“Oh. You mean …?”
She reaches out to touch my shoulder, but I jump back and do a fancy turn, which nearly knocks me over. I end up facing the wall like a punished student. I decide to stay that way—forever. My life is over. Done. I bang my forehead, slowly, very slowly—one, two, three, four times—against the concrete.
“Don’t,” Angela says, slipping her hand between my head and the wall. “Don’t. Listen. One day you’ll meet someone, and she’ll be crazy in love with you. And you’ll just know. It’ll be obvious.”
“Way obvi,” I grumble toward the concrete wall.
“Esssaaactly! And not just to you, but to everyone. You won’t even have to ask.”
We stay that way for several minutes, her cool hand between my forehead and the wall. Neither of us says a word. It’s as though we’re both making an adjustment that can’t be talked about or figured out—only lived.
“I’m no good for you, Dylan. Maybe if I was Marta and you were Alex, I mean, if we were our true selves, we’d be a good fit, but … as we are? I don’t know. We’ll still be friends, though, right?” She makes this last statement sound more like a question.
“Sure,” I reply. “We’ll be friends.”
As we reenter Marie’s room, Crispy can tell that something just happened. But there isn’t an opportunity for him to grill me, so he lets it go.
Des comes waltzing out of the bathroom wearing a dark blue satin number with a giant flower stuck to her waist. Everyone takes a quick intake of breath and then lets out the appropriate oohs and aahs. She looks like someone who can win a contest, someone worth rooting for. Ora swoons and clasps her hands to her breasts. Crispy gives an all-out wolf whistle. Tears gather in Marie’s eyes, and then one by one they begin to drop onto the front of her housedress.
“I wore that dress the night I met Frank Sinatra,” she says as she swipes a tissue from the box beside her and dabs at her eyes. Ora goes to stand beside Marie, ready to catch her and pull her back up if she begins to fall down into a memory hole. “He grabbed me by the waist, Frank did, and pulled me to him. He smelled of smoke and strong cologne. I thought he was gonna carry me off and marry me that night. I guess my whole life woulda been different, huh?”
Des sits on the edge of the bed and takes Marie’s hand. She alights like an African fairy princess who has just come to enchant Marie and grant her one last moment of remembering. It’s a touching sight, and we all stand back and let it happen.
“Did you want to marry Frank Sinatra?” Des asks.
“Nah,” Marie replies as she smoothes the satin of the dress that now rightfully belongs to Des. “The guy could sing, but he was a bum.” Then she takes Des’s hand and pulls her toward her chair. “But you,” she says with a big smile, “you, I would marry this minute if I had half a chance.”
Then we all sit around while Marie tells Desirée stories of her past—the night Granddad swept her off her dancing feet, the time a girl taught her how to do a quick step ball change, the night she saved Tony Bennett from choking on a chicken bone. Somehow she has tapped into the stream, and the stories are pouring out of her. It’s as though she’s determined to pass the stories to Des, along with the dress.
Gravity
A person can never be 100 percent certain about anything in this world—that’s the one thing about which I’m entirely certain. I once thought that gravity was going to be it. Every single one of us, whether we happen to be a hot-dog vendor or a semiprofessional videographer, whether we agree to it or not, is subject to the same law, is controlled by the same unseen force that keeps us tethered to this planet and prevents us from floating up and off into outer space: gravity. But it turns out that there’s a lot they don’t understand about gravity. For example, scientists can’t really explain gravity. They know how it works, but not what it is or where it comes from. Go figure.
“They know a lot,” Mr. Blyer, my sophomore-year natural studies instructor, explained to the class. “But some things remain beyond the horizon of our current knowing.”
Nice.
I’m convinced he told us this in order to prove that science is an exciting new frontier worthy of our attention, but it only proves to me that I am right in assuming that nothing is for sure.
Consider Pluto.
At the moment, the only thing I’m absolutely certain of is how I feel about Angela. Even though my confidence has taken an impressive and unexpected nosedive, my affection is still there.
It’s not even eleven o’clock, and the thermometer is topping one hundred. The sun is blazing hot and all the green leafy things are seriously drooping. Crispy and Desirée are present and accounted for, but Angela is MIA. Calls have been made. Angela hasn’t been picking up. Something’s going on, and I’m sure I blew it by asking her if she liked me.
“She’ll show up,” Desirée assures us as she scans the crowd. “Angela’s not going to miss my videotaping. Not after all the prep we’ve done. I’ll kill her if she doesn’t show.”
“And what about your dad?” asks Crispy, also craning his neck to get a perspective on the crowd.
“Oh, he’ll be here,” I say, giving the crowd a once-over. “He promised me. And Doug’s pretty good about not breaking promises: that’s why he doesn’t promise me much. I’m going to text Angela one more time.”
As I scroll through my addresses, Crispy and Des exchange a look. By this time, I’ve learned to read their signals. I’m thinking that they have a secret.
“What?” I ask them point-blank.
“Come on,” Crispy says as he stands up. “You might as well know.”
He tells Des that we’ll be back in a bit and to call when Doug shows up. Then he motions to me, and the two of us head off in the direction of a nearby field that’s been turned into a parking lot. When we turn the corner and come into a clearing, we stop and stare at the long lineup of Acuras and Hondas and Toyotas and Saturns; they all sit there in the noonday sun looking like the dead and empty shells of some extinct species of giant beetle.
Crispy lifts his sunglasses and nods in the direction of a pickup truck, midnight blue, banged-up, with its back gate hanging open. A girl sits there, swigging from a water bottle and dangling her long bare legs. I guess you could say that I acknowledge the boy and girl before I see them, which is to say that my eyes take them in and register the fact of them without actually seeing what is going on. They have no story attached to them; they’re just two people hanging out together in a field, à la carte. The guy is leaning up against the gate, trying to grab the water bottle away from the girl. But the minute I hear her laugh, my brain allows the story to unfold; in this new story Angela has a boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s name is Chad.
“But that … that’s …,” I sputter.
“Yeah, Chad,” Crispy replies, even though my eyeballs have provided all the confirmation I need. “The dumb guy you caddy with. He and Angela. Need I say more?”
I’m thinking that it would be better if I just looked away. But I can’t seem to move my head, so in a lame attempt to draw a veil and eliminate the whole tragic scenario, I opt to close my eyes. When I open them again, I discover that Angela and Chad are still there, but now they’re kissing. The kiss goes on and on until it’s official: nothing can undo it now. When they finally come up for air, she laughs; he throws his whole body against her, pulls her close, and nuzzles her neck.
“How long?” are the words I manage to eek out.
“Almost a week,” Crispy replies. “We didn’t know how to tell you.”
Just then Angela looks up, and she sees Crispy and me standing at the edge of the lot. We must look like old news, her personal Pluto. Chad is what’s happening; he is now, all get-up-and-go, the current center of her solar system. I turn and begin to walk away.
“Dude!” Crispy calls after me. “Wait up!”
I slow just enough so that he can catch up to me, and when we’ve cleared the side of the building, I stop to yell at him: “You could�
��ve told me! You, of all people! You knew! You knew and didn’t bother to tell me. How could you have not told me?”
“Whoa,” is all he offers. But then after a beat, he adds, “I tried.”
The first punch doesn’t land, but I don’t let that stop me. I just keep swinging at him until eventually I feel my fist bang hard against his head. The hurt is sharp and immediate, and my knuckles sting. I instinctively grab my fist and pull it to my lips to suck the wound. Crispy takes the opportunity to punch me hard in the gut; the air goes flying out of me and I stagger backward. I catch my balance just in time to swallow a terrible urge to wretch. Then I go charging back at him. He doesn’t look frightened enough, so I start screaming at the top of my lungs—a banshee’s cry, loud and clear and fierce. Crispy isn’t much bigger than me, and yet he is barely rocked when I slam into him. We tussle for a minute, our arms and legs grappling for advantage, and then he throws me to the ground with one deft move. He’s on top of me, has both my arms pinned to the ground, and he’s yelling—telling me over and over, to quit it, to chill out, to shut up before he’s forced to really haul off and hurt me.
When I manage to quiet down and stop struggling, Crispy rolls off me. He’s lying beside me in the grass, panting.
“Ma-an,” he finally says, and I can tell by the way he exaggerates the word that he’s having trouble wrapping his brain around what just happened. I’m right with him on that score.
“I’m an idiot,” I say to him, though I direct my comment up toward the sky.
“Yeah, well … me, too.”
“What am I gonna do?”
“What we all do,” he says. “Go on.”
“Right,” I reply. “But how?”
The question hangs in the air between us. Neither of us has the answer.
“Beauty pageants,” I say, because that’s what seems to be in my immediate future. I notice that I sound pretty disgusted with it as a possibility. “I mean, we don’t even care about crap like that, do we?”
“No,” he replies. “But then again, it’s not about the pageant, is it? And it’s not about Des. For you and me, it’s all about Angela.”
He rolls over onto his stomach and stares at me. I don’t know what he’s hoping to see, but whatever it is, I’m determined not to show it. He’s already seen too much for one day.
“What?” I ask him.
“Don’t you get it?” he asks. “How do you think I knew to warn you? Me and Angela, dude. I saw her when we were both in Stone Mountain, Georgia. But she wouldn’t give me the time of day. She was too busy with this other guy. Then we got here, and for a couple of days I was her ‘it’ guy. But she dropped me when she met you. Now she’s dropped you for Chad. Just like she’s going to drop Chad for some other guy. Anyway, I tried to warn you.”
“You did,” I say as I turn over onto my stomach.
“And on top of everything else, she stole my wallet.” He gingerly touches the bruise on his face and winces. “Geez, that hurt. I never shoulda told you.”
“What do you mean, she stole your wallet? For real?”
“For real. Oh, she gave it back to me—eventually. But it was missing the fifty bucks that I had in it. At least I got my fake ID and my Social Security card back.”
“Are you saying she stole your money?”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’m leaving in a couple of days,” Crispy announces without any fanfare and no intro at all. “So that’s that.”
“No!” I cry. “What about the pageant?”
He laughs out loud and says, “Gotta go, man. School’s starting next week. And let’s face it, we’re done here.”
“That’s just cold.”
“And my mom’s had it. She says this whole thing’s turned into a kind of circus, and she’s not interested anymore. Says the Virgin Mary experience has been diluted.”
Crispy gets himself up and onto his feet, brushes stuff off his pants, and checks his phone for a text. “Come on,” he says. “Angela just showed up at mission control. Let’s get this over with.”
“Whoa,” Doug says, when we saunter onto the scene. “What the hell happened? You guys all right?”
“We’re fine,” Crispy replies, turning away from Angela so she can’t get a good look at the damage on his right cheek. “We both fell from a great height. But no one was hurt. Not seriously.”
Satisfied that Crispy and I are both relatively unharmed and are still talking to each other, Doug jumps up and announces that we need to get cracking if we want to do this video. Everybody immediately gets to work. Doug walks Desirée toward a milk crate that he’s set up for her under a large shade tree. Crispy mans the camera, fiddles with the focus, and pretends to be a professional cinematographer. Angela fluffs Desirée’s hair, touches up her makeup, assures everyone that this is going to be great, really great, and somehow manages to totally ignore me.
I imagine that there will be plenty of hot, humid Florida afternoons before I’m able to figure this all out. September will arrive; Crispy and Des and Angela will all leave Jupiter. My life will go on; things will happen. I might even forget that I was once in love with a girl named Angela who cared for me hardly at all.
“You just gonna stand there like an idiot?” Doug asks me. “Here. Clip this microphone to Desirée’s blouse.”
I do as I’m told, robotically going through the motions of clipping the mic to one of Des’s buttonholes. I know the drill. As usual, I’m in close when Doug gives his last-minute instruction.
“Just remember, kid, this isn’t a contest about who’s prettier or smarter or better dressed. This is about whose got the biggest heart. Just let it shine.”
We step back out of frame. Doug yells, “Roll ’em.” Desirée shoots us all a beauty-queen smile, and then she does as she’s told—she shines.
When I open my eyes, Doug is looming over my bed; he’s shaking my shoulders, telling me that I’d better get myself dressed and come downstairs, because Mrs. Ramirez is in our living room and she’s in a terrible state.
I try to remember if we have a neighbor by the name of Ramirez. Then I remember. Mrs. Ramirez—Angela’s mother!
“What time is it?” I mumble.
“It’s the middle of the night,” he says. “Or, if you prefer, the morning.”
When I come down the stairs, Mrs. Ramirez is sitting on the edge of the sofa. She’s wearing a green hoodie and sniffling into a ragged bit of tissue. Her eyes are puffy, and her nose is red from crying.
“Careful,” Doug warns her as he hands her a cup of coffee that he’s just made fresh. “It’s hot.”
“My name’s Dolores,” says Mrs. Ramirez, taking the cup with one hand and flattening her messed-up bangs with the other. “What is yours?”
“Doug.”
“Bless you, Doug,” she says, and then blows a few cooling breaths over the rim of her cup before continuing. “I don’t know anywhere else to go. I’m sorry it is so late. I hope I didn’t wake your wife.”
Doug closes his eyes and gives his head a little shake.
“It’s fine,” he says.
“It’s terrible,” Mrs. Ramirez remarks. “The coffee, I mean. But still it is so nice of you. Bless you.”
“What’s going on?” I finally ask. “Is Angela all right?”
Startled, Mrs. Ramirez looks up from her coffee. She blinks at me and then begins to sob again. Doug takes the coffee cup away from her so that she doesn’t spill it on the carpet. He stands with a cup of hot coffee in either hand and shoots me a look as though I’m the one who’s making Mrs. Ramirez cry.
“She disappeared,” Doug explains to me, which isn’t much of an explanation, but it’s a start.
“Do you know where she could be?”
“Me?” squeaks my voice. I sound, even to myself, like a guilty party who knows more than he’s saying.
Doug turns his attention back to Mrs. Ramirez. He sits beside her and tells her that everything’s going to be okay; they will find Angela. He suggests going to
the police and filling out a missing-persons report. But at the mention of the word police, Mrs. Ramirez sits up and begins madly wiping away her tears with both hands.
“No, no, no!” she says emphatically. “Not the police. You don’t understand. You cannot call the police. That would be very bad for us.”
She tells us that Angela’s father is not a good man and that she escaped from Tucson with Angela in order to keep her safe. Although Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez are now separated, he’s been making her life a living hell, and he won’t stop until he has full control of Angela.
“And this can never happen,” she assures us. “Never. Angela belongs with me.”
Doug nods and gives her a smile of grim determination to prove he knows what’s going on, but I can tell he’s as lost as I am. He doesn’t know what to do in order to find Angela or how to get this woman out of our living room.
Mrs. Ramirez leans toward me, touches my knee, and says, “You really don’t know where Angela is? You were such good friends. She talked of you all the time. You must have some idea. She must have said something.”
Doug jumps in with a few questions of his own—all of them directed toward Dolores. How long has Angela been missing? Why would she leave town? Did she leave a note? Is she on her own?
Mrs. Ramirez doesn’t have a clue where Angela might be. That’s why she’s come to our house. Her worst fear is that Mr. Ramirez has kidnapped the girl and taken her back to Tucson. “It’s not like my daughter not to call me. No. Something is wrong.”
“Did you have a fight?” Doug asks as kindly as he can. “Has she been acting strange? Maybe in the past day or so? Something out of the ordinary?”
“No,” Mrs. Ramirez replies. “No, nothing strange. We never fight.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you and Angela came to be in Jupiter,” Doug suggests. And though he’s sitting there all calm and concerned looking, I just know that he’s wishing that he had his camera handy. He’d give anything to be filming Mrs. Ramirez as she wipes her nose and begins her story.
Virgin Territory Page 13
