After the shaking stopped, when everything that was going to fall had already fallen and the rattling of the displaced quieted, I finally let go of her. May stood up on the back of a fallen bookcase and wrapped a sheet around herself. "I have to call home," she said.
In the light of the one still standing candle, I pointed at the telephone perched precariously on the edge of the desk and rolled onto my back on the waterbed as the first aftershock began. She fell away from me towards the desk. As I watched her, unable to protect her by the sloshing of the bed, the framed poster of downtown Chicago hanging above the bed tilted, then slipped off its moorage and crashed in front of me onto the edge of the bed, blocking her from my view.
When the shaking subsided again, she stood up, re-wrapped the sheet about herself and turned away from me. With steady fingers, she punched the buttons on the telephone receiver.
"Is everything okay?" she asked. "Any damage? I'm out with some friends. I'll be home soon."
She carefully replaced the receiver. Then she began hunting for her clothing strewn about the room, now buried under fallen books, furniture and broken reminders of my past life. She pushed the fallen poster and its million shards of glass onto the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. "I have to go home. A pipe burst."
"What are you going to tell him?" I asked.
"He saw my car here."
I sat up behind her on the bed and put my hands on her shoulders.
* * * * *
I ran away from Chicago to Los Angeles soon after Laura left me. I thought this would be a good place to start a new life. Although the salt breeze was a constant reminder that I could not run even a single step further without leaping across the Pacific, the warmth of the sunshine seemed to melt the broken pieces back together again.
Laura and I had first met in high school in Wilmette, a suburban town along Lake Michigan just north of Chicago. We fell in love in eleventh grade and despite her mother's pleas, she entered DePaul University with me. From the beginning, Laura's mother had tried to destroy our relationship. She introduced Laura to Jewish men that she found more suitable for her daughter than the man she nicknamed "the Hitler youth" because my family had settled in Ohio many generations ago from Germany. But by the time we graduated, everyone, especially I, assumed we would marry.
However, a year later, I started to suspect that Laura was seeing other men. When I confronted her, she only answered, "We're not married yet." I grew angry and she stormed out and didn't come back until I apologized. She told me then that she loved me, that the other men meant nothing, that she was just making sure before we got married, that she would stop as soon as we were engaged. That is when I pulled the deep-blue velveteen box from my pocket and slipped the ring around her finger.
We had already set the wedding date for a holiday weekend in January when she vanished, leaving behind only the engagement ring and door key in the center of the kitchen table. I never understood why she left. She left no note, no sign except the empty picture frame that had held a photograph of us at our graduation ceremony. The empty frame was lying on the floor next to the mantle, the glass cracked into three pieces.
For the first few months, I tried to locate her. I needed to know why she left, and if it was for another man, I wanted the chance to win her back. But her friends told me nothing, that they hadn't seen her, that they were as shocked as me. I tried calling her mother.
"She's gone," her mother answered.
"When will she be back?" I asked.
"No, she's gone. Left. Went to teach English to the peasants in China. Didn't leave an address," was all she would tell me, and all my other efforts to find her failed.
I eventually tried to piece my life together, but like the picture frame that I tried to salvage, the cracks were visible and the tape only made them more evident. Eventually, I decided to make a new start in Los Angeles, as far away as I could get from Chicago and still remain in America.
Through a recommendation by a friend of Laura's, I found a job in Torrance as an editor of computer manuals for a Japanese electronics firm. The monotony of the work there soothed my nerves. On the way home from the office, I often stopped at the beach. I sometimes jogged along the shore, just as I had done with Laura along the banks of Lake Michigan. But usually, I felt too tired and just stared across the sea, straining to see China, wondering if she was really over there, and if she ever looked back in this direction for me.
Every Tuesday evening, a group of about ten people from our office came to the beach to play volleyball. That's where I first met May. She was one of only two women present. She wore a black and purple Body Glove bathing suit which accentuated her shiny, black hair draped the back of her Asian face. We played and won every match that evening until after sunset when it became too dark to see even each other.
The next day at work, during my daily boredom rounds when I toured the building, trying to clear my head of the cobwebs that grew while sifting though the pages of unintelligible manuscripts, I noticed May seated at a computer terminal upstairs. She was lounging back in the chair, chatting with the two middle-aged men who were standing on either side of her while sipping on coffee out of identical company-logo mugs. I nodded to her as I walked past, but she called after me, "Nice playing yesterday."
I turned around.
"Do you know about the party Friday night?"
The other two men disappeared back behind the carpet-lined partitions. I had planned to use the time that night to continue unboxing that night the pieces of my past life that I couldn't leave behind in Chicago, knick-knacks that I had bought for Laura or she had bought for me, or we had both bought for the house, and garbage that I couldn't throw away like the broken picture frame. I realized that it might be best to leave them in the box for a while longer and agreed to attend.
I knew no one at the party except May, but she introduced me to a few of the other people, then disappeared into the adjoining room where people were dancing to the ear-drum puncturing music. I tried to make small talk, but couldn't hear over the din. I soon tired of yelling and contented myself to watching the others dance while I sipped on a bottle of beer. At a break in the music when I was considering slipping out, she came over to me, "Why do you look so sad?"
I shrugged my shoulders, but as the next song began, she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the other room. I danced poorly, but she enjoyed laughing at me, and soon I stopped minding and began to enjoy making her laugh. While concentrating on the music and her smile, I even forgot about Laura. By the end of the night, I was drinking deeply from the bottle of tequila that was being passed among the circle of males standing in the kitchen.
The following morning, trying to clear my head of the deathworm, I walked the few blocks from my apartment to the beach. I sat on the concrete retaining wall that was erected to protect those on land from the ocean's moods. When I finally became bored, I jumped down onto the sand and began jogging. I ran past the Manhattan Pier, past Hermosa Pier, all the way to the charred remains of Redondo Pier, then winded, I started back at a slower pace.
As I ran, I thought about Laura. I usually had to slow down my pace when we jogged together. I wondered if people jogged in China, but I still couldn't imagine her there. She always talked too fast and didn't have enough patience to be a good teacher.
I was startled out of my reverie by the black and purple bathing suit that streaked past me. I raced to catch up with May. Although she was faster, she quickly tired and I soon caught up with her.
We talked for a few minutes until one of the over-weight, Caucasian men that I recognized from our volleyball games ran wheezing towards us.
"This is Steve," she said to me before adding in a lower voice, "my husband."
I looked down at her bare hands. She noticed my surprise and smiled. Steve faced the sand, still panting, hands on his knees, oblivious.
"Steve, this is John. He's new in the office. You remember him he was my partner in volleyball the other day."
He glanced up and nodded at me, looking about to pass out. I felt sorry for him.
* * * * *
Twice a week after work when she could get away from Steve, we jogged along the beach just before sunset. We started at the Redondo Beach Pier and attempted the round trip to the cliffs at the end of the beach at Palos Verdes, a total distance of about three miles. Afterwards, we sat on the retaining wall and watched the last vestiges of redness dissolve into the nighttime sky.
As we walked back to our cars, she often complained about Steve, occasionally tossing out the word divorce, but it wasn't until after many evenings together along the beach that I was bold enough to ask, "Do you love your husband?"
"I married him to spite my mother she wanted me to marry a Chinese," was all she answered that day and I didn't press for details. I wondered how much of the truth was included in that statement.
Afterwards, we usually drove back to my apartment to take showers, then went out for dinner at a local Chinese or Mexican restaurant. It was often late in the night before she headed home. I wondered what her husband thought when she came home so late.
After I returned to my apartment, I lay motionless for hours on the sofa. I stared at the TV until late at night, trying to keep my mind from fogging up, from thinking about the things I knew I couldn't think about.
* * * * *
On a miserable Friday afternoon, as I wondered about the building unable to concentrate on work, I noticed her husband standing next to her desk and I detoured in the opposite direction. A while later, when my colleagues were all away from their desks, I called her. "Can you talk now?"
"What's up?"
"Are you free Sunday night?"
"I can make myself free."
"Care to get seriously drunk with me then?"
When she arrived at the Mexican restaurant, there were already two shot glasses in a row in front of me, empty except for the oily residue of the tequila. The January day was unnaturally warm, the spooky Santa Ana winds blowing at us from deep in some desert hell.
As she walked over, I stood up and signaled a waitress to bring two more shots and tortilla chips.
"What's this?" she asked.
I grimaced. "It's a special occasion."
When the shots arrived, we raised our glasses. "To your health," she said.
"To my wedding day," I answered, quickly touched my glass against hers and downed the cup of honey-colored death.
She stared at me while I continued to look away, focusing on the nothingness in front of me. Finally, she walked over to the bar and talked with the bartender, gesticulating wildly. The manager trotted over and shrugged his shoulders. She returned and set a fresh bottle of Cuervo Gold down onto the center of the circular table.
I didn't move, so she arranged the glasses in four corners around the bottle, then twisted off the cap and slopped the liquid into all four glasses. She picked up a glass, brought it up against her bottom lip, then opened her mouth and snapped her head back. She slammed the glass onto the table.
I picked up a glass, motioned it towards her, then enjoyed the burning of the alcohol on the back of my throat. I banged the glass down on the table. We continued without talking, the only sounds the background conversations of normal couples and drunken men, and the periodic thump of a shot glass on the wooden table. Whenever those four glasses were empty, one of us grabbed the bottle by the neck and sloshed the oil into the empty glasses and over most of the table.
By the third round, I began feeling dizzy and my stomach queasy. I stumbled off to the bathroom. Once my head cleared, I began to feel better. I washed my face, gargled with some water and returned to the table, falling into my chair.
"You look pale."
"I feel much better," I responded, then added, "Thanks."
Her face, as well, was beginning to take on a bluish tint below the alcohol flush. I looked into her wide, black eyes, black holes into another universe, a different universe, a fairer universe, a more understandable universe. I began to grow dizzy again.
"I'd better drive you home," she said, though she didn't appear sober, either. I said nothing and let her lead me by the arm into the devil wind.
She led me up the stairs to my apartment, but began to stumble, so I led her partly up the stairs, by turns helping each other until we finally arrived at the door. I fumbled with the keys until I found the right one and struggled to slip it into the keyhole. I leaned on the door and as it opened, I lost my balance and fell forward. She grabbed my hand, but instead of holding me up, my momentum pulled her down and she fell on top of me as I hit the floor. I remember us kissing wildly before I passed out.
When I awoke, head throbbing, I was lying face up between the sheets and comforter on my waterbed. I was wearing only my underwear. May was lying next to me on her side, facing me with one arm limp across my chest. The clock read just after 4 AM.
My mouth was dry. I needed water and aspirin. I climbed over her, trying not to wake her. I swallowed three glasses of water, then carried an extra one back to the bedroom and set it on the night-stand. I lit the three globe candles that adorned my desk and dresser. The waves of the waterbed woke her as I climbed back under the blanket.
"I feel weird," she said. At first, I thought she meant her hangover, then realized she might mean sleeping in my bed. "Something's wrong. The wind's stopped."
I realized how still it had grown, still as the surface of the sliver of moon that shone through the window, still until a tidal wave enveloped us on the bed as I rolled on top of her.
It wasn't until after the glass of water had fallen and shattered and the alarms of a million cars began to wail that we became conscious of the shifting earth. I clung to her, trying to protect her with my body, trying to protect myself in her grasp. But as the earth shook us, I thought I heard Laura's voice in May's screams.
* * * * *
Before she was fully dressed, another smaller aftershock rocked the bed. At that first moment of panic when the rattling started again and only the grinning devil knew yet if this was to be a small aftershock or the big one that would finally drop us off the continent and into the sea, I knew I could have grabbed her. I could have pulled her back atop the bed and protected her with my body and kisses from the debris of the others' lives above us falling thorough the ceiling. I could have held her and she wouldn't have protested, but I realized it wasn't her I needed to protect.
* * * * *
When the first rays of light filtered into the eastern sky, I surveyed the damage. Shards of glass from the broken poster frame were strewn across the top of the fallen bookcase and multicolored CDs were scattered about the room like the leaves of a Chicago autumn, but little else besides a few of the knick-knacks Laura had left behind were broken. I knew that I had to straighten up the room, replace the fallen and throw away the broken, but I didn't yet quite have the energy. Instead, I dressed and walked down to the beach and sat on the retainer wall and listened to the sea at high tide lapping against the wall. There were no joggers on the beach that morning, and I had no desire to run.
Gradually, the sun rose into the sky and sparkled off the glassy sea. I sat on the wall and stared across the Pacific. When another aftershock began, I felt myself slipping off the wall, knew that if I fell, I would be engulfed by that sea. I held on with all of my strength as the rough cinder block bit into my arms, chest, and legs, ripping my flesh. I knew I could hang onto that wall if I could only stand the pain, but I turned my head and looked down and could see the sandy bottom just below the water's surface. I splashed into the water and after a moment of disorientation, I regained my bearings and stood up. Although the salt water stung the scrapes from the wall, it felt good, felt like it was healing the wounds.
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