I felt naked. I was naked. I wrapped my hair towel around me, sarong style, and looked around the living room. There was nothing remotely like a weapon anywhere in sight.
Another knock. The dog should have been barking her head off, but she just sat there looking at the front door, smiling and panting. I picked up the cordless phone, ready to bean somebody over the head with it if necessary, and went to the door.
“Who is it?” I asked, face to the crack in the door.
“It’s B.J.”
“Shit.” I twisted the dead bolt and swung open the door. “Sorry. I thought you were one of them.”
He looked at my face, then at the phone gripped in my white knuckles, and then back at my face. “What were you going to do? Talk me to death?”
“It’s not funny,” I said, motioning for him to follow me inside. “You don’t know what I’ve been through in the last few days.”
“How’d you get that bruise?” He pointed to his own forehead.
I fingered the spot I knew was purple. “This ... ow. Got hit with a fire extinguisher. That was before I was thrown overboard and nearly drowned.”
“Seriously?”
“What do you think, I’m doing a stand-up routine here?”
“You sure don’t look good.”
“Thanks. Just what a girl wants to hear. You have such a way with words, Mr. Moana.”
As I was speaking, he went into my bedroom, pulled the quilt off the bed, and with a big flourish, spread it out on the living room floor.
“Lie down.”
“What?” I said clutching at my towel. “B.J., last night somebody tried to kill me. And they came damn close.”
“Facedown.” He picked up a pillow off the couch and set it on the floor. “Put this under your neck and let your head hang off the other side.”
“I don’t have time for this ...”
He put his hands on my shoulders and pressed down. I resisted at first, but the weight of his hands suddenly felt overpowering, and I bent my knees and spread out on the quilt.
“Take off the towel.”
“Why?” I lifted my head and looked over my shoulder at him.
A faint smile lit his eyes. “Just do it, Seychelle. Trust me.
I hesitated only a fraction of a second after looking at the familiar planes and angles that made up his face. “Oh, B.J. I’m just so tired.” I unwrapped the towel, and he slid it down so that it was draped across my butt.
“Shh. I know. Just try to empty your mind.” He knelt on top of my back with a knee on either side of my rib cage and began to knead the muscles in my shoulders. His hands dug deep into the fibers of that damaged left muscle, and it felt as though electricity coursed through his fingers. A very real and palpable heat penetrated from his skin deep into the pain-wracked tissue. It hurt, but there was an exquisite pleasure in the pain.
I closed my eyes and surrendered my consciousness to the world of sensation. Explosions of color lit up my inner eyelids. But before long, my memory kicked in and a montage of memories played in my mind without plot or destination, the way dreams sometimes jump from image to image with no discernible connection.
Pit and I played dress-up next to the family’s Dodge Valiant, getting into Red’s navy footlocker, trying on his uniforms, the big brass latches on the locker gleaming in the late afternoon light, the garage filled with the odor of old motor oil and mothballs.
Standing in front of an easel, my mother’s arms wrapped around me from behind, her warm bosom pressed against my back. She was steadying my right hand and the brush it held, whispering in my ear “Light strokes, yes, that’s it, lovely,” as I washed in the blue sky around the white clouds.
All five of us were on board Gorda, probably the one and only time it ever happened. It was the Fourth of July and we were offshore waiting for the fireworks on the city barge. It was a night so dark and still, the sea looked like star-splattered black glass. Meanwhile, Maddy, the only one allowed to use the lighter lit Pit’s and my sparklers ever so slowly, and we were screaming at him to hurry up, to stop trying to be such a big shot. Red told us all to shut up. Mother went up to stand alone on the bow. He didn’t go after her.
We were in the living room and Red was crying. I’d never seen my father cry. I hadn’t said a word to anybody all day. Not to the lifeguards. Not to the police officers. Not to my brothers. Not to my father. “Didn’t she say anything?” he kept asking. “I don’t understand. Why? Why did she do this? She must have said something.” I didn’t think I would ever talk again. . . .
The summer burned up through my towel, sandwiching me between rays of the sun and the dry oven heat of the sand. On a radio, several blankets over Carole King was singing “Up on the Roof.” I was pretending to read the words of my book.
“Seychelle,” my mother said.
I didn’t answer her. I kept my eyes moving over the print on the page.
“Honey.” I was still mad. I wanted to be back with Pit and Molly. “Try to understand. Sometimes it’s just too hard to do what we know is right.
“Seychelle, will you ever forgive me?”
I answered her.
She stood up and walked down to the water.
"Did you fall asleep?”
B.J.’s voice brought me back. The pain was nearly gone. I felt rested and renewed.
I sat up, shifting the towel around me, and rotated my arm and shoulder. There was a little remnant, sort of a phantom pain, but I had regained 90 percent of the movement in my wrist and shoulder.
“That’s amazing, B.J. What did you do?”
“Just a little shiatsu. It’s like acupuncture, only using massage instead of needles.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, trying to stand gracefully without losing the towel. “Thanks.”
He shrugged. “What are friends for?”
I walked closer to him and watched his eyes. “You are my friend, aren’t you? I mean, after what happened the other night at your house ... I don’t know, I was kinda crazy.”
“Always, Seychelle.”
He was right. I could see it in there.
“You wouldn’t believe what I had started thinking about you. People have been following me, spying on me, trying to hurt me, and I haven’t known who to trust.”
“Trust your own instincts,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me.
My own arms were crossed in front of my chest, clutching the towel, and I folded into his embrace feeling slight and fragile in the circle of his arms. It was rare and remarkably pleasant for me to feel almost petite. I nuzzled my face into his chest, smelling him and feeling the thudding of my pulse deep in my tight throat. I wanted to say something, to explain that I’d never felt anything like his touch, but the words wouldn’t come. I pressed my body to his and was about to toss my towel and reach around those shoulders when he placed his hands on my arms and gently pushed me away.
Our eyes locked. He brushed the backs of his fingers across my cheek. Smiling, I playfully bit his pinky.
B.J. pushed out his lower lip in a playful pout and shook his head. “Seychelle.”
I loved the sound of his voice speaking my name. “How do you do that? I was in so much pain, and you just made it all go away.”
“No.” He sighed. “Not all of it.” He pressed his fingers against the tendons on the side of my neck, and I winced. “See that tightness? You are still holding on to something, something I can’t massage away. I don’t know what it is . . . maybe you don’t even know what it is. But until then”—he turned me around—“this is not the time,” and he pushed me through the bedroom door. He didn’t follow.