Bougainville Summer

The first time I saw Max, he was buying a mango.

Not the polite, pre-packaged ones in the supermarket, shrink-wrapped and sad. He was at the roadside market near Boroko, the one where the old women sit on plastic crates and fan flies off the bananas. I was supposed to be picking up fish for Charles. He wanted barramundi, grilled with lemon, and he'd told me three times not to come home with the frozen kind.

I was late. The sun was already punishing the pavement. My blouse stuck to my lower back.

Max stood at a fruit stall with his back to me. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and the muscles in his forearms shifted as he lifted a mango, turned it in his palm, held it to his nose. Not smelling it. Something else. Studying it like a man who respected what he was about to consume.

The vendor, a small woman named Grace I'd bought from for years, said something I couldn't hear. He laughed. A low, easy sound that cut through the traffic noise. He said something back in Tok Pisin, and Grace laughed too, showing the gap in her teeth.

I stood there like a fool, holding my empty string bag.

He turned. His eyes found mine before I could look away. Dark, deep-set, creased at the corners. He smiled. Not a smirk. Not a leer. A smile that said he'd been caught doing something harmless and didn't mind being caught.

"Sorry," I said. The word came out too fast. I pointed at nothing. "I was just. The mangoes. They look good."

He picked one up, held it out to me. "This one's perfect. Feel the weight."

I took it. The skin was warm from the sun. Smooth. I didn't know what I was supposed to feel.

"Too many people grab the first one they see," he said. "They don't check the stem. They don't give it a gentle squeeze. They end up with something fibrous and disappointing."

I looked at the mango in my hand. I looked at him.

"I'm Max," he said.

"Hilda."

"Hilda," he repeated, like he was tasting the word. "You look like someone who deserves a good mango, Hilda."

I laughed. It surprised me. A real laugh, not the polite one I used with Charles's colleagues at dinner parties.

Grace wrapped two mangoes for me, and I paid her. Max had already paid for his. He didn't offer to pay for mine. I noticed that. He wasn't trying to buy anything.

I walked back to the car with the fish still unminded. Charles would have to eat chicken tonight.

---

I didn't see him again for three weeks.

Then I was at the Holiday Inn for my cousin's engagement party. A Saturday afternoon affair with too much chicken and a DJ who kept playing the same lagu songs. Charles was beside me, nursing a beer he'd been nursing for an hour, his smile fixed in place like a mask that didn't quite fit.

"You're quiet," he said, not looking at me.

"I'm fine."

"You always say you're fine."

"Because I am fine."

He turned to me then, his eyes scanning my face like he was looking for evidence of a crime. "You're not happy."

"I'm fine, Charles."

He nodded slowly. The way he nodded when he was storing something away for later. A note in a file. A weapon for the next time he needed one.

I excused myself to the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror and gripped the sink and told myself to breathe.

When I came out, Max was leaning against the wall by the fire exit.

He wore a dark blue shirt, open at the collar. Silver at his temples. The same easy smile.

"Engagement party?" he said.

"Cousin's."

"Yours?"

"Married."

He didn't look disappointed. He looked like he already knew. "And your husband? Is he inside enjoying the chicken and the terrible music?"

"He's inside enjoying the beer and the resentment."

Max laughed. Not loud. Just enough. "Come walk with me."

"I can't."

"Just to the garden. Five minutes. Your husband won't miss you."

I looked back at the door. Through the glass, I could see Charles talking to my uncle, his hand gesturing in that way he had, the way that made people think he was warm and engaging. He was probably telling a story about how hard he worked, how much he sacrificed, how his wife didn't appreciate him.

I turned and followed Max.

---

The garden was empty. A few plastic tables with umbrellas. Bougainvillea climbing the wall, bright and desperate. The air smelled like frangipani and cigarette smoke from somewhere.

Max sat on a bench. I sat beside him. Not close. Not far.

"You looked like you needed air," he said.

"Is that your line? Rescue women from bad parties?"

"It's not a line. It's an observation." He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, held it up. "Do you mind?"

"I don't smoke."

"I do. Bad habit from Bougainville. Too many long nights in the jungle, nothing to do but think and burn things."

"You're from Bougainville?"

"Born and raised. Left when I was twenty. Came back for the referendum. Left again when the dust settled." He lit the cigarette, took a drag, exhaled. "Now I travel for work. Mining equipment. I sell things that dig holes in the ground."

"And you buy mangoes."

"Among other things."

He looked at me. Not the way men look at women they want to sleep with. The way men look at women they want to understand. It was worse. It made me want to be understood.

"What do you do, Hilda?"

"I'm a wife."

"That's a job. What do you do?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it. No one had ever asked me that. Charles asked me what I'd cooked, what I'd cleaned, what I'd bought. He never asked what I did.

"I read," I said. "I think. I walk to the market and I watch people. I imagine their lives."

"And what do you imagine?"

"That they're happier than me."

Max didn't say anything. He just nodded. He finished his cigarette, stubbed it out on the concrete, tucked the butt into his pocket. A man who didn't leave his mess for someone else.

"I'm at the Crowne Plaza for the next two weeks," he said. "Room 412."

I didn't answer.

"I'm not asking you to come," he said. "I'm telling you where I am. In case you ever need air."

He stood, adjusted his shirt, and walked back inside.

I sat in the garden until the sky turned pink. Charles found me eventually. He stood in the doorway, his silhouette stiff.

"You've been gone forty minutes."

"I needed air."

"You always need air."

He turned and walked back in. I followed.

---

Three days later, I knocked on room 412.

Max opened the door in a white shirt, unbuttoned, barefoot. He didn't look surprised. He looked like he'd been waiting.

I didn't say anything. I stepped inside. The door closed behind me.

His hands found my waist. Gentle. Like he was checking the weight of a mango.

"I don't know what I'm doing," I said.

"You're breathing," he said. "That's enough for now."

He kissed me. Soft. Slow. The kind of kiss that isn't asking for anything yet. The kind that says we have time.

I hadn't been kissed like that in years. Maybe ever.

I let myself fall.