by Edan Lepucki
“I had a great time,” he said. He paused. “Did you? I mean, was it okay?”
His insecurity—the pleading eyes and furrowed brow—was almost too much to bear. Right when I thought he might not be so bad, he had to prove me wrong. I looked away. Didn’t he have the sense to cover his fears with banter like everyone else? I was about to say, “Don’t. Just don’t,” but Zachary brought his index finger to my lips, as if to hush me.
“Just forget I said that,” he stage-whispered.
I had to laugh; it was as if he’d read my thoughts.
“I didn’t actually mean for you to answer,” he said.
And with that, he told me he’d call me. He walked away.
It wasn’t that I missed Zachary after he left; it was that I imagined he missed me, and that felt wonderful. I saw our lives in split screen, so that as I swept my floor, Zachary was pulling into his parking spot, a big floppy grin on his face. As I showered, Zachary shaved at his bathroom sink, making eyes at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, pretending, for a moment, to be me. As I lay on my couch, he did the same on his, his hand reaching for his belt buckle as he recalled our previous night together. He moved through one image of me and another, like thumbing a flipbook. He wanted to call me, but he had to wait. Zachary knew that much.
I decided I wanted to see him again.
Make no mistake: It was still, at that point, a decision.
I was in eighth grade when my family bought a house down the street from the one we’d been renting for nearly my entire life. For two weeks we possessed both houses at once, and during that time I liked to take the spare key to the new place and let myself in while my parents were still at work. The house was one block south, hidden behind a cement wall covered in ivy. I remember thinking it was like a castle. My parents have since replaced the wall with a white picket fence, a popular choice in the valley; it’s certainly more inviting, but it purges all mystery from the property.
Every day for those two weeks, I’d slip behind the wall and run across the front lawn to the door. The lock was always a little sticky, and I had to fiddle with it to get inside. Aside from a bottle of Windex on the kitchen counter and a few boxes of tools in the living room that my father had brought over, the rooms were empty. From the front door, I could hear birds singing in the backyard—there was nothing to interfere, is what I’m saying.
On these visits, I might lie beneath the windows in the living room, or do somersaults. Once, I hid in the hallway closet, swallowing my own breath. I did the splits in my parents’ room. I spun in circles in the dining room, yelling the alphabet.
In my own bedroom, however, I was sensible. I planned where the furniture would go: the dresser next to the door, and my bed in the corner. My mother said I could put the old rocking chair there if I wanted, and I imagined it first in one corner and then in another. I tried to keep track of the furniture in my mind, but, like solving a complicated math problem, the design kept dissolving before I could finish. It was almost compulsive how I mentally arranged and rearranged the furniture, like counting steps, or tying and retying my shoe laces.
I’m telling you this story because it reminds me of Zachary. You can see the connection, can’t you? How I tried to manage every arrangement, every little possibility?
But let’s look at it another way. Perhaps this little story has nothing to do with a man. Perhaps it’s just another view into my life, and nothing more. You couldn’t have predicted it, could you? You had no idea I had such a history, at once rich and small.
Be careful, then. You will spend your life assuming things, Baby. About me, about the world. And you will often be wrong.
A day later, Zachary invited me over to his place for dinner. We had not interacted—no written nor oral nor corporeal communication—for twenty-four hours, and in that time I had cleaned my apartment more deeply than I had ever before. In my mind, I laid the image of these now-pristine rooms atop the memory of those empty ones of my adolescence, as if I could make them one and the same. I moved the couch so that it faced the front door, and I left one kitchen cabinet completely bare, to fulfill some future need. I was ready when Zachary called; I knew he would.
I arrived at his place five minutes late so as not to appear too eager. His apartment was at the end of a long, carpeted hallway that smelled of chicken soup and Doritos, and behind other doors came the occasional human voice and snippets of television: a basketball game, a telenovela, a decades-old sitcom. A baby cried somewhere nearby. I hurried along.
I knocked once and Zachary opened the door. “Hey,” he said, almost breathlessly. He took a determined step forward and kissed me.
“Hello to you,” I said, when he pulled away. We both laughed and he invited me inside.
As it turned out, he lived in a studio, which is why, I deduced, he hadn’t wanted me over on the first date. If his bed weren’t made, or his couch cleared, the tableau would be too immediately personal. But whatever condition his apartment had been in the other night, it was now spotless. There was almost an ascetic quality to the place, with its white walls and neatly made bed, and thick black bars on the only window in the main room. I knew right off that he had no mold problem, that he had lied, to comfort me. It was husbandly behavior, I thought.
“Do you want some wine?” he asked.
“Red or white?”
“I bought both,” he admitted. “Just in case.”
“Red then,” I replied. “But I do like white, when it’s hot out.”
He nodded, but before he could head for the kitchen, I said, “Explain those.”
In two of the four corners hung piñatas. The first was a cartoonish pink pig, with wide, bewildered eyes and a short, curly tail. The other was black and oddly shaped; I couldn’t tell what it was. I had never seen someone hang piñatas as decoration, and I was still deciding if they were cool or stupid when from behind me, Zachary said, “That one’s supposed to be an old telephone. A rotary phone.”
I nodded and walked beneath it. Yes, that much was clear now, although the design was pretty primitive, too bulky, the numbers on the circular dial difficult to make out.
“Where’d you get them?” I asked. I pictured Zachary, his first week in LA, stepping into a Latino grocery store, raiding it of all its exotic specimens.
“I made them,” he said. He seemed neither proud nor embarrassed. “It’s a hobby,” he explained, “though I guess that’s not the right word.” He gazed at the telephone. “I was into art in high school, but gave it up in college pretty quickly, when I couldn’t get into any of the classes. I went to Mexico after graduation—you know, traveled around, wore a bandana.” He shrugged. “While I was there, I took this workshop. It was for tourists, like me—or not, there were older people there, couples. Anyway, I learned how to make piñatas and other Mexican crafts.”
“Do you have a thing for Mexico?” I asked. “Like some guys, they love Japan?”
He frowned. “You haven’t been there, have you?”
I realized I’d offended him and I felt myself losing the upper-hand. Just a minute ago, he’d answered the door like a five-year-old birthday boy.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said.
“I know—I guess I’m just a little protective of them. Stupid, I know.”
“It’s not,” I said.
He said nothing.
“What’s inside of them?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing?” I said.
“No, they’ve both got stuff inside. But it’s a secret.”
“You won’t tell me?”
He smiled. “Nope.”
Zachary’s refusal to tell me what was in the piñatas was what I now call Blow #1. The fact of the piñatas alone would have done very little to change my feelings about this man, who, I should point out, was wearing the exact same outfit I’d seen him in the first time we’d met. But the secret of the piñatas, the mystery of their innards—candy or money or balled-up
washcloths—compelled me. With a single refusal, Zachary plucked the apathy off of me like a petal from a flower.
For dinner, he cooked a box of spaghetti and a jar of red sauce. Over this entrée, we shook salt, powdered parmesan from a green cardboard cylinder, and black pepper already ground to gray sand. We ate sitting on the couch, the overhead light the opposite of dim, and Zachary said, “Yum.” For him, this was a feast.
I don’t mean to be a snob (“Yeah right, Joellyn.”). I only want to illustrate that this man had not cooked dinner for a woman, or a woman like me, in quite some time. If ever. And if I am a snob for making a connection between the passion of food and the passion of lovemaking, so be it. A man who cannot grate his own fresh, raw-milk cheeses is a man who will have trouble undressing a woman, tonguing her parts. This is logic. This is something to remember, once you are born.
As we dug into our dinner, holding our chins over our bowls so as not to spill on the carpet, I wondered what was inside those piñatas. Wishbones, sea glass, the fuzz of a zillion dandelions— hell, maybe the light of the moon. I wanted Zachary to tell me. More than that, I wanted him to want to tell me. I glanced over at him; the fork was sliding out of his mouth, glistening with pasta sauce. He hadn’t given our conversation another thought.
“Have you ever heard of Imagine Land?” I asked.
Zachary raised an eyebrow, and I explained it to him. I did not mention Dickens, but rather, pretended it was a well-known concept.
“For instance, in my Imagine Land,” I said, “I’ve got a little house with a backyard. And I’ve stopped designing dental pamphlets, because I’ve moved onto fun stuff. Like album covers.”
I thought of Dickens’ words, how I might use them. I could tell Zachary about the man in my Imagine Land. I could say, “He’s not you.”
I took a deep breath, and Zachary put down his bowl.
“Sounds better as Imagine Land,” he said, emphasis on the second word.
“Imagine Land?” I repeated.
“You know,” he said, “like a plot of land.” He kept a straight face, and his eyes took on a dreamy quality. He was looking beyond the apartment, beyond me.
“What do you see?” I asked.
He smiled then, brought his gaze back to me. “What do you see?” “
I don’t know.”
“Come on,” he said. He took the glass of wine out of my hand, and set it on the table. “Try it. Imagine land.”
“Where do I start?”
“That’s the question,” he said, and smiled.
“Dirt?” I said.
“Dirt,” he repeated. “That’s good. What else?”
“Rocks.”
“Definitely,” he said. “Sharp ones.”
I was smiling now, too. “We’re on the coast,” I said.
He shook his head. “We’re too close to tell.”
“We are?”
“Yeah, we’re too close to the ground. We’re in it.”
“Oh.” I wanted to see what he saw. “What about little pebbles?”
“Yes.”
“So little, they’re like grains of sand.”
“I like that,” he said.
“Like in an hourglass,” I added.
“That’s beautiful.”
For a moment we didn’t speak.
“And let’s not forget the blind worms,” he said.
I laughed.
He took my hand. “Close your eyes.”
“Imagine land,” I said again, and followed his instructions. We could have been explorers on a ship, so long on water we barely remembered solid ground. I could picture the rocks, and the worms, pale and jelly-soft, squirming among the soil. Deeper down, that soil turned to mud.
This was Blow #2.
I wasn’t looking at him when his lips touched mine.
This time, things went differently. This time, I undressed him. All the lights were on, and we didn’t speak. I began with his shirt, pulling it over his head.
It wasn’t that he’d become beautiful. No. He was still Zachary and I was still Joellyn, but the energy of the room had shifted. It was like that army of 400, leaning forward.
His skin was so pale, I could have been a doctor, cracking him out of a body cast he’d worn for a decade. That chest, that belly, had missed the sunlight, and now I was giving it back. I was returning opportunity to the body. As Zachary took off my clothes and kissed me, and moved me deftly to the nearby bed, I couldn’t shake that image of the cast from my mind: I had broken something open and out came this man.
Zachary took one of my breasts into his mouth, and then the other. My own lust surprised me. I thought about the piñatas. I felt like I’d gotten one open, you see, and I was scrambling for its contents.
When we woke the next morning, Zachary asked me how I took my coffee, and I said, “No particular way,” which was, suddenly, true. I would drink it dark or with cream, sugared or bitter.
I told myself I was done with requirements. Was I?
After Zachary and I bid adieu, I went home to my now-spotless apartment and surfed the internet for four hours. I was waiting for him to call; I can admit that now because he did call, that very afternoon.
Before answering, I tucked a frizzy strand of hair behind my ear, and then chastised myself—Zachary couldn’t see me.
“Hello?” I said into the phone.
“It’s me.”
I paused for a moment. Was he being serious? His familiarity was so presumptuous. Like we were best buds. But I didn’t say so. After all, there was no need for him to tell me his name: it had flashed across my phone, and I had recognized his voice. I reminded myself that I was done with requirements. I smiled—would that transmit?—and asked him how his day was going.
The second time he called, the next evening, I found myself waiting for it. And there it was again:
“It’s me,” he said.
“It’s you,” I said.
I felt short of breath. This felt important. We didn’t need names. They didn’t matter, they didn’t suffice. This was Blow #3.
Zachary cleared his throat.
“Want to go to the beach, for a walk?”
“Now?” I asked. It was after ten.
“Oh. I guess not. No.” He paused. “I was thinking—this weekend?”
“Sure,” I said, without even pretending to check my calendar.
It was too cold to swim. We couldn’t even take off our jackets, but we walked along the shore as planned, the icy water approaching and retreating, approaching and retreating. My hems got soaked. Zachary had worn pants that zipped off into shorts; I looked away when he made the transition. He pointed to my wet jeans and asked, “That’s not bothering you?” It’s fine, I told him. The hems were not only wet by then, but covered in sand, and they slapped against my ankles until my skin stung.
Zachary told me about his day of searching for jobs. “I start typing these ridiculous things into the search engine. Smart person wanted. Or, Circus performer, no experience necessary.” He shrugged. “I keep hoping something perfect will come up.”
“There are clown schools, you know.”
He smiled and put a hand on the small of my back. “I probably need to reconsider my resume.” He kept talking. But he was asking me the wrong questions.
“What if it’s more than a page long?” he asked.
He expressed no concern about his email account, ([email protected], a vestige from his teenage years, apparently), and he did not bring up paper stock. He had no idea that fonts mattered.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He picked up a piece of driftwood, threw it halfheartedly, as if for some dog I couldn’t see.
“You were about to say something.”
“Just about fonts,” I said. “They matter.”
“Oh?”
I skipped ahead and picked up the piece of wood. It was my turn to throw. “To begin,” I said, and let the wood soar. I tried to keep my explana
tion short, but part of me wanted to talk forever. “Got it?” I asked, when I finished.
Zachary held the driftwood now. I remember he took a moment or two to toss it. I imagined he was absorbing the information I had given him. Finally, he threw it, and we both watched it dive into the sand a few feet in front of us.
“I wonder how far it’s traveled,” I said.
Zachary nodded. “We can’t be the first to have thrown it down the beach.” He took my hand, and squeezed it. “It’ll probably be in Ventura next week.”
I laughed, and then he laughed.
That evening, in his bed, I discovered Zachary had duped me that first time I slept over. “I prefer to lay my head directly on the mattress,” he’d told me. That first night, he had handed me a pillow and said, “Take it. Usually, it’s just for show.”
This time, he told me the truth. “I only own that one.”
“One? That’s it? But what if someone—“
Zachary had already turned off the lights, and in the dark he squeezed my hand, as if to say, Don’t finish your sentence. I heeded his request. No one slept over, I realized.
“Can we share?” he asked.
“Okay.”
Zachary scooted closer, until both of our heads rested on the pillow, and his hot ear pressed against mine.
The pillow probably bore sweat stains, billowing yellow clouds covered by the case. He had probably slept on it since transitioning from the cradle to his big boy bed. It probably belonged to his dead grandmother. This was it: a single, flat pillow. Normally, such a thing would have sent me running, but, somehow, it struck me—as surprising, or endearing, or, let’s be honest—as repellent. And I liked that. Blow #4.
Zachary and I settled into a routine. Every few days we had dinner, often at my place or his, to save money, and we talked every day, if only for a moment. We were checking in, as they say. We hadn’t met each other’s friends yet, but introductions were pending.
One evening, he called me as I was cleaning the kitchen. I had sworn to keep the place clean; I would not let the recycling bin pile up with my sins.