The contrast between them physically couldn’t be any greater. Chuck Daniels looked like an authentic chef, rotund, with premature jowls and roller-pin forearms. When Fani first showed me any attention at the private school, Sophia, jealous, of course, tried to turn me against her quickly by telling me that beautiful girls and handsome men like to be friends with people who are less attractive. It makes them stand out more. It was another way for her to insult me. I thought about it and asked her, “So, then, why are you not her best friend?”
I didn’t ask it with any nasty tone, but it was enough to send her flying off to complain to her girlfriends about me and how I was impossible to help. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder if what she had said could be true. I wondered about it now. What did Adan and Chuck have in common that would make them so close? Perhaps I was hoping to find something that would turn me away from Adan, but it didn’t take long to see that he and Chuck had a definitely warm and sincere friendship. Later, Adan would tell me Chuck was the brother he had never had.
“I’d do anything to help that guy,” he said. “And I will. His father gets me that angry.”
He slipped out of his unpleasant mood quickly, however, and talked excitedly about our boat trip to Catalina.
“I’d take you someplace else,” he said after we had left the restaurant, “maybe dancing, but I want to get you home early. I want you to be fresh and awake tomorrow so you don’t miss a thing.”
When we drove up to mi tía Isabela’s hacienda, he didn’t get out immediately, however. He shut off the engine and sat there. I didn’t know what to make of his silence. I was getting nervous.
“I’m glad I met you at this particular time in my life, Delia. I feel my father and I are starting the final liftoff of a rocket ship. I imagine you’ve been told some pretty racy stories about me. I know I have something of a reputation. I’m sure your cousin Edward has warned you about me.”
I started to protest, but he put his hand up.
“It’s all right. I’m not saying I don’t deserve the notoriety. I just want you to know you’re the kind of girl who can make a guy like me grow up.”
He smiled and leaned in to kiss me softly. Then he pulled his head back a little and looked at my eyes. If I ever sensed I was losing my grip on any restraint, I sensed it at that moment. It would make me feel so guilty later, but I brought my lips to his waiting lips and kissed him. He held on to me firmly. Then he lowered his head to my shoulder and whispered, “I’d better get you out of this car now, or I won’t let you out at all.”
He sat back, opened his door like someone truly trying to oppose the demands made by his own body, and got out to come around and open my door. In silence, he walked me to the front door of the hacienda, where he pretended to be a gallant Zorro and kissed my hand.
“Buenas noches, señorita,” he said. “Sueños dulce.”
“Pleasant dreams to you, too, Adan,” I said in a voice that seemed to rise out of my heart.
He smiled and hurried down to his car. I waited until he got in and started away, and then I entered the house in a daze. I felt as if I were floating up the stairway. Sophia opened her door as I approached my bedroom. I imagined she had been sitting at a window and watching for us. She was in her nightgown and barefoot.
“I do not want to fight with you anymore, Sophia,” I said.
She folded her lips into a wry smile. “That’s okay. I’m not going to start an argument or anything. In fact, I’m going to be your friend. I just thought you’d like to know where my mother was tonight, or rather, who she was with.”
“I do not—”
“She went out with Adan Bovio’s father,” she said quickly. Then her smile widened. “She’s just using you, just like she uses everyone else.”
She stepped back into her room and closed her door.
I stood there listening to her words echo in my ears.
Maybe I should be grateful she was so spiteful. Adan’s words and good looks, the whole warm evening, and his kisses had lifted me into a place so high I could no longer see Ignacio’s face. It was truly like personally delivering him to the third death.
Now, thanks to Sophia, like a balloon losing air, I sank back to the earth, where promises like beautiful bubbles floated by and then burst.
I hurried to bed and the sanctity of sleep, where I could escape fr
om Fani, from Sophia, from Tía Isabela, and from Adan Bovio and see only my grandmother and hear only her voice.
But just before I got into bed, I saw the headlights of an approaching vehicle wash over my windows. I looked down and watched as Adan’s father got out and opened the door for Tía Isabela. He kissed her when she stepped out, and they held each other very closely. They looked like serious lovers already. A terrifying thought sizzled in my mind.
If I did something to ruin her pursuit of Adan’s father, she would see me as she saw my mother, once again ruining her plans for a loving relationship.
It was the emotional world in which she lived and from which she could never escape.
We were all in little traps, perhaps of our own making.
13
Open Water