The Color of a Dream (7 page)

We landed without any trouble in Salt Lake
City, and as we touched down, the passengers broke into a
spontaneous round of applause.

I never learned what went wrong with the
equipment but we all discussed it tirelessly when we disembarked
from the aircraft and had to wait in a long lineup to rebook on
other flights.

I spent the rest of the night in the
airport, sleeping on the floor at the departure gate, and woke up
to learn that my next flight was going to be delayed as well.
Evidently a few tornadoes in Oklahoma had thrown departure and
arrival schedules into spinning vortexes all across the
country.

Now it looked like I wouldn’t land in LA
until Friday morning.

I found a payphone and tried to call
Angela.

I called every hour and left messages until
it was time to board my flight. By the time we landed at LAX, I
felt like a giant bag of dirty laundry. Thankfully, I had packed
all my belongings in a knapsack so at least I was able to brush my
teeth and change my shirt before I got off the plane and climbed
into a taxi.

It was my first time in Los Angeles but I
was only minutely interested in the view outside the car window
because I couldn’t stop thinking about Angela. Maybe she thought
I’d changed my mind about coming out here. I hoped my phone
messages reached her.

But even if they had, I didn’t know how I
was going to solve her problems and make things better. Rick had
never listened to me before when I tried to give him advice or when
I asked him to do things. He always did whatever he damn well
pleased. Whatever worked best for him.

Then what the bloody hell was I doing here?
I wondered as we sped along the freeway. What did I hope to
accomplish? Was I here simply to provide moral support for Angela?
Or did I intend to be her knight in shining armor, as I had been
that day in the parking lot when she locked her keys in the
car?

I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I
couldn’t let Rick bully a person or manipulate her into doing
something she didn’t want to do.

Not this time.

* * *

There was no answer when I knocked on the
door to Rick and Angela’s apartment. This came as no surprise
because I’d called ahead from the airport and was forced to leave
another message on their answering machine.

I didn’t have much money on me so I decided
to hunker down in the corridor, rest my head on my knapsack and
close my eyes until one of them returned home.

I slept for a long time. The trip across the
country must have exhausted me more than I realized because when
Rick kicked my foot—
hard
—for the umpteenth time, I startled
awake, groggy and lightheaded. I squinted up at him in a daze.

“What are you doing here?” he asked with a
frown.

He was dressed in a black suit with a blue
tie and he carried a brown paper bag that looked and smelled like
it might be full of Chinese food.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Almost seven,” he replied. “And you didn’t
answer my question. What the hell are you doing here? Did Angela
call you?”

“Yeah.” I rose stiffly to my feet.

He shook his head and dug into his pocket
for the apartment keys. “I told her not to do that.”

He unlocked the door and I followed him
inside. While he set the bag of food on the table, I glanced around
at the worn sofa, cluttered desk and metal bookshelf, and peered
toward the kitchen, which was even smaller than mine.

“This is only temporary,” Rick explained,
“until I can afford a better place. I’ve only been working a couple
of months.”

“I’m not criticizing,” I said. I glanced
toward what I assumed was the bedroom door. “Angela’s not here? Do
you know where she is?”

“I haven’t got a clue,” Rick replied. “We
had a huge fight last night so I left and slept on the couch at a
friend’s house.” He shrugged out of his suit jacket, draped it on
the back of a chair at the table and drew his tie out from under
his crisp white shirt collar. He folded it on top of his jacket and
began to rip open the paper bag containing his dinner.

“Now that I think about it,” he added, “it’s
probably your fault we had the fight in the first place. And she
didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“What did you fight about?” I asked, still
standing by the door and finally sliding my backpack off my
shoulder. I let it drop heavily to the floor.

Rick motioned me over. “Do you want some of
this? There’s plenty.”

I hadn’t eaten all day and the smell of the
beef fried rice, chicken balls and egg rolls caused my mouth to
water.

“Sure.” I approached the table while Rick
went to fetch plates and a couple of serving spoons.

“Chopsticks are in the bag,” he said.

I helped him open the containers and we sat
down to eat.

“So what did you and Angela fight about?” I
asked a second time, growing concerned that she might have kept the
appointment that morning after all.

His eyes lifted. “That’s not really any of
your business, is it?”

“I think it is,” I replied, “since she used
to be my girlfriend and she was pretty upset when she called
me.”

Rick picked up an egg roll, swirled it
around the pool of plum sauce on his plate, and took a large bite.
“I assume she told you then.”

Losing my appetite all of a sudden, I sat
back. “Yeah, she told me everything. Why else would I fly all the
way out here?”

Rick pointed his chopsticks at me. “Then it
is
your fault. Because everything was going just fine until
last night, when she told me she changed her mind about what we
decided and that she’d cancelled the appointment.”

I felt a great rush of relief to hear that
she had stuck to her guns. I only wished I’d been there to back her
up.

“So she didn’t go through with it?” I
asked.

“Not that I know of,” he replied.

I wondered how he could have risen from bed
that morning and gone to work all day, not knowing for sure. But
that was Rick.

He scooped more rice out of the Styrofoam
container and refilled his plate. “Let me guess,” he said. “You
offered to come out here and fix everything. You probably even told
her you’d marry her.”

“No,” I said flatly. “That’s not what I told
her.”

“But that’s what you’re hoping, isn’t it?
That you’ll get her back?”

“No,” I repeated more firmly. “I only came
to help her figure out what she’s going to do. She sounded like she
needed a friend.”

Rick rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Yeah,
right. You keep telling yourself that.”

“What is your
problem
?” I asked. “Why
are you acting like I’m the selfish one here?”

“Selfish? Jesus! All I’ve done is give,
give, give to that girl, but nothing’s ever enough. Don’t get me
wrong, when she first came out here she was a lot of fun, but then
she got all clingy and demanding, and all of a sudden, she wanted
to get married. After five months! Honestly, I think she tried to
trap me with this pregnancy. If it’s even real. I have my
doubts.”

I had to pause a moment and consider what he
was telling me, because I remembered how Angela had behaved when
Rick flew home on New Year’s Day. She didn’t eat or speak to
anyone. She hadn’t seemed rational.

Certainly, through the years, Rick had sent
more than a few girls into an emotional vortex of insanity, but
maybe he wasn’t always completely to blame for their highs and
lows.

But had Angela truly been lying about the
pregnancy? I didn’t believe she would go that far… But what did I
know? At the time, I hadn’t even realized she was cheating on me
with my own brother.

“Can I use your washroom?” I asked, because
I needed to think this through. I needed to see Angela and talk to
her face-to-face before I passed judgment.

“It’s through there.” Rick pointed toward
the bedroom.

As I rose from my chair, I couldn’t help but
wonder what was going to happen when Angela walked through the
door. Whether she was pregnant or not, I knew there was no chance
Rick was ever going to marry her, but if he was leading her down
that garden path it was time for him to set her straight. She
needed to know the truth so that she could get on with her
life.

As I moved through the bedroom, I glanced
briefly at the unmade bed and felt a sudden, sharp pang of
jealousy.

It was enough to stop me in my tracks. The
image of Rick sleeping with Angela was more than I could stomach. I
had to shut my eyes and fight hard to purge the thought from my
brain.

Then I began to question my feelings.

Was I truly over her? What if she decided to
leave Rick and come home, pregnant and alone? Could I forgive her
for any of this?

God
,
oh God…

I opened my eyes again and put one foot in
front of the other. Maybe this jealousy had nothing to do with
Angela and was merely a product of my resentment toward Rick. Those
roots were certainly buried deep. The seeds had been planted many
years ago—on the day he drove me home from a football game and
refused to hit the brakes when I asked him to.

As I pushed the bathroom door open, however,
all thoughts of the past flew out of my head, for there was Angela,
lying on the white tile floor in a puddle of blood.

Adrenaline spiked through my body and I
rushed to her side. “Rick!” I shouted. “Get in here! And call
911!”

We learned, after the paramedics arrived,
that Angela had not tried to commit suicide but had most likely
attempted to perform an abortion on herself by using the knitting
needle they found on the floor beside her.

Later, the autopsy would show that she had
indeed been pregnant, so there could be no doubt about whether or
not she had lied to Rick about her condition in order to trap him.
She’d been telling the truth about that—and the fact that I had not
arrived in time to help her would haunt me for the rest of my
days.

In that moment however, after they wheeled
Angela into the ambulance and Rick and I were left alone, there
were other issues to discuss.

“What did you say to her last night?” I
asked, feeling distraught and needing answers as I followed him
back into his apartment.

Rick went straight to the kitchen and pulled
a cold beer out of the fridge. He twisted off the cap, pitched it
into the trash can and tipped the bottle up. Then he leaned back
against the counter and faced me. “Do you want one?”

“No!” I replied, leaning a shoulder against
the doorjamb between the kitchen and living room. “I just want to
know what happened. Tell me what you said to her and why you left
her alone.”

“I wasn’t her babysitter,” he replied. “And
I didn’t say anything.”

“You must have. You said you had a fight.
She couldn’t have been arguing with herself.”

Rick set his beer down on the counter.
“Fine. If you really want to know, she told me she cancelled the
appointment for this morning because she wanted to think about it
some more. She wanted me to think about it, too, but I told her I’d
already made up my mind and I wasn’t going to change it. I told her
I didn’t want to have a kid or get married. Not today. Not ever. I
was honest with her, Jesse.”

I felt my eyebrows pull together in a frown.
“How did she take it?”

“How do you
think
she took it? You
know how emotional she was. She cried and begged and pleaded.”

Suddenly there was a heavy pounding in my
ears and a heated blood flow to all my extremities. My fingers
began to twitch and before I knew what I was doing, I had stalked
across the kitchen and grabbed hold of Rick’s shirt in my
fists.

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded to
know. “She’s
dead!
Don’t you care?”

I was no longer the nerdy baby brother who
couldn’t fight back when he was surrounded by linebackers. I was
now as tall as he was and I’d been chucking heavy suitcases for a
year. Tonight it was just the two of us, alone in his small
kitchen.

He tried to slap my hands away but my grip
was rock solid as I dragged him along the length of the counter and
shoved him up against the refrigerator.

“Of course I care,” he replied.

“No, you don’t. You never loved her. Not
like I did. She was nothing to you.”

“She was something,” he said, “but you need
to calm down, Jesse, because she wasn’t
that
special.
Remember, she cheated on you.”

I dragged him away from the fridge and
shoved him so hard up against the wall, I knocked the breath out of
him. “Don’t you ever say that again.”

Suddenly he head-butted me in the nose and
pain shot through my skull. I saw stars and stumbled back a few
steps. The next thing I knew Rick was hauling me into the living
room by the shirt collar and throwing me onto the sofa.

“Get a grip!” he shouted, standing over me
and pointing a finger. “You’re upset.”

“Damn right, I’m upset.” I wiped at my nose
with the back of my hand and realized I was bleeding. “Jesus.”

He pointed at me again. “Stay down.” I
thought maybe his intention was to fetch me a washcloth or
something to staunch the flow of blood, but he made no move to
administer first aid. He simply stood there, staring at me with a
look of warning.

“If you grab me again,” he said, “I swear
I’ll finish you.”

That was all I could take. Something
exploded in me and the whole world turned red. I shot like a rocket
off the sofa and tackled him onto his back on the living room
floor.

I punched him in the face but he punched me
back which caused a ringing in my ears.

Grabbing him by the shirt, I hauled him to
his feet and threw him into a small table. The lamp smashed to the
floor.