New Moon

Maya’s boyfriend died of a diabetic heart attack on a cruise ship about halfway between New York and Bermuda. At the time, she was watching a stand-up comedian in the captain’s lounge. When she came back to the cabin he was unconscious, pale, rigid. She called the ship’s doctor, watched as they defibrillated him. The spikes on the electrocardiograph, peaking, falling, peaking, going flat. Each time she thought he’d pop up, smile his oblivious smile, tell her not to worry. He’d be fine. But instead, deferential apologies, a visit from the captain, a change of plans. They’d unload the body at Hamilton. Maya could fly home from there.

Thirty minutes later, she was standing on the deck again. She tried to picture his face, alive, but it was jumbled up with the comedian’s red hair under the spotlight, baked Alaska being wheeled through a darkened room. The stars. From the Bronx you could see about six stars. Here on the sea, they hung in clusters all the way to the horizon. A new moon, which means no moon at all.

No more Karl. Some men, young, tan men of the type hired as deckhands by cruise lines, had come to carry away the body. They’d brought a body bag stamped with the company name in small white letters. They'd steered Karl around the corner, and then he was gone. The captain had said his piece, and by the time he’d excused himself there was nothing left of Karl but an unmade bed. His clothes erupting from a too-small suitcase. One of his hairs left on the white pillow. At the time she’d wished he’d died at home. Then there would have been more left of him.

She slept on a plastic lounge chair that night, woke up a hundred miles south of where she’d fallen asleep. The early morning was a hundred miles warmer. Fresh and free of exhaust. Car horns. The Russian baker and his wife’s constant harangue. Reguetón. Instead, a fistful of diamonds scattered over the water where the sun was rising. Old men and their wives, jogging or walking the mile-long circuit from bow to stern. Gulls wheeling in their wake, feeding on the steady stream of garbage and the chunks of fish churned up by the propellers.

When a swarm of children invaded the pool area, Maya wandered off towards the bow. Southwards. Away from the landlord. Maybe the cruise line’d refund Karl’s half of the money. Beneath the sound of the wind and the gulls, she could hear the steam press exhaling like some huge, discontented animal. The same sound her boss made when she asked for time off. Southwards, towards the airport. Both directions led back to work.

She went for a massage and fell asleep on the table. Raisin-Bran for breakfast, then a cheese Danish and then a Spanish omelet and two cups of coffee. She changed into her bathing suit and laid by the pool. No one knew who she was. Some people smiled. Isn’t this great? The children went on screaming, and doing cannonballs into the water.

Instead of lunch, she took driving lessons from the ship’s golf pro. Ball after ball with a crack launched to hang like lint on the sky, then fall with an inaudible plop. Out of sight, the ball kept on sinking. To the bottom of the sea. The pro said she’d have a good swing, if not for the tension in her shoulders. He recommended a massage, and another lesson on the trip home. He offered to give her the massage himself.

She slept on a deck chair again that night. Getting off the boat the next morning, the captain pulled her out of the crowd. “Here is the newspaper clipping about your husband’s death.” She didn’t bother to correct him. “Show it to people in town. They will be kind to you.” The phrase didn’t sound quite right. She listened to see if the captain had an accent as he gave her directions to the American embassy. Because Karl had died in international waters, the State Department would have to certify his death. On paper, he was still alive.

The teaser on the newspaper clipping said that Karl was the cruise line’s first death. But they’d had a body bag. There must be a law about that, too. Did they have a freezer reserved for storing the dead, or had they just put him in there with the lobster tails and kegs of beer? If she asked about the laws on refunds for dead boyfriends, would they tell her?

Hamilton was too short to be called a city, but with too much traffic to call it a town. Two-story buildings painted in pastels. Shopfronts displaying jewelry, souvenirs. It should have been peaceful, but instead the narrow streets were crammed with the clatter of mopeds and little Renault taxis. Maya folded back her tongue to whistle one down, stopped with four fingers stretching sunburned lips. Cracking open her skin. She felt the cool morning broken by traffic. At her feet, two suitcases. Across the street, a moped rental shop. ‘If they’ll hold Karl’s bag, I’ll go for a ride. If they won’t, I’ll go straight to the embassy.’

The tattooed man at the bike shop looked her over, asked what a so-pretty girl was doing in Bermuda by herself. She explained, showed him the newspaper clipping. “Condolences, love,” he said. Sure he’d watch her bags. A long drive sometimes did the trick for him. “You’ll be careful,” he said, like a question.

The main road around the island passes through Hamilton from east to west. On either side it winds uphill and carries on along the cliffs over the sea. Maya headed right. Uphill. Out of town. Within a mile, trees hung over the road, grew right up the mountain, and the mountain went right down into the sea. She thought she’d never seen so much green. And blue. The sky was just everywhere, all around her. And the sea laid out flat, like a carpet. Blue-green, greenish blue. Like a carpet with a handful of diamonds scattered across it.

The red moped struggled at the crest of the hill. She stopped. From there the city seemed a quiet thing, like the bones of a whale beached and bleached upon the shore, too big to roll back into the sea, so instead painted for some indecent festival. She could see her ship, carrying five thousand living souls, and one dead one. Inside, maybe a single hair sat on a starched white pillow, depending on what time the maid had started work. Away to the north were New York, her landlord, her boss, Karl’s mother. She’d most likely blame Maya. For the heart attack. For the diabetes.

‘I don’t really want to have a baby,’ she thought. That surprised her. She and Karl had been planning to start a family immediately after the wedding. He was already 46. Getting old. Maya was 28. She’d thought she wanted to grow his baby. Feed him, clothe him, teach him. All that work. And what for? So he could grow up to work at a dry cleaner’s? So he could brave the difficulty and disappointment of a whole life for the sake of one sunny, sad day?

She took off her helmet and sat for hours, watching the sun rise over the flat sea. Later it would fall. Someday, a long time from now, she’d be someone else. She’d have other thoughts than these. Maybe she would be married to someone she hadn’t met yet. Have kids who were a mix between herself and this hypothetical stranger. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d never remember this afternoon. Maybe she would, and she’d look back just once as this other Maya, and recognize a fondness she doesn’t now feel mixed in with all the regret she does.

Someday she’d die. At least she could count on that. On being dead for a long, long time.

Diamonds scattered in careless handfuls. The smell of the sea, and the sky was just everywhere.