Chapter 7: Operation Keep PT Down: Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day was a week after Steve and I met. I had training that day. I was going to do depos for my firm as an independent contractor. Training ended early so I texted Steve what was up.

Steve’s text: You can come over and hang. My door is always open to you.

Steve’s door was open to many people. But I did appreciate that he meant me in particular.

Steve’s text: Did you want some roses or anything?

My text: Save your money, please.

Steve taught at an art school and I know how little that paid. He had to support his son Alan and Macy, who wasn’t even his kid. Macy’s dad did what he could to contribute, but he wasn’t able to find much work either.

When I arrived, Macy and Alan were out. It was a Friday. Steve was playing his guitar, that same little melancholy riff he always played. I plugged my phone charger in the uncovered outlet, washed my hands in the kitchen sink where the hot and cold water directions were installed backwards, and tried to ignore the clump of wiring that ran from various places in Steve’s house collectively to the kitchen and down a large five-inch diameter cubby hole into the basement. Only there was no door to the basement. Not outside at least.

I asked Steve how his arm was doing and he said he was pushing it every day. He could lift his wrist about a centimeter. “Arggh!” he grunted while trying to life his wrist. It "was scary for him.

“Don’t you think you should go to the doctor?” I had to ask again even though I knew what the answer would be.

“Doctor can’t do anything. The day after my father checked into the hospital, he died.”

Steve took up the guitar and moved his arm from the shoulder to strum, rather than with his fingers, as would have been the case had he had full movement of his hand.

I relaxed on the futon while Steve played. I came to learn that Steve played to relax, ponder something troublesome, or both. Today’s surprise, which would be just one in a series of surprises much like the daytime soap opera “As the World Turns,” was the return of Steve’s ex. She appeared out of nowhere after disappearing for months—

“Why, that’s wonderful!” I was relieved, for Steve had thought Asra might be dead since he had not heard from her in a while. Now this worry was eliminated. I was happy that things turned out well. I’m that type.

“She signed the divorce papers, and asked me to meet her at LAX. She’s flying to New Jersey where her family lives.” He strummed the guitar. Steve was sad, “She was like a broken animal. Her orbital bone was broken. She’s missing a couple of teeth.”

“Why? What happened?” This was distressing.

“Oh, she always gets into fights. With men. She’s got arms like an ape. She’s a beast.” Steve continued strumming. As if nothing were wrong.

“Doesn’t she get hurt?” I asked.

“No, the men who hit on her do.” Steve answered. Obviously came the delicate questions.

“If she is so mannish, why would men hit on her, besides men who like mannish women, of course.” I asked.

“Oh, she’s beautiful, until she flexes her arms, then she’s ripped. More powerful than a man. I had trouble fending her off.” The matter of fact way Steve talked about some things that were not normal was disconcerting.

“She attacked you?” I didn’t want to hear the answer.

“She tried to kill me several times,” he continued strumming.

“Does she work out?” I asked.

“Not really, she uses the fifteen-pound weight in the room,” He pointed to the bedroom. “I don’t, I’m a lounge lizard.” Steve laughed. I went into the bedroom and found the 15-pound weight by the side of the closet. I brought it out.

“This is heavy,” I said.

“Yeah, I know, she curls it like it’s nothing.”

“Is that how she’s so muscular?”

“No, she’s naturally like that.”

Somehow, the topic of super-strong women with ape-like arms turned me off, especially on Valentine’s Day. Okay.

“So, do you want to go out somewhere?” I asked.

“Yea, sure, where do you want to go?” Steve asked, checking his phone. We were always meeting in the Pasadena area so I suggested Santa Monica. I love the beach.

“Shoot, I thought Alex was out with his friends. Gotta’ pick him up from detention again.”

“What did he do?”

“Skip class.” So we went to pick up Alan and went home. We wanted some privacy so we talked in Steve’s room. Steve grabbed a beer bottle from the refrigerator and brought it into the room with us. There were several empty bottles on the kitchen counter. The more I learned about him, the more I felt for him.

-Being the youngest of ten children, Steve had to fight for meals. That was really sad.

-Once, Steve was kidnapped by some woman while he was walking on the street with his family. He woke up on a table or something, fought her off, wandered around for miles, and somehow found his way home. His family had not called the police. I shook my head.

-When he was eight, his family moved. Somehow, he was left at the old house. His family did not miss him. Not even his mother. He remembers doing his own laundry, looking through the cupboards to find something to eat. Being alone in a family of ten children.

-When he was with his family, his father beat him to a pulp when he was young. When he grew up, his brothers beat up on him, until Steve became the strongest.

“Are you the biggest?” For some reason, I figured Steve for the smallest.

“Nah, I’m 5’10, 5’11”, my brothers range from my height to 6’6”. Reeve is a bear. But last time we got in a fight, he had just finished training in special forces, he came at me and I dodged, swung and landed a lucky punch on the side of his face. He started bawling. Man if he had knocked me down, you don’t want a mass like Reeve’s knocking you over, you ain’t getting back up.

So Steve was faster, which explained his need for speed on the bike. I asked Steve what the fastest he had ever gone on his ZX-10.

“The wind was really pushing against my head. You gotta keep it forward like a bullet you know. Wind drag at those speeds.” Steve started getting into position to show me. he always did that when talking about riding. Also because he no longer had a bike and for Steve, not riding for a week was a lifetime. “When I glanced down, I saw 223 miles per hour,”

“Goddamn,” I said. Somehow I believed him.

“I got a lot of speeding tickets, Daniel Spade is my attorney, he’s a celebrity attorney.”

“Why do you need an attorney for a speeding ticket?”

“Because I was going over 150.”

“Oh,” I was beginning to understand Steve’s need for speed.

“My family’s got half a dozen life insurance policies on me, I’ll make sure you get something,”
“Stop it, Steve!” this was too macabre for me. “I don’t want your money or money from your life insurance policies--”
“You should take one out on me,” Steve laughed, “no one that I would survive this long.” He enjoyed disappointing people.

“Stop talking like that! I know your life has been hard but you’ve got so much going for you now. Your teaching job, you can go back to finish your degree. Your designs are the best I’ve ever seen”

“Really?” he asked like a child.

“Of course, they’re the best I’ve ever seen. Your use of color, and how you sketch so fast,” I answered. Steve had zero percent belief in himself.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed and Steve had slunk to the floor. The bags under his bloodshot eyes accentuated his misery. He wrapped his arms around my knees and rested his head in my lap. I held his head in my hands and lowered myself to hold him more completely.

There were many miserable creatures in this world. But something told me that Steve’s kind of misery was one of a kind. I did not know everything. It was difficult getting a straight answer out of him, but there was a reason why Steve called me “Ms. Spock” and my other friends called me an eerily similar version of a female Sheldon Cooper, and not as a compliment either, lol. Actually, they meant my social graces.

It was morning when I woke. I was disoriented looking at the ceiling, you know like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday where she goes to sleep looking at the two corners of her grand ceiling in her bedroom and then wakes up in Gregory Peck’s place that he “laughingly called home” and notices that the ceiling isn’t the same.

I got up. Steve was already awake. He was sketching at the desk, using his left hand. The desk was against the wall on the other side of the room near the door. I noticed his shoulders were broader than expected given his exceedingly slim build. Steve wasn’t scrawny but I could imagine a lot of people picking on him and expecting to walk over him easily.

“Hey,” Steve turned his head. “Want some coffee?”

“I’m a tea girl, thanks.”

“I’ll get some,” Steve got up and left the room. He came back with a mug. I thought it was coffee because there was milk but didn’t say anything.

“Thanks for the tea,” I smiled.

“Hey, will you be my attorney?” Steve asked. I already did not want to be his patent attorney.

“For what?” I asked.

“MY tickets. Daniel Spade finished taking care of them. just wanted  you to check up that everything was done.”

The Monday after that, I called Daniel Spade. He had closed all of Steve’s traffic cases. Steve needed only to pay $125 fine. I made sure that Steve paid it. I checked his DMV records afterwards that Steve had paid his fines. Six months later, Steve called me. There was a bench warrant out of his arrest for not paying his traffic fines. The late fees accumulated to $600.

It’s not that big things went wrong in Steve’s life. Trivial things in Steve’s existence snowballed to keep him from doing anything. He could have been working as one of the most prominent designers in the auto industry, any industry, for that matter. But because he was not organized, did not keep receipts, the same bills plagued his life to keep him from living a normal life.

It wasn’t until much later when I was neck deep into trying to extricate Steve from the strange quagmire of his life that the same things started happening to me. Even though I did not have a free arm with which to hang onto Steve, I used my mind. For that was the key to everything. I held on to Steve with my mind, and would not let go.