Any Day Now (19 page)

“Are you bored?” Sondra once demanded of Mary Anne, who'd complained, saying she wanted to get back to writing comedy.

“Well, no,” Mary Anne whined.

“Are you writing?”

“Well, yeah. Poetry.”

“Are you learning anything?”

Mary Anne had shrugged, then nodded.

“It's a long, lovely, ride,” Sondra said.

“Lonely, too,” said Joe.

“That's why we have each other,” Sondra said.

Sondra was writing now herself, lying on her side, elbow resting on her sculpted hip (she did Pilates every day), her many-shades-of-blonde hair falling from its trademark French roll. She always wrote, although she never read her stuff out loud. Mary Anne thought she was writing lists — groceries, things to take to the cleaners — but Allison said, no, Sondra had been working on a novel for the past few years, even had some New York agents interested in it. Something about child pornography, something headline-ish.

“OK,
mes amis
,” said Sondra. “Time out.”

I was glad because Nippy, Griffin and I, we were 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Outside, Joe, Curtis, Mary Anne, and I breathed in the night air. And Joe's cigarette, though we'd been strictly forbidden in Casa Polarity's brochure.

“Get me some fucking java,” Curtis said. He was one of those guys who said fuck almost as much as he said I or me, which was a lot, too.

“I could make a run into town,” said Joe, his voice so low, I had to lean in to hear him. The movement made my head hurt worse.

“The ginseng-mint-zinger tea ain't doing it for you, baby ?” Mary Anne asked, but Joe didn't laugh.

“I'll go with you,” I said. I wanted something to do, somewhere to go. Suddenly I couldn't imagine how I was going to last out there for two whole days.

“There is no town,” Mary Anne reminded us.

“We're about mid-point, I figure, between L.A. and San Diego,” said Curtis, who was new to SoCal. “I'd love to go clear to San Diego, put in a visit at the zoo, pull an all-nighter. There and back. She'd never fucking know.”

I wasn't sure about Curtis. He was too quick to climb on board, to claim things he hadn't earned yet, like an attitude toward Sondra. Not that he ever showed that kind of sass around her. What really turned my stomach, though, was how she was with him. She got fluttery and buttery. He was a looker with longish, sandy hair that curled adorably around his temples, eyes like Ralph Fiennes', pale blue and wish-filled. I'd caught myself a few times staring at him in class. OK, a lot.

“Wheels,” I reminded them, and Joe said, “Shit.”

I'd driven out with Candace in her car. Curtis had gotten a lift with Sondra. Joe and Mary Anne had doubled up with Gabriella and Allison. And we could forget any of them. Candace was too loyal to Sondra, and Gabriella and Allison loved peace and harmony.

Curtis jiggled something in his bermudas pocket, then waved a single Honda key at us. “She let me drive,” he said.

“I know you're all tired,” Sondra said at 10:30, after another round of breathing and after Gabriella had practically put us to sleep with a reading of her Evening Papers, something with a coyote and a shaman and a crow. The desert was turning some of us into really bad imitations of Carlos Castaneda. “You're out of your natural environment,” crooned Sondra. “That can be pretty absorbing and exhausting. And then, some of you,” she looked at Mary Anne, “are suffering from separation anxiety. No caffeine, no freeways, no phones. My, how will we ever survive?”

“Gosh, Sondra, I honestly don't know,” Mary Anne said.

But Sondra left us with something that would, in fact, occupy us all night and all morning, would carry us into the next day's session, which, she'd decided, would not begin until after lunch — Curtis threw me a yes! look — and it was this: silence. We were to exercise silence, to experience silence. “And I mean it,” she said. “No words, except those on paper. If you cheat,” and she tried so hard, you could tell, not to look at Mary Anne and Joe, but did anyway, “you are only cheating yourself and your work. And if that isn't enough of a deterrent, think of each other. When you speak you are not only destroying your quiet, but that of your fellows.”

“What exactly is the point?” asked Mary Anne, and for once I wished she would just take her foot off the brake and go.

“You'll find out,” Sondra said, and then quite sweetly, I thought, blew a kiss in Mary Anne's direction.

Outside, Curtis broke the ban almost immediately. “Fuck this,” he growled.

I grinned and made a zipper sign over my mouth. It didn't actually sound bad, not talking for fourteen whole hours. With the monster personas among us, it might be the only way I would make any headway on the screenplay I was secretly working on.

“But what about San Diego?” he stage-whispered at Mary Anne when she and Joe came outside.

“If I don't get some coffee, I'm going to kill someone before dawn,” said Mary Anne, not even trying to keep her voice down.

Curtis threw his arm around her and Joe lit up, inhaled from his toes. Candace came out and looked at me questioningly, but nodded when I made a walking gesture with two fingers. I was known for my walks, even in big, bad L.A. She gave me a loose hug, the only kind she knew I was comfortable with, and headed back toward our building. Gabriella and Allison came tiptoeing out of Sondra's room, as if moving silently was also part of the mandate. They were so cute, both short and chunky, in their long shorts and Benetton polo shirts. They gave us nighty-night waves and headed off.

There were maps in Sondra's glove compartment. Maps for places like New Mexico, Vancouver Island, and one of those block-by-block books for Boston that tells you where the best brew pubs are and about the real story behind Paul Revere's midnight ride. But nothing for Southern California.

Curtis said, “Fuck that. We're smart people, right?” and let the car coast down the hill until we got to the circular driveway at the entrance. The Casa Polarity sign was still lit up, though it was nearly 11:00 and they were strict about not allowing guests to arrive after 8:00. I noticed, as I hadn't twelve hours earlier, that parts of the O and P in Polarity were out.

“Look, Casa Hilarity!” I said and felt instantaneous disappointment. Ten minutes into the pledge, and I'd sold it, the peace and the promise, for the chance to entertain the troops. Joe just looked at me, and Mary Anne said, “Blew it, Jen.” Curtis gunned the car, trying to make up for our wimpy, noiseless escape. “Goodbye, funny farm!” he said.

We'd arranged ourselves with me and Joe in the back seat and Curtis and Mary Anne up front, a breaking up of the natural coupling, though the thought of me and Curtis as a couple made me cringe. And blush. He was turning out to be even more of a brat than I'd imagined. But at the same time, he was looking awfully, awfully good in the moonlight. I glanced over at Joe, who was staring out his window. Curtis was right. We were smart. We were heading south. Sooner or later we'd hit San Diego.

“There was a 'feine junkie named Joe, who drove like a fiend to Diego,” I said and could see Joe smile, though he only turned his head slightly.

“I'm wondering why we do it,” Mary Anne said. “Why we subject ourselves to this week after week. In my case, year after year.” Considering Mary Anne's nearly weekly acts of defiance, she was actually Sondra's oldest student, having done her workshops for going on seven years.

“You must be getting something out of it,” said Curtis.

“Yeah, Mary Anne,” I said. I felt irritated with her, as if my failure to keep silent was her fault.

“She's good comedy material,” Mary Anne said.

“Come on,” I said.

“Well, dear heart, why are you in there?” I knew she'd throw it back. Sometimes I wondered why I liked her.

“Writer's block,” I said. “Stasis. Stagnation.” It was true. I'd written up a storm my first six years in L.A., with a partner, then with another partner, then on my own, then with two women, neither of whom I was speaking to now. Sandollar, Dolly Parton's production company, had
almost
bought a script. Such near misses. Two years ago I wrote my best all-time script, a date movie with a techno twist, but I guess I'd burned too much goodwill by then. No one would look at it. And then I hit the wall. No new ideas, no ideas at all. This went on for a good half year until I met Candace in a spinning class at the gym. Candace — a short-story writer with two collections out and pretty good reviews — had recently joined Sondra's writing group, because, as she put it, she'd run out of ink.

“Seems like there's a lot of losers in there,” Curtis said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not you guys,” he said. “But you know…Candace and her weeping fits, our dykey friends. I always get their names mixed up…Gabriellison.”

Mary Anne laughed and rolled down her window. The car filled with desert wind. It wasn't a warm wind. It made my head ache more. There were stones in there now, boulders pressing from inside.

“For your information,” I said, “Candace has two books of stories out, good books, and Gabriella and Allison have just remounted, at the Odyssey, a play they co-wrote. I saw it last week and it's good. You should go.”

I could see Joe shaking his head in the dark. And it hit me, kapow! that Curtis was talking about Joe. Joe was what you might call an enthusiastic contender. He had some ideas, and some nice moments when he concentrated, but writing was still pretty much a dream for him. Candace thought Sondra kept him around because he was such a cheerleader for the rest of us.

“The play's not
that
good. Be honest, Jennifer. Joe and I went last week,” said Mary Anne.

“So if we're all so monumentally untalented and you're so fed up with Sondra, why keep coming back?” I was surprised at how monumentally annoyed I felt. And how much I was letting it out. Usually I just fester. “I must really need coffee,” I said.

“Don't apologize. I always thought you could do with more of an edge,” said Mary Anne. “As to why I haul myself to Sondra's
pied-à-terre
every week just so I can write bad poetry? Well, you know, darling, I think I always wanted to be the next Anne Sexton. Or what the hell, the next Sylvia Plath.” She blew pretend cigarette smoke out the window. “Now I know why those women offed themselves. All those truncated lines, all that alliteration and those pregnant, fecund images. All that pressure to be”…she waved her arm… “poetic.”

“You're funny,” said Curtis. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Yeah, a few times,” said Mary Anne.

“Anybody think about the extra mileage on this thing? Like 250 miles?” I asked.

“We'll say some of her Indian spirits borrowed it. They thought Honda was an Apache word, not Japanese.” And Mary Anne chanted, “Hondaaaa, Hondaaaa, Hondaaaa. That's TV Indian for firewater.”

“You're funny,” said Curtis.

It was quiet for a minute and then Mary Anne asked, “Think so?”

Curtis was a demon driver. We were flying through the night, the high desert (or the low desert…ten years in La-La Land and I still didn't know the difference) splintered in two, “sundered by the speed of our need,” Plath might have said. Or Mary Anne.

Curtis and Mary Anne were on to Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Sam whatshisname, the comic who said fuck every second, who was dead now, when I finally noticed the obvious: Joe still wasn't talking. I poked him on the arm. He looked at me, startled, and I felt another tug of disappointment. He was really in there, in the quiet with himself. Having outed myself so willingly, I was now back in the world of agents, pagers and egos. My world and welcome to it.

“Hi,” I waved and Joe smiled a smile of such sympathy I wanted to cry. My short, lost silence. My short, lost career as a screenwriter. Coleman. Joe took my hand and held it, and that's how we pulled into Temecula, California, Capital of the Desert.

Only one gas station seemed to be open. Mary Anne bolted from the car, which Curtis parked at a lazy angle across two spots. He hummed and drummed, not bothering with Joe or me. Mary Anne came back with two Styrofoam cups, handed one to Curtis.

“You guys want any?” she asked. Joe shook his head.

“Please,” I said, amazed she'd forgotten me. I handed her a dollar bill and Mary Anne put her cup on the dash and went back inside.

“Get two more, OK?” Curtis said to Mary Anne when she came back with my cup. “Two cups each should hold us until San Diego.” She hesitated. He hadn't even offered to pay for the first round. She trotted back in. I heard Joe breathe in.

“Starbucks, Starbucks,” Mary Anne chanted as she got back in.

“Baby, don't I know it,” said Curtis. And accelerating the Honda beyond its limits, got us out of town and onto the 15 South.

The coffee was hot but awful, more chicory than bean. I hoped Joe would take my hand again, but he didn't.

Once Coleman and I had driven all over Hollywood for a coffee he couldn't live without. Some decaf blend he claimed gave him a lift without messing with his metabolism. Coleman was always worried about his energy levels, had to eat the right combination of things at the right time of day, had to sleep eight and three-quarters hours a night. Before he left for New York he went on an eating plan based on his blood type. I couldn't remember exactly what type he was, O positive maybe, but it meant he had to eat an awful lot of red meat, an awful lot for someone who was against eating meat for spiritual reasons.

Coleman also had ideas about sex. I wondered if he was imposing them — X number of times per week, to orgasm or not to orgasm — on the new girl. I didn't know for sure there was a new girl in New York. But I could so easily imagine someone dark-haired and long-legged, a dancer maybe in the show, someone adoring and simple who came with the territory.