God-Shaped Hole

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

  I spun my chair around and watched the small crowd dance. When the DJ took a break, everyone swarmed the bar for refills.

  A guy in crisp blue jeans and a bomber jacket stepped between me and Jacob, and ordered a rum and coke.

  “Omar?” I said.

  The guy did a double-take. Jacob looked over to see who I was talking to.

  “Beatrice?” Omar said. “Are you kidding me? What are you doing here?”

  I stood up and he threw his arms around me.

  Omar’s girlfriend, Valerie, and I were roommates our last year of college. We stayed friends for a while after graduation, until he and Valerie moved up to the Bay Area and I lost touch with them. Omar was a dark, lanky theater actor with a dusty presence. I always had a crush on him.

  “You look great,” he said. “How are you?” He kept his arm around me.

  “Good,” I said. I introduced him to Jacob and the arm came down.

  Omar gave Jacob a quick overview of our past, explaining how long it had been since we’d seen each other. Jacob vacantly acknowledged Omar and never really tuned in to the conversation.

  “He had a bad day,” I said.

  There were no empty seats at the bar. Omar had to stand close in front of me as we talked. I saw Jacob watching him in the mirror, as if there were some imaginary line in the floor Omar had mistakenly crossed. Jacob was being unusually rude but, like I said, he’d had a bad day; I wasn’t going to hold it against him.

  Omar told me he was working with a theater company up the street and was considering moving to New York. I asked him about Valerie. They’d broken up a few years ago, he said. She was married now and lived in Boise.

  “You know, I still have that ring you made me,” he said.

  Back when Omar and Valerie thought they were going to live happily ever after, they had me make them a set of rings. It was my final project in metalsmithing; I got all the materials for free.

  Omar wanted to know what Kat was up to. As I filled him in, the DJ started spinning again.

  “You guys want to dance?” Omar said. “Come on Beatrice, I know how much you like to dance.”

  “How much does she like to dance?” Jacob mumbled.

  Jacob and I had never gone dancing. It was hard in L.A. The older I got, the less tolerant I became of establishments with bouncers at the door and C-grade celebrities as the main attractions inside.

  I invited Jacob to join me but he said no. He told me to go with Omar. His eyes were getting glassy, and I asked him one last time if he wanted to leave.

  “No. Have a good time. I’m fine.”

  “Just for a few minutes,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I followed Omar to the middle of the crowd. After the first song ended, I said I’d had enough. He pleaded with me.

  “One more,” Omar said. “Come on, I haven’t seen you in years.”

  The next song was slow. Omar wrapped his arms around me and started whispering in my ear. His neck smelled like a citrus tree.

  “You know, I never told you this before,” Omar said, “but I really had a thing for you back when you lived with Valerie. Did you know that?”

  “No,” I said, which was a lie. Of course I knew, I just never acknowledged it. I felt the same way and didn’t want to get into trouble. Believe it or not, I have boundaries. Valerie was my friend.

  “It started when we all went up to Tahoe together,” he said. “I was driving and you were sitting right behind me. Everyone else was asleep and you gave me a shoulder massage. Do you remember that?”

  “I remember that you had to throw your jacket over your lap so I wouldn’t see the bulge in your pants.”

  Omar laughed. “You haven’t changed at all, Beatrice.” Little did he know. He kept pulling me closer. Too close, I thought, but I didn’t pull away. “What’s the deal with you and that guy?” he said.

  Omar slid his palm down the curve of my lower back. He was a centimeter away from having my ass in his hand. I realized what was going on and I stepped back. I hadn’t been that close to another man since I met Jacob, and the truth is, I would have had to use a calculator to count how many times, over the course of the year I lived with Valerie, that I’d thought about what Omar’s dick looked like, or what kind of cereal he’d offer me for breakfast if I ever spent the night with him. I used to walk around the apartment wearing black lace bras under thin white T-shirts, just to give him a glimpse of what he was missing. And oddly enough, if it had been any other time prior to meeting Jacob, I probably would have taken Omar home, fucked his brains out, then ended up dating him for a year or so before he would have realized what a head case I was and dumped me.

  I turned around to check on Jacob and didn’t see him above all the people. I walked back to where I’d left him. He was gone.

  I asked Omar to look for Jacob in the men’s room. When he came back to report the search futile, I darted out to the car. Omar followed. Before I got in, he tried to kiss me. After a brief hesitation, I pushed him away.

  “Keep in touch, okay?” he said.

  Compared to Jacob, Omar’s okay sounded like a violin getting run over by a lawnmower.

  I sped back to the hotel in a panic. I felt like a heel. Jacob needed me and I’d let him down. I’d gone off and danced and flirted while he wallowed in misery and as a result, he was wandering. Margaret said he wasn’t supposed to wander.

  I took the elevator up to our floor and ran down the hallway. As soon as I got to the door, I realized Jacob couldn’t be there—he didn’t have the key. And he rarely carried identification. I’m not even sure he had identification. I knew he had a credit card and an ATM card, but I’d never seen his driver’s licence. In the inebriated state I knew he was in, I highly doubted the hotel would have kindly unlocked the door for him on his word alone.

  Our room was pitch dark. I turned on the lights, sat down on the bed, and contemplated what to do. I considered going out to look for Jacob, but I wanted to be there when he got back. I stayed up as long as I could by writing in my diary. I don’t know how long it was after that, I was awakened by the sound of my name being called. At first I thought it was someone at the door. Once I sat up, I realized it was coming from outside the window. I pushed the curtains aside and looked down into the hotel courtyard.

  Jacob was in the pool. He was shirtless, but still in his jeans and boots. I saw his jacket and his T-shirt bunched up on a lounge chair near the shallow end. I remember wondering why he’d bothered to take off his shirt but not his boots. He had a few other shirts to wear, but he’d only brought that one pair of shoes. They were going to be wet for the rest of the trip.

  “Trixie! There you are. I’ve been waiting for you, Trixie!”

  He looked so small from where I was. “Shhh!” I said. “People are sleeping.” It was two o’clock in the morning.

  “Why won’t you swim with me, Trixie?” he said. “Why won’t you ever swim with me?”

  By the time I made it downstairs, the concierge on duty, a dapper lad named Simon, had somehow managed to get Jacob out of the water. Jacob was sitting on the edge of a hot tub—it was right next to the pool—dangling his boots in the warm current. His teeth were chattering.

  “Get away from there,” I said, and yanked him to his feet.

  Simon gave me a weak smile and handed Jacob a towel. I’d never seen a man with posture more perfect than Simon’s. His spine must have been shaped like a ruler. He was completely vertical.

  I pushed Jacob in the direction of our room.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” I said to Simon. “He thinks he’s Keith Moon.” I was trying to be funny, but Simon’s blank face told me he had no idea who I was talking about.

  Jacob was still shivering when we got upstairs. I turned the shower on hot and told him to get in. When I tried to help him undress, he shoved me aside and slammed
the bathroom door in my face.

  He came out a few minutes later wearing a pair of shorts. He just fell into bed. I tried to curl up next to him but he turned his back to me. When I touched my feet to his, he jerked them away.

  “Jacob…”

  “Don’t talk to me, Beatrice. You’re the last person I want to fucking talk to right now, okay?”

  Fifteen minutes earlier he’d wanted to swim with me. It took a quick shower to make us mortal enemies.

  I had the dream again that night. The one where Jacob got caught in the whirlpool. Only this time I saw him get pulled under. He had that same weird look on his face, where he was smiling, but his eyes were filled with panic. I bolted upright in bed and purposely made a lot of noise around the room. I like to live by the rule that if I’m not sleeping, nobody’s sleeping. Especially if it’s the person indirectly responsible for keeping me awake. I turned on the TV, then I ordered a large pot of coffee and a basket of pastries from room service. After it arrived, I filled two cups, one for Jacob and one for myself. I didn’t usually drink coffee in the morning, but the Ritz served what Jacob called “the good shit.” It was creamy and sweet, and I sopped it up with a croissant, imagining that’s what Anais did at breakfast while she was in Paris screwing Henry Miller.

  Jacob drank his coffee in silence. He looked like he’d been hit by a truck. After he checked his watch—twice, to make sure he was seeing it right—he rubbed his eyes and said, “Why, pray tell, did you wake me up at such a ridiculous hour?”

  It was a little after six.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said.

  The TV was tuned to The Weather Channel. There was a huge storm over North Carolina, and a high pressure system in the northeast.

  “Did you have fun last night?” Jacob said, running his hands through his ransacked hair.

  “Oh yeah, I had a ball. You?”

  “Fuck you, Trixie. I went to Tosca last night.”

  “You did? Why?”

  “Why do you think? I thought maybe I’d run into him. I figured we’d get along better if I leveled the playing field a little, you know, if I was drunk out of my mind.”

  “Well, you definitely accomplished that goal.”

  He gave me a look that said he’d just about had it with me.

  The anchorwoman in the tweed pantsuit and the perfectly coiffed up-do said there was a chance of thunderstorms in the southeast. I-85 between Greensboro and Atlanta could be dangerous. A flood warning had been issued.

  “Jacob, I was worried about you.”

  “Oh, really? You could’ve fooled me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You were too busy hanging all over that Oh-mar guy to be worried.”

  “I wasn’t hanging all over him.”

  “Beatrice, you could’ve picked your feet up off the ground and not fallen down. That’s how all-fucking-over-him you were.” Jacob slammed his spoon onto the table. It crashed into the porcelain cream pitcher and made a horrible clanging noise. He got up and stood by the window.

  The weather lady said it was partly sunny and unseasonably humid in the western half of Mississippi. I wondered if Jacob heard that—if he was thinking what I was—perfect weather for sweaty sex in the middle of the night.

  “Did you fuck him, Trixie?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Come on, be serious. He’s just an old friend.”

  “A pretty good friend, I imagine. When I left he practically had his hands down your pants and his tongue in your ear. Not that you seemed to mind.”

  “I didn’t fuck him.”

  “Not last night, I mean ever.”

  “No.”

  “Did you want to?”

  I thought about my answer before I gave it.

  “No,” I said. “A long time ago I did, but not now. Not last night.” I got up and stood next to him. I pushed his bangs off his face. “I’m sorry. I should have never left you last night.”

  He wouldn’t let me kiss him.

  Prissy-pants on TV said, “Stay tuned for your local forecast,” as if it were the prize we’d been waiting for all hour.

  “I feel like shit,” Jacob said. “I need some aspirin or something.” He reached for his jeans and grimaced. “Why the fuck are my pants wet?”

  “You don’t remember being in the pool last night?”

  “I was in the pool last night?” He hesitated, trying to recall the hour he was missing. “Damn.” He shook his head and cracked a tiny smile.

  I took the jeans from him, let them drop to the floor, and got back in bed. “It’s too early to put pants on. Come here,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Please…”

  “Don’t think this means I’m not still pissed at you,” he said when he finally gave in. I pulled the covers up over our heads, to pretend it was still dark, and got as close to him as I possibly could. I apologized a few more times. Then I told him about the rest of the night, everything from Omar trying to kiss me to Simon’s posture. I even confessed to the face-off with Margaret, and the reoccurrence of the whirlpool dream. I made him promise me he’d never wander into another hot tub.

  “You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?” he said.

  “No. But just in case.”

  He crossed his heart and swore over his mother. No more hot tubs.

  “Speaking of impending doom,” he said. “I saw him at the bar last night. I saw my father.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing, really. We drank half a dozen Irish coffees and talked about books. That’s it. We just sat at the bar, shooting the shit on books. I think he was jealous when I told him I used to gamble with Bukowski.” Jacob seemed pleased that he’d impressed the man.

  “So, that’s something, right? At least it was civil.”

  “I suppose. It’s just that…” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t feel like I was sitting with my father. Not what I thought it would feel like anyway.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know,” he said mournfully. “An apology would have been really nice.”

  He toyed with the buttons on my shirt—his shirt, actually—that I’d worn to bed. “And you know what else? I always thought if I ever met him, that we’d have some kind of a bond, that I’d feel a connection to him. I didn’t. We were like two strangers who happened to be sitting next to each other.”

  “A connection takes time. At least you have a memory of him now.”

  “Cold comfort,” he said. “Don’t have a father, just imagine that you do.”

  “It’s the first step,” I said. “You never know.”

  Jacob nodded, like he craved that to be the truth, but frankly, I highly doubted Thomas Doorley would ever come around.

  The local forecast told us to expect another cold, windy morning filled with lots of sun.

  “Hey,” Jacob said, “no more talk about asshole fathers for the rest of the day, okay?” He unbuttoned my shirt and reached for the handcuffs on the bedside table. “Happy Birthday…”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was during what they called the rainy season when Jacob finally finished Hallelujah. The year’s rainy season in Los Angeles was, of course, one particular week of spring when all the thirsty plants turned green for a few days, all the houses near the water braced for floods, all the hillside highways closed due to rock slides, and all the native Californians drove their cars like blind men.

  Jacob and I had officially been together a little over a year and the book was, at last, complete. I remember when Jacob and I met, he said then that he was almost finished with it. Almost finished must mean a year to go on the internal clock of a writer.

  One might accuse me of bias, as I automatically categorize anyone whose semen tastes l
ike lemon meringue pie as extraordinary, but sex aside, I was wholly impressed. Of course, I knew Jacob was talented. I’d read the articles he wrote, the short stories, but he never let me near the book until it was done so I had no idea what to expect. It was funny, that was the first big surprise; although it shouldn’t have been because Jacob was funny—not nearly as funny as he thought he was sometimes—still, his wit translated well onto the page.

  Thematically, however, Hallelujah was a bleak, solemn story, probably even more so for me. I likened it to a kind of autobiography of spirit for Jacob. The circumstances and the characters were completely made up, but the truth was there in the emotional undercurrent. It was like getting a little glimpse into the darkest corner of Jacob’s soul, into some parallel universe where his name was Jackson Grayson, and he was a seventeen-year-old trumpet player living in a tenement building in Hollywood, with a mother who wanted to be a Vaudeville singer; an alcoholic father who wanted to be a Brooklyn Dodger; and a neighbor he was in love with who faked her Southern accent and went by the name of Scarlett O’Hara, even though her mail came addressed to someone named Eleanora Schwartz. Meanwhile, there was a drought going on, and all Jackson wanted in the world was to see it rain.

  It was a story about people with dreams. Dreams that never come true.

  Jacob pretended he was watching television all weekend long while I read in the bedroom. Whenever he heard me chuckle at something, he came in to see what page I was on.

  “You really think that’s funny?” he’d say.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Halfway through the book I had to lock him out so I could read in peace.

  To me, Hallelujah was more than just a novel, it was the catalyst for our future. Jacob and I were explorers and the book was the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, all rolled into one, and it was going to carry us to the new world. As I read, I allowed myself to daydream about what our life was going to be like: would we have the kind of summer storms where warm mist rises off the pavement, and the thunder and lightening make you think the earth is going to crack in two? Will cotton grow wild in our backyard? Will we have fireflies? How about a peach tree? Jacob loved peaches.