Lomita For Ever

by Trevor Eve

  No names had been exchanged and he wondered whether he should ask the question. Her shape was thin, and her skin had witnessed hours of sun in an era when people loved it, without guilt. Her hair swept back, clean and grey but thick for someone who must be seventy? Eighty? Had he any idea at all?

  Her dress rolled over her thighs and he could see the underneath of her right leg in its motion of crossing lightly over the left. It was wrinkled with the pressure of leg on leg.

  Her precision at pouring betrayed the ritual of someone conditioned by solitude, giving every moment purpose and elegance. The ritual of the day; he wondered if, at six o’clock, there would be a drink poured with the same attention to the physical movement of hands and arms and a sweeping of the air that moved with pleasure out of the way, sensing this effortless lift of cup to lip and lip back to saucer, which was held in the left hand as the right did the sweep.

  Not work, just rhythm. Grace.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Broke his trance.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘You invited me.’

  ‘But why accept, have you nothing to do?’

  This completely stopped him. He had a lot to do, but why had he accepted? It was pertinent as a question.

  Her legs uncrossed, and he felt the embarrassment of looking at them as they did so. Something that women must take so much for granted. But this one watched his watching, and he awkwardly slurped his tea, attempting to convince that was what he was intending to do while his gaze was fixed. Post movement she sat still with the confidence of someone who was used to being observed.

  He thought that she was really quite beautiful. Wrinkled and thin, but really quite. Her question had still received no reply.

  ‘I suppose I am not very happy really.’

  She said without any emotion at all. After a contemplative silence, that appeared to concern neither of them.

  *

  He had rented the apartment on Havenhurst Drive.

  In West Hollywood for one month; it should be ample time, he thought, to carry out what he needed to do. What he felt committed to do. The only thing at thirty that he felt able to do now; knowing that he would never get away with it, but incapable of doing anything else. It was like an inertia, set in concrete.

  *

  Thirty years on earth and a realisation that in fact he didn’t really have quite the same lust.

  At least in quality and quantity anymore, this hit him like a missed sit.

  Gosh oh God, that which drove him now didn’t even get him standing.

  He was however stood and looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, embedded in the Spanish tiles in this rented slice of Mexican architecture, expecting a sense of lack of recognition. If the feeling had changed, will the response to the image change? It was still him but the purpose for any of his physicality didn’t seem to be there.

  His hands moved objectively over his face, as if the face had no feeling.

  Why were they needed, the mouth, the eyes, all of it? The breakdown of these component parts was becoming unnecessary.

  They didn’t have a function if he didn’t have a function.

  So that was an interesting way to face the next years of his life.

  Different at least with these dulled animal desires.

  His shoulders dropped as his hands left his face; he slumped and felt like his tongue looked. He promised himself to stop analysing the lingual papillae, with the bacteria and debris that was lodged on their fungiform crags.

  He knew it all from the very beginning – the soul bit.

  How do you live a life without a soul, because it had never come back? Or had it? How would he know if he had a soul if he’d never had a soul?

  ‘Stop, please stop.’

  This he voiced, head hanging down, staring at the basin, relieved that he had nothing to throw up.

  His hands threw water at his face.

  ‘Stop.’

  This was not a birth and mother issue.

  No, get to the present.

  He stood there, inhaled a big one, a chest full of air, now bearing the medals of victory in this mental skirmish.

  Ever had fended off the dawn attack, well not dawn, but he had fended.

  The change that has brought about this ascension into a higher dimension of sensibility is a tragedy. No longer a reptile. No longer requiring to be succoured and satisfied; life seemed to present another distinct emotion.

  The feeling of loss.

  And pain.

  His father had died, and he loved his father and he always thought and felt that his father loved him. But could his father really have loved him, when he had removed himself from his son’s life without even saying so much as why or goodbye?

  But if it wasn’t his father’s fault; a pause in his thought – was death a blame issue?

  The toilet flush escorted him out of the bathroom.

  He had thought of nothing else since his father’s life had ended.

  Appearing as an accident but in an emotional condition that could have implied purpose.

  A finished man with nothing that he could construct to live for, and Ever had witnessed the demise, the whole decay of a soul. A putrid decay. A vibrant, happy functioning soul that had wound down to death. No one really can understand what happens to a man when purpose is taken away, when all that you have focused on is no longer allowed to happen. When people tell you that you can’t do what you want to do, what you know how to do; you are forced to a stop, and look at a wall and go blank. Switched off. They have switched you off; they did it, they stopped the joy. They decided – the human race that is.

  *

  One man, he had broken it down to one man.

  Although it was probably more than one, but somehow one was enough to carry out the retribution.

  He saw it as more than revenge, it was a statement for all lives that had been controlled, affected by other people because they didn’t care.

  A big thing of his, this caring.

  When it comes down to the final moment does anyone give the slightest squidge of shit? He believed the man didn’t, and so he was going to make him care – or rather make sure that he would never have the option not to care again. A son was going to sacrifice himself for his father to show that somebody, somewhere, did care.

  And it was not even an effort.

  *

  He sat having tea in the brown room.

  He so wanted to tell this physical dignity poised in front of him what he was going to do, but knew he wouldn’t, so instead these words came out.

  ‘I am so sorry, has your husband died?’

  ‘Sweet boy. I was married once, twice actually, but long gone.’

  And then he caught sight of her finger that was not bearing the restriction of a ring. A manacle of possession. Her hands brown and shining, as the cream of years nourished the wrinkles in a battle that would be forever lost.

  She raised her slightness to her feet with a greater agility than he had perceived before, she said she needed to rest, and it was so nice to meet him.

  They walked, slowly, to the front door across the brown polished floor, she had taken his arm for support again, the daylight from the garden was now dimming, they entered the lobby, equally brown; the windows, blinded by white linen curtains, stood either side of the door that anticipated its opening as it had previously witnessed their arrival.

  The sounds of a tray being removed behind them betrayed the presence of Manita, quick to clear the slightest obstruction to the order of her life and return the cups, saucers, milk and unused sugar to a kitchen that he could only imagine.

  Was it, too, brown?

  Or 1950s Los Angeles beige, with a tint of the dreaded green, as if dullness was needed to compensate for the endless sun that now seemed a little less endless in the face of a changing climate.

  ‘My name is Lomita Nairn.’

  And her hand hung in the space between them.

  He touched he
r skin, satin or silk, confused in that second as to which was softer, then his name syllabled out of his mouth. Two of them.

  ‘Ever.’

  She remained impassive, demanding explanation by her stare.

  ‘Short for Everett. I will love you Ever, forever, my mother used to say, so…’

  She smiled and said,

  ‘Come again. We’ll have dinner. Maybe. That is if you would like. Or – do you prefer to watch a motion picture?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  Intrigued by the formality of the words – motion picture.

  ‘I sometimes watch old ones in the evening. Dinner is optional.’

  ‘Yours?’

  Responded Ever, with a smile and the consciousness of flattery.

  ‘No. Good heavens, no, one I made, not really, but… that is all.’

  The ‘but’ held for a longer moment than a moment and he sensed it, the feeling of something that hadn’t been done for a long time. That sense of nothing in the in-between time when something should have happened. But hadn’t. And didn’t. And Lomita, in that indeterminate time, did not know why she had proffered the mention of a motion picture. Of the one film. She was frozen with the mistake.

  ‘I would be delighted.’

  Not sure as he said it why he would be or what about, but he decided he wanted to see her again and talk. Yes, next time talk, not stare. The smell was there again. The perfume and just the cleanliness. The organisation of it all, as a person.

  ‘Goodbye Lomita, if I may call you that, or Miss Nairn.’

  ‘Lomita is fine.’

  She said and he thanked her for the tea.

  The pause stood for a time.

  And then.

  And then.

  *

  He walked down the circular driveway.

  The short distance to the road, he turned right onto Elevado and then left up Doheny. Up the hill to Sunset, passing the almost concealed and decaying precision of an early Frank Lloyd Wright construction, with the singular intention of buying a bottle of tequila at Gil Turner’s on the corner.

  He hoped, and had concern, that she would have made the journey back across the big brown room with safety, Manita escorting her for a rest on her bed. A large bed he imagined. A California King he supposed, without any evidence to support his supposition; he thought of her fragility in the expanse of bedding.

  On his walk east down Sunset, a brown bag in his hand enclosing a bottle of Patrón Silver, he realised the only way he could get in touch with her again was by knocking on her door at North Oakhurst Drive. No attempt at the exchange of numbers had been made.

  He felt strangely pure passing the bars and clubs, preparing for the night’s energy, the comedy clubs and the bookstore and the sadness of Tower records with nothing left to sell. And Book Soup on the other side that was still selling, books that is.

  He felt he had been in the aura of a spiritual being like a monk, or more appropriately a nun. Although nuns didn’t always have that quality of calm and oneness with the universe. Where did that thought come from? How many nuns and monks had he met?

  But he had been washed and wanted to bathe in her again and be blessed by her and sit at her feet and tell her all the things he could never tell and sleep in her bed and be read to and she would put out the light and she would kiss him goodnight.

  Lomita Nairn was worth a Google. No, she deserved more than that.

  She deserved to be happy.

  Chapter Eight

  The tequila bottled had supplied half its contents.

  To the man disappointed that Lomita Nairn had produced nothing from the Google god. Nor had any variation of what he presumed to be Nairn. Narne, Naryn, Nerne, any number of other fucking ways to spell the name.

  He rolled his second joint and looked at the stars, the French windows of the apartment opened onto the courtyard that housed two other similar abodes, now both shuttered against the dying heat; the sound of muffled voices and air conditioners wrapped around his ears, his eyes looked to the stars and the moon and he closed them, the chair rocked on its bent bamboo rails and he felt sad and started to cry. Quietly cry, this was not unusual, as crying seemed to wash him clean, an internal shower that he enjoyed, and he cherished the privacy of that emotion. One that he never needed to share with anyone, a solitary experience that left him feeling calm and, well, just calm, and of course alone.

  He missed his father and he hoped that his father wasn’t missing him. That he had found a peace that, earthbound, he never had.

  He fell asleep, still rocking gently in the chair with the warmth holding him in its arms.

  *

  He had last seen his father in New York six months ago.

  When his father was supposedly meeting a gallery owner, to organise an exhibition, even though he didn’t have any paintings – yet. It was just for a weekend. Ever paid for them both to stay at the Bowery Hotel; away from home, eating, drinking and having fun, his father seemed to be putting on a face that was brave, at least; he seemed OK, frustrated maybe with his life, but essentially OK, and in many respects in a better place than Ever himself.

  Although he never did meet the gallery owner.

  But Ever did carry blame, it was an issue, towards himself, he should have come out earlier, when he had sensed the change, the attitude, the feeling, the enthusiasm disappear from his father. He could hear it in his voice, read it in his emails, but he was so consumed with his own turmoil in his brain that son never came to see father.

  The person he loved the most. And his father would never have burdened him with any kind of painful truth.

  And now.

  Now.

  What?

  *

  Lomita Nairn had eaten her dinner.

  A grilled chicken breast lightly coated with olive oil and some green beans, haricots vert, the same dinner she ate, when at home, every night. Well, there was the occasional variation. On a tray, on a California King size bed, lying on the top of the bedding, on a lilac satin eiderdown, faded but the stitched squares still carried a plumpness that comforted her delicate limbs.

  The television would normally be supplying sound but now displayed itself in silence. She thought about Ever. She was not a sleeper. That luxury had long left her, two or three hours a night was the only peace she was given from her mind, and the continual reassessment of her life.

  Her life of seventy-six years. Born 9 July, early 1940s. That was all she would admit to. She didn’t want to think about being a child again. A time when she thought and planned everything, believed that it was all going to be all right. She didn’t want to relive that.

  She took a zolpidem and a shot of whisky. The particular whisky she liked was a single malt, called Oban, the taste of which she demanded to linger in her mouth, and she swirled it, making sure it accessed every particle of tissue. It comforted her, and she prayed to drift off, dreamless, for just a few hours.

  The whisky and sleeping pill numbing, just ever so slightly, her thoughts. So she would be unable to connect with disappointment and her dreams would no longer, if she was unfortunate enough to have them, house the hope of great things to come.

  *

  Ever rocked in the roll of the chair, concentrating his mind in an attempt to determine whether he had been asleep or not. He tried to remember a dream; in a trickle of treacle his thoughts came back.

  The act of focusing on life had for Ever’s father more than occasionally defeated him.

  The condition that age and a battering bring with them; it is known as the stoop.

  A bending forward from the hips as if driving through a heavy gale, with shuffle steps. That coupled with a thickening around the middle, a general filling out of all the finer points of youth, as if the sculptor had got bored and given up the defining process, given up the chipping away to sustain angular perfection.

  Then it turns, it turns through age, backwards, the artist no longer attempting the perfect ideal. There is no time le
ft. Not sufficient time. The backwards process of age has taken the perfection away and then spends those remaining years defiling it. Life is a forward process and then a destruction. This backwards process, a reversal, an obscuring, makes youth seem like a gift that should never have been given, or at least ever cherished; an anger sets in, even though we know that nothing can challenge the process.

  This was the process his father had been submitted to, the physicality of defeat.

  The mystery of human frailty, this error, passes us by in our moments of trying to survive, but is unavoidable in the end.

  Why is it, then, challenged by some? Ever was in a half-dream, now, revisiting the face-lifts in the Rodeo public parking. Image after image came to him. Why then do some call in the sculptor, the surgeon, to attempt to carve the stone back, back to its perfection, when they know the stone has worn. When no sharpness can now be attained, no accuracy of line; it is brittle and its smoothing produces a flatness of definition, no detail of personality.

  It has lost its ability to present its original image.

  The artist, the sculptor, just looks untalented, unskilled. And the model looks like a very bad piece of work, something that should have been binned in the studio.

  Ever’s mind was swimming in the waves of tequila, and drowning in 10 mg of Ambien.

  But they were all in the same frame. The face-lifted women and the failing, the disintegration of the artist. It was the same. Old and fighting. Just different canvases.

  Is this the position that Ever’s father found himself in, then, on that day when it all seemed to go black?

  The unskilled artist binning his work, the attempt to retrieve his past abilities had vanished as he stood bent with his aged stoop. The past glory in crumbled and brittle collapse. Now in this old man’s life there seemed to be no hope after what was dished out by the God, the Source of the Universe, the provider: the unfolding of events in a misconceived and overambitious life.