“Richard,” Barry said. “You can get us some bullhorns from the football locker room?” Richard nodded. “Javier,” Barry said. “You’re set to take photos?” Javier nodded. “And you.” Barry nodded toward Mary Alice. “You’ve got my speech drafted?”
Mary Alice opened the rings of her binder and removed several sheets of notebook paper. “I think it’s good,” she said proudly. “I’ve got quotes from parents who say their kids have leukemia, that they know about other kids with cancer, and about all the families who’ve been subjected to clouds of fallout for years. I’ve got some former workers who talk about their dosimeter readings. And quotes from scientists who’ve been arguing since the late fifties that this whole thing is a public health catastrophe in the making.”
“Good, good.” Barry was skimming the pages, nodding.
When he looked up at last, Ruby stood and said, “I’d like to contribute.”
“What? She’s gonna do a nude protest dance?” Richard or Adam or Jeremy—she couldn’t keep them straight—said, sotto voce.
Ruby hadn’t ever imagined that student protestors could be such assholes. Weren’t they supposed to be selfless, sacrificing themselves for the greater good? These were a bunch of spoiled rich kids, living off of their parents and pretending that they were courageous rebels.
Fuck you, she thought but didn’t say. This was clearly important to Javier. But lord, these kids pissed her off.
And they were kids. They hadn’t had to learn to pay bills, make a living, sign employment contracts, or get up every day and work their asses off. She’d grown up way too soon, that she knew, but these boys were lingering in some kind of candy land, a delayed, absurdly extended childhood.
“I came here to help,” Ruby said, aiming her gaze directly at Barry. “I thought I could help. I’d think you’d want all the people you could to show up, to impress the news media with the number of people who care about your cause. Is it just this handful of you, walking around with signs? Have you gotten the word out? I’m wondering if you’ve even thought about the fact that most of the television viewers won’t side with you. You have to persuade them. And keep in mind that a huge number of people who work at the test site—and yes, I actually do know a thing or two about this—they live in Vegas and commute. So, you’re asking that the government shut down the test site and take these people’s jobs from them. Your protest, if successful, would result in families losing what may be their only source of income. So, you’d better have your ducks in a row, and you’d better be able to suggest viable solutions—not just protest.”
Ruby stopped herself. She looked toward Javier and was surprised to see him grinning.
“My Ruby, she is right,” he said, standing. “You have a lot to learn, for estudiantes. I could tell you about real rebellion, what it costs, but you will no listen. And so it is adiós, muchachos, muchacha.”
Javier took her arm and led her out of the overheated dorm room, into the hallway that smelled of too many males confined in too small an area for far too long. When they reached the exit, Ruby gulped fresh evening air.
“Sorry about that,” she said, waiting for him to light his cigarette.
“No. No apologies,” Javier said, exhaling smoke. “Those kids. They are ridiculous. The grises would have wiped them out in just a few minutes.” He shook his head. “Dis is no for us.”
“At least you tried,” Ruby said, taking his arm. “You tried to do something that mattered.”
“They will be gnats. Just this”—he clapped his hands together—“and they are gone.”
“If what they’re saying is true, about the leukemia—” Ruby began.
“Is shame, no?”
“It’s a shame,” she confirmed.
Javier kicked her, hard, and she awoke with a start.
“Ow!”
He kept kicking, and Ruby used both arms to push him away from her. “Javier! Wake up! Stop!”
“Augh!” He sat up suddenly, still groggy. “What is?”
“You were kicking me. In your dream. Geez,” Ruby said, turning on the bedside lamp and rubbing her shin. “That really hurt!” There was a crescent of blood where one of his toenails had nicked her.
He rubbed his eyes. “I am sorry.”
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t remember,” he said, clearly lying.
“You don’t want to tell me?”
“I don’t want to remember.”
“The soldiers? The police?”
“The crowds,” he said. “So many people, all pushing to get away.”
“Come here,” Ruby said, and as Javier moved into her embrace, she thought about how the night stoked primeval fears. We let our guard down in the dark, she thought, and that’s precisely when the past knows it can come hurtling forward. Ruby held him until he slept once more, and she left the light on.
* * *
—
RUBY’S BIRTHDAY—VALENTINE’S DAY—WAS just a week away. Javier had borrowed Ruby’s car, and so Rose was dropping Ruby off for work.
“He’s moving in with you? Already? After what, five or six weeks?” Rose asked. She flicked her turn signal. “You’ve been keeping him all for yourself, and I understand that. Still, none of us has met him. I mean, it’s up to you, of course, but it seems a little fast. Don’t you think?”
“It’s mostly practical. Javier doesn’t have a lot of money. No paycheck yet from the casino for his work—there’s some delay, I don’t know—and he’s had the expense of all the film-developing, the printing,” Ruby explained.
“Okaaaay,” Rose said. “It’s just—well, I’ve never seen you act this fast. Not with a man.” Rose paused, and Ruby could see that her friend was trying to decide whether or not to say what she said next. “Has he asked you to marry him?”
“What? No, of course not! And I wouldn’t say yes, even if he did!”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“That he hasn’t asked me or that I wouldn’t say yes, yet? Well, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t bother me. Not in the least.”
“I get the physical attraction,” Rose said, smiling widely. “I’ve seen him coming and going. He’s gorgeous.”
“Isn’t he?” Ruby grinned at her friend.
“Don’t distract the driver,” Rose joked. Laughing, Ruby pretended to reach for the steering wheel. “But seriously. What would your family say? I mean—living in sin and all. My father would disown me.” Rose pulled into the parking lot of the Dunes.
Ruby rested her hand on the door handle. She was unwilling to discuss family or morality, and especially not in a parking lot. And while other women might believe they should save themselves for marriage, Ruby had nothing to save—and no family to object. Besides, Javier was different. Her friends would see that when they met him at her birthday party. She touched Rose’s shoulder and said, “I realize you care.”
“We all care,” Rose said, spreading the blame for her motherly lecture.
Ruby opened the car door and stood. “We’ll have a blast at my party. Now stop worrying!”
* * *
—
JAVIER STORED MOST of his photographic equipment—the lights, the reflectors, and the huge rolls of backdrop paper—in his VW bus, and that helped some as they squeezed their two lives into Ruby’s one-bedroom apartment. Ruby unplugged her sewing machine and stuck it on the shelf in the coat closet. She gathered her drawing materials, her watercolors, and she packed them away.
Ruby was excited about sharing her life; she felt ready.
But Javier hadn’t told her about the red-and-royal-blue parrot, whose cage took up a large part of the living room and who shouted “Oye! Elisa!” every time Ruby passed his cage.
“What does that mean?” she asked Javier one day when she came home from rehearsal and dropped
her purse on the couch. He was in the kitchen making her tapas.
“What?”
“Iago’s greeting.”
“Oh, dad. Well…”
“It’s profane?”
“Is what? Profane?”
“Dirty.”
“No, no no. Is no dirty.” He stopped slicing fingerling potatoes, set down the knife, and stirred a pot with some sort of red tomato sauce. Wiping his hands on the towel he’d tucked into the waistband of his jeans, he said, “Iago is saying oye, and that means ‘hey.’ And then he is saying Elisa. Dad is a wooman’s name.”
“Elisa.”
“Sí.” He turned back to the cutting board.
Ruby stood behind him, put her hands on his shoulders. “Elisa is an ex-girlfriend?”
“Sí.”
“Oh.” She felt a flame of jealousy, which was an entirely new experience for her. If Iago had known some woman long enough to learn her name and call out for her, it must have been serious. “Okay,” Ruby said, resisting the temptation to ask more. She didn’t really want to populate her mind with images of the woman—women—who’d come before her.
After all, she told herself, she was Javier’s here and now. The others were his past. And hadn’t each and every woman Javier had known before Ruby made him the man he was now, the man she’d fallen in love with? The man who’d said he was willing to hold her pain in his hands, to carry it for her? Maybe Elisa taught him all sorts of wonderful things. Maybe Elisa even taught him to make tapas.
Ruby picked up a carrot and nibbled on it. “When I was in sixth grade,” she began, leaning against the counter, “I asked my teacher to help me find a pen pal. Her name was Calista Salvador Rocha, and she lived in São Paolo.” She grabbed another carrot stick. “Her letters came in envelopes edged in the Brazilian flag’s yellow and green. I remember”—she laughed—“that Calista wrote with a fountain pen that left burps of ink in the middle of sentences.”
“Is most beautiful. Her name,” he said. “That is what Calista means in Portuguese. Most beautiful.”
“I never knew that.” Ruby used the tip of her tongue to dislodge a piece of carrot from between her teeth. “But what I wanted to tell you was that she had a pet jaguar that lounged beside her swimming pool. And”—Ruby paused for emphasis—“Calista had a parrot that sat on the back of her chair and taunted everyone at the dinner table by shouting ‘Mas que otário!’ at each of them in turn.”
“ ‘Loser!’ That is funny,” he said, stirring the sauce. But his voice didn’t reflect any kind of true appreciation for Calista’s charm, and so Ruby let it go.
“I need a shower before we eat,” she said, kissing him on the nape of his neck. Rehearsal for the new show had been murder. She was sore in all kinds of new places.
“Oye! Elisa!” the parrot shouted as Ruby headed down the hallway to the bathroom.
After dinner, they sat on her couch, sipping a peppery cabernet and quietly talking. Ruby was excited about her birthday for the first time since before her family died. Vivid, Rose, and Dee were helping her put together a party, and Javier had agreed to make paella and sangria.
“It’s such a luxury to have someone cook for me.” She sighed, full of pleasure. “You’re spoiling me.”
“Is what you deserve,” he said, just as the phone rang. Ruby started to stand, and he said, quickly, “Don’t answer that, por favor.”
“It’s probably Vivid or Rose. Don’t be silly,” she said, barely glancing back at him.
It wasn’t until she’d finished discussing paper cups, plates, and utensils with Rose that she saw Javier was seething.
“What?” she asked.
“They call you all the time. They cannot live one day without you? They cannot give us one day alone?”
“Of course they can,” she said, still standing and watching her boyfriend suddenly transform to a truculent child planted on her couch cushions. “Are you jealous?” Ruby almost laughed at the absurdity of her question.
“Is no jealous. Is matter of respect. They don’t respect me.”
“They don’t even know you! Honestly, Javier, you’re reading an awful lot into a phone call. Rose was asking about my birthday party. Really. Let’s not be silly about all of this.”
“Come sit down,” he said, thumping the cushion next to him. “You spend all your free time with them. I am the one should be número uno in your life.”
“You are,” she said, touching his cheek.
“It does no feel that way.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and apparently to show her that he, too, was regretful, he took her foot into his hands and began massaging it. “Lord.” Ruby sighed.
“Is better, yes?”
“Perfect,” she said. He was just insecure—for now—in their newfound love. Truthfully, so was she. She’d be careful to demonstrate her devotion, and soon enough he’d feel central in her life. How odd it was that such a big, strong man felt needful, uncertain. But how lovely it was to be needed.
She sighed deeply and laid her head back against the cushions. Ruby had planned to ask him for the change from the fifty-dollar bill she’d given him to buy wine and tapas ingredients, but at this point it seemed wise just to let it go. He was a little too sensitive this evening; she’d ask him tomorrow. Instead, she stretched until she could switch on the TV, letting Steve McGarrett and the men of Hawaii Five-O distract her until it was time for bed.
* * *
—
FOR HER BIRTHDAY celebration, Ruby was wearing a backless black sequined dress, and she’d applied a generous swath of turquoise-blue eye shadow to each eye. She lined her eyes darkly, emphatically. She wore a choker made of five strands of pearls interspersed with rubies, and a ruby cocktail ring. Still, she thought as she watched Javier orbit Vivid, Ruby could have been naked for all that it mattered.
Javier was transfixed, drawn to Vivid just as every other man on earth was pulled in by Vivid’s powerful gravitational field. That night, Ruby’s friend wore a zebra-striped micromini with silver wedge boots that rose to the middle of her thighs. Beneath the dress’ thin material, Vivid’s breasts proclaimed absolute freedom, and her silver hoop earrings caught the light, fractured it into a thousand pieces, and sent it spinning off to land on the faces of Ruby’s guests. Ruby saw a piece of that light dance across Javier’s cheeks as he leaned close to Vivid and whispered something.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Dee said, standing beside Ruby and holding a tray of stuffed mushrooms. “Vivid’s just being Vivid. She can’t help it.”
“She could,” Ruby said, surprised at how fervently she resented Vivid for not turning Javier away. Ruby saw Rose and Matt exchange a look as they, too, watched Javier and Vivid. “I’ll take that.” Ruby grabbed the tray of appetizers from Dee. She marched across the living room and inserted herself between the couple. “Canapé?” she asked, forcing a smile.
“Oh, honey,” Vivid said, clearly oblivious. “Javier was just asking me—”
Ruby saw Javier shake his head, trying to stop Vivid.
“What?” Vivid asked innocently. “Ruby won’t care.”
“Who says I won’t?” Ruby asked, the edge to her voice sharp, the tray of hors d’oeuvres tilting precariously.
“He just wants to photograph me,” Vivid said. “I told him fully clothed,” she assured Ruby.
“Here.” Ruby shoved the tray into Javier’s hands. “See if anyone wants any.” She could see him decide not to challenge her, and she watched his back as he moved off. He was wearing a Mexican embroidered muslin shirt, jeans with frayed cuffs, and his leather sandals. His hair was getting longer, now past his collar.
“He’s fucking gorgeous,” Vivid said, still unaware of Ruby’s mood. “And that accent. God, pure sex. Is he as good in bed as he looks?”
“I think he’d like to
show you,” Ruby said.
“Oh, come off it, Ruby.”
“How can you, of all people, be so obtuse?” Ruby heard that her voice was too loud, and she fought for control. “He hasn’t asked me to pose for any photos.”
“Hey,” Vivid said, finally noticing Ruby’s distress. She held up her hands. “I’m sorry. Look, I won’t do it. I mean, I’m your friend, and I would think you would know you could trust me, but if it bothers you this much, then I’ll tell him to forget about it.”
Ruby closed her eyes, took a calming breath. “I know I shouldn’t mind—”
“Yeah, well, clearly you do. So it won’t happen, okay?” Vivid squeezed Ruby’s shoulders, and Ruby saw that Javier was watching them. “It’s your birthday, Ruby Wilde. Let’s don’t spoil it with stupid shit like this. All right?”
“I’m sorry. I’m acting like a child.”
“You’re acting like a woman in love.” Vivid kissed her cheek. “Now let’s light twenty-one candles and humiliate you with song.”
Late in the evening, Javier cleared off the glass-topped coffee table and carefully opened a Baggie of white powder. He took a teaspoon from the kitchen and carefully spelled out RUBY, using his fingertips to coax the powder into the proper shapes. From his hip pocket, he pulled out a Sucrets throat lozenge tin.
“Okay, so that cost a fortune,” Ruby heard Dee’s date say. “That’s a lotta coke.”
Ruby hid her surprise. She hadn’t known Javier used coke—or even dabbled in it.
All the Beautiful Girls Page 21