Further Out Than You Thought (27 page)

“How,” she said. It was all she could get out.

“You have all you need.” The woman let go of one of her hands. She lifted Gwen's pendant from her chest. Gwen opened her eyes and dried her face. In the woman's fingers, the Virgin of Guadalupe caught the red light from the window and glowed.

“She is here.
Tu abuela.
Behind you.” Gwen turned to look. All she could see was the closed door, painted shiny turquoise. “She used to kiss you,
sí
? Your eyes and cheeks, lots of kisses, your whole face wet, red with her lipstick.”

“Sí.”

“She loved you like that because she couldn't love your mother.
Tú sabes?
After she was born, she was afraid she'd kill her. By accident.” The psychic was quiet a minute, as if listening to something she decided to keep to herself.

“There was no medicine then, nothing to help her.”

Gwen wasn't sure what she was talking about. She knew her grandmother had been phobic, afraid to leave the house, that she'd spend the morning and sometimes the entire afternoon in her king-sized bed with her German shepherds on the floor around her. But that was after her mom and her sisters had been in school. That was later.

“She was scared,” the psychic said. “That she'd crush or drop her.”

The thought of her grandmother being anything less than warm troubled her—it was the opposite of the woman she remembered.

“You knew this?” the psychic asked.

Gwen shook her head. No. She hadn't known about the lack of physical love Carlotta had shown her mother. She wondered what that would do to a person, that absence of mother love.

“She say she's sorry. She want you're not afraid. Blithe spirit, she say. What means, blithe spirit?”

“She'd call me that. I was her blithe spirit. Free.”

The woman on the sofa snored again and jerked herself awake. She sat up and squinted at Gwen.
“Lo siento,”
she said. She had long dark hair and wore a flowered dress. She brushed her hair from her damp forehead and straightened her crumpled dress and walked past Gwen into the back of the house.

“Mi hija,”
the psychic said with a sly smile. She let go of Gwen's hand, wrapped her sweater tighter over her chest. She stood. “Anything else, anything you want to know?”

She thought of the cards, the Fool and Death, and why she'd turned them over so quickly. She thought of Leo, and how the psychic hadn't mentioned him, nor any other man in her life, but he didn't seem so important now. Whether he was with her or not, she had all she needed.

“Which way is the Bar Del Prado?” she said.

“The bar?” She peered at Gwen over her spectacles.

“The Hotel Suiza. Where I'm staying.”

“Sí, sí,”
the psychic said. She laughed and took her by the arm and walked her outside. They stood in the moonlight, in the balmy wind. “Down this street,” she said, pointing. “Two blocks. Right. One block, is there.”

Gwen pulled from her pocket the wad of cash. Why was she walking around with all that cash? She'd have left most of it in the hotel room had she been thinking. She took out a twenty and handed it to her.

“Gracias por todo,”
she said, and the psychic took her face in her hands and tilted her forehead toward her and kissed it. She held her face, peered into her eyes, and Gwen felt her heart lurch—they were her grandmother's hands on her face.

“Let them go,
hija.
They worry. You tell them—you okay. You strong. Tell them move on. Is time.” She dropped her hands to her sides and smiled, her gold tooth shining in the moonlight.
“Vaya con Dios, hija.”

Led by Fifi up the road, Gwen turned to see the psychic one more time. She was stooped over on the sidewalk, picking up the knife. She turned it in the red light, closed it, and slid it into her pocket. If anyone could cleanse the aura of that knife, it would be her. She waved at Gwen, and Gwen waved back and smiled.

She felt like Dorothy leaving the Good Witch and had the sudden urge to skip up the yellow brick road. In spite of the weight of her boots, she felt light as the tapping of Fifi's toenails, as the moonlight on the pavement. As if she might fill with helium and float into the night sky, tethered to earth by just the leash, by Fifi, her anchor. She wanted to take off all her clothes and dance. To drive to the ocean this second and cartwheel on the sand. However ridiculous this desire was, it belonged to her body, and what could her mind do but laugh? Yes, the very thought made her giddy.

And Leo? She knew he'd escaped the brawl, knew he was fine—like the Fool card she had drawn, the Fool of which he was so fond, who could walk right along the edge of a cliff and not fall because the little white dog at his side would pull at his pant legs or nip at his heels to keep him from stepping over the edge.

Of course, she'd taken the little white dog. Maybe she was the Fool tonight. She felt like a fool, buoyant and hopeful, ready for the next escapade. Nevertheless, Fifi was his. If she left him, he'd get the dog. How could he be Zero without his little white dog?

Zero with his quick-lived schemes. “Quixotic” was the word she'd use to describe him, were she ever to write it all down. “Quixotic,” from “Quixote.” Wild, imaginary, and so beguiling, his gold-flecked eyes wide open, dreaming, his smile, infectious. He took her with him, or used to—his body a lean urgency, his words spinning an intricate tale. He would dance her to his newest utopia, an island frothed and floating, name her both queen and treasure.
Il mio tesoro,
he'd croon. And then the music would end, and she'd find herself in a smoggy city, in an apartment with piss-stained carpet and roaches, rent to pay and groceries to buy. The practical one, the drudge, she was, along with Fifi, the anchor to his boat, the anchor he managed still to pull up here and there to sail the pirate-ridden seas. But how long could she be that for him? The bottom of the ocean was a lightless place. She shrugged off the thought. It was bringing her down fast and she wanted to stay off the ground awhile.

Maybe from here she could see where it was she needed to go, and see, too, how to let go—how to let them go—Carlotta and her mother—how to send them each off into the abyss she couldn't think about just now, couldn't fathom anyhow, even if she tried, send them off with a kiss and a hug, the way a mother waves to a daughter leaving home, driving off into the world.

Vaya con Dios,
the psychic said. One must trust.

She turned a corner and there he was, in his knickers and the T-shirt, pacing in front of the hotel. In the stutter of the streetlamp he was slow motion. When he saw her, he ran to her and flung his arms around her and held her tight.

“Jesus Christ, you're all right.”

“I'm fine,” she said, feeling her jaw tighten.

“You left. I turned and you weren't there. I ran after you. I yelled. Didn't you hear?”

“No, I didn't.” She pushed him away. Her hands curled into fists and her feet planted themselves in a firm stance. Her body was ready. And the rush of blood was really something. She wasn't shouting. Her tone was low, and meant to connect, the way her fists wanted to. She wasn't thinking anymore, or rather, her body was thinking for her. And she knew why they called anger seeing red. Knew it in a way she hadn't before. Leo was bathed in a red glow, like the strip joint tonight, like the psychic's sign. And she was the bull, drawn.

She stood there, staring at him for what felt like a long time.

“What's wrong,” he said at last.

“Nothing,” she said between clenched teeth, as if it were a struggle not to reach out and bite him. “I'm fine.”

“Stop saying you're fine.”

“Fine then, Leo.” His name felt odd in her mouth. She sounded like a mother scolding her son. “Here it is. You might have worried sooner, before you jumped in between them. You might have thought before you got in a fight.”

“You mean broke up a fight.”

“Is there a difference?”

“You wanted me to let them kill each other?”

“What two random men do to each other is none of my business. And with your pregnant girlfriend beside you, it shouldn't be your business, either. Who do you care about more?”

His face fell and she thought he might sob, but his eyes were blank, as if he were busy. Busy figuring. His lips pursed to a sneer. He spat his words. “How can you be so selfish?”

She stared at him.
Selfish.
The word was like a sucker punch to the gut, taking all the air out of her. She walked past him into the hotel, pulling Fifi down the hall toward their room. He grabbed her arm.

“Gwen, look.” The sleeve of his white T-shirt was darkened with blood and he pulled it up over his shoulder. “I was cut. See? It hurts. You have to help me.”

She studied the cut, touched the skin around it. It was a slash, rather than a puncture wound. It was curved and the clotted blood made it look like a mean, close-lipped smile. It could've used some hydrogen peroxide, or antiseptic ointment, but he was going to be fine.

“I thought I was selfish.” She slung the words back at him. “Not so much the type to help.”

“I could get hep B, or tetanus. I don't know when I had my shots. You think I should go to a hospital?”

The old Gwen would have broken down; she'd have driven him wherever he wanted to go. But this Gwen only looked at him. In the yellow light of the putrid hall with blood on his arm, he was someone she didn't know. Not anymore.

“What do you think, Gwen? Does it look infected?”

“I think you should have thought of that before you jumped in and left your pregnant girlfriend on the sidewalk,” she said. And then she laughed. Not the high, nervous laugh, but a low grounded rumble she hoped would shake him. She couldn't push the thought from her mind. What if. What if he'd been killed. Or what if the men had turned on her. But in his mind, the risk had been worth it. She meant next to nothing to him, in the scheme of things. She turned the deadbolt to their room and walked in. “You're an asshole, Leo. You can go to hell,” she said, and she closed the door.

“Bitch! You have a black hole for a heart,” he yelled. The words stung.

There wasn't much to pack—her hairbrush and the notebook she carried everywhere and never seemed to write in. But where would she go? She wouldn't leave him, him and Valiant, here in Tijuana. So what was she doing?

It didn't matter. The act of packing was enough. She refolded her sundress, shut the suitcase. She stared at the wall, at its peeling white paint, the old shit-brown showing through. Why had she agreed to come here? What had she been hoping for? An all-day, all-night fiesta? Something to bring them together again, lighthearted and hopeful?

He pounded on the door. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” he cried.

She opened it to stop the noise. He was on his knees, his face a blotchy red. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and stood.

“You're right. I'm an asshole,” he said, and noticed the suitcase on the bed. The corners of his mouth were low and his eyes were bright. He didn't turn from her. He didn't yell. He just sat on the edge of the bed and flicked his shoes off. “You can leave me, you know. But no one will love you as much as I do.”

“Is that some kind of a curse?”

“If that's what you think my love is. A curse.” A tear spilled down his cheek and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

“Christ, Gwen, can't we just sleep?” he said. He moved her suitcase onto the floor, clasped her arm and pulled her down with him onto the sheet. “Tink, you need to sleep. Remember how we used to sleep? We were so good at it.”

She was exhausted. As if all the late nights were heaped like quilts on top of each other and she were under them already. She couldn't keep her eyes open. “I want to get to the ocean. It's been too long,” she said, and even as she spoke she felt herself drifting. He was right. She needed to sleep. His arm was around her shoulders, his stomach to her back.

“You're not just you anymore,” he said, hugging her closer. She could feel his heart lulling her. His breath like the tide, like waves on the shore, he was Morpheus taking her out and under, taking her elsewhere. He unlaced her boots and pulled them off along with her socks.

“Tink,” he said. “Dream of flying.”

THE ROOM WAS overexposed. The thin, flowered sheet hanging in the window did little to block the sun, and there was the Count, backlit, a vision in silhouette, standing over them, singing in falsetto.

Had it come to this—to Judy Garland so early in the morning? This was serious. Too serious. She couldn't fathom it just yet.

She closed her eyes, tried to focus on the buzzing in her ears. She could almost feel it—the dream he'd woken her from. The power in her chest, in her heart, filling her body and lifting her into the sky. It was her
over the rainbow
dream, only she wasn't stuck at a farm but in a city, the crowds moving in on her, so close and thick she couldn't breathe—that part was recurring. She'd had the dream since she'd been a kid. But the rising above the throng, the flying, that was different.

Two flying dreams in two days, ever since she'd found out.

The bed dipped as the Count sat beside her as though she were the sick one.

This time he hit the high note with ease. She opened one eye. He was still wearing his bandanna on his head, but now he had some makeup on, eyeliner, mascara that was running. Where had he gotten it? He hadn't packed a bag. Had he been rummaging in her purse? She noticed it was open on the chair. How long had he been awake? She'd never seen him this worked up in the morning. She could smell tequila on his breath.