by Paloma Meir
“Wake-up, dude. Madrid to Paris is like LA to San Francisco.” I found myself upset with her. What could she have been thinking to toy with him for what probably was a simple argument between her and Paolo? I stretched out and stared out at the ocean, trying to relax and be open to his nonsensical thoughts. “Remember when I was going to take you down for taking advantage of her? I misread that.”
“We’ll figure out the details. I’m bringing her home.”
“Did she say that she wanted to come back? Does she think of LA as home?”
“No, but she called she wants me there. You should have heard her. She was crying, persistent.”
“Shelly said she phone sexed you. I don’t want to get in your business, but I don’t want you to be her transatlantic late night sex call. Does she know how hard you take it?"
“I went through it with her. She wants me to come out as a friend. You’re throwing a bummer on my whole plan.”
“Sorry dude, but it’s so out of the blue. If she thinks of you as her friend that’s probably all you are to her. I don’t want you knocked down again. How does the phone sex fit in? I don’t get you two, now or ever.”
“I know she called me her friend, but then she did her sexy thing. It was her idea, kind of. She fucking loves me. I fucking love her. That’s all anyone needs to know.” He got up in a daze and went to bed.
…
I woke very late the following morning to find Danny stretched out in the living room with papers everywhere, school assignments, schedules, escrow papers, panicked. Panicked wouldn’t be the right word, electric. Danny was electric, on fire in a way he had never been, even as a teen.
His bright blue eyes glowing as he talked about how he didn’t see how he could get out of town in less than a week. He wanted to drop everything, as was obvious from the mess he had made of notes, and open spreadsheets on his computer. No animal videos that morning. Ranting about his final class, and how he wanted the program that he would never use anyway. He must have said that three times.
I wished him luck not knowing how else to respond and went back into my room to call my sister and get to the bottom of the mania Zelda had caused with her thoughtless, almost selfish phone call. She was a full grown adult, unlike us. How could she have possibly thought it was okay to send someone who had once been so important to her, into such a frenzy.
My sister was between classes and very rushed. She laughed when I told her the story, telling me not to worry. She would call Zelda later in the day and get back to me. She wouldn’t for three days, and then to only tell me that she couldn’t get in touch with her. She seemed angry with her about that.
It only got worse. Days upon days of Danny staying up all night on the phone with her, walking around late at night in his white bathrobe, laughing, reminiscing loudly, calling her 'baby' non-stop. It was as if she were living with us.
I couldn’t imagine in any way that Zelda was planning out the future for herself with him. He was planning with her. If in fact her and Paolo were over, I seriously doubted it. It stunk of rebound and that was best-case scenario.
I tried to talk to him in his calmer moments, suggesting he slow down, consider that she had lived happily, in fact something close to a perfect life in Madrid for the past seven years. Maybe she wasn’t ready to come back to the States. He would blow me off saying he was going to “bring her home”. He must have said that phrase a hundred times in the ten days between first talking to her, and the day he was supposed to fly out to her.
He dragged me into town to go shopping for traveling clothes. He ended up getting an entire new wardrobe down to the brightly colored socks at Paul Smith. I even picked up a few things that were on sale at the APC store. I didn’t see myself wearing them anytime soon, but it was good to slowly make the move to an adult wardrobe. I didn’t want March 1st to come as too much of a shock.
We went to the Country Mart for his haircut. Good-bye to shaggy sun-streaked hair and back to his college year’s style of tousled dark hair. I could get behind that choice. He had a great head of hair with the slight wave pulling the longer portion in front to the back, very 1940's without the pomade. He tried to get me to cut my dreadlocks off. I came very close to having a fit.
I tried to go with it without being too much of a downer to him. I didn’t think, and nobody with a brain in their head would have seen it differently, that it was going to end well for him. All of his progress washed away, left to start again.
I came in late the night before Danny was planning to fly out to Zelda. I had spent the evening out at the Santa Monica Pier with Gemma, a recently divorced woman a few houses up the road from us. Danny was wired and wore the white bathrobe that he always wore during their phone calls. Eyes ablaze, he paced our small living room, laughing, saying he was her best friend in a lascivious way, and a lot of baby’s. I rolled my eyes and went into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of beet carrot juice before going to bed.
“Take a walk today, a long one, baby. I want you awake when I get there. Because we’re not getting out of bed...”
His newfound comfort in sexualizing her perplexed me. He had always been so protective of that aspect of their relationship before, in spite of their hyper affectionate ways.
“Baby, baby, okay.” He hung up the phone and said to me, “Louisa’s crying. She’s going to call me back.” He sat down on the sofa, put the phone on the coffee table, and stared at it.
“Is the ringer on your phone broken Danny?”
“No.”
“It could take awhile, babies...”
“I know you told me already. Louisa comes first. I’m good, Serge.” His eyes did not leave the phone. I went to my room ready for a good night’s sleep. It wasn’t going to happen. The walls of the house were paper-thin, and they liked their phone sex. He would put the phone on speaker. I couldn’t hear their words, and I was thankful for that, but I could hear a light moaning drift across the rooms. I covered my head with a pillow and went to sleep.
…
“Serge now. You’re making me late.” He stood by the front door ready to go, overstuffed suitcase in hand. I wondered why he packed so much when his plan was to spend the week in bed. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.
“Dude, your flight’s at 7:30. It’s 3:00.”
“There could be traffic. Let’s go.” He fidgeted with the doorknob.
“It’s straight down the coast. Fine, let’s go.” I gave up and closed my chat window with Arturo.
He was amped up. I talked about the surf forecast for the following week thinking it would calm him down, even though he wouldn’t be home to enjoy it. He nodded his head a lot and gripped the door handle as if he were going to jump out of the car and make a run for it at any moment.
“We’re good with the time. Do you want to stop at In ‘N’ Out?” I asked as we approached the airport.
“No, get me to the airport. There could be a line through security.”
“You’re going to be there three hours early.”
“I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Dude, I don’t want to be a downer, but you need to manage your expectations.”
“I know you’ve said something like that every day. Stop. You don’t get us.”
“I’ve watched you two since day one. She grew up in my house. She’s great, but she’s human. You’ve turned her into a mythical creature of love man.”
“Cool get me to the airport.”
I helped him with the bags in front of the terminal and tried to stay positive in spite of his madness. It wasn’t easy. The best case scenario for him was he would finally see they were very different people with all the time that had passed. I had no doubt Zelda would recognize that within a day or two of the visit. Who knew though? I could have been wrong, but we’ll never know because his phone rang.
“Mom?” His face that had been so bright, sagged. “I’m coming right now. I’ll call Brian. Hang on Mom. It’s going to be okay.”
“Take me to Cedars.” He ordered. I put the bags back in the trunk.
“What happened?” I asked as we got back in his car.
“Dad had a stroke.” He didn’t look up as he selected the contact icon of his brother. “Brian. Dad had a stroke. Come down now,” He stared out the window with a different energy. More take charge than obsessive, “Cedars. Fly down now. Text me your flight information. I’ll have Serge pick you up.” He looked my way. I nodded my head in the affirmative. “Call Serge. I don’t think cell phones are allowed in hospitals, or call the room. Cedars.”
He hung up his phone and stared out into the nothingness of the streets ahead. I raced us through the back roads to get us quickly to Cedars and patted his shoulder a few times but didn’t say anything.
“It’s the middle of the night in Paris. I don’t know if I’ll be able to talk to her anytime soon. I sent her a text but call her in a few hours and let her know what’s going on. Go home and wait for Brian’s call. Thanks buddy.” We pulled up in front of the hospital. I gave him a manly hug and headed home to wait for Brian’s call.
I made it back to the airport on the dot at 8:00 to pick up Brian. He was frazzled, quiet in a way I had never seen him before. Generally, he was much the same as Danny, but a lighter version even though he was the older brother. Danny was the spark in his family. The leader if there could be one with all of them being self starters. Very different than my family.
He stared out the window of my car in the same way Danny had done on the drive to hospital. I wondered if their emotional reactions were written somewhere in their DNA. Which led me to ponder if whether or not I had studied genetics or neurobiology, I would have lost my mind in the way I had with astrophysics. They really weren’t so different, more the macro vs. micro. Maybe my detachment to the subject, which I did find almost equally interesting, would have kept me on the path.
We were nearly halfway to the hospital before I realized my mind wanderings were rude, almost selfish. Brian was clearly upset and rightfully so by the events and not knowing what the outcome would be for his father. I didn’t have much to offer in the way of information. He told me while getting in the car that his father was stable, and they was waiting for the results of tests to determine the permanence of his coma-like condition.
I thought a little gossip about what his baby brother had been up to for the past week might take his mind off his sadness for a few minutes at least. “So what do you think of Danny’s planned trip to Paris?”
“What?” He shook his head as if I had woken him up from a deep sleep. “Why is he going to Paris? You can’t surf or snowboard over there.” He laughed.
“Zelda... She claims she’s broken up with Paolo. I don’t know why she called him, but according to your love-struck brother, they are back together.” I purposely sighed in a dramatic way. “We shall see.”
“Serge.” He ruffled my dreadlocks. “Not like you to be so cynical. They went through a lot together, makes sense to me.”
“Makes sense?” I laughed hard, making it difficult to drive. “Seven years they’ve been apart. They’re strangers. She’s lived a full life. Danny... me... not that much.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not the one getting back together with her then. Weren’t you in Peru, playing soccer? Danny and I would watch you late at night. We found the games on the internet. Law school, now you’re a lawyer? Pretty full life to anyone else. My baby brother, a wealth accumulator, like he always says, he doesn’t lose. You can’t flip through a magazine without seeing one of his girlfriends. Living the dream.”
“I wouldn’t call them his girlfriends.” The two of them watching my games when I had so easily let go of my friendship with Danny filled me with guilt, enough that I let my worries go and enjoyed the pep talk I probably should have been giving him. “You’re right, and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work out, he’s got you, Brendan, me. We’ll take care of him.”
“That’s better, Serge.” He pulled his beeping phone out of his carry-one bag. “Vanessa’s flying in with the kids tomorrow. Could you pick them up? It’s tough traveling with the boys. Be nice for her to see a friendly face.”
I looked over at him to say, 'yes,' and found him staring off again, his energy ebbing.
“I remember the first time I met her. I came home from college the summer between junior and senior year to do an internship at the Times. There she was, living at our house, the center of everything. My mom, it was like she found her soulmate, all the things she could never do with Danny and me, she did with her, and my Dad, he loved her. I was jealous. I hadn’t been home in a year. It was like no one had missed me. I was awful to her, calling her out on the silly things she said. She wasn’t even sixteen. When she wasn’t around I would torture Danny, telling him how hot she was, trying to get a rise out of him. He would just look up at me as if I knocked him out. I didn’t get it, and nobody told me anything until they left a few weeks later for France with her family. You know… about what happened to her.”
“You didn’t know,” I said because there was nothing else I could say. I could feel Zelda’s heart and mind not understanding why someone would treat her that way.
“You’re letting me off too easy. I was twenty-one. There was a bully inside of me... I could barely look at her when they came back. How do you fix that? I didn’t know how to apologize without it sounding like I felt sorry for her because I did feel sorry for her. I turned it into a big brother situation as if I were just trying to toughen her up all along. I practiced Krav Maga at night with her by the pool. I would let her win. Knock me down. She was a nice girl, letting me make things right with her.”
By this point I was actively trying not to listen to him. It didn’t work. Prius’s are very small cars, energy efficient, and soundless.
“Danny though, that’s another story. Maybe I was hurt that he didn’t talk to me about it, who knows. I never talked to him about it.” He paused and checked his phone again. “She would have anxiety attacks, the crying. He was so on it. It was painful to watch.”
“He was good with her.” I really wanted him to shut-up. “We’re here.” I changed the subject to his family, asking about his new baby as we parked and took the elevator upstairs.
On the ICU floor, he walked straight to Danny bypassing his mother and hugged him tightly for a very a long time. It was, as he had said in my car, painful to watch.
“Vanessa and the kids are coming down in the morning. Serge said he would pick them up.” He looked over at me with a small smile, “Thanks for all the airport runs my man,” He turned to Danny. “You didn’t tell me you were going to Paris. How is your little nymph?”
“What’s she doing in Paris? You didn’t tell me you were going to see her. Danny what is going on?” Their very tired looking mother asked.
“Zelda and Paolo are done, over. We’ve been talking. She asked me to visit her. That’s all there is to the story for now.”
“Then why are you smiling like that?” asked Brian. “Rock on, little brother.”
“They’re on the phone half the night,” I said.
“Oh, Danny. This isn’t good for either of you. Give her some time. She hasn’t been on her own since she was fifteen,” his mother said.
“We’re good. Don’t worry about it.” And with that we all sat down in the chairs and stared at the walls.
The doctor came out a few times to give us updates that didn’t contain new information. The waiting, the not knowing was frustrating, not just for them but for me as well. I wouldn’t say Mr. Goldberg was like a second father to me, that honor would go to the patriarch of my Peruvian family, Mr. Zarate. Still Mr. Goldberg and all of Danny’s family had been a constant in my life, a very positive force, supporting me in my turbulent teen years, feeding me, and generally looking after me.
After the doctor, Sarah Berman, came out for the second time within forty minutes with no new information, I noticed the way she carried herself. She stood fac
ing the family but her green fairy-like eyes were only on Danny. She adjusted the top button on her blouse underneath her medical coat, repeating information as if nervous. I wanted to laugh, our esteemed doctor, and she must have been esteemed because she headed up the stroke unit and couldn’t have been more than year older than Danny, had a crush.
I wanted to tell her the khaki suit wearing, newly coiffed Adonis before her was not in fact the real Danny. If this event had happened a mere ten days earlier she would have had him escorted out by security, for being a possible transient. Instead, I took the moment to leave and get the Goldberg’s some food. They had existed on chips, candy bars and bottled water for the better part of the day. No way to treat your body in a high stress situation.
I was back within a half an hour, the traffic being light because of the late hour, with an assortment of pizza, salads and juices. I didn’t do it cheaply either. I drove to Mozza on Melrose and spent close to two hundred dollars, my weekly food budget, on their improvised dinner. We devoured it as Dr. Berman, of the twittering heart, came out to let us know once again the same information she had provided an hour before.