Always Chloe and Other Stories

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  In the end, he wished for a light heart. And saw the first meteor. Or falling star. To a mature man, a meteor; to a child who still wants the world to be big and full of magic, a falling star. A shooting star. Then he saw another. Two miracles in a row. Not magic, Victor knew. Science. Reality. But miracles, because they fell just as he became ready to look up.

  Lately, he’d allowed reality to become too small.

  Then it was an ongoing meteor storm, a shower. Someone, something out there saying life is not as stingy as it seems. Victor couldn’t get back on the train because then he’d miss the rest of the show, which would be sad, and also disrespectful. The universe had obviously gone to a lot of trouble.

  Just before the train pulled out without him, a porter paused before boarding, caught his eye. Victor half expected him to say, “All aboard,” or something along those lines, but maybe they didn’t do that anymore. This was, after all, Amtrak in modern-day Arizona, not the Orient Express.

  Victor averted his eyes, and the porter shrugged.

  The train pulled away and left him standing on the platform, the sole witness, so far as he knew, to a full-on scientific miracle.

  Nearly an hour later, right around the time his neck began to ache, Victor heard the footsteps. He adjusted his vision downward to see the three teenagers cross the cement platform. Approach him. All male, one black, two white, none particularly friendly looking. Though painfully aware of his vulnerability, this struck him as something over which he had no control, and, in recognizing that, his heart felt oddly light.

  He craned his neck back to view the sky.

  He could feel them standing close. Almost feel the heat, the breath, of them. He caught a trace of tobacco smoke. He waited for something; he wasn’t sure what. A gun in his ribs, a blow, a coarse demand. Something.

  He never looked at them, never assessed their faces or their clothing. He did not memorize details to share with a sketch artist if he survived.

  He thought about the cash he held on his person, which wasn’t much. A few tens and twenties, a wallet full of credit cards. Would they be satisfied with that? He almost asked, but hated to disturb the delicately balanced moment.

  A second later, one of the youths spoke up.

  “Mister, what the fuck we lookin’ at?”

  Victor adjusted his vision down ever so slightly to see all three young men craning their necks to see what Victor found so interesting. “Meteors,” he said, as though it should be obvious.

  “I don’t see no fuckin’—”

  “Shut up, man,” said another of them. “You talk so much, you cain’t see nothin’. You just missed one.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there, man. Shut up an’ pay ‘ttention.”

  After a moment of strangely comfortable silence, three bright streaks of light exploded almost simultaneously. Victor watched them slide down the sky as if over a glass dome. Their sudden brightness split the night among the three long trails, curving down and tailing out into nothing, leaving a visual echo of themselves, light printed onto Victor’s eyes, or brain, or both.

  He heard a sound escape at least two of the boys, a kind of “ooooh” sound, unplanned breath noises, children watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  Which Victor knew they probably had been, at one time.

  Minutes later, he heard, “Gotta cramp in my fuckin’ neck.”

  “Shut up, man, you cain’t never just shut up.”

  How much time elapsed then, Victor wasn’t sure. But when he straightened, lowered his head to massage his own cramping neck muscles, he noticed he was standing on the platform alone, as before.

  He briefly regretted not having said goodbye.

  He lay on his back on the cold concrete, his eyes still to the sky. At some point in the night, he probably slept briefly.

  He woke suddenly. The thin, barely-dawn light made him blink. His eyes felt sandy, his stomach slightly upset. His back and hips ached from their contact with the hard, cold platform. Before he could even come fully awake, he felt himself seized by an idea.

  Something had happened, something dreadful, to the passengers of his missed train. And some bizarre chain of events had conspired to spare him.

  He struggled to his feet, feeling disheveled and hungry, but strangely clear. He tried the door of the station, but it was locked at this hour of the morning.

  He stumbled along the street adjusting his thoughts. He saw a man walk into a diner on a corner two blocks up, and decided breakfast would be just the thing. Breakfast and the morning paper. So he could read about the fate from which he’d been spared.

  He bought a paper from a coin-operated box in front of the diner. The headline blared the coming election. No train wreck on the front page.

  He sat in a booth, flipping through the paper, but found no mention of a rail disaster. But then, it might have taken place just a few hours ago. Surely, it would not be in the morning edition. That made sense.

  The waitress brought coffee, which tasted strong and bracing. He tried to remember when he’d last had a good cup of coffee, though he drank the stuff every day.

  Before she left with his breakfast order, he asked if anything exciting had happened around here last night.

  She eyed him suspiciously, as though he’d made a rude personal comment.

  “What kinda thing, mister?”

  “I don’t know. Car crash, plane crash. Train derailment.”

  “I didn’t hear nothing.”

  He ate heartily, scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, knowing it could have happened, whether the waitress had heard about it or not.

  When he arrived back at the station, an old man in an Amtrak uniform was just opening for business. He was small, shrunken, wrinkled; in his seventies, at least, Victor thought.

  He smiled when Victor approached the counter, his footsteps echoing in the otherwise empty hall.

  “I missed that train headed east through Phoenix.”

  “‘Nother one along in two hours.”

  Except that Victor was no longer sure he wanted to go.

  It felt so damn good not to be there. He had already missed his meeting. God, he hated these business trips. Maybe it was blessedly too late to make things right, anyway.

  “Did that train get in…okay?”

  “What d’ya mean? You mean, was it on time?”

  “Right. Was it on time?”

  “What time was it s’posed to arrive in Phoenix?”

  The old man’s computer hummed softly to life.

  “Six twenty-two.”

  “Yep. Right on time.”

  “Really?”

  “On the nose. Yep. Folks on that train are in Phoenix right now. Right on time.”

  Right on time, Victor thought, with a sinking in his full, warm, otherwise light insides. Ready to go to work. All set to do business.

  Only then did Victor fully comprehend the scope of the dreadful fate from which he’d been spared.

  “Well,” he said. “You two look comfortable.”

  Rayanne lounged on her back on his bed, looking through one of his photo albums. Josephine lay with her head across Rayanne’s belly. She didn’t even raise her head to greet him, just tapped her tail against the bedspread.

  “You’ve only been gone three days.”

  “My trip didn’t work out quite like I thought it would.”

  “Hate to say I told you so.”

  Rayanne made breakfast for him. Her suitcase sat ready by the front door.

  The place looked cleaner than it had when he left. She served him good, strong coffee.

  “Look,” she said. “Don’t get mad, okay?”

  “What?”

  “Your ex-wife called. Something about a bill.”

  “Why would I get mad about that?”

  “Well. You wouldn’t, I guess. Just that we talked for a while. At first, she thought I was, like, your underage girlfriend or something. But then she figured out that, you kn
ow, girlfriends totally do not say to ex-wives, ‘You two belong together.’ Ooops. I just let it slip. The part you might get mad about. I told her I was just the dog sitter, I hardly know you. So then she said, well, if I hardly know you, why would you tell me all that? How much you love her and all? I said you didn’t; I was just alone in all this energy left over by you guys, and I started doing a reading on both of you at once. And you two are, like, in the cards for each other. Big time.”

  Victor smiled slightly to feel that light sensation return. He’d worried that maybe it had been a one-time situational high, never to be heard from again.

  “So, are you mad?”

  “I guess not. What did she say?”

  “That you were way too wrapped up in your work.”

  “True.”

  “I said that could all be about to change. Big time.”

  “Also true.”

  “So, that’s cool, that you’re not mad. I thought you’d be mad. Want your cards done? No charge.”

  “You know, I don’t think so. I think I’d like to be surprised. I mean, in the nicest possible way, I’d like to wait and see what happens.”

  He wrote her a check for the time he had intended to be gone, with fifty percent added as a tip. No, not a tip. A gift.

  “But thanks for what you’ve done already.”

  “Maybe she’ll call.”

  “Maybe.”

  “She sounded like maybe she’d call.”

  “We’ll see,” he said, knowing it might not work out that neatly, but also knowing that stranger things have happened, could happen still. “Anyway, thanks.”

  “Sometimes you can hear things from a total stranger. That you couldn’t even hear from your own husband. You know?”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  “All part of the service,” she said on her way out.

  Josephine whimpered softly at the door for hours.

  BREAKAGE

  I live in My Employer’s house. My Employer does not.

  An average of twenty-eight days per month, I rattle around in this place alone, a place the size of an island, a country, a planet. I am royalty by default. On the remaining days, Rachel, my employer—the actual royalty—rudely insists on using her own house. On those days, I disinvent myself in the servant’s quarters, a woman without a country.

  My Employer has three dogs, my charges. My reasons for being so employed. Three vast, elegant Harlequin Danes, blessed with these carefully chosen names: Mistress Minerva, Artemis, Sandoval. My Employer calls them Minnie, Artie, and Sandy. After all, they are dogs. If they object to being so trivialized, they are not at liberty to say.

  My Employer’s dogs don’t realize that they are My Employer’s dogs. They think they belong to me.

  My lover calls me Lilly.

  My lover’s name is Roland Webster. His live-in girlfriend calls him Roland. I call him Web. No one calls him Roley or Webby. I notice that. I called him Ro once, but he didn’t like it. Sounded too much like a woman’s name. God forbid. He can see trivialization coming, and resist. But then, he was born human and male, and so has been afforded years of practice.

  Now and then, Web will say this: “You have to stop tearing at scabs, Lilly.” I want to ask if he has any idea how self-serving that advice is. I want to ask what makes him so sure those wounds have scabbed over. I want to ask how he knows the scabs aren’t tearing at me. So far, I never have.

  We’re lying in bed in the daylight, Web and I. Together, though it’s hard to tell. Normally, he’d be dressed and gone by now. He’s good at that. Sort of a hobby.

  For a few strange moments, we remain frozen in our assimilation of a small disaster. Really, it’s a big disaster. We don’t know that yet, but later we will. Later still, I may describe it as a blessing. I won’t be surprised when Web fails to join me on that journey.

  He sums up the moment rather ineloquently, with a scattering of blunt words thrown in no particular direction. “I thought it felt too good there at the end.” Those are the words he chooses. On second thought, they don’t quite sum it up.

  I search around on the quilt, pick up the torn foil packet. I examine it, see what it has to say for itself. “Says here, each and every one of these bad boys is electronically tested.”

  I ball up the foil packet, launch it in the direction of the waste basket in the corner. Miss. Everything is a miss today.

  Web says, “So much for the electronic age.”

  Upon saying this, he swings himself off the bed, and it falls to the floor, and he has to retrieve it. He has to compromise his studied elegance to fish it off the carpet. He doesn’t like to stand naked around me in broad daylight, because he feels, not unreasonably, that the years and gravity have taken a toll on his chest. And he doesn’t like to bend over, because…well, it all goes to gravity. So much of our lives does.

  When he stands upright, he has it in his fingers. For a flash of a moment, I get to observe it. It reminds me of a burst balloon. Reminds me how, as a child, one could stand holding only the curled neck of a former balloon and marvel over its sudden fate. How large and substantial it had seemed just a moment before. What exactly became of the rest of it? For a flash of a moment, we are allowed to pretend that simple latex, rather than our own approach to personal relationships, has failed.

  As he strides out of the bedroom, I hear familiar sounds: a threatening growl deep in a Dane throat, Web’s voice, dense with irritation and an undercurrent of fear. Sandoval outweighs Web. And he’s still growing.

  “Goddamn it, Sandy. Lilly, call him, would you?”

  “Sandoval,” I call.

  He vaults into the room and lands on the bed with me. I stroke his long, silky ears. Thank God, My Employer never had the dogs’ ears cut.

  Sandoval despises Web with conviction; he is inordinately jealous. Web dislikes Sandoval because, until Sandoval came into his life in a package deal, all dogs had thus far roundly and openly adored him. Like most of us, Web hates to close out a good long streak.

  I call after him. I say, “Don’t flush it this time.”

  Then I tell Sandoval, “He’ll probably forget and flush it anyway,” and Sandoval predictably commiserates. Along with almost everybody else on the planet, Web doesn’t live at the beach. He’s not the one who has to call Septic-tank Guy, and later slide the bill for his pricey service into a stack of other bills that I unreasonably worry My Employer may someday notice. Despite the fact that she never has before.

  Last month, Sandoval shredded one of her white leather sofas, outraged to be abandoned at home while I drove to L.A. for a casting call. I left an emergency message with the decorator, who arrived the following day, pronounced it beyond salvation, and replaced it. My Employer didn’t seem to notice either the substitution or the bill, so I pointed it out. Literally.

  I said, “New sofa.” And pointed.

  She said, “What happened to the old one?”

  I said, “Sandoval ate it.”

  She said, “Oh. Okay.”

  This is a good example of the depth of our communication.

  Web reenters. “I didn’t flush it.” He begins to dress.

  Sandoval growls. I place a hand gently over his great muzzle. “Stop that.” The silence reverberates. “You’re leaving?”

  “I have to go.”

  “Shouldn’t we talk about this?”

  “I have to go.”

  “When are we going to talk about this?”

  “I’m not sure what there is to say.”

  “I think you need to tell me if I have any cause to worry.”

  “I can’t control what you will or won’t worry about.”

  Good old Web. Father of the noncommittal. President of the easy out. I used to study him, thinking I could learn it. I am currently formulating a theory that the truly great evaders are born, not made.

  When he’s gone, Sandoval lays his heavy head on my midsection, dark eyes open. Pained. He’s upset because I have a problem he can’t f
ix. If Sandoval were a human male, I’d confide in him, tell him Web is making my life difficult. If Sandoval were a human male, he’d be the sort to storm down to the pawn shop, buy his thirty-eight out of hock, find Web at the university, and smoke the guy in front of dozens of witnesses. Then he’d march straight to the nearest police station and turn himself in. And for seven years, I’d have to visit him in the Big House every Sunday, because he did it all for me.

  His soft ear flaps tickle my stomach. I tell him he’s lucky he’s a dog. We’re all three lucky that Sandoval is a dog.

  We’re drinking lattes al fresco in front of a little bakery on Casitas Pass Road. Web and I. Looking past a strip mall to a backdrop of mountains framed in electric blue—from the ridiculous to the sublime. It’s been quiet between us for some time. I grow tired of it. It’s wearying to listen to something not being said. Easier to just get it over with.

  I say, “Before I left L.A., I had myself tested. Since then, there’s only been one guy. Just a one-time thing. I mean, other than you, that is. You know what I mean. And I don’t think there was anything really high risk about him.”

  At a point in this awkward monologue, his gaze peels away from the mountains; he regards me as if I have rousted him from a pleasant dream. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I’m trying to give you some sense of your risk factor.”

  “Oh, I get it. Now it’s my turn. And if I don’t care to play?”

  His hair is doing that thing it likes to do. Spraying down over his forehead. It’s not unduly long but has a mind of its own, and tends to spill down to touch the bridge of his sharply straight nose, partially covering one eye. I would have to brush it away were it mine; he seems unaware of its travels. Even shot through with gray as it is, this effect makes him look young.

  I say, “I don’t see that you have any choice.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

  I’m pleasantly surprised myself. I say, “What part of personal responsibility don’t you understand?” God. I’m on a roll.