by Michelle Tea
I’m a writer, the husband proclaimed. He sounded like he was trying on the declaration and liked how it fit. It brought a smile to his bearded face. I wrote a letter to the editor, about permit parking. And when I wrote it, I’ll tell you, honestly—I did not think they would publish it. I wasn’t thinking of it being good, I wasn’t thinking like that at all, I was just in that place of flow. I was expressing my feelings and it felt right. And I think that came through because the editor published it. He even asked me to write an op-ed about it! You just have to find that flow and do the work for the joy of it. That’s another silver lining. He stroked his beard meditatively. There won’t be any time for things to pay off so you’ll have to only do things because you love them. Here. He pulled a scrap of scratch paper from under the register. Here, make a list. I love lists. They’re so helpful. Make a list of five things you want to do in the next year. Think about it.
Michelle allowed the pen to be shoved into her fingers. She stared at the red piece of paper. She procrastinated by scratching out the numbers one through five.
1. Have sex with Matt Dillon.
The husband looked at her with raised eyebrows. His eyebrows were wild, the hairs looked like they were having a party.
You’re serious? I want you to take this seriously.
Mmm-hmmm. Michelle chewed the pen.
We can help you with that, he comes in here—Beatrice, doesn’t Matt come in here all the time?
Oh, yes.
Michelle wants to have sex with him. He studied Michelle. I thought you were a lesbian? Michelle shrugged. Okay, okay, continue, the husband prodded.
2. Stop drinking.
3. Leave the country.
4. Meditate.
5. Write something good.
The husband analyzed Michelle’s list. I see you have a negative, he observed. “Stop” drinking. Try to reframe that in a positive way.
Nearby, Beatrice leaned on a pile of books, her elbows jammed into the top paperback, the whole stack trembling with her breath. She looked at her husband adoringly. Michelle realized they were in love. She had assumed they were just resigned to each other.
Paul used to be a counselor, Beatrice said dreamily, brushing moisture from her cheek.
Paul winked at his wife, a twitch that brought the unruly tuft of his eyebrow in contact with the brush of his mustache. I did. But then I had an acid trip and realized that people need to find their own way. It isn’t for me to say what experiences are healthy or not healthy. Maybe it’s beneficial for a soul to, for instance, sink into depression and end their life. They could take that experience into their next life and become a healer, how do I know? The picture is much, much bigger than we think it is. Anyway, back to you.
This game, or whatever it was, made Michelle uneasy. It was absolutely the opposite of how she lived her life. Michelle didn’t have goals or plans or wants or needs. The chances of them coming her way were slim, and then what? Then you were a loser. If you just stayed open and rolled with things you could be a champ. Plans led to disappointment, to regret, to chain-smoking and sadness. Michelle refused to be tragic. She would resist having plans.
Paul pointed at number two. How about “I want to be sober”?
I Don’t Want That, Michelle gulped and shuddered. That’s Not What I Wrote.
You wrote you want to stop drinking, it’s a negative. What’s the positive? I want to be sober. You want to be sober.
No, No, No Way, Michelle said. I Just Want To Stop Drinking The Way That I Do. I Want To Drink Differently.
Like how?
I Want To Not Get Drunk? Michelle said.
Okay, well, why do you drink, when you drink?
To Get Drunk, Michelle said.
Hmmm, you want to stop drinking to get drunk. But you drink to become drunk. So you want to continue to drink why?
You Know, Just To Be Able To Drink.
For what reason? How often do you drink? Do you drink every night?
Yeah.
And do you get drunk every night?
Yeah.
And how often would you like to drink, ideally?
Michelle shrugged in a full-body jerk, like Paul’s hands were clamped onto her shoulders and she was trying to throw him off. I Don’t Know. I Don’t Want It To Be Such A Big Deal. I Want To Drink Whenever I Want To Drink And Not Have It Be Such A Big Deal. I Don’t Want To Be Sober.
And the store became full with the shrill sounds of alarms then, of ambulances and fire engines tearing down the street, coming to a halt outside the gates of the Scientology Celebrity Centre. The gates were long and iron and very majestic, the trio could see it through the front window. More vehicles came, and then more and more again. Ambulances, mostly. Their sirens were unbearable. Oh, Beatrice expressed pain in her face, clamping her thin, spotted hands to her ears. Michelle took her list and crumpled it in her fist, tossed it in the basket. She didn’t like seeing it there, red in the otherwise empty bin. She wanted it to not have ever existed. Outside in the street a maid was hysterical. She was waving her hands and screaming and crying, her body racked with sobs as if her crying were vomit, a deep heaving. EMTs took her to the side. Gurneys were being relayed from the compound. The street filled with clogged traffic. Cars honked. Ambulances pulled away only to be replaced by more. Smaller cars managed to scoot around the flashing spectacle, driving up onto the sidewalk and peeling off. One woman, her car too large, climbed out of it. She was crying too, not as terribly as the maid, more like Beatrice, her expression calm below the tears, her face wet as if she’d lifted her face from the sink while washing it. She threw her keys to the street and left her car. She walked away from the traffic, back in the direction she’d come. The car behind her couldn’t accept this. It rammed into the abandoned vehicle, rammed it again.
Oh no, Beatrice said.
Not good, Paul agreed. Not good, not good.
The bookstore shook with the impact of the abandoned car being rammed through the French restaurant next door. The breaking glass sounded the way fireworks looked—a sparkling, bright explosion, slivers and shards pushed brilliantly into the air, a rain of tinkles growing lighter and fainter, a wind chime. Piles of books throughout the shop tumbled and slid, paperbacks and LPs skidding down the aisles. The shelves, crammed as they were, held together. Michelle and her bosses were ducked into themselves, as fetal as a person can go and still remain standing. In the silence left by the fall of glass, close enough to be heard above the constant ambulatory wail, a man yelled, Fuck this! Fuck this!
Oh, please don’t let anyone be hurt, Beatrice prayed.
They don’t open till dinner, Paul said. How often do I complain about that, huh? How many times have I told Allan to start opening for lunch? What do I know. They could be dead now. I could be dead, I could have been sitting there eating a croque monsieur.
They’re so bad for your condition, Beatrice said.
You get my point, though. You can’t listen to other people. Remember that, Rochelle.
Poor Judy, Beatrice sighed. This is going to ruin her vigil.
14
That night Judy spoke to Michelle for the first time. She came into the store as the sun was setting, the sky streaked with orange and purple, glowing down on the silhouetted neighborhood, the Scientology Celebrity Centre a haunted mansion in the darkness. The ambulances outside the gates had been replaced by news vans. Dishes of light angled at news people, stylists stood by with blotting papers and aluminum cans of hair spray.
Michelle had been collecting bits of gossip from shoppers and junkies as the sun sank. Tom Cruise had killed himself. Michelle’s childhood love, John Travolta—Vinnie Barbarino and Danny Zuko, gone bulky and grotesque with the onset of manhood—he too had offed himself, right across the street from where she had stood, leafing through photo books of natural wonders. Michelle thought back to playing Grease with Kyle as children, both of them fighting over who got to be Sandy, tugging the neckline of their T-shirts over their should
ers, Tell me about it . . . stud, mashing an invisible cigarette into the ground with the tip of their invisible stiletto sandals, their bony hips swinging. Each sibling was in love with John Travolta. Michelle could never have imagined that the man’s life would come to its terminus across the street from where she stood, twenty-eight years old, the world beginning its ending around her.
Giovanni Ribisi and Jason Lee, dead. Kirstie Alley and Juliette Lewis. Karen Black! The Presley women! Michelle started to feel an antsy excitement, as if these famous people were just chilling in the garden across the street, not getting rolled out on stretchers. She wanted to see. But did she? Did she want to see Linda Blair dead from poison, a corpse on a cot? This was not how Michelle had wanted her celebrity sightings to happen. She regretted frittering away her brief glimpses of Gwen Stefani and Marilyn Manson.
Julia Migenes. Judy shook her head as she entered the shop, upset.
Who Is That? Michelle asked.
An opera singer. Marvelous, just marvelous. The paramedics rolled her out a moment ago. It is awful over there, awful. Judy shuddered. But all the more reason to keep our vigil, she said, determined. She heaved her tote from her shoulder onto the counter, obscuring a paperback, Baby Driver by Jan Kerouac, Jack Kerouac’s junkie, hooker, memoir-writing daughter. Like her father she was already dead and would be spared this time of celebrity mass suicides. Judy dug from her tote a bunch of waxy white candles and a stack of shiny paper ashtrays. She laid them before Michelle.
So, you have scissors? Michelle nodded. Well, let me see, then. Michelle pulled a pair of scissors from under the register. Judy took them up, snipped a slit into the ashtray and jammed a candle through it. Voila! Catches the wax. Won’t burn your hands. Do as many as you can. She lifted her tote back onto her shoulder. I’ll be back in a half hour or so. Want to check in on La Bébête. Allan was crying. Judy’s voice grew hushed. Crying! European men are just different. More sensitive. He sat inside that car and just cried. No one has come to help him, not with the suicides across the street. There’s only so many resources. I’m going to help him sweep up some of the glass so he can try to open tonight.
They’re Going To Open? Michelle asked. With All This? She waved a blunt candle at the carnage across the street.
Oh, well, he’ll get a lot of business tonight I think, between the vigil and the suicides. That car that got knocked through the window was a convertible, I told him he should just pull the top back and let people sit there. Won’t that be a hoot? She nodded at the craft supplies. Half hour. Do what you can.
Judy, I’m Working.
Judy waved her hand. I spoke to Beatrice, she told me I could leave it with you. Just pitch in, why don’t you?
Michelle lifted the scissors and petulantly stabbed a hole into an ashtray. Oh! Judy dug a roll of ribbon from her tote. She flung the wheel of it to Michelle, red, white, and blue stripes. And then you tie a bit of ribbon at the base, like so. Sweet, right? One half hour. Judy jingled out of the shop. Michelle rammed a candle through the gouged ashtray.
15
First there were only a few people at the vigil, but soon there were many. Michelle watched the sidewalk clog outside the bookstore. People held cameras, took pictures of the car lodged in the French bistro’s facade. Diners reclined inside the vehicle, the top cranked down per Judy’s suggestion. They held heavy-bottomed glasses of wine in their hands, their fingers lacing the stem, they raised the sloshing goblets at the cameras and smiled, their lips purple. Candles flickered everywhere, each one ornamented with red, white, and blue bows tied by Michelle’s nimble fingers.
The strip’s restaurants emptied onto the sidewalk and diners hoisted their drinks into the air, like it was New Orleans and a great procession was passing by. Someone held a poster-board globe with HONK FOR EARTH painted on it, cars rode by, honking. When cars honked, everyone cheered. Judy dashed up and down the strip, weaving through the people, handing out the candles. Beatrice stopped by the bookstore, holding a glass Coke bottle plugged with a candle. She and Paul had gotten good seats—not at the French bistro, whose tragedy had lent it novelty, but at the Italian joint down the street. They kept checking in to make sure the bookshop hadn’t been set upon by looters. Beatrice placed the Coke bottle on the dime paperback cart, the melting wax blobbing around the ribbon.
Michelle, keep an eye on that? Make sure it doesn’t get knocked over and set the books on fire.
The bookstore was empty. Michelle lingered in the doorway, by the dime cart and its burning candle, observing the strip. A man dressed as Uncle Sam was jogging in the gutter, pumping his hands in the air like a mascot at a sporting event, inciting the crowd to cheers. Everyone seemed drunk. A young kid, good-looking, no shirt on, held a large cloth peace flag above his head as he ran laps around the block, the fabric rippling in the wind above his rippled torso. The crowd loved it. A Boy Scout troop arrived and stood across the street from the drunkards, singing patriotic songs paces away from the news crews still covering the celebrity suicides. A couple of news cameras crossed the street, shifting their focus to the vigil. Was the vigil for the fallen celebrities? No, no, Judy said, offended. She did not want her event getting appropriated.
Inconsolable Tom Cruise fans had arrived and attempted to assemble an altar at the Celebrity Centre’s gates, arranging candles and photos and iconic relics—a pair of Ray Bans, a cocktail shaker. They were quickly brushed away. It had not yet been announced that Tom Cruise was dead, it was all rumor and speculation. The fans were grief maddened, holding above their heads homemade collages of the actor in his many roles—Jerry Maguire, Top Gun, Legend.
The cops guarding the Celebrity Centre pushed the stricken fans across the street to the vigil, where Judy pushed them back toward the Celebrity Centre. This is not a vigil for Tom Cruise! Judy shouted at the fans, the news cameras trained on her. This is a vigil for the planet! Our planet! Planet earth! Michelle’s hand flew to her mouth as she watched Judy rip a Vanilla Sky poster from someone’s hands and dip the edge of it into her vigil candle. She tossed the flaming effigy into the gutter.
Whoa, uh-oh! yelled the topless boy with the peace flag. There was no way around the conflagration but into oncoming traffic. He jogged in place, the flag sinking limply onto his head. Judy flung her candle onto the poster and stormed down the street, enraged.
A rebel Boy Scout climbed onto the bus shelter across the street and began chanting, USA! USA! The crowd roared its approval. A fire truck cruised by and the crowd howled anew, as if the truck were but the latest float in a parade. The fireman, confused, honked his horn in acknowledgment of the salute, and the crowd howled once more, hoisting their drinks to the noise. Michelle noticed many people crying. Women and men. Insensitive American men, in tears. People waved flags, American flags and peace flags.
Revelers asked Michelle where they could get candles. A Little Gray Lady. Michelle craned her neck to search for Judy. I Think She Lost Her Mind And Left. She gave away the Coke bottle candle.
A blond girl walked by on a cell phone. Yeah, it’s really awesome, you should come down, it’s awesome . . . A young golf punk from her apartment building approached, his pristine spikes standing full mast atop his head.
We were up on the roof, you should see it from there! he crowed. You should come up with us, drink some beers.
Can’t, Michelle thumbed back toward the bookstore. Working.
Oh. The punk looked uncomfortable, turned away as if Michelle had revealed a great shame. You work here? Well, see ya. He moved into the crowd. Michelle felt a sudden embarrassment at her lack of embarrassment at having this job. She didn’t even know enough to know what she should be ashamed about in life. She was starting at subzero, she would never scramble out in a year.
The same pickup truck kept circling the block until finally the topless boy with the peace flag hopped onto the bed and a cheer rang through the crowd. Bystanders leaped from the curb and joined him. Now it truly was a parade. The strangers clutched at ea
ch other in the back of the pickup, unbalanced from the beers they still carried or the bumpy motion of the truck or both. They arranged themselves around flag boy, smack in the middle, his flag lifted above him like a kite hoping to catch some wind. It looks like Les Miserables, Michelle overheard the comment of a passing gay man.
Beatrice stopped by again, asking if Michelle would like to take a walk down the block.
I’m Okay, Michelle assured her boss.
Go have a look, Beatrice insisted. There’s nothing to do here.
Michelle made it as far as the bar and grill a few doors down, the crowd growing thicker and yeastier around her as she cleaved into the heart of it. She turned and shoved her way back to the bookstore, dodging open flames and sloshing pint glasses. Too Overwhelming, she told Beatrice, and resumed her post in the kiosk. A tall, red-faced man burst through the glass doors.
How much is that book? he demanded. The Australia book? You know they just blew up the Sydney Opera House? He shook a handheld communication device at Michelle. It just happened. How much for the book? Australia is being decimated. You know the whole country was founded by criminals, it’s like some time-coded genetic switch got flipped on and they’re blowing everything up! How much for it?
It’s Not For Sale, Michelle said. She hated the man. It’s Not For Sale. It’s A Memorial.
Oh. He deflated. His lower lip sagged down in a pout. But I want it, he whined.
Michelle shrugged. I Just Work Here.
No, really, he pushed. I want to buy it and then walk around and have everyone out there sign it, to commemorate the evening.