From The Dead (6 page)

Jada put down the script. Shallow creases wiggled
along her forehead. “You always said you didn’t want kids either.
We talked about that early on: no long-term anything—no baby, no
marriage. We both wanted our careers, remember?”

“Sure.” Jesse shrugged, an attempt at passivity. “But
back then I was what, nineteen? Twenty? The thought of fatherhood
freaked me out at the time: the demands, the responsibility—another
human being depending on you to come through for him.”

“And it no longer scares you? Scares the hell out of
me.”

“I guess I’ve gotten used to the idea as I’ve grown
older. It doesn’t bother me as much. It’s normal to start to
question your life choices, right?”

“What choices? I
like
my life. How are we
supposed to juggle a kid with our lifestyle?” She jostled her hair
and readjusted her sunglasses. “Maybe kids fit your personality,
but not mine. What’s got you thinking about this out of the blue,
anyway?”

“Random thoughts, that’s all.” He shrugged it off.
“Second chances at—“

Jada interrupted him. “What the …” She yanked her
sunglasses off and stared closer at his face. “You’re
bleeding.”

“Huh?”

“Your nose, it’s—wait.”

Jada reached behind to her beach bag and found a
tissue. Jesse dabbed at his nose, and then laid back. Another faint
trickle. He felt his belly tighten with apprehension but waved it
off.

“Are you okay?” Jada asked.

“Probably the sun.”

Jada nodded. “I used to get those nosebleeds in
Nevada. It was the dry climate.” She put her sunglasses back on.
“Is it easing up?”

“It’s fine. Be right back.” As he walked away, he
could sense Jada’s eyes on him.

Jesse disappeared into a restroom beneath the Pier to
nurse the nosebleed. It seemed to take longer to quit than the last
time.

For several months, Jesse had noticed occasional,
random bruises that remained unexplained. When Jada pointed them
out, he couldn’t remember if he had bumped against a shelf or
counter at the store.

Now he wondered if the symptoms were related. But
then again, these were common things that happened to everyone.
Best not to consider it while in an emotional valley, Jesse
figured.

CHAPTER 9

When they arrived home late that afternoon, Jesse
offered to cook dinner. After a quick shower, he padded barefoot
into the kitchen in a T-shirt and shorts. By no means was he a
gourmet, but he had learned his way around a handful of simple,
ten-minute recipes. Given Jada’s preference for low-calorie meals,
he opted for a pot of spaghetti, which now simmered on the stove in
a pool of minced garlic, oregano and olive oil as a light sauce
substitute.

He heard Jada finish her shower around the corner. He
had to admit, he felt disappointed that she wouldn’t budge on the
prospect of kids. Granted, he had no reason to expect her to
change, but the way she’d reminded him had sounded callous. It had
landed a stone-cold blow to his gut, given his own
reconsideration.

Shake it off, Jesse.

He stirred the spaghetti. As the scent of the entrée
wafted through the kitchen, he closed his eyes and breathed the
tempting aroma. Jesse placed the finishing touches on a salad and
walked it to the dining room table, where he set out a pair of wine
glasses. Jada had already had a glass while Jesse showered, but he
was sure she’d want another. He turned off the stove and carried
the entrée to the table.

With his back turned, he didn’t see Jada when she
strode into the room. Barefoot and dressed in her mauve terrycloth
robe, she fingered her damp hair. She tiptoed from behind, slipped
her arms around his waist, and rested her head against the back of
his neck.

Jesse eased around in her arms and admired the
glimpse of natural beauty before him, an image of fresh allure. He
placed his arms around her waist and drew her against himself as
she slid her palms down to his buttocks. She smiled. Her eyes
danced.

“My favorite chef,” she whispered.

He lingered and returned her gaze. “Would you like a
glass of Chardonnay?”

“I want you to fuck me.” She giggled in a subdued,
sensuous manner all her own.

She possessed a magnetic draw. The woman was adept
with her body and always won.

Jesse leaned in. He brushed his lips along her
neckline and traced it with kisses on the way up. She turned her
face; Jesse felt her relax in the flow of the moment. Through a gap
between the edges of her robe, her flesh still glistened moist
along the top of her chest. Her hair smelled of orchids and
invigorated Jesse’s senses. He removed his shirt, ran his fingers
through her hair and down to her waist as he guided her backward to
the living room, against the sofa.

Jada grew breathless as he laid kisses on her mouth,
her earlobes, down to her shoulders. He glided his hands down her
sides and into the opening beneath the knot of the robe—she wore
nothing underneath. With agile fingers Jesse loosened the knot; her
robe fell to the floor in silence. Jesse stepped out of his shorts
and started at her belly. As he ran his hands upward, he traveled
the surface of her feverish, Mediterranean skin. Jada’s hands
descended from the top of his head down to his waist as he worked
his way along her belly. Then he retraced the territory with his
lips, feathered her thighs with his fingertips as Jada let out a
muted sigh of delight.

Jesse in the lead, he glided her around the sofa and
laid her on the cushions with care. Jada grasped Jesse’s backside
as he hovered over her. His brow dampened; beads of perspiration
fell down her belly and below her waist. Their flesh stuck to the
leather surface, which released a series of subtle cracks and purrs
in response to their motion.

Jesse began to descend further with his mouth when
she broke his stride with a soft voice.

“Wait—hold on …”

Jesse paused, his lips still parted, and glanced up
to see her face. “What is it?” he asked, then resumed his
navigation.

“Stop,” she said, then winced at the halt. “We don’t
have a condom.”

He grimaced for a split second.

“Now?” he murmured.

“Go grab one from your drawer. You don’t want to be a
daddy today, do you?”

Startled, Jesse froze. A chill raced up his spine.
His mind backtracked, and then returned in a fast-forward to the
moment at hand. He shook his head.

“No … no, you’re right,” he said. “I … yeah, let me
go grab one.”

Jesse wrenched himself from the sofa, then padded
into the bedroom and opened a condom packet from the dresser
drawer. When he returned, he found Jada motionless, her back curved
in a slight, delicate arch, her eyes shut, her lips parted. Jesse
resumed position overhead.

He didn’t pour her Chardonnay until an hour
later.

* * *

That night, Jesse lay awake in bed, his head propped
against the pillow, eyes wide open. This was the second night in a
row insomnia had crept in.

A glance at the clock revealed it was past three
o’clock. Moonlight skulked through the window and slashed the foot
of the bed with its oblong glow. Jada had fallen captive to slumber
hours ago; her chest now rose and fell in hypnotic fashion. Jesse
picked up a trace of the homemade facial mask slathered over her
face—mixed scents of tomato, cucumber and oatmeal—an all-natural
defiance to the natural aging process. And Jada didn’t stop with
her own remedy: She had convinced Jesse to wear suntan lotion each
night to achieve the same goal through the vitamins in the lotion.
But at the moment, it was a random ingredient in Jada’s concoction
that elicited his hunger pangs.

Jesse now admitted the obvious: A fruitless career
served as a mere corner piece of his emotional puzzle. Curled on
her side, Jada faced him as she breathed in steady rhythm as Jesse
stared down at her.

The sex was good. The sex had always been good. Jada
had accumulated a repertoire of experience by the time they met. In
sharp contrast, Jesse had had much less practice. Their
relationship had struck him as exotic, a far stretch from the type
of girl he’d dated back home. He had allowed Jada to experiment
within reason and didn’t feel compelled to argue—she paid the bulk
of the bills, after all. It was pleasurable, exciting. But to be
honest, he felt dark during their intimacy: a subtle shadow, a
nicotine stain on the edge of his heart.

So what was wrong?

Jesse paused. And then it hit him.

Affection. He missed the affection.

With Jada, that quality felt absent. And for her, it
wasn’t an issue. But Jesse had grown to desire something greater.
He craved the opportunity to love. He sought the chance to pour
himself upon another in mutual abandonment, where satisfaction
remained intact longer than a few hours.

Jesse shut his eyes.

So they enjoyed an endless spiral of sex. That didn’t
sound like a raw deal, did it? Maybe the rest was overrated.

And with his past, he didn’t deserve more anyway. His
mistakes crawled to the forefront of his memory, silent screams of
condemnation. The pressure closed in on him.

He had chosen this fate.

Forget it, Jesse.
Tuck the emotions
away.

CHAPTER 10

Jesse had never found clowns funny.

Dressed in a firecracker-red wig and green,
puff-buttoned jumpsuit, Elmer the Clown, with his plastered smile,
posed beside a pair of second graders at the birthday party. No
sooner had Jesse snapped the photo when Elmer squirted the kids
with his flower lapel, which sent them off with squeals of
delight.

As arranged at the camera shop with Glen Merseal,
Jesse roamed the public park in pursuit of spontaneous action
shots. When Glen mentioned the birthday party, Jesse had pictured
ten kids and a game of musical chairs. As it turned out, the party
was a joint effort to celebrate the birthdays of two cousins born a
week apart. A deluge of kids, what appeared to be a classroom’s
worth of them, had infested the place. Jesse hadn’t been around
this many children since his own childhood and wasn’t used to
today’s chaos. He jumped at the shriek of a girl as a boy chased
her around the monkey bars. More than once a kid raced past Jesse
on foot and almost knocked the camera out of his hand. What
madness—but he enjoyed it.

The families had reserved a pavilion, and the scent
of barbecue lured Jesse to where some adults grilled lunch on this
Saturday afternoon. Jesse got into position, and the parents waved
their cooking utensils at his camera.

Point and click.

A mother leaned over to tie her toddler daughter’s
shoe.

Point and click.

A husband and wife sneaked a kiss behind the
grill.

Point and click.

A dad embraced his children around the shoulders.

Point and click.

Life communicated a different tune from behind the
lens of a camera. With the naked eye, you see concrete reality,
actions without motives—the melody of a song. But behind the
camera, Jesse discovered that song’s tender bass line—the
undercurrent, the heartbeat of a relationship.

Whether the subject was live or inanimate, Jesse
found himself enthralled by his advantage as a photographer: He
captured life as he wished it could be.

“Are you hungry?” Glen asked as he approached. He
clapped a hand on Jesse’s back.

Jesse scanned the array of kids that scrambled around
a jungle gym. “Which one’s yours?”

“That’s the birthday girl right there, in the purple
T-shirt.” Glen pointed to a scrawny child who scuttled across the
monkey bars. Glen removed his sunglasses and tucked them into his
shirt. “I never imagined myself as a dad.”

“A wild man in your day, huh?”

With a chuckle, Glen waved his hand at the notion. “I
wouldn’t say that. No more than usual, at least. But to provide for
a family—I just couldn’t picture it.”

“You must’ve changed your mind, though.”

“It was an exciting time, all the way to the day my
oldest kid was born.” Glen paused, then snorted. “Then we brought
her home. I woke up the next morning and thought, ‘What do I do
with this little person? I don’t have a clue how to be a dad!’”

Jesse nodded.

“And sure enough, I’ve made my share of mistakes
along the way,” Glen continued. He winked at his daughter, who
sauntered toward him now. “But I wouldn’t trade fatherhood for
anything.”

Maybe fatherhood wasn’t such a stretch after
all.

Jesse lined up his camera shot and had to smile at
the scene before him, in which the girl tugged at her dad’s
shirt.

CHAPTER 11

The birthday party was supposed to last until
evening. But when relatives tired sooner than expected, the group
opted to catch a movie instead. So Jesse’s Saturday night was
available after all. Jada had looked forward to an evening of rest,
which meant she planned to vegetate in front of the television and
indulge in her guilty pleasure: an old Cary Grant film.

But it appeared she’d changed her plans.

When he returned home late that afternoon, he found
Jada in the bathroom, where she put the finishing touches on her
makeup. Draped in a slinky black dress, she looked gorgeous.

With a look of surprise, she paused with her
eyeliner. “You’re home early. I thought they’d keep you till after
dinner.”

“They got sick of each other and wrapped up their
shindig,” he replied, then tried to recall whether his memory of
her free evening was wrong. “You’re headed out?”

She nodded and returned to her eyes.

“No Cary Grant after all?”

“Huh?” She began her lipstick, a shade of smoky
maroon. After a beat, she replied, “Oh, I’m heading to the
Acoustica.”