“At the wharf?” Clarissa must clarify the conditions.
“Anemic waves and corndogs that give you cancer. Immigrants catching perch so full of mercury, they explode as they reel them in,” she reports.
“What color is the water?” Clarissa asks. “Precisely?”
“Last ditch leukemia IV-drip blue,” she decides.
“Half an hour,” Clarissa assures her. “I’m coming.”
They meet episodically. Conventional friendship, with its narrative of consensual commitments, has proved too intimate and demanding. Between them are houses, husbands dead or divorced, and children known only by anecdote and photograph. Entire strata of their personal history are less than footnotes. Decades passed when they were driftwood to one another, or vessels lost at sea. Or a drowned stranger, perhaps; why bother?
“Our litany of blame is tedious,” she once recognized.
“Human perimeters are background razor wire. We’re too hip for that shit,” Clarissa responded.”
“We’ll bite it off with our teeth,” she offered. “Napalm it. Grenade launchers and M-16s. Tec-9s. We’ll have our own Cultural Revolution. We’ll go post-modern, but fully armed.”
“We’ll invent rituals appropriate for our circumstances. We’ll whisper endearments while strolling the killing fields.” Clarissa was enthusiastic.
“But we’ll abide by the Geneva Convention,” she prompted. “Despite our emotional residue.”
“Directed psychological evolution. It’ll be more brutal than weight training,” Clarissa agreed. “But we’ll become better human beings.”
“We’ll redefine and transcend ourselves,” she said.
It was an earlier autumn on Fisherman’s Wharf. It was bluer than Maui, the bay studded with strands of cobalt that looked charged, technologically modified. She had lived two years in a bamboo and chicken wire shack on a nameless river of honey yellow reeds and orchids in the jungle near Hana. She had no electricity. She wasn’t in contact with Clarissa then. Clarissa probably doesn’t know there are seasons in Maui, too. A faint reddening, a moistening that seems a prelude, and sudden stillness as the mosquitoes enter temporary remission.
“I like it conceptually. But let’s go further,” Clarissa suggested. “We’ll be molecular. Just strands of light from one radiance to another.”
“We’ll reject linearity entirely,” she encouraged. “Sporadic moments of illumination in extreme altitudes requiring oxygen masks?”
“Discreet and unpredictable rendezvous with spectacular voltage. We’ll communicate by blowtorch,” Clarissa offered. Her eyes emitted an unnatural gleam suggesting rows of votives in deserted rooms and beaches of mica in white sand.
Their psychiatrists were cautiously optimistic. A process of accommodation and evolution was unlikely but not implausible. True, they had failed the traditional strategies of giving and receiving. But the standard methods by which one registers recognition and regret don’t apply to them. They had a pact, an armistice with the elements of aggressive radical improvisational surgery. Malignant complications were an acceptable risk. Then they had shaken hands.
Now she sees Clarissa exiting a black town car with darkened windows. She’s wearing her usual business outfit — aerobics pants and jacket, oversized Gucci sunglasses and a Giants baseball cap. It’s the popular camouflaged movie star look, designed to create the impression you’re attempting to be incognito. It’s the uniform the narcissistic personality disorder dictates. It’s become a global fashion statement. In the malls of all the capitals, passing women might be gangbangers, housewives or soap stars.
Clarissa is carrying not a gym bag, which would be appropriate and predictable, but a Chanel purse with leather quilting and long gold braided handles. It’s the second decade of war and alliances are ambiguous and brief. We’re polite but alert and suspicious. Vigilant.
They kiss on both cheeks. “You forgot my birthday,” Clarissa begins. She dismisses the car and driver with a hand gesture.
“I didn’t sign on as a soccer mom. I don’t decorate for holidays. I don’t bake or send thank-you cards. I throw away personal mail. You know this,” she reminds Clarissa.
“Don’t you go to bed at Halloween? And not get up until after Valentine’s Day?” Clarissa’s voice is light.
“That was my mother,” she replies, annoyed. “I just leave the country at certain junctures.”
She is fond of Christmas in Southeast Asia — ornately decorated pine trees in air-conditioned hotel lobbies like vestiges from another planet, and bamboo balconies draped in green velvets, antique brocades and holly wreaths. More fetishes. Christmas carols are rendered in versions so mangled by distance and erroneous translation they’re almost tolerable. Rivers smell of rotting vegetables, petrol, wood cooking fires and hunger. Air is layers of decaying prayers like a satellite losing orbit, falling down not as metal but as streams of origami. In Bangkok, in December, it’s 106 degrees.
“Let’s just be here now,” Clarissa says. “We know the rules. It’s play time.” Her mouth glistens with a red lipstick that seems to have small stars encrusted within it. There are implications in the sheen she doesn’t want to consider.
The wharf is almost deserted. It’s mid-day, mid-week in an undifferentiated season. It’s another windswept early November. They walk hand-in-hand down the pier past occasional men fishing and stray teenagers eager for corruption.
“Don’t look,” Clarissa cautions. “They’re contagious. We’ll get a contact psychotic flashback.”
They, too, grew up in tenements designed for transience, and shabby from inception. The rows of apartments like festering sun sores. They were an integral part of the blueprint for the millennial slums in the sun. They were the penciled-in stick figures on the diagrams.
The Last Edge Saloon perches on the furthest side of the wharf. Their reunions begin there. Clarissa sits in a booth facing the bay on three sides. It’s a bold and invitational decision. They’ll order expresso and take amphetamines. Or get drunk on something festive, White Russians or champagne. Since she’s technically still in AA, she lets Clarissa set the tenor. Clarissa orders a pitcher of Bloody Marys. From a caloric standpoint, it’s the obvious selection.
“You still look like a hippy,” Clarissa observes, regarding her with an expression that’s speciously conciliatory, even condescending. She interprets this as disturbing. Anxiety is inseparable from the air. It’s in the oxygen molecules their biochemistry fails to adequately process. There’s a perpetual uneasy truce.
“It’s my signature classic bohemian statement,” she replies quickly. She’s defensive and a bit agitated. “I want to formalize our alliance,” she begins.
“Want to get married?” Clarissa produces an unconvincing partial smile.
“I want a contract with precise specifications,” she replies. “And I want a weapons check.”
“Contracts are worthless,” Clarissa points out. “They’re a wish list for Santa.”
She’s a lawyer, after all. She knows.
“We could become cousins,” Clarissa suggests.
This appeals to her. Survivors of cataclysmic childhoods defined by poverty and isolation compulsively seek validation. They know they lack proper emotional documentation. Cousins evokes a blood connection that would substantiate and obviate certain complexities — the ebbs and flows, droughts and monsoons of their relationship. She wants a device that highlights and justifies their erratic and pathologically intense conjunction. In regions of bamboo and sun-rotted petals, hurricanes are routine and wind propels sand like tiny bullets, and there are too few artifacts. Cousins is an inspiration.
“I could draw up the papers,” Clarissa is expansive. “But adoption is superior.”
She came to San Francisco when she was 7. Her father, Marvin, had terminal cancer. Her mother was mentally ill. They were bankrupt. She thought heaven was a foster home. If Marvin would just finally die, perhaps she could even get adopted.
“I’v
e missed you like a first love,” she says.
“I was your first love,” Clarissa reminds her. “And you mine.”
They lean across the faux wood table etched with knife gouged gang insignias and logos of metal bands and kiss again. They are both manic this autumn day. They share numerous personality disorders. They’re both bi-polar 2 with borderline features. Substance abuse is a persistent irritant. Recently, they’ve been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Today’s sun turns the San Francisco Bay the purple of noon irises in country gardens in July. To articulate such facets, to know and chart them is a spasm of thunder inside, a tiny birth the size of a violet’s mouth. If she extracted this entity from her body, she could present it to Clarissa like an infant.
She examines her almost cousin’s eyes. Even through dark sunglasses, they are inordinately bright. Then she senses that she, too, is glowing. Her eyes are brass corridors reflecting fluorescent light. They’re both candles today, unusually in sync, radiant with clarity and energy. Clarissa wears a silk scarf, a vivid purple implying motion and vertical waves.
“Like it?” Clarissa asks. “Hermes. Take it. I just stole it on Maiden Lane.”
“You still shoplift?” She holds the scarf. It feels moist and sanctified. It reminds her of the Mohave in December, crossing from the east into an inland ocean of relentless purple and mauve waves. The scarf is an embrace around her neck.
“Theft is like guerilla warfare,” Clarissa explains. They’ve finished their second round of drinks. “A thrill kill requires mental discipline. I put it on and keep walking. I know I’ve had it for years. I bought it on the Champs Elysees. It was raining. I was at the George V. No one could dare question me. And no one does. Let’s ride the carousel.”
They carry their drinks across the stained wooden planks of the pier. The carousel is closed. Clarissa makes a cell phone call and a man appears. She produces three hundred dollar bills. They wait for the right seats, choosing recently painted twin horses, white and intricately decorated like certain antique porcelain plates, and ride for half an hour. Clarissa vomits twice.
She searches her theoretical arsenal. Is it time for a hand grenade? Should she call for a chopper with medics? Then she remembers her mission. “Are you OK?” she manages.
“I understand how children discover bulimia,” Clarissa reports, excited. “It’s an accidental miracle.”
Despite the gym-suit camouflage, it’s obvious Clarissa has gained weight. But even they have taboos. Eating disorders are a forbidden topic. They meet on neutral ground, but there are still no-fly zones, areas of fragmentation and carpet bombs, landmines and IEDs.
Clarissa borrows the purple scarf to wipe her mouth. She’s contaminated the silk, but she still wants it back. She thinks, suddenly, of flower bouquets and their inadequacy. The floral arrangements of her life have been too much and not enough. The petals stained, fragile and insubstantial. They were debris.
“If a contract is insufficient, what can we do?” she wonders.
They stand on the wharf where the carousel is no longer spinning. Gone are the circles they inscribed in the too thin aqua air, engraving midnight blue trails like marks made by fins. Somewhere these etchings floated into a river winding to a bay. More invisible origami.
“We could get a tattoo,” Clarissa proposes. “Our names together in a heart.”
“A tattoo?” she repeats, delighted. “Isn’t it painful and dangerous? The possibility of AIDS and infection?”
“But you love needles.” Clarissa is annoyed. “You’re a professional junky.”
“I’m in remission,” she replies quickly. There’s no doubt anymore. Clarissa is attacking.
In truth, during one particularly virulent carousel rotation, she decided to call a drug dealer in North Beach. It’s walking distance, over a steep sequence of stone steps in a cliff. Then the sudden unexpected gate. Within, a creek is dammed and trapped, the water stalls green with slime and duck excrement.
There’s a bridge to the Victorian house. She knows the grain in every wooden floorboard and the way sunset displays itself through each glass pane in every room. There’s a geometry to how sun impales and dissects the Golden Gate Bridge. If you comprehend this mathematics, you can construct spaceships and time machines with common household appliances. You can turn on the radio and talk to any god.
“You always relapse,” Clarissa observes. “And don’t you already have AIDS?”
She is shocked. She stares at Clarissa. Even with Gucci sunglasses, there’s a distinct softening around her chin, and a loss of definition in her cheeks.
“No. I have hepatitis C.” She is angry. “And you need to get your face done.”
“What part?” Clarissa is concerned.
They’re walking from the wharf toward a tattoo parlor on Columbus Avenue.
Shops offer stacks of cheap plaster statues, saints and children, dwarves and obese laughing frogs. Someone will purchase and paint these objects, display them, or give them as gifts. They pass display windows offering plastic replicas of Alcatraz, and T-shirts saying PRISONER and PSYCHO WARD.
“What part?” she repeats. “It’s not a fucking negotiation. It’s a composition. Just give the guy a blank check. And don’t use a Marin surgeon. You’ll end up looking like a clone. I found an Italian in Pittsburgh.”
“I noticed you finally got your father off your face,” Clarissa slowly admits.
“Well, the police wouldn’t do it,” she says with an edge. “And Mommy was in a locked ward.”
Slow swells are below the wharf. The bay is a liquid representation of fall. It’s in continual transition. All fluid bodies are autumnal and promise betrayal. That’s what leaves signify, flaunting unrepentant criminal reds like vengeance and adultery, and yellows like lanterns and amulets. Fall is about packing and disappearing. It’s the season for divestiture. Time of the severing. That’s the obvious subtext. And it occurs to her that her elation may dissipate. Emotions have their own inexplicable currents and random lightning storms.
She follows Clarissa into the tattoo parlor. “Let’s rock,” Clarissa says. “Lock and load.”
The Eagles are playing. It’s “Hotel California,” of course. A tanned man with a blond ponytail who looks like a yoga instructor opens a book of designs. Dragons.
Butterflies. Demons. Flowers. Guitars. Spiders. She vaguely remembers negotiations involving a fifth of vodka, and a complicated argument regarding the aesthetic implications of scripts. They selected a gothic font. Then she may have passed out.
She realizes they’re in an arcade on Pier 39. It’s three hours and six Bloody Mary’s later. They have gauze and adhesive tape on their shoulders where their names are carved into their left upper arms in navy blue. They’re leaving the encircling heart in red ink for their next reunion. Banks of garish video games surround them; hip-hop blasts from speakers in the ceilings and floors. Boys who look part Asian or Mexican are armed with laser levers and plastic machine guns. They keep the real Glocks in their pockets.
“This is not the global village I envisioned,” she says.
“That’s politically incorrect enough to get me disbarred,” Clarissa whispers. She places two fingers against her red lacquered lips in a gesture of mock fright.
The photographic booth is on the far side of the arcade. 4 shots. They’ve been taking pictures here since they rode buses and walked from Daly City in 7th grade. It cost a quarter then. Now it takes dollars. The photographic session is a ritual element in each of their meetings. It’s their sacrament. When they leave the booth, they cut the strip in half. She saves her photographs in the shoebox where she keeps her passport and birth certificate. She assumes Clarissa does the same, but in her Swiss jewelry vault. Or perhaps she just throws them away.
The photographs are a necessary component of their liturgy. They can only see one another by laminated representations. It would be too disturbing and intrusive if they actually perceived one another wi
thout artificial mediation. They communicate by email, fax and newspaper clippings.
“Marvin’s jowls are definitely gone.” Clarissa examines the thin strip of facial shots. “You have cheekbones. Are those implants? Jesus. You’re gorgeous. You didn’t look this good at sixteen, even. Cosmetic surgery already.”
“We’re breathing on 40.” She is bewildered. Certainly Clarissa comprehends the necessity of proactive facial procedures. This is San Francisco and Clarissa is an entertainment business attorney with a penthouse office above a Chinese bank. Is Clarissa in denial? Are her medications interfering with her functioning on even this rudimentary a level?
“After you psychologically resolve the slap across the face, and its more damaging verbal resonances—” she begins.
“And that takes decades and costs what? A quarter of a million?” Clarissa is still holding the strip of photographs.
“Then the next step is actual surgical removal. It’s a natural progression. It’s how to treat emotional cancer. Keep them,” she decides. “Get some reference points.”
They sit on a bench on the south side of the pier, sun tamed and restrained. The water is agitated, white caps like mouths open, baring teeth. The bay reminds her of a woman in autumn in an imaging office. First the locker, the paper bathrobe, the chatty blond with the clipboard who walks you into the room with the mammogram machines. Then the stasis before the X-rays are read. Yes, the bay is waiting for its results. Poppies encrusted with resins or blood float like prayer offerings in the dangerous toxic waters.
“We used to walk here. What were we? 11, 12?” Clarissa asks. Her mood is also shifting. They’re both still drunk.
They hold hands. Her childhood is a sequence of yellows from trailer park kitchen cabinets and the invisible poisons leaking from fathers undergoing chemotherapy. Take a breath of rancid lemon. You’ve seen the Pacific, reached the end of the trail and don’t linger at the edges. They had a final punctuation for that. It was called the iron lung.
“They hadn’t invented a vocabulary for us yet,” Clarissa says to the waves. “Dysfunctional families. Latchkey children. Remember when I lost my key? What my father did? Jerry tied me up in the carport in pajamas for a week.”
A Good Day for Seppuku Page 13
