by Lisa Taddeo
Around noon the bell over the door jingled and a man walked in. He was in his fifties and wrecked and seedy and handsome.
—How are you doing, Natalia? he said.
—Good, thanks, she said.
He looked at me. How are you? he said. He said it like he didn’t need a response, but it was enough for me. I nodded and smiled.
I ferried the dry mugs from the rack onto the shelf. He ordered a green soup from Natalia. The cook, a shrewd Mexican woman named Rita, made it once every three days and it lived in a vat. It was a puree of asparagus, kale, and onions, and full of butter. The whole canyon was crazy for it. He went to sit outside.
I’d been struck by him and suddenly realized why. He reminded me of Big Sky, of what Big Sky would look like a decade from now. Alice would make me see these things, my penchant for a certain flavor of man, a certain type of imbecilic self-destruction.
—Is he a regular? I asked Natalia.
—Dean. Yeah. He used to be famous.
—What’s his last name?
—Um, I don’t know. But he was Doctor Johnson? The lead singer of them.
When his soup was ready, I told Natalia I’d take it out to him. I didn’t know much about Doctor Johnson. I knew the song “Jessica’s Father” and that they sang Shel Silverstein poems.
He was leaning back in his chair, his jeaned legs spread. His loafers were expensive and his brows reddish, as though he’d tried to dye them from gray. I could tell he’d had eyelid surgery and I can’t explain why I was attracted to old, young-acting men. I also liked big noses, dishonest expressions. Men who couldn’t be bothered but were friendly. Ego. Former high school quarterbacks. Cheaters.
—Goddess soup, I said, setting the earthenware bowl down in front of him.
—Thank you. You’re new?
—I am.
—New to the Canyon as well?
—Yes.
—How do you like it so far?
—Oh, I don’t know.
—That was a stupid question. I hate when people ask me stupid questions like that.
He smiled. I could see clear through to his young self. I saw older men the way they still saw themselves. That was why they liked me so much; I was a solar panel, absorbing and refracting and reenergizing.
—It can get strange up here, he said, but it’s the best air in Los Angeles. He had an accent like just about every man I’ve liked.
Big Sky, of course, had an accent. He’d grown up down south. His voice was heroic. Accents are also a lie.
I met him in a nice bar on Wall Street, beneath street level, with hanging lamplights and red leather banquettes. This was during Vic. Almost always in my life there had been one man I desired who was giving me nothing at the same time that there was another who didn’t move me but from whom I was taking very much.
Big Sky wore a cashmere jacket. Underneath it a fishing vest. The second I saw him I thought, Here is the greatest man in all of Manhattan. We made eye contact from thirty feet away. He had blue eyes, too, a deeper blue, even, than my father’s. I began to sweat as he walked toward me. Instant dampness under my arms. I had a plate of oysters in front of me and a glass of Gewürztraminer. He was on his way to the bathroom. He purposefully paused near my seat and the bartender introduced us. We said hello and right away we both knew what was between us.
On his way back from the bathroom he asked me about my oysters. Like an asshole, I talked about why I preferred West Coast to East. After politely but ludicrously asking if he could try one, he slurped it off its rocky beach like he knew how much I already wanted him.
He was there with a friend, a blondish man who was married and lived in the suburbs. The chasm between them was considerable. The friend was a regular guy with a regular tie. He took the train into work and his wife didn’t have to worry.
I wondered if Big Sky’s wife had to worry. I saw a picture of her when he showed me one of his young son. Long brown hair, in shape, uninteresting legs. She’d held a good job in the city, something creative, before quitting it for the kid. She was from a city and from a family that made Big Sky proud. She ran every morning around the park.
Big Sky pointed at his friend with a gorgeous thumb.
—He still gives up shit for Lent, isn’t that tragic?
I laughed too loud.
The bar, intended for after-work cocktails, began to clear at nine p.m. The bartender opened the door and I felt the cool spring air. I got cold. I was wearing a sleeveless dress. A man I knew from the bar came by with his coat, a thick patchwork pelt, and draped it across my shoulders. It was heavy and it laid across my slight frame in a tyrannical manner. It wasn’t a nice gesture. It was like he’d rolled his balls out and stretched the sticky dough against me. Men were always putting their coats around my shoulders. They mark their territory that way. It’s better to freeze to death.
Big Sky had been in the bathroom or making a phone call and I’d thought of nothing but him, but also I had tolerated other people’s conversation because the first day you meet someone like that you still have your self-decency, you still can have an interest in life beyond every tendril of their hair.
He came back and said, What’s this, and he took the pelt off of me and replaced it with his cashmere jacket; he laid it across my shoulders and one of his fingers brushed my flesh and he said, That’s better, isn’t it?
The friend left because he had to catch a train. We talked for an hour more. He worked in finance. He spoke candidly of what was going on, the collapse of Wall Street.
He looked me in the eye over his bitter-smelling beer and said that he and all the men down there were a sad bunch of losers.
—We don’t create shit, he whispered at my mouth. We trade paper. It’s all worthless.
It was the same type of thing Tim had said, but Big Sky made even more money. His dishonor was grander, sexier.
When men tell you they are pieces of shit, when they tell you they are scumbags, they do it because they subconsciously know that you are hooked. It hooks you more. They push you away to pull you in and the most terrible thing is they don’t even do it on purpose.
I told him I needed an accountant, that I was in the midst of my own collapse. He smiled and said he had the best one. He said he himself would give me sound investment advice. He said his accountant was the type who should go to jail but never would.
—Write or call me, he said. I’ll make an intro.
Then he said he should go, too. He wrote down his full name and number and email on an order slip.
I went home that night feeling beautiful.
A couple of days later I wrote to him. My note was all business and he wrote back, How about a drink next wed?
He wasn’t much for punctuation, which I liked because it showed confidence and carelessness. Sure, I said, same place?
He wrote, How about spring lounge?
It was north about twenty blocks from the people he worked with and the place I lived.
I walked the whole way there. It was a bright day in early spring. I wore a leather halter top and jeans and riding boots. I’d pulled my hair into two loose pigtails. Some hypochondriacal thoughts were passing through. Cancer, mostly. A black-and-blue on the inside of my arm that I thought could be the first sign of blood cancer. A sharp headache meant it had now spread to my brain. I soothed myself with the thought that if I were dying it would all be over soon, including not being able to have this man who was the only man for whom I had ever felt this strongly, even after just one meeting.
I thought about turning back. But I looked good and a part of me knew I needed this, that you can’t turn away from feelings like this even if they’re wrong. I called my aunt, who told me to go inside. That, for God’s sake, it was the most beautiful day.
So I did. And right away I saw him. Spring Lounge had these old picture windows with fly wings in the seams, and the Easter-time sun was shining on his face. All the anxiety left me at once. He looked imaginary, wearing the sam
e fishing vest and a pair of cargo pants. I would come to know and love it as his uniform. He’d ordered us two beers and held a corner table.
—I hope you don’t mind, he said, I took the liberty of ordering you a Stella.
I said hello and thanked him and said I had to run to the bathroom, where I looked in the mirror and screamed at my reflection. John Fogerty drowned me out. I was in love.
We had a couple of beers and everyone in there was less excited than we were. We glowed together. I was proud of a lot of things about myself. The way I always knew how to make a dish taste better with salt or turmeric or Parmesan or lemon zest or cardamom. How I could make another person feel comfortable or feel smaller. How I was rarely drunk or out of my own control. I was even proud of my pain. It made me enigmatic and aware. But I had never felt better about myself than I did in that moment, with the sunlight coming through those filthy pretty windows, sitting next to that man.
—This secret accountant of yours sounds like he will be unbelievably helpful. I’ve gotten myself into a number of untenable situations.
—Listen, he said, leaning his chest across the table. Truth is, I’m not just trying to help you. Look, I was excited to come here. Looked forward to it all damn week.
I blushed and then we did what people in illicit situations do. We pretended something untoward hadn’t been said but enjoyed all around ourselves the warmth of it.
I tried several times to pay for a beer of his. As a thank-you, I said. But he kept saying, No, that’s not how it works. Gentlemen pay.
—I’m a certain type of woman.
—Okay, buy me a drink somewhere else, certain type of woman. This place is getting beat.
We walked to Tom & Jerry’s, a bar that had the same bearded bartender for years. On the walk he smoked a one-hitter. He smoked good pot. I thought it was sexy. We walked by a church in SoHo and he told me about its engravings. He knew the histories of places. He knew good bars. He was of an indeterminate wealth, somewhere in between a two-bedroom in Chelsea and a classic six on the Upper West Side. I said something funny and he laughed and then he stopped us on a block of Manhattan that I would, in the desolate future, walk over and over, trying to reconstruct the essence of that first night. I would stand in the very spot he’d stopped us.
—This is so weird. Seriously. It’s like the best first date I’ve ever had. Only I’m married.
I was so happy. I was too happy. I should have played it cool. I’d have given anything to go back and play it cool. At Tom & Jerry’s we sat side by side at the bar. We drank gin and tonics. He complimented my hair and my intelligence. Our thighs were touching, my jeans against his loose khakis. I felt the heat of his leg through the material. I had never wanted someone more.
—I have never wanted someone more, he said. I have a wife and a baby at home. I have to get out of here.
He paid and we left and outside it had started to rain, turning the streets darker. That little stretch of Elizabeth Street would become hallowed. Within months it would feel like the love of my life was buried under the cigarette packs and the fallen magnolia blossoms. He hailed a cab. One flew past.
—We didn’t want that one anyway, he said, laughing.
A second came and stopped and Big Sky opened the door for me. As I was getting in, he took hold of my shoulder.
—Hey, he said. Jesus.
His face looked like a wolf’s. He had a long nose and clever blue eyes. He didn’t look like a liar. His self-centeredness was sexy.
—May I kiss you on the mouth? he said.
The cabdriver’s impatience was palpable but nobody else mattered.
—Yes.
He came forward. My heart was a rock knocking in my chest. The kiss was openmouthed but tongueless and lasted no longer than three seconds. It was more sex, that kiss, than any sex I had ever had. Maybe it wasn’t love, but I don’t know what to call how I felt inside that moment.
Do you see how it’s a cycle? I was standing there with the lead singer of a seventies folk band. I was attracted to this faded man because he looked like Big Sky, because I craved men who had big happy lives of which I would never be a part. The experience of Big Sky gored me. In a way, Big Sky was responsible for Vic’s death. One man like that can be responsible for every big and small thing in a woman’s life. A woman he isn’t married to whom he doesn’t think very much about at all. But it’s not the man’s fault. The man is nothing. It’s what you think you are missing inside of yourself. I promise that you are missing nothing.
* * *
I DIDN’T KNOW IF I could bear to see Alice again. I like to think I was lying in wait, sharpening a knife, but really I was only postponing the last thing I had left to fear.
I considered writing her a letter.
Dear Alice,
I have had a lifetime of suffering. From what I know, you have not. I have something to tell you, and you have something to tell me. I am all alone. I thought about killing myself but I wanted to meet you first. I am depraved. I hope you like me.
On the way home from the café I passed River walking with a dog. They were on the crest of the lookout just before Comanche. The sun and the greens framed them.
The dog was a mutt, gray and brown with a beard like a schnauzer and robust as a shepherd. River came to my open window and said, This is Kurt.
He told me Kurt was a stray he’d found on the stairs hike at Murphy Ranch Trail. Men and their dogs. They will bring them everywhere and never forsake them. Unlike their women, children. Dogs want nothing of a man except all the things a man wants to give.
He had no leash for the dog, yet the animal waited pleasantly beside him while we spoke. There’s something admirable about a man who can keep a stray dog at his heels. It made me want to have sex with him.
Every single thing I did was to make that young man want to fuck me. Who are these people who have platonic conversations? They are adults.
I rubbed my chin against my shoulder, exposing half of my neck. I couldn’t tell if that had turned him on, so I did twenty more things. Envying another woman made me ugly with need.
I had to leave first—you must always be the first to go—so I said goodbye and drove away like a person who drives unsafely. I passed the house with the aluminum gate all the way around. Palm trees rose from behind the metal and bougainvillea strangled itself against it. You couldn’t see anything in the distance. Much of the Canyon was that way. Behind a wall of trees and fencing there might be a glorious house with good cars in the driveway, horses in the distance, and crops; or there might be a commune like ours, sandy adobe structures, the occult. That house, Lenny had told me, was the site of a former swinger’s haven called Sandstone. Communal bathrooms and sleeping areas, hot tubs, naked women rinsing their legs in natural springs. You would go for a daytime interview, and if you were deemed suitable, you could come back that night for a trial evening. If you were trim and attractive, you might be invited to become a member. Lenny talked about it like he’d only heard tales and never visited. But he spoke in great detail of tan women with cornrows jumping on cowhide trampolines as the sun fell behind the red mountains.
Just then, as I passed the rusting gate, I had the premonition that I was going to become a killer.
10
ONE OF THE REASONS I worked in the hospital downtown was to desensitize myself. I would still wake screaming in the night, feeling around my bed for their bodies. So I watched as emergency room doctors spoke to one another casually, arms swinging imaginary golf clubs while all around them short and long lives were ending. I went to work in a hospital so that I might learn the drill. That death was common and not so bad.
It didn’t work. One September afternoon a woman came to find her pigtailed child intubated. The child had pursued a butterfly across the street, away from the teachers at the playground. She’d been hit by a bus. The mother could not understand. But a bus is so big, she kept saying. The nurses didn’t get it, but I did. She meant, how could a bus on
ly hit her daughter’s twig body? Merely hit. I begged the nurses to undo the child’s hair and they snarled at me like I was an idiot. But I knew that when the mother saw the pigtails, she wouldn’t be able to make any rational decisions.
What worked better for desensitization was kicking Tim.
Tim worked at AIG and this was during the collapse of Wall Street. So many more terrible things will come to pass after the collapse that I wonder how big a deal it will seem to you. But back then it was a dark time for dark people. The men who’d been pulling in millions a year were suddenly broke or scared. I met him in a restaurant. I was always eating alone those days before Vic.
Tim was with another man like him and they were seated beside me at the bar where, a few months later, I would meet Big Sky.
I’d heard them order a 1966 bottle of French first growth, at fourteen hundred dollars. The other man had seventeen stents in his heart. He ordered the steak and ate the fries off Tim’s plate. Elvis was playing from the sound system. The bartender poured the wine into a goosenecked carafe. It was a little darker than old blood.
They offered me a taste. I said no, no, no and they insisted. The bartender got me a glass and watched Tim to see when he should quit the pour. Think of how terrible that feels, to not even want the wine and then be metered out some amount. To be sized up. Was I worth a $100 taste, or a $250 taste?
—How do you like it? Tim asked me. He was balding and wore a shirt with a contrast collar. He had large teeth and the kinds of eyes that looked like they were in the middle of a sex act no matter what he was doing.
—It’s no Yellow Tail, I said.
They didn’t know to laugh right away. Eventually Tim did because I gave him one of my gazes.
I stayed for another glass. The bartender wiped down the bar, and the smell of rib eye faded out the door.
Back then the blue-collar men who worked at Ford would think of Wall Street and their veins would bulge. They thought of bars like that one, labels of wine that worked out to $350 a goblet. It’s not that I was sympathetic to men like Tim—there was no pitiable plight of the Wall Streeter—but the other end of it was oversimplified. The hatred was misplaced and men like Tim, if anything, wanted you to hate them. If you told them they were not evil, they would say that yes they were. Men don’t necessarily want to be the bad guys, but they don’t want to be the ordinary ones, either.