The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [43]
“That what we did might have been a big mistake,” she admits.
“I was dreaming about that, too, sort of.”
“You were?”
He turns onto his back, covers his eyes with his pillow. “It’s kind of silly.”
“Tell me.”
“I dreamed we didn’t make love at all, but only kissed a little and then told each other things till the sun came up.”
“What did we tell each other?”
“Well, you told me about your childhood.”
“I did? What did I say?”
“You told me your gym teacher dressed like a lawyer, gray suits and tasseled loafers. And that he never ran and never touched a ball, and you never understood why. Let’s see, what else. . . . You said your favorite thing on earth was Edward’s nose.”
“Who’s Edward?”
“Your pet puppy. You liked the texture of it. How it felt like a tongue but colder.”
“We never had pets. Our mom was a total neat freak.”
“Not even an ant farm?”
She laughs. “You dreamed I had an ant farm?”
“So you didn’t?”
“In our house? Not a chance.”
“That’s too bad,” he says. “I bet you were the kind of kid who would’ve liked an ant farm.”
“What kind of kid is that?”
Javier is silent for a moment. “A quiet, serious kid,” he finally says. “The kind who stares at colors on soap bubbles until her eyes glaze over.”
He peeks out from under the pillow, and she looks at him, speechless for a moment, because for what it’s worth, this is true. It wasn’t just Ivy; she was like this, too, once, something her own mother never even recognized. And she misses never having had a dog named Edward now. And maybe he does understand something about her, maybe this isn’t entirely fake after all.
“And what did you tell me?”
He smiles with embarrassment. “Can’t remember.”
“Come on,” she laughs, “I told you all that stuff about my childhood and now you’re gonna hold out on me?”
He takes a breath. “OK. I told you that I . . . I liked you from the minute I saw you.”
“You did?”
“I told you how you didn’t see me,” he says, “but I watched you leaving Chas’s office the day of your interview. You walked out of there so proud, steady, perfectly put together.”
“I did?”
“And I was so happy just watching you, but I was also miserable because I was sure you’d never want to have anything to do with a goofball like me.”
She laughs. “No, certainly not.”
“But then I learned about how you’d come to the city to take care of your sister. And over the weekend before you started your job—before we even met—I skated down to the hospital a couple of times, just to watch you coming out at night. And I saw how hurt and sad you looked. And I realized that you weren’t just strong and cool; you were caring and good, too. And you would never abandon your sister or anyone else you loved. And I said to myself that if you ever let me be your friend, I’d never abandon you, either.”
Javier is still smiling. He has said all this very calmly, holding her gaze. She, for her part, is too stunned to say anything, too stunned to move; all she can do is look into his eyes and marvel that he’s real.
“Breakfast,” he declares. A second later he’s up, a flash of dusky buttocks, semierect member, and muscular limbs as he tosses on a robe.
She explores the apartment while he makes breakfast. The living room is large and high-ceilinged, with the same tall windows and ornate moldings as the bedroom. It’s the kind of room that’s difficult to make look anything but tasteful, but Javier has risen to the challenge, using it for a kind of medicine show of outmoded furnishing technologies: A divan and a méridienne vie for floor space with a fan-backed wicker throne. A leather chair shaped like a human hand and a couple of candy-colored beanbag chairs nuzzle like a mother wolf and her young by the fireplace. The job of timekeeping is squabbled over by a grandfather clock, a cuckoo clock, and a cat clock with eyeballs and tail swinging in opposite directions. The shelves, bureaus, and end tables run the gamut from Egyptian Revival to fifties space-age and are