The Shimmering State

by Meredith Westgate

  Lucien is startled when he hears a voice across the room. The voice isn’t what startles him—the hum of others is a comfort after the past hours of isolation.

  What startles him is that he recognizes it.

  Her.

  Lucien scans the room, his entire body newly alive. He sees only more men—no one belonging to that voice. He catches sight of her just as she unwraps a tea bag by the coffee station. Her neck is long, her hands graceful, and her eyes stare off just past the mug, past the countertop, absent from her own delicate movements. She looks about Lucien’s age, in her twenties, so this might be a recent memory—one of his own.

  A piece of him reverberating up from the rubble.

  Her movements are graceful but cautious, weary of pain. Before Lucien can approach her, her lips pursed and blowing on her tea, the space fills with other patients arranging seats in a circle around the fireplace. Within moments, a line of chairs separates him from her. As everyone finds a spot, she falls into arrangement directly facing Lucien, missing his attempts to catch her eye. As she turns to sit, Lucien notices on her cheekbone is a piece of gauze, and above her eye, a butterfly bandage hugs her brow. Even her forearm is wrapped. Then she crosses her legs, shifting so that only her profile faces him again.

  A woman with a sleek black bob—the only person in the void of Lucien’s memory from the past day, or weeks—takes the last open seat. She wears the same jumpsuit as everyone else, but by the way the room adjusts to her, Lucien guesses she must be the head doctor.

  Lucien loops his fingertips under his thighs to stop them from fidgeting. A teen with crusty, sun-bleached blond hair and chapped lips sits to his side. A white residue cakes the cracks in his lips. He smiles and looks down to his own hands, also tucked, while his feet bounce to some invisible pulse. To Lucien’s other side is an elderly man with short gray-flecked hair. He sits in a wheelchair, and the dark skin on his thin legs is loose under his rolled-up jumpsuit. Lucien wonders if what brought him here were memories from his own past, memories of movement—to run, to walk, to stand—or if he disappeared into another’s for what he never had. Or harder still, what he lost. Who wouldn’t let themselves slip away? The man winks at Lucien, and the doctor clears her throat.

  “Wonderful to see so many new faces here today. Welcome. To those who have been here some time, I hope that you take solace in the repetition of today’s session. It is only through repetition that we truly find clarity.”

  As she continues, Lucien is so lulled by the pace of her words that it becomes a sort of meditation, an affirmation, and he hangs on the pauses. She looks around the circle before she continues with a tight smile.

  “Water, fire,” she says with a new strength to her voice. “These are primal groundings. Look around. It’s no coincidence that you find them here. Let them anchor you. Let all other sensations leave your body but these, and when you feel overwhelmed, come and sit. Look into the flames. Stare out at the sea. The first days are the hardest. You’ll crave something, anything, to latch on to, but just wait. By day seven, what’s left will be you, in your purest form, and that is when you can truly rebuild. Savor your new beginning. This simplicity won’t last forever. You’ll never get another fresh start like this. And as we learn from those who have departed too soon, if you try to rush, or become impatient—if you introduce that which we keep out—you risk the entire process.”

  She turns to a petite man with round glasses beside her. He speaks in a sort of recitation, looking eager to please her. “A drop of water on a dry paper towel will spread,” he says, “until it has crept into every corner, every vein.”

  “Thank you,” she says with a single nod. “A healthy reminder from our session last week, for those who were here. We find ourselves in this place because the human spirit is precious, delicate. No matter how strong you feel, consciousness is a fragile, sacred thing. The basis of who you are depends on consistency, coherency. Some of you have taken that for granted. Many of you have suffered unimaginable pain. You are here because of the generosity of others. Now what you have to ask yourselves, as the unraveling begins—as the work is done—is who do you want left once you’re finished?

  “I know you feel broken. Some of you feel empty. Tainted. Compromised.”

  Lucien notices her gazing at the girl, attempting to find her eyes.

  “I assure you, where you are now—right here, together—is a privilege. Consider others who escape themselves, who lose themselves. Where do they end up? You are here. You’ve already found the Center. And we’re here to help you find yours.”

  And you to yours, they say as a sort of amen.

  “For those I have not yet met formally, I am Dr. Sloane.”

  Lucien had almost forgotten how good it feels to place a person. To hold them, static, by the name. Dr. Sloane. He sighs. The stability of a name.

  Lucien senses her speaking directly to him, and he looks up just in time to meet her eyes. Then one by one her gaze moves across the circle, a nod introducing each person in the absence of their names.

  “Here, you are all equal. Whether you are married, single, divorced. Unemployed, self-employed, partner, or the boss. Here, you are all patients.”

  The teen beside Lucien lets out a sharp cackle.

  She tilts her head in his direction.

  “We’re all patience!” he says, delirious. “Been here so long, patience is all that’s left!”

  A slow rippling laughter breaks out across the circle. Lucien is unclear as to whether the teen sounds mad or absolutely revelatory, but maybe that is the point. The silence pulsing through the room makes him anxious, but when he looks down, his entire body is shaking, too.

  Dr. Sloane sighs. Her disappointment stings.

  Lucien feels in awe of her cohesion, how it sparkles when set against those she is tasked with fixing. He is, for the moment, ashamed to be among them. When she stands and walks toward the wall, gazing out across the ocean as the faintest ripple moves out to sea, Lucien wonders if their disruption crossed even the glass. She lingers with her back turned to them and the laughter dissipates. When at last she passes behind Lucien on her way back to her seat, he smells cigarettes, or at least the lingering staleness of a smoker. The air holds the scent for just a few seconds, his mind chasing it, until he finds himself second-guessing whether it was ever there.

  “Where do you want to go from here?” Dr. Sloane says. “The only thing we can truly teach you is that you are the Center. And when you leave, that is all you can take. That’s it. You. It’s very simple what we do here. Now, go there. Go inside.”

  Lucien looks around, watching each set of eyes, with names he doesn’t know and never will. They turn inward at her command. He can guess the ones who have been here for a while. They reemerge found, present, still.

  Two seats down from Lucien, a middle-aged man with a buzz cut hits his forehead with the base of his palm. He whispers, in argument. Beside him is another man, in his early thirties, with freckles covering his face. He blinks long and hard, spending deliberate time behind his eyelids. When they open, his eyes are cloudy with tears.

  Lucien looks back to the girl, her perfect posture and long neck. He watches as she swallows, focused, then tucks a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear.

  He notices it then—the faintest outline of a tattoo on her knuckles. One by one, though he is supposed to be looking inward, he names the letters. There it is, upside down and backward. His call to action, or maybe hers.

  L-O-O-K-U-P

  And when he does, their eyes meet.

  Chapter 5 BEFORE

  A bar graph of cocktails in differing heights and widths sits atop the marble counter in the courtyard of the Chateau Marmont. Sophie scans the paper ticket, her eyes alternating between its water-stained ink and the lineup as Jonathan applies the finishing touches behind the bar. Sugared ginger on a bamboo toothpick. Thinly sliced jalapeño. A handful of torn mint. Jonathan rubs an orange rind around one rim, then lets its cur
led peel slide down the ice cube held in place by the diameter of its lowball glass.

  “Two Pimm’s Cups, Moscow Mule, Jalapeño Margarita, and one Negroni.”

  Sophie stabs the ticket onto a metal rod already piled high with the night’s orders. Another server comes up close behind her, and Sophie knows not to move. This is the silent choreography one learns on their feet. Break a few glasses in your first week, and you store it in your bones. It’s Eva, Sophie can tell by the perfume. Sandalwood and citrus. Or maybe that’s the orange rind.

  “I need a glass of Bourgogne Blanc and a Taittinger for table seven, and I need it, like, five minutes ago.”

  Eva is shorter than Sophie, and as she twists past her toward the bar, her petite frame and French bob make Sophie feel giant and plain. A blunt object next to a feather in the breeze. Eva’s tray lands hard on the bar top, splattering old cocktail spills and condensation. A drop of something gets in Sophie’s eye, and she lifts a finger to stream it out in a tear without drawing attention. As if even an injury—Eva’s fault—would mark her as high maintenance. Rather than accepting that Eva might just not like her, Sophie has made it her mission to disprove her, regardless of whether the insults are fabrications of Sophie’s mind turned on itself.

  Jonathan uncorks the Bourgogne Blanc without looking away from Sophie.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she says.

  “How about a drink when your shift’s over?” Jonathan says. “My treat.”

  Her eye is on fire now, the bubble of champagne traveling her iris like hot oil on a skillet.

  “Sure,” she says, still hoping to blink it away. “You know what I take.”

  “Oh my god,” Eva says, leaning toward her. “What’s up with your eye?”

  Sophie wipes away a tear and it’s black with mascara. She grabs a napkin.

  “Nothing, it’s fine. Allergies or something.”

  “No, not a shift drink,” Jonathan continues. “Somewhere else. Expand our horizons, what do you say?”

  “Just the two of us?”

  Sophie is still aware of Eva, her eyes perfectly lined and flicked up at the end, while wet mascara no doubt fans Sophie’s cheek à la Clockwork Orange. Finally, the stinging passes and Sophie feels the tears subside. Eva hands her another bar napkin, with Chateau Marmont printed on it in a script so tall and stretched as to be almost illegible. Sophie has learned that glamour has to be a little bit strange, a little off. And that is why she will never be glamorous; she seeks perfection and it shows.

  “Building castles in the sky,” hums Jonathan, flirting either in spite of Eva’s presence or because of it. How unfair, that what might make him cooler could make Sophie more disliked.

  “Huh?”

  Eva scoffs beside her, and Sophie hears her own voice come out squeaky clean. “I have rehearsals at eight a.m. tomorrow.” She lowers her voice before continuing. “Besides, why would we complicate a perfectly good workplace flirtation with actually seeing each other outside of this den of iniquity?”

  “What if I told you it was my last night?” he says. “Last-chance rodeo.”

  He’s corking the Taittinger, winking at Eva, who rolls her eyes before darting away under the ivy trellis. Somehow she always gets her orders filled before Sophie.

  “Well, then I’d congratulate you,” Sophie says, freed from Eva’s gaze. “Like I do every time you say that.”

  “I mean it this time. Take a good look, Sophie Marden, I’m gone after tonight.”

  “All right, then I’ll take a Veuve, here, and remind you how fond I am of your wife.”

  Jonathan looks down, pretending to be surprised by his own wedding band, and then licks his finger, as though trying to pull it off.

  “You forget that I liked Ellie before I ever liked you,” Sophie says. “She’s the reason we tolerate you.”

  “What else are you waiting on?” Jonathan asks.

  “A taste of the skin-contact for table seven. I’ll drop it on the way.”

  “We’re out of the orange. How about the new Chablis? Bitches love it.”

  Sophie rolls her eyes and turns with the fresh tray of cocktails, when a woman in platform heels and a tight bandage dress sways drunkenly in her direction. Without hesitation Sophie rises to her toes and spins on one leg, the other lifted and turned out. She stretches the arm with the tray of drinks straight up to where the twinkle lights dangle. Then she comes down with a light pas de bourrée.

  The young woman continues on her staggered path a few steps farther and then rests against a topiary, her hair tangling in its leaves. She pulls each strand back—one after another, a revelation, how plants work!—then begins poking at the tarp to the smoking area. A cloud of smoke sneaks out from behind the plastic sheet. The woman coughs, and a bare arm covered with diamond bracelets reaches out for her. She disappears.

  Sophie lowers the tray. The margarita’s salted rim went straight into one of the courtyard’s low-strung lanterns and spilled all over. Before she looks back up, Jonathan is already shaking a fresh one. He mimics her aggression in furious movements, while she sets down the tray and removes the other glasses to mop up the spill.

  “Quite the reaction on your part,” he says. “Two thumbs up.”

  He taps the shaker on the side of the bar, then strains the concoction—a frothy sea foam flecked with jalapeño—into a new glass with a chipotle-salted rim. Sophie takes a moment to roll her neck out, letting her head circle, feeling its weight stretch every vertebra of her back.

  “Rough rehearsals?”

  “The usual,” Sophie says, head still tilted back. “So, yes.”

  Jonathan dips a straw into the remade cocktail, pipes a taste to his lips, then tosses the plastic blindly to the trash. “Perfect.”

  “Excuse me,” a throaty voice calls from behind the tarp. “Do y’all have, like, a lighter?”

  Sophie grabs a pack of matches from the dish on the bar and tosses it in the direction of the tarp without looking. Then she turns once more with her tray.

  “Fucking tourists.”

  The Chateau’s courtyard is relatively quiet for a Thursday. Save the standard tables of regulars, tonight’s crowd is mostly hotel guests doing their best to stave off jet lag with Moscow Mules in sweaty copper mugs and truffle fries overflowing from their paper cones. Hard to believe that this place has survived the stereotypes, the deaths, the clichés, the ever-changing scene, but then again people hate change. They want to live in the memory of some enchanted evening, especially if it isn’t their own.

  On a quiet night, Sophie is often struck by the magic in the air—the way twinkling lights and ivy can transform a patch of land off Sunset Boulevard into a French dream. In those moments, she catches herself—back in her bedroom in Minneapolis ten years ago, if she could see herself now—and laughs that she gets paid to stroll between tables of beautiful people on feet sore from ballet rehearsals led by Auguste Demarchelier; that her day job’s duties (though more often at night) involve assuring Sean Penn that his salade niçoise will not have tomato, or bringing Jennifer Lawrence soda water for a jus stain from particularly rare steak frites, and that Leonardo DiCaprio still “owes” her for his date’s unfortunate incident involving a glass of Malbec and Sophie’s lilac satin shoes. Once she helped Bella Kingston stop a nosebleed from a mountain of cocaine at two a.m. On a Monday.

  Whenever she returns to visit her parents, friends at home ask about celebrity sightings, expecting to hear that she saw so-and-so at a coffee shop or pumping gas. Not only does Sophie wait their tables, take their orders, and make them feel safe, but she has spent late nights at their after-parties. She has been not only witness but confidante. How could she ever explain? Mostly, she doesn’t really care anymore. The brain can only hold so many stories before it starts to prioritize sleep and waking up with a semblance of energy above all else. She gets paid to be out. To be on her feet. Would it not stand to reason that her free time should be spent alone and comfortable
and preferably reclined?

  “Hey, Soph,” calls Jonathan before she’s out of earshot.

  He nods in the direction of table 5, just off the entrance from the hotel lobby. The table that implies prominence with just the right amount of privacy. The table they give as a subtle show of respect when someone powerful, or bankable, walks in. Also, Ray Delaney’s table. Sophie can tell from Jonathan’s expression that it’s him. He must be asking for her.

  A couple years ago during the mass-purging of men who used intimidation, sex, and coercion to reinforce their own power and subjugate the women around them, Sophie had looked for Ray Delaney’s name in the headlines each day as she poured her coffee, rolling her ankles in the tiny kitchen of her apartment. She had checked for him among the tally of large, forceful bodies in The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, the LA Times; she even set a Google Alert, just waiting for the results: “Thirty Women Come Forward Against Hollywood Producer Ray Delaney!” “Big Shot Producer Loses Overall Deal—Faces Damages!” But those headlines never came. Any results were populated instead by his most recent films, and what new projects he was developing with so-and-so.

  Sophie cannot figure out what keeps him safe, what lets this man get away with that same pushiness pardoned by power or, worse still, what causes the unnerving lurch in her stomach. What happened to the so-called revolution?

  Soon after starting at Chateau Marmont, Sophie learned what such spaces offer people like Ray Delaney. It is not the same fairy tale that intrigues tourists, or those who come hoping to see someone famous. The Chateau delivers on the fantasy of a world curated to your tastes, your enjoyment, your privacy. What could be more appealing to powerful men? The waitresses beautiful, the waiters respectful, no one inconvenienced—never the customers, at least. Most important, they find the privacy their success has taken away momentarily restored. For celebrities especially, this kind of protection is assured by the Chateau’s seclusion, by the exclusive privilege of being let inside—but also by the vanity of its other customers, lest they admit their own insignificance by placing any importance on another’s. The NO PHOTOGRAPHS rule is almost unnecessary. These people only take photos of themselves.