Walt knew it wouldn't be enough to restore her love, but spooning someone chicken broth could hardly be more intimate, could it? He could call off work at the bodega, too. With all those free hours, he could plot out a more permanent plan, something to forestall the letter forever.
Vanessa came home on a breeze of lavender and fresh sweat. He sat up from his couchside nest, blinking, remembering to cough. What time was it? Ten? Midnight? She slung her coat on a hook and pulled the pencil from her swept-up hair, loosing her locks over her shoulders.
"How was your day?" he croaked.
"Don't ask," she laughed, splaying the fingers of one hand. "Don't even ask. By the time I finished someone will be dead."
"Preferably neither of us."
"So okay. Mark hardly knows any of his lines. No, that's being too kind—he doesn't know any. He's got fewer lines than a baby's ass. He thinks he'll be ready next week?"
He cleared his throat. "Is that where you were all this time? Mark's?"
She stopped teasing out her straight dark hair to give him a look of dying annoyance. He didn't like that look. It said: Calm down: he won't be here much longer. "What, we're going to rehearse in the park? Get stabbed mid-soliliquoy? I know, we could practice on the platforms at Union Square. Treat the commuters to a sneak preview."
"It was a question, not a snake. Don't get so wound up."
"It's not the question. It's the tone."
"Sorry." He cut himself short with a coughing fit. "Got the flu or something. Voice sounds funny."
She frowned. Disbelief? Concern? "You don't sound good. Need some water?"
"Tea?" he tested.
This time, her smile was as soft as her skin. She clicked to the kitchen while he watched from the couch. She ran the teapot under the faucet, leaning over the sink, breasts hanging against her shirt. He was already half hard. In ten or twenty years, Vanessa might be as fat as her mom, but at 25, her swollen tits and musical hips drove men's imaginations to feverish degradation. He'd possessed that body for four years now, touched it thousands of times, fucked it hundreds, but he still couldn't go swimming with her without wearing a jockstrap under his suit to bind his erection. She caught him staring and smiled over the stove. So what if she privately hated him? She lived to be looked at.
She handed him a steaming floral-print cup. "Maybe you should see a doctor."
"A doctor?"
"You know, one of those guys who pats you on the head until you feel better?"
"I'm familiar with the word. I didn't know you were."
She shrugged, breasts rising. "I don't want you to be sick."
He sipped. He didn't even like tea. "And normally you'd be pestling up some herbs right now. Doing the Dance of Good Humours."
She rolled her eyes. "Please."
"Thanks for the tea." He reached for her thigh, squeezing its springy muscles.
"De nada. I'm going to take a shower. I stink."
She rose, leaving him on the couch. The bathroom door snicked. He frowned over his tea. She didn't believe in doctors for anything short of cancer. Suddenly she was ready to ship him to the waiting room? Was he onto something with his ersatz illness? Would she strike as soon as he improved? And what about the Mark factor? She wouldn't leave him, Walt, unless she had someone else to go to. He knew better than that. That's how he'd gotten her himself, after all, prying her away from a high school boyfriend she'd been looking to leave since getting to NYU, some sad-sack future electrician who'd eventually agreed to an open relationship rather than dumping her like he should have. That had been the dude's death-knell. She'd told her good friend Walt the news on a Friday; Saturday night, he'd talked her into bed.
Ten minutes into her shower, he stripped down and snugged into bed. The shower hissed and splattered, muffled by the door. He closed his eyes and imagined the soap slipping down her skin. He wanted to be the soap, clinging to her curves and folds, touching all of her at once—but he already was the suds, wasn't he? Slipping away from a body he could no longer hold onto. Rinsed down a drain into darkness and shit.
Twenty minutes later, she slid in beside him, kissed him once, and turned her back. A truck banged over a metal plate.
* * *
In the morning, he let her overhear him scheduling a doctor's appointment for that Friday. He shuffled around the apartment, sipping tea, a sheet wrapped around his shoulders. When she left to read lines with Mark, he walked up to Washington Square Park and bought a falafel. Old men of all races played chess on the boards at the park's corner. Tall, thin black guys cruised through the cool spring sunlight, hawking drugs with their one-word mantras. College kids, mostly white, smoked cigarettes in the dry fountain and watched the skateboarders tricking on the asphalt hills.
After a couple hours, he went back home to ensure he'd get there first. She wasn't back until 11:37 that night.
Thursday, when she left to meet Mark for more work, he followed.
He watched her hips roll from a half block back. He was dressed in a sweater he hadn't worn in years and a knit cap he bought yesterday. The morning was cold and steam drifted from the corner grates with a smell of laundry and sewers. Vanessa only looked back once; he'd ducked into the gap between two parked cars, heart on fire. At the Bleecker Street station, she jogged down the stairs for the 4-5-6 trains. He swiped his card and pushed through the turnstiles in time to see her descending to the uptown 6 local.
He went home. The next day she had a shampoo audition; he ate soup and a sleeve of saltines, claiming an upset stomach. She bought him ginger ale and vitamin C. He left for the "doctor's" and wandered all the way down to Bowling Green, where he watched the gray waves of the Atlantic.
Whenever he tried to think about how to hang on to her, he found his mind mired in sick, hesitant hate for Mark (what were they doing together all those long hours? He was an actor, too—did he look like one?) and sick, overwhelming love for Vanessa. That love was a boulder, an anchor, a devouring cancer that had eaten a hole through the man he'd used to be (another part of him said: the hole had always been there, he'd just let himself forget that). At first he'd been faking, but now he grew nauseous whenever he thought of her, unable to put down more than cereal and chicken soup. He felt infected, hot, dizzy. The world looked like a puked-up joke, unstoppable, crashing.
She had another meet-up with Mark that Sunday. When she left the apartment, he donned his sweater and cap. When she cut east for Bleecker, he sprinted north, then jogged parallel for Astor Place. The train pulled in as he hit the platform. The doors bonged, closing. What would he tell her if she caught him? The doctor's appointment? A call from an agent uptown?
He didn't have to worry. He pressed his nose to the scratched glass until he was certain she wasn't in the next car, then crossed forward, rocking on the narrow platform between cars. As usual, Vanessa was at the very front of the train. One car back, he slouched down in a seat. She detrained at 86th. Uptown.
The street smelled like bread and rain and Chinese chicken. She stopped in front of a brick walkup less than a block away. On the stoop, a man stood. His grin looked permanently installed in his jaw. His jaw looked like it spent the day breaking rocks. Vanessa grinned back at him, gave a tight, waist-high wave. He leaned in, kissed her—lips? Or the cheek? Typical overfriendly actor-greeting, or the hello of newly-minted lovers? They disappeared inside the building.
Walt found himself cold and half-lost in Central Park. He bought a soft pretzel, chewed down half, tossed the rest in bits to pigeons. Was she already gone? Then what the fuck did it matter what he did? He could propose to her, burn down her apartment, hold her mom at knifepoint. It wouldn't matter. She was gone.
He sat down in the grass. The dew seeped into his jeans. If he had a box with a button that could erase his existence, he would have pushed it.
This same park had been the start. In another sense, the year and a half of NYU classrooms and dorm rooms and Village bars where he'd dogged her had been the start, but the star
t, the start that had launched their first movie together, their first night of moany, eye-buzzing sex together, their first morning-after when he'd descended to a gray and silent Sunday AM in a city so empty it could have been built just for the two of them—all that had sprung from this park.
How had he talked her into coming here? He could no longer remember. He suspected it wasn't the particular words that had finally convinced her to a date with him, but rather his steady, undaunted presence. His persistence. So on that cool Saturday afternoon in spring, spurred, perhaps, by the dying of her last shreds of respect for the future electrician, she'd agreed to hop the train up to the park, where they walked around the paths before lying down in the grass on a quiet hill where she rested her head in his lap and he touched her hair above her ear and felt he'd never need to be anywhere else. They didn't move for an hour. It probably wouldn't sound that special to tell someone about. Everyone, at some point, sits in the grass with the person they love.
But after a year and a half of fruitless and corrosive pursuit, fueled by a desire his roommate Ajit kept calling "obsessive," it had been perfect. How often do you get to realize a dream? To put your hands on the exact thing you've always wanted?
Now that he was losing it, what wouldn't he do to keep it?
As if it had always been there, he had his answer. Stolen right out of The Royal Tenenbaums, which she'd seen, too, but tweaked just enough to elude notice. Smiling the unweighted smile of a man who's staked everything on the turn of one last card, he went back to the subway station, rode home to their apartment in the Village, and practiced his worried-face in the mirror. When Vanessa got home, it took her two minutes of how-was-your-day talk until she noticed.
"Everything okay?"
"The doctor called."
"What've you got? The flu?"
"There's a problem." He looked down at the carpet. It was a nice carpet, so thick your toes could get lost in it. He'd miss it if she kicked him out. "With my heart."
She reached for his shoulder, gaping, horrified. Her fingers never felt so good. "Your heart? Are you going to be okay?"
"I don't know. They want me back tomorrow." He covered his eyes with his hand, shoulders shrinking. "I'm scared."
3
Across the desk from Raymond, Lana Englund turned from her monitor, the wrinkles around her eyes highlit by the Santa Monica sunshine spilling through her great glass window. "We have a problem here. Our ad specifically asked for a degree in Communications."
"I minored in it."
"And maybe if you'd minored in English you'd know words have meanings."
He cocked his head. "The ad said experience would be the key factor."
"So it is. Your resume mentioned web work. Can you elaborate?"
"I've designed graphics for a half dozen different sites. I've been designing and writing my own blogs since before there was a word for them. I had a popular one that covered art supplies—pens, brush brands. I think that will carry over here."
She frowned, round cheeks puffing. "Traffic?"
"For my site?"
"No, for the 405. I was thinking of running out for some tapas."
"Before I moved on, I was drawing about 1500 unique visitors a month." Raymond's mouth twitched as Lana literally rolled her eyes. He'd been trying to keep things pro. "Is something the matter?"
"Something? No. Some things? Take your pick." She ticked off her points on her fingers, bending them back until the knuckles cracked. "You don't have a BA in the field. No direct experience writing copy. The best you can muster is a website that wasn't even a blip on the screen and has been dead for years. What I'm not understanding is who cleared you for an interview in the first place."
"I know my resume isn't a knockout. That's because I'm the only guy in LA County who doesn't lie on it. That's what I'm offering: honesty. I can do this job."
"I don't need a guy who'll tell me when my ass is looking big. I need a guy who can write me crisp, compelling copy. You're not that guy."
Raymond stood. "Fuck you."
"Excuse me?" She drew back in her chair, chin disappearing inside her high collar.
"You're talking to me like you never expect to see me again. So fuck off."
"Security's going to squash you like a toad." She reached for the phone and they probably would have, but he'd already left, walking down the sidewalk in a wrap of sunshine, smelling salt from the shore and grilled carne asada from the truck down the block. He hadn't told her to fuck off out of anger, but more out of the conviction that if you don't make a habit of standing up for yourself in the small moments, you'll never be able to do it when the big ones rolled around. Well, that and some anger. Anyway, it would make a better story for Mia.
Mia, when he'd told her they were out of money, that unless something changed, within two months they'd be living out of his car or, with luck, a spare room at one of his siblings', had been exactly the woman he'd married: concerned but forgiving, miles from petty, focused on nothing but making it together. She'd reached across the table and taken his hand and said they'd be okay.
He'd fully resolved to put his graphics career, if he could use the word without stringing quotes around it, on hiatus. A man on a mission, he'd replied to every feasible want ad on Craigslist. Most hadn't replied. A handful scheduled interviews. Lana Englund had been his first.
Mia smiled when he relayed his day. "Nowhere to go but up."
"Or postal."
"It's one interview."
"Maybe I should stop wasting time on the ambitious positions. I can worry about liking my job after I've stopped worrying about starving to death."
"You know what?" She grabbed his waist, shaking him like the beautiful thing you're compelled to destroy. "We should do something fun."
"You look like you already are," he said, voice rattling as she shook him.
"We should go live on the beach this weekend. I mean with tents and vodka-canteens and public urination."
"All of that is illegal."
"Who cares?" She released him, tugged open the crumbling curtain that overlooked their wild backyard, the lemon trees and wildflowers and the fifty-foot magnolia tree with its red, corn-cobby buds. "If we have to leave soon, why not have some fun? Enjoy the damn place? This is Southern California. Let's love it while we can."
He had to smile. "Of all the things you have to choose from, you want to go camping three blocks from your house?"
She put up her dukes, hopped forward, and tapped him in the gut with a fist. "It's free, isn't it?"
He couldn't argue with that. In between emailing his resume around and clipping coupons, he went down to the basement, a half-finished space cluttered to the point of unnavigability by books, tools, jars of screws, camera lenses and developing fluid, and half-painted, rough-sawn wood scraps from his dad's old projects. Decades ago, before his birth when they too had been too poor to do much else, his parents had been campers. Between two sawhorses and beneath a layer of dust thick enough to write your name in, Raymond dug up a tent, metal stakes, some tarps, canteens, and a tackle box that still smelled like bait, plasticky and fishy.
Saturday morning, they drove to the beach. He left most of the gear in the trunk until dark. They made up some rules: no leaving the beach unless a) the bathrooms were closed or b) to stow the tent in the mornings. When smoking weed, make sure no one could see the fire. Bag up all their trash. And absolutely no talk of money.
The sun bounced off the water and the sand; within an hour, Raymond had to break the first rule to go buy stronger sunscreen. It was late March and he knew the water in the bay had carried down the coast from Alaska, but he waded to his knees, coaxing Mia out into the curling surf until the soles of their feet went numb. They combed for shells, smelling salt and kelp and warm sand. On the rocks at the south end of the bay, where the mansions of Palos Verdes clung to the cliffs on eighty-foot stilts, small black flies swarmed in thousands over brown mats of drying kelp. He overturned stones, searching f
or crabs.
"I've been down here two dozen times and I've never seen a single fish," he said. "How hard can it be to find a fish in an ocean?"
"Maybe they just don't like you," she smiled. They'd been swigging warm vodka from a metal flask.
"Then they must know something you don't."
"Or vice versa. I've seen you naked."
"Maybe we should educate them."
After midnight, drunk and grinning, they carried two towels down to the tideline, laid one beneath them and one over them, and made love amidst the sand, the moon, the waves. Once they finished and Raymond had caught his breath, he popped up, naked, and faced the sea.
"Get a good look, fish. One night only." He plopped down on the towels, pawing in the moonlight for his underwear. "Why can't I shake the feeling this is a trial run for how we'll be living a few weeks from now?"
She waggled a finger in his face. "No money-talk, remember?"
"Who said anything about money? I'm talking about bindles and cans of beans."
"We'll have to memorize the train schedules."
"I think a barrel with two straps would look very flattering on you."
"We can't go homeless when we have a home, can we? Maybe we can get a thing. A lien."
"No money talk!" She sprung from the sand in a flash of light brown, her skin speckled with the darker spots of her nipples, belly button, and the gap between her legs. She tackled him on his back and smushed a towel into his face. "Gonna follow the rules? Or do I have to smother you?"
They woke sticky-mouthed and sunburnt, hungry and hungover. Between a couple covert puffs, packing the tent in the trunk, and a walk through the not-quite-cold morning, the fog lifted from their heads, the poison washed from their flesh. Just past the breakers, dolphins paralleled the shore, sleek gray fins shedding seawater.
When they drove the half mile home on Sunday afternoon, Raymond felt no less charged and refreshed than if they were on their way back from a trip across the Pacific. An interview request waited in his inbox. Wednesday morning, a video store just a few blocks up the street. Part-time clerk position. He didn't care. Low stress and more time to build his freelance career.
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 2