Love Me Back (14 page)

To apologize for anything he’d put on a record and share his enthusiasm with me. As if to say Nothing can be all that bad if we’re enjoying this brilliance together. That night it was Coleman Hawkins’ high hopeful
Body & Soul
, the sax’s silky tremble more human than a voice. My hateful man also made incredible tacos for me no matter how late it was when I got out of work. These may seem like nothing, but even if you yourself can tell how paltry the spread is it’s yours so it glitters and you don’t want to turn away from it.

My ex punched the wall the one time he wanted to hit me, and I probably deserved it. He had this striking autumn-red beard and warm brown eyes and wanted only to make me happy but I would yell at him for buying the wrong
orange juice etc. He would have done anything for me, he even gave me an enema once when I had a strange disease that had compacted my shit so hard I went to the ER. He never minded getting up when the baby cried in the middle of the night and he would change her and bring her back to me. But I slept with everyone at work so he put his fist through the sheetrock and we broke up. He plays guitar at night when he gets home, and he teaches special ed at the middle school. That’s the sort of guy he is.

I wish I didn’t want the exotic man who knows the entire history of jazz, and instead wanted the teacher, who has his flaws but whose kindness is as rare as genius.

Frank had me pick up a necklace for the Dangler from this Arab jeweler who owed him. It was a custom-made pendant—a tiny white gold spider with a heart-shaped sapphire on its back. She’d been wearing this choker made of rubies and black pearls that Matt bought her in Cabo, he must have remortgaged his condo for that thing. Frank had me write the note to put in the box with the sapphire spider:
To the Dangler, the player with the heart of cold. Dangle this. XO Frank
.

I saw the other dangler again when I was on my way to get Frank’s sandwich and drop off the necklace. Shaila lived in a penthouse on Turtle Creek and I was supposed to put the gift directly into her hands. As I headed up the freeway I looked to my right and there was the white Silverado. The other dangler was in the back again, one hand gripping the side of the bed, her scrawny forearm tendons popping out.
The other hand was alternately holding the Mickey Mouse keychained purse close to her and moving strings of hair out of her eyes when the wind lashed her ponytails across her face. She was grimacing—smiling?—and the driver was drumming her ringed fingers on the steering wheel, nodding her head in time.

Frank had called Shaila’s doorman—he had box seats on the fifty at Texas Stadium he used for leverage if people didn’t need legal tricks—so the doorman keyed the elevator to the penthouse as soon as I got there. Shaila answered the door in a wife-beater—no bra—and cutoff jeans shorts. She could have put on some heels and come into our five-star joint and no one would have said a thing but What’re you having, sister. Her body was like an outfit she never took off. I suddenly felt like I needed a haircut and wished I wasn’t wearing sneakers.

Hey, she said.

Two small kids appeared behind her, a girl and a boy. Kids, I thought, Shaila has fucking kids!

They never told me you had kids, I said like an idiot.

Yeah I bet they told you everything else though, she said, but not like she resented it or like she was boasting. It was more a comment on Frank and Danny and Ahmed and how she knew them, knew everything they could possibly think of to do or say.

She turned and hollered Maria! into the penthouse. Go play with Maria, she said to the kids. They ran off.

What can I do for you? she said.

This is from Frank and I was told to put it right in your hands, I said.

Okay, tell him it’s the most beautiful thing anybody ever gave me and I want to suck his huge cock until he dies of coming, she said, shoving the black velvet box into one back pocket of her shorts and pulling her buzzing phone out of the other. Hey sexy, she answered, mouthing Thanks to me with one of those all-expenses-paid smiles as she shut the door.

Did you give it to her? Does she like it?
Frank texted me.
She LOVES it
, I sent back. Then I figured I should tell him exactly what she said in case she said Did she tell you what I said? later. A woman like Shaila might seem flip and shallow but you could see that she could get you fired if the wrong look crossed her face and the wrong man happened to notice.

Shaila must have really liked the spider though because she started wearing it all the time instead of the choker Matt gave her. Then Matt started drinking again, vodka Red Bulls, he’d drink double talls until he was out of his mind. One night he swung at Danny in the bar but Danny is an Italian street rat and Matt is just a gym rat so Danny ducked and broke his half-full bottle of Heineken on Matt’s jaw like he’d seen the punch coming for eight years. Danny’s friend Kole was in the bar that night—Kole was a freelance bodyguard who used to be an offensive tackle for the Broncos and was three times the size of Matt. Kole threw him out of the bar and two twenty-bags fell out of Matt’s pocket into the pool of beer on the floor as Kole was relocating him. Jesus, Kole! said Shaila, from her barstool, Don’t fucking kill him!
He’s a big boy, he be all right, said Kole. You’re a much bigger boy, she said, searching for the straw of her mojito without taking her eyes off him.

Danny picked up the twenty-bags and shook them off and told me to get Niño to clean up that stupid queer fuck-wad’s mess. He bought all the customers in the bar a shot to make nice and then he and Shaila left in the orange Ferrari.

The next day when I got to work Ahmed was already on his stool.

Did you hear? he said.

We used to chat when he’d wait for Shaila, she’d made him so happy he was extra-friendly with everyone, and he palmed me a bill for no reason once. But he hadn’t wanted to talk since she dropped him, so the energy in his voice surprised me.

No, I said, what?

That sad fuck Matt ran off the bridge last night, he said. Went right through the construction barrier and hit a guy. Killed him. Can you believe that? Dumb fuck walked away, too. Broken wrist, that’s it. I know it’s all that bitch’s fault. He lost his shit over her.

Ahmed seemed stunned by this event and also perplexed in a jaded way, as if he couldn’t get why it was the next guy over who’d won the disaster lottery. As if he wished he could have been the one to blow up his life because of Shaila.

Later that week I heard that Frank was leaning on the prosecutor to get him to drop the DWI since Matt was already up for manslaughter. And Danny became Shaila’s
consoler, when she came into the bar he had her drink ready and he sat with her all night long, his arm around her. He tried to make her laugh in a special sensitive way that acknowledged she didn’t want to. When she wasn’t in the bar I heard him playing family therapist on his cell phone, pacing in the lobby:

It’s not your fault. You didn’t make him do it. He wasn’t a stable person. You were just having a good time and he couldn’t handle it. You didn’t do anything wrong, he said, you didn’t do anything a man wouldn’t do.

One night he hung up after one of these conversations and said I’m taking her to Baja. I’m gonna fuck her brains out, try and take her mind off it.

I slept with Matt, when I was on my streak. It was just once but now I keep seeing the ceiling fan in his room. I stared at it while he was going down on me, thinking of how to ask him to be softer. He was so vigorous about it, the same way he stirred his tea, as if delicacy must be avoided above all.

After all that Kole and Shaila became a thing but Frank and Danny would still drink with them in the bar. Danny told me Kole called Shaila Boo and Shaila called Kole’s dick Baby Bear.

I won’t ask how you know that, I said.

Good honey, he said, then I won’t tell you I passed out on the floor of her penthouse and they forgot I was there.

The hateful man was supposed to come back from Miami soon and was sweet-talking me for a smooth reentry
but after everything that happened over the summer I wasn’t interested. I called him and left a message saying he needed to start paying the rent on the storage space for his stuff. I know none of that shit with the Dangler and the other dangler even happened to me but somehow just watching it made me want to kill whatever yearning self I had inside me. Whatever was in me hoping for something from someone, hanging on.

I was with the hateful man when you got sick. Later I found out it was just a bad cold. But when you are five and you are sick all you want is for your mother to hold you and rock you and I was with him and I didn’t answer the phone when your dad called. He left a message saying you were sick and he needed me to take care of you so he could go to work tomorrow but I didn’t call him back. The hateful man showed me some pictures of Rome and asked if I thought they were any good. I didn’t like them—some trees, some stone. No heart. I drank bourbon with him until it would have been a bad idea for me to drive to you to hold you and rock you. The man fucked me and told me I was drunk like it was a weakness. But his apartment was full of empty bottles. In the morning he drove me home and when he parked in front of my place he said I think I need to fuck you again. As we walked in the door my home phone was ringing. I unplugged the cord. I knelt in front of my loveseat and he got behind me. As he was thrusting he shifted his balance and I tried to adjust to match his position but we went opposite ways and he jammed into me wrong. Fuck! he yelled and doubled over, holding his nuts. You broke my cock! he said. You moved, I said. I’m sorry.