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Plotting the geographic imaginary: nostalgic impulse in the California novel and So L.A.

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Plotting the geographic imaginary: nostalgic impulse in the California novel and So L.A.

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Content PLOTTING THE GEOGRAPHIC IMAGINARY: NOSTALGIC IMPULSE IN THE CALIFORNIA NOVEL AND SO L.A. by Bridget Hoida A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH) August 2007 Copyright 2007 Bridget Hoida ii EPIGRAPH “A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it the most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.” -Joan Didion “This curious emotion is with Americans … a national trait, as native to us as the roller coaster or the jukebox…it is no simple longing for the home town or the country of our birth. … As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.” -Carson McCullers, The Mortgaged Heart iii DEDICATION Frontiers function in the space between. Crossing from the safety of the known into the vast wilderness of the uncharted can be tempestuous, uncomfortable and tricky. Plotting the Geographic Imaginary is dedicated to the pioneers traversing the rutted road of academia and motherhood. Caught in the fork, we straddle the line. Walking bowlegged, with a toddler on each hip, we anticipate the merge with hope, and with a sticky, tear- streaked joy. To my eternal HLP and mompair, Cara Cardinale Fidler, and to our breathtaking native sons, Owen and West. My creative project, a literary novel entitled, So L.A., is dedicated to my parents who raised me in the San Joaquin Valley; my brothers Willy and Jeff who are so not L.A.; and my husband, Jesse, and my son, West, the direction of my heart. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In The Oxford History of the American West, Kathleen Neils Cozen writes, “At the heart of American western history, lies a family story,” one marked by the “insistent themes of family, kinship and community,” one that focuses not only on cowboys, pool halls, outlaws and saloons but on “wives working alongside their husbands… warriors setting their hands to the plow, children trudging to one room school houses.” Although it would conform to the prevailing Western mythos to believe that a rugged individual completed this project, the heartfelt truth is that this project—both critical and creative— would not have reached completion without the tireless dedication, support and candor of community, family, and kin. In the academic community I wish to express my gratitude to William Handley, Thomas Gustafson, Phil Ethington, and Rebecca Lemon. On the homestead I give my love to my parents, Jack and Lynn Hoida, who raised me on the agrarian soil of California and inspired in me a love of stories, and my husband, Jesse Mulholland, the best part about city-life. And finally, to Percival Everett, Aimee Bender, David St. John, Chris Abani and Rick Reid, my creative kin, I want to thank you for taking me seriously, for enveloping me into the fold. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Epigraph ii Dedication iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract vii Section One: Critical Dissertation: Plotting the Geographic Imaginary 1 Introduction: The California Mythos 1 Chapter 1: The California Pastoral Paradox 11 The Girl From Hollywood: Ranch Novel Archetype 16 Chapter 2: Home on the Representational (Anglo) Ranch 29 Oil!: Ranch as Refuge and Unrest 29 Valley of the Moon: Imperialist Nostalgia 42 Run River: The Remembered Ranch 48 Chapter 3: The Terra Firma of the Re-storied Ranch 62 The Squatter and the Don: Collective Resistance on the Ranch 62 The Plum Plum Pickers: Nostalgia as Survival 66 The People of Paper: Unfolding the (Mythic) Master Narrative 70 Conclusion: The Ranch in Revision 78 Section Two: Creative Dissertation: So L.A. 81 Chapter 1: Take One 84 Chapter 2: Take Two 232 Chapter 3: Take Three 262 Chapter 4: Take Four 375 Chapter 5: Take Five 540 vi Chapter Six: The End 542 Bibliography 543 vii ABSTRACT My critical dissertation, Plotting the Geographic Imaginary: Nostalgic Impulse in the California Novel is a comparative project that questions the problematic nature of nostalgia and the complex relationship of Western fictions and facts. Through an exploration of geographic imaginaries—as implemented by both Anglo and Chicano narratives—I posit that California can be read as a palimpsest wherein the ranch functions as a compendium of multiethnic history in the West. In my creative project, a literary novel entitled, So L.A., I look at the “It Girls” of Los Angeles from an atypical vantage point and contrast the expected glamour of L.A. women with a lonely and oftentimes despondent reality. Using a “re-storied” L.A. to articulate a new “artistry of community” that reflects a deep commitment to illuminating connections between diverse peoples, I examine issues of identity formation and homeplace through prose, questioning patriarchal labels while nurturing cultural havens. 1 SECTION ONE: Critical Dissertation INTRODUCTION: The California Mythos It should not be surprising that California—long before European explorers set foot on her soil—was located in the popular imagination as occupying a space “very near the terrestrial paradise” (de Montalvo 139), for California was invented by a novelist. The novel, after which California was named, was published in Madrid in 1510, written by Garci Ordonez de Montalvo, and titled The Adventures of Esplandian after its bold Spanish protagonist. 1 Positioning California as a golden island with “steep cliffs and rocky shores,” de Montalvo unwittingly plotted what was to become the perpetual mythos of the golden land—an Edenic ideal ensconced within a rugged geography—nearly four-hundred years before Lansford Hastings conceived her as an American garden of Eden “possessing a soil so fertile and productive, with such varied and inexhaustible resources, and a climate of such mildness, uniformity and salubrity… to promote the unbounded happiness and prosperity, of civilized and enlightened men” (122). Although both de Montalvo and Hastings present California in similarly utopian terms, it should be noted that Hastings was not a novelist. He was instead an Ohio lawyer, who, heeding the call of Manifest Destiny, took up as a lector and real-estate broker, leading trains of wagons across the great plains into the west. His book of non- 1 According to the editors of The Literature of California, “The name California has no Indian source, nor is it Spanish. It is a Spanish-sounding word that has beguiled etymologists for years. … In all likelihood Cortes had read Montalvo’s novel, since it is the only known source for this name” (3). 2 fiction, The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California, promoted the Californian Dream with such veracity that it is said nearly every wagon-train of the 1846 “Great Migration” carried with them a copy (Hicks 120). However, as the Donner Party (they were said to have employed Hastings’s Cut-Off) as well as countless other dreamers of the golden dream soon learned, Hastings’s “guide”—wrought with California hyperbole—was in fact more akin to de Montalvo’s fictional creation than to the hardscrabble existence of any California reality, past or present. In the golden state, the lived reality of California is, as Anne E. Goldman asserts, “radically discontinuous with our creation myth” (157) and yet, despite many attempts, both past and present, to dispel this fraught master narrative, the prevailing mythos remains a central focus of California studies. Perhaps, as Maxine Hong Kingston, Al Young, Jack Hicks and James D. Houston all make resoundingly clear, where California is concerned, “the dream came first. The place came later” (Hicks 3). And so, regardless of the overwhelming advance of information to the contrary, California appears still to be fixed in various sects of the popular imagination as a type of paradise—easily undone, but imagined all the same. Situated at the heart of this “California mythos” is the California ranch. A highly contested landscape in its own right, the ranch, both in California history and literature has been a rich repository for the imagination. Illustrated most notably in Frank Norris’ California story, The Octopus—but also seen in works by John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Joan Didion, Robert Easton, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Jose Antonio Villareal, Raymond Barrio, Cherríe Moraga, and Salvador Placencia, among 3 others—the sacredness of the California ranch and the sense of home it invokes is set against the corruption and impurity of the city. 2 Between the covers of these ranch narratives the restorative forces of good battle the outlaw forces of evil, for possession of the venerated ranch. However, in addition to this weary trope, it is interesting to note the agrarian characters, who consider the vast valleys and rich soil of California’s ranches home, engage in a moral and psychological reclamation of identity that has heretofore been critically neglected when discussing the ranch as a geographic imaginary in California fiction. 3 Throughout California literature and history the meaning ascribed to the ranch, both as a physical place and a symbolic space, has been fraught with a regional mythology that reflects both an Edenic retreat and the archetypal desires of an agrarian people forced to reckon with a paradise undone. 4 As such, the literal and fictitious ranch 2 The novels I have chosen to discuss in this project mirror a similar trajectory in their recollection of ranchland as “home.” By analyzing these diverse texts I hope to prove that the ranch in California literature is not only a highly consistent symbol, which inscribes (although often unknowingly) similar themes and devices through the utilization of geographic imaginaries, but also a “homeplace”: the often nostalgic, though irrevocable site of collective identity. 3 Edward Said, 1979 develops the term “imaginative geography” (59) and employs symbolic features to construct meaning. Ramon Saldivar furthers this notion in a Chicano context in Chicano Narrative suggesting that the imaginative geographies “serve both a unifying communal function as well as an oppositional and differentiating end. […] Native Americans and Mexican Americans alike, helped define Anglo America by serving as its own contrasting personality, idea and experience. […] this contrastive function has had, paradoxically, both debilitating and potentially liberating effects” (4). 4 Yu-Fu Tuan distinguishes between place and space rather simply: place is memorial, personal, emotional and particular; space is abstract, political and general. State boundaries are spaces; homes are places. Spaces may include or subsume places. However, places may NOT include or subsume spaces. 4 structures an affinity among memory, identity, and history and seeks to liken the universal lament for homeland with the pastoral lament for the land. Ironically, however, as Joan Didion notes in Where I Was From (2003), such a romanticized affection for an agrarian past in California lies in direct contradiction to the history of corporate agriculture and “ a well-proven willingness among the state’s ‘yeoman farmers’ to subdivide and sell, when the money’s right,” (23) thus questioning the complex nature of nostalgia and the uncomfortable relationship of Western fictions and facts. In the golden state, the transformation of the garden into the suburb and the suburb into the city is a continually perpetuated myth, wrought with anti-urban sentiment and set forth to protect the pastoral from the ever-encroaching evils of the cityscape. Nevertheless, California has been a place where urbanism has thrived since the boom of 1849. San Francisco, California’s first metropolis, has long been situated as a place of substance and in the 20 th century, Los Angeles rose to epic import. Why then does California, like so much of the rest of the United States, seem to be so uncomfortable with its urbanism? Perhaps historically, Californians (like a large population of Americans) have seen in the city a pathology and conversely, they have envisioned the garden—-the ranch, the agrarian, the pastoral—as a cure or antidote. 5 Imbued as remedy, the lush 5 Throughout its comparatively recent history California, specifically Los Angeles, has been situated as a prescription for the dying, derelict, and otherwise depraved. As Kevin Starr notes, “Southern California filled up with the dying and the sick who, fleeing death, were yet uncertain of the outcome” (443). Not only a common literary trope touted by authors from West (Day of the Locust) to Fanté (Ask the Dust), the notion of California as prescription is further explored by Carey McWilliams in Southern 5 landscape of the California pastoral has taken on a particularly dense symbolic meaning, precisely because of its westerly geography and its enormous agricultural capacity. Or perhaps, the frontier myth of rugged individualism, predicated on the dialectic of bioregionalism, has infused within the American national identity a dependency upon geographic imaginaries. In his book, The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx illuminates why Americans may have had (and continue to have) such worrisome reactions to technological advancement and why they have been equally eager to collectively invent “imaginary products” to combat such encroachment. “Industrialization, represented by images of machine technology,” Marx writes, provides “the counterforce in the American archetype of the pastoral design” (25). According to Marx the pastoral is not only representative of a rural, agrarian or country place, but also the imaginative space “where literature, general ideas, and certain products of the collective imagination—we may call them cultural symbols—meet” (4). In contrast, “whether represented by the plight of a dispossessed herdsman or by the sound of a locomotive in the woods, [the counterforce] brings a world which is more ‘real’ into juxtaposition with an idyllic vision” (25). Because nostalgic impulse and imaginary geographies are dependent on the collective reminiscence and remaking of history, the pastoral becomes a fitting repository of “cultural symbols” that both preserve and defend the agrarian myth against any or all intrusion (i.e. invocations of the counterforce). In fact, the very presence of a counterforce allows the pastoral (and its inhabitants) to establish and keep the myth of California: An Island on the Land, particularly in the chapters entitled, “The Cultural Landscape” and “I am a Stranger Here Myself.” 6 agrarian California. Since the counterforce serves as a contrasting opposite that allows, through its opposition, the mythic qualities of the pastoral to forge greater meaning, it becomes a necessary component of rural subsistence. A prominent figure in the formation of American national identity, this dialectic of bioregionalism helps to clarify the relationship between the disparate influence of the “pastoral” and the “counterforce.” That is, the historical veracity of the American West is put in contrast with the myth of the American West, further unsettling Anglo settlers and causing them, each time a new counterforce emerges, to perpetually reinvent, re-inscribe and re- protect their agrarian ideals. According to Svetlana Boym in her book, The Future of Nostalgia, “Nostalgia, like progress, is dependent on the modern conception of unrepeatable and irreversible time” (13). As such, the object of a nostalgic’s desire must be “othered” and kept at a distance beyond the present scope of her daily life. To this end the agrarian nostalgic is greatly aided by the counterforce of the pastoral design as it provides clarity, through opposition, to the object desired. Although the nostalgic cannot always put into words what precisely it is that he desires, he is almost always able to clearly voice what he does not want, the intrusion of a counterforce be it technological, industrial, psychological or physical. Similarly, as is evident in all of the books I discuss, once the counterforce is defined in the real and immediate present (the intrusion of the city in Burroughs, Sinclair, London and Didion, the intrusion of technology in Sinclair, Didion and de Burton, the colonization by Anglo forces in de Burton, Barrio and Plascencia) 7 the object of desire is perpetually positioned outside of time and, more often than not, harkens back to a mythic and imagined past. According to Boym, “The nostos of nation is not merely a lost Eden but a place of sacrifice and glory, of past suffering” (15). Employing the iconography of childhood and a profound sense of familial duty, California ranchers are highly susceptible to, and dependent on, nostalgic impulses that not only allow them to recall the mythic days of a bygone era upon imagined soil, but also allow them to recall such images through a lens of heroic innocence. Dai Jinhua, author of “Imagined Nostalgia,” even goes so far as to claim, “Nostalgia is not only a kind of remembrance, but a kind of right. We all have a longing for the past-lingering over some mundane objects because these mundane objects have become the memorial to the trajectory of one’s own life, allowing us, without a doubt, to construct a human archive” (143). It follows then, that to remake (or remember) history according to one’s own life trajectory (which very often is in direct contradiction to historiography) is essential to both nation-making and the survival of ranch life. As Jinhua further explains, “[…] the meaning of modern ‘progress’ truly depends on the expressive materiality of memory to sustain its equilibrium” (144). By nostalgically positioning the ranch as an Edenic ideal located within the pastoral, and further endowing it with the symbolic importance of home, ranchers occupy a unique vocation within the American experience. More than merely an occupation (like factory work or banking) ranching occurs alongside family, within a tight-knit community that must rely upon a shared commitment to the land and one another for survival. Endowed with symbolic meaning that embraces a “way-of-life” 8 attitude (as opposed to an occupation or residence), subsistence on the ranch, according to Ian Howard, is an “ongoing life process that defines one’s place in the ecological and agricultural situation” (150). Consequently, in the American West farmers (more so than any other class or profession) were most dramatically affected by nostalgia (Boym 6). In her discussion of the rural origins of nostalgia, Boym quotes American military doctor Theodore Calhoun who says, “The soldier from the city cares not where he is or where he eats, while his country cousin pines for the old homestead and his father’s groaning board” (Calhoun qtd. in Boym 6). Although neither Boym nor Calhoun provide an answer as to why the country cousin might suffer a greater nostalgic affliction than his city counterpart, I believe that disproportionate frequency of country versus city nostalgics has, in large part, to do with the function of agrarian life and the dependency on pastoral land. As Jobes illustrates, “In order to understand the relationship between the myth of ranch life and the reality of ranch life one must distinguish between the content of the lifestyle and the structure of community in which it operates” (51). Acknowledging that the real and the imaginary both exist—and moreover that they very often exist simultaneously within the same experience, overlapping and bleeding into one another—geographer Edward Soja encourages Western regionalists to move away from binary modes of thinking that stress an “either/or” dichotomy and instead urges theorists to embrace a “both/and” methodology. Realizing that both “mythic” and “real” interpretations of the West have been common throughout its relatively short history, Soja advocates the theory of “thirdspace,” the very “place” in 9 which myth and truth collide. 6 Accepted by most Western regionalists, the concept of thirdspace seems a natural response to the legacy of conquest implicit in the official history of the US and—through the use of overlap and revision—allows for a “re- storying” of Western history’s master narrative by previously marginalized voices. 7 By reading the ranch as a functional third-space, and by grouping previously unrelated titles under a category I have termed “ranch novels,” I am attempting to classify the features of the agrarian struggle within California literature and (re)place the enduring qualities of the ranch as homeplace within the text. 8 In this comparative analysis of Chicano and Anglo nostalgic impulse I will illustrate how the California ranch has been “re-storied” over the past 100 years, presently functioning as a compendium of multiethnic history in the West, while revealing surprising similarities 6 Patricia Nelson Limerick advances a “rendezvous theory,” Elliot West calls for a “web-like structure” of Western history, Neil Campbell proposes that the West is an “agglomerative space” while Annette Kolodny champions the narration of “seriatim first” encounters. 7 “Re-storying” is a concept developed by Gary Nabhan and furthered by Neil Campbell in The Cultures of the American West. In essence it involves: “the sense of creating new stories to counter and displace the mythic ones that have, for so long, framed the visions of the West [. . .] the sense of restoring, healing and regenerating the diverse cultures of the West [. . .and] the West is articulated as a ‘thirdspace’ where cultures collide, fuse, intermingle, and interrelate, where new mapping might be achieved” (29). 8 In my research I have not come across the term “ranch novel” when applied critically to California fiction. Although there have been various critiques of the ranch in literature from Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, I believe this is the first time “ranch novel” has been used to discuss a genre of diverse California works. Additionally I am indebted to Thomas Gustafson, professor of English Literature, American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California who directed me towards this project and originally coined the term “ranch novel” as used in this context. 10 between the nostalgic yearnings for homeplace as seen in Californio dispossession and Anglo nostalgia for an unfettered frontier past. 11 CHAPTER ONE: The California Pastoral Paradox “When I was a child I lived in a world of miracles: the Hollister Ranch, which had belonged to my family for generations but which, in dreams and memory, became the central part of me…. When I grew up I moved away to live another kind of life, a city one. I thought that was the natural order. The ranch belonged in my beginning and would stay put.” -Jane Hollister Wheelwright, The Ranch Papers Nostalgia, according to Svetlana Boym and Fredric Jameson, among others, represents a crisis of history. 9 In a California ranching context, this historical crisis is not only manifest in the longing for homeplace, but also in the means by which home is represented and invoked. The idea of home on the ranch has a profound influence on both national identity and regional identity, for inherent in the frontier myth is the Anglo aim of agrarian possession, extraction and regeneration of “wide open” western spaces. However, beyond the bucolic urgings of many formulaic and reactionary Westerns (such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s racist The Girl From Hollywood, 1922) there is a marked instability in Anglo settlements as the “rural myth” is perpetually threatened by the intrusion of historical veracity. In The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx elaborates on the “incursion of history” and introduces the pastoral paradox, “While in the culture at large it is a starting point for infantile wish-fulfillment dreams, a diffused nostalgia and a native, anarchic primitivism, it is also the source of writing that is invaluable for its power to enrich and clarify experiences” (Marx 11). 9 For further discussion please see chapter 6 “Space: Utopianism After the End of Utopia” of Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (2001); Jameson’s The Political Unconscious (1981); and Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia (2001). 12 In literature, pastoralism is best marked by the retreat of a protagonist from the chaos of the city into the lush, yet habitable, agrarian, that, akin to the Arcadia Virgil “discovered” in his poem “Eclogues,” “take[s] on political overtones” and “acquires a symbolic repository of value” (20). Without exception, in all the novels I discuss (and have termed “ranch novels”) the ranch functions within the pastoral mode as a symbolic Eden and is located within a fertile agrarian valley set at a distance (usually of a hundred miles or more) from city influences. Although the precise placement of the ranch in California fiction may be an arbitrary designation in the minds of its authors, when viewed comparatively the semi-primitive space the ranch consistently occupies is, in fact, a necessary component for its inclusion within the pastoral model. According to Arthur Lovejoy, the “pastoral ideal” (represented in this study as the ranch) is predicated upon its location as “a middle ground somewhere between” the city and wilderness. Located as such, the California ranch occupies a “transcendent relation to the opposing forces of civilization and nature” (23). Duly opposed to the encroaching urbanscape and yet inhabitating a decidedly “domestic” and “collective” atmosphere when compared to the “savage” American wilderness, the ranch exhibits many characteristics similar to Virgil’s pastoral. Situated in this semi-primitive “middle ground” are ranchers who claim these pastoral valleys as home. Accordingly, ranchers believe that they are able to live outside the corrupt social codes of the city and yet do not have to forge their way through a dense and uncivilized wilderness. In this way they characteristically exhibit a heightened sense of moral authority—self-made men living above the law—and 13 innocence as the inhabitants of a “new” Eden. Setting the stage, or perhaps serving as partial justification for the widespread dispossession of native valley inhabitants (people of Indian and Mexican California ancestry), pastoralism was “removed from its literary context” in the West, “and embodied various utopian schemes for making America the site of a new beginning for Western society” (Marx 9-10). Exhibiting profound influence upon (Anglo) agrarian identity in the West, the widespread absorption of pastoralism into the western psyche allowed ranchers to position themselves as protectors of a symbolic landscape both on and off the page. As I will illustrate—most notably in works by Jack London (The Valley of the Moon, 1917), Upton Sinclair (Oil!, 1927), and Joan Didion (Run River, 1963)— although the Anglo landowner positions himself as symbolic protector of the land, he has little interest in actually working the land himself. 10 Emblematic of the frontier prototype, the Anglo rancher inherits his ancestors’ ideas—ideas that are responsible for the creation of the representational ranch and its position as a symbolic repository of heightened moral virtue—as well as the physical ranchland itself. Further moved to secure the presence of an imaginary ancestral past upon the physical landscape, the Anglo rancher is influenced by a sense of “rugged individualism,” and finds it imperative to stake claim to a land of his own creation. However, in order to define the land as uniquely his, he (albeit unwittingly) conforms to the pastoral design by placing the ranch in opposition to various counterforces: the ancestral (Eastern/European) lands 10 This trend can also be seen in numerous other texts, most notably, The Pastures of Heaven (John Steinbeck, 1932), and Angle of Repose (Wallace Stegner, 1971). 14 of his forefathers, the “savagery” of the encroaching wilderness, the dispossession of native peoples, and the sprawling advance of the industrialized city. As David Fine notes in his introduction to Los Angeles in Fiction, “California subscribes to a dialectic of bioregionalism in its fiction. Experience is measured against experience in another place.” By defining the California ranch in contrast rather than by analogy I propose that a narrative of Anglo nativism can be located within the text whereby the ranch exists as an uncontested place of elevated authenticity, morality and territorial purity. Furthermore, by employing the pastoral design, I will illustrate that the sense of innocent entitlement and nostalgic yearning is necessarily heightened within historical narratives due to the ranch’s foremost construction as a mental creation, (rather than a physical location). Accordingly, the Anglo ranch, much like mythic notions of Western history, becomes isolated from the past as the notion of homeplace becomes, as Lillian Schlissel asserts, a “longing for a life as it could never be—a vision of time without change,” (243) which is in fact contrary to the migratory history of California and the West. Although the past is clearly articulated in the minds of Anglo settlers as an idyllic place where the pastoral is continually preserved without work, the present is duly problematized by the encroaching forces of the city and the Chicano ranchhand who, through physical contact with and historical claim to the land, reveals the deeper Anglo anxiety of a literal “undoing” of history. Suggestive of an underlying racism that runs throughout all the Anglo works I will discuss, the ranch—carved out of the sprawling ranchos of the Californios (and built atop Native American agricultural 15 lands)—has largely been (mis)read as a space of whiteness. 11 Through the largely colonialist action of creating home and profit out of a seemingly “worthless” bit of land, ranchers are allowed a feeling of entitlement and re-instilled ancestral heritage. Furthermore, as Owen Wister and Theodore Roosevelt illustrate in “The Evolution of the Cowpuncher” and Ranch Life, respectively, colonialist Anglo actions of regeneration in the West, (known by Roosevelt as “republican virtue”) not only recreate home and heritage, but also, through the process of domination and assimilation, adopt the customs, practices, and language of the colonized and “improve” upon them in the name of “progress” and “civilization” (Slotkin 615, Wister 42). As Richard Slotkin elucidates: [Roosevelt] used the history of the West to illustrate the first succession of savage by civilized races, and then the succession of different classes or sub-divisions of the white or Anglo-Saxon race, which represented progressively higher forms of socio-economic organization and morality, … [to demonstrate] that even the most advanced of the civilized races could reacquire the essential spirit and lifestyle that gave their conquering pioneering ancestors their prowess, racial élan, and ‘republican virtue.’ (615) Unlike Jefferson’s vision of the yeoman farmer, the Western agrarian was not passed down in a patriarchal exchange. Rather, as Slotkin clarifies in his discussion of the frontier myth, it was acquired through brute force and imperialist means and therefore the rancher’s connection to the land is one of both (re)creation and force. As Wister writes in “The Evolution of the Cowpuncher:” 11 It is no coincidence that the rise of the ranch occurred simultaneous to the dispossession of non-white peoples in California. 16 Soon [the Saxon] had taken what was good from this small, deceitful alien [the Mexican American], including his name Vaquero, which he translated to Cow-boy. He took his saddle, his bridal, his spurs, his rope, his method of branding and herding—indeed, most of his customs and accoutrements—and with them he went rioting over the hills. (42) However, as is illustrated in Turner’s pending anxiety upon the frontier’s close, once the West was “recreated” in accordance to the doctrines of Manifest Destiny, a nostalgic yearning surfaces that is both ahistorical and decidedly imperialist. “Imperialist nostalgia,” according to Renato Rosaldo, “uses a pose of ‘innocent yearnings’ both to capture people’s imaginations and to conceal its complicity with often brutal domination” (108). As such, Anglo nostalgic urgings in California ranching narratives are characterized by more than just the loss of and lament for physical land; they are also characterized by a loss of a misremembered past, paradoxically, that historically never was. The Girl From Hollywood: Ranch Novel Archetype “Much of Hartland writing starts with the soil,” states California author Gerald Haslam (105). 12 Beginning with the early vaquero narratives of Arnold Rojas —which chronicled the range lives of California’s Hispanic cowboys— and continuing through the “harsh print of the earth” illustrated in the poetry of William Everson to the dusty 12 Hartland in this context refers to California’s vast farming valleys, specifically the San Joaquin, Central, Sacramento, San Fernando and Salinas. 17 squatters’ camps of Steinbeck and the journalistic clarity of Didion’s geographically landed essays, the writings of California’s valleys seem to begin, as Haslam suggests, with the land. Such is the case with Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Girl From Hollywood. 13 Beginning with a bucolic description of two horses “pick[ing] their way carefully downward over the loose shale of the steep hillside” (1), Burroughs introduces the reader to the Rancho del Ganado (trans. Livestock Ranch) as a fixed place of awe and God where each year the “land becomes more wonderful…it never changes, and yet it is never twice alike” (17). Because much of the ranching population is composed of a robust, working-class, ranching people who depend on the land for their very survival, and dually because the effort required to till such a landscape under fierce weather conditions is grueling and oftentimes inhospitable, the fertile soil of agrarian California is endowed with a high symbolic significance and is featured as a predominant element in most ranch writing. As Craig Leslie concurs in his introductory remarks for the anthology, Dreamers and Desperados: Contemporary Short Fiction of the American West, “The West I know contains working people in a hardscrabble existence trying to stay ahead of the bills and the banks…. [Such] working class lives are indelibly marked by the environment in which they take place” (xi). As is evident in all the novels I will discuss, the ranch novel, conforming to the pastoral mode, is typically placed in an isolated agrarian valley. It is rooted thus in the shared values of a particular agrarian structure, which, according to Patrick Jobes, “evolved as consequence of their small 13 Although my analysis of the ranch in California fiction will supersede the critique of formula Westerns, I do find it necessary to begin my evaluation with an appraisal of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Girl From Hollywood, as I believe it to be a fitting ranch novel archetype. 18 size, stability and isolation” (51). These “small town” values naturally place a great deal of worth in physical toil and agrarian production, but they equally place ardent emphasis on familial and personal honor and reinforce the strict moral code of ranching people. Scant more than a pulpish morality play, The Girl From Hollywood pits the wickedness of Hollywood against the “wholesomeness of natural living and the redemptive power of love” on agrarian California (Holtsmark 94). 14 Situated in Sycamore Valley, roughly 100 miles from Los Angeles by train, Burroughs’ Rancho del Ganado serves as an archetype of the ranch (and rural ranch life) whose sole function is to act as idyllic opposition and restorative refuge for the destructive and deadly counterforces of the city, in this instance, Los Angeles. Mirroring the trajectory of a horse opera—without, of course, the singing cowboy—Burroughs’ Girl From Hollywood is a code Western typical of the Dime Novel variety with one notable exception, the heroic movement is not brought about by a cowboy, nor even a boy at all; rather it is realized by Shannon Burke, a reformed actress and cocaine addict who, in the lush valleys and green hills of the Rancho del Ganado, unites two families and discovers the “true meaning” of home. Burroughs’ Rancho del Ganado, home to the Pennington and Evans families, is first seen as the epitome of righteousness, ancestral honor and neighborly good will. Staunch and upright, both families are equally concerned with the coming-of-age of 14 It should be additionally noted that in The Girl From Hollywood Burroughs reverses his usual (see Tarzan) gender roles. “In this tale it is a corrupt woman (rather than a man) in love with a noble man (instead of woman) who is redeemed” (Holtsmark 94). 19 their children and the perpetuation of subsistence living on the family ranch. Due to the isolated nature of ranch life, ranching neighbors take on a heightened significance, largely because ranching communities are particularly small by nature and external help may be miles away from the ranchstead. As such, the neighbor often assumes the role of extended family and often, neighboring sons and daughters inter-marry. The Penningtons and Evans are no exception to this “neighborly mentality” as the convenient courtship of Custer Pennington with Grace Evans and Guy Evans with Eva Pennington is secured in the first three chapters of Burroughs’ novel. This is most likely because there are little other suitable matches in the agrarian landscape and choice is limited, (the Penningtons and Evans are seemingly the only inhabitants of Sycamore Valley) but when viewed through a subsistence lens, intermarriage between the offspring of bordering land-owners can also be viewed as a safeguard whereby ranching estates are adjoined through matrimony and provide additional security against foreign (city) intrusion. Neighbors, and soon to be family, on two accounts of matrimonial union by their children, the Penningtons and the Evans consider themselves blessed by God for their exceedingly good fortune, but moreover the underlying tone expressed is that of entitlement. Having come to California in 1900, “on the advice of his physician in the forlorn hope that he might prolong his sufferings a few years more” (19) –a common trope amongst California migrants—Colonel Pennington found the Rancho del Ganado, “rundown, untenanted and for sale” (19). Although the soil and water was not suited to raise the type of horse that he had bred in Virginia, Colonel Pennington recognized 20 “other possibilities” in the land and virtually transformed the ranch into a sustainable living. It is this action – creating home and profit out of a seemingly run down bit of land – that allows the rancher a feeling of entitlement and re-instilled ancestral heritage. Unlike his father and his father’s father Colonel Pennington’s land was not passed down to him in a patriarchal exchange and therefore his connection to it is one of both choice and creation. In this sense the land of Sycamore Valley is endowed with a profound sense of pride for Pennington as he is allowed to re-map his cultural ancestry in opposition to that of his prior familial lineage. His land, and furthermore his West, was made and not merely passed down. Not only Western in sentiment, but also historically American, Colonel Pennington embodies the problematic nature of individual identity as seen in the ranch novel and other works of the Western genre. 15 His rugged sense of individualism causes him to stake claim to a land of his own creation, but to define it as uniquely his, he must first place the Rancho del Ganado in opposition to the ancestral lands of his forefathers and the ever-encroaching city of Los Angeles. As Gerri Reeves states in her book, Mapping the Private Geography, “America’s identity is grounded less in its geographic actuality than in its rejection of place, and thus was from its beginnings primarily an idea. Before it was endowed with a legal identity America was defined in terms of its own genealogy – somewhere that is ‘not Europe’” (117-8). In The Girl From Hollywood, like other ranch novels, Reeves’s analogy and the term “not-Europe” can easily be replaced with “not-East Coast” or “not-Middle West” and duly, “not-Los 15 Migratory trends both westerly and to America from Europe require a break in familial lineage in regard to land, both the connection with, and ownership thereof. 21 Angeles.” Then, by defining the California ranch by contrast (what it is not), rather than by analogy (what it is akin to), the ranchers who inhabit agrarian California are able to align themselves in opposition to a corrupt and morally vapid city. Occupying what Lovejoy earlier referred to as a ‘semi-primitive’ middleground, the ranch is claimed by the ranchers within the text as an uncontested space of elevated authenticity, morality and territorial purity. Aligned with the pastoral design the ranch becomes a new Eden. Although Colonel Pennington’s breach from his own father may have endowed him with a self-created wealth, he is still faced, like most agrarian fathers, with the paradox of keeping his own children content. As Lillian Schlissel notes, “Frontier children do not duplicate the family arrangements of their parents (240). And as Mary P. Ryan concurs, “The unsettled atmosphere …allowed the young to design their own life strategies” (Ryan qtd. in Schlissel 240). How then does a father like Colonel Pennington, who has fashioned his own identity through western migration, keep his own children interested in staying on an isolated ranch and maintaining his newly- acquired land? The response that Burroughs gives this query is, quite simply, to let the child go away and serve as example for the remaining children and the ranch as a whole. Employing a rise and fall dynamic, a typical ranch novel plot is marked by an initial descent of just this type wherein the child of a steadfast rancher becomes dissatisfied with the limitations of agrarian life and embarks on a journey into the big- city (Los Angeles or San Francisco) with the hopes of securing her own identity and 22 fortune. 16 Consequently, once departed, the child yearns deeply for the land of her upbringing. In the ranch novel this longing is evident in a nostalgic telling that seems to be continuously centered on the iconography of childhood. To survive in the cityscape, the child is usually forced to abandon the honor of her name and upbringing by succumbing to immoral and often highly sexualized urban acts. The enchantment of the city is subsequently broken, but the child hesitates to return to the ranch because she fears that the taint of the city—now evident in her re-defined urban identity—will infect the ranch. Rescued or found out by the family, the ascent begins as the child returns to her agrarian home and her immoral character and actions are cleansed by the ranch pastoral and restorative powers found in the rolling hills and lush green valleys of the ranch landscape. 17 By leaving the ranch and then “rediscovering” it after a perilous journey, the adolescent protagonist of the ranch novel is not only re-placing herself upon the pastoral landscape, but she is also choosing a ranching lifestyle. Effectively identifying herself with the values and morals ascribed to the ranching community, she 16 I am much indebted to an essay entitled, “Homecoming in the California Visionary Romance” by Charles R. Crow. Crow adeptly outlines the features of a Romance in the California tradition and I have used his findings as a model for approaching the California ranch novel. Much like the Romance in California fiction the plot of the California ranch novel involves what Charles R. Crow pens “vertical action among these realms, usually in a descent and an ascent” (4), but unlike the Romance, ranch novels are cautionary in nature and seek to warn the reader against the assorted evils that may befall the pastoral, and subsequently the home. As such, a second descent is fixed within the plot and the novel typically ends in destruction. 17 However, the ranch novel-- though loosely based on its predecessor the Western -- rarely resolves in a “walk into the sunset,” for the ranching child soon learns that once acknowledged, the damning characteristics of the city cannot be quieted and more often than not these aspects follow the child back to the ranch destroying both family and farm. 23 becomes a voluntary, rather than compulsory, member of the agrarian while simultaneously rejecting an urban way of life and advocating an anti-urban sentiment, which helps to secure the sanctity of the ranch. In The Girl From Hollywood, the child that leaves is not, as one might expect, Colonel Pennington’s son, Custer. Rather, it is his fiancée, Grace Evans. “It seems to me that I have a duty to perform,” Grace states in a fit of melodrama and melancholy typical of the pulpish tone of Burroughs. “Perhaps I am not only silly, but sometimes I feel that I am called by a higher power to give myself for a little time to the world, that the world might be happier and, I hope, a little better” (41). The calling of which Grace speaks is to the Hollywood stage and although she is unskilled in acting and the cinema, she is sure that her destiny lies in the city where the “real living” she and Custer Jr. have been heretofore denied, resides. With promises to return once she has made her own way and secured additional pride and glory for the family name, Grace leaves the ranch and in her absence “the routine of ranch life weighted more heavily on Custer Pennington. The dull monotony of it took the zest from things that he had formerly regarded as the pleasure of existence.” The hills themselves, “had lost their beauty” (60). Antithetical to the previously defined notion that self is derived from place, the lament by Custer Jr. and the other ranchers for Grace’s absence as reflected by the loss of beauty in their natural surroundings seems to echo playwright Sam Shepard’s sentiments that “real home is in the recognition of each other,” (qtd. in Reeves 140) or as Reeves elaborates, home is the “intimacy discovered in people, not in place” (140). So if the ranch loses beauty, both 24 literal and symbolic, in the absence of one of its inhabitants it can also be said that connection to and with the land is secondary only to the people who inhabit the land. Thus ranching persons, as well as the ranch itself, must be protected from outside temptations and influence. To further illustrate this dichotomy, Burroughs introduces the reader to the parallel plot of Shannon Burke, a girl of Grace’s same age and beauty, who, up until Grace’s flight, has been working in Hollywood under the stage name Gaza de Lure. Shortly after Grace leaves for Hollywood, Shannon arrives frenzied, hollowed, and addicted to “snow” at the Rancho del Ganado. To suggest that Grace and Shannon act as foils for one another is somewhat of an understatement, for Grace and Shannon literally switch places; Grace finds herself in Shannon’s old Hollywood bed next to the seedy and sex-driven director Wilson Crumb, while Shannon takes up Custer Jr.’s heart on Rancho del Ganado. As Grace begins to lose “all of her self-respect and part of her natural modesty” (62), first by posing for a nude test shoot, then by sleeping with Crumb to secure a lead role, and finally by ingesting cocaine to “keep awake,” Shannon finds that she is cured, almost overnight of her “snow” habit and substitutes the little glass vial and needle for twice daily regimens of riding on horseback through the Sycamore Valley. For Shannon, the quiet ranch house and the lush natural surroundings is comparable to morphine and it leaves her “nerves quieted and her brain clear” (84). While most ranch novels show the descent and ascent of the same child within the text (this is typically done to show maturity and change in self-identity), Burroughs employs a small, although slightly too coincidental, adaptation of this theme and is 25 therefore able to more adeptly parallel the evils of Hollywood with the restorative power of the ranch. By allowing Grace and Shannon’s fates to be revealed simultaneously, Burroughs can chronicle a page-by-page, movement by movement, comparison of the two places, showing Hollywood as a continual site of moral degradation while the ranch perpetually upholds the strong moral values of honest, hard-working folk. The climax of the novel arrives when, against everyone’s better judgment, but as a concession to the perpetual insistence and glamorous desires of Eva Pennington, Wilson Crumb and his Hollywood crew (what Marx would call the counterforce) arrive on the Rancho del Ganado to shoot a Western picture. The lush landscape of Sycamore Valley is seemingly perfect for an authentic outlaw film but Crumb’s arrival, as expected, upsets the delicate balance of the ranch as the fields are trampled and bathed nightly in an artificial light. A classic example of what Marx calls a “Sleepy Hollow moment,” the intrusion of Hollywood’s simulated luminescence coupled with the tire marks of trailers and indentations of movie sets upon the Rancho del Ganado landscape serves as a physical mapping of the artifice of the cityscape onto the pastoral. 18 The physical alterations to the land are further mapped onto the psyche of its inhabitants, thus showing how the presence of the city causes chaos and ethical decline, and incites violence. Shannon Burke becomes nearly hysterical with fear that her “past self” will be 18 A “Sleepy Hollow Moment” is Leo Marx’s analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s notebooks wherein the peace and tranquility Hawthorne experiences in the pastoral is abruptly and irrecoverably shattered by the sharp whistle of a passing train, thus exhibiting how technology has intruded upon (and has the potential to destroy) nature. For further analysis see Machine in the Garden by Leo Marx, 1967. 26 revealed and the moral Penningtons will subsequently exile her. Eva Pennington is attacked and nearly raped by the licentious Crumb, and, equally because her honor has been violated and because it was her idea to bring Hollywood to the ranch, she attempts suicide. Custer Pennington Jr. is unjustly jailed for bootlegging alcohol, a crime in which he was not involved; and it is ultimately learned that Grace Evans overdosed in Crumb’s shady Hollywood home. The accumulation of wrongs perpetrated against the ranch and its inhabitants are notably marked by city influences (specifically Hollywood), and move Guy Evans to murder Wilson Crumb, thus allowing him to seek justice for his dead sister, violated fiancée, future sister-in-law, and trampled homeland all with one shot. More importantly, however, the counterforce of Hollywood is driven out of the ranch, both physically and in the desires of the ranchers, and the literary admonition of the city is successfully achieved. According to Peter Homans, the typical Western plot is one in which evil appears as a series of temptations to be resisted by the hero—most of which he succeeds in avoiding through inner control. When faced with the embodiment of these temptations, his mode of control changes, and he destroys the threat. But the story is so structured that the responsibility for this act falls upon the adversary, permitting the hero to destroy while appearing to save. (Homans 77) Although the ranch is not completely restored within the novel, Guy Evans is able to destroy the wanton advances of Crumb, Hollywood and the city at large while appearing to preserve his homeplace—the symbolic landscape of honor and pride—thus effectively saving the archetypal ranch home. 27 As Charles Crow states, California as home is seen as “a place satisfying the deepest needs of the protagonist; not visible to all seekers, this home place can only be discovered or recognized after a radical reformation, a transformation of the self” (3-4). As such, the ranch when situated on the California agrarian can also be “rediscovered” or ascribed with greater value only when it is in danger of being eradicated by the encroaching city. Admonition against leaving the ranch, hence compromising one’s collective/family identity (the apparent goal of the ranch novel) is realized in the contrast between the rural and the urban rural and urban, and seeks to provide a cautionary tale in which the hard-learned lessons of the California dream are mapped onto singular families and the ranches in which they make their homes. Illustrative of a larger phenomenon within the ranch novel, the Pennington’s Rancho del Ganado acts as an iconic representation of the utopian and restorative pastoral. In spite of this, the plight of the Rancho del Ganado can also be understood as an assertion of the authentic value ascribed to homeplace within the ranch novel. In the ranching context, home place is broader than the specific geographic space in which the ranch is situated. 19 In California literature the ranch as “identity- defining” is a recurring theme that renders the ranch novel as a genre beyond formula fiction. Emerging cross-culturally in literary works by both Anglo and Chicano writers, the ranch novel consistently functions as a family melodrama where hearth, home, 19 In his essay “From the Inside Out: The Farm as Place” Ian Howard argues “one essential feature of the farming drama […] is that it supplies meaningful and worthwhile work” (151). Using this to support the position of place, as “life process and location Howard questions the supposed “farming mentality” that precludes humanity is better served by pursuing a farming “way of life.” 28 morality and soil are intimately intertwined with nostalgic invocations of ancestral blood. 29 CHAPTER TWO: Home on the Representational (Anglo) Ranch Oil!: Ranch as Refuge and Unrest In his epic, Oil! (1927), a novel that has been touted by Lawrence Clark Powell as “the largest scale of all California Novels,” Upton Sinclair furthers his renowned socialist agenda by illustrating the influence of capitalist acquisitive psychology during the discovery of black gold in Signal Hill. By telling the family story of oil monger J. Arnold “Dad” Ross and his son J. Arnold “Bunny” Ross Jr., Sinclair is able to use the son’s inquisitive nature to rebel against and question the political, cultural and financial aims of his father; thus succinctly advocating socialism as an alternative to capitalism in 1920’s California. 20 However, and in a manner largely understated by Sinclair’s political ambitions, when looked upon as a ranch novel, Oil! can also be said to examine the relationship people have with the land (and in particular ranchland) when the agrarian shifts from a site of subsistence and home to the site of potential monetary wealth in the form of oil. Using the Watkins’ family ranch as a fictive template for this exploration, Sinclair’s child protagonist, J. Arnold “Bunny” Ross, discovers oil while camping with his father on the back half of the Watkins Ranch. Bunny’s discovery changes a simple goat ranch and strawberry farm into a wild-cat mecca as the ranchland moves from a site of production (planting on and living off the land) to a location of 20 Sadly, due to the epic length and ambition of Sinclair’s novel it is beyond the scope of this project to further elucidate the father/son dynamic however the link of capitalism and socialism as ties to Dad and Bunny is largely an allegorical function wherein Dad personifies the former while Bunny embodies the latter. The dealings of father and son, both politically and domestically also coincide with the trajectory of history in California in the 1920’s. 30 extraction (where the land itself is disregarded and destroyed in order to remove the precious oil beneath its surface). In fact, although Sinclair in his epic California pursuit manages to cover World War I, the Russian Revolution, the boom of Hollywood as a major industry, religious cults, labor strife, the corruption of public and political officials, and the Harding-Fall-Doheny oil scandal, much of the action in Oil! centers around the familial hearth and takes place on the Watkins Ranch. 21 Although Sinclair does not overtly state his reasoning behind placing so much of the plot on the ranch, when analyzing the ranch as symbol one can deduce the following: historically, and as has already been shown in Burroughs’ The Girl From Hollywood and will be seen in London’s Valley of the Moon and Didion’s Run River, the ranch in the Western imagination is endowed with a greater sense of moral righteousness. As an emblem of both family and the restorative powers of nature, the ranch achieves an “everyman quality” that invites the active participation of the reader in protecting it against the turpitude of exterior forces. The Watkins family is merely one such instance. Their house was a “California house:” […] it was made of boards a foot wide, running vertically, with little strips of ‘batting’ to cover the cracks. It had no porch, whether front or back, nothing but one flat stone for a step. The paint, if there had ever been any, was so badly faded that you saw no trace of it by the lights of the car. On the other side of the lane, and farther up the little valley, loomed a group of sheds with a big pen made of boards, patched here and there with poles cut from eucalyptus trees. From this place came the stirring and murmuring of a great many animals crowded together. (85) 21 For a full mapping of Sinclair’s vast fictional accounts onto the historical events and persons on which they were based see the forward by Jules Tygiel to the 1997 University of California Press edition of Oil!. 31 Quite a contrast to the Pennington’s “castle on a hill” in The Girl from Hollywood, the Watkins’ ranch is a decidedly more real representation of California ranch life in the early 1920’s. According to Jan Roush ranching narratives can be divided into three periods: 1860 – 1890, the period of the open range that follows the end of the Civil War; 1890- 1934, when the West became increasingly regulated and domesticated; and 1934 to the present, “when increased environmental awareness” and, I might add, the civil rights movement “applied its own pressure on traditional ranch life” (165). 22 Although most formula Westerns are centered around the “open range” motif of a masculine-centered bildungsroman, with the advent of barbed wire in late 1870’s and the close of the Frontier in 1890, the roving cowboy found himself literally fenced in. Accordingly, after 1890 the story of the West changed from that of rugged individualism to a family- centered narrative, while the counterforce of the Western struggle shifted from man 22 Roush discusses ranching throughout the United States and her analysis is not specifically of Californian, but rather Western American in sentiment. In what Roush calls the “early period of ranch narratives,” America was trying to recover from physical devastation of the land. Largely positioning the ranch as a place to heal or recover, “early ranching narratives,” according to Roush, “had a rags to riches theme,” as is prevalent in most formula Westerns. Ended by barbed wire—a literal fencing in of the rugged cowboy—and the natural events of the late 1880’s blizzard this early period of ranch narratives was put to rest with Turner’s Frontier thesis. Middle ranching narratives, 1890 – 1934, “retooled ranch thinking and methodology to establish new techniques more in accordance with a controlled, fenced in range.” While ranching narratives told post WWII stress an increased environmental and multicultural awareness “and applied its own pressure on traditional ranch life. Perceived pressures by environmental groups have made the rancher feel like an endangered species. Encroaching population boom in California shows the rise of the suburbs and further encroaching onto the rural. New accounts of the ranch convey the ongoing tradition but also chronicle change in tradition that allows ranching to maintain its way of life, including, but not limited to: land use struggles, ranch women narratives and ethnic narratives all told with broader characteristics.” 32 against nature (wilderness survival narratives) to man against machine. Furthermore, as Roush notes, it is precisely during the middle period of ranch narratives when “the first nostalgic recordings of a way of life that is no more” (169) appear in the oeuvre of Western ranch narratives. In addition to the emergence of nostalgic impulse within ranching narratives, the “fencing in” of the cowboy and his narrative illustrates an important thematic shift in the understanding of home upon California soil. No longer located in nomadic space, home becomes located as a clearly defined place within the ranching narrative. Accordingly, the dangers, or counterforce, associated with ranching also move closer to home as the ranch is regulated—by the new implementation of federal tax, inheritance tax, and the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934—and domesticated (169-170). The focus of ranching narratives also shifts from the solitary and rugged individual to the collective and family. As such, and in an effort to distinguish the “authentic” ranchers (evident in Sinclair’s portrayal of Paul Watkins) from the “wannabe” ranchers (like Bunny and his father), ranching communities are forced to subscribe to stringent codes that support agrarian lifestyle. 23 Impoverished and nearly starved, Paul Watkins, the eldest Watkins son, first encounters Bunny Ross at the future site of one of Dad’s excavations. Bunny assists Paul by giving him a bit to eat, but when Bunny offers Paul money so that the boy can continue his search for work, Paul refuses. “No sir,” he says, “I don’t want no money, not till I earn it” (47). Both testament to the high moral code of the ranching family and 23 Please note also note, as Roush does, that ranching in this context places emphasis on solitary farmers and family farms—a stark contrast to agribusiness. 33 the pride of agrarian people, this transaction between Bunny and Paul leaves Bunny in a state of shock and awe. All his life Bunny has heard indoctrination from Dad about the vice and greed apparent in all people and how Bunny must learn how to protect his money, yet here is Paul, a poor ranch-boy, who, when offered much needed cash, refuses it. Setting the stage not only for a life-long friendship between the wealthy Bunny and the humble Paul, Sinclair also begins articulating the socialist thrust of his novel. When Bunny reports back to Dad about this incident, both Bunny and the reader are made aware that the capitalist perspective embodied by Dad is not the only ideology to occupy the ranch. The ranch can also be an alternative place of honor and care. Torn by his loyalty to his father and the family oil business—a business he later comes to see as exceedingly corrupt—and by his desire to band together with his friend in the fight of the labor class against capitalistic and corporate endeavors, Bunny’s temporal identity upon the ranch is split into dichotomous halves. Through Bunny’s fundamental connection with the land, the ranch takes on a new meaning as sanctuary for both the laborer and the entrepreneur. However, although Bunny makes a valiant attempt to straddle the line between the family ranch and big business, his plight is perilous. Even if Bunny embraces the pastoral ideal, he is still bound by blood to the counterforce of his father’s oil involvement. In the laborer’s or socialist’s sense, the ranch exemplifies subsistence-based living in which all persons function as a part of the communal work force and in turn reap the meager yet collective profits of their collective toil. In the entrepreneurial sense, the ranch and its surrounding landscape is a place for discovering wealth for 34 individual gain. No longer a source of farm and food, activities that exist in harmony with the agrarian landscape, the land acts as a cover or barrier that must be torn back to reveal the fruits beneath. Reminiscent of Colonel Pennington’s Rancho del Ganado, the Watkins ranch is initially a prescriptive reprieve for Bunny and Dad. Advised by his doctor to take a much-needed rest from the oil fields, Dad embarks with his son on a camping trip to Paradise where Bunny convinces Dad to pitch a tent in the Watkins’ back property. Taken in by the quail hunting and the dim prospect of oil, Bunny and Dad offer to buy up the property and work out a deal wherein the Watkins are allowed to stay and farm their land indefinitely while receiving an essential allowance each month. Old Able Watkins, beaten by hunger, poverty and religious obligation, quickly agrees to this plan, but Paul—who is emblematic of both the persistence and optimism of youth as well as a ranching mentality that values land ownership over easy money— makes it clear that the deal never would have taken place if he had been home during the offer. 24 Although the land is left untouched and in the Watkins’ care for a short while, before long prospecting equipment arrives and the wild-cat takes up permanent residency in Paradise. The ranch and the neighboring steads undergo a marked transformation whereby “a score of ‘little people’ suddenly seized by the vision of 24 Mentioned at the introduction of this section, one of Sinclair’s apparent allusions to power in the capitalist/socialist is through the usage of father and son as emblematic of these ideologies respectively. With that said, it should also be noted that by placing Abe and Paul Watkins in ideological opposition in regard to religion (Paul rejects the evangelical practices of his father and younger brother, Eli) and by allowing Abe to make the fatal mistake of selling his ranch to J. Arnold Ross, Sinclair foreshadows parallel disagreements between Dad and Bunny and places the son in the “right” both epistemically and morally. 35 becoming ‘big people,’ driven half-crazy with a mixture of greed and fear” (Sinclair qtd. in Powell 50) permeate the area. Similar to the hysteria Hollywood creates when it arrives on the Rancho del Ganado, the uproar over the drilling done by Ross Consolidated elucidates an interesting paradox wherein the city is fixed in the collective opinion of rural people as a “big” place endowed with the capacity of power through money. On the contrary the agrarian landscape and its inhabitants are seen as “little,” a diminutive term that reflects rural life’s lack of monetary wealth and public power, but does not account for the inherent value of the land. 25 Sanctuary for a spell, as both egalitarian and elite fight for space on the ranch— one to farm and the other to profit through oil—the land itself becomes an actual battle ground and transformative site where turbulence and unrest plague both the soil and the inhabitants. Marked by extreme violence and even death, Sinclair’s text, in fictively depicting the battle over Watkins ranch, asks underlying questions about ancestry, 25 As historian Kevin Starr observes, “The Gold Rush had taught Americans to employ technology to extract wealth from the land. The technology, infrastructure, and attitudes of the mining era led easily to the headlong, often ruthless wheat era that followed in the 1870s and lasted through the turn of the century (Starr xiii). After the wheat boom, came the Hollywood pilgrimage of 1915, which, according to Hedda Hopper, “was like the Gold Rush of ’49, only the gold was in pusses [faces], not pans” (qtd. in Soderbergh 174). Then, not five years later came the boom of black gold. Spurting from beneath the soil in costal cities like Signal Hill and Long Beach as well as inland sites like Bakersfield and Oil Dorado, oil transformed the fertile lands of California’s rich valleys. Once again simple subsistence farming was reduced by mechanical excavation. Drilling wild-cats took their place alongside sluice boxes, casting couches, steam propelled plows and harvesters as the most fertile farmland in America was bought and distributed by corporate owners. In later decades, when the remnants of gold were nothing more than dust and pursuit of oil went overseas, the emphasis on California’s agrarian landscape continued to be situated as a site of excavation, rather than production, as it was bulldozed, paved, and turned into countless profit making tract homes. 36 nature and the common good of man. Some of these musings can again be seen in the physical structure of the ranch itself, for as J. Arnold Ross and his oil wells boom, so too does the structure of the Paradise ranch house. In stark contrast to the Watkins’ “California house” a new Spanish style ranch home is erected for the use of Dad and his guests. Unlike the Watkins Ranch the Ross Ranch is […]built around the four sides of a court, with fountain splashing in the center, and date palms and banana plants and big shoots from the bougainvillea vine starting to climb the stucco walls. There was a Japanese who served the double function of butler and cook, and a boy who combined gardening with dishwashing, while Ruth [Watkins] had been promoted to be housekeeper and general boss[…]. There were six guest-rooms and when the executives and directors and geologists and engineers of Ross Consolidated came up to the tract, they were always Dad’s guests, and it was one big happy family. (248-9) Obviously, in what Sinclair intends to be an ironic usage, the term “family” is brought to the forefront of ranch function. Throughout Oil! Sinclair seems to make the (then) radical presumption that family is comprised not of bloodline but through association and shared values, thus allowing Bunny to associate with the muckraking Paul. 26 It should be noted, however, that Paul’s values are largely consistent with a rural (subsistence) way of life. When Bunny attempts to assimilate into the ranks of urban Hollywood he, like Grace Evans and Eva Pennington, jeopardizes the pastoral. 26 A “broken” family from the start, the Ross family consists largely of Bunny and Dad in a joint pursuit of oil. Although Bunny also has an aged grandmother, a spinster aunt, a sister, Bertie, and a mother (Mrs. Ross, known as “pretty little mama,” is seen as a gold-digger who left J. Arnold Ross before he struck oil and subsequently, she lives on a meager alimony, much to her chagrin) the only Ross blood-based bond illustrated in the text is that of father and son. 37 Through the use of a rebellious child Sinclair, like Burroughs but without the decidedly puplish and melodramatic tone, provides the reader with additional admonishment against city morals, values and ways of life by illustrating how Bunny’s identity is compromised when living among the city set. Because Sinclair introduces us to Bunny as a child, the reader is allowed to see Dad-as-idol through the untainted eyes of youth. As social geographer Yi-Fu Tuan states in his book Space and Place, “To the young child the parent is his primary ‘place.’ The caring adult is, for him, a source of nature and a haven of stability”(138). In this way, Dad functions both as icon and home to Bunny; a permanent site wherein identity is fixed through a single being. As Bunny ages and begins to make his own way in the world, however, his “family” extends beyond Dad to people of his own choosing. As Bunny inducts individuals into his familial circle—first Paul Watkins and his sister Ruth; then Rachel Menzies, a Jewish clothing worker, socialist, university student, and fruit picker; and Vee Tracy, the Hollywood starlet—his opinions of the world and of Dad form in glaring contradiction, oftentimes forcing Bunny to change his allegiances with his company. Evident of a great internal moral struggle and, furthermore, a confused self identity, Bunny’s character would again suggest, much like The Girl From Hollywood, that personal identity is based largely on who one identifies with, and not on one’s genealogy. By gaining entrance to and inclusion within the “authentic” ranch family of Paul Watkins, Bunny is able to tap into the collective values of hardscrabble ranchers as he is additionally allowed to wax nostalgic about a (family) ranching history and a (family) ranch that is contrary to his (heretofore) lived 38 experience. By employing Bunny with a found family of influences, Sinclair is able to provide startling social and political commentary through the actions and interactions of his protagonist as he comes of age. One of the most striking accusations Sinclair makes, outside of his Socialist allegations against the oil industry, is his indictment of Hollywood as big business. Equating the “dream factory” to the “steel kings,” Sinclair, according to Peter Soderbergh in his essay, “Upton Sinclair and Hollywood,” considered Hollywood producers and stars to be “of the ‘ruling classes’ who were in conspiracy against the masses and were consciously blunting the democratic processes whereby the public will might be exercised” (178). By resituating the ruling class as producers of visual industry, rather than as producers of natural resources or other commodities, Sinclair extends his socialist argument into the Hollywood hills and awakens an escalating fear that the working-class will be overcome by visual delights and concede to pay exorbitant amounts of money to performers, thus widening the already large gap between the masses and the elite. For the ranch this provides specific concern in terms of attrition and inherent value ascribed to land-derived vocations, or “real work,” as the rancher attests. 27 These anxieties are literally personified in Bunny’s relationship with the cinema doll, Viola “Vee” Tracy. Having somehow managed to make her way off the casting couch of the immoral director Koski (reminiscent of Burroughs’ Wilson Crumb) and onto the silver screen, Vee is perpetually cast in thinly veiled anti-socialist propaganda 27 For further discussion of work on the farm and ranch see Ian Howard “From the Inside Out: The Farm as Place.” 39 films where she, in an equally thin and revealing costume, is often and ultimately saved from encroaching socialist danger by an upstanding capitalist. Off screen, Vee’s “actual” life echoes these same anti-socialist sentiments as she is one of the many “Hollywood types” who are buying up the costal landscapes of Malibu and converting the once public land into private beaches with restricted public access. Vee’s relationship to Bunny serves as both distraction and illustration: on Dad’s urging Vee successfully woos Bunny away from his “class-conscious,” and “odious” (358) working-party friends and seduces him into an elitist costal paradise to distract him from his social muckraking. Nonetheless, with the Hollywood set, Bunny finds himself further troubled. Although there is no mention of the Russian Revolution, or the impending oil worker’s strike, a different war is waged within the film aristocracy and conversation is continually plagued by seemingly irrelevant (at least on a global scale) industry goings-on. “They [the Hollywood gathering] talked for a while,” Bunny observes, “about the sexual habits of their rulers; who was living with whom, and what scandals were threatened, and what shootings and attempted poisonings had resulted” (321). A stark contrast to the Bolsheviki revolution, it is of interest to note that this illustration of Hollywood is laden with military and religious analogies that help direct the sympathies of both Bunny and the reader away from the duplicitous movie idols and towards the honor of the working- man. Further illustrated in Sinclair’s most scathing, but perhaps most effective, indictment of anti-urbanism is Vee’s recitation of the “Hollywood Prayer:” “Our Movie, which art Heaven, Hollywood be Thy Name. Let Koski come. He will be done, in studio as in bed” (320). A clear parody of the Lord’s 40 Prayer, Vee’s Hollywood Prayer cements the distorted social values and low moral standards of city inhabitants. Illustrating a “lack [of a] shared personal history,” urban people, like the Hollywood set, must “rely upon conventional symbols for their place interaction” (Jobes 53) rather than upon familial bonds and ranchland musings as their rural counterparts do. Although this “glamorous” lifestyle is antithetical to both the underlying beliefs of Bunny and outright beliefs of Sinclair, by placing Bunny within the grips of the Hollywood elite and forcing him to “play along”, Sinclair is more aptly able to illustrate the “extravagant conduct and gaudy affluence” of Angel City (Soderbergh 180). By casting Los Angeles as a counterforce, as both a politically corrupt and morally bankrupt site, the ranch is further endowed as a place of meaning-making, a site where Bunny is forced to reckon with, and ultimately claim, his socialist ideologies. As such Bunny is able to secure his “true” identity without influence from Dad (big oil), Vee (Hollywood), or Paul (communism). Split domestically due to his fractured identity and ideology, Bunny moves between the three members of his biological and extended family, searching for truth and self. Although parts of him identify with each (his political allegiance to Paul, his loyalty to Dad, and his sexual union with Vee), Bunny is unable to integrate all parts of his fragmented character and is constantly forced to bend to the will of others. Understandably, then, Bunny is freed from his familial burden it is only after Vee is married off to the Prince of Marescu (thus allowing her entrance into an actual aristocracy), after Paul is killed during a raid on a Communist workers’ meeting (an anti-urban commentary intended to show the corrupt establishment of city 41 officials), and after Dad dies (thus interrupting the patriarchal lineage). No longer affiliated by blood or bond to another individual, Bunny is able to publicly reject the city and its immoral connotations. Fleeing Los Angeles, Bunny is subsequently subsumed by nostalgia for the ranch of his childhood. Although the ranch Bunny seeks is a “new” ranch, coincidentally situated in the village of “Mount Hope,” it resembles the ranch of his youth, a ranch populated by quail where the land has not been damaged in the pursuit of monetary wealth, or horded in greedy extravagance. With his new wife Rachel, Bunny finally realizes, “Men and women are not bodies only and cannot be satisfied with delights of the body only. Men and women are minds, and have to have harmony of ideas” (398). Although he had previously pondered this point when enjoying the fleshly delights of Vee, it is only with the likeminded Rachel that Bunny can find true happiness and ideological independence. Free from capitalistic influence, Bunny and his wife embark on an “authentic” agrarian pursuit situated in the “valley of new dreams” (499). Upon his return to the ranch Bunny’s split self is restored with the hope of starting a communal school where students live and learn in a subsistence fashion on the land. The soil of Mount Hope figuratively acts as a cementing of identity between the Paradise Ranch as it was in Bunny’s youth (before the oil, and corruption of big-city corporations) and the “new” ranch with its vast orchards, artesian water, little ranch house and “a regular airdrome of a barn, gorgeous with revolutionary red paint!” (498). Literally transforming a remembered ranch into an actualized site of subsistence living, Sinclair restores the 42 idyllic ranch of Bunny’s youthful remembering through the use of childhood iconography and the actualization of geographic imaginaries. Repopulated with Mount Hope students, the ranch is ideologically secured under the tutelage of Bunny and Rachel who become symbolic parents for the next ranching generation. As the novel closes, Bunny is finally able to pursue his own ideals precisely because he has returned to the ranch after a perilous journey and chooses to identify himself in relation to the ranchland (as opposed to his father, Paul or Vee). Bunny embraces the valley of new dreams as he literally “samples the soil” of his “future labors” (498, 502), thus deriving his notion of self from a re-endowed agrarian California. The Valley of the Moon: Imperialist Nostalgia In The Valley of the Moon, Jack London aggressively attempts to reclaim a valley of his own dreaming for the displaced children of American pioneers and to justify his own self-constructed identity as a California rancher under the guise of “imperialist nostalgia.” A form of nostalgia that allows racial domination to appear innocent, imperialist nostalgia, according to Renalto, permits its agents to “mourn the passing of what they themselves have transformed” (69). Particularly useful in discussions of Western dominance and colonization by those of Anglo Saxon ancestry, imperialist nostalgia is paradoxical in nature and is heavily dependent on the historical imagination and the façade of innocence (107-8). 43 London’s novel opens in the industrialized city of Oakland where the American Dream of hard work and persistence does not pay off for Billy, a teamster, and Saxon (a thin veil for Anglo Saxon), a laundress. Connected by their shared (and largely imagined) ancestral heritage, Billy and Saxon attempt to counter their increasing misfortune by nostalgically reminiscing about the heroic virtues of their Anglo ancestors. Indicative of what Svetlana Boym calls “reflective nostalgia,” the nostalgic reminiscing that Billy and Saxon employ “is not always for the ancient régime or fallen empire but also for the unrealized dreams of the past and visions of the future that became obsolete” (xvii). Although they lose their jobs, their home, their child and almost their marriage, they take comfort in the fact that they are “both [of] old American stock,” (London 18) and “[their] folks were walkin’ across the plains together” before they were born (19). Through the invocation of nostalgia and Anglo nativism Billy and Saxon are able literally, as Kevin Starr argues, to “re-enact the migration of their forbearers to California in an earlier generation” (7). Although Billy and Saxon can both technically be considered “adults” when they begin, “to repeat their parents’ migratory experience, but not their mistakes” (Starr 216), it can be argued that neither reach full maturation until after they have been counseled by Jack Hastings (a thin veil for the author himself) and the Hales, who, acting like surrogate parents, school Saxon and Billy in the ways of the ranch. Parallel to the ways in which Paul Watkins schooled Bunny Ross and also much like Bunny Ross envisions himself schooling the students of Mount Hope College at the close of Oil!, the Hales and Jack Hastings serve Billy and Saxon as “found family” and help 44 them to reclaim their ancestral birthright. Furthermore, because Billy and Saxon are both orphaned and know their birth parents only through the invocation of nostalgic musings of the past, the function of “surrogate parents” (like the Hales and Hastings) allows these adult children to re-map their own cultural heritage from the counterforce of Oakland onto the pastoral of Sonoma. Because the very condition of childhood has the decided tendency to connote innocence, Billy and Saxon are able, throughout the first section of the book, to appear as orphaned entities without parental guidance or agency. Thus they are able to shirk any responsibility they may have for their current plight as they are untaught and un-mothered, further complicating the implicit lack of Anglo guilt within London’s text. Experiencing an intense melancholic sorrow over the absence of their parents, Billy and Saxon resort to their collective imagination to secure (what the believe to be) their birthright, a wide-open Western space to call their own. According to Rafael Perez-Torres’ Freudian reading of geographic (and cultural) imaginaries, the center of melancholic loss arises from the child’s separation or sense of disconnection from the mother: “The loss of place, home, language, a loved one, a location, an object can evoke the unresolved loss of the mother's body as a matrix of meaning and wholeness” (110). Perpetually pining over her dead mother’s poetry, old tales passed down from the family network, and a red satin girdle— “the pioneer finery of a frontier woman after the California-Spanish model of forgotten days” (London 39)—Saxon can be said to superimpose the body of her mother onto a geographically imagined motherland: 45 “[The old tales] were sharp with detail, for [Saxon] had envisioned them many times, though their content was of things she had never seen. So far as details were concerned they were her own creation, for she had never seen an ox, a wild Indian, nor a prairie schooner. Yet, palpitating and real, […] she saw pass, from East to West, across a continent, the great hegira of the land-hungry Anglo-Saxon. It was part and fiber of her. She had been nursed on its traditions.” (40-41) Though Saxon cannot physically resurrect her mother, she can revive the pioneer ideals her mother passed along and published in the San Jose Mercury, thus making her (and Billy’s) dependence on the actualization of a geographic imaginary all the more necessary. As Yi-Fu Tuan states, “The adult is also the guarantor of meaning to the child”(138). Accordingly, then, to be reunited with the motherland, is, by extension, to be reunited with the absent mother. Paradoxically, however, although Saxon romanticizes “the form of her little, indomitable mother” (41) and Billy champions the brevity of his Indian fighting father, they also subconsciously blame their kin for the “mixed-up” state of the world today. As Billy says to Saxon, “Somehow I think it was a better world to live in than now. Things was more sensible and natural. I don’t exactly say what I mean. But it’s like this: I don’t understand life today. There’s labor unions, an’ employers’ associations, an’ strikes, an’ hard times, an’ huntin’ for jobs, an’ all the rest. Things wasn’t like that in the old days. Everybody farmed, an’ shot their meat, an’ got enough to eat, an’ took care of their old folks. But now it’s all a mix-up that I can’t understand.” (53) Although they never explicitly blame their parents by name, both Billy and Saxon do recognize that something they don’t understand “went wrong” (194) and left them landless, working long hours in city factories rather than on farms of their own making. According to Perez-Torres, “The individual suffering from melancholy is ever 46 caught between a desire and hatred for the object of love and loss” (102). Tossing historical accuracy aside, Billy and Saxon, long to inhabit the symbolic geographic space where their parents once “lived simply,” in harmony with nature. However, they also harbor a bitter (albeit subconscious) disappointment in their parent’s shortcomings that have subsequently left them landless. After all, in Saxon’s words, “We’re Saxons, you an’ me, […] and all the Americans that are real Americans, you know, and not Dagos and Japs and such” (17). Historically, as Renato Rosaldo, William Cronan and Patricia Limerick, among others, concur, “what went wrong” was the white man. Raping the soil in his conquest of native lands and people the Anglo Saxon pioneer soon found his agrarian pastoral uninhabitable and was forced (largely by the advent of industrialization and agribusiness) into the cities for subsistence. Typical of imperialist nostalgia, once the land has been lost or destroyed “the agents of colonialism long for the very forms of life they intentionally altered or destroyed” (Rosaldo 107-8). In the city the displaced pioneers, in this instance Billy and Saxon, are left only with a self-constructed geographic imaginary of their mythic ranch. However, because London is adamant in securing the pastoral ideal, both for himself and for his characters, the “real reasons” behind Anglo displacement are subverted in Valley of the Moon. Consequently, nostalgic impulse surfaces in London’s text with a decidedly imperialist inclination as he seeks to secure the valley pastoral by using minority farmers as a counterforce. Despite the fact that London attributes Anglo-Saxon nativism and heroic birthright for Billy and Saxon’s successes with scientific farming, several (decidedly 47 racist) passages in the novel suggest that the methods learned by Billy and Saxon are in fact Asian and Near Eastern techniques that are best implemented by immigrants of Japanese, Chinese, Dalmatian, Greek and Portuguese ancestry (292-295). Furthermore, although scientific farming conforms to London’s vision of a post-frontier California, it also helps to further legitimize the connection between the protagonists and their ancestors. As Starr notes, “Scientific farming makes possible for Billy and Saxon a saving ruralism, a repetition of the frontier experience upon the same soil where pioneers such as their parents had squandered and mismanaged their land and energies” (10). Additionally, imperialist nostalgia, as Rosaldo suggests, “has the capacity to transform the responsible colonial agent into an innocent bystander” (108) thus allowing Billy and Saxon to nobly achieve the return to a “heroic”—and decidedly white—ranching context while reclaiming the lost myth of the Anglo agrarian hearth. When attempting to legitimize (through fiction) his ranching dream and the California Dream of Billy and Saxon, it should be noted that London often employs a racist hierarchy where Anglo-Saxons (what London refers to as the “original American pioneers”) are the only race of people deserving of agrarian Edens such as that found in the Valley of the Moon. 28 Furthermore, it is not until the novel’s close that Billy is able to translate the Indian word “Sonoma” into “Valley of the Moon,” thus actualizing his return “home,” by ascribing or translating the Native American landscape of Sonoma into the Anglo homeplace Valley of the Moon. This “cultural borrowing,” more 28 For a complete study on the overlap of London’s biography in Sonoma and beliefs in scientific farming and the ideology presented in Valley of the Moon, please see Kevin Starr’s “The Sonoma Finale of Jack London, Rancher, ” in Americans and the California Dream. New York: Oxford, 1973. 48 commonly known as dispossession, is starkly reminiscent of Owen Wister’s revelation in, “The Evolution of the Cow Puncher.” Because Billy and Saxon are allowed figuratively and literally to re-claim the land they consider to be their ancestral right from the “Chinks and Japs [who are] running the valley” (London 295), they are also able to return the American soil back to the “[Anglo Saxon] folks who made this country” (295) thus effectively reversing their ancestors’ mistakes while simultaneously invoking the racial superiority of their Anglo forbearers. Run River: The Remembered Ranch Nearly fifty years after London’s publication of The Valley of the Moon, Anglo- Saxonism and the (failed) Edenic promise of the West continues to be the subject of Western ranch narratives. Like Billy and Saxon who frequently question, “What went wrong?” and “How did we lose out?” (London 194), Joan Didion ponders, as the title of her first published short story suggests, “How exactly did we get from there to here?” William Handley, in his book Marriage, Violence and Nation, writes, “If there is an answer, it is the causal error in the frontier belief that the West offers a new life, a chance to begin over again, tabula rasa” (192). Although Billy and Saxon (and Bunny and Rachel) may very well have secured the pastoral ideal—largely due in part to the Anglo erasure and denial of Mexican and Indian cultures— Lily Knight McClellan, Joan Didion’s female protagonist, is not afforded a similar success. In Run River Lily is propelled into near paralysis as she watches her family, marriage, home, ranchland, and subsequently her ancestral heritage disintegrate due to her inability to decide “what it is 49 [she] wants” (21, 23, 24). What Lily wants is a past that never existed. Evident throughout the novel’s nostalgic tone, but most apparent in the final passage where, if given one wish, Lily “would have wished” that her recently deceased husband, Everett, “had been a good man” (264), Lily effectively wants to rewrite the narrative of Everett’s life (and by extension her family history) immediately following his death. Suffering from what Krista Comer calls Anglo-nihilism (68), Lily experiences a profound bout of historical nostalgia. Providing a definition of nostalgia that profoundly resonates with Lily’s plight, Susan Stewart claims, “Nostalgia is a sadness without an object, a sadness which creates a longing that of necessity is inauthentic because it does not take part in the lived experience…the past it seeks has never existed except as a narrative” (23). Akin to both Billy and Saxon, Lily is fated to repeat the nostalgic impulse of desiring an idealized pastoral throughout Run River. Involving—both implicitly and subconsciously—Anglo migration, conquest, and dominance, the narratives that Lily perpetually invokes are reminiscent of a bygone era and lie in direct contradiction to historical veracity. Whereas Billy focuses his nostalgic yearnings on the heroism of his father, the Civil War veteran who was captured by Indians as a small child, and Saxon likewise invokes the poetry of her dead mother, that although “hopelessly beyond her” (London 39) was nonetheless published in the San Jose Mercury (73), Lily reminisces about the role-playing games her sister-in-law Martha played like the “ritual drama of Tamsen Donner,” and “the Winning of the West” (RR 100). Direct descendants of the 50 fated Donner-Reed party, Didion and her characters gain identity by associating themselves with an aggrandized California past. 29 As Eva Pennington states in The Girl from Hollywood, “We have all lived here always, it seems, your family and mine like one big family… (43), Didion’s agrarian characters also claim to be of a “native” lineage that has “always been in the Sacramento Valley” (STB 172). 30 However, unlike Sinclair’s Oil! And London’s Valley of the Moon, Didion’s Run River ends with the impending loss of the agrarian pastoral. This is problematic for collective Anglo identity on two levels, for if, as I have posited previously, the ranch novel structures an affinity between memory, identity and home and seeks to liken the universal lament for homeland with the agrarian lament for the land, then Lily’s landlessness at the close of Run River is emblematic of a dual (and devastating) loss of earth and self, geography and ancestry. As has previously been established, in order for the pastoral design to function, thus fixing the safety of the ranch, an agrarian geography must exist (even if it is entirely imaginary). The counterforce not only encroaches on the actual pastoral at the close of Run River but the pastoral ideal as well, thus dis-assembling family, both physically and mentally, and leaving the ranch in ruin. Lily is thirty-six years old when the novel opens, and much like Saxon Brown, she 29 When writing her Sacramento-based ranch novel, Run River (1963), Joan Didion lived in New York. Nevertheless she kept a map of Sacramento County hung on her bedroom wall to “remind [her] who [she] was,” (Slouching Towards Bethlehem 232). Who she was, was not, as is evident from her many fictional and autobiographical accounts, a person who felt at home in the city. Rather, she was a child of one of California’s many fertile ranches as home for Didion is the place of her childhood: Sacramento, California. 30 “Always” for Didion is characteristic of a sentiment rather than an actual fact. “For it is characteristic of Californians,” she states, “to speak grandly of the past as if it had simultaneously begun, tabula rasa, and reached a happy ending on the day the wagons started west” (STB 172). 51 is struggling to hold together family, history and home. Her husband, Everett, has just shot and killed her lover, Ryder Channing (reminiscent of the fatal shooting at the end of The Girl From Hollywood) and as Ryder’s dead body lies on the fertile bank of the American river in Sacramento, Lily is transported back in time to her childhood. Because of the unique way in which Didion “re-stories” her ranch novel structurally (the novel opens in medias res with the climactic shot of a gun and then moves both forward and backward in achronological order) the evocation of nostalgia and childhood innocence is necessarily heightened allowing Lily the (feigned) innocence of both child and bystander. Through Lily’s “rememberings” the reader is able to view the Knight McClellan Ranch as it existed in exemplary form back in 1938. In this “intersection between place and history” (Randisi 14), Didion secures the pastoral while indulging in Anglo-Saxonist tendencies so often seen in Anglo ranching narratives. As Jennifer Randisi observes in her essay, “The Journey Nowhere: Didion’s Run River,” “What the accumulated past accumulates is family history, and what place illuminates is the effect of memory over time” (16). The “accumulated past” of the Knight family is precariously woven throughout the text while memory is constantly embattling time for narrative control. Through Lily’s eyes, the reader is able to bear witness to the gradual deterioration of ranch and Anglo Saxon nativism as the narrative progresses to the present moment, 1959, when Ryder, along with the imperialist dream of the ranch, is dead. Known equally for her ardent representations of California life and psychological musings, Didion combines both of these qualities in her first novel while 52 painting a family melodrama, reminiscent of Burroughs, London and Sinclair. In Lily’s younger years, her family identity, much like that of Bill Roberts and Bunny Ross, is inexplicably yet resolutely tied to her father, Walter. “A roar of blood” (RR 33) between them, father and daughter share a bond that is necessary to the survival of the Anglo- Saxon lineage. Like Custer Jr. to Colonel Pennington and Bunny to J. Arnold “Dad” Ross, Lily—being Walter Knight’s only child—must learn the ways of the family ranching business if the family line and land is to survive. Although Lily, unlike Bunny Ross, is unique in that she is a female, thus breaking down patriarchical lines by her gender, she is still molded to her task by her father in a masculine fashion: by doing (as opposed to teaching). 31 In order to secure that their children walk in the patriarchical path (namely stay on the land), all three fathers instill within their children a sense of entitlement and obligation. This further exemplifies the agrarian notion that “A long- term commitment to a particular place requires an understanding of that place: a particular knowledge of that place over time” (Howard 152). As previously illustrated in The Girl From Hollywood, Custer Pennington Jr. has been made to feel that it is his moral duty to stay on the ranch with his father. “I will stick it out for father’s sake” (Burroughs 40) he often repeats. Likewise, Bunny Ross cannot fully pursue his own political agenda until his father is dead, for he knows that speaking out against the horrors of the oil corporation would be an admonishment to Dad. It is no secret that Walter keeps Lily on the ranch by reminding her of her California blood. “You come from people who wanted things and got them. Don’t 31 See Howard page 151-152. 53 forget it” (RR 35), Walter tells Lily on her sixteenth birthday. However, although Walter has wanted and received plenty, there is one area in which he fails: he runs for governor of the state of California and loses. While Walter’s failed campaign is a bruise to his ego, it is an even bigger setback for Lily who was certain that her father was capable of anything. This initial loss incites a series of descents: Lily decides not to return to college at UC Berkeley; akin to Eva Pennington and Guy Evans, she stumbles into a marriage with Everett McClellan of the neighboring ranch; and her father, Walter, dies. Even though the initial two events (dropping out of college and marrying Everett) strip away at Lily’s identity—causing her more and more to be defined not by what she accomplishes, but rather by what she has failed to do, or to whom she is wed—it is Walter’s death that truly transforms Lily’s character. “I’m not myself if my father is dead,” (RR 78) Lily whispers, horrified. Although the death of Dad was cathartic for Bunny Ross, for Lily, the death of her father is tantamount to collapse, both of the self and the Edenic myth that the ranch has heretofore been imbued. Left only with the land, Lily can no longer forge an existence from those that surround her. Having established her father as primary “place,” 32 Lily becomes particularly disoriented when her father dies; in her mind her father, like the ranch, was a permanent fixture and his absence upsets the order of what Lily knows to be “home.” Subsequently, Lily, (like Custer Jr. when faced with the departure of Grace,) can no longer endow the ranch with the same symbolic meaning it 32 By applying Yi-Fu Tuan discussion of “Intimate Experiences with Place, ” (pages 136-148) it can be argued that Lily (and Bunny Ross) remain in an extended child-like state and as such, even in early adulthood, depend on their fathers to secure meaning within and of place. 54 possessed when her father was alive. As Yi-Fu Tuan again points out, “In the absence of the right people, things and places are quickly drained of meaning so that their lastingness” –in this study, the ranch—“is an irritation rather than a comfort” (140). With Walter gone, the comforts of the ranch and indeed the whole Valley—which Lily previously claimed as her own –are now devoid of meaning and conjure up feelings of loss rather than security. Rather than leave the pastoral for the city, as is typical of ranch novel protagonists, Lily “doesn’t see the need” to escape to urban places like New York or San Francisco (RR 53). Instead, she turns inside of herself and begins a psychological absence that is just as lasting and perhaps more damning to the ranch than a physical absence would be. Beginning with a string of adulterous affairs, Lily departs from the moral foundations of the ranch that have heretofore elevated Anglo-Saxon morality and allowed for white “progress.” She symbolically leaves the matrimonial bed she shares with Everett and as such, compromises the ethical stronghold the ranch has previously embodied. Lily also engages in promiscuous sexual relations disrupting and jeopardizing the delicate structure of her family on the ranch. As Lillian Schlissel notes, “keeping the family together has largely been the special charge of women” (244). Not only are “family histories recorded in their hand,” (244) but women, unlike men, are susceptible to pregnancy. By engaging in sexual relations with a man outside the agrarian structure Lily is also potentially opening both her womb and the fertile soil of the ranch to a non-indigenous progeny. 33 33 Although it is beyond the scope of this dissertation to include an in-depth analysis of the gender of ranch novel protagonists, it is worthwhile to note that with the exception 55 During Lily’s psychological hiatus and after Walter’s death, Everett McClellan positions himself as symbolic protector of the land; however, in Didion’s portrayal of Everett as a “guardian of an ephemeral empire in need of constant control, split-second manipulation” (RR 8), the reader learns that Everett “had little interest himself in using the land. Like his father, he only wanted to have it” (133). Although Everett’s emphasis on ownership (instead of utilization) certainly preserves the pastoral against encroaching evils such as freeways and housing developments, it does nothing to enhance or sustain the production of the Knight McClellan Ranch. Everett’s behavior is indicative of a shift in urban/rural relationships. In both The Girl From Hollywood and Oil! the city and pastoral were kept at a safe distance from one another with an assuring “100 miles” of uncharted land between the ranch and the bustle of the metropolis. In Valley of the Moon the city and pastoral are kept at a safe distance from one another such that Oakland becomes “just another place to start from” (217). In Run River, however, suburbia is ever-encroaching and the counterforce of the city can no longer be escaped. It is not invited in (like Wilson Crumb or Ross Consolidated); rather, it is forcefully butting up against the ranch. Additionally, Everett is emblematic of the typical Anglo Saxon character as he inherits his “ancestors’ ideas” along “with the farms they have cultivated for generations.” As such, for both Everett and Lily, the ranchland becomes “the literal symbol of their destiny, the vital and real sign of continuity between then and now” (Brady 456). Although the “then” is clearly articulated in the minds of Lily and Everett as an idyllic time when the pastoral is of Bunny Ross (who is largely feminized in name and mannerisms) the ranch novel is largely concerned with the female protagonist. 56 continually preserved without work, the “now” is problematized by the encroaching forces of the city which has come symbolically to represent change and modernization. Notice also that in Didion’s dichotomy of “then and now,” there is no space, metaphoric or actual, for a future ranch (home place) to exist, leaving both Lily and Everett in a suspended state of idleness where the now is perpetually informed not by plans for a future but rather by nostalgic yearnings for the past. Paralyzed by inaction, and making only “enough to live on” (133), Everett can do nothing but physically remain on the land—in fact Lily informs the reader that Everett has only left the ranch for “occasional growers’ meetings… and funerals down in the Valley” (8)—while he entertains nightmares of its eventual demise. “A dock light first, a torn fence next, maybe the pump goes off and loses its prime,” Everett muses, “before long the whole place would come crumbling down, would vanish before his eyes, revert to whatever it had been when his great-great-grandfather first came to the Valley” (13). Strikingly analogous to Billy and Saxon’s fears upon witnessing the valley fill up with immigrants, and Custer Pennington’s anxiety about the intrusion of Hollywood on the Rancho del Ganado, “Watch them wreck the furniture and demolish the lawns! They’ll go up into the hills and chase the cattle over the top into the ocean” (Burroughs 27), Everett’s fears reveal a deeper anxiety of Ranchland: a literal “undoing” of history. The loss is more than the physical land. It is, as Jennifer Brady states, “the loss of a world that never existed” (458). Not only is Anglo-Saxon dominance in jeopardy, which is also Custer’s and Robert’s worry, but as Everett compounds, the land will also revert back to “whatever it had been” before the family 57 had set their mark upon the pastoral. Such a historic reversal not only threatens the ascribed fiscal value of the land, but also the claim of whiteness. As Patrick Jobes states, Ranchers, while aware of the nuances and complexities of their social system, tend to be unaware of the importance of structural antecedents unless externally imposed change disturbs their community. They think of community as something they create by their behaviors and choices rather than as a structure they respond to. (56) Although the protagonists of both novels lay claim to ownership of the land, as Everett’s lack of physical toil reveals, they are largely ignorant of ranchland structure as someone else is inevitably doing the manual labor and upkeep of the sprawling estate. As such, owners are relegated to figureheads as the land literally slips away from their once staunch grasp. In Run River, this “someone else” is identified as Gomez, who even during Walter Knight’s life, “ran the ranch, even bargained with the fruit buyers, while Walter Knight sat in the familiar gloom of the Senator Hotel bar…” (RR 35). Similarly, on both the Pennington and Ross ranches migrant workers and seemingly disposable oil workers keep production on course. Although the landowners have contrived an appearance of independence, subsistence on the ranch is necessarily intertwined with dependence on migratory workers. Often painted as outsiders or, even worse, as malefactors who lack “ancestral blood,” (like Slick Allen and the “swarthy Mexicans” on the Rancho del Ganado, or menacing unionizers on the Paradise Ranch), these workers destabilize the “self-made man” and further intrude on the romanticized notion of ranchland, compromising identity and ownership while proving that the changing times cannot be 58 escaped by looking to an imagined past. For Didion’s Knight McClellan family, the encroaching fear of intrusion, landlessness and ancestral exile are literally embodied in the counterforce of a single character: Ryder Channing. A landless outsider from San Francisco, Channing serves as technological advancement and urban power personified. Pushing himself sexually on Martha McClellan, Everett’s youngest sister, Channing is allowed entrance into the Knight McClellan Ranch while Everett is enlisted (Didion is clear to point out this is the only time Everett is away from the ranch for any duration) and sizes up the riverfront and adjoining lots as potential profit by way of housing developments. 34 Reminiscent of Sinclair’s sale of the Watkins Ranch, Didion, through Lily’s frantic letters to Everett, subtly suggests that if Everett had been home on the ranch, Ryder Channing would not have been allowed to intrude. In Ryder, Lily sees “the look of someone who has been in some sense spoiled” (123) echoing the same divine manner in which Custer Pennington was able to denounce Slick Allen as “evil” by merely looking into his eyes. In both novels, it would then appear that ranching people are comprised not only of similar social values, but that they also have a certain look or mystique that sets them apart from outsiders which subsequently allows interlopers to be easily detectable. Whether or not this mythic “glimpse into the souls of others” is indeed possible, it is of interest to note that both authors employed similar technique when differentiating the authentic from the false. Comparable to its inhabitants, the ranch itself is also positioned as more authentic when 34 For further discussion as well as a comparison to the Leo Marx’s Machine in the Garden see Michelle Loris. 59 viewed through an outside gaze. “Intimacy with the land can be stated in two ways, according to Howard, “(1) ‘people identify themselves and their local community by natural landmarks;’ and (2) ‘the setting represents a quality of interaction’” (Howard 148). By situating both natural landmarks and interaction with the landscape outside the grasp of an interloper, the rancher is able to secure his identity with the land by referencing himself in relation to the specific idiosyncrasies within the land. In all four novels, countless references about the virtue of country life when compared to the city are made in part to exclude an outsider while simultaneously elevating the virtue of the ranch. Typical of this sentiment is Burroughs, who in addition to referencing the country as “clean” (75), also positions the city as “counterfeit” (90) and, through the virginal voice of Eva Pennington announces, “Here in the country you can really live. You city people don’t know what life is” (89). Although ranchers, as Jobes points out, may see themselves as living a more authentic or desirable life than city-dwellers, “Economically, their livelihood is possible to few persons since the land must be inherited or obtained through great price” (Jobes 57). As such, ranchers, like the Penningtons, Watkins’, Ross’ and Knight McClellans’ carry a burden of living a myth along with reality, and feel remorse when they can no longer comfortably combine the two….Their remorse involves more than retiring from a job; it is an admission that they are giving up a romanticized style of life integrated around the work of a community. (57) 35 35 Again, this is my comparison. Jobes specifically deals with ranchers in a non-fictive analysis. I have merely graphed his analysis of ranch life onto the fictive novels presented in this essay. 60 According to Krista Comer, in Run River there is still a noted emphasis on the representational ranch and river and a seeming disregard towards the ‘real’ status of the landscape (Comer 86). “[The] river [itself] is racialized in this process and belongs not to the Mexican American men who manage the ranch and work the hops that grow on the river-rich soil, not to the Oakie migrant pickers, not to the domestic worker ‘China Mary’ whose speech pattern suggests she is African American. The river belongs to the white elite. … That is, the ‘real California’ belongs to the white people who can afford to buy it, just as a century before it belonged to the white people with means to dispose others with competing claims” (Comer 73). Additionally, forfeiting the romanticized ideals of the pastoral usually coincide with a loss of human life. Marked by particularly graphic points of violence and death, the ranch novel reaches a climactic height when, as control on and of the ranch wavers, the ability to hold reign on one’s emotions also wanes. Due to the reverse chronological order of Run River, the reader begins, as previously stated, with the seemingly senseless murder of Ryder Channing. However, as the plot unfolds, the reader also learns that in killing Channing, Everett McClellan, like Guy Evans, is seeking restitution in the name of his sister (Martha), his wife (Lily), his own honor and the sanctity of his ranch. Unlike, Guy, however, Everett is further moved to turn the gun on himself, and akin to Oil!, Run River ends in a suicide. As such, though restitution is achieved, the pastoral is not ultimately secured for the symbolic protector also chooses to turn the gun on himself, thus destroying the hope of pastoral regeneration. As Lillian Schlissel notes, “The image of the Garden holds family and land inheritance in balance as generations 61 are tied in a sedate and orderly progression on the land” (233). Once the delicate balance of “orderly progression” is interrupted, the Garden ideal is broken as well. 62 CHAPTER THREE: The Terra Firma of the Re-storied Ranch The Squatter and the Don: Collective Resistance on the Ranch In ranching narratives written by and about Chicanos the “pioneer ideal” of Anglo identity is necessarily destabilized while the previously marginalized “other” is often depicted as the rightful landowner and subsequently must navigate through colonialist Anglo oppression in search of social justice and the rectification of history. As Richard Rodriguez states, effectively illustrating the need of marginalized citizens to disrupt Anglo dominance, “Joan Didion’s Sacramento has nothing to do with me; families like mine meant the end of them” (206). Although official US history negates the value (and often presence) of non-white experience in the West, it is important to note that Chicano ranching narratives both precede and follow Anglo narratives on the California agrarian. 36 The historically silenced voice of the conquered Mexican American was first brought to press in 1885 with the publication of Maria Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don. Accordingly, I will examine the aforementioned Anglo texts in relation to Ruiz de Burton’s historical romance while calling attention to a more recent, though decidedly less analyzed, work by Raymond Barrio (The Plum Plum Pickers, 1969) to illustrate the practical use of re-storying where concurrent narratives are allowed to voice their individual stories upon a common agrarian landscape. As such, the official 36 It is also important to remember, as Gerald Haslam writes in his introduction to “Early California” literature, “Two central facts about Mexican California must not be ignored: ranchos depended upon the work of Indians and mestizos, and European hauteur relegated those with Indian blood to subservient status within the society” (14). 63 white narrative of Western progress is matched by a story of Chicano loss and survival. One of the many factors that set Chicano (survival) narratives on the ranch apart from their Anglo counterparts is, as Joe Rodriguez illustrates, the necessity of the collective Chicano experience to stand against the “rugged” Anglo individual. Usually, as is the case with Roosevelt and Wister, there is “a white protagonist and the wilderness is populated by Indians/ethnic enemies. However Chicano/a novels twist this wilderness ideal and show how ethnics must fight in a white wilderness for survival and social justice… [wherein] the I must necessarily speak for the entire race/ethnic group” (65-66). Although there are notable exceptions to the collective expression of Chicano identity (such as Jose Villareal’s Pocho), in both de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don and Barrio’s The Plum Plum Pickers Chicano identity must function through a collective voice in order to resist imperialist doctrine, and depict the Anglo population as corrupt. Although de Burton and Barrio each—according to their respective biographies and place in history—represent Anglo forces in disparate ways—Barrio positions the Anglo rancher as cruel boss and landowner while de Burton positions Californios as the rightful land owners, thereby relegating the Anglo race to the despicable (and historically) accurate position of squatters and thieves—both approach Anglo dominance and oppression by employing similar means of nostalgic longing for a heroic past. As Vincente Perez remarks, “[The Squatter and the Don’s] nostalgia for a genteel hacienda society, while undermining popular stereotypes of Mexican Americans and thus intervening in the public discourse about land entitlement—reflects a desire to 64 come to terms with the culturally fragmented identity of conquered Mexican Americans” (Perez 39). Although true on a collective level, others, like Jose Aranda Jr., have argued that “[de Burton’s] biography indicates that she saw herself as part of a white, educated elite—aristocratic in its origins and with a history in Alta California as colonizers—not as colonized” (558). 37 Biography aside, within the text itself there is convincing evidence that when engaging in “nostalgic longing” de Burton employs similar tactics to that of London, Sinclair and Didion. For de Burton the past—even when “idealized and unattainable”— still functions as a means by which to explore the incursion of history. 38 For example, when Clarence visits the Yucatan with the express purpose of seeing the ruins of Uxmal, he finds that the “ruins, which are the irrefragable witnesses of a past civilization” are also “intensely interesting” and “seem to him symbolic of his ruined hopes, his great love, in fact, himself” (284). Although Clarence is himself of Anglo stock, de Burton takes pains to shape his character as both genteel and aristocratic, thus allowing him to have more in common with the Don than his own father, the Squatter. As such, when he locates symbolic meaning via his witness of a past, Mexican civilization, he is able to “connect the ideas of return and pain, [of] a glorified past colored by an undistinguished or conflicted present” (Wiley 101). Clarence’s experience in the Yucatan speaks directly to the fundamental nature of nostalgia while it 37 I will hold off on a close reading of de Burton, including her use of whiteness as advanced by David Luis-Brown. 38 de Burton’s embrace of the Railroad and industrialization that sets her apart, most notably from Didion, who rejects industrialized progress as evident in Run River. 65 illuminates a similar need, by both Anglo and Californio/Chicano ranchers, for a geographic imaginary. Although not always explicitly named, the emergence of Aztlán in Chicano narratives counters the Anglo desire for a pioneer past with a more distinct and indigenous past and allows Mexican Americans to locate a “usable Mexican past” that, according to Francisco Lomeli, ascertains a “heightened visibility” within Western history (10). Mythical in origin, Aztlán is said to be the ancestral home of the Aztec (Nahua) people “located near estuaries or on the coast of northwestern Mexico” (Azteca). During the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, however, Aztlán was infused with political significance and has come symbolically to represent the large area of land in the American Southwest that was stripped from native inhabitants by Anglo America after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. According to Daniel Cooper Alarcon, “The ideas embodied by Aztlán are meant to draw together geography, culture, history, biology, migration, tradition, heritage, unity, and authenticity. Linking the Chicano to an indigenous ancestry, Aztlán posits a claim to land once home, prior to invasion and dispossession.” Accordingly, Aztlán functions both as a geographic imaginary and a discourse within the Chicano experience and helps to clarify both mythic and historic origins of the pastoral. In establishing a heroic place of origin, and by accessing this origin through nostalgic yearnings, Chicano narratives are successfully able to seek refuge and orchestrate revolt against the Anglo landowner (and by extension colonialist US doctrine). As Catherine Wiley clarifies, “Chicano culture generally depends on Mexico not only for its origins, but for its essential meaning as well. … Indeed the term 66 Aztlán… is one of nostalgia…and carries the weight of authenticity and loss” (Wiley 99-100). The Plum Plum Pickers: Nostalgia as Survival Continuing in the critical vein established by Ruiz de Burton, Barrio, in his linguistically experimental and structurally fragmented novel The Plum Plum Pickers, shows how the plight of the Mexican/Mexican American has not significantly improved on California soil. “Structured in the mold of a ‘documentary novel’” Barrio’s The Plum Plum Pickers according to Francisco Lomeli, “sets out to straddle the thin line between reality and fiction with the overt intent to fuse them” (10), thus exhibiting a functional re-storying of the (Anglo) ranch narrative that encourages the reader to actively participate in or “witness” (10) the plight of the migrant farm worker. In addition to interspersing his fictional text with a montage of songs (both Mexican folk ballads and popular Anglo music), poetry, official US documents, newspaper clippings and leaflets from the US Department of Agriculture, Barrio christens the Anglo landowner and heartless field boss, Fredrick Turner, thus effectively vilifying the historical legacy of US imperialism. 39 “Historically,” Thomas Gladsky notes and Barbara Foley concurs, “writers have used documents either to enhance the truth or to question it, to validate a widely held 39 Fredrick Jackson Turner delivered an essay at the 1893 Chicago’s World Fair entitled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” In his essay Turner was the first to explain America’s national identity in terms of the frontier. 67 position or to fashion a new one” (Gladsky 380, Foley 393). For postmodern writers, the documentary mode has become an integral part of the novel. “Documents,” as Gladsky notes, “become theme as writers determine that historical reality is ultimately unknowable, that all is discourse, and that the documents themselves are nothing more than another kind of fiction. […] The documentary mode is typically associated with the novel of history and with those texts that examine the unauthenticated past” (Gladsky 380). 40 Barrio’s use of the documentary mode implicates a specific time and space— agrarian California during the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960’s. “That reliance on specificity,” according to Foley, “no longer assumes historical actuality as self-evident” (143). Furthermore, as Gladsky concurs, “The documentary mode serves the historical actualization of the self on a fictional, personal and cultural level” (381). Accordingly, in Barrio’s text the documents themselves become, in part, the subject. As biographer John Akers states, “The effect of Barrio's style is to bring the reader into closer contact with the world of the picker” (50). To this end Barrio documents the current plight of migrant workers effectively illuminating the glaring discontinuity between legislation and lived reality. Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture declares, “the grower will furnish drinking water and toilets near where you are picking,” on the lived ranch, “thirst, violence, [and] accidents,” abound thus allowing Barrio to reinscribe history in personal and public ways in his text. Through the use of documents he creates a subdivision of false fronts and a circus of mirrors that do not accurately reflect the intended image. For example, the Western Grande 40 Didion’s non-fiction and memoir is often discussed in the documentary mode, especially her essays in Slouching, White Album and Where I Was From. 68 Compound where the ranch hands of Barrio’s novel reside are depicted to resemble a Universal Pictures movie set; that is, they provide a polished façade that masks the gross and inhospitable living conditions of what lies inside. Although the inclusion of historical papers can be said to lay claim to a larger truth, in Barrio’s text these same social, political, pop-cultural and even legal documents are revealed to be more fictitious than the fiction he himself writes. As such, according to Akers, “Barrio’s novel adeptly links social protest with literary technique” (50). Also highly infused with nostalgia, Barrio, like London, Sinclair and Didion, endows his protagonists with dreams of the noble origins of their ancestors. Invoking both the legendary Joaquin Murrieta (33) and Gaspar de Portola (90, 94), Manuel Gutarriez attempts to ward off his despair and near exhaustion in the fields by aligning himself with heroic ancestry through the implementation of historical nostalgia. 41 Bent over the California earth, “both don Gaspar and Manuel were landlords and landless at precisely the same instant of viewing all this heady beauty. And both were dispossessed. Both were also possessed of a keen sense of pride and natural absorption with the ritual and mystery of all life” (Barrio 91). Through visions of Portola, Manuel 41 Joaquin Murietta (ca. 1829-1853) was considered a legendary figure during the California Gold Rush. Referred to as the Robin Hood of El Dorado, he was either an infamous bandit or a Mexican patriot, depending on who did the telling. For more information on Joaquin Murietta please see John Rollin Ridge (Yellow Bird), The Adventures of Joaquin Murietta, Celebrated Bandit of California, and Ireno Paz, Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit Joaquin Murieta, his exploits in the state of California. Reigning from Spanish nobility, Gaspar de Portolà (ca. 1717–1784), was governor of Baja and Alta California (1767–1770). As a soldier and explorer he is attributing with discovering both San Diego and Monterey. For information on Gaspar de Portola, please see, Harry Crosby’s Doomed to fail, Gaspar de Portolá's first California appointees. 69 seeks refuge from Anglo dominance, by employing a “usable Mexican history” and as such gains hope and pride in an otherwise desperate space. Akin to Manuel, Ramiro, who represents the “newer generation that learns from past experience” (Lomeli 23), also engages in dreams of the heroic past and speaks collectively for the group desire when he claims there is an urgent need to restructure capitalism and find refuge in the Aztec past. Believing that, in sharp contrast to London and Didion, “the land and what it produces should belong to those who work it” (23), Ramiro utilized the geographic imaginary of Aztlán, “a spatial field that enabled Mexican-Americans to write themselves more visibly onto Western American spaces, and through those, onto the terrain of the nation” (Comer 35). In Ramiro’s symbolic (and later literal) revolt, he states his desire to be an Indian and in his claiming of an Indian past. His nostalgic desire to find identity in a mestizaje ancestry, unlike that of Anglo yearning, does not dispossess, but rather repossesses what was historically, forcibly removed from entire nations of native peoples. 42 The heroic origins of the Mexican American laborer can be deftly contrasted with Turner’s collection and exploitation of Mayan and Mexican artifacts and his desire to retire with his wife in “Auckiepolko.” As Lomeli concurs, “Instead of seeking aesthetic pleasure in [Mexican] cultural objects, [Turner] displays an ingrained paternalism towards those whose culture is represented. … Pleasure for [Turner] can only be measured in lucrative gain; thus his authority as a person is denied because he becomes synonymous with the system he sustains” (17). Although nostalgia caters to 42 According to Artega “The mestizo is the confluence of different races, in the sense of descending from an original hybrid begetting, of continually procreating mestizo offspring. Multiracial.” 70 the impulse of locating ancestry and assuring historical rootedness in both Anglo and Chicano ranch narratives, revising the “official” US history, as Gerano Padilla asserts, also “fixes a version of history within a cultural text that would mark historical presence in the face of erasure” (16). However, some, like John Gonzales, argue that even this “new Western” mode of looking at ranch life isn’t enough of a “solution” to the historical institutions of racism, erasure and oppression. “Let ‘the West’ be recognized as contested terrain, yes,” Gonzales argues, “but let not a new, pluralistic consensus simply take the place of the old racist nationalism” (189). The People of Paper: Unfolding the (Mythic) Master Narrative In Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper, which has been self-described as: “part memoir, part lies,” autofiction and metafiction are reminiscent of Barrio’s documentary model, with one noted twist: the documents provided by Plascencia in his text (letters to Rita Hayworth from irate lettuce pickers, papal decrees, food pyramids that ration sadness, war maps charting the battle course against omniscient narration, and gang signs) are obvious fabrications, and yet their inclusion only helps to ascertain the hyper-reality that is his text. 43 With so much of the present world turning virtual, author and storyteller Barry Sanders concludes, “We demand less from the historical 43 Autofiction: or autobiographical fiction; Barbara Foley, among others, has shown that the practice of representing the novel as “true” is historically typical if not truly historical, and the technique of authenticating fiction with documentary evidence are as old as the novel form itself (Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Harriette Beacher Stowe’s Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren). 71 accuracy of our stories. We even demand less of a truth. We are content with images and feelings. If it feels closer to the truth then it might as well be” (Sanders 42). Metafiction, according to Patricia Waugh, “offers extremely accurate models for understanding the contemporary experience of the world as a construction, an artifice, a web of interdependent semiotic systems” (Waugh 9). In a California context I maintain this web of interdependent systems both informs and helps to preserve a palimpsest as readers of metafiction are invited to explore how their own worlds operate textually. In no case is this more apparent than in the People of Paper. In Plascencia’s novel the characters wage “a war for volition and against the commodification of sadness,” and in taking on their narrator, Saturn, who is revealed to be Plascencia himself, they effectively revolt against the counterforce, represented in Plascencia’s text as the master narrative. Or as Rigoberto González states, “the mortals claim autonomy by writing their own stories, independent of the grand author” (1). Effectively illustrating what Californians have been engaging in narratively, for years, Plascencia documents the revolt against traditional narrative by offering up a fragmented hypertext that simultaneously writes and rewrites itself thus “exploring the possible functionality of the world outside the literary fictional text” (1). Wrestling with aspects of colonialism, Amie Nenninger observes that Plascencia’s novel is “consumed with battles and digs into those who lay claim to and exert ownership over stories, histories, and individuals” (Nenninger 1), all the while modestly or perhaps imaginatively casting his creation as a web of lies. “Metafiction has this weird stigma,” Plascencia says, “like it's a dirty word somehow. I wanted to 72 make it as fleshy and human as I could, but not high-concept-wise, more like I'm a dumb writer and I don't know what I'm doing—things are getting out of control” (LA Weekly). Although Plascencia and his “I’m a dumb writer” confession may claim (or actually believe) he does not know the potential gravity of what he has done, when the papered people of Plascencia’s text are unfolded it becomes quite clear, to the reader at least, that he is both literally and figuratively rebelling against the master narrative of Chicano, ethnic, Californian, conventional, and Western literature. As Toni Morrison has shown in Playing in the Dark, the master narrative is a myth that defines the subsequent works, subsequent works do not define the myth (xi-xii). Plascencia’s novel literalizes this motif through documents and the documenting of “the other lover,” a “white boy” who is “denied his piece of literary fame” by being literally cut out of the text. The white boy is subsequently unnamed and, like a black hole, he cannot be observed. Yet by observing the chaos the swirls around him he exerts effect and brings the narrative into focus. If the unnamed white boy represents the master (Anglo) narrative the myth becomes transparent. We are forced not to see him, but to see through him, only increasing his intrigue and dependence on the myth, and yet debunking the myth by both his absence and his presence. Like the Baby Nostrodomus character of Plascencia’s novel who sees the future and the future is represented not as blank space, but as black space, the space of the white boy in Plascencia’s novel cannot be defined. However, if we are to believe the myth, it is also the defining factor of why the book was written: to entreat Liz, the ex-lover of omniscient narration, to reject the white boy, the cut-out master narrative, and embrace Saturn/Sal/Plascencia, the author 73 of a radically new California narrative predicated on the authority of feeling over fact. Illustrating how memory and ancestral invocation bracket all telling of the past Plascencia’s text maintains that fiction is as vital as fact, and any event has multiple interpretations. Or, as folklorist Barbara Allen has shown, stories offer clues for understanding how “people perceive and construct historical experiences,” (qtd. in Walker1) immigration and the relationship with the land being two common historical experiences among Californians that are told in diverse and varied perceptions. As Allen states, “We all learn how to tell stories by listening to others tell stories. From others we form our notions about the kinds of experiences one can have and the ways to give meaning to them.” (qtd. in Walker 1). When a story or narrative, or even a cultural people, open up to the potential of more than “one” way of telling, questions of accuracy, memory and truth must consequently be addressed. As historian David Thelen puts it, “people shape their recollections of the past to fit their present needs” (Thelen 1119). Plascencia’s narrative is both traditional and unconventional, a blur of linear and oblique contours in which even the formatting of Plascencia’s text moves and sways between paragraphs, columns, blocks of “blacked out” text, absent text, and a combination of all four. Seemingly an effort literally to bend the physical shape of narrative convention, Plascencia also bends the rules of conventional novel writing. Offering a “reshaping” of a California past that may indeed fit the “present need” of our virtual, postmodern, multi-ethnic society, The People of Paper boldly exposes the artifice of fiction by literally deconstructing itself in search of love and truth. 74 Although some California writers resolutely believe that the truth of the tale is the truth if the incident, most, like Maxine Hong Kingston and Joan Didion, address the problematic nature of memory and truth and concur with Plascencia by admitting that when a story is told it is not the truth that matters; what takes precedence over truth is the memory or feeling of the incident as evident in the following statement by Didion: I tell what some would call lies. ‘That’s simply not true,’ the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event.... Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters.... How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth.... (Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”) When applying Didion’s analysis to the pastoral landscape of the agrarian it becomes clear that not only is truth abandoned in favor of memory and imagination, but perhaps that imagination, or the “artist’s memory,” as Kingston says, helps to bring retrospective clarity to the present. As Kingston further notes, “We approach the truth with metaphors.... The artist’s memory winnows out; it edits for what is important and significant.... To have a right imagination is very powerful because it is a bridge between reality”(“An Imagined Life”). Memory and truth may not be synonymous, but it is important to note that the memory of each author not only shaped the past space of her childhood, but it also influenced her present (narrative) space and nostalgic tendencies. As Melissa Walker states, “When evaluating the narrative themes of (rural farming) narratives the accuracy of the account becomes less important than the perception that 75 shapes the stories” (1). As such, memory in agrarian literature takes precedence over truth in an attempt to explore “how it felt to me,” which is, as Didion expresses, and Plascencia proves, the point of written narrative, at least in the golden state. When examining the storied soil of California ranches from a migratory perspective, the home-site necessarily becomes de-centered and as it shifts, so too does the idea of iconic identity. Furthermore, when investigating Western literature of Hispanic origin one can find several essays like “Borders, Frontiers and Mountains” written by Margaret Garcia Davidson, that accurately claim that “Hispanic literature is profoundly concerned with place, with the varied ways in which ethnic identity is written into regional landscapes” (Davidson 184), just as one can find countless similar arguments promoting Chinese, Indian, Jewish, African American, and various other cultural connections to the land. Yet one is hard pressed to find a study that focuses on the similar reaction and response to a common landscape between various cultures. Although literature and historical analysis is far from comprehensive in this area, Michael Kowalewski, editor of Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West states that, “an increasing number of scholars have called for a newly conceived literary history that emphasizes multilingual, hybridized tropes and forms of intercultural communication” (Kowalewski 10). If scholars relinquished the prevalent practice of “claiming” an author solely based on a single cultural heritage (i.e. reading Kingston as Chinese-American, Rodriguez as Mexican-American, Bulosan as Filipino- American, and so forth) and instead began to focus on the many components of multiple 76 experiences that distinguish an author, many of the tropes that cross cultural borders might become increasingly evident. Furthermore, as both Barrio and Plascencia concur, the practice of cultural claiming or “ghettoizing” is also antithetical to the desires (and occasionally the biographies) of most authors. For example, though Plum Plum Pickers “remains the most anthologized work of Chicano fiction,” Barrio is not Chicano. 44 He readily admits that although “he is comfortable being called Hispanic, because he has grown up in America as a descendant of Latin peoples,” he is not comfortable with the term Chicano (Akers 48). Additionally, Plascencia is wary of the notion of Latino literature. “Anytime I see the names of Marquez and Borges attached to my name, I am of course very flattered and excited,” he states. “But then I wonder why people feel compelled to compare a Latino to a Latino? I worry that when you talk about Latino literature that it starts to become insular” (Ganahl 1). 45 Perhaps if readers were able to revisit the ranch 44 According to John Akers biographical essay on Barrio, Raymond Barrio was born in New Jersey of Hispanic parentage. His parents immigrated to the United States from Spain in 1920. 45 Although only briefly mentioned in this project, Jose Antonio Villarreal’s Pocho (1959) adds another interesting perspective to this analysis. According to biographer Tomás Vallejos, “While Pocho, the first known Chicano novel published by a major publishing company in the United States has earned Jose Antonio Villarreal wide- spread recognition, the book has prompted controversy and criticism surrounding its stated and implied socioeconomic and political views. At the center of this controversy is the author himself who maintains a most precarious status as a Chicano writer. To begin with, he has repeatedly stated that he does not identify himself as a Chicano. He also openly questions whether there is such a thing as "Chicano" literature, asserting that most Chicano novelists are primarily influenced by the British and American literary tradition and write in English, not Spanish. Of greater importance is the fact that Villarreal found himself at odds with the ideology, rhetoric, and methodology of the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet he is aware that the movement was responsible for Pocho's resuscitation after a decade of neglect following 77 novels of the American West and focus their attention on the similarities—such as relationship to the land, interpretation of ancestral stories, the emigration/immigration patterns inherent to California and changing gender roles— an intercultural and multilingual ranching discourse might become increasingly prevalent. As Annette Kolodny suggests, this new cross-cultural reading will complicate the previous historical notion of time and redirect attention to “’seriatim first encounters’ in the same place rather than as a linear chronology of successive discoveries and discrete settlements” (qtd. in Kowalewski 10), thus allowing several similar first encounters by different cultures on the same place. Once attention is thus redirected, historians and literary scholars alike will be able to recognize the common movement towards story both within and upon the California ranch. By “re-storying” the ranch and the California agrarian outside of what is now a mythic and obviously unrealistic portrayal, the ranch both on and off the page, can be freed from its own identity archetype and, like the final chapter of a ranch novel, will have the opportunity to be born anew. its publication in 1959. More than 160,000 copies of the 1970 Anchor edition have been sold, making it one of the most widely read works of Chicano literature.” 78 CONCLUSION: The Ranch in Re-vision In Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion states simply, “It is hard to find California now, unsettling to wonder how much of it is merely imagined or improvised; melancholy to remember how much of anyone’s memory is no true memory at all but only the traces of someone else’s memory, stories handed down on the family network” (STB 176). Yet when we examine this family network of story, recollection and memory—both real and imagined—we find that California agrarian voices consistently resemble one another through their consistent invocation of nostalgia for a common (although oftentimes imagined) landscape. As folklorist Barbara Allen argues “an examination of common narrative themes in the stories found in multiple oral histories can ‘suggest larger, collectively constructed notions of experience’” (qtd. in Walker 2). Currently, the ranch, both as a literary site and a sedentary location continues to be endowed with romanticized images of childhood, home, and hearth. Due in part to the plenitude of ranching fiction, as well as cinema and American cultural iconography concerning the West produced in the past 150 years, the myth of ranchland continues to be perpetuated, perhaps, as an alarming disservice to the actual ranches themselves. In his book Fields Without Dreams, Victor Hanson cautions the new millennium writer against invoking the Edenic pastoral. “Any book about farming now,” he writes, “must not be romantic nor naïve, but brutally honest: The American yeoman is doomed; his end is part of an evolution of long duration.” Citing the mythic fantasy of the ranch as presented by authors like London, Sinclair and Burroughs, as a “caricature” and as fatalistic to modern ranch and farming enterprise, Hanson urges authors to compose a 79 realistic agrarian free from “childhood innocence and the security of clapboard houses, cornfields and baseball” (xi). 46 In a direct response to Hanson’s urging I have decided to undertake the task of “re-storying” the ranch novel. A fictive work, So L.A. (113,500 words) is a voice-centered narrative that tells the story of Magdalena de la Cruz, an artist who uses her body as medium in an effort to combat the debilitating effects of the city that surrounds—and threatens to subsume— her. Disguised beneath a designer body she herself no longer recognizes, Magdalena navigates the streets of Los Angeles with sass, silicone and strappy shoes offering a rare glimpse into the lonely and often despondent reality of the archetypal L.A. woman. Adding to the expansive oeuvre that reads California as a paradise lost, So L.A. scrutinizes issues of identity formation and homeplace through the penetrating prose of its female protagonist. In So L.A., Magdalena, a “valley girl” who grew up in the eighties among the grapes and small towns of the San Joaquin, decides to break from her agrarian lifestyle and move to Los Angeles when her twin brother Junah dies in a rock-climbing accident. In L.A. Magdalena all but abandons her art when she weds Ricky Duran de la Cruz (a second-generation Mexican immigrant). Together, using Ricky’s business skills and Magdalena’s extensive knowledge of viniculture, Ricky and Magdalena set up Diamond Myst, and successfully market a cool new designer water. Caught up by the materialism intrinsic to their newfound wealth and L.A. lifestyle, Magdalena and Ricky find themselves valuing things more than people. Not surprisingly, they split and Magdalena 46 This is my comparison; Hanson speaks of literature “in general” and does not mention these specific authors. 80 takes up residence in the Beverly Hills Hotel where she engages in an affair with Quentin, a musician who spends his days scaling billboards. Through her relationship with Quentin, Magdalena faces the trauma of her brother’s death, the unraveling of her agrarian childhood, her husband’s imaginary betrayal and the shocking materialism of her own drastically augmented body. Using performance art to symbolically “peel back the layers” of her silicone self, Magdalena reconciles her agrarian upbringing with her urban future as she submits to the city and reinvents herself on the billboards of Los Angeles. Evoking a dynamic and materialist landscape, So L.A. examines anti-urban sentiments while challenging the often-invoked Southern California mythology of starlets and Edenic archetypes. Playing with common tropes of the ranch novel, it is my hope to “revamp” its archetypical form while situating its many still-relevant themes into the 21st century. 81 SECTION TWO: Creative Dissertation So L.A. THE STORY PROBLEM. The nine people I know in Los Angeles—and by know, I don’t mean people I lunch with. I mean the nine people who have seen me naked—those nine people would never believe it but sometimes, in the San Joaquin Valley, it gets so hot the fields spontaneously catch fire. Just lick and burn and an entire crop of asparagus, Tokay seedless, rutabaga, hothouse or what have you are quite literally up in smoke. They didn’t believe it the first time and they won’t believe it the second, when I tell them about the ash that folds like walnuts into the swimming pool and the radio warnings to keep the dog off the asphalt. People from Los Angeles aren’t too good at willing suspension of disbelief, unless of course it involves Hollywood-celebrity-cellulite- secrets and million-dollar-mascara-wars, so I don’t much expect them to empathize with the Lodi fireman, dressed in yellow gear and aiming a single hose, not at the blaze, but the sky. Firing water upwards into the clouds and watching it waterfall against the air and onto the charred umber. But, before I go too far, I suppose you could say the reverse is also true. That, with help, I could find nine people from the San Joaquin who would never believe that in Los Angeles you can take a class called Strip-tease Aerobics, get a boob job through 82 your belly-button or, when pregnant, like the Malibu moms and Beverly Hills types, you can actually schedule the premature delivery of your infant so as not to interfere with your Bridge game or your husband's billion dollar business deals. Wait. Who am I kidding? No one plays Bridge in Beverly Hills. Not anymore. But that’s beside the point. The point is: you can schedule the birth of your babe three weeks in advance of its actual due date because the last three weeks is the point of no return as far as your abs are concerned. So you can schedule a cesarean and in optimal situations—read all situations except the occasional indie-actress turned earth-mother who, in a fit of Sundance/Cannes/ Taos nostalgia decides to have her son in the saline filtered spa of her beach house—the OBGYN, who is also a certified plastic surgeon, makes the incision and throws in a tummy tuck for a nominal fee. I suppose if forced, I could find nine nice folk from the San Joaquin who wouldn’t believe a bit of it. Not the scheduling, not the cesarean, and certainly not the part about fishing out the placenta before finishing off the lift and tuck, but—and this is something I feel confident about having lived in both L.A. and the San Joaquin—it would be much, much harder to find them. Not only because spontaneous heat-derivative fire is inherently easier to believe in than is neonatal manipulation, but also because when pressed, people will believe almost anything about Los Angeles. Take me. 83 What if I told you that right now I’m bobbing about in the Pacific ocean without a life vest, while Kelley, the yacht I fell from continues on her course? You’d believe me, right? You’d believe that sometimes, in Los Angeles, it’s easier to float between the legs of a man you hardly know, than it is to reach an arm towards your husband—on deck—as he casts a buoy overboard? 84 TAKE ONE OPENING VALUE. We were on the set of a commercial shoot for our newest product, Luxe; a mineral water herbal supplement combination priced at a dollar an ounce. My husband and the rest of the investors thought it might be a little high end, even for the high-enders, but, although they advance money, they don’t really know how to make it. I’ve got an MBA from Haas, but even before the degree I knew it was simple. When everyone’s making money then everyone’s making money. And likewise with loss. But most men, especially those who’d like to believe they are powerful and brilliant, have a bit of a problem taking advice from a six-foot blonde who says the time to invest is when there’s blood on the street. A lot of men are too squeamish for that and will repeat something stupid, something their daddy said—something like: I’m not throwing good money after bad. So standing six-foot two in my Jimmy Choos I occasionally have to toss my platinum locks over my shoulder and repeat myself. People like to pay more for things, I explained. They especially like to spend if the thing’s got style and a certain designer charm. So I say, charge more and give it some glass. As in packaging. Are you getting this? I said to Puck, my personal transcriber, while looking directly at my husband, Ricky, who was trying extra hard not to look at me. And don’t be cheap about it. I don’t want just any glass, I want… I said, fingering the slight silk of my vintage Chanel scarf while shutting my eyes, frosted. Frosted, smoke-colored bottles pressed into perfect cylinders. God, it was so perfect I was giving myself shivers. 85 I mean, really, I said, from my place at the head of the table, who wants to shake it on the Sunset Strip with a plastic water bottle in hand? This isn’t Kentucky. Everyone gave a compulsory chuckle, except for Ricky who was nervously tugging on his left ear, and Puck, who was either from Kentucky or genuinely thought I was funny. We’ll call it Luxe, I announced. Not only does it rhyme with Fucks—and Ricky, I looked him dead on, don’t think that’s an afterthought—but it fits in at the bar. Hell, it’s a natural. But enough about business, I don’t want to bore you. And besides, we don’t really know each other yet so it’s a little early to lollygag in the asides, don’t you agree? So back to the boat. There we were, at Luxe-Take-One, or whatever those idiots in HR named the ad campaign and I was on Kelley, a 51 foot Bluebay, while Ricky, was on Green Tambourine with the directors, the camera crew and a rather touchy-feely lighting girl who seemed to be perpetually leaning over, her ass in Ricky’s face, her tits brushing up against his elbow. Usually Ricky and I sailed together on Chelsea Girl but she was getting shellacked, and I decided to be the star of the shoot. The concept was basic, but smart, and featured tanned flesh on a yacht outside Malibu. Puck was an extra in tight white trunks and a blue captain’s hat, brought in for deck meat. He and about twenty 86 others—compliments of Pico’s People: Talent and Casting Agency—were supposed to delight merrily, mingling, sunning and generally having the time of their lives, while I, dressed in a yellow and navy nautical bikini, stretched myself out centerfold-style near the mast, left leg bent at a point towards the sun, blonde hair breezing about my back and a bottle of Luxe lingering just above the cool blue sea. Or at least that’s how it was supposed to be, but first Ricky, through a megaphone no less, berated me for showing too much skin and then, after I refused to cover up, insisted that I be replaced by one of the extras. This went on for about forty minutes, Ricky shouting from the camera boat, me pretending not to hear him, the costume girl forcing me into a one piece, and then, when Ricky still wasn’t satisfied, a yellow York Parka, complete with hood that I was instructed to pull snug beneath my chin. As if. So we fought. In public. In front of a half-dozen cameras, Pico’s People and some Diamond Myst Water bigwigs and then, when we finally compromised with a sarong and a well placed palm, the sky turned gray and the wind, that had previously been tossing my blonde hair filmically, picked up to a gust and the camera boat had to have a brief pow-wow to decide if, at $17,000 an hour, we should call it a day or sit it out. It was cold, I’ll admit that, but damned if I was going to get off the boat because I knew once we hit shore Ricky’d have me replaced with some burgeoning starlet. So I shouted to Ricky, Stick it out. We can always have the guys paste in some sun at the studio. As the extras shivered in their suits and I reached for the parka I had previously discarded, Ricky and the cameraman whispered and nodded. One of our consultants, I 87 think he was vice president of marketing—to be sure I’d met Michelle, his wife, on occasion—pointed to a break in the clouds and it seemed that if we headed a bit north, nothing far, just a mile or two towards Zuma we’d have at least a semblance of sunshine and so the go ahead was given, the anchors hoisted, and the boats began to move. 88 SCENE ANALYSIS. Falling off Kelley was a rookie move, even for me. The first mate shouted, Tacking starboard, and I forgot to duck. With one quick swoop of the sail I got knocked in the noggin, pushed past the coach roof, slid by the guardrails, and went plop, straight into the sea. Magdalena Overboard! someone shouted on deck. Off deck, three or four buoys–the horseshoe buoy, the Dan buoy, the horseshoe life-buoy fitted with a drogue—came in plop, plop, plop, right after me. Someone in red was instructed to point, and even though it was daylight, they started up the search lamp and shone it in a single yellow beam at my hooded yellow head. In the water, my head throbbed. I tried to stay calm by chanting, When in doubt straighten out, like some goddamned Hare Krishna. I reclined so my feet were close together and near the surface like they teach you at Harbor School, and I kicked the saturated sarong from my legs. I suppose I should have looked for a life vest, but instead I looked to Ricky who had his back to me and his arm around the shoulder of Big Hollywood Someone-Or-Other. Both his personal assistant and my personal transcriber, along with the directors, the best boy, the grip, the lighting tech, and a few dozen extras were trying desperately to get his attention, but he was leaning into his conversation, most likely indulging industry secrets in hushed watery whispers, and when the grip shouted, Excuse me, Mr. de la Cruz, through a bull horn no less, he merely held up his index finger—a gesture synonymous with ‘This is Business, and unless the building’s on fire don’t bother me.’ 89 But the building is on fire! I said, finally scanning the skim for a flotation device of some kind. And I hit my head. Hard. Tell him, I shouted to the grip, who clearly couldn’t hear a word I was saying, but to his credit was still trying to get Ricky’s attention on Green Tambourine while everyone else on the Kelley ran about in a panic, making small gestures of rescue. The director, bless his heart, was removing his watch and attempting to fasten it to the brass rail of the boat, the assistant to the executive assistant producer was slipping out of his topsiders while pointing to the buoys floating well beyond my reach, and the wardrobe consultant shrugged out of his intentionally wrinkled Dolce sports coat while the extras were unilaterally instructed to keep a peeled eye and point. Life jacket, the grip shouted, still using the bullhorn, though this time apparently directing his comments towards me. Life jacket, I thought, but continued to look only at Ricky. His back was still turned and his index finger was now outstretched and pointing at the horizon, admiring the outline of the Channel Islands as they jutted out against the shark-infested sea, perhaps? Tell him the building, I mean the boat, is on fucking fire! I shouted again while rubbing my head. But the grip merely shrugged and pantomimed the sign for I can’t hear you, before pointing again to a waylaid flotation device. Right. 90 I shut my eyes, and continued to float. Trying to levitate. Trying to stay almost entirely on the surface, or at least as close as humanly possible. Trying to ignore the incessant and increasing throbbing inside my skull. Trying to believe that any minute now, Ricky would turn around; leap over the rails and save me. I mean this was so unlike him. Okay, not the part about ignoring his crew on a million dollar ad campaign, or the part about his wife falling overboard while he was talking business, but the part where he failed to be heroic. The part where he, in public no less, did not twirl about in his imaginary phone booth and save the day, but instead plopped down another quarter and kept talking. However, when I opened my eyes and looked again in his direction I saw him reach for a bottle of Luxe and pour, first himself and then Big Somebody, a glass. It was right then that I realized three things: one, it didn’t appear as if he was coming in after me any time soon; two, the cameras were rolling; and three, the cameras were still fucking rolling. I smoothed out my hair, wet my lips and tried to angle myself upright. The extras continued to point, the light shone, and someone shouted, Another Man Overboard. I looked, but it wasn’t Ricky. Although, to his credit, he had finally turned around. But instead of leaping over the rails in my rescue he was confidently balancing himself against the mast, near Big Somebody, dangling a buoy overboard and sporting a big thumbs up. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought as a flotation device drifted within reach. I gave a few graceful scissor kicks—the cameras were still rolling—and an open-armed 91 reach, but it drifted steadily past my grasp and instead, floating near me now were several half-empty bottles of Luxe that had also slipped off deck. I grabbed one in each hand, like flares, and raised my arms above my head swaying them back and forth, as I shouted to no one in particular, Help. Later, I remembered something about traumatic instances and the distortion of time, so I’m not sure if it was seconds or hours before help arrived, but I know the color of the water was green, like the shell of an avocado, and just below the surface what looked like little pieces of Styrofoam bobbed past. 92 EXAGGERATED HEROICS. It would be nice to say that Puck did a swan dive, clearing the copper rails and bounding in after me, but he did a fireman’s pole, feet first, hands out so he didn’t get his white-blonde hair wet. Coming in after me was just about the stupidest thing Puck could have done, but he did it anyway and I loved him ever after. I watched him swim over to me doing a crazy crawl-like stroke and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that from a distance, especially with a knot on my noggin and my eyes slightly crossed, he looked an awful lot like Junah. So much, in fact, that I thought, for maybe half a second, I was dead. Maybe heaven was an ocean and as I bobbed about it was Junah who was coming for me. But another half a second later, as the cold continued to creep through my skin, I knew I was alive and when Puck reached me we bobbed about together. I wanted to make sure you tightened your waist fastenings, he said, reaching over with a life-vest and tugging at the Velcro fasteners for me. Don’t want you to catch your death, boss. I smiled, my teeth already starting to chatter out of fear or cold, it was too early to tell. I can’t catch, I said. Not even a Frisbee. Good. Then we won’t teach you. How about we just sit tight instead? Sure, I said, but first smile for the camera. What? he asked. The camera. I pointed along the horizon to Green Tambourine, zipping along the water with Ricky and Big Somebody—thumbs up—on deck. It’s rolling. 93 Really? Would I make it up? I asked, positioning the Luxe between Puck and myself. Now smile. He smiled and as he did I went faint. Not for real, mind you, for the show. Hold me damsel-style, I instructed through closed lips. He did. Now take the bottle and pour it on my face. Like it’s a magic potion or something. Right, he said, starting to get the picture. And, as the mineral water mixed with sea salt fell on my face, I faked my own resuscitation and passionately kissed Puck on the lips. Saved, I proclaimed and pronounced it a wrap. Although the cameras stopped rolling, Puck and I were still out to sea, bobbing and sifting with the ebb of the current. You do this often? Jumping in after fallen women? I asked. Nah, you’re my first. The motor’s down so they’ll have to circle eight. I wanted to be sure you didn’t go hypo. Do people really go hypo in So Cal? I held tighter to my life vest. Not usually, but it is January. I forgot to start my watch when you went over, but from the time I jumped, he looked at his watch, it’s been a minute thirty. How long do you figure? 94 Maybe six, maybe seven until it starts to set in. Hell, we got bunches of time. Just turn your back to the break and try not to move. I did as he said, and as I turned, Puck turned with me, so I ended up reclined in what would have been his lap, his legs tucked under each of my arms and my sore head against his puffy orange vest. My toes were numb and the chill was working its way up my legs and past my knees. I squeezed and released my thighs. Squeeze, release. Squeeze, release. Puck must have felt what I was doing because after awhile he was squeezing along with me. At least if we die, we’ll have toned glutes. Hey, he ran his hand across my cheek, stopping to outline my lips with his near blue finger, we’re not going to die. I twisted so that we were holding each other and looking into his eyes I said, Think they called Mayday? Still holding me, he looked over my shoulder at his watch. Three minutes give or take, he said, his mouth rubbing against my cheek, Probably so. The water lapped slowly around us as we floated quietly, the light still shining bright in our eyes. Mayday. Mayday. This is L.A. Woman, I said, a mock radio up against my shivering lips. Vessel L.A. Woman, this is Coast Guard Station Point Dume, Puck responded, his face so close I could taste his Chai latte breath. Please state your position and the nature of your emergency. 95 Coast Guard, I’m in between the legs of man who is not my husband somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. Junah, the boy I loved most in the world, is dead. I’m freezing to death and I think my marriage may be over. Over. L.A. Woman, we read you but could use a little more directional information. Can you be more precise as to your bearings? Bearing windward, just shy of scared, and positively freezing, I said, and this time I meant it. I was suddenly so ice cold that even holding onto Puck was effort and I started to slip. Copy, L.A. Woman. Hold tight. Help is on the way. We’ll have you out of that water in no time. So here I am, just as promised: Afloat on the Pacific Ocean, wrapped up with a man I hardly know, and chances are, you believe me right? Because it seems like something that could happen, especially in Los Angeles. Especially with my husband still on deck discussing business with Big Somebody and the best boy maneuvering the grips so the artificial sun keeps shining. The Kelley is on her forward scoop and as the lifeline snakes its way through the frothy blue wake Puck snaps me to a buoy and says, blowing me a kiss, You’re safe now. It’s over. As they tow me in, Kelley getting larger and larger while Puck shrinks into a tiny blue and yellow speck, I can’t stop thinking about water and drowning, drowning and death, death and falling, falling and Junah, Junah and. 96 And although it is nice to be pulled to safety, and although I’m supposed to just go with it, refrain from moving or resisting, I’m so cold that I can’t help kicking my legs and swimming along. So it logically figures that by the time I reach the vessel I’m too exhausted to climb to the bathing platform by myself. Because there are already two more people than planned in the water, someone above fashions a short strap, with a block and tackle rigged to the end of a halyard, and they sort of scoop me up and rolled me out of the water and onboard. Of course, this isn’t what’s actually happening. Technically, when my body reaches the boat I’m unconscious, and so that whole bit about the block and tackle and halyard, whatever the heck a halyard is, is what they’ll tell me after my water fall, when I come to. 97 EMOTIONAL TRANSITIONS. I came to soaked to the bone, on a gurney, in an ambulance with Ricky’s face staring intently above me. I fell, I said. Like Junah but not…. My words chattered around in my teeth before I spit them out. Puck, he— Shussh— Ricky said, stroking forehead with his thumb. There was a paramedic at my feet rubbing something I couldn’t feel all over my toes and I was covered in some strange sort of tin foil. I tried to sit up. Ma’am, the paramedic said, simultaneous with Ricky’s softer, but sharper, Mags. Lie still. I leaned back and the tin foil made a crinkly noise as my back slid against the firm foam mattress. I tried to move one of my arms, but Ricky gave me a look and so, keeping all limbs beneath the foil, I rubbed my elbow against my waist. I couldn’t be sure, having lost the certain sensation of feeling, but it felt as though I were naked. Am I naked? I asked Ricky. Almost. But the cameras. The staff. The paramedic blushed and looked down at my toes. You were frozen, Ricky said. We had to get you out of those wet clothes. We? Did this happen before or after Kelley caught up with you? 98 Does it really matter? You’re safe. Are you really going to worry about who saw what? I tried to look away, but because I was told not to move and because Ricky’s face was directly above mine, I could only close my eyes. Where were you? I asked, eyes shut, as the ambulance wailed on towards the hospital and the tears came. Right here, baby. I’m right here, he said, even though he knew full well what I meant. More tears were coming now, and though I tried to hold back, they spilled over easily, like a girl slipping off the side of a boat, the first one sliding down my cheek and the second back along my hairline and into my ear. When I raised my arm to try to brush them back, I realized my wrist was restrained by an IV and then I lost it. Ricky reached up to touch my face, occasionally smoothing away a wet strand of hair while chasing tears. It’s okay, baby, he said, I’m here now. I’m sorry. I’m here. And I tried, through my tears, to hear if there was another siren, Puck’s siren, screaming alongside my own, but I couldn’t quite hear, even with my eyes wide open. You’re going to be fine, Ricky kept on. Just a little blue is all, but it’s pretty. Your lips match your eyes. I tried to protest, but as I did, a snot bubble escaped my nose. It was disgusting. It was funny. We kinda laughed and as Ricky reached over to wipe my upper lip, he whispered, You’re safe now. It’s over. 99 And there it was like a charm: It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over, spilling over its toxic salt-water voodoo, out of my eyes and into the medical van, a virtual sea of endings. And right there the end began. 100 INCONSISTENT REALITIES. No, that’s not entirely true. One thing you should know about me straight off is that I’m prone to exaggeration and fits of sparkling melodrama. But all that aside, the truth is, the end has been beginning for a long, long time. Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband, I always have, and probably always will, it’s just that lately—well, lately it’s been a lot like I said before: easier to bob about in uncertain waters than it is to swim towards shore. 101 THE NEXT BIG THING. After the fall the only thing that was really over was my career in water but the ad itself was a big-time boom. So successful, in fact, that there was more water than we knew what to do with and so, citing a rise in the economy, we bought a fifty-six story executive office building on Wilshire, Ricky stepped in as acting manager and CEO of Diamond Myst, I took some time off to recover and look after myself, and Puck was promoted from personal transcriber to personal assistant. Which unofficially meant it was his job to keep me company at company parties and—whether or not this was in contract, I don’t know—he was in charge of bringing B-list celebrities and industry types to spice up the water vibe. You see, after my water career washed up, Puck’s took off. The commercial won some sort of Emmy or Oscar or whatever it is they give out for commercials—I’m not keeping track—and the Luxe print ads were blown up and plastered down buildings and across billboards all over Sunset. Puck blew up too and despite his being a bit too flamboyant for every-day life, was offered the male lead in the best Bigfoot screenplay ever written. He had like sixteen speaking lines but it didn’t really matter much because, he had tons of face time as he dashingly—on more than one occasion—managed to save damsel after damsel in distress. 102 CHANGE V. STASIS. When, almost four months later, I finally got around to telling my shrink about my little accident, she gasped, held her yellow legal pad to her chest and said, I really wish you would have told me about this sooner! According to her, my fall was consistent with ‘behavior that burgeoned on reckless,’ as she claimed I was consciously acting out to gain Ricky’s attention while simultaneously subconsciously reacting to—thus effectively recreating—my recent family trauma. Duh, I thought to myself, as I sat across from her on a plush faux-suede settee, drumming my nails on my knee and trying not to make eye contact. Tell me something I don’t know. She announced, quite simply, that I was beginning Stage Three of the grieving process, though she was quick to caution that, Most people don’t take the bargaining motif quite so literally, Magdalena. And, she added, if you continue to engage in such reckless and might I add, life threatening behavior your going to force me to break our understood patient therapist privilege. You’re my shrink, I said, still not looking directly at her, pretending instead to tighten the screw that hinged the sidepiece to the frame of my oversized sunglasses with my fingernail, You can’t break any confidentially agreements and you sure as hell can’t break up with me either. Magdalena, she said, I’m not here to break anything. I’m here to help you. Pretending to busy yourself with your glasses is not going to change anything; neither is 103 toying with your marital relationship, your bikini ties, or your life. You’re exhibiting avoidance, pure and simple. Interesting, I said, sliding my dark sunglasses onto my face so she couldn’t see my eyes, I thought you said grief came in five stages. How can I possibly be acting out the bargaining stage if I’m so clearly still in avoidance? Isn’t that stage one? Grief she said, smoothing the lap lines of her skirt as she stood up and moved towards her appointment book, is a complex phenomenon. It is not uncommon for a person to find herself stuck in a stage, or, as in your situation, to act out two or more stages at once. Next Friday, 4:30? Fine, I said, reaching for my shoes, which I had tossed next to the Zen water feature on the way in. And Magdalena, she said, as I made my way out the door, remember, grief is a process, acceptance is the goal. 104 SLICE-OF-LIFE. Well? Ricky said as I opened the passenger’s door and slid into the front seat of the Mercedes beside him. He was parked in a valet-loading zone, windows down, radio tuned to some AM talk station he knew I abhorred. Must you? I asked, reaching across and hitting the XM button. Sorry, he said, as he reached back across and turned the radio off, leaving us with street sounds. It was rush hour, and everything was too loud and too bright. Not helping the matter at all was the fact that my shrink—who repeatedly requests that I not call her that, and who came highly recommended as the best in the business by none other than Eric Clapton’s personal assistant, Paige—was located on Melrose and Crescent Heights, which isn’t half bad if you want to hit Fred Segal, but if you live in Beverly Hills and have to be at Lynda Carter’s Hillary for President Beach Bonfire and Benefit in Malibu, in less than an hour, it’s totally impossible, not to mention a total pain in the ass. Already dressed in pressed linen and a pair of John Varvatos woven slides, Ricky jutted out into traffic without so much as a signal or a wave, forcing a giant yellow Hummer with a personalized plate that read QueenBe, to lay on her horn. I sucked in my breath, hanging tight to the passenger door. Oh stop complaining, Ricky said, maybe to the Hummer, but most likely to me. So we drove, ten blocks—from Crescent Heights to La Cienega—in silence. Which doesn’t seem like much, but in L.A. on a Friday night it took well over thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of intermittent silence and unnaturally loud breathing, tempered 105 only by the opening and shutting of the sunroof (Ricky) and the click, click of the automatic door locks (me). If I’d had more fight in me, I would have initiated war over the radio dial, but I already had a headache from my avoidance, or maybe it was my bargaining, and I didn’t really feel up to it. Instead I said, I want to go home. Ricky looked first to his watch and then to the road. You look fine, he said, glancing at my printed Pucci two-piece and pareo, though I can’t believe you wore that to see your therapist. Shrink, I corrected him, yanking at my bikini ties. And why should I care, she already thinks I’m crazy. Is that what she said? Ricky asked, suddenly interested. No, that’s not what she said. She told me her usual fat pack of lies. I clicked the door locks a few more times: lock, unlock; lock, unlock; to let Ricky know I was offended by the suggestion. Well maybe if you tell me what she did say we could stop playing this game and have a real conversation. Lock, unlock; lock, unlock, I pulled a long strand of my blonde hair off my shoulder and stretched it as far as my arm would reach before saying, She told me a really inane story about her brother the manic-depressive English professor. She said something about genius and madness and chemical dependency and how most of us (artists, CEOs, rock stars, grape farmers), in order to get to such great heights also have to have the ability to fall very very low. That’s what she said? Ricky said, switching lanes from left to right, again 106 without so much as a glance in his rearview. Pretty much, I said, locking and unlocking the door once more, for good measure. And that in addition to the Junah grief I’m most likely also suffering from prepartum depression. Prepartum? Ricky asked as we stopped at a light. Because we’re having such a hard time getting pregnant. Magdalena, Ricky said, pulling off his sunglasses so I could see his eyes, We’re not trying to get pregnant. Well maybe you’re not, I said under my breath as I turned my back to Ricky and stared out the window at the Pacific Design Center. The light turned green and Ricky cut off a bus in an effort to make a left. She also said I should stick with the Zoloft, I clicked the locks once more. And gin. She didn’t say gin. Ricky shut the sunroof, maybe in an effort to get back at me, but most likely because he didn’t want anyone—in traffic, on Sunset—to overhear his wife, Magdalena de la Cruz, the founding partner of Diamond Myst Water Corp. and Luxe mastermind was on antidepressants. Oh grow up, I said, abandoning the door locks for the automatic window button. As it rolled down I said in a loud voice, Zoloft. I’m on Zoloft. I don’t care about the Zoloft, Ricky said. It’s the gin that has me worried. Ouch. Traffic was easing up a little and Ricky had decided to take the side streets 107 through West Hollywood. We were quiet for a while until, nearing Rexford Ricky asked, Do you still want to go home? Yes, I thought, but No, is what I said aloud. I wanted to go home, but not to the house in Beverly Hills. I wanted to go back to Berkeley, where once upon a time two idealistic grad students named Ricky de la Cruz and Magdalena Bamburger met, and fell in love. I wanted to go home to the ranch in Lodi where I studied viticulture alongside the tall tanned body of a boy named Junah. But here I was stuck under the beautiful L.A. sun. 108 PREMISE. In northern California I loved Ricky in a kooky, mad, crazy way. I loved the way he walked through the hills, the string of his grey hooded sweatshirt pulled tight beneath his chin, his lips moving with unspoken ideas. I loved the balmy feel of my hand in his as we passed the seminary on Euclid, atop holy hill. I loved that, even when he was asleep, he listened. He heard me. It was years ago, on a futon on the floor of a converted Victorian in north Berkeley, when the air smelled like wet red leaves and tasted like September, that I breathed easily from beneath our shared sheets and whispered: Baby, I have an idea. Ricky was half asleep, his arm resting across my shoulder, the bare skin of his chest pressed tight against the bare skin of my back. Umm? He whispered to the back of my head, smoothing out my long hair so he could kiss my ear. What if we made water taste better? Umm, he said again before falling asleep. 109 NECESSARY DIGRESSION. Magdalena, Ricky said as we woke to the sound of the Campanile chimes echoing through the hills, this water idea, I really think it can work. I mean why settle for tap when you can have pure mountain spring? Everyone knows that water just tastes better after a long hike up Wildcat Canyon to Inspiration Point. Imagine if we could bottle that? Not just water, but the entire experience: the mist as it sets in over the east bay skyline at dusk; the color of the ocean as it sparkles like a diamond in the last ray of sunset. That’s it Magdalena! We can design water for the rich and pour the profits—get it? Pour the profits back into environmental causes. You and I, we can Robin Hood water. And it didn’t matter what came next. Whether I thought so, or whether not. All that mattered was the look of him, looking at me, and talking as though it made a difference. As though we could make a difference, to each other, to the world. As though we could be a better business. But then, for the better of the business, we moved to L.A. and it’s not exactly an exaggeration to suggest that things changed. Although, if you must know the truth, sometimes when Ricky’s driving I can almost believe it didn’t happen. If I shut the sunroof and close my eyes, if I breathe through my mouth so as not to inhale any of the new car smell, if I sit still, very still on my sit bones, with my toes pointed and my hands in my lap I can almost believe I’m in a ’83 Chevy, with a chug in the tank and a star on the dash, doing 43 mph past Stagi and Scriven’s sunflower farm. Ricky’s beside 110 me and the billboards for Delta bluegrass have nothing to do with a recording deal and everything to do with sod. Almost, that is, until Ricky tugs open my door says, Earth to Magdalena, this is your party. You coming? And when I open my eyes it’s not crawdads I see, sliding off the sides of Pixie Slough, but sunshine over the Pacific ocean, still shining impossibly bright, at 7:22 in the evening, and two lit tiki torches, a banner reading: Hillary’08, strung out between them. 111 IMAGE SYSTEMS. At Lynda Carter’s parties the bar is out back on her private beach between the artfully aged drift-wood deck and the surf. Tonight was a Caribbean theme (isn’t it always?), which meant Puck was sporting someone who looked vaguely familiar. A child star now grown? Punky Brewster perhaps? Or maybe Mallory Keaton from Family Ties? It was hard to tell for sure, because, like every other Hollywood has-been she had fixed herself up with all the right parts: fake tits, fake tan, a purple bazinea in her extended hair, and an off-the-shoulder frilly something-or-other, secretly hoping that she’d be re-discovered, or at the very least, asked to appear on the newest reality show. Puck himself was decked in linen, barefoot, with carefully rolled cuffs, and a Gaultier hat with bold braided passementerie trim. Oh, he was a vision, but when he shot me a wink near the synthetic samba ensemble, I headed in the opposite direction towards the drinks. It was too early to cling to Puck. He’d be more necessary later when I’d run out of smiles and nods. There was lobster all over the place and I had a headache. I had also just gotten a pedicure and didn’t feel much like sifting through sand, but my need for a tall glass of gin outweighed painted toenail polish and so I gently stepped off the wood planks and onto the beach. 112 SOCIAL DRAMA. Sitting on matching chairs in a semi-circle around a large bonfire were six or seven Malibu moms and a whole array of Prada offspring. The kids were poking sticks at the fire, throwing sand in one another’s eyes and sucking on the door-opening/panic buttons of the BMW key-ring while the moms looked on in a haze of faux-concern. I was angling towards the booze when Tammy came running over—Mage-da-lane-a!— threw her arms around me, and left a faint crimson smudge on both of my cheeks. Mag-da-lane-a! you are so lucky to still be so tiny, she cooed, putting a heavily jeweled hand on my shoulder and steering me over to the semi-circle where the moms were. Everyone, I was just telling Magdalena here how positively lucky she is to be so thin while I’m six months gone already! She rubbed her hand against her tummy and the other women giggled, casting sideway glances at their own broods. The bar was literally within spitting distance, but Tammy was pulling up a chair near the fire and suggesting, her hand still wrapped around my wrist, that I sit. So I sat, and because launching into a speech about extramarital affairs and how I suspected my husband might be having one might not only reveal too much but might also be rather inappropriate considering the kids, I said, Think of a name yet? Well, Dean was thinking Marcus, said Tammy, overemphasizing the us. But I’m holding out for Payton. I mean, Marcus sounds so Manic Depressive, don’t you think? I didn’t have to answer. Lorin, one of the newer moms, was quick to interject, Ab-SO-lutely. I mean you have to go with instinct on these things because my cousin, 113 Alicia, she named her child Job. Can you imagine? I mean they’re not religious people but really you’d have thought someone at the hospital would have said something. Oh honey, they’re trained not to, Holly, one of the second, and therefore more aggressive, wives said. I did Labor and Delivery in Alabama for three years before I met Jake. She flipped her hands out in front of her chest and said in a squeaky baby voice, her whispering voice, Thank God for frequent flyer upgrades or I might still be there. Anyhow, people would name their babies all sorts of things. I mean it was ‘Bama, but really. I remember this one mother, a young one, maybe fifteen—we won’t go there, anyhow—I came in to take down the stats and I asked her what she wanted to name the baby and oh my heck if she didn’t say, and here she put her hands around her face and quietly, so the kids wouldn’t hear, mouthed the word, Vagina. The Malibu Moms just lost it and Holly struggled to maintain control, her eyes wide, No really! I swear to Rudy! So I said, I’m sorry but did you just say—and then she motioned with her hands like we were playing frickin’ charades or something. And the girl said, Yes, isn’t that just the prettiest word? I heard one of the nurses saying it and it’s just so pretty. So of course I had to smooth down the sheets, take a seat on the side of the bed and explain it to her. But darn if she didn’t think I was putting her on. She just laughed and said something about it being called a Yaya. Well what did you do? Michelle, a tall redhead with two sets of twins, asked, rubbing at the lip-gloss glitters on the rim of her wine glass with her finger. I did what any lady would! Holly said, looking over to me and winking, On the birth certificate I misspelled the name Virginia. What else could I have done? 114 They all clicked and cooed in agreement and for emphasis, Lorin said, I mean name your kid Job and don’t be surprised if he spends his adult life in a box by the river! I dated a Marcus once, I said, pushing my toes into the sand. In Oakland. He was a boxer. Sofie, don’t bury mommy’s lip-gloss in the sand, baby, Lorin said. But no one said anything else, so I continued. Typical boxer-type, pretty-boy looking for a few scars. The trouble was, he was good. Not in bed though, but I suppose that’s typical, too. Michelle said, Wow. Good thing you found Ricky, right? The other girls nodded while I watched a seagull make away with a caviar sprinkled slice of Russian rye. Ricky found me, I said, digging my feet further into the sand. How did you two meet anyhow? Cecile asked, grabbing a bottle cap away from her two-year old while Tammy rubbed at her stomach. He kicked! Tammy said. Right there, she pointed to her left side. Lorin reached over and pressed two fingers near the spot. Definitely a Payton, she said. I was at a bar, I said pulling my feet out of the little sand ditches I had dug, shooting pool in tight pants. All rightie, then, Holly said. Anyone want a swig of spritzer? Drinks all around, Tammy said gesturing with a jewel-covered hand, but sans the spike for me. She winked and pointed to her enormous stomach. 115 Ab-SO-lutely, Lorin said as she held out her glass with the other girls while Holly poured out sloppy gulps of White Zinfandel. When she reached me, I shook my head—who the hell drinks pink wine?—and placed my hands on my belly. It wasn’t intentional, but damned if that’s not how it worked itself out. Why, Magdalena, you and Ricky aren’t planning a little surprise of your own, are you? Oooh, Cecile gushed, her hand suddenly on my knee, don’t tell me you and Tams might be sharing strollers! And before I could say anything, maternal instinct broke loose. I have an extra crib, Lorin offered, not that you wouldn’t want a new one, but it’s good to keep one at the in-laws’. Mark’s mother saved his from when he was a boy, nice thought, but I positively wouldn’t let my little Aubergine have anything to do with that death trap. Hello, lead poisoning anyone? And I have the inside track on breast pumps, Michelle offered. You don’t want just anything tearing at your tits. Not after what Dr. Hoefflin charges for them, Cecile agreed. No doubt, Tammy said, as she passed me a glass of sparkling cider. To Mags, the mommy-to-be, Holly held up her glass in a toast. To Mags! all the other women joined in and pushed their glasses together, swilling Zin all over the sand. I need some gin, I said, lifting the glass of sparkling cider Tammy had passed me and pouring it out onto the sand. Like, right now. 116 Oh my, said Holly. Listen, Mags, Lorin said, reaching out for my arm. We didn’t— Forget it, I said, pulling away a bit more forcefully than I had intended. Ricky and I, we’re trying. It’s just— Oh honey, Cecile said, rummaging through her Birkin-turned-diaper bag, my friend Jamie’s husband, Paul works with the husband of this delightful girl, Renee, who just so happens to go to the same fertility specialist Julia went to with Hazel and Phin, and I have her card in here somewhere, she continued to rummage through her bag, her arm lost up to the elbow in Butt Paste and baby wipes. Here! She wiped off some fruit puff before holding out a card that read: Rejuvenate with Renee, rejuvenation and reflexology specialist. Just give her a call and tell her Celi, MiMi’s friend told you to give her a buzz. She dangled the card out in front of me. Honey, Lorin said, taking it from Cecile and setting it on my knee, take it, it won’t bite. No really, it’s okay, I said handing the card back, we just started trying, I blushed. Well, not to get too personal, Michelle said, but what position? And how about temperatures? You monitoring? Excuse me? It’s because you’re thinking too much about it, Tammy explained. Hell, if you were 16, 19, or even 21, you’d probably get knocked up just thinking about it. Isn’t that how it works? 117 The other moms nodded in agreement, But because now that you’ve actually managed to finish college and grad school, land a husband and well, you had a successful career, before you gave up the water stuff, didn’t you? I didn’t give up the water stuff, I swallowed fast, sending traces of booze up my nose, I’m on hiatus and even still I have a career. I do art now. I’m an artist. Right, Lorin said, smiling, exchanging glances with Tammy. I’m on hiatus too, and in my off-time I’m a professional chef. She pointed, not-so-discretely, at a half eaten PBJ that one of the kids had dumped in the sand. I didn’t say profess—I started to say, but before I could finish Michelle burst in. But back to the baby-making. It’s because you’re closer to forty than fifteen and you’re actually trying— I’m twenty-nine, I said and then cleared my throat. Okay, so you’re twenty-nine, Michelle said, exchanging looks with Tammy who continued, you just have to relax is all. Sure, I said, as I attempted to push back my chair and make my way to the bar, but just as I did Ashleigh or Addison—I couldn’t tell which since Michelle insisted on dressing both sets of twins in unisex clothing, came running straight at me and smashed a toasted marshmallow into my hair. Now Precious, Michelle said, Public displays of senseless aggression against mommy’s friends aren’t very nice, are they? Gurrrr, the little marshmallow masher said, gnashing her teeth in a wicked snarl. 118 She thinks she’s a tyrannosaurus, Michelle explained, as I tried unsuccessfully to unstick the sugared glop. Ashleigh-dear, how about you sit on mommy’s lap and count her diamonds? Oh, Cayden Zachary went through that same phase, when he was three, Lorin said. Thank god he lost interest and moved onto herbivores. I was beginning to think he’d bite a hole through the house. That’s nothing, Cecile said. Our Avery thought he was a Power Ranger and crashed head first into the dining room wall. He thought he could go through it. You’re lucky, Holly leaned over and whispered into my ear while she expertly fished an ice cube out of her wine glass, kids are nothing but poop and pandemonium. She leaned over and grabbed at my hair and began rubbing the ice against the marshmallow. If I had to do it all over again, I’d wait a while too. Go to Fiji. Thailand. Bora Bora. When you get pregnant, you can’t travel until they’re at least six and then you’re so worried about Happy Meals and Water Wings that you can kiss your beach novels good-bye. She had worked the goop down to a small sticky smudge. You bet, I said, lucky. Now, about that drink, and holding up my empty cider glass, I finally made my way to the bar. 119 TEXT AND SUBTEXT. At the bar, a makeshift lean-to with a thatched roof and hula skirt wrapped around the counter, a surfer with a night job was juggling limes. It might have been cliché, except of course it was the only thing about the party that actually worked. You know, if you really want to score, you’d try bottles, I said as I put both elbows down on the bar and rested my chin on my hands. Sand’s soft, they won’t break if you miss. Tried it, he said reaching below the counter to hold up a bottle of Smirnoff Vanilla Twist, but the jigger gets all full of sand. Right. I smiled and picked up a cocktail umbrella, twirling it around in my fingers. What are you having? he asked. Jameson up, I said, looking at his salty hair and wondering if my instinct to push it out of his eyes meant I was ready to be a mom. And a tall glass of gin with a straw and some ice so it looks like a Sprite. I detected a hint of admiration when he set the whiskey down and I took it up and finished it in one gulp. I wanted to tip him big, but looking down at my silk sarong tied and knotted at my hip, I realized I didn’t have any cash. So I said, Thanks, and made off with my gin. 120 POINT OF VIEW. It wasn’t quite dark yet, only mid-evening hazy, but the girlfriends—the moms had Infant-Off in their Petunia Picklebottom diaper bags—complained about bites and swatted at their thighs and tummies. I said nothing and quietly scanned the shore for Puck. Puck and a drink or two is how I get through parties. Before him it was Xanax and a flask, but thank god for metrosexual men—and not just because they were last year’s de rigueur accessory—because I love them. Puck most especially. He likes to proclaim, loudly and in public, that he’s not really out, but he’s got a Papillion named Princess Shangri La-De-Da and ostrich seat covers; two birds a headrest, twelve birds total. I’m probably not the only one of the bottled water set who knows this, but I’m not about to out him and find out for sure. Not only because he said he’d father my child if Ricky didn’t come around, but because, back on the boat he may have just saved my life. 121 CONSISTENT REALITY. Puck was predictably floating on a purple pool raft sipping a blended pink umbrellaed drink. His skin was the perfect blend of Caribbean caramel and Bora Bora bronze and his platinum hair skillfully complemented his tight white European trunks with what can only be called panache. As he drifted down the length of the Olympic- sized sapphire swimming pool various starlets and Puck’s Punky Brewster B-Girl—who frankly looked more like a porn star with her Brazilian bikini bottoms and tiny triangle top—splashed about pretending to play volleyball, desperate for his attention. I wet my lips with my tongue, smoothed out my sarong, took a long pull on my gin straw, and stepped over to the side of the pool. Puck gave me one of those out-of-the-corner-of-his-left-eye winks and dipped his hand into the water. Palming the water softly, he glided over to where I stood. Need a lift? Puck asked, motioning towards his inflatable raft. I smiled and pointed my toes towards him, as though I was seriously considering walking onboard, but when the raft floated close enough I gave it a playful push with my foot. Come on, Puck paddled back towards the deck, it’s heated. Warmer than the air actually. I dunked a big toe in. He was right, it was warm, but I shook my head, No. I mean I would, I said, but I’m not exactly dressed for it. What are you talking about? Puck looked up at my beaded bikini, You’re not exactly in jeans and a parka. 122 True, but this isn’t a swimming kind of suit. I think it may have even come with a warning: Dry clean only. Do not submerge in water of any kind. You’re making that up. Check the tag, I said, bending down and fishing inside the top for the label. Right here, I thrust my chest at Puck, secretly eyeing the pool girls with a back-off look. It says, he struggled to read the faded vintage label, Emilio Pucci, he said, palming the cup of my breast, his cheek nearly in my cleavage. Right. Italian for don’t submerge in chlorine. Puck laughed, and tipped his drink appreciatively in my direction. I lifted my glass back at him before sucking out the last of my gin and sat down. My feet rested on the first step as I rearranged my sarong so that it wouldn’t get wet. Besides, I said, water and I aren’t exactly mixing these days. Oh Sugar, Puck said, shooting me a sexy little wink as a barely-legal badly-died blonde intentionally spiked the volleyball onto his chest. Oops, she giggled, her tits jiggling up and down as she laughed. My bad. No worries, Sunshine, Puck said as he effortlessly set the ball back in the blonde’s direction. Why do you lead them on? I asked squinting my eyes to better make out the girl’s face. Why do you lead me on? Puck asked, grabbing my left foot and gently beginning to massage. 123 Me? I asked, playing coy as I held my right foot above the water and wiggled my toes. Pu-uck, one of his groupies interrupted in a sing-song-ie voice, Taffy just quit and the sides are all lopsided. Play a match? As she spoke she successively untied and then retied the bow between the breasts of her bikini. I’m going to float this one out, Puck said, giving me another one of his famous long-lashed left-eyed winks, but maybe next time. Bummer! She pouted. I guess I’ll have to join you then so the teams will be fair. She ducked under the net and bounced her way over to the deck near Puck and me. I smiled a thin-lipped pout and pushed the ice around my glass with my finger. Hi-iyee, Bikini Bow splashed her way into our conversation, I’m Nikole, but my friends call me Nikki. Puck started humming the Prince song and I started to grin, despite my firm resolve to be fierce and moody. Nikki extended a dripping hand in my direction and I took it. I’m Mag, I started to say, but then Nikki burst into an ohmigosh. Ohmigosh! she giggled, I know you. You’re the girl from that shipwreck ad. The one that Puck saves. I almost didn’t recognize you. In the ad well, you’re not so pretty. I mean. As you are now. She giggled, I mean you know what I mean. Puck laughed loudly and steered his raft in between Nikki and me. Nikki, this is Magdalena, and I think you may be confused. No, I interrupted Puck. That’s me. The girl in the ad. Me. 124 I thought so, Nikki said. So you guys are still friends? I gave a half laugh, Yeah, I said, looking towards Puck, despite his sudden fame, we still hang out, but all we ever do is get mani-pedis and shop Rodeo. Ohmigosh! Nikki said, don’t even get me started on Rodeo Drive. I just snagged one of those fabulously filthy see-through 70’s T-shirts. It nearly cost me a car payment but it was so worth it. You mean the ones that are all too small and all the rage with L.A. Flea Circus and Wildhoney’s Girls’ Camp ironed onto a flimsy off-green fabric with evergreen trim around the neck and sleeves? Puck asked, putting his hand around my ankle from under the water. Exactly, Nikki said. I didn’t say anything, just sucked hard on my straw. But the truth was, I knew exactly what they meant. In fact, when the fad first hit, Ricky and I were at a VC happy hour at the Palm, and Ricky, gleaming off the rhinestones, said maybe I should think about fashion. What, I said, looking down at my Betsey Johnson feather, beaded and denim dress, about this is not fashionable? Aw, Mags, he said, rubbing the palm of his hand across my ass, I’m talkin’ go into fashion. You do those beads, right? Why not put them on a shirt? So the next day I bought six-dozen thrift store tees and even went so far as to buy a rhinestone gun from Beverly Fabric. But somehow I just couldn’t do it. I mean there I was pressing red and purple glitter onto the L of A Little Bit Country when 125 everything I knew for art went spinning and turning into tacky tees. I felt like one of those graffiti artists who goes clean and opens up a booth at the mall—spraying hot- rods and palm trees on a Hanes below some thug’s gang name. No thank you. And besides, even with the little dry cleaning knowledge I do have, I knew they wouldn’t wash well. It’s like that a lot with $350 T-shirts. $485 shoes give you blisters. $12,000 peels leave your cheeks burnt and pimply for three weeks. $550,000 rings from Tiffany sit unloved and unnoticed on perfectly manicured hands. It’s so L.A. But before I could say as much, Lynda Carter herself, with a wonderful running start, jumped justice-league-style into the deep end sending up a giant splash of water in all directions. The volley-girls let out wild squeals of mock-horror and Puck accidentally slipped off his raft and under the water. I watched him swim silently, illuminated by recessed pool lights, beneath the blue-green glow of the glistening water and for a moment I remembered Junah. I remembered a doughboy in the Central Valley. I remembered that I needed another drink. 126 DIALOGUE. Jameson up, Surferboy said as he saw my approach and started to pour me a glass. Make it two, I said. He raised his eyebrows and started to pour me a double, but I cut him off with my hand. Not double, two. One for you. Against the rules, he said as he poured himself a shot. Well then here’s to rules, I said, as I raised my glass. Rules, he said and our glasses touched with a clink. I swallowed all mine in one slug, and giggled when it took him nearly three sips to polish off his. Not much experience with the Scotch, he apologized. You’ll learn, I said. How old are you anyhow? Seventeen? How old are you? Christ. What was I thinking? First the lame Cocktail reference and now this. Next thing you know the theme song from The Graduate will cue up. Never mind, I said, before he could answer. I don’t really want to know. I’m nineteen, he said. But my ID says I’m twenty-nine. Of course, I said. How old are you? Or aren’t I supposed to ask? I’m twenty-nine, I said. Can you get me a Tanqueray and Tonic and while you’re at it, can you tell me how I can get an ID that says I’m twenty-one? What for? 127 No reason. Just figure it’d be useful is all. Now I can understand why a guy like me’d want a fake ID, you know to get into clubs and buy booze and all that, but why would you need one? Twenty-nine’s cool. I mean it’s not like it’s thirty, right? He winked. I shrugged. If you’re hot, he said, who cares? Thanks, I said, but the hot-part is new for me. So sometimes I forget. No way, he said as he slid my gin across the counter. Tall glass, with a straw, like a Sprite. Way, I said, raising my expertly waxed brows and looking over my augmented breasts to my tan and tucked tummy. A year and a half ago, when I didn’t yet live in L.A., I paused to take a sip from my straw and lowered my voice to what I imagined was a throaty, sexy, whisper, I was a size eight. Surferboy chuckled and slapped a hand on the bar in mock-horror. Oh, but it gets better, I said, leaning in confidentially so the knot of my sarong rubbed against the faux hula grass of the bar, I had bangs. Perfect blonde bangs that hung across my forehead like a platinum shelf. And they let you out of the house? Surferboy grabbed a wet rag and swiped it across the counter top, stopping just short of the place where my belly brushed the bar. In northern California they did, but down here, I backed away from the bar and looked around at the assembled party, well let’s just say who would have guessed that 128 I’d turn in my wranglers and upgrade my cowboy’s for some stiletto, snakeskin, zip-up, knee-highs that couldn’t ever function on any real ranch but are still, by some strange familial association, called boots? Not me, Surferboy said, shaking his head as he worked the rag over a sticky maraschino cherry stain. Exactly, I said, sucking on my straw, No one, most especially not me, would have thought that after the awkward butterfly barrette stage, my bangs pinned out of my face in that silly ‘grow-out’ style, some pilates, and an exclusive diet of gin and peanut M&M’s that I’d be hot. Or better said, I paused and took another sip for dramatic emphasis, who knew Junah would exit my life and I’d ever want to leave the ranch? I don’t know much about ranches, and I don’t know any Junahs, Surferboy said, as he threw the rag on a lime crate in the corner and smiled at me. But good thing for L.A., right? I poked my straw at the ice in my glass and then, holding the straw out like a baton, said, What? L.A., he smiled another of his heartbreaker grins, it looks good on you. Right, I said as I held out my now empty glass and nodded in the direction of the gin. He poured dutifully, smiling all the while. Thanks, I said. Wishing again that I had some cash so I could give the kid a tip. Don’t mention it, he said, and he leaned in close across the teak counter, if you really want I can get you the name of this guy who can get you an ID. I mean it’ll cost 129 you, but he does good work. The best I’ve seen. Hologram and everything. The only trouble is you’ve got to find a place that will snap your photo DMV style with a blue background. See, that’s where most people mess up. They go to some photo booth or passport place, but all those places got white backgrounds, it’s a red flag to the cops and stuff. See, he said, pulling out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and flipping it open so I could see his license from behind the plastic pane. Haywood Augustus Rose, I read off the top line, That something the ID people made up? Nope, it’s real. But people call me Gus. Thanks for the drink, Gus. I said. No worries, he said, and if you need the hook up, he winked. If only it were that easy. Find a blue background, snap a photo and flash, you’re back to twenty-one, before Ricky, before L.A., and Junah still around. I took my drink and walked towards the shrimp-kabob station near the shore. 130 CAST DESIGN. Standing around pretending to eat shrimp from pointed plastic skewers and talking shit, the long-term girlfriend clique traded rumors with the childless-by-choice girls and the ever present ex-girlfriends—posing as current girlfriends. They were dangerous, but fun, so I picked up a skewer and said hello. Mag-da-lane-a! Geneva Sutton, a hand model and an aspiring actress exclaimed, standing on her tippy-toes (while I slouched) so she could giving me a kiss kiss on both cheeks. Hilarious party, no? I smiled and nodded as I picked carefully at a jumbo shrimp, Hysterical. The Malibu Moms are really wound tonight, Geneva said as she flicked her hair in their direction and began a relatively funny imitation: pushing an imaginary Bugaboo down the Promenade she pretended to preen over her invisible designer child: Look at little Emma, she crooned in her mock-runway voice. Today she’s wearing a chambray bib by Bebe, ruffled rumba pants by Phoebe Stephens, petite Valentino macramé sandals and, of course, diapers by Dior. Because I don’t have kids, I laughed along with the girls. But it wasn’t about paternity or matrimony even; this was clear early on. It was about the show. And so even though the Malibu moms lived 0.2 miles at most from the beach—hell, most of them had surf out their back doors—the Malibu moms would dress their heirs in all the latest and parade them down to the Santa Monica Promenade, where they would promptly deposit their kids in the fountain and allow them to splash about in recycled water while Daddy dropped by for a quick lunch before heading back to the office on 131 Wilshire. Ricky and I would see them occasionally at Cheesecake or CPK or P.F. Changs and we’d laugh. Not just because we understood the fountain for what it was— we understood reverse osmosis and spiral wound filters; but because those painted women with their mini minions seemed so far from anything we might become. But back then I was working with Ricky to increase our liquid assets and Los Angeles was a destination, not a lifestyle, not—more specifically—my life style. But then I had to go and suggested the shift from manufacturing to service. I mean why spend all those dollars to drop in chemicals when the real purpose is to take things out? Why not cut out the middle-man? Why not carbon filter? When I decided to make Diamond Myst the water with taste, Ricky went along. But then there was Junah and then the whole boat thing and I think that’s when I got the push. Or maybe I jumped. I mean no one really wants to admit that the water will keep flowing without them. I think this is half of what I was thinking when I agreed to take some R&R and step out of the business for a while, renew my interest in art. I really was tired of overseeing everything by myself and I thought that maybe without me Ricky would see how hard it was to run a company, alone. That he would realize I did more than pick out colors for the plates at the executive luncheons and design designer water labels. That I was just as much a part of Diamond Myst as he was. That without me he would need me. That he would miss me. That he at the very least would notice. Or Care. But one month turned into two, three, four or more and it seemed like he was doing just fine. So I went to the studio and Ricky went to the office. And when the bottles hit the stores I was stay-at-home, but without the -mom- part. 132 THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM. Geneva and the girlfriends were talking about infidelity, their third favorite topic after strappy shoes and sex. Holy shit you’re not going to believe this, Adair said. Adair was gorgeous. Drop dead. Half Persian, half Scottish, she was on-again off-again with J. Smith, our CFO, and rumor had it she’d dated both Dennis Rodman and JFK Jr., but not at the same time. As I skirted the circle she gave me a nod, not quite a full-scale sass, but definitely a warning about the confidential nature of the dirt she was about to dish, letting me know I was in as long as I could keep my mouth shut. Which, without a doubt, I could. At least closed tight enough for it not to get back to her and so she continued. Okay, so I’m going about my business in the little girl’s room when I hear two of the mommies come bursting into the adjoining guest bedroom, one of them in hysterics and the other frantically shushing and sushing like it’s her goddamned kid or something. Really the way they treat sobs, it makes me sick. Well, anyhow, usually I could give a rat’s ass about Tupperware tears, little Brayden probably got wait-listed at the pre-school prep-school or some such, so I’m preparing to flush and get the hell out when suddenly I overhear the hysterical one mention something about that slut he’s been fucking— Wait, did she actually say the f-word or did she say fricking or efff-ing or, worse yet, spell it out? Treena asked. Treena was a Breck girl, or at least she had been in 1977. It was her biggest thing ever and although she still had terrific hair and looked thirty- two when she was probably pushing fifty, you could tell she hadn’t gotten over it. 133 No, she actually said it, Adair said. That slut he’s been fucking. Direct quote and so I’m thinking this is serious. Damn right! Mia, a board certified pet therapist and Treena’s best friend interjected. So what’d you do? I shut-up and sat it out. That’s a girl, Lucy shouted. Lucy was hard to figure out. She claimed to own her own boutique, though no one had ever been there and she never actually seemed to do anything for or about it. Like the other girlfriends she was pretty, but not in an L.A. way. No, Lucy was exotic in a couture kind of way that only works in France or on men who speak French. Adair continued, So she blubbers on a while and there’s some muffled cursing and some nose blowing. Probably one held the tissue while the other blew, Geneva said. Exactly, Treena agreed. No doubt, Adair went on, but it was getting kind of drawn out and, I don’t know about you, but who the hell wants to be locked in the bathroom when there’s a party raging on outside? But I waited it out, for the team, you know? and, you’ll never believe this. What? All the girls seemed to ask in unison. Well you know how they’ve practically peppered all of West Hollywood and half of Mid-Wilshire and the Sunset strip with those goddamn surveillance cameras that pop a picture when you run a red? 134 Oh Christ, tell me about it. I mean how else are you going to make a left in L.A. if you don’t go on a red light? Hello. Lucy asked, while simultaneously answering her cell phone. It’s Gisele, she said, pointing to the phone. Hi, Gigi, the girls shouted into the tiny titanium receiver before Adair continued. She says Hi-e, Lucy reported back about Gisele. So not that I know for sure—I always put my hand in front of my face when I go through them—but apparently when they give you a ticket they also send you a photo of the license plate, a view through the windshield and a view through the passenger’s side window. Yeah, my brother’s a DA, Geneva said. He says they have to obtain positive identification. So they send you pictures of whoever’s driving the car and ask if it’s you. I’d just lie and say it wasn’t me, Treena said. I mean how could they know. Maybe I lent my car to a friend and she was driving it. You know you wouldn’t let your own mother drive your TT, Mia said. Well, of course not, my mom’s pre-menopausal, what are you thinking? You know what she means, Geneva said. Whatever, Treena said, tucking her long auburn hair behind her ear, I’d just lie is all, how would they know? Court. I offered, breaking my silence and causing all the girls to turn in my direction. What? Adair asked. It’s Magdalena, Lucy said into her phone. 135 Court, I said again, biting onto my straw and sipping hard on my drink. You know Magdalena, the blonde who’s married to Ricky. Lucy told Gigi. Ricky. You know Ricky de la Cruz. The guy who like practically invented bottled water. Then she laughed. I took another sip and brushed some sand from my forearm. They could summons you to court and then they’d see it’s you. That’s why I always hold my hand in front of my face, Adair repeated. And besides, Lucy said, Gigi wants to know who actually gets called into court over a traffic ticket. I mean don’t they have rapists and murderers to catch? Anyhow, Adair said, apparently one of the upstanding, civic-minded, family- orientated, bread-winning, Malibu dicks, I mean dads, got a ticket and got caught running more than a red light if you know what I mean. No. What do you mean? Mia asked. I mean, Adair said, drawing out the suspense to its full height, that when the flash popped he was caught on film with someone in the passenger’s seat and you can be damn sure it wasn’t his wife. No way! Lucy squealed and then struggled to keep Gigi up to date on phone. You mean— Exactly, Adair said. A view from the front and, just to be sure there is no confusion, a snap on each side. You have got to be kidding me, Geneva laughed. How fucking funny is that? 136 Best part is they sent the evidence straight to his house, and, because the car is in both their names, when the mail came, little wifie just opened the envelope and the rest is on film. Wow! Mia said, I wonder how he explained his way out of that one. Fuck him. I say good for her, Treena said. You have to keep tabs on them. Sounds like she got lucky if you ask me, Mia said. Still, agreed Treena, you’ve got to do it. Got to do what? I asked, wondering if in fact I wasn’t standing next to Ricky’s other woman right now. There was another awkward moment as the girls all exchanged glances. But then Adair clicked her acrylic nails against the rim of her now-empty glass and looked me dead in the eye and said, Your homework, sweetie. Open the mail, track the AmEx, pop in unexpectedly for lunch. Absolutely, Mia agreed as she adjusted the knot on her sarong, and don’t forget the pass codes. Pass codes, I looked quietly at Mia to see if she was serious. Oh honey, Adair said, wrapping her arm around my shoulder so close I could smell her Shiseido sunscreen, you have got to get his pass codes. No really, said Lucy, while seeking confirmation from Gigi. That’s like the secret to everything. I listen to Andy’s voice mail like twice a day. More like twice an hour, Mia said. Whatever. 137 Speaking of keeping tabs, Adair said. Where is the water man tonight? You’re not here alone are you? I don’t exactly know, I said. I’d check up on that too, Adair said, giving a look to the other girls. He’s kind of up there as far as catches go. I wouldn’t know, I lied. We met before all this. All what? Geneva asked. All this, I said opening my arms to the party, the beach, the sunset, the really awful looking impressionist ice sculpture of a baleen whale. 138 INCONSISTENT REALITIES. I was shifting back and forth on my toes, trying to squeeze my calves into tight lines of muscle and concentrating on the cut line when Treena asked, So if you met before all this, she opened her arms wide, just like I had done, What were you like? I wanted to tell Treena, and all the girls for that matter, that we were real. That before all—gesticulation—this we were smart and silly and awkward and better. But because I was a little off balance, and because I was annoyed all to hell and secretly hoping I would give myself a charley horse so that I could go sit in the Mercedes and contemplate the fidelity of my marriage to Ricky, I said, we were just different. You know, like the kind of couple who meets under the couch? I don’t think Treena heard me at first because she nodded and ah-hummed in that way people do when they’re not really listening but waiting to speak. Hum, she said and was about to begin on something else when the Adair cleared her throat and said, Did you say under the couch? Yes, a tan rattan, I said. You see, I was at a friend’s house and Ricky was there with his girlfriend, a really silly girl with a big nose, I forget her name. Well anyhow, Ricky and Pinocchio were kind of hanging by the wall, but I could tell he had no interest in her. That he really had eyes for me. So I pretended to lose my contact and I was feeling around under the couch when Ricky bent down to help me. There, under the rattan, we held hands and the rest is us. I swooped my arms out in an exaggerated shrug for emphasis, but even without the gesture I could tell that the story was working. What I could not tell, and what nobody had told me, was at about this same time, Ricky and a 139 few of the guys had come up behind me and were listening with interest to the story I was spinning. Oh that’s just precious, Geneva said. Tell us, did you find the contact? But before I could answer Ricky put his hand on my shoulder and said, No. No, I agreed, hoping Ricky would, for once in his life, go along with it. Indulge my need to make something a bit more of our one-line: we met in a bar. But he kept going. He said, Magdalena doesn’t even wear contact lenses. She has twenty-twenty vision. I could have tried a giggle. Grabbed him by the arm and said with sugar, Isn’t it hilarious! There we both were searching for a contact that didn’t exist and finding true love! But instead I said, He’s right. I don’t, and sipped on my gin, trying to decide what could hurt so I could escape. There was always the headache, or if I was really going to go there, menstrual cramps, but saying cramps out loud and in public was so junior high. I needed a way out of Lynda Carter’s party, not a way out of P.E. There were giant Tiki torches made of citronella and one of Surferboy’s friends was holding up small children, bearing matches, so the kids could light them. With a bit of strategic placement I could probably manage to catch my hair on fire, but even for me it was kind of drastic. So instead I said, My ear hurts. Ricky laughed and looked back towards his audience, but I could tell that he was pissed. Well honey, he said, reaching his hand towards my derrière and patting me on the ass, I’m sure if you put another diamond on it, it’ll feel better. Everyone laughed, Adair the loudest, and Ricky looked at me, amused. 140 I forced my lips into a smile. A fake smile that I gave to Ricky alone, and said, You know, you’re right. I think I have a rock in the car. I’ll go check. And, one hand on my ear and the other tightly holding my gin, I left. 141 THE PROBLEM OF MELODRAMA. With the exception of a half-dozen cases of Myst labels, the Mercedes had no diamonds. Even still, I pressed my remote key-chain and opened the passenger’s side door as though I might find a carat or two. Then I took out the pear-cut studs from my ears and threw them inside, secretly hoping that one of them would land in the driver’s seat and end up sticking Ricky in the ass, fully knowing that if I didn’t fish them out eventually, they would be stolen by the carwash attendants or the valet, whoever found them first. Fuck, I said and slammed the door, hoping that the noise would calm me, but it only kind of sucked shut, the rubber insulation vacuuming tight against itself. Fuck, I said again, this time tossing my keys—Prada coin purse and all—as far as I could towards the beach. They hit something, probably the Spanish mosaic that separated the plumeria from the palm trees, and their jingled crash was quickly replaced by the honking siren of the car alarm, masking the sound of surf hitting sand and blocking out the ska-tones of the one-man steel-drum band entirely. It was perfect. Soothing even. And if I had had my keys I would have unlocked the door and sat inside, with the windows down, lulled by the shrieking wail surrounding me on all sides. But the keys were in the winding pedestrian pathway, well most probably, and to go after them would, in effect, be tantamount to disabling the alarm, so I did the next best thing. I boosted myself up onto the hood, (by way of the front bumper) and shimmied across the glistening metallic paint until my back was smack against the windshield and I was sitting on my car as though it were an oversized deck chair. 142 It was a stunning view—I dare anyone to tell me otherwise—the sky, the moonlit beach, twenty or so business-types fishing in their pockets and designer purses for car keys, cursing, politely, at their spouses and kids, and angling black and green plastic remotes at various vehicles in the lot. Click click and the honk of a Porsche joined in for the chorus; click click the lights of a Lexus LX470 began blinking in syncopation. Click click. The neighborhood dogs bayed. Click click. Someone from a beach-front villa opened a high window and peered out. Click, click. They went on and off. Off and on. Each owner checking his car against the disturbance, no one able to shut up the noise. Magdalena, Puck shouted, breaking up my revelry, will you do the honors or should I? On his outstretched finger hung the loop of my keys and as he walked towards me from the pedestrian path, he jangled them back and forth as a taunt. I sighed and leaned back against the glass. May I? Puck asked angling the remote at the side of my car. Please. He pressed down twice on the red panic button with his thumb and the screeching stopped. He pressed down once on the green button and the dome lamp lit up and the doors unlocked. He opened the passenger’s door and held it ajar in mock chivalry. Drive you home? he asked in the general direction of the hood. 143 I didn’t respond. Instead, I stayed as still as possible, trying to blend in with the windshield wipers. I seeee you, he said, standing on tip-toe on the running-board, looking down at me reclining against the silvery roof. I turned my head to the left, away from him, and continued not to talk. You know you’re probably skinny enough to blend in with the fixtures, but that cotton-candy sarong is a dead giveaway, honey. He almost had me. My cheeks were pushing into a grin and I was dying to speak. But I didn’t. I held firm, hands wrapped around the side mirrors. Okay then, he said, jiggling a bit of ice in the bottom of the glass I had left on the ground, I guess I’ll just go back to the beach. If you want your drink back you’ll know where to find me. He stepped off the running board and turned in the direction of the party, my keys tucked into the linen waistband of his pants, his hand around my drink. Puck? I said, turning ever so slightly to the right and adjusting my Chanel sunglasses in the dark. Yep? Did Ricky send you? He stopped and fiddled his shoe in the sand, Not exactly? Big. Fat. Liar. I said, making my hand into a fist and tossing air in his direction. Puck ducked, spilling what was left of my drink and clutching my keys to his chest. 144 You, he pointed a thin finger, have lousy aim. And besides, Ricky didn’t send me to fetch you. He sent me for the keys. Of course he did. I pushed my bare heels into the hood. The quickest way to turn off the noise. Mags, don’t get me tied up in the ponytail of your drama. If you wouldn’t throw fits, hell if you wouldn’t throw things, he held up the keys and jangled them again, then he wouldn’t have to send anyone. I know, I whispered, my arms shrugged. I’m sorry, Puck said. It’s none of my business. I’m trying, okay? I am trying. I know you are. Here, hold this, Puck said, passing up my glass and a little green flask he pulled out of his pocket. I reached across and took both, setting them with me in the center of the hood. Puck slid off his suede espadrilles and made the barefoot climb up the front of the Benz. But then, as though to prove how irrational my fear of heights was, he pressed his body first against me and then against the windshield where he shimmed up the glass until he was standing squarely in between the ski racks on the roof of my SUV. I bit my lip and chanted a small mantra, willing him not to fall, willing the roof not to cave in. Calm down, he said as he squatted first to his knees and then lowered himself onto his stomach so his face hung over the top of the roof and the spiky gelled tips of his blonde hair touched the top of my head. 145 It was a big car by any means, hell, according to the Green Party it was a terrorist tank suitable for the wilds of Africa, but it was still a bit small for a picnic, especially the top, on which Puck laid while we passed his flask back and forth. You know, he said, reaching his hand down to hold mine, my mother claims that the rules of every relationship are established within the first five days of knowing a man. Didn’t Dr. Phil say that? If he did he stole it from my mother. I brought the flask to my lips and took a sip. I shook my head and said, I suppose you’re right, before passing the booze back to Puck. Puck pulled on the flask and let it unstick from his upper lip with a pop. But the point is, he paused, looking up at the stars, half disguised by the glare of a nearby street lamp, people don’t change so put up or get out. But see, that’s just the thing, I said. I never tried to change Ricky. He changed without me and now I hardly recognize him. So now it’s poor you? Excuse me? I’m just saying, and don’t go throwing things again, he said, eyeing the glass that was now filled with melted ice and a half eaten lime impaled by a straw, that if everyone’s changing maybe you should change too? I didn’t say everyone. I said Ricky. Fine. Ricky. Ricky’s changing. You change too. 146 I looked down at my overflowing breasts, Don’t you think I’ve changed enough? What? Should I cut my hair too? I pulled it out in front of me and wrapped it around my neck like a rope. Maybe a dye job? Or maybe, I said, I should think about collagen? That way when I pout Ricky’ll be sure to notice. I puckered my lips and made smacking noises at Puck. Stop. Puck said as he grabbed my cheeks between his thumb and finger like a potty-mouthed child. Just stop. Stop screaming. Stop it. Leave if you have to, but knock it all off. I tried to interject, but Puck held firm to my face and shook his head, No. Magdalena, I’m only going to say this once, and then you’re on your own, so listen up: I’m done making swan dives. He let go and I rubbed at my cheeks with fingers. You didn’t swan. I didn’t? No. You jumped. Feet first with your arms out, so you wouldn’t get your hair wet, not that I didn’t appreciate it. That’s not how I remember it, but you get the point. Learn to float. Float, swim, dry off, fish, I don’t care so long as you keep the water in the bottles and off my back. Puck was right. And even with him I was fighting because I was used to it, not because it made any difference. So I changed the subject. 147 I think Ricky’s having an affair, I said taking a long drink of my gin. Again. Puck thinned his lips and looked up towards the sky. Technically Ricky never had an affair. He took some time off when you were in hysterics over Junah and wouldn’t come out from beneath the bed, but to my knowledge you’re the only girl he’s slept with in the last, I don’t know, decade, he said. And besides, I thought you two were over all that suspicious blamey behavior. Blah, blah, blah I said, while Puck was still speaking. If we’re so fucking over it, then why’s he doing it, again? Sweetheart, Puck said, directing a wisp of hair out of my eyes and pushing it back behind my ear, There is no again. You were camped out crying under the bed for three weeks and Ricky needed a break so he stopped trying to coax you out five times a day. But he wasn’t in bed with someone else. In fact, if I remember correctly he was in the office. If you remember? You weren’t even there! No, but you told me all about it, six maybe sixty times. Whatever. So maybe he didn’t fuck around then, but he is now. I can feel her. Puck continued to play with my hair, and as he traced a finger across my temple where the soft baby hairs grew, he asked, So what does she feel like? She feels like Adair Adams. What do you know about her? Puck sighed, I know she has a condo in the same building as Tara Reid, she doesn’t work days, she takes her coffee with three equal and one splenda, and oh! she gives a mean blow job. Is that what you want to hear? 148 I took a big sip, swished the alcohol around in my mouth and swallowed. Is she fucking my husband? Not that I know of, but so what? So what if she is. If he is. Ignore him. Confront him. Take up with the goddamned cabana boy. But do something. Something besides throwing keys and fits. Like what? I don’t know. Have dinner. Think about it. Move in with me. And speaking of which, I’m famished. Spectacular view, he nodded to the sky, but lousy spread. You coming? He slid off the side of the tank and held out his hands. 149 THREE LEVELS OF CONFLICT. When Puck and I returned to the party Ricky was surrounded by lobster and the newbies. The lobster was flown in, live, from Maine and the newbies, a group of investors who had an excess of fun money to blow on bottled water and female presidential hopefuls were flown in from the East Coast, France, and Fiji. Skirting them, and trying to manage a plate and a cocktail while still having a free hand to shake were a dozen or so overdressed interns—Cal, Stanford, UCLA, (the USC girls in their band- aid skirts and sorority tanks always seemed a little underdressed and so we didn’t recruit there). Ricky was standing dead center and was in the middle of what I like to call his A&E Biography. You know, his well-rehearsed life story in case anyone wants to film, record, document or otherwise preserve it for some future generation. The one that starts with, On a day that was more hazy than it was hot, my father left Juarez with six little girls, a pregnant wife, and a pocket full of cauliflower seeds. Middles out around: After working the fields from Washington state to San Diego, learning English from schoolchildren, and earning the handle Cauliflower King, my father saved enough to buy 600 acres near Riverside, two Cadillacs, a house with Spanish tile and two swimming pools, even though he couldn’t swim. And climaxes somewhere near, And that’s when I said, Papa, I only have two goals: to run a Fortune 500 company, and to see my face on the left side of the Wall Street Journal, right next to a picture of Janet Reno stating her intentions to split my company for antitrust. If you’re lucky enough to be in his office when the story spills out, he’ll lean back in his leather chair, kick his boots onto his desk, stretch his arms towards the panoramic view behind his head, and 150 nod, unassuming, towards the wall, where the front page of the Journal hangs framed behind anti-glare glass. I’ve heard the story maybe a gazillion times. So much, in fact, that I’ve stopped trying to correct his exaggerations, stopped trying to remind him that his mother came from money, stopped trying to include my name in the water-industry plot. Hell, on good days I can almost remember the first time I heard it. And then I believe him myself. Ricky was wearing one of those seersucker sports jackets, with white and blue stripes, a yellow organdy tie, and blue jeans straight out of J. Crew, Spring 1994. It was bold; maybe even a little sassy, but it caught my attention and I listened as he coughed twice and then said, Gentlemen, I’m not a betting man, myself, but I’d bet you can name the biggest auto manufacturer in the world, the largest telephone and computer companies too, but I bet nobody in this room can tell me who the biggest water producer is? He let the room linger in what I felt was too pregnant of a pause and then nodded a quiet I thought so nod, before continuing, Funny, isn’t it? You can live without cars, computers, even telephones, but nobody on this earth can live more than three days without water. Sure, there were some smirks. Obviously. I mean some young kid, just out of college with his black hair combed slick to the right and you’re going to get a few titters from the corporate crowd. We were in the banquet room of Spenger’s Fish Grotto in the Berkeley Marina, (it wasn’t Chez Panise, but it was all we could afford) and a newly 151 printed Diamond Myst logo, which I designed myself, loomed large just above Ricky’s head. The label was three shades of blue: turquoise, teal and aquamarine with little sunbursts of saffron and vermilion bursting from the edges of an ice-blue diamond. Gold ingots jutted from the left and the right of the marquis-cut gem and near the bottom, ever so subtly, the base melted into small tear-shaped drips that spelled out the word Myst. On the bottle, its resemblance to a Tiffany’s two-carat wasn’t so noticeable, but spread out, banner sized, above Ricky’s head it looked like a goddamned tiara. I’d envisioned an empire, procured the crown and positioned my man square beneath it, while I stood by the back door, balancing my weight against a carefully penned, poster- sized graph of projected growth and yearly gains, a three-foot stack of press packets by my side. I heard more than a few level three coughs and some shuffling of paper. But that was back when no one had a Sparklets man and Ricky, glistening like the diamond above him, let it all drip off. Gentlemen, he continued looking only at me and reading, if possible from across the room, the words I mouthed off my lips, Gentlemen, if you want to be a part of this invest in Diamond Myst and I’ll promise you two things: First, to build Diamond Myst into the world’s largest water treatment company in the world and second, that before long, in your daily paper, the one that gets delivered to your front door, you’ll find a memo from Janet Reno herself, stating her intentions to split Diamond Myst for antitrust violations. He kept the part about his picture being next to Janet Reno’s to himself. The details weren’t important, but in the end, just as promised, the portrait was drawn and 152 illuminated a carefully built empire made entirely of small plastic bottles, filled to the brim with H 2 O. It was like a fairy tale, really. I always knew my castle would be built on water, and Ricky always said his Princess would have clear eyes. Blink once, twice, and poof! There’s the royal family floating down river with a moat made of land. 153 IMAGINATION. Truth be told, Ricky’s father learned English off the portable radio and his children suffered the consequences: Rhonda, Donna, Sherry, Cheri (pronounced Cherry), Venus, Barbara Ann, and Ricky. Six Spanish-speaking baby-girls and one American- born Prince. The Mora de la Cruz girls, with the exception of Venus (who staged political protests and came out at sixteen), grew up in the shadows of Los Angeles and came into the city as one might expect: they married well, divorced, took half and then married again, to second husbands always a little bit older and a little bit richer than their first. Excepting of course Barbara Ann (who had three daughters with three different daddies), they remained childless, thin and beautiful; determined above everything to choose and maintain a certain lifestyle. To erase a certain past. In the past the Mora de la Cruzs’ picked grapes, asparagus, peaches and—worst of all—strawberries from the time they set foot on California soil until the youngest among them turned twelve. They moved with the harvest, living in the dust and hay of the farm labor camps from Salem to Stockton, Bellingham to Riverside. Between the nine of them they were deported—individually and collectively—thirteen times under various grounds and foundations. Yet somehow, with assorted tests of auspice and finagling, they always managed to make their way back to the states. Juan Duran de la Cruz, a.k.a. The Cauliflower King, put on a bathing suit and, unable to swim, kicked a rubber tire a treacherous fifteen miles to shore. Rhonda waded through raw sewage in the Tijuana River. Sherry and Cheri jammed themselves into boxcars with hundreds of other nortenos, unable to move, hardly able to breathe. Donna 154 rode across the border spread eagle on the top of a freight train, her blistered hands white with holding on. And Venus, a particularly bold and quick girl of fourteen, sprinted through the backed-up traffic at the port of entry, defying Border Patrol to chase her. Barbara Ann had to pay $550 American dollars to a coyote smuggler to take her to Fresno. She rode, sewn inside the bench-seat upholstery of a Volkswagen Vannagon, for 149 miles and once she crossed la frontera she was held hostage for another $250 in ransom, which required her to work a full five months indentured and hungry, sleeping in the dirt with rotten lettuce for a pillow. But Ricky—the only true-to- flesh American born citizen of the de la Cruz clan—holds the best yarn by far. Caught as an infant, sucking on warm milk and stuffed inside the folds of his mother’s dress, Ricky was deported with his mother, Angelina, without question of the papers that secured his legitimacy. On the east side of a southern river, Ricky was stuffed into a Styrofoam cooler and floated across the border like Moses, while his mother trailed behind. Kicking against the current, and steering little Ricky away from eddies, Angelina fished crawdads from Ricky’s makeshift cradle and tucked him into the tulle at the first sight of danger. 155 MEMORY. It’s pretty, that story. Pretty enough to make you fall in love. And it’d be pretty too, to think the story ended there. To think that Mom, a little muddy but no worse for the wear, follows the river upstream until she’s spit out with her child on some San Diego shore. Towing the Styrofoam box behind her, she trudges through the silt to safety, her fingers prunish and her knees purple and sore. She puts her baby in the grass, where he coos and giggles, a tickle of dandelion brushing across his tummy, while she wrings out her skirts in the sun. That’s the way Ricky remembers it, so damn pretty. He remembers too, that shortly thereafter, Dad, an uncle of no relation, and all six sisters came tumbling out of the hedges and trees, and before long they were in the big house in Riverside, splashing it up in the swimming pool, the river sledge long forgotten. Of course, it didn’t happen like that. Never does. But whose gonna tell Moses that his momma pushed the cradle upstream while she swam up a sewer, filling her mouth full of piss and shit and raw scum? Who’s going to tell the baby that momma held her breath, the filth and refuge still inside and trickling down her lips, and faced the immigration police face front? That she spat the festering contents of her mouth, in one solid stream, straight into the blue-green eyes of the border patrol and then she ran, her baby still bobbing about unawares? Nobody. That’s who. Nobody’s gonna tell the baby a goddamned thing. They’re not going to linger on the lack of hedges in the desert. They’re not going to mention the indescribable taste shit leaves in-between your teeth and on the inside of your cheeks. They’re going to let him float straight onto the chosen land and they’re only going to 156 cringe, a little, when the baby grows up and announces his intent to marry a yellow- headed wife. But Ricky only ever fell for tow, hemp, and flaxen colored locks. His Camelot depended on it. Or at least he told me as much, back when we were grad students, happy and snuggled on top of a warped futon, atop a graying hardwood floor in Berkeley. Do you think, he would ask, fluffing a wine-stained down pillow beneath his chin and cheek and rolling on his side to face me, that the world is ready for us? Us, maybe, but mayor, no, I’d say, looking into his large brown eyes, and answering the question he’d really been asking. Ricky was getting his masters in history, with an emphasis in political science, and he was prone to the utopian way of most Berkeleyans, that is, he saw social change as organic. We’ll dominate. We’ll get all the votes, he continued, it’ll be a landslide. Right, I replied, tugging on the tie-dyed curtain we had stapled above the window to keep out the glare of the neighbor’s kitchen light. Minus the threats from the Klan, the sell-out slurs from Venus and her gang, the Republicans against affirmative action, the Democrats liberal enough to support bilingual classrooms but not liberal enough to support a bilingual candidate. I was a double major in viticulture and business. In grad school I focused on natural resources and privatization. I knew enough to know there was no rainbow coalition. That the children of the world would not one day join hands in a barn-raising exclamation of peace and understanding. But I also wanted it. I blame Berkeley, but 157 somewhere deep inside, it secretly thrilled me that Ricky believed in positive, evolutionary social change. That he believed in God. Of course, I couldn’t tell him that, so instead I said, If you wanna run, tell me now and we can work on finding you a cute little poster wife. I can be your behind the scenes girl, everyone has one. Ricky pulled the pillow from beneath his head and hit me in the face with it. I’m not running anywhere, he said. And you’ll never be behind the scenes. I meant for office, my voice was muffled beneath the pillow. Maybe Ricky didn’t hear, or maybe he didn’t want to hear, but he didn’t say anything. He only threw his body on top of mine and hit me again and again with the pillow. I countered by locking my left leg around his waist and jabbing three tickling fingers into his armpit. But even as we rolled around, off the thick mat and onto the floor, giggling, I knew he was partially serious and I was partially right; Ricky, in his Birkenstocks and grammatically correct University Spanish, wouldn’t last long in politics. He was too sensitive for that. Too smart, too. There could be no election, no office, no public. It had to be a private affair, a simple transaction. Something obvious, but with wit. Something that came to me on the road to Zacatecas. Now don’t get me wrong, like most girls I’ll take Cabo or Cancun over the pit that is Juarez any day. I mean who wouldn’t want to be stretched out on some ocean- side resort towel, sipping a pina colada while some little village girl combs your hair into a gazillion beaded braids? Hell, I’d even take Ensenada, with its photo-op burros, 158 dusty over-sized sombreros and roaming mariachi, before I willingly signed up for a trip to Zacatecas, made by car no less. But it was an invitation. An initiation into the family sort of thing extended by the Cauliflower King himself. Juan Duran de la Cruz may have reached the American Dream, but he still maintained notions of Mexican longing, and so two times a year he packed his wife, his fleet of daughters, their respective ex, current and prospective spouses, and his only son and drove south. When I was invited to join the entourage I packed a few bags, stuffed all my hair into a floppy straw hat and sat next to Ricky in the back seat of the fifth of five silver Cadillacs. Our small, metallic parade was conducted by Juan Duran, driving himself in a just-off-the-sales-floor El Dorado, and caboosed by a late model Ford pick-up, filled with supplies—namely, jugs of recycled milk cartons filled with Los Angeles tap water and crates of thousand island dressing—tightly secured with a tarp and driven by Venus. We left on a Thursday, late in the afternoon, and I somehow managed to sleep through the border crossing, but before long the interstate ran out and I was jolted awake by pot holes and the cursing of Juan Duran, transmitted by CB, about the fucking rocky roads ruining the fucking suspension in his fucking fleet of cars. Each time his voice, heavy with driving and accents, swore across the static of the transmitter radio, Ricky would reach across the back seat and squeeze my hand. I’m sorry, he mouthed, in the dark of night. It’s okay, I mouthed back, waiting for a northbound truck to illuminate the car so Ricky could read my lips. I squeezed his knee. 159 He whispered, I love you. Even still, it was a long fucking night. FACT. Somewhere near breakfast, Juan Duran signaled and one by one, the train of now-dusty cars pulled to the left and parked near a field. The field was full of crops, something low-cut and greenish, like parsley, and speckled throughout the harvest were farmers in old Dodger caps and white T-shirts, digging up produce and depositing dirty bunches into large wooden crates beneath brightly colored umbrellas of orange and yellow and pink. You mean the umbrellas aren’t for the workers? I asked Ricky in a hushed voice. What? Donna, who was riding shotgun, asked. The umbrellas, I said, pointing, you mean they aren’t… Unbelievable, Donna said, before opening her door and directing a sharp glare at Ricky. I thought she grew up on a farm. I should have guessed this from you she said, though it was unclear to whom she was speaking. Then she slammed the door and walked off, barefoot towards the lead Caddy, mumbling under her breath. I sat in the backseat with my hat in my lap, stunned and looking at Ricky. It was a vineyard, I said quietly, a small one. When we hired people it was just a few and they used the house. Hey, don’t worry about it, Donna’s second husband, Christopher, said as he pushed the tip of his foot against the e-brake and took the keys out of the ignition. She’s 160 still bitter about the scars and the smell of cilantro brings it back. Then he opened his door and slipped out after Donna, carrying her heels in his left hand and her sunglasses in the other. Ricky slipped an arm around my shoulder and rubbed the back of my head with his palm. Hey, don’t worry about it. How could you have known? You could have told me, I thought. Should I apologize? Nah, she’ll forget about it before lunch. Just next time, maybe save your questions for when we’re alone. He opened his car door and let in a burst of golden light that had been previously muted by tinted windows. Right, I said, pulling on my hat and pushing my sunglasses against my face. Oh, come on, Magsie, Ricky said, ducking back into the car and planting a kiss on the top of my head. Don’t let it get you down. He tugged on my arm and I let him slide me across the leather seat and out of the car. Outside, doors and trunks began to click open and slam shut as the Mora de la Cruz family poured out of their air-conditioned cars and into the heat of the Mexican morning sun. Their polo shirts and pressed Levis contrasting loudly with the tattered, muted colors of the farm around them. We walked, en masse, along a cracked dirt driveway and into a stucco barn-like structure that functioned as sort of multi-purpose dining room/mess hall. The girls and their men fanned out and took up occupancy around the various bench-like tables, fanning each other with poorly folded maps and sun hats while Ricky, who held tightly to my hand, was corralled by his father into the kitchen. 161 Three old ladies, tied up in faded paisley aprons—their hands covered in cornmeal to the elbows—were pounding tortillas, while a small, gold, portable radio hummed Mexican folk songs from the windowsill. When they saw Ricky they exploded into Spanish pandemonium, exclaiming and folding Ricky and Juan Duran into a sweaty embrace and littering their faces and starched black shirts with kisses and corn- covered pats. Overwhelmed, I managed to wrestle my hand from Ricky’s grasp and took a seat on a wooden crate in the corner. The old lady shrieks seemed to set off some sort of chain reaction and before long, what appeared to be the entire town had gathered around, some of the children and a few older boys singing in broken English and particled Spanish, He’s here. He’s here. Yup the guy from California and his son. Happy. Of course, the Spanish part I didn’t understand. My mother had been trying to teach me a working vocabulary since before I could walk and Ricky had managed to teach me a word or two, but I had a hunch the words were dirty, or at least not something a girl from a good home was supposed to say out loud in front of strangers. So I nodded a lot, held up my fingers and used gestures. It worked well, but there were a few flaws. For example, my hand held like a cup to my lips seemed to be the universal sign for water (agua, duh), but even with the word, there was no gesture for water from the bottles in the back of the truck and not Mexican water from a rusty pipe. So rather than ask I’d just brave the heat, follow the dirt drive back to the car and fish around under the tarp of the truck, wrestle with a gallon sized jug, and pour myself a hot glass of L.A. tap. And that’s how it happened. How it hit me. How I knew that it would be 162 water, in small plastic bottles, sold to America by a Mexican son. The irony was enough to make me choke, but I didn’t. Instead I spit the water from my mouth in a single stream onto the cracked brown dirt below, and twisted the cap back on the recycled gallon-carton. Of course, I could have said all this to the adoring crowd assembled around Ricky, but I didn’t. Unlike Ricky I didn’t say a word. Didn’t correct a single fact. Didn’t rearrange anything at all. Instead, I stood with my back to the sea and looked around at Ricky’s assembled beach-front audience. I eyed each of the interns, in turn. I scanned tanned and tucked faces illuminated by the subtle orange glow of tiki torches and tried to figure out which one. Which slut. Which common whore was fucking my husband right under my $22,000 nose. 163 CLASSICAL DESIGN. In the car, on the way home, Ricky drove and I sat in the passenger seat, fully reclined, and took deep, big, sniffs of air through my nose. I tried to be as loud as possible, pushing air in and out of my nostrils and it worked because before long Ricky broke the silence and said, Will you please stop that? Stop what? I asked. That, he said. I’m just breathing, I told him. You have a problem with my breathing now. What, should I hold my breath? That is not breathing, he said. This is breathing. He paused and made no noise as he took in several breaths of air. What you were doing, he snorted and snawed like a flat-faced dog, is not breathing. It’s gross. Gross? I asked, sitting up while my chair back remained in the recline position. You’re the gross one. You’re so extremely unpleasant that I can hardly stand it. So stop breathing so hard and you won’t have to stand it. Or smell it, either, for that matter. Too late, I said, slipping my right arm out of the seatbelt so I could turn and face him, I already smelled it and she stinks. She who? Christ Mags, what the hell are you talking about? Her, I can smell her on you. Just tell me her fucking name and we can have it out once and for all. Whose name? You’re not making sense. 164 Her! I said. The girl you’re fucking. Don’t worry, I don’t even care anymore. Just admit it so I can get over it, again. And then we can do whatever it is people do once they’ve found out. You really want to know? Ricky asked. Yes, I said, my hands clenched around his armrest, I really want to know. Okay, then I’ll tell you, Ricky said. Tell me then, I said, ready to throw myself at him and or rip the wheel out of his grasp. Magdalena, he said. What? I asked. Just fucking tell me. I did, he said. Her name’s Magdalena. That’s who I’m fucking. Or at least that’s who I used to be fucking, but I haven’t really gotten any in a while. Liar, I said as I lunged for the wheel, but Ricky was too quick for me. He slammed on the brakes while simultaneously throwing his arm in front of my body. So paternal. The car screeched to a stop in the dead middle of Sunset and cars honked and flashed their lights as they swerved around us. Ricky, always the thinker, pulled up the e-brake and flipped on the hazards. As he pushed the button to start the lights blinking the On-Star system was activated and out of nowhere an operator asked, Mrs. de la Cruz our computers indicate you’ve initiated the hazards, is everything all right? Fine, Ricky said. We’re just stopped is all. Excuse me, Mr. de la Cruz. Glad to hear everything is all right. 165 Night then, Ricky said into the monitor. Goodnight, the operator signed off. This enough drama for you, Ricky asked, as a driver laid on his horn and gave us the finger as he sped by, or should I make a U-turn and drive into on-coming traffic? I didn’t answer, instead I grabbed Ricky by the shoulders, pulled him towards me and slammed my face into his. I kissed him, hard, on the mouth and when he didn’t respond, I bit his lip and his cheek and his tongue. When I drew blood he bit me back and threw me down onto my reclined seat and pressed himself on top of me. Fuck me, I said. If I’m the only one you’re supposedly fucking, then prove it. Ricky pulled at his belt and unzipping his pants. He pushed my sarong aside and tried to push himself into me without removing my bikini bottoms. When that didn’t work he pulled the crotch to one side and fucked me. And fucked me. I kept biting while he fucked. I scratched my acrylic nails across his back and pushed my breasts into his face, desperate to feel something. Anything other than empty, hollow anger and tears. But the deeper I scratched, the more vacant I felt. Outside cars continued to lay on their horns and occasionally someone would shout an obscenity before screaming around us. Fuck you too, Ricky said. I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to the offending driver but I didn’t much frickin’ care. When he was through he pushed himself off me and drove the rest of the way home. I must have fallen asleep on the way back, because when I woke I was still inside the car, which was now perfectly parked, inside the garage. The dome light was 166 on, sending a weak yellow shadow across my lap and the keys were placed strategically on the driver’s seat, the circular chrome ring perfectly centered around a blinking pear- cut diamond earring. 167 DURATION OF MOOD. When I woke up I had a kink in my neck, a swollen lip, and no idea where Ricky was. I unbuckled myself from my seat and checked my reflection in the passenger’s mirror. In addition to the lip, I had mascara rings beneath both eyes, a red scratch that ran from my just-like-Cindy-Crawford-mole to what was left of my last-all-night panacea pink lip-gloss and tangled blonde hair that fell in sad whispers across my shoulders and back. I wet my index fingers in my mouth and then rubbed them slowly under both lids, forcing the black smudges into subtler lines that almost looked intentional. I took a quick sweep at my hair with my hand, snagged my diamond engagement ring—not the original pavé promise ring Ricky gave me years ago in grad school, but my Tiffany four carat upgrade with the “past” and “future” pink diamond offsets on the side—in my hair and managed to rip out a few strands of blonde before deciding to hell with it. Swollen lip and runny mascara, I could say that not since Junah had I been so low, but, and here’s the funny thing, I felt all right. Not exactly spectacular or anything, but as close to good as all right gets. I mean I slept well for one thing, which has become more rare than I care to admit these days, and for another thing I woke up without remembering. I mean that’s not to say that later, with cotton wrapped in between my toes and the subtle vibration of the spa chair working its way up and down my spine things didn’t start coming back to me. They did. And like usual I spent the remaining half hour 168 of filing and buffing and base coats and polish trying to pretend it all away, but for the first time in over a year my waking thought wasn’t Junah. It wasn’t why Junah and how Junah and Junah in vivid Technicolor tragedy. Instead it was a seatbelt digging its slick edge into my clavicle, a dry mouth, the dull glare of the dome light still lit in the garage. I started the engine and put the car in reverse. I needed to talk to my shrink. Not that I was scheduled, and not that she worked on Saturdays, but I knew where she lived and I considered this an emergency. 169 CRISIS MODE. The Shrink lived near a creek—a real body, well trickle rather, of flowing water in Los Angeles—at the top of Laurel Canyon. And as I pulled up her steep drive I watched her through the kitchen window, as she made pancakes for her husband and a little blonde boy dressed in green frog pajamas. I was going to knock, or at the very least honk, it’s not like I intended to hover in her driveway, peeping, but there was something so precious about the perfectly domestic breakfast scene, that I couldn’t bear to interrupt it. And try as I might, I also couldn’t seem to stop staring, to reverse and cruise the canyon for awhile, at least until she was dressed, so I sat entranced until the dog—a shaggy red Irish Setter—spotted me through the blinds and began to bark. Jesuschrist Magdalena, she said, walking out onto her front step clutching a coffee mug, her husband, still in boxers and a T-shirt hovering protectively behind her, I live here. This is my house. I know, I said, rolling down my car window, that’s why I came. I needed to see you, and I thought you said you were Buddhist? It’s just an expression, she said, dismissing her husband with a pat on the arm and walking over to my car. But this, she motioned towards me with her mug, this is so totally inappropriate. You’ve crossed the line here. You know that, right? After hours and you’re supposed to call my answering service. This can't wait till Friday, I said, biting on the arm of my sunglasses. And if I had wanted to talk to a machine I would have called my fucking husband. He never answers his cell, not if he sees it's me on the ID anyway. Besides, this is an emergency, I said, 170 running a hand through my snarled hair, hoping I looked appropriately pathetic. The service is more than equipped to handle emergencies, she said. The Shrink’s answering service was a joke. It was a number that rang up a machine attached to a pager somewhere and when ever I had the urge to ‘go there’ with Ricky I was supposed to dial it up and vent into the phone. Supposedly this was a good way to get things off my chest without actually inciting matrimonial riot, but even though I paid extra for the service I never actually used it. Don't get me wrong, I called it plenty and then hung up. Once I was almost tempted to speak, but I kept having images of her and her Wonderland Park friends sipping iced tea and laughing their asses off as they listened to one manic caller after the next. But I didn’t say any of this out loud. Instead I lied: I lost the number, I said. Interesting, the Shrink said, still standing opposite my car in the drive. I find it very interesting that you’re resourceful enough to figure out where I live—which need I remind you is commonly referred to as stalking and is probably directly in line with a restraining order—but I digress… and then she looked at me blankly. What was I saying again? You were saying, I said, that you find it interesting that I can figure out where you live but I can’t— Right she said, taking a sip of her coffee, that you’re resourceful enough to figure out where I live and invade my privacy, but you’re apparently unable to locate the emergency number, which by the way is on the voice mail of my office phone. 171 Zabasearch-dot-com, I said and smiled. But I’m unlisted, she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Totally doesn’t matter. They have almost everyone, I opened the car door, do you want to sit down? She eyed me suspiciously and took a step back. Oh come on, I said, sliding across the center consol to the passengers seat, you can have the driver’s seat. Here, I said as I turned off the engine and threw her my key ring, you can even hold the keys. Only if you promise this will never happen again, she said, pocketing my keys and getting into the car. Promise, I said, my fingers crossed. But even if they weren’t it wouldn’t matter. We both knew I paid her too much for her supposed services, and, besides, I suspected she liked me. Alright, she said, reclining her chair a little and turning to face me, What’s this all about? Ricky's cheating on me. She tried to hide her exasperation, but it was pretty early in the morning and so I forgave her for letting out a small sigh. Are you sure? No. Yes. I put my feet up on the dash and tried to explain. I tried to tell her about the party, about how lonely I felt, about how everyone seemed to be looking at me funny. About Adair and Geneva and the signs. What are you talking about, signs? 172 Oh you know, caller ID, unexpected changes in his behavior, or dress, working too much. And does Ricky exhibit any of these so-called signs? Well he did work 320 hours last month, but aside from the working, the truth is I don't know just yet. I mean I'm still looking for the rest, but I'm sure they're somewhere. And have you expressed your infidelity concerns to Ricky? Why do you think I spent the night in the car? I asked her. Why do you think I showed up here, at 7 am, wearing the same bikini as yesterday, no less? Well, she looked at my wrinkled pareo,— He denied it, of course. And is this consistent with his past extra—his past behavior, she corrected herself. You were going to say extramarital. Was I? she asked. Is it? You know, I don’t exactly remember. The last time I thought Ricky had cheated on me I was a little preoccupied, what with Junah being dead and all. The Shrink took a deep breath and looked out the car window to where her son and her husband were watching us in the kitchen. She waved. They waved back. Magdalena, she said, do you honestly, in your heart of hearts believe that Ricky is really cheating on you? What do you think? I asked. I think you need to go home now. I think you need to take a hot shower and get some sleep. I think we’ll talk about this in more detail on Friday. 173 But, I said, pointing to the dash, it’s only been half a session, we still have 25 more minutes. The Shrink raised her eyebrows as she opened the car door and stepped out, We’ll talk more on Friday, she said, as she handed me the keys. And if you need to talk before then, call the service. I didn’t say anything. I just hunkered into the driver’s seat, put the car in reverse and left. 174 INTERNAL CONFLICT. Back home I headed straight to the kitchen where I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Evian. I’ve been stocking our competition regularly for about two weeks now. To piss Ricky off. But of course he hasn’t noticed. I don’t know how long I was standing in the kitchen, fridge door open, no less, but it must have been a while because Imelda, our housekeeper, opened her bedroom door and whispered, Magses you all right? Yes, I whispered, I’m great. And then, Evian still in hand, I took the stairs two at a time to the master suite. Ricky was in bed, his Hanro cotton shirt perfectly matched to his Swiss Euro-style briefs. Before, that is to say yesterday, I probably would have dumped the bottle of Evian on his head, grabbed the down comforter and made my way into the library to sleep, but I kind of told Puck that I’d refrain from throwing anything anymore and besides, things were changing. I could feel them. So I got into bed with my dirty bikini. Without washing my face I lay on top of the covers next to Ricky where, of course, I couldn’t fall asleep. So I flipped back and forth like a sixteen-year-old in a cheap tanning bed, hoping to wake Ricky without actually touching him, but no matter how much I wiggled and flopped Ricky’s side of the bed stayed perfectly still—mattress technology—and Ricky himself slept soundly. I grabbed one of the seven gazillion throw pillows off the floor and, still resisting the urge to lodge it at Ricky, rung it viciously. 175 Fuck! I said into the soft goose down batting, Do what? I mean really, what the fuck am I supposed to do? In this situation? With myself? In this life? Just shower it all away like some Dame in South Pacific? Bury myself in Egyptian combed cotton towels and begin again all freshy fresh and squeaky clean? As if. I twisted, and then untwisted myself in the sheets, tugging the top sheet away from Ricky’s tucked arms, but even this failed to interrupt his regulated snore and so I gave up, got up and headed towards my studio. 176 SET CONSTRUCTION. For the first month after we bought the house my studio was in one of the eight guest bedrooms that flanked the master suite, but after I fell off the boat, which caused me, quite literally, to drop out of the water set, I decided to take up full time with art. I felt the need to spread out, to take up space. The creative process of an artist in residence, I told Ricky, really necessitates an actual residence. Mags, Ricky said, taking my hand and marching me upstairs, you have seven rooms of your own. I don’t quite understand what you mean. What I meant was, if I worked in the house, if I set up shop in one, three, seven of the bedrooms on the second floor I would actually have to work because there might actually be the possibility of Ricky or Imelda or the guy who does the bills suddenly walking in on me and expecting to see art, work, product, something other than a bedraggled girl, still in her pajamas, drinking gin with a straw and playing with rhinestones. But I couldn’t say as much to Ricky and so I blamed the light; it was completely inadequate. A glass house, I said would be adequate for my artistic endeavors. Or at the least some very large windows on the north and west sides, which, after some contracting, construction and a short step up a disappearing staircase, put me in a studio directly above the garage. The floors were teak and the ceilings vaulted and wood-beamed. In the afternoons and early evenings the sun would streak in and warm the oversized chaise where I would 177 usually lie, sipping gin and holding rhinestones up to the light, refracting their beams in a rainbow of prisms about the room. I climbed the stairs and pushed open the fort-like door in the floor, that I will not pretend didn’t remind me, every single time I touched it, of Junah and a certain tree house my daddy built in the big arms of an oak tree in the Central Valley. But I tried not to think of Junah or Ricky or anything associated with how things used to be or tears and instead I decided to focus on art. 178 METHOD ACTING. Right now I’m working in rhinestones. Some people, serious artists and my husband for instance, might say that what I do is not art. And I might agree. What I know to be art does not involve twisting stringy strands of dried glue off the corners of rhinestones. But real art, the kind that I used to do in a sort of makeshift studio near the grain shaft of our barn, and again on the tarred rooftop of our co-op in Berkeley, takes a certain level of introspection, self-actualization and reveal, and although my shrink thinks that’s exactly the kind of behavior I should be engaging in right now, I strongly disagree. The very last thing I need to do is go further into my self, and so, to keep my hands busy and to keep appearances up I paste and stick artificial gems to simulated masterpieces. Once a month I go to the library in Beverly Hills and check out books: Monet, Mondrian and Gauguin. Expensive, museum-quality books by Taschen. Then I take the books to Kinkos. I don’t have to take the books to Kinkos. Ricky bought me a library full of museum quality books when I started in art, but going to the library and then to Kinkos gives me something to do (aside from imagining I’m preggers). So I go to Kinkos on Wilshire and I color Xerox a dozen or so prints (which is, according to copyright, blatantly illegal, but I always smile and tell the Kinko’s guy that I teach kindergarten). Then I take them to my house on Bedford, shut the blinds to the staggering view, and glue rhinestones all over the fucking place. I sold one for twenty- five (thousand) to this movie guy in Bel-Air. Don’t tell Ricky I said it, but only in Los Angeles, am I right? 179 And the best part is that it wasn’t even my best piece. I mean it was so college- radio-station-I-just-fell-in-love-with-the-Velvet-Underground-and-must-play-them-all- the-time. It was Nico for christssake. You know an imitation of the blue green, red purple orangeish blocks that Warhol did? Like Marilyn and Chairman Mao. Only different. I sold him the red goddess square. I had junkie, icon, and rock star too, but he only wanted the yellow haired girl. Said it looked most like me. What, are you high? I asked him. I don’t have bangs. Makes no difference, he said holding up the sparkle-incrusted print up alongside my face. It’s you all the same. Whatever, I said, and showed him the door, a personal check for twenty-five grand sticking out of the pocket of my Paper jeans. 180 THEATRICAL TRUTH. I was working, or at least pretending to work, on a Gauguin when Ricky walked in and kissed me on the cheek. Hey babe, he said, gettin’ up and getting’ right to it, that’s what I like to see. Umm, I said, feigning an intense interest in a Xeroxed copy of a man with an axe standing next to a native woman in a rose colored stream, because this is how it was with us: at night we would fight, throwing out every mean word we knew until our throats were hoarse, our adrenaline worn, and our hearts totally and completely knotted. And in the morning we woke up and Ricky pretended and I pretended that everything was okay. That nothing in the world was wrong. That is, until, I noticed Ricky was not dressed in his semi-usual Saturday shorts and Cal tee, but was instead sporting slacks and a Hermes tie. I thought, I said, turning towards Ricky, suddenly disengaged with art, that we were laying low today. Renting a movie. Ordering take-out. Yeah, so did I, Ricky said, checking his reflection in one of the floor to ceiling widows that flanked my studio, but when I woke up I noticed you were working and so I thought, Hey, she’s on a roll, why not catch up on a few things in the office? But I was just finishing up, I said, hastily scooping rhinestones into Ziploc baggies and pulling the plug on my glue gun. Looks to me, Ricky said, pointing to the Gauguin, that you have a long way to go. 181 No really, I said, I was just thinking about throwing in the towel. Taking a shower and then heading to Kings Road for a latte and some eggs benedict. Want to join me? Since when do you eat eggs benedict? Ricky asked, straightening his tie. Well not eggs benedict, exactly, more like Florentine, but with egg whites, steamed spinach, and tomatoes, you know what I usually get. I’m sure Imelda could whip that up, and besides, he said, I could really stand to get a few things cleared off my desk. And I think, he pointed again towards the barely begun Gauguin, so do you. Just a quick coffee then, I asked, rolling the Xeroxed print up and stuffing it into a cardboard tube. No time, babe, Ricky said, as he kissed me on the head, but I’ll tell you what, let’s both work hard today and then tomorrow we’ll do whatever you want, my treat. And before I could get another word out. Even a small word like, No. Or Stop. Or What? Ricky ducked out the door in the floor and was gone. Fuckity Fuck. I said, as I threw myself down on the sofa, because although I often refused to admit it, Ricky was like art, no matter how much I pretended otherwise, I still wanted to be near him. I still, regardless of our fallings out, longed for his company. His attention. His—cheesy, sappy, and utterly chestnutty—touch. 182 AS-IF’S. After I heard Ricky’s car pull out of the garage. After I heard the garage open and then electronically shut behind him, I lit a forbidden cigarette and walked around the house. Magses, what are you doing? Imelda, asked as she walked behind me from room to room spraying organic air freshener in a billowy mist within my wake. Taking a drag, I said, as I puffed on a Lucky Strike from the white pack. But you know, Imelda said, spraying in staccato spurts, that Mr. Ricky hates the cigarette smoke, she said. And that it will kill you early. Uh huh, I said while taking a particularly deep inhale and then blowing the smoke directly into a throw pillow. Oh Mages, no! she said, as she scooped up the pillow and began beating it with her free hand against her thigh. You remember last time you did this? she asked. You remember the dry cleaners and the drapes and how mad Mr. Ricky got? Yes, I remember, I said, ashing on the plush Quaker-style rug, and rubbing it in with my bare heel. But this is my house too, remember? And I’ll do what I damned well please in my own damn house. Magses, she said, as he shook her head at the carpet, maybe I should call the doctor? Maybe this is another of your emergencies? Go ahead, I said, flopping down on the chaise, and pointing with my cigarette hand toward the phone, but she’s not accepting emergencies this weekend. I already tried this morning. 183 Jesus, Maria y Joseph, she said signing herself and making her way towards her room, a continuous spray still spouting from the aerosol can, I pray for you. Thanks, I said, stomach down on the lounge, cigarette dangling between my lips. But she only shut her door in response and, bored after a short while of just lying about with no one to talk to, I tossed my cigarette in the sink and made my way back to the studio. 184 INDICATED ACTING. In the studio I spent a good hour staring out the window wondering if Ricky was really at work, or if, in fact, he wasn’t out fucking. When I was good and convinced he was out fucking I picked up the phone and dialed the office. He answered, of course, with his usual, Ricky de la Cruz speaking, and of course I hung up. Then I flipped through the Neiman catalogue, dog-eared a few pages and went online to shop for vintage rhinoceros belt buckles. I bought three, had them rush delivered, and then, because I had nothing at all better to do, I decided to plug in the glue gun and adhere to my faux-art. The Gauguin pastoral, once I got good and into it, was actually quite complicated considering I had to seal off a few dozen pink stones in imported cheesecloth and then beat down with my tack hammer to achieve that slightly rippled stream effect. I also had a little run-in with the glue gun. Somehow I always manage to get hot glue stuck in-between my acrylic nails and finger-skin. Only this time, when it happened, the burn was so hot that I put my finger in my mouth and also burnt my tongue. It hurt. Fishing some ice from the mini bar, I filled my mouth and suddenly realized: just because Ricky answered his phone doesn’t mean he’s actually at work. I mean he could have forwarded his calls to his mobile, or better yet the hotel room where he’s fucking his whore. So, ice in hand, I made my way out of the studio for the second time, 185 got dressed, slapped some product on my face and hightailed it to Bristol Farms where I planned to make a homemade lunch for everyone at the office. Not, mind you, because I was prone to sudden fits of generosity and good will towards my employees, but because dropping off boxed lunches, would make my spying on Ricky a little less obvious. 186 DOING LUNCH. Only in L.A. is driving a Bentley to the market run of the mill. Okay, maybe they do it in The O.C. too, but with the way the urban is sprawling, houses skyrocketing, greenbelts depleting and people pushing in to every available gap between Malibu and San Onofre, we’ll all be one big happy county soon enough anyhow, so it might as well be the same. Not that I drove a Bentley—I drove my tank— but I parked between two, silver on the right and black on the left, and I was very careful to stay within the painted lines. Why anyone would drive a three-hundred and fifty thousand dollar car to pick up some Cheerios and Charmin is beyond me, but in L.A. it happens all the time. Especially near the end of the week when everyone uncovers their Friday cars and the already expensive Porsches and Jaguars are replaced with their vintage counterparts, you know the 1940’s and ‘50’s throw-backs, with half the horse power but twice as much class (not to mention resale value), filling up on premium gas and lingering a little longer in the left turn lanes. Now in case you have the wrong idea, I didn’t grow up watching NASCAR, paging through Motor Trend or obsessing over the seconds in a quarter mile. In fact, where I’m from vehicles come in two types: cars and trucks, with an occasional mini- van thrown in for variety. In the car family you have your two and four doors, your automatic and manual transmissions, and trucks are either full bed or pantied, four-by or limp-dicked. And that’s it. But in L.A., well maybe it’s because we spend so much time in them going nowhere, staring out windshields at other cars with drivers also just 187 barely creeping along that we take notice. And what I’ve noticed is that L.A. is a fucking car show. A preposterous parade of rims and tints, chrome and conversion kits. Because Mr. Silver and Mr. Black Bentley were undoubtedly hiding behind the gorgeous display of organic star fruit just outside the automatic front doors—because that’s what you do when you bring a $350,000 car to the market, you let your wife shop while you stand outside to police the parking lot for vagrant carts and Kia-driving kids—I opened my door slowly, and even though there was plenty of room to open it wider I shimmed out of the small opening in an obvious way that smacked of respect. Not that I gave a damn about the car or Mr. Silver or the resale value of Mr. Black, but on the off chance that I did open the door too wide, and god-forbid it did ding with a clunk against the passenger’s side, I wanted to be sure Mrs. Silver didn’t catch hell for needing free range eggs or emu pate or edible rose petals which required a trip to the goddamned market, in the first place. It was a small sign of female solidarity, and I figured, it was the least I could do. High-end markets might possibly be the best part about L.A. It’s not only the lighting, a soft muted bulb rather than harsh fluorescents, and the hardwood as opposed to that awful sticky white linoleum, but it’s the feeling you get as you walk through the rich mahogany-shelved aisles, gazing at gourmet imports and listening to Bach, that you’re not really doing an errand, rather you feel like you’re being treated. Treated to a fabulous pantry of saffron soaked lentils and shaved daikon, where no one shakes their head or scrunches their eyebrows when you inquire about cactus stock or cremona fruit. 188 Where they actually sell quinoa thyme buerre blanc, you can sample anything, and if you don’t like it you can take it back. No really, just look—but not in an obvious way— to your left. See her? That blonde so-blonde it looks silver haired woman with the fierce ass and aquamarine glasses standing at aisle two? The one who just handed the checker three- dozen wilted long-stemmed roses and demanded a full refund, because, as is perfectly obvious, they died. And the clerk, bless her heart, just smiled and punched in the keys. Exchanging $372.18 in cash for the drooping bouquet, without batting an eye, because even if she doesn’t understand it personally, she’s been trained to understand that in Los Angeles bitter housewives are the bread and butter of Bristol Farms, because not many people are willing, or rather able, to consistently shell out $8 an ounce for Norwegian cheese imported from virgin goats. Try that in a Stater Bros, or even at a Ralphs and you’ll get your ass laughed out of the store. You’ll also only pay $2.99 for a family- sized stick of orange cheese, but that’s not what this is about. And although it may seem like it, it’s not about the roses either. It’s about gestures and principles and the very real truth that what the woman with the bob really wants to take back is her husband, but because she can’t do that she bundled up the roses that he gave her nine days ago in an apologetic action, and brought them back instead. And as she stands at the counter wearing diamonds and terrycloth and not much more you can see the loneliness radiate from her flat tummy and tiny thighs. You know, that, dead or alive, her husband still doesn’t give her the time she deserves and taking the roses back to the market in his 189 Bentley gives her something to do. She wouldn’t dare take back a rotten cantaloupe or a stale baguette, because undoubtedly those things would smell, and would seem rather silly, but the roses, they make perfect sense, and Christ knows she’s not the only woman to think so. And I want to tell her as much, and I suppose I could if I didn’t have a schedule and a gazillion box lunches to make. Homemade is a relative term, especially amongst the Malibu Mom Set. Ranging from: I transferred this adorable quiche from the chichi pink box I bought it in to this smashing Mottahedeh china platter; to I had my housekeeper whip something up; to the shortbread is store bought, but the strawberries I chopped myself; to I actually made this in a real oven Martha Stewart-style with a recipe and lemon zester and everything; homemade has many meanings in L.A. which is why I didn’t feel the least bit bad about buying three dozen prosciutto, pesto and sun dried tomato brie paninis and passing them off as my own. I mean it’s not like any idiot couldn’t buy ciabatta, some pine nuts and some basil, but why bother with all that Mix Mastering when you can just go to Bristol Farms order to-go and then take it home and re-make it some. You know, crack the crusts on the pear and boysenberry tartlets so they don’t looks so damn perfect, exchange the signature grocery wrap for some Saran brand waxed paper, put in a wicker basket and you might as well have made it yourself, because you damned well could have, if you really wanted to. And it’s not that I didn’t want to, but we are working against the clock here. Even in L.A. lunch is only so long, so if I wanted to re-wrap and be at the office to 190 check up on Ricky before, say, 3 pm, Martha Stewart be damned, I simply cannot be bothered with aioli today. 191 INGÉNUE. While I touched up my face and scouted for shoes Imelda peeled the price tags off the tartlets and stuffed the panini into waxed-paper bags. Usually I took great pride in rewrapping them myself, but my recipe for pesto cibatta was no secret, at least not to Imelda, and like I said, I was crunched for time. Hair tied up like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina and lip-gloss tucked into the sash of my pintucked skirt, I motored over to the office for lunch. The valet didn’t work on weekends, and so, rather than hassle with parking and the underground and the elevator, I saddled up to the curb and flipped on my hazards. With a basket over each arm I shut the car door with my heel and made my way inside. Although we owned the entire building, we only used the top six floors, the other fifty we leased to architects and lawyers and agents. I walked past the diamond-shaped fountain misting water in the lobby and hopped on the elevator where I had to insert a special key to get to the penthouse and realized quite quickly, that this was not at all like the movies. A-of-all because it was our office, not his, although sometimes Ricky forgets that when he’s say talking to people or breathing. B-of-all, because I didn’t check in at the concierge or press the elevator button reverently and ride quietly, nervously up fifty-six floors to the suite of penthouse offices where I had to bully my way past two security guards before bursting into his office with a flourish. Why honey, he’d say hastening to tuck in his shirt, a staggering view behind him and a two-bit whore hiding beneath his desk, why didn’t you call? 192 In the movies, I’d scream, Because you bastard, before sweeping the contents of his desk to the floor with my arm and then bursting into tears. If it were the movies I’d be in Grace Kelly heels with a full a-line skirt, mohair sweater set and red trench coat with matching hat. Perhaps I’d carry an umbrella and throw it to the floor for emphasis, but in real life, it doesn’t rain in Southern California, all the Myst secretaries are gay men or fat girls, and I had a key to everything—not to mention an office of my own right next to Ricky’s with a view of the Getty—not that I ever used it. The elevator quietly hummed its ascent and when it reached the penthouse it settled with the slightest bump. The polished nickel doors slid back and, for the first time in months, I stepped inside our office. With the exception of the receptionist, who—mental note—was about twenty-years younger and a hell of a lot prettier than the girl I had previously hired, not much had changed. Ricky’s office was on the right with a view of the city and mine was the mountainous Getty view on the right. We both had our respective corners, flanked by conference rooms, a computer technician, secretaries, an in-house legal team, an image consultant and, of course, Puck. Floors 51-55 housed marketing, sales, accounting, design, and PR, respectively, but Ricky preferred his speaker phone to personal conversations and with the exception of round table meetings and ad campaigns, he rarely set foot below the fifty-sixth floor. Holding a picnic basket in each arm and wearing a flouncy A-line regatta dress I imagined myself a sexy, blonde Dorothy, sans the ruby slippers. I stepped off the elevator and made my way across the reception area in long steps, pretending to ignore the receptionist entirely 193 while secretly taking in every inch of her smooth brown legs and funky India Arie meets Lisa Bonet head wrap, from behind my dark glasses. Excuse me? she said, as I walked past her desk and the enormous slate fountains that flanked her on both sides. I ignored her, as she was probably talking to a girlfriend on her wireless headset, which even though I used one myself, was always annoying. I mean a cell phone is bad enough, but at least you can see it there, pressed against a heavily made-up cheek by a manicured hand, but the wireless gadgets, especially with your hair down, are practically invisible. I mean seriously, if I could tell you how many times I’ve turned, thinking the girl next to me at the nail salon or in the latte line was asking my opinion of her boyfriend’s cock or her best friend’s vein removal, well let’s just say if I had a penny, I’d be a gazillionaire. Excuse me, Ma’am? She said again, and as I turned, one hand on the door to my office where I planned to check my lipgloss before passing out sandwiches, I knew she couldn’t possibly be talking to me because nothing, just let me repeat nothing on my ass, my chin or even my arms even slightly suggested anything but sweetie, babe, honey, or for those with etiquette, the requisite Miss. Hey, tall girl, she called out so it was perfectly clear that she was, in fact, talking to me, you can’t go in there. And then, in what appeared a bizarre attempt to block my entrance with her body, she stood up and positioned herself between me and the office door. Delivery, she said with a hint of attitude and a left-handed, is on the fifty-second floor. 194 Excuse me? I said, turning around and looking down at her from the tops of my oversized sunglasses so she could see my eyes, But this is my office. Now she gave me a once over, You’re Magdalena Bamburger? she said reading my name from the sliver plaque that hung to the left of my door. No, I said, noticing for the first time that Ricky must have had my original name plate—the one from so long ago it still bore my maiden name—moved from the old Berkeley dive to our new, shiny L.A. digs. The Lisa Bonet girl pulled on one of her braids and gave me an I-thought-so smirk. I used to be Magdalena Bamburger, I said, smirking right back at her, but she nearly drown so now I’m Magdalena de la Cruz. She raised an eyebrow. Do me a favor, will you? I asked, not waiting for a reply. Have this, I pointed to my name plate, removed and updated. By Monday, I added, pressing down on the handle and leaning my hip against my office door. I thought that would be the end of it, but as the heavy glass door swung shut behind me I heard her say, Interesting, and although I tried to shake it off I couldn’t. So I opened the door back up and said, What? Interesting, she said, as she smoothed the lap of her skywriter gauchos before sitting back down at her desk. I didn’t know Ricky was married. 195 That fucking bastard, I thought to myself and deciding to hell with the lip-gloss, I dropped my baskets to the floor and stormed through the door that connected Ricky’s office to mine. 196 RED-HANDED. I knew it, I shouted. If it couldn’t be like the movies at least I could hope for a bit of as-seen-on-TV-drama as I burst in on Ricky working quietly at his desk. Jesus, Magdalena, you nearly scared me to death. I mean, he stumbled with his wording, you nearly scared the crap out of me. Knew what? And what are you doing here anyhow? I thought you were home. Working. I was, I said, scanning the room suspiciously, but I knew, now I was stumbling, that you’d be… hungry. So I made lunch. I quickly walked back into my office—they call this set up the Jack and Jill suite our real estate agent had boasted—and grabbed my baskets. Panini? I asked, holding the basket out and peeking back round the door. Sure, Ricky said, clearing a spot to eat in the middle of his papered desk and rubbing his eyes with both fists. He looked tired and more than a little beat down. I handed him a wax-wrapped sandwich from the pile and as he reached across to take it our fingers touched in the awkward way of first-dates and teenagers. And it was nice. Ricky smiled and I knew, as I smiled back, that we both wished somehow, that we could linger here, in this moment, for a long time. That something about it felt unexpectedly right, or like how it used to be, or better said, decidedly lacking in suspicion and anger and blame. But it was just a single moment and we both knew that as soon as one of us opened our mouths, blinked, breathed, it would be gone. Ricky went first. Hungry? he said pulling his hand away and looking at the pile of sandwiches in my basket. 197 I brought enough for everyone, I said. That was nice of you, he said as he took a bite. Well, I’m a nice person, I said, trying to smile the same smile of seconds ago. Umm, Ricky said with a full mouth, and good too. Thanks, I said, pulling out one for myself and clearing a spot across from my husband. What’s this? I asked as I moved a rather large pile of legal looking documents. Oh, that’s nothing, Ricky said as he hastily grabbed the pile away from me and set it behind the desk, on the floor. Just some technical details. I wasn’t worried, I said, subtly scanning the other documents piled up on the desk. You gonna pass out the rest of those? Ricky asked, trying to change the subject or divert my attention, I wasn’t sure which. Yeah, I said as I bit down. I was but maybe Lisa can do it. Lisa? Ricky asked. Lisa India Beyonce Bonet. That hottie you hired working reception. I didn’t hire her, Ricky said, she’s a temp. Marge is out on maternity. Maternity? I thought she was gay. She is, Ricky said. They used a donor. Well why didn’t anybody tell me? I think, Ricky said, choosing his words carefully, that you were preoccupied with your art. But you sent a gift. 198 I did? Well we both did, to the shower that Cecile threw. Wow, I picked at the crust on my sandwich. I guess a lot has happened since I left. Not really, Ricky said. And then it was quiet. Ricky finished the rest of his sandwich in two bites. He crumpled the wax wrapping and pitched it towards the trash, it missed. But instead of getting up to toss it away proper, he reached instead to the left of his desk and pulled out two bottles of Luxe from his minifridge. He held one out to me and I took it. If only he was as monogamous with his wife as he was with his water, I thought, but I didn’t say it, instead I clicked my nails against the fiberglass La Chaise I was perched on and pretended to eat. I designed the office, all of it, and if you shut the blinds against the staggering view it almost felt like San Francisco. Or at least the furniture did. Although Ricky initially had his eye on a desk fit for the Sultan of Shanghai I convinced him to leave the decorating to me and had the penthouse outfitted in Mid-20 th -century modern masterpieces: clean lines, naked wood and slips of sexy, cool, chrome. So do you want Dior to pass out sandwiches, Ricky asked, as his phone started to ring, or do you want to do it yourself? Dior? The receptionist, Ricky whispered to me as he said, ‘This is Ricky,’ to the voice on the other end of the line. 199 Her name is Dior? How precious, I said, standing up and grabbing my Dorothy baskets, suddenly feeling very, very silly. She can do it. I set the baskets on his desk. One sec, Ricky said as he placed his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver. Mags, would you mind asking her yourself? This is important, he gestured towards the phone with his chin. I smiled a fake half smile and grabbed the baskets back. It was always important. Thanks, Babe, Ricky said, as I let myself out. 200 EXIT STAGE LEFT. In the lobby Dior was filing her nails with a metal emery board, sending flecks of polish and dead skin cells in a flurry about the aluminum Knoll bench she was standing on, in shoes, no less. Um, Dior, I said to her back, as she appeared to peer into the frosted glass of my office door, filing away. What are you doing? Oh hey, she said, turning around, smiling. I couldn’t find a flat head she said pointing to the screws that held my nameplate to the wall, so I thought this might work, she held up the file, but it didn’t. And so I tried my nail, she held up her left pointer finger, but well, that didn’t exactly work as planned, so I busted it and then I figured since I had the file, she smiled again and kept grating away on her acrylics. I thought as much, I said, straightening my shoulders and trying to be as tall as possible. But maybe if you could not stand on that bench…I don’t mean to be all uppity, but it’s the real deal. Really? She asked, jumping down in a playful ninja swoop. Vintage, I said. I had it delivered from the design center in San Francisco. Why? She asked. Why? What kind of question was that? I don’t know why, I told her. Because I like it. Because it, because all of this—I gestured wide, basket still in hand—reminds me of Berkeley and simplicity and a certain understatedness that just doesn’t exist in L.A. 201 No, she said, running her thumb down the emery board like a knife and wiping the residual nail powder on her pant leg, Why wouldn’t you just buy them at the Pacific Design Center on Melrose? Because San Francisco just means more. She laughed then. A real, almost loud laugh and said, Oh. Oh, I repeated, because I didn’t know what else to say, and then, straightening my shoulders still further I handed her the baskets and said, I made lunch. Would you mind handing them out to the rest of the staff? Not at all, she said, reaching a bangle-filled arm into the basket and helping herself. Thanks. You’re welcome, I said and took a left towards the elevator. I pushed the backlit chrome button that pointed down and hoped it would come fast. Like right this second. But it was on the twenty-third floor and going down, or so said the numbers above the lacquered doors and so I shifted my weight from foot to foot and waited. Hey, Mags, Dior said, wiping at the corner of her lips with a pinkie finger. Yes? If I get that nameplate done by Monday, does that mean you’ll be back in the office? I don’t know, I said, Most likely. Super, she said. How about you, I asked. How long are you temping for? Three, four weeks? 202 Five, she said, excusing herself from saying more until she swallowed. Months. Five months? I tried not to sound concerned, and focused on the incredibly slow creep of the lighted numbers as they made their way slowly up from one. I know, it’s going to cut in on my studio time, but I need the cash. What do you do in the studio? I pressed the down button again for good measure, sure she practiced voice or her super model walk. I study the architecture of Los Angeles. And since you asked, I just have to say that this, she flung her arms out like I had done previously, is a hell of a lot more L.A. than Frisco. I winced, did she really just say Frisco? But I decided not to go there. Instead I said, I didn’t ask. But if you study architecture, you should know that Ray Eames was from Northern California, from very near where I grew up. Yeah, Dior said, as the elevator doors opened, but Ray was Charles Eames second wife. And they designed in L.A. I stepped in and the doors shut. The temp agency would be getting a call Monday morning. Not because of the furniture jab, I’d been told that before, and besides I never said it was San Francisco, I just said it felt like it. No, the temp agency would get a call because if Dior didn’t know that Ricky had a wife then how in the fuck did she know to call me Mags? 203 NOTES FROM THE STUDIO. I went home and couldn’t even fathom the idea of pretending to work, again, so I spent the rest of the afternoon looking up people I used to know on google and planning my Sunday date with Ricky. When he wasn’t home at 9 pm, I poured myself a drink. And when he wasn’t home at 10 pm I poured myself another. By 3 am I stumbled to bed, drunk and alone, and when I woke up, at noon the next morning there was a cold latte and a scone on my bedside table with a note that said, Babe- Long night. Early morning. Sorry but I had to get back to the office to finish something. Vital. Will call just as soon as I can. Didn’t want to wake you sleeping. So pretty. Will make it up to you. Promise. XOXO, Ricky Fuck Puck and his non-violent anti-tantrum tossing rhetoric. I threw the latte as hard as I could against Ricky’s side of the room and then went in search of the toenail clippers. I was going after Ricky’s Armani suits and it wasn’t going to be pretty. 204 WARDROBE MALFUNCTION. When Ricky called three hours later I had successfully undone the seams of most of his pocket linings and was half way through releasing the little buttons that kept the collar down around the tie neck of his designer shirts. Hey Babe, he said. Want to meet me at the MoCA? And surprised, and maybe feeling the tiniest bit guilty about the buttons, but not about the seams, I said sure, hung up and crossed the walk in closet to my side where I set to work finding something to wear. 205 SITE SPECIFIC. When Ricky said, on the phone, to meet him at the MoCA I thought it was a date. I thought that maybe he was making up for standing me up at dinner, again, by expressing interest in art. But when I arrived at the Basquiat exhibit I quickly realized it was a carefully disguised private school fundraiser for one of our ‘fingers-crossed’ potential investor’s kids. When I finally managed to get Ricky out from under the protective arm of the investor’s wife, she was sharing a charming little story about the catastrophe her breakfast nook was in thanks to the remodel, I angled Ricky towards the installation and tried, in hushed whispers, to get him to fall in love. Not with me. With the art. Though he was slightly impressed by the Charlie Parker/Joe Louis tributes, he guffawed at the painted poetry and full out snorted in front of the framed graffiti. So I quietly gave up and while he traded tech tips with the assistant vice chancellor I stood on one foot and stared at a boarded up window, painted black and hung aslant with the words: torepelghosts enjambed across the center. It was on loan from a private collector in Picardy and it was my personal desire to acquire it. Pronto. But when, standing around the banquet table, I suggested it to Ricky his response was usual. Magdalena, there is no way I’m spending five dollars much less five-hundred and thirty five thousand dollars for something I could so clearly make myself, or better 206 yet, commission from some homeless person in Echo Park. And besides, wouldn’t it break up the exhibit? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said within earshot of some seventh grade teacher who was sipping Veuve Clicquot Grand Dame from a clear plastic cup and offering her personal opinion on everything. Obviously I wouldn’t break up the collection. It’s not like I’m going to pull a Thomas Crown and strip it from the wall, I’d just like to own it, is all. Interesting, Ms. Seventh Grade said, fully inserting herself into our conversation before taking a sip and swirling champagne from cheek to cheek before swallowing. Do you, she gestured towards me, perchance live in L.A? Yes, I said, sipping straight from a bottle of Luxe, which I had secretly filled with Tanqueray and Tonic in the handicapped restroom on the ground floor. We live on the west side, in a cute little place off Sunset. I expected Ricky to interject. Although it was true, he hated it when I inferred we lived anywhere other than Beverly Hills, and he really hated it when I referred to our house in the diminutive (i.e. cute and or little). Usually he’d try to be witty about it and reply with an, It’s a charming little estate in Beverly Hills, Lana Turner’s old house, I’m sure you’ve heard of it? And although most people undoubtedly had heard of it, what with Cheryl Crane and the murder and all, even if they hadn’t (heard of it) they lied and pretended to know all about it all the same. In fact, not to get too far off course here, but really, you’ll probably find this to be quite useful should you ever find yourself stuck at some L.A. premiere or promotion, most people in L.A. pretend to be in the know about almost anything. And not just who got what augmented, lifted, and tucked or how much 207 it cost and who they saw on the way out, but also about serious things, global things, things that have absolutely nothing to do with the industry, things like long division, and Armenian genocide and how much the highest recorded sale of a Basquiat original went for at Christies. No really, next time you’re at the Playboy mansion or riding the mechanical bull at the Saddle Ranch, approach the first blonde you see and bring up plate tectonics or the pastoral influence of Pope Innocence the Fifth and don’t be surprised if she pretends to know exactly what you are talking about. But back to Ricky, who never lets an opportunity to announce he lives in Beverly Hills pass him by, except of course, for right now, when he didn’t say anything. Not one single word, allowing Ms. Seventh Grade to Umm again, as she swished and then swallowed. And your objection, she asked, cup still in hand and pinky extended, as though it were high tea, to just visiting the piece in question, or perhaps buying a print, you know so the rest of the world can still enjoy it, would be…? Trying to gage how far I could go, I looked to Ricky, who seemed to be in deep meditation studying the number of cubes in his glass, and so I decided to go all the way. My objection, I said, screwing the silver lid tightly onto the neck of the bottle, is traffic. Hell of a lot of it, in case you haven’t noticed. Mags, Ricky said, finding his way back into the conversation as he put his hand lightly on my arm. But Seventh Grade just laughed and cleared her throat simultaneously. Of course, she said. Of course, what? 208 Mags, Ricky said again, jingling the ice in his cup just a little. No really? I mean who is she. Who are you? I asked, turning to look her in the eye, to suggest I’d keep it locked up at my place? I could hear my voice rising, I could feel Ricky’s finger’s tightening. Who’s to say I wouldn’t donate it? To a high school? Maybe even a private one? Hang it in the gym so that all the little rich kids can enjoy it while sweating off their sashimi take-out? Because you wouldn’t, Ricky said, aligning himself with the champagne- swishing schoolmarm. Because we— I slammed my bottle down on a bench and said, to Ricky before he could finish, Just once? Would it be so hard to take my side, just once? Ricky opened his mouth to drink what was left of his cocktail or maybe to form some words, but I continued. Or if not, maybe you could just keep your mouth shut? Maybe, just once, you could play along? What are you talking about? Ricky asked my back as I stormed away. I am on your side. I pushed through a crowd of PTA parents bidding, not-so-silently, on botox and tickets to Disneyland. Right, I shouted. Sure you are. But I am, he shouted back as he hurried to catch up with me. And when he did he grabbed my arm again and lowered his voice so I could barely hear. Through clenched teeth he said, I was disagreeing on the private part. You didn’t let me finish. 209 We went to public schools. If you donated art to anything, it sure as hell wouldn’t be private. Well you’re right about that, I said. But were you going to say as much? Out loud? Or was I just supposed to intuit it? Well if you had given me the chance before exploding, maybe I would have. No, I shook my head. You weren’t going to say anything. How do you know? He challenged. Because we’re here, I opened my arms wide and gestured to the banquet tables adorned with Diamond Myst and Luxe bottles, and we just unloaded a hundred and thirty cases of free product to a private school that’s what? Trying to raise enough money to send the senior class to Paris for the summer? This, Ricky said, mocking me as he opened his arms and gestured, is business. You’re the one who said ‘People like to pay more for things,’ remember that? Well, these, he gestured wide again, are the people who can afford to pay more, and that—he nearly knocked over a pyramid of perfectly placed Luxe bottles is your product, in case you haven’t noticed. I mean really, now his voice was rising, what’s it going to take to get you to understand that? Where do you think the money comes from? I know you’re not working right now, but that doesn’t mean the world has stopped. Who do you think pays for you cars and your scarves and your thousand dollar shoes? Who do you think keeps you in Gucci and gin while you glue sparkly little beads on canvas all day? The beads and canvas is just temporary. I do art. 210 Well look around Magdalena, this is a museum. Do you see anything that looks like your art? The room was kind of quiet now, not quite rubber-neck car crash quiet, but that awkward semi-silence of people pretending to have meaningful conversations about art and how they’re going to get little Aiden into Harvard, or at the very least USC, all the while waiting for it to get good between Ricky and me. Waiting for fireworks or something truly explosive so they can stop pretending to be engaged in their own discussions and openly stare without shame. They were waiting for broken glass and spilt water, but for once I refused to give it to them. Instead I scanned the instillation quizzically. You know Ricky, you’re right, I said in a quiet voice. This art looks nothing like mine. Of course, that would be what would make it art, and not say, a knock off or a postcard the likes of which you can buy in the gift shop. Whatever, Ricky said. Fool yourself if you have to. All I’m saying is that someone has to pay the bills. Yeah, and someone has to perpetually step-out on his wife. I guess we both know your role in this relationship. Besides, it’s not like we’re starving or anything. Well at the rate you’re going we very soon might be. I won’t buy the art, okay? I’m not talking about the art. I’m talking about that woman you offended. You mean the nosey seventh-grade teacher? No, I mean the seventh-grade teacher who just happens to be married to Vincent Chell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Fox Sports Net. 211 And I give a damn because? Because athletes drink water, Magdalena. Because Vice Presidents and CFOs and errand boys drink water too. Don’t you get it? I get it all right. And I don’t think I care anymore. Well if you want to keep making art, you damn well better. I turned on my imported cork heel and was about to breeze out the glass doors and up the stairs when I stopped, put a hand through my hair and said, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear myself speak, I thought this was going to be about us tonight. What? Ricky asked, already saddling up to Mrs. Seventh Grade in an attempt to smooth things over. I thought, I said, pointing first at him and then at myself, tonight was for us. It is, why do you think it was so important for you to come? No, not Myst. Not the business. Us. You and me. I thought it was going to be us tonight. But Myst is us, Ricky said, refilling Mrs. Seventh Grade’s plastic cup with some ice cold Luxe, it is, and has always been a part of us. 212 THE BACKLOT. Outside I nodded at the valet and my colossal silver tank that sat idling on the curb—what do they have, some sort of closed circuit camera installed above the exits?—and walked in the opposite direction, past the Disney Concert Hall—towards First Street. There were trees on Hill and Broadway and Spring. Not enough to be considered a grove or anything, but enough so that that leaves outnumbered the fronds almost a bazillion to one, and so, even with the dirty sidewalks and people Ricky usually referred to as ‘unsavory’ before unrolling his window just a crack and tossing out a dollar so they wouldn’t spit on his windshield—I could breathe deep diaphragmatic breaths. On the corner of Spring and Temple I looked both ways and went in the direction that boasted the most foliage. There are a lot of things wrong with L.A. I’ll be the first to admit that, but I found that walking her downtown streets wasn’t one of them. Maybe it was because Ricky forbid me to unlock the car doors anywhere that didn’t valet south of La Brea, or east of Pico, or maybe it was because that downtown L.A. –with its old Times building, and Federal Courts reminded me of downtown Stockton, another place I was forbidden to go to while growing up in Lodi, but that Junah and I frequented none-the-less. It always felt so reckless, to get in the truck and drive the country miles to Highway 99 when we were supposed to be peddling a paddleboat around Lodi Lake or jumping from the rope swing at the trestle. From the 99 we would drive the paved roads in the slow lane, never quite sure if the truck could go more than 53 mph without igniting in a burst of smoke and fire, the tachometer quivering at speeds over 50. We’d exit on Charter or 213 Waterloo or Freemont and expecting to see brutality and mayhem, or at the very least prostitution, we were slightly disappointed to find only poverty and boarded up windows. Old women walking with limps, pushing jimmied shopping carts full of discount produce and cheese. Gangs of small boys wearing ratty ball caps fishing aluminum cans out of the trash or crawdads out of homemade traps set up in the polluted runoff of the delta inlets. We drove past a pencil factory, and the soup kitchen, the courthouse and a blood bank advertising free pie in exchange for a pint. When, after a few trips, we got brave enough to park the truck and walk around we found an antiquarian bookstore, an acupuncturist, a turn-of-the-century theatre, and a Mexican bakery that sold bread with Milagros baked inside. We toured the classified section of the valley newspaper and sized up columbines and caterpillars designed by Wagner Holt inside the Haggin Museum. With the exception of a crazy woman who screamed Let me out! Let me out! at the top of her lungs on the corner of Airport and Main we saw no bedlam, and the only violence we witnessed was an underage white boy who, angry at the barista for refusing to sell him a beer, got angry and threw a chair at the plate glass window of the Blackwater Café. Walking from street corner to street corner, getting my direction from the trees, I wondered, if Junah were still alive, if this was the part of Los Angeles that he’d like best? If, when visiting Ricky and I, he’d insist, laughing at my chrome rims and kid leather seats, that we take his car downtown and if Ricky, alternately, would make Junah park his 1982 Subaru tri-toned wagon inside the garage instead of on the street, less worried about oil stains on the epoxy garage floor than about what the neighbors 214 might think. Fuck! I missed him so much it was maddening, and most likely obscene: I wanted to cut off my arm, to roll around naked on crushed glass. If I were brave enough I’d probably throw my body off a high rock because that’s just about how it felt. I missed him in a way that’s hard to explain, especially to your shrink, or worse yet, your husband. And regardless of what either one might say it had nothing to do with some fucked up Freudian incestuous VC Andrews kind of plot. I never loved Junah like that and I don’t miss him like that either. I miss him more than that; as though he were mine. As though I had birthed him. As though he were all the best of me. 215 KABUKI. When I reached the empty lot across from the Geffen I realized it was almost dark, so I picked up my cell phone and called Puck. You’re where? Puck asked. Sitting on the steps of, I turned around to look at the plaque on the building behind me, the Japanese American National Museum. Where? Puck said again, while simultaneously thanking someone for coming, I could hear his fake kisses through the receiver. Across the street from J-Town. What? You know beneath that giant pagoda thing? A giant Yoda? Honey you’re breaking up. Pagoda, I shouted. Pagoda? You mean J-Town? That’s what I said, I said. Babydoll, what on earth are you doing there of all places? I took a walk. Kiss. Kiss. He was faking it with someone again. You walked? His attention was back—somewhat—on me. You’re kidding, kiss kiss, right? No, I’m not kidding, but I could use a lift back, at least to my car. Meet me for sushi and I’ll fill you in? Be there in ten. Text me some directions, okay? 216 Sure, I said. And then hung up. Instead of texting directions I held up my phone and took a picture of the tower, which, after reading the sign, I realized wasn’t really a pagoda at all, but a replica of a Japanese fire-tower, and sent it off with ‘Follow the Trees’ in the subject line. It took him forty-five minutes to find me, but when he did the albacore was to die for and the uni nigiri was the best I ever tasted. 217 AD LIBBING. You say that every time, Puck said, reaching his chopsticks across the dimly lit table and scooping up a roll. Yeah, but this time I mean it. You say that every time too, he said, wrinkling up his nose and taking a bite. Don’t waste it! I said reaching my own sticks across the table and pinching what remained of the sea urchin out of Puck’s grasp. Easy there Princess, we can always order more. Umm, you say that now, I said, with my mouth full, but who’s to say the next round will be from the same cut? Prepared in the exact same way? I mean it might be from a completely different urchin and then what? It might only be the second, or gasp sigh the third best uni I’ve ever had. Or maybe, Puck said, sticking to his spicy tuna and California rolls, it will be even better. Ohmygosh! I said, washing down my last bite with a swig of sake. What if you’re right? I usually am, he said with a wink. Except when it comes to horse races and campy horror flicks from the 1960’s. Oh please, he said. Say what you will, there’s no science to horse racing. Betting on the color of a jockey’s vest is just as arbitrary as any other method. Didn’t you take statistics? I majored in it. 218 Right. So you should know. Just like you should know that Dracula has Risen From the Grave is just about the most perfect horror movie ever written. Oh please! Casting attractive women in low cut-nightgowns and vampire teeth does not qualify a script as perfect. Oh see, now there’s where you’re wrong. It wasn’t just any woman, it was Veronica Carlson. And since we seem to have brought the conversation back to tall blonds with pale complexions, remind me how it is that we got to this quaint little venue anyhow? Something about you walking here in, he looked under the table, a pair of three inch Vera Wangs? Now that’s what I call a horror show, can you still feel your pinkie toe or is it just bloody pulp? They’re three and a half inch, I said wiggling my toes inside my shoes beneath the table, and it’s a stack heel, so I’m fine. But you’re not? Well, I said popping an edamame into my mouth, I was until you changed the subject. Sorry, he said, holding up his sake glass and motioning to the waiter that we could use some refills. It’s just like he doesn’t get it, you know? No. I don’t know. But I have a few questions, he took a sip of his drink. He doesn’t get it? Or you don’t? And just what exactly is this it, anyhow? It’s just it, I said. It, my life. It, Ricky. It, Junah. Just it. I still don’t get it, Puck said, while nodding an arigato to the waiter. 219 I sighed, held out my cup for Puck to fill and said, You know that picture I have of me before L.A? The one where I’m sitting on the tailgate of a teal Dodge Ram, with my flannel-covered arms wrapped around my brother? Puck scrunched his eyebrows. It’s on the fridge, you know the one. My tits are small, my teeth are crooked, and a boy’s too-big Stetson sits on my head, partially concealing my left braid. In the picture, Junah and I are smiling. Fuck, I pounded my drink and set the cup on the table with a thump. We’re loving each other to goddamned death. You mean the one that’s been torn in two and then taped? Puck asked. The one stuck above the ice crusher with those cheesy-ass Diamond Myst magnets? That’s you? Yes, I said. And that’s exactly my point. When people pass through, for a Chimay or some ice, they always point at the girl and ask, Who’s that? Well can you blame them? Puck asked, stirring another large clump of pasty wasabi into his soy before pointing his chopstick at me. I mean it’s not like the resemblance is obvious. But the point is, it is me. Or at least it was, but Ricky he can’t even get that anymore. And when people ask, instead of saying, Oh that’s Magdalena, my wife. Ricky says, She’s much prettier in real life. And then, instead of pouring the alcohol into my cup I picked up the petite porcelain bottle the waiter placed between us on the table and sucked it down in three huge gulps. My mouth burned, my head rushed and I felt hot and shivery all at the same 220 time. I set the bottle down on the table and then said to Puck in a not so confidential voice, Real life? See what I mean? Oh, is that it? Puck said, as he laid several crumpled bills on the table, stood up, put his arm around me, and steered me out the door. 221 SYNTAGMATIC STRUCTURE. The last real art I did—Luxe labeling not included—was just before I started crying. Just before I took up residency under the bed. Just before Ricky fell out of line, and just after Junah fell. Morbid as it maybe, (and I don’t, for the record, think it was,) the last real art I did was plastered to the outside of Junah’s coffin. It was cardboard, or maybe pressed board—and not, as you might think, because we couldn’t afford anything better, but because Junah’s body was so far gone, so badly mangled, that cremation seemed like the only humane thing, at least according to the man at the mortuary. And because we are from—but are not ourselves—religious people, and because my father found some comfort in knowing that he could plant Junah as an Oak in the backyard, and because my mother was too distraught to speak, we went with it. And as the body was flown from the Yosemite Basin to the Podunk airport in Stockton, as funeral arrangements were made and flowers and casseroles and cards arrived in an endless string, I locked myself up in the barn, not sleeping, eating only from a stale box of wheat thins and drinking straight from the garden hose. I spent four days adorning Junah’s casket. Dry-eyed and clear-headed, I worked until my palms blistered, until my nail beds were so thick with paint I could no longer feel my fingers, my wrists grew tingly and a stabbing pain shot back and forth between my neck and my right elbow. But I kept on, and when it was finished I carried it, all by myself, to the front porch, where I set it near a foil-covered lasagna and an amaryllis plant. I wanted to go in. I wanted to go to the funeral too, but after I finished the coffin or the casket or the container or whatever the fuck it was, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t 222 stand to see his body, however mangled, set inside it, and I certainly could not sit beneath the live oaks in the pasture and watch as friends and neighbors cried into their purses and programs. I did the last thing I could do for him, and although it wasn’t enough I just couldn’t bear to share him, even in death, with anyone else. So I pounded on the front door, rang the bell twice and left. And least you think I’m some self-absorbed, irredeemable, ingrate who couldn’t even show up at her only brother’s funeral, I’ll have you know that two days later, on the day after the funeral, I did stand, by myself—while my parents and Ricky waited outside—and I watched as my brother was slid into the crematorium. Because somewhere, sometime, I remember reading that when the skull pops, due to the intensity of the heat, the soul is set free. And more than anything I wanted to be there when Junah’s soul soared. I wanted to catch it, in case it also decided to fall. I thought it would be quick, standing there. That the flames, or whatever it was that lived behind the ascetic and antiseptic brushed nickel doors, would be so hot that his body would just disintegrate, but I was wrong. It took forever. And as I shifted back and forth from foot to foot, refusing to sit, refusing to speak for nearly three hours, I strained to hear the pop. To hear anything. But of course I couldn’t. Hear anything, that is, except the sound of my own breath that, as time wore on, gradually turned into a panted hysteria. When I went back to the car I was shaking so badly that I almost dumped the cardboard box that held his remains—and not a soft ash, like most people assume, we 223 decided to skip the mechanical smoothing out process, preferring instead to take Junah as he was, all four and three-eighths pounds of coarse bone fragment. In the car I handed the box to Ricky, and when he took it the tears began. My mother lifted a bottle of Bombay sapphire to her lips and took a long pull, and my father ground the gears as he shifted into first. Not soon after I crawled beneath my bed and refused, despite all efforts, to come back out. 224 BRECHTIAN ACTING. Puck and I got home after midnight, but when he pulled my car into the garage, the headlights illuminated Ricky’s empty parking space. He wasn’t home. Probably business, Puck said. Right, I said, glad for the sake that still sloshed around with the raw fish in my stomach. And because Ricky wasn’t home, and because it was late, and because, ever since Junah, I developed a fear of the dark, and because Puck drove my car and left his who the hell knows where, I invited him in. Why not? he said as he followed me up the stairs to the master suite, a bottle of Tanqueray between us. You know, I said to Puck, setting the bottle down on the night stand and flopping back into the pillow-filled bed, I never realized how much Ricky worked until I stopped working. Yeah, he said, unscrewing the bottle and pouring a dash of tonic into the gin filled glasses. No really, I said as he passed me a glass, When we were working together the dinners at midnight seemed normal, even almost like fun. And now the fun’s done? Puck asked, taking a glass for himself and getting comfortable on the bed. Now, I said, snuggling into the crook of his arm as we laid back on the gianormous bed I shared with Ricky, I’m tired all the time. And the only thing I do is art. 225 Well, art can be exhausting, Puck laughed. Especially the good kind. Yeah, I yawned, but having a husband who is never home— Never as in ever? Puck asked, rehearsing our well-played script. I smiled, As in ever. That’s pretty damn exhausting too. But seriously, Sugar, Puck said, twining his fingers in my hair and rubbing my scalp in small circular motions, it just feels that way, right? He’s got to be home sometimes, right? Okay fine, you caught me. I’m exaggerating. Welcome, I flung my arms wide, sloshing gin in my gesticulation, to the hyperbole of my life. If you must know, Ricky is technically home from 9:43 pm to 5:35 am Monday through Friday, occasional Saturdays and every other Sunday afternoon. Excluding of course, I counted with my fingers, fund-raisers, extended industry luncheons, Laker Games, Hollywood premieres and other so-called appearances. So what do you do? Puck asked, Home by your lonesome. That’s a damn good question I said, as Puck moved his hand down my scalp and started rubbing the back of my tense neck. I can tell you what I don’t do, I said as my voice softened with his rubbing, When he comes home at 10:02 I do not point out that he’s 19 minutes late. I do not remind him that I’ve waited up. I do not ask where he’s been because I know the answer. The answer is the business. ‘Baby,’ I said in my mock Ricky voice, ‘I’ve been up to my ears in the business.’ ‘Honey, the business is on fire and I’d sure like to take advantage of the market.’ 226 Puck laughed and in his best Ricky imitation joined in, ‘Sugar, without the business how would we eat?’ I turned and looked Puck straight in his cool blue eyes. Ricky doesn’t call me Sugar. I said. You call me that. Puck shrugged and kissed me on the nose. But to answer your question I said as I pulled back a bit, We’d eat with a fork, a knife and maybe even a spoon. But I don’t say as much. Not out loud to Ricky anyhow. Because I know that’s not what he means. You sure? Puck’s hand slid further down my neck to my shoulders. Oh I’m sure all right, I said as I untied the straps of my halter and rolled over so Puck could work on my back. What Ricky’s really saying when he gives me the business is not how, but what would we eat and, heaven-forbid, where? I said, speaking into the pillows, my voice only half audible. Ricky, I’d like to say, I said, turning my head to the side so that Puck could hear me, without the business we’d probably eat pasta, with butter and salt, on a card table in our rented living room. But we could eat at 5:30 in the p.m. and we could eat together. Well isn’t that pretty to think? Puck said, straddling my body between his legs, so that he was sitting on my ass and pushing down on the small of my back with his knuckles. Wow that feels good, I said to Puck, but Ricky doesn’t think so. Well I should hope not, Puck said. If Ricky wants a full body massage I’m going to need a raise. 227 No, I laughed, Card table dinners together is not pretty thinking to Ricky, who maintains when I met him, when I married him, that I understood he had a certain minimum lifestyle to maintain. And don’t get me wrong, ohh. Right there, I said to Puck. That’s the spot. Umm. I was quiet for a while, and when Puck began to move his hands up and down the outline of my spine I continued, When I said I do, I understood about minimums—and maximums too. I mean Ricky’s not the only one with an MBA—I just didn’t realize that Ricky’s bottom line was a clay tennis court and six-car garage. I had no idea his sine qua non included a household staff of twelve and twin sunken saline-filtered Tahoe-blue swimming pools. If I had I might have held my tongue when I came up with the goddamn business. When I said, while we were rolling about in our 150 count polyfiber Sears’ sheets, Baby, I have an idea. Puck, finished with my back, rolled over so he was curled up beside me again. Drink? He asked, holding up the green bottle and looking at me with a soft, almost sad smile. And although the last thing I remember is passing out looking at Puck’s distorted image from the behind the clear green glass, when I woke up Ricky was kissing me on the forehead, and prying the bottle out of my grasp. What time is it? I asked, looking around, still half expecting to find Puck passed out beside me or on the floor or maybe, even, beneath the bed. Two-thirty. In the morning, I asked. 228 Yes, in the morning, Ricky said, unclasping the onyx circles from around my neck and helping me slip my hips out of my abstract embroidered dress. Where were you? I asked, so tired I could barely speak. At the fundraiser, Ricky said, as he helped me into a paisley chemise, raising funds. Until two-thirty? I moved my head from right to left so he could undo my Buddha hoop earrings. Until midnight, he said. Then I went to grab a drink with some of the investors at The Standard and after that I headed back to the museum to load up the signage and the leftover bottles of Luxe. Oh, I said, holding my legs up Pilates-style so Ricky could remove my shoes. And did you? Did I what? Ricky asked. Do the deal? We’ll see, he said, turning off the light and sliding into bed beside me. I sure as hell hope so. Me too, I said, not sure if I meant it or not. Not sure anymore what I meant. Only sure that as soon as Ricky’s breathing became regulated in the bed beside me, as soon as he was fast asleep, I was suddenly very wide awake. 229 TREATMENT. After Junah, my hair went dark. They say that can happen, you know. Shock or something. But not my whole head, just a streak. Like an inverted skunk of brown tailing its way through the top left of my yellow head. Jersi, my stylist, said on most people it usually goes white. Well fuck me for being the exception. He sighed, brushed a small brown strand high above my head and held it there, the ends tightly wrapped around the bristles of his brush. The rest of my hair was wet, and my shoulders and chest were covered with a silver smock. I looked at my reflection and followed the lock of brown hair upwards towards the exposed bulbs running in a straight line across the top of the mirror. There were six of them and they cast a hyper- white glaze across my face so that my skin appeared translucent. You could actually see the veins pushing blood across my forehead. It was rich. It was much too much. I looked at my lap and said, Do what you can. Jersi looked at me, or at least the mirror image of me and said, I’m not going to pretend that it will be easy Cup-Cake, but I think, although the texture’s changed, that I can bleach it out. That’s when I started screaming. When I couldn’t stop. Losing Junah isn’t something I like to talk about. So I’m not going to talk. About it, that is. 230 What I will say is that Sometimes I wonder if Ricky wasn’t on liquid time, if he didn’t sleep only four and a half hours a night, if I would be able to stay awake and pretend not to go crazy, pretend not to know that it’s impossible to only sleep four and one half hours a day, pretend not to care that if he isn’t sleeping here he must be sleeping somewhere, right? But where? And with whom? And if he slept, say, six or seven hours like most people, would I make it? Would I be able to lay beside him night after night and hate him? Night after night in some sleek and silly nightie with my arm almost touching his thigh, with my head almost touching his chest (if I actually touch him he says, Mags go on your own side. Like we’re six and seven in the backseat of the station wagon and have drawn imaginary lines to mark territory. Pretend there is a chain saw running down this line, Junah would say, tracing the vinyl ribbing that ran the length of the upholstery, and if you cross it you will loose your arm. That’s how it is with Ricky, only now it’s a bed and we’re twenty-nine and thirty-four.) For eighteen months I’ve laid here, almost insane, almost ready to leave, almost ready to scream, almost ready to rape him so that I could have a real baby and not some powder-scented delusion. I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you. I’m not touching... but before I can finish Ricky’s alarm, set to New York time, sounds. If we were in New York it would be 8:30 am. But we’re not in New York. We’re in fucking Los Angeles, or some Hollywood extension thereof. And in Los Angeles Ricky will shower and shave and dress himself up in a gray slacks, 231 lavender shirt and paisley tie because it’s the outfit I have laid out for him. On the back of his belt I wrote I LOVE YOU in Mauve-a-licious nail polish. He won’t notice. It’s been there for three months. Should I say it again? That he doesn’t notice anything? When he actually does notice he’s liable to shout. Then I will have to go to Bloomies and buy him a replacement. It will be something to do. Something besides trying to peel the label off a bottle of gin in one fluid, untorn piece. Something besides imagining my hangover is morning sickness. Something besides seeing Junah die, over and over and over again in the backspaces of my mind. 232 TAKE TWO. THE BIRTH OF CHARACTER. Junah and I were Polish twins, which means basically that our mother was born a Jablonowski and we were born thirteen months apart. Of course no one on my mother’s side called us that. And whenever she heard it said at picnics and grape stomps she’d cover Junah’s ears and humm. To her credit my mother, up until she married my father, believed you could get pregnant by sitting on a boy’s lap while kissing. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that she also believed you couldn’t get pregnant while breastfeeding. Even still, she didn’t cover my ears and I was old enough to know that being a twin of something made you more special; it meant you were never alone. So I took to telling everyone that Junah and I were legitimate twins, identical in fact, and not soon after I made my first attempt on his life. Junah was always almost just about to die. He was born blue and it started there. Something about the umbilical chord being wrapped around his neck. But the gist of it is, he was born without breath. There was some smacking, I’m sure. Some country doctor in lavender scrubs held him upside down by his ankles and shook him and thumped with thumbs and forefingers on his chest. Breathe, said the doctor, but Junah went from blue to purple and then to grey. He closed up his throat and he flat out refused. 233 The doctors pronounced him dead after birth, the one making the delivery and the one called in for consulting when things started going badly. Still born they said. But they didn’t know Junah and they didn’t know breath: Junah held his. Through the attempts at resuscitation he neither sucked nor pushed through the mucus that glued his gums shut and when the doctor put his old hairy lips to the cerulean child and puffed: three short baby breaths, one soft baby thump, three short baby breaths, two soft baby thumps, Junah refused to respire. The nurse shook her head sadly. The doctor handed Junah, now upright, to his colleague. The other doctor clicked in an obvious way and passed little Junie on down to the smooth nurse who wrapped him in blankets, and then because my mother insisted, gave him to her for one final only hold. My mother took Junah and held him up to her swollen sweaty face. Breathe, she whispered. She said it to him sweetly and rocked him in her arms with a hum. She continued with the chorus, Breathe baby. And then, Baby breathe. She invented the mantra that would become Junah’s life, and with the last line, no longer whispering, baby snatched away and doctors charting “hysterical,” Junah lost his Prussian pigment, yellowed out and took his first breath. Auh, Junah said and then he wailed. It was a miracle, Mom says, but I say it was fixed. Junah was attention from the start. Attention on top of attention on top of a show and always wanting more. Although he didn’t go about it in the normal way: he didn’t hit, or color on the walls or wet his 234 bed. He was cool. Cool down to the blue of his blood and Mom loved him more because of this. She loved me, the child that had come easily, but not as much as Junah. Junah she loved like licorice. Loved his anise taste and stringy limbs. Loved him because he was born not to breathe. When she brought him home, he was not simply Baby like I had been. No, Junah was, Baby, my baby, who almost forgot how to breathe. Junah was, Precious baby sunshine who nearly, dearly, died. Junah was, Careful around Junah. Junah was, Don’t touch and, In a minute, and, After Junah. I mean this isn’t to say I didn’t love him just as much, in fact I loved him more, but I wasn’t the type to say anything. Instead, I decided to take his life. 235 WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT. We were five. Junah had just celebrated his birthday and mine was three weeks off. It was Easter. Junah and I were dressed in matching mint overalls–-mine skirted, his panted—made of linen with white blouses and buttons in the shape of birds. Just to see what it would be like I slipped off one of my shiny patent leather shoes and hit him hard on the top of his head with my heel. The sound was terrible: a muffled womp, and then he just tipped over and onto the grass and was out. I remember standing there, my hand stuffed into the mouth of my shoe, the shoe raised above my head, looking at Junah and wondering if I really had killed him what it might have meant. There was a thin trickle of red blood weaving its way across the top of Junah’s forehead, matting in his platinum hair and pooling left towards his ear. I knelt down next to him, bits of newly cut grass blurring with the green sweethearts on my white tights, and put a finger in his bloody ear. I wiggled it around like a Q-tip, trying to fit it into his ear hole like a plug. I mean it was one thing to try to kill your brother. It was another thing entirely to cause him to go deaf. Jun? I said. Then I waited. For Junah to laugh, throw a fistful of grass in my eyes and shout, Gotcha, before getting up and racing across the lawn. But he didn’t shout and he didn’t laugh and his chest stopped moving and he started to blue. Mom-ma, I shrieked, my finger pressing harder into Junah’s ear, Mom-ma! Junah’s making himself blue. Blue! I said loud and with breath, He’s going blue again. Unfazed by the other cries, the tears and the tattles and the screams, Mom-ma leaped when she heard the word blue and came running, her skirt held high above her pale 236 knees out to the yard. Breathe, she shouted to Junah, who lay still on the lawn. Breathe, she said again, as she lifted him by the feet and shook him upside down. Junah bobbed like a cork in a bottle of wine and then swung, syncopated to the chanting, like the tire attached to our porch. Laney what did you do? Mom asked in between mantras. Nothing I said, holding my hands behind my back, bloody finger and shiny shoe. Baby, breathe, she chanted, swinging Junah’s body upwards and slipping her arm under his neck to cradle his weight. She saw the blood then, dripping now into his eye, and for a moment she stopped breathing too. I could hear it, a quick sucking in of air and then a silence, not a gasp. Junah Francis, would you fucking breathe? His body stilled like a dead stump of tree. Magdalena, get my keys, call 911, she said, scurrying with Junah over to the side yard where we parked the car. And then, for reasons that escaped us both, Junah’s cheeks began to inflate, his lips cracked and ever so slowly he sucked at the sky like a mute whippoorwill. He inhaled and exhaled and breathed. His head needed six stitches and my birthday was sort of cancelled. Well, at least the party part. I still got a cake with peanut butter frosting, and a pile of presents wrapped in newspaper. From Junah I got a pair of pink, soft-soled, ballet slippers, bundled in tissue paper, inside a box that said, Freed’s of London. When I opened the box he grabbed one and hit himself over the head. See, he said, in his baby-me voice, won’t hurt. I see, I said, and wore those shoes until I wore them out. 237 THE DEATH ROLE. When Junah died dead, he fell off a rock. It was a big rock. Huge. Junah had attached himself to the rock with brightly colored ropes and super- strong clips and clasps. Lean back, Junah had told me the first time he tied me to a rock. We were camping, in Yosemite, and he had me all strung up like a marionette. We were on a small rock—small by Junah’s standards—that seemed a little too tall for me. Junah scurried up first. He was like a goddamned ring-tailed lemur, my brother. Limbs and legs against a staggering granite wall. Like this, Magda-laney, he said, dipping his hand into the polk-a-dot chalk bag he had clipped to his waist and fitting his fingers into cracks I couldn’t see from the ground. Make yourself long. Reach with your arms and push up with your legs; be as long as possible. Like Pilates? I asked, squinting up at him, shielding the sun from my face with my hand. Sure, Junah said and gave me a thumbs up. He was aglow, he was awesome, he fully and wholly took away my breath. Never climb higher than your anchor, he called down, stopping just before the peak and twisting around to look at me. 238 This is your anchor, he pointed to a hunk of metal stuck into a crack in the rock. How do I know it will hold? I hollered back. It will, Junah said. It can hold you and me and about five other people. He tugged on the rope for emphasis. How do I know it won’t slip out? I said. It won’t, Junah said, kicking the rock. Oh, I said. I promise. Right. Okay, I’m going to rappel down. I need you to hold the rope. Rappelling is the part that looks fun about climbing rocks. Floating down in huge hops, suspended by string. I’m going to say Rope, and then I’m going to swing out the rope. Watch it and make sure it falls straight. Don’t let it hit you. Keep away from the trees. Okay, I said, taking six giant steps back, and standing wide, feet apart, just in case. Rope, called Junah, and swung the purple and gold rope in my direction. I had my hands out, ready to catch it, ready to catch anything, but the rope stuck, snagged on a sharp rock that jutted out on the right. Junah repositioned his bearing and leaned to the left. Rope, he yelled again. 239 This time the rope came swinging out in my direction and I caught the tail end with both hands. Got it. Ace, Junah said. I’m coming down now. Your job is to hold the rope out so it doesn’t get tangled or caught. As I get lower it might have some play so be careful. Play? Slack. Right. Ready? No. Junah waited patiently at the top of the rock. Why not? he smiled. What if I mess up? You can’t mess up. Just hold the rope. Then he leaned back, so that it seemed as though he was parallel with the ground, or from his perspective, the sky. He let go. He fell back. I shut my eyes and held the rope. See, he shouted, it’s easy. Carefully, I peeked up at him. He was about four feet below the anchor. He jumped back again, and again and within seconds he was next to me on the ground. Now you go, he said. No way. Way, I’ll go with you, he said, putting his hand on my back. Piece of cake. 240 I looked up again at the rock. It was bulbous at the bottom. I could easily scamper up the first few boulders no problem. Then came a bit of straight rock that appeared to be about as tall as I was and above that a ledge-like thing that Junah called a shelf. After the shelf, however, it was straight as a sheet and twenty feet at least. How far up? I asked, willing to go to the ledge. All the way, Junah said, nodding to a pair of smelly, too small shoes, Those will help. I squeezed my size nine feet into the size seven and a half shoes and tippie-toed about while Junah fashioned a harness out of cord and carabineers for himself. The real harness, the one with a belt, two leg holes and buckle designed specifically for alpine climbing by the boys at North Face, he gave to me along with his helmet. You sure that’s safe, I asked, eyeing his meticulous knots and reaching a hand out to test the clip-things. Yep. And besides, I’m not going high, just to the shelf. You’re going all the way up. Ready? I looked first to Junah and then to the rock. Safety check, Junah said pulling tightly on my harness, and double-checking the belt to be sure it was strung through the buckle twice with a double back. Let’s clip you in, he said. But don’t I get any gloves? How in the heck are you going to feel the rock with gloves on? he asked, giving me the silly girl look he used to throw at me when we were kids. 241 I shrugged. Chalk up, Junah said, smiling and turning his hip in my direction. I put my hand into the pouch, cringing as the gritty dust worked its way beneath my nails. Then I rubbed my palms together like I had seen him do previously and, because I couldn’t help it, I smacked my left hand against his shoulder, leaving a filmy white handprint on his back. Funny girl, he said, not bothering to wipe the mark away and walking towards the base of the rock. Okay, start by putting your left hand there, he motioned towards a lip on the rock just above my head, your left foot here, he nodded towards a spot about three feet off the ground and then stretch your way up towards that dark grey crack up top. Up top seemed impossibly out of reach, but Junah said, I’m serious. It’s all about perception. Think yourself longer. So I put my left hand there and my left leg here and I stretched and tugged and felt myself rising. Neat, I said to Junah who was still on the ground shouting out my next move like a game of Twister: Right foot green. Left hand blue. I was climbing the rock. Look at you, Laney, Junah called up after me. You’ll be a pro in no time. No way, I said, I’m not letting people see my ass in this thing. It sure is juicy, Junah laughed, reading the letters off my mango-colored sweats, but I won’t tell anyone. When I made it to the shelf I stopped and took a look around. 242 Not a bad view, is it? Junah said beginning his ascent. Brilliant, I said. Even though I didn’t make it to the top. The rock, another one of those things they don’t tell you on T.V., was ridiculously cold and after awhile it was hard to hold on. But I got a hell of a lot further than you would’ve expected, if say, you were placing a bet. Now, said Junah who was about fifteen feet below me on the ledge, comes the fun part. I can’t wait, I said. What do I do? Let go, Junah said. You’re kidding, right? Not at all. Push back with your feet and keep your legs perpendicular to the rock. Let go and fall back. You’re safe, the anchor will hold you. I bent my knees a little and bounced a bit to show I was seriously considering it, when in fact there wasn’t a way in hell I was letting go. Nope. Can’t do it, I said. But it’s the fun part. Just let go and hop down. I’ll only let a little slack so you won’t go far. If you fall, I got the rope. It’ll catch you. I looked down at Junah and then past him, to the rocky ground. You’re not fooling anyone, I said to him. I know full well that you still have the scar from when I hit you with the shoe. I forgive you, Junah said, and I promise you’ll be fine. Trust me. 243 Trust him. I took a deep breath. Bounced some more, released with my left hand and then reached back towards the crack. Trust me, Junah said again. I let go and fell. But not far. Just a little bit, like maybe four feet. Because I forgot to keep my feet out in front like Junah instructed I scraped my knees against the rock and ripped off a nail, but Junah caught me and on the next rappel I jumped further, landed softer, and loved him. And I try not to think about it, but sometimes, I can’t help it. I wonder if someone said, Trust me, to Junah just before he fell. All the way. To the ground. 244 THE SUSPENSE SENTENCE. And I was supposed to be there. 245 CATALYST. Here’s the thing I just can’t get over. And not—fuck—the death part. That, you should know, I’ll never get over. But also, I’m not trying. What I can’t get over. What I can’t seem to wrap my mind around. Why I couldn’t stop crying. Why I took up under the bed to begin with. And perhaps, maybe even why I fell off the boat. Why I took a hiatus. Why I glue goddamned rhinestones and drink. Is because I was supposed to be there. We both were, Ricky and I. But then an investor called from Vermont. And the ad team just wasn’t getting it. And the accountant had a question. So Ricky stayed home to manage it, and because he couldn’t. Manage it by himself that is, I rolled up my sleeping bag and went back to Berkeley. Early. Two days later Junah was dead. And just you tell me how I’m supposed to get over that? How I’m supposed to just deal with knowing that had I been there. Had Ricky been able to deal for once in his fucking life. Had I said yes to Junah and no to the business, well then maybe my kid brother could have trusted me, and not some stranger who cost him his life. 246 AUDITORY CUES. After Junah died, my mom kept his voice on the answering machine, so when I called home, he’d answer. According to Pac Bell, the month after Junah died I called home seven-hundred and nineteen times. When Ricky, armed with the phone bill, finally asked what was going on, I just dialed and pushed the receiver to his ear. He listened, quietly, his face pale, before he hung up and pulled me close to his chest. Magdalena, he whispered, into my neck, Junah’s gone. I ignored him, and hugged tighter, my nails pressing into his back, willing myself not to hear. Later, in the middle of the night, when Ricky caught me, in bed with the phone pressed tight to my cheek, not talking, just listening, he said, I’m trying to understand, but— No, I said. No you don’t. Mags, Ricky said reaching across the bed and trying to take the phone away from me. No! I said and held the phone to my chest as though it were a defibrillator. You didn’t even listen to the whole thing. Ricky looked confused, I heard it this morning, he said. In the kitchen— No. You listened to half of it. The message is twenty-two seconds long. You only listened to fourteen. Mags, Ricky said again, placing his hand on top of mine, which was still holding tight to the phone, I think— 247 But I counted, I said shaking. I counted. Three days later, when I picked up the phone and dialed, a mechanical voice answered. I sat on the floor and cried until I couldn’t breathe. When Ricky came home from work and found me there, phone off the hook and beeping on the cold floor, he took me in his arms. It’s in a box, he whispered, under your bed at your parent’s place. Your dad and I… we thought it was the best thing. Best for who? I screamed and promptly began my residency beneath the bed. 248 BLOCKING. Apparently, after Junah died, I wasn’t the only one to go numb. I wasn’t the only one who felt cold and bare. Ricky stopped feeling too, but unlike me, he didn’t take up residency under the bed, crying his eyes shut for the next three weeks; no Ricky took up and left. Later he said that his knees hurt. That he just couldn’t do it anymore, crawling on the ground and peeking under the dust ruffle, begging me to come out. He explained that he thought if he left I might come out on my own. And besides there was the business to look after. And when I think of it—Shit!—that may have been when the business began to take hold. When it became his new pet project, his number one excuse. Not that he wasn’t always obsessed, we both were, but after I went under the bed, he went a little overboard, trying to keep something of our old life intact. Trying to hold on—tight—to the one thing that he could prevent from falling. I just wish that he could have held on harder. To me. 249 ARCHIVES. After I came out, from beneath the bed, my mother filled the gap with shoeboxes. Fifty-eight of them to be exact. Filled with articles and clippings, they’re filed chronologically by date, and organized front to back, 1949 to Now, except for an Asics box from October 2005, that lives instead in the top drawer of her dresser, beneath her going out panties, that has exactly six articles inside, each and every one about, what she calls, “the accident.” When—nearly fifteen years earlier—my grandmother died, my mother and her sisters spent three days going through her things. What they didn’t leave for my grandfather or divide amongst themselves they gave to Goodwill. The only thing they fought over was an embroidered ladybug wall-hanging and the contents of a Ziploc baggie, found by Junah between some lettuce and a kohlrabi in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator. When Junah found the baggie, while on the prowl for some orange cheese, and handed it to my mother she let out a strange sort of whimper and went white. My Aunts came running and that’s when the fight began. For generations extending back to the Battle of Olszynka Grochowska, where Great Grandma Katarzyna allegedly predicted the salvage of Warsaw the Jablonowski women have been intuitionists. That is, they pride themselves on their intuition and abilities not to see, but sense the future. My grandfather called it Bohunk-gypsy nonsense, but the Ziploc baggie, or rather its contents, was further proof that although my grandmother may not have been able to foresee her own death, she clearly sensed it. Why else would she have clipped and neatly folded three Dear Abby articles around an 250 aged picture of her daughters as children and then hid it in the fridge, where everyone knows is the only safe place in a fire, flood, hurricane or other natural or unnatural disaster? Although we never talked about it I know, after Junah died, my mom checked in the drawer by the cheese. I checked too. Just like I checked under the insoles of his hiking boots and in the liner of his sleeping bag, but unless she’s keeping something from me, we both found nothing. Nothing to allude to the fact that Junah sensed anything ominous at all. Which I suppose can be explained away by the fact that he was male. That maybe only Jablonowski women have the gift, but if that’s true then why didn’t we sense it? Why didn’t my mother or I intuit that Junah was just about to die? The Shrink, when I asked her exactly that, had an easy answer. She claimed that intuitionists were nothing more than doomsayers and glorified seekers of negative energy. Magdalena, she said, fanning her legal pad in front of her face, You can find anything if you look hard enough. And if you try hard enough you can actualize it too. The human mind has an extraordinary capacity to direct energy—positive or negative— into being. That was right about the same time I got my first formal warning about harassment and verbal threats. Because I did not—you fucking bitch—wish for Junah to die, and I did not—I’ll kill you for even thinking as much, you cunt—cause it into being. 251 THE SPINE OF THE STORY. After Junah died dead I decided to become a bombshell. It began with an order, placed by phone, to Freed’s of London. Unlike other brands (that shall remain nameless but come in that horrible pink of hair barrettes and cheap nail polish) the London slippers are peachy, like the color of my grandmother’s dress-slips, and you have to sew in your own elastic ribbons with teeny tiny stitches and baby-fine thread. Six pairs, I told the British voice across the wire: one leather, one canvas, four satin. And which colors would you prefer, Miss? Pink. They all have to be pink, I said. But then my voice broke and I hung up. Later, I had Ricky call back with my credit card. He pretended to be me and said something about a cold. The woman on the end of the line pretended to understand. Right then. Been going around. Glad you rang back up. I know this because I was listening on the other line with my hand over the mouthpiece and a Kleenex in my mouth. 252 EXPOSITION. When I first met Ricky I was a Berkeley bombshell, which, as anyone who’s traveled far enough north to know, is quite different from the L.A. bombshell variety. In Berkeley you only need to shave more than twice a week to be considered feminine so you can imagine how little it takes to be glamorous: wear a charmeuse gown to bed instead of a t-shirt, trade your Birkenstocks in for a pair of kitten heels—no matter if you kick them off at every opportunity—and always insist on gin. When Junah died—eighteen months and nine days ago—I stopped wanting to be me, and so when Ricky and I moved to L.A. I suppose you could say I wasn’t really myself. Maybe, if Ricky and I had stayed up north I would have tired of gin-induced tantrums and dangling diamond earrings, maybe I would have joined forces with my father and poured my creative talents into the renovation of our vineyard, but after Junah’s death Ricky felt it might be a good idea to get away for awhile, ‘Breathe some new air,’ were his exact words, and so we moved south where everything smelled like acetone and Errol Flynn. 253 IMAGE SYSTEMS. At first it almost seemed like Ricky was right: It was pretty hard, if not impossible to imagine Junah in his dusty Teva sandals and Patagonia vest ordering burrata at Ago, queuing up behind a velvet rope outside the Skybar, or cozying up to the barista for a frothy $4.00 cup of Joe at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. No way would Junah take Barley, our half-breed ranch dog, for a constitutional around the Laurel Canyon Dog Park, and he wouldn’t be caught dead holding chopsticks at Nobu. Fuck. Maybe he would be caught. Dead there. Since he was, in fact, dead now. And that, I soon found, was the problem. Junah may not have been ingrained and organic to the glittery Hollywood set, like he was in the bucolic valley, but he was ingrained and organic to me, and in myself, I saw him. Which again, wouldn’t have been so terrible, had it been in the privacy of my own home. Safely locked in the bathroom, steam from the faucet pouring hot water into the tub, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to see Junah there. But contrary to the advice of seismologists, Los Angeles is virtually made of glass, its reflective surfaces sweeping and expansive, and so Junah was with me everywhere I went. At the Lobby Bar of the Four Seasons Hotel he stared at me from the concave curve of a highball glass; when I did sun salutations he stretched from floor to ceiling. He walked tall with me past mirrored shop windows tinted blue and green, he hovered above the 254 ATM in the dome-shaped double-sided glass, and even when I drove he tagged along, inching his way down Sunset or Beverly bouncing off the rearview, the odometer, the shiny chrome of twenty inch rims. He was in my nose, in the crooked angle of my premolar bicuspids, in the natural flax of my hair. And that’s when I realized it would take a lot more than a pedicure and the moves to Chico O’Farrill’s “Chico’s Cha Cha Cha” to become a bombshell in the Southland. And so if I was going to try to forget about Junah entirely, if I was serious about learning how not to be me, I needed to step up the bombshellazation and enlist some local help. Because I didn’t know anyone else I called Ricky’s sister Cheri. She said, Precious, it’s about damn time and then proceeded to set up emergency consultations at Neimans, Escada, Badgley Mischka, and Dr. Hoefflin’s. Oh and Magdalena, don’t try to dress yourself for our little outing. Just tell me your size and I’ll bring something by. Eight, I said quietly into the phone. Right. We’ll have to work on that too. 255 SOCIAL PROGRESSION. I’m not going to lie and pretend that I expected our little trip to Rodeo Drive to be anything but a scene out of Pretty Woman. Did I expect Cheri to transform me from a Nor Cal bombshell wannabe into a So Cal starlet? Yes. Did I expect to be met with sighs of admiration and astonishment because I was tossing down obscene amounts of money for semi-functional swatches of fabric and uncomfortable shoes with too high heels? Absolutely. Did I expect designer clothes to actually fit? You bet your sweet bippy I did. I expected some serious sucking up. I expected not to have to dress myself. Hell, since we’re being honest, I expected a goddamned theme song and hats with big sashes. But instead of Roy Orbison and brown polka-dots I got Cheri whining about the poor selection of discounted designer merchandise in the backroom of Loehmanns and a dressing room without doors or dividers where the women seemed to find a strange joy in walking about half naked in front of one another. In fact, the longer I stayed there, secluded in a corner, my chest facing the wall, the more I began to realize that part of the Loehmanns experience was prancing, or flashing yourself rather, in front of your neighbors who were doing the same. But as with everything in L.A. there was a strategy to it: you didn’t just bare all, you bared only your best. Women with big tits seemed to 256 feel the need to remove their bras before trying on tight fitting tanks two sizes too small. Women with buns the size of thirteen-year-old boys tugged at their Valentino jeans slowly, removing them an inch at a time while bent over beneath the greenish fluorescent lights. Then, as if that weren’t enough, they would offer up unsolicited advice and beg the woman nearest to them for a second or third opinion. And you’re sure it’s not too tight? a girl with a Playboy bunny tattooed to her left ankle asked Cheri, referring to the band-aid sized skirt she had managed to wrap around her body. Oh God no, Cheri said, taking in the curve of the woman’s non-existent hips. It’s Sue Wong, right? Right, the girl said. Well isn’t it obvious then? The girl spun around in front of the communal mirror and looked at her ass over her shoulder. She yanked up the on the waistband a little and, standing on her tiptoes, said to me, What do you think? In addition to the band-aid she was wearing around her waist she had on a frayed tube top with the words: I’m Not An Actress spray-painted on the front. From my position in the corner—and I don’t think it was just because she was on tippie- toes—I could see that the butt of her panties, visible from beneath the skirt, were also spray painted and said as though to conclude the phrase on her breasts: But You Can Put This On Film. I think maybe it’s a little short, I said. 257 Cheri coughed. The girl pulled down on the hem of her skirt and said, Really. (Not Really? But Really.) before she turned her back on me and studied herself in the mirror. On me, I mean, I tried to amend. Because I’m so tall. It’d be short on me because I’m so… Cheri coughed a second, louder, time. And then, maybe it was my imagination, but the dressing room seemed to silently shift to the corner opposite me. There was some whispering, which I tried to ignore, and a look from Cheri that said, It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to do for now. Find something with the best name that fits and let’s get the hell out of here. I chose a silk dip-dyed halter dress, not because I liked it particularly, because Cheri insisted it was recognizably Armani, even at a distance, and the jeans and t-shirt I had met her at the door in were unfit for Macys let alone Neiman Marcus, and so we had come to Loehmanns to buy something I could wear to Neimans and maybe I was getting the hang of it. I was not, however, getting the hang of three-inch heels. Because I was already tall and because Cheri was growing tired of my wobbling all over the shoe department she conceded and allowed me to get a pair of ring-toed sandals with a kitten heel but insisted on purchasing a matching Kate Spade satchel, My treat, she said. Once we were back in her Jag (we had to fetch it ourselves because Loehmanns did not have valet), she dug out a scissors from her purse and instructed me to clip the tags off my items, roll up the tinted window and change immediately. 258 Right here in the parking lot? I asked looking around the concrete structure filled with expensive automobiles. You know of a better place? A dressing room, I said. A bathroom. A tent? Magdalena, she looked to her watch, we’ve already spent nearly three hours picking out your going out outfit. If you want to actually go out, like today, you need to stop complaining and strip. I mean really, she looked through her purse for her lip-gloss and cell phone, it’s like you’re the one who called me. It’s like I’m just trying to help. While she dialed with one hand and glossed with the other I pulled my arms out of my tee and slid the skimpy piece of bluish silk over my head. Then lifting my hips I undid my button fly and shimmied out of my jeans while I simultaneously pulled the dress down over my lap. God, you’re such a prude, Cheri said, leaning over to help me tie the silky straps into a knot behind my neck. I mean nobody’s looking, hello. Sorry, I said, rubbing at the sock lines still visible on my ankles. Don’t worry about it, she said. And pulling up on the e-brake she pushed a button and the convertible top slid down and into the trunk. I busied myself transferring the items in my suede messenger bag into my new purse, but after I found I couldn’t even squeeze in my wallet, I gave up and stuffed a credit card, my picture ID, house key (sans chain), lip gloss, cell phone, and a fist full of hundreds into the purse, which lost its slim appeal, but what else could I to do? 259 Okay, Cheri said, making a left on red and easing her way down Third Street, let’s make a list. You write I’ll talk. Her phone rang. It was Donna or maybe Barbara Ann, I couldn’t tell. I was too busy making sure we didn’t die in traffic. We cut off an Escalade, we agreed to meet someone for lunch, we made another left turn on red, we decided, or rather Cheri decided to fuck the list, and somehow—not without some major horn honking and a flip of Cheri’s middle finger—we made it to Fred Segals on Melrose and Crescent Heights. There were paparazzi in the parking lot, which both excited and pissed Cheri off, and as we made our way out of the car she whispered to me not to embarrass her. If you see a star, she said, anyone famous, don’t stare and certainly don’t try to talk to them. Just mind your own business and move on. I nodded, squared off my shoulders, stuck out my chest and followed Cheri’s lead as she sashayed into the store. At Fred Segals we bought vintage jeans and t-shirts that looked like they had less than one wash left in them before they’d evaporate into small, indistinguishable fibers. Then we were off to Rodeo where we bought lingerie from La Perla, make-up from Chanel, shoes from Jimmy Choo, and the most fantastic Python wrist bag and belt from Fendi. The sales people were all young or at least they pretended to be and they all knew, without a doubt, that they were beautiful. The worse you treated them the better they treated you. Everyone knew Cheri by first name. 260 Ah, Mon Cheri, my petite flower, crooned a black Adonis dressed entirely in linen, his nautical tattoo and the bulge of his muscles visible through the thin fabric, you’ve returned and oh! how I’ve missed you. Armundo, my love, Cheri cooed, shuffling up to him and kissing him on both cheeks, how are you? Comme ci, comme ça, he said, shrugging his shoulders and picking an imaginary piece of lint off his chest. The question is how are you, and what, or shall I say who, is that exotic bird you’ve brought with you? That, Cheri said with grand emphasis, is my sister-in-law Magdalena. Magdalena, this is Armundo. Magdalena my love, he held out his hands expectantly, how brilliant that you decided to stop by our little boutique. Come hither my sweets; let’s take a look at you. I walked over to where Armundo and Cheri were having their little tête-à-tête thankful for my new hydrophobic Gucci sunglasses that were firmly pushed against my face. Magdalena’s going through a bit of a reinvention, Cheri explained. Understandable, Armundo sighed as he slowly rotated around me, staring hard from head to toe. She does have a bit of an ass. She’s working on it, Cheri said. Well I should hope, came the response, but considering her height, and her fabulous coloring I think we can work with it. Fabulous, Cheri squealed. 261 You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, I thought. But then I thought of Junah and how, if I just went with it, although he was dead, I could rebirth myself. 262 TAKE THREE. STORY AND LIFE. There are three things in my life that I wish I could undo. The first is so obviously Junah that I won’t even risk the cracking of my voice in saying it out loud. The other two—so pale in comparison that they might as well be transparent—are: moving to L.A. and taking Adair’s advice. Every morning for a week after our little incident at the MoCA I pretended to sleep until Ricky left for work and then I got to work myself. Not, mind you, on the rhinestones or anything remotely connected to art. No, I set to work spying, prying and otherwise meddling into all of Ricky’s affairs. I searched his accounts for excessive or unusual purchases, I recorded and redialed numbers appearing more than once on his cell phone, I retrieved the trash from his hard drive and read through his e-mail. I phoned restaurant managers from Sunset to Wilshire and requested facsimiles of business lunch bills and on Friday I conferred my findings with the Shrink. 263 CHARACTER REVELATION. The Shrink didn’t want to talk about undercover infidelity operatives, instead she wanted to talk about sex. Which was easy, because there was nothing to talk about. Nothing? she asked, her pen scraping against her legal pad as she spoke. Nope, I said, There’s absolutely nothing to say, and then I decided: Not. To. Say. One. More. Thing. For the entire rest of the session. The Shrink, for her part, said a lot. That the French referred to orgasm as le petit mort. The little death, she translated. No fucking duh, I thought. And she said she thought that was a very accurate description, especially for someone in my current situation. That sometimes emergency sex was the best way to feel again. That if anything, orgasms were a great stress reliever. That without physical intimacy, mental intimacy would be harder to obtain. That if I pretended to be interested in sex I might actually find I actually am. I sat closed lipped, and played with my scarf. I tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to tie it about my head as Dior, Ricky’s temporary new secretary had. I wondered if he’d fuck me, if he’d give me just a smidge of polite attention, if I could get the scarf just right? I wondered if the Shrink knew I was interested in sex? That I’d love to have it, and often, and soon, but that my husband just wasn’t interested? Or if he was interested, he wasn’t interested in having it with me? Or if he was interested in having it with me, he was never home long enough to accomplish anything short of sleep? 264 And when the Shrink said, near the end of our session, in frustrated desperation, You know Magdalena, if you’re going to refuse to say anything I don’t know why it is you come, she almost won. She almost got me to open my mouth and shout, I come because Ricky and I have a deal. If I go to a shrink he’ll drive me, and although I can’t count on much, I know, that at least once a week, for forty minutes there and forty-eight minutes back, I’ll be alone. With my husband. In the daylight. In a car. And although that may not seem like much, believe you me, it’s all I have. But even though I wanted, very much, to say as much, I just opened the door and walked out, tossing her my scarf—Isadora Duncan style—as a parting gesture. Back in the car Ricky handed me a shot of wheat grass juice and an orange chaser. He sucked his own smoothie through a straw asked, So, did she say anything interesting? No, I said, tossing back the wheatgrass and sucking on orange rind, wishing it was gin and a lime, respectively. She told me a fat pack of lies. 265 THE WAR ON CLICHÉ My undercover infidelity operative findings, of which the Shrink refused to entertain were, with the exception of a five-hundred dollar scarf purchased at the Beverly Center and gifted to me yesterday, that nothing was unusual. His clothes smelled like Ricky, his musical tastes remained the same; if I played by the rules of Adair and the girls, everything—with the teeny tiny exception of the void I felt in bed— seemed to check out and Ricky was in the clear, which was really fucking weird in and of itself. I mean how can anyone be that clean? But he was, and even still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he preferred work to home and Diamond Myst to me and that maybe his preferences strayed elsewhere as well. 266 CAUSALITY. Imelda! I screamed from beneath the pile of down I was suffocating beneath in my bedroom, even though before we hired “help” Ricky and I had sat down and mutually decided that although we were indeed the kind of people who were now hiring others to clean up after us (something our Berkeley selves would have protested in full force) we would never be the type of people who treated the “help” as help. Imelda, we reasoned, would be treated with respect, like a great Aunt. Things change. Imelda, I screamed again. Yes, Mages, Imelda said, peeking her head into my room through a small crack in the door. Imelda, is this yours? I held the single strand of black hair in front of me with disgust, as if it were a night crawler. Is what mine, Magses? This, I said again, dangling the hair before me. I don’t see what you have, she said. Well if you’d come here instead of dancing in the hallway you might be able to see. I’m not dancing, she said as she made her way into the room, looking around for Ricky. Don’t worry, he’s in the shower. 267 Oh. Now what do you have that is mine? I held out the hair for her to examine and she took it carefully, between her wrinkled thumb and index finger, and squinted her old eyes to examine it closely. Yes, maybe that is mine, she said. Maybe? Give it to me, I said. I took the hair from her hand and held it up to her head. Was it my imagination or did the hair in my hand look darker, a bit glossier than Imelda’s subtle black and gray. Mages, she said, sorry for it being mine. Maybe it fell while I made the bed. In a past life this would have made sense. Hell, in a past life I would have brushed the hair to the floor with not so much as a thought, but in this life, where apparently I was capable of thinking things into being, even Imelda was a potential suspect. No really, imagine what L.A. Magazine would do with a story like this. Local Water Tycoon and noted philanthropist Ricky de la Cruz was caught cheating on his wife, the sometimes artist and L.A. socialite, Magdalena Bamburger de la Cruz, with Imelda Morales, his sixty-one year old house keeper. It could happen. Imelda, I said, letting go of the hair issue and asking her point blank, I need to find out if Ricky is fucking around on me. I should have just slapped her. Maybe it would have stung less, because as soon as the f-word had left my mouth the tears came to the corners of her eyes and then came the Spanish. A long tangle of words, the sign of the cross, a kissing of the Virgin Mary medallion she kept pinned to her bra, another cross. 268 No is no in both languages and her frequent repetition of the word cleared her, at least temporarily, from my long list of maybes. I tried to say as much, but the shower water shut off and Imelda fled the room, probably to make long distance phone calls to Mexico on our phone. 269 DRESS REHEARSAL. I waited three days and then, bright and early—well, after traffic early, which I suppose means lunch, or at the very least brunch, when I went unannounced, again, to see Ricky at our office. This time I left the tank with the valet, made my way up the executive elevator and walked into Ricky’s office in a pair of peach Juicy sweats and some J. Crew two-for-twenty-five flip-flops. My camisole, I had picked up at Fred Segal—though it looked like it came from the street vendors at Venice Beach—said: I Heart L.A. It was Ricky’s least favorite shirt of all time. When I bought it for $168.50 shortly after the water boom, he said carefully, so that I would understand, that my shirt was for tourists. People who live in L.A. do not wear t-shirts that say I heart L.A., he said, unless they are in L.A. on vacation from Minnesota—which you are not—and even then most of them have the good sense to wait until they’re back in Duluth until they wear them in public. But why not? I asked, holding the shirt out and attempting to determine which size I needed by pressing it up against my body while it was still on the hanger. Because it looks stupid, Ricky said. I mean that would be like going to Hawaii and dressing your kid up in one of those t-shirts that say, ‘Grandma and Grandpa went to Hawaii and all they got me was this dumb t-shirt.’ It wouldn’t make sense because you’re already in Hawaii and the kid is wearing the shirt there. You see? 270 No I don’t see, I said, putting the medium back and reaching for the small. I don’t have a kid and we never took him to Hawaii. So you’re not really making sense. It’s just dumb, Ricky said, wearing a shirt that says I love L.A. when you live in L.A. But that’s just it, I said, taking the small and handing it to the sales clerk standing nearby. I’m being ironic. I think I wore it once, to the beach, while Ricky was at work and then I forgot about it in my closet. It’d probably be there still, if I hadn’t pissed Imelda off with the hair comment so that now she was refusing to pick up my dry cleaning or do my laundry. Making do with what was clean I fished about in the recesses of my walk-in and found some real gems, the tank being one such nugget, and I slipped it on special for the occasion. When I stepped out of the elevator and into the penthouse suite a fat girl sat at the reception desk, my nameplate had been updated, and Ricky’s door was closed. This was a good sign, it meant something private was stirring. It meant when I pressed through without knocking there would be hell to pay, it meant before I could place my hand on the knob the door opened and a leggy brunette stepped out. A leggy brunette in the leggiest sense of the word, opened Ricky’s fucking door and ruined my fucking moment. Worse yet, she wasn’t buttoning anything, her skirt was straight and her 271 lipliner was perfectly applied. Maybe, then she was a professional. Maybe she knew enough to tidy up before stepping out. Maybe… Ohmigosh! You’re Magdalena Bamberger, right? She adjusted the stack of papers she was holding so that she could extend her right hand for me to shake. What was this? The enemy offering a treaty before the terms had been discussed? I took her outstretched hand and shook it tentatively. Yes, I said, I was. But I’m de la Cruz now. Magdalena de la Cruz. Wow! she said. You’re taller than I pictured you to be. And you pictured me because? Was she really going to give herself up this easily? In your pictures, I mean. I’ve studied you, she blushed and rearranged the pile of paperwork she was holding in case it should slip. Studied me? What the fuck? Is that like stalking me? I asked out loud. Oh no, she said, nervously stroking her hairline for errant strands, which, of course, there were none of. I mean my friends sometimes accused me of it, but there’s so few female role models in the industry, doing what it is that you’re doing and I’m just a little, she made a precious little squint accompanied by a teeny tiny hand gesture, okay, a lot, obsessed with you. I stared, incredulous. This was so not what I had rehearsed. Not you, she was starting to get nervous, you’re work, rather. I’m sooo in love, enamored really, with your work. 272 My work? what was this? A decoy? A distraction? Was Ricky making his way out onto the fire escape while Legs held me up in the hall with her transparent compliments. It would be so like him to have a preplanned strategy just in case. Hell, he probably made her practice. Okay, he’d look at his watch, let’s pretend my wife entered unannounced right, he put his finger on the chronogram button, Now! It’ll take me exactly one minute and thirty-six no, make that seven seconds to slip out the back. You, he rubbed his hand on Legs’ knee, need to come up with something to distract her for at least that long. I know, he clapped his hands together impressed with himself, tell her you love her art. She’s a sucker for that. I pushed past Legs and stuck my head in Ricky’s office but there was no sign of him, and as I looked around, I noticed that his office didn’t have an escape. That was my office. My office fifty-six floors above ground was the one that had been custom fitted with an emergency window, you know, just in case. Oh, Legs said upbeat, noticing my searching look, he’s not here. They’re having the Fiji merger meeting in the conference room. Should be done, she looked at her watch—a pastel Philippe Charriol, the lady’s jet set—by three, maybe. Didn’t he tell you? No, I said, walking into his office and looking around. Under his desk were a pair of Ugg slippers and a blue foam stress ball. His top drawer held a pack of Trident, contact lenses and about a gazillion post-its. No, I said again, glancing in his empty In- Box, I’m so busy with my work—I tried to imitate her exact inflection—that I don’t really have time for the water scene. 273 Legs looked confused, But if your work isn’t water, what do you do? I mean… I thought…I’m Nina, she laughed. I didn’t. I went to Cal too. I walked carefully over to the coat closet and peeped inside. There’s a case model of your business plan in our entrepreneurial unit. I read about you, and about Ricky too, but I was most impressed by you. How you used your background in viniculture to implement the water filtration system. It was brilliant. And besides, she gave a small shrug, I believe in the solidarity of women, I really do. And I’m not just saying that because I’m talking to you, you know? I really believe that if women don’t help other women come up… she trailed off. Anyhow I just graduated with a double in business and biology. I’m interning here, on the purification project. They sent me upstairs to get these, she nodded to the stack of papers. I guess I’m a glorified copy girl, really, but whatever it takes to get in the door, you know what I mean? I looked her over and remained quiet. Wow. Am I talking too much? Because I tend to do that. All I really wanted to say is I love your work and it was a pleasure meeting you. She held out her hand. I shook it, noticing how soft her skin was, and said Ditto. Then I walked to the elevator and pressed the down button. When the doors opened she stepped in with me. I pressed Lobby, she pressed 43. 274 Um, she said as the elevator sped down, if you don’t mind, I do have a quick question. I examined her professionally styled Los Angeles ponytail. It was high, but not too high and so smooth it sheened. I was impressed and so I said, Shoot. Well, now that you’re not in on the water scene what do you do? Wine? Filtration? A mixture, you know, like Luxe? The doors opened and she hesitated to step out. Art. I said, as she made her way into the hall, the doors slowly shutting. I do art. 275 THE PROBLEM OF ADAPTATION. After not exactly catching Ricky in the act, again, but not not catching him either, I drove to the sprawling American Federal Revival that was my home. I drove up the expansive brick drive and instead of veering left and entering through the garage I parked in the circular out front and made my way up the three short stairs to the front porch and attempted to enter via the raised panel Monterey-wood front doors with cut leaded crystal looking glass. The irony was, if you can call it that, my key didn’t fit the polished brass keyhole. Okay, it fit the hole, but it didn’t turn in the unlocking way it should have. I expected as much. And although it might have been worth it to get upset, to call Ricky in tears and accuse him of changing the locks, to get damn-near hysterical, I knew there was a reason the front door was only ever opened and entered during parties. That even the UPS man knew to cart the loads of brown boxes I continually received from catalogues and on-line shops round to the side; it had something to do with the Mexican version of Fung Shui and bad luck and the location of the front door, which was south- facing, instead of north-facing and so it was only opened when absolutely necessary, else all our money or health or hair or some such might be sucked out. And although I don’t believe in Fung Shui—neither the Mexican nor the Chinese practice—I didn’t need any more bad luck and so I obeyed the silly rule. I rubbed the brass knob of my own front door until I smeared its polish with prints. Then I moved my hand up to the archaic, impractical, but nonetheless of the period, doorknocker and I let the hammer— a bird of some sort—smash its beak against the smooth knocker-plate three times 276 sounding a muffled whap into the foyer. I waited, but nothing happened. I walked across the porch, tugging a dead leave from the cascading hydrangea hung in the corner, and still nothing happened. So, because I didn’t have anything much better to do I decided to sit. Seated in the wide porch swing that was suspended by delicate brass chain links from the low–pitched roof, I decided to camp out in front of my own front door, at least until Ricky came home. I settled into the swing and pushed off with my feet. Softly I swayed back and forth, back and forth. An Eastern European Manny, who had replaced the Filipino Nannies, who themselves had replaced the Mexican Nannies as all the rage in Beverly Hills, pushed a pram filled with strawberry-blonde triplets down the sidewalk, a golden retriever lassoed to the buggy’s front bumper. I waved, he nodded, his left cheek pressed against a zebra-striped cell phone, his lips pushing out sarcastic sounding Slavic words. There was a squirrel darting around in the duff beyond our gazillions of properly pruned hedges. A leaf-blower roared down the street, powered by a redheaded Mexican wearing protective plastic goggles and a surgical mask. I looked up and noticed that the palm trees had recently had their beards shaved. Not that I knew for sure, but they didn’t appear to like it very much. Their long necks looked cold and exposed and even more impossibly long than I ever remember. Like if I could, I would give them all scarves or something. I could maybe hire someone to do it. Commission a knitter to 277 make fifteen matching Palm cozies. Or wait! Why stop there? Better yet why not convince Christo and old Jeanne-Claude to stage an instillation? Outfit the entire palm population of the City of Angles in matching magenta muffs? It would be hot, especially in WeHo. I looked to my watch: 4:30. In another hour Los Angeles would switch places. The freeways, already congested with the exchange would be jammed in both directions as gardeners, housekeepers, pool boys, and handymen keeping up the homes on the Westside made their way east to Downey, Inglewood, El Monte, and Echo Park while lawyers, bankers, producers, executives and industry types, working downtown, made their way west to Bel-Air, Beverly Hills, Westwood, and Malibu. Aspiring actors would stop circulating their headshots and start passing out menus. Musicians would climb down from billboards and arrange drum-sets in someone’s cramped studio apartment. It was a slow parade of poorly documented domestics making the long walk to the neighborhood limits because public transportation is restricted from entering designer drives (see decrease in property values) and chic canyons (see smog, see noise ordinance, see intentionally built narrow roads that curve and chiquane). According to Mapquest, the Historic Core of downtown L.A. is exactly 12.62 miles from Rodeo Drive (Start out going Southeast on N RODEO DR toward ELEVADO AVE. Turn LEFT onto S SANTA MONICA BLVD/LITTLE SANTA MONICA BLVD. Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto BURTON WAY. Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto N SAN VICENTE BLVD. Turn RIGHT onto S LA BREA AVE. Merge onto I-10 E. Merge onto CA-110 N via the exit- on the left- toward PASADENA. Take the 278 4TH ST/3RD ST exit- exit number 22B. Take the 6TH ST ramp). On a good day, on a Sunday at say 3 a.m., you might get there in the 23 minutes Mapquest suggests. On most other days it will take you anywhere from 47 minutes, not including parking, to an hour and a half. An hour and a half, without parking, to go 12.62 miles seems extraordinary in most instances, but it’s about one of the only things in L.A. that actually make any sense; it’s one of those collegiate conundrums of place and space that can actually be solved, QED. My sociology professor would go nuts over it. I mean income times quality of life divided by a quotient of perceived happiness, expressed or otherwise, minus assets, including, but not limited to green cards, 401K’s, IRAs, and dental insurance and it takes a hell of a lot longer than 23 minutes to navigate from Olvera Street to Rodeo Drive. In fact, I’ve heard it said that although it’s easily walkable in less than an afternoon, it can sometimes take upwards of five generations to make the trip. Ricky, I suppose you could say, provided you’re not the type to perpetually remind me that California was actually once Mexico and so Ricky wasn’t making the trek, rather he was making his return, as long as you’re not one of those kind of people, you’ll most likely agree that Ricky made the trip in two generations and some change— which beats my fifth generational white-ethnic slide down from Pollack Hill by quite a mean feat. The traffic must have been particularly light. Maybe he took the surface streets or maybe, oh the genius, he took the car-pool and didn’t get caught! It was barely five when he pulled into the drive, made his way into the garage and then reversed his way back out to see just why exactly I was camped out on the 279 front porch. He was about five hours earlier than I expected, and although I had rolled down the windows and cranked up the SIRIUS satellite radio in my tank so as not to be without music, I had yet to crack into the dozen or more bottles of Luxe I had stashed in the trunk as promotional give-aways, and I was rationing my peanut M&M’s to one every half hour. When I saw the silhouette of his McLaren—he must have had a business lunch—I popped a whole handful of the melt in your mouth candies between my lips and when Ricky, in reverse, rolled down his window to ask what was up, I could only mumble peanuts. 280 THE PROBLEM OF SURPRISE. Ricky parked the McLaren behind my tank and, tugging the lap of his trousers before sitting down, joined me on the porch swing. What’s going on? he asked, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. I swallowed a mouthful of chocolate, held out the yellow paper wrapper and said, Want some? Naw, he said, pushing off the wooden floor and sending us swinging into motion. I tucked my feet up under my legs and went with the sway. Nice day for a sit on the porch, he said, but I couldn’t tell if it was a question or sarcasm, or if, in fact, he meant it. So I didn’t respond. Instead I said, You’re home early. Not for long, was his reply. Something came up with the Luxe line. Apparently I have to sign a few more dotted lines down in Fiji. Steve and I are taking a red-eye. When? Tonight. I lifted my head off his shoulder and looked past him to a SUV full of uniformed kids pouring out onto the lawn three doors down. Ricky knew I hated to stay in the house alone. That I couldn’t stay in the house alone. That it made me anxious and sometimes physically ill. What, they can’t just fax it to you? I asked. Ricky reached up and ran his hand through my hair, trying to woo me back to his side of the swing. You know that’s not how they do it down there. Before you sign on the line you have to shake a few hands, buy a few dinners, golf. 281 Drink a few beers and saddle up to some whores? Or wait, I sought confirmation for my own suspicions, are you bringing her with you? Why do you do this? He stopped with the hair thing. It’s business. Fine, I’ll go with, I said as I fished around in my purse for my cell phone. I needed to call Imelda and tell her what to pack. I needed to call the car service, Neiman Marcus, the airline. Babe, it’s a quick trip. Flyin’ out tonight, spending two, maybe three days tops and then taking the next plane back. No beaches. No spa treatments. No fun. But it’s my birthday. Your birthday, Ricky said checking his Blackberry, isn’t until Thursday. Today’s Monday, I’ll be back in time to take you to dinner. Promise. I held the phone to my ear and a finger out to Ricky making the, ‘Just a minute babe, I’ve got something bigger on the line, but I’ll get to you just as quick as I can’ sign. Ricky sighed and pushed back and forth on the swing. It’s a sold out flight, he said, but not very loud. I’ll fly coach, I said, speaking both to Ricky and the Ozzie operator on Qantas. It’s a sold out flight, the operator said. If you want you can fly to Japan with Air France and then pick us up in Osaka. You’d have a pretty hefty layover, but you’d get there about thirteen hours after Flight 817. Too late, I said and clicked my phone shut. 282 It got very quiet on the porch. I focused all my energy on not crying, which meant I cinched up my brows, clenched the phone with white knuckles and took deep breaths of air through my mouth, filling my nose with the scent of freshly cut grass. Ricky put his hand on my knee. I let him keep it there. The quiet continued. Ricky slid his hand up my recently laser-treated leg—you have to keep on top of veins. One day they’re little purple threads, the next day they’re knotty varicose ropes— and played with the kumquat beaded hem of my Betsey Johnson German chocolate minidress. I slid my body to the left so that my back rested against the arm of the swing and Ricky slid his arm behind my back and easily slid me onto his lap. He pushed his face into the space between my neck and ear and breathed in deep before whispering, I’m sorry. I promise I won’t let anyone get you while I’m gone. You’ll be perfectly safe. The swing swayed gently back and forth knocking my feet, which hung off the right side, into the cool brass chains on each forward glide. Deciding, for once, to actually take the advice of the Shrink, I rubbed my fingers across the back of Ricky’s neck. I turned my face into his and slowly kissed him with open lips. Our tongues were shy, our movements slow but not clumsy, and I suppose that is what differentiated us from the countless teenage couples who had mirrored our motions in the hundred and thirty-seven year lifespan of the swing. Which reminds me, any minute now Ricky will remember we, all combined three-hundred and eighteen pounds of us (only a hundred and fourteen to me, thank you!), are making out on an antique and then we’ll probably have to stop. Stop or readjust ourselves to the floor or the faux-federal estate lawn- 283 chairs. But Ricky was really into it. I could feel the sequined strap of my bra slide down my left shoulder as the hem of my skirt slipped up, exposing the saffron lace of my Occhi Verdi G-string. In a lapse of ten minutes we had gone from never before having sat on the front porch of our house together to dry fucking on the front porch of our house together and I couldn’t decide if I hoped the shrubs were high enough to seclude our tryst or if I hoped the shrubs, artfully hedged into a replica of the east lawns of Haddon Hall which was itself a riff on Chiswick Park, fell in fact a smidgen short of full enclosure. Intentionally, I stretched my toes higher up the chain link. I pressed my lips into Ricky’s fervently. The swing moaned, but would it be loud enough to make it past the neighbors? A flash of flesh, my ponytail as it bobbed from one side of my blonde head to the other. A sigh from the tall lattice beams above. Ricky discreetly navigating his way out of his slacks. The hem of my dress pushed higher still, and the forever sway of the swing back and forth back and forth. The smell of grass from before mixed now with sweat, Dove soap and expensive styling products. Flecks of old white paint, probably lead-based, stuck to our arms and thighs. Another swing groan. Then quiet. And still, I didn’t feel anything. Which means I wasn’t exactly fibbing, in the car, when I told Ricky the Shrink had been feeding me a fat pack of lies. In fact, like most things I make up, it was now pretty much true. 284 STEP OUTLINE. You know, Ricky said once we were sitting fully upright again, our clothes smoothed and pulled back in place, the secretaries at the office listen to Ryan Seacrest every morning and they have this game where you call in and try to convince your significant other to come home in the middle of the day. What, you mean like just quit work and come home? Right, but you do it all live, on the radio. They have some sort of two-way connection where you call in and then give them your significant other’s number at work and then they connect you and if you can convince them to leave work and come home— Like agree to it on the air? Exactly. Then you win a prize. What kind of prize? I don’t know. Concert tickets, dinner on Sunset, free CD’s, radio stuff. I wonder if they give away trips to Palm Springs? I’m sure they do, everybody gives away trips to Palm Springs. Well then we should play. Like you need another trip to Palm Springs, and besides, you know you’d never be able to get me to agree to come home in the middle of the day. Sure I could. Really, Ricky said, grinning. Try it. What do you mean, try it? Like call up tomorrow? 285 No. Right now. Pretend we’re on the radio. I’m on one line—he held up a pretend phone to his ear—and you’re on the other. I stretched out my finger and thumb and curled up my middle three fingers into a phone. Hell-Oh, Ricky said in his overdone radio personality voice, This is Ryan Seacrest on air live with Mrs. Magdalena de la Cruz. Magdalena you ready to play? Sure am, I spoke into my finger phone. Allrightie sweetie, why don’t you tell our listeners just who it is you’ll be calling today. My husband, Ricky. And where’s Ricky today. At work. He bottles water, I said knowing in real life Ricky would die if I said as much. Good old H 2 O. Well Val, our production assistant is going to ring Ricky up and when he says hello, you’re on. You ready? Ready, I said. Ricky made several fake phone ring noises and then put down his radio mic and, becoming himself again, picked up his hand-phone, Hello? I summoned the tears that I’d fought back before and let them fall loudly from my eyes. Ricky, I said in my serious hysterical voice (as opposed to my frenzied and/or anxiety-invoked hysterical voice) I… I need you to come home right away. I hiccupped and sobbed again for emphasis. I was opening up a cantaloupe for lunch and I slipped 286 with the knife, you know the samurai-ginsu Global knives, the good ones we got for our wedding that will cut through chicken bone? Well, I cleared some snot from my nose and said, I slipped and cut off my finger. The little one. Chopped it completely off. I need you to come home right now. There’s blood everywhere. I let out one more soft whimper before turning the tears off. Well, I said, looking into Ricky’s stunned face. Would you come home? Did we win the trip to Palm Springs? Are you feeling all right? Ricky asked. What do you mean? I mean is that how you’d get me to come home? You’d scare me half to death with a made up emergency? Well, did it work? Of course it fucking worked. Only an asshole would stay at work after a call like that. So I won! I said, clapping my hands together and making the mental flight to Palm Springs. No, you didn’t win. You fucking scared me half to death is what you did. I probably would have drove home at 80 mph and slammed into the side of some brick wall, because of your little prank. And besides you didn’t play by the rules. You never said there were rules. You’re supposed to try to get me to come home by flirting and talking dirty. You’re supposed to make me hot, not scared to fucking death. 287 Well you didn’t say that, I said. You never said there were rules. So you just decided to pick the sickest thing you can think of? No. It wasn’t the sickest thing. I mean it wasn’t like I cut off my whole hand, or my arm. It’s not like I fell on a nail and gouged out my eye. It was just a finger. My pinkie one. Yeah, but you cut it clear off. I mean on the drive home I’d be imagining how it was all small and bloody sitting in a Ziploc baggie with ice cubes or something. Probably turning blue or green or whatever color severed fingers turn when they get cut off. They turn grey. I’ve seen it. When? he challenged. In Italy, remember. No wait, you don’t remember because I had to go to Italy by myself. We were going to go together but then something came up. What was it again? Switzerland? Colorado? That patent infringement with Pepsi-Corp? Anyhow, I was in Italy, by myself, at the Uffizi, by myself, looking at the frickin’ Madonna of the Goldfinch, by myself— De Sarto? Ricky asked, trying to milk all he could out of the one Art History class he’d taken to humor me. No, de Sarto did Madonna of the Harpies. Sanzio did the Goldfinch, which I was looking at, by my self when that little American girl who kept spinning round and round in the revolving door that lead to the coat check, got her finger caught in the entrance or the exit, and cut it clean off. Her parents were so panicked that they picked her up and 288 headed for the nearest emergency leaving her finger, which turned grey, on the coat check floor. Ricky looked puzzled, You never told me that. Well you never asked. What happened to the finger? I picked it up, stuck it in a cup of gelato and waited with it by the coat check until the father came back. That was nice of you. Well, I figured I owed it to them, being American and all. But it still doesn’t excuse you for saying stuff like that on the phone. Okay, fine, next time I’ll only say I cut it, not that I cut it all the way off. How about next time we just don’t play the game? You started it. And besides, admit it, if I had gone on with all the usual stuff, the baby come home so we can fuck on the porch swing kind of stuff—wait, can you even say that kind of thing on the radio? Anyhow, if I had said all that, oh baby, you never would have come home and there ain’t no way I would have won that trip to Palm Springs. You know if you want to go to Palm Springs all you have to do is ask. Hell, you don’t even have to ask, just pack a bag and go. But what if I want to go with you? He squeezed my knee. Well I have to go to Fiji, he said, as if I forgot. But maybe when I get back we can work something out. 289 For my birthday? I asked already planning which scarf I’d wear in my hair as the wind wiped past the open top of the convertible. Maybe you could take Friday off, we’ll make a weekend of it? Now let’s not go overboard. How about you make dinner reservations somewhere and we’ll just see about the rest. Which was just a fancy way of saying no. Even still, when he got up off the swing and held out his hand I put my hand in his and let myself be pulled to my feet. He walked to his car. I walked to mine. And following each other in a private parade we drove round the circular drive and into the garage where we entered the house by the side door. 290 CONSISTENT VERSUS INCONSISTENT REALITIES. I hate my fucking house. If it weren’t for the house I could have forgotten Ricky in an afternoon. But there’s a goddamned house, which is worse than a goddamned dog. I want a dog. And not one of those stupid fluffy white yappy little shits; a real dog. A mastiff. I tried to buy a cat once but Ricky made me take him back. Can you imagine that? Taking back a cat. I mean it’s not like a purse or a belt or a few dozen wilted roses or even a car. (Okay, so a car you actually cannot take back. That three-day rule you believe in? Fantasy. Pure fantasy.) But a cat? They take them back. They look at you real funny, but they do take them back. And just like the bag or the belt, they ask what the problem was. The problem? This is where you stretch your manicured hand out to the cat, ruffle it up near the back of its ears, and with fingers woven between the carefully brushed fur, scratch all the way down until you reach its tail. Where it immediately arches its little kitty ass straight to the sky. With a few loose hairs still in-between your fingers, look at the pet shop lady and say, as though you were from Beverly Hills, It didn’t match the rug. I mean I thought it would, but the color was too close and so in fact they clashed. Next time I’ll be sure to bring a fabric swatch. Or pretend you’re from the Valley and say, I was hoping it would go on sale. Do you know when the next cat clearance will be? Or don’t pretend at all; just say you’re a woman narrowly escaping insanity in the Beverly Hills. Say, my husband is an asshole and he says he’s allergic but I know for a fact he’s not; just pretending to be allergic like he pretends to be allergic to smoke so I can’t. 291 The pet shop owner will try to be funny. While making goo goo faces at the cat and glaring at you she will say, But you don't smoke do you kitty witty? She will reach for the cat, a blue tabby, and she will take a long time, putting on a big show of detangling the cat from the straw Nordstrom Sac the cat’s in. Then she will ask if you would like your money refunded and the cat will stretch out a paw and bat at your ring. Don’t bother with an answer. Just walk out as quietly as you can in Dior heels on tile floor and try not to cry. 292 AESTHETIC EMOTION. Ricky had been gone maybe an hour—hardly to the airport yet let alone Fiji— when the panic started. Although the logical Magdalena that I once was whispered rationalizations like: it’s the same house with Ricky as it is without Ricky, and Ricky’s never home anyhow so how is his being in Fiji any different than his being downtown or on the Wilshire Corridor? the irrational Magdalena that I have somehow become, that I have somehow made myself be, said, because it’s just different, that’s all and at least Ricky, when he’s downtown, comes home eventually to sleep and those noises, the bumps and clicks and groans, could, potentially, be him. I think it’s settling sounds that disturb me the most: the roof as it fuses to the shingles; the refrigerator running into the night; the floorboards aligning themselves with the foundation; wind. Most especially named wind events like the Santa Anas and Floyd. When the noises fall, not always in the dead middle of the night, but sometimes in the afternoon also, I make it my self-appointed job to find them out. To identify how the house moves when I am inside it and I am—by my own rules—sitting impossibly still. The Shrink has prescribed small white pills to dull my hearing, my anxiety, my compulsion for identity. The pills, I tell the Shrink, those pills I tell Ricky, make me sleepy. Asleep I cannot hear the noises. That’s exactly the point, Ricky says. The point is, the Shrink says, sleep. But if I don’t stay awake all night to find out the noises who will find them for me? And what if, unidentified, they find me first? When I am hung over from my prescription it means that Ricky is out of town and I was left alone in the house. This means I gave in to the small yellow bottle with 293 the little white pills because my fingers were going numb with reckoning. Rain falling down a chimney that no longer burns wood sounds like ping-whoosh. The Santa Anas blowing against the palms that drag across the south wall sound a swooze-tick. That one noise, my least favorite noise, that sounds like roses falling down a dark hole onto wood is most certainly a ghost making his way from the kitchen into the foyer. Don’t breathe. Don’t move. The creak that goes he-haw is his phantom boot on the first stair. The creak that goes haw-hump is an ephemeral too big hand on the banister. To take one white pill means to fall asleep for fourteen hours. To take two means to be temporarily dead. I do not want to die. I merely want a familiar body to lie next to me in the night while I classify sounds. Ricky, a baby, a dog. Someone to think about outside of myself and the memories of Junah’s dying I can’t help but let in. 294 STAGE LEFT. On my birthday the phone rang at 3 am and had I not been so hung over from sedatives and gin I might have peed myself in fright, but thanks to my substance abuse I just rolled over and gave a groggy, Yeah? Hey Babydoll, Ricky’s voice was choppy on the static-filled line. Ricky? I asked, You okay. I’m fine sweets. Just calling to wish you a happy birthday. But it’s, I rolled over and lifted off my satin sleeping mask so I could focus on the clock, 3:57. In the morning. I know, sorry about that. I’m going to be rather caught up in meetings all day and wanted to be sure I reached you. Meetings? my eyes were adjusting to the lights—when Ricky was gone I slept with all of them on, hence the mask—but aren’t you coming home today? About that, Ricky stuttered through the bad connection, Babydoll, I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but— I let the phone slip down my shoulder and onto the pillow. Tugging the mask over my tear-filled eyes, I rolled over and went back to sleep. 295 PROPS. When I woke up again, at 10:30, it was to the sound of the doorbell chiming incessantly. Unbelievable, I thought as I trudged down the stairs, still in my nightie, how long was Imelda going to play this mad-at-Magdalena game anyhow? What? I said, as I opened the door to a virtual tree of lilacs tied together with a vintage scarf. Delivery, for Magdalena de la Cruz, the delivery boy said. Thanks, I said, changing my tone while crossing my arms in front of my chest. You can leave them on the porch, I pointed, until I figure out what to do with them. No problem, he said, as he set down the gargantuan bouquet of flowers and walked back down the drive. Imelda, I called from a step stool in the pantry, have you seen my Murano vase? You know, the green one that I brought back from Italy? She didn’t answer. Imelda? I said again, stepping down from the stool and opening random cabinets in the kitchen. It was hand blown, and cost a fortune. You know that one? I asked, waiting for her to appear, as usual, with the vase in her hand. But she didn’t. Imelda? I shouted, louder this time. You here? It was Thursday, which meant that the shopping didn’t get done until the afternoon, and the dry-cleaning was picked up on Wednesday, delivered on Friday. According to the schedule she should be cleaning out the fridge from the week’s 296 remains. But the crisper tray boasted a rotted heirloom left to ripen a day or two too long and Imelda was no where to be found. Grabbing the slimy tomato with two outstretched fingers I tossed it in the sink. I had seedy vegetable guts underneath my pointer nail, which would necessitate a manicure, pronto. Disgusted, I flipped on the disposal and listened to the grind. The double white avalanche blooms of the lilacs sprayed across the island cutting board where I had left them, and I slid them over ever so slightly to avoid immediate proximity to the now-contaminated sink. I ripped off a post-it and scribbled: Clorox sink, stuck it to the faucet where I knew Imelda would see it. Imelda? I said, this time pushing down on the intercom button so that my voice resonated in surround sound through out the house, Imelda, where are you, please? I was met with silence. I walked around the kitchen, this time stooping down to check the lower cabinets. No vase; not even a cheap one that came for free with 1800flowers.com. Frustrated I went back to the intercom. Okay, I’m sorry, I said pushing down on the talk button again. I know I was out of line the other day, but it’s my birthday. Do you have any idea where we keep the vases? She was clearly still pissed, but it wasn’t like her to ignore me completely. Not for this long. I grabbed three heavy Le Creuset Dutch ovens, filled them with water and set the flowers inside. They tilted, lopsided on their stems, but settled without too much calamity. Flowers fixed, I did another tour of the downstairs. The security system was armed, Imelda’s car was parked in the garage and as I crossed through the kitchen 297 towards the sunroom I noticed the door to her suite was shut tight. I knocked lightly, but she didn’t respond. Of all the days, I muttered under my breath as I flip flopped up the stairs in my sandals. Upstairs I popped a couple Zoloft and raked half-heartedly through racks of designer sundresses. When I woke up I was feeling flirty, but now I just felt sad. 298 DRAMATURGE. I stretched out on the floor and stared at the vaulted ceiling. Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday Magdalena, I sang to myself, Happy Birthday to mmmeeeeee! I sounded the last note loud, like a scream, and held it until I ran out of breath secretly hoping Imelda would hear and, suspecting an armed intruder or house mouse, would come running. But she didn’t. It was just me, turning thirty all by myself. I knew later my mother would call and then pass the phone off to my dad who would try very hard to wish me well without a crack in his voice. The year Junah died Birthdays ceased to exist, and although now, a little over a year later they were making their return in a small way, they were still hard. Especially because things like birth tended to remind one of things like death. Especially because my birthday was exactly 22 days before Junah’s. Especially because Junah was no longer alive to remind me that ‘May maybe great but Jun-ah is better’ like he had every year since he learned how to comprehend calendars, which I think, began when he was four and asked my mom, Mama, how come if my birthday is in June, Laney’s birthday isn’t in Lane? Because it’s in May, my mom would explain, patiently, and because her real name is Magdalena. 299 Oh, Junah would say, before moving on to something more interesting like seeing how many rocks he could fit inside his tucked in shirt before they spilled beneath his waistband and fell out his pant legs. CALL TIMES. Before Junah died my mother would call me at exactly 10:53 am and tell me the story of my birth: Everyone said you’d be early, she said. The doctors, your father, the test results, my gut. You dropped somewhere near the 32nd week and my mucous plug fell out not long after. According to the books you were supposed to arrive 48 hours after I was "unplugged" but you decided to wait. I was dilated at first to two and then to three, and still you waited. I had false contractions not once but twice and not once, but twice your father and I dashed to the hospital only to drive back home disappointed--we wanted to meet you so badly--and a little embarrassed--those nurses sure sound understanding but they do look at you funny--five hours later without a baby in the back seat. As we waited for you we became expert walkers as every day for two weeks your father and I would troll the trestle. On the first day we found a flattened penny, run over—heads up—still on the tracks. On the second day we saw a flock of goslings and I was sure it was a sign that you'd arrive within the next day, but the next day came and went. Then we saw a cardinal’s nest high up in river birch, little birds swaking: what- cheer, cheer, cheer, to be fed, peering out above the twigs and twine, I was sure you'd arrive, that the scarlet bird was your sign, but the next day came and went and your father and I walked back road after back road and sat on tree stumps and big rocks and 300 ate lunch after lunch looking at the train as it clattered past, counting the boxcars and still you were inside me. Then Daddy, sure that he could walk you out of me, stepped up his already aggressive aerobics and we spotted a baby Elk, just beyond Little Lee Creek, so close you could walk right up to it. And we looked and marveled at such a wobbly little thing and I told your dad we’d better head home, totally and completely certain you'd be born this exact April day, because not only was the Elk a sign, it was newly born and it crossed our path on slender unsure legs. But again, you stayed put, low, but put until the exact day the doctors said you were due, and then, in a perfectly punctual fashion, you were born on May 13th, at exactly 10:53 am. It was 11:01. It’s not like I actually expected my mom to go through the whole story. Not today. Not when telling me the story of how I was born would no doubt remind her of Junah, and how he was born blue, dead, the doctors said, but he lived. That is, he lived until he died. No, I didn’t need the story, but a call at 10:53 would have been nice. But I understood. Since Junah mom had her own issues. What you need, my shrink said, is a transitional project. Something to transition you away from your perpetual grief and into a life after death. Bullshit, my mother said, when I reported to her about my session. What we need is your brother back and a fucking shrink who fucking understands what it’s like to lose a child. Before Junah my mother never swore, and although we grew grapes, she was impartial towards wine. But after, she took to talking like an unsupervised seventh- 301 grader and she took up the bottle too. Right now she was most likely sleeping it off. But still. My father, when I told him, had a different response. He rented a Caterpillar D9 and bulldozed the barn. What the fuck is he doing? my mother asked staring through the kitchen picture windows, a glass of cabernet in her hand. Transitioning, I guess. Well, does he have to be so goddamn literal about it? 302 EXEUNT. Turns out bulldozing the barn was the best thing my dad ever did. Because when it was down, when he had it leveled and then cleared, he began again, sleeping in a worn down sack in his portable shed. He was building, he told me, a cellar with temperature controlled barrel storage and a proper tasting room. We’re going to have our own label, Magdalena. I’m through selling grapes to the big guys. We’re going to do it ourselves. For a week or two when I wasn’t crying softly under the bed, I tried to help. I tried to pretend I was interested in constructing something, in making something new, but truth be told it was all too painful. Junah was everywhere and when Ricky mentioned that maybe it might be easier if we moved to L.A…. not forever, he promised, but just for a little while. Breathe some new air, see some new sights. I went. What the fuck was I thinking? 303 CHEATING THE STAGE And, lest you think I’m irrationally biased or certifiably insane, don’t. I can see things, even if I try not to, from Ricky’s perspective and I don’t blame him. Not for any of it. I mean it wasn’t like he made me. It wasn’t like he said, get a boob job or I’m leaving you. In fact, he was against it. And if you really must know the truth, he liked my boobs, and me, the way we were before. But Ricky doesn’t understand a damn thing about what it’s like to be a woman in L.A. and so I went ahead and augmented everything. 304 STAGE RIGHT. Pushing myself up on one elbow, I reached for my cell phone and dialed. Hello, a throaty female voice said. I hung up, checked the display on my cell phone that read: Ricky Cell with a little picture of him and pressed send, again. Hello, the same girly voice said again. Sorry, I said. I think I may have the wrong numb— Ricky, the girl said holding the phone away from her lips so it made an overseas echo, it’s for you. There was some fumbling while I tried to remain calm and then, before I could decide whether to scream or throw the phone against the wall, Ricky said, This is Ricky. It’s me, I said, and who the hell was that? Hey, he said, Happy Birthday, Babydoll. Listen, he ignored my question completely, I really am sorry, about tonight, but I sent flowers, did you get them? Since when did you stop answering your own cell phone? Since I got so busy I can’t even think, he said. But the flowers, you got them? Yes, I said. They’re pretty, but I can’t find Imelda. Or a vase. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’d let someone, some woman, no less, pick up your goddamned phone when you knew it was me. Ricky was quiet for a moment. I could hear the sound of him e-mailing in the background. You know I hate it when you do that, I said. 305 Do what? E-mail. While you’re on the phone with me. Sorry, but I told you how busy I am, he was still clicking away, typing, talking and thinking all at the same time leaving unnaturally long conversational gaps. You know, multi-tasking. And she’s just a secretary the hotel provided, you know, to answer phones while we get some work done. And is that all she provides, cell phone answering? Stop it Mags. I don’t have time for all this right now. I’m a little stressed, in case you can’t tell and the numbers aren’t coming through like they used to. What? I asked. Since when don’t our numbers add up? Do you want me to go to the office and take a look? I scanned my row of vintage Chanel suits that were bagged in dry-cleaned cellophane, on permanent hiatus, like me. Definitely the vintage pink and black tweed and taffeta combo, with a pair of lambskin skimmers. No, Ricky said, almost immediately. He stopped typing and suddenly I had his full attention. It’s your birthday. Stay home. Take Puck to the spa or something. No, really, I said, standing up and reaching for the hanger, It’s no problem. And besides, Puck’s in Bombay. You mean Mumbai, Ricky said. You know what I mean, I said. How can I help? You can stay put and get off the phone, Ricky said. I got it under control. I took a deep breath, and gave up on my vintage suits and, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say I said, While I have you on the line, maybe you can help 306 me. Any idea where our housekeeper is? It’s bad enough I have to manage without you, but without her it’s really tough. She’s on strike, Ricky said. Of course, I said, rolling over onto my stomach, coming face to face with the rounded toes of my Bettye Muller plaid Waldorf pumps, I figured as much. I must have really pissed her off. If I would have known she was going to boycott, and on my birthday no less, I would have kept— Ricky sighed, It’s not you. Right, when is she ever mad at you? It’s not me either. Mags, don’t you know what day it is? Yeah, it’s my birthday. True, but it’s also a day of national protest, haven’t you been watching the news? Why did he always need to infantilize me? Of course I haven’t been watching the news, I said into the phone, fully noting the sass in my voice, but once it started, once I went there it was so hard to stop. I haven’t been watching the news because as I mentioned previously my maid is on strike and I’ve been busy doing all the housework. On my birthday, I said again. Since when do you do housework? Ricky asked. Since always, I said, recalling the rotten tomato I had recently disposed of. I was about to tell Ricky as much when I heard his Blackberry beep signaling a call on his other line. I have to go, he said, it’s the Thai guy. It’s important. 307 And I’m not? I asked, trying to hold in the tears. Magdalena I don’t have time for this right now, I need to be efficient today so that I can catch the next flight out of here. Bye. You mean you don’t have time for me, I said to the dial tone. 308 WALKOUT. I lay on the floor for a while. Missing Junah. Wondering how it was so easy to slip from happy to hell? Like the line that used to be delta thick was, like the L.A. river: a dried up trickle; so easy to cross it might as well be concrete. And once you realized that you could just skip across, say one mean thing after the next and get away with it, it was hard, so hard—after the worse thing you could imagine had already happened—to go back. To be understanding and compassionate to other people, who might very well have their own shit to deal with, when it felt so god-awful on the inside. And I wanted to redial. To call Ricky back and say: I’m sorry and I’m sad. I miss my brother. I miss you. But most of all I miss us. But I wasn’t brave enough. Maybe if Puck was beside me instead of on-location in Bollywood. From my stomach I noticed that my riding boots were dusty. I stretched out a finger and wrote Magda across the soft leather upper of the left and lena across the soft leather upper of the right. Post-it, I made a mental note to myself, Imelda, please polish. When I got up I put on a vintage crocheted trim dress with full skirt and peek-a- boo tulle underlay, pulled my hair into a high pony, rubbed on some lip-gloss and decided to make up. Imelda was on strike, fine, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t eat. I was going to take her out for Birthday lunch at Mr. Chows. Imelda, I knocked on her bedroom door. Hey, it’s me, Magses. Listen, I leaned in so my mouth was close to the door, I’m sorry. I waited a bit, and then said, I want to take you to lunch. 309 When she still didn’t answer I felt a strange twinge of panic in my gut. Imelda, you okay. I jiggled the door handle, it was unlocked. Imelda? I opened the door just a crack and peeked my head inside. Her bed was neatly made, her colorful Aztec quilt peeking out from beneath the 1020 count Leontine linens Ricky and I bought her last Christmas from Bergdorf Goodman. I slipped off my crisscross buckled sandals and tiptoed across the floor. She wasn’t passed out on her kitchen table, a chunk of something stuck in her throat, nor was she slumped over in front of the TV in her study. For a minute I imagined her kidnapped in some elaborate South American ransom scheme. Just the other day Tammy was telling me about how her Au Pair’s brother was kidnapped in Brazil—I won’t even get into the conversation where I said: Tammy, what the hell are you thinking hiring a hot young Brazilian girl with really big boobies to live in your home? And Tammy said, Please, it’s not like James is ever home anyhow. And besides, I don’t want my kids seen at the beach with just anyone. I won’t even go there. Instead I’ll go back to the brother. Apparently he heard a baby crying at a construction sight and when he stepped in to see what was wrong three men nabbed him and held him hostage. He was released once the family paid a steep ransom, (apparently even Tammy and her husband pitched in a few hundred, it was the least they could do. I mean think, Tammy said, of how awful it would be to find temporary childcare if the girl had to go back for the funeral, or worse yet, was so traumatized by the event that she had to go home!) Once the money was paid, he was released, unconscious, on a park bench, with a note attached to his shirt that read although your son appears unharmed, beware he was injected with illness. 310 Illness? I asked, poking at the lime in my drink with a straw. You know, HIV, typhoid, tetanus, tuberculosis, maybe all of them. The family is still waiting on tests. Wow, I said swallowing some crushed ice while making a mental note against Rio. The last place to look was the bathroom. I knocked three times before opening the door, Please oh please don’t let Imelda be dead in the tub, I pleaded as I threw back the shower curtain. 311 GHOST LIGHT. Before Junah actually died, and just after I outgrew my childish attempts on his life, I thought he actually had died and it nearly scared me to death. We were fourteen and fifteen, respectively, and we were home alone, which was a pretty big deal considering it was a school night and it was after dark. Our parents were at some sort of town hall meeting concerning the long stretch of greenbelts that separated Lodi from North Stockton and because the proposed legislation was about Eight Mile and whether or not to allow the construction of a strip mall behind what was now Chavez cherry stand, the meetings got rather heated and lasted well into the next morning, the fruit and asparagus farmers on one side, the middle-class suburbanites—desirous of larger stadiums for their high schools and newer tracts for their homes—on the other, and in between Ronnie Buck and J.T. Garamendi—the town developers—their pockets bulging with cash for the sell-outs. My parents were on the green side, as opposed to the greenback side, and my mother decorated the bumper of her Volvo with a glossy red stickers that read: Developers Go Build in Hell. My father, a self-proclaimed quiet farmer, who just wanted to be left alone to tend his grapes, gave impassioned speeches about sprawl, gentrification, oak trees and egrets, and was frequently quoted in the News Sentinel. In the morning, my mother would sit at the high kitchen counter, perched on a yellow stool, her glasses just about to fall off her pointy nose and read the articles aloud while the family ate Johnny cakes and peaches around the kitchen table. When she finished a column, she’d take a sip of heavily sweetened coffee from an ancient tea-cup passed down from my Polish grandmother, push her glasses back up on 312 her face and reach for the scissors, the sound of shears slicing through newsprint mixing easily with the clicks of tines on teeth and knives on plates. It had started as a normal night, dad packing boxes of flyers and supporting documents into the Volvo, mom icing small sugar cookies in the shape of trees and toads that read: Save Me. Junah and me in the barn, staring up at the rafters and peeling the veneer off leftover furniture. In the valley, it was the time of year when the air changed. One day in September it would be 102 and then, with not so much as a Delta breeze to quiet the heat, the frost began to form on the vines at night, collecting in whimsical drops on whatever remained of the heavy, unpicked fruit. It was one of those nights when the air tasted so good that you couldn’t stay inside, and so, without much else to do, we decided to walk the levee. It was a hot, dusty valley day. The kind of day that starts out hot and then grows exponentially hotter. The kind of day where the plows start up at seven—and not in the am, like they do in the fall, but at night. As we walked the levee from our farm to past the Stroud stead, Junah pointed towards the flood lights mounted to the roof racks of Warren Stroud’s tractor and said, squatting down so his eyes were level with the light, It’s got to be ten times harder, farming at night. At six am it’s hard enough, but at least you have light. Something to shield your eyes from, something to wear a brimmed hat against. But at night, he picked up a clod of sticky clay dirt and chucked it into the levee water, it’s got to be ten times harder. To emerge from the barn without shielding your eyes, to ride around on the Deere in the dark. 313 I never thought too much about it, I said, a ways down the levee path, but not yet out of earshot. But it’s interesting. To beat the heat, I’d figure, though how do you suppose they keep the lines straight? Instinct, Junah said, still squatting and squinting on the steep levee side. And when I close my eyes that’s the picture I have of him: Tall. Bent at the middle and caught in the lights of a plow above the levee. His feet boot-clad and brown with dirt, his jeans torn at the hem and his T-shirt white and ringed with sweat. The dust his hands stirred up as he traced the dirt, unearthing clods and rocks and roots, indistinguishable from the waves of particled light the tractor beams spit his way. And then, just like that, with the turn of the tractor he was gone. I thought, for a moment that it was a trick. Something about my eyes adjusting from the direct light of the tractor to the muted light of a few far-off stars, but even after a moment, even after several moments, he was gone. Junah? I called out, scanning the rows of grapevines stretched out to my left, where’d you go? He didn’t answer and I turned retracing my steps to the spot where he had just a moment ago crouched. June-Bug you bastard, where the hell are you? I could still see the lines his fingers had traced in the dirt and his boot prints walked southeast, like mine, but then stopped. There was something inside that told me something wasn’t right. Something inside that pushed up the panic instead of just assuming, like I usually did in some 314 instances that Junah was playing hide-and-seek in the vineyard. That he was off chasing a peacock or simply faking me out. Even still I willed him to pop up and shout: gotcha! Maybe throw a crawdad at my chest and then sprint towards the house where he’d dig into the whole carton of ice cream with a spoon, leaving the freezer door flapping in his haste. Junah Frances! I shouted again, This isn’t funny, where are you? And then, when there was no reply, a final, Junah I’m calling mom and dad. Laney Bamburger, that you carrying on over there? Mr. Stroud hollered, reaching the end of another line and turning the tractor back round. Yeah, it’s me, I said, holding up my hand to shield my eyes from the manufactured light. You okay, honey? What’s all that shoutin’ ‘bout? Yeah, I’m fine Mr. Stroud, I waved him on. Knowing full well that to tell my parents would be one thing, but to involve the neighbors, the hardworking neighbors as my father so fondly referred them as, well that would be quite another. But then, bathed in light, I looked down the incline and saw Junah’s boot, bobbing about on the scummy levee surface. I don’t know what the words were that I screamed, or even if there were words at all. I just remember a strange sound coming from somewhere inside as I slid down the levee’s bank and splashed, mouth open still screaming, into the reclaimed water. 315 Everybody in the valley has their own version of the story: the story about the kid who gets drunk and drowns in the levee. It happens every three years or so, around prom time or graduation or sometimes even on the first warm night after winter. The kid, most always a boy, most always a jock, was drunk and stupid, drunk and brave, drunk and young, drunk and show offish, drunk and—take your pick. Whichever you choose he was above all, drunk and forgetful that levee walls are slanted v like and even if you aren’t too drunk to remember, the algae sediment is usually too slick to counter. So the drunk kid slips in, or jumps in, or falls in or whatever and then splashes about while the other kids laugh and drink and toss him a beer, sure he’ll soon be able to get himself out, not realizing as the splashes turn from amusement into struggle. Not realizing until it’s too late. Occasionally—and these are the stories with the happily- ever-after—someone will be sober. Occasionally disaster is narrowly avoided by someone who thinks smart enough to tie a thick rope to whomever’s truck has the biggest bumper, lasso the swimmer and pull him up hog-style. But Junah wasn’t drunk and unless he lost his balance, hit his head… how the hell? Junah, I screamed, as I splashed through the water, holding up his boot and waving it at Stroud. Junnnaaahhhh! 316 MID-ACT ANTICLIMAX. Junah was down the street at Jennifer Anne’s. The story, when it came out, had something to do with her county fair lamb, and Junah, having spotted it escaped from its pen out of the corner of his eye, took off after the wooly critter with wordless stealth. To sneak up on it, he said. To catch it by surprise. The boot, well he didn’t know who’s it was but yeah, funny thing it did look an awful lot like his. Maybe I should have slapped him. Maybe Mr. Stroud should have given both of us a firm scolding and perhaps even a good licking, but when I saw him, sitting on the porch holding out an asparagus spear to Jennifer’s lamb, I could only cry and shake and run to him, and Mr. Stroud, wore out from shouting and lifting me—hysterical—out of the levee hog-style, could only do the same. And I wish I could say it ended there. An alarming misunderstanding. But it didn’t. After I thought Junah was dead, after I had to live, for only three minutes, with the empty thought of life without him, I knew I could never lose him. Just as sure as I knew I someday would. 317 SUPPORTING CAST. It was weird, but as I stood in Imelda’s bathroom, holding my breath before flinging open the door that led to the oversized tub, I felt it all over again, the warm creep of the levee water, the dim beam of the tractor light, searching for Junah’s bloated body, my own body flooded with fear, my eyes barely held open. Only this time the terror was unnamed. Clearly I didn’t love Imelda, at least not like Junah, but here was that sick feeling anyhow. The twitch in my left eye. The deep breath before looking into the tub for bodies. But, Thank the Mexican God of Catholicism, Imelda wasn’t floating in the basin, her neck snapped from a slip. All I found when I pulled back the curtain was some Aveda products and a loofah. And then me. Alone and sitting in an empty tub with all my clothes on, on my twenty-ninth birthday. Imelda’s tub was roomy. Not quite as expansive as my own, but totally nice. I flipped on the plasma TV, secretly hoping to catch one of those Telemundos she was always watching but instead all the Spanish stations were showing parades. What, was it some kind of new Holiday? On my birthday no less? I flipped to the home shopping network, wanting nothing more to numb my mind on faux gems and juicers bought in three easy payments from ex-Dallas cheerleaders and TV has-beens. On the way there, though, I flipped past CNN and learned it wasn’t a parade at all, it was a walkout, a protest, a massive demonstration in support of day-laborers and domestics. As I flipped the volume button I wondered why no one had invited me? I mean didn’t I, a vintner’s daughter, go a whole four years without eating grapes for Cesar Chavez? I scanned the aerial shots of downtown and Hollywood, looking for Ricky’s parents, looking for 318 Imelda, sure I’d see Venus, but I didn’t see anyone remotely recognizable, just the world going on without me, doing things I, not that long ago, would have been proud to say I did. 319 TURNING POINTS. When Imelda came back I gave her an enormous hug. I’m sorry, I whispered into her ear, and I’m so proud of you. Thank you, Mages, she said, pushing out of my arms, but proud of me for what? For standing up for what you believe. For taking to the streets with a cause. Oh that, she fanned her hand in the air. No, I wasn’t boycotting. I was moving a cousin, she said, as she pointed to the calendar we kept pinned to the kitchen wall. Oh, I said, looking at tiny 1” x 1” box with where I read ‘Imelda Off” printed in my own handwriting. Sorry, I didn’t remember. And besides, I said, more to myself as Imelda walked into the dining room with a can of pledge, I kind of hoped you were. Were where? Imelda said, spraying a circle of white foam on the side table. Nowhere, I said, clicking my nails on the counter. Good day to move, though, Imelda said as she rubbed the foam into the wood until the surface was shiny and clear. No traffic. We finished in half the time. I know, I said. About the traffic, I mean. And hey, where do you keep the Murano vase? You mean the really big green one from Italy? Yeah, I was looking for it yesterday and— It’s holding the Ricky flowers, on the credenza, she said. 320 ON LOCATION. Upstairs in my studio, I poured myself a drink and picked at little bits of dried glue and misplaced rhinestone. This had to be the single worst birthday ever. Well, not counting last year’s, of course, but I was still crying under the bed and this year I just wanted things to be different. I wanted to go somewhere, do something, and pretend to be the girl I looked like from afar. So, without much choice in the matter, I gave in and called Geneva. She seemed the least threatening of all the professional girlfriends, and she had a career. Okay, so it was mostly holding soaps and smoothing on lotions while advertisers shot stills of her hands, but she did make a pay check, on her own, and that was more than I could say for, well, for myself , really. It was awkward at first, mostly because I had to introduce myself as Magdalena of Diamond Myst who’s married to Ricky de la Cruz, Magdalena. And then because I had to tell her, No actually, I’m not calling about a job. You do have extraordinary hands, but we’re not doing print ads right now, when we do, I’ll be sure you’re first on the list. But after that it sort of smoothed out and although I still wouldn’t consider her a friend, she said she’d pick me up at nine and we could hit the Sunset Strip. In truth, I would have preferred something a little less showy, but I wasn’t driving and although it was my birthday, it wasn’t my party. Geneva showed up a little after 10:30. Traffic, she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder as if that said it all. 321 No worries, I said, as I slipped into the backseat of Geneva’s Jag next to Treena, Mia and Nikki, the bimbo from the pool. Adair was riding shotgun, Lucy, I was told, was on a real date and the stereo was blasting gangster rap. Ohmigosh! Nikki said as she slid her small hips over to make room for me in the backseat, you’re that Magdalena. Yeah, I said smiling, not quite knowing what to do with my legs. In the backseat of Geneva’s car they suddenly seemed longer than usual and hopelessly in the way. I tried to tuck them, uncomfortably, awkwardly, in between the door and the back of the passenger’s seat and although Adair did giggle sympathetically when she looked in the vanity mirror at the four of us crammed in the back, she—all five foot three inches of her—never offered to switch spots or even move up the seat a pinch. Squished, thigh to ass against Nikki, I scoped out the girls and secretly blessed the ‘Traffic’ that had caused Geneva to be an hour and a half late. I had almost worn a leather jacket and capris but at the last minute I ran back upstairs and threw on a pair of black Rock and Republic skinny jeans and a cashmere skull-pocket tee. Not that I hadn’t changed a gazillion times before that, but even still, in comparison I thought I looked all right. No, fuck that. I looked hot and maybe even a little bit dangerous. Not as hot as Lucy, maybe, but like they said she was on a real date and in her absence I was clearly the hottest girl in the car. Which, probably didn’t matter much, because I was also the only married girl in the car, but as I fingered the rock on my left hand and debated switching it to my right, just for the night, it might be fun to pretend. 322 Once the car was moving, north—slappin’ the bitches and pimpin’ the hoes— towards Sunset, the girls continued talking about whatever it was they were talking about before I got into the car. From what I could gather over the rap it had something to do with who Lucy was dating. Lucy, like most of the other girlfriends and every ex- bikini model I had ever met in L.A., was expensed. Which meant she never got ahead but she was well taken care of. Most of the men she dated had wives, first and seconds, so they couldn’t commit full time, but they put her up well enough. And she, in exchange had to put up with them. You see Lucy, Treena, Adair and maybe even Mia drove expensive cars. They had designer purses and boob jobs, they vacationed in the Maldives and used the back door at Parc and the Palm, but they rarely had enough cash to tip the doorman or even pay for a matinee on afternoons when they were stood up and sat at home, alone. And although they looked the part, and walked the part and did a bang up job of talking the part, they were totally and completely stuck and usually flat- ass broke. Because though the men they dated had no problem paying 30K for a six week sublet in Malibu and $500 a bottle for booze at a club they sometimes forgot to leave a little pocket money for valets and tips when they were back home with their wives and the girls were no longer in their presence. And although the girls’ designer wallets were filled with carte blanche cards for Neiman and Barneys, a department store credit card, no matter how tony, doesn’t get you very far when you need gas for your $80,000 Mercedes that isn’t even in your name. But apparently the new guy Lucy was dating was different. According to Nikki he was the producer/director of The Mummy or maybe it was The Rock? 323 You know, one of those desert movies that totally suck but bring in great gobs of cash, she said with a giggle. God, what I wouldn’t do to be in one of those, Geneva said, merging into the crawl of cars approaching the Sunset Strip. In the movie or the producer? Adair asked. Either one, Geneva said as she cut off a SUV Limo filled with shouting college kids. Fucking tourists, Treena said, as she rolled the sunroof closed before a Coors can or inflatable penis could make its way into the car by mistake. Any-hooow, Nikki said, bringing the attention back to her, apparently he’s never been married and he already bought her a Cartier watch. With or without? Treena asked. With, of course, Nikki said. Princess cut baguettes, an entire band of them. Wow, she must be doing some serious tricks, Mia said. Hardly, Nikki said, squirming in her seat while Geneva adjusted the stereo dial, she hasn’t even kissed him yet. Yeah, but she’s fucked him, Treena said. Surely. I swear to God, Nikki said, holding up both her hands to prove her fingers weren’t crossed, she totally has not. I’m telling you this one’s different. Sure he is, Adair said, until he threatens not to pay the taxes on the car he just bought her because she wouldn’t put out. 324 What? I asked, confused. Not sure how we went from watches to blowjobs to cars to taxes in not so much as three minutes. She’s just bitter, Geneva said, catching my eye through the rearview, because Dean just did it to her. Did what? Nikki, also apparently in the dark, asked. Oh fuck, Adair said, I just haven’t been into him, for like a while, you know? And he can’t take away the car because it’s in my name and he paid cash so his wife wouldn’t find out. But he can threaten not to pay the taxes because how the fuck am I going to come up with five grand to pay the fees on my fuckin’ Lexus? Ouch, Treena said, squeezing Adair’s shoulder. You should call his bluff, or better yet threaten to tell his wife. His wife’s pregnant, I said, thinking of Tammy’s round belly. Oooh! Even better Mia said. Yeah, that’d totally work, Adair said, so then he could threaten to tell my husband? You’re married? I asked Adair, incredulous. Honey, isn’t everyone? But he’s broke and besides, as long as I don’t rub it in his face I doubt he even cares. All the more reason why you should tell Dean you’re going to his wife, Treena agreed. 325 No, Adair said, reaching into her purse and reapplying her Chanel infrarouge lip-gloss. I told him if he didn’t pay the taxes I’d find someone who would. Geneva let out a hoot and then held her hand out for the lip-gloss tube, That’ll show him. Yeah, Adair said, checking her lips in tinted window glass, and the funny thing is, it worked. You mean you mean he paid? No, Adair said, tracing the line of her upper lip, I found someone who would. Who? Treena and Mia shouted in unison while Nikki said, Let me get this straight, you’re cheating on your boyfriend but you already have a husband? Yeah, I thought, bewildered in the backseat, my butt pressed tightly between the door and Nikki’s hips, let’s all get this straight. Whatever it takes to pay the rent, Adair said, and it’s not like they all don’t step out on me. Well, I don’t know if sleeping with your wife is exactly cheating, I said, thinking again about Tammy from the backseat. Honey, Adair said, if they were getting any from their wives do you really think they’d be sleeping with me? I don’t know, I said. Maybe. Well, I know, she said. And they’re not. At least not what they can get from me, and she, along with the rest of the girls laughed. 326 I pretended to laugh too, but I couldn’t help but notice that Adair failed to mention who the new moneyman was and as my cheeks burned, I pushed back the thought that it was Ricky. Instead I said, Are we there yet? I could totally go for a drink. Soon Sweetie, Geneva said. We’re just going to scope out a few spots first. 327 SURVEY BEATS. After we killed an hour and a half driving around and parking with various valets (my cash), flirting with various bouncers (Treena’s tits) and getting into clubs (Adair’s sass) only to leave without so much as a drink, because the people who we apparently wanted to be seen with were no where in sight—all the while texting and talking three ways on five of our six cell phones—we ended up at True, the first place we tried, but now, according to Geneva, unlike the first time, it was ‘So on.’ Which was made resoundingly clear by the fact that we had to wait in line, even after Geneva slipped the doorman a hundred bucks and Treena offered to give him a blowjob. For free. I didn’t know if she was kidding, and truthfully I didn’t much care. What I cared about was getting into the club before—heaven help us all—I was seen standing on a Sunset curb by Cheri or Sherry or Donna. So I ran my tongue across my lips, stuck out my chest and did something I never thought I’d do: I sashayed up to the bouncer, fanning my black American Express in front of my face and said, Magdalena de la Cruz. I’m on the list. Maybe I was on the list, or maybe the fact that we were six attractive women without a man—even a gay one—in tow played in our favor, but regardless the bouncer unclipped the velvet rope and let us slide by. The girls were delighted, and secretly so was I, though when Mia grabbed my arm and asked me what I said to get us in while Adair pouted dethroned from her job, I just shrugged and said, Nothing. 328 Part cigar bar, part pop museum True was awash in white smoke and glass. The waitresses, clad in thigh-high white boots and super short polyester shifts, held their drinks in old-school around-the-neck cigar boxes while barefoot dancers in gauze bikinis bopped about atop white felt pool tables. The crystal-flecked LED lit floors supported low-lying white leather sofas and three sleek bars, where I, suddenly the unofficial leader of the group, steered the girls. Gin and tonics all the way around, I said, slapping my card on the counter before Adair could once again change her mind and demand we go someplace else. But on mine, I winked at the bartender adorned in white linen, leave out the tonic. Whatever you say, the bartender said. And as I threw back my first glass of gin, I was glad I went out. Hey, Nikki said, slipping out of her shoes, which I noticed were Valentino, wanna play? She had boosted herself up on one of the many white felt pool tables and was gyrating around a pool cue while she playfully kicked translucent billiard balls into the left corner pocket. Ohh, let’s do teams, Adair said, finishing the drink I had paid for and ordering another, on my tab. How about Geneva, Mia and me against Nikki, Treena and you, she pointed her finger directly at me. I sat back on my barstool and smiled, No thanks, I said. I think I’ll sit this one out. 329 Oh come on, Treena said, tugging at my wrist and sloshing her drink onto the glass floor. Yeah, pl-eeee-ase, Nikki said, picking up the pool cue and pointing it at me from across the smoky bar while she wiggled her hips. Fine, I said, finishing up my drink and nodding to the bartender that I’d need another, preferably stronger drink in a just a few seconds. Unbeknownst to the girls this was my first game of billiards, ever and not, as Treena suspected my first of the evening or as Nikki asked my first in L.A., but — be it hard to believe— the first of my life. Sure I’d batted the ball around on occasion. Maybe even played a game or two in Uncle Jerry's rec-room when I was nine. Hell, according to one of the versions of how I met Ricky, I was a virtual pool shark, but truth be told, this was my first ever in-the-bar game of billiards and it goes without saying we lost. In the beginning even Adair was supportive. She showed me how to rack’em, she held the cue over the white felt and drew imaginary little lines; hell, she even knocked a few of my stripes in ‘by accident’ and didn't enforce the ‘call the pocket’ rule. As the evening wore on however, somewhere after her seventeenth drink but just before she took off her panties and flung them, rubber-band style, at a guy at the bar she changed. She turned into a belligerent drunk and I remembered why—aside from the fact that she was most likely fucking my husband—I hated her. I mean come on, 330 flinging your panties rubber-band style? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for women's rights, hell, in Berkeley my roommate Jennifer and I used to jog Bay to Breakers in the buff to assert our optimal feminine dominance upon the prudish phallocentric world, but to pull your panties off in a bar and then carelessly sling them at strangers, to do that honey, you’ve got to be Claudia Schiffer. I mean, I'm not a super-model, but I'm a hell of a lot hotter than Adair and you don't see me launching my personals through the air. And secondly, even if I were to toss my drawers (which by the way, I am not) but if I were, I'd at least make sure they were pretty. Lacy, thongy, crotchless, edible, something more than blue cotton Gap 4 for $25.00 specials. I mean, really. But there Adair was, boosting herself up on the table like Nikki had earlier and then, to do her one better, shimmying out of her skivvies like it was god-damned Mardi Graw and she was Angelina Jolie. What's even worse, (if you can still bear me going there) is the guy. He didn't seem to mind. Did I expect him to be grateful? Certainly not. Did I expect him to hold them up and rub them on his face? Hell no. But I did expect him to scold her? I certainly did. I expected, no I needed him to stand up and say, You dirty little bird, put you undies back on your filthy self and don't let me catch them flying in my or anyone else's direction ever again. 331 But he didn't. He just sat there, Adair's underwear static-stuck to his leather jacket and continued with his drink. Clearly it was up to me. So with much protest, and a possible flashing, I got her into a cab and because she couldn’t remember her own address drove us back to my place where she promptly passed out— clothed but not pantied—on the porch swing. I threw her a blanket, left on the light, and secretly hoped she'd wake up to roaches. The next day she pretended nothing happened. She knocked on the door, asked Imelda for an Advil, or maybe five, and when I came down the stairs, still glaring and pissy, She said she forgot, but did I have fun? I just stared, poured myself a glass of Evian and went back to bed. 332 THE SILENT SCREENPLAY. When Ricky eventually returned from Thailand I was exhausted and lethargic. So when he said, Did you keep busy while I was away? I did not have to lie to say, Yes. Yes I was busy. Busy with the second hand on the clock that counted out the hours until daylight. Busy sorting rhinestones. Busy keeping track of Treena and Mia and their respective boyfriend’s wives, and Nikki’s gyrating and Adair’s panties and a whole lot else I’d rather not know. But most of all I was busy fighting the memories and the sick feeling that always creeps in when it’s 3 am and I’m home alone. So when Ricky returned home and said, Did you keep busy while I was away? I did not have to lie to say, Yes. When Ricky said, What did you do? Then the lie will begin, because I did not, as I claimed, finish two new paintings and come up with an idea for a third. I did not look into the rising trend of exporting water to expatriates in Prava and Prague. These are all things I may have done if I didn’t have a purse full of pharmaceuticals and an overactive imagination to feed. 333 WORKING WITHIN THE GAP. I cinched my left shoulder up near my ear to steady the phone I tucked in place while I opened the stainless steel cabinet with one hand and reached for a can of tomato paste with the other. The view inside the cabinets was stunning; while Ricky was in Fiji I decided to have Imelda organize the sundries by color and so four-ounce cans of tomato paste were backed up against half-quart jugs of V8 and translucent jars of Prego and Ragu—but only the mushroom and sausage variety. The garden vegetable and spicy three-pepper medley had green and yellow labels, respectively, and so they were smushed behind the French cut beans and the Pad Thai noodle mix. It was always a dilemma, when organizing by color, to decide between external packaging and internal product, but if I had gone for the insides the Caribbean black beans would have rubbed sides with the raisins and that was not at all appetizing. In Ricky’s absence I decided to renew my interest in color, hoping it would light some hidden creative spark. I’d had my nails done chili-pepper orange and was trying to convince Jersi, my colorist, to dye my roots black so that I would look like a bleached blonde. I was on the other line with him, scheduling a day when my mother beeped through on the other line. I clicked over and she immediately started in with gophers and the damn nonsense they’ve been doing to the lawn lately. I reached down to itch my shin and pressed the receiver between my cheekbone and my clavicle. Fake nails never scratched right. Rather they agitated the itch. I pressed on until my shin shone red with thin little lines, still unsatisfied, and pushed the side of my chin into the redial button, which beeped loudly into my ear. 334 Laney, that your other line? No, I said, reaching up to the magnetic knife strip above the stove to unstick the can opener, and while pulling a little too hard, upsetting the rack of cast iron pots above the marble island, causing them to clatter and crash against one another. I opened the handles of the can opener and sank the silver tooth into the lip of the can. So about those gophers, mom continued as she putzed about in her own kitchen. Mom, really, I said, pushing a pepper-colored nail up the side of the phone to inch the volume a notch higher while simultaneously squeezing on the grip of the opener, can’t you just hire someone to exterminate them? And pay two hundred bucks for something I could so easily do myself. For free. Well, Dad used to pay us to kill the gophers, I said, when we were kids. There was silence on the other end. He used to pay us a dollar for every gopher we killed. He would set half the neighborhood up with bats in front of the holes on the lawn. Then he would tunnel the garden hose down the biggest one, the gopher den, and hit the water full blast. Somewhere deep inside gopher land the great flood would splash through the curves and catacombs and when the damn dirty bastards poked their heads out of the ground for air that’s when we would strike. Wham Wham Wham! like that arcade game at Chuck E. Cheese. I know, my mom said. 335 I cinched down on the phone with my cheek again and used my free hand to twirl the little turnie thingy around the can. Little cans were always harder. I pressed down as I turned, trying to get a little leverage and the paste slid out from beneath my grip and landed with a thud and a bit of red ooze on the mosaic tile below, smashing a yellow bezina to bits. Fuck, I said, jumping back a bit, not wanting to get any of the sauce on my peacock feathered shoes. Yes. Fuck. I laughed, Fucking fuck. You okay? Yeah. Just messed up the floor. So how’d you know, about the gophers? Junah told me. What? I asked, boosting myself back up onto the counter and sitting Indian style with my elbows on my knees, bent over, one hand on the phone, the other pushing against my forehead. I shut my eyes and imagined blood running through my eyelids. He used to tell me everything. There was silence. We both cleared our throats. He wasn’t secretive like you, she said. I wiggled my feet so that my shoes slid with a clunk to the floor. I reached out with one pointed foot and rolled the fallen can towards me with my chili-peppered toes. When it was near enough I took aim and kicked. It slammed into the vent below the 336 fridge and then ricocheted off a chair leg, leaving a little stream of globby red funk trailing behind. Making dinner? Mom asked, when she heard the crash. Yeah, I said trying not to go there. I’m making chili. With beans. I reached the bottle cap part of the can opener towards my shin, but then thought better of it. Mom, when we were kids how come you never made us chili with beans? Your father doesn’t like beans, Mom said before heading right back to prairie dog extermination. But he cooks his own meals now, on that camping stove in the barn, right? And I bet you still never make chili with beans. Always those damn curly noodles and hamburger, like a Sloppy Joe. Your father doesn’t eat every meal in the barn. We do go out occasionally, when I can convince him to shower. And besides, it’s not exactly like you’re home to find out for yourself. What’s that supposed to mean? Nothing, she said, as I heard a wine cork unstuck with a pop from across the line. But it would be nice if someone slept in this house besides me. After Junah died and before my mother took up the bottle and my father took up permanent residency in the broke down barn I read an article that said over 80% of parents who lose children separate within the first year. And although I had an urge to 337 clip it out and mail it to mom, just like I had the urge to tell her about it now, I resisted. Instead I said, Tell me about it. It’s almost 10pm and Ricky is where? Tell you about what? Mom asked as I heard her raise the bottle up to her mouth and take a swig. Tell you that if you moved back up north you wouldn’t be alone? And I wouldn’t be alone? We could be together? Or that maybe if you came home once in a while, gave a damn about someone other than yourself, you could convince your father to move back in the house, or at least you could get him to stop urinating out by the peach tree like a goddamned caveman. She took another swig, and the lip of the bottle clicked against her front teeth. It was getting harder. I took a breath, but then couldn’t stop myself, well maybe if you could acknowledge a simple thing like my birthday, I would. Well, maybe, she was talking around the glass rim of the bottle and her words were liquored, if you came home I’d throw you a party. Ever think of that? Could you at least use a glass, mom? I mean seriously, would it be so hard to use a glass at least? Why? I mean why the fuck bother anymore? Because I can’t go back there. You know that. I can’t look at the house, his room. And the neighbors and their whispering. It’s bad enough being a girl on the street, but I can’t be the girl with the dead brother on the street. That I can’t do. Stop! Just stop. You could if you wanted, you don’t. Okay, mom I gotta go. 338 No, Magdalena, you already left and last time I checked, son trumped brother so take that to your shrink and smoke it. 339 LAW OF CONFLICT. Ricky came home at 10:30 in the evening, half-starved—he always seemed to be half-starved—only to find me still perched on top of the cabinets like some goddamned toucan, red funk and uncooked curly noodles scattered on the floor. He reached for the phone, which was making the beeping-off-the-hook noise and set it down in the cradle. What now? he asked. Before we were married he would kiss me when he walked through the door. He would say something like Gorgeous, toss his bag on the couch, and search me out. If I was cooking, putting a little more cumin on the Moroccan chicken, he would grab me from behind and kiss the back of my neck. He said the food tasted better that way. Now he said, Mags, the food would taste better if it wasn’t on the floor. I thought. I thought of what to say so as not to burst into tears. What I wanted to say was, Love me. Because sometimes my mother spontaneously cries and says things like: What if I die before I get to meet my grandchildren? and I have nothing to say to her. Because it’s killing me. You’re killing me. And I miss you. And I need you. And can we move back up north and try to be the way we used to be? Please. But instead I shrieked, Fuck you! jumped off the counter, ran down the hall and locked myself in the bathroom. The entire time that I was running, which wasn’t very far, just up the stairs and down the hall, I knew I was behaving badly. But I couldn’t stop myself. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, died at fifty-five. My mother would turn fifty-nine in twelve days. My mother was not there when grandma died, though both of my aunts were. I 340 was told grandma died singing. When the death call came I answered on the second ring. I was seven. And when I said hello my mother screamed. She screamed and screamed and wouldn’t stop screaming. She was in front of the stove folding marshmallows into Rice Crispies, nowhere near the phone that was nailed to the wall above the light switch, but she knew. On the drive to the airport, the whole family in a yellow Plymouth wagon with faux wood siding, I said, We still have two grandmas. Out loud. That’s what I said out loud. In my head I continued, One on earth and one in heaven, but I didn’t continue out loud. It was something I remembered the minister on T.V., a bearded man who looked more like Colonel Sanders from Kentucky Fried Chicken and less like Jesus Christ, saying. At seven, in the car, it started. I stopped being able to finish out loud, but more than anything I wished that I could now. The summer before my grandmother died, when I was six, my father and I drove to Oklahoma; dad on business and me just to visit. It was canning season and the task was strawberry jam. I only remember two things: first, falling asleep on the way to buy jars and waking up in an unfamiliar parking lot with my grandmother gone and second, the face of my cousin Scooter as he tried to break my arm. Supposedly that summer I also learned how to cross-stitch. Supposedly in my grandmother’s coffin I placed an unfinished oven mitt with half an orange daisy embroidered on the face. But these were other people’s memories. I didn’t go to the funeral. But I went to the buffet afterwards 341 where Junah pushed green and black olives onto his fingers and chased our cousin Wanda around the coffee table. Ricky, I shouted in a shrill voice from behind the bathroom door, if my mother dies before I have children a part of me will die too. A part not unlike the chunk of my heart that tumbled down a hard rock wall with Junah. 342 PARADIGMATIC ANALYSIS. The next morning, in an attempt to make up for the failed dinner of the past night I slipped out of bed while Ricky was in the shower and made my way downstairs to make omelets. Now I’m not going to pretend that I’m one of those women who’s so far removed from the kitchen that she doesn’t know where the eggs are, much less how to crack one. I may not be able to light the pilot or clean the crisper in the sub-zero, or even find a vase, but I can make a mean Hungarian Goulash, a smokey pulled pork and one bad-ass chocolate mink. Without question I can beat an egg. Which is exactly what I was doing, beating, when Ricky breezed down the stairs and made his way towards the blender. As I whisked and stirred, making progressively more noise with each flick of my wrist, I watched him add two scoops of protein powder, a cup of soy, six strawberries and a whole banana to the glass pitcher. It was only when he reached for the egg carton and found it missing that he noticed me. Denver or Spanish? I asked as I poured the eggs into the sizzling pan. He hesitated. I saw it in the movement of his pointer finger as it reached to press the liquefy button on the blender. I watched the eggs bubble around the edges of the pan and pointed with a knife towards the chopping block where I had neat piles of diced ham, green peppers, and cheddar or alternatively, potatoes, onion and green olive. 343 Wow, Mags, I wish I could have got some advance notice on all this. He looked to his watch and then back to me. It’s just that I have the Petrulakis proposal in T-minus thirty. He pressed the liquefy button. Sorry, babe. No worries, I dropped a handful of cheese into the pan and flipped the eggs. Sorry, he said again and kissed me on the forehead as he made his way towards the shelf with the portable mugs. By the way, he asked, have you seen my glasses? Third drawer of the buffet. Not my regular ones, my driving glasses, I’m taking the Spyder. Top down, you know? Upstairs in your closet, second shelf on the left, the summer accessory section. Great, he said, heading up taking the stairs two at a time. I pushed stop on the blender, poured the contents into his mug and placed it next to his briefcase. Imelda, I said, can you go upstairs and help Ricky find his Porsche glasses? You know the funny-looking ones? Right, upstairs, Ricky said, as he followed Imelda up. Once I was sure no one was looking, I opened his briefcase and looked inside. In addition to the Petrulakis proposal, a pack of spearmint flavored Orbits gum, three proofs of the new ad campaign and a Forbes article on the IBWA Bottled Water Hall of Fame, there was a handwritten note from Nina. Congrats on the Aqua Award. Enjoyed working with you on our little project in Thailand. If you need anything…I picked up 344 the note and hid it under the toaster. Then I picked up the pan held it over Ricky’s briefcase and slipped the omelet inside. When Imelda, followed by Ricky, wearing his hopelessly goofy driving goggles came down the stairs I was standing by the front door, Ricky’s briefcase in one hand and his protein shake in the other. Careful, I smiled, the Spyder doesn’t have cup holders and you wouldn’t want to make a spill. Right he said, taking three long swigs of the shake and then handing the mug back to me. Have a nice day, he said, kissing me on the cheek and bouncing happily out the door. You too, I said, and the door shut. After he left I stood looking at the doorframe, listening for the old throaty purr of the Spyder as it slid out the drive. But I couldn’t hear it. What I heard instead was Imelda smacking a rug against the banister, inside the house, and the invisible sound of a gazillion microparticles of dust smacking against walls and couches, hardwood floors and Tiffany lamps. While Imelda worked her revenge against the upholstery I decided to go for a drive. Taking a cue from Ricky I knotted a cherry scarf around my head, pushed my 345 Didion frames against my cheeks and slipped my fingers into the soft white leather of my driving gloves. It was a top down day, I was gonna take the ‘Vette. The ‘Vette was a gift and if you want to get technical, it’s also actually mine. Gifted to me by Ricky last Christmas it sits in the garage mostly because Ricky’s too afraid to drive it on public streets and, on the two occasions he actually let me man the wheel we only got as far as Robertson before, drenched with sweat and throwing out cuss-words, he made me turn around because the trip was just too stressful. Even still he let me have a key—probably to impress other people who might, what, be looking through my key-chain for signs of prosperity and wealth? It was Monday, early morning, and although I knew I risked rush hour, it felt like a good time for a long drive. 346 ACT RHYTHM. I like to drive. Not to anywhere in particular because I have no place in particular to go, but I’m addicted to freeways. The 110 to the 405 to the 10 to the 5. It’s so L.A. I used to like driving more when I had a piece-of-shit Escort. It was stick shift and unreliable and I never knew where I’d end up stranded. Since the move to L.A., nothing’s been unreliable, at least in terms of cars and appliances. Whenever something breaks and I attempt to fix it, Ricky goes all red in the face. Magdalena, there are people for that, he says. I used to be afraid of those people. When I first moved to L.A. my mother would download stories off the internet about everything that happened to L.A. women. Then she would e-mail them to me. Her favorites were car jackings and wives raped in their own homes by plumbers and pool men. For a good year-and-a-half, whenever the people would come over to carpet, clean, deliver, or fix, I would sit on the porch with my cell phone and a container of carefully concealed Mace. One day the guy who was delivering our Hepplewhite sideboard was early, can you frickin’ imagine that? Early in L.A. So I didn’t have time to prepare. I actually had to talk to him. We had a very nice conversation about yachting. He had just bought a Tartan 37 footer named Molly Putz and we talked about tacking, marina fees, tall teak toe rails and shellac. Fuck me, but who knew? I suppose it figures, though, the amount of money Ricky pays him—correct that, the amount of money we pay him to deliver, times seven or eight deliveries a day, damned if I wouldn’t buy a boat too. 347 Now I consider breaking things just for conversation. Like the tank. It’s silver and colossal and has a gazillion cylinders. So I run over things for adventure. It started with those little concrete blocks that separate parking spaces; initially I had to escape an irate gas-man, but once I realized I could do it, I started to run things over on a regular basis. My favorites are orange tubes. Not the cones; those get caught in-between your tires and can’t clear the muffler so you end up dragging them for a block or two and people look at you funny. But the orange tubes, they’re taller and usually stuck to the asphalt by a black hexagon. They’re also a harder plastic so when you run over them you get a nice click thump rather than just a chub. The trouble is the tubes are usually located on on-ramps to alert your attention to cement dividers, so it’s quite a trick running over the tubes and still clearing the concrete. A trick I’ll most likely be avoiding today, considering the ‘Vette and all. I mean I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the pinnacle of caution, but I’m not exactly malicious either although I should add—and not many people know this—Corvettes are impossible to maneuver unless you are a driving professional, which I am not. I like to drive. This is different from driving well. When you’re in a Polo White ’53 ‘Vette with a personalized license plate that reads ARTGRL, you can’t see the front from the back, parking’s a bitch and you can forget cutting anyone off. I much prefer shitty little convertibles like Miatas, Cabrios and Capris. But Ricky insisted first on the vintage Corvette and then, when he realized the stress of driving it, of my driving it—and he had his little break-down about vintage ‘Vettes and the Duke and how some things just couldn’t be restored—he bought me a 348 brand new tank disguised as a Mercedes SUV. Said it was a responsible family car. Shit, why not buy me a Volvo and a backseat full of Russian babies? Because a-of-all I’m not pregnant, and b-of-all with the amount of time we spend together I probably never will be. Not that it’s a good idea to bring a child into this relationship. Not only because of the infidelity issue, but also because I might try running over something and, with or without a baby in back, that would be plain irresponsible. 349 STRUCTURE. The best part about freeways is the lane change. I like to cross from middle to fast without hitting the reflective bumps that divide the road. It takes a lot of practice, especially at speeds above sixty, but if you tune into the blinker, if you play the clicks of the flashing green light like a metronome, you can usually succeed provided some asshole –the type who refuses the courtesy wave—doesn’t speed up when he sees you attempting the merge. I always give the courtesy wave; it’s like waiting the requisite three seconds before making a left on yellow: necessary survival. If I were a cop, I’d ticket anyone who didn’t wave. It’s inexcusable. Almost as bad as strutting down Rodeo with a flea-market Preda purse or fucking another woman’s husband. I said almost all right? When we first moved to L.A. my favorite thing to say was, That’s so L.A. I used it to describe just about everything from fake boobs to traffic. Then I got implants and started to drive. Drive not to go someplace, but as sport. On the 10 you can pick out the regulars from the tourists. Those who merge left just before the lane ends and then have to merge back right again, versus those who know the La Brea shortcut: exit but don’t ever get off. During a crunch you can save five minutes plus if there’s a pile-up. My favorite time to drive is early morning and right before dark. I like the added thrill of the sun in your eyes. It throws mirage into the game and the DJ’s are at their prime. 350 Sig alert on the Santa Monica freeway west, the Shady Lady hums through my speakers. Since nobody’s going anywhere anyhow I’ll take caller number nine for some naked rush hour bingo. I shit you not. Bingo. Naked. In rush hour. Shady Lady here. Name, make, and license plate, please. Oh Hi-yee! I’m Alyson, with a y, and I’m in a silver 325i on the 10 west, wearing pink and black- Which, as you may realize, is the physical description of a gazillion people on the 10, but everyone plays along. Okay listeners we’re on the prowl for a silver Beemer license 1MY325I. If you see her honk and Alyson, you know the rules: you lose a piece of clothing for every honk you hear. As if there isn’t enough honking on the 10. As if taking your clothes off while stuck in traffic weren’t so L.A. After a while Ricky banned me from saying it ever again. First off, he huffed, nothing is so L.A., and secondly, we are not in L.A., we’re in the Beverly Hills. It’s a totally different thing. I said okay, but I really wanted to point out that differentiating himself from Los Angeles proper was, of itself, so L.A because no one is actually from L.A. Of course, Ricky doesn’t understand this. Ricky doesn’t understand a lot of things. For example, Ricky is really happy about my career in art. I am bored out of my fucking— 351 My fucking phone is ringing. Vibrating around in the ashtray while it sings Ricky’s Take Me Out To The Ballgame ring. Hello? What the hell, Mags? I know. Traffic’s a bitch, isn’t it? That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. What? Honey, you’re breaking up. I’m on the 10, near the Robertson exit, you know how it gets spotty, I lied. He was coming through clear as water. That was the Petrulakis proposal you breakfasted on. Petrulakis as in how I plan to pay for that gas-guzzling G500 you’re motoring about in. He wasn’t fooling anyone. I knew he paid cash for the Mercedes. In full. And besides he never planned on anything. We were above that now. I’m not motoring about in the G 500. I’m in the ‘Vette. You’re in what? Ricky said. What? I repeated. Babe, I really can’t hear you. Get off the freeway, Ricky said. Go straight home. I set the phone in my lap and fiddled with the radio dial. Love you too, I said. Call you back when I get better recep—I clicked the phone shut. I was in the fast lane, cruising along at 10, maybe 15 miles an hour. I sighed and flipped on my blinker, not because Ricky told me to, but because it felt like time to 352 make a graceful exit, to head for the hills, to cruise the canyons. I took Robertson north through SoRo, past Pico, and Olympic, and Wilshire, as the used car dealerships of Crestwood melted into the kosher Delis of Beverlywood turned to the lavish boutiques of Beverly Hills. The phone rang, I let it go through to voicemail. The phone rang again, I clicked the reject button. The phone rang a third time, I answered, didn’t say anything and then hung up. Before it could ring a fourth, Ricky’s smiling face dancing across the ID panel of the receiver, I clicked messages and clicked again on voice mail. Phone to my ear the mechanical voice asked for my password. Blonde, I said into the voice recognition system. Error, It spoke back. Please speak or press your password again now. Blonde, I repeated. Error, it said again. Please speak or press… I took the phone away from my ear: 2-5-check-the-road-6-check-the-road-6- check-the-road, I typed when, 3-check-the-road, the light at the intersection of Beverly turned yellow and instead of speeding up the car ahead of me, a fucking blue Mini, slowed to a fuck! stop. I slammed on my brakes and checked the rearview simultaneously. My hands sweat through the soft white leather of my gloves, I wasn’t going to stop in time. I cranked the wheel a hard, too hard, right and—though I almost made it into a boutique parking lot—I rolled instead into the foot of a giant pole. 353 When I opened my eyes there wasn’t any smoke or a geyser of water from some broken gasket or other like I expected. There was no airbag so the steering column remained intact and I hugged the wheel desperately. I looked around, expecting a crowd, but with the exception of a couple of gawkers from the outdoor café across the street no one stared. In fact, no one had even stopped. I unbuckled my seatbelt. You okay? An espresso drinking kid shouted from across the street. I waved my arm affirmatively in the air, I’m fine. I opened the driver’s door and then shut it again, afraid to step outside and assess the damage. Instead I looked to the giant pole and followed it up, twenty feet maybe more, to where a billboard advertising exotic car rentals and private planes sat perched high above. The phone rang a fourth time. I opened the door again, this time without looking, and, still without looking, I stepped out onto the sidewalk and walked down the street in search of a bathroom, a bar, and a straw in exactly that order. 354 TYPECAST. At the Ivy I tossed the valet my keys and when he looked bewildered towards the curb where my car did not sit idling, I shrugged and pointed toward the billboard a half block down. The long-haired girl who passed out menus politely pretended not to notice my tears as she led me to my table of one, sat me outside near the faux-fence beneath a white umbrella. I sat facing south, my back to the wreck, and because it wasn’t yet noon, I ordered three chocolate chip cookies, which were soft and gooey, and a bottle of Cabernet that I insisted upon pouring myself. Between my first and second glass I sent a 911 text to Puck, who should, by my calculations be somewhere near the international wing of LAX on a non-stop from India. Instead of typing anything I just held my phone above my head and snapped a picture in the direction of the billboard, a picture of the menu and my cookies and my bottle of wine. Between my second and third glass I counted the number of nights in the last year Ricky was supposedly away on business: 93. Between my third and fourth glass I ordered three more cookies. Mag-da-lane-a! Is that you? Adair followed by Treena and smelling of lilac sashayed over to the table and bent down as if to kiss me on the cheek. I shoved an entire cookie into my mouth and said a mumbled, No. No, woman, I’ve never met you before in my life, and if you’ll excuse me, I brushed some crumbs from my lap as I reached for my bag, I’ve got to be going. I stood up, slapped a credit card on the table and left, Treena and Adair smirking at one another in my absence. 355 I flew past the long haired girl who said something like have a nice day or maybe valet and when I reached the curb I walked fast in the opposite direction. I knew that speed was the only way to keep back the tears that were dangerously close to welling over. I knew that if I walked fast enough in my heels, that if I could breeze past the boutiques and flower shops and designer hardware stores, the Juicy, and the amaryllis, and the claw foot tubs, the tears would stay in, but if I slowed, if I faltered, if the glue or nails or whatever it was keeping my heel to my sole should separate and crack and cause me to fall, in a sort of half heap on the corner, the tears would slip out, the tears slide out, the tears are starting, slow at first and then frenzied. A frenzied sobbing ridiculous girl, tied-up in a cherry-colored scarf, sitting on the curb in a Donna Reed dress, her taffeta petticoats riding up in a pout around her knees, crying about a broken shoe, a broken car, a broken heart and so much more. 356 DEUS EX MACHINA. With one bare foot in the gutter and my butt still seated on the curb, the tears were still turning, pouring out tumultuous when I met Quentin. That bad huh? he said, sitting down beside me but not too close. Just kind of there, at a safe distance, but there all the same. I pushed my glasses hard against my face, Yes. He didn’t ask more. Wasn’t one of those people who pretend to be concerned about blubbering women on the sidewalk. He just sat down beside me and lit a cigarette. For me it was a better version of those walk-up psychics who, walking down Melrose, sense your aura could use a little cleansing and feel the need, for a small fee, to schedule you a reading. Quentin was in the right place at the right time, or maybe I was. He said, Crying get you much? I stopped then. Maybe even I laughed. Ricky doesn’t like it when I cry. The first time I cried I thought he was going to start crying, too. He got all cute and crazy and for that moment I could have gotten away with anything. But later, Ricky didn’t care anymore if I cried or not. He thought that two years was enough to get over anything, including Junah. He started calling me melodramatic. Then he said, You cry so much your tears have lost their meaning. That really made me cry. What Ricky didn’t know, couldn’t possibly understand, was that the tears, they were a good thing. That my heart still had enough of him in it to cry over. When the 357 tears stopped it would be worse. Much much worse. But I didn’t say as much to Quentin. What I said instead was, Cigarette? He flipped out a package of Lucky Strikes. I took one and held it in my hand a long time: inhaled, coughed, exhaled, before I said, When I was sixteen I convinced my daddy to let me borrow his 1936 Chevy Pro Street pick-up. I’ll bet you did, Quentin said, smoke escaping as he spoke. Cotton candy blue and newly restored, he threw me the keys, much to my mother’s horror, and said, Drive safe. Clearly I wasn’t listening or maybe I was more concerned with securing my scarf to my choppy yellow hair. I turned the wrong way down a one-way street and collided with an officer of the peace. I cried. Huh, Quentin coughed, looking down my legs to my lavender toenails. But a quiet, one tear dripping from beneath my large gold sunglasses kind of cry, and said I was sorry. I got off. Quentin shook his head and put out his cigarette on the chipped gray curb before crushing the butt with his shoe, Goddamn girls. I ignored him, and, cigarette still in hand, pushed back a cuticle. With daddy I cried huge, hiccuppy, my life is going to end here and now kind of sobs. I got off again. Figures, Quentin said, and shrugged as he pulled in his legs. He had a lot of leg; legs that nearly reached his chin and he hadn’t the faintest idea of what to do with them hunched along the curb. Probably when he went out for a smoke he perched on the fire- hydrant or leaned up against the wall watching people pass, but next to me his 358 awkwardness was thin and comfortable; his tallness familiar. He had long, hair that wasn’t stringy or greasy, but voluminous, and it sort of waved, in unkempt curls, around his shoulders. He would have made a beautiful girl had his Adam’s apple not jutted out extensively far from the center of his neck. He made an all right guy too. But I said, you can’t just keep on doing it. The crying. And getting away with it. The crashing. It’s like after awhile when they run your plates their little computer thingy spits out Crier. That’s funny, Quentin said. Like at the dentist. After my name it reads Biter. They’ve got us figured out. Anyhow, I continued, letting the cigarette grow slowly into ash, I just did it again, only different, in my ‘53 Corvette. Had there been water in Quentin’s mouth, had he been sucking on candy or chewing tobacco, surely he would have choked it up his nose, but because his mouth was dry and his eyes locked with mine, he simply let down his shoulders and said, You have a ’53 ‘Vette? Well I did, I said, motioning towards the street. But now it’s kind of wrecked. And you’re sure it’s a ’53? That’s what they tell me. As in first model run, only 300 ever made, 1953 ‘Vette, and you crashed-- Yes, I said before he could finish. He didn’t say anything then. He pulled out his cigarettes and banged them against a strip of silver duct tape on his palm. Maybe he didn’t believe me. Regardless, 359 he reached into his wallet and held out a card. I took it but I don’t think he intended to give it to me. I could tell by the way he paused when pulling out his wallet; the way his finger twitched a little when it went beneath the photo of him and a pretty red-haired girl to retrieve it; the way he held it in his hand a little too long, so that the corner was wet with thumb perspiration before he handed it over. He said the guys at La Cienega Collision specialized in classics and could work something out. He said he had a cousin or something. He said, Tell ‘em Quentin sent you. And then he said, what color? 360 ARCHPLOT. Asshole. The ’53 ‘Vette only comes in one color: Polo white with red interior. I would have said as much to Quentin and his little trick of a question but it didn’t really seem relevant. Help me up? I said instead as I held out my hands. He hesitated, again, for just a moment too long and then, tossing his cigarette into the gutter, he grabbed my hands in his and pulled me up off the curb. His hands were dry and calloused, something I didn’t expect from such a pretty face, and the tape across his left palm was sticky. Standing up on the curb, one red d’orsay pump on my foot and the other, heel- less and broken on the sidewalk, I was still shorter than Quentin who stood in the street, in a vintage pair of Pumas, holding my hands. Unusual. Not only because I’m taller than most girls, but with three-inch heels and a step up from the curb, I’m usually taller than most boys, too. But as I stood looking at Quentin, I had to kind of tilt my head to look him in the eye. When our eyes met he dropped my hands, but kept looking at me, intently. What? I asked, smoothing out the flounce of my dress. Nothing, he said, stuffing a long fingered hand into his front pocket, you’re just tall. Or tall-er rather. 361 Not taller than you I said, breaking the gaze and moving my eyes up his face to the sky. But I’m a guy and you, he said, with a squint, are not. No, I said, shaking my head, I very much am not. Hey, he said, pulling his hand from his pocket and reaching out in an apologetic gesture, tall is sexy. I like tall, especially on teary, shoeless girls. My delivery’s usually way cooler, it’s just that I can’t shake the feeling that I know you from somewhere. Now it was my turn to smirk. Yeah, that’s real original. But no, sorry to say, I don’t think we’ve met. But if you want, to meet me I mean, I’ll buy you a tall drink of something. He paused and looked to an invisible watch on his naked wrist, Isn’t it kind of early? I pulled my cell phone from my Birkin bag, It’s 12:42, I said and waited, tottering on my one good shoe, my other bare foot on tiptoe. He picked at the tape on his left palm, looked me over and then said, Gotta get to work. I’m twelve minutes late already. I looked him over then, his tattered blue jeans and tight white t-shirt. Definitely not business, but not a waiter either. Most likely blue collar, but maybe, I crossed my fingers in my mind, maybe an actor, maybe a poet, maybe just maybe Quentin did art. Where’s work? I asked. Across the street, he nodded towards a yellow utility truck. Some blonde supposedly just drove her car into a billboard. I’m the guy who has to fix it. 362 I smiled and stepped out of my one good shoe. Barefoot on the corner of Beverly and Robertson, I waved and walked in the opposite direction of Quentin who walked down and then across the street. 363 CLIMAX AND CHARACTER. The valet at the Ivy called me a cab and when it arrived it wasn’t yellow. It was green with a billboard for Match.com on the roof. Why isn’t anything like the movies? I got in, cringed as my bare feet touched the filthy floorboards, and told the driver to head west towards Diamond Myst. I could have called Ricky. I could have called his secretary and had her send over a driver and the company car. Hell, I could have called our Mercedes dealer and had them drop off a loaner tank, but I called Puck and left a message: keys with at the Ivy, car at the pole and then I called a cab and sat on the grubby vinyl bench seat in my frilly-girly dress as we drove to the office because I wanted to see Ricky’s face when I told him about the ‘Vette. I gave the driver a fifty and asked him to wait. Said that I’d only be a minute. And as I rode the elevator up to the fifty-sixth floor I rehearsed what I would say to Ricky. I anticipated the dramatic pause I would leave for him to explode, for me to burst into tears, for him to come to his senses and embrace me, in an it’s-okay-it’s-only-a-car- I’m-glad-you’re-alright-hug. Or, alternatively, not come to his senses in which case I’d start screaming and create such a high-profile and thoroughly public ruckus that he’d have no choice but to lower his voice and apologize, embracing me in a slightly less sincere, yet still forgiving hug. A hug, that’s why I needed to go to the office in person. If only Ricky would hug me again, like he used to, like he meant it. 364 I took a deep breath and walked out of the elevator. His secretary was on the phone and as she saw me approach she covered the mouthpiece with her hand and whisper-said to me, Ricky’s in a meeting right now. Right, I said as I glided past her in my bare feet. No really! she said, as my hand reached for the doorknob to Ricky’s office, It’s best if you don’t— I opened the door. Inside, instead of finding a half-dozen important looking men scratching their heads and shouting over one another about cost analysis and market figures, there was just Nina sitting in Ricky’s silver Herman Miller chair, her feet on his desk and her hair down, falling long across her back. Just Nina and Ricky! Who was leaning over her shoulder, close enough to smell the rosemary mint of her shampoo, close enough to brush his lips against her naked neck as they talked in low whispers. Wow, I said, with no hint of exclamation. Mags, Ricky said as he stood up and took a few steps away from Nina, what are you doing here? Walking in on a very important meeting, apparently. Nina stood up. She smoothed her charcoal grey pencil skirt over her thighs and looked embarrassed to her stocking-clad feet as she stuttered to explain, we were just going over the Fiji figures... No really, I said walking across the plush pile rug, make yourself comfortable. In fact, since you aren’t using these, I picked up her shoes, black alligator Chloe pumps, 365 I’m sure you won’t mind if I borrow them. I broke mine when I crashed the ‘Vette. You know, Ricky, the 1953 only 300 ever made John fucking Wayne sold it because he was—like me—too tall to fit in it polo white ‘Vette you bought from the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book Fantasy Section and gifted to me last Christmas? Well I ran it into a billboard. I didn’t wait for him to respond. In fact I didn’t even look at his face. Throughout my entire monologue, a monologue completely contrary to the ones I’d composed on the elevator ride up, I looked only at Nina. Then, turning on borrowed heels, I left. 366 IDEALIST, PESSIMIST, IRONIST. Nina had sharp green eyes and big feet. I had to take precise, planted steps and hold on to the front of her pumps with curled toes to keep from stepping out of them. Thankfully, I could take it slow. After walking out of the office and not slamming the door I realized that no one was following me. That Ricky wasn’t running after me. That I was in the elevator, and then the lobby, and finally back in the green cab, quiet and alone. No really, completely alone. The cabby, keys still in the ignition and cab still running, was nowhere to be found. I opened the back passenger’s door, grateful it was unlocked, and sat silently inside. I pushed my oversized sunglasses tight against my cheeks and waited for the tears but they didn’t come. So I reached my arm through the small opening in the Plexiglas partition that divided the cab into front and back and honked the horn. Nothing. I picked at the layers of pink and red netting that stuck out from the bottom of my maraschino-printed dress. Still nothing. I reached my arm back through the divide and gave two more honks, longer this time, and if, at all possible, with attitude. When he still failed to arrive I picked up my phone and sent another text to Puck. 411 I typed and then snapped a self-portrait of me inside the cab. It wasn’t an emergency anymore, it was just a fact. Fact: I was sitting in the backseat of a green cab in front of the building that Fact: housed a cooperation that I created, but Fact: no longer worked for while my husband Fact: quite possibly screwed an intern with excellent, but Fact: expensive taste, which made me wonder just how much were we 367 paying her that she could afford Chloe anyhow? JesusMaryandJoseph was I blind? Of course we were paying her a fucking fortune. She was fucking the CEO. Solidarity my ass. I reached my arm to the front, about to honk a fourth time when the cabby appeared, carrying two double ice-blended caramel macchiatos with whip. He handed me one with part of the paper still attached to the top of the straw. I took it, felt the cold of the ice as it perspired through the plastic cup and said, Thank you. No problem. He placed his drink in the cup holder, and looked at me through the rearview, Where to? Home, I said. I want to go home. 368 CONTROLLING IDEA. Maybe my mother was right. Maybe it was time to go home to the brown ranch I grew up in, because suddenly I wanted nothing more than to crawl under the green- gingham bedspread of my childhood and sleep. I wanted to love Ricky as I loved Junah: completely. I wanted to love him to death. And not in the I’m so furious I could kill you kind of way, but in the I love you so intensely, so madly and insanely that I sometimes dream of pushing you off tall places, of suffocating you in your sleep, of beating you senseless with a shoe, my love for you is so fierce. 369 THE GAP IN PROGRESSION. As I licked the whipped cream from the top of my drink I debated telling the cabby to head north on the 5, but figured a seven-hour metered ride through the central valley might be pressing my luck, so I gave him my address in Beverly Hills. He let me out, by request, at the end of the circular drive near the side door. I handed him another fifty and offered to throw away his coffee cup. He declined, gave me a funny half smile and headed back down the drive. Just after he turned left onto Bedford and the lime green of his cab disappeared into the lush foliage that lined our street, I realized I didn’t have my keys. That they were probably still neatly hung on a hook, sans car, in the valet box at the Ivy. Which was really fucking fabulous, especially since Imelda was most likely still mad as hell, and so, without even trying to knock on the door that led to the big house, I went through the garage to my studio. Inside I headed towards the bar, which was artfully disguised behind a Cindy Sherman (original) print, when something decidedly male coughed. I grabbed the Costco-sized bottle of gin by the neck and spun around, holding the green glass in front of me like a weapon, when Puck, sprawled across the chaise and flipping through fashion magazines said, No thanks, I’m not thirsty. Damnit, Puck, you know how I am… how I get… fuck. I unscrewed the cap of the bottle and poured. Long day? 370 You don’t know the half of it, I took a sip. Try me, he said sitting up and smoothing out a spot next to him for me to sit. So I sat and I tried. The car and the cookies were easy to explain. Quentin—a little more difficult—I decided to leave out, but Ricky and Nina and Nina and Ricky, how do I even? So I tried. 371 RHETORIC. When Ricky started saying mean things—and by mean I mean those really mean things you can’t come back from—when he started saying those really mean things they sounded like: Maybe if you made something of yourself, instead of making yourself another drink like your mother, maybe then you’d stop blaming everyone else for fucking up your own life. They sounded like: I never knew there could be so much space between two bodies on a queen-sized bed, so much space it may as well be the loneliest place in the world. They sounded like: Who are you and where is the girl I fell in love with? Just where exactly is that girl right now? 372 THE NATURE OF CHOICE. Wait, let me get this straight, Puck said, when we were eating Thai takeout from white cardboard boxes and I had finally managed to get most of the story of Ricky, and Nina, and that damn Corvette out and into the air. When you walked in on them, they were whispering? I pushed a piece of bamboo shoot around the bottom of my takeout container with my chopsticks and said, Technically, yes, but— No buts, Puck held his hand out—STOP—in front of me, I just want the facts. Yes, I nodded, while putting a piece of green curry chicken in my mouth. And they were fully clothed? Except for those, I pointed towards Nina’s shoes. Okay, so no one was untucked, their lips were not locked, and everybody’s hands were above the breasts? Yes, but— But what? But I could just tell. Mags, Puck said, sliding closer to me on the couch and putting his head on my shoulder, are you sure you’re not confusing what you want to happen with what is actually happening? Why on earth would I, would anyone, actually want their husband to be cheating on them? I don’t know, said Puck. You tell me. 373 Tell you what? I said, pushing away from Puck. That if I had a baby, a boy around five or six, that maybe I could just look the other way while my husband fucks half of L.A. Maybe, for the sake of the family I could just suck it up and make out with the pool boy? Well I won’t. Because I don’t need to be reminded that I don’t have a kid or even a kid brother because Junah, as you know, is dead. Magdalena, don’t. Don’t what? I stood up spilling glass noodles across my lap. Don’t go there, Puck said, trying to redirect my anger with the calm of his voice. Why not? Maybe there is exactly where I should go. Maybe I should just go out and fuck senseless the first married man I find. Fuck him to even the score. Fuck him to find out how it’s done. Nail him and then take notes. I mean why wait? Why lounge around my house in Beverly Hills becoming the best bimbo I can be all the while waiting to walk in on my replacement? Why not just load up the tank with Saks’ summer line and leave? Well maybe you should. Leave, Puck said. Go back to your ranch or whatever it is. But I can tell you one thing, fucking a married man isn’t going to make Ricky love you more. Fuck you. No really, maybe you’re right, he said, dangling my key ring in front of me. Maybe you don’t belong in L.A. You can take the girl out of the valley but – 374 Seriously, I snatched my keys from his outstretched hand, I am just barely holding on here and you think a weekend with mom and her bottle, watching dad barbecue his dinner in the shed, is going to snap me back to reality? Well I sure as hell hope something does, because it’s about time you realize Junah isn’t coming back. I slapped him then, straight across the face, with my keys still in my open palm. He didn’t say anything. Not even ouch. Instead he pursed his lips into a thin, tight line and left. The lingering smack of hands and keys against soft face flesh echoed in the studio air. 375 TAKE FOUR. THE INCITING INCIDENT. I want to be the other woman. You know, the one who fucks your husband while you’re PTAing with the kids; the one who spends alternate Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday mornings with your fiancée while you’re Yoga-wrapped in a salutation to the sun. I want to wear $90 panties and do it doggy-style. I want to hang half-off the tailgate of your boyfriend’s burgundy F150 while he fucks me like a racehorse. I want to swallow. I want to suck. But I want to do other things too. I plan to listen well and I won’t nag. Not about the laundry or the bills or the baby. I won’t be the one who pressured him to marry me when we were twenty-three and I sure as hell won’t make him make nice to my parents. That’s your job, sweetie: you and your fake nails, fake tits and fake laugh. It may have took me a little bit longer than I would have liked, but yesterday, I got smart and stuffed everything I owned into my Mercedes and left. Just shut the door and drove the San Diego Freeway north—which, I might add, is in the exact opposite direction of San Diego. Freeways in L.A. never will make any sense to me. But neither will setting out to wreck a home just because I suspect I was wrecked. Yet that is exactly what I’m about to do. Home-wrecker. 376 Harlot. If you had asked me two days ago I would have told you I preferred things the old fashioned way: Highway 99, which cuts through the San Joaquin Valley north and south and has no additional name; tangerines with seeds; marriage. But not today. Today I say, Fuck it. Or rather, Fuck me. Because today I want to be unfaithful. I want to know, firsthand, how it’s done. 377 THE POLITICS OF STORY DESIGN. Leaving didn’t take long really. I mean not as long as you might think. For some reason, the leavers—divorcées, and otherwise—always try to make you believe they’ve been meditating on their departure for years: Do I go. Do I not go? If I leave will I still maintain my eligibility on his dental plan? If I stay will I maintain my sanity? Turns out all it takes is one really long day and poof, the car you didn’t crash is packed and you’re wearing the other woman’s shoes and angling for cones on the interstate. As I drove north through the valley, past Castaic and into the grapevine, I made a mental list of all the eligible, or rather ineligible, men that I knew. The problem with most of them was that if they weren’t already cheating they were too fat or too old to be realistically considered. As I was spit out of the grapevine and passed Tejon Ranch I ran out of men and realized I had to turn around. Consciously or unconsciously I was headed home, to Lodi, to Berkeley, to the north, where nice things like Glinda the Good Witch and fidelity hailed. If I was going to learn how to be unfaithful, for real and for good, I need to stay south in the Land of the Locusts. I grabbed a cheeseburger and a chocolate malt at In-N-Out, gassed up the tank, and headed back to L.A. It was probably brain freeze from the shake, but as I sucked through the straw I recalled the perfect candidate. He was tall, with long hair, but not in a sissy or stringy kind of way. He wasn’t involved with the water set. I didn’t know his wife or children, in fact I didn’t really know him, except for our brief post-accident encounter where we shared a cigarette on the side of the street. I grabbed my purse and dug for my wallet and there, 378 after some major shifting and searching, stuck between my Bloomingdales charge and my black AmEx was a card for La Cienega Collision with Quentin penciled on the back. 379 THE QUEST. I suppose I was expecting to find Quentin greasy and under the belly of a ’67 Barracuda Formula S or maybe a Lime Lite Green ’69 GTO, something classic with a loud engine and some muscle. He’d be on his back on one of those roller thingies and I’d walk up, straddle his long legs, and fish him out. In my mind, it would take him a moment to realize I was there. Maybe a guy named Sal or Tony would give a low whistle or a Yo Quen’tin, to clue him in, but probably it would be just us. And he would look down or across or however it is you look out from under a car and see my ostrich- feathered pumps, the dimple above my left ankle, and ever so slowly he’d come. Sliding on his back until he was firmly between my legs. He’d be polite. Shielding his eyes from the noon sun and leaving a greasy smudge across his forehead, he’d say, Hey, while trying to sit up and I’d say Hi, putting my foot on his chest and pushing him down, and out, like a cigarette butt. He’d pretend to be surprised, maybe even a little shocked but while his eyes were widening his hand would be climbing the backside of my calf, pulling me down onto him. He would taste dirty—that I could be sure of—like smoke and unwashed grapes and wherever he touched me it would leave a mark. Slippery brown fingerprints that I would wear like Tiffany’s: showy and proud. I’d unzip his denim jumper slowly, lingering on the whiteness of his chest, his uneven tan tines and his rippled abs. Or better yet, I’d get on all fours and unzip him with my teeth, tugging at the little steel pull, leaving small traces of MAC as I went. My hands on his shoulders, knees on the oil-spotted concrete, I’d wink and work my way down. When I reached his cock I’d slow, just slightly, push my lips into an o-shaped 380 kiss, and blow. Not him, but on it until it pressed against the zipper, rose beneath the denim and pushed against my throat, wanting to be released, and then I’d tug, on the pull, until I had passed it, until I was halfway to his left knee and then, slower than before, I’d lick my way back up. I’d linger on the waistband of his baby blue boxers, following the elastic bit with my tongue from his hipbone to his navel; I’d bite onto the center, and again, rip down. And his mouth, no longer able to stand the strain of surprise, would relax and he would aaahhh while he maneuvered his way under my white cotton shirt to unfasten my vintage carnelian bra. He would be clumsy, looking for a clasp instead of a tie, but by the time he found the bow and gave the strings a tug, my Sue Wong skirt would be up around my hips and I’d push down onto his dick. And we’d fuck. Right there on the garage floor, rolling back and forth on the dolly with each thrust. And when we were through we’d toast ourselves with 19-year-old scotch. But when I got there, Quentin wasn’t in and instead of Tony and Sal there was an overweight receptionist with extra-long turquoise nails, named Wendy, who informed me that Brick, the guy on the front of the card, was out to lunch and, Ain’t no one working here named Quentin, hon. But I left the scotch, with a note and a fifty just to be sure, and checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel. 381 LEAVE ROOM FOR THE ACTOR. Ricky’s sister Cheri was the first to introduce me to the Beverly Hills Hotel. After our little outing on Rodeo we went to the Cabana Club to get our wits back about ourselves over icy cold mango margaritas, blended, no salt. Salt bloats. I’m actually allergic to mango, but when I tried to say as much, Cheri started in on the Polo Lounge and how she really couldn’t believe Ricky hadn’t taken me there yet. Although I had convinced Ricky on more than one occasion to put on a jacket and take me out we had never actually stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel and so when the concierge asked if I had a reservation I said, of course. Bungalow Five for Mrs. Ricky de la Cruz. He typed on his keyboard, scanned his screen and looked back at me. I removed my sunglasses from my face and gave him an icy stare. de la Cruz, is that with an e or without. Without. And the dela, is it one word or— Two. Two. I continued to give him my best do-you-know-who-I-am glare while clicking the arm of my sunglasses against my teeth. I apologize, ma’am, but the first name is? 382 Magdalena, but it’s under my husband’s name. De la Cruz. As in de la Cruz owner and founder of Diamond Myst water. This was a first. Not that I hadn’t namedropped before, but I had never namedropped in the ‘do you know who I am’ style of namedropping. In fact, I vowed never to be so blatantly appalling after I overheard Tori Spelling throwing a fit of her own at Wrap Scissors Paper on La Cienega when the counter girl wouldn’t let her use the ribbon cutting scissors to cut through a cardboard box. These scissors have a special blade, the girl explained. Do you know who I am? Tori exploded in a bad bit of Hollywood entitlement. I could buy this entire store if I wanted so give me the damn scissors. Undoubtedly she probably could buy the store, or at least she could have if she made up with her mother. Hell, if she made nice with Candy and got back in the will she probably could buy the whole block, Beverly Center included, but that didn’t give her special scissors rights. Of course, Mrs. de la Cruz. He was reddening a bit in his cheeks. Is there a problem? I asked. No, no problem, he said, clicking on his mouse repeatedly, maybe it’s under your address. My address? Yes, you do have an address? Of course I have an address. 730 N. Bedford, I blurted out before I could think better of it. Bedford, in Beverly Hills? Yes, about three blocks that way, I pointed. 383 Right, he said. It’s the foyer, I lied. A total nightmare so we’re doing a complete remodel and the pounding, I held my black American Express card to my temple in a dramatic gesture, is more than I can stand. I’ll probably be here for an extended stay. I smiled and the boy behind the counter smiled back at me, but this time his grin was different, less quizzical and more compassionate. As if I wasn’t the first Beverly Hills housewife to walk out on her husband and take up in the Hotel. Blaming the carpet or the plumbing or the goddamned paint that’s taking forever to dry. You’re in luck! He exclaimed, as he swiped my card, It appears that Bungalow Five is already occupied, but we do have the Sunset Suite. Impossible, I said, near tears. I always stay in Bungalow Five. Your staff assured me that Bungalow Five would be reserved for me beginning this afternoon. Do you remember who it was exactly that you spoke to, ma’am? I looked at his name badge and said, Ian, does it look like I have time to take names? No ma’am, he replied. And please, stop calling me ma’am. Certainly, Mrs. de la Cruz. I didn’t tell him the reason I was making such a fuss over Bungalow Five was because it was reportedly the very same Bungalow where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned and so I figured it was the perfect place to end a marriage as well. 384 Maybe he knew as much because he said, you know, not many people are aware of this, but Lana Turner stayed in the Sunset Suite with four of her seven husbands. Really? I asked, refusing to make eye contact by staring off at the banana leafed wallpaper. Really, he said, as he reached across the marble counter and patted my hand. I thought that might be of interest to you, since you’re redesigning her foyer and all. Well, technically, I smiled, it’s my foyer now, but I appreciate what you’re saying. The Sunset Suite’ll be fine. Fabulous, he said, tapping my hand once more before typing something into his computer. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time during your stay with us, and if you need anything, he gave me his card, give me a call. Thank you, I said, palming his card and handing him my keys. My things are in the car, I’ll be in the Cabana Club. Let me know when it’s ready. How they managed to get my things upstairs without suitcases I’ll never know. Maybe they used large green lawn bags, or maybe they just backed the tank up to the service elevator and tossed everything inside. Maybe misplaced L.A. wives were commonplace and they had a system, but whatever it was it worked and by the time the bellhop came round to the pool where I was sitting on an umbrella-covered lounge chair and sipping on a pina colada, to tell me my room was ready, my clothes were all perfectly hung on glossy wooden hangers in the walk-in closet of my new temporary $2,000 a night residence. 385 I had considered, briefly, the Four Seasons, renting one of those penthouse thingies and drinking my liver larger, but the Beverly Hills Hotel wasn’t in walking distance of anything and they had the most adorable little pool-side palms. So if Quentin didn’t get the scotch maybe he’d get an inkling for a swim. Maybe I should call and inquire. Maybe I should call 411. Maybe I should call my mother. Maybe I should dial 209-555-2855 and let it ring until I’m home. Just crawl right up the line and fall out onto the hardwood floor of my mother’s yellow kitchen and cry. No, fuck that. If I wanted tears I’d drive back to Ricky and I’d cry him a whole new line. Saline Spritzer, he could call it and bottle it up in a Diamond wrapper for $2.95 a liter. Remove the phone from the cradle. Look at the handset until the Beverly Hills Hotel desk clerk says, Ma’am? And then wonder how you slipped? How you slipped from Miss to Ma’am without lift or a tuck or a stomach full of embryonic fluid and stretch marks the size of Japan. Hang up. Pick up and dial Mom. And in between the repeating deet deet deet of the busy tone slip still further into a past life, a life where your wardrobe consisted of blue jeans and t-shirts and not a whole lot more. 386 THE WORLD OF A CHARACTER. When the busy beeps stopped and my mother said hello, I said, Hi. Under my breath I said, I’m sorry. To myself I said, I was wrong. Laney, my mom asked, is that you sweetheart? Yes. Where are you? You sound far away or hollow. Maybe both. I hope you’re not talking to me on that cell phone while driving. You know that’s dangerous, especially in L.A. I have an article somewhere around here that I’ve been meaning to send to you, I could hear her open the heavy door of her file cabinet and sift through her alphabetical magazine index, that says people who drive while on the phone, even if they wear a headset, are thirty times more likely to get in a wreck, and in Los Angeles, she was still sifting, it more than quadruples. I’m not driving, so you can stay on the line. Well where are you? The connection sounds hollow. I’m in Santa Fe, I lied. New Mexico, or is that some kind of trendy new L.A. hot spot? New Mexico. And you’re there because… her voice was on the verge of panic, but I could tell she was exhibiting some restraint just in case I happened to be there on business instead of say, her worst fear, escaping the wreckage of my burnt-to-the-ground-in-a-riot home. Because I need some time to think. 387 You can’t just think at home? What, California isn’t big enough? You need to fly to another state? I didn’t fly, I lied. I drove so I could think. About what? I don’t know. Stuff. Me and Ricky. You and Dad. Junah. Stuff. She was quiet. Too quiet. Mom? Yeah. I’m sorry. For what? For all of it, you know? Yeah, she said, uncorking another bottle, I know. But I’m over it. You should get over it too. And while you’re at it, stand up straight, get some comfortable shoes, those heels you wear will give back problems by the time you’re thirty-five. Get a haircut that doesn’t take two hours to blow dry. Laugh at yourself and, for Christ’s sake, stop thinking so damned much about your relationship. You honestly think anyone gives a damn? I tried to answer but the beeping of call waiting cut off my words. Answer it, mom said, maybe it’ll be someone who can help you stop thinking so much. Okay I said, but when I clicked over it was a voice I didn’t recognize. A musical male voice that said, Hey. 388 THE FIRST STEP. Hey. Hello? Hey, the voice said again. So I was thinkin’ that since I was in the neighborhood I might be able to borrow some ice? Quentin? Yeah? Oh my God are you hurt? Do you need me to bring you some ice? No, said Quentin, laughing, inhaling. I was wondering since I was in the neighborhood if I might borrow some ice and perhaps a glass to put it in because I have some scotch. No, um, yes, I said, swooping whole piles of clothes from the bed onto the floor and attempting to push them beneath with my foot. No ice? Yes. I mean, no. I grabbed a pile of panties—the green, aqua, and lace pile—and pushed them into the drawer with the Beverly Hills phone directory and shopping guide. I have ice. So you have enough to spare? I could hear his fingers drum against the metallic box of the pay phone. Mind if I come up? No, I mean yes. Just. Come up. Hang up. Grab the cheesecake box. Where to put the cheesecake box? In the tub. Everything that doesn’t fit under the bed goes into the tub. And then he knocked. A loud 389 knock followed by two short raps all with knuckles and I peeped out the peephole and saw him sway with the bottle, half outside the frame waiting for an invitation. I took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and said, Come in. Sit down. Ice. Before he arrived I thought I would fuck him. Fuck him to fuck over Ricky, to even the score of my lopsided marriage, but there Quentin was: tall, with thick tan shoulders, leaning in the jam. He had a very long chest, big arms, and dark brown hair that grew long and away from his temples in boyish waves. The scotch he held in his left hand and with his right he kept smoothing away a piece of imaginary hair that had fallen into his eyes. I watched him survey the room, but what’s more I could feel him. The way he sized up the mahogany breakfast table, still littered with Kleenex, the green leafy butts of bitten strawberries, and an overturned magnum of Laurent Perrier Grand Siecle. I could feel he had misjudged the situation too. I wanted to explain that I had brought the booze with me; that I hadn’t paid $210 for alcohol as the room-service menu claimed; that Ricky and I bought it by the case, $165 a bottle from a wholesale guy in Napa; but it wasn’t true, and besides, I didn’t want to point out the extravagance. In case Quentin didn’t know. In case Quentin didn’t fucking care. He looked to the table and then to the chairs—all seven and the desk and loveseat covered by clothes: bras wrapped around the armrests, blouses and coats over the backs and pants piled in unfolded heaps on the seats. Before Quentin arrived I had been sorting, by season, as opposed to say, designer or texture, and although I had tried to shove errant parts of Fall 2006 under the California king-sized bed, Quentin’s knock came too soon and bits of brightly colored Dolce and Gabbana and Gianfranco Ferre 390 stuck out from beneath the ruffled bed-skirt. When Quentin stopped surveying the room and began to assess me, I shrugged and looked sideways to the bed, which was made, but by no effort of my own. In my memory it seems that he made the trip from the door to the bed in two steps, but maybe that’s just how it seemed. What I know for fact is that when he decided to come all the way into the room, he never took his eyes off me. I tried to look back at him, but I could feel my eyes grow red and puffy. I hadn’t had time to put on any lip-gloss, not to mention fix my hair, which was tied up in a tousled ponytail. So when he did sit down, on the far right corner of the bed, the corner closest to the balcony and opposite any pillows, I left the room. Glass, I said, pointing to the scotch he still choked by the neck, but rather than heading towards the bar, I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door. What the fuck was I doing? I had seen the picture in his wallet. The one of him and some redheaded chick sitting knee to knee on a merry-go-round. I mean who the hell rides a merry-go-round anyhow? And who’s to say she wasn’t his sister or an old roommate from college? That they were even still together? Though the trembling of his fingers, okay, not trembling, but the slight tic… the slight tic in his fingers as he reached beneath the picture for his card… I mean, who’s to say? But I knew. Staring at my grey eyes in the mirror, massaging my temples with my index finger, I knew and yet I pulled out the rubber band, brushed my fingers through my long hair, smoothed on some gloss and walked back out to Quentin with a glass in hand; all the while knowing full damned well: Quentin had a wife. 391 I sat in the middle of the bed and I brought the ice with me. It sloshed around in the carafe and gave me something to look at, something to do besides move my leg half an inch closer to Quentin when I thought he wouldn’t notice. It was a strange game we played, holding the bottle a little too long so our fingers touched when we passed it between us. Adjusting and repositioning, slowly. Fighting for possession of the awkward space between us. Ricky and I were about the same height: 6’ 0,” though Ricky always said he was 6’2” even when, in my three-inch heels, I towered over him. Quentin, however, had to be 6’ 6”, though he seemed still taller, his legs stretching every which way, uncomfortable. Her name is Sarah, he said, just to get it out there. Something other than worn floral fabric to keep us apart. Sarah, I repeated and then coughed on some ice. Yeah, Sarah, he said, leaning back on the bed and rubbing the underside of his thumb against the bare skin of my shin, and she’s short. I slid back also, letting my head rest against the large down pillows—was this how you had an affair?—and pushed my legs out so that suddenly Quentin was in the space that would be my lap, if I were seated. He leaned back so that my legs tucked neatly beneath his arms, one on each side of his waist, and I waited. What was I supposed to do? Ask, Wanna’ fuck? Want me to suck your dick with my finger up your ass until your head explodes and then you can go home and hug your wife? Want to hug me instead? I said nothing. 392 Quentin continued to run his fingers down my legs, tracing some invisible pattern. I got tattoos, he finally said, running his nails from my knees to the arches of my feet. I wiggled my toes, I figured as much. One right here, he said tracing the line of my calf, and another, he said turning on his side, and then on his stomach, so that his face was now near my navel, right here. His hand was moving along my waistline; creeping up ever so slowly under my shirt, but it stopped. He stopped. And one more, he continued, turning us both around so that I was on my side also and his hand moved up the small of my back, right here, between my shoulder blades. I suspect he wanted me to ask what they were. To ask if I could see them, but for some reason I could only stare out the window and look at the palms as they swayed in the wind. This is what happens when you let things talk themselves out. Suddenly, just like a Timotei commercial, we were hugging and not fucking. Not doing anything you’re supposed to do when you’re on the run from your own life and wrecking another woman’s home. But because I couldn’t say her name, because I was never really able, after the first time to say Sarah out loud, what I said instead was, Maybe you should go. 393 THE GIFT OF ENDURANCE. But he didn’t. He sat up and took off his shoes, then his shirt, and finally his pants. See, he said, spinning around before falling back onto the bed, peacocks and lions. The tattoos made it easier. Like him, I began by tracing, from mane to tail. He had two big-top prides parading around his thigh, and one enormous purple peacock frozen in full plumage on his chest. Its neck stretched up his breastbone and the eye of its uppermost feathers encircled his nipples in neat rings. I started in on a dirty orange claw, tracing its scrawny leg up Quentin’s pelvis until I reached their shared navel. It wasn’t inked on the inside and looked kind of funny, a bit too big for the belly of a bird. I moved my index finder around inside it and then back down the other leg, moving dangerously close to his hard dick. Tattooed flesh feels different. Unreal and slippery almost, like the soft leather of overpriced shoes. When I turned him over, his back was all monkeys. And not gorillas or chimpanzees, but the blue and yellow plastic kind that you link together from out of a barrel. I tasted them, sucking with tiny kisses, and they tasted different. But maybe it had nothing to do with the shape or the color, Quentin tasted different than Ricky. I bit down. Right in the middle of a left-shouldermonkey, I bit into Quentin’s flesh and he flinched. No, he shook his head with his tongue pressed against his lips. No marks, he said aloud and I knew why. I thought Sarah, I thought Ricky, and I turned away from Quentin and bit into my own flesh. Just below the shoulder I sank my teeth into my skin 394 and sucked until it bruised. I have tattoos too, I told him. They just haven’t been inked yet. My clothes came off easily, like in college when my roommate Jennifer and I used to snip the seams of our panties halfway so that, later, when they came off, the boys thought they’d ripped them. When we were both completely naked, I couldn’t see much of Quentin at all, we were lying too close, but I could feel him; the entire fucking circus of Quentin and his markings was moving their way over me. Every curve of his body, every ink-drawn line was taking possession and suddenly I couldn’t get Sarah out of my mind. How did she manage Quentin’s carnival? Or worse yet, did she have some of her own? Somewhere on the small of her back was there an aviary plumage and a squawking beak attached to a bird that just wouldn’t shut up: That’s not how Quentin likes it. That’s not how Quentin likes it, like the goddamned Tiki Room. Starting out, I don’t know exactly what I thought infidelity was supposed to feel like, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. When you ask around they always make it sound fantastic. Like fucking your brains out or sex times ten. But this was awkward, uncomfortable even. Maybe it was different because we knew we wouldn’t get caught. Even if Ricky did track me down, he wasn’t the type to bust down a door. And Sarah, who really knows? Maybe, like me, she was wrecked. Maybe, just knowing Quentin and I were inside wouldn’t be enough. She’d need to see it. She’d need to know how and why. She wouldn’t bust down the door but she’d slip in quietly. Climb the palms up to the balcony, and slip in through the French doors. Perched on the end of the bed, 395 she’d smooth out the covers and whisper, Lean back. He likes it when you arch. Push in, not down. Get on top. And before I could tell what had happened, Like this, let me show you, she’d shove me off and we’d switched places. Sarah on Quentin and me in the corner, where I finally could scream, I feel something, Ricky! because I’d know how it was done. How someone could cheat on their bereaved wife and get away with it. How someone could fuck a man they knew full well was married and not even mind. Maybe being the other woman would teach me something too. Teach me how I could make my husband love me. Teach me how to be more than just a wife. But, and here was the kicker, flat and still on my back, I was the other woman making love like the wife. No this wouldn’t do at all. So I arched my back and he slipped right out. Surprise, I said, and climbed on top, and that is how it was done. 396 THE POINT OF NO RETURN. I wasn’t afraid until he’d finished. He wove his fingers between mine, thrust up and said, Dangerous. Dangerous could have meant a hundred things. For starters we weren’t protected and if dangerous didn’t mean genital warts it most certainly meant thousands of tiny sperm spinning and swimming their way up the birth canal and smack into fertilized eggs. I could have told him I was on the pill, but I wasn’t, and lying beside him in our Beverly Hills bed I wanted danger. I wished for imaginary feet pushing out from the inside. I wished for illegitimacy and scandal and betrayal. What I got instead was a now-quiet Quentin, rolling over on side and blowing soft circles of air on my chest. My nipples contracted and shriveled. He stuck out his finger and pushed one down. They real? he asked, peering up from the nook in his arm. No. I said, putting my own index finger on my left boob and pressing down. Thought they were supposed to be cold then, he said letting a few more fingers touch down before he grabbed it cup-like. The cheap ones I guess. These are saline. Twenty grand. Like the ocean. Tears. I filled them all myself. Hurt? Unreal. I mean I hear it’s worse than childbirth, but how would I know? What I can tell you was that I couldn’t comb my hair for two weeks. I couldn’t reach my arm high enough, Imelda had to…. I stopped. 397 Quentin pretended not to notice, How’d they do it? They went in through the armpit, I said, lifting up my arm so he could see the staple-like scar. On strippers and the girls who pay $3,500 off some Value-Pac coupon they go in on the underside. Just cut a smile and stuff in some silicone. I suppose it works, but not as well. The way I had it done was with a balloon. They put it in and injected the saline through a tube. It happens gradually, over a few weeks. You can adjust the size. B today, D tomorrow. Like people won’t notice? To cut down on stretch marks. I had a few, in the beginning, but with the vitamin E you can hardly notice. And your nipples come out in the middle. With some girls they’re lopsided, or pointy, like to the sky. Yours look good. He bent down, took the left one in his mouth and blew a raspberry, and then he moved over to the right and tugged at a nipple with his teeth. They repositioned them. Even better than before. How big were they before? Little. Like lemon little, lime little, cherry little? They were Chicken Little, okay. Grade A, organic, sunnyside up egg yoke little. He laughed, Are you happy? With the tits? Yeah, they’re all right. I have a big ass so they give me balance. You know, I’m proportional now. And it’s not like I take them seriously or anything. I 398 mean as soon as I could do my own hair I threw a busting-out party. Invited all kinds of people and put them on display. I mean that’s what they’re for, aren’t they? Guess so. Like tattoos. Tattoos are an art. He was squeezing now, first the right, then the left. Really. Yeah, they mean something. So what do they mean? Depends on the person. You. He had each nipple pinched between his thumb and index finger, and was twirling the skin back and forth. Me? The twirling stopped. He only held. What do yours mean? Mine mean I like lions. And peacocks. And monkeys. The kind that come in a barrel. That’s deep, I said, reaching under the bed for something to cover my breasts with. Well, it’s kind of like a club, you know? You can’t just go running off at the mouth with just anyone. Then you might as well join a frat and get matching Greek letters or some of that Old English gang shit. 399 So we fucked, I said, my voice muffled by the sequined tank I was pulling over my head, and then I told you about my boobs but you can’t tell me what your tats mean? Tattoos. You’re not some biker-chick in some Bakersfield bar. He looked around for his own clothes and started to pull them on. And until you get one of your own my lips are sealed. Besides—he was fishing for shoes in a pile of Prada—gotta go. Home? I just gotta leave is all. Want a shower? There’s soap and stuff around here somewhere. I never use the hotel stuff—it makes your skin dry. Nah, I’m all right. But won’t she. I mean the smell? I like your smell. I like you too. He was dressed, up and making a move for the door. Hey, Quentin? Yeah? He was in the frame again, half in, half out. The spinning mauve floral of the rug was reaching out for his left shoe. I could feel you, you know. Your fingers. The pinching. It’s not like I didn’t. He winked, long eyelashes briefly closing over the green of his left eye, and held up the bottle of scotch. 400 THE PRINCIPLE OF TRANSITION. Even after Quentin left, the room felt full. I lay on the bed bare-assed, my sequin-printed lace camisole stretched over my designer tits, and followed him home in my head: Tuesday. Two-thirty in the afternoon. A hotel full of daylight adulterers: doctors, lawyers, and industry-types who kept their other women high in the recesses of the Beverly Hills Hotel, their offices in Westwood or Mid-Wilshire, their kids in Harvard Westlake, and their wives in kicky heels, sashaying down Rodeo or Robertson. The afternoon tycoons had their inter- marital relations for lunch. Maybe they made jokes about it in the elevator: talked shop, switched hits, and anted up. Maybe, like Quentin, none of them showered, and wearing the scent of another woman, they waited for their Jags and Benzes, over-tipped the valet, and drove back to work with the windows rolled down. How many would Quentin run into as he made his way from my room to the street? Hallway to elevator to lobby to valet, I’d guess five, at the absolute most, but what of it? Or better said, was Quentin the type to even give a damn? Chances are he’d walk straight out the front door, nod to the bellhop, bypass the valet and endless stream of newly waxed town-cars and walk three blocks to Rexford where his car, something old but well maintained, something with muscle, was waiting where he parked it: under the spotted shade of a palm. 401 He smoked, I’m sure, three maybe four cigarettes on the drive home, and no doubt he stopped for gas. Maybe that’s what they did with the smell. Mixed with smog, smoke and Exxon, the Chanel floral, amber blend of orange blossom, Sambac jasmine, iris, floating vanilla, and lilac express lost its hold as it slipped around exhumes and exhaust. Maybe I rubbed off as Quentin wore on, a mint in his mouth and one of those princess red gas station roses stuck in the cup-holder, waiting, with an exaggerated flourish, for Sarah. Maybe he’d make her dinner, runny spaghetti with white toast; and because he was guilty, and because even the smell of burnt bread and fresh basil wasn’t enough to cover his afternoon absence, they’d fuck ferociously on the tan linoleum floor, Quentin rubbing his head beneath Sarah’s small chin and tugging at her breasts with his teeth. Sarah, no doubt, had big ones. Jugs, Quentin probably called them, and to tell you the goddamned truth, I’d like to believe that she was stupid, fat, and clumsy. But, and here’s where I roll onto my stomach, push my head into the down of my pillow and say smothered, so maybe you won’t hear: I fully admit that I know it’s not true. Sarah fell in love with Quentin and he with her and so she’s obviously something, although what she is, I don’t really know. Who she is to me is no problem. She is not tall, she is not blonde and she has not recently left her husband to take up with a full body tattoo circus in the Beverly Hills Hotel. To me that is enough. But to Quentin, who she is to Quentin, that I cannot even think because thinking that would, by some screwed-up twist of logic, require the inverse of me. Who am I to Quentin? And who, pray tell, is Ricky to me? 402 SYNOPSIS. In the most basic of terms Ricky is my husband. And once upon a time we were lovers, too. This is the guilt talking, right? The post-coital running of the mouth that starts the mind wandering while the funk of some man, other than your husband, is beginning to drip from between your legs? Why is it that sex is so messy and why doesn’t this get taught in high school? No, seriously, if more girls knew about the slimy white spunk they will inevitably spend the rest of their lives sopping up they might hold out longer. It’s kind of like your period. You spend all of eleven and half of twelve chanting tiny mantras for its arrival and then, when it hits—usually in a white bikini at the community pool in Lodi—you wonder why the fuck no one warned you. I mean really, speaking of a solidarity of women, shouldn’t it start there? A stalwart sisterhood of truth and vindication with in-house biologists specially trained in the advancement of the elimination of dripping funk, where the first rule of membership would be honesty and the second, allegiance to your fellow female. With a system like that I could be home with Ricky right now, tanning by the pool and drinking a Piña Colada; but as is, some intern bitch had to go sleep with Ricky, and I had to go hunt out Quentin so that I could learn how it was done. And Sarah, poor, oblivious Sarah, is a good two hours away from her first clue, and when she finds out, (if she finds out,) will it even matter? 403 COMPLICATION VERSUS COMPLEXITY. Why was I with Quentin? Well, there’s the whole Ricky thing, and not the fact that I just walked out of his life. I mean the other thing. The small bundle of rhymes with maybe thing. Maybe Mags when we sell the water; Maybe Mags when we buy a house; Maybe Mags when I work less and you go a month without crashing the car. Maybe without you Ricky, maybe how about that? And before you get all judgmental and tell me how terribly fucked up I am to leave my husband and go search out a sire like some frickin’ Cher song, let me tell you that you have not earned the right to say shit until you have peed over a plastic stick. You can’t speak a word until you have sat, the second Monday of every month for a year and a half without exception, with your pants around your ankles, watching a thin stream of golden-yellow piss bounce against an indicator strip and then spill into the toilet. You cannot tell me one thing until you have attempted to button yourself up while simultaneously holding the stick between your first and third fingers, and you have absolutely no voice until you have taken your mother’s car without asking and driven half way to Rio Linda to buy a home pregnancy test from a drug store where you’re hoping like hell there’ll be no one you know. 404 FLASHBACK. Magdalena Bamberger was seventeen, unmarried, and a senior at Tokay High School, anonymity was therefore important; almost as important as her desire not to be pregnant. Unfortunately, for her, she had woken up nauseous for the past two weeks. She hadn’t missed her period, but then again, it wasn’t due for another eight days, so she was probably jumping the gun driving Eight Mile Road in search of a Thrifty Drug where she was sure no one from Lodi would recognize her. As a volunteer at the local day care (Monday and Wednesday) and convalescent home (Tuesday and Thursday) she was exposed to everything: mono, strep, meningitis, cooties, and so it was highly likely that her nausea was merely a strange vein of stomach flu the kids or the old folks had been passing around. For the first week this seemed the case; however, near the end of the second week, right around the time she started vomiting like clockwork, Magdalena stopped calling her infliction the flu and started calling it Ariel. She had sworn to name her first child Ariel in the eighth grade when she got a hold of Sylvia Plath and spent nights under the covers in a flash-lit tent. When the baby actually did come out she would undoubtedly name it Madison or Madeline or Marianne, but right now, in the three-minute wait on the indicator strip, Ariel would do. What Mags will do when the strip turns pink is uncertain. The father, a sweet, but over determined kid, won’t be of much help, which Mags doesn’t mind because she doesn’t plan on mentioning it. However her own father, sweet Jesus, her own daddy will do what every good valley daddy does and convene a search party to hunt out the bastard and cut off his balls. The thought of her brother Junah, Uncle Petie, cousin 405 Wade, the neighbors, and half the Lodi wine-growers association hunting down the unfortunate soon-to-be-father and then tying him to the bed of an F-150 while pelting him with cork brings a giggle to Mags’ lips as she impatiently stares herself down in the bathroom mirror waiting for the strip. Nothing has changed yet, and as she again sizes herself up in the glass, reflecting on her posture, she is reminded of her mother. Her mother, oh Christ, her mother will positively come unglued. Mags boosts herself up on the counter and sits beside the sink. She swings her heels against the linen cupboard for five or six beats and then jumps off the counter and onto cold linoleum where she takes another step up on the scale. It reads 107, which is somewhat of a relief, but then again the stomach flu is probably about the size of her pinkie nail and so she again jumps up on to the counter and leans her cheek against the medicine cabinet. When she imagined situations such as this Magdalena always figured she’d be surrounded with loud but well-intentioned girlfriends: the feminist who’d have already scheduled the abortion; the sentimentalist who would go on and on about onesies and layette sets and buggies with yellow wheels and attached umbrellas; and the dreamer who wouldn’t say much of anything, all the while secretly wishing it was her with her pants around her ankles pissing on a stick. The four of them would cram into the bathroom with some chocolate mint ice cream and wait it out together. Kinda like in summer camp when all the girls would get it in their heads to go blonde, taking turns tinting each other’s roots and massaging the dye in with rubber gloves. But, a natural 406 blonde, Magdalena was alone and the strip went from one line to two and thus begins the second saddest story I know. 407 VOICE OVER NARRATION. With the rather large exception of Junah, the saddest story I know is about a girl who got knocked up the first time she put out. You know the story: young, yada, just about out of high school, dada, with an acceptance letter to UC Berkeley tucked beneath the padded bras of her underwear drawer. She’s tall, a little too tall, so that she’s not really all that pretty but she’s smart. I suppose there’s a story variation about the dumb, short, pretty girl who goes and gets preggers too, but I have no experience with that version. So I’ll stick with the one I know best. This girl, let’s just call her Magdalena, she’s like the valedictorian or Artistic Editor of the school yearbook or some such what- she-thought-then-was-meaningful but turned out years-later-to-be-trivial type-shit and because she has a pact, a very sacred and valued pact with Jenny and Jennifer Anne, her two best friends in the world, she loses her virginity a month before prom so that when prom night rolls around it won’t hurt. See, I told you she was a bright one. But now for the irony: It wasn’t even about the boys. It was about the girls. You see, these three they loved each other with sister-blood and the only way any one of them could imagine doing it was with the others in close proximity and so it was that these three little virgins all ended up holding hands on a California King, while three faceless boys— maybe they were brothers, maybe they were triplets— hammered away from above, so elated to be getting ass they overlooked thirty identically manicured fingernails attached to three sets of tightly held hands. Hell, if any one of the girls had read Fear of Flying, or had been born after the internet, they would’ve probably bought a big purple vibrating dick and undone each other amidst a group hug, but they were from a small 408 town and so they used boys. But sex, with boys, is messy. And even with condoms— fluorescent orange, glow in the dark, school colors—and all six hands all gripping tightly onto something or other, it juiced out. Sploshed over the latex and some how, made its way up the pipes past the do not enter sign and into Magdalena’s baby box where it bit hold of an egg and held. Three weeks later she was ten days late. So Magdalena took some Midol—like a lot of it—because it’s the one thing she could find with promise: Do Not Take if Pregnant. This Drug has been known to Induce Miscarriage. Betting on some little pink pills Mags came out—in red and violet gushes and all over the porcelain tub—the big winner. Like I said, it was a small town. And if she had read Fear of Flying or if she’d had the internet, or even a fricking Planned Parenthood she might have done something different, but instead she held tight to the soap dish and her younger brother’s hand while she downed pill after pill until her stomach seized up, her ovaries cramped, her face went white and it worked. Out came the blood and she was bloody unstuck. It worked so well, in fact, that nothing stuck ever after. Not even much, much later, years in fact, when she actually wanted it to and for a while she thought it was Ricky. But now, with her panties still tangled in the sheets of the other room, Quentin’s just a single line of blue too. 409 IRONIC ASCENSION. I haven’t seen Jenny or Jennifer Anne since high school, and last I read— courtesy of mom’s newspaper clippings—they were Teaching for America and engaged, respectively, but I think of them both, a lot. Especially, when I’m tanning, bleaching, waxing or tweezing. Sometimes, it’s almost as if they’re still with me, you know? Or maybe it’s just that I wish they were. Because maybe then I’d have someone to call, someone who would rush over to the Beverly Hills Hotel and reassure me that what I did was right, absolutely acceptable, considering the circumstances and all. Instead I call Ricky. But not work, or his cell, because well then he might actually answer. I call home, because if I’ve learned anything from being wedded to the water baron of the western states, it’s that he’s never home. So I dial and then listen to my own voice tell myself that I’m not home. I have no idea what I want to say to the beep, but I’m pretty sure it sounds like save me. Which is really fucking stupid, considering. But still it’s there like a badly-drawn dream: my need for a happily ever after. Instead I hang up before the beep and then call back. When my voice sounds I pull the phone away from my ear so I don’t have to hear myself jabber again: Hi, this is Ricky and Mags, we’re so sorry we missed your call… and when I hear a faint beep I pull the phone back in and whisper into the line, Ricky it’s me. I’m in Santa Fe. As in New Mexico and not that trendy new grill on the corner of Santa Monica and Kings Road. I needed some time to think, but tell anyone who asks that it’s art or something. Make up a convention if you have to. I don’t much care and I’m sure neither do you. If you need to reach me try my cell. 410 And then I hang up again. I tell myself this is because I don’t want him to worry. I don’t want to see myself on flyers posted all over WeHo, or on the 6 o’clock news; Ricky solemn, rational, demanding my captors to return me safely. My mother hysterical, her swollen eyes covered with sunglasses too big for her face, unable to speak. Or not. This is just what I tell myself. Deep down I know the message is for me. So that I can stop telling myself Ricky hasn’t called because he hasn’t noticed that I’m gone. 411 PROGRESSIVE COMPLICATIONS. It’s amazing how quickly I came to need Quentin. Without discussing the details we fell into a pattern. He’d arrive, half-in-half-outside the door, signaling his entrance with a low knuckle rap. I’d await that rap Tuesdays after one, Thursdays after six and precious, perfect all-day Sunday afternoons. He’d arrive at various other times too, unannounced, unafraid and sometimes I’d answer and sometimes not. And even in the nots I’d see his need, usually in the form of a note or small trinket, written mostly on bar napkins, but sometimes also on actual paper enclosed in envelopes. He’d push these small missives under the door and whenever I’d return from anywhere, weighed down by designer bags of obscene dimensions, I’d insert my hotel key and catch my breath as the door pushed open and I looked to the floor. Mostly I saw the expensive Berber carpet, but sometimes—and the joy at these moments is too hard to explain except to say it was a joy not unlike the days when Junah still lived—sometimes there’d be his letter. The bags would fall unnoticed to the floor or the bed, a chair if it was near, and I’d bend over, sometimes a Adho Mukha Svanasana pose, sometimes a Baddha Konasana Bound angle pose, sometimes a complete crocodile twist (Jathara Parivartanasana Reclining) or even a little boat (Pavana Muktasana). I’d pose and breathe, the letter inches from my cheek, chin and eyelashes and I’d let the moment linger, breathing in deep through my nose, feeling the air fill the bottom of my lungs, feeling my lungs press back into my spine. The smell was of shag, to be sure, and industrial hotel carpet cleanser, but sometimes there’d also be a whiff of something 412 new: a linger of Lucky Strike, the scent of a guitar string just before it snaps, and once, though this brought decidedly less joy, the smell of a girl’s nail polish remover, the non- acetone type. His handwriting was stretched and slinky. It curled around the M and l of my name with abandoned precision, never fully centered, always, almost, about to run off the envelope before it reached the final a curve. Barefoot, in child’s pose, in downward facing dog, I’d meditate above the letter. If it were enclosed I’d imagine what the sweet words were that were written on the insides. If exposed I’d linger on each word before I forced it into a sentence, into a recognizable phrase: Mag-da-lane-a (accompanied by half and whole musical notes as though it was a score, my name a song) Mag-da-lane-a last night. Mag-da-lane-a last night I. Mag-da- lane-a last night I was at a party. In Silver. Silver Lake. And. And although you were not. You were not. Not. But. Not but you. Not but your voice. Your voice was. Was. But your voice. Your voice. Voice. A deathless song. Song full. Full of money. I was at a party. Money. Party. Mag-da-lane-a. Your. Yours. Yrs. Quentin. Quent-in. Quen-tin. tin. He stole, to be sure. Lines from songs, from books and poems. He claimed it was his right as an artist. That music required sampling. That it was born on repetition of a few good chords strung over and over again in endless repetition. He had a band to back up his theory. A band and a day job because he still, let us not forget, lived in L.A. But unlike most Angelinos in the industry he didn’t supplement his craft working wait 413 staff at some trendy bar de jour. He worked manual labor putting up and taking down billboards across our urban skyscape. Wait a minute! I asked when he told me, You don’t work at the auto shop? We were facing each other in the tub, our legs intertwined, his body slightly angled to the left so as not to have the faucet uncomfortable in his back. Naw, he said, scooping up a handful of soapy water and splashing it against his face. The shop’s in the family, but I’m not. In the shop. My uncle Al runs it with a few of my brothers and my cousin, Salvatore. It’s a good business, they rake in a shitload, but not for me, you know? Spending my days under the belly of some automobile looking for oil drips and unclutched parts, naw. I need to live above ground. So what you’re saying, I said, untwisting the sheath of my hair from the rubber band that secured it and letting it fall wet-ends into the tub, is that you chose billboards to be closer to nature? Kind-of. But they chose me too. All stretched out, so high in the sky. And the view. Have you ever been fifty, or sixty feet above ground? Not without ropes, I said. Fuck ropes, Quentin said, apparently not noticing the prepanic in my voice. You don’t need ropes to look over a city so filled with people and possibility that anything could happen. And you. Above it all, looking down. Once I tried it there was no coming down. It’s like that with most things. The rest is up to… He paused. I waited. 414 The rest is up to… he took a mighty big breath of air. Would he say God? Chance? Luck? Fate? I was naked, chin deep in a tub with a man who I only recently learned was not a mechanic, as I had initially supposed, but was instead a billboard technician, is that what they’re called? I knew he was married. I knew he smoked and was tall. I knew the precise location of all his tattoos and he knew my tits were fake and filled with salt. But what else really did I know? Not the names of his brothers. Not the school he attended in junior high. Not his favorite color or song, none of the things that typically make up the courting ritual. And yet I knew enough. The rest is up to the rest, I said, pulling up on the soap dish and rising out of the tub. As I stood up bath water fell from my body in soft splashes and a sparkle of bubbles piled on my breasts and hips. Quentin stuck out his long finger and gently popped a few of the full bubbles clinging to my backside. I lifted my left foot and watched the sudsy water slide from my shin, across the top of my pointed toes and back into the tub, before gently placing my foot down onto the fuzzy bath mat. Lifting my right foot behind me, I shook it gently before placing it next to my left on the mat. And then I stood there, naked before Quentin, feeling his eyes move across my back, which was still slightly slouched from the lingering remnants of junior high when I was the tallest girl in the school. From my shoulders his gaze moved down my spine, resting on the soap-bubble freckles just above my ass, and from there he moved down further still, to the curve of my butt as it met the tops of my thighs. Standing, with knees and ankles touching, ballerinas and super models—unless they’re the bulimic kind—have three perfectly spaced boat-shaped openings between their legs: one between ankles and 415 calves, one between calves and knees and one between knees and thighs. I had spent the last seven months in Pilates and spin classes widening the width of my boat-spaces and I wondered, as I stepped from the mat onto the cold marble tile, if Quentin appreciated my work? But the touch of the marble started the march of goose bumps working their way up from my feet and so I grabbed a plush pink BHH monogrammed robe and slipped into it, tying the sash in a loose knot around my waist and effectively ending the show. The rest, he replied, scooping up more water and splashing it across his face, across his long hair, making no move to get up or get out, content to spread out in the space my absence made and plunge his head beneath the water’s surface. When he went under my first thought went to Junah, the only other boy with whom I’d shared a bath. My second thought was don’t go there. Push Junah to the back. Push Junah under. At least for a little while. At least until you’re alone. Now is the time to sit down on the short leather vanity stool and pretend nothing’s wrong. I sat down on the short leather vanity stool and put my feet up against the adjacent wall where an assortment of hand towels hung. I counted: one alligator, two and he surfaced, a pile of suds artfully arranged on the top of his head. Nice look, I said, motioning to his head with my chin. He rolled his eyes upwards as though he could see his skull from the inside out and then, using a prunish hand, patted the bubbles down into a flat cap. With the other hand he scooped up a new batch and smoothed them over his chin and cheeks. Ever play bathtub barber? he asked. 416 I pulled one of the wash towels off the rack with my toes, and, none-too- gracefully, flicked it into the water. No, I said, even though I had. You missed out, he said, bending his index finder into a crooked razor and shaving off the suds on the left side of his chin. If I had a Tupperware cup I would have dipped it into the bath and ladled out a glassful over his soapy head. Lean back, I would have told him, using my hand as an extended eyebrow shield, careful not to let the soap drip into his eyes. But the Beverly Hills Hotel is, for rather predictable reasons, without Tupperware and they don’t have those little plastic cups wrapped in cellophane like the Holiday Inn either. Instead they supply goblets and flutes and other beverage containers bearing stems that hum when clinked with the flick of a finger. So I fished the washcloth out and hung it, drippy and wet, over Quentin’s head where I squeezed, letting the collated water hit his head in rivulets, unconcerned about his eyes. Hey, he said, shaking his head back and forth like a wet dog. Hey, he sucked in a drip of water off his upper lip like a baby bird. Hey. 417 HEADSHOTS. The mood, if there ever was one, was gone. I settled back on top the short leather vanity stool and said while combing my hair, Our housekeeper, Imelda, has a sister, Immaculate, who now works for Priscilla Presley but who used to work for Bruce and Demi, back when they were together, before Ashton started the urban cougar thing. Anyhow. She told Imelda, who told me that Demi and Bruce only bathed in Evian water. Can you imagine? I asked Quentin, a long, wet strand of blonde held in the bristles of a flat brush held out before me, bathing in water imported from France? But Quentin didn’t reply. Instead he raised his left eyebrow ever so slightly higher than his right, framed his hands like a camera and put them in the air as though he was taking an invisible photo of me. I ignored him and kept brushing. Evian? It’s so presumptuous not to mention impractical. Immaculate said it used to take hours, heating the water so that it would be warm enough to bathe in, and what, with all three kids— Hey, do me a favor, Quentin interrupted. Comb your hair forward will you? Like this? I said, as I bent over and shook my head so that my layered locks covered my eyes. Yeah, Quentin said, adjusting his phony camera again and angling it to the left. Now tuck half behind your ear. I did as I was told. 418 No the other ear, Quentin said, still positioning his hands, fiddling with an invisible zoom. I switched ears, wondering what he was up to. No, like this, he reached up and adjusted my chin so that it was raised to the right and well above my chest. And put your shoulders back. Why? Shussh! Quentin said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the ledge of the tub, now close your eyes. You’re not going to splash me or something silly, are you? No. Just trust me, will you? Trust me. Fuck. And there it was again. Those two words that I just couldn’t let go. I took a deep breath, Promise? I asked. Promise, Quentin said, holding up both hands to show me his uncrossed fingers. Okay, I said, and shut my eyes. The water in the tub rippled slightly. Maybe, like I always feared, Quentin was about to make his final exit. Just slip out while I sat, eyes closed, and when I opened up he’d be gone. In the other room the TV was on, and I struggled to hear past the cheesy laugh lines of some syndicated sitcom, for more clues. I tried to elevate my senses, to be perfectly motionless so that I might sense the heat of his body and his tiptoes out across the tile. But all I heard was a soft Click, and when I peeked out—just a quick blink with 419 one eye—to see if it was the click of the door or the click of Quentin’s imaginary camera Quentin shouted, I knew it! Shit, it was a test then? I opened my eyes just a crack and he caught me, untrusting. Did I lose? I asked him, pushing back my hair and opening both eyes wide. Lose what? Quentin asked. The game, or whatever it was we were playing. Huh? I held my own invisible camera up to my face and said, Click click. I wasn’t testing you, Quentin said, as he lifted the drain to let the water out, I was framing. Framing? I knew I knew you, he said. I just had to get the position right. Position? I put you up, Quentin said, standing in the tub, bubbles stuck to his thighs and chest and knees, partially obscuring the tattoos. Excuse me? On a billboard, he said, reaching for a towel, off Sunset and Doheny, the wet hair gave you away. You were clinging to some blonde boy and bottle of Crystal Geyser, right? Diamond Myst, I said. Biting the inside of my cheek and looking to the floor. 420 Whatever, he said, wrapping the towel around his shoulders like that boxer I used to date, and strutted off naked into the next room. 421 ZED CARD. So what are you anyhow? Quentin asked later while we were wrapped in the sheets. Model? Actress? Some sort of bottled water heiress? None of the above, I said as I turned my back to Quentin and looked out the window towards the skyline. I’m just a ditzy blonde who happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Bullshit, Quentin said, turning towards me like a spoon and running his index finger across the small of my back. I always wanted to be one of those girls who had dimples right there, I said. You know, so when you’re back-side up in a bikini at the beach or when you bend over and aren’t wearing panties under your Chloe jeans, guys will stare. I’m pretty damn sure guys stare at your ass regardless. Thanks, I said blushing, scooting an inch or two closer to Quentin’s naked body with my own. But, he scooted away from me an inch or two, so he could keep his finger on the spot, it would be a cool spot for a well-placed tattoo. I almost said, Ricky abhors body art, but I caught myself and said instead, Don’t you think that’s a little trendy? A little too 1992? If you got a rose, yeah. Or a butterfly. Or the Chinese fucking ideogram for Zen. But I’m talking about something different. Like text. Text? I rolled over to face him and found that as I did so my boobs pressed up against his forearm. How is text any different than the kanji symbol for hummingbird? 422 Because, one it’s in English, and don’t you dare go and get Latin or French or some other shit unless you plan on moving there. And two, I’m thinking not just one word, or even a phrase, but a full fucking sentence. Isn’t that a little bit dangerous? I asked. I mean a peacock, I looked straight to the plumage on his nipple, can mean lots of things, like prideful or narcissistic or-- Or the psychic duality of man, Quentin interjected, staring at me through a squinted eye. Exactly, I said and smiled. It’s ambiguous. But a word, not to mention a full sentence, well that’s pretty damn clear, isn’t it? That’s why it would work, especially on you. What do you mean especially on me? Oh please, he said, as if you don’t know. No, I said, I don’t. Enlighten me. The space between us on the bed seemed to be widening with each word we said. I mean, look at you. I winced, and pulled back so that there was only an inch between me and falling off the bed. No, he said, closing the gap between us a bit and reaching his hand out to stroke my cheek, I didn’t mean it like that. Or rather, yes I did. But not the way you’re taking it. Fuck. I mean look at you outside yourself. Look at you like someone on the street sees you. 423 I had nothing to say, so I just lay there, blinking, pushing my tongue against the tip of my palate. I saw myself like that every time I looked in the mirror. Because when I closed my eyes, when I imagined myself as me, without the aid of digital cameras or reflective surfaces, I saw the girl version of Junah. But when I opened my eyes, when I stared into the glass, I saw a stranger. The only thing that remained the same, the only thing it was impossible to augment and was, now still, the only one thing that still linked me to Junah, was my height. And height aside, I saw a perfect blonde body pretending to be me, the new me now, as opposed to the me of who used to be, blinking. Blinking, I said nothing and waited for Quentin to dig himself out, or perhaps further in. You’re fucking flawless, Quentin said, and you’re funny. Ha. Ha. I said, laughing while tucking the sheet around my body. No really, he said, you are. And not in a ha ha Laugh Factory way or in that asinine flirty I can get what I want way— I raised an eyebrow. Well, I’m sure you could if you wanted to—but you don’t. I don’t? No, you, he said, standing up naked on the bed and pointing a finger at where I still lay, you have wit, which is what makes you so damn stunning. Really? I was starting to smile despite myself. My cheeks were pulling back and my laugh lines were beginning to show. I mean a fine ass, well that’s a dime a dozen, you know that. But a witty ass, now that’s a gem! 424 Thanks, I said, loosening my grip on the sheets, I think. You’re welcome, Quentin said, reaching down to grab the sheet and pulling it off me in a flourish, leaving me naked and exposed. Now about that tattoo. He scanned my body, How would you feel about, Caution: contents not what they appear. Right about, he lifted my left leg and traced a line from my inner thigh to my ankle, here? Maybe, I said, looking up at him, but I think I prefer, here, I traced my hipbone from side to thigh, and I think if we’re going with a caution, I’d prefer, Caution: contents may shift under pressure. Brilliant! Quentin said. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Why I like you, I mean. You do? I asked. Well, sure, he said. You think I show up here for the view? I laughed. Well you never know, it is rather spectacular. Naw, he said stretching a long leg on either side of me and bouncing gently up and down on the mattress. I like you. And I like the view from right here. He pulled out his imaginary camera and took another pretend picture. Click click, he said before asking, Don’t you like me, too? Yeah, I said, I like you all right. But I’d like you even more if you stopped prancing about and fucked me. No problem, Quentin said, as he bounced down, to his knees and then threw himself on top the bed. That I can easily do. 425 CHARACTERS AREN’T PEOPLE. I didn’t exactly tell Quentin that I was married to Ricky in so many words. That I was married at all, but I know he knew. Even still, I didn’t want him to feel as though he had gotten one over on me. As though we were even or something. And besides, two unhappily married people sneaking around hotels to have affairs at three in the afternoon seems so hopelessly forty. If L.A.’s taught me anything it’s that you can only be forty at sixty-five. I’m twenty-nine—take it or leave it—but either way you put it, twenty-nine is way too fucking young to be playing at middle-age. Twenty-nine is I can still pass for twenty-three prime. It is not scrambled egg-whites with spinach—steamed—and a cup of fruit on the side. I mean sure it’s like that at home, but in public? Honey, on the Sunset Plaza it’s give me a table near the sidewalk with eggs Florentine, extra bacon and some of those sour-cream battered French toast halves. It’s yes I can eat anything I want and still fit into these size twenty-five Sevens for all mankind. Let’s not be silly, I never was one of those girls who said non-fat before latte. I mean for me it just happens and if it doesn’t, well, then so-the-fuck-what? So what if I’m lying here, artfully draped in Egyptian cotton, next to Quentin, making assumptions about his happiness at home. I know there’s a possibility that he’s actually in love with Sarah. That maybe it’s not like the made for TV movies and Harlequin books: Magdalena flips back her hair with a perfectly manicured hand and says breathily, “I honestly hope they’re happy together,” and a sincere, single tear drops down her petal-soft cheek. She cinches the lavender sheets around her ample breasts 426 and looks out the window towards the palm trees swaying softly in the breeze, “Nothing would make me happier than if they were happy.” Right. But I’m not delusional. I’ll admit there’s a slight possibility that Quentin isn’t escaping a frigid marriage, that Sarah isn’t a prude. Maybe even, although this is where it gets hard, there’s something about being with me, something about lying on top my tall body that makes Sarah’s small body exciting. Maybe the truth isn’t that Quentin came by because he wasn’t getting enough; maybe he came because he already had. Enough, that is. It was getting late. Later, in fact, than Quentin had ever stayed on a Sunday before and as he lie naked on the bed, blowing smoke rings towards the ceiling, I got up and walked to the window. His visits were getting longer which meant his leaving was getting harder, which most likely meant that my experiment had gone on a little too long. In the beginning my intentions were informative: I would fuck Quentin to figure out how Ricky got away with fucking around on me. But somehow the more we did it, the fucking, the more talking we did too. And talking as we were it was suddenly becoming very apparent, at least to me, that Quentin was more than sex. What he was just exactly, especially to me, well of that I wasn’t quite sure. I mean, isn’t it entirely possible that—maybe I should call Adair and she can run it past the girls?—when Quentin took up with me, his relationship with Sarah grew stronger? And isn’t it also possible—maybe too or even perhaps—that Ricky never cheated on me? That maybe I just made it all up? 427 Or is that one maybe too close to maybe not? Maybe not what? Quentin asks, his arms bent at the elbows and tucked neatly behind his head. Not nothing, I said, wandering back into bed, beside Quentin and wondering when I had stopped thinking to myself and started thinking out loud. You hungry? Okay, Quentin said, stretching out his bare legs and placing the leg closest to me across my own sheet-clad leg so that we formed an awkward X. What do you want? I asked, reaching towards the table and rooting around beneath socks and scarves for the menu. Nothing with a face. Nothing with a face, I scanned the menu. Salad? Too girly. Grilled cheese? He grinned. Will you cut off the crusts? Well you’re not exactly making this easy. No flesh, no crust, what do you expect? Fish? Do fish have faces? I mean, obviously they do, but does it count? No, but I’m not in the mood and besides you don’t want some crusted halibut stinking up the place. True enough. I sat up and stretched past the lamp for the phone, grabbed the handset off the cradle and hit the zero button twice. Hi, Ian it’s Magdalena in the Sunset Suite. Listen I’d like a sourdough baguette, some fruit, like strawberries and pears, and hold on a sec. I put my hand over the 428 receiver and turned to Quentin. You’re not lactose intolerant or something silly like that are you? Nope, he said. I removed my hand from the mouth of the receiver, And some Brie, I said into the phone. Baked. Right. Quentin was miming something strange next to me. One more second please, I told the phone while I asked Quentin, What? I like apples, he said. And apples, I said. Crisp apples cut into wedges. And thanks. I leaned back into the bed, the phone still in hand, its corkscrew cord pulled straight. Fifteen minutes. Yum, Quentin said, inching his body closer to mine so that his head was tucked into the space between my shoulder and neck. Carefully I attempted to replace the phone on its cradle without getting back up but I only managed to bang around blindly and so I just let the phone slip from my hand and slide to the floor. I wondered if Quentin hugged Sarah after sex too or if it was just me. If we were married would he roll over and turn on the T.V. or would he continue to nuzzle my neck? I almost asked, thinking about how to phrase the question while he nibbled and bit—a hicky probably—but the phone spoke. Deet. Deet. Deet, it said, before clarifying in a muffled computer-generated voice, If you’d like to make a call, please hang-up and then dial again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator. Quentin laughed. I groaned and hung my arm over the side of the bed, hoping to fish it out and cut off its head, but Quentin stopped 429 sucking and leaned over me, his long torso bent at the waist and hanging off the bed. In one stretch he picked up the phone and set it back in the cradle. Hey, he said, a long finger pressing the flashing green light to the right of the numbered buttons, You’ve got messages. Yeah, I know, I said. Anyone special? he asked. Don’t know, I said, I don’t listen to them. What if they’re important? They’ll call back. But what if you’re not in? Then they’ll leave a message. Got it, he said, and then somersaulted out of bed. But he didn’t get it, because even I didn’t get it. The blinking light was me, calling the hotel from the pool to check if I had messages. The first time I tried I messed up and left a message for myself that said, Fuck, why can’t anything be easy, before I walked back into the hotel and checked with Ian at the front desk. He apologized several times and blushed—I was wearing my Brazilian bikini and refused to sarong or sandal myself—and said, No Mrs. de la Cruz I didn’t put anyone through to the Sunset Suite. Thank you, I said. And maybe you should think about making your message retrieval system a little bit easier to use, I said. And maybe you should call me Magdalena, I said. I don’t really like Mrs. de la Cruz, she’s just someone who put her name on my credit cards. 430 Certainly, he said. Well okay then, I said and walked away leaving a puddle of pool water in front of his desk. 431 HOSPITALITY RIDER. When the door knocked it was Ian. Or at least I hoped it would be and so rather than saying just a minute and tossing on one of the hotel’s complimentary terry-cloth robes, I drug the sheet with me to the door and opened up. But it wasn’t Ian. It was a woman, young with great hair and a precious little cleft in her chin. Even fucking better. On the terrace, I said, nodding to the balcony where Quentin had escaped with a cigarette and his shorts. She nodded without saying anything and attempted to steer the cart across the land-mine of my floor, that I was beginning to notice was looking a little less shabby- chic and a lot more bargain basement. I might soon have to flip the do not disturb sign around and enlist the service of a maid. It’s okay, I told the girl trying to clear her a path by kicking at designer bits with my toes. Just run over it if you have to. I’d rather not, she said, and looked at me with what could equally have been helplessness or sass. Right, I said and from the balcony Quentin coughed. Most likely trained in such things the girl miraculously managed to wheel the cart onto the balcony without running over a thing and without seeming to notice Quentin or his nakedness. I handed her a twenty and she left without comment. Still bound up Cleopatra style and dragging my sheet behind me I walked over to the sliding glass door and leaned carefully against the jam, wishing like hell I could 432 trade in the presidential suite for an on-the-ground bungalow. Relatively speaking, the Beverly Hills Hotel is rather squat compared to the skyscrapers that make up most of L.A., but even at its pink peak of a whopping four stories, the drop from the balcony is simply too much. Quentin, of course, couldn’t have known this. Quentin-billboard- scaling, Quentin-no-ropes-climbing, Quentin pushing an iron chair over to where I stood saying, Seat? No, I said, trying. I have a horrible case of vertigo. Caught it one day in San Francisco. Something about the clouds moving in piles over the Trans-American building and I’ve never been able to shake it. Well have you tried? he asked, smiling like he did playing barber in the tub. It’s messy, I said. Sometimes there’s vomit. Your call, he said, dunking a pear in the cheesy soup and handing it over to me, but the view’s spectacular. I can see it, I said, not five feet from where he sat. Purple-orange sky, big green palms, twilight. Yeah, but can you really see it, he asked, holding out his hand. I held my breath and took his hand, thinking that I could fudge an inch or two to quiet him down a bit, but no. When I handed myself off he took hold and swooped me and my screams onto his lap. I resisted, yelling and pushing at his chest with all my weight. Although he was skinny, he was strong and he resisted my struggle as though it were a farce. 433 Let me go, I said, grabbing on to the handle of the sliding door and trying to pull myself back inside. Stop. I’m serious. You really are afraid, aren’t you? he said loosening his grip. What do you think? I said as I slipped out of his arms and back into the suite. He followed me in, talking in a soft voice. It’s okay, nothing bad will happen, I promise. Yeah, I said, my heart racing, I’ve heard that before. Really, he said, still trying to sooth me with his voice. Take my hand and close your eyes, vertigo can’t work in the dark. Really? I wondered, my eyes cinched shut, my nails pushing into the skin of his wrist. Really, he said, as he carefully moved my manicured hands off his arm and onto my own. No marks, he whispered into my ear, as I stood wrapped in my king-sized sheet. No marks, I repeated, digging into my thigh, running my nails across the cast- iron frame of the door. It was quiet for a long time. Quentin on the outside, me on the inside of the door. The sun set fast and when it was completely gone Quentin walked in from the verandah and looked for his shoes. So about that tattoo, I said, leaning back into his lap as he sat on the edge of the bed and tried to put on his shoes. If a girl were serious, serious about a tattoo in the 434 shape of some text that did not resemble a Chinese fucking ideogram or fraternity brand, where might that girl go to get it done? Quentin let out a laugh, that was more like a snicker, and said, while tugging a tight bow in his shoelaces, Well, if that girl were indeed serious, and if she were to get a tattoo, the one she’s describing, she’d have to go to Long Beach and make an appointment with a man named Tuttle. Tuttle? I said, as I hung an arm over the bedside and playfully untied Quentin’s left lace. Tuttle, he said again, retying again. He’s the only one who will know how. Nothing closer? I asked, reaching this time for the right lace, before Quentin playfully swatted my hand away. Like something on Sunset? Nope, Quentin replied in a voice that echoed with the notion that I’d never go through with it. But good luck, he said, kissing me on the forehead, and slipping off the bed and towards the door. Lyle Tuttle only inks Hell’s Angels and Rock Stars, anymore. 435 THE SILENT SCREENPLAY. I know he didn’t mean it, but the anymore stung. Almost as much as the click- shut of the hotel door. Almost as much as the noise I imagine Junah’s body made when it ran out of air and hit dirt. Almost as much as the slap of my open fist, with a handful of keys, against Puck’s baby-soft cheek. As though—in the anymore—there was a hint that there ever was a time when Lyle Tuttle inked regular people like husbands and infidels and desperately lonely bottled water girls; there was a time when Junah clung, breathing, suspend from ropes; a time when Puck was my best friend and not my whipping boy. If I hadn’t slapped Puck, if I hadn’t—literally—knocked the best friendship I’ve had since the ninth grade out of my life, I would have called him up and invited him out on fieldtrip to Long Beach. We could have bought bikes and got inked and revved our engines, together. But instead I was left. In a hotel room. Alone. 436 REINVENTING GENRES. Left alone in a hotel room, in the dark early evening of a Sunday afternoon, has just got to be the opening line of a blues song somewhere. If I knew a little less about art and a little more about music, I’m sure I could sing it to you, but I’ve been known to be a bit off key and so I’ll refrain. There’s a voice in the back of my head that says maybe I should paint it. Maybe I should splash up some color and stick on a few rhinestones, use the blues to make a masterpiece, call it ‘Magdalena In and Out of Love, or at Least Bed’ but just what color is infidelity exactly? And how big is the rhinestone that would catch Ricky’s eye? Bigger than a Sweet Tart, that’s to be sure. Bigger than a bread box, a hope chest and even my car, big as it is. Bigger than big is the flash, the glitter and the gleam. Bigger than me and then maybe he’d know that even with Quentin I miss him. Maybe in fact especially. 437 COLD CALLING. After Quentin’s exit I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. Tuesday was still a day and a half away and so, lacking anything better to do, I picked up the phone, hit 411, and asked for Tuttle. When I was patched through to the shop I put on my best Barbie voice and said, I need to talk to Lyle. The guy on the other end said, Yeah honey, what about? And so I said, because why the hell not, Who the fuck do you think this is? Guy said, Just as sec. And in a sec Lyle was on the line. And in another sec I had an appointment, on Monday, at four. And it was just. That. Easy. Making up with Puck, however, I knew would not be. So I called his agent. BZ and I went way back. Or rather BZ and Ricky did, and so, according to the Hollywood rules of acquaintance, so did we. He was the ex-husband of one of Ricky’s sisters, either Cheri or Sherry, I can never remember which and because of this Cheri or Sherry got 5% of whatever Puck made. No, really. It’s another one of those L.A. things that took me a small while to wrap my mind around, but now that I understand, goes something like this: In L.A. it’s always about who you know. And if the people you know know someone who’s in the know well then you know them too. Or better yet, if the people you know know someone who’s known well then you’re known by association, which can, in fact, mean very big things for you and, by the rule of reciprocal association, big things for the people you know. Which is why it makes sense to know people, especially in L.A. And because I knew BZ, through Ricky, who knew 438 him through Sherry or Cheri, which practically made him family, my ex-brother-in-law if you don’t mind the fact that he was married to, and then divorced from, Cheri or Sherry or maybe even both, years before Ricky and I met, I subsequently knew that Puck was recovering from Moroccan jet-lag (he and Keanu were on location working on the so-top-secret-I-can’t-tell-you-the-title Matrix prequel) and that he had said, out loud and in public that, and this is a direct quote from BZ who heard it from the make- up girl, who no doubt told Cheri or Sherry or both, who then obviously told Ricky, or at the very least Ricky’s mother, which was much, much worse, that my situation—and remember, this is an exact quote— “was so far gone it was sad.” And when BZ said as much to me, on the phone, all I could say was, Ouch. And then I hung up. Cold phone in my hand I desperately wanted to call someone, but there weren’t many people left to call. My mother thought I was in New Mexico and was probably preoccupied in her Lodi kitchen, drinking a bottle of Merlot and affixing brightly colored stickers that said Bueno! and Muy Bien! to the tops of passing Spanish exams. Adair and the girls were probably out with their boyfriends or husbands or maybe even their husband’s boyfriends at Chin Chins or Cha Cha Cha, and although there was always room for one more I didn’t think I could handle another round of them. Not on a Sunday anyhow. Which left only Ricky. And Imelda, who were probably at home watching Deadwood—in Spanish subtitles—on my couch. I paced the suite naked walking in and out of the bedroom, bathroom, and living room divides. I opened the door just a pinch 439 and flipped the Do Not Disturb sign over to reveal the Please Make Up Room sign. I turned up the stereo and turned down the air con. I threw myself on the unmade bed and buried my face in the pillows. As I breathed in I realized, if only for a moment, that I expected them to smell like Ricky. They didn’t. And don’t be so judgmental, they didn’t smell like Quentin either. They smelled of grapes and chlorine and very dry cork. They smelled of Bamberger Merlot just before the press. They smelled of home. I reached for my purse, shook a couple of pink and blue pills into my hand, swallowed them dry and then called the front desk. 440 EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED. Mrs. de la Cruz, how can we assist you? I need my room made up, I said in a flirty voice to the woman at the front desk, and a dog. Certain—she was about to say, when the part about the dog registered. Pardon me, but I believe I heard wrong. I thought you said dog. She laughed. I did, I said. I see, she said. And, excuse me, but by dog you mean… I mean a dog, is Ian there? Would you put Ian on the line? There was a brief semi-silence as she pressed the receiver against her breasts, probably explaining the wack job in the Sunset Suite was asking for a canine, and then Ian was on the line. Mrs. de la Cruz, he said, Ian here. Now what’s this I hear about a dog? A puppy, I said, preferably, but an adolescent will work too. A Dobie if they have one, or perhaps a German Shepherd. Something big with a bit of a bark. I apologize, but here at the hotel we only allow dogs under forty pounds. For the comfort of all of our guests and the animal too. I’m sure you understand. I took a deep breath. Ian, honey, we understand each other, right? For the most part I believe we do, Mrs. de la, I mean Magdalena, he said into the phone. 441 Brilliant, then can you please explain to me Calista Flockhart’s Collie? That overweight beast, has got to weigh at least 52 lbs. and yesterday I saw that Standard Oil daughter sunning poolside with not one, but two Weimaraners. He cleared his throat and attempted to respond but I continued. Besides, unless you come back with a Great Dane I’m sure a puppy will be under the limit. I apologize. I didn’t mean to upset you. I only meant to suggest that the hotel policy— Ian, I don’t want to be a bitch or anything, but I didn’t call you to discuss hotel policy. I called for maid service and a dog. Housekeeping is on the way and as for the dog— The puppy. As for the puppy, I’ll see what I can do. I switched tones immediately. Thank you, sweetie. That’s fabulous. And remember, something with bark. Something with bark, he repeated. And, pardon me for asking, but will this be a permanent purchase or will you only need the dog, I mean the puppy, during your stay with us? I’ll be keeping the puppy permanently, I replied. You can charge it to my account. And while you’re at it, I’m going to need some accessories. A water dish, one of those doggie beds, a collar, some bones…Are you writing this down. Yes, he said, dish, bed, collar, bones. 442 Good and whatever else you think he might need. A squeaky toy. Vitamins. Louis Vuitton Carrier. Whatever it is dogs need, get him two. It’ll be taken care of. Brilliant, I said and then hung up. 443 HOLLYWOOD DOG STUDIO. I heard the bark before the knock. A high-pitched yelping, really, but I was so caught up with anticipation that I failed to differentiate. I flung open the door expecting a puppy, its feet too big for its body, jumping excitedly to meet me. Instead there was a luggage cart piled high with accessories, the porter, the steward, the desk clerk, the public relations manager, the housekeeper and a teeny tiny shivering puppy. I stepped back. Becky, the public relations manager, who was holding the dog stepped forward and handed me a Penelope-pink Pucci carrier with the yelping bundle inside. Your order, Mrs. de la Cruz. No, I wanted to say, peeking into the mesh opening, this is not my order. A-of- all I ordered Louis Vuitton. B-of-all I said Doberman. I said Shepherd. And C-of-all, most-important-of-all, I said bark. I did not say yelp or yap or yip or whatever noise it is this dog is making. But like I said above, I peeked into the mesh opening and saw the teeny tiny hairless thing quivering in the corner and instead of saying any of those things, I said, Thank you. I said, Please, and I stepped away from the door motioning towards the living room. I hope he didn’t give you much trouble, I said, seeing as how it took one two three four, I counted, five of you to escort him up here. Just making sure he’s well adjusted, she said and smiled, her sass hidden deep beneath a layer of gloss. Then she deployed the troops. 444 They paraded through in rank order and set to work on the room like one of those two-day home improvement shows. Clothes were picked up, shook out and sorted. Take-out boxes were tossed. Wine glasses collected and washed. Windex misted all over the place. While they busied themselves with my things, I set the carrier down on the chaise and busied myself with the dog. Hi, honey, I whispered as I unclasped the mesh door. Hey sweetie, I reached my hand into the carrier where the dog shook, showing its small teeth in the corner. It’s okay, I whispered inching my fingers closer. It’s all—Fuck! I whipped my hand out of the cage and put it in my mouth. Becky, who had been previously carving out a dog-friendly space near the balcony, was immediately at my side, Are you okay? She asked. Did he bite you? Let me see. I’m fine, I said, sliding out of her reach, still sucking on my hand. It’s nothing. Didn’t break the skin. These small breeds can be feisty sometimes, she said, peering over at the carrier. That’s why I requested a real dog, I said, tasting blood. Oh, she said, attempting to cover her mistake. I just meant when they’re young. All puppies are like that. When he gets bigger he’ll mellow out. You mean when he maxes out at six pounds? Do you want me to bring him back, she asked, reaching for the carrier. 445 No, I said, wondering to myself if this all wasn’t a part of their master plan. Give the bitch in the Sunset Suite a vicious antisocial Chihuahua and see if she orders another room service dog. Well I’d show them. I love him, I said aloud. He’s perfect. A baby pinscher, right? Just like I ordered. I stood up and made my way to the door, opening it with my left hand so that Becky wouldn’t see the bite on my right. Well, Becky said, pausing a bit too long at the door, we aim to please. Yes, I said, tell Ian he did a fabulous job. Vicious is just the thing. Vicious? she asked. The dog, I said looking to the carrier. That’s his name. Oh, she said and smiled her bullshit smile again. Bye-bye, I said, as she walked out with her entourage. Have a good night, she said as the door closed. 446 FOIL. Alone, except for housekeeping, Vicious and I had a little talk. Now look here I said to him, pushing all of my face against the closed mesh door and looking directly into his tiny doggie eyes, you’re not exactly what I had in mind either, but apparently we’re stuck with each other so you can either make things easy or I can make them hard. He yapped four or five times in quick succession and peed on the disposable diaper-looking pad spread out in the bottom of his carrier. I took this to mean he was open to change. Okay then, I said, unhitching the clasp again. I’m going to leave this open and when you feel like it you can come on out. No pressure, I held up my hands so he could see there would be no reaching, just whenever you feel like it. Then I pressed my sunglasses against my face and watched him behind tinted glass while I pretended not to give a damn. He apparently didn’t give a damn either and curled up on the unsoiled part of his diaper and took a nap. Housekeeping, finished with the sheets and the bath, pointed towards the vacuum. No, I shook my head, and pressed a single finger to my lips, he’s sleeping. She crept around the couch and peered into the carrier. Precious, she said. 447 No, Vicious, I said holding up my bitten hand. And, I motioned to the sleeping pup, he refuses to come out. Just a second, she said, and made her way out to the hall where she disappeared for ten minutes, maybe more. When she finally returned she was carrying a band-aid, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a Dove ice-cream bar. This is for you, she said, handing me the medical supplies. And this, she held up the Dove bar, is for the dog. Really? I asked, they eat ice cream? They eat anything, she said unwrapping the bar, but they love chocolate. She peeled off a piece of the candy shell and placed it carefully at the entrance of the doggie door. Vicious looked up and crinkled his petite nose but then, instead of snarling, he sniffed and smiled. He liked chocolate. Especially dark frozen chocolate with almonds, and ate the shell in a single gulp. Here, the housekeeper handed me a small piece, hold it out to him. I did and he ate it, his tongue darting over my fingers, sure to get every last bite. Was that yummy-wummy? I asked him, careful to mind his teeth as I scratched beneath his chin. He took two steps closer to me and rolled over on his back. Do you want me to scratch your tummy, honey? I asked. He stretched his two front paws in the air, and so I began to rub my French-manicured tips across his bronze chest. Tomorrow Mommy’s going to make you a real rhinestone collar, I said fingering 448 the baby blue leather strap he had fastened around his tiny neck, and we can get rid of this tacky thing. What do you think about that Vichy? He yawned, apparently unimpressed. Oh, you’ll see, I said. He closed his eyes as if to say, Yeah, honey, well go on and prove it. We’re going to get along famously. We’re going to get along just fine. 449 CRISIS. The next day I text messaged Puck: 911. long beach. tattoos. please? yrs, mags. He responded: Go 911 yrself. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but at least it was something. And it was a quick turn around which meant, undoubtedly, he was stomach down, sprawled on his faux-rabbit sofa thumbing through Variety, and waiting for his Blackberry to ring. So I tried again: pretty please? But he didn’t reply. So I emptied Vicious’ water dish, and refilled it. With Evian. And he still didn’t reply. So I went into the bathroom, sat at the vanity, reapplied some mascara, and nothing. I checked my cell, it had all the bars. I turned it off and then on, just in case, but no. Vicious? I called out scanning the room. Vichydog? He was in the bedroom, frantically trying to eat his way out of his Burburry cape. I suppose I could have scolded him. I could have marched in and tapped his little nose with the tip of my finger, but who really wants to parade about in a plaid cape, in Los Angeles, in June? Go at it, I told him. Shred it to bits. And while Vicious kept himself occupied I called down for the tank and made my way to Long Beach, alone. 450 SPECIAL EFFECTS. Contrary to what Quentin may have said, Lyle Tuttle’s tattoo parlor is not in Long Beach. It’s in the back of a bike shop in Bellflower. The bikes were all Harleys and shiny with chrome and tacked up to a grease-stained wall were a grip of hand-drawn girls in bikinis and one-piece suits, stretched up against palm trees or lounging in inner tubes. Some had super-short cut off’s with small dangleys of denim touching their thighs and others had coconuts or half-shirts tied in a knot above their navels. I walked along considering each one. Considering myself done up as one, with high heels and coifed hair, looking as though I were waiting to be slapped against the freshly scrubbed bicep of a seaman from the 1950’s. Yum. Lyle Tuttle was in the back and when someone hollered, 4 o’clock, he didn’t keep me waiting. So sugar, what’s it gonna be? he asked, eyeing first my hips and then my breasts. Text, I said, pulling from my purse the Basquiat postcard from the MOMA gift shop Ricky bought me when he wouldn’t buy me the painting itself. I held it out to Lyle but he didn’t take it. Instead he readjusted the bandana that was holding back his ponytail and he made what sounded like a grunt. He had a ridiculous amount of armpit hair, the most I had ever seen, on anyone, and he smelled sticky or like bologna and I realized I kind of liked the smell. Sit down, he said, pointing to a barstool with a swivel seat and no back. I sat, hanging my Fendi bag over my bare knee, and soon learned Lyle Tuttle didn’t do custom orders, especially not custom orders taken from reproduced pieces of 451 art printed on a museum postcard. Lyle Tuttle gives you the tattoo he thinks you need and he doesn’t care particularly if you want it on the small of your back or circling your wrist. Lyle Tuttle gives you the tattoo he thinks you need in the place he thinks you need it and when he told me to take off my shirt off, I did. And when he told me my bra strap was getting in the way, I took off my bra as well. Naked, from the waist up, in the back room of a Harley shop, I sat on a stool with a swivel top and watched Lyle carefully add black ink to a steel vile attached to a gun. He turned it on and off twice and he said to me, Ready? Hell no I wasn’t ready, but I knew if I said as much, if I hesitated for even an instant Lyle would turn off his gun and walk away forever leaving me to sit shivering, half undressed on a barstool in Bellflower. So I took a small breath and said, Ready. Lyle Tuttle grunted and picked up another stool, identical to mine, and set it down in such a way that when he sat down he was straddling my small body like a hug. And suddenly, right there, like that, I was alright. No, I was better than alright. I can honestly say, that at that moment, I had never felt more safe in my life. Ready, I said again to Lyle who switched the gun to his left hand before he switched it on. Lyle decided I needed a moth adorned sentence running vertical down the lower back of my spine. Le papillon de nuit, he said. The gun was on, in Lyle’s left hand, and it hummed. With his right hand Lyle grabbed my right shoulder and began to squeeze while massaging the muscle in a circular motion. With each small circle he inched his index and pointer fingers closer to the line where the sharp curve of my breastbone was 452 lost behind the fatty skin of my boob. With his left hand he inked the moth and then the text while with his mouth he made quiet words into my ear. Can you feel it pushing against your skin? Ripping into your flesh? Do you want it deeper? Longer? Harder? Sugar? 453 THE CASTING COUCH. I didn’t fuck Lyle though maybe I almost wanted to. I did not fuck Lyle although I knew it was probably part of the gig. Part of my way around not being a Hell’s Angel or a Rock Star. Because I did not fuck him he used brown institutional paper towels to blot at the blood that formed in the crevices of the delicately drawn wings on my back. I deserved this. I said, Ouch. Lyle said, don’t use Neosporin. Don’t sun. That’ll be $175. I wished I could pull three perfectly rolled hundred dollar bills from someplace magical, like my cunt, but unfortunately I hadn’t the foresight to think of such a thing, so like a dumb-ass, I wrote Lyle a check. Don’t worry, I said, as he looked it over with a squint—I had made it for four times the amount he told me—It’ll clear. I’m sure it will, Sugar, he said as he tucked it into the pocket of his worn and greasy jeans. Of that I have no doubt. Outside, the sun was a little too bright, but instead of getting back into the tank, which I left, with the last of my cash—a fifty—near some kids on the curb. I sat on the steps of the bike shop, smoked an imaginary cigarette and tried to figure out what the fuck I was doing. In the Central Valley I’d be quite a sensation, sitting skirt around my thighs on the dirty-ass steps of a bike shop, taking drags of a cigarette that doesn’t exist. But in Los Angeles, or some Long Beach/Bellflower extension thereof, I’m just another 454 girl with a back that burns like a motherfucker and a purse full of pharmaceuticals. I dug out my cell phone and dialed. Okay, so I didn’t exactly dial numbers, rather I said, Puck, into the handset and after a brief pause the phone rang. It rang three times before someone, a girl, picked it up. Hi-ye, she said, Puck’s place, and then she giggled. And he giggled. I heard him in the background. A distinctly Puck-like giggle of the we’re-talking-shit-about-those- girls variety. I didn’t say anything. I just crossed my fingers and held my breath. Umm, like hell-oh? she said again. Hi, I said. Is Puck there? In the background I heard him say, Ask who it is. He said to ask who is it, the girl said. She sounded young, but she couldn’t be that young. Not four-years-old I repeat everything as I’m told young. I was being played. She was playing with me. And I had to take it. At least take it if I wanted to talk to Puck. So instead of saying, Listen here Sweetie, on the front of the phone is a little screen, and when I call my picture pops up. I know because I was wearing my I-can’t-believe-I-spent-so-much-on-a-white-linen- that-you- just- spilled- Cabernet – on –before –I –could –even –wear –it –in –LA -dress when Puck snapped the shot it in the rolling green hills of Cotes de Bordeaux. And 455 underneath that picture, in case we haven’t met, is my name, Magdalena. But instead of saying all that, I just said, Magdalena. She said Madge-da-lane-a, the girl repeated and I heard a muffled cough, or what might have been a cough but what most likely was a pantomime because when she returned to the phone, He said to tell you he’s not home, is what she said. I hung up and sat down. I closed my eyes and pushed my fingers into the sides of my eyelids until the red haze I was seeing turned into a dark black spot. I breathed. I took air in and then, as gently as I could I let it out. I was going to need a bath. A hot one. And a real cigarette. And one hell of a bottle of gin. 456 EXTERNAL CONFLICTS. Back at the hotel I was admittedly half-drunk, in a half-full tub with Vicious. My body art burned and itched in a god-awful way, even when pressed up against the cool porcelain back, and Vicious was giving me a small migraine splashing and yapping in circles as he was, trying desperately to yank out the drain plug with his teeny pincer teeth. Unbelievable, I thought as I tied my hair in a knot on top of my head, and reached over the side of the tub for another drink. I was blasting a recently burned copy of The Barbie Coffin’s latest single, “Baton de Colle.” It was Quentin’s band and I was trying to love it, hence the volume, the alcohol and the perpetual repeat, but in all honesty it just wasn’t my thing. In order for me to work with music it has to live up to its word and although the lyrics were promising, the vocalist had maybe been in love once with a selfish girl and had certainly never been in love with two women simultaneously as the lyrics implied. And then there was the whole French thing: if you’re going to give a song a French name you have got to somehow invoke its Frenchness. I mean that’s only fair. Not that I know French or anything but I know a few French artists, and like I said to the Shrink, I’ve done a fair bit of work on Catherine Deneuve. Or, and maybe that’s the problem, maybe the French decoded would help reveal a deeper meaning. I stretched over and grabbed the phone to dial 0. How may we help you Mrs. de la Cruz? the hotel operator on the other end of the line replied. Ian, for fuck’s sake, can you lay off on the Mrs. please? 457 I beg your pardon, Mag-da-lena, he said, as though it physically hurt his tongue to say my first name out loud, How may I help you? Parlez vous Français? I said into the receiver. Oui. Puis-je vous aider? Right. I was wondering if you could send someone up to translate some French for me? Pardon? I’m trying to translate my lover’s band but I don’t know French so I was wondering if you could tell me what colle means? He laughed, and then quickly tried to cover his snicker with a cough. Oh come on Ian, let it out, I won’t tell anyone. And to emphasize my point I laughed, out loud, with him. Because it was a rather ridiculous word: lover, but what the hell else was I supposed to call him. Vicious yapped three sharp barks in quick succession and Ian, fully recovered now said, what was the word again, Collie? Like the Lassie dog? No, coe-lay, I tried to Frenchify it a little before giving up and spelling it. I think it means glue, or stuck depending on the accent. So then Baton de Colle would mean, Glue Baton? Yes, something like that I believe. Baton like the girls who couldn’t quite make the cheerleader squad used to throw in high school before the band marched out? I asked, dunking a hand towel in the bath and ringing it out across my knees. 458 No, Ian said, in French I believe baton is more like wand. As in bippity-bobbidy-boo? Probably, but not as magical, if I can be so frank. By all means, Ian. Be as Frank as you want to be. It’s not exactly as if the French are known for their suspension of disbelief, but a glue wand? Well I’ll give them that. What do you suppose it’s used for? Broken hearts? Match making? Umm…he hesitated. Come on Ian, spit it out, I commanded. Probably for affixing small bits of paper together, stamps and envelopes, kindergarten art projects and the like. Oh, I said. He cleared his throat. Anything else I can assist you with? Would you like a French –English dictionary sent up? Not right now thanks. You’re welcome. And, he hesitated before saying, Mag-da-lena? Yes? I know you’ve placed a hold on all your calls, but since you’re on the line would you care to receive messages at this time? That depends who’s calling. Well there’s a gentleman in the bar. He’s been waiting about forty-five minutes. I told him you were taking a siesta and that I’d notify him when you were receiving visitors. 459 Send him up. I’m receiving visitors now. I’ll get right to it. Thank’s Ian, you’re a doll. Au revoir, Mon Cherie. 460 SURVEY BEATS AND LOCATE TURNING POINTS. It wasn’t Tuesday or Thursday and it was far from a Sunday afternoon so for a brief moment I breathed a strange excited air thinking the gentleman in the bar who was currently making his way up to my suite might be Ricky, or better yet, Puck, but when I heard Quentin’s knuckles rap, I knew it wasn’t so and my stomach fell. It’s open I hollered above the drumming of the Glue Stick song. The door opened slowly as Quentin shuffled in and took a survey of the room. My hair was piled in an artful, but wet sloping mess on top of my head, secured with two take out chopsticks, and I wasn’t wearing lip-gloss. I had, however, managed to get out of the tub and slip into a camo tank and hip huggers, covered by a tangerine kimono with red and magenta dragonflies buzzing round the armholes—I didn’t want Quentin to see the tattoo. It was still raw and red. Maybe when it had healed over. Maybe when the scab fell off. Hi, I said to Quentin. Hi, he responded, walking over to the stereo and turning down the noise, shaking his head and kind of quietly, laughing as he did so. Glad you decided to accept visitors, he said, I was going broke down there at the bar. Do you know they charge $24.50 for something called a Tahiti Martini? Well they use real lychees, I said. Fuck, for that much they’d better use real crystal and let you keep the glass. 461 I giggled and slid my feet over a smidge so he could join me on the lounge. Vicious, ever suspicious of strangers and wet at that, had his ears back and was attempting a snarl. I didn’t know you were the Tahiti Martini type, I said, stretching my feet back out over his lap. I’m not, but what’s that? he nodded towards Vicious who was running back and forth along the length of the lounge, making periodic attacks on Quentin’s shoes. That, I said reaching down and lifting Vicious onto my lap with one hand, is my new security system. Well can you call it off or pack it away or something? It’s making me nervous. Afraid of dogs? When they do that, Quentin said, noting the anxious slobber foaming on Vicious’ mouth. He’s all show, I said, getting up and depositing Vicious and his chew toys into the empty bathtub. And besides, we weren’t expecting you. I know. We’re redoing a tall wall on Sunset and there was a conflict with the squeegee jockeys so we got off early. A tall wall? You know when they paint the entire side of the building with an ad for Spiderman or something. You mean like where his eyes become the windows and he looks like he’s climbing up nineteen stories strung from a web? 462 Kind of, but we’re more sophisticated than that now. We do the windows too and from a distance you can’t even tell. What about from close up? Close up its pretty good, though I don’t know what it’s like from the inside. I’ve always wondered what they see. What it would be like to go to work every day and look out you window to a giant finger, a backwards letter or maybe even an ass. I’m pretty sure they can’t tell the difference, I said thinking of the giant bottle of Diamond Myst we had painted on the west wall. Most companies use dual panes and they’re tinted in such a way that you can’t really tell what’s going on outside. Right, he said. You would know. There was some silence while I adjusted the chopstick in my hair. So Spiderman, that’s what you did today? No, we’re starting a Target wall. Target amazes me. I mean ten years ago they were battling it out against K-Mart for small town proprietorship of paper towels, tacky clothes and particleboard furniture and now look at them, competing with Absolute and Calvin Klein on Sunset. I’d love to meet their image consultant, whoever the hell he is, I bet he’s loaded. I’m sure, Quentin said, pushing my feet off his lap and walking out to the balcony, where he lit up a smoke. Shut the sliding glass door, I shouted out to him, I don’t need smoke in here today. Without saying a word Quentin did as he was told. 463 While he was out on the balcony I took a quick peek at Vicious (who had settled down and was sleeping on his paisley pillow) and then repositioned myself on the lounge where I busied myself with make-up, trying to discretely paint and line my lips with my right hand while I held my left over my mouth as though I were about to cough. I didn’t have a mirror, but I could see an outline of my mouth in the polished base of the table lamp, and although I was grossly disproportioned by the convex surface, I managed the lips just fine. When he came back inside I had a freshly done-up mouth, which he failed to kiss. Instead he walked towards the icebox to retrieve his shoe and said, Maybe this was a mistake. You mean us? I said, suddenly still on the settee. No. Not quiet, he tried a small laugh. Maybe we should just keep to our appointments next time. I don’t know about this dropping in stuff. I didn’t ask you to come— That‘s what I mean, he said, pushing his heel down into his shoe and reaching for the laces. But, I finished, I’m glad you did. He paused, I can’t say I feel the same. What do you mean? I was standing up now, making my way to the door to block his departure. I mean I guess I thought you were different when I wasn’t here. 464 Different how? Like you did something. For your information, I told him, I do do things. I do all sorts of things. Like what? he said, suddenly sounding a lot more like Ricky than I ever thought him capable. You know what, I said reaching for the doorknob and opening it myself, I don’t need this. No really, what do you do all day? Is this it? he said as reply. Is what it? This, he untucked an arm and motioned to the room, the growing mound of glossy shopping bags, the take-out box from Chin Chins, the view. Yes, I said. I hotel all day. I spa and I sun and more often than not I call down to the valet and he brings the car round unless I don’t feel like driving whereupon I’ll hire a limo and then I spend the afternoon nursing a latte through the boutiques of Rodeo and Robertson. Sounds like a tough life, Quentin said. It is, I said, defiant. You don’t know the half of it. But something in the way he was looking at me, past me, said he did know. He knew all too well. Fuck, I said, holding on to the doorframe to keep from shaking. Do you think that it’s nothing? That I spend my days doing nothing? I do exactly the opposite. I spend my days trying to do something, anything so that I have something to pour the 465 nothing into. Doing nothing is easy. It’s doing something that’s hard. Doing something meaningful or monetary all day… I mean, how on earth do you begin? Quentin laughed, finally, and not in a sad or sarcastic way. He laughed out loud and for real. Come on, he said. I’ll show you. 466 THE NOT SO A-LIST. Seriously, he said. Get dressed. I wanna show you something. What, I asked, my faced buried in down. It’s an outing, he said. Now are you coming or what? I don’t know, I said. Well I say you should, he tossed me a pair of red capris. Rolling over slowly and leaning back on the bed I slipped my feet into the leg holes and slid the capris up onto my bare ass, zipping and buttoning one-handed. I reached for my bra and blouse and quickly put on my shirt so Quentin wouldn’t see my back, while he dug through the closet looking for shoes. Don’t you have any shoes with laces? he asked. Sure, I said, pointing to a pair of cranberry corset-inspired Manolo pumps with ankle ties. That’s not exactly what I had in mind, Quentin said, picking up the shoe and examining it briefly before placing it back in the closet. Don’t you have any tennis shoes? he asked, poking around in the closet again. I don’t play tennis, I said. It’s almost more excruciating than golf. I wasn’t being literal, he said. How about sneakers? Nikes? Campers? Gym shoes? You go to the gym don’t you? Yes. Okay, good. What shoes to you wear to the gym? Those, I said, point to a pair of rhinestone encrusted flip-flops. 467 You wear these to work out in? Quentin picked one up and ran his finger along the punctured sole that Vicious had recently used as a teething ring. No, I wear them to the gym. At the gym I wear my Pumas. Okay, he turned around a bit exasperated and I could tell I had almost gotten to him. Wear your Pumas then. I can’t, I said, enjoying myself. A-of-all they don’t match with what I’m wearing and B-of-all they’re at the gym. I keep them in my locker. Of course, Quentin said, and turned back towards the closet. I laughed. Having fun? he asked, still sizing up the closet’s contents. A blast, I said. Where are we going that I need sneakers anyhow? It’s a surprise, he said, reaching back into the closet and grabbing a small black shoebox. Put that back, I said, jumping up from the bed and walking towards the closet in two long steps. Why? he asked, opening the lid and removing one tiny peachy-pink slipper. I froze, half wanting to tear the shoe and the box away from him, half struck by the sight of the dusty ribbons I had hand-sewn into the seams with teeny tiny stitches. Hey, he said. No heels, laces…do these still fit? I don’t know I said, gently taking the slipper from his hand and rubbing its soft leather with my thumb. I sat back down on the bed and held the sole of the shoe up to the bottom of my foot. I think they’re too small, I said to Quentin. 468 Just try, he said, you never know. I took a deep breath expecting, like some backwards Cinderella story, to be immediately transformed, flooded with memories, turned into ash. But when my foot touched the slipper, first the left and then the right, nothing happened. They were a little tight—my pinkie toes were pushed uncomfortably against my middle toes—but I took hold of the ribbons and wrapped them in a tight X-pattern up my ankles and ended with a double-knotted bow just above the neck of my foot. Okay, I said, desperate to pas de bourrée, to arabesque, to échappé and jeté out of the hotel. I grabbed Quentin’s hand and tugged him out of the bedroom. Let’s go already. 469 STUNT DOUBLE. Each soft-soled step I took down the hall, down the elevator, through the lobby and out the door of the hotel resonated with danger. My hand in Quentin’s, step by step, we were breaking the rules. Maybe if there had been a third, Puck for example, or one of Quentin’s cousins from the auto shop, a Jennifer, someone other than just the two of us, standing in the lobby surrounded by banana-leaf wall paper and waiting for the valet to pull Quentin’s car around. Someone to make excuses in case we were seen by someone from the water set, by one of Quentin’s cousins, by Venus, Donna or, oh the horror, Cheri. Three can be explained as a meeting, a business dinner, a group outing. Two can’t be so easily explained. Especially when one of the two is wearing pink ballet slippers, Two Blonde Lizard chandelier earrings and no panties, while the other of the two is wearing paint splattered Diesel jeans, a vintage Syd Barrett concert Tee and green pumas. We deserved to be caught, I was thinking, and then a teal minivan with a ladder tied to the top pulled up and the valet held open the passenger’s door. That’s us, Quentin said, dropping my hand so he could pull a twenty from his wallet. You coming? You drive a mini van? Don’t worry, he said, the rear windows are tinted. You can sit in back if you’re worried about what the world might think. He tugged open the sliding side door and walked around to the driver’s side leaving me to make up my own mind. I climbed in next to him and the valet closed both doors before we drove off. 470 That’s not what I meant, I said, clicking my seat belt across my lap. I just thought you’d drive something older. What, you don’t think the Aerostar’s a classic? This baby here, he patted the dash, is timeless. I can see that I said, noting the sloping bow of the ceiling and the duct-taped vinyl upholstery. And besides, it fits three amps, the drums, a dozen cans of paint and a 22-foot extension ladder. Good to know. Quentin made a left on Beverly and another left on Crescent Heights. We passed Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose. Where are we going? I asked again, terrified he’d gotten it in his head to take me to Sunset and there was no way I was pulling up in front of Katana, North, or even the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, in a minivan, however timeless. You’ll see, he said. Right, I said and continued to keep track of the street signs: Norton, Fountain, Sunset. On Sunset we didn’t turn right or left and I let out my breath. Instead we continued straight passing Selma Ave. and Mt. Olympus, and, just before Crescent Heights turned into the windy roads of Laurel Canyon, we took a right and headed east on Hollywood Blvd. Can I have a clue? We’re not going out, we’re going up, he said. 471 Up how? I asked, feeling a new kind of terror creep into my stomach. Up there he said, pulling into an alley on the corner of North Stanley, and pointing to a billboard that advertised Diamond Myst. Maybe I’ll stay in the car, I said, eyeing Puck holding a water-logged me, as we bobbed about in the Pacific larger-than-life and the words: A Diamond in the Rough. printed in bold, below. Well I’m going up, Quentin said. Could you at least give me a hand with the ladder? Fine, I said, unclicking my belt and opening the side door. While Quentin worked the knots on the driver’s side, I struggled to undo the double figure-eights on my side without injuring a nail. When the ladder was unhitched, Quentin lifted it off the roof and over his head, setting it down against the Myst ad. We’ll need this, he said expanding the ladder and locking it in place, to get past the barbed graffiti wire. After that we can climb up the utility pole using the attached rungs. You can, I said, if that’s what you want. Even looking that high makes me dizzy. Look, he said, I know what’s up with you and heights, but you’re not going to fall, I can promise you that. Really, I asked through the lump now forming in my throat. You can promise I won’t fall? You can promise I won’t come crashing thirty gazillion feet to the ground? You can promise you’ll save me and all that. No thank you, I said. I’ve heard that line before and it’s a lie. 472 He kicked at some loose gravel with his sneaker and stuck his fingers in his pockets, slouching. No, he said, you’re right. I can’t promise anything. Maybe you could fall. Maybe an earthquake will hit and knock us both over. Maybe you’ll sneeze and I’ll slip and we’ll both, as you say, come crashing to the ground, but it’s doubtful, and if it does happen we’ll fall together, that I can promise. Why would you want to…How could you promise a thing like that? You go first. Climb to the fifth rung and I’ll be right behind you. We’ll go step by step together, and if you slip, if you fall and crash to the ground, so will I. I’ll fall beneath you, maybe I’ll even break your fall. What do you say? he held out his hand. I say, no, I said as I walked to the ladder and tested its stability by shaking it a bit. I say, absolutely not, I said, stepping with my soft slippers onto the first ruing and then the second and then the third. I’m right behind you, Quentin said, as I stepped onto the fourth and then the fifth rung, making sure both feet were parallel before leading the right foot up another notch: right foot, left foot, feet together; right hand, left hand, hands together. It was very slow going, but Quentin didn’t seem to care. I’m right behind you, I’m right behind you, he kept whispering. About five feet below the barbed-wire my cell phone, attached to my waist by a plastic clip—hopelessly uncool, I know, but I forgot my purse and had nothing to put it in—rang. But not just any ring, Ricky’s customized Take Me Out to the Ballgame, ring. Deet de de de de deet deet, it sang as I climbed. I wanted to push the reject button. I 473 wanted to turn it off. I wanted to answer, but to answer, to reject, to power off would mean removing one of my white-knuckled hands from the cool metal of the ladder and there was no way in hell that was going to happen. So we climbed to musical accompaniment. When we reached the massive loops and swirls of barbed wire, intended to keep taggers and people such as ourselves from reaching the billboard’s shelf, the ringing stopped and Quentin said, now this is going to be the tricky part. You didn’t say there was going to be a tricky part, I said. Well there is, he said, and this here is it. What you have to do is swing around to the back of the board, where the rungs are, but don’t push off or the ladder will wobble and lift your leg extra high or else you’ll be snagged by the barbed wire. I looked at the board, the wire and the rungs as Quentin gave instructions. I think I’d like to go down, I said. But you’re over half way there, Quentin said, it’s quicker to go up than it is to go down. I’m sure you’ve heard the joke I said, the one about the blonde, or the Pollack— take your pick—who swims out to the middle of the lake and then, because she’s too tired to make it to the other side, swims back. This here is the punch line: I want to go down. I’ll make you a deal, Quentin said as my phone began to play Ricky’s ring yet again. Just try it once. Stretch up as tall as you can and see if you can reach the rung with your leg. If you can’t we’ll go down, no questions asked. 474 Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, my phone hummed in mechanical tones, I don’t care if I ever—No really, I said, I can’t. And if you’ll excuse me, I started to take slow, small steps back down the rungs, I really have to take this call. Quentin nodded, but he didn’t back down. Instead, he swung his body around the backside of the ladder and made me face him, our knuckles inches apart, our chests brushing through the cold steel as he went up and I went down. 475 WRITING FROM THE OUTSIDE IN. On the ground I leaned up against the hood of Quentin’s van and stared at the picture of Ricky that flashed across my caller ID. Putting a hand over my mouth and the receiver to help muffle the noise in both directions I said, Hi. Hi, Ricky said. And then there was along silence where neither of us said anything. How are you holding up? he finally said. Fine, I said. You know, considering. Considering what? he asked. Considering, I wanted to say, I’m in a mild tiff with my lover who is currently without ropes fifty-feet above ground and if he doesn’t die, I just might from the sheer terror of the memories and all. But instead I said, Considering, you know, us. What about us? Ricky asked. I don’t know, I said. I thought maybe that’s why you called. It is, he said, kind of. I’ve been thinking about us and I think we need to talk. Yeah, I said. We probably do. So how about if I fly out to Santa Fe and then help you drive back. How do you know I didn’t fly out here myself? I asked. Because you’re too scared to fly, at least without a purse full of sedatives and a licensed psychiatrist. And your car’s gone. She wasn’t a shrink, I said, she was a holistic visualizer, I said, referring to how I managed to make it to Italy, to France. 476 You know what I mean, he said. And your mother called. Oh, I said, wondering how even in a simple lie I managed to get so caught up. So how about it? How about what, I asked. How about I fly to Santa Fe and we drive back together. Sure, I said, knowing he never would, knowing that something would come up—Fiji, an important merger meeting, a melted iceberg—something always came up. Where are you staying? he asked. I’m moving around, I lied, not wanting him to do something crazy like call the hotel to confirm. How about you call me when you land in Albuquerque and I’ll pick you up. Sounds good, he said. Good, I said. And then there was more silence. I love you, you know. I know, I said, and then looking over to where Quentin stood, hands in his pockets on the ledge of death, I said, Me too, and hung up. 477 UNRAVELING THE NARRATIVE THREAD. The car ride on the way home was awkward. I stared out the window and would have fiddled with the door locks, except in Quentin’s car nothing was automatic, and it might have seemed silly to push and then pull the button thingy by the door. So instead I picked at a loose piece of rubber that was sticking out of the dash and tried to count my intake of breaths. Hey, Quentin said, reaching his hand over the stick shift and rubbing my knee, heights aren’t for everyone. It takes practice, to know you won’t fall. That’s when the tears came. The impossible body-shaking, snotty, hiccup mess of soul-melting sorrow. Fuck, Quentin said, taking his hand off my knee so he could downshift and pull over with minimal commotion. You okay? No, I shook my head as the story of Junah began to slip out. I’m not okay at all. 478 DREAM SEQUENCES. After Junah died I was sure he would come for me. In a dream, in a cloud, as a door-to-door soap salesman. I prayed to God a lot then. My God, not the Catholic one. Apparently this is the bargaining/ denial/ rage stage, but I didn’t see it that way. Maybe it’s because I’m still not to the acceptance stage, but to get to the acceptance stage I would have to know just how exactly it feels to fall to the ground and when your body hits the earth in some sort of deafening smack, what it feels like and does it feel alone? I know that accepting Junah’s death has everything to do with the feeling of body to ground, but short of leaping off the same cliff I only have moments, like the ones just before sleep when I feel as though I’m falling and I don’t fight it. I don’t jolt awake and reach out for the bed, instead I try to stay there, in the perpetually plunging moment, and I pray—not to God—that this is Junah. That if I fall with him, I’ll have my sign. 479 SUBSTANCE. The next day I woke up alone, tattoo still snugly hidden beneath my tank, without so much as an indent on the pillow next to me to prove that Quentin had—not ten hours ago—lay beside me. I showered, got dressed, called down for a driver and then waited in Elie Saab for Puck to pick me up for our standing weekly nail/wax/Rodeo appointment at half past ten. But he didn’t show so I went alone. At the Nail Bar I sucked down Cosmopolitans and stuffed my cheeks full of marshmallow chocolates while Vietnamese women buffed my calluses smooth. Although most of the wives in the water set preferred to get their nails done at the Four Seasons Spa where they give ‘European-style’ manicures—which are no different than any other type of manicure with the large exception that the floor is Spanish tile, the price is three times as much, and girls doing the nails are white—I still preferred the low-overhead Asian joints. Or at least I did when they were seemingly owned and run by the girls themselves. Lately, in every shop, or at least the ones I frequent, in addition to the polite, skinny nail girls, there is also a boss man. At Nail Bar his name is Norman and although he doesn’t do nails he sits at the front desk and takes all the money, tips included. In hushed whispers I tried to express my distaste for Norman to the older woman seated next to me but she was, in her own words, Entering a euphoric state, honey, and Not in the mood to discuss gender politics. Sorry, I said and leaned back into the vibrating faux-leather of the massage chair. 480 Sensing I wanted to talk, Lily, the girl who was massaging my left calf, said, You married? She knew I was married. I came in weekly and every week we had the same chat, but it was part of the ritual, part of the short list of English words she most likely knew. Yes, I answered, smiling. How is your husband? I looked at Lily, she was kneading her thumbs into pressure points just above my ankle. Her hands were powerful, despite the tired look in her eyes. I don’t know how he is, I answered, honestly. I moved out. Lily pressed deeper, pinching my Achilles. That’s why I ask, Lily said in perfect English, if you’re married. In L.A. you have to ask every week. I smiled, for real this time, and a noise, half laugh, half sob, escaped from somewhere deep in my throat. You okay? Lily asked. Yeah, I said, sinking back into the pleather massage chair. How are you? I asked Lily as she moved on to my right leg. Still married, she said. Norman, she nodded her chin to the front desk, he’s my husband. Oh, I said, not really knowing what else to say. I was quiet, even Vicious kept his yap shut, until the phone rang. 481 When Norman answered Lily whispered, The Nail Bar was my idea. To sell drinks and do nails at the same time. Used to be fun working here. Then Norman got fired from his job with Cal-Trans. Cutbacks or something. Now it’s not so fun here. I know exactly what you mean, I told her, taking out a twenty and discreetly tucking it in between the acetone and cotton balls on her nail cart. When I was back in the car, speeding to Pink Cheeks to get waxed the stupid feelings started up. Or rather, I started feeling stupid. You know, like when you’re at a party and you think of the perfect come back only after you’ve left? It was like that. Only reverse. Had I really just complained to my underpaid manicurist? Had I really just pretended to empathize, no to compare my life to her life? My own voice mimicked me in my head, My life isn’t so fun either. What a bunch of bullshit. Poor me. I live in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Poor me. I’m fucking the next Eddie Vedder while my oblivious husband is footing the bill. Poor me. I’m just like you. Oh my God. As if I really believe that. As if I actually think I have anything in common with Lily, who actually has to work, touching other people’s feet as though she likes it, for a living? Fuck me. And then I was scared. Soon I was actually going to have to think about what the fuck I was doing. Already the pieces didn’t match up. The longer the affair lasted the more it became apparent, at least to me, that Ricky wasn’t in fact cheating. He was most likely working. Hard. It was me who had issues. Me who couldn’t keep the faith and was, literally, fucking up. 482 At Pink Cheeks, a place supposedly frequented by all of Hef’s girls, I went into my cubicle and, thankfully, didn’t have to talk. Although some of the other girls shouted their personal lives into cell phones or through the curtain divides I silently unrobed, spread open my legs and as promised, in six sheets of sharp pulling I was hair free and on my way to Escada. 320 North Beverly Drive, I told the driver and he made the next left. North Beverly Drive is one block east of Rodeo, developed largely for tourists so it has stores like Victoria’s Secret, Banana Republic and the Gap. Affordable stores so that the masses visiting from Duluth can say they bought something on Rodeo even if they didn’t buy it on Rodeo just exactly. I told the driver Beverly and not Rodeo because Puck and I had universally agreed there was something too Nuevo riche about getting dropped off on Rodeo. I much preferred to get dropped off one street over and walk around the block. As we rounded the corner to Escada I set Vicious down on the seat beside me and fished in my clutch for some gloss. Applying a small amount to my bottom lip and then blotting, checking my work in the tinted window of a Hummer as we passed. Magda! Armundo shouted, sashaying through the store and into my outstretched arms as I walked through the door. Mundo! I shouted back as we kiss-kissed first one cheek then kiss-kissed the other. 483 Do not tell me, he said spotting Vicious. Do not tell me that this stunning creature belongs to you! He reached out and rubbed Vicious beneath the chin, and much to my surprise, Vicious declined to bite him, as was his customary greeting for strangers, and instead was perfectly apathetic to Armundo’s caress. Well aren’t you just the package, he said, looking at me, my clutch, my small hairless dog. To think, it was days ago— Months, I correct him. Months ago, he smiled and swatted me on the ass, that you were just some ill- fitting farm girl from where was it again, Kentucky? Lodi. Might as well be Kentucky, and now look at you, he paused for dramatic effect, you are positively Sooooo L.A.! I looked at myself in the full-length mirror and I didn’t see me. Not the me that I carried around in my mind. Not the me that in any way at all resembled my brother Junah. My Polish nose had been replaced with a smaller, less pointy version. My eyebrows had been waxed and arched and lined into perfect floating commas above blue eyes that had been lasiked into perfection. My skin had been pealed and buffed and bleached and bronzed into a tight mask free of sunspots or laugh lines or anything remotely real. Anything that might have once said, I grew up outdoors on a grape ranch in the sun. And my hair, try your luck, pick a strand, one in a hundred says you won’t— hell, even I won’t—be able to spot which shade, which lock is my natural blonde. 484 I looked fake and felt a little sick. The burning sensation that was largely due to the waxing of my parts was creeping up into my stomach, into my chest, into my cheeks. I took a deep breath trying to still the panic and threw up. 485 INSTANT REPLAY. If my life were a movie and had instant replay, my puking all over Vicious, all over Mundo and Rodeo and Escada’s designer dresses would have been worthy of an academy award in special effects. Touted as overly showy and unbelievable by some, the projectile-range of my vomit was astronomical. It would have been awesome too, if the store was not one of Beverly Hills’ elite and was instead a tree house filled with thirteen-year old boys. If I had been back on the ranch, Junah would have appreciated it. He would have told of my aim glowingly to his friends. And then, he would exclaim with wild gesticulations, Laney barfed chunks all over everything. It was soooo cool. But at twenty-nine and some change, with clumps of breakfast stuck to the sash of my knitted angora bolero, it wasn’t cool at all. It was the opposite of cool. It was the third worst day of my life. 486 THE GAP. The first worst day of my life involved a phone call from a sympathetic ranger who manned a first-aid station at the foot of an impossibly large rock. It was summer and the business was off to a rough start. Ricky had just left the accountants in Berkeley and then drove over to my parents’ place to work out the kinks in our reverse osmosis project. And because the accountants had given him the run-around and because no one would invest until the osmosis project was kink-free and he couldn’t quite unkink it himself, I left Junah in the mountains to join Ricky and my Dad in the field. We were waist high in Tokay seedless and I was attempting to explain to both of them the best way to achieve efficient hyperfiltration without energy recovery or pressure exchange, only this crazy bird, a magpie maybe, I don’t remember, kept splashing down into the center of my project, as though it were a bath, and flipped the water that I was vainly studying, all over his little birdie back. Ricky and Dad were stitches over the thing. I tried to be serious. Shooing the bird with my left hand while I explained the process, but Ricky and Dad were laughing so hard they could hardly breathe let alone listen and that’s when it happened. When we heard Mom scream. Dad sprinted for the house so fast he nearly broke his leg on the length of PVC pipe I had recently rigged to the aqueduct. Ricky looked around, bewildered, choking on his laughter he was suddenly solemn, and followed slowly behind Dad. I, on the other hand, didn’t move. I had heard that scream before, when I was seven, and I knew. Maybe Junah and I really were twins and the umbilical chord that we had shared at birth was finally cut, the tail knotted and left to rot like a black-eyed-pea 487 on a newborn’s navel. I knew it was Junah, and not say Grandpa who was getting on in his years. I knew it was Junah and not cousin Wade who drank too much and then challenged the Larsen boys to chicken fights along the levee. I knew it was Junah and not an intruder or a fire or a mouse because I felt it. I felt it like my own back was breaking, my own face crashing as it hit the stone ground. The third worst day of my life pales in comparison to the death of Junah by leaps and bounds. Pales so ghostly and sickly green that I feel it tarnishes his memory by even mentioning it in the same breath, but the second worst day, which—contrary to linear plot-lines—came after the third, was closer to the same kind of Junah pain. It was the day I realized infidelity wasn’t fun. 488 KEEPING THINGS MOVING. After blowing chunks in Beverly Hills I did the only thing I knew how. I ran out the door and around the block to where the driver was waiting on North Beverly and I said, I want to go home. But this time I did not mean the house on Bedford or the Beverly Hills Hotel. I meant home, home. The place where I was from. The driver looked bewildered. Said something about how he was only contractually able to drive as far as the airport without first getting permission from his supervisor and so I said fine. Take me to my car. I’ll drive the rest of the way myself. The drive up I-5 is one long agrarian slog. It’s slow and mindless and with the exception, three hours in, of Kettleman City (which is comprised entirely of fast food restaurants and gas stations built beneath a freeway underpass) and the Danish décor of Pea Soup Andersens two hours after that, there’s not much but an endless expanse of land and livestock, orchards and sky. In my rush to get on the road I forgot my i-pod, not to mention any sort of mixed tape and so it was just Vicious and me, on the road with static, an occasional mariachi march, and some feel-good love songs for lovers after dark. First it was Foreigner wanting To Know What Love Is, followed by Michael Bolton’s How Am I Supposed To Live Without You? By the time REO Speedwagon couldn’t Fight This Feeling Anymore, I killed the radio. The last thing I needed was Rod Stewart Telling me Lately, or worse yet, Celine Dion and her Power of Love. So there was silence. And in the silence I drove straight and followed the beam of my headlights as they illuminated hubcaps and tumbleweeds in the shoulder. Vicious was 489 curled into a small sleeping bump in the passenger’s seat and in addition to the air rushing past with the rumbling of a semi, I heard his small doggy breath as it pushed in and out. At Harris’ Ranch I stopped to gas up. Stepping out of the car the first thing I noticed was the smell of cow in the dark night air. It was a warm night in the great central valley and the air was moist with dung and the fresh scent of alfalfa. I walked from my silver tank into the convenience store, where the light was harsh and unnaturally yellow. I pushed my sunglasses back against my face and paced the aisles. I grabbed a pack of Orbits, some Starburst, a Jolly Rancher lollypop, sunflower seeds and a Dove bar. Then I went for water. A long time ago, when we were happy and first beginning Ricky and I were frequent convenience store stoppers. We could spend an entire weekend exiting and entering off and on ramps going from 7-Eleven, to Shell, Circle-K to Arco and Exxon, scanning the refrigerator sections for liquid. And not, mind you, just any liquid, but water, our water. In the beginning it was usually stored on the bottom next to the gallon jugs—large opaque containers with little labeling and no frills—used for filling radiators or cross-the-border trips to Mexico. We’d work quickly and quietly, one of us, usually me, distracting the counter boy with inane directional questions about the quickest way to get to say, Sileda, while the other, usually Ricky, rearranged Cokes and Sprites and Mountain Dews, moving Diamond Myst from the bottom shelf to eye- catching, eye-level locations. We’d snack on corn dogs and powdered doughnuts and drive for miles, moving our empire up, one plastic bottle at a time. 490 In front of the refrigerated coolers I scanned the shelves for water, which nearly seven years later, wasn’t hard to find. In fact, there were now so many brands and bottles, they collectively took up nearly two cooler cases. Diamond Myst was sandwiched between Fiji and Aquafina, third row from the top, while our Luxe line sat nearly four rows below beneath the Evian and Perrier! I looked quickly at the station attendant and then, holding the door open with my hip, I pushed the Evian to the back, and stocked nine or ten cool bottles of Luxe in front of it. It wasn’t a full run, but single- handed and short on time it was the best I could do. Then I grabbed a 64-ounce, sports top bottle of Diamond Myst and made my way to the checkout. I drove the remaining 187 miles to Lodi with the window down, so I could taste the air, and when, after the urban cityscape of Stockton and the cloudy black waters of the San Joaquin Delta melted back into the pastoral of Lodi. I pushed down on my blinker and exited onto Eight Mile Road. When I was a kid Eight Mile Road used to be just that: eight miles. Junah and I would test it on the odometer of the Chevy. It was eight miles down a two lane country road west from the docks at Herman & Helen’s Marina that led through the channels of Rio Linda to Pixley Slough by the Union Pacific Tracks ending up at Highway 99 where it continued another eight miles—well, eight point six, if you want to get technical—east past the Central California Traction lines to Jack Tone Road. Now it stretched a proposed eight lanes and twenty-two miles. There was a Target, two golf courses and hundreds of felled oaks to make room for the tract homes. When I exited I 491 had to pay special attention to stoplights, which seemed to multiply each visit, but even still, as I turned left onto Thornton and right onto Devries, as the country reclaimed itself under the protection of a precious greenbelt, as the manufactured ranches and man-made lakes of Beck Homes turned into the real ranches of my neighbors there was the wood strawberry shack with its hand painted sign and dirt drive on the shoulder. And even if the Cardinales did tear down their yellow barn and erect a boutique and state of the art tasting room where they sold sips for $10 a glass at least they still kept their land. When I pulled in to the long dirt drive bordered on both sides by grape vines and rose bushes I half expected my dad to be out in the barn, fiddling with some stray part, coaxing it to come unstuck or bending the renegade tine of a pitchfork back into alignment, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. But he’d leveled it months ago and in its place now stood what looked like an upscale tasting room and marketplace. I got out of the car and, with Vicious under my left arm, I made my way to the front door where I rang the bell and waited. Inside I could hear mixed voices and laughter. When my mother opened the front door she was holding onto the stem of a Riedel glass (a gift from Ricky and me two Christmases ago) and she looked flushed and happy. Laney, baby, hi. What are you doing here? I mean, I thought you were in New Mexico. She said, stepping back and holding open the door. I lied, I said. I never went to New Mexico and I, I really don’t know what I’m doing here. I just needed to get out of L.A. is all. 492 My mom looked over to where my father and their guests, a dozen or more couples dressed in various vineyard-logo polos and swilling wine mingled. Well come on in, she said, kissing me on the cheek, making a careful sway around Vicious who was yapping and snapping beneath my left arm, we were just having our monthly Wine Brats tasting. Can I get you something to drink? No, I said, smiling and giving a small wave to the crowd before heading towards the kitchen. I think I’ll just go upstairs and take a bath. It was kind of a long drive. Mom followed me into the kitchen where she gave me a quick, Sorry honey, is this a Ricky situation? whisper. Yes. No. The tears were building behind my eyes. Go take a bath, she said, kissing me again on the head. They should all clear out in an hour or so. Then we’ll talk. 493 THE LAW OF CONFLICT. In the tub of my childhood, my long legs cramped up against my chest, I hadn’t known I’d miss the valley heat, the air thick with corn, the calm before the temperature hit the century mark. I hadn’t seen the beauty in a place that smelled like cow shit; I hadn’t seen the strength in the sweaty valley men who bent in back-breaking swoops to load eighty pound bushels of asparagus bedding onto lowered tail gates before the frost. Maybe my mother was right. Maybe I needed to move back in so we could be alone together. I grabbed an ice cube from my water glass and rubbed it across my forehead when my cell started vibrating and bouncing all over the soap dish. I reached blindly for it, wondering if I knocked it into the bath if I would electrocute myself, and didn’t check the caller ID before flipping it open. I hoped it would be Puck. Puck calling to say he accepted one of the many apologies I kept leaving on his voice mail, with his agent, written in lip-gloss on the window of his car. Puck calling to say that it wasn’t really that bad, that he still loved me and was coming over with some sushi and Dove bars, but it wasn’t Puck, it was Ricky. Hi, he said, I’m here. You’re where? I asked, pressing the phone closer to my ear and tossing the towel in the direction of the sink. At the airport, he said. In Albuquerque. In Albuquerque, I repeated, feeling the vomit rise up all over again. Yep, pick me up? I…I can’t. 494 You busy? No, I mean, Ricky, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. No big deal, there are tons of cabs around. No, that’s not it. I’m not in Santa Fe. I’m confused, he said, an announcement for the arrival of Flight 817 from Tucson echoed in the background. Where are you? I’m in California, I said. In a bathtub in Lodi. It’s just…I never thought you’d actually fly to New Mexico. I could hear his frustration rise through the phone. I told you I was going to come didn’t I? I e-mailed you my flight information and everything. I haven’t been checking my e-mail. I didn’t think… sorry. So am I, he said, and hung up. Taking the cell phone with me I plunged under the water and waited. Although the phone made some bubbles and a weak beeping noise, nothing happened and so, when I ran out of breath to hold, I came back up. 495 FALLING IN LOVE WITH ALL OF YOUR CHARACTERS. Three things you need to know about Ricky that I haven’t told you yet: 1.) Every morning, no matter what, he drives to The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to buy me a vanilla latte and a currant scone. He gets up, showers, and picks up the clothes I have laid out for him. When he puts his socks on he sits on the corner of the bed and kisses my face all over. He notices how the red stripe in his socks matches the red alligators on his boxers and how the red alligators match exactly with the vertical stripes on his Hugo Boss tie. Not only does he notice, but he says, Babe! Babe, he says, you always do me right! When he pulls on his pants he makes sure to leave the band of his boxers showing, he rolls up his left leg and bends over, with one foot on the bed, so that tie and boxer band and sock all touch. Then he smiles, re-adjusts himself and kisses my face all over again. He leaves and shouts up the stairs, I love you, before going out the door. When he’s gone I roll over to his side of the bed and breathe in the scent of him on his pillow. Twenty minutes later he’s back with my scone and vanilla latte. He leaves it on the bedside table, kisses me all over my face for the third time and says, Are you going to have a productive paint day? I look up at him and say, Yes. What’s on the menu? he asks. I’m thinking of maybe a Wyeth-theme. Maybe I’ll go introduce myself to the neighbor. Ask if she’d mind terribly posing for me nude about the farm for the next twenty-two years. 496 He laughs and says, I’ve seen the neighbor. I don’t think she’s much of a Helga. In fact, I think she’s Saudi or something. Perfect, I say. Wouldn’t want to be accused of imitation. He laughs again and hands me the latte I’m reaching for. I sit up against the Mt. Vernon headboard and take a sip. Ricky, I say, vanilla espresso coating my tongue, don’t you think it’s weird that we don’t know our neighbors? Not particularly, he says. We know the Deitzberrys on the left. And those TV people, the Fox Real Sports guy and his wife up the street. Didn’t we invite them to last year’s New Year’s party? Yes, probably. I said. But I still think it’s weird not to know everyone. Well, Ricky says, standing up and giving me a kiss on the top of my head, go introduce yourself. We’ll have a block party or something. Tell Imelda to help you set a date. He walked out of our room and down the hall. Oh! he shouted from the stairs, and be sure not to hire the same valet company you did last Fourth of July. They were awful, not to mention what they did to the left fender of John and Holly’s Saab. Ricky, I called after him, it’s a block party. Won’t the neighbors walk? Well just in case, he hollered up. Love you. It was understood that after he left I got up, ate my scone and took the rest of my latte to work with me in my studio over the garage. Understood by him at least. As I understood it, on most days I got up, coffee in hand, and then I walked around my 497 studio, messing things up, rearranging, considering. But instead of working I would curl up on my couch and sleep until lunch. After lunch I’d take a nap. And after my nap I’d count the hours I had left in my work day, panic that it wasn’t nearly enough time to start let alone finish anything and then, absorb myself in the panic until I’d reach a frenzied space just about the time Ricky came home. These were workdays. On non- workdays, I’d shop, tan, beautify, run errands and work out as the schedule required. Yes, I’d remind Ricky, it does take all day and a box of tissue to run over the hill and meet with the accountant. Yes, dry cleaning is quite exhaustive. Yes, I do need a full face of make-up and a manicure before I can work out. 2.) Every morning before he goes on the coffee run I ask Ricky if he really has to go to work today. If he couldn’t just stay home, just this once. Usually he says, No, kisses my face and makes a remark about somebody supporting this family. What family? I ask. There’s only you and me. But one day, a Tuesday in May, the only day in the whole of my recollected memory, Ricky actually said yes. Of course I didn’t really hear him, so used to him saying no, I waited for my pre-coffee kiss pretending to be half asleep. Why not, I heard him say, taking off his key-lime tie, navy striped shirt and matching lime and blue argyle socks, I’d like to see just what it is that you do all day. I peeled one eye open slowly, to be sure I wasn’t dreaming, but there he was standing in front of his closet looking bewildered. Where’s my Cal—? 498 Before he could say sweatshirt I said, Second drawer from the top. Your jeans are folded in the walk-in. Nice, he said, grabbing a frayed Abercrombie hat and tugging it down over his gelled office hair, You wanna go with? he held out his hand and he looked liked Berkeley again. I did want to go with, straight back to the Bancroft Library and Noah’s Bagels on Telegraph, but I said no because I knew I’d need a few minutes to pull together what it was I did all day. As soon as I heard the door click shut behind him I ran from the bedroom into my studio and started imposing chaos. I poured rhinestones on the table in piles. I plugged in the glue gun and let it smoke in the corner. I dumped a handful of clean paint brushes into the copper sink, and covered them with water. I covered two blank canvases perched upon independent easels with dusty drop cloths. If Ricky asked to see them, my stunning works in progress, I would object that they weren’t finished yet. That he wouldn’t understand. That I didn’t want to ruin his reaction to the final product by showing him the messy in-between stage. Satisfied that the room looked worked in, or at least so messy that Ricky wouldn’t dare inhabit it for longer than three minutes, I ran back to bed and pretended to sleep. On that day he came back with two scones and we ate, much to his loud objections, in bed. Ricky has a thing about crumbs. Probably because his mother couldn’t be bothered with insignificant tasks like housekeeping and his father wouldn’t hear of them taking a maid so clutter and a thick layer of dust and whatnot continually filled his parents’ place. Whatever the reason he had a penchant for hygiene and, this is 499 long before I stopped doing my nails myself, when he once caught me cutting my toenails over the bathroom sink, instead of say, the bathroom toilet, he went white, dove for his 15 horse power electric toothbrush (lest a clipping fly into the bristles) and lectured me on my blatant disrespect for oral hygiene. It was going to take a whole lot more than a dramatic dive to get me to stop clipping over the sink (I couldn’t stand the idea of resting my foot on the toilet seat) but Ricky thinks I stopped, largely because I stopped doing it in front of him. Anyhow, he stayed home from work on a Tuesday, we ate the scones, and then, because I very well couldn’t allow him to tour the studio with me while I took my morning nap, I asked him what he wanted to do? I don’t know, he said, how do you do errands? 3.) Contrary to what a lot of people—myself included—say about Ricky behind his back, he didn’t sell out. Not his Berkeley social consciousness or his Mexicaness. In fact, like most of the critical mass at Cal, he made the connection between money and power rather early, but instead of rallying against it, instead of picketing the Bay Bridge because they wouldn’t let the working class commute across on bicycle, or unfurling bloodied banners from the top of the Campanile to demonstrate the horrors of factory farms, Ricky buckled down and bought stock in the corporate monopoly. I mean, he’d ask, late at night a pot of organic coffee steaming between us on our milk-crate table, Who the fuck is going to listen to some fucking Mexican from Berkeley with a degree in social work? What, should I stand up on a car and distribute flyers? It worked for Mario Savio, I said. 500 Yeah, and JFK and MLK Jr. but let’s not forget that was 1964 and Mario Savio was a stuttering Sicilian. How exactly does that work against him? Because he’s too common. He taught Math for christssake, at a junior college in Modesto, no less. And he taught Physics and Philosophy at Sonoma State. How very Ayn Rand of him but last time I checked Sonoma State wasn’t Yale. So what, State school kids don’t deserve inspirational teachers? Sure they do, but again, and that’s just my point, have him teach state school and junior college where it’s safe. Did they give him a job in academia, because they respected his social responsibility, his legacy? Think again. They gave him a job at some small beans state school to limit his influence to ninety tuition-paying students per semester. And if that’s not enough, then they kept him busy with publishing requirements and tenure anxiety while he attempted to revolutionize the children of the working class. Do they need revolutionizing? Maybe. But I bet most of them already know what it’s like to get by. Their mothers are teachers, nurses and secretaries. Their fathers, if they’re lucky, are firemen and retail store managers who had to take out a second mortgage to afford the damn state school. Watch it, I said. I grew up with those kids. So did you. Exactly! That’s exactly what I’m trying to get across. Do you think your parents busted ass so you could become a lab tech? 501 My mother is a high school teacher, in case you forgot. She changes lives every day and deals with a pretty big ration of shit in the process. I agree, and I respect her for that. It takes a special person to teach high school, a thankless job. And maybe your parents are comfortable enough to let you do whatever makes you happy, but I can tell you one thing, my parents didn’t swim through a fucking sewer to have me settle down as a social worker who makes $30,000 a year. No way Jose! Despite myself, I started to laugh. Ricky continued, They expect greatness, but what’s more, they expect cash. Bumper stickers and protest signs, they only go so far. If you really want to change things you have to infiltrate the rich. You have to become them so you can guilt them, or better yet, force them to change. You can’t become an inspirational speaker until you’ve done something inspiring. And standing up to the University Regents on Sproul to begin the Free Speech Movement in front of 800 students, that isn’t inspiring? Of course it is, Ricky said. But staging a protest isn’t going to make the machine stop. In order to stop the machine, you have to be the man who runs the machine. The man who owns the machine. The man who fucking made the machine in the first place. So your plan is to buy social consciousness? No, even better, he said, I plan to sell it. And although it didn’t seem possible, that’s just exactly what he, no wait, we went and did. 502 4.) I know, I said there were three things you should know about Ricky, but that’s only because three rolls off the tongue better than four. This is the last one, I promise. And stay with me because it’s good. It isn’t entirely true that the reason Ricky is never home is because he works all day. He works a hell of a lot, don’t get me wrong, but, and I think with the exception of the kids at the center and their probation officer I’m the only one who knows, so don’t go blabbing it around for philanthropic publicity reasons, every Thursday night Ricky volunteers as a crisis mentor at the Los Angeles Juvenile Detention facility. He listens as boys, sometimes a young as seven or eight, tell him about their gang bangs, their sexual conquests, their rap sheets and how in the third grade they would drink their own urine out of a Ninja Turtle thermos because their Uncle/Cousin/Neighbor/Father was sexually molesting them and they thought, if only they could make themselves disgusting enough, then maybe the Cousin/Uncle/Neighbor/Father would stop. Sometimes the kids cry. Sometimes they lunge at Ricky with sharpened pencils or Plexiglas shanks. He doesn’t pretend to understand. He doesn’t pretend that he didn’t go to Berkeley. He doesn’t try to relate by imagining a similar story about his own life or attempt to paint the bleak image with hopeful pastels. He just listens. He listens for as long as the boys need to talk. 503 THE STORY IMPERATIVE. When my mom came upstairs she sat on the worn mint bathmat and handed me a cup of jasmine tea. Laney, she said, after I had poured my heart out, there are surprisingly many things that a husband does better than a lover. Maybe the sex isn’t always as exciting, and maybe he doesn’t remember to open the door every time you approach the car, but there are things you realize that only a husband can do right. You know like when you’re trying to put on a necklace with a tricky clasp? Your husband will know how to fasten the clip without snagging your hair. He will know the curve of your neck like his own. He will kiss you behind the ear when he’s finished and he will know that the smell he’s inhaling is, what’s that expensive perfume you’re always wearing? I swallowed the tea that was in my mouth and said, Joy by Jean Patou. Well, Ricky will know that it is Joy not because he’s refined enough to tell the difference between orange blossom and lily of the valley-- It’s orris, I interrupted. Orris, orange, whatever. The point is he will know the difference because, at one point, he bought you a bottle of Joy and you wore it and whenever he smells it he thinks of you. But it’s so much more than that, I said, setting my teacup and saucer on the side of the bath and dipping my washcloth back into the lukewarm water. It’s so black and so bad and— 504 My mother held her hand up to my mouth. No, she said, it’s not. It could be if you want it that way, but if you stop right there, right now, it can really be just as simple as that. 505 CHARACTER IS SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Could it? Could it really be as simple as the smell of perfume and the fastening of tricky clasps? Initially I seriously doubted it could, but after a week in the valley, after a week of driving dirt roads, bits of gravel stuck to the undercarriage of the tank. After a week without room service, or valets, or makeup. After a week of using Noxzema and Crest and wearing underwear from Wal-Mart beneath my mother’s Lee jeans (I hadn’t thought to pack any of my things. I just got in the car and left) I began to think that maybe it could. I mean undoubtedly Ricky was still mad as hell about the whole Albuquerque thing, and Puck was still pissed and not returning my calls, and Quentin, as well as half my wardrobe, was all but abandoned in the Beverly Hills Hotel, but just maybe, with the right props and an ample bit of humility, it could happen. When I decided I wanted to go back home, and by home I mean the house on Bedford and not say Lodi or the Beverly Hills Hotel. When I decided to go back home to the house I shared with my husband, Ricky. The house I lived in. The house that I had made a home. When I decided to go back there I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as driving back down the 5 to the 405, and exit on Wilshire, a left on Santa Monica, another left on Maple, a right on Carmelita, one last right onto Bedford and walking in through the front door. I mean as you may well remember, my key doesn’t exactly fit in the lock, and even if it was that simple, Ricky and I hadn’t exactly settled our terms. If I came 506 home like nothing was wrong, like I really was in Santa Fe adorning the canvas with dusty rose and turquoise paint, would anything change? Has Robert Downey Jr. been to rehab? Is water wet? I needed something, some sort of irrefutable way to get Ricky’s full and undivided attention so that I could tell him, so that I could scream: I’m in on the Joke and I don’t find it funny. The revelation, when it happened, wasn’t nearly as shocking or as sudden, as say my maternal urgings in the paper goods aisle of Bristol Farms. In fact, the solution was scattered up and down the sides of I-5. Between Pea Soup Andersens and Harris Ranch the brown monotony of flat brown land undulates into the greenish hills and valleys of Crow’s Landing. And spotted about Crow’s Landing, spaced in increments of exactly 4.3 miles apart were the shamrocked signs of Shane P. Donlon, Ranch Broker. The first one, on the right, partially secluded by the dot of Vicious’ head as he yapped out the window was: 1900 Acres of Ground. East and West it’s All Around. The second, a little further down the road and nailed to the trunk of a peach tree read: In the Middle Crow Creek Can Be Found. The third, continuing the rhyme, was bigger, and ran the length of a wooden fence: 507 It Can Be Yours How Does That Sound? And the fourth, biggest of all, and phone number inclusive, stood on it’s own pole, billboard-like in the middle of a high green hill: All You See Here Can Be Yours! S.P. Donlon Private Tours. And no, I wasn’t going to buy up 400 acres of land in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t plan to force Ricky into a move or stake my claim on a field of summer fruit trees. What hit me were the signs. Pretty little rhyming couplets spread out, not along a desolate stretch of the Golden State Freeway, but rather scattered, intentionally, on Sunset, Melrose and Mid Wilshire. Signs that Ricky couldn’t help but notice planted perfectly along his path to work. I’m going to plaster myself onto a Billboard. I’m going to get off my ass and make some art. 508 UNSCRIPTED. But first, I had a stop to make, and I don’t mean Kettleman City or Castaic. First, I had to make a visit to a champagne colored Craftsman bungalow in WeHo. First, I had to pull up, without hitting a car wash, without even changing out of the pair of elastic-waisted track shorts I borrowed from my mother (and I don’t mean the sexy terry-cloth Juicy variety, I’m talking your average navy blue nylon, mid-thigh, made for jog-walking track-shorts courtesy of the Big Five Sporting Goods store). First, I had to pull up and apologize, in person, to Puck. I got out of the tank without checking myself in the vanity. I had no idea what I looked liked, but I was pretty sure it was real. As I stepped on the stones that led to Puck’s front door I took a deep breath and when I reached his porch, I made my hand into a fist and I knocked. I waited, breathing and squeezing my calves tight then lax, tight then lax. I brought my hand up to knock again, but just as I did the door opened and my hand in the air and darling Nikki, in a bandeau bikini, no-less, stood on the other side. Hi-ey, she said. Hi, Nikki, is Puck here? Ummm, do I know you, she asked, twirling a long strand of hair on her finger and looking at me puzzled. Yeah, I’m the girl from the shipwreck ad, I said pushing past her and making my way inside. Right! she said, looking me over, I totally recognize you now. 509 Right, I said and made my way through the living room and into the kitchen, where, through the large picture windows I could see Puck floating in the pool on his purple raft while six or seven beautiful people lounged under lavender umbrellas or splashed on the Baja bench of the black-bottomed pool. As I opened the sliding glass door that separated the kitchen from the deck I caught a glimpse of my reflection. My hair was pulled into a messy knot and stray strands escaped at almost every angle. My eyes were unlined, my lips bare and my eyebrows, even though they were blonde, could use a good waxing. But that was nothing in comparison to the white trucker tank, with orange and yellow stains down the front that I pulled from a ragbag in my father’s shed or the puff of the nylon as it pulled against the elastic waistband of my midsection. I stepped through the door and out onto the deck. Puck, I said, shielding my eyes from the bright Hollywood sun as I walked towards the pool, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I don’t even know how else to say it. Everyone got quiet then as they stopped applying coco-butter and sucking down strawberry peach daiquiris, it was finally like the movies where the action stops and all eyes were focused on me. But then, not half a beat later, when they turned, looked, surveyed and decided I was unworthy of their gaze, they all went back to whatever it was they were doing before, as if I were invisible. As if I were the help. Everyone that is, except for Puck, who rolled off his raft, and getting his hair soaked in the process, swam out of the pool and over to where I stood. I held out my arms and he held me. Dripping with tears and chlorine, respectively, he said into my hair, so this is what the real Magdalena looks like. 510 Yes, I said into the tanned smooth skin of his neck, this is me. And, pulling away ever so slightly so he could look at my face, he said, Well I think you’re beautiful. Much better in real life. Then he scooped me up like a baby and holding me in the cradle of his arms, he jumped into the deep end of the pool. 511 THE QUESTION OF SELF EXPRESSION. Although the Pink Palace had been relatively accommodating to all of my, shall we say whims? I have a feeling even Ian will put his foot down when it comes to art. Especially art-in-the-large. Especially art-in-the-large involving spray-paint and rhinestones and gallons of hot glue and acrylics. But that isn’t a problem, really. I mean it might stand to pose a threat to those less imaginative than I, but as you know, I have more than enough time to make things up and so Puck and I devised a plan: I would still maintain the Beverly Hills Hotel as my primary residence, but every morning instead of getting up at 10 and sunning by the pool, or shopping, or lunching or waiting for Quentin, I would instead get up at 7 (yes, in the a.m.) and sneak into my studio. My studio above the garage. My studio attached to my sprawling American Federal Revival estate. Just how exactly I was going to do this without garnering suspicion from the gardeners or confrontation from Imelda has yet to be determined, but Ricky, well need I remind you? there’s little risk of running into him. Gearing up for a proper stakeout I called Ian at the front desk and requested a rental car. While he worked out the details on a long-term rental with Enterprise—I specifically asked for an Escort—I packed Vicious in his carrier, put on a black mini- dress, wide brimmed hat, oversized Chanel glasses, and set to work. If I wanted to outwit Imelda I’d have to show up precisely between 7:30 and 8:45 each morning. She has a daily routine and the hour and 15 minute slot between 7:30 and 8:45 was dedicated to morning mass at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church. Because the Good 512 Shepherd is located on one prime piece-o-property (who says the Catholics are having financial troubles?) Imelda walks the seven blocks to North Bedford. So as long as I park down the street, as long as I walk in the opposite direction from opposing blocks (say Lomitas to Rexford instead of Roxbury to Santa Monica) I should be fine. As for my entry, well lucky for me it was built in the authentic tradition of American Federal Revival and as such, had, in addition to the garage and front entrance, a service entrance out back. As far as I knew Imelda never remembered to set the alarm, and besides, it’s not like if she did I couldn’t disarm it by entering the code. What? Did you think I’d have to shimmy up the rain gutter? Hitch a rope and swing from the palms? The real challenge would be getting out. The real challenge would be art. It had been so long since I had done any real (as my mother would say) art that I didn’t know how to begin. For two days I avoided work by stocking up on supplies. Puck and I drove to World Supply, and then, because they only had six-dozen bags of magenta rhinestones left in stock, we drove to Sterling Art in Irvine to get a few dozen more. The next three days work was avoided through research. Puck, because in serving as my unofficial personal assistant he was familiar with our accountant (and our accounts too, for that matter,) was put in charge of the financial aspect. His job was to figure out just how much four prime location billboards would cost and how, without Ricky catching on, we could get the money wired from our reserve bank in Panama. I mean running up a charge at the Beverly Hills Hotel was one thing. Dropping a couple 513 of million on rhinestones and billboards was quite another. While Puck busied himself with the financial and logistical matters I drove to the library in Beverly Hills and instead of checking out predictable museum books, I pulled out the less glossy obscure. With Florine Stettheimer, Gwen John and Tamara de Lempicka, I poured over portraits, studying brush strokes, chin lines and the proportion of parts. With the Jennys—Saville and Holzer—I poured over attitude, extremity, and exhibition. With Cindy Sherman, I renewed my love of the still. I envisioned my finished product to resemble an Alberto Vargas calendar had the pin-ups painted themselves. A vintage Esquire Vargas, but with a little more skin and—obviously—a hell of a lot more sparkle. I checked out a book called Painting Faces and Figures and embarrassed myself each time I referenced its pages. Appalled by lines like, ‘experiment with major gestures of a composition using a pencil sketch and thumbnail grid. Then, transfer your sketch to a canvas by means of a grid,’ I none- the-less found them instructive. Though how in the hell I was going to find a canvas as big as a billboard I had no idea. That, coupled with the proportional mathematics of transferring an 8 x 11 inch pencil sketch to a 30 x 50 foot wall was enough to induce panic, or at least a migraine. But I refused to curl up on the couch and sleep until the task was more manageable. I had been sleeping on the couch for nine years. It was far time to wake up. To get the gesture straight I needed a model, but because I had snuck in to my own home and was working in secret, Imelda was off limits. So, standing with my back to a full-length mirror, wearing nothing but my panties, I looked over my shoulder and 514 snapped a digital photo of myself with my cell phone. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it held its shape and although the resolution was low, I was successfully able to e- mail it to my laptop and begin a digital recreation. Using Photoshop I broke my body into thirty-two self-contained 1x1 inch squares. Although it would have been as easy as a click of a mouse I resisted the urge to streamline my thighs, to exfoliate my underarms, to smooth out the dimples in my exposed derrière. If I was going to make my debut as Magdalena-Larger-Than-Life I was going to do so uncensored. I was going to do it right. Truth be told, the only changes I made weren’t with me at all, they were with the fabric. I changed the sea foam lace of my panties to a subtle black lycra and then, doctoring, enlarging, enlivening the text of my tattooed flesh I typed, in Arial Narrow, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Right Now and promptly stuck the words down the spine of my back. On the screen the text was black and fairly generic, nothing as beautiful as Tuttle’s tiny real-life design, but on the board I envisioned it glowing. I envisioned the world’s largest rhinestone collection all meticulously glued together reaching up from my bum and sparkling in the Sunset Boulevard sun. Using 5x5 foot particleboards it took me three days to transfer the thirty-two original squares of my body into enlarged forms. Considering the letters that would adorn my panties were approximately three feet each, and considering there were also thirty-two of them, not to mention one two-foot apostrophe, I knew it was going to take at least three more to set the rhinestones straight. For nearly a week I lived on coffee, peanut M&Ms and whatever Puck phoned in from Pink Dot. Although I returned to the 515 Beverly Hills Hotel to shower and occasionally sleep, I spent most of my time sneaking in and out of my studio, while Vicious spent his time at the Doheny Dog Spa. On Tuesday at 1 p.m. I was applying small samples of paint to my thighs and arms trying to match the exact shade of my flesh. On Thursday at six I was engaged in an oil study of hair, trying to capture the depth of blonde curls as they cascaded down my bare back, and on Sunday, precious Sunday afternoon, I was burning my fingers on hot glue and rhinestones and taking small breaks to soak them in ice. I know by the notes he left behind, piled on the rug inside of the door, that Quentin came by, but when I returned to the Hotel in the late hours of night, in the wee hours of the morning, I was too exhausted to read, but not too tired to care. And then, when I was least expecting it, there was a knock on the door. Removing the satin mask from my eyes I rolled over to look at the clock. It was 12:30 in the morning on a…Friday? I pulled an overstuffed pillow over my head and tried to ignore it, but there it was again, a muffled, but still present, long knuckled rap rap rap. I got up and walked to the door. I didn’t need to check the peep hole, only one person in the world knocked like that and when I opened the door there was Quentin, standing half in, half out, of the jam. Hi, he said, as he stood leaning, picking on the duct tape that covered his left palm. Hi, I said, and let him in. 516 THE TRUTH. I can’t, I said…I just. I know, he said, in a shy way, reminiscent of the first time he came knocking, standing half in, half outside the door. I’m not here to…he blushed and looked down, and then, stepped all the way inside and grabbed my hand. I missed you. Talking to you, ya know? Yeah, I said, sitting down on the sofa, I know. I missed you too. We sat there then, awkward, like some stupid after-school special. So, he said, finally, breaking the silence, What have you been doing, you know, lately? Art. So that’s it? Art is what you do? Well, I said, deciding to just go for it, not so long ago I was executive Vice President for Diamond Myst Water Distributors. And before that I was their chief financial officer. And before that I was an investment banker. Woaah, Quentin let out a slow whistle. What’d ya do before that? Mine opals in Australia? Create a zero balanced spending plan for the state of California? Drive ambulances for the Red Cross? No, I said, allowing my lips to form a small grin. No, before all that I was a grape farmer and before that, my voice caught just a little, an artist. Now there’s something I know a little bit about, he said, getting more comfortable on the couch and slipping out of his shoes. 517 Really? I asked with a smile. Yes, really, he threw a throw pillow from the chair beneath him in my direction. You think I worked seven years in the advertising industry as an understudy and two in the billboard union without picking up a thing or two about visual techniques? What’s your medium? You’ll laugh. I won’t laugh. Promise? What, do you work with your own urine or something? Are you one of those feminists who think a file cabinet full of used tampons is art? No, it’s worse than that. Worse than tampons and urine? Rhinestones, I said. I use rhinestones. He laughed. I threw the pillow back at him, but I had more force and better aim than he did and so it knocked him square in the chin. Ouch, he said rubbing his face. That didn’t hurt. How would you know, he picked up the pillow and fingered the fringe. These little beaded things, these rhinestoney things are kind of hard, not to mention sharp. Quentin, I’m serious. Rhinestones, huh? 518 And paint and a hell of a lot of glue. Or should I say, cello? He clutched at his heart and made a fake grimace of pain. Okay, you got me. Truce? he held out his hand. I crawled over to where he sat and took it. We shook and then he pulled me close. He tried to slip me out of my kimono, out of my clothes, but I shook my head a soft, No. But somehow it happened anyhow. Not in our usual naked intensity, but softer and slower and with our top halves fully clothed. Later, worn out and sticky, we had nothing more to say, my lips on his hand and my head on his chest. Our legs were intertwined, bent and pushed up against the coffee table. He worked his fingers through my hair. He brushed it out with his nails, fanning it across my kimono-covered back, and then he gathered it neatly, wove his fingers between the blonde strands and held tight before falling asleep. 519 CHARACTER VERSUS CHARACTERIZATION. I woke, still stretched out on the floor, at 2 am, to the sound of Quentin searching for his shoes. Don’t go, I whispered. He sighed and reached a hand over to my cheek, brushing away a strand of hair. I have to, you know— I know, I said, but this is… I mean that was. The last time. Yeah, he said, slipping on his left shoe and making a bow with the laces, I know. He bent over and kissed me on the forehead and then, with only one shoe on, he made his way towards the door. It was funny, but I finally felt guilty. Like all the cheating before was just warm up and this night, after I had sworn it was over but slept with Quentin anyhow, was the real deal: Infidelity in the raw, and I felt it. Quentin! I said, jumping up and chasing after him, grabbing his arm and pressing into his wrist flesh with my nails. Don’t go. He smiled, a small, sad grin as he pried my acrylic nails from his arm. I need your help with something, I said, moving my body between him and the door. All right, he said taking two steps back, but then it’s done? Then it’s done. But I want to go up the billboard first. I want you to take me, all the way to the top. 520 He paused, and then exhaled as though it were smoke. Go get your slippers on, he said. I’ll take you. Let’s go. 521 ON RISK. Going up the second time was like the first only harder. I took the rungs slowly. One at a time. Methodical. Don’t look down, Quentin said. Reach up. Be tall. I am tall, I said, with my feet squeezed into my too tight ballet slippers. Good, Quentin said, as we made our way to the landing, because here comes the hard part. The hard part? Bend your knee, Quentin said, his hands on my lower back, and plant your foot down solid. Solid, I said, my arms and thighs shaking. Okay now, swing around, Quentin said, lifting my torso as I reached out an arm, grabbed hold of the rung and swung around. Breathing deeply for four counts I clung to the backside of the billboard. Good work, Quentin said, now one more thing and you’re done. I thought you said you’d climb with me, I said, looking down and across to the ladder where he stood. Not enough room, he said, I’ll be there in a sec. But first you have to reach up and open the trap door. You’re joking right? No. See that cord? He pointed to a rusty chain above my head, Pull down. 522 I knew about trap doors and tree houses too, but reaching above my head to pull a yellow rope in the garage and reaching above my head to pull a rusty chain forty feet above ground were two completely different things. You mean I have to let go? Just for a second, he said. Pull on the cord and the door will open up, then you can climb through it and onto the platform. I breathed a count of four again and then reached up and pulled the chain. I climbed, faster now, the seven remaining rungs and, emerged just under the oversized ‘X’ of Luxe. Leaning my back against the ad, I slid down into a sitting position and was still. Isn’t it amazing, Quentin asked, popping up through the trap door and walking on the outer perimeter of the platform, pointing out at the lights of the city. Even though I somehow felt perfectly safe, just as Quentin promised, I still couldn’t walk to the edge. Instead I sat holding onto the side beams of the board and said, Ever wish there were things you could do differently? All the time, Quentin said, lighting up a cigarette, taking a drag and the ashing over the side. No, not life, I said, but in art. Art? Quentin asked. Yeah. You know if you had a blank canvas, say the size of this billboard, what would you do? A love song, Quentin said. Maybe something by Billie Holliday for no reason at all. 523 Well, isn’t that precious, I said, holding out my hand for a drag. Quentin passed over his cigarette and said, well how about you? What would you do? I took two very very small scoots away from the back of the platform and looked up to the billboard where my blond hair hung in wet clumps over my bluish lips. Close as I was the image was distorted, and slightly out of focus, but I stared intently anyhow and tried to honestly figure out what it is I would do, if, as I had been wanting for so long now, I was given a do-over. Well first, I said, I’d simplify. I held up my hands, in a frame, and like Quentin was prone to do, I took an imaginary picture: click, click. I’d do away with the hunky blonde boy, the boat… hell, the whole ocean would just dry up and instead I have…me. You? Quentin asked, smirking. The distressed damsel without her prince? No, I’d do away with the damsel stuff too. It’d just be me, naked, except for some panties and rhinestones. Of course, Quentin said. Nothing says water like a half naked chick and some rhinestones. It may not say water but, and correct me if I’m wrong, it certainly says “drink me,” does it not? Well, that depends, Quentin said, grinning. Depends on what? I asked, unbuttoning my shirt and feeling the sense of something old and forbidden creep into my chest. 524 On the rhinestones, Quentin said, looping his finger through his belt buckle and looking at me, curious. Well, I was thinking, I said, shrugging out of my shirt and unhooking my bra, that it’d look something like this: I stood, tits pressed tight against the filthy billboard. Turning so my profile was visible over my bare shoulder I looked to Quentin and said, What do you think? I think he said, walking slowly, surely, over to where I stood, that that is exactly what I was talking about. Only better. Better? More, I don’t know, intimate. Intimate? I giggled. Discrete. I don’t know. Smaller than I expected, but just better. When did you get it done? A week or two ago, I said, still pressed against the board as Quentin traced the tattooed lines of Tuttle’s text with his finger. Hurt much? Like crazy. But in a good way. Like you wanted it to? Exactly. Yeah, I know that feeling. Most people usually want it to hurt. There was a long silence as Quentin continued to trace down to the last little letter at the tip of my tailbone. 525 Anyhow, I said when he was finished, I figured I could replace the ink with rhinestones, on the board, I mean. And make them bigger, of course. Course, Quentin said, his thumb slung in the belt-loop of his jeans. I reckon that might be pretty damn hot. Hot enough to make you sweat? I asked, pushing away from the dusty billboard and reaching for my discarded shirt. I’d say so. Thirsty? I’m buying what you’re selling, Quentin said. It may not have a hell of a lot to do with water but with you like that, he pulled out his imaginary camera again and pretended to review a shot, I’d buy a whole jug. 526 THE DECLINE OF STORY. Descending from the billboard wasn’t difficult. I mean it wasn’t a piece of cake or anything as sweet as that, but, with Quentin going first, and me following after, left foot, right foot, both feet, we hit solid ground in about half the time it took us to go up. In the van on the ride home, I took my shoes off and examined their soles. They were dirty, and running through the pad beneath the forefoot was the faint imprint of the rungs. I massaged the leather with my thumbs and by the time we reached the Pink Palace and Quentin let me out, the indentation was almost invisible. 527 NOTE CLOSING VALUE & COMPARE WITH OPENING VALUE. Because it was, as promised, officially done we didn’t sleep together. Instead we stayed up half the night and talked. So, not that you’re an expert in these things, but now what? I said, my lips loose after a few too many sips of gin We live with it, Quentin said, walking across the room to the get a pack of cigarettes off the top of the TV. What? I live with it. You live with it and we never ever ever tell, he said slowly as he navigated a cigarette out of the pack. And if it slips off some asshole’s tongue, he paused to light and inhale, always always, he exhaled, always deny. Funny, but isn’t that a rap song? I shook my hips and started swaying while humming “Wasn’t Me.” No, Quentin grabbed my shoulders to stop my dancing, the lit end of his cigarette barely grazing my left arm. Looking at me, suddenly serious, like he might slap me, okay not slap me, but shout really loud until I understood his point, he said, Don’t tell him. Even if one day you find you can’t stand him, you love him now, and you loved him while making love to me in that bed over there. His cigarette had turned mostly to ash and he took one long drag before squashing it out on the disposable plastic lid of an old Starbucks cup. Telling him is selfish. You’ll feel worlds better, to cry and confess and get it all out. But he won’t. Not even after or if he forgives you. Telling him is unfair. If you love him, you won’t. 528 And there it was, smacking out in hard words against the air: how to cheat, and get away with it. But what wasn’t there in words, what Quentin didn’t say out loud, but said, instead, through the force of his fingers as he pinched the cigarette butt was that how to cheat and how to live, unfaithfully, were not mutually exclusive. What his mouth held back but his body told was that, to the canon of Junah falling, I could now add my betrayal of Ricky to the dark, secret, backspaces of my mind. And in the wee dark moments of early sleep and in the foggy daylight of morning I’d have to live with it, alone. Feeling cold and slushy drunk I stopped talking, walked into the bedroom, slipped into bed and pulled up the covers. Quentin followed and I let him into my bed. I even let him wrap around me like a spoon, but we didn’t have sex, and we didn’t kiss and once he fell asleep I slipped out of his arms, pulled the drapes tightly closed, and went to sleep on the couch. At 7:30 in the morning I woke to another knock on the door. I looked around the dark room, confused. And then pulling back the curtains to let in a little light I peeked into the bedroom, where sure enough, Quentin lay sleeping, his feet poking out from beneath the down comforter. Another knock, this time louder and more persistent. Fuck, I thought, as I grabbed a robe and tied it tightly around my waist, who on earth could it be? The knocking continued, still louder and any hopes I had for the possibility of room service or housekeeping vanished as the knocking sounded less and less polite. I pulled the bedroom door shut and peeked through the peephole. 529 On the other side, dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket was Puck. I opened the door. Oh thank God! he exclaimed as he burst through the door, Magdalena, we have a little problem. He paced back and forth from the balcony to the bar. What? I asked. Gazing nervously to the door Quentin slept behind. Well, he stopped his frantic pacing and sat down. Well, I don’t exactly know how to tell you this, he reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope covered in foreign postage and a red air mail stamp. Just say it, I said, my heart thumping. I was suddenly certain that Ricky found out about Quentin. That he was so upset he moved to our hacienda in Los Cabos and inside the envelope were papers for divorce. Well, I think I may have found out what Ricky’s been hiding. He looked down, as if he was almost embarrassed himself, and then he looked back at me. Tell me, I said, the fear I’d had just three seconds early suddenly evaporated and was replaced with sad rage. Here, Puck said, as he pushed the envelope across the coffee table to me, I think you should see for yourself. I looked at the envelope, bewildered at what might be inside: explicit photos of Ricky and Nina naked and going buck wild, a magazine clipping of Ricky, caught by the paparazzi smooching some starlet at a charity benefit, a sappy and overly sentimental love letter? 530 I took a breath and opened the envelope. Inside was a bank statement from the Banco Confederado de América Latina, and even though I didn’t speak Spanish, the numbers were clear; Diamond Myst was dry. What? It’s not quite as bad as it looks, Puck said, reaching across the table and taking my hands in his. What? I asked again looking at the negative numbers before me. That’s just the Panama account, he tried to assure me. You still have money in the bank here in the states, you own the corporate office, the plant in Fiji. Yeah, but the mortgage on the office, what we pay that off in 2040? And the overhead, the exportation fees, how in the hell did we just lose 473 million dollars? My head was reeling and I was starting to feel sick again. Mags, Puck tried again, it’s not that bad, you still have the house. The house, right. Thank God we still had the house. It was worth what, eighteen, maybe nineteen million? If we sold it tomorrow…moved into the vineyard with my mom, reinvested the remainder. More like eight, Puck said. Excuse me? I said, we paid cash and almost twice that. How can it be worth only eight? He took out an equity line, Puck said. But calm down. You can turn this around. Now I was pacing the room. I mean, is that even legal? Isn’t the house in my name? Can he take out an equity line without me knowing? Without my signature? 531 You signed it, Puck said quietly. January 17. I was completely stunned. Magdalena, Puck asked, when is that last time you looked at the books? I opened the balcony door. I needed some air. Some time to think. The books? How come I couldn’t remember? I don’t know, I finally admitted, one, maybe two months ago. Try nineteen. Nineteen? And suddenly it all made sense. The long hours. The emotional detachment. The meanness. He wasn’t cheating on me. He was treading water. Our water. My water. While I slept, Ricky was trying his hardest to keep the business afloat. I sat down. On the floor and leaned my head against the wall. So now what? From what I could gather it was the Nestle and Pepsi people that did it. Aquafina, Vittel. They have vending machines, Sweetie. And exclusive contracts with Disney and McDonalds. Stop, I said. I get it. Do you even know what’s happened to the advertising department since you left it? I shook my head. I’m just saying, Puck said, but I don’t think it’s over. 532 I didn’t know what to think, not only was my instillation art, my first real creative attempt in years, evaporating, but my life, or rather my lifestyle was slowly dissolving too. Honey, Puck said sitting next to me on the floor and rubbing my head. You can get it back. Maybe not all of it, but if you try really hard, I think you can reclaim the important stuff. Just then the toilet flushed. Puck and I both looked towards the closed bedroom door. Plumbing acting up? he asked. Yeah, I said, pretending not to hear Quentin coughing into the sink as he ran the tap water. You didn’t, did you? No, I said. I slept on the couch. So…? Puck looked at me, curious. So, I said standing up and pulling Puck up with me. Now we go out and reclaim the important stuff. I grabbed Vicious, my car keys and my sunglasses, and still wearing my pink robe I pulled Puck out the door. 533 THE LOSS OF CRAFT. The first thing that had to be scaled back were the billboards. It was doubtful I could afford one, more or less four. And the one I hoped I could still have had to have a bigger purpose. Not that it still couldn’t be a message to Ricky, but—and this partially killed me—in order to justify spending a half million dollars that apparently we didn’t really have, I had to make it utilitarian. I had to splash on some Myst. I went back to my studio and stared at my oversized self portrait. My left arm was on my hip and my right arm was half hidden behind my torso, but if I did a little digital editing, and a bit of revision to the upper nine panels, with work I could extend the right arm up and over my head, and in my outstretched hand I could carefully place a sparkling glass bottle of Lux, cap off and pointing downwards, one single, precious drop of liquid headed for my head. Wow, said Puck, when he saw the revised rendition on my Macintosh screen. Love it, but how in the hell are you going to manage to get the bottle cut out suspended above the billboard like that? I mean I know you’re good at what you do, but don’t you need a crane or something? Don’t worry, I told him. I have a friend. 534 THE STORY TRIANGLE. Trouble was, Quentin had always come to me and now that I needed him I hadn’t the first clue of how to find him so I got in the tank and made my way back to La Cienega Collision with a fifty and a bottle of scotch. You again? Wendy asked, her long tangerine nails tapping the Formica counter. Yeah, I said, setting the fifty and the bottle in front of her greasy computer screen. She looked at the bottle and then she looked at me. I wasn’t wearing much make-up and my tiny-tee had paint splatters across the chest. I’m a little untucked today, I apologized. It’s been busy at work. Hey, no skin off my nose, honey. But as for your little gift here, she pushed the bottle and the bill back towards me, we’re not interested. I looked her in the eye and asked, How much? How much, what? she tried to play dumb. How much is it going to cost for this note to get to Quentin? What’s it worth to you? she asked, drumming her nails incessantly. Honestly, I pushed the bottle and bill back towards her vicinity, it’s worth my sanity, my marriage, and my artistic integrity. I opened my purse and pulled out my checkbook, How much? Wendy picked up the bottle and turned it around. She fingered the fine malt label. Do you know, she said, that in Scotland they give tasting tours? Kinda like Napa, but with scotch. 535 Never been there, I said. But it makes sense. I was there last summer, she said, having a slow-start come-apart. It stayed light for 21 hours a day and even when it got dark, she used her orange talons to make quote marks in the air, it was more like twilight than night. Must have been fabulous, I said. No, she said, taking the fifty and putting it into the pocket of her jeans, there’s something really fucked up about living in a place that doesn’t have night. Oh, I said. I didn’t really— Get out of here, she said. I’m keeping the bottle, but he’ll get the note. Thank you, I said as I walked out the door. Whatever, she said as the screen slammed shut. The note Wendy gave Quentin wasn’t nearly as poetic as the ones he wrote me, but considering the situation it was the best I could do. In it I told him I was grateful. I told him it was over and I asked again, even though he didn’t owe me a thing, for his help. P.S. I penned, I considered enlisting the Guerilla Girls, but I don’t know if they work in rhinestones. He showed up, his teal mini-van parked in the circular drive of the Federal Revival, at exactly 11 a.m. Imelda had Sundays off and as expected, she was getting her hair set and styled at Spa 415 and wouldn’t return until at least 2. In addition to the van, 536 Quentin had brought a crew and a crane and I led them all through the yard and up to the studio, the back way. 537 THE END OF THE LINE. In my mind I had always imagined my billboard would go up in the secret of the night. That I’d hitch the painted panels to the top of my rented Escort with bungees and nail gun the 5x5 foot squares to their expansive platform by the light of a full Hollywood moon, but in real life a 5x5 foot piece of board, even the particled kind, is pretty freaking heavy, especially when it’s been doused in rhinestones and layers upon layers of now-cooled glue. So instead of attaching a tool belt to the hip of my True Religion jeans, I deferred to Quentin and the billboard professionals, preferring instead to dictate through a megaphone, with Puck, on the ground. The spot I had chosen for the erection was on the Sunset Strip just above the House of Blues. Originally, I had wanted a tall wall, but when I had called Chuck at Viacom, the best he could do was a 20 x 40 foot traditional, even after I reminded him of the little favor he owed us after Ricky threw some weight during the Outdoor Advertising merger meeting. A tall wall, he said, would be opening up (at a half price discount for the wife of Ricky de la Cruz) in twenty-two days and if I could wait that long— I’ll take it I told him referring to both the board and the half-price discount, but I’ll need something facing east and ready by Sunday, too. Facing east and ready by Sunday I had my space. As I stood below watching my ass grow ever larger while Quentin and his boys secured my half-naked body nearly 50 feet above ground, I felt, for the first time since Junah, something akin to butterflies. Something akin to joy. 538 THE PROBLEM WITH P.O.V. Although I paid nearly five-hundred (thousand) for my billboard on Sunset (not including supplies, not including my time) I would have sold the house if I could have been with Ricky as he drove to work on Monday. I would have given my breasts, my nose and my diamond engagement ring to see his face as he glanced casually up at the sign, to be a bug on the windshield after he slammed on the breaks and threw the car into reverse to look once more. I wonder if he recognized me by my ass? If he knew the dimples and precise couture of my thighs? Or, if he had to look further up, to the profile of my face, half hidden behind a blanket of blonde. If I had been in the car I would have said, That’s me, trying to say I’m sorry, I want to come home, I want back in the business, in the only way I know how. 539 TAKE FIVE. FALSE ENDING. I was—without ropes and without a net—forty feet above West Hollywood, on the corner of Melrose and Stanley, working on my second billboard installation—me dressed as a genie caught in a capped bottle of Diamond Myst—when my cell rang. I glanced at the caller ID panel, it read: KISF Audio Marketing. Thinking it was someone returning my call from the Outdoor Advertising place I unflipped the phone, careful not to coat it in acrylics, and pressed it up against my ear. Hello, I said. There was a soft sigh, like a whisper, and then a cough. Hello, I said again about to hang up. Who’s this? Magdalena? the quiet voice said just as I was about to flip the phone closed. It’s Ricky. Ricky? You sound terrible. No, he said. I’m not all right. What is it? I asked, sitting down on the high work-platform and dangling my feet over the edge. Did you get in an accident? I scanned the road below, imagining his Porsche trapped beneath a Hummer. Glass everywhere, and Ricky sitting on the concrete curb, a bloody towel pressed to his forehead. Where are you? I’m home, he said. Home? I looked to the clock on my phone, it was only 11:30. I was chopping a cantaloupe, he said, and I slipped and cut off my finger. 540 With one of those Samurai-ginsu knives we got for our wedding? I asked my voice now just about as shaky as his. The really sharp-cut-through-chicken-bones knife? Yes, he said. Will you come home? There’s blood all over the place. I’m on my way, I said, beginning my descent, rhinestones still stuck to the front of my t-shirt, a tack hammer and industrial strength glue wrapped around my utility belted waist. When I started up the tank, I heard Ryan Seacrest confessing to his listening audience on the radio. Saying something about how one of the unfortunate dangers of dealing with a live audience were sickos like us. As an apology from the station he would be awarding our forfeited trip to Palm Springs to caller number 16, but I didn’t care. I put on my blinker and snuck out into traffic. Ricky, like most Angelinos, doesn’t believe in the blinker. He maintains that by initiating the blink you actually hinder any small chance you have of actually getting over. The guy on your right, when he sees the click click of the yellow light will speed up and close in on the gap, but I disagree. One of the remarkable things about Los Angeles, one of those things that no one seems to talk about, is how we all do manage to get where we’re going. We slide from the fast lane, (wave) to the middle lane, (wave) to the slow lane, (wave) to the exit ramp, (blinker off) and we merge. It may not be singularly graceful, or without incident, but 99.9 percent of the time, we do manage to make our exits, our left turns, our way home. 541 THE END. FADE OUT. If Hollywood had her way things would have worked out with Ricky. He would have taken me back and I him and we would have lived, together, in our big house in Beverly Hills, happily ever after. But if you look at the outtakes or perhaps maybe the director’s cut you can piece together the real story and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out things with Ricky could only work out in the movies. Off screen there’s trust issues, body art, a pile of staggering debt and joint custody of a housekeeper to negotiate. So you may as well know, after the credits stopped rolling we didn’t exactly kiss and make up. We didn’t have hot burning sex and I didn’t find myself vivaciously pregnant. No, instead of all that, Ricky and I split right down the middle. He downsized to a smaller house on the Westside and I moved to a studio in Silverlake. I see him around every now and then and we smile and wave and sometimes we even do lunch. 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Creator Hoida, Bridget (author)

Core Title Plotting the geographic imaginary: nostalgic impulse in the California novel and So L.A.

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Literature

Publication Date 06/27/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag California,nostalgia,novel,OAI-PMH Harvest,West

Place Name California (states), USA (countries)

Language English

Advisor Everett, Percival (committee chair), Bender, Aimee (committee member), Ethington, Philip J. (committee member), Gustafson, Thomas B. (committee member)

Creator Email hoida@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m557

Unique identifier UC1135431

Identifier etd-Hoida-20070627 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-513344 (legacy record id),usctheses-m557 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Hoida-20070627.pdf

Dmrecord 513344

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Hoida, Bridget

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu