HIDE

EPISODE 2 (The Past.) - A DAY WITH ELIOT

Early the next day, Eliot had told my dad that he wanted to spend time with us, which my dad gladly agreed to. After lunch, everybody lounged about in their bathing suits inside and outside the house, bodies tumbled everywhere. We all felt lazy, but I yearned for the comfort of my mum, who I hadn't seen all day. Eliot finally suggested we head down to the rocks for a swim. So many of us rushed to the rocks, enjoying the sight of nature and the beautiful sea.

I can't remember when I started trusting Eliot. Perhaps it started on the beach. Or at the tennis court. Or during our first walk together on his very first day when I was asked to show him the house and its surrounding area and, one thing leading to the other, managed to take him past the ancient forged-iron metal gate as far back as the endless empty lot in the backcountry toward the abandoned post office that was once home to so many letters but had shutdown.

“Is there another functioning post office?” he asked, looking through the trees under the scalding sun, probably trying to ask the right question of the owner's son.

“Yes, they are. That is how we receive the letters you and others send.”

“Of course, how silly of me?” He smiled.

He was curious about the train; the rails seemed so narrow. It was a two-wagon train bearing the State's emblem, I explained. There were rumours that the dead lived in it now. Since the train station had equally shut down. They'd been living there ever since my mother gave birth to me here at a younger age. The ghosts had hauled the two derailed trains farther inland.

Did he want to see them? “Later. Maybe.” Polite indifference, as if he'd spotted my misplaced zeal to play up to him and was summarily pushing me away. But it stung me. Instead, he said he wanted to open an account in one of the banks in town., then pay a visit to one of his business partners whom he has worked with for as long as he could remember. I begged him to take me with him. The house was boring and I hardly got out. We went there by bike. He said that it was always nice to enjoy nature sometimes and help preserve it, rather than using cars that polluted the air all the time. The conversation was no better on wheels than on foot. Along the way, we stopped for something to drink. The café was totally dark and empty. The owner was mopping the floor with a powerful antiseptic solution. We stepped outside as soon as we could. A lonely seahawk, sitting in a Mediterranean pine, hawked a few notes that were immediately drowned out by the rattle of the sea cascading. He took a long gulp from a large bottle of coke, passed it to me, then drank from it again. He spilt some sunscreen on my hand and rubbed my face with it, running his fingers through my hair.

“I don't want you getting burned,” he said with a wink.

I liked him because he cared about me. No one except my mother had cared that much about me. The breeze was old and raining on us, giving a clue that it would rain later.

“What did one do around here?”

“Nothing. Wait for summer to end.”

“What did one do in the winter, then?”

I smiled at the answer I was about to give.

He got the gist and said, “Don't tell me: wait for summer to come, right?”

I liked having my mind read. He'd pick up on dinner drudgery sooner than those before him.

“Actually, in the winter, the place gets very grey and dark. We come for Christmas. Otherwise, it's a ghost town.”

“And what else do you do here at Christmas besides roast chestnuts and drink soda?”

He was teasing. I offered the same smile as before. He understood, said nothing, we laughed. He asked what I did. I played tennis. Swam. Jogged. Read. Learned the family business.

He said he jogged too. Early in the morning. Where did one jog around here?

Along the alley, mostly. I could show him if he wanted. It hit me in the face just when I was starting to like him again: “Later, maybe.”

I had put reading last on my list, thinking that, with the willful, brazen attitude he'd displayed so far, reading would be the least to interest him. A few hours later, when I remembered that he was a man fascinated by anything business and intelligence, it occurred to me that he must have studied hard to get to that level. At that point, I hit my chest that I'll do the same just to make him happy and proud of me. That was something I shouldn't have gotten myself into. He was a total stranger and yet, I felt close enough to him.

It was the unwelcome scepticism with which it finally dawned on me, both then and during our casual conversation by the train tracks, that I had all along, without seeming to, without even admitting it, already been trying—and failing—to win him over. When I did offer—because all visitors loved the idea—to take him to Villa Hulo and walk up to the very top of the skyscraper we nicknamed End-of-the-world, I should have known better than to just stand there without a comeback. I thought I'd bring him around simply by taking him up there and letting him take in the view of the town, the sea, eternity. But no. Later! But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don't really see him, he's in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing “catches,” and before you're even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, he had done more harm than good to you, simply for trusting him and being so innocent. Yet, you don't realize it until you come of age and start understanding the reality of things.

I knew that when he would leave, I would basically be scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what I have been taught against. Yet, forced to an 'experience of growth by him'. How couldn't I have known, you ask? I didn't know desire when I see it—and yet, this time, it slipped by completely. Taking me unawares. I was going for the tricky smile that would suddenly light up his face each time he'd read my mind, when all I really wanted was to be seen and appreciated by him.