The Dissident

by Nell Freudenberger

  June made a face. “They look cool,” she said. “But they taste like soap.”

  51.

  TWO MONTHS AND THREE DAYS AFTER HE ARRIVED IN LOS ANGELES, Phil got the phone call. Or rather, he got a brief message from Kiss Me, Kill Me Productions (he was in the shower, the only time he didn’t have his phone nearby) with directions to a house in the fashionable district just east of La Brea, where Keith and Steve would be “hanging out.” If “by any chance” he was free next Thursday, he was welcome to show up and help. If not, “no worries”—they’d do it another time. Phil felt it was better not to call right back, and managed to wait seven minutes before dialing Steve’s number, which went straight to voice mail. Thursday, it turned out, was good for Phil.

  The night before he was supposed to meet them, Phil had trouble sleeping. He finally drifted off at three o’clock, and was woken two hours later by Aubrey, who had forgotten (or pretended to forget) the time difference.

  “Were you sleeping? I’m sorry,” she said. “But we have to figure out Thanksgiving. If I’m coming out there, I have to give Bruce at least three weeks notice, and the ticket’s going to be expensive.”

  It was still dark out. He had slept for exactly two hours and fifteen minutes. “Who’s Bruce?”

  “The partner on the AT&T case. If you don’t know that, you haven’t been listening to me for the past six months.”

  “Look,” Phil said. “I don’t know if Thanksgiving is going to work out.”

  “Hold on, hold on—I’m getting some coffee.”

  He heard the morning rush at the local nonfranchised place, and Aubrey saying, “Excuse me, sorry,” in a sweet, friendly way. She was probably talking to a man. Probably a man in a suit, with a perky, bright-colored shirt. A hedge fund manager who lived downtown and did interesting drugs in his fabulous duplex. Phil wasn’t jealous so much as envious of the opportunity the stranger had, to notice the mysterious, original Aubrey who had first captivated him, before everything became so complicated.

  “Sorry,” Aubrey said in her ordinary voice. “It’s going to be expensive, but you coming here would be the same thing, and I feel bad I’ve never done it with your family, since you’ve done it with mine a million times—”

  For a woman talented with numbers, it was amazing how twice could suddenly become “a million.” She had manufactured a million dollars for him, however, out of the air; perhaps it was silly to fight it.

  “Unless you wanted to just come here, and we wouldn’t have to go to my mom’s. Maybe it would be nice to have it just the two of us—in the apartment?”

  Phil thought of the two of them in the apartment: candles, a meal that referenced Thanksgiving without in fact being a Thanksgiving dinner, a pregnant pause, a pause in which Aubrey thought about pregnancy…

  “I don’t know what you had planned?”

  “I don’t have anything planned.” Perhaps he sounded too insistent.

  “What a surprise,” Aubrey said.

  There was a long silence. There was no way he was going to go back to sleep after this.

  “Well, I’m going into the subway now,” Aubrey said. “I need to know by the end of the day.”

  “What a surprise,” said Phil, but she had already clicked out.

  52.

  WHEN HE ARRIVED AT THE ORANGE BUNGALOW, THE HOUSE WAS DARK, but as he approached, he heard a steady bass beat coming from somewhere inside. His heart sank—the fact that he couldn’t get into hip-hop was a serious failing. He heard it coming from Max’s part of the house, and felt envious. (Another failing was his affection for Billy Joel, especially the ballad “The Longest Time,” which Aubrey had gleefully caught him humming on more than one occasion, after they’d had the misfortune to hear it in a taxi.)

  Phil rang the bell, knocked, and then noticed that the door was ajar, an intimidation tactic that forced a visitor to wander through your house like a thief until he found and inevitably startled you, ensuring an unpleasant beginning to what ever social interaction you were about to embark upon. Phil shut the door behind him: there was no point in calling out over the furious music. He could see how inner-city youth could be this furious—but a couple of twenty-nine-year-old Ivy League graduates, making upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a year in a city full of aspiring actresses? He didn’t get it. When he had lived here, in his tiny studio in Mount Washington, coming to West Los Angeles always made him feel like he had wandered onto a movie set, a place where the bartenders, the salesgirls, and even the parking attendants were all played by actors.

  “Hello,” he shouted.

  The music was lowered to an outraged whisper. “Yeah? Jorge?”

  “It’s Phil—Phil Travers.”

  “Phil? We’re in here.”

  He went through the living room, large, empty, and shuttered, and stepped down into an open kitchen, also dark, where two sleepy-looking young men were sitting at an island with a black marble top, facing an enormous television hooked up to a slick video game console. A box of Cap’n Crunch was on the counter between them.

  “Sorry,” said the taller, blonder one, getting up. “We thought you were our gardener.” He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Sailing the Seas of Cheese,” and a pair of board shorts. “I’m Steve, this is Keith.”

  Keith raised one hand and turned back to the screen. At least they didn’t look alike. Keith was more what Phil had expected, with curly dark hair, freckles, and a squint, whereas Steve looked like some kind of teenage pop idol.

  “Sorry about the dark,” Steve said, nodding his head toward the TV. “Glare.”

  “This is so awesome,” Keith said. “Ghost in the Shell was awesome, but this Korean action is something fucking else. Fucking Kiss Me, Kill Me? Shit.”

  Phil was confused. “That’s your company, right?”

  Keith emitted a kind of strangled laugh; the screen exploded in green fire.

  “Also a Korean comic book,” Steve said gently. Of the two of them, he seemed the more sympathetic. “Are you a fan of manhwa, by any chance?”

  “Is that this band?”

  Keith looked away from the screen for the first time. “What?”

  “Sorry,” said Phil. “What’s manhwa?”

  “Korean comic books,” Steve explained. “A lot of them have been turned into cartoons. It’s kind of a cult thing.”

  “Manga!” Phil said. “I’ve heard of that.”

  “That’s Japanese,” Keith said, disgusted.

  There were footsteps upstairs, and a pair of long, tanned legs appeared on the spiral staircase, followed by slim hips, large but perky breasts, dramatic dark eyes, and thick, honey-colored hair: in short, a knockout. She was carrying a rolled-up exercise mat under one arm.

  She looked from Keith to Phil and Steve to the television and sighed.

  “This is disgusting.”

  Keith flipped off the TV, and Steve started opening the drapes. Two sets of French doors were revealed, leading out to a backyard with a dark blue, kidney-shaped pool.

  “I’m Leona,” the woman said, pronouncing it in an appealing South American way. “You must be the other writer for the movie without a name.”

  “It’s called The Hypnotist,” Phil said. He didn’t want to stare, but he was finding it difficult to look away.

  “We were thinking of changing that, actually,” Keith said.

  “Changing the title?”

  Steve and Keith exchanged a glance. “It’s just that—”

  “That’s cool,” Phil said. “I never really liked the title.”

  “Yeah?” said Steve. “Because we were thinking of punching up the shrink a little.”

  “Making him more of a kind of cult leader.”

  “A cult leader?”

  “I’m going outside for stretching now,” Leona said. “Please don’t drink my kefir, Keith.”

  “Of course not,” said Keith.

  “Bye,” said Leona, giving Steve a little wave: she was dressed entirely in loose wh
ite cotton, with a black leotard underneath—the kind of outfit that made you want to become a cult leader.

  “What’s kefir?” asked Keith.

  “It’s like yogurt,” Steve said.

  “Shit,” said Keith.

  “Leona is from Rio,” Steve said proudly. “But she’s interested in the California lifestyle—you know, yoga, organic food, shiatsu.” Outside, Leona had taken off everything but her leotard and inverted her body on the purple mat. The pool sparkled in the background like an advertisement for a vacation. How stupid people were, choosing to live anywhere besides Los Angeles.

  “We’re supposed to make it a little edgier.” Keith reached into the box for another handful of Cap’n Crunch. “A little more dangerous.”

  “We need to find the MacGuffin,” Steve said.

  “That would be OK,” said Phil. “I think a MacGuffin would be good.”

  “Yeah?” said Keith. “Because maybe it could be a kind of survivalist cult. Maybe on an island—like Catalina?”

  “Catalina?” Steve said. “How could there be a survivalist cult on Catalina? There’s a fucking ferry twenty times a day.”

  “OK, OK.” Keith looked annoyed.

  “It has to be more remote,” Steve said. “What’s that island in New York called?”

  “Manhattan?”

  Keith laughed. “Hey—this guy’s funny.”

  Phil felt wonderful. They were bonding. The age difference didn’t matter. He imagined the three of them inhaling Cap’n Crunch, punching up The Hypnotist—terrible title anyway—and talking about girls. He pictured them doing whiskey shooters in a Hollywood dive bar with Leona and a couple of her friends. He saw himself with a Brazilian on each arm, discussing manhwa.

  “Not Manhattan,” Steve said. “The other one.”

  “Long Island!” Keith said. “That’s good.”

  “Long Island isn’t actually—” Phil began and stopped. It would be a shame to interrupt, now that they were really rolling.

  “A survivalist cult on Long Island,” Steve suggested. “Darcy gets lured out there by the guru—”

  “What’s her name?” Keith asked.

  “Celine,” Phil said. “But we can—”

  “Change that,” said Steve. “Right.”

  “And he’s experimenting with her head,” Keith continued.

  “And it’s after Y2K, so everyone thinks the world is totally fucked.”

  “Dude? Maybe you missed it? Y2K didn’t happen.”

  “That’s the point.” Steve smiled. “They don’t know. It’s after Y2K, but they still think everything’s fucked. Only the guru knows, and you see him going into town and having a beer or something—”

  “Wait,” said Keith. “Does Long Island have towns?”

  “Quite a few,” Phil said.

  Steve turned to Phil with concern. “Is this getting too far away from your play?”

  Phil had hung out with Steve, Keith, and Leona all afternoon. They had taken a swim (except for Phil, who didn’t have a bathing suit), drank a pitcher of sangria, and debated various names for the cult leader.

  “We want something evil,” Keith said. “Like Colonel Moon.”

  “I don’t think this one can be Korean,” Steve said.

  “Your name is evil,” Leona told Phil. She was standing in the shallow end, rippling the surface of the water with her fingertips. The lower half of her body wavered underwater, like a fantasy on TV.

  “Mine?”

  “It sounds a little evil—in Spanish.” Leona smiled. “Travieso, travesura.”

  “That means evil?” Phil asked. Was she flirting with him?

  “Leona speaks Portuguese, Spanish, and English,” Steve remarked. “She’s only twenty, and she’s already written a telenovela.”

  Leona splashed some water at Steve. Then she turned to Phil, and made an inch with her fingers: “A little evil. A mischief—like a little monkey.” Then she sank down into the water, her hair floating for a moment before dipping beneath the surface.

  “I’m going to ask her to marry me,” Steve said, once Leona was underwater. “What do you think?”

  The afternoon had ended with plans to meet up over the weekend in a pool hall off Sunset where Steve knew the bartender, so that they could “spitball” about the new storyline. Leona would join them, in order to offer the female perspective.

  “Where’s the bar, exactly?” Phil asked.

  Steve looked at Keith.

  “Dude—if you want to come, be our guest,” Keith said. “But you might be kind of—uncomfortable.”

  “He doesn’t want to hear us mutilating his art.” Steve smiled companionably at Phil. “Better to take it all in one blow, at the end. Then you can offer suggestions.”

  “It was nice to meet you,” Leona said. “I hope your movie is a big success.”

  Probably the fact that Leona was underage would be no problem at the pool hall. Probably it was only overage drinkers who had to worry.

  The three of them saw Phil out, watching while he backed Cece’s matronly Mercedes into the narrow street. He felt ominously tired. What was wrong with him? He forced himself to recall the sight of Leona, climbing out of the pool in what must have been a genuinely Brazilian bikini, and instead saw Keith’s pale, underdeveloped chest and self-satisfied leer. His lust, he was horrified to discover, was directed not at Steve’s girlfriend but at his house and his pool, his palms, red hibiscus, and birds-of-paradise. The door closed behind them, and Phil idled for a moment, straining to see through the thick front hedge, but except for a flash of chlorinated blue, sparkling in between the leaves, that lush landscape was completely hidden from the street.

  53.

  THE WEEKS LEADING UP TO MY SHOW PASSED QUICKLY, EACH ONE faster than the last. I tried to ignore it—teaching my class, working on my scroll, and, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, staying late at St. Anselm’s to instruct June in Mandarin Chinese. I clung to the resolution I’d made that night in the aviary, and was even a little cold with her, but what had happened between us had removed a boundary. Although there was no more physical contact, June now felt free to address me as a peer. Her questions became more personal, about my family and my life in China, and were therefore more difficult to answer. The single subject that seemed to be off-limits was my visit to her house; she mentioned it only once—and that was in order to correct me.

  “Xiao Pangzi isn’t a name,” she said one afternoon in early November, when we were alone in the classroom.

  “It’s a kind of family nickname,” I said. “More personal.”

  But June shook her head. “My grandmother says there are a million ‘Little Fatties’ in China.”

  I was impressed that she’d been able to remember the name “Xiao Pangzi” well enough to repeat it to her grandmother. “You already know my name,” I told her. “There are a million other Yuan Zhaos, too.”

  June looked at me critically. “But I wasn’t asking about them.”

  On afternoons when I didn’t see June, I worked on my project in the Traverses’ pool house. Many afternoons, Cece or the lady novelist came to look at the scroll, which had extended now to six panels. I didn’t mind their visits so much anymore. To be honest, I was proud of my work. I had ideas about my painting when I was doing other things: looking over my students’ portfolios, doing my exercises in the morning (on the floor of my bedroom, now that the weather had finally turned chilly), or even soaping my body in the luxurious shower. Sometimes in my head I added things that were not in the original, a few saplings on the bank of the stream, or a teahouse high up on a distant mountain, with a tiny pilgrim making the steep ascent.

  These additions were fantasies, of course, and when I sat down at my easel, I didn’t depart from Zhao Cangyun’s masterpiece. It was only that my mind returned so often to the painting that the world inside it seemed to expand; I couldn’t help thinking of what lay beyond the last hill, or behind the half-glimpsed gate. I almost wished it were the scrol
l I would be exhibiting at UCLA in two weeks, rather than the famous DNA-ture paintings, which I had transported so carefully across the ocean.

  “Why did you call it that?” June asked me one afternoon, peering at the announcement card on my desk. We were supposed to be studying from a textbook June’s grandmother had supplied. Each chapter began with a list of vocabulary words related to a subject, such as “Sports,” “Talking About the Weather,” or “At the Beijing Post Office.”

  Since none of these subjects was especially interesting to me or my student, we were not making very speedy progress.

  “The paintings are based on cells,” I told her. “The smallest units of life.”

  “Cells aren’t the same as DNA.”

  “But they’re a pattern that represents human life. That’s what the paintings are too.”

  “What about the ‘Nature’ part?”

  “I made these paintings a long time ago,” I said. “I barely remember.”

  “Not that long,” June said. “Ten years, right?”

  The way she was pestering me about my show, it was almost as if she suspected something. I dreaded the thought of June in the gallery looking at the paintings. What ever humiliation I might suffer in front of Harry Lin, I thought June’s presence would compound it. It was the same feeling I’d had the first time she looked at my work, the lobster I had painted in Olivia’s sketchpad: I was sorry that I hadn’t spent my whole life trying to become the kind of person she’d admire.

  “Let’s focus on the lesson,” I said, perhaps more sharply than necessary: “Celebrating a birthday.”

  But June had got up, and was examining her classmates’ creations, displayed on the fancy wooden easels. She stopped in front of Emily Alderman’s workspace, and began flipping through a sketchpad of dully competent watercolor landscapes.

  “Did you really like those Color and Design paintings?” she asked.

  “I thought they were very good,” I said, perhaps overstating the case. I thought June had been harsh with Emily regarding those paintings, and that no matter how advanced she was, it was wrong of her to put down the other students’ work. “They showed she’d been looking at art.”