by Norma Klein
“Will you be okay all by yourself?” she asked as I was packing.
“Oh sure . . . I don’t mind,” I said.
We’d gotten down some of my summer things since Mom said it might be quite warm. “I wish I could go,” she said wistfully. “Give Janet a call when you get there, okay?”
“Sure.” Janet is one of Mom’s friends out there. “I don’t know if I’ll have time to see her, though.”
“Oh, I know . . . Listen, do you have enough pantyhose?”
“I don’t usually wear them if it’s warm.”
“But for TV, hon, I think it looks smoother. Take a couple of pairs anyway.”
The day I was due to leave, I had to go to the airport by myself. Mom and Daddy were both working. “Oh, hon, I feel so awful, not at least driving you to the airport,” Mom said.
“Mom, really,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure? Can you handle everything?”
“Positive.”
In some ways, actually, I like going by myself. I’m glad Mom can’t come with me. This way it’s like it’s just me. I don’t have to worry about how Mom or Daddy or Deel is reacting to how I do. That can really be a drag. I wore this pretty new dress. It’s short sleeved with red and pink stripes and a lace collar. I just wore my wool coat since it’s supposed to be warm out there. Evidently the publicity people who’ll be going around with us are out there already. They’re supposed to meet me at the Los Angeles airport.
I bought some magazines and candy and went over to the ticket counter to weigh in my bag. I was really early, but I like to be early. It was two o’clock and the plane left at four. While I was standing there, watching the man punch the computer thing, I glanced around. There was Joshua, standing on the line next to me. I stared at him. He smiled. “Hi, Rust.”
I took my ticket from the man. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m flying to Los Angeles.”
“What?”
“Just wait one sec, okay?” I stood there while he waited for his ticket. “Well, I just thought why not take a brief vacation.”
“Joshua! You mean you didn’t know I was going to be on this plane?”
He looked sheepish. “Well, actually, I did know.”
“How? From who?”
“From Neil.”
“But . . .”
“I thought it would be good to talk a little. And since it’s a five-hour trip . . .”
“And your parents don’t mind? It’s so expensive!”
“Well, actually . . . they don’t know yet. Neil’s covering for me. He’s telling them I’m in Andover visiting Pam.”
“So, how did you get the money?”
“I charged it to Dad’s American Express card on the phone.”
“You’re going to get into terrible trouble.”
“No. He can afford it. It’s just a drop in the bucket for him.”
“But we could have talked in New York!”
“I know . . . but I like planes.”
“But, Josh, I’m going to be really busy out there. I can’t do things with you or anything.”
“Oh, I’m not staying there. I’m flying right back as soon as I get there.”
“What?”
“Yeah. You know, the journey not the arrival matters?”
“Joshua, you’re crazy.”
“Sure.”
“Why on a plane?” “Why not on a plane? I figured there you’d be trapped. You couldn’t run away from me.”
I smiled at him. “I’m not going to run away from you!”
“You’re not?”
“No.” I looked at him for a long time. “I’ve missed you . . . a lot.”
“I’ve missed you.”
We stood there, staring at each other. “Did you like the movie?” I said, just to say something. I had a tingling feeling all over, the way I always get when Joshua looks right at me.
“What movie?”
“Lolita.”
“Oh, well, I’d seen it before . . . I was just trying to imagine you in the part.”
“Can you?”
He hesitated. “Are you going to audition for it?”
“I might just go in and talk to them.”
“In other words, yes.”
“Daddy and Mom think it’s a good script.” I stared at him, wanting him to understand.
He smiled at me. Then he leaned over and kissed me. “You’ll be terrific,” he said wistfully.
“I may not even get the part.”
“You’ll get it.”
“I may not even do it if I do.”
On the plane we had seats in the middle. We talked a lot about everything. Joshua was right. You do have a chance to really talk on a plane since you can’t do much else. He said he’d thought everything over and he realized he had to trust my judgment, that I had a strong character and wouldn’t let myself be corrupted the way he might under the same circumstances. It’s funny—I don’t think of Joshua as the sort of person who’d be corrupted at all! I think of him as really strong. He said that’s not true, that he thinks he’s eminently corruptible.
While we were sitting there, side by side, I began feeling really attracted to him again. Our shoulders were touching and it seemed like warm vibrations kept passing back and forth between us. We kept staring at each other and smiling.
“You have goose pimples,” he said, touching my arm.
“I feel cold . . . Could you get me down a blanket?”
He got a blanket down and spread it over my lap. We held hands under the blanket. Joshua began rubbing my hand back and forth slowly with his thumb. He glanced over at the person sitting next to me. It was a middle-aged woman; she was sleeping. He pulled the blanket up so it covered both of us up to our chins. Then he reached down and touched my breasts. I wasn’t wearing a bra since it was the kind of dress that looks better without one.
“I thought it might be warm in California,” I said, to explain why I’d worn that kind of dress.
“It’s warm right here,” Joshua said.
We were leaning against each other. I closed my eyes while he stroked my breasts, slowly going around each nipple. Then I turned around and put my arms around his neck. We looked at each other and smiled. Our eyes were half an inch apart; I could feel his eyelashes on my cheek and his breath, which smelled of the Wild Strawberry Bubbilicious gum we’d been chewing during takeoff to keep our ears from popping.
“I guess there are some things an airplane isn’t good for,” Joshua said wryly.
I nodded. I felt so nice and relaxed. “I feel sleepy,” I said. “Is it all right if I go to sleep?”
“Go right ahead.” It seemed awful to sleep when I wouldn’t even see Joshua for a week, but I couldn’t help it. I leaned against him, letting my head rest on his shoulder. At first I imagined we were together in a place in the woods with a log cabin like in The Wilderness Family. There was no one there but us and some friendly animals and birds. We went swimming and lay around in the sun and Joshua caught some fish and we made a fire. Then I guess I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew he was nudging me.
“We’re here, Rust.”
I blinked. “Already?”
“You must have had a good dream. You were smiling.”
Suddenly my eyes opened wide. “I wasted all that time sleeping. Now I won’t even see you for a week!”
“I’ll come back to the hotel with you. My plane doesn’t leave for a couple of hours.”
We held each other close. I could hear Joshua’s heart thumping. The stewardess came by and smiled at us. “I’m afraid all seats have to be moved to an upright position,” she said.
We pressed our buttons to do that and sat holding hands while the plane landed. When I got off the plane, I looked around for Kelly Neff, the publicity person who was supposed to meet me. She came over to us. She was about twenty and looked a little like one of the airline stewardesses, with short blond hair and a slim figur
e.
“How was your trip, Tatiana?” she said.
“Oh, it was good,” I said. “I had a really good trip.” I could see she was looking questioningly at Joshua who was standing next to me. “Uh . . . this is my younger brother, Joshua. He’s out here to look at colleges.”
“Hi, Joshua,” Kelly Neff said.
“Hi,” said Joshua.
“I remember you as having a sister,” she said, puzzled.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, well, I have a sister, too.”
“How nice that the two of you could come out together,” Kelly Neff said. “Which colleges are you thinking of?”
“UCLA,” Joshua said. “Berkeley . . .”
“He’s going to be a famous director when he grows up,” I said.
Kelly Neff smiled up at Joshua. “He looks pretty grown up already,” she said.
I blushed.
“I suppose with your father in the same business,” she went on to Joshua, “that’s only natural.”
Joshua looked blank.
“But, of course, he’s done mainly documentaries, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But he might do a feature film some day.”
She looked from me to Joshua. “I can’t say I see a strong family resemblance,” she said, “but then, that’s often the case, isn’t it? My sister and I are twins and people never think we look alike at all.”
“I’m the only person in my family with red hair,” I said quickly. That’s true, anyway. “Except my grandmother and she’s dead.”
“Well!” Kelly Neff said. “We have a pretty busy schedule lined up for you, Tatiana. I’m afraid you’ll just have an hour to go to your hotel to freshen up and then we have an interview scheduled for three o’clock.”
At the hotel Kelly Neff stayed there while I signed in. “I’ll just help her unpack,” Joshua said when I was done. “I’ve got a pretty busy schedule myself.”
“Have a good stay in L.A.,” Kelly Neff said to him. “Nice to have met you.”
In the elevator Joshua and I smiled at each other.
“Why your younger brother?” Joshua said.
“I couldn’t think of what else to say!”
“No, I mean why younger?”
“I don’t know! Look, it’s not real, so why does it matter?”
“She must think I’m pretty precocious, going off to college at thirteen.”
“I just said you were looking at them. I didn’t say you were going.”
“I guess she didn’t care.”
I looked at him, scared. “Do you think she’ll go back and look it up and find out you don’t exist?”
“I don’t exist?”
“You know, that you’re not really my brother.”
He smiled. “She’ll think I’m the skeleton in the closet.”
They’d gotten me a really gigantic room in the hotel. The bathroom was twice the size of my bedroom at home. In it was a big bouquet of flowers. I opened the note lying on the table. It said, “Welcome to L.A. We can’t wait to meet you. Love, Greg and Jim.”
“Who’re they?” Joshua said, reading over my shoulder.
“Those people . . . about Lolita.”
“They sign it ‘love’ and they’ve never even met you?” He threw it down on the table.
“People are like that out here,” I said nervously. I hoped he wouldn’t get mad. I didn’t want to have a fight, not so soon after we’d made up.
Joshua glanced at his watch. “You’ve got half an hour to freshen up,” he said.
“Maybe I should shower,” I said. “I feel kind of sticky.”
“I know a better way to freshen up,” he said. He put his arms around me.
“I thought you were going to help me unpack.”
“First things first.”
We sat down on the edge of the bed. It was really huge.
“I guess they expect you to have a lot of company,” Joshua said, looking at it.
“I won’t, don’t worry.” I looked at him, frowning. “Josh, half an hour isn’t that much time. Do you think we should? It might be sort of rushed.”
“It won’t be rushed,” he said, starting to unbutton my dress. “It’ll be nice and slow.” He helped me take off my dress and then, while I was pulling off my underpants, he yanked his clothes off and threw them on the floor. I put my dress neatly over a chair. I didn’t want it to get wrinkled. When I looked at Joshua, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his penis sticking straight out, as though it was looking around wondering what was going on.
He pulled me down on his lap and we grabbed at each other and kissed, as though we hadn’t done it in years. It’s funny. Maybe it was because we hadn’t done it for so long, or even the scariness of knowing Joshua shouldn’t have been there, but I felt extremely excited right away. Joshua seemed to be, too. He entered me while we were kissing, it just sort of happened. It hurt for a second because of the way we were sitting, but I was so wet, it felt okay a minute later. I was holding him by the shoulders, he had his tongue all the way in my mouth. We did it really fast, in a couple of seconds practically. “Oh God, Rusty,” Joshua gasped.
I started to come. “Oh, I love you,” I said, clutching him.
Afterward we fell back on the bed in a kind of daze. We looked at each other. Both of us were sweaty and out of breath.
“Well, I guess that was worth two hundred and fifty-eight dollars,” Joshua said, smiling.
“What?”
“That’s what a round trip to L.A. costs.”
“Joshua! Is that all you came out here for?”
“No! Of course not. I mean, it did cross my mind, I have to admit . . . Are you glad I decided to come out with you?”
I nodded. “Very.” I hesitated. “I thought it was really good, didn’t you?”
Joshua leaned over and kissed me tenderly on the nose. “It was more than good, Rust. It was an important, thrilling, meaningful experience.” Suddenly he got an anguished look. “Have you been doing it with anyone since we . . .”
“No!”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! What do you mean?”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Of course I would . . . anyway, how could I? I didn’t have a diaphragm.” Suddenly I gasped. “Uh oh . . . we didn’t use anything.”
“Well, one time. I don’t think one time usually—”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Do you think I’ll get pregnant?”
“Not from just one time . . . Are you going to get another diaphragm?”
“I guess . . . I better go to another doctor, though. I’ll feel pretty stupid going back to the same one.”
“You could tell her you lost it.”
“True.” I looked at him. “Did you do it with anyone since we—”
He shook his head.
“Would you tell me if you had?”
He was silent a minute. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Joshua!” I felt awful.
“Well, Rust, if I told you, you’d just get all upset, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“So what would be the point of telling you?”
“Joshua, did you or didn’t you?” I stared at him.
“I didn’t.”
I turned away. “But if you had, you wouldn’t tell me anyway,” I said angrily, “so that’s like saying you did!”
“Rust, listen . . . I didn’t do it, okay? That’s the truth.”
“But you tried?”
“No, I didn’t try either.”
“Because you didn’t meet anyone who . . .”
“I wasn’t looking to meet anyone. I was just lying around mournfully thinking about you.”
I sighed. “I want to believe you.”
“It’s true . . . I felt I’d acted like a dope and I was afraid you’d never speak to me again.”
“What if I hadn’t?”
He frowned. “If you’d never
spoken to me again?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d have felt really awful.”
“But would you have gone off and done it with someone, then?”
“Eventually, sure.”
“Well, by eventually do you mean two weeks or two years or what?”
“Something in between,” Joshua said. He looked at me. “Rust, come on.”
“I feel so awful.”
“Did you think I’d take a permanent vow of celibacy if you rejected me?”
I tried to smile. “Yes.”
He kissed me. “And were you going to do the same?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
He laughed. “Great! What a double standard!”
I put my head on his shoulder. “I love you and I couldn’t stand it if you did it with anyone else. I couldn’t bear it.”
“I couldn’t stand it if you did it with anyone else either.”
“But you said I was bad at it,” I said, remembering our fight.
“No.” He frowned. “When did I say that?”
“When we had the fight. You said in this really sarcastic way something like, ‘Sure, I just see you for sex.’”
“Rust, look, I was really upset . . . I was just trying to get at you. I said a lot of stupid things.”
“Do you think I’m bad at it?”
“Of course I don’t . . .” He kissed my cheek. “I think you have a great natural gift.”
“Do you really?”
“Uh huh.”
“More than at acting?”
He hesitated. “I think you’re wonderful at both, okay?”
We were silent a minute.
“I thought it was so good before,” I said hesitantly.
He squeezed my hand. “Yeah, you seemed really turned on.”
“Weren’t you?”
“Sure . . . well, I always am when I’m with you. I’m in a state of perpetual horniness.”
Just then the phone rang. It was Kelly Neff. “Tatiana, I hate to rush you, but we really should get moving. Can you come right down?”
“Oh sure.” It was past two! I leaped up, raced into the bathroom, washed really quickly and put on my dress. I looked at Joshua who was still sprawled out on the bed, naked. “Josh, what do you want to do? I have to go right down.”
“I haven’t finished unpacking for you,” he said.
I went over and kissed him. “Do I look freshened up enough?”
