Vagablonde

by Anna Dorn

  “Perfect,” he says. Yumiko appears and lights a blunt.

  “Jax,” Beau calls from inside. He’s been working on the lighting and I have to admit he’s doing a decent job. Cool, minimalist blues. James Turrell vibes. Like the Kingdom, or my apartment.

  Jax puts out his cigarette and rushes back in.

  Yumiko and I are now alone and guilt hits. In between drags, she opens her mouth to say something and I brace myself for her to ask me about the case.

  “My friend Crystal is a dope designer,” she says, pulling her flip phone out of her pocket. Yumiko is the only person I know with a flip phone, and when I told her this she said, “What else would I have?” A low-res photo of a parka covered in turquoise glitter pops up on her screen. “For the show,” she says.

  I examine the photo, and the parka is, in fact, “dope,” although I must admit I was skeptical when I heard the woman’s name was Crystal. And this picture is very grainy. “I love it,” I say.

  She looks down and smiles, her thick lashes batting against her face.

  The next morning I take two Adderall and begin reading the government’s brief. It’s better written and more thoroughly researched than most government briefs. (Mostly, the government’s argument consists of something like “appellant’s argument lacks merit because it is meritless” or “defendant’s conduct was illegal because it was not legal.”) The brief is also sixty-seven pages, which is certainly the longest reply brief I’ve ever received. This sends me into a mini-rage. Why is the government so concerned with upholding the nonviolent misdemeanor conviction of this middle-class white girl? Then I feel bad for thinking that Yumiko deserves special treatment because she’s white. Really, I think she deserves special treatment because she’s my friend.

  As I read the brief, I rephrase all the government’s arguments in bullet points in a separate Word document. I reply to each bullet point with a counterargument, or an idea of how to research a counterargument. At a certain point I find myself entering a flow state. I always forget this can happen to me with law until it happens. I imagine myself on a battlefield, coming to rescue my friend with my ability to twist language to my benefit.

  Every few sentences, I refresh Twitter. I count my new followers or search @WYATTLOOK. Whenever I remember that we’ll be performing on the same stage I feel giddy, then terrified, and then I go back to typing.

  Soon my notes become sentences, then paragraphs. I copy and paste the boring legal portions, mildly tweaking the phrasing to avoid overt plagiarism. I fall into a nice rhythm while piano music plays. Sometimes Ennui meows in sync with the music and it seems my typing and the music and Ennui are all part of a single breathing organism. Then I remember she’s meowing because I need to feed her. So I go do that.

  When I return, I see a text from Yumiko. It says, Do you want Crystal to make you something? She said she can do gold on black.

  Crystal’s style is a bit flashy for me, but I don’t want to hurt Yumiko’s feelings, so instead I change the subject.

  I’m slaying the fuck out of your reply brief, I write. At this point I’m pretty high on myself and don’t even think it’s an exaggeration. The government brief is so idiotic, couching its lack of legitimate arguments in pretentious language and irrelevant cases.

  RIGHT ON SISTAAAAAA, she writes back, and I feel proud. Then I remember what Nina said about my possibly breaking ethical rules. I make a mental note to google this later, although I can’t imagine there has been a situation in which a lawyer and client have ended up in a successful rap group before. I remind myself that Robert Kardashian was close personal friends with O.J. and then I calm down a bit.

  I’d say it’s a definite winner, I type, but the sad fact is it’s always an uphill battle when defending the accused in this country.

  I understand, she types back. I already served my time anyway, and it’s not like my record is squeaky clean.

  I’m kind of upset by this response. I want her to want me to win so that I will care. I close iMessage and get back to typing. I make a note to remember this exchange in a few years when someone asks me why I quit law.

  The next day I’m almost done with my first draft when the Kingdom text thread lights up with a text from Jax.

  YOU GUYZ. I think the EP is done. Listening party tonight?? Come over around 9?

  I look at the clock on my MacBook. It’s four P.M. I’ll probably be done with this draft in twenty minutes. This leaves almost five hours to get ready, a chunk of time that makes me uncomfortable. Fucking time. My bête noire. I want to be semi-coherent at the listening party. I want the perfect buzz. I just want to look and feel good at all times, and I don’t think this is too much to ask.

  I consider texting Nina, but then I remember we aren’t speaking. At least I think we aren’t speaking? I haven’t tried to contact her and she hasn’t tried to contact me since I kicked her out the other night.

  I text Jake Perez, Hi.

  New phone, who dis, he responds.

  Yeah, yeah, I’m a shit friend, I type back. Is this a venus conjunct pluto thing?

  No, he responds.

  Then it’s just a sociopathic narcissist thing. Ellie’s exact phrasing. I make a note to bring this up in therapy if I ever go back. I can’t imagine calling Barbara Lumpkin, and finding a new therapist is hell. I’ll think about it later.

  Happy hour? I ask.

  The typing bubbles appear, then disappear.

  By the time I arrive at the Kingdom that night, I’m a tad wobbly. I handed in my draft to my supervisor at 4:30 and then from 4:30 to 8:45 did the following:

  Smoked my vape pen.

  Coated my hair in coconut oil and painted my nails black.

  Zoned out and watched various shades of light hit the wall.

  Washed my hair.

  Took half an Adderall.

  Brushed my teeth.

  Fed Ennui.

  Composed and then deleted pathetic-sounding text messages to both Ellie and Nina.

  Applied eyeliner.

  Drank four light beers while making a Spotify playlist called “Sad Girlz.”

  Took off my eyeliner because I thought it looked messy.

  Took the other half of the Adderall.

  I’m annoyed when Beau answers the door. I mumble hi and walk past him, then strut down the sparkly blue hallway, imagining it to be a runway. In the main room, I see Jax’s silhouette behind the shoji panes, hunched over the panels. The window beside him is cracked open, and Yumiko is lighting candles in her shrine. I feel a warmth toward her, probably because I spent the past few days crafting savage sentences on her behalf.

  On the couch, a forlorn-looking Pilar smokes a long, thin cigarette. Nina rolls a joint at the coffee table, and despite my confused feelings toward her at the moment, I’m comforted by the predictability of the Kingdom, our Factory. I imagine Andy Warhol joining Pilar on the couch, swallowing an Adderall with a chilled glass of bourbon, then saying, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.”

  Nina looks up at me with blank eyes for a second, then returns to rolling her joint. Hatred fills my gut. Then shame.

  I walk over to Pilar and give her a strategic kiss on the cheek. Not an air-kiss, but a wet one. I do the same for Beau. Then I give Nina a condescending pat on the head, from which she recoils.

  “Anyone need anything from the kitchen?” I ask, looking only at Beau and Pilar. They both shake their heads, but Beau follows me. Soon he’s standing in the kitchen doorway, looking like a greasy rat.

  “You sure you need another drink?” he asks.

  I can’t believe a drug dealer is monitoring my substance intake. “I’m just getting a water,” I lie. My words are slurring a bit. “What’s it to you, anyway?” I grab a plastic Lakers cup, fill it with ice, then water. My good mood is dropping, no plummeting. I plan to add a splash of bourbon when Beau leaves.

  “Just looking out for you,” he says. “You’ve been looking… kinda pale.”
/>   I point to a pot on the stove, then a kettle.

  “Whatever.” He shrugs.

  “I thought you liked me pale and frail,” I say. “Better to take advantage of?”

  “Excuse me?” he says with a limp-wristed, feminine tone.

  “Palm Spring her?” I say. “I hardly know her.” I know I’m sounding kind of crazy. I’m also pretty fucked up.

  “Drink some water,” he says, then leaves the kitchen. Once he’s gone, I look around for the bourbon. When I locate the bottle, it’s empty. Behind it, there’s an almost-empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire. I don’t normally drink gin that isn’t a martini, but c’est la vie. I empty the bottle’s remaining contents into my cup.

  When I return to the main room, Jax has emerged from behind the shoji panes. He’s standing while everyone else sits, reigning over his loyal subjects. I wonder whether Andy Warhol was ever this tyrannical. He was a Leo too. I sit on the ledge of the couch beside Beau.

  “My Kingdom,” Jax says, opening his arms wide. The turquoise beads on the ends of the strands of his fringed black coat clink together and the strands make a wave. “Tonight is a big night. I imagine a lot of big nights in the near future. Tonight, the EP. Next week, the Teragram, our FADER cover.” He winks at Nina and I can’t see what face she makes back. “I haven’t slept in the past three days,” he adds. “And I don’t know when I’m going to sleep again.”

  He laughs and everyone else laughs, and I become afraid. I’m not ready to give up sleep. I’m too fragile. Jax looks pale and tired, shaky. I wonder if this is how I appear to Beau. My stomach sinks and I sip my drink, which provides no relief.

  “I want to first give a major shout-out to my girl Vaga,” he says.

  I feel everyone’s eyes on me. How am I supposed to perform in front of hundreds of people if I’m embarrassed when five friends look at me?

  “I’ve been waiting for you my entire life,” Jax continues.

  Yumiko lets out a little holler, which causes everyone to laugh and puts me at ease. I stick my tongue out at her and she sticks hers out back at me.

  “Now,” he says, “let’s listen.”

  The listening session is very uncomfortable. Everyone keeps nudging me and looking at me, and Nina is taking frantic notes in her Moleskine. I become paranoid that I ruined Shiny AF’s career by fucking it up with Nina. I keep wanting to look at what she’s writing but I know that would be insane. The only parts of the listening session I enjoy are when Pilar is singing. Her voice is really angelic and makes me feel like I’m part of something good and right. By the third track, Yumiko has her arm around me and I’m nuzzling up in her parka and she’s petting my hair. I imagine what my supervisors would think and try to push away the thought.

  When it’s finally over, I’m relieved. After a few seconds of silence, Jax asks for our permission to send it along to Wicked Ice and everyone agrees that it’s ready. I’m tempted to say no, mainly because I want to get back in the booth. I don’t want to be done. I want to keep creating. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts and my time.

  “And now,” Jax says, “we party.”

  Like clockwork, Beau pulls out a Ziploc bag of white powder and lays it on the gold tray on the table. He also lays down some bright blue pills and winks at me. I can’t believe he had the nerve to interrogate me earlier. The doorbell rings and I jump.

  “Invite whoever,” Jax says as he gets up to get the door.

  Soon the Kingdom is packed wall to wall. It’s steamy and glows red and looks ominous, and the scariest part is I don’t remember when all these people got here. I’m sitting on the couch next to Beau. He’s mumbling expletives at his phone while I stare vacantly into the masses and think about what Edie Sedgwick would do right now, other than take too many drugs and die.

  I feel a tap on my shoulder. A part of me hopes it’s Nina, but I look behind me and it’s Yumiko. “Shrine?” she asks. I can’t get up fast enough.

  Yumiko has to make a tent around the end of my cigarette as I light it because the wind is blowing. It’s been unusually cold the past few weeks, not getting above the mid-60s—finally appropriate parka weather. The air is damp and misty and I feel nostalgic for the Bay Area, which rarely happens. LA is where the freaks are, like Lana said.

  “I filed a draft to my supervisor,” I say to Yumiko as she lights her blunt.

  “Awesome,” she says. “I’m sure it’s amazing.” Another wind hits and I think I smell the ocean.

  “You’ll see the final copy when it’s filed.” I say this as though it’s a nice gesture, but it’s legally required.

  “Can’t wait to bring those pigs down,” she says.

  “The length of their reply brief suggested they were scared,” I say, then drag.

  “They should be,” she says. “Look at my lawyer.”

  It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about me. Though I passed the bar four years ago, I’ve never really felt like a lawyer. Lawyers are rational adults, and I’m drugged out on a rickety fire escape, sharing a blunt with a former gun dealer.

  “I want to be able to do you justice,” I say, then realize I’ve said something atypically cheesy.

  “I trust you,” she says, and I feel terrible.

  Yumiko and I exhale simultaneously and smoke dances away from the fire escape and up toward the palms.

  I turn and look through the windows into the room. The dance floor is packed. I see Jax and Pilar in the center under the disco ball but don’t really recognize anyone else. I spot Beau because he’s so tall. His arm is around someone I can’t make out. Then I see the curls. Nina.

  I grab Yumiko’s hand. “Let’s dance!”

  She throws her blunt off the ledge and I drag her inside.

  The dance floor has emptied out a bit, and it’s less hot. The neon is no longer red but a calm baby blue. The music isn’t pulsing but rather soft and sonorous. I don’t recognize the song, but when I look over at Pilar and see how she’s singing it—it’s her. I put my arm around her and we bump hips. Jax, Yumiko, Pilar, and I are all under the disco ball, swaying in sync, Shiny AF.

  Just when I feel calm, the bedroom door opens. Beau is tugging the bottom of his T-shirt down as though it’s been off. Nina emerges behind him. I want to look away, but I force myself to watch. It’s emotional cutting, like looking at the Instagram pages of my enemies.

  “Shrine?” I whisper in Yumiko’s ear.

  “But we were just there,” she says.

  Instead of answering, I grab her arm and start pulling it, and luckily she doesn’t put up a fight. I feel the weight of Beau’s presence behind me, like a slimy drugged-out ghost.

  Once we’re on the fire escape, I burst into tears. It’s very unlike me to cry around someone. But Yumiko doesn’t feel like a person. And besides, the drugs and alcohol whirling around in my system have frayed my natural defense mechanisms. I had no idea I cared this much about Nina even. This is good. Maybe I’m finally getting to the heart of my feelings. I’ll become more vulnerable and less sociopathic.

  “Who do I need to pop?” she asks.

  I laugh, and I lean into her parka. She wraps her arms around me. My gaze floats inside briefly and I make eye contact with Nina, who is leaning on Beau’s shoulder. I quickly look away.

  “Wanna get out of here?” I ask Yumiko.

  “Yes,” she says. “I start to feel cooped up when I’m in here for too long.”

  She starts walking toward the window and I grab her arm. “Wait,” I say. “I can’t go in there… “ I eye the fire escape and then Yumiko. Her eyes light up.

  I’m terrified of heights. And I’m fucked up on a potpourri of mind-altering substances. Sound judgment says this is a horrible idea. And yet I’m here, grasping a metal ladder twelve stories above the ground, wind hitting me from all sides.

  Yumiko is already two platforms below me, urging me on. “You got it, Vaga,” she says, using her guttural “hype woman” voice. I worry that she’s waking up Ja
x’s neighbors. I think of aborting this mission, then I imagine Nina and Beau mid-coital and I get a surge of courage. The grotesque image, combined with Yumiko’s hooting, propels me to quickly scale down two stories. As soon as I reach Yumiko, I collapse into her parka, feeling wobbly and weak. She grabs both my arms and shakes me upright.

  “You got this, Vaga,” she says. “The closer you are to the ground, the easier it is.”

  She then swings down to the next ladder, moving gracefully and without fear, a trapeze artist. I take care not to look at the ground.

  Yumiko yells, her voice faint from the distance: “Imagine you’re onstage.”

  I want to yell back that, historically, I panic onstage. I want to tell her I could hardly handle five people looking at me during the listening party. I want to tell her that I’ve been medicating myself into near collapse just to handle the past few months. But I say nothing and grab the ladder and descend, until I’m right beside her voice.

  “Almost halfway there,” she says.

  This is not helpful. My legs feel weak. I don’t think I can make it another half. I look in the window of the apartment we’re beside, wonder if anyone could let me in and escort me to the elevator. But it looks dark and very bougie. I would frighten these people. They might call the police. And Yumiko has a criminal record.

  “Okay,” she says. “Imagine Nina yelling from above, saying you can’t do it.”

  “She would never do that,” I yell back, and think about how much I hate Nina.

  Yumiko’s already hanging on the next ladder with only one hand. “Look,” she says, “the more you drag it out the worse it’s going to be. It’ll take longer to get back up than it will to get down at this point.” Then she starts swinging down the ladder, like a monkey.

  I follow much less gracefully. One step at a time. Don’t look down. With each step, the entire structure seems to shake and I wonder whether it will just break and I’ll fall to my death. Death doesn’t scare me, but the free fall does, as does hitting the pavement. If I die, I pray to a god I don’t believe in, I want it to be quick. And then I’ll smoke cigarettes with Edie Sedgwick in hell.