Traveling Sola

Knee-length cargo pants and t-shirts clung casually to her supple limbs and torso as if she

accidentally had rolled inside them while sleeping. As she strolled down the stone walkways of

colonial cities and explored worn jungle trails and tourist havens, brown sandals and hooded

sweatshirts acted as androgynous cloaks, betrayed only by her blond pigtails and girlish face.

    The stale sacks were discarded at the beach and the rest of her girlishness was

revealed. She wore a white bikini that let her cream colored skin kiss the sun and sand. Her

curves were gentle and slight, and her small hands and feet lent her a delicate femininity, even

while her garish humor tried to deflect the allusion.

    Only subtle lines on her forehead and eyes suggested a face older than twenty-five.

She smiled easily and her teeth gleamed whiter than eggs with a tiny gap between the two in

front. Sometimes her lips held a cigarette, which she stepped away for several times a day.

She was courageous in approaching strangers, men included. They were kept at bay

with an ode to pooping, normally uttered after a few drinks, on what otherwise might have been

romantic midsummer night walks back to the hostel.

    For those more ambitious souls, without squeamish imaginations, she kept a cocked

elbow and a tense unresponsive torso at the ready. Even drunken passes were bounced from

her like failed layups thudded against a backboard.  She didn’t mind traveling un-showered for days and strapped some thick-rimmed glasses on for extra effect, yet she sometimes changed her mind.  Switching from Puck to perfumed Vixen wasn’t an easy metamorphosis. Yet when she met a man who didn’t seem to flinch or pursue, despite her juxtaposed disposition of charm and vulgarity, she was intrigued.

    She played the damsel using spiders as her puppet nemesis. Shaking her head at an

oblong angle, as if trying to drain her ear after a swim, she twisted her face in a faux-fearful

mask made more for a child’s tale, and repeated, "no spiders please!"

    To her traveling companion the ostensible display sent an incredulous chill through the

space between them. A more authentic outburst of anger over wet clothes and unpacked

suitcases refreshed the bond a few days later. When she was too tired to help row the kayak,

and then afraid to descend the thirty-meter rope from the top of the tree, she wasn’t pretending

anymore.

    She never did see spiders and probably wouldn’t have been afraid of them, but in the

end it didn’t matter. The new companion was delicately placed between her two former

boyfriends, the one that aimed his pupils like fishing nets from across the room, and the one

who cheated on her with the television.

    In chalky air swept up from airplane propellers she dashed across another border

leaving only a phone number. After the plane landed she exited the airport, shooting coy

glances over her shoulder.