Somewhere Between Never and Now

Chapter 5: Continental Driftwood

I: Faith

Each day of the retreat began with an optional guided meditation. Zane didn't attend these and I wouldn't have either if not for Cooper's urgings. I preferred not to engage Cooper about it not because differing from him would have resulted in any acrimony, but because whatever I chose to do would likely include Cooper and the meditation was at least free of his voice. For the most part.

After the meditation, the attendees dispersed to writing work for a few hours and reconvened for lunch. Dinner was at eight o'clock, and was followed by a salon in which we shared work either by performing it or by hearing it read in Lauren's awkward little voice. The afternoon and early evening were spent writing or exploring, and I tried to do both at once.

Cartagena captivated me. I had not been to Colombia and my expectations were tempered. I understood the bloody recent past, the hazards in Bogota and especially Medellin, and the active civil conflict. I understood that despite the country's reputation as a tropical paradise, much of it was mountainous, its busiest cities were well inland, and it could be cool. But Cartagena was not like that. It hummed with a dry, summery heat. The people were friendly. The food was homey and uncompromising.. The coffee was terrible.

“So where are you off to today," Cooper asked me as we finished lunch.

“I don't quite know," I said. “The old city was wonderful yesterday. I may go there again. I've also heard a lot about Getsemani, that there's street art there. I might like to--"

“--Dreadful," Cooper said. “Drawing on walls. It's a very dangerous place, Getsemani. I wouldn't go there."

“Oh," I said. Nothing that Cooper didn't think of first seemed a good idea to him. And he so infrequently thought of anything at all first.

“The old city, then?" he said. “I'll join you!"

“Well, I was just going to hole up somewhere and write…"

“Oh, perfect, me too."

And so Cooper and I took a taxi to the old city. The driver let us off just at the walls, so we could, against Cooper's objections, explore as we made our way to a cafe or cantina.

“Whichever cantina you wish to go to, Faith, he can deliver us right there."

The fortress walls were mottled, anchor-like stones, lying atop one another for five hundred years gone and five hundred years to come. Scant, beveled windows revealed the Caribbean Sea and its resolute horizon, gold clouds, the rocky shore at the foreground.

Just beyond the walls the old city crammed itself into three or four blocks. We found a cobbled square surrounded by shops with awnings bright and varied as so many flags. We had beers in the gentle heat. Two boys with a boombox approached us and ignored Cooper as he tried in his effete manner to wave them away. They surrounded us and started rapping and from the boombox a circle of coarse beats bounded around the square. When they finished I told Cooper he had to tip them and he tipped them a little too much even before they angled for more.

“I don't have a word of Spanish - what were they saying?" Cooper asked.

“My Spanish isn't great and it was very fast, but it seemed mostly to be about sex."

“Well!" Cooper beamed.

“Not necessarily in a good way, as regards, um, you."

“I see! And I tipped them for this?"

We nursed our beers and I took my tablet and bluetooth keyboard out of my tote.

“So I noticed that you spoke with Zane Davis. I know him from ages ago. I would steer clear."

“He is quite confounding," I said.

“Indeed."

“Though: The bit about me at the retreat - he wrote it."

“Did he!" Cooper exclaimed. “I had assumed it was Walter."

“He confessed."

“Tripe and tommyrot nonetheless."

I didn't agree so I sat with my beer and prepared my devices for the writing I presumed would not happen. The hip-hop boys had moved to another table of tourists. Our server asked if we wanted to order something to eat and we did not. The sun crept around the high spire of a medieval church and lit the square. A man in suspenders came to our table with a tray of emeralds, some as large as Brazil nuts, and they shined for him in the sun. “No, gracias," I smiled.

“Because everything with him is a trick, a scam. He's a charlatan. A proper bad guy. I had my fill of him fifteen years ago."

“I'm finding that," I agreed. “The piece he wrote though. He even came within two letters of getting my best friend's name right."

“Parlour tricks are not what writers do. Writers write."

“Well, yes, but detailed attention and keen observation have a place in writing."

Cooper finished his beer down and scowled. “Don't be deceived by him, Faith."

I wanted to ask what had happened between Cooper and Zane. But I didn't want to hear Cooper tell a story, and I was not invested enough in either character for the story to hold my interest. So I imagined an encounter between a clever con-man and a sap nearly as guileless as Cooper. In my imagination, it ended quite funny. I tapped out a few words on my keyboard, turned the brim of my new Panama hat down, and angled my body slightly away from Cooper. Perhaps I would buy some emeralds.

“Because if part of your objective at this retreat is to find a new male friend…"

“Cooper, I'm not interested in Zane. At all."

“You have options."

“Walter???"

Cooper sighed and took out his journal and a pen. In the quiet we wrote for a while. And then Cooper explained the abundance of emeralds in Colombia, their quality, and then why the coffee was so bad. Then he said, “I should tell you what happened between him and me."

II: Zane

Before the retreat, I had in mind to work on the long novel I had been laboring over for years. It was very close to a place where it would be easy to finish. It is called “Continental Driftwood." A boy and his young sister, who is autistic and has an eidetic memory, run away from an abusive home and settle on an unknown island. Nearby, a storm destroys a ship and the famous novelist carrying in a trunk the only copy of his new masterpiece. The trunk washes up on shore and the boy and girl discover it. The girl has only this manuscript to read on the island. Two years later, it is worn and mostly destroyed. Except in the girl's mind: She has recalled it word for word, front to end. A team of filmmakers arrives on the island. One of them was close friends with the deceased novelist and recognizes the quotes, snatches, and bits of dialogue from the lost novel that the girl has made into songs. To rescue the novel and the girl would mean returning her and her brother to the abusive family.

And I had been writing that novel for 120,000 words. It's a can't-miss plot. I stared at the current chapter on the screen of my laptop. I closed it. I opened a new document. At the top, I wrote “Faith."