“Was the sex still going on?”
“I think so—I was trying really hard not to listen too closely—but this guy Mike came into the room—fully naked, just this totally hairy foul naked dude showing up and taking a hit off a bong. Marianne was annoyed and told him to put something on and he told her to shut up, he did what he wanted in his own home—and who the fuck was I. He kept looking me up and down.” My stomach turned a little at the memory.
“It was all so… disgusting—and embarrassing. Marianne said I was her cousin who was visiting from California and we were going out to lunch, and he walked over and pushed her up against the wall—pushed hard—and said I could do whatever I wanted but she wasn’t going anywhere, she was needed there. It seemed like she was going to fight back for a second, but then she just seemed to kind of… deflate… and told me to leave. She wouldn’t look at me. She said she’d call me later and I got the hell out of there.”
Peter was silent, something about his tight jaw telling me he wasn’t going to comment.
“I didn’t hear from her that day. At first I was glad—I was furious with her for inviting me there and—well, just upset about the whole thing. But then it started to make me nervous. I waited until I got back to the hotel after dinner and called her, and she answered on the first ring and said she could meet me for breakfast the next day in the city, she’d text me where, then hung up. She showed up looking tired and acting keyed up—sort of hyper. I kept thinking she might be on drugs, but… I asked her point-blank why she was living in that place. I told her I thought it was appalling and disgusting—and the people even worse.”
“Not exactly tactful,” Peter observed.
“No, but I wasn’t thinking very straight about it. I couldn’t believe Marianne had gotten herself involved with such—such lowlifes. She seemed angry, but then laughed in a weird way and hugged me and said that it was awful but it was an adventure. She left right after that.”
“Did you see her again while she was staying there?’”
“No, she wasn’t living with them the next time we saw each other. She came out for my mom’s funeral, and then for my dad’s, last year. She seemed back to normal—but she didn’t talk about herself much. It’s hard to tell with her. She won’t show what she doesn’t want you to see.”
“What about her parents? Are they still alive?”
“They’re alive, or at least I think they are. Last I heard they were in Africa somewhere. Marrakech, maybe? That’s what Marianne said. She was never close to them—they weren’t around a lot. I only met them a few times when we were growing up.”
“Other than you and your folks, it doesn’t sound like she’s had too many winners in her life. What about relationships—anyone other than this Mike guy that you know of?”
“Nothing serious. She dated a few guys in high school and college. Just casually, though. If she had a boyfriend—or girlfriend—in the last six years she never told me about it.”
“Is a girlfriend possible?”
“Anything is possible. The commune people—the twelve of them—were all supposedly dating each other, after all. She didn’t go into details… I mean, from what I heard there were at least two women going at it.”
“Mmph,” Peter said ambiguously. I was learning how careful he was with his responses, whether this was a learned reaction or innate to his nature, I couldn’t tell. “What did she do for work?”
“She worked for a travel agency a few years ago, that was the last job I heard about, come to think of it. Recently, I don’t know. She was an English major at Cal and wanted to be a journalist. She worked in San Francisco for a few years, then moved to New York for a graduate program in journalism. It was a really great opportunity, but she quit before getting her degree. I don’t know what happened. We weren’t in touch as often when she moved away. I remember she worked for a talent agency for a while, too—right before she joined up with Mike and the rest of them. I think she left that job when she moved to Newark. After that horrible visit, I didn’t hear from her again until she’d moved to Manhattan. That’s when she started at the travel place. The last few times we saw each other she didn’t talk about work, she just said it was a job and everything was fine.”
I didn’t add, now that I thought about it, that during those visits we talked almost entirely about me—what was I going to do when first my mom, then my dad, had gone and left me gradually more rootless and alone, until Marianne was my only close family. She’d already drifted away from me, too, or we’d drifted away from each other. I really hadn’t had anybody for such a long time.
Until now.
“Did her parents pay her tuition?”
I forced my mind back to the conversation. “Did they… Oh, yeah, they did. I always got the impression they had a lot of money.”
“Mm. Did they set her up with an allowance, or anything like that?”
“I don’t know—if they did, she never mentioned it, and my parents never said anything. I know her parents gave mine cash when she was living with us—every year until she was eighteen, though I don’t know how much it was. My day told me he and my mom had saved it in an account for her. I guess her parents might have started sending it to her after she started college.”
He nodded, lost in thought, then seemed to recall himself and glanced at his watch.
“It’s after ten. We should probably get moving.” He squeezed my leg and stood up. “I’m going to shower and start packing—do you mind hanging out a few minutes?”
“Not at all—if it’s OK, I’ll catch up on a few emails. Don’t feel like you need to rush.”
“Sounds good,” he said, and told Osiris, who seemed to want to follow him into the bathroom, to stay and keep me company. After staring down the hall for a few minutes, listening with ears cocked to the sound of the water running, Osiris finally gave up and came to lie down on my feet.
I quickly composed and sent a letter to my supervisor telling her I needed to quit without notice due to a serious family emergency out of town. I apologized and left it at that. There wasn’t much more to say, and it wasn’t like I’d ever been counting on her as a future reference.
After that, I found an email address for my property manager and let them know that I’d been called away suddenly on—what else—urgent family business, and would probably need to stay indefinitely. I said I’d come back as soon as possible and would take care of mail forwarding in the meantime, and went ahead and gave notice to end my lease at the end of the following month, allowing for about five weeks to figure things out and empty out the apartment. It meant paying one final month’s rent, but at least I’d get that back twofold when they returned my substantial deposit.
Finally, after logging out of all my accounts, I went to the U.S. Postal Service website and filled out a mail forwarding request form. I was still hesitating over what to use as my forwarding address when Peter reappeared. His short, thick hair was still damp and curling slightly, and he was freshly shaved. He carried a bulging navy blue duffel bag, which he set down before starting to collect Osiris’s food and belongings together.
“Looks like I may need to do laundry before we go,” he said ruefully. “I didn’t realize it had gotten so bad, but I didn’t do any last week.”
“We have plenty of time,” I pointed out. “Come to think of it, I don’t have any clean clothes, either. I’ve been washing my underwear in the sink.”
“There’s a Laundromat not far from the bar, we can swing by the camper and start a few loads on our way. I want to give Oss a good run and then drop him off so he has a chance to settle in before Lyle heads into work. We should try to leave town by about eight.”
“OK,” I agreed. SFO wasn’t far, only about a half an hour away over the mountains, assuming traffic was on the lighter side. But you could never count on that, and it was always better to check in early. “Hey, um… do you mind if I have my mail forwarded here—just temporarily? I don’t know if the camper actuall
y has a mailing address, and I’d rather not use the attorneys for anything if I don’t have to.”
“Of course—do you have it?” He repeated the address as I typed it into the fields, his voice matter-of-fact. I finished entering my PayPal account information—trackers be damned—and hit submit on the request. As I stared at the confirmation screen, a sort of dizzying sense of security washed over me, bringing a strange lump to my throat.
It had been a long time since I’d had somewhere to call home. Not just a place to live, but an actual home. Somewhere I was wanted and missed and loved. My mother’s death; my father’s move to a small apartment in a senior residence, his sad, slow withdrawal from me—from everyone, except maybe Uncle Joe; Marianne’s distant affection… The past five years had been so full of loss and emptiness. I’d tried to escape it by running south, but my time in LA was a distraction, not a solution.
Now, in this moment, I felt a bittersweet mixture of aching sadness and overwhelming joy. Home. Friendship. Love. All that I’d missed so much, all that I’d so pessimistically hoped to find through dating apps, knowing the whole time somehow that it wasn’t going to answer—it was here, right now, represented by this man I’d just met, his dog, and his address.
It wasn’t that I felt like this was my new home—it was still just Peter’s apartment. I had no desire to move in here. No, it was something much bigger than that.
It was Peter. Himself. The way he accepted me into his life. Told me the truth about his past mistakes and present worries. Believed my story and wanted to help solve my problems. The easy affection he showed me, alone and in front of others. The passion of our new intimacy.
It was all new. So incredibly, astonishingly new. So new that I didn’t want to name it—that the few times we’d casually referred to ourselves as “dating” and “together” felt almost irreverent, like putting a price tag on an unfinished work of art. Our declarations had been brief and simple and enough—we didn’t need to promise more, not yet.
And even without declarations and labels and vows, the thought of him—by my side, holding my hand, giving me his address so that my mail could come here without a second’s thought—filled me with the deepest sense of safety, of home, than I could remember feeling in a very long time. To this depth, and as an adult, maybe not ever.
I didn’t know if he felt the same way, but it didn’t really matter. There are always risks involved with trusting anyone. Opening your life, your stories, your heart to another person requires a desperate leap of faith into the unknown. No matter how quickly or slowly you allow that leap to happen, success isn’t possible without vulnerability.
Peter and I had seemed to be on the same wavelength since we met on the beach, seemed to be progressing at the same lightning pace, which felt so utterly effortless. That might not last. At any moment, he might hesitate—stumble—back away. And as far as he knew, I might do the same.
It didn’t matter. Even if it didn’t last out the week, it was worth it. This crazy magical ride was worth it.
I was safe.
■ ■ ■
I’d thought it was going to be a long day, but the hours went by very fast, blurring together as the evening neared. By the time we got to the camper and had collected clothes and linens to wash, it was nearing noon. Peter wanted to go into work for a while, so we took both cars to the Laundromat, Osiris riding with Peter.
He seemed to sense something was going on and, whatever it was, that dogs might just be the losers in the situation. What were all of his things doing in that bag—his favorite toy and food and bowl? He kept sniffing at the bag and whining, looking up at Peter with large, accusing brown eyes. While we started our loads of laundry, he waited in the front seat of the truck, sitting very close to his bag just in case anyone was so foolish as to mess with it.
“Our first domestic task,” Peter said as we carried our handfuls of quarters over to the wall of washers.
“It’s never as sexy as it looks on TV,” I said sadly, throwing dirty socks and underwear into the machine.
“Oh, yeah?”
Without warning, he dropped the duffel he was holding and pushed my body—firmly yet not quite forcefully—up against the open washer door, kissing me before I had time to react. When his mouth moved on mine, the clothes in my hands fell to the floor and I wrapped my arms around his neck. Several breathless minutes later, we were interrupted by a muttered “Excuse me,” from across the room, where an elderly man had been reading a newspaper. We broke apart, laughing self-consciously—at least I was, Peter just seemed to be laughing—and continued to load the washers.
I could feel my cheeks burning, and glanced at the next row over where a round rosy woman was placidly unloading a dryer. She smiled at me, which made me feel better. Whatever anyone might think about the appropriateness of displaying public affection, it wasn’t as though we’d been having sex. We’d just had a gracelessly intense make out session. In a public place. In front of strangers.
Though voyeurism of any kind didn’t interest me, sex with Peter at the Laundromat—alone—would have been and undeniably erotic experience… For a second I allowed myself to imagine it, then quickly pulled my mind back to the task at hand and finished putting my towels and sheets into a second washer. Not the time or place, I told myself sternly.
Peter and Osiris left for a run on the beach while I continued into town and made my way into a chain drugstore, conveniently right off the main highway like almost everything else. In my mad rush to leave home, I hadn’t brought any travel toiletries besides my toothbrush, so stocked up on tiny bottles of various useful things as well as granola bars and candy for the plane and hotel room. Not knowing what Peter liked, I got a variety of standards: Snickers, Starburst and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, among other favorites. If he didn’t like any of those, there was something wrong with him. I also bought a few new paperbacks and magazines, knowing they’d be half the price of what the airport would charge for the same reading material.
I drove back to the Laundromat with my purchases, relieved to see that the previous customers—witnesses to our make-out—had been replaced by new people who never even glanced my way. Our loads were done; I changed everything over to the industrial dryers, sitting down on one of the plastic chairs with a newly-purchased book to distract me while I waited. It was a cheap edition of a Michael Crichton suspense, “Coma,” which I’d vaguely remembered seeing a movie of years ago on TV. It was an unexpectedly compelling story, and before I knew it the dryer was giving a low buzz and the laundry was done.
I took our duffels back to the camper, spending the next few hours sorting and folding clothes, remaking the bed, packing, washing the few dishes and checking the fridge for perishables. Trash had to be taken down to a dumpster in the city, so I collected everything I’d thrown away since I arrived and took a load down. I hesitated over Peter’s clothes, mingled as they were with mine, but rather than fold them, which seemed sort of presumptuous—what if he didn’t like folded clothes? Or had his own special way of folding?—I shook everything out and tucked it neatly back into his bag.
Before I knew it, the clock read five fifteen, causing me to pick up the pace; Peter and I were meeting at the bar at six. We planned to leave his truck in the parking lot and take my car to SFO, parking at a nearby BART station which cost about a third as much as airport parking. I quickly showered and got ready, checking one more time to see that I had everything I needed, tidying up behind myself so the camper would be spotless when we got back, heading out the door at exactly five fifty-one.
I parked beside the truck at the far corner of the lot, close to the back entrance, and went around that way rather than through the front door, bringing Peter’s duffel with me so he could sort and pack what he needed. As soon as I stepped into the hallway, Osiris appeared from Peter’s office, running full-tilt at my legs and showing his excitement with loud barks. Peter followed immediately, greeting me with less noise but equal enthusiasm.
“Fine. The time went faster than I expected. Wasn’t this guy going to Lyle’s?”
“Change of plans, Lyle will take him home tonight.” He didn’t explain the reason and I didn’t ask. “Are you hungry? We got sandwiches, I ordered a few extras thinking we might want them now and as a snack later.”
“I am pretty hungry,” I said, looking with interest at the bag of food as my stomach gave an insistent growl. We settled in with two of the subs, the dog watching carefully to make sure that no scraps made it to the floor. “Are you all set to go?” I asked, muffled by a mouthful of bread, tuna salad and pickles.
“Yeah, everything’s wrapped up,” Peter said, just as inarticulately. He swallowed and reached over to something on his desk, hesitating for a fraction of a second before continuing. “I also got you something… Well, not exactly got it, I already had it. I just turned it back on.” He held it out to me—it was an iPhone. I saw that it was slightly scratched and scruffy, not the latest version.
Spiders in a Dark Web Page 9
