Part 13 (1/2)
He says something, but it is lost in the sound of the door closing behind me, obscured by the ringing of some strange chime Franklin put there long ago to warn us that someone had arrived, in search of music.
10.
YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING how a woman gets to be forty in a city as big as Los Angeles without having any female friends. Well, I did have them. Or I had one. Her name was Leah.
We used to meet at John O'Groats, an Irish breakfast joint on Pico, every other Sat.u.r.day morning to catch up. Leah was a lawyer-turned-artist. She worked in family law. She dropped out and took up mixed media, which, as far as I could tell, was about putting unlikely stuff together until it looked good. She said that's what families were about, too. But with art, n.o.body gets hurt.
Leah made a name for herself by collecting bottle caps, flattening them with an iron, painting them, and then arranging them into abstract forms on a piece of plywood. There was a real rush for her work a few years back. Celebrities bought it. (That's how you know you've made it in L.A.) Leah would call me at all hours, saying, ”Oh, my G.o.d, Tom Cruise was just here!” Or George Clooney or Jennifer Lopez or Susan Sarandon. Like most art waves in Los Angeles, it didn't last long.
We met at church, when I first moved here. A laid-back Episcopal church, which never bothered with follow-up. My faith started dwindling around the breakup of my marriage, and the church was so laid back they never sent anyone to check on me. This just didn't seem right to me. Though at the time, Leah said, ”Pearl, be honest. If they sent someone, you'd throw a bucket of p.i.s.s in their face.”
I would never have done that, but it sounded appealing.
I said, ”Well, I'd like the option.”
Leah laughed her raspy smoker's laugh and said, ”That's why preachers stopped making house calls. Who wants to get p.i.s.sed on without a soul to show for it?”
Leah still went to church, even though she had been flailing as an artist. Or maybe because of it. She liked her faith. Whenever we talked, she'd say, ”Don't you miss the wafer, Pearl? Don't you want to take Communion?”
”What for?”
”For protection,” she said.
”Protection against what?”
”Well, I don't know. Life.”
”I don't think it works that way. That's more like superst.i.tion.”
”It's not a superst.i.tion. It's an image. An archetype. Jesus is your lawyer. Communion is your retainer.”
”Please.” I kind of believed it. But at the same time, as a musician, I thought I was way more up in G.o.d's grill than Leah. Although flattening out bottle caps might have had a spiritual component I hadn't yet understood. I have always believed in art, have devoted myself to it from an early age, because I decided it was important to make the world a more beautiful place. But the bottle caps sometimes looked to me like a nervous preoccupation, an attempt to ward something off. It scared me when I thought that music might have become that for me, too.
Leah and I had our bimonthly breakfast at John O'Groats shortly after my visit to the Edwardses'. I usually filled her in on all the happenings at my job. It took the place of her isolated life, experimenting in art while she whittled away at the same married man she'd been seeing for years. His name was Phillip. He was a literary agent. He was never going to leave his wife.
Leah was beautiful and still made every effort to keep herself that way. She wore whites and creams to show off her black hair and olive skin. She wore all kinds of rattling jewelry and she always smelled like something exotic. People stared at her.
Next to her, I felt dowdy but somehow proud of my earth tones and bare arms. As if I were a more serious person.
Leah always asked about my love life. Even back then, I made the mistake of telling her about Clive.
She was excited. She said, ”Why shouldn't you sleep with a young guy? What's the harm in it?”
”He's young. And we work together.”
”If you sleep with him, the other guy will come around in no time.”
”You mean Franklin? I'm not sure I want him, either.”
”Well, who do you want?”
”I don't know.”
”Pearl, you haven't had s.e.x in ages. Have you? You're all alone in that c.r.a.ppy place and you're waiting for Mark to leave Stephanie.”
”No, I'm not.” But back then, I might have been.
”You need to start living.”
”You're hanging around every night, waiting for a married man to call you.”
”And how are we so different?”
”I'm not desperate.”
”You're not?”
”Okay. I'm aware of my desperation.”
”But you're in retreat.”
”Not forever.”
”Oh, really? How can you be sure?”
”Because I don't have a vibrator.”
”How is this proof of anything?”
”When you get one, you're giving up.”
”That's not true.”
We had that argument often. I was right, though. I knew a lot of girls who had stopped looking after crossing that Rubicon.
”Is it really so much better,” I asked her, ”to sleep with a man who is emotionally connected to someone else?”
”He's only legally connected to her.”
”Right. What planet are you on?”
”He's staying for the children.”
”The children are in college.”
This seemed to hurt her a little, but she was far too tough to admit it.