Stay with Me

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  Chapter 3

  Miami

  Adrian Vega was about to unzip the fly of his jeans and dive into bed when he saw, in the blue silky light coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his bedroom, the figure of a woman asleep in his bed. His thumb lingered on the tab of his zipper as he leaned forward and squinted, trying as hard as he could to make out her features. She wasn’t under the sheets; she was simply lying on top of the down comforter, on her side. She was wearing some kind of dark outfit, and when Adrian took a step back his foot landed on what felt like a high heel shoe. He looked over his shoulder. How had she gotten into his apartment?

  The woman stirred, shifted her weight around, but didn’t wake up. Adrian stood before the bed, not knowing what to do. He had just gotten home from the airport and was dead tired. He backed up and looked at the digital display next to the bed: 3:15 a.m.

  Adrian zipped himself back up and closed the bedroom door. In the living room, he grabbed his cordless phone and stepped out onto the balcony, sliding the glass doors behind him. The moist, salty air blasted him with its fishy seaweed smell. The neon signs on South Beach sparkled on the left, and the sea was dark and invisible. He shook his head, tried for a moment to think straight. Coño, he thought. Too fried to think. He dialed building security and asked for the guy on duty downstairs to come up. He wanted the Goldilocks situation to be handled quietly, with the minimum fuss. He also wanted to be safe. Who knew if the woman was armed or crazy? His only desire was to get to sleep sometime before the unforgiving Miami sun came up.

  Adrian realized that most people wouldn’t handle a home invasion so calmly, even if the perpetrator was sound asleep. In fact, the average Miami homeowner would have a gun pointed to her ear by now. Perhaps the woman had been secretly living in his apartment while he was gone. Adrian yawned. Women had been inviting themselves into his bed in the middle of the night since he was sixteen. His father was a social worker and part-time minister who dragged home every glue-addicted loser and prostitute he could find to try to repair their souls with his famous sermon-over-a-hot-breakfast. As a kid growing up in a humble, two-room home in rural Puerto Rico, Adrian had been awakened by the rum-soaked snores and deranged mumblings of strangers with more frequency than he cared to remember. He thought about how his father would handle it: just go inside, shake the woman by the shoulder, and say ¿que te pasa, mujer? Or maybe he should simply do what most guys would do—bang her then kick her out. But he’d outgrown that sort of thing.

  Maybe she was a fan. He felt mounting pressure to move into a more secure building, or out to the gated suburbs, which was preposterous. South Beach was the only place for him in the entire state of Florida. And after that, New York and L.A.

  After Adrian hung up with building security, the glass slider opened and a voice behind the thin drapes said, “Adrian?” The woman stepped out into the patio; her high heels were back on and they clicked against the clay terrazzo tiles. She pulled her long hair back away from her face. “It’s me, Veronica.”

  Adrian had not seen Veronica Mayorga in over a year. She had lost a significant amount of weight. She looked gaunt and had hair that reached down to her waist, obviously fake because just a year ago, she had been a voluptuous woman with a pixie cut. They had broken up when their relationship reached the three-month mark, which was when Adrian broke up with every woman he dated if she didn’t do it first. At three months he always grew bored, and it was time to move on. He blinked for a few moments as he tried to reconcile Veronica with this person. He stepped closer to get a better look, and when he had satisfied his curiosity, he got back to business. “You’d better have a spectacularly good reason for being inside my apartment.”

  Veronica made a face. “I certainly do. I’ve been leaving messages for you for twenty-four hours. No one could find you.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “You never changed your alarm code,” she said with a sheepish grin. She held up a key. “And I had a copy. Anyway,” she said with a shrug, “I’m still writing for People en Español but for the next year I’m also hosting Telemundo’s nightly entertainment update ¡Al Dia! while Lupita Camacho is on maternity leave.”

  “Congratulations,” he said with a yawn. “I guess that explains the new look. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “You like?” she said in a high voice, tossing her thick blanket of hair over one shoulder.

  Adrian turned and walked to the other end of the balcony. He grabbed the rail, squeezing until he saw his veins pop up under his skin. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

  “I’m sure that the news about your brother is painful, so I thought you might want to make your statement to someone you know and trust.” She blinked both eyes and smiled a tight little smile. “Like me.”

  Adrian shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about David.”

  She held up her notebook, clicked the top of a pen. “Holly could barely talk on the phone, she was hysterical. She had just gotten the call from David’s mother in Connecticut.” Veronica shook her head, put her arms over her chest and stared at the ground with an almost convincing look of worry. “I’m glad I got to meet David that time he came down to see you.”

  “What’s wrong with David?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve been in Spain. I’ve been trying to get home for three days. Storms, delays, and dead cell phones . . .” He stopped himself and peered in closer, as if seeing her for the first time. “Veronica, what the hell are you talking about?”

  She let out a breath. “David has brain cancer. It’s fatal.”

  Adrian sat down, or rather, slid into a chair. He looked down at the floor for a moment, suddenly recalling the weekend in New York, how David had been complaining of headaches and nausea. He took a deep breath and turned to look back at her. “I don’t—I can’t believe it. I need to talk to him.” He rubbed his hand, the place of the tattoo. He found the starfish leg with the letter “D” floating above it and touched it lightly with his index finger. He stood up and turned toward Veronica. “Please leave now.”

  “Are you sad? Angry?” She tapped her pen against her notepad.

  He gave her a one-eyed squint. “Why did you call Holly?”

  “Because I check in with her periodically for news about you . . . since I got the new job.”

  “I have a publicist.”

  “I dated you.” She pointed to her chest, and then to his. “That has to count for something. Besides, Holly likes to talk.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Adrian, please. Please.” She moved in closer. “C’mon, it’s me.” She pressed her chest against his.

  There was a knock at the front door. Adrian turned and brushed past her. He walked through the open patio door and let the security guard in. “Oye, Frank. This lady needs to be escorted out of the building.” The security guard craned to see who she was. In Spanish he replied, “I’m sorry, Adrian. She told me she was dating you and I remembered her.” The man bowed. “Disculpame.”

  Veronica clutched his arm. “Adrian, let me sleep on the couch. We can talk in the morning.”

  “Leave.”

  She closed her eyes as she spoke. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “This is my house! It’s three in the morning. Are you insane, woman?” He looked at the security guard. The guard took a step toward her. Veronica recoiled and said, “You owe me, Adrian.”

  “Because I dated you? Are you nuts? I’ve dated half the media in Miami. Get in line.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that,” she said, opening her kohl-lined eyes wide.

  “I can’t believe you broke into my apartment. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

  “You don’t have a gun,” she said in a mocking voice.

  “I’m gonna get one.” He made a gun with his fingers and pointed it at her forehead. “Next time, bang!”

  “I’ll get my story, Adrian. With or wit
hout your help.”

  He wanted to lash out at her, but his dad suddenly popped into his mind, the annoying angel on his shoulder always there to remind him to be a gentleman. The door slammed shut behind Veronica and he stood still until he didn’t hear her in the hall anymore. How anyone could deliver that news and behave so selfishly was beyond him. They were all like this, the women he met out here. Smooth and sweet like coconut candy but always out for themselves. He exhaled and rubbed his stinging eyes.

  He found his phone charger still attached to the outlet in the kitchen. He plugged in the dead cell phone and listened to his messages. There were almost twenty of them just from Taina, Holly, and Ray. There was one from David’s mother, Marcia O’Farrell, spoken in her soft, measured words. “We have some news, sweetie. Please call me as soon as you get this.”

  Adrian sat for a moment, pressed his hands together. He felt a headache coming on so he reached behind the sofa and found his guitar. He began strumming, aimlessly. Listening. Waiting. At last it came, those first few notes, he played them again to be sure. Those tentative notes were followed by more perfect notes, as if they were living things that were hatching. A simple tune at first, just four chords, but by six in the morning Adrian had composed the first song of his By Blood and Ink collection. It contained a veiled confession that he had known that another disaster was coming, a deep and repressed premonition that suddenly seemed inevitable.

  As soon as the sun came up, Adrian began returning the phone calls, with apologies to everyone, especially David, who was just home from the hospital. He called to ask Marcia if he was needed right away. Marcia said, “We’re fine for now, Adrian. David has us and our relatives and Taina. Julia’s on her way back from Mexico, and he has had plenty of friends coming by. We’ll know in a day or two what the schedule is for the big surgery. It should be in about two weeks. But like I told the others, not everyone wakes up from brain surgery. You’ll want to come before that. Just in case.”

  Chapter 4

  After Holly had exhausted the venues of reaching Adrian in Spain, she remembered the time that he had given her the silent treatment for two whole months. While Holly was known as the family loudmouth, Adrian was the one most likely to hold a grudge. And while he would never purposely go AWOL in an emergency, he did have a record of holing up just because he was in a funk.

  The year before Adrian got popular in Miami, he and Holly had gone to a Luis Miguel concert together. Someone had given him the tickets as a gift. Holly had already seen Luis Miguel five times, knew all the songs, had all the CDs. Her husband, Erick, had absolutely no interest in sitting though a concert in Spanish. In fact, Erick only crossed the Broward-Dade county line to get to the airport; he had a deep disdain for anything having to do with Miami.

  Holly, who had grown up in Miami, missed the energy and Latino intensity that seemed to evaporate just beyond the North Miami Beach city line. So after Adrian had moved from Puerto Rico to Miami, he had been her ticket to play in the old neighborhood. At first, he had no money, so Holly always paid as long he agreed to go where she wanted. A stroll on Ocean Drive, cocktails and people watching on Lincoln Road, Cuban food in Little Havana. They had gone salsa dancing a few times, but that was harder now that Holly had kids. She always ended up feeling trashed the next day. Eventually, as Adrian got more and more gigs, he had a little more money and less time to hang around with his sister. They hadn’t been out in six months when he called to tell her he had the tickets.

  Holly was thrilled, but Adrian had criticized the singer throughout the whole concert, and Holly found it distracting and extremely annoying. First it was, “He doesn’t play any instruments,” and “Only Ricky Martin can turn with his arms spread out like that.” Then with a roll of the eyes, “Grown men shouldn’t play air guitar.”

  “Adrian, you play air guitar all the time.”

  He ignored it and moved on to the next criticism, “The dude’s facial expressions are so fake—it totally insults the greatness of that classic song,” and, addressing the stage, “What’s with the suit, man? Are you moonlighting as a banker?”

  Holly could tell that Adrian was wracked with envy. Had they been at a club, Adrian might be getting a lot of attention, but not here. Here he was nobody. Luis Miguel, on the other hand, was an international star, bright and blinding as the sun, which is what they call him in Mexico, “El Sol de Mexico.” The crowd was disproportionately young, female, and crazed. Adrian watched as the young women swooned and waved t-shirts or handkerchiefs for him to wipe his sweat and throw it back at them. During intermission, Holly had asked, “What’s the matter with you anyway? Surely you agree the guy’s got a voice.”

  “He’s got a voice,” Adrian conceded. “But that suave act is so fake. He’s head over heels in love with himself.”

  Holly batted her eyelashes and put her hand to her throat. “He’s in love with me. He was looking at me the whole time.”

  “See? That’s the part I don’t understand. Every woman here believes that.”

  “Well, take notes, baby,” Holly said, giving him a fraternal slap on the arm. “That’s why it’s called performing. You’re not on stage to be yourself.”

  “It is essential to be yourself. It’s the rarest thing in the world to find someone who is authentic.”

  “Alright, are you done? Because you’re ruining it for me.” She pointed at the stage.

  “I’m done.” He folded his arms and was silent for five seconds, then started up again. “And then there’s the lyrics. People like Juanes and Shakira sing about war and corruption and family and poverty and geography and the environment. Stuff besides love, love, love.” When he complained that Luis Miguel sweat too much, Holly flicked her head to the side and replied, “I’d happily lick the sweat off his face and anywhere else it might drip.” Adrian looked horrified.

  “What?” Holly shouted into his ear, palms out in the air. “I can’t say that just because I’m married and have kids?”

  “I’m your brother, not your girlfriend,” he said. “It’s just weird to hear you talk like that.”

  “Oh, puh-leeze,” Holly said, slipping into a tough-girl persona. “It’s not like we’re really brother and sister.”

  Adrian had continued to stare ahead. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  The music slowed to a ballad and they were able to speak without shouting, so she said, “Look, Adrian, I have three kids, I know what a real brother is.” She looked over and saw the expression on his face. She tried to backpedal a little bit: “I’m just saying we didn’t grow up together. Even if we are blood relatives, it’s not the same. I should be able to say whatever I want and not freak you out. That’s what I love about us hanging out. You’re better than a brother, better than a friend. You’re my ‘bro-friend,’ a brother without the family baggage. You know?”

  Adrian turned stone cold after that. “I want you to apologize for what you said about us not being related. That was mean and if you want to get technical, it’s not like you know the truth either.”

  Holly extended her arm and pressed it to his. The lights were too low to show the subtle differences in their skin tone, and yet they both saw it. “We are different colors. It’s impossible.” Then she tilted her head, smiled, and wrinkled up her nose. “Unless of course, our mother was a total slut.”

  Adrian winced, but ignored the last comment. “Is that why you refuse to get the tattoo? Because we have different color skin?”

  She made an exaggerated “Augh,” and rolled her eyes. “Get a tramp stamp on my hand? No way.”

  “That’s your ultra-conservative husband talking.”

  “But he’s right. It’s not like I can hide it on my ankle or my bicep or my butt cheek like everyone else, it has to be right there.” She slapped the top of one hand with the other. “Right there for the whole PTA to see.”

  “Well, that’s fine because you don’t deserve to be a part of the . . .”

  “The what?” aske
d Holly. “The clan? The brotherhood? The gang?”

  “The family,” he said.

  Holly let out her breath. “I love you guys, don’t get me wrong; but I have three boys who love each other and fight every day of their life.” She interlaced her fingers and tugged them to demonstrate. “And it’s not the same.”

  “Oh yeah? Well I have a friend whose parents got divorced. His sisters went to live with the mom in another state. He grew up with his dad and almost never saw the girls. So you’re telling me they’re not siblings, just because they don’t see each other?”

  “Sure. I’m saying they don’t fully exemplify the real definition of a sibling.”

  “Guess I’ve been deluding myself,” he said, knitting his brow and squinting at her.

  “Don’t be such a pisser. What’s missing in your life, anyway? Why can’t you accept that we’re just fellow passengers in the boat of life?”

  “Siblings,” he said, and looked away. “That’s what.”

  “I hear ya, Aidge. But trust me, you’ll feel differently when you get married and have kids.” She patted him on the back.

  “No, I won’t,” he said. “There’s first family and second family, and your siblings are a part of your first family. It’s different from parenthood. Siblings are your peers. Everything that predates your husband is the realm of your sibling’s memory.”