Survivors of cataclysmic childhoods defined by poverty and isolation compulsively seek validation. They know they lack proper emotional documentation. Cousins evokes a blood connection that would both substantiate and obviate certain complexities, the ebbs and flows, droughts and monsoons of their relationship. Such a device would highlight and justify their erratic and pathologically intense con-junction. In regions of bamboo and sun-rotted petals, wind propels sand like tiny bullets, and there are always too few artifacts. Cousins is an inspiration.
“I could draw up the papers,” Clarissa is expansive. “But adoption is superior.”
Zoë came to San Francisco when she was seven. Her father, Marvin, had terminal cancer. Her mother was mentally ill. They were bankrupt. She used to think heaven was a foster home. If Marvin would just finally die, perhaps she could even get adopted.
“I’ve missed you like a first love,” Zoë says.
“I was your first love,” Clarissa reminds her. “And you mine.”
They lean across the faux-wood table etched with knife-gouged gang insignias and logos of metal bands and kiss again. They are both manic this autumn day. Zoë and Clarissa share numerous personality disorders. They are both bipolar 2 with borderline features. Substance abuse is a persistent irritant. Recently, they have both been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Today, sun turns San Francisco Bay the purple of noon irises in country gardens in July. To articulate such facets, to know and chart them, is a spasm of thunder inside, a tiny birth the size of a violet’s mouth. If she extracted this entity from her body, she could give it to Clarissa like an infant.
Zoë examines her almost cousin’s eyes. Even through dark sunglasses, they are inordinately bright. Zoë senses that she, too, is also glowing. Yes, her eyes are brass corridors reflecting fluorescent light. They are both candles today, unusually in sync, radiant with clarity and energy. Clarissa wears a silk scarf, a vivid purple implying motion. It might contain vertical waves.
“Do you like it?” Clarissa asks. “Hérmes. Take it. I just stole it on Maiden Lane.”
“You still shoplift?” Zoë holds the scarf. It feels moist and sanctified, an embrace around her neck.
“It’s an attitude like guerrilla warfare,” Clarissa explains. They’ve finished their second round of drinks. “A thrill kill requires mental discipline. Put it on and keep walking. I know, I’ve had it for years. I bought it on the Champs-Élysées. It was raining. I was at the George V. I remember the details absolutely. No one could dare question me. And no one does. Let’s ride the carousel.”
They carry their drinks across the stained wooden planks of the pier. The carousel is closed. Clarissa makes a cell phone call and a man appears. She produces three hundred-dollar bills. They wait for the right seats, choosing recently painted twin horses, white and intricately decorated like certain porcelain, and ride for half an hour. Clarissa vomits twice.
Zoë searches her theoretical arsenal. Is it time for a hand grenade? Should she call for a chopper with medics? Then she remembers her mission. “Are you okay?” she manages.
“I understand how children discover bulimia,” Clarissa reports, excited. “It’s an accidental miracle.”
“Maybe you’ll get retroactive psychiatric insight points,” Zoë says.
Despite the gym-suit camouflage, it’s obvious Clarissa has gained weight. But even they have taboos. Eating disorders are a forbidden topic. They meet on neutral ground, but there are still no-fly zones, areas of fragmentation bombs and landmines. Shrapnel is a constant.
Clarissa borrows the purple scarf to wipe her mouth. She has contaminated the silk, but Zoë still wants it back. She thinks, suddenly, of flower bouquets and their inadequacy. The floral arrangements of her life have been too much and not enough. The petals stained. They were debris.
“If a contract is insufficient, what can we do?” Zoë wonders.
They are standing on the pier where the carousel is no longer operating. Gone are the circles they inscribed in the loitering too-thin aqua air. Her body carved the afternoon as they whirled and spun, engraving trails of midnight-blue ink like marks made by fins. Somewhere these etchings floated into a river winding down to a bay, more invisible origami.
“We could get a tattoo,” Clarissa proposes. “Our names together in a heart.”
“A tattoo?” Zoë repeats, delighted. “Won’t it be painful and dangerous? The possibility of AIDS and infection?”
“But you love needles.” Clarissa is annoyed. “You’re a professional junky.”
“I’m in remission,” Zoë replies quickly, unexpectedly defensive.
In truth, during one particularly virulent carousel rotation, she began to think about a drug dealer she knew in North Beach. It’s walking distance, over a steep sequence of stone steps and hills, through a sudden unexpected gate. There is a combination lock. Within, a creek is dammed and trapped, the water a stalled green with slime and duck excrement. She knows this Victorian house, the grain in every wooden floorboard and the way sunset displays itself through each glass pane in every room. There is geometry to how sun impales and dissects the Golden Gate Bridge. If you comprehend this mathematics, you can construct spaceships and time machines with common household appliances. You listen to the radio and talk to any god. This is encrypted information she will be buried with.
“You always relapse,” Clarissa observes, as if stating an historical date or chemical formula. “And don’t you already have AIDS?”
Zoë is shocked. She stares at Clarissa. Even with Gucci sunglasses, there’s a distinct softening around the chin, a loss of definition in her cheeks. “No, dear potential cousin. I have hepatitis C. And you need to get your face done.”
“What part?” Clarissa is concerned.
They are walking from the pier toward a tattoo parlor on Columbus Avenue. Shops offer stacks of cheap plaster statues, saints and children, dwarves and frogs. Someone will purchase and paint these objects, display them, give them as gifts. And plastic replicas of Alcatraz and T-shirts that say Prisoner and Psycho Ward.
“What part?” Zoë repeats. “It isn’t a fucking contract. It’s a composition. Just give the guy a blank check. And don’t use a Pacific Heights or Marin surgeon. You’ll end up looking like everybody else. I found an Italian in Pittsburgh.”
“I noticed you finally got your father off your face,” Clarissa slowly admits.
“Well, the police wouldn’t do it,” Zoë says. “And Mommy was so busy.”
Slow swells are below the wharf now. The bay is a liquid representation of fall. It’s in continual transition. It’s a form of treachery. All fluid bodies are autumnal and promise betrayal. That’s what leaves changing mean, the reds and ochre, the yellows like lanterns. It’s about packing and disappearing. It’s a season for divestiture. That’s the fundamental imperative winds hint at. Time of the severing. That’s the obvious subtext. And it occurs to Zoë that her elation could dissipate. Emotions have their own seasons, inexplicable currents and random lightning storms.
Zoë follows Clarissa into the tattoo parlor. “Let’s rock,” Clarissa says. “Lock and load.”
The Eagles are playing. It’s “Hotel California,” of course. A tanned man with a blond ponytail who looks like a yoga instructor opens a book of designs. Dragons. Butterflies. Demons. Flowers. Guitars. Spiders. Zoë vaguely remembers negotiations including the procurement of a fifth of vodka, tomato juice, and a complicated argument about the aesthetic implications of script choices. Eventually they selected a gothic font. Then she may have passed out.
Zoë realizes they are in an arcade on Pier 39. It’s three hours and six Bloody Marys later. They have gauze and adhesive tape on their shoulders where their names are carved into their left upper arms in identical navy-blue. They decided to leave the encircling heart in red ink for their next reunion. Banks of garish video games surround them; hip-hop music blasts from speakers in the ceilings and floors. Boys who all look part Asian or Mexican are armed with laser levers and plastic machine guns. They keep the real Glocks in their pockets.