Further Out Than You Thought

by Michaela Carter

  She kissed his forehead. It felt clammy, and he shivered. “Need anything else?”

  He shook his head. “I have Leo.”

  He let go of her hand, crossed his arms over his chest, closed his eyes. For a moment he seemed not to move, not even to breathe, but then she heard his exhale, followed by a deep breath in. She saw her friend’s chest rise and fall, and she forced herself to turn from him.

  In the hall, she slowed and time slowed with her. The pot was coming on stronger now and it was good. Like being underwater, thirty feet under the sea, the kelp and the fish deliberate and dreamy.

  It was true, what she had said, the part she’d tacked on, just now, to the end of her story. Her mother was with her. Some part of her—of her soul?—she could feel watching her, but from inside her own eyes. Or were they just shards of memory, coloring her vision?

  She touched a photo Valiant had framed of himself. In black Ray-Ban sunglasses, a black jacket and a white shirt, his thick hair short and slicked back in the manner of his idols—Dean Martin, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr.—he smiled as if he knew something he might tell you if he felt like it. To his hairline he’d added a widow’s peak using a black Sharpie. It was a gig poster. Café Largo, May 10, 1990, two years ago already. Count Valiant and the Midnight Strangers, the poster said. With the Go-Go Dancing Vacarro Sisters. She had been one of them. Brenda Vacarro. She’d danced to Valiant’s campy tune “She-Devil” in a short, tight black dress and black go-go boots, and Leo had played the keyboard. The Peruvian soprano Yma Sumac, so famous in the fifties, had happened to see the show and told him he had a velvet tongue. It was the last time Valiant had performed in public.

  Beside it was the beach shot Leo had taken before she’d met them. Valiant in a G-string he’d fashioned of white gauze—Native American–style. The photo was from the front and showed his bare legs and chest. A long piece of gauze wrapped his ankles, his shoulders, and trailed off his outstretched arm toward the ocean behind him. He was looking back over his hand at the horizon, and the long black hair of his wig sent shadows across his face. His other hand was open, palm pressed to his heart. It was a gesture of farewell.

  The bell rang again. Leo. She’d all but forgotten about him. She opened the door.

  “Just what he needs,” he said, taking the cigarettes and the half gallon of cheap vodka from the plastic bag.

  “He’s worse,” she whispered.

  “I know.” He crumpled the bag in his fist. And then looking at her, really, for the first time tonight, he said, “You look like hell.”

  “It’s been a long night.” She stared back at him, hard.

  “I miss you, Tink,” he said.

  It was his name for her, what he’d called her for years now, ever since she’d come home with her long hair gone, with her hair short as a boy’s. Tink, as in Tinker Bell. Because she was sprightly, light as air, or stardust, because she was mischievous, devilish, because she had wings and could fly where she liked. Because he was Peter Pan and they lived in Neverland. Because they belonged together, belonged to each other, but would not lay claim. Because it was the first movie they’d watched together—the play version, with Sandy Duncan as Peter. His all-time favorite.

  Leo’s bloodshot eyes, Gwen knew, were the same eyes she’d fallen in love with. She wanted to recognize him. The boy who’d said too soon I love you, and meant it. The boy with the soft lips and touch. The boy with the little dog, the white fluffy dog who bit. The boy who could play the piano and sing like an angel. The boy she’d believed she could be happy with.

  “Did you see the Leave Earth guy?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Guess he must have gone home,” she said, and left the apartment.

  The door opened behind her. “Tink?” Leo leaned into the hallway, and the gold angel on the chain around his neck glinted in the fluorescent light.

  “Yes?”

  “Dream of flying.”

  Six

  GWEN WOKE TO a tickle on her arm she automatically swatted and smeared. Blood, wings, antennae. The roaches had made it to the bedroom.

  She ran to the kitchen, washed her arm and hands with dish soap. The clock on the wall said 8:15. But it always said 8:15. Years ago it had ceased to be of relevance, a dead battery neither one of them had bothered to replace. Below the clock hung a calendar from the year they’d met, 1989. Featuring posters from the twenties and thirties, it was open to December, the image of a naked girl riding a peacock, her champagne glass lifted to the blue-black night and the stars. It was the most recent calendar they owned.

  In the bedroom she checked the digital clock by her side of the bed: 9:20. Her alarm hadn’t gone off, or else she’d forgotten to set it.

  She’d be late for work. Even if she rushed, forty minutes wasn’t enough time to get to the club. And there was the test. She could put it off no longer. The test. Thinking of it, her heart beat fast—she could feel it in her throat—and her head became light, and starry. She held the wall, took a deep breath, and got on with it. She could be a person in this world, she told herself. She could face whatever life had to give her.

  She pulled on her jeans and the white T-shirt she’d worn the night before and stepped into her flip-flops. She filled her empty plastic bottle with good, cold water, took an apple from the kitchen table, and slipped them both into her purse.

  Leo lay asleep on the sofa. He was dressed in his minuteman costume—black knickers, white ruffled shirt, and a black vest with gold buttons. He must have changed sometime during the night. The sign he’d fashioned out of cloth that read SONGS FOR THE ROAD HOME, $5 hung over the arm of the couch. Fifi slept on his chest.

  Gwen kissed his forehead and he stirred. He cracked an eye. “You’re leaving already?”

  “I’m out the door.”

  “What kind of schedule is that?”

  “I’m off tomorrow.”

  “Drop me?” said Leo, stretching.

  On her way to the club, she could get him as far as Pico and Fairfax. From there, he could walk the additional blocks to his Century City street corner—where Pico meets Avenue of the Stars—where he would stand all day with his sign, his bag of tapes, and his smile. Hopeful, always hopeful.

  He yawned and sat up, and Fifi rolled off him and onto the carpet. Tail wagging, she licked Gwen’s ankles.

  He’d have to take her out to pee. This meant ten minutes at the very least.

  “I’ll get the car and pick you up,” Gwen said, purse and keys in hand.

  From the top of a nearby stack of books, Leo took his tricornered hat and put it on. He tied his ponytail with a red ribbon and packed the bong with fresh dope. “You want some?”

  “Ten minutes. Be ready,” she said. Fifi at her heels, she opened the door. Taped to the back of it was a yellow Pay or Quit notice. She pulled it off, walked back in and stuck it to the bong.

  “Shit,” said Leo, and struck a match.

  Turning too fast, she tripped over Fifi, who snarled, attacked Gwen’s toes and, tail wagging, followed her back to the door. Gwen put her leash on. “I’ll walk her on my way to the car,” she said, and closed the door on the smoke.

  Pay or Quit. She knew there had to be a poem in it. If there were ever time to write.

  Fifi pulled on the leash to reach the base of an avocado tree, perfumed with what must have been an intricate bouquet of dog piss. Gwen let her sniff. What was another minute? This day would be like the last, and like the next. A blur of dollars and men, marijuana, and lights leaving their flickering spots in her eyes. It would be a day of fastening and unfastening, bending and straightening. At least she got to dance, she reasoned, even if the moves were calculated. Less inspiration than expiration. One long sigh. To say nothing of aspiration—the things she might have wanted. Once. All those dreams. The movies she’d star in before she was eighteen. The countries to which she’d travel. Like her mother, on the sets of films. The life she’d had before Gwen.

  The tree in the tiny y
ard of the Spanish-style building was fruitless. Once, when it was laden with avocados, she and Leo had done some of their own midnight gardening. It had proved quite a harvest. She’d climbed the tree and thrown the green fruit down to him. They’d filled a pillowcase.

  She tugged at Fifi and headed to Jin’s. The street was quiet, most of the residents having gone off to work, and the day was balmy. The Santa Anas were blowing, and the air was dry and bitter, as if it were tinged with smoke. Maybe houses were burning in the canyons, unless it was the smog.

  As she hurried down the sidewalk, she lifted her face to the sun, soaked it in. It made her think of the beach and lying on warm sand. It made her think of her mother, who had loved the ocean like no one else. Her mother had taught her how to bodysurf—how to push off the sand at just the right time, how to ride the wave all the way to shore, head down, arms out and hands fisted like Superman.

  Gwen shortened the leash and walked into Jin’s with Fifi beside her. Although dogs weren’t allowed, she knew he wouldn’t mind. He had a little crush on Gwen, and would throw in an extra donut now and then, or a free coffee, if he was careful to keep his distance from Fifi, who had snapped at him once and drawn blood.

  “Morning, Jin.”

  “Miss Griffin.” He was watching the news. Denny, the white man from the clip last night who’d had his skull bashed in by a cinder block, had been rushed to the hospital by a few black South Central residents who’d seen what was happening on their TV, got in their car, and picked him up. He was in ICU.

  She scanned the pharmaceutical section, and her heart started up again, her stomach churned and her mouth went dry. There it was—First Response—between the Vagisil and the Monistat. One stick for thirteen bucks, or two for seventeen-fifty. Better to be sure.

  She filled a large cup with coffee, and grabbed a Hershey’s Special Dark bar of chocolate and a bag of almonds to make the purpose of her purchase less glaring. Setting the items on the counter, she felt her cheeks and hands grow hot, as if she were a child and she’d been caught stealing, or telling a lie. She searched her purse for cash.

  A man poked his head in from the back room, pulling the thin brown curtain to the side, and she could smell the sweet grease in which donuts were born. He said something to Jin, in Korean she supposed.

  “Jin,” she said. “Could I have an old-fashioned, too?”

  He took a bear claw from the case. She watched him put it in the bakery bag and didn’t say anything. She liked bear claws, she told herself. The fried apples and the patches of gooey dough.

  “Miss Griffin, my brother, Kim.” Kim stepped toward her. He looked like Jin but much younger. She wondered if he was even twenty.

  “Good to meet you, Kim,” she said, and offered him her hand. He hesitated, but then took it in his, which was slight and limp and a little damp. He seemed gentle, like the boy the night before. He blushed, looking from her to the linoleum floor.

  “Good to meet,” he said in his thick accent, and went back to his donut making.

  Jin rang her up distractedly. There had been looting last night, the news was saying, and other people had been attacked—people driving their cars, people running the stores.

  “Why you live here, Miss Griffin?”

  “In the Miracle Mile?”

  “In this crazy city.”

  “Why do you?”

  “Family.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “You have family here?”

  “No. I don’t have any family here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She slipped the almonds and the chocolate, the donut and the pregnancy test in her purse and sipped the black coffee. A little weak, but it would do. “I couldn’t live in the same city with my family, Jin,” she told him. She might have said father rather than family. They were the same thing.

  His eyes lit up. “Oh, I see,” he said. And she knew he didn’t, not really, and there wasn’t time to explain.

  “You be careful,” he said. And she promised.

  In the car, she took a bite of the bear claw. It was good, but it was no old-fashioned. The clock read 9:45, and it was a few minutes slow. She’d be late for sure. She’d do her makeup on the way.

  Leo was in front of the Cornell when she pulled up. He ran Fifi inside and jumped into the car, tricornered hat and all.

  “We should let her go,” he said.

  “Let who go?” she said, stepping on the gas.

  “Fifi.”

  “What? It’s not like she’s our maid or our secretary. We can’t just let her go.”

  “I mean, let her go free. It isn’t right. We shouldn’t own animals. And decide for them whether or not they can procreate. It’s barbaric.”

  “This isn’t Mexico. If you let her go she’ll get picked up by Animal Control and either get adopted by someone else or, more likely, since she’s a biter, get put down.”

  Gwen drove fast and blew through two lights as they turned red. She handed him the donut.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said and took a bite. “God, what possessed you?” He took another bite and gave it back.

  “It’s your favorite,” she said, holding it to his lips. He inhaled it.

  “Witch,” he muttered, mouth full. “You have water? I just need a sip.” He reached into her bag, feeling for the bottle. Her heart lurched.

  “On second thought,” he said, and reached for her coffee.

  He put the bag on the armrest between them. He hadn’t seen. But then, he never looked through her purse. He didn’t dare. It was a carpetbag affair, terrifying in breadth and density. Like a great mouth complete with teeth—pencils or hairbrushes with thin nylon bristles that pierced you under your fingernails, bare razors. Damn, she thought, she’d forgotten to buy a razor.

  “Pick me up on your way home?” he said.

  “It’ll be six thirty, at least.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “You have water? Food?”

  “No.”

  “Cash?”

  “You know I don’t touch the stuff.”

  “But if someone gave you money for a tape?”

  “I’m not an idiot, Gwen.”

  She searched her purse for a five and pressed it into his hand.

  “Honest Abe,” he said, and studied the face on the bill before putting it back in her purse.

  “Leo—”

  “Zero. Please.” He tipped the front corner of his hat, grinned, and started singing, a sort of Middle Eastern chant. His voice was liquid, clear undulating blue, lit so you could see to its depths. It made the traffic stop and go rhythmic, made it flow, ebb and slap. The Mediterranean on an afternoon in October. They’d been there once. Made love on a hot smooth rock.

  Put the trip on credit cards.

  It seemed so long ago, like a dream. Greece and its empty beaches. Folegandros, the island where she first had Leo in his sleep, took him as a real succubus would, on that cement dock at the beach with the long name, the furthest beach, the one that made the villagers smile when she and Leo had asked. “Livadaki?”

  “Ah, Livadaki.” They’d nodded knowingly, pointing in its direction, their smiles showing their missing teeth.

  Leo was nude when he fell asleep. They’d skinny-dipped in the brisk sea and stretched out on the dock to dry. He was sleeping on his back, and she whispered to him, “Who am I?”

  “You?” He’d laughed to himself. She’d touched him, lightly. And when he stiffened, she straddled and rode him.

  “You like this, don’t you,” she teased.

  “Yes,” he said, under his breath.

  “Who am I?” she said again, but he was beyond all talk, this thrust fast and needful. Unconscious of himself, Leo had been, for the first time with her, one with his hunger, his passive, pleasing mode a shadow.

  She’d rolled off him, her knees red. He was still sleeping, the hint of a smile on his lips. At the top of the hill, an old Greek woman in a black dress, sidesaddle on her do
nkey, had stopped and was watching them. How long she’d been there, Gwen hadn’t known. She imagined she’d seen everything.

  Gwen had smiled and waved at her and dove into the sea. Her hands parted in a breaststroke, her legs kicked and closed. Under the water she opened her eyes, and swimming was like flight in dreams, how it makes you free and limitless. Leo was hers. In that moment—in which he’d trusted her completely, the way a child trusts his mother—she had the power, had that willful, girlish, stamp your foot, dance on the tabletop if you want to power. She had been charged with it.

  Now she looked at him, in the passenger seat, lost in his own voice, singing with his eyes closed. She could take him anywhere and he wouldn’t know it. She could get on the freeway and head west, till they hit the Pacific, and then veer north, up the coast. She had an aunt up there, in Santa Cruz—her mother’s youngest sister, Sam, who lived with Loni, her partner. She’d told Gwen she was welcome anytime. They could stay with them awhile. Get out of the city, have a few days at the sea.

  His chant gave way to “The Freedom Song.” Her birthday present the first year they were together, it was her favorite of his songs. But the cars were moving too fast. She wanted to hear one verse at least before she let him out. He sang and she joined in, singing higher than him, harmonizing.

  You gotta roam, darlin’, to know you are free.

  You gotta roam, darlin’, but if you come back to me,

  I’ll be your new pair of sneakers,

  I’ll be your old bicycle chain.

  I’ll be your home, darlin’, come back again.

  They were at his stop—the curb before the freeway on-ramp—and she pulled over, watched him open the door, step from her car, tap his hat onto his head so it would stay put in the breeze, and wave good-bye with his fingers—toodle-do—one at a time. She had to smile.

  Seven

  BY DAYLIGHT THE exterior of the club was something Gwen tried not to look at. Like a condom under the pier, or a beggar at a stoplight. It was made of cement blocks and was big and boxy as a warehouse. The white paint was peeling, showing Pepto-Bismol pink beneath. It was ugly—uglier because it aimed at ugliness, because the ugliness was itself an attraction. The club was, simply, ugly as sin.