Dev Dreams, Volume One (3 page)

“I wasn’t really picturing him riding a white
horse,” Ember interjected, but her mother hadn’t heard her.

“—I wish
my
mother had warned me
earlier that romantic ideals are just for stories, and for a real
man you need someone stable with a good steady income.”

“Kyle.”

“Exactly, dear. I’m so proud of you, you
know, Em. You never let your imagination offer you things real life
can’t provide. I love how practical you are. Kyle is everything you
could want. I never knew men like him when I was your age. If I
had, things might have gone differently...Oh.” She jerked herself
out of reverie, “And how is your job?”

“Fine,” Ember squeaked.

“I’m glad,” her mother said distantly.

Ember went to her classes that day, though
she spent them scribbling absently in her notebook. That night Kyle
called and asked Ember to go out to the new fancy restaurant in
town the next day. He said he wanted to talk to her about something
important. They didn’t usually talk about important things—just
politics and movies. Ember was curious and, of course, she never
denied Kyle a date. But as she agreed, Jim’s face was in her mind.
Could she get rid of Kyle completely, without James ever finding
out?

The restaurant stood out against the dark
night in false gaiety. It was high off the ground with a wide
staircase leading up to the bright doors. It looked like the houses
set up on stilts at the beach. This house was raised up not to keep
out floods, but to separate society from all the people it didn’t
want to see. As they climbed up Em counted the steps. Forty.

At the top, Em asked Kyle to wait for the
table. She walked around the outside balcony where people waited at
metal tables to be seated inside. The night was dark. The lights in
the rooms behind Em were so bright that the stars outside were
dim.

She found the ramp around the back. There was
a gate with a handicapped sign on it that would open onto the
balcony. Ember tried the latch, but she couldn’t get the gate to
open. She pulled on it as hard as she could, tried all different
directions, but nothing worked. And then she looked at the path
from that gate to the front door. There wasn’t a chance that
James's wheelchair would be able to maneuver through all these
tables and chairs. She looked down at the parking lot far below her
and she felt like a traitor.

Kyle called for her and Em ran back to him.
The main room was huge. Three stairs led down into it and the walls
were long and wide. Tall windows along the walls looked out on
nothing but darkness. High on the ceiling, crystal chandeliers
provided the false brightness. People talked in low, refined voices
and looked around themselves haughtily. Kyle held out the chair for
Em to sit on. She looked at the menu. Kyle ordered them some
wine.

“Em, put down your menu for a minute,” Kyle
said.

“Yes?” Em said, laying it on the table beside
her.

Across the room a woman’s laugh bubbled over
her champagne.

Kyle took her hand from across the table.

“Look at me,” he said.

Em looked at him. There was a deep sincerity
in his face that she didn’t see in him very often.

“I asked you to come here so I could ask you
a very important question.” He held her hand tighter and said,
“Ember Matthews, will you marry me?”

Suddenly Kyle had her full attention. “I...”
she started, but she couldn’t get out another word. The house on
stilts was suddenly swaying.

Kyle began to talk. He seemed to be giving
her reasons why marriage was a practical decision. He probably used
sweet words, but Em didn’t hear them. She could almost see James
sitting outside in the dark looking up at the gay pretense. None of
it was real. It never would be.

“Well?” Kyle said. “What do you say?”

“Could I have some time to think about it?”
she asked timidly.

Kyle looked taken aback, but he said, “Of
course.”

“We can meet on Saturday? I can tell you
then?”

“Certainly,” he said.

The next day Ember stayed home from class and
called in sick to work. She couldn’t in good conscience agree to
marry Kyle while she was in love with another man. Kyle was just
what she needed. Kyle was the only choice. No one could be as
perfect for her as Kyle was, except that she felt passion with
James. She decided that she had to spend the next few days trying
to forget James and teaching herself to live without him. She
called in sick for the rest of the week.

Every day it grew more and more painful, and
Em became more and more afraid of that Saturday. Julia asked her
what was wrong, but Em wouldn’t tell her anything.

Saturday morning Em couldn’t stand to be in
the apartment waiting around for Kyle to show up that afternoon.
She rushed out, not knowing where she was going. She wasn’t
thinking anymore. Her mind would not be logical. Her feet led her
straight to the hospital. She had to see James.

He wasn’t in his room. She checked everywhere
she could think of. The wing where his patients were, the break
room where they had played scrabble, the window they had cleaned
together, and finally the garden.

She saw the back of his wheelchair. James was
looking down at the ground where he and Ember had made love.

“James,” Ember said.

His chair struggled around in the confined
space and he looked at her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m okay, I guess,” Ember said.

“I was worried when they said you called in
sick for the whole week.” James's face looked drawn. His cheeks
were more sunken than the last time she saw him.

“Oh, James, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry
you.”

“What’s going on?”

“I, well, it’s just that, um, my mother,” Em
struggled to say, “set me up with this guy a while ago. I never
told you, but now… now. He asked me to marry him.”

“You have a boyfriend?” His face was
unreadable—flat—he hadn’t moved.

“I should have told you,” she whispered
miserably.

“Yeah. Yeah, you should have. You know, this
meant something to me. What was it for you? Just something to pass
the time?”

“No, no, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t mean
for this to happen.”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry. I never wanted it to turn out
this way. You’re the one I love.”

“That doesn’t do much good, though, does it?
Love is great and all, but it doesn’t fix anything.”

“How can you be so cynical?”

“How can I not be?” His voice was hard and
tight. “I live in a nursing home, Em.”

“Assisted living facility,” Em corrected.

“Nursing home,” James insisted, “Like my life
is already over because no one has ever been able to love me
enough. My parents abandoned me here. They figure as long as they
help pay the bill, that counts as love. How dare you make me care
about you? This whole thing doesn’t just affect you. You’ve messed
with my life. You should have thought about that. I have feelings
too.”

Em stayed quiet. He was right. She had been
terribly selfish. She should never

have let this happen. Wasn’t love something
you couldn’t control? Wasn’t that her excuse? She realized she was
crying as she felt hot liquid tickling her chin. She reached out
and picked up his hand, holding it against her cheek to catch the
tears.

“I love you,” she said. “I don't know if it's
enough, but it consumes me. You are the first person who ever saw
me and let me be myself. I want you, I really do, I just don't know
how.”

The door behind her opened and Em dropped his
hand, where it landed on his thigh and stayed there. Em spun
around, wiping tears off her cheeks with her sleeve. Kyle walked
into the garden.

“There you are,” he said to Ember, ignoring
James. “Julia said I could probably find you here.”

“Yes,” Ember said.

“Come on, Em, today’s the day you’re going to
tell me you want to marry me.”

Ember looked back at James. He was looking at
her steadily. She turned away, looked at Kyle, and swallowed
hard.

She said, “I’m sorry, Kyle, but I’ve met
someone else.”

“What are you talking about? Who?” he
demanded. It never occurred to him that the man was sitting
directly in front of him.

Em's voice was caught. She tried to say
something, but no sound came out. James saw her floundering. “That
would be me, you asshole,” he said, rolling forward.

“This is a joke,” Kyle said.

“You wish,” James said. “Now get out of here
and leave Ember alone.”

“You’re making a big mistake, Em,” Kyle said,
never looking at James.

“Just go,” she said.

“You would pick some limp dick cripple over
me? Am I in bizzaro world?”

“Kyle!” Em knew he had a temper, but she'd
never heard him say anything like this. “It's not true,” she
added.

“Oh my God,” Kyle ranted, “You fucked him?
That is too disgusting to believe. You make me sick, Em.”

Something snapped in Ember. Later James would
say it was her spark finally catching fire. “I make
you
sick?” she said. “You with your pompous, arrogant talk and your
dismissal of everything that makes me, me? You are pathetic and I'm
sorry I ever met you.”

Two security guards appeared in the doorway,
Em didn't know who had called for them. Kyle turned and saw them,
looked back at Em, but didn't say anything. He walked away,
shrugging off the guards.

Em was amazed by how light her heart felt as
Kyle finally walked out of her life. Like she had been under one of
those boards they used to kill women in the Salem trials, with
rocks piled on top of her chest. One enormous boulder had been
removed and she was surprised how much easier it was to
breathe.

“Thanks,” she said to James.

“No,” he said, “that was all you. This is not
going to be easy.”

“We’ll make it work.”

James smiled. He said, “Come give me a
kiss.”

Mariann, Dancing Alone

Mariann woke up with her fingers tapping the
Cha-cha against the blanket. She turned her face off the pillow and
looked at her little purple clock. Hrmph, she thought, and blinked
blearily. She sat up on her bed and ran fingers through her mass of
red hair and let it fall back against her shoulders. She stretched
forward, touching her toes with her fingers. Her fingers were
strong and defined; so too were her feet. Sticking out at the
bottom of her sweat pants her feet showed every one of their
muscles. Mariann rolled off the couch on which she had slept, her
feet tapping out the Cha-cha rhythm on the floor. She went to the
bathroom and looked at herself for a few moments in the mirror. She
had a youthful appearance, even some freckles left over from when
she was twelve dotted under her blue eyes. But the last few months
had been rough on her and her appearance. This morning she could
feel herself aging. Her skin was looking a little drawn, she had
two gray hairs above her right ear which blended into the red
curls. Mariann splashed cold water on her face and brushed her
teeth.

She grabbed her dance shoes and put them in
her bag. She pulled her feet into sneakers and put on a sweatshirt
that fell over her knee-length leggings. She grabbed her pile of
red hair, snapped a clip around it and shoved her sunglasses over
her eyes. She threw her bag in the passenger seat of her car and
pulled out of the garage. Mariann was living with her mother now,
ever since Mariann and her husband had had The Fight. She didn’t
know what was going to happen next, but for now all she could do
was go to work and pretend nothing was different. It was not what
Mariann had expected from life, to be living with her mother at
this age. “I told you it was crazy to marry him,” her mother had
said when Mariann arrived at her door last month.

That's what everyone who met her husband
seemed to think. Why would a dancer marry a paraplegic? They didn't
know him, though, if that's all they saw. They had so much in
common when they met, both pursuing careers in the arts. Kevin was
a gifted actor.

Over the years, though, her career had grown
and his had withered. It broke her heart as much as his when he
went to auditions and was dismissed without even reading. She had
not been fair, though. She had wanted to keep her life with him
separate from her life as a dancer. Her excuse to herself was that
she was tired of answering the question why had she married him. If
her coworkers never met him, they couldn't wonder about the husband
in a wheelchair. It was more than that, though, there was some
terrible superstitious part of her mind that was afraid his failure
could drag her down too.

Then he had asked the question himself. Why
did you marry me? She wasn't sure, she couldn't remember, she
didn't have an answer to the one question that followed her around
where ever she went.

Traffic wasn’t bad on the highway. Mariann
drove absently past red, orange and yellow trees. She exited, going
through the same familiar routine. The sign for the dance studio
came up quickly and she pulled into the parking lot. She parked her
car and hopped out, her fingers tapping out the Samba rhythm. The
Samba was all about percussion and it had a beat that felt as
though it was your heart pounding against the inside of your
chest.

She put her sunglasses on top of her head as
she pushed open the door to the studio and walked down the cool
white hallway. Through a swinging glass door a fake wood floor
spread across a huge room. The ceiling was high with a few large
lights. Tables and chairs sat in a corner. Empty shoeboxes lay all
across them along with coats and sunglasses. Mariann added her own
to the pile. All across the floor in almost every place people were
practicing. No music played other than the click, click, stomp;
tap, tap, tap, spin of shoes clumping against the floor and the
murmured repetitions as a cannon around the room “one, two, three;
one, two, three...”... “One and two and one and two and.”... “One,
two, three, and four and; one, two, three, and four and..”...
Mariann eventually picked out her partner in the crowd. Standing in
a corner of the dance floor, he had his eyes closed and was moving
his feet to some rhythm he heard only in his head. Charles was
scrawny, mechanical, and not that good at leading. He saw Mariann
and walked over. She put on her high-heeled dance shoes and took
his hand. As he pulled her arm forward, thin silver bangles slipped
down from her wrist and pattered lightly against her rolled up
sleeves.