* * *
The cool air outside feels like safety. Sterilizing. When Sophie reaches her car, she doesn’t immediately recognize the face reflected back in the window. She smooths her unwashed hair, pushing it down and back, and stares until her features are familiar. Then she smiles, watching her face unfold. Tears run down her cheeks. If she could only get back to herself, to her routine; to the things that sustain her, and define her. If only she could get through the night.
Sophie drives west along Beverly Boulevard, her mind too fuzzy for the freeway. A red light stops her at an intersection just entering Hancock Park, where the yards are wider and the trees taller. She pushes the cool heels of her hands into her eyelids, cupping her forehead. When she opens her eyes, a coyote stands at the curb.
At first Sophie wonders if she is hallucinating. She often sees coyotes in Griffith Park when hiking early in the morning, or later as dusk settles and the trails empty out, but she has never heard of them coming this far into town. The coyote looks stoic beside the road, as if in mourning. Humans are not the only ones being displaced. Sophie always felt a magic when coming across coyotes in the wild, their presence marking the crossover between when people own the city versus when the animals take over. From dusk until dawn.
She checks the traffic light—still red—and when she turns back, the coyote is staring at her. For a moment Sophie thinks they make eye contact; they understand one another. But that is a projection. This isn’t a coyote from a children’s movie; it isn’t Pixar’s animated and misunderstood predator with a kind heart. This is a wild animal. A scavenger.
Still, the coyote does not look away. Does it recognize something in her?
Sophie speeds along Olympic Boulevard, feeling for a moment like she might actually escape this feeling if she goes fast enough. Years of living in Los Angeles, and she can count on one hand the number of times she’s made it to the beach. On Main Street in Santa Monica, she keeps driving as the brick buildings and vintage streetlamps give way to peeling plaster and spray-painted murals. The jazz playing on public radio calms her. Out the window, a dilapidated giant clown sculpture looms above a freshly installed neon CVS sign. She looks westward at each intersection to catch a glimpse of the ocean, but the haze from the fires has settled here, too. Even the horizon line is indiscernible. At one point, she thinks she sees sailboats floating into the sky.
Tan, wiry-haired surfers walk in front of cars with ease, carrying boards twice as long as their bodies like briefcases, coming home from work. As the street curves and narrows, buildings alternate between homes and all-new glass compounds, gated for the start-ups that have claimed the area. Burned-out windows sit next to chic signs that hint at expensive new restaurants. A corner hardware shop with its original sign advertises a GENERAL STORE, though it likely sells artisanal chocolates and expensive vintage jeans. General needs have changed.
When she finally finds a parking spot, Sophie hurries down an alley toward the beach, hearing the crunch of glass on sandy pavement under each step. The light is fading fast. The Venice Boardwalk souvenir shops and food stands are closing up for the night, and it has become eerily still. Most of the tourists have left the beach for restaurants and bars. Sophie wanders farther away from the well-lit stretch of boardwalk as the last light disappears.
She knows people come here looking for Mem. Not the fancy kind, no Nagano ski-jumping memories, but she doesn’t need anything special. She tries to say what she is looking for, to speak it into the darkness, but the words get stuck in her mouth. It feels wrong to assume, to ask for something no one should have. A young man with crusty blond hair skateboards by, and Sophie blurts out Mem just as he passes.
She feels like an idiot, but so desperate she doesn’t care. The guy stops and steps off his board. His nose is pink and peeling, raw. He looks around, then points toward a spot down the block. She rushes forward, and he skates past, sticking his tongue out at her and laughing. She is relieved once he disappears into the darkness ahead, but then she is alone.
Once she reaches the spot he pointed to, she approaches a man standing near a lamppost. The only person she sees. “I’ve got thirty,” Sophie whispers. Thirty would be enough, but not too much to get her in trouble. “How many pills does that get?” She can barely see his face, only his ponytail flecked with sand. “Okay,” she tries. “How about three pills?” He pulls out a bag of multicolored glossy capsules, and the full range of pastels. He shakes the clouded plastic until the pills rattle.
Just then another man appears behind her. He tugs Sophie’s arm, then nods in the other direction. She follows him, surprised and somewhat reassured by his older age, his gaunt cheeks and arched back. He ducks behind cardboard and fabric she didn’t see before, against the side of a building. Then he waves out a hand for her to follow.
Chapter 20 TODAY
What does a mudslide sound like?
Movement. But what is silence, untethered? A forest holds a cracking thunder; a hillside neighborhood, its wealth in weight. What are the latent sounds of an area, in stillness, that might be released in motion? Closets of clothing, dressers packed full; giant televisions made to appear weightless, hovering on steel brackets; cabinets stocked with spices in glass jars; refrigerators full of produce and cold meats. We live in silence that could suffocate us. Crushed under all that we own.
The only sound then is its path of destruction. Cars and power lines, stacked like the forest is still. Twisting metal and splitting timber. The rush of land made liquid. Can one even hear so much motion? By then, is it too late?
At the Center, patients have been evacuated down to the beach, its sand tinted blue under the full moon. They look like a cult, all beige and uniformed, not a single possession or adornment. No jewelry glittering under the moonlight. No shoes to show their different styles or priorities. On either side of the Center, up and down the beach, other residents and families stand with their backs to the ocean, facing the hillside, watching for something they won’t recognize until it’s there, if it comes. Living beside someplace so private must be strange. To gaze into the glass but glean nothing at all. Are they afraid, too?
As Lucien understands, the wildfires left scorched earth where they tore through Malibu and Topanga after the valley. Now the rain every-one prayed for has unleashed mudslides, since the roots that usually hold the land together were damaged by burn or gone altogether.
Lucien scans the beach for Sophie. He stayed behind until the last room had been emptied; she must be outside already. Even though they stand within steps of the Center, everyone looks different outside its walls. The fresh air is a reminder that they existed before and outside this context; if Lucien looks farther down the beach, or inland across this country, and others, they would all have parents, friends, or even children. At the very least, everyone has parents, at some point. Their lives would expand infinitely just as his does, touching others in all directions. But who would they find for him if they looked now? A single old lady, sitting alone in her house, with a nurse? Trina. How sorry for him would Trina be, that he thought of her second? Something in the expansiveness of this revelation, in being outside again, makes Lucien bashful both to look and to be seen. They all appear suddenly vulnerable. Exposed. Like running into a teacher at the grocery store, outside the familiar surroundings that establish our roles.
Lucien keeps scrolling the sand, the shoreline. Where could Sophie be?
Word travels through the crowd, across blankets stretched over the cold sand, over the mutterings of some who are hardly there, who have not yet come back to themselves, as they say in the Center. The crowd says Dr. Sloane is making her way back. She has been absent from the Center for days, maybe a week. Without phones or computers or changing laundry, it’s harder to keep track of time. Lucien can confidently say she has been gone for three days or two weeks and it makes little difference.
Roads are closed. The PCH has been rerouted at Sunset due to a rockslide near Will Rogers, taking out an
entire lane. Those farther out in Malibu might be stuck indefinitely. On their own as they are, with only a few nurses and the handful of technicians, certain patients are understandably getting nervous. Making their dependencies known.
Lucien walks back toward the steep hillside, where his friend in the wheelchair sits on a piece of forgotten boardwalk or docking wood at the base of the Center’s stilts. A blanket is draped across his legs, and his hands are tucked underneath. He is in conversation with the teen with the crusty blond hair.
“I just don’t get it,” his friend says. “The ones who stay behind, convinced they can save their homes just because they never had to leave before. Because they’ve always had the privilege of safety. As if the past proves the present.”
The teen laughs in agreement. “Totally. My family’s in Topanga,” he says. “I bet they’re still there. But they’ll be fine.”
“Yes,” says his friend, rolling his eyes at Lucien. “Of course.”
Lucien takes the cue.
“Not exactly what I pictured for a night on the beach in Malibu,” he says, interrupting. He places a hand on his friend’s shoulder, in part to check on his temperature. Even his posture looks cold. “You warm enough? I’m fucking freezing.”
“I’m fine,” the man says. “All this time I’ve wanted to get down here by the sand, up against the water, and now that we’re here it’s straight up dark. If that’s not life. Can’t see anything but my breath. My breath, in Los Angeles.”
He pulls his blanket farther over his forearms, until his feet stick out underneath.
Lucien bends down to tuck them back under the blanket, when he sees Sophie curled up at the other side of the property. Her face peeks out from a blanket, and her hair looks fuzzy on the top like she had already been sleeping. He forgets for a moment what he’s doing.
“She’s been through it,” his friend says, noticing. “Used to have the room next to mine until they moved her. Then there she was again the next morning, sitting by the fire. I’m surprised every day I see her, still fighting.”
Lucien gently squeezes the man’s feet with the blanket, feeling for circulation, then to impart some warmth, though by his face it’s clear that his friend doesn’t feel it.
“She’s stronger than she looks,” Lucien says, less defending Sophie than he is convincing himself.
“You’re right about that. There’s something inside holding that girl up. And I don’t have much of it left, that’s for sure.”
“You strike me as someone who’ll be just fine.”
“Don’t get the two mixed up, I’m still here. But I’ve seen how trauma lingers inside us. Even when we think we move on, it’s there under the surface, hollowing us out.”
“I know the feeling.”
“We’re all rotting from the inside.”
Lucien walks across the sand, zigzagging around reclined bodies staring up at the stars, into the infinite space with no glass between them and the rest of their lives. Once Lucien approaches Sophie, she’s staring back at him.
Next to her the air outside feels warmer, or he forgets that he’s cold, or something of both, but she holds her blanket out toward him nonetheless. He slips it over his shoulder, keeping most of it on her. Now that he’s found her, he can’t think of anything to say.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
Then another murmur travels across the sand. Lights flicker on inside the Center, where everything had been off in case of fallen lines, or broken gas mains. Soon enough the glass house goes dark once more, the main room reflecting back the moon. And two shadows make their way slowly down the spiral staircase to the beach.
Lucien looks at Sophie, bashful for all of them. For their excitement, for their fear. Sophie smiles. She looks pretty tonight. Healthy. Her skin glows under the moonlight. Her hair is curlier in the salty air, and frames her brow along the delicate line of her scar. Neither of them has said another word, but it’s enough. To be beside her is enough. As the figures walk into the open air, Lucien can tell from the sleek, sharp haircut who it is.
The question is, who is it attached to Dr. Sloane’s side, who limps under her arm, with the blank stare on her face that marks most patients when they first enter? This girl seems calmer than most. She wears a hospital gown, wrapped in a blanket. Her hair is a very faint shade of blue, unless that is just the moonlight, too.
Another breeze blows across the sand—straight from the hospital, evacuated from the mudslides, which brings them in the middle of the night. The girl is hardly a patient at all—say the voices rippling in like the sea. The girl is Dr. Sloane’s daughter.
Chapter 21 TODAY
Later that night, once the coastline has been cleared of immediate threat, everyone finds their way back to their rooms and the silence of sleep settles again over the Center. Sophie sits at the foot of her twin bed with Lucien beside her. She pulls at the muscles around her shoulders, behind her neck. She cannot remember when she last felt so stiff. She had no idea not moving could make you sore.
Sophie has tried to keep her strength, dancing in her room once the nurses have done their rounds and everyone is lost in their re-centering “soft” doses. She can only do so much in that small rectangle of a bedroom, the edge of her bed frame being the closest thing she has to a barre. And her mind is only able to focus for so long before she needs to distract it again, prolonging the time before she, too, needs a pill and the nighttime to reset.
Lucien’s visits, when they lie on the floor and talk, reimagining the world, are the only things she looks forward to, though they keep her from practicing. Even if she practiced all night, and walked a hundred laps a day from her room to the common area, up and down the stairs, it would hardly equal a single hour of normal rehearsals, let alone the routine she kept on her own time to stay in shape. The stretching, the weight lifting, the time alone at the barre.
From beside her, Sophie feels Lucien’s hand hovering over her own, in that charged space before touching. He gently sets his palm down on her shoulder. She waits for the lurch, the flinch, but there is none. Tonight, his touch feels like sight.
She puts her hand over his. It feels so good to be touched, finally. He puts his other hand on her opposite shoulder. With his thumbs, Lucien pushes against what feels hard like an edge until her muscle shifts then rolls as the release runs through her body. She holds her breath. Careful not to spoil the moment.
Sophie considers this a small victory, to touch and be touched. She is making progress after all. No matter what comes next, she has this moment. Lucien’s hands on her, her body unfolding inside. Relaxing. Lucien pinches the skin on either side of her neck, and a familiar pleasure returns; she remembers this one, and that doubles its relief. As he continues pricking her muscles back into memory, the facts of what her body was once capable of return to her. She has felt tainted for so long. Wishing only to get back to the sense of herself she never understood before. The stability she took for granted. The privilege of a singular, solid existence.
Sophie spent hours when she was younger wishing other eyes into her mind. First, when she started ballet and couldn’t keep up with the older girls, couldn’t understand what she was doing wrong, or why they looked effortless while she still felt clumsy. Then in high school, when she was told she didn’t see her body, not really, not when her weight dipped below what was described to her as dangerous, despite feeling at the peak of performance, and despite her being cast in each lead.
She went to a therapist who used to ask what she saw in the mirror. In her curves, there was the opportunity to get stronger and lighter, as if she might one day shed her body and become movement itself. This was not disordered thinking; this was aspiration, determination. And yet she was told, from everyone outside of her eyes, that she was mistaken. There were no curves, there was no room for improvement. After those sessions, Sophie would look down at her legs, seeing the thickness she wished away, and then she would try to look as someone else. Som
etimes she could do it, too, she could flip the world and see it from their side; to see herself as she might a stranger, fighting for their life. She understood. At least, she made herself understand. Her mother, the doctors, the audience. From then on, the ability to see herself—that flip of perspective—became a talent, something that gave her an edge as a performer.
All Sophie wants now is to lose the ability to leave herself. To forget what she knows about other eyes, and to see the world through hers alone. Since Lucien has been coming to her room, she feels more herself every day. Now her body feels awakened, not guarded.
Lucien traces a line with his finger from the base of her neck toward her lower back, grazing her thigh as he trails off. He goes farther each time he touches her, making sure she feels comfortable, waiting for her glance to say it’s okay. He becomes intent, focused. His restraint turns her on. He treats her body like a professional, attentive and kind.
He strokes a tight tendon along her arm, hitting a spot that sends a current through her body, and she imagines what it would feel like to have him touch her in a different way. Using the same fingers to create another sort of shiver. With him sitting behind her, she feels the warmth of his body, its strength, the smell of him that survives despite their mutually laundered uniforms and the sterility of the space. The scent she never noticed until one night after he left and then—bliss. She smells it faintly on her sheets. Pheromones, she thinks, fuck.
A clang from the hallway. A curl of Lucien’s tickles the back of her neck as he turns to see. She imagines her fingers through his hair. He is the only thing she thinks about in the future; the only daydreams that take her back into the world.
The Shimmering State Page 23