Spanish Disco (7 page)

She held a tomato out in front of her, marveling at its red ripeness. “And I don’t have to give them away. They are for my babies. Mister Riggs, and the birds and the bunnies.” She turned to smile at me, and then she bent her head over her pan, ignoring me as she worked her sorcery over the stove.

Feeling dismissed by Maria, and with time on my hands and a house that smelled like gastric doom to me, I decided to venture to the sand.

Stepping out on the clean white beach, I spotted Roland in the distance. He cast his line into the Gulf and pulled back. Then cast it again. Over and over, falling into a rhythm. I didn’t want to intrude, so I started walking in the opposite direction.

The early evening was breezy. The sun hadn’t yet set, but the sand was nicely warm—not too hot—on the soles of my feet. Shells dotted the beach in wavy lines where the tide had brought them in. An osprey swooped down to the water, and dune grasses grew ragged along the shore. I
hated every minute of my walk. Time stretched out in front of me like the beach. I couldn’t imagine a week here. Let alone longer.

When I was in college, my freshman roommate was a manic-depressive. Cherish, named by her hippie, acid-dropping parents, stayed awake for days on end, the life of the party. She did stupid things like max out her father’s credit card—by then he’d started a software company and made millions. She walked up to the biggest football player on campus and called him a Neanderthal after he fumbled the ball on what would have been the winning touchdown in the most important game in the University of Virginia’s season. She climbed out on the ledge of our dorm “to look at the stars” at night. She drank too much. She didn’t take her Lithium.

In her depressive episodes, Cherish refused to eat. She wouldn’t shower. She didn’t dress. She curled in a fetal position on her bed and sucked her thumb. Her beautiful chestnut brown hair grew matted. She cut all her classes.

I accepted Cherish for what she was. I would come back to our dorm after classes and stroke her hair and try to get her to eat something. I knew the cycle would reverse itself sooner or later. And it always did.

I never tried to talk her into taking her Lithium, and even though everyone else on our hall thought I was crazy, I opted to live with her again the following fall and every year after that. She wouldn’t take her Lithium because it made her lose the highs. And I knew better than anyone how that felt.

She and I called it our sweet insanity. Of course, my
brand was higher-functioning. I never hit the lows and never soared to her highs. My brand was just killer Type-A, pedal to the metal, careening wildly, never-sleep drive and ambition. I graduated second in my class; I double-majored; I interned every year while taking a full load. I worked nights as a bartender. I never stopped. And it was bliss. My Aunt Charlotte accused me of running from something. I thought I was running
to
something. To greatness. To excitement.

After college, I got a job working for Lou. I arrived before 7:00 a.m. and left long after the janitor. He and Helen noticed. Everyone did. Soon, I was lunching opposite the poet Diego Rivera, and working with names I had dreamt about. But, though meeting famous authors and lunching at New York City’s hot spots was a kick, it was the pace I craved. If I had gone to medical school, I would have thrived in the E.R. and never bitched about the long hours of residency.

When my father slipped into the past and stopped realizing who I was, I worked longer and harder. Helen used to fuss over me, but she never really expected to get me to ease up. Saint Helen accepted everyone as they were. Lou was more pragmatic, I suppose: “Kid, the only thing that’s gonna slow you down is your second heart attack—if you survive your first.” Always one to tell it straight.

I breathed in the Gulf air. The beach was nearly empty, and I felt my heart slow down a smidge. I thought of my father.

“This story is good, Cassandra. Very good. I am going to type it up and you can illustrate it, and I’ll keep it forever. I’ll keep you forever, Angel.”

He took me up on his lap, and I wrapped my arms
’
round his neck, breathing in his Royal Copenhagen scent. I felt the starchy crispness of the collar of his Brooks Brothers shirt. He put his hand to my face and wrapped a stray curl around his pinkie, watching my jet-black hair circle his finger in a spiral.

“You know, I shouldn’t say this, but sometimes I’m glad I don’t have to share you with your mother, Cassie. I come home from work and you run to me, smelling of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, and I get all the exuberance and all the hugs. All for me. But you deserve so much better. A mother’s touch. We both do.”

He clasped his arms around me, and I twirled the JJH-initialed cufflinks in his French cuffs. He stared out the window. Traffic on Park Avenue was in a five o’clock crawl. But he wasn’t really seeing the traffic or me or our apartment. He was seeing her, I knew. In his mind. I was six years old, and I remember thinking he looked, for that brief moment, very old.

“Mind if I join you?”

I was startled by Roland, suddenly at my right side.

“Not at all.”

“I asked Lou if I was inconveniencing you by requesting that you stay here while we work on the book. He told me you didn’t mind.”

“Did he, now?” I cocked an eyebrow.

“He said you weren’t married, that you hadn’t found a lucky guy yet, and—”

I laughed. “Mr. Riggs…Roland, I’m sure that’s not exactly what he said.”

He stopped and kicked at the sand with his toe, smiling. “You’re right. Not exactly.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“I’m not sure…”

“Come on. It won’t be anything I haven’t heard before.”

Roland paused, clearly assessing whether I really meant I wanted the truth. “Lou said, ‘Cassie? She won’t even take care of a God damn goldfish. Married? Not likely. She’s got nothing holding her here except for her father. She’ll come.’”

“Lou’s sweet that way.”

Roland’s eyes twinkled. “So…do you think I’m crazy asking you to come here?”

“No…I don’t.” I looked at his face, wrinkled, but rosy-cheeked from the sun.

“Cassie, you’re a terrible liar.”

“Am not. I have an excellent poker face, you know.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m not crazy.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“Good. Glad you agree. See you for dinner.” And with that he took off toward the house. “By the way,” he turned to face me. “Do you like music?”

“Sure. What kind?”

“Oh…I don’t know. Classical. Opera. Hip-hop…
Disco.
”

He stared straight at me.

“Disco? Well…I grew up with the Bee Gees, but it’s not like I play them all the time now.”

“Ahh. But you
did
know them in high school.”

“Personally? No. But everyone listened to them.”

“Splendid.” He turned away. “You better eat those Tums I gave you before dinner. She adds extra spice in the evening. Damn-near kills me every night.”

I watched Roland Riggs disappear up the beach, his head bobbing over the waves of grass in the dunes. Yeah. He wasn’t crazy. Much.

At dinner that night, my nose ran—so did Roland’s—and we kept dabbing at them with our napkins. Maria didn’t even have a hint of mucus about her. How can you trust someone who manufactures no phlegm?

Roland clutched his napkin to his nose, then said, “When I was trying to decide what publisher to call, I read all of Michael Pearton’s works. I re-read ’
Night All
a second time. He raved about you in his acknowledgments.”

“Michael gets a little sappy.”

“Sap’s okay.”

“Sure. Sap’s okay, if you’re into sap.”

“You
must
be into sap.” Roland pounded the table. “Sap is what makes the world go ’round.”

He raised his Corona. “To sap.”

“What is sap?” Maria asked, hesitantly raising her glass.

“Sap,” proclaimed Roland, “is a belief in wishing on a star, in angels and fairy wings. Sap is believing in love at first sight and soul mates. Sap is the only way to go through life. Otherwise the ugliness will wear you down.”

“
Sí.
Sap. To sap.” She nodded her head, approvingly.

I lifted mine. I couldn’t believe I was toasting sap.

After dinner, Roland and I sat in the living room. He could slide all the panes of glass over, making the room open directly out to the Gulf.

“Where’s Maria?”

“She has a little cottage on the other side of the pool. She usually changes after dinner, and then comes here and watches a TV show or two. Then she goes back to her cottage and does whatever it is she does.”

Roland abruptly stood up and faced the sea. “You know, I held my wife as she took her dying breath.”

He turned around to face me and looked as if he might say something more. But then he stared at me expectantly.

“I didn’t know.” I hoped I was saying what he wanted me to say. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’ve known loss. I can tell. And Lou told me.”

“Told you what?”

“Nothing specific. I just asked if you could relate to loss, and he said yes.”

I thought about my mother. She had been out of my life so long, I stopped thinking of her absence as a loss and started thinking of it as how it was meant to be. But my father had become a shell of who he once was. I knew loss. “I can.”

“But he also said you’re not the touchy-feely type.”

“I’m not.”

“Neither am I. I like a good hug now and then, but I’m alone here, except for Maria, so I don’t get the chance. But I do believe in true love. Do you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Hmm. It would be better if you did.”

“Better for what?”

“For what we are facing. So that’s not good, however in your favor you are very honest.”

“I don’t believe in bullshit.”

“Good. Neither do I. I’m going to go for my nightly walk now. Please feel free to watch television. My
casa
is your
casa,
as they say in Mexico.”

He crossed the living room and walked out onto the deck.

“It would help if you believed, Miss Hayes. But I won’t force the issue.”

With that he disappeared into the darkness.

I felt stupid sitting in a big living room all by myself. I don’t watch TV. I went to my room and e-mailed Lou.

Lou:

Help me. Roland Riggs speaks of disco and fairy wings. Where is the man who wrote
Simple Simon,
Lou? I fear his brain has turned to mush here under the stars. Lou, I will go positively insane if I stay the month. I’ll do it, but…send bagels. Send coffee. Send me someone who doesn’t want to know what I think of Andy Gibb, the Bee Gees, and finding your soul mate. Lou…you always tell me I have the best “gut” in the business. My gut tells me Roland Riggs left part of his mind in a tomato garden in Maine.

I’m bored outta my mind.

And his housekeeper is trying to kill me.

Seriously.

Swear it.

Miss even you,

Cassie

7

I
clicked on Send, and my e-mail made its way through cyberspace to Lou’s computer where it would remain until the next morning. Lou isn’t a night owl. Ever since he took up fishing, he is one of those guys who’ll get up at the crack of dawn, rod in hand and fish for two hours before most human beings are even out of bed. Only I know it’s because he can’t sleep with Helen gone. He dozes in front of the television set, but he waits anxiously for that dawn, for that moment when he can bolt his condo and hit the beach and not be reminded that he has a huge expanse of nighttime and no one to fill it with.

Periodically, one of the women at work gets the bright idea of trying to fix up Lou on a date. The inappropriateness of this bemuses me. Besides his expansive list of weird character traits and decidedly un-dreamboat-like quali
ties—the fact that he eats cold Chinese food out of a box for breakfast and won’t wear shoes in the office (and his feet are ugly), the way he burps loud enough to wake the dead if he drinks his beer too quickly—there is the little fact that he is nowhere near ready to date. And probably never will be.

ARE YOU THERE?

Sitting at the keyboard, thinking about Helen and Lou, my thoughts were interrupted by an instant message. About a year ago, Michael got the bright idea that we should each have an instant messaging system on our computers so that we could write in real time on the computer on days when we were both bored but I was too crabby to answer my phone or to really be civilized.

Yes.

Are you in love with him yet?

I clicked back:

Who?

The mystery author.

No, I am not in love with him yet. I am not going to fall in love with him.

I pressed the Enter key, and my message zipped to London. No love between Roland Riggs and me. That I knew as surely as I knew dinner would be repeating on me all night long. I unrolled four Tums and chewed them into a big, chalky, fruity-flavored mess in my mouth.