Déjà Vu
Lorona dug the sleep out of her eyes. The dream was a warning. Déjà vu sank in, paralyzing events into how they must occur.
This will end with someone leaving and never coming back. Her throat twisted.
Sweating again under the Victoria's Secret nightgown that Kestrin had bought for her, Lorona pushed the painful dream to the border of her consciousness, but it only leapt up stronger, like a hydra sprouting two heads where one had been before. The memory of the echoing bang of a suitcase on the stairs filled her ears and she heard herself wail with the lungs of a ten-year-old who held nothing back.
“Good morning,” she heard herself say, and thought, On the sixth day God made mankind, full of curiosity that would damn them. And it was not good.
Kestrin's eyes clung, unmoving, to her face. Life flickered in them, but it was like light through a screen door. The real Kestrin stood outside in the cold, separated from her.
“Did you read this?” he asked softly. His hand traced the new mark on the journal's cover.
“Yes.”
Silence. The back of Kestrin's chair creaked as he slumped against it.
“Why?”
“They told me that—”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Kyle and Teri and Yuki.”
“They put you up to it?”
“They said that you had an entry in there—”
Kestrin broke in, “That I show to girls before they get some?”
She couldn't speak. She'd never heard him talk like this. Her surprise and anxiety curdled into fear. A tumor of disgust expanded in her throat. Lorona swallowed futilely and a headache exploded behind her eyes.
Kestrin hissed, “And you believed them?”
“I-I needed to know.”
“I said I'd tell you anything you wanted to know.” Much more quietly, he continued, “If it was bothering you, why didn't you ask me?”
“Because I didn't want it to be true, and I didn't have the guts to ask you directly. I snooped around because I'm a coward.”
Kestrin's voice deepened and grew solemn. “What did you decide? Was it true?”
“I think I found the entry. The edge of the page looked more worn than the others. The one about that crying girl in the white dress?”
“And?” His voice shook and the screen lifted from his eyes. The real Kestrin stared at her, waiting for her answer with taut expectancy.
“It seems true. I mean, the entry was there, waiting at the end for the girl to do something…” A spark of anger flared inside her. “I know this was all in the past, and you're not proud of everything you've done—” Lorona stopped when she saw his face. She'd said the wrong thing.
Kestrin's eyes fell to the ground, his shoulders slumped again, and his legs uncrossed. One foot kicked an empty Corona bottle. He'd been drinking. The time on their bedside clock read 7:18am.
She felt a small dragon crawl out of her belly, ready to spew flames. “You must have got a good run for your poetry,” she hissed.
His eyes burned darkly. “The entry never gave me what I was looking for.” He stood. “Today is no exception.”
“Why didn't you try it on me? Was I so easy that I didn't need to be seduced with poetry? You just married me to ease my conscience?”
“I was—”
“When did you plan to read it to me? On our one-year anniversary?”
He grabbed the empty bottle and hoisted it as if about to throw.
Lorona faltered.
He let his arm drop. “All you had to do was ask, and I would have given you anything. Instead, you took my thoughts and read them in secret.” He looked like he'd tasted poison. Then, with his eye on the journal, he said, “You have no idea what this is.” He let the journal slide to the floor. “We're just two strangers, living together, pretending we can create our own happily ever after. I bet your friends told you that, too.” He snatched his shirt from the day before, and forced his arms into the sleeves. He buttoned it carelessly. “You think I haven't thought about how crazy all this is?”
Lorona let her hair fall in her face, as if that would magically muffle her ears.
“Go.” Kestrin went on, his voice rising, “Go on and trust your friends. You've read my journal. You've seen my thoughts. I'm not the white knight, am I?”
Lorona pressed her palms over her ears and shook her head, not wanting him to continue, but he misunderstood.
“Yeah. I know.” He'd taken her headshake as acknowledgement that she despised him after reading the journal. He said, “Maybe we were crazy. Maybe we acted too fast. Maybe nothing makes sense.”
Now Lorona looked at him. “You said you were sure.”
“I was sure that this was different. Now, quite honestly, your response to this journal throws things into quite a doozy.”
“You said that this was meant to be.”
“Well, I'm human, and now I'm not so sure. I've got a good track record for disappointing people. Just talk to any of the other girls.” He punched the last word viciously.
Lorona couldn't tell if he was trying to hurt her, or if he was feeling the bite of guilt. Either way, it didn't matter to the spasms of panic that charged through her like an electric current, each one larger than the one before. The dream/memory flashed again and she saw an arm covered in silver bangles dragging a suitcase out the door while her own voice howled, begging her mother to stay. Lorona's own mouth hung silent as she sat in the still apartment with Kestrin glowering at her.
I'm missing something, she thought. There's something going on here that I don't understand.
There was more to this than a journal entry. She could tell by the way he talked about it. He reached for his pea coat, which hung by the door.
“Don't go,” she pleaded. It was like a pathetic puppy whimpering at its master. She just sat there, shaking.
Kestrin shook his head. “I have to go, Lorona. I need to get my head on straight and see if I just went crazy for the last few days.”
“But I thought that we said we'd work out our arguments, not storm off and do something dangerous.”
Kestrin yanked aggressively on the collar of his coat. “Who says I'm doing something dangerous?”
“I meant me. If you leave, I'll do something dangerous. I know it.” Lorona bit her lip and waited. Maybe, if he knew how badly she needed him to stay, he would.
Instead, he looked angrier. “Are you threatening me? Like you're going to hurt yourself?”
Again, she'd said the wrong thing. In her desperation, Lorona lost her temper. “Of course I'm not going to go hurt myself! I'm not the one who writes about playing with blades on my wrist, am I?”
His eyes flashed. For one moment she saw a raw throbbing in his eyes before he slammed his screen closed and sealed himself behind it with an iron door. When she looked again she couldn't see any more of the real him, just a rigid mask of face towering over her as he buttoned his long jacket.
“I'm leaving. You can go wherever you want. Stay here, go home to your mom and drink tea with her, I don't care.”
Lorona looked down at her hands, shaking her head furiously. She'd never told him about her mother.
“If you can't trust me, how am I supposed to trust you?” he said. “We were just starting to build that and I don't even know where to start rebuilding. It's not instinctive. At least, it's not now.”
“I'm sorry.”
He straightened up from tying his shoes. “Me too.”
“Don't say that!”
“There's milk in the fridge.”
He slammed the door.
The bitter terror, the fearful restraint, the sullen anger, everything he'd seen in Lorona was all too familiar. The voices of the other girls returned to lay siege and riot on the borders of Kestrin's mind, screaming, mocking, making obscene gestures with their hands and tongues, and ridiculing Kestrin until he fell in with their bitter and victorious chant. Just like the rest of us. She's just like the rest of us.
He didn't know how he got in the car and drove, because he couldn't see anything and his chest felt tight enough that inflating it at all would have burst him, but when he opened his eyes, he'd parked in the belly of a downtown skyscraper and the next thing he was doing was riding an elevator, walking into a waiting room, and asking a secretary if Kal Shehadi was in the office.
“Oh yes, go right in.”
Kahlil didn't tell most people his full first name. His family relations who had helped him land the sweet consulting job had also given him a name that most found challenging to pronounce. Kestrin shambled past the receptionist as she resumed typing with two index fingers.
Kahlil's glass office doors shone without a single fingerprint, so Kestrin added five for good measure. Kestrin's work in the food industry made him the caveman hunter-gatherer in comparison to the successful Kahlil who consulted and lectured about new information technology.
Kahlil sat motionless in his office with the mahogany desk, Persian rug, and floor-to-ceiling window that looked out at the Space Needle, the Centerhouse fountain and the square roof of the Key Arena. Kahlil had his back to the view, like everyone else on his floor, and stared at the door. Turning your back on a view like that for any reason had never made sense to Kestrin. Kahlil's name glowed on a golden card near the door, which Kestrin pushed open without knocking.
“Kestrin?” His friend waited for an explanation, letting his eyes do the asking. His fingers still clicked fluidly across his keyboard.
“It's my day off,” Kestrin offered.
Kahlil glanced at his watch. “No, you work mornings at the restaurant. You're supposed to be there right now, making the daily soup or something.”
“Actually, now is when I make the marinades and the dessert sauce.”
“So you're playing hooky?”
“You could say that.”
From the worried look on Kahlil's face, Kestrin knew he'd already let the cat out of the bag. Kahlil had known him since fifth grade soccer camp when Kahlil accidentally kicked Kestrin's hip out of alignment. Thanks first to Kahlil's guilty burden for recompensing his offense, and then later to their mutual loyalty that defied explanation, differences aside, they'd been friends ever since. By now, not much slipped past Kahlil's notice.
“How's the wife?” Kahlil asked. He stopped typing and slid past Kestrin to shut the door.
“She's back at my place.”
“Did you have a fight?”
“You could say that.”
“Is that why you're here?”
“We had a fight. I didn't say I wanted to talk about it.” Kestrin heard the rattle of ice in a drink machine outside in the hall. It made him want to break something. He decided he should remove himself from the glass office as soon as possible.
“Can I help you with anything?” Kahlil asked. It sounded so packaged and corporate, but Kestrin knew he was speaking out of habit.
“You were my best man and my witness at my wedding.”
“Yes.”
“And I've just had an awful thing happen that I don't want to think about.”
Kahlil sighed. “Will she take you back tonight, or are you asking for a couch to sleep on?”
Kahlil always knew how to direct conversations to the practical. He was excellent in the business world.
Kestrin smiled unconvincingly.
“What the heck did you do?” Kahlil shook his head, not expecting an answer. He glanced at his computer screen as a new email arrived with a ding.
“Let's just say I need a place to sleep.” Kestrin wasn't ready to talk about Lorona's failure. If he was really honest with himself, it was his failure, too.
First I dream of marrying her, and then I watch her fail the test like every girl before her. Doubt was having a heyday and Kestrin couldn't answer the question that had haunted him from the moment he woke that morning, even before he'd seen the dented journal. Why am I still having the dream about She Who Cries if Lorona is the one who completes it? She should have known the answer.
Kestrin shuddered. He hadn't felt this desperate since he'd let himself get involved with his friend Michelle. It was a very dark, very lonely, very wild feeling that had left him disgusted with himself afterward. He hadn't even shown the dream to Michelle, he'd just taken her flirtation down the path it was going.
“Want to go get a drink?” he asked Kahlil.
“It's 11:30.”
“We can order lunch with it.” Kestrin held the door open until Kahlil got up and followed him down the hall. Kestrin's phone flashed as their elevator took them to the base of Kahlil's building. It was a message from his mother.
Still liking the married life?
“From Lorona?” Kahlil asked.
Kestrin deleted it. “Nope.”
“I seriously think I've failed an invisible test.” Lorona finished her story to Yuki.
There was a pregnant pause at the other end of the line. Finally Yuki said, “You worked your entire shift in this mental state and you're only calling to tell me this now? What's wrong with you?”
“I know, I know.” Lorona tried to say more, but Yuki talked a thousand miles a minute, pouring her concern into the phone.
“Has he called? Are you feeling okay? Do you feel safe where you are? Have you eaten anything?”
“No to all of the above.”
“Thought so. Come over now. I'm cooking you macaroni.”
“You don't have to—”
“Yes I do.”
Lorona felt so heavy by the time she reached Yuki's, she almost crawled off the bus. She must have dragged herself along the wet pavement at some point, because when she got to Yuki's door, her knees were muddy and bleeding a little.
Yuki cranked up the Ella Fitzgerald, so that when Lorona opened the apartment door, a low crooning swept around her like a friend's arm sliding around her waist. As she staggered inside and closed the door, Yuki bounced toward her with a bowl of steaming macaroni and cheese.
Lorona didn't remember much of what happened next, but she was sure that Yuki never tried to get details. She was pretty sure Yuki had made her eat something and then after the entire pot of macaroni had disappeared, Lorona guessed that Yuki had slipped a little rum into the glass of coke she gave to Lorona.
Right before she fell into a blank sleep, curled up on her old bed, Lorona felt a light pressure on her forehead, probably a kiss, and then fingers around her hand. When she woke up the next morning, she saw that Yuki had fallen asleep, still in her work clothes, with her hand over Lorona's.
Kahlil,
I went for a walk. I've got this craving and you don't have any orange juice in the house—maybe it's something cultural. Do you even believe in citrus fruit?
Peace, Kest
Yuki darling-
Went to the grocery store. I woke up with my tongue craving some oranges like crazy. Since you'll be gone when I'm back, have a great day at work.
Love, Lorona
