by S. Ann Cole
Our prolonged coition was interrupted, unfortunately, by the unexpected visit of Darren and Tanya. Or as Ruddy announced them: Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. Apparently, Natalio had promised to have lunch with them but such promise had been mind-slipped due to our soul-enshrining morning. They’d come by to check if he was okay, worried, because his phone went unanswered when they’d called. “And such was highly unlikely,” Darren had said. Natalio had apologized and suggested we all had lunch together, but quickly retracted the idea when he recorded my patent disapproval.
No way. I wouldn’t go anywhere with Darren, for he’d been the cause of all our heartaches. The cause of his brother’s death. The cause of every damned thing. If he had respected Nelly when he’d said ‘no’ and hadn’t gone banging on his door, things would’ve been different. But clearly, Natalio didn’t see it as I did. And I do understand he loved him as a friend, but I didn’t. Darren knew, too, because he hadn’t been able to meet my eyes at all. And Tanya’s scowls and disapproval of me were just as transparent as they were seven years ago. Positive I was that her desire for Natalio had amplified since she’d found out who he was. The dreamy look in her eyes when she’d looked at him and her coquettish fluttering didn’t go unnoticed to anyone but Darren. Oblivious sod that he was. So much for being happily married.
“No. I’ve never slept with her,” Natalio had said when he’d caught me scowling at the closed elevator door when Darren and Tanya—Mr. and Mrs. Wilson—had left.
And I’d wondered how he’d known my thoughts.
“Darren’s my friend,” he’d said. “I’ve never told him of Tanya’s shameless advances because he loves her a lot. And it would hurt him. I sure as hell know that I’m never going to sleep with her. So why bother? If she does it with someone else, then that’s a different story.”
“I don’t like either of them,” I said contemptuously.
“I can see that now,” he’d replied, then gripped my chin forcing me to look up at him. “But you can’t blame Darren for all that’s happened. I was just as imbecilic to go. Larry was wrong for shooting at the cops. Travis was turpitude at setting us up. And if we want to play the blame game we can go as far as blaming the people who invented ammunitions, or Eve for eating the apple which introduced us to sin, or God for making human beings at all. But all that’s illogical. Shit happens. As long as we retain life, we just have to learn from our mistakes, forgive and live on. I have you now, you have me. We’re happy. Let’s live on.”
I’d worried my lip at the irritating fact that he was right and that I couldn’t be combative. And he’d kissed me senseless and led me back upstairs, only for him to be alerted an hour later about an urgent meeting and leave with bristling apologies.
After I shimmied into the other gown, I turned to the mirror and smiled. “Yes. This is it.” A strapless, cleavage-dipped, flowing navy blue gown. Diamond studs launched from my left hip and crept upwards to rim the deep sweetheart neckline. The slinky material cleaved to my skin, accentuating my small waist and ample hips. It was perfect.
Lori beamed at me. “You look amazing. Natalio is going to grow hazy when he sees you in this dress.”
Kelsy popped her head from where she was rummaging through the racks. “I think he’ll prefer her out of it.”
After abounding me with apparels, undergarments and needed cosmetics at Natalio’s behest, Lori wished me a good day and—accompanied by a commiserative expression—good luck at the dinner, and left.
Kelsy flopped back on the sofa, surrounded by the mess of unnecessary apparels she snatched from Lori. “Holy shit, you’re with Natalio Nelson bitch!”
I rolled my eyes and waved her off, folding the scads of clothes heaped in the living area into neat piles. “He’s just a normal guy that I fell in love with when I was seventeen.”
“Normal, you say?” Kelsy said, blowing a large bubble of her chewing gum then popping it. “There’s nothing normal about that sexy, blue-eyed—”
My phone started ringing and I held up my hand to stop her blabbing when I saw that it was Natalio. “Hi.”
Natalio’s voice came over the line in a tone that was levels less spirited than it had been before he’d left a few hours ago. “Hey, babe. How are you doing? Found a dress yet?”
“Yes, I have. Lori just left, actually.”
“Well, um, that’s good…” he trailed off, sounding a little odd. His agitation was palpable and it was sending me into a panic mode.
“Is everything alright, Natalio?”
“Not really. I, uh, have something to tell you…Hang on, baby.” I could hear him yelling at someone in the background threatening to cut their lying tongue out or something of that sort, then came back on the line. “Yeah, Sadie? Maybe I should just wait until I get home later. Is Kelsy still there?”
“Yes, yes she’s still here,” I answered in impatience. “But please, tell me what you have to tell me now. You’ll only leave me worried if you don’t. What’s going on?”
Natalio sighed. “Something’s happened. It’s Tevin.”
An unusual feeling jolted in my chest, and I sprung to my feet. The piles of clothes that were sitting on my lap tumbled to the floor as I began pacing the room. Kelsy perked up, watching me closely. But I tried my damndest to avoid her eyes. “What-What do you mean ‘something’s happened’?”
“Well—Just a sec.” And again I was on hold. There was rustling in the background as Natalio gave some sort of order to someone, then it sounded like man was howling in pain. I couldn’t hear what was being said, and I just wish he’d hurry up with the chit-chat and tell me what the hell has happened to my best friend. As wished for, he came back on the line. “Sadie?”
“Yeah, am still here, Natalio. Will you just freakin’ tell me already?!” Every vein of patience had left me.
And just like that, he dropped the words that pushed me into an abyss. “Tevin’s dead, Sadie.”
Tears sprung to my eyes so fast, it was as if I’d been punched in the nose. My heart felt extremely heavy in my chest, beating so hard I could feel it in my ears. My knees wobbled, threatening to take me down. Kelsy stood up from the sofa, imploring me to look at her. But each time she came near, I turned my back to her, hiding. She suspected the news I was receiving was terrible, but she couldn’t imagine just how terrible. There was no way to prepare her for this.
“Sadie? Are you still there?”
“Y-yes I’m still here,” I croaked. Pain and lament clogged my throat. “How did it happen? Who did it? Who took my best friend’s life?!”
A long, winding wail pierced through my ears as Kelsy tore her eyes wide, her hands fisted in her own hair. Now she knew just how terrible the news was. I never meant to say it aloud like that, but the pain was so unbearable it incited anger. On a sigh, I averted my eyes from the horrific sight of her. It was more than I could handle.
Natalio breathed heavily down the receiver. “He’d…done something. And they took his life back for it. He was found stabbed to death in his jail cell this morning.”
A noise that sounded too horrible to be my own voice left my lips and I doubled over in pain, a heaviness pulling at my stomach. “W-w-what did he do?”
“That doesn’t matter, Sadie. He’s gone and there’s no way to bring him back. I really wish I was there with you right now, but I’m a bit tied up and—” A gunfire went off in the background, cutting him off. An angry Natalio shouted, “Ruddy, what the fuck?”
I could hear Ruddy’s familiar voice rumbling in apologizing tones, but Natalio swore at him again and came back on the line. “Sadie, I gotta go. I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”
“You!!” I yelled at him. “You could have saved him! You could have stopped this! You…you bastard!”
“What?” Natalio said, sounding shocked at my outburst.
“You got me out of there. You could’ve gotten him out, too! But you left him; you left him in there to die!! I hate you! You let him die.” Finding it impossible to spea
k another word, the rest of my blame choked out in my throat.
Kelsy’s caterwauling grew louder. Deafening. And I felt like stripping myself bare and running butt naked to a place farther away than Africa. Away to a place where bad things never happen. What’s the route to Utopia? Was I to just close my eyes and imagine myself there? For once, couldn’t the damned place just be real?!
“Sadie, the only way Tevin could’ve lived to see another month is if a helicopter had landed on the prison grounds and got him out of the state—the country. Tevin was a dead man walking in or out of jail. Even if I’d gotten him out, he’d still be dead by now. Too many people were after him. There’s nothing I could—”
“Screw you, Nelly! You could’ve saved him! You know as I know that you could’ve prevented this.” Before he could reply, I hurled the phone across the room and it went smashing into pieces against a wall. I felt as if I had an anchor tied to my ankles, dragging me down to the bottom of a sea of salty tears. Drowning me in grief.
When I finally had the courage to face Kelsy, her eyes were red and swollen, her face drenched in tears. It was hard to see. But I looked at her anyways, as she looked back at me. And all we could do at a moment’s beat was launch into each other’s arms, both of us seeking solace from the other. But all I withdrew from her was bereavement, as she withdrew the same from me. Because this was all we had, this was all we could give. And so we sank to the floor in our embrace, our tears mixing, our wails competing.
We cried ourselves into a tangled heap, curled up on Natalio’s huge, dark rug like a twin fetus. Tevin was dead. We cried ourselves to sleep.
When I awoke, night had fallen, and there were arms around me. But they weren’t Kelsy’s. They were arms I knew, yes. But they were arms that I didn’t want to embrace me, to try giving me solace to a grief that these said arms could’ve prevented.
Kelsy was nowhere my eyes could see. Launching up in a sitting position, I began calling for her. My friend who needed me like I needed her. I couldn’t allow her to grieve alone. She had no idea what grief could do to her. She wouldn’t know how to deal with it.
“Kelsy!” I called out. But my voice was so hoarse I could hardly hear myself.
Natalio’s hard frame was right there behind me, his strong arms trying to tug me back down to the carpet. “Sadie, calm down. Kelsy left.”
Anger surged through me as I twisted to look at him. He was shirtless and seemed a tad weary. I tried not to let his nakedness distract me. “How could you let her leave? Are you that goddamn insensitive?” Though I wanted it to sound like a shout, I failed, because my throat was so sore from crying, I almost had no voice.
Natalio ran a hand through his hair then braced up on his elbows, his eyes holding sympathy and remorse. “I tried to get her to stay, but she insisted on leaving. She was worried…about you.”
“About me? I know what grief feels like. I know how to get over this. She doesn’t. I have to be there for her, Natalio. I’m sorry, but I can’t go to your family dinner with you. I have to stay here with her.”
“That’s exactly what she said you would do,” Natalio sighed. “I came in and found her sitting on the sofa. Just staring at you while you slept. Saddened.”
“Of course she’s saddened, her boyfriend just died!”
Natalio shook his head, trying to be patient with me, seemingly understanding my rage and allowing me to be angry. He stuck his hand in the side crease of the sofa and pulled out a folded paper. “She left this for you.”
Giving him a glare which sent the message that I hated him—only temporarily—I snatched the paper from his hand and unfolded it.
Sister,
We’ve both just lost someone dear to us. Someone who was apart us. Your brother and my lover. We have lost him. And all the tears in the world won’t ever bring him back.
Please note the plural pronoun: WE.
It’s not just me that’s feeling this pain. You are, too.
As you might know, I’ve never, ever felt pain like this before. I’ve only ever known joys, and happiness and sunshine. Contentment, love in abundance and peace. My life has always been exceptional.
Your life, on the other hand, has been anything but. You’ve been grieving since that midwife slapped you on your bare bum the day you were born. Unlike me, you’ve known only sadness, sorrows, and darkness. Unhappiness, tough love and heartaches. People like me who have always been in merriment need doses of grief from time to time to even things out. To open our blinded eyes to the abrasiveness of life.
But people like you, my dear sister, need not a dose of happiness, but an outpouring, a torrential flood of bliss, love and contentment foraying into your life. Because life has not been lived until we know what happiness feels like. Neither has life been lived until we know, too, what grief feels like. And there can be no way to distinguish the two until we’ve felt both.
Which means neither of us have ever lived…until now.
It’s your time to be happy with that man who loves you enough to wait seven damn years for you. That is love I’m yet to receive!
Don’t worry about me, Sadie. I have enough happy bones inside me to fight off this minuteness of grief. Stay with Natalio and let him love your pain away. Go to the dinner, meet his family, and, though I know it will be hard, have fun. I’ll see you when you get back. And if you decide to move there, you know damn well that I’ll be moving there, too.
But please, let me grieve on my own. Focus on your own happiness. For once.
I love you, with all my heart, mind and soul.
Kelsy.
Twin tears strolled down my face as I folded the letter as small as it could be folded and tucked it in my shorts pocket. In a time when I thought Kelsy would’ve withered to the ground, she’d found so much more strength than I ever could. She wanted to grieve alone. She was handling this so much better than I was, and in her sorrow, she was thinking about my happiness. That fact evoked rivulets of tears from my eyes.
I turned to Natalio who was gazing at me with pained eyes, as if wishing he could swipe away my misery. “I don’t believe her, Natalio. What if she’s just trying to keep me away so she could go hurl herself off a bridge? I don’t want her to grieve alone. It’s not healthy.”
Reaching out, he thumbed my tears away. “You only see one’s true strength in their time of sorrow. Some people may seem weak on the outside, but really, they’re so much stronger than you could ever imagine. Everyone has their own way of handling grief. You’ve never seen Kelsy grieve before, so maybe this is her way of dealing with her distress. I sure as hell know that I hate having people around when I’m going through my shit. While there are some people who’d rather be surrounded with friends and loved ones. Just…respect what she asks, Sadie.”
“But I’ve always thought her to be so fragile. It’s just…” I sighed and crawled up to his chest, curling myself in his arms.
“You stop to think that maybe she was expecting it? I’ve seen her, and I’ve seen you. You’re taking it so much worse than her, Sadie. And I think that’s why she’s worried about you. It’s almost like she was expecting it and you weren’t, which made the news a harder hit on you.”
Natalio might have made a correct assessment. In fact, Kelsy had been vacillating between whether she should break up with Tevin or not, due to the scare of the event that had taken place at Tevin’s house. Adding also the nights that she used to sit up and worry about Tevin on the streets. So in some light, she might have been expecting the unexpected. Of course I knew that Tevin was a son of sin, but I honestly was not expecting his death. At least, not yet.
Tevin was bad, yes, a menace to society. But I was hoping he would’ve been like one of those bad guys that tiptoed around God’s wrath and reaped long life. Incalculable sinful bastards have lived until their eyes dimmed into gradual darkness. And I thought, really thought, Tevin would’ve been one of those sinful bastards.
Pressing my lips against the firmness of Natalio’s
chest that was my fortress, shield and refuge, I whispered, “Love my pain away. All of it. Everything that has ever made me cry, love it away, Natalio. Be my light at the end of the tunnel. Be my eternity.”
My lover sighed and kissed my forehead. “All that and more, Francé. All that and more.”
Chapter Twenty Three
I was convinced, no doubt, that Natalio was obsessed with glass homes once I stepped into his pad in San Francisco on Saturday night. Dumbstruck I was, for once, because I’d never seen anything like it. Huge was too small a word to describe his pad. Would colossal do? I knew not where to look first. It was aesthetically decorated with white furniture and elaborate pieces of art. No black this time. And I wondered sketchily if he’d replaced black with white because of my dislike of his loft.
It didn’t matter where I went, kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, I still saw the city lights twinkling all around because the pad was all-glass. Everywhere. How could I ever feel comfortable here? I would always have the notion that someone was watching me. My discomfort had retired when I stepped outside on the immense wraparound balcony and saw only my reflection when I tried to look into the house. From inside of the house I could see everything outside, but from outside the glass walls were exquisite opaqueness.
Strewn about the balcony were white leather seating and tall decorative plants. I wasn’t the type of person who was easily awed, because I fully concurred with the Ecclesiastes verses that everything here on earth is all meaningless. Nevertheless, I was awed.
“You like?”