• •
According to the Explorer, it’s 103 degrees, and Phoebe believes it. The sand burned her feet, and the moment she and Jackson crossed the Strand and left the crashing surf and breeze, the temperature spiked. She’s an hour from Serenos, longer if the traffic doesn’t clear, after a day spent at the beach, her second trip with Jackson in two weeks. Nick is working. Nick is ignoring her invitations. It’s five and Jackson is hungry and tired, played through his nap. She carried him into the waves. They watched the swimmers and surfers and lifeguards training, diving into the surf. They built a sandcastle and Jackson laughed when the waves washed it away. He was breathing the cool ocean air, the spray in his face. She could feel his mood lift with every wave that crashed. He chased the seagulls. She snapped pictures on her iPhone. She rinsed the sand from his little legs and feet under the shower as they left.
She won’t be home until dark. She hates getting home after dark. Her iPhone vibrates, a message from Marina: Desp Housewives 9 pm, bobcat
Phoebe is now filling friendly ’scripts for Marina, who doesn’t believe in doctors but needs something, anything, because she can’t slow her brain down, she says. They have a loose Sunday routine—watch their show, smoke a joint, and soak in the outdoor spa—and Phoebe is surprised that it’s something she actually looks forward to.
Stuck on some blocked freeway baking in heat.
Kostya 2. Had boyz at batting cagez now getting dinner somewhere so am here alone with princess. Come over!
Trying.
Car sitting outside the empty house. Just sitting there.
Are you trying to scare me??
Any crazy bitch comes near the house then it’s over for her
The next message from Marina arrives two full minutes later and is a JPEG file. The image is the rear end of a black Nissan Maxima with Nevada plates, taillights glowing.
Leave it alone. Tent Man’s there. Or just call the police.
Marina doesn’t respond but sends another JPEG.
See that? That’s my pink .38 pointed at these golovorez
Go inside. Lock the doors. Call 911 and I’ll see you at 9 ;) And don’t shoot anyone.
Going outside tell them bitches where to go ;)
Can’t cope with two shootings on the block in a month.
• •
She’s home. Two helicopters pass low overhead. Jackson is asleep. Carousel Court is deserted. It’s just after nine. Blue garbage bins are tipped over from the wind or Kostya’s dogs or the coyotes, trash strewn across the asphalt. The orange tent ripples and sags. Two of Kostya’s children run from a neighbor’s backyard, shrieks of laughter, until they disappear around the other side of the house. And it’s the slate-gray sky and the silhouettes of swaying palms and the loose string of white lights and the collapsing tent that make it plausible that the running, screaming children weren’t playing.
But there is no sign of the black Maxima from Marina’s pictures. Marina’s not aiming her pink semiautomatic pistol at strangers from a bedroom window. The neighbor is, however, setting more of his possessions on fire. Phoebe smells the smoke from his backyard as she carries Jackson inside the house and upstairs, where she changes his diaper, kisses his forehead, and lays him down in the crib. Nick already refilled and turned on the frog-shaped humidifier and three night-lights. Jackson makes a tiny sound and rolls to his side under his pale yellow blanket. She draws the blinds and leaves his door open. Nick is sleeping in the master bedroom, facedown, jeans and no shirt, boots unlaced but still on.
She shakes him once. He makes a noise, but his eyes stay closed.
“I’m leaving. Nick, can you hear me? I’m going.” He makes another sound. “Listen for Jackson.” She places the baby monitor next to his face, turns up the volume.
She leaves the room. From the kitchen she takes a bottle of Fiji water and an apple. In her white Coach bag: her wallet, a Massachusetts driver’s license, her GSK photo ID, four bottles of pills, and a new purple hairbrush.
She sets the ADT and locks the front door. She enters the address in her GPS and turns right as she leaves Carousel Court, turns onto the wider street, passes the banks and nail salons, T-Mobile and Jamba Juice, and the crisscrossed palms in front of In-N-Out Burger. The looming sign is like giant blue LEGOs: the Shoppes at Serenos, Forever 21, PacSun, and P. F. Chang’s. She pulls in, parks. She wants stretch pants and a top or two, a short dress. All the stores are dark. It’s ten o’clock on Sunday night. Everything is closed. She’s tired and sunburned. She’ll shop tomorrow. She’ll go to Melrose Avenue and Mint Collection and that other little shop on the corner. She’ll play juvenile games. She’ll take pictures of herself and show him what he’s missing. She’ll treat him like the perverted client that he is: a mark. He may deserve more in exchange for what he gave her, but it’s the fact that all that’s required to course-correct her life, maybe salvage her marriage, is superficial titillation for him after all this time, and that enrages her.
She’s driving, following green signs that lead west. She accelerates at the yellow light, pulls the wheel to the right onto the San Bernardino, and is alert with the windows down and her long dark hair tangled, shot through the currents of traffic like a hollow-point bullet.
40
The silence of the dark room only exacerbates the ringing in her ears. Sunlight seeps through the edges of floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the king-size platform bed. This morning the split in her skull is the hangover from too much wine and Klonopin. She checks the time on her iPhone. It’s 1:13 P.M. She tries to lift her head but can’t hold it up for more than a moment, drops it back to the mattress, out of breath. She closes her eyes to recall last night: She followed a narrow, ascending road after an hour on the freeway; at the ivy-covered gate she pressed the silver button on the call box and watched it slide open; the tan skin of the slight blond man who greeted her seemed to glow; his nonchalance when she said no, she had no luggage, and then he showed her to her bungalow; the glistening hillside lights; the messages from Nick asking where she was.
What did she say to Nick? There was a call. They spoke and she recalls her tone (harsh and dismissive) but not the words. She drank wine and ate JW’s leftover bruschetta and swallowed three Klonopin because she had to sleep or she would die.
Now she sits on the edge of the low firm bed, and her throat burns when she swallows. All the contents of her Coach bag are spilled across the bed and floor, as though someone shook it out, searching for something. She has no recollection of doing it. The walls are purple. She slides the door open and steps out into the bright yellow sunlight of a hot afternoon. The wind moving through the canyon smells of smoke. The cicadas crying out. Even here, she thinks.
The messages from Nick are from last night and this morning and five minutes ago:
You coming home?
Where ARE you?
??? I have to WORK, Phoebe.
Are you passed out somewhere? You realize how dangerously high your threshold is now for that shit? You will sleep and never wake. Lame. Totally, completely pathetic way to go out. But what do you care? You won’t be around to hear it.
Slip away, Phoebe. Slip away. What an example for your child.
She responds:
Take him to Mai’s. He can spend the night. Or Kostya’s.
You’re still with us?
Phoebe lies back on the bed, holds the iPhone over her, taps out a response:
Sorry.
Not cool. Totally uncool.
Her phone rings. It’s Nick. “Just say it. Say it. Tell me.”
“There’s nothing to say. I can’t explain anything away. It’s just not what you think.”
“I’m not sure you should come home. I’m not sure it’s safe.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Just being responsible. Being realistic.”
There’s a long pause
. She’s fingering the lip of a wineglass, nearly empty. Outside, tucked in the shade from a eucalyptus, she notices the koi pond.
“I’m not sure someone won’t get hurt,” he adds, his voice distant.
“You and me both.”
“Keep thinking it’s some twisted dream.”
“It’s not.”
“Like he’s bending you over a hotel balcony.”
“Nick.”
He clicks off.
Instead of leaving, Phoebe does the math: Jackson’s fine until six, which is pickup time from Mai’s house. It’s two. The water is ready. She fills the sunken tub with lavender bath salts and slides in, closes her eyes, and slips underwater.
41
The message is from JW: So tell me? Was I right?
Phoebe responds: I feel badass in here. You were right. To die for ;)
She stands on the veranda, squints in the dry wind. It’s almost four. She sips cool white tea. Her mind is finally still. She feels the organic jojoba, sunflower, and apricot kernel oil lotion seep into her skin. Her sinuses are clear. She considers calling for the Pilates instructor, who, according to the brushed nickel–covered hotel guest-services guide will conduct a seventy-minute session in the suite, but it will likely take at least an hour to get back, to pick up Jackson. It’s time for her to go home.
Pick a handful of weekends or weeknights and it’ll be there for you.
The two-foot cast-iron statue rests on the granite coffee table and depicts a man balancing acrobatically on one hand atop a smooth white stone. She rereads the message twice, slower the second time. What is he telling her? She runs her fingers along the iron statue. It’s cold and smooth. She wants it. She considers taking it with her. It won’t fit in her Coach bag. She’ll get it next time.
No obligations.
Not sure
Minimal expectations ;)
Liar
Maybe I’ll visit. Make sure they’re taking care of you.
What else do I have to do?
Stay badass when I’m there
• •
It’s five o’clock. Shadows stretch across the hillside. She’s wearing her white sunglasses, charcoal yoga pants, and peach top from yesterday.
Another text arrives: Who’s at the door?
She doesn’t respond. She’s late. It’ll take hours now, rush hour, to get home. Stress she doesn’t need.
Is it the Pilates instructor? The concierge? Your husband?
The knocking is rhythmic and playful.
She knows before she opens the door.
He looks younger than before and thinner. Clearly, JW is avoiding any of the emotional distress he’s accused of inflicting. His eyebrows are dark and his pressed blue-pinstriped Versace shirt is untucked. He’s tan and smells like the beach, brown Ray-Bans perched on his head. She wonders if he just got a facial. She wants to push past him because she’s late, her husband is working, her son is waiting miles and hours from here. But what is she going back to? Nothing is different, just slightly worse than the day before. Nick and his sweaty cash.
She wants it to be yesterday. JW does this to her. Every time. And it’s not that he’s unapologetic or unaware, and he doesn’t press or make her feel bad when she doesn’t or can’t drop everything at a moment’s notice. He is nothing if not understanding. The truth she avoids: She can never say no to him and make it stick. It might be considered a character flaw, a fault line at her very core, she thinks. A connection burned through or never made somewhere in her makeup, no clarity about what matters, what must come first: her family.
But what about her? She existed before Jackson, before Nick, and exists now, the slightest gap between her front teeth, the same chestnut hair. When her mother nearly died from what should have been a lethal cocktail of martinis and Xanax, went into respiratory failure, and was hospitalized for three weeks, Phoebe went to Florida to help salvage her mother’s last good years. You can’t live someone else’s life for them, Nick told her when Phoebe was determined to stay down there until her mother was fixed. She’s making her own choices.
Phoebe heard it as concession, typical Nick. You’re not a fighter, are you? she accused. Your acceptance of failure is not much of a lesson for your child.
And you don’t know when to quit. That could be a fatal flaw.
JW slides his sunglasses into his shirt pocket, casually surveys the suite, looks for something, maybe confirmation that she’s alone, that Nick didn’t come along for the ride.
“This is fantastic. It’s really special,” she says.
He crosses the room, pulls back a sheer curtain, then the sliding glass door, stares out at the dry canyon, dark from the afternoon shadows. “Isn’t it,” he says, his back still to her.
“Quite the gesture, really,” she says. “A nice break.” She smiles.
He turns to her. “Was he here?”
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
“Do you care?”
“Makes no difference to me,” he says, and wraps his soft hands around her forearms. “You’re stick-thin.”
She lets out a sigh. “I don’t want to leave.” She shakes her head as if trying to clear her mind. Her arms are free of his grip, which was loose. “I don’t even know what time it is. It’s Monday, right?”
“Tell me.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you just tell me once and for all to fuck off?” he says.
“I should be asking you that.”
“So we deserve each other.” He laughs.
He’s closer to her than he should be. His warmth fills their space. She breathes him in, the familiar citrus that lingers on her clothes, remembers how she’d hold them to her face as she stuffed them in the washing machine when she was twenty-six, while Nick slept.
She’s cycling through messages from Nick (call . . . this is inexcusable . . . who the hell do you think you are?) on her iPhone, not meeting JW’s eyes.
“Why don’t I feel guilty?” she asks, tosses her phone to the bed. “Something is really wrong with me, right?”
“Fundamentally.”
She punches him hard with a closed fist on the side of his head. He staggers back and curses. She stares at him, poised to do it again, exhilarated.
He’s still laughing, rubbing his head, when she swings, this time missing because he’s ready and agile enough at forty-nine, so she scratches his neck with her other hand, slicing the soft skin. He grabs both of her wrists. He’s strong, too, and she recalls the last time they were together, he was in the midst of a popular workout regimen that involved flipping over giant tires and dragging sandbags across dirty gym floors.
“Easy. Easy,” he says.
She drops her head. Everything spins. She closes her eyes, which only makes it worse. It’s the same as the dizzy spells that send her into strip-mall parking lots to climb into the backseat of the Explorer with the engine on and air-conditioning blasting as she pages maniacally through images on her iPhone of the last three years of her life: Nick clutching a wooden spoon loaded with Nutella, poised to spread it over her swollen belly; Jackson plugged full of all sorts of wires and cords, clutching Nick’s index finger in NICU; the nurses and Phoebe and Jackson in his little knit hat; Jackson floating on a blue blanket surrounded by primary-colored plastic fish; Nick and Phoebe at the Boston premiere of some movie he got passes to from work; the three of them on the cool, wet sand with glistening water behind them their first week out here; and she’ll realize as she closes her eyes tightly, trying to rest, sleep if only for a few minutes until the dizziness fades, that there isn’t an image taken of their lives together, on her iPhone at least, when JW wasn’t in the picture.
“I miss you,” he says. “Miss you, miss you, miss you.” His voice fades as he buries his face in her hair.
“Why?�
��
“Jesus. You feel good.”
“I don’t do anything right.”
He’s pushing his soft hands under her top, wrapping them around her rib cage. He could squeeze and snap her in two.
“I can’t keep doing this,” she says.
He’s kissing her neck. Then her chest and her breasts, then he’s biting and lifting her off the floor until she’s looking down at him and she drops her head and he tosses her to the bed.
He stands over her.
“I don’t want this,” she says.
“Of course you don’t.”
“We’re not doing this again.”
“Doing what?”
“All of it,” she says.
“No one’s holding a gun to your head.”
“Any of it.” She’s leaning back on her elbows, her hair a mess, her legs crossed, not meeting his eyes.
“You don’t want to be here?” he asks, unbuttoning his shirt. “You don’t want me here?”
“I’m going to fuck you for a job,” she snaps, and remains on the bed.
“That’s what this is?” he asks. He’s on his knees, sliding his hand between her crossed legs, urging them apart. The sliding glass door is open and the warmth from outside washes over them. She shivers in it, and when she closes her eyes, an image flashes across her mind: a fine mist falling softly on paper-thin mizuna leaves and kale in a nearby Whole Foods, everything organic and cleansed. Then: frozen cherimoya melting on her tongue.
When she opens her eyes, she sees the paint from the purple walls melt, and what she feels is his tongue, and she sees a new house in Laguna Beach close enough to hear the waves crashing and business cards with her name in raised lettering and a small office in a glass tower overlooking palm trees and the glistening water in the distance, and the last image she sees before closing her eyes once more is the statue, the man balancing on one hand, and she thinks of Nick climbing the wall.
• •
Later, their bodies are intertwined on top of cool white sheets. From behind her, unseen, he brings something to her mouth. “Breathe in when I tell you.”
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