Deva didn’t reply.
I passed my hand over her chin. She pulled back a bit, then spoke, staring at the ground. “He can be a real dick sometimes. He can be ugly and he can seem violent. He’s a little crazy for sure. Sometimes he just gets drunk or uptight. By the morning it’s gone.”
“I don’t need to have fun as long as you’re okay.”
Deva started to laugh, releasing tension. “Okay.”
My fingers moved naturally across her belly, up to her chest.
“But I do want to keep having fun. I don’t want to get sad now. I’m really fine, you know.” She sniffed snot up into her nose.
“We’ll keep having fun,” I reassured her.
“Will we? Because we can, right? Who says we can’t?”
“Nobody says we can’t have fun!”
She leaned back again on the merry-go-round and pulled her dress up over her knees. The satin shimmered in the darkness. She took my hand and brought it to her inner thighs and then pressed down. I felt a kick in my legs, something opening up, and things went dark. The next moment I was on top of her. I pulled down her scrunched-up underwear, soggy and loose. She was wet. I pushed away her pubic hair to get to her exposed, unprotected parts, and pressed my lips against her. Her hands reached for my pants. I undid them quickly and in a second her fingers were inside me.
We pushed against each other, startled, not knowing what we were doing. I pulled her up and pushed her over the seat. I placed her in the same position I saw her in when her father had glanced down her back: leaning forward with elbows resting on the cold metal and her ass in the air. I wanted to own that position. I wanted Deva to know her father was wrong. She could wear any kind of clothes with me. I opened her up from behind and licked her, spreading her apart while I touched myself. I felt her taut skin become tender, then taut again. I didn’t know what it was. A buttery thing, easy like the oiled merry-go-round, like her father’s desk drawers. It moved and found reciprocity. Arms corresponded to arms, toes agreed with each other. A hot piece of leg merged with another. Mouths breathed the same air. Nothing needed to be explained or thought about. We were feeling the same things at the same time and the painkillers did not take that away from us. We both came.
Deva’s belly rested against the cold rails of the merry-go-round, back still folded over. I could see her beauty outside the confines of vodka and painkillers, and I knew I was done with not feeling things. I was done with my rubber suit. I did not need it anymore and I hated the way it blocked my vision, how it got in the way of the sun and the drops of rain in Deva’s hair—things I wanted to see. I kissed her shoulder and told her I had never felt anything like that with a boy. She hung from my neck and we let the wheel lull us through the last drops of our trailing pleasure.
19
My parents and brother picked me up in the Cadillac at the bottom of Deva’s driveway. The sun shone and Topanga felt like the Alps. I’d woken up in Switzerland to a voracious blue sky. There were no traces of the boulder except for some rubble on the side of the road and a bunch of cigarette butts and joint stubs from the drum circle.
My father was in slippers and flannel pajamas that were covered in paint. He had wild, insomniac eyes. His untamed hair was divided into three sections, a vertical funnel and two side cones ruffled into curls. A new set of hair tufts had started growing out of his ears as well. He looked mad.
“What’s going on? I thought we were going out for lunch,” I asked.
“Dad’s been painting. We’re eating at home,” my mother replied.
My brother shook his head at me and tapped his forehead with his index finger, miming the Italian gesture for “crazy.”
“I don’t understand why you couldn’t just walk down the canyon the other day. You’ve done it hundreds of times,” Ettore scowled at me from the rearview mirror.
“It was pouring and I thought it was dangerous.”
“You were much braver as a child.”
Serena gave him a look, trying to stop him from speaking further. I wanted them to be quiet also, to take in the golden light over the mountain ranges, listen to the sheep bells in the pastures, and get lost in the blue distances. I wanted them to see Topanga and love that day like I did.
“We had to hire Henry to work nighttimes. He was going crazy with the costume changes. You left a mess in the changing rooms. It’s full of stuff. Where does it come from?” Ettore protested.
“I thought I would be back the next day,” I answered.
“All I’m saying is that in the professional world, you would have had to find a solution. You don’t just call and announce you won’t make it on set.”
There was that word again, professional.
Serena turned to me, droopy-eyed. “Never mind. We worked it out. Two more weeks and the film is done. Dad is stressed because he had some bad news.”
I could still smell Deva on my fingers. I kept them close to my nose and smiled. What happened between us felt like butterflies and sweat and a racing heart and it made me not care about being “professional” or on time or available. I felt light. Even Arash’s brick was turning into a rubble of lasered powder.
“I had some bad news!” Ettore shrieked. “This is exactly our family’s problem. When things go well, it’s everyone’s business, but when they turn to shit, it’s my bad news, right? Nobody shares the pains. Only the glories!”
“Which glories, Dad?” Timoteo asked discreetly.
“The glories, the glories—”
“So what happened?” I interrupted as the car coasted past the canyon’s last curve.
“She won’t think it’s bad news,” my father mumbled to himself, pointing at me with his eyes. His eyebrows pulled up high and bushy when he was angry.
My brother and mother both turned toward me like I was the culprit.
“What?” I asked.
“She’ll be happy finally. After everything I’ve done for her!”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here. What’s going on?” I screamed.
The temperature rose the minute we rolled into the Valley. Heat was a different concept there—a constant that one was doomed to suffer. There was no escape.
Serena gave Ettore one last glance, then looked at my brother for encouragement.
“Max left,” she finally announced.
“Why wouldn’t that be good news?” I answered.
“See!” my father screamed. “All she cares about is having her fucking bedroom back!”
My brother took my hand and squeezed it. I pulled it away, afraid he’d steal Deva’s scent from me.
“Gone. Like gone gone,” Timoteo explained.
I remembered Max on the phone at the Alexandria, his mumbled words in Spanish. I felt guilty because I could have said something then but didn’t. The car screeched to a halt on the side of the road and my father turned around toward me.
“He left.” He sighed. “The production money we were waiting for from his bank never came. We have no idea where he went. He didn’t even leave a note. He took off with all his stuff.”