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“March,” I said into the phone.
“Okay, I’m looking at the calendar. The 8th and the 15th are both good.”
“How ’bout March 15?” I heard my dad say in the background. “That was the day Julius Caesar was assassinated.”
“Oh, be a little more macabre, Arnold!”
“No, I like that,” I said.
“March 15 it is, then,” my mom replied. “Now, honey, are you coming home at all to see Maddy before she has to go back to school? She’s getting back from Europe next week.”
My sister is nineteen and will be a sophomore at Stanford. She has spent the summer in Paris, working as an au pair to some French family to pay her way. I think that’s really weird. I spent the summer in Paris once and was totally fine to let my parents pick up the check.
“I’m really busy, Mom. I don’t see myself coming home anytime soon,” I replied.
“You’re not that busy!” Karen shouted.
“Well, you’re going to have to come home at some point,” my mom informed me. “To do marriage counseling with Reverend Nelson.”
“Christ, Mom, you have got to be kidding me!”
“I am,” she laughed. “Reverend Nelson says he’ll allow for just one session when Roman gets back.”
“Better thank Grandma Jane for that one, Doll,” my dad said in the background. “She slipped a big donation into the collection plate last Sunday with your name on it.”
“You still have to come home at some point,” my mom said.
I haven’t been home in months. I can’t cross the county line without some childhood monster jumping out at me. I see them at all the old haunts—Coastal Cone, Santino’s Pizza Parlor, Foster’s Freeze. Only now the little demons are all grown up. Still, I remember them and they remember me. No matter what I do or who I become. It’s like a creepy Never-Never Land.
I popped into Ava’s salon to have my hair cut after work. Normally I would avoid senseless, excessive trimming, but with Ava being the receptionist and making my salon appointments, I can never get out of it. In her salon, they play nothing but techno and everyone has colored streaks in their hair like cotton-candy pink and bubblegum blue and apple green. Ava may be a “starving” actress of sorts, but not really starving because her father keeps her in large amounts of cash. She only keeps that job for the social interaction and the deal on color.
She needed a ride home but she had to work until six, so I went down to Aldo and bought a pair of expensive black slides. Then I went over to The Limited and got a few new sweaters. Sometimes it’s sweet liberty to spend money you don’t have—almost like you’re living someone else’s life. Then you get the bill and oh, no—you realize it really was you and this is your life.
“Guess what?” Ava giggled as we drove home listening to Madonna’s Immaculate Collection. She had fresh lavender highlights and a cheeky glow. “Dylan likes me. And I like him.”
Last night while we were out Dylan left this very keen message on our answering machine. He played the whole song “Ava Adore” and hung up when it was over. If you listen to the lyrics of “Ava Adore” you’d realize it’s a song about some seriously messed-up love.
But what a smooth move, really. That’s the way a big dorky asshole cajoles you into falling for him, by impressing you with his smooth moves. I told you I was onto his methods.
“Oh, shit! Don’t think I didn’t see this one coming! The fuck!”
Ava had just broken the news to Electra.
“Ava…not Dylan,” Electra pleaded, when Ava told us he was on his way over. We were having Baja Fresh on the patio in the backyard and a homeless man we call Fret was standing on the other side of the gate, in the alley, asking us if he could please have some money. We call him Fret because when people say no to him he goes back and forth with his hand in his mouth, saying, “Oh, dear, oh, dear.”
“Get out of here before I call the fucking police!” Electra finally screamed, throwing something at him. It was that limp green onion they always wrap up with your burrito. He ran off before she could chuck the slice of lime that comes with it.
“Electra, that was mean,” Ava told her, frowning.
“Well?” she asked haughtily, throwing her hair over one shoulder. Electra has the longest, shiniest brown hair ever. Stunning. She is fucking gorgeous.
“Well, you shouldn’t be so mean,” Ava lectured. “The man is homeless!”
“Yes, and I work for a living,” Electra replied, spooning up some of her rice. She eats a burrito from the center and never touches it with her hands. Her mother’s family name is on a bottle of whiskey. Her father’s family name is on a pack of cigarettes. Electra doesn’t like it when you talk about all that. She thinks it’s gauche for people to go around flaunting their wealth. Now check out those monogrammed Gucci slides of hers, and the matching bag.
“Back to Dylan,” I said, pouring more margarita into my glass from the pitcher on the center of the table.
“Yeah, why him?” Electra demanded.
Ava looked thoughtful. “He says I’m a star in his sky.”
Electra looked at her as though she were pitiful. “Oh, please. Must we go through this galactic debacle again?”
And the whacked-out milk lecture starts in five, four, three, two…
“You need to learn that women are like dairy products to men, sugar. They’re fresh before use, and spoil quickly. Women friends are like milk. Something substantial to drink if there’s not an appealing alternative in sight—like a Coke. Right now you’re like an unopened carton of milk to Dylan. And man, he’s gotten thirsty. So he wants to drink you because you’re right there and there’s no Coke and he’s fucking thirsty! That’s all it is! So fine, but when he trashes you, don’t be surprised. You won’t even go to the recycling bin because milk fucking spoils! Hello!” Electra shrieked.
“You’re totally stuck in the Milky Way, Electra, and besides—I’m not trying to alter the course of the universe,” Ava informed her. “I just like him.”
“Yeah, well…he’ll stop thinking of you as his fucking star as soon as you start thinking he’s pulled down the moon!”
Ava looked to be considering this. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Electra said graciously.
“What makes you the authority on absolutely fucking everything?”
“Oh, ha ha, really funny!” Electra bitched as Ava and I collapsed into giggles. “Let’s have a gathering, then. I can’t handle Dylan on his own. Doll, you call some people.”
I called Jeremy even though I suspected he was with Pristina. He was. He told me over a bunch of restaurant racket that he may come over later because she was on call. If Pristina were kidnapped and held for ransom and I had a lot of money, I would put it all into mutual funds and not even feel guilty.
I hung out in the living room with Andy Whitcomb, who is my best guy friend. We grew up around the block from each other and have been pals since our moms were in our elementary school PTA. I even took him with me to college, which we attended at Chapman University in Orange. Andy is just like me. And just like me, no way in hell was he moving back home after graduation. So he lives nearby, just off Third Street near the Beverly Center. Everyone thinks he’s gay because he works in couture at Nordstrom and his apartment is beyond Pottery Barn. Fashion sense aside, he’s not gay at all. He is actually a real sleaze. When he talks about the female sex organ he calls it “trim.” One time he was hooking up with a girl and he found a hair on her nipple all long and dark just like it was a pube. Instead of ignoring it he bit it off with his teeth. When I heard that story I laughed for an hour. Andy gets laid a lot.
“Do you want to be in my wedding?” I asked him as he strummed his guitar and I looked through a Victoria’s Secret catalog for a pair of sexy boots I just know I saw in there. Have to have them. Ava and Dylan were making out on the other couch. I am a total voyeur. I kept sneaking glances at them.
“Yeah, sure,” he replied. “But there is no way in hell I’m wearing a dress.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you can wear a tuxedo just like the other guys, Andy. Only you’ll have to stand on my side.”
I know this is the kind of thing everyone will ooh and ah over and think is the most adorable thing they’ve ever heard in their entire lives.
He nodded. “I’ll do it, then. Hey, you know something funny?”
“What’s that?”
“This’ll only be the second wedding I’ve ever been in.”
“The reason behind that, Andy, is that the majority of your bozo friends will be lifelong confirmed bachelors,” I predicted.
“Let’s hope so,” he said. “But don’t you want to know what’s so funny about it?”
“Enlighten me.”
“The other wedding I was in was Dan’s. Remember? Ha ha ha!”
Andy is cute but too much of a scamp. He has brown hair and impish brown eyes and a wiry build like a soccer player.
“You’re a fucker,” I told him, glaring.
“I am and I won’t deny it,” he practically giggled.
He was referring, of course, to Dan Michaelson. My high school sweetheart. Though our breakup took place years ago, we have sustained a heinous feud. This feud spreads out over time and geography. It has invisible, toxic tentacles.
“You’ve got to admit it’s kind of ironic,” Andy laughed. “I mean, wasn’t the original plan for you and Dan to get married at the same time? To each other?”
“Yeah, when we were seventeen,” I said, starting to get itchy. I feel sick talking about Dan and Andy knows it. “Anyway, you just take that Dan shit and shove it. Now, promise you’ll really be one of my bridesmaids?”
“I promise, Doll. It’ll be a great honor.” He winked at me. “Want me to play ‘Jane Says’ for you?”
“Sure.” He thinks it’s one of my favorite songs because my favorite grandmother, my father’s mother, calls me Jane. She doesn’t like my first name at all. Dalton is actually my mother’s maiden name, and since my mom was an only child and had no cousins, there was nobody to carry it on in the traditional way. Grandma Jane said Dalton was an awful name to give to a cute little baby girl and she was going to call me by my middle name, and always. Grandma Mary, my mother’s mother, said there was absolutely nothing wrong with the name Dalton and that she would never understand why Grandma Jane had to be so hateful about it, especially because everyone got in on that Doll thing, anyway. Only a few people call me Dalton as it is. My mother when she’s very angry with me, my father when he’s very angry with me, and Roman. He says Dalton is a noble name and that he can’t say Doll with a straight face, it’s so ludicrous.
Anyway, it’s not one of my favorite songs, really. It’s just one of the only songs Andy can play and definitely one of the only songs he can sing without making you want to run for cover. Case in point—he finished singing “Jane Says” and started belting out “Everlong.” Oh. My. God.
I zoned and pretended that instead of an ICRA project director, Roman was a famous musician away on tour and I would soon be joining him. We would ride in a big bus all across the country with a hot tub in the back and drink champagne and when he gave a concert he would dedicate a special love ballad just for me as I watched from backstage. In the song he would refer to me as “My Girl,” just like Jim Morrison. When people asked about his love life in interviews he would say he would never dream of going anywhere without taking his girl with him. I would make tank tops out of concert T-shirts with the band’s name on the front and wear them with jeans and a leather jacket as I posed next to him for press photos. I would hang out with fashion designers and models. Fans and groupies would hate me and say they wouldn’t know what Roman even saw in me.
Jeremy showed up around midnight. Ava and Dylan had retired to her bedroom and Andy had joined everyone else outside. I didn’t know who half those people were. That happens a lot around here. They were being too loud.
“Wow, am I glad to get away from that,” he said, flopping down on the couch beside me.
“That being Pristina?” I asked.
He pulled his hands down over his face. “Her friends are such bitches. It makes me love coming over here.”
I gave him a skeptical look. “Why, because my friends aren’t bitches? Come on.”
“No, because nobody here cares. Anything goes and you may get shit for it, but nobody really minds. Around her friends I have to act totally different. I have to act all…I don’t know, like I have to carry her purse and shit.”
“Oh.”
“Do you mind if I go see who’s outside?”
“Go for it.”
I watched him leave the room. What a strange creature, really. And what a pushy broad, that Pristina!
Dylan came out of Ava’s room with hooded eyes and a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He put his hands on his hips and peered at me, shirtless. Dylan is not unattractive. He’s sexy the way all scoundrels are. He doesn’t work out, you can tell, but he has a solid, manly body. He has green eyes.
“Hey, would you ever carry a girl’s purse?” I asked him. “Like, if you were dating her?”
“Fuck no,” he replied. “What kind of sick dude would ever want to date a girl like that?”
My point exactly.
Jeremy returned with two bottles of Heineken and handed me one. I guessed the beer stash was dwindling because Jeremy knows I hate Heineken and will only drink it as a last resort. He turned on the TV to see if there were any good movies on.
I watched the way his shoulders hunched forward as he leaned onto his knees to change channels. His face was earnest as he observed the activity on the screen. I wonder if Pristina thinks she’s a lucky girl. I hope she does. I know I’m a lucky girl because when you strip away all of the foolishness and weirdness and constant bickering between us, it’s actually nice to have a friend like Jeremy. It’s nice to have a friend who would rather come keep you company than go home and be alone…even if to keep you company means that you’re both being adulterous.
We slept quietly in my bed that night, on sheets printed with fish, holding each other in a comforting embrace. Occasionally he would wake up and kiss my neck and stroke my hair. Sometimes that’s all you need—to have somebody there—to get you up the next morning and make you think about how sweet it feels to have warm blood in your veins and hot breath in your lungs and a whole life that’s all yours to live and live and live.
Chapter 6
After checking the mail each day for two weeks, I was excited to find a postcard from Cameroon waiting for me on a Friday afternoon. On the back it said simply, Love YOU! This was a sign that a package of strange foreign goodies would soon be coming my way, with a long handwritten letter.
Roman doesn’t send e-mails. He says that such casual communication is at the root of today’s relationship problems, because you just go ahead and type what you’re thinking. He says when you speak you stop to think about what you’re about to say. He says e-mail is cold and harsh. I ask him, Don’t you go ahead and write what you’re thinking with a pen? He says no. He says you carefully craft every sentence because there is no backspace, no delete, and so you don’t want to make a bunch of mistakes. Mistakes make a letter look messy.
And his letters are certainly beautiful. I feel like they should be read in a special place, so on occasion I have driven seventy miles up the coast to read them by the Point. It is one of my favorite seaside spots in all of California. I get out of the car and feel the Pacific wind on my face and smell the salty air that reminds me of being a little girl coming home from the beach, with wet towels in the back of the car and sand in my ice cream and a song on the radio about a girl named Peg done up in blueprint blue. Then I pop in on Lily and we go eat at Yolanda’s and make big cheesy pigs of ourselves and try to bargain for the big juicy black olive that comes on top of the enchilada plate. Then we go to Baskin-Robbins for a pint of mint chocolate chip, and take it home to her mother and Al, and her mother gives me a “cold soda for the road” which is never name brand because Kitty can be cheap like that, but it’s delicious all the same.
I decided to call him.
“Baby! Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” I replied. “I just got your postcard. Thanks!”
“Too bad you can’t send me yourself by mail like that,” he said. “It would make things a hell of a lot easier for me over here.”
“I could send myself by plane,” I joked, only half kidding.
“Yeah, but I’m so busy here you would never even see me. So how’s everything going, Dalton? Making wedding plans?”
“Yeah, I’m on it. Booked us a church and everything. Unfortunately, we have to go to marriage counseling with Reverend Nelson when you get back. Just once, though.”
“I think we can handle the critical cleric our way. Let’s get tossed before we go and then argue the whole time just for fun,” he suggested with a laugh.
“Now you’re talking!”
“Listen, Landon’s coming in on an early flight. He says we’re just having breakfast but I know he’s really coming to review me, so I have to get back to bed.”
“Okay. Miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
That night I took Ava and Electra to the opening of a new club on Sunset, the reigning celebrity “It” girl’s Monaco. Charisma had put together the premiere party and the free alcohol flowed like an endless river. Sometimes I love this plastic town when I’m wasted. I love how everybody is somebody even if they’re nobody. I like painting on a whole new face and wearing black-on-black sparkles and teetering around in to-die-for shoes with to-die-by heels. I like how everybody’s pretty, and important, even if half the time they’re making shit up or really glamorizing their lives so they won’t seem inferior to anyone else. Everybody does it. Even me! It’s all part of the act.
Ava and Electra brought their new handbags, but I was without because Jeremy was with Pristina. If Pristina needed a transplant and I was a positive match, I would run away to Mexico and let her search for another one while I was wasting away in Margaritaville and loving every second of it.
He called around eleven the next morning. I was watching Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning and painting my toenails glittery green. Sometimes Jeremy and I prank-phone-call each other by leaving clips from our favorite horror movies on each other’s voice mails at work. These are like our love letters. Electra says we are sick.
“What’d you do last night?” he yawned into the phone.
