The Last Lovely City Read Online Free PDF Page A

particular, a tall pretty young woman in a white uniform, sort of like a nurse. She had a briefcase full of lovely silver things. Pretty opal rings; it’s where I got mine.” And she spreads her fingers, showing him, again, the two opal rings, one pink and one green, each with seeming depths of fire, each surrounded by a sort of silver filigree. “About ten bucks apiece,” Penelope laughs. “Augustina, her name was. I wanted to get more rings on this trip, but I don’t see her.”
    “Why more?”
    “Oh, they don’t last. They dull and come apart. But I suppose I don’t really need them.” Though thrifty, Ben no doubt disapproves of such cheap rings, or so Penelope imagines—the wives of successful lawyers, and certainly of judges, do not wear ten-dollar rings. And in a discouraged way Penelope wonders why they have come to Mexico together, she and Ben. Most recently in San Francisco they had not been getting on especially well; there was a string of minor arguments, the more annoying because of their utter triviality—where to eat, whom to see, what to do—arguments that had left them somewhat raw, on edge. It comes to Penelope that she must have expected some special Mexican balm; she must have thought that somehow Mexico would make everything come right, would impart its own magic. And she thinks, Alas, poor Mexico, you can hardly heal yourself, much less me.
    “Well, how about a swim?” Ben stands up, so trim and neatly made, in his neat khaki trunks, that Penelope sighs and thinks, He’s so nice, and generally good; do I only trulylike madmen, like Charles? Even as she smiles and says, “Sure, let’s go.”
    As always, the water is mysteriously warm and cool at once, both nurturing and refreshing—and green, glittering there for miles out into the sunlight. But perhaps not quite as clear as before? Penelope thinks that, but she is not entirely sure.
    Despite a passing motorboat, this one lolling at low speed, its owner smiling an invitation, drumming up trade—Ben strikes out into deep water, swimming hard. For an instant Penelope thinks, Oh Lord, he’ll be killed, that’s what this ill-advised (probably) trip is all about. But then more sensibly she thinks, No, Ben will be okay. He is not slated to be run over by a Mexican motorboat (or is he?). She herself, more and more fearful as another boat zips by, this one trailing a large yellow inflated balloon, astride which six young women shriek and giggle—Penelope moves closer to a large, wave-jumping group of Americans for protection.
    She persuades Ben to go back to Rosa’s for lunch, but the day scene there is even more depressing than what goes on at night: the same blaring TV, same group clustered in front of it—in broad daylight, the sun streaming outside on the beach, the lovely sea not twenty yards away. Rosa hardly looks up as they come in. And the food is indifferent.
    Walking up the path to their room, Penelope observes, again, the row of empty rooms. And she remembers an elderly couple, the Connors, friends of the Farquhars, who always took the room on this end, that nearest to the path, and sat there, calling out to their friends who passed. The lonely old Connors, now very likely dead. But how easy to imagine them sitting there still, he with his binoculars, she with her solitaire cards. And, in theroom after next, Penelope and Charles, and in the next room the Farquhars. It seems impossible, quite out of the question, for all those people to have vanished. To have left no trace in this air.
    Instead of saying any of that to Ben (of course she would not), Penelope says, “I do wonder how come Augustina’s not around anymore. Her things were great, and she was so nice.”
    During their siesta Penelope has a most curious dream—in which she and Charles and Steven, Charles’s beautiful boy, are all good friends, or perhaps she and Charles are the happy parents of Steven. The dream is vague, but there they are, the three of