Aoki laughed. “Of course. Actually, you’ve been on my mind a lot lately—in a good way. I get a bit lonely, sometimes, with so many strangers tugging at me all the time that I never have time for the people who are real to me. So I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the people who really understand me. Who knew me—before all this.” She flicked a hand abstractly, gathering the entire café and the world beyond into the circumference of her personal fame, and then gazed up at him through stubby black eyelashes. “That’s why I contacted you.”
He watched her watching him. Years of history seemed to flash between them, unspoken. It was as if they were veterans from a war that only the two of them had fought, sharing scars from battles that no one else could possibly comprehend. He had let himself forget so much. “I’m glad you did.”
She sat back, pleased. “I knew you would feel that way.”
A diesel bus groaned past, just a few feet away, bringing conversation briefly to a halt. Aoki pinched her nose to block the smell of car exhaust, and Jeremy leaned in to fill the gap of sudden silence: “Well, if we don’t want to talk about the past, what should we talk about instead?”
“Oh, you pick,” she said.
“OK. Tell me what it’s like to be a superstar artist.”
“You really want to know?” She made an exasperated face. “It’s bloody awful. Everyone wants to talk about my myth. The critics, they say anything they want about me, invent meanings for my work that I never imagined, deconstruct my life and then label it me, and I can’t do anything about it. Remember how I used to enjoy screwing with the public? Making up stories about my time spent living with Nepalese yak herders or my hermaphrodite birth and seeing how they scrambled over fictitious crumbs? But now they don’t believe me anymore and instead this whole myth thing has emerged. You know what some critic wrote about me the other day? ‘Aoki exemplifies the fractured soul of the post-modern media age, her constantly reinvented personae externalizing the root of human disconnection.’ It’s like I’m not a human being at all anymore.”
“Strange,” he said, surprised by the force of her diatribe. “I thought you would like that sort of thing. You used to live for it.”
She looked momentarily abashed. “I know. But that was before I knew it would become such a monumental bore.”
“So are you unhappy?”
She ran a finger along the rim of her cappuccino cup, scraping off brown froth with the raw edge of a bitten fingernail. “No. It’s very nice to be rich and respected. I get to do whatever I want whenever I want it. I keep apartments in three cities. And I love the art, of course.”
“Sounds awful,” he said, pulsing with jealousy. That would have been my life if I stayed with her, he thought to himself; and then, before he could stop himself, Did I make a mistake?
“You’d love it,” she said. She smiled, and an understanding seemed to pass between them. “OK. Now you,” she said. “I’m desperately curious about who you’ve become.”
Aoki was looking at him with her head tilted to one side, her eyes narrowed in thoughtful contemplation. It stirred in him a bright shock of recognition: He remembered this look, the one that made you feel like you were the most fascinating person on the face of the planet, a person of infinite depth and undiscovered capabilities. It was the look she’d seduced him with in the first place. Was she trying to seduce him again? Did he want to be seduced? “I should tell you about Claudia,” he said stiffly.
Aoki shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want to hear about her yet. Tell me about you. Let’s start with your music.”
“That’s a sore subject,” he said, hoping he could stop this line of questioning, reluctant to reveal the mundane details of his life. “My band is no more.”
“I thought you were about to finish an album?”
“So did I. Events conspired against me. My bandmates bailed out. Just yesterday, in fact.”
“Daniel,” she said. “Your friend the journalist?”
“Yes, he’s having a kid and he had to quit. But he wasn’t the only one.”
Aoki made a face. “He was always too mild for my taste. Anyway, you shouldn’t have been playing with amateurs. You’re better than that.”
“They were actually quite good,” he objected. “We had a lot of potential. People were eagerly awaiting our album.”
She seemed not to have heard this. “You want to know what I would have done, if I were you? I would have set up meetings with managers the minute I got to Los Angeles, used all those contacts from your This Invisible Spot days. You could have found professionals, other high-profile veterans like yourself—like that guy who played guitar for The Villains, remember? He’s out here; he started a kind of—what’s that hokey word they use now?—superband. LA is the music capital of the world, even if it doesn’t have much else going for it, and I’m sure people would have died to work with you. You could have gone solo, even. Honestly, you missed an opportunity.”
Jeremy took a sip of cold coffee, registering this truth for the first time. He saw the last two years with Audiophone reflected in a whole new and far less flattering light. She was right; he hadn’t ever tried to succeed on his own, not in any kind of significant way. He’d just let his music career proceed in the easiest way possible, had succumbed to complacency and the comfort of friendship. Only now did he realize that he’d completely failed to think strategically; had failed to realize that was even a concern.
“I was distracted, I guess,” he said. “By—other things.”
“Right. Claudia,” she stated flatly.
Claudia’s name on Aoki’s tongue made him cringe. Shame tugged at his sleeve, reminding him who he was now. “Not just Claudia. It’s also … well, we own a house, which is a time and money suck, particularly now with the economy the way it is.” Aoki arched an eyebrow, which Jeremy ignored. “And I’ve got a day job, of course.”
“Yes. Designing T-shirts. A lifelong ambition of yours, I remember.”
He retreated from her, falling back in his seat. “What’s your point?”
She leaned in and—another shock—put her hand on top of his. Her palm was cool and soft, and he looked down at it there, a pale starfish impaled on his fist. He suddenly recalled a hundred vivid moments with that hand, paint-speckled and tiny and always so cold. When she used to grip his body it tingled and burned, as if he were naked in a snowstorm. Claudia’s hands were much bigger and warmer but somehow less possessive. He thought of pulling his hand away from Aoki but he couldn’t quite do it. His heart flopped and thudded as the years of pent-up emotional memory flickered back and forth between them, an electric current.
“You could be so much bigger than you are,” she said.
“Being rich and successful isn’t the only way to be happy.” He said it instinctively, the old cliché falling from his lips before he had a chance to really decide whether or not he believed this. Of course he did. But it might make you happier.
“It’s not just about that. It’s about fulfilling your potential.” She shook her head. “And so? Are you happy?”
He paused, too long, to ask himself a question he hadn’t really asked before. He waded through the quagmire of the last few months—the career failures, the money troubles, the disaster of their home, and the quickening fear that he was headed toward a life of mediocrity—and then clambered out again, ticking off items in the plus column: his marriage to a lovely woman, old friends, a pleasant enough lifestyle. It was depressing that he had to work to list these things at all, though, and by the time he’d readied himself to answer in the affirmative—happy enough—Aoki was already shaking her head. “I refuse to let this happen, Jeremy.”
“I don’t think you have much say in the matter.”
“I’m sure I can do something. I know so many people. I’ll make some calls.” She was so familiar, this Aoki; he used to admire her blithe self-confidence, the way she believed she could make almost anything happen just with the force of her desi
re. But suddenly he didn’t like this aspect of Aoki at all: Who was she to march in after all this time and tell him what to do? He didn’t want to be her pet project. I’m perfectly capable of running my own life, he told himself, despite the evidence suggesting otherwise.
“Thanks for your support, anyway,” he said, halfheartedly.
“Not at all. If anything, I owe it to you. After all, you left This Invisible Spot because of me, so really all this”—she held up her free palm and once again described a semicircle that encompassed the entire city; did everyone else’s world belong to her, too?—“is my fault.” Aoki smiled apologetically; and as she did something seemed to shift, so that once again she was the woman he’d always known—beautiful and compelling and slightly unstable but, still, someone who believed in him right from the start. She wanted to throw him a lifeline, and he should be grateful for that even if he hated the fact that she saw him as a cause to be saved. He knew he could never turn down her offer of help. Maybe she knew that too. He felt himself slipping into a neat little web that Aoki had woven, wondering whether she had planned this all along and hating himself for being so willing to get trapped in it. In order not to be a failure, he realized, I may have to become a bad person.
Out of the blue he wanted, very badly, to lurch across the table and kiss her, just to see how it felt, what might happen to him, whether things would change forever.
He should go home, now, to Claudia, before it was too late.
Looking down, he noticed that they were still holding hands and quickly withdrew his, masquerading his desertion by lifting his coffee cup and draining the last milky drops. “I need to go now,” he said, afraid to sit there any longer. “I’ve got to get in to work. But it was really great to see you.”
“You’ll see me again, of course,” she said. “You’re coming to my opening, yes? All my sycophants are sure to be there—so I’m sure you won’t enjoy it, exactly, but at least you’ll get to see what I’m talking about. I did send you an invitation, didn’t I?”
“No,” he said, his chest tightening. “You didn’t.”
“Well, consider yourself invited.” She flashed a wicked smile, revealing a snatch of bright white teeth and pink tongue. “Bring Claudia,” she said.
Claudia
THE APOCALYPSE HAD ARRIVED IN LOS ANGELES, AND A YELLOW scrim of haze shimmered low on the horizon for days on end, as if something were perpetually on fire in the distance. Still two weeks out from Halloween, the weatherman was reporting temperatures topping 100 degrees, an unseasonable inferno.
At Ennis Gates Academy, the air-conditioning system had gone down in a very untimely fashion, and with the doors and windows closed against the light, Claudia’s classroom was a stifling coffin. The heat liquefied her students’ brains. The teens melted across their seats like softening ice cream, torpid limbs dangling loosely in the dark. Succumbing to their inertia, Claudia had chosen a ringer of a movie today. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, not exactly art cinema but at least a classic with some interesting film technique and a strong example of the cultural motifs of 1970s pop cinema. She sat on the stage on her stool, sweaty and agitated, as the movie playing on the screen behind her haloed her with pixilated interference.
From the back of the classroom came a rumbling gurgle that sounded suspiciously like a snore. She paused the movie with her remote and used the laser pointer in her other hand to circle a face on the screen above her.
“Wake up, people. I know it’s hot out but let’s focus, OK? Extra credit question for whoever answers first: Who’s the director playing the French researcher here?”
Another snore sent a wave of muted giggles rippling toward the front of the classroom, where it broke and crashed gently at her sandal-clad toes. Annoyed, Claudia squinted into the gloom, trying to discern which of the inert lumps out there was asleep. She simply did not have the patience, not today.
“Come on, you know who he is. We did a whole section on his films earlier this semester. You’re too young to have senile dementia yet.”
From the dark Jordan Bigglesby’s high-pitched voice rang out. “Gus Van Sant?”
“This movie was made thirty years ago, Jordan. Nice try, but think French. Think dead.”
Mary Hernandez raised her hand, as usual. The stub of a well-gnawed pencil was wedged in her fist, and she waved this back and forth as if she were trying to stab the question with its point. She waited, patiently, until Claudia acknowledged her with a nod. “I was thinking, Krzysztof Kieslowski?” she said, wrinkling her forehead intently. “But I don’t know if you’d call him French, really, since wasn’t he actually Polish? Although all his most critical works were produced in French, unless you count The Decalogue—”
Claudia cut her off. “A good guess, Mary, but no.” Must the girl always go on and on? Who does she think she’s impressing? “Anyone else want to give it a try?”
Nothing, just another sonorous snore, so exaggerated it almost sounded like a parody of a snore.
Claudia sprang from her stool and made for the wall, snapping on the overhead lights. Eighteen pairs of dilated pupils blinked blearily back at her, wounded by the fluorescent assault. There, in the second-to-last row, sat Penelope, her head tipped backward over her seat. Her eyes were winched closed, her mouth hung agape. As Claudia watched, Penelope released another snore. The rest of her students erupted in laughter.
“Penelope?” Claudia bit the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from yelling. “Would you care to answer the question? Or would I be interrupting your nap?”
“François Truffaut,” Penelope said, with her eyes still closed, her head still limp over the back of her chair. “Everyone knows that.”
“And tell me the significance of his presence in this film?”
Penelope let loose an aggrieved sigh. She slid down in her seat until her head was propped upright and looked accusingly at Claudia. “I don’t know. He was friends with Spielberg, probably. That’s the way it usually works.”
“Is it, now. Aren’t we lucky we have such an expert here to share with us how the film industry works!” Her response was maybe a touch too bitchy, but she had the right to be short-fused once in a while, didn’t she? It had not been a very good month. All the gains of September—the new job, the roommate, and subsequent apparent relief of their foreclosure crisis; the near-completion of Audiophone’s album and Samuel Evanovich’s unexpected interest in her script—had been obliterated by the disappointments of October. She felt like a bricklayer who has just completed a dam, only to watch the mortar crumble and water come pouring through the chinks.
Jeremy had been moody and irritable all week, perhaps a symptom of Aoki’s unsettling appearance in Los Angeles but more likely just the fallout from Audiophone’s sudden disintegration. Claudia knew how much that must have hurt. She could still feel it herself, that gnawing ache of creative failure. It was a loss, a huge loss—although, truth be told, she was starting to grow just a little impatient with his defeatist moping. He’d skipped out on work three days in a row, instead spending his time sleeping and watching hours of music videos on YouTube. He was acting as if he’d lost a child, not just a band.
Really, what he needed was to pick himself up and move on. There was no room for self-indulgent pouting, not with the economy crashing around them and the few remaining opportunities winking out one by one. As much as she knew she should encourage him to go start another band, she couldn’t quite put her heart into it. And she was too cowardly to tell him what she really thought: That what they needed, instead of embarking on yet another risky new endeavor, was a nice safe trench to huddle in while they waited out the storm. Solid jobs, practical expectations. In just a few brief months, the worldview that they and all their friends had grown so accustomed to—a heady mix of recklessness and optimism and self-entitlement—had become completely obsolete. As if disapproving parents had just returned from a long vacation and grounded the world for the wild party that had taken place while
they were gone. Dreams of rock stardom—they were a relic of the time before. But she hadn’t told Jeremy any of this. No, her role here was to be the sympathetic shoulder, to rub his back and empathize with the vast unjustness of life. She hoped that with just a little encouragement, he’d come to the same conclusion she had.
But in the meantime, Jeremy was so preoccupied with the failure of his band that he hadn’t once asked about the status of Claudia’s script. Not that there was much to tell him. Claudia had spent a week blowing off all other school deadlines—grading essays, writing college recommendations—as she conjured up some hasty revisions to make the script more appealing to Samuel Evanovich, and then sent the package off by courier with signature required. Since then, nothing. Her e-mail address was right there on the title page—along with her phone number and home address and the contact information for her agent Carter Curtis (more truthfully her former agent, considering that he hadn’t returned a call since August)—so it certainly wasn’t that he didn’t know how to find her. Hollywood executives never do anything quickly, she reminded herself. Yet it still required superhuman effort not to look up Samuel Evanovich’s home number in the student directory and call him, even if the news was bad, just to end this miserable limbo.
She said nothing to Penelope, of course, about the possibility that she might be working with her father. And Penelope, in turn, continued to cultivate her aggressively indifferent façade. Last week, she’d failed to turn in a single homework assignment. Was that fake snoring a feint intended to provoke her? Claudia shouldn’t let it bother her, but it did; she couldn’t help seeing Penelope as a proxy for her father, wondering what—if anything—she should read into Penelope’s behavior.
“OK,” she said curtly. “Since you all seem so uninterested in the film today, I’m going to switch things up. Pop quiz!”
The room erupted in groans as Claudia distributed the quiz sheet that she’d originally planned to spring on them later that week. Maybe it was unfair to do this on the hottest day of the school year, but she was feeling punitive. She sat in front of the classroom grading homework to a soundtrack of operatic sighs and dulled pencils scritching across paper.
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