by Lee Thompson
“Sure, kid,” he said, nodding.
As she turned to walk away she glanced at his hands cupped between his knees and saw that he was holding a photograph. She couldn’t see much but the edge of it, a woman’s black hair, his thumb hiding the rest of her.
Nina waved before she walked away but he didn’t wave back. It made her a little angry, the child not realizing that she’d learned it from her mother who did things for other people and then got irritated if they didn’t appreciate it. She wondered if he’d eat the sandwich she’d made him, or if he’d just throw it away.
He was strange, she thought, sad, and strange, and kind of beautiful.
2
Jacob pulled his hand from the bag of ashes inside his hoodie’s pocket—he wanted to see if he could somehow still smell her—and toyed instead with the wrist watch Santana had bought him for his twenty-eighth birthday, six months ago, and then he looked at the photograph he held again. His wife’s image stared back at him, and part of him wanted to believe that she was still out there somewhere, still carrying their child, still ready to disarm his most aggravating triggers and be his anchor when he felt like drifting too far into his own head.
She had only been twenty when they’d met, and her shoulder-length black hair made her look both exotic and regal when she wore it bunched on the top of her head. Her bright, almond-shaped eyes were filled with both intelligence and curiosity, and she brandished the smile that had left him so weak he could barely breathe from the first moment he saw her—and he thought it would become easier to breathe with time, but looking at merely her photograph still left him weak in the knees even after they’d lived together for three years, and even now, two weeks after her death.
She was petite, dark-skinned, and he believed her to be the most perfect woman he had ever met physically, intellectually and spiritually, and sitting there on the gazebo, feeling again that he had been lucky to have her in his life for the few years he had, he wiped his eyes and ran his index finger along the line of her jaw to the point of her chin, and whispered, “I’ll always love you.”
She’d worked as an assistant manager at a gas station where he stopped for coffee every morning on his way to work at the Museum of National History. The first time she smiled at him and asked how his day was going, he felt as if something inside him had shifted over the hard plate guarding his heart, and it was as if a breath both gentle and forceful filled the cavity of his chest, and he feared that he would never again be the same man he’d been before meeting her.
But he was also frightened by the force of those feelings because he had thought such feelings only existed in the movies, and he had never experienced such crippling circumstances himself.
He grabbed his coffee every morning, for two months straight, barely able to speak a word to her because it hurt to even look at her, almost as if he was staring into a blazing July sun. But she was kind, he noticed, to everyone, and he believed there was something special about her beyond her beauty and if he could only muster the courage to say something to her he’d also, somehow, find the strength to ask her out, regardless of how far he believed her to be out of his league.
It was torture though, seeing her every morning and unable to say anything, feeling as if he’d pee his pants, Jacob holding his breath and unable to breathe again until he walked out the door and onto the crowded street, staring at sunlight reflecting off a million windows and him thinking that as bright as all of that was, it all looked pale in comparison to Santana’s radiance.
It took him a minute after seeing her every morning for his ears to quit roaring with the pounding of his heart, and for the sounds of the city to bleed back in, annoying in some ways and comforting in others. He knew people all around him were suffering and dying, but such things were like a distant sound he found easy to ignore.
And eventually, in May, he bought her roses and had them delivered to her work. He hand wrote on a small card, Because I think you’re lovely… thinking that he wanted her to know that he thought her so, and also hoping that it would give him the courage to speak to her.
But it hadn’t given him courage, and he went another month through quiet torture—thinking the entire time: I want to know this woman more than I’ve ever wanted to know anyone—and his tongue was like a lead weight in his mouth and his shoulders always felt tense, and he would think about her while he worked, and he’d stumble into people on the street and have to apologize, and he’d lay in bed at night and ask himself, What the hell is wrong with me? Because he had never, not once in his life, had a woman steal his breath like Santana had; never once had he had a problem talking to any woman because for the most part he found them to be either too cautious, or bored with life, or workaholics, or bitter. So they were easy to speak with, any other women, because the cautious ones wouldn’t look him in the eye; and the bored with life ones perked up, sensing excitement; and the workaholics, like his own mother, had plenty to talk about and all he had to do was listen; and the bitter accused him of having an agenda like every other man, and he found that amusing, that they would assume so much about his motives simply because he was a man.
But Santana was like a dream, someone to write a song about. The type of woman he knew that if he found the courage to talk to, he would die for and give all of himself to—and maybe that was it, what scared him, letting himself go completely when he had his own defenses so deeply set, and his life for the last two years had become exactly what he thought he wanted.
He worked at the museum six hours a day and he painted at night, surreal images that stuck with him through his sleep and into his waking hours when he’d pick up a brush and dab the tip in paint. And he was comfortable with that simple life until he met her.
So he wrote her a letter and told her about himself, his job, his paintings that were garnering regional attention, and how terrified he was of even a small amount of fame. And he asked her questions —What matters to you? What are you talented at? What do you hope for and strive for? What do you find funny?—and he held the letter in his pocket for two days, unable to hand it to her as he paid for his coffee and went to work flustered, ashamed of himself for his cowardice.
Another week passed and she looked right into him when he came in Thursday morning. Her voice was soft, gentle, and he felt his heart melting and his breath trapped in his throat, and it felt like a bubble bursting inside him as she asked what he had planned for the weekend. He mumbled; he knew not what. She giggled and asked him if he had ever been to a bar called Slakes and he shook his head. He rarely went anywhere but work and home, and sometimes to the park. Santana said, “Well, I could take you there. I think you’d like it.”
She wrote her phone number on a napkin and slid it across the counter and he nodded and grinned and looked away before looking back at her, square in the eye, and he choked out, “Thank you.”
Her smile made him want to faint. His hand dipped into his pocket as if it was not part of his body, or simply beyond his control, and it pulled the letter he had written her and set it on the counter and pushed it closer to her and he watched in horror as something in her face changed, an uncertainty where before he only saw warmth.
She said, “What’s this?”
And he wanted to say: It’s nothing. Give it back! But he couldn’t, and instead he said, “It’s a letter I wrote you.” It sounded so odd, even to his own ears, but why should it, he wondered. It was only a letter. People used to write letters all the time. His hand shook as he lifted his coffee and carried the napkin with her number on it out into the bright hot street teeming with people, and he let out a long breath, shaking all over.
But strangely, with the letter no longer in his possession and her number right there in front of his eyes, he felt a charming elation.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to call her since he had trouble sleeping Thursday night and he had trouble functioning all day Friday, his mind stuck on the letter he’d given her, telling her about himself, and th
at he saw something unique and special about her, and he’d confessed how nervous she had made him but he wanted to get to know her if only he could speak. And he worried because he had written his number at the end of the letter and so far she hadn’t called him, and it was weird to give a stranger he’d never spoken to such a personal letter, upon reflection, wasn’t it? Only a fool opened himself up to rejection, he thought.
He had no idea how she felt about it, he had no idea if she thought it was sweet or she thought him a weirdo—most of the time he leaned heavily toward one or the other. But she was sweet and she treated people kindly so he thought she might not judge him too harshly like other women might.
During those sleepless nights and long drawn out days, he painted a lot, brighter paintings than he normally painted, images of a dark-haired and beautiful young woman on a tree swing, and of Santana rising from a lake and stepping onto the shore, the sun always in the middle of rising or setting, her heart-shaped face beatific and warm and open.
And painting her made his heart ache, and he thought, Call her.
Yet he couldn’t.
He wanted her to call him.
It would make things so much easier, he thought.
Santana called him Saturday afternoon. Jacob’s heart pounded and as if sensing that he was extremely nervous, she did most of the talking, only asking him easy questions before she said, “I love your letter.”
Her laughter was filled with light, and he felt that huge boulder he’d rolled in front of the door of his heart being pried back to expose the gentle, beating engine of desire.
He said, “It was nothing.”
“No,” she said. “It was more than nothing. It was sweet.” And then she said, more softly, “I think there is something special about you, too. And I’m really glad you built up the courage to talk to me.” She giggled. “The first time I saw you I did not imagine you as a shy person.”
“I’m not,” Jacob said, smiling a little himself. “There’s just something about you that ties me in knots.” He shook his head and lied when he said, “I don’t get it.”
He’d told a few of his closest friends about her and they had all patted him on the back and told him, You know what this means? Only he didn’t and he asked, and they said, She’s the one. This is the girl you’re going to marry. But he couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life with her, to wake up in bed next to her and look at her sleeping soundly; to praise her when she accomplished something she had worked for, and to see the pride in her eyes when her goals were achieved one by one; to hold her hand and feel her warmth and know that never, not in a million years, could he ever give his heart to someone else so completely.
He shook his head.
Santana said, laughing again, “Are you still there?” He loved that laugh and he would love it more and more as the months added up and they grew closer.
He felt himself crackling inside like a live wire had torn loose at every single one of his nerve endings, and he said, “I’m here. Just thinking.”
“So, do you want to pick me up tonight or just meet me at—”
“I’ll just meet you,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, sounding a bit disappointed and he wished he could take back what he’d said but he couldn’t because it was out there, lodged in her ear. “Meet me at eight?”
“I’ll be there,” he said, “thank you.”
She giggled again. “You’re welcome. Just relax, Jacob. We’ll have fun.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
They said their goodbyes and he hung up and paced his apartment, stared at the dozen paintings he now had of the subject that had caught his attention more than any other subject ever had, and he felt ashamed of himself for obsessing so, and yet he had no idea how to stop because she was like his art to him, though he barely knew her, he felt the more time they spent together the more he would die if she wasn’t a part of his life and he didn’t express himself around her and through her. He told himself that it was just the obsession that drove his creativity, but secretly he knew that it was the profound effect she’d had on him.
So he arrived at the bar that night ten minutes early, and he walked inside and gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. He saw her seated at the bar with a Long Island Iced Tea in front of her, her thin fingers wrapped around the stem, a man who looked six-foot-five and was built like a linebacker, leaning on the bar next to her, smiling, talking to her as if she was just any other girl.
For some reason it made Jacob furious, and though he had been in some scrapes, he had never stood up to such a menacing character. But he forced himself forward, ignoring the fact that Santana seemed perfectly at ease with the behemoth in her personal space. Jacob imagined she was probably used to men’s attention and she could handle him herself, but he did not seem the type to take a lady’s hinting to leave her alone, so Jacob grabbed the man by the elbow and said, “Are you bothering her?”
“Excuse me?” the man said.
“I asked if you’re bothering her,” Jacob said, holding his gaze. He wanted to look at Santana to see if she was happy or mad at him, but he didn’t want to look away from the stranger in case the man took a swing at him. He had seen hundreds of guys just like this one in bars all over the place and he’d never liked any of them, thinking they stood for nothing more than the basest human pleasures.
“What if I was?” the man said.
“I’m going to ask you to leave,” Jacob said. His pulse pounded so fast, and he knew he was on the verge of asking the bartender for help, but the man was smaller than Jacob and he had removed himself to the far end of the bar and had busied himself with wiping down beer glasses, making an effort not to look in their direction.
“What if I don’t want to leave? Are you going to carry me out of here?” He smiled, first at Jacob and then at Santana. He patted Jacob on the shoulder and said, “You like this girl, huh?”
Jacob nodded. “I do,” he said quietly. “A lot.”
“What would you do if I called her a slut?”
Santana said, “Victor! Enough!”
Jacob punched him in the stomach, hoping to knock the wind out of him, double him over so that he could drive his knee into his face and break his nose, but Victor just straightened his shirt as if nothing had happened. He smiled again and said, “Have a seat, buddy. I’ll leave you guys alone.”
Jacob, confused and embarrassed, said, “You know each other?”
Santana said, “He’s my brother.”
“Half-brother,” Victor said. He held his hand out. Jacob shook it and apologized for striking him and mumbled, “I thought…”
“Sit down,” Santana said. “Both of you.”
She gave Victor a look that said she was not happy with him playing a little prank on Jacob, but she looked at Jacob differently as well, as if surprised that he would challenge someone who could so easily crush him.
They sat, Victor on her right, Jacob on her left. Victor kept looking around her and smiling at Jacob. The bar was quiet. Victor said, “I already like him.”
Jacob said, “It’s quiet in here.”
“I know,” Santana said. “I figured you’d be more relaxed if we could hear each other.”
She laughed that laugh that turned his insides into butter.
She told him how she worked here, closing at nights four days a week, and he was impressed that someone so young would tackle the responsibility and exhaustion working two jobs would create.
She said, “Later things will pick up, but for now it’s just us. Ask me anything.”
“Okay,” Jacob said, his mind a blank. He had a thousand questions he’d intended to ask her but he couldn’t remember a one now. But somehow, as he drank and she drank, and the two of them loosened up, Victor faded away and it was just the two of them talking and smiling and laughing, and he thought, I’m going to fall in love with her like I’ve never fell in love before… seeing her there right in fron
t of him at the bar, so wondrous, so full of life…
And seeing her there in the photo as he sat on the gazebo steps, eight hundred miles away from where they’d shared their first laughs, he felt himself folding in on himself and saw the little girl, Nina, watching him from the window of her mother’s house, so he told himself not to cry, don’t cry, but he looked at the photograph again and he could feel Santana’s breath on his neck and her lips on his skin and their fingers intertwined, and knew he would never hear her laughter again, and he pulled himself up onto the gazebo’s platform, hoping he was out of sight from everyone, and he cradled her ashes, and he wept.
3
From the living room, next to where her mother kept fresh roses perched on the top of their old television set, Nina watched Jacob the rest of the day. He only moved once, up onto the gazebo, but never to use the restroom facilities near the playground, or to even stretch his legs. He just watched the sun work west, baked in it, hung his head sometimes and Nina knew that he was studying the picture he held. She wasn’t sure what he was waiting for yet she knew it had to be something important.
Her mother, Betsy Kunis, returned from work shortly after midnight. She was compact, short, and bony yet muscular. Her hair was dark and her eyes rimmed with red from lack of sleep and irritation from the chemicals at her job in Maytag’s steel room. Nina was still awake, sitting on the couch in the dark living room. The park was dimly lit, only one light pole every fifty yards around its perimeter, but Jacob was still sitting on the gazebo steps. When her mother, came into the living room she said, “There’s someone watching the house.”
“What?”
“There’s a man sitting in the park and he’s watching our house.” She grabbed the cordless from the wall and Nina stopped her before she called the police. “It’s not right,” her mom said. “Just sitting there like that. Maybe I should wake Rick up to have him go across the road and speak to the man.”