Losing Clementine

by Ashley Ream

  I imagined PR-conscious Kirby trying to smooth things over with his long-lost love child. I wondered if he’d gotten William any coverage in the Times.

  We hit the low point in the valley. “So,” he said, breaking the quiet, “what do you do?”

  “I go looking for appetizers on a toothpick,” I said. “Thanks for the giggles.”

  I snagged a couple of pork shumai from a passing tray, left my empty glass on an inlaid sofa table, and turned my attention to finding the bathroom. The one I found was occupied, so I wandered up the stairs, which were tiled and curved along with the wall. At the top, I could see down to the crowd below. I leaned over the railing and watched Annabelle glide from group to group. Her husband was standing in a corner, talking seriously to the one man in the crowd wearing a suit.

  Annabelle and I had had a fling during my couch-surfing months. It was the midnineties, and everyone was doing something to show they were cool. I had been Annabelle’s something. As far as I knew, her husband didn’t know. She had been a painter for a while. That’s how I’d met her. Now she was a wife and a patron, which suited her better but still seemed a letdown.

  I pushed off the rail and continued down the hall.

  I put my hand on the levered doorknob and turned. It moved less than a quarter inch and stopped. Locked. I hadn’t yet removed my hand when the door pulled back, and Elaine Sacks looked out at me.

  We both froze. Her curly hair was pulled back in a loose knot that let small ringlets curl around her face. She looked like the cover of a Jane Austen novel, which is false advertising if I’ve ever seen it.

  “Sorry,” I said, which came out over her words, “Congratulations on the Walton show,” so the whole thing was “Garble-garble—ations on the Walton show.”

  It took a second to know what to do with that.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She stood for a moment as if there might be more to say. Then again, maybe she just couldn’t get around me.

  I stepped aside, and she slipped out and quickly down the hall. I watched her go. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t punched her. I couldn’t believe Annabelle had invited her. I couldn’t believe Elaine hadn’t screamed about her painting and the gallery window and the article in the Times. It was an unexpected retreat, and I didn’t like it. It was unsettling.

  I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror to see what she saw. The giant flower looked ridiculous, like I was posing for a Hawaiian Tourist Bureau poster. I took it out and tossed it in the trash can, tucking the ends of my bob behind my ears before lifting my skirt to do my business.

  Back downstairs everyone was drifting out to the pool, and a projector had been set up. I picked up another glass of champagne from a waiter and stepped off the flagstone patio and into the grass, which felt soft and tickly on my bare feet.

  “Clementine.” I looked down, and Irish Eyes was looking up at me. He patted the empty spot beside him. “I’ve been saving it for you.”

  I doubted that, but the long-limbed fillies were all still grouped together several rows ahead, so what the hell?

  I gathered my skirt under me and sat, careful not to slosh out any of my drink. The bottoms of my feet were so dirty they looked like they’d been fingerprinted. A waiter slid over and offered us paper cones of popcorn, which, because it was Hollywood, had been sprinkled with some kind of herb.

  I scanned the crowd. Elaine was sitting on a chaise by the pool talking to an older woman I didn’t recognize.

  “Where’s your dad?” I asked.

  “He’s always the first to leave a party.”

  The outdoor lights dimmed, the projector flickered on, and everyone but me clapped. My hands were full of champagne and popcorn. The ground was too uneven to set the flute down, and I had to use my lips and tongue to fish out the kernels.

  I sat cross-legged, while William lounged back on his elbows, one leg out straight, the other bent and lying flat on the ground like a homoerotic underwear ad. The screen flickered with images of burning Sudanese villages and militia members riding camels and horses. A well-known black actor was doing the voice-over. William put his hand on my bare back. On-screen, the body of an old woman was being wrapped in brightly colored cloth for burial. William used the tips of his fingers to trace circles on my skin. Goose bumps popped up on my arms. Girls in flowing skirts and rubber flip-flops went in search of firewood while the narrator’s voice warned of the rape and torture—as though those were two different things—they faced. William let his fingers drift under the fabric, and I felt the panel of my underwear dampen. Aid workers were being interviewed.

  William tugged on my arm, and I leaned over.

  “Want to get out of here?” he asked.

  12 Days

  His apartment turned out to be a bedroom with a hot plate and a stand-up shower near Hollywood and Highland, where the stars get down on their hands and knees in cement.

  “I have a refrigerator, too.” His lips were still pressed to mine, and his breath and words went straight into my mouth.

  And so he did. It was the sort of fridge that comes standard in dorm rooms—two feet tall and just big enough to hold a six-pack and some yogurt. His had a microwave balanced on top of it. There were dirty socks on the bed, and I was lying on them with both of his hands up under my dress.

  The truth was I had liked this better at the party. When we were talking, I could feel mature and urbane. Now I wondered if he had noticed that my butt was dimply and my upper arms were losing their elasticity. I was not a long-legged filly. I was more like glue fodder.

  For obvious reasons, I’d soaked my brain in two manhattans after leaving the party and before lying down on a pile of unwashed laundry. I was drunk enough that when I closed my eyes the room would spin, so I left them open while he pulled down my underwear and settled himself between my legs. His tongue was warm and soft, and he used it gently at first as though he was asking permission.

  I looked up at the ceiling and then over at the dresser while he worked. There was a stereo and a pile of CDs. I squinted in the dim light to read their spines. Tupac was heavily featured. Next to that were a few bottles of liquor, including the three wise men, Johnnie, Jack, and Jim. A photo of William with a blond pixie of a thing was framed on the nightstand. I was guessing not his sister. On the far wall hung a large flat screen television worth more than everything else in the room combined.

  “You’re not into this.”

  I looked down. When had he stopped?

  “I suppose I’m not.”

  “Is there anything I can do different?”

  “Age twenty years.” That was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Sorry.”

  He rolled over on his side and rested his head on his palm. “It was worth a try, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  Poor kid was still in his dress shirt and trousers, which were fitting snug in the crotch.

  “You want to spend the night?”

  Oh God, I really did not want to spend the night. The booze would soon start to leave my bloodstream and leach out through my pores, leaving me all too aware of my surroundings. The air smelled of something that could have been microwave burritos mixed with cigarette smoke, and I was about to have to use the bathroom, which I wasn’t looking forward to. Seeing it all in the smog-diffused sunrise was more than I could bear.

  “Can I have a glass of water?” I asked. “Can I have three?”

  He fetched a cold bottle out of the minifridge, which did not, as it turned out, contain any yogurt. I opened it and drank. The bathroom was not the horror show that it could have been. There were no cigarette stubs in the toilet or pubic hair in the sink. Used condoms did not lie gushily on the floor of the shower. It did have the moldy smell of poor ventilation, no window, and the approximate square footage allotted airplane lavatories. I peed and washed my hands and straightened myself, all without facing my reflection.

  When I stepped out, he was stretched out on the bed wi
th the television on. Jon Stewart was behind an anchor desk. We watched it together while I finished two and a half bottles of grocery-store-brand water, which was the kind I bought, too.

  Each gulp brought more and more sobriety until I was pretty sure I could stand on one foot and touch my nose.

  My shoes were on the floor, and I slipped them on. Barefoot at Annabelle’s was one thing. Barefoot walking down the sidewalk in this neighborhood was another. William walked me to the front door of his building and kissed both cheeks good-bye.

  Cars were parked nose to tail on both sides of the street, and the sidewalk was cracked and uneven where tree roots had broken through. The buildings were close together, all stucco with the arched doorways and tiled roofs of L.A. architecture. Some of them were pretty, even in their worn, decayed states. Vacancy signs were posted in upper-floor windows, and the grass had been worn to the sandy, unfertile dirt below.

  I was less than a block off the main roadway but walking deeper into the neighborhood. I’d circled twice before finding parking. Sounds of traffic and late-night commerce faded as I walked, and quieter residential noises, fewer and farther between, took over. A car door slammed on another block. Two voices argued then laughed as I walked past a group of shirtless men smoking on a porch. My shoes click, click, clicked on the concrete like the sound effects in a monster movie before the ominous music starts to swell. I tried not to think about that.

  I found my car, drank the last of my bottle of water, and climbed in.

  I was close enough to the freeway to see the entrance sign when the yowl of the siren startled me. I glanced down at the speedometer. Ten miles per hour over. Crap. I looked in the rearview mirror. He was right on my tail, lights flashing, turning the siren on and off so it yelped like a wounded puppy instead of the long blare of an emergency chase.

  I pulled over, turned off the engine, and fumbled for my driver’s license and registration. I wiped my sweaty hands on my dress, which had no doubt picked up the aroma of microwave burrito. When he got to my window, I handed him my identification. He read it and my registration and took them both with him back to his car.

  I waited. The dashboard clock read 2:14. I dug in my purse for a petrified piece of gum and crammed it in my mouth. I checked the rearview mirror again. No movement.

  2:20.

  2:29.

  2:34.

  My body didn’t know whether to get less nervous or more nervous as time went by, but sitting still was becoming unbearable. Would it be considered a sign of aggression to knock on his window? Could he have had a stroke sitting in his cruiser? What were the odds he was in desperate need of CPR at the very moment I was tapping my thumbs on the steering wheel?

  It was after the thirty-minute point that worry began to morph into anger. It crept up the back of my neck and flushed my cheeks. This was not how I wanted to spend the time I had left. I put my hand back on the keys still dangling from the ignition and checked the rearview mirror one last time.

  He was stepping out of his car.

  My annoyance did not abate.

  “Ma’am,” he said, when he got back to my window, “have you been drinking tonight?”

  Trick question.

  “Not so that it’s a problem,” I said.

  “Would you step out of the car, please?”

  The breathalyzer read 1.0, only 0.2 over the legal limit. I felt pretty good about that under the circumstances.

  “You’re going to have to hire a lawyer,” Richard said. “Your insurance is going to go through the roof. You’ll probably lose your license.”

  “Technically, I already lost it.” I held up the piece of paper I’d been issued in lieu of my real California ID.

  “Jesus Christ, Clementine. Why couldn’t you have just stayed wherever the fuck you were?”

  “He was young enough to be my kid. He had a studio apartment with no kitchen. It smelled like burritos.”

  The vein in the side of Richard’s neck bulged, and he didn’t look at me. “That was fast.”

  I leaned my head back against the seat. Sunrise was no more than an hour away. I was so tired my eyes itched, and moving my arms seemed like too much work. Richard took the on-ramp too fast, and my shoes rolled around on the floorboard.

  “What’s fast?”

  “You were just in bed with me a week ago!”

  “It was two weeks ago. Stop yelling.”

  “Out of one bed and into the other.”

  “Hey, screw you. You going to tell me you’ve stopped sleeping with Sheila out of respect for our little fling?”

  Richard didn’t say anything.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  We drove in heavy silence down the freeway. Even at this undefined hour, too late for night but too early for morning, cars were in every lane. Where were all these people going? I wasn’t complaining. I liked how the city was always in motion at all hours, no matter what.

  “You cut your hair.”

  I jerked my head up off my chest. I was asleep enough to drop my head and awake enough to know it.

  “What?”

  “You cut your hair. I like it.”

  We were nearing my exit.

  “Is that ex-husband-speak for ‘Sorry I called you a slut’?”

  “I didn’t call you a slut. I wouldn’t say that. I just like your hair.”

  He was wearing sweatpants, flip-flops, and a giveaway T-shirt advertising a software company. His hair looked like he’d been running his hands through it the wrong way, and there was just enough product left in it from the day before to make it stick like that.

  When he pulled up to the curb, I unbuckled my seat belt. “Tell Sheila I’m sorry I woke her up.”

  “She wasn’t there.”

  “Okay.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t, either. Maybe she was on a trip. Maybe she’d taken to pitching a tent in the backyard. Maybe she’d entered a fugue state. It wasn’t my business.

  I gathered up my shoes and climbed out. He rolled down the passenger-side window, and I leaned down to look in.

  “You could’ve been hurt,” he admonished. “You could’ve hurt someone else.”

  “I was barely over the limit. I wasn’t impaired.”

  “You’ve never been a very good judge of that.”

  “Are we still talking about booze?” I asked.

  “No,” he said and rolled up the window.

  11 Days

  The phone rang, and the number showed the call box on the front of the building.

  “Son of a bitch,” I told Chuckles. “They’re early.”

  I picked up the receiver and punched the access code to unlock the door.

  The buffalo piece was on the floor. The animal was filled in, what you could still see clearly of it. I’d slept until noon the day before, taken a taxi to get my car out of impound, and then come home to work. I’d taken the widest brush I could find, like a housepainter’s brush, and dipped it in bright red paint thinned to make it translucent. Then I’d made the animal bleed. All afternoon and evening I’d paced around it, adding gore, creating a scene of pain and destruction. The bucking outline of the animal that before could’ve been a defiant leap was now a death throe, and I was happy with it. It leaned against the wall, and a fresh, primed canvas with its first coat of paint was on the easel.

  I hadn’t showered since before going to Annabelle’s. I was wearing jeans and a black tank top I’d found on the floor. I had red paint settled into my nails and the wrinkles of my hands up to my elbows. I had it on my pants and a smear across my boobs. I even had some in my hair from when I’d pushed it out of my face.

  I’d stopped yesterday only to eat a little dinner and to answer the e-mail of a man from Silver Lake who wanted to meet Chuckles. He was supposed to come by at noon. By then I was planning on looking a little less as if I’d recently dismembered a body. Chuckles, who was on the verge of going feral, was going to be brushed, probably with my own comb, as I ha
d no idea where Jenny kept his—or frankly if he even had one of his own. She could’ve been using my toothbrush to groom between his toes for all I knew. I had, in a moment of grandeur, imagined giving him a bath, but the mania dissipated, and I decided to just spray him down with room deodorizer instead.

  But it was just after eleven, and all I’d done was add a coat of orange paint to my fingers. There was nothing to do but man the battle stations and hope for the best. I ran for the bathroom and lathered up to my elbows, leaving a sink full of sunset-colored bubbles. I sniffed my armpits, detected telltale, day-two musk, and added more deodorant. I snagged the Spring Fresh spray off the toilet tank, found Chuckles sunbathing in a pile of dust and crumbs on the kitchen floor, picked him up, brushed him off as best I could, and squirted his belly with the cold aerosol, which had the unintended consequence of pissing him off no end.

  He turned his squished face to mine, yowled, and used his back feet to disembowel my bare bicep. Then, like a porcupine shooting quills, he let loose enough white fur to assemble a new, better-tempered cat, which stuck all over my black tank top.

  By the time I got to the door, still clutching him, we were both furious, and one of us was bleeding. At least I could lie and say it was paint.

  “Hey, there. I …” The words died in my mouth.

  Elaine Sacks was standing in the hall with her hands shoved in the oversized patch pockets of her tunic. She’d showered and was probably wearing perfume that didn’t come from a poop-stink-no-more can.

  “You can’t have Chuckles.”

  It was the first thing that came to mind, and he reiterated the point by slamming his back jackrabbit feet into my gut and launching himself out of my arms, making for the space under the bed without a single paw touching the floor.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t answer the ad about the cat?”

  “No.”

  It would’ve been a lame prank, signing Paul to the bottom of an e-mail about a soon-to-be-orphaned animal.