Spanish Disco by Erica Orloff Read Free Book Online Page B

my freckles, so it has nothing to do with that. I just hate to slow down.
    But here I was in paradise.
    I ventured downstairs after sending all my e-mails and felt like I had nothing to do. Probably because I didn’t.
    “Where’s Roland?” I asked Maria as she stood over the stove brewing some concoction with so much onion and garlic and jalapeños in it my eyes flooded with tears.
    “Mister Riggs is on the beach. Fishing.”
    “What time’s dinner again?”

    “We eat at 6:30 every night.”
    Trying to make conversation, I offered, “I think it’s amazing that you can grow fresh vegetables. There’s nothing but sand around here. Between that and your potato bonsai here, you have a regular green thumb. I killed a cactus that I only had to water once a year.”
    “I learned as a little girl. Only none of the vegetables were for me. We picked them, my family and I. So now I have a garden—Mister Riggs’s garden—but I love growing vegetables with my own hands. They taste better.”
    She held a tomato out in front of her, marveling at its red ripeness. “And I don’t have to give them away. They are for my babies. Mister Riggs, and the birds and the bunnies.” She turned to smile at me, and then she bent her head over her pan, ignoring me as she worked her sorcery over the stove.
    Feeling dismissed by Maria, and with time on my hands and a house that smelled like gastric doom to me, I decided to venture to the sand.
    Stepping out on the clean white beach, I spotted Roland in the distance. He cast his line into the Gulf and pulled back. Then cast it again. Over and over, falling into a rhythm. I didn’t want to intrude, so I started walking in the opposite direction.
    The early evening was breezy. The sun hadn’t yet set, but the sand was nicely warm—not too hot—on the soles of my feet. Shells dotted the beach in wavy lines where the tide had brought them in. An osprey swooped down to the water, and dune grasses grew ragged along the shore. Ihated every minute of my walk. Time stretched out in front of me like the beach. I couldn’t imagine a week here. Let alone longer.
    When I was in college, my freshman roommate was a manic-depressive. Cherish, named by her hippie, acid-dropping parents, stayed awake for days on end, the life of the party. She did stupid things like max out her father’s credit card—by then he’d started a software company and made millions. She walked up to the biggest football player on campus and called him a Neanderthal after he fumbled the ball on what would have been the winning touchdown in the most important game in the University of Virginia’s season. She climbed out on the ledge of our dorm “to look at the stars” at night. She drank too much. She didn’t take her Lithium.
    In her depressive episodes, Cherish refused to eat. She wouldn’t shower. She didn’t dress. She curled in a fetal position on her bed and sucked her thumb. Her beautiful chestnut brown hair grew matted. She cut all her classes.
    I accepted Cherish for what she was. I would come back to our dorm after classes and stroke her hair and try to get her to eat something. I knew the cycle would reverse itself sooner or later. And it always did.
    I never tried to talk her into taking her Lithium, and even though everyone else on our hall thought I was crazy, I opted to live with her again the following fall and every year after that. She wouldn’t take her Lithium because it made her lose the highs. And I knew better than anyone how that felt.
    She and I called it our sweet insanity. Of course, mybrand was higher-functioning. I never hit the lows and never soared to her highs. My brand was just killer Type-A, pedal to the metal, careening wildly, never-sleep drive and ambition. I graduated second in my class; I double-majored; I interned every year while taking a full load. I worked nights as a bartender. I never stopped. And it was bliss. My Aunt Charlotte accused me of running from something. I