“What’s with me how?”
“You didn’t call me back, but you went to drinks with Georgie, and then G told me you’d been running around all day looking for Ezra.”
“She said that to you?”
“Was she not supposed to?” Lydia asked.
“I told her I didn’t want to get everybody riled up this weekend,” I said.
“Well if you’re actually worried—”
“I’m not worried, like, Miguel-style worried. I don’t want everyone to freak out and then get pissed at me when Ezra is just like…” I shrugged. “Somewhere.”
Ezra wasn’t just “somewhere.” I could feel a black cloud of something wrong, but I was anxiously certain that no one else would feel it or understand it or understand him or understand me. This absence was somehow about me, somehow for me. I wanted to be as smooth and unbothered as a starless night, but when something feels wrong I’m incapable of the stillness of “wait-and-see.”
A waitress with long, crystalline acrylic nails crouched near our table so she could hear us well enough for us to order two plates of pollo enchiladas and another round of mezcal margaritas.
I lifted my phone turned on portrait mode and Lydia lifted her mezcal margarita and struck a practiced pose. It was impossible to take a bad picture of her, especially under the glow of El Condor’s neon accent lights; my iPhone picture of her looked like a select from a Vogue editorial spread.
In the loud restaurant, we were surrounded by people around our age in pairs or fours, drinking margaritas from glasses similar to ours, wearing a new pair of trendy jeans and shifting uncomfortably because the denim hadn’t stretched out to fit them yet, taking Boomerang pictures of all their friends’ hands as they cheers a round of tequila shots, all the girls’ nails painted; or couples on a second date, explaining the mechanisms of their job, talking, talking, everyone can always think of something to say, even me, especially me, as the ghost of El Conquistador—a slutty 1920s serial murder victim, my favorite ghost in the city—vibrated over the heads of the bartenders and waiters, giggled happily in the bathroom, creeping on all the guys’ dicks.
“When was the last time you heard from Ezra?” Lydia asked.
“I hung out with him last night until late and haven’t heard from him since,” I said.
“Where does he go when he’s depressed?” Lydia asked.
“Sometimes to the Huntington Gardens but he always Instagrams like a billion flowers, and then his face near a rose bush.” I said. “I tried some of his places.”
“Where?”
“The Drawing Room,” I said. I certainly couldn’t tell Lydia about going into Ezra’s apartment, she wouldn’t understand.
“Okay, well like isn’t Chelsea doing her half-birthday drinks thing tonight? Ezra told me on Thursday he was going to go,” she said.
We handed the waiter our empty goblets, exchanged them for ones that were full and new, their contents sharp and campfire-y from the mezcal smoke.
Lydia continued: “So you’ll see him tonight, then, and you can ask him then what the fuck he’s been up to today.”
“He’s not going to come,” I said.
“Are him and Chelsea fighting again?”
“No, I mean like he wouldn’t not text me all day, then just randomly show up at a party.”
“Who says?”
“I says.”
“Ezra loves you,” Lydia said. “But sometimes people fuck off and it’s not about you. Whatever Ezra is doing right now, it’s not about you, and you need to let him do it.”
I didn’t want to say to Lydia, because I knew how it would sound, that even though it wasn’t about me, by blanking me out Ezra had made it about me too. He knew me well enough to know I’d be uncertain and therefore frantic. He was letting me dangle, and I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. If he’d sent me just one text, I could calm myself down and let him do his thing, but he hadn’t, so he was letting me panic on purpose.
The food runner came back, holding our plates of enchiladas with napkins. He put Lydia’s down first then said, “Hot plate.”
“Thank you,” we said. He put my plate down.0
“Hot plate,” he said.
“Thank you,” we said.
When he turned away, I touched the plate with the sides of both of my hands. Whenever a waiter tells me a plate is hot, I have to touch it. I want whatever heat anything is giving off.
Lydia made an eating noise. “Are you doing anything before Chelsea’s?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Come with me to my sound bath meditation thing at the crystal store after dinner,” she said. “This shaman who works at a meditation center in the desert is coming out to lead the class today, it’s a special event.”
“No way,” I said, “You know I always hate that kind of thing, I can’t sit still, I disturb everybody, I spend the whole time thinking about sex and it messes up everyone’s energy.” I took a very big bite of enchilada. I always felt like I should be good at that kind of witchy ritual, but I wasn’t, like a fish that couldn’t swim.
“You’re obviously frantic,” Lydia said.
“I’m regular.”
“You’re not,” she said, “You’re nothing like I’ve ever seen you, except that one time last year.”
“Could you please stop bringing up Miguel.”
Lydia didn’t know I could text with him, so she had found my initial dramatically intense mourning, then sudden recovery, very suspect; she assumed I was repressing, she bought me crystals that were supposed to aid grieving and hid them in my underwear drawer and underneath my sink. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t need to move on, that whenever I missed Miggy I texted him and, though dead, he texted me back. “I’m trying to be honest with you about my anxiety and all you’re doing is telling me I’m hysterical and bringing up my dead best friend.”
“I’m—”
“You’re pushing my buttons, then you’re acting surprised when I have, like, a dramatic response.” I was leaning forward a little, gesturing more wildly than normal with my hands, raising my voice into its highest, loudest register. The problem with being called hysterical when you’re not is that the natural response to that accusation is hysteria. “I have anxiety! Ezra won’t text me back!”
“Yes, okay, I’m sorry,” Lydia said, wiping up some red enchilada sauce with her finger, then sucking on it. Her lowered eyelashes were fluttery like a hummingbird’s, even her hand shook a little as she raised her mezcal margarita to her mouth. She tucked her body away from mine. I felt a hot prickle of anxiety watching her pull away from me; I needed her back.
“No, fuck, I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have yelled. You didn’t do anything, I’m just scared about Ezra.”
“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, “I wasn’t trying to push your buttons, it’s just hard to see you get wrapped up in whatever Ezra has going on. You need to focus on yourself for once.”
How could I, though, when everything about me was fine, and everything about Ezra was suddenly an absence? How did I look at a hole in the fabric of my day-to-day and just let that gap remain and widen?
“You’re really not worried about Ezra?” I asked.
“I’m not,” Lydia said.
She was wrong. But I didn’t know what to do, besides do a little bit of detective work at the party, to see if anybody else had heard from him. There was an unfilled chunk of time before the party, and I could give that to Lydia.
“I’ll come to the sound bath,” I said, chewing enchilada, extending an olive branch, washing them both down with mezcal.
Lydia perked, “You will?”
“Sure. I could use a little healing.” I forked my precious last bite of enchilada into my mouth and followed it with another chip, covered in cold, congealed queso. When had I gotten so hungry?
Lydia made a little hand motion in my direction, “Who couldn’t?”
* * *
—
While Lydia was in the bathroom, I opened Instagram. At the top of the feed, the algorithm fed me an image of myself, from Georgie’s account, sexy in the Drawing Room. Over 150 of our friends had double tapped, but not Ezra, who usually was fast to like content taken in one of his favorite locations with his people; of course, of course, his accounts were still inactive, and yet I’d instinctively looked for his usual red heart of approval.
At the Drawing Room I’d been anxious for answers about Ezra’s whereabouts, panicked, attacking erratically, practically shouting at the bartender, but the picture showed nothing of my actual emotional state. I looked carefree, blissful, having fun with my friend! I’d instinctually struck this pose. And Georgie, knowing I was hurting, posted a version of me that was not hurting. Months and years from now, when I scrolled back in my feeds, would I remember how I’d actually felt, or would I remember this vibrant image that I had placed on top of my feelings like a shroud?
Normally on Instagram, I scroll through the images before watching the stories, but I saw Noz’s round icon at the top of my screen, first thing in my video feed. I put my headphones on and clicked to watch her story.
The first thing I saw was Noz’s pale brown arms and her raw cuticles, nibbled on, peeling because of a dryness she couldn’t shake. It must’ve been worse where she was, heading away from the water, into the deep desert.
Her first clip was a driving video, her arm out the window and fingers rolling through the whipping wind. Out her windows, the sky was bleakly bright and huge. Her radio was playing music loudly, a Bluetooth connection to her phone, the Priests song “JJ”: I thought I was a cowboy because I / Smoked Reds! / Smoked Reds! / Smoked Reds!” The video was from five hours ago.
The second fifteen-second clip, also from five hours ago, I watched from Noz’s perspective as she walked into a gas station. The video broke, a Godardian jump cut, picking up in a third clip moments later, with a new human subject: an awkward looking gas station attendant who seemed unsure about whether or not to wave. Nozlee’s voice: “Can I get a pack of Marlboro Reds?”
The fourth clip was from four hours ago, Noz’s hand outside the car again, a Marlboro Red between two fingers, the smoke drifting up in a picture-perfect coil.
Her videos jerked to a stop, stalling me in a still image, finally something with Noz’s face. Her cheeks shapely and full, her bleached hair fell artfully along the curves of her face, her eyes bright and shining, her parted lips revealed an inviting cavern of a mouth; there was a pink tongue in there, waiting for someone. I could see only its pale tip.
This was Nozlee, driving into the desert, projecting fun, projecting silliness, unbothered by the heart she’d squashed mere hours before, what a fun perfect little life, this desert babe, a liker of good music, a pretty face, a good sense of humor, a real treat to know. Fuck her for all of it. If smashing my phone could’ve destroyed all evidence of her superfun Instagram story, I would’ve sacrificed it, smashed it against the floor, dunked it in a pint of beer, let it fizzle to death. But there was nothing I could do to wipe the internet clean of her.
I can have fun too, bitch. I posted the pic of Lydia, captioned it “Dinner Date.”
Lydia came back so I took out my headphones.
“You ready?” she asked.
“I just have to tweet this thing,” I said.
I typed:
i’m a bad boy because your nice day makes me mad at you
I showed Lydia, “Is this a good tweet?”
Lydia read it, “Who is this about?”
“I’m speaking in general,” I said, “about all videos of peoples’ nice days.”
“You need to let people be happy.”
“Happiness is a construct just like everything else,” I said.
“That’s what you should tweet,” Lydia said.
She was right, so that’s what I did.
We reached my car first. Lydia stopped to hug me even though we were driving to the same place. She broke the hug but held onto my arms with her hands, her palms’ skin was so soft. “I know you’ve had a hard year and I’ve tried to give you a lot of leeway.”
“Leeway?” I asked. I didn’t know what she was getting at.
“But I don’t think I’d be a good friend if I didn’t say: You need to get ahold of yourself.”
I decided to interpret it as loving and overprotective. I touched her where she was holding me. “You don’t have to worry about me, I’m managing.”
She stopped touching me but smiled and said we’d see each other in a few minutes, and she walked away from me.
Friday, 6:30 p.m.
The meditation thing was in a crystal store, Sacred Light. When we arrived, it was filled with very skinny women of various ages and one or two other women who weren’t skinny; most wore stretchy athleisure pants, one of the younger women wore a linen jumpsuit which made her look trendy instead of dowdy. She slipped her feet out of shoes I recognized, she’d bought them from Everlane. Their white bottoms were lightly scuffed. Lavender-scented smoke pumped out of bamboo oil diffusers and on all sides, massive crystals were arranged in color-coordinated energy grids. Lydia embraced the lineny-ist woman and handed me a thick Mexican rug and square cushion, muted colors. We set up in rows like a yoga class.
I looked around the room and neither saw nor felt the presence of any gathering ghosty. I could even feel the faint pulse of my own cell phone, which had a bit of spirit energy as a result of all my texting with Migs, but normally I couldn’t feel it because there was so much haunted energy everywhere on earth; everywhere is a place where so many people have died. Sacred Light was an unusual hush, a lack of energy, like the opposite of a TV show’s racist fantasy of an Indian Burial Ground that’s dense with mad ghosts and bad juju. Generally, botanicas and crystal stores—even the whitewashed new ones capitalizing on trends, like Sacred Light—attracted a dense cloud-cover of spirit energy. The quiet was unnerving. I glanced around looking for answers and saw only the glint of light bouncing off a cluster of rose quartz points.
The woman Lydia had embraced, who evidently was the owner of the store—excuse me, the space—gave the annoying “housekeeping” notes that precede every class of this type (“please silence your cell phones, don’t disturb the energy of those around you, but feel comfortable to express whatever comes up for you”). Then she vaguely praised the visiting shaman, who worked not at a desert meditation center but coincidentally at the expensive spa hotel Two Bunch Palms where Nozlee had planned to take Ezra before smashing his heart. The space-owner told us we had two minutes to get ready and then we all started murmuring again, while she walked into the corner of the room to confer with the shaman. I realized with a jolt that the shaman was Witch Colleen.
The meditation leader stepped to the side of the room, where she turned off the music and adjusted the light levels. I sprang up and hurried towards Colleen, cornering her away from the group.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s Eve, from Brooklyn a while back, maybe you don’t remember—”
“I remember,” she said, cutting me off, twisting a strand of dark hair in her finger. She was in her early fifties by now, with a smattering of wrinkles around her eyes and a sun-worn look to her skin that I didn’t remember, but that might be a function of being in LA; a healer who looked like she didn’t do any plastic surgery or Botox was rare in Los Angeles.
Witch Colleen, in her sharp mentorship style, had warned me of the various dangers of telling anyone that I could see ghosts, constantly reminding Noz and me and our fellow students of the burning, stoning, and hanging of witches, of the turn-of-the-century women chained to the walls in dirty asylums, the lobotomies, of modern institutionalizations—more humane now, sure, but still traps, still rooms with locked doors
that isolated witches from the rest of humanity.
So, with so many people around, we couldn’t be perfectly candid. Tongue-tied, Colleen not inattentive but not speaking to me either, I was awkward. “I didn’t realize you were working in LA. I think about you, but I didn’t know how to get in touch.”
“I have to keep my energy clean for my work out here,” Colleen said, again not turning away from me, but offering me nothing.
“It feels calming to me. I often feel very psychically attacked and this place is just nice and quiet,” I said. “Maybe the owner put a lot of Cascarilla round.”
Colleen’s eyes narrowed, “Well you would be familiar, wouldn’t you?”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re doing a bad job,” Colleen said, more meanly than I anticipated.
“What does that mean?”
“I tried to teach you how to appreciate and use your gifts, not how to squash them.”
“I have to—” I tried to protest, but she cut me off.
“Cascarilla is a way to banish the past without dealing with it.” She looked right at me when she said it, accusing me of something. “You’re supposed to embrace the past, no matter how rough, work your way through it and come to a peace.”
“I just use it to protect myself.”
“No, you use it to hide from yourself,” she hissed. “Don’t bring that energy into this session.”
“I’m not!” I wasn’t! This woman couldn’t know the ways in which I suffered, and couldn’t know who I was.
“I’d ask you to leave, but you probably need this more than anyone else in the room.”
“That’s actually super rude,” I said, and took a step away from her. Her wrinkles, her knotted black hair, suddenly looked witchy to me, in that bad horror movie way: hooked nose, warts, eating children. “I paid like forty dollars to do your dumb meditation.”
“If you wanted to be coddled you shouldn’t have come over here to talk to me when I could still feel Cascarilla seeping out of your pores.” She grabbed my shoulder, suddenly and hard enough that I stepped back, trying to get her out of my space, but she danced forward with me and pulled my ear towards her mouth. “I can read your aura, Ghost-Seer,” she said in a harsh whisper, “You need fixing.”
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