Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He tried to let himself float to the top but the grinding of the huge wave held him down. A few kicks toward bottom—just where is it now? Eyes open: a gritty swirl of shadow and half-light, shapes moving within shapes. Blow out some air and follow the bubbles up. But he was tumbling still, and the bubbles simply joined the turbulence and disappeared.

  Then this wonderment of the senses: a feeling of falling but not necessarily down, maybe up or sideways or all directions at once; followed by a realization that something is missing here, some fundamental faculty linking the organism to gravity. He pushed off the bottom with a fear-driven heave, but there was no bottom. Lights arced through his head. He thought of saving the last of his breath to simply float upward, but the last of his breath was gone.

  He thrashed against the darkness, a burst of energy as he strained for the surface and finally gulped a mouthful of sandy water. He could feel the scream from his system: what is this, Chuck? God, please no. Then the weakness coming, and a warmth with it, and the uneasy hypothesis that he was really just dreaming and about to waken and everything would be okay and Hyla would be there with hot chocolate and let him watch TV awhile. Another breath of water. He could sense his arms out ahead of him in the murk, paddling, turtlelike, trying to lead his head to air.

  Then Hyla had hold of him. She was dragging him. She was barking like a dog.

  Her face finally congealed before him, at odds with memory. Blond hair and long, nothing like mom. Why is she barking? Hands under my arms now, some dragging motion on sand. Faces. Legs. Puke, then breathe, in that order. Then a hot rush of sea water up from the lungs, burning nose, mouth, ears, eyes, pores. A wolfish creature bearing down, speaking in tongues. Someone up there slaps it away. More shapes, all in black. I am in alien hands. I am on my back. Chest goes up and down. Air is good. Life is good.

  Of course. Cristobel. Surfers. Dunce.

  He worked himself to hands and knees, chest heaving, vomiting between breaths. Dunce barked and shot in and out of his vision with each wretched outpouring. He could sense someone beside him; bare feet, jeans, a spill of light hair as a hand tried to steady his back. In the mid-distance he saw more legs, heard mumbled concern. “Whoa, he’s like throbbin’ lucky he’s not totaled right now. Rad wipeout. Is that that Frye guy, or some tourist?”

  Good God, he thought. Get me out of here.

  Cristobel helped him up and guided him to where the sand meets the rocks. He settled down to the cool earth, still breathing heavily, lights still pinging around his skull. A moment later she returned with his board, both halves, which she leaned against a boulder. Dunce sat and studied him as Cristobel wrapped a towel around his shoulders. “I knew it,” she said. “I felt it, strong.”

  He looked at her, hugging himself under the towel.

  “I saw it. When you didn’t come up I waded out. Blaster helped.”

  “Thanks,” he said. His voice was helium-high. He watched another set forming outside and shuddered, then launched into a new fit of coughing.

  She knelt beside him and tucked the towel close to his neck. Her smell cut straight through his brinedrenched senses, an aroma of woman and earth so solid you could stand on it. The onshore breeze stuck a batch of golden hair to his face as she leaned in close. “Can you make it to my place?”

  Awhile later he stood uneasily, straightened his shoulders and breathed deeply, which sent him into another paroxysm of coughing that bent him in half. When he’d discharged what seemed at least half a gallon of ocean water, he smiled like death at Cristobel. “Let’s go.”

  “What about that?”

  Frye looked at his board, halved neatly and leaning on the rocks. “Public service reminder,” he said, and offered her his hand.

  Blaster led the way, his red scarf in a cavalryesque lilt to the east.

  He sat in a sunlit rectangle on the floor, warming in the rays that came through the window. Jim was on a shoot in L.A. Blaster nuzzled against his leg, then turned over for a belly rub. Cristobel changed into dry shorts and a halter top, then went to the kitchen to make coffee. Frye regarded the dress she was working on, now hanging on a mannequin. He coughed. Cristobel’s humming came to him from the kitchen. He had always liked a woman who hummed. He liked it so much he fell asleep.

  When he woke again the sunlight had drifted from his face to his stomach. Lying still, he watched Cristobel’s back and legs as she stood in front of the dress, as she then leaned forward to make some adjustment. Steam eased up from the floor a few feet away, and he rotated an eye for explanation: a coffee cup placed on the carpet, just far enough so he wouldn’t knock it over. She had put a pillow under his head. He watched her hands now, slender but large-knuckled: one pinching the fabric, the other reaching forward, a pin ready. She was up on the balls of her feet, springy, like a basketball player. She moved forward for a closer look and smoothed the silk with her finger. She arched her back, cocked her head, and crossed her arms in an analytical pause, then turned to look at him. “Well, sleeping beauty, what do you think?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Not much of a critic, are you?”

  “I know what I like.”

  “It’s not finished yet.”

  “It will be soon. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

  She bit her lip gently, looked at the dress, then back to Frye. “I designed it myself.”

  She smiled, blushed a little. Blaster’s tail knocked against the hardwood floor. “Every time I look down to Rockpile I see you going over.”

  “I’m glad you were there. You saved my life, Cristobel.”

  “Aw, shucks.”

  He sipped the coffee, leaned up on an elbow. “Now you’re stuck with me.”

  “What’s a girl to do?”

  “Could come over here and lie in the sun.”

  She looked at the dress for a long moment, then at Frye. Blaster lumbered over, working his nose under one of her hands. She took a pillow and lay down beside him, a couple of feet away, braced on an elbow. She was back-lit by the sun. It made her hair even lighter as it dangled down in a loose braid, Frye looked long at her, and she looked back. “You look real beautiful to me,” he said.

  “I’m glad that’s what you see.”

  Blaster tried to squeeze in between them; Cristobel shoved him away. He lay instead on the other side of her, resting his head in the narrow part of her waist, watching Frye with big round eyes, affable, moronic. “You’ve got an admirer.”

  “Isn’t he a sweetheart?”

  Frye shrugged. He had learned years ago that a man can’t compete with a woman’s pets. He reached out and touched her face.

  She reddened. “You feel okay?”

  He nodded. He could feel himself getting sucked into her dark brown eyes.

  Suddenly she was telling him about fashion design, how it started off as something to do to win trophies at the local fair. She explained that her older brother had Little League and Pop Warner trophies all over the place, that her father had Toastmaster plaques, that her mother had a whole roomful of civic awards and citations. “I had this dresser in my room with nothing on it but one picture of my horse and one of Mickey Dolenz. I decided to fill it up with hardware like everybody else had. I started entering all the little fairs and contests in Mendocino County, then some down in Sacramento and San Francisco. Sure enough, I heaped that whole dresser full of awards and ribbons. Then my brother became a hippie, so he tossed the trophies. And Dad had already won everything he could at Toastmasters so he quit. And Mom got sick of philanthropy so she stuck to the garden. I didn’t want to lose a good thing, so I just kept on sewing. Later, I started designing my own clothes.”

  “You’re smart to stick with it. Now you’ve got something that’s yours.”

  Frye reached out and touched her face again. It flushed, but she kept looking at him. He brushed back her hair. He could sense her body tensing; her jaw went tight. She lifted a hand toward him. It hovered a moment, withdrew. She looked away, took a dee
p long breath. “This isn’t anything like you think it is,” she said. “There are layers of me to cut through.”

  “With a little luck, I’ll cut in the right place.”

  She sighed and touched his face with her hand. “There’s no such thing as luck. We get what we ask for.”

  “I feel lucky you were at Rockpile today. That you were there Monday morning when we met.”

  She looked at him oddly, then away. “Anyway, what about you? Always surf and stuff like that?”

  Frye told her about the first time he’d paddled out on a surfboard, one that Bennett had made for him, a cute little thing just under five feet long, with his name written in flashy red letters across the deck. He was six. Bennett was eleven. “I couldn’t stand on the damned thing, so I just slid around on my belly all morning, riding the Whitewater in. After lunch we went back out. It was one of those hot fall days when the water’s green and the waves are little and shaped perfect. Bennett said he wouldn’t let me back to the beach unless I stood up and rode back. He helped me find the right place to take off. I fell a hundred times, then finally got up. I can see it just like it was. I’m crouching down like I’m going a hundred, arms out, absolutely stoked. We stayed out until the sun went down, and I had big rashes under my arms from the wetsuit.”

  “You’ll never forget that day.”

  “No way.” Frye went on to relate how that night Benny and his friends had taken him down to the water at the island and performed the ancient Hawaiian ritual that all new surfers were allowed to enjoy. They made him drink three swallows of his father’s bourbon—part of the ceremony, they explained—then peed on him.

  Cristobel laughed. Blaster looked up and panted knowingly. “What horrible little boys,” she said.

  “I was deeply moved. I had my swimsuit on, so I just waded out and washed off. I was laughing like a fool. Bourbon hits a kid hard.”

  Frye described his abortive college career, his attempts to major in geology, marine biology, English. Finally, he just flunked out and joined the surfing tour, to the horror of his father. He recalled Edison’s letter of acknowledgment, which arrived while he was competing in the miserably cold waters of Australia and getting rather creamed by unfriendly locals, saying, “If you choose to kill your mind, son, then your body will surely follow. With love and disappointment, Father.”

  Cristobel frowned, then laughed again. “Sounds like my dad. They always want you to do what you want to do, as long as it’s what they want you to do. They try. Mine was extra hard on Mike, my brother. So when Mike was shot down over there, it tore Dad up.”

  “Your folks still alive?”

  She shook her head. “Just me now. Don’t say you’re sorry. I hate those words. Just put your hand on my face again, like you did.”

  Frye touched her. He scooted closer, but not too close. She smelled so good. She kept looking at him. For a long time he just held his face close to hers, smelling her breath and the richness of her skin. What do I smell like, he wondered, seawater? When he moved his lips to hers, she turned away. He kissed her ear instead. She pressed up close to him. She was shaking. “Something’s starting. I don’t want anything to start. That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But just hold on to me awhile, Chuck. Kind of light, like. I’m … I’m so damned glad you’re alive and here with me.”

  He did, a long while, until his lower shoulder was asleep and the hand that stroked her head was heavy and tired. Twice he started to tell her about the tunnels and what he had found there, but he stopped, unwilling to bring that horror into Cristobel’s sunlit living room. The rays rushed the window and made her hair warm. Blaster, his head still resting on the small of Cristobel’s waist, looked up at Frye, yawned, and closed his eyes again. Frye could hear the surf pounding outside, and through the corner of window he could see the lanky palms of Heisler Park drooping far in the distance. The sun hovered, an orange disc. For the first time in two days he felt warm. He was glad to be alive too, and to be here with her. Some things, he thought, are so good and simple.

  Then she was kissing him, lightly at first, then deeper. She moved closer. A hand touched his neck.

  Inside, Frye shrieked with delight.

  She sat up, cross-legged now. Frye sat in front of her, legs apart, scooting close. “I hope you don’t hate me for this someday,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You don’t. You really don’t.”

  He slipped the straps of her top away and kissed her round dark shoulders. Her breasts were soft under his hands. When he pulled away the halter she breathed deeply and her nipples stood up and he took one between his teeth. She leaned back, hands braced behind her. She lifted her butt as he slid her shorts down, then tossed them onto the couch. Frye looked down at her nakedness, her lovely round body, the plain of tan on her stomach, the narrow white section of hip, then the dark wedge between smooth strong thighs. Blaster gave him a concerned look. Then Cristobel moved forward and put a hand up his leg, all the way to the sandy lining of his swimsuit. He helped her get it off. Their mouths locked and she moaned. She pulled away. “I don’t know if I can do this.” She touched him gently. “I see that you can.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Be slow.”

  Frye lowered her on her side and guided her hips toward him. The kiss got deeper and deeper, and he could feel the sunlight on his hand as he moved it across her shoulders and back, her butt and legs, down the outside, up the inside where, to Frye’s mild astonishment, she was very much ready for this. “Oooh, God,” she said.

  He found her mouth again. He rolled her over and braced himself on his hands and knees.

  Then she pulled away. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  When he tried to take her, her legs suddenly clenched, a corded flex that felt like steel. He tried to get a knee inside. “It’s okay,” he said. “Okay, sweet woman, okay.”

  Her head was tilted back. Tears ran up her face, into her ears and hair. “This is wrong,” she whispered.

  “This is right.”

  He could sense her will taking over. Her legs opened, her stomach quivered. The moment he touched her, Cristobel grabbed his arms and pushed off him, wriggling away. She worked herself up with the unsteadiness of a foal. She stood there in the sunlight, trying to cover her breasts. She looked down at Frye with her hair a disaster and tears rolling off her cheeks. “I hate this,” she said. She turned and disappeared into the bathroom.

  He sat there for a moment, his member aiming dolefully up at his own forehead, wondering what you do in a case like this. She was running water in the bathroom. He thought he heard sobs, too.

  He went in without knocking and took her in his arms. She had already put on a silk robe. Frye took it off, and it melted to the floor. He held her close and rocked her like Hyla used to rock him, back and forth with his hands spread across her back and her face buried in his neck. “It’s okay, Cris. Forget it. We’ll do it when it’s right. It’s okay.”

  “I don’t want to forget it, and it’s never going to be right. I want you.”

  “Oh?”

  He led her to the bedroom, a collection of purples and lavenders, a bright, sunny room. They fell onto the bed.

  “What I want you to know,” she said, “is that this isn’t at all what I wanted to happen.”

  She was stroking him again. The idea struck him that Cristobel was a contradictory animal, but he was soon past the point of ideas altogether. Then she guided him in, slowly, a little shudder as he entered and buried himself deep as he could go, a perfectly tooled connection.

  “Oh no,” she said.

  “Oh yes.” He let her have the control. She was tentative at first. She lay back her head and closed her eyes, and Frye wondered what visions were exacting themselves on the backs of her eyelids. Her face was dotted with sweat. Her hair was all over the place. Then the ancient rhythm took over and Frye joined her, chasing down
that place in her where all the nerves converge, where the detonations begin, where the center explodes and reforms and sends out deltas of pleasure all the way to the fingertips. He could feel it gathering inside her, inside himself. There was nowhere else on Earth he’d rather be. He propped up her head with his hand and kissed her. When it came, she arched her back and cried out, and Frye joined her, shaking, planting everything he had to plant, shuddering while the quakes broke over him, electrocuted on his own nerves. Below him, petals of voltage opened and bloomed, muscles tightened, breathing stopped, sharp fingernails trailed down his back.

  They lay there, locked in aftershock.

  Then Cristobel took a deep breath, so deep Frye could feel her heart slamming away as her chest rose. She released. Her fingers relaxed. Her legs lowered to the bed.

  Cristobel slept while Frye worked himself free and went to the telephone to call Westminster Hospital about visiting hours for Tuy Nha.

  He looked at Cristobel sleeping in the bedroom and felt fatherly. He smiled, then stood there, browsing the sundry collection of odds and ends tacked to the bulletin board near the phone.

  Funny, he thought, how when you like somebody, even their minor stuff seems important to you: coupons, phone numbers, two Florida postcards with alligators on them, an old photograph, some slick shots of Jim, looking very GQ.

  The corner of the newspaper photo caught his eye, because he had seen it so many times before, because he knew exactly what it was.

  It was thumbtacked up there, behind a city recreation schedule and a local nightclub listing. Less than an inch of it showed, but he knew what the rest of it looked like. He swung away the other papers and looked at himself, dressed in the ape costume, grinning like a fool, chasing the Mystery Maid toward the hedge of blooming hibiscus.

  God, how I hate that thing, he thought.

  He looked at Cristobel. And what are you doing with it?

  You re Chuck Frye, aren’t you? I saw you in some contests …