“What are you waiting for?”
“My date,” he said, and as we watched, a skinny brunette wearing a cinched coat floated from the night holding a paper bag with a bottle top poking out. “We'll need that,” he said, low so only I could hear. When she approached I opened the door. They both passed me and stood in the entryway.
“I'm Vivi,” I said. “Francine is my mom.”
“Cindy,” the woman said, while I took her coat. I waited to see if the guy would say who he was, but he only stood staring. Cindy elbowed him with an irritated look on her face. “This is Alejandro Cruz.”
He rolled his eyes, put his hand over his chest and said, “Shit. Sorry, that's me.”
I took the beer from Alejandro.
“Cindy, is that you?” Marion came into the foyer and led both Cindy and Alejandro into the dining room.
I moved to the refrigerator with the beer. There was an entire case already in there, so I set the new one on the counter with a heavy clink. Alejandro darted in and handed me the bag with the bottle in it.
“Introductions are going to be fun,” he said with a wink. He stared another minute and headed back out.
Jasper didn't look up when I came in, only leaned farther into the TV screen. I took the remote and gave him an apologetic frown when I switched the channel to light classical music per my mother's request. His face fell before he gave me a wide-eyed look, fighting to return to reality, as if he were Sleeping Beauty and I'd just planted a big wet one. I took his hand and led him to his seat at the head of the long oak table in the dining room. My father's place.
“Please sit,” my mother said to Alejandro and Cindy, gesturing to the last two empty chairs.
I brought wine in from the kitchen. When I got back, Alejandro sat with his elbows up on the table, staring at Jasper, his hands clasped beneath his chin. Alejandro wore the most endearing expression of amusement. Cindy with her pinched mouth and little brown eyes, furrowed her brow in confusion; her date seemed to be openly fawning in the most embarrassing way. I didn't care. This new guest added intoxicating electricity to the air, and I knew things were going to get good.
Jasper didn't say anything for several long seconds, just let his face work for him—eyebrows arching, lips curling down in a frown like a smile that denoted genuine surprise and delight. The other guests were silent while they watched the interaction. Jasper finally opened his mouth to speak then looked to me and stared, like he just remembered I was there, or like he'd been caught. Then that look disappeared and he swept his gaze around the table.
“Alex, what?” Cindy finally said in a high voice.
“Sorry,” Alejandro said. “Jasper and I used to run around Hanover together, in college, what like a million years ago?” He faced Jasper who snorted a laugh and sat back swigging on the last of his beer.
I fought the impulse to give Alejandro a big hug and thank him or somehow acknowledge that I knew he was the one who first had his way with Jasper's beautiful ass. Instead I said, “We were just there.”
Jasper kept his face neutral.
“You both attended Dartmouth?” Cindy said.
“At least fifteen,” Jasper said.
“Well, you two still need to eat,” my mother said to the new guests, standing and pushing the bowls and plates toward them. As she poured them wine, let them spoon and cut portions for their plates, and generally fell over herself for a minute as she does with new guests, Alejandro and Jasper watched each other from across the table with an intensity I had never seen on two men's faces. I had this insane urge to bounce up and down in my chair and clap my hands with delight.
Once they were settled, Jasper said, “So how did you make it out here?”
Alejandro swallowed, turned to my mother and said, “This is wonderful. Wonderful!”
My mother nodded. Cindy made a noise in assent and took a sip of her wine.
“I got a job teaching at the University. Latino Studies and Mexican American History. I started this fall quarter.”
“And that's how you met Cindy?” I asked.
Cindy addressed my mother, “I work with Marion. We thought this would be a good way to help him meet more people, and to meet an important author,” she gave the most simpering smile, “only I didn't know you already knew Jasper Caldwell.”
Alejandro beamed. Jasper laughed again. I poured another glass of wine and sat back to listen. Jasper asked and Alejandro explained what he'd been doing since they last saw each other. Travel. Two masters degrees. A PhD. More travel. Apparently if you wrote the right sort of letters you could go almost anywhere on someone else's dime. His last trip took him to Colombia.
“Research,” he said and took a gulp of his wine. “You've been busy,” Alejandro said to Jasper, who shrugged like he didn't want to talk about it.
As we listened to Jasper and Alejandro catch up, the rest of us all helped ourselves to juicy pot roast, roasted baby potatoes and carrots glazed with maple and brown sugar. My mother sat next to Jasper, I sat on the other side, and she turned her eyes to me every few minutes to gauge my reaction to the conversation. We both loved surprises and this was a delightful one—she had no idea how delightful. Inevitably talk turned literary. Jasper answered questions and offered opinions when they asked what he thought of the current year's Pulitzer and National Book Award finalists.
Marion wiped her pink mouth with a cloth napkin and said, “Jasper, I really liked this latest book.”
One eyebrow twitched on her husband's face.
“Thank you,” Jasper said. As I watched him, the color began to drain from his face, and a stone sank to my gut. His smile was perfect though, and his eyes were attentive. It was the body snatcher pose again. There were two of him. The performing Jasper, and my Jasper. I vowed I would get him back after this—better yet, not let him completely slip away.
Marion worked her napkin between her fingers and I could positively smell the glee on her. There was an evil glint in her eye when she said, “All your characters were so well done, so vivid, so real. Can you explain why Vanessa, the heroine's daughter is, well, to say it the way that critic put it in the New York Times—” Here she nodded to Susan who held up her hands as if she wanted it clear she had no part in what was coming. She had been in Jasper's seat enough times. Marion continued, “She's a bit flat.”
I stabbed a carrot, watching his face.
His jaw tightened and he said, “I don't read those.”
I let the orange sweetness bite the tip of my tongue and began licking around the edge of my mouth. His eyes slid toward me but only for a second. He pushed his lips inward to stifle a smile. The color came back for a moment.
“You don't read your reviews?” both ladies said from the other end of the table.
Susan gave me a wink before turning her attention to Jasper.
Jasper pushed his plate away and took a sip of his beer. Marion and Cindy looked at each other and shrugged before Marion said to her husband, “What would you say about that?”
He made a vague hand gesture in the air and went back to pushing carrots around his plate.
Something stirred inside me watching Jasper's face, the hardness that covered the flash of disappointment. He had to be used to this, though it still affected him. I thought of the anxiety I had when I sent a new manuscript or story to a new editor. That was nothing. Jasper had a serious reputation to uphold, readers and people who were paid to read him and comment for all the other vultures. The crap he put up with was after the fact when there was nothing he could do about it. I felt an insane urge to make him small and hold him inside of me and keep him safe. I checked that, shook it off wondering if it was again that time of the month. Something about the depth of the feeling and the heaviness in my heart while I watched this told me my feelings were more complicated than hormones.
I slid the top of my foot along his calf, and got a minor thrill that went all the way to my groin when his eyes opened wider. I worked my foot inside the leg of his pants. There was on
ly a slim bit of nylon between his warm skin and the end of my toe. The muscle in his jaw flashed for a second, he pulled his lips in again. Goal achieved.
“She wasn't a main character,” my mother offered, patting the table by his hand. She had that same tone in her voice she used to use on Tristan, a perfect mix of adoration and condescension.
“At some point I had to move on. I had been working on that book for five years. I did what I wanted with it. It was done. As I look back on it now, you're right, maybe I could have worked more on Vanessa,” he said with his hands in the air and an agreeable smile on his face.
“So what's it like speaking in front of all those people?” Alejandro looked around the table. “You guys should have seen him back in school. I had to get him wasted before he got up in front of even ten people and read.”
Jasper uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, taking my hand. “It's hard to explain. At first it is a quite an adjustment. I go from being alone all the time to all these people wanting my time. Then it becomes routine; you meet people, answer questions, more often listen to them talk about themselves.”
“I had something weird happen once,” I offered. “In Portland, there was this guy. When I was reading he was like the only friendly face in the audience, and I kept returning to him when I was reading and talking. I think I gave him the wrong idea. Afterward he wouldn't leave me alone. I had to get the store manager to get rid of him.”
Alejandro made an impressed face and looked at me like he wanted to say more.
“What I've been going over the last day or so,” Jasper said in a soft voice, “is that there will always be people I can't please. Who seem to think that because they have read a book that I wrote that they somehow know me, or that I owe them something. I never leave those things feeling like I gave everyone equal attention, and honestly, I wouldn't want to. Writing books that people read hasn't made me any less of an introvert, hasn't made any of those events less painful.”
My mother rested her hand on his for a moment. “Surely though, there is a certain validation in having people want your time?”
Marion whispered something to her husband.
Jasper spoke as he studied the label on the brown bottle, “Those things are very hard for me. I think everyone is judging everything I say, then later when I sign books or shake hands, sometimes I wonder if they are all humoring me. Or I feel like I am suffocating with them all trying to get something from me, and I just don't have it. Everything I can give anyone I have written down. When I talk, it just doesn't work.”
Jasper and Alejandro shared a complicated look. I couldn't wait until everyone else was gone so I could grill Alejandro about Jasper. Did he play the role, as he did for me, of the sweet bottom, making soft noises as he was penetrated? Did Alejandro take it easy on my love, or was it rough…? And for the love of all that smells good and is holy, how could he have just left school and not written or called afterward? Jasper obviously remembered him fondly and they seemed to be enjoying the reunion.
The rest of the dinner guests looked at each other and smiled, and conversation moved to his last essay in the Paris Review. Several people asked him if he knew this or that author or if he'd met any actors. I stood and grabbed his plate, my mother's and mine. They might have known he liked to drink Guinness, but they didn't apparently understand him further than that.
I went into the kitchen and stared out the window over the sink. Craggy branches blew against the night sky, and I wanted to be out there. I was profoundly grateful for my readers who, with the exception of a few jerks who made the wrong assumptions about me, were generous, accepting and interesting people themselves.
Jasper's voice came from behind me. “What can I do?” He placed several empty plates on the counter and rolled up his sleeves.
“No, Jasper, that's—” My mother stood beside him.
He gently took her shoulders and turned her toward the dining room. She made an annoyed sound and gave me a stern look. I glared back: what was I supposed to do?
When she was gone, I took the plates from him and started rinsing them and he loaded the dishwasher. “I don't know how many times she complained about my father's inability to do anything around the house, and here she gets to see what it looks like when a guy actually does and she's freaking out.”
“Where is the dessert?” he asked.
I turned to regard him. “So…wow…”
When he continued to act as if the biggest secret of his life was not sitting in my mother's dining room, I gave up and pointed toward the refrigerator. Inside was a cheesecake made especially for my mother by one of her students who owned a bakery in Coupeville.
Jasper took it out, taking care to keep both hands under the box, and set it on the counter. He scanned the cupboards and I pointed to the one on the far right. He pulled down a stack of small plates and pulled open drawers looking around for the forks.
“My mother will never forgive me for letting you wait on her.”
“If my mother were still alive, she wouldn't forgive me for sitting on my ass the entire night.”
I placed the remaining dirty plates and silverware in the dishwasher and started the coffee. As it brewed, the sturdy aroma of musky berries and deep tropical forests hit my nostrils. I leaned against the sink and watched him.
Since he wouldn't talk about Alejandro, I said, “I'm sorry Marion was so rotten.”
He stood beside me and crossed his arms. “That was nothing. One reading I gave in Ann Arbor this guy quoted verbatim what had to be one of the worst reviews I ever got. This was a pretty friendly group.”
I took one of his hands. I studied his knuckles, pink and red contrasting against the white skin. I ran my thumb over them, stopping to smooth down the hairs on the backs of his fingers.
“I don't know why I didn't say this before, but I love you and I don't care about all that big author shit.”
He rested his head on mine and took a breath, long and slow like he could pull in everything about me from the top of my head. When he didn't say anything else I said, “I just thought you should know that.”
My mother's voice rose from the dining room, “The kids are bringing dessert.”
He pressed his lips to the top of my head and pulled away.
“Do you think I am an asshole because I get so annoyed with my parents?”
“No. I understand. Your mom is a handful, but I can tell by the way she watches you,” here he really looked at me, “that she loves you.”
I laughed, “If you're basing that on what you're seeing tonight, just remember I scored a major coup getting you out here. She hasn't gotten to be next to the center of attention in a long time.”
He helped me move the cake from the box to a pretty gold serving platter, and carried the plates and silverware in and set them on the table next to the cake. I poured coffee two at a time, and Jasper came back to bring them out. Last I brought in Mom's china serving dish containing lumps of raw sugar and a tiny silver spoon I knew she would want to use.
At the table she wore the worst look of consternation—each time Jasper came in and out of the kitchen, she gave her friends looks of apology, amazement and disappointment.
Mom served the cake and everyone sat for a minute making noises and agreeing it was the best thing they'd ever eaten. The cake was three layers of dense chocolate cheesecake, the texture of which held the perfect amount of weight against my tongue.
“You make the best coffee, Vivianna.” Susan tipped her head back and sighed.
I held my cup in the air and tipped my head to her. I sipped my coffee, satisfied when I saw Marion's mouth tighten when she drank hers. I loved to make it strong.
“So tell us more about how Jasper was in college,” Cindy said.
“Huckleberry Finn?” Jasper said.
“Like you can't remember,” Alejandro said. “The day I met him he talked my ear off about that book.”
“It is a great book.” Jasper extended his hand. �
�You were the one reading it!”
Alejandro continued, “Later, when I had classes with him, I knew he could write. I mean this dude could put down the words. He'd read this stuff in class and we would all, I mean the whole class would just be like this…” Alejandro demonstrated a slack jawed look of admiration.
“How?” I asked. This might be the one person who could help me get the working side of Jasper.
“We were all handing in this total shit. No description, no rhythm, it was just sort of like: this guy went here, he did this, then he said that and then something bad happens and that's it. Jasper got specific. These colorful images, one word sentences, and these long wandering ones where every other word chimed against the last…he blew everyone away.”
Jasper peeked from behind splayed fingers, clearly embarrassed by Alejandro's praise.
Alejandro leaned forward with his hands between his knees. “Jasper read this thing in class about this kid whose dog gets hit by a car that had everyone, even the guys tearing up. You felt like you were there, you knew how it felt to be this kid and have your best friend die right in front of you. It was so honest, it was so detailed. Everything he did was just like that. If it was funny, it was really funny, shit you just don't think about until someone points it out.” Alejandro raised his brows at me. “You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling shy and grateful at the same time.
A soft smile played across his lips and then he turned to the rest of the table. The energy was back in his voice. “So after that I thought, if he could do that to a room full of dudes who were sober, he would make out like gangbusters if I took him to the campus reading.” He answered the confused stares of the women across from him. “It was a monthly thing, held at a bar near campus.”
We all leaned in, pushing cups away, scooting chairs closer to the table. The banter back and forth was better than any movie. The light in both their eyes, the way each of them gave some and took some, making fun and trying to get the rest of the table to listen to him as he spoke…it was great. Alejandro had livened up everything as surely as if he'd stuck a bomb up everyone's ass. To say I was entranced would be a gross understatement.
Sex and Death in the American Novel Page 20
