The house was as dark, and the rain and cloud cover had darkened it further. We tucked each other into bed, and I curled against her. I shifted her T-shirt and kissed her shoulder, moving my lips across it. She tasted of warm milk and canned peaches.
“My Jonathan,” she groaned.
“I’m not making a pass at you.”
She turned to face me. “Like hell.”
“I think you’ll help me sleep.”
“You never sleep much.”
“Well, I’ve been sleeping less, and I don’t feel right. Not since the arrest. And since Rachel.” I cleared my throat when I choked on her name. My neck and arms hurt as if the nerves were being squeezed. I broke out in a sweat. Ridiculous. I tried to get control of myself, but it was hard to breathe. I must have been coming down with something.
She turned around to face me. “You ever going to forgive yourself for that?”
“I’ll get around to it.”
“You’re going to give yourself ulcers.”
I didn’t answer. Talking about my irrational emotional issues wouldn’t get either one of us to sleep, and we both needed it. I stroked her eyebrows as I’d done before, getting her eyes to flutter closed. She sighed and let me touch her, relaxing. Our legs got heavy together as she released the spring of tension binding them. She seemed on the edge of sleep, breathing regularly and softly. Her eyes stayed closed when I stroked her hair. Then she opened them.
“You’re wide awake,” she said.
“It’s all right.”
She sat up. “No, it’s not.”
I tried to sit up with her, but she pushed me down. I was stronger, of course, but I let her press my shoulders to the mattress.
“Stay here,” she said.
She rolled off the bed and padded away. I didn’t know where she was going or what she intended, but I hoped it didn’t involve Xanax or alcohol. I didn’t want to fight about that or anything. She came back with a viola and bow slung over her shoulder like a batter coming off the on-deck circle. If I’d ever seen anything as sexy as Monica Faulkner in a stretched-out T-shirt and wielding a stringed instrument, I’d be at pains to remember it.
“You going to knock me unconscious with that thing?”
“One way or the other.” She crawled on the bed, leaving one foot on the floor and stretching her body so the instrument fit under her chin. She drew the bow across, making it hum, then turned a knob at the top of the neck. I slipped closer until my lips touched her thigh. “Any requests?”
“Something bombastic. With percussion.”
She laughed and played a measure. I recognized it right away as Mendelssohn’s “Evening Song.” She was all right, my woman. What she was trying wouldn’t work, but the honest attempt wouldn’t go unappreciated. I stroked her knee with my thumb as she played and rocked her body with the slow rhythm of the song. The piece was short, and when it ended, she riffed on the melody, smoothing it further. Her hips rocked the mattress like waves on the ocean. I stroked her knee, then stopped, placing my hand on her leg.
I listened with my eyes closed, feeling her sway, hearing her music, as it got farther and farther away. The sounds of the ocean outside the window grew louder, and the water rose, coming over the sill and flowing onto her floor. She must not have noticed the flood or care about the fact that her house would probably float right down the hill, because she kept playing and rocking. I was too heavy, too weak, too contented, to stop her.
The rain got louder and harder, dropping into my eyes, blinding me. My stomach was in complete upheaval, and my head swam as the waves pulled me out to sea. I had a dead weight dragging down my right arm. It was a person. A woman. Monica? I’d let her face go under while I fought the tide. I pulled her up, the effort twisting my stomach. Her mouth was full of water, and her eyes were glassed over.
The scene was mine. I’d been blacked out from half a bottle of whiskey, but things had happened, and my brain had stored them deep.
“Rachel, baby, come on!” But even saying the words took more energy than I had.
I looked upward, to safety, and saw only sheer cliffs between us and the street above. The beach had drowned under forty nights of rain, and we were about to as well. No one knew we were there. Most of the population of Palos Verdes was away for Christmas.
So it was on me. All I had to do was keep our heads over the water and not drift too far out, a simple task that became more difficult as the minutes wore on. The car drifted away, the headlights getting dimmer as it drifted out to sea. I’d been thrown clear, saved by inertia and a body limber and pain free from conspicuous alcohol consumption. Rachel was sober and stuck, but somehow, I’d jumped in and pulled her from the car.
I looked up the cliff again, the rain dropping in my eyes. It was a black edge, cutting the starry sky in half. Hopeless. Going down had been as easy as a running jump. Getting back up would be impossible. I tried to keep our heads above water, and failed, and tried again, and failed again.
A light.
Two lights.
A car parked right at the edge of the cliff. I tried to cry out, but I had nothing left. The noise of the ocean and the rain would have drowned out even the most powerful scream. All I had was my body and my last bits of strength. I swam toward the lights, pushing against the current, and saw that the driver had found a way to crawl down.
The driver was my father.
He wore the khaki trench coat I’d looked for at Sheila’s house. I’d wanted his keys so I could chase Rachel. I’d seen him out the window, going after her, and run out. That’s how he knew we were there. Thank God for him. I’d never been grateful for my father before. I looked at Rachel. She’d become a dead weight in my arms, but I pulled her up. A wave caught us. A lucky break. I smacked against the rocks, managing to put myself between them and Rachel. My father got thigh deep in the water, grabbed my collar, and pulled me onto the ledge. I climbed with him, pulling Rachel. Dad grabbed her and helped us up. I collapsed at the top.
“This is going to cost me, son.” My father’s voice. “It’s going to cost.”
The world swam as if I was riding the teacups at Disney. I opened my eyes. In front of me, so close I had no context but a few blades of grass, the dark, rainy night, and my own nausea, was Rachel’s face. She too had her cheek to the grass. Her eyes glazed over. Her mouth hung open. Her hair stuck to her face. She blinked, and a tear fell over the bridge of her nose.
She faded, like a movie going to black, and the sound of the rain in Echo Park replaced the sixteen-year-old remembrance. Monica breathed in my ear in the rhythms of sleep. Outside, I heard traffic, a bus on Echo Park Avenue, and the children playing in the Montessori school yard. I opened my eyes, as if waking not from a dream but a resurrected memory.
It was morning, and finally, Rachel was free.