Closer (4 page)

Chapter Three

An hour, an hour, an hour
, she chanted as she jogged up the dingy stairwell within the apartment building.  She felt like a fugitive escaping from her captor, except with a twist—he had placed a ticking time bomb on her life and threatened to detonate it unless she returned to him within an hour.  Hyperventilating, she stopped on the top landing in front of the door and leaned against the wall to catch her breath. 
God, just blow her up now
.

              She clicked open the locked door and pushed into the one-bedroom apartment of her best friend.

              “Sarah?” She barely called out, in case she was napping.  Inez surveyed the messy heap of dank clothes dangling across the blinds and strewn across the couch.  Clearly, the basement dryer was broken again. 

She stepped over the two crushed soda cans and an empty pizza box, still on the floor exactly in the same place as when Inez had been there earlier that morning. 
Bar boys
, Inez thought, knowing Sarah’s weakness for picking up stray men during her night shift as a bartender and bringing them back to feed and pet them like alley cats.  She tried not to judge.  At least one of them was getting some.

Inez crept down the corridor and into the bathroom where she had left her personal belongings—
hairbrush, toothbrush, perfume, make-up bag. 
What the hell else did she need to get her through an uptight fancy schmancy dinner with a bunch of rich arrogant snobs? 
Hello Kitty Pez Dispenser
?  Check.

She glanced at herself in the mirror.  Billions had been right.  She did look like an uptight Northwestern graduate.  She quickly stripped off her interview clothes and slipped into her favorite jeans and off-the-shoulder T-shirt before stuffing everything she owned into her oversized crochet purse. 

“You’re back already?  That can only mean failure.”

Inez turned towards the whimper in the doorway.  Weary and exhausted, Sarah rubbed her eyes while cradling a baby in her arms.  She noted Inez’s purse stuffed to its brim.  “Correction—you look like you’re leaving and never coming back?”

“Actually, I got the job,” Inez confirmed.

“Really?” Sarah yawned through her surprise. “Do they know that you got fired from your last two jobs?”

“Three.  And no, I’m absolutely certain they’ve hired the wrong girl but apparently I was the only one who could talk and walk at the same time.  They expect me to start immediately…Can you keep Luna until dinner time?  Nana usually naps in the afternoon and it’s getting harder and harder for her to care for Luna the whole day.”

Sarah handed off Luna to Inez who embraced her daughter like she hadn’t seen her for weeks. 

“Sure…I don’t go to work until nine.  What else am I going to do here during the day besides cat nap and experiment with non-dairy kale smoothie recipes?”

Inez kissed her daughter’s soft black hair and savored her baby scent—fresh diapers and baby shampoo.  Her fuzzy flannel onesie made her whole body soft to cuddle.  Her black jelly eyes fixed on Inez, as if she recognized her mother’s voice.  It had been only three months since Luna’s birth, but already Inez couldn’t imagine her life without her.  Luna had become her guiding light.  No matter how angry she was at the world for all the injustices in her life—her parents’ unexpected deaths, her embittered years in foster care, her grandmother’s debilitating illness—she could simply cradle Luna and remember that nothing mattered except the well-being of her daughter.

“Is she hungry?” Inez lowered herself onto the covered toilet seat, testing whether Luna wanted to nurse. 

“Maybe.” Sarah nodded, yawning again.  “I gave her a bottle right after you left, then we hung out and listened to Broadway show tunes while I painted my fingernails.”  Sarah held up her hands, proudly displaying the vibrant neon blue nail polish. 

“Bitchlicious,” Inez agreed.  “Oh, and one more thing.  Can you please tell my grandmother not to wait up for me because I won’t be home until midnight?” 

Sarah arched her brow.  “Please tell me you didn’t take a job as a lap dancer.”

“Yes, definitely…because you know how much experience I have looking sexy while dangling from a pole.”

Sarah eyed Luna sucking from her breast.  “Well, you are a triple D these days.  And pretty shameless about it.”

“Ugh, that reminds me.  My pump.”

“Here—” Sarah said, disappearing and reappearing with the heavy black bag slung over her shoulder.  “You left it on the kitchen counter next to the half-eaten carton of Oreos.”

Inez shrugged. “Naturally.”

“Naturally.” Sarah shrugged back.

“So c’mon on.  What is it?” Sarah pressed her to dish. “More practicing English over dinner with wealthy Japanese businessmen?”

“No,” Inez shivered.  “And I’ll never look at butter the same way again.”

“One pat or two,” Sarah joked, repeating the phrase Inez was forced to pronounce over and over.

They both laughed.  It had been one of many horrible jobs that Inez had endured and it seemed that there was no end in sight.  “No butter etiquette, but it does involve spending the next four nights with an extremely rigid businessman.”

Inez paused, suddenly remembering her new agreement with Sven was supposed to be kept confidential.  Sarah spotted her hesitation.

“Hmm…” Sarah pondered, admiring her neon blue fingernails. “That sounds almost…indecent.” 

“It does require me to wear heels.”

“Well, whatever it is, make sure you keep your legs crossed at your knees and smile with your eyes, not your lips.  Otherwise, men think we’re easy, and just because we are, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have to work for it.”

Inez looked at Sarah.  Her long auburn hair always looked amazing, even thrown up into a tousled pony tail, and her waif figure and unblemished porcelain skin made her look like one of those Swedish magazine models. 
She
was the perfect person to play Sven’s girlfriend, not Inez who suddenly felt nauseous with doubt and uncertainty.

Twenty thousand dollars
.  It was the only thing motivating her to leave her daughter again.  Inez wanted to confess to Sarah that she was going to make more money in one week than she had made in an entire year, but she also knew Sarah would assume the worst.

“Let’s just say that I’ll be able to pay you double what I’m paying you now every time I need you to watch Luna.”

Sarah waved her hand.  “Pay me whatever you want.  Luna is the only person I know who doesn’t mind me belting out the high notes of
Memory
like the faux soprano that I am.”

“Thanks, Sarah.  I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Inez said, feeling Luna release her latch and nestle snugly into her arms. 

“You’d probably go on welfare and be better off.” 

“Clearly they taught me nothing at Northwestern.”

“Community college was way more fun.  I guarantee you.”

They both fell silent.  It was the moment that Inez dreaded—the hand-off.  Reluctantly, she stood up from the toilet seat and passed Luna over to Sarah who accepted her with a soothing bounce.

“You know, things might be easier if you let ‘you-know-who’ back into your life,” Sarah offered.

Inez looked away.  “I’d rather just struggle.”

Inez gathered up her purse and breast pump bag and headed for the front door.  

“He came here looking for you today.”

Inez stopped cold in the doorway.  “Did you tell him to go flush his head in the toilet?” 

“Noooooo,” Sarah sang out. “I’ll leave that precious honor to you.  Instead, I told him you’d be back soon, but that was before I knew you were officially employed as a woman of the night.”

“What did he want?”

Sarah smiled slyly.  “What does he always want from you?”

“Money?”

“No, the other thing.”

“Cigarettes?”

Sarah flopped onto the couch and held up Luna like a trophy. “I think he genuinely misses you.   And I think he wanted to see Luna.”

“Too bad.  He should have thought about that before he slept with all his tango partners in Argentina.”

“Well, in his defense, you didn’t exactly tell him you were pregnant before he left.”

“In my defense, I didn’t exactly realize it until a month after he was gone.  And he didn’t exactly tell me he had every intention of sleeping around while he was away.”

Sarah shrugged like it was no big deal.  Sarah treated the ideal of monogamy like an expensive car or a fancy house—something completely unobtainable in her own life.  “Well, he’s back now and he wants to see you.  Maybe you should give him a chance to try?  He is your baby daddy.”

“Sperm donor,” Inez corrected her.  “And the perfect example of a man who got me too easy.  I’ll never make that mistake again.”

Inez pushed down the resentment in her voice.  It was hard to acknowledge that her heart had been broken; it was a lot easier to pretend that she was always tough and bitter—even from birth.

“Okay, well…don’t shoot the babysitter.  Just pointing out the fact that we’re both examples of girls who grew up without fathers, so…there’s still plenty of time to not screw up Luna’s life.”

“I rather just stay on the pill forever and not get knocked up again.”

Sarah shrugged, like there was no winning the conversation.  “Say goodbye to Ma-Ma,” she said, waving Luna’s chubby little hand.  “And don’t worry.  We’ll only binge on organic ice cream and public television.”

“I’m jealous.” Inez stared at Luna in Sarah’s arms, yearning more than anything to trade places with Sarah rather than leaving Luna in the care of a babysitter—again.

Twenty thousand dollars
.  Without saying goodbye, Inez forced herself out the door and down the stairwell.  When she exited into the courtyard, she spotted the silver Rolls Royce, idling along the curb and strode towards it.

“Do not run away before you’ve said hello.”

His powerful voice startled her.  She glanced back at his backlit body, bathed in the mid-afternoon sun. 
Enzo
. 

“I’d much rather say goodbye,” she asserted, turning back towards the Rolls Royce.  Without warning, his strong hand encircled her wrist before she had a chance to look up into his playboy face and dark, devilish eyes.

“It’s been over a month since I’ve been back.  You should forgive me by now.”  He lowered his voice, deepening his strong Latin accent.  She struggled against his unforgiving grasp and the familiar way he pivoted his pelvis against her own, attempting to greet her with a kiss.

“You went back to Argentina for six months to screw other women.  Maybe it’s just a cultural thing—but here in America, that’s pretty hard to forgive and forget.”

“It wasn’t my choice to leave and you know it.  They forced me to return because of my visa.”

“But it was your choice to invite every tango partner of yours into your bed.”

He spread his hands open like he had nothing to hide.  “It was a year, Inez.  You cannot expect me to be a monk.”

She crossed her arms and glared at him. “You could have tried.”

“Impossible,” he said earnestly.  “And I did not lie to you about it, not the way you lied to me about our daughter.”

“I never lied,” countered Inez.  “I just didn’t bother to inform you that I was pregnant.  And just because you
told
me you were sleeping with other women doesn’t make it honorable.” Her trademark sarcasm seeped into her voice.  “Unless you expect a medal for not infecting me with the clap.”

Uncertain, Enzo gazed at her. “I don’t think I understand your meaning?”

Inez sighed with disgust, just to ensure he would understand her meaning. “We were together a year, Enzo.  A year.  And you act like that meant nothing to you.”

“I thought about you every minute that I was gone.”

“Oh really?  While you were fucking them?”

“After,” he admitted, like it was a confession. “Because none of them satisfied me the way your cruel words and passionate heart satisfies me.”

Inez rolled her eyes.  “Oh, geez…well, just wait.  Because my cruel words haven’t even had a chance to flame out of my mouth yet.”

As if he was enchanted by her passion and hatred, he grabbed her and pulled her against his firm chest. 

“I remember the feeling of that fire in your mouth,” he said, drawing her body against his own.  “
Te echo de menos
, Inez.”

Did he really miss her?
  Inez stared into his bottomless black eyes, softened by his long eyelashes.  His scent relaxed her like a favorite memory.  He smelled exactly like he always smelled—like an artist.  Clove cigarettes scented his black pony tail and olive skin, and the unmistakable aroma of oil paint varnish wafted from colorful smudges on his forearms and baggy white painter’s pants. 

“I’m not going to let you go.  You’re stubborn and proud and vengeful, exactly like me.  You are determined to punish me and I know that.  I accept it.  But I also know that you miss me.  Miss us.  Because I can hear it in your voice—in your pain.”