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WHAT SEX THE SKY?
by Neil Ayres

There�s a cloying warmth he enjoys: A humidity like a touchy-feely lover, one whose attentions you crave. That�s how the air is here. It wraps around every bare inch of flesh; pushes summer fingers up under shirts, down past the belt-line of shorts. It�s enough to bring anyone to a pre-sexual fervour. This is no place for a pink-skinned, pale-headed northerner. Luckily for Sam Pumogun, his ancestry�stretching back millennia to Sub-Continental exiles�has furnished him with tan-easy skin and a shag of black hair, dashed only barely by white and grey, heedless of his seventy-three years. His bushy beard is flecked sea salt-and-black pepper. There�s cinnamon in it too: auburn betrayals of the two recent generations that attempted to tame his forefathers� blood.

Sam sits on a white plastic chair at a white plastic table. If we were to sit opposite him we would be awed by the magnitude of the landscape beyond. He is sitting in the terraced garden of a bar hewn into the cliff-side twenty minutes drive north of Guadalest. The panorama behind him is white, beige, yellow and red rock, with a sun-blued sky as counterpoint, reflected off the Mediterranean.

A woman steps out from the dimly lit bar, shielding her eyes in response to the change in light. She looks down and fishes one-handed in her handbag for sunglasses. In her other hand there�s a something-and-coke. �Hola,� she says, after fixing her glasses in place. She raises a healthy, recently-sunkissed hand in greeting. We might estimate she is in her late thirties. In fact she is a well preserved forty-eight years of age.

Sam waves a brown brown brown hand back. His skin is the hue of a sea-fisherman�s.

The woman gestures at the view. �Esta muy�� she does not speak much Spanish and is struggling for a suitable adjective.

�Guapa,� Sam says, even though the sky is not feminine, or alive. �Yes. Si,� she agrees. �Guapa means pretty,� he explains, �Beautiful. Like you.�

The woman�s face looks cross for a moment, and then eases back into an expression of indifference. �Sorry, Spanish isn�t my strongest language,� she says, covering her mouth with a sip of her something-and-coke.

Sam has guessed correctly that the something is vodka. �Nor mine,� he says, �but I�m getting better.� And he flashes a crooked-tooth grin before turning to look at the sky. �I look at it every morning, noon and night, yet I don�t look at it enough.�

The woman is not sure whether this statement is intended for her or for someone not present. She takes another sip of her drink and then asks, �Do you live near here?�

�No, no, I�m staying in Guadalest with a friend, helping lay a floor. I live on the coast. I�ve just come up here for a break.�

The woman takes the seat opposite him, the one we imagined ourselves seated in a moment ago. Sam and the woman are seated at a slight angle to one another. She faces the precipice and the sky, he the ivy-creepered shack that is the outdoor toilet.

�And you?�

�Some time alone,� the woman says, and before she can change her mind she adds, �Perhaps a mid-life crisis.�

Sam doesn�t laugh but says, �Ha,� as if once he would have laughed but now he�s past finding such revelations amusing. �You know only people who have never stopped to look at the view every morning, noon and night believe in such things.�

�How do you mean?� She has drunk over half her drink, though it appears less as the ice has melted. A lemon slice bobs at the surface as she swishes a cocktail stirrer.

Sam scratches his beard, apparently idly, but it�s a practised movement. �A mid-life crisis is the point when you stop bottling things up and admit you�re the same confused kid you always were, same as everyone else is; it�s when you look at the sky and realise it�s genderless. It ends when you accept these truths aren�t going to get you anywhere. Of course it doesn�t really end. Nor is it easy to define when it began. It�s what novels are for, why they succeed where pictures and music failed. All the best books are like intensified, yet over-extended mid-life crises. It�s such an inadequate term, don�t you think?�

The woman has placed her open handbag atop the seat of one of the vacant chairs. Sam has spotted a book peaking out the top of it. A translation of a French novel set in London, a book about coincidences: Two French women meet on a tube when it is delayed by a suicide. One of the women was on her way to have an abortion because her boyfriend doesn�t want children. The other woman agrees to go with her. There�s an Asian man who keeps popping up and a chance meeting in a bookshop. Maybe it will end the same way it began, only with the women�s roles reversed. The woman opposite Sam suspects this but cannot know for sure as she hasn�t finished reading it. She smiles bitterly. �In a book by a man I suppose a na�ve-but-beautiful middle-aged woman with too much time on her hands can run away to Spain to be patronised by a middle-aged would-be-Kundera. What�s wrong with you, you think you�re the only person to ever have such thoughts? You think you�re the only one who�s ever looked at the sky?�

�Most enlightening.� Sam is unruffled; he extends his open brown brown brown hand. �Sam Pumogun,� he says.

The woman pouts and ignores his proffered paw. �Natalie,� she says, before downing the rest of her V&C.; �Buy me another drink and I�ll enlighten you some more.�

Sam orders a San Miguel and a vodka and coke for Natalie. As the barman slices lemon for the drink Sam looks at the pictures on the wall. They are of boxing matches. There are several trophies behind the bar, and on the walls, interspersed with the mostly black-and-white photographs, are related cartoons, and an occasional certificate.

Sam�s glass bottle is refreshingly cold. He sips the lager whilst watered-down cola is sprayed into Natalie�s tall glass from the soft drink tap.

Back on the terrace Natalie is taking pictures of the place. Not just of the view, but of the table and chairs; of the board advertising ice creams with half the prices left blank where the products are not in stock; the brick-built toilet; a lizard at a crack in the ivy-creepered wall.

Sam places the drinks on the table. He is disappointed when Natalie fails to offer to take a picture of him. She thanks him for the drink and puts the camera back in her bag, next to the book we noticed earlier.

Sam realises he would like to know the colour of her eyes, but they are hidden behind the sunglasses she is wearing, which she bought duty free at the last minute from the airport. �How long are you staying?� he asks.

�Maybe another month. It depends.

�Where is everybody? This place was packed the other night.�

�It�s siesta time.�

The barman has turned on the music system. A wooden speaker by the brick toilet whistles out the left-side stereo of La Bamba, perhaps because the barman knows his customers are likely to recognise the song.

�Did you see the Flamenco when you were here the other night?� Sam has started to tap his hands along to the beat of the music.

�Yes, it was� all right.�

Sam�s drumming is making a popping sound on the white plastic of the table. �What, you didn�t like it?�

Natalie lowers her gaze to his hands, then past him to the view. �To be honest, it was what it was. Amateurish fun. I�ve seen the real thing in Catalonia.�

Sam does laugh this time. He stops drumming and shows his yellowed teeth and scratches his beard in that certain way.

�What?� Natalie takes a nervous sip of her drink.

�The real thing? Are you a dancer?�

�As a matter of fact��

�And the Flamenco you saw, in Catalonia, it was on a stage; and you were in the audience, seated, silent, with a hundred similar observers?�

Natalie can see where he�s going with this. It makes her feel patronised again.

�That�s the opposite of the real thing. That�s like�� Sam shuffles his fingers in a psychosomatic effort at helping himself think of a suitable comparison, ��That�s like bloody Riverdance.� He leans back and swigs his lager in triumph, happy to have made his point.

�Precisely, it�s likeRiverdance. It�s professional.� Natalie is looking straight at him now, but the defiance is wasted behind her glasses.

�It�s professional spectacle!� There�s a cool silence in the sexual heat. Sam thinks from the look he is being given, she was probably in Riverdance. He can feel sweat in the small of his back. �We should swap seats,� he says. �You�ll get your shoulders burnt sitting there.�

Natalie stands and collects her bag. �Forget it,� she counters, �I�m going.

He watches her leave, feminine verve in khaki shorts and a vest-top. He hums La Bamba to himself, though the song has ended. Then he moves into her seat and looks at the sky.

� Neil Ayres
Reproduced with permission

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SELECTED LINKS:

Profile of Neil on Whispers of Wickedness website * Speak to Neil on the TTA Press Discussion Forum * Neil's Portfolio on the BBC Get Writing Website * Neil's review of 'The Bestowing Sun' from Fragment magazine * Neil's review of Whispers of Wickedness Spring 2004 Issue * Neil's story, 'Liver Cake,' from Whispers of Wickedness * Read Neil's story, 'The Angel and the Barghest' on Dusksite

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