Literacy and Longing in L. A. (11 page)

“What exactly do they say?” he replies, putting her on the spot.

“Well, you know, that people just want to watch TV and rent movies.”

“Those people probably never read to begin with.” An uncomfortable silence as she changes the subject.

“What’s hot now? What are people reading?”

“The usual
New York Times
booklist stuff.”

“Oh. Like…?”

“Baldacci, Steel, Roberts, Clancy, things like that.”

“Oh, I like Tom Clancy.”

“Lots of people do.”

Pamela stretches as she covertly loosens a notch on her belt and takes out her compact. She meticulously reapplies her lipstick and says, “Well, it was nice talking to you, Fred, but I guess I better mingle a little.”

It’s at this point that a couple at the next table, who had apparently been having a minor dispute, explode. She’s yelling, “Fuck you!” He’s shouting back, “Fuck you too!” She then races out into the rain in tears. He briefly apologizes to no one and runs after her.

Pamela mouths “uh-oh,” pointedly ignores the outburst, and continues her hostessly duties. Fred looks at me and rolls his eyes.

Okay, so it’s not the Algonquin Round Table here. He could at least have made an effort. Granted, it’s a bad party. But not in a good way. Like in
Tender Is the Night
when Dick Diver said, “I want to give a really bad party…where there’s a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the toilet.”

There is no way to salvage this evening.

Where the Wild Things Are

“The fawn lifted its face to his.
It turned its head with a wide, wondering motion
and shook him through with the stare of its liquid eyes.”

~
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953),
The Yearling ~

A
ll things considered, last night was a disaster. We ducked out after the cake and when we got in the car, instead of just letting it rip—me telling him he was a jerk, him telling me that my friends were bourgeois and boring—we both avoided the confrontation. I’ve learned that this is usually a mistake, but by this time we had already morphed into sullen passengers exchanging pleasantries in an excruciatingly civil manner.

“Do you mind if I turn on the music?” Fred asks with a benign smile.

“Oh no, not at all,” I answer evenly.

“I think we’ve heard enough country-western,” he says, which might have been funny had our moods been different.

Then he drops the bomb. “What’s the best way to get you home?”

Now I’m mad. I was the one who was going to say “Take me home.” But instead, I politely respond, “First get on the 10, and go north on the 405 and get off at Wilshire. Take Wilshire West to San Vicente and I’ll give you the rest when we get there.”

“Would it be better for me to take the 10 straight to Twenty-sixth Street, then go up to San Vicente?”

I don’t know how much longer I can take this. “No, Twenty-sixth is usually pretty crowded, so the 405 would be best.” If he asks me one more question regarding directions, I’m going to snap.

“Your friends are very nice.” He doesn’t mean it. Why is he saying this?

“Thank you.” (You prick.) He drops me off saying he has to get up early, but we both know it’s bullshit.

Darlene puts up with my rants all day. She called me this morning informing me that we couldn’t go on our usual walk because there was a giant squid infestation and all the beaches were temporarily closed.

“Are you joking? What’s a squid, anyway? Is that calamari?”

“Yeah, without the olive oil. How was last night?”

“Oh god, let’s see. We go to this corny, expensive theme party in West Hollywood that was supposed to be a hoedown and which, I admit, was in poor taste, even for Pamela, and he proceeds to patronize all my friends and hang out with the bartender. When I asked him to please come back to the party and act like a grown-up, he went into a funk and was basically mute for the rest of the evening. He hates my friends.”

“So what? I hate your friends.” She laughed. “Just kidding. Not really.”

“Well, it was uncomfortable as hell.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“No, I didn’t fuck him. He dumped me off at home. Couldn’t wait to get rid of me. And personally, I couldn’t wait to get rid of him.”

“Why did you throw him into that kind of gonzo scene anyway?”

“It was the birthday party of one of my oldest friends,” I huffed. “He could have been more cordial. I kept waiting for him to say something trenchant and provocative—lord knows, he had plenty of opportunity between Heather asking him about books and Pamela prodding him about his work, but instead he just sat there looking all judgmental and sanctimonious.”

“He was insecure,” Darlene insisted.

“No, he wasn’t. He was disdainful and snobbish.”

“Okay. Then he was both. He’s still a hunk and a great fuck. What do you care? You know what your problem is, Dora? You turn all these stupid social things into major downers over nothing. You’ve been depressed since the separation and what are you doing now? Reading and going to doctors’ appointments. I’m sorry. I know you’re down. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Did I hurt your feelings?”

“No, Darlene. At this point I have no feelings.”

“Okay. Let’s talk about something positive. What’s going on with the job?”

Oh, that’s something positive. “I’m waiting to hear.”

“I could call Sully, she’s still in Classifieds. She might have heard something.”

“Thanks…but no thanks,” I say dejectedly.

“Chill, Dora. You’ll get the job and the Bookprince will call you to apologize.”

“No, he won’t.”

“He’ll call you. They always call you.”

“Not that I care, but they don’t always call. I’m not twenty-five anymore. I’m divorced. Twice. Almost. I don’t have a job. My money won’t last much longer. And Dr. H. told me I could use a little lift right here.” I point to my upper eyelid as if she could see what I was talking about.

“Well, fuck them all,” Darlene said with a flourish. “Let’s go do something.”

We decide to meet for a late lunch and then take one of my favorite hikes, a two-mile trek through the Santa Monica Mountains, finishing at Inspiration Point, which offers a 360-degree view from downtown to the Pacific Ocean.

By the time we make it down the path, it’s twilight. Darlene and I are wet and slick and sweaty like horses coming down from a long trail ride and the cold moist air turns our breath to steam. The moon, a thin shaving of tin, is already visible in the sky as we pull out of the parking lot and head toward Sunset.

Darlene spots him first—a hefty, black-tailed buck with ominous-looking antlers lying by the side of the road.

“Dora, stop! I think someone hit a deer.”

I pull over and she leaps out to investigate. I see her bending over the body of the prostrate beast, peering into its dazed, gentle face. His fur is the color of a beagle, only matted and muddy, and there appears to be something black and sticky on his slightly pivoting, long, stiff ears.

“Is he dead?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Do you have a mirror?”

“Yes. Why?”

Darlene is cupping the moist tip of the buck’s snout in her fingers.

“I can’t figure out if he’s breathing or roadkill.”

“Wait a minute.” As I get out of the car with my compact, I see the buck suddenly spaz out in a series of convulsive movements in an attempt to get up. God, he has huge teeth. Do deer bite? Darlene jumps back.

“Well, I guess he’s not dead,” I say, a bit unnerved. “Maybe someone grazed him and he needs to, you know, just get his bearings,” I add hopefully.

“Maybe, but I don’t think we should leave him lying here. Do you think we can fit him in the trunk?”

“Darlene, he looks like he’s over six feet and he must weigh close to two hundred pounds.”

“How about the backseat then? Mel’s about the same size.”

Okay. Now I’m going crazy. I don’t want to be here. It’s cold and dark and I’m stuck. I suddenly long for a hot bath and a book.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Of course I’m kidding. Pull your car behind the deer, put on your emergency lights, and I’ll try to flag someone down with a van or something.”

I move the car, get on my cell phone, and start calling different wildlife agencies, all of which are gone for the day and have elaborate answering machines that are totally useless. I remember there is an emergency animal hospital down on Sepulveda and I call them next. The man gives me a bland, routine dismissal.

“We don’t handle wildlife here. There’s Lyme disease up in the canyon. Also, it’s illegal to administer any drugs—if we fix him up and set him free and then someone shoots him and eats him, they could get poisoned.”

I try to figure out the logic of what I’ve just heard. He goes on to tell me there’s a place in Torrance just off the 405 that might hold the deer until the Malibu Wildlife Agency opens in the morning. “Those people,” he says, “will handle anything.”

Meanwhile, I can just make out Darlene standing a few yards ahead, her white-streaked hair glowing in the streetlight as she motions to passing cars to stop. One man in a car slows down briefly, presumably to check her out, then speeds off.

“Sayonara, shithead!!” she bellows. “That’s French for fuck you.”

Finally, after a few more minutes, a black pickup pulls over on the bike lane. I see her long, sinuous body lean into the cab as she flings her mane at the driver. He doesn’t have a chance.

“Okay,” she shouts a few minutes later. “He says he’ll take the deer.”

“Okay what?” I answer, suddenly feeling protective and then worried that maybe he’s thinking venison!

“He says he’ll take it to a shelter—we just have to help him get it in the flatbed.”

I try to act grateful and calm as the short, muscled-up man in a tight black T-shirt and jeans gets out of his truck, walks over to me, and flashes a wide, sharklike grin. Then he unbuckles his leather belt and pulls it like a whip out of his pants.

I glare at Darlene and my heart starts to pound.

“Relax, Dora. This is Bill. He’s a real doll. Guess what! He thinks I look like Daryl Hannah. Anyways, he says he’s going to tie the buck’s hoofs together so he doesn’t kick the shit out of us and then we’ll all lift him into the truck,” she says cheerfully. Sometimes Darlene has this weird kind of mother energy that is hugely comforting. In the moment.

Then Bill looks at us and says, “One of you has to ride in the back so the buck don’t roll himself out.”

I look at Darlene and we’re both thinking the same thing. I can’t drive on the goddamn freeway, so it’s me and the stranger and the buck going on into the dark without her. I make one last attempt to worm out of this. “You know, the man at the shelter says deer in this area are infested with ticks that carry Lyme disease.”

“Wash your hands when you get there, then,” she shoots back.

So here’s how it went down. The three of us held down the buck, tied his back legs, and heaved him into the truck as the dust flew off the animal in blinding, eye-stinging waves, like thick clouds of tear gas. Then I jumped in, covered us both up with a piece of greasy tarp, and held down the buck’s head as good old Bill raced along the 405 in the emergency lane, his lights flashing, all the way to Torrance.

All the while, the animal struggled to right himself and I could sense he was gradually regaining his equilibrium and strength. He smelled earthy and woodsy like a wet pile of leaves and at one point he let out a windy, guttural sound like nothing I had ever heard. It wasn’t a howl or a growl—more like the muffled, heartrending sob of a small child in distress.

As I lay beside him holding his warm, heavy head, I gazed down at the wild, guarded cast of his eyes. There was something so unnatural about it all—being that close to a creature that needs to get back to whatever wild place he came from as soon as possible. I felt a sense of urgency for him and for me.

The natural balance of the world was upset and both Darlene and I instinctively felt the call to set it right. I suddenly flash on Mole’s rescue of Otter’s young son on the Island of Pan and how he “felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy…”
^*

When we finally reach the shelter, Bill jumps out, disappears inside, and argues with the techs for what seems like ages. Meanwhile, just as the buck has a renewed burst of energy and I am struggling to keep him down, my cell phone goes off. I automatically grab it from my purse with my free hand, thinking it’s Darlene.

“Dora?”

Fred.

“Oh, hi.”

“So, what’s goin’ on?”

“Oh. Nothing.”

“You sound out of breath—are you okay?”

“I’m fine but, ah, Fred, I can’t talk just now.”

“Okay. I’ll call you later.”

I hang up. Great. My mother used to say a watched pot never boils. Somehow or other that also applies to getting calls from men. They wait until you are frantically trying to keep a giant buck from bolting out of the back of a pickup, and then they call.

Catch the Soap

“Tell him I’ve been too fucking busy—or vice versa.”

~
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) to Harold Ross (
The New Yorker
)
when asked why she had not delivered her manuscript on time
.~

T
he first thing I think of when I get home is ticks. Ticks on my scalp. Ticks under my nails. Ticks in hidden places where you don’t even notice them until they are so swollen that whatever disease you have has metastasized and you are a goner. I need a drink. I open a brand-new bottle of something expensive that I’d been saving for the right occasion. This is it.

I turn on the water in the tub as hot as I can possibly stand it without searing my skin. I debate whether or not to call my doctor and tell him I’ve lain down with a buck. Maybe after the bath. I sink down into the water, submerging my head. Everything stings. I’ve got scratches all
up and down my arm and a big black and blue mark on the side of my face where I accidentally banged my head on the side of the truck. I shampoo my sweaty hair at least five times. What I really need is white vinegar. I remember my mother used to put it in the humidifier to get rid of the bacteria. I jump out of the tub, buck naked, and head for the kitchen. I lean over the sink and douse myself with vinegar. Then the phone rings.

“Hey, it’s Victor here. There’s a gentleman who says you’re expecting him, Fred Mud, can he come up?”

Shit. Fred Mud? Oh. Very funny. Who cares. What the hell. “Tell him to come up.”

I answer the door in an old sleeveless T-shirt and sweats. My hair is dripping wet and I smell like a pickled something. He’s obviously coming up to apologize. I guess we should sit and talk about it. Probably a good idea. I wish I didn’t look like garbage.

Fred is standing in the doorway with a frosted bottle of Belvedere, the fancy one with the etched picture, and he has a puzzled grin. “Jesus, what happened to you?”

“Darlene and I rescued a deer. Come on in,” I say quickly.

“Does it hurt?” He touches my face and I pull away. I’m still annoyed and tired and, when it comes to him, confused. Jesus, he looks great.

“Peace offering,” he says, and gently strokes the back of my arm. I start to weaken as he croons, “Poor baby.” Without a beat, he swoops me up, swings me around, and kisses me, slamming the door shut with his foot. He
puts his hands under my shirt and slides them down into my sweats and presses my hips next to his. He whispers a lot of foolishness as he pushes me back into the room.

“God, Dora. You’re beautiful.”

A crazy urge suddenly comes over me. I pull off my T-shirt and sweats and throw myself at him. We are both heady with lust as we stumble and fall on the rug. He grins and hoists himself over me, crushing me with his body. He grabs my wet, vinegary hair, pulls my head back, and pins my arms behind my back. Then he starts doing something with his tongue. My whole body is trembling. The buttons from his shirt are digging into my chest and the stiff fabric of his pants feels good. I try to rip his shirt off and he laughs at my urgent struggle. It’s shocking how much I want him.

“You won’t respect me in the morning,” he says with delight.

“You’re right. You were naughty and you need to be punished. Do you mind if I get my handcuffs?” I say, still panting from the tussle.

He looks at me with strange, new interest. “Do you have handcuffs?”

“Maybe,” I taunt him. “Follow me.”

He’s thrilled. There is something about a guy finding out you’re a bad girl. Just the thought completely turns him on.

I lead Fred, like some Nubian slave, into my bedroom and motion for him to sit on the bed. His tongue isn’t exactly hanging out of his mouth, but you get the picture. I open the drawer by the side of my bed, pull out
my gleaming steel handcuffs, and dangle the keys provocatively in front of his face.

“You didn’t believe me, did you?”

He’s chortling like an adolescent. “Okay. Where did you get these?”

I wasn’t going to tell him that I got them from Darlene as a separation gift…her ex, Mel the cop, had left them behind. I don’t even want to think about what Darlene’s done with them. “Just lay down,” I say. But at that moment he spins around, tackles me, and handcuffs me to my handmade ivy-twined iron bed frame.

We are roaring with laughter as I kick my legs violently at his chest, twist my body back and forth, and wrap my legs around his waist and squeeze him like a vise. I pull him toward me and his body is heavy and strong and I’m gasping for breath. Lusting for him.

He knows. He props himself up on knees and unbuttons his shirt.

“How much do you want me?” he teases.

He puts his fingers in my mouth and then leans in and kisses me softly and slowly and our mouths get wet and warm and tingly and this guy really knows how to kiss. Great kissing can be almost like making love. If it’s done right, it can magically obliterate all the extraneous limbs and sharp corners of your bodies. It’s a rapturous feeling. Oh, my, my, my. This feels good…the sweet, hypnotic power of it all where you are outside yourself, suspended somewhere far away looking down on a scene where, for once, reality is better than fiction.

I remember when I was a teenager, there was a boy
named Chris who used to come over after school and sit in my bedroom and kiss me. We would start out slow, laughing and kidding around, but he knew and I knew that this was all leading somewhere we weren’t ready to go. I learned it was all a question of acquiescence, letting your guard down and opening yourself up to a tangle of feelings and driving urges that sweep over you as a series of firewalls are released one by one.

Fred pulls off his pants and starts licking me under my arms, down my stomach, on the soles of my feet and other places that make me crazy.

There’s always a moment when you can feel the yielding in your muscles and your bones and all you can think about is you want more. A selfish, ravenous sensation washes over you and if someone is good, and Fred is definitely good, you never want it to stop.

I had a discussion in college once with Pamela, before William, when she was a hell of a lot looser. The concept was that “doing it” with a guy you had a crush on was sort of like finding out his one BIG secret: Is he good in bed? By that we meant, is he gentle or rough? Does he take his time or get carried away? Is he robust and insistent or does he let you take the lead? Is it a religious experience or just hard-core? We decided that you never really discover a good lover’s secret because they are different every time. It’s all a question of patter—the strong, silent type never really did it for either of us in the sack. A good lover had to know how to talk, cajole, philosophize, wax poetic, gossip, confess, and flatter. And the dark other side, the raunchy, off-color rap that
feverishly describes in whispers and murmurs every lurid move.

As we got older, though, we both realized that, alas, technique is never the whole story. How could it be that simple, after all? It’s the ineffable qualities of a person, like temperament, sensibility, integrity, and idiosyncrasies, that truly capture a lover’s imagination and send them to that coveted place of bliss. You can lick your chops over his physique, his bank account, his cool car, suave manners, whatever, but no matter how he acts in bed, that hideous word “connection” has to carry you through, it just does, or you inevitably end up blowing him off for no apparent good reason.

His face is next to mine as I strain my wrists against the cuffs and arch my back, pressing my breasts up against his bare chest. I have unlocked my legs from his waist now and obligingly let him lie down on top of me. He is rock hard and he lets me know it.

“Unlock the cuffs, Fred,” I say with a moan. “I want you to fuck me. Right now.”

“You can’t have everything you want, Dora. That’s no fun,” he chides as he holds the keys up to my face and then flings them across the room.

He’s stroking and moving. I feel as if sensation after sensation is piling up, swirling around me, carrying me off into a lost place.

As he goes down on me, he whispers, “Who would have thought my baby is a slut.”

We doze off enveloped in a languorous embrace and wake up a few hours later, reeking of vinegar, vodka, and sex. I tell him I want a bath and he says, “Me too.”

Aside from the view, the best feature of my apartment is the master bathroom. There is a big, old-fashioned claw-foot tub by the window, vintage white tile floor, and shiny stainless steel hardware with French
chaud
and
froid
on the handles.

Fred follows me into the bathroom, looks around at the disarray of books all over. He picks up a paperback version of Welty short stories and says to me, “You’re the real thing, aren’t you?” I am taken aback with the compliment.

“It’s the perfect getaway. I can spend the whole weekend in here.”

I pour loads of bubble bath in the tub, maybe a little too much; my entire body is hidden in giant drifts of white, snowy fluff. That’s when I see the sparkle in Fred’s eye.

He sits on the rim of the tub with a towel wrapped around his waist, picks up a bar of soap, and flips it like a lucky penny into the tub. It disappears below the surface for a moment and slowly floats down, grazing my leg.

“Dora! Catch the soap!” Then he jumps in.

We sit facing each other for one decorous moment, like a pregame salute. Let the wild rumpus begin. I dive for the soap, sliding against his thigh, while he grabs my wrist and lunges forward for the slippery prize. I push back against him in a kind of mat slam, my right hand
and foot jamming him in the stomach as I inadvertently slip back and dunk myself. His foot is now wedged between my thighs and he starts moving it seductively higher and higher.

“No fair,” I say as I grab his foot and pull him under. I reach for the soap and see his hand underwater, grasping for it also; we both make contact at the same time and the soap suddenly shoots up in the air and sails across the bathroom tile floor, which is now flooded with water.

We both stare at the soap, which has skidded all the way to the carpet. We are out of breath and panting and covered in a film of slippery suds.

“Come here, baby,” he breathes in my ear. “Let’s do it this time without the cuffs.”