Lost to Light

by Jamie Bennett

  Benji and I ate and he was happy to go outside and play. “Mostly we played basketball in Georgia. Do you know how to play?”

  “Not at all. I’m willing to try, though,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty bad.” We walked up toward the school with the soccer ball to use. I would get a basketball tomorrow.

  My first shot on the basket went so wide, I thought we might find the ball in Nevada. “You’re the rebounder!” I told Benji, and he ran after it. His shot barely went into the air. “Would you still want to swim?” I asked him.

  He threw the ball toward me and it went about two inches before it hit the ground. He kicked it to me with better luck. “I guess I’d like to swim.”

  “Would you like to swim with Iván?” He was busy, but he hadn’t forgotten his promise to me about teaching Benji.

  “Yes!” He did a weird dance.

  I was liking this new Benji. “I bet the kids at school play basketball.”

  “Sometimes.” He drooped a little.

  “Maybe we’ll both get really good. You can play with them, and I’ll go pro.”

  “Pro?”

  I took another shot, which went five feet over the top of the backboard. “Professional. I’ll become a professional basketball player.”

  He studied me. “The odds aren’t good.”

  “Maybe our goal will be you playing at school then. I’ll put my pro career on the back burner.”

  At eight o’clock, as I was getting ready to go, both Joana and I watched the driveway out of habit. “Mr. Dorset must have come here over the holidays,” she told me. “Most of his clothes are gone and also the pile of mail I left in the entryway.”

  “Undine hasn’t said anything?”

  “The only thing I heard from her so far was ‘where is my coffee.’” Joanna plunked a dish into the sink. “I certainly didn’t hear anything about a holiday bonus or a tip.”

  Undine was willing to pay me for getting her husband arrested, but not give anything to the woman who provided so much love and care for her son. Nice. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told Joana.

  I could walk home now from Benji’s. It was funny how quickly Iván’s new house had become my home. I practically ran there.

  Iván was at the stove, stirring something in a big pot. “Hey,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m at a critical point.”

  “The point at which the noodles are done?” I put down my bag and fought a strong urge to walk over to him and put my arms around his waist.

  “No, look at this. It’s my mom’s recipe.” Now I did stand close to him, but only to lean over the pot and sniff.

  “Mmm.”

  “Let’s hope you feel that way when you taste it,” he said, and put the lid on the pot.

  After the party on New Year’s Eve, I had wondered how things were going to go. If maybe he thought I had rejected him, so he would kick me out. Or if he was going to start trying to fast-track our relationship, and then kick me out because I was too slow and uncertain for him. But he had apparently meant what he had said. He wasn’t rushing or pushing. He was just Iván. Gradually I relaxed back into our easy friendship.

  We had gotten our grades over the vacation, and we had both done well on our finals. For Iván, I considered it a minor miracle. He had been half-dead when he was taking them and when he was writing his essay. Really, it wasn’t a miracle, it was just a testament to how smart he was. He was taking fewer classes this semester and I was taking my final two. I would graduate in the spring, if everything went according to plan.

  The pot suddenly bubbled over on the stove, spewing food and putting out the gas burner. Iván swore vociferously. He was smart, but not so handy around the house. We had found that neither of us really was when we tried to paint the living room. In the end, Iván had hired a crew. I grabbed some towels (we had found everything else but decided that for sure the movers had stolen all the rags) and helped him mop up. We kept a lot of bread for sandwiches, just in case. And a lot of ham.

  The next day I took the car and drove Benji after school over to the pool at the university. He disappeared into the locker room to change into the suit I had brought and it took him forever. He finally came out in baggy swim trunks which he was cinching tightly with the string at the waist. He looked nervous.

  “There are some really big guys in there,” he announced. “Is there a smaller pool we can go to? I think this one is too advanced.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’m in this one all the time.” I had progressed to putting my face under frequently and my arm/leg coordination were much improved. “Let’s go find Iván.”

  He was already poolside in his suit and my heart gave an involuntary flutter when I saw him smile at us. He was always so happy to see me, like just being around me was actually pleasurable for him. Another cardiac flutter and I realized I was smiling widely back at him.

  Iván kissed both my cheeks and squeezed my waist, then turned to the little guy. “Benji?” He held out his hand to shake. “I’m Iván.”

  “I know,” Benji said. “You have the European records in the one hundred meter and two hundred meter butterfly and the two hundred freestyle. And the world record in the hundred butterfly.”

  Iván laughed. “I guess you looked me up. I’ve heard a lot about you, too. Maura talks about you all the time.”

  Benji looked at me suspiciously. “What does she say?”

  “How smart you are, and how much she loves you.”

  Had I said that I loved Benji? Maybe not in so many words, but when Iván said that, I realized I did. It must have shone through when I talked about him. I swallowed away a little lump in my throat.

  “R-r-r-ready?” Iván asked, winking at me, which could have looked cheesy but instead was very endearing. “Maura, are you coming in too?”

  “Of course,” I told them. “I definitely need some more practice.”

  Benji was way, way better than I was. He and Iván went in one lane and I cruised up and down another with a kickboard, trying to breathe in, arm circle, breathe out, arm circle. I had major issues with blowing out underwater and had to keep stopping so I wouldn’t hyperventilate. I hung on the lane line for a second, which I knew Iván didn’t like, and coughed.

  “Talk.”

  “What?” I turned to the swimmer in the lane next to mine who had also stopped. It was one of the guys on the swim team who had been injured. He was using what Iván called a pull buoy so he wouldn’t have to kick and could swim using only his arms.

  “If you’re having trouble blowing out under water, you can talk or yell. Push out the air that way,” he said.

  “Seriously?” I laughed. “Won’t people be able to hear me and thing something’s wrong? Or that I’m insane?”

  “You can also sing,” he said, grinning at me. “Sometimes I do that just for fun.”

  “Any particular songs you recommend for underwater singing?” I asked him.

  “Shultz!”

  We both looked up. Iván was standing on the side of the pool, frowning down at the other swimmer, the singer. “How many yards have you done?” he asked him.

  “Uh, about a thousand.”

  “Then you’re not finished. Keep going and stop talking.”

  I heard the swimmer, Shultz or whoever, continue talking as he swam away, but it was now muttered insults about Iván.

  “Are you and Benji done?” I asked.

  Now Iván was frowning at me. “We’re going to the dive tank.”

  “I’ll come.” I hauled myself out and put the kickboard away.

  “What was he telling you?” Iván asked me.

  I turned to look at him. “That guy? He was giving me tips about how to breathe out under water.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Of course you can, dork. But he was the one in the lane next to me at that particular moment.” I elbowed him and he looked…sheepish? “What’s your deal?”

  “Nothing. Benji is doing well. He just lack
s confidence. And strength.”

  “We’ve been working on that. See?” I flexed and he felt my bicep, then nodded as if he was very impressed. He slid his hand down my arm and intertwined our fingers.

  “Maura! Look, I’m going to jump!” Benji waved to me from the five-meter platform of the diving tower.

  “Oh, glory! Benji, get down from there!” I turned to Iván. “Did you tell him he could dive from so high?”

  “I told him he could jump.”

  “Is he allowed up there?”

  “Technically, no.” He was holding up his phone, pointing it at Benji. “I found out that you’re not actually allowed in the building, either. It’s just for student athletes.”

  “In the whole building? Iván!”

  “Blastoff!” Benji yelled, and my heart stopped as he was airborne. He made a clean entry into the water and surfaced, laughing.

  “See?” Iván said. “I told him feet first, and he did it.”

  I looked from him to Benji, wondering who to kill first.

  “Maura, did you see me? Iván, did you get the video? Will you send it to my cousins?” Benji looked so happy and proud I didn’t have the heart to murder him immediately.

  “Sure, let’s go do it,” Iván said, letting go of me to get Benji’s towel and lead us up to the coaches’ office. He took his own towel down from a hook and handed it to me, and I reminded myself to bring it home to wash. Then he took out a swim coat, one of the long, nylon ones with the university logo and soft, fuzzy fleece inside.

  “What’s this? Can I borrow it?” I took it from him.

  “It’s yours. See? It says ‘Sutherland’ on the front.”

  I checked. “Hey! Thank you!”

  “You’re always cold. My grandma thinks your blood is too thin.”

  “You told your grandma about how I get cold?”

  He looked at me curiously. “Of course, I told them a lot. They all know about you, all of my family. Put it on before you freeze.”

  Benji was hopping from foot to foot. “Let’s send it so they get it before they have to go to bed!” He and Iván put on a bunch of filters and set the video to music. I watched them together, smiling. “They’re going to love this,” he said enthusiastically.

  “Ben, are you and Maura busy tomorrow afternoon?” Iván asked casually.

  Benji was still staring at Iván’s phone. It was a cool one. “I don’t think so, are we, Maura?”

  “I was going into the city to the office where they work on Blazer. Do you know that game? You and Maura could come with me after school,” Iván mentioned.

  I thought Benji was going to have a stroke. He stood stock-still, frozen. I had to nudge him on the shoulder before he could respond.

  “Do you mean it?” he gasped.

  “If Iván says it, he means it,” I told him. “You can trust him.” Iván was staring at me. “What?” I asked him.

  “I’m just glad that you feel that way.”

  I shrugged, embarrassed. “Well, that’s how you are.”

  “I have another issue that I need some help with,” Iván was saying. “I need to calculate swimmer time drops. Are you interested in math?”

  Benji was as happy as he’d been when his mom was taking him to Georgia before Christmas. I had to pull him out of the building, carrying a ton of meet results with us. “I’ll work on this tonight! I’ll give it back to you tomorrow!” he told Iván as we said goodbye to him. In the car Benji told me, “I didn’t think swimming was so fun.”

  “Yeah, I like it too.”

  “Iván got mad when you were practicing.”

  “He did?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, he got mad when that man talked to you. He said, ‘What does he think he’s doing, hitting on Maura?’”

  I glanced over at him. “Iván said that? To you?”

  “He said it more to himself and then he said some words in Spanish.”

  I could guess what those words were. “Don’t repeat what Iván said. Especially not to your Spanish teacher at school.”

  “Was that man hitting on you?”

  “What do you think that means?” I asked Benji.

  He rolled his eyes. “Maura! It means he likes you.”

  “No, we were just talking. He was giving me advice about swimming.”

  “Why don’t you ask Iván for advice?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “He has a friend in you, huh, buddy?”

  “Yeah, Iván and I are friends.” He looked out the window, grinning. “He’s my friend for sure.”

  I wiped away the tears with the edge of my sleeve. I was turning into a major weeper.

  Chapter 12

  When I got home from Benji’s later that night, Iván wasn’t there yet, so I put away the leftovers that Joana sent along for him and took a shower to get the pool off myself. Iván swore that the chemicals were good for your skin, but they didn’t appear to be great for blonde hair, and I couldn’t seem to get used to a swim cap.

  When I got out, I saw that I had a message from Anouk. It was the first I had heard from her in weeks. I had been trying to get in touch, but the studio was still closed, and she hadn’t started her winter session of classes yet. For someone who needed money, this really wasn’t a good tack to take.

  I called her back. “Anouk? Where are you?”

  “I’m on my way home. Back to California.” I could hear the radio blaring in the background and the wind rushing. She was in her car.

  “Where have you been? Why haven’t you answered me?”

  Anouk still didn’t answer me. “Listen, can you come by the studio tomorrow?” she asked instead.

  “Well, sure. As far as I know, I still work for you. Is that right?”

  “Of course. Have you been practicing?”

  No. “Some. A little,” I clarified. I had danced on New Year’s Eve, so that counted for something. Whenever I thought of that night, I felt my heart start to race.

  “Get ready for a workout, then.” She sounded almost gleeful.

  “Ok, I’ll see you tomorrow.” I wondered what she had been up to.

  I heard the front door close and came down quickly. “Hey!” I couldn’t really stop myself. I ran over and put my arms around him.

  “This is a nice way to come home. What have I done to deserve it?”

  “Everything,” I told him. “Thank you for everything you did with Benji. Thank you for everything.”

  “I like him,” Iván told me. He settled his chin on my head. “He’s a nice kid.”

  “He is a nice kid.” I probably could have stood there forever, but I wanted him to eat. I heated up Joana’s excellent fish stew and told him about hearing from Anouk, and about Benji explaining to me where baby geese came from. He laughed so hard at Benji’s sex ed that he almost spit out the stew. Iván told me about the swimmers on the team and how they were all doing, and about a difference of opinion he had with the head coach, Christos. It sounded like a serious difference of opinion.

  “You always remember that he’s your boss, right?” I asked him cautiously.

  “We’re co-workers.”

  “Yes, but he’s the head coach, and you’re the assistant.”

  “I have more experience than he does.”

  I was getting exasperated. “Yes, as a swimmer, you do. But as a coach, he does.”

  “Sure, but…”

  “He’s also older than you are.” I cleared my throat. “Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.”

  Iván stared at me. “What?”

  I put another helping of stew into his bowl. “I remember someone telling me that to speak a language well, you have to have the sayings.” And I had been reading the Spanish proverb book a lot.

  “Do you know what you just said?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Mostly.” Iván laughed until he wiped tears from his eyes, then he leaned over the table and kissed me. On the lips.

  I went down to Dance by Anouk right after my morning class
the next day. The Tibetan bowl store had closed down before Christmas and Anouk’s new tenant was moving in. I watched for a while with narrowed eyes. Oh, glory.

  “Anouk?” I yelled, yanking open the studio door. “Did you really rent the shop to a guy selling spiders?”

  “He had the security deposit. In cash.” She put down her cigarette. “How about a hug and a ‘Happy New Year?’”

  I gave her both. “But really, spiders?”

  “He assures me they’re properly caged,” she said.

  “Wait, they’re in cages?” That meant bars. I felt pretty sure that spiders could get through bars.

  “Housed, whatever!” Anouk got mad and forgot about her French accent. “God damn it, did you hear me say that he had the security deposit?”

  “Sorry, sorry. Ok, tell me what you’ve been doing! Where did you go?”

  “I had to try to get the money somehow. So I went to Vegas.”

  “Oh, Anouk…”

  “It was either that or the ponies. I did make some back.”

  “How much do you owe now?” I asked, and held my breath.

  “Only fifty-eight thousand!”

  Only fifty-eight thousand. “Ok, well, it sounds like you had a real run of luck.”

  “I sure did. I also cleared up the IRS thing.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How did you do that?”

  Anouk waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it! Listen, the best part is, I also have a potential investor.”

  I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I met someone who wants to invest in the studio. In Dance by Anouk. He has some money he wants to put somewhere, and I’m certainly willing to take it.”

  I pulled my lip with my teeth. “Anouk, that sounds a little…weird. Where did you meet this investor? What do you know about him?”

  “I met him at a casino. I’m not sure what he does, but he has a lot of cash. He wants to put some into the studio but be a silent partner. Well, the money would come from some kind of company, not from him directly.”

  Alarm bells were clanging wildly in my head. “That sounds even weirder. How many people want to put money in dance studios? I mean, as an investment, it’s a pretty poor one.”