Walker
José drives Sanchez, me and a couple of other guys to Monterey where the triathlon is taking place. It’s been a week now and still no word from Didi. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Not after pushing her away like I did.
The hurt has calcified now. I’ve buried myself in a coffin, thrown acres of dirt on top of myself, closed everyone out. I don’t feel anything any more. It makes things easier.
I’m aware Sanchez is talking to me, but the words are like further fistfuls of dirt. I stare into the darkness as the others exclaim over the views all the way along the coast road.
‘We’re here. Lieutenant, wake up.’
Sanchez prods me to my feet and helps me down off the bus. I’m finally using the stick they gave me, still getting used to it, and I take Sanchez’s arm as he guides me into the hotel, where I stand waiting to be assigned a room. The race is in the morning. I just want to go to bed.
‘Lieutenant,’ Sanchez says, ‘I would share a room with you and all, but Valentina’s coming later tonight and, you know, we haven’t had much privacy to, you know, get jiggy-jiggy these last couple of months.’
I wave him off. ‘It’s cool.’
‘I want to show her what I can do with my bionic hand.’
I wince.
‘Here’s your key,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you to your room. Help you get set up. It’s next door to ours.’
I stand up and take his elbow. We take two steps and then he stops. I trip into him.
‘Shit,’ he says.
‘What?’ I say, but as soon as I say it I know. I can smell her, feel her, sense her.
‘Hi,’ Didi says.
My body starts to hum like a tuning fork. ‘Hi,’ I say. What the hell is she doing here?
‘Can we talk?’ she says.
Sanchez, remarkably, for once stays silent. He pats me on the arm and I hear him walk away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Didi says in a rush. ‘I just needed some time.’
I nod. ‘Me too. I’m sorry.’ Calcification. A hardening of the heart.
‘Those roses didn’t mean anything.’
I nod. She takes a step nearer and my senses burst into hyper-drive. My fingers twitch and I have to fight the urge to reach for her.
‘I don’t want him,’ she says quietly. ‘You know I don’t want Zac. I want you.’
Her hand slides into mine, gently, tentatively. Her palm feels warm.
But something makes me pull my hand away and take a step backwards. I bang into something, a table. Something heavy falls to the floor and I hear Didi bend and pick it up, then put it back on the table. We’re still in the damn lobby. Anyone could be watching us.
‘Didi, I can’t see,’ I say, gesturing at my eyes. ‘I can’t do anything. I can’t drive. I can’t make a cup of fucking coffee. I can’t shave. I can’t even dress myself properly. I put antiseptic cream on my toothbrush the other day.’
She doesn’t say anything. Is everyone watching us? I don’t care.
‘You deserve someone who’ll take care of you,’ I say desperately. ‘Protect you, look after you.’
‘And there I was thinking we lived in the twenty-first century,’ Didi answers. She laughs under her breath. ‘I don’t need a guy to do all those things. I can take care of myself.’
It’s my turn to laugh. ‘You’re lying. You do want those things. I know you. You’re a romantic. You want someone like Zac who’ll send you flowers and take you out to dinner and open doors for you and whisk you off to Paris for the weekend. You want the knight on the white horse. You want a lobster. Someone who believes in all that stuff. And I can’t be that person. I can’t give you those things. I can’t whisk you anywhere. I can’t even walk in a straight line.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Didi asks.
‘What?’
‘Pushing me away.’
‘I’m not. I’m just laying it on the line. What are you going to do? Give up your studies to take care of me?’
‘No!’ she exclaims. ‘As far as I was aware you don’t need taking care of. You’re perfectly capable, or you will be soon enough. And you won’t be blind forever. In fact, if you actually tried to open up to me instead of constantly shutting me out, then maybe you wouldn’t be blind by now.’ She stops, takes a deep breath as though to calm herself. ‘But if I did want to take care of you, why would you want to stop me?’ She pauses and takes another step closer. ‘That’s what people do when they love someone – they take care of them.’
She takes my hand again. It takes me a second to register what she’s said, what she means. I’m thrown for a split second, reeling. And then I recover. I snatch my hand away.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ I tell her.
‘Walker . . .’ she says, a pleading note in her voice I’ve never heard before. She sounds close to tears.
‘Didi,’ I say, shutting my senses down, closing my ears to the note in her voice, ‘let’s just call this a day. You and me, it was never going to work. We can’t have a future.’ I don’t have a future is what I really want to say to her.
‘How would you know?’ she exclaims. ‘You refuse to even think about the future.’
‘And that’s all you ever do,’ I shoot back.
I sense her pull back.
‘You’re always talking about when I get out of here, when I can see . . . well, I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to get my sight back, whatever anyone says.’
‘Then . . .’ She hesitates.
I butt in. ‘Then nothing. Just go.’ I hold up my hand as a goodbye and move away from her. I have to. I can’t allow myself to ruin her life.
I can feel the pain thrumming off her. It’s like a knife through my own ribs. But I don’t look back, even though there’s a voice screaming in my head.
Please stay. Please don’t go.
*
There’s a knock on my door an hour later. Immediately hope springs up in me that it’s Didi, that she hasn’t listened to me, that she’s stayed. But why should she?
I know even before I heft myself off the bed and fumble my way to the door that it’s not her. It’s Sanchez. And he’s with Dodds. Dodds isn’t competing in the race, but José figured it would do him good to get out of the centre for a couple of days.
I hear Dodds wheel himself into my room. ‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hey,’ I answer. I’m not in the mood for this. Why are they here?
‘How you doing?’ Sanchez asks. ‘I saw Didi leaving.’
I turn away so they can’t see my face. Shit.
‘You two didn’t make up, then?’ Sanchez asks.
‘Is this about the sweepstake?’ I ask. ‘Because I’m not in the mood.’
‘Nah,’ he says, sounding offended.
‘Did you break up with her?’ Dodds asks.
‘We weren’t exactly a couple,’ I tell him.
‘You know, Lieutenant, you’re one lucky bastard,’ Dodds suddenly explodes. ‘Girl like that wants you, what right have you got to turn it down?’
‘Excuse me?’ I say.
‘The rest of us should be so lucky,’ Dodds goes on angrily, his hands tapping the wheels of his chair manically. ‘It’s all fucking meaningless. All those goddamn posters in the centre – all of them are bullshit – but there’s just this one makes sense to me. It says that love will see us through.’
Sanchez smirks.
‘Yeah, I know, sounds like a Celine Dion song, but you know what? It’s true. Connection. That’s what it’s about. I ain’t got nobody. Nobody gives a damn about me.’
‘Dodds, that’s not true,’ Sanchez argues.
‘It is true,’ Dodds says without a trace of self-pity. ‘And that’s OK. I’m used to that. Figure I’m not meant to have anyone, not in this lifetime, anyway. But you, you been given this thing, this chance, with someone like Didi, for Chrissake, and you’re giving it up. And why? Because you’re “scared of the future”.’ His voice has taken on a mocking tone.
I stare down at the ground, his words hitting raw flesh and nerve like shrapnel.
‘At least you got a future, unlike some of us,’ he tells me.
‘Dodds, you’re talking weird,’ Sanchez says, trying to make light of it.
‘I’m just saying,’ he growls in answer.
I hear the whir of his wheelchair, the door being yanked open. ‘Fuck you,’ he says as a parting shot. ‘You know, fuck you. You don’t know how good you got it.’ And then he slams the door.
There’s a moment or two of silence. Then Sanchez opens his mouth.
‘Well, that sure told you.’