Micecapade

College kids. They sure know how to live! Pizza delivery. I’m all for it. Always some pieces of crust left in the box. Perfectly baked. Not too doughy, not burned, just crunchy enough to snap when I gnaw into them.

They have been covering their trash lids more carefully these days, though. I suspect the landlord sent them a letter warning them about me. Good thing nobody’s thought to get a cat.

Nevertheless, I can almost always get into a trash can even when it’s closed carefully. I can squeeze down pretty thin. Tonight’s specialty of the house was a taste of pizza crust with some melon rinds and for that after-dinner treat, a mouthful of coffee grinds.

So now I'm tired. I'll climb up here. The car just pulled up and the engine’s still warm. Think I’ll take a snooze right here, below the windshield wiper, tucked between the windshield and the hood … mmmmm.

Whoa! Why’s this car starting up! Better get out of here quick! Who’s driving? It’s some girl. You crazy chick, why are you pulling out already? Don’t you know you’re supposed to let the car warm up a little first? Even I know that, and I don’t drive. You’ve got to let the oil flow through the engine.

And now I can’t jump off. If I do, I might get run over. I’d better just stay low and take the ride. She must be going to 7 Eleven for a midnight Slurpee or something. I’ll jump off there.

What? Oh, no! The freeway!

Aiieeeeeeee! I’m going 70 mph! Through the night! Tucked in here under the windshield wiper! I’m probably not gonna make it. I’m probably gonna get shaken off. I’m trembling. I’m so scared. I’m hanging on and the wind is whipping over me, and it doesn’t stop. And the vibration! And the lights! Where is this girl going? This is taking forever!

Whew. Off at last. I don’t know how I survived that.

What’s this now? She’s pulling into a garage. Oh, good, the car stops, the engine shuts, and she walks up the stairs and into the house and doesn’t see me.

What should I do? I don’t know this place. And there could be a cat. I wandered into a garage once and there was a cat there. That was at least as scary as this freeway drive.

I got away, but barely. And I saw the look in that cat’s eyes. It wouldn’t have eaten me. It would’ve played with me for hours, shuffling me in its paws, letting me go, catching me again, ripping my eye out with a claw. Yikes. Not gonna risk that. This car will move again. I’ll just sleep here until morning and then when the car moves I’ll jump off and find some hiding place safer from cats.

Whoa! Oh, just the engine, again. It’s morning and she’s leaving, as I’d expected. I’ll jump off at the first stop and then find a place to hide.

Shit! She sees me! She’s screaming! Ah, what do I do? What do I do ….?

You know what? I’ve decided. I’m just staying here. She’s calling someone on her phone. I guess I could make a run for it. But I think I’m safer here. No cats for the moment, at least.

So this guy comes out. With a broom. He sees me. He’s yelling at her: “Pull the car out of the garage. Pull the car out of the garage.” But she’s too scared. He won’t do anything, though. He doesn’t want me running around his garage. But that broom is bad news. I’m going to have to get away from that broom. I could make a run for it now. But I won’t Let’s see what he does, first.

She backs the car out of the garage and tells her to shut the door so I don’t run back in after he knocks me off. Except I have no intention of letting him knock me off. I’ve decided I kind of like it here. I think I’ll make my last stand. I’d rather die than move from here. Strange, how these thoughts come into your head? Oh well, no one ever said I had to act rationally.

So the guy he takes a jab at me with the broom. I’m looking at him. He’s looking at me. I don’t move. He laughs. I guess he finds it amusing that I’m not scared of him and his broom. “Dude, what’s your problem?” I think to myself as I stare him down. “Just leave me alone, man.”

I guess he’s impressed by my determination to hold my position. He actually talks to me: “Get out of here!” he says. I look at him. “No,” I reply. I’ve made my decision. He laughs again.

This time, though, he doesn’t just make a feint with the broom, he actually pokes me with the bristles. I don’t want to move, but my nervous system kicks in. Fight or flight, they call it, though I ain’t no bird. I guess my nervous system wouldn’t let me get hit with the broom. I was trying to do passive resistance, y’know, like Gandhi. I didn’t want to move, but I had to. Reflex.

So I run up the windshield, right over the girl’s face. You should’ve seen her! And heard that scream! Girls really don’t like me. If ever I needed confirmation, that was it.

Now I’m sitting on top of the roof of the car, like a hood ornament. No, that would be a roof ornament, right?

The guy is laughing at me. “Fuck you,” I say to him. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. This car carried me here at 70 mph on the freeway last night and I survived. Now I claim this car as my own.”

So he makes another jab at me with the broom but I don’t even flinch. I’m just looking at him with my beady little eyes. I’m not movin.’ Unless I have to.

Which I do, when he uses the broom to push me off the car.

I fly onto the ground and trot down the alley.

I’m not running. I’m in no hurry. I’m just walking off to find someplace I wanna be. Where there are no cats.

That was a pretty nice car, though. Wish I coulda kept it. The mousemobile, I woulda called it. My mousemobile. I coulda been riding all around town in style. With that girl as my chauffeur.

“Hey baby,” I’d say. “To the cheese store!”

At Dad's Grave

Flying back to the states from France. Looked out across the sky. Clouds, pink at sunset. Dad, are you there? Please, sometime, when you can: Tap me on the shoulder. So I’ll know everything will be all right. I just need to know everything’s going to be all right without you. Please.

We’d talk once a month. He’d call. January: He had a bad cough. February: He still had that bad cough. By March, they knew: Hodgkins. But they said they could treat it. He was a big strong guy. He could make it if he fought.

It was tough on him and my mom. She had trouble getting him out of the car sometimes after his treatments. I was in France. They were in L.A. I’d just finished college and started my first job. Should’ve come home to visit, at least. Not enough money, though.

He got better. Remission. A year after he was first diagnosed. So he called his boss and said he could come back to work. Sorry, his boss said. Couldn’t hold your job for you. Stay on disability. His morale collapsed. A secondary infection set in, something like pneumonia. He died.

Had to change planes at Logan. The customs officer was a young woman. She looked at me as if I were the handsomest man in the world. It was St. Patrick’s Day. She was wearing antennae with four leaf clovers that said: “Kiss Me I’m Irish.” When she read my documents she said:

“Welcome home! Are you going to be staying in Boston for a while?”

“No, I’m flying to L.A.”

“Oh well. Have a great time.”

My father’s funeral was the next morning.

Greeted his old pals as they arrived. Then walked off to the side of the mortuary chapel. Sobbed and sobbed. Don’t think I’ve ever been that sad. It was over, dad and me. Never see him again. When that hits you, it’s something.

The years came, the years went. Moved back to Los Angeles to try to take care of mom. We didn’t get along. She was bitter that he died, resentful that I hadn’t been there to help her through it.

Met a neighbor from when I was a kid. She told me: Hey, the house you used to live in, it flooded. Flooded? We were on top of a hill. From the inside, she explained. The pipes burst. The ones that carry the water upstairs. The people came back one day and opened the door and whoosh. Water flowed out. The house had to be gutted and rebuilt. That night I dreamt I went up in the attic of the house to find the leaky pipes. And my dad was there. He hadn’t died. It was one of those dreams where you think it’s not a dream, it’s happening. Dad! How could you have done this? I had to, he said. I had to fake my own death. I was overcome. But I needed you! I shouted at him. I love you!

Woke up. So upset. Ruined the day. Maybe the week.

Life got hard, then harder. Work. Money. Love. Nothing was easy, nothing went well. Bad decisions, one after the other. Dad, please, tap me on the shoulder. Tell me everything’s going to be OK. Please.

Everything went wrong. Company where I worked got taken over. Big pay cut. Could barely make rent. Couldn’t find another job. Got sick, really sick -- for six weeks. Three-stage malaria-type virus. Debilitating. Lost 20 pounds at least. High fever, 104, 105, 106 … then drenched with sweat, then chills.

Recuperated slowly. Years came, years went. One friend died, another was dying. Car crash -- almost died myself. Haven’t been living right, said to myself as my car flew into the air, then landed upside down.

Had to put mom in a nursing home. Dad, I did it. I went to his grave and told him. I took care of mom the best I could and now I’ve got her in a reasonable place. Settled back in to life. Work, money, love. Better decisions. Re-connected with religion. Started living right. Well, living better. Trying, at least. Dad? Are you there? Tap me on the shoulder, please.

More years came, more years went. Mom died. Buried her next to dad on a cloudy day, light rain. No one at the funeral. Dad, are you there?

Another year came, another year went. Visited dad at the cemetery one day. He’s buried under a big pine tree. Said the Kaddish, sanctifying and venerating the creator and asking that mom and dad be granted eternal peace. I had just read the history and legends of the Kaddish. One tale: A man in a carriage rides by a poor woman and her children. Carriage stops. The man asks the woman to recite the Kaddish for him. She does. Carriage disappears. Her pockets are filled with gold.

Sat down under the pine tree and recited the Kaddish again for mom and dad.

Suddenly: A tap on my shoulder.

I laughed. Bird shit, I thought to myself. While reciting the Kaddish. OK, I said. I’ve got a sense of humor. Bird shit. Asked for a tap on the shoulder. Got one. The messenger was a crow. Normally, I’d think bird shit was a sign of bad karma. But hey. I’d been asking for a tap on the shoulder for all these years. The important thing is I got one, right?

Didn’t look at first. Kept reciting the prayer until I was done. Then checked my shoulder. Expected to see a big mess on my black T-shirt.

But it wasn’t bird shit.

It was a big, beautiful drop of clear, shiny gooey gel. Didn’t know what it was at first. Found a little stick on the ground. Scraped some off and held it to my nose.

Pine sap. It looked beautiful. It smelled beautiful. It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing in the world.

Pine sap. From dad. To the tree. To my shoulder. The tap on the shoulder I’d been asking for all those years. I finally got it.

A non-believer might say: How unremarkable. You sat under a pine tree. A drop of pine sap fell on you. Big deal. To that I reply: Didn’t drop on my head. Didn’t drop on my hand. Didn’t drop on my pants. Dropped on my shoulder.

I’ve traveled. I’ve lived and loved, experienced pain and joy, satisfaction, contentment and defeat. Celebrated victories, too. I have seen and done many extraordinary things.

But that was my most intense moment, there, under that pine tree, saying the Kaddish that day at dad’s grave. I’d asked for that tap on the shoulder from him. And that day, after all those years, I got it. That tap on the shoulder. From beyond. Thanks, dad.

Green Parrot at My Window

It didn’t quite fly, it struggled, it fluttered – a staggering, stumbling kind of flying – and landed on the windowsill of our twelfth floor apartment. A big green parrot. And it sat there, looking through the window at us.

I laughed. You don’t usually see that, a parrot struggle up to a high-rise window and land there and then stare at you.

The bird didn’t know what to do next. From the way it had landed there, it was apparent its wings had been clipped. It wasn’t going anywhere.

I was ten years old. My parents had people over. My dad had made friends with some of the salesmen where he worked. It was Ben and his wife Chris. Two Brits, very dignified, transplanted to casual California. My parents didn’t entertain much, so it was unusual. We had eaten dinner and we were sitting at the table. We were playing cards after dinner. We had a toy set of small plastic poker chips that were stacked in a rotating chip-holder. The chips were red, white and blue.

“I can get it,” I told my parents after the parrot made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. “Let’s get a box and we’ll put him in it.” I had a parakeet, a small blue bird I had named Fluff when I got her five years before that. I didn’t think handling a parrot would be any different than putting a knuckle on little Fluff’s breast to get her to climb onto my finger.

“No, don’t try,” Ben warned me. “If that bird sinks its beak into your hand, he could rip your thumb off.”

It was still light outside.

We decided that the parrot belonged to someone who lived in the building, probably in the apartment right below ours, or maybe next door. So my dad called the apartment’s security service.

A guard came. He brought a box and carried a pair of heavy gloves. He was older. He had probably fought in World War II twenty years before.

He looked at the parrot. He didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile.

“Yeah, its wings are clipped,” he said in response to our speculation. “Let’s try to save it.”

The guards held the box and opened our living room window, slowly, as the last blue light of the sky was turning black. The parrot was about a foot away from where the window opened. The guard popped out the screen, gently. He was trying not to make any sudden moves that would spook the bird.

Then he put on his gloves. He seemed worried.

“Here goes,” he said.

He stuck his arm, shoulder and head out the window and reached slowly toward the bird.

The parrot could’ve tried to fly with his clipped wings and risk falling twelve floors, or let this guy grab him, which is what happened. The bird’s instincts kicked in, though, and he squawked, shook, clawed and bit as the guard grabbed him. In an instant, the angry bird was in our apartment, held up in the security guard’s black leather glove.

“Hey! Gotcha!” the guard told the bird. Then he put him into the box. He said he would try to return the parrot to his home. We thanked him and he left.

My parents and their friends wrapped up their socializing. Sometimes when they had people over, I would bring out my accordion and play a simple version of “Lady of Spain.” I don’t remember if I had performed the night the parrot appeared.

One afternoon the next week, I was at the recreation center, a huge playground that served only about two dozen kids who lived in the apartment complex. Up until a few years before that, the complex was for adults only, and the center had some tennis facilities for tennis, handball, ping pong and even shuffleboard: retiree games. When they started allowing kids, they put in some tetherball poles and stocked a storeroom with footballs, basketballs and baseball gear we could check out for the afternoon.

The supervisor was named Carol and she was a pretty redhead. Once we had a talent show, where kids would lip-sync pop tunes and act out the stories. She came in a mini-skirted go-go dancers’ costume.

“You missed it,” my friend Tony said to another friend, John, a few days later and described what she wore.

“What happened when she bent over?” John asked.

“You saw,” Tony answered.

That afternoon, the week after the green parrot appeared on my window, Carol was playing jump-rope with Jessica and some of the other girls. Jessica was older, a year or two older than me, the other girls were younger. Jump-rope and jacks were what the girls did while the boys were playing football or basketball.

There were a couple of younger boys hanging around. One of them was Jessica’s brother, Louie. He was kind of fat. We didn’t play together much and we weren’t playing that day. I think I might’ve been watching the girls jump rope. Louie and the younger boys were having a water fight. They were filling their mouths from the fountain, and spitting at each other. Louie decided I’d be a good target too, and took a good shot at the back of my shirt.

“Don’t do that again,” I told him.

He ran back to the fountain and took another mouthful, then ran toward me.

“Don’t,” I warned him. He spit all over the front of my shirt.

“If you do that again, I’m going to clock you.”

He waited a few minutes, then came back alongside me, then stepped in front of me and spat a stream of water into my face.
I swung with a right hook and hit him in the ear. My arms were scrawny and I wasn’t a fighter. It was maybe the first time in my life I’d hit anyone. I didn’t think it would hurt him; I thought it would show him I was serious about getting him to stop spitting on me.

But he let out a wail, started crying and ran to his sister. She asked what happened. Between sobs, he managed to explain, and Carol heard.

“You know he’s got ear problems,” Carol told me. “You should never have hit him in the ear. Go home. Don’t come back for the rest of the week.”

Other kids had been banned from the rec center for fighting. I never thought I’d be one of them. Did I know he had ear problems? I don’t think I did. I would’ve stayed away from his ear. I wouldn’t hit him in the chest. I wasn’t thinking about it, though. I just wanted to get him to stop spitting that water at me.

“That was awful,” Jessica said to me. “I would expect that of some of the other kids, but not you.”

I think she meant I shouldn’t have done it because I was older and smarter than the other boys. Jessica was pretty and had long black hair. She was a little stocky, not really fat like Louis was. She didn’t say a lot and she didn’t laugh or smile as much as the other girls. I liked her. It was the first time she’d said anything that gave me an indication she approved of me. I think it was the first thing she ever said to me.

I went home and stayed in my room and thought it wasn’t fair. I really didn’t mean to hurt him.

Later that night my parents had people over again. That was really unusual. We really did not have company that often. They must’ve had such a good time that night the parrot landed on the windowsill that they decided to do it again.

It was Tom, a tall, thin guy with acne scars, and his girlfriend. I brought out my accordion after dinner and played “Lady of Spain.” Then we took out the cards and the poker chips again. We were playing cards after the sky outside turned to night.

A siren sounded, approaching. Rotating red lights flashed down below. Another siren approached, more lights swept across our window. We all got up to look down.

A fire truck and an ambulance stopped in the street between our building and the one facing ours, another pink 12-story like ours and the twenty other towers in the complex. The red lights flashed across the building façades. Firefighters and paramedics hurried up the stairs that led to the apartment entrance. It didn’t look like there was a fire, though.

There were a lot of old people in that complex. Every now and then one of them would have a stroke or a heart attack.

Sometimes it happened to people who lived in our building, sometimes even to someone who lived on our floor. They’d get taken away in an ambulance and I’d never see them again.

Mr. Lynch had moved in next door to us that year. He gave me a set of magnets. They were really interesting: Some of the magnets would stick together; others would repel each other. I liked to try to push the ones with opposite charges together, feeling for that invisible point of resistance. One day not too long after he gave me the magnets, I noticed his name wasn’t on the slot above his brass doorbell anymore.

“What happened to Mr. Lynch?” I asked my mom.

She told me she’d heard he had been walking down the street and collapsed. A stroke, maybe.

So I thought the ambulance and the fire truck were there for some old person.

Every now and then, late at night as I’d be falling asleep or early in the morning as I’d be waking up, I’d have some vague notion of activity outside one of the buildings in the complex.

“What was going on?” I asked my dad once. He explained:

Sometimes, an elderly person who lived in one of the buildings would get tired of being alone, get tired of being sick, get tired of being old. He would leave his apartment for the last time and walk down to the far end of the hallway. Each hallway had a door marked with the word Exit and the door led to the stairs. On the other side of the Exit door was a small balcony with a railing. Every now and then an old person would jump over the railing from one of the upper floors.

The temptation of those Exit doors, the old people looking at them every day when they’d come home to another night of illness, loneliness and despair … you can see how it could get to be too much.



As we watched the red lights flashing below, a car pulled up to the front of the apartment. A nicely dressed woman jumped out of the car and ran up the stairs, as the paramedics and firefighters had done, only faster.

“That’s not good,” my father said.

“No, that doesn’t look good,” my mother agreed.

There was dread in their voices.

I went to bed that night not knowing what had happened. I thought about the fire truck and the ambulance, though, and the others that came when people died. I thought about Pete.

When we first moved in, my mother brought me down to the rec center to introduce me to the director, a big Italian named Mike, so he could show me around and tell me what I could do there if I came after school: play caroms, tetherball, football, baseball or basketball or just hang around with the other kids. Mike was talking to an old guy named Pete. Pete was seventy, maybe eighty. He was full of energy, though. He bounced when he spoke. He work a cap, glasses, a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.

“First day here?” Pete asked. I nodded yes.

“I remember the day I got here. I was your age. I rode into town on a stage.” Then he pointed to a billboard out beyond the handball courts. “And they were hangin’ a guy right there!”

I started going to the rec center most afternoons and hanging around with the other kids who were about by age, including Jessica and Louie. Pete was there, too, most days, talking to Mike.

One day some of the kids found an injured gray dove.

“What should we do with it?” one of them asked me.

“Let me see,” I said.

They brought me over to the edge of the baseball diamond, to where the dove was immobile and cooing in distress. It couldn’t fly. I cupped my hands and picked it up. It was warm. I could feel its heart racing. It was heavier than I thought it would be.

“It’s dying,” I said. “Let’s put it in the bushes so it can die in peace.”

It felt it die in my hands. I put it in the bushes.

Then about the time the parrot landed on our windowsill, I told my mom I hadn’t seen Pete around the rec center recently.

“He killed himself,” she told me. “He jumped off the balcony one night.”

Three or four days after the night the ambulance and the fire truck came, my mom asked me if I’d heard about Louie. I hadn’t. She had bumped into Carol at the store and Carol told her she'd see Jessica arrive at the rec center alone on Tuesday morning.

“Where’s your brother?” Carol asked.

“My brother’s dead.”

At first Carol thought Jessica was joking. But then Jessica told her what happened.

Jessica and Louie stayed home that night while their parents went out to dinner. She filled the tub for Louie’s bath and gave him a battery-powered toy boat to play with. When she checked on him later he was dead. The toy boat electrocuted him when he put it in the water. She called the ambulance and then called the restaurant and had the manager send her parents home.

That was Louie’s mom running up the stairs that night. I saw her in her fur coat, rushing to the apartment where her son had just died.

I had punched him in the ear that afternoon. I really didn’t mean to hurt him. I’d be sorry even if it wasn’t one of the last moments of his short life.

My parents didn’t invite people over any more and we moved away the next year.

Every now and then I’d take friends from my new neighborhood back to see the apartments where I grew up. We’d go up to the twelfth floor and walk out through the Exit door at the end of the hallway and I’d tell them how the old people used to climb over that rail and let themselves fall to the ground below.

If you were a green parrot with clipped wings, would you flutter up to my twelfth-floor windowsill and sit there and stare at me? Of course not.

Unless you had something important you wanted to tell me, right? Something you really wanted me to know.

Euro-Looters

You showed up in Paris with your friend Greg. You were going to ride your bikes to Barcelona. You were twenty years old and you grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and you’d never been to Europe.

You took the train from London to Dover and the ferry to Calais and then got on a train again there and arrived at the Gare du Nord first thing one cold morning at the beginning of March. You made your way across Paris and found your friend Julie’s apartment on the rue St. Jacques, up six flights of narrow, twisting stairs.

Julie was doing her junior year abroad. She’d been studying music, but they just fired her teachers in a pay dispute so she was taking French classes and doing some drawing, but mostly just sitting in cafes and hanging out.

Her roommate, Joan, had lived down the street from you through junior high and high school. She had left Paris a few weeks before.

Julie and Joan had gone out one night and met two Nigerian guys at a café. They got to talking about life in Africa, in France, in the United States. They must’ve seemed like nice guys. So as the night turned to morning and the café was closing, they all went to the Nigerians’ apartment.

Once there, things got tense. The Nigerians wouldn’t let them leave. They thought there’d be sex. But that was not what Julie and Joan thought. Joan got nervous and aggressive with them. One of the Nigerians picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, as if she were a sack of wheat he had bought at the market. He was going to carry her to bed.

Probably the only reason they didn’t get raped is because Julie kept her cool. “Why are you doing this?” she asked them. “Pourquoi vous faites ca?” Good question. Maybe it was a reality check for the guys and it reminded them they were nice girls and didn’t deserve to be hurt. The Nigerians let them go home.

But Joan didn’t feel safe there anymore, though, so she packed her bags and moved back to L.A. She sent Julie a tape.

Julie played the tape for you the day you got to Paris. Joan talked about her nightmares. She would dream she was getting raped by a Nigerian. You put your hands over your face. “Oh poor Joan!” you said.

Julie’s new roommate was a gorgeous redhead named Lolly. You fell in love with her almost as soon as you saw her. She took you to bed. Then you and Greg took off on your bike ride to Barcelona. It was spring break so Lolly and Julie hitchhiked to Nice.

Lolly fell in with a group of people hanging out on the beach, some young travelers from France and other countries, and some street people. Somehow, everyone gravitated toward a squat in an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of town, past the Chagall Museum. They pooled their money for groceries but pretty soon they were broke.

Lolly became a valuable member of the gang because of her striking curly henna-tinged hair and remarkable curves. She would spend the day on the beach with the travelers and the bums. The men walking on the path above would lean over the wall and shout down to tell Lolly to take off her top. When they threw enough coins, she did.

A British guy named James was a member of the gang, and Lolly was sleeping with him. One night he got food poisoning and crawled out of their sleeping bag and walked to the hospital. That was the last she saw of him.

Marco was the leader of the squatters. He asked some of the other Brits and Belgians and French guys if they wanted a job. They said yes. He told them to follow him.

It was 2 a.m. They walked up the road, heading out of the city. They arrived at a house. It was uninhabited for the moment. They broke in. Marco found a linen cabinet and took out some pillowcases. They filled the pillowcases with plumbing fixtures, doorknobs, anything that wasn’t nailed down and some stuff that was. They carried the jangling pillowcases back to the squat. Marco said he could sell the stuff in the morning.

But it wasn’t morning yet and he was hungry. Looting a house must work up an appetite. There were pigeons roosting in the rafters of the squat. Marco devised a slingshot and killed one of them. Lolly grilled the pigeon and Marco whipped up some sauce from a stick of butter and some flour and thyme and they ate it.

“How was it?” you asked her when you got back to Paris and she told you the story.

“The pigeon was awful,” she said. “But the sauce was really good.”

You and Greg had done your ride to Barcelona and spent a week with a friend, Elisabeth, who was teaching English there. She was sharing her apartment with an American and a couple of Brits. It was spring break, so there was also a guy and a couple of girls from Belgium, too. The night you arrived the whole group went out to dinner. A young Irishwoman named Kaitlyn and her Spanish boyfriend came along. It was a dark restaurant, which was good, because that way when the rabbit came you couldn’t see that it was served with its brains. Greg told you that part later.

Kaitlyn’s hands were slightly deformed, but otherwise she was pretty. She had thinnish light hair and a nice face. The American and the Brits were teasing her with Irish jokes. A Brit said: “The Irish wolfhound chews on a bone all day long and when he stands up his leg falls off.” The conversation turned to the Irishwoman’s boyfriend. He’d recently finished his military service, where he’d been trained as the Spanish equivalent of a U.S. Special Forces officer. But he had long hair and he looked more like an artist than a soldier.

You were standing outside the restaurant after the meal and it started to drizzle. You were telling Elisabeth about the unusually wet winter of heavy rains she’d just missed in Los Angeles. Suddenly, you were in the air! The Spanish soldier had picked you up by your thighs and was holding you in some sort of Spanish Special Forces carrying position, straight up, as if you were a tree branch or a flagpole that he’d locked his arms around, and he was running down the street, holding you aloft. He plopped you down on the hood of a car and he said:

“Never stay with one woman for too long.”

Then he ran off down the street and disappeared into the Barcelona night.

Two days later, Elisabeth told you:

“Kaitlyn hasn’t seen Fernando since that night at the restaurant. She wants to know if he said anything to you before he ran away.”

“No she doesn’t,” you said. “She doesn’t want to know what he said. Tell her he didn’t say anything.”

Greg stayed in Spain and you went back to Paris because you decided you were in love with Lolly. But her interest in you had faded by the time you got there. You spent a week together, then she ditched you one night to go out with a French guy named Dominique. She came back to the apartment the next night. You said you wanted to take her out for a last drink. So you walked down the street together and went into the Closerie des Lilas. You went inside and she stepped on a Borzoi’s paw and the dog yelped just under the seat at the bar marked with the brass plaque saying that Hemingway drank there. You got a table outside and ordered a beer for yourself and diabolo menthe for Lolly. You drank together without saying much except goodbye.

You left for Brussels and stayed there with one of Lolly’s friends, Suzanne. You took her out to a bar on the Grand Place and got her drunk. She barfed out the cab window all the way home. You left for Amsterdam the next morning. You spent two days in Amsterdam, walking around the canals and daydreaming. You didn’t go to the Van Gogh Museum. You knew you’d regret that for the rest of your life. And you do.

You took a ferry back to England and checked into the White House Hotel on Earl’s Court Square. The guy working was a long-haired blond from Santa Barbara, his name was Rick and you knew some of the same people and places. He had grown up in L.A. You were about to book a flight home. But he said he was quitting and was looking for someone to replace him. You figured it might be fun to stay in London for a while so you said you’d do it.

Rick went up to Scotland to visit his friend Perry there. Perry was in prison. He was from Los Angeles, too. When Rick came back to London he told you how Perry wound up in prison and what the visit was like.

Perry had been hitchhiking around the U.K. He met a girl in Edinburgh. She introduced him to her friends. They asked him if he’d come along with them on a job. He said yes. They drove out to the country in the middle of the night and broke into a mansion. He was the lookout. They came back out carrying candelabras, silverware, paintings, anything and probably everything else of value.

A couple of nights later the Edinburgh crew took Perry out on another job. They drove him up to the gate of another country estate, gave him a crowbar, told him to break in and come out with everything he could carry. So he did. But they weren’t waiting there. The police were. The gang had tipped them off and pinned the previous looting on him, too. That was to keep the cops off their trail. Perry told the cops everything, but the gang had skipped town by then. So he got a three-year prison sentence.

A guard brought him out to the cafeteria to meet Rick.

Rick told him the prison didn’t look very secure and you asked him if it was a low security facility. It was rather isolated, but still ….

Perry explained: The access to the road was tightly controlled. But in every other direction it was surrounded by moors covered with thorn-bushes and bogs. People tried to escape every now and then, he told Rick. The lucky ones came back after a few days, starving and with their arms and faces and chests and legs ripped to shreds by thorns. The unlucky ones? Sometimes they’d find a body. Sometimes they wouldn’t.

He leaned over to Rick and said “Get me out of here. Get me out of here.” Then he started sobbing and crying.

“How?” Rick asked. “How can I get you out of here? I can’t get you out of here! You know that!”

“I know, I know,” Perry said, composing himself. “I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask.”

Rick went back to the gate and got into his rental car and drove back to the train station.

You and Perry and Joan and Julie and Rick and all your friends grew up during the last years of the Vietnam War in the comfortable and safe tract-home suburbs of Los Angeles.

You picture those thorn-covered moors, stretching out into the distance and fading in the mist.

My Doppelgangers

(I)

Lionel and Christine took some time off from their teaching jobs in Paris and set off on a trip around the world. It was one of the deals where the airline offered unlimited travel for 30 days, so if you wanted to see a lot of cities in the world, and you were willing to take a lot of flights, you could. They traveled cheap and light. Paris to London, London to New York then New York to Los Angeles. They stopped to spend a few days at my place while preparing for the next leg of their trip, through Central America and South America. Later, they would go across Asia and Africa.

I was working a few of the days they were here, but I managed to take them to the beach and for a drive through the canyons. We played some tennis and went out for dinner. Lionel bought me a T.C. Boyle novel to thank me for my hospitality and I took them to the airport where they caught a flight to Mexico City, then a bus to the coast, then a boat to Belize.

After the boat docked they walked across town to their hotel. Along the way, they were approached by locals.

“Why don’t you come stay with us?” a guy asked them.

“Because we’ve got a room at a hotel,” Lionel answered.

“Come on, come stay with us,” he urged.

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

The locals got exasperated, or maybe insulted.

“What are you afraid of?” another guy asked. Then he hissed an insult: “You’re going to be afraid all your life.”

Lionel and Christine went on to Bolivia, then Peru. They were taking a flight out of Lima bound for Buenos Aires. That was about 10 days after they’d seen me. So they knew what I looked like recently. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen me for a year or two.
But there I was at the airport in Lima. Of course, I wasn’t. It was another guy who looked just like me.

“Eh ben, dis-donc, qu’est-ce que tu fais ici?” Lionel asked the guy. (“Wow, what are you doing here?”)

The guy was an American and spoke French, so he understood, But he stared at Lionel and Christine blankly while explaining that he didn’t know them.

I have a pretty distinctive voice, it’s kind of high and nasally. The guy also had my voice.

So Lionel and Christine were convinced it was me. And that I was playing with their heads. Maybe the stress of the travel, the plane flights, the weird world of Latin America had gotten to them. Anyway, they weren’t happy I was teasing them. They started getting angry.

“Stop playing with us,” Lionel said to the guy. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

The guy insisted he didn’t know them.

“We just stayed at your place for a week in Los Angeles!” Christine screamed at him. “You can’t do this to us. We know it’s you! Stop this! It’s madness.”

The guy insisted.

“Sorry. It’s not me,” he said.

Lionel raised his voice.

Arrete de te foutre de nos gueles!

And then he said he hit me – well, what he thought was me. He wouldn’t have hit this guy. Unless he was absolutely convinced it was me. Which he was. It was probably more like a push, though, I imagine. Not a real punch. I hope.

At that point the guy figured the only way to get these crazy French people off his case was to show him his passport and business card and drivers license, which he did – much to their astonishment. They had really thought it was me.

Lionel called me when they got back to Paris a few weeks later to tell me the story. He said the guy was our age – a young businessman from San Francisco. And he had my voice and he looked just like me and he had the same haircut, kind of on the long side, almost shoulder length. And the same hair color and the same voice and the same mannerisms and even wore the same kind of clothes.

“Did you get his name and number?” I asked. “Did you get his business card?”

He didn’t.

“Oh, man,” I whined. “Did you remember that I was adopted? Didn’t you think this guy could be my twin brother?

“I forgot about that,” Lionel said. “But I told him your name. And where you worked. So he might call you.”

If I had his name, I could use it on a fake ID, then fly to another city, rent a car and use it to rob a bank. I’d throw out the dye-pack they put in the money bag, drive away and the FBI would arrest him.

But he knows who I am. So he is in San Francisco, planning to use my name on a fake ID, fly to another city, rent a car and use it to rob a bank. He’ll throw out the dye-pack they put in the money bag, drive away and the FBI will arrest me.

“What are you afraid of? You’re going to be afraid all your life.”

(II)

It was my birthday. Brigitte was leaving her teaching job to pick me up and take me out to dinner. She said goodbye to one of her students, Elisabeth, who asked her where she was going all dressed up like that. She told her it was my birthday.

“Oh, that’s funny, it’s my mom’s birthday, too,” Elisabeth.

Elisabeth’s mom, Mrs. B., came to see Brigitte after school a few days later.

“Happy birthday,” Brigitte said.

“And happy birthday to Steve,” Mrs. B. said. “That’s why I came to see you. Would you mind if I asked you a couple of personal questions about that?”

“Uh, well, I suppose …”

“Tell me, was Steve born in 1957?”

“Yes, he was.”

“Oh!” Mrs. B. said with heightened interest. She had cleared the first hurdle. “Do you know where he was born? Was he was born in New York?”

“Yes, yes, he was, in fact.”

“And do you know, on the off-chance: Was he adopted?”

“Uh, yes, he was.”

This was getting a little intense. Mrs. B. paused.

“Do you mind if I ask: Is he Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if he was adopted through a Jewish agency? Do you know if the birth parents were Jewish?”

“Yes, that’s what happened,” Brigitte answered.

Mrs. B. paused for a moment before explaining.

“Because I was born on Oct. 13, 1957 in New York. And I was adopted through a Jewish agency. And I was told I had a twin brother.”

I went to my mom’s apartment that weekend and told her about Brigitte's conversation with Mrs. B.

“Could this woman be my twin?” I asked my mom.

“No!” my mom insisted. “I wanted two! I asked for two! I wanted a brother and a sister or twins or older, younger, it didn’t matter! If there were two, I would’ve got them! I would’ve got her two!”

I thought about it for a while and took my mom’s word.

I had dinner with Mrs. B. a few nights later. We were studying each other’s faces for any clues. They say fraternal twins don’t resemble each other, but we had to look. How could you not look? I told her what my mom said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Mrs. B. answered. “I’ve been investigating. They had a policy to separate brothers and sisters. They didn’t place them together.”

I didn’t know if I should believe Mrs. B. or not. That sounded inhuman. That sounded insane. Why would adoption agencies have that policy?

In any case, there was another reason my mom would know I wasn’t Mrs. B.’s twin.

After my mother died, I sorted through all her photos. I found out what I had long suspected: My birthday was changed so that if my biological parents tried to track me down they wouldn’t be able to find me. Mom’s photo album of my baby pictures had the original date of Oct. 27 scratched out and replaced with Oct. 13.

I had suspected this for some time. When I was 19, I filed the application for my passport and I needed a copy of my birth certificate. The date on it was the 27th, not the 13th.

“Hey dad,” I said. “Why does it have this date?”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Is it just the filing date, and not my birth date?” I suggested.

“Yeah, that’s it,” my dad said.

I’d always wondered about my birth date. My mom gave me hers. We had the same birthday. What are the odds of that? Three-hundred and sixty-five to one.

“You were my birthday present,” my mom used to tell me when I’d ask.

The day I asked her about Mrs. B, I also asked her about the birthday. I thought it was ancient history by then. Maybe she’d tell the truth.

“Mom, did you change my birthday?”

“No.”

“You can tell me. I won’t be mad.”

“No.”

“Swear?”

“I swear.”

Maybe she’d been telling the lie so long it had been absorbed into her psyche as the truth.

So I couldn’t be Mrs. B.’s twin. Unless her adoptive parents had done the same thing and chosen the same fake date. That’s possible, isn’t it?

Was I upset that I had been celebrating a fake birthday my whole life? Yes. Was I upset that I’d thought I was a Libra but was really a Scorpio? Yes. But then I realized: I have two birthdays. I am the man with two birthdays! My birthdays are Oct. 13 and Oct. 27.

I am a Libra and I am a Scorpio. I am my own double.

Plus, everybody knows: Scorpios are hot.

Flight 59 to JFK (Part I)

“My pretties!” Christopher shrieked when he saw his tomato plants hadn’t been watered properly in his absence. “Rood, how could you neglect them like that?”

“It rained the other day. I thought that would take care of them.”

Christopher rushed to his potting table and scooped a dose of Miracle Gro out of the box and into his watering can. He filled the can from a hose on the patio of his Brooklyn Garden and began sprinkling water on the thirsty vines.

“Well it didn’t. Look, they're as dry as an old lady’s insides.”

“How was your trip?” Rood asked as Christopher continued watering.

“You know. Horseshoes with the good ole boys. They always enjoy having the family’s token queer at the reunion.”

“What’s that about?”

“You should come next time. I think they accept the idea of my being gay, but if the reality of my big black stud were shoved in their shitkicker faces, that might be a different thing.”

“Thanks for the invite, but I think I’ll pass. I’ve provided enough shock value to rednecks over the years.”

Rood sat on one of the patio chairs.

“You would not believe what happened to me at the airport, though,” Christopher said.

“What?”

“I was waiting at the gate for the boarding call. A tall, strong man sat down next to me.”

“You were checking him out? You slut.”

“No I wasn’t checking him out. It’s just that he sat down next to me. I noticed him. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He might’ve fallen asleep.”

“You were checking him out.”

“I don’t think he was gay. I’m not sure he was straight, either though. Something about him was strange. He was pale. He looked, I don’t know, broken. He slept, or just had his eyes closed, for a while. The plane was delayed. We were both sitting there.”

Christopher set down the watering can and sat cross-legged on the ground near Rood’s feet.

“That’s when things got strange.”

“How?”

“A girl walked up. Well, a woman. Kinda pretty. Little bitty thang. Bangs. Nice legs.”

“What did she do?”

“She stood right in front of the guy. The guy had his eyes closed. I think she saw I was gonna nudge him. She motioned with her hand for me not to. She wanted him to open his eyes on his own, maybe sense her presence, and then see her. I thought maybe they’d gone to school together, or worked together, or maybe dated, or maybe they were related. I had no idea what was about to happen.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I think that he did sense her presence and he opened his eyes.”

“And?”

“Well it was the damnedest thing I ever saw. You’d think he thought he was still dreaming. He looked at her. He closed his eyes. He shook his head. He turned and looked at me. He turned back to look at her. His jaw dropped and he turned pale. He was realizing she was really there.”

“So, he was like, freaked out?”

“Oh, no. He didn’t know if it was real or not. He was not quite ready to be freaked out yet.”

“What was she doing?”

“Just standing there, watching him react.”

“Didn’t they say anything to each other?”

“Oh, yeah. But not at first. They looked at each other for the longest time. I thought for sure they were gonna call our flight and she was gonna walk away and I was never gonna know what it was all about. Then he said:

“ ‘I said I was sorry. I said I was sorry. I said I was sorry.’ Three times, like that. Like a magical chant to make her go away. Like Dorothy clicking her heels.”

“What did she do?”

“She just stood there. And then he started talking.”

“What did he say?”

“I’ll tell you. Let me get a beer, though. I’m getting’ as thirsty as my pretty tomatoes were.”

Christopher got up and went through the back door into the kitchen and came out with a Pilsner Urquell. He took a swig and continued.

“He said: ‘I thought I had the green light. I told you. I never would’ve done it. I thought I had the green light. I’ve paid. I said I was sorry. I paid and paid and paid. My brother’s dead. My mom had a stroke. I went to prison. You know that. I said I was sorry. I said I was sorry.’ Then he started crying. Sobbing. Hands over his face. My Lord, I said to myself.”

“And what about the lady?”

“She let him cry for a while. Then she talked.”

Charlie sipped his beer and stood up, imitating the woman’s cool demeanor.

“”She said: ‘I know. You said all that in court. I know. I know what happened. That’s not why I came over when I saw. I know your brother and mother were victims, too.’ ”

“Then he looked at her like he couldn’t believe she was saying it. His eyes got all wide. He didn’t say anything. Then she started talking again.” She said: ‘I know it’s your fault. But I was in it, too. I played a role, too. I was your victim. But I was involved, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have ever gotten in your truck with you. Maybe I shouldn’t have reported it. I ask myself that, too. I know your brother’s dead and your mom’s paralyzed. It’s a small town. Everybody knows what happened. I’ve felt guilty about it since that day. I told the truth about what happened. You know that. But I know what happened because I told the truth. That’s why I’m standing here. I need you to forgive me, too.’ ”

“Wow,” Rood said.

“Then she reached out her hand to him. He looked at it. He started crying again. He shook her hand. Tears were flowing down his face. He was blubbering. ‘I forgive you,’ he said. Then it was too much for him, I guess. He got up and ran away. I mean ran. Like a deer. He ran across the terminal and down a hallway. The lady walked away. But I saw her on the plane later. You know me. I’m the worst godawful gossip between here and Pensacola. I had to know what happened. So I walked down the aisle and asked her after the seatbelt sign came off.”

“What did you say?”

“I said: ‘Ma’am, I saw you and that gentleman out there and I am sorry but I am a godawful gossip and I just have to ask what that was all about.’ ”

“Did she tell you?”

“No, she just closed her eyes and shook her head and made a little ‘no’ sign with her hand. So I guess I’ll never know.”

“Musta been a traffic accident, right? He thought he had the green light. His brother died. She was probably in the car, huh?”

“Yeah, I thought of that, but …”

“But what? Come inside. I’ve missed you. Let me give you a massage to take away your travel stress.”

“Don’t have to ask me twice!” Christopher went inside and stripped and stretched himself out on their bed, stomach down. Rood straddled him and began working his hands over Christopher’s shoulders.

“Unless …” Rood said.

“Unless what?”

“Maybe the green light was for sex. Maybe he was saying he thought she was OK with having sex, and it turned out she wasn’t. And she reported him.”

Christopher stiffened.

“Yes, that must be it!” Then he relaxed again. “No, the brother. And the mom. That doesn’t really fit, does it?”

“Could.”

“Guess we’ll never know.”

Under Rood’s exquisite touch, Christopher soon forgot about what he’d seen at the airport while he was waiting for the flight back from Florida.

Flight 59 to JFK (Part II)

“Good morning, Nelly.”

“Hello, Sally. Good to see you.”

Nelly Belcourt opened the door to the office of her counseling practice. Sally had been waiting outside. It was first thing Tuesday morning.

“So urgent?” Nelly asked.

“I really wanted to see you yesterday.”

“I couldn’t come in to the office. I had previous engagements. Sorry. I left you a message. I’m presuming you got it. You’re here.”

They walked into her office. Nelly turned on the lights. Sally sat down on the couch and her counselor took a seat near her and turned so they could speak face to face.

“So. What was so urgent?”

“I saw him.”

“Him?”

“Walt.”

Nelly wasn’t registering. So Sally explained.

“The guy who raped me. The one whose brother got arrested by mistake after I called the cops. And got killed in jail.”

The counselor nodded. She remembered Sally’s story.

“Where did you see him?”

“At the airport. I went home for the weekend. I was flying back to New York on Sunday afternoon. We were going to fly on the same plane. Only we didn’t. I talked to him for a minute. And he broke down and cried and ran away. I had to come talk to you. I can’t sleep. I can’t think about anything else. I’m nauseous. I’m afraid.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I didn’t say anything at first. He was sleeping. I just stood there in front of him for a while. I didn’t know if I should talk to him. There was this gay guy sitting next to him. I thought they were together, but I guess they weren’t. For a second I thought maybe, in addition to everything else that happened, he went gay because of …”

“We’ve been over this. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I called the police. And he went to prison for five years. And his brother died. And his mom had a stroke.”

“He raped you.”

Sally was silent for a moment.

“Looking back, I can’t be sure.”

“We’ve been over this. It wasn’t a misunderstanding. He forced himself on you. You tried to stop him. He was twice your size. That’s rape. What did you say to him?”

“When he woke up, he looked at me as if he were having a nightmare.”

“Of course. Don’t you think he feels guilty?”

“Well, yeah. But so do I.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he was sorry. He said he’d told me he was sorry. He said his brother was dead and his mom had a stroke. He said he’d been to prison for five years. He wanted to know how much he was going to have to pay and for how long. He said he thought I wanted it.”

“That’s horrible. Is that really what he said?”

“No, not all that. He said he thought he had ‘the green light.’ ”

“What did you say?”

“I said I needed him to forgive me.”

“You shouldn’t look at it that way.”

“But I do. So I held my hand out to him. He touched my hand and then he ran away crying.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“I knew you were going to ask that.”

“So you can tell me.”

“I was confused. I didn’t know how to react. The gay guy saw me on the plane later and asked me what was going on, but I wouldn’t talk to him.”

“You were too upset.”

“I’m very upset.”

“What did you want from him?”

“From the gay guy?

“No, from Walt.”

“I don’t know. When I saw him I just thought I needed him to forgive me.”

“He raped you.”

“I knew his brother. We went to school together. Sean. He was a really nice guy. He was retarded.”

Sally started to cry.

“It wasn’t your fault. You’ve told me before. The deputy killed him in jail. They didn’t know he was retarded. He didn’t understand what the deputy was telling him, so he got beaten. The deputy was fired. It was the deputy’s fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But if I hadn’t called the police …”

“He raped you.”

“He was caressing my leg. I didn’t stop him. He kissed me. I didn’t stop him.”

“You were 15. You didn’t know what to do.”

“He was only 17. He didn’t know what he was doing, either.”

“He was twice your size. You know all this. We’ve talked about this.”

“When his mother went to identify Sean’s body, she had a stroke. She’s been paralyzed ever since.”

“Not your fault.”

“Whose fault is it?”

“He raped you.”

“His brother didn’t rape me. His mother didn’t rape me.”

“What happened to his brother and his mother wasn’t your fault.”

“Easy to say. I can tell myself that. Harder to believe. What if I hadn’t reported it?”

“You reported it. You were raped. You had to report it. You did your civic duty. It would’ve been irresponsible of you not to report a rape.”

“I told you I came. I had an orgasm. It was my first time.”

“I know.”

“It was awful at first. I was scared. I thought he was going to hurt me. That’s why I didn’t scratch his face or hit him hard. He was twice my size. I thought I’d make him mad and he’d hurt me. But then when he calmed down, the sex got … good. It felt good. I came.”

“Doesn’t matter. He forced himself on you.”

“His brother’s dead. And his mother’s paralyzed. And I got off.”

“Don’t do this to yourself. You need to stop thinking about this. Go swimming. Go to the gym. Get a good workout.”

“I got into his car. I was wearing my summer dress. He asked if I’d smoke a joint with him. I said no. He asked if would go down to the orange grove with him while he smoked. I said yes.”

“You’ve told me all this before. Don’t keep reliving it. Put it behind you. You can’t keep reliving this. Close your eyes.”

Sally did.

“Picture it as something inside you. A black thing in your gut. Now imagine it’s a balloon, a black balloon. Let it out and watch it float away.”

Sally sighed. She opened her eyes.

“I haven’t eaten since I saw him. I’m starving. Something good for brunch around here?

Sally knew Nelly was a foodie. They’d traded recipes over the years of her counseling.

“There’s a new tapas place down the street. I had lunch there the other day. But I don’t think it’s open yet.”

“Anything else?”

“The deli.”

“Wanna grab something with me?”

“Yeah, I’ll go along and have a coffee. You should get some chicken soup.”

Sally recognized the recommendation for comfort food.

“Chicken soup won’t help. I’m hungry. Maybe one of those big omelettes.”

They got up and Sally led the way out. Nelly turned off her office light and locked the door behind her.

Flight 59 to JFK (Part III)

Walt was running down the hall at the West Tampa Convalescent Care Center.

“Mom! Mom!” he shouted, panting, as he got to her room. “You won’t believe what happened. I was flying back to New York. I was waiting for the flight. I sat down next to a gay guy and I fell asleep. When I woke up Sally was standing in front of me. Sally, mom. The girl. She’s grown up. She’s a nice looking young woman now. She’s not a stupid teen-ager anymore. She looks fine. She’s fine. She’s OK. And you know what mom? She felt bad about what happened to you. She came to me to apologize. She asked me to forgive her. She asked for my forgiveness, mom. I thought she was gonna make me say I was sorry again. She feels guilty about you. She feels guilty about Sean.”

Walt’s mother may have winced when she heard the name of her dead son. But it was impossible to say for certain. In the years after her stroke, she could write short sentences on a pad of paper on the table under her right hand. But she had stopped writing at least a year before Walt got out of prison.

“So it’s all over, now, mom. It’s all over. Right, mom? It’s all over. She asked me to forgive her. I touched her hand. She let me touch her. To forgive her.”

His mother made a sound.

“Uuuuunh.”

It was impossible to tell what she was trying to say.

“So you heard what I said mom? You can still here. It’s over. I’m so sorry, mom. I’m so sorry it happened. But it’s over now. It started that day I asked her if she wanted a ride home. She was carrying those grocery bags. I put them in the back of the truck. I asked her to come down to the grove with me. She said yes. I touched her leg. I thought she liked it. I’m so sorry, mom. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I thought I had the green light. I really did. I know I made a mistake. I didn’t know, mom. I’d never been with a girl before. I’d never even kissed a girl before.”

“UUUUUUNH.”

Lela Baldessari, his mother’s nurse walked in.

“You shouldn’t be here, Walt,” she said. “You’re upsetting her.”

“No!” he shouted at her. “You’ve got to understand. I just saw Sally. The girl. The one. She asked me to forgive her. So she knows. She understands. It wasn’t all my fault. I’ve got to tell my mom! You’ve got to let me tell my mom!”

Lela walked out.

“So everybody’s OK, mom. Even the deputy who killed Sean. Deputy West, that asshole. He got fired from the force, but they didn’t charge him? You remember: They couldn’t prove he knew Sean was disabled, so he was allowed to use force on him when Sean didn’t do what he said. That guy went into his dad’s real estate business. He’s developed all the groves around here, built tract homes on them. He’s made millions, mom. The asshole arrested Sean thinking he was me, and now look at him. He’s rich. Sally’s OK. Deputy West’s OK. It’s just you, me and Sean. I’m sorry, mom. But everybody else is OK. Sally wanted me to forgive her, mom. So it’s over, now, mom, except for you and me.”

“Paging Dr. Hudson.” It was Lela’s voice on the intercom. “Please come to the front desk. Security, please. Front desk.”

“I wanted to grow up and take care of Sean, mom. That was my plan. Like we always said. Like you always used to tell me: I’d have to take care of him when you were gone. I started a program for disabled teens in New York. That’s what I used the settlement money for, mom. I met a stockbroker in prison. He was in for embezzlement. He helped me set it up. His son’s disabled. He’s not gonna steal anymore. Don’t worry. The program’s named for Sean and his son. It’s called Sean and Rick’s Place. See? I’m making it all good again, mom. See how I’ve honored Sean? What do you think, mom?”

“UNNNNNNH. UNNNNNH.”

He pulled his checkbook out of his pocket and tore out a deposit slip. He turned it over and put it on the table under his mom’s hand. He put a pen in her hand.

“Walt?”

Dr. Hudson had walked in the room. Lela was standing next to him. Two orderlies were behind them.

“Dr. Hudson! She wanted me to forgive her. Sally! The girl!”

“Walt, you’ve got to go. You’re just upsetting her. Can’t you see that?”

His mother was moving her hand, slowly, scrawling something on the back of the deposit slip.

“Get him out of here,” Dr. Hudson said to the orderlies. They each took one of Whit’s arms.

“Wait! She’s writing! What’s she writing!” Walt shouted as they dragged him away.

“You’ve got to let me see what she’s writing.”

He struggled but the two orderlies dragged him out the front door and pushed him out into the parking lot. Dr. Hudson followed them out.

“You’ve got to go, Walt,” he said. “You can’t come here anymore. You have to leave this be. There’s a restraining order. I’ll enforce it. I don’t want to call the police. You’re on parole, aren’t you? Haven’t you had enough of this? Isn’t it time to move on?”

“I … I …” Walt started sobbing. “She asked me to forgive her. She knows it’s not all my fault. She knows it was a mistake. How long do I have to pay?”

“For the rest of your life, Walt. You’re going to pay until the day you die. Now get out of here before I have to call the police.”

Walt got into the rental car he picked up at the airport, started the engine and drove away, sobbing. Dr. Hudson watched the car turn out of the parking lot and disappear down the highway.

He walked back into the building. Lela was waiting for him.

“Did he leave?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he’ll come back?”

“Probably.”

“What should I do if he does?”

“I’ve known that family since I finished medical school. Their dad and I played golf together. He died young, sudden heart attack. Then, just months after that, the rape case. The deputy went to their house and arrested the wrong brother and killed him because he didn’t know he was retarded so he thought he was defying him instead of just not understanding what he was being told to do. Then the mom stroked out from the stress. He’s the only one left. You wonder what bad star rose over them.”

“So what should I do if he comes back.”

“I don’t know. Call the police. Or not. Sit down with him. Let him talk it out. Try to reason with him.”

“He doesn’t seem all that reasonable.”

“He’s not. But would you be? You’ve heard that expression: ‘Things have to get better.’ Well, what if things don’t get better? What if things get bad and then get worse, and worse and worse? You gotta wonder with some people. Where does it stop? How much can you take?”

Dr. Hudson walked down the hall back to his office and shut the door behind him. He poured himself a glass from the bottle of Old Granddad on his shelf and took a sip as he looked out the window at the colors of the setting sun.

Jennie and the Diamond Ring

“Genug shoen – enough already. I’m making good money with the taxi. You don’t have to schlep with the cart all the way up to Lexington and 1-2-5 every day,” Izzy would say to his mother-in-law every morning.

“Vy not?” she’d say. “Vat else I can do?”

Along with thousands upon thousands of other Jews, Isidore had fled Russia before the revolution. With his parents and brothers and sisters, he made his way from Minsk across Europe, via Budapest and London, and landed at Ellis Island in 1913. They stayed in Charlotte, North Carolina for a while, where he worked at a junk yard and drove a motorcycle. Then they went to Calgary while waiting for American naturalization. Iz learned to be a projectionist there. As soon as they got their U.S. papers, they set up in New York. That’s where Iz married Fannie in 1922. He drove a cab and was doing pretty well for those days.

Fannie’s family was in the garment business. Her mother Jennie, a tiny woman, had been taking a pile of end-pieces from their sewing shop every night. She’d load up a cart with them the next morning and push it to Harlem. Black women would buy the cast-off fabric and use it to make potholders, scarves or even socks.

But it was driving Iz crazy.

“Why? Why? Genug shoen, Jennie.” Sure, when he was a projectionist, the pocket money she brought home from the end-pieces helped. But as a taxi driver working double-shifts he didn’t need it any more. He had gotten married, had two kids. His father died and he was supporting his family and his mother-in-law in their rented apartment. She didn’t need to push the cart any more and he didn’t want her to.

But it gave her something to do every day and she wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. She wasn’t even going to give it up with a fight, the one they’d have almost every night when he’d come home from his long day behind the wheel, shuttling fares across the Bronx and Brooklyn and Manhattan.

One day Jennie came back from Harlem and was emptying the cart when she saw it: A spectacular diamond wedding ring. A gold band with three prongs held a big flawless stone, must’ve been at least a carat and a half, maybe two. On the inside of the band was the engraved inscription: “To Marcella From C. Love You Always.”

“Hmm,” Jennie said to herself. “It must have slipped off the finger of one of the black ladies.”

She put the ring in a piece of fabric and tucked it into a pocket of her purse. She re-stocked the cart with that day’s new end-pieces and went to bed.

The next morning, as she approached Lexington and 125th, she saw a woman standing on the corner, with body language displaying some signs of anticipation. The woman didn’t wait for her to get all the way down the block – Jennie’s tiny steps and advancing age made for a slow trip. The woman walked forward to meet her.

“I was so afraid you’d never come back,” the black woman said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“My son-in-law, he doesn’t vant me to come no more. But I like it. Vat else vill I do? But he says I don’t make enough money. It’s not vorth it, he says. He doesn’t vant me out pushing the cart. Oy vay, ve fight about it every night.”

“Do you remember me from yesterday?”

Jennie didn’t really. There were a lot of women coming to look at the fabric every day. And she was getting old. She grimaced and shrugged.

“I was looking through your cart. I lost my ring yesterday. I thought maybe you found it later?”

Jennie smiled. The woman’s eyes widened with something beyond relief in reaction. But it wasn’t over. There would have to be authentication.

“Desc-rrr-ibe it,” the tiny Jewish woman commanded the large black woman. Jennie rolled the ‘r’ with her Yiddish accent.

The black woman remained calm.

“It has a gold band and three prongs and it’s engraved “To Marcella From C. Love You Always.”

Jennie opened her purse and plucked the piece of fabric holding the ring out of the pocket and handed it to the black woman.

“Here it is,” she said.

The black woman opened the fabric and saw the ring. She looked at Jennie for a few seconds with something like bewilderment. Then she walked away.

“Hmmph,” Jenny said to herself. “You’d tink a ‘tank you,’ maybe?”

It was Shabbat. Jennie went home for the Friday night prayer. The men went to synagogue in the morning and the women prepared the lunch. The weekend passed. Iz begged Jennie not to walk the fifteen blocks back to Harlem anymore. For the first time, she thought about it.

“Maybe he’s right,” she said to herself. “I am getting old.” But then she realized how bored she’d be. And a couple of bucks a week allowed her to buy a pin for her granddaughter and a toy car for her grandson every now and then. “Maybe a few more months,” she said. “Maybe I quit ven the vinter comes.”

She pushed the cart slowly down the block toward Lexington and 125th on Monday morning. But something was happening. Things seemed different.

There was a crowd of black women there and it looked like they were waiting for something.

They were waiting for her. About a dozen of them, maybe more.

As soon as she got to the corner, they crowded around her cart and started buying the cast-off fabric pieces faster than she could count the money. Instead of selling six or seven pieces for nickels and dimes, she unloaded the whole cart. Suddenly, about five dollars worth of coins was weighing down her purse.

When the crowd cleared, she saw the woman whose ring she’d returned the week before, standing across the street, observing the scene with her arms crossed.
Marcella nodded to her. Jennie nodded back.

The same thing happened the next day and the day after that.

Marcella had gone to church on Sunday and told the story of the ring. She was the leader of the choir.

“So I want all the women in this church to go down to the corner whenever you can and buy the fabric from the honest Jewish lady who gave me back my ring.”

When my grandfather Iz heard the story he put his hands over his face.

“Oy gevalt! Now she’s never going to stop with the fershlugginah cart!”

And so my great-grandmother Jennie pushed that cart up to Lexington 1-2-5 every day until she couldn’t push it anymore.

Boys in the Van (Prelude to 'In Love With Lana')

Sean and Mike were standing at the curb in front of their elementary school, waiting for me to pull up in the van like I did at three o’clock every day and drive them to the private school where I worked so they could do crafts and music or just play until their parents picked them up and took them home.

It looked like they were grinning as they got in. They might’ve even been suppressing giggles. Something was going on.

They were both seven. Sean had a missing front tooth and he climbed up on the passenger seat in the front. Mike had a blond helmet of hair and sat in the back seat, taking the middle position so he could see us. The two boys were looking at each other as I pulled away.

Sean unbuckled his seat belt and stood up as we pulled out from the residential neighborhood onto the boulevard. He was a little hyperactive, so his moving around like that didn’t surprise me. But I had the feeling they were planning something.

“Hey, bus driver!” Sean said. That’s how the kids got my attention, by shouting “Hey, bus driver.”

“Yeah, Sean?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I have a girlfriend,” I answered.

The boys both started giggling. Sean with his big gap-toothed grin, put his arms around an imaginary girl and started humping her.

“Do you fuck her?” He shrieked with laughter and Mike started laughing, too. They kept laughing and laughing and Sean kept humping the imaginary girl. They looked at each other and they laughed harder.

So that was their plan. To ask me if I fucked my girlfriend. They were having a great time.

“Do you fuck her?” Sean said again. “Do you fuck your girlfriend, bus driver?”

I smiled.

“Yeah, I fuck her.” They started howling. I was driving down Ventura Boulevard, past restaurants and a park and an upscale shopping mall with two seven-year-olds who were cracking up at the thought of me fucking my girlfriend. I waited a little while for them to calm down. Then I asked them:

“You know the best part?”

“What’s that?” Mike asked as his laughter shifted down into giggles.

“Remember – WE’RE NAKED!” I shouted.

They went wild. Sean was screaming and Mike was drooling and pounding the van seats.

“We Get Naked And We FUCK!” I shouted.

They could barely breathe through their hysteria. They were wheezing and convulsing.

I had forgotten what it was like to be seven. But then I remembered. I waited for them to calm down. I turned right onto the boulevard. They were regaining their composure, but one of them would burst out with a blubbering laugh and then the other would follow. When I thought the time was right, I decided to get them going again.

“Wanna hear somethin’ else?” I asked.

“Yeah! What? Tell us! Tell us? What? Tell us!” they demanded. “Tell us!”

“You know what she does sometimes?”

“What? What? Tell us! Tell us!” They were both standing up, waiting for the next part, knowing that it was going to be good.

“Sometimes …”

“What? What? Tell us! What? Tell us!”

“She puts my wiener in her mouth and she sucks on it!”

They practically exploded. Snot was bubbling out of Sean’s nose. Mike’s chest was heaving. He threw himself across the back seat and was kicking the door of the van.

I didn’t wait. I struck:

“And you know what else? You know what sounds she makes when we fuck? She goes: Ooh! Ooh! Ah! Ah! Aiiee! AIEEE! YEAH! OH BABY! YEAH! OH! OH! OH!”

Sean fell on his knees and was pounding his head against the seat. Mike doubled over and clutched his stomach. They were both screaming. Sean’s face was turning cherry-red and he was pulling his hair. Mike was wheezing and tears were streaming down his cheeks.

Thing is, I didn’t really have a girlfriend anymore. We had broken up for the last time a few weeks earlier.

But that’s another story.

It isn’t all that funny, though.

In Love With Lana (Part I)

It was after 11 when the phone rang. Was that unusual? Not entirely. It was April in my second year of college. Sometimes people had things they wanted to tell me late at night.

“Hi. Do you have a new girlfriend?”

It was Lana. We had broken up more that a year before that, then got back together for a couple of months in late summer and early fall. We were seeing each other every now and then, but I hadn’t heard from her in a month or so.

“No,” I answered. It was true. There were a couple of girls I’d been taking to concerts or movies and going to bed with every now and then. No one special, though. But I wasn’t going to explain all that to her.

“So come over and fuck me tomorrow night.”

That was not how she usually spoke. At least, not to me. I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t say anything.

“What, you don’t want to fuck?”

“I want to fuck,” I said. “I was just a little, uh, surprised.”

“I decided just to come out and say what I want. Annette gave me the keys to her boyfriend’s apartment on the beach. He’s out of town. So I’m going to drive to your place tomorrow after work, then you’ll follow me back here. I’ll pick you up at six.”

That was insane. She worked at the Bank of America in Malibu. Why would she drive ten miles out to the Valley just to have me follow her back?

“Why don’t you just give me directions?”

“Because if I gave you directions, you might not be able to find it, and then you’d just go home and I’d be sitting there waiting for you, and then I’d call you at eight, and you’d say ‘I couldn’t find it’ and you’d ruin my plan.”

“Plan?”

“For this date. This fuck date.”

She knew me pretty well. She was right. That’s what would’ve happened. I would’ve ruined her plan.

“OK. I’ll be here at six. How are you, anyway?”

“This isn’t a talk date. This is a fuck date. If you want to talk, you can call me and make a talk date. But this is my date. I called you. So it’s a fuck date.”

“OK. Bye.”

She said goodbye and hung up. I fell asleep, partially flattered, but mostly apprehensive.

---

Lana was my first girlfriend. I’d met her at a friend’s house when I was 14 and she was 15. She sat down at the piano and played the riff from “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” She had pretty eyes, a round face, long brown hair and a super-curvy body with D-cup breasts and great legs. We got to be friends over the next couple of years. She got a job at Bank of America when she graduated from high school. I was still in my senior year. We started spending more and more time together, going out to dinner and movies and concerts. I told her I loved her, and it was true. One night when my parents were out, we had sex. It was my first time. She was really beautiful naked.

---

She knocked on my door the next night at six to pick me up for our fuck date. I was ready.

“So you’ll follow me?” she asked.

“Like we agreed.”

I hopped in my Fiat sedan and followed her Barracuda. We sped through Malibu Canyon under a cloud-covered twilight. The mountains were still green from the winter rains.

---

After we’d made love that first night, we spent most of our time together. I got to know her parents because we were hanging out at her house on Calabasas Lake a lot. Her dad owned the local butcher shop. “He has such soft hands,” she told me. Later she realized it was because they were soaked in blood all day.

Her mother had been a problem drinker when Lana was young – they had to get in the car and drive through the neighborhood chasing her when she’d run from the house late in the night, wearing only her nightgown, racked with some sort of alcohol-fueled anguish. Apparently she’d gained control of her emotions and was still able to have a couple of glasses of wine every now and then. She’d become loving and tearful instead of despairing and pained.

Her dad knew I was a music student. He gave me a little bit of a hard time about it.

“When you’re young, art and music and books are great, they’re fun, they’re interesting,” he told me one night in his kitchen. “But when you get older, it’s all about the job and making money, and art and music and books become less and less a part of your life.”

I knew he was right in his way, but I thought that was a shitty way of looking at things.

It was his second marriage. He’d met her mom after his first divorce, when he was working as a bartender at a nightclub on Catalina Island. She was a singer there, performing with Xavier Cugat. They got married and had the two kids, Randy, the scientist, and Lana.

We were planning on moving to Monterey or Sonoma and going to college together.

“Take care of her,” her mother told me one night after a couple of drinks. “She’s my baby.”

“Get out of here, mom,” Lana told her. Her mom left.

“But that was nice of her,” I said later. “She cares about you. She loves you.”

“She’s drunk.”

Before we started getting ready to set up a new life together, we took a cross-country drive to move her brother and his girlfriend Cindy from Berkeley to Boston, where Randy would be going to grad school at MIT.

It was a horrible trip. We all got on each other’s nerves. Randy and Cindy had wanted to speed across the U.S., but we’d all agreed we could take it a little easy across the Western half, stopping at Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore and taking some detours across scenic routes to see the Grand Tetons and the Badlands.

I had misinterpreted that agreement, however. They still wanted to make the maximum amount of miles every day and they wanted to make the sightseeing stops as short as possible. I’d been hoping to enjoy the journey, but it was a grueling experience. I was constantly asking myself why I was doing it when I could’ve had a better time staying home. After the third day, none of us were on our best behavior anymore, no one was trying to make a good impression, the conversation was dull to non-existent. The road was as monotonous and painful as the whir of a dentist’s drill.

In a foul mood at a camp-site in Utah as the trip was turning into a nightmare, I decided to switch my major from music to journalism. I’d left my enrollment packet for my dad to drop off at college on the first day of registration, and I called him from the campground pay phone and told him which classes to sign me up for.

Finally, we got to Boston. But it was so hot and humid that the only relief I could find was playing with an ice cube, sliding it around the back of my neck and across my forehead and up and down my arms. We had little inclination to do anything except go to movies – mostly for the air-conditioning. We got out of Boston as fast as we could.

We drove back through Canada, crossing at Niagara Falls. Although I didn’t realize it, Lana was sick of me by then.

---

I followed Lana’s Barracuda as it turned right onto Pacific Coast Highway. She turned left into Latigo Shore Drive and stopped at the security gate. The guard waved us both through. The road ran in front a row of white townhouses with blue trim that were right on the ocean. We parked and went inside.

“Nice place,” I said. “How long do you have it for?”

“Oh, as long as I want.”

“Not forever.”

“Of course not. I don’t want it forever.”

“I would. What does this guy do?”

“He’s a contractor. He’s out of town on some big project.”

I was having a look around the living room.

There was a couch facing a TV. On the wall behind the TV was a large portrait of a bearded man holding his three-year-old son. It was surrounded by about about twenty five-by-seven photographs of the man with the boy.

“This him?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I was struck by what I thought was outrageous vanity. I mean, would you put twenty photos of yourself up on a wall over your TV set?

“How long has Annette been going out with him?”

“Well, it’s not like they’re really going out.”

Lana had said it was Annette’s boyfriend townhouse. But it turned out that was an oversimplification.

“Annette met him at the bar of Moonshadows after work one day,” she explained. “He had a dozen keys on his key ring, and he gave her one. He said he was hardly ever here and he gives the key to his place to all his girlfriends. So I guess that makes her his girlfriend, right? Anyway, Annette’s going out with this other guy, she didn’t want to bring him here, so I asked if I could have the key and she said yes.”

“So he could walk in here and find us? Wouldn’t he wonder who we are and what we’re doing here?”

She laughed.

“No, I took care of that. He’s out of town. Annette made sure.”

“OK, but that key ring – all his girlfriends have these keys. One of them might walk in, right?”

“No, I guess he does ask his ‘girlfriends’ to get permission to use the place. We’re OK. Don’t worry.”

I shrugged.

---

Toward the end of our trip across Canada, passing through Banff National Park in Alberta, we drove above a river that was used to transport lumber. Logs were floating downstream on the smooth water and were gathered in an inlet off to the side.

The river was pretty wide, and there were dozens, maybe a hundred logs there below us. Above us, we were surrounded by mountains covered with bright green pines. The sky was clear blue and the sun made the river sparkle. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

I don’t know what happened that day, that moment. I don’t know if I said something that annoyed Lana or if it was because I wasn’t saying anything. We weren’t the same nervous wrecks that we’d been on the trip across the U.S., because we weren’t trying to make time. When we got tired of the road every day, we’d stop, get a hotel room and explore the environment, go bowling or just lay in bed together. I didn’t think it was going all that badly.

But for some reason, above the river full of logs and under the pine-covered mountains, she snapped at me. I don’t remember over what.

She was driving. I was in the passenger seat. I climbed into the back section of the station wagon and curled up in the fetal position and tried to fall asleep or do anything to forget how bad she was making me feel.

“Get back up here,” she ordered me. “Why?” I asked myself. “So you can dish out more abuse?” I didn’t respond.

“Get back up here now,” she demanded. I didn’t move.

She pulled the car over to the side of the road and got out.

I sat up to see what she was doing. She ran down the shoulder of the road and started stomping her feet and swinging her arms like a five-year-old having a temper tantrum. I could hear her screaming and I could see her sobbing.

I got out of the car and ran over to her. I put my arm around her and walked back up the road.

“Shhh, it’s OK. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you that angry. I’ll stop. I won’t be an asshole anymore. I promise. It’ll be OK. I won’t do that again. I won’t do anything like that again, ever.”

I had no idea how miserable I’d been making her.

We got back into the car and drove off across British Columbia, making a stop for a day in Vancouver, then powering through Washington and Oregon before sightseeing in Monterey.

It was after a lunch at a quaint bistro in Carmel that she told me it was over. We wouldn’t be moving up north together. We wouldn’t be going to college together. We wouldn’t be getting married. It was over.

“This is just not what I want,” she said.

I cried and asked her to leave me alone in the car for a few minutes. She took a walk around the block.

I was devastated. But I was relieved, too.

In Love With Lana (Part II)

“I didn’t bring you here to look at the pictures of this guy on his wall,” Lana said. “You came here to fuck.”

Nevertheless, I was still standing in front of the pictures.

“Shouldn’t we worship at the altar of this guy’s self-aggrandizement for a little while, though?”

“Hey, don’t put him down. He makes money. Look where he’s living.”

We went into the bedroom. The window looked out onto the beach, straight onto the sand. It was high tide. The waves were breaking a few feet away. You could hear them, but the sun had set and the moon hadn’t risen yet, so you couldn’t see them. It was black, black, black outside.

Lana took her clothes off and lay down on the bed. She was a beautiful woman and every curve on her body was absolutely exquisite. She had a great haircut, too.

---

She had been my first girlfriend. But I wasn’t her first guy.

Lana lost her virginity when she was thirteen. An eighteen-year-old neighbor got her alone at his house during a party and seduced her. How was it? I asked her. It was overwhelming, she explained. She almost came, but the sensory overload of being so excited and so scared was too extreme. She didn’t have sex again until she was sixteen. She was dating a guitarist named Mark. I heard him play that first night I met her, when she played “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” on the piano. Mark could do a note-for-note, tone-for-tone rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s version of the “Star Spangled Banner” from Woodstock. He had an excellent ear and could figure out songs after hearing them once. Mark played in a couple of bands and we’d go hear them every now and then. They had sex pretty often but she said it never did anything for her.

Then she became pretty promiscuous. She’d go to bars with her friends and their fake IDs, and they’d get picked up. She went camping with a girlfriend and they met two guys and traded tent-mates. (She told me after she’d finished having sex with the guy in his tent she cut a huge fart and laughed and laughed and laughed.) She even drove around with another girlfriend looking for guys and went to a vacant tract of land off Mulholland Highway once they’d found some. She told me none of that ever did anything for her, either. She never came.

One night, though, she went with some girlfriends to visit a friend in a dorm at UC Santa Barbara. She got separated from her crowd and a guy convinced her to come back to his room. She wouldn’t fuck because she wasn’t on the pill at the time and didn’t want to get pregnant. So the guy did her with his fingers and she told me she almost came. She thanked him with a blow job.

She still hadn’t had an orgasm by the time I went to bed with her. And she didn’t come that night, either. Nor the next. Nor the one after that. All through March, April and the first part of May – nothing. We tried everything. Doggy style. Oral. Her on top. Me on the side. Many variations as depicted in the Kama Sutra. Even some that weren’t. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Then one afternoon we were in my room and I was on my back and she was riding me. I crooked my arm to finger her clit and she said: “Oh, yeah, keep doing that,” and she moaned and sighed and moaned and sighed and collapsed onto me and said she came. I felt good.

Then she told me:

“I don’t want you thinking that you did that. I did that. I let my body do that.”

That might seem harsh. But she was being honest. I’m glad she said it.

We had sex almost every day for the next five months, through the rest of May, then June, July, August and September, even on that horrible trip to Boston and back.

---

Even today, as I write this all these years later, I look back on that night in Malibu and I’m still amazed that I got it up. But I did.

And I put my knees between her thighs and suspended myself above her breasts in push-up position, so I could see. And I penetrated her and began thrusting, first gently, then harder. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth. She was trying to enjoy it. I was watching her.

She opened her eyes and saw me watching. We looked at each other for the time it took for me to make a half dozen or so thrusts. Shtoonk, shtoonk, shtoonk, ….

“This is awful,” she said.

“You’re right.”

I pulled out and sat on the edge of the bed.

“So what do you want to do?” I asked, sitting there with my hard-on.

She shook her head, dismayed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess this fuck date was a dumb idea.”

“No, I think it was a good idea. It sounded really fun, actually. Maybe for anybody else, though. Just not for you and me.”

She laughed a little.

“I should go,” I said.

I put on my clothes, said goodnight and walked out the door.

---

When we got back from Carmel after our breakup, I didn’t call her and she didn’t call me. Until about two months later, one night pretty late. She asked me to come over. She met me outside and ran up to me and grabbed my hand.

“I had sex with another guy,” she said. I suppose she wanted to see my reaction.

“Oh. Who?” I wasn’t completely indifferent. But pretty close.

“You don’t know him. I met him at a Halloween party.”

“What did you go as?”

“I wore an army uniform.”

“Cool. I was a hipster. I wore a cap. It wasn’t much of a costume. I went to a party at Joann’s house. It was pretty boring, so some of us went to the Roxy to see George Duke.”

I paused for effect.

“I didn’t get laid.”

We were walking behind the houses on Calabasas Lake. There were ducks floating on the water, asleep. They would wake up as we approached and give their wings a few flaps, then glide away. Otherwise the night was silent.

“I just wanted to tell you,” she said.

“I understand. It’s important for you that I know. It’s over between us. This makes it official and final, huh?”

“I still love you,” she said.

“I’ll always love you,” I told her.

---

She dated a French exchange student named Dominique, two years younger than she was. She wanted to go to France to see him after he went back there, but her father wouldn’t loan her the money. She got mad at him and they fought and she came over to my house one day and asked me if she could stay for a while. I said yes and she moved in. It was the summer after my first year in college. I was 18 and I was living with my parents.

“How long is Lana going to be here?” my dad asked me after a week.

“She had a fight with her father. I’m sure she’ll calm down soon,” I told him.

I slept in the den and she slept in my room. We’d sneak in to have sex with each other, though.

We snorted some coke one night and I got nervous, then paranoid. I was full of dread and felt a vague fear of the future. I went in the den and crawled into my sleeping bag. Then I got up and decided sex might make me feel better. So I went into my room and tried to get into bed with her, but she pushed me away and said she wanted to sleep. I went back in the den and jacked off. She came to see me five minutes later and said she’d changed her mind. I told her I was too tired. Too bad.

She moved back in with her parents. She got assigned to the Malibu branch of the Bank of America. When she worked as the drive-up teller, actors and musicians would pull up in their cars. Walter Becker of Steely Dan made his deposits and withdrawals there. Bobby Pickett, the guy who did that goofy song, “Monster Mash,” was a customer, too. She said he was really shy, so he’d flirt with her with just a wave of the hand and a smile.

I needed a date to a college journalism awards banquet and Lana was nice enough to come. She got dressed up and enjoyed herself. It was a foggy night. We parked on a street and made out, invisible to the rest of the world. We went back up to my house and had sex. My neighbor backed his car into the Barracuda in the morning, denting the fender. He left a note on her car.

At the bank, she made friends with Annette, who taught her to wear garter belts and lingerie. Annette dated a lot: guys she met at the bank, guys she met at the restaurants and bars around Malibu. That’s how Lana wound up with the key to that townhouse.

---

She called me the night after our fuck date.

“I was so upset afterwards that I cut my thumb opening a can of soup,” she said. “And it bled so much that I went to the emergency room.”

“Wow, did you need stitches?”

“No, they just bandaged it closed. I was so angry. I wanted you to know.”

About two months later, I was working as a busboy at a restaurant and she wanted to buy some coke. She didn’t want to wait for me to finish work. She wanted the coke right then. So she came and got my house keys and told my parents she was going up to my room to borrow some records. She snuck into my drawer and took the coke she wanted and left.

She was supposed to come right back to the restaurant and give me my keys back. But she went out partying with friends and pulled into the parking lot after I’d been waiting outside for more than an hour.

She got out of her car and handed me my keys and I walked away.

“Don’t be like that,” she said.

Fuck you, I said, but not so she could hear it. And I got in my car and went home.

---

I finished my second year of college and got a job at an import store on Ventura Boulevard. I sold African crafts that the owner collected while he was working as an animal trainer on that show “Daktari.” I sold scrimshaw that some craftsman had there on consignment. I sold used books and bongs and draw-string pants and tie-dye shirts. It was a weird place. Lana walked in one day.

“Got any hash pipes?” she asked, without saying hi.

“Just these,” I said and showed her the ones in the display case. “And hello, by the way.”

She looked at the hash pipes, seemed to disapprove of them and walked out.

She called me a week later as if that hadn’t happened. I had to remind her.

“You walked into the store and didn’t say hi to me,” I said.

“Sorry. That’s why I’m calling. I wasn’t feeling good that day. Why don’t you come over after work?”

So I did. We went upstairs to her room, like we used to. She had a bunch of records I didn’t have that I always liked to hear, so I put one on. I think it might’ve been the one with the flute player in the Taj Mahal. Paul Horn’s “Inside.” Haunting and mysterious.

Just then her phone rang. It was obviously some guy. She was talking with him for a while. More like listening, though. I couldn’t quite tell what was going on.

“You know what I like,” she told him. “Uh huh … Uh huh … Yes. …. No. …. Yes.” I could tell she didn’t want to reveal too much in front of me. I waited for her to say: Listen, a friend just came over so I’ve got to go and I’ll call you back later. But she didn’t. So after a few more minutes of that, I left.

A few minutes after I’d gotten home, she knocked on my door. My dad let her in and she stomped up the stairs and into my room. She was furious.

“No one walks out on me like that!” she shrieked. “No one!”

She turned to a photograph I had on top of one of my speakers. Her brother had taken it of her and me in front of Mount Rushmore. It was a great picture and I really liked it.

“You can’t have this anymore!” She tore it up.

“Are you crazy?” I grabbed her and tried to get the picture back, but it was too late, it was already in pieces. She started slapping and punching me. I pushed her onto my bed. My dad came in.

“Are you OK?” he asked. “Do you need help?”

“No, it’s OK, dad. She’ll be OK. Everything’s cool. We just had a little fight.”

He left.

“Gimme some coke,” she said.

“I don’t have any personal stash left.”

“I’ll buy some.”

“How much do you want?”

“Half a gram.”

I opened my drawer and gave her a bindle – one of those envelopes you make by folding a square piece of paper into a triangle, then folding in the corners. She opened it up and tapped two long lines onto the mirror that was on my table. She snorted them both, folded up what was left in the bindle and put it in her purse. She threw fifty dollars on my bed and left.
And that was the last time I saw her.

I went to Europe a couple of months later and stayed for eight years. At one point she called my parents and got my address in France and she wrote me a few letters. She was living in New York City, but said she was moving to Oklahoma. She was dating a prison guard and I supposed he’d gotten a job there. She came back to L.A. one weekend and called my friend Mike and they went to see a ska band play at the Whiskey on the Sunset Strip. She was staying with her lawyer, who was suing the storage company where she’d put all her stuff before she moved to New York. The storage space had been broken into and all the possessions that she’d left in L.A. were gone.

And that was the last I heard of her.

I remember the time she invited me over to see her parents’ new house on the lake. She opened the patio door and said: “Watch this.” There were ducks on the lawn in the back. They had waddled up from the lake. “Missy!” she called to her toy poodle, a tiny gray thing with its toenails painted blue. “Go get ‘em!” Missy flew out the door and terrorized the ducks, careening around the lawn like a pinball. Lana laughed and laughed. “Isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever seen?” she asked me.

And I remember the time we dropped acid and went up to the water towers late at night and stayed until sunrise. It was above the city, so the glow of the stars turned the night sky violet and the pine trees came to life, vibrating into various forms for our viewing pleasure: one became a couple making love, another was a Tyrannosaurus Rex popping stars into its mouth. At dawn we went back to my house and I poured us cereal and milk for breakfast. We ate sitting on the floor of my room, listening to Steely Dan’s “Bodhissatva.” She was still wearing her poncho. I remember watching her and telling myself I’d found my partner in love, sex, music, acid and life. Even though by then I knew it wasn’t true.

And I remember driving up to San Francisco with her once. “It’s right here that it happened,” she said as we passed a desolate point on the I-5. “I was going up to visit my cousins in Auburn and I saw this dog running around on the freeway. He was beautiful, a shepherd-collie mix. I passed him and I thought for a second that I should stop and get him in my car so he doesn’t get killed. But I didn’t. Then I decided to turn around at the next exit and go back. And I thought to myself: I’m going to adopt him. And he’s going to be my companion. And we’re going to go hiking together. And I’m going to move to my parents’ cabin in Bass Lake with him. So I was creating this whole new life for myself with my new dog. And I got off the freeway and turned around so I could get back to where he was. And by the time I got there he’d been run over, he was smashed, dead and all bloody on the road. I cried the rest of the way. And so from that day on whenever I want to do something I do it. I don’t let anything go by. Because in a few minutes, it’ll be too late.”

And I remember the night she took me for a drive up to a place called Tabletop. It was a hill above a housing tract. A full moon was glowing above us. Suddenly, a huge barn owl glided across the sky, and landed on the top of a pine tree as he retracted his enormous wings. His balance was so perfect that the treetop barely swayed under his weight. From his new perch, the owl surveyed the scene. Looking for prey, no doubt. Possums, cats, rats, whatever. But to me it seemed the owl was the master the world. The king of the night.

It was a prefect moment, perfect for me.

Some people say that love doesn’t exist, that it’s just affection, lust or some kind of neediness. I do think I really loved Lana. That’s something, isn’t it?