by Solace Ames
“Wow.” I tried to sort out the timeline in my mind. It was epic, biblical. Expulsion from paradise. Sojourn in hell. Escape to Los Angeles and a life in the shadows of the stars. “So you’re what, early twenties? How old is he?
“Not that much older. I don’t even think he’s forty. People back then, they grew up fast. He said he thought was eleven when he shot his first gun and thirteen when...” She shut her mouth tight. We’d crossed a line. I nodded to show I didn’t mind, and I wouldn’t press her.
“Would you like a refill on your coffee?” asked the waitress with a nervous smile.
“No thanks, but we’ll get the check please.” I looked at my phone. I’d been so absorbed in the conversation, collected keys to so many mysteries, how could I have kept track of the time?
It was fifteen minutes after Miles’s meeting let out. And I knew a meeting for parents of terminally ill children started on the hour, and no one wanted to fuck with what little time they had left.
Miles was overdue.
Way overdue.
“Stay here,” I told Xiomara, and jumped out of my chair.
I made for the church, ran across the street and shouldered through the double doors. The adrenaline rush gave me flashbacks to false memories of tearing through zombie-infested warrens. Shit, I watched too many horror movies.
The place was clear, anyway. I peeked into the main meeting room and didn’t see Miles among the somber-faced parents. I checked the women’s bathroom. The men’s. “Sorry,” I yelled at the startled old man with his hands in his pants. No time to be embarrassed. I found the back door, burst out of it, and jogged in place for a second, furiously thinking. If I was Miles and I wanted to get high, where would I go?
He’d find a phone. Call someone. Arrange to be picked up. There was a row of shops starting two blocks away, and at least one of them would have an impressionable young woman behind the counter.
I ran some more, thankful for all that surfing and clean living because I hadn’t even broken a sweat. The sun was hot and high, though, so by the time I saw the alt-Mexican girl with the rainbow hair at the frozen yogurt shop I was breathing hard. “Did you see a man with a dagger at his throat?” I asked her.
She gave me a guilty look and pressed her lips together. Oh yes, he’d been here. I didn’t waste any more time interrogating her. I ran to the right, looking for landmarks. Didn’t find any. Circled back toward the row of shops...
There he was, slouching behind a drive-in sign and licking a frozen yogurt.
“Miles, you bitch,” I yelled at him.
“Why so aggro? I just needed a yogurt.”
“Oh, yeah?” I rested my hands on my thighs and caught my breath while I glared at him.
He pulled off the innocent act for maybe half a minute, until a car pulled up to the drive-in—a beat-up compact covered with band stickers, including more than one Avert logo.
“Your ride is here,” I gasped. “Tell them to keep on driving. And think about your daughter.”
His face turned so cold. He’d flipped to a state where people didn’t matter, only pure sensation. I wasn’t his companion anymore, I was a thing standing between him and heroin. The transformation didn’t shock me. All addicts had this evil side to them. All human beings, really—the drugs just brought it out a little quicker.
Two girls shot out of the car. The driver was big, white and hefted a car club. “He’s coming with us,” she announced.
“The first thing I’m going to do is rip out your nose piercing,” I warned her. “You’ll get uglier real fast.” I struck a pose from Zumba she might mistake for kung fu, if I was lucky.
I wasn’t lucky. The light of adoration practically shone out of her eyes as she stared at Miles—I might as well have been a goddamn army of ninjas, for all she cared. She took a step forward. Raised the club.
Oh, fuck. I wasn’t scared of pain, but I didn’t want to fail. I’d already failed so many people, no matter how hard I tried. Emanuel.
Miles darted between us and blocked her. She wrenched the club backward right as he grabbed it. They spun, twisted, and I didn’t get out of the way in time—someone shoulder-checked me and I went down hard, only just managing to break my fall with my hands. The sound of cars honking disoriented me, making it hard to remember which direction was up. The heel of my palm burned. I staggered to my feet.
Miles grabbed my arm and ran away with me.
“I wasn’t thinking,” he said, low and ashamed, once we’d found a stopping place away from the street.
“You made me look like a clown.” Not that I wasn’t used to being humiliated for money, I reminded myself. Don’t make a big deal out of this. “We’re going to move on. I’m not going to lie but I won’t make things harder for you. I’ll tell Xiomara I found you eating yogurt.”
“Your hand...”
I dug a wet nap out from my purse and cleaned the scrape where I’d hit the asphalt. “It’s nothing. Let’s go back.”
We stayed quiet all the way back, and I wouldn’t look at him.
* * *
Xiomara blinked rapidly when I told her about the yogurt in the car, and one of her immaculate eyebrows struggled not to rise. But she left it alone.
We talked about music. “I’ve heard the new songs,” she said. “They’re good. At least most of them are—some of them sound unfocused. Too many tempo changes that don’t make sense.”
“They all have to be as good as ‘Second Skin,’” Miles said. “If they’re not, there’s no fucking point. Believe me, I’m not interested in making the equivalent of a Spinal Tap jazz album with this kind of money at stake. They’ll be good and they’ll be catchy too. We’ll whip them into shape. Nothing wrong with being a whore for the label.”
I kept my eyes on the road, my hands on the wheel, my mind blank and peaceful.
Xiomara sighed. “Jesus, Miles.”
He started singing a song about Jesus. I’d never heard it before. Maybe it was improvised. I wondered if he was really going off the deep end, or just faking it. Then again, faking crazy was as crazy as being crazy for real. Wasn’t that the lesson of Hamlet?
“What’s the lesson of Hamlet?” I asked Xiomara, just to keep my mind off Miles and his crazy-ass Jesus song. “I never went to college.”
“I don’t think you can boil it down to a single moral. It’s a journey that ends pretty badly, and people fail a lot along the way, and you learn different things from how they fail.”
“That makes sense. I remember he died in the end. You studied computer science in college?”
Miles quieted down to listen. I was glad he stopped, but I couldn’t help missing the sound of his voice. No matter what he sang, it always left an echo.
“Computer science and sociology,” Xiomara answered. “I wasn’t sure I had a place in the world before all the sociology classes. I came over here as a little child, and learned how to write in English before Spanish, and had people tell me I was too black to be from where I said I was. It was confusing! But then I came to understand I was just the right amount confused, and everyone else was full of false certainty.”
“That makes a lot of sense.”
We talked about culture and identity the rest of the ride home. Xiomara had easy answers to some of the hardest questions, a way of coming at the problems sideways. Miles stayed quiet. I hoped he was learning too, at least learning to keep his mouth shut.
“I’ll write a song for you, Amy,” he said as we pulled up to the courtyard.
A peace offering.
I was suddenly terrified he’d make it about my family history.
“Sure,” I said. “Make it a scary song. Put monsters in it. Maybe something from the Philippines. There’s one that’s just the flying severed top half of a woman, and it eats babies.”
; “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do that.”
Xiomara waited until he got out of the car, then turned to me and took my hands in hers. “Whatever you’re getting paid for this, it’s not enough.”
I smiled and shrugged. “He’s not so bad. And Emanuel’s been good to me.”
“I carried a torch for Emanuel, when I was younger. Before I figured out he only saw me as a daughter. It’s easy for that kind of love to pass away, if you’re patient and you wait long enough. It’s going to happen any day now, again. For what I feel for Miles.”
“Good luck, Xiomara.” I appreciated her advice. I knew it myself, but hearing the same words from someone outside my own head—well, it helped. It really did.
“We’ll talk more later. I’m glad you’re here.” She squeezed once, let go, then followed Miles into the studio.
I parked the car, went upstairs and spent a long time in my room after that, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, listening for the faint sound of the waves in the distance. Now that the adrenaline from the standoff had drained away, my blood ran cold and sluggish.
How did the saying go, that you had to love yourself before someone loved you? I didn’t hate myself, but I sure as hell didn’t love myself. I didn’t even know who I was anymore. A cut-up, partial girl. And according to some, not even a girl...a fetish-thing with robot eyes and a boy’s slim body.
I’d do anything to make these terrible thoughts go away. Fuck, even heroin. I made myself crawl off the bed, shivering, and went for the headphones as if they were a needle. I’d close my eyes tight, play music and look to lose myself, at least for one song.
I couldn’t even get to the headphones before the tears came, marks of burning shame forcing themselves through my violated eyelids.
I wasn’t anywhere near as strong as I pretended to be, and I was only getting weaker. With every test, I came closer to failing and falling apart. Soon I’d be too weak to even pretend, and that would be the worst of all. I curled onto the floor and cried like a child. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt and I wasn’t strong enough to bear the pain alone.
A hand touched my shoulder. I hadn’t even heard the door open. I blinked and saw a blurry vision.
Emanuel. I was so ashamed.
“This is nothing,” I whispered through clenched teeth.
“No,” he said. “This is everything.” I felt his arms around me, drawing me up to lean against his chest. He was the realest part of the world, solid as a mountain, there for me in that moment. I stopped crying and listened to his steady heartbeat, inhaled shakily and smelled the ocean on him, or maybe it wasn’t the ocean at all—he smelled so good I couldn’t help but think of the ocean and all the things I’ve ever loved.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
I lay cradled against him until my higher mind drifted back. And then I was afraid. I didn’t want him to think of me as weak in any unnatural way. “These are growing pains,” I said, marshalling my excuses. “It’s a transition time for me. I’ll be fine. I promise. Thank you for holding me.”
“Did he hurt you?” He stroked my wrist, below the scrape on the heel of my palm, his fingers pale against the brown of my skin, the contrast comforting and familiar.
“No, not really. This isn’t about Miles. Sometimes it gets too much for me. Like you said. Everything.”
The gut-deep depression had passed, but a more intellectual fear had taken its place. This attachment I had to Emanuel was immature. I should know better. Expect less. I broke free from his arms and tottered to my feet, keeping my head turned away so he wouldn’t see my puffy eyes, the smeared eyeliner.
There was a knock at the door, rat-tat-tat, and then Miles edged in. I saw him from the corner of my puffy eyes and silently cursed. He must have been waiting outside with Emanuel. “Hey,” he said, a tentative announcement. Maybe another peace offering.
“Did you hurt her?” Emanuel asked, on his feet as well and suddenly very, very close to Miles.
The temperature in the room dropped from Malibu noon to Arctic midnight. I swear to God, I felt the breath freeze in my lungs, and my eyes stopped burning. Just like that.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even blink.
Miles looked up into Emanuel’s eyes without flinching. He seemed to draw himself higher and tighter, like a bristling cat. “Yes,” he said. And in a quiet voice that was entirely at odds with his body language, he added, “I apologized.”
I knew Miles well enough by now—I held at least one of the keys to his strange nature. I knew what he was screaming inside. I’m not scared of you.
He should have been.
Emanuel’s arm shot out and grabbed the collar of Miles’s shirt, constricting it around his neck. My senses were so heightened I could hear the cotton creaking. The heat roared back, in my heart and chasing up and down my spine. There was violence in the room.
“Come with me,” Emanuel said. He didn’t wait for an answer. He just moved, and Miles moved with him, whether he wanted to or not.
To the bathroom door. Around the corner, out of sight. My knees were locked. I couldn’t really process what was happening, couldn’t predict the future. I almost called out to protest that no, Miles didn’t hurt me, but then I remembered he’d hurt me after all, just not with his hands...
There was a sharp thud noise from the bathroom, then a similar sound, but softer. Miles hitting the floor, I imagined, and flinched.
Emanuel walked out alone. He stood at arm’s length from me, as if one step farther and the violence would leap between us. I still wanted, perversely, to close the distance. To see how infectious the force of him really was, to test myself.
His voice was calm, rational, soothing. “The pain is an empty gesture, given his nature. He probably enjoyed it. Nevertheless, I promised.”
I’ll hurt him myself. Yes, I remembered.
I didn’t know whether to thank him or point out the flaws in his unconventional code of honor. Maybe he was very, very good at playing everyone, and he knew this would make things easier between me and Miles. I mouthed the first word of thank you then couldn’t bring myself to say it. My stomach tightened around the word.
Oh, but I could thank him down on my knees, and the thought made me outrageously slippery with desire, melting inside. I wanted to offer myself to him, offer everything I was and would be, if only I knew he would accept.
He nodded once and walked past me. Out the door.
Gone.
And that was good and right, because offering myself to Emanuel while Miles was lying on the floor in the next room was one degree too fucked up even for me. Even with all the sparking, stripped and tangled wires in my mind and between my legs. I took a deep breath. And another one. And it didn’t help. The air in the room was heavy with sex and need and hopeless longing. No relief.
Miles rounded the bathroom doorway, leaning at a broken angle. He walked slowly and carefully to the bed and laid himself down. I couldn’t tell where Emanuel had hit him. Somewhere that wouldn’t leave marks or permanent damage, I was sure—Emanuel would be neat and precise in that regard.
I broke my frozen pose, went to the bed and lay down next to Miles.
“You should go to him,” Miles said.
“You’re the last person in the world I’ll take advice from. But thanks anyway. I guess you mean well.” I wasn’t sorry for Miles, or angry at him. He wasn’t at the center of my story anymore, if he ever had been. He belonged to another woman. What we did with our bodies, in the day or night, didn’t change that.
“I’ll get up soon. Go back, keep working. We’ve moved past more than this.”
“Good. And Miles? If you run away again, I’m not going to throw myself in the way. So think hard, next time.”
We stared at the ceiling and shared the silence.
“We were gett
ing the band back together,” he said. “I was using. He told me I had to stay away from her and go to rehab, or we wouldn’t go on. I fucked up. I lost her. I lost everything. Turned out she was better off without me, though, so I guess it all worked out in the end.”
“This isn’t the end. And start taking your meds, okay?”
He sighed in what I hoped was weary agreement.
Chapter Nine
Miles started taking his meds.
The SSRI cocktail helped his appetite and murdered his sex drive. He could hold a coherent conversation, but complained of a metallic taste in the back of his mouth and random headaches. The songs didn’t leave him, so he kept taking the meds. I couldn’t have made him. That was his decision.
I made sure he ate well, reminding him three times a day. He could stand to gain a few pounds and so could I.
I avoided Emanuel and Xiomara for a while, not wanting to intrude on their intense Spanish conversations. Fausto and I played chess in the outdoor kitchen sometimes, while El Tigre played a combat game on his phone that involved a lot of growling, and Isabel did bookwork. I bought more curtains for different windows, trying to match the colors of the house. Was this what being a housewife felt like? It was all so new to me. Small goals that added up every day, and a sense of being included, of being necessary.
Three days after Miles’s abortive escape, I opened a disturbing email.
I know you’re staying with Miles and Emanuel. You’re in the right place at the right time and I’m talking millions. Want to find out more? Let’s set up a meeting.
The address was a throwaway mixture of letters and numbers. I immediately went downstairs, where Emanuel and Isabel and Xiomara, draped shoeless and casual over the modernist aluminum chairs, passed letters back and forth and softly murmured Spanish to each other. They were getting things done. I hated having to interrupt the hum of their energy.
