Further Out Than You Thought (6 page)

She'd had the feeling he'd been jealous of her, of her abrupt appearance in their lives. Before she'd come on the scene, Leo had been his. When she'd asked Leo about the extent of their friendship, he'd been quiet. He'd blushed. “Well,” he'd said, “it wasn't for the Count's lack of trying.” But when she pressed the question, he insisted that nothing had happened between them, ever. They were friends. It was just—well, he'd said, the Count could be possessive.

After the movie episode, the Count had stayed away for a few weeks. When he'd come down to their apartment, he'd given her flowers he'd picked “midnight gardening” in the neighborhood, and since then, they'd been friends.

She handed him the lit joint.

“I hoped he'd be gone when you came,” said the Count. “I've been worried.”

“The whole Zero thing,” she said, pulling a chair up to his bed.

“He thinks he can heal me. Like he's Jesus or something.”

“Christ.”

“Exactly.” He laughed and his laugh turned to a hacking cough. His whole body shook with it. He reached for an empty glass.

Gwen took it and hurried for water. His kitchen sink was filled to the brim with dishes stuck with grease and remnants of God knows what. A few weeks' worth, it looked like. And they were crawling with roaches. The Cornell was riddled with them. She held her breath and filled the glass with tap water—all he had—and returned to his bedside. She handed it to him, made certain he had it. He drank it down.

“You look like the Virgin Mary,” he said.

“Olivia Hussey?”

“Those cheekbones. Lord.”

She held his hand, warmed it in hers.

“I have a favor to ask you,” he said.

“Anything.”

He brought his other hand out from under the covers and touched her slip. Took the silk between his fingers and rubbed it as though assessing its worth. “Tell me how your mother died,” he said. She felt her body tense. “You've told me, I know, but it was so, so lovely how you described her last moment, how you held her. Will you tell me, just one more time?”

“I may need one more hit.”

“You don't have to if it's too hard,” he said, passing her the joint.

“A bedtime story, huh?”

He nodded, pulled the covers up to his neck and closed his eyes.

He looked peaceful now. The lines in his thin face had smoothed and his body was spent and quiet. Like a child on the verge of sleep, she thought, not looking at the lesion, not thinking about it.

“Okay,” she said. She took a deep drag off the joint, held it in and let it go. She would tell him something beautiful. “We were in the car. It was afternoon, a few days before Christmas.”

“I love Christmas,” he said.

“So did I.” She gave him back the joint and said nothing.

“I'm sorry,” he said, interrupting the silence.

“You want me to go on?”

“Please.”

He'd broken the flow of her story, the one she told people if they asked, but she picked up where she'd left off. “It was a few days before Christmas,” she said, and the rest came out in a seamless, practiced rush—this monologue she'd written for herself.

“We were at a stoplight, and we were laughing about something, and I looked up and saw this truck coming for us, fast, down the hill. It swerved around the cars on the other side of the light and veered and it nearly toppled sideways but didn't. Everything was slow motion. The truck was coming through the red light, the huge white truck was barreling toward us, but so slow we should have been able to move. I tried to speak. Time was folding, the world was swallowing itself, it was inside out, slow, and the cement truck with its big headlights was swerving, but not enough. My mother looked up and screamed and her scream made everything white. I reached for her. I pulled her to me, and we held each other. She was mine and I was hers and we wouldn't let go. Not ever. Her eyes were what I saw last.”

“
Your
eyes were what
she
saw last.”

“It was like some part of her entered me, for safety, and then there was the slow motion shattering of glass. And I put my hands up to block it. That was the only part of me that was hurt. That and my memory. I couldn't remember anything. Not for a very long time.”

“God. To be taken like that, in one clean break. The fates snipping your thread without any warning. To go in the arms of your daughter.” The Count opened his eyes. They were full of tears. “She knew you'd live, that you'd survive her. And if someone loves you that much, and misses you, it's like you don't really die, not all of you.”

The bell rang. Leo had made it back. Valiant wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe. “Kid,” he said. He gripped her hand and pulled her toward him, whispered in her ear. “You and Leo, you're lucky you have each other.”

She kissed his forehead. It felt clammy, and he shivered. “Need anything else?”

He shook his head. “I have Leo.”

He let go of her hand, crossed his arms over his chest, closed his eyes. For a moment he seemed not to move, not even to breathe, but then she heard his exhale, followed by a deep breath in. She saw her friend's chest rise and fall, and she forced herself to turn from him.

In the hall, she slowed and time slowed with her. The pot was coming on stronger now and it was good. Like being underwater, thirty feet under the sea, the kelp and the fish deliberate and dreamy.

It was true, what she had said, the part she'd tacked on, just now, to the end of her story. Her mother was with her. Some part of her—of her soul?—she could feel watching her, but from inside her own eyes. Or were they just shards of memory, coloring her vision?

She touched a photo Valiant had framed of himself. In black Ray-Ban sunglasses, a black jacket and a white shirt, his thick hair short and slicked back in the manner of his idols—Dean Martin, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr.—he smiled as if he knew something he might tell you if he felt like it. To his hairline he'd added a widow's peak using a black Sharpie. It was a gig poster. Café Largo, May 10, 1990, two years ago already.
Count Valiant and the Midnight Strangers,
the poster said.
With the Go-Go Dancing Vacarro Sisters.
She had been one of them. Brenda Vacarro. She'd danced to Valiant's campy tune “She-Devil” in a short, tight black dress and black go-go boots, and Leo had played the keyboard. The Peruvian soprano Yma Sumac, so famous in the fifties, had happened to see the show and told him he had a velvet tongue. It was the last time Valiant had performed in public.

Beside it was the beach shot Leo had taken before she'd met them. Valiant in a G-string he'd fashioned of white gauze—Native American–style. The photo was from the front and showed his bare legs and chest. A long piece of gauze wrapped his ankles, his shoulders, and trailed off his outstretched arm toward the ocean behind him. He was looking back over his hand at the horizon, and the long black hair of his wig sent shadows across his face. His other hand was open, palm pressed to his heart. It was a gesture of farewell.

The bell rang again. Leo. She'd all but forgotten about him. She opened the door.

“Just what he needs,” he said, taking the cigarettes and the half gallon of cheap vodka from the plastic bag.

“He's worse,” she whispered.

“I know.” He crumpled the bag in his fist. And then looking at her, really, for the first time tonight, he said, “You look like hell.”

“It's been a long night.” She stared back at him, hard.

“I miss you, Tink,” he said.

It was his name for her, what he'd called her for years now, ever since she'd come home with her long hair gone, with her hair short as a boy's. Tink, as in Tinker Bell. Because she was sprightly, light as air, or stardust, because she was mischievous, devilish, because she had wings and could fly where she liked. Because he was Peter Pan and they lived in Neverland. Because they belonged together, belonged to each other, but would not lay claim. Because it was the first movie they'd watched together—the play version, with Sandy Duncan as Peter. His all-time favorite.

Leo's bloodshot eyes, Gwen knew, were the same eyes she'd fallen in love with. She wanted to recognize him. The boy who'd said too soon
I love you,
and meant it. The boy with the soft lips and touch. The boy with the little dog, the white fluffy dog who bit. The boy who could play the piano and sing like an angel. The boy she'd believed she could be happy with.

“Did you see the Leave Earth guy?” she said.

“Who?”

“Guess he must have gone home,” she said, and left the apartment.

The door opened behind her. “Tink?” Leo leaned into the hallway, and the gold angel on the chain around his neck glinted in the fluorescent light.

“Yes?”

“Dream of flying.”

GWEN WOKE TO a tickle on her arm she automatically swatted and smeared. Blood, wings, antennae. The roaches had made it to the bedroom.

She ran to the kitchen, washed her arm and hands with dish soap. The clock on the wall said 8:15. But it always said 8:15. Years ago it had ceased to be of relevance, a dead battery neither one of them had bothered to replace. Below the clock hung a calendar from the year they'd met, 1989. Featuring posters from the twenties and thirties, it was open to December, the image of a naked girl riding a peacock, her champagne glass lifted to the blue-black night and the stars. It was the most recent calendar they owned.

In the bedroom she checked the digital clock by her side of the bed: 9:20. Her alarm hadn't gone off, or else she'd forgotten to set it.

She'd be late for work. Even if she rushed, forty minutes wasn't enough time to get to the club. And there was the test. She could put it off no longer. The test. Thinking of it, her heart beat fast—she could feel it in her throat—and her head became light, and starry. She held the wall, took a deep breath, and got on with it. She could be a person in this world, she told herself. She could face whatever life had to give her.

She pulled on her jeans and the white T-shirt she'd worn the night before and stepped into her flip-flops. She filled her empty plastic bottle with good, cold water, took an apple from the kitchen table, and slipped them both into her purse.

Leo lay asleep on the sofa. He was dressed in his minuteman costume—black knickers, white ruffled shirt, and a black vest with gold buttons. He must have changed sometime during the night. The sign he'd fashioned out of cloth that read
SONGS FOR THE ROAD
HOME, $5 hung over the arm of the couch. Fifi slept on his chest.

Gwen kissed his forehead and he stirred. He cracked an eye. “You're leaving already?”

“I'm out the door.”

“What kind of schedule is that?”

“I'm off tomorrow.”

“Drop me?” said Leo, stretching.

On her way to the club, she could get him as far as Pico and Fairfax. From there, he could walk the additional blocks to his Century City street corner—where Pico meets Avenue of the Stars—where he would stand all day with his sign, his bag of tapes, and his smile. Hopeful, always hopeful.

He yawned and sat up, and Fifi rolled off him and onto the carpet. Tail wagging, she licked Gwen's ankles.

He'd have to take her out to pee. This meant ten minutes at the very least.

“I'll get the car and pick you up,” Gwen said, purse and keys in hand.

From the top of a nearby stack of books, Leo took his tricornered hat and put it on. He tied his ponytail with a red ribbon and packed the bong with fresh dope. “You want some?”

“Ten minutes. Be ready,” she said. Fifi at her heels, she opened the door. Taped to the back of it was a yellow
Pay or Quit
notice. She pulled it off, walked back in and stuck it to the bong.

“Shit,” said Leo, and struck a match.

Turning too fast, she tripped over Fifi, who snarled, attacked Gwen's toes and, tail wagging, followed her back to the door. Gwen put her leash on. “I'll walk her on my way to the car,” she said, and closed the door on the smoke.

Pay or Quit.
She knew there had to be a poem in it. If there were ever time to write.

Fifi pulled on the leash to reach the base of an avocado tree, perfumed with what must have been an intricate bouquet of dog piss. Gwen let her sniff. What was another minute? This day would be like the last, and like the next. A blur of dollars and men, marijuana, and lights leaving their flickering spots in her eyes. It would be a day of fastening and unfastening, bending and straightening. At least she got to dance, she reasoned, even if the moves were calculated. Less inspiration than expiration. One long sigh. To say nothing of aspiration—the things she might have wanted. Once. All those dreams. The movies she'd star in before she was eighteen. The countries to which she'd travel. Like her mother, on the sets of films. The life she'd had before Gwen.

The tree in the tiny yard of the Spanish-style building was fruitless. Once, when it was laden with avocados, she and Leo had done some of their own midnight gardening. It had proved quite a harvest. She'd climbed the tree and thrown the green fruit down to him. They'd filled a pillowcase.

She tugged at Fifi and headed to Jin's. The street was quiet, most of the residents having gone off to work, and the day was balmy. The Santa Anas were blowing, and the air was dry and bitter, as if it were tinged with smoke. Maybe houses were burning in the canyons, unless it was the smog.

As she hurried down the sidewalk, she lifted her face to the sun, soaked it in. It made her think of the beach and lying on warm sand. It made her think of her mother, who had loved the ocean like no one else. Her mother had taught her how to bodysurf—how to push off the sand at just the right time, how to ride the wave all the way to shore, head down, arms out and hands fisted like Superman.