Dara’s appetite was officially curbed.
At this time of day she was usually thinking of what to make for dinner. Nothing sounded good right now. How could she be hungry with the churning sourness in her stomach? Too many things pressed on her. Those strange vibes Maribel gave off, the interview tomorrow at GeoGreen, and now this weird behavior from Luke: it was enough to make her start smoking again. And why not? Her teeth were already hideous anyway. Maybe she’d keep this low appetite and lose the fifteen pounds she’d put on from sitting in front of the computer all day?
That’s it, she thought, worry about the important stuff.
But she couldn’t stop concentrating on the heaviness of her breasts. She didn’t care what Luke and Maribel said. Every pound she gained had gone straight to her chest. It was obvious, standing naked before the mirror. Not yet returned to what they once were, she certainly shouldn’t be freaking out, but how long before she was back in a triple-D bra? It wasn’t just the size, either. Unshapely and huge, areolas too big and too pale, too short nipples like bug bites…she knew Luke and Maribel must have thought so too, deep down inside.
Another surgery and stretch marks, here I come. And yet, if she allowed her weight to go unchecked, her back muscles would spasm her into early cripplehood. Despite her breast reduction a few years ago, her portions had gradually reinstated their old claim on her body.
What a waste! She’d wanted the procedure since High School but never saw it happening. She was shit at saving money and had become resolved to going through life being fodder for flat women to crinkle their noses at and for men to ogle like milk-hungry babes—until her bra came off and revealed the unprepossessing reality of overlarge breasts. It wasn’t fair, but life could go down that way.
And it had, until her soul mates had saved her.
One of those people was asleep back home with his feet wrapped in aloe vera soaked bandages, but the other was here, slowly nodding her head to a Green Day song. As Maribel drove them to pick up Luke’s car at the Rec center, where, for whatever reason he’d left it, Dara gave her wife a sidelong glance, appraising her, wondering. Maribel had a perfect button nose. If Dara hadn’t always been so boob-conscious, she was sure she would have been nose-conscious. Nobody had ever implied so, but Dara felt her schnozz could badly use a Beverly Hills trimming.
Maribel’s head slowly dipped with the conclusion of Jesus of Suburbia. It was cute how she got hypnotized by her favorite bands. You’d have to set off a firecracker in her ear to pull her out of it. Maribel could tune everything in the world out, and with Dara’s stupid self-consuming thoughts about her body, which she knew were vain and borderline obsessive, she so, so wished she could do the same.
If not with her body, then with that strange song that had been playing in her head for the past few days….
At any rate, all these issues swarmed around Dara, sharks and vultures, vultures and sharks. Luke wasn’t thrilled with her interviewing at his engineering firm, but she actually had an “in” there, which was a job-hunting advantage she’d never had in the past. He wouldn’t really come out and say anything directly negative about it though—before Maribel came along, they might have fought, and in the end Dara would have let him have his way.
Not so anymore. The dynamics had changed with their new wife; she’d made both of them feel like dumbasses for ever rallying against each other’s happiness. That was a rule. You never interfered with happiness. You were the facilitator of making it happen—and that’s why Maribel took out half of her savings and Luke sold his wave-runner to make Dara’s surgery happen.
Hopefully, it would always be like this. Lately there had been some cracks in their newfound holy trinity. Last night Luke had grumbled a few disparaging things about the interview, and Maribel hadn’t interceded. She might have had her classroom planning on her mind because it often possessed her when she began a new school year, but still, it wasn’t like her to let slide any caustic or judgmental quips, especially when directed at each other. Luke even seemed to notice the absence of her enforcement and corrected himself, hoping for Maribel to chime in.
She hadn’t.
Dara remembered exactly what Maribel had been doing. Sitting in the recliner, legs bent beneath her, fingers absently fiddling with the white horse earrings one of her students gave her. She’d been watching a water polo match on TV, in a trance, the worn-out paperback of the autobiography of Mark Twain resting on her lap, a leopard-print book mark sticking out of its center. Luke asked if she wanted a salad with her chicken, to test whether she was even listening. She turned her light brown eyes to him. “You know I don’t.”
Of course not. Maribel only ate one thing at meals. She wouldn’t eat a hamburger and fries. She’d either get a hamburger, or a large order of fries. One, or the other, not both. At their first Thanksgiving together she just ate stuffing. The next year she had turkey. The next, green-bean casserole. But she never feasted. Dara and Luke had both tried to figure this out, but it was just one of Maribel’s quirks. She never ate plain dinner salads because that’d be the only thing she’d have, and it would leave her hungry.
A wave of commercials came on the radio. Maribel turned it off.
“Are you proud of me, doing this interview?” asked Dara.
Maribel’s eyes flitted to her. “That’s a silly question, Dee. You know I am. Luke is too. It’s all the static he’s getting in his job from the rumors. He’ll work through it. We’ll all be okay.”
“But what about today? Do you think he’s having a breakdown over it?”
“You’re not going to be there when he gets home,” said Maribel, pulling into the Rec-center parking lot. “He’s prematurely missing the housewife he thinks he has.”
“Yeah, I’m not much of one of those.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Dara leaned over to kiss Maribel on the side of her mouth, but the flickering lights of police cars and fire engines made her freeze. “What’s all that?”
“Oh my god,” Maribel whispered.
Several gurneys awaited transport in one of the four coroner’s vans parked amongst the other vehicles. Everything came in flashes, Dara’s breathing quickening with every image. Bodies under white sheets. Men in sweat-soaked collared shirts scribbling on legal pads. A policeman pointing to some unknown thing near the pool. Freeze frames of an aftermath. Of what, Dara couldn’t tell yet, but it opened a pit in her center.
Luke had been here. What if he’d been part of something horrible and couldn’t tell them about it yet? Her mind flitted to all those shootings in public you read about or saw on the news. Massacres from militant wackos with 180 IQs and Facebook walls brimming in hate.
“Look over there—look at the road,” said Maribel. She put a hand up to her lips, and her eyes looked as frozen as Dara’s heart felt. A tremendous cataclysm had shattered the street, making the concrete roll like a wave of stone.
“What did that? A bomb?”
“I don’t know, but we have to get back to Luke. We have to ask what happened here. You okay to drive?”
Unwisely, Dara shook her head to dispel the dizziness that had overcome her. “Yes, sure.” She took the spare keys from the center console and popped open the door.
“Careful driving, honey,” said Maribel.
“You too.”
As Dara walked over to Luke’s blue Chevy Volt, the only ambient sound was the secluded 60 freeway. Her ears unintentionally perked for the floating vibrations of loved ones crying, something tragic and grim that would make her heart fall; she remembered the echoing of such pain. It’d once come from her own throat, rang in her own ears, the day Uncle Sal came to the house and described her parents’ accident. On their way to church, couldn’t be helped, big rig carrying eight thousand gallons of corn syrup couldn’t brake in time on the downgrade and just went through the intersection. Took them under, crushed the station wagon, back to front. Had Dara gone with them, she’d have died first. She’d mad
e them late by pitching a fit about wasting her Sunday morning. In the end they’d just left the house, both in bitter moods, promising to discuss her attitude when they returned.
That discussion would never happen.
A case could be made that Dara’s lack of respect and stubbornness got her mother and father killed that day. For many years that was all she could behold in a mirror: a heartless soul, a bad daughter, an ugly leftover from two wonderful people. Uncle Sal and then Luke had tried their best to calm her self-loathing, but nobody except Maribel had ever scratched the surface.
Dara studied her shape reflected in the Volt’s window and door. It was never enough. She would never be the person she wanted to be. Accepting that fact was probably the only answer, but how did someone pull that off?
The song from her dream shimmered to the front of her mind again. It wasn’t the whole song…just maybe one layer of a thousand. Strange.
“Excuse me ma’am.”
Dara jumped. Lifting a hand to calm her, a young cop with a raspberry birthmark on his left cheek took another step closer to her, his heavy utility belt squeaking as he did. “Sorry, I just wanted to caution you to the east side of the parking lot. The street department has not arrived yet for detour signs. You weren’t at the pool today, were you?”
“No, my husband was.”
The man’s entire face turned the color of the birthmark.
“He’s fine,” Dara quickly said. “I guess he left before everything…happened.”
“Good. All is well that ends well.”
Dara blinked, uncertain that she’d heard him right. “Certainly. What went wrong in the street out there?”
“Likely a sewer explosion. We’re still looking at it. But, you know, that’s what you get when this type of thing occurs.”
“What type of thing?”
The radio on the cop’s shoulder chirped, and an authoritative female voice began to rattle out information. He held the radio, walking back toward the Rec building. After a moment he replied, still walking, “No I think the pool’s always been shaped that way. Yeah, yeah. Well we have….” His voice trailed off.
Dara took a deep breath and opened the Volt. She dropped into the muggy cabin and rolled down the windows. After getting the car started and taking off the brake, she checked the external temperature gauge. It read 108 degrees. Yes, this is a Southern California August; no doubts there. Maybe there had been a madman at this place, and he’d gone crazy from the heat.
Maybe Luke had been the one to go crazy….
She headed west out of the parking lot.
Luke couldn’t hurt anybody. He had made mistakes but had also paid his dues. She reminded herself that had he been faithful in the beginning, they no doubt would have broken up for other reasons. She wouldn’t have been hurt, betrayed, whatever—she wouldn’t have moved temporarily back in with Uncle Sal down at the beach and wouldn’t have gone for that walk where she met Maribel.
At the time Dara understood that something existed between her and this exciting new woman, that it was more than a passing friendship. She was terrified of losing it, just about as much as she was terrified to discover what it might actually become. Taking a great risk, she told Maribel she still loved her husband and couldn’t do to him what he’d done to her. That’s what she thought she had to say. That she couldn’t break the vow she’d made, and that she wasn’t ready to leave him. Instead of the whole relationship unraveling though, Maribel wanted to meet Luke. Dara hadn’t thought it a good idea at first. In fact, she thought it might isolate her from both these people she had feelings for.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. It was almost immediate. Beautiful. Complete. The last puzzle piece snapping in place. And above all, the wonderful thing was knowing everybody felt the same way. The three of them were united. They would adore one another forever. They would support each other until their bodies gave out, or the world ended, whichever came first.
Dara flipped her hair off her shoulders. Maribel fondly called her blonde waves a unicorn mane. On sweltering days like this, Dara just called it a pain in the ass. And speaking of pains in the ass—
“Yuck,” she commented, already feeling sticky sweat dampening in her bra. Hoping to let a little air in, she adjusted herself. Should have just stuck sponges under the girls. She resentfully nudged the A/C dial higher.
She avoided gridlock on Pine Street and took Maple to the freeway. Maribel drove like an ADHD bat out of hell, and Dara didn’t expect to keep up with her most days. Yet, she actually caught up with her. Today Dara’s wife piloted the mini Cooper just under the speed limit, making no attempt to beat out any lights. Respecting the horror that car accidents had to offer, Dara couldn’t feel anything but grateful. But why now? Nerves because of Luke?
Don’t question it. Be thankful.
It just doesn’t seem like her though.
She drives crazy-fast in every mood I’ve ever seen her in.
“What’s up with you, Mari?” Dara whispered to herself. She turned on the local radio station and checked for news reports about the Rec center. After an extremely worn-out Red Hot Chili Peppers song, the news came on. Dara increased the volume.
“…Riverside Recreational center where eight people drowned.”
Dara gasped and caught her mouth.
“…Over a dozen in brown scuba gear were also found dead in the pool. No air was found in their tanks. The Riverside police department has confirmed that the frogmen had their arms locked around each victim, possibly drowning themselves and the people in their grip. Two of the frogmen were empty-handed, yet still drowned with the others.”
A text came on her phone. Dara never read texts in the car, but this time she picked up the phone without hesitation. It was from Maribel.
Listen to the news.
They arrived at a red light and Dara answered. I am. Dont txt & driv.
Fifteen minutes later they were home. Not saying a word, they rushed to the front door, unlocked it and went inside.
Luke had tossed the mail over the kitchen countertop. Along with a recent copy of the Federal Register, which kept him updated on new environmental regulations, a copy of Dara’s new Game Informer magazine had arrived. She’d seen the issue at Target earlier that week and thought the cover artwork for Dragon God III stunning. Now the Orc hovering over corpses of its fallen victims, battle axe raised above its head, just stared at her, fire in its condemnatory eyes. As Maribel unstrapped her purse, Dara slid the magazine away.
Another letter fell out of the pile. It was from the bank, and judging by the size of the envelope and the type of block writing at the top, it seemed to be the same notice as before. The bank wasn’t willing to short sale the house and wouldn’t budge on their offers. Shocking as it was, the lender had suggested, indirectly though not subtly, to let the home go into foreclosure. They might have been able to get topside on their mortgage if Maribel and Luke hadn’t blown their savings earlier on Dara’s surgery. She’d ruined their chances of moving up north.
Luke sat in the living room, watching the news on TV, both of his feet submerged in a large square container of crushed ice. On the coffee table a few Heineken bottles stood in formation, along with an opened tube of Aloe Vera and a wad of damp rags. He looked at them, his face pale and eyes red. In the background, a video showed a sheeted body being pushed into a coroner’s van. The next shot was of a red rubber ducky floating on water so brown it might have been put through a sepia image filter. Maribel capped the Aloe Vera, took the rags to the sink, and hurried back.
Twisting away from the TV, Luke said, “I was there to teach my class. I remember those Frogmen now. Couldn’t happen, right? And then again…that’s how it all went down.”
Maribel sat down beside him, Dara at his other side. They were quiet for a few minutes. Dara grabbed the remote control and muted the TV when an obnoxious toothpaste commercial cut through their fugue state.
Luke looked intently into the den, at noth
ing in particular, his lips slightly parted. “Ralph Stedding and his wife, Alice, died in the pool.”
“He’s the one Johnny calls Mouse?” Maribel asked.
“Yeah.”
Her honey complexion yellowed. “Was Petunia there, too?”
“She got away with me, I think.” Luke put a hand on his forehead and looked up at the ceiling. “I think so—it’s like remembering an acid trip. I don’t know if that’s what happened.”
“Did they say anything about her on the news?” asked Dara.
“No,” he said. “They only talked about Alice and Ralph.”
The house phone rang, breaking the calm. Maribel grabbed it and answered.
Dara squeezed Luke’s knee. “Don’t worry. You’re okay.”
He nodded and remained quiet.
Maribel sat back down by Luke and spoke with a detective named Reese. Evidently, her aide from work, Allie Banks, had tipped off the cops that Luke had a swim class this morning at the Rec center. Allie habitually interfered in other people’s affairs, citing loose ends as her justification. She was always jumping for a chance to screw Maribel over, but would explain it as just trying to help in a bad situation. Dara didn’t understand how Maribel could even work with the woman anymore. She’d have strangled her by now.
Maribel crinkled her nose in disbelief at something the detective said, then turned on speakerphone.
“My husband is listening in now, too,” she said, carefully leaving Dara out of the equation, which she appreciated. “So if you have questions for him, he’ll answer anything. He might be involuntarily suppressing some of what happened right now, but he will of course come down to your office and cooperate.”
A polite, almost jovial voice replied, “No that’s quite all right ma’am. That’s completely unnecessary. As I said before, we have all we need here.”
“I know, but how can that be? It just happened today—are you serious?”
The man laughed, but wasn’t mocking in his tone. “It wasn’t complicated. Petunia Stedding released a statement about the frogmen. We have no reason to doubt her version of the story because it fits with everything we’ve put together.”
Nightmare Ballad Page 3