.10

She wore pearls in her ears. She was a Cancer.

The flash reproduced them as a glowing orb embedded in her ear lobe.

Her ears had probably been pierced at birth with a grandmother needle and very little blood and tears. He’d heard of these barbaric customs from the islands, and she was from the islands.

She wore the pearls like an extremity, like a benign tumor. She hardly noticed them. Like her teeth. She’d probably worn them all her life.

The forensics were moving in the hallway. He was alone with her.

The first thing he did was remove the pearls. Straightened her head to look forward at him (the fine hairs in the back still damp), and removed the pearls. He placed them in his shirt pocket.

Around her neck was a silver chain—two hearts dangling from it. A soft terra cotta color. The chain was purposeful. She’d probably put it on just after brushing her teeth and just before tying the towel around her left wrist. The way they fell on the floor, clinking in her ear, was the last sound she’d heard.

He undid the clasp and lifted her head (put his nose to her neck) and removed the necklace as well. He placed the necklace in his shirt pocket.

He would remake her.

He went to the porter, still shaken in the hallway, and gave him 300 euros and said, “Leave me alone with her. I will take care of the rest. Let no one come this way. When your manager arrives in the morning, I will be gone. The last thing you saw was the woman and the forensics.”

The porter bowed, took his euros and closed the door, “Si, Signore.”

.9

He was beginning to understand her.

She had placed herself there for him—or someone like him. She had known that he would come, that he would be here, surveying her. And she had staged it.

She taunted him with her late girlhood—the rosebud and shoes. Presented her sophistication—the white towel. And then, she ingeniously put up the ultimate electric fence. She completely removed herself. She made herself permanently unavailable while leaving her passport open on the bed.

It was a challenge. He had to admit.

She had made it difficult. He could, after the forensics left him in charge and the porter slinked off, slip down the pink undies to her knees. He could, but she would be absent. And he wanted conquest.

He put the journal down. Crossed into the bathroom. Looked at the closed eyelids. No mascara. No shadow.

The forensics finishing up with their brushes and papers and inks.

Vacating.

She had to give in.

.8

She had very clearly staged the whole affair. Gold and pink reflecting back up from the red-tile floor and her sunburnt skin. No one left their passport open on the bed and left everything else in the drawers and closets. She’d fully unpacked. She had been there over two weeks. The door was open. Inviting. And there was the musk and the gardenias and the brushed teeth and the shoes and the underwear, and, of course, the towel.

It was orchestrated. Down to the porter cringing in the corner and the full moon over the lake.

He was practically proud of her. It took enterprise and no shortage of guts and more than a little faith in fate. She’d practically thrown herself headlong into it. She planned it—ritualized her decision into a pattern, making her moves and her plays into intricate weavings and circlings—searching her mate and looking for a singular response. Dropping her crumbs.

.7

She was an animal.

From the bedroom door from where he stood with the journal, he could see her lower torso, pelvis and the tops of her thighs.

Despite that pill, (the half-empty pack was still on the shelf over the sink next to her wet toothbrush. She must have just brushed her teeth before tying her wrist). She could be impregnated.

He smelled her when he entered the room. Like compost. There was a biology about her. The way she had carefully left herself.

A supreme performance:

After brushing her teeth and before tying the towel, she had stripped and left on one article of clothing (if one did not count shoes and jewelry)—her underwear. White elastic grabbing her thighs and abdomen. Transparent (that was a nice touch)—her pubic hair (delta) cascading down and over her vulva under a soft screen of pink. On the elastic waist was the final touch, a rosebud.

She was a genius.