12 #2
Ayesha, in her breezy dress and leather flip-flops, strolled by at just the right time, defusing a bomb that might have gone
off in Jules’s hands.
“Hey!” Ayesha called out. “Want to check out the writing studio? It’s not part of the guided tour. We’ve got to do it on our
own.”
“Let’s do it,” Jules said, convinced Ayesha was the only serious adult on this trip.
“Go ahead. I’ll catch up,” Vicky said. “I want a video of this adorable furball.”
The same furball who would’ve scratched Jules’s cornea, given the chance.
“I don’t get the obsession with the cats,” Ayesha whispered as they walked away. “People are going wild over them. Am I missing
something? A six-toed cat isn’t all that rare.”
They made their way around the main house, past the urinal Ernest had brought home from the original Sloppy Joe’s which Pauline
had turned into a water feature, and moved toward the stand-alone studio loft. Jules clocked a sandy-brown cat eyeing her
from the communal litter box. She put her question to Ayesha. “Do you think cats have a sixth sense?”
“Absolutely,” she answered. “They see things we can’t.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Jules stayed close to Ayesha. They climbed the A-frame stairs to the loft, but they could only peer in through the bars of
an iron gate. A regal typewriter sat on a dark wood table. They admired the rattan furniture, the bookcases, the simple framed
art, and various artifacts brought home from Hemingway’s travels. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Hemingway hideout without
the head of a dead animal mounted onto the wall.
“Fuck, I love it,” Jules said in a breath.
Ayesha went silent a minute then asked, “Is she still cross with me?”
Jules assumed she meant Vicky. “No, it’s like you say. She’s wild about the cats. She isn’t avoiding you, if that’s what you
think.”
“I think I’ve intruded on your personal holiday.”
“No way,” Jules said. “It was good hanging out with you.”
“Don’t lie to spare my feelings. You two never liked me.”
This again, the old “roommate shit,” to quote Sebastien. Rather than sweep it under a rug as roommates often did, Jules felt compelled to air it out. This was Key West, after all. The land of unburied secrets. “We liked you fine,” Jules said. “But you thought you were better than us.”
“What if I am?” Ayesha asked, brows arched high, leaving Jules to struggle with the question.
And what if she was? Jules asked herself. Couldn’t her brittle ego take it? She’d had mentors in the past, women she admired
for their force of will and intellect. Couldn’t Ayesha have been one of them?
“I only wanted to be friends,” Ayesha admitted. “You two were cooler than I could ever hope to be, more confident, more fun.
Popular on campus. Invited to all the parties. I was disciplined and focused, but you were better than me in so many ways.”
“I was jealous,” Jules admitted.
“Why? What did I have that you didn’t?” Ayesha asked, incredulous.
“A family,” she answered. “The day you moved in, ten cousins rallied to assemble your Ikea bedroom set. The day you moved
out, another cousin cleared your room, handled everything. He said you hated us, by the way.”
“That idiot!”
“It’s okay,” Jules said. “My point is, I envied the love and support you had at your fingertips. I’d lost my mother the year
before.”
“I remember,” Ayesha said.
“I’m also estranged from my extended family.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Jules shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sure it does,” Ayesha said.
“And you’re a far better writer than us,” Jules added, steering the ship to shallow waters. “That’s the last time you’ll hear
me say it.”
Ayesha offered a sad smile. “What a waste!”
Jules agreed. They’d wasted years squabbling when each had exactly what the other needed. For the second time within a half
hour, she found herself locked in a woman’s embrace. She hugged Ayesha back.
“Promise we’ll keep in touch after this wild weekend is over,” Ayesha whispered.
“Who knows?” Jules said. “We may be trapped here forever. We may never leave.”
“Please don’t say that!” Ayesha whimpered. “I miss home.”
Vicky joined them soon enough, grimacing as she climbed the stairs. “Couldn’t Hemingway have installed an elevator?”
In her cork platform sandals, the climb was more strenuous than it needed to be.
“Pauline would’ve had to install it,” Ayesha said. “Ernest was too busy pissing his money away at the bar.”
“This is some setup,” Vicky said when she reached the top.
Ayesha agreed. “It’s fantastic.”
“The man had the right idea,” Jules said, wistful. “Find someone to bankroll your dreams. What I’d give for a space like this.”
“No book advance can buy you paradise,” Vicky said. “That’s for sure.”
“Remember when we sat at our wobbly dining table to catch up on writing?” Ayesha asked.
“I struggled years to afford my one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn,” Jules said, “and I still write on a wobbly dining table.”
“You three up there!” Sebastien called to them from the garden below. “Look here!”
They swiveled around and found him aiming a camera lens at them. He snapped the photo commemorating the moment when from the
threshold of Hemingway’s studio, Jules, Vicky, and Ayesha bid a farewell to arms of another kind and started again as allies
and friends.
Leo was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, offering a hand. Why did he have to be so attentive, so overly solicitous? She couldn’t stand it. And yet she took his hand and let him guide her away from the others.
“The Royal typewriter is a beauty. Did you see it?” he asked.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said. “Do you think they’ll encase your MacBook in glass for future generations to admire?”
“I use a word processor that I picked up on eBay for fifty bucks. It’s a worthless piece of shit, glitches often, but hasn’t
let me down yet.”
“Wait,” Jules said. “Those old-school processors with the tiny screens that show one paragraph at a time?”
“I like it that way. It’s good for a first draft. You can’t delete what you can’t see.” In a now familiar gesture, he reached
for his nicotine gum. “How about you?”
“First draft? Pen and paper, baby.”
“Who’s old-school now?” he said.
A black cat scurried across the lawn, careful to avoid her. Jules shivered. “Those damn cats hate me,” she said. “They love
Vicky, though.”
“Vicky is easy to love.”
“What does that mean?” Jules snapped.
“She’s warm and fuzzy.”
A poisoned arrow landed in her heart. “And I’m not?”
“You’re hot, but not warm or fuzzy.”
That was exactly how she wanted to be perceived, and yet it upset her. As perceptive as he was, couldn’t he see through her
facade? What was he thinking? That she was difficult to love? Incapable of it? That having received it, she wouldn’t know
what to do with it? That she would hand it back?
He glanced up at the house and took in the Spanish colonial design carved of native limestone. “What’s your take on Hemingway?”
he asked.
Jules took a breath. “I don’t know why I was such a hater. He had it all figured out. His books will endure, whereas mine will end up lining his cats’ litter boxes.”
“Would you want all this?” he asked. “Minus the cats.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“I’m asking you.”
“I just bought an apartment.”
“I’m asking you to dream, July.”
She forgot her mother and her mortgage. She ignored the cats. Instead, she focused on his voice and let it guide her out of
her cluttered mind so that she could find space to dream.
“I would,” she admitted. “It’s perfect. What more could you ask for?”
“Agreed,” he said. “I didn’t expect to like Key West as much as I do.”
How lucky for him! To enjoy the adult playground as it was intended to be enjoyed, as opposed to whatever it was that she
was doing.
He took her hand and swiped his thumb over the fresh scratch. “How did you get this?”
“I told you. The cats hate me.”
“A cat did this to you?” he asked, alarmed.
“Never mind. I’m fine.”
He inspected the cut closely before moving on. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
Jules didn’t want to think about the future, even the very near future. She wanted to stand here, next to the shooting bamboo
trees, and dream with him.
“Our lectures,” he said. “It’s just you and me tomorrow evening. I couldn’t have planned it any better.”
He framed it as if it were a date, and not a live presentation with about eighty individuals in attendance.
Jules thought of Ayesha urging them to bring their A game and the hasty revisions she’d made to her talk on the plane.
“Not really,” she said. “I should work on mine. I can’t coast on charm like you do. ”
“Stick with me,” he said with a wink. “I’ll teach you things.”
“Ten minutes everyone!” Daphne cried in her best teacher-on-a-field-trip tone of voice. “Then time for lunch!”
While Vicky, Ayesha, and the others cleaned out the gift shop, buying special Key West editions of Hemingway’s titles, souvenir
mugs, postcards, and refrigerator magnets, Jules and Leo stood rooted in place. It was noon. The sun was high. Jules was thirsty,
and weary of fighting her true nature.
Every cat needs a toy.
She met his eyes. “What can you teach me? I’m curious.”
A hint of a mischievous smile. He took her hand and brushed his lips over the barely visible scratch. “Sorry,” he said. “There
are children present.”
“Are there?”
Jules blinked and suddenly the world around them burst with activity. A large group of kids in colorful matching T-shirts
swarmed the grounds. In every corner, a visitor aimed a camera at cats. A new tour had begun inside the house. New arrivals
crowded the ticket kiosk. It wasn’t just the two of them standing among the trees. She would’ve never known it.