“Wrong on both counts!” laughed Angel, looking at the guys. “How about a bet? If you win, we’ll blow you.” She folded her arms and waited for their reaction, ignoring Rose’s aghast expression.
The pain in my stomach was sudden and intense. “Oh, shit!” It didn’t pass, and I felt dizzy, too. Angel was at my side, tormentors forgotten, before I could sink to my knees and sit on the grass.
“Lloyd, what is it?! Are you okay?” she asked, peering at my face. “Is it your heart?”
“I don’t think so.” I struggled not to moan under the relentless pain. “It’s lower; appendicitis, maybe?” I looked up at the circle of faces staring at me. “Sorry to — aaaah! — get in the way of your game.”
“I called 911,” Nate announced, joining us.
My vision narrowed, centered on Angel’s wide eyes; a haze of glows illuminated the growing darkness around her. “Lloyd, stay with us! Don’t scare me like this!”
Rose’s voice sounded nearby. “He looks so pale!”
My consciousness expanded briefly, not in a good way, when the EMTs lifted me onto the stretcher. I wanted to curl into a fetal position, but the straps held me flat, and any movement sent jagged spikes of pain through my abdomen. Angel was my anchor, her grip crushing my hand while the aura of her mind spread over me like an electric lace canopy. The siren sounded so far away.
I hadn’t been in a hospital since Alexandra died, and wasn’t happy to be back. I felt strangely detached and almost sleepy, certain only of Angel’s hand, while I floated in a sea of mind glows, many wracked by physical or emotional anguish, or even fading the way Alexandra had.
“Lloyd, I love you! Don’t leave me!” sounded fuzzily in my ears. There was a rush of other voices too, but the sounds meant nothing to me.
“Angel…” Drawing breath hurt, and took too much effort. The glows around me started to fade away — all except the closest, which flared to unbearable brightness. Suddenly the pain was gone; my consciousness lasted but an instant longer.
June 2011
I stood in the office, curiously unwilling to sit in His chair. I’d been in it any number of times, either alone, waiting, or sharing it. The feel of it against my bare skin was like an old friend. The scent of the leather, subtly perfumed by His cologne, made me think of “home.” Today, I chose the sofa.
Mr. Sullivan didn’t make me wait long. “You know, Angela, this office is yours.” He put a metal lockbox on the coffee table before sitting beside me. “Lloyd left everything to you, including his ownership interest in the club. Hell, you spent as much time here as he did!”
“Not today, Danny.” Mr. Sullivan always wanted people to call him Danny — unless they were prosecutors or tax collectors. It was one of his quirks, like the way he liked his employees to leave as little to the imagination as possible. I was shockingly overdressed, in a dark knee-length dress and jacket and modest 2-1/2 inch pumps, but we’d just come from the memorial service.
It was scandalous enough to have two young, unrelated women sitting in the first row, without dressing like a call girl. My Lloyd had always been a believer in subtlety, so I honored him by dressing carefully, looking appropriately mournful, and not hanging all over Rose — or letting her hang all over me. A number of the other girls had gone, too, but they’d been in back and not in the faces of the people who’d known Him from his other jobs, or even school.
“Well, this is the only stuff from his apartment worth keeping, apparently. Lloyd wanted it given directly to you.” I knew Mr. Sullivan was more affected than he let on, but he didn’t let society’s expectations bog him down; he probably felt the sooner this task was out of the way, the sooner he could get back to thinking of new ways to wring cash out of Home Run’s clientele.
I felt a little thrill of anticipation, looking at the box. I’d never seen His apartment, or felt a need to visit it. Home was wherever I could offer myself for His enjoyment; I felt myself juicing up at the thought of it, and then remembered that cherished wand of flesh would never again pierce my body. The box was His last gift to me.
Mr. Sullivan looked at a piece of paper he’d brought with him, and rotated the combination lock on the box to 721. “Sentimental bastard,” he said under his breath. “That was the day he and Alexandra were married,” he added in response to my look of inquiry.
After a quick glance at him, I unlatched the box and flipped open the lid. There were a number of old composition books and a smallish jewelry box, and that looked like it. The jewelry box was on top, so I lifted it out and opened it.
“Sentimental bastard, indeed!” Mr. Sullivan laughed as we both stared at the contents. “Jesus, Lloyd, you packrat.”
I picked out the ring He’d worn until the night He’d created me, and the slightly smaller copy of it. “Their wedding rings?” I guessed.
Mr. Sullivan nodded. “Yup, and that’s Alexandra’s engagement ring.” He poked a fingertip at the smaller of the two diamond rings in the case.
“I thought Lloyd was only married once,” I commented. He’d been very clear I should never call Him Master, so of course I was very careful to use His name when talking with others. “Was this an anniversary ring?” The other diamond was much larger, and the style was different, too.
“No,” Mr. Sullivan answered, laughing louder. “It’s the engagement ring Sis got from Jonathan before she decided to marry Lloyd.” He looked at my face. “What, you’ve never heard that story?”
“No.” I wanted to know everything there was to know about Him, but He almost never talked about His life before me. “What happened?”
“Well, it’s a long story,” Mr. Sullivan began, with the relish of somebody who knew it was a good one. “Let’s just say Alexandra was engaged to another guy when she met Lloyd. She dumped him a couple months before the wedding, and chose Lloyd instead! I have to say, I didn’t think much of him when we met, but he grew on me.” He smiled absently. “I guess she didn’t give back the ring when they broke up, although it looks like she got the watch.”
“What?” I thought I’d been following him, right up to the end. “This?” I asked, pointing to the old Rolex. “I gave it to Lloyd as a birthday present two years ago.”
Mr. Sullivan gave me a funny look and picked up the watch to look at it more closely. “I’m sure this is Jonathan’s — see this scratch? It’s from a bar fight. My sister gave him this watch as an engagement gift. How did you get it?”
“My mother gave it to me; she said it belonged to her father and thought it should stay in the family. I don’t know why she didn’t give it to Dad; she never said much about her folks.”
“What was her maiden name?”
“Edwards,” we both said at the same time.
“Karen Edwards?” he repeated, and I nodded. “Jesus, Angela! Your grandmother was sitting right behind you at the service today!”
My mind reeled at the thought. I tried in vain to picture her face, to remember anything about her, but I drew a complete blank. “Grandma” always meant Nana Vasquez in Houston.
“We’re having dinner tonight; you definitely need to crash the party! Connie’s granddaughter — I’ll be God-damned!” He bounced to his feet. “Be here at 5:30, okay?” There was nothing Mr. Sullivan liked more than being one up on everybody else; he walked out of the office looking younger than the day I’d phoned him from the hospital.
A little dazed, I closed the jewelry box and picked up one of the composition books. I recognized His neat handwriting as soon as I opened the cover; it looked like lab notes, dated from February 1962. A second book, chosen at random, had dates in the 1980s. I riffed through a few pages, but couldn’t concentrate. A grandmother!
We recognized each other immediately from the service. From the look on Mr. Sullivan’s face and the absent curiosity on hers, I knew he hadn’t told her yet. With the insight that came from knowledge, I studied Connie’s features and found hints of my mother there.
At least he didn’t leave her hanging. “Connie, my dear, this is Angela Vasquez. She worked closely with Lloyd over the past several years, and in many ways he was her mentor. I believe you know her mother — Karen Edwards?”
She sat down, hard. “Karen’s daughter?” We stared at each other while Mr. Sullivan grinned.
“Angela, this is Connie Dickerson — your grandmother. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
It took a couple false starts, but smiles appeared on our faces. There was nothing for it but to stand up again and hug each other.
“How in the world did you discover this?” she asked, when we were seated again.
Mr. Sullivan was only too happy to relate the story and point out his cleverness in fitting the pieces together. I learned more about Mom’s side of the family in 15 minutes than I’d known in 25 years. It was easy to see why Mom had never said much about them; Ms. Dickerson — Grandma — was a sweet old lady, but my intuition told me she had her foot in Mr. Sullivan’s crotch before the end of the story.
“How apropos,” she told us when Mr. Sullivan finally fell silent. “I’m so glad you could be with Lloyd at the end, Angela.” I sensed from the way she was studying me again there was something more that hadn’t been said yet.
“I’ve always wondered…” She squared her shoulders, as if making a confession. “I’ve often thought Karen might have been Lloyd’s daughter; the timing was right, and she didn’t get the Edwards nose.”
“A great comfort,” Mr. Sullivan readily agreed. He showed unusual, for him, restraint in not mentioning exactly how I’d been “comforting” my putative grandfather for the last two-and-a-half years.
For myself, it felt right. I could hardly have loved Him more, and any family relationship we might have had paled before my need for Him and His love for me. I twisted the band that had belonged to Alexandra before me, settling it more firmly on my finger, and looked forward to the remainder of the meal. “Please, tell me about how you met him.”
It was later than usual by the time I walked down the hallway, but dinner had run on and none of us had been ready to end it. Connie had finally begged off in order to rest before her morning flight back to Florida. I still hadn’t decided whether to send her contact information to Mom or not, but that was a decision for another day.
Leave a Reply