Sleeping Beauty (4 page)

Talking to Davin is like being trapped in the surfer movie
Pointbreak
. He has a working grasp of conventional English, but when he lets his guard down he says things like: “Surf was epic today, fully macking double overhead corduroy to the horizon.”

I understand the sociological concept of the “ingroup,” and how slang helps members of a group identify one another, but I don’t care about being seen as legit by a bunch of waterspiders. For extra fun, every summer brings a fresh crop of high school and college kids adding their own lingo to the collection.

Since I never intended to devote my life to the pastime the way Davin, West and some of these other guys have, my vernacular always feels about six months to a year out of date. After we’ve all sorted out who is who, I wish everyone would just go back to speaking normally. I swear, it’s enough to make me want to give up surfing altogether.

“Then don’t act like I didn’t try to get a hold of you,” I say.

“Up for some scran?”

“I’m not sure. That sounds mildly unpleasant. Is it high in fiber?”

He sighs, then sits up ram-rod straight and gets that look, a warning that he’s about to take a shot at formal English, or what he calls Professional Speech: “Pardon me, madam. I was contemplating patronizing a local eatery, and was hoping you would be willing to accompany me. It would give me the greatest pleasure to break bread with you.”

I look out the window to hide a smile as he slouches back into his seat. “Do people at your work care that you talk like Jane Austen after a three-day bender?” I say. “How do you stay employed anyway?”

“It’s day to day, baby.”

Which is total bull. Davin somehow put down his bong and wandered off the beach long enough to finish a degree in computer something-or-other, and he’s worked at a small, independent film distributor since I met him. “Independent enough to pay well, but still not do drug tests,” as he says. “And Evan is old-school, used to be totally core.”

In other words, the older gentleman who owns the company used to be an avid–and apparently skilled–surfer back in the day. During the peak months from December through March, Davin doesn’t even try to make up an excuse or call in sick; he just rings up the president, and tells him that conditions are prime and surf’s up. In return, he’ll work eighty or ninety hour weeks April through November to make up the time. The film industry goes into high gear in May in preparation for summer releases, so it all works out perfectly.

Davin’s one of only three hard-core surfers my age that I’ve ever met who wasn’t either homeless, living with his parents, or working at some transient, minimum wage job. In fact, the trio is such a renowned rarity in local surfer circles that they’re referred to, respectively, as One, Two, and Three, and collectively as The Three. Sort of sad when you can count the “local boy makes good” success stories in your social circle on one hand, but there it is.

He pulls the van into a nearby mall parking lot, and I follow him into a pizza joint. He knows better than to take me to one of the “food huts” on the beach that he and his surfer crew frequent. Their health department inspection credentials always seem dubious at best, and the menu rarely strays far from burritos. I once committed the
faux pas
of asking for a veggie wrap, and thought the grungy guy behind the counter was going to execute me.

I watch, always amused, as every woman we pass undresses Davin with their eyes. And why wouldn’t they? He’s one of those gay men you want to take a stab at converting. I’ve thought more than once about staging an intervention and sending him off to one of those bogus de-gayification religious camps. He’s tall and blonde and tanned, and when he splashes out of the surf with his board tucked under one arm, beach girls from Hawaii to Australia weep and wail with the goddam unfairness of it all.

Years ago, I’d tried to convince him that he might be a confused bi-sexual, pointing out that he’d dated girls in high school and college, and often made crude, heterosexual-type comments about women’s breasts and their relative “do-ability.” He thought about it and said something I’ll never forget: “I like women. I like the way they look, I like the way they curve, I like the way they laugh. I can tell a spiffy from a swamp donkey.” He shrugged. “I can’t really explain it. At some point I realized I have a bisexual heart and a misogynist penis. If I could figure out how to date women without my penis I would.”

Kind of hard to argue with that logic, so I stopped crying about it. As an added bonus, he can tell me that I look good in a short skirt without me having any reservations about him sleeping over.

“So?”

I’ve done a solid dive into my Hawaiian pizza. Davin interrupts me just as I’m trying to slurp in a string of wayward mozzarella and a square of ham. “So…what?”

“What did they tell you?”

I roll my eyes. “Same thing as everyone tells me: ‘We don’t know, but we’d like to do some tests.’”

“What kind of tests?”

I pluck a sliver of pineapple off a slice and pop it in my mouth. “Another sleep study. Day after tomorrow.”

“Did you tell them how close you are to an episode?”

“No, we mostly just talked about your mad surfing skills.”

He wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Man, you are
bubbles
.”

This is not a compliment. “Aw, c’mon now. I thought I was a betty.”

“It’s possible to be both, you tool.” He takes a long pull on his soda. “Does West know?”

“I haven’t talked to him in a few days.”

“You going to tell him?”

“I suppose.”

“No you won’t. You’ll just wait until one of us wonders why we haven’t heard from you for a week.”

I don’t answer. I hate this conversation already. I take a huge bite of pizza, hoping this will make it impossible to talk.

“Did you tell him about how you get real hungry?”

“‘Him’ who?” I mumble from the corner of my full mouth.

“The doctor.”

I masticate for awhile and take a swig of my Coke. “
He
was a she. And speaking of hungry, I’m eating.”

“What about the nightmares? And the zombie stuff?”

“I told her!”

“You tell her about the other thing?”

I freeze, a pizza slice halfway to my mouth. I lower it back to the plate. “Davin…c’mon.”

He balls up his napkin and drops it onto his plate. “How do you expect her to help you if you don’t tell her everything?”

I feel my face turn red. “It’s only ever happened twice, okay? And I don’t want to talk about it.”

He screws his mouth up into a scowl. “See? I knew you were going to get all pissy about it.”

“I’m not pi–I’m not mad, I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Then quit deluding yourself about it. It’s happened
every
time. Same as the bingeing and the zombie-walking and the hallucinations.”

“Not every time,” I mumble.

“Every time. You’ve done it to me twice.”

“I have?” In a lower voice, mostly to myself I add, “Why didn’t I know that?”

His expression clouds for a heartbeat, and it’s gone before I’m sure I saw it. “Trust me,” he says, “it’s probably better that you don’t remember these things. But I’d say that’s regular enough to tell your doctor about.”

I flush. “But I’ve had three episodes.”

“Right. I forgot the cameraman on the set of
Nurse Jackie
you took down during the last one.”

I look down at my plate, wishing I could forget about that one. The guy was really cool. I was sure he was on the verge of asking me out. “Can we not, you know, talk about it like that?”

“You don’t even know you’re doing it!” he says with a laugh. “You never remember it. Ask your brother.”

“No!” My palm hits the table top hard enough to make the Styrofoam plates bounce. People around us turn and stare.

Davin’s smile vanishes. Now he just looks annoyed. “Jesus, gidget, chill out!” Suddenly he blinks, like something’s just occurred to him. He leans forward, all intense-looking. “Wait a minute…is
that
what this about?” He doubles over, hooting with laughter, injecting a word here or there in between. “You think–you–when you–”

I glare at him. “You’re an asshole, Davin.” I push my chair back and stand up.

He reaches across the table and grabs my arm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Sit down, sit down. C’mon, Claire-Bo. I didn’t mean to laugh, I swear.”

I sit back down, but leave my chair where it was. There’s a two foot gap between my torso and the table.
If he so much as cracks a smile…

“I get it now, I get it,” he says, crossing his arms, thinking hard. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.” He lowers his voice, and leans forward so only I can hear him. “
Never
, okay? Not even once. West has been there for two out of three. The first two times you got me, the other time you went for the camera guy. You
always
go after someone you’re already hot for, and you
always
know West is your little bro’.”

“Clearly not if I went after
you
.” I close my eyes. “God, this is so embarrassing.”

“Whatever. Look, it’s not the world’s biggest secret that you would steal your brother’s boyfriend away if you could.”

I feel my face turn red. “
Okay
. Conversation over.”

“You should’ve asked me before. I could’ve saved you two years of getting all stupid over it.” He digs into his pizza. “Now we’re cool, you can make West do his fair share.”

“Of what?”

“Taking care of you. Boy’s your brother. Time for him to shoulder a little.”

I shake my head. “It’s just that he’s got the band, you know and–“

“That’s crap, Claire-Bo, and you know it.” He leans back in his chair and points a finger at me. “West is twenty-four. I give you props, I
always
give you props for stepping in after your parents…you know, and you did what you did. I know he’s five years younger, but–”

“I’m not his mother,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow. “Well, good,” he says dryly. “Looks like we’re making real progress here today.”

“That’s not what I meant.” I pick up a plastic fork and tap it against the table top a few times. “It’s not
just
that he’s my little brother.”

“Okay…”

“Or maybe it is. I just–” I groan, trying to think how to explain. “West is always my brother and you’re…always not.”

He thinks about this, then shakes his head. “Nope, not following you.”

“When I wake up from an episode, I feel panicky, and I just know that I’ll feel better once I see you, once I talk to you.” I shrug. “I don’t feel like that with West, probably because he’s my annoying little brother, and he just sits there and teases me. He thinks it’s funny. When he’s in my bedroom I still feel like he’s going to, like, go through my dresser and read my diary, or steal my dank or something.”

I turn to watch a woman at the table next to us struggle to unfold a stroller. When I look back Davin is smiling at me, arms still crossed. “What?” I say.

“‘Dank?’ You don’t partake, gidget.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“You know what you need? You need a man.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I knew you were gay, but I thought you
were
a man. My mistake.”

“You know what I mean, Claire-Bo. I’m not saying you’re like a sister to me, because that sounds really nasty considering you’ve tried to jump me twice now–”

“Ugh! Stop. I’m not even listening to this.”

“–but you’re like a cousin.”

I wrinkle my nose. “A cousin? That’s still sounds pretty offensive.”

He bows his head in acknowledgement. “Okay, the kind of cousin you’re allowed to be attracted to if you lived in a state where that was legal, and you agreed not to have children if you got married.”

“Okay, this is going from uncomfortable to totally unbearable.”

“Can you just tell the damn doctor? She’s a chick…how hard can it be?”

I think of Dr. Brendan Charmant lurking in the corner of Wendy’s office, suspecting everything and saying nothing, and I blush all over again. I sigh. “You’d be surprised, dude.”

Chapter Four

May 17
^th

“Claire, you’ve got to get out of the Valley.”

My brother is giving me a ride to work, and already I’m regretting not taking the bus. It sounds like a quick job, just an extra on
Vampire Diaries
, which is good because I’ve already strained the understanding of Central Casting to the breaking point. The shorter the gig, the less likely I’ll be to pass out on some famous actor.

“Why?” I say. “Most of the studios are in the Valley. It’s not like I can drive. The less time I spend on public transportation the better. I took a bus to NBC last week, and a guy stood up and tried to urinate on me.”

West glances over at me. “Well, you’re short. Did you ever think that maybe he just didn’t see you?”

“Shut up, West.”

“Seriously, the Valley is a joke. The only people who live here are struggling actors working at Starbuck’s to get by.”

“I don’t work at Starbuck’s.” I roll my window down, letting the cool air and carbon emissions swirl around the car. “Besides, where would I move to?”

“West Hollywood is really nice.”

I glare at him. “Stop acting like they
named
it after you. Besides, something like ninety-nine percent of West Hollywood is filled with gay men.”

He grins. “And
that’s
why I live in West Hollywood.”

I sigh. “
If
I was attracted to gay men, and
if
gay men were, in fact, not gay, then I could see your point.”

“Hey!” he says, pretending to be hurt. “Gay men are a woman’s best friend. Just think how safe you’d be.”

“I have you, Davin, my agent, and that guy who plays my dad when I’m on
Gossip Girl
,” I say, ticking them off on my fingers one by one. “I think that fills my individual mandated quota for gay friends. Besides, Davin’s gay and even
he
hates West Hollywood.”