by J. S. Brent
A shift in the sheets, he walked naked towards her, embraced her and let her feel his manhood against her back. He groaned and kissed her neck. She bent her neck to the other side and relished his touch. She felt sensuous and wanted him to want her. She needed his touch. It was what she needed more than anything; a touch from Cortes, nothing more. Dyanela could not imagine needing anything more after that.
Cortes lifted her and brought her to bed. He undressed her and watched the buds of her breasts lift and sigh. She was expectant now. He was in heat and slid inside her easily. She was wet and they continued to do this for awhile.
For some inexplicable reason, Dyanela’s eyes grew wide with shock as though she remembered who she was. Cortes only recognized her as the woman he loved but he had reached a part in her which denied this. It was as though she had forgotten who she was for awhile and was now recalling who she had become.
Dyanela hammered his chest. Cortes rolled on her side and grappled his hair in frustration.
“Dyanela!”
“I can’t, Cortes!”
“I love you. Help me.”
Dyanela slid into her gown and walked back to the balcony. She dropped to the floor and screamed a long primal scream that was filled with agony, devoid of pride, weak, humiliated and desperate for an answer to her pain. She looked up to the sky and screamed some more. She tore open her gown and exposed her breasts.
Cortes buried his head on the pillow and cried. He stifled his own scream with the pillow.
***
So, the old Rose had taken something from him, after all, Cortes sneered. He drank his whisky and tipped the bottom of his glass on the table. He watched the light dance on the bottom prism of his glass. The light seemed to be imprisoned inside it and it was almost amusing to watch.
He was seated at the Maynila restaurant, avoiding the bar. He had a table to himself and had just eaten a sour soup with milkfish called Sinigang. He had carefully worn a good suit and wanted to look good, for some reason. He had watched himself in the mirror and felt empty even though he looked great.
Dyanela was asleep when he left for the restaurant. The restaurant was done in luxurious blue and gold. The seats were deep and felt like royalty to sit on.
Soon, the lights dimmed and couples from the candle-lit tables stood up to dance when the music began. They danced like shadows in the dark.
Cortes watched them all from afar, mocking their movements. He would not allow Dyanela to enter his thoughts, not tonight, not tonight.
A woman wearing a gold-fitted, short dress brushed his arm and dropped her bag, spilling its contents.
Cortes picked up the contents of the bag and looked up to give it to the woman. She was a sharp, mestiza beauty with porcelain skin and had heavily made up eyes and dark red lipstick.
“I’m sorry, how clumsy of me.” She said with a hint of mirth.
“It’s alright, Miss?”
“Julia.” She said but Cortes could not hear her due to the blaring music. They were playing salsa.
“Sorry?”
“Julia. I am Julia Angara. And you are?”
“Oh, I am Cortes Ancheta.”
If the woman recognized his name she did not show it.
“May I?” she asked to sit on the chair adjacent to him.
“Yes, please do.” He answered.
She sat on the chair easily with the sensuous movement of an eel.
Cortes was strangely attracted to her which was unusual because he had never wanted women except for Dyanela.
“Punyeta this music. I need a hard drink. Would you order me one, Cortes Ancheta of Ancheta Enterprises. How on earth did you end up in this godforsaken land of mine?”
And then she laughed, a deep throaty laugh which he shared. He liked her. He liked her very much because she recognized his power, the old self he had almost forgotten after what he had been through.
***
Cortes woke up and it was morning. The woman beside him was sleeping on her stomach and had her white back was exposed to him. Her face was easily towards him as though she watched him all night and fell asleep.
Julia, her name was Julia. Cortes remembered.
What he could not recall was how they ended up in this particular hotel room. He didn’t even want to go into details of how he got here.
He was naked underneath the sheets and grasped his hair in anger over himself. He wanted to get away from this woman as far away as possible.
He did not rouse her. He simply wore his clothes and walked out of the room. He took the elevator and went to the ground floor. He wandered aimlessly for awhile before settling to eat a hearty American breakfast with coffee at the lobby.
After his meal, Cortes laid back on the chair and watched the people pass by. He wanted to be one of them. Light, airy creatures going about their daily affairs, he thought.
Cortes stood up and left the lobby. He took the elevator and went straight up to their floor. When the door of elevator opened he could hear her screaming. Housekeeping and management were milled by the door of their suite.
He strode forward to the suite and opened the door with his card. He saw his beloved, tearing at her hair and screaming while down on the floor. Her eyes were wild with abandon. She wore the same nightgown she wore days before and her hair was a mess all over her head. She was wearing make-up with lipstick that missed the contours of her mouth.
Dyanela, Cortes called her name and she looked at him, crazed.
Cortes picked up the blanket from the bed and wrapped her with it. She shook and closed her eyes while copious tears seeped through. Cortes embraced her and wept as well.
That night, Cortes hired a private plane that took them straight to Los Angeles. All through the journey he hugged her and kissed her hair.
***
Dyanela opened her eyes. Everything was white and sterile. There was no color but there was a wide window. She stood up and walked towards the window. The sun was burning bright outside. There were trees at the same level of the window. There were people playing with a ball on the grass below. There were white dressed attendants playing with them.
She wept and missed Cortes. She realized she was in a hospital, a mental institution. She wasn’t surprised. Cortes had given up on her. He did not come back to their suite that night and now he had left her in a facility.
The door to her room opened and a nurse in entered with a cart of food. She looked at it with askance. There was a table and a chair. The nurse placed the tray there. She looked at her.
“Dr. Emerson will be with you shortly Ms. Dyanela.”
Dyanela sat on the bed and wished she had a book to read at least. She realized she was beginning to have desires again and felt good about it.
After the nurse left, the door opened again and a young man with blonde hair and the most expressive blue eyes, came in. He wore a white coat with a pale, blue shirt inside. He looked at her and smiled. The smile was as warm as the sun outside.
He looked like the epitome of sunshine to Dyanela.
“Hi Dyanela. I am Doctor David Emerson.” He shook her limp hand. “I’ll tell you a secret. You are not locked in.” he laughed. “You may leave any time you want but I do have to tell you that this is the best place for you to be in right now. This is Summerhurst Place. It is a facility for troubled people but the people here are guests and we choose only those who come in willingly. So, are we all set to stay?”
Dyanela looked at him and melted. No, her heart said wanting to go back to Cortes but yes she wanted to stay because she was exhausted.
“Why don’t you eat your breakfast and rest some more, ok?” he smiled at her self-assuredly.
He left the room and Dyanela looked at breakfast. She felt her old sensations coming back. Later she would explore the facility and maybe borrow a book.
***
The facility as it turned out, was beautiful.
Dyanela walked through the facility’s huge hallways. There was a workout hall
, another for recreation and outside, a pool where guests lay under the sun on lounging chairs. She specially loved the forest at the edge of the facility. The trees were so green, tall and old. Beneath the trees were an unexpected flower garden and a waterfall.
She returned from the forest feeling invigorated. Among the trees, she was able to forget the past events in her life. She could forget the night Cortes did not return home at a time she needed him most. She wasn’t insipid not to know what happened to Cortes but the thought of him with another woman gave her chills down her spine. How could he simply be a man and not more the way she thought he would be, Dyanela wondered.
She had so many questions about herself and Cortes that she felt on alien ground. She had always relied on her visions as a special part of herself that made her different from other women. But now she felt unclean from her kidnapping, and ugly from the way Cortes behaved when she couldn’t make love to him. Knowing this gave her a sense of control over herself. At least she was able to know exactly how she felt and that was a start. She wondered if Dr. Emerson could help her sort out these feelings of confusion and abandonment. She had just killed a man and that was something a woman at most could experience in a lifetime.
Cortes came to visit in the afternoon. He looked relaxed in slacks and a sports shirt that clung to his fit torso. He smelt nice and was irresistible. Dyanela resisted the urge to touch him. She wanted him to be the one to want to touch her, she thought proudly.
They talked of ordinary things. He didn’t seem to want to let her go so she played on this. She crossed her legs and allowed him to see a part of her thigh. His initial impulse was to look down at it and he started fumbling on his words as they talked about the facility. She laughed inside. She was going to use the facility to stay away from him for awhile. Let him be the one to want me back instead of me wanting to go back out there with him, she decided and was surprised at the way she was playing this all out. Yes, she was angry at him, but she would never let him know that. She wanted him to suffer this time.
Dyanela had plans. She knew there was a salon in some part of the facility, also, she could go online and buy clothes she liked that would bring out the better part of her personality. She was going to be beautiful. She wanted revenge. She wanted Cortes on the floor drooling over her. It was all very simple and exciting. The possibilities were endless at this point and she was going to enjoy every minute of it.
She went back to her room, entered the bathroom and showered. She washed her hair, soaped herself until her flesh tingled. After the bath she felt renewed, totally in control and relaxed. She could play this game with Cortes, after all.
***
The following morning, Doctor Emerson came into her room with some fresh flowers in a clear vase.
“You look happy this morning.” He observed. “So, what are you going to do today?”
“I don’t know, I have some therapies lined up but I want to do something with my hair. It looks awful. I’m going to have it done.”
“That’s the spirit, Dyanela. There is always room for you to grow and being aware of your physicality is not a bad thing.” He scribbled something on the chart then looked up. “In fact, it is the first step in the right direction. Ok? I’ll be back tomorrow and we can talk some more.”
“Sure.” She replied feeling exhilarated at the prospect of what she was going to do.
“Remember, my facility is not an institution. Treat it more like, well, a spa.” He laughed.
“Oh, this is your facility?”
“Yes, I put money in it from my family inheritance. I thought it would be the best way to help people feel good about themselves again. I just love making people happy again. It’s always been my calling. I’ve had a happy childhood. I want to spread it around, as thinly as possible.”
Dyanela laughed. She liked him, in fact she secretly thought he was attractive. So, he had a happy childhood. A tinge of guilt entered Dyanela’s mind. It was a pernicious thought about Cortes’s past having a sad childhood. No, she pushed the thought aside. She was going to enjoy every minute of her time here. In here at Summerhurst she felt safer than ever before and she realized she needed that.
And so the day continued and Dyanela went on group therapy. It was a tight group of five. There were three women and two men. They seemed wealthy and conclusively bored with their lives having mundane problems that included too much boredom that he’d rather kill himself, a woman getting on with age and couldn’t handle it so checked into the facility before she spiraled out of control and further reduced her looks, to sheer trivial love sick problems that were just too shallow for Dyanela to digest. But she went along with the therapy and decided not to reveal too much of herself. She simply said she had problems with her fiancée and needed to find answers on how to make him happy.
“Oh you mean that hot Latino guy?” A girl asked her.
“That’s Cortes Ancheta, you moron.” The girl next to her hissed. “He’s like a techno giant in Silicon Valley.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. That guy?” and so they went on to discuss details they knew about him making Dyanela blush to the roots of her hair being Cortes’s fiancée. Yes, she was flattered Cortes was after her but she wanted an identity of her own so that when she stood beside him, she was also a woman of substance herself.
They were to meet everyday to discuss progress which was fine by Dyanela. She was more interested in helping out because that was who she was, someone who always wanted to help out.
The first thing she did was to order clothes from catalogues online. She ordered sassy animal prints which were in season, a variety of tops to go along with them. She went on to order little black and red dresses plus heels in various colors. She also bought spring dresses in pastel colors and sandals for a refreshing sprightly look. She also bought hats and shades for her foray beside the pool.
She went to the salon and had her hair rebonded and dyed to a tawny gold color to bring out her skin tone. She experimented with make-up and chose one lipstick, the lush berry shade, to use all the time. She chose some perfumes and felt she was all done.
The following day she looked smug as a Cheshire cat who just got her cream. Dr. Emerson checked on her as usual and they talked lightly about the therapy the day before. He announced, as usual, that he would see her the next day.
She had her orders rushed and the packages came the next day. She organized her ensemble and thought of starting to look good when Dr Emerson would come in the following day.
Dyanela wore a demure blue spring dress and strappy sandals. She put on make-up and sprayed perfume on her wrist.
Dr. Emerson came in on time as usual.
He seemed distracted and could not follow their line of conversation. He kept checking out her low cut neckline and was almost impossible to talk to. He dropped his pencil and excused himself saying he had to go check on another guest immediately.
Dyanela spent the morning with her groupmates in therapy and the men could not help but whistle. The women complimented her apparent improvement in appearance. They said she really looked better than the day before when she seemed sad and guarded.
Strangely, as she wandered about the halls, lingering in the library for books to read, a nurse came over and told her she was being summoned by Dr. Emerson. Dyanela blinked her eyes unable to figure what on earth she had done for him to ask for her to have a private session.
Dr. Emerson was in his study and looked troubled. He seemed deep in thought when she came in so she put on a bright smile, the kind he gave her when she first arrived, to cheer him up instead of the other way around.
Dr. Emerson looked at her in a scowling way that made Dyanela very nervous. What had she done this time, she wondered.
“Please sit, Miss Dyanela.”
Dyanela sat on the chair before his desk. He was looking at her intensely through his thin rimmed glasses. He walked over to the other chair before her and talked to her.
“They say
you haven’t been talking much during group therapy sessions.”
“That’s not true.” She said. “Who said that?”
“We video all sessions and I review them at the end of the day, Dyanela.” He used her name now, rather informally.
“Ok, what do you need from me? Did Cortes tell you what happened to me?”
“No, Cortes simply placed you under my-- our care with no thought to giving us a clue as to who you are or what on earth you’ve been through.”
“That was mighty of him.” She sneered derisively.
“You seem to have problems with your custodian.” He melted like cheese before her and she looked at him.
“Custodian? Is that how he introduced himself?” she asked rather hurt.
“No, I mean I really don’t know your relationship with Cortes and it really is none of my concern. My concern is you Dyanela. He gave you to us so it is my job to make you better. It entails opening up so we can help you approach life better. Do you understand?”
“Ok, I promise to be more open to my groupmates, so can I go now?”
“Yes, but here’s the thing, I will need to have you here for private sessions with me along with your group therapies. Is that alright Dyanela?”
