Strange Girl

Aja touched the man’s arm. “That’s not necessary. Let the woman grieve in peace.”

  The manager seemed struck. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, she’s sure,” I said. “Now we’re leaving. Good-bye.”

  “I understand, of course. There’ll be no charge for the meal.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” I muttered.

  Aja needed help getting to the car but once there she seemed to rally. She still had the napkin from the restaurant and continued to hold it to her lips. The bleeding had stopped.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I love their swordfish.”

  Just like Aja. She cared more about the fish than the fact a complete stranger had slapped her in the mouth. I burst out laughing. “The fish was fantastic. We should come here again.”

  “Maybe we could eat in the kitchen with the staff,” Aja said.

  “Before we do we’d better make sure none of the cooks have any sick relatives. They might demand you do a healing at knifepoint.”

  Aja smiled, although her lip was already swelling. “It doesn’t matter. Let them carve away. This body is just a body.”

  “The hell it is. I love your body.”

  “You do? Why? It’s no different from Aunt Clara’s body. Soon it will be nothing but ashes.”

  “I hope not too soon.” I finally began to calm down. “That was my fault in there. I saw her draw back her hand but didn’t move fast enough to block it.”

  “You like to blame yourself, Fred. It’s not necessary.”

  I saw she was serious. She was staring at me again.

  “Why do you say that? I’m not a martyr,” I said.

  “Maybe a little one? Maybe? Yes?”

  She had me. “All right. I admit it, I’m always trying to fix things. But people expect me to do it, I don’t know why. Like in the band, if there’s an argument, everyone looks to me to settle it.”

  “You’ve been playing that role since you were young.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was asking a question or making a statement.

  “That’s true,” I said. “It probably started when I was six. My parents were going through a rough time and it looked like they might get a divorce. My dad moved out of the house, although he didn’t go far. He got an apartment around the block. Anyway, I remember going to see him every evening after he came home from work. He would tell me things to say to my mother and then she would tell me stuff to say to him. There I was, in first grade, playing the role of a marriage counselor. But the weird thing is my parents expected me to fix their problems. And that was all right with me—I wanted to help them.”

  “And you were happy when they got back together.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What kid isn’t terrified of the thought of their parents divorcing?”

  Aja nodded but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she was agreeing with me. I didn’t take it personally. The last thing I wanted to do was to get into a major psychological discussion. I changed the subject.

  “What do you want to do next?” I asked. “We’ve already missed the movie. I could take you home, if you want, or we could, I don’t know, do something else.”

  “Let’s get a hotel room,” Aja said.

  It was the last thing I expected her to say.

  I came oh so close to having a heart attack.

  “Huh?” I gasped.

  Aja spoke casually. “This body’s never had sex. I’ve often wondered what it would feel like, especially since meeting you. I think tonight would be a good night to experience it.” She paused. “If that’s okay with you?”

  I nodded. I nodded again. And again.

  “Sure,” I said.

  We stopped at an all-night drugstore on the way to the hotel. I ran in, bought a packet of condoms, and ran out. Aja wanted to see what I had bought. I obliged her, and she opened one.

  “Oh,” she said, and she smiled.

  • • •

  The room had a huge Jacuzzi bathtub. I’d never been in one before but Aja was interested. Maybe it reminded her of skinny-dipping in the lake behind her house, or in the streams of Selva. I remember turning on the hot water and slowly watching it fill. Aja silently came up from behind me and hugged me. She rested her head on my back, listening to my breathing instead of my heart. Both were pounding fast.

  There were bath salts for good health and bubble mixes for fun. We threw the whole lot in and took off our clothes and jumped in the steaming water. Well, I slowly climbed in. Aja, she was the one who jumped. And here she was supposed to be the quiet one, the shy one, and I was supposed to be the rock star. But the truth was I was just as much a virgin as she was and far more nervous.

  She had me hypnotized. Her big, brown eyes never left my face. Sliding toward me through the gushing hot water, the swirling steam, and the swelling bubbles, she sat naked on my lap and wrapped her thin but surprisingly strong legs around my waist. God, I felt I was about to have my own near-death experience. Then again, it would have been just fine if I had died right then. Why? Because I’d never been so happy in my life. I’d reached my ceiling, I thought. No, the top of my skull had burst through it. Everything that came after in my life would be anticlimactic.

  But I felt that would be okay as well. I’d have this memory, I’d have this night. When we began to kiss—I kissed her very lightly—to touch each other, the feel of her skin gave me so much pleasure I felt as if my body was no longer bound to the earth. Holding her naked in my arms transported me to another world.

  Honestly, I felt she was an angel.

  My angel. Aja . . .

  Later, lying together on a Hilton king-sized mattress, a single sheet covering our bare bodies, I stared at the ceiling and thought I saw stars. I saw them through the roof of the hotel room. Was it so impossible? We were on the top floor of an eight-story building, and with Aja resting in my arms, the stars did not seem so far away.

  Her breathing became soft and regular, like it had in the hospital when she had dozed off while Mike was in surgery. I assumed she’d fallen asleep and began to drift off myself. But then I felt her palm reach up and rest over my heart, which was now beating slow and lightly, almost sighing with a newfound rhythm it had found. I almost pitied it. My heart wasn’t used to such joy.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hello,” I replied, drowsy.

  “I told you it would be okay.”

  “When?”

  “Many times.”

  I smiled. I felt many miles away, still floating, and yet, at the same time, I’d never felt so close to anyone in my life. It was pleasant to drift along beside Aja, through the moments, the seconds, the instants . . .

  “I guess you were right,” I heard myself say.

  “Are you happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you feel the Big Person?”

  “I feel you. Are you the Big Person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I?”

  Her next words sounded like a child’s lullaby in my ears, so sweet, so innocent, and yet, ironically, so wise. My drifting sensation slowly picked up speed. Now I felt like I was going somewhere, somewhere nice.

  “There’s only one Big Person. He’s the same in everyone. But you don’t often feel him. Your Little Person gets in the way.”

  “Who’s the Little Person?” I asked.

  Her palm slipped from my heart to my forehead. “He’s up here. His name is Fred. He thinks a lot, he worries a lot. He thinks he’s a body. He thinks he’s his mind. But he’s neither.”

  “Who is he then?”

  “He’s everywhere and in all things. He never grows old, he can never die. And he’s never sad. He’s always happy and at peace.”

  “Like I am right now?”

  “Yes. Right now you’re getting a glimpse of the Big Person.”

  I could hardly think, nor did I want to. I felt it disturbed the joy I was feeling and it seemed much easier just to let my thoughts run down. To
turn them off with a switch that suddenly seemed close at hand. Intuitively, part of me knew she was helping me find this switch by using the touch of her fingers to steer me from my head down to my heart where my mind belonged. To what felt like an endless space suffused with peace and happiness.

  “Do you always feel this way?” I whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “So this is the real you?”

  A million light-years away I felt her kiss my cheek.

  “Yes. Now go to sleep and remember.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE NEXT DAY I only remembered having sex with Aja. In my defense the sex had been absolutely incredible and what had followed had been very abstract. Even though I’d felt the memory of being with her would sustain me for the rest of my life, I wanted to be with her again as soon as possible. It was the lover’s eternal paradox. One night was enough but a thousand nights would never satisfy me.

  I felt I was in love.

  Honestly, I only vaguely recalled what she’d said as we fell asleep. But I’d had such amazing dreams. I felt I’d spent the whole night flying.

  We slept in and ordered room service: breakfast. We ordered half the menu. Aja begged me to let her use Aunt Clara’s credit card and I gave in. She continued to show no grief over the woman’s passing. With anyone else I would have been concerned but with Aja it all seemed so natural.

  We didn’t start back to Elder until one o’clock. There were clouds in the sky. The first sign of summer coming to an end. Knowing South Dakota, I thought, the weather would skip autumn and head straight into winter. It occurred to me that Aja had probably never seen snow before. I asked and she said that was true.

  “You’re in for a treat. Sort of,” I said.

  “This body has never been cold before.”

  I smiled. “You like to say ‘this body’ rather than ‘I.’ I know you’d say it all the time if Bart hadn’t lectured you about it. Why do you do that?”

  She glanced at me. Her lower lip was still swollen from the previous night. “Because I’m not the body,” she said.

  A feeling of déjà vu swept over me and I felt a mild dizziness. It reminded me of the first day I had met Aja, when she had touched me while we were eating lunch on the bench. I struggled a bit with the wheel of the car.

  “You told me that last night,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I frowned. “Why am I having trouble remembering?”

  “It’s hard for most people to understand. Don’t worry, it’ll come back to you with time.”

  “What will?”

  “What you need to know.”

  “About you?”

  “About you.” Aja touched my shoulder. “It will be okay, Fred.”

  The dizziness caused by my déjà vu fled and I was able to steady the car on the road. I smiled at her reply. “You like to say that as well. But I don’t think it’s true. The world’s a brutal place. Life is seldom okay for very long. Just look at what happened to Mike.”

  Aja squeezed my shoulder and nodded.

  But she didn’t say anything.

  I dropped her at home before I returned the Camry to Janet’s house. Bo met me in the garage. He joked about providing transportation for my love life. “You should just buy the damn car from me,” he said.

  “Didn’t you already give it to Janet?”

  Bo shrugged. “It’s impossible to give that girl anything. She keeps insisting it’s my car when I keep telling her it belongs to her.”

  “Whose name is it listed under at the DMV?”

  “Mine. She won’t let me put in under her name.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “That’s her mother in her. Hey, she told me to tell you she’s over at Shelly’s with the rest of the band. They want you to go over. Mike can’t play yet but they still want to practice.”

  “Thanks. And thanks again for the car.”

  Bo grinned mischievously. “Just tell me if you got lucky last night?”

  “A gentleman never says.”

  “Since when are you a gentleman?”

  I laughed. “Since last night!”

  Bo patted me on the back. “That’s my man!”

  I walked straight to Shelly’s house. My two main guitars were at home but I could always use my old Fender if we decided to jam. Walking up to our heavily insulated garage, I was surprised when a middle-aged couple jumped out of their car and hurried over to me.

  “Excuse me, are you Fred Allen? The lead singer of Half Life?” the man asked. They were both overweight with pleasant faces. Yet they were tense as well and I was reminded of the incident at the restaurant. Suddenly, I knew what was coming. Their car plates said they were from Ohio.

  “Who wants to know?” I asked.

  “Please forgive us. My name is Dustin Alastair and this is my wife, Eileen. We know who you are. We saw you in that first video Casey Morall posted on YouTube.”

  “That video didn’t exactly focus on my singing.”

  “I’m sorry. But to be honest we’re not here because of you,” Mr. Alastair said. “Our ten-year-old daughter, Lisa, is in the car, lying in the backseat, resting. She has an inoperable brain tumor.” He paused. “The doctors say she doesn’t have long to live.”

  “We need Aja to heal her,” Mrs. Alastair blurted out.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” I tried slipping past them but they blocked my way.

  Mr. Alastair continued. “Look, Fred, may I call you Fred? We’ve checked around town. Everyone says you’re Aja’s boyfriend. We’ve been out to her house. But no one answers when we ring the doorbell. And we understand that. Tons of people must be showing up and begging her to heal them. I realize we’re nobody to you.” He began to choke up. “But Lisa’s all we have. And if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, if you could just ask Aja to look at her.”

  “We’d be so grateful,” Mrs. Alastair said, her eyes watering.

  This couple wasn’t like the one Aja and I had run into the previous night. They were in terrible pain but they were still striving to be kind and polite. Yes, maybe they were a little pushy, I thought, but if I was in their position would I be any different? I mean, if I honestly believed Aja could heal my child. The answer, of course, was no. So it made it harder for me to brush them off.

  Yet I had a problem. Well, actually I had a few problems. First off, I didn’t know if Aja could help Lisa. On the other hand, I wasn’t certain Aja couldn’t help their daughter. Somehow, sleeping with Aja, having sex with her, and listening to what she had told me—whatever it had been—had altered my mind in some mysterious way. All the doubts I’d had about her healing ability, they had not vanished. Not completely, at least. I mean, it wasn’t as if I’d suddenly been transformed into a true believer. But the idea that she could work miracles no longer seemed ridiculous. And that in itself was something of a miracle, I thought.

  Yet I was terrified what would happen to Aja if she did try to heal Lisa Alastair. Touching Mike’s head had wiped her out for a week. She was my girlfriend now—at least in my mind she was—and there was no way I was going to risk hurting her, no matter how dire the Alastairs’ situation was.

  It was all very confusing and difficult.

  “Are you staying in town?” I asked.

  Mr. Alastair spoke. “We just got a room at the Great Western. Room sixteen.”

  “Okay, room sixteen. I’ll remember that. Look, I’ll be talking to Aja later today and I’ll ask her about Lisa. But I must warn you, the chances of her doing anything to help your daughter are small. Really small, I mean, extremely remote. So please don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Can I give you our cell number?” Mr. Alastair asked, handing me a card.

  “Sure,” I said. I put it in my back pocket.

  “But she can heal people, right?” Mrs. Alastair said. “You’ve seen her cure people?”

  I shook my head. “Honestly, I’ve never seen her heal anyone. Not with my own eyes.”


  That seemed to shock the Alastairs. They didn’t know how to respond. I took the opportunity to slip away. I headed for the garage and went inside. Mike, Dale, Shelly, Janet—everyone was waiting for me. Only no one looked ready to play music. The mood was somber. I didn’t have to ask if they’d spoken to the Alastairs. It was written on their faces.

  “We have a problem,” Janet said.

  “I told you guys about my meeting with Casey Morall,” I said, taking a seat beside Mike and Dale on the dumpy yellow couch we kept pressed against our amps to smooth out our sound. We also used it to crash on.

  Shelly sat behind her keyboards, Janet behind the drums. In a pinch Janet could play the drums. She had the few times Mike had been too drunk to go onstage. But she wasn’t very good.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Shelly said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “The bottom line is Casey’s got too much time and emotion invested in ‘Aja’s story’ to back off.”

  “Aja should sue her,” Shelly said.

  Janet spoke. “Yesterday, I would have said no way. But today I wonder if it’s not a bad idea.”

  “Casey’s not our problem,” Mike said abruptly.

  A long silence followed his remark.

  “What do you mean?” Janet asked.

  Dale spoke. “Aja’s the problem.” He turned in my direction. “Fred knows what Mike and I are talking about.”

  I hesitated. “Not really. What do you mean?”

  Mike spoke. “You must have noticed we left the garage door open. We heard you talking to the Alastairs.”

  “So? They drove a long way. They seemed like nice people. I didn’t want to just brush them off.”

  “You gave them hope,” Janet said. “You shouldn’t have done that. It doesn’t matter that you told them the chances Aja could help their daughter were remote. All they heard is that it’s possible and that hope will torture them. You should call them right now and tell them to take their daughter home.”

  “I agree,” Shelly said.

  “I don’t,” Mike said.

  “Neither do I,” Dale said.

  Janet jumped up, knocking over the snare drum with her leg. “Hold on a second! What in God’s name are we talking about here? You guys are acting like Aja really can heal people. Do you know how nuts that is?”