by Paloma Meir
Strange thing, his father hated Sarah. He couldn’t voice it, but you could tell from his grunts and the way he would recoil when she would touch him to check his vital signs or muscle elasticity. Danny would reassure her, surprised by his father’s reaction, reminding her that she had told him strokes could sometimes cause personality changes.
Our ornery neighbor died a week after Danny’s father had the stroke, and Danny was on his house. He approached the neighbor’s estranged son before any real estate agents could get to him. He offered to buy the house for fair market value, telling him that doing the deal directly would save him the five percent brokers fee. Deal done.
He was worked up about whether or not to tear down both of the houses and build one giant mega Modernist box that was popular in our area, or to keep the one we lived in and tear down the other and build a more modern house. He didn’t know the zoning laws, or how the coastal commission worked, so the rest of his time was spent in Downtown LA, researching the variances, or talking to architects and builders about what the better choice would be for his investment, which would be sizable. In fact, he would have to liquidate most of his assets to make any scenario work. He didn’t worry about that.
Chapter Seventeen
I made myself a veggie smoothie after a long day out with some friends about a month after the cathartic breakdown of Danny. I felt a little lonely, a little lost without the responsibilities of school and the daily companionship of my good friend. The one who had suddenly sprung up into a fully grown man.
He came in the front door dressed in a baby blue plaid button down shirt that made his eyes pop out in a disarming way, and slim fitting khakis. His bronzed skin, from spending all of his days in the sun, had begun to fade, disappointing me. He placed a pile of mail on the counter that I had neglected to bring in for the previous two weeks from the look of it. I thought of apologizing but was too lazy to say anything about it.
He handed me my mail. I looked down to see Zelda’s return address. She had sent me three letters, one in an oversized envelope. I started to tear the largest one open but was distracted by Danny violently tossing a letter into the recycling bin. I looked into the bin, confirming it was from Zelda.
“Dude, did you throw away her letter?” I retrieved it and tossed it on top of our refrigerator. “I’ll put it on top of the refrigerator. You might want to read it later. Heavy. She wrote you a manifesto.”
“Doubtful.”
“Dude, fucking hot. You turned her gay.” I tore open the envelope to find a magazine, a French one. I don’t know the name of it because I’ve never been able to look beyond the picture of her dancing with Theodora on the cover. Her arms swung over her head, her lips locked against her friend’s, the pink jeweled dress clung to her body, the high pink heels that would have made her well over six feet tall. The sweetest of the siren songs from Zelda.
“Mother of the year. Throw it away.” Mesmerized by the cover, I ignored his dismissive almost angry tone.
“I’m going to keep it in my bathroom. Just screwing around buddy. There’s a note in it. “This is how we keep the men away.” She’s being funny. Where did that come from?” I put the magazine down because my mind was running away with me, imagining lifting up the dress, taking her from behind, devouring her completely. I opened up her other letters and willed away the thoughts of running my hands through the armholes of her dress and squeezing her breasts tightly in my hands. Maybe just tearing the whole dress off of her.
“What is her problem? She sends me crazy texts, now this letter. How did I not notice that she was a complete idiot all these years?” Again, I ignored him.
“Dude, the letters are all about Louisa, and what they’ve been doing.” Truthfully, a little dull after the erotic charge of the magazine picture. “A photo captures a moment not a life. If you want to hate her fine, but I don’t want to hear it. She’s texting you?”
“Just twice. I didn’t respond. She gave up.”
“What did she say?” I wanted to say that two texts over a period of a month did not deserve the characterization of “crazy texts” as if she were stalking him, but I didn’t because feeding anger wasn’t my thing.
“I have no idea. Something about stars and time. As I just said, she’s a moron.”
The mention of stars and times confused me. I did not have ownership over those concepts, but I didn’t know how she could mention them without thinking of me after listening to me prattle on about it about it for half of her life. But who cared about that when the magazine lay in front of me.
“Well aren’t you lucky, she went away then.” I held it up to him giddy with feelings I shouldn’t have had at all, let alone in front of my friend whose life had, according to him, been wasted and destroyed by her. “Who would want anything to do with that?”
“You can have her. She’s good for a workout.” He looked down at his phone as if he were bored.
“I might take you up on that bro,” I called out to him, still giddy as he walked to his room. “I won’t mention her anymore, okay? Stop hating on her.”
I went to my room, veggie shake in hand and put the magazine in the top drawer of my brand new black lacquered bedside table. I looked at the cover again as I was about to the shut the drawer and wondered if she had really thought it was a funny picture. She was a twenty-seven year old woman with a child. Could she really not see it was provocative, an invitation to objectify her?
Instead of shutting the drawer, I reached under the magazine to the letter I had begun to write her and impulsively ripped it up into tiny pieces. I pulled out a page of blank paper and quickly drew a stick figure drawing of me opening the envelope and seeing the cover. To express my surprise, or lust, or however she chose to view it, I drew the eyes popping out of the head.
I stuffed it in the envelope and drove myself to the postbox down the road, mailing it before I changed my mind. It seemed the least embarrassing way to ask for clarification of her intent.
Our correspondence began. She never gave me a real answer about her choice in sending me the magazine, only saying she was happy I found it funny too. Her letters were filled with stories of her nights out with Theodora. She used the word bacchanal to describe the decadence of dining late at night with the Parisian elite, the artists, and the designers, and of dancing late into the night. I used the term very differently.
She would spend her days shopping and taking Louisa around to all the museums and parks. Her letters weren’t very interesting, but they were the highlight of my week. I would wait outside by our mailbox on Mondays, the day they usually arrived. I told myself that it was to protect Danny because any mention of her would send him to a dark angry place I didn’t like to see.
For her birthday I found a Victorian era ivory cameo bookmark at a garage sale, mint condition. I wasn’t cheap about it either. The owner wanted forty-five dollars for it. I handed it over, no haggling. I wrapped it with overpriced wrapping paper I had bought at the Malibu Country Mart. I took my time in wrapping it as well, making sure the hand painted velvet ribbon they sold me for more than my daily food budget was perfectly symmetrical.
Satisfied with the presentation, I tucked my card, a carefully folded stick figure drawing of the two of us on our eleventh and twelfth birthdays blowing out the candles on a cake my mother had made for us. I took the package to the post office and sent it express mail with insurance and tracking. I wanted her to wake-up to it on her 28th birthday, so proud of it I was.
I woke up the next morning, my 29th birthday, to the doorbell ringing. I roused myself out of bed and tripped over Danny’s present to me, a brand new surfboard. My old one was covered in dings. He had hastily written a note in large block letters saying, Fucking Birthday Buddy, next to the large red bow.
I sat back down on my bed to call him on the road, thank him, but the door buzzed again sending me across the house in my boxers to answer it. I saw the UPS man walking away, and almost yelled out to him. I didn't want to hav
e to run out onto PCH in my underwear, but my eye caught the package at my feet sparing me the embarrassment.
I knew it was from Zelda even before looking at the address slip attached to the top of the box. I opened it to find a gift box wrapped in yards of raw black faded silk. The huge bow sprung up as I lifted the gift out of the cardboard shipping box. The card fell to the floor.
I unbound the fabric and opened the box to find reams of black and grey tissue. I dug through it all and eventually found a jacket, a blazer to be precise. I held it up to the light streaming through the newly installed charcoal colored curtains in my room.
Zelda had taught me as a teen to recognize the quality of textiles, to know the difference between fine tailoring and mass-produced clothes. The navy velvet jacket was top tier, bespoke quality. I stood up to try it on, not believing such a luxurious item would be mine after my years of ragged clothes. The lining was also navy but embroidered with silver silk stars, like the night sky. I picked up my phone to call her. I put it back down as I noticed the designers label and realized the cost involved in this gift.
I laid the jacket down upon my bed and slowly opened her card.
Happy Birthday Serge,
I know that it’s your birthday, but having this jacket made for you made it feel like my birthday, I spent days in Jean’s studio picking out the fabrics, overseeing the construction, and even helping his assistants with the embroidery of the stars. I know it will fit you perfectly by the way it fits me, a little too wide in the shoulders, and snug at the hips.
Best, ZM
I didn’t try the jacket on, instead I took all of her letters out of the drawer and reread them as a story she was telling me. A tale of excess is what I read. The suite on the top floor of the George V hotel she casually mentioned and had been staying in for the previous two months was $2,500 a night. I know this because I checked online. The shops she mentioned, that I hadn’t thought about, all of them couture with dresses starting in the thousands. The driver she had hired because cabs and the metros proved to difficult with her daughter was an ex-Mossad bodyguard. I couldn’t figure out how much that cost but I assumed it was very expensive. All the dinners in Michelin rated restaurants couldn’t have been cheap either.
Zelda was for whatever reason rebelling. I knew from my sister that she had lived a modest life in Madrid with Paolo, who looked down on American excess. He paid for all of their living expenses, not that it was a huge sacrifice for her. He came from money, she lived well. Danny had been the same, always reining her in, insisting on them living within his means for the most part.
She wanted to be independent. A wave of sadness swept through my body. Such a simple desire, that most put no thought into, which would happen gradually with the passage of time, eluded her for the entirety of her twenty-eight years.
I put the jacket on. It fit perfectly like no other item of clothing I had ever possessed.
Chapter Eighteen
I stepped out of the shower on Thanksgiving Day in a rush to get dressed, shaking the water out of my dreadlocked hair that never seemed to get too wet, as if the knots were water-resistant. I wrapped the towel around myself and opened the door into my room to find Marianne. She had come down for the holiday to visit her mother and was staying with me. She was stretched out on my bed with papers all around her. As I drew closer to her, I saw that the papers in question were Zelda’s letters to me, with the magazine in the center of the mess she had created.
“I think I’m going to cut your hair off while you’re sleeping tonight Serge.” She lifted her head up and a slow smile spread across her beatific face, a sparkle in her feline eyes.
“I wouldn’t like that,” I said without humor and scooped up the letters. “Why did you do this?” She had never infringed on my privacy before. We had always been open with each other. There was no need, and it wasn’t her nature.
“Stop.” She put her hand over mine, preventing me from picking them up. “I was looking in the drawer for condoms. You didn’t tell me...”
“Why were you looking for condoms? We’re leaving in a few minutes.” I shook her hand off mine, gave up and sat down on the crowded bed beside her. “I told you that we were writing letters.”
“There must be forty letters here. All over the last five months, and from what she writes, it doesn’t sound like you write anything. You draw pictures. You don’t think that’s a little strange?” She sat up beside me on the edge of the bed.
“There are only twenty-seven letters... Marianne, if you wanted to read them, you should have asked me.” I knew the violated feeling I was having was ridiculous, but that didn’t make it go away.
“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I was curious. She’s always been so... I don’t know... important to you.”
“Okay, fine... forgiven.” I stood up to get dressed. She pulled me back down.
“Does Danny know?”
“There’s nothing “to know” Marianne. She’s one of my oldest friends, and yes, he knows. He’s angry with her, something he should have been years ago, waste of time now... But he’s not a baby. He doesn’t expect me not to be friends with her.”
“Those aren’t friend letters." She waved her hand across the bed.
“You’re right. They’re a travelogue.” I leaned back and collected the pile scattered across the duvet.
“Serge,” Danny stood before my open door, “I’m going to run up to the liquor store, get a bottle of wine for my parents. Will you be ready in half and hour?” His eyes drifted from me to the letters on my bed. He shook his head and looked upward as if even in her absence, she was a terrible nuisance. He was a little angry, but not at me. No more sadness and watering eyes for him.
“Yes, good, half an hour.” He nodded his head and left with a pounding heaviness to his step.
“We have time now.” I got up and closed my door. “Did you find the condoms on your quest to invade my privacy?”
“I’m sorry.” She put the remaining letters in a pile on my bedside table. “Zelda...”
“Is my friend” I let my towel drop to the ground and crawled up on the bed, “Actually, we don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do to you, so this will have to tide you over until later.” I pulled her underwear off from beneath her pleated skirt.
“No, no, no,” she squirmed away from me and pulled out the magazine that had been tucked under the pillow with all the picking up and putting down of the letters, “she’s wants your attention.”
“She has my attention,” I took the magazine from her hand and placed it face down on the table beside my bed, “She’s like a sister...” I sat up next to her and put my arm around her, “Are you jealous?”
“Yes Serge, I am jealous.” She sounded bitter, which surprised me. “Look at these...” She reached over to pick up the pile. I stopped her.
“Do you want more than we have?" I had never been more confused by her.
“Not until I saw the letters.” She reached out for them again and began to cry. “You love her.”
“How many times do I have to say this?” I laid her crumpled and quivering body onto the bed, and lay down next to her, putting her head on my chest and ran my fingers through her hair, “She’s my friend.”
“You never really loved me.” She could barely get the words out through her sobbing.
“Where is this coming from?” I moved her off my chest and rolled on top of her and held her head in my hands so she would look at me. “Nobody has ever made me as happy as you. I told you I loved you all the time. Don’t you remember? I didn’t like to be away from you. I took you to all my tutoring sessions, all my games... I went away to college. It was a mutual break-up... I flew you down to Lima for the Copa... What more could I have done? You’ve never cared about the other women in my life, not even Jimena, and Zelda’s not one of them. You know that.” I ran down our whole relationship in my mind, trying to find an aspect that I had missed. There wasn’t one.
“Jimena? That was one month in the mountains. I didn’t know about it until you had been back home for months, and no I didn’t like it.” She tried to move her head, but I held firm. She relaxed, calming down.
“You didn’t like it?” I held my laughter back fearing she would misunderstand it. “Should I count the number of long term commitments you’ve been involved with over the last ten years? If you don’t like the way we are with each other, we’ll have to change that, okay?”
“So we’re not going to see each other anymore? You think I’m so stupid, but I always knew you didn’t really care about me. I was so insecure, such a mess... I didn’t care as long as you were with me, but I knew... I knew that you just wanted to fix me. I could see how powerless you felt with your mother and…”
“Stop it, Marianne,” I got up off the bed and pulled a pair of frayed taupe painter’s pants out of the pile of clothes on the floor, and felt the emotional punch of her words to my solar plexus, “I was going to say that we should spend more time together,” I paused, the words felt stuck in my throat, “Give it another go, try a long distance relationship... It’s not too bad of a drive.”