Swim Back to Me Read online

  “What’s the matter, Carolee?” one of the other guys said. “Alejandro said he can help.”

  Alejandro turned away, eyes downcast, front teeth pulling at his lower lip. She’d trained him when he first started, almost a year ago, and she felt sort of responsible for him. It wasn’t just that she’d been around longer than he had—she’d been around longer than anyone, including her boss. It was more, he was the runt of the litter and she hated watching anyone get bullied.

  She gave him a swift nod and they headed for the exit, Alejandro trotting beside her and then darting ahead to push open the door. “Yo, Chavez,” someone called after them. “No funny business.”

  The moon was high and bright, and a cold wind blew bits of debris around the nearly empty parking lot. Carolee turned up the lapels of her flimsy jacket and clutched them close. She hated her heavy coat so much she’d ditched it at the first false note of spring.

  They began walking. An empty Vitamin Water bottle lay in their path, and Alejandro paused, raised his foot high, and gave her a huge grin when he saw he’d flattened it. He said, “You’re lucky I’m even here tonight. Usually on Fridays I’m wit my friends doin’ airsoft.”

  “Airsoft.”

  He stared at her with disbelief, his thin face pinched from the cold. He had smooth olive cheeks and the beginnings of a fine, silky mustache that never seemed to grow. He said, “Carolee, you gotta be kiddin’. It’s guns—Not real—It’s so fun, you gotta go wit me sometime.”

  He told her about the empty shopping mall where he and his buddies played late at night, its businesses shuttered, a giant “For Lease” sign facing the highway. There were recessed doorways perfect for ambushes, vacant loading docks. He said, “My boy Gordo’s a security guard, he lets us in.”

  “Hope he doesn’t like his job,” Carolee said.

  “Why, cuz he could lose it? Gordo’s smart, he ain’t gonna get caught.”

  He was parked at the far end of the lot, his boxy old Nissan just a few spaces from her battered Hyundai. By the time they got there she had to pee, though she’d peed right before she clocked out, like ten minutes ago.

  He swung open his trunk. “Fuck me.”

  Inside were a bicycle wheel lying on its side, a mess of dirty clothes, a six-pack of off-brand cola. No jumper cables.

  “I know I had ’em,” he said. “Somebody musta stole ’em.”

  She turned to go. She had a theory that any one bad thing made it likelier more bad things would happen. Her dead car had set her up. She said, “I’ll figure something else out.”

  “Carolee, no, we can go borrow some. Gordo has some.”

  “It’s fine, Alejandro.”

  “Or I can drive you home and go get ’em after, bring you back tomorrow. You workin’ tomorrow?”

  She wasn’t. And she really had to pee, the feeling like a knife slice now, which was not good. Plus it was incredibly cold. In the morning she could probably find someone with cables at her apartment, get a ride back up here and deal with her car then. All she was supposed to do tomorrow was stop by her mom’s. There was some project her mom had in mind for the two of them, labeling photos, reorganizing a closet—the kind of thing Carolee thought of as playing with the past, as if the past were a doll and the two of them were putting dress-up clothes on it, combing its hair so it would look pretty.

  She said to Alejandro, “I live in Sunnyvale.”

  He shrugged and opened the passenger door for her, and she got in, the car smelling of old French fries and air freshener. He settled into the driver’s seat and wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Finally I get you in my car.”

  “Do not do that.”

  He held up both palms, then backed away from the curb and drove straight across the painted lines of a dozen parking places. Leaving the lot, he gave her a worried glance from under the fringe of his hair and faced the road again.

  Now she felt bad; he was just doing what guys did. And he looked so hangdog, slumped in the seat, steering with the heel of one hand.

  She said, “So this airsoft war. It’s teams?”

  He looked over and grinned. “Every man for himself.”

  “But you help Juan.”

  “I help Juan and Iggy. Gordo helps me.”

  “Gordo helps you but you don’t help him?”

  “He don’t need help.”

  And on he went, like the little kids she used to babysit, who talked and talked, and then talked more as bedtime got closer. He basically was a kid: twenty-two at the most, whereas she’d turn thirty in less than a month, and what a good time that was going to be. Her mom kept saying they’d go out somewhere really nice, just the two of them, like that was the solution and not the problem.

  They drove past a gas station, and Carolee wondered if she should offer to buy him some. “You got a full tank?”

  “Yeah.”

  Another gas station, complete with a big bright mini-mart.

  “Can we stop for a sec?”

  “I said I’m good.”

  “Not for gas.”

  He turned to her with wide eyes. “Carolee, no. You’re my role model, you can’t smoke.”

  “I don’t smoke. You can keep it running, I’ll only be a sec.”

  The cashier was an old guy, sitting on a stool with his neck arched so he could watch a TV mounted to the ceiling. Carolee ducked into the bathroom. It was dank and freezing, with scattered puddles on the concrete floor. There was nowhere she wanted to put her purse, so she held the strap between her teeth as she lowered her thighs to the frigid seat. At first it felt good letting the urine out, but as she finished it burned, a sure sign, and she knew she had a bad night ahead.

  The store light was bright and ugly. She found the grocery aisle and scanned the shelves, hating the way boxes of food looked in these places, the yellows and cardboard reds.

  Alejandro stood empty-handed at the register, leaning on one elbow. When he saw her he straightened up. “What you got, juice?”

  She flashed the label at him.

  “Cranberry juice. Guess you got a infection, huh?”

  “Alejandro!” She set the juice on the counter and fished in her purse. In the mirror behind the register she saw how she towered over him, all 5′10″ of her. She felt like his mother.

  She opened her wallet, and he reached across her to a plastic tub of Slim Jims. He said, “On you? Thanks, boss.”

  “I’m not your boss.”

  “You are. You’re my boss lady.”

  It seemed even colder when they got back outside. She hated “boss lady.” She was shift manager, which—despite the flowchart she’d made for the online business class she took a few years back—meant next to nothing. Shift manager at the idiotically named Copy Copy, her thirtieth birthday coming soon—she was kicking ass.

  Back in the car, she unscrewed the top of the cranberry juice and drank from its too-wide opening, the juice sweet-sharp, with that drying effect. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  He said, “Carolee, I hate to tell you, cranberry juice ain’t gonna fix it.”

  She looked over at him, sitting behind the wheel, a serious look on his face. “You’re a doctor now?”

  He shrugged and sat there nibbling on the Slim Jim. Another car pulled in next to them, and the driver got out, a man in his fifties with thick, disheveled hair and the ruined nose of an alcoholic. He spoke through his open door, waving his hand like he was excited or upset, and when he moved away Carolee got a quick glimpse of his passenger, a black and white mutt with floppy ears.

  She’d left clothes in the washer, she just remembered. Put them in last night when she got home from work and forgot all about them. Evenings she worked late, she was sometimes so fried she didn’t even eat, or she ate crap from the freezer, Hot Pockets, Bagel Bites, stuff she bought for emergencies. Her laundry would’ve been taken from the washer by now, left wet in her basket if she was lucky or just dumped on the floor. She hated her apartment. Every now and then she th
ought of trying to move north, closer to work, but it was like the idea of signing up for some classes again—it wouldn’t make a big enough difference, so why bother?

  She turned to Alejandro. “So are we going?”

  He didn’t respond, his expression glazed, the Slim Jim drooping from the corner of his mouth.

  “Yo,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Are we going?”

  He shook, or shivered—it was like a wet dog trying to dry off. Moving slowly, he started the car, put it in reverse, and pulled out of the gas station, but when he came to the on-ramp for the freeway he turned right.

  “Wait, what’re you—”

  “Shortcut.”

  There was no shortcut to Sunnyvale, and her pulse picked up a little. Was this going to turn into one of those horrible stories, woman killed by coworker on deserted street? She thought of a Monday morning when she’d gotten to work early, and Alejandro and the other night-shift guy were sitting on opposite counters, tossing a roll of packing tape back and forth. When he saw her he hopped down and gave her a big smile. “Hey, Carolee,” he said, “come and kiss me, just right here”—he tapped his cheek twice—“ ’cause I know you love me.”

  He wasn’t a maniac. A fuck-up but not a maniac. And maybe not such a fuck-up, either—for him he was probably doing well, just having his job. She was pretty sure he was first-generation, with parents who didn’t speak English.

  She was in pain again, and she shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable. She had swiped some sleeping pills from her mom’s medicine cabinet, and this was definitely the night to try one. Either that or lie awake watching the clock. She was pretty sure Kaiser opened at 9:00 on Saturdays. At 9:01 she’d call for some Cipro.

  He said, “What you doing tomorrow?”

  “Nothing. Dealing with my car.” Maybe she’d skip the stop at her mom’s, though then she’d have to hear the usual moaning, What’s the point of having you close by if I never see you?

  “No, after that,” Alejandro said. “Later. We should go out. You wanna go to a movie? I ain’t hittin’ on you, I swear.”

  She glanced over at him, sitting there all thin and hopeful. Did he really think she’d go out with him, even as friends? They were so different: age, race, everything. What would they talk about, airsoft wars? She said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  He stared straight ahead, hands tight on the steering wheel.

  She said, “What?”

  “Why are you such an icicle, lady?”

  “I’m sorry.” She hesitated. “It’s late. Don’t listen to me.”

  On they drove, past heavy trees on one side of the road and a big wall on the other. The streetlights were far apart, and they were the fancy kind, with curly iron things spiraling on top of the globes. At a T intersection, she looked in both directions and saw more walls, more trees.

  “Where are we?” she said.

  “Atherton.”

  “Why are we in Atherton?”

  The light turned green, and he made a left and passed through a giant stone gate. Now they were somewhere residential, but quiet, wealthy, spread-out residential, with smaller closed gates at driveways every hundred yards or so and, way back from the gates, the smudgy outlines of giant houses. Atherton was where the rich people lived, the richest people, richer even than the kids Carolee had gone to school with in Palo Alto. Atherton kids went to private schools. They drove brand-new cars and walked in gilded groups through the pricey Stanford Shopping Center, where Carolee had her first job, cashiering at a gourmet hot dog stand. In those days, Carolee’s richest friend was Tamara Bevin, and she said her parents had chosen Palo Alto over Atherton or Woodside because they wanted her and her brother to learn about the real world. Carolee and her mom lived in the thin strip of south Palo Alto that ran between El Camino and the railroad tracks, where the houses were small and close together and you could hear shouts many nights, and cars roaring up and down the streets—and she knew that was about as real as Palo Alto ever got.

  Alejandro stopped at a driveway. He reached up to his sun visor, and the gate swung inward.

  “What the fuck?” Carolee said.

  “Mi casa.”

  The car crunched over gravel and slowed as a huge white cake of a house came into view, with pillars and a covered entryway, and a massive double door flanked by glowing lanterns. He cut the engine, and they looked at each other.

  She said, “You live here.”

  “My mommy and daddy do. Come on, I gotta make a stop.”

  Inside the house it was dark, though there was a light on somewhere near the back, so dim it might be nothing more than a night-light. He moved fast, and she picked up her pace and trailed him through an enormous living room, twice the size of her entire apartment, and through a corridor that led to a vast kitchen, with stoves and ovens and sinks and refrigerators at one end and couches and easy chairs and a huge flat-screen TV at the other, where a small, dark-haired woman sat watching some show with the sound off, her tiny body enveloped by a splashily flowered robe, white with giant red and orange flowers that gleamed in the near dark.

  “Sandro,” she said, leaping to her feet and switching on a lamp. “Madre de dios.”

  “Mami.” He crossed the room and kissed her cheeks.

  Her hands fluttered from her face to his face to the pockets of her robe. Her skin was a darker olive than his, her eyes deeply black and ringed with shadows.

  “Sandro, you almost gave me a heart attack. What’s wrong, what is it?”

  He said something to her in Spanish, and they went back and forth, speaking rapidly. Alejandro gestured at Carolee, and the woman came over and held out her hand. She was maybe 4′11″, and she had tiny, almost nonexistent breasts; she could have passed for a child if it weren’t for the blurriness of her aging face.

  “You are most welcome,” she said. “How do you do? I am Alejandro’s mother.”

  Carolee took the hand, which was cold and soft and seemed to slip from her grasp the moment she touched it. Was she the maid? No, she wasn’t the maid, and Alejandro was not the person he pretended to be. All these months Carolee had assumed he was from the Latino part of Redwood City, near the taquerías and bodegas. He obviously wanted people to assume it, with his cholo talk.

  “Carolee,” the woman said. “In Spanish we have Carolina. Are you for Carolina?”

  Carolee shook her head. She’d been named for her mom’s parents, Carol and Lee. It was embarrassing, she never told anyone.

  “You work at the photocopy shop?”

  “She’s the queen there,” Alejandro cut in, speaking in perfect, unaccented English. “The queen of photocopies and expedited shipping services.”

  Carolee felt her face grow warm, but he turned to his mom and said, “¿Dónde está Papi?”

  She gestured at the ceiling, and he left the room, his footsteps sounding on a flight of stairs.

  Carolee looked at his mom. She used to know how to deal with people like this, rich and in every way out of her league; she got through school dealing with them, charming them, making sure she was that nice girl Carolee to all the parents she encountered because that was how she got to go places. “Mrs. Chavez,” she said. “I’m sorry to intrude.”

  Alejandro’s mom smiled. “It’s Mitchell—Chavez is my maiden name. My son borrows it because he does not like Mitchell. But please, call me Raquel.”

  “Raquel,” Carolee said. She repeated the apology, explaining about her dead car, but all she could think was what a liar Alejandro was. He’d faked this Latino homeboy thing and he’d changed his name to go with it? She was going to kill him. Her days of protecting him from the other guys at work, trying to sand the edges off their teasing? Over.

  His mom was waiting.

  “He was giving me a ride home,” Carolee said, “and then suddenly we were here. I don’t know why we stopped.”

  His mom’s arched eyebrows went up. “For medicine. He didn’t tell you?” />
  “Medicine?”

  “He has a soft heart. He always has.”

  Carolee forced herself to smile, but things were going from bad to worse. What did Alejandro think he was going to do, dig up some old pills from an infection he’d had? He was a liar, and he was out of his mind.

  She had to pee like crazy, and she looked around, wondering where the bathroom might be. Bathrooms. The sitting area was full of furniture, everything covered with flowers, gold tassels, big silk buttons. Even the lampshades were flowered, and the lamp bases were painted with ladies holding parasols.

  “May I use the bathroom?” she asked. “The restroom?”

  Alejandro’s mom showed her the way, reaching into a small pink-and-gold room and turning on a light. When she was gone Carolee closed the door. It hurt, and then it hurt a lot more as she finished. There were tiny linen hand towels, ironed, and rather than use one she dried her hands on her pants. She thought of a boy she dated in high school, from a rich family in Crescent Park, and remembered going home with him for dinner one night: soon after they arrived the boy’s mom suggested he show her the restroom so she could freshen up. She didn’t know what that meant, freshen up, but she figured she must look dirty, so in the bathroom she took a small fringed cloth—terry, not as fancy as this one—and wetted it thoroughly to scrub her face, realizing only afterward that it was a hand towel and not a washcloth. “They sound very la-di-da,” her mom said when she got home and described the evening. Carolee had liked the boy: David Connell, with his straight dark hair and his voice that still cracked sometimes. He ran track; she met him after practice most afternoons, and they made out behind the tennis courts until it was time for him to go into the gym to shower. She remembered loving his intense sweat smell, the damp of his shirt. But after that dinner with his family she broke up with him, saying she needed more time to study. It was a good excuse: it was junior year, everyone was working like crazy. No one had to know the truth, which was that it made her too nervous, the threat of being found out.

  It was after one a.m. She decided that when she got back to the kitchen she’d excuse herself to Mrs. Mitchell, call a taxi, and just eat the fare, thirty bucks, forty, whatever it would be. Alejandro she would deal with later.