by Siel Ju
“I’ve wondered if I should be worried about you,” I said.
“Worried? Why?” She asked in a flattered tone.
“The Xanax thing. I didn’t realize it, that you were having such a hard time.”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged, then leaned over her glass of water and without lifting it, sucked from the straw. “I don’t take them that much.”
“I feel like maybe I made it hard for you to tell me,” I said. “Like I was judgy about that short guy. It’s just that it seemed like you were unhappy, so you were trying these random things, whatever came along, and they were making you unhappier.” I paused, feeling genuine. “You deserve better.”
She laughed mildly at this, like she was humoring a child. She put her arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. She felt strong and solid. “It’s not like I suffered some sort of damage and I’m permanently tainted now. I just didn’t like the guy, and I need to nix the alcohol and Xanax combo. Keep them separated. Church and state.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right.”
She was still smiling, more inwardly now, thinking. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “Actually, let’s go to my place. I have a surprise.”
Erin lived five blocks away. The streets were cold, but the air was still. I felt like we were inside a refrigerator, the traffic on Lincoln whirring steadily behind us. Once we started walking I noticed Erin’s shoes, new gray pumps with rounded toes, then realized she was wearing a whole new outfit—a gray pencil skirt and a maroon silk shirt under her regular black coat. I complimented her and she stuck out her chest a little, gratified. She said it was her new look, part of a New Year’s resolution. Her stride was brisk and her mood jubilant. She pointed out little details of her neighborhood’s holiday decorations as we walked—the miniature tree in a shoe repair shop, the lone red ribbon around a ficus tree. As if on cue a green sedan glided by, the tune of “Feliz Navidad” floating out its windows. The car contained a nuclear family, elementary school–aged kids in the back seat; it came to a stop at the light in front of us. When it started moving again a homeless guy we hadn’t noticed stood up from a doorway and yelled that Christmas was over. At this we turned the corner onto Erin’s street.
As soon as I walked in the door I noticed the moving boxes. At first I thought she’d brought some extra stuff back from her parents’ after the holidays, but then saw she’d taken her framed posters down. Erin grinned at my confusion. “Surprise!” she said. “I’m moving to New York.”
“Since when?”
“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid I’d jinx it. But the New York office had this senior manager position. My boss told me last week that I got the job, which was weird since we’re on the same level now. They’re paying for my move, and if I want, they’ll pay for my MBA.” Her eyes shone. “After that, I could really go anywhere.”
I congratulated her, a bit uncertainly at first, then once I started to feel the logic of it, more heartedly. I’d miss her, but she was right. Moving would be good for her. It would rejigger the frayed puzzle pieces of her life, start to jolt them in place. She opened a bottle of champagne and even before we started drinking it, we started growing giddy and excited, imagining her future. I peppered her with logistical questions. She was going to leave in a week and a half. She started talking about renewal and clean slates, about how she’d get to start that relationship seminar there now. Her voice was somewhat tremulous, with a flustered joy.
“The fact is, it just hasn’t worked out for me in LA,” she said. “I’ve been living here a decade, and really, what do I have to show for it? There’s nothing holding me here. I mean, friends, of course,” she looked at me meaningfully, “but you know.” She paused. “I didn’t want to admit it because it seemed like admitting that I’d failed, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
We nodded together in a fraught but accepting silence. We both surveyed the jumble of boxes.
“I’ve kind of started seeing someone,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” Erin said, as if she’d been waiting for it. “Natalie told me.”
Erin had gone in after work to exchange her scarf, to get a gray one that went with her new outfit. We must have just missed each other. Erin asked me genial, obligatory questions about Christian and seemed fairly happy for me. She poured us more champagne, then put on some music. “Pretty Young Thing” played, a cover by a woman with a feathery voice. I thought she filled the lyrics with fear and an ill-defined regret, bringing out the strange melancholy of youth and uncertainty in the lyrics. But the music only seemed to enliven Erin, who sang along at the chorus, keeping beat with her thumb against the glass. I thought about how nothing was fixed, that everything—songs, events—held only the meanings we affixed to them. I wondered if my mind had been perpetually stuck in one spot, dissolutely clinging to the uncertainty it was familiar with, adding that scrim to everything I saw. For a few seconds I saw myself as floating in a limpid, amniotic darkness that was comforting, but also keeping me in an ineffectual, fetal state.
Then the song ended, and Erin turned to toast the New Year again. We started walking between the boxes, Erin going over what she planned to take, what she wanted to sell. She gestured at the window and pointed at a big Christmas tree planted in a neighbor’s back yard, its gigantic glass star gleaming from its high perch. The fog had come in and I couldn’t see the real stars above it, but I could sense them up there, shining, patient.
You Are Realistic
The last time I saw Jeff on stage was in a dream, a dream of nostalgic contradictions, my private emotions unfurled and exposed by the stark presence of my body among other bodies, all twisting yearningly to stay in rhythm with the unstable logic of the dream.
In it, I was in Griffith Park for the Free Shakespeare Festival, alone on a square of blanket checkmated by all the other squares of blankets, hundreds of them, on which sat other women, also each alone, in varying postures of boredom. We were all waiting for the show to start. The stage undulated softly before us, and looking closely I saw its walls were a tangled façade of leotard-clad bodies, their small movements like an almost imperceptible dance. Jeff came on the stage looking young and impetuous, wearing his usual scruffy T-shirt and expensive jeans, the ones with the tricky zipper. A shiver ran through the crowd and I tensed with it, until the play was over in a flash, the wall disassembled into an excited mass of writhing bodies, and Jeff walked off the stage, toward me. He moved with a sharp tenacity, his cold, lithe body cutting like an ice pick through the summer air. His dark eyes glowered with a seductive danger. I stood up anxiously. But when he got close, he transmuted. I realized he wasn’t actually Jeff at all but another guy, one with a sharp, deliberate haircut that looked almost peculiar against his blandly friendly expression. This guy was in his early twenties, a decade younger than Jeff and I, and he had an overeager jauntiness that affronted me. Our eyes met briefly, then still grinning, he walked past me, gleefully holding out his tin bucket for donations.
The next week I felt pulled toward Venice and went there, somehow convincing myself that it wasn’t about Jeff, I just needed a change of scenery. I walked down Abbot Kinney aimlessly before settling on a coffee shop, one outfitted in minimalist warehouse style, glass and chrome and vaguely lab-like, the shelves lined with beakers and Chemex flasks.
Of course I found myself looking for Jeff there, though there was no reason why he’d come into this place. He didn’t even drink coffee. Still, I took a seat and studied the crowd. The baristas were all rail thin, wearing skinny jeans and black vests over neat collared shirts, accentuated with bright bow ties. At the back of the café was a raised bar where customers sat facing forward, their row of laptops gleaming like polished teeth. From the stereo came music that sounded like The Supplies, but with heavier drums. A couple walked in wearing tennis whites, each holding an end of a baby blue surf board. They edged around the bar and disappeared through the swinging metal doors into the kitchen. I stayed distrac
ted this way until close to closing time. It was only then, in the balmy dark illuminated by streetlights, that I finally wandered into Diane’s Restaurant.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded, but it took me a while to spot Jeff because he was on the other side of the bar, a customer. When I saw him, he was already studying me with an amused smile.
“You’re here,” he said.
He said he’d stopped by on a whim to see old friends; he’d quit bartending at Diane’s months ago. I said I’d been in the area and just needed a quick drink. When he got off his stool and gave me a half-hug, his stubble grazed my skin, and the rest of my night as we talked, my cheek tingled and burned insistently.
I’d first met Jeff about a year before, at a Christmas dinner party thrown by Christian, my boyfriend at the time. Jeff had been dragged to the event by an acting buddy of his called Amy, who had an obvious crush on him. At the end of the night I’m pretty sure Jeff went home with her, though I never asked him about it.
A few weeks after that dinner, Amy invited Christian and me to her birthday party at Diane’s. I didn’t expect to see Jeff there until I spotted him mixing drinks behind the bar, looking put upon. Amy had obviously planned her party there so she’d have an excuse to see Jeff again, and realizing this, I felt a small tug of pity for her.
Amy had a brave game face on though. When she saw Christian she squealed and gave him, then me, a sloppy hug. She and her actor friends had taken over most of the restaurant’s bar section, already a few drinks in and rowdy. I followed Christian to the bar. Jeff remembered us and said the first round was on him. “Thanks again for dinner,” he said, looking at me. I told him Christian had done all the cooking. Jeff looked unconvinced but he said thanks again anyway; Christian responded by thanking Jeff for the wine. Then there was an awkward pause, and Jeff went to help other customers.
Christian and I stayed at the bar and drank somewhat lugubriously, watching the actors preen and pose with melodramatic, garrulous enthusiasm. Christian drank a lot faster than I did; he had a narcissistic but fragile sense of pride that he protected by drinking diligently. At the bottom of his glass Christian ordered another and got up, lubricated enough to join the fray. I told him to go ahead, I wanted to relax and finish my drink first. He hesitated for a moment but then gave me a wet, close-lipped kiss and left, his hand curled possessively around the new drink.
“Sorry about the noise,” Jeff said, suddenly in front of me, drying a glass. He shrugged, smiling. “I think we’re the only people here who aren’t trying to get wasted.”
I smiled back. At this he unexpectedly held my gaze. The gaze-holding came so suddenly that I wasn’t able to look away, that instead I stared back at him transfixed, my senses slowly growing warm and nervy, confused. The moment felt visceral though it must have lasted only a few seconds, so that afterwards, when he made small talk with me in that genial, light tone of his, I was left with an incoherent, unmoored feeling that I tried to anchor by reminding myself that it really had happened. He was wearing the regulation dark jeans and black button-down of bartenders, sleeves rolled up, which on him looked sharp and precise, tailored to his lean form. He moved around fluidly, chitchatting with me between customers, the long row of stoppered wine bottles a glossy backdrop for his performance. There was a soft pop tune playing, its sound almost drowned out by the party, but audible in snippets if you listened hard for it, and it seemed only the two of us could hear that music, could sway surreptitiously to its secret rhythm. I wondered if Amy was watching us, if Christian was, but didn’t turn around to look. We weren’t doing anything suspicious. Jeff asked me how I spelled my name, and what neighborhood I lived in. I told him I lived in Santa Monica, and he said since I was so close I should come by once in a while. He said this in such a breezy tone that I really couldn’t tell if he was coming on to me, or if he was just being nice, or if he got some sort of bonus for bringing more customers in. “I work Thursdays and Fridays,” he said affably, then after a moment, added, “You can bring your friends too.”
I asked him about the acting class, the one he’d been in with Amy, and he smiled like he was glad it was over. He poured another tray of shots for the actors; a Drew Carey type whisked it away. They seemed to be taking turns buying rounds, though Diane’s was really a wine and specialty cocktail place. The party crowd had gotten considerably louder since I’d arrived, and the diners in the restaurant section kept fidgeting and looking over with a scowl, then turning their glares at Jeff, who’d shrug commiseratingly then go back to pouring drinks. Jeff said he’d just been cast in a play, Antony and Cleopatra, and when I expressed interest, said I could come to a rehearsal, at the Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga. That’s when Christian came up, slinging an arm around me and setting his empty glass on the bar. “What’s in Topanga?” Christian asked, tipsy and grinning. Jeff quickly told him about the play. “I’ll let you know when the performances start,” Jeff said, rather loudly, refilling Christian’s glass. “I’ll Facebook you guys.”
“That would be great, man,” Christian said. “We’ll totally be there.”
It was close to two in the morning when we left the bar, and on the way home to his place, Christian was drunk and affectionate and amorous. At a deserted stoplight he eased up my skirt and put his face between my legs, in a soft, almost drowsy way. I pressed my foot harder on the brake, as if in response. I closed my eyes. Then a car that had come up behind us honked, Christian sat up, and we moved forward.
Of course I never took any friends to Diane’s. That was just one of Jeff’s decoy phrases, let out there softly like a song past its prime to blend into the white noise of the crowd. He and I both listened hard for the tune though, and when it played, we moved to its pulse. A couple weeks later, I stopped by on a Thursday. I got there just before closing and took a seat at the bar with a glass of Viognier. Jeff’s smile when he saw me seemed startled and expectant at once. We made light banter about good brunch spots and movies, delicately avoiding any mention of people we knew. We mimed an innocent friendship, though I felt his coworkers must have known what was going on, that my showing up there at all betrayed it somehow. Eventually, once we were out on the near-deserted street and walking, he grabbed my hand somewhat selfishly. He walked me to my car, which was parked on a side street under a sinister-looking tree, and in its murky shadow we made out, a crush of tongues and hands groping next to the quiet dumpsters. “Should we go somewhere?” he said. Then we parted and drove our separate cars to my place.
Once we were alone, he was shyer than I’d expected. He took my clothes off cautiously, as if any sudden movements might make me change my mind. “Is this okay?” he kept asking, and I think with anyone else this would have annoyed me, though with him it felt sweet. When he came he let his body collapse into mine and we lay cuddled that way for a long time, his face tender against my neck. I took shallow, heady breaths, because of his weight. Afterwards, side by side, we talked for a long time. We discussed unnecessarily personal subjects, about family and ambition, both of us answering questions in what seemed like obstinately direct ways, as if our situation demanded that we share these details. Despite that, our conversation still had the polite, back-and-forth manner of strangers who by sheer chance had been placed together at a wedding reception table. When I told him I was a freelance writer he said his father had recently self-published a book of poems, of which he was proud but his children not, the book being a compendium of their embarrassing childhood memories. The Kindle download was available for ninety-nine cents. Still, Jeff talked about his father fondly. I told him my only foray into acting was in the sixth grade, when I played Buttercup in the school production of H.M.S. Pinafore. I told him I was a lot better at the singing than the acting, at which point he started trying to get me to sing something from the musical. “Come on, just one line,” he said, and when I refused he started tickling me, both of us laughing hard, until eventually we went at it again, more aggressively this time. After that, we lay in a ne
ar doze, tired but unable to fall asleep, taking turns starting brief, non-sequitur conversations. Right before we finally drifted off, Jeff made fun of his co-star, the Cleopatra of the play. “She hath such a celerity in dying,” he said. “Like, seriously.” We both laughed drowsily into our pillows, though I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Like a thin, vapid attitude,” Christian said, when I asked him what celerity meant. I told him I was reading the play in preparation for the performance. Christian had gone to grad school for creative writing, though he’d dropped out after a year.
“It says ‘swiftness of movement,’” I said, searching on Google.
“You’re missing the nuance.”
I nodded, though I didn’t believe him. I’d never heard Christian just say the words, “I don’t know.” I thought I might ask Jeff about it later, give us something to talk about, though I wasn’t sure when I’d see him again, or if I would. Even after it became a regular thing that winter, I wondered often what Jeff thought of me, though every time we met I was too afraid to ask. I supposed he liked that I wasn’t an actress, that I could move to the beat of his tune without turning anything he said into a production. And maybe he liked that I had a boyfriend, that I couldn’t push him for anything without seriously upsetting the fragile equilibrium of my life. It disconcerted me a bit, but I think he liked my easy predictability, that I evoked in him a feeling somewhat close to a pleasant boredom. By that I don’t mean that the sex was bad. It wasn’t, and that was a part of it too. And it was that memory I felt on my cheek, sitting at the bar with him a year later.
