Spanish Disco (18 page)

23

I
n the middle of the night, I heard a scream that not only jolted me awake but set all my hair on end. The sound was more than a scream. It was the keening of a man in the throes of grief.

Despite the gift Lou gave me of beautiful pajamas, I was naked with melted bags of peas resting on both my feet. I tried to remember where I was and what I was dreaming and told myself it was a nightmare. But then I heard it again.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” The man’s voice was unmistakably Roland’s. I flew out of bed, grabbed a T-shirt from the floor and threw it over my head, and rapidly pulled on a pair of jeans from my suitcase, nearly ripping my pubic hair in the zipper in the process.

Rushing out into the hall, I headed toward the screams just as Maria bolted up the stairs.

“It’s the television show. I knew this would happen,” she shouted, through tears.

“He said he wasn’t going to watch it.”

“He lied. He loved his wife too much to not watch it.”

Maria opened the door to Roland’s room, which looked more like a library with a bed in it. Books were stacked everywhere, with a king-sized bed off-center and diagonal in the middle of it all. And there, in the bed, lay Roland with sheets and blankets twisted all the way around him and a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!” he screamed again.

“What, Roland, what?” I asked, moving toward him as Maria became totally efficient, like a nurse on duty in an emergency room. Her movements were spare, quick, with the grace and weariness of someone who has performed them a thousand times. She untwisted the blankets and took the bottle of alcohol from his hands.

“That idiot! That idiot… If somehow…” and he began weeping like a child. Maria shushed him, putting her lips next to his ear and soothing him as she stroked his hair.

“I’ll get you something to drink. Some water. And aspirin. Your head is going to hurt tomorrow, Mister Riggs,” she whispered. Then she looked at me. “Talk to him until I get back.”

She left the room, and I heard her on the steps moving quickly.

“It was an accident,” I said in hushed tones, holding his hand as I sometimes comforted my father when he couldn’t recall my name.

“If he had been…noble somehow. Or just not such a dumb-ass redneck. What gods are these? What gods!” He shook his fist at the ceiling. “If it had been…” and his shoulder racked with sobs and his nose started running.

“What?”

“If it had been an accident that I somehow could have accepted. But here was an idiot…” He strived to catch his breath.

“And?”

“And my…” his voice broke. “My Maxine. My angel…was killed by a man I would no sooner trust my parrot to, let alone a gun. It’s all so doubly senseless. So pre—” he stumbled over the word “—posterous. So pathetic. So…”

He cried. He wailed. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Again, he screamed. His gray hair was splayed across the pillows like some eighteenth-century genius in the throes of the plague. Only Roland’s plague wasn’t carried by a rat, but by a mistake, borne on the shoulders of an idiot now nearing his own last breath on earth.

I squeezed his hand and thought about it. Would I rather my wife killed by an intelligent man who made a grievous error or an imbecile who simply fucked up without thinking? A brilliant life snuffed out by a stupid one. Where was the score evened with that one? Roland was right. What gods? What gods!

Maria crisply reentered the bedroom, her shoulders stiff with total authority.

“Drink,” she commanded, and he sat up and took a sip of water.

“Tongue,” she commanded and he stuck out his tongue while she placed two aspirin on it.

“Drink,” she said sternly as he sipped the water again.

“Lie down.”

He did as he was told.

“The bed is spinning.”

“Just lie there. Only sleep can cure this.”

With that she began to sing a lullaby in Spanish. It was a vague tune, the type mothers make up on the spot for their young children—in any language—to chase away monsters and boogeymen. I didn’t understand a word of it, but she stroked Roland’s head and held his hand. He sniffled and sighed and eventually fell back to sleep.

“Sometimes death makes no sense, Mister Riggs,” she whispered. When she seemed confident that he was soundly dreaming and not agitated any longer, she whispered, “Let’s go. He will sleep and maybe dream.”

In the hallway she turned to me, “The dead have a way of haunting the living.”

“Is he like this often?”

She stared at me, knowingly. “He will never let go of Mrs. Riggs. And the man on the television just reminded him all over again. She is still here.” Maria stared up at the darkened ceiling. “She will not let him rest.”

“That’s bullshit. He needs to find a way to make this end. Death is death. The end.”

“That cannot be,” she whispered and crossed herself.

24

T
he next day, I hobbled downstairs to the kitchen. Maria was chopping onions for yet another fatal dish.

“What happened to you?” she asked, the knife hitting the cutting board with a pounding sound. In all the commotion, I don’t think she noticed my swollen feet the night before. And I had run to Roland’s room so quickly, adrenaline pumping, I hadn’t noticed either, but there they were, fat and pink and swollen.

“Oh…I went walking on the beach last night, and I think my feet were attacked by crabs.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“Happens all the time. You ever go walking the beach at night?”

She shook her head, now dicing the onions into tiny squares.

“Well, I’m here to warn you. Very dangerous.”

Maria stopped her chopping and looked up.

“I don’t believe you. I think you’re making fun of me.”

I shrugged. “Fine. Don’t. Just don’t blame me if the crabs attack your feet. They travel sideways, you know. Guerrilla attack. Stealthy.”

I made my way to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“What should I tell Mr. Riggs if he asks when you’ll be back?”

“Later.”

“Today he will be very sad. Maybe you should stay.”

“Maria, I’m his editor. You’re his nurse and his keeper and his cook and botanist. I would even go so far as to say you’re his muse.”

“His what?”

“Nothing.”

I walked out the front door, taking care to not let in the orange-striped fat cat that was sitting on the doormat. The cat lazily licked his front right paw. Walking to my car, cats slunk up to me and rubbed against my bare legs. Others stretched out by the koi pond and fountain. Still others slept on tree branches, a lone paw or tail dangling over the side. I wondered if the cats ever eyed the rabbits and thought “dinner.” I wasn’t sure why, but the thought of Pedro or José ending up as cat food worried me. And the fact that I was worried about bunnies told me I had already spent too long on this island.

Driving to Donald Seale’s hotel, I thought of the last time he had kissed me. I wasn’t sure why I hated him so much, or if I really did hate him. He was just trying to do his job. I told myself that. Repeated it in my head a hundred times as I drove. But when I walked up to his hotel room, and he opened the door, I still shot him down for all it was worth.

“Here’s your book.” I walked in and tossed it on the bed. “You’ve proved nothing. Roland Riggs does not write romances.”

“I’m still going with the story.”

“Suit yourself,” I said flatly. How can you trust a man who doesn’t even leave wet towels lying on his hotel room floor? He was too neat, smelled too clean when I was near him. Was too good-looking.

“You’ll look like a fool when we issue a denial,” I said.

“Did you see the segment with the dying hunter?”

“The ‘I’m with Stupid’ guy? I saw it. Roland didn’t watch. You’re not going to get an interview. He doesn’t care, Donald. It’s all in the past,” I bluffed. “You’re pursuing the Holy Grail of journalism, and I can’t blame you, but it’s not going to happen. Not now. Not when his new book comes out.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Donald, I returned your book. All your yellow highlighted paragraphs don’t show they’re the same writer. It just shows you were the nerd in high school who used highlighters. I’m leaving. When the book comes out, I’ll be sure to send you a press kit like everyone else.”

“I don’t want to wait that long to hear from you.”

Even as he said that, he was walking toward me, then standing behind me, kissing my neck. Shivers ran up and down my spine, and, for what it’s worth, I wanted to push him away. Instead I turned around and kissed him back. He moaned.

“You make me crazy.”

“A lot of men tell me that. Not in a good way.”

“No…this
is
in a good way. And the bad way.”

I plead amnesia. My shirt was off, his pants were halfway down to his knees. I wasn’t sure if I had done that or he had, but the next thing I knew we were in bed, fucking our brains out. He was beautiful. He was a skilled lover. And when it was all over, I was dressing faster than a hooker on the clock.

“Don’t go. Spend the afternoon with me. Cassie, please.”

“I can’t.”

“What if I said I’d drop the story?”

“That’s not why I fucked you.”

“I know.”

“There’s a spark between us, Donald. You infuriate me and piss me off, and I do the same to you. But I have to go. This was just one of those things.”

“Not to me.”

“Donald, this was one of those things to me. Here’s a little secret about me. A slice of vulnerability that you can tuck away in your Rolodex— My life is one of those things. Some people are like that, Donald. My life…at every turn…is one of those things.”

I watched him fall back on his pillow and shut his eyes as I left. When I got to my car, I slid in and started to drive back to Roland’s. I passed the public beach and the lighthouse, and then I had to pull over and throw up. Acid burned my chest and throat as I emptied my stomach of last night’s booze. But it wasn’t a hangover—for a change. It wasn’t the senseless fucking. I had done that in Studio 54’s bathroom. I had done that on my kitchen table. I had done that behind the Greek mythology stacks in the New York City public library. I climbed back in the car and drove to Roland’s. He and Maria were eating something that smelled dangerously like pure chili peppers. I waved hello and went to my room. The rabbits followed me.

No. It wasn’t the fucking. It was that it was Donald and not Michael. The acid rose in my throat again, and I went to the bathroom and kissed the porcelain goddess. My nose was running. My eyes were watering. Believe me, I could make a case that I am my most unattractive immediately post-vomit. Even worse than my puffy menstrual days, and most decidedly worse even than a head cold. I wiped my eyes. Jesus Christ, it wasn’t the throwing up that was making my eyes run. I felt my stomach heave with the realization that I was crying. But I couldn’t stop them. The tears came no matter how much I willed them away.

I took out my laptop and wrote Michael an e-mail:

Michael:

I’ve messed this up totally. Totally. I’ve pushed and pushed and now you’ve gone and hung up on me. What are you think
ing? Are you thinking I’m impossible? Insane? That we were just dancing and now the music’s stopped? You’re right, you know. That night on the phone. I never used your tea set. Not once. I knew the minute I opened the box I would never attempt to serve high tea, and it was the most impossibly impractical gift I had ever received. I took it out of the box when it arrived and put it on my counter where it sits, gathering dust. It needs to be polished. It’s really an unattractive tarnished gray-brown. But, besides the fact that the thought of buying silver polish is completely against my very genetics, I refuse to polish it.

Why?

I ask myself this. Why? It’s just a tea set. My cleaning lady threatens to clean it every two weeks.

And I never realized it, until maybe a few weeks ago. But I never polish it because your hand was the last that touched it. You put it in the box and shipped it to America, and somehow I can’t bear to buff away your touch. Your fingerprints that linger on it.

The tea set, Michael, looks, as you’d say, “bloody awful.” But it’s all I have of you.

I’m not sure if this is how someone says “I love you.” I’ve never tried.

Am I crazy, Michael?

Cassie

There it was. My finger poised the cursor over Send. I waited. I read and re-read. I waited. My hand cramped from holding the mouse for so long. The acid in my throat
kept burning me. The two rabbits stood on their haunches and looked at me. Expectantly.

“I know, you two. I know.”

And then, I pressed Send.

Too late to change my mind. The message was gone.

I turned off my laptop. That was that. I wiped my eyes again. I needed to shower. I needed to wash away my morning with Donald. I needed to start fresh. But first, I needed to finish crying.