Inexpressible Island Read online

  They stopped at a watering hole in the Mojave to gas up and grab a quick snack. The food was gross. Old wrapped burritos, nachos with dried-up cheese, dubious-looking tuna sandwiches.

  They got sodas and Doritos and brownies and potato chips and sat at the picnic table in the desert dust under a canopy, continuing their ardent conversation. The topic veered off to the horror genre.

  “Your ignorance of classic horror, Zakiyyah,” Ashton said, “leaves you woefully unqualified to run my haunted house.”

  “I have a job,” she said. “Why would I ever want to run your haunted house?”

  “I didn’t say I was going to pay you,” Ashton said. “You’re not even qualified to run it for free.”

  “I wouldn’t run it even if you paid me,” said Zakiyyah.

  When their lunch at the decrepit picnic table on the side of the gas station convenience store in the middle of the desert began, Ashton knew he was sick in love with her. By the time it was over, he knew he couldn’t live without her.

  Why are you looking at me like that? she said.

  He waited to answer. Like what?

  I don’t even know. Like I got something on my face.

  Is that how I’m looking at you?

  I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.

  He said nothing.

  What’s wrong with you? she said.

  Everything’s wrong.

  Ugh. What is it now?

  Ashton didn’t say anything, he just stood up. He lifted himself off the bench, leaned all the way across the table, over their garbage train wreck of travel mart food, and kissed her.

  For God’s sake, what do you think you’re doing, Zakiyyah exclaimed, breathed out. She dropped her drink. Her arms wrapped around his neck.

  I really don’t know, he said. He came around the picnic table and pulled her up. His hands were in her hair, his lips were on her. His arms slipped down her back, down her cotton dress, pressing her breasts against him. Her hands rose in supplication.

  Ashton, what are you doing, she kept repeating, her eyes closed, her face up.

  I really don’t know, he said.

  Their fevered fumbling in his miniature car could’ve been filmed as a climax of a screwball farce. He couldn’t move the seats far enough back, not his, not hers. Before he could even get her inside the car, before he could pull down her dress or expose her breasts, he had to remove the boot cast from her leg and put the top up. He sat in his seat, she in hers. He leaned over the console. Finally the tinted windows got steamed up. He pulled down her dress, unhooked her bra, bared her glorious breasts to him. He didn’t have enough hands for all of her, enough lips for all of her. He didn’t know what to touch first, what to do first. He knew where he wanted his hands and lips, he knew where he wanted his everything. Why do you smell so good, he murmured. Why are you so hot? They made out like wild kids on the beach.

  Off to the side at the rest stop, they remained parked, her trying not to make a sound, and every five seconds a new car would pull in and some joker would get out, and peer across the dust at his lightly shaking BMW.

  He pressed her against the car door, fondling her, kissing her, the heat off his body melting her down, the heat off her body making him rock solid.

  Ouch, she said.

  That’s not me, he said.

  No, it’s the door handle in my back.

  He took her hand and put it over himself.

  Whoa, she said.

  That’s me. Let’s get out of here. Quick. Let’s go find a motel.

  Are you out of your mind?!

  Yes. He was panting.

  She was panting. Everyone is waiting for us in Vegas, said Zakiyyah. Julian’s family, Mia’s mom, my mom—oh, and Riley!

  Ashton pulled back slightly. How do you know about Riley?

  Mia told me.

  You asked Mia about me? That is so hot. His mouth was on her breasts.

  It was a question, not an invitation, she said in a moan.

  How wrong you are. Let’s go. Motel.

  Ashton, we can’t!

  I didn’t say we had to stay overnight, he said. We’re not moving in. But I can’t drive like this or stand aright. I can’t move or breathe or live until—

  You want us to go rent a motel for an hour? Please, Ashton, do continue with the romance. But he was making it difficult for her to berate him and moan at the same time, his fingers and palms and mouth on her topless body so insistent.

  Z, this is the most romantic thing I can give you, Ashton said. I want you so desperately that I can’t wait until later. I can’t wait another minute. He tried to move his entire body over the stick shift into the passenger seat to get closer to her.

  You cannot fit into this space with me! she said.

  Watch me.

  It’s physics, Ashton. Two people can’t occupy one space at the same time.

  Watch me.

  I think your idea of romance and mine is quite different, Zakiyyah said, gasping it out, pressing his stubbled mouth harder against her nipples. Suck them, she whispered, suck them. Wait, she kept saying, wait! This isn’t going to work.

  Even the motel that rented by the hour was about to become out of the question.

  You knew what you were doing, he said, when you wore this unbelievable dress. You knew how I’d feel about it.

  The $20 knit pullover from Amazon?

  Yes. Sitting there tantalizing me, seducing me. You’ll think twice next time.

  I’m thinking twice right now, but what does the dress have to do with it?

  His hand was between her knees.

  Ashton!

  Now you know. Because the dress is nothing but flimsy fabric, nothing but a bit of cotton between me and your bare—

  Ashton . . . !

  Now it was really too late.

  Somehow Zakiyyah held herself up and he slipped under her from his seat into hers, somehow he unbuttoned his shirt and unbuckled his belt. While Marley’s “The Lion Roars” played through the car speakers, he sat in the passenger seat, moving it as far back as he could against her guitar, and she climbed astride him, her underwear off, the dress bunched up at her waist. His mouth tried to remain on her nipples as she fit over him and slid up and down, but she weakened too soon and was unable to hold herself up, breathing out his name O Ashton followed by I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. He had to keep her steady and move himself, breathing out her name followed by the words I can, her hips clamped between his hands. Both he and she tried desperately not to make any sounds that would make the people putting gas in their cars 50 feet away call the cops. The convertible heaved. The shocks made a sound, hissing in, hissing out. Stephen Marley made a sound. The guitar behind their seat made a sound. The bass strings vibrated their humming rhythm pounding on every half beat, then every quarter beat, then every semi-quaver. And then Zakiyyah made a sound.

  “Well, you were certainly right about one thing,” she said after it was barely over, still on top of him, clutching his wet neck.

  “What’s that?” Ashton murmured, his head back. “Oh, yeah. If you see something that needs doing and can be done in under two minutes, do it immediately.”

  They both laughed.

  He opened his eyes. “I saw something that really needed doing.” Her body was in his hands.

  “And you did it immediately.”

  “Woman, I think I love you,” said Ashton.

  She gazed at him. “You’re very fickle. A minute ago you hated me.” She rubbed her breasts back and forth against his bare perspired chest.

  “Do that for two more minutes.”

  “Ashton!”

  He fondled her, he kissed her.

  “Do you know when I knew I loved you?” Zakiyyah said. “When I stepped into your store and you were wearing your stupid Free Licks shirt and I was yelling at you for it, as you deserved to be yelled at, and you opened your arms like you could do no wrong—and I realized even as I was infuriated that all I wanted was to be in
them.”

  “That’s why I opened them.”

  Eventually, they got going. With their lips pulpy and Zakiyyah’s neck and chest inflamed from his stubble, they got themselves dressed and sorted, got cleaned up as best they could, and pulled out onto the highway, but not before Ashton leaned over and put his face into her outrageous breasts, pulled down her dress, kissed her nipples again, kissed her lips. You’re a goddess, he whispered. He drove with one arm. His other arm lay in Zakiyyah’s lap.

  “I hope Mia and Julian don’t kill us for what we’re doing,” she said.

  “For what we just did,” Ashton said, “or for throwing them a surprise wedding with a hundred people, not twenty?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Wait, did you get the right flowers? Mia said he’s really . . .”

  “You don’t have to tell me. A bear. Ridiculous. Nuts. They nearly wiped out my bank balance, but yes, I ordered them some white asphodel. He keeps telling me the asphodel is the forever flower.”

  “That he even knows that is weird.”

  “He knows a lot of weird shit, pardon my language.”

  “Oh, when you spoke to him yesterday, did he tell you he punched a guy?” Zakiyyah said.

  “If Julian told me about every man he punched,” said Ashton, “we’d have no time for any other conversation. What did the guy do?”

  “Oh, great. Sure. Defend Julian.”

  “Um, did you want me to defend the other guy?”

  “Whatever. Mia said they were in the casino and some drunk said something to her. She said the words had barely come out of the man’s mouth when he got his shit quaked. Julian hit him so hard, he knocked him out. MGM had to comp the guy like two years’ worth of visits so he wouldn’t press charges.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Mia said something like aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Come on,” Ashton said, “there had to be more.”

  “That’s the thing—there wasn’t. Julian couldn’t explain it. He told Mia the phrase just set him off.”

  “Well, the drunk should’ve kept his trap shut.”

  “Oh yeah? What if Mia says something that sets him off?”

  “Let’s all calm down. You know she can do no wrong in his eyes.” Ashton cleared his throat, let a mile of road go by. “But he has been having really bad dreams lately.”

  “I know. She told me.”

  “I don’t think she realizes how bad it’s been,” Ashton said. “She’ll know soon enough. Several times a week, I find him sleeping on the floor in my room. I had to put an air mattress in the corner.”

  “Because that’s not weird,” Zakiyyah said.

  “You know what’s weird? That the dreams only started after he met your friend.”

  “Um, do you know what the word coincidence means?”

  “Julian says there’s no such thing. First time coincidence, second time happenstance, third time enemy action.”

  “Then this is coincidence even by his definition,” said Zakiyyah. “You can only meet someone for the first time once.”

  “Jules says otherwise,” Ashton said.

  “Does he remember what he dreams about?”

  “Unfortunately for me, yes.”

  She waited. He drove. “Are you going to sit there, or are you going to tell me?”

  “The dreams are so bad, I almost don’t want to tell you.”

  “Oh, then by all means, don’t tell me.”

  “Dreams in which,” Ashton continued, “I die, and Julian dies, and Mia dies.”

  “So he tells me anyway,” said Zakiyyah.

  “Dies not just once. But over and over. In the most unimaginable ways. He doesn’t come right out and say what happens to me. It’s so bad, he won’t tell me. I’ve had to extrapolate. But no matter what else happens, Mia always dies. Don’t tell her I told you this.”

  “Oh—not to worry.”

  “I’m serious, Z. Ever,” Ashton said. “Or I’ll actually be dead, because Jules will kill me. It will ruin our friendship.”

  “Do I die?” Zakiyyah said.

  “I don’t think so. You just vanish.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Are you going to take it seriously or what?”

  “You want me to take seriously the screwed-up dreams of some guy I hardly know?”

  “Yeah, some guy who’s about to marry your oldest friend.”

  “That’s her problem.”

  “Nice.”

  “What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? Why did you tell me?”

  “Because I’m worried about him,” Ashton said. “I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. I couldn’t bear it on my own.”

  “Well, now we both can’t bear it. Happy?”

  “Happier,” he said, “knowing I’ve made you a little bit miserable.”

  “A little bit?” Zakiyyah said, bringing his hand to her lips.

  She’s not the one.

  Ashton said that about every girl he’d been with. And it didn’t matter. Every silk designer-bejeweled beauty from Pasadena to New Orleans made him shake with joy, but he’d also shake his head and say, Jezebel, Delilah, Grace Kelly or Marilyn, I love you, girls, I love you all, but you’re not the one. You’re pretty, foxy, you smell good, you sing, do cartwheels, laugh at my jokes, you like morning sex and swimming naked in my pool. But you’re not the one. He and Julian had a decade of sun and fun pretending to search for the one.

  And then the bell rang on a Friday morning, and she walked into his Treasure Box with her ripe body and her perfect face, judging him even as she herself was falling, falling, falling. Before she spoke a word, Ashton knew. He knew it in his gut.

  And when that happened in a man’s life, the man had to come clean with everyone else, and make good on his human promise to struggle toward perfection, to try to be good, to try to do good, and hope that his puny effort would be enough.

  Ashton finally understood what Julian had been talking about.

  He and Z were quiet the rest of the way into Las Vegas, listening to Marley’s “The Fruit of Life,” listening to “Babylon” and “Paradise” and “The Lion Roars,” on repeat. Half a mile before the Wynn, Ashton pulled into a 7-Eleven. “Look, Z,” he said, taking her hands in his, “my Julian and your Mirabelle are getting married at the Chapel of the Flowers. It’s an incredible momentous day. Even my dad, whom I haven’t seen since my college graduation, is flying in for the occasion.”

  Zakiyyah nodded. “And Mia’s mom, Ava, who’s been a widow for sixteen years, is bringing a plus one! Some Vietnamese guy. She met him on her last trip to London. Had lunch at his place, and they hit it off. Mia doesn’t even know about this yet.”

  “Yes, and your girls from Brooklyn are flying in to meet my boys from UCLA and Jules’s boys from the gym,” Ashton said, grinning. “It’s going to be one hell of a party. My point is, I don’t want anything, not one single blemish, to ruin this for Jules and Mia. Okay?”

  “Of course. But why are you telling me? How are you planning to ruin it?”

  “What I’m trying to say . . .” Ashton regrouped. “Is that I can’t speak to Riley until after the wedding. I promise you, it will be the next private conversation she and I have. I will do right by you. But I also have to do right by her. I’ve been with her a long time, and I owe her that.”

  “Okay,” Zakiyyah said, looking at him with deepening emotion.

  “I just don’t want you to be upset that I have to stay with her, and sit next to her, and dance with her. That for the next few days, I’ll have to be with her.”

  Zakiyyah leaned forward to kiss him. “Thank you for being honest with me. Besides, the maid of honor always dances with the best man. So I’ll get to dance with you, too.”

  “Yes. Because you’re my maid of honor.”

  “And you’re my best man.”

  He gazed into her face. “You are so familiar to me,” Ashton said. “I don’t know why. You’re like my favorite song
.”

  “And you are mine,” Zakiyyah said. “Don’t worry about me. You do what you need to do. I’m playing the long game. I’ll stand aside.”

  “And if at any time during the wedding and dinner and dancing, you hear me say the words Hey Baby,” Ashton said, “know that I’m thinking of you.” He smiled. “I’m thinking of the next time I can romance you again.”

  “Ashton!”

  “Yes, Z?”

  “Hey, baby,” she whispered.

  “Hey, baby,” he whispered back.

  47

  Pink Palace

  “JULES, THE ORIGINAL GIRL THEY HIRED BROKE HER LEG IN A freak accident, and I got the part!”

  Mirabelle had gotten the call while they were in the morning ocean learning how to surf in the gentle Waikiki waves. She took the phone to the lobby where the reception was better and ran back to their cabana on the beach to tell him. They were staying at the Royal Hawaiian, “The Pink Palace,” for their honeymoon.

  “What’s the part?” Julian said, sipping his breakfast cocktail and looking up at her, blocking the sun, jumping up and down in her Marmont minimum-coverage bikini. She’d gotten crazy tanned in the lethal tropics by using one of his hacks: one day heavy SPF, next day light SPF. “Don’t tell me—Medea, the vengeful mother, in London?” Judging by how excited she was, what else could it be?

  “No, sadly. Though that would’ve been so great.”

  Julian shrugged. “Not that great, newlyweds being separated while the wife is wooed by another man in a foreign city.”

  “Okay, that part might not have been great,” she said, “though I do like to be wooed, but—London! And why would we have been separated? You would’ve come with me, of course. To keep an eye on me. You know how you like to keep an eye on me.” She smiled. “You would take in the sights while I rehearsed.”

  “London is not all it’s cracked up to be,” Julian muttered, glad they didn’t have to make that decision. “So what part did you get?”

  “The part of a chick named Josephine—in a horror flick!” she said in a thrilled voice. “I tried out for it a month ago and had two callbacks.” She plonked down on the edge of his chaise, rubbing his leg. “You probably don’t remember; it was during that heady period in our courtship when you were contemplating moving continents so you wouldn’t have to make dreaded love to me.” She tickled his knee.