Chapter 3
I was tired on Monday morning. I spent almost the whole day on Sunday cleaning our apartment from the dinner party on Friday night and also trying to get Robin to work on his thesis, trying to help him organize the notes he had taken, trying to somehow inspire him to finish. That part of my day had been exhausting and fruitless and disappointing.
I had also sent an email to Benji’s teachers, asking how he was doing and telling them about the boy pushing him to the ground. They replied a little vaguely, saying they would like to discuss things with his parents. I was the one who went to the conferences, the back to school nights, the “volunteer opportunities” to weed the school garden, and the field trips! But they held firm and I got nowhere. It seemed like I had failed just about everyone recently: my brother didn’t go to his appointment, Robin wasn’t completing his doctoral work, and now Benji was suffering at school.
Iván texted me on Sunday, late, wanting to meet for another tutoring session on Monday. He claimed to have read all the poems and finished the book. If that was true, I wasn’t sure why he needed a tutor, but I was willing to meet if he thought that he did. He didn’t have a problem paying me, like some of my other tutoring clients had in the past, and I needed the money. Even if I felt a little bad taking it from him.
I waited on the fourth floor where we had met before, and this time, he was only five minutes late. He had another large cup with him, which I took gingerly when he held it out.
“Regular coffee,” Iván explained, with a long, rolled R. I took a tentative sip, watching him over the lid, and he laughed. He always seemed to be in a good mood. Or at least, he seemed always ready to enjoy himself.
“Thank you,” I said. “I like it a lot.” I felt a little constrained now that I knew he was so famous, but he was still all ease and swagger. Maybe if I had accomplished as much as he had before I was 30, I would swagger too. I still had a few years to go.
Again, he put his hand on my shoulder as we walked back to the table we’d occupied before and I held very still, hoping he would keep it there. He let go to pull out a chair for me, and I took it. “What did you think of the book?”
Iván slapped it on the table. “Boring.” He sat too, and rocked his chair back on two legs.
“So you didn’t read it?”
“No, I did. Every boring page.”
Now I laughed. “It wasn’t my favorite, either. What about the symbolism—”
He plunked his chair back down. “Tell me what you did for the weekend.”
“Iván, don’t you think we should talk about the class? That’s what you’re paying me for.”
“Yes, of course. After you left me on Saturday, what did you do? Where did you go?”
I closed my book. “I went to see my brother.”
“He lives close by?”
I nodded. “It’s why I wanted to move up here.”
“I thought, your boyfriend? That you moved for him.”
“Both.” I slid my lip between my teeth. “I mean, I was going to come with Robin, and it was lucky that Mikey lived here. Michael, my brother. We had dinner on Saturday and hung out.”
“That’s nice for you, to have family close by.”
I nodded again, vigorously. “I know! I’m so glad he’s here. He’s a great brother.”
“What does he do?”
“He was a machinist, but he got hurt on the job. He’s working at an autobody place now, learning the ropes.”
“It makes you look worried.”
“Does it? I guess you always worry about your family.” I rubbed my temple. I wished that Mikey had gone to the appointment with the therapist today. I would have happily skipped this time with Iván to take him there. He needed to sort out some things, like his anger. His drinking. I understood it, but it wasn’t doing him any good. “It will be better when I graduate and have a real job. I can get a good apartment for us all and get…” Iván was watching me carefully. “Let’s start with the poetry we didn’t talk about the last time we met.”
“What about Sunday?” he asked instead. “What did you do on Sunday?”
“What did you do over the weekend?” I countered.
“I went to a party on Saturday. A lot of people,” he threw up his hands. “A lot of talking. On Sunday I had a commercial.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, I had to go to LA, to make a commercial. It took much, much too long and I got back late. My mother was angry.” He laughed.
For a second, I had forgotten who he was. “I looked you up. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. You’re so accomplished and I should have known who you were. I feel like an idiot.”
“No, no.” He picked up my hands, holding them in his. “Why would I care about that? It was nice, really. A lot of the time, people want to be friendly because they know my name or my face. It’s,” he paused to think. “Tiring. No, I mean, tiresome. Both.” His hands felt so warm. I looked down at his fingers, clasped around mine.
I pulled away. “Let’s talk about the poetry.”
We did, a little, and he clearly had read them and had some interesting things to say about “The Sphinx” and Rossetti. Then his phone rang, and he had to take it to talk to someone about what sounded like a business issue. I listened to him confidently discuss an investment for quite a while. Then someone else called and he got a huge smile and spoke in Spanish. A few minutes into this conversation, his voice changed. I had been looking at the back of the book, trying not to stare at him and watch his beautiful, strong lips form the interesting sounding words. Now my eyes jerked to his face. He was speaking higher, softer, slower, smiling the whole time. “Iván,” he repeated. “Tío.”
I didn’t know a lot of Spanish but I recognized that word. When he hung up, still smiling, I asked, “Was that your niece? Or nephew?”
“My little nephew,” he confirmed. “He’s only seeing me on screens. I miss them all. I need to go visit.” He nodded, pursing his lips. “Maybe next week.”
“What about class? What about your job—don’t you coach?”
“Right. Yes.” He shrugged. “I haven’t had a schedule that I didn’t make myself for a long time.”
Personally, I couldn’t remember when my time was my own. “Let’s talk about the book.”
We spent much longer than an hour together, but I didn’t plan to charge him for it. We wasted a lot more time talking rather than working, about other books, music, life in California, and a thousand other topics. He was easy to talk to.
Then he asked me about Robin. “How long have you been with him?”
“A long time. Since high school.”
“You went to high school together?”
I shrugged. It always sounded weird when I explained it so I tended to gloss over the details. “No, not exactly. He was a little older. We’ve been together for almost ten years, since I was fifteen. Tell me about where you’re from.” He did, and I asked him more about places he had traveled, too. He had been almost everywhere. He was telling me about India when suddenly his phone sounded and he glanced at it.
“¡Coño! I have to be at the pool. Walk with me?”
I had completely lost track of time. This was supposed to be when I was…well, there were a million things I was supposed to be doing. Suddenly I didn’t want to do any of them. “Sure, I’ll walk over with you.” I felt a little rebellious just saying it.
We took the stairs down and I hung back as we came out of the library. “I don’t know where the pool is here,” I told Iván, when he turned to look at me questioningly.
“Really?” He drew out that R again. It made the word sound so interesting, I kind of felt like we should all start rolling our Rs. He put his hand on my back and started to walk. “You know that you can go there to swim if you want, since you’re a student here. I think that’s right.”
I was trying not to press myself back into his hand. “I don’t know how to swim.”
He stopped dead in the middle of the path and a guy looking down at his phone ran smack into Iván’s back.
“Sorry,” the guy said, but Iván didn’t even hear him.
“What do you mean, you don’t know how to swim?” He put both hands on my shoulders, turned me to face him, and bent down to look at me.
“What does it sound like?” I asked. We were making a spectacle of ourselves in the middle of campus. Iván was, anyway. And I shouldn’t have told him that. It was stupid. I ducked out from under his hands and hurried along the concrete.
Iván caught up to me and replaced his hand on my back. “Maura, how can this be? You’re from the coast of California!”
“I didn’t even see the ocean until I was nine and went to Santa Monica,” I admitted, and then wanted to stuff my fist in my mouth.
“What?”
“Anyway, I never learned to swim, and it’s not a big deal. There are probably a lot of things I can do that you can’t.” I walked faster.
He stopped again, less abruptly, and pulled me to a halt also. “Maura, wait. I’m not trying to make fun, I was just surprised. I think it’s dangerous that you don’t know how. Everyone should know how to swim, just for safety.”
“I never go on boats or near the water.” I tried to wiggle free of his hands again but he slid them down my arms. Funny that he wasn’t scaring me with how he was holding me in place.
“What about to the beach?” he questioned.
“I don’t go.”
“Not ever?”
“No, not ever. Aren’t you going to be late? Come on.”
We started walking again. Iván was quiet, which I had come to realize was unusual for him. He probably thought that I was a big idiot. Who didn’t go to the beach in California?
“Where did you live in Los Angeles that you didn’t go to the ocean?” he asked me suddenly.
“I lived all over.”
“Your parents moved a lot?” I shrugged, and nodded, not looking at him. “Where? I was just down there.”
“I can guarantee you’ve never been to the places I lived. Pacoima?” He shook his head. I thought for a second and tried to go in a somewhat north to south direction instead of chronologically. “Reseda, Van Nuys, El Monte, Pomona, Downey, Bellflower…um… Gardena, Signal Hill.” I was missing some for sure.
“You moved that often? Did your parents sell real estate or something?”
For some reason, that made me laugh a little. “No!” I shook my head. “It was just complicated.”
“My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. They’re planted, like trees. They won’t even let me buy them a new house, with a dishwasher and a garage door that has a motor instead of a rope. My brother lives a few blocks away.”
“In Madrid?” That was where his apartment was. I had read about it and seen pictures online in a décor magazine.
“No, we’re extremeños. From Extremadura. Cáceres.”
This meant nothing to me. I resolved to immediately research Spain and its geography.
Iván walked up to a huge, new building and pulled open the door. “Come on in.”
If I thought heads turned while we walked across campus, it was nothing compared to the looks Iván got in the aquatic center. People were literally turning around and following him as we walked. Two people asked for his autograph and he was genuinely nice to everyone, asking them about their swimming and where they were from. More and more people came to talk to him, surrounding him. I hung back and watched, then he held out his hand for me. “Maura, let’s go.”
The little crowd around him parted and I stepped forward. They were all staring at me, and I didn’t enjoy it. I put my hand in Iván’s and he pulled me along.
From behind a glass wall, he pointed to an absolutely gigantic pool. “This is my office,” he told me. There were swimmers in the water, going back and forth at incredible speeds. “They already started so I have to go down. Thank you for tutoring me.” We were still holding hands, and he let go to get his wallet. Again, he held out way too much money.
“I can’t take that,” I said. “I’m not tutoring you. We’re just hanging out.”
“Don’t be silly. I need to pay you for your time.” He opened my hand and put the bills into it, then closed my fingers. “I’ll see you tomorrow in class.”
“Iván.” I swallowed. “I didn’t live with my parents in Los Angeles. I was in foster care. That’s why I moved around so much. It’s not a big deal, but I didn’t want to let you think…anyway, it felt like I was lying to you.”
He nodded seriously. “Thank you for telling me.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but I was already backing away.
“Bye!” I shoved the money in my pocket and hurried out of the building.
I left the pool and called Anouk to see if she wanted me to come by and work at the dance studio, but she said she’d had a rough weekend at the poker tables and couldn’t pay me. I had school work to do; I could have gone home and put something in the crock pot for Robin for dinner, or even just tried to wake him up and get him out of the apartment; I could have gone to the student employment office and continued looking at job postings for after I graduated. I definitely could have studied for the Auditing test I had on Wednesday.
Instead I found myself walking down toward a big used clothing store—I meant, vintage clothing store. I spent at least an hour wandering around the aisles and trying things on. I even bought a bunch of stuff, which was way, way out of my normal spending pattern. In fact, I felt so guilty afterwards that I tried to go back in and return it all, but I could only get a store credit, so I kept everything. A new dress, form-fitting but not too tight, and kind of fancy. I had no idea where I’d ever wear it, but I loved it. I also bought two new skirts, which I rarely wore, and three new tops. And a necklace and a really cool ring and a pair of jeans that looked brand-new. I rolled it all up and put it in my bag, grabbed some falafel for a late lunch and headed over to Benji’s.
His mom usually came home early on Mondays, between seven and eight, if she wasn’t out of town. I still wasn’t sure exactly what either of his parents did. Benji mentioned the name of an international bank when I asked about his mom and Joana just said they did business. We went for a run on the track and then hung out in his room after another delicious dinner. According to Joana, Mrs. Dorset wasn’t traveling, but as eight o’clock crept up and she still hadn’t arrived home, I got antsier and antsier.
“Maura!” Joana called from downstairs. “It’s eight!”
I kissed Benji on the head. He had been subdued and quiet the whole afternoon and not even an extra 15 minutes of Blazer on the computer had improved his mood. “I’ll see you tomorrow, ok?” He just nodded.
“Do you know if something weird happened over the weekend?” I asked Joana when I went downstairs. She lived in with the Dorsets Monday through Friday and went to her daughter’s for the weekends, but maybe she would have heard something. “Benji seems off.”
“No, not that I know of. They all went up to Napa to a spa.” Fun for Benji. She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go! He’ll be home soon.”
“I have to talk to him. I have to tell him about Benji’s school, and I have to ask for more money for us.”
Joana pursed her lips, brow furrowed. “I’ll go in with you if I can.”
“I can handle him.”
When the headlights came up the driveway, I didn’t run out the back door as I usually did. Instead, Joana and I opened the kitchen door and listened to Mr. Dorset come in, drop his keys, and go into his study. He never went upstairs to say hello to his son.
I waited a few minutes for him to get a drink together and then squared my shoulders. “Ok, here I go.” Despite what I had said about handling him, I was glad when Joana trailed after me as I went to the study and knocked.
Mr. Dorset called, “Come in!” and I cracked open the door. He was sitting on the couch with a financial news network already on the TV. A big tumbler with caramel-colored liquid almost to its brim was in his hand.
“Mr. Dorset? Hi, it’s Maura. Do you have a minute?”
He got a big smile on his face, showing his pointy cuspids. “Maura! For you, I always have a minute. Come in and sit down. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
Yes, that was exactly as Joana and I had planned it. I didn’t sit, but came in and stood near-ish to the couch. “I just wanted to talk about Benjamin for a moment. I think he’s having some difficulties with the other kids at school.”
He immediately lost his smile and lost interest. “Talk to the teachers, not me.” He changed the channel to another news network.
“I tried, but they would like to speak to you. Or Mrs. Dorset.”
I shouldn’t have mentioned her. His face got even stonier. “I’ll get in touch with them,” he said.
Sure he would. “Um, also, we are running a little low on cash and I was wondering if you…if I…could you give me some, for Benji and me to use? And Joana?”
Without looking at me, he pulled out his wallet, grabbed the money out of the billfold, and held it out. “Here.”
It was the second time that day that a man had handed me a load of cash. Somehow it felt a whole lot cheaper and more demeaning to take it from this guy rather than from Iván. Tentatively, I took a step forward and he shook the bills as if tempting me. “Do you want it or not?” he asked me.
I took another step and reached for the money, but he grabbed my wrist. Shit!
“Maura, you’re over eighteen, aren’t you?”
Oh, glory. “I am. But I’m not available. Remember we’ve talked about this? I live with someone. My boyfriend.”
Mr. Dorset tugged me closer, his fingers like a clamp on my wrist. He wasn’t big, but he was strong and wiry. I knew he worked out and went mountain biking all the time. “Yes, your boyfriend.” He smiled. “Maura. You’re a beautiful girl.”
“Thank you.” My voice quavered a little, making me angry. I wasn’t scared of this guy. I wasn’t! “Could you please let go of my wrist?”
I heard the front door slam and Joana said loudly, “Hello, Mrs. Dorset! Your husband is in the study.”
Now the door to the room banged open and Mr. Dorset released my wrist. I grabbed the money and stepped back quickly. His wife stared at us, eyes narrowed. “Hello, Maura,” she drawled. “What’s going on here?”
“I was just getting some petty cash before I left for the night. Goodnight.” I hurried out past her, and put the money into Joana’s hand. She squeezed my shoulder briefly before I ran out the kitchen door and into the darkness, my heavy bag with all my new clothes bumping on my back. I rubbed my wrist as I walked quickly to the bus stop, still feeling his damp, talon-like grip on my skin.
I was glad for the interruption, but sorry that Mrs. Dorset had seen us like that. The last thing I wanted was for her to think that something was going on between me and her husband. According to Joana, that was why the last nanny got fired before I came three years ago. The Dorsets paid well. But more importantly, I couldn’t leave Benji. He needed me more than I needed the job.
∞
There were two messages from Iván on Tuesday night.
“Maura, it’s me, Iván. Maybe you just didn’t feel like going to class. Text me if you get a chance.”
Then, a few hours later, “Maura, will you call me back? It’s Iván, again.”
I put the phone away from my ear and started to lean back on Mikey’s couch before I remembered how dirty it was. I stood up and resumed pacing.
I had been at the studio that morning with Anouk, who was paying me by giving me a dance lesson, when the special ringtone sounded that made me run outside to take the call. I always took these calls.
“I have to go,” I told Anouk when I came back in.
“Right now? Shit, no, we just started!” I heard a lot more New Jersey than France in her voice when she was angry, like now.
I had pulled on a shirt over my leotard. “I have to go. I’ll see you Friday. Sorry, thanks.”
Mikey wasn’t at his apartment. That meant that there were a few places I was sure that he wasn’t: here at home, and according to that call I had gotten from his parole officer, he wasn’t going in to work, either. I had known when he didn’t complain about his boss over dinner on Saturday that something was wrong. Mikey never missed a chance to badmouth that guy. I should have pressed him harder about what was happening at work.
I had gone in to talk to the parole officer in person after his phone call, to plead Mikey’s case, to try to get him a little more time and maybe some leniency. The PO wasn’t a bad person, but he did have a job to do. No time, no leniency. Then I had gone down to the autobody shop to find out what had happened there, and they told me that Mikey hadn’t been in for two weeks. They had cut him a break and not notified his PO immediately. They were also decent guys, and I thanked them. It had been a good place for Mikey to work, but now he had totally screwed it up. I went then to Benji’s, and acted so weird and distracted that both he and Joana got worried. It was very sweet. “You didn’t eat your dinner,” Benji had said. “You have to eat well for your health, Maura! Proper nutrition is very important for women in their mid-twenties.” I had hugged him for that, and he had permitted it.
“Let Michael know that he needs to get in touch with me,” the PO had said. “Immediately.” But I couldn’t tell him that if I couldn’t find him. After leaving Benji, I had gone to all the bars where Mikey usually hung out, the pool hall, and when it opened late, the nasty strip club I knew he liked. I couldn’t think of where else I could go. Where could he be?
I looked at the phone in my hand. “I’ll be back in class on Thursday,” I wrote to Iván. “Just had to deal with some family stuff.”
It was just a moment before it rang. He was calling me now.
“Hi,” I answered. “Did you need my help with something? What happened in class?”
“Not too much,” he said. “Your voice sounds strange. Is everything ok?”
I bit down on my lip. Why was this guy the one person calling me? Where was my brother? Or Robin? “Why do you care?” I asked, and my voice sounded strangely bitter. “I just missed one class. Are you my parole officer or something?”
There was a silence. “Not at all.”
That made me feel terrible. I rubbed my eyes. He was calling me, and he was the only one. “Iván, I’m sorry. I’ve had kind of a bad day.”
“Can you tell me—”
“No,” I interrupted him. “I don’t want to talk about it, I’m sorry. Thank you for asking, though.” Outside the window an ambulance and a police car went past, sirens wailing. I had a test tomorrow in my Auditing class. Shit. Why was I worrying about that now, when Mikey was missing?
“Where are you?” Iván asked.
“I’m at my brother’s apartment. I’m going home now.”
“How are you getting there?”
I sighed. “The bus.” I wasn’t looking forward to it this late at night in this neighborhood, but I had used up all my available cash on taxis and cars trying to find Mikey, and on my stupid new clothes. What a waste—what had I been thinking to spend money like that on things to wear?
“Listen, I’m out driving around,” Iván was saying. “Can I give you a ride?”
Another siren went by the window, so loud it sounded like it was in the room with me. I waited for the noise to die down. “You don’t have to do that.”
“It would be easy. Give me your address so I can put it in the car.”
I thought about taking the two buses home. “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s not too much trouble?”
He told me it wasn’t any trouble at all, and I said I would watch for him. When his sparkling new car pulled up the street at about a hundred miles per hour, I ran down the filthy stairs and jumped inside. “Go!” I told him, and locked the doors. I was glad now that he drove like he was in a racecar.
“Were you going to walk around here?” Iván asked, glancing from side to side, his gaze seeming to linger on the fight currently happening on the sidewalk.
I didn’t feel like I needed to mention that I already had been walking around there, going from bar to bar and to the um, gentleman’s club with the broken neon sign on the corner. I just shrugged. “It’s ok during the daytime.”
“And you were taking the bus now? At night?”
“I do all the time.” He went right through a red light. “Woah! Iván, you have to stop for the red!”
“I don’t think your brother would like you taking the bus at night. Does he know?”
“What happened in class today?” I asked him, cutting off this line of questioning. I was sure that Mikey had never thought twice about how I was getting home after visiting him. He knew I could handle it myself.
Iván glanced over at me and was silent for a moment. “Nothing really happened,” he said finally. “A woman tried to get into an argument with the professor about Nietzsche. It was ridiculous.”
I loved how he said his Rs. I tried to do it too. “R-r-r-ridiculous.”
He looked over at me again, and laughed. “You can’t trill the Rs?”
“I never had to, before. Why was it ridiculous?”
“The woman didn’t know what she was talking about. She hadn’t read any Nietzsche, obviously. We’re starting the next book, The House of Mirth. It looks terrible.”
“No,” I said, and leaned toward him. “It’s a beautiful book. I love it.” I told him more about the plot, then I said, “I cried when I read it in high school, and last year, when I read it again, I cried even more. I get it more now. The heroine feels like she’s trapped, and she’s trying to do the right things for her future, but also trying also be happy in the present, and then, at the end—no, I’m not going to tell you the end. But I understand her.”
“You made me want to read it,” he said. We drove, right through a stop sign and onto the freeway where Iván went faster than all the other cars while driving in the far-right lane. He passed someone on the shoulder.
“Oh, God!” I kind of yelled. I closed my eyes briefly, but it was worse to not see what was coming. Like my imminent death. “Iván, do you have a driver’s license?”
“Not from California, no.”
“What about from somewhere else?”
He jammed on the brakes as we came up on traffic at the end of the freeway off-ramp. “Not really, no. Not at all.”
“You can’t drive, then! Ok, seriously, you have to stop.” He did. We were in the left lane of a four-lane road. “No, pull over to the side and stop!” When we were idling up on the curb, I asked him if he would please change places with me. He thought it was hilarious.
“I’ve been driving since I was thirteen!” he protested, as I moved the seat up so I could reach the pedals.
“That may be true, but seriously, you can’t drive here without a license. You could get arrested!” That made me think of Mikey. I drew in a breath and took out my phone to check for a message from him. Nothing. We started back down the street, much, much more slowly with me at the wheel.
“What’s wrong with your brother? Or is it someone else in your family?” Iván asked me quietly.
“I don’t have any other family,” I heard myself admit. “He’s it. He’s in a little trouble and I’ve been trying to find him. It’s really his business, not mine, and I shouldn’t be telling you. I’m sorry.”
“That’s ok.” We rode the rest of the way to my apartment in silence. Robin and I lived in an illegal in-law unit behind an illegally-divided house on a street that had seen better days, but I was happy to get there. It was home. I pulled over to the curb and stopped, wheels in the street, not on the sidewalk. We got out and Iván came to stand next to me under the streetlight.
“Thank you for coming to get me. It made my night a lot easier,” I told him. “Iván, please, please drive home slowly and carefully. And tomorrow, will you check about how to get a license? I think, um, maybe you could start with drivers’ ed?”
Iván reached out and ran his fingers down my cheek. “I’ll drive very, very slowly and carefully. You don’t need to worry about me also, Maura.”
I took a small step back. “I’m not.”
“Or maybe I like it that you care enough to be concerned,” he said. “But I’ll try not to give you anything else to worry about.”
He leaned down toward me and I looked up into his warm, brown eyes. I felt like I was being drawn toward him. It was like the time first I went to the beach when I was nine at the Santa Monica pier. The water had tugged at my ankles as it went out, beckoning me into the ocean. Alluring and inexorable.
I felt the pull, so I took another step back. “Goodnight, Iván.”
“Goodnight, Maura.”