by Amber Foxx
That’s why he’s sleeping with me, she reminded herself.
Mae walked to the bedroom door. “You all right, sugar?”
A groan. The toilet flushing. Water running. Jamie returned, smelling like mouthwash, his face wet with cold water. He leaned on her and moaned, “Sorry. I’m disgusting.”
She tried to keep her eyes off his long limbs, broad shoulders and narrow hips, but he looked good when it was so dark she couldn’t see his bones or all the scars. Stop. He just got up and puked. This is not sexy. Disengaging from him, she helped him back to bed.
He fell onto the mattress, and within seconds seemed to sleep again. Lying beside him, Mae rolled him onto his side in case he choked, and Pie slipped between them, finding a spot to nest and purr against Jamie’s chest. Mae curled over to face him and took hold of his hand.
He was the man who had danced with her, given her a massage, comforted her sorrow, made her laugh, showed her the town, and bared his wounded soul and body. He was worth the trouble of this sorry night. Someday she would hear his new music playing, and know that she’d helped him get there, and be glad.
Light. Light that moved. Mae opened her eyes. She had rolled away from Jamie in her sleep. The sunrise, a thin golden line over the edge of the house next door, showed and then vanished as the curtains seemed to inhale then exhale the morning’s arrival. Feeling Jamie’s gaze, sensing his alert presence, Mae turned and saw him lying on his side, halfway up, apparently entranced by the movement of the curtains. He looked at her, then at the window, then at her. His expression could only be described as a kind of rapture.
He caressed her face, touched a finger to her lips, and gestured with his hand as if closing her eyes. She closed them. Whatever he was seeing and feeling, it was beautiful, and she should let him have this moment.
When she woke again, the light was brilliant, and she smelled coffee. Jamie, in clean clothes—had he run out to the van naked?—stood holding a steaming mug in each hand.
“G’day, love.” He waited for her to sit up, and then handed her a mug and sat at a respectful distance on the bed, his voice and energy subdued. “Hope you slept some.”
Mae took a sip of coffee and a deep breath of its aroma. “Thanks for bringing this. Yes, I did. After you got a few things out of your system.”
“Sorry.” He drank his coffee. “Not my normal. Hard liquor. Jesus. Bloody awful.”
“You’re gonna see Wendy today. How you feeling?”
“Buggered.” A wan smile. “It’s all right. Got a bad head, but,” the two-part shrug, “I can still cook.”
“You don’t have to. You’ve got to focus on your music today. I can—”
“Waffles? Muffins?”
“Do you carry a cookbook around in that backpack?”
He nodded. “I do. Yeah. Get to someone’s house and ... you never know. Might have a chance.”
“Whatever you feel like, sugar.” This obviously meant so much to him, she had to let him do it. “I’m sure I’ll love it.”
With a faded version of The Smile, he left. Mae rose, drank more of her coffee. While Jamie was cooking, she had a mission to accomplish. After a quick shower, she called her father. Tempted to tell Marty the whole story, but knowing how ashamed Jamie was, she simply asked if he could stay in the house a couple of days while he took care of Pie. He could give the place a final cleaning before the tenants arrived.
“’Course he can, baby, if you need to come back. What’s Jamie’s number? We should talk to him before Niall comes up to get the new tenants settled in.”
“He doesn’t have one.”
A long silence. “Stan and Addie know?”
“They’re about to.”
Before sitting down at the table, Mae laid her phone nearby on the counter, hoping Jamie’s parents had read the e-mail and would call any minute. Even if she didn’t know what time it was in Australia, they had to know what time it was in New Mexico.
As if moving underwater, Jamie served waffles and more coffee. “Lemon corn blueberry,” he said. “Let me know if it worked. Can’t believe I found all the right stuff to make ’em.”
“I can. I bet you shopped for this recipe when we were ...” She didn’t finish. Of course he’d fantasized being here for breakfast. The hope-it’s-okay version of The Smile admitted as much. Except for the menu, this could hardly be the way he’d imagined waking up with her, though. She tasted a waffle. “This is good, sugar. You’re the best cook I’ve ever met.” Meeting his eyes, she saw a mix of relief and sadness as he sat across from her. His last chance to try to impress her. “Can you stay a few days and take care of Pie?”
He nodded and looked down, cut his waffle with atypical neatness, and ate a small piece of it. Swallowed before talking. “Thanks. I’ll leave the place perfect. Leave Pie all happy and sweet.”
“She loves you. I’m sure you will. Promise me you’ll go to someone’s house when you leave, Jamie. You’re not going back in some gully—”
“Jesus. You weren’t supposed to know that. Can we act like—act like you don’t?”
“Not really. You need an address and a phone number. You need three meals a day and eight hours sleep. I can’t leave you stranded. I have to know.”
“I’m not stranded. I just ... dunno what to do. Yet. I’ll figure it out. I’ll see Wendy. We’ll get a plan.”
“She needs you to have an address and a phone number, and to get enough to eat. Don’t you think you panic more when you’re worn out like that? You could have a lot of work coming up, and you can’t do it in the shape you’re in.”
“I’ve written some great music in the shape I’m in.”
A distraction, and she didn’t let it snag her. “You have relatives, don’t you? Isn’t your Dad from here? Family can know.”
“I don’t and they can’t. My grandparents are dead, and my cousins don’t live here. Not that they like me, anyway. All the ones I’m close to are in Oz. Look, I wasn’t just talking drunk. I said this is my fucking mess and I’m—”
Her phone rang, and she rose to answer it, saw an unfamiliar number. It had to be, she hoped, his parents.
“Hey. This is Mae.”
“This is Stan Ellerbee.” A deep, gentle voice with a neutral American accent. “I don’t know who you are, but thank you for giving us your number.”
“I’m Marty Martin’s daughter. Doing some work on his and Niall’s house.”
“Marty.” Stan’s tone warmed with recognition, and then tightened with worry. “Is Jamie all right? Is he— I ... don’t know how well you know him.”
“Pretty well. He’s right here. You can talk to him.”
Jamie’s eyes grew wide as Mae walked over and proffered the phone. “Fuck. You gave my parents your number?”
“I didn’t tell them anything except that you were too drunk to type last night. And my number. And that you claimed you were fine.”
“Bloody hell.” He glared at her, took the phone, and collapsed into a sheltered slump, one hand supporting his head, his voice soft and drained as he said, “G’day, Dad.”
Mae began cleaning up the kitchen while she finished her meal at the counter, deliberately making enough noise washing dishes that Jamie could assume she wasn’t listening. Occasionally she heard a few words, always in that surrendered, exhausted voice. Enough words to know he’d given up the fight and was telling the truth. Bad check. William died. Lisa quit.
Leaving him to finish the long and painful conversation, she went to the laundry room to get her clothes, and then to the bedroom to pack. She didn’t know how this would turn out for Jamie, but she felt sure that at least his parents wouldn’t let him stay homeless.
Aware that her time here was ending, she slowly folded each dress and blouse. Someone else’s hands seemed to be placing the items in her suitcase. Leaving. Jamie’s pink shirt lay on the floor. She picked it up and hung it on the arm of the chair. Nice to think that he could stay a few days, do his laundry, cook, sleep,
shower, even dance and practice his music, all in one place, not be running all over town all day just to take care of ordinary life. She hoped it would be peaceful, and that the break from being desperately busy staying alive would feel safe.
Carrying her purse and suitcase to the back door, she heard Jamie now laughing. “Fuck, Mum, I’ve been waltzing Matilda ... Nah, no fucking billabong to jump in ...” A roaring laugh. “Jeezus, you’re as sick as I am ... Too right ... Nah ...” He sounded subdued again. “She’s still half-married ... man back in woop-woop ... ”
Mae wished she hadn’t heard. Had his mother hoped he’d found someone?
“Yeah. I promise. Told you—I have a manager. I’ll be working, might do a tour ... Can I talk to Haley?”
Now he would be on her phone longer, talking to his sister, but this was important, one last thing Mae could do for him. Leaving her suitcase inside so Jamie wouldn’t panic and think she’d left without a goodbye, she went out to the garden. A little time with the sage and lavender and the statue would be good for her soul. Finally. Her time alone.
“Thanks.”
Deep in contemplation of the gleaming black curves of the statue’s hair and blanket and the enigmatic expression on its timeless face, Mae jumped at the sound of Jamie’s voice. Where had she been? She seemed to have drifted into a space between her thoughts. He stood near the bench, holding out her phone. She took it from him, slipped it into a pocket, and moved over to let him sit with her. “You don’t make a sound.”
“Used to be fat, y’know? Had to take dance in college, tried not to be a fucking walrus. Learned to float. Still float.” A heavy silence sat between them. He took her hand, and she didn’t resist. “Fuck. You’ve seen everything, haven’t you? Past and present. Fat, thin, sick, drunk, crazy, stupid, crying ...”
“I’ve seen more than that.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t see,” he paused, watching his hand squeeze hers, then looking away, “your equal.”
Shocked that he thought she’d looked down on him, Mae protested. “I never said that.”
“Didn’t have to. It was what you did.” He let go of her. “You can handle this—this—” An angry flick of his hand at the space between his eyebrows and then at the crown of his head indicated what he meant. He leaned his elbows on his thighs and spoke to the ground between his feet. “I can’t.”
He was right that she’d thought he couldn’t handle his spiritual gifts right now, but he made it sound like a final verdict, or a matter of finding him lacking in some way. It wasn’t. “Not yet. But you could get it back, when you’re better. When you get your head on straight.”
“It doesn’t go on straight. This is it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, love. Come on, so do you.” Still avoiding her eyes, he clasped her hand again and turned it over, his long fingers rippling repeatedly across her palm. “It’s like my body. I can get to perfect one seventy-five, and I can swim and dance and bike, but I won’t get fixed. I’ll still be full of metal and scars, and places that hurt. I’ll still take my clothes off and scare people, y’know?” A soft laugh. “The mind can get a little better, but not a lot. I live with it, y’know? It’s who I am.”
“So you don’t think you’ll ever be ready? Seems you get some kind of gift like that, you’re supposed to use it.”
“Gift. My bloody curse. Jesus.” He met her eyes. “D’you have any idea what I was seeing?”
She shook her head.
“Wish I could tell you.” Jamie turned to straddle the bench, and Mae sat more sideways on it to face him, a move that felt strangely like he’d led her in a dance, still holding her hand. “Jesus. It was like ... I’d know, but it wasn’t words, or ideas—like shapes and lights and even sounds sometimes, but they told me, y’know? Truths. In the park yesterday, I fucking couldn’t do the music. I could see ...” He shuddered. “Sorry. Something ugly in someone ...” He looked down, released her hand, drummed on the bench. “But I could see stuff so fucking beautiful I could hardly stand it, too. You. And my mates, Mwizenge and Dagmawi—Jesus, their souls when we played together, fucking blinding. Made me fly. But I couldn’t turn it off. Sometimes it’d go off when I didn’t expect it, then it’d come on again for days, and I’d be in bloody heaven and hell at the same time.”
“You could find a teacher, maybe, so you could learn to control it. Your father knows all these medicine people and shamans.”
“Put away your tool box. Stop trying to fix me.”
“I’m not. I’m trying to tell you—I’ve kept telling you—I think you’re a healer.” If he were mentally healthy and could control his gifts, he’d be more than her equal. He’d have powers she couldn’t imagine. “A healer shaman.”
“And then would you see I’m your soul mate? Is that what it’d take?”
“No, that’s not why I said that—”
“Because that’s what I hoped. That’s why I—” He stood, his back to her, and pounded a fist into his hand. “Fuck. That’s why I left it to you. To see. If I could. But I can’t. You’re right.” His hands exploded upward, fingers spread, as if tearing a veil from his vision, and then pressed into his temples and burrowed into his hair. “There’s not room.” He dropped his hands and shoved them in his pockets, walked a few steps along the path and stopped, still with his back to her, shoulders hunched, head down, rubbing the edge of a brick with his heel. “But I’m still the one.”
Him? A thousand arguments crossed her mind. Things she could never say to him. She took her time to pull her thoughts together, struggling to assemble both kindness and truth.
“I’m not ready, sugar. I’m taking time out from men. A long time. And ...” It was so hard to hurt him. He’d give her the baby seal eyes and she’d want to comfort him, but they had to make a clean break so he could let go of her. “Even when and if I am ready for a man in my life, it might not be you.”
He looked up into the blinding sky, squinting. “Dunno, love. Might change your mind when you hear me on the radio and you wonder if that love song’s for you. Wrote one already, y’know.” Drifting to the statue, he stroked the sweeping curve of the stone woman’s shawl. “Since you closed that door in my head I’ve had this music in me, y’know? Woke up when the grog wore off and there it was. Like this force. Coming out of everything.” He held contact with the statue a moment longer, and faced Mae again. “Better get your suitcase, hadn’t I?”
With a flash of The Smile, he hurried into the house.
He put her bag in the trunk, and she set her purse in the front seat, keeping her keys out, and took the house key off the ring. She handed it to him. “Niall’s coming up to meet the tenants in a couple of days. You got somewhere to go then, ’til your folks get back?”
“Yeah. Alan ...” Jamie jammed the key onto his ring with what Mae now realized must be his parents’ house keys. “Mum and Dad are sending money for the van. Y’know, rescue ...” He kicked at the gravel and drew a line in it with his heel. “Thanks for everything, love. You’re a fucking angel.” Without looking at her, he started away.
“Jamie. Come on, sugar, say goodbye.”
“Sorry.” He turned around, beginning to laugh. “Fuck.”
“What’s so funny?”
“I was afraid I’d cry.” The snort-laugh. He returned, took her in a ballroom dance position. “That’s better. I can do this right.” He grinned. “Follow my lead, love, this is a waltz.”
“What? Now?”
“Yeah, now. It’s all we’ve got.”
He waltzed her into the alley, expanding the sweep and flight of the dance, and began to sing a tender, flowing ballad as they soared and spun.
The curtains breathe
Dawn’s golden line
You’ll soon be gone
Heartbeat of time.
Your beauty shines
Through heart and mind
So wild and sweet
So strong and kind.
He sang t
he final verse several times, each repeat reaching further into the seemingly limitless highs and lows of both his voice and his heart.
And though you say
You can't be mine
I’ll cherish this
Heartbeat of time.
Crazy. Heart-rending. She felt like a bird flying on the wind, and like a fool dancing in the street with a man singing loud enough to be heard in every house on the block. A love song for her.
On the last notes, he waltzed her back to her car, and with a kiss on the cheek let her go. “Remember me like this.”
Mae wasn’t sure if she said goodbye. She got in her car and looked out the window at that blazing gold-toothed smile and those deep black eyes, this strange-looking lean brown man with his little dark beard and wild blond hair, walking backwards into the garden. Then she had to look away, and focus on driving. Her eyes were blurring. For the past four days she had been trying, and failing, to get away from him. Now she had, and it hurt.
What could she do with her mind for three hours? Even the red and brown cliffs, the black lava rocks, the startling shapes and colors of the bare bones of the earth along I-25 South didn’t stop the tumult inside her. KUNM began to fade. Without taking her eyes off the road, Mae reached for the first CD she could grab.
The last disk of one of the romance novels wrapped up the story with a wedding, as they always seemed to—either that or an engagement, followed by an epilogue describing the happy couple with their two children. Really? Is that how stories end? Marriage is the golden door people walk through and they live happily ever after. Parents stay together and have perfect children. And the hero of the romance sure isn’t crazy, or homeless. Who’d want a story like that? Unemployed personal trainer halfway to second divorce meets mentally ill homeless musician ... And then? Nothing. Nothing was possible. Jamie, sweet kind Jamie, would drain the life out of her with his endless needs.
She missed Hubert. So calm, so steady. The sound of his slow, Southern speech, the solid feel of his body. If he was here, he’d put on some country music, sing along once in a while—badly—and not say much as they drove. Didn’t need to. They’d been comfortable. No noise, no chatter.