by Amber Foxx
“Nah. Got to think of him, not just me. Other one might not like him. Might be mean to him.”
“Why? Because he’s fat?”
“Yeah.” Jamie took her hand and laid it on his belly, on the inch. Accept me as I am. “Like kitty high school.”
“You’re so funny. You’re not fat.” She gave him a rub and let go. “I guess cats could act like teenagers, though.” She rose to get a glass of water and stood by the sink, drinking. “High school—That reminds me—I’d thought of this earlier but we didn’t get to talk about it. Maybe Sylvie was your student.”
“Nah. She’s a Texan. Talks like she’s lived there for years.”
“She could pick up an accent.”
“I’ve lived in the States for fourteen years and I still don’t sound like an American.”
“But you spent a lot of your summers in Australia, and you talk to your mother all the time. Anyway, you don’t want to be American. I bet Sylvie wants to be Texan.”
“She’d have to have worked at it. Fuck, your little Zeus, whatever his name is—”
“Stamos. Don’t make fun of him.”
“Sorry. Stamos still sounds Greek.” Jamie picked up the list, began folding it into a little structure, not sure what he was making. Might be a Pueblo horno oven. “Anyway, she can’t be from Santa Fe. It’s not just the accent. Even if I don’t remember her, if she remembered me and wanted to tell me something, I’ve got a web site and a blog, and Wendy does my Facebook thing for me, and Lisa used to. A former student could have found me.”
“As Jangarrai. Not as Jamie Ellerbee. Did your students know your whole name?”
“Dunno. Maybe. Might have. Stop expecting me to know this crap.” He flattened the little horno back into a list. “Jesus. It’s still insane. She sees me in Austin, she thinks, ‘Oh, look, it’s my old music teacher Mr. Ellerbee, what a small world.’ Why doesn’t she just shake hands and say, ‘I went to Santa Fe High School’?”
“I reckon she’s a little off, sugar. She’s got some reason why she wouldn’t.” Mae filled another glass of water, brought it to him, and sat across from him this time. “This’ll help your hangover. You’ve got to admit, the high school is one way she could know you.”
“Jesus.” A former student stalking him was somehow more disturbing than stalking by a stranger. It would mean she’d harbored something for years. He guzzled the water. Its coldness calmed him. “She’s close to my age. She’d have to have been in my first class. My first year. Fuck. I can’t even remember my therapist’s name from back then, how would I remember a student? It took me half of the semester to learn half of them and the rest of them I’d have to pretend. It’d be December and I’d be thinking, Fuck, you’re an alto but who are you? Jesus—”
He could see Sylvie now, hear her, see the texts. She was always trying to make him remember her. “That’s what she wants. To make me recognize her. Like I should know who in bloody hell she is.”
Chapter Twenty
Walking along the beach, Mae kept an eye out for a very small woman, while Jamie jumped and shook with delight whenever a particularly big wave swelled up. If Sylvie was around, she hid well. She could have done so easily. The Ocean View beach was busy with other post-storm gawkers, surfers in wet suits, determined runners, and people strolling with dogs.
Jamie wore some of his newest thrift-shop fashions, soft old jeans and a thick pumpkin-colored sweater, along with the old felt fedora. He looked like himself again. Full of a new surge of energy, he zigzagged about, finding pretty stones and shells and giving them to Mae. He pocketed only one. “To remember this by.”
With Sylvie on her mind, and Jamie bordering on romantic, Mae didn’t see Stamos among the runners until he was only a few yards away. Jamie didn’t seem to see anyone but Mae. He walked close, smiling tenderly at her, and gave her a little shoulder-bump as he told a joke.
Mae noticed that Jamie had a hitch in his hip, though he was trying to hide it, and stopped. She needed to take a break anyway. “Can you take a rest here? I see Stamos.”
“Jeezus. Is he stalking us, too?”
“His parents live here. This is his neighborhood.”
“Yeah. Fine.” Jamie’s voice dropped. He walked away from her toward the wild surf. Was he sulking? Even for him, that was a big mood swing. With a melodramatic gesture, hand to forehead, he rushed toward the waves and then stopped. A loud laugh whipped through his body like a dance. “Scared you, didn’t I?”
Gold tooth glinting in the sun, hair flying in the wind, he looked reckless and joyful, as if he hadn’t a problem in the world. She wished he could always look like that, though not over a suicide joke. How could he think it was funny?
Mae shook her head and turned away to catch Stamos. He met her eyes and kept going.
He cut me dead. Her anger surprised her. She kicked her shoes off and chased him.
“Stamos Tsitouris, how dare you snub me like that?”
“I was simply not interfering with your date. I am too much of a gentleman.”
Mae ignored the dig at Jamie. “Gentleman my foot. You were rude.”
They ran, silent with unresolved tension. Mae’s anger faded as she fell into the rhythm of their feet. She used to run with Hubert a lot, and something familiar took over. It had been nice to have a man she shared this with. Jamie had that bad hip and couldn’t run. What was she thinking about that for?
“I’m sorry.” Stamos, eyes ahead, kept a steady pace. “Yes, I was rude.” He dodged a dog that took his running for play and gave it a commanding no that drove it off. “But I don’t take kindly to what you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do anything. You and Jamie got into that stupid drinking and dancing contest, and you were the bigger jerk of the two of you. But it was close.”
“And what about you? Telling him about Brazos?”
“I didn’t.”
“So I am to believe that he dressed like him and danced with you and mocked me, and he knows nothing of Diana—”
“I explained that after you left, but he had no idea at the time. Remember, Joe Wayne’s wife is acting crazy on him. She sent Jamie that hat. And the belt was from Spirit Body. He even said he was modeling it, remember?”
Silence, nothing but their soft thudding footsteps, the waves, and the thrumming of a helicopter over the ocean. A distant ship, a black shape on the horizon, seemed to keep pace with their run. The Navy. Reminders of Commander Diana.
“I have to think about it,” Stamos said at last. “Go back to your date.”
He sped up his run. So much that he might not have heard her protest, “It’s not a date.”
She stood and watched Stamos’s effortless, flying steps, his trim yet powerful shape receding down the beach. Longing and resentment fought to a tie. Everything had started out so beautifully, and yet it had already come to this.
She turned and jogged back toward Jamie. Toward where he should have been. Instead she saw only her shoes and a butt print where he’d been sitting in the sand. Had Sylvie showed up?
Mae looked around. She spotted Jamie waving from the deck of a beach entrance. Relieved, she collected her shoes and joined him. On the bottom steps of the bleached wooden platform, a woman held the same wriggling, shaggy dog that had almost tripped Stamos. She clipped a leash onto its collar, scolding in a babying voice that might as well have been praise, while the dog licked her face. Mae wanted to tell the woman to train her dog, but her first concern was Jamie.
“Hey, sugar, you sure got up there fast.”
“Yeah. But no harm.” He called down to the woman with the dog. “Right? No worries.”
“Sorry,” the woman whispered to Mae. “People bring dogs off-leash here a lot. Shelby just wanted to play with him. He panicked. It made her go for him. I’m sorry.”
Jamie perched on the railing of the platform. “Dog woman, Shelby’s mum, what are you doing tonight? You owe me, and I need an audience. What’s this place called, Mae? Where I am t
onight?”
“Flanagan’s.”
“Yeah, Flanagan’s, Virginia Beach. Benefit for one of the waiters who lost all his stuff in the storm. But don’t bring your dog.” He grinned. “Check it out. Web site’s Jangarrai. Only one of me. Can’t miss it.”
The woman stood, dog under control, eyeing Mae doubtfully. “For real?”
“Yeah, for real. He’s good.”
Jamie danced on the platform and sang a lively Calypso-style tune.
“There’s the spiders and the scorpions that hide between my sheets,
There’s the dentist and the dogs and the monsters in my sleep.
Did I say something stupid, is there something in my teeth?
I’ve got five hundred fears and they all run deep.”
He beat a rhythmic pattern on the railing, did a double spin with a crisp stop.
“I’ve got five hundred fears and they all run deep.”
Striking a pose, he shone his smile at the dog owner. This, Mae thought, was the essence of him. Neurotic, but not defective at all. Funny. Full of life. He glowed like a shooting star.
Mae sat at the kitchen table, watching while Jamie tossed vegetables onto the counter from the crisper drawer and then rattled through the spice cabinet. Pamela had gone out to dinner with her husband, so Mae had the mixed pleasure of having Jamie cook for her alone. She disliked cooking as much as he enjoyed it, but this was one more situation in which he could misinterpret her friendship. She said, “I thought I’d go early with you and stay outside the entrance in case Sylvie shows up at Flanagan’s.”
“Yeah, she’ll see you and run.” He opened a bag of rice and measured some into a rice cooker. “You could squash her like a bug.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m not your bodyguard. I want to talk to her. I can’t get any psychic contact with her, and you won’t call the police—”
“Officer, this woman gives me presents. And I think she took my underwear.”
“She’s stalking you.”
“But what’s she done that we can prove? Not a bloody thing. Anyway, she’s got Gasser. Can’t make her mad. I need him, and he needs me. Don’t want to fuck that up, y’know—getting him back.”
“I know. I wasn’t pushing you. I said you won’t call, I didn’t say I’d try to make you.”
“Thanks. Hope you won’t have to stay out and scout for Sylvie the whole time. I like seeing you while I sing.” He rinsed and dried the top of a can of beans, wiping every possible bit of dirt out of the grooves before opening it. “Don’t let me load up on this or I’ll hit some low notes with the high notes. People will think I got my didg back. Give a whole new meaning to wind instrument.” He washed vegetables, singing fart-like didgeridoo sounds. “You miss this, don’t you?”
“Fart jokes?”
“Yeah, whole package.” He added water to the rice cooker, turned it on, and frowned at the spices he’d selected. “Storm was a gift, y’know, putting us here together.”
Had she ever missed him? She had thought about him, but not longed for him. He had his hair pulled back in a little fuzzy wad of ponytail for cooking, showing the dog-bite scar on his neck and ear. Mae wished his scars didn’t make her so uncomfortable, but they did, a biography of trauma written on his body. Even the gold tooth was a minor footnote, another accident’s mark. “It’s ... it’s been a chance to see about being friends. I hope we can be.”
“Jesus.” He chopped garlic with rapid, efficient motions. “Friends. I’m trying to seduce you.”
“Not that I can see.” She turned it into a joke. “With your back to me, cooking?”
“It’s not sexy?” He stuck his butt out at her and wiggled it, straightened up, and turned to face her. “Yeah, it is. My backside. The whole thing. We have this nice ordinary day together, shop, walk on the beach, cook. It’s sexy. It’s sweet. It’s like—foreplay. You know how an Australian man usually does foreplay?” He threw his head back and shouted with a double-thick caricatured Aussie accent, clasping an imaginary lover by the hips, “Brace yourself, sheila!” Dropping the act, he resumed his cooking tasks. “So I’m being suave by comparison. Had to point it out, sort of like having to explain a joke, but ... y’know ... Now that you’ve noticed ...”
Mae smiled at the joke, but the subtext wasn’t funny. Sexy? Jamie? It had crossed her mind once or twice when she first knew him, but didn’t stay. “I’m sorry, sugar, but I—”
“Come on, love. Neurotic is the new erotic. The sensitive man, right?” He glanced over his shoulder at her with a sweet smile. “Come here. Stand next to me.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Whip out my fucking donger, whaddya think? Jesus. Come here. Let me see you while we talk.”
Mae joined him at the counter. Jamie slid an arm around her and pulled her close, kissing her softly on the mouth, so gently yet quickly that she had no time to resist. “That wasn’t fair.” The aftereffect was a lingering arousal, as well as a shade of anger. He was sexy. She didn’t want him to be. That wasn’t the kind of friendship they had. “You said you wanted to talk.”
“Sorry. Impulse.” Jamie stepped to the stove, scraped the garlic off the cutting board into a pan with sizzling oil. “Had to do it before we ate this.” He made a lion face with a soft roaring sound that somehow conveyed garlic breath.
Nothing seemed to pop his happy bubble, his delusion that they were a couple. She leaned against the counter, keeping a little space between them. How could she undo the fantasy without breaking his good mood? “It’s not like we were building up to the kiss at the end of a date or something.”
“I was.”
Mae sighed. “Jamie, I’m not your girlfriend.”
Adding vegetables to the pan and stirring, he glanced at her. The brief look was unexpectedly serious. “Yet.”
“You forget I ran into Stamos today. He’s still mad about last night.”
“At himself?”
Adding onions and peppers to the mix in the pan, Jamie stirred it. His bubble deflated. “Sorry. Trying to be confident and assertive, y’know? Probably makes me, dunno, blind. Something.” He stepped to the sink, drained the beans, and crushed the can between the heels of his hands. “You still with him, then?”
“I don’t know. I might be done with him, I might not. If we get back together, I’ll be taking it slow. He’s got issues from his marriage still, and my divorce isn’t final yet. I’m still in early recovery.”
He pitched the can into a recycling bin. “Make yourself sound like an addict.”
“I think I am. I’ve never gone a whole year without a boyfriend or a husband since I was sixteen.”
Jamie busied himself with measuring spices, stirring, getting dishes out. He was unusually silent. Mae felt uneasy. She’d enjoyed silence with Stamos and with Hubert, but with them, she didn’t expect something to explode after it.
“Jamie? What’s going on?”
He gave the alternate shoulder shrug, a wriggly delaying dance. “Started the veggies too soon. Rice won’t be done.”
Mae was sure the answer was an evasion. Jamie didn’t mess up as a cook. “Are you mad because I dated Stamos but I wouldn’t date you?”
“Mm. Yeah. Little.”
“Stamos didn’t expect a commitment or anything big and serious out of me. I could handle that.”
“No, you couldn’t.” Jamie faced her, his eyes hot and dark. “You’re not like that. If you try, you’ll break off some piece of yourself and he’ll use it to wipe the shitty arse of his midlife crisis. Don’t do it. Jesus. I’ll wait for you. Give us time.”
His words ambushed her, landing as an ache in the pit of her stomach. How could he insult Stamos like that and ask for her love in the same breath?
Confused, she looked down at Jamie’s feet, bare on the cold tile floor. His oddly long toes reminded her of little fingers. Everything about him was strange, head to toe, body and mind. Sometimes she found him unbearably beautiful, though he wasn’t. Sometimes
he seemed stronger and braver than she was, but that wasn’t true, either. Or was it? How could it be?
Jamie chopped a few stalks of celery. The whack of the knife on the cutting board was loud, like footsteps when a home is full of sleepers. He added the chopped vegetable to the simmering pan and placed a lid on it. It sounded like a gong in the stillness between them. He adjusted the burner, tapped his fingers on the edge of the stove, and turned to her. She looked up. His voice was soft, his speech slower than his usual chaotic rush, as if for once he had planned and thought out what he would say.
“I’m like a diamond, love. Seems all fractured and distracted, light flying everywhere. That’s the surface. But you look deep, there’s fire in the heart. Indestructible. I’m not giving up. I’m always there for you. Yeah, I’m poor, and I’m fucked up, and you may not see what I can give you, but ...” He cupped his hands at his chest and reached them out her as if they held something sacred. “You’ll never lose it. It’s yours. This—” He lost his steadiness, seemed to struggle for words, though his eyes stayed locked with hers. He brought his fists to his breastbone. “This—diamond of heart.”
The words didn’t quite make sense, yet it was what she had seen in him. His strength, his courage. Mae waited, making sure he was finished. She didn’t want to cut him off or leave him hanging. What he had offered her was precious and too big for her to grasp. More than she had room for. “Thank you.” That was the easy part. The next was hard. “If you can give that as my friend, I couldn’t have a better friend on earth.”
Jamie inhaled sharply, but didn’t speak. He faced the stove again, added the beans to the vegetables, stirred, then snort-laughed suddenly. “’Course you heard me wrong. Talking about the diamond fart.” He cracked up again. “So powerful it can cut glass, and it lasts forever.” He tasted the beans, added salt. “Yeah, have a coldie with this and it should do the job. Blow little Sylvie right out to sea.”