Surreal Ecstasy (18 page)

"I was under that impression
as well," Ree said lazily, sitting back down on the foot of the mattress
after opening the door for his sister.  He'd set up my laptop on the folding
chair in front of him and was watching an online movie.

Sadly, he was now wearing his shirt
over his boxers, but I kept a very vivid image of him in all his naked glory. I
saw it now in my mind's eye, and with this image to accompany me, I smiled and
hummed as I made breakfast.

Dess locked my door and walked over
to the kitchen, taking out some plates and utensils. Pathetically enough, I
didn't actually have a table, so she put them on the counter next to the stove
for now. "I had a dream again last night, a very clear one. I know who I
am now." She smiled proudly.

"Oh, Dess. I'm so sorry I
haven't had time to help you set up your mind room."

"No prob, Bob. You just got
released from the hospital yesterday, for chrissakes. I'm not going to fuck you
up psychically just to suit my own needs. Besides, I did discover the identity
of the god I used to be." She gave me a big toothy grin.

"You might not need me after
all. That's great, Dess." Smiling, I got the sautéed mushrooms off the
stove and put everything together in a messy but delicious scramble, glad I
didn't have to look at her square in the face while we hung out in the very
same place where I had practically raped her brother the day before.

My cheeks burned with this thought.
Was she uncomfortable? She didn't seem to be.

Ree closed my laptop and gave his
sister his (sort of) undivided attention.

"Tell us about it," he
said. I sprinkled some shredded cheese over the scramble. It was nearly done.

We sat down, Ree and I on the bed
and Dess on the floor next to us, and ate our breakfasts. "Lachesis was
one of the Three Fates, you know, the ones that spun the wheel and determined
the amount of years a person lived."

"Oh, yeah. I remember learning
about them in school, I think." I sucked down my home-brewed coffee.

"Baby, this food is really
good," Ree remarked as he squeezed my hand, probably trying to annoy Dess
by pretending he wasn't paying attention to her.

But Dess wasn't fooled; she didn't
look at all concerned. She probably knew him too well for that.

"Which one were you again?"
I prompted after thanking Ree for his praise.

"Lachesis, the one who
measured the thread of life. I'm telling you, Morgue, it was insane. I was just
sitting there using the computer, and in my head I suddenly saw things—it felt
a lot like my old past life dreams, except everything was crystal clear, and
thoughts were zooming around my head like lightning. Suddenly, things make
sense in my life. It's totally unexplainable."

"And yet we still have no idea
what planet you're from," Ree teased, swiftly cleaning his plate.

"Eat a bloke and choke,"
Dess retorted without missing a beat, stuffing a slice of orange in her mouth.

"What else do you remember,
Dess?" Maybe I should be taking notes or writing this in a journal.

"Just that the other two Fates
are also on Earth right now as Slates, just like me, and that it's important I
find both of them. Beyond that, I don't remember anything helpful." She
looked irritated and despondent.

Ree looked at Dess with a serious
expression, which was a very strange thing to witness. Dess, sensing it, turned
her head and looked at him back.

"Whatchu want, Rios?" she
asked, polishing off another orange slice. Then, upon seeing his expression,
hers changed to match his, all the usual signs of mockery vanished. "What
is it? What happened?"

He took a deep breath. I was about
to get up and take a shower, but something told me to stay and watch what would
happen next. Keeping his eyes on his sister, he motioned with his head toward
where I was sitting. "It's her."

She instantly rolled her eyes and
looked like she was about to speak, but she froze, considering something for a
moment. "Morgue is your charge? No fucking way. Really? NO FUCKING WAY!"

My shock almost matching hers, I
regarded Ree with a similar expression. "You really never told her about
me? I mean, even while you guys were growing up?"

He shook his head. "I told you—I
couldn't. That's one detail that I kept to myself. It was too sacred," he
added, his voice dropping to an intimate tone.

"And I understood that,"
Dess interjected. I felt her eyes on me so I looked at her, and she was indeed
studying me. "It's just fucking crazy. All this time… all your
distractions… I can't believe your charge is
Morgue
, my best friend.
This is screwy. I'm getting confused. How could we all be connected like this?"

"I had to meet her somehow,
someway, and… I suppose this is how it happened, confusing or not."

Realizing the juiciest part of that
conversation was over with, I decided to leave the twins talking among
themselves and watching an old movie on my laptop so that I could take a
much-needed shower. It felt like ages since hot water has rained down on me,
cleansing my worries away momentarily. I felt like myself again, like the
insanity of this past week left my body with the dirty water trickling to my
feet and disappearing down the drain.

The twins were the only highlights
of my week. They were a godsend.

Um, metaphorically speaking…or not.

When I got out of the shower, I
heard partial sentences through the closed bathroom door.

"We have to –"

"I know."

"Do you think she'll –"

"Not if we –"

"What about when we –"

"That'll be –"

"You sure –"

"Yup."

"Kay."

"Cool."

"Let's do it."

Not understanding at all, I laughed
to myself and shook my head as I dried myself off. Twins were crazy specimens.

Although Dess' clothes had been a
relief for me to borrow, it was incredibly satisfying to be in my own clothes
again:  jeans, pink off-the-shoulder blouse, white socks. I emerged out of my
two-inch bathroom to find the twins elbowing each other for more laptop-viewing
space.

"Hey, Morgue. Rios and I were
talking about it, and we've decided on something."

I laughed. "I heard the way
you guys talked. You can actually have a conversation that way?"

They both chuckled briefly. Besides
one sounding masculine and the other feminine, it was the exact same laugh. "It's
a twin thing," Ree explained, a tiny gleam of attraction shining in his
eyes as he looked me over. "Some twins actually have their own unique
language. Hey, we used to do that, remember, Dess?" His sister nodded.

"Anyway," Ree continued, "We
know your life has been turned upside down lately, including you getting fired
from your job."

"How did you know that I was
just going to talk to you guys about it?"

"We didn't—not really,"
he replied. "But it was a natural topic of discussion for all of us to
have. Anyway, Baby, what I'm getting to is that –"

Dess couldn't wait. "We want
you to move in with us!"

"Whoa! What?" I never
dreamed they'd be
that
generous, although thinking back on it, I guess I
shouldn't have been too surprised.

Ree stood up and smiled. "No
pressure for us to actually live together, Morgan. I'd personally love it, but
I have absolutely no problem with giving you sufficient time to get used to the
idea. I can take the couch, and –"

I tackled Ree, throwing my arms
around his neck. He got pushed back a few inches but otherwise held his ground.
"Thank you so much, you guys," I gushed. "I can't believe this.
You don't have to be this nice to me!" Touched by his show of commitment,
I planted kiss after kiss on his face, all over his cheeks, forehead, and neck.

"Whoa, Morgue, back it down a
notch," Dess said. "Save it all for your bedroom,
please
. I'll
get all those boxes and crap outta there and move it to the garage, which I
never use anyway."

"Morgan, I don't want to crowd
you too quickly," Ree continued, studying me closely.

"Let
me
worry about
that, okay?" I asked him. "If you get on my nerves, you can keep your
promise of sleeping on the couch."

"Deal," Ree agreed,
smiling adorably.

"There's just one other thing
that's bothering me, guys," I pointed out. "I don't want to take
advantage of you—of your generosity, I mean, both of you, you know? I don't
really have anything in my savings account. I mean, Dess, you have the same job
I do—I mean, used to—and that barely paid for my apartment and utilities. Plus,
you started after me so I'm pretty sure you don't earn as much as I did. How
can that be enough to pay the rent for this house? And now with Ree coming to
live with you—I don't know if you plan on getting a job, Ree, although it's not
my business. I know that. I'm just trying to understand how things are gonna
go, how they're gonna happen, how we'll maintain—I mean, I know I have to get
another job, obviously, but that could take weeks. I don't really want to ask
my mother for help because she already thinks I'm the devil child as it is."
I stopped to take a breath.

Dess' lip quivered a bit,
threatening to break out into a grin, and Ree flat-out smiled and laughed. "You're
cute when you ramble."

"I'm not finished explaining
yet," I protested.

"Do you want to tell her, or
should I?" Dess asked him.

"All right, what twin secret
do you want to let me in on?" I had a feeling something interesting was on
the horizon.

Ree looked at Dess, then at me and
said, "Baby, you don't have to worry about money, okay? We're good.
Seriously."

"That's not telling her
anything
,
dummy," Dess told him, elbowing him. To me she said, "Our family owns
a restaurant in L.A. In the valley, actually."

I had no idea what she meant by 'the
valley.'  "Oh! That's great. So you're not struggling, then," I said,
suddenly understanding how Dess was able to put $500 in my hand at a moment's
notice on Friday.

"It's a little more than that,"
Ree chimed in. "You kn
ow Abuela Zerlina's
?"

I knew that name. Where have I
heard that before?

After a moment it hit me, and just
like the time I found out they were twins instead of husband and wife,
realizations began whirring through my brain, including the reason why the
twins' names had been familiar to me. I suddenly began to feel weak. "Oh,
my god. You guys are
that
Rios family?" I started to
hyperventilate. Ree whipped out a small paper bag out of nowhere and made me
breathe into it.

"Morgan, it's okay," Ree
said after I'd been able to breathe on my own.

"Uh, I beg to differ," I
retorted, incredibly mortified. For some reason, my only thought was how Ree
and I had lunch at Pike's and I'd told him not to worry, that I'd pay for it,
as if I were some hotshot doing him a favor. Oh, god. I wanted to rip up the
wood planks in my kitchen and crawl underneath them.

The twins' family was wealthy and
kind of famous. Not everybody in the world knew who they were, but they
actually had an empire. They themselves have probably appeared in a tabloid now
and then, though the media usually focused on a couple of their older siblings,
who spent much more time in the limelight. Abuela Zerlina was the name of the
manufacturing food company that made and packaged chips, salsa, and the like,
which were all being advertised up the butt on TV and in magazines everywhere.
Not too long after the company made it big, it gave birth to a handful of
restaurants across the nation, which in turn caught the media attention and the
offer for their short-lived reality TV show called
Dining as a Rios
,
which I'd never seen but certainly heard about from women who thought the Rios
boys were hot. Who wouldn't love to watch them? They were a good-looking,
intelligent, charming family from Malibu, California. The publicity they
received from the show paved the way for more opportunities for them, because
since then I'd seen one of their brothers in a guest role for a TV sitcom, and
one of their sisters in advertisements for her new makeup line.

I mean, you could actually go to
Best Buy and find the
Dining as a Rios
DVD. There was probably even a
small picture of the twins with their family on the cover of it.

I should have caught on when Ree
told me there were eleven children in all, but I was so focused on my
intensifying feelings for him that I didn't even consider he might have been
well-known. It also helped explain the stares and idiotic behavior in women
around Ree. He was already perfect, gorgeous, and considerate, but when you add
'millionaire' to the whole thing, well, that was a whole new ballgame, folks.
For most women, that is. Never mind the whole 'angel-who's-sexy-as-hell' bit.

For me, however, I suddenly felt insignificant,
not to mention inept and brainless.

Here they were, the Rios twins,
youngest siblings of the semi-famous family, sitting on the floor in my crummy
studio apartment, eating the breakfast I cooked for them and acting as if the
shabbiness of the whole place didn't offend them. They treated me as if I were
one of their own. Ree's perfect personality suddenly made sense—it was probably
the result of privileged upbringing, his obnoxiousness around his sister
notwithstanding. And Dess, whose wages at work would probably infuriate and
insult her mother to no end, walked around Crafts Market like she was beneath
everyone else, when in fact she could probably buy and sell every jackass at
the store's corporate headquarters.

The twins never ceased to amaze me.

I breathed deeply as I tried to
come to terms with the true identity of my new boyfriend. Part of me couldn't
believe that I had caressed and slept with a famous millionaire from L.A.