Conundrum (55 page)

“UCLA, huh? I’m from Washington State. Escaped from my uptight, rightwing parents and tried college for a couple of years. But I had to drop out.”

He shot her a perplexed look, as if she had lost her marbles. She didn’t plan to tell him she had—long ago. “Why’d you drop out?” he asked.

She stopped and turned to face him.
A dreamer, this one.
Idealist?

This close she realized he had only a few inches on her—maybe five foot eleven. Sunlight streaked him bronze. The moist salty air gave her a heady rush, standing there as if she and Jake were the only two people left in a world of metal and concrete. “What’s your birth date?” she asked.

“July 6. Why?”

Cancer. Probably with Virgo rising. All those cancer men—needy, dependent, unsure. Easily swayed, easily pleased.
“Just wondering how you evaded ’Nam.”

“I pulled 327 in the lottery. Doesn’t get much better than that, I guess.”

“And I take it you’re not so patriotic as to enlist and volunteer to die for liberty, justice, and the American way.”

Jake gave her a wry smile. “I’m plenty patriotic. And I guess I’d be happy to enlist in a war that threatened our country—”

“You don’t need to elaborate.” Leah waved her remaining sheaf of flyers in front of his face and resumed marching down the street. “I’m on a mission. That’s why I dropped out of school in April. Mass demonstration in DC. Over two hundred thousand protested the war at the Capitol.” She pouted good-naturedly. “You
did
hear about that in Colorado, right? I mean, last I heard it was still part of the good ol’ US of A.”

He tipped back his head and chuckled. His throat gleamed. “Yeah, I heard about it. We get the ten o’clock news there too.”

“And then when we marched in May, we all got arrested. Twelve thousand strong.”

“Arrested? I guess that makes you the first criminal I’ve met in person.”

Leah gave an exaggerated bow. “I’m honored to be your first.”

“So . . . what now? You park yourself at bus stops and pass out flyers? Until you find someone lost and confused, like me. Then, of course, you switch roles and put on your tour guide hat.”

Leah laughed. “Yeah, something like that.” She gestured at the next corner. “Here’s your street. What’s the number again?”

She watched him, this man soaking everything in, a dry, thirsty sponge whose soul seemed in need of hydration. A kindred spirit. As they climbed the stucco stairs that led to a lone door at the side of a two-story apartment building, she laid her hand on his arm. He stopped midstep and questioned her with his eyes.

“Have you ever seen the ocean?”

He shook his head.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Well, I’ve seen it in magazines. And on TV.”

She threw her arms in the air and her jaw dropped. “It’s only, like, six blocks from here.”

He shrugged and set the duffle down. “I figured I’d see it at some point. It’s inevitable.”

“But—aren’t you excited? Thrilled? How could you not be itching to run barefoot through the sand and stare at all that water?”

“I am kind of itching. But more from needing a shower. And I think I picked up some fleas on that bus.”

Leah could hardly contain herself. She just had to be there to see his face when he first gazed out on the sea. It would be like watching a blind man whose sight was suddenly restored. The beauty would overwhelm him.

She tugged at his T-shirt sleeve. “Okay, seize the day, as they say. A quick shower in your new pad and then a run to the beach. You game?”

A laugh blurted out. He seemed to study her with new eyes, as if she were some unexpected country he had run aground on after years of plying an endless sea. “Okay. Just let me get inside and wash up.” He cocked his head, weighing something. “I suppose you can come in and wait till I’m ready to go.”

Uneasiness rippled outward from his face.

“I promise I won’t bite. Or steal your stuff.”

“Well, I don’t even know you. I’m not accustomed to letting strangers into my house.”

“What’s to know?” She spread out her hands.
Look, what you see is what you get. I’m an open book.

He actually blushed. His shyness endeared him to her even more. She stood back while he located a set of keys in his pocket. One opened the deadbolt and the other the knob. He swung the door open and walked inside; she gave him some space to examine his apartment. The air sweltered with heat and anticipation.

She started working her way around the room opening windows. The place had been painted numerous times; the window latches were nearly gummed shut. The slight breeze circulated but did little to cool things down. Leah knew it would take more than a summer breeze to cool her. She was sizzling.

“Hurry,” she said under her breath, her foot tapping the threadbare tan carpeting.

He heard her and gave her a strange look, one charged with electrical tension. He stared at her for a moment as if seeing her for the first time. She let his gaze roam over her, like some alien ray gun scan. It tickled her head and traveled down the length of her body to her toes, almost the touch of a finger. She closed her eyes and heard his voice, which sounded as if he whispered in her ear, although he was miles away, across the room.

“I’ll just be a few minutes.” He took in the simple furnishings and didn’t seem displeased. It was a cozy, cheerful place, painted in a soft yellow. The heat exacerbated the paint smell, so she reached into her large cloth shoulder bad and pulled out a cigarette. The couch and armchair were upholstered in typical ’sixties’ boring earth tones and striped patterns, but in good enough condition. Once he put up some posters and macramé and hung a few house plants, it’d be pretty bearable, she decided.

Jake dug a towel out of his duffle. She lit the cigarette and sucked in the smoke.

“Is that all the stuff you own?”

“I shipped a few boxes. They should arrive in a couple of days.”

She nodded. “Want one?” she asked. Meaning a smoke.

“No thanks.” He closed the door to the bathroom and she was pretty sure she heard him click in the lock. She chuckled. As if that could keep her out, should she really mean to get in. Her skin tingled and she imagined herself wading into the ocean, small waves breaking at her ankles, spindrift caressing her cheeks.
The sea, the sea drinks of my slippery skin. I tumble in a universe of history, falling with great ease into a humanless world . . .

Lines of poetry washed against her awareness, in the gentle way the silky waves raced up and folded over the sand. They lapped against her mood in rhythm, those little reminders.

Who she was. Why she was. What she wanted. The things she needed.

She smoked in silence, letting the imagined sounds of the ocean drown out the traffic, her thoughts, the constant restlessness that pounded at her harder and more insistently than any wave could.

She tapped her foot against the wall as she lay on her back smoking, staring at an old glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. She heard the water turn off and Jake moving around in the bathroom. After snuffing out her smoke in the kitchen sink, she reached into her bag and pulled out her hairbrush. When the door opened and he stepped out in his jeans, his mahogany hair wet and flopping against his forehead, a towel the color of sea grass draped over his bare shoulders, his lean but firm chest webbed with pearls of water caught in the soft down of his hair, she felt her pulse throb in her throat. It throbbed so hard, it ached. She untangled her hair and let it fall freely down her back, a waterfall of black ink.

From the corner of her eye, she caught him watching, eyes fixed like a gull about to dive for its prey.

He threw a clean white T-shirt on and shrugged. His expression now spangled with excitement.

She sucked in her breath. “Ready?”

He nodded and let her grab his hand; it felt like smooth Manzanita bark.

“Outasight, let’s run. The ocean is waiting to meet you!”

His laugh danced around her, making her giddy as she skipped down the stairs, her inner compass needle quavering westward. His skin smelled of mountains and pine. Of wide open sky and river rock and alpine meadows. He had hijacked those scents with him to the coast.

But she knew they would not last long. Once his flesh tasted the sea, all those lingering molecules would be washed away, washed by a million salty drops as potent as tears, drops with the power to erase, a potion that dissolved all troubles and worries and hang-ups. That mercifully dissolved the past.

She, undoubtedly, knew that better than anyone.

After the first bitter bite to his throat, Jake managed to gulp down the rest of his drink without gagging. He elbowed Richards, his buddy from the algebra study group, who phased in and out like a faulty neon sign under the pulsating, blinding strobe light. “What is this stuff?”

“What?” Richards yelled over the noise. Frank Zappa’s howling from the LP
200 Motels
made Jake’s ears feel stuffed with cotton. That and whatever some dormie had spiked the punch with. He knew better than to drink when he had a pile of notes to organize. His buddy shook his head. Either
I can’t hear you
or
I can’t be bothered
.

Richards rocked to the song, something about stolen towels. He shouted out every third word in an attempt, Jake presumed, to sing along. Streamers in green and red, makeshift Christmas decorations, tangled in Jake’s hair as he ducked under décor and edged through the crush of partygoers, feeling woozy from the alcohol—whatever it was. He should have stopped after one cup. Hell, he should have passed altogether. But he was sweltering in the stuffy, dark dorm room that seemed a whole lot smaller than he’d remembered it, and the punch was the only thing in sight to drink. He didn’t hang out much in the dorms, but Richards had insisted, called him a bore.

Jake smirked. Students like that—attending college with a get-in-free ticket from their parents—probably didn’t calculate the financial outlay for each hour of class, but Jake did. He had to. Failing and retaking a course was not an option. And by the time he pulled his work-study hours at the career center, agonized through his homework, kept up with fifteen units—throw in commuter time both ways on the bus—he barely set aside enough hours to sleep.

Not that Leah gave ground much on that score. Lately, she seemed to spend more time crashing at his pad than at hers. Too many women stressing with PMS, she argued. One tiny bathroom. Low water pressure, barely hot enough water. She liked his place, so close to the beach. Before he stirred some mornings, when he didn’t have an early class and confiscated those precious extra hours under the covers, she’d run to the pier, swim out behind the waves, and hop back in bed, smelling of salt and sand, before he’d opened an eye to the day. Handfuls of sand eddied in the folds of sheets, rubbed rough against his toes. Little by little she was transporting the beach to his apartment. No doubt her intention.

The flashing light made it hard to make out faces, but he finally found her in a corner, hemmed in by three students nodding their heads like those bobble-headed dolls. Their red glassy eyes told him they’d been smoking weed, but Leah was on her natural high.

Jake shook his head. So animated, so passionate. About everything. She was an enigma; he’d never met anyone like her. Calm waters swelled into boisterous waves in her wake. Even at the grocery store. Who could get so worked up about mercury in cans of tuna? Once, in a sudden fit, she had tugged the manager by the sleeve to the canned food aisle, urging him to stop buying Starkist, throwing in the dangers of net fishing for good measure. That was early on, when Jake’d stand slack-jawed and speechless. Now he just cleared a path, stepped out of the way of her barreling arguments. She didn’t need much leeway, or encouragement. Any small space and a listening ear would do.

“Hey you!” Leah yelled to him, waving as if he stood on some distant shore. She wiggled out through her audience and wrapped her arms around Jake. Before he could say a word, her lips were on his, her mouth hot. Always hot.

Someone with a fuzzy Santa hat passed by them. Leah grabbed the hat and stuffed it onto Jake’s head, positioning it until she was satisfied. “There. Now you’re dressed for the occasion.” She ran her hands over his shoulders, stroked his neck. She’d clearly been drinking the spiked punch; her cheeks flushed, offsetting her emerald eyes. Her touch sent tremors across his skin.

He pulled her close, wanting to absorb her into his soul. She smelled like summer and citrus; her energy sparking like a severed electrical wire dancing free. Dangerous and erratic, too much voltage for one man to handle without getting fried. But how could he resist her? He was a moth, flirting with flame, mesmerized and helpless to pull away. He’d tried. Numerous times.

His flimsy excuses those first few weeks had only made her laugh. She matched Ethan in determination and stubbornness. She matched his mother in making those guilt-inducing faces when he hesitated, held back. All or nothing. No sitting on the fence. No one gave Leah Sacks a half measure of attention. She was an all-consuming fire.

“Did you just get here?” she asked.