“When?” He looked at the paper, not at me.
I took it out of his hands and wrote, “Now. Soon. As soon as possible I guess.” I looked at the ground between where he was squatting back on the heels of his Vans and my feet.
“Okay,” he said. “For how long?”
“I don’t know.” I lifted my shoulders. I couldn’t stand the look in his eyes. It said he was secure, disappointed, but not yet aware of his mistaken assumption that I would be coming back. That he would want me back. What I was thinking must have shown on my face.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m not coming back,” I wrote. The minute I wrote it I regretted it. Not because it hurt him, but because it closed off that tenuous place between us, where we’d agreed tacitly to try to communicate. If he didn’t give me his eyes, if I didn’t enunciate my words, if he didn’t read what I wrote or look at his phone, all communication would prove impossible.
“Never?” he asked, only half looking at me. Should I just nod, or shake my head? Had we come to that?
I reached for his hand.
“Explain,” he said, gripping my hand so hard it brought tears to my eyes. I grabbed another piece of paper. On it, I wrote the tersest account of the accident, its aftermath, and the responsibility I bore. I told him I had to go to support my friend, who’d paid the price for both of us. I told him I didn’t have a choice. I told him I had to see Jordan through this. I told him I had to go pack. I watched him grind his teeth in silence.
“Go,” he said. “Pack.” He looked tired. “I’ll be up when I get off work.” He turned his back and walked away.
My gear was stowed when Shawn finally came upstairs. He didn’t look at it, but rather pressed his lips firmly together and came to me. He pulled me toward him in a crushing hug, which I returned, imbuing it with everything I was feeling. I started to speak.
“Don’t say anything,” he commanded me, taking my face between his hands. “No words, okay?”
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I nodded. He made love to me then with a desperation I felt through my skin to my bones. I know I strained against him, hoping I could just melt into him. I pulled his hair and bit his skin. I wanted to devour him. He didn’t hold back a thing, and when he shuddered to a climax in my arms I thought I’d never see anything more beautiful than that for the rest of my life. I prepared myself for that. He touched something deep inside me. I didn’t want anyone, ever, to touch me that way again.
* * * * *
I swallowed the burning in my throat when I said good-bye at breakfast the next day.
Jim smiled a bittersweet smile and assured me that I’d always have a place in Santo Ignacio. I shook my head as though it were a joke. Oscar and Tomas looked at me, concerned, and made lame jokes about cutting up their own onions again, until they could find some other stupid gringo to do it for them. Shawn followed me to my bike.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. He pulled my hand out of my jacket pocket and put something in it. The cell phone.
“I can’t take this,” I said.
“Take it. Text me,” he said. “You could keep in touch. Send me text messages so I’d know…”
“I can’t take this. You know that.” I was shaking my head as he caught it between his hands. I hated the way hope died in his eyes. “I can’t,” I said.
He took his phone back. “This is really good-bye?” I nodded.
He pulled me to him and pressed his cheek to mine. “No,” he whispered. “It doesn’t have to be.”
I said nothing. What could I say?
“You don’t have to go to him,” he spat, holding my face so we were eye to eye. “There for him, so he can make you feel responsible, when you did nothing!”
“You don’t know!” I said, wondering if it made any sense to talk without a phone or at least a paper and pencil.
“You handed your keys over. You knew better.”
“Once,” I said, holding up my finger. I shook my head. I knew he’d never understand why I was leaving. The one time something bad had happened Jordan was behind the wheel, but there had been hundreds of other times it could have happened when I’d been driving.
“Go,” he said.
Was it wrong of me to want to kiss him? I put on my helmet. I got on the bike and kick-started it. It roared to life. I knew even though Shawn couldn’t hear the roar of my Harley, he could feel it in the empty spaces of his body.
58 Z. A. Maxfield
I began to ease away, out of the alley by the boardwalk where I parked my bike behind Nacho’s, onto PCH. Hardly a soul was driving there this time of day, as dawn still glowed a little bluish through the marine layer. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Shawn tearing down the street after me, chasing my bike, chasing me, his arms pistoning, his long legs pumping as he followed at a dead run.
I stopped on the side of the road and had my helmet off in seconds. “What?” I shouted as he ran up, as if he could hear me. “What is it?”
“Kiss me,” he cried, throwing himself into my arms. “Kiss me, kiss me,” he murmured against my skin, as he held me that last time. He kissed me deeply, pulling me to him as if to draw strength from the embrace. A car went by, honking its horn, startling both of us. I looked into his amber-colored eyes and discovered desolation and wet lashes. They told me everything I wanted to know, and maybe much, much more. Finally, he ended the kiss, giving a last lick to my lower lip.
“’Bye,” he said again, and stood to watch me ride away.
I raised my gloved hand and took off again, and this time, I didn’t look back.
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59
Chapter Ten
We sat in a semicircle of battered metal folding chairs, each of us armed with the New International Version Study Bible. Mine had been a gift from Jordie, lovingly inscribed with a message and the date, given to me when I first returned to River Falls. That first week was a blur. Well-meaning friends and relatives came to welcome me home. My parents were distant but nice. Julie held an impromptu get-together with people I hadn’t seen since high school at her upscale coffee place on Main Street. They were a loud bunch, and each of them questioned me at length about why I no longer drank, indicating that this seemingly Herculean task was somehow the defining change of my life. More than one pitying glance shot my way.
To be fair, I must have looked miserable. I missed Shawn and Santo Ignacio with a kind of ever-present dull ache that probably showed itself on my face like a migraine. There were times, I admit, when I found it unbearable.
“Coop?” Jordie was talking to me, and I was off somewhere else.
“Oh, hey. What?” I asked him. They were looking over Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, something I remembered from Sunday school and the many weddings I’d been to where
“The greatest of these is love” was improperly imported and tattooed onto cocktail napkins.
“What do you think that means?” asked our Bible study leader, Jordan’s pastor, Stan.
“Was he talking about romantic love?”
I looked at him to gauge whether he was kidding. One glance told me he was dead earnest. “I…um…always thought they were talking about unselfish love, like taking care of your neighbors and seeing to their needs.”
“Right.” He smiled a toothy smile. “Right. Paul is talking here about the second great commandment. Do you know what that is?” he asked the group.
60 Z. A. Maxfield
Jordie raised his hand like a kid. Like, oh, oh, pick me, pick me. “It’s ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’” He seemed genuinely pleased.
“That’s right, Jordan. Thank you,” said Stan. I looked around again. There were eight of us crammed into the small den in Stan’s house, which smelled like cats. Not bad, really, not that heinous litter-box smell, but just the kind of smell you associate with cats. Stan lived with his aging mother, who had four small-boned cats to whom she’d given alphabetical names, Abner, BartholeMew, CharleMange, and DewDrop. That I knew the names of her cats didn’t surprise me anymore.
“May I go outside and smoke?” I asked suddenly, startling Stan, and I guess, everyone who was intent on whatever he was saying.
“Yes.” Stan smiled. “But for your body’s sake, I’d like to see you quit.” It was as if he’d made a motion in a student council meeting because two of the women there said, “hear, hear.” I half expected someone to say motion carried.
I smiled my barest smile, one I pulled out for times when I had no other. “I should, shouldn’t I?”
I left the room to a chorus of agreement. Stan’s backyard was lovely. His mother was a gardening enthusiast, and at this time of year it showed up in flowers long since blooming in California. She even had poppies, which I love, and the last of her tulips. I sat on a small wrought iron bench and smoked. After a few minutes of quiet, Jordie joined me.
“Hey,” he said, lighting his own cigarette off mine. “Everyone in rehab smoked.”
“I remember. We lived on cigarettes, coffee, and angst.”
“What was it like? At Hazelden.”
“I don’t remember,” I lied. “I was messed up.”
“Ah.” He took a drag and looked thoughtfully at a small birdhouse Stan’s mother kept filled with sunflower seeds. Squirrels probably ate most of them. “I know this isn’t your kind of thing.” He indicated our clothing, dress trousers, crisp white shirts, ties. We looked like missionaries. “I just… I like to fill the time with stuff that’s healthy, you know? People like Stan are good for me to hang out with. He doesn’t see us as bad.”
“That’s good then,” I said gently.
“In that Nacho’s place,” he began. “You had somebody there, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. I got up and looked around for an ashtray, and found one next to the door on the cement patio floor. I picked it up and brought it back to the bench, then set it between us. “That’s over. I left it when I came back here. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I see.”
“Did you have anyone? I mean, you know, where you were?” St. Nacho’s
61
“In prison?” He looked at me and laughed. “I don’t remember.” He used my words about rehab back to me, and I realized he hadn’t been fooled. “It’s better that way, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I hope you know that I’m here to help in any way I can, I don’t know what you expect from me. I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing here and how I can support you, but I can’t just…start where we left off.”
“Coop? You’re wearing a tie today because I asked you to. We’re way past where we left off.” I felt my shoulders drop a little, like maybe some of the tension had left my body, but my head still hurt. “You know I don’t expect more than you can give me, right?”
“I…” I fought for the words. “It’s going to take me some time to get used to all this.” He nodded. “Stan doesn’t like it when I smoke.” He blew out a thick stream.
“Well,” I said. “You’re bound to piss some people off no matter what you do, you know?”
He punched my arm, grinning. “That’s comforting.” He stubbed his cigarette out and went back inside. I rubbed my arm. That was going to leave a mark.
* * * * *
The last of our meager moving boxes finally came up the two flights of stairs to our apartment. I went to the kitchen to order pizza for the people from church who had helped us move in. I think I had maybe four boxes altogether, and that included things I brought from my parents’ house. It amazed me that my life amounted to little more than that. Jordie was feeling gregarious, I noticed, and was holding court. He used to do that when we were kids, his big, lanky body perfect for throwing an arm around you and dragging you into whatever he had going. He was currently telling the men and women who helped us that it was a shame he couldn’t offer them beer for their troubles.
“That’s all right,” said Stan. “You get us some pizza and we’ll all call it even, won’t we?” Everyone agreed enthusiastically.
“Pizza’s on its way,” I said, coming in from where I’d phoned in the kitchen. It was nice having a group of friends there. I was certain when they all went home they’d leave behind an awkward silence. Our apartment had only one bedroom and one bed. It was Jordan’s. I planned to sleep on the couch in the living room, graciously donated by Jordan’s parents, and we’d share the bathroom. The apartment wasn’t too bad, actually. It was much nicer than my studio in St. Nacho’s. It had big windows, a view of the small park across the street, and a tiny balcony where I could smoke until the weather got too bad.
Stan came over to me while Jordan supervised putting the boxes into the correct rooms.
“I’m glad to get a chance to talk to you,” he said, holding out his hand. I took it, and we shook firmly. “This is good, this place.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I’m going to like it here. Did Jordan tell you he got a job?” 62 Z. A. Maxfield
“Oh, yes, at the UPS Store, right? He’ll be fine. He’ll like that. He’s good with people.”
“Yeah,” I said. I wondered what I was going to do. I thought about the different restaurants in town, and also my old music teacher and the music store he owned.
“What are your plans?” Stan asked as if he read my mind.
“I usually… I sometimes play my violin for tips in restaurants,” I said. “Or wait tables.”
“Oh, you play the violin?” he asked. “Jordan didn’t mention that. You’ll have to play in church! We love for our musically gifted brethren to grace us with their talents.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said. “How did Jordan find your church?” It was something I’d wondered about for a while. Stan’s church, located in a strip mall, had once been a barbershop, which they had gutted and fitted out like a hotel meeting room. Blue industrial carpet, beige paint, a few pictures of Jesus on the walls, and a makeshift pulpit. Folding chairs. What it lacked in amenities it made up for in sincerity. Stan -- Pastor Stan the people called him -- served coffee and homemade cookies after services and held Bible study at home. To keep the church going, they held fundraisers, car washes, and sold self-published books on the Internet. Apparently, they got a deal on the rent from the strip mall.
“Well,” Stan said, “I have a prison ministry and see men from the penitentiary who are in rehab. Often, I minister to their needs as they transition from prison to civilian life.”