1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PART I 
“So we beat on, boats against the current, 
 borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 
 - F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2 
 
Zola 
? 
 
 Zola runs her hand across the row of seven light switches, watching as 
each Tungsten filament fuses and comes alive, illuminating the length of leather-
 cushioned bar stools. The reflection in the windows tells her that all the can lights 
are on, including those in the adjacent room. She adjusts the three round track 
knobs to “the mood” Jules, or J.P. Verne, prefers—just short of bearskin rug and 
the tasteful touch of a stone fireplace with crackling logs.  
 She hefts a case of light beer onto the back counter below the stuffed head 
of a large elk, its antlers coated with golden enamel, its eyes blank and staring off 
toward the almost vacant parking lot of the hotel. The one reserved spot is taken 
by Mr. Verne, because he thinks that parking all the way out there will keep his 
car safe from dings and dents.  
 As she tears open the cardboard flaps of the box, the distributer’s glue 
gives, and Zola grabs three glass necks in one hand and two in the other. 
  “It’s a small buy-in, I promise.” She hears her boss coming around the 
corner from the lobby, talking on his phone. Buy-ins mean he’ll be staying this 
evening and won’t be going home to his new wife. 
  “Okay. We can get it over the weekend. Just because they’re on sale 
doesn’t mean they’re going anywhere.” Putting an elbow on the bar, he pinches 
3 
 
the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. Zola gives his crown the once-over—he 
shouldn’t wear so much gel. It makes his hair look like it’s thinning.  
 “I didn’t expect to see you,” says Jules, when he’s off the call.  
 “Covering for Martha. I need the hours.”  
 “I’ve got some marketing materials going out with the sales team in a 
couple days. I could use your help editing before I drop them at the printers. 
That’ll give you some extra time.” 
 “Sure, I can do that,” says Zola. “By the way, Mr. Bronkowski’s back.” 
 Jules studies a spot of oil on his tie, which is sapphire blue with pink polka 
dots. He shuffles behind the bar. “I need soda water,” he says. 
 “He’s brought company. Eastern European. Pretty.”  
 Zola doesn’t want it to sound as if this bothers her. Men like Mr. 
Bronkowski always tip well on their business trips, and she’s learned how to 
appeal to them with talk about what they collect, their hobbies, or by asking if 
they have been anywhere interesting lately. Most importantly, she’s learned to be 
polite to the women escorting them (even if they are half their age or she’s sure 
they’re not a spouse).  
 “Did they pay the full rate?” asks Jules, helping himself to the beverage 
gun. 
 “I think so,” says Zola, returning to the chore of stocking the sliding door 
coolers.  
4 
 
 “That’s what I like to hear.” Jules is a few inches shorter than she is, even 
in his lifted designer loafers. She watches as he squirts water into a wad of 
cocktail napkins.  
 “Shit!” he says, stamping his foot. He has managed to get his entire sleeve 
wet.  
 He removes the cuff link—if they weren’t real he probably wouldn’t 
worry about them rusting, but she knows this pair was a gift engraved with his 
initials. His acquisition of fine watches and other accessories often makes her 
wonder, especially since discovering a whole drawer of them in his office 
accidently while looking for a box of staples. 
 Finally getting to the stain on his tie, he walks away. He’s off to 
somewhere quickly. With his short-cut legs and stocky frame, his claims of 
having been an All-State wrestling champ in the early-90’s are believable, though 
he reminds her more of one of those circus boys—no more than 10 years old, with 
highly defined biceps, sometimes smoking cigars or holding oversized dumbbells 
impressively overhead. But then again, there is also something about his Filipino 
put-togetherness that makes it hard to imagine him sweating over anything, 
especially when it comes to rolling around on those funky school mats.  
 “We’re in the business of pinks elephants,” he calls over his shoulder. 
Everything comes with a price tag and can be bought. There is always someone 
willing to pay.  
5 
 
 The Hunt Club du Monde is the name of the restaurant attached to the 
French-inspired hotel, REST & POUTINE, where Zola has been working for the 
past year. The place basically tries to duplicate what Old Montreal brags, on a 
cheaper budget. Jules almost didn’t hire her, because she interviewed so poorly 
and spent more time looking at his shiny black dress shoes and his shiny 
rectangular belt buckle than at his open face. It wasn’t that she’d been worried 
about landing the position; part-time jobs were easy to come by in a seasonal 
town like Portland. But what made her nervous, more than anything, was that 
she’d never had someone before point out her lack of confidence, right to her 
face.  
 
 “Do you follow sports?” he’d asked her right off the bat, and she instantly 
began to sweat beneath her chiffon blouse. 
 “Not really. The competitive thing—”  
 “I’ll ask again. Do you follow sports?”  
Zola looked at Jules, confused. “Yes?” 
 “Did you catch the Redskins game last night?”  
 Zola shook her head. 
  “WHOO-WEE! ” With a smack on the edge of the table with the palm of 
his hand, he startled her. The two water glasses rattled with ice and the silverware 
jumped to a crooked angle on the linen napkins. Taking on a Southern drawl, he 
6 
 
rocked in his chair. “Man those boys played h-aaaard! I don’t care much for those 
black boys, but that running back. He can run like he’d been raised to.” 
 Had he purposefully tried to offend her? Judging from the slight 
Philadelphia accent that came out during all his raving—she would recognize that 
faint whine and overexcitement anywhere—and the obvious fact that his skin was 
as dark as any African-American or well-tanned Spaniard, she realized what he 
was really doing was testing her patience and threshold for vulgarity.  
 “I am more interested in the ones who call the shots.” 
 “Oh, you’re a smart girl? A quarterback queen. You must enjoy the 
strategy.”  
 Zola laughed. “I don’t know about that.”  
 “Yes, you are! You’re not agreeing, you’re making a statement. ‘Yes, sir!’ 
Our clientele will dictate if you let them. They’ll eat you up. Understand?” 
 Zola nodded, disappointed that she had gotten it wrong, and a bit 
embarrassed that he could read her so easily—though it wasn’t in an invasive 
way, almost as if he could relate to her level, her sex, and with a sensitivity she 
didn’t typically associate with guys in expensive Italian suits. Fidgeting, as she 
does whenever she’s put on the spot, she rubbed the area of skin just above the 
knee of her crossed leg.  
7 
 
 Jules saw her doing this. “The job is yours if you want it. But take my 
advice: subscribe to daily stats. You can make some good money here, if you 
want to.” 
 He took a set of keys from his pocket as he shook her hand. The key chain 
was as polished as his larger-than-life appearance, and most likely his car too. She 
knew she was so far beyond her element, and that this conversation had been 
nothing short of an adult education for her. It was something different, which she 
craved. After all, it wasn’t her first time adapting to a foreign place. She’d found 
that losing her bearings or not being solely committed to what’s at stake, if only 
temporarily, helped to redirect her. Reinvention was her case for using borrowed 
time.  
 
 “Jitterbug Perfume,” says Opera John, as he daintily sips his dirty martini. 
“I was with a troupe in France, we were doing a rendition.” 
 She watches as his two chubby fingers swim around in the thin-stemmed 
glass, like a fat kid’s legs kicking in a murky lake at summer camp. Fishing out 
this one olive is this 300-pound man’s idea of exercise.  
 “I was paired with this tenor. Piro was his name. Oh, what a lovely union 
that was. I was an alto, sweet on him like you wouldn’t believe. I ate at his 
family’s corner café every day of that run. The kind with white and red umbrellas, 
and pinwheels in the front. And sometimes before we’d leave to break, I would 
8 
 
sneak in the back where he kept his costumes, because they smelled of butter 
cream just like his skin.” 
 John pined for many young men, lamenting to Zola regularly that he was 
too big for anyone to love anymore. He came in a couple times a week, but it had 
taken him awhile to trust Zola with his explicit poison. He would direct her 
through every step of the mixology process, from chilling to shaking to straining. 
And though it was one of the simplest cocktails to make in the alcoholics’ 
hierarchy, Opera John had his own definition of a perfect balance and absolutely 
didn’t tolerate a rushed drink. 
 “Soooo?” Zola is amused by his overplay of the gay card, especially when 
he bats his eyelashes at her like a giant Kewpie doll.  
 “Nada.” 
 “Really?” He acts surprised and she laughs. 
 “Yeah, you’ve got much more going on in that department,” admits Zola. 
 “You got to get out there! You ain’t no Gertrude Stein—I bet you wear 
rehab slippers around your house, Ms. Stein. I’m gonna call you that from now 
on.” 
 “My mother gave them to me. Worried that my feet would get cold.” 
 “Let’s be real. Gertrude probably had more gentlemen callers in one day, 
begging for her attention, than you’ve had all year. Well, there’s nothing like a 
good romp to get the circulation going again.” 
9 
 
 “Is this seat taken?” Another man has joined them. John barely 
acknowledges him, but Zola asks what she can get him. 
 “A scotch with two rocks will do, thanks.” 
 She reaches for the label he’s pointed to, standing on her toes with her 
longer fingers inching up on the ledge of the shelf. She hears the phone ringing 
behind the kitchen doors and has to stop to answer. 
 “Excuse me,” she says, with a glance back at the waiting man. Now 
engrossed in the evening news, he gives her a dismissive nod, apparently 
unconcerned by the delay.  
 “What should I eat?” asks Jules, on the other end of the line. 
 “Where are you?” she asks, knowing very well he could tell her it isn’t 
any of her business, but this has become a regular aspect of her role. 
 “Still playing. Up a few hundred in hold ’em.” 
 “How about steak frites?” 
 “Is it tender?” 
 “You can have it raw as you want.” 
 “What goes well with steak?” 
 “It comes with fries, but substitute asparagus. They’re as thick as ever.” 
 “What would you get?” 
 “Probably that.” 
 “I didn’t know you ate meat.” 
10 
 
 “Sometimes. I like it every now and then.” 
 “Always took you for one of these vegetables-have-feelings types.” 
 “Not sure I know what that means.” 
 “Thought writers were all the ‘farmers market, don’t-shave-their-pits’ 
kind.” 
 “I just write,” she says. “Medium? Asparagus?” 
 “I’ll be back within the hour, hopefully a rich bastard. Have Tanya let you 
into my room. Just leave the tray on the dresser.” 
 Zola returns to decant the scotch for the man at the bar, who doesn’t seem 
to notice she’s been absent.  
 “Thanks,” he says. “Did you happen to catch the score on the Cardinals’ 
game? I was in the air and missed the whole thing,” 
 “7-5 Missouri.”  
 A win will put this man in good humor, hopefully translating to generosity 
for Zola. He is focused on the Dow ticker. Above it, the headline reads: Dogs 
Living in High Rises. With a skinny black straw he swirls the short pour in his 
glass, as the cubes melt to the size of two icy pills. He takes a swig and hisses 
through his teeth from the bite. 
 
 
 
11 
 
? 
Zola steps into the street after her shift. A fog is rolling in off the harbor, 
blurring the lights of the town with a smoky screen that covers a backdrop of 
brick and copper brownstones. She smells fish and salt, carbon and gasoline. This 
is Zola’s favorite part of day—the eerie quietness that begins with the new. Her 
patrons have gone home and Jules has turned in, and while most others are 
sleeping, she will use this time to write. She can only store so much in her head 
before she must upload her thoughts elsewhere; somewhere past the extension of 
her. Putting her ideas down on paper and making room for new thoughts is for her 
the closest thing to a natural release. If she didn’t have writing to turn to, then 
there would have to be something else. Though she has found in her experience, 
the alternative substitutes are often not as fulfilling, and are usually shallow 
attempts passed off for the real thing. 
A blonde girl, around Zola’s age, wanders aimlessly in the middle of Ferry 
Street, barefoot and abandoned after refusing to get in the car with her drunken 
boyfriend. Fortunately, it is the time of night where cars are tucked away safely in 
driveways and garages, and the street is empty. 
“You have a smoke?” the girl asks. 
Zola stops and digs in her purse for a pack, then helps the directionless 
wanderer with a light. “Got a way home?” 
12 
 
“I’m in no rush,” the girl says, leaning over to put on a pair of sandals 
sitting on the sidewalk that Zola hadn’t noticed. As the girl does this, her low-cut 
tank top sags down, showing no traces of a bra. 
“I’m walking this way, if you want to join me.” Zola doesn’t want to leave 
the girl unattended in such a condition, but she also knows that there may be more 
drama in store if she acquires company. 
“Nah, I’m gonna finish this and catch a cab. Mark’s probably worried.” 
Relieved, Zola bids her goodnight and heads home.  
 At her apartment building, she notices that her mailbox has become 
overstuffed from a couple days of neglect. Its nameplate lists her as one in a series 
of others who have come before her, the only one who has yet to be crossed or 
blackened out. She removes the contents and lets the metallic lid slam with an 
empty sound.  
 Bills and coupons, mostly. Over the last month, she’s sent very few 
submissions out, knowing that even a completed piece is still just a pitch. It is 
frustrating to put all that time and energy into an idea, only to hear back from an 
editor at a journal it doesn’t fit in with the theme for next month’s issue. How 
could she have known that a Flirtini was no longer en vogue in trendy clubs, 
having been replaced by Medusa’s Orgasm over night? After all, when she does 
13 
 
get out she doesn’t have the patience or poise for anything fancy, particularly of 
the popular neon variety. 
 Leafing through a color-copied coupon flyer for a local department store, 
she climbs the stairs to the second floor. Nothing she really needs—though a real 
Kitchen Aid mixer would be nice. Right in the middle of the thought, a small 
white envelope slips from the paper and lands at her feet.  
 In the top, right-hand corner is a foreign postmark dated within the last 
week and covering the rest of the surface are forwarding stamps, at least five, with 
the fingers pointing every which way. Zola crouches down to the worn tiles of the 
hallway landing, focusing on the smeared and distorted handwriting. The original 
address is old; it’s going on four years since she lived there, and she’s impressed 
by the postal service for tracking her down through the various relocations. Zola 
is not necessarily hiding; she just doesn’t care too much to be found. And 
knowing only a few people who use the postal service anymore, she has a 
sneaking suspicion as to who this letter is from. The sender’s address is 
unidentifiable, with no name included, but the legible portions look familiar. She 
almost wants to deny the possibility, as she slips the envelope into the stack 
between her thumb and forefinger, and continues her ascent upstairs.  
 Once inside, she hangs on to the letter and drops the rest of the mail on her 
kitchen table. Lingering for a moment, she wonders if she could toss it away 
unopened, as though she had never seen it. But it would take a will she knows she 
14 
 
doesn’t have. Questions are forming quickly, like air bubbles underwater—as one 
rises to the surface, others follow, only to be stopped if she ceased breathing.  
 Beneath the sharp folds of the paper sachet is a letter. She considers the 
contents may not necessarily be the kind of guidance she’s been waiting for. It 
could be a potential discourse from the certain existence she has fought 
desperately to create. But as her need to know prevails, she opens the envelope 
with care, and the letter flutters like wings unfolded from a cocoon.  
 
My Dear Zola, 
 I hope this letter finds you. If it does not, you will never know the loss of 
my words. After all these years and silence, I do not expect you to read on, let 
alone open this letter. Even if it is tucked away in a box, at least it is in your 
hands. And one day you will know that I tried to reach out to you, and that you 
are rarely far from my mind.  
 I hope you are well. I hope you are loved. I hope that you are creating 
beautiful art. And I hope you have not abandoned your pursuit for something 
more.  
 I see my life passing before my eyes. I have traveled, loved and painted. 
But my life is far from whole and sometimes I wonder if you have found that piece 
I left behind, when I thought I misplaced it somewhere else…  
Nicholay 
 
15 
 
Patches of red and yellow light bounce and flicker off the kitchen cabinets, 
and the refrigerator hums against the laminate floor. Watching the steam from the 
kettle dissipate, Zola sits at the table that serves as both a desk and dining area, 
with the one-page letter in front of her. She studies it as though analyzing a 
significant archival document.  
The pot whistles.  
She gets up to steep a bag of tea, and reads his letter once more: I wonder 
if you have found that piece I left behind—when I thought I misplaced it 
somewhere else… His words resonate. She knows how they would have exited his 
mouth, and curled out from his thin, wide lips—like an armadillo reciting an 
elegy. 
But how could he? 
After all this time? 
He was always the selfish one. 
What did he expect? Closure in his newfound life? To make her crazy as 
he knew he could? Four years with no word, hearing nothing, and here he was 
showing up in a letter, without apology? 
16 
 
When all that is left in her cup is the smell of mint and a hint of delicate 
herbs speckled on a ceramic bottom, she heads for bed, choosing sleep over the 
recollection of him.  
? 
 Zola dreams that she is in a small paper boat in the middle of a great body 
of water. The sail is stamped with a compass rose pointing the way. The sky 
hangs heavy, but does not reflect off the water’s surface or meet at the horizon. 
She cannot anticipate its depth, because light does not exist below her. There is no 
beginning or end, only where she floats in between. She becomes afraid, straining 
her eyes for any sign of familiarity, but there is nothing. Curling up on the bottom 
of the boat, she weeps. She does not cry for fear of death, but out of fear she will 
never be found, that she will disappear off the face of the earth and no one will 
notice her missing.  
 Determined this will not be her demise, she sits up and scans her 
surroundings once more, this time noticing a mainstay at one end of the boat. 
Grabbing hold of the line, she plants her feet for balance and with both hands 
begins to pull herself and the weight of the boat towards its anchor. For hours she 
pulls, but the rope continues to uncoil and extend. Uncertainty about what lies at 
the other end of its length, and whether it will be better to wait for someone to 
discover her, makes her heave harder and faster, feeling the stretch through her 
17 
 
arms and all down her side. She was once told by her mother that if she ever got 
lost to remain in one place, but now she wonders if there will be anyone who will 
come looking.  
With all her might she pulls, hands blistering and body drenched in sweat. 
Time passes, but she has no gauge of the hours or the days. Her muscles are sore, 
her body weak.  
Ready to give up and collapse in exhaustion, she sees it, a vague silhouette 
of a dock—this must be a trick someone is playing on her. But as the boat drifts 
closer, she can make out the rough outline of a shadowed figure leaning on a 
wooden railing, arms crossed and head bent. She knows the height of this man, 
the width of his torso, and the way of his stance. She knows this man, but she 
doesn’t know if she should cry out in thankfulness, or let her boat drift past him 
into the abyss.  
Zola wakes with her nightgown clinging to her body and the sheets at her 
ankles. Half awake, she slinks her way to the bathroom and wearily splashes her 
face at its porcelain basin. The dampness of her nightgown against her bare 
breasts gives her a chill. She pulls off the cotton gown and grabs the robe from a 
hook on the back of the door.  She is strangely aroused from the dream, not solely 
in a sexual way, but the way someone would feel when anticipating a meeting 
with an old lover. She feels it in her abdomen, as though strings are being played 
18 
 
between that connected place of navel and femininity. Some describe this 
sensation as butterflies, but Zola knows she is not a 13-year-old girl, but a 28-
 year-old woman, and butterflies are too pure a description for what she feels. The 
thought of him is embedded inside of her now, pulling ever so gently, on all the 
right chords.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
19 
 
Nicholay 
? 
 He can hear Geraldine prancing around upstairs, trying to locate her fallen 
garments. He can picture her long legs in various yoga-like stretches as she 
attempts to dislodge her panties from his tangled bedding. 
 “You didn’t wake me,” she says, finally coming downstairs in the same 
clothing as the night before. She leans over him and grabs his chest affectionately, 
her strawberry-blonde hair tickling his cheek and neck. “Now I’m going to be 
late!” she singsongs with ironic flair, then takes a few, quick gulps of the coffee 
he has poured and left for her. “Nothing like cold, black coffee to start the day,” 
she says, holding one of her lengthy legs at an angle like a flamingo. 
  Turning down the newspaper slightly, he gives her his attention. “You 
were like a peaceful undine, all laid out in morning bliss. Couldn’t bear to disrupt 
such a beautiful creature sleeping. It’s unjust.”  
 “What’s unjust is that you’ve managed to get me to stay again and you’ve 
barely touched that canvas.”  
 Nicholay sees a nice contrast between the tassels of Geraldine’s hair, and 
the aqua marine glaze of the cup she is holding in her hands. He makes a mental 
note of this palette, before his focus shifts to his unfinished cabinets behind her, 
without cabinet doors—just another one of his projects he’s saving for a rainy 
20 
 
day. “Trust me, we’re getting close. I can feel it. Pretty soon you won’t be able to 
pull me away.”  
 “I was warned about you.” 
 “Indeed you were.”  
 “I gotta to go,” she says, looking at her watch and pulling a bag over her 
freckled shoulder. “Besitos. Ciao.” Then her long limbs are out the door and down 
the steps, off to a class he doesn’t teach—ceramics was for the birds, full of pot-
 smoking youths who backpack through South East Asia in search of their chi.  
 Nicholay sets the kitchen timer on the table beside him and goes back to 
reading the news. Recent heirs, a brother and sister who have been off the radar 
until recently, when, in a bizarre turn of events, they received a large trust after 
the passing of their tycoon father. According to sources, they despised this man 
and everything he stood for; he was a self-promoting capitalist, bureaucrat and 
social philanderer. The siblings denounced their father’s name, and donated all 
their funds to local arts programs. They were currently seeking the like to 
sponsor.  
 No better than their father, Nicholay thinks. Philanthropic karma is the 
latest currency. Disgusted, he turns to another section, then to the soccer scores.  
21 
 
 When the timer goes off at 11:11, he gets up and removes the button-down 
sweater he’s wearing, leaving him in nothing but his unlaced boots. The cable knit 
cardigan belonged to his grandfather, a good ol’ boy from New England, and it is 
the only thing Nicholay has left of him. He doesn’t want to ruin the sweater with 
oil paints, since there isn’t an effective way of getting the stains out. Despite the 
many methods and neutralizers he’s tried over the years, every stitch of clothing 
he owns is covered with evidence of whatever project he is currently working on. 
Painting naked just began to make sense after a while.  
 This particular project is not the one he and Geraldine have been 
collaborating on. Right now, as it sits on the easel in the corner of his kitchen all 
that is identifiable is a pair of female hands kneading bread in empty space: an 
idea that came to him in a memory.  
He hadn’t thought about Zola for quite some time, until an early morning 
last week when he couldn’t sleep any longer. He’d slipped away from the purr of 
his lover and went to make a sandwich downstairs. He wasn’t sure if it was the 
piece of artisan bread he’d been chewing between thoughts, or the way the light 
caught the side of the hammered metal mug he was drinking from, but whatever it 
was, a vision came back to him, a familiar energy he became determined to 
capture.  
22 
 
The recollection is four years old, but feels like yesterday’s clothes. His 
hand searched the bed for her, but was met with the coolness of deserted sheets. It 
was dawn and a chill ran along the crooked floorboards. Nicholay got up, 
following the smell of sweet yeast downstairs to the kitchen. As he approached 
the entryway, he saw Zola, nude, kneading bread. He stopped in their unlit 
hallway and looked on as the faintest pieces of first light barely touched her moist 
skin, her silhouette glistening like a mare in summer’s heat. Her hands moved 
rhythmically over the dough as strands of hair fell to her face and her tiny breasts 
gently swayed in motion. She was beautifully posed and he couldn’t help but 
make love to her and her flour-covered body, in their flour-covered kitchen.  
Last week, when this came back to him, Nicholay painted feverishly for 
hours, into the late afternoon. The poet Rilke once described the artistic 
experience as “lying so incredibly close to that of sex, to its pain and its ecstasy, 
that the two manifestations were one in the same.” And when Nicholay becomes 
enraptured in his work, even the temptation of a half-clothed woman happy to 
indulge him again and again can’t take him away from his canvas.  
He made the decision to write Zola out of selfishness, mostly, but also 
curiosity. There is part of him that wonders where the wind has taken her. She 
always had a little gypsy blood in her, an innate inability to settle. It was one of 
the many things that drew him to her in the first place. Her need for travel, to seek 
23 
 
new adventures, and all those unspoken personal conquests, inspired them once to 
dream of a love and life built on something higher. They had relished the idea that 
no one but the two of them alone understood what they shared, and that was all 
that mattered. This had been so clear in the way they made love and worked side 
by side, and how in time her beauty blossomed into a finely stated independence. 
However, there had been an element of something spontaneous and erratic too, 
deficiencies they did not want to admit to. Being together required them to make 
compromises, promises Nicholay suspected he might never be able to make to 
anyone, not even to her. 
? 
Among his nobler pastimes, Nicholay teaches a small group of five-year-
 old kids how to paint. Two days a week, he works for a community center that 
offers instruction on everything from aerobics to interior design for all different 
levels and ages. This is where he met Geraldine. She was leaving at the end of one 
of the studio classes she was taking, and he was walking in to teach the next slot. 
“What do you think of this pot?” she had asked him, as she cleaned a 
potter’s wheel in the back of the room. 
Nicholay went over to examine the clay heap. “Honestly?” 
“Lay it on me,” she said, scrubbing the slick grey goo from her hands over 
the industrial sink.  
24 
 
“I think it’s shit, and you can do better.” 
“Is that so?” she said, removing the black apron tied around her neck and 
waist, to reveal a curvaceous body in a floral dress. She’s taller than most women 
he’s known, almost his height. But what stands out to him the most, is that she is 
of those mixed breeds of Spanish women, with light hair and brown skin. 
“In fact…” He put his hand over the lopsided, muddy vessel and pressed 
down hard, flattening it into a pile.  
Geraldine stared at him. “Who the hell do you think you are!” 
“I thought you wanted me to be honest?” 
“I did, but—” 
“Listen, I’m sorry. Were you really attached to that pot?” 
“I spent hours…” She trailed off, shaking her head. 
He may as well have been the man who hit the family pet with his car and 
left it for dead on the side of the road, because the expression on Geraldine’s face 
was one and the same. Looking as though she didn’t know what to make of the 
situation or him, she bagged up what was left of her project. 
25 
 
“How about this: Why don’t you think about it for awhile, and when I take 
you out tonight for dinner—as my apology to you—you can explain why it 
mattered that I squashed that terrible thing you called art.” 
“And why would I go out with you?” 
“I just so happen to be an expert on these things.” 
“And this actually works?” 
“You tell me.” 
That was three months ago, and since then Geraldine has been the closest 
thing to a companion Nicholay has had for awhile. 
Nicholay enjoys teaching kids, because they haven’t been polluted by 
reality, and their perceptions of the world are still pure. Ask children why they 
chose blue for the color of skin, and they’ll say, “The boy is sad because he lost 
his dog.” 
And if Nicholay asks, “What dog? I don’t see a dog pictured here.” 
They’ll say, “Because he’s lost.” 
“Okay, then what about the rainbow?” 
“I just like rainbows.” 
26 
 
“Fair enough.” This was reasoning he could follow. He would accept a 
child’s reasoning over an adult’s any day.  
Sometimes, Nicholay brings in his paintings and lets the kids ask him 
questions about his own work.  
“Why does that man look so angry?”  
“I don’t know,” he replies. “His lover left him for his father.” 
“What’s a lover?” 
“It’s a woman or man who cares for another deeply, but is incapable of 
committing in the most intimate and complete way. Usually, someone ends up 
getting hurt.” 
“My mommy loves my daddy.” 
“You’re probably right.” It does exist, though Nicholay hasn’t personally 
seen such a case. 
“Sometimes my mommy says she hates daddy when he doesn’t pay 
attention to her and watches soccer all night, and then goes to bed without her.” 
If only he could see like a child again, he could paint uninhibited without a 
care or worry about whether what he was doing was any good. His kids were 
gauges for how honest his paintings were. If they told him they liked it without 
27 
 
any explanation other than “just because,” he knew he was on to something half 
decent.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
28 
 
 Zola  
? 
 September’s vibrant decay is creeping inland, as it does in New England 
with its fiery touch and rustic soul. The treetops appear as gentle red and ginger-
 headed giants standing loyally on guard, waiting to shed their coats and bare their 
rickety bones, aged and vulnerable to another winter. Zola looks out her window 
at the oak in the yard below. It has become a dial for the seasons, and the scent of 
musty leaves has already made its way into her apartment. The family of birds 
that nested there for most of the year has abandoned its home without so much as 
a goodbye note, but she knows they will return and she will awake once more to 
the cheery diligence of their songs.  
 It’s only a matter of time now until the hours in the day become fleeting, 
like flocks of evening geese, and the nights will get colder—particularly when 
one is alone. Yet the lure of procrastination tap-tap-taps on her windowpanes, 
with the same tenacity as drumming fingertips on a glass tabletop, making a 
racket she can no longer ignore. Exhaling heavily, she scribbles out another 
phrase, hoping for that beginning sentence to appear and give way to prose.  
 Ah, if only she was a true morning writer, waking when light breaks into 
brilliant white pieces on her bedroom floor, a jumble of words all ready and built 
up for a day’s work. Now, distracted and trying to fend off agitation, she rolls the 
29 
 
pen she’s been playing with across her desk and away from her. The coffee in her 
mug has gone stale.  
 She hasn’t been up this early since God knows when; she doesn’t normally 
have a routine before 11, and is feeling a bit out of sorts. With the late hours she 
keeps at the Hunt Club, her nocturnal habits and eating and sleeping patterns are 
constantly under speculation from Jules, her closest friends, and the occasional 
admirer. So, when she gets up to throw together a breakfast and at once discovers 
there is nothing in her fridge that could entice even Kafka’s fasting artist, she 
decides a trip to the farmer’s market is in order. 
 It is an unusually warm fall day, and Zola takes her regular route from 
India Street, where she lives, down the hill toward the shipyard, then along the 
boulevard to the park where the market is held. Her mind escapes with the 
moving and orchestrated sounds that echo off the wharf and under the easements 
of storefronts, basking in what she is a part of, but aware of being separate too. 
With her hands tucked inside the satiny cool pockets of her wool jacket, she turns 
her face to the warmth in the sky and lets her boots guide her down the 
boardwalk, making that familiar scuff and hollow sound as she goes.  
 The stone buildings and open-air markets of Old Port are reminiscent of 
the seaside villages of Spain, as is the close energy of the bustling crowds. 
Tourists come for the quaintness, while the city’s residents live out their lives. 
30 
 
Weather-beaten men in galoshes populate the pubs beside day traders in dock 
shoes and pastel sweaters. And fresh-faced kids maneuver narrow cobbled roads 
on motorbikes beside lovely white-haired ladies walking dogs. It could be 
anywhere, but it is in this harbor town that she wants to learn to belong. 
“You brought another lovely morning with you,” says the man behind the 
bread cart as Zola enters through the west end of the park. Both shield their eyes 
from the early morning glare.  
“It was lovely before I got here,” she says, leaning to pick up a basket 
from the stack piled before his stand. “There was an amazing blue heron out at 
lower pier. He looked so noble with his broad chest and stern face. Actually, he 
reminded me a bit of you.” 
 Bernard laughs heartily from his belly. “Ah, maybe when I was a young 
man, perhaps. Today?” He shakes his head ‘no.’ 
 “Where do you suppose they all go when it gets cold? The herons, I 
mean.”  
 “Depends on how cold it gets. Every now and then when we have a mild 
winter, you’ll see a couple of them sticking around here. They like the marsh a lot 
over near the bay. But I suppose they go with all the other birds, though generally 
you see them flying solo.”  
31 
 
 “How’s business been? I bet the other vendors are jealous; you get to greet 
all the women who come by here first.” Zola points to one of the freshly baked 
mounds with a cross-shaped texture in the top.  
 “Women don’t eat bread anymore. Always worried about their figures. 
They don’t know it’s good for them, because it tempts them like sweets.” He 
holds the loaf with the same care as a newborn, and Zola nods her approval. “And 
now we have these gluten-free followers. Depriving their bodies like that, it can’t 
be good for their hearts.” Bernard carefully wraps her selection in brown paper, 
tying it up with a bow of twine. “We’ll be packing up the market here in a couple 
weeks, but I’ll still be distributing to a few shops around town.”  
 “Well, I don’t mind a little honey and salt in my diet,” she says, then 
thanks and pays him when he hands her the bundle. 
 It is noticeably busy in the park today and she has to side step to get where 
she wants to go. By lunch the crowd will disperse, and couples and families will 
go off to find places nearby to sit and enjoy their goodies. Zola has her favorite 
stops, and has made a point to learn the vendors’ names and listen to their stories. 
Now they greet her with their warm northern accents and smiling eyes.  
 Tilia has the nicest cart of greens: kale, fennel bulbs, mesclun, and 
watercress. Her vegetable kiosk is often the second stop after Bernard’s bread 
32 
 
cart, unless the temperature is real warm; then it is Zola’s last stop, so nothing 
wilts or spoils. Zola has to speak up when talking to the older Portuguese woman, 
who hobbles out on bad hips from behind her usual roosting spot, just so she can 
hear correctly. With a handful of stalks close to her face, Zola breathes in the 
verdant scents that remind her of the gardens and stables of her youth, and Tilia 
smiles knowingly at the gesture without complaining that she’s touching the 
merchandise.  
 Tilia’s grand-daughter, Eva, sits near the back of their nylon tent, reading 
tabloid magazines with images of blond and busty women on their glossy covers, 
or thumbing the keypad of her cell phone with zombie-like concentration. She has 
the pretty ethnic features that Tilia probably once had, though there’s a constant 
look of boredom on her face. Zola tries not to see her pregnant and married by 
twenty, especially when Tilia says proudly, “She will be first in our family to go 
to college.” But the young girl diverts her uninterested eyes, and Zola can’t help 
but think a future in produce could save her. 
  Then there is Matisse, the beautiful man who sells olives. He happily 
speaks of his marriage and children, but Zola can’t help but wonder if his mouth 
melts like a pan of olive oil in the heat of passion. The way he says her name 
aloud when he spies her coming is enough to make her return to his table each 
week.  
33 
 
 “Hi, Zola,” he purrs, the l lulling and the long, sensual ah. In a similar way 
she savors the salty thought of him with an olive pit rolling around on her tongue. 
Leaning forward to ladle out his green and black specialties with their briny juice, 
he spoons them into the blue Tupperware containers she makes sure to bring. As 
his shoulder blades move beneath his long-underwear shirt, he is all eyes and 
teeth, like some sleek mountain cat contemplating her. 
Others beckon her over, wanting to show off their finest selections— 
sometimes jewelry and scarves, sometimes simply the seasonal prides of their 
gardens. It feels good to be acknowledged and recognized, even if they are just 
strangers trying to take money from her pockets and put their goods in her basket. 
Even she is barely eking out a living these days.  
She has chosen to reside here, and shape a life she can support on her own, 
but has she been overzealous to think that coming here would rid her of 
distraction too? Distraction is a bloodhound that seems to follow her everywhere 
she goes. She never intentionally set out to be a writer, after all. It happened on its 
own, no less organically grown than the trays of herbs with labeled wooden slats 
sticking out from their well-watered soil. Still, calling herself a “writer” makes 
her uncomfortable; it’s a term too pretentious for her.  
 Even as she sets her mind on the newspaper stand and the fish market up 
the street, she knows she is biding her time until she must return to the page again. 
34 
 
How long has it been since she wrote anything but a string of nonsensical words? 
She’s stopped registering the time that has passed. Why has it become so hard for 
her? It is as though she woke up and there was nothing inside of her worth putting 
down.  
Then again, maybe there hadn’t been anything worthwhile in the first 
place.  
 “You want one, don’t you?’ 
 Zola turns to see her best friend Natalia giving her the I-caught-you-look, 
with an armload of her own groceries—too many hemp bags can really weigh a 
person down.  
 “You were staring at that sweet-looking little boy over there, dancing with 
the green balloon.” 
 “I do love balloons.” 
 “I was talking about the kid. You were staring with that far-away glimmer 
in your eye. Either that or you’re the same day-dreamer I used to kick awake in 
class. What are you up to this evening?”  
 Zola has known Natalia ever since they were in high school, back home in 
New Hampshire. She and her husband Adam came to Portland, when he took the 
35 
 
executive chef position at The Hunt Club, five years ago. They had a hand in 
getting Zola to come live this city too, and it is nice to be nearby one another 
again. 
 “It’s my night off,” says Zola. “But I promised myself I’d chain my leg to 
the desk if that means actually getting some words on paper.” 
 “Well, if you work up an appetite with that writing-bondage thing, I just 
picked up ingredients so Adam can make bouillabaisse tonight. I know I’m not 
supposed to have shellfish while I’m pregnant, but I just can’t bring myself to 
listen to a bunch of wives’ tales. Kids have too many allergies these days if you 
ask me and it’s because some woman said ‘no fucking peanuts’ when she was 
knocked up.”  
 “If I come to a breaking point, I’ll stop by.” 
 “Great! I’ll see you at eight!” Natalia pulls her sunglasses down from out 
of her hair and gives Zola a squeeze, before she heads off in the direction of her 
home in the West End.  
Walking back along the pier, Zola snacks on a bag of sticky apricots. Her 
skin feels dewy, with a balmy flush. All the vacations her family took to the 
Maine coast when she was a child come back to her now—running with the 
36 
 
sandpipers, her apple cheeks and sniffling nose defying that brisk sea air, feeling 
that sensation between laughter and an ordinary day.  
Looking out to the faint white triangles tracing the bay, she sees that the 
heron is no longer there. There’s only some gulls perched along a drooping dock 
rope, like necklace beads glistening against a black resin hull.  
? 
 Portland’s west side attracts art students, musicians, singles and 
immigrants, a so-called “arts district” that seems to be labeled more often by 
rental agents trying to lure 30-somethings from the bigger cities than by the actual 
colonizers and transient dwellers who reside in the neighborhood. There is 
nothing cool about living in the West End. The fact is that those who do can’t 
afford to live anywhere else.  The hallways of unsecured apartment buildings 
smell like piss, mildew and cigarettes. Elevators are routinely out of service, 
forcing tenants and visitors to soiled back stairwells with sticky railings and 
evidence of lewd acts. The lack of parking makes for low rents, but for most a car 
is not a necessity, since everything you really need is within walking distance. 
However, in the winters, when the temperature drops below freezing, you really 
have to brave it to go just around the corner for a box of noodles or a roll of toilet 
paper. At least then the hookers and the drug addicts won’t bother you. Very few 
can manage such a thrifty lifestyle, and those who expect something better out of 
37 
 
living in the area eventually trade in their undergraduate fine arts degrees for 
comfortable desk jobs.  
 Zola lives on the East Side, largely because she found an inexpensive 
place on a quiet street. But what really sold her was the view, a slice of the ocean 
no west-ender can compete with. Also, she has found that in communities 
concentrated with other creative-types, she is less likely to get much done—too 
many get-togethers for solidarity.  
 To get to Natalia and Adam’s Zola must walk through the shadier section 
of town. They live on the western promenade overlooking the South Bay, and 
technically share the same zip code as other West Enders. When her friends tell 
locals they live in these parts, someone is always surprised to hear they own real 
estate there. However, the lane they live on has some well-kept Capes and other 
turn-of-the-century-style homes, built by merchants and shipbuilders who 
prospered in commercial trade as the Old Port grew. Natalia and Adam’s home is 
as classic as they come, with painted cedar shingles and white trim, a stone 
foundation, and even a wrought iron gate decorated with casted pineapples.  
“My dear, I’m so glad you made it.” Zola is greeted by a very round 
Natalia, who is absolutely radiant with her first pregnancy.  
38 
 
“Well, I have very convincing friends,” says Zola, taking off her jacket in 
the front hallway and receiving a kiss on her cheek. 
  “What can I say? Law school was good for something.”  
Every now and then, Zola forgets what domestic life consists of: matching 
linens, a full refrigerator, coffee table books, a well-behaved dog and children. 
Like the family of birds in the old oak tree outside her apartment, there’s a dutiful 
bliss to it all. She concludes that domestic life is for the well trained. The free 
spirit that encompasses all that Zola is and all that she aspires to be has little 
understanding of this way in which so many others live. But she loves her friends, 
regardless of what they have chosen for themselves, and knows they feel the 
same. They welcome her presence, and there is always a social gathering she can 
be coerced into attending.  
The scene, however, is often predictable. The same faces, the same 
backdrop, the same disconnected conversations, while their offspring play at her 
feet. “I thought the work to be too pretentious and assumptive… Lynnie, what do 
you have in your mouth? NO! Spit it out ... C’mon, spit it out please, honey… 
God, what is that? Where was I?” 
“Consumptive?”  
39 
 
“Yes, yes, of course. Consumerism will soon destroy the arts as we know 
them…” 
Unlike an accessory, however, children never seem to go with a cocktail 
dress the way her peers would like. Zola imagines a small child pinned to a velvet 
strap like a gaudy brooch, the little being kept quiet with olives and tabouleah. 
Different from many of the women she knows who like to be on display, Zola 
takes pride in her simplified appearance, sometimes wondering if her lifestyle 
appears novel to her friends. They always seem intrigued, but would never 
consider wearing her shoes, which are worn from late night walks alone on the 
beach, where the salt water seeps in, and from early-morning visits to the fern 
beds, to catch the deer awake. And from the bar and street filth she brings home.  
“How do you like The Club so far?” asks Adam, standing over a sizeable 
skillet of spice and onions. Natalia pours glasses of wine for her husband and 
Zola.  
“I never got a chance to thank you for getting me in over there. You’ve got 
some good guys in the kitchen. I’m learning a lot about Cuba from Ramon. And 
Jules, Jesus! He’s got the energy of a six-year-old.” 
Adam laughs agreeably. “Ramon. I have to watch him every minute of 
baseball season to be sure he’s getting the dishes done. He keeps sneaking out to 
40 
 
the bar to watch his teams and then suddenly we’re nailed on the line, and I’ve got 
no back up sauté pans coming. And what can I say about Jules? A good heart, but 
he’s all over the place.” 
“Do you have enough time to write?” asks Natalia. 
“I have plenty, and actually working there has really helped with 
material.” 
“That place is good for that,” says Adam.  
“Like a couple weeks ago, I had this woman in, who told me the wildest 
story.” 
“I’m sure you hear it all,” says Natalia. 
“I really do. So much, that by the end of the day, my filter is shot.” Zola 
takes the glass Natalia hands her. “So, this woman came in. She has three piña 
coladas in a row and I couldn’t tell if she was medicated too, but her buzz went 
right to her head. I didn’t want to cut her off and embarrass her in front of the 
other customers—she was clearly one to keep up appearances. You know, the 
type who hires a tennis coach and plays mixed doubles every weekend, but deep 
down really despises it and her husband for making her take up the sport.” 
Natalia nods.  
41 
 
“So I offer her a cheese plate, but she says she doesn’t want the carbs and 
fat, so I give her a veggie plate instead, and before I know it, she’s crying, 
mascara all down the face, saying, ‘I know you are just trying to sober me up, but 
I need this drink. Fanny is at the vet and I just can’t cope right now.’ I feel bad, of 
course, so I hand her some tissues and serve her another drink, and she tells me 
this horror tale about her cat.” 
“What happened?” Natalia has never owned pets, but Zola knows she 
donates to the humane society when they call and ask for money. 
“She owned this Khao Manee breed. Know anything about them?” 
Both Natalia and Adam shake their heads. Natalia sets the table, as Adam 
portions out the serving dishes. 
“I didn’t either,” says Zola, taking a sip of her wine. “They are really rare. 
Apparently, she was on this trip with her husband in Thailand and had taken a 
lover while her husband was busy in meetings. The lover gave her the pet as a 
symbol of luck and sort of parting gift. One eye is known to be gold and the other 
silver, and the cats have all white fur.” 
“Sounds beautiful,” says Natalia, who has taken over dinner preparation, 
so Adam can hang up his apron and wash his hands. 
42 
 
“Right? So, they’re back in the States with the cat and the cat is pretty 
much catatonic for whatever reason. And the woman starts believing it is a curse 
or something. Feeling really guilty and thinking she should never have had the 
affair in the first place. Then in the middle of night, she hears this loud crash and 
the sound of breaking glass, and gets up to see what’s happened. And she walks 
into the living room to find that her coffee table has been flipped onto its side, and 
the cat is jumping back and forth through the frame of broken chards like a circus 
hoop. There is blood and fur everywhere, and the cat is really torn up.” 
“That’s awful!” says Natalia, as she hands Zola a bowl filled with 
scallops, shrimp and fish swimming in an herby tomato-rice stew. It smells 
delicious, like the sea and garden have been slow-cooked together all day.  
“Yeah, I can’t imagine,” says Zola. “It was probably chasing its reflection. 
A vain woman acquiring a vain cat seems too perfect, don’t you think?” 
“Those Thai do believe in karma,” says Natalia. 
 “But they aren’t sorcerers. I still feel bad for that woman and her 
Franken-cat.” 
“Well, that’s definitely something,” says Adam.  
“I think, Zola, you give people too much credit. A spouse who cheats, 
there’s bound to be repercussions, in whatever form they come out,” says Natalia. 
43 
 
“Perhaps, but what about forgiveness?” 
“No way! If I found out Adam ever—“ 
“Whoa!” Adam protests, a shrimp in his mouth. He pulls at the fanned, 
scaly tail to remove it.  
“Honey, I know you wouldn’t,” she says, then adds to Zola, “But if he did, 
trust me, his two sacks would be the next day’s special.”  
They laugh and toast to Kahunas Du Jour.  
Later, as they talk about relationships and heartbreaks, Nicholay’s words 
run over and over again in Zola’s head like a damaged film reel. She wants to tell 
Natalia about the letter, but watching her friend’s jubilance with her husband as 
they discuss baby names and plans for the future, there never seems to be an 
appropriate time. Besides, the light, easy chatter carries Zola far away from the 
contemplative place where she often finds herself when alone.  
Opera John was right; she needs to get out more often. 
 
? 
On her way home, Zola stops at Café La Mer for a nightcap. This is her 
neighborhood hideaway when she can’t find inspiration or stillness, where she 
sometimes bellies up to the bar to read or write or sort through her dreams. Dimly 
44 
 
lit with worn velvet couches, the café mostly draws drunken professors and a 
salon of young, beautiful people who find it excusable to act bourgeois. For Zola, 
it is shelter from the outside chaos. Strange liquors fill elixir jars with the 
remnants of cherry skins and lemon peels, and the smell of mussels or fresh-
 shucked oysters make her romanticize the life of the fisherman and his wife, 
listening intently to the words they exchange when they think no one else can hear 
them.  
“I swear by it or I’ll die trying to convince you. I sing your name under 
my breath and the fish bite,” says Thomas.  
“Come’n now, you’re beginning to sound as crazy as the rest of ‘em.” 
Loralei dries her hands on her apron and leans over the bar to place her palms 
tenderly on either side of her husband’s face, bringing him closer to her. “Just 
make it home for breakfast, whether there is fish in your boat or not. This means 
six, not drinks with the boys.” 
Thomas pulls the stretched-out neck of his sweater to his ears and the 
hood of his windbreaker over his head. “My beacon,” he says, and then leaves 
through the kitchen’s service door, forever Loralei’s mysterious sailor sneaking 
out the back. 
45 
 
Zola orders a Beaujolais and glances down the bar at Louis, a Tuesday 
regular. He’s twirling his handlebar mustache and staring into his glass. He’s 
Greek, and the only person she knows who puts fruit in his merlot. His cabbie hat 
sits deflated beside him, and everyone knows he should be at work. Catching her 
looking at him, he smiles, straightens his bad posture, and raises his glass.  
“Lo, what do you think about second chances?” Zola asks Loralei. 
“Are we talking about men here, or you?” Loralei sticks a bobby pin in her 
mouth and adjusts the hair on top of her head.  
“Maybe both?”  
Zola admires the fine-looking gray streak just above Loralei’s right ear. 
There is something about these Northern women who wear their age so well, an 
ingrained wholesomeness passed down through each generation of matriarch.  
“Men think they’re misunderstood and we owe them a chance to explain. 
We women on the other hand, we never feel like we deserve ‘em. If we fuck up 
once, we typically don’t go back or admit we’re wrong. Too much pride. Men just 
don’t know any better. They’ll keep banging against the same wall until we give 
in. Trust me, I’ve patched my fair share.”  
“But how do we know when to give in?”  
46 
 
“I have run this place for years. It’s a playground for many. Temptation, 
destruction, you name it. But you’re talking about compromising one’s beliefs… 
that is something different. Someone burn you bad, Sweetie?”  
“It’s been so long, I can’t remember who’s to blame.”  
“Well, whatever you do, don’t admit that, no matter who he is.”  
Zola sits for awhile thinking how estranged it feels between her and 
Nicholay. Just when she thinks she’s swept away all the pieces that would remind 
her of him, an artifact appears without fair warning, or the tools to decipher it. 
Zola thinks about the letter, opened and hanging on her refrigerator, surrounded 
by the scraps and evidence of her new life. If their parting had been simple, 
perhaps she could’ve just as easily thrown out his words with the day’s garbage, 
or stashed them in a box out of sight and out of mind, to look at many years down 
the road when she is stronger or wiser. But the truth is, she hasn’t been able to 
forget him. And she knew that he would one day reveal himself, like the 
illusionist he was, forcing her to remember the way things were back then.  
Zola pays her tab, leaving the din of introspection behind with the other 
patrons, who, like her, have told themselves lies.  
Exhausted and tipsy from the cheap wine, she stumbles around her 
apartment, trying to locate a photograph she came across not long ago while 
47 
 
unpacking the couple of boxes she’d been living out of. This time around, it only 
took her nine months to be sure she was going to stay put for awhile, a real record 
for her. She was proud of how quickly she settled in.  
She finds the picture under a stack of loose papers containing observations 
she’s saving for something she plans to write, someday. In the image she’s eating 
a pear, looking up with surprise, a droplet of juice rolling down her chin.  
She studies her own expression. Pure joy stares back at her, as though 
wondering when they will meet again.  
Bringing the photo over to her desk, she tears a piece of paper from a 
raggedy notebook and begins to write. Neither a poem nor a short story, it is a 
sequence of words that somehow effortlessly fills a page. Her hand is frantic to 
keep up, but her heart is as calm as a stationery deer.  
Nicholay, 
You can’t imagine the surprise I felt when I received your letter. It’s been 
a long time… I always believed that with time and distance we could make things 
right, but your letter shook me to my core, and once again I feel something 
missing, something that has never really allowed me to feel complete. You say you 
left something behind—with me or for me, I’m not sure. When you left, you took 
more than you owned. 
With the innocence of a child, wide-eyed and hopeful, I held my heart in 
my hands and offered it up to you. It was not a gift, but a peace offering. You 
48 
 
hung it with your other medals and accolades. It became dusty, stale and 
forgotten. Now I ask for its return, but maybe you have misplaced it among your 
other possessions. You have taken a piece of me and my only regret is that I wish I 
had not been so wide-eyed and hopeful.  
Why have you come back into my life, Nicholay? What did you leave 
behind? 
 ~Zola 
 
She doesn’t bother reading the letter over. It is what needs to be said. On 
the back of the photograph she writes: Please Return. In her mind it is clever, it is 
rhetoric, and she does not question whether or not he will understand her plea. In 
a way, it doesn’t matter.  
Carefully tucking the letter and photograph into its own envelope, she 
prints the mailing address. She considers not using a return address, but decides 
she does not want to turn this into a game. Nicholay will write again, if he’s the 
same man she once knew him to be.  
 Trying to picture his life now, she wonders if he’s married or lives with 
someone. He seems so distant to her, as if she knew him in a time far-removed 
from the present. She imagines how he looks, knowing how the bends of life can 
change a man’s appearance or spirit.  
49 
 
She was only twenty-two when they met. The world had offered itself to 
her, and with both fear and hope she did what she needed to. She hardly 
recognizes herself now from that girl she once was, and he probably wouldn’t 
either. With her hair shorter, her skin lighter, she has outgrown the awkwardness 
of late-adolescence. Now a woman mature in both instinct and her own set of 
beliefs, it is hard for her to conceive of the infatuation she felt for a man she 
barely knew.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
50 
 
Nicholay 
? 
The house was originally owned by a professor of botany—Dr. 
Nightingale, who specialized in rare healing plants. The doctor never returned 
from collecting specimens in South America and was last seen in a remote border-
 village trying to organize a camp of men. With no news of his whereabouts, the 
bank declared the house abandoned and put it up for sale.  
When Nicholay moved into the place it had been vacant for years, but still 
contained the scientist’s belongings. The deterioration of the structure resonated 
with Nicholay; the windows were like burdened eyes, and the flaking clapboards 
reminded him of aged skin. He decided not to throw anything away; if Dr. 
Nightingale ever returned, or if a family member contacted him seeking the 
former owner’s possessions, it would be only right to keep these things on hand to 
be reclaimed.  
Many of the professor’s personal things were boxed up and kept in a 
pantry off the kitchen. However, Nicholay found use for the minimal and 
utilitarian furniture: the petrified oak cabinet with ivory knobs; the painted 
mismatched chairs; the scuffed and scratched peasant table; the threadbare 
Oriental rug. The richest object is an African Blackwood writing desk that sits in 
51 
 
the corner of his bedroom. The house has been lived in and he can feel its ghosts. 
He’s become their caretaker. 
A small but impressive library also remains intact, and often Nicholay 
enjoys the books and journals throughout the house. He brought very little of his 
own when he moved in, only his art tools and a bag of clothing. He’d been 
seeking a simpler way of life; it was how he rationalized leaving everything 
behind. But from what he can tell of Dr. Nightingale and his collections, they are 
similar souls in many ways.  
Nicholay likes the doctor’s sketches best. Simply done in black ink, or 
occasionally colored pencil, the foreign shapes of petals and leaves with Latin 
labels tell him of another man’s obsession with uncommon beauty. He can see it 
in the careful etchings—no smudges, no mistaken lines, complete certainty and 
precision. Admiring the steady hand and finely detailed flora, Nicholay wonders 
if the doctor could have ever loved anything more. 
The greenhouse stands behind the main house. It was once a sanctuary and 
laboratory, and at one time, passion probably grew from every pistil and pod, 
filling the air with sweet loamy aromas and a tepid green haze only found in 
southern hemispheres. When Nicholay first came upon the space, there was 
nothing left but rows of dried compost and brown shriveled stems, broken and 
cracked windows covered in dirty film that kept the sun from shining too brightly, 
52 
 
and bird droppings splattered like white paint on benches and growing boxes. 
Restoring the greenhouse brought its spirit back to life. Nicholay salvaged 
windows from retired train cars and buildings ready for demolition. He removed 
all the old equipment and containers, leaving only the discolored stencils on the 
concrete floor where hoses had once lain coiled and watering cans had dripped. 
He brought in his own equipment and containers—horsehair brushes and rolls of 
canvas, acrylics and oils, sprays and solvents, and the easel he was given at 
seventeen. He worked with determination to get the place in order, anticipating 
the paintings he would produce in this new space. But on the first day he stood 
before his canvas, he could not make a brushstroke and the greenhouse filled with 
a suffocating heat. He felt like an insect beneath an overturned glass, aware and 
frightened of his own decline.  
Now, his oil paints remain wet and workable. Zola’s half-painted portrait 
has become such a presence in his life that finishing it would mean he could put 
the memory of her finally to rest. Like the painter Modigliani, who left the eyes of 
his models black until he knew their souls, Nicholay does not attempt to paint 
what he does not know. Looking at her photograph and letter, which arrived this 
morning, he wonders whether he could bring a sense of peace to her life that their 
past was never able to resolve. Her words were accusing, even though she was the 
one who left first.  Ever since she walked out, Nicholay has learned to live with 
the choices he’s made, and has taken responsibility for his part in their demise. He 
53 
 
can’t fault her for being suspicious. But with nothing more to lose, why not at 
least attempt to reconcile their differences?  Then maybe he will be able to find 
peace of his own. 
In the mornings, as he works on the painting of Zola, he tells her his 
troubles with women. This is usually after Geraldine has stormed out, angry with 
him again for beginning another day without her.  
“See, it wasn’t just you,” he says, adding more rose pink to Zola’s lips and 
areoles. “Can you blame me for trying?” he asks, as he uses a spatula of paint 
around the contours of her hipbones. “And here we are now. Would you like some 
more light? Of course you would. Remember that room we once rented in the 
hotel with narrow hallways? How you would throw the curtains and windows 
open wide, to rouse me—and how you roused me, you did.” 
In the evenings, when he finds he’s unaccompanied, Nicholay sits in his 
kitchen studio with a glass of homemade cognac and his half-painted Zola, 
speaking to her as if she has been with him all along.  
Nicholay’s father was crazy, and he worries sometimes if this trait was 
passed down to him. But it is madness that he truly fears. He has seen the faces of 
the mad, in the asylums and the churches, in the bars and under park bridges. He 
54 
 
has painted them in fascination. These are the faces that haunt him in the latest 
hours of solitude and why he is afraid of aging alone.  
? 
Setting out one evening to visit his friend Lucien, Nicholay drives north 
along the winding dirt roads of the Cape. The sun is just dipping on the horizon, 
creating wispy hues of lavender and salmon, and the trees are twisted in the only 
direction the wind here blows. He thinks of the image of Zola eating a pear; he 
had taken it the day they met with that troublesome camera of hers, her eyes eager 
and ready to capture the world with every blinking, passing moment. He was only 
seven years her senior, but already cynical, oblivious to the joys of living. It was 
Zola who helped remind him to appreciate rarity and purity in the slighter things, 
and that day happiness had sat beside him, eating ripe fruit with both pleasure and 
satisfaction—like a child. Like a woman he could love.  
 Nicholay parks his truck beside Lucien’s Land Rover, a vehicle that hasn’t 
moved in over a decade, its bed looking more and more rusted out every time 
Nicholay sees it. The wet season at this elevation isn’t too kind to old scraps of 
metal and rubber, especially the forgotten kind.  
 “Damn shame,” he says, putting his boot to one of the rear tires, which has 
sunk a good three inches into the hard and cracking dirt driveway.  
55 
 
  Lucien came to the island ten years ago and quit driving when he realized 
he hated leaving home. When he does wander away from the farm, he stays 
within a certain distance and mostly gets around on moped or bicycle despite his 
age. He has become a sight in town, with his white linen clothing, wide straw hat, 
fisheye glasses, and ponytail flapping behind him in the wind like a pilot. The 
Jeep is neglected, as are most of Lucien’s material things. Even when he no 
longer has the need for them, he has a difficult time parting with them. Nicholay 
has known him long enough now to know this.  
 Lucien was Nicholay’s painting instructor during Nicholay’s formal 
training years. Nicholay had won a scholarship through his college back home in 
Pennsylvania, and was given the opportunity to gain experience abroad by 
studying with a master craftsman. His father’s drinking was becoming 
progressively worse, and even though Nicholay had never been out of the state 
before, he didn’t want to stick around watching his father drink himself to death. 
When Nicholay boarded the plane to Spain that day he knew he wouldn’t be 
returning, and his father stopped speaking to him.  
 Lucien took Nicholay under his wing, probably because he pitied him. It 
was a push-pull relationship from the start, beginning with Lucien asking if 
Nicholay had ever painted a day in his life before he came to Spain. This 
comment made Nicholay even more determined to prove himself as a painter. 
56 
 
Failure to succeed meant having to go home and face his father, the washed-up 
sports columnist who had smothered out his own wife’s artistic light years before 
Nicholay was born.  
 As he enters the gate to Lucien’s modest villa, Nicholay is still deep in 
thought. 
 “Lovely isn’t it?” 
 Startled, Nicholay looks up to see Lucien sitting in a cushioned wicker 
chair, just barely in sight from the walkway, lighting a cherry-tobacco pipe. His 
signature hat cuts across his charcoal eyes, and Nicholay can see a smirk of 
welcome. “What?” 
 “You’re telling me you drove all this way and didn’t give one glance to 
the sky? Something must be really eating at you.”  
 “Buenas noches, Señor,” Nicholay says in his pigeon Spanish, stepping 
onto the porch with an offering of wine and a tin of sardines.  
 “You’ve brought dinner. You shouldn’t have,” says Lucien, giving a nod 
towards the gift. 
 “I know,” says Nicholay. “Are you going to do anything with the Rover, 
or am I’m going to have to come and take her off your hands?” 
57 
 
 “Let me look at your hands,” says Lucien, leaning forward. 
 Nicholay holds them out without questioning. Grabbing one, Lucien 
presses his thumb into the palm and turns it over for examination, blowing smoke 
through his mouth in shallow puffs. “Just as I suspected. Delayed progress. Who 
is she?”  
 “Why must it always be a woman? Can’t it be something else, perhaps a 
stagnant period?”  
 “A man paints only for himself. The one thing that makes him question his 
existence is women.” 
 “Nothing else?” 
 “Nothing else.” 
 “Then I’m screwed,” says Nicholay. He rubs the scruff on his chin, then 
pulls up a chair. Placing his arms behind his head, he kicks out his legs to stretch. 
 “Indeed you are,” says Lucien, turning back to the sky. 
  Nicholay confides in Lucien with the ease of a young man speaking to an 
older and wiser sage. But their relationship is different than that of a father and 
son, because Nicholay respects Lucien and takes his advice, and because Lucien 
has never married, nor does he have any children of his own. Living a life of 
58 
 
disconnectedness, and yet purpose too, Lucien knows nothing else but to create, 
despite any circumstances he’s encountered in his years of experience, and 
sometimes at the cost of loving another. From what Nicholay can tell, women 
only stick around long enough to figure out that Lucien’s one true passion is his 
art, and they will only ever be mistresses to his work.  
 “Did you get a chance to go over and see those paintings?” Lucien asks. 
 “I did.” Nicholay had gone to see an artist named Guillermo last week, 
hoping the trip would cheer him up and bring him out of his funk.  
 “And your thoughts?”  
 “He’s trying too hard to be something he’s not. It seems forced and 
contrived. He would make a great impersonator of Goya.”  
 “So, should he stop altogether? Poof. Give it up?”  
 “I think if you aren’t possessed by your own thoughts and feelings when 
you approach the canvas, then yes, you should retire your brushes. It should get 
your rocks off, exploit your psyche, bring you to tears. I just didn’t see any of that 
in his work.” 
 Lucien looks proud to hear this response, but Nicholay isn’t looking to 
impress his teacher. Instead, he wants to be more like him. 
59 
 
 “Shhh! Did you hear that?” asks Lucien, hushing Nicholay.  
 They listen as the night crawls in, dragging up to the porch with a faded 
landscape in its teeth. Lucien lights the lantern sitting on the box table between 
them, the word FRAGILE stamped across it for the cargo it once carried. 
 “You hearing voices, old man?” asks Nicholay, jokingly. “Being out here 
all alone?” 
 “I got spirits.” 
 “So, have you seen these…?” Nicholay motions around his chair, 
“Spirits?” 
 “Of course not, but I have invited them to drink.” Lucien uncorks the 
bottle of Vinho Verde that Nicholay has brought. “And wouldn’t you know they 
can hold their own.” 
 Nicholay graciously accepts a mug. 
“Chin chin,” they say, drinking to health and the heart.  
 It is their anthem to talk loosely of things they could never change, and 
never would. They argue over who they think are the true masters, and who has 
lost his or her way. But mostly, they try to understand why they desire the things 
hardest to pin down, and agree it must be the nature of man.  
60 
 
When they shake hands goodbye, Lucien holds on firmly. “Whatever is 
unresolved inside you is what made you leave in the first place. You need to live 
without fear, before you can call yourself an artist.” 
Nicholay says nothing.  
He drives home with the night sea air in his pores and Lucien’s words 
wrapped up tight in his head. What is it about Zola that he can’t let go? Why is he 
still drawn to her in a way like no other? Or is it even Zola that plagues him? His 
need for resolution is clear, but his desire is not.  
 Nicholay returns to his kitchen. Sighing as he runs his hand through the 
wave of his hair, he picks up the photo and squints at it, hoping something will 
emerge from its smooth finish and become tangible for him. He looks over his 
shoulder at the naked Zola upon his easel, half-lit by moonlight with her flawless 
face and breasts, but missing her limbs and any surroundings to ground her. “You 
would have made a lovely amputee, my dear.” 
 Nicholay feels he may have also fallen victim to a similar fate. Maybe 
Zola had been an appendage to him, attached in a way he’d taken for granted. 
Now that she is gone, he feels incomplete.  
 Staring for a long while at her painted eyes, he becomes electrified with a 
fervor he hasn’t felt in years. There have been other women, yes—fair young 
61 
 
sprites, exotic beauties, mature wives. But Zola did something to him that he can’t 
forgive her for. She made him love her.  
He takes her upstairs, placing the cut canvas upon a chair and positioning 
her at the foot of his bed. He wants to fall asleep with her as a guardian upon him, 
watching him sleep through the night, and wake with her focused eyes and intent 
mouth, the way he used to find her in the morning. What makes women so 
beautiful to him are the ways a woman loves her children, the way she can nurture 
a deep wound, but also her ability to love a man despite himself. Nicholay is as 
flawed as any man can be, lost and trying to find his way, trying to fulfill his 
purpose. Tomorrow this flawed man will paint again and not just because of the 
love of a woman, but because he may as well be dead if he doesn’t. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
62 
 
Zola 
? 
My Dearest Zola, 
Your heart was neither a medal nor a prize. It was a noble conquest. A 
mystery to unlock. A secret I protected as my own. If you could not see my love, 
then I was the fool, not you. I made mistakes, and for that I am eternally sorry. 
Will you accept this old friend’s apology? You can push me away if you feel it is 
best, but this is my peace offering to you; the truth you have always deserved.  
 Remember when we were allies, chasing common goals? Ever since our 
separation, I have had bouts where I can’t paint. I don’t blame you; I was 
damaged long before you ever came along. However, I wonder sometimes if we 
were at our best back then. There was something unified and frenzied in the way 
we worked side-by-side. I would give anything to have that again, though I know 
it could never really be the same.  
Inspire me Zola. Tell me your story. 
Nicholay 
 
Truth is a raspberry seed, stuck in a back molar until one day it becomes a 
toothache that she can no longer ignore. Zola is reading through Nicholay’s recent 
letter when she hears an unexpected knock on her door. She sets down the letter 
and goes to find out who it is.  
 “Have you been sleeping in your clothes?” asks Natalia, not waiting for an 
invitation to come inside.  
63 
 
 “I haven’t been sleeping,” Zola mutters, looking down at her wrinkled 
sundress and moccasin slippers.  
 Natalia follows her into the kitchen, a basket swinging from her arm, 
looking sideways at the clutter that has become Zola’s apartment. Stacks of 
papers and books have taken over every square inch of surface like tables at a 
rummage sale, but she’s so worried about throwing away notes for a potential 
idea, that the piles keep accruing. There was an order to things, though someone 
on the outside looking in might think otherwise.  
 “No elevator I can handle, but how about some water for a fat lady?”
  Zola fills a glass from the faucet, hiding Nicholay’s letter under some 
books in the process. 
 “So, this has become your den of excuses, I see,” says Natalia, as Zola 
curls on her futon with a cup of coffee and forces a smile. “Here, I brought treats. 
I noticed how thin you were at dinner last week.” Natalia produces two wax paper 
bags from her basket. “Chocolate croissant or scone?”  
 Zola takes the scone with a sigh. 
“Okay dear, I haven’t come to see this glum side of you,” says Natalia. 
“Either we can talk about what’s going on or we can go about our days like 
nothing is wrong, but we both know something is wrong. Then we’ll just be like 
64 
 
those fake people you despise, who act as though nothing is the matter and the 
whole world is perfect. You and I both know we’re not like that. We hate people 
with sunshine blown up their asses. So why don’t you save us the energy of 
pretending, dear, and tell me what’s up?” 
Natalia has many endearing qualities, particularly being persuasive. Her 
law classes had their benefits, and her logic always seems to find its way into the 
conversation in such a natural way that people just have to trust her. In her second 
year of school, she met and married Adam, who loved food, wine and entertaining 
as much as she. Disappointing her family, who had placed such high hopes in her, 
Natalia never returned to her studies; in their mind, she wasted her life on love. 
Zola knows this isn’t true, that Natalia is a genuinely happy and opinionated 
woman who doesn’t care much of what others think of her, and Zola both 
cherishes and envies this in her friend. 
 “Have you at least been able to get some writing done?” Natalia continues. 
“I know you’ve been putting in the hours at work, and Adam’s come home with 
such praise, but I’m well aware it’s not what you want to be doing—I know it’s a 
paycheck and all, but you’ve got talent and should be using it.” 
 “I wish I knew what’s wrong with me,” says Zola. “It’s never been this 
hard to get into a routine. Just when I was feeling settled—finally comfortable—
 everything went flaccid on me.”  
65 
 
 “Flaccid, eh? What are you, a fifty-year-old man in disguise? That would 
explain the slippers. Maybe this writer’s block you’re experiencing—” 
“I don’t believe in writer’s block,” Zola corrects. 
“Okay,” says Natalia. “Maybe the reason you’re having difficulty is 
because you have nothing to connect to. What’s it been, Zola? Almost four years 
since your last relationship?”  
“Hemingway believed the best way to write about a subject was to have 
distance from it.”  
“Oh, come on! Hemingway was drunk and self-indulgent.” 
“Drunkenness and self-indulgence don’t make you any less wise. Plus, he 
produced some very provocative work.”  
“Zola, you’re a passionate woman. You need to keep that fire burning, or 
one day it may just burn out. Then you’re stuck rubbing two sticks together trying 
to get a spark.” They both laugh at this caricature. 
 Zola stops eating. “He sent me a letter.” She has been waiting to say 
something since last week, and so she spits out the news and then braces herself 
for her friend’s reaction.  
  Natalia stops eating. “When?” 
66 
 
“I have moved so much, I don’t exactly know. I almost wish it had gotten 
lost in the mail, or that some tenant kept it.”  
“What’d he say?” 
“Something about hoping I’ve found what I was looking for,” Zola pauses. 
“You know, Nat, there has always been something about him. And ever since we 
started communicating—” 
“Wait! Communicating? There have been more?” 
“Yeah,” she admits. “I mean, I thought it would be harmless. Him living 
there, me here. No way of us reconnecting. I think enough time has gone by—” 
“When you called me, where were you? Somewhere out West? I sent you 
a ticket to come and get your life back.” 
“I’m grateful for everything you and Adam have done. I was lost for a 
while. But that time was good for me.”  
“No one knew where you were, Zola! Last anyone knew, you were with 
him in Spain. Your parents were so worried. You’d up and left, and for a couple 
of years we got nothing but random postcards and short messages. We all thought 
you went off the deep end.” 
“I needed to figure things out.” 
67 
 
“I’m just saying, I don’t know if now’s the time to be starting up again 
with him. I don’t think it’s smart. From the little you have told me, I feel there is 
still some healing that needs to take place.”  
 Zola felt relieved, though she hadn’t anticipated where the conversation 
would end up. She knew Natalia was only trying to protect her. She trusted 
Natalia for the same reason her parents had trusted Natalia the year before to 
convince Zola to return to the East Coast; if she would listen to anyone, it would 
be her best friend.  
 “I’ve got to run. My prenatal yoga class starts soon,” says Natalia. “Just 
tell me you’ll be careful, okay?” 
 “I will,” says Zola, walking with Natalia to the door. 
Retrieving a straw hat from the bedpost in her bedroom, Zola traces the 
leather strap with her finger, remembering where it was bought. She’d been 
traveling through a mining town in Colorado—the kind of place she didn’t know 
about until she ended up there—when she came across the country store smelling 
of sawdust and tobacco, just like her grandfather’s woodshop. When she saw the 
cowboy hat upon one of the untouched shelves, she wanted it as a memento. 
It wasn’t the first time she had gone out on her own to look for something 
else, but that time she was more attuned than ever, loving how the landscape 
68 
 
changed from the Kansas wheat fields to vibrant waving sunflower fields to 
looming cathedral mountains. Kerouac had described the Rockies as being of 
“papier-mâché,” but she found their cliffs more industrial, dark and intimidating. 
Though she’d had her share of brushes with faith, Zola was never certain there 
was a God. But it was in those mountains she came to understand there was 
something bigger than herself, and she was invigorated with the newfound 
awareness.  
Now, covering her face with the hat, she takes a deep breath, just as she 
did countless times before while lying in fields and upon red-dusted rock beds. 
There is still a faint hint of adventure left between the woven straw, ground in 
with the sweat and dirt of wear. She places the hat on her head and picks up the 
phone to call her mother. 
“It’s so funny to hear from you,” says her mother. “I’m buying groceries, 
and I just put a bag of salted almonds in the cart. The ones you used to spoil your 
appetite with before dinner.” 
“You can bring them up next time you visit.” 
“I could do that,” she says. “You will never believe what’s happened. That 
theater teacher over at the high school is having an affair with his son’s foreign-
69 
 
exchange student. I said to Karen just the other day how I think his wife drinks 
before the PTA meetings.”  
“She’s been drinking for years,” says Zola . “How’s Dad?” 
“Who?”  
There is a consistent beeping on her mother’s end. Zola pictures her 
standing in line, looking at the magazine racks. She can hear her mother’s 
attention waning.  
“Dad.” Zola repeats louder. 
“Oh, your father has in his head that he’s going to buy a sailboat. I said to 
him, ‘Harry, we don’t even know how to sail!’ ‘But Mary, we can learn,’ he says. 
So if we end up as Cuban hostages, just remember, it was your father’s idea.”  
“I will keep that in mind if the embassy calls me,” says Zola, knowing 
perfectly well that they will most likely buy the boat, but will never sail.  
Her mother asks, “Have you gotten a job yet?” 
“I’m working at that place I told you about.” 
“It doesn’t have benefits, Zola.” 
70 
 
“No, but I’m still looking. They feed me, though. And if you and Dad ever 
want to get away—” 
Zola can hear the checkout girl in the background. “Well, keep taking 
those vitamins,” her mother says. “And make sure you are getting enough rest.”  
“I will. I love you.” 
“Talk to you soon, Sweetie. Remember, fish oil. It does wonders for 
digestion.” 
How did her parents actually create a child so completely unlike them? 
Did they settle for the life they lived, or had they ever wanted something different 
from what they ended up with? Were they even happy? Has her father always 
dreamed of owning a sailboat? Or was it not a sailboat he wanted, but another life, 
another woman and maybe no children at all? She realizes she knows almost 
nothing about these odd, middle-aged people she supposedly shares genes with. 
Yet sharing a life with another individual and then having children with them is a 
forged bond her parents will forever share. Zola imagines this connection to be 
something like the human vascular: delicate and corruptible, intricate and 
regenerative, both in its ability and need to keep the sap of desire pumping 
through.  
71 
 
 Her thoughts return to Nicholay.  He has changed, she thinks. There are no 
hints of defense or resentment in his tone. He seems different and engaging. But 
how does he suppose she can go about inspiring him? She is not even sure she is 
capable of delivering a story to anyone on such a tall order. She decides she can 
only give him the truth, but maybe that’s what they have both been looking for all 
along. 
Nicholay, 
 For all your weaknesses, they no longer affect me the way they once did. I 
am not one to judge your nature, for my own imperfections still remain. 
Perfection—I have never been one to believe in such an aim. Flaws exist in even 
the most beautiful of things.  
 As a kid, my mother used to drop me off at my grandparents house, the 
kind of place where my boots were immediately abandoned to the front lawn, 
forgotten for the day and left to the bees and beetles and bugs looking for a new 
home.  
There was one particular afternoon when my Papap was out behind the 
house scrubbing blood off his hands, purpled like turnips from the hard brush 
washing he was giving them. Over his Army-Navy jacket, he had draped an apron 
splattered with shades of red and maroon, and at his feet was a plastic bucket 
with knife handles protruding from a soapy bath. No matter what I was told and 
no matter what I knew to be real, my imagination was capable of turning my 
always gentle, caring grandfather into a monster. 
72 
 
 I was told not to go down to the barn, but I did. Peering through the 
cracks between the rotted wall planks, I caught sight of the buck’s length strung 
up by its hind legs, its underbelly no longer that soft downy white, but matted and 
dark and split open. The deer’s antlers barely scraped the ground. I tried to 
translate the hieroglyphics I saw in the dirt below them. But a fly was feeding 
upon one of its hairy lids, and I couldn’t recognize tragedy or struggle, just 
peaceful placidness and all black. I waited and waited for that deer to flick its 
ears and be reborn again, but it never did. 
 It wasn’t just my fascination with the carcass, or with what happened after 
a life was over. I loved the gap of heavenly blue where the roof still needed to be 
patched; the air, filled with the scent of birth mixed with the decomposition of 
dank wood and death; the mud squishing between my seven-year-old toes and the 
wet silt forming around them with a warm, viscous suction. The soil in front of the 
doorframe was soft from the way the rain fell and collected, and I could easily 
leap across the puddle by holding up the hem of my dress. But the mud is why I 
never wore shoes to the stables. Even after stepping on a nail one summer, I still 
went around barefoot.  
 I wasn’t alone that day. An owl had been watching all along, calling out to 
me in its high condescending tone: WHOO, WHOO? WHOO, WHOO? It 
shrieked, loudly and shrilly, until I fled from the barn into the quiet open field. I 
can hear the owl even today. Its sound brings to mind my worst possible fears—
 all the things I’m unable to admit to, and that I’ve done wrong.  
 So, here we are, two people far from perfect. Our lives diverged and now 
they intersect again. But who are we now? Time cannot pass without change. I 
know I am no longer the woman of girlish fantasies and wild dreams. I find myself 
more grounded in a reality I have fashioned for myself, and I continue to mold my 
73 
 
life, sculpting it into something I have always wanted. You used to ask me what it 
was I wanted. The naïve, young girl told you ‘happiness,’ and you said you could 
never give that to me. I resented you, because I didn’t believe you. Now, I know 
you were right.  
~Zola 
? 
“Am I glad to see you,” says Jules, who has poured himself a drink and is 
already at the bar when Zola arrives at work. He startles her, sitting alone in the 
dark, his petite legs dangling where a full-grown man would have his feet 
comfortably positioned on the lowest rung of the stool. It’s only four o’clock, so 
she holds her tongue to keep from saying what she’s really thinking.  
“Hannah told me to not bother coming home tonight. Tell me, would you 
have been offended if I said I didn’t care for a roast?” 
“Depends if I already made it.” 
“True. I think I screwed that one up.” 
“You should eat something. I’ll go find Adam.” 
“No, it’s okay,” says Jules, as the lights come on. “But man, did you miss 
an episode yesterday.” 
74 
 
“What’s that?” says Zola, unpacking her beer opener and corkscrew from 
her purse. She begins to organize the bar for dinner service. The rest of the staff 
will be in within the hour. 
“You know that local woman who comes by here every now and then, the 
one who we think is a pro—” 
“You’re the only one who thinks that.” 
“Songbird! That’s what it says on her license plate. You know who I 
mean?” 
“She’s always picking up the car salesmen who come in at happy hour, 
trying to get a better APR.” 
“That’s her! So, she picked up another one. I watched her do it. I was 
sitting over there—” Jules points to the other end of the bar. “It didn’t take her 
twenty minutes to get this guy out to the back parking lot. The whole place could 
see her in his truck and she didn’t seem to care who was watching. Who picks 
someone up at a hotel, then goes out to their car? We have perfectly good rooms! 
I would’ve cut them a deal for a couple hours.” 
“Who was the guy? Do we know him?” 
75 
 
“No, he worked for a courier service, just in for the night. That’s the best 
part!” Jules finishes his drink. “Can you pour me a beer? I can’t seem to do it 
without messing up my shirts.” 
“Sure.” Zola grabs a frosted pint from the cooler, then pulls the tap handle 
toward her and expertly fills the glass with lager. “So what happened?” she asks, 
placing a coaster and the beer in front of him.  
“The truck is rockin’ and rolling. So much that the back latch comes 
undone, and out jumps a couple dozen bunnies!”  
“What?” Zola laughs. She can’t possibly take Jules seriously, particularly 
now, but he is deadpan and his crescent-shaped eyes aren’t blinking.  
“They were hopping around everywhere. I ran out there to alert the guy, 
but they had been going at it like rabbits themselves and hadn’t even noticed the 
escapees,” he says. “Apparently, some dealer in the area was trying to save this 
Australian hare that is being wiped out by some virus over there.” He stops. 
“What? Why are you laughing? It was a real mess out there. Turds on my car.”  
“Jules.” 
“What?” 
“You just made my night. Thank you.”  
76 
 
“Maybe you can use it in a story someday?” 
“Maybe.” 
“I’m going to my room. Phyllis unlocked the movie channels for me.” 
Jules leaves a five under the empty glass for Zola, and retreats to his usual 
room at the end of the hallway of the first floor. Zola looks at the elk on the wall, 
with a head full of stuffing. Nicholay will probably think she’s nuts and will never 
write again—but he asked for a story, and so that’s what she delivered.  
The night progresses like musical chairs, with the customers coming and 
going in a revolving-door procession of pin stripes, toupees and aftershave. 
Unfortunately, the Endless Classics Collection, which Jules bought from the 
Home Shopping Network, is responsible for the ambient soundtrack this 
particular evening, and the swingers’ lounges of the 1970’s, quickly come to 
Zola’s mind. Room keys discreetly left in check presenters are also as frequent as 
the fluctuating tips she receives—pilots are the biggest offenders. Though some of 
the girls she works with collect these keys competitively (and occasionally take 
men up on their propositions), the thought of doing such a thing repulses Zola.  
Around nine, like clockwork, Jules calls down to the restaurant.  
“Zola, it’s for you,” says Martha, teasingly.  
77 
 
She takes the phone. “What do you want, Jules?” 
“I’m craving pie.” 
“But you haven’t had dinner yet. Don’t you—” 
“What kind of pie do we have in house tonight?” 
“Cherry, apple, rhubarb…we have French silk—” Jules is drunk and Zola 
has a feeling she knows where this is going. 
“Aren’t you French?”  
“Well, my father is…”   
“I’ll take that, then.” 
“Sure. I’m busy right now, but I’ll send Martha down—” She feels a bit 
resentful toward Jules for putting her in this situation. 
“I was hoping it would be you.” 
“Are we still talking about dessert, Mr. Verne?” 
“I expect it here in ten minutes.”  
Zola hasn’t been with a man in a long time—a couple of years. There had 
been a fling with a guy she met while camping out West, but before that, it had 
been Nicholay. Jules isn’t an unattractive man; his efforts to remain appealing to 
78 
 
the opposite sex are evident in the way he presents himself. He is married, though 
more to his job than his wife, and Zola has heard through rumors that he is 
enjoying the strip clubs a little more than usual lately.  
She cuts a perfect triangle out of the silken chocolate pie, adding a dollop 
of whipped cream to the crust for decoration, and hands it over to Martha, who 
doesn’t have much going on other than waiting for text messages to come in.  
“Jules is expecting this,” says Zola. 
“Great!” says Martha, taking the plate in her hands eagerly. Zola watches 
as she nearly skips down the hall in her black miniskirt. Martha is known to be 
proficient in the trade of collecting keys. She also doesn’t need to be told where 
Jules spends his nights away from home.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
79 
 
Nicholay 
? 
Sitting at his peasant table, Nicholay sips a coffee and picks at some 
pungent leftover Manchengo and chorizo. It is overcast, the kind of day where 
Zeus could impregnate the sky. Nicholay has brought his painting of Zola down 
with him for breakfast, but instead of sharing his meal with her, decides he wants 
to be left alone to his thoughts. So he places her outside on the porch, looking 
down on the rocky beach below, where the fishermen have just come in for lunch 
and to bring the day’s first deliveries to the markets.  
A wind chime tinkles outside, bringing in a breeze, and his palms form 
around the quickly cooling ceramic of his mug. His hands are hard worn, but with 
the elegant, slim fingers of a piano player or flamenco guitarist. As much as he 
tries to keep them clean, bits of paint still remain under his nails, and his beard is 
getting unruly along his neck. With swollen eyelids from too much wine and 
tobacco the night before, he is still wearing the same torn jeans and grey jersey.  
He tunes out the calls of the old men hauling their skiffs onto shore, the 
birds swooping in for a free meal, and the sound of the wind through the chimes. 
But his meditation is interrupted by a soft accent and the sound of light, padding 
feet outside. 
“Hello?”  
80 
 
Nicholay follows the female voice to the front door. He studies the woman 
through the screen for a moment. He can discern her features as dark, with even 
brown skin and ink-colored hair tied up with a silver clip. Most likely from the 
mainland, she is too composed to be vacationing, yet too relaxed to be a tourist. 
He opens the door and joins her on the porch, still making his assessments. 
 “Yes?”  
“I am looking for Mr. Salazar. Is this the right address?” 
 “Lucien Salazar?” 
She wears a simple sleeveless dress. A pair of heels hangs loosely in her 
right hand, exposing her bare feet to the weathered wood. Around her swan neck 
is a red silk scarf with purple flowers, tied with a close knot. She was probably a 
dancer at one time, but gave it up to pursue a more practical occupation—in sales 
perhaps.  
Nicholay laughs to himself a bit. “I suppose Lucien gave you this 
address?”  
“He did. He said I’d find him here.” She points to the canvas facing the 
cove. Zola’s eyes and bust are perky on a chipped, blue chair. “Is she yours?” 
“It’s a work-in-progress,” he says. “Lucien lives thirty minutes north of 
the Cape. But he doesn’t take to unannounced—” 
81 
 
“Your work is captivating,” she interrupts. “I see longing in her 
movements.” She remains focused on Zola, ignoring Nicholay’s warning about 
uninvited guests.  
 “I am taking a bit of a break on it—can I help you with something?” 
 The woman finally meets Nicholay’s gaze. “Oh, I’m sorry. I met Mr. 
Salazar in the market yesterday. I’m a collector.”  
 Nicholay nods, but doesn’t respond. He tries to place her face; he’s sure 
he’s seen it before. Then the newspaper article from a couple weeks ago comes 
back to him; the rich siblings who inherited a bunch of unwanted money. She is 
one of the rebels with a cause. 
“I’ve been shopping the village galleries for weeks with little success, 
when I heard an argument over pricing and commissions. I was considering a 
Miró knockoff, when out storms Mr. Salazar, clearly upset over a settlement 
between him and the shop owner. I chased him down to give him a better offer. It 
was probably an absurd thing to do, knowing nothing of his work. But have you 
ever just had one of those feelings? He seemed so… so impassioned. He gave me 
this address, but I’m starting to think I didn’t come to the right place.” 
 Nicholay laughs. “Miró? Really?”  
 She shrugs. “I was getting desperate.” 
82 
 
  “We’ve all made impulsive mistakes out of hopelessness.” Nicholay takes 
up a protective stance against the side of the house, his hands in his pockets. 
“Lucien’s a very private man. He keeps to himself. He doesn’t sell his work much 
anymore, so I’m actually surprised to hear he was in a gallery. I haven’t even seen 
his latest work myself. But maybe it was an older piece he was getting bent over 
on?” 
“So you know each other? You’re pretty close, I gather?” The woman 
eyes Nicholay. “I will take your word on his privacy, but why would he send me 
here?” 
“Maybe he thought I would want something with you,” says Nicholay, 
instantly regretting his tactless suggestion. 
 Instead of being offended, however, she blushes. “I see. And you’re a 
painter, too?” 
 “I’ve been studying with Lucien for the last eight years.”  
 “That’s a long time. You must be good.” 
 “I get by.”  
“Do you have other work I could see? Anything finished? Or did I catch 
you at a bad time?” The woman casually peeks past his shoulder, smiling. 
83 
 
“You just cut to the chase, don’t you?”  
“I’m sorry,” she says. “My name is Ariana. I guess I get by, too.” She 
holds out her hand. 
“I don’t have much time, but if you want to take a look around my studio, 
it’s out back. It looks like a greenhouse. Should be unlocked.” Nicholay turns to 
disappear into the house. 
“Thanks!” she calls after him. 
From the kitchen window, Nicholay watches her walk down the stairs and 
around the side of the house, wondering what Lucien is up to.  
? 
Nicholay decides to move back into his studio, leaving the painting of 
Zola unfinished in the kitchen. It waits for him at the end of every evening. 
Stagnation comes and goes. Nicholay never knew it when he and Zola 
were together, or even before that, when he first aspired to be a painter. In recent 
years, he’s bided his time with still life paintings and commissions just to keep his 
hands working. Yet they are hardly as stimulating as a painting sprung from his 
own imagination. It wasn’t long ago the dormant period settled upon him, but it 
has been the image of her—the memory of the way they made love on the table of 
84 
 
their kitchen, the taste and smell of yeast and honey on her skin—that has made 
him take up the brush again. Now he wants nothing else but to paint.  
He sizes up two rolls of canvas that have been wedged between his 
drafting table and the corner of the oblong studio. The roll closest to the wall is 
cinched at the top from being squished, and feels slightly damp, but Nicholay 
pulls it out anyway and lets it fall to the floor with a dusty thud. Worried about 
mildew and mold spreading to his other materials, he unrolls the uncut canvas to 
examine it. No signs yet, but just to be on the safe side, he flaps the fabric into a 
loose cone shape and drags it outside to bake in the beating sun. He returns to the 
canvas in better condition and proceeds to cut a piece six arm’s lengths long and 
as high as his chest. This he divides into three equally proportionate sections. His 
plan is to tell a story in sequence.  
Sweating profusely, he walks to the back of the studio, where an industrial 
fan has been installed for ventilation. The mechanism clicks a few times but does 
not start. 
  “Come on!” he growls, hoping this doesn’t keep him from working. But 
the blades charge into action and pretty soon they are making a deep oscillating 
sound, similar to the propeller of a plane. Satisfied, he returns to the task of 
fastening one of the three blank sheets to his easel, one to his drafting table with 
85 
 
clamps, and the third one across the old gardening bench, so he can see all three 
points as they evolve.  
 Nicholay assumes Zola is happy, or at least has found her own version of 
happiness. Happy—what a strange word, meaning so many different things. Are 
two people together ultimately satisfied? It’s unlikely; he’s seen it in many forms, 
holding his proof with conviction, knowing it is the only piece of wisdom he can 
ever offer another.  
 He’d seen it in the collapse of his parents’ marriage. They gave so much 
of their selves for so many years, only to be met with violent disappointment and 
unfulfilled expectations, and eventually soothing their battered hearts in the 
comforting arms of paramours. (Paramour—another fascinating word, meaning 
“for love,” as though love is the only cause for an affair.) They were foolish 
believers of an idealized notion: that they could be everything and would be 
everything to each other. Their marriage was supposed to be a testament. Instead, 
it became a constant reminder of their shortcomings and powerlessness. 
 Nicholay had sensed a similar outcome in his relationship to Zola. When 
she came to him looking for reassurance and reciprocity, he tried to explain his 
stance and lack of faith, time and time again. He tried to make her see that what 
she was really seeking could never come from an outside source; it was 
something she would have to find on her own. For he has always believed that 
86 
 
love exists without form and without force. It is unconditional and can’t be shaped 
to fit or controlled.  
He wants to think Zola is happy now, but there is a part of him that 
suspects otherwise.  
 Painting puts many things in perspective for Nicholay, and when it comes 
to producing, he believes the senses and mind are best evoked under complete 
solitary freedom. All the stimuli he absorbs over the course of a couple hours, or 
even over years, is bottled up like fireflies caught by a child, only to have their 
wings torn off and their luminescent pigments spread by the trembling tips of his 
fingers. It sounds barbarous, but that is just what it is when he unleashes the 
incubus within; the white hot noise that pulls at his most vulnerable organs or 
lacerates him into a disciplinary focus.  
 “There isn’t enough time to become great,” he tells himself. “We all die 
too soon.”  
 And even in the midst of such a trance, he thinks again of Zola, and with 
dilated pupils, begins to see the bigger picture.  
My Dearest Zola,  
 The quest for a fulfilled heart is a solitary one. For so long, I sought 
fulfillment along the streets and beaches speckled with beautiful people, in the 
87 
 
countryside beside workers with callused hands and brandied breath and in 
foreign cafés, hoping it would arrive unexpectedly, like an old friend. Perhaps I 
was looking for it in the wrong places, or with too much assurance. I am as 
incomplete a man as I ever was. Could you ever forgive me for thinking I was 
someone I was not?  
 Please believe me when I say I am sincerely hopeful for your discovery, 
your new sense of self. I will not use the word “happy,” for you know how little 
the word means to me. But if you would prefer to believe that is what I am, I will 
not deny you your belief. Have we lost so much between us, since we’ve parted 
ways? Are we no longer the people we once were: passionate, celebrating and 
lost in ourselves? One early morning in our kitchen is a memory that has stayed 
with me all this time. It has inspired me to paint again.  
 Yes, it is true; I stepped away from the canvas. I lost my ability to create. 
But it was the memory of you making bread at dawn and making love at sun up 
that made me pick up the brush again. I wanted you to know this—that your 
image has never left me. I spent years trying to forget that morning together, but 
it haunted me with both grief and lust, and now it sits painted in my kitchen in the 
warm colors of your body and the cool colors of faint light. It is a symbol of what 
was. It is a symbol of what could’ve been.  
 I once followed the freckles on your skin, as one does the constellation 
Orion to the North Star. Somewhere along the way, I became lost. So, I ask you 
this: With all this time that has passed, how does one ever retrace and reclaim 
such careless steps? Or don’t we? 
       I await your thoughts,  
        Nicholay 
88 
 
 
Zola 
? 
Her loft reminds her of an antique aquarium. With its carved moldings 
framing every window and doorway, there is a certain flow to the space where she 
lives. Trying to unlock something meaningful and poignant, she swims about in 
this think tank of hers, treading water for a while, and then changes direction. 
When she is not swimming, she writes. When she is not writing, her mind swims, 
trying to come up with ways to change the personal narrative or the direction of 
her story. And when the sun or moon passes over the windowsills lined with jars 
of round stones and beach glass from her travels, she awakens to find herself 
floating just below the surface of distant seas—pools where she swam naked and 
free, like a young seal. 
  Just beyond her apartment is another ocean. Looking out from her desk 
towards its mystic expanse, she contemplates its connectedness to other oceans—
 one body flowing into the next, in the same way the past merges into the present. 
And when she becomes tired of looking at her computer screen or the 
blank pages; when she lets her eyes relax to a slight blur; she can almost make out 
the cliffs of the island in the distance and the entrance to the mysterious Spanish 
gardens she once knew.  
 
89 
 
 
 
 
 
PART II 
Five Years Earlier 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
90 
 
Spain 
? 
 
 “Apurate! Levantanse!” Mimi hollers through the door. 
 Zola rolls over in bed to see a giant black handprint on the edge of her 
pillowcase.  
 Pushing her sheets from the length of her body, she finds carbon smudges 
all across her bedding, and her fingers and palms are sooty like those of a press 
setter. 
 Knocking ensues from the hallway. 
 “Dame un secundo!” Zola calls back, still groggy. 
 “El autobus!” responds Mimi, before Zola hears her go down the stairs. 
 Late again, Zola grabs her jeans and blouse from the chair next to her desk 
and dresses. Pulling her hair into a messy ponytail, she slides her feet into a pair 
of espadrilles. 
 “Great,” she says, noticing the charcoal from last night’s studio 
assignment is now soiling her clothing, too. But she doesn’t have time to worry 
about these things, since she’s overslept.  
91 
 
 
 It is an early ride from the boarding house where Zola rents a room to the 
school where she takes classes. She knows this because she is regularly the only 
passenger—the only Americano—who actually uses the commuter at this hour. 
And between the four-hour block of art courses in the morning and two hours of 
literary studies in the afternoon, by the time she takes the bus home at the end the 
day her mind will be a fog of Botticellis and Davids, and a great many writers 
who have written great words.  
 This morning, she cracks a book and attempts to read, but restlessness has 
come over her, and she stares out the bus window with a longing for something 
more. Outside, it is a ghost town, except for a couple of stray cats and clusters of 
pigeons, and the men who work in the scaffolding outside ancient and important-
 looking buildings.  
She fingers her page, leaving behind a series of thumb and fingerprints in 
the corner. Her warm breath bounces off the window as she leans closer to the 
glass.  
  At the third stop, the hydraulics hiss and the doors open with the sound 
and smell of the city. Some days there is the stench of something unforgivably 
rotten out there coming in from the curbs, and other days it smells like the sweat-
 soaked pheromones of a man. Not a single sign of life can be detected, not even in 
92 
 
the park. The stone tables, where she likes to watch the old compadres playing 
chess, are deserted, as is the water fountain where younger men often group 
together to discuss futbol.  
 Zola looks up to acknowledge the man coming down the aisle, staring a 
little more than usual. She can’t help it; she is used to being the only one in the 
caravan, at least until Stop 5 or 6.  
  Then he chooses the spot beside her, when there are plenty of empty 
seats.  
 She closes her book, but keeps it on her lap. Her attention returns to the 
window; the passing clotheslines and alleyways, and a cityscape that has been 
hung out to dry. 
 “Are you a pilgrim?” the man asks. 
 Zola turns to him, but his focus is ahead. A can of paint rests at his feet. 
 “Not quite,” she says, taking notice of the brimmed hat upon his crossed 
knee. 
 He leans toward her this time and whispers in her ear. “Are you running 
away?”  
93 
 
 His nickel eyes meet hers, and she shies away from his closeness, looking 
down and hiding her dirty hands. 
  “I think I’m running towards something,” she says finally.  
  “You know, I ran away once. I was about your age. I wanted to paint and 
didn’t give a damn who understood me. But people just want pretty little pictures. 
Noninvasive stuff they can fuck beneath and not get distracted by.”  
 The man possesses the faint scent of burnt cherries, almost like the burn 
off of a pie in an oven, when the boiling fruit filling can no longer be contained by 
its pinched crust.  
 “There’s this place not many people know about,” says the man. “I spent 
some time there. No other place like it. It will awaken your soul.” 
 Zola could easily mistake what he is describing to her as spirituality, but 
strangely enough she trusts him without even knowing his name.   
 “Where would I find this place?” asks Zola.  
 “I can tell you, but you’ll have to go. The gardens alone are something to 
see.” 
  “It’s time for me to leave here soon, anyway,” she says. 
94 
 
 He writes some information on a receipt that he takes from his pocket, and 
hands it to her. 
 “Don’t read into this too much, but you may someday find that you’re 
chasing the wrong thing. It may be mildly disappointing when you realize this. 
Maybe you’ll feel like you’ve wasted time. Just remember all is not lost,” he says, 
standing up. “It’s likely misplaced, until you’re ready.”  
 “Ready for what?” asks Zola. 
 “Ready for what happens next,” he says. 
 The bus begins to slow. The man holds onto to the luggage rack above his 
head until the motion ceases.  
 “This is me,” he says, putting his hat on his graying head of hair. He turns 
down the aisle and is gone. 
  For some encounters there are no possible explanations, and for Zola this 
was one of those experiences. For out there in the world, there are seraphs and 
saints, and then there are those who walk among us, who have lived a little bit 
more. The only difference between those who are good and those who are Godly 
is being mortal.  
95 
 
 Zola looks at the piece of paper in her hands, a sales slip for art supplies 
bought in a store not far from where she’s been living. After three months in this 
city, she has begun to see the allure of having specialty shops so close, because 
she never knows when she’ll need something carved or aged, dyed or treated—
 these are the kind of things she writes home about. Such shops pepper the streets 
with their window dressings of ribbons and fabric, with bronze bells that alert 
shopkeepers they have company. There is something evocative about discovering 
these unknown nooks and crannies, especially on foreign soil. It seems as though 
Spain has been courting her ever since she’s arrived, yet Zola still can’t see 
herself completely committed to staying.  
? 
 Zola stands at the steps of a limestone sanctuary with ornately carved 
doors. She doesn’t know what to expect. There were no roads on this island, no 
village, and no structure other than this monastery built up on cliffs, practically 
out in the middle of the ocean.  
 “It’s just a bunch of holy men out here,” the ferryman had said before he 
left. “I’ll be making the rounds back this way by evening.”  
 There had been other passengers aboard, but no one else seemed interested 
in staying with her; they were mostly English, on their way to Ibiza for a quick 
holiday. When she hiked up the narrow path of gravel and sand toward the white 
96 
 
edifice above, the scorching sun was reflective and harsh, and she wondered why 
she decided to follow the stranger’s suggestion in the first place.  
  This must be right, she thinks to herself, as the massive doors open to a 
nave so grand in size, she doesn’t know if she’s ever felt so humbled.  
 A long line of high arches cross-hatch the ceiling in a similar 
configuration as an elephantine ribcage, and the floors are of a rose-white swirling 
alabaster. This room is not one to pray in, but it is the type of room where the 
ravaged and the hopeless are instantly transported to a better place.  
 She picks up a pen and signs the visitor registry, where only one other 
name is listed for today, though it looks like no one else has signed in all week.  
She tries to locate a map, but there doesn’t seem to be one available, so 
she chooses the corridor to her right to continue. 
 The caverns of the passage, lit only by candles, lead to an elevated 
walkway. As she carries on, she hears the echo of crashing waves below. She 
follows this dark tunnel to its end, and emerges atop a lookout in the open air, 
surrounded by stone walls.  
She assesses the island’s terrain from above, trying to see if she missed 
anything when she arrived. Low-lying scrub and vegetation cover most of the 
area. She can see a few paths, like the one she took up the hill, but there are no 
97 
 
trees to offer protection from the elements. It is as barren as a desert and uncanny 
as a graveyard. She is at the highest point she can be, yet she can still see all the 
mica sparkling in the dirt like thousands of diamonds below her. A gust of wind 
brushes the bottom hem of her dress and the spontaneous scattering of her blue 
skirt, gives her the momentary confidence of flight actually being possible.  
 Backtracking, she takes another hallway, this one lined with wooden 
benches and portraits of foreboding men in cleric robes, some with shaved heads 
and others with practiced and meditative expressions.  
Absorbed in these photographs, she is startled when she hears the rustling 
of paper and a slight cough. Assuming it is a monk, Zola peeks around the corner 
of the marble statue beside her, only to discover a man sitting on one of the 
benches, wearing jeans and a plain white tee shirt. She is caught off guard by the 
fact that this man had not been on the boat with her, and therefore didn’t belong 
there anymore than she did.  
 His boots are pointed outward. He holds a sketchpad against his thigh, but 
his left hand is completely still, as though he is in the middle of an intense 
thought. Zola knows this feeling well—betwixt and between the no man’s land, a 
psyche must scour before his ink can readily flow, like the spring of one’s 
personal oasis.  
98 
 
Not wanting to disrupt his focus, she goes on to find a space of her own to 
collect her thoughts.  
 The hours go by. Zola uses up three rolls of film. In late afternoon, a low 
hum rises from the monastery and the chanting of mantras drifts along the pillars 
and courtyards and through libraries and scriptoriums, naturally amplified by the 
nautilus shape of the sanctuary’s chambers. Shadows elongate and other spots are 
illuminated, making it seem as though the grounds have lifted up and rotated in a 
new direction. It is as though Zola can feel the full tilt of the world’s axis, another 
day being born, as this day slowly slips away.  
 Zola looks at her watch. She still has time before the boat comes in. The 
man on the bus mentioned some gardens, and there is one last wing for her to see. 
 Two stone steps bring her down to a patch of soft grass and into the 
embrace of fruit trees, where the air smells of citrus and lavender and the breeze 
off the water. Zola begins to remove her shoes, so she can dig her toes in and 
make her mark—her imprint.  
 As she slides off the second shoe, she looks behind her to find the man she 
saw earlier standing at the entrance of the garden, watching her. Embarrassed and 
barefoot, she retreats to the trees to avoid his gaze. But he follows her, catching 
her by the hand and pulling her close. 
99 
 
 “Where have you come from?” he asks, with an amused look. 
His boldness is jarring, and she wraps her arm around another trunk base, 
barely in view and just out of his grasp. “My grandfather had trees like this,” she 
says, moving away from him to duck beneath the low boughs of a tree. 
 “These are still young,” he says, resting against a silver-papered trunk, 
below an umbrella of malachite green.  
 “When I was a kid, I’d follow him down to the orchards when it was time 
to prune and I’d crawl up inside them, eating pears until I was sick,” she says, 
leaning down to pick up a leaf.  
 “They’ve always been too sweet for me,” he says. She can feel him eyeing 
her as she twirls the leaf between her fingertips.  
  “I thought people found mates in a similar way—while getting blown 
along in the wind,” she says, letting go of the leaf, and watching it fall freely to 
the ground.  
  “I believe we choose,” he says. 
 “But what if no mate comes along? Then there’ll be no fruit, and we age 
all alone.”  
100 
 
 “We die alone anyway,” he says. “Who are you to be worrying about these 
things so young?” 
 “Zola,” she says. 
 “Zola?” 
 She nods. 
 “Zola, I’m Nicholay, and I choose to kiss you,” he says, leaning toward 
her and putting his lips to hers. The kiss tastes of a honeyed fig and lasts only 
moments, lingering pleasantly in their mouths. 
They wait for the boat to return, watching the evening sun change against 
the masonry of the walls, with something written there in the foundation, 
developing in the light.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
101 
 
The following … 
Spring 
? 
  “I’ve done a lot of work for this woman over the last few years. She’s 
particular, but if you get in with her, you’ll have a good thing going,” Nicholay 
tells Zola as they walk through the flea market looking for housewares. “It’s 
better than sitting in a lecture hall, trust me. You’ll learn more about the industry 
this way. At least it’ll get your feet wet.”  
 “It’s just that it’s going to be a change working for a paper,” says Zola, 
looking over a table with an assortment of cabinet knobs, some ceramic with 
floral designs, others made of intricately crafted metalwork, tarnished or green 
from corrosion.  
 “It’ll be for the better. Getting to put your observations down will heighten 
your awareness, if you ask me. If it wasn’t for painting, I’d be a narrow-minded 
bastard, I think.” 
 “I doubt that,” says Zola. “What would you be doing if you weren’t 
painting?” 
 “I don’t know. I’ve only had one job.” 
 “Really?” 
102 
 
 “The summer before I came here, I worked as a gas station attendant. I 
would work ten, twelve-hour shifts, and sketch between pumping gas and selling 
customers candy bars. I still have those sketchpads, and some of the drawings I 
did back then have become paintings.”  
 “I’d love to see them,” says Zola. “I used to write stories, but using people 
I actually knew, not ones I made up. Real people fascinated me. It was the 
storybook characters that I always found too heroic.” 
 “So you’re telling me I should be careful?”  
 Zola smiles and wraps an arm around Nicholay’s waist. “Are we really 
ready for this?”  
 “Probably not,” he says, putting his arm across her shoulders and giving 
her a gentle squeeze. “I’ve never lived with anyone before. You’re the first. And 
you’ll probably be the last. You’ll want nothing to do with me after you’ve seen 
my ways.” 
 “I’ll take that chance, Mr. Bell.”  
 Nicholay kisses her on the top of her head and rubs his thumb against the 
back of her neck beneath her hair. “We’ll be okay. After all, we’ve got this!” He 
holds up a stainless steel pot with a copper bottom, which he has been carrying 
since its purchase.  
103 
 
 Zola takes the cooking pan from his hand. “You may want to use it like 
this,” she says, putting it on top of his head like a backwards ball cap.  
 He grabs her and pulls her into an embrace. “Are you saying I need a 
helmet, my dear?” 
 “We could both use a little armor,” she says, with a little laugh. “What are 
we getting ourselves into?”  
He shrugs, then kisses her. 
 As they stroll along, Zola follows the architecture of the closely situated 
buildings that stand squat and imposing at the edge of the market. White tent 
canopies are packed tight with textiles, earthenware pottery, colored glass, and 
food. Market-goers pick over the displays like scavengers. A white-haired man 
with a long black coat sits on top of an empty chicken coop between two vendor 
stalls, playing an accordion. He is barefoot, and keeps time on the crumbling 
pavement. They stop and listen. 
 “I couldn’t be a street painter,” says Nicholay. “If I had to do something 
else, maybe I’d be an engineer, or a carpenter. I need to do something with my 
hands.”  
 “I think people do what they have to, depending on the situation,” Zola 
says, taking some coins from her pocket and throwing them into the black-and-
104 
 
silver cubed case propped open at the musician’s feet. The man gives her a slight 
bow in gratitude, and goes on with the tune.  
 “I think we choose,” says Nicholay, leading her away, into the mob.  
 
 Zola has taken her first job as a paid writer for a daily newspaper. She is 
elated to have the opportunity to write for an audience and be paid, no matter how 
minimally. Nicholay helped her line up the position through a woman who 
commissioned him for a mural in her home. Though Zola questioned the details of 
the favor at first, those thoughts were quickly put aside when she received a warm 
reception from the editor on her first day. Apparently, Nicholay’s work had 
pleased the woman so much that taking Zola on at the paper was the least she 
could do.  
 They rent a three-room country house just outside of Seville. Lucien 
arranged it; the house had been the childhood home of his close friend. Though 
Zola has never met Lucien or the friend, Nicholay speaks of them both fondly; he 
says they have been very generous to him ever since his arrival in Spain two years 
earlier. Carolina, the woman who lived there before she passed, was some sort of 
philanthropist and artist, and from what Zola can gather, she was the only woman 
and muse Lucien ever truly cared for.  
105 
 
 The house sits peacefully near a riverbed in a cluster of ash and almond 
trees, which keeps it cool in the warm months. In the spring, pink and white 
flower buds appear on the almond trees, making Zola feel as though she is living 
in one of those dreamy Japanese ink landscapes with samurais and geishas, snow-
 capped mountains and cherry blossoms. 
 Though the cottage is quite small, there is room enough for both Zola and 
Nicholay to find corners of their own. Zola types away the hours in a designated 
area of their bedroom, while Nicholay works in another section of their living 
quarters just below her, putting paint to canvas in an exalted and expressive way 
that is both masculine and sensual. Every now and then Zola will emerge from the 
room above and appear behind him, watching, waiting to get swept up in his 
madness, and he takes her, wet paint still on his hands, with both desire and 
reason in his eyes.  
? 
 Zola is assigned her first story after working in the newsroom for about a 
month, checking facts and selling subscriptions. She gets the assignment by 
default, as all the staff reporters are tied up working on the more pressing news of 
the Duchess of Alba’s third marriage. Zola, being the only one free, is handed a 
plane ticket and a tape recorder with instructions to travel to Pamplona and 
interview a man claiming his father once crafted a fly-fishing rod for Hemingway. 
106 
 
Zola doesn’t care that no one else wants to cover the story, or that the story will 
be overshadowed by a slew of gossip about an 80-year-old aristocrat who marries 
younger men for sport. This is Zola’s turn to prove she’s capable, without having 
strings pulled in her favor. 
 “My father had fingers like carrots, swollen and cut up from the line he 
tied for so many years,” the son, Ernesto III, tells her during the interview. “But 
he was the one to go to, if you wanted to catch that prize.” 
 “Did he ever speak about Hemingway to you?” asks Zola. 
 Ernesto shakes his head, and Zola notices how the shine of his hair stands 
out against the shoddy shop of dusty cases, rusty clamps and prehistoric-looking 
tools. 
 “Never to me. Not to anyone, really. He was not like the men who came in 
talking about the big fish they caught. My father never bragged.”  
 “So how did you find all this out?”  
 “My father and his brother owned this shop before I took it over. My papa 
was a woodworker who made the rods from trees on our land, and my uncle 
worked with metals and was a collector of feathers. He made all the lures.” 
 “Sounds like an operation.” 
107 
 
 “It was. They had some of the most skilled fishermen in the country come 
to them. They would spend months getting a pole just right,” he says. “But I 
didn’t find out about Hemingway until one of our family celebrations, when Papa 
and his brother got into a fight.” 
 “What was the argument over?” asks Zola. 
 “It was about the kind of fish Hemingway went after,” he says. “To 
everyone who knew my papa and his brother, this meant they were working on 
something.”  
 “But they never told you directly?” 
 “There was no need to. They were secretive in this way. Fishing was 
sacred to them, like the loyalty of their clients. It would’ve been like speaking 
their prayers out loud.” 
 “I see,” says Zola. 
 “Do you fish?”  
 Zola laughs. “I went out a couple times with my dad when I was little, but 
haven’t in a long time.” 
 “I could take you if you’d like,” says Ernesto, going to the counter near 
the cash register to retrieve a calling card with his telephone number. Then he 
108 
 
slides the back of the main showcase open, where the tackle is organized by type 
and size and material, and chooses a bronze spoon lure that looks like an earring. 
  “For good luck, and if you return to Pamplona,” he says, dropping these 
items into her hand. “You never know.” 
 “You’re right,” says Zola, accepting the gift. 
 “I look forward to seeing what you write,” he says, putting on his jacket to 
escort to her car. 
 “I’ll do my best, and will try to tell your story.” 
 “My father deserves the credit, not me,” says Ernesto. “He was the true 
craftsman.” 
 The story runs a week later, ending up in the Lifestyles section of the paper 
between a piece on this season’s trending outerwear and an article about a food 
poisoning outbreak that happened a couple of days prior at a local café. The story 
shares a page with an advertisement of a woman sporting a persimmon-colored 
jacket and knee-high leather boots. Her foot is up on the bumper of a safari 
vehicle, and she looks stoic out in the wilderness. 
 “Nice placement,” says Nicholay smugly, when Zola shows him the story. 
 “At least it’s something,” she says. 
109 
 
? 
 Zola hears stories of a hundred-year-old amusement park built in the 
mountains after the Spanish-American War. The story goes that in the late 1800’s 
after Spain lost its territories in the Caribbean Islands, the park inspired a revival 
among the people of the country. A colonial powerhouse and empire for so long, 
Spain was so diminished by the defeat that leaders thought the only way to restore 
its national identity was to find ways of bringing the nation together again, 
whether through art or education or entertainment. Parks were commissioned, 
sculptures were erected, and writers and artists became unified, speaking up for a 
new era of progression and intellect.  
For ten years, Spain maintained a neutral political presence, basking in an 
enlightened state. They seemed to be enjoying their carnivals of life. But when 
tensions in North Africa began to increase, Spain abandoned its communal 
gatherings for one last shot at acquiring land.  
 Zola convinces Nicholay to visit the old park. “It’s their necropolis,” Zola 
says, helping Nicholay to pack the rest of his equipment into the back of a small 
hatchback they have borrowed from a friend. “The skeletons of many of the old 
rides are still intact, even after they pulled off bits of metal from the roller 
coasters to make planes.”  
110 
 
 “So they took something joyful and made bombs?” says Nicholay, closing 
the lid of the trunk. 
 “Come on, you’re going to love it,” says Zola, opening the driver’s side 
door. Nicholay climbs in on the other side. 
 Zola has wanted to see this place ever since she found out about it. She 
managed to persuade Nicholay to leave the studio for the weekend, which is a real 
feat these days—though from the looks of it, he brought half his studio with him 
anyway.  
It isn’t his painting that bothers her. It’s how distant he becomes when 
he’s preoccupied. The days come and go, passing through the rooms they share 
but rarely occupy together. After a while she begins to feel as though she lives 
with a roommate, rather than a partner.  
 Ever since the interview with Ernesto, her work at the newspaper has been 
piling up, too. Zola feels compelled to keep fresh ideas in her head, so that when 
she gets a chance to make her first pitch she will be ready and sharp with a 
proposal.  
 “Be my navigator?” she asks, handing Nicholay a map she picked up at a 
bookstore.  
 “Sure, but I’ll tell you now that I’m not like every guy.” 
111 
 
 She pulls out of their driveway. “And why is that?” 
 Nicholay reclines in his seat, indicating that he is along for the ride. “They 
say men tend to get lost easily, then refuse to ask for directions.”  
 “And you are a descendent of Ponce de Leon?” says Zola, with her eyes 
on the road. 
 “Close, but what I was going to say is that I’ll be the first to admit when 
I’ve gotten us lost.” 
 “That’s reassuring.”  
 “Thought it would be.” Nicholay unfolds the map, and spreads it across 
the dashboard. “You can count on me,” he says. 
 It is a four-hour ride to the national park. Nicholay and Zola have never 
been in a confined space together for any extended amount of time. Chemistry can 
do something to a young couple; either it encourages them to be better versions of 
themselves, or it eats them up like wild piranhas. There is no better way of testing 
this then sticking a couple in a sedan in the Andalusian Mountains.  
 “Do you think Lucien would mind if we paint the walls in the bedroom 
and kitchen?” asks Zola. 
112 
 
 “I don’t see why not. I’ll ask him when we get back. They are looking a 
bit banged up, aren’t they?” 
 Zola nods. “I thought it would be nice to personalize it a bit in there. Plus, 
I look at enough blank pages in the course of my day. It’s a bit much to have 
white walls all around me, too.”  
 “What colors are you thinking?” 
 “That’s where your expertise comes in handy.” 
 Nicholay laughs. “Choosing colors for anything is as overwhelming for 
me as choosing the right words for a poem is for you.”  
 “Maybe we can put a bunch of swatches in a hat and pull one out. Then 
we don’t have to make any decisions at all,” suggests Zola.  
 “How about during this trip we keep a lookout for colors that stand out to 
us? I’ll take photos, and we can bring the colors home with us to decide.”  
 “That works,” says Zola.  
 “But we can’t talk or think about it too much,” says Nicholay. “Or this 
won’t work at all. It has to really jump out, okay?” 
 “Okay,” says Zola, reaching for the radio.  
113 
 
 “I got it,” says Nicholay, and Zola’s hand returns to the steering wheel.  
 “So what’s the deal with Lucien?” asks Zola. “Am I ever going to meet 
him? I’m starting to think you made him up.” 
 “Trust me. Lucien is as real as real can be. You’ll meet him some day. He 
doesn’t leave his place much, so we will have to go visit him.” 
 “I would like that. I feel like I know him from the way you talk about 
him.” 
 “He’s taught me a lot, and not only about painting. But I think I’m more 
worried about him meeting you.” 
 “And why is that?” 
 “He may steal you away.” 
 Zola laughs. Lucien has to be at least seventy. Anyone younger couldn’t 
possibly be as accomplished as Nicholay has made him sound. 
 “That doesn’t put much faith in me. You think I’d be swayed by some 
smooth-talking older man?” 
 “Like I said, it’s him I don’t trust. He has a way of making women fall for 
him.”  
114 
 
 “That’s ridiculous,” says Zola. 
 “Why do you say that? I’ve witnessed it.” 
 “Because I’m in love with you, and you’re not Lucien.” 
 Nicholay looks out the window. “Lucien is like a father to me. He’s given 
me more advice than my own father,” he says. “Do you know what my father’s 
biggest piece of advice to me was?” 
 “What’s that?” says Zola. 
 “‘Trust women enough to behave like men.’” 
 “And you believe that?” 
 “I know my mother wasn’t a trustworthy woman. She was cheating on my 
father from day one. My father was a fool, not seeing that she was unhappy. He 
loved her even after she walked out,” he says. “He loved her so much he’s still 
sitting in that same damn chair, waiting for her to come home. Of course, now he 
drinks himself to sleep in that chair. He didn’t used to do that.”  
 The spine of the old roller coaster rises over the tops of the dark alders as 
the car crawls through the winding pass.  
 “We should be there soon,” Nicholay says, still staring out the window 
toward the remnants of a past—maybe his past. 
115 
 
  Zola flicks on the headlights. 
Summer 
? 
 In the summer, when the Spanish countryside feels like a sunbaked 
terracotta bowl, Zola loses countless hours of sleep. The house is haunted, but 
when she tells Nicholay this, he says it’s impossible; Carolina lived a happy and 
full life, he says. But in her dreams, Carolina speaks to her in warnings, telling her 
not to love a man like this.  
 When it becomes unbearable for her, Zola sometimes goes out to the river 
behind their house and sits on its banks surrounded by iridescent fog, watching 
the Mayflies skip and dance on the water’s surface. They remind her of fairies, 
aquatic nymphs, delicate and ethereal. She remembers that Ernesto, the man in 
Pamplona, told her that these were the best insects for bait. Their life cycle varies, 
from only a few short hours to the length of two days. She imagines living her life 
in a certain rush. 
 One night, Zola watches Nicholay sleep, untroubled, until she knows she 
won’t wake him, then slips away quietly, still naked. They haven’t made love in 
weeks, and she has found other ways of satisfying herself—sometimes even in his 
studio among his paintings, hoping to get caught in the act. But tonight she has 
another sort of yearning.  
116 
 
 She opens the cabinets, removing one package after another: salt, flour, 
yeast, honey. Blending the ingredients together, she presses her palms into the 
soft dusted belly of the dough, her body rising and falling with each motion. Flour 
begins to stir up around her, settling into her exposed creases. And every now and 
then, she flings her head back to keep her long hair from dipping between her 
working arms, and closes her eyes like a woman riding away on the night. She 
does this with purpose. When she feels she’s achieved the perfect mold, smooth 
and firm to the touch, she tucks the kneaded dough into a cloth to rise.  
 “Now that’s an image,” she hears Nicholay say from behind her.  
 She hadn’t heard him come downstairs, but before she has a chance to turn 
around he is at her collarbone, kissing her. Her breasts instantly ache under his 
touch, and his workman hands go to her hips.  
 “You scared me,” she says, submitting to his caresses, as he works his way 
between her thighs. He is the same man she left sleeping in bed, but she feels like 
a different woman; she is the bread upon the table, the heat in the stove, as new as 
the morning. The love they make is unrefined and wild, running over them like 
warm spring puddles on fertile plains, leaving her finally satisfied and him 
weeping. 
 
117 
 
? 
 “I can’t allow myself to believe in something that will ultimately fail,” 
says Nicholay, watching Zola stand on her toes to peer into the vanity mirror to 
apply her makeup. She does this unconsciously, just like counting on her fingers 
or pouting her lips. Nicholay likes to tease her by telling her that if she were a 
mere two inches taller, better at math, or thicker-skinned, she wouldn’t be the 
same woman he loved.  
 “It doesn’t have to fail,” she fires back, as she applies liner and mascara to 
her eyelids. She looks at him through the reflection in the mirror, where he is 
positioned behind her, sitting on the bathtub. He is already dressed for their 
outing, while she, as often is the case, is running behind, putting on finishing 
touches. 
 “A false foundation cannot support a house. Marriage is just a substitute 
for security. It guarantees nothing but the kind of pain that can destroy a man.” 
 “You think I want to destroy you? Is that what you think of me?” 
 “That’s not the point.” 
 “You know, Nicky, there are examples of people out there who have 
figured it out, who have put in time and effort, and they’re not imbeciles.”  
118 
 
 “You’re asking for proof? Tell me about the first man you loved. The first 
man you ever said those three words to.”  
 “Fine, but then we have to go,” says Zola. “His name was Jamie, and he 
was good to me.”  
 “Was?”  
 “He still is. I still care for him very much.”  
 “So why did it end?” 
 Zola can see where this is going. “We wanted different things.” 
 “Different things?” 
 “Yes, we both did.” 
 “But isn’t that what I’ve been trying to say? One settles, the other goes. 
There never seems to be enough room for two people to be in the same place, at 
the same time. It’s like the proudest and most vibrant flowers trying to blossom 
side-by-side. One ends up dominating the garden; the other becomes 
malnourished.”  
 She has to admit there’s some truth to what he’s saying. That was always 
Zola’s problem with relationships; they were either confining or conflicting, or 
119 
 
too close to her own parents’ reality. Then she met Nicholay, who asked nothing 
of her, but challenged her to believe in something more. 
 “Imagine something different, an understanding if you will. Having the 
freedom to explore different kinds of relationships, to have them inspire you. To 
grow from them. Not only that, but to be able to love deeper, because of such an 
understanding.” 
 “I don’t want to be late,” she says. Standing between his open legs, she 
rubs the sides of his head with her thumbs and bows to plant a kiss on him. “You 
think too much about what doesn’t work.” She playfully snaps one of his 
suspenders, and his defense softens. 
 “I’m proud of you. Have I told you that lately?” he asks, holding her 
around the waist. 
 Zola knows the conversation isn’t over, that it may, in fact, be about 
something much more complex that neither of them is ready to deal with. But it is 
their first year together and they’re having all the important conversations; and for 
the most part, they seem to complement one another well in their aspirations. 
They have all the time in the world to get to where they want to go. 
 
120 
 
 The plan is that Nicholay will take Zola to dinner in honor of her recent 
journalistic successes. Then they’re going to drop in on a gallery opening.  
However, their discussion about the woes of commitment leaves a sour 
taste in her mouth that even the best wine or the richest sauces can’t get rid of. 
Zola can tell Nicholay feels the same way. All evening, they seem to be moving 
in different circles, like the choreographed steps of bull and matador.  
 “You’ve been with that girl a lot tonight,” Zola says to Nicholay at the 
opening. She gestures toward a tall Russian woman with long legs and a tight 
black dress, who is pouring a round for a group of men who are clustered around 
her.  
 “She’s the bartender,” he says, sipping his drink. 
 “Have you seen Ivan?” Zola asks, referring to the artist. “He was looking 
for you earlier.” 
 Nicholay shakes his head. “He looked busy. I’ll congratulate him later.” 
 “Well, I’m ready to go when you are,” says Zola. She doesn’t feel well, 
though she does not know if it’s from the conversation, the people in the room, or 
the way Nicholay is behaving. He looks silly in his jacket, she thinks, like a boy 
playing dress-up.  
121 
 
 “I’ve been invited to the pub with some of those guys,” he says, nodding 
in the direction of a group of French men they met earlier.  
 “I’m going home, then. Do you have the keys?”  
 “I’ll walk you out,” says Nicholay, putting his drink on a table. 
 Zola waits as Nicholay pulls the car around for her. Leaving it running, he 
gets out so she can get in. 
 “Is everything okay?” he asks. 
 “It may be the food. My stomach is upset,” she says. “I’ll just meet you 
back home.” 
 “I won’t be too late,” he says, kissing her forehead.  
 He closes the door for her. She watches him walk back inside.  
? 
The sound of knocking downstairs makes her open her eyes. Even as she 
transitions from sleep to wakefulness, Zola senses that Nicholay has not been 
home.  
She reaches for his wristwatch on the nightstand to check the time. She 
locked all the doors before she went to bed.   
122 
 
 The knocking ceases. Zola pulls one of the blankets around her naked 
shoulders, and in socked feet goes down to answer. But when she opens the door 
there is no one there.  
 Grabbing her keys off the hook in the front hallway, she steps outside and 
walks around the house. She finds Nicholay trying to open the window to his 
studio. It wouldn’t be the first time he came in this way. Since they have been 
together, Zola has witnessed Nicholay’s strange behavior of sneaking in in the 
middle of the night, looking rough and animalistic, sometimes clawing at her until 
she awakes, or sleeping at her feet like a dog. Then there are the times when he 
sneaks into his studio in the wee hours, where Zola finds him on the floor in the 
morning, crusted paint in his hair and all over his clothes, smelling badly of booze 
and tobacco. 
 “It’s locked,” she says, startling him. 
 “I don’t have my keys.” He is weary-eyed and disheveled.  
 “Where have you been?” she asks. 
 “I told you.” 
 “Where?”  
 “This is ridiculous. I’m tired. Can we talk about this in the morning?” 
123 
 
 They stand in silence with a speckled moon stretching their shadows 
across the lawn. Nicholay doesn’t make eye contact with her. She is chilled 
beneath the blankets, her socks wet and filthy. 
 “Come with me,” she says, walking out into the dark.  
 “Where are we going?”  
 She doesn’t respond, but he follows her, walking to the end of their 
property where the river coils quietly like a black snake.  
 “Zola?” he pleads.  
 With her back to him, she looks into the miniature gulch below. Creeping 
vines hang from the trees as though trying to pull the willows and poplars in for a 
swim. Small critters scamper among fallen debris further out on the forest floor.  
 “What are we doing out here?”  
 She turns, but doesn’t quite look at him. “Take your clothes off.” 
 “Why on earth—” 
 “Take your clothes off and get in!” says Zola, louder.  
 “I’m not—” 
124 
 
 “Yes, you are! You’re not coming in the house smelling of another 
woman. Or else you’re going to sleep out here with the lynxes and coyotes, and 
trust me, they won’t be so kind to a pathetic man like you.” 
 She begins to shake and sob. Nicholay reaches out to her. 
 “I didn’t—” 
 “You did. I know you did.” Her chest is tight with her hard beating heart. 
 “I’m sorry,” Nicholay says finally, unbuttoning his shirt. Zola knows it is 
over.  
 He strips down as Zola sits huddled on the bank, the blanket wrapped 
around her in a cloth nest. His chest hair is matted and his testicles are two 
deflated lemons stuck to his inner thigh. She feels disgust like she has never felt 
before, and closes her eyes as he splashes into the water and wades out to the 
middle. 
  “Goddamit!” he yells into the woods on the other side of the river.  
 Zola doesn’t feel sorry for him. Not a bit. 
 Dunking himself a few times, he scrubs his hair and scalp with his fingers 
before coming back to shore. He crawls up next to where she sits and collapses, 
125 
 
breathing with difficulty from the cold. His skin is raised with goose pimples and 
his jaw is clenched to keep his teeth from chattering.  
 She leaves him lying there and walks back to the house with the blanket 
around her. She returns to bed, and Nicholay doesn’t attempt to join her.  
? 
Nicholay, 
  The nights are too long. I need to relearn how to be alone. My writing is 
suffering. I have gone to stay with a friend in Pamplona. I won’t be gone long, 
only long enough to miss our bed. Do not worry. 
Zola 
 
 Zola leaves the note by Nicholay’s boots in the hallway. She doesn’t dare 
disturb him while he’s in the studio working. She walks out the front door without 
him even noticing. 
 Her plan is to see a doctor near Pamplona, then find a place to stay until 
she figures out where to go from there. A child is growing inside of her. She can 
feel her body already adjusting to fit that growth. There were definitely signs; her 
increased sensitivity to taste and smell; the way she’s been guarding her emotions 
with an impatient tone or quick temper. She often feels as though she wants to 
126 
 
pelt Nicholay with a bunch of hard marbles every time he makes an asinine 
comment.  
Going home isn’t an option. She made the mistake of telling her mother 
when she had lost her virginity at sixteen, and her mother insisted on reminding 
Zola every day, up until the day she left for college, that she had no interest in 
raising her children’s children. Irresponsibility, even now, wouldn’t be tolerated, 
and an unplanned pregnancy wouldn’t get her an ounce of sympathy.  
 The night she left the party alone, she stopped by a 24-hour pharmacy and 
picked up a pregnancy test. She had an inkling, the way women do when they 
sense something different about their changing bodies. As she waited on the toilet 
for her bladder to relax, she anticipated the definitive release that would give her a 
plus or a minus, along with the tough facts she knew she would have to face 
sooner or later.  
All the questions, all the possible solutions; it is all too much for her to 
comprehend. Her reality has been knocked askew, teetering on shaky ground. She 
knows how Nicholay feels about children— not only wasn’t it in the cards; it was 
the surest way to end their relationship. The first time they were intimate, he said 
to her, “If we’re going do this, I need to know something: Can you live for 
something other than having kids?”  
127 
 
 She was barely twenty-two. Children were the last things on her mind, and 
so she told him she could go without. They agreed there would be no children. It 
was understood. End of story.  
 
 Ernesto knows she will be in town. She hasn’t forgotten his offer to teach 
her to fish, and she likes the idea of spending her days in tidal pools and amongst 
currents. She needs time to reflect and prepare for the new life she is about to 
enter into, with or without Nicholay at her side. She knows keeping the child will 
mean a sacrifice, but it is a trade she is willing to make.  
Her body tells her one thing, her heart another, while her soul tries to 
mediate between the two. If only she could transport herself into the future, she 
would know the choices to make. The fear of the unknown has never terrified her 
more. It is the abyss she will dream about years later, a world of never-ending 
plains and skies, in the land of unpredictable and uncontrolled possibilities. The 
painter Dalí hadn’t been a madman; he’d been a prophet.  
 
 At two-and-a-half months, the arms and legs are formed, the heart has 
been divided into two chambers and is pumping, the brain is growing rapidly, and 
taste buds are beginning to emerge. Zola can’t believe so much can be happening 
in an organism slightly smaller than her thumb. In two more weeks, the child will 
128 
 
be the size of a small apple, with fingernails and toenails. She is in absolute awe 
of all this growth, including her own. 
 She will write Nicholay in a day or two, or perhaps call him. It is the right 
thing to do, after all. But how she will tell him? How should she write it—recite 
it, this speech she should know by heart. What tone will she use?  
 As the days go by, while she sits in doctors’ offices and sleeps in her 
cheap hotel room, she realizes she is okay with just being by herself. And 
somehow, all longing and truth she wanted to unfold like a picnic they would take 
in together, all those expected things, retreat further inside of her. It becomes 
harder for her to miss Nicholay, when it feels he has given her his best part. 
 
 The day she visits Ernesto, he instantly detects something different about 
her. “You again—so full of life,” he says. Rising from behind a draftsman’s table, 
he walks over to meet her at the entrance of his shop. 
 Zola does not respond. Certain things will remain unspoken. 
 “What brings you to Pamplona? Another story?”  
 “Actually, I’ve come to learn to fish. I feel it’s a good time.” 
 He nods, as though he understands everything she doesn’t need to say.  
129 
 
 She remembers his smooth-skinned charm. He isn’t arrogant, just sure of 
himself. His clothes are airy, fitting loosely beneath his strong neck, and he wears 
a closed-toe sandal that is almost feminine. He is a little older than Nicholay, 
though not by much, but his composure tells her he is a man with experience far 
beyond his age. There is something archetypal about him, and she is keenly aware 
that he has the perfected proportion of a renaissance man in the flesh. 
 Ernesto catches her gaze and looks her straight in the eyes. “We go out at 
five.” 
 “In the morning?”  
 “Sí. And bring a thermos with you. It will be cold.”  
 Zola wants to tell him she will not be able to drink coffee in the morning, 
to spill everything to him like a runny yolk. But she keeps these secrets to herself. 
Of all the decisions she has to make in Pamplona, whether or not to have a little 
caffeine will not be her most difficult. 
? 
 Zola bicycles into town for her first fishing lesson. The sun is barely 
cresting over the horizon, the air crisp enough to make her eyes water and her 
knuckles chap. On her ride she notices a few stores with light on and movement in 
the windows, but there is a hush in the streets and the wind speed through her 
130 
 
bicycle spokes tell her, “It’s only you. It’s only you.” For a moment, she believes 
what she hears.  
 She parks her bike in the alley next to the store and enters the stairwell 
leading to Ernesto’s apartment. She pauses for a moment before her ascent. It’s 
just fishing, right? Nothing more.  
She shivers and she can’t tell if it is from the dampness of the hallway, or 
her conscience.  
 In Ernesto’s apartment, the temperature is surprisingly different. She 
immediately notices the dryness, and there is a familiar scent in the room, almost 
like clay between one’s fingers. The view from his street-side windows is not as 
nice as she’d imagined. From where she’s been staying only a few miles away, 
the town appears to be situated upon a hill; but from this vantage point she can’t 
see beyond the rudimentary shapes of rooftops, chapel towers, and building 
facades. The realization that he will never look out his window toward where she 
works and sleeps is a disappointment. 
   She is comfortable with Ernesto. There’s a feeling of simplicity as she 
waits for him to gather his things. She feels no need to be anywhere other than 
where she is. She likes watching him move about his residence, knowing that 
131 
 
each item he looks for will be right where he left it. Nothing in Zola’s life is like 
this, but she thinks that maybe there will come a time when it could be.   
 “You like?” he asks, holding up a case to a CD. Paco de Lucia. 
 “Heard of him,” she lies.  
 “We will listen in the car. I think you’ll enjoy.” He puts some extra things 
into a backpack, and is ready. 
 
 It is a short drive in Ernesto’s truck to the spot where the river forks in two 
like a wishbone, creating a slight rocky island perfect for reading or eating. 
Ernesto says he likes to stand at the tip of this strip of land, in shallow water 
facing the currents, as the fish decide which way to swim. This state of confusion 
distracts the larger fish, and they will mistake the free bait for easy prey.  
He tells her all this in the car, pausing to listen to the flamenco musician 
on the CD, who has been accompanying their conversation with passionate solos 
and weeping guitar. Ernesto strums along on the steering wheel. 
 “You like?” he asks again. 
 “Yes, I do,” she says. 
 
132 
 
  The mosquitoes are vicious. Swatting at them is useless. Red welts come 
quickly to her skin, and Ernesto chuckles to himself every time he hears the slap 
of her hand against an arm or a leg.  
 “You shouldn’t bathe at night. It’s the lemon oil that’s attracting them.”  
  She gives him a look as she sets her bag away from the water’s edge. How 
does he know what she puts in her bath water? And when had she let him close 
enough to her that he could distinguish this scent on her? Was it when he had 
leaned across her in his truck to reach into his glove compartment, or was it when 
he put on the radio? Or could it have been when he stood beside her earlier that 
morning, pouring hot coffee into her thermos?  
 “Watch what I am doing with my wrist,” he says. With a delicate and 
directed rhythm, Ernesto’s angler line dances back and forth above his head, then 
into the middle of the stream. “It’s a fluid motion. Not a quick action.” 
 Zola tries to copy this movement from the ten-foot distance where she’s 
balanced herself in the riverbed. But her line goes where it wants, landing too far 
off to the side, or too far out from the ripple she is aiming for, with one of her 
casts just barely missing his ear.  
 “No, no. You’re trying to control it, instead of guiding it. Timing is 
everything. Watch me again.” Ernesto repeats the cast, his forearm rolling 
133 
 
smoothly at his elbow joint, landing his fly exactly near the same rock of his first 
demonstration. “You are using the repetitive sweeps to unfurl the line. This is 
how you get enough momentum to land your nymph.”  
 Zola tries again. Her loops are better, but not nearly as graceful as his.  
 “Better,” he says. “It will come with practice. It took me years to find my 
own technique. I learned from both my grandfather and father, but they also had a 
style of their own.” 
 “How long did it take you to master this?” 
 “As many years as you are old, my dear.”  
 The insinuation about her age slightly bothers Zola. She thinks of how 
Nicholay frequently made such comments, too. Too young to know what she 
wants. Too young to make those sorts of decisions. Too young to believe anything 
differently. If she had told him she wanted to learn to fly fish, he probably would 
have called it a youthful whim, too. 
 “This is a blood knot,” says Ernesto, when he reels in his empty lead. A 
fish has gotten away with his fly, and he crouches to examine it further. “It 
connects two autonomous pieces of line, just like a family lineage.”  
134 
 
 Ernesto holds out the knot for Zola to inspect. She follows the swoops and 
crosses with her fingers, but can’t figure out how the fiber bud is made.  
 “You see,” says Ernesto, taking up the line in his hands. “If the knot is 
strong and made with care, it will endure for a long time and you will have your 
success. But if it’s weak and made carelessly…” Ernesto tugs at the two sides. “It 
comes undone and is another opportunity missed.”  
 Zola leans over and picks up the separated pieces, now frayed and lying at 
his feet. 
 “Will you teach me to make a strong one?” says Zola, as she hands the 
ends back over to Ernesto. “I want mine to last.” 
 “I can teach you what I know of fishing.”  
 Zola smiles. “That’s all I want,” she says.  
? 
 Through Ernesto’s connections in town, he finds her a place to stay with 
an elderly woman named Peata, who offers her home to solo travelers for 
indefinite periods. Ernesto tells her that the landlady takes to artists, because they 
keep to themselves for the most part and live on meager diets.  
135 
 
 The hallways are lavender and covered in photographs, the bedrooms 
whitewashed with clean lace curtains. The toilette and bathtub have claw feet, and 
Zola likes the idea of being able to soothe her body in warm water after days 
spent hiking over river rocks and standing in icy streams. When she shows her the 
house, Peata explains to Zola that she spent most of her life in London, but moved 
back to her homeland after her husband passed away. She has lived in this house 
by herself for the last fifteen years, tending to her gardens and her guests, never 
having the desire to return to the city life, where people tirelessly move about but 
don’t really go anywhere. Zola knows this will be a good place for her to stay.  
 Her bedroom window faces west, overlooking and the dirt road and gate 
leading to the property. Occasionally, a car or bicycle passes by, but it is an 
occurrence so rare that Zola pauses to see who it is and observes them until they 
are out of sight, before returning to her writing. By the second week, however, she 
stops thinking it is Nicholay and works for hours without looking up.  
   
 She craves olives and juicy clementines. Traces of her cravings appear on 
the keys of her computer and across the thighs of her skirts. She takes trips with 
Ernesto to the mercados, where they try delicacies she’s only read about—salted 
and aged meats, pickled vegetables and virgin oils, rare mushrooms and roots. 
They take turns cooking for one another with the new ingredients they discover in 
136 
 
these markets. Food becomes an adventure for them, a language they can both 
understand. They bake and fry the fish they catch, wild brown trout or catfish, 
sometimes adding the peels of lemons or oranges they gather during their walks 
on his family’s land. Sprigs of rosemary and thyme from Peata’s herb garden also 
make their way into these dishes. They enjoy the indulgences of things that are 
good, because they don’t know a better way of living. 
 Zola hasn’t rested so peacefully in years. The long days, the fresh air and 
the writing she creates leave nothing more for her to want. She sleeps like the 
child inside her womb, undisturbed and content. The things that haunted her back 
in Seville have all but subsided. There is a light around her, and a feeling of being 
optimistic and worthy.  
Fall 
? 
 Ernesto invites Zola to a cafe in the park, where an outdoor movie plays 
on a sheet strung between trees. They eat little sausages and hard cheeses.  Zola 
tells him her secret, and he says he already knew. 
 “Tell me about the father,” he says. 
 “He probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone.” 
 “I don’t believe that. He’s hurting.” 
137 
 
 “Let him hurt. I can’t forgive him.” 
 “Just because he was with another woman doesn’t mean he loves you any 
less.” 
 “Whose side are you on?”  
 “It’s not about sides, Zola, or about being equals.” 
 “Then what’s it about? Because I’m having this baby despite him.”  
 “I was with this girl once. It didn’t matter what we talked about: pigeons, 
chairs, movies, music; she needed to prove to me that she could not just have a 
conversation about a topic, but also that she knew as much as I did.” 
 “What happened?” 
 “I stopped talking.” 
 “You stopped seeing her?” 
 “I stopped talking in her presence. I loved her—God I loved her. She was 
an amazing woman. But that one thing about her drove me nuts. I quit 
competing.” 
 “And that worked?” 
138 
 
 “For awhile, she tolerated it. We would sit for hours saying nothing to 
each other, like a couple of old people who have been together too long. But she 
would still try to engage me in conversation, because she needed to be heated 
about something.” 
 “Didn’t that lead to tension between you?” 
 “Sure. She took her anger out on me in the bedroom. She was wild and 
willing to do anything to get me to open up.” 
 “Did you?” 
 “I never shut myself off to her. My feelings never changed. She left me, 
because she questioned her worth. Not because I did.”  
 “I still don’t know,” says Zola, picking at the outer skin of one of the 
sausage links.  
 “You just need time,” says Ernesto, turning his attention back to the 
movie.  
? 
 In the night, a moth flies into Zola’s room. It circles around her bed, then 
lands on her windowsill. “Come with me” it says, with a vibration in its voice.  
139 
 
 Zola rises from bed and follows its translucent wings down the stairs and 
out the front door. She trails its flight through the gardens, lit by the moon and the 
stars, to the gardening shed where she retrieves her bicycle, and then to the 
country road, where they set out into the night.   
It brings her to a boundary of pasture that looks like her grandfather’s old 
farm. The moth takes up a branch nearby as its perch. Up in the trees is a pair of 
owl eyes she has come to know very well, staring down on her.  
She hears moaning in the distance, a sound so filled with pain it brings on 
an unexplainable sadness that grows deeper and darker as she walks over the 
grassy knolls toward the faint ember of light cast off from Pamplona. She can 
make out the shadowy profiles of beasts roaming on the horizon, a herd restless 
and pacing. 
 She crouches in the grass, trying to disguise her presence. They can smell 
her, but pay her little mind, for there is something more burdensome stirring.  
The moans come again, this time only a few feet away. Her eyes adjust. A 
shape that Zola had first mistaken as a toppled-over haystack is actually a head, 
straining in discomfort, rising and falling with every jerk of its thick neck. She 
doesn’t dare get closer for fear of startling the unsettled animal, and stays squatted 
140 
 
in the tall weeds, waiting. The cow cries again and again. With every contraction 
and spasm, Zola remains in place, stiff and helpless.  
 She wants to look away. She wants to vomit. She wants to close her eyes 
and wish for it to be over, but she can’t. She now knows what true pain smells and 
sounds like, and she can’t just turn away or escape it.  
? 
 Peata’s eyes are hawkish and suspicious in the morning. Zola tries to eat 
her breakfast at the table casually, while Peata waters her blooming clivia and 
begonias. But even with the windows open and the garden fragrances circulating 
through the house, Zola feels tension in the room. 
  Zola speaks first. “I’ve been sleeping so well and I’m getting a lot of 
work done here. I hope I haven’t been disturbing you with my typing.”  
 Water continues to trickle from Peata’s can. There is something unrushed 
and careful about her nature. “Lady’s Slipper. I made tea from the root during my 
first pregnancy.”  
 Zola sets her cup down and turns to the woman, who is now plucking 
yellowing and dried leaves from her flowerpots. She hasn’t told the woman she is 
pregnant—she hasn’t told anyone, only Ernesto the night before. 
141 
 
 “I was a sleepwalker, too,” the woman continues. “However, I don’t know 
where you brought all the mud in from. We haven’t had rain in over a week.”  
 
 On the way to the river, Zola tells Ernesto about the Luna moth.  
 “That is strange,” he says, turning onto the trade road that leads to their 
fishing hole.  
 As they pass a field on their right, Zola spots the handlebars of a bicycle 
lying below in the ditch. Her bicycle. 
 “What’s that?” says Zola, holding her breath.  
 “Luna don’t have mouths,” says Ernesto. “I find it interesting that it spoke 
to you in your dream.” 
 “They don’t?”  
 Ernesto gives her a sideways glance, grinning widely and playfully. “They 
don’t have mouths because they live for only one week, and their sole purpose is 
to mate. They don’t eat, they don’t sleep. They just mate, then die, knowing a 
piece of them will live forever. Imagine if man were immortalized in such a way. 
It would be tragic. But in the case of the Luna, it’s quite beautiful.”  
142 
 
 “I didn’t realize that,” says Zola, thinking about how uneasy she felt 
getting dressed earlier that morning, with the image of the stillborn calf on her 
mind, and how peaceful it looked lying in the field next to its exhausted mother. 
“It’s probably nothing.” 
 “Dreams are never nothing,” says Ernesto, parking the truck.  
 
 Zola’s casts are becoming more natural, as is her relationship with 
Ernesto. As they bait their lines in silence on their river island, he sometimes 
leans over to observe her fingers working with the string and fly. Other times, he 
lets her figure it out on her own. Then they walk into the river together, where 
they take their places like orchestral conductors, with Zola three paces to the right 
and Ernesto six feet out. Together, they wave their wands, summoning the fish to 
them.  
 However, this time Zola feels hesitant. Ernesto goes in first without her. 
He casts his line and looks back at Zola. 
 “Coming in? Or are you just going to watch me?” He turns back to the 
rushing water. 
 Zola picks up her pole and slides her feet in. “It’s really cold today,” she 
calls over to him. 
143 
 
 “It only feels that way because the air is so warm. You’ll get used to it.” 
 Trusting him, she steps forward, placing her feet slowly and cautiously as 
she goes. Even her rubber waders can’t protect her bones from the temperature of 
the water, but she finds a calmer spot that isn’t out too deep and makes her cast.  
 She looks over at Ernesto, who is waiting too.  
 After several minutes, with only the sound of the moving river to entertain 
her mind, she begins to shiver.  
 “I’m getting out. It’s too cold,” she says. She can’t tell if he heard her. As 
she tries to steady herself, the rod quivers in her hand. Beneath her boots, the 
feeling in her feet and calves drains out, as though they belong to the river itself. 
Before she can catch her breath, she is submerged, water filling her waders and 
pulling at her clothes.  
She faintly hears someone calling out, but the voice is muffled and distant. 
Darkness and cold cradle her. She lets it take her.  
 “Don’t worry. Don’t worry,” it says.  
 
 
 
144 
 
 Before Zola can open her eyes, the smell of animal droppings is in her 
nostrils, making her woozy. She can feel hay grass poking her skin. She is wet 
and chilled, but she is sure the sun is still above her, even though there is 
something blocking it.  
 “Nicholay?” she asks, with eyes still closed. 
 “No, it’s me.” The shadow momentarily disappears, then returns. “I’m 
going to get these off so you can warm up. Okay?” 
 She feels the gentle unfastening of buckles and belts, then the damp rubber 
suit being pulled off her torso, hips and legs. Water runs down her inner thighs. 
 “I think you fainted,” he says. “I saw you, then I didn’t…”  
 Zola sees Ernesto kneeling next to her. She looks away, at a patch of 
black-eyed Susans and when looks to him again she sees that he is staring at one 
of his hands.  
 “Zola. There’s blood.”  
 The baby. Zola tries to see where it is coming from, but instantly becomes 
light-headed from the sudden movement.  
 “Don’t get up. I’m going to get the truck,” says Ernesto, without delay. 
“You’re safe here. I’ll be right back.”  
145 
 
 As she lies there, she feels a pulling pain just below her abdomen. 
Through the warming air she vaguely remembers the scent of her grandfather’s 
barn after a butchering. For the first time since she’s arrived in Pamplona, she 
wants Nicholay at her side. But it is Ernesto who returns, and delivers her safely 
to the town’s doctor.  
? 
 The first thing Zola notices when she wakes up is the feeling that 
something has been taken from her. Loss carves out a space inside. 
 “Your body was trying to purge the pregnancy,” the doctor tells her. 
 “I don’t understand,” says Zola, still groggy from morphine. “I have 
ultrasound photos. Only a couple weeks ago, everything was normal.”  
 The doctor is looking at the files in his hand, and not at her. “It seems you 
couldn’t carry.” 
 “I don’t understand. You’re saying I’ve been carrying a dead…”  
 “I’m sorry we couldn’t detect it sooner. Would you like to see the photos 
from the surgery, to see what we accomplished?” 
 “Surgery?” 
146 
 
 “When we removed the fetus, we found that your fallopian tubes were 
damaged, and an ovary had ruptured beyond repair. We had to remove it.” 
 “Can I still have children?” Zola tries to get the doctor to look at her, even 
though her face is wet with tears. She wants to be sure she isn’t completely 
broken, that there is some small chance. 
 “It will be difficult, but possible. We’ll know more after we see the how 
the scar tissue heals.” 
  She doesn’t want to hear anymore. She is being punished. She wasn’t 
supposed to do this on her own in the first place. She was incapable of protecting 
their child.  
Nicholay was right not to want children with her. She couldn’t handle the 
responsibility. 
 There is a reason hospitals feel so sterile. The lack of life in their décor 
and ambiance prepares patients and loved ones for the inevitability of death. In a 
place so morbid and demoralizing, it is hard to grasp onto hope.  
Zola looks at the painting across from her metal barricaded bed. It is of a 
bowl of fruit, grapes and peaches and a couple of pears past their prime. In the 
foreground is a dead pheasant, its long neck stretched out where it once dangled 
from the mouth of a dog. 
147 
 
 
 A sweet nurse snuck a pair of pale blue booties on to her feet in the middle 
of the night. Zola asks to keep them; this simple act of kindness from a stranger 
makes her realize that she isn’t alone in the world.  
 “You’ll have beautiful children when the time is right,” says Ernesto when 
he brings her lilies.  
 “It was your body’s way of saying the pregnancy wasn’t healthy,” says the 
nurse, helping Zola to use the toilet. 
 “It’s more common than you think,” says the doctor, adjusting her 
morphine dose.  
 “You’re all lying!” Zola wants to scream, but she doesn’t have the energy.  
 She lost a lot of blood. Internally she feels like a bruised cantaloupe, 
scraped of all its seeds. She asks Ernesto to call Nicholay for her, then changes 
her mind immediately when she considers how the situation may appear if he 
does come.  
 By the third day, Zola feels herself regaining strength and the doctor 
agrees to release her into Ernesto’s care, as long as she promises to stay off her 
feet. The stitches are still vulnerable, and with too much strain or activity, she is at 
risk of losing more blood.  
148 
 
With fishing out of the question, she doesn’t have reason to stay in 
Pamplona much longer. 
 Peata is at the gate when they drive up. Without letting her feet touch the 
ground, Ernesto carries her to her room. Peata is close behind, with afghans and 
tea.  
Zola misses her mother. She misses her family. Why hasn’t she talked to 
them in so long? 
 “I will come tomorrow if you like. Right now, you need rest,” says 
Ernesto, standing at the foot of her bed. “Try not to grieve. You need to heal first. 
You’ll have plenty of time to feel sorrow, when your heart and head are strong 
again.” 
 She never sees Ernesto again. 
Winter 
? 
 “Have you been to Colorado before?”  
 Zola turns from the window of the plane. She’s been waiting for the first 
sight of land to come into view, after hours of looking at only water.  
149 
 
 The girl sitting next to her is British, smartly dressed in a tuxedo jacket 
over a tee shirt, and she wears a nice watch on her wrist—probably a graduation 
gift from her parents, along with the plane ticket to the States.  
 “No,” says Zola, adjusting the scratchy blanket the flight attendant gave 
her and the undersized pillow propped behind her neck. She pulls the plastic 
shade down, hoping that when she opens it again, they’ll be flying over something 
that’s worth looking at.  
 “I only have a layover in Colorado,” says the girl. “I’m on my way to LA, 
but being in the Denver airport for twelve hours still counts, right?” 
 “Buy a magnet, and it will,” says Zola.  
 “Of course. My mother would love that. Good idea.” 
 The girl picks up the Sky Miles magazine from the blue velour pouch in 
front of her, where they keep the in-flight manuals and barf bag. “Do people 
really buy this stuff?” she asks Zola, flipping through pages of designer luggage 
and perfume.  
 “People buy a lot of useless things, when they have nothing better to do,” 
says Zola.  
 “Do you have family in Colorado?”  
150 
 
 “No. Honestly, I don’t know why I chose this flight. It’s far from the place 
I call home.”  
 “So you don’t know anyone? No one is waiting for you, and you don’t 
know why you are going?”  
 “Yes.” 
 “Who you trying to get away from?” The girl laughs. 
 Zola doesn’t find it as funny. Why should she have to explain anything to 
anyone? This girl doesn’t know her—her story—she just assumes that Zola has 
poorly planned or is trying to escape someone. Normal people, rational people, 
people who buy magnets in the shape of states, don’t travel to places without 
knowing a single soul, without an itinerary in hand.  
 What this girl doesn’t know is that this is exactly what Zola wants— 
solitude. A new beginning. To be carefree. To have no plan at all. All she needs to 
know about Colorado is that the state bird is a lark. She’ll be singing at the top of 
her lungs, when she doesn’t have to worry about anyone hearing her.  
 Spain is behind her. The last two weeks provided enough time for her 
body to recuperate, and Peata had nursed her back with her holistic ways. Take 
this and take that was her daily prescription. The old woman told her stories about 
151 
 
London and Paris in all their glory, so that Zola’s dreams could be filled with the 
glittering lights, satin evening gowns and the piano music of Claude Bolling.  
 A few times Zola picked up the phone to call Nicholay, but she never did. 
She finally wrote him a letter confessing everything. It was simple and to the 
point, and she avoided making any mention of how she really felt, because she 
still wasn’t exactly sure how that was.  
She thinks she has forgiven him. But she can’t forgive herself for having 
deceived him. She doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.  
 
 As the plane makes its way down the tarmac, Zola drinks in her new 
landscape and the mountain range that awaits her, bent and creased like a monk in 
prayer. The sky is the color of amethyst and frostbite and acai berries. Zola thinks, 
All is not lost. I’m okay not being found for awhile. 
 The girl wishes Zola luck as she pulls her bags down from the overhead 
compartment.  
 And Zola says, “Good luck,” back—not knowing who needs it more.  
 
 
  
152 
 
 
  
 
 
 
PART III 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
153 
 
Nicholay 
? 
 Lucien is on all fours, digging in the soil where he’s planted a handful of 
vegetables and flower bulbs. With his head stuck in leafy greenery, it looks as 
though the bushes are giving birth to a full-grown man. The position reminds 
Nicholay of a heavy-bottomed polar bear, clumsily fishing for his dinner.  
 “Isn’t it a little late in the season to be gardening?” asks Nicholay, 
surveying the pockmarked ground around Lucien’s knees. 
 “I’m collecting,” he says, scooping and tossing dirt aside. His elbows rub 
against his ribcage as his hands search beneath the earth bed. Leaning close to a 
patch of bluebells, he shifts his weight to his left side. 
 “Do you need any help?” asks Nicholay. 
  “There’s a good one. Well formed,” says Lucien, dropping something 
small and hard into the tin bucket beside him. It lets out a soft ping. “That’s the 
last of them.”  
 Lucien moves to one knee, and Nicholay reaches forward to help him. 
 “I got it young man, I got it.”  
 Nicholay steps back.  
154 
 
 Slightly hunched over, brushing dirt from his pants, Lucien turns around. 
“I can’t be so old that I need someone to keep me balanced.”  
 “When did you start believing in age?”  
 “When you attempted to make me feel old, damn it!”  
 He walks toward the backdoor and slides off his dirt-caked slippers. 
Handing the bucket to Nicholay, he plucks the pipe from his shirt pocket.  
Age is catching up to Lucien. The fading out process has already begun.  
 With this somber reality in mind, Nicholay looks down into the muddy 
base of the pail. “Snails?” 
 “Escargot,” says Lucien.  
 With lips drawn tight, he lights a match, the first smoke through his 
nostrils, making his eyes water. Sticking his hand into the container, he pulls out a 
black-shelled grub. “They are hermaphrodites. Male and female. Companionless 
creatures, because they’ve got complete souls.”  
 The slimy slugs don’t look like much to Nicholay and hardly appetizing, 
but Lucien has a way of relating to the rest of the world, as if he holds the secret 
which men will spend their entire lives trying to find. Being trusted with this 
knowledge makes it all the more significant to his pupil.  
155 
 
 Nicholay follows Lucien into the house, carrying the pail with him. “That 
woman you sent over to my place a week ago,” he begins. 
 Lucien’s head rocks back in a rough laugh. “Dark complexion, with 
imposing eyes. Seeking something, that one. It certainly wasn’t me.” He takes the 
container from Nicholay’s hands, bringing it over to the kitchen sink. 
 “I don’t think she was looking for me either,” says Nicholay, getting 
comfortable in a chair.  
The grunt in response indicates he will have to wait until Lucien finishes.  
 Over the stainless basin, Lucien rinses the snails of grit and the gelatinous 
substance that coats their bodies, continuing to smoke like the artful codger he is. 
In the drying rack, paintbrushes are mixed with silverware, and Mason jars with 
colorful and permanent tints are arranged amid drinking glasses and colonial-
 patterned china.  
 Nicholay fiddles with a butter knife left over from breakfast, forming 
small piles of crumbs upon the tabletop. As he lets out a deep sigh, the crumbs 
blow away. 
 “Did you hear about Madrid’s loss yesterday?”asks Nicholay. 
156 
 
 The sound of water stops. Nicholay looks up. He watches as Lucien 
shakes excess water from a colander and transfers the hard little bodies to a 
ceramic bowl. Nicholay didn’t know what would become of the terrestrial critters 
until now. But of course Lucien would attach theory to something he would later 
devour, because that is his power of influence—just when you think you 
understand the depth of something he sees, he makes it appear simple and small 
again. 
  Lucien takes a cloth and dries his hands. Pulling the pipe from his mouth, 
he finally speaks. “You’re not satisfied?” 
 “She is a beautiful woman—” 
 “I didn’t mean with her,” Lucien interrupts firmly. “Satisfied with what 
you are doing. Or, shall I say, what you’re not doing.” 
 Nicholay thinks about this for a moment. “You’re right. I had this grand 
moment of inspiration. Then what? It vanished! I got caught up in thinking I 
could carry a feeling over to something else. It doesn’t work that way, does it?” 
 “Let me ask you this,” says Lucien, leaning on an edge of counter. “Why 
are you waiting for it to come to you? A settled mind is not required to create. 
Inspiration is temperamental and needs to run wild. If you can get a grasp on 
anything, even if it’s just a handful, you need to ride it out.” 
157 
 
 “I thought I needed to find resolution first.”  
 “Through your work, young man, through your work,” says Lucien. “Inner 
peace and all that jazz is bullshit. If love inspires you, use it, but there is more 
than just that out there. The way in which women excite you will change. You 
must be aware of this, or you will become more and more unsatisfied. It took me a 
long time to understand this on my own. You never want to become dependent on 
such a muse.” 
 “So what about the girl?” 
 “No one can work under the demands of another. It’s a good lesson to 
learn. Show me anyone who has and I will show you an unsatisfied man.” 
 “Should I not do the show then?”  
 “Oh, so she did want something.” 
 “Am I a fool to have committed to an exhibition?” 
 “Not necessarily.” Lucien sits with Nicholay, emptying the contents of his 
pipe into a tobacco tin. Tapping out the last dried shreds, he says, “Why don’t you 
go home and clear your head, and then stand before your canvas? See it as if it 
were already painted. Not as space that needs to be filled, but as something that 
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needs to be revealed. Then it will be done, and others will be able to see what 
you’ve seen all along.” 
 “I wish it were that easy,” says Nicholay, looking away, frustrated.  
 “Easy. Hard. Don’t think about it. It will happen the way it should.”  
 Nicholay wants to trust his guide.  
 “Would you like to bring some snails home with you?” asks Lucien, 
getting up. “They are delectable with a little lemon and garlic butter.”  
 “I think I’ll pass, but thank you.”  
 “Just means more for me.” 
  Lucien walks with Nicholay to the door. “Let go of the idea that you need 
to produce or should produce. Get these notions out of your head. Something will 
appear. It will come out of hibernation and roar.” Lucien puts his fist gently to 
Nicholay’s chest, just above his heart. “It’s in you, and it’s scratching to come 
out.”  
? 
Nicholay, 
 Before we met, I was always looking for something else, with curiosity 
lying beneath the changing showcase that I’d become accustomed to—a lifestyle 
159 
 
in a constant state of energy and fete and restlessness. I never had to apologize 
for who I was or the things I was doing, because I never let anyone come close 
enough to care.  
 I realize now, as we talk about the way things were, that I was afraid. 
When I walked out and left you, I was afraid for the first time in my life that I 
would have to think about someone other than myself and that I would have to be 
responsible for a life other than my own. I was scared of my incompetency, my 
lack of experience, my inability to keep you satisfied in all aspects and need. I 
even recognized the possibility that I would never completely fulfill you. Knowing 
this each day, to be reminded of it—I couldn’t live with it.  
 Since then, I can admit that my thinking was all wrong. It never was about 
pleasing only you or me, but finding pleasures of our own and then bringing them 
to the table, to share in their completeness. I find it funny that we are now seeing 
this; these letters are filled with all of the conversations we should have been 
having back then. We can spend years dissecting what we should have done 
differently, but I think it is best to become acquainted with who we are now. 
  There is much I would like to know about you, and I hope you feel 
comfortable enough to confide in me. A friendship would mean a lot to me, since I 
have always considered you and our time together a significant part of my life. I 
hold you and your talent at such a high regard. I think I have always somewhat 
160 
 
envied your confidence, hoping it would rub off on me and perhaps cure me of my 
own flat-lining imagination. I want to believe that I can still become inspired, just 
as I was when I was with you. At least, I have hope in such a possibility. 
 Tell me Nicholay: Where are you these days?  
Zola 
 Nicholay reads as he walks back from the mailbox to his studio. He has 
been working on the new triptych consistently, and the three connected paintings 
are beginning to feel exhibition worthy. In less than a month, he will be one of 
five no-name painters, sculptors and photographers who have potential for 
success. Would he define himself this way? Probably not. But with future sales in 
mind and a mortgage due, and the promise of all of his materials taken care of by 
sponsors, it was an offer he found difficult to dismiss. Lucien may think less of 
him for submitting to such pressures, but Nicholay is nowhere close in his 
evolution as an artist to position himself above buyers, critics, and an audience. 
He will attempt to play the game, if it means some bread is coming in. Call him a 
sellout, but he has no desire to starve.  
 Sitting on a stool by the central canvas, he is letting it all sink in when 
there is the sound of a car in his driveway. He expects it to be Geraldine, since he 
161 
 
hasn’t seen her in a few weeks and there is still work to be done together. But it is 
Ariana he sees.  
 “You haven’t returned my calls,” she says, standing under the steel 
doorframe with her arms across her chest.  
 Nicholay chooses a softer brush, dips it in water and assesses his palette. 
He glances toward the easel, then looks back to the plywood board covered in a 
variety of wet and hardened globs of pigment. Rolled up tubes, some uncapped 
for too long, give him the last bits of paint. 
 “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she says, moving uncertainly toward 
him, her face angry but naturally pretty.  
 “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m working. I didn’t know I had to give 
you an update every hour.” This woman wasn’t going to dictate to him; he would 
make the deadline for the show. What else did she want? 
  “No, you don’t have to check in every hour, but I am putting large sums 
of money into promoting your name and your work, and I need to be assured that 
you are going to deliver when it comes time.”  
 “You needn’t worry,” he says, working out an angle with a spatula and 
then blending its edges with a brush.  
162 
 
 “Really? Show me.” 
 Nicholay roughly puts down his tools. The sound they make on his 
workbench is one of irritation; she needs to get off him, or he won’t paint at all. 
With open hands, he gestures around him. “What proof do you need?” 
 Nicholay watches Ariana move into the space, which he’s clearly been 
using. She moves cautiously, almost as though she doesn’t want to disrupt his 
subject matter. Her fingertips hover above one spackled and flush surface, tracing 
imaginary lines and routes like someone who has just regained eyesight.  
 The figures are amorphous in nature, a mix of features that are human and 
animal, male and female. There are feathers and fingers, eyes and hooves, mouths 
and tusks. If someone stares long enough, deep enough, they could delineate the 
outlines of a woman, man and child in each composition.  
 “They are complete souls,” whispers Nicholay from behind her. He is 
standing so close he can smell laundry detergent on her clothing.  
 “I can see them,” she says, as though entranced by how the creatures look 
at once alive, and ready to leap out and devour her whole. She stares at his work, 
and he stares at her, neither one of them speaking.  
163 
 
 Finally, she turns to leave, walking past him and brushing his side as she 
goes. The motion makes Nicholay’s skin tingle, and it takes everything inside him 
to resist grabbing her hand and pulling her back to explain.  
 He remains in the studio as he watches her walk across the yard. A bee 
buzzes around him, circling his head, then exiting through a chip in one of the 
glass walls. Ariana disappears from sight, leaving a powdered auburn dust 
swirling in the road.  
 Could she even begin to understand what he sees? Could anyone? As soon 
as these paintings are finished, he will be able to send them off with her to the 
mainland. However, his original plan of not attending the show has changed. He 
has found a new interest.  
Zola 
? 
 Crawling from beneath the covers of her bed in the azure of first light, 
Zola pulls a wool sweater over her head, warm leggings around her thighs and 
thick socks onto her feet. The world is still in shadows, except for the slight blue 
tinge of pre-dawn that, by the time she makes it into her kitchen, will become the 
golden cast of the sun shining through the marbled panes of every New 
Englander’s eastern-facing home. Through the windows she’s cracked, to let out 
some of the dry radiator heat in the middle of the night, she hears forks scraping 
164 
 
on plates, and from the house next door comes the aromas of coffee and wood 
smoke and the clambering noise of young children getting ready for school. Zola 
gathers her waders and tackling box and puts on a knit hat and rain jacket. She 
hasn’t picked up a fishing pole since Pamplona, but what better way of facing her 
past than to try again at something she once loved?  
 Zola can almost be mistaken for an adolescent young man among men, 
standing in line in her oversized gear, waiting to get a coffee from the breakfast 
cart. They let her go ahead of them, not knowing what else to do. Sometime in 
their lives, their fathers had taught them that chivalry wasn’t dead; women and 
children always go first.  
Below the wharf, crates are hauled on to trawlers, nets are detangled and 
picked clean of debris, and ropes are stacked up around strong arms to tie-off or 
tie-down. Zola knows some of the guys from the pubs and restaurants around 
town, the places where they sell their catches in exchange for hot meals and 
strong drinks. They are men of lore, the weather and the sea, spending their 
isolating days among rotting fish bodies, the lead of petrol, and the 
unpredictability of swells and gales. There is a brutality to them, a hard coolness 
that makes her wonder if the affection of a woman could ever warm them, or if 
they will forever be wedded to the spirit of the Atlantic Ocean. Even when she 
165 
 
turns around to thank them, they are looking past her—far, far beyond the mouth 
of Casco Bay. 
 “If I knew to behave better, but I say the attire suits you,”says Chris, 
walking up to her as she’s about to hand over a couple bucks for her coffee. “I got 
this. Put it on my tab,” he says, smiling down with his big Nordic face. “It’s a real 
treat to buy my favorite bartender a drink.” 
 “What tab?” says the man in a bowler hat and fingerless gloves, pouring a 
steaming cup of joe for the next person in line. 
 “I’ll get you later, Griff, I promise,” says Chris. 
 “Thanks,” says Zola, putting the money back in her pocket. 
 “Don’t mention it. You know you’re something for braving the port at this 
hour. Don’t tell me you stayed with one of the Duckies last night.” Duckies are 
what the locals refer to as the “young blood sailors,” usually obnoxious trust 
funders joy-riding around in Daddy’s boat, or the stoic merchant marines that 
frequent as many coastlines as they do hookah bars and pool halls, looking for 
easy girls.   
Chris isn’t one to talk either, since most of the year he lives on his boat, 
but as soon as winter blows in, he usually shacks up with some crazy woman or 
another. He has a reputation in town for his foul mouth and disgusting jokes, and 
166 
 
it isn’t a surprise that Jules befriended him over a night of drunken debauchery. 
The two men are often seen together comparing notes, or taking turns trying to 
impress a female, stumbling around in heels too tall. 
 
 Chris looks surprised when she asks where to find the best spot to fish 
alone is. “The water will be calmer down a ways, on the other side of the bridge,” 
he says. “It’s off-limits to motor boats, and the sandbar stretches further than any 
other part of the peninsula, so you can wade.”  
 Casting from land where a snag on a rock or in some tall weeds is much 
more likely is the surest way of losing a fly.  Not to mention, she is rusty.   
 Chris is on his way to check his traps, but offers to take her down to the 
cove.  
 “I think I can find it. I don’t mind exploring.” 
 “You know where to find me the Laila at slip three,” he says. “And send 
that kooky Polynesian my way when you see him, I got some purple sea urchin 
that will really get his dick hard.”  
 
 
167 
 
 The beach gnats make the seaweed pulse with a sound like the electric pen 
of a tattoo artist. Zola sticks the handle of her pole into the sand, pointing straight 
up towards the faint strata of translucent clouds scattering in the new sky. She sets 
her fishing kit on a nearby rock, and opens the yellow lid to inspect its contents: a 
wrapped clipping of line, artificial nymphs of green duck feathers, two spools of 
black thread, a packet of hooks, skipping stones, an origami sailboat Ernesto had 
once sent downstream to her, and a pair of reading glasses left behind by a 
stranger.  
  The knot comes back to her quickly, as though they aren’t her fingers 
tying the fly on, but his. She recognizes her own knuckles, but not how they 
expertly roll while threading the string. Her mind seems to expand like a sponge, 
when she finds herself this close to the water’s edge. She lets it lap at the toes of 
her rubber boots, but no farther will she go. The fly dangles from the cork and 
graphite pole in her hand, slightly slack in the direction of the light wind. Timing 
is everything.  
 She recites a stanza from Tennyson while directing her line in a motion 
slower than a whip, leaving the last word to propel her lure a good fifteen feet 
across the crescent-shaped inlet, barely rippling the surface as it lands.  
 
168 
 
The streams through many a lilied row 
 Down-carol-ling to the crisped sea, 
Low-tink-led with a bell-like flow 
A-tween the   blossoms we-are-freeeeee.   
 She waits.  
 Zola understands her place in the scheme of things. She can send out 
anything she wants with good intention, but if she doesn’t have the patience or the 
wherewithal to accept universal disappointment or discouragement, then she 
wasn’t cut out for such endeavors in the first place.  
 As she thinks about growing pains, she feels a slight tug that barely bends 
the rod, but she releases the bail on instinct. As soon as she does, the line goes 
limp and the movement at the end stops. False alarm.  
 Suddenly, though, the line jerks fast, running out quickly a good five feet 
at an angle, making the reel handle spin quickly under her right palm, smacking 
against her thumb as it turns. Wanting to give the barbed hook enough time to 
lodge itself in the mouth or throat, she continues to wait, watching the line zigzag 
through the water.  
 Finally, she flips the bail back over to lock and begins winding the spool, 
slowly at first. There is tension on the line, but she still isn’t fighting much. Not 
169 
 
until the last few yards does it really give her trouble. But she stands her ground, 
reading the pace and energy of the fish, and acting upon what it tells her to do.  
 When her catch is brought in and breaks the surface, she lets it flop down 
into the sand. 
 “Looks like you got an alewife!” 
 Zola turns to see Chris sitting on the breakwater wall. 
 “What do I do now?” she calls over to him. Chris jumps down into the 
sand, and comes over to her. 
 “Figured you would need help with this part.” He pulls a screwdriver out 
from under his jacket, and hands it to her. She looks at him, unsure. “See how it’s 
sharpened on the end?” 
 Zola nods. 
 “Okay,” he says, squatting on the beach. He puts his fist around the 
alewife’s pearl and slate-colored body, instantly calming the wild flapping of its 
golden finned tail.  
 “Should I take the hook out?” she asks. 
 “You don’t need to.” Zola kneels down next to him with the tool in her 
hand. “Okay, see this spot above the eye? The temple,” he says, pointing to where 
170 
 
he means. Its soft yellow eyes seem to be begging for mercy. “Now just shove it 
in right there.” 
 “This is the only way?” she asks, nervously. 
 “It’s the best way. He won’t suffer anymore.” Zola can see the asthmatic 
breathing begin. The fish is becoming sluggish, and the tail is barely twitching. 
Zola’s jaw tightens as she jams the spike into its head of cartilage and flesh, 
without hitting a shard of bone. 
 “It’s like the spot was meant for just that, huh?” says Chris, as she 
withdraws the screwdriver.  
  “I’ve never killed anything before,” she says.  
  “It’s not the best eating, but the more you do this, the luckier you get.” 
 Chris bleeds the fish for her, then gives her a few pointers on how to 
prepare it. 
 “You keep it,” says Zola.  
 “You sure?”  
 “Yeah,” she says. “Now that I know I can do this, I’ll give it another go 
another time.”  
 
171 
 
? 
 “Say you’ll come,” says Natalia. “I don’t give a shit about architecture or 
conservation reform, but you need to meet this guy.”  
 Adam has a gig catering a private party, coordinated through a mutual 
acquaintance, and Natalia is trying her best to hype up the host to Zola with a 
mixed bag of ulterior motives. Zola is curious; Natalia is pulling out all the stops 
on this one. But she’s always hated the idea of being set up and just the thought of 
walking blind into a date sounds so awkward to her, so she has never once 
followed up on any of her friends’ attempts to play matchmaker.  
 “He’s a transplant, too, and a writer,” says Natalia, while waiting for 
Adam to finish his prep list at the restaurant. This afternoon is their third trimester 
doctor’s exam, and Zola can tell they are both anxious to get going to see on 
camera how perfect their baby is.  
 “You do realize we may have nothing in common?” says Zola, tapping her 
pencil on her ordering sheet. She came in early to help Jules with the end-of-the-
 month inventory, yet Jules is nowhere to be found. 
 “In common with who?” asks Adam, unbuttoning his chef’s coat. 
172 
 
 “Honey, please tell me you have another shirt to wear,” says Natalia. 
Adam looks down at his Violent Femmes tee shirt, threadbare where the cotton 
has begun to pull away from the iron-on decals.  
 “What’s wrong with it? Summer of ’98. You were just a giii-rl,” he teases. 
Natalia relents as he kisses her cheek. “Got to keep it for the kid, anyway,” he 
says. “He’s gonna be cool just like his papa.” 
 “Right. On second thought…” Natalia rolls her eyes, flashing Zola an I’m-
 over-the moon-for-this-one smile.  
 “I’ll think about it,” says Zola. 
 “That’s what I like to hear,” says Natalia, slowly climbing off the bar 
stool, her body adjusting to the weight of her belly. She groans. “I better get my 
ass back.” 
 “It looks okay from here.” 
 “Thanks, girl! I have a feeling you’re going to like Max. And if you don’t, 
I promise never to subject you to another one of my awful plans again.” 
 “Deal.” 
 The happy couple leaves, and Zola puts down her clipboard to see if Jules 
has come in.  
173 
 
 
 
 She knocks on his door. “Jules?” she says, her head resting on the frame. 
There is some movement in the room, but it may just be the cooling unit in the 
window; they can get loud when they need to be serviced, and even when Jules 
isn’t occupying a room, he keeps the A/C as cranked as a meat cooler. “Jules?” 
She raps the knuckle of her index finger against the door. 
 “Do you need me?” His reply is muffled.  
 “It’s almost time to open for lunch service.” 
 The door opens abruptly, the chain still in place. Half of his face is visible: 
rich brown eyes, caramel skin, the wider side of his nose, and his hair as she’s 
never seen it before, dry and ruffled like a teenage boy’s. His breath smells of 
peanuts and scotch. “I’m not feeling it today, Zola. Ever just want to walk away 
for good?” 
 She looks at her feet, boring black flats on an ugly geometric carpet. “I 
have.” 
 He opens the door wider, and she can see he’s not his usual self. He’s 
wearing his old college wrestling sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants. He isn’t 
174 
 
wearing shoes, not even socks—nothing shiny to look at. “Do you want to come 
in?” he asks.  
 She hesitates, then decides she is comfortable enough and steps into his 
room. He shuts the door, and she tries to figure out the most appropriate place to 
sit. The TV is airing sports highlights. The alarm clock is a blank gray screen, 
having been unplugged from the wall. Three cell phones sit on his desk, along 
with a pair of cuff links, a bottle of cologne, and a pack of unopened gum. Other 
than these items, there are no other signs of an occupant. She is surprised that the 
room doesn’t feel more lived-in.  
 She sits on the matching footstool of the overstuffed chair in the corner. 
Jules goes to the end of the bed, close by. “My wife doesn’t love me.” 
 “How do you know?” 
 “I just know,” he says, flatly. “She married me because I was her best 
option.” 
 “What does she do exactly? If you don’t mind me asking.” 
 “She sells novelty products at home parties. Completely futile.” He flicks 
the TV off, and Zola realizes she’s been staring at it. “I can’t make her happy and 
she knows it, but as long as there is money in the account, she won’t leave.” 
175 
 
 “Do you want her to leave?” 
 “I want to leave and do her a favor.”  
 “Where would you go? Would you stay here?” Jules has become a regular 
part of her routine; she can’t imagine him going away, not now, not when she is 
just starting to get her feet under her.  
 “I want to go back to the Philippines and work in my aunt’s orphanage. 
My parents are getting older and as their only son, I will one day inherit rice fields 
and land that has been in my family for well over a hundred years. I’m trying to 
keep them holding onto their shares. The developers want to build more malls.”  
 Jules is distraught; it’s all over his face. Zola wants to touch his hand in 
comfort, but she stays where she is, listening to his stories about living on the 
island as a kid. About the little white owls that nested in their sugarcane fields, 
fields that were burned by revolutionaries, and how horrified he was to witness 
this event and the other crimes that followed.  
How he lost his virginity too young in a brothel, like the other boys who 
hung around the military camps and sex shows, hoping to make quick money 
playing poker with the soldiers.  
How his father had another son, a brother unknown to him until he was 
ten, when he moved into their house. His mother’s quiet acceptance. His father’s 
176 
 
domineering eccentricity. They were rich in their homeland, with chauffeurs, 
maids and nannies, even a pet monkey. When they came to the United States in 
’82 with all their money strapped to their chests, they could barely afford to live 
in section-8 housing of a Philadelphia ghetto. Jules was thirteen at the time, 
growing up in a neighborhood where getting involved in sports was the only 
alternative to joining a street gang. Too small to play basketball, Jules became a 
wrestler, a good one. He went college. Landed a decent job; became successful. 
When his parents went back to Manila, he bought them a house. He married a 
white girl, because that is what it meant to be an American. 
 “I know how it is to try to convince yourself that you got everything you 
wanted, but still feel that gap of uncertainty,” says Zola. 
 “She is the kind of woman that most men dream of possessing,” says 
Jules. “And that’s exactly how I’ve seen her since the day we married, as a 
possession I worked hard to have. But she gives me a headache with her demands, 
and the more I give, the less she respects me.”  
 “Then maybe you should stop handing over the keys so easily. Maybe find 
other ways of showing her who you are that doesn’t involve buying her things,” 
says Zola. “Why not take her to the Philippines? If you two can survive an 
environment outside your comfort zone, then the two of you can survive 
anything.” 
177 
 
 “You’re right. I would be a coward if I just up and left her high and dry,” 
says Jules. “I could totally take her with me. She’s never met my parents and the 
beaches are amazing. That’s what I’ll do.” Jules begins pacing, unable to sit still 
with his enthusiasm. “I have to make a call.” 
 “Don’t let me keep you,” says Zola, standing to go. 
 One of his three phones is already to his ear. Zola lets herself out, thinking 
she had written off Jules too quickly. You don’t really know a person until you 
know what they are afraid of. 
 She is a coward for walking away from Nicholay, she realizes. She never 
looked at it that way before, but now she sees that Jules is a lot better than she is 
at calling things as they are. She knows she has rationalized many of her choices 
as she’s moved from place to place, but did she really emit the guilt of cowardice? 
She is no anomaly after all, just another undecided girl looking for her best 
option.  
And if such an implication didn’t hit home for her, the letter sitting in her 
mailbox did.  
My Dear, 
 When we first arrived at the steps of the sanctuary, what were the 
unanswered questions we brought with us? You told me once our love filled in all 
178 
 
those open crevasses that revealed your soul to the world. I never understood this 
kind of comfort, and continued to seek it in other forms. I hurt you with these 
pursuits, I know this; but I never meant to cause you any deliberate pain. In the 
end my selfish needs were never met, and to this day I question the choices I made 
with you, with others, and for myself.  
 These days I’m closer to understanding the unattainable. I struggled for 
years trying to achieve what has never been done before. But it wasn’t just a 
pigment or a brushstroke I was trying to create; it was always something more 
that I couldn’t put my finger on.  
 Do you know how we associate certain hues with feelings, thoughts, or 
memories? Red is the color of the heart. Blue is a mood close to sorrow. Green 
means life. White is something anew. 
 I find that many of my paintings are incomplete, because I’m always 
looking for something else between colors. Can you really name the color of mist 
at the horizon? The color of sweat and tears, the color of pear juice on your chin, 
the color of wanting and needing, the color of remembering? How about the 
things never seen, but always felt? The color of no name. 
 It seems to me it is the people that eventually leave you, rarely the places. 
So, why try to capture impermanence, when we know very well that we can’t?  
Nicholay 
 
 
 
179 
 
? 
 Tonight’s party is on the other side of town and Zola takes her time getting 
there, walking uphill towards the historic Eastland hotel. The address Natalia gave 
her is only two streets over from this landmark. Zola tries not to have 
preconceived notions about where the guy lives, but there is definitely a type of 
person who lives here and the last thing she wants to listen to is some West End 
hipster going on about what he deserves from others, when all he does is sound 
like an asshole. 
 “Max is from Boston,” Natalia tells Zola when she gets there. “He’s spent 
some time in Europe too. Lovely dress, by the way, much better than that 
wrinkled number I saw you wearing the other day. I was beginning to worry that 
you thought ragamuffin chic was in.”  
 “So what’s so great about him?” asks Zola, taking in the other people in 
the room. She recognizes a handful from past gatherings, but can’t put a single 
name to a face, other than Lucy. Everyone knows Lucy as the muse to one too 
many men. Zola has seen semblances of her on local gallery walls, with vacant 
eyes and never the slightest hint of a smile. In the flesh, she is crane-like as she 
moves through the crowd, her slinky dress about to fall off her anorexic body, her 
blank angelic face telling of a life of being used.  
180 
 
 The space itself is open concept and seems to serve multiple purposes, 
though it does not extend to the bathroom and bedroom, which are visible through 
glass-blocked dividers. Three of the four mustard-colored walls are covered in art 
of all shapes and sizes, with only a few inches separating each mat or frame. The 
fourth wall is covered with shelves of books and albums, so many that Zola could 
spend days feeding her head.  
 “He writes criticism. You’ve probably read some of his commentary,” 
says Natalia. 
“Oh God,” says Zola, having a flash of recognition. “You’re not talking 
about Maxwell Laurie? The last thing I read of his, I responded to with a not-so-
 nice letter to the editor.”  
 “You have crossed paths already, then. Let’s formally introduce you. It’s 
long overdue.” Natalia grabs her arm and drags Zola across the room toward a 
man with a confident build surrounded by complimentary-looking people. Natalia 
pulls her right up to him like a parent encouraging a shy child. “Max, I want you 
to meet a friend of mine.” 
 Maxwell Laurie is a lot younger than Zola expected. His views on the 
artistic experience are archaic for their time, and Zola said so in her letter to The 
Port. She expected an older man with silver hair, an outdated suit, and maybe 
181 
 
even an obvious hair piece; someone who appeared as detestable as he sounded. 
But no, Maxwell Laurie is attractive by anyone’s standards, and Zola is 
embarrassed by her own assumptions.  
 “Max, this is Zola.”  
 Max slips a hand from the pocket of his jeans, and switches his drink from 
his right hand to his left and reaches out to her. He has charm, with chestnut hair 
beneath a newsboy hat and a wide, jockey smile. His forearms are tanned and 
defined beneath the rolled-up sleeves of a white button-down shirt, and his shoes 
are two pointed signals of poise—definitely not boots, but the kind of footwear a 
modest or practical man never wears. He takes pride in his appearance and it 
shows. He is not what Zola normally finds appealing in the opposite sex; he’s too 
pretty for her taste, but there must be something else that Natalia knows will make 
her consider him. 
 “‘The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the 
work,’” he says, taking Zola’s hand.  
 “Excuse me?”  
 “It is one of my favorite quotes of Emile Zola’s.” He switches his glass 
again. “But I think a recent personal favorite of mine is, ‘His perception of the 
creative experience has all the insight of a man masquerading as an artist.’” 
182 
 
 “Who said that?” asks Natalia. 
 Zola’s cheeks are burning. He is quoting her, and is clearly enjoying her 
discomfort. 
 “Apparently someone posing as the patron saint of the arts,” says Zola 
finally. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—” 
 “Don’t worry about it. I actually found it an interesting perception. Aren’t 
we all masquerading as someone else?” He sounds sincere in his response, and 
Zola is relieved. In a way, she feels singled out, as if they are the only two in the 
room and they have no other choice but to interact. “Natalia mentioned you were 
coming,” he says. “I was looking forward to meeting you. It’s always nice to meet 
people in the flesh, especially when they seem to have—” He stops as Natalia 
disappears to the table with food, unabashedly abandoning them. He chuckles. 
Zola wonders what he was going to finish saying.   
“So when you’re not attacking critics, are you working on anything else?” 
he asks.  
 “At the moment, a piece on oyster farming.” 
 “Interesting.”  
183 
 
 “Not really. It’s boring as hell. Actually the bits on mating are—” Zola 
stops. “In a perfect world, I would be able to write about something other than 
shellfish that breed, but unfortunately, that is the height of their existence and 
mine right now.” 
  “I would love to read it.”  
 “Thanks. That’s nice of you, especially after I said such horrid things 
about you.” 
 “I’m a critic. I’m not supposed to be liked or agreed with. That’s the 
profession. I tell people what I think and hopefully it gets them thinking for 
themselves. It’s different than telling people what to think. I would never do that.”  
 “I could never do it.” 
 “Do what?” Max asks, his expression kind.  
 “Not care what others think of me. But maybe that’s my problem. I’m 
always so worried about getting to the bottom of things and having people see me 
so low and exposed, sometimes I feel like I’m not telling the truth, that I’m being 
dishonest.” 
 “Readers may be relentlessly judgmental, but many of them also want to 
relate. They are more looking to connect with your story than put you on trial.” 
184 
 
 “You’re probably right,” says Zola. At least, it sounded right to her.  
 “Look at it this way. Another set of eyes belongs to another heart, mind 
and soul. No one sees things exactly the same. My green may be your blue—” 
 “Sorry, what did you say?” 
 “My green may be your blue.” 
 “I’ve heard that before.” 
 “It has to do with subjectivity.” 
 “No, it’s a sign.” 
 “Sorry?” 
 “Someone said that to me once. At the time, I thought it was an excuse for 
something else…” Zola distinctly remembers a long, drawn out conversation on a 
car ride with Nicholay after he asked her if she loved him. He didn’t like the word 
“love,” and believed that people who used the word too much had turned it into 
something without value. “It’s like saying, ‘I cheese sandwich you’ over and over 
again,” he’d said. He made Zola feel stupid for loving him. 
 “That sounds like a story to me,” says Max. “We want to be understood, 
yet no two people see things the same way. So, instead what do we do? We learn 
185 
 
to accept. It’s about making different deductions over the same shared experience, 
don’t you think?” 
 “I think I should go find Natalia before she eats all your dip,” says Zola, 
choosing a lousy way out of a real conversation, but the way Max looks at her—
 she refuses to be so transparent.  
 Max laughs. “It was nice meeting you, Zola. Your words complement you 
well, and I truly mean that in the most genuine sense.” 
 Zola shakes his hand again. “Maybe we can talk some more another time.”  
 “I would like that,” he says, handing her a business card. “Call me. And 
keep me in mind if you ever need someone to bounce ideas off of. I would be 
much obliged.”  
 “I will, and thank you,” she says. And with that she goes to find her friend, 
who is indeed devouring the last of the dip.  
 Natalia sees Zola, and all she has to say is, “I told you so.”  
 But Zola is distracted by the memory of Nicholay, wondering if the two of 
them would still see things that differently. 
 
 
186 
 
Nicholay 
? 
 The last art event Nicholay attended was with Zola, and he can imagine 
what she would say if she saw the clothes he has laid out for tonight. If she were 
here she would probably sneak off to iron his shirt, add a tie when he turned 
around, or maybe even replace the belt. But the boots she would leave alone, 
knowing it is all a matter of compromise.  
 From his closet, Nicholay pulls out a garment bag containing a jacket 
made of black velvet with a black silk lining. Sexy even for a man, it was Zola’s 
attempt at making him look gallant, though he could never really pass as an 
authentic European man, having the stature of a mason and the face of an honest 
woodsman. A week ago, though, he finally brought the unworn gift to a tailor in 
town to adjust a couple of seams in the shoulders and the hem of the sleeves. 
Now, examining himself in the mirror, he thinks he looks like a cross between a 
lounge singer and a spy. The only thing amiss is not having Zola on his arm in her 
poppy-colored dress. 
  The painting of her leans against the wall, resting atop an old traveler’s 
trunk.  
 “I feel overdressed,” he says, getting rid of the tie and undoing a couple 
buttons of his shirt. This looks and feels much better to him.  
187 
 
 He glances at the painting again. Her left hipbone and the dimple of her 
buttocks need more shadowing, but other than that the painting is truly the image 
of her frozen in time, the flour and dough in her hands as lifelike as a picture 
show. “I would feel more myself if you came with me,” he says, straightening out 
the alignment of his shirt to match the fly of his pants.  
 Zola was always much better at working the crowd, attuned to others and 
knowing how to behave. These things are lost on Nicholay, but he never bothered 
to try; why would he change if he had someone like her to get him through a night 
like this? He hadn’t foreseen that one day he would be going to such events alone. 
 He rubs his chin where stubble has grown in. “I know. I probably 
should’ve shaved,” he tells her. This is the most dressed up he’s been in ages. 
 “I will tell you all about it when I get home,” he says, putting his wallet 
into the inside coat pocket, and grabbing the keys off the dresser.  
 Leaving his bedroom, he keeps the light on.  
? 
 Walking into the gallery space is like crossing the border into an alternate 
universe. Beneath an atrium, cross sections of ceiling beams are exposed to a dark 
crystalline sky, and contrast fittingly with the hi-gloss cherry wood floors and 
potted plants throughout its corridors. The bare and glittering arms and legs of 
188 
 
women balance the sharp contours of men, and the rise and fall of their 
interchanging languages remind him of how long it has been since he’s attended a 
party in the city. It is a euphoric sea of perfume, sex, and champagne, and he is 
hesitant to ride the wave.  
 Ariana spots him before he can escape, motioning him over 
enthusiastically. Negotiating his way through the dazzling specimens filling the 
room, he catches bits and pieces of conversation, but mostly he goes unnoticed. 
He sees his paintings hanging on the far wall beside a turntable setup. Sets of eyes 
look at him from each canvas, wondering why they are there too.  
The deejay switches to a French version of some pop music, but Nicholay 
can’t let his inhibitions fade away.  
 Ariana receives him on the other side of the crowd, kissing him upon each 
cheek before she introduces him to the guests.  
 “I’m glad you came,” she whispers. “I didn’t know if you would.” 
 “I couldn’t miss my own show, now could I?” he says, his lips close to her 
ear.  
 “But you thought about it. I saw you at the door.”  
189 
 
 “Just seeing what I was getting myself into.” He eyes the deep neckline of 
her dress; it dips almost to her ribcage.  
 “We shall make it worthwhile, then,” she says, with confidence. 
 “It already has been.”  
 “Ariana has such an eye for new talent.” Nicholay overhears a flamboyant 
black man say to a woman, and they both look him up and down as though he is 
on an auction block. He is put off by this, but doesn’t let it show.  
 “So what do you think?” he asks Ariana.  
 “I think you are good at what you do. And if you let me, I can give you a 
name. I think you’re a beautiful man.” 
 “That’s it?” 
 “What do you mean?” 
 “I thought you would have some thoughts of your own on the paintings.” 
 “I told you, I think they’re good. You are the whole package, Nicholay. 
This is what the people want, not some crazy old man’s work that I have to dig 
out of an attic, or pry out of fingers. They want art that is mod to their lifestyle, 
that they can hang in the corner penthouse overlooking the Seine. In the ski chalet 
in the Alps. They can live vicariously through your work, because it is alive just 
190 
 
like the streets of Rio, and rich with meaning like the Zen-like religions they 
follow.” 
As Nicholay listens to Ariana, he realizes she is not solely in the business 
of collecting; she also enjoys the company of the painters. Ariana had piqued his 
interest, yet he can see now there isn’t much beyond her façade. He has known 
women like her—self-serving in their nature, and successful. She wouldn’t want 
him for any reason but to satisfy her own needs and desires. He would very much 
enjoy her body, but he knows she would never come close to fulfilling him. This 
isn’t enough for Nicholay and it certainly would never be enough for her. She is 
attracted to those who have imaginations because she doesn’t have one of her 
own. 
 As Nicholay steps outside to smoke, he sees Lucien walking up to the 
entrance. Stopping to light his own pipe, he says, “Hard to breathe in a room full 
of air, isn’t it?”  
 “Something like that,” says Nicholay, touched by the fact that Lucien 
showed up. “Have you come to see your hack student squirm in a room full of 
critics?” 
 “Screw’em. They know nothing,” says Lucien. “Are you headed back in?” 
 “I was actually thinking about leaving.” 
191 
 
 “Good. Let’s get out of here. I’m already short on air.” 
 The two men walk down the stairs and down the long drive. The city is a 
prop and the night surreal, and Nicholay has glimpsed what he could become, and 
left it behind. That wasn’t him in that room. It was an impostor. An artist posing 
as an artist—the worst of the kind. All the approval he needs is from the white-
 haired man beside him, smelling too much of brandy but still walking tall. He 
must have been a sight in his day, thinks Nicholay, not knowing who is really 
doing the following or the leading, or where they are actually going. It doesn’t 
matter. He now knows what he doesn’t want and a little more about what he does. 
It really wouldn’t be so bad to end up like his teacher; there are far worse things 
to be.  
 Lucien hasn’t said much since they left. He just stares ahead, humming 
under his breath—probably painting something in his head. They round the block 
to the park and continue on, with the river and the trees as their guideposts. 
? 
Nicholay, 
 Sometimes I can’t help but think that I’m not particularly good at 
anything. I seem to be mediocre at a variety of useless things, but not particularly 
good at the things I want to become better at. I want more time in the day and 
192 
 
often get worried when I don’t get a chance to sit down and write at least a few 
lines. Occasionally, I get angry toward anything or anyone who interrupts or 
takes away from this time. This is why I am glad to be alone; because I don’t want 
to give up the short hours of my day to anyone. No one should have to, if they 
must feel so torn away from what they really want. 
 There’s a street preacher that stands in the square by my house, spouting 
his interpretations of the Lord’s word. I’m certain he doesn’t get paid for this, but 
he is there every day, despite people yelling from their windows for him to be 
quiet. He has a following, too. His apostles stand behind him, three or four men, 
offering an ‘Amen’ every now and then when they feel inspired by his verses. The 
preacher feels chosen to do this, and his followers believe in him simply because 
he speaks so passionately. He believes what he says is the only truth and so the 
others do, too.  
 I think we all want to feel this sort of devotion to something. Because 
aren’t we all just looking for confirmation of our existence?  
 The nearest I’ve gotten to this, so far, is finding meaning through the 
written word. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, because there is no other 
feeling close to creating something from nothing. The closest comparison I can 
think of is having a child. And as we have learned, it is difficult to devote your life 
193 
 
to both. One must eventually choose; either you live your life for yourself or for 
others. It seems to me that we have gotten everything we have asked for.  
Zola 
 Has he gotten everything he has asked for? Nicholay thinks there could be 
some accuracy to this. He has accepted the fact that his benchmarks for success 
will always be spread out in such lengthy intervals that he will only see true 
progression when he has a full life’s work under his belt. Nicholay plans to paint 
until he dies without retiring. No plan, other than to keep doing what he’s been 
doing. Some may question where the reward is in being this committed to 
something until death, which makes Nicholay laugh, because no one promised a 
reward, at least not to him. There are definitely similarities between him and Zola; 
they are both opportunists maneuvering through an incongruent world.  
 There is not much Nicholay looks forward to, because he can’t be certain 
where he will end up. But he has come to look forward to Zola’s letters as the 
weeks go on. He is reminded of her idiosyncrasies, the ones that made him fall for 
her in the first place. With a maturing insight, it is hard for him not to feel some 
sort of renewed attraction for her. He hasn’t met anyone like her since. 
 
194 
 
 The phone has been ringing for over an hour. Nicholay knows it’s Ariana 
and hopes that if he continues to ignore her, she will put the check in the mail and 
call it a day. Some women are just more persistent than others, and then there is 
the possibility that Ariana will get in her car and come over, like she’s done 
before. Maybe if he goes away for a little while and can’t be found at home, she 
will give up all together. A change of environment may even do him some good. 
Maybe Lucien has some suggestions; after all, he seems to have the whole 
avoiding-women thing down.  
 Nicholay waits for the ringing to stop, then picks up the phone.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
195 
 
Zola 
? 
 Zola doesn’t have to scrounge up the courage to call Max. He calls her 
instead, asking if she would like to come along for a private purchase he is 
considering for his collection. He wants her opinion on a few pieces, he’d said, 
and he can’t be sure that anyone else will be as straightforward as she is. 
 They choose to meet in the square downtown, in front of the bookstore. 
When Zola arrives she sees that a few late season vendors are still open. Max is 
running behind, so Zola talks with Bernard until he arrives.  
 Walking hurriedly toward her, Max waves and smiles. “I’m so sorry to 
keep you. I got stuck on a call on my way here.”  
 “No worries. I was learning the secret to Bernard’s brioche.” 
 “Lots of butter, I presume?” Max greets Bernard with nod. “An 
acquaintance of mine brought some souvenirs back from his latest trip and wants 
me to look at a painting. Our tastes differ, but he has a sense of mine. He only 
lives a few blocks from here.”  
 They leave Bernard’s cart with bread samples and walk out of the park.  
 “How long have you been collecting?” Zola asks, as they head south.  
196 
 
 “Since the first piece my father gave me. He bought it in Cuba in the 
seventies and gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday. Because of the lack of 
materials available to Cuban artists, it’s painted on a scrap from a canvas sail. The 
paint is of an unknown blend, but the colors haven’t faded and are just as vibrant 
as the day he gave it to me. It’s truly amazing how some artists improvise when 
they have little to work with.” 
 “Your admiration must fuel your passion for writing,” says Zola. 
 “It does, but I have moments of questioning like everyone else. Sometimes 
I wonder if my representations are just another way of labeling, rather than truly 
understanding.” He adjusts the portfolio case on his shoulder. “How about you? 
Where do your stories come from?” 
 “Mostly from experience. Which is hard at times, because I’m not always 
sure that what I am remembering is accurate, or if it’s me wanting things to be 
different.” 
 “I think we often forget how mysterious and flawed the brain is.”  
 “So you don’t believe in perfection?” says Zola, surprised. “I would think 
someone who studies art would consider the possibility of it.”  
 “Ask an artist to find the perfect stone in a quarry and they will pick up 
any at their feet. Ask a writer to do the same and they will have to ask you to 
197 
 
define the characteristics of a perfect stone, so that they can match it. I’m a writer. 
I dissect and analyze.”  
 “I’ve known a painter who thinks everything is beautiful. It used to 
frustrate me how he saw the world.” 
 “So you don’t believe in perfection either?’ asks Max. 
 “Pain, envy, greed, violence—they wouldn’t exist in a perfect world.” 
 “Or maybe they are part of a larger symmetry?” 
 Zola is enjoying the conversation and the walk so much that when they 
arrive at their destination, part of her doesn’t want to go in.  
 “Here we are,” says Max. “I’m going to warn you, Tobias is a bit 
eccentric, but harmless. He would have made Napoleon jealous with his 
conquests—actually he may have inherited the leotard pants too, now that I think 
about it.”  
 Zola laughs.  
 “Get it out of your system now. If Tobias sees the slightest hint of 
amusement at his cost, he makes it uncomfortable for everyone, trust me. He’s a 
really sensitive guy.” Max turns to use the gaudy doorknocker, a phoenix with a 
ring through its beak. Zola assumes a neutral smile, and they wait.  
198 
 
 “Maxwell!”  
 A middle-aged woman with fiery hair and powdered face answers the 
door. She wears a gauzy dress wrapped like an altered toga, tightened around her 
thighs and skirt hem, and showcasing the sides of her hanging breasts, which are 
much too large. She is almost a full head taller than Max, with a pendulant front at 
eye-level to anyone of average size, accentuated by a golden charm of a cat with 
ruby eyes. Green henna decorates her left arm from clavicle to wrist in 
intertwining vines and flower buds, and Zola can’t help but stare at the jewels 
upon her fingers. Enveloping Max, she rocks his body from side to side with the 
strength of a gorilla. “Where have you been, sweet man? I overheard Camille, that 
vulgar loner, say just last week that you wouldn’t be around anytime soon. She 
could only hope that, poor dear—she couldn’t do better than you if she tried and 
everyone knows it. That girl needs to stop feeling sorry for herself. Her father 
bought her an original Rothko and she turned her nose up at it, telling everyone 
she didn’t care for anything existentialist. Can you believe the audacity?”  
 “We all have our preferences, Lou,” says Max. He seems pretty 
accustomed to this tiger of a woman meddling in his personal affairs.  
 “Who’s this?” the woman asks with a wry smile, only now acknowledging 
Zola, standing beside Max. 
199 
 
 “This is Zola. She’s a fellow art lover,” says Max. “Zola, this is Lou, 
Queen of Art Deco.” 
 “Christ, another one?” asks Lou, reaching out to Zola.  
 As Zola suspected, the weight of her hand is heavy in hers. 
 “Zola’s a writer,” says Max. 
 “Even worse! I can only take you writers in small doses. My husband 
collects and I decorate. You writers overanalyze way too much in my opinion. 
You need to enjoy more.”  
 Lou leads them into a rotund marble entrance with colorful tin sculptures 
and artificial plants, and for a moment Zola is back at the sanctuary, looking down 
the stretch of corridor toward the gardens.  
 They are ushered down a hallway to a room that looks like a bank, with 
disjointed grey architecture built in layers upon layers of rectangles. Stained glass 
is in every window, but the display of art is most impressive—more impressive 
than any collection Zola has seen in New England. Even the galleries of Isabella 
Gardner are meager in comparison.  
 “Darling, we have company. Maxwell’s here,” Lou calls toward a leather 
wing-backed chair.  
200 
 
 A small, dwarfish arm emerges from its right side and beckons the group 
over. Max and Lou don’t hesitate, while Zola trails behind, gaping at the walls.  
 As she catches her hipbone on an oddly placed table, a porcelain swan 
rocks on the stand, and she catches her breath. “Shit,” she says, rubbing the spot 
above her right thigh.  
 Max looks over at her. There is an expression of amusement on his face, 
as if to say, it happens all the time. 
 She joins them and immediately smiles at her first sight of Tobias.  
 With the airs of a show pony, Tobias can’t stand more than five feet tall. 
His feathery, thinning hair lies so close to his scalp it looks as if it is sewn on. 
Behind round glasses, his mole eyes shrink back from the rest of his face, as 
though they would disappear if he breathed in too deep. He is indeed wearing 
leotard pants in a shimmering green, and his crossed legs look like entangled 
garden snakes. On his lap sits a Siamese cat, purring with every touch.  
 In a lisping whisper, he says, “We humans are just like felines. We protect 
our independence and flaunt our efforts by sticking up our noses, but in the end 
we have the same dependencies.” Tobias rubs his thumb and forefinger behind the 
cat’s ears and the cat squints with pleasure. “We simply need to be touched.”  
201 
 
 Zola notices the grey cat hair that has collected on Tobias’ pants and 
wonders how long or how often he sits like this. She also thinks about how long it 
has been since she has been touched by anyone other than the occasional brush of 
a stranger on the street, or a hug in greeting from a friend. It isn’t the same as a 
direct caress, a caring rub, or the intimate stroke of arousal. Something has 
definitely been missing. Zola’s eyes move from Tobias’ lap to Max’s hands. They 
appear both gentle and strong, with the veins of a person who knows how to use 
his hands.  
  “Toby my friend. I want to hear about your recent escapades. I’m curious 
to see what you picked up this time,” says Max.  
 “I can’t say it’s anything of your taste, but I did think of you.” Tobias 
moves the cat to the floor and gets out of his chair. It is the first time Zola sees his 
feet touch the ground; it as though he has to climb down from a perch. “The seller 
was adamant about the story behind the painting, but honestly I could’ve cared 
less. She kept telling me I had to appreciate the courage of the artist. His insight. 
But all I could think of was the price tag she was trying to push for some 
unknown painter. I talked her down, but it wasn’t easy.”  
 They follow Tobias to a door in the corner of the room. He presses some 
buttons on a keypad and it beeps in response. He tries the handle. It doesn’t 
budge.  
202 
 
 “Dear, I think you changed the code before you left, remember?” says Lou 
from behind Zola and Max.  
 “Oh yes. Right.” Tobias tries a different order of buttons. This time the 
door unlocks and they enter. 
 Full of frames and paper tubes, the chamber feels like a tomb of treasures. 
Tobias rummages through the clutter. “Here it is,” his voice sings. He produces a 
smaller canvas from behind a larger framed print. He hands it to Max and they 
exit the crowded vault.  
 Max holds the painting at arm’s length; together, he and Toby admire it. “I 
guess this is one of the paintings from a series of three. I’m curious to know what 
the others were like. They were bought before I got to the show. What do you 
think?” asks Tobias. 
  “What do you think?” says Max, turning to show Zola.  
 The emerald eyes of a winged child stares back at her from beneath a 
masked face of fish scales. It bears an external heart on its chest, like an ancient 
wound that has healed and hardened to a scar. The child is not of this world, too 
delicate and beautiful to ever survive. There is something so familiar to her, so—  
 “What is the name of this artist?” Zola asks Tobias.  
203 
 
 “Like I said, the artist is unknown to me. American, but trained in Europe. 
I think his signature is…” Tobias looks over the painting. “Oh, yes, it is there in 
the bottom right, dear.”   
 She recognizes the pointed peak of an N and the long loop of a Y, painted 
lightly in white. They are the same letters she once traced with her own finger. 
She once knew them so well that she could have forged them.  
 “Are you okay?” asks Max.  
 “Look at her. She looks like she’s seen a ghost,” says Lou.  
 Max mouths the words. “Are you okay?”  
 “Yes, a ghost,” says Zola. “Would you excuse me? I need some air.” 
 “I’ll come with you,” says Max.  
 “Not necessary. I’ll just be a moment,” says Zola, and begins to find her 
way out.  
 Max calls after her as she reaches the door. “What do you think of the 
painting?”  
 Zola pauses. “I think there is more to know about the artist,” she says, and 
walks out.  
204 
 
 
 Zola is sitting on the steps outside of Tobias’ brick home when Max 
comes out with a wrapped package. 
 “You bought it?” 
 “I figured if it could illicit such a reaction in you, there must be something 
to it. Are you feeling better?”  
 “I like to think of myself as someone with an open mind, but there are 
some things I just don’t understand,” she says. Max sits down next to her on the 
stoop, and rests the paper-wrapped painting against the black iron railing. “That 
painting,” she says, nodding in its direction. “It brought to mind the fragility of 
life, and how there is so much outside of one’s control.” 
 “Wow. And here I was thinking, ‘Would this look a little gay hanging in 
my apartment?’” 
 Zola laughs. 
 “Seriously, the colors are all wrong. Studio 54 comes to mind—“ 
 “Stop it!” says Zola, but she can’t help but laugh. 
205 
 
  “What?” says Max, also laughing. “Here I ask you on a day date, and I 
take you to see pictures of androgynous children. I would understand if you didn’t 
want to go out with me again after this.” 
 Zola shakes her head, smiling. If anything, she has to give Max credit; 
here she is, going through all the possible scenarios in her head and the likelihood 
of her and Nicholay intersecting once again, and Max is still good-humored and 
kind, even though he’s well aware she has been affected. He doesn’t seem to need 
to ask her questions, which she appreciates, since she doesn’t have many answers.  
 “Let’s say goodbye, and then we can go,” says Max, standing and helping 
her up. 
 “I hope I didn’t come off as rude,” says Zola.  
 “Don’t worry about it. I just told them that you like art so much that 
sometimes it brings you to tears,” says Max, opening the door for her. They both 
smile. “They didn’t seem to think much of it.” 
? 
Zola, 
 My first show was a success, not because of the response I received or 
because the paintings that sold, but because when I left the opening I was 
absolutely pleased to move on. There was a moment when I wished you could’ve 
206 
 
been there with me, though now that I think about it, you probably would’ve found 
the people in attendance as distasteful as I did.  
 Lucien did come, though, and that meant more than words. Of course if I 
had told him that, he would’ve said something like, “Don’t let it go to your head; 
I am just here to scout for some fresh-faced thing that will show me her wonders.”  
 The other thing I wanted to tell you is that I will be away for a few weeks, 
and won’t receive any of my mail until I return home. I have yet to decide on a 
destination and have been tossing around a couple of ideas, but perhaps I will 
have more time for rumination, and maybe we can continue our correspondence, 
as I have been enjoying the familiar voice in your letters. Do you suppose we 
should speak on the phone sometime? I would suggest e-mail, but it is a trek into 
town for me to connect at an Internet café.  
 Thinking of you and hoping some worthy ideas have been knocking on 
your door. Don’t be afraid of the pen. It can do you no harm. 
Nicholay 
 Max asked to see her again. He invited her to visit his friends, who own a 
bed & breakfast on Chebeague Island. At first, she thought it was strange that he 
would consider taking her on such an intimate excursion, since they haven’t 
known each other very long. But he was careful to add that they would have 
207 
 
separate rooms, and that he hopes the company will give them both quiet hours to 
write, as well as some enjoyment exploring the island together.  
 She agrees, and as she writes the date in her calendar, she notices a circle 
around a day later this week. Zola racks her brain trying to remember the 
occasion. It has to be important, or she wouldn’t have bothered making the effort 
marking it down. She has a bad habit of storing her datebook in her head.  
 “Natalia!” Zola grabs her phone off the table and pulls her friend’s number 
up on speed dial. “If I missed it—Come on, pick up!” 
 The ring turns into a voicemail. Zola hangs up and calls Adam’s cell 
phone.  
 “Hello?” Adam shouts into the phone. There’s a racket coming through on 
his end. “That’s with a béarnaise, guys!” A banging, metal chorus resounds. 
 “Adam, it’s Zola. I’m glad you’re not at the hospital yet. I thought I—“ 
 “Not yet! I’m working so I stay out of her hair. She’s gone bonkers with 
the wait. If that boy doesn’t come out by the weekend, they’re inducing her.”  
 “Keep me posted. I’ll try her again on her cell, but will you let her know 
I’m checking in and thinking of her?” 
 “Will do, Love! See you tomorrow?” 
208 
 
 “Yeah, I’m in around six. Hang in there!” 
 “Thanks!” he says. “I’ll see you soon.” 
 
 Natalia’s call comes in at eleven o’clock the following evening, when 
Adam and Zola are at work. Jules allows for the restaurant to close for the rest of 
the night, and the two of them hightail it across town to retrieve Natalia, getting 
her to the hospital with plenty of time to spare. But Adam and Zola are most 
thankful when Natalia finally gives up trying to be Superwoman and demands an 
epidermal.  
 “Sugar plums,” says Natalia, glassy-eyed from the drugs that have been 
put into her spine. 
 Zola pats her hand, which is covered with needles and tubes. “You’re 
doing great. He’ll be along soon.” 
 Natalia screams bloody murder; the candy-coated halo has evaporated. 
Zola winces.  
 Indigo Meyer Reece is born at six in the morning, weighing nine pounds, 
seven ounces, with all his fingers and toes. He is unflawed, not even a freckle 
upon his skin or newborn wrinkle out of place. This isn’t the name chosen for him 
originally, but when their clean and healthy baby boy makes his first appearance 
209 
 
in the birthing bed, under the breast of his mother, Adam is crying tears of joy and 
Natalia is crying tears of happy exhaustion, Zola is the one to point out the unique 
purplish-blue of their son’s eyes. It is then that they decide to move the family’s 
namesake to his middle name and call him Indigo instead, and Zola is honored to 
play a part in this.  
The placenta is put into a freezer bag to be stored until spring, when they 
will plant it under a pear tree sapling for good luck and good health.  
 Zola falls in love instantly as she cradles Indigo in her arms. 
 “You can tell me forever you don’t want one, but I know you do,” says 
Natalia, beaming as bright as a star ready to sleep for a million years.  
 Zola hands over the pink-skinned bundle to his mother, who begins 
humming a ditty. Before they know it, Zola and Adam are singing along. 
 
 
 
 
 
210 
 
Nicholay 
? 
 Nicholay packs only a rucksack of clothing, a handful of his finest 
brushes, and a tightly rolled scroll of canvas. He also includes Zola’s letters, so he 
can continue his dialogue with her, and refer to them if needed. 
 He locks the doors and boards the windows of the house, leaving all of his 
and Dr. Nightingale’s belongings inside, and secures his studio with a heavy-duty 
chain and padlock—though if some hard-up artist actually decided to break in, the 
windows could easily be shattered.  
 Nicholay straps a seatbelt across the width of an unfinished frame. He 
decided to keep the wood raw, but the painting of Zola is finally complete.  
Her eyes look quizzically at him, as if to say, “Where are we going?” 
  “You will be in good, trusting hands. I promise,” he assures her.  
 He has never promised anything before, to anyone, but this he does mean.  
 He can’t keep her with him, and he knows she isn’t supposed to stay.  
She was never supposed to stay. He understands this now. 
 
211 
 
 Nicholay makes a stop on his way to the airport. When he pulls into the 
driveway, Lucien is sitting in his chair, smoking his pipe and watching the road 
unwind and fall off at the horizon. He is a man who possesses grace doing 
absolutely nothing but being present.  
 A week ago, Lucien came to see Nicholay in his studio, worried that the 
gallery opening had done a number on his student. The painting of Zola was still 
in the works; still inanimate and without spirit—a body without life, a mimic of 
the real thing.  
  “You’re so close to releasing her, my boy. So close.” 
 But Nicholay had to stop on his own, knowing that his teacher’s 
expectations would never be met. He knew when no more could be done. Despite 
the myth that a painter’s work is always evolving and is rarely finished, Nicholay 
believes that he can take things too far, running the risk of ruining the whole thing 
and having to begin again.  
 
 “Don’t you have work to do?” Lucien calls now from the porch as 
Nicholay climbs out of the cab of his truck.  
 “Nice to see you, too,” says Nicholay, walking around to the passenger 
side to fetch the painting. 
212 
 
 “What do you have there? It better not be for me, because I have all I 
need,” says Lucien, getting up from his chair to meet Nicholay at the top of the 
stairs. 
 “In that case, think of it as something to hold on to for me. I will pay you 
for storage, if you’d like.” Nicholay unbuckles the belt and removes the painting 
from the vinyl seat on which it safely traveled.  
 “That’s unnecessary. Let me have a look there. Maybe it will grow on me 
and I will just decide to keep it.” 
 “That is my hope,” says Nicholay, presenting the finished piece to his 
mentor. 
 On the porch, Nicholay places Zola in the chair next to Lucien’s. Side by 
side, they look at her, tilting their heads slightly. Lucien smokes, and Nicholay 
rubs the back of his neck.   
 “How about a drink? You must be thirsty?” says Lucien, finally breaking 
their study.  
 “I should be on my way. I’ve a plane to catch.” 
 “That’s right, running off to find that thing.” Lucien shakes his head, but 
smiles for the first time since Nicholay’s known him. “I give you a couple weeks, 
213 
 
and you’ll be back here realizing that what you were looking for was right where 
you dropped it.” Lucien points to the ground, and Nicholay looks down. “At your 
feet.” 
  “Perhaps, but it isn’t just the painting. There are other things…” 
 “So be it. Don’t forget I—” 
 “I know. ‘You told me so.’” 
 “Well, I did. But what I was going to say is, don’t forget that I like salt 
water taffy.” Lucien pulls a set of keys from the pocket of his yellow pants. 
Taking two of the keys from the ring, he hands them over to Nicholay. “One is for 
the front door and the other is for the back. Sorry, I never got a chance to match 
them.” 
 “I’ll figure it out,” says Nicholay, clutching the keys in his hand as a 
gesture of thanks. “Do you mind if I use the head, before I go?”  
Lucien gives him the go-right-ahead gesture. Nicholay steps inside, and 
Lucien follows behind. But as Nicholay walks by the living room he recognizes 
something and stops abruptly. Lucien keeps moving down the hallway to the back 
of the house. 
214 
 
 On the wall hangs two of Nicholay’s paintings from the show, the woman 
and man—his Adam and Eve. The child is missing, and there is an irony to this 
that Nicholay picks up on instantly. Hanging next to each other, both figures are 
turned, as if in conversation with one another. One has horns, while the other has 
tusks. Between these two paintings should be the third, though without it the 
series is as poignant as ever.  
 Nicholay goes to find Lucien, who is rinsing brushes in his kitchen sink.  
 “Now I know who my secret benefactor is,” says Nicholay. “You didn’t 
have to do that.” 
 “Of course I didn’t,” says Lucien. “But it was either that, or let an awful 
little man purchase all three. He was a leper.”  
 “Thank you.”  
 “Just do me a favor when you get to the States...” 
 “What’s that?” asks Nicholay. 
 “If you find her, don’t let her go. It will be your biggest regret to get so 
close, only to have her slip out of your hands again,” he says. “I know how you 
feel about this one. What sits out there on the porch says it all.”  
215 
 
 When Nicholay drives away, he sees Lucien and Zola together, waving. 
On the rear view mirror he reads: OBJECTS MAY APPEAR CLOSER THAN 
THEY SEEM. 
 He laughs out loud. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
216 
 
Zola 
? 
 It is the kind of autumn day that doesn’t strike a New Englander, because 
they are so spoiled. The skin still blushes in the mid-September sun, while a saline 
breeze sweeps up the coastline, reminding the people of Maine how much the sea 
is a part of them. Zola and Max sit at the stern of the Casablanca, on their way 
out from Yarmouth, knee touching knee, shoe touching shoe.  
 “You’re going to love this place,” says Max. “I know I feel more myself 
when I get away from the mainland, where I don’t have to be on a schedule or 
interact with a bunch of different people.” 
 “Must have been a real treat to leave Boston and come north.” 
 “Don’t get me wrong, I miss it from time to time. There’s a different 
mentality there, a real appreciation for education, and working hard to play hard. 
It isn’t just another blue-collar city. Boston’s got real soul, you know? You just 
have to know where to find the pulse.” Max props his right ankle on his left knee, 
and puts an arm across the bench behind Zola. He isn’t wearing socks, confirming 
that it’s time to kick back and relax. 
 “So,” she begins. “You know those paintings—” 
217 
 
 “Don’t worry about it,” he says, patting her leg. “I took your advice and 
checked with some contacts of mine. Apparently this guy is the up-and-coming IT 
guy overseas.” 
 “That’s not what I—” 
 “The Casco Bay islands are in sight. Please remain seated until the ferry 
has safely docked.” The voice on the speaker crackles out, and Zola catches sight 
of their destination ahead. “We’ll be exiting on the starboard side today and we 
want to thank you for choosing our chartered lines.”  
 The islands are still only grey mounds, and from a distance they look like 
whales in migration. Zola keeps her eyes glued there, imagining one dipping 
below to feed and disappearing forever.  
At some point, she will have to tell Max, but in the meantime—  
 
 “Shall we?” says Max. The boat has stopped moving. He puts his laptop 
case over his shoulder as he stands up. 
 Zola collects her leather duffle and follows him and a line of travelers 
down the gangplank to the pier. Walking past the ticket booths, they head toward 
a cluster of buildings that she assumes to be the center of town. There is only one 
218 
 
general store, a post office, a bank, a school, a café, and a gallery. Who needs all 
that other stuff anyway?  
 They buy two coffees for their walk, and continue up the street to the end 
of town. 
 “So how’d you end up in these parts?” Max asks. 
 “It’s kind of a long story,” says Zola, taking in the sight and scent of 
wildflowers and freshly cut fields. Barbed wire and posts mark the boundaries of 
properties, but Zola does not see one house along the way.  
 “Try me.” 
 “Well, I bounced around for awhile.” 
 “Nothing wrong with doing the pinball thing for a bit. My father was in 
the Air Force.”  
 They take a right down a private dirt drive. “Do you know what I like best 
about the nomadic life?” he says, as they walk beneath a tunnel of trees toward 
the ocean. Shadows of leaves and light move over them like a school of 
glimmering sardines. 
 “What’s that?” 
219 
 
 “The feeling of discovery.” He stops in the middle of the road. “How 
simply a change in locale can make you feel like a completely different person.” 
 “Then I’ve been a million people,” says Zola. 
 “Me too,” he says. “That’s probably why I like you so much. You have 
multiple personalities like me. That’s why, despite all odds and changes that may 
come our way, we must continue to write. So we appear sane.” 
 Zola laughs at how serious Max looks when he says this. 
 “What?” she asks, searching his eyes.  
 “You laugh beautifully,” he says. 
 She sees a protruding veranda in the distance. As they get closer, the 
curtain of green draws back, revealing a sprawling house on the edge of meadow, 
and a strip of desolate rocky beach. A carved wood sign swings slightly in the 
wind, just steps from a stone walkway. The weathervane on the main steeple and 
dormer swivels in its iron joint. 
 “Now this is lovely,” says Zola.  
 “Come on,” says Max, sounding pleased. “Anyone home?” he calls, taking 
the stairs up two at a time to reach the screen door. 
220 
 
 “No!” A man’s raspy voice answers from inside. “Go home. We don’t like 
no stinkin’ beatniks here.”  
 A silver-haired man wearing a Cheshire-cat smile and thin-rimmed glasses 
appears in the doorway. 
 “What?” says Max. “You’re discriminatory against your own kind now?” 
 “A smart man would be,” says the man, then opens the door.  
? 
 Henry Foster ran The Fern Bed Inn alone for fifteen years, before Mirabel 
came into his life.  
 “She was a gift from the sea,” he says, sitting in a rocking chair positioned 
between Zola and his young wife.  
 The four of them have just finished a welcome dinner of raw oysters on 
the half shell, baby field greens from the Foster’s garden, and quail with plum 
sauce, and are now taking in the last glimpses of day on the water with aperitifs.  
 Zola admires the simple charm of the couple and their home. She loves the 
way neat bouquets of ferns are arranged on tables and shelves, and how the whole 
place smells as though one has slept in a bed made of the fan-like plants. She is 
also pleased by Max’s thoughtful invitation, and glad she came.  
221 
 
 “If it wasn’t for this woman…” says Henry. “She turned my life on again 
and has been a godsend to this place.” He motions with his hand to indicate the 
whole existence he and Mirabel share. 
 Mirabel smiles and sips hot tea.  
 “And can you believe I am going to be a father?” says Henry. “At fifty-
 five. Another marvelous blessing.” 
 “Henry, you promised,” says Mirabel, giving him a chastising look. She 
leans over to Zola. “We were going to wait to tell anyone, but clearly Henry 
doesn’t know how to keep secrets.” She shoots him another look, and returns to 
her tea.  
 “Tell us, Zola,” says Henry. “What do you do? Max has been a friend of 
ours for years and we’ve always wondered when he would bring someone around. 
When we heard you were also a writer, our immediate thought was, now how 
could that possibly work?” 
 “I write, but I’m still working on what I’m trying to say. I’m just enjoying 
the process right now. Max is really helping me to understand the process more.”  
 “See, that’s so nice,” says Mirabel. “If I were a writer, Henry here would 
be dividing our home into territories.” 
222 
 
 “It’s a good thing you’re my flutist,” says Henry with a nod of agreement.  
 “We hope to work on some ideas while we’re here,” says Max. “And 
maybe if Zola gets comfortable enough and we don’t scare her away, she’ll share 
something of hers with us.” 
 Zola can smell the jasmine candle burning on the windowsill. She feels at 
ease with her new friends. Henry and Mirabel seem to have it figured out, despite 
their age difference, which Zola guesses to be more than twenty-five years—but 
maybe that’s why they fit so well together. From what Zola can tell, they admire 
each other’s uniqueness. Tension is probably as foreign a concept to them as 
being apart. Zola doesn’t know if she has ever felt that way about anyone. Being 
alone is what she does best.  
 She looks at Max, in his chair across from her. His back is against the dark 
night. A pair of moths is caught in the light of the lantern above his head. Zola 
can’t get over how attracted she is to him, and not because of how handsome he 
is, but because she doesn’t have to read into every word he says.  
 “So what do you kids have planned for tomorrow?” asks Henry. 
 “Probably lunch at the sandwich shop in town, and maybe we’ll stop in at 
the gallery,” says Max. “I haven’t been over there in a while.” 
223 
 
 “There’s this painter… Mari, do you remember his name? We met him the 
night you played that opening,” says Henry. “He had remarked to me how much 
he enjoyed watching you play the flute. Said he wanted to paint you. Of course I 
agreed with him, as any man would. What was his name?” 
 “That’s right,” says Mirabel. “He has a house here, up on Shepherd’s 
Road.”  
 Henry is rolling a sheet of thin white paper between his fingers. “My 
substitute for drink,” he says, gesturing toward the joint. “Keeps my head on 
right.” 
 “Yeah, not much to worry about out here,” he says, taking a toke, and then 
passes it to Max. 
 “Sounds like a man of mystique,” says Zola. 
 “I’ve heard stories,” says Maribel.  
 “Have you? And you kept them from me?” Henry teases. 
 “I just thought they were rumors,” says Mari. “You always tell me to 
believe only half of what I hear, especially when it comes from the salty broads 
who run the general store. You know how they like to stir up all sorts of things, 
particularly about the ones who live here part time. That’s how I became curious 
224 
 
about you, after all. You were that crazy drunk poet who ran a ramshackle inn. I 
just knew I had to meet you.”  
 They laugh. 
 Zola wants to hear more about the man on Shepherd’s Road who is 
spotted infrequently, like some mythical creature.  
 “We’ll plan on having you for dinner tomorrow night. A boat comes in in 
the afternoon and we will have some more guests here. Sometimes they join us 
for meals, and sometimes they don’t,” says Henry. “Mari, you should go to the 
market and get whatever’s fresh off the block. And we’ll break out a bottle of 
Chianti.”  
 “Sounds great, man,” says Max, gathering his empty cup. “I’m turning in 
early.” 
 Zola stands, picking up the blankets she’s been sitting under, and Max 
takes them in his arms to carry up for her. 
 “Sleep well, Zola,” says Maribel, “If you need anything, just let me know. 
We’re happy to have you with us.”  
 Henry stubs out his nightcap.  
 “Thanks for having me,” says Zola, before she and Max turn to leave.  
225 
 
?  
 The next morning, while laying out a breakfast selection, Mari tells Zola 
she likes to take rides to various spots on the island to play flute for the hermit 
thrushes.  
 “Solitary, the thrush/Sings by herself a song, Song of the bleeding throat,” 
quotes Henry, his head down as he scratches out something barely legible on a 
scrap of paper.  
 “Walt Whitman,” says Zola. 
 “Very good,” says Henry, looking up and putting the piece of paper into 
his flannel pocket. “I could easily mistake my wife for a bird. Sometimes I think 
it’s her on the porch in the morning, but it’s really one of those miniature hermits. 
I think they follow her back home, thinking she is one of them.”  
 “Ready?” asks Max, finishing his coffee in a hurry.  
 Zola grabs an apple and a corn muffin for the road, and they bid the couple 
a good day.  
 
 Zola borrows a bicycle from Mari, a Schwinn in robin’s egg blue with a 
wicker basket and brass bell. It was a refurbished wedding gift from Henry. Max 
uses Henry’s rusted jalopy of a bike, but it still peddles all right. 
226 
 
 As they bicycle down the road, Max and Zola talk of things they have 
dreamt of since they were young, and how life has a funny way of detouring itself 
when something is wanted too much—if you are patient enough to let life happen, 
it makes the wait all the more worthwhile. 
 “I was quick to leave home,” says Zola, coasting next to Max. “I couldn’t 
wait to be on my own.”  
 “How old were you?” asks Max, swerving his bike in a pattern of 
backwards and forwards S’s 
 “Seventeen.” 
 “I wanted out badly too,” says Max. “I think we all want that at that age, 
because we think we know everything already. It sure is a wakeup call when we 
realize we don’t.”  
 “I spent more time at my grandparents’ than at my own house,” 
remembers Zola. “I had more freedom there. There was a logging mill up the road 
from their farm, and as a kid I used to crawl all over the wood piles out behind the 
property, pretending that I had my own cabin in the woods. I learned how 
important being alone is—my need for solitude has always been with me.” 
 Some of the roads are not well groomed, particularly in areas where they 
have been washed out from rainstorms, with rather large potholes and gravel 
227 
 
deposits they have to walk their bikes around. They have no map, but it is nearly 
impossible to get lost on the island—if they make enough circles, they will end up 
right back where they started. They make several stops on the way to town to 
check out different geological formations or clusters of trees, wishing there were 
more places like this on earth, but also liking the idea of keeping these places to 
themselves.  
 “You must have a unique relationship with you parents,” says Max, as 
they push their bikes along a stretch with wild briars of raspberry bushes 
crowding the road.  
 “I like them enough, but we’re not very close.” 
 “My parents can’t stand one another,” says Max, shaking his head. “I can’t 
believe they’ve been married as long as they have.” 
 “I just know I don’t want what my parents have.” Zola stops on the 
shoulder of the road, and empties her shoe of a rock that has been rolling around 
inside and bothering her. Max waits as Zola gets herself situated.  “There used to 
be an elderly couple that lived next door to us—the Tallys. They were in their 
nineties, and were by far more affectionate with one another. My bedroom 
window looked down into their kitchen, and I would watch how tenderly they 
shared that space together.” 
228 
 
 Zola and Max keep walking. “I remember looking into their kitchen the 
night Mr. Tally died. Somehow, his wife managed to get him on their table, and 
had laid him out so that she could bathe him. They came for his body the next 
morning. It was probably one of the most beautiful displays of love I have ever 
seen.”  
 Zola and Max lay in the bedded October grasses of a field ready and 
waiting for the sharp cuts of the tractor’s blade.  
 Chewing on a piece of straw, Max rolls onto his side. “Are you always this 
hard to read?” he asks. “I’d pay to know what you’re thinking.” 
 “Only when I’m in a moment. I don’t want to mess it all up by talking 
about things that don’t really matter.” 
 “I should probably try that out then. I seem to talk to figure out the next 
thing to say. It’s the Bostonian in me.” 
 Zola takes a deep breath. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something about 
that painting back home.”  
 “You didn’t like it, did you?” 
 “No, it wasn’t that,” says Zola. “This going to sound crazy… but I think I 
was meant to see that painting.” 
229 
 
 Max moves to a kneeling position and sits back on his heels. He looks 
down at Zola and picks a piece of loose hay from her hair. “You were meant to 
see it? Like the way two people are meant to meet. You can’t explain why, but 
you feel it deep down inside.” Max gives her his hand, and she accepts it, getting 
to her feet. 
 “There is so much that is unexplained out there,” she says, as they walk 
out of the field toward the road. 
 Max picks up his bicycle, and she does the same. “If there wasn’t, then 
there wouldn’t be hope,” he says, mounting the patched seat.  
  They continue to the bluffs on the other side of the island, which jut from 
the earth in dirt drifts.  
 “It looks like rain,” says Max, pointing to boats on the water, where sails 
are blown out like kites lost at sea. 
 “It looks like the ink of an octopus,” says Zola, watching the sky darken 
before their eyes. She feels she needs to tell Max now, or else she never will. 
 “I knew the painter. From when I lived in Spain,” she says. I knew him as 
a man too, she thinks, but she keeps this thought to herself. 
 “Weird,” says Max. 
230 
 
 “I know.” She nods in agreement. It was weird, strange, surreal, and 
unusual. She is still trying to understand why and how. Nicholay writing to her 
was one thing, this was something else entirely. 
 “Let’s get to lower ground, quick, before we get struck by lightning,” says 
Max, grabbing her hand.  
 They slide down the sandy dunes, grass whipping at the legs of their pants, 
running out the momentum of their bodies on the hard-packed beach below. It is 
low tide, and the water’s edge is decorated with a shell-and-stone appliqué in 
white and silver and opalescent.  
 Zola takes off her shoes, rolls up her pants and sticks her feet in. “Some 
days this is the only thing that tells me I’m alive.”  
 Max joins her, wading up to his calves.  
 “But how do you celebrate?” he asks, taking her hand again in his.  
 Zola throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. The waves, 
encroaching on their thighs, soak them from the waist down. They shiver and 
huddle closer.  
 “I’m relearning,” she says. 
231 
 
 “Then there is hope.” He holds her tightly around the waist so she doesn’t 
get washed away.  
 They postpone their return to the inn as long as they can, peddling back 
slowly, and carrying their findings with them—their pockets full of sand and their 
hearts full of something they can’t explain. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
232 
 
Nicholay 
? 
 Nicholay asks the man in official nautical dress on the dock if he has 
missed the boat. He’s out of breath from running down the hill; his bus broke 
down in the last couple miles, so Nicholay decided to keep going on foot.  
 “By three minutes,” the man says, fastening a holding rope across the 
entrance of the boarding ramp. “You can take the cargo ferry if you don’t want to 
wait. They’re loading now.” 
 Nicholay looks below to the open platform watercraft, loaded with palettes 
and boxes and a few cars. “What time is the next one?” 
 “Comes in at five from the island. Leaves around 5:30. You can get tickets 
over there.” The man points to a booth, where a female teller sits behind a plate of 
glass.  
 “Thanks,” says Nicholay, taking his pack off and sitting down on a bench, 
on the port side of the cement transit building. He opens his bag and takes out a 
pen and notebook. 
Zola, 
233 
 
 You can find me at this address for the next month. Feel free to write. Or, 
we could meet up. Seeing as we will be so close, it would be silly not to. But no 
pressure; I understand if you say we should just keep things as they have been.  
 It is by sheer coincidence that Lucien owns property so near to you. I 
haven’t been in the States for some time, and for a while I didn’t think I had a 
reason to come back. It did cross my mind many times during the plane and bus 
ride that maybe you are my reason. The physical distance between us hasn’t been 
this near, in years. I have no expectations, only hope… 
 “See the boat?” Nicholay hears a man say. He looks up to see a small boy 
atop the man’s shoulders. He is pointing toward the bay; the child squirms from 
his lookout to see.  
 Planning to finish the letter later, Nicholay puts the notebook away. 
 The ferry is chugging in, and the men who work on the dock move quickly 
to their posts to prepare for disembarkation, communicating with one another in 
Portuguese—a language so close to Spanish, but not quite close enough for 
Nicholay to understand.  
 The black and white vessel, like a giant floating block, is negotiated into 
the slip and calmed like an animal being put into a pen. Nicholay goes over to the 
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woman at the window to buy his ticket. They make small talk as she processes his 
card and prints his voucher.  
 The passengers unload in pairs and singles, and Nicholay waits near the 
railing, looking out across the water with his back to the dispersing crowd.  
 “We will begin boarding deck one and all assisted passengers,” the 
docking agent calls, ushering a waiting group aboard.  
 Nicholay leans down to pick up his backpack from the ground, and works 
his way through all the people who are migrating one way or another, upstream or 
down. With eyes focused on where he needs to go, he pushes through the mass of 
sweaters and windbreakers and sunglasses. Clumsy bags bump against him as he 
passes through.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Zola 
? 
 Amid the throng, trying not to lose her grasp on the clasp of Max’s 
fingers, is Zola, returning to the mainland.  
 “You with me?” Max calls over his shoulder. 
 “Wait, do you have my purse?” asks Zola, noticing that it is not hanging 
across her. 
 Max stops in the middle of the rush. “Did you leave it on the seat?’  
 “I must have,” she says. “I’m going to run back. Hopefully it’s still there!” 
 Zola heads back on board. She waits patiently in the aisle as an elderly 
couple puts their luggage away and takes their seats. Ahead she can see a man, his 
back to her, sitting at the end of the row where she and Max had been seated 
earlier.   
“Excuse me, I think I left something between the seats,” she says, 
approaching.  
 The man stops writing and looks up. 
 They stare not knowing what to think. “I did,” says Zola, forcing air from 
her lungs and words to her lips.  
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 Nicholay closes the notebook, and puts it to the side. Zola’s heart is 
pounding. “What am I looking for?” he asks. He leans across the seats, slipping 
his hand between their pilled cushions to feel for any items wedged between. “I 
don’t feel anything.” 
 “I don’t know where else it could be,” says Zola. “How—” 
 “Did you find it?” asks a voice from behind her. Max.  
  “No,” she says, turning back to Nicholay, wishing they had a little more 
time. 
 “It’s probably in your bag,” says Max.  
 The captain begins his departure speech over the speakers, telling them it’s 
time to go.  
 “Thanks for looking,” she says to Nicholay, feeling torn whether she 
should leave or stay. 
 “If it turns up,” says Max, handing Nicholay a card with his contact 
information.  
 “Sure,” says Nicholay, taking the card. He looks to Zola, searching her 
face.  
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 “Come on, Zola, before we get stuck on this boat,” says Max, making his 
way to the exit.  
 “Thanks again for looking,” she says, touching Nicholay’s shoulder 
tenderly.  
 “It was worth a try,” he says softly, and he lets her walk away. 
? 
Dear Zola, 
 When we saw each other on that ferry, I had been writing to tell you that I 
have come to stay for a while. But as fate had it, there was another plan for us. 
When I initially wrote you a couple months ago, all I wanted to know was if you 
were okay. And the reason it took me so long to find you – I can’t really say.  
 Everyone finds closure in his own way, and sometimes we hang on to 
certain memories, afraid to let go—afraid to be alone out in the big, vast world. 
The vanity of youth, the belief we are sure of our abilities and what we want can 
tarnish the fuller picture. And not until we have truly lost something or someone 
of value are we capable of seeing our faults—that is, if we are lucky.  
 I am writing to say goodbye, Zola, and that I hope you are well, that you 
are loved, and that you are creating beautiful art. And that I hope you have not 
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abandoned your pursuit for something more, because there is so much more out 
there in the world to love.  
Take care my darling, and enjoy the ride, 
Nicholay