Here I Go

by Jamie Bennett

  “You’re good at that,” Cain said.

  “Stopping violence? I hope so!” I answered.

  “No, I mean that you make people feel a lot better.”

  “Do I?” That idea made me so happy.

  “I’m sure your sisters were in a better place after talking to you today,” he said, and looked at me for a moment. “But right now, you’re yawning. Maybe you should get to sleep.”

  “No!” My fingers had latched around his sleeve before I realized it. “I’m not very tired. Tell me more about your meeting and your dinner. Who were you there with?”

  Cain rubbed his eyes. “The other co-chairs of the event. Mostly we’re supposed to get donors, call rich people and get them to give money, buy tables, and give supplies. The dinner tonight was all about self-congratulations at how many connections they all have and how important their friends are. It was very, very boring.”

  “I wish you’d been here with me instead,” I said, and he nodded.

  “Me too.” He breathed out a rush of air. “This has definitely been the best part of my day.”

  Those were lovely words to hear. He stayed until I was almost asleep, too, because I couldn’t make myself stay awake anymore as hard as I tried. And when he left, I felt him kiss my cheek very gently. I reached out to hold his shirt and ask him not to leave ever, but he was already gone.

  Chapter 9

  I looked again at the napkin, then quickly folded it before anyone could see the picture on it of me, in the flesh. The naked flesh. I’d wanted to check the address also written on it and yes, this had been correct. This was the place I’d been trying to find, this rundown building with the broken window in the door and the sign on it that said, “Duck cough!”

  Except it was actually another phrase on the sign, a well-known expression that rhymed with those words and was not really about sick birds. Was this what an artist’s studio was like? Maybe. I’d never been to one, but I hadn’t expected it to look like someone might get robbed inside.

  Despite the warning on the sign, I reached through the iron bars and knocked on it, and a moment later, a face looked at me through the shards of broken glass. “Well, it’s Aria from Tennessee!” Sebastián swung open the wood panel and then pulled up the security gate. “I didn’t think you’d come so fast.”

  “I didn’t have to come at all!” I said.

  “Sure, but I’m so fascinating. Hang on.”

  He closed the door right in my face! “What?” I asked it, but another moment later, he opened it again, and this time, held it wide and beckoned to me. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, despite the fact that it was December and it really wasn’t warm here, even if you’d thought it would be because you’d been fooled by pictures of California beaches with sun and people in bathing suits.

  “Come on in,” he told me, smiling. I waited until he had locked everything up and he squeezed past me in the narrow, dark hallway, his bare chest rubbing against my back. Then I followed him through another doorway to a big open space at the back of the building. “This is why I wanted this place,” he explained. “Isn’t the light in here amazing?”

  I guessed so. The room was mostly dirty and full of any number of things, like a zebra head (that looked real—stuffed, but real) lying on the floor and a safe turned on its side and a huge, huge pile of bottles (liquor bottles) surrounded by a lot of broken glass. Despite this danger, Sebastián still didn’t have on shoes, and there was another barefooted person in here, too. A woman lay on a stained sofa with a blanket pulled over her, one naked leg dangling out and resting in a puddle on the floor. Her eyes were closed and she was very, very pale.

  “Is she all right?” I asked, because she didn’t look it.

  “Annemily!” he shouted, and she opened her eyes slightly and stuck out a bare arm to wave at me. “She’s fine. She was posing for me for a line drawing.” He turned to me, his own eyes inspecting me carefully. “Would you ever want to do that?”

  I looked at the woman, pretty sure that there were no clothes separating her from the dirty sofa or the grimy blanket. “Are you asking if I’d pose for you undressed? No, thank you!”

  He laughed. “We’ll see. What brings you by my studio besides my charm and your curiosity?”

  “I need…I’d like…” I stopped. He didn’t seem like the person to ask, since he didn’t even wear shoes, but he’d had a lot of opinions before on my appearance. “I need to look better,” I explained.

  “Better, or less different?”

  “Both. I have to go to the ballet gala,” I explained. “In four days.” I put my hand over my heart as I said it, because that wasn’t enough time. There was no way to become completely better and different in only four days.

  “Sure. I’ll be there too,” he mentioned casually, and I wondered if they had any kind of dress code so he’d be forced to put on more items of clothing. He studied me again. “You already look different.”

  I’d been working carefully on my makeup, watching tutorials. I’d also blown my hair as straight and flat as I could get it, but with the quantity I had, it wasn’t very flat at all. “Can you help me?” I asked him.

  He smiled again. “I’d love to. There’s nothing I enjoy more than spending other people’s money. Annemily!” he yelled again, and I jumped. “I’m leaving,” he told her. “There’s more in the back room.”

  More what? She only nodded without opening her eyes.

  Sebastián put on a shirt and even a pair of old shoes before we walked outside to Cain’s car. “Nice,” he said, his eyes sliding over it the same way they’d gone over me. It almost felt like he was adding up a total, like I’d done behind the register the summer I’d worked at my Great-aunt Lu’s junk shop. “You know how to get to Union Square?” he asked me. “We don’t have time for anything except straight off the rack, unfortunately. Next year, we’ll find an indie designer to create something for you.”

  Next year? I suddenly pictured a string of long, grey days…but no. That was a silly way to look at things! “Union Square!” I repeated, putting a lot of pageant into my voice, and Sebastián gave me a weird look.

  Somehow, before we’d even gone a few blocks, he’d gotten me an appointment with a stylist he knew who would be able to do something with my hair, he thought. And when we got to the stores, Sebastián was worse than my mother.

  “That’s awful. No,” he told me again and again, and once, when I reached for a hanger, he slapped my hand away! In fact, it reminded me so much of my mama that I got a little homesick. I took pictures of what I was doing and sent them to Cass and Kayleigh, because this was probably as close as I was going to get to picking out a wedding gown. They would have been here with me, and my mama too, telling me that the one I liked was not made for a woman with hips like mine, just as she’d done when we’d shopped for prom dresses. I’d ended up in one of Aubree’s dresses, the one from when she’d won Homecoming Queen, and I’d loved it. I’d felt like I was a queen myself.

  “There,” Sebastián said to the salesperson, and she reached for a red dress with large, beautiful silk roses on the shoulder. I loved it just as much as I had Bree’s dress for my prom. “No, not that one! I meant the blue.”

  “Blue? Navy blue?” I asked as the lady carefully held it out to us. It was straight and severe, with no flowers, lace, beading, spangles, sequins, fringe, gathers, layers, or anything else to break up the fabric and give it interest. “I usually never wear—”

  “We’re not going with your taste,” he reminded me. “We’re going with good taste.” I nodded but the salesperson gasped. “It’s out of affection,” he explained to her. “Affection for my own eyesight, so it won’t be damaged by whatever she would pick for herself.”

  I carefully touched the fabric. This dress didn’t only look different from what I had picked for myself in the past, it felt different, too. It felt like luxury and fanciness. It felt like I’d fit right in at Cain’s house wearing a dress like that. And then I saw the pric
e.

  “Oh, my word!” Both of them were staring at me. “I just…hold on.” I could barely hold in my pounding heart. This dress cost more than my old car in Tennessee had. “Is this right? No. I mean, yes! It’s not a mistake.” But all those zeros for a piece of cloth? It was more than Aubree’s wedding dress, which was the most expensive item of clothing I’d ever seen. We’d all told her not to get it, it was ridiculous!

  I took a quick picture of the gold and purple tag and sent it to Cain. “This is the dress I’m looking at for the ballet gala. It’s really this much, it’s not a mistake! I need something to wear and I’m told this may be nice for me, but I can’t put that much on my credit card. If I use yours, I’ll pay you back. It will take a while.”

  We’d been sending each other little notes, maybe because I’d suggested it, and I was glad that I had. It had started this morning with a warning from him about a stray dog he’d seen in the street in front of the house that hadn’t looked very friendly, and then I’d told him about how far I’d run, and he’d taken pictures of the gym at his office.

  Now he wrote back, “If you like it, use mine and why would you pay me back?”

  “It’s so much,” I wrote again. “I feel terrible! This is for a charity party!”

  “Get it.”

  I looked up at Sebastián. “Ok, I’ll try it on. I’m not promising you, though.”

  “While you do that, I’ll get shoes. How big are your feet? Those thick heels you wear make them look like boats. And they don’t do much for your ankles.”

  He was probably right about that, too. “Size seven. Look for something the opposite of what I have on,” I said.

  “I don’t think they sell anything like that here,” he told me, and the salesperson went with me into the changing room and called in more help, too, to get me into the gown. By the time that I had the right undergarments (very, very tight ones) and the dress on over them, Sebastián had returned with some shoes and a beautiful pocketbook that had a security guard attached to it. Like, it was so expensive that it was attached on a lock to the poor guy’s wrist.

  “Absolutely not,” I told them both, and the guard took the bag back downstairs.

  Sebastián studied me. “It will be better with the hair fixed. But it’s not bad.”

  “You look beautiful,” the saleslady told me. “You’re a beautiful girl.” She patted my shoulder and was the nicest person I’d met in California, even if she was just doing it for the commission.

  I thought that the dress would be even better if I lost seven more pounds like the sriracha and mayonnaise diet instructions had told me that I would in the four days before this party. But I could breathe even with those extra pounds still attached to my body, and after waffling a lot, staring at myself in the mirrors and re-reading the text from Cain that told me to buy it, I did get the dress and the shoes. Then I almost fainted, just like my mom, but I couldn’t sit down in the dress and they had to unzip it and unhook all the fat-squashing undergarments so I could take a deeper gulp of air. I could breathe ok in it, but not really great.

  And who knew? If you spent enough and looked like you’d be back for more, too, they would call a seamstress to quickly fit things for you, and then they would deliver everything to your house. Sebastián got antsy after all the money was spent and said goodbye, took off his shoes, and left in a car back to his studio. I went to the hair appointment he’d set up for several treatments. They were nice enough there, but obviously didn’t care for how I’d been styling myself.

  “What’s your normal routine?” the woman asked me, and when I mentioned a curling iron, her eyebrows shot up. She really had gone to a great place to get those shaped into a perfect slashing arch. I got the name of her salon.

  Several hours later, I left about six inches of red waves on their floor and walked out with pin-straight auburn hair and another giant credit card charge. I flipped down the mirror when I got into the car and I could hardly recognize myself, not with the new look or the new spending limits. It was very, very dark as I drove back to Cain’s house. I checked on the street for the brown dog that he’d seen this morning, alone and without a collar. He’d written that it had growled at him when he’d walked out, as I watched him from my bedroom window, my nose pressed against the glass and wishing he would stay.

  But we’d be together at this party for hours. He wouldn’t be able to leave and go to work, and we’d dance together just like at a wedding. In a way, this was our chance at one! I had the dress, and the new hair, and I’d get my nails and eyebrows done. I started to feel a little faint again when I thought of the expense of it all, and I really understood my friend Eimear back at home and how worried she’d been about spending so much on her own wedding. Then I felt a wave of sadness that I was missing out on planning with her, and I wished she were here to do this with me, too.

  It was impossible to tell from the outside if someone was in the house because it always looked so dark and empty, but it felt different when I came inside. Or maybe, it smelled different—like spicy, delicious food and something else. Something sharp and flowery. “Cain?” I called, already smiling as I waited for his answer.

  “We’re in here,” he said.

  We? I followed the sound of his voice into the dining room, a place I hadn’t been since the day we’d arrived in San Francisco and I’d wandered around trying to find him. The flowery perfume was stronger in here, aggressive and recognizable even over the aroma from the plates of yummy dinner on the table. Cain sat at the head of the black, lacquer top and next to him…

  Oh.

  She stood up and smiled, exactly as she did in all the pictures of her I’d studied on my phone. “I’m Demetra Diamandis,” she told me, but I already knew that she was his former girlfriend, the one who’d lived in this house.

  “Aria Miller,” I answered, and I had a moment of unkind satisfaction when her smile slipped a little at hearing my name. I couldn’t even say that it was nice to meet her, it was such a lie, so I moved on and was glad that no one in my family was here to witness my poor manners. “Are y’all working on the benefit?” I asked instead.

  “What did you do to your hair?” Cain demanded. His voice was louder than normal and he sounded shocked. Not happy-shocked.

  I didn’t turn and run even though I wanted to. “I got it cut.”

  “They made it…what did they do to it?” He stared, frowning.

  Demetra sat down and covered her mouth with her hand. Now she was laughing, not smiling.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” I said, which was the opposite thing from what my instincts were shouting, that I couldn’t walk away from Cain and this gorgeous woman who he had definitely slept with. But those same instincts were also warning me that it would be the worst move possible to cry in front of Demetra, and I was about a hair’s width away from that happening. One of those hairs that I’d left on the floor of the salon, maybe. I took myself right out of the room on the ankles that looked thick in these shoes and was rushing up the stairs when I heard Cain call to me.

  “Aria!”

  I didn’t stop, but I didn’t lock my bedroom door, and his footsteps followed behind me.

  “Why would you have said that to me?” I asked him. “Why would you talk like that, in front of her?” I threw my pocketbook into the corner, where it belonged.

  He blinked in surprise. “What? In front of Demetra?”

  “Isn’t she your former live-in girlfriend? Why would you criticize me in front of her?”

  “I wasn’t…” He sat down on the bed. “I didn’t mean to criticize you. You look so different.”

  There it was again. I was different, and it was wrong! “I was trying to look better!” I told him. “I’m doing my best here, Cain!”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean that I don’t like it either but this is how it is! And something else I don’t like is to walk into this house and find you having a cozy dinner—”

  “We
’re meeting about the gala,” he told me, and his eyes started to get that icy look to them. “In my house, I eat with whomever I choose, by the way.”

  Oh, really? I wished I still had my pocketbook so I could throw it at him, instead of into the corner. “By the way, I live here, too! And I would have appreciated a heads-up that your girlfriend was coming over!”

  We stared at each other and he sighed. “Aria, she’s not my girlfriend.”

  No, not since she’d dumped him and moved out. “That’s right. And I’m your wife, and you made me look like an idiot.”

  He sighed again, but this one was sharp and annoyed. “Don’t cry about this,” he told me as I wiped my eyes.

  “Don’t tell me what to do! You’re not my boss. Go on back to your dinner with Demetra.” I pointed at my bedroom door. “Go on!”

  He looked at me and didn’t move. “I don’t mind your hair,” he announced.

  “Well, bless your heart for saying so!”

  That made him get off the bed. “Fine,” Cain snapped back. “Fine. We’ll talk about this later.”

  It was tough being trapped up here, not knowing what was happening downstairs. He’d shut the door (a little harder than necessary) when he’d left, but I cautiously opened it, and since everything in this place worked so perfectly, it didn’t make a sound. But I couldn’t hear anything even with all that echoing marble floor, and I didn’t creep closer, bellycrawling down the hallway like my sisters had done when my parents had fought in the kitchen and they’d wanted to hear what was happening. I had to wait for Cain to come up and as I did, I finished applying to the bookstore, a dry cleaner, a restaurant, a coffee bar, a real bar, and also the grocery store where I’d been shopping. I would need to pay him back for the dress and shoes, which would take me about a year, and also my hair, which would take another.

  I was finishing the last application as he knocked on the frame of my open door. “Come in,” I announced without looking up. “It’s your house, as you noted.”