"This is our artist," Rena said, lighting one of her black Sobranies. "Astrid Magnussen. You remember name. Someday that suitcase worth millions."
The woman smiled and shook my hand. I tried not to breathe Sports Mix on her. Rena handed me a permanent marker with a flourish, and I signed my name along the bottom edge of the suitcase. Sometimes being with Rena was like doing acid. The artist. The Buddhist book I'd found on trash day said you accrued virtue just by doing a good job with whatever you were doing, completely applying yourself to the task at hand. I looked at the zebra bar and barstools, the suitcase disappearing with the sunburned woman. They looked good. I liked making them. Maybe if that was all I did my entire life, wasn't that good enough? The Buddhists thought it shouldn't matter whether it's contact paper or Zen calligraphy, brain surgery or literature. In the Tao, they were of equal value, if they were done in the same spirit.
"Lazy girls," Rena said. "You have to talk to customer. Work up sale."
She saw a young man in shorts and Top-Siders looking at the barstools, turned on her smile and went out to hook him. She saw those Top-Siders fifty feet off.
Niki finished her mug of Gatorade cocktail, made a face, poured some more while Rena had her hands full. "The things we do for a high."
"When are you going?" I asked Yvonne.
"Tomorrow," she whispered, half-hiding behind her curtain of smooth hair.
I stroked her hair back with my hand, tucked it behind her small, multipierced ear. She looked up at me and smiled, and I hugged her. She burst into tears. "I don't know, Astrid, do you think I should? You always know what to do."
I laughed, caught unaware. I squatted down by her seat on a rickety director's chair. "Me? I know less than nothing."
"I thought you didn't lie," she said, smiling, holding her hand in front of her mouth, a habit to conceal her bad teeth. Maybe Benito would marry her. Maybe he would take her to the dentist. Maybe he would hold her in the night and love her. Who was to say he wouldn't?
"I'm going to miss you," I said.
She nodded, couldn't talk, crying while she was smiling. "God, I must look like such a mess." She swiped at her mascara that was running down her cheeks.
"You look like Miss America," I said, hugging her. It was what women said. "You know, when they put the crown on? And she's crying and laughing and taking her walk."
That made her laugh. She liked Miss America. We watched it and got stoned and she took some dusty silk flowers Rena had lying around and walked up and down the living room, waving the mechanical beauty queen wave.
"If we get married, you can be maid of honor," she said.
I saw the cake in her eyes, the little bride and groom on top, the icing like lace, layer after layer, and a dress like the cake, white flowers glued to the car and everybody honking as they drove away.
"I'll be there," I said. Imagining the wedding party, not a soul over eighteen, each one planning a life along the course of the lyrics of popular songs. It made me sad to think of it.
"You'll get back together with your boyfriend," she said, as if to soften the blow. "Don't worry. He'll wait for you."
"Sure," I said. But I knew, nobody waited for anybody.
THE NEXT NIGHT, Yvonne packed a few clothes, her horse, and her radio, but she left the picture of the TV actor in his frame on the dresser. Rena gave her some money, rolled up in a rubber band. We all waited on the front porch with her until Benito came by in his primer-gray Cutlass. Then she was gone.
31
ON THE ANVIL OF AUGUST, the city lay paralyzed, stunned into stupidity by the heat. The sidewalks shrank under the sun. It was a landscape of total surrender. The air was chlorinated, thick and hostile, like the atmosphere of a dead planet. But in the front yard, the big oleander bloomed like a wedding bouquet, a sky full of pinwheel stars. It made me think of my mother.
There was still no call from Susan. Many times, I'd wanted to call her and demand a meeting. But I knew better. This was a chess game. First the urgency, then the waiting. I would not run down the street after her, begging. I would develop my pieces and secure my defenses.
I woke up very early now, to catch a few breaths of cool air before the heat set in. I stood on the porch and gazed at the giant oleander. It was old, it had a trunk like a tree. You just had to roast a marshmallow on one twig and you were dead. She'd boiled pounds of it to make the brew of Barry's death. I wondered why it had to be so poisonous. Oleanders could live through anything, they could stand heat, drought, neglect, and put out thousands of waxy blooms. So what did they need poison for? Couldn't they just be bitter? They weren't like rattlesnakes, they didn't even eat what they killed. The way she boiled it down, distilled it, like her hatred. Maybe it was a poison in the soil, something about L.A., the hatred, the callousness, something we didn't want to think about, that the plant concentrated in its tissues. Maybe it wasn't a source of poison, but just another victim.
By eight it was already too hot to be outside. I went back inside to make Tasha's lunch. She was the new girl in Yvonne's bed, thirteen, going to King Junior High, D track, summer term. Grave, silent, she had a vertical scar on her upper lip just healing. She flinched if people moved too fast near her.
"You'll do great," I said, making her celery with peanut butter in the creases and a Granny Smith apple. "I'll be watching."
I drove her to school in Niki's truck, let her off in front of Thomas Starr King Junior High, watched her go in scared and small, her backpack hanging with key chains. I felt helpless to prevent her life from taking its likely direction. Could a person save another person? She turned to wave at me. I waved back. I didn't drive off until she was inside.
Dear Astrid,
It's been six years today. Six years since I walked through the gates of this peculiar finishing school. Like Dante: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. /Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura. / Che la diritta via era smarrita. The third day over 110. Yesterday an inmate slit another woman's throat with a bent can. Lydia tore up a poem I wrote about a man I saw once, a snake tattoo disappearing into his jeans. I made her tape it together again, but you can't imagine the strain. Aside from you, I think this is the longest relationship I've ever had. She's sure I love her, though it's nothing of the kind. She adores those poems of mine that refer to her, thinks it's a public declaration.
Love. I would ban the word from the vocabulary. Such imprecision. Love, which love, what love? Sentiment, fantasy, longing, lust? Obsession, devouring need? Perhaps the only love that is accurate without qualification is the love of a very young child. Afterward, she too becomes a person, and thus compromised. "Do you love me?" you asked in the dark of your narrow bed. "Do you love me Mommy?"