Iván texted me on Sunday, late, wanting to meet for another tutoring session on Monday. He claimed to have read all the poems and finished the book. If that was true, I wasn’t sure why he needed a tutor, but I was willing to meet if he thought that he did. He didn’t have a problem paying me, like some of my other tutoring clients had in the past, and I needed the money. Even if I felt a little bad taking it from him.
I waited on the fourth floor where we had met before, and this time, he was only five minutes late. He had another large cup with him, which I took gingerly when he held it out.
“Regular coffee,” Iván explained, with a long, rolled R. I took a tentative sip, watching him over the lid, and he laughed. He always seemed to be in a good mood. Or at least, he seemed always ready to enjoy himself.
“Thank you,” I said. “I like it a lot.” I felt a little constrained now that I knew he was so famous, but he was still all ease and swagger. Maybe if I had accomplished as much as he had before I was 30, I would swagger too. I still had a few years to go.
Again, he put his hand on my shoulder as we walked back to the table we’d occupied before and I held very still, hoping he would keep it there. He let go to pull out a chair for me, and I took it. “What did you think of the book?”
Iván slapped it on the table. “Boring.” He sat too, and rocked his chair back on two legs.
“So you didn’t read it?”
“No, I did. Every boring page.”
Now I laughed. “It wasn’t my favorite, either. What about the symbolism—”
He plunked his chair back down. “Tell me what you did for the weekend.”
“Iván, don’t you think we should talk about the class? That’s what you’re paying me for.”
“Yes, of course. After you left me on Saturday, what did you do? Where did you go?”
I closed my book. “I went to see my brother.”
“He lives close by?”
I nodded. “It’s why I wanted to move up here.”
“I thought, your boyfriend? That you moved for him.”
“Both.” I slid my lip between my teeth. “I mean, I was going to come with Robin, and it was lucky that Mikey lived here. Michael, my brother. We had dinner on Saturday and hung out.”
“That’s nice for you, to have family close by.”
I nodded again, vigorously. “I know! I’m so glad he’s here. He’s a great brother.”
“What does he do?”
“He was a machinist, but he got hurt on the job. He’s working at an autobody place now, learning the ropes.”
“It makes you look worried.”
“Does it? I guess you always worry about your family.” I rubbed my temple. I wished that Mikey had gone to the appointment with the therapist today. I would have happily skipped this time with Iván to take him there. He needed to sort out some things, like his anger. His drinking. I understood it, but it wasn’t doing him any good. “It will be better when I graduate and have a real job. I can get a good apartment for us all and get…” Iván was watching me carefully. “Let’s start with the poetry we didn’t talk about the last time we met.”
“What about Sunday?” he asked instead. “What did you do on Sunday?”
“What did you do over the weekend?” I countered.
“I went to a party on Saturday. A lot of people,” he threw up his hands. “A lot of talking. On Sunday I had a commercial.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, I had to go to LA, to make a commercial. It took much, much too long and I got back late. My mother was angry.” He laughed.
For a second, I had forgotten who he was. “I looked you up. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. You’re so accomplished and I should have known who you were. I feel like an idiot.”
“No, no.” He picked up my hands, holding them in his. “Why would I care about that? It was nice, really. A lot of the time, people want to be friendly because they know my name or my face. It’s,” he paused to think. “Tiring. No, I mean, tiresome. Both.” His hands felt so warm. I looked down at his fingers, clasped around mine.
I pulled away. “Let’s talk about the poetry.”
We did, a little, and he clearly had read them and had some interesting things to say about “The Sphinx” and Rossetti. Then his phone rang, and he had to take it to talk to someone about what sounded like a business issue. I listened to him confidently discuss an investment for quite a while. Then someone else called and he got a huge smile and spoke in Spanish. A few minutes into this conversation, his voice changed. I had been looking at the back of the book, trying not to stare at him and watch his beautiful, strong lips form the interesting sounding words. Now my eyes jerked to his face. He was speaking higher, softer, slower, smiling the whole time. “Iván,” he repeated. “Tío.”
I didn’t know a lot of Spanish but I recognized that word. When he hung up, still smiling, I asked, “Was that your niece? Or nephew?”
“My little nephew,” he confirmed. “He’s only seeing me on screens. I miss them all. I need to go visit.” He nodded, pursing his lips. “Maybe next week.”
“What about class? What about your job—don’t you coach?”
“Right. Yes.” He shrugged. “I haven’t had a schedule that I didn’t make myself for a long time.”
Personally, I couldn’t remember when my time was my own. “Let’s talk about the book.”
We spent much longer than an hour together, but I didn’t plan to charge him for it. We wasted a lot more time talking rather than working, about other books, music, life in California, and a thousand other topics. He was easy to talk to.
Then he asked me about Robin. “How long have you been with him?”
“A long time. Since high school.”
“You went to high school together?”
I shrugged. It always sounded weird when I explained it so I tended to gloss over the details. “No, not exactly. He was a little older. We’ve been together for almost ten years, since I was fifteen. Tell me about where you’re from.” He did, and I asked him more about places he had traveled, too. He had been almost everywhere. He was telling me about India when suddenly his phone sounded and he glanced at it.
“¡Coño! I have to be at the pool. Walk with me?”
I had completely lost track of time. This was supposed to be when I was…well, there were a million things I was supposed to be doing. Suddenly I didn’t want to do any of them. “Sure, I’ll walk over with you.” I felt a little rebellious just saying it.
We took the stairs down and I hung back as we came out of the library. “I don’t know where the pool is here,” I told Iván, when he turned to look at me questioningly.
“Really?” He drew out that R again. It made the word sound so interesting, I kind of felt like we should all start rolling our Rs. He put his hand on my back and started to walk. “You know that you can go there to swim if you want, since you’re a student here. I think that’s right.”
I was trying not to press myself back into his hand. “I don’t know how to swim.”
He stopped dead in the middle of the path and a guy looking down at his phone ran smack into Iván’s back.
“Sorry,” the guy said, but Iván didn’t even hear him.
“What do you mean, you don’t know how to swim?” He put both hands on my shoulders, turned me to face him, and bent down to look at me.
“What does it sound like?” I asked. We were making a spectacle of ourselves in the middle of campus. Iván was, anyway. And I shouldn’t have told him that. It was stupid. I ducked out from under his hands and hurried along the concrete.
Iván caught up to me and replaced his hand on my back. “Maura, how can this be? You’re from the coast of California!”
“I didn’t even see the ocean until I was nine and went to Santa Monica,” I admitted, and then wanted to stuff my fist in my mouth.
“What?”
“Anyway, I never learned to swim, and it’s not a big deal.
There are probably a lot of things I can do that you can’t.” I walked faster.
He stopped again, less abruptly, and pulled me to a halt also. “Maura, wait. I’m not trying to make fun, I was just surprised. I think it’s dangerous that you don’t know how. Everyone should know how to swim, just for safety.”
“I never go on boats or near the water.” I tried to wiggle free of his hands again but he slid them down my arms. Funny that he wasn’t scaring me with how he was holding me in place.
“What about to the beach?” he questioned.
“I don’t go.”
“Not ever?”
“No, not ever. Aren’t you going to be late? Come on.”
We started walking again. Iván was quiet, which I had come to realize was unusual for him. He probably thought that I was a big idiot. Who didn’t go to the beach in California?
“Where did you live in Los Angeles that you didn’t go to the ocean?” he asked me suddenly.
“I lived all over.”
“Your parents moved a lot?” I shrugged, and nodded, not looking at him. “Where? I was just down there.”
“I can guarantee you’ve never been to the places I lived. Pacoima?” He shook his head. I thought for a second and tried to go in a somewhat north to south direction instead of chronologically. “Reseda, Van Nuys, El Monte, Pomona, Downey, Bellflower…um… Gardena, Signal Hill.” I was missing some for sure.
“You moved that often? Did your parents sell real estate or something?”
For some reason, that made me laugh a little. “No!” I shook my head. “It was just complicated.”
“My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. They’re planted, like trees. They won’t even let me buy them a new house, with a dishwasher and a garage door that has a motor instead of a rope. My brother lives a few blocks away.”
“In Madrid?” That was where his apartment was. I had read about it and seen pictures online in a décor magazine.
“No, we’re extremeños. From Extremadura. Cáceres.”
This meant nothing to me. I resolved to immediately research Spain and its geography.
Iván walked up to a huge, new building and pulled open the door. “Come on in.”
If I thought heads turned while we walked across campus, it was nothing compared to the looks Iván got in the aquatic center. People were literally turning around and following him as we walked. Two people asked for his autograph and he was genuinely nice to everyone, asking them about their swimming and where they were from. More and more people came to talk to him, surrounding him. I hung back and watched, then he held out his hand for me. “Maura, let’s go.”
The little crowd around him parted and I stepped forward. They were all staring at me, and I didn’t enjoy it. I put my hand in Iván’s and he pulled me along.
From behind a glass wall, he pointed to an absolutely gigantic pool. “This is my office,” he told me. There were swimmers in the water, going back and forth at incredible speeds. “They already started so I have to go down. Thank you for tutoring me.” We were still holding hands, and he let go to get his wallet. Again, he held out way too much money.
“I can’t take that,” I said. “I’m not tutoring you. We’re just hanging out.”
“Don’t be silly. I need to pay you for your time.” He opened my hand and put the bills into it, then closed my fingers. “I’ll see you tomorrow in class.”
“Iván.” I swallowed. “I didn’t live with my parents in Los Angeles. I was in foster care. That’s why I moved around so much. It’s not a big deal, but I didn’t want to let you think…anyway, it felt like I was lying to you.”
He nodded seriously. “Thank you for telling me.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but I was already backing away.
“Bye!” I shoved the money in my pocket and hurried out of the building.
I left the pool and called Anouk to see if she wanted me to come by and work at the dance studio, but she said she’d had a rough weekend at the poker tables and couldn’t pay me. I had school work to do; I could have gone home and put something in the crock pot for Robin for dinner, or even just tried to wake him up and get him out of the apartment; I could have gone to the student employment office and continued looking at job postings for after I graduated. I definitely could have studied for the Auditing test I had on Wednesday.
Instead I found myself walking down toward a big used clothing store—I meant, vintage clothing store. I spent at least an hour wandering around the aisles and trying things on. I even bought a bunch of stuff, which was way, way out of my normal spending pattern. In fact, I felt so guilty afterwards that I tried to go back in and return it all, but I could only get a store credit, so I kept everything. A new dress, form-fitting but not too tight, and kind of fancy. I had no idea where I’d ever wear it, but I loved it. I also bought two new skirts, which I rarely wore, and three new tops. And a necklace and a really cool ring and a pair of jeans that looked brand-new. I rolled it all up and put it in my bag, grabbed some falafel for a late lunch and headed over to Benji’s.
His mom usually came home early on Mondays, between seven and eight, if she wasn’t out of town. I still wasn’t sure exactly what either of his parents did. Benji mentioned the name of an international bank when I asked about his mom and Joana just said they did business. We went for a run on the track and then hung out in his room after another delicious dinner. According to Joana, Mrs. Dorset wasn’t traveling, but as eight o’clock crept up and she still hadn’t arrived home, I got antsier and antsier.
“Maura!” Joana called from downstairs. “It’s eight!”
I kissed Benji on the head. He had been subdued and quiet the whole afternoon and not even an extra 15 minutes of Blazer on the computer had improved his mood. “I’ll see you tomorrow, ok?” He just nodded.
“Do you know if something weird happened over the weekend?” I asked Joana when I went downstairs. She lived in with the Dorsets Monday through Friday and went to her daughter’s for the weekends, but maybe she would have heard something. “Benji seems off.”
“No, not that I know of. They all went up to Napa to a spa.” Fun for Benji. She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go! He’ll be home soon.”
“I have to talk to him. I have to tell him about Benji’s school, and I have to ask for more money for us.”
Joana pursed her lips, brow furrowed. “I’ll go in with you if I can.”
“I can handle him.”
When the headlights came up the driveway, I didn’t run out the back door as I usually did. Instead, Joana and I opened the kitchen door and listened to Mr. Dorset come in, drop his keys, and go into his study. He never went upstairs to say hello to his son.
I waited a few minutes for him to get a drink together and then squared my shoulders. “Ok, here I go.” Despite what I had said about handling him, I was glad when Joana trailed after me as I went to the study and knocked.
Mr. Dorset called, “Come in!” and I cracked open the door. He was sitting on the couch with a financial news network already on the TV. A big tumbler with caramel-colored liquid almost to its brim was in his hand.
“Mr. Dorset? Hi, it’s Maura. Do you have a minute?”
He got a big smile on his face, showing his pointy cuspids. “Maura! For you, I always have a minute. Come in and sit down. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
Yes, that was exactly as Joana and I had planned it. I didn’t sit, but came in and stood near-ish to the couch. “I just wanted to talk about Benjamin for a moment. I think he’s having some difficulties with the other kids at school.”
He immediately lost his smile and lost interest. “Talk to the teachers, not me.” He changed the channel to another news network.
“I tried, but they would like to speak to you. Or Mrs. Dorset.”
I shouldn’t have mentioned her. His face got even stonier. “I’ll get in touch with them,” he said.
Sure he would. “Um, also, we are running a li
ttle low on cash and I was wondering if you…if I…could you give me some, for Benji and me to use? And Joana?”
Without looking at me, he pulled out his wallet, grabbed the money out of the billfold, and held it out. “Here.”
It was the second time that day that a man had handed me a load of cash. Somehow it felt a whole lot cheaper and more demeaning to take it from this guy rather than from Iván. Tentatively, I took a step forward and he shook the bills as if tempting me. “Do you want it or not?” he asked me.
I took another step and reached for the money, but he grabbed my wrist. Shit!
“Maura, you’re over eighteen, aren’t you?”
Oh, glory. “I am. But I’m not available. Remember we’ve talked about this? I live with someone. My boyfriend.”
Mr. Dorset tugged me closer, his fingers like a clamp on my wrist. He wasn’t big, but he was strong and wiry. I knew he worked out and went mountain biking all the time. “Yes, your boyfriend.” He smiled. “Maura. You’re a beautiful girl.”
“Thank you.” My voice quavered a little, making me angry. I wasn’t scared of this guy. I wasn’t! “Could you please let go of my wrist?”
I heard the front door slam and Joana said loudly, “Hello, Mrs. Dorset! Your husband is in the study.”
Now the door to the room banged open and Mr. Dorset released my wrist. I grabbed the money and stepped back quickly. His wife stared at us, eyes narrowed. “Hello, Maura,” she drawled. “What’s going on here?”
“I was just getting some petty cash before I left for the night. Goodnight.” I hurried out past her, and put the money into Joana’s hand. She squeezed my shoulder briefly before I ran out the kitchen door and into the darkness, my heavy bag with all my new clothes bumping on my back. I rubbed my wrist as I walked quickly to the bus stop, still feeling his damp, talon-like grip on my skin.
I was glad for the interruption, but sorry that Mrs. Dorset had seen us like that. The last thing I wanted was for her to think that something was going on between me and her husband. According to Joana, that was why the last nanny got fired before I came three years ago. The Dorsets paid well. But more importantly, I couldn’t leave Benji. He needed me more than I needed the job.
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