Chapter seven ~ Partiers
As Natasha climbed the six long flights of stairs to her mother’s apartment she was crying. A feeling of so much dread surrounded her it was like a cloud. She slipped inside and nobody was home, so she reached for Alladin and carried him with her. She curled around him as she wept into his long beige fur, while he padded at her and purred, as cats always do. It was in this little ball, on her bed, where her mother found her a few hours later.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
“Honey, you can tell me.”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“What is it?”
“I just had a bad day.”
“At least tell me what happened?”
“It was just, I saw a really sad movie.”
“Oh Natasha, you always cry at movies.”
“I know.”
“How’s your friend Cheryl?”
“She’s great. She cried too.”
“Then where did you go?”
“We had a coffee in Westwood.”
“That’s nice.”
“She’s moving back east soon, Mom.”
“Oh, that’s too bad Tasha. You two are such good friends.”
“I think it’s because of Augie and what happened. She wants to go home and be with her Dad.”
“Honey some friends and I are having dinner down at the Bicycle Shop Cafe on Wilshire. Want to come? They have the best Spanish omelettes. You know you love it there.”
“No, Mom.”
“It would make you feel better.”
“That’s okay.”
“All right then, I’ll be back by 11:00 tonight. It’s Nancy, Ellen, Patsy and I. We’re celebrating Ellen’s promotion and Nancy’s birthday.”
“Have fun, Mom.”
Natasha hadn’t even been able to tell her own mother. She had lied about the afternoon. Everything about John Sandman seemed like a lie in that moment, on that day. When her mother left, Natasha went down to her car and opened the trunk. It was filled with the drying stems of roses, one on top of the other, and on the other side were photographs in a silvery pile. All of them were black and white, and all of them had been made with his Leica, or her little Russian camera. She had taken some rolls of him and he’d developed them for her during the break. *What am I supposed to do with everything now?,* she wondered.
The semester was going to be ending soon. At the beginning of June. It was May, and so that only meant another month and a half of Mr. Sandman’s class. It’s just that he was in her department -- the Art Department.
She picked up one of the pictures of the two of them, wrapped around each other on a park bench in Venice. All that day they had “walked with the light” as he called it. All that day they had photographed each other, and she had finally stopped trying to hide her face in her hands. It had been so fun that day. Just to be with him. It had been like Georgia and Steiglitz. It had felt like love.
She stirred the petals with her hand. They had become a potpurri in two hundred colors. The scent of rose was intoxicating as it lifted up into the air around her. One hand slammed the trunk down on the whole thing, but she carried the picture of them kissing back upstairs. It made her cry again even harder, and since she was alone she could. She must have cried for four hours that night. Actually, she cried herself to sleep -- with Alladin, her beautiful cat by her side.
YOU ARE READING
Where I Laid Me Down To Sleep
General FictionShe's only twenty two when she falls madly in love for the first time. Only he's the wrong guy. He's her married Art teacher, and he's ruthless when it comes to the pursuit of her. Can she survive him? Will there be another love, later? This nov...
