Chapter 7
When Candice woke the next morning, she was full of anxiety. She couldn’t remember where she was for a moment, and then everything came back to her. She looked over and there was no sign of Alex. He hadn’t left a note. She rolled over and looked at her phone that she’d left on the nightstand table. It was ten thirty in the morning.
She lay in bed for another fifteen minutes when she heard the door open. She smelled the food first. It was buttery and rich. Then she heard the door lock and Alex walked in.
“I got you breakfast in bed,” he said. “I didn’t know what you wanted. I know you like Mexican food, so I got you huevos rancheros. I didn’t go to the hotel restaurant either. They mainly had soggy bread and overcooked eggs. I had to go down the street.”
“Whoa,” Candice said.
Alex busied himself serving the food. He unwrapped everything and set it on a portable table that he rested on the bed.
“You slept really soundly. I was up around eight in the morning. You looked beautiful in your sleep,” he said. “I decided I would let you doze for a while and I went to the gym. After my workout you were still asleep. Nothing could wake you.”
“I’m a heavy sleeper after a night of exercise,” Candice said. She looked down at the food that Alex had set for her.
Candice had had a lot of huevos rancheros before. It was a staple morning breakfast dish. The salsa ranchera was fresh and simple for this dish, as it was composed of some white onion, tomatoes, garlic, chili guajillo, chili morita, and fresh jalapeños.
The eggs on top of the fried tortillas were crispy. The egg whites were burnt slightly but the yolk wasn’t overcooked. She ate the dish with a fork and knife. The dish had been served with some flavored rice and beans. The beans were delicious and didn’t have a lardy flavor, which was usual for many of the restaurants in Oakland.
The food was rich in Candice’s mouth and she ate it quickly. Alex sat by the bed and watched her eat.
“You aren’t hungry,” Candice said as she licked her fingers clean.
“No. I had some of the hotel breakfast. Probably a mistake. So what’s your plan for today?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was going to see what you were going to do,” she replied. She looked down at her empty plate with a look of sadness wishing that more of the delicious food were there.
“I have to go to the airport. I need to leave in a few minutes actually.”
“Oh…” Candice said, a look of disappointment crossing her face.
“I am guessing you haven’t thought more about when we would meet again.”
“I haven’t. Although if you promise me breakfast in bed again I am sure to come sooner than later.”
“I think I can promise you that,” Alex said. He kissed her on the forehead. “I should get going. Will you take care of dropping off the key?”
“Yeah, absolutely.”
“I, of course, took care of the bill.”
“Well, that’s certainly a positive,” Candice said. A thin smile rose on her mouth.
“We’ll talk soon, okay? Check out isn’t until noon. Maybe you can sleep in a little more.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Okay, bye,” Alex said. He kissed her forehead and walked backwards out of the room. He picked up his luggage and then turned out of the room. Candice could hear him walk down the hallway. She thought she heard him whistle a soft song as he walked.
Candice lay back down on the bed. Alex had cleaned everything off and she felt pleasantly full from the meal. She lay in bed for a while.
Things with Alex were moving along rapidly but she felt secure and safe around him. He was like a harbor for the storm that Mitch was causing her. She’d completely forgotten him during the time that she spent with Alex, but he’d crept back into her thoughts like dark clouds of an impending storm. She wasn’t sure what she’d do about him. She’d battened down the hatches and taught her parents how to ignore him, but had he punctured her ship in some way? Was he causing some yet unseen damage to her life? She wasn’t sure. She knew that she had to resolve things with him in some way.
She fell into a light sleep. She saw Alex climbing a series of stairs. Each step wound upward and onwards. She rushed ahead of him and came to the top floor of a lighthouse. A strong burning fire lit up the lighthouse and the surrounding area. It was fed with wood and a large stack of wood sat next to the fire.
Candice could see out into the water despite the darkness of a starless night. The light from the tower enabled her to see a boat. The boat’s sails were taut and the ship was thrust forward. She could hear Alex’s steps come up further. The boat was coming close to the shore. She didn’t know what the reef was like. In the distance, she could make out another boat. It was hurtling towards the first with no regard for the speed at which it may crash into the shore. The second ship’s sails burst forward and it looked like it would ram the first.
“Alex! Alex!” Candice yelled in her dream.
She put another log on the fire and tried to fan the flame higher. She wanted the first boat to see what was going on. She couldn’t see anyone on the boat. Was it unmanned or too dark to make out the crew? Candice couldn’t tell.
She looked away for a moment and heard a grating sound as wood clashed against wood.
“Housekeeping!” a voice said. “Housekeeping!”
Candice woke from her slumber and looked up. A young woman was pushing a cart of cleaning supplies. She rolled over and looked at her phone. It was 12:15 p.m. She’d overslept. Check out was at noon.
“One moment,” Candice said.
The housekeeper stepped out of the room.
Candice slipped out of the bed and found her dress on the back of one of the chairs. It was neatly draped. Next to her was her underwear. She slid her clothes on and then took her shoes that rested by the door. She walked out of the room and went downstairs.
“I’m checking out,” she said to the lobby. She handed over the key and the clerk nodded.
The day was bright and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the brightness. A light air blew through the streets. The height of the buildings and the brightness of the sun created hard shadows. The city was bifurcated into places of light and dark. Candice walked through them. She walked a few blocks from the hotel towards Jack London Square.
The area was busy with a day fair. A horde of organic food stalls had been set up. Candice walked through them. She knew she was overly dressed and the darkness of the dress helped warm her skin under the summer sun. She picked up a strawberry and tasted it. The juices were rich, better than the ones at the Ferry Building. She bought some and then looked at her phone.
There was a text from Alex and from Tiffany.
“I just landed in L.A. I miss you already,” Alex had written.
“Let’s get coffee or lunch,” Tiffany had written.
Candice got an Uber and headed home. When she arrived back at her house she changed her clothes into shorts and a T-shirt and then sat on her stoop eating the strawberries. She put the green tops to the side and watched the street as she ate.
A white man jogged by. He wore barefoot style shoes that separated his toes and Nike shorts. A white visor protected his eyes from the afternoon soon and he’d tucked his sport athletic shirt into the back of his shorts. Candice shook her head looking at him.
A woman walked her dog. She was thin and wore tortoise-shell glasses. Her arms were covered in tattoos and she wore a beaten Motley Crue T-shirt with cut-off blue jeans. Her dog was a large German Shepherd. The dog pulled at the leash and yanked the woman around. The dog’s coat was dark, although his face was tan. A few white whiskers around his nose gave him an aged appearance.
Candice watched the woman and the dog walk down the street until they disappeared. A moment later she heard two dogs barking angrily. There was a woman’s high-pitched screams and then there was silence. Candice thought about walking around the corner to see what had happened but thought it wasn’t worth her time.
Candice looked down at her phone. The message to Tiffany would be easy.
Let’s meet in an hour. Can you pick me up? she texted her friend.
Yeah. Just got done with my run. I’ll see you in an hour, Tiffany responded.
The message to Alex would be harder. Candice wasn’t sure what she should say or what she should do. She liked him. She worried though that Mitch might come back. Her dream that morning hadn’t filled her with hope.
I’m glad you had a safe flight. Let me see what my work schedule is like, she wrote after a few minutes of anguish.
She wasn’t sure how he would respond. Would he think that she was being cold and rude? He was older, so he probably didn’t think much of it. He didn’t seem the type to get overly worked up over things like this.
Candice was still on the porch mulling things over when Tiffany pulled up. Tiffany drove a small Honda Civic CR-X. The car was red and black and roared loudly. When Tiffany parked, the stereo speakers were blasting out Calvin Harris’s “How Deep Is Your Love.”
“Remember Coachella?” Tiffany said.
“There was such a big crowd for Calvin,” Candice answered.
“There was also that hologram of Tupac,” Tiffany said. She walked up to Candice’s door and sat next to her friend. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt as well. Hers was pulled back tightly. The basket of strawberries still sat next to Candice and Tiffany pushed her finger around the discarded remains. She looked sad when she couldn’t find a strawberry. She pouted for a moment.
“That was so crazy,” Candice said. She looked out into the street and then down at Tiffany’s car. “I don’t understand why you have a car. You live in the city. Isn’t it impossible to find parking?”
“The car is small, and I just started paying for a spot at a lot nearby.”
“That’s expensive though.”
“Everything is expensive now. I like the car. I drove it today for the run.”
“Where did you go?”
“We went to the Presidio and ran around there.”
“We?”
“I went running with a group of people. We are all preparing for the SF marathon together. I found everyone through a Facebook group.”
“Oh cool. What’s everyone like?”
“It’s mainly people our age. There are more than a few tech people,” Tiffany said.
“Aren’t we tech people?”
“I’m not sure we count as tech because we’ve been living here for a few years.”
“We work in the industry though.”
“Yeah. Well, it pays the bills.”
“Sometimes it does,” Candice said. “It doesn’t solve everything though.”
“What happened,” Tiffany said. She put her arm around Candice’s shoulder and pulled her friend closer for a hug.
“Nothing. I think I am being dramatic. I had a bad dream this morning.”
“Oh… well, what about yesterday? Didn’t you meet up with Alex?”
“Yeah,” Candice said. She looked out into the distance.
“And?”
“And it was great. We had drinks at Dogwood. We talked a little. We had sex.”
“That sounds good,” Tiffany said. “Why are you looking so glum?”
“I don’t know. I guess I am still feeling a little weird about the pregnancy thing.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it. I don’t feel bad about it, but do you think I should have told Mitch before I did something?”
“Would it have changed your decision if you had told him?” Tiffany asked. She pulled her friend in close again.
“No,” Candice said. She squeezed her friend’s hand and then let it go.
“Then what does it matter? Did I ever tell you about the time I got knocked up?”
“No. What happened?” Candice asked.
“I was in high school. His name was Hemmerich. He was a German exchange student. He loved Hermann Hesse and talking about himself. I would often get confused about who he was talking about. He kept saying, ‘When Hermann wrote this book…’ and I just thought he was talking about himself in the third person,” Tiffany said.
Candice laughed.
“I was young and dumb. I thought I would be with him forever. Forever being more than two months, that’s how long I was with the boy before him. Before he left, we had unprotected sex. He came in me in about two seconds. I didn’t feel his penis I just felt the gush of his cum,” Tiffany said with a laugh. “I thought that maybe if I was pregnant he would have to stay. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I missed my period. I was keeping careful track. I hadn’t heard from him. No letters, no phone calls, nothing. I was talking to one of my friends and she said that Hemmerich had slept with another girl before he’d left too. I thought I was going steady with him too,” Tiffany said rolling her eyes.
“So you got an abortion?”
“Yeah I did the same as you. I walked straight up to my mom that afternoon and told her that she had to bring me to the clinic. That I’d gotten pregnant from Adolf Hitler’s grandson and that I didn’t want the baby.”
“What did your mom say?”
“My mom was a progressive, or said she was. She told me that it was my body and my choice, although I could see judgement in her eyes.”
“What about your dad?” Candice asked.
“He didn’t say anything. He’s always been stoic. We all sat at the dinner table and my mother told him everything that had happened. They knew about Hemmerich. He’d come over to the house a few times. My father hadn’t really spoken to him, hadn’t said anything bad either. When my mother told him that I would be getting an abortion he said, ‘Children are expensive, you’ve made a sound economic decision, Tiffany.’ Incidentally he said something similar when I told him about my college choice.”
“Did you feel bad about it? How do you feel about it now?”
“No. To be honest I don’t really think about it much. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have been a teenage mom, but then I think about how awful it would have been. I wasn’t ready for a child then,” Tiffany said. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t think anyone is really ready for these things though. You have to go with your gut to some extent. I think that having Mitch’s kid would have been a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“I agree. I guess the pregnancy just made me think about what I would do if I did find someone that I actually liked.”
“Someone like Alex?” Tiffany elbowed her friend in the ribs.
“Quit it.”
“Oh, you like him. You like him so much. You want to get married and pick out your wedding dress,” Tiffany continued. Her face skewed to the side. “Now, bitch, if I’m not your maid of honor, I’ll kill you.”
“I don’t know. I think you’d be pretty terrible about helping with wedding planning.”
“Let’s face it, Candice, no one stays married anymore. People get divorced, so why sink so much money into it? Really you should have a small wedding and a great honeymoon. That way at least when you get divorced, you’ll have had a good time in Thailand or somewhere.”
“You always look at the bright side of life don’t you?” Candice said.
“I try.”
“Anyways, how was the run today?” Candice said.
“I’m dead. I can’t believe I actually ran twelve miles. It was absolute shit. The good thing now is that I can eat whatever I want.”
“Yeah, I’m hungry. Let’s go get food,” Candice told her friend. She stood up and picked up the finished basket of strawberries and brought them inside. She threw them away and walked back out. Tiffany was standing by her car.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Tiffany said. She smacked the top of the car. “Get in my hot rod and we’ll go get some burgers and milkshakes.”
Candice smiled. She opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat.
Tiffany looked over at her and put her foot on the gas pedal. The car engine revved and the two pealed out. The tires streaked and the two jetted away from Candice’s West Oakland apartment.