With his other hand, Grandfather grabbed me by the wrist and pulled my right hand away from his. Then, like a battering ram, he used his left hand to shove my right hand solidly into his right hand. Our thumbs brushed by each other and slammed together at the webbing. His fingers curled up and cradled my pinky ridge until it locked in a tight tongue and groove. Our palms suctioned together with a loud fleshy slap. Then Grandfather tightened his grip, solidly in control, looking me straight in the eye with commanding directness.
My breath shortened if not stopped. I was confused by the direction this man was indicating I should follow. Was the increasing pain he was inflicting punitive or instructive? I responded by tightening my own grip as hard as I could, knuckles whitening, face reddening, breath laboring When he felt the grip was tight enough, Grandfather lowered his head a centimeter in resolution, and jockeyed my hand up and down three times. He nodded at me with a look of inquisitiveness, possibly satisfaction, and I nodded in the affirmative. What I was affirming, I had no idea. And why me? Did Grandfather's instinct tell him I was the strongest brother or the weakest? That I had to be propped up in status or diminished?
Grandfather pursed his lips a little and released my hand. To any other, this might have been a game. To Grandfather, as I later learned, it was an initiation. A test. One of a series of tests that would grow epically more intense, painful, and instructive.
He allowed me to pass into his lair.
The prefab trailer had no structural modifications: a living room, a kitchen, a hall, a tiny bathroom, a small walk-in closet, and a bedroom. The interior walls were white contrasted with that mocha brown wall siding with the fake wood grain. Grandfather lived in minimalist comfort … or discomfort. No mess. No signs of personal expression. No photos of relatives on the walls. No kitschy porcelain figures on the sill or magnets on the refrigerator door. No hanging mobiles tinkling in the sunlight. No avocado green butter caddies. The only items in the living room area were the couch that Paul and I would fold out for our bed, and one plank of knotted blonde pine resting on two small metal sawhorses to make a shelf. On the plank was a brown and silver Sony record player. Below the plank were neatly ordered records-all classical music. Specifically, all Mozart.
Paul and I placed our duffle bags next to the couch and stood at attention. Grandfather opened the refrigerator. It was full of neatly stacked bottles of water and nothing but bottles of water. What the hell were we going to eat?
I felt Paul was scanning the room with more scrutiny than I had, and then I realized what his little boy's brain was looking for …
Where would he hide our Swiss Army knives?
Grandfather handed us each a bottle of water and motioned for us to sit. We sat. He leaned against the counter with his arms folded, staring at us, assessing. What was he thinking? He knew nothing about us, and we knew even less about him. If he wanted to know something, why didn't he just ask? Or if he wanted to tell us the rules of the house, then why didn't he just speak?
For minutes Paul stared resolutely ahead, still avoiding eye contact, making no expression of expectation nor acknowledging any hint of the heavy awkwardness. With a crack I ripped the plastic top off my bottle of water. I was so thirsty. The dry mountain sun was in complete contrast to the moist Pacific air. I swallowed large gulps of water, one after the other, until the bottle was empty. Grandfather raised his eyebrow. He opened the refrigerator door, withdrew another bottle of water, handed it to me, took my empty bottle of water, and placed it in the garbage beneath the sink.
He went over to the plank of wood. He crouched down at the record player and began to play Mozart-specifically, as I came to learn, the second movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto. Since the record was already set to go, this was apparently part of some predetermined order of procedure. We heard him take a large breath, then release it. This was the first audible sound he'd made since we arrived.
Grandfather turned the rod at the side of the leveler blinds on each of the living room and kitchen's four windows until we were almost completely in the dark. With the clarinet concerto twisting its melancholic melody, Grandfather walked away from us down the hall into the darkness. Paul looked at me with an unspoken question. I shrugged my shoulders. We heard the closet door open.
And then down the hall we heard the hollow metallic cocking of a rifle …
"What cha doin' out here, Demi Moore?"
I heard Marzoli's voice above me.
I opened my eyes, confused. My hands, feet, face and limbs were blue with cold. I was shivering violently and breathing in rapid, short pants.
"Don't give me that look," he continued with a smile, "Did you think I was too young for St. Elmo's Fire?"
What was he doing climbing out of Ruben's window? What was I doing like a popsicle on this balcony?
I was confused as shit … falling … anchored … spinning … frozen …
Where's Paul?
I felt Marzoli's arms around me, dragging me, hoisting me. I tried to open my eyes, but the snow on my lashes seeped into my eyes. My eyeballs felt they were being slivered by icicles. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt raw and tight and painfully dry.
Was I inside my apartment or outside?
I felt Marzoli's strong hand press against my upper back. I could not feel any of my numbed extremities, but I could feel the hardness of the wooden floor against my shoulder blades as I was lowered down onto it.
The whiteout blackened.
Chapter Fourteen
"You've the constitution of a sixteen year-old virgin in a Jane Austen."
I felt the vibrations of his deep rich voice without even opening my eyes. I inhaled deeply through my nostrils as I regained some kind of mental equilibrium.
Cedar and nutmeg.
Control yourself.
"Two things are completely at odds with each other," I began with my eyes shut, "One, what the fuck kind of Puerto Rican Sicilian uses words like constitution? Two, what the fuck kind of Puerto Rican Sicilian reads Jane Austen?"
"You don't have to be politically correct around me, asshole. Drink this."
I felt the hard lip of a glass click on my teeth lightly. Warm liquid swirled around my tongue. Ginger … lemon … tea. Where's the shot of whiskey a New York detective is supposed to be giving a swooning damsel?
I finally opened my eyes.
Marzoli's ridiculously handsome face came into focus, every pore a breathtaking symmetry of ruggedness, street tough urbanity, Italian hotheadedness, and Latin smoothness. The black hairs of his five o'clock shadow slanted southward, and I imagined running my fingers against its grain. His full blushed lips appeared all at once strong and soft, perfectly delineated by an eighth inch smoothness of bare skin before the forest of his facial hair encroached. His brown eyes looked into mine with all the clinical concern of Francois Sagat in a white overcoat in a hospital scene.
Goddamn.
When did two plus two start adding up to this motherfucker? When did I stop caring about the borderline that distinguished the sexes? Did I really need to be knocked down to the bottom of a black housebound misery to realize I didn't give a flying fuck about the plumbing of the person I wanted to tongue from heel to hairline?
As I registered Marzoli's presence, the truth inexplicably surfaced. I had no control over my visceral yearning for his strength, his certainty, his muscularity, his friction, his hardness, his solidity, his weight, his drive, his forcefulness, and his competence. I wanted everything he had on me and in me and part of me. I wanted to absorb it. To have it. To become it.
He took me in deeply with his eyes, his pupils cemented to mine. But … I couldn't tell … did he feel anything for me? Was he even open to feeling anything? I'd been so far removed from connections to other humans, I had no confidence in my ability to interpret what I felt anymore let alone what he felt.
I felt a warm firmness against my neck. He was massaging me with his left hand. He smiled, his dimples pitting either side of his face.
Fuck … must … not … drool.
"Forty minutes," he said, "That's how long you've been outside."
"Oh."
Here I was drifting in a Jacuzzi of brainless teenage pining, and he slaps my hand with the sharp edge of a hard fact, calculated from the time I ignored his call to now. I tried to move my arms but was in the tight cocoon of a blanket. Marzoli motioned to the pile of clothes on the arm of the couch. My underwear was peeking out of the bottom of the pile.
"They were soaked so I took them off," he smiled. "I tried to put you in dry clothes, but … honestly … I couldn't tell what was clean, and um … "