—I would like nothing more, darling. I’ll go and take a shower, get the sand off my feet. I like to be clean as a whistle when we—when we lie with each other.
It was easy for me to say the things that Leonard wanted to hear. I have always and unequivocally known what a man needed from me. With Big Sky I trembled in fear at saying the wrong thing. I tried to keep every message short. I rewrote lines to make them sound nonchalant. I spent morbid hours on one sentence.
With Vic I knew very well what to say but often said the exact opposite. In the very beginning of our relationship, the second or the third time I let him fuck me, he lay beside me after, staring with those wet little eyes of his. We were in a hotel room in Zihuatanejo. The rooms were all open air, white curtains billowing, the blue sea. Lanterns and rattan and ripe mangoes in a bowl. You’re going to throw me out one day, he said, caressing the side of my arm. The breeze was gorgeous. I was in the prime of my life in that orange and blue place. The coconut grove down the road.
Oh, no, I said. Not one day. I’m going to do it very, very gradually.
* * *
I WAITED UNTIL LENNY FELL asleep. When he began to snore, I walked to the safe in the wall. I tried fifteen or so combinations, looking over at him every few seconds. I reminded myself that there was no rush. I turned it back to where it had been and used the hem of my dress to rub off my fingerprints. I looked inside of his little closet. I found his old man robe, his old man record collection, and a photo album. I tucked the latter under my arm and I also took the pipe from his coffee table and a packet of tobacco back to my place. I sat at the outdoor table and drank a greyhound with fresh grapefruit juice and puffed on the pipe. If I’d had a child, I thought, I never would have been able to fresh-squeeze a grapefruit, to rim the glass with salt.
I lit the bowl of the pipe and looked through the album. It was almost exclusively full of pinup-type shots of Lenore. There was something sordid about them, even by my standards. Lenore sitting on the toilet with a scrunch of toilet paper in one hand. Lenore, naked in a bathtub with no water. Lenore drinking a martini in the nude on a velvet settee. Her hair up in her classic Lenore chignon. None of it was pornographic, exactly, but there was something aggressive about the pictures. Lenore had an embarrassed smile in every shot. Her relationship to the photographer, Lenny, was clear. He was the bullish director, telling her how to sit and how to hold her body and she was smiling like a woman who didn’t want a man to be angry at her.
Around five Kevin came out, wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt. He was handsome and warm, but there was something distant about him. He would speak to you on one level, but his train of thought seemed to exist on another. I kept wondering if he would start wanting me, and the not knowing gave me an enormous amount of pleasure. Being with Alice made me feel confident that sooner or later he would.
—Miss Joan, he said, coming close enough that I could smell him, eucalyptus. Haven’t seen you around too much.
—We keep different hours, I said.
—How true, how true. What’s up with Lenny.
—He’s kind for being a bastard, I said.
—I like that, Miss Joan. You got verve.
—Coming from someone with verve, I said, that means a lot.
—Nice of you to be checking on him. Why do you think you do that?
—I don’t know.
—He still in there? Little nappy for the old man? Nonnyboots, my mother used to say. Get into your nonnyboots, son.
—I like that.
—Yeah, I always dug it, too. Tonight is his regular poker game. It’s the only night he looks good to me. He gets together with a bunch of old friends in Hollywood. Long black car comes to pick him up. One of these days, Kev, he says to me, it’s gonna be a hearse.
—Sometimes I feel bad for him, I said, and other times I don’t.
—You know, I think that’s just about everybody.
I was always going around wondering where everyone got their self-assurance. Kevin’s mother sounded like she loved him in a pure way. She didn’t make him take care of her. It made me want him. His mother’s love for him turned me on. I worried that with every man I met, either I was going to want him or he was going to want me. It had never truly been both at once.
—Just keep your wits about you regarding Lenny.
—River said the same thing. What do you mean?
—Nothing, really. He’s harmless, of course, but he isn’t innocent.
—What does that mean? I asked.
—Oh, I don’t really mean anything. You live in the Canyon long enough, you hear rumors and such, and anyway, you don’t move up here unless you have something to hide.
He looked at his watch.
—My lady is waiting, he said. You have yourself a fine night, Miss Joan. Young man River went to Froggy’s, ’case you’re hankering for something to do. It’s half-priced caipirinhas. All night long.
He winked and ran to his Charger. The music was all the way up as he sped down the drive, trailing baked dust in his wake.
I couldn’t hear the coyotes but I could sense them. The rustle of the breeze might have been their tails thwapping against the saltbush and the milkweed. It was easy to pin my fear on the animals and the darkness of our queer compound. I wished I were in a place where I wouldn’t be afraid to be alone, to turn in early with a book and a cup of chamomile. But even when I’d lived in such places, in the Jersey City apartment building, for example, surrounded by city lights and the noises of families, even then I had been afraid to be home early, to be sober and unaccompanied as dusk approached.
Very quickly I dressed in a black jumpsuit and my new, stolen heels and drove down the winding road to Froggy’s.
I saw River right away, sitting at the bar, alone in an unalone way. We spoke candidly for a while. I was very attracted to him. I felt safe because I wanted to fuck him more than he wanted to fuck me.
He told me the story of how in grade school he’d been walking home one day with his best friend, Eric. They took the same route as always and it was a bright spring afternoon. Cherry blossoms, baseball season. Eric was wearing a blue sweatshirt his cousin sent him from Hawaii. It said ALOHA HAWAII on the front in rainbow letters and there was a rendering of all the islands.
A white pickup truck drove past, slowed, and came to a stop. A man got out. He had long gray hair, a silvery goatee, jean shorts, and paint on his bare knees. He was flustered and nervous and asked if one of the boys could help, his little girl had fallen into a well on Shroudsbury Road at the old pump house. He was on his way to get help, but he didn’t want to leave her there alone.
—He was looking at me the whole time, River said. And I didn’t say anything. I guess I believed him, but I don’t know, I didn’t say anything. But Eric said, Sure. Eric hopped right into the cab. The old man told me to run along home and call the fire department, tell them to go to the pump house. But he kept looking at me as he backed away. Then he got into his car and they sped away. Eric waved at me out of the window.
That was the last time River saw Eric alive. The next day they found the old truck a few counties over. It was a florist’s van. It had been stolen from a funeral home during a wake. They found Eric’s body in a ditch, naked, a few days later.
—Jesus, I said to him. We were very close to each other in that moment and I looked into his eyes. I suppose, like anyone, I’ve never lost the hope for perfect love to come out of nowhere. River was not brilliant but he was physically perfect and kind and a life with him would be like a Grateful Dead t-shirt.