by Jody Gehrman
Eva and I met on a frozen lake just down the hill from the yurts and tepees my first day there. Her hair was crazy curly. She always had her hands in it, trying to direct it out of her face, but it was hopeless—untamable. It was snowing. We were the only two people for miles, so it would have been weird not even saying hi. After we exchanged names, we wandered the frozen lake together. Right away, I started talking too much. I was nervous under her watchful gaze. Her wide-set eyes, so devoid of pretense, unleashed in me an unexpected panic.
“You shouldn’t talk unless you have something to say,” she said, interrupting my lengthy monologue.
I stared at her. She was five feet tall. Her long, dark curls trailed behind her in the breeze.
“That’s rude,” I said. “Take it back.”
“I’m trying to help you.” She stared at me, her brown eyes devoid of malice. Her voice sounded husky for someone so young. The few girls I had encountered before then all seemed giggly and frivolous. Eva was the opposite. She had no time for fakery.
“I don’t need help.”
She shrugged. We walked in silence for a few minutes.
“You’re in Phoenix’s yurt, right?” she asked after a while.
I barked out a cynical laugh. “Yeah. Total dump. Smells like bong and ass.”
We walked in silence again. We stopped to look at a tricycle that lay beneath the frozen surface of the lake. We stared at it for a long moment. There was something sad and also beautiful about it.
As we walked on, I started telling her about the Donner Party. I’d just read a book called Desperate Passage. I explained how they got stuck in the snow and ate each other to survive. I made sure to include lots of gruesome details.
“People think they have to know stuff.” She stopped walking and turned to me. “That’s not important. All anyone wants in this world is to be seen, to be heard.”
I’m not kidding you. She actually talked like that. Her childhood in the wilderness among hippies had preserved her childlike absence of bullshit.
“Are you always this blunt?” I asked her.
She nodded. There was nothing but blank honesty in her eyes.
“That’s cool.” I started walking again. “This place is pretty fucking weird.”
She grinned. “Welcome to paradise.”
“What do you do around here?”
Her gaze swept over the snow-dusted landscape. “We do this.”
It was hard not to notice her perfect, tiny body—the breasts that swelled beneath her thick wool sweater. Her slender, twiglike legs sprouted from black combat boots and striped, mismatched socks. Most of all, though, I noticed her eyes, so big and full of wonder. I started to think The Mercury Ranch looked promising.
Everything I know about girls I learned from Eva. She was my first love. My first tragedy.
The sight of you laughing brings me back to the present. Raul must have said something funny. I long to brain him with his dinner plate. I train my binoculars more tightly on his mouth, but I’m not good at reading lips.
Whatever he’s saying, you’re entertained.
Surely, you’re not considering sleeping with him. He’s not your equal, Kate. I don’t care how expensive his suits are, how black his hair. One look tells me he’s a douche.
But maybe you’re the sort of woman who sleeps with douches.
I’ve known such women. Vivienne, for example, routinely chooses the stupidest man she can find. It’s baffling. In spite of her drug-addled decrepitude, Vivienne has a decent mind. Sometimes she read to me from the books of her favorite author, Roald Dahl. Those are my first memories of words—my mother reading about a giant peach. How I loved those nights, curled up in her lap, listening to her smoky voice make each word come alive. She painted beautiful pictures in my brain. I assumed for years that she created the stories. She only looked at the pages to remind herself of what she’d written. Back then, Vivienne was omnipotent; she had the power of a deity.
I feared and loved her with equal savagery.
You and Raul continue with your meal. He makes you laugh once more, but overall you look glazed. I’m good at all the things he’s bad at, Kate. When I have you in a candlelit restaurant, a glass of wine before you, I’ll ask you all the right questions. I’ll find your tender spot, that thing you want to talk about but never do. I’ll be patient. When your voice cracks, and you reveal the secret you’ve never told anyone, I’ll nod encouragement. I won’t say anything, won’t try to fix it. I’ll just bear witness to your pain.
You don’t need the Rauls of this world, Kate. You’ve got me.
KATE
I’ve got to hand it to Zoe; Raul is sexy. His voice is pure velvet. His subtle accent turns every sentence into a spicy mélange of rolling r’s and quirky phrasing. He tells stories of his childhood in Oaxaca, and his words form a steady lullaby, a seductive lilt to every syllable. There’s something soulful about his eyes. When he looks at me, You fascinate me and I want to fuck you chase one another across his face. His thick, luxuriant, blue-black hair is artfully mussed. His smile radiates boyish, dimpled charm.
“I love the steaks here.” He stabs a hunk of bloody meat with his fork. Everything about him is decisive, confident. “They cook them just right. Of course, I like all kinds of food—Asian fusion, tapas, dim sum—but sometimes an old-fashioned filet mignon just—how do you say? Hits my spot.”
“Hits the spot,” I correct him, smiling. “But I know what you mean.”
He dominates the conversation. I don’t mind. I’m tired. I spent all day trying to lead discussions, struggling to say things worth listening to. He makes it easy to sip my wine and drink him in. He talks about his restaurants like treasured children. What I know about the hospitality industry wouldn’t fill a postcard, but it doesn’t matter. He makes it sound fascinating. All the intrigues, the liaisons, the backstabbing. I sip my Bordeaux and listen.
“Forgive me,” he says after a while. “I talk too much. You must tell me about you.”
I shake my head. “Not much to tell.”
“You are a profesora, yes?”
“Yes.” I nod. “I teach English at Blackwood.”
He considers me. “You are very good at it, I imagine.”
“Not especially.” I’m not being modest. My student evals are consistently gruesome.
“I know you are.” His dark eyes go serious, penetrating. “I can see that.”
“How can you see that?” I don’t bother to hide my incredulity. A strand of hair falls into my eyes, and I tuck it behind my ear.
“Because you are beautiful to look at, and beautiful to listen to. If they do not appreciate that, they are fools.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“What I mean is, they can see how intelligent you are. In spite of your beauty.” He grins.
I wait to feel something. A flutter in the pit of my stomach. My heart perking up like a dog catching a scent. Heat between my thighs. Nothing.
“Zoe tells me you are a novelista.” His eyebrows slant upward.
I sip my wine. “Yeah, that’s my other job.”
“What sort of stories do you write?”
A chasm opens between us, the one I always face when trying to explain my work. How do I express my war with words, my torrid affair with verbiage, my love-hate relationship with my characters? How do I squeeze any of that into the one-minute summary expected? It’s daunting, impossible.
“I write crime fiction.” I pull out my tired, trite old line. “I kill people for a living and get away with it.”
He laughs loudly. For a second, I do feel something—the tiniest flame in my belly. It settles into powdery ash almost immediately, though, a brushfire quickly extinguished.
“It is quite sexy.” He leans forward, his dark eyes scanning my face. “I love a woman with danger.”
I bite my lip and will myself to flirt. Nothing comes to me. No witty rejoinder. I can’t even bat my eyelashes. I wish to God I could.
He goes on, undeterred, “Have you ever had a book turned into a movie?”
“No. Not yet.”
“I must confess I consume more movies than books.”
“You and most of America.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know it sounds judgmental. I backpedal. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I love movies.”
“Would you like to see your story on the big screen?” He shows no sign of being offended.
“Sure, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well, I’ve known writers who had their work adapted for film—”
“Who?” He looks intrigued.
I name a friend from grad school who had his short story optioned by an indie filmmaker. Predictably, Raul’s face remains blank.
“Anyway, he had a terrible experience,” I say. “The director wanted to change just about everything. In the end, he felt no connection with the project.”
He shakes his head. “That must be very difficult. Once my restaurant in Athens was featured in a TV show.”
“How interesting!” My voice sounds overly bright, even to my own ears. “What was that like?”
This prompts a long diatribe on the joys and sorrows of his brush with fame. He’s not a bad storyteller—funny, self-deprecating. In spite of my obsession with dramatic structure, I can’t even convey a simple anecdote on a date. All the words that spring easily from my fingertips get stuck in my throat. It’s easier to let him pontificate, to half-listen while leaving my other half burrowed in my own private thoughts.
Keeping a fascinated expression frozen on my face, I pick over my day, feeling more and more depressed. Workshop today was miserable. I tried to facilitate an honest discussion about the rape scene Kayla submitted, but the conversation quickly devolved into emotionally loaded barbs and college-girl pseudo-feminist slogans (“Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power.”). I like to think the open forum is my strong suit—my ability to draw people out and guide the conversation—but today proved even that power’s failing me. I can’t write. I can’t teach. What can I do?
“Kate?” Raul shifts slightly in his seat to catch my eye. “I fear I am boring you.”
“No. Not at all.” I put one hand on his. “I just had a shitty day.”
His smile’s a little sad. “I talk too much.”
“Seriously, you’re fine.” I let go of his hand and swig the rest of my wine. I put the glass down with a definitive thunk. “You’re wonderful.”
“Zoe said you were moody.”
“She knows me well.”
He lowers his voice. “Moody is okay with me.”
“You sure about that?”
Are we flirting? Is that what we’re doing? There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s warm, attentive, charismatic. My nerves should be wide awake by now, alive with anticipation. Instead, my body remains stubbornly inert. Nothing’s stirring. I can’t understand it.
My mind keeps slipping back to Sam; there’s a strong river current pulling me toward him. Today he wore a black hoodie to class, kept the hood on throughout workshop. Sometimes he descends into dark, solitary funks. On those days, no amount of bait will draw him out. Today, I kept waiting for him to join the discussion. He always has something to say about violence and how it’s handled in fiction. No luck. His eyes were opaque, unreadable.
“You are thinking about your ‘shitty day’?” I can tell by the gentle reprimand in his question I must have drifted again.
“Occupational hazard.” I offer a wan smile. “Hard not to take your work home.”
“Your writing or your teaching?”
“Teaching. If I obsessed over my writing as much as I do my students, I’d probably have another book worth reading.”
He pours more wine into my glass. “Perhaps I can help you forget about your shitty day.”
* * *
As we slip out the door of the restaurant, the cool night greets us with a gentle slap. It’s October thirteenth, and though the temperatures have been unseasonably warm, tonight I can feel the cold coming. Blackwood’s winter is harsher than any place I’ve ever lived—frigid, snowy, blistering. I love it. Growing up in California, I never imagined how dramatically the Midwestern seasons turn, one cartwheeling into the next, transforming the landscape completely. Now, the smell of coming snow and the perfume of rotting leaves stirs a swirl of delight in me. I look up at the blanket of stars, the crescent moon, and beam idiotically.
“You have a beautiful smile,” Raul says, eyes glued to my profile.
“Thank you.”
“Are you parked on this block?”
“Oh, I walked.” I pull my coat tighter as a cold wind lifts my hair, tickling my neck.
He looks surprised. “You live very close, then?”
“About a mile from here.”
His eyebrows shoot toward his hairline. “What a healthy girl you are.” His smile is teasing, but there’s also a thread of insinuation there, a gleam in his eye that implies he’s picturing me naked. Possibly sweaty. I don’t mind. It’s been so long since anybody looked at me like that. Okay, yes, there’s Sam, who watches me with an intensity that makes Raul’s gaze look cursory, but I’ve promised myself I won’t think about him tonight.
“That’s me!” I shove my hands into my coat pockets. It comes off way more aw, shucks than I intended.
“May I drive you home?”
“Sure.”
We’ve reached an enormous black Range Rover by now. He clicks the key fob, and the car lights up inside. With a flourish, he opens the passenger’s side. As I climb in, a wave of smells washes over me. Aftershave. A whiff of ancient cigar smoke. Leather. I wait for my body to respond to this manly potpourri. Nothing. I’m flatlining here. My sexual dashboard is awash in darkness.
I keep flashing back to Sam. His ethereal blue eyes. His eerie way of watching me—so intense, like I’m the first woman he’s ever seen.
“You are okay?” Raul asks, settling into the driver’s seat.
“Sure. Fine.”
“In my experience, when a woman says she is fine, she is not so fine.” He fastens his seatbelt, then turns his searching gaze on me.
“Yeah, well, I am.” I can’t keep the irritation from my voice.
He starts the car, and warm air blasts from the heaters. I ask myself what’s going on here. He’s lighting up all the old pleasure centers: exotic accent, boyish dimples, strong jaw. Yet somehow, watching his profile, I can’t muster a single erotic impulse. It’s like the part of me that responded to these signals is now dead and buried.
Did Pablo kill my receptors? Am I doomed to walk the earth a numb, dead-eyed spinster?
Pablo and I argued—God, we argued. That man could turn a paper bag into a knock-down, drag-out fight. His temper would flare at the slightest provocation, his muscles coiling, the tendons popping in his neck. He never hit me, but he always looked ready to give it a try. He did punch things—walls, doors, the dash of my car. There’s still a gentle indent in the glove compartment of my Saab, a fist-sized reminder of the good times.
What a bastard.
But the sex was phenomenal.
“I’ve kept you out too late. Can you forgive me?” Raul’s accent caresses each syllable. He ducks his head slightly.
“No problem.” I manage a thin smile.
As we’re driving away, a quick, darting movement catches my eye. A blur of dark blue in the alley across the street. Someone in a hoodie? I crane my neck, peering into the shadows. For half a second, I’m certain there’s someone looking back at me. Eyes on mine, staring from the darkness. Then nothing.
Raul parks in front of my house. He doesn’t turn off the car; the heaters go on shooting hot air at my face. At first it felt wonderful. Now it’s claustrophobic. The cold night air beckons. I shift in my heated leather seat, trying to avoid the furnace-like blast.
“Your house is very charming,” he says.
“Oh. Thanks.” I look at my darkened wind
ows, the glow of my porch light illuminating a couple of pumpkins. Zoe gave them to me. She’s obsessed with holiday decorations. Unlike her new friend Abby, she pulls them off with admirable élan. I doubt I’ll get around to carving the pumpkins, sadly. I always mean to and never do.
“It is a nice neighborhood, yes?” Raul takes in the rows of orderly houses and matching tidy lawns. “Very quiet.”
“It is.”
Nervousness makes my pulse quicken. Should I ask him inside for a drink? The fluttery indecision in my belly feels foreign. The whole situation is like a bad dream, the kind where I find myself trapped back in high school. It feels so wrong to be dating at this age. Repulsive, really, like trying to squeeze myself into the low-slung jeans I wore as a teenager.
I try to picture Raul curled up next to me on the couch in front of the fireplace, highballs in our hands, ice tinkling. Will he smell like his car when he leans in for a kiss? Sam smelled like lemon aftershave and leather, the ghost of old cigar smoke? The fantasy does nothing for me. I long to pull on my stretched-out yoga pants and my ancient sweatshirt, the one that’s so old it’s disintegrating. The last thing I want to do is play seductress, pouring drinks and enduring soulful gazes.
What’s wrong with you? He’s hot and age-appropriate. He’s got a full head of hair, a steady income, and his stomach doesn’t dwarf the rest of him. You really think you can do better?
Glancing at the side mirror, a car parked down the street catches my eye. It’s a battered silver Honda. It looks a little rust-eaten for this side of town. The dark interior reveals nothing. Something about it tugs at me, though I can’t say why. I tell myself I’m just being neurotic, looking for distractions.
“I had a great time.” Raul’s voice is low and intimate. He runs a finger over his brow, glances at me sideways. “You are an intriguing woman.”
I smile. I’ve always wanted to be intriguing. I think “distracted” would be more accurate, but I don’t correct him.
“You say little, but I can tell your mind is very active.” His eyebrows arch suggestively.
“Sorry to be so laconic. I’m not trying to be difficult.”