Because Ezra and Noz had been technically nonexclusive at the time and hadn’t even texted for the whole week and a half before she actually fucked Andrew, he’d been able to forgive her. Though I guess not thoroughly, not actually. Andrew, of course, was ostracized completely.
“You never had a real conversation about it, right?” I said.
“Exactly, it was like, I always suspected she was fucking someone else, right now I’m honestly convinced she’s fucking someone else. Like, tonight. I’m convinced of it. I know it sounds paranoid but some of the things she said made it sound like she was breaking up with me for someone else.”
“What did you guys say about the Andrew thing?” I asked. “Did you talk about it when you guys got serious about each other?” Ezra hadn’t been forthcoming at the time, just gave me the news that Noz was staying in LA and they were staying together and that nothing else was important, so like him I’d brushed the whole Andrew situation under the rug and acted like I’d never heard of any such thing.
“She said that if we hashed it out we’d end up in this big fight right when we were trying to start over, and that was no way to begin a real relationship, so we decided not to talk about it. She said she’d never do that to me again and I said I forgave her, which I guess was a fucking lie, even though I didn’t mean to lie at the time. I should’ve asked her why she did it, a real emotional reason, so that I didn’t have to wonder and resent her and act like a jealous dick.”
I could guess at Noz’s reason to not talk about Andrew, to get some control over Ezra, whose affection often felt like an untethered kite. I also think she liked being mean to him. I didn’t say so. I had never said so.
“I think it was a rotten hidden core,” I said. “From the second you decided not to have that conversation, you were doomed.”
“I’m an idiot,” Ezra said.
“It was her decision as much as yours.”
“I wanted to talk, I let her convince me not to.”
“Then she didn’t want to make it work in the first place,” I said. “You’re an amazing guy who is going to find a person who deserves all the good you can bring into their life. You’re going to make someone’s world perfect. You don’t deserve someone who won’t even have the conversation.”
Ezra squeezed my wrist. His hands were dry and his grip strong. I let him keep me there, roped to him. I thought of the only time I’d actually seen him and Noz kiss—as opposed to the times when he’d described it to me. Noz, Ezra, Miggy, and I were all hanging out at this big house with a pool in the Hollywood Hills; Miggy was housesitting. Under the sinking sun, my arms were getting cold, and I’d gone into Ezra’s bedroom to get something, a sweater; Ezra was sitting in a tan leather chair, and Nozlee was on his lap, facing him, her knees on either side of his hips, legs spread so wide it was straining those dumb raw denim jeans she had been breaking in at the time (I’d seen the welts at her hips, she’d been so happy to show them off, completely ignoring that this chosen form of suffering was wholly unnecessary). One of Ezra’s hands was on the back of her neck, one was on her hip; both of her hands were in his hair. When I walked into the room they stopped, I flushed hot like I was under the noon sun again, Noz turned her head to see who it was, and seeing that it was me, laughed. It had been unearthly tender.
Ezra let go of me to wipe his nose. Bodies drip. The fluids of a stranger are so gross; we gag on a hair in our restaurant food, we lose our appetite. But when we love someone, their bodily fluids are de-gross-ified, and not just the obvious, the spit and cum exchanged during sex. I’ve popped Ezra’s pimples, peeled itchy sunburned skin off his back, watched him vomit and piss in the street. I’m long past the point of being icked by any of it. I’d lick the snot off his upper lip without blinking.
“Can we talk about something else now?” Ezra asked. “If we keep talking about this I’m going to totally lose it.”
“Sure, of course,” I said. “Do you wanna play the game?”
The game is a game of choices, an either-or. We alternate picking a similar pair of things—sushi or Italian food, Chinatown or Citizen Kane, going to the ocean or going to the pool, The Vampire Diaries or True Blood—and then we guess which one the other person would choose as their own favorite. We type our answers on the Notes app on our phone and simultaneously reveal them, reveal what we think the other person would prefer. We are rarely wrong about each other now, after so many years playing the game together. Often it’s easier for us to guess what the other person’s response will be than our own answer; Ezra knows what I like before I know what I like, which is a form of precognition. When we get going with the game, we can play for incredibly long stretches of time, until our brains can’t think of any more movies or places or activities or objects; until we are empty of thoughts or ideas, a raw nothing.
Ezra tapped his foot and reached up to tug at the ends of his hair but he no longer had hair. “Blind or deaf?” he asked. Ezra would prefer to be deaf, I would prefer to be blind.
“You’re a fucking fool,” he said, smiling big at me.
“Why??”
“Because the worst thing in the world is to not be able to see what’s right in front of you.”
Then he put a hand over my eyes and walked me around the apartment, gently bumping me into the fridge and the doorframes and the couch until I was giggling so hard I couldn’t suck in a breath.
With the little pile of cocaine on the table, and the Cascarilla on the window sill, we were able to keep our brains full until 3:45 a.m., at which point Lotus returned to nuzzle at Ezra’s feet, and we both decided it was time to finally end what had ultimately been a good night, because even though Noz was a bitch and Ezra was brokenhearted, as deep night settled in over the palms in the yard of the Monte Vista, we still had each other.
Friday, 10:37 a.m.
When I parted my curtains in the full flush of the morning, it was like creating my own sunrise. The light came in as incrementally as if the sun was chugging up over the horizon, because the curtains are so heavy and hard to move out of place, thick blue velour I bought on sale at some home goods store in West Hollywood, waiting for a margarita buzz from El Coyote—the last restaurant Sharon Tate ate at before she died; what did she order? Taco Salad?—to fade off enough for me to drive home. As I pulled them open, squinting in the sudden slivers of light, I waited to feel a headache, but somehow one didn’t come; my window-unit air conditioner churned, trying its hardest and failing in equal measure to keep my apartment cool. It only just keeps the summer at bay, that’s the best it can do.
All the plants—my cactus points, the spider plant that keeps producing cute little baby leaf clusters, the on-the-edge-of-death jade plant on my kitchen table that makes me feel like a King Kong giant looking down at a tree—strain towards the sudden burst of light. When illuminated, my apartment, its plant life, and the crystals and Cascarilla on my windowsills, all glitter.
I made some coffee and ate straight out of my big container of Fage 2%; I always eat alone in the soft morning light and can dip my spoon in anything I please. I checked my phone. There were a few emails, a work assignment for the day from my boss James Danielson, a marketing email from Thinx, and a nice note from my mother about one of her friend’s daughters getting married to her girlfriend, because now my kind can marry; I responded with practiced fake enthusiasm and vagueness. A few Twitter notifications, new pictures on Instagram to scroll through.
On Instagram, I watched a video Ezra had taken of me last night, right before I left his apartment. Lotus was in my lap and, through the window, the glowing palm fronds ringed my head like a halo. In the short video I laughed and snorted; I can’t remember what Ezra had said to make me laugh, but I remember the joy, some joke stacked on top of another joke, riling me up so that I was laughing so hard I almost squished Lotus when I doubled over. Watching myself laugh, I didn’t laugh, but I felt a pleasant echo of
having had laughed. My life Xeroxed, and doubled back.
The only new text I had contained a set of pictures of my friend Leslie and me in a Jacuzzi from this time last year; she liked to send little friend memories. I sent back a series of red hearts. Then I sent a few messages to see who was up out there.
EzraIsTexting
Yesterday
Noz broke up with me this p.m.
Today 10:52 AM
how’s the morning treating you?
DONT TEXT BEA
Today 12:59 AM
u up?
Today 3:57 AM
I’m up
Today 10:52 AM
i guess we missed each other
Georgie
Not tral
Out
I’ didn’t meant to yell at u, I love you the most!
Today 10:53 AM
woman, you were ful of a smoky scotch whiskey and spouting inanities, are you feeling filthy & disgusting this a.m.?
Lydia
Yesterday
their old fashioned is such garbage
it smells like gasoline and tastes like a jolly rancher
ugh fuck Georgie is sloppy wasted and annoying the shit out of me
she’s crying abt our friendship, i just can’t
our friendship is fine she’s the one with the problem
sorry i just have to vent to someone
now she’s yelling at me, i’m going home
Today 10:53AM
sorry hun I was fully asleep
sounds like a shitty night, do you need decompress and vent this morning?
DOT DOT DOT
morning beautiful woman
i’m okay actually
georgie and I had a little fight then hugged and made up, i don’t even really know what it’s about, we’re both on our periods and it’s the day after a full moon so we were probably filled with big female energy and spewed it out at each other, i’m feeling good tho
Their fight wasn’t about periods, it was about how Lydia finally got Hannah, a good girlfriend, nice to her and friendly with our group and tall and hot, and stopped drinking so much, started going to the gym more often, so her codependent friendship with Georgie was shifting. It was happening slowly, like erosion on the cliffs in Malibu, which made it rougher than if Lydia had ended the friendship with a Band-Aid rip. Lydia, self-help books written by formerly single women hidden under her mattress like 1980s teenage porn, didn’t know that she was slowly murdering her best friend; she didn’t know she couldn’t have both Georgie as a nonsexual mostly girlfriend and a Hannah. I was watching them writhe in my text message window like dolphins caught in a tuna net.
I showered to de-sweat and de-tangle my hair, put on my bike shorts and my running shoes, found my glasses case and switched out my regular glasses for sunglasses, grabbed my keys, and left. I opened the work email I’d seen in my inbox earlier; James Danielson, with his usual Hemingwayesque lack of greeting or explanation, began with: “Start at the intersection of Effie Street and Silver Lake Boulevard.”
I work as a researcher/copywriter for a company that had published an app called LA by Foot, which they advertised as a series of “definitive walking guides to the secret history, hidden paths, pedestrian staircases, and beautiful architecture of Los Angeles.” I didn’t write that copy. My bosses did, two men named Jason who left LA for San Francisco when their app that helped demystify train schedules for English-speaking tourists in Japan made a literal billion dollars. They keep LA by Foot going as an easy-to-manage side project, with one part handled by an engineer who, based on the boringness of his emails, I never, ever want to meet in person. James Danielson, a Los Angeles historian who teaches at UCLA, comes up with ideas for locations that should be highlighted on the walks, then I write the copy.
James Danielson is old, and fat, and all the cartilage is gone from his knees, so he needs me to actually do the walking. I could do it all myself, research the history of Los Angeles by reading any or all of the many books James Danielson has published, but he has something I don’t have: the social power that comes from having a masculine name that starts with a J.
James Danielson, in control of me, was sending me to Silver Lake.
I couldn’t bear to leave Echo Park just yet, with its welcoming familiarity on a fresh sunny morning, so I created the unnecessary errand of getting another cup of coffee and walked down to Stories Books & Café on Sunset Boulevard. The sun made the whole world glimmery, even the grubby Little Caesars and uneven gray sidewalk had a shimmer.
Most of the dives and Mexican restaurants where I’d slurped margaritas and ate enchiladas for years had recently been replaced by fresh businesses, designed to appeal to white people with money. The owners of The Gold Room had attempted to transform the old ratty narrow dive bar into a cocktail bar, but they wound up with a Frankenstein, the new aesthetic stapled over the old like poorly done plastic surgery, too-inflated lips, too-narrow nose, too-sharp cheekbones. On the back of the empty parking lot across the street, flowering bougainvillea vines grow through the concrete, pink and green and white.
Some mornings, I can’t walk down Sunset without remembering that the empty building across the street used to be a perfect Mexican restaurant with five-dollar margaritas on Wednesdays, where old Mexican men posted up at the bar and would buy me a drink in exchange for a few lines of conversation; without remembering that the Gold Room used to sell me a shot and a beer for five dollars; without remembering that the 99 Cent store, lumbering to its death like an aging Brontosaurus, used to be one of two competing and always bustling hyper-discount enterprises on neighboring blocks; without remembering that it was me and my kind that had done this to the neighborhood.
It should’ve been a bummer morning, with the coke leaving behind an internal twitch of anxiety, and with the depressing thoughts of Ezra feeling crushed and maybe still sleeping. I tried to feel down, but all I felt was the warmth of summer sun, the way walking through Echo Park made me feel like I was flying, and the strange sensation that everything ahead of me was going to be better than everything behind.
As I walked, I let this feeling crest, unaware for a few blissful moments that it and I were Icarus-like, as I walked into Stories and made my way past the bookstore in the front to the coffee bar in the back, and saw her: hip-cocked, slouchy jeans, striped shirt, waiting in line, no chance of mistaking her, obviously Nozlee.
Noz gets her brown skin from her Iranian-Jewish father and her round breasts from her Russian-Jewish mother. Her hair was dyed platinum blonde, the same color as Kim Kardashian’s when she first bleached her hair, and she wore it like a boy or a lesbian: a choppy bob, styled like she’d run her hand from her forehead to the back of her head. She is a Virgo sun, Scorpio rising, Cancer moon, and her teeth are faintly yellow. She has a major paranoia about the dentist, she can’t even drive herself to an appointment because she’d have a panic attack in the car. One time when she and Ezra were on the outs, she’d asked me to take her. When she got in my car her face was blotchy and blanched like she was about to throw up; when she’d cried, I’d pulled over and hugged her around her shoulders.
When we were studying under Mother Witch Colleen, we’d bonded because among the eight other witches in our apprentice group, Noz and I were the obvious stars and haughty about it in a way Colleen neither encouraged nor tried to suppress. She taught us a witch needs confidence, but must always understand that compared to the four elements from which we draw our power, we are less than nothing, a blip in geographic time and as easy to tear apart as a piece of paper. Back in New York, we’d been the person each other texted first every morning, that kind of friendship. But it always had an undercurrent of uncertainty that came out when we hung out in person, because she always had a look on her face l
ike she was asking me a question that she couldn’t say out loud. Noz was more sensitive than me, more of a true medium, ghosts developed attachments to her and would do her bidding; whenever I tried to bond with them, they tried to eat me.
Noz and I had left New York at the same time. I’d learned all I could from that kind of city and I wanted to know what it felt like to live in the sun. Noz’s mother in Chicago had gotten sick so Noz went there to help her. We’d tried to stay in touch, but drifted. When her mom went into remission, Noz wanted to ditch the Midwest. She’d decided on LA independently of me, for the same reason so many witches do, because our kind belongs here. She hit me up when she moved here, with Twitter DM like, “can I have some you friends please?” I introduced her to everyone I knew; besides people she worked with on set, she had me to thank for all of her friends in Los Angeles. Including Ezra, of course.
We’d tried to recapture some of that best friendship, she read my tarot and we went on ghost hunts in Griffith Park and even got wine like normal women. But something of the magic (lol) was gone, and I had these weird instincts that she was looking at me differently, like before she looked at me and now she was looking at me, which is not something that made actual sense so I couldn’t talk about it with anybody else. Our friendship shifted, adjusted, and suddenly our best times were in a group with Ezra and Miggy. We gelled into a dependable little foursome, and I was never bothered that at the end of our nights together, when we were strung out from coke or tipsy or high, when we’d said everything we could say and our brains were empty and ready for the vacancy of sleep, I’d go home by myself and Ezra and Noz would go home together. It would’ve been nice to have sex with someone on those nights, but there was always a girl I could catch up with the next day, and the sex they were having couldn’t have been the best part. It was the hours we spent with each other that mattered; that was the way we gave each other our lives.
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