Julian peered into his friend’s face. “Dude, what’s going on with you?”
Ashton stared into his empty beer glass. “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling, that’s all,” he said. “Even at Cherry Lane when I saw her perform, there was something about her that wasn’t right. And I’m not the only one who thought so. Look at Gwen and Riley’s reaction to her. Everybody’s but yours, frankly. I can’t explain it. Something’s off. Maybe she’s not the girl you think she is. Maybe what you’ve found is the Hollywood version of what you think you want. You think you’ve found day, but what you’ve really found is night.”
“You’re wrong,” Julian said. “She is the most open, heart on sleeve girl I’ve ever met. She lives her life out loud.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“She’s like a female you. Are you telling me you’re not the guy I think you are?”
Ashton didn’t answer. “She is trouble,” he said. “I can’t help it. That’s what I feel.”
“You’re wrong.”
“For your sake, I hope so.”
The men fell quiet, focusing on other patrons’ conversation, on the song playing on the jukebox, “Burn it Blue.”
“I know how you are,” Ashton said. “Quiet but ruthless. I know you won’t be talked out of anything unless you want to be talked out of it. When are you planning on popping the question?”
“Soon. Waiting for the right time,” Julian said.
“Oh, that’s wise.”
“I don’t have much of it, though.”
“Wisdom?”
“Time.” Julian leaned in. “The Brentwood Country Club has a cancellation four weeks from Friday!”
At first Ashton didn’t react. “Four weeks from which Friday?”
“Don’t be like that.” Julian rocked on his seat.
“You want to marry a girl you met five minutes ago, four weeks from this Friday?” Ashton’s stunned expression was priceless.
“I’m not crazy, Ashton.”
“Of course, why would I think a marriage after knowing someone not even two months is crazy?”
“You think marriage after knowing someone three years is crazy,” Julian said.
“Am I wrong?”
“We cook together! Have you ever known me to cook with a girl?”
“Oh! Well, if you cook together!” Ashton slapped the counter. “Why didn’t you say so? Holy shit. Mario! Two of your best beers, por favor. Our Jules here is cooking with a girl. He totally forgot the best piece of advice Oscar Wilde ever gave us. Mario, are you listening? Because Jules sure isn’t. A man can be happy with any woman,” Ashton said, “as long as he doesn’t love her.”
***
First they had blood orange jello shots. When they were slightly four to the floor, Josephine asked if he had a frying pan. She was going to attempt to make him dinner.
At Pavilions on Santa Monica (to which they stumbled, not drove) she marveled at the high prices and the shiny apples. They bought steak, French fries in a bag, a mix for salad.
Things they forgot: dressing, butter, oil.
One more thing: salt.
“You don’t have any salt?” Josephine rummaged through his cabinets.
“Do we need it?”
“Without salt, there is no life,” she said. “What kind of Mr. Know-it-All doesn’t know that? How do you eat popcorn at night?”
“I go to Arclight Cinemas on Sunset and buy popcorn. And use their salt shaker.”
“Every night?”
“I don’t eat popcorn every night.”
When he returned after a trip to buy salt without which they couldn’t live, the apartment smelled of rotten eggs. She had left the gas on and forgot to light the burner. Julian opened the windows and doors.
“Didn’t you smell it?”
“Smell what?”
“They inject that terrible smell into gas on purpose,” Julian said. “To warn you that you’re about to die.”
“Is that one of your life hacks?” She was so blasé about leaving the gas on.
“It’s everybody’s life hack. Your mother didn’t teach you that?”
“No. Ironic, since she’s a teacher and all,” Josephine said. “You’d think she’d teach me how to stay alive.”
“Yes, it’s one of the first principles.” Julian found a theme for his next morning’s newsletter. “First Principles.” Clearly nothing was so well known as to be common knowledge. “Your mother doesn’t cook?”
“My mom is a fantastic cook,” Josephine said. “She grows her own vegetables in the garden behind our house, she makes her own bread, has fresh herbs, she could write a book, she’s that good.”
“She never taught you about the smell of death?”
“No, because she didn’t let me near the gas burners. My mother,” Josephine said, “took care of everything. I danced the mambo till I felt the pain and ate her food. You want another shot?” She gave him the glass before he answered.
Like a dolt Julian stood near the cold stove. Josephine was barely dressed. She wore a thong and one of his tank tops. Her hair was bed-messy. Where was the little black box? He reached into his pocket.
“They should put the smell of death into death itself,” Josephine said. They clinked and drank. “For easy detection.” Instead of wiping her mouth, she let him kiss the blood orange vodka off her lips. “Have it built in, like a death hack.” She giggled. “That way, everybody would instantly know what was coming.”
“You’d want that?”
“To know when you were going to die? Absolutely,” she said. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Barring that,” Julian said, going down on one knee, “they inject an odorant into gas before it runs through the pipes. Eggs is your smell of death.”
“And that’s no yoke. What are you doing?”
He took her hand. “Josephine, I want to tell you something,” he said. “I want to tell you about the first time we met. You stood at the wall in silhouette, backlit by the pink lights. It had started to rain, and the man you were with couldn’t be bothered to get you an umbrella. So you stood in the rain by yourself. You were a stranger to me, but all I wanted at that moment was to have the right to call your name and offer you my umbrella. I’m a regular guy, and I thought that regular guys don’t fall in love like they’re constantly clutching their chests and living on their knees. I never got too empty, but I never got filled up either.” Julian paused. Because the one thing that filled me up got taken away, and nothing else sufficed, not even love. “But at that moment,” he continued, “when you stood alone by the wall, I asked God that I could once in my life know what it meant, what it really meant, to love another.”
“That’s what I ask for, too,” she said. Her hand clenched inside his.
“Josephine, I love you. He popped open the black box. “Will you marry me?”
There was a stunned, glazed-eyed silence. “You want to marry me?” she said. “Why? I haven’t even met your mom. She’s going to hate me. You haven’t met my mom. She’s definitely going to hate you.”
“It’s not for them. It’s for us. For you and me.”
She cried. She said yes. Her hand remained clenched.
Julian saw the sun during his day for night and all the comets blaze down, the eyes of the planets like flames, the whole world on fire, not gentle or nostalgic or soft, but an ocean, raging with the swell of one human heart colliding against another.
14
Shame Toast
THEY WERE IN ZAKIYYAH’S APARTMENT. IT WAS LUNCHTIME. “Sometimes, when I’m starved,” Josephine said, “I make an awesome thing. I told you about it. I call it Josephine’s shame toast.”
“Does it put all other toast to shame?” He grinned.
“It puts everything else in the world to shame. It’s quite a heady mix of carbs and lard. Don’t worry. It requires no gas.” She kissed him. “But don’t tell Z about it. She thinks it’s despicable.”
“Oh, I’d blab immediately if I
were to ever see her again,” Julian said. “She is coming to our wedding, isn’t she?”
“You’re hilarious.” Josephine winked. She got some bread from the fridge and some butter from the cupboard.
“I think you have the locations of those two foods mixed up,” Julian said, sprawled at the table, gazing at her.
“Nope. The butter must be soft, and the bread must be not green. Ergo this way. But see how the pieces of toast are skinny? It’s very important they be skinny.”
“Of course,” he said. “In Hollywood we’re always watching our waistlines.”
“Exactly. Okay, so you toast the bread, twice if necessary, until it’s real crisp.” They waited. The bread popped. “You butter it a lot, right up to the crusts.” From the fridge she pulled out a plastic tub of potato salad.
“How long has that been in there?”
She smelled it. “It’s potato. What can go off in a potato?”
“Well, the potato,” Julian said. “And then there’s the mayo.”
“You worry too much. It’s fine. You spread the potato salad . . .”
“With flecks in it.” He came to stand behind her, peering over her shoulder as she worked.
“It’s pepper, I think. I hope. Anyway, you spread the salad over the toast, then you get out your cheddar cheese, sharp’s best, and grate it over the potato, like this, you pepper it some more, and then you put the other piece of bread on it, and you push it down with your palm, like this, and then, well, I guess you slice it in half if there are two of you, but if you were by yourself, you’d just pick it up and stuff it in your mouth and . . .”
He watched her as she, her eyes closed, devoured her half of the shameful sandwich.
“Are you going to eat your half or are you just going to stand there?” she asked.
“Do you want me to eat my half?”
“If you want. It’s the only thing your future wife knows how to make, so best you taste the milk before you buy the cow, I suppose.”
Standing by the sink, he ate it as she watched him enviously.
“Not bad.” He wiped his mouth.
“We’re still hungry though,” she said. “And there’s not enough potato salad for another one. Or cheese. Or bread.”
He nudged her toward the bedroom. “Quick, go have a shower and I’ll take you to Factor’s Deli, where we can ask them to make this into a custom sandwich. Who knows, maybe it’ll become so popular they’ll put it up on their daily specials board. Josephine’s Shame Toast. Right next to the Steve Martin. But hurry. We still have to run to the Country Club for the cake tasting before your call time. And your ring is finally ready.” The ring he had bought for her was four sizes too big. Who knew she had such delicate hands. She was afraid to lose it, so she never wore it.
There was a lot to do that afternoon before Paradise. They had to select their wedding bands. And a wedding band. They had an appointment for a cake tasting, they needed to rent him a tux, oh—and she had no dress. She had made plans to go shopping with Zakiyyah last week, but didn’t. Today they were supposed to knock off half a dozen things on Julian’s long list, but when he arrived to pick her up, she was still asleep. It irked him slightly that she wasn’t ready, until she beckoned him into bed. Now it was two hours later, barely enough time for shame toast and a cake tasting.
While she showered, Julian sat in the chair by the window facing the street and looked over his to-do items, each day the list growing longer while time grew shorter. Choose the flowers. Drop by City Hall, apply for a marriage license. Select a wedding registry. Decide where to go on their honeymoon. (He: Hawaii? She: London?) Buy shoes she could dance in.
Normandie has a short upward slope as it heads downtown past Clinton Street, but otherwise it’s straight and flat as a runway. Due north, it juts into the Hollywood Hills. Tall browning palms line its curbs like telephone poles.
It’s all sunny, sunny.
Normandie is a through street. A million cars whizz by all day and night. Weekends are especially boisterous. Weekdays are quieter. Today is a weekday.
Latinos wash their beat-up cars, water their yellow petunias and red azaleas, sweep the street.
Behind Zakiyyah’s house with the balcony with the yellow petunias and red azaleas, the freeway noise never stops. And across the street sits the razor-wire house. Even when Julian’s mind is not in the world but on the girl, he notices it from the corner of his eye. Even now, when he is counting out the minutes left and the errands to run, the peripheral weight of the house manages to drop a chink of anxiety into his gut, where it lodges and churns.
Lowering the notepad to his lap, Julian stares at the stucco building. A chain link fence surrounds it; there’s a gate to let visitors in. There are bars on the windows, bars on the gates and the doors, bars on the bars. And razor wire.
In the daytime, the two-story building looks like what it is—a fortress. Like they’re hoarding the gold bullion that didn’t fit in Fort Knox in one of their skanky hallway closets, either that or half of Medellin’s coke supplies for Southern California.
Like: whatever’s in there, you don’t want anyone crawling over the fences and balconies to get.
What’s there?
Who lives there?
While Julian was pondering this, a mixed-race dude emerged from the gangland house. In high tops, low-hanging jeans, and an oversized Lakers jersey, the guy locked the gate behind him, tucked his semi-automatic pistol into the back of his belt, walked across the street and hopped up Zakiyyah’s stairs.
Julian closed his notebook with the wedding to-do list.
There was a knock on the door.
He stood up. The shower was still running.
The knock came again, more insistent.
Opening the door, Julian found himself face to face with a medium-build dark-skinned kid in his early twenties, big eyes, thick messy cornrows, tattoos and bling and earrings. The belt holding up his Levi’s and his pistol was Gucci. The laces in his high-tops were bright red.
“Hey,” the dude grunted. “Whatup.”
“Hey.” His right hand tightening, Julian turned his body to the left. The left hand squeezed around the doorknob. None of it went unnoticed by Mr. Cornrow.
“We cool?” he said.
“You tell me,” said Julian.
“Is JoJo here?”
“You mean Josephine?”
“Yeah. That’s right. Josephine.”
The water in the shower was still running. Julian didn’t want to say to the gangsta-boy with the insolent stare, sorry, she can’t come to the door right now on account of her being naked. “She’s not available. I’ll tell her you stopped by.”
The guy looked Julian over top to bottom, assessed his fighting stance, his stone-cold stare.
“I’m Poppa W,” the young man said. “And who be you?”
“Julian.”
“All right, Julian. Later. Be sure to tell her I stopped by, though. Don’t forget.”
“She’ll know what it’s about?”
“She’ll know what it’s about.”
Julian watched Poppa W skip down the stairs and saunter across the street, where he jumped into his gold sedan with two huge exhaust pipes, turned the volume up to max on his souped-up stereo, and with Dr. Dre’s “Nothing but a G Thang” blasting through the speakers, shot up Normandie and out of sight.
Things can happen, things you don’t expect. One weekend you go camping with your friend, as you’ve gone a hundred times before, except this time rock falls out of the sky and alters the course of your life. Did you know that camping was such a risky endeavor? One minute you got plans, the next barely breath.
She came out of the bedroom in a towel, smiling and humming, not even close to ready. “Josephine, I keep meaning to ask you, who lives there?” Julian pointed across the street. He restrained himself from calling the woman he was about to marry by another man’s nickname.
“How should I know?” She was drying her hair
. A beat later, “Why?”
“Because a man named Poppa W just came out of there, knocked on your door and asked for you.”
Josephine said something incongruous. “What door?”
Was she stalling? “I don’t know how to answer that. The front door to your apartment.”
“It’s not my apartment.”
“Zakiyyah’s, then. What door did you think I meant?” Julian frowned. Even his heart frowned. “Did you think I meant your shower door?”
“No.” She stopped drying her hair. “What did he want?”
“He didn’t say. He just asked for JoJo.”
She blinked. “He calls me that sometimes. What did you say?”
“I said you weren’t available.”
“Why did you say that?”
“Well, because you weren’t available. Were you? And because I didn’t want to tell him you were in the shower. I don’t have to explain why I didn’t want to tell him that, do I?”
“Ugh, Julian.”
Ugh, Julian? “What should I have said?”
“I don’t know. You’re Mr. Know-it-All.” She didn’t look at him. “He’s Z’s friend, okay?”
“Okay.” Julian nodded. “Except you did say you didn’t know anyone across the street.”
“When did I say that?”
“Literally just now.”
“It’s true, I don’t know anyone. Z knows some people. Trevor hangs out with Poppa. I know him through Z. I owe him a couple of bucks.”
“You owe that guy money?”
She shrugged. “It’s fine, he’s a friend.”
“You just said you didn’t know him.”
“Jules, come on. I thought we were going out. I thought we had a lot to do.”
“You’re right,” he said slowly. “We do. But you’re still not dressed.”
“I can’t get dressed when you’re grilling me.”
“I’m not grilling you,” he said. “This isn’t grilling. This is rational concern. Normal curiosity. But also”—Julian kept his tone as even as he could—“I need you to be straight with me. If you know him, you know him. If you owe him money, you owe him money. But when you start by telling me you know no one across the street and it turns out that a dude you don’t know is calling you JoJo, it makes me doubt the other things you tell me about him.”
The Tiger Catcher Page 10