Elliot Mabeuse (27 page)

Waking again in the gray hours of early morning, not knowing now dream from reality, intoxicated, enchanted, she opened her eyes and looked at me, saw where she was, and smiled.

"I was having the best dream," she said.

And so was I.

She lay back down and slept, entering those golden rooms where magic happens, where all of us are alone with everyone we've ever known, with everything we've ever done, or thought, or desired.

Chapter Ten

In the morning, there's a girl beside me in bed, sharing the pillow with me. She's lying on my left, lying on her left side, facing away from me, her head on my left arm, her long brown hair thrown across the white pillow like a scattering of seaweed, like she's been cast up by the ocean. It's warm in there and the sheet's fallen from her in the night, and her breasts are reddened and marked from the anger of the whip and it fills me with guilt and a twisted kind of pride, knowing what she took for me. Her knees are drawn up and she looks small and elflike and totally incapable of the pleasure and depth of emotion she gave me last night, and yet she fills the loft with the peace of her sleep. I know, because I lie there and just
feel
for a while, my senses like antennae, and everything feels different.

I have a lover. Everything feels different.

I got out of bed and threw on some clothes, trotted down the stairs and went out on the street. It was a dull day, bright but overcast. I'd slept later than usual and felt kind of guilty. The trucks were unloading meat and produce at Ho Ho and Viet Long, the men well into their day, and there was Jimmy Vu, standing on the sidewalk and slapping at a parking meter, bopping up and down like a happy buddha, keeping an eye on things.

"Hey, Conner!"

"Hey, Jimmy, how's it going?"

"Oh great, man, great. So who is this Emma, man? She your new friend?" Jimmy didn't waste any time.

"I think so, Jimmy." I tried to wipe the sleep out of my face and smiled. I felt like I still had her all over me. "What do you think of that?"

"Very nice, man. Is she the sculptor? Is she the one we put up that thing for?"

"Yeah, that's right. She does metal sculptures. Great big things. Funny, isn't it?

Little thing like her can make such big heavy things?"

He smiled and nodded. "I liked what you told her about me. That was nice, man.

Tell her that again, okay? Anytime, that I'll take care of her."

"Sure."

He nodded, satisfied, and I headed down Carmen to Broadway and over to the Brite-Way.

My plan was to get Emma some toiletries. That's what I said to myself, thinking I sounded pretty knowledgeable—"toiletries". I might have even thought, "ladies'

toiletries". I had no idea what they were.

The place was freezing cold. I got her a purple toothbrush with a serious looking rubberized handgrip and some brand-name girl-type face wash and then I looked down the aisle, wondering what else I should get. There were miles of bottles and tubes and creams lined up and marshaled there, serious products with the might of American cosmetological know-how behind them, and I was no match. There were ads hanging from the shelves and the ceiling and even on the floor, and I was swept by a great wave of joy and terror.

Suddenly I saw Emma as the very tip of a great funnel of goods and products and services about to descend into my life, and I wondered if I was ready. Just what did a twenty-something year-old use to take care of herself these days? And these were just basic maintenance products, not make-up and enhancements.

But then, what did she need beside a toothbrush and face soap?

I went and paid.

I stopped in at the Saigon Bakery. They were already selling lunch. The Vietnamese have insanely great French bakeries, and I got some croissants and this great kind of submarine sandwich they make called a
banh me
, and two iced Thai coffees. They sold chunks of fruit in little plastic containers and I got a couple of those too.

Out on the street again, I took a few steps and stopped—a habit, get your bearings, check where you are, explain yourself to yourself. The city's always changing and it has a life of its own, just like the woods did to the Indians or the snow does to the Eskimos, and today I found a tender city under a bruised sky ready to accept me and Emma. It had a feeling of growth and I knew somehow it wouldn’t be like this much longer, that these were precious days. That made me briefly sad, but I knew they were precious and that was something in itself, knowing that.

I hurried back to Emma.

I felt her immediately as I climbed the stairs. An El went by as I opened the door—a blinding rush of sound—and then I heard her voice talking on the phone, low, reasonable. As I approached the bedroom in the back, I could make out what she was

saying: "No, well that's fine. Fine, but there's no point. I know. I know. I know all that and I'm sorry, David. David? No, I don't want to talk to Abba Yosef."

I turned and went back into the front and sat by the windows, giving her some privacy. I could still hear her voice. It echoed in that big place, but all she was saying was, no, no, it's no use, I don't want to talk, and it seemed obvious this break-up had been a long time coming. A lot of familiar material seemed to be dredged up again, and apparently it was a family affair. David kept on wanting her to talk to his brother, his sister-in-law, his father and God knows who else until, in time, even I was worn out.

Another train went by. It sliced the late morning silence like an axe, and by the time it was gone, Emma had stopped talking and the place was absolutely silent. I picked up the bags and went into the back.

She was sitting up in bed naked, the sheet around her waist, the phone in one hand, the other hand covering her face.

"You want me to talk to him, Emma?"

She dropped her hand and looked at me. She wasn't crying, but she was about to, and she was angry.

"They'll never leave me alone," she said. "There's fourteen of them, a whole clan.

David, his brothers and sisters, their wives, in-laws, uncles and cousins, his mother and father, even his grandfather and grandmother. All of them together. You get the whole package and they all get on you. They work you over, one after the other.

"Oh God, Conner! They have
plans
for me. It's like I'm upsetting their precious
plans
. It's so sick! I've been trying to get out of this for weeks, months, but you just can't shake loose of them."

I put the bags down and sat down on the bed. Emma sat there, totally unconscious of her naked breasts, which were beautiful, in spite of or because of the whip marks. She made me feel old, and I kind of liked it. I think she did too. She leaned forward to peek into one of the bags and let her breasts swing.

"What'd you have? Anything good?" She took out an iced coffee. "Is this coffee?"

"Yeah. Want it?"

"Oh, thank God!"

"It's Thai coffee. Cold and sweet, they—"

"What else did you get?"

She was already in the bag, handing me her coffee. She took out the fruit and opened it, began to greedily eat the melon balls and strawberries.

"I'm sorry," she said through a mouth full of fruit. "I'm just really hungry. I must be like the only person in the world who really has to eat breakfast or I die. Ooh! What's this? A sandwich?"

The
banh me
was the size of her forearm.

"Conner? Would I, like, seriously disgust you if I ate a sandwich for breakfast? It's what I usually do at home."

"No, baby. It's what I do too. I have no use for cereal."

"Oh Conner, you're beautiful!"

I made her throw on a shirt and button it. It didn't hide much. I could still see the whip marks. She sat at the kitchen table and tore into the sandwich while I had a croissant to keep her company but I wasn't really hungry. I was too busy watching her, too busy trying to absorb this daytime Emma, figuring out who she was, and at the moment she was all appetite, fascinated with the sandwich, and then with the loft, the window and the view, the trains going by. She took some convincing that, with the lights off, the people on the platform couldn't see in but we could see them. They were that close, close enough you naturally wanted to keep your voice down, except of course when a train came by, when it was impossible to talk loudly enough.

"And you live here alone, Conner? Just you? It's so big. You don't get lonely? Not even a cat?

"No. I mean, it happened kind of gradually. I was living with someone. It got ugly.

When she moved out, it was a relief. It went from being a relief to this. I never thought of it being lonely."

"Do you ever have parties?" she asked. "I'd have parties if I had this much room."

"For a while I had readings. Sometimes I still do. Sometimes people come over and we work on things. There's usually something going on. You like parties, Emma?"

"No, not really. I don't. Not much. I think I'd like the kind of party I dream about, though. The kind filled with interesting people where people actually know how to drink out of a glass."

I laughed. "We can have parties. I'll make sure everyone has a glass and knows how to use it. Tell me about your roommates. How's Angela the liar?"

She took a bite of her sandwich and pouted at me, then smiled, remembering last night. "Angela's actually okay. It's Christina who's bad. She's a cousin."

"Your cousin?"

"No. David's. Everyone's a cousin. Christina's…I don't know, a third? fourth?—

rear echelon, pressed into service. She had the apartment and David got me in there so she could keep an eye on me. She's a bitch. Even goes through my mail sometimes, my drawers."

"Jesus."

She drank some coffee. "If you're worried, don't be. They're not violent. Just crazy as hell. Honestly. Like the mafia. Everything's property to them. You must think I was crazy to get involved, but I actually liked it at first. I have a small family. Older sister, my younger brother died in a motorcycle accident and my mom never got over it.

My house was always really quiet after that and I couldn't stand it. When I met David—

Do you mind if I talk about him, Conner? Do I talk about him too much? I don't want to talk about him all the time."

"No. I don't mind. There's a lot of him in there. He's going to have to come out."

She wanted to believe me so she nodded. "Because I don't love him, you know. I really don't. But like I say, when I met him, his house was always full of people, lively, and I really liked that. They have this big house and they were always cooking, and someone always seemed to have a baby or a birthday and I was just caught up in this

whole thing. And once I got caught up, there wasn't even time to stop and hear yourself think. You were always doing something…"

She didn't say anything for a while, so I asked, "You were really engaged?"

She gave a weak laugh. "I don't even know. They have all these different arrangements. You're 'serious', then 'committed', then David's father talked to my father, and I didn't even know that meant anything until David told me we were now 'pledged'."

She threw her head back as if letting something wash out of her hair. She laughed. "Oh God, it's so bizarre! I just want my life back!"

She let her chin fall forward so she was looking down at her breasts and the marks. I suppose they reminded her of me because she looked up at me. "I mean, I just want to be able to choose my own life, Conner.
I
want to choose, and you know what I want."

I hoped I did, and I was still afraid to ask. On impulse I asked, "What about your car?"

"David's car? He gets it back, of course. I don't want it. I wish I'd never taken it.

See, Conner? That's why I was so careful last night when you wanted to buy me things.

You should never take gifts from people unless you're absolutely sure and you're never absolutely sure. You should never take anything."

"Oh. Well that's too bad then." I reached into the bag and brought out the toothbrush. "I already bought you this, Emma. I thought you might need it."

I handed it to her and she took it.

"Oh." She gave a little laugh. "A toothbrush. Yeah."

She looked at it and turned it over in her hands, then looked up at me again and put it down on the table by her plate, adjusting it so it was neat and straight. She pushed it aside an inch or two and sat there for a moment longer just staring at it, and then she started to cry. She shook her head as if she really didn't want to cry, but she was looking at the toothbrush and she just couldn't stop, and then she really started to cry hard, the tears coming, sobbing.

She covered her eyes with her hands, put her elbows on the table and started weeping, her shoulders heaving, her whole body convulsing in wracking spasms as all the hurt she'd caused everyone came gushing out—all the hurt that goes with trying to stumble along and follow your heart, the confusion, the fear and pain and rage, all those things that go with love just like the noise went with those damned El trains that kept on sweeping past the kitchen as she sat and wept and shook and wept and I stood and watched her and didn't know what to do, watching her, all alone with her pain.