Things That Happened Before the Earthquake

by Chiara Barzini

  “I fucked up your neck,” he said.

  I remembered an episode of Happy Days when everybody gathered around Ralph Malph at Arnold’s so he could show off his new hickey to his friends. Wasn’t it supposed to be romantic and exciting to receive hickeys?

  Our date was not working out, so Robert proposed we go to his house. He lived in a place called Soledad Canyon. The landscape was so barren and lunar that many Star Trek episodes had been shot there. His house was in a cul-de-sac in the middle of nowhere. The place was pristine and cold, the furniture preserved in shiny protective plastic covers. His father, a downtown LAPD detective, snored in front of the TV next to a pair of crutches that leaned by him on the couch. He woke up when he heard us and gurgled something about Robert having to warn him when he left home.

  Robert ignored him and headed straight for his bedroom. I nodded hello, but the man growled at me and closed his eyes again, curling up in a fetal position, squeaking against the cushions of the plastic-covered sofa.

  —

  “Can you work as a cop when you have crutches?” I asked Robert when we stepped in his room.

  “He’s on leave. He was on duty during the riots and got fucked up by the assholes who were looting.”

  “Wow, I can’t believe he was there. He was part of it.”

  Over the bed was a framed Nekromantik poster showing a skeleton clutching a woman’s breast. Robert opened a drawer and pulled out a switchblade.

  “Yeah, I wish they’d killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just kidding,” he mumbled. “You don’t get my sense of humor, huh?”

  I tried to laugh. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t tough enough.

  “Anyway, he hit a couple of bastards with the butt of his gun They hit him back. It was crazy.”

  “Why the hell did he hit them? Don’t you think the police have done enough hitting?”

  “There’s never enough hitting.” Robert smirked and passed me the knife. It was the original one from Nekromantik. Worth money, he said, and gave it to me as a gift.

  “You want to see what I’ve been working on?” he asked, as I rolled the knife over the palm of my hand. “It’s a short film I shot in school. It might make you vomit.”

  He plugged a camera in to the TV. He was on the screen, walking in a parking lot toward a high-voltage barbed-wire fence. He electrocuted his arm on the fence, then fell to the ground.

  I realized it was the film that had gotten him locked into the psychiatric ward.

  “Isn’t that awesome?” he asked.

  “Totally,” I answered.

  Robert lifted his sleeve and showed me four parallel lines of raw, red flesh. “You like my electrocution scars? I think they changed my life.”

  “Didn’t you go to an asylum after this film?”

  “Yeah man. It was nuts. They thought I was crazy and suicidal.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “They also didn’t like it when I told them Hitler was my role model.”

  “Hitler?”

  “Yeah man. I fucking love Hitler.”

  I couldn’t smile at any of the things he told me, so I accepted one more Valium instead. We turned the TV on and I placed my head on his thin torso, letting the rest of my body twist on the hard cold floor. I thought about my friends in Rome, the ones I’d had sit-ins with at my high school, the ones who taught me to be interested in politics and suspicious of America, the imperialist devil. What would they think of me if they saw me bundled on that floor, clinging to a Hitler fanatic? But again, the rubber-suit rules were clear. If I wanted it to work, I should not think too much. I should not feel too much.

  We undressed and embraced. Robert threw my underwear on the floor. I noticed it had discharge on it and turned it upside down. Then I felt a tremor, an imperceptible quiver, and his minuscule penis rose. He put a condom on and pushed me on top of him. I spilled over his bony hips trying to keep myself light, afraid I might suffocate him with my curves. I moved up and down, back and forth, feeling nothing inside me, hoping his facial expressions would betray a sensation of pleasure or presence, but they didn’t. I thought of the bowls of pasta my mother tried to shove down his throat, our little Italian world with our sit-down lunches in the middle of Van Nuys, and the screenplay he was writing with my father—all those things standing between us.

  It lasted two minutes—the apathetic humping disguised as sex. I looked down at him, a strange, small creature with vacant eyes. He was gazing at a commercial on TV. Then it was over. He rolled off the condom. I couldn’t tell if there was anything in it.

  In the car ride back home we didn’t speak. This time I smoked my cigarette without asking if it was okay. He coughed and rolled the window down a crack.

  8

  Ugly men who do not read. I’m attracted to them. If one is to have meaningless sex, one should at least pick people with admirable physical qualities. Sex with pretty, stupid men is never as fun as sex with ugly, stupid men. Ugly men who do not read might not become prominent people, but they sure have prominent chins. Like, maybe they have boxy chins or chins with dimples—chins that trick you into thinking they are brave. They enjoy spitting and groping girls in abandoned buildings. They want to do simple things that feel right, like electrocuting themselves on high-voltage barbed-wire fences. Sometimes they look stupid in public situations, like when they crawl in sewer canals or scream inside movie theaters. They might like visual things like art or film. They watch movies about people having sex with dead people. They call them romantic comedies.

  In moments of solitude, an ugly man who doesn’t read will be exactly where you want him to be. He will give you moral support or a leather jacket from Berlin with a rare patch on the back. They can only have certain pieces of a girl’s flesh in their mouths at a time, but you are still willing to give them what they want because nothing better is coming along.

  —

  This was the excerpt of the essay I wrote for health class that Mrs. Anders read over the phone to my parents when she called and asked them to come in. The topic of our final exam was abstinence and STDs. I got suspended. I could not understand why. I thought I’d written a great paper. I was so excited about it I even sent it to a literary journal I found out about at the library. They were looking for submissions for their next issue. The theme would be “Bad Sex.” I thought I’d fit right in. But it wasn’t just the essay that got me in trouble. Leafing through my health textbook, Mrs. Anders discovered horrific Nazi phrases and swastika scribbles. Someone had transformed the face of a Boy Scout into that of a young Hitler by giving him a mustache and parting his hair on the side. I realized it must have been Robert. All those times he slid into my room and infiltrated my backpack, he wasn’t just leaving me notes, he was defacing my books.

  The principal called me in to his office and asked to see the rest of my schoolbooks. We found plenty more drawings and offensive writings.

  “I wasn’t expecting this from you,” Mrs. Anders said while I waited for my parents to pick me up. “After everything your country is going through.” I tried to convince her I had not done the drawings. I was a communist’s daughter. I couldn’t draw that well and it wasn’t my handwriting. It did not matter. If someone I knew had done that to the books, it said something about me, about my own immorality.

  I stayed on the office chair waiting. Azar, my macrocephalic PE buddy, peeked her big head inside. I lied and told her I was going home because I was feeling sick. She became frantic and asked me if I thought I’d be better by the following day. She crept inside the room.

  “It’s my birthday tomorrow. You must bring me a balloon.”

  I was confused.

  “That’s what friends do here when it’s someone’s birthday. The more balloons a girl has on her birthday, the more popular she is. My mom said she’d get me two, but I don’t want it to look like I’m buying my own balloons.” She looked at me with serious, pleading eyes. “You have to bring me one an
d give it to me in front of everyone in class. They need to see.”

  “Of course, Azar.”

  I was moved by her big head. I wanted to tell her she should grow her hair out so it wouldn’t look like a ball.

  “The balloon should be pink. It should say ‘Happy Birthday.’ Better if you find something with hearts or kittens.”

  I promised her I would bring her the balloon.

  —

  “I have no words.” My mother looked like a martyr as we walked to the school parking lot with a handful of papers that determined the amount of days of suspension—three plus a week of community service cleaning up school grounds after hours.

  “Slut!” my father screamed at me as we got inside the car. “My daughter is a total slut!”

  Suddenly Ettore had transformed into an Italian patriarch I had never met before.

  “You were the one working with a psychopath. It’s not my fault if Robert’s hero is Adolf Hitler!” I tried to defend myself.

  “Well it’s your fault for having intercourse with him and it’s your fault for writing this delirious essay!” my father yelled.

  “How irresponsible of you! Who are these men you’ve been sleeping with? And Robert? Robert! Of all people! Do you know he could have killed you?” my mother burst out.

  “It’s great that you guys had a murderer at our dinner table then!”

  “We didn’t know at the time. That was before the episode!”

  “The episode” as Max and, consequently, my parents called it, was the reason Robert eventually stopped showing up at our place. Without anyone knowing, he’d obtained an appointment with two powerful Jewish Hollywood producers and pitched them his new solo film idea: Holocaust 2: The Party’s Just Getting Started—a horror movie about Jewish zombies who organized raves in Dachau. The producers, who, thanks to Max, were faintly interested in the project Robert was working on with my father, were horrified and vowed Robert would never set foot in their offices again. Robert showed up a few days later and threatened them with a blunt razor saying they were making a big mistake. He was arrested, but his father—the downtown LAPD officer on crutches—got him out with the paperwork from the insane asylum where he had been locked up weeks earlier. The producers were so disgusted by Robert and the whole event that they stopped responding to my father’s calls. He was back to square one, without prospects.

  From my bedroom that night I heard Max at the dinner table.

  “She’s turning into a nymphomaniac! Keep her home,” he commanded, explaining to my parents what people did to their kids in America when they got suspended from school.

  I sneered at him from under my blankets. “Nymphomaniac” was a bit strong, I thought, but it served a purpose. For the first time since we arrived, my parents were worried. I finally heard them consider the possibility of having made the wrong choices. They feared their daughter was turning into a sex maniac. Their son got beat up regularly in school for not having a group to hang out with. He was known by the nickname “the Italian Tomato.” It was one thing to be part of a racial minority. It was difficult and you were discriminated against, but at least you knew you were backed up by those who shared your origins. But Italians had no reference points and were hard to classify.

  “You can’t just let these kids float. They need rules. Eugenia has to be grounded,” Max explained. “This sex rampage is a cry for help. Take away her private phone,” he ordered them.

  “She doesn’t have one,” my father replied.

  “Then take away her TV!”

  “It’s broken,” my mother admitted.

  “Take away her monthly allowance.”

  “Umm…she doesn’t have one.”

  “Well, just keep her inside the house, then,” Max groaned impatiently.

  “Keep?” my mother said. “She’s always home. I don’t know when she even had time to meet all these boys.”

  I liked hearing their concerned voices. I liked that people were gathered around a table to talk about me—even if it was about the best form of punishment for my wild spree.

  —

  On my fourth night of being grounded, I lay in bed struck by the sudden awareness that I’d missed Azar’s birthday. She had been alone on her special day—no balloons, no friends. The thought of her by the track, waiting for me to show up with the kitten balloon, was devastating. I would tell her I was sick. I would tell her a tragedy occurred. Better a late balloon than no balloon. I’d make it up to her.

  I slipped into a dirty pair of sweatpants and tennis shoes, snuck out through my bedroom window, and walked to the twenty-four-hour party shop on Sepulveda that Henry had introduced me to. The Taiwanese kids at the register were sucking nitrous from balloons, laughing. A different kind of partying went on in the back of the store compared to what was showcased in the front. I bought my usual bubble tea, a pack of cigarettes, and a pink-and-silver balloon with puppies for Azar. They didn’t have kittens.

  With the string wrapped around my wrist, I was headed home feeling festive when I heard an insistent honk on the road.

  “Is it your birthday or somethin’?” a voice shouted at me.

  A metallic blue BMW pulled up to the curb. I peered in.

  It was Arash. Without thinking I opened the door, stuffed the balloon inside, and jumped in.

  “I missed your cousin’s birthday and I promised her a balloon. I’ll bring it to school on Monday.”

  “When are you going to stop hanging out with that weirdo?”

  “Never. Don’t be mean.”

  We were happy to see each other, but we didn’t want to say it.

  “So is it true you got suspended?”

  “Yes, and now I’m grounded.”

  “So what are you doing walking around?”

  “My parents think I’m in my room. They won’t check. They don’t really notice when I run away. It’s very convenient.”

  Arash’s car moved past my house. I didn’t tell him where I lived and didn’t ask him to stop. I just wanted to stay with him without having to think about anything.

  “You seem happy to see me,” I teased him.

  “It’s Saturday night. You’re lucky I had no plans,” he said with his usual cocky tone, but his eyes had a little warm light burning in them and I told him I was happy to see him too.

  Arash was dressed up. Beneath his Yankees cap, the gel on his hair had turned strands of it into rigid, oily spikes and he had layers of gold on his chest.

  “Why are you so dressed up if you have no plans?”

  “My stupid homeys flaked on me ’cause they scored some pussy.”

  “Oh.” I looked down and leaned back against the seat.

  We drove by the Sound City Studios hoping to catch a rock star on a cigarette break, but the parking lot was empty. The smoke from the Budweiser factory next door was sickly and Arash kept driving. We reached the far eastern edge of the San Fernando Valley at Chatsworth, an old agricultural community flanked by the Santa Susana Mountains. We stopped the car in front of Stoney Point, a huge set of boulders on a hilltop, a classic Valley hangout spot for kids. The rocks were etched with marijuana-leaf drawings.

  We climbed to the top and Arash spread his hooded sweatshirt on the ground. We sat overlooking the flat lights of Chatsworth and the black mountain range to the east. Arash exhaled into the sky and took my hand.

  “This is a good place for weirdos like you.” He smiled.

  “I’m not a weirdo,” I said leaning against him, too tired to fight back.

  “What the fuck you wearing?” he said, noticing my sweatpants.

  I looked down, embarrassed. “I wasn’t planning on going out.”

  “So that’s your home-alone outfit?”

  “Oh no, that one’s much worse!”

  Arash giggled.

  A warm night wind blew on our faces, thick with smog fumes from the end of the day. I inhaled everything and kissed him hard. I kneeled over on automatic pilot and pushed him back on the rock,
ready to go down on him, but Arash put his hand on my forehead and lifted it.

  “Stop,” he said and pulled a strand of hair away from my eyes.

  I looked up at the drowned-out stars trying to shine through the polluted purple Valley sky and felt relieved.

  “They still look pretty even when they’re fuzzy,” I said, but what I really wanted to say was “thank you.”

  “You’re getting romantic,” Arash teased. He pulled me toward him and smiled. “We’re just lying under a hood of smog, actually.”

  He kissed me, pushing my hands into his, and we just kissed and kissed until our lips went blue. We were trying to find out who we were when we weren’t people who hid in abandoned buildings. Who we were at night, as equals.

  “You know what? Fuck it. We should just go out and do something,” he said quietly.

  “Like where there’s other people?” I laughed.

  “You want to go see a movie? Reservoir Dogs is playing at the Woodland Hills Mall,” he asked with a tentative tone.

  “Together?” I asked, worried about how quickly we were changing the parameters of our unspoken understanding.

  “Why not?” he said to reassure me.

  —

  The mall was filled with the excited shrieks of adolescents set free. They were everywhere, the people our age. They swarmed out of minivans in packs. That’s where they all went, I realized. That’s why the streets were silent. They hid inside shopping malls, scattering popcorn and teasing each other, chewing gum, burping, exploding with soda.