Spanish Disco (20 page)

“I want to learn something fancy,” he said, as he spun me, Sister Sledge singing out in the background.

“You’re not ready for fancy,” I said. “You’re a step above walking, but you’re getting there.”

“How about a dip?”

“A dip? I don’t think so, Roland.”

“But a dip would really impress Maria, wouldn’t it? It’s tango-like. Sexy.”

“Roland, I—” but before I could sputter off another argument, he dipped me.

“Not bad,” I said, amazed he so gracefully leaned me backwards. “Now let me up before my back breaks.”

He did, and we continued doing the Hustle. “Another dip?” He laughed, looking positively giddy that he, Roland Riggs, Pulitzer-prize winner, could do the
Saturday Night Fever
“point,” complete with hip gyrations. I was ready to buy him a white polyester suit.

“Sure, Roland.” The rabbits even looked impressed as they lay flopped on their sides near the couch. I envisioned him and Maria dancing the night away, perhaps putting their respective pasts behind them, and me rewarded with a new manuscript flying off his word processor in no time.

He dipped me. And then, just as suddenly, he dropped me on the floor with a heavy thud.

“Jesus Christ, Roland! What the fuck are you doing?” Pain shot up from my ass and assaulted my neck.

He was staring stock still, frozen. Petrified. From my crumbled position on the hard wooden floor, I turned my neck ever so slightly and painfully and saw, to my equal horror, Maria standing in the kitchen doorway.

“I forgot to feed Julio.”

I looked at Roland and mouthed “Julio?”

He whispered, “A feral cat that comes by.”

Maria’s eyes were filled with tears of betrayal, and Roland’s were filled with tears of what was now as ruined and crumpled as our last dip.

“I can explain,” he said.

“Don’t bother, Mister Riggs. I don’t need any stories from you. You owe me nothing.” She turned on her heels and ran from the house.

He seemed to have forgotten I was even there.

“Roland? Could you help me up?”

“I knew it,” he whispered as he lent me a hand. “I’m doomed.”

“Give me a break. Doomed?”

“I am.”

“Go after her.”

“What? I can’t.”

“For all your talk of love, you’re as scared of rejection as a sixteen-year-old pimple-faced geek before the prom. Go after her,” I implored. “Go after her and offer your dance. Let her see it was all about her.”

It was clear, from the defeated look on his face, that he was not going to move. So I grabbed his arm. “I need a book from you, and if this is the only way I’m going to get it…. Editor, nursemaid, matchmaker, psychiatrist, how many more fucking hats do I have to wear?”

I tugged him along by his turquoise Hawaiian shirt, half dragging, half pulling, half pushing him to the guest cottage. I banged on the door.

“Maria!” I screamed, “Maria! Look, I need five minutes
of your time, because I am leaving. And sooner or later, I know you’ll come out to feed the cats in the morning. So we can do this now or do this in the morning. But I’m tired as hell, and I would rather do it without staying up all night.”

She didn’t immediately answer, but I sensed we were being watched from behind the curtains. Eventually, I heard her fiddling with the locks.

When she opened the door, I was stunned by how angelic she looked. She was wearing a very long white T-shirt and her hair, instead of being in a single thick braid, was brushed out and full and wavy. Her eyes were puffy from crying, but in the moonlight, her skin was smooth and luminescent.

“Tell her, Roland.” I turned to him.

He stood stock still, his lips moving but no sound coming out.

“Tell her!” I poked my elbow into his ribs.

“Maria, I…I wanted to learn to dance for you.”

“Please,” she waved her hand. “No lies. I’ll leave in the morning. I don’t want to…be in the way of the new mistress of the house.”

“You two are driving me fucking insane!” I screamed. I finally hit my breaking point. Maria’s eyes blinked twice, as if I’d verbally slapped her. They both stared at me.

“Floating around that house full of ghosts, wanting each other but never saying it. You,” I poked Roland in the chest, “still living in a garden in Maine, afraid to let go. And you,” I pointed at her, “caring for every creature under the sun but not your own heart. For God’s sake, you two need
to live again. It’s okay, you know. To join the rest of us living and breathing souls.”

“How dare you!” Maria said. “You have no idea—”

“I have every idea. Listen, lady, he hates hot food, he’s allergic to all your cats, and he doesn’t particularly like rabbit crap on his carpets. But he loves you, and that’s what this whole dancing stunt was all about. Proving it to you by stepping on
my
feet and dropping me on the floor. I was teaching him to dance, Maria. For you. That’s all.”

Roland nodded, willing her to believe me.

“And Roland,” I faced him, “I’m through with all this. You talk to her. You say what needs saying. And if you hand me a manuscript I can use, fine. If not, I’m outta here tomorrow either way. I’ve had enough of this island. And now,” I massaged my neck, “I think I have whiplash.”

I stormed back toward the house. My teeth chattered. For such a temperamental bitch, I always feel a rush after spewing out my anger. First I flush and feel a release, and then I briefly tremble as the release floods my body with endorphins. I breathed deeply and tried to still the shivers.

I reached the deck and turned around. Through the curtains, I saw them dancing. Slowly, cheek to cheek. She was holding on to him, her head buried into his chest, and he kept stroking her hair. They swayed as one, moving to the music I was too far away to hear. Then Roland dipped her—and didn’t even drop her. The move was sexy and seductive. Perhaps their ghosts had decided to let them live after all.

28

T
he next day nothing had changed…and everything had changed. It was as if the sun decided to rise in the west. The world had been turned upside down, spun backwards on its axis, and yet it was still the same sun, burning hot and bright over the Gulf of Mexico.

Maria still cooked a breakfast that would kill mere mortals. This time, it was runny eggs
without
hot sauce. Sure, I had told her the night before that Roland didn’t like spicy food, but it was as if now, without the hot sauce, she couldn’t prepare something edible. She didn’t seem to notice. And neither did he. She served the eggs smiling, in a daze, reeling in love with Roland Riggs. And Roland was worse. He first greeted me with a bear hug and then picked up one of the rabbits and kissed its quivering nose.

As I forced down the eggs, I asked him, or really stated what we both knew, “I’m not going to get that book, am I?”

Roland looked thoughtfully at his fork. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to write another word.”

“Not even as the queen of unrequited romance novels?”

He let the eggs fall back to the plate and stared at me. “No more romance novels, though they have supported me in the style I’ve grown accustomed to.”

“So what’s next?”

“What’s next?” he looked toward the kitchen where Maria tended to her potato bonsai. “The rest is all a mystery, Cassie, but when I solve it, you’ll be the first to know. And thank. The bigger mystery, of course, is what’s your next move?”

“Mine?”

“With Michael Pearton.”

“Some mysteries, Roland, are best left unsolved. I wrote him. He didn’t write back. End of story.”

He swallowed a swig of his breakfast beer.

“That’s the thing about being a writer, of course. Or being an editor. If you don’t like the ending, you can always write a new one.”

I took a swallow of my beer.

“Yeah. Or you can burn the book.”

We finished our breakfasts, and I went upstairs to pack. I was going back to the land of Starbucks, malls, pink palaces, and bagels. I missed my father. I missed Lou, though I’d never tell him. I carried my bags downstairs.

Maria came toward me, clutching a rabbit. “This is José. I want you to take him with you.”

“I couldn’t,” I stumbled, “I couldn’t poss—”

“It would mean very much to me. To Mister Ri—to Roland. If you took him. To remember us.”

“Trust me. Remembering the last two weeks will not be a problem.”

“You shouldn’t live alone. You should have someone.” She stared at me earnestly, her black eyes making me uncomfortable.

“Maybe I should just take a bonsai.”

“No. You should take the rabbit.”

I nodded. I obviously wasn’t leaving without the rabbit.

“I shouldn’t live alone. Okay, so is the rabbit for company or protection? An attack rabbit?”

Maria looked at me quizzically. “José would never hurt anyone.”

“Right.”

Maria placed José in a travel case. Then she handed me a box full of rabbit food, carrots, and vegetables from the garden.

“Not too much lettuce. It will give him diarrhea.”

“The last thing I want is a rabbit with the runs.”

I took the rabbit and the box, and Roland grabbed my suitcase and laptop.

“I’ll walk you to the car.”

We made our way through the garden, past all of Maria’s cats and orchids. I sensed the garden ghosts had been sent away.

“I really don’t know how to thank you for teaching me to dance.”

I shrugged. “José is more than enough, Roland.”

“You’ll like having his company.”

“No…I won’t.”

“Well, thank you anyway. For everything. If I ever do write again, you’ll be the first person I call.”

Inwardly, I shuddered. Roland put José on the passenger side of my car, and I put my bags in the trunk.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said as he gave me another bear hug. I looked at him in the full light of day. Years of loss had been erased. He looked a decade younger than when I had arrived. As much as I wanted to hate him for not giving me a manuscript, for the deception of bringing me here in the first place, for writing a poem, not a novel, I couldn’t.

“Don’t forget to dance every night, Roland. You deserve a little happiness.”

“I will. I’ll dance. And maybe even write—”

“Don’t say it.” I shook my head. “I’ll explain it to Lou somehow.”

We hugged again, and I was on my way. Backward. Like the sun setting in the east now. Back to my world. All was the same, but maybe I wasn’t.

29

M
y world kept spinning backward. After I arrived home, I drove to Stratford Oaks and visited my father. He hadn’t missed me, because he hadn’t remembered that I’d gone.

“Cassie…” He smiled and recognized me. He clutched my hand like a little boy clutching his mother as he learns to cross the street. Once my little hand fluttered like a baby bird inside of his. Now, he grasped at me, as if he knew he was falling away, out of the tree without knowing how to fly. Falling backward into a chasm that was deep and dark and permanent.

“Dad…” I pulled the ottoman closer to him and smiled, caressing his cheek. He coughed a great racking cough. I’d been told he had caught a bad cold. It came on suddenly. The doctor was due to see him on morning rounds.

“Damn cold. I need a tissue,” he mumbled, though he
had a box of them on his lap. “Damn cold. Damn cold.” He was being pulled away from me, and I fought to keep him.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been here, Dad. I had to go see Roland Riggs. Remember? To help him with his book.”

“Are you a writer?”

“No. An editor. But you know that, Dad.”

His eyes were fading. And then, briefly, they focused.

“You have always made me very proud, Cassie. I love you. I love you truly.” And then he coughed again. “Damn cold. Damn cold. Damn cold.”

Eventually, he nodded off. I wrapped his legs in a blanket and kissed him on his forehead. I knew there would come a day, a moment, a line in the sand, after which he would never recognize me. The chasm would swallow him up, and I would stand on the edge. Utterly alone.

But that time never came. Two days later, he was transferred to Boca Community Hospital with pneumonia. He died two days after that.