by Anna Dorn
When? I write.
Tomorrow.
Good lorddddd!
NINE
Wicked Ice’s office is in Chinatown, right across from this place I used to go dancing in my twenties with Jake Perez called Hop Louie. It’s a weird dive bar with a jukebox and the bartenders are mean as hell. Chinatown looks very different during the day, sterile and cartoonish.
The office is crisp and white and minimalist. Paintings of cool ocean scenes decorate canvases on the walls. A woman with hair the shade of her bright red lipstick takes us into the back room. Two heavyset white men dressed like rappers are seated at the edge of a white table.
The men introduce themselves as Max and Ezra. We introduce ourselves and sit down. I’m wearing a black tunic and my hair is tied up in a velvet scrunchie on top of my head. I think I look pretty great. But I don’t really feel great. Looking great and feeling terrible.
As soon as I sit down I start sweating. I force myself to take a breath. I try to talk myself into being excited. I’m about to be famous! Wicked Ice! I force a smile, which I never do, but it’s supposed to do something good neurologically. Pilar gives me a strange look.
Pilar sits on my right and Jax on my left; Yumiko and Beau are on either side of them. Beau is shaking his leg and it thrashes against the table and I keep thinking it’s an earthquake. Everything feels ominous in this harsh light. It’s so bright in here. Outside the windows people work at massive white Mac computers. Occasionally they look in and say something to each other. I feel like a goldfish, or the food for the goldfish.
“So along with the rest of the world, we loved ‘Dearly Queerly,’” says Max or Ezra. I forget which is which. They look very similar except one is slightly heavier. The heavier one was speaking. Shit, did he say “world”? For the first time, I wonder whether our song is actually good or if Nina is just a really good writer who happens to have a crush on me, then I think of Lana— I fucked my way to the top.
The less heavy one speaks. “But one hit single does not a career make,” he says. “Just look at Kreayshawn.”
Ouch. I mean, I like “Gucci Gucci,” but we’re obviously on a different level. I make eye contact with Jax, who is frowning angrily at the table. Good, we’re on the same page.
“We ain’t no Kreayshawn,” Yumiko shouts at the men. I have an image of her in the courtroom, and for some reason my immediate instinct is to laugh. This moment is so strange. I watch the women outside, shuffling around behind their massive Macs. I feel like I’m one of them, watching the situation from outside the glass.
“We understand that, Yumiko,” says the less heavy man. Her name sounds weird coming out of his mouth, like he’s emphasizing the wrong syllable.
“Don’t fuck with us,” she says, and slams both hands on the table. Jax looks impressed. Yumiko pulls back her arm and shoves the speakerphone in the middle of the table. Max and Ezra jump a little and this time I actually laugh.
“We have no interest in fucking with you,” says the heavier man.
The redhead who led us in is gesticulating wildly outside the glass. I think she’s on the phone. I stifle a laugh and Pilar gives me a weird look again.
“Just checkin’,” says Yumiko. She’s using an accent I’ve never heard before.
“We don’t want to waste anyone’s time,” says the less heavy one. He adjusts his black fitted cap. “We want to put out your first EP on Wicked Ice.”
“Okay,” says Jax.
I’m staring at the ceiling, which is so white and bright I begin to feel dizzy. I wipe my wet palms on my dress. I look out the windows and it’s equally terrifying somehow. The redhead seems manic. She’s moving too much. Everyone outside the room is moving around like a maniac, and everyone in this room is paralyzed with fear. The tension reminds me of our song, at least how Nina described it. Maximalism meets minimalism; everything cloaked in panic.
I check my reflection in the glass and I look calm somehow. Try to be that person in the reflection, I tell myself. But soon I’m looking at that maniac redhead again screaming into her cell phone. She reminds me of Beau, who is speaking right now. He’s talking numbers, which I don’t understand. I try to focus on the in and out of my breath. I’m an artist.
I am not getting air in.
I am dying.
I fantasize about jumping out of my chair and leaving the room, but I can’t imagine it. I can’t walk. I’d collapse.
Just then, Max and Ezra start to stand. They reach out their hands. We stand and everyone reaches out a hand except Yumiko, who walks straight toward the door. I’m impressed by her erratic behavior. I’d love to be that uninhibited. I guess that’s why I’m always dosing myself.
I’m mad at Beau for being here, and he has no qualities I want to emulate.
The redhead comes over and walks us out of the office, gesturing more than she needs toward the door. Soon, we’re outside. I take a big breath of hot exhaust and somehow feel okay.
I file Yumiko’s brief the next morning. I realize it might be the last opening brief I ever file and have a little private celebration in my head. I got a fair amount of money from the Wicked Ice deal, enough to not need to rely on appeals for a while. Plus, I’ll still have money coming in from the California government as my lingering cases are decided. I get my inheritance at thirty-five as long as I can maintain the right image for my parents. (Luckily, they are internet illiterate.) I stopped taking the Big Pharma medication that was stifling my creative power and causing me to write mindless legal briefs for the government. Now I’m self-medicating to maximize my creative potential. It’s all happening.
Yumiko’s parka flashes through my brain, then exits as fast.
I go meet Jake Perez for lunch to celebrate my independence from government servitude. We bring our laptops to this place called Subtropical, where people go to day drink and pretend to work. Jake and I open our laptops and begin performatively clicking our keyboards.
“So, your dreams are coming true,” says Jake Perez after we’ve ordered. “How does it feel?”
My chest tightens a little and I sip some beer. “It feels great.”
A text from Nina slides across my iMessage.
Hi.
God, she’s so annoying. I can’t believe I ruined my perfect relationship with Ellie for someone who communicates like a middle school boy.
“Who’s texting you?” asks Jake. I don’t respond. “This is your Venus conjunct Pluto issue.”
“Excuse me?” I ask. I know Jake Perez has told me about this aspect of my chart before, but I’ve taken care to avoid preserving it in my memory. I know my sun, moon, and rising, but I don’t fuck with the aspects. I respect that Jake is into it, but for me, it’s a line that cannot be crossed. The last thing I need is more minutiae to obsess over.
“How many times do I have to explain it to you, Prue?” Jake Perez asks. He sips his wine and his lips are red. “You attract stalkers.”
I text Nina back. I admire your brevity.
“Nina isn’t a stalker,” I say. “She hardly even likes me.”
“Remember Thomas?” Jake asks.
“Gawd,” I say. Jake set me up with Thomas, so he was dragged into his post-breakup cling. For several months, Thomas just “happened” to be everywhere I was—every party, every yoga class… I even saw him at my therapist’s office. Once Thomas cornered Jake in a 7-Eleven demanding an explanation for the demise of our barely relationship. I really can’t imagine dating a man again. Too needy. Also not pretty enough.
Annoying as it was, a part of me secretly enjoyed Thomas’s obsession. For a few desperate months, his entire world revolved around moi. As I sip my beer, I feel a strange sense of loss at the fact that Thomas has likely moved on.
“I like being stalked,” I say. “Stalk me, bitch.”
“You’re unwell,” Jake says.
I sip my beer again, then grin at Jake Perez. “Oh, wait,” I say. “You already did.”
“Pardon?”
“Why did you decide to be my friend?” I ask.
Jake rolls his eyes, then his entire head. “Not a day goes by that I don’t regret telling you that.”
Dinner? Nina texts back.
“I can’t believe you’re going on a date right now,” Jake Perez says to me when we leave the restaurant. “You were, like, just dumped.”
“It’s not a date,” I say. “And I wasn’t dumped. In the words of Ross Geller, I’d call it a break.”
“She said she doesn’t want to hear from you,” says Jake Perez.
“Until she gets back,” I say.
“You’re delusional,” he says. He takes my cigarette from my fingers, drags it. “But I’m glad Nina’s a Scorpio.” After an exhale: “There’s no way you can handle one of us.”
I meet up with Nina at a Mexican restaurant with flaming margaritas. They ask if we want to sit outside or inside. The patio is really cute, but I have horrible circulation. “Inside,” I say, and Nina looks at me kind of strange. She looks good in her normal uniform: a silk crop top, high-waisted Levi’s, a black braided belt, a thin gold chain. If she were to DJ, her name could be DJ High-Wasted, although she isn’t really ever wasted.
“Do you have any siblings?” she asks when we’re seated.
“Is this a date?” I ask.
Nina laughs, thankfully. I need her to loosen up.
“Do you want it to be?” She bites her lip and her freckles scrunch.
“I’m not in the mood to be interviewed,” I say.
“I’m a journalist,” she says. “I’m curious. I like getting to know people.”
“And I’m an artist,” I say. “I love to deflect.”
She laughs.
“Do you have siblings?” I ask.
“Nope,” she says.
I light up. I never meet only children. This is exciting. “Me neither!”
“Shocker,” she says.
“I never learned to share.” I dunk a chip in guacamole mainly for something to do with my hands. I’m not hungry. I place the chip on my plate.
“Do you get jealous when people talk about their siblings?” Nina asks.
“No,” I say.
“You don’t want them?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Lack of interest.”
“What do you want?”
I decide to quote Lana. “Money, power, glory.”
She frowns. “You’re pretty fame-obsessed.”
A rebuttal comes quickly. “Yes, I’d like to be noticed.” I pick up the previously discarded chip on my plate. “As a queer woman, my story has been erased by the canon.” I’m trying my absolute hardest to say this with a straight face.
“A white woman with a law degree,” Nina says. “I’d hardly call your kind erased… You basically invented the canon.” This turns me on.
“Which makes me the perfect person to subvert it,” I say, then bite the chip.
After two drinks Nina asks me if I want to go to a show downtown. Some DJ she likes. In the Lyft, she puts an Adderall in my hand. Now this is a date.
I swallow it while Nina asks the driver for his auxiliary cable. She puts on Drake. Interesting choice.
“So are you going to write about all this?” I ask.
“Depends,” she says. Then she starts rolling her body to Drake. She looks good, though.
“Did you really like the track?” I ask. The Adderall has already given me courage.
“Prudence,” she says.
“No one calls me that,” I say.
She jabs me in the rib cage. “You really care about my approval, don’t you?”
“Only because Jax does,” I say. “I don’t really care about the people who read Pitchfork.” I can’t tell if I’m lying. “I want to win over the red states.”
“Yes, ‘Dearly Queerly’ definitely has that alt-right appeal,” Nina jokes. She reaches for her iPhone and switches the song.
“Oh god,” I say.
Nina rolls down the windows and starts chanting along with Yumiko’s voice on the speaker.
“Oh, this song,” says the driver.
I try to hold back my smile.
The driver drops us in a parking lot in front of an enormous millennial-pink warehouse.
“Oh,” I say. “This is near where American Apparel was invented.”
Nina says nothing. I don’t know many people who are as good at keeping their thoughts in their head as I am. I light a cigarette outside and she shares it with me. In between drags, she gushes about this DJ we’re about to see and I can’t help but feel a bit jealous.
As we walk up the stairway, she grabs my hand and I feel a little flutter. I remember when I felt this way with Ellie. On our first date, she took me to an indie rock show at the Teragram Ballroom downtown. Neither of us is really into rock music, but the band is a client of hers and I think she was trying to impress me. We got to stand in the VIP section and smoke a blunt with the band afterward. During the show, we danced the way we thought we were supposed to dance at rock shows, kind of thrashing against each other, jokey and playful. I’m pretty sure I did an air guitar and she laughed. The memory gives me a little pang. I consider texting her, but I want to respect her wishes that I don’t contact her. I’m toxic, and she’s an angel. If nothing else, she deserves for me to leave her alone.
“I need another cigarette,” I say when I spot some people smoking out the stairwell windows. I practically run over there and light up. Looking out at the shimmery buildings as smoke burns my lungs, I feel a brief sense of peace.
“You have an oral fixation,” Nina says.
“Thanks, Sigmund,” I say. She raises an eyebrow like she’s impressed I know who Freud is, which, frankly, is sad.
I put it out after only a few puffs. It’s really that first drag I’m after. The theatrics of lighting the cigarette and that pensive first drag. I take one more look at the moon and then grab her hand. She leads me up the stairwell and down a pink-lit hallway, then into a steamy room filled with people who look like they belong in the Kingdom. I wonder if any of them will be here.
As soon as Nina and I are in the middle of the morass, I feel an arm on my shoulder and jump.
“Ohhh, Vaga is out.” It’s Beau. His energy immediately shatters the romance I was feeling with Nina. I feel his beady eyes all over my body.
“Shut up,” I say, as he pulls me into a bony hug. My least favorite thing about the Kingdom is all the hugging; it’s barbaric. Beau brushes his bony knuckles along my skull and teases my hair. The sociopathic brother I never wanted. I slap him on the arm.
The lines shift and, yay, the bar is open; I leap toward it. As I order, I hope Nina isn’t talking to Beau. I’m thrilled when she swoops her arm around my waist. “Grab me a Tecate?” After handing her a drink, I recognize a familiar figure edging toward the stage. Holy shit. It’s Wyatt. Agnes is behind her. I squeeze Nina’s arm.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she says. I kick my Timberland boot and do a little scream.
Next thing I know I’m at the Kingdom. I don’t remember many details from the show, but I assume my lizard brain enjoyed it. Jax is in front of me cutting lines, and I wonder if he was at the show too. I look around the twilit loft, watching artsy weirdos with whom I have varying degrees of familiarity snort white powder off gold trays and exchange pills in elusive handshakes, and it makes me think of Andy Warhol’s Factory. Jax is Andy; I’m his Edie Sedgwick. I guess that would make me dead for two years (I’m pretty sure she overdosed at twenty-eight), which, given the combination of drugs in my system at this moment, makes me laugh for some reason.
A puffy parka swings through the window f
rom the fire escape, pulls me from my thoughts.
“Yumiiiii,” Jax says. I’ve never heard him call her this.
Instead of looking at Jax, Yumiko looks me right in the eye. Her eyes are huge and round and watery—sweet, with an underlying tinge of scary. “You gonna win my case, bitch?”
Jax looks at her confused, and I immediately grab Yumiko by the parka collar. I’m self-conscious for a second, but Beau, Pilar, and Nina are all in their private drug zones. Beau screams “fuck” at his phone. Pilar is braiding Nina’s hair. Jax turns to them, his eyes glassy and vacant.
On the fire escape, Yumiko just laughs in my face—haunting, unhinged. I imagine myself in Palm Springs, lying out by the pool at twilight, naked and exposed, but also feeling myself.
“Of course I’m going to win your case,” I say, then I laugh back in her face.
I think about 1950s housewives on benzos, or quaaludes I guess. Downers keep women passive and in the home, unable to do anything but vacuum rugs and suck dick. Uppers make women participate in the marketplace. We talk a lot, unafraid of what people will think, like men all the time. Women on Adderall are magazine editors and CEOs and doctors and, apparently, lawyers. Girl bosses. I lick my lips.
“Vaga doesn’t lose.”
Back inside, Nina clutches a Budweiser in the corner of the room, her skin glowing blue, and I move toward her almost without thinking. She’s fiddling with her jean jacket pocket. I swing my hip toward hers, but she doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe she’s ignoring me. Something cold hits my shoulder.
“Thanks,” I say, taking a cold beer from her hand. I pop it open and it fizzles. “How do you know Beau?” I ask. He’s sitting on the couch and I glare at him a little. I’m feeling unlike myself. Confident, assertive, aggressive. I’ve only really ever felt this way while writing, but this is the new me. Amphetamine feminist.
Nina just shakes her head and laughs.
I glare at Beau a little harder, squinting my eyes to the point I almost can’t see. He’s staring blankly at the smoke floating up from Pilar’s cigarette, a thin gray snake weaving up to the tin ceiling. I momentarily become transfixed, plucked from my rage. Suddenly Beau pokes Pilar on the shoulder like a twelve-year-old boy and I start glaring again.