My father was a warrior, I thought, while Theon was a pimp and a whore. I was that real or imagined bird on the roof across the street from the woman pretending to be me. And Anna was everybody else, recording the complex interrelationships of men and women out there beyond the definitions of who and what and how we should be.
Theon was what Dickens would have called a swollen boy with an engorged member as his cross to bear. Daddy was a street fighter searching for and finding his manhood in back alleys and barroom fights.
“Sandra?” Anna said.
I looked up and out the window expecting to see a whole flock of condors waiting for me to join them or feed them. But the rooftop was empty.
“I have to go,” I said.
“What were you thinking?”
“I don’t have any answers, Anna. You can call in the prescription to Beacher’s Pharmacy in Pasadena. I’ll pick it up when I get home.”
Anna tried to continue our unwieldy conversation but I needed to leave. I stood up and waded through her questions to the door. Before I left I told her about the funeral and said that it would be good for her to come.
Driving back toward my home I got a call.
“Yes?”
“Sandra?”
“Hey, Rash. Are you coming to the funeral?”
“I am.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“I told Annabella about you.”
“Your girlfriend?”
“She’s pretty mad. It kinda surprised me. I mean, for the last year or so she’s been totally distracted and kept on telling me how things weren’t working. Now it’s like we were married and I was cheating on her.”
“If you can’t come I’ll understand,” I said.
“No,” he said, “I want to be there with you, I mean for you. I need to be there.”
“What if you lose Annabella?”
“Then I won’t have to leave her.”
Maybe I should have said something then. It seemed clear that Rash was using me as the element of change in his life. Rather than just telling Annabella that he wanted to leave he was presenting me as the reason. Maybe I should have said for him to go figure out his relationship with her before coming to me.
But I felt so far away from anything except the actions I had to take that I wasn’t worried about my hapless suitor. Maybe I even felt a little complimented that a man working in the real world would leave a pretty UCLA grad student for me.
Anyway, I’d be dead soon and then Rash could use me as a memory.
“Okay,” I said. “If you get there early we can talk before the ceremony.”
I drove out to LeRoy’s Chicken and Waffle House and ordered two full meals. I ate at an outside table, scanning the skies for that big bird. I didn’t see it but, I thought, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
After eating I went to a big toy store in Santa Monica and bought Edison a boy’s computer that had learning games and a place to keep his diary.
By the time I got home I was happy. There was a silly grin on my face and a lightness in my spirit that I hadn’t felt since I was a little girl. I wasn’t worried about leg breakers or bill collectors, letting down my family, or the loss of people I loved or might have loved.
Even my breathing was cheerful. The air felt good coming in and going out. My entire life had been leading to this moment. No one could take it away. I didn’t have to run or hide or pretend I was somewhere else while a man shoved his nine-inch-long, four-inch-wide dick into my rectum.
The feeling I had was exactly the same as when a young girl falls in love. I was in love with the beauty of finality and I had Theon to thank for that.
I got three sheets of paper from the office desk and sat down to write the eulogy. I sat there for hours writing slowly and surely. I didn’t cross out a word. I wrote the whole thing in medium blue ink from an old-fashioned ballpoint pen. It was a retractable that I had taken from a Best Western motel when we had used a room on the sly to shoot the final scene of Debbie Does It All.
It was well past midnight when I finished the tribute. I slid from the chair onto the carpeted floor and smiled at the ceiling. I closed my eyes and was instantly asleep.
That was the best night of sleep I ever had — ever. It was dreamless and seamless, dark and soft. Any lingering trepidations I had about death were dispersed by the peaceful ecstasy of those eight hours.
I still had a few sore spots from the beating Coco gave me but the pain would end. I felt sadness about Theon and my son, my mother, and others but I knew that the dead were gone and the living could go on without me — had been doing so for years.
It was a lovely, balmy morning. I went barefoot out upon the blue-green grass that Theon cultivated just outside our dinette. He shaded that small lawn from the summer sun and made sure that it was well watered and cooled even in the L.A. desert.
The spiky blades tickled my bare soles, exhilarating me. I was naked out there. No one could see me and that was fine.
I couldn’t remember the last time that I had solitude. I mean, I’d been alone often enough, but to know that I didn’t have to strip down and oil up, to take a preparatory enema for the afternoon shoot, to manicure every square inch of flesh, nail, and hair...
I bathed for an hour listening to Mingus, my father’s absolute favorite musician. I used lavender bubble bath and thought about Perry Mendelson. While I was sitting there, luxuriating, it struck me that I hadn’t turned on the security system. Maybe I was reminded because I might have heard something behind the jazz. The sound, I thought, might have registered without my awareness, because the moment I thought it Richard Ness walked into the bathroom — the same room where my husband had died with the child I could not save.
“Dick,” I said, only mildly surprised.
“I told you I don’t like people calling me that.” He was wearing a shit-brown suit and a green Borsalino hat.
“And I said that I don’t like you.”
“You owe me money, bitch.”
“I thought you sold the debt to Manetti?”
“He gave it back. He said that you had my money now and I’m here to collect. I came here to see your green or your red.”
“How festive.” I had to hold back to keep from laughing.
My obvious good humor disconcerted him.
“Why you got to be like that, Deb?” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“How can we ever come to an understanding if you lie to me, Dick?”
“Say what?”
“You want to hurt me but you know if I die Jude Lyon will be unhappy. And if he’s unhappy you might get damaged.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with him,” he said.
“But it does, sweetheart. It has to. You’re mad and you’re scared, so you came here to bully me to show that you can’t be bossed around.”
I’d hit the bull’s-eye on Ness’s shame. He grimaced and considered mayhem.
“You know I’m gonna have to kill you,” he said.
“I know that you want to, Dick. The only question is if you’re brave enough to murder an unarmed woman in her bath.”
He was like a lover who couldn’t perform. Everything but Dick’s dick was willing. He sat down on the toilet seat and glowered at me.
“You are one crazy bitch.”
“Yeah.”
Warm steam was rising from my tub. My breath was still magical.
“I’m gonna go through your house and take enough stuff to make my nut offa Theon.”
“Be my guest,” I said. “I don’t own this house or anything in it. I don’t want it, and besides, Theon has everything in hock. Take it all, Dick. I don’t care about it or you. You can take everything, but I will call the cops and tell ’em you did it. I sure will.”