Disconnected
Page 11
"So, you and Mary are through? Totally done and on to the next one?" I asked as I turned back to folding my clothes.
"We're done." Jon frowned, but his hazel eyes flickered with humor. "She said she couldn't trust that only my eyes wandered." He flung his fleece shirt on the bench against the glass wall. His tall, thin frame was Giacometti-like, silhouetted against the glare outside. "Confessing the past to cleanse the soul is highly overrated. The truth can really fuck up a functioning relationship." His straight brown hair hung past his shoulders and framed his gaunt face, his black t-shirt was tucked into worn blue jeans that hung on his slender hips like a GQ model. He held a black leather organizer under his arm. Very vogue. "I never should have told Mary that Lavonne and I split because of Allison.” Jon flashed a quick, regretful grin, then put his organizer on the folding table next to me. He unzipped it and took out a pack of Marlboro Lights, extracted a cigarette and lit it, then pulled out a baggie of buds. "Here." He handed me the weed. “I hope it provides the diversion you need.”
"Thanks. Looks yummy." I pocketed the baggie in my leather jacket.
"It is, trust me."
I did too, about the weed, anyway. Jon was a connoisseur of just about everything. He liked the best, and bought it, whether he could afford it or not. He took his first bankruptcy at 23, and was railing headlong into another one by 30 had he not landed the editing job at Universal Studios a couple years back through a friend who worked there. Knowing someone in the Industry is the most common ticket to entry.
"Mary was right. I don't know what's wrong with me. She's beautiful and smart and accomplished. And she still wasn't enough." Jon took a drag off the cigarette then exhaled it and the bright room clouded with harsh tobacco smoke. He delivered the cliché with Hollywood cadence, and gave a little shrug before zipping his black case and sticking it under his arm. He leaned back against the end of the folding table and stared outside.
"Maybe you're just not ready to settle down." Or grow up, but I didn't say it because he already knew it, and there was no reason to be contentious. "You know, Mary is a big time producer and gorgeous and all that, but honestly, she had a stick up her ass that went right through her brain. I love her ‘success breeds success' rap, like no one knows who her daddy is. She really was a bitch, Jon. You're probably better off without her."
"Like you are without Lee?" He stared at me and cocked his head to one side.
Ouch. My cheeks flushed.
"Come on, Ray. I get that he lavished you with attention, was demonstrably generous and had all the emotional shit I so sorely lack. But 'just scratch the surface,' to quote you, and the full picture you've painted of Lee seems fairly screwed up to me. If what you've told me about him is true, then move on. Stick to your gut and find what you want."
He was right, of course, if I took out emotions like choking loneliness and gasping desperation. Jon did not feel these things. Losing Mary was more like losing an anchor than an appendage, though they'd lived together the last six months. He had no need of commitment. He could find someone to be with at his whim. And all counted with him, but none too much. By his own admission, Jon had never known Lonely, which I reverently envied.
"I've gotta jam.” He leaned over and gave me a quick peck on the lips, then pushed off from the edge of the table. ”Have a ten hour schedule today and I'm late." Jon was always running late. "Booked on Married with Children straight through New Year's or I'd say let's hang out, go up to Starwood's for New Year's eve. You got plans, or did they go away with Lee?"
"CBS asked me to come in but I'm thinking about going to Colorado early, hanging in the Rockies with Chris and her clan, escape the menagerie for a while."
Jon studied me. "Can't run from yourself, babe. Trust me. I keep trying but it never works."
My throat clamped. Tears fell. I couldn't stop them.
"Ah, Ray..." Jon pulled me in and hugged me in his warm yet separate way. "You're going to be fine." He spoke softly in my ear. "You still have many years to meet the right guy, make beautiful babies, and live happily ever after." Jon released me and we stood a foot from each other.
"That's you, Jon. Adorable, successful, athletic white male, Hollywood career track, and you've got the next 30 years or more before considered undesirable. I'm at negative three, and counting." I held up three fingers to accentuate my point.
He stared at me, like he was trying to get inside my head, but couldn't. He was too into his own to make the connection. "You worry me, kid. Hardcore coating with a marshmallow center." He sighed and shook his head. "You gonna be OK?"
"Yes, Jon.” Anticipating the buzz I'd be putting on in 10 minutes made it almost true. “And thank you, for everything."
"You bet. What's mine is yours, save my fidelity, of course." He flashed a grin then pulled me in for a quick peck on the lips and released me, picked up his fleece shirt and walked backwards toward the door. "Happy New Year, Ray. Enjoy the smoke. Take good care and be safe out there."
I wished him a happy New Year and thanked him again as he turned and exited the laundromat. I watched him walk to his Jeep parked right in front of the glass wall, but he didn't acknowledge me as he got in his car and left. Jon was on to the next thing and I became virtually irrelevant.
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Chapter 11
Las Vegas is like a sinister Disneyland. I'd hated the place since our family trip there when I was 10. Instead of awestruck by the bright lights and menagerie in the casinos like my sister was, all I could see were the worn, blank faces of old and young slumped at the tables and in front of the slot machines. I felt their desperation, and they grew uglier, morphing from normal to maniac, like Munch's The Scream.
Up on I-15 cruising past the city, the afternoon sun lit up the garish façades of the Strip, but the tall glass structures of downtown seemed to absorb more light than they reflected. I pictured Lee in one of the casinos, on a stool in front of a poker table, so absorbed in playing he doesn't notice he's turning into a rhinoceros.
Highway 15 starts getting beautiful around the southwest tip of Utah. Known as the Painted Desert, millions of years of sediment band the low hills in horizontal stripes of purple, brick-red, and blonde for miles before blending into thin yellow lines that lace the mammoth chocolate rocks of Zion. I marveled at nature's wonders, let it fill me up, ground me, like the buzz did, and Lee used to.
I stayed in the tiny town of Selina, Utah, that night, just off of the I-70 corridor through the Rocky Mountains. I was back on the road with the sunrise. It was eighteen degrees out so I didn't open the passenger window for Face to stick her nose out. The dog whined once, touched her wet snout to the cold glass and pulled back, then circled twice before plopping onto her sleeping bag in the back of the Civic.
I lit a joint and sucked it in to temper my trepidation over today's journey. The high desert of Utah stretches one hundred miles along I-70 with no services. Sagebrush plains sprinkled with dwarf trees lined enormous terraced slabs of decaying rock. Fifty miles in and the trees vanish. Tumbleweeds dance with the constant wind that howls through the low, flattop hills occasionally extruding from the vast wasteland of dirt. Lonely lives here.
I saw only one other car on the road in front of me, and saw no one behind me. The car ahead disappeared around a hill and for a moment I was alone on the highway, a metaphor for the present, but maybe my future too, damned to travel life alone. The notion cut, physically hurt, a deep, suffocating weight in my chest even high could not suppress. I could take it away in an instant, just miss the curve ahead, put the car in a ravine and kill the unrelenting longing. And if no one ever found me, and no one cared I was gone, did I ever really exist? Had I not been buzzed I would have crumbled right then, but instead flashed a sardonic grin. Face was a great traveling companion— she didn't get fidgety or bored driving for hours on end— but she wasn't enough. I couldn't exactly discuss Descartes with my dog.
12/16/91 (driving)
A thousand miles from there,
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It takes at least forty miles into Colorado before the landscape gets lush. It's a gradual climb approaching the Rocky Mountains from the west. The snow-capped peaks can be seen from as far as the Utah desert, but the immensity of the Rockies can't be felt until weaving through them. Shrub trees turned to pine which seemed to grow with the surrounding mountains as I passed the tiny hamlet of No Name, irony at its finest, since No Name is the town's name. Snow crept down the steep slopes the higher I got, and by the time I reached Vail it blanketed the stunning panorama of 10,000 ft high peaks surrounding the resort town below. The highway was dry, with the occasional speckled gray mounds melting onto the road. I stopped only for gas and to let Face pee, then moved on quickly to avoid black ice that came with the night.
I got into Breckenridge mid-afternoon and parked in the Beaver Run Resort's heated garage to insure the dog's comfort. I stroked Face, told her to stay as I closed her in, then locked my car and crossed the glass enclosed overpass to the hotel entrance. I'd called Chris before leaving L.A., and we'd scheduled to meet at Tiffany's bar in the lobby when she got off work.
With almost an hour to kill, I chose a square wood table in the back of the bar and watched the skiers drink and flirt after their long day on the slopes. The ski-bunny blond waitress told me there was a $5 minimum after 4:00p.m. when I ordered just tea. After she delivered it, along with the check, she never came by again. The bar was filling fast. Skiers clomped in wearing their dripping gear then stripped it off after picking their spot and ordering drinks.
I watched, unseen by most, wanting to be noticed but not bothered. I was buzzed, though mildly by then. I pulled my spiral notebook from my backpack but prose failed to come to mind in any focused fashion after my long journey, so I sketched the room and the people in it. I was untouchable. Autonomous, almost invisible, safely nestled in the warm bar, making it with my muse.
"Wow. That's beautiful." A female voice said over my shoulder.
I startled, immersed in sketching a stunning male skier sitting near the bar. Maybe 25, he was on his fourth gin and lime, and either knew I was drawing him or was sitting that still because he was totally blasted. I looked up at the short, stout woman with coiffed, dyed brown hair who'd spoken. She was standing next to Chris. A very thin, middle-aged man with a bushy blond mustache stood on Chris' left. All three stared at my drawing then looked up in unison at the skier. I felt my face flush as he smiled back at us, and then at me with a knowing grin. I closed my notebook and got up to hug Chris. I pictured her coming alone like always, her physical weight matching the weight of her demeanor. But when we separated and Chris looked up at me from her mere five feet, she seemed... happy. Dressed like her companions in casual work attire, her kinky yellow hair was pulled back in a French braid revealing her fair, freckled face, and made her normally gray eyes seem blue/green. She introduced me to her new boyfriend Rick, and their workmate, Shirley, as we all sat down.
"Are you a professional artist?" Shirley wanted to know.
"No." I didn't feel like engaging with strangers right then.
Rick's chair was beside Chris's. Their legs were touching and he held her hand in his lap. Though she was still plump for her small frame, and Rick was rail thin, practically concave, they seemed suited for each other, as if one completed the other, a yin/yang kind of thing. Though she'd mentioned him on the phone, I had no idea it was serious until that moment.
"You're very good. Where did you study?" Shirley asked me.
"Nowhere that counts. I just like to draw." I wasn't trying to be rude, but had no interest in rehashing my education and pretending it mattered.
"Rachel was an art student at the university in Greece where we met." Chris chimed in. "She carried this wooden board around everywhere, with sketches she was working on. Mostly nudes, if I recall correctly." She smiled at me, then at Rick, and I was consumed with envy.
We exchanged the basics— jobs, places of origin and the like. Rick went through three whiskey sours and two beers in the hour we sat there. He showed no sign of getting drunk, or even tipsy as he told wild stories about Vietnam, claiming to be a retired hit man for the Army, like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, but it was hard to believe with his gentle demeanor. I asked questions once in a while, but more out of courtesy than interest. The gorgeous skier glanced at me every few minutes, probably to see if I was still watching him. I wondered what it felt like to be so completely comfortable inside your own body, to know you are beautiful, powerful— male— that the world is your oyster.
Chris informed me she'd been living with Rick for the past few months over her third gin and tonic. When we'd spoken on the phone she'd failed to mention I'd have her house to myself. I'd been looking forward to late night talks over Tavli, like we did as roommates in Greece, and the years I'd been staying with her for the holidays.
Shirley finally took off. Rick leaned over and kissed Chris on the lips, then stood and suggested we get dinner, but I begged off, claimed exhaustion. Watching their exchange of affection literally hurt. I couldn't wait to get out of there, up to her house, and away from them right then. We hugged goodbye and felt a visceral exchange between us that surprised me. Chris had never been demonstrative, and true to her German heritage had always maintained a composed stature and an appropriate distance. I smiled at my friend when we released but the invisible wall was back. She handed me her house keys, then invited me to join them after work tomorrow back at Tiffany's for Happy Hour. I accepted, thanked her again and left, and without leaving the indoors traveled through hallways and glass enclosed bridges back to my car and waiting dog.
Face wildly wagged her tail tantalized by the scents of the forest as I pulled onto the snow dusted gravel drive and parked along the side a single-story, aging wood paneled house nestled in the eastern foothills of Breckenridge. She whined to get out and bolted as soon as I opened the hatchback.
"Get back here you crazy bitch," I yelled. And there was a heart-stopping moment when Face didn't appear upon command, but then she came barreling up the porch steps, wired, panting steam and waiting for me to unlock the back door slider and let her in.
It was as cold inside as out. And dark. Smashed my hip into the end of a narrow table and cursed. I finally found a light switch and lit up the quaint living room. The fireplace façade commanded the room with tightly fitted granite rocks that took up a third of the wall, its hearth big enough to curl in. A tan leather couch faced the fireplace six feet back, and in front of the couch was a long, low, knotty pine table. A large projection TV sat in the corner of the room, near the sliding glass doors I'd come in.
The TV remote was on the pine table. I retrieved it and clicked Power but the screen stayed dark. I pressed it again and again, then pressed the green button on the set itself but the TV did not come on. No TV! It couldn't be. My impulse was to run from there, get back in my car and find a motel for Face and me. But then I thought of the icy hill to get up here, and my half-bald tires and cruddy breaks, and reminded myself that any lodging in town this time of year was sure to be beyond my meager means, assuming anything was even available.
Face curled on the throw rug near the glass doors. I shivered as I dropped the clicker back on the table. No TV, and I sighed heavily, my warm breath condensing to steam. I glanced around for a heater box but spied none, then noticed the metal basket by the hearth stacked full of kindling and firewood. After checking to make sure the flue was open, I constructed a pyramid inside the fireplace then lit it and blew on it softly. The flame spread quickly, sparkling gold encasing the wood in quavering sheets. Within minutes the heat began burning my flesh and I put the heavy metal screen across the opening then went and sat on the couch, put my feet up on the low table and stared at the fire.
The crackle of the wood was now the only sound but did not fill the eerie quiet known only in remote areas. Beyond the buzz of any major city, in L.A. you can hear a freeway from just about any
where. And right then I wished I was back there, with the perception of family and friends at hand, even knowing they did not fill, and often exaggerated the emptiness within. I got a joint from my camera case and lit it, the sweet smoke and familiar burn in my throat and lungs providing a psychosomatic buzz before the actual weed high.
What the hell am I doing here again, I wondered, staring at the flames consuming the logs. Eight years later and I'm still running up here. My contemporaries had moved on, from roadtrips to carpools, they were married and making babies and hanging with others of like kind. I was still doing the same old thing, running in circles on the little metal wheel. I should have stayed home, put that ad in the paper. But the Quest was exhausting and the idea of it daunting, especially after my recent sabbatical from the dating game hanging out with Lee.
I missed him. Most everything about him, from his powerful presence, to his Cheshire smile, his laconic laugh to the attention he lavished on me. If I'd agreed to give it a go with him he could be here with me now. We'd sit by the fire, share a joint, play Tavli and pass the night, maybe bake a pie and share it. We'd talk about everything and anything, just like we used to. He'd protect me from drunk skiers or whacked out locals who saw me drive up or heard me yelling for Face. They'd never throw one of the metal deck chairs through the sliding glass door and attack me if Lee were here.
The weed soothed, the fire warmed, and tired crept in as I wove my twisted fantasy. I made sure the screen was over the hearth, then checked the dead-bolt on the sliding glass door and went to bed. It was cold in Chris' bedroom and I huddled under the enormous patchwork quilt that spilled over the bedsides, almost to the floor. Every creak of the house or rustle of wind outside startled me. Again I wished I wasn't alone, that Chris was here with me, or somebody, anybody, Lee.