Iván and I had talked numerous times, in English for the most part. His flight had been ok and he was feeling good, too. He showed me around his parents’ house, walking with his phone held in front of him. He made me meet his mom and dad on a video chat too, which was extremely awkward. We kept nodding and smiling and talking over each other, then simultaneously stopping and apologizing, until Iván took the phone back, sure that we were now all best friends. I sent him pictures of the locksmith changing the locks and another shot of the new keys in my hand so he would relax about that.
Every time we hung up or I got a message or a picture from him, I got the throat pomelo. The holiday season was just really rough for people.
I kept busy when I got back to the apartment in San Francisco, too, by packing up most of the kitchen. Finally, I got so tired that I had to stop for the day. I took a shower to wash the layers of dirt off my body, then I wandered around the apartment for a while. Iván and I didn’t do much in the way of big nights out—dinner or a movie was an occasion for me and he seemed to have vanquished the need for the retinue. But I was feeling restless, and kind of strange. I walked into Iván’s room and looked at his bed, remembering how I had curled up next to him, the feeling of his arm around me.
I had changed the sheets since he’d lain sick in them, but the bed still was all Iván. I crawled in and this time I curled up with his pillow. I felt a little better.
Sunday was another big day of cleaning, this time the ground floor of the new house. La cocina, la sala, el borrego, el comedor. Iván was at his grandma’s for the day, so I got another video tour and met a thousand relatives, some of whom spoke no English and made me redouble my efforts to pick it up on my end. El horno, el grillo, el lavaplatos, la nevera.
Fatigada. That’s what I was. At the end of the day I had a headache and I went right back to Iván’s bed. Sola.
Monday morning Benji and I went to our big show at the planetarium, and before our extra-fun meeting with the plumber, we went back to his house to regroup and have lunch with Joana. I had asked him in the car on the way to the planetarium how the weekend had gone.
“Was your dad home?” I casually threw out.
“No, I don’t know where he was. My mom didn’t say anything about him.”
“Yeah? What did you guys do?”
“She was on the phone all the time or working on her laptop and I did Blazer,” he said. “Joana left good stuff for me to eat.” It made my heart ache to hear him, the poor little guy. I was extra huggy and lovey as we walked into the planetarium from the parking lot until he said, “Ugh, Maura! Quit touching me!”
Now we pulled down his street with him explaining to me what the deal was with Pluto. He had a lot to say on the subject.
“Is that my mom’s car in the driveway?” Benji leaned forward in the seat. “Why is she home now?”
I had no idea.
“Oh,” Undine said when we walked in, and the corners of her mouth turned down. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“He’s on vacation for the holidays,” I explained, my hand on Benji’s shoulder.
“Well, actually that’s great, because I didn’t remember where the school was to go get him,” Undine said. She turned to her son. “Guess what? We’re leaving for Atlanta!”
“Today?” Benji asked.
“Go pack,” his mother told him, and looked back down at her phone.
Yelling “Yay! Yay!” he pounded up the stairs.
Undine glanced up at me, and I waited. This could go very poorly if she knew that I had anything to do with the disappearance of Mr. Dorset. Suddenly she broke into a huge smile that didn’t move a muscle around her eyes or in her forehead. She leaped forward and hugged me in a bruising grip. I hadn’t felt so uncomfortable since I’d last seen her husband.
“You’re a deep one,” she told me, her cheek crushed against mine. Her perfume was overwhelming, gag-inducing. In such close proximity to her, it burned my nose. She finally let me go.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said carefully.
“I didn’t think you were planning to help me. But getting Mr. Dorset arrested? It was genius. How did you know about the coke in his car?”
My mouth fell open. “The coke?”
She laughed. “Ok, you can play dumb! Possession with intent is no joke, on top of the drunk driving. He blew a .21, the moron. He had been out drinking all afternoon, I’ve been told.” She laughed again. “He had gotten fired that day for harassing a junior associate.” She tilted her head, studying me. “Was that why you turned him in? Because he was playing around on you?”
She was his wife! I was almost too stunned to speak. “Where is Mr. Dorset now?”
“Out on bail. He didn’t come back here! You haven’t seen him either?” She smiled happily. “Really, Maura, I can’t thank you enough.” She held out an envelope to me. I just stared at it. “Here! Take it!”
My hand didn’t move. “What is that?”
“Call it your Christmas bonus.” Undine winked at me. “I owe you, sister.”
“I can’t take that, Mrs. Dorset. I didn’t…” Well, I had called the police, but not because I was trying to help her in some weird scheming way. “I can’t take that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Playing the long game? You remind me a lot of myself, Maura. Impressive.”
No, nauseating. “I’m going to help Benji pack,” I said, edging toward the stairs.
“Oh, I meant to ask. Can you come with us?”
“To Atlanta?”
She nodded. “I have a lot to do and it’s so hard to keep track of Benji. The airplane…”
Oh, glory. I doubted she had ever kept track of him for one single moment in her life. She just didn’t want to deal with him at all.
“I’m sorry, I can’t go with you.”
Undine sighed. “Well, I guess he can stay with my mom once we get there.”
“I think he would really like that,” I encouraged her, and she shrugged. I hoped that she would decide that ditching him with his grandma, whom he loved, was the way to go.
Benji was enthusiastically throwing things into a bag. “Buddy, I don’t think you need your mask and snorkel, right?” I took everything out and started folding, instead of making clothes balls as he had been doing. “Are you excited to see your family?”
“Yes!” He was dancing. I’d never seen him so happy.
“Hey, why don’t you send an email to your grandma, or give her a call and let her know that you’re coming? Maybe she can talk to your mom about letting you stay over.”
He got even more excited. “She makes pancakes in different shapes! And there are bugs the size of golf balls outside her house!”
“Very cool,” I told him. He sounded like the 10-year-old that he was.
It wasn’t too much longer that Undine was yelling up the stairs that it was time to go. “Bye,” Benji said briefly, and ran out into the hall, dragging his suitcase.
I had a Christmas present for him, but I had thought I had another few days to give it to him. “Ok, bye, Benji.” I followed him out of the bedroom and watched him bump down the stairs with his bag. My eyes were filling up and I blinked quickly.
Halfway down the stairs he dropped the suitcase, ran back up to me, and threw his arms around my waist. “Merry Christmas, Maura.”
“Merry Christmas, buddy.” I held him tight and a tear dripped onto his head.
When the whirlwind that was Undine was gone, taking Benji with her, I went into the kitchen to find Joana. She was taking down the decorations we had just put up and looked at me guiltily. “I figured with Benji gone—”
I waved my hand and shook my head, sinking down in a chair. “No, it’s ok. It was a little makeshift, anyway. Give me a minute and then I’ll help you.”
“You ok?” she asked, looking at me curiously.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I guess.”
“Lonely without your big guy?”
“Benji?”
“No, don’t be silly. Oh, look at this. It’s so cute.” I showed her a picture of Iván with his nephew. “Isn’t he adorable? They look so much alike!”
She smiled at the picture. “Very handsome, both of them.”
I flipped through more pictures he had sent me. “What happened here today with Mrs. Dorset? What was the hurry to get out of town?”
“I have no idea,” Joana told me. “She scared the shit out of me, coming home in the middle of the day. She just said they were leaving and I had to get the suitcases out.”
“She told me Mr. Dorset got fired and is out on bail. He had drugs in his car when the police stopped him.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t doubt it, with these people. I’m certainly not going to spend an extra minute around here just in case he comes back. And if he got fired, we might be looking for other jobs.” She frowned, thinking. “Although, I always got the feeling that she’s the real moneymaker.”
I put the phone away and rested my chin in my hand. Then that got to feel a little heavy, so I rested my head on the table for a second.
“Maura?”
I jerked up. “Sorry. I’m tired. I need to go meet the plumber at Iván’s house.”
“Have some lunch first,” Joana urged me.
I shook my head. “No thanks. I’m going to sound like Benji, but I’m not very hungry. What time should I come to Ana Lívia’s on Christmas?”
“As early as you want,” she told me. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I nodded. “See you in a couple days.”
The plumber was generally impressed with the state of the pipes. He also liked the tilework, and in his business, he had seen a lot of bathrooms. After talking to him for a while, I tried to start cleaning the pool house (la piscina), with the idea that I’d also do the little apartment over the garage (el garaje), but suddenly I felt so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I drove slowly and carefully over to San Francisco and dragged myself up the stairs to the 16th floor. By the time I got to the apartment, I was kind of crying.
I pulled myself together. I didn’t feel great—so what? The world wasn’t going to stop spinning. Benji and Iván were both gone. Yeah, people had left before, but I thought there was a good possibility that both of them would come back. They both had strong ties to the community, and Iván was employed. He also had a foreign passport and usually carried large amounts of cash. If they were being considered for bail, Benji was definitely the safer bet.
They would come back. I would just rest a little and when I got up I’d feel better, and finish packing the kitchen. I went without thinking to the master bedroom and fell immediately asleep.
I woke up to my phone and blearily hit it like I had done to my old alarm clock years ago. “Hello? Hello?”
“Maura? Why haven’t you been answering? What’s the matter?” Iván sounded upset.
I looked at the clock. Seven pm California time meant…oh, I was tired. I pulled myself together. It meant four in the morning in Spain.
“Nothing’s the matter,” I told him, but had to stop talking when a fit of coughing overcame me.
“You got sick,” he said flatly. “You got what I had.”
“I’m fine,” I told him again. “I was just taking a nap. Hey, what are you doing up so early?”
There was silence on the line for a moment. “I had trouble sleeping. Time change.”
I rubbed my aching head and tried to remember the good news I had been meaning to tell him. Oh, yeah. “Guess what? I had a plumber come out and check the pipes. Everything looks great. I’ll forward his report when I get it. Now you don’t have to worry.”
There was another big silence.
“Iván?”
“I’m here,” he said finally. “Thank you for having that done. But I wish I was there. I don’t like you being sick, all by yourself.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I assured him. “I can take care of myself. I just need to sleep a little.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“Probably not,” I hedged.
“Did you have dinner?”
“I’m getting up to eat now,” I lied. We talked a little more. I finally got off the phone with him and lay flat on my back, wishing that every part of my body would stop aching. I had a fleeting thought about getting some water and some medicine to take down the fever I was sure I had, but then I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.
∞
“Joana?”
“Maura? You sound awful!”
“I’m sorry to call you on Christmas, but I’m not going to be able to come. I don’t feel very well and I don’t want to get anyone sick.”
“Oh, that’s too bad! Poor baby. Do you want me to come over later? I can bring you a plate, a ton of leftovers. We always have too much.”
“No thank you,” I mumbled. I didn’t have much of an appetite. Not for food, or for leaving the bed. I had been hunkered down for the last 48 hours, dragging myself to get some of the medicine I’d bought for Iván and this morning, forcing myself into the shower. I sat on the floor and let the water run over me.
“I’ll call you later,” Joana said.
“I just need to sleep. Merry Christmas.”
Honestly, I’d had some pretty crappy holidays. There was the time it was literally crappy, when a boy in the house I was living in had, um, gastric distress in the toilet, then decided that he would make the situation more interesting by flushing his socks down there too. There was gastric distress coming out from under the bathroom door. Some dripped from the light fixture onto the dining room table below.
There was the time I had moved into a new placement early on the morning of December 25th with a very cranky social worker who would clearly rather have been home with her own kids. That year I got two presents: a red pencil and a roll of tape, used.
Maybe my worst Christmas had been when I was eight and didn’t believe in Santa, at all, but an older girl in the house convinced me that he was real and he would come and bring me a baby doll, which I really wanted. Then when he didn’t, she had told me that Santa didn’t love me. No one loved me. There were days I still dreamed about finding that girl and running her down with a monster truck.
This Christmas was right up there. I thought that maybe I had been sicker in my life, but I couldn’t really remember when. I thought that I had been lonelier, too. But loneliness wasn’t something that was easily measured. I just knew that right now, I felt bad. Really, really bad. Merry F-ing Christmas.
I had been talking to Iván on and off, speaking in my heartiest voice and trying to convince him not to worry and to have fun on his vacation.
“I’m coming home soon,” he had assured me when we last spoke.
“Have a great time with your family! Feliz navidad,” I told him. When we had hung up, I cried like an absolute idiot. I missed everybody. I thought that Mikey might call me because of the holiday, so I kept waking up from dreams in which the phone was ringing but I had missed it, or my voice wouldn’t work to say hello. Then I started to think that maybe he wasn’t calling me because something had happened to him. If it had, somewhere in Mexico, no one would ever know. I would never know, I would just wonder for my whole life. I cried harder.
I woke up to drag myself around the apartment some. I drank a glass of water, spilling it on my shirt when my hands shook and thinking I would freeze to death. I watched a little TV, or tried to, but it hurt my eyes. I literally crawled back into bed, huddled in a miserable lump, hoping that when I woke up again, either Christmas would be over or I’d be dead. I wasn’t sure which one I was truly wanted more.
I jerked awake. There was someone in the apartment. Someone was touching my forehead, brushing hair out of my face. I opened my eyes to a man sitting on the edge of the bed, his lips pursed in concern, his beautiful brown eyes serious.
“Iván?” I croaked. “What are you doing here?” I stared at him. “Wher
e’s your beard?”
The corsair was gone. But he was so incredibly handsome without it, even in my miserable state, he practically took my breath away.
“I shaved,” he said. “I came home.”
I was struggling to sit up but then abandoned the effort. “I feel better,” I told him, and tried to smile. My lips were so dry that the bottom one split. “What day is it?”
“Oh, Maura. Ok, I need to…I’m trying to think of what you did for me. I’m getting you something to eat and tea to drink. Stay there.” He pressed his hand to my cheek. He didn’t need to worry; I wasn’t going anywhere.
After I ate the kind of strange eggs he made and drank the hot tea, and another glass of water, I did feel better, no lie this time. Iván was trying to finger-comb the tangles out of my hair. I hadn’t done anything after my shower—had it been the day before?—and my hair was in knots. “How was your flight? Did you have a good time?” I asked him.
“Everything was fine. It was nice to see everyone.” He paused, and then said, almost angrily, “There are all kinds of programs to help people who are afraid to fly.”
“I don’t know if I’m afraid to fly.”
“Well, we’re going to try it!”
“Why are you so upset?”
He didn’t answer, but got up and came back with the brush from my bathroom. “I’m sorry I’m in your room,” I told him. I started to comb out of my hair. My arms got tired and I put the brush down in my lap, sighing. I had too much hair.
“You’re fine in here,” he told me. He took the brush from me and started gently working on the tangles. “Sit up so I can get the back.”
I did, and leaned forward a little, and ended up resting my head on his chest. He put the brush down and wrapped his arms around me. “Joder, Maura, ¿por qué no me dijiste…why didn’t you tell me how sick you were? Me cago en la mar, you’re burning up.”
“Did you just say something very gross about the ocean?” I felt his laughter rumbling through both of us. “I listened to the Spanish app a lot,” I explained.
“You should have told me.” He rubbed my back. “Can I get you anything else?”
No, I was good. I had exactly everything I needed.
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