Chapter 37

The embers of the fire burned low. 

Samantha sat, her chin resting on her knees, her feet buried in the still warm sand.  The kerosene lamps burned inside the shack casting shadows across the sand to Burt who sat cross legged, picking the last morsels of flesh from the feast’s carcass.  ‘Nope… never had a taste of a rainbow… actually, can’t believe after all these years, never tasted it.  Good.  Real good.” 

Samantha’s eyes stayed fixed on the photo lying beside her.  “I’m glad you liked it, Burt.  Makes the girls happy to see their cooking appreciated.”

“Well…” Burt turned around and looked back at the shack and the four girls looking out the window toward them.  He waved, “…they know what to do with a meal, that’s for sure.  For sure.”  Burt wiped his mouth with the carefully folded newspaper that served as his napkin.  Smiling, he said “they’re really poor, huh?”

Samantha glanced up at Burt, to the girls, and back to Burt. “Richer than you or I will ever be.”

Burt smiled again. “Yeah.”

“What do you mean, ‘yeah’, Burt?”

“Just that,” Burt said awkwardly, the echo of his own word banging him on the side of the head.  ‘You know, I understand what you mean.”

Samantha looked down at the picture again.  “We all like to say the right thing, but a lot of the time we don’t really believe what we say.”

“What I meant was…” answered Burt.

“Not necessary, Burt.  I know you mean well.  They know you mean well.  They know I mean well.  But, they know something else, too.  They know I we can never understand this kind of life like they can.”  She gestured out to sea.  “Salvador, out there in his little boat, drops anchor every night… sits while the nets and his pole dangle off the side.  He sleeps sometimes out there, not returning before first light.  He won’t come back in without enough fish for the next day.  Antonio with his jewelry brings home the cash to buy what they can’t make or catch.  The girls study from old books they’ve found or Antonio has found discarded on the beach, and… and they cook and sew and keep the family together no matter how tough things get.”

Burt nodded.  After a moment he looked over at her and asked, “Don’t think me rude, Miss Turner, but you’ve been here a long time, and… well, a… isn’t it hard?”

Samantha smiled. “Hard?  It was hard in the beginning when I had to get used to them refusing any money from me.  It was hard when I knew they needed certain things and they wouldn’t let me get them.  It was really hard when I began to enjoy the living here and couldn’t say enough to convince them I wasn’t going to leave.  That was really hard.”

Burt waited a moment, then, “ So it’s going to be super hard when you do leave?  Is that what you’re thinking”

“No, Burt.  That’s not what I’m thinking.  I’m not leaving.  Guess I should make that call to New York before it gets too late.”

Burt didn’t move.  The words “I’m not leaving” were so out of his realm of reality, his take on celebrity, that if he thought himself awkward in her presence up till now, ‘awkward’ certainly wasn’t the word for this moment. 

“The phone, Burt.  Ari wanted me to call him about the picture?”

“Oh,” said Burt, his hands fumbling for the phone. “Yes.”

As she dialed, she lifted the picture.  “What do you think of the picture, Burt?”

“Oh, nice.  It’s a nice picture.”

As she dialed, she glanced once again at the black and white images.  “Yes.  It is nice, isn’t it.” 

***

“Ari?” came the sound that would have been received on most days like any other phone call.  But this day that was all but gone – insomniacs excepted – found Ari pacing his bank of windows with tape measure in hand, jotting down dimensions for new coverings.  The speaker phone base station for his cell phone was all the way at the far end of his loft, making the voice echo.  Again, “Ari?  Are you around?  This is…”

Ari was already there before the sentence could be finished.  “Yes…yes, I’m here,” as he knocked over a table lamp.

“Sounds like I woke you?”

“No,” Ari assured her, “Just clumsy me… working.”

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you, but…”

“No, you’re not disturbing me.  How are you?”

“I’m doing quite well.  Burt and I have had a hell of time tonight,” she laughed and then caught herself.  “Oh, I mean, me trying to be what he expected to find, and him trying to be the best messenger and fan he can.”

Ari chuckled, “Yes, well, Burt is a good guy trying to always be better.”

“Yes, he is,” opined Sam, “especially when it comes to helping you.”

“Oh, oh, that sounds like I’m in trouble.”

“I don’t know,” said Sam, “Are you?”

Ari paused.  “Yeah.  Indirectly.”

“Okay.  Want to move away from your abstract nature and straight arrow me?” Sam offered.

Her voice was firm once again, but not without the little girl quality that had so endeared her to Ari’s newly remembered authentic-self.  It was so much easier being Ari, the photographer, artist, and for the past few months, Harrison’s assumed answer to the future of the Profile.  To just be Ari the frightened man of too many years’ experience with life, the man who had never fully realized his childhood because responsibilities had come early… that Ari was being asked to answer.  

“Straight arrow, huh?  Have you no mercy?”

Sam glanced up the beach at Burt who was helping Francesca lay out the mats that served as the beach mattresses on warm nights. “Sending Burt down here with a cell phone to call you must be serious.  You’re in trouble?  What kind?”

“It’s about the snap shot.”

“The snap shot?  Okay.  I’m listening.  How could that get you in trouble?”

 “Can I ask you a question first, Sam?” said Ari, his tone returning to the quiet and caring sound that Sam had allowed to penetrate areas of her secrets that no one had ever been granted before.

“Of course,” said Sam, her own voice now settling into that space that had been realized only through Ari.

Ari gazed out over the snowy roof tops of the adjacent buildings.  The background of dark, mostly unlit skyscrapers of the financial district reminded him of the shadowed canyons of his own island existence.  Like the city, his days were made up of warm and cold impressions, allowed to sleep with the darkness of night and reawaken to days of added new thoughts, new dreams and mostly, new remembrances of the authentic Ari.  And like Manhattan’s surrounding waters, he too was surrounded by currents of energy that would have him cater to them, bow to them, succumb to them... and forget again.

“Sam, you were never more…”  Ari paused.

“More what?” Sam quietly spoke.

“More beautiful, more loving, more you than in that snapshot.”

Now it was Sam’s turn to pause.  Her eyes welled up.  Another glance toward the shack was now blurring the image of cooling red embers dimly lighting Burt helping the children as they each bedded down. “You’re the only person I shared that with.”

“Why me?”

“I knew you’d understand.”

“I didn’t at first.”

“What happened?” asked Sam.

“A trip upstate to my home town.”

“And then?”

“And then I met myself again and realized we might have had the same kind of discovery.”

“Which was?” continued Sam.

“Oh boy,” whispered Ari to himself as he stared at the snapshot before him.  “Sam… I think there’s something bigger than both us at stake right now.  I want to believe this picture can…”

 Ari’s eyes closed and he realized he was in a very still state, only short inner breaths keeping him conscious for the moment. “I believe your picture with these gentle children faces can change lives.  I want to believe that.  I want to risk your trust by letting me give this picture to Harrington.  He thinks I can save his magazine, Sam, but this is what can save it.  Those readers out there are wanting something real, and in the past they’ve been getting from the Profile and all the rest of the weeklies only what tradition and habit dictated.  This is not what they are expecting on the cover, especially after all of my fantasmic layered images submitted to them.  This is empowerment, Sam, empowerment that is your greatest gift to your public and maybe yourself.  This is a part of you that every conscious human being longs for.  They will vicariously buy the magazine and hopefully transcend that expectation and realize they’re looking at not just an artist on the stage and screen, but there before them is a living artist woman, a matriarch, a human being just like them.  They are at last looking at the authentic Mrs. Quinlan… the special person known to only two of us as Sam.”

Sam started walking back up the beach toward the shack.  She wasn’t sure how she felt right now.  Part of her felt violated by Ari’s words, part of her felt more loved than she had ever experienced.  “That picture was just for you, Ari.”

“I know, Sam.”

“So why do you ask such things of me?”

“Only you know the answer.”

Sam lowered the phone and clicked it off.  As she walked, her eyes moved to the faint glow of the kerosene lamp aboard Salvador’s little fishing boat off shore.  Ahead of her, the children continued to bed down for the night.  Little Juanita, a few yards away from her mat, knelt at her favorite rock for her nightly quiet time with God.  Above her, the moon-filled open sky was clear.  In the distance, an airliner could be seen shimmering in the moonlight heading east.  As she reached the cooling embers of the fire, the children all greeted her with their goodnights and sleep-tights and don’t let the bedbugs bite.  She tucked them in and turned to Burt who was sitting in the sand in front of the shack, his head leaned back, his eyes focused on the sky.  She walked over and sat down next to him, joining him in his gaze at the stars.  They sat for a long while without speaking, then Sam broke the silence with a whisper.  “You’re quite a messenger, Burt.  Quite a messenger.”