“Yeah, well,” she says. She flicks her cigarette at the black block-shaped ashtray on the table, and looks over at Peter who is standing on one foot and making kicking motions on the other side of the room. “It’s not ever the end of the world,” she says, “not even love or the end of love. None of it.” She turns back toward me, looks in my eye as if challenging me to take up my usual position on this, contrary to hers. As children, she liked purple, I liked pink. She liked turkey, I liked ham. She liked American cheese, I liked Swiss. I try to pull an exasperated expression over my face, but find myself glancing over at Dieter. I feel suddenly cold, a soreness in my throat.
“Let’s try to do something this weekend,” I say. I look back at Hailey; she looks surprised. I am not known for saying things like this out loud.
Dieter and I get back to my place around two a.m., and we share my microwaved leftovers from Chung King. We decide it would be the best idea ever to take a ride on his motorcycle, despite the fact that he’s drunk, despite the fact that his bike has been unreliable for the past two months. Three weeks ago, I had to pick him up off the side of the 101 freeway on-ramp and help him push the gleaming, recalcitrant thing to the side, so that he could go home and get a part, and then go back and patch something up so that he could ride it all the way to the shop.
Reasons not to go on the ride are overshadowed by our drunken enthusiasm, and we grab at helmets, pull on boots. I send Hailey a text message as Dieter guides the bike backwards down the driveway, something about having lunch over the weekend, just so I’ll have said something to someone. Just in case something happens, I’ll have said something. Dieter and I decide we want somewhere scary—a cemetery!—we shout at the same time. He wants to go to East L.A., where there is a cemetery his coworker talks about a lot. It’s off the 60, never mind why his coworker would be talking about any cemetery a lot. I rack my swimmy brain for other, more viable cemeteries, throw out the one in Westwood off Veteran, the one on Venice Blvd across from Loyola High. We decide the closest one is Hollywood Forever, but after a blur of a ride that feels supremely long, a ride that in reality must only have taken ten or fifteen minutes, we come upon barricades and cops blocking the cemetery gates. So we turn around, and try to get to the old L.A. Zoo ruins at Griffith Park. But everything is barricaded, blocked off, gates down, closed. Everything fails. Even in my ruffled teal skirt, we fail.
We make it back to my house, through the warm, windy darkness. So we sit back down on the couch, in a post-drunk, pre-hangover haze, and talk about this thing we have been talking about, a marriage of convenience. He gets his laptop out and starts looking up procedures and laws and bylaws on EU citizenship and EU work visas. I kick myself for not having taken German in high school instead of French, even though at one point I had already kicked myself for not having taken Spanish instead. Hailey texts me back about meeting up on Sunday. Dieter and I argue about whether or not it would be a good idea for me to tell Hailey—Hailey who really is not the biggest fan of Dieter—about our upcoming nuptials. Nuptials! We cannot stop saying this word—oh man, our nuptials—they are fucking...impending! and how I will convince my parents I want to move to Europe when they think I should move to China. We fall asleep on the couch like that, laptop in his lap, phone in my hand.
2009
My sister is thirty, I am twenty-eight. I’m stuck by myself this time, with my parents. How did this happen?
“We didn’t ask that much of you,” my parents are saying. They don’t sit next to each other in the booth. “We didn’t make you be doctors,” they say. “We didn’t even make you marry doctors.” These have been half jokes my entire life.
“Do you know,” I begin, “I just realized yesterday that I’ve only ever attended one wedding without the two of you?”
My parents look confused. “So?”
“So? That’s sad,” I say.
“No it’s not,” my mom says. “It just means your friends haven’t really started getting married yet.”
“But why?” I ask, listlessly, rhetorically.
“Why haven’t you decided to get married?” she asks.
I roll my eyes, “I don’t want to.”
“Yes,” she says, “because you’re not ready to lose your freedom yet. And so you’re friends with people who are just like you, who also are not ready. Yet. You all know that once you get married, you lose your freedom.”
“Yeah, well,” I reply, “just remember you said that. And don’t be surprised or upset when I decide that I don’t ever want to get married.”
She inhales, “You’ve decided that? Your dad would certainly be upset.” I don’t look up to see what my dad’s expression is. I am trying to enjoy my dinner. Shredded pork and bean curd, hollow-hearted greens, ants crawling up a tree. I am trying to not listen. For the rest of the dinner, I open my mouth only to blast hot solid rectangular prisms of aggressive silence.
This is how I know I’m older, because people start saying these things. As if it’s ever appropriate to tell someone they should consider settling down. Settling down is what pilgrims and pioneers do. What school teachers tell their unruly pupils to do. In the car later, my mother brings it up again.
“You should still consider settling down.”
“I don’t have time,” I say vaguely, to bide myself some time.
“Don’t have time?” she asks, “You don’t have time to find someone, or you don’t have time for the kind of life your sister has, with a baby and a husband?”
“Both,” I say, again trying to hand over only the broadest, nothingest answers I can produce. I change my mind. “No, that’s not right,” I say, “I don’t really not have time. I just don’t have the desire.”
“That’s because you haven’t decided you’re ready to lose your freedom yet,” she says, triumphantly, as if we have made a true breakthrough, as if we have struck gold. I nod, as if I believe the same.
In front, my dad’s mouth is in the shape of a soft, blurry smile. I think that he must be remembering a joke, one that takes place in a distant land.
*
I am 29.
Two roads. One is straight, a logical continuation. The other one? Weird. I shouldn’t take it. It doesn’t make sense. It’s going the wrong way. It’s going backwards. It is backwards. But I guess I’ve taken it. This other one.
*
On an empty Sunday afternoon, I find myself driving down Pacific Coast Highway, near Malibu. The sun is hitting a path through to the horizon, and the surface of the sea blinks clear-eyed points of light over the opaque grayness of the water. A smattering of wetsuit-skinned surfers’ backs, bobbing, facing something I cannot see. Before me are road trip clouds stretching to the very edge of what I can see. Look, they beckon, look at us, look at this world, look what’s ahead, and just for a moment, I take my foot off the gas pedal.
The Burgeoning
This happened once, and then it happened many more times; it is probably happening still. Probably it has happened, in a way, to someone you know. It happens to pretty girls, one of those pretty city girls. She was pretty, and young, nearly ripe, still whole, getting more whole, getting fuller. She was a sweet and lovely thing—that was the side of her we wanted to see, so that was the side of her we did see. Her mother loved her—and her Grandma loved her even more. It was amazing how lovable she was, but only to the women in her immediate family, who were her only apparent family. Men and beasts would love her also, but in different ways, in ways that made you reevaluate the ways in which we love. But her mother’s love for her, and her Grandma’s love for her, these were simple and straightforward pure loves. Her Grandma even made the pretty girl a very eye-catching red woven hooded capelet, which so suited the girl in all her burgeoning girlishness, that she wore it all the time, and became known as The Pretty Girl Who is Always Wearing That Red Hooded Capelet, though unsurprisingly, th
is moniker was soon distilled to just its most important elements.
One day, when she walked into the kitchen, her mother said, “Oh, there you are, my Pretty Girl. Please bring these to Grandma—there’s a rumor that she’s not feeling very well. Here, take her this freshly-baked soft, soft bread, and a bit of this sweet cream butter that she loves!”
And so The Pretty Girl did what she was told, and she took the basket, and set off for her Grandma’s house, which was in the suburbs just outside the city, on the other side of a forest. In the middle of her walk through the forest, The Pretty Girl happened upon The Wolf. The Wolf was a Wolf, and had an innate wolfishness, which manifested itself in his longing to devour The Pretty Girl, tear her apart and slurp her down whole. But there were others in the forest, actual men, real men, with real jobs, and who carried axes upon their broad hairless shoulders, and so The Wolf simply asked The Pretty Girl where she was headed. And The Pretty Girl, who did not yet know, had not yet learned not to engage, had not yet learned of any need to not always be her lovable, young, ripe self, said in her sweet and lovely way, “Oh, I’m going to my Grandma’s house, I’m taking her this freshly-baked soft, soft bread, and a bit of this sweet cream butter that she loves!” And she held out her basket, as she said this, tilting it toward The Wolf, delicately lifting up the top, and, in a heedless rush of demonstration, or was it performance, lightly pushed her young white tender fingertips into the springy softness of the still-warm bread, which now exuded a fragrant steam.
“Oh?” he said. “Does she live very far from here?” The Wolf did not look long at The Pretty Girl’s smooth tender fingertips fingering—kneading almost, nearly—the pulsating bread, wasn’t it pulsating, like a living thing wrapped warm. He thought he might give himself away, surely by his dilating pupils if not by the protrusion growing with a pulse of its own, in his woollen trousers. He slid his paws behind his suspender straps and felt, for a moment, their tightening, the slight eager strain.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said The Pretty Girl. It was strange that she said this, because of course she did know exactly where her Grandma’s house was, and therefore whether or not it was far away (it was rather far away, as are most of the things we set out for, rather far beyond our reach, no? In a most enticing way, a most thigh-clenching way). But she wanted to look longer at this wolfish face before her, his salivation, could it not be her salvation? His hunger, could it not be her hunger? How else was she to keep this moment, between two hungry creatures, facing off in a forest, that is on the one hand just a forest full of trees, but on the other hand, ten thousand other things? How many decades or centuries or millennia ago was it that a pretty girl first pretended to not know something for the sake of just several more moments with the most scrapingly, achingly, slice-to-ribbons set of sharpened teeth a pretty girl had ever been starved for?
The Wolf smiled at The Pretty Girl and waited.
“Oh, well. My Grandma’s house is just on the other side of the forest. The first house. The suburbs.” The Pretty Girl did not know what else to say. She swung her basket a little bit.
“That’s fascinating,” said The Wolf. He said it in a very sincere manner. “I am forever succumbing to novelty. New things, you know, things I have yet to touch. I have never seen a Grandma before, do you think I might see her too? Wolves don’t have Grandmas, you know, and I would be so much obliged. Well? We can make a game of it, a date of it, I go one way, you go another, one of us will arrive first and wait for the other.”
The Pretty Girl was still caught on the word, date, it was kind of a sweet-sounding word wasn’t it, its sweetness not something she had noticed before. She blinked rapidly a few times, her breasts felt full and warm beneath her capelet. She was about to say something, but The Wolf had already nodded winningly, and wolfishly, at her, and started off on his way, assuming she would take the other. Which she did, feeling a feverish sort of blindness, a sensation as if she were the cool sweat coating a wide and long stream of fluttering silk ribbon, winding itself through the forest of its own accord, aiming for the house on the other side, aiming for the heart of The Wolf, who surely would arrive first, who would surely be waiting for her, heart exposed. She wound and wound herself through the trees, kneeling down on her knees occasionally to feel the thud of her knees on the dark forest soil, to feel the tearing of roots and stems as she yanked and ripped at bunches of wildflowers. She floated after a butterfly, she gathered nuts into her skirt, held some in her mouth. She stood still, and pictured him.
The Wolf was already there. He knocked at the Grandma’s door. Knock. Knock. Knock. On your knees.
“Hello? My lovely, Pretty Girl, is that you?” the Grandma called.
“It’s me,” said The Wolf, his snarled lips near the seams of the door, nearly touching the wood, “And I’ve brought you some freshly-baked soft, soft bread, and a bit of this sweet cream butter that you love!”
“Oh I am all tucked into bed, do you mind just turning the outside knob counterclockwise, and the latch bolt will recede from the face plate, causing the bolt and the nut to shift, and the spindle to enter into the rose of the inside knob, and the push-button to unlock?”
The Wolf did as he was told, and the door opened wide. He launched himself over to the bed, fairly threw himself down on top of the Grandma, and ate her. He ate her so fast. He had not eaten in three days, and had just spent the last hour careening through the forest, salivating over The Pretty Girl’s pungent unfurling. Best to devour this old one, tamp down on his lust for a moment, and be primed, steady, rock-solid for the one just about to be split open, sweet juice dripping, a ripe fig. He pressed the push-button on the inside knob, and locked the door. Then he settled himself in the Grandma’s bed, which was still warm. She came.
Knock. Knock. Knock. On your knees.
“Hello? My lovely, Pretty Girl, is that you?” The Wolf pitched his voice. Almost to a scream.
The Pretty Girl shuddered at the sound of the voice. She did not feel like she knew it, but she rationalized: the rumor was that Grandma was not feeling very well, this was the reason for her visit, anyway, and so her voice was possibly gruff and hoarse from a sore throat, and so The Pretty Girl straightened her shoulders. Maybe she knew, somewhere, on some level of blood and hormones and fantasy, that it was The Wolf who had spoken to her from inside. But didn’t she want The Wolf, wasn’t that want pure and simple enough to darken all other thoughts and banish all misgivings?
“It’s me,” said The Pretty Girl, her mouth pressed full-on against the wood of the door as she spoke this, something hard against something soft. “And I’ve brought you some freshly-baked soft, soft bread, and a bit of this sweet cream butter that you love!”
The Wolf could barely lie still. He rustled under the sheets. “Just turn the outside knob counterclockwise, and the latch bolt will recede from the face plate, causing the bolt and the nut to shift, and the spindle to enter into the rose of the inside knob, and the push-button to unlock!” he shouted desperately.
The Pretty Girl did as she was told. She opened wide.
The Wolf pulled the covers up, he smoothed the covers back down, then up once more. “Just leave the freshly-baked soft, soft bread, and the bit of sweet cream butter that I love on the counter.”
The Pretty Girl did as she was told.
“Come to bed,” The Wolf commanded. There was a sliver of something glinting, on the very edge of his voice.
As if in a dream, or as if it was all she had dreamed of, The Pretty Girl took off her clothes. She climbed into the bed. She expressed shock at the sight of Grandma in that nightgown. It was so completely unbecoming, so very unfeminine. Would she become like that too, as an old woman? What became of old women? What became of pretty girls? She squirmed under the blanket. The Wolf edged closer to her. The Pretty Girl shivered now, moved restlessly against the sheets.
“Grandma, your arms are t
hick and flabby and hairy.”
“The better to hug you with, my Pretty Girl.”
“Grandma, your legs are very veiny and furry.”
“The better to chase you with when we play games, my Pretty Girl.”
“Grandma, your ears are so big and sharp.”
“The better to hear your moans, my Pretty Girl.”
At this, The Pretty Girl stopped writhing for a moment. But it was too late, she couldn’t stop, the game was being played.
“Grandma, your eyes are so cold, so dark, so dangerous, how they gleam!”
“The better to see your near-perfect flesh, perspiring, blossoming, opening for me, my Pretty Girl.”
The Pretty Girl stilled.
“Grandma, your teeth are like the teeth I have dreamed of, that would tear me apart, and give me my first breath.”
“The better to devour you, your sweet and lovely naked body, to slurp you down whole.”
The Wolf said these practiced words, and threw himself against The Pretty Girl. But she had opened her eyes as he said those words, she had opened her eyes as he fell upon her, and she had seen that they were old phrases, that they circumscribed all that she would ever see, through her Pretty Girl eyes. And in that moment, The Wolf just as quickly reeled forcefully back, found that he could not eat her, for she had grown old, in the playing of this game.
He shut his shining, black eyes. Back in the forest, he would find something exceedingly more delicate, more lovely, more simple. Something not just playing dumb. Something less formed.
Newfangled Creature
She is filling in as a pole fluffer again. The pay is bad. The street cred is okay-good. The story is pretty good. She is kind of into the poetry of it, even of the phrase itself, two nondescript words, nondescript but also seemingly contradictory—hard, soft. Good, bad. Mostly, it is because her friend Denise needs her to say yes, and so she says yes.
All Roads Lead to Blood Page 6