Maeve fly, p.5
Maeve Fly, page 5
Kate and I don’t know what to say. We stand there a moment longer, and Andre says, “Well, enjoy your day, and I’ll see you out there!”
We turn to leave the room, both a little stunned. Just as we are about to head through the door, he calls out, “Oh. Just one last thing.”
We pause, knowing this is our moment of execution. The man is clearly a sadist, and I have to say I deeply respect him for it. I brace for the worst, my heart thudding in my ice-blue dress.
“What do you two think of, uh, Liz?”
Kate tilts her head. “What, you mean, like, as a person?”
“Sure, as a person, but mainly as a boss.”
“She keeps us on our toes,” I say before Kate can speak. “She takes the job very seriously and very much strives to run a tight ship.”
Kate shoots me a look of betrayal, but I ignore her. It would be unwise to denounce Liz to this man who adheres to rules and hierarchy just as she does. It would lead to questioning and perhaps a line of inquiry that would damn us far more than it would Liz. Additionally, I’ve spoken the truth. As much as I despise Liz, as much as she is merely a peon of the Grand Capitalist Regime and the largest pain in my ass to date, she is also an adversary, albeit a weak one, in a world frankly lacking in much excitement. Liz is part of the job. Frustrating Liz. Appalling Liz. It would not be the same without the ever-present threat of her try-hard do-good twitchy eyes catching us in the act of something we are not meant to do. I do not wish to see her banished from this place any more than I would us. I am sure Liz does not feel the same about me, but that’s her issue, not mine.
Andre nods again and says, “Good. Very good. Thank you for your time. I suspect that she might be outside the door. Please send her in when you go.”
Indeed, Liz is waiting anxiously on the other side of the door, clearly having tried to eavesdrop. Kate leans in close as she brushes past and says, “Careful, Liz, I think he might have a crush on you. Very improper in the corporate structure. And did you see his package?”
Kate’s comment leaves its mark. Liz is destabilized, her face bright red, her eyelid twitching slightly as she plasters on a smile and heads into the room.
VIII
I am back on the Strip, late afternoon sun hot on the pavement, and I feel sick.
The doll is gone.
I have been avoiding revisiting the site of its apparition, have been avoiding looking into this particular bramble of flowers, passing by this particular corner. But today, I worked up the nerve to revisit the thing, and possibly to destroy it.
But it is not here. I stand, and I reposition myself, reach into the same spot I reached into before. A crow circles above me. An El Camino passes, bouncing on its wheels. There is no doll.
Was there ever?
I think it to myself, and as soon as I do, I unthink it. I inhale as though I can suck it back into my lungs or my treacherous mind. There is a tingle in the back of my skull, and I turn, slowly, certain I will find someone standing there. Watching. Waiting.
At home, I am restless. I watch the 2003 video of Michael Jackson fulfilling his lifelong dream of grocery shopping, his friends having rented a shopping center out for him so that he might, along with them, play pretend at normalcy for an hour or so. I loop the video and watch again. Three minutes and thirty seconds of this extraordinary happenstance. Initially, it is charming, endearing. This man who is so far removed from society experiencing something innocuous, taken for granted, and to anyone else, surely extremely disappointing upon final attainment. But the glee he expresses. The absolute pleasure in his pretend errand unsettles me. I don’t know. I am sick watching it, and yet I cannot stop. I make myself watch. Again and again.
And then I am on my feet, and I am in my grandmother’s room. Time has passed. The sun has lowered so that its light will only fill this room for a few minutes more. Just moments. Dust mites swirl, and Lester the Cat sits beside my grandmother’s head, his tail flicking, once left, once right.
My grandmother sleeps. I listen to the ragged rise and fall of her breath, in and out, arrhythmic over the incessant whirring of the machines. It is still disturbing, even after these months, to see her bare face, free of her heavy armor of makeup. I have considered applying it, coaxing her image to rework and return to its natural form. But it would be a violation. A boundary irreversibly crossed. She has never allowed anyone near her. Even in her days of stardom, she applied her own makeup, styled her own hair. The act of intimacy required to enter someone’s space so fully, for so long, has always been far outside my grandmother’s comfort. Mine as well. In all our time together, we’ve never so much as shared a hug. Our hands have never touched. I do not wish to touch her now, only to return her to normal. To feel her watching me. To know I am seen, by someone.
My mind flashes back again. My first night here.
After our dinner at Jones, I couldn’t sleep. I rarely sleep anyway, but usually I doze for a couple hours, at least. But that night, it wouldn’t come. I was electrified, couldn’t stop myself from trying to take in every square inch of the room that even then I felt would become mine. We hadn’t discussed it, hadn’t gotten much past the I’m your granddaughter, and I’m here now, but I felt it all the same. This house that existed as though it had been made for her. And her blood ran through my veins. There was such a feeling of rightness about it all that I felt if I closed my eyes for even a moment, it might disappear. It might never have existed at all. Too perfect to be real.
Tallulah was and was not what I had expected, had imagined from my father’s limited stories and the films of hers I could find. But even if my parents’ scope had not been so unforgivably limited, how could anyone possibly describe Tallulah? How could anyone do her justice?
In the thin hours of that first morning, I heard movement in the kitchen. I stayed very still, deciding what to do. Tallulah was everything and more, and I held no illusions as to what she was capable of. It permeated the air of the house. Her scent. Her domain. She was not warm, and she was not maternal, and for these things I was grateful. But here I was, a foundling in her lair, and my fate here was not yet determined. There was a slight air of danger about her, of instability, the type of woman who might every once in a while lash out with a slap across the face or claw marks left on a lover’s arm. But only if it was deserved.
I cleaned myself up and decided to meet her. She did not acknowledge me as I entered the kitchen, but she was aware of my presence. She knew, and accepted, that I was there. If she had not, I would have known. This I was sure of. She had laid a square of dark chocolate and four almonds out for herself, which she picked at without looking. A stack of magazines lay before her on the large countertop, unopened. Lester the Cat jumped on the counter and climbed on top of them, leaning in close to her. He eyed me warily. I plotted my next move. I knew Tallulah would approve of assuredness and strength over polite reluctance. Civility so often a tiresome burden foisted upon the one it is paid to, requiring acknowledgment and reciprocation. Still, I felt my heart pounding as I opened cabinets until I found what I needed to make coffee. I tried to steady my hands and set it brewing. My grandmother said nothing, which told me I was right, and I like to think my shoulders relaxed, just a little.
After some moments, she reached up and relocated Lester the Cat to her other side on the counter, clearing space for me. I was surprised. As much as she felt like the person I had always been searching for without even quite knowing, I did not know this woman who wore my face, not in the practical ways. But still, it was an opening, and I knew it would only be offered once. I took my mug and came to stand in the proffered place beside her.
Through the enormous panes of glass, we watched her territory as it slowly illuminated. Orange, yellow, pink. It was the first time I ever witnessed the day breaking over this city, the indifferent sun preparing to cast its harsh glow upon the dirty hot pavement, piercing the thick cover of smog. How could I know on that first day that this would become our routine? Years of this lay ahead of me. Beautiful, too short years of convening wordlessly in the kitchen with my grandmother and Lester the Cat, bearing witness. Neither of us slept, I would later learn, a trait I had never shared with my parents but now understood. I was never theirs. It was all so clear.
“It’s time to leave,” she said, her voice cutting through the perfect silence the moment the light touched the glass. “Go get dressed.”
Outside, I followed just behind her as she stepped over the various debris on the pavement as though she knew the exact location of each and every piece of trash. The homeless awoke, a few newsstand and café workers arrived, unshuttered windows and doors. The crows cawed, seagulls screeched, and a light chill pervaded the air that I didn’t yet know would be gone within the hour. The vegetation, the signs, the colors, the fading stucco and stained sidewalks and sleepy monumental street. I couldn’t take it all in fast enough, I couldn’t absorb so much so soon. It felt as though I had dreamt of a place my entire life and never let myself believe that it could be real. Of course, I had seen Los Angeles in movies and on the internet, but it wasn’t the same. It was the feeling of it, being here now, the dry polluted air, suffused with hints of orange blossom and jasmine. It was the grime and the shine together. My grandmother’s black Prada boots stepping over dogshit and cigarettes.
Tallulah brought us to a stop outside the Rainbow Bar, the smell of stale beer and cleaning chemicals wafting out to greet us. She wore a large black-brimmed hat and oversized black sunglasses. She handed me a vintage Hermès scarf with monkeys and snakes on it. I debated various ways I could wrap myself with it, as I was clearly meant to, and as I was thinking, an enormous red double-decker bus came to a stop before us. The doors opened with a hiss, and the driver nodded.
“Good morning, Miss Tallulah, another beautiful day!”
The bus lowered to the level of the sidewalk, and my grandmother took one regal step and then another inside.
We settled in the two right back seats on the open upper level, Tallulah clearly having staked her claim to them long before. The tour guide nodded at her, and over the course of the next few stops, the bus filled with eager tourists, as new to the town as I was.
I watched them step on, the excitement in their eyes, some of them fatigued in the early morning, some of them overwhelmed, not city people, or perhaps not accustomed to the vengeful heat.
“We do this every Sunday,” Tallulah said. “You should know that, if you’re going to be here.”
I turned to her, but she was looking out over the city, not at me. I didn’t know if this meant I could stay, didn’t want to think it, in case I was wrong. I took in the early morning Hollywood streets, the overly eager people who would sign up for a tour at this hour and their dragged-along families, the shine of our red bus.
I tied the fabric like a driving scarf over my hair, and Tallulah conveyed her approval with silence. She handed me a large pair of sunglasses, which I also put on. I listened as the tour guide pointed out celebrity homes and locations of suicides and murders. Everything was so monumental, so full of death and life. A part of me could not reconcile the idea of my immaculate grandmother and these pedestrian tourists, and yet it made complete sense. We chugged through this city that awoke ungracefully around us like the breath of life, and I had never felt that the world held such promise in it. There were so many possibilities before me, and at the same time, I felt I could never want anything more than just this.
A smile played at the edges of my grandmother’s lips—my grandmother, even saying it to myself was so significant—and I tried not to let her see me watching. I wanted to know this woman whose genetic material made up such a significant portion of me. We stopped along Hollywood Boulevard for the tourists to admire the stars and the handprints, and a few of them got off to crouch down and pose. Kitsch. Clichés. Cheap thrills, replicas, the exploitation of out-of-towners, of those visitors who will never feel this place pulsing through their veins. All of it so wonderfully American, Western, Californian, Angelean. So very much itself. The studio set shine, the extra-coated polish, the pigeons and trash and fanny packs and cell phone cameras, the too-white teeth and Snapchat selfies. Look, Mom, I made it to Hollywood;)
“Well, what do you think?” Tallulah’s voice, commanding and clear. Her eyes were closed beneath her glasses, and her head was tilted back theatrically. “Isn’t it just…?” She waved red-polished fingers.
I gazed out over the top of the bus, peered down at the glinting stars and the filthy streets, the Chinese Theatre and the Egyptian and the wax museum. But Tallulah wasn’t looking at any of it. It wasn’t the city bringing her such joy. Her eyes were on the tourists. And I understood. There was no difference between this city and the woman beside me. The tourists admired Hollywood Boulevard, and she felt it. Every street, every lamppost was a part of her, was so much a part of her in fact that I felt they must have been birthed in the same great seismic crack. A silent unknown god these mortals all unknowingly paid tithe and tribute to, observing them from the back row. Simply watching.
And I thought, even dared to hope, that I, perhaps, had originated there too.
“Exquisite,” I said.
Tallulah there beside me, smiling now so that I could see her canines, inhaling all of them, the naïveté and awe of the visitors, their very spirit.
“You understand,” she said, adjusting her sunglasses, her elbow resting on the guard rail’s edge beside her. “Which I suppose now can only mean one thing.”
I cleared my throat and watched a man in a visor rows ahead of us try to fight off an attacking pigeon. I held my breath.
Tallulah turned her canine smile on me.
“It’s yours now too.”
* * *
My phone rings in the other room. I close my grandmother’s door softly and answer.
“Please, please, please! I’ll love you forever and ever!”
Kate. Another party. Another career-making opportunity in the guise of a suited adulterous downer of a man. And she needs a wing woman. I do not want to go, I do not want to be anywhere. But I know how these men can be. And I owe her. Perhaps Kate will not always need me to watch out for her, but for now—
IX
So here I am, by myself, my thong creeping farther and farther up into the crevasse of my derriere, and the man with the champagne tray hasn’t been by in almost six minutes, but even so, there is not enough alcohol in the world to distract me from the mind-numbing Beverly Hills crowd of dustbags-in-training I’ve somehow found myself enveloped in. Kate, meanwhile, is across the room talking up someone who looks a lot like Derek from Babylon but may or may not be an exact replica with a different name in the same line of work. He is not particularly handsy, but the night has just begun. All these men are the same. In front of me stands another, talking. I scan the room for another drink.
“Yeah, we met back at my first VC firm, it was his first job too, and he’s really just such a guy, man, I really never thought he’d be the first one down the aisle, but I guess when you wanna lock it down you wanna lock it down, amirite?”
This is an engagement party.
“Mmm,” I say, glancing at his girlfriend who I believe would also very much like to be locked down.
“And how did you two meet?” I ask as my eyes follow two suited good-looking twenty-year-olds retreating to the bathroom for blow.
“Get this, you’ll never guess. Guess.”
He waits and watches me, full of giddy expectation. There are two things I despise in this world above all others: the first is when a person forces you to guess something as though you are a psychic or a child or could possibly be interested enough in their lives to expel brainpower to feed their narcissistic tendencies, to observe them fully and regurgitate some aspect of that observation back to them to their ultimate satisfaction, swallowing it all down like a grateful little porn star swallowing a big heaving helping of—
“She’s your proctologist,” I say.
He freezes, huge smile, eyebrows raised, as though I have punched him in his face.
After a moment, he blinks a number of times and then finds his words. “Well … yeah. I mean she is. How did you—?”
I am as surprised as he is.
“So you probed him and knew he was the one?” I direct this question to the proctologist who I now realize looks as though she has truly seen some things. I wonder how many items she has had to remove from rectums, and I picture her momentarily naked in a sea of glistening butt plugs, Gatorade bottles, and various girthy vegetables.
“He asked me out after the exam. It happens more than you’d think. But I don’t know, caught me in a weak moment I guess.” She shrugs and takes a sip of her drink. “And he doesn’t care that I spend my days with my hands up other men’s asses, so there’s that too.”
“Yeah, you know, some buddies of mine and me,” says the proctologist’s boyfriend, “we have this group chat—”
“Don’t get into the group chat,” the proctologist says.
“Why not? We’re already on the topic.”
“Not here. We’re at an engagement party for Christ’s sake.”
He ignores her and turns to me. She takes a long drink from her glass and beckons the server over for another. I try to grab for one, but I am prevented by the start of this enthusiastic story. “Okay,” he says, eyes manic with self-pleasure, “so I’ve got this group chat with my oldest buddies, there’s eight of us, and we send each other videos every day. Can you guess what they are?”
