DIRECTIONS: Warm. Or chill. Icy, even.
Fast as You
I was getting paid to watch Tucker’s two-year-old daughter Emmylou while he was on stage singing and some other times too. He and his band were on tour. But no, I wasn’t getting paid to get in my bunk on the tour bus after I put Emmylou down in her daddy’s bed and pull the curtain closed and put my hand between my legs and think about Emmylou’s daddy touching me. Slipping between me the same way he slipped his cigarette between those strings of his guitar and let the smoke go and go while he was tuning and getting it right.
Tucker was one of those guys who smoked even though he worked out every day too and kept an eye on what he was eating. It didn’t make no sense and that’s kind of how he was. He didn’t make no sense and I didn’t want him to. He wasn’t my man, he was Shay’s. Shay was a big country music star too and had legs like Jesus had sculpted them with His bare hands, said they were good. Shay wasn’t Emmylou’s mama. Emmylou’s mama was a mystery. She didn’t much want to be a mama, Tucker had told me about her. I gave Emmylou extra love because of it and Tuck loved her plenty enough for two. I’d put her hair up in two little pigtails to make her look like a ladybug and wonder how her no-good mama could leave her behind.
Sometimes Shay would be up there singing with Tucker and I’d be standing off the side of the stage holding little Emmylou on my hip with her big, pink, plastic earmuffs on to block out the loud sounds. Tucker and Shay had a duet burning up the radio stations and on the nights I was strong and not too jealous to listen, I’d stand there and watch them. On my weak nights, it would hurt my feelings and I’d turn me and Emmylou around right before Shay walked out. Emmylou and I would take the long way back to the bus—catch the sky right as it was changing from late-ombré evening to full-on night black. Every single star shining bright as God.
Tucker wasn’t an easy flirt. I had to earn it. Like the time I put on a turquoise feather skirt and went next door to his hotel room to pick up Emmylou before the show. He opened up the door and I sang the chorus of “Amarillo by Morning” to him and wasn’t the tiniest bit shy about it because I’d been practicing in the shower. That part was easy to sing once you listened to the song all the way through just once. I’d listened to it about five hundred times. That was where we were headed after the show in Oklahoma City. Amarillo. Tucker looked me up and down and did a cartoony wolf whistle and he never did stuff like that, so you got to hear me out when I tell you it was really something. Emmylou was toddling around in her overalls, babbling behind him. Tucker was saying look at you. To me.
“Damn right about Amarillo by morning. I’m ready to get back to Texas,” he said.
I wanted him to say more about my skirt, but didn’t want to make it too obvious or desperate. I bent over and got on my knees, opened my arms for Emmylou to run into them. I got Emmylou’s bag and Tuck closed the door behind us. Emmylou and I were going down the hallway, walking hand in hand in front of him and I had a feeling that little skirt looked best from behind. I thought about him thinking about me, thinking about me differently than just Emmylou’s nanny. Thinking about me the same way he thought about Shay. Thinking about my body and my legs and what was under my little skirt. And I was thinking about his arms in his shirt, how I cut off the sleeves for him those nights he was on stage sweating and singing. His perfect, cute-fat ass. And those nights when I’d put Emmylou to sleep at his place and he’d be downstairs writing music and wearing those gray sweatpants that made me want to fall out and die. Those nights, this life when I’d give any damn thing for him to take me to his bed. For him to take hold of my hips and pull me to him hard and fast without saying a word.
Like one night, it was storming so bad I stayed over. Tuck told me if Emmylou had been a boy he was going to name her Buffalo; his brown buffalo hat was right there next to him on the couch and I picked it up, put it on my head. He asked me my favorite Dwight Yoakam song. I said “Fast as You” so easy like it was my middle name because for me there ain’t no other Dwight Yoakam song. Told him it was sexy, lonesome. And Tucker started playing it right there for me and singing the chorus and he was singing it like Dwight. I covered my hot face with my hands. I didn’t get paid to think about Tucker putting that guitar down and slowly slipping his tongue into my mouth and taking off his gray sweatpants, but I was thinking about it anyway. I wanted to feel how Thelma felt about J.D. in Thelma & Louise, minus the awful parts. Just that part where she goes to the diner the morning after and gets all wide-mouth laughing at Louise before hell breaks loose again. When she pulls her collar out and points at the hickey on her neck—that part, jittering on the VHS screen of my heart.
So I was walking in front of Tucker, swaying my hips, but not too much. That turquoise feather skirt looking like the sun had lit it up, the blue holding the bright. Tuck was singing under his breath and we were almost to the elevator. He was slow poking, taking his time like he always did.
“I see you up there looking beautiful,” he said with his scritch-scratch voice from so much singing and growling under rising summer moons night after night, all over. He said it kind of low. Kind of like I wouldn’t hear him, but I did. I was listening with every part of my body. Hoping he’d leave Shay. Feeling the weight of the wait. The carmine-hot wanting. I would’ve heard him if he hadn’t said a word.
We were fixing to get on the elevators and I didn’t even turn around. I was thinking I could be as fast as he was—knowing someday Tuck’d write a song about this. Knowing I’d finally planted a seed back there somewhere and now all I had to do was sun it and water it and be as patient as patient could be. I looked down at Emmylou and said, “Say thank you, Daddy.” Then I said it too, like a good girl. Kind of slow. Meant it.
Thank you, Daddy.
Chateau Marmont, Champagne, Chanel
He is no mystery to me, we are no mystery to us. He travels, I travel, we travel but not always together. When I am home alone, he writes to me: Miss K. Huff, traveling. Stiff, washy office-blue envelopes, perfect squares. Typewritten letters on expensive paper, gentle-sweetly barking at me in all caps spaced cleanly down the middle of the page. This time it reads:
CHATEAU MARMONT, CHAMPAGNE, CHANEL
UPCOMING FRIDAY BEFORE DINNER UNTIL SUNDAY AFTER BREAKFAST
x
M
And that’s what I always call him, M. Spoken aloud, written down, zip-whispered in little blue electric bursts from my beeping phone to his vibrating one. I send him a text on a Tuesday.
Dear M, I will be there.
Promise?
Have I ever lied to you?
No. I don’t think so? Maybe?
No!
I pack my moisturizer and tingle-foaming face wash, toothbrush and toothpaste. A thin dress and two pairs of white lace panties. A long, light sweater and two pairs of leggings. A white triangle bikini. My hard pink suitcase. I put my big, clear-plastic sunglasses on my face like two black eye-moons. My little bottle of allergy pills rattles around, making music in my purse with my lipglosses. I pack a book, although last time I packed a book I didn’t take it out of my bag. It is the same snaky Joan Didion I always take to California, but never read.
* * *
M is already there, hogging a whole couch to himself. M is already there, hogging California to himself. M is already there because M is always early, never late and M is particular, but not impatient. M is my James Bond in his pressed white dress shirt and slim blue tie, with his flat-front navy pant legs crossed, the thin-striped socks I’d given him, slipping into one acorn-colored cap-toe Oxford shoe resting upon his knee, the other flat and still on the floor. A sculpture. M is reading the newspaper like it is the sixties or seventies or eighties or nineties. M has gifted me diamond earring chunks the size of thumbtacks and I am wearing them for him. I wear everything for him. Cool touches of perfume on my neck and my wrists and the backs of my knees. A breezy white dress with pockets, white Birkenstocks. I’ve painted my toenails the softest pink I
could find. A whisper. I sit close to him so our thighs touch and he puts his arm around me.
“We were here only three months ago?” he asks after saying hello and kissing my mouth.
“Yes,” I say.
“You look smashing.”
“Thank you.”
“Where were we last month?” he asks. He sniffs my neck.
“Mountains,” I hint.
“Ah, mountains,” he says, before standing and offering me his arm. He bends to get my suitcase. “Drinks in the room?”
“Chateau Marmont, champagne, Chanel,” I say, nodding.
“Chateau Marmont and Chanel,” he says, looking around. He takes my wrist, turns it over and puts his nose there.
“Champagne,” I say, wanting.
* * *
I slip off my sandals, leave them by the door. He sits on the edge of the bed and unties his shoes. His brown leather bag has beat us to the room. We order in the charcuterie, a smoked trout salad, an aged strip steak bourguignonne and fries, the prime filet mignon with oregano butter and asparagus.
But before we eat! Glitter in a glass, the ice of his peppermint breath.
“Isn’t it so pretty how they say a flight of wines?” I ask him when we are full. I am bubble-drunk, sitting cross-legged on the bed next to him, knowing full-well he can see my panties. He’s taken his shirt and tie off so he won’t stain them, his pants too. Hungrily, I watched him loosen his tie. I love watching him loosen his tie. Now he is in his white undershirt and underwear and I am still in my white dress, boldly brave enough to eat and drink everything without fear of ruining it because I know he loves that about me. My defiance—heady and arousing. To me. To him.
“Who says flight of wines?” he asks.
“The wine-tasting people,” I say. I flip through a glossy, heavenly-smelling magazine I’ve found in the bedside table drawer.
“It’s lovely. Them saying that,” he says.
“Did someone die in this room? Someone famous?” I say.
“John Belushi died in Bungalow 3.”
“And Jim Morrison used to live here,” I whisper, as if Jim is one room over and I don’t want him to hear me.
“It’s earthquake-proof.”
“And haunted.”
The condensation of sadness that presses against us—leaving us damp and cool—fills the room at the word haunted.
“Let’s not die here.”
“No, let’s not die here,” I repeat. We have plenty of time to die, I don’t say.
“We don’t talk about death in California,” he warns himself gently. Contrite. His attempt at fanning away the grief-smoke that chokes us, stains the glass of our shattered hearts.
We make quiet love and go to the pool.
We go to the pool and come back. The bed, again.
M bosses me around.
Kiss me. Fuck me. Harder. Pull your hair back. Touch yourself. Beg me. Call me Daddy. Suck it. Spread your legs. Wider.
M is shirtless, in white pajama bottoms. We’ve gone out to the hills, watched the sunset. The jacaranda as God-purple as the sky, the sky as God-purple as the jacaranda. Our California is outrageously dry and lousy with flowers.
Our room again: I’ve brushed my teeth, but am drinking more champagne anyway. M is sitting by the wide-open balcony doors, smoking a cigarette with his legs stretched out. The wind and the curtains, ghosting. He is the only man I’ve loved like this. Have you ever loved anyone else? He has asked me plenty of times when he is inside me, his mouth pressed against mine. My forever-answer: No, M; not like this.
I watch him smoke with his no-wedding-ring left hand. M is quiet. M was quiet before, but he’s even quieter now. M is contemplative, cerebral. M is terrible at arguing. Early in our relationship, M used to think we were breaking up any and every time we argued. Some things we argued about back then: Me, feeling emotionally abandoned. Him, feeling emotionally abandoned. Me, jealous of the time he was spending with other people. Him, jealous of the time I was spending with other people. Me, worried he was opening up to someone else who wasn’t me. Him, worried I was opening up to someone else who wasn’t him. Me, annoyed when he was too quiet. Him, annoyed when I talked too much.
M used to think our fights meant no more hotels. No more room service. No more champagne on the starlit balcony. No more sharing a cigarette after sex. No more sharing an apple after a nap (specifically, no more of him holding the cold, sweet crisp to my mouth and letting me bite and him making sure to put his mouth in the exact spot where mine was). No more matching white robes after baths. No more of him rubbing coconut oil on my feet after our showers. No more of his bearded face disappearing between my legs (also, no more of me getting on my knees in front of him). No more sharing minty space in front of the mirror. No more Sinatra Sunday mornings, Nina Simone nights. It took him years to understand how I could fight with him and get over it. That our fights never meant I loved him less. I watch him smoke and think of this: M, I love you and nothing and no one can ever stop me.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks without turning around. His voice—a warm, gray wool net casting out into the California night, catching those California stars that would zoom-power-up and shoot out from his eyes if only he would turn to me. His arm, thrown over the back of the chair like a slack rope.
“We are far from home,” I say.
“Does that bother you?” he asks. He smokes.
A trumpet somewhere below us. Barely, but I can hear it! And do you know what else I can hear? The nightswimmers—tender splishes echoing off the white-weathered concrete and blackness. I am wet-haired in my robe on the bed and more in love with M now than I’ve ever been. Like kudzu, devouring me. Like a gremlin I fed after midnight.
“No. I like how we got here,” I say.
I am waiting for M to turn and look at me. Please look at me. Look at me.
“Next month we’ll meet somewhere different, but California keeps us,” he says over the pale brown moon of his shoulder.
California, keep us, I pray in Jesus’ holy name.
Bearish
So We Can Glow Page 5