Chapter 2
Madame Anouk looked like an old hippie lady, with multiple scarves and dangling jewelry and long, grey-streaked brown hair in a big bun on the top of her head. Totally a Berkeley cliché. She looked like the type of person who might drink tea made from herbs she grew in her own garden while donating to animal rescue charities and protesting something. And making macramé. She made a lot of sweeping arm movements to illustrate her speech, using the words “serenity” and “sustainable” and “centered” a lot. Sometimes it was a little hard to understand her due to her thick French accent.
Looks could be deceiving. I knew that every moment she spent away from her dance studio was at the poker tables at one casino or another in the Central Valley. No time for growing herbal teas or the macramé. By mistake, she had let me see her passport, too, so I also knew that 1. Her name was really Agnes and 2. She wasn’t really French, either. Her birthplace was listed as Newark, New Jersey, the big faker.
Nevertheless, she was a great boss. First, she gave me no oversight whatsoever. I came in to her studio, Dance by Anouk, a for a few hours during the week and every Friday for most of the day. My job was to straighten out the business as best I could, and I was free to do this in any way I chose. Today I was going through a pile of receipts that she had found under her bed that dated from five years ago to the present and were covered in cat hair. She trusted me to manage all her financials and I did my best to keep her in line. I generally felt like she was about a half-step ahead of an audit, and if that happened she would probably go to jail. By mistake I had also seen her tax return, and a bigger pack of lies had never been concocted.
But despite her phony accent and fast and loose finances, Anouk really could dance, and she really could teach it, too. After I worked for a few hours in her cramped and dirty office on Fridays, we would go into the studio and she would give me a lesson, and it was a serious workout. This was the best reason to work at Dance by Anouk. My lesson was the absolute highlight of my week. The highlight of my life.
“Anouk, you can’t possibly count this as a business expense.” I held up a receipt for cigarettes with “STUDIO” written in red on the top.
“I smoked them here,” she explained. She inhaled and blew a grey ring over her head, to illustrate.
“Just, no. This is a children’s dance studio.” I turned on the desk fan and pointed it in her direction to propel away the smoke. “Go outside with that thing!”
Anouk shrugged and threw up her hands. “And me, how am I to know about the business expenses you talk of?” She put the still burning cigarette in an old tuna can and I stubbed it out. Yuck. “Come, enough of your complaints about these things. Have you been practicing at home?” she asked me.
I had not. “I’m busy.”
“How do you expect to improve? Come, come.” She took my hands and pulled me into the studio. After about an hour of being alone together, she dropped the bogus accent and yelled at me in a perfectly standard American voice. “Arms up! Weak! No, total shit. God damn it, Maura, your core!” She sure swore a lot more when she wasn’t French. “No, again. From the soubresaut.” It was wonderful and I loved every moment of it.
I was a sweaty mess when we were done and her youngest students were starting to come in for their introduction to ballet class. “Very good!” Anouk said to me, and clapped her hands twice. The accent was firmly in place again.
“I’ll see you next week,” I told her, and she kissed both my cheeks.
I had just enough time to clean myself up at the studio then run over to the bank for her before I went to my next job. I had decided to mix things up with Benji. Instead of him taking the bus, I thought I would meet him after school and we would walk home and get our exercise that way. It would also get him away from the little maggot who had pushed him down.
Both Joana and I had prodded a little the day before to try to figure out what had happened but he had clammed right up. Everything at school was “fine” except they were all “jerks.” I asked if he wanted me to speak to his teacher.
“No!” he had exclaimed, utterly horrified. Before I left that night, I mentioned to Joana that I should probably tell his parents.
She had snorted. “Why? What will that do?”
She was right. Maybe I could deal with it on my own, teach Benji some strategies. I thought of the ways I had dealt with bullies in elementary school: running, hiding, crying. No, those were not good solutions.
“Hey, buddy,” I greeted Benji as he emerged from his school, the last among a huge crowd of happy, skipping kids. It was Friday, after all.
“Hi, Maura. Are you really making me walk?”
“Yep. I thought we could stop for ice cream on the way home. It’s pretty hot. What do you think?”
If someone had offered me ice cream when I was 10, I would have been all over it. Benji shrugged. “Maybe.” We plodded along together. It was hot for the East Bay, but nothing like when I had lived in the San Fernando Valley. The summers there had been a furnace. Right up my alley.
“How is fifth grade treating you?” I asked, nudging him.
“It’s alarmingly undemanding.”
I tried not to smile. “Why would that alarm you?”
“I just have to wonder, is this really all adults expect from us?” He looked at me plaintively. “It makes me very anxious about our future. Our future as a nation.”
“I think it will all work out.” I put my arm around his shoulders and he let me hug him. He had pulled away from me the day before. “How were all those jerks from yesterday?”
“Still jerks.” Benji kicked at a rock on the sidewalk and got out from under my arm.
“Is there something specific—”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” he exploded.
“Ok, buddy, ok! Got it. There’s the ice cream place. What are you going to get? I’m planning on chocolate chip.”
“This isn’t that kind of ice cream store,” he told me. “It’s all organic and they don’t have normal flavors. Maybe you could get Mexican chocolate, if they have it.” He considered. “I’m going to have goat cheese.”
“Goat cheese ice cream? I’m going to gag.” At least he was planning to eat something. I paid with a bill that I had grabbed the night before from the stash of ready cash the Dorsets left, and as always, I was shocked at how much things cost in this neighborhood. Benji’s parents stuck money for Joana and me to use in a drawer whenever they thought about their son—which meant, it didn’t happen too often. The ready cash supply was getting low and that signified communication with his parents. Now I had two topics to bring up, money and the bully. I would have to do it.
Because it was Friday, I let Benji play Blazer on his computer for extra time. He also spent a while messaging with a boy he had met at camp the summer before, which I tried to encourage as much as I could. Unfortunately, the camp was in Maine (the Dorsets liked him far away) so this other kid lived on the east coast. Not really “play date” material, but hey, a friend was a friend no matter where he was. I hurried out when I heard Benji’s dad, Mr. Dorset, pull up in the driveway. Yes, I needed to talk to him, but I couldn’t do it tonight.
Robin was having a bunch of his poly-sci cohorts over for a late dinner. That meant that they would eat every bit of food we had then smoke pot until I was about to lose my mind. I pulled my long hair into a ponytail high on my head and started cooking when I got back to our apartment. Robin always wanted to impress them when they came over, even though most of them were so high they didn’t care what they were shoveling into their mouths for sustenance (which was probably lucky, because I wasn’t what you’d call a gourmet chef). All Robin’s friends were just like he was: doctoral candidates or going for their master’s degrees and having a little bit of trouble wrapping things up, living with the support of their generous (and wealthy) families. They were enjoying not going to class, enjoying not working, enjoying what they considered to be the academia lifestyle.
To be totally honest, I was also living with the support of Robin’s generous family. We paid our rent out of a check his mom sent each month. I felt like I was stealing from them every time I gave our landlord the money, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful.
Robin walked up behind me in the kitchen and ran his hands over my butt. “They won’t be here for another ten minutes. You want to go?”
I looked at the stove. “I have to keep cooking. Later, ok?” I made myself stay still and not pull away from his groping hands.
He pushed his hips into me. “You’re so hot, Maura. Can you put on that other shirt, the red one?”
The one he had shrunk in the dryer that I was embarrassed to wear. “Robin…”
“Come on.” He pulled me into the bedroom and watched as I changed. I felt like I was wearing compression bandages rather than clothing. Then he took down my ponytail, arranging my blond hair around my shoulders. “So sexy.” He fondled my breasts. “So hot. You look awesome, babe.”
“Thanks,” I said flatly. Then, when he started to get amorous again, I told him that I needed to get back to the kitchen before stuff burned. This was another thing that always bothered me when his friends came over. Robin wanted to show me off in front of them—not my mind or my razor-sharp wit (I like to think I had one), just mostly my boobs, my legs, my ass.
They all came wandering in, generally late, generally without bringing anything to contribute to the dinner besides their own stashes and pipes. The conversation around the table, when enough people had finally arrived to eat, was entirely jargon and one-upmanship, so I was quiet and ate my chicken. Robin made a big point of grabbing me and having me sit on his lap after dinner, running his hands up and down my thighs, until I got up to clear the table and do the many dishes. The rest of the crowd went into the living room and lit up. I opened the kitchen window and in between washing and drying, I hung my head out to get some air. I managed to get past them and into the bedroom before Robin could grab me again. I put the pillow over my head, turned on the fan, and opened this window too. I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about him that night; he and his friends would pass out in the living room and I’d find them there in the morning.
They were all snoring when I left to go to the library early on Saturday. I thought I would do some work before I met up with the corsair—I meant, Iván. This was the day of his tutoring session, and I tried (and failed) not to get excited about seeing him. He was just another client.
And he was late. At 10:30, he still hadn’t arrived. I had gotten a lot of work done and decided I had better things to do than to wait around for him. I was walking to the stairs to go down to the ground floor to leave when the elevator doors opened, and Iván came out.
His face wreathed in that gorgeous smile. “Maura! Here you are.”
“I’ve been here. You’re a little late.”
He handed me a large paper coffee cup. “I stopped for this. I needed it. Do you drink coffee?”
I sure did. “Thank you. But, um, this isn’t allowed up here. We’re not supposed to have food.”
Iván put his hand on my shoulder to lead me away from the elevator, and I swore that it was literally burning through my shirt. “It’s all right. No one will bother about it. Where are you sitting?”
We went back to the study room I’d given up a few minutes before and I took out the course materials from my bag and spread them out on the table. “I didn’t know what you had, so I brought all this for you.”
“Yes, we’re supposed to have a book.” He picked up The Marble Faun. “Is this about animals?”
“No, that’s fawn with a W. This is the Greek kind of faun. Why don’t we start at the beginning of the course? We did a short study of some poetry.” I reached for the copies I had made for him and spread them out. “Do you know any of these poems?” I took a sip of the coffee. “Ugh!” It scorched my mouth with bitterness.
“Do you not like it?”
I wiped my bottom lip. “It’s just strong. Is it espresso? A giant, unsweetened espresso?”
Iván nodded. “It’s what I like to drink. Tell me what you like and I’ll bring that for you next time.”
“I guess just regular coffee. But that’s ok, you don’t need to bring me anything. Do you know any of these poems?” I tried to direct his attention back to the copies.
“Tell me why you’re taking this class. Is this your area of interest?” he asked instead, not even glancing at the papers.
“No. I mean, I’m interested, but I’m an accounting major. I just took this because I like Dr. Rooney and I needed another English class.”
“She recommended you.”
“I think that was because I was the only one who actually did the reading when I had her before. It was British poetry, and no one else was interested in ‘Tintern Abbey.’”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Neither did anyone in the class. So, about the poems—”
“What did you do last night? Did you go out with your boyfriend?” he asked.
I sat back, giving up. “No, we had his friends over.”
“His friends? Not yours?”
For some reason, I started telling him about Robin’s poly-sci cronies. “They’re just…so boring. All they want to do is impress each other. I doubt any of them understand what they’re actually saying. I know that I don’t get it.”
“So why didn’t you go out with your own friends?”
Because I didn’t really have any. “I, I needed to stay with Robin. What did you do last night?”
Iván rubbed his eyes. He seemed tired. “I saw some people in San Francisco. It’s where I live.”
“Have you been there long?”
“Only a few weeks. Before that I lived in Florida, to train.” He drained the last of his monster espresso. “Ah. Much better.”
“Do you mean training for athletics? What were you training for, a marathon?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I was a swimmer for a long time. I retired, and I thought I should go and get a college degree.” He smiled. “I think that you don’t follow the sport.”
“No, not really. Not at all,” I answered honestly. But I was going to look him up the second I left the library.
“I came here to coach and to go to school. But I have a hard time. I haven’t been to school in many, many years. Even secondary school—no, I mean high school, I didn’t go.”
“Why?”
Iván raised his eyebrows. “I told you, I was a swimmer. I was swimming. I did high school at home, which for me meant I didn’t really do high school at all.”
“Then how did they admit you into this university?” I bit my lip. “That was rude. Never mind.”
But he laughed. “They wanted me to come here and coach, and I said, if I do, then you have to let me be a student. Here I am.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s almost been an hour. I’m sorry, but I have to start charging you from the time the tutoring was supposed to start at ten.”
“Why are you sorry? I was late. But I brought you coffee.” He smiled at me, and I found myself smiling back. “Are you in a hurry to go somewhere?”
I thought of my apartment, full of Robin’s now smelly, hungover friends. “No. Not until later. I just have studying to do myself.”
“Why don’t we study together, then? I will read these poems, you can do your work. And I’ll pay you for the time, because that’s fair. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of questions.”
I ran my teeth over my lip. “It’s not really tutoring.” It didn’t seem fair to charge him for that. “But if that’s what you want to do, ok.”
We sat together quietly at the square table. I worked on a sheet of practice problems, and he read the poetry. Kind of. He checked his phone about a million times and once took a call, speaking in rapid Spanish and smiling.
“It was my mom,” he explained when he hung up. “In Spain. She’s checking to make sure that I’m getting enough sleep and eating breakfast. I’m trying to convince her that I’m old enough to plan meals on my own.”
“That’s nice that she called,” I said, and he laughed. “I mean it,” I told him.
“You’re right. I am lucky to have my mother. And my dad, and my older brother. We all love my mom very much, even if she still sometimes wants to wipe…our noses. Do you have a big family?”
“I have a brother.” I checked my watch again. “I have to go. We didn’t get through very much for the class.”
Iván stood up. “I’ll read the deer book tonight.”
“It’s not…” He’d soon find out that it wasn’t about animals. “Ok, sounds good.”
“And we’ll meet tomorrow, to discuss?”
“Tomorrow?”
He hesitated. “No, actually I can’t tomorrow. Monday?” Now he took out his wallet and extracted two bills, and handed them to me.
Without thinking, I took them, then tried to give them back. “This is too much. I don’t charge one hundred dollars per hour!”
“You should. You’re a very good tutor.”
I burst out laughing. “You didn’t learn anything!”
“Yes,” he told me. “I learned a lot, just not about the poems. I learned not to bring you espresso, that you are very hardworking, you have a brother, you’re honest, and ignorant about sports. And you don’t want to go home to your boyfriend.”
“Iván! That’s not true.”
“Are you saying that you’re dishonest? Or that you’re lazy?” He smiled at me. A girl walked by and did a double-take when she saw him. He really was that handsome.
I shook my head and gave up. “I’m not sure if I can meet you Monday. It depends. I’ll have to let you know.” He pushed the down button on the elevator but I took a step back. “I’ll see you later. I’m going to take the stairs.”
He immediately held the door to the stairwell for me and we descended together. “Is this for health?”
“No.” I hesitated. “I don’t care for elevators.”
“The thought that we are suspended only by a slender wire, which could—”
“No, not that! I don’t like, um, enclosures. Being trapped.” My throat jerked a little on the last word and I cleared it.
“I see. I have a good friend who’s afraid to fly. Her husband used to travel all around the world and it was hard for her. She doesn’t have a reason, she just becomes terrified.”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to get into my reasons. “Can I have your number?” I asked when we got outside. “I’ll let you know about Monday.” He gave it to me and took mine. “Good luck with The Marble Faun.”
“Goodbye, Maura.”
I really liked it when he said my name.
Iván took off in one direction and I watched him. Then I quickly typed his name into my phone to look him up.
Oh, glory. He wasn’t just a swimmer. He was a world-class, winning, elite swimmer, and had been since he was 16 years old. He had medals from competitions even I had heard of, and a ton more from those I didn’t know. I sat down on the bench in front of the library and checked to make sure I had the right guy. Yep, there was his picture, Iván Marrero Ortuño. I clicked through more. There he was again, in one of those little bathing suits they wore. I enlarged this picture and gently touched the gold medal hanging around his neck, the defined muscles of his shoulders, arms, stomach, legs. The kind of devilish smile on his face. He was…perfect.
There were news articles about his wins, his times, his recent retirement from swimming. No wonder they wanted him to come and coach and let him attend school here. He was an international celebrity, apparently, and I was too out of touch and dumb to have known it. No wonder the women in the car had screamed his name and a girl almost walked into a bookshelf staring at him.
I looked at more news articles, about his beautiful apartment in Madrid, his super fancy car there. His many, many girlfriends. There were pictures of him with about fifty different gorgeous women, actresses I recognized, models whose faces looked down from billboards, a tennis player who was also an actress and a model. And also owned a chain of dog toy boutiques.
I felt like an idiot. I thought of the stupid questions I had asked him. “How does she know your name? You were training for something athletic?” He must have been laughing at me the whole time.
I put the phone back in my pocket and went to catch another bus.
∞
“Michael? Mikey?”
I shut the front door behind me and pocketed my key. There was no answer, and no movement in the apartment.
“Hello?” I walked into the small living room and saw him, lying on the couch. For just a moment I couldn’t see his chest move and I thought I felt my own heart stop. Then a muscle in his cheek jumped and I relaxed.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty!” I walked to the couch and poked him. “Wake up. It’s your sister.”
His eyes cracked open. “Maura? What are you doing here?”
I pushed next to him on the couch. “It’s Saturday. We were supposed to go to lunch today, remember? And then we’re going grocery shopping. And to the pharmacy, and doing laundry, and we’re going to look at your bills…”
He rolled over away from me. “I’m not hungry.”
“Oh. Ok.” I looked at his table, covered in dirty dishes, open food boxes, and papers. “Do you want me to help you straighten up?”
“Do what you want.”
He turned onto his stomach and I stood up. An ache formed in my chest. I rubbed it, reminding myself that it wasn’t a big deal, he had just forgotten that today was the day we were meeting up and he was tired. Not a big thing. I walked to the table and looked at the mess. I would just clean a little and look at his bills. Then we’d talk. I started by gathering up all the bottles around the apartment and bringing them to the building’s recycling.
A few hours later Mikey felt like eating. I had gotten his place back into decent shape and gone grocery shopping with my money from Iván, and organized all the various paperwork I’d found on the table and around the apartment. His filing system was about as good as Anouk’s at the dance studio. The overdue electric bill was under the refrigerator, along with a whole lot of gross stuff like dead bugs and moldy food bits. It was a disgusting discovery. I made a quick dinner while he took a shower and we sat at the clean table to eat together, like a family. We were a family.
I smiled at him. “Isn’t this better?” I gestured at the living room, and he glanced around.
“Did you clean? Yeah, it looks different. Thanks.”
“Sure. I put all your medical bills next to the phone so you can remember to call about them.”
“Yeah.”
“How is work?” I asked, watching his face. “Everything ok?”
“Good. Yeah.”
“No more problems with your boss?”
Mikey shrugged.
“I’m glad.” I played with my spaghetti noodles. “I have some good classes this semester.” I told him about them, but I could tell that he wasn’t interested. I debated, then said, “You know who I tutored today? Iván Marrero.”
“The swimmer?” Mikey looked up. “You met that guy? He was banging what’s-her-name, the girl from the movie about the spies on the space ship. Redhead.”
“I didn’t see that one.” I didn’t feel like eating any more, and I pushed my plate towards my brother. “Here. I’m done.” He took it and started in on my share. “Hey, when you were a kid, did you ever have problems with bullies?” He shrugged again. “Remember that little boy I take care of? I think he’s having problems at school. I mean, I know he is. What do you think I should tell him?”
“Grow a pair.” He grinned at me.
“Mikey! Seriously.”
“Teach him how to hit,” he suggested.
Yeah, if I wanted to get Benji expelled from school. Anyway, I couldn’t imagine him getting into a physical fight. I changed the subject. “I’m thinking about what I want to do next. You know I’m going to graduate in May.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m not going to move away. I mean, you’re here, Robin’s here…I’m looking for jobs in San Francisco, Oakland. I should be able to find something full-time and make some more money. Maybe I’ll get a good benefit plan and I can get you on it somehow.”
Mikey nodded.
“Have you given any thought to the appointment I made for you on Monday?” I waited, holding my breath.
He took a big bite, chewed, and swallowed. “I’m not going.”
“I can take you. We can go together.”
“You know I don’t want to, Maura! Why are you always pressuring me?” He stood up and pushed back his chair. “I’m going to meet up with the guys. You can hang out here, but don’t forget to lock the door when you leave.” He ruffled my hair as he walked out. “See you later. Thanks for making dinner.”
Why had I brought it up? I knew how he felt about therapy, therapists, mental health stuff in general. I’d tried to force him, put on too much pressure, and now he had bolted. I rested my face in my hands for a second, angry at myself. Then I cleaned up from our dinner, separated the dirty laundry into loads for him to (hopefully) do sometime in the near future, and carefully counted out money from my wallet to leave in the envelope under his mattress.
The thought of going back to my own apartment was not something I was ready to face. But neither was staying at Mikey’s, listening through the thin wall to the couple fighting next door. His TV wasn’t working—I’d found the letter from the cable company indicating his service was terminated when I cleaned. So I waited at the window until I saw the headlights approaching, then I flew down the stairs to the bus stop on the corner.
It was a long ride home.