Homesick for Another World

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  She said she didn’t believe in fate or magic. There was hard work and there was luck. “Luck and hard work. Good looks and intelligence. In this city, it’s rarely a two-for-one.” I remember her telling me that the day I moved in. “Any fool can see you’re handsome. But are you smart at all? Are you at least reasonable? That counts for a lot here. You’ll catch on. Did you see this?” She held up the cover of a flimsy magazine showing Jack Nicholson picking his nose. “This is good. This is interesting. People like to see celebrities at their worst. It brings the stars back to earth, where they belong. Listen to me. Don’t go crazy. I should warn you that there are cults in this city, some better than others. People ask you to open a vein, you walk away. You hear me?” She made me fill out a form and sign my name on a letter stating that if anything happened to me, if tragedy struck, she would take no responsibility. “I don’t know what they teach you in Utah, but even Jesus would get greedy here. The Masons, the satanists, the CIA, they’re all the same. You can talk to me. I’m one of the good ones. And call your mother,” she said.

  I had no desire to speak to my mother. I took a mint candy from the crystal bowl on Mrs. Honigbaum’s desk. “My mother and I don’t really get along,” I said.

  Mrs. Honigbaum put down her pen. Her shoulders slumped. I could see the fringe of her real hair poking out from under her wig in short gray tufts across her forehead. Tight bubbles of sweat, murky with makeup, studded the deep lines of her wrinkled cheeks. “You think you’re the first? My mother was a terror. She beat me black and blue, made me chew on bars of soap any time I mouthed off. She forced me to walk miles in the rain to get her plums from a tree, then beat me because they were full of worms. And yet I mourn her passing. I’m a grown woman, and still I cry. You only have one mother. Mine got starved to death and thrown in a trench full of rotting corpses. You are lucky yours is still living. If I were a Christian I would cross myself. Now go call her. You know she loves you.” And still I didn’t call.

  I felt safe at Mrs. Honigbaum’s house. I trusted her. She said there’d been an incident only once. A girl had stolen one of her rings. “It was a ruby, my mother’s birthstone,” she told me dolefully. Because of that, it was forbidden to bring guests into the house. I had a lock on my door but I never used it. There was a guest bathroom all the tenants shared. We had to sign our names to book shower time on a piece of paper taped up in the hallway. Mrs. Honigbaum never gossiped about the tenants, but I had the sense that I was the one she liked best. One tenant was a voice actor for some cartoon show I’d never heard of. He walked around barefoot and shirtless, perpetually gargling and speaking in a falsetto, to keep his vocal cords from seizing, he explained. There was also a man in his thirties, which seemed ancient to me at the time. He was always widening his eyes as though he’d just seen something unbelievable. He had deep creases in his forehead as a result. I saw him carrying a painting to his car once. It was a portrait of Dracula. He said a friend was borrowing it for a music video. Another guy was an aspiring makeup artist. He always wore flip-flop sandals, and I could hear him flapping up and down the hall at odd hours. Once I caught him without any clothes on, thrusting his genitals into the cold steam of the refrigerator. When I cleared my throat, he just turned around and flapped back down the hall.

  My room was next door to Mrs. Honigbaum’s office, so from morning to night I could hear celebrity news blaring from her six or seven televisions. The noise didn’t really bother me. Every morning when I passed her open doorway on the way to the shower, her maid would be spraying the carpet where the poodle had shit. Stacks of old tabloids flapped in the breeze from an industrial-sized fan. The poodle was old and its hair was yellowed and reddish in spots that made it look like it was bleeding. It was always having “bathroom mishaps,” as Mrs. Honigbaum called them. Whenever Rosa, the maid, saw me without a shirt on, she covered her eyes with her hands. Mrs. Honigbaum sat at her desk and stared at her television screens, sweating and taking notes. It seemed like she never went to bed.

  “Good morning,” I’d say.

  “A sight to behold,” exclaimed Mrs. Honigbaum. “Rosa, isn’t he beautiful?” Rosa didn’t seem to speak English. “Ah! My menopause,” Mrs. Honigbaum cried, shoveling barium supplements past her dentures. “Thanks for reminding me. Look at you.” She shook her head. “People will think I’m running a brothel. Go get yourself some lemonade. I insist. Rosa. Lemonade. Dónde está la lemonade?” With all the rejection I got at auditions, it was nice to be home and be somebody’s favorite.

  • • •

  One afternoon, as I was coming in from tanning, Mrs. Honigbaum invited me to dine with her. It was only five o’clock. “Someone was going to come, so Rosa cooked. But now he’s not coming. Please join me, or else it will go to waste.” I had the night off from work, so I happily accepted her invitation. The kitchen was all dark wood, with orange counters and a refrigerator the size of a Buick. The white tablecloth was stained with coffee rings. “Sit,” said Mrs. Honigbaum as she pulled the meat loaf from the oven. Her oven mitts were like boxing gloves over her tiny, knobby hands. “Tell me everything,” she said. “Did you have any auditions today? Any breaks?”

  I’d spent most of the day on a bus out to Manhattan Beach, where Bob Sears said a guy would be expecting me at his apartment. I arrived late and rang the doorbell. When the door opened, a seven-foot-tall black man appeared. He plucked my head shot out of my hands, pulled me inside, took a Polaroid of me without my shirt on, gave me his card and a can of 7UP, and pushed me out the door. “It was a quick meeting,” I told Mrs. Honigbaum. “I didn’t have many lines to read.”

  She slid a woven-straw place mat in front of me, plunked down a knife and fork. “I’m glad it went so well. Others have a harder time of it. They take things too personally. That’s why I know you’re going to make it big. You’ve got a thick skin. Just don’t make the same mistake I made,” she said. “Don’t fall in love. Love will ruin you. It turns off the light in your eyes. See?” Her eyes were small, blurry, and buried under wrinkled, blue-shadowed lids and furry fake lashes. “Dead,” she affirmed. She pointed upward to the ceiling. “Every day I mourn.” She cleared her throat. “Now here, eat this.” She returned to the table with a dinner plate piled high with meat loaf. I hadn’t eaten a home-cooked meal since Gunnison, so I devoured it quickly. She herself ate a small bowl of cottage cheese. “That is kasha,” she said, pointing to a boiling pot on the stove. “I would offer you some, but you’ll hate it. It tastes like cats. I make it at night and eat it for breakfast, cold, with milk. I’m an old lady. I don’t need much. But you, you eat as much as you can stomach. And tell me more. What did Bob say? He must be very proud of you for all you’re doing. I hope you’re going to call your mother.”

  I still hadn’t called my mother. By then I’d been in Los Angeles for several months.

  “My mother doesn’t want to talk. She doesn’t want me to be an actor. She thinks it’s a waste of time.”

  Mrs. Honigbaum put down her spoon. Under the harsh light from the hanging lamp over the kitchen table, her fake eyelashes cast spidery shadows on her taut rouged cheeks. She shook her head. “Your mother loves you,” she said. “How could she not? Just look at you!” she cried, raising her arms. “You’re like a young Greek god!”

  “She’d be happier if I came home. But even if I did, she wouldn’t love me. She can’t stand me most of the time. Everything I do makes her angry. I don’t think she’d even care if I died. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “It’s impossible,” cried Mrs. Honigbaum. Her rings clanked as she clasped her hands together as if in prayer. “Every mother loves her son. She doesn’t tell you she loves you?”

  “Never,” I lied. “Not once.”

  “She must be sick,” said Mrs. Honigbaum. “My mother nearly killed me twice, and still she loved me. I know she did. ‘Yetta, forgive me. I love you. But you make me mad.’ That’s all. Is your mo
ther a drinker? Does she have something wrong with her like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “She just hates me. She kicked me out,” I lied some more. “That’s why I came here. I just figure acting is a good way to make a living, since I can’t go home. And my dad’s dead.” That was true.

  Mrs. Honigbaum sighed and adjusted her wig, which had fallen off center with all her gesticulating. “I know what it means to be an orphan,” she said gravely. Then she stood up from her chair and came to me, the sleeves of her housecoat skimming the table, knocking over the salt and pepper shakers shaped like dancing elves. “You poor boy. You must be so scared.” She cradled my head in her thin arms, squishing the side of my face against her low-slung breasts. “I’m going to make some calls. We’re going to get you on your way. You’re too handsome, you’re too talented, too wonderful to be squandering your time working at that pizza place.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead. Then I cried a little, and she handed me a chalky old tissue from her housecoat pocket. I dried my tears. “You’ll be all right,” said Mrs. Honigbaum, patting my head. She went and sat down and finished her cottage cheese. I couldn’t look her in the eye for the rest of the night.

  • • •

  The next day I picked up a copy of the coupon circular where Mrs. Honigbaum’s columns were published. I found one at the pawnshop across from the bakery where I bought my cinnamon doughnuts. Then I boarded an express bus going east on Melrose. I took a window seat and laid the circular across my lap. Mrs. Honigbaum’s columns ran side by side on the last page. I found my horoscope. “Virgo: You will have trouble with love this week. Beware of coworkers talking about you behind your back. They could influence your boss. But don’t worry! Good things are in store.” It was nonsense, but I considered it all very carefully. The gossip column was just a list of celebrity birthdays and recent Hollywood news items. I didn’t know anybody’s name, so none of it seemed to be of any consequence. Still, I read each and every word. Suzanne Somers is suing ABC. Princess Diana has good taste in hats. Superman II is out in theaters. As I watched the people of Los Angeles get on and off the bus, I felt for the first time that I was somebody, I was important. Mrs. Honigbaum, who cared so much about me, wrote columns in this circular that traveled all across the city. Hundreds if not thousands must have read her column every week. She was famous. She had influence. There was her name right there: “Miss Honey.”

  Oh, Mrs. Honigbaum. After our fourth dinner together, I found myself missing her as I lay on my bed, digesting the mound of schnitzel and boxed mashed potatoes and JELL-O she’d prepared herself. She made me feel very special. I wasn’t attracted to her the way I’d been to the girls back in Gunnison, of course. At eighteen, what excited me most was a particular six-inch length of leg above a girl’s knee. I was especially inclined to study girls in skirts or shorts when they were seated beside me on the bus with their legs crossed. The outer length of the thigh, where the muscles separated, and the inside, where the fat spread, were like two sides of a coin I wanted to flip. If I could have done anything, I would have watched a woman cross and uncross her legs all day. But I’d never seen Mrs. Honigbaum’s legs. She sat behind her desk most of the time, and when she walked around, her thin legs were covered in billowy pants in brightly colored prints of tropical flowers or fruit.

  One morning, I stopped off at Mrs. Honigbaum’s office on the way to the shower, as usual.

  “Darling,” she now called me, “I have something for you. An audition. It’s for a commercial or something, but it’s a good one. It could put you on the map quick. Go wash up. Here, take this.” She came out from behind her desk and handed me the address. Her handwriting was large and looping, beautiful and strong. “Tell them Honey sent you. It’s just a test.”

  “A screen test?” I asked. I’d never been in front of a real movie camera before.

  “Consider it practice,” she said. She looked me up and down. “What I wouldn’t give,” she said. “That reminds me.” She went back to her desk and riffled through her drawers for her pills. “To be young again! Well, go shower. Don’t be late. Go and come back and tell me all about it.”

  It took me several hours to get to the studio in Burbank. The audition was held in a small room behind a lot that seemed to be a place where food deliveries were made. The whole place smelled faintly of garbage. Two slender blond girls sat in folding chairs in the corner of the room, both reading issues of Rolling Stone. They wore tight jeans and bikini tops, huge platform sandals. The director was middle-aged and tan, his chest covered in black curls, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. His beard was long and unruly. He sat with a script open in front of him on the table and barely lifted his gaze when I walked in. “Honey sent me,” I said. He didn’t stand or shake my hand. He just took my head shot and flicked his cigarette butt at the floor.

  He must be doing Mrs. Honigbaum a favor by allowing me to audition, I thought. He could have been a former tenant of hers. If he’d be reporting back to her, I wanted to perform better than ever. I had to be perfect. I slowed my breathing down. I focused my eyes on the blue lettering on the cameraman’s T-shirt. GRAND LODGE. The cameraman had huge shoulders and hair that flopped to one side. He winked at me. I smiled. I chewed my gum. I tried to catch the eyes of the girls, but they simply sighed, hunched over their magazines.

  It turned out to be the longest and most challenging audition I’d ever had. First the director had the cameraman film me while I stood in front of a white wall and gave my name, my age, my height and weight. I was supposed to say my hometown and list my hobbies. Instead of Gunnison, I said, “Salt Lake City.” I had no real hobbies, so I just said, “Sports.”

  “What do you play—tennis? Basketball? What?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I play everything.”

  “Lacrosse?” the director asked.

  “Well, no, not lacrosse.”

  “Let’s see you do some push-ups,” he said impatiently. I did ten. The director seemed impressed. He lit another cigarette. Then he told me to mime knocking on a door and waiting for someone to answer it. I did that. “Be a dog,” he said. “Can you be a dog?” I sniffed the air. “What does a dog sound like?” I howled. “Not bad. More wolf than dog, but can you dance?” he asked. I did a few rounds of the electric slide. The girls watched me. “Needs work,” the director said. “Now laugh.” I looked around for something funny. “Go. Laugh,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  “Ha-ha!”

  He made a mark on the paper in front of him. “Now be sexy,” he said. “Like you’re trying to seduce me. Come on, like I’m Farrah Fawcett. Or some chick, whoever, some girl you want to lay. Go.” He snapped his fingers again.

  I’d never had to do anything like that before. I shrugged and put my hands in my pockets, turned to the side, pursed my lips, winked at him. He made another note.

  “Come in for a close-up,” the director said to the cameraman. “Stand straight, dammit,” he told me. “Don’t move.” The camera came about six inches from my face. The director stood up and came toward me, squinted. “You always got zits up there between your eyebrows?”

  “Only sometimes,” I answered. I tried to look at him, but the lights were too bright. It felt like I was like staring into an eclipse.

  “Your eye’s messed up, you know that?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a lazy eye.”

  “Work on that,” he said. “There’s exercises for that.” He sat back down. “Now be sad,” he said.

  I thought of the time I saw a dead cat on the street in Gunnison.

  “Be angry.”

  I thought of the time I slammed my thumb in the car door.

  “Be happy.”

  I smiled.

  “Be brave. Be goofy. Be stuck-up.” I tried my best. He told me to stick out my tongue. He told me to close my eyes, then open them. Then he told me to kiss the two girls. “Pretend they�
��re twins,” he said. He clapped his hands.

  The girls stood up and came toward me.

  “You. Stand on the line,” the director said to me. “That line.” He pointed to a length of black tape on the concrete floor. The girls stood on two Xs marked in red tape in front of me. They looked young, maybe sixteen, and pretty in a way girls hadn’t been back in Gunnison. The skin on their faces was orange and as smooth as plastic. Their eyes were huge, blue, with wide black pupils, white liner drawn across their lids like frost. Their heads were big and round, necks and shoulders narrow and bony. I chewed my gum and put my hands in my pockets.

  “What are you chewing?” one of the girls asked.

  “It’s gum,” I said.

  “Get in the shot,” said the director. “On the line. Jesus.”

  “That’s rude,” the other girl said to me.

  “Take out the gum!” the director yelled. “Let’s do this. We haven’t got all day.”

  I took out my gum and held it on the tip of my finger and looked around for a place to throw it out. The girls sighed and rolled their eyes. The camera came closer.

  “Action!” the director cried.

  The girls lifted their chins.

  I just stood there holding my gum, looking down at the legs of the table where the director was sitting. I was paralyzed. The girls laughed. The director groaned.