“You’ll figure all that out.”
“Like now. I don’t know if the fact that we are sleeping next to each other means we are going to have sexual intercourse. How does a person find out when to have sex with another? Assuming Jasmine wanted to have sex? How would that work?”
Jasmine is laughing. “I don’t know. Knowing you, we would probably talk about it and then make a list. Or maybe we skip all that and I just jump your bones.”
“Remember the first day in the office, you told Marcelo to stay away from Martha because she might jump my bones.”
“And did she?”
“Jasmine, I thought of another question.”
“Oh, no.”
“If Jasmine and Jonah were camping together, would they sleep next to each other?”
“Mmm. I kind of see where you’re going with this. I guess I’d have to say no. We wouldn’t sleep like this.” She reaches over and hits me in the chest with her forearm.
“Then why with Marcelo?”
“I don’t know. Do you always ask so many questions? It just seems okay, that’s all.” She sits up.
“Maybe Jasmine doesn’t see Marcelo as a man.”
“Nope. That’s not it. Not it at all.”
She opens her sleeping bag and tucks herself in. The conversation is over. Then she pulls herself out, turns on her side, and looks at me. The conversation is not over. She has more to say.
“I’m glad you came. I wanted you to see this place.” She seems to have trouble speaking.
“You wanted Marcelo to think about the memo and the consequences of doing something with it.”
“Not just that. I wanted you to have an image of this place in your mind because you need to know that it exists. People think a place like this is perfect. Living a simple life close to the land and all that. It isn’t. There are mean people and alcoholics and medical bills to pay and depressed people galore. But some of us feel okay here, you know, despite all that. It is a simpler life than the law firm. More silence, I guess.
“Anyway, I wanted you to see it. You’ll always be welcome here. You can come and stay for a few days or for…for as long
as you like. Amos likes you, I can tell. And you’re not much of a bother to me.” She looks at me for a brief second and then closes her eyes.
I stay up listening to her fall asleep, feeling how it is not to be alone.
I
am sitting in the park in front of the law firm playing in my mind the scenes from our camping trip. Every once in a while, I catch myself laughing out loud. Whenever our family went on a trip we would, at the end of the day, ask each other our favorite thing for that day. “Marcelo, Marcelo, what do you say? What was your favorite thing today?” This is the song we would sing to each other.
So I sit here, seeing all that happened, not leaving out any details.
“Marcelo, what was your favorite thing?”
I ask myself.
“It is so hard to pick one. Do I have to?”
Another part of me responds.
“Yes, you must.”
I stop the dialogue because I know very well, without a doubt, that my most favorite thing was being next to Jasmine under a million stars.
This is what I’m thinking about when I notice Wendell sitting next to me. He appeared out of nowhere, it seems. Wendell takes out a cigarette, lights it, and inhales deeply.
“Smoking is bad for you,” I tell him.
“I know it,” Wendell answers. He takes a few more puffs before flicking the cigarette away. “How’s it going with Jasmine?” he asks.
I feel my heart speed up. This is the time for me to tell him. There will be no pleasure in doing it. I take a deep breath and say, trying my best to look at him, “I will not ask Jasmine to come on a boat ride with you.” I say it. It is out. I glance at Wendell’s face and see him grimace.
“Oh? Well, that’s a big surprise. Actually, I was asking how it was going between
you
and Jasmine?”
“It is not like what you think. Between Jasmine and me. We are friends. Like you and I were once.”
“Pssh.” Wendell makes a sound like air being let out of a tire. “I understand you went on a camping trip with her. How was that? Did you poke her?”
“I have to go back to work,” I say, starting to get up.
“Sit.” Wendell’s voice has anger. Then softer, “I want to give you something.”
I glance at Wendell’s hands but they are empty.
“It’s the gift of truth.”
I sit down again. I am confused. I wait for Wendell to begin, but Wendell is absorbed in looking at a pigeon that is edging closer to a potato chip near his foot. Wendell moves his foot back, clearing the way for the pigeon to approach. When the pigeon hops closer to the chip, Wendell kicks him, and the pigeon goes catapulting in the air. The dazed pigeon takes a few wobbly steps and then flies away. I look at Wendell, stunned. It is the first time I have ever seen anyone hurt an animal.
Wendell sits straight and turns his body to face me. “Are you brave enough to handle the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“Yes,” I say nervously.
“Remember that conversation we had at the club? You know, I told you about your father and my father and the bond?”
“Yes.”
“And we talked about this balance of power that we had between our families.”
“Yes.”
“Remember I told you that there were ways, easy ways to disturb the equilibrium. A mistake could be made by one of the partners and then the other partner would have more power?”
“You said that.”
“What I see happening here is that the balance of power has been disturbed. You disturbed it. The balance existed in the first place only because I befriended you. And what do you do? I took you for this innocent moron while all along you want Jasmine. I cannot believe this. I cannot believe Jasmine prefers…”
I remember the conversation I had with my father on the first train ride to work.
He wanted to show everyone that my son was…
“It is not true I wanted Jasmine all along.” I hear my words but they don’t sound convincing.
“I want to give you this.” He hands me a folded piece of paper. “No, don’t open it now, as much as I would like to have the pleasure of watching you read it. As part of the discovery I had to do, I had to go through some files that the attorneys kept in their offices. I found that in one of your father’s personal files along with some other stuff. When I saw it, I said to myself, ‘What should I do with this? If I show it to my father, the balance of power might be tipped.’ Then you came along and I said, ‘I don’t want to hurt the kid. He’s so naive.’
“But now I think it’s time. You broke the bond. Therefore
you’re ready for the gift of truth. That’s yours to do with as you please.”
Wendell leaves. I unfold the piece of paper and recognize Jasmine’s handwriting.
Dear Mr. Sandoval:
I know you want me to call you Arturo but in this letter I want to call you Mr. Sandoval. I don’t know what happened last Friday at the Christmas party. I should not have had those margaritas. I never drink hard liquor. Most of all when you came to me and asked me to meet you in your office because you had a present you wanted to give me, I should have said no. “Thank you, but that’s probably not a good idea.” I want to say that I honestly thought you had a present but the truth is that I kind of knew what was going to happen and I still went. Part of me was afraid to say no to my boss, but saying no to anyone is not a problem for me.
I have no idea how it happened. I say to myself that I was lonely and needed to be close to someone. My brother died a few months ago. I am homesick. But these are all excuses. It should never have happened. It was wrong. I don’t think it is right for me to work here anymore, so if it’s okay I would like to stay just long enough for me to find another job. Otherwise, please consider this my two weeks’ notice.
Jasmine
I read the letter one more time. And then a third time. Then I read it again until the letter’s meaning finally penetrates my resistance to believe. I look at each sentence for its significance, for what each sentence says about my father and…about Jasmine. I see him asking her if she can come upstairs to pick up the present. I see him drawing her with the same deceit that
Wendell wanted to draw her to his boat. Then they are in his office. What happened? Arturo and Jasmine had sexual intercourse in his office. Isn’t that the only interpretation of the letter? How can there be any other interpretation? I see him using her. Or maybe there was love on his part? But how can there be love when you lie, when you take advantage of someone who has been drinking alcohol or who is lonely? How can there be love when you have promised to love Aurora?
I am standing. I don’t know when it was that I stood up or if I have been talking to myself out loud. My impulse at this moment is to take the Vidromek memo to Jerry. “Here, Jerry. My father has what is coming to him.” But I sit down again. As much as I am full of anger and disappointment, there is a part of me that wants to wait. When I came home from the camping trip, I knew my reasons for giving the memo to Jerry. If I give him the memo now, it will be out of revenge. I don’t want to act out of revenge. There is something that is not right about that.
Then there is this other emotion that I’m feeling. I don’t have a name for it. It centers around Jasmine.
Saying no to anyone is not a problem for me.
It hurts to know that she didn’t say no. It hurts to think that there may have been love for him, despite the alcohol and despite the loneliness. It hurts to think that there may still be love for him. Is this what jealousy feels like? I remember lying next to Jasmine, listening to her breathe as she fell asleep, my first-ever butterflies of attraction dancing in my abdomen, and the memory saddens me, as if all that I felt then was for a different person, someone I made up. The real Jasmine is the one who could not say no to my father.
“
W
hat is happening inside that head of yours?” Aurora asks me on the way to Temple Emanuel.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You have not said a single word since you came home from work yesterday. You refused to come down to dinner. You were up at four walking Namu. You wouldn’t go to work today. I had to practically drag you out of that tree house to come with me to see Hesch. I know it’s not the camping trip because you were happy when you returned. Did something happen with your father yesterday at work? Why are you so quiet?”
“Marcelo is always quiet.”
“Yes. But it’s a different kind of quiet now. You remind me of…”
“Joseph. Just before he died.” I finish her thought.
“How did you know?”
“I know.”
“Joseph’s quiet was not a bad quiet, I don’t think.”
“He was waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“The music.”
We drive in silence for a few minutes.
“Is there anything you want to tell me?” Aurora asks me.
The IM has stopped. It will never come back. It was a temporary product of my brain, just like my special interest. I am lost. I have no way of knowing what to do about Ixtel, about my father, about Jasmine.
I cannot tell any of this to Aurora. Instead, I say to her, “Aurora is acting too much like a mother.”
“You haven’t seen Hesch since I don’t know when. You need to spend a little time around someone on your own wavelength.”
“Aurora is on the same wavelength,” I say.
“No. Your religious interests are way beyond me. Besides, you need to
talk
about them.”
“Aurora’s religion is like the morning dew. No one knows where it comes from. It is just there.”
“Nonsense. I am not religious, morning dew or otherwise. The law firm turned you into a poet now?”
“It’s from the Bible.”
“What book and verse?”
“What?”
“That line about the dew on the flower, whereabouts in the Bible is it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You’re forgetting Bible references now? I knew something was wrong with you. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have insisted that you talk to Hesch. I don’t know why you resisted so much. You always liked going to see her.”
It is true, I think. Talking to the rabbi was one of my favorite activities. But now I am afraid.
Aurora drops me off at the rear parking lot of Temple Emanuel. I am climbing up the steps to the back entrance when I hear the rabbi’s voice.
“I’m back here!”
She’s at the far end of the parking lot holding a green garbage bag in her hand. I walk toward her, carrying the book by Abraham Joshua Heschel that she lent me.
“Look at this,” she says when I am close enough to hear her normal voice. She holds up an empty can of Bud Light for me to see. “The cops tell me that kids come back here at night to drink and make out. Can you believe it? A Temple parking lot of all places! Is there nothing sacred anymore?” With her oversized, green-fluorescent sunglasses, she looks like one of the Amazon frogs that Yolanda once kept in her terrarium. She beams me a smile. “How is my young
mensch
?”
“I brought back your book.” I hand the book to her. I notice a beer can half-buried in the leaves and bend over to pick it up.
“Thank you.” She grabs the book first and places it on one of two tattered lawn chairs. Then she takes the can carefully from me with yellow rubber-gloved fingers. “It can’t be any of our kids. No God-fearing Jewish kid would drink this stuff. If I find a bottle of vodka, then I worry.” She tightens the bag and points to the tattered lawn chairs. “Let’s sit outside. It’s beeeautiful out here!”
It is the middle of August. The leaves on the oak trees are fullsize and dark green. Rabbi Heschel waits for me to sit down and angles the chair so that she is not facing me directly. Then she takes a deep breath and folds her hands in her lap.
I remember some visits with the rabbi where no more than a hello and a good-bye were spoken. That’s one of the things I enjoyed about her. I didn’t have to think of anything to say when I was with her. Now the silence is uncomfortable.