by Anna Dorn
While I’m filling in my hours, in which I just always fill in the max time allowed and wait for them to challenge me, which they’re normally too lazy to do (perks of government work), a text floats in from Ellie.
Bad news bb, I heard from Micah, she writes.
Uh-oh. Micah is the rapper whose album I was supposed to feature on.
His producer says your verse isn’t quite the right fit for the album, so they’re cutting it.
Ugh. I fucked up. I knew I was off that day. It was too hot in that studio. I made the mistake of wearing gray, which I never wear because I’m a sweater. I knew I was supposed to be focusing on my bars, but all I could think about was the rapidly darkening spots of fabric under my arms, on my lower back and sternum. And Micah is this wholesome sober vegan, so he had nary a drop of alcohol in the studio to take the edge off. Also he is beautiful. I get very nervous around such perfect bone structure. Like, how is this man out here having better cheekbones than me? And I’m behind the glass feeling like a monkey at the zoo, and he is just staring at me with those perfect feline eyes. He is this gorgeous panther, and I am just a chimp sweating all over his studio like a real joke.
I see Ellie is calling me and I ignore it.
She texts again. Please don’t think this reflects on you or your talent as an artist, she says. It’s a subjective business. Besides, Micah’s style is very different from yours.
Talent doesn’t exist, I type back, then shut my laptop and grab my keys. I go on a walk to quiet my brain, but it doesn’t work. I’m so mad at myself. I have so many opportunities just handed to me, and I fuck them all up. The only thing I’m good at is stupid law, which I don’t even care about. Besides, I need to stop practicing after Yumiko Houndstooth’s case. I’m way too unstable to have indigent people’s liberty in my hands. As my brain spins, I wonder if I made a mistake in going off my medicine. Then I think I’m having emotions for the right reasons, because I experienced a genuine disappointment.
When I get home, I take an Adderall Nina gave me and start crafting rhymes to prepare for my next session with Jax. I don’t come up with much, but I like the following: all my cars imported / all my thoughts distorted.
When I enter the Kingdom that night, I feel like I’m being strangled by a ghost. I can’t tell if this is a side effect from my lowered dosage of Celexa or my disappointment about Micah or the Adderall I took earlier, so I decide to stop thinking about it. Pilar is there, but I interact only with Jax. We head straight to his studio in the corner of the main room. While we sip beers and listen to some beats, I think about how I fucked up with Micah and how I’ll probably fuck up again and be stuck practicing law in my bedroom for the rest of my life. But “Bedroom Lawyer” might be a good song title.
The fourth beat is absolute gold, Timbaland-esque, and I know it’s the one. I try out the bar about my distorted thoughts and some others I wrote a while ago about being vegan, which I’m not. It’s satire, I think. I can never tell if what I’m doing is satire. When I get into a flow I feel like Jax’s Missy Elliott. When I’ve hit my creative max and can’t record any more without sounding scratchy and feeling stiff—approximately one hour after beginning to flow—I excuse myself. I need to get enough sleep to work on my brief.
At home, I head straight to my bedroom to get my eight hours, organizing arguments in my head as I brush my teeth. I plan to argue that the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Yumiko willfully hit the officer with her shoe (an intentional mens rea [state of mind] is required under the statute). Here is my version of events: the cop grabbed Yumiko’s arm without reasonable suspicion, and—as an involuntary reflex— her arm (which happened to be holding a shoe) swung and hit him in the face. Unfortunate situation, really, but not criminal. As finding the gun was a fruit of the Fourth Amendment violation, the law says it must be suppressed. And without the gun, there’s no charge.
Before nodding off, I call Ellie. I like to hear her voice before I go to bed and when I wake up. When I tell her about my recording session, she gets all giddy. I typically don’t attach much weight to her support because she’s obviously looking at me through rose-colored glasses, but this time I can tell she’s serious. I wonder whether she’s considering representing me or at least finding me representation. They say not to mix business and pleasure, but I’ve always disregarded that rule. Every job I’ve gotten is from someone I know. Business is pleasure is art is business, I always say, or maybe that was Andy Warhol.
Instead of asking to represent me, Ellie asks the name of my current weed strain. Marijuana isn’t Ellie’s drug of choice, but her clients are stoners.
“Blue Dream,” I tell her.
THREE
The next morning I’m typing and listening to Kari Faux’s Lost En Los Angeles when I think I feel an earthquake. But it’s really just my iPhone buzzing against my desk. It’s Ellie.
“I’m being sent to New York Shitty for three months against my will,” she whines. Ellie hates New York, and so do I. Dirty, boring, overrated. “The people there are so pale,” she once said, “like they’re dying.”
“What?” is all I can manage. It comes out froggy. My throat tightens; the ghost strangler is back. I take a deep breath and do a neck roll.
“I know, baby,” she says. “When I come back I’m going to buy you something real nice. A Benz. Black, vintage, tan interior— just like you like.”
“Thanks,” I say. I smile and my eyes feel wet, a rare sensation. I really only cry in movies or at concerts—art moves me more than life. “Promise you won’t forget about me?” I ask.
“Never,” she says.
I’m silent, and after a brief pause, she says she has to go.
She hangs up and I realize I forgot to ask her why she’s going to New York. I lie facedown on the bed and try to cry into my pillow, like they do on TV, but nothing happens. So I jump up, shake my limbs around, and return to the keyboard.
The law is very tedious. Lots of long, excessively complicated citations designed for a pre-Google era. I kind of freestyle the formatting part, which my less smart supervisors always harp on about because what else do they have? I really need an intern. Law students are wet for formatting.
I finish promptly at COB and feel high from pushing up against the deadline. This is very unlike me. Maybe this is the new, less medicated me: impulsive and exciting, always running on adrenaline.
Afterward I meet Ellie at Nora’s. When I see the sign, the name Nora reminds me of Nina and I push the thought out of my head. I should be focusing on Ellie right now. She’s leaving this weekend and we’ve decided to spend every night together before the wretched East Coast steals her from me.
Once inside, I remember that scary butch from the last time we were here. I’d forgotten to ask her about it afterward, or maybe I was just too afraid. The truth terrifies me. That’s probably why I’m a good lawyer.
I sit down across from Ellie and we quickly settle into a nice conversational rhythm, which is mostly me talking. Ellie loves to listen to me monologue and I love to monologue. I tell her about Yumiko Houndstooth and the “shoe incident,” as I’m now calling it. I tell her there is a strong Fourth Amendment claim, but the issue is that Rachel was a real psycho on the stand. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, she admitted to threatening the cop on the scene, and then she threatened the judge. I tell her about the Kingdom and about Nina and Pilar and about my being the Missy to Jax’s Timbaland.
“Oh my god, I’m so jealous you got to hang out with Pilar.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Have you heard her voice?” Ellie asks.
I shake my head.
“Just look her up,” says Ellie.
“Fine,” I say. I’m still not sure about Pilar. It’s very difficult for me to like a girl who is that beautiful.
Just as my jealousy starts brewing, the alarm on Ellie’s phone goes off—loud, raucous, strident, nightmarish. It’s the sound I hate most in the world, an
d it’s always going off at inopportune moments—when I’m midsentence, already having an unpleasant feeling, or, worst of all, mid-REM cycle. It’s funny, Ellie is so competent in certain ways. She understands the stock market and was on Forbes’s “30 under 30” list in entertainment. But in other ways, she has total absentminded professor vibes, which I mostly like because I’ve always wanted to fuck a professor. She’s always being surprised by her schedule, like we’ll be having this nice, normal conversation and then her god-awful alarm will go off and she’ll yell, “FUCK!” and realize she has an important meeting with the next big thing in thirty minutes. If I had an important meeting of any sort, I’d be spiraling about it for weeks. I can’t imagine something important just popping up on me in the form of that terrible alarm. I’d say that alarm is the biggest hurdle in our relationship at the moment.
“And I think Celeste is friends with that Nina girl,” Ellie says once she turns her alarm off. “She works with some music writers.” The way Ellie says “Nina girl” suggests she’s threatened. Probably because they both have curly hair and capture my attention.
“Cool,” I say.
Then we stop talking about the Kingdom and Ellie starts talking about New York. I focus on my Niçoise salad and start crafting rhymes in my head.
Got something?
do nothing
you like me?
that’s touching
I keep it chill & breezy
so it’s cute that you be lusting.
Before I know it, Ellie is signing the check. The East Coast, ruining my life again. I imagine her meeting a needy butch there—or worse, a man.
Back at my apartment, we put on Pilar’s SoundCloud and I suck hard on my vape pen. Ellie starts playing Candy Crush on her phone and I stare at the streetlights dancing on my wall. I think about how nice it is, the way Ellie and I can just sit in silence and inhabit our own special worlds, together, united by Pilar’s spooky voice.
Eventually Ellie starts to drift off and I admire her ability to fall asleep without trying. I need to toss and turn and craft, like, twenty-seven raps or related fantasies in my head before my mind lets me sleep. This time, I imagine being onstage with the charm of Wyatt and Agnes. There is pink smoke and the crowd is screaming and my hair is longer and thicker and silkier than ever.
I wake up with bars dancing around my head. Ellie is gone. The sun pours through the palm fronds that curl over my bed. Gucci Mane once described his home, which has indoor trees, as “like living in a forest,” which inspired me. The cats scream outside my bedroom door. I’ve started locking them out because they’re getting on my nerves.
I’m waiting for my supervisor to get back to me on brief edits and I have no new cases, so I decide to spend the morning writing rhymes. I walk in circles around Echo Park Lake listening to MF Doom and typing bars in my Notes app:
discipline and punish, no pomo
like Foucault, no homo, like Zuko, Travolta
no pistol, no holster
I’m winning, I told ya
but y’all already know, duh.
When I’m tired I go home, eat lunch, and take a nap. When I wake up the sky out my windows is turning pink. I reach for my phone and have two texts from Jax and two from Jake Perez.
From Jake Perez: Hi stranger. Library sesh tomorrow? Jake and I often work together at the Silver Lake Library, which has spacious desks and a very hot librarian. Also, there is normally someone having a very public mental breakdown, which always makes me feel better about myself. Jake says I have schadenfreude. He’s not wrong.
From Jax: Come over. The Kingdom is ablaze. I’m not entirely sure what that means but very interested in finding out.
Calling a Lyft, I text Jax.
I’ll text Jake tomorrow.
When I arrive at the Kingdom it’s glowing red. I prefer the blue. The red makes me feel like something bad is about to happen, but to be fair I always feel like something bad is about to happen. It’s why I was medicated for ten years.
Jax puts me at ease, as does Missy Elliott’s Supa Dupa Fly blasting through the speakers, which was playing when I named my cat. Jax pulls my body close to his and breathes in my hair, which for some reason doesn’t creep me out at all. He hands me a tiny plastic bag in a handshake and I give it back to him.
“I’m good,” I whisper in his ear. I get high off abstaining.
“Perfect,” he says. “More for moi.” He flicks his head around, grabs my hand, and pulls me through the hallway, which is littered with skinny men and women with gold hoop earrings. People carry Solo cups and PBR cans. A hipster frat party.
Jax takes my hand and pulls me down the hall. In the main room, Pilar chats at someone while her cigarette ash drifts to the floor like rain. As I scan the room for Nina, my gaze hits something unpleasant. Another ex-lover. My slutty past is always coming back to haunt me.
“You okay, Vaga?” Jax asks.
At first, I can only manage a sigh. “An irritating ex is here,” I finally say.
“Fuck, you want me to kick her out?”
“Him,” I say. Thomas is this clinger I dated about a year ago. Whoever says that only women cling has not dated a beta male. Thomas was one of those aggressively sensitive men who uses his “kindness” as a weapon. “But I had such a nice time with you,” he pleaded when I called it off. Well, that’s wonderful—most people enjoy my company—but it doesn’t mean I have to keep dating you.
“Oh,” Jax says. “I thought Vaga was strictly… vag-a.”
He laughs and I laugh too even though I’m annoyed. I want to say, Are you strictly dickly? But instead I say, “Dearly queerly.” I am coming up with this on the spot. It cracks me up, the word “queer.” It’s a very alienating way to identify, and I think that’s why I’m drawn to it, especially now. The only other option was “mostly vaga” and that doesn’t rhyme. I wanted to rhyme more than I wanted to be factually accurate. There is no spoon anyway.
He laughs again. “All right, all right,” he says. I realize for the first time that I don’t know Jax’s sexuality and I haven’t even tried to guess. He gives me post-sexuality vibes, like a god. Or Rihanna.
“That might be a song,” he says, and at first I’m not sure what he’s talking about. “‘Dearly Queerly.’ Maybe we can record it tonight, you know, once the plebes filter out.”
I nod. The room is crazy crowded. I definitely don’t have this many friends. Sweaty arms brush up against me on all sides and I don’t love it.
“So who am I kicking out?” Jax asks. He hands me a perspiring Tecate. I have no idea where it came from.
“No, no,” I say. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
He wipes some Tecate from his lip. “You’re a better woman than I.” More laughter, and I feel compelled to join. Before I know it, there is an arm around me.
“Didn’t mean to scare you, kitty cat.” Pilar laughs.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m on edge.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s what we love about you.”
I meant at this moment, but now I’m concerned I always come off like a nervous wreck. Also, I had no idea Pilar “loved” me. The last time I saw her she seemed aggressively indifferent to my existence.
As soon as I’m about to say thanks, she’s gone, and her arm is around someone else.
“Dina train,” Jax says.
“Dina?” I ask.
“Oh,” he says. “Dina as in Dina Lohan.” He must clock my confused expression and laughs, then lowers his voice, leans in to whisper in my ear. “As in cocaine.”
This time I let out a genuine laugh. I’ve heard a lot of euphemisms for cocaine but this is my favorite. A floating hand holds out a blunt and I grab it eagerly. I love blunts. I just lack the dexterity to roll them so I’m at others’ mercy. This is typically the case. I’d be the first to die in an apocalypse.
I pass Jax the blunt and he shakes his head. “Not until after hours,” he says. Then he disappears to the couch. I’m
alone and I’m high and I don’t know who to talk to. Feeling paranoid, I gulp my beer to even out. This is how I like to do. Beer, weed, beer, weed, until I’m basically comatose.
I eventually walk over to Jax, who is sitting on the couch next to a bony, pale man I don’t recognize. I get a weird vibe from him, like he isn’t at all embarrassed to exist. Also, he seems sick.
As I walk, I’m very aware of my body and how stiff it feels when it moves. I wish I knew who rolled the blunt so I could inquire about the strain. I’m having a moment of paranoia, but I look forward to the other side. This is how it works. Euphoria, terror, euphoria, terror, until I need to smoke more.
“Hi,” I say. I sit down on the ledge of the couch.
“I’m so happy you get to finally meet Beau!” Jax shouts with big Dina eyes.
“Oh, the famous Beau,” I say, then become embarrassed. Is he famous? I’ve heard of him once. He looks at me strangely and my body language starts to fold in on itself.
“He wishes he were famous.” Jax laughs. Beau just narrows his eyes, like he hates me.
I laugh at Jax’s joke slightly too late.
“Something funny, new girl?” Beau asks me, I think. He’s staring at his phone.
“Pardon?” I say with a French accent. I’m suddenly confident, embracing the extroverted edges of my high. “New girl?”
He looks up from his phone and I see his face for the first time, which is sunken and translucent in a way that suggests hard drug use. His hair is jet black, and his face borders on handsome but falls on the side of frightening. “Aren’t you a lesbian?” he asks.
Objection: Relevance? Ten minutes at this party and I’ve already been interrogated about my sexuality twice. Thank god I’m not sober. “I’m queer.” I hate myself as soon as the words leave my mouth. I wish there was a better word for when you feel uncomfortable identifying as a lesbian because you’ve seriously dated men and you don’t want to cheapen those relationships, but you will likely never date a man again, and you’re also an obnoxious pseudo-intellectual who believes gender and sexuality labels are a prison. Jax’s gender presentation is way more confusing than mine—how come he never has to announce his sexuality? Oh right, his Y chromosome. Also, he’s a Leo.