Cece is another story. I consider going to talk to her a thousand times, but I keep delaying. I’m not sure why.
“Too many women?” Cody asks, throwing a wadded up piece of notebook paper at me. I catch it before it lands in the cup of coffee he just handed me.
I toss it back. “Just one. And her sister,” I add.
Cody sputters on his coffee. “Shit, man. Don’t even involve me in that craziness in a secondary way. That’s Biblical amounts of trouble.”
It’s definitely nice to have Cody around when my mind is cruising around in manic circles, like a rat in a wheel. “Not like that. There’s a girl who’s had me distracted since the second I met her. I can’t seem to get her to agree to a date. And I have no way of getting a hold of her until the next lecture I do. But her sister is in the social sciences department.”
“What’s her name? I don’t have many friends over there. A little too touchy-feely for me. But I might know.” Cody looks at me over his Tardis cup.
“I’d so appreciate it. Her name is Cece Rodriguez.”
This time Cody really does spit his coffee out. “What?” he coughs, tossing his mug on the desk and standing up, shaking his head. “Cece Rodriguez?”
“Yes.” I narrow my eyes at him. “I met her the other night. She seems very nice. And I’d imagine she’s open minded, considering I was introduced to her while a video of her dancing naked played in the background.”
“Salomina got the okay for that?” Cody asks, momentarily sidetracked. He holds a hand up before I can answer. “Damn it! They need to reopen the science wing fast. I need clothed dorks with no social life around me again. You art and social science people are like a never ending Greek drama.”
“It’s not that intense.” I rub my face. “Is there something about Cece you know that I don’t? Some reason I should stay away? Other than the naked dancing?”
“No.” But Cody says the word like it’s a question. “Nothing is wrong with Cece or any Rodriguez. Just…remember I told you my buddy married the girl he tutored?”
“Right. The ones who are in Belgium is it?”
Cody smiles and snaps at me. “Damn. It took the guys in my lab three weeks just to learn my name. You art guys are good at all this friend stuff. Right, so, yeah, they’re in Belgium. And she’s a Rodriguez.”
I nod. “I see. Well, Lydia said she had a few siblings.”
“Lydia?” Cody says, again, like he’s hard of hearing and has to double check everything I say. “Man, you sure you want to get with her?”
“I’m sure I want to take her out to dinner.” I wonder if I really want to know, but I ask anyway. “What’s the issue? Is there something about this family I should know?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the Rodriguezes,” Cody says. He says it carefully. Like maybe how someone might say, ‘Nothing is wrong with grown men who love playing with dollhouses.’
He seems like he’s going to say something a few times, but keeps changing his mind and shutting his mouth. Finally he goes completely silent.
“If you’re not going to explain to me, are you willing to help me get her number?” I ask.
“Sure.” Cody kicks his feet up on his desk and picks his coffee mug back up. “But listen to me: Rodriguez girls are intense. My buddy, Adam? He’s happy. Seriously happy. But Gen’s brothers put him through hell. And their father practically had a shotgun pointed at his heart while he grilled him. And he’s a scientist and a professor. And Jewish! A nice Jewish scientist from Israel, and it was still blood sport to get accepted into that family.”
I cross my arms. “What exactly are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Cody says, thumping his feet down on the floor and throwing his hands in the air, “you’re an artist.” He holds his hands out at his sides like the rest is obvious. “And probably not Jewish?”
“I’m a lapsed Catholic. I have this gig, too,” I say.
“Yeah. A sometimes Catholic artist with a part time guest lecture spot that earns you the title of Professor. Not that impressive, dude. Lydia? She’s a lawyer.” He raises his eyebrows high.
“A lawyer?” I assumed she was student. Maybe a graduate level student. I wonder if she’s coming back to school for a different degree or personal reasons. “Do you know how old she is?”
“I’m not sure, man. She’s the oldest of all of them. I’d say late twenties. She finished school fast and is crazy brilliant. Like, intimidatingly smart and really aggressive. It’s sexy. Scary sexy. I heard she made junior partner after just a few years.” Cody eyes me warily. “And if you’re serious about her, you better up your game. I know all this about her because her father grabbed me at Gen and Adam’s wedding and talked my ear off about his amazing lawyer daughter. She’s definitely a daddy’s girl, and that guy is no fucking joke.” Cody grimaces. “You should see his mustache. I swear the guy packs heat. No one who looks like that dude doesn’t carry a gun.”
“A real gun?” I feel a little nervous. I’ve never held a gun in my life, but I hear Americans are crazy about them. An overprotective, armed father aside, if Lydia is in her late twenties, this may be a whole different thing than I was expecting.
I knew there was something grounded and sexy about her. It makes sense now that she’s older than I assumed. She has the air of a woman who knows herself.
“Just speculation on my part, bro,” Cody says. “But, like I said, Adam couldn’t be happier with Gen, even if he did have to go through a trial by fire. I don’t mean to scare you off. This is just a warning. Maybe I’m all wrong. Maybe you’ve got the chops, Picasso.”
I think about what it would be like if I didn’t pursue Lydia anymore. If I let her out of my grasp and shut down the feelings that have been consuming me lately. There are enough reasons: she’s at a different place in her life than I am right now, her family sounds pushy and interfering, and she’s made it clear that she’s not interested.
Maybe I need to tone down the passion I feel and listen to logic. Despite what my father thinks, I’m actually not very good at doing this. But I know when things are out of my control.
“Thanks for the heads up.” I get up and head out of our office. “I guess I’ll put a hold on that number for now.”
Cody gives me a weak goodbye, like he doesn’t agree entirely. Which is strange, considering it was his argument that made me reconsider.
***
I can’t stop thinking about her.
It’s ridiculous.
I’ve known her a few weeks, talked one-on-one with her a couple of times. We’ve hardly touched. I’ve kissed her hand.
I’ve done more sooner with so many women, I can’t count them all. And any woman I’ve really fallen for? That happened slowly, over the course of months or even years.
Nothing has ever felt this immediate or this all-encompassing.
Even if I can lie to myself, lie about how I don’t want the risk and the complications, the divergent life plans and the family led by a gun-toting father, my art never lies.
I have seventeen chapel pieces planned for my exhibition. The last one—based on the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels—should be finished in two weeks.
Though I’ve gone to the cathedral a dozen times, I’ve never come back to the studio inspired to work on it.
An incredibly famous sculptor, Robert Graham, cast the bronze doors that I pushed through as I entered the church’s frankincense scented interior.
But when I get back to my place and begin mixing colors to find the perfect replication of the sunlight glinting on the metal, I forget the door entirely. I wind up with a color that the color and warmth of Lydia’s eyes as she looked up at me, her fingers running lightly on the skin under my dress shirt.
The geometric complexity of the cathedral drives my mind mad, but when I grab my paintbrush, I have no interest in detailing the twists and turns of its foundation.
I soften every line until I’m painting the swells and dips of her body, the ones I
know more intimately since I held her outside the gallery, but not intimately enough to give her body the depth and power it deserves.
In order to do that, I’d have to see her completely naked.
No.
I’d have to feel her completely naked.
Some painters use their eyes, but I prefer to engage all my senses. Before I paint a chapel, I want to know the density of the stone, the smolder of the incense, the clang of the bells echoing from their little tower.
But to paint a woman?
To paint Lydia?
I’ve done life paintings before, of course. And I did tend to do better when I had some knowledge of the people I painted, but I was usually going through the motions, and it showed. Technically, they were fine. But they lacked the passion of my more detached pieces. I had a theory that being able to focus without getting too carried away would make my art stronger.
That theory is being blown out of the water as I sketch page after page of Lydia’s face, hungry to know her body, wild to feel her, taste her, smell her, until I’ve had enough.
Though I’m not sure there’s any such thing as “enough” when it comes to her.
8 LYDIA
“What are you talking about?” Cece and I are in the backyard after dinner at our parents.’ Despite several attempts to smooth things over after the way I talked to her the other day, my sister has been pretty hard to reach out to.
But she has said a few vague things about Isaac. Like she knows something I don’t.
Like if she was meaner, she’d use what she knows as a weapon against me. If we were closer, she’d probably have a heart-to-heart with me. But we’re in that tricky place because we’re sisters—like it or not—but not quite friends.
“Isaac. Just…was that night at the museum just an innocent thing?” she asks, and I can’t tell if her mouth is twisted with annoyance because she’s remembering the events of that night or because she doesn’t want to come out and say what she’s saying.
“It was an innocent thing, I swear.” I take a long pull of the sweetish Carta Blanca my brothers never pick up. Luckily it was my turn to bring beer.
“What was innocent?” My brother, Cohen comes by, his wife, Maren, over his shoulder, squealing and kicking. “Lydia doesn’t have an innocent bone in her body.” He sets Maren down, and I hand her a beer as she pushes her dark bangs out of her eyes.
Which sparkle when she looks at my stupid, know-it-all brother. Like he’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen.
“I’m not not-innocent,” I object in an argumentative voice so typical of the ‘me’ they know: of Lydia the lawyer. I wonder if I should spill, but I don’t really know what’s going on anyway. And it’s more comfortable to be who I’ve always been than to try to explain that I’m not quite who they think I am anymore.
My siblings sneer. Maren smiles.
Sweet Maren. I definitely lucked out in the sister-in-law department.
Well, so far anyway.
Our younger brother, Enzo, will most likely have a marriage worthy of an episode of the Jose Luis Sin Censura show…which is basically the Mexican version of The Jerry Springer Show. Our abuela is seriously addicted, and I still watch with her whenever I make the drive down to Orange Cove, where she lives in a tiny ranch surrounded by her beehives. I love the comfortable chaos that I always experience when I visit her.
“Sure, you’re innocent. Like that witch who gave Snow White the apple,” Cohen snickers.
Cece frowns. “Drop it, Cohen.”
The three of us stare at her. Cece is the most laid back of all of us, so for her to be snippy to anyone—especially Cohen, who she just might love the most—is strange.
“Are you okay, Cece?” I ask.
“Are you?” Cece narrows her eyes at me. “I stopped by the law office this afternoon.”
It takes me three tries to get the damn beer bottle on the patio table. “Why?” I whisper.
“Because you did all of that advocacy work with the domestic abuse shelter. I have a student who needs help, and I came to the offices immediately after she spoke to me.”
I feel my throat go into lockdown. I’d been so busy hating Richard’s guts and ignoring my old life, I’d forgotten that there were so many loose ends I could never leave undone. So many things I had a hand in starting, but may have no chance to finish.
“I will get your friend help,” I vow. I know that I can call Leslie and John, and they’ll make time to see it’s done.
“It’s fine. John was really helpful, and he already got things going.” Cece glances at Cohen, his arm tight around Maren’s slim waist. She doesn’t know if she should say this in front of him.
I let my crashing, bursting head fall into my hands and mutter, “It’s fine. How long was I really going to be able to keep this going anyway?”
“What the hell am I missing?” Cohen growls out, his eyes darting from me to Cece.
I lift my face and raise my eyebrows at Cece. She wanted to open this Pandora’s Box. Well, she can be my damn guest.
“I…I don’t know what to say, Lyd. I never even thought you wouldn’t be there. No one would say much to me. They kept saying I should ask you. I went straight in and to your office, but it’s kind of cleaned out. Richard was still there. Wait. Is this because of him?” Cece’s voice shakes with anger.
“Because of Richard?” Cohen asks. “What the hell did that fucking dickhole do now? I thought I heard you two were broken up. Please don’t tell me the best news I’ve heard in weeks isn’t actually true.”
“We are. Broken up. But what happened at work…it’s not…well, it’s not entirely because of Richard,” I amend and sigh. And try to figure out the swiftest, least brutal Cliff Notes version of my life/career meltdown. “Richard and I hadn’t made our relationship office knowledge yet, and we got found out. In pretty much the worst way possible.”
Maren sucks her breath in, and her baby blue eyes give me a look of raw sympathy. She strokes my brother’s arm to halt the string of obscenities we all realize he was about to unleash.
“Cohen, just stop. You remember how hard it was for us when your father hired me in the office. And we were able to be open about it from the beginning. And you were the owner’s son! It’s just awkward to be dating and working together.”
“Yeah, but I was proud as hell to be your man, and I didn’t give a damn how awkward it was for anybody else. I loved having everyone know you were mine.” My brother stares into Maren’s eyes like he’s about to devour her. I have to look away.
“Barbarian,” Cece mutters, then cracks a half smile my way. It’s the first sign of peace since our argument at the gallery: I’ll take it.
“Freaking adorable barbarian,” I add.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but seriously. It really is strangely sweet.” Cece’s smile gets a little bigger.
“So what happened?” Cohen asks, hardly able to tear his eyes away from Maren. “Did old Dickey get pissed when the cat was out of the bag? Are you working from home because he’s bent out of shape and throwing a tantrum like a damn toddler?”
“It’s complicated.” I guess I hoped saying that would squash some of my family’s interest, but I think it only heightened it. They all lean in. “We were, ahem, meeting for lunch at a hotel—”
“Wait. Hold up.” Cohen puts both hands in the air and his mouth kind of swings in the breeze before he collects himself and snaps it back shut. “Am I hearing right? Am I actually hearing that my straight-laced big sister was having a little afternoon delight on the job?”
“Why do you look so shocked?” Maren asks, poking him in the ribs with her elbow. “I got more than one text to meet you in the warehouse on your lunch break.”
Cece gasps. “So that’s why all those rugs were opened and unrolled in that corner behind the fountains? Ew! Guys, seriously? Papi made me roll them back up. I should have worn rubber gloves.”
I take a sip of my beer, letting the light tas
te of licorice roll over my tongue. “Come on, Cece! Like you’ve never had a nooner before? You’re at one of the most liberal colleges in the country. I find it very hard to believe all those poets and artists aren’t going at it like characters in some D.H. Lawrence novel.”
My sister’s blush and giggle let us all know Lady Chatterley’s Lover is probably a decent approximation of the amount of sex going on in those little offices lined with dusty books and dying ferns.
“Well, if I ever did—not saying I have, just if—I would do it on the desk like a civilized person. And use a Lysol wipe after.” She glares at my brother, who wraps his arm around his blushing wife’s shoulders and grins wide.
“Oh, we never said we only did it on the rugs. There are some great desks in the warehouse, too. And some sturdy chairs. A couple chest freezers that are just the right height—”
“Enough!” Cece claps her hands over her ears. “Remind me to spray anything down before I touch it next time Papi begs me to cover a shift in the back.”
Maren bites her lips and turns her face into Cohen’s shoulder. “I cannot believe you’re telling your sisters all this,” she hisses.
He laughs and kisses the top of her head. “They’re just ragging on me because you’re here. My siblings are infamous for this kind of shit. You have no idea how many times we walked in on Enzo and some half-naked girl in a utility closet at the synagogue.”
“Or Gen getting hot and heavy in some parked car she had her loser boyfriend pull down the street so Papi wouldn’t see,” I add. “It’s fine, Maren. All the Rodriguezes have the same crazy sex drive.”
“Even Lyd, apparently,” Cohen says, pointing to me with the neck of his beer bottle. “I gotta say, I thought the whole reason you were dating that asshole was because you figured he wouldn’t mind if you were too busy with lawyer shit to jump his ancient bones.”
“He isn’t ancient,” I protest. “He’s only in his forties, Cohen.”
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