I awoke from a complicated and confusing dream, or maybe nightmare; in my dream, I was in a plush room, with Leon, and a girl whose face I never saw, and Barbara was there, too. She was trying to talk to me, to tell me something, and I was straining to hear what she was saying, but her voice was being constantly drowned out by the roaring background silence. I knew it was important, maybe the most important thing I’d ever hear, but try a I might, I couldn’t make out what she was trying to tell me. Suddenly Nicky was there, his furious face covered in terrible scars and cuts, his habitual grin replaced by a huge scar pulling his mouth down on one side. He reached out and grabbed my collar, cuffing me on the side of the head, shouting “How could you do that, why did you let it happen, where the hell were you? She needed you!”
I jerked awake with a shout, to see Shari’s eyes full of concern.
“What is it baby? That was some nightmare, you’ve been twisting and muttering, do you want to tell me about it?”
I couldn’t properly recall the dream; like all dreams, what had seemed so clear and insightful had faded almost immediately; the only images that remained clearly were Barbara’s anguished face and Nicky’s bruised, bleeding face covered with scars and cuts, hurts put there by my father.
I lay back, suddenly realising I was covered in sweat, and still too unsettled to go back to sleep. I couldn’t work out what had brought that on; I never dreamed, or if I did, I never remembered my dreams, but this one had reached down into me and pulled all sorts of switches and I didn’t know why. Shari pulled herself closer to me and looked at me quizzically.
“Baby, you’re trembling! What frightened you, what did you see?”
I didn’t know, but, for the first time in my life, I felt a deep melancholy, a sadness so profound I wanted to cry. I needed to cry, and I didn’t know why, and that unsettled me even more. I felt like I’d forgotten something I really needed to know, and the loss was gnawing at me. Shari sat up and pulled me even closer, cradling my head in her arms, holding me close and gently rubbing my head, the way you’d calm a small child.
“Let it go, baby, whatever it was, just let it go, you’re safe now, I’ve got you…” she murmured, and for some reason, that picture of Barbara back home on the mantelpiece flashed into my mind, her smiling face and carefree expression, and her bracelet glittering in the light from the camera flash. That jerked me awake again, and now my head was full of that image, entwined with memories of how we’d treated her, ignored her, closed our ears to her cries, and pretended that she was fine, that all was well in our world. There was no more sleep for me that afternoon.
*
We were dressed and ready for dinner with Leon and his girl by 7 p. m., Shari in a deceptively modest black cocktail dress that made her look delicious and my preferred first course at any banquet, the dreams and memories of earlier temporarily banished by the sight of my beautiful girl.
“Do you like it?” she smiled, pirouetting to show off her svelte figure in that figure-hugging dress, and I could only nod, once again lost in admiration of her long, supple legs, her trim, sexy body, and her gorgeous hair tumbling down her back in a riotous mass of red-bronze curls. I was dressed in a pair of dress slacks and a new white dress shirt, and a subdued purple silk tie with a “Hermes” label she’d pulled out of one of the boxes we’d brought back from the shopping mall.
Shari pronounced me fit to be seen in public, so I knocked on the interconnecting door, which was opened by Yaz. Her dress wasn’t at all deceptively modest; on the contrary, it seemed to be competing for the title of world’s shortest dress. It was a glittering metallic Teal green, to set off her Titian-red hair, her lips a blaze of almost fluorescent crimson against her pale olive skin, with her hair cascading carelessly over her shoulder, and towering matching green stiletto heels making her already flawless legs look truly endless to finish the look; she looked breathtaking; my baby sister was stunning, no escaping the fact; but then, so was my older sister, and they were going to make maximum impact tonight, I would have bet the farm on it.
We made our way down to the lobby, to wait for our guests, other guests and visitors stopping dead in their tracks to stare at the two visions of loveliness walking through the lobby like they owned the place. Leon was already seated there, waiting for us, talking to a girl with her back to us, with colour-streaked hair cut in a layered shaggy mop. As we walked up to the eating area, he glanced up and spotted us, immediately standing up and smiling. His girlfriend also stood up, smoothing down her really short shift dress as she stood, and turned to greet us. She was a pretty little thing, petite bordering on tiny, with thick, dark eyebrows framing a pretty, elfin face, and a gold pendant piercing through her bottom lip. She smiled broadly, and then, for a second, her smile faltered and her eyes widened behind her pink-tinted pixie glasses as she looked intently from Rick’s face to mine and back again.
“Guys, this is Judy Nixon, my fiancee. Judy, these are the two guys who saved my ass today, Rick and Bobby, but I haven’t met these two lovely young ladies yet!”
I made the introductions, introducing Yaz and Shari as our girlfriends; it was too complex to explain our real relationship, and they didn’t actually need to know that anyway. Judy shook hands with all of us, then looked up at me.
“So, Bobby… and Rick; am I right in thinking that would be short for Robert and Richard?”
I nodded, and she looked appraisingly at me, then flicked her glance over Rick again, obviously comparing our features, noting the resemblance. We chatted for a few minutes while we waited for the car we’d booked to take us to the restaurant, Judy asking about England, what we did, how old we were, all the little things you talk about when you first meet someone. The conversation we’d had earlier that day about his boss and the place he worked came back to me, and so I asked Leon what I thought were a couple of innocuous enough questions, just politeness regarding his place of work and his “English” boss. If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn Judy deliberately jumped-in to change the subject each time. I let it go; it didn’t seem important, and we’d only just met them, so it seemed impolite to press him about something so trivial…
After a short while, Judy excused herself, and still hadn’t returned when our driver arrived, so Leon went to look for her. I led the way to the minivan, and happened to look back, to see Judy and Leon partially concealed behind a potted Weeping Fig tree in the lobby, having some sort of heated conversation, Judy arguing with Leon while simultaneously speaking to someone on her cell phone.
I turned away; it was none of my business, anyway, and they both seemed fine when they joined us out by the entrance, chatting quite normally and affably as the minivan threaded its way through the downtown traffic.
Dinner was very good, an harmonious blend of traditional Malaysian cooking and American flair, most of the dishes exotic and interesting, although I drew the line at the Mee Goreng; there were just too many tentacles in it for me to want to give it a try. Rick and Leon ribbed me gently about it, telling me that squid was delicious, I really should try some, and to just ignore it if it winked at me; somehow, appetising as they made it sound, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it…
Yaz jabbed Rick with her elbow and squeezed my hand.
“Ignore him, baby, I can’t take him anywhere twice! Here sweetie, you can have my Satay instead, I’ll take the Mee Goreng!”
I noticed Judy watching all this carefully, interestedly, almost like she was evaluating us, Rick and me in particular. Once we’d got to the coffee stage, Leon grinned and leaned back in his chair, smiling at all of us.
“Guys, you really saved my ass today, I thank you, Judy thanks you, and most of all, my mom thanks you! She keeps saying I need to meet new people; I guess I did, it’s just that one set tried to rearrange my face, and you guys came along and saved my ass! Somehow I don’t think she meant it in quite the way it happened, but I’m sure glad you guys came along when you did!”
After a good dinner, with good wines and some really good beers, we eventually called it a night, and had the restaurant call us a minivan to take us back to the hotel. Once there, Leon and Judy made their farewells. Leon remarked that he’d be along in the morning to take Rick and me out and show us around, and Judy wanted to show the girls some of the better-kept secrets of Albany’s shopping experience, so that was how we left it.
We were in good spirits when we went up to our rooms, although for some reason the intent, sometimes almost hostile, looks I’d seen occasionally flit across Judy’s face puzzled me. I shook it from my mind; I was mistaken, I must be; I didn’t really know enough about people to interpret their body-language that well, and I was probably on completely the wrong wavelength.