Note to Self: A Novel

by Alina Simone

  “—the second time we’d had to call the super in one week—”

  “—but if you ever check the box, soy is actually—”

  “—the injections aren’t so bad. I used to be the biggest baby about needles and now it’s just part of the morning routine. You know, brush your teeth, breakfast, shot.”

  Anna suddenly tuned in—this was Leslie speaking to an older woman with impeccable abs.

  “—no guarantees, though,” said Abs. “Took five tries for my sister-in-law.”

  “Well, I had two friends over forty get pregnant just using clomiphene—” said Leslie.

  “No, you were right to skip to the IVF.”

  “The doctor says statistically—”

  “I told you, five tries. It’s just a question of how much can you afford. You know it’s free in Israel? That’s why my brother ended up making aliyah. They live in Tel Aviv now.”

  “Yeah, well at least it worked.”

  “And at least you have the one kid,” Abs said, snapping the waistband of her yoga panties decisively.

  “Yeah,” Leslie said. She sounded sad and distant.

  Thinking back to their earlier conversation, about the hot girl with the blue cotton candy, Anna felt a sudden stab of shame. She had spent the past few weeks so self-absorbed in her manufactured crises that she hadn’t even bothered asking Leslie about her own life. Who knew how badly Leslie wanted this second baby? What psychological toll infertility was taking on her marriage as each month that pastel negative sign swam to the surface? How Leslie felt when she picked Dora up from day care and watched siblings chase one another around their father’s legs? Maybe Dora had asked for a little sister for Christmas? At this thought, tears actually filled Anna’s eyes. She would have to be a better friend. Next time they saw one another, for sure, Anna would start right off by asking Leslie, How are you? She would have to be tenacious, otherwise sweet, modest Leslie would selflessly redirect the How are you? right back at her. She would write it on the palm of her hand to make sure she remembered, give it an acronym so Leslie wouldn’t notice. HAY.

  Leslie was done changing. She was wearing practically nothing and had swept every bit of hair off her neck in a tight bun. Anna followed her into the yoga studio, where the foot smell increased by several degrees of magnitude and temporarily threatened to overwhelm her. Leslie unrolled her mat and placed a white towel over it. Anna watched her and did the same. They both lay down. The room was incredibly hot, but also dry. Lying still, Anna closed her eyes. She felt pleasantly baked. It was like being at the beach, if that beach were located inside an armpit. Before long she was completely relaxed. Why had she been so resistant to accompanying Leslie to yoga for so long? Now Anna pictured herself walking purposefully down the street with her yoga mat tucked under her arm. On the way out, she would ask about that discounted one-month pass for new students.

  She must have dozed off, because suddenly everyone was on their feet and the instructor, a middle-aged woman reassuringly lumpy around the middle, had taken her place on the dais at the front of the room.

  “Please bring your feet together and place your hands below your chin for pranayama: deep breathing in standing pose,” she said.

  Anna put her feet together and placed her hands below her chin. Leslie had assured her that Chakra Shack’s was a no-nonsense approach. One of the things Anna had always feared about yoga was being asked to chant something in Sanskrit, only to discover later she’d just spent twenty minutes worshipping Ukkar the Suction God. Of course, simply standing around and breathing struck Anna as almost disappointingly easy. Still, it was a step up from lying down.

  Anna breathed, unfolding her elbows until they hovered just above her ears, then pulling them back down beneath her chin. For the first thirty seconds she felt pretty confident—she was no Cirque du Soleil contortionist, but she could bring her elbows up higher than at least one woman in the front row. Quickly, however, she noticed an alarming ache setting in. Holding her elbows up around her eyes wasn’t quite so easy. Her elbows were heavy, apparently. Who knew? They moved on to the next series of exercises, which Anna found presented a new series of challenges to her unequipped muscles. Soon she had to stop to roll up her pants above her knees. Parts of her she hadn’t known could sweat were sweating. Her earlobe. The bottom of her foot. The instructor told them to focus on their own eyes in the mirror, but Anna only had eyes for Abs, who was standing directly in front of her, and whose bones had apparently all been replaced with pipe cleaners.

  “I want you to lift your foot and forgive your foot,” the instructor called out, her face nestled snuggly against her ankle bone. “Forgive it for causing you pain. It’s the concept of karma. Whatever bad feeling you put out there will circulate through you, infect your chi. Even bad feelings toward your foot. And remember to breathe. Let it all go.”

  Anna pretended to lift her foot, forgave Taj for the blue-eyed girl.

  The instructor detached her foot from her face and Anna considered the possibility that all her limbs were actually removable and infinitely reconfigurable, that she was in fact a human Mrs. Potato Head.

  “Now tuck your right elbow behind your left ear,” she said, doing something impossible with her arms. “Forgive your elbow.”

  The air was undeniably hot when she had first lain down, but now Anna felt as though she were deep-tonguing a blowtorch every time she inhaled. She was starting to feel woozy and sank down to her mat, tried to fold herself into an appropriately lotuslike position, but ended up sprawled there like an aborted origami crane. To Anna’s shock, the dizziness and nausea were even worse now that she was sitting down.

  “You’ll feel better if you don’t leave the room,” the instructor called out to Anna as she began to pick her way across the moist carpet. Anna shook her head to indicate Please stop humiliating me, but it was a signal the instructor apparently failed to pick up.

  “Once you acclimate you’ll see what an incredible instrument your body is and how much you are truly capable of,” the yoga Nazi continued, casually switching legs. “But if you leave now, you’ll never know. Leaving the room won’t make you feel better, it’ll only make you feel worse—”

  Her perp walk finally complete, Anna pushed open the glass doors to the lobby and instantly felt better. She slid onto a bamboo bench, put her head in her hands. A moment later she felt a slap of hot air against her legs as the studio door opened once more.

  “Are you OK?” came Leslie’s voice. Anna looked down at Leslie’s tan, dry lap and felt the overwhelming urge to lay her sweaty head there, curl into a ball, and let the horrible Celtic pan flute music saturating the lobby lull her to sleep.

  “I should have guessed it would be too much.” Leslie sighed, pressing a tube of Electrolyte Stamina tablets into Anna’s hand. “It’s the computer. You lose so much mobility hunched over like that all day. I’m such a jerk. I should have started you with Anusara, where they use supports and things. Will you be OK?”

  Anna felt Leslie’s hand on her shoulder and inadvertently stiffened. Leslie knew she wasn’t spending all day in front of the computer anymore, not since becoming a “creative.” So why was she going out of her way to remind Anna who was the “bottom” in this relationship?

  “Will you be OK?” Anna said, an almost-credible hitch in her voice. “I heard you talking to that woman earlier, you know, about how things are going.”

  “Oh.” Leslie stiffened, plucked at the fat she didn’t have. “Yeah, it’s not looking good for the IVF and Josh isn’t sure how he feels about adopting.”

  This triggered an automatic association. “I read this weird thing on Squeee!—did you hear about this?” Anna began “—that couples are purposely adopting black babies so they have a better chance of getting their kids into private school and Harvard and stuff. Isn’t that fucked up?” Even before Leslie gave her that look, she wished she could take it back, scroll up through the history of their conversation to the part where Leslie was stil
l lecturing her and making her eat electrolytes.

  “I can’t believe you read that shit,” Leslie shuddered. “That site’s a cesspit.”

  “Oh no, yeah, I know,” Anna said quickly. “Ridiculous.”

  Through the door, she could still hear the instructor encouraging everyone to flex some inflexible part of themselves, then forgive themselves for it. Leslie began talking again, in great gushes, about adoption and Josh and the problems they’d been having, but now Anna was distracted by what was going on in the yoga room and the memory of that terrible smell. This somehow got her thinking how the only perfume she’d ever loved had been the first she’d ever bought, Colors de Benetton. She wondered if it still existed—were there vintage perfumes the same way there were vintage wines?—and suddenly, more than anything, all she wanted to do was search eBay for an original, unopened, 1987 bottle of Colors de Benetton.

  “So Josh goes, ‘I believe in genes,’ and I was like, ‘Well, what if I believe in destiny?’” Leslie was saying.

  Anna tried forcing herself to listen, but all these concepts—genes, destiny, Leslie’s hypothetical second baby—were wisps of dandelion fluff compared with the totally concrete image she had of the 3.3-ounce bottle of Colors de Benetton perfume that had stood on her bedroom dresser all through high school. Her thoughts skidded toward the locker room, where her phone waited inside her jacket pocket. Even though she always made fun of those cyborg people who walked around with those horrible “augmented reality” glasses, she saw the sense of it now, almost wished she had a pair.

  “… unfair, right?” Leslie said, and Anna realized she was supposed to say something.

  “Totally,” Anna nodded, guessing. “Especially because you guys have everything. Money. The apartment. Dora. I mean, I know people having babies who totally don’t have their shit together. Who don’t even have jobs—”

  “What?” Leslie cut in, eyes narrowing. “Who do you know?”

  Anna looked at her and, before she answered, felt a sudden surge of … what? Triumph? Meanness? Adrenaline?

  “Didn’t I tell you?” she said. “Brie’s pregnant.”

  17

  “I’ll have the veggie burger, but can I have no bun, no onion, and no sprouts with that?”

  The waiter nodded.

  “And the avocado on the side?”

  “No problem.”

  “Instead of brown rice and beans, I’ll have the steamed vegetables.”

  Now the waiter looked at Brandon with open hostility, furiously scribbling. “Will there be anything else?” he said in a voice tipped with acid. But if Brandon noticed, he didn’t let on. He simply handed over his menu and turned his attention back to Anna.

  “Did I tell you about the cat?” he said.

  Anna shook her head. “What cat?”

  “Manx. We just adopted him. Philippe’s idea.”

  Anna had googled “black baby adoption” after coming home from yoga with Leslie and learned that people were adopting African babies not to take advantage of affirmative action, but because restrictions on international adoption were tightening. China and Russia had passed laws. While this made her feel worse about her comment to Leslie, it had one unexpected benefit. Ever since the “black baby adoption” search, Google had been sending her new personalized ads. She’d been alarmed at the first suggestion that she consider freezing her eggs, but after a few days, began to appreciate the new maternal role Google was playing in her life. Maybe freezing her eggs wasn’t such a bad idea? And thinking back, maybe it was Google that had first planted the idea she take a class after losing her job. Maybe instead of listening to Leslie or her mother, she should just listen to Google, let Google be her life coach …

  “—they don’t have tails. More like a dog-cat,” Brandon was saying.

  “That sounds cool,” Anna said.

  “Philippe wants to train it to pee in the toilet.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Sam from Torts did it with his cat. Haven’t you seen his Facebook page? Personally, I think it’s disgusting.”

  “It’s a little weird—”

  “Selby already fell in once. That’s the cat.”

  “Ew.”

  “Don’t act like it’s my idea. Philippe loves that thing like a baby. He sifts through the litter box to examine its poo. Says he wants to make sure he’s regular. A week ago he found pink streaks in his stool and totally freaked out.”

  “God.”

  “The vet bill—get this—four hundred dollars.”

  “Four hundred? Wow,” Anna said, gumming her straw thoughtfully. “Hey … do you think maybe I should get a cat…?”

  “A cat? God, no. What makes you think that?” Brandon waved a hand as though to ward the specters of unwanted cats away from their bread basket. “So anyway, you’re a filmmaker now?”

  Anna blushed. “I didn’t say that.” And yet she had to admit, the footage she’d shot of the fortune-teller at the carnival felt more precious to her than all her material possessions—save for the AVCCAM itself. She had already watched it countless times, memorizing every fold in the old woman’s neck, the rhinestone rings clogging her knuckles like tumors, the lurid whine of her Jersey accent. Anna replayed the footage in her head, cutting and recutting it in the shower or while lying awake at night. She wasn’t ready to edit it yet. For now, she greedily wanted to keep every little piece of it intact. Every stomach-tossing lurch of the camera. In fact, the unfocused bits, which reduced the carnival background to a hazy, Froot Loop soup, were some of Anna’s favorite parts.

  “Is the Shoe Lady still there?” Anna asked. The Shoe Lady was a secretary whose synthetic Payless pumps let out an odor so dire that when she took them off under her desk, it sent the suits at Pinter, Chinski and Harms scattering through the lobby like so many silver mercury balls.

  “Can we not talk about work? I really want to hear about your movie.”

  “It’s not a movie, Bran. It’s just footage—”

  “You were so right to leave, Anna. Best fucking decision you ever made.”

  Anna decided not to remind him it wasn’t a decision she made.

  “PCH is such a wasteland. I hate it. I really hate it.” Brandon asked, his eyebrows shooting up, “You know what my first thought is in the morning, when the alarm goes off?”

  “What?”

  “‘Fuck.’”

  “That is a little sad…”

  “Sad? It’s fucking Shakespeare-level tragic.”

  “Maybe you should just quit?”

  “Yeah,” Brandon said, looking as though she’d just suggested he lather himself with olive oil and scale the high-rise across the street. “Right.”

  The thing with Brandon—and this Anna had noticed in the early days of their friendship—was that he seemed to have a fixed quota of disappointment demanding to be filled regardless of how well his life was going. Conservation of angst: Brandon’s own empirical law of physics. If he got a raise and a promotion at Pinter, suddenly his relationship with his boyfriend, Philippe, was falling apart. If Philippe surprised him with a Groupon for a weekend balloon ride over the Hamptons, work became intolerable. And if he couldn’t manage to engineer any kind of crisis at home or at work, he would find something else to freak out about: the intolerable living conditions at his $4,000-a-month Brooklyn Heights condo, a perceived pain in his spleen, the perilous rise in the global incidence of melanoma.

  The waiter arrived with Brandon’s “burger,” a solar system of sides and condiments arranged around a bare vegetable patty on his half-empty plate. Anna had ordered a salad, but before the waiter had even set it down, badly regretted not ordering the fettuccine Alfredo. Brandon drizzled some balsamic vinegar on a lonely tomato. No wonder he’s so fucking skinny, Anna thought, watching him chew. Then Brandon stopped chewing and looked at her, his eyes suddenly bright.

  “Anna Banana?”

  Anna stopped picking at the salad she didn’t want anyway and waited for him to te
ll her she smelled like 1987. She’d found a bottle of original Colors de Benetton on eBay for only thirty-nine dollars with free shipping. It had arrived yesterday.

  “I think I have an idea,” Brandon continued, in the same slow, awed voice. “We should do something. Together. You already have all the gear. The AVCCAM, the mics—”

  “You mean, a movie?”

  “—and I have the skills.”

  “But I thought you hated movie people and you hated USC?”

  “I never said I hated it.”

  “You said—”

  “I just hated Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a pile of lies shaped like a city. But film … I’ve totally been thinking of getting back into film for a while now.”

  Then how come, Anna wondered, Brandon had never mentioned these thoughts to her? Not during their umpteen apocalyptic lunches at Pinter, or when she asked for his advice about the AVCCAM, or when he dropped off that pirated copy of Final Cut Pro last week? Was it just her, or did everyone suddenly want to be a filmmaker?

  “There’s this idea I’ve had since back in college.” Brandon exhaled excitedly, pushing a pickle around his plate.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’ll love this. Ready?”

  “OK.”

  “It’s a freestyle adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.”

  Anna stared at him with blank eyes.

  “You haven’t read it?”

  “No,” Anna admitted.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m thinking this would be an updated version, happening in the present day on some East Coast campus. It would be told through the eyes of an associate professor giving testimony, with, of course, brief flashbacks to the backstory. You know, sort of the way Heart of Darkness was adapted into Apocalypse Now by Coppola or Secret Agent by Hitchcock…?”

  Anna had no idea what Brandon was talking about, but nodded anyway.

  “Jesus.” Brandon exhaled excitedly. “I can see directing the fuck out of this. We’re talking massive Dostoyevsky-grade material. Actors will love it! It’ll be so much fun to write. And it’s all in the public domain, so—”