Fishbowl (29 page)

The chair’s tucked in the corner, and the lamp has been moved as well. At one point, Garth angled the lamp to spotlight Jimenez and the room, and at first, Jimenez gave him a pleading look but then resigned himself to the spotlight. Garth couldn’t help but giggle at the time, at the theatrics of preparing the room, but now here he stands, the man who is about the dance for him, and he’s so in awe of his bravery. It’s an uncomfortable exposure to let oneself be true in the presence of another.

In sharing this scene, Garth feels infinitely more at ease in his gown and shoes than he first had, partially reclined with one knee crossed over the other and his leg sandwiched in the sliver of space between the couch and the coffee table. Garth wonders if that’s the point and if Jimenez knew it was, subjecting himself to potential embarrassment in recognition of Garth’s exposure. Garth hopes it is, that the big man is dancing as a chivalrous act to make him feel at ease.

“I don’t think there’s any more furniture to move.” Garth chuckles.

“I’ll put it all back,” Jimenez says apologetically.

“It’s okay,” Garth says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I just don’t want to break anything. I’m not that good.”

“You’re fine,” Garth says.

And what a picture he makes, Jimenez, handsome and poised and alone in what was once a small apartment but is now a spotlit stage in front of an audience of one. The waning afternoon lights the city behind him, blurring it into a stage-set backdrop, as if the glass weren’t there and it were just a painted scene on canvas. As if Jimenez were about to dance along the edge of a cliff overlooking the buildings. An impression of the city is reflected in the hardwood under Jimenez’s socks, as a rippled texture where the polish had settled between the patterned hardwood slats. The lamp spotlight casts a sharp contrast, highlighting only one side of everything and, in the backlight of the city, leaving the rest in deep shadow.

When there’s nothing left to fidget over, Jimenez stands still in the middle of the room. His socked feet, one big toe peeking through a small hole in the fabric, are staggered one in front of the other. His heels are set slightly inward, and his toes are slightly splayed. His knees are loose, crooked at such an obtuse angle that it’s barely noticeable, ready for the movement to come. He runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, and he shakes out his thick arms. He pushes his sleeves up over his elbows, exposing his meaty, hairy forearms. He is a hefty man with lamppost legs, but Garth can tell there’s something graceful there, just by the way he stands.

“I feel so stupid,” Jimenez says.

Garth smiles and gestures to his own body with wrists bent and fingers unfurling toward his gown.

“But maybe I’m not as brave as you,” Jimenez says.

Garth feels a blush rise again at the compliment. He hopes that it can’t be seen from where Jimenez stands, but then he wonders what it matters after the last ten minutes they have shared. Surely a blush is the least of his insecurities. Jimenez has been so willing to look past the incongruities of their encounter and see something worthwhile and good. Now he’s going to return the favor. There’s no reason this kettle-bellied man can’t dance like the old movie actors he admires.

“Just dance.” Garth smiles.

“There’s no music.” Jimenez fidgets with his pant leg.

“Whistle a tune to dance to.”

“Won’t work.”

“Dancing doesn’t need music,” Garth reasons. “It can be its own thing.”

“It’s easier with it,” Jimenez says.

Garth sighs, flashes Jimenez a strained smile, and then extracts himself from the couch. He shimmies his way around the coffee table and then smooths his gown with two sweeping palms from his hips to his knees. He goes to his bedroom and grabs his alarm clock radio from the nightstand before returning to the living room and plugging it in. The display flashes a row of red eights. Garth flips the switch from “Alarm” to “FM,” adjusts the tuning knob a smidgen to clarify the sound, and then turns up the volume. A thin song comes through the speakers.

“There,” Garth says, returning to sit on the couch. “Anything else?”

He has to smile at Jimenez’s expression. There’s nothing else. Garth recognizes the song, “Military Madness,” but not the cheesy Graham Nash version; it’s the Woods remake. It’s a jaunty, midtempo, lo-fi number with a drumbeat fit for some neo-hippie fantasy, skipping across a grassy hill covered in wildflowers.

And without further delay, Jimenez begins to dance, slowly for the first few steps but then coming up to double-time the music. Two steps to the one side, a heel up and toe-to-ground shuffle with his leading foot. Two steps back to the start and a quick rock-step back.

A jive, Garth recognizes. A solo jive.

Jimenez’s hips drive the movement, and his ankles are springs to compensate for their push. Two steps, two steps, and then a rock back onto his heel. Then arms to one side, legs kicking out to the other. Then arms stiff on both sides and legs moving a flurry for a while. A little Charleston thrown in. Then a smooth transition to a twist, his arms held out, elbows tucked to waist, palms down but fingers daintily arcing toward the ceiling. His hips pivot, but his body stays still. The whole thing unrehearsed, nearly perfect, and completely wonderful, to see him move and the happiness that the movement brings him. When Garth sees the expression on Jimenez’s face, he also notices that Jimenez has been watching him the whole time.

Jimenez’s cheeks become flushed with the effort. For as unexpectedly agile as he is, he’s still a big man, and the exertion brings a sheen of sweat to his brow. Yet he doesn’t stop moving, working the whole floor from windowsill to kitchen counter. He doesn’t stop smiling at Garth. Garth smiles back and they hold each other’s eyes for a few moments.

Then the song ends and Jimenez stops.

Garth claps, and Jimenez smiles and dips his chin in acknowledgment.

On the radio, the DJ babbles a quick weather forecast and then introduces Deerhunter’s “Basement Scene” as the next song in the “commercial-free rock-and-roller coaster.” The new song begins, and Jimenez holds out his hand to Garth.

“Dance this song with me?” he asks.

Garth shakes his head. “You’re too good a dancer for me.”

“That’s not the point,” Jimenez insists. “Come dance with me. I’ll teach you.” His invitation arm is outstretched and unwavering.

Garth stands and begins to shimmy his way around the coffee table again. His attention is drawn to the window, to a quick movement, a shadow that flashes through his peripheral vision. But when he looks, there’s nothing but the expanse of buildings. Nothing outside, and here, here’s Jimenez waiting to take his hand and join him in a dance to the music coming through the alarm clock radio’s tinny speakers.

And that’s what Garth does, dances with Jimenez. They share a slow sway to the billowing lyrics and the occasional psychedelic interjection. During the sauntering dance on the parquet with his head on Jimenez’s sweat-dampened shoulder, his gaze focuses on nothing in the fuzzy middle distance out the window. With the smell of Jimenez’s cologne in his nostrils, Garth feels happiness spreading in his belly like a gulp of hot cocoa.

51

In Which Petunia Delilah Gets a Fucking Ice Cream Sandwich

Her body has never been so truly spent, and her mind has never been so completely calm. Petunia Delilah floats in that spot for a minute, the one where there is no world outside her consciousness. Her eyes are closed, and her brain basks in the deep-red light filtering through the delicate skin of her eyelids.

The apartment air is warm and comfortable and smells homey, like the quiche baking in the oven. The linoleum she lies on is cool and soothing on her back. The constant stresses, both physical and mental, have passed.

Her baby is alive. She can hear her daughter fussing in the boy’s care. Her arms long to hold her, but she waits for a moment.

She is alive. She can see it through her eyelids, her blood feeding her body. She feels the air going in and out of her lungs. A bead of sweat tickles its last lines across her skin, seeking the lowest places it can find before it will rest, evaporate, and then disappear into the air.

Claire’s talking to the emergency operator, the thread of their conversation rambling away, over there near the oven, where she checks to see how her quiche survived the whole ordeal.

Petunia Delilah opens her eyes. She can’t keep herself from smiling. The boy kneels beside her, and he cradles her daughter in his arms.

“She’s so little,” he whispers, the wonder transparent in his voice. He’s an odd sight, Petunia Delilah thinks, merely a baby himself, with her daughter in his arms and his eyes transfixed on her. She thinks he might cry; his face betrays that even though the wells of his eyes remain dry. She wonders if he has a little brother or sister. She hopes so because she can tell he would be a great big brother.

A tea towel is wrapped around her baby. There are others, stained and crumpled on the floor beside the boy. He must have wiped her daughter clean before swaddling her. He’s the reason she is here, safe and gurgling in his arms. He has delivered her. He brought her from peril to safety, and Petunia Delilah feels a love for the boy swell in her.

She lays her hand on his forearm.

“You probably want to hold your daughter,” the boy says in response to her touch, his eyes never leaving the little girl in his hands.

“I do,” Petunia Delilah says. “But whenever you’re ready.”

The boy glances at her. Petunia Delilah remembers Claire calling him Herman.

“Herman,” she says, “how old are you?”

Herman shuffles closer and offers her her daughter. Once the baby has been transferred into her mother’s arms safely, he replies.

“I’m eleven,” he says. “And a half. I’m actually closer to twelve.”

Petunia Delilah nods. Her daughter peeks out from a hood of tea towel. Embroidered on the waffled fabric is a sprig of lavender flowers, purple and curving around a brown teapot. A few curls of blue-gray stitching denote steam coming from the spout.

“Herman, you were the first person in the world to meet my daughter. Her name is Lavender,” Petunia Delilah tells him. She hadn’t discussed the name with Danny, but Danny isn’t here, and she can’t stand to let her daughter live nameless for a second longer. They had discussed names but couldn’t narrow it down beyond some two hundred choices. To Petunia Delilah, “Lavender” is fitting to both the baby and the situation. Danny will just have to agree.

Herman smiles. He leans forward and inches a finger back and forth on Lavender’s cheek.

“And,” Petunia Delilah continues, “you probably saved her life. And mine too. Thank you, Herman, for being the bravest guy I’ve ever met.” Petunia Delilah starts to cry from a mix of exhaustion and relief. It’s over, they had all fought so hard, and now everyone is safe.

Thoughts become things.

“You’re our family now,” Petunia Delilah says in a few choking sobs. “You’re Lavender’s brother and my hero. If you ever need anything, if I can ever do anything for you…”

Herman sits back on his heels. His hands rest in his lap, his fingers interlaced, fidgeting. The corners of his mouth twitch downward. His eyes are fixed on his fingers.

“I have to go now,” he says. “There’s something else I have to do.”

Herman gets Claire’s attention and asks her to have another ambulance sent to his grandpa’s apartment. He tells her the buzzer number.

Claire waves her hand and nods, pointing that she’s talking on the phone.

With that, Herman stands and walks out the door.

Before Petunia Delilah can say anything, he’s out of sight. Moments later, a short way down the hall, she hears the stairwell door’s hydraulic arm hiss and the latch click shut.

Petunia Delilah will find Herman again. She wants to be his friend and to know him. She wants Lavender to know him as she grows up. Herman is going to be a part of their lives for as long as they all last. She will make sure of it.

Then she’s left listening to one side of Claire’s conversation but doesn’t hear any of the words; they’re just background noise. She watches Lavender and is struck: Kimmy was right all along. Women have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years without modern medicine. Petunia Delilah is sure it isn’t always such a shit show, and she’s also sure that, most of the time, things work out. And when they don’t, you salve your scars and pick up the pieces and do the best you can.

“Hey,” Petunia Delilah calls to Claire.

Claire bolts upright. She holds her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and looks at Petunia Delilah expectantly.

“You wouldn’t happen to have an ice cream sandwich, would you?”

A puzzled look crosses Claire’s face. Then she nods and says, “I do.”

She opens the freezer, pulls one out, and crosses the room to hand it to Petunia Delilah. Then she goes back to the phone and continues her conversation.

Petunia Delilah doesn’t know whether to savor or savage the ice cream sandwich. She rests Lavender on her belly, tucked against the crook of her elbow, and runs the package between her fingers while she contemplates how to consume it. The plastic wrapper is velvety and cool. The sandwich contained inside is firm but has the slightest give to it under a gentle squeeze. It isn’t frozen solid, and Petunia Delilah likes it that way. The cookie parts will be slightly gooey on the outside. It will leave chocolate gunk on her fingers, which is perfect. She opens the package with her teeth and gazes upon the wonder inside.

Two paramedics arrive at the door. The burly men in blue uniforms announce themselves. One is trailing a gurney loaded with equipment.

Claire sweeps a hand in Petunia Delilah’s direction, as if they would miss her lying on the floor in front of the door, as if to say, “Clean that up, there.” She keeps talking on the phone.

Petunia Delilah starts devouring the ice cream sandwich before they can find reason to stop her.

With practiced ease, the paramedics set about examining her and Lavender. They check blood pressures and listen to hearts beat and ask questions about family histories and medications and if there’s pain and where on her body it is. Petunia Delilah answers through mouthfuls of ice cream sandwich. She licks the wrapper and accidentally drops it to the floor when they load her onto the gurney.