by Amber Stuart
And then, unexpectedly, she pushed me onto my back and straddled me, looking down at me with that same smile, that same passion in her eyes, but there was something mischievous there now, that look she got when she knew she’d surprised me and that excited her. She leaned down to kiss me again, and I slid my hands down to her hips, pushing at her pants and she let me take them off.
She was naked now, sitting on my lap as we pulled at my jeans, and in a minute, we’d start making love, I knew that because this was a memory, and over an hour later, we’d both be tired and sweaty and bearing the carpet burns from having sex on our apartment floor, but there was no more.
Because like that, the humming of the air conditioner broke through the moans of my dream, the sweat that was dripping from my forehead was real, the racing heart, the shortness of breath, the obvious throbbing erection, it was all too real. Except for being alone in a hotel room in Baton Rouge, not in our apartment in Houston, not with Lottie. I lay there in the dark listening to the steady humming, the occasional closing door from somewhere along the walkway, footsteps on the stairs. I waited. I waited for my body to remember it was dead and this was just an afterlife. Lottie was not with me. There was no sex in Hell.
I could see the red lights of the digital clock on the nightstand beside me; I would have known what time it was even without a clock in the room. It told me it was 3:34. And so I kept waiting. My phone was beside me and I picked it up, not really sure what I would do. I had no interest in surfing, didn’t have any social media accounts, and didn’t even have any games on my phone.
I found myself typing out a text to Lottie. It was an impulsive thing to do, and halfway through it, I realized it was also probably a stupid thing to do. Sane, sober people don’t send text messages at 3:40 in the morning. But I finished it and deliberated for a few more seconds on whether or not I would tap the send button before swiping my finger across it. I hoped she was one of those people who always remembered to turn the Do Not Disturb function on at night.
I tossed the phone back on the pillow beside me and rubbed the palm of my hand across my eyes. This would only be my third day in this hotel room, and I was already getting sick of it. I ran a hand through my hair and thought about getting up then, finding somewhere to go jogging, maybe by the lakes again, when I saw the screen on my phone light up beside me. Lottie had texted me back.
My message to her had been short, only telling her I’d had a dream that wouldn’t let me go back to sleep and if I remembered correctly, there was absolutely nothing to do in Baton Rouge at 3:30 in the morning. I opened her message. “I always have nightmares. I’ll wait outside my apartment. Come pick me up.”
It took less than ten minutes to get there, and as I drove by her building, I saw her small body glide down the stairs. She must have been watching for me. She slid into the seat next to me. It was barely 4:00 a.m.
“Should we just drive around?” I asked.
“Sure, as long as by drive around you mean get on I-10 and head east.”
“Ok. How far east?”
Lottie smiled at me. “New Orleans.”
I wondered whose idea that had been. Lottie was occasionally spontaneous, but more often she planned things meticulously, like fretting over the difference between ivory and creamy ivory. But I headed back toward the interstate anyway and headed east. We had been to New Orleans often enough, but I didn’t know if Kyrieana had.
Would it be different for her, to see the familiar streets, taste the familiar beignets, smell the unmistakable stench of Bourbon Street, hear the corner musicians playing some touristy version of jazz that had become just as much a part of New Orleans by now as real jazz had? I wondered what it would be like to experience it all for the first time, even though she had experienced it so many times before?
“Have you been to New Orleans since…” How was I even supposed to ask that kind of question? But Lottie knew what I meant.
“No,” she answered. She looked out my window as we passed Blue Bayou and pointed. “You can’t see it now. On our way back you’ll have to look. They’re adding on.”
I just nodded.
“What is it you want to see there? In New Orleans, I mean.”
She was quiet for a while, maybe thinking if I had known Lottie so well, I should have known the answer, but she sighed happily, “Everything.”
So I showed her everything I knew about the city, even though she knew the layout just as well as I did. But she was content to let me lead her around like she’d never been to New Orleans before. We parked near the French Quarter then walked to Decatur so we could have coffee and beignets and sat on the Riverwalk as the sun came up. The Mississippi River in Louisiana is a thick muddy brown, but sometimes, when the sun is rising or setting and the orange glow of its light catches the water just right, it can be as beautiful as any other river in the world.
We walked through some of the twisted streets of the French Quarter, occasionally stepping into shops as they opened their doors for business when something particularly kitschy caught her attention. She wanted to find the tackiest souvenir we could to bring back for Lydia. I assured her that wouldn’t be difficult in this city.
We made our way to Jackson Square and I let her lead me straight to the St. Louis Cathedral. I had been there once before when Lottie and I had taken a tour. We hadn’t been dating long; we were the same age, but Lottie was a senior in high school and I was about to graduate from college, but I often felt like she was so much older than me, so much wiser about the world despite having grown up sheltered, loved, secure. Hell, she even went to a private school.
I had grown up in foster homes around Berlin, being passed from one family to another. It wasn’t as bad as the United States, but I was a difficult child. I rarely spoke to the family I was placed with or made any effort to fit in. I certainly didn’t fit in at school. I kept getting moved ahead and was soon much younger than my classmates. Every attempt at sticking me in therapy met with the same stubborn resistance. I wouldn’t talk or cooperate with a psychiatrist anymore than I would a well-meaning would-be parent.
I had no way of knowing then these people meant to care for me, that they meant, maybe, to even love me. At five years old, my mother had shown up at our apartment one day after having been gone for a while, I don’t even know how long, and told me I was the reason her life was so completely fucked up and that she was sick of looking at me. That she was finally going to do what she should have done five years ago. That was the last time I had ever cried.
Lottie was so full of a confidence I had never had, that confidence that can only come from having grown up knowing you are loved, appreciated, wanted. What did I care what strangers told me? I took their tests. They fawned over my intelligence. I would walk through the mall, trailing a safe distance behind whatever family I was staying with at the time, and girls would smile at me, sometimes approach me, tell me I was cute, and I would turn away. I took so many aptitude tests that I started to wonder if I wasn’t being prepared for a future in professional test-taking. Grown ups who more often than not just scared me would come to talk to me about their companies, their industries, their agencies, how much potential I had. I never talked to them either.
Finally, at fourteen, I won my freedom. I had only applied to universities outside of Europe, mostly in the U.S. because I spoke English, and I decided on LSU because they offered me a full scholarship and stipend. I had to get permission to leave the country, but even the foster care system by that point had grown tired of me. When I left Berlin, I never had any intention of going back.
Standing outside the Cathedral now, I could tell that it was Kyrieana looking up at the flat façade of the white stone church. I asked her if she wanted to go inside, but she shook her head. There was something like awe and reverence in her eyes as she followed the spires upward toward the bright blue of the burning New Orleans sky. This was Man’s religion, Man’s God. Kyrieana didn’t understand it, but
she respected it.
We turned around and walked back toward the Riverwalk as the steam organ on the Natchez started playing, beckoning tourists to come ride her for an exorbitant fee. We paid to go through the Aquarium of the Americas instead, and Lottie – or Kyrieana – stopped to watch whatever was alive behind every single exhibit. Lottie and I usually skimmed the exhibits. We could make it out of the entire aquarium in under two hours, easily.
As I watched her now, her excitement over the sea horses that didn’t even move – I had seriously never seen them swim or move, they seemed permanently attached to a piece of seaweed – finally became contagious. I looked in the tank again, trying to see it as she must be seeing it; both a memory and a revelation, old knowledge mixed with new discovery. If I had been annoyed – ok, I had been a little annoyed – by our slow progress before, I found myself really looking at these animals for the first time, the habitats they were living in, the placards by their tanks that I had only occasionally read in the past. I started pointing out interesting facts as we stepped slowly together now, instead of me just hanging back while she excitedly peered into each exhibit.
As we approached the tank with the skates where they let people reach in to touch them, Lottie didn’t hesitate. She had never tried to touch one before. As it slid beneath her fingers, she let out a squeal of both excitement and nervousness but reached down to touch it again as it looped around at the edge of the tank and made its way back toward us. I watched her, fascinated with this new sense of bravery and willingness to experiment. She was absolutely radiant. I found myself reaching for my phone and snapping a picture as the fish glided under her fingers again and the same nervous giggle escaped; she looked up at me, her shy grin transforming into a wide smile. It was a great picture of her.
As I closed the camera app on my phone, the picture of Lottie on the beach in Galveston flashed on my screen and my stomach knotted. I had an overwhelming feeling of guilt and depravity, as if I were betraying Lottie’s memory by enjoying myself now. I watched her again as she stepped back from the shallow pool, letting a little boy take her place at the edge. In so many ways, she was the same. But this wasn’t my Lottie.
And yet, by the late afternoon, when we finally made it to the exit, tired and starving and knowing far more about aquatic animals of North and South America than I had ever known before, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time; something I hadn’t thought I would ever feel again. I felt happy. Lottie took my hand as we walked out and rested her head against my arm, sighing contentedly as we walked toward a café to get an early supper before heading home.
It still felt like this was Kyrieana’s experience, this was her day, her turn to be selfish and have those moments she had left everything behind for. And I surprised myself by feeling honored that I had gotten to be a part of it. I looked down at her as we walked, still wanting to know how much she had known when she first woke up in that strange bedroom in Waco, if my Lottie had really been with her instead of these bits and pieces she had always led me to believe. But I wouldn’t ask her today. Today was for Kyrieana.
She fell asleep quickly on the ride home, still holding onto the little crawfish statue playing an accordion with a banner that read “Laissez les bon temps roulez! New Orleans!” underneath it. Lydia didn’t like crawfish. Lottie said they freaked her out.
I almost woke her as we neared the Highland Road Exit to point out we were passing Blue Bayou again, but I let her sleep. She was breathing slowly and deeply, looking so peaceful and angelic, save for the creepy little musically inclined crawfish still nestled in her lap, that I didn’t want to wake her. I wanted to steal as many glimpses of her as I could, just like this, so that they would be seared into my memories for the rest of this afterlife. If there was beauty to be found here, it was asleep next to me in my car.
As I pulled off the interstate at our exit, she opened her eyes and looked sleepily around her, then sighed that happy, contented sigh again. “Thanks, Dietrich,” she stifled a yawn, “this is the most fun I’ve had since… well, since coming here.”
I smiled at her as we waited at the red light so that I could take her home. “You’re welcome. Thanks for letting me the spend the day with you.”
I’m pretty sure she knew who I meant.
I didn’t feel even a little bit bad about being showered and ready for bed by 9:00 that night. I was fucking exhausted. Eric had borrowed my car and had taken off somewhere – a sports bar maybe? I hadn’t really been listening.
I had just climbed into the hotel bed that for once felt unbelievably firm and comfortable instead of saggy and springy when my phone rang. I had a nagging suspicion it was Eric calling me either because he’d gotten into a fight or was too drunk to drive. I was tempted to ignore it. I felt like I hadn’t slept in days. But he had my car. The car Lottie had picked out for me. I groaned and picked it up. It was Lottie’s number.
“Hello?” My heart was racing again. I had only dropped her off an hour ago.
“Um.”
Shit.
“Dietrich, Lydia did something today…”
Goddamn, it. I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon.
“Ok?”
“I don’t know what all she and Eric talked about, but it made her start thinking, or realizing stuff and she got really freaked out and she’s so scared something’s wrong with me, so she called somebody…” Lottie trailed off again.
Somebody? Calling a Somebody was never good. It was even worse if that Somebody was from Somewhere like Omaha.
“Whom did she call, Lottie?” I heard myself saying it.
Christ, I sounded like a pretentious asshole when I used whom. I vowed to stop doing it. Or to at least try.
“His name is Jackson. He’s… I don’t know, he’s been here a long time. He knows a lot. She told him everything that’s wrong with me.”
“Lottie, there’s nothing wrong with you.” Or maybe there was, but I wasn’t going to let anyone treat her like she was defective.
“He wants to meet me. Us. I mean, you and me. He drove into town today and would like to come over tomorrow morning.”
I didn’t tell her it was a good thing he wanted to meet me, because there was no way in hell I was going to let him come near her if I wasn’t there. Some voice in my head told me I was being controlling, that if she wanted to meet with him and tell me to get out of Baton Rouge, she could. I told that voice to shut the fuck up.
“So, will you? Um, you know, meet him?”
“If you want me to, of course, I will.”
Lottie got quiet on the other end and I could picture her biting her lip in that nervous way of hers, worrying.
“Lottie, what all do you know about this guy?”
An inhale. A deep breath. Fuck. He probably was from Omaha.
“He’s like our doctor. He’s the one who took care of Lydia and me when we first came here.”
“And he makes you nervous?”
He was human now. That was all I needed to know.
“He decides things, Dietrich. I don’t know. I want to find out what happened, why I’m like this but when Lydia told him, he said she must have gotten some of the information wrong. What she was describing is impossible. But the way she told it to me, it’s exactly what’s been happening to me, so how can it be impossible?”
She was rambling, anxious, maybe even scared. I definitely didn’t like this asshole. Even if he was just from Waco.
“Wait, Lottie, slow down. What kinds of things does he decide?”
“What if he makes me leave?” Her voice was a whisper now. Is that what had her so frightened?
“He can’t do that, Lottie. I won’t let him. I don’t care who he is, he’s in my world now,” God, that was so clichéd, “and I promised you no one would hurt you. No one is going to make you do anything.”
“But he’ll cut me off.”
“From what?”
“Everything! A
ll the help we get. The money, the drivers’ licenses, the social security cards, the passports, the birth certificates. It all came through him. And he still helps us; he sends us money and he got us these jobs and there are others, in the city, like other doctors so we can go see them and it’s just easier, less… I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would take our DNA, this is still kinda new and it has us all freaked out, so we kinda stick together now and I can’t just ignore him because then I’ll have no one!”
“I...” I stuttered.
No one? How many times had I promised her I would help her, protect her? Didn’t Lottie know that?
“Lottie, I’m not going to abandon you. Why…?”
“God, Dietrich,” she was crying now. I didn’t know if it was because of this Jackson asshole or this Dietrich asshole. “You have no idea how hard this is.”
“I think I have an idea.” I was so drained. I didn’t mean to sound bitter but she wasn’t the only one who was tired of hurting. “Ok, why would he even want you to move? You’re here, and we know each other. The damage has been done. What’s the point of trying to keep us apart now?”
“I don’t know! I’m just scared that he will! I don’t want you to…” Her sobbing choked off whatever she was going to say.
I took a guess. “Lottie, I’m not leaving you.”
“It’s her,” she cried. “It’s her you love! You don’t want to leave her.”
I felt like we had had this argument at least half a dozen times. They were the same person but they weren’t, so what difference did it make?
“Lottie,” I sighed, exasperated, but she didn’t let me finish.
“You will never love me. You can’t. I know that. You can’t ever love anyone but her, and I’ll never be the same, and you have no idea how much it kills me, how much it hurts to love someone who can’t ever love you back.”
