The Jaguar Man by Lara Naughton

Author:Lara Naughton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942094210
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Published: 2016-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

My eyes are open all night. I stare at the ceiling. I stare at the wall. I lay in the dark feeling sick. I haven’t eaten, I can’t sleep, my heart is breaking, and I’m in shock. The night is long. The diver wakes up several times and puts his hands on my face, whispers for me to sleep. He tells me in his deep voice he loves me. I say I love him, too. We say it over and over. I close my eyes and open them again. The jaguar man is inside my closed eyes.

I drift through the night, time is vague, the darkness is a vacuum sucking the dust mites of my thoughts. I lay on my side facing the diver. I barely move. If I’m hot or cold I don’t notice. Hour by hour I float, puffs of wind shooing her in one direction, me in the other.

Then it’s morning. I need to go home but I don’t want to leave the diver. He says go, he’ll see me soon, don’t worry. He’ll apply again for a United States visa, it’s sure to be accepted this time. There’s no reason to deny the visa, but these are days of terrorists and closed borders, and even though he’s a gentle man of the sea, he’s still considered other. He promises to find a way to see me again, we’ll meet in a neutral country, but I need to go home.

My stomach aches as I drop things in my suitcase. Not everything, though. I leave my hat with the leather string cut off. I leave the flip-flops I was wearing. I leave incidental clothes and toiletries I’m too tired to pack. I close my suitcase and wait for the diver to return with a taxi. I ask him to please double check it’s a real taxi, get one with a driver he knows. He says don’t worry, he’ll ride with me, he has to go to work and he’ll drop me off at the airstrip on his way. This was supposed to be our day to go to his private caye, where he would fix moorings while I relaxed and swam. He’s still going to work. I don’t understand this choice. Isn’t what happened important enough to call off work?

My plane ticket says I’m leaving in eleven days. I can get a flight to Belize City from the tiny village but I don’t know if I can get a flight out of Belize City to Los Angeles today. I’d rather not be alone, but I don’t ask him to come with me. I don’t ask him for what I need. I don’t want to impose, and he didn’t offer. Plus, I don’t get the sense he’ll say yes and I can’t bear to hear no. I tell him I’ll be fine.

It’s 7:10 A.M. He puts my suitcase in the taxi and sits with me in the back. It takes three minutes to get to the airstrip, and there’s a twelve-passenger plane about to depart to the international airport in Belize City.

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