Tart

by Jody Gehrman

  “I guess we should call the cops, or something,” Clay says as he returns from the bar with our drinks.

  “Cops?” My head swings toward him too quickly.

  “It’s a bad time for a fire like that—could get out of hand,” he offers, but I can see by the way he’s studying me that my panic is apparent.

  “I can’t.” I spent most of the ride here trying to concoct a good story, but I’m a rotten liar. I’ve been acting since I was six years old and still I can’t fib my way out of a goddamn dental appointment, let alone grand theft auto and arson, so I’ve resigned myself to telling this hapless stranger the truth. “Look, I hate to get you involved in all this,” I begin, stirring my vodka tonic quickly before downing half of it. “The thing is, I sort of—well—borrowed that bus.”

  “Borrowed it?” In the dim light of the Owl Club, I can’t be sure what color his eyes are—somewhere between blue and green—but there’s something remarkably comfortable and familiar about his face. He has a stare that makes you lose your train of thought, and for a long moment I can’t remember what I’m doing here, or what I’m supposed to confess.

  “If I seem incoherent, I’m sorry,” I say, looking away. “I’m a little tripped out. God, this is absolutely the most delicious and the most needed vodka tonic I’ve ever tasted.”

  “You didn’t steal it, did you?”

  “Well…” I try a smile, but it’s all wrong. The woman playing pool breaks and the smack of the balls makes Medea sink her claws into my thigh with alarm. “Ouch!” I cry, quite loudly, and everyone turns in my direction. I sink a little lower into the booth. Psychotic Car Thief and Mad Pussycat Apprehended at the Owl Club. “It was my boyfriend’s,” I whisper. “I just borrowed it, but he doesn’t know.”

  “Aha. And where’s your boyfriend now?”

  “Ex-boyfriend. Sorry. I can’t seem to get that right. He’s in New York, having sex with a teenager.”

  “Charming.” He leans back, looks at the ceiling, and I can tell he’s wondering what he’s gotten himself into.

  “You don’t think it’ll start a fire, do you? I mean, of course it was on fire—the explosion and all—but do you think it’ll catch?” What an idiot. Why can’t I speak?

  One of the old guys at the bar laughs violently at something, and this time Medea makes a break for the door. I scramble after her, but Clay’s quicker by half; he scoops her up into his arms and has her purring in his lap before I’ve even managed to lay a hand on her. Jonathan never did get along with Medea. He claimed he was allergic, that she gave him a headache and an itchy tongue, but I always suspected it was more of a jealous grudge than a physical reaction.

  Now that I’m standing, I feel a warmth spreading into my underwear again, and I realize that in my haste to get a little vodka down my throat I completely forgot about changing my tampon. I excuse myself to the ladies’ room, which turns out to be a disgustingly neglected converted broom closet. There’s a sink stained brown with rust, the floor is covered with miscellaneous paper products, and the single-stall door has been delightfully decorated with a vast array of rants, insults and warnings, the most prominent of which reads, Die Puta Bitches.

  I study myself for a moment in the small, cracked mirror. My hair, even on a good day, is immune to threats with a comb. Each curl finds its way into its own contorted expression of chaos; trying to interfere leads only to excessive frizz. Today the curls have twisted to ambitious dimensions, resulting in a Medusa-on-crack look. I’m wearing this little orange sundress—the most comfortable thing I own for long drives (now, I remind myself, the only thing I own). It’s not exactly the height of chic, especially since it’s all wrinkled, the armpits are wet and the bodice is smeared here and there with the sooty remains of Jonathan’s bus. I think of Mr. Indecently Attractive out there, nursing his beer and petting my cat; perhaps it’s just as well that I’m so horrifically unpresentable today—there’s less chance of me wandering into something I really shouldn’t.

  Tampon, Claudia. Focus. Oh, but goddammit, my stash of OB is now being cremated on the shoulder of Highway 17. There is a machine, thank God, but I haven’t got any change. I could go back out there and get the bartender to give me quarters. But then Clay will see me and it’ll be obvious or at the very least odd (think about it, Claudia—wouldn’t incinerating a stolen vehicle qualify as plenty odd already?). I know the chances that I’ll create a favorable impression at this point are slim (not to mention unnecessary. Remember? On the rebound, delirious with heat, on the rag, homeless, with all possessions currently blowing amid Tuesday traffic in form of ash. Do not, I repeat, do not indulge in a messy entanglement with Gorgeous Motorcycle Boy). But still, I don’t want to make things worse with one more faux pas.

  There’s a gentle sniffling coming from inside the bathroom stall. I freeze. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t alone in here. A quick check under the door reveals a pair of pink flip-flops. A couple seconds pass, and then the toilet flushes and out comes Beach Barbie.

  She’s wearing a tiny tank over a bikini top and miniature turquoise shorts, cut high enough to reveal her mile-long legs. Her eyes are bloodshot and her nose is pink from too much blowing, but neither this nor the seedy setting is enough to detract from her overwhelming California glow.

  I try not to gawk as she squeezes past me to the sink, washes her hands and then her face, pats both dry with a paper towel.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She looks at me in the mirror and smiles, revealing the expected set of gleaming white teeth, then she bursts into sobs.

  “Oh, no,” I say. “What is it?”

  “I—” She can barely get the words out. “I hate—”

  “Yes? You hate…?”

  “Guys,” she finally spits out.

  By now, there’s snot dripping from one of her pretty little nostrils, so I duck into the stall she just left and get her a wad of toilet paper. “There you go,” I say, patting her shoulder gently. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  She blows her nose loudly several times, then composes herself quite rapidly, considering the extremity of the breakdown. “Oh, my God,” she says, checking her reflection for mascara damage. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be. If you have a quarter or a tampon, I’m never telling anyone. Deal?”

  She’s got a pink beach bag slung over her shoulder, and now she paws through it, pulling out a half-eaten Snickers bar, a bottle of aspirin, three lipsticks and a cell phone before finally producing the coveted Tampax. She hands it to me. Its paper wrapper is smooth and delicate from so much toting around.

  “Oh, God, thank you,” I sigh. “You’re an angel of mercy.”

  She hiccups daintily and smoothes her already perfect hair with one hand. “Our little secret, right?”

  “Lips are sealed,” I say, disappearing into the stall.

  When I emerge, my tragic little Beach Barbie is gone. As is usually the case, the blood damage was much less extensive than I’d feared—hardly more than a spot—so I’m feeling refreshed and eager to return to my drink. Clay is still stroking Medea. He appears to be engrossed in a conversation with her, as well. Her puffiness has completely disappeared and she is stretched out happily in his lap, soaking up the affection. She’s always had excellent taste.

  “…terrible motorcycle ride,” he’s telling her, as I sit down. “But you’re okay. Bet you always land on your feet.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  He looks up. “For what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…calming her down. Bringing us here. Saving us from a fiery death.”

  “I hardly saved you.” He wraps a hand around his beer and rotates it slowly before taking a swig. “You two don’t look like the kind of girls who need saving.”

  “Anyway,” I say, eager to change the subject, “what’s your story? What do you do?”

  “For a living?”

  “Okay, sure. What do you do for a living?”

  He shrugs. “I
’ve got a record store.”

  “Here in town?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “That’s cool. So you’re into music. You play anything?”

  “Not really. I DJ on the side, but it’s slow going. The gigs I make money at are mostly weddings, which generally suck.”

  “Oh, man,” I say. “I hate weddings.”

  “Jesus, if I have to play ‘You Are So Beautiful’ one more time I’m going postal.”

  “I think our generation’s way too jaded for marriage. It should seriously be outlawed. Forget the whole same-sex marriage debate.” I lean into the table. “Let’s do away with the whole institution.”

  He looks amused. “Now, that’s something I can drink to,” he says, raising his beer bottle. We toast, and a vision of his mouth on the nape of my neck makes me feel suddenly much drunker than half a vodka tonic can account for, even on an empty stomach.

  “So what are you doing in Santa Cruz, anyway?” he asks.

  He keeps turning the conversation back to me. He’s probably a serial killer. People who murder for a living tend to be rather private. One more reason not to go home with him.

  “How do you know I’m not from here?” I ask, twirling my straw in my drink and looking coy in spite of myself. Stop. Flirting. Stop. Flirting.

  “I had the dubious pleasure of growing up in this vortex. I can spot an outsider by now. Besides, your license plate said Texas.”

  He’s an undercover cop. Oh, God. I can already feel the cold steel of the cuffs against my wrist bones.

  “You okay?” He reaches across the table and gently touches the very hand I’m busy morbidly encasing in restraints. Please, Jesus, don’t let him be a serial killer undercover cop.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Every once in a while you get this wild gleam in your eye—”

  “Wild gleam?”

  “The same look Medea shot me when I unstrapped her from my bike.”

  I laugh, though even to me it sounds strangled. “Yeah, well, I’m a little off today. I don’t routinely rise at four in the morning, drive six hundred miles, then blow up my stolen vehicle to unwind in the afternoon.” Listing the events of the day makes me feel the wild gleam coming back, so I try to steer us toward safer topics. “Um, let’s see, what was your question?”

  “Santa Cruz—what brings you here?”

  “Right. I’ve got this university gig teaching theater.”

  “Wow.” He looks impressed, and maybe a little bit skeptical, which only confirms my suspicion that I am not professor material.

  “Yeah, well, they were hard up,” I explain. “Some guy faked his credentials so they had to fire him. I’m the only person they could drag here at the last minute. They made it clear that I’m just a stand-in—you know, one year and then, unless I turn out to be the next Stanislavski, I’m on the street.” The combination of my nerves, three days on the road alone and this dreamy vodka tonic are making me babble, but I hardly care. It feels good to talk to somebody other than a pissed-off, stoned cat. “I’m a total perennial student— I fell in love with the endless adolescence of college—so I figured a university’s the only place I stand a chance. Except I’m not so sure about the professor thing. I suspect I haven’t got the wardrobe for it.”

  He waves a hand at me dismissively. “At UC Santa Cruz? You could walk on campus in a garbage bag and by the end of the day you’d have a following. Lack of fashion is a fashion here.”

  “Yeah. Well, good.” There’s an awkward pause; we end up looking at each other for too long, and this makes me so edgy I blurt out, “Christ. I can’t believe I actually stole my ex’s bus.” He looks a little unsure about how to respond, and I realize I’m starting to monologue in a dangerously unchecked fashion. “Sorry. Very long day, as I mentioned.”

  “Sounds like you could use another drink,” he says, rising. Very carefully, like one parent transferring a sleeping child into the lap of the other, he hands me Medea. “More of the same?”

  I suddenly realize I’ve been gnawing nervously at the wedge of lime from my drink; even the peel is now littered with teeth marks. I toss it back into the glass, which I hand to him sheepishly. “Yes, please. Oh, but here—let me get this round.” I reach for my money, still tucked inside my bra, but he shakes his head.

  “Don’t worry about it. Consider me the welcoming committee.” He turns and walks toward the bar. Watching him makes me bite the inside of my cheek. Has there ever been an icon steamier than that subtle sag of a man’s barely there butt in faded Levi’s?

  I lean back against the vinyl of the booth and close my eyes, running one hand absently over Medea’s soft fur again and again. The tart taste of lime still lingers on my tongue. Claudia. Please. For once in your life, resist. Resist. Resist.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tart is my favorite word. I love how it tastes in your mouth—sour, tangy, just sweet enough to keep your lips from puckering around it in distaste. I love what it stirs in the mind—the synesthesia of flavor mixing with colors: buxom women in reds, oranges and apple-greens, gleaming with cheap temptation, like Jolly Ranchers. It’s been a central goal of my twenties to live a tart life; I want everything I do to have that sharpness, that edge of almost-too-out-there to be tasty, but not quite.

  Until I met Jonathan, living tartly meant, for starters, never saying I love you. Which was easy, since apart from my cat, my gay roommate and my vibrator, I didn’t really love much of anything or anyone. I’m not even sure I loved Jonathan. I think our relationship was rooted in blind panic, and that, combined with great affection for him, was exactly the brand of love I’d heard about in pop songs since puberty. Being with Jonathan was terrifying, sometimes tender and studded with misery. These are the central ingredients of love, according to Top Forty tunes throughout the ages, so I figured I must be on the right track.

  Before Jonathan and the Great Blind Panic, I used to think monogamy was every woman’s enemy, and that promiscuity (a central element of every tart’s lifestyle) was synonymous with freedom. It’s probably generational—lots of girls I went to college with admired strippers and porn stars the way our mothers admired starlets. It’s that fuck-you to middle-class values that inspires awe in us. We find the sex industry and all of its incumbent seediness sort of glamorous. And tart.

  But being a tart can be exhausting, and after a while its rewards start to seem a little tawdry. Now that I’m rounding the corner toward my thirties, the fervor of my tart philosophy has faded some with wear. Frankly, my right to be wild, cheap and promiscuous has started to bore me.

  I guess that’s part of why Jonathan and I got so serious so quickly. We met when I was twenty-eight. I could see right into my thirties from there, and beyond. I knew a change was in order. I started cringing every time I spotted some woman in her late thirties haunting the junior racks at Ross Dress for Less, sporting deeply ingrained crow’s feet and hair that’s been dyed so many times it looks like cheap faux fur. I’m not sure why self-respecting tartery requires a wrinkle-free face and body, but it does. That’s no doubt really messed up, but it feels like a force of nature too momentous to challenge.

  It was in this twenty-eight-year-old climate of anxiety and pending doom that I met Jonathan. He was creative, suitably unconventional and so crazy about me that I could feel a palpable confusion coming off him anytime we were in the same room. I was directing his play, Molotov Cocktail, a farce about morticians in training, and whenever we discussed his rewrites over coffee he took every opportunity to touch me in ways that could be construed as friendly or accidental: his elbow nestled fleetingly against mine, his knee bumped against my thigh under the table. I was flattered but not overcome. I told myself he wasn’t my type—too skinny, his hands too pale, his eyes too furtive and searching, so unlike the muscular, vaguely bovine types I was used to going home with.

  But Jonathan was nothing if not persistent; he rooted himself beside me and sent exploratory tendrils into my psyche with the strength a
nd tenacity of kudzu. I started to crave the way his black hair looked in the morning light as he rolled himself a cigarette with agile fingers. I became addicted to his smell: Irish soap, cigarette smoke, Tide. He was so solicitous, as only someone with a heart that deflates between relationships can be. Jonathan loved being in love. He was lost without someone to brew coffee for, or share his favorite scripts with, or sing to sleep with funny, black-humored lullabies he made up as he went along.

  He convinced me to move in with him three weeks after we first slept together. It did make some sense, since my roommate, Ziv, was involved at the time with this German guy, Gunter, who had three habits Ziv found adorable and I found repulsive: he covered the entire bathroom with a thick dusting of tiny black hairs each time he shaved; his favorite time to practice his cello was postcoital, which usually meant 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.; and he continually, despite my protests, consumed any chocolate products we smuggled into the house, including the special Belgian hazelnut bar I hid in my underwear drawer. So Gunter was driving me away, and Jonathan had this beautiful place—the upstairs of a lovely old-fashioned Texas-style minimansion with French doors, hardwood floors and a claw-foot tub I spent most of that year floating in. A warm, stable relationship and a cool new apartment to boot made cohabitation seem catalog-perfect—a Pottery Barn fairytale.

  But old habits die hard. Monogamy was quite a shock to my system, both physically and philosophically. Toward the end of that summer, when we’d been living together a little over five months, I became overwhelmingly itchy for Something Else. When you’re addicted to the pursuit of all things tart, Friday night with a video and Chinese takeout is a little foreign. I’d pace the living room and blurt out nasty jabs, like a junky trying to kick.