Blazed (8 page)

I turn away from my father. So much makes sense to me right now. My mother always said my father was a wannabe artist. She told me he painted all the time but wasn't any good and nobody liked his work.

“But he knew a lot about art. He was a fixture at gallery openings. He was at all the after parties. It's how we met. But he couldn't cut it as an artist. I don't think he ever sold a piece. That must be really hard on someone. To love something so much, yet not to be very good at it. It's cruel,” my mother would always say. “He wanted to be an artist so
bad. He probably wanted it more than most artists do. He just had no talent.”

Now he owns the places that show artists' work to the rest of the world.

It makes perfect sense to me.

If you can't join them, own them.

ME AND HER, WE SAT
on the roof of her garage one afternoon when her parents were at the grocery store.

She asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I told her.

“You look out of it,” she said. “You've been really quiet since we got here.”

I told her I was fine. That I was thinking about this dream I'd had the night before. I couldn't shake it or ignore it.

“What was the dream?” she asked.

“I don't wanna say,” I told her.

“Was it about me?”

I nodded.

“Come on,” she went. “Tell me.”

“It's fucked up. It was so fucked up and gross.”

“That just makes me wanna hear it even more.”

She was wearing these dark-blue jeans that buttoned right under her belly button. She had a loose black tank top on and a black bandanna tied backward around her forehead.

She was smoking a joint.

I didn't smoke any weed that afternoon.

“Please tell me,” she said. “You have to now. It'll be good for you. It will.”

This made me cringe. I went, “How the fuck do you know what's good for me?
How?
”

She looked away, and I admired the way the sun looked on the pale skin of her shoulder, highlighting her tiny freckles.

A few seconds later, she stood up. “Fuck you,” she said.

“That's fair,” I said back.

“What was your dream about?”

I ran a hand down my face and told her.

By the time I was finished, she was standing on the other side of the roof from me.

And she looked sick.

Later, when it was time for me to leave, she grabbed me and she threw her arms around me and told me that someday, she'd let me do anything I wanted to her.

“That's not what I'm expecting,” I told her.

“Well, I wasn't expecting to hear about your dream.”

We never talked about dreams again.

That fucking slut.

MY FATHER'S HOUSE IN ASHBURY
heights is the nicest house I've ever seen this close up. These two older Hispanic ladies emerge from the front door as the town car stops in the driveway.

My father and I get out of the car.

The ladies rush toward the trunk as the driver grabs my suitcase from it. I take it from him, and my father hands his bag to one of the ladies.

The other lady tries to take mine.

“Stop it,” I say. “I can carry my own bag.”

The lady looks at my father, and my father shrugs.
Está bien. Gracias aunque.

My father hands the driver a fifty-dollar bill.

“So this is it,” he says. “What do you think?”

“It's nice.”

“I like to think so.”

“I bet you do,” I say.

He shakes his head and tells me to follow him.

HERE'S THE WAY THIS HOUSE
goes: First of all, it's on Ashbury and Clifford. It's two stories, and light gray on the outside with a white border.

Natural sunlight fills the first floor of the house. It's so pretty and calm.

Straight ahead is the living room. A white couch sits in front of a huge bay window. A blue-and-white rug covers the hardwood floor, and a nice wood-and-glass coffee table sits on the rug. The wall across from the couch is white, and a huge, sixty-inch flat-screen TV is on it. There's a white leather reclining chair in the corner of the room and a white leather love seat against the far wall. Paintings hang everywhere. So do plants.

To the right of the front door is the dining room. A chandelier hovers over a huge oak table.

The dining room spills into the kitchen. It's a big room.

And it spills into a stairwell that leads to the basement, which my father's stepdaughter, my stepsister, Kristen, occupies.

Right next to the stairwell is a door that takes you to the backyard. There's a hot tub on the deck out there.

On the other side of it is a set of stairs that takes you upstairs.

I'm impressed with all of this.

I'm also disgusted.

It's not like me and my mother have been living in a dump or anything like that.

Cos we don't.

Our house is pretty okay.

But we certainly have never lived like this.

We've never come close to even thinking about living how my father has been all these years.

LESLIE WALKS INTO THE ROOM.
She is very pretty, which I expected.

She's like two, three inches shorter than me, and very tan. Her hair is short and blond and she's got a toned, curvy body, which normally I ain't into, but she's making it work really well.

She's wearing a blue sundress and she's barefoot.

Her eyes are big and blue.

My father introduces us, and she gives me a hug.

She smells really good. Like she's just bathed in a tub full of juices squeezed from fresh fruit.

She kisses my cheek.

I feel a small rise in the crotch of my pants.

“Wow,” she says. “You look so much like your father did when he was your age from the pictures I've seen of him.”

“Oh yeah?” I snort.

She nods.

“I wouldn't know. I've never seen a picture of him before.”

Her and my father glance at each other.

I say, “If you guys don't mind, I'd like to take a shower and get my things put away.”

“Not at all,” my father says, then asks one of the maids to show me to my room.

“You can just tell me where it's at,” I snap.

“She'll show you,” he says.

“I'll show him,” Leslie says. “I'm going upstairs anyway.”

So I follow Leslie up the stairs and down a long hallway, where more art hangs from the walls.

She leads me to the last door on the right and goes, “Here it is.”

Obviously, the room's big. Way more than I need. Way more than anyone needs.

A king-size bed is directly to the left of the doorway, with four massive pillows on it and blankets sitting at the foot of it.

There're two walk-in closets.

A bay window directly across from the door lets in more natural light.

There's an oak desk to the right of the doorway with a computer and printer on it, and a really nice dresser on the same side of the room as the desk.

“This is a really nice place,” I say as I walk to the middle of the room and set my things down.

“I'm glad you think so,” she says. “We've lived here for five years and just love it.”

“What's not to love?”

“Exactly.”

An awkward moment of silence follows.

And then Leslie, she says, “I'm sorry we're meeting under these circumstances, Jaime. It's not the way anyone wanted.”

“Right.”

Pause.

“You're implying that anyone ever wanted this meeting to happen, though.”

“Well, yeah, I am. Of course we did, Jaime.”

“I didn't.”

“Okay,” she goes. “I understand.”

“No, you don't. And that's not your fault, Leslie. But you don't understand any of this.”

“Right,” she says. “I'll just let you get settled then.”

“Thanks.”

Leslie leaves and closes the door behind her.

Me, I lock it and then I dig the small sheet of foil from my suitcase and drop a blue on it.

A minute later I'm coasting through the castle while the Fresh & Onlys song “Waterfall” echoes from the chamber.

MY FATHER WANTS TO GO
his gallery in the lower Haight to meet with Savannah, and he wants me to go with him.

Leslie says she'll have dinner ready for us when we get back, even though I tell her I'm not hungry and won't be anytime soon.

The blue dragon takes care of everything I need.

I'm wearing tight black jeans and a blue-and-purple-striped tank top. I put on my parka and dangle a black bandanna out of my right back pocket.

My father drives his black Mercedes-Benz.

Duran Duran plays from the speakers.

We make a right on Haight and Ashbury. It's totally unimpressive. Most of the people I see are a bunch of nasty-ass, strung-out-looking white kids with dreads and their dogs polluting the four corners of the intersection.

It's pretty gross.

A couple of them are playing bongo drums, and I laugh because it's so lame.

Like, way to go, losers.

All that 1967, “Summer of Love” bullshit is dead, and that's a good thing.

Fucking hippies.

White kids with dreads are the worst.

“This is going to be a really busy week,” my father tells me. “I don't know how much I'm going to be around.”

I shrug. “That's fine. I know this isn't ideal for anyone. I don't care if we hardly see each other.”

My father seems irritated with my comments. He scowls and I smile. It's perfect.

And he goes, “What I was getting at is that you're going to have a lot of free time, and I encourage you to explore the city. That said, avoid those fucking dirtbags hanging out on the corner.”

“Oh, I will, just for the sake of my nose. It looked like their skin was growing dirt.”

My father laughs. Then goes, “A couple of those street-kid assholes followed Kristen for a couple of blocks one night and tried to rob her.”

“Jesus.”

“She maced them, though, and got away from them.”

“Nice.”

“She's a tough girl. But you have to be careful, Jaime. Have eyes in the back of your head. Those losers will try something if they think you're not paying attention.”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

My father parallel parks in front of this bar called Molotov's.

That Misfits song “Hybrid Moments” blares from it.

“This is the Lower Haight,” my father says after we both get out of the car. “And that's my gallery.”

He points across the street at this two-story building on the corner.

The word
TRANSMISSION
is spelled out in shiny, lowercase black letters above the door.

“Why that name?”

“Joy Division,” he says, grinning.

I can't help but grin back. “Nice, man.”

“Come on,” he goes, and we jog across the street and go inside.

The Talking Heads are playing on a record player that sits on a stack of crates behind this glass counter.

There are maybe ten other people here too.

This gallery is pretty sick.

Clean white walls. Beautiful hardwood floor. An information desk at the back.

There's a small, finely crafted bar on the right side of the room. And a winding stairwell next to the glass counter that ascends.

Regardless of how big an asshole my father is, dude's got some good cultural taste.

This middle-aged black lady with glasses appears, holding a clipboard and a manila envelope packed with papers.

Her hair is pulled back tightly, and she's wearing a white dress, a black cardigan, and black heels.

She's pretty.

My father and her immediately engage in a very intense and important-seeming conversation.

I already feel like a third wheel.

Maybe if I would've ogled over his house and his wife and the maids earlier, he wouldn't have dragged me down here in his ninety-thousand-dollar ride (I looked it up on my iPhone) to show off some more.

I wonder where Savannah is.

I don't see her anywhere.

I Googled her in the car too.

Her picture left me breathless and clumsy.

Savannah is beautiful in the way that Van Gogh's
Starry Night
is beautiful.

In the way that Françoise Hardy's voice is beautiful.

In the way that Kim Novak looks during every second her face appears on film in
Vertigo
.

My father finishes his conversation, then waves me over to introduce me to the lady.

Her name is Jackie, and she's the publicist for both my father's galleries.

She gives me a hug and says it's such a privilege to meet me. “You look just like your daddy. Welcome to San Francisco, Jaime. Welcome to the Transmission Gallery.”

I thank her and follow my father up to where Savannah will be staying and working all week.

Savannah opens the door. The look on my father's
face as he meets her in person for the first time, well, it's something else. Something I've never seen before.

Eager.

Intense.

Engrossed.

Her dark-brown hair is pulled back into a bun. Her lips are thin and her cheekbones are raised and so defined. She's wearing this baby-blue and soft-pink plaid shirt that's buttoned up just past her decent-size tits, leaving her cleavage exposed. She's also got on a pair of cutoff shorts that are practically covered by the shirt. And she's barefoot. And she's wearing this large silver chain with a locket that hangs down to the middle of her stomach.

As they begin to chitchat, my eyes drift to the studio space.

Like, holy shit!

In the center of the room is a black Bechstein Model B grand piano.