I‘m standing on the balcony of Martin’s apartment in Westwood, holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and Martin comes towards me, rushes at me, and with both hands pushes me off the balcony. Martin’s apartment in Westwood is only two storeys high, and so the fall is not that long. As I’m falling I hope I will wake up before I hit the ground. I hit the asphalt, hard, and lying there, on my stomach, my neck twisted completely around, I look up and focus on Martin’s handsome face staring down at me with a benign smile. It’s the serenity in that smile – not the fall really, or the imagined image of my cracked, bleeding body, that wakes me up.
I stare at the ceiling, then over at the digital alarm clock on the nightstand next to the bed, and it tells me that it is almost noon, and I uselessly hope that I have misread the time by shutting my eyes tightly, but when I open them again, the clock still reads that it is almost noon. I raise my head slightly and look over at the small, flickering red numbers glowing from the Betamax, and they tell me the same thing the hands on the melon-colored alarm do: almost noon. I try to fall back asleep, but the Librium I took at dawn has worn off, and my mouth feels thick and dry, and I am thirsty. I get up, slowly, and walk into the bathroom, and as I turn on the faucet I look into the mirror for a long time until I am forced to notice the new lines beginning around the eyes. I avert my gaze and concentrate on the cold water rushing out of the faucet and filling the cup my hands have made.
I open a mirrored cabinet and take out a bottle. I take its top off and count only four Librium left. I pour one green and black capsule into my hand, staring at it, then place it carefully next to the sink and close the bottle and put it back into the medicine cabinet, and take out another bottle and place two Valium from it on the counter next to the green and black capsule. I put the bottle back and take out another. I open it, looking in cautiously. I notice there is not too much Thorazine left and I make a mental note to refill the prescription of Librium and Valium, and I take a Librium and one of the two Valium, and turn the shower on.
I step into the big white and black tiled shower stall and stand there. The water, cool at first, then warmer, hits me in the face hard and it weakens me, and as I slowly drop to my knees, the black and green capsule somehow lodged in the back of my throat, I imagine, for an instant, that the water is a deep and cool aquamarine, and I’m parting my lips, tilting my head to get some water down my throat to help swallow the pill. When I open my eyes I start moaning when I see that the water coming down at me is not blue but clear and light and warm and making the skin on my breasts and stomach red.
After dressing I walk downstairs, and it distresses me to think of how long it takes to get ready for a day: of how many minutes pass as I wander listlessly through a large walk-in closet, of how long it seems to take to find the shoes I want, of the effort it takes to lift myself from the shower. You can forget this if you walk downstairs carefully, methodically, concentrating on each footstep. I reach the bottom landing and I can hear voices coming from the kitchen and I move towards them. From where I’m standing I can see my son and another boy in the kitchen looking for something to eat, and the maid sitting at the large, wood-block table staring at photographs in yesterday’s Herald Examiner, her sandals kicked off, blue nail polish on her toenails. The stereo in the den is on and someone, a woman, is singing, ‘I found a picture of you.’ I walk into the kitchen. Graham looks up from the refrigerator and says, unsmiling, ‘Up early?’
‘Why aren’t you at school?’ I ask, trying to sound like I care, reaching past him into the refrigerator for a Tab.
‘Seniors get out early on Mondays.’
‘Oh.’ I believe him but don’t know why. I open the Tab and take a swallow. I have a feeling that the pill I took earlier is still lodged in my throat, stuck, melting. I take another swallow.
Graham reaches past me and pulls an orange out of the refrigerator. The other boy, tall and blond, like Graham, stands by the sink and stares out the window and into the pool. Graham and the other boy both have their school uniforms on and they look very much alike: Graham peeling an orange, the other boy staring out at the water. I’m having a hard time not finding either one of their stances unnerving so I turn away, but the sight of the maid sitting at the table, sandals by her feet, the unmistakable smell of marijuana coming from her purse and sweater, somehow seems worse, and I take another swallow of Tab, then pour the rest of it down the sink. I begin to leave the kitchen.
Graham turns to the boy. ‘Do you want to watch MTV?’
‘I don’t . . . think so,’ the boy says, staring into the pool.
I pick up my purse which is sitting in an alcove next to the refrigerator and make sure my wallet is in it because the last time I was in Robinson’s, it was not. I am about to walk out the door. The maid folds the paper. Graham takes off his burgundy letterman’s sweater. The other boy wants to know if Graham has Alien on video. From the den, the woman is singing, ‘Circumstance beyond our control.’ I find myself staring at my son, blond and tall and tanned, with blank, green eyes, opening the refrigerator, taking out another orange. He studies it, then lifts his head when he notices me standing by the door.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
He waits for a moment, and when I don’t say anything, he shrugs and turns away and begins to peel the orange, and somewhere on the way to Le Dôme to meet Martin for lunch, I realize that Graham is only one year younger than Martin, and I have to pull the Jaguar over to a curb on Sunset and turn the volume down and unroll a window, then the sunroof, and let the heat from today’s sun warm the inside of the car, concentrating on a tumbleweed that the wind is pushing slowly across an empty boulevard.
Martin is sitting at the round bar in Le Dôme. He is wearing a suit and a tie, and he is tapping his foot impatiently to the music that is playing through the restaurant’s sound system. He watches me as I make my way over to him.
‘You’re late,’ he says, showing me the time on a gold Rolex.
‘Yes, I am,’ I say, and then, ‘Let’s sit down.’
Martin looks at his watch and then at his empty glass and then back at me, and I am clutching my purse tightly against my side. Martin sighs, then nods. The maître d’ shows us to a table and we sit down, and Martin starts to talk about his classes at UCLA and then about how his parents are irritating him, about how they came over to his apartment in Westwood unannounced, about how his stepfather wanted him to come to a dinner party he was throwing at Chasen’s, about how Martin did not want to go to a dinner party his stepfather was throwing at Chasen’s, about how tiredly words were exchanged.
I’m looking out the window at a Spanish valet standing in front of a Rolls-Royce, staring into it, muttering. When Martin begins to complain about his BMW and how much the insurance is, I interrupt.
‘Why did you call the house?’
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he says. ‘I was going to cancel.’
‘Don’t call the house.’
‘Why?’ he asks. ‘There’s someone there who cares?’
I light a cigarette.
He puts his fork down next to his plate and then looks away. ‘We’re eating at Le Dôme,’ Martin says. ‘I mean, Jesus.’
‘OK?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. OK.’
I ask for the check and pay it and follow Martin back to his apartment in Westwood where we have sex, and I give Martin a pith helmet as a gift.
I am lying on a chaise-longue by the pool. Issues of Vogue and Los Angeles magazine and the Calendar section of the Times are stacked next to where I am lying, but I can’t read them because the color of the pool takes my eyes away from the words, and I stare longingly into the thin aquamarine water. I want to go swimming, but the heat of the sun has made the water too warm, and Dr Nova has warned about the dangers of taking Librium and swimming laps.
A poolboy is cleaning the pool. The poolboy is very young and tanned and has blond hair; he is not wearing a shirt but he is wearing very tight, white jeans, and when he leans down to check the temperature of the water, muscles in his back ripple gently beneath smooth, clean, brown skin. The poolboy has brought a portable cassette player that sits by the edge of the Jacuzzi, and someone is singing, ‘Our love’s in jeopardy,’ and I’m hoping the sound of the palm fronds moving in the warm wind will carry the music into the Suttons’s yard. I’m intrigued by how deep the poolboy’s concentration seems to be, at how gently the water moves when he skims a net across it, at how he empties the net that catches leaves and multicolored dragonflies that seem to litter the water’s gleaming surface. He opens a drain, the muscles in his arm flexing lightly, only for a moment. And I keep watching, transfixed, as he reaches into the round hole, and his arm begins to lift something out of the hole, muscles momentarily flexing again, and his hair is blond and wind-blown, streaked by sun, and I shift my body in the lounge chair, not moving my eyes.
The poolboy begins to raise his arm out of the drain and he lifts two large gray rags up and drops them, dripping, on to the concrete, and stares at them. He stares at the rags for a long time. And then he makes his way towards me. I panic for a moment, adjusting my sun-glasses, reaching for the tanning oil. The poolboy is walking towards me slowly, and the sun is beating down, and I’m spreading my legs and rubbing oil on the inside of my thighs and then across my knees and ankles. He is standing over me; Valium, taken earlier, disorients everything, makes backgrounds move in wavy, slow motion. A shadow covers my face and it allows me to look up at the poolboy, and I can hear from the portable stereo, ‘Our love’s in jeopardy,’ and the poolboy opens his mouth, the lips full, the teeth white and clean and even, and I overwhelmingly need him to ask me to get into the white pick-up truck parked at the bottom of the driveway and have him instruct me to go out to the desert with him. His hands, perfumed by chlorine, would rub oil over my back, across my stomach, my neck. As he looks down at me, with the rock music coming from the cassette deck and the palm trees shifting in a hot desert wind and the glare of the sun shining up off the surface of the blue water in the pool, I tense up and wait for him to say something, anything, a sigh, a moan. I breathe in, stare up into the poolboy’s eyes, through my sun-glasses, trembling.
‘You have two dead rats in your drain.’
I don’t say anything.
‘Rats. Two dead ones. They got caught in the drain or maybe they fell in, who knows.’ He looks at me blankly.
‘Why . . . are you . . . telling me this?’ I ask.
He stands there, expecting me to say something else. I lower my sun-glasses and look over at the gray bundle near the Jacuzzi.
‘Take . . . them, away,’ I manage to say, looking down.
‘Yeah. OK,’ the poolboy says, hands in his pockets. ‘I just don’t know how they got trapped in there?’
The statement, really a question, is phrased in such a languid way that though it doesn’t warrant an answer, I tell him, ‘I guess . . . we’ll never know.’
I am looking at the cover of an issue of Los Angeles magazine. A huge arc of water reaches for the sky, a fountain, blue and green and white, spraying upward.
‘Rats are afraid of water,’ the poolboy is telling me.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’ve heard. I know.’
The poolboy walks back to the two drowned rats and picks them up by their tails which should be pink but even from where I’m sitting I can see are now pale blue, and he puts them into what I thought was his toolbox, and then to erase the notion of the poolboy keeping the rats, I open the Los Angeles magazine and search for the article about the fountain on the cover.
I am sitting in a restaurant on Melrose with Anne and Eve and Faith. I am drinking my second Bloody Mary, and Anne and Eve have had too many kirs, and Faith orders what I believe to be a fourth vodka gimlet. I light a cigarette. Faith is talking about how her son, Dirk, had his driver’s license revoked for speeding down Pacific Coast Highway, drunk. Faith is driving his Porsche now. I wonder if Faith knows that Dirk sells cocaine to tenth-graders at Beverly Hills High. Graham told me this one afternoon last week in the kitchen, even though I had asked for no information about Dirk. Faith’s Audi is in the shop for the third time this year. She wants to sell it but she’s confused about which kind of car to buy. Anne tells her that ever since the new engine replaced the old engine in the XJ6, it has been running well. Anne turns to me and asks me about my car, about William’s. On the verge of weeping, I tell her that it is running smoothly.
Eve does not say too much. Her daughter is in a psychiatric hospital in Camarillo. Eve’s daughter tried to kill herself with a gun by shooting herself in the stomach. I cannot understand why Eve’s daughter did not shoot herself in the head. I cannot understand why she lay down on the floor of her mother’s walk-in closet and pointed her stepfather’s gun at her stomach. I try to imagine the sequence of events that afternoon leading up to the shooting. But Faith begins to talk about how her daughter’s therapy is progressing. Sheila is an anorexic. My own daughter has met Sheila and may also be anorexic.
Finally, an uneasy silence falls across the table in the restaurant on Melrose, and I stare at Anne who has forgotten to cover the outline of scars from the face-lift she had in Palm Springs three months ago by the same surgeon as did mine and William’s. I consider telling them about the rats in the drain, or the way the poolboy floated into my eyes before turning away, but instead I light another cigarette, and the sound of Anne’s voice breaking the silence startles me and I burn a finger.
On Wednesday morning, after William gets out of bed and asks where the Valium is, and after I stumble out of bed to retrieve it from my purse, and after he reminds me that the family has reservations at Spago at eight, and after I hear the wheels on the Mercedes screech out of the driveway, and after Susan tells me that she is going to Westwood with Alana and Blair after school and will meet us at Spago, and after I fall back asleep and dream of rats drowning, crawling desperately over each other in a steaming, bubbling Jacuzzi, and dozens of poolboys, nude, standing over the Jacuzzi, laughing, pointing at the drowning rats, their heads nodding in unison to the beat of the music coming from the portable stereos they hold in their golden arms, I wake up and walk downstairs and take a Tab out of the refrigerator and find twenty milligrams of Valium in a pillbox in another purse in the alcove by the refrigerator, and take two milligrams. From the kitchen I can hear the maid vacuuming in the living-room and it moves me to get dressed, and I drive to a Thrifty drugstore in Beverly Hills and walk towards the pharmacy, the empty bottle that used to be filled with black and green capsules clenched tightly in my fist. But the store is air-conditioned and cool, and the glare from the fluorescent lighting and the Muzak playing somewhere above me as background noise have a pronounced anaesthetic effect, and my grip on the brown plastic bottle relaxes, loosens.
At the counter I hand the empty bottle to the pharmacist. He puts glasses on and looks at the plastic container. I study my fingernails and uselessly try to remember the name of the song that is floating through the store’s sound system.
‘Miss?’ the pharmacist begins awkwardly.
‘Yes?’ I lower my sun-glasses.
‘It says here “no refills”.’
‘What?’ I ask, startled. ‘Where?’
The pharmacist points to two typed words at the bottom of the piece of paper taped to the bottle next to my psychiatrist’s name and next to that, the date, 10/10/83.
‘I think Dr Nova made some kind of . . . mistake,’ I say slowly, lamely, glancing at the bottle again.
‘Well.’ The pharmacist sighs. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’
I look at my fingernails again and try to think of something to say, which, finally, is, ‘But I . . . need it refilled.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the pharmacist says, clearly embarrassed, shifting from one foot to the other, nervously. He hands me back the bottle, and when I try to hand it back to him, he shrugs.
‘There are reasons why your doctor did not want the prescription refilled,’ he offers kindly, as if speaking to a child.
I try to laugh, wiping my face, and gaily say, ‘Oh, he’s always playing jokes on me.’
I think about the way the pharmacist looked at me after I said this as I drive home.
I walk past the maid, the smell of marijuana drifting past me for an instant. Up in the bedroom I lock the door and close the shades and take off my clothes and put a tape of a movie in the Betamax and get under washed, cool sheets and cry for an hour and try to watch the movie. I take some more Valium and then I ransack the bathroom looking for an old prescription of Nembutal and then I rearrange my shoes in the closet and then I put another movie in the Betamax and then I open the windows, and the smell of bougainvillaea drifts through the partially closed shades, and I smoke a cigarette and wash my face.
I call Martin.
‘Hello?’ Another boy answers.
‘Martin?’ I ask anyway.
‘Uh, no.’
I pause. ‘Is Martin there?’
‘Uh, let me check.’
I can hear the phone being set down and I want to laugh at the idea of someone, some boy, probably tanned, young, blond, like Martin, standing in Martin’s apartment, putting the phone down and going to look for him, for anyone, in the small three-room studio, but it does not seem funny after a while. The boy comes back on the line.
‘I think he’s at the, um, beach.’ The boy doesn’t seem too sure.
I say nothing.
‘Would you like to leave a message?’ he asks, slyly for some reason, and then, after a pause, ‘Wait a minute, is this Julie? The girl Mike and I met at 385 North? With the Rabbit?’
I don’t say anything.
‘You guys had about three grams on you and a white VW Rabbit.’
I do not say anything.
‘Like, hello?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t have a VW Rabbit?’
‘I’ll call back.’
‘Whatever.’
I hang up, wondering who the boy is, if he knows about me and Martin, and I wonder if Martin is lying on the sand, drinking a beer, smoking a clove cigarette beneath a striped umbrella at the beach club, wearing Wayfarer sun-glasses, his hair slicked back, staring out to where the land ends and merges with water, or if instead he is actually on his bed in his room, lying beneath a poster of the Go-Gos, studying for a chemistry exam and at the same time looking through car advertisements for a new BMW. I’m sleeping until the tape in the Betamax ends and there’s static.
I am sitting with my son and daughter at a table in a restaurant on Sunset. Susan is wearing a miniskirt that she bought at a store called Flip on Melrose, a store situated not too far from where I burned my finger at lunch with Eve and Faith and Anne. Susan is also wearing a white T-shirt with the words los angeles written on it in red handwriting that looks like blood that hasn’t quite dried, dripping. Susan is also wearing an old Levi’s jacket with a Stray Cats button pinned to one of the faded lapels, and Wayfarer sun-glasses. She takes the slice of lemon from her glass of water and chews on it, biting at the rind. I cannot even remember if we have ordered or not. I wonder what a Stray Cat is.
Graham is sitting next to Susan, and I am fairly sure that he is stoned. He gazes out past the windows and into the headlights of passing cars. William is making a phone call to the studio. He is in the process of tying up a deal which is not a bad thing. William has not been specific about the movie or the people in it or who is financing it. In the trades I have read rumors that it is a sequel to a very successful movie that came out during the summer of 1982, about a wisecracking Martian who looks like a big, sad grape. William has been to the phone in the back of the restaurant four times since we arrived; I have the feeling that he leaves the table and just stands in the back of the restaurant because at the table next to ours is an actress who is sitting with a very young surfer, and the actress keeps glaring at William whenever he is at the table, and I know that she has slept with him, and she knows I know, and when our eyes meet for a moment, by accident, we both turn away abruptly.
Susan begins to hum some song to herself as she drums her fingers on the table. Graham lights a cigarette, not caring if we say anything about it, and his eyes, red and half closed, water for a moment.
‘There’s this, like, funny sound in my car,’ Susan says. ‘I think I better take it in.’ She fingers the rim of her sun-glasses.
‘If it’s making a funny noise, you should,’ I say.
‘Well, like, I need it. I’m seeing the Psychedelic Furs at the Civic on Friday and I totally have to take my car.’ Susan looks at Graham. ‘That’s if Graham got my tickets.’
‘Yeah, I got your tickets,’ Graham says with what sounds like great effort. ‘And stop saying totally.’
‘Who did you get them from?’ Susan asks, fingers drumming.
‘Julian.’
‘Not Julian.’
‘Yeah. Why?’ Graham tries to sound annoyed but seems tired.
‘He’s such a stoner. Probably got crappy seats. He’s such a stoner,’ Susan says again. She stops drumming, looks at Graham straight on. ‘Just like you.’
Graham nods his head slowly and does not say anything. Before I can ask him to dispute his sister, he says, ‘Yeah, just like me.’
‘He sells heroin,’ Susan says casually.
I glance over at the actress whose hand is gripping the surfer’s thigh while he eats pizza.
‘He’s also a male prostitute,’ Susan adds.
A long pause. ‘Was that . . . statement directed at me?’ I ask softly.
‘That is, like, such a total lie,’ Graham manages to say. ‘Who told you that? That Valley bitch Sharon Wheeler?’
‘Not quite. I know that the owner of the Seven Seas slept with him, and now Julian has a free pass and all the coke he wants.’ Susan sighs, mock wearily. ‘Besides, it’s just too ironic that they both have herpes.’
This makes Graham laugh for some reason and he takes a drag from his cigarette and says, ‘Julian does not have herpes and he did not get it from the owner of the Seven Seas.’ Pause, exhale, then, ‘He got VD from Dominique Dentrel.’
William sits down. ‘Christ, my own kids are talking about Quaaludes and faggots, Jesus – oh take your goddamned sunglasses off, Susan. We’re at Spago, not the goddamned beach club.’ William gulps down half a white-wine spritzer that I watched go flat twenty minutes ago. He glances over at the actress and then at me, and says, ‘We’re going to the Schrawtzes’ party Friday night.’
I finger my napkin, then I light a cigarette. ‘I don’t want to go to the Schrawtzes’ party Friday night,’ I say softly, exhaling.
William looks at me and lights a cigarette and says, just as softly, looking directly at me, ‘What do you want to do instead? Sleep? Lie out by the pool? Count your shoes?’
Graham looks down, giggling.
Susan sips her water, glances at the surfer.
After a while, I ask Susan and Graham how school is.
Graham doesn’t answer.
Susan says, ‘OK. Belinda Laurel has herpes.’
I’m wondering if Belinda Laurel got it from Julian or the owner of the Seven Seas. I am also having a hard time restraining myself from asking Susan what a Stray Cat is.
Graham speaks up, barely, ‘She got it from Vince Parker whose parents bought him a 928 even though they know he is completely into animal tranquillizers.’
‘That is really . . . ‘ Susan pauses, searching for the right word.
I close my eyes and think about the boy who answered the phone at Martin’s apartment.
‘Grody . . . ‘ Susan finishes.
Graham says, ‘Yeah, totally grody.’
William looks over at the actress groping the surfer and, grimacing, says, ‘Jesus, you kids are sick. I’ve gotta make another call.’
Graham, looking wary and hungover, stares out the windows and over at Tower Records across the street with a longing that surprises me, and then I close my eyes and think about the color of water, a lemon tree, a scar.
On Thursday morning my mother calls. The maid comes into my room at eleven and wakes me by saying, ‘Telephone, su madre, su madre, señora,’ and I say, ‘No estoy aquí, Rosa, no estoy aquí. . . ‘ and drift back to sleep. After I wake up at one and wander out by the pool, smoking a cigarette and drinking a Perrier, the phone rings in the pool house and I realize that I will have to talk to my mother in order to get it over with. Rosa answers the phone, which is my cue to move back up to the main house.
‘Yes, it’s me.’ My mother sounds lonely, irritated. ‘Were you out? I called earlier.’
‘Yes.’ I sigh. ‘Shopping.’
‘Oh.’Pause. ‘For what?’
‘Well, for . . . dogs,’ I say, then, ‘shopping,’ and then, ‘for dogs.’ And then, ‘How do you feel?’
‘How do you think?’
I sigh, lie back on the bed. ‘I don’t know. The same?’ And then, after a minute, ‘Don’t cry,’ I’m saying. ‘Please, please, don’t cry.’
‘It’s all so useless. I still see Dr Scott every day and there’s the therapy, and he keeps saying, “It’s coming along, it’s coming along,” and I keep asking, “What’s coming along, what is coming along?” and then . . . ‘ My mother stops, out of breath.
‘Does he still have you on the Demerol?’
‘Yes.’ She sighs. ‘I’m still on the Demerol.’
‘Well, this is . . . good.’
My mother’s voice breaks again. ‘I don’t know if I can take this anymore. My skin, it’s all . . . my skin . . .’
‘Please.’
‘… is yellow. It’s all yellow.’
I light a cigarette.
‘Please.’ I close my eyes. ‘Everything is all right.’
‘Where are Susan and Graham?’
‘They’re at . . . school,’ I say, trying not to sound too doubtful.
‘I would have liked to talk to them,’ she says. ‘I miss them sometimes, you know.’
I put the cigarette out. ‘Yes. Well. They … miss you too, you know. Yes . . .’
‘I know.’
Trying to make conversation, I ask, ‘So, what have you been doing with yourself?’
‘I just got back from the clinic and I’m in the process of cleaning out the attic and I found those photographs we took that Christmas in New York. The ones I’ve been looking for. When you were twelve. When we stayed at the Carlyle.’
For the past two weeks now my mother always seems to be cleaning out the attic and finding the same photographs from that Christmas in New York. I remember the Christmas vaguely. The hours that passed as she chose a dress for me on Christmas Eve, then brushing my hair in long, light strokes. A Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall, and the candy cane I ate during the show which resembled a thin, scared-looking Santa Claus. There was the night my father got drunk at the Plaza, and the fight between my parents in the taxi on the way back to the Carlyle, and later that night I could hear them arguing, the predictable sound of glass breaking in the room next to mine. A Christmas dinner at La Grenouille where my father tried to kiss my mother and she turned away. But the thing I remember most, the thing I remember with a clarity that makes me cringe, is that there were no photographs taken on that trip.
‘How’s William?’ my mother asks when she gets no reply from me about the pictures.
‘What?’ I ask, startled, slipping back into the conversation.
‘William. Your husband,’ and then, with an edge, ‘my son-in-law. William.’
‘He’s fine. Fine. He’s fine.’ The actress at the table next to ours last night in Spago kissed the surfer on the mouth as he scraped caviar off a pizza, and when I got up to leave, she smiled at me. My mother, her skin yellow, her body thin and frail from lack of food, is dying in a large, empty house that overlooks a bay in San Francisco. The poolboy has set traps smudged with peanut butter around the edges of the pool. Randomness, surrender.
‘That’s good.’
Nothing is said for close to two minutes. I keep count and I can hear a clock ticking and the maid humming to herself while cleaning the windows in Susan’s room down the hall, and I light another cigarette and hope that my mother will hang up soon. My mother finally clears her throat and says something.
‘My hair is falling out.’
I have to hang up.
The psychiatrist I see, Dr Nova, is young and tanned and drives a Peugeot and wears Giorgio Armani suits and has a house in Malibu and often complains about the service at Trumps. His practice lies off Wilshire and it’s in a large white stucco complex across from Neiman Marcus, and on the days I see him I usually park my car at Neiman Marcus and wander around the store until I buy something and then walk across the street. Today, high in his office on the tenth floor, Dr Nova is telling me that at a party out in the Colony last night someone ‘tried to drown’. I ask him if it was one of his patients. Dr Nova says it was the wife of a rock star whose single has been number two on the Billboard charts for the past three weeks. He begins to tell me who else was at the party when I have to interrupt him.
‘I need the Librium refilled.’
He lights a thin, Italian cigarette and asks, ‘Why?’
‘Don’t ask me why.’ I yawn. ‘Just do it.’
Dr Nova exhales, then asks, ‘Why shouldn’t I ask you?’
I’m looking out the window. ‘Because I asked you not to?’ I say softly. ‘Because I pay you one hundred and thirty-five dollars an hour?’
Dr Nova takes a drag from his cigarette, then looks out the window. After a while, he asks, tiredly, ‘What are you thinking?’
I keep staring out the window, stupefied, transfixed by palm trees swaying in a hot wind, highlighted against an orange sky, and, below that, a billboard for Forest Lawn.
Dr Nova is clearing his throat.
Slightly irritated, I say, ‘Just refill the prescription and . . .’
I sigh. ‘All right?’
‘I’m only looking out for your best interests.’
I smile gratefully, incredulous. He looks at the smile weirdly, uncertain, not understanding where it comes from.
I spot Graham’s small, old Porsche on Wilshire Boulevard and follow him, surprised at how careful a driver he seems to be, at how he flashes his signals when he wants to change lanes, at how he slows and begins to brake at yellow lights and then comes to a complete stop at red lights, at how cautiously he seems to move the car across the road. I assume that Graham is driving home, but when he passes Robertson, I follow him.
Graham drives along Wilshire until he makes a right on to a side street, after crossing Santa Monica. I pull into a Mobil station and watch as he pulls into the driveway of a large, white apartment complex. He parks the Porsche behind a red Ferrari and then gets out, looks around. I put on my sun-glasses, roll up my window. Graham knocks on the door of one of the apartments facing the street, and the boy who was over earlier in the week, in the kitchen, staring out into the pool, opens the door, and Graham walks in, and the door closes. Graham walks out of the house twenty minutes later with the boy, who is only wearing shorts, and they shake hands. Graham stumbles back to his car, dropping his keys. He stoops down to pick them up and after three tries, finally grabs them. He gets into the Porsche, closes the door and looks down at his lap. Then he brings his finger to his mouth and tastes it, lightly. Satisfied, he looks back down in his lap, puts something in the glove compartment and pulls out from behind the red Ferrari and drives back on to Wilshire.
There is a sudden rapping on the passenger window, and I look up, startled. It’s a handsome gas-station attendant who asks me to move my car, and as I start the engine an image that I’m uneasy about the validity of comes into my line of vision: Graham at his sixth birthday party, wearing gray shorts, an expensive tie-dyed shirt, penny loafers, blowing out all the candles on a Flintstones birthday cake, and William bringing a Big Wheel tricycle out of the trunk of a silver Cadillac, and a photographer taking pictures of Graham riding the Big Wheel around the driveway, on the lawn and eventually into the pool. Driving on to Wilshire, I lose track of the memory, and when I get back home, Graham’s car is not there.
I am lying in bed in Martin’s apartment in Westwood. Martin has turned on MTV and he is lip-synching to Prince and he has his sun-glasses on and is nude and pretends to be playing the guitar. The air-conditioner is on and I can almost hear its hum which I try to focus on instead of Martin who begins to dance in front of the bed, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. I turn over on my side. Martin turns the sound on the television off and puts on an old Beach Boys album. He lights the cigarette. I pull the covers up over my body. Martin jumps on the bed, lies next to me, doing leg lifts. I can feel him raising his legs slowly. He stops doing this and then looks at me. He reaches down below the covers and grins.
‘Your legs are really smooth.’
‘I had them waxed.’
‘Awesome.’
‘I had to drink a small bottle of Absolut to endure the process.’
Martin jumps up suddenly, straddling me, growling, imitating a tiger or a lion or actually just a very large cat. The Beach Boys are singing ‘Wouldn’t it be nice’. I take a drag from Martin’s cigarette and look up at him. He is very tanned and strong and young, with blue eyes that are so vague and blank they are impossible not to fall into. On the television screen there is a piece of popcorn in black and white and beneath the popcorn are the words: VERY IMPORTANT.
‘Were you at the beach yesterday?’ I ask.
‘No.’ He grins. ‘Why? Thought you saw me there?’
‘No. Just wondered.’
‘I’m the tannest one in my family.’
He has half an erection and he takes my hand and places it around the shaft, winking at me sarcastically. I take my hand from it and run my fingers up his stomach and chest, and then touch his lips, and he flinches.
‘I wonder what your parents would think if they knew a friend of theirs was sleeping with their son,’ I murmur.
‘You’re not friends with my parents,’ Martin says, his grin faltering slightly.
‘No, I only play tennis with your mother twice a week.’
‘Boy, I wonder who wins those matches.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about my mother.’ He tries to kiss me. I push him off and he lies there and touches himself and mumbles the lyrics to another Beach Boys song. I interrupt him.
‘Do you know that I have a hairdresser named Lance, and Lance is a homosexual. I believe you would use the term “a total homosexual”. He wears make-up and jewellery, and has a very bad, affected lisp and he is constantly telling me about his young boyfriends and he is just extremely effeminate. Anyway, I went to his salon today because I have to go to the Schrawtzes’ party tonight, and so I walked into the salon and I told Lillian, the woman who takes the appointments down, that I had an appointment with Lance, and Lillian said that Lance had had to take a week off, and I was very upset, and I said, “Where is he? On a cruise somewhere?” and Lillian looked at me and said, “No, he’s not on a cruise somewhere. His son died in a car accident near Las Vegas last night,” and I rescheduled my appointment and walked out of the salon.’ I look over at Martin. ‘Don’t you find that remarkable?’
Martin is looking up at the ceiling and then he looks over at me and says, ‘Yeah, totally remarkable.’ He gets up off the bed.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask.
He pulls on his underwear. ‘I have a class at four.’
‘One you actually go to?’
Martin pulls on faded jeans and a Polo pullover, and slips his Topsiders on, and as I sit on the edge of the bed, brushing my hair, he sits next to me and, with a boyish smile spread wide across his face, asks, ‘Baby, could I please borrow sixty bucks? I gotta pay this guy for these Billy Idol tickets and I forgot to go to the Instateller and it’s just really a hassle . . . ‘ His voice trails off.
‘Yeah.’ I reach into my purse and hand Martin four twenties, and he kisses my neck and says perfunctorily, ‘Thanks baby, I’ll pay you back.’
‘Yes you will. Don’t call me baby.’
‘You can let yourself out,’ he calls as he walks out the door.
The Jaguar breaks down on Wilshire. I am driving and the sunroof is open and the radio is on and suddenly the car jerks and begins to pull to the right. I step on the gas pedal and press it to the floor and the car jerks again and pulls to the right. I park the car, crookedly, next to the curb, near the corner of Wilshire and Le Ciénega, and after a couple of minutes of trying to start it again, I pull the keys out of the ignition and sit in the stalled Jaguar with the sunroof open and listen to the traffic passing. I finally get out of the car and find a phone booth at the Mobil station on the corner of La Ciénega, and I call Martin, but another voice, this time a girl’s, answers and tells me that Martin is at the beach, and I hang up and call the studio but I am told by an assistant that William is at the Polo Lounge with the director of his next film, and even though I know the number of the Polo Lounge I don’t call. I try the house, but Graham and Susan are not there either, and the maid doesn’t even seem to recognize my voice when I ask her where they are, and I hang up the phone before Rosa can say anything else. I stand in the phone booth for close to twenty minutes and think about Martin pushing me off the balcony of his apartment in Westwood. I finally leave the phone booth and I have someone at the gas station call the auto club, and they arrive and tow the Jaguar to a dealership in Santa Monica where I have a humbling conversation with a Persian named Normandie, and they drive me back to my house where I lie on the bed and try to sleep, but William comes home and wakes me up, and I tell him what happened, and he mutters ‘typical’ and says that we have a party to go to and that things will get bad if I don’t start getting ready.
I am brushing my hair. William is standing at the sink, shaving. He has only a pair of white slacks on, unzipped. I am wearing a skirt and a bra, and I stop brushing my hair out and put on a blouse, and then resume brushing my hair. William washes his face, then towels it dry.
‘I got a call at the studio yesterday,’ he says. ‘A very interesting call.’ Pause. ‘It was from your mother, which is a strange thing. First of all because your mother has never called the studio before, and second of all because your mother doesn’t particularly like me.’
‘That’s not true,’ I say, realizing it’s better to pretend not to listen.
‘You know what she told me?’
I don’t say anything.
‘Oh come on, guess,’ he says, smiling. ‘Can’t you guess?’
I do not say anything.
‘She told me that you hung up on her.’ William pauses. ‘Could this be true?’
‘What if it could?’ I put the brush down and put more lipstick on, but my hands are shaking and I stop trying and then I pick the brush up and begin brushing my hair again. Finally, I look up at William, who is staring at me in the mirror across from mine, and say, simply, ‘Yes.’
William walks to the closet and picks out a shirt. ‘I really thought you hadn’t. I thought maybe the Demerol was getting to her or something,’ he says drily. I start to brush my hair in fast short strokes.
‘Why?’ he asks, curious.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I can talk about that.’
‘You hung up on your own fucking mother?’ He laughs.
‘Yes.’ I put the brush down. ‘Why are you concerned?’ I ask, suddenly depressed by the fact that the Jaguar might be in the shop for close to a week. William just stands there.
‘Don’t you love your mother?’ he asks, zipping his pants, then buckling a Gucci belt. ‘I mean, my God, she’s dying of cancer for Christ’s sake.’
‘I’m tired. Please. William. Don’t,’ I say.
‘What about me?’ he asks.
He moves to the closet again and finds a jacket.
‘No. I don’t think so.’ These words come out clearly and I shrug. ‘Not any more.’
‘What about your goddamned children?’ He sighs.
‘Our goddamned children.’
‘Our goddamned children. Don’t be so boring.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say.
‘Why not?’ he asks, sitting on the bed, slipping on loafers.
‘Because I . . . ‘ I look over at William. ‘I don’t know . . . them.’
‘Come on baby, that’s a cop-out,’ he says derisively. ‘I thought you were the one who said strangers are too easy to like.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You were, and it was in reference to fucking.’
‘Well, since you don’t seem to be too attached to anyone you’re not fucking, I’d think we’d be in accordance on that score.’ He knots a tie.
‘I’m shaking,’ I say, confused by William’s last comment, wondering if I missed a phrase, part of a sentence.
‘Oh Christ, I need a shot,’ he says. ‘Could you get the syringe – the insulin’s over there.’ He sighs, pointing. He removes his jacket, unbuttons his shirt.
As I fill a plastic syringe with insulin, I have to fight off the impulse to fill it with air and then plunge it into a vein and watch his face contort, his body fall to the floor. He bares his upper arm. As I stick the needle in, I say, ‘You fucker,’ and William looks at the floor and says, ‘I don’t want to talk any more,’ and we finish dressing, in silence, then leave for the party.
And driving on Sunset with William at the wheel, a glass of vodka nestled between his legs, and the top down, and a warm wind blowing, and an orange sun setting in the distance, I touch his hand that is on the wheel, and he moves it to lift the glass of vodka up to his mouth, and as I turn away and we pass Westwood, up, above it, I can actually see Martin’s apartment flash by.
After we drive up through the hills and find the house, and after William gives the car to the valet, and before we walk towards the front entrance, a crowded bank of photographers lined up behind a rope, William tells me to smile.
‘Smile,’ he hisses. ‘Or at least try to. I don’t want another picture like that last one in the Hollywood Reporter where you just stared off somewhere else with this moronic gaze on your face.’
‘I’m tired, William. I’m tired of you. I’m tired of these parties. I’m tired.’
‘The tone of your voice could have fooled me,’ he says, taking my arm roughly. ‘Just smile, OK? Just until we get past the photographers, then I don’t give a fuck what you do.’
‘You . . . are . . . awful,’ I say.
‘You’re not much better,’ he says, pulling me along.
William talks to an actor who has a new movie opening next week and we are standing next to a pool, and there is a very young, tanned boy with the actor, who is not listening to the conversation. He stares into the pool, his hands in his pockets. A warm wind comes down through the canyons, and the blond boy’s hair stays perfectly still. From where I’m standing I can see the billboards, tiny lit rectangles, on Sunset, illuminated by neon streetlights. I sip my drink and look back at the boy, who is still staring into the lit water. There is a band playing, and the soft, lilting music and the light coming from the pool, tendrils of steam rising from it, and the beautiful blond boy and the yellow-and-white striped tents that stand on a long, spacious lawn, and the warm winds cooling the palm trees, the moon outlining their fronds, act as an anaesthetic. William and the actor are talking about the rock star’s wife who tried to drown herself in Malibu, and the blond boy I’m staring at turns his head away from the pool and finally begins to listen.
Image © Thom Milkovic
