Which, it was, a little bit. But it was also physical and boring and oddly intense and tedious and you had to contort your body into strange shapes for hours on end.
“On his lap, Lu,” Ray said, setting up the camera a few inches from our faces. “Let’s try some extreme close-ups.”
“My favorite,” I replied sweetly, then proceeded to make a hideous, monstrous face directly into the lens. The camera guy spit his drink out.
“Taylor, you’ve gotta wake up for me, buddy. We need your face as animated—”
“Yet passive,” I chimed in.
“—as possible. Yes, what Lu said. Also, I need you to barely breathe.”
I’d perfected the art of Barely Breathing, but Taylor was struggling. Ray wanted us to do a lot of intense gazing into each other’s eyes and we just couldn’t do it. I’d hear Taylor’s scarcely concealed wheezing and I’d crack up.
We had no connection. Which was an issue.
“Let’s switch it up for a bit and then we’ll take a break. Get a little coffee, re-orient. Sound good?” Ray said, finally.
We both nodded, a flurry of stylists rushing over to primp and fluff me, pulling things up, yanking things down. I looked up and made direct eye contact with Calvin.
For the past few hours, he’d been either reading intently or answering the questions of bemused customers, who weren’t used to wandering into an active photo shoot.
He was more comfortable around them than he was around us—still awkward, but warmer. Funnier. A few times his laugh rang out and I had to work to keep from smiling automatically.
Now his eyes were boring into mine—probably by accident—so I shrugged, arching my eyebrow. He was going to see me primped and fluffed a lot. I kind of wanted him to walk over again, but he kept his distance.
“Lu, let’s have you face me now,” Ray said. “Taylor, you’re back in the chair but facing the fireplace. Lu, you straddle him. Let’s get a series of shots where you’re being kind of intimate with each other. Aware of the camera—”
“—but not aware at the same time. Got it,” I said, throwing my legs over Taylor and getting into position. Taylor gave me kind of a wolfish grin, probably trying to work his nerves out.
“Be serious,” I chided, tossing my lion-hair and staring directly into the camera.
Which was now directly facing Calvin.
“Taylor, I want your hands kind of…well, kind of everywhere. Let’s do a bit of a peep show, sound good?”
I rolled my eyes and Ray caught it.
Reputation.
“It needs to be fucking sexy, Lu, you know that,” he said, dismissing my eye-roll with his hand. Calvin was definitely only pretending to read now, looking up every other minute as I essentially made love to the back of Taylor’s head. Eye-fucked the camera. Exposed my throat, arched my back. Pulled Taylor’s hair.
“Ouch,” he winced.
“Get used to it,” I said back.
“Can you lick his neck, Lu?” Ray said and I complied, running my tongue up the side of Taylor’s neck.
I looked up at the camera, inadvertently catching Calvin’s gaze again. He didn’t break contact this time, still staring. Taylor’s hands smoothed up the backs of my legs. I nibbled on Taylor’s ear. He grazed his hand on my stomach, pushing up the crop top and exposing the lower swell of my breasts.
I bit my lip, made eye contact with Calvin, expecting him to blush or cough or faint.
Instead, he gave me that look again, the one from last night.
Pure fucking lust.
“Take her top off, Taylor,” Ray said, and Taylor’s fingers glided up my rib cage, the fabric lifting off. I wasn’t completely exposed, but if you used your imagination you could get there.
I was pinned beneath Cal’s gaze, trapped against Taylor’s body, and growing more aroused by the second. Gone was Cal’s nervous demeanor, replaced by something almost savage.
And then a family with six children walked in, breaking the moment.
“Holy—” the teenaged boy said, whipping out his phone. The mom gasped, the dad tried to stay composed, and the youngest children were distracted by the lollipops Cal quickly found for them.
“So sorry,” he said, moving from behind the desk and escorting them back to the front parlor. Taylor laughed, Ray grinned, and I wasn’t entirely sure what the fuck had just happened.
“Let’s take an actual break this time, eh?” Ray said, standing and stretching. Josie handed me my top and I put it back on.
“That’s a great idea,” I said quickly, slipping off the six-inch platform sandals I was wearing. “I’m going to wander for a minute, get some air.”
Josie gave me a questioning look but I shook her off. I walked towards the back half of the store, discovering a few hallways I hadn’t noticed before. One of the hallways was comprised entirely of built-in bookshelves and I ran my hands down the spines, seeing some well-loved titles.
I breathed in the scent of dust and words. My heart was still racing, my body keyed up. I suddenly longed for someone to press me against these shelves, skin-to-skin.
Oddly enough, I wanted that someone to be Calvin.
I shook my head, dismissing the thought entirely and wandering further. I looked up toward the ceiling, seeing the postcards Cal’s grandfather had pinned. I was tall enough to be able to read some of them—they appeared to be older.
Tonight, a group of us listened to Diane di Prima read some new poems in The Big Room. Amiri Baraka was also there, joining in on occasion. Smoked good weed and had the oddest sense that I could feel Diane’s words on my skin. Robert opened the windows and the night air was so clean and cool I cried.
I swallowed against a sudden wave of emotion, feeling the enormity of this place. Of the moments that happened here, of this person, now probably sitting at some desk, filing paperwork or answering emails, but with the memory of hedonistic nights at this bookstore.
“Lucia?”
I spun at my name and fell directly into Calvin’s arms.
“Sorry…ah, fuck, I didn’t mean—” he started to say.
“—oh, no, it’s not your fault,” I mumbled over him, looking up into his face.
At first, he wouldn’t look directly at me, shoving his glasses back onto his nose and trying to slide past me. But the hallway was too narrow and so we stood, locked together for a moment, so close we were practically hugging, the only thing I could focus on his hand, clamped like steel around my wrist.
He stepped back first. “I’m so sorry, I…um…really didn’t mean to scare you.”
I waved it off, willing my heartrate to slow to normal. “You’re fine. I’m kind of jumpy today.” I smiled at him and he smiled back, tentative.
“I think, um, well I think you might have given that dad a heart attack,” he said.
“Not the first time,” I said, stony-faced, pointed at my barely-covered breasts. “These things are real killers.”
His laugh came from deep in his chest. He was cute when he laughed.
He was cute when he wasn’t laughing.
“I was reading this card,” I pointed up and Cal moved closer again, tilting his head to see. I thought about his gaze back in The Big Room, his hand on my wrist. “I just had the strangest feeling reading it. I was… I don’t know…enthralled.”
My tongue rolled around that word—enthralled. It was a good word.
“That’s beautiful,” he said softly. “You know, there are days where I would give anything to be here during that time. I can’t imagine seeing someone like Diane di Prima reading poems, and at the height of Beat Poetry, no less.”
“Yes,” I breathed. “I went through a heavy Beat phase when I was younger. I loved this one of hers called…” I tipped my head, trying to remember. I’d been in eighth grade, fighting with my parents about modeling and escaping through poetry.
“‘An Exercise in Love’?” Cal said, eyes finding mine. The air became charged, the hallway growing smaller around us. I w
anted to hold onto this moment: two near-strangers talking about poems.
“That was it,” I said, a smile practically splitting my face. “I loved that—”
“Lu, you back here?” Josie stumbled into the hallway. When she saw us, she could barely conceal her reaction—a blend of excitement and confusion. We were standing closer together than I realized.
“Hello,” I said, waggling my fingers at her. “Ray need me back?”
“He does. And he sent Taylor back to the cabins for a bit. Told him to get his head on straight.”
Cal glanced at me. “It’s common,” I said, shrugging. “Modeling is hard. Sometimes you’re just not in the right headspace for it.”
“This girl, though—this girl could model balancing on the tip of the Empire State Building,” Josie said, leaning against the bookshelves. I laughed. I wanted to snap a photo of her and Instagram it, some cute caption about best friends. She looked so pretty.
“You’re thinking about Instagram, aren’t you?” she said and I sighed, my hands aching for a phone that wasn’t there.
Cal moved out of the way, letting Josie grab my arm and pull me down the hallway. “I just miss it so much,” I whined.
“It’s only been a day,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you’ll survive.”
I turned back towards Calvin, his shoulders broad against the narrow shelves. He gave me a small smile and I winked at him. He blushed and looked away.
I turned back to Josie, feeling confident again.
At least Calvin liked me.
◊
CALVIN
I slid onto a barstool and motioned over to Gabe, who was chatting with another Big Sur local. Without even looking, he opened a beer and slid it down the bar towards me. This bar (affectionately called “The Bar” by those who lived here) had been around as long as my grandfather’s store, although it had been through several different permutations. I wasn’t even sure of its real name, but I’d been coming in a couple times a week since moving here.
A few tourists came in, immediately obvious. They were laughing, pointing at some of the strange artwork on the wall. Like all Big Sur institutions, this place was half bohemian, half leave-me-the-hell-alone.
I wondered when I had stopped thinking of myself as a tourist. I’d only lived here for five months, and yet it seemed that taking over my grandfather’s store gave me automatic “local” status. That, and many of the folks here actually remembered me from when I was a kid and I’d spend my summers here.
I wondered what they’d think of me when I sold his store a month from now and moved back to Silicon Valley.
“Calvin,” I looked up to see Gabe, The Bar’s bartender and owner — and the first friend I’d made here.
“Gabriel,” I said, grinning.
I liked Gabe, a lot. He was funny and chill and didn’t seem to care that I was a bumbling mess of nerves half the time we hung out. He was a true Big Sur bohemian: man bun. Full beard. He looked like a hippie lumberjack.
“I’ve heard through the Big Sur Channel that you have a bunch of Hollywood starlets at the store right now,” he said.
“I do. And I have no idea what to do about it,” I said, sipping my beer. “I have a hard enough time talking to normal people, let alone famous people.”
“Ah, you’ll do fine,” he said. “I mean, they probably barely notice you, right? Maybe I’ve lived in Big Sur too long, but I get the sense they wouldn’t care too much about us lesser folk.”
I nodded, thinking. “That’s pretty much true,” I said, “and it hasn’t been too hard. I mean, I’ve just been showing them around, giving them a bit of ‘inspiration.’”
Gabe grimaced. “Stories about your grandfather?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The usual.”
Gabe was an institution in Big Sur, even though he was only a few years older than me. But his family had lived here for generations and tourists often sought him out for stories about communes and acid trips. Like my grandfather, Gabe actively worked to keep the memories of this place alive.
But sometimes having to share the same stories over and over to drunk San Jose State students got old.
“Right now, the biggest issue is the fact that none of them knew they would have little-to-no internet connection.”
Gabe laughed. “Amateurs. Don’t they know we send letters up here?”
I laughed too. “I remember the shock of it when I first got here. I used to be so connected, especially in programming. There was always some new blog post to read, or community thread about a new thing Google was doing. I loved to just scroll through Reddit—”
“—down in an internet rabbit-hole—”
“—and then look up and realize two hours of my life had gone by while I watched cat videos.”
Gabe nodded, picking up a towel and starting to dry beer glasses. “You get so used to the luxury that coming up here feels shocking. Which you know I technically prefer,” he said with a smile. Gabe lived his life pretty off the grid.
“Yeah, and I think the two models, Lucia and Taylor, both have a big internet following so they’ve been extra twitchy.”
“Interesting,” Gabe said, stepping away for a second to help two customers, both locals.
Gabe was one of the only locals not curious about the ‘Hollywood starlets’ camped out at the bookstore for the next week. But I’d already shooed away countless others (the Mayor, two waitresses from the diner, a handful of local musicians) who’d been sneaking around, trying to get a glimpse of the action.
My phone buzzed, a text from Ray, reminding me about the photo shoot tomorrow. I was closing the shop early and taking them into the Ventana Wilderness, the long stretch of forest that ran alongside Highway 1 in Big Sur.
I had mentioned to Ray that my grandfather used to camp in the wilderness in the 60s and 70s with some of the poets and authors that came through town. Ray wanted my help in staging a kind of bohemian camping scene for Lucia and Taylor, which I was happy to do even though none of this entirely made sense to me.
On the phone, before arriving, Ray had told me all about high fashion, and how avant-garde this designer was, and how the ‘new’ thing in Hollywood were photo shoots that had the feel of modern art. And I nodded along, taking notes, and wondering when the fuck we started caring about clothing so much.
Gabe walked back, grinning, nodding to the two customers. “They’re both planning on coming back this week to spy on the photo shoot. You are suddenly very popular, my friend.”
I sighed, shifting on the barstool. “That’s good, because we need customers,” I said wryly. “After the shoot is done, I need to start putting things together to sell,” I said.
A look of disappointment flashed across Gabe’s face and I cringed. I knew, deep down, how he felt about it—he was part of a long list of residents who had both subtly and not-so-subtly pleaded with me not to sell.
“Have you, uh…have you reconsidered on that at all?”
“No,” I said, honestly. “I mean, it was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, but my parents and I looked at the finances and I just don’t think it’s possible.”
“You don’t want to revive it? Bring it back to its original glory?”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I can’t run a bookstore, especially not that one. My grandfather was like this big, bold person who didn’t give a fuck about society or doing anything the normal way.”
“Which is why he was so awesome,” Gabe interjected.
“True,” I said. “It is why he was so awesome. But that’s not me. I can barely…” I paused, coughing a little, “I mean, I can barely ask a girl on a date and I’m almost 30 years old. I don’t take risks. I’m not spontaneous or impulsive like he was.”
I thought about my routine back home: commute, work, commute, gym, sleep.
The American Dream, although my grandfather would have considered it a nightmare.
“And running that bookstore isn’t the same as it used to
be. Writers don’t want to come through and do readings anymore. We barely make enough revenue a month to pay costs.” I finally stopped, feeling myself blush and hating it. My inner introvert seemed to be in constant turmoil up here. Sometimes when I felt comfortable enough to talk or share a lot, I’d feel embarrassed afterward.
“I don’t know,” Gabe said, thinking. “You left your job for six months to move here. You drink with me most nights. You’re currently hosting two world-famous models at the shop. That’s pretty impulsive, Cal.”
“Hardly,” I said, smiling sadly. “And I’ve got a meeting with these investors I really like in two days. It’s all but done.”
Gabe nodded, switching subjects. He never pushed, even though I knew part of him wanted to beg me to keep it open. He had a lot of good memories at The Mad Ones and considered it an historical landmark of Big Sur. I knew it was painful for him to think of it being sold and turned it whatever the fuck it would be next—a hotel? A spa?
Gabe and I chatted the rest of the night, but I felt unsettled. Every time I thought about my life back home, I felt an odd blend of homesickness and dread. Every time Gabe would tease me about being “wilder than I thought,” my stomach would clench.
I couldn’t tell if it was anxiety over selling the store, or my body trying to tell me something else, something deeper. Like that night in the woods with my grandfather, his deep belief I was living an uninspired life.
I walked home late, a little tipsy but mostly happy, the cold air and storm clouds forcing me into the present moment. It was going to pour rain at any moment, but I didn’t care. A gentle reminder that I liked talking with Gabe, I liked sitting in a bar surrounded by my neighbors. I liked walking home beneath a Big Sur sky—I knew why my grandfather loved it up here: beneath the expanse of these stars, every crazy idea you’d ever had felt possible.
And I had a crazy idea.
When I got home, I walked into the Poetry section of the bookstore—the small room off the Big Room. I slid my fingers down the spines until I found Di Prima, Diane and pulled out a collection of her poems.
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