The dark of the upstairs hallway welcomed Tea, enveloping her as she traveled its cavernous depth. She held her hand out, let it run along with the wall’s bumps and pauses and jogs - barely seeing in front of her, allowing instinct, curiosity and the little bit of light flickering from within a room yards away guide her. She passed closed doors, saw that the walls boasted plainness, no pictures, no prints … no artwork. Nothing. She dipped her head, pausing, reflecting on that Turkish prison that had held Todd for months, almost a year he had said. It explained some things, it clouded others. A shudder ran through her body, she imagining congregating rats, the sounds of dripping water, the absence of the sun - and she hurt for what happened to him. But then, that empathy faded … she hurt for the man she once had known, not for the creature who existed now.
She reached the room at the end of the hall, stopping in the doorway and studying the view. A small fire blazed in a river-rock fireplace set in the furthest corner from where she stood. There was a large, heavy-looking canopy bed made of a deep mahogany wood - beautiful. No linen though hanged from above. Tea smiled, the thick downy comforter seemed inviting to her.
“I must be tired,” she sighed.
Glancing about the rest of the space, the emptiness once again struck her, she seeing no photographs, no décor. An armoire and a sofa occupied the opposite corner to the fireplace - simple bulky styles matching the bed. Quickly, she opened the cabinet door, peeking inside. Books … compact discs … papers. She flipped through the loose leafs, just enough light to see that they were contracts of some sort, business oriented. It appeared he purchased a couple of companies - uneventful, she concluded. She eyed the titles … classic novels, surprising her. She opened the drawers and found the richest, most luxurious clothes, European styled silken shirts, a thick cotton robe. He’d certainly changed his tastes.
“At least I know you’re human,” she said to herself, closing the drawer. She shut the cabinet and when she turned around, she screamed - because Todd was standing right in front of her.
“My GOD!”
“What’s the matter, Tea? I scare you?”
“Yes …”
He smiled at her so warmly that Tea almost smiled back. But she caught herself - how had he come upon her without making noise, without so much as a creak in the floor or a snap of a joint or anything at all? Not so human, maybe.
“Your mind is a powerful thing, you know,” he said softly.
“Yes, I know.”
“When I was in that prison, the first weeks, I was so scared - like a baby, I cried and cried.” His eyes left Tea and wandered to the other side of her, to the windows, his hands buried in the pockets of his woolen pants. “Hopeless situation. I thought of killing myself but I had no weapons. Thought of getting into it with a guard - but I … chickened out.”
“How’d you get through?”
Todd chuckled briefly. “I lived in the moment - second by second, minute by minute. I could sleep for long periods of time. Just closed my eyes and slept … and I’d travel.”
“Travel?”
“Yeah … travel.” He walked up close to Tea and then whispered, “Turn around. Put your back to me.”
Tea didn’t fight his suggestion - she simply did as she was told because she understood this was explanation … this was … his sharing of an experience, he was satisfying a base curiosity of hers. He placed his hands delicately over her eyes and she reached up, touching his hands with both of hers. Instinct - she couldn’t help it.
“Now think of a place, Tea, where’d you like to be. Think hard. Picture every detail. Every sound, every bit of it. Make it real and exact.” He was so close to her, speaking near her ear, warming her with his breath, sweetened with whiskey. He made her distinctly aware of his entire body.
“Yes … okay …”
“Tell me what’s in front of you.”
She was quiet, imagining what she wanted, but reluctant to speak of it.
“Tell me,” he urged.
Giving in, she said, “The Penthouse, the staircase … a glass coffee table … and Starr … she’s still a baby.”
“You hear her voice?”
“Yes … yes, it’s sweet and open and she’s so loving.” Tea smiled slightly.
“Go to the stairs. Walk up.”
“Yes.”
“Breathe - don’t forget to breathe.”
“Yes … I won’t forget …”
“Go to the top of the stairs … look down, what do you see?”
“I can see us. We’re … happy.”
“Live there a bit, just that moment. Live it, play with it … love it. You’re the artist, Tea … you build the room, you build the people … you fill it with your pictures, with reality. It’s real … you’re there … we’re there.”
It was true, she let herself think about a sweeter time, let herself remember the beginning of her life with Todd. The careful steps, the careful words … the stolen looks … a kiss on the stairwell. Tea sighed and let go of Todd’s hands … leaned her head back slightly.
“Go,” Todd whispered thickly. Then, he released her and Tea bowed her head, tears suddenly coming to her eyes. God, how did it all go wrong?
“So you spent the time imagining yourself someplace else?” she asked in a voice nearly inaudible, trying to move the focus from her … to him. “Just like that? Seeing us? Seeing Starr? Months and months of that?”
“I guess …”
“What do you mean, ‘you guess’?” She spun around hoping to capture his moment of vulnerability, hoping … sure she’d see that damaged soul she remembered. When she stared straight at him though, when she opened her eyes fully to him, El Diablero was there, cold and collected. No ’in’ to speak of.
“I learned so many things in my travels,” he said.
“Like turning into a wolf and running the streets at night?”
He laughed, “You’re watching too many movies, Delgado. If I’d been able to transform myself, why would I ever stay there? I’d have run like hell.”
“I don’t know …”
Stepping back, he turned and then in two quick steps, closed in on the bed, slithered onto the covers and finally lay on his side holding himself up on one elbow. One knee up … using that sexiness of his. Tea furrowed her brows, did he honestly think that she could be seduced into forgetting about the baby?
“Come here,” he purred.
“You’re crazy.”
“And? Since when has that bothered you?”
“Since you gave away a child - since you basically held him over the edge of cliff and let go without looking to see what happened, without caring.”
“Jeez … when you put it that way. Wouldn’t it have been worse had I stayed to watch?” That smile again … that cocky grin he’d recently adopted.
“Don’t you feel bad? Aren’t you afraid when you think about it? The man I know, he’d have been mortified with himself. He’d be-”
“Suicidal?”
Tea gazed at Todd … nodded. “Yes. I believe he would have been. To learn he sent his own son to hell - or what could have been.”
Chuckling, he shook his head. “Poor, poor Todd … so devastated over the bad things he does.” He lay back fully, putting his hands behind his head. “You like my house?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’ve explained it repeatedly. The bitch made me hate that kid - it ate at me. I got rid of it when I had a chance - I … uh … shouldn’t have. There - I said it. I shouldn’t have done it.”
Tea slimmed her eyes … studied the stranger lying across the bed, stretching out like a cat without a concern in the world. He shut his eyes, sniffled, and Tea moved towards him.
“Todd, I want to leave now.”
His smirked … licked his lips and then looked at her. Shook his head. “I want you here, with me. I want you to stay.”
“I can’t.”
Again, quick as light, he was up, heavy lidded eyes looking right into her. “Tea … I understand what I did was wrong - and believe me when I say, I didn’t want the kid to die. I’m sorry there’s a witness around … because the picture will be warped, morphed into something it’s not. I hoped for a home for it - I’m sure she’ll tell you that what I said was to find a place for it. A family, good parents. I’d never do what my real father did - give it away to a monster. And I wouldn‘t have done it if I’d known it was mine.”
“But don’t you get it? This isn’t a far cry from what Victor Lord did - your kid or not. He caused you ultimately the most terrible punishment, to live with Peter Manning. Why would you do the same? What guarantees did you ask for that the baby wouldn‘t end up with a Peter Manning?”
He said nothing.
She sighed and reached out, moving an errant lock of hair out of his face, grazed his cheek. She could see him weaken at her touch, his features softening. He swallowed visibly. Familiar neediness peeked out - but God, she couldn’t be it was genuine anymore. He mystified her more than ever. “Why would you take the risk? I don’t understand,” she asked again. “Where’s your heart? Your love of children - your complete and total acceptance of the innocence of babies?”
He swallowed visibly again and an expression of confusion flashed by - he began to touch her face, his fingertips mere inches away but he stopped. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I …” He paused, running his tongue along his lower lip, Tea maintaining a tight gaze on him.
“Explain … I won’t judge you, I won’t ‘morph’ it into anything more than what you say.”
Tea could tell, or … she thought she could tell, that he was close to trusting her with something, close to revealing the absence of compassion or the presence of evil - an admission … he was so close. A shrug of his shoulder, a setting of his jaw.
“What do you want me to do, Delgado? Go to the cops? Put myself in a hospital? Whip myself? What? Is there enough for me to do - that would satisfy you? Somehow, I don’t think there is.”
“I haven’t turned you in.”
“You’re about to - it’s why you came back, isn’t it? Armed with your bloody witness, ready with those handcuffs. You want your 350 years that you never got for my hitting you. For my lying to you about being sick - for all that time we spent married and I abused you. All those rotten things. Why else would you be here?”
Tea breathed in deeply, covering her face with her hands - tired. She was tired of the back and forth with him. And yet, he had a legitimate question: what was her ultimate goal behind coming back? She allowed herself to look at him once more.
“I asked you to think of someplace you’d like to be, when I covered your eyes.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Close your eyes, Tea, except this time think of something that makes you angry. Let yourself live it … love it. Dig yourself deep inside of that picture - and make it real.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too frightening. It makes me sick.”
“Why would it make you sick? To think of a solution to a problem that’s beyond you isn’t sick - it’s progress! It’s resolution!”
Tea shook her head slightly, not wanting to step into this world he spoke of. Too ugly, too out-of-control. “No, Todd …”
“You’re not looking at this right,” he said as he grasped onto her shoulders, moving her a bit so he could look at her more directly. And as if he read her mind, he added, “I’m not talking about crazy, screaming, mad … I’m talking about the simmering anger, the thing that rocks your innermost self - for a lifetime. The janitor’s daughter, Tea … the little Puerto Rican girl who’s always on the outside because despite her white skin, she’s always going to be brown on the inside …”
“Shut up.”
“Yeah … that’s it … you know what I’m talking about.”
“You’re using me … to make some … point …”
“Remember walking next to the pretty rich girls in their ballet leotards with their diamond stud earrings, with their hair twisted into braids scented with hundred-dollar perfume, with their leather purses and leather slippers … you remember their looks at you? Remember their slow glance down at your clothes, at the bag you carried that your ‘abuelita’ made - the knitted one - the one you loved but weren’t allowed to … in front of those girls? Remember how it ate at you?”
“SHUT … UP! I wasn’t ashamed …”
“You wanted to be like them - you wanted that stuff, you wanted their lives … you wanted to break free and yet there was nothing you could do about it. You knew that no matter how rich you’d be, no matter how much education you had, no matter the big car, the top penthouse, you were ALWAYS going to be Te-ita Delgado, little bare-footed brown girl from the islands. Always. Live that some more, Tea … Te-ita …”
Without hesitation, Tea drew back her hand and tried to slap him but he caught her hand, hissing, “Not so hard to get angry, is it? Not so hard to remember that pit-in-your-stomach hatred, is it?”
“God … what are you doing?!”
“There’s another part to that anger, though, Tea.” He pulled her hand downwards and pulled her to him, so his body pressed into hers, he speaking softly. “When you get that angry, concentrate on the adrenaline, concentrate on the rush through your entire body, the power of it. The need to hit something, to pound it into oblivion - into a bloody mess. Think of the warm blood rushing to places … that aren’t supposed to be affected by anger. I know you feel it … I know it.”
“I don’t feel that, I don’t …”
“Sure you do - you think I forgot those times we argued about … R.J.? Think I’d forget how I pushed you until you were spittin’ mad … and what about the sex afterwards - oh you were beautiful that way - ohhhh we made love so … good ‘cause we were both so hot and so bothered and so … fucking … mad.”
She felt his lips touch her cheek, those lips parting … she felt his tongue mark her … and she heard his breathing pick up, matching hers. His other hand found its way to her side, roaming now, touching her back then higher, higher … slipping towards the front, teasing the fullness of her breast … he had some nerve, he had some damn nerve doing that to her ... and he moved towards the front and finally squeezed her breast fully, eagerly, and she moaned at his touch and she could tell the adrenaline had made its way to the center of her soul, wetting her …
“God … damn you …” she practically whimpered from the pain of it all and he kissed her deeply, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth and not letting her go. She couldn’t breathe … she couldn’t do this, not with this man, not with this stranger who’d done what he’d done … no remorse to speak of … how could she do this … how could she?
“Come to the bed, Tea - I need you - I wanna love you so bad … come on … let me do that …”
All through her, logic and common sense screamed, but she didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to go with him, she wanted to make love with this man who made her do things she never would have thought of … who made her crazy with his hunger and that illogical thinking - that badness. She kissed him back - pushing him backwards, pushing her own tongue into his mouth, pushing him … and he grabbed her arms and turned her around so he could move her where he wanted. They both hit the bed and Tea crawled onto the soft coverlet and Todd, he didn’t let her go any further from him and easily climbed on top of her … pinning her to the bed …
They stopped for a second, both breathing hard and stared at each other, face to face, he lying on her without concern of his weight and she liked that - liked knowing how turned on he was, liked feeling his insistent erection … but … but …
“I love you … Tea … I never stopped loving you. I didn’t care that you left - I … understood it. I never told you … stuff … I don’t know why.”
She put her fingertips to his mouth, stopping him from talking. She moved her leg so she could feel his strong thigh … so she could feel more of him … and without warning, the most powerful sadness washed over her. She held him tightly, saying gently, “I love you, too …” The tears, they rolled down her cheeks and she held him, thinking this could be the last time for a long while. “You feel so good, mijo … I wish we could stay this way forever …”
“Why not? Why can’t we, Delgado?”
She smiled wistfully, touching his face, his lips - his expression had changed. That hardness, that meanness had faded and all she saw was the man she once loved more than taking another breath. “Look at you,” she said. He smiled a tad - sweetly, like a boy. He nuzzled her and she cupped his cheeks in her hands, making him stop. Kissing him before she nudged him away. He didn’t stop looking at her … and she didn’t either. It hurt her to see him again …
“Where you been, baby?”
“I don’t know … right here, I guess.”
“I guess?” She chuckled, more to herself. He began kissing her again and she let him - he suckled at the delicate skin of her throat, moving to her chest. He moved his hands to the lower curves of her buttocks and lifted her to him, their hips gently pressing, their need for the other explicit. She knew it was getting to the point where neither of them would be able to stop and she knew they had to end it - this wasn’t right - it was physical mixed up with a lot of history and unfinished business and what the hell was she doing …
Groaning, she managed a weak objection, “Not like this … it’s wrong …”
“Don’t tell me that … I know you want this … I know and I do too and I don’t want us to stop …”
“Todd …”
By this time, he’d worked her blouse up and slipped a bra-cup down, freeing her … kissing her nipple, pulling at it … making Tea weaker at saying, ‘no’ to him. And with everything she had in her, with all her alarms going off, with a heart too bruised to take much more, she pushed him away. “No … no … no …” She grabbed the comforter and forced herself onto her side, with Todd digging his hands into her, tightening his grip on her arms.
“Don’t tease me … don’t fucking tease me …”
“Todd!! That’s not what I’m doing … let go of me!”
And he did. “God … damn it!!!” He cursed and shook himself, getting off the bed, shaking with frustration.
“I don’t trust what you’re doing …”
“I’m not ‘doing’ anything!”
“You’re afraid … why don’t you admit it! You’re scared to death about what I’m going to do with that witness. Tell me the truth!!”
He shook his head slightly, his face a picture of pent-up sexual need and fury. “Fuck!” Marching over the fireplace, he then plopped down on the sofa. Leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. “The baby … the baby … the baby …”
“Yes … a baby. When did you stop caring about human beings, Todd? I know it was before RJ - was it because of the prison? Was that the last straw? What did they do to you … to kill that … human in you?”
And with that, the man she loved disappeared … El Diablero turned around in the sofa and smiled broadly at her, “Oh sweet Jesus … Saint Delgado is here … bearing witness to the crimes and sins of the Devil himself - who’s not a human being, who’s a monster. Dangling little babies from his hands … watching them crash into the sea, never to be seen again.”
He got to his feet and stood over Tea, “You want out? Get out. I’ll call a car … you’re free to go. I‘m not going to make you stay in a place that makes you so fucking sick.”
“Fine. Call me a car.” She gathered herself and steadily walked to the door, fighting her divided self and body.
Heard him say, “But it’ll be on your head the hell that comes raining down on Llanview … on YOUR head.”
Her nails dug into the wood and she bit down on her teeth … damn it, she said to herself. At that moment, lights flickered on … music began playing … the sole, sorrowful pings of a piano from long ago.
