They used to joke about dropping out of law school and becoming groupies to some of the bands they were enamored of like American Music Club, the Talking Heads, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Rolling Stones, the Wallflowers, U2, Guns N’ Roses, and Prospero, especially the lead singer, Dex Cooper, whom they met one night stone-cold drunk at the Troubadour. They were there pretending to be bad, wild girls and not buttoned-down law students. After plying them with whiskey sours (Ann’s first), he invited them both to come back to his place, provided they could drive him since his license had been revoked courtesy of a DUI.
As luck would have it, Ann was driving. Dex promptly fell asleep in the backseat. She remembered getting lost as they wound up into the steep, overgrown canyons of the Hollywood Hills. The house was a throwback to the ’50s, a glass-and-stucco bachelor pad at the top of the hill. As they walked to the front door, Ann noticed the yard was weed-choked. Inside, it smelled of cats, although none were in evidence. Dex quickly went to the bar, backed up by a plexiglass panel into the pool, very James Bond. Ann rolled her eyes at Lorna. Dex poured gigantic drinks and then took off his shirt.
“So what do you girls do?” he slurred.
“Go to school,” Lorna said, gulping down her drink.
“Which high school?”
The girls dissolved into laughter while Dex patiently drank.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Ann asked and made her escape.
The bathroom, along with the rest of the house, was filthy. It seemed Dex was camping rather than living there. She poured her drink down the toilet. When she came back to the living room, Lorna was French-kissing Dex on the sofa.
“I need to get home,” Ann said.
“Curfew?” Dex asked. “Want to get high first?”
“No!” Ann said.
Lorna sat up and straightened her blouse. “Don’t bother. Ann’s a prude.”
Dex nodded. “That’s too bad.”
Once they reached the driveway, they fell into each other’s arms giggling.
“Oh my God,” Lorna said. “Oh my God!”
“I know!”
“Dex Cooper!”
“You kissed him!”
“I would have given him a BJ if you didn’t barge in.”
“Lorna!”
“Dex Cooper!”
“Still.”
They broke down in laughter all over again.
Later, Lorna said she was holding out for her number one, Axl Rose, as unlikely as that was to happen. Ann claimed to have always preferred Eddie Vedder, but it lay as an unspoken truth between them that Lorna had passed the wild test while Ann failed.
* * *
With the hot-potato check, Ann drove aimlessly in her Toyota as she dialed Lorna. “You won’t believe the shit that has just covered my entire life.”
Lorna directed her to go to the nearest branch of her bank, which she GPS-ed on her iPhone, and told her to put the signed-over check in the night deposit box, directed into Lorna’s account. “I’ll figure the rest out. Lie low. I’ve got contacts at my bank. Come by my office tomorrow, and I’ll give you cash. Then get out of town for a while so you can’t be deposed. Out of sight and the limits of jurisdiction, out of mind.”
* * *
The previous April, Ann and Richard had been to their first and only session of couple’s therapy, courtesy of a social acquaintance Ann knew through one of her professional women’s groups. The problem, as Ann saw it, was that she hardly knew her husband anymore. For the last ten years, they had both worked so hard they never saw each other. She had deferred her dreams of being a painter to first creating a successful restaurant for Richard, and that required earning money as an attorney, while what she wanted — a happy life with Richard — was moving further and further away till it was just a blur on the horizon. She was tired of catering to her spoiled clients, people who had either inherited their wealth or earned it too easily, dealing with children in the guise of adults for her livelihood. As she sat in the office, she realized the miscalculation of being there. She did not need to pay someone to tell her what was wrong. She needed a new life.
She knew the therapist, Eve, from her Women Ethically For the Environment (WEFE) group that met monthly at various trophy houses on the Westside, and served organic vegetables paired with expensive imported alcohol. Eve’s style had impressed Ann, and the monthly WEFE meetings had made improvements in her life that made her feel nominally better, such as: she now recycled, ate organic and grass-fed, and wrote out checks (albeit for small amounts) to various international NGOs to make clothes and furniture out of recycled garbage.
At Eve’s office, they sat marooned on a Balinese opium bed carved from sustainable teak.
“Should I take off my shoes?” Ann asked, uncomfortable and unhappy. Through Eve’s eyes, Ann was aware that Richard appeared slump-backed and slope-shouldered, that his potbelly topped his belt like a muffin rising over its tin, or, in Richard’s case, a brioche. Eve’s husband, Guy, who attended black-tie environmental events with her, was a former B-list actor who now worked strictly as an activist, allowing him free time to spend every day at the gym maintaining his six-pack abs. He was on the correct side of open land, clean water, sustainable farming, and baby seals. The only thing that sustained Ann through her present mortification was that years ago, at an event, Guy had put his hand on her ass and made a pass, a klutzy move that she had deflected. Richard would never do that.
“Shoes on, shoes off. Ann, do what makes you feel comfortable.”
Which was impossible, because leaving the room was the only thing that would accomplish that. Ann dropped one pump, and then the other, with a loud clatter on the Saltillo tile floor. “Nice floors,” she said to cover the noise.
“Eduardo is the best. I’ll give you his number,” Eve said. “He’s a wizard. We just came back from a design trip to an island in French Polynesia. We discovered exotic woods. The heat and the light. The place is pure sex.”
“Did Guy like it?” Ann asked.
“He couldn’t come. So let’s get to work. Now what I’d suggest is for you and Richard to lie side by side and close your eyes.”
Ann, grateful for the privacy of closed lids, felt herself burning with shame. It drove her crazy how Eve repeated their names back to them, as if reading off index cards, as if they might forget who they were. Too late, Ann saw the conflict of interest in discussing one’s personal issues with someone one ate canapés with. Someone who took her floor man to the South Seas. She would have to quit the environmental group and find another cause. A waste because she didn’t believe in therapy — in fact, prided herself on being the problem solver for others — and this exposure made her feel doubly humiliated. Thank God for the small favor that Eve had revealed that Guy had cheated on her numerous times (this after the hand-on-the-tush incident), and had come to see her a year ago about a divorce that never materialized.
Eve coughed and spoke in a soft voice. “Now, Ann and Richard, I want you two to picture where you want to be a year from now.”
Ann moaned, her eyes still closed, poisoned by her own words used against her. This was the question she had posed to Eve the year before, her standard for divorce cases. Eve had stolen it. Apparently the answer for Eve ended up being staying with Guy, whom she claimed had reformed. The law had shown Ann that people rarely changed. At best, the behavior went inward, underground, where lust carved out a dark and dangerous hole in one’s heart.
“See,” said Richard. “Always a negative, knee-jerk reaction.”
“Could I have some water?” Ann asked.
“Of course,” Eve answered. “Flat or sparkling?”