The Companion Contract

by Solace Ames

  “Sorry I fucked up,” he said cheerfully into the laptop camera. “Be good to Xiomara, okay?” He’d made the video for the fans, of course, but there were other messages layered into the usual wry, self-deprecating stream of consciousness. “And now, here’s ‘Wonderwall’! No, seriously, I got fired from the landscaping crew, but I just landed a gig playing piano at an Italian restaurant on weekends, so I’m working on some standards—”

  He smiled into the laptop camera, the same toothy grin I remembered so well, and launched into a wonderful, terrible synthesizer version of “Careless Whisper.”

  We emailed him back with a tongue-in-cheek list of smooth jazz requests. “He’ll be all right,” I reassured Emanuel.

  Emanuel, always the fatalist to my optimist, made a grumbling but hopeful noise in response.

  The next day, once Emanuel had recovered from his hellish jet lag, we moved out of the Venice Beach apartment into Isabel’s family’s house, which was so cramped with guests we had to sleep on a squeaky old sofa bed in the living room. The move saved time, the time we desperately needed for the reunion’s last stand before the last of the money ran out.

  Fausto was reliable as a rock. Juan Carlos was also reliable, now that his girlfriend was settled and had a birth plan. Xiomara was exceptionally reliable. She worked long hours with photographers and videographers and lawyers without complaining, showed up on time or early, and hardly ever looked overwhelmed, although every once in a while I caught her shaking her head in an obvious what even is my life moment.

  A stylist re-dyed her hair platinum blond and calculated her eyebrow arch with the rigor of a Caltech astrophysicist. The physical trainer made her lose five pounds, five pounds only, which relieved me.

  Four reliable people in one band, all working together.

  “It was never this easy with Miles,” Emanuel told me.

  Xiomara’s fling with Markov had splashed her image all over gossip sites. Transgender punk diva was a frequent caption. She told the reporters she might write a song about him, but otherwise, the affair would have to remain private. Questions about Miles were likewise politely deflected.

  The day before the first song release, a bouquet of flowers arrived for her at the studio. Nothing extravagant or expensive. A small orchid arrangement in a clear glass vase, and a single word: Star. It wasn’t signed, but we all knew, from the ugly name of the town, who it was from.

  I’d been running errands back and forth, coordinating with Xiomara’s stylist, poring over balance sheets and receipts and invoices with Isabel. I was ridiculously busy, kind of sexually frustrated, nostalgic for the days at the mansion, but above all, happy.

  I hoped Miles could get to that kind of happy one day.

  My thoughts swerved from Miles to Gabriel in a natural symbolic progression. That night, after we settled into our shaky bed and Emanuel wrapped up a business call, I went ahead and asked him, “Did Gabriel make it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, already drifting asleep.

  I kissed his eyelids. “I’ll find out tomorrow. If there’s any time in between all the music business.”

  “There’ll be time,” he murmured. “You’ll see.”

  Chapter Twenty

  In the morning, he explained exactly where all this miraculous, precious time would come from.

  “I reserved two tickets to Manila, leaving tomorrow.”

  I jumped off the sofa bed, crossed my arms and glared at him. Without my weight it sagged heavily to his side, coils groaning in metallic distress. “I hope your next words are for you and me. I can’t handle another travel surprise.”

  “For you and me,” he said, and smiled, pushing the sheets down. He rested his head on his arm, the long muscle on the inside of his arms flexing in a way that made me want to jump right back in bed with him. “If you’re ready, I want to take you home for a visit.”

  “Home? It feels half like home in my mind, but I’ve never been there. But yes, I want to go. I couldn’t do it by myself. My family...Oh my God! I’m going to the Philippines!” I jumped up and down, pounding my heels against the floor, the wobbly boards creaking and sending the sofa bed into a fresh round of shrieking. Emanuel was laughing, and soon I would be too, but for now I just put my hands over my mouth and screamed into my hands and jumped and jumped, drumming a beat of pure joy.

  It wasn’t a good time of day to call my mother, but I knew she wouldn’t mind, so after I kissed Emanuel ten times, I rushed to the phone.

  A dear, sleepy voice murmured hello.

  “Nanay! I can come to visit you!”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow!”

  My mother didn’t say anything, but there were sounds coming over the line, soft breathy sounds edged with hard pain.

  “Are you okay, Nanay?”

  “I’m happy. I’m crying. Oh, I missed you so much, baby.”

  “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

  “What do you want for your homecoming dinner?”

  I closed my eyes and imagined dishes. They swirled around my head until the hurricane of savory steam confused me, and I sank down to the floor. I couldn’t answer questions like this yet. There were so many other things to settle. “I don’t know. But who’ll be there? You and Jimmy?”

  “Everyone will be there. I will make them be there.”

  I couldn’t sink any farther. And then my heart sank down into my stomach. “I don’t want to cause problems,” I moaned.

  “You’re not the problem, baby. You never were.”

  It was my turn to cry.

  She was proud of me.

  When I finally closed the line, an emotionally punishing half hour later, Emanuel scooped me off the floor, my eyes red and ruined.

  He held me for a long time.

  “Are you sure it’s okay to go now?” I asked him, once I could speak again. “With the song release and everything.”

  “I don’t want to be central to any publicity. And I deserve a vacation, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, you do. I don’t know how much of a vacation Manila would be for you. I mean, it’s so busy and polluted and I don’t think you can swim there.”

  “We’ll spend a few days at Surigao del Norte, then.”

  A famous surfing beach. “How do you know about Surigao del Norte?”

  “I’ve been reading a guidebook. I told you I wanted to know your history.”

  “It’s sad. I could give it to you in a sentence. The Spanish came and fucked us over, and then the Americans fucked us over, and then the Japanese Empire fucked us over, and now we go all over the world and send money back home, until one day we don’t, the end.”

  But it wasn’t nearly that sad and simple, and we both knew it.

  So we talked history for a while as we dressed and sorted through suitcases. I showed him a picture of my mother with her parents. “This was her nursing school graduation. My grandmother, my lola, is still alive, but I’ve never met her. I used to see my other grandparents, my Japanese grandparents—they’d visit us in California every other year. They ran a small business making Japanese handicrafts to sell in the U.S. That’s how they came to Manila, in the seventies.”

  “Was there any anger at them, over World War II?” So he knew about the Bataan Death March.

  The words spilled out in a frantic rush. “We killed each other like crazy back then. But today, people can’t afford to be angry. My ojiichan and obaachan had a good business going for a while, then a larger export company drove them out of business. My mom met their son at a Japanese-Filipino event. I’m something like sixty percent Japanese, and part of that is Okinawan, and the rest is a people called Manobo from Mindanao and probably some Chinese and maybe even a Spanish dude somewhere way back down the line, those bastards.” I usually didn’t l
ike breaking myself down into fractions like that, but with Emanuel, it was all right. Together, we could shake our fists at the Spanish. Their crimes were so long ago, they didn’t hurt as much to recall.

  “Will your family all be there?”

  “Mostly. I don’t count my father as part of the family anymore, and of course he’s not going to be there. My oldest sister is working in Singapore. But everyone else, yes. I said my boyfriend would be with me. Jimmy’s going to fucking flip.”

  “Does he play guitar?”

  “A little. Better than me, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ll give him my Ibanez.”

  “Why are you so good to me?”

  “Shh. Don’t ask questions like that.” He tapped his finger over his lips.

  The motion got to me. Hit me in all the right places. I relaxed in his arms, letting the electric feeling roll through my limp body, then shivered off the excess. “Yes, Sir.”

  We’d finally have time for the epic sex he was so expert at. I knew he had a collar waiting in a black velvet bag hidden in a pocket of his suitcase. I hadn’t opened that bag because I’d rather save the surprise, but massaging my fingers over the velvet to feel the leather underneath wasn’t cheating now, was it?

  He was waiting for it, building up to it. I knew because I nearly had his measure now, although maybe there’d always be locked doors at the end of the hallway. That was all right. If I had his heart, I didn’t need his whole past as well.

  Emanuel was ambitious. He was cautious too, but he never said no to pleasure out of hand, as long as the pursuit was reasonably discreet. And he made his own rules.

  I licked my lips, thinking about those rules. He kissed my warm, wet lips, holding my cheek and pulling my face against him. I wanted so much more, wanted him holding me down and driving into me, but there were people frying breakfast and brewing Colombian coffee only a curtained doorway away.

  Discipline.

  Everything in its time and place...

  * * *

  LAX didn’t seem like hell today, just a horribly designed and uncomfortable airport.

  Emanuel carried two guitars. I pushed a cart full of luggage and hastily purchased gift sets. We checked in, breezed by the bar where we’d had the encounter with Lewis, and passed through security without any delays. After the security scan, sitting against a wall and pulling my shoes back on made me unreasonably excited, giving me that magical little-girl-with-dandelion feeling. The journey was real, not theoretical anymore. We were taking the first steps, ready to fly.

  I’d never flown this far before. Fourteen hours in the air, fifteen hours’ time difference. I kept staring at the boarding pass as we walked to the gate, trying to decipher all the numbers. “Will we be chasing the sun?” I asked Emanuel. I wasn’t actually sure what that meant, but it sounded dramatic.

  “No, running away.” He held up his left fist to represent the globe, and traced our path westward, in the opposite direction of the earth’s rotation. The elegantly circling movement of his fingertips made me remember how I’d fallen in love with his hands at the beginning of this miraculous summer. His hands, and then the rest of him, skin and flesh and blood and family.

  I hadn’t met his daughters yet. He told me I would, soon, perhaps as soon as this Christmas. For presents, I planned on buying them dried mango slices and miniature jitneys in Manila. The future opened out for me like a river delta to the sea.

  We were ushered down the walkway and into the plane, then through a curtained corridor. Our first-class seats reminded me of science fiction space pods more suited for suspended animation than earthly travel. I’d never seen anything like them before, mechanized beds enveloped by partition walls studded with bright computer screens. Everywhere I ran my fingers, there were pockets stuffed with luxurious items.

  The only downside was that we weren’t really sitting next to each other. I couldn’t even reach over and touch him.

  He saw the frown on my face, moved over so that we shared my seat. They’d separate us when the flight started, so I took the chance to hug him now. I circled his shoulders like he was the globe. We’d run away from the sun together.

  “Amy. Look.”

  He showed me his phone. The new Avert video loaded.

  “No! Put it on the big screen,” I gasped.

  We pushed at buttons until we got the airline logo replaced with the video. The audio wasn’t working right, but I’d heard the song before, Xiomara’s words with Miles woven into the chorus, a haunting song about...well, about death, as much as it was about anything. Death was a popular subject. But the way Xiomara sang the words made it sound like a celebration.

  She floated there in the middle of the screen, a white cloud behind her, falling out of the sky. The imagery was breathtaking, perfectly matched to her every subtle motion.

  “She looks like an angel.”

  Emanuel didn’t say a word. His lips tightened and he let out a long breath.

  “Are you worried about her?”

  “Yes. But she wanted this. I saw how much she wanted this.”

  The view count on the video rocketed upward with every refresh. The comment count rocketed upward too, so fast we couldn’t scroll quickly enough to keep up with the newest.

  XIOMARA = FLAWLESS!

  Is this about the death of the band?

  Where’s Miles Morrison?

  Jail and/or rehab and/or dead

  This is not Avert, they should change the name

  Shit I don’t care if they call it Mucinex it’s still genius this is everything

  That guitar hook though

  SO GOOD I’M DYING

  Is that a chick or a dude I’m confused

  Are you a shithead or a fuckhead I’m confuuuuuused

  These new fans are so clueless

  I would tapdance on rusty razorblades for a tour

  I’d blow a weregoat for a tour

  How do you pronounce the X?

  LITERALLY DYING RIGHT NOW THAT’S IT I’M DEAD

  “Sir, could you please return to your seat? We’re readying for takeoff.”

  Emanuel apologized politely to the attendant and returned to his own cubicle. The video switched to a kiss-your-ass-goodbye demonstration of safety features.

  I got in a call to Xiomara real quick before we took off.

  “They love you,” I whisper-screamed. “This is going to work.”

  “I’ve got three interviews today. Then I’m shutting it all down and going surfing. And Amy? This wouldn’t have happened without you.”

  I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. And then the attendant had me turn my phone off. God, I hoped we weren’t already going down in their book as the passengers from hell.

  Once the plane took off and leveled, they let us on the internet again, but I forced myself to take a break. It was Emanuel who pulled me back into the information stream, passing me his phone and showing me a picture of a sandy stream-bank.

  “Look to the right.”

  I zoomed in on a triangular wedge topped with two smaller triangular wedges, a graceful collection of V-shapes that broke the surface of the murky water and left a pretty trail of ripples behind. “Is that Gabriel?”

  He nodded. “They think he’ll live a few more years.”

  I smiled, immeasurably glad that he was free. Like he should have been all along.

  The sun set way before its California time. I couldn’t see the colors from my window, but I watched pale stars appear thicker and thicker in a rapidly darkening sky. We were so much closer here, in the crystal air.

  Like most of the other barely seen passengers, we tried to go to sleep despite the early sunset, tucking down into our mechanical beds and drawing the partition walls closed. Turning the public s
pace into private space felt creative, even fun. Like an expensive permission slip to build an adult blanket fort.

  I stretched my spine until I heard it crack, dug my toes into the crisp cotton sheets, and fell asleep to the rhythm of the gently roaring engine.

  My dreams were terrible.

  I said goodbye to my family over and over again. Emanuel smiled down on me coldly and told me you are your own, then walked away. I was rootless, wingless. I fell from the sky to the bottom of the sea and stayed there for ages, geological ages, until everyone I knew was long dead and turned to fossils and I was entirely alone.

  “Amy. The sun is rising. We’re crossing the sun.”

  I blinked awake from my short sleep. Emanuel sat beside me, his big body swallowing up all the space on the bed. He drew the partition wall neatly closed behind him.

  “Already? Are we there?”

  “No. Not for many hours.”

  I sat up and cracked the window open to a violet sky. My bad dreams were already fading, and easy to forget in any case. “Is the light all right for your eyes?” He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses.

  He nodded and smoothed the spiky hair back from my forehead, although it just popped back up a second later, of course.

  I could ask him anything.

  “Why don’t you let me ask what you want?”

  “That was only a game, cariño. You’ve spent enough time worrying about what men want from you.”

  Easing me into retirement—I suspected as much. I looked into his eyes and saw the love there, and flashes of the pain he wanted to save me from, and the pain he had saved me from.

  It was time.

  “So what do you want from me?”

  He answered without hesitation. “Your presence in my life. When I look at you, I could talk all night of souls, and love, and sex, but above all, your presence, because that encompasses everything. You, as my companion, always by my side.”

  “How?” I could feel another category-five emotion storm rising, but this time my eyes were clear. I was tired of crying. I’d save my tears for Manila.