Kitty hated the Peace Corps. She too had applied to join but had been turned down. What a waste of name, she thought. She was glad she hadn’t spent two years of her life pretending she had made a difference.
“Well, they’re not doing anywhere near enough for the goddamn huge tips that they’ve become accustomed, thanks to soft touches like you two,” said spirited Robin, who at the same time gave a pretty good pinch to Kitty’s soft left arm.
“Both of you cut out this touchy-feely stuff,” cried Kitty.
There had been a time when the girls were unconscious of their close physical touches and cuddly embraces of friendly adolescent familiarity. They had been hugging, pinching, and squeezing each other since junior high school days. But now, at their age, these familiar caresses had become awkward; grown women just don’t touch each other. Even cheek kisses demanded a practised distance. With the passing of years, the friends had become more privately body-centric, more sensitive to bodily contacts, so when they now touched each other, it reminded them of immature high school goosing.
“Well, Kitty, let’s start with you. What’s new with you since we last saw you,” chimed in Sharon, well recovered now from her out-of-this-world spiritual jaunt. She thought Robin’s criticizing of Gianni as impolite and racist and wanted a new topic. Like they couldn’t afford a fifty-dollar tip? Anyway, there were more important issues to be covered than Gianni’s tip.
“As if there’s anything to know about food and wine,” Robin continued harping in a pissed mood still agitated for reasons even she didn’t know. “Some son-of-a bitch will next boil cabbage and add cilantro and oregano to it and it’ll become the next must try for every middle aged fatty frightened woman in town. Frigging boiled cabbage and cilantro at ninety bucks a throw. And God forbid that Mick Jagger gets a hold of the recipe because he’ll make a fortune jarring it for his next several super lean long legged twisting in the air marionette groupie wives…”
“Jamming with cilantro,” said Sharon.
“You’re right, Robin,” Kitty said. “Really all you need to know in life is how to eat the food and drink the wine. Duh, hello, you know, like we’re not born with the skill?”
“Well, you should have some notion of what you’re eating or drinking,” said Sharon. “For example, during communion…”
“Shut up, Sharon.”
“And the biggest rip off of all is that pretentious wine list shit. No wine on earth is worth more than ten dollars a bottle. The only reason people drink wine is that it’s good for the digestion especially after a lot of dark fatty meats.”
“You drink it for pleasure; bad wine makes you fart,” said Kitty.
“Not if you have faith in Jesus,” said Sharon.
“Let me put it this way to you Sharon: it makes you burp and fart. Right now we’re not talking religion but the wine list. There is no bad wine and there is no such thing as luxurious wines to be dearly paid for. Any bottle more than ten dollars is a rip off. All wines are either vinegary, or sugary sweet alcohol, or somewhere in between.”
“It’s those in between wines that we all love,” smiled Kitty.
“A lot of people think that wine is sacred.”
“They all come from the same grapes and every year is the same year. Best wine I ever had was a cheap red with some black pepper in it. If you want relief, try a couple of spoonful of good apple cider vinegar,” said a feeling good Robin.
“If it was good for Jesus, it’s good enough for me,” said Kitty.
“Thou shall not blaspheme, Kitty,” Sharon couldn’t help it.
“Sorry, Sharon. I didn’t mean to bring up the religious issue again,” smiled Kitty.
“For shame, on both of you,” hushed Sharon, and sensed her brain rushing again.
“What a rip off!” fumed Robin.
“All right, Robin, calm down. Here comes Gianni with the Bordeaux. Now, what were you going to say, Kitty?” said Sharon.
“If that son-of-a-bitch asks me to taste before he pours once again, I’ll spit it out all over his prick-n-span white frock and cocktails,” Robin continued to bristle.
“It’s coat tails, Robin. And it’s spic and span. All waiters should wear red,” said Sharon.
“Well, I think I have some good news about Mick and me,” said Kitty.
“Mick?” Sharon and Robin crested their eyebrows.
“Just kidding, you guys. I meant Claudio and me.”
“Just open the bottle and leave it with us, Gianni,” said Sharon.
“Yes, Mrs. Merker.”
“So, Kitty, you were about to share some good news about you and Claudio.”
“Well, Sharon and Robin, you two are the first to know. As it should be between friends! My husband Claudio and I have been thinking of getting out of the rat race of recycling grease and buying a farm. Especially Claudio who says that a man needs to have a small piece of land if for no other reason than to periodically piss on it,” and the girls laughed at the image.
“I thought you were going to say that you’re pregnant,” sighed Sharon. “Like Justine.”
“We want to get out of this boring world of the crazy maze big city life. He can’t get Sicily out of his mind so he wants to buy a farm. Get a farm and celebrate the seasons again, he says. We now have more money than we’ll ever need, and, he says, that the only thing we’re short on is time.”
“You wanna make a bet?” laughed wicked Robin.
“That’s unfair, Robin,” said an angry Sharon. “I know you didn’t mean that. So, be a good girl and apologize to Kitty.”
“About what?”
“We all know that Claudio is very bright,” said Sharon momentarily coming to the defence of a man she knew only Biblically, while his wife was sitting next to her.
It took Kitty a second or two to catch on to where Sharon was coming from. Anyway, like any housewife knows whenever her husband strays, Kitty had guessed about her husband and Sharon from the several oblique comments that Claudio had made.
“Did you know he’s an author?” continued Sharon almost spilling the beans.
“Is that what he told you?” laughed an unflustered Kitty.
Robin was unmoved from her frustrations about waiters and cheap wines. She was a bit puzzled though, because she didn’t know where Sharon was coming from with this suddenly found kindness for Claudio, her admitted rapist, and her insistence that she apologize to Kitty for implying he was short of brains. True friends shouldn’t have to apologize no matter whose prim and proper etiquette Sharon was sucking on, including Old and New Testaments.
“Did you know, Sharon, that palm trees are symbols of fertility,” said Robin. “I thought you might have run across that in your Biblical studies. Maybe you should straddle on top of a palm tree and sooth what’s itching you.”
“Oh Robin, sometimes you’re the grossest …”
“Oh, that’s ok, Sharon. I know Botox Robin meant no bad insult. And if she thinks she’s got more brains than I do, well, the weight shows on the crick of her wrinkled neck. Right, smart-ass Robin?” said Kitty, and she waited with a broad grin.
“Here’s one for you, and to your farm, wrinkle free Kitty,” and Robin gave Kitty the finger. And then she began to laugh, hiding her big mouth with her palm.
“Palms are symbols of peace, Robin, peace as in Palm Sunday, and not the phallic symbols you’re always think about,” said Sharon.
“I can picture Claudio humming ‘home on the range’ while planting palm trees in the sunset to let you know that you’re his only love,” said Robin.
“Home, home on the range,” Kitty recited the words without the melody.
“Where the deer and the antelope play,” Sharon continued the words.
“Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day,” Kitty was thoughtfully continuing the gr
eat outdoors when suddenly, not to be outdone, Robin burst forth with her own improvised country poem for her best friend Kitty:
City babe,
I’m gonna take you
down to my doggie farm home,
where you belong, baby,
I’m gonna make you love me
ghee-tshu down to do some dirty laundry
to do some dirty laundry
down by the creek
where I’ll pinch your fat cheek…
And she did teasingly pinched Kitty’s cheek.
“Cut it out,” said Kitty, all the time loving it.
Ad-libbing the little poem was Robin’s way of apologizing to Kitty for implying that she and Claudio were running short on oil. It was, after all, Robin’s quick mind, which all the friends, now and forever, gave her great credit and made them want to be her friends. And Robin knew and never outgrew that, though at times, she could be unkind. One time Robin had described Kitty to Myrna as not being “one of the sharpest tools in the shed.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, and the yawns began to slowly descend upon the day as noon gave way to afternoon nap time. Afternoons are of those moments when all people, including true friends, feel alone, lazy, and the brain is not firing on all pistons. It was an uncomfortable pause, consumed without words, each friend waiting for the other to say something. The moment felt like yesterday, and all the yesterdays piled up into the memory of skinny and not so skinny girls who grew up and married and all the time pretended that nothing had changed in all the years they had been leaning on each other. In the tranquillity of the pacific Beverly Hills, there was nothing to suggest that their collapsing long time unfulfilled love affair, while outward calm, was jangling on an ocean of many years’ accumulated feelings which might now have ripened to the point of splattering in the inevitable ending that comes to all things. As the separation slowly invades the skin, circuitous shit, like literary prizes, begins to convolutedly flow out of pretty mouths, you hope it leaves no stink behind to soil the indomitable friendship. For it is said that friendship, like virginity, once lost is irrecoverable. But then, again, there’s a lot of grey in both friendship and virginity, both vital to a woman’s mental wellness.
“It’s not such an unheard of thing to want to get way from this daily hassle and slow time a bit, Robin. After all, aren’t we all tired of this absurd life we all lead? We greedily rush and get fat on one bubble market after another and all too soon we get old, and no time left,” Kitty threw her hands up in the air.
Robin yawned.
“That’s exactly how I feel. Wow, time does fly,” excitedly responded Sharon. “Time is such a precious commodity, yet most of us waste it, like Kitty just said. Time is a spiritual concept requiring …” both Kitty and Robin were staring at the tablecloth so Sharon shut up.
“Claudio and I have been thinking, like a lot of other couples think these days. We’re pretty sure we want to slow things down by just getting way from the city; getting away from all this neurotic LA madness. Get out and do a little contemplation on what’s it all about, and how did we get here so fast. You know what I mean?”
More yawns.
“Like, I’m beginning to suddenly feel old,” continued Kitty.
They knew what Kitty meant: that contemplation is the pastime of the old as they get closer and closer to death. And in spite of Sharon’s fleeting sermons on the go, none of the friends wished to take that disquieting route to join Christ yet. You reflect too much and before you know it you’re dead.
“Let me tell you Kitty, contemplation is the quickest path to death. Anyway, you didn’t have to go on a farm to reflect,” suggested Robin.
There was more unnerving silence because nobody wanted to admit they wanted to devote the rest of their lives to prayer and penance on some stupid farm, like Myrna’s husband was now doing. It cannot be that ‘that’s all there is’.
“Go buy a little farm near Santa Barbara he says and wake up to a bright new day, every day. Have coffee on our huge deck with the birds and the bees buzzing around a myriad of wild flowers in the great outdoors where there’s lots of sunshine, away from this here pollution, and have the sun splash light and heat on us all day long,” Kitty’s teeth shone brighter than her pastoral images as she gesticulated her husband’s bedazzling dream.
“Right out of Wordsworth; butterflies, mosquitoes, and all,” said Robin.
“Claudio does write poetry, Robin,” poor Sharon was confused again.
“Of course you’ll both be invited to visit because you’re my best friends,” said Kitty.
“Did you know that the California palm tree is a symbol of peace,” said Sharon. “Palm trees as in Palm Sunday …”
“You’ve said that already,” said Robin as she bottomed up another French red, at the same time wishing it was a more muscular vodka, or even a, ugh, muscular bourbon; anything to drown the spastic murmuring of her friends, now registering flat in her soaked brain.
“Claudio says he’d buy me a horse, and when you guys visit, I’d let you pet it.”
“Another phallic symbol, Kitty, as if you didn’t know,” said Robin.
There were too many bees and too much yellow sunshine in Kitty’s farm and Sharon had been stung. She was having difficulty accepting all the highlights of country living; all that light and sun had totally blindsided her and were a contradiction to her lovable, intimate moments for lovely, cool, shade, and preferably darkness. How could there be contemplation in bright disturbing sunlight?
“You were doing alright there, until you got to the part of lots of sunshine stuff, Kitty. What, you want to get away from the pollution and crime just so that you could get blinded by lots of sunshine? And I mean blinded. Haven’t you heard or read that sunshine is evil; that it blinds; that it’ll give you cancer? Worse, too much sunshine will blow your mind, you know, with, like excess sensual overload and no time to think? Are you trying to tell us that you want to forget how to think or never use your brain again? Just like all them farmer boys?”
“Right you are, Sharon. Sunshine! Shit! Give me the deep purple dusk of vespers and the darkness of the long night of old times,” said Robin and tapped into another glass which by now was becoming worthless to spike you on a spin.
“Anyway, I think Claudio is joshing you,” said Sharon.
“Also, Sharon, a Roman symbol of fertility,” said Robin.
“Sharon, why else do you move to a farm if not for the birds and flowers, the glow of dawn, and the serenity of an evening’s sunset? Isn’t the hush of dusk, with its thousands of starlings flying in formation to find a safe place to roost, away from the deafening insanity of big city noises the reason people seek out the farm? The green, and yellow, and soft browns and reds of autumn rolling hills and pastures full of the bright sunshine to warm the tired soul even on a wintry day?” redirected Kitty.
“Starlets, in Southern California?” said Robin.
“Robin, what do you mean symbol of fertility? Do you mean the palm trees, or Claudio,” said Sharon, away from Kitty’s hills and pastures canvas.
“Well, duh, coconuts, Sharon, big cojones; coconut trees are tall palm trees, and some have huge cojones hanging, like in ancient Roman statues …”
“Robin, you’re crazy,” said Sharon.
“Well, when you think about it Sharon, I suppose people could just as easily be put out to pasture in the city as in farms,” Kitty tried to pretend dumb.
Another dead end. Still, there was no reason to think that Kitty and her Claudio had not done a lot of soul searching in reaching out to the promise of the farm. It was their dream and no one had the right to deny their wish.
“I wanna go home … where I belong…down by the buoys of my soul…”
Robin beamed another shaft of delight toward Sharon and Kitty trying to bring the friends back to Beverly Hills
again.
“Here’s your Grecian peasant’s bread, ladies.”
It was Gianni. Just in the nick of time, again, the trademark of a good waiter.
“Your salads are coming right up.”
“Thank you, Gianni,” said Kitty in a very sweet voice, and Gianni smiled back to match the splendour of her teeth.
Sharon had reached for her Louis Vuitton purse and was fumbling through it not exactly knowing what she was searching for. She thought she wanted to put on her Dior sunglasses to blunt Kitty’s sunshine and then realized that she had them smartly on her head. Somewhat embarrassed at her fumbling, she took them off her head, shoved them back into her purse, and nervously put it on the floor. The sudden intrusion of farm light was too much for her unprotected eyes. She felt fidgety, uncomfortable, and thought she wanted to tell Gianni to pull the restaurant curtains shut, but the sun was already setting behind the restaurant, away from the window openings to the east, and their side was already in the shade.
“Robin, you’re the weirdest, man,” said Kitty, knowing that Robin could take it better than fragile Sharon.
Somebody had to say something.
“No, I think Sharon’s the weirdest. She’s off to la-la-land again. I think she needs to get laid; big hunk Hank must not be putting out, is he Sharon?” said Robin.
“I don’t think she’s listening to what you’re saying,” said a concerned Kitty.
“Maybe you could lend her your Claudio stallion for a few nights,” said Robin.
“Claudio is always approached by women,” said an embarrassed Kitty. “You should try him sometime, Robin,” and she tried to hide in silence.
Once again Sharon was lost between the sound of her friends’ voices and the storming of her mind. She was being inundated by an immense emotional rural rush full of happy yellow sunshine scenes and huge palm tree cojones which she could not comprehend. Here she was, in the company of long-time friends, so why this anguish? She thought she would have liked to say something to her friends, to find relief in speech, but was too afraid to open up to them because of the damn light; afraid that if she did, her words might have been full of the unpredictable lapses of… fuck it; that sob was the biggest mistake of my life, she thought of Hank.
BF4Ever Page 25