Lessons in Pure Life Read online

  Fucking Diego’s brains out seems to have burned me clean, and a green wilderness has begun to thrive where there was ash before.

  I feel an empty peacefulness, like after that first therapy session with Dr. Sim. She asked me to imagine I was a sand dune in the desert during a storm and I was slowly and gradually whipping away into nothing. It was a weightless place with no material existence, where I realized I was more than form. Matter is converted or lost or rejected, and I’m nothingness. An empty shell in a shower with a misty, glowy essence, like a bathroom nightlight or a Time Lord life force (the David Tennant kind).

  A gust of salty wind blasts up around me suddenly, juxtaposing with the heat of the water. Every follicle on my body stands erect, reaching out for more rather than taking cover. Reminding me I’m still tethered to flesh and bone and a nervous system. Lia is the anchor, the heart that pumps and neurons that pulse. It’s “I” who is the other being, hovering around her but clearly a different state. An angel from another dimension. Luma from Mario Galaxy 2. Star bits in my eyes…

  From shore, the small problems of my life are swallowed by the surf. Carter, Costa Rica, my unknowable future – they all seemed so big and scary until I met Diego and recognized my own desires in his actions. That first moment I saw him, kneeling on his board, proposing over and over to his wild lover Ocean, I couldn’t have guessed the way he’d reveal himself to be a friend, a person learning to explore his own personal truth in the same frustrated and curious way I was. The response he triggers in me has been evolutionary, helping me discover what can happen when I touch others not just to take, but to give and create. Makes me shiver like when I hear “Astral Weeks,” the tiny jukebox in my heart telling its musical truth all through my body so I’m filled with notes and strings and Van Morrison singing unintelligibly.

  Another misty gust, two different sources of water hitting me at once from opposite directions. So many sensations. I elbow the faucet hotter and it responds quickly, sending a delectable, orange toaster-grill warmth through me. Deep breath.

  My head tilts back so that the rush of droplets hits my hairline and runs over my skull, cascading down the natural slide of my spine. I examine a white bottle without any label, hoping for conditioner. I open it and sniff the pale contents tentatively. Cocoa butter. My guts roller coaster as the scent hooks onto a Diego memory, some day at school when I passed him in the kitchen. His hair must have been coated in it, a natural conditioner.

  Ridiculous smitten-ness engulfs me.

  I carve a scoop with two fingers, the butter giving pleasantly. It’s glorious. My hair drinks it up as it melts down to nourish my sun- and salt-parched ends. I coil my hair up on top of my head to soak it in while I lather up with a bar of glycerin soap. In circles, froth foams up around my neck and shoulders and breasts and along the slopes of my stomach. Ritualistic, it seems, and I could get used to this. Down my glossy, brazil-nut thighs, gliding over the edges of my knees and down to my heels.

  Rinse, repeat.

  Thoughts drift to Diego, somewhere in the house. Waiting for me. I reach for the faucet. The shower trickles to a stop. I can hear him just below me. I lean over the edge in nubile glory to see what he’s doing, if there’s breakfast.

  A dark, piercing pair of eyes startles me. A large man is standing only a few feet away. His curvy lips have fallen open and a gold molar winks out as he fixes on my wet nakedness. He’s so close he could reach up and grab me.

  My shriek pierces the air, animal instinct fully functional. He stares at me glassily, like he’s seeing a ghost.

  “Ahh-yyy!”

  The sound came out of his throat, but it’s hard to believe. A dead man’s drawling, dragging cry. The end of a life, or some kind of birth. He takes a step back, holding his hand up at me and stumbling like he’s drunk.

  What the fuck? I have to act.

  I grab the nearest solid object, which is a slippery bar of soap, and hurl it at him. As I’m reassessing my weapon of choice – concerned the unreliable surface will fuck with my aim – the thought combusts, useless. I’m not sure at what point I recognize Mustachio without his mustache, but it’s too late. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.

  Thwap.

  The soap hits him directly in the left eye, a perfect shot, and thuds to the ground. That’s gonna sting.

  “Stop it!”

  It’s a weird thing for me to yell, but that’s what came out. It works. Diego flings the door open and it clatters off its track, his face contorting, first with confusion as he sees that I’m clutching a towel around me in a panic, and then with rage when he sets eyes on his father standing below.

  Both of Mr. Valverde’s hands are over the eye, his face puckered in pain. He’s backing away in small, shuffling steps, his good eye pointed at Diego, then me. Dismay. Grief. Apology.

  Tears all over his face. Stumbling down to one knee, then both. One hand goes down to the ground, steadying.

  “Papa.” Diego bolts for the stairs.

  Oh god. Don’t be having a heart attack. Don’t be having a heart attack.

  23

  He wears a cream-colored suit, looking like some Miami Vice double agent who wandered into the set of another program. The flat porch bench is unforgiving under my ass, and it can’t be better for him. He’s got to be at least sixty, and even though he’s as tall as Diego, he’s a little bony under the fabric, like a marionette.

  Diego had talked quietly with his dad while I got dressed and gathered my wits. I didn’t have time to explain what happened before the two of them entered their man-to-man debriefing. Restless, I’d waited in the bedroom until Diego came back in and asked if I would sit with his father for a few minutes.

  Leaning back, Joaquin loosens the top button of his shirt and rests his head against the wall of the house. The dappled light of sun filtering through palm frond dances on his face. Squinting, Joaquin pats around for something on the other side of him, eventually finding it with a slight smile.

  Barely moving, he pulls it into his lap. It’s a small tin of cigars. There are only a few left. He reaches it out to me, offering. His eyebrows are pulled up by invisible puppet strings. The arm doesn’t extend fully, like he doesn’t believe I’ll actually take one. And normally I wouldn’t, but the fact that he might assume I don’t want one pushes me to thank him and take a stogie for myself.

  For several seconds – one Mississippi, two Mississippi – he stares, confused. Blinks.

  I grin without apology, nodding in thanks again.

  He nods back, chuckling to himself and looking away like he’s laughing at an old joke I’d never get. Politely, he clips the cigar and lights it for me. I pull on the smelly brown thing, and the tobacco crackles to life.

  Why people smoke these things without the benefit of getting some sort of high is beyond me. The flavor is interesting, but the little bits always stick to my tongue. It doesn’t do much for the teeth either. But I’m doing this, chilling with No-More-Stachio like a boss.

  “Do you know,” he starts, the words already knocking against each other like boulders, “I had two children at Diego’s same age now.”

  “Wow. Was he a good baby?”

  He sniffs, ashing his cigar over the porch into the sand.

  “He was, I think. My wife took care of him more than I did. I was working in San Jose for several years when he was young.”

  Diego never mentioned that. I wonder if he remembers it well.

  Joaquin clears his throat. “So, my daughter tells me you wrote a proposal. For the, eh…” he stares off, thinking, “new escuela.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you have experience with this? Proposals for financial benefit?”

  “Well, I learned to do it when I was in university. I had a part-time job at an office…”

  “And you know this grant money will be award to Genesis?”

  “Yes, I think she stands a very good chance,” I say through a grin. It feels pretty amazing to be
able to say it out loud: if this happens, Genesis will be her own boss.

  He exhales and slumps down a little in his seat, shifting into a more lazy position. Smoke shoots out of his mouth like he’s fire-breathing. I guess he is – I guess we both are. A couple of fire-breathing dragons talking business. Never say never.

  “I like to save money. I like… efficient systems,” he offers out of the quiet. The last word gets stretched out in exaggerated enunciation, sounding like a Bond villain instead of 007 himself.

  “And, when I saw you, there—” he gestures up at the outdoor shower like he’d rather not think about it, “my memory came back.”

  Dare I go here?

  “What do you mean?” I ask warily. There’s no way he’s going to get weird on me – right?

  “My wife. I’m a widow with grown children. I don’t spend time thinking about romance and young people.”

  “Okay,” I prompt. He speaks in these weird, short sentences. I can’t tell when his speeches end.

  “Years can pass, decades. The mind forgets what love is like for young people. My son, I don’t want him to make mistakes. But my wife would tell me, Deja que sea.”

  “Let it be?”

  “That’s it. You have my apologies for— for, eh, interrupción. I’ve disrespected you. But I think it was a gift.” He laughs suddenly, startling me. “A gift for me, not you. Because my wife. In that moment, I saw her again. She was so beautiful in her youth, with long hair like you. We used to see a— excuse me, a bare woman as art. She knew herself. Your confidence was like an art. That’s something my wife taught me to respect. In one picture so many words can come. It was a gift. Because I just have small pieces left, lo ves? But I’m sorry. I said some things I regret. It was wrong, and I came to apologize to you, and to Diego,” he confesses. I’m shocked to see him get misty-eyed.

  We smoke and talk a little longer, but he doesn’t stay. He’s embarrassed. I don’t think he’s used to apologizing. He seems a little out of it, but I don’t say anything. Joaquin and I may not see eye to eye, but this is as good as I could expect. I’m proud of myself for standing my ground. Dying for some mouthwash, though. Ugh.

  Later, Diego and I sit outside at the table, feet in the sand. I’m slumped so my legs can stretch out in front of me for an even bronzing. I’m going take a swim soon. It’s hot like it’s been every single day, clear now, like I predicted.

  “What do you think if Genesis starts a new school?” Diego sits on his hands, unusually fidgety.

  “It’s a big one. I think it’s going to happen,” I say earnestly, looking at him.

  “I don’t like to think about you leaving,” he grunts, a sheepish smile breaking out of what looks like a pout.

  This is a first.

  “Leaving?”

  “Well, if you don’t go with Genesis, what will you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you go back to your world, I think we might shrink away from each other and never go back to this.”

  “Well, if we get the grant, Genesis will need my help, and it seems like it’s going to happen. But if not, I don’t know. I can’t pretend I’m not hugely influenced by you. Right now, of course I want to stay. I want to sleep in that little cabin with you at night and work on my laptop from your bed.”

  “And I want you in my bed, pulling the covers like last night.” He gazes at me softly, teasing gently. Like I could ever not want that. “I think about what my life would be like with you around. Good music, surfing, working. Eating supper with you. Sleeping. Fucking.”

  My knees dissolve; that’s how it feels. And that’s what makes it so hard. How am I supposed to give this a good, sober think-through when this short-term miracle I crashed into asks me to consider the fucking? It’s all I can think about. It’s the other stuff I need to focus on.

  “Don’t we need to be practical, though? What if things change? What if we want totally different things but haven’t had time to figure it out? And then I’m here, committed to a contract but going through another life overhaul. It’s not that I couldn’t do it; it’s just that I need to watch out for patterns in my life. I don’t want to swing around trying to fill voids with… with expiry-dated experiences.”

  Diego makes a snorting noise that sounds like a barn animal. “Que mierda. You’re tearing it all down. Don’t talk like that, expiry date. ”

  “So, what? Things are perfect, then? They just work out fine?” I ask with incredulity.

  “Listen, gringa.” He jabs his elbows on the small plastic table, and it jostles our drinks. “I don’t know what your idea of perfect is. Maybe this won’t, I don’t know, be covered in magic dust.” He mimes sprinkling fairy dust with crazed eyes, and I’d laugh if we weren’t being so serious. “But we also know that either of us could die tomorrow. Or that life could change so much that you really have to leave, for a proper reason. Or there could be a change for me, who knows. Whatever. But don’t light the house on fire with all the furniture in it, ya sabes? This is a pretty big fucking miracle between us, no?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Si?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. It is a miracle. It’s more that I can predict how I’ll feel for a few weeks, maybe a few months. But we both know that beyond that, it’s a mystery.”

  “Yeah. Do we need to plan that far? Knowing we can’t? It seems like a… paradoja.”

  “A paradox? Yes. It is.”

  Watching the horizon like the quintessential human questioning her existence, I think about this and what I felt in the shower this morning.

  “Diego, here’s what I’m thinking: it looks very likely that I’ll be working with Genesis for the next twelve months at least. Her application will be on the shortlist; trust me, I did a good job.

  “At the same time, I also feel so much for you. I feel like I’ve found someone who brings out some interesting strengths in me and who teaches me new ideas while he learns from me, too. Guys like that just don’t… You’ve become important to me. And you’re incredibly good-looking,” I add, smiling. “At the same time, your sister is a dear friend, a professional ally and my boss. And your dad’s seen me naked. So there’s a lot going on with the Valverde family.”

  “My dad saw you naked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Completely naked?”

  “Yes!” I widen my eyes at him, like Trust me.

  “I didn’t realize! Oh my god.” He throws his head back laughing. “That’s so awkward, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re laughing! You’re not sorry.” I shove him, though I can’t help laughing too.

  “Sorry, it’s just that he doesn’t get much action.”

  “You think?”

  “And with a body like yours,” he continues, “you’re lucky you didn’t kill him.”

  “He sure got a full frontal.”

  “His eyesight is really bad, at least,” he offers, raising his eyebrows.

  “It didn’t make much of a difference. You’re made of the same cloth, you and him,” I tell him.

  “Fuck,” he face-palms.

  “I’ve been Valverded,” I concede.

  “That’s true, you really have. You have my humblest apologies,” he offers with a sympathetic smile.

  “I never thought I’d be so intertwined with you guys.”

  “Si. I didn’t think of it that way. Genesis is always getting her shit in my way,” he grumbles, only half kidding.

  “It’s a pretty good cause she’s got.” I punch him playfully.

  “I know, gringa. And you have so much to give the students.”

  “I do.”

  “You’ve really broken into us,” he observes, and we laugh at that.

  “It’s very unusual, but then, you guys have been missing an important, female element in your lives. Maybe my new energy made me a— I don’t know, a comforting and distracting presence.”

  Diego rolls his eyes. The things are going to fall out one day.

  “
Maybe it’s just that you’re interesting, and kind, and very beautiful, hay? So far you’ve charmed each one of us who meets you.”

  “Hmm.” He’s got a point. Although it took a bit more than I had in mind to charm his dad.

  He gazes out toward the foamy, white breakers, “I would even say, at least speaking for Genesis and I, that we care about you very much. You belong here. You’re one of us. And you should stay.”

  Sweetness chimes in the chapels of my heart. So much kindness and acceptance, and on the morning after, too. Instead of leaving with an empty peck on the cheek, he scrambled me eggs with salt and pepper and made not just ordinary coffee, but dulce de leche coffee.

  “Diego,” wearing my feelings unabashedly, “you’ve given me so much. I really do love living here, assuming I can stay with Katherine. I mean, I guess she and Jose might want to move in together at some point,” I consider.

  “Que?” he says, turning to look at me strangely.

  Oops. Secrets are slippery in the heat, harder to hold on to. “Uh, I’ll explain later. All I’m saying is for now, I don’t think we need to make any major decisions. Let’s enjoy this.”

  “And I think we’ve just broken down some pretty big barriers.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t mean to take away from that. It would be an awful shame to waste this new freedom of family acceptance,” I agree.

  “So, if it all falls apart…”

  “There’s always Korea,” I tease.

  “Is that where you would go?”

  “Well, now that I have teaching experience, I could go anywhere; in a completely different direction. I have friends there, I could learn new material…”

  “That’s cool. I’m jealous.”

  “Wanna come? It’s a long plane ride.”

  “Sure,” he laughs dryly.

  “You could, you know. Diego, no matter what happens, there are options we haven’t even thought of.”

  “So I can call you my girlfriend? Is that an option?”

  “It sounds so good.”

  “Tan bueno,” he teaches.

  “Tan bueno.”

  He kisses me long and slow. A whole sunset might have gone by and we wouldn’t know. The only thing that matters is our mutual, genuine desire to exist here together, in this moment. Nothing is certain, but we are everywhere. We are a miracle of pure life.