by Tatiana Vila
He smiled softly. “It is. And there's not enough, I don't know, warmth to fill the bigness,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest while leaning against the back of the couch.
I looked at the vast space spreading between us. “You don't…I mean, don't you get along with your dad or his girlfriend?”
He looked down between his feet, as if wanting to avoid my eyes. “Dad travels a lot, and whenever he's around he spends his time in his room with Cheryl. I barely see him,” he said with a humorless laugh. “Cheryl, on the other side, loves shopping and spending money. My sole interaction with her reduces itself to thank-yous when she buys me stuff.” He pointed to those battered, fancy boots of his, “And to 'I haven't seen it' whenever she loses her cell phone—which is eighty percent of the time. Her head is definitely somewhere else,” he added, muttering to himself.
I frowned. “But if she buys you stuff…she can't be that bad.”
“Yeah, I bet that's how it looks like from the other side of the field,” he said with a shake of his head. “I don't want to sound like a mushy character from a sappy drama movie but,” he walked up to the bed and sat down several inches away from me, enough for both of us to feel comfortable, “Sometimes a physical sign of affection is better than material stuff, better than gifts.”
I pulled up my legs and crossed them in front of me. Looking at his disheartened profile, I said, “And you have too much material stuff already.” Not exactly what I'd planned to say but meaningful nonetheless.
The corners of his mouth twitched, drawing a soft smile on his lips. He shifted his legs on the bed and turned to look at me. “I know. That's why I like your grandma so much. She always has her arms wide open for anyone. She makes you feel good, like you're at home.” He pondered, lost in his thoughts while looking at his hands.
I remembered the look on his face after Gran had kissed him on the cheek after thanking him for taking care of me. I'd been right back then. His life lacked warmth, and his father's marriage with Cheryl hadn't brought him any happiness.
Ian plucked himself out from the wagon his mind had boarded and stared at me. “See?” he said, shrugging his shoulder, “That's why I like to hang around your grandma's house so much. It's cozy and welcoming.”
I nodded. “I love the Lady.”
“The Lady?”
I nodded once more, not getting the reason behind his confusion. And then, “Oh,” I realized. Of course, he didn't know who the Lady was. “Gran's house. I call Gran's house the Lady—because of its fairytale looks. I don't know…it makes me think of a lady with all the flowers around and all.”
He narrowed his green eyes in thought. “I guess you're right. Now that you're mentioning it…she does look like one. Funny.”
“Yeah,” I said, picturing the Lady with her fish-scale pattern and guardian-like trees next to her. “What about Lola?” I suddenly remembered. “How long has she been here?”
A grin tugged at his lips. “For as long as I can remember. She's been the only constant thing in my life. I don't know what I would do without her.”
“She's awesome.” I smiled.
“She certainly is,” he said and chuckled, as if a memory had flapped its wings in his mind. “You know, you left a hell of a good impression on her with that vegetarian cooking talk. She likes you a lot.”
“Well, I like her a lot, too. I really meant the thing I told her about giving her some recipes.”
“She'll be ecstatic if you do it. I've never seen anyone who likes cooking as much as she does—and anyone who cooks better than she does.”
“That's because you haven't tasted my lip-smacking vegetarian dishes.” The joke blurted out of my mouth before I had time to stop it.
“Yeah?” Ian stared at me with new intensity.
I averted my gaze from his deep eyes and looked at the far-flung nightstand on the other side of the bed. “I mean, I might not like to cook as much as Lola, but I can defend myself in a kitchen pretty well.”
“Do you cook in those toe socks, too? Because it might be worth watching,” he said with his voice full of laughter.
I turned around, confused at the swerve of the conversation, and locked my eyes with his.
“Your toe socks?” he explained, glancing at my feet for the glimpse of a second.
I looked down and found the rainbow striped socks that swallowed my feet. A rush of awkwardness warmed my face. Great, I looked like the modern, ghetto version of Rainbow Brite. Why did Ian keep embarrassing me in my sleeping clothes? Well, not mine exactly this time, but I was the one wearing them.
“Hey, I like them. They’re definitely eye-catching. Not to mention cheery.” He smiled. “I bet a leprechaun is already on his way with a pot of gold.”
I held back a smile.
“Just please, tell him not to go to the couch. I may have a heart attack if he does. They're way too creepy.”
“Creepy?”
“Have you seen Leprechaun, the movie? That's more like it.”
“I was thinking more about Lucky, as in Lucky Charms, the cereal.”
“The real ones are treacherous and have razor-sharp teeth, Dafne. There's nothing sweet about those creatures.”
I cracked a laugh, unable to bear the contained laughter in my throat anymore. “Of all possible scary things, leprechauns are the ones that fright you? I can't believe it.”
“They eat human flesh, not Brussels sprouts,” he said and leaned forward. “To me, that's enough to scare the hell out of me.”
I bent forward, closing the distance between us. “What about sharks or lions? You know…real stuff.” I ended in a whisper.
“Who says leprechauns aren't real?” He leaned a bit closer.
I pulled up my eyebrow in a you-can't-be-serious way.
“Don't disregard things that sound fictitious just because you haven't actually seen them with your own eyes.”
I drew my face a few inches away from his, my body on a forty-five degree angle in bed. “Are you telling me that you believe in a kid-size old man clad in green who stores his coins in a hidden pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?”
He pressed his hand to the bed so he could lean closer to me. “Being open-minded is a gift every human should have.”
“Open-minded?”
He nodded. “It's what allows me to see the truth behind walls.”
With his stare on me and my heart on a sprint, I knew I should've stopped the route this conversation was taking. But stubborn, out of orbit Dafne wanted to know if her presumptions were on the right track, or if they were simply a product of her imagination. So I asked in a pretty clueless way, “By walls you mean the ones made with concrete and bricks? Like the ones surrounding that window-tinted Goth bar in Irving Street? God knows I would love to see what happens behind those walls.”
He half-smiled. “No. By walls I mean the ones that people put up around them,” he said while looking at me, his green eyes puncturing holes in my chest with the meaning of his words.
He'd said to me once, before bursting Buffy's door open and finding her in bed, that he could see through me. That he could see how I protected myself from getting hurt by hiding within a cold façade. Because I cared for people a lot. And I'd been blindingly mad at that time, believing to the root of my soul that Ian had been playing with me for his benefit.
Somehow, I didn't think that way this time. Somehow, I believed the warm, open honesty shining in his eyes in that moment. And to my disgrace, I discovered that I kind of liked his see-through abilities, that for once someone besides Gran and Linda could see the real me behind those icy walls.
Would I regret it tomorrow? Hell yes. I hated Ian. I had to. Right? I didn't know why my opinion of him was changing so much, or why these doubts were suddenly attacking me, but I had my puny state to blame for my weakness—I could see why emotionally unbalanced girls were easy to take advantage of. But it didn't matter at that instant. For now, I could only think of those emerald-green eyes staring
at me, responsive as a wide field of grass was to the nourishing light of the sun.
I saw his other hand lift and reach my lap. I felt the warmth of his skin enveloping mine as he cupped my hand, hesitantly but wistful at the same time, his deep eyes never leaving mine. With each second that flowed by, thin cracks broke along the surface of the walls surrounding me. I could feel them as the beats of my heart within my chest, spreading like veins over skin, weakening my fortress of strength.
The fact that it was Ian who was doing this damage was what slapped me out of the hazy cloud under my feet. I pulled out my hand from the cocoon of his touch and jerked my body away, settling a cold distance between us.
What was the matter with me? That was Ian. Asshole Ian. Buffy's boyfriend. It didn't matter if I wasn't riding my usual ice-cold, bitchy wave, I should've known better than that.
I looked away and pretended to be falling asleep, faking a big, open yawn.
Ian took the hint. “We should sleep,” he said and stood up to leave, but not before I caught, out from the corner of my eye, his frustrated face. One of the cracks in my walls lengthened.
“Ian?” I said, almost in a whispery tone. Maybe I was expecting he wouldn't hear me, maybe I didn't want him to hear me, but in the cavernous, dry silence of the room, he did.
He stopped in his tracks and turned to look at me.
I swallowed, giving strength to the brewing words in my throat. “Thank you, for everything.” Even for what you did downstairs with your friend, I thought but didn't say out loud.
He must've seen it in my eyes because he nodded. “Good night, Dafne,” he said and retook his path to the couch.
I cursed inwardly for those weak words, realizing the damage to my walls had cost me dearly and that it was somewhat…irreversible.
Shoot. I was in hot water.
CHAPTER 10
I woke up by the smell of a soft, buttery scent. It laced the air with warmth and promises of pleasure and fulfillment. Hunger exploded in my stomach like a punch. I made my way out of bed and stopped next to the large couch, where Ian's sleepy form rested. A faint distorted vibration that sounded more like snoring whispered through his nose.
I pushed back the need to watch his unguarded face in the dimness of the room, telling myself it was there because of my other need to squeeze toothpaste onto his mouth so when he would wake up his lips would stick together. That's what I would've done normally. But it seemed I hadn't come back to my old self yet, because pulling that prank on him was the last thing on my mind. He didn't deserve that.
I rolled my eyes. Jesus, I really am mad.
I carried on, moving quickly on my tip toes and glided out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar so I wouldn't jerk him up from Dreamland, or wherever his mind wandered off while sleeping—the Playboy mansion maybe—with a snap of the door.
Silently, I admitted to myself I wasn't ready to see him, too, and didn't delve into the reasons behind that.
I rushed down the stairs, driven by the expectant groans in the pit of my stomach and ended up in a place that guaranteed one hundred percent ambrosial satisfaction: Lola's kitchen. God, I swear I could even feel my taste buds crying tears of joy.
She was bending over the oven, checking her scrumptiously smelling biscuits, when she looked to the side and jumped. “Santo Dios!” She brought her hand over her heart, startled. “Mija, you move like a ghost. I didn't hear you coming.”
“Sorry Lola, but the smell of those”—I pointed my eyes to the yellowish cakes—”awoke me from my slumber,” I said dramatically.
She smiled, as if I've given her the best compliment in the world. “Yes, yes.” She bent over the oven once again and gripped the baking sheet with her gloved hand. “Mr. Townsend likes his biscuits soft and fluffy. He calls mine mounds of joy,” she said while pulling them out. “Ian calls them flakies, because he loves them tall and flaky so he can split them apart in halves.” She placed the hot sheet over the glass-ceramic stove. “Since Mr. Townsend isn't here, I've made flakies. I hope you like them.”
I liked my biscuits soft and fluffy, like Mr. Townsend, who I guessed was Ian's dad, but the scent of these flakies was overflowing my senses. My taste buds were bawling.
As if noticing this, she scraped out two biscuits and put them on a plate. She turned around and asked, “Butter and honey?”
“Butter and pepper,” I answered with a shrug of my shoulder.
She narrowed her eyes like she was appraising me from a different perspective and liked what she saw. “For that, mija, you get a third one. You'll have to break your diet today.”
“Oh, I don't diet.”
She handed me the butter and pepper and paused. “And for that, I would give you a fourth.” She smiled. “Young ladies nowadays don't eat with their heart anymore. They eat with their mind.” She smacked her baking glove onto the counter, as if to emphasize her words. “A pity, I say. A pity.”
“Well,” I said, picking up one half of a biscuit that was topped with butter and pepper, “I always eat with my heart.” I sank my teeth into the flaky wonder and moaned. “And thank God for that,” I added with my mouth full.
“Good girl,” she said with a nod, pride coloring her voice. She pressed a red button on a remote control and turned on the small flat screen TV mounted on one of the walls. That Spanish channel, Univision I think it was called, came into view.
Apparently Lola had a soap opera to watch, something about a poor girl falling in love with a rich guy—so cliché if you would've asked me—and some revenge going on. Lola, as if remembering I didn't speak a word of Spanish, stopped once in a while to explain what the deal was with the characters. Good-looking characters at that, which made me wonder if all the guys in Mexico looked like that, because if they did, I was living in the wrong place.
At the end of the episode, I'd already figured out what the plot was and knew Maria would get her happily ever after with Reymundo. Lola didn't seem to think so, the way she pined for them a clear example of her unawareness. Was every soap opera watcher like this, so oblivious to the obvious?
She excused herself and left to her room. A Skype call with her son in Mexico was waiting for her, she'd said. The information surprised me. For some reason, I'd never imagined her having a family, which was completely stupid and ignorant of me. Of course a woman so warm and skilled like her had a family. Perhaps she was a woman that'd had to leave her family behind to assure them a better future. I asked her if that'd been the case, and she answered with a tender smile, “A mother always does what she can to take care of her hijos, no matter what harsh things life throws at her.”
From that moment on, I respected Lola more than I'd ever respected anyone. Women like her, who wore strength like their everyday shirt, deserved statues built in their honor. It was often the people who acted under a veil of silence that were the true heroes.
I grabbed the remote control from the counter and switched the channel…to a least pleasant one. My eyes dropped, like a moth to a flame, to the red band in the bottom of the screen.
I immediately regretted watching those words. My fears had been confirmed.
The United States government has declared a public health emergency. Cases of sudden coma have mounted across the country. The CDC anticipates more cases and more hospitalizations in the upcoming days and weeks. The CDC believes a virus may be behind the cases, causes of illness remain a mystery.
One after the other, news on Buffy's “illness” glided in a hurry, squeezing my heart in dread with each passing second. How had all of this come to a national emergency? How could the causes of “sudden coma” still remain a mystery after so many cases?
Truth was, I'd known since the beginning this wasn't a normal thing or a simple illness. Deep down inside of me, a tiny light had been blinking red, silent and watchful. Now, it'd turned into one of those big rotating warning lights that police cars used on their tops, its strident alarm shrieking at me to do something, because if virol
ogists and doctors were looking for a virus, they weren't going to find anything. I knew it to my core and to the marrow of my bones that this was something…unusual, something beyond the limits of human science.
Did I know what we were dealing with? I had absolutely no clue, but somehow, someway, I had to take action. I had to bring Buffy back. All these CDC people were looking in the wrong places and I had to find out where the right places were. Fast.
An oppressive cloud of anxiety engulfed me, stirring up a clashing storm of distress and helplessness inside of me. But where to begin? Where? I wanted to scream.
I turned off the TV and left the kitchen, wanting to shed some of the emotional assault my body was experiencing. I paced the floor agitatedly, going back and forth between the living room and what looked like a bar area, restless, my mind not processing my surroundings, until the surface underneath my feet shifted to polished concrete. I looked up and, as if ice-cold water had been splashed to my face, I stopped, thunderstruck.
The space sprawling before me was an art sanctuary, something you could've found in a museum if it wasn't for the long paint-daubed table that sat from wall to wall on one side of the room. Pointed tools and unfinished sculptures lay on top—wood, stone, metal and bronze the materials of choice—with a thin coat of white dust encircling the base of a marble sculpture. The white brick wall behind the table had test patches of color ranging from peacock to teal to blue-green, and if made on purpose or not, it was an effortless look that could've been found in any SoHo apartment. The light source in the room had to be my favorite part, though. Wide glass panels served as a roof, shedding a natural glow on the pieces of creativity, permeating everything with a warm, soulful beauty.
As I walked, breathtaking sculptures rose around me—a silver triangle that folded itself into a rectangle, a large cube with imploded glass spheres, a woman's body shaped like a sensuous flame, the face of a man breaking into smaller faces, bronze hands twisting around each other, a metal guitar that seemed to undulate in the air, a disc made with an intricate weave of steel rods, and the one that hypnotized my eyes and didn't let them go, a distorted heart that seemed to have been pulled by a vacuum from one side. It looked as if the heart had chosen that side though, that no matter how distorted or conflicted it was, the pull to that other side was too strong to ignore. It was almost as if the sculpture symbolized a choice.
