Thursday evening, Vivi phones from Miami. She’s doing a workshop at the Essential Retreat. Don Rufus is locked up at home. Her sister’s staying with their kids.
When I tell her I'm half-way there—I have plenty of money now—she says, “Wait, Trevor. I wasn’t inviting you exactly. 'Cause, honey, you won’t even recognize me now; I’m so old.”
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“Vivi, we’re eight months older since we were together. I turn twenty-four on Tuesday.”
She laughs. “Twenty-four, darling? I’m your mother’s age.”
“But you’re not my mother. We’ve said so before.”
“I look older than eight more months in time. You’ll see an old woman, Trevor.”
“I’ll see you at every age, Vivi. And something new: your full-up pure illumination. I see that streaming from people all the time now.”
“Not so much from me,” Vivi says. “You’ll see a sorry old lady.”
“I’ll make you happy, Vivi. You won’t be sorry with me.”
“Trevor, trust me. I’m long past physical love.”
Turns out, Vivi's wrong; she shakes inside and out with physical love. Her spirit needed waking up, that’s all.
The Essential Hotel has an enormous turquoise pool that nobody goes swimming in. People play in the icy waterfall and then lie in the hot sun. Vivi and I share one of the rooms that spiral around the pool. Instead of walls, unbleached canvas separates the rooms, each of which has a bathtub outside so you can watch the sunset. The hotel’s mind-body treatments, the chanting workshops and a steaming, multi-tiered hamam promote intense intimacy.
Vivi needs lots of reassurance, which is the opposite of her true self. Everyone respects her; Vivi’s a conduit. A few years ago I told her about rising above my boyhood unhappiness. And she immediately described a typical evening when Brian and I were kids: a little boy sitting with his mother, while the screwface father whaled on Brian. Then she taught me meditation and how to recognize blessedness and direction.
So what she says now is so wrong, such a lie, that I don’t notice at first. How can Vivi ask why I love her? And worse—do I have a fixation about old women!
“I love lots of women, you saw that in me first thing, remember?” I expect to explain this if someone has first met me. But Vivi knows everything about me. Since she’s acting so strange, I go on. “Older, younger, same age—I love to the fullment. Mostly I love women. There’s only a few grown-up girls I can only admire—no desire.”
“Only admire me then.” She rolls herself in the bed-sheet.
“I love and admire you, Vivi. X-amount of both. You know that.”
She stares out into the air and scans the horizon. “We won’t get like this again. It’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not.”
She covers her face, saying, “I’m gonna get hurt, Trevor.”
“Not now. Not while we’re here together.”
Vivi doesn’t answer. She shifts around until she’s lying face down. Her shoulders twitch up and down, and a sickening possibility slithers inside my mind. I get rid of it. Because, what a filthy lie. ’Cept it slithers back, a vicious, reptilian coil.
My Vivi would never ask, “Do I look old and ugly?”
But ever since I got here she’s asked me that every ten minutes.
So I have to ask her: “Vivi, do I embarrass you? I mean, does being seen with a skinny young white guy for your lover make you ashamed?”
“No.” She groans and I pull the pillow away from her face. “You see how bad I am, Trevor?”
“Time to wake up, Vivi! Come on.”
Tonight there’s a party. She kisses me and says, “Hush darling.”
We put on our best clothes. At the hotel restaurant, I ask for a front table so everyone will see us together.
After dinner, two sweet-faced, ready girls play deejays. I can love girls like them anytime. Tonight Vivi’s gonna dance with me till first light.
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