Awake (4 page)

“I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, honey,” she says. “I’m a withered old Mexican lady you met in a Boyle Heights shelter. I would expect you to think I swam across a river to get here.”

“Speech pathology and?” I ask to change the subject.

“Linguistic Anthropology. It’s my super power.”

Wade suddenly enters to grab a stack of her bowls. He gives me a worried look. “Now you’re in trouble, Erin,” he says. “Alodia knows all.”

When he leaves I realize her sinks are empty. Alodia joins me to help finish the last two pans. She turns and stares into my eyes in an intense way. “I don’t know all,” she says, “but I have figured out a few things about you.”

“Such as?” I say as indifferently as possible.

“For one, you were not born and raised here. My super power tells me there is some Minnesota in your dialect.”

Alodia is a scary little woman, but I like her. “You can do that just from the way I talk? That’s incredible.” I say. “Is there anything else about me that you know?”

“Maybe, but not every secret a girl has should be shared.”

I nod and try to understand, but think I do. She knows I’m reluctantly under his spell.

“It was nice to meet you, Erin.” Alodia grabs my right cheek and pinches it affectionately. “Now go on out to that boy.”

Without realizing it, I wrap my arms around her for a tight hug. “I’ll come back again to help.”

“I hope so, dear,” Alodia says.

* * *

I HELP REED AND two other volunteers, Cesar and Vivi, serve the people who have come to the shelter for a warm meal. Wade manages to load the plates and the trays fast enough so the rest of us can take them out to the tables.

When every poor soul has received their warm Mexican food, we all take a break in the kitchen. Wade hunches over a counter exhausted. There are six more plates waiting on the counter. I notice the portions are smaller than what we have just served the packed dining room.

“This is the best part,” Vivi says grabbing a plate. “The leftovers.”

Reed grabs two plates and hands one to me. “I challenge you to find a better Chimichanga anywhere in Los Angeles.”

“Home boy laces it with some uptown narcotics,” Cesar says before he bites a hole in the side of his Chimichanga covered with a drizzle of thin, green sauce.

Alodia walks up behind Wade and touches the back of his hair with such familiar affection that it makes me suddenly feel alone in the universe. I don’t have that with anyone, that unspoken physical comfort and casual tenderness. He slides a plate over to a spot next to him and then helps her sit down on one of the rickety stools.

A moment later I realize everyone is waiting for me to have a taste. Cesar might be right. It’s as if they are all in some drug-fueled nirvana and they want me to join them.

Vivi hands me a fork and I use it with purpose. I scoop up some of Wade’s mass-produced homeless shelter, Cinco de Mayo slop and I immediately feel a new sensation. Never a fan of Mexican food my mouth suddenly infuses with a lime-tinged, liquefied avocado sauce of some kind that collides divinely with the lightly-spiced and crisply- textured beef.

“Holy shit!” I say as I chew without regard to manners.

“Yeah,” Alodia says, “she likes it.”

The next ten minutes sitting around this metal table with this odd assortment of people overwhelms me with belly laughter and honest communication. It feels like my first day out of a prison. We talk with our mouths full and no one cares. Fucking liberating.

The dream is broken when Reed’s phone vibrates. His bends his lips. “Damn,” he says. “It’s a patient. She must have scratched through one of her fresh sutures.”

Disappointment circles the table. Perhaps I am not alone in feeling the magic of this place and these minutes slipping through our fingers.

“If Alodia will drive you and Erin,” Wade suggests, “I can stay behind to clean up after the dining room empties.”

“Always my hero,” Alodia responds. “Take Doc and the little doll and let me run my kitchen.”

I can see there’s about to be some kind of showdown of kindness and so I decide to get in on it. “The little doll’s staying too,” I say with playful disapproval of my new nickname. “Alodia, we all have years of dishwashing ahead of us if we are ever to catch you.”

She stares at me a long time with what I hope is approval. “All right, Miss Cassidy, Doc’s been trying to get me alone for a long time anyway.”

Cesar punches Reed’s shoulder. “You old pervert, Doc.”

Vivi rolls her eyes happily. Alodia smiles so deeply she looks like a gleeful little girl. Reed lifts his eyebrow seductively and reaches across the table to take Alodia’s hand.

“Shall we, my little minx?” he says to her.

-7-

Driving home with Wade that afternoon, the sky seems to have disappeared. Clouds obscure the sun. The world is now ominous and surprisingly dark. The unexpected dreariness surprises my senses to the point of disorientation and leaves me excited. The air smells like rain and then the rain comes as quick as the thought.

A few heavy drops land on us before his convertible roof is up just in time for the onslaught. I turn down his radio which plays an old Cure song. “The sound of the rain,” I say softly. “Listen to that.”

The rain pours down in incessant sheets creating such rapid patter it becomes a breathtaking white noise. His windshield wipers battle against the almost biblical flood of rain. It’s no use. We lose all visibility.

“Unreal,” Wade says as he quickly pulls the car over to the curb.

We are cozy and confined. The darkness, the sound of rain, the soft green lights of his dashboard intoxicate me. I feel myself slipping away. I watch him watch the rain. The barely-there stubble on his tan face sends a shiver through me. My heart pounds steadily. I wonder if he can hear it. I wonder if he knows I am so nearly out of control in his presence.

“What are we doing?” I say with my voice weak and breaking.

He turns to me with eyes that dig into my chest and electrify everything. I try to hold his stare, but it overwhelms me. My breathing begins to struggle out of my lungs. He notices.

“Are you okay?” he says in a sexy whisper. He lifts his right hand and reaches out to touch my left cheek and hair and ear.

The gentle warmth of his fingers closes my eyes.

“Erin, it’s just the rain,” he assures me.

I turn to take in his tender eyes. I wish his words were true. I wish this was just a passing thing like a sudden rain, but I know Wade will never leave my heart, not for a long time. I realize he is not mine and I realize I’ll never find another man like him.

I push open the car door so hard it scrapes across the top of a high curb. The cold water drenches me immediately as I step out into the downpour. I run. I run through pounding rain and away from him. I find a small park and want to feel the grass, the real earth under my feet.

My yoga outfit absorbs water, becoming heavy and cold as it sticks to my burning skin. I stop and hit a button on my phone. “Sunset and Vine,” I say and hang up.

I stand in the rain dreaming I am becoming steam, dreaming I will float slowly up into the dark clouds and be free of him, free of Wade and my selfish desires.

He grabs my arm. Wade’s already there. He pulls me around roughly like I am his to control. I am. We can barely see each other as the cold rain splashes onto our faces and into our eyes.

“What are you doing?” he yells through the noise of our ridiculous moment. “What’s happening?”

He lifts my chin and moves in closer trying to see me. I am afraid. I want to kiss him. I am afraid he wants to kiss me. I am even more afraid he does not want to kiss me. I bury my face against his chest.

Wade hesitates and then pulls me in hugging me tightly.

I don’t know how long the dream lasts. Ten minutes or ten seconds. The rain lightens as my heart soars. Part of me starts remembering it even as it happens. “Nothing’s happening,” I tell him.

The rest is a blur. I push away somehow. I want to be a decent human being. I push away and tell him I can’t see him again. I tell him I have my own ride. I tell him it was the most beautiful day I have ever had. I do not kiss him. I do not hug him or touch him again and it nearly kills me.

Wade waits with me quietly; we do not say a word, until Rodrigo passes by in the town car, spots me and does a slippery U-turn on Sunset Boulevard.

* * *

I am shivering by the time I get back to my dark apartment. I shed my icy yoga outfit, sports bra and panties. The shower turns on cold, but even then it warms my goose bumps away. When the hot water comes I tremble from the sudden heat shooting through my blood.

The warmth reaches my heart and the shivering lessens. I turn the water hotter to relieve my frozen nipples. I remember the shower fantasy about Wade, the one I had back at the shelter. Now I decide to let it unfold. I close my eyes. His warm lips kiss my hard nipples to make the cold go away.

He sits down on the bench in my shower and kisses my belly. His strong hands make their way around to the back of me grabbing and caressing my cold butt. I dream Wade’s magical hands warm me. His kisses travel south suddenly until I feel the shower head pulsing, set to massage.

I want his attention, his hands, his lips, his tongue. I want to be spoiled by him, cherished, adored. This one time, in my imagination, I’ll be his beloved. I’ll be the altar he kneels to, the passion of his heart.

The dream makes me gasp and moan. The dream releases my loneliness into the steam of the shower. All that was cold and trembling turns red hot. I cannot withstand the power of his ghost. I fall down onto the shower bench holding the shower head close.

My whole body tenses for a moment before I let go and thoughts of my fingers in Wade’s gorgeous hair linger as I come undone.

* * *

I have nothing left. I have stripped away everything and just lie here in an Erin-sized dent on my couch. There’s a DVD menu playing in an endless loop on my TV. The volume has long since been turned down.

If a person cannot change in a day, they can never change.
Someone said that once. Maybe today is that day for me. Alodia and Wade and their friends at the shelter interact with everyone in our city. They feed the hungry, inspire the passionless and teach wonders to fresh minds. Vivi sings and dances for a repertory theater and Cesar is a legendary graffiti artist who apparently designs cult sneakers on the side.

They break down the walls of the society and make everyone an equal part of their story. Their reality does not suffocate and limit them in any way. There is no judgment or competition or power game. Who the fuck are these people? They are absolutely breathtaking to me.

If I am to forge a new nobility of spirit, the first sacrifice must be Wade. I will not see him. I will not desire him which means no more pink panties and no more thoughts of him in the shower. I could barely stand up after that shower. He weakens me. I’m done with being weak.

My whole life is ahead of me and I want to truly experience it. I don’t want to be a critic of a single social class. I want to interact with the entire fabric of humanity with an open heart. I want to feel the heartbeat of the world.

The phone rings and I answer it. It’s stepmother. I somehow knew it would be, but I am accepting all things without fear.

“What came over you this morning?” she asks.

“Reed insisted I go,” I tell her.

“You mean Doctor Hendricks?”

“He also insisted I call him Reed,” I say.

“And the Donovan boy?”

Somehow she bends those words into both a question and an insinuation. My stepmother has her own linguistic gifts. Alodia would be impressed how she can imply so much with so few words.

“Yeah, he was there too,” I say indifferently. “Helping the less fortunate.”

We both listen to her long pause. This is a point our conversations often arrive at, where my dear, sweet stepmother resists saying all sorts of hurtful things, but I can hear them anyway. Silence can deliver an icy message better than words ever could.

“Well, young lady, I have to say I am pleased that your heart was in the right place today,” she says uncertainly. “Charitable works are very important to your father and me. You could help with the foundation this summer after you graduate.”

“Perhaps,” I say.

“That’s wonderful, Erin,” she says. “We would love to see you get involved.”

She has cleverly changed the subject, moving the conversation to a positive place. My stepmother really is an unequaled master of duplicity, but I am not without skills of perception. I know she called to feel me out, worrying I may be up to my slutty tricks and seducing poor Wade Donovan and, if so, creating a potentially dangerous scandal between the Cassidy and Wexler families.

“It was a lot of work, but exhausting,” I say, offering her a way to escape the conversation.

“Oh, yes, Erin honey, I’ll let you rest,” she says relieved.

She’ll never let me rest. Not as long as I remain in her life.

“Night, mother,” I say and hang up.