The rumpled folksinger came in at noon. He ordered the green soup and waited inside with me. I hadn’t given a sign that I knew who he was. I knew eventually he would bring it up now that Natalia was gone.
—When Doctor Johnson was a thing—do you know any of our songs, “Jessica’s Father”—
—Yes, I do. I’m a fan.
—Are you?
—No.
He was leaning on my counter and looking up at the ceiling between us. He wore expensive casual pants and leather sandals and wasn’t offended.
—When we were a thing, we did a show at the Theatricum Botanicum down the way. We stayed with a couple of friends on Tuna Canyon and they brought us to lunch at this café. A beautiful young woman was slinging beans and rice. There was leche in the icebox and Pepsi-Cola. That’s it. Now look.
My phone vibrated on the counter. Vic’s Wife, said the caller ID. The warming timer dinged on Dean’s soup. Some of the soup bowls were thick and brown. Others were shallow, light pink, and very thin. We weren’t supposed to let the customers bring the latter outside themselves.
—I can follow you to the table, I said. I was holding the hot bowl of soup and my phone vibrated again.
—Do you want to get that?
—No, thanks.
—It’s Vic’s wife, he said, smiling. She seems anxious to get in touch.
—Could be a follow-up to “Jessica’s Father,” I said, and he laughed but not enough.
There was an old woman at a table in the shade. She wore glasses and had fuzzy ringlets of strawberry hair. I’d sold her a rooibos hours ago and she was only halfway through with it. She wasn’t sweating. She’d told me she kept flamingos in a garden of flamingos, and if I ever wanted to visit I needn’t call ahead.
Dean Johnson sat down and jerked his thumb in the direction of the lady.
—If you’re ever lost, the old ladies are how you know where you’ve landed. In Beverly Hills the biddies look like whippets. Here in the Canyon they’re shriveled hippies with bright red hair.
I placed his soup bowl before him. He looked at my neck as I did. I liked it when good-looking men checked out the less obvious parts of my body.
When I got back to the counter there was a text message from Vic’s wife.
CALL ME CUNT
* * *
ALICE CAME IN WHILE I was on a phone app that took a picture of an item and automatically affixed a description and a title, and then you named your price. Somewhere, within fifteen miles, someone who wanted your Package of Two Krazy Glue messaged you that they would come and pick it up.
I was going around the café taking pictures of the bukedo and raffia baskets. I was setting the price at ten dollars more than their list. The plan was to meet interested parties after work and pocket the profit. I’d pinned my location as Beverly Hills and used for my profile picture a shot of myself in Sayulita. Hair in braids, white bikini, sitting on the sand in lotus pose.
When she walked in I tripped on a basket and nearly fell. I wasn’t prepared for her to be the one to come to me. I keep talking about her beauty and I don’t want you to think it matters as much as it does. It only mattered too much to me.
I could smell her sweat. It reminded me of my father’s. I said hello and she said it back.
Her eyebrows were bushy. Her hair looked sandy and sweaty. I was not one of those heterosexual women who said they were attracted to other women. Who were these women? I could see in their faces; they were trying to impress whoever was listening—men—with their fluidity. I understood the inclination, of course. But with Alice what I felt was very pure and shocking to me. When I looked at Alice, I didn’t want her. What I wanted was to eat her, swallow her, and become her. I wanted to reach down between my legs and feel her cunt there.
Nervously I asked her what she would like to eat, and brightly she said, The green soup, please! Her manner was unhurried and self-assured. I’d never lived in the same place long enough to be meaningfully conversant with the grocery clerk.
I felt embarrassed, like she could see inside me—my roiling thoughts, my loneliness, my suffering, and most humiliatingly, my petty jealousy.
She walked to the fridge, selected a Tecate, and brought it to the counter. She tucked the beer under one bare arm and reached around to the back pocket of her leggings. She handed me a crumpled ten-dollar bill and looked at my face with intent. She moved in so close that I could smell her apple shampoo. I had the instinct to move away but I suppressed it. Or she suppressed it for me. I don’t know how it happened, but our two heads hovered above the counter like magnets.
—Can I ask you a question? she said finally. I could feel the mist of her breath on my lips. I nodded. I felt expired. She sighed deeply and smiled as though she’d won the first interaction. In fact, she had.
Do you shave your face? she said.
I despised the requisite stunned look on my face. I said no and she smiled.
—I ask because your cheeks and chin are incredibly smooth. Apparently women everywhere are shaving their faces. They say the reason men look younger than women is because they shave every day. They remove the top epidermal layer so the skin is always regenerating.
Alice touched her face.
—I grew fur this year, she said.
—Well, I said, we’re animals. I tried to sound dispassionate, but I felt exploded. I wanted to bolt. I’d spent a lifetime not caring what women thought of me. But that was merely the lie I told myself to tell others. The truth was that I was afraid of women.
When I brought her soup outside, she engaged me further, nodding to the seat across from her and saying, Did you want to sit down? as though I were the one engaging her and not the other way around. She wore small pink rose earrings that I recognized from somewhere.
The patio abutted the face of a small mountain. The rocks near our cheeks gave the feeling of enclosure, privacy, and claustrophobia. It was my lunch hour and it was all right that I’d put a sign on the door that said BE BACK SOON in seventies-style script. It was allowed, but this was the first time I’d done it in the several days I’d been working. I drank a Tecate as well. I had never enjoyed a beer so much.
I told her I was new to the Canyon and she could tell there was a reason I’d left New York but, like all self-assured people, she didn’t ask. She was startlingly forthcoming right away, which made her an alluring and warm conversationalist. At the same time she seemed difficult to please and too young to be so smart.
A well-built man with blond hair walked by the café.
—Hard eight, she said.
—What?
—There are so few attractive men up here. There are maybe two.
The man turned to look at us. She looked back at him. I think she could have broken up any marriage.
—Yes, I’ve noticed, and I’ve only been here a few days.
—We aren’t supposed to like men these days, she said to me, still looking at the man.
—The wrong ones, anyway.
She nodded, turning back to face me, leaving the man standing there as though she’d never seen him to begin with. But, she said, the right ones are boring.
—The right ones don’t lie. They don’t forget to call.
—Who wants a man you can trust?
There was a pause. Then we smiled and laughed. There’s nothing more sensual than a woman who makes you work to make her smile.