By Catherine McNamara
Margaret, growing used to being single again, booked a holiday in the commonly overlooked West African city that she and her lover had planned to visit before things went pear-shaped and he returned to his wife. She filled in her arrival documents at Abidjan airport, giving a hoot when asked if her luggage bore medicines, pornography, weapons, wondering if her vibrator was classified as such and, if so, in which of these categories.
At the taxi stand there were vehicles in line with vivid orange flanks. Young men swept suitcases into boots and slammed them shut, walking back to drivers’ seats with rangy torsos and clinging shirts. The physical was the hardest of the ravages to abandon. A dozen times a day she could feel her lover nosing down her neck. The taxi took a ramp that led to the high-rise city collected around a lagoon. These pillars became dense with human life as they neared, as did the roadside with its knots of sellers and food stalls and donkeys tied to horrifying buggy contraptions. There were streams of motorbikes carrying women riding side-saddle, arms around men’s waists, shirts whipping. She felt a swooning inside; she sensed the aromas of skin; the sky above rose as the concave of a shell.
She had booked a classy hotel, so she thought, close to a lauded new museum a friend of hers had helped design, before dropping out of the project. It was one of the only items on her short list of things to see, besides a club the same friend had mentioned, adding a cautionary note about late taxis and drugs in drinks. A worldly Peruvian on her friend’s team had woken in his hotel room, devoid of wallet, passport and underwear.
On Day Two Margaret visited the said museum, whose attractive wings could be seen from her 20thstorey window. From this point, she was certain she could perceive how the design came together on paper, alighting from someone’s mind, and how it now possessed an avid clunkiness, such as a dispirited bird, or a damaged temptress.
Downstairs a comparison was to be had: one wing of the old, original building lay untouched in the museum grounds, with reams of photographs in gritty frames, light mould entrapped on the passe-partouts, making these images appear as a series of appeals before a final vanquishment. She was glad she roamed here first, for the sight of international war atrocities, murdered figureheads and misshapen, cradled babies, caused a rough stirring inside of her, which was perhaps part of the scheme. She next strode into the new structure, whose wide stairway and glossy, polished windows made her feel that the region had indeed moved on.
What if she had come here with her lover? This thought dwelled in her through moments that were whittled back to the bone, when she saw the plain path of her future. She had chosen not to upend her lover’s crafted life, though his reticence over this made her wish she had pulled out a dagger, and plunged it into his flesh.
Back at the hotel, Margaret seated herself at the bar despite it being mid-afternoon. She had formulated a plan with herself, whereby she would drink a glass of champagne, then return to her room and make use of her vibrator. The idea that this champagne was a preamble made her treacherously horny, and the long-ingrained impulse to message her lover surfaced, amplifying this, before bringing about a slight curdling of this charge. He would have loved the museum experience; he would have sought things out and made almost voiceless criticisms of the various regimes, while coming across to stand beside her so that she could feel his chest breathing, and she would know how he was holding his hands. All afternoon they would have bartered their thoughts, perhaps tussling over a pair of them, and gone starving to a restaurant along the water, walking into the first one they saw, regretting it but both of them too polite to up and leave.
After her bout of self-pleasure Margaret caught a taxi to the aforementioned club, reciting her friend’s safety warnings as she paid and had her hand stamped. She would report back to her friend when she returned home, thanking her. She now thought she had underestimated this woman, and wondered what it was that she had seen in Margaret, when Margaret had rarely sought her out, and several times had ignored her invitations. This woman had been attentive when Margaret’s head had been in that other morass, teased and plummeting. For Margaret had always thought that love was the apex, carrying its drastic rewards.
She was joined by a local man wearing a white T-shirt and linen jacket, who said he’d been stood up on a date. She did not believe this for a minute, thinking of the Peruvian colleague waking up half-nude in his suite. She held onto her drink until the glass was empty, refusing a fresh cocktail, noting that his hands often moved to his pockets. The man then pulled out a packet of cigarettes and, from the other, a lighter, claiming they were not so manacled to development in this country that smoking had been banned in bars. That was when Margaret laughed and gladly took a cigarette.
The man appeared very docile to her and did not say much as their smoke blurred the air. How different it would be with a quiet man, she thought, for she and her lover had been so chatty at all times, even when he was inside of her there could be things that needed to be said, or the conversion of notions into words. The man went on to say that over the past few years internet dating had taken off in the city, though this would be his last foray. He said he was far too old-fashioned, and that his daughter had set up this date.
Margaret admitted she would likely be following the same path.
The man rose and walked off, she presumed to the bathroom, while she watched the flickering lights over a stand of false bamboo, how they fell upon the dance floor that was vaguely peopled. She watched a man and woman hooked together in motion; it was enough to set off another high slither between her legs.
The man returned with two negronis and placed hers on a yellow coaster beside her hands. She peered at it doubtfully; the way he made himself comfortable on his seat led her to think he would be a good dancer, while she also felt the ache of his spirit and the need for another cigarette. He made a toast to something that she couldn’t quite hear, chinking their glasses, then looking at his watch said that after this drink he would be on his way out of here, that she had saved him from a long night of bitter drinking, but he felt he would like to go to bed.
Margaret began to sip hers, the blood-red cord falling into her. She sensed that she could relax, and that whatever happened to her next would be a new thread of liberty. The man guided her onto the dance floor and they moved together, quite wooden at first; she saw he was embarrassed, or inward, and looked carefully at his face; that was when they gave each other gentle, sudden kisses, and the warmth of his lips was overwhelming, it was a tide through her.
Margaret awoke gulping, as though her ribs were contracted and the lungs within were without air. She staggered to the bathroom, putting the bellowing sphere of her head under the tap, wetting her hair, feeling the vicious water splattering over her cheeks, drawn into her nostrils, reaching her throat. Her belongings were scattered behind her, as was her clothing; she stood to see her breasts, her belly, a smear of blood, the brown pit between her legs, which she touched, which she held.
She ordered coffee and, when it came, stared out of the window, neglecting to drink until it was a cold pool.
The third item on Margaret’s list was a visit to a gin facility a far way along the coast. Margaret liked gin, and had been advised to sample the local product and bring a bottle or two home. She ordered one of the orange taxis at the hotel reception, planning to complete her tour before lunchtime, and eat at a restaurant along the shore on the way home. There was a dish she had been told it was essential to try, a preserved deep-sea fish that was difficult to catch and therefore a delicacy, with a mix of fried, spicy vegetables.
During the tour, Margaret lagged behind the group and began to sweat all over; she veered to a bench to sit down and found her heart was galloping in sloshing punches. She brought her hand to her chest and her skin was slimy.
By the time the taxi drove back along the shore she could feel a lightening had occurred behind her eyes, as though the drug had moved through her. She selected a restaurant that was open and new with big signage, and the driver pulled across. As she waited for her order she asked for a cup of green tea which was served to her in a small ribbed cup. She figured these were pocketed more often than not, such was their fine texture.
Margaret was famished now, and she marvelled at the sheer logic of her body, the way it would carry her from one thing to the next, the elusive witness who had been in that room while she was trespassed over. She was now able to distinguish passages of action or distinct micro-sensations, though these fell away before she could grasp at a greater context. Perhaps, in time, these would filter through, and she would see her body slumped, receptive, beneath the man who had quickly become faceless. What came to her was the sense of having retreated to the furthest reaches of her body where there was some fumy, still cogent shelter, which at the end of her existence would be the course of her dying and this, in educating her, flayed her.
When her food came out she ate everything on her plate, realising that what she would have told brokenly to her lover she would now recount to the woman who had worked in this city; she would summon every detail of her falling, from the man’s hands in his pockets to the nonsense about his daughter urging him to date; to the negronis and the hookers on the dance floor, to the moistened warmth of his lips and her pitching against his body. She would be emboldened, it would happen all over again, it would be vivid and appalling on this woman’s face E
