The Ladder of Kotor

 At the magic hour, the gangsters drank their morning cola.

She descended the stones like confetti dribbling from a cracked pinata. Close-cut hair as red as a motel ashtray. I recognized her from the videos, but I would have seen her regardless. Her force l'entrepreneur seized focus. Because of where I stood and because she did not shy away, we made eye contact. I touched my hand to my heart and told her my name.

"Your room is ready," she said. She asked me if I recognized her from the videos, and I told her I had. She asked me if she was as beautiful in person, and I said "More so. It is like comparing a packet of powdered grape drink to a living orchard."

If this flattered her, she made no sign. I was taken upstairs, shown the codes, and given the key. "Yours," she said, "is the one with the anchor. No guests." 

Later, I wore the t-shirt with the logo for The Monster, a Key West disco that no longer exists, and stood shoulder to sunhat with women sipping Aperol and soda and men who held thin cans of beer to their sweaty red brows.  

At the cat museum, I tried to translate a poem. My French is poor, almost as nonexistent as a Key West disco. I knew the word "fin," I knew the word "guerre." I called it "Until the War is Over, All Cats Will Live on the Roof." 

Later, I could find no evidence of this poem, no translation. A difficulty, of course, is "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" contains too many of the important key words for the search algorithms to resist and I could have, of course, used the word roof for something else entirely. I may never know. 

An evening of string lights over soft guitars. A tout upon seeing my shirt said, "But you are not a monster." Then his face got close to mine, and he said, "Unless it is at night. With the woman." It was so unexpected, it didn't register until I was several string lights along the path. 

I wondered what, from his perspective, the ultimate response would have been. "You got that right. You know what, you're my kind of guy. Get me a barrel of beer, and kill that goat you've been saving. Gonna need it fried up. French style. Monster like me's got appetites."

I took bread to bed. 

In the morning, I followed the birdsong through the mist to the Ladder of Kotor. Years ago, I'd only made it halfway up. I was determined this time, at this hour, to reach the top. And after many steps, I did. My reward was a fortress. Spray-painted on in interior wall was:

"Do you still think there is more to love than Lazerquest, Ana?"

Along the path, stray cats chose Englishwomen as companions, attached themselves, and followed them up the steepnesses of the mountain. It was astounding, familiar even. The Englishwomen took it in stride. Why shouldn't they be followed by cats? C'est normal. 

Reaching the top was a great satisfaction. The view was too beautiful to register as legitimate. It seemed unfair, somehow. And one gets used to it on one's walk. But the sense of completion, the walls that crumble just so, the clusters of poppies in the dust. Strange to find them in pairs. They do not mate in this fashion, and yet to see them partnered this way, it is a tempting conclusion to draw, to think they have freed themselves of a reliance on bees, pollen, and random breeze. 

A long walk down, though easier, of course. I encouraged the steak-faced others I met. "You're almost there." "Worth it! Keep going!" Their cats padded alongside, sometimes along the ruined fortifications. 

In town, a fragile membrane hovered waiting to be pierced by the arrival of the cruise ships. I sat on the marble and drew a church. An attempt to add the mountains behind it ruined it, absolutely ruined it in my sight. I drew it again. I drew it a second time. 

Gangsters smoked and drank their morning colas at empty cafes. Boys in tank tops, insect bites on their shoulders, rubbed their unshaven jaws and awaited reentry into the hostels they'd been ejected from the night before. 

From somewhere came the sounds of Boney M. I took my book to the terrace. With the climb done, I'd earned the right to disappear.