Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge

his wife from Spain who refuse to speak to anyone during the six days and
nights they occupy what used to be the master bedroom, a woman who has
been on permanent disability for 10 years because of repetitive stress syndrome,
several people waiting for low income government subsidized housing, a
Satanic lesbian couple and several retirees: a librarian, a steel worker, and a
mathematician. But even so, there is something more than that, something
peculiar about each one.
Every night at 3 o'clock in the morning, your boyfriend calls from
home. It's early afternoon where he is. It doesn't matter to him that you are so
far away - he has a supply of other people's calling card numbers. He tells
you that he should have let you go, that he thought you wanted to be free, that
he doesn't know what to do now. You don't know what to do either. It's been
over three months.
The operator of the glass bottom boat explains that fish have sensitive organs
called latera/lines. These latera/lines pick up the vibrations made by other sea creatures,
he says. That is how they manage to swim so close to one another without touching.
They also do not scrape their bodies on the coral below.
He turns on a special light that illuminates the reef Small iridescent
angelfish dart in and out of neon-colored lunar rock. Strange fleshy pink, white and
green plants beckon. They are sometimes tubular, sometimes spiky, sometimes fluttering
like ostrich boas.
One night, your boyfriend calls to tell you that he has made a friend
for you. She is the sister of a woman he has met back in the States. You do not
want to know this woman, you say. It is a ploy, a way for him to keep tabs on
you, to know what you are doing.
"You're always alone," he says. "It's not good."
When the woman shows up in her new car to pick you up, some of
the residents come to their windows. It's rare to see someone from the outside
around these parts. She is tall and has long, curly auburn hair. She lives in a
condominium on the beach. She is beautiful. You get into the passenger's seat
and you drive away. You tell her about how this morning, in the upstairs
shower, which you rarely use, you looked up and thought you saw an eye
watching you through a hole in the ceiling. The woman is horrified. "What
did you do," she asks. You tell her that you quickly turned off the water,
dressed and ran down to the owner 's office, but he refused to answer.
13