Hydraulic Level Five (1) (24 page)

“Yeah, I remember a few,” Danita muttered. “Togsy was a piece of work. Used to saunter around campus with a joint between his fingers, like he was daring security to do something about it. Artist asshats.”

A nail crept into my mouth, and I yanked it away. “Anyway, I got into JFK late at night. The subway was…interesting. I’d never even been to New York City before, let alone on the subway. It was dark, grimy, smelly. A scattering of bizarre, ragged people stared at me. I should have just gotten a cab, but I couldn’t afford it after dropping so much money on the plane ticket. It was scary, but I kept telling myself once I got to Samuel, it would be okay. I needed to keep plowing forward, keep moving. I got off at the wrong stop, doubled back, hopped a different line—I ended up at NYU, then walked until I found the brownstone in the East Village.” My voice crept higher. I took a deep, calming breath.

“People were going in and out of the house, so I followed them in. It was so crowded…people everywhere, students maybe, I don’t know. Shabby furniture, stacks of garbage. Pot hung heavy in the air, broken glass and stale booze. I stalled in the foyer because I knew I couldn’t be at the right place. I felt like a stupid, lost little girl. But then I saw one of the guys from CU. He was startled to see me, but he took me up to Samuel’s room anyway. ‘You Cabral’s wife? Damn, this should be cracked,’ he laughed.”

I pressed my palms against my eyes, not wanting to relive any of this. My stomach churned violently at the memory.

“Kaye? You can’t just leave us hanging!” Molly cried. “What happened?”

“There were more men and women in the upstairs room, straddling laps, shirts hanging open, groping each other…I’m not sure how many, I didn’t look closely. There were a few candles on the floor, and the rest of the room was dark. There weren’t curtains on the window, so the moon cast odd shadows from all the limbs…of all the details to recall, huh? I started to panic, scared the CU guy had lied just to get me upstairs. I asked where Samuel was, and he pointed to this old metal bed in the corner, the only furniture in the room except for a desk. I stared at the corner, not seeing him. There was just a half-naked man hunched over, all sweaty. And a brunette woman, nearly naked, too. His nose ran up her torso, and I thought he was smelling her at first. But then I saw white powder blowing across her skin and sticking to his fingers, rimming his nostrils, and I realized it was a coke line.”

“Oh no, not Samuel,” Molly murmured. Danita was stone-silent.

“But the way he was touching her…so greedy and demanding, his hands tugging her skin, her lace bra…it wasn’t him.” My voice cracked. “‘I don’t see him,’ I told the CU guy. He rolled his eyes and pointed directly at the corner. It took me a full minute to understand the man in the corner wasn’t some random, horny coke head.”

“What did you do?” Molly asked.

I fought to keep my voice detached so I could finish my story. “I said his name, several times. The other people in the room stared at me. I felt my knees go weak, so I hung on to the doorframe for support. Finally, his head shot up. His eyes found mine. They were so…wild. Brittle. That’s what frightened me the most, I think—seeing the warmth missing from the blue. I know it was because he was so high, but still…” I shuddered. “He told me to get the hell out of his room, said I wasn’t supposed to follow him. ‘Go home to Colorado, and don’t you ever come back here again, Aspen Kaye. I fucking mean it. You think this is a joke?’ His voice was snarling, harsh, just like his eyes. I didn’t know what to do. My knees finally gave way.” I pressed my fingertips to my temples, as if they could shove the memories from my brain.

“It gets really vague from there. A couple of the people in the room helped me off the floor. A woman took me across the hall, to a bedroom. She settled me onto a bed—a wicker bed—then pulled out my cell phone and saw all the missed calls…”

My phone call to Alonso played through my mind. Relief was in his voice when he’d answered…

“Kaye!
¡No hubo heridos graves, gracias a Dios!
Sofia has called you all day and you weren’t picking up. She’s on her way to Boulder to check on you—”

“Alonso, something’s wrong with Samuel.”

He paused. “What do you mean?”

“I’m in New York. I think he’s high. He’s with this woman—” It didn’t even sound like my voice. This voice was edged in hysteria. “You need to fly out here, now. Something’s wrong.”

I heard shuffling and doors slam through the phone, as Alonso tore through the house. “Tell me in detail what you saw, even the little things. Did you call a doctor?”

“No, I called you…” Fingers of exhaustion crawled through my mind.

“Kaye?” Alonso commanded. “Focus please,
mija
. Describe what you saw.”

I told him there was a woman. I told him Samuel had wild, angry eyes. “Do I need to call a doctor?”

“I will send somebody—an old friend from my Boston days. Can you sit with Samuel until he gets there?”

“I’ll try…”

I did try. I banged on his door, crying and pleading for him to let me in. My face dripped with tears and snot, streaked across the sleeves of my hoodie where I’d wiped them across my nose. I remembered being trapped in the tree house so long ago, scared and soaked through, how Samuel left me there with his Keep Out sign. He wouldn’t open the door. Alonso’s doctor friend came, felt my heartbeat pulsing in my neck and peered into my eyes.

“Get her to bed, she’s as white as a sheet.” He spoke to the woman next to me, I hadn’t noticed sitting there until now. “He’ll be fine, Mrs. Cabral. I’ll take good care of him until his father arrives.”

I tried the door, one last time. “Please, Samuel. Let me in.” Locked.

So I burrowed into the strange wicker bed in the strange, pitch-black room.

Time passed…

Ages later, a thin, firm hand shook me awake. Samuel. I peered into the dimly-lit room and saw not Samuel, but Alonso. He helped me sit, then wrapped two strong, fatherly arms around me. I think I hugged him back.

“Oh, Kaye,” he lulled, smoothing my hair down as silent tears slid from my eyes. Heaviness lifted from my mind, leaving only panic in its absence. I clung to his neck.

“How is he? What’s wrong? I want to see him!”

He pulled away, troubled brown eyes meeting mine. “He’s fine now, Kaye. My son was high on cocaine, probably a few other things. I’ve had a talk with him, and I’m going to stay out here for a while.”

I nodded. “Do you want me to look into hotels online?” I peered at my surroundings, searching for a computer. Mauve walls, flowered curtains fluttering over the window, the wicker furniture, a shelf packed with books and tiaras and knickknacks. Such a pretty room, so incongruous compared to the rest of the house. But no computer.

Alonso had the look of a man who’d just stepped off a New York red-eye. “No, that’s fine. Kaye…I’m fairly certain the drugs have been going on for some time.”

I shook my head. “That’s not possible. I would have known.”

“We’ll discuss it later. For now, I think you should go home. You have school on Monday.”

“No! I want to see him.”

Alonso rose from the bed and turned to the window, dragging a hand through his glossy hair, so wrong in the grime of this city. “He asked me to put you on a plane back to Colorado. I think that’s the best thing.” His voice begged me to understand.

I was too weak, too young to fight back.

I didn’t get to see Samuel. We never discussed the cocaine. I barely remembered saying goodbye to Alonso at JFK, or being in Sofia’s arms at Denver International.

Three days. Three long, wretched days, and nothing. At last, I emptied my backpack, knowing I wouldn’t be summoned back to New York. A letter fell out, carefully tucked away in my hoodie. I tore open the envelope. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew what I was hungry for. I wanted the sweet lie: I’m sorry. Come back. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t me. I want you. I love you.

But I got the bitter truth…his final “Keep Out” sign on the tree house, scrawled in his signature elegant handwriting…more frantic than normal, but still, his.

Kaye,

Go home to Colorado. I don’t want to see you again. The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

The car was as suffocating as the grave when my voice fell away.

Dani flipped on the radio, then glanced at me in the back seat with careful eyes. “Is that all?”

“You’ve heard the rest. I did what he wanted: filed for divorce. Your parents moved to New York to help rein in his drug habit. I called Sofia once a week to check in, see how it was going. She gave me the same ambiguous ‘fine, fine, we are all well’ line. You know how your mom tends to gloss over unsavory details.”

“And that’s all you know?”

Almost everything…I remembered Samuel’s arrest records carefully tucked away in my underwear drawer, but it would be wrong of me to share that. If Samuel wanted Danita and Molly to know, he’d have to tell them himself. My role in his life ended when I had my first meeting with my divorce lawyer.

“I would have kicked him in the balls a long time ago, if I’d known,” Molly muttered, squeezing the life out of the steering wheel.

“That’s just it, Molly—it’s been almost seven years. I’m afraid the window for balls-kicking has passed. I’m not really angry anymore, just…done.”

“Kaye, you’re right. We shouldn’t do the pranks. I’m so, so sorry I pushed you into this.” A tear dripped from Molly’s chin.

“Like hell she’s getting out of it,” Dani retorted. Our faces whipped to hers. “Yes, what happened was shitty, for everyone. But it was so long ago and it’s time for you and Samuel to get past this.”

“Danita, I don’t think—”

“Shut it, Molly.” Molly indignantly settled into the driver’s seat.

“Why on earth do you still want me to prank him?” I asked.

“Because this prank war is the first time I’ve seen you take any real initiative to deal with this. You’re not the only one who’s stuck. You’ve told me, Molly, everyone else that you’re angry and hurt, but have you told Sam? No. Sure, you’ve whined to him about the books and the alimony. But when it comes to the serious stuff, you bite your tongue and run, or divert, or make jokes. There’s something about my brother that makes you bury your head in the sand, like you’re terrified to takes risks with him.”

“Well gosh, I wonder why?” My voice dripped with sarcasm.

“No. You both have been this way, long before you even started dating. Why can’t you just be blunt?”

“Because I’m not
you
, Dani.”

She slapped the dash with her manicured palm, causing Molly to flinch. “You may be done, Kaye, but the rest of us are just now catching up. For all I knew, you divorced him because of the drugs. For all I knew, you didn’t even try. My brother was
beside himself
when I told him about your name change, and I didn’t really understand why, because
neither one
of you bothered to clue us in. I was shocked when he told me you’d followed him to New York. Why didn’t you talk to me? To Molly? You’ve had years to tell me!”

I rounded on Danita. “What was I supposed to say—‘Oh Dani, your brother’s a cheating, coke-head
cabrón’?”

“Yeah, at least you would have been talking to me.”

“Look, if your own family didn’t clue you in, I wasn’t going to.”

“You’re family too!”

“Not anymore.”

Molly bit her lip, waiting for the explosion.

Danita took a deep, calming breath, but her fingernails dug into her hands. “Believe me, they’ve heard about it. But, Kaye, you’re my closest friend. Why did you hide this?”

My voice broke. “Because it hurt too bad, okay? Because I was humiliated. How would you feel if Angel did that to you? I bet you wouldn’t want to tell anyone about it, either. You’d just want to forget it happened. You have no idea…it made me question
everything
, Dani, from our childhood, to our life in Boulder, to my own sex appeal. It was too painful, too embarrassing, too frightening, and I didn’t want to share it.”

I ran my hands through my hair, tugging strands loose from my ponytail. I knew,
knew
, it had been wrong not to tell Danita. But for the life of me, I would not admit it.

Danita ground her jaw, struggling to rein herself in. “Kaye?”

“Yeah?”

“I told you I spoke with Samuel three weeks ago.” Her voice grew somber. “Did you know he can’t even remember what happened in New York? Between the brunette’s story and a few serial speedballers who were in his room, he’s cobbled together all sorts of ridiculous scenarios. You’re the only one who knows, Kaye. You need to talk to my brother. Please. If you care about me,
please
.”

I rested my head on the window, unable to comprehend what she said. How was it possible he didn’t remember? He had to remember what he did—he was on the other side of that locked door. I couldn’t be the only one living with this wretched memory, could I? Somehow, I felt even more sick.

Silence filled the car as I collected myself. But just as my blood began to cool, Danita pursed her pink lips—a dead giveaway more bluntness was coming my way. I braced myself.