“Pretty much,” I said.
Mamie’s friends wobbled and kicked, arms around one another like a last-ditch chorus line. And as the song picked up steam, moving into that revved up orchestra part, Candy led them in Mamie Lee’s trademark shimmy. One at a time, they lay down on the floor and raised their legs straight up in a full-body quake until it was all wiggly thighs and Bobby Darin singing:
Happy we’ll be beyond the sea. Never again I’ll go sailing.
“Is this actually happening?” asked Daniel.
I could feel him watching me out of the corner of his eye, shyly taking in a face he’d only seen in pictures. His proximity was unnerving, but my heartbeat would not slow down. I had no idea where things were supposed to go from here, so I just kept staring at the stage.
“I think so,” I said.
It was the best I could do.
26
Then Daniel Torres was living in my house.
One day, he was a line of text, a disembodied voice, and the next day, he was sleeping on a couch in my living room.
Well, my dad’s living room technically.
When I approached Dad after the funeral, to ask if Daniel could crash for a few days, he chose that very instant to pretend he was a real parent. Probably because Grace was standing there, he asked what he thought were real parent questions.
Did Daniel’s guardians know he was here? (Yes.) Was he on drugs and planning to steal things from the house? (Probably not.) How did I know him? (Friend of a friend?) I could see him trying to think of additional, better questions, but in the moment, he seemed to draw a blank.
“Fine,” he said. “But he sleeps on the sofa.”
Daniel was fine with this, but he seemed to take it to mean that he was confined to the couch exclusively for theduration of his stay. So for the first few days, he sprawled out there with a laptop balancing on his small belly. Meanwhile, I flitted in and out of the room and made sorry attempts at conversation.
“How did you get here, anyway? You never said.”
“The bus.”
“Huh. The bus. Interesting.”
“Yeah. There was a guy in the back guarding the toilet.”
“No kidding.”
“Totally. He wouldn’t let anyone use it. He said it was an infringement on his rights.”
“Hmm. Weird.”
“Yeah.”
And that was the best we could do.
We couldn’t seem to get anything going. And I thought, on numerous occasions, that I’d made a terrible mistake by implying he should come here. I couldn’t understand why things were so strained. After a couple days of relative silence, there were still no signs of improvement.
Then he showed up at my room.
At night.
Just a half hour before he appeared, I had gone down to the kitchen to get a snack. I’d heard him shuffling and twisting around on top of the cushions, taking small,frustrated breaths like a baby. I couldn’t sleep either.
So I was awake when I heard the knock. I got up slowly. I assumed it was my father at first, come to ask me what the hell was going on with the odd teenage boy on our couch. Instead I found Daniel standing in the dark hallway, blinking at me.
I hadn’t closed the shades, so there was enough moonlight in the room that we could see each other. He was wearing a baggy T-shirt, and his hair was matted against his forehead. He looked my way, and a sudden wave of self-consciousness broke over me. I was wearing ripped boxers and a tank top. Not exactly ready for prime time.
