A block from their home, Gwen searched the street lined with cars for a parking spot. Nothing. Passing their apartment, she saw the light still on. One thirty in the morning, and Leo was awake, as usual. She should get him, so as not to walk home alone. He would want her to. But she had to buy the test—something he didn’t need to know about. Not yet, at least.
Yes. She would find out on her own.
Three blocks away, she parked her car in the nice, predominantly Jewish neighborhood with houses and carports and no parking problem. Still, she didn’t dare lock her car, didn’t leave a single thing in it that could be stolen. She’d learned the hard way, found her car in the morning with its windows smashed and the lock on its trunk drilled out—her cassettes and her Walkman, her books of poetry and her Rollerblades gone. They’d even taken her journal.
The sidewalks were quiet. It was called the Miracle Mile, this section of town. Brand new in the thirties, the buildings were eclectic, each one different from the next. She passed a castle with turrets and stained-glass windows, a hacienda with wood beams and stucco and a red tile roof, an Italian villa—all of them tiny, fit to the size of their small lot, and all of them with barred windows, dark at this time of night.
She turned the corner and a loud bass of a voice rattled the night and made her stop. Leave Earth, Leave Earth, Leave Earth, Leave Earth, Leave Earth.
She crept in her sneakers toward the source of the booming, insistent chant—a man black as space at the street corner, directly in front of Jin’s 24-Hour Mini-Mart and Donut. Jin’s Joint, they called it. She could smell the just-fried old-fashioneds, their vanilla heat thickening the air.
Leave Earth, Leave Earth.
The man was dressed in layers—a T-shirt, a long-sleeved button-down shirt, a jacket, a knit cap. His bottom half was thick, too, as though his pants were doubled, and she wondered if he was wearing all he owned. His clothes were blackened. His skin was obsidian dulled by soot. His hair was matted black wool. His eyes did not seek her out, although she was all that moved, apart from the occasional car, in the world to which they seemed to be open.
Leave Earth, Leave Earth—his mantra, the mantra he shouted to no one in particular, to bird and to dog alike—Leave Earth, Leave Earth.
She would buy the test tomorrow. Along with an old-fashioned. Her feet moved in time to his beat as she passed, her gaze fixed further on, down the street.
A half block past him and she found herself chiming in as she jogged home. Leave Earth, Leave Earth.
Their brick Gothic building was just across Sixth Street, which was always empty at this hour, and yet she stopped at the red light, looked both ways for cops, before she dashed to the other side. She’d been frisked before, written a ticket for jaywalking at two in the morning, on an empty street.
She listened. The night was still again. Or was it? She heard the rhythm, the words, but she was unsure if the voice was his or hers—that incessant voice in her head now tuned to his channel.
Four
THEIR BUILDING WAS called the Cornell. The apartment had been Leo’s until she’d let her own studio go a month after they’d met to move in with him and save money. In the thirties, when the area was posh, Mae West had owned the Cornell, and the third floor had housed a brothel that serviced the Brooklyn Dodgers when they’d come to town.
Gwen pushed open the heavy iron gate. The courtyard fountain dribbled past stone angels into the rectangular stone pool, flickering with koi fish. She adored the courtyard. It was what she’d first fallen in love with when she’d come to Leo’s apartment.
In the brick walls were windows open to the night. And between the windows in horizontal rows were faces of white stone. There was the row of young sailors, schoolboys dressed in sailor hats. Then, further up, the row of maidens presided, braids framing each oval face. And way up at the top, the row of homunculi rubbed their potbellies like African fertility gods. Over the lobby’s glass doors at the center of an archway was a man’s face—the face of a Viking, bearded, gaunt from his travels, a poet Viking, purged of his lust for the world and with his heart pure as the heart of a saint, looking for land from the prow of his ship and seeing an island shaped like a woman.
From one of the windows, a man peered down at her. “Lookin’ fine, Gwendolyn,” he called, mispronouncing her name, so it rhymed with fine. Gwendo-line. It was Barry sitting at his window, naked—at least from the waist up—and smoking. He was the son of the owner of the Cornell and he lived there for free. Leo had dubbed him Psycho Barry, since most nights he spent naked and alone, chain-smoking and talking to himself. Tonight, though, he was quiet. He must have taken his lithium.
“Hey, Barry,” Gwen called up. “Get some sleep, you hear?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sleep is good. You like sleep? You like sleep, Gwendolyn?”
“I love sleep, Barry. Good night.”
“Sleep tight, sleep tight, Gwendolyn. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Unlocking the door, she could hear the news on the TV coming from their ground-floor apartment, echoing off the high brick walls, as if Leo had just cranked the volume. Today in East Los Angeles, at the corner of Florence and Normandie, thirty-three-year-old Reginald Denny was pulled from his truck and beaten.
She wasn’t sure she could take it. Another night of news and ranting.
With a small key she opened their mailbox, along the wall with all the others. A few collection notices for Leo’s long-ago maxed-out credit cards. And for her, a bill from her master’s program. The second half of this semester’s tuition, twenty-five hundred dollars, due in a couple of weeks. One more semester and she’d graduate. All without loans or money from her father. There was—hallelujah—a check for Leo, a residual check from some voice-over gig or other. And at the bottom of the stack was an invite to the AA meeting Greg, the manager of the Cornell, held in the lobby every day at noon. Even after Leo had told him to mind his own business, he still slipped an invite into their box on a weekly basis. Whenever Greg saw Leo, he’d tell him he was praying for him, to which Leo would retort that he was an atheist. These days, however, since they were late with their rent, Leo avoided him completely, exiting the building through the back door.
Walking down the hall, she flipped through the mail again. Nothing from the literary journals to which she’d sent her poems—three, four months ago.
She opened the door to the cloud of their apartment. It smelled like the good stuff. Might as well put the smoke to use. She took a deep breath and dropped her bag, went into the bathroom and started the bath.
When she’d first started stripping, Leo had drawn baths for her, warmed her towels in the oven and rubbed her dry. It had made her feel like a baby, loved for merely existing. Those were the nights she’d bought red wine and steaks, which he’d fried up with green onions. Those were the nights they’d feasted.
Sitting on the edge of the sofa, Leo exhaled, filling the room with more of the skunky-sweet smoke. His white Lhasa Apso, Fifi, was curled up beside him, snoring. Leo was wearing his white caftan, open at the neck, without anything on underneath. It was what he always wore these days, except when he was on the street corner dressed as a soldier from the Revolutionary War.
“I told you,” said Leo, pointing at the television as if identifying the culprit. “Did I not tell you this would happen? Man, you could feel it. The unrest, the tension.” He tugged at his beard. She stood a minute, taking him in.
He was as beautiful as he’d been when they met, maybe even more so, because he was freer. In their time together it was almost as if he’d become more himself. A riotous mane of curls, his brown hair was streaked with sun-bleached strands, as though he’d spent the day at the beach instead of on his street corner. His Mediterranean skin glowed in the TV light, the muscles in his neck and face flared with elation, and his hazel eyes were bright. She was struck by how like a child he was, bursting with life, even at this hour of the night. It made her realize how much her feet hurt. She slid off her s
hoes.
“Every generation needs a new revolution. Jefferson said that.”
The wall behind him was covered with note cards. These were new, another scheme.
Gwen handed him the residual check along with the collection notices. He tossed the latter, still sealed, with their bold Final Notice warnings, into a waste bin in the corner of the room and tore the envelope with the check open. “Sixty-two fifty, not bad.”
It wouldn’t begin to cover what he owed in back rent, but at least it was something.
Gwen turned on the kitchen light and the cockroaches scattered. The sink was full of dishes. On the stove was a pot of bay leaf soup with garlic and eggs—Leo’s daily fare, because at pennies a bowl it was what he could afford. In another pot was fettuccini Alfredo, a splurge—what he’d bought with the grocery money she’d given him.
She opened the cupboard, and more roaches scurried for the dark. One was longer than the rest, and it moved slower. Gwen saw the egg sac at the end of its body as she watched it flicker into a crevice. She took a mason jar and rinsed it as best she could in the full sink. In the refrigerator she found the water filter and poured the few drops that were left. She’d have to fill it. She’d have to wait.
On the counter sat the DustBuster, full of roaches. Live roaches. They were crawling its plastic sides, tracking it with their sticky black turds as they searched for escape. It was Leo’s Relocation Program. He’d vacuum the roaches into the DustBuster, and when it was full he’d dump them, still alive, into the trash bin at the back of the Cornell. “Switch two letters in ‘pest’ and it becomes ‘pets,’” he’d said just that morning. He refused to kill a single roach. For his compassion, Gwen loved and hated him.
She watched him pace the living room, pace the aisles of carpet foxed with dog piss, between the waist-high stacks of books and notebooks and newspapers, between the towers of his record collection and videocassettes. On the antique coffee table, the table he’d grown up with, his childhood drawings inked on its underside, there was the Ziploc bag of pot, the eye-shaped ashtray Gwen had made of clay, the purple bong.
Water pipe, the salesgirl had corrected. We don’t sell bongs.
Gwen had thought it might be fun. Getting high now and then, watching movies. A way to relax. She didn’t foresee how he would take to it, need it like a kite needs wind. High and higher. How far off the ground could he go?
She filled her jar with water, drank it down and filled it again.
“This is serious,” Leo was saying. “Gwen, watch.” He took her arm and sat her down. A black man was pulling a white man from his truck and beating him on the pavement, bashing his head with a cinder block. It had happened early that evening.
“It was the Rodney King trial. The bastard police that beat him got off. All of them white, by the way. And now this. You can’t hold a people down,” Leo said, his eyes blazing.
How long had they been showing this? How long had Leo been watching?
Gwen’s stomach turned. She felt sick. “Can we switch the channel?” she said, snatching the remote from the table and clicking.
“Damn it, Gwen.” Leo took it from her, but on his way back to the news, he stopped on the Home Shopping Network. A woman turned her hand, and the ring on her finger sparkled in the studio light. A man was talking fast. If you called in the next five minutes you could purchase this ring for only $59.99.
Gwen watched Leo pick up the phone and dial. “What are you doing?”
His eyes shone. “My mama’s always wanted a diamond.”
“It’s cubic zirconia.”
“They say you can’t tell the difference. But can I use your card?” he said. “I’ll pay you back.”
“What about rent?”
“This is important. My mom thinks I have a record deal. She believes in me.”
He was standing on the sofa, bouncing up and down and wearing a hopeful smile, dimples and shiny teeth. She could hear her bathwater running. It had to be getting high. She tossed him her wallet.
In the bathroom, she closed the door that didn’t lock, turned off the water and peed.
No blood. Not even a tinge in the toilet, and on the paper, nothing.
She wiped off her face—the creamy whitish base that made her look like a china doll, the mascara, the eye shadow and the residual lipstick—with Luvs Baby Wipes, unscented. It took three towelettes, both sides, to get all of it. She washed her face five times with the good soap her father had given her at Christmas—the last time she’d been to Phoenix, her yearly two-day visit. She undressed, lit the blue devotional candles at the head of the bathtub and slid into the hot bath.
The purple-and-black art deco tiles around the tub were coming loose. A few had fallen off. Mildew spread from the faucet. The shower didn’t work. And to the side of the window facing the street, the plaster was bubbling and the cream-colored paint was peeling off.
Leaning back, relaxing, she noticed faces in the peeled paint. In the candlelight they wavered, a circus scene. The thin male profile by the faucet had whispered something to the ringmaster, his face a twist of a smile. And, up in the corner, two girls were waiting—one with her eyes lowered, the other gazing out the window at the night.
What were they waiting for? If they didn’t like the circus, why didn’t they up and leave?
She closed her eyes and the bruises on both her knees were a vague ache that seemed, as she soaked, to spread over her whole limp body, as if to combat her apathy. To feel pain, she thought, was to be alive.
Leave Earth, the man had said. Maybe he was right. Maybe that was the answer.
She slid under the water and let her breath bubble up.
Isn’t that the test?
When you think you want to kill yourself, you take a bath instead and, under the water, let go of all your air. You hear your heart in your ears. And then, you feel it—your survival instinct, alive and well in every cell, pushing you up. And by the time you take your next breath, you love the air that saves you.
It was the Count’s philosophy. Worked every time.
Leo knocked once and opened the door. “The Count called.” He held up the Ziploc. A few fuzzy green buds left. “He’s out.” It was no surprise the Count was up, too. He liked the nighttime best and, like Leo, had nowhere he had to be in the morning. “He asked if you were coming,” Leo said. “He wants you to pay your respects.”
“He’s dying again tonight?” she asked, the water up to her chin. It happened once a month. He’d call in a state of fervent agitation, sure that night was his last, and Leo or Gwen or both of them would hold a bedside vigil until he fell asleep. And then he’d wake up the next day and somehow keep on living.
Leo shrugged. “He’s dying, and he redecorated.”
“What’s the new theme?”
“It’s a secret. He wants you to see it.”
“I have to work tomorrow. I have to sleep,” Gwen said. She ran her hands over her body—over her calves, between her legs, under her arms. Smooth enough to last through tomorrow. And anyhow, her razor was dull, she needed a new one.
Sure, she could go.
Leo didn’t move. His eyes were distant, as if staring through her he could see a desert of sand he could walk and walk until he remembered and—“Leo?”
“Zero,” he said, coming back.
She wouldn’t ask him where he was. What it was he’d been thinking. She just didn’t have the energy. “I’ll meet you at the Count’s,” she said.
Leo left. She heard the door close behind him.
Why did it feel so good to be alone?
Alone, she could feel the world ebb, taking with it the boy’s lips, Tony’s hands, her swollen breasts and lack of a period, taking the fact of their being months late on the rent. Two, to be exact. She’d paid her half all along, but other than a few voice-over gigs, Leo hadn’t worked in a year. She could pay his half. She had the money, but that was enabling his lifestyle, his choices. And wasn’t she doing that already? Buying their
groceries and paying the utilities, letting him borrow her car.
She unstopped the drain and the water swirled down it. Counterclockwise, slow. How had she come to be in—out of all the baths of Los Angeles, of the world—this one, the bath of the slipping art deco tiles, of the peeling paint and plaster circus men, the women in waiting? Watching the water whirl down the hair-clogged drain, she remembered. That first afternoon.
She lay back and closed her eyes. She used her heel to stop the drain, to keep the warm water a little longer around her.
SHE WAS SOMEONE else when she’d come to this apartment. Fresh out of college, in her cutoffs with the white eyelet trim she’d sewn by hand along the hem, her hair in a ponytail, a bag of sweet white corn in her arms. It was summer, the afternoon of the solar eclipse that was full in Baja California but only partial in Los Angeles, so that those who cared to caught the crescent sun in a shadow box, where it appeared no bigger than a baby’s fingernail.
A phonograph played a young Pavarotti in La Bohème. The bedroom’s manila curtains billowed in the open French windows and turned the light to sepia. She’d felt tired, tired of running—from actor to unemployed actor, from one audition to the next, from herself. She lay on the bed and he lay beside her.
He slid the elastic from her hair and took his time pulling his fingers through the thick mass, working out the tangles. His lips seemed softer even than the night before—their first kiss, by his car. And on the bed their kissing led to holding. In his arms, she had drifted.
The light through the curtains dimmed. They jumped from the bed. He made the shadow box from a shoe box and she cooked the corn, and armed with these they climbed the stairs to the roof, the sky cloudless but eerie, like a black-and-white dawn.
Further Out Than You Thought Page 3
