by Paloma Meir
“All better now?” He still wasn’t looking at me.
“Yes thank you.” I picked up my book.
“I sold my house. I’m going to build a pool for you Zelda.” He stared out at the ocean. I wondered if he was ever going to look at me again. He was behaving odder than I was that day.
“That sounds nice.” I began to read.
The other’s came back. He wouldn’t let them near me without them thoroughly removing their sand, even Louisa, who didn’t take kindly to not being able to jump into my lap. It was ridiculous, and I had no idea where his passion for me enjoying my beach experience had come from. Our entire lives together and apart I hadn’t liked it. I felt a shadow of guilt for a second knowing how much he had always loved it, but I liked reading and he never sat next to me with his own book. I had never thought couples needed to have the same set of interests. Paolo had enjoyed archery, and I had never gone with him out to the field to shoot with him. Serge and I were each other’s hobby, so we had no such problems.
The other horrific side effect of beach going was the sleepiness. We put Amelie on to watch after dinner and putting Louisa to bed. I sat next to Danny on the sofa as I usually did when the four of us watched movies, which wasn’t that often and promptly fell asleep, my head accidentally on his shoulder.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Zelda fell asleep during the opening credits of her favorite movie, or should I call it the world’s most ridiculous film. Marco and I had a good quiet laugh not wanting to wake up our mercurial Zelda over the romantic planning that passed for a plot. Astrid teared up several times. Next time Marco and I would insist on something a little more general and without subtitles.
Still it was nice. My spoiled Zelda had willingly fallen asleep on my shoulder. When the movie was over Astrid made a move to wake her up so that she could go upstairs to her bedroom. I shook my head, and of course she rolled her eyes at me before going off to her room for the night.
I gently adjusted her so as not to wake her up. She slept hard as usual so it wasn’t too difficult. I put her head on my chest and wrapped her arms around me. It wasn’t real because it hadn’t been her choice but I liked it anyway. She had showered after the beach to get all the sand off of her that was ruining her life but she still smelled of the ocean.
I thought of the pool I would build for her. Marco and I would do it by ourselves. There wasn’t that much to do around the house. Zelda and Astrid called it island time. Marco was a little too into the easy lifestyle too, great as he was but he would never replace Serge to me. Much in the same way the way it was becoming apparent that I would never replace Serge to her.
The day had been a much needed breakthrough for her. I didn’t know what had happened on her run but she came back almost normal, engaged at the very least, with her weird mania for the beach. Maybe every day would be better now. She had never known how to hide her feelings. Her bottomless pit of anguish had been hard on everyone even Louisa who she tried so hard to hide it from. Nothing anyone did helped her. Her going up to her room for her afternoon cry was the worst part, hitting Astrid hardest. Who knew what when on with those two?
I was just happy that she wasn’t afraid of the beach anymore. That particular fear of hers had been the hardest for me. I wanted her to be free, so many chains on the one I loved.
I fell asleep feeling pretty good with her resting on my body and thinking about her lying on that rickety lounger on the beach, her spoiled complaining, about how I would build her a dream of a pool.
…
I don’t know what time it was when I woke up to her crawling across my body but the house was quiet enough that the sounds of the ocean pounding drifted across her living room.
She had taken off her clothes like the nudist she was at heart and kissed my ear. Her naked body rubbed across my chest and lap. I didn’t want to open my eyes, afraid that she would stop, go up to her room and who knew how she would behave the next day. It felt pretty good too. I stayed in my sleep position.
“I can’t stop thinking about your hands washing the sand off of me.”
Was she in a dream? She lifted her body up and rubbed her breasts lightly across my face. She kissed my neck, her tongue running up to my ear. She squirmed around on top of me whispering words I couldn’t hear.
“Why are you so horrible? I loved you so much.” I caught that.
She ground herself onto my hand, moving back and forth. My fingers were covered in her wetness and I suddenly understood the water jokes of her and Serge. Normally that would have put me off of her for at least a few minutes but I couldn’t get over what she was doing to me.
“You feel so good, you’re hands are so strong.” She moaned, moving back and forth, the new muscles on her legs from her running giving her more control over the movement across my knuckles.
She kissed my lips and face as if she were trying to devour me.
“Did you ever think that maybe you’re just a body bag of protrusions I like to rub myself on and put into me?” I hated being reminded of my cruelness towards her but it was pretty sexy thing to hear her say.
She leaned back moaning her work with my hand done, but she wasn’t done. She unbuttoned my shirt and kissed my chest as if she were hungry, starved for affection. She couldn’t get enough of me but I was not free to put one hand on her.
“I want to put you in my mouth. I want you in my throat.”
I had never had a stronger erection. I fought myself wanting to respond to her. She wrapped her arms around my neck murmuring how much she loved me and how dark I was, how she would never love me again, a lot of contradictions. Her lips and tongue running further down my chest. Her fingers rested on the top of my jeans pulling on the top button.
She pulled herself up from where she was headed and pressed her breasts into my chest, kissing my neck again, her hands running through my hair.
“I want you deep inside me. That’s all I want.” She got up, picked up her clothes and walked quietly up the creaky stairs to her bedroom.
Ask me on my deathbed my favorite memory from my life and I guarantee it would have been this night with Zelda.
…
The next morning at breakfast it was as if nothing had happened. She hadn’t gone back to her unendurable pain. She wasn’t quite happy either but the progress made from her run the day before remained.
Had she woken up in her bed thinking it had all been a dream after her long day at the beach? I wanted to go to her, talk to her about it. Finally be with her again as we were always meant to be. I knew I couldn’t do that. I was here for her. She had to come to me from a place of strength. I couldn’t let her not make her own decisions. It was hard being noble that day, but I did it.
It was easier to keep it together in the coming days knowing at least on some subconscious level she still thought of me as the one she loved. I chose not to focus on the other things she said. I would stick around being good to her until her bad thoughts of me faded away.
She replaced her afternoon crying for Serge session with her letter writing. Watching her write away reminded me of me not reading her letter to me, of all the pain for everybody that could have been avoided if I had only read her letter. Serge would still be my daily friend. I would have gone out to Paris. I had missed so much of their lives for fear of reading her letter. I watched her write unable to imagine how I could have ever hated her. I had lost my mind and taken down so many people with my anger.
I hired a consultant to help Marco and I build Zelda’s pool. I wanted to do it with my own hands to create something lasting for her. It wasn’t as easy as digging a hole in the ground and filling it with water. I made appointments with inspectors and read up on engineering while Zelda wrote her letters in the afternoon.
A few days after the sleep incident, she sat on her bench outside penning away but this time with frustration. She would write a page, rip it up, write a couple more, crumple them and her tears returned. I knew she was trying to writ
e a letter to Serge. Finally she threw her whole writing box to the ground and ran up to her bedroom.
Marco and I gave each other a looks of concern. Her moods were treated more with facial expressions than talk from us. I knew from him that before I had brought Serge to her and invaded her life with me, she had been calm and happy most of the time. I was her demon.
Astrid jumped up to collect the mess she had left behind. She gave me a dirty look as if I would try to pick up her letters to read them, to spy on her again. She was wrong about that. I didn’t want to know her Serge pain. I was too complicit in that whole situation. I was trying to be a better person, but I wasn’t quite there yet.
She didn’t come down for dinner and she wouldn’t accept Astrid’s tray of food. Astrid told us her room was silent. Her tearless state was good news. We worried she would go back to her sadness again.
…
She came to me later that night. I heard her feet creaking across the old wooden floors of my cottage. I lay on my bed pretending to be asleep. I didn't know what her angle was, had she become a sleepwalker unable to deal with her feelings for me when awake?
I heard her robe drop to the floor. She crawled across my bed as if she didn’t want to wake me. I laid in my fake sleep, my eyes tightly closed. She pulled the covers over, climbed in next to me and curled up against me. She knew what she was doing. My girl was fully awake.
“What part of your body should I rub myself against tonight? There are so many to choose from.”
She climbed on top of me. Was it possible that she really believed I was asleep? I wasn’t taking any chances. My eyes stayed closed, my body immobile.
“You’re wearing pajama pants. It would be too hard to get them off of you. I’ll leave your largest protrusion for another time. I didn’t know if I wanted in my mouth or inside of me anyway.” She whispered.
She climbed off of me and curled back up against me, running her hand over my erection.
“You know what I like best about it in my mouth? The tip on my tongue, It’s such a unique texture, so smooth and taut. I think I would have chosen that. Yes that’s what I would have chosen.”
She sat up beside me, took my hand and ran it across her cheek and then kissed it.
“I miss touching you all the time. How could you have hated me?” She got off my bed, put on her robe back on and walked back to the main house.
I woke up the next morning knowing that I would never in my life sleep in pajama pants again.
…
I walked down to main house for breakfast and there she was, Louisa on her lap sharing her pineapple with her. Her mood back to the low average she had recently attained. She acted as if nothing had happened the night before. She played with our daughter, drank her coffee. She got up to go for her jog. I took my chance.
“Can I go with you on your run?” I asked her even though she refused to let anyone join her in her morning jog. Maybe her words last night meant she wanted me to test her boundaries again.
“No thanks.” She ran out the door.
She did her backgammon, reading and playing with Louisa for the rest of her day before going to teach the art class. Good news on that. She loved it. She filled her car with vegetables, big containers and bolts of cotton and off she went. She came back from the classes almost happy. Real happiness wasn’t part of her life anymore. That girl could mourn lost love like nobody’s business.
She came home a little after sunset, took Louisa to her room and they played dress up for the rest of the night. No men allowed. After putting Louisa down for the night she went to bed early. I assumed from her nocturnal wanderings to my room. I also assumed she wouldn’t come visit me again for a few days if ever. I was wrong.
I could hear the carefulness with which she took her steps, but the floor creaked anyway. The sweet sound of her robe falling to the floor put me into my fake sleep position. She pulled the covers back slowly and curled up against me again.
She kissed my shoulder, running her hand across my chest. I couldn’t figure out if this was a game to her or if in her vaguely depressed state believed I was asleep. I wanted to roll over and touch her, to kiss her with the tenderness Serge always kissed her. I sensed waking up would ruin whatever was going on with us. I lay on my back and pretended to be asleep.
“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you in spite of you using me as a sex toy all those years. How could you have said that to me?”
She climbed up on top of me.
“I want to be filled up with you. I miss that so much but I’m not going to do that.” She leaned across my body and kissed my lips. “I can’t do that. I want babies. I don’t know how much of my note you read. I don’t know if you read the babies part. I don’t want any more confusion in that choice. I want it to be your choice this time.”
She climbed off of me. It took everything in me to not sit up and say I wanted babies with her, that I had read her whole letter. I didn’t know where she was going with her chatter.
“My mouth, that’s my choice tonight. I love the hardness in my mouth, my tongue running against you.”
She lowered her head down to me and did what she liked to do. This would be the second best night of my life if I were to keep a list as she was always so fond of doing. Finished she scampered back to her room in the main house.
She didn’t come back to my room again for a long while after that night.
…
I had expected our day-to-day relationship to get better after her nocturnal visits but there wasn’t a change. She remained cool to me most of the time, only really engaging when the two of us were alone with Louisa. I began to believe she truly believed I was asleep. She slept deeply and at will like no one I had ever met before, maybe she thought others did as well.
I tried to create times where the two of us could be alone, a walk to the shave ice shop or to the sushi restaurant that we all loved. She declined all my offers or insisted on bringing one of the members of our home. I wanted to be my old self with her but that part of me had hurt her so I put that idea away. No more dragging her off no matter how much she enjoyed it.
The pool was going well. Marco and I had marked off the dimensions and rented a mini bulldozer and had begun to dig having gotten the clearance from the inspectors, not an easy thing to do on this sleepy island. Louisa sat on my lap as we drove the bulldozer around pulling the levers and bringing up the dirt.
…
Finally her footsteps again. The robe dropped to the floor. I relaxed my body into my sleep position and waited for her. She climbed across the bed and got under the covers with me. I would “wake up” before she left this time. It was time to talk to her no matter what the outcome.
She curled up against me, her hand on my chest, and that was it. She was quiet.
“I can’t stop thinking about him. He’s on my mind all the time. Six weeks. That’s it. Out of my life I only spent six weeks with him.” Silence again. This would be a different night than the others.
“He’s been gone much longer now than I was ever with him.” She sighed and took another long pause, “Did you know he let me take him shopping once? At Barney’s? That’s how much he cared for me. He let me do that for him.” She moved closer to me.
She was right about that.
“He would call me rich girl sometimes. I thought it was a cute nickname. You know how he liked to make fun of me sometimes. Who knew that would be the end of us?”
I had an idea of what she meant but not completely.
“There are so many things I wish I could tell you about all the things we did, and all the things he said, but I can’t, it hurts to talk about.” She took a deep breath, “I’ll never forget his eyes the first time he kissed me. It was so silly and unexpected, but his eyes looked like they had been waiting his whole life to do that. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but I see it now. He was so honorable and truly good.”
If it helped her I would listen, but I didn’t enjoy
her words at all.
“Every day that I waited for you to stop hating me... He would take me out. We would go to the silliest places and eat the strangest food. He took me around as if I were a new to the city, all the parks and ethnic shopping districts. We would drive up to Mulholland and he would kiss me for hours. I miss him so much all the time.”
Poor Serge couldn’t afford to take her anywhere else, like she ever cared about that kind of thing on any real level. Spoiled as she was, it was all fluff and fun for her. He took it seriously. Fucking Serge. At this point she would live happily ever after with him in a trailer park.
“Of course you were always on my mind. You always stay with me, even when Serge and I were alone here for the five most perfect days of my life. You were in the back of my mind. Why is that?”
She sat up.
“Danny why don’t you ever talk to me when I come to visit you? Why do you pretend to be asleep?”
