This One Is Mine: A Novel (8 page)

“JFK was responsible for the space program and oversaw the civil rights movement. That’s more than posing.”

“What are you, a fucking historian?”

“My father was.” The colorful and dissipated Churchill Grace. He had moved to Hollywood in the sixties and kept company with his fellow countrymen Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood.
Jam Today,
his slim but prescient jeremiad against all that Americans held dear, caused a minor stir when it was published in 1965. He was able to string together writing assignments, guest professorships, and Esalen weekends until his death thirty years later. His wife, Violet’s mother, left and moved to Hawaii when Violet was just a baby. Churchill’s devotion to his little daughter allowed him second and third chances with friends and benefactors. But finally, booze, regret, and anger were greater than his love of Violet. She had learned of his death from one of her father’s devotees. The memorial service was at Churchie’s favorite watering hole, Chez Jay in Santa Monica. Violet could have imagined nobody showing up, or five hundred. Twenty people did. That was the saddest part of all.

“How’s she related to the Kennedys?” Violet asked. “Through Teddy or Bobby? Aren’t they the only brothers?”

“Who the fuck knows? I try not to listen.” Teddy ran his hands through his hair and checked his reflection in the window, then turned to Violet. “Anyway. Miss Kennedy aborted my baby this morning in Palm Springs.”

“God . . .”

“Yeah, well. What are you going to do?”

“Why Palm Springs?”

“That’s where she grew up,” he said.

“How did a Kennedy grow up in Palm Springs?”

“Jesus. What does it fucking matter? She aborted my baby!”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m waiting a couple of hours until her sister drives her home from the baby-killing center, then I’m going to call her and break up with her. It’s like the fourth kid of mine a chick has aborted.”

“
Like
the fourth?” asked Violet. “You’ve lost count?”

“Four that I know of. I’m sure there are a dozen more.” Teddy poured some salt on the table. He grabbed a sugar packet and started cutting the salt into lines. “Make me a promise.” He looked up. “No matter what, never let me get back together with her. Okay?”

“I promise.”

The booths, that’s why Violet must have picked this restaurant. She knew they would be cocooned in one of these dark booths with the high backs that shut out the rest of the world.

“You seem to do okay for yourself,” she said. “Sounds like you’ll be onto the next in no time.”

“No nice girl will ever go out with me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’m broke, I’m an addict who will probably use again, and I have hepatitis C.”

Violet blurted, “What’s hepatitis C?”

“It’s the consolation prize God gives the junkies he spares from AIDS.”

“Did you share needles?”

“Ha! That’s the
best
thing I did when I was a junkie. I’d cook heroin on a Christmas tree ornament and shove that up my vein if it meant getting high.”

“Gee,” Violet said lamely.

“I guess God gives you what you can handle.”

“Then God must have a low opinion of me,” she said. “He’s given me money, health, the easiest baby in the world, and I
still
can’t deal.”

“Fuck off, you can’t believe that. You’re a saint. You know that, right? You’re like this Johnny Appleseed of joy and light. Anyone who gets to feel your love is lucky. And I don’t just mean lucky. I mean
one of the lucky
. The cosmically lucky.”

“Are you dying?” she asked.

“Not really.” He brushed the sugar onto the floor. “Hep C fucks up your liver and eventually you die of cancer. But if I eat right I’ll be okay. I just get really fucking tired sometimes.”

“You know what I’d do if I found out I was dying?” Violet asked. “I’d spend my last hours smoking cigarettes and listening to Stephen Sondheim.”

“What, no Percocet?”

“Percocet would ruin the Sondheim. You’ve got to be all there for Sondheim.”

“The Grateful Dead and ‘Send in the Clowns’? That’s a fucked-up combo.”

Violet felt a ripple of relief that Teddy knew who Stephen Sondheim was. Not so much for Teddy as for Sondheim. It always made Violet sad when people didn’t know who he was. It happened surprisingly — outrageously — often.

“Are there dating groups for people with hepatitis C?” she asked.

“It’s called AA,” he said with a laugh.

“How are you impregnating all these girls? Don’t you use condoms?”

“I hate condoms.”

“Oh man. I am sorry, but that is not cool.”

“The doctors say you can’t catch hep C from hetero sex.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“You’re totally disgusted by me, aren’t you? See, this is AA at work. Three years ago, I never would have said that to anyone. Now I’m all like, Hi, I’m Teddy, I’m a junkie, I have hep C, and I don’t use condoms. What’s your name?”

“You’re certainly honest,” she said. “I have to give you that.”

“
Certainly
. Listen to you with your five-dollar words.”

“Wait until you hear me use the word
insouciant
.”

“Break me off a piece of that.”

She assumed airs and said, “Your prejudice against condoms whilst infected with hepatitis C would indicate an insouciant disregard for safe sex.”

The waitress had walked up. “I’ll come back,” she said, and pivoted away.

“Whoops,” said Violet.

Teddy let loose a big, appreciative laugh, then stared into her eyes. She sunk deeper into his. Was he jaundiced? She couldn’t tell. His bloodshot green eyes with the angry dark circles couldn’t be considered beautiful. But they were arresting. And she couldn’t look away.

“You’re the one who’s honest, Violet. You have this natural honesty that erupts from your heart then straight out of your mouth. I’m a manipulative junkie. Any kind of honesty I have has to be drummed into me by going to meetings every day. With you, it’s pure.”

Violet lolled in this gorgeous moment. Then she said, “You bring it out in me. I’m like this naturally, I suppose. But with you it’s extreme.”

“Jesus. I don’t even know you and you’re already using the word
extreme
. See what I do to people?”

“No, no, no,” Violet said. “Extreme is good. We like extreme.”

“No, we don’t. Extreme is bad. I’m over extreme. I just want to play my music and write poetry.”

“You’re a poet?” Violet’s heart swelled.

“Yeah, I’m always writing poetry,” he said. “Poetry keeps me sane. And golf keeps me present.”

“Golf?”

“I always start the day with golf. It pimp-slaps me into the here and now. There’s no such thing as the past or the future when it’s just you and the next shot.”

Violet frowned. “I can’t picture you on the links.”

The waitress returned. “Have you decided?”

“Whatever she orders, I’ll have the same,” Teddy said. “And make it quick, because we’ve got somewhere to be.”

S
ALLY
already felt better. Concrete action was the only thing that worked in times like these, and here she was, taking it. The teakettle whistled. Sally held Jeremy’s Visa envelope an inch over the steam. If she got one edge loose and peeled the flap from there, she’d stand a chance of not mangling this one the way she had Kurt’s.

She realized this was not her finest hour, but she wouldn’t have been reduced to standing here if what had happened back on the street were an isolated incident. No, a troubling pattern had formed. Jeremy always put his routine above her. He had difficulty looking her in the eye. He never shared his innermost feelings. What was he hiding? Another girlfriend? Could he be one of those men who had another secret family? Could he be opening up emotionally with his
wife?
Of course not! That’s what was so maddening. Jeremy was faithful and predictable. Sally had never caught him in a lie or whispering into the phone, and his e-mails were all spam or work related. With Jeremy, what you saw was what you got.

Sally had once broached the subject with Maryam. “Compared to my other boyfriends,” Sally had said, “I feel like there’s something with Jeremy that’s . . . missing.” Maryam shot back, “The asshole part? If you’re having problems with a guy who has a job and isn’t running around on you, maybe
you’re
the problem. Some girls can’t be happy unless a man is treating them like garbage.” Sally couldn’t dismiss Maryam’s analysis, as coarse as it was. Still, she didn’t quite know what to make of Jeremy.

She tested the flap of the envelope. It lifted right off. She scanned the first page of the bill:

Hamburger Hamlet

El Torito

Hamburger Hamlet

El Torito

Hamburger Hamlet

El Torito

Hamburger Hamlet

In case anyone didn’t believe the man loved his routine! She turned to the second page.

El Torito

Hamburger Hamlet

El Torito

Hamburger Hamlet

El Torito

Cabot & Sons

Hamburger Hamlet

El Torito

Hamburger Hamlet

El Torito

She would have missed it if the dollar amount in the right column hadn’t popped out:
$8,800
. Cabot and Sons was the jeweler just around the corner on Ventura! Sally neatly folded the bill and surrendered it to its envelope. The adhesive stuck, leaving no trace of her minor trespass.

“F
OLLOW
me” was all Teddy said when Violet asked where they were going. She found herself zooming along Wilshire Boulevard, lacing amid traffic, gunning through yellow lights, swerving into bus lanes — anything to keep up. The battered Mazda teased her late-model Mercedes through the Beverly Hills corridor, turned left at what was once CAA, then left again through Century City. Teddy’s speed and recklessness were a throw-down, a sexual tease. Pure adrenaline, Violet was right there with him, proving herself worthy of the challenge. Approaching a red light, Teddy sharked into the left lane, as if to turn east on Pico. Violet, two cars behind, put on her blinker. But when the light turned green, Teddy lurched right. A car screeched to a stop and its engine died. Violet rammed into reverse, then drive, and stepped on the gas. She glimpsed Teddy’s tail a long block ahead, sailing west, making no concessions to her. The light was green, but the walk signal a solid red. Violet was four cars back. She swerved into the right-turn-only lane and made it through the intersection. Violet neared Twentieth Century Fox. Right now, writers in smelly rooms were slogging through rewrites, eating take-out, unbuttoning the top button of their pants, putting in their order for the afternoon’s coffee run, and debating where they’d order dinner. None of them had a clue that right now, Violet was airborne. She looked up. The light at Motor was red — it was too late to stop.

Fifteen years old: Violet’s father drove her from the Zurich airport, up a verdant Alps road, for her first year of boarding school at Le Rosey. They entered a particularly long mountain tunnel. As they emerged from it, her father’s eyes were closed. Violet screamed. “My dear,” he said, in that blasé way of his, “when in the dark, it’s easier to see with your eyes closed.”

Now Violet closed her eyes and flew through the red light. She opened them. She had cleared the intersection unharmed. Teddy turned left into a parking lot outside Rancho Park. Just as she had thought . . . he was taking her golfing. Her phone rang.

“Have you arrived at the undisclosed location?” he asked.

“I’m here.” Violet looked for a parking spot.

“May I draw your attention to the office building across the street.”

Violet passed his car. It looked like he was taking off his shirt. “What are you doing in there?”

“Hey!” he said. “Don’t look.”

She found a space. “Okay, what?” she said.

“My ex-wife, Vanessa, used to work there while I stayed home smoking crack. And I wanted to fuck her, so I’d call her at work every five minutes saying, When-are-you-coming-home-when-are-you-coming-home-when-are-you-coming-home? She was busy, so I just sat on the couch all day, smoking crack and watching
Sanford and Son
.”

“Come on.
Sanford and Son
?”

“You didn’t love
Sanford and Son
?”

“I never saw it,” she said. “I was at Le Rosey.”

“What you say?”

“Forget it. Okay, I’m parked. Where do I go now?”

“Stay right where you are,” said Teddy. “So there I was, out of my mind on crack, wanting to fuck my wife for sixty-five hours straight, but she was in a meeting all afternoon. And see that Jewish synagogue next door? Well, they were all worried about terrorist threats because it was right after September eleventh.” There was considerable grunting coming from the other end of the phone.

“What are you doing?” Violet got out and walked toward his car, looking down.

“Stop. Hang on a second.” After a long pause, Teddy resumed. “Okay. Anyway, I wanted Vanesa to come home, so I called up the lobby of the building and said there’s a bomb. And they evacuated like a mile of Pico. Everyone who worked up and down here was out on the sidewalk.”

“Jesus! I remember that. I was working at Fox. It was after lunch, right? I was off the lot and couldn’t get back on.”

“Yeah! They evacuated the movie studio, too.”

“That was you? You could have been arrested for calling in a bomb threat. That’s a federal offense.”

“See how far I’ll go for the love of a woman?”

“I should be mortified to be having a conversation with you.”

“But you’re not,” he said. “You think it’s rad.”

“It’s pretty rad.”

“Ha-ha. I just got you to use the word
rad
.”

“It was my first time,” Violet admitted.

“Okay, you can look.” Teddy had changed into long black pants, a short-sleeved black knit shirt, and the black-and-white golf shoes. Topping it off was a straw porkpie hat. He leaned against a golf bag and had one of the toothpicks from the restaurant sticking out the side of his mouth. It was hard not to love him, standing there, jaunty and confident.

“Dress more like that,” she said.