I didn’t want to leave my desk today.
But there was something small and lost in Eric’s voice. “Please, Becc. Just for a couple hours?”
“Sure, E. I’ll meet you.”
I left a Post-it on my monitor saying I was at a “Dr. appt.,” just in case Skip came by to lodge another grievance about his internet “bullies,” grabbed my lunch bag, and drove to the beach.
* * *
A group of struggling artists had built the Crystal Cove beach shacks out of scrap lumber and driftwood in the 1930s. The parks department had been waffling over the buildings for ages, not sure if it should demolish them or make them into a tourist attraction or sell them to a condo developer or what. So they sat, pastel relics of more free-spirited days. Some were sinking into the dunes but a remarkable number of them were still upright, as if their owners had just gone for a stroll down the beach.
Eric was close to the water, skimboarding with the loose-jointed ease of a high school boy.
I sat on my yellow-striped beach towel with my work pants rolled up to my ankles and watched him until he noticed me and waved, running up with wet hair.
I tried not to look at the comma-shaped ridges of muscle that curved into the waistband of his trunks, and the thin trail of dark hair in the middle.
“I’m starving,” he said, dropping onto my towel. “I guess I forgot the food part of my lunch invitation.”
I fished in my bag. “Try this delicacy, courtesy of Betty Renfreau of Fountain Valley. One of my regulars. She calls it Fudgy Lovin’. I’m trying to decide if that’ll sound too much like some kind of exotic sex act to Paula’s readership, or if I’m the only one with a dirty mind.”
Betty had mailed the recipe in on a flower-trimmed recipe card. It was basically brownie mix and melted Crisco spread on graham crackers. When I handed one to Eric, he sniffed at it before biting.
“Tell Betty it’s not bad,” he said. “How are your fascists?”
“Libertarians. They’re in rare form. Actually, it’s only the Opinion section that’s Libertarian. The reporters aren’t.”
“Doesn’t it kill you to help that bulgy-vein guy? And do that techy stuff you hate?”
“It’s a foot in the door.”
“And that crazy retro housewife column. Three Beccs for the price of one.”
“God, you’re being mean.” I stood and gathered my things. “Your SOS call was a ruse. I thought something was up, that you really needed me.”
Eric reached up and squeezed my wrist. “I’m sorry. I do need you.”
“What’s going on? You called because you’re worried about me? Because I’m fine, more than fine—”
“I was trying to ask you a question and it came out wrong. How can you stand your job?”
“You think I’ll be typing recipes for Oreo-Cool-Whip-Wonder Cake and sale dates for the Yarn Barn forever?” I said. “And placating morons like Skip Theobald?”
“I hit a nerve. I’m sorry. It’s just that nothing’s turning out the way I expected. I’m turning into one of them.”
The despair in his voice broke my heart, and I sat back down. I didn’t need to ask who them was. He meant his parents, the guys at the brokerage office, the Gold cousins. Anyone who, according to him, had sold out.
I spoke gently. “We have to pay the bills. We’re lucky to. And it’s not selling out if you haven’t given up the dream, E. Why don’t you go to film school part-time next term? Suck it up like Serra and take loans, or get a night job?” I tried to smooth his hair but it was so stiff from salt water it barely budged.
“You’re right.”
“I’ve got to get back. And you should go to work, too. At least until you decide what to do.”
“Yeah, I’m tired.” Eric regularly ducked out of the Gold Coast production office to nap in his truck, in the cool underground parking lot. Serra and I had a theory that he wanted to get caught grabbing REM cycles on Gold Coast’s dime so they’d fire him.
“Brat. I mean go to your desk. Not go back and sleep in the cab of your truck.”
Eric walked me to my car. Before I got in I reached over and pulled his hoodie up over his head, tightening the drawstrings until the fabric cinched around his face. I tied the strings in a neat bow below his lips.
“Do you need tough love?” I asked. “Tough life coaching?” We’d once searched for the certification requirements for life coaches online.
“Coach away,” he said. He could barely move his lips because of the tight knot under them.
“My mom has worked as an insurance coder for twenty years, but she never complains. There are people who have to walk miles for clean water every day and we sit in air-conditioned offices for regular paychecks and sleep in warm beds.”
“Or cold truck floors.” He smiled but he looked so lost I untied his drawstring, pulled his hood down, and gave him a long hug.
“Your dreams aren’t dead,” I whispered into his ear.
He held me there, and his hand began making slow circles on the small of my back. Even through three layers of fabric—camisole, button-down shirt, chenille sweater—it felt good.
So good I closed my eyes for a second before shifting away.
“You have affluenza,” I said. “The Desperation of the First Cubicle. Disillusionment of Youth. The Liberty did an article on it. It’ll get better, E.”
I didn’t tell Eric that a regular commenter, AlGoreRhythm2000, had posted that “generational disillusionment” was “just another way of saying ‘brats kicked on their asses.’”
“Don’t go yet, life coach,” he said. “I’ll buy you sourdough pancakes at Dani’s to pay you for your services.” He tilted his head toward the restaurant up the hill.
We could sit on the deck at Dani’s and watch the surfers. The pull, from the hopeful shine in Eric’s eyes and the vision of us sitting close to each other, was strong. We could eat our sourdough pancakes with maple syrup. I could call Deb and say I needed the rest of the day off.
“C’mon, you know you want to stay. I can scrape together enough pennies for one stack.”
But just as clearly as I could see us laughing together on the Dani’s balcony, I could see myself laughing with Cal on another balcony.
The Catalina house. Look at that color. It’s the magic hour.
I had smiled, nestled close.
Only the pain of what I’d done to Eric could summon such a cinematic visual.
I hadn’t spoken to Cal in over a year. He hadn’t emailed me in months. He’d become a phantom behind my back that I was careful not to turn and look at, an uncomfortable feeling that I outran by staying busy.
“I can’t, E. I really have to go back to work.”
“More pancakes for me.”
“Pick a movie for Sunday?” I called as I left. “Something early.”
Eric and I saw matinees, never evening showings. I said it was because matinees were cheaper. But the truth was going out with him alone at night would have felt too much like a date.
At our bargain matinees, I always stayed within the boundary of my armrest. I kept things light.
I could have cut off all contact with Eric. Maybe I should have.
41
Cracked
2008
Friday, 8:30 p.m.
We devour room-service burgers and steak fries and house salads in the “executive” armchairs of our suite’s sitting room, in front of a big TV tuned to Law & Order.
“Maggie was on a Law & Order,” I say. “I forget which one.”
“I saw that! I was at a hotel in Orlando, and there she was, in the credits and everything. Bailiff, Margaret J. Estes. Her hair was red but I recognized her right away.” There’s pride in his voice.
“Our shower tiles are still stained pink from when she dyed her hair for that audition. S
he works so hard. You should tell her.” Maggie and I have been roommates for four years. Technically I’m her landlord, since I own our shared condo in Dana Point. But she doesn’t treat me like one, which suits me fine.
She still keeps insane hours, she still smokes, and she never cleans the litter box, even though she’s the one who brought in our stray cat, Eliot. She never judges me for my work choices, or the fact that I haven’t had a proper date in two years. She’s been seeing another actor, this older woman who started as a comic, for more than a year.
“So you’re flying back with her Monday morning after the wedding?”
“Yeah. She has a callback Monday afternoon. She’s trying out for a soap, this psychic character named Daphne. I’ve been running lines with her so long I’ve memorized her love interest’s part.”
“Oh, you have to do it for me.”
“Picture a six-five guitarist-slash-firefighter named Jagger. Her script says he’s ‘hardened by life, but with a soft side.’ Daphne! I see us together! Like we were in Santa Fe!”
“Brava. Maybe you missed your calling.”
“Please. Anyway, it’s brutal, all that rejection, but Maggie’s really happy.”
“She’s doing what she loves. Serra, too, teaching her art classes.” He nods at the triptych in the middle of the suite. “So have you looked at it?”
“Just the pictures, and I peeked at one side. The seller wrapped it up so carefully, I was worried I wouldn’t get it back in. But now that you mention it...” I lick salt from my fingers, cross the room, and kneel in front of the triptych. Pick at some duct tape.
“What are you doing?”
“I just want to check that it didn’t get damaged today.”
I unfold the side flap of the box, peel at a little Bubble Wrap. The edge of the triptych looks exactly the same as when I checked it at my condo two nights ago. I pull the panels out a few inches, just to make sure.
“Is it okay?” Eric asks, shaking ketchup on his plate.
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
I should fold the Bubble Wrap back into place. Shove the panels all the way into their long cardboard sleeve and retape it.
Buy some paint or white shoe polish to cover my scuff mark on the door. Say good-night to Eric, shower, and go to sleep. Restore myself to fight another day. The last thing I should do is slide the box off the panels.
I slide the box off the panels.
Eric sets the ketchup down and comes over, stands behind me. I feel heat on my spine where his legs would brush if he were just a few inches closer and freeze.
“Becc, are you sure we’ll be able to get it back in, maybe we should wait... Wow.” He crouches on the floor next to me.
I undo more Bubble Wrap so we can see it clearly.
Some of the creatures are a little worse for wear. There’s been a breach in panel two. A little crack running up from the right bottom corner. The small, furred figure Serra used to represent Glenn is orange and balding, and his hacky sack is gone. Poor Glenn: it’s not something I can fix. But the piece looks better than I expected, considering that it’s ten years old.
I pull it out a little more. Tear at more Bubble Wrap. Enough to see the small replica of Serra.
Then Maggie. Our other housemates.
Eric.
And me. Serra’s sweet little critter version of me, clutching my skinny reporter’s notebook so eagerly, a pen behind my bitty pink ear. Miraculous that I’m still intact, down to the pages in my dollhouse-size notebook and the shine in my eyes.
Here we all are, trapped in time. Little, fearful animals swimming against the current.
The piece is as unsettling now as it was when I was twenty-one. Whatever we’d been swimming away from, whatever we sensed lurking inside that gold nylon graduation cap above us, maybe we’d been right to fear it.
We say we’ll never be like them, but it happens.
It happens gradually. We give in a little here, put off the hard decision there, say we’re paying our dues. We forget to swim against the current.
“I forgot how detailed it was,” Eric says, running his long fingers along the front. “The tiny espresso machine, the cash.” His voice softens. “Look at you in there, with your notebook.”
I rest the side of my head on top of the middle panel, and it’s cold and smooth against my cheek. “Remember when you gave me those notebooks? After I got the newspaper job?”
His hand pauses for a second, but he doesn’t look at me.
“Yeah, Becc.” He says it sweetly. Not doubting, just remembering.
Those empty notebook pages had been so full of hope. Passion.
Searching for the triptych and retrieving its scattered parts has given me a taste of something I haven’t had in a long time. The thrill of the chase. Entering other people’s worlds, so different from your own. One fact leading to another, feeling your way through the dark, sometimes crawling and sometimes backing up and sometimes running. The certainty that the story is important, that you have to keep going because no one else will. Until you’re out of the maze, holding a fragment of the truth up to the light.
It’s been a long time, my shoe leather’s thicker. But the feeling had rushed back as if no time at all had passed. And I still loved it.
“You okay?” Eric touches my hand, the one spread out on top of the triptych’s second panel.
I shake my head.
“Maybe we should get some fresh air. Check out that roof garden Bryce was telling you about?”
l look up at him. “I didn’t think you were listening.”
“I was, and he said we shouldn’t miss it. Come on.”
42
Bender
July 1998
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | The paper
WHERE I WAS | Crystal Cove
Eric never called about the Sunday matinee we’d planned to see together. He blew me off.
After eighty hours of unreturned messages, I told myself—Good. Let him move on. It was just like after high school, and maybe that was how it had to be.
He was the one thing I couldn’t have, simple as that. I would be a grownup and accept it. Let him fall in love with someone else. Some lovely but previously underestimated fellow Gold Coaster who’d roll her eyes at him conspiratorially in a meeting about Suzi Gold’s “internship” at the fashion designer.
Or he’d click with a random film buffette in a theater. They’d meet-cute. She’d fall into his lap trying to reach her seat, spilling popcorn, and he’d forget me, and we’d all be better off.
But after four days of not hearing from him, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I drove to his apartment on my lunch hour, and his roommate Simon answered the door in a purple flower-print robe. Eric told me that Simon and his girlfriend had screeching sex all night, then slept until noon. Simon’s parents were funding him. He took a smattering of classes at CalArts but was in no hurry to finish. I’d assumed Eric had been exaggerating, but here was Simon looking like a young Hugh Hefner.
“Jessica’s,” he explained, cinching the floral robe tighter.
“Ah. It’s gorgeous.” It was. “Is Eric home?”
“He moved out last week. Jess moved in... He said it was good timing, that he already had something lined up. He didn’t tell you?”
Oh, Eric.
“No. Did he say where he was moving?”
Simon shook his head. “Shit, now I feel bad. I thought it was weird when he didn’t take his stuff. He said he’d come back for it in a week or two. Come in for a coffee?” He opened the creaking screen door wider just as, behind him, Jessica leapt across the hall in a towel.
“Thanks, I’ve got to go. And don’t feel bad... I’m sure he’s fine.”
But the second Simon shut the door I speed-dialed Eric from my black Nokia. “What’s going
on? You’ve moved out? Call me.”
I dialed Serra. She was renting a garage apartment in Silver Lake, juggling three jobs (nannying, working at the museum again, helping a caterer). So I wasn’t surprised when nobody picked up.
I called everywhere else I could think of. No Eric.
When I eventually got through to Serra, I asked her to try Eric’s mom at her new apartment in San Diego, but not to let on that we didn’t have a clue where Eric was.
“Why don’t you call her?” Serra asked.
“It would be awkward. I don’t want her to think I’m...acting like a crazy girlfriend or something.”
“You are acting like a crazy girlfriend. But I know for a fact he’s not dating anyone. In case you’re interested. In case you’re worried he’s moved in with some lovely—”
“Serr. Don’t. Just...can you call her? I’m worried.”
“Fine.”
I’d neglected Eric’s offers to join him and Donna for lunch. She’d actually softened a lot since we were in high school, he said. I could tell it puzzled him that I was avoiding her. But the idea of being in the same room with her, even trying to make small talk with her on the phone, was not appealing.
You know, we have more in common than you might think, Donna!
No, thanks.
Serra called back in ten minutes.
“Okay, he’s definitely not living at his mom’s. But I’m sure he’s fine, Becc. He’s probably on one of his benders.”
Serra and I had learned about Eric’s benders during winter break junior year of high school, when things got so bad at home he disappeared for three days.
Eric told his parents he was going skiing at Big Bear with a bunch of friends from school. I called his house and that was what his mom told me, so I’d tried to sound casual—“Oh, right, he said something about going.”
Serra was dating a guy on the ski team at the time so we knew within an hour that Eric wasn’t in Big Bear. We’d spent forty-eight hours debating a missing-persons report before he turned up on my doorstep, acting blasé.
Summer Hours Page 24
