Vivi paced her left-behind feeling around the kitchen. As the baby of her family and the only girl, she’d been adored and protected by her brothers, but also considered a pain in the butt to be ditched at every opportunity. Not that Ben had ditched her.
She sighed and wondered if Ben would be able to identify the person the police had in custody.
A skateboard ka-thunked down the street, a grating noise. Now that she wasn’t jacked up with adrenaline, now that she was alone in the house, uneasiness settled around her. The intruder had had a gun. She locked the back door. Forget the fingerprints. She’d smeared them already anyway.
She found herself holding a ladle and didn’t know why. She set it down. Standing in tadasana, she tried a simple pranayama, observing the breath without changing it. On the third breath, she shook her hands in irritation. In class, when Winn offered this exercise, she wanted to shout, “You cannot observe something without changing it.” Even a houseplant responded to attention.
She picked up a sponge, relapsing to her ingrained way to restore order—swiping at the counters she’d already cleaned. The tracked-in mud and mess in the bedroom had to stay. The police would want to photograph, wouldn’t they?
If they’d detained someone, it must be the burglar. There weren’t many young black men in Playa Maria.
Over the years, she’d worked with at-risk students, kids teetering on the brink of disaster. What life—what stupid decisions—had led this one to point a gun at Ben?
But anyone could make stupid decisions. That was for sure. Bubble-wrapped in teenaged ignorance, she’d gone into nude modeling to earn college tuition money. Everything had been fine—for a year.
Vivi opened the refrigerator and blinked at the contents with the vague notion she should eat something. They’d had no lunch.
Maybe it was time to tell Ben, and yet, right now, when he’d almost been shot, seemed like the worst time possible.
She backed into the kitchen, nibbling a piece of cheese.
Once, she’d tried to unburden herself of her secret—to an English major she’d crushed on for a semester of The Bible as Literature. The first time they had sex, in a long, post-coital talk, she’d told him.
His eyes had glistened but he unlatched his hand from hers and said they should get some sleep.
In the morning, he told her it wasn’t a good idea to dump something that heavy early in a relationship. That moment, over a bowl of Cheerios, she stopped adoring him. Just as well. He never called.
Her story had taken on the quality of Double Dutch—don’t rush in too early—but if she waited too long, the opportunity twirled away. And it was easy to put off the telling because under her anger rested a bedrock of shame. Why share it? It wasn’t like she’d murdered someone, or anything like that.
Revived by sharp cheddar, Vivi considered how Ben might react. By the time she’d known nothing would scare him away, she also knew he wasn’t someone who would let the matter lie, even if it had happened more than thirty years ago. He would want justice.
To give attention to her secret, to expose it to air, would change it, as certain as paying attention to one’s breath expanded it. She preferred the experience remain in a little box, under her control, neat and tidy.
The thief had turned things upside down, but now was not the time to tell Ben what had happened in Hollywood.