‘Do you want lunch, Nat? I’m making paella.’
‘I’ve just eaten. Thanks.’
‘We’re thinking of surfing this afternoon, do you want to come?’
‘Who?’
‘Me and the guys.’
The teenager picks some chicken out of the pan. Kim jokingly wags a finger at him. He burns his mouth and makes a gasping noise, frantically fills a glass of water.
‘Honey, be careful,’ Kim says.
It feels like a scene in a weird sitcom. I try to smile at Kim but she has a mask on and I don’t know who she is in this moment.
‘I’m not able to surf, Kim. I may relax here and read.’
‘Okay,’ she says and the little boy asks her something. She bends down to his level and is fully attentive.
Is it a show? I wonder in my hammock. Or is it real? Is she experiencing something she’s always wanted right now? Who the fuck am I to call her fake for it?
I hear them all having their moment downstairs.
I swing in the hammock and figure out how I’d describe this scene in a spin class. I’d bring in the grey sand beach, the thrum of the mototaxi engines, the sweetness of the local café’s mousse and these glorious feathers that keep falling from the sky.
Kim comes bounding upstairs to freshen herself before surfing.
‘What will you do for the afternoon?’ she asks.
‘I’ve been thinking about the fitness qualification. Maybe it’s something I’ll look into.’
Kim beams. She puts some light make-up on and sprays grapefruit perfume on her hair, underarms and on her feet. She dashes after the men.
I go to the side pocket of my rucksack to find a pen and notebook. I see the bag of powder, the San Pedro.
I have nothing else to do for the afternoon. I get a spoon of it and put it into a glass of water. It blends terribly. I stir it about but it doesn’t dissolve so I take a gulp. It’s so plantlike and bitter I have to whine after taking a mouthful. I block my nose and drink the rest of the glass.
Then I sit in the hammock and write goals, listing the actions I’ll have to take to achieve them. Small steps.
After about forty minutes, the world feels a bit different. Shimmery. I suddenly know what a flower must sense as it faces the sunshine. The head of the turtle I realize doesn’t need protecting, its body does. The body is the temple. I understand it now. The temple is where you go to contact God. So maybe heaven isn’t above, it’s below?
I feel the pedals of the spinning bikes being pushed in gyms around the world, the ocean surrounding Kim’s wetsuit, the hope in her heart to feel better. I lie in the hammock and gaze at the sky. It’s infinite petrol blue. I wonder how much space and time exist between me now and the me who knows what she’s doing with her life?
Then it dawns on me, how space and time are dependent on observation, and that all potentials exist simultaneously. Therefore, if I can dream it, it’s already done.
‘What the fuck?’ I scratch above my eyebrow, not sure where this quantum theory has come out of.
A bird flies by. The divine white of its plumage glistens. It stops on the plastic roof above me. I see its webbed orange foot. It’s a goose. She yangs and honks.
The cleaner woman arrives downstairs and greets Carla. The women speak in Spanish, and though I don’t know what words they say, I understand exactly what they’re expressing to each other.
Natalie, a voice that’s not a voice utters from somewhere in my chest. What you need you already have, it says, but speaking isn’t the way we’re communicating. It’s a knowing. It’s a vibration.
I know, I respond.
I amn’t even I. I am everything. Everything is me. The fat white goose plodding on the plastic roof. The Rolling Stones tongue on Carla’s T-shirt. The grains of sand all over our bathroom floor. The salt in the sand. The father and son. The beach noises, laughs and waves and wind blowing, singing. The bobbing seaweed. The perpetual might of the Pacific. The gripping sun.
I see a flash of the twenty-foot cactus in the yard. I could go downstairs to talk to him but there’s no need, I can speak from here.
I’m in the universal mind, amn’t I?
He laughs, in a cactus way. He’s very distinguished.
Do I need to know anything?
He’s smiling but serious. You don’t need anything. You have it all. You are it all. We all are.
I know! I say and surge with joy. I’m a bit mental right now, yeah? I’m talking to a cactus from inside and he’s talking back.
We don’t make the laws, lady. You’ve opened a new route in your mind. You know this is not forever but you also know it is, because now is forever, if you’ll let it be.
I know! I want to squeal. But I don’t know what to do about Kim.
What is there to do?
She’s going crazy.
You’re talking to a cactus.
Okay, good point. I don’t know how to help her.
You don’t have to help her. She has her journey. You have to accept her.
She’s annoying me.
You’re seeing in her what you don’t want to see in yourself.
Am I?
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to.
I am.
The goose tramples the plastic until she ends up right over my head. I love her. The noise. Her foot. The plastic.
It’s all beautiful, you’re a witness.
All? Even me?
He has a prickly, wheezy laugh this time. Why do you doubt it? It’s not a question. You’re alive. You’re beautiful. Don’t un-acknowledge the universe.
It’s my ego. It’s out of control. Isn’t it?
The cactus laughs again. It is what it is. You’re doing fine.
Do I try out this idea of being a fitness instructor?
You already know.
Yeah, I do. It’s so weird, Abuelito, it’s so weird to be out of my own way.
It is what it is.
It’s lovely is what it is.
I close my eyes and hear far-off drums, rattles, see the life force of trees and plants. I knew they grew but I never really recognized what that meant before now. I never considered the ‘being’ part of being alive, behind our personalities, how we share that – our existence – with plants, with animals, with everything.
I wake and haven’t a clue how much time has passed. A few seconds? Hours?
Whatever it was has faded, and Kim is home to shower.
‘We’re watching a movie downstairs? Come down for a while for drinks.’
I join them for one rum and cola but I’m not feeling it. Kim grabs a cardigan and leaves for a bar with Nico, Carla, the father and older son.
We’re in a small modern café, on the main strip, for breakfast, and I notice Kim is binge eating. She blames it on her hangover and goes for a long run again when we get home.
I am relaxed. I wave hello to Kim’s new family and go for a walk on the beach.
I sit for a while and watch the ocean, in and out, each slow wave its own, each wave connected.
In the afternoon, Kim wants to go for a ceviche in a locals’ secret place, recommended by Nico. To keep the peace, I join her. We hop into a mototaxi and off we go, way past the tourist side of town, through the tin and patch house neighbourhood, taking a right down a side street.
‘Is shantytown an offensive term to use?’ I ask.
Kim says, ‘Is slum better? Jesus, how do they access water in those shacks?’
My eyes prick with tears trying to imagine. ‘I don’t know.’
The restaurant is crowded and noisy with many conversations happening at once, cutlery clanging off plates, steam hissing from the kitchen, and a big cloudy bubbling fish tank on the wall packed with lobsters, crabs and other shellfish. A smiling waitress gives us a window seat. We’re the only white-skinned people in the building.
Kim orders ceviche and a seafood stirfry. I order chips.