Roadmap Part 15

CHAPTER 37 - BEST BABE IN L.A.

"I know you don't want to talk to me anymore," Boris says when he calls, "but all the voiceovers got erased on this new editing system I've been working on and I need you to come and rerecord everything." 

Completion. Yes.

I sit next to Boris in the editing bay at Post House where he works, just as we sat next to each other editing this piece year after year. This is the same carpet we once slept on when we were too tired to drive home at four in the morning. This is where we spent Thanksgiving last year.

Boris is especially easygoing tonight.

"How was the housesitting?" he asks. I wouldn't give him Shane's number to call me when I stayed there. He's been trying to pump me. He doesn't know about Shane by name.  But he knows.

"Great," I smile.  "It worked out so well I'm moving down the street."

We rerecord the voiceovers in the next room and I give him a couple of suggestions on how to improve his reading.  Old times.

"I need to be directed," he looks at me with sad, nostalgic eyes.  If he's trying to push my buttons, it's working.

Our work over, he offers to show me the movie as it is now, now that I'm off the project.  The documentary opens as it always has, with a brief montage of our wedding photos.

At the end, I see what wasn't there before:

Home movie footage of Boris and me happily on the courthouse steps with our marriage certificate.  The image dissolves to Boris with a face like puffy stone holding a large envelope, alone on the same courthouse steps.  "In a few minutes, I will be filing divorce papers..."

Then he does take after take.

So that's why he keeps pressing me to hurry, sign the papers, send them back.

"You look like shit..." is my only comment.

"I felt sad."

Rosie once asked, "Has Boris ever…"

"No, never."

"You know what I'm going to say?"

"He's never once has said how he feels about the divorce."  

Boris freezes the image, but doesn't take his eyes off it, "When I was editing this, going over and over our wedding and your beautiful close-ups, it started to hit me..." He unfreezes the frame and the on-screen Boris says, "...for our little marriage which has ceased to exist."

Now he catches me wiping a tear and hands me a tender smile.  Turning off the Avid, he whines:  "You dumped me, Carrie."

Um, okay.  You insulted me, abused me, refused to go to counseling.

"Come on, Boris.  You need to get another woman."

"Where am I going to find one?  I've got the best babe in L.A. right here.  Let me take you to dinner."

"Okay, as long as you understand one thing."

"What is that? "

"That you didn’t actually file the papers, we still need the Settlement Agreement. "

"You are indeed psychic woman. I have papers with me."

"Boris?"

"Da?"

I want to ask if he thinks we are karmically challenged, but I already know the answer. "Where should we eat?"

xx

At the California Pizza Kitchen, Boris hands me his drafts of the second stage of the divorce papers, which list what each of us gets from the other which is nothing, and explains that I can type them up at work. Oh and by the way, he’d like to move to Topanga, do I have any leads? Also, do I know how he can buy a new car? And would I know any industry leads who can revive his flagging career?

  "Boris," I hear myself say, "I want you to get your stuff out of my safe deposit box or I’m selling it."

Through the garlic and artichoke pizza he's just stuffed into his mouth, "Why? You are not going to have safety box?"

"You can get your own."

Chewing straight at me, his wheels obviously turning. "The art is mine."

"Yes, it is. And I want you to take it."

I'm amazed at how easy this is. But is Eva right? Should I give up the "only divorce settlement" I could ever get?

He blows his nose with a napkin.  "That is fine.  Anything to make you happy, my dear.  Only do me one favor..."

My hand tightens on my water glass, "What?"

"Take the camera." looking almost pleased at my dumfounded silence: "It is old, I have another."

Wow. I will have a video camera! Looking down at my half-eaten pizza, ashamed of my earlier thoughts of larceny, "Thank you, Boris."

Content to have the upper hand, he leans back and picks his teeth, looking appraisingly at a young woman in a tight "zebra skin" body stocking who just sat down at the table next to us. 

"You are most talented woman I ever know, Carrie, but what you have done since April?  Maybe this camera will give you push."

CHAPTER 38 - THANKS GIVING

Life at Sargent Court quickly becomes idyllic. I could see the Hollywood Sign through my wall of windows if there wasn’t a thicket of lush tropical plants in front of it that Cervantes—our live-in gardener and maintenance man—hauls in ("I am making jungle for you.”). There are no screens. Soft breezes blow through my place no matter what the weather. At night, only the crickets can be heard, and in early morning, only the birds.

Everything perfect. Except for Shane. Still half a block away.

My friends ask, "Why keep thinking about this loser?" Well, because I fell in love and I'm trying to climb out but it's one hell of a deep hole once you're in it.

"Don’t go unconscious for Love, " Kaiulani called to tell me.

"Tonight is his Thanksgiving show at the Japanese American Museum Theater."

"Uh huh. Don’t go unconscious for Love, Carrie. All I’m sayin’. "

He never put a flyer on my door. Never offered a comp. He did leave a number of frustrating voice mail messages that said stuff like:

"Dropped by your place, but you weren't in.  I've been fairly busy, workin' and rehearsin' and stuff. I'll be out in the garden for a couple hours, then I have to go to rehearsal.  So see ya.  Whenever."

I did not return the messages. They stopped coming.

It’s been two weeks. I'd scream, but it's such a quiet building.

xx

I dress to the Nines and go to Little Tokyo.

As I walk into the theater lobby, I see her. Getting her ticket at the box office. Maybe it's not her,. It is her. Maybe she doesn't see me. I duck into the museum gift shop. When I come out, I’m herded with the rest of the audience into a tiny waiting area in front of the locked house doors. 

There she is. On the other side of the crowded room, talking with an elderly couple.  Long body perfect even in dressed-down jeans and denim shirt.  Her "long, strong, Asian" hair loose past her elbows.  Her laughing face gleams like ivory.

Grace.

Feeling very Lucille Ball, I actually hide behind a potted plant. Yes, it's stupid, but why shouldn't it work?  Through the leaves, I see her actually work her way through the wall of people to get to me and extend her hand.

"Hi, I'm Grace. I don't know if you remember me. You're Edward's roommate, aren't you?"

Nothing comes out of my open mouth.

"What are you doing here?" she asks ingenuously. "Did Suki invite you?"

"Yes." I did call Suki last night and ask for a comp. She was okay with it, but somewhat withdrawn.

 I manage to ask Grace how she’s doing.

"Not busy for a change, I'm getting a rest," she says. "So how's Edward?"

Doesn't Suki tell her how Edward is?

"Um, Edward's at a theater in Indiana." I can't resist adding, "But then you probably know that."

"Yes, yes..."

"We're not roommates anymore."

"You're not?"

"No," I reply. "I had to move. Everything changed like that." I snap my fingers. She doesn't blink.

Mercifully, the house doors open and we file inside. I can't sit near her. She goes on alone to sit a few rows ahead of me. 

I want to go home.

Later I will call Rosie and groan, "I found something more agonizing than being in the same space with my ex-husband and Shane... "

Still. The woman has class. No potted plants for her.

I sweat my way through the show, miserable. What is Grace doing here?  Did Shane ask her? Are they getting back together? Did Shane spot us in the audience before the show and go, "Uh oh"? Is this the first time he's had two ex-lovers in the audience? Doubtful.

The play is a musical about Thanksgiving in a Japanese American concentration camp during World War II (something Shane neglected to mention), and I’m the only Caucasian in the audience. Their laughter and silences are in sync.  My laughter and silence is that of an outsider.

After the brilliant show, actors stand around on stage, accepting kudos from thrilled audience members. Suki and I greet each other. She seems cheery and distant. Still nice, but I sense her distress. Grace approaches and hugs me. Then we both praise Suki who was terrific in the show.  But tension binds the three of us into a wordless awkward moment which Suki tries to break with:

"Have you...two...met?"

Grace reaches for my hand with a sweet smile, "Yes, remember?  We all went out to dinner? After the show?"

Suki forces a laugh, "Oh yeah, right!  I spaced."

In the time it takes for my stomach to turn over, Grace moves into me for a hug, "Take care." Saying something about going home to change, she leaves without saying a word to Shane who stands on the other side, chatting with a group of older Nisei men. In the show, one of his characters was an elderly Japanese man which he played to comic perfection.

I go to him.  He smiles, takes my hand, holds it against him while he talks to these older men. Then he hugs me, kissing my hair, "How have you been?"

"Great," I say over his question.

"Thanks," he says, as if forgetting his question and thinking I mean the show.

"You're such a ham."

"Well, it's a hammy role." Is he defensive? He's such a genius actor.  Pointing at the older Japanese American men who surround him, "I’m getting my picture taken with the vets."  My cue to leave.

I return to Suki. "Have you heard from Edward?"

"We broke up," she says. 

I can't believe it.  "Why?"

"Last week he sounded funny on the phone and I asked if he wanted to break up and he said yes." Then quickly, "We'll work it out when he gets back.  I'm so hungry. Well, I've got this party to go to…"

xx

In the parking lot, I sit in my car, trying to breathe; shivering and crying. 

Empty circle...Full circle...Empty circle...

xx

I have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving. Tony’s in China. Edward’s in Indiana. Kaiulani's in Utah on a ski trip. Rosie went home to Cleveland.  And I've managed to become exempt from any obligation to eat a raw turkey with Eva.

Venus turns straight today so I call Boris and wish him a Happy Thanksgiving. He warmly wishes me one, too. Of course I haven't heard from Shane. I wonder if he makes a special dish for his large family's Thanksgiving dinner.

Loneliness aside, I love my place.  My cat sleeps all night next to me with her head on her half of my pillow. Mornings she licks my hand to wake me up. I carry my cereal to the picnic table outside and eat it while taking in the city in front of me and listening to the roosters crow.

The hardest thing is what I figured would be hard--living among so many recent memories. I can't look at the glamorous view without remembering how we stood there that pre-dawn morning. Every day I drive past his faded car, the one I warmed up weekly to keep the battery alive. Every day I drive through that same avenue of date palms we drove through on that balmy evening while he told me a hundred ways to get home.

I call Mom to wish her a Happy Thanksgiving. She's living alone again, now a few blocks from my brother's house. Taking her medication and sounding so normal I almost don't recognize her.

"Men that are forty-one don't think they're forty-one," she comments after she asks how's that Japanese fella and I tell her. "In their heads they're still twenty, and they want to do the things they did when they were twenty. If he's never been married and he's forty-one, he's never really grown up."

What about Boris? He got married and never grew up. I want to argue that Shane has a life. It's just a life alone. That doesn't make him a Peter Pan. Then I think about his ancient peeling vehicle, the theater-for-no-profit he donates his talent to, his never ending field of women, the continuous self-medication. No children.

"He probably wants the freedom to play around," my mother offers without any encouragement from me. "I didn't want to say anything when you told me how you met, how he was ignoring his girlfriend and giving you all the attention, but 'What goes around comes around.'"

"I didn't steal him."

"That's not what I mean. He was available. He's probably seeing somebody else now. He probably met somebody on the trip."

"He says he's not seeing anybody."

"How do you know?"

"I know." Because his car is gone every night and back in place every morning. Still, the night we "thrashed around" in my car, he drove home afterwards.  All the nights I stayed at his place, his car would have been there every morning. I can't admit to my mother that I'm keeping tabs. I can hardly admit it to myself. The same question has always bugged me with this type of guy: "Can a man who was as into sex as he was go cold turkey for two months?" Tony and his condoms.

"Maybe you're right," I concede, remembering Shane's hand on the actress' back the night he thought I wasn't at the reading.

"Let 'em have their damn freedom, that's what I say," snorts my mother.  "I've been single thirty years now and I love it! When I was married I was always worrying about him, his career, his needs. Screw that. Let somebody else marry them!"

I tell her how Shane helped me get this place, then turned tail and ran.

"Yeah, yeah," she laughs, "I love ya, but from a distance!"

 Next I call my brother  Ever since Mom's breakdown, we've been talking again. He sounds depressed. "Are you down because this is your first Thanksgiving after your divorce?" I ask Jeff.

"That's kind of it."

He tells me about a woman he "sometimes sees" who invited him to Thanksgiving with her family, but he's not sure. "She can be kind of moody and I just want fun and games," he states. "After growing up with all that anger and fighting, I can't even take 'snippy.'  I'd rather be alone." Then he waxes informative: "There are two types of men. The Stalker O.J. Types who make the woman the center of their universe and engage in needy, possessive relationships, and guys like me who want to stay unattached.  But guys like me can be caught. I believe that if you string together enough non-committed evenings together, one day you'll find you’re in a relationship."

I tell him what happened with Shane. How crazy I was about him, how scared he got.

"Aren't you guys going to see each other anymore?" he asks. It's funny to hear the concern in his voice after that speech.

"No, I have to leave him alone."

"Well, the more time and space you give him, the more he'll come back to you."

Because Jeff doesn't want to talk about his divorce, I decide not to tell him the movie about his wedding to his college sweetheart and my divorce from a Russian man is finished. Instead I say:

"So if the woman cares but pretends she doesn't just to get the man, then what is he getting? A woman who's not real. A stranger."

"True," he admits. "But I don't want to work at it.  Commitment takes too much energy."

Feeling empty and agitated, I don my coat and cross the narrow street that is Sargent Court, and step into Elysian Park. Shane had told me about a trail that takes you to "an incredible lookout spot."

The trail gently inclines up and up, while the view on my right descends in layer upon layer of red copper and gold leafed trees. Afternoon sunlight streaks through the branches. Mild breezes blow soothingly against my cheeks while my thoughts fly in and out in an obsessive whirl.

I can hear cascading water down below. Looking down, I see a Japanese rock garden at the bottom of this hill, surrounded by a fence. Stumbling downhill through the tall grasses, catching sticky burrs with the hem of my coat, I go all the way down until I can thread my fingers through the chain-link fence and take in the delicate harmony of the garden through a web of steel.

When will I be able to look at this and not think of My Little Joshua Tree?

The path up seems much steeper than the path down.  No joggers, but plenty of smiling artsy folks pass with their dogs with a just-fed Thanksgiving Day look. A long line of boys on bikes glide past—grinning hellos. I watch them round the bend and realize.

This year has been one long Turning Point. 

Alone again on the path, I say out loud into the crisp air, "It's been a wonderful year."

When I get home, I find a message in my Voice Mail from Aunt Vermillion in NYC: "I hear you moved again." When I call her back, she says:

"Now tell me the whole story.  From beginning to end."

CHAPTER 39 - EDEN

Two young women show up at my door and invite me to a Christmas party that's being given in our building "for the neighbors". I haven't really met anyone, yet.

Squashing my anxiety that Shane might be there or that these people might somehow know my messy history, I go to the large corner apartment (the one with the Italian lights woven into the arching-over-the-walkway wisteria) and knock.  Mixed voices yell, "COME IN!"

I walk into a room of warmth and light and Chinese artifacts and a small crowd of men and women who kind of look like me. Boho. Artsy. Near my age.

Sitting on a couch next to a woman with curly fair hair, I ask through my shock, "Why is there so much Chinese stuff in this apartment?"

"Because I lived in China for five years," answers the woman, whose name is Reva.  "I taught English there." Now she's a filmmaker, she says. Matter of fact, they all chime in, everybody here’s in The Industry. Most have lived and worked in China.

Did Shane know how well I'd fit in here? Or is this another of his unintentional absentee gifts?

"I was born in Beijing," a youngish red-haired man explains, flopping next to me.  "I'm an 'ABC'--American Born Chinese." Felix is his name. His sweet face seems to be made of elastic, and he stays with me long after his British wife has left with her headache.

"Was your father an ambassador?" I ask him.

"He was blacklisted by McCarthy, so we moved to China so he could edit a propaganda Communist newspaper for English speakers." Intimidated by this crowd, I don't talk about my Asiaphile dabblings. But I feel so at ease.

Instead we talk cats and gardening. I know a lot about cats, nothing about gardens. A tall gay man says he’ll teach me. I've seen him outside watering every day.  Cultivating roses. His name is Glen.

"The wonderful thing about Sargent Court," the ABC explains, "is that ‘Sargent’ makes a classy American last name if you put your middle name in front of it. My middle name is Ephron, for example.  So  my name would be Ephron Sargent.”

"We’re going to use them as screen names. A secret code that says we’ve lived at Sargent Court, " jokes Reva. "My middle name is Adelaide."

"ADELAIDE SARGENT!" The Room exclaims. 

"What’s your middle name? " Felix asks me.

"Regina."

They scream, "REGINA SARGENT!  Perfect!"

"And don't forget our TV series," Glen calls out.  "'9-0-0-2-6!'"

          

Change. Change is good. As long as it’s good change, I decide.

On Christmas morning I get up at six-thirty and drive to the Chinatown Tai Chi spot that Shane told me about. It’s in a school parking lot.  Just as he said, there are loads of old Chinese doing exercises. I drive slowly past them, aware of their eyes on me. Then I park and get out, trying to look nonchalant.

On a cement patch next to the playground, a small group is doing Tai Chi.  An Asian man with a serene face leads them, arms rippling through the air, his body floats as if moving underwater.  After half an hour, I stop watching and go. 

This is not a place for white people.

xx

Glen (aka "Thurgood Sargent") is teaching me to garden.

"This neighborhood used to be called Edendale," he tells me as he shows me which are weeds and which are flowers. "They changed it to Elysian Park. You know, Elysian Fields, right? Homer’s land of the happy dead at the edge of the world.”

"So we are not actually in Echo Park. "

"Not technically." Glen is digging in the pocket of his jacket. Taking out a packet of seeds: "Present. Poppy seeds. "

I thank him, bewildered at what to do with them.

"Just throw them in the dirt and water them."

I thank him. "Glen, how’d you come to live here? "

"My roommate died of AIDS and I needed a smaller space that I could afford. He acted in one of Reva’s Chinese TV-movies that she shot in Canton. She got me in."

He goes on to tell me that he’s stored some of their stuff in the garage next to his car. "We had two of everything. Two drafting tables...I know I should sell it, but... "

I sew together a routine. Water poppy seeds in between working as a freelance script reader for a film production company. My twentysomething neighbor Blythe referred me after I helped her troubleshoot structure problems in a spec TV-pilot script she’s writing.  So every night I’m up until the wee hours reading scripts and writing about why they work or don’t work. And every morning, I walk in the park—perversely returning via Shane's side of the street, right past his home. As if daring him to come out.

Oh God, there he is.

Coming up the stairs from his place. Like a dream.  Almost a year to the day that I met him. On his way probably to work in his suit. Face fuller than I recall, grey hairs glistening among the black. Stopping almost in front of me.

"Well, hel-lo," he says, friendly and warm as if he sometimes wonders about me too. "Out for a walk?"

My hair's unwashed, pinned up—not awful, not great.  Black shirt and jeans.  But I’m glad not to be dressed up right now. Makes it all the more casual. We stroll a few feet to his car; I ask if he's doing any shows.  He says no.

Now we’re standing on the very spot that I can't pass without remembering his embrace, his deep kisses. "Oh," he says, "somebody left me a note..." lifting it from his windshield. I can smell the smoke lingering on his jacket like a fire gone out.

From an angry neighbor about parking.

  "Well geeze!" his face squinches. "Every day they take up two spaces!"  He looks straight and middle-aged. There's a heaviness in him; maybe it's the suit.  But still no frills Shane. Talking as if we just spoke yesterday. 

At ease. Self-absorbed. 

I keep going, "See ya later."

"See-ya-later," he calls back in that John Wayne drawl.

"Did your heart go pit-pat when you saw him?" Rosie asks me later.

"No,” I tell her. “More like pit-pat, pit...pat.  Pit."

xx

A week later, Mercury is retrograde again. No good for fresh communication and contracts, say astrologers. Okay for cleaning out closets, resolving the past. Even “past karma.” All my desperate attempts to replace Shane have failed. Like the proverbial missing arm, there's a throbbing under my skin where he still exists.  Maybe that's why I call him from the pay phone at the Namida sushi bar. The sake I ingested helps me come straight to the point.

"I thought I might come down and visit you, if it's all right."

"Um, sure.  I'm just watching a basketball game."

"Which inning?"

"Basketball."

"Any touchdowns, yet?"

He laughs. 

xx

I walk to his place in the demure dress I wore to the restaurant.  Shane's in the bathroom when I arrive. The game is on. Only one cat bowl. Is one cat gone?  The place smells of animals. He hasn't cleaned for a while. But I feel like I'm home again. He comes out looking pale, a bit drawn. Thin. Explains that he's been napping. Just got back from three days in Joshua Tree with twelve friends.  Camping. Unpacked stuff lounges around the kitchen table.

Juice is offered and accepted.

He empties a bag onto the table and food spills out. Opening a packet of Chinese dried fruits, he hands me chopsticks and hovers over them with his own.

"Dried plums," he says, circling the chopsticks over them.  "These are all plums."

For the next hour or so, we talk effortlessly.

"Do you ever see anybody from Topanga?" he asks.       

I've only heard from Tony a few times since his return. Edward called once and said he was moving out to live with his new Chinese girlfriend. Tony now lives in the cabin. Edward also mentioned that after Tony returned, Eva sent Carmelita back to the Southern Hemisphere after her niece disappeared for one night.

To test Shane’s reaction, I try this out on him: 

"I heard from my ex-roomie Tony. Says he finally got up the nerve to call the ex-girlfriend he'd been pining for all these years. They met for coffee and hit it off all over again, but she was seeing someone. A few days later, she called to say that she’s now broken up and available.  But Tony said no. He doesn't feel ready."

Shane lets out air at the ceiling, "What an asshole!' Then. "Y’know, Edward's been calling a lot, wanting to get together. But I feel funny since he got this other Asian girlfriend."

"Because he dumped Suki?"

"Because he's got this thing about Asian women.  Makes me wonder why he does it."

Here we go.  I venture out onto the black ice.

"I've been thinking about this theory of yours...and I really believe that sometimes people are just attracted to a certain race or culture. Something about Asians blends with my own way of being. And vice versa. If I'm at a party and there's one Asian in the room, they'll come up and talk to me."

He squints at the plums as he puts the lid back over them, "Well, no wonder.  It's those herbs you drink. Doctor's back there mixin’ ‘em up…'I make her skin a little bit more yellow...'"

[Author’s Note: It will be over a decade before Carrie will learn from a long lost cousin tracing their family tree that their great-grandfather was Mongolian, but that’s for the sequel, guys!]

I switch the topic back to Edward. What's worse than his penchant for Asians, I tell Shane, is that he was two-timing Suki. Edward told me himself when he got back. 

"After they broke up via long distance, Suki called his ex-girlfriend Rinko in Indiana and asked if he'd ever cheated on her, because she suspected there was another woman.  Rinko said yes. He did cheat when they were together. So Suki thought he was probably having a fling in Indiana.  Maybe with Rinko, maybe someone else. But it would be over soon. She had no idea that he'd started an affair with this Chinese woman before he left L.A.

"Edward told me that when he got back, he took Suki to dinner. She patted his hand across the table and said, ‘It's okay. I talked to Rinko and know everything.’ Meaning that Rinko had confirmed that Edward was prone to flings. But Edward had actually confided this new affair to Rinko, but Rinko didn’t tell Suki. Thinking that Suki knew, Edward talked about the Chinese woman in L.A. "

"What an even bigger asshole!" howls Shane.

On the phone, Edward had ended with: "Then Suki got up...and walked right out of the restaurant." Sounding confused, hurt.

"I don’t think she should have left, " I tell Shane. "She should have grabbed a cream pie off the dessert cart…"

Shane hands me a napkin. He doesn’t ask to be filled in on me, but I try anyway.  He nods over my summary of my reader job and how much I'm enjoying my neighbors and the gardening.

"Glad it's workin' out for ya," as he takes the plums to the fridge.  Plums gone, Shane pauses at the stove to light up a joint—takes a toke, passes it to me. The dope puts my mind on HOLD, like nothing else. We stroll out to the patio ("Don’t sit in that chair! Cat hair! Cat hair!"). He smokes a cigarette, denying me one ("Not good for ya"), and the cats descend. Both of them. Cleo is huge now. I pet her in my lap and she wants more and more. He stands smoking and watching. Then Cleo hops off and goes to Black Cat. They touch noses.

"Never seen them do that before!" Shane says.

"How's your brother?  How's Shannon?"

"Oh, fine, Judge threw the case out of court."

"What case?  The divorce?"

He takes a drag, "I guess you didn't know...His crazy wife accused him of molesting Heidi."

"WHAT?  Didn't Heidi tell them that it wasn't true?"

"They asked her questions like 'Does your father touch you?' and she'd say, 'Yes.'"

"But the Judge threw it out."

"One look and said, 'Get this case outta here',"  He drags harder. 

Finding her feeder empty, Cleo reaches out with her paw and pulls down more food from the tube. 

"Wow! Never saw her do that either..."

A night of new things.

I tell him how the cats nestled against me every morning while I ate breakfast and looked at the woods.  He murmurs, ah, yes, that must have been nice.

"I have to go to the bathroom," he says, going. In that moment, I know that there's no clear point at which I'll leave.  He'll return and we'll continue...

I don't feel like leaving.  Ever.

Inside the phone rings. When he answers it, I sit on the loveseat next to him while he talks to somebody about the camping trip. Apparently it was all men.  Twelve Asian American men.  From a men’s group.

All night long, I've had my legs crossed, my arms crossed. Now I go inside and curl up next to him on the loveseat—arms folded—leaving a space between us.  I try unfolding...it's a little better.

Well, at least I'm not double-knotting my shoelaces.

Is this where we've arrived?  As platonic friends/neighbors? In the kitchen, he'd asked about the Neighborhood Watch meeting on Saturday.  Did I go?

Now hanging up, he asks: "Would you like to see my new flies?"  I can't believe it. Shane's web.

Sitting at the desk where I once had my computer, he opens that compact fly case and shows me the teeny tiny, feathery imitation bugs. Pointing out the various attributes ("This one's not as good, see the bump?") I'm getting hotter and hotter.  Fuck the flies. I want to fuck him.

Cleo is rolling around on my knees where I sit, as if in heat. She actually claws at my dress and I have to look down and push her away.  Shane notices.  He snaps the box shut and I don't want to talk anymore.  I don't.  I look down at the cat.  Shane sighs, leans back in his chair.

"So...ya wanna mess around?" he says out of the corner of his mouth like a high school kid tempered by forty-two years of emotional shut-down.

"Yeah," I say, letting it out, "I really do."

xx

Our "messing around" quickly acquires the same seamless intensity it had the first night we were together.  He luxuriates in everything I do and talks and talks—leaving no doubt how much he enjoys me.  And we still laugh.

I feel...my arm being licked...

Cleo. She’s on the bed licking my arm like crazy with the same rhythm and intensity that I've been licking him. I stop.

"I never had a threesome with a cat before!"

"I don’t think Cleo minds."

"I mind. "

He puts Cleo out and shuts the door. When our laughter subsides, we begin again. Playful, teasing, caring...startling...grateful. Everything sex should be. After the first hour, he crawls away from me on the bed, flopping onto the pillow to rest ("Wait...Wait...").

"I'm...on...sensory overload," he groans. Me, too. I never expected to have this again. Not this.

In the second hour, I let myself ride wherever it takes us. I don't hold anything back. His hands on my breasts are hot. We try lots of positions, but my favorite is when he's so worn out that all he can do is lie back while I gently cover him, rocking, holding...neither of us in a hurry to get anywhere.  Just feeling each other.  Catching our breath while keeping the flame alive.

When it's over, we lie in each other's arms, he has my hand over his heart.  

"Thank you."

"Thank you."

xx

On the phone later, on hearing my news and confusion, Rosie will remark in that seen-it-all stripper voice of hers: "The mind cannot process sex.”

 

Saturday again. A week since that encounter. And I haven't heard from him.  So I call. "Would you like to see a play with me tonight?"

"Can't.  too busy."

Silence. But the tone is light, friendly. On the other hand, he's not helping. I try again:

"How about a walk?"

"Going to work now."

"On Saturday?"

"Yep...and then rehearsal tomorrow. For a reading. Family dinner after that."  More silence. Finally, he says, "Maybe I'll call you next week and we'll do something."

I hang up into a depression so deep it feels like I may never recover.  Family dinner excuse equals double-knotted shoelaces.

Sunday. Ten at night. I've turned off the porch light, started boiling my herbs when I hear him call through the screen door.

"Anybody home?"

He's standing in the shadows.

I stutter and stammer my greetings as he enters. Re-enacting last year's scene: "Want something to drink?"

"No.  I - what do you have?  No.  Well, okay."

I pour his favorite juice with a shaking hand, spilling some on the floor. He doesn't make it easier. I'm getting monosyllabic answers to my questions. Heavy sighs.

His laces are fine. But he's closed up tight.

"You want to go outside and drink it?"

"No."

We sit on the floor, he leans against the futon which I've folded into a couch.  I ask Shane what he was rehearsing for. A sketch he's going to do about his trip to France. No invitation is extended so I don't ask. I should be turned off. Instead I stroke his bare legs, unable to bear not touching him. They are silky, light and soft.  But I hate being the aggressor.

I pull back, "I'm sorry, I can't be in the same room with you without wanting to touch you." 

He answers, "I feel the same."

Encouraged, I come closer, cuddling, touching his face, nibbling his ear, teasing, "You can't be in the same room without wanting to touch you either?"

He half-heartedly strokes my breasts at an angle, because he won't turn and face me.

"You're the first guy I've had over," I admit. "I guess I should pull out the futon."

He stands and watches me pull out the mattress. Then slowly lies down. I unbutton his shirt, nuzzling his chest but he stays aloof.

"I really just came to say hello..." he says.

"I feel like I'm molesting you."

"It's okay.  I mean, I'm tired.  Been hiking all day."

Hiking? 

It's as if he's a stray cat that I want to coax inside. Afraid I'll scare him off.  Wanting him to come closer. He insists that he's too tired for sex. Okay.

"I'm sorry," I pull away.

"Don't apologize," he groans. "It's just that, um, I don't want to mislead—to be misleading. I don't want you to be misled."

Oh.  "So you’re saying…"

"I don't know what I'm saying!"

"I think I know what you're saying."

He leans his head back on the mattress, laughs through clenched teeth. "You do? Then tell me. Because I don't."

"I can't tell you how you feel," I start cautiously. "I can tell you how I feel."

"Okay."

"After what happened, I know I can't depend on you." He agrees. I continue, "And I know that you need your independence." He agrees. "You are a loner." More agreement. "I know all that and that's fine.

"As for me, all I know is that I'm powerfully attracted to you and I have been since the day I first saw you. And if I was looking for somebody to have great sex with and who's good company. Well, to me, you fill the bill."

He gives a short laugh.

"I really like you," he says. "You're fun and neat and the sex is mind blowing. It's just..." He stops.

"You want to see other people?"

"See other people?" he laughs.

"Are you already seeing…no, don't tell me. Are you saying that you don't want a Relationship?

"I don't know what I'm saying," I remember this response from before.  Now he's speaking quickly, casually. "Let's not define it. Let's just take it as it comes."

So to speak.

"All I can tell you that I'm still trying to get whole.  I need to be alone these days."

"What the hell?" Shane gives a sarcastic shrug, "It's Echo Park!"  Rolling on top of me, giving me a rush of heat, "Okay then let's mess around!"

"But nothing's resolved," I say in a weak voice as our bodies take over the argument and win it.

"Who cares?" With that, a deep kiss catches fire. We roll along, but he keeps stopping, claiming to be too tired. "Okay, no more that's enough!" Then eyeing me, "Unless of course...you might want to encourage me." 

Which I do. And do. And do. 

When I get out of the shower, I find him dressed and helpless at the door.  He can't get out. "You sure you have enough locks on this door?" As I open it, I mention that we've resolved nothing. "I can't negotiate," he says. "Especially not right now.  Let's just see what happens."

We exit together into the balmy, full moon night, and almost knock over Glen, who says he just got back from a walk.  He nods hello to Shane.

On the cement pathway that leads to the street, Shane pauses to light up and I take his arm as we walk back to his place. He leans in to me with a smile, "I love this neighborhood."

Glen is sitting on the steps when I get back, long, bare legs spread out.  I sit in a chair and we admire the moon.

"I didn't know Shane could glow in the dark," says Glen.  When our coitus began, I thought I heard Glen upstairs. The walls are so thin you can hear throats clearing. Hearing neighbors screw would be the next best thing to being there. Glen lives alone and doesn't cook, so whenever I make extra food, I share it with him.  Tonight was Curry Night. "I came down to get some and I saw your place was dark so I thought you'd gone to bed early."

I share with him the uptight discussion Shane and I had before screwing our brains out. Glen laughs and says, "Sounds like all you needed was for me to bound in and ask for curry. "

"So the Shane beat goes on. But can it be without expectations? " asks Lani when I tell her. We’ve fallen into a sexual routine, Shane and I. He shows up late, unexpected.  Kissing me saying he doesn't want to...fucking until I'm all raw nerve endings...his face in the moonlight tilted back, eyes closed, mouth open in a half-smile as if floating in a warm water...holding my hand over his heart after...

"Why not drop in on him!" Lani says.  "See how he likes it!"

So I surprise him with a daytime visit. He turns from the bacon he's frying and gives a happy start. I help him de-flea Cleo, we spend some non-sexual time together.  But Lani’s question nags.

Can it stay without expectations?

xx      

Gradually, I start to fall apart.  My emotions ride on Shane's moods.  His icy withdrawals mean my despair. I can hardly keep focused on whatever bad script I'm reading. It takes me almost all day to write one summary and critique.  A slow script reader in this town is an unemployed reader.  His sudden buoyant acceptance means my joy. 

One night, glowing in the afterglow, I ask him again, "Do you think we'll ever get out of this room?  See a movie?"

"Sure we will."  He sits on the bed, sliding on his sandals.

"When?"

Pressed, he says through gritted teeth, "Uh, how 'bout Thursday?  Thursday's no good.  Friday, I guess."

“You'll ruin your eyes," Glen scolds when he arrives home Friday evening to find me reading under the porch light. Shane and I were supposed to go to dinner and a movie. I picked up a message from him saying that he was exhausted so forget dinner; he was going to take a nap. "But I can make the movie. Just call and tell me where this thing is playing." I guess they ran out of papers at work. The last show starts in twenty minutes.

All sharp angles and aristocratic North Carolina breeding, Glen folds his arms, looks down his aquiline nose at me and flatly states, "Shane is a flake."

"I know."

"Do yourself a favor. Turn off that light and take yourself out for a nice dinner."

"I can't.  He's picking me up. Damn! This reminds me of our first date when he showed up so late!"

"Then let him know you can't be this easily had. Let him know that if he pulls stunts like this, he'll have to move heaven AND earth to get you back!"

"I can't."

"OH, FOR GOD'S SAKE, CARRIE!" he shouts. "I have hungry kitties to feed!" I follow him upstairs and argue with him while he opens cans for his three Persians.

"Can't you see the patterns?" he says.  "The abusive victim cycles?"

Is he kidding? My victim band’s been pinching so tight it feels like a migraine. "Of course I can, but what can I do? If I walked into a room of five hundred people..."

"You'd pick the only one who would take your money and steal your car."

Right.

He looks up from where he kneels over the cats' bowls, "Because you're attracted to these abusive types."

"But I don't know they're abusive when I meet them."

Glen gives me an Oh-cut-the-bullshit look and says, "You're an attractive woman.  How many guys hit on you?"

"That's not the…"

"And yet, you always wind up with…”

"The guy I have to call."

"That's another thing.  He should be setting up these dates."

My feminism aside, I know what he means.  And I feel ashamed.

More kindly now, he asks, "Do you have a therapist? Because you're going to need one to help you break this dependency." I can’t answer. “What does Shane do? "

"He’s an actor. "

Glen screams, "Don’t tell me you live in L.A. and don’t know the TEN COMMANDMENTS OF DATING ACTORS? (counting on his fingers) Thou shalt not give money to actors…Thou shalt not pay actors’ rent…Thou shalt not expect them not to act…Thou shalt…"

"I get the idea." Laughing now.

Not a chair in sight so I plop on his floor against his fridge. "Okay, so it's true that I keep reinforcing these patterns. But I swear that I can't tell an abusive man. Boris was great at first. My Aunt Sadie in San Diego was nuts about him."

"How long was it before you saw the other side?"

"A few days before we got married." A month after I'd met him.  Maybe if we'd had a longer engagement...less passion and romance. Or is Karma Karma?

When Lani visited my new home in Eden, she said, "So Shane was a means to an end. "

But even right now, I'm not standing up for myself with Glen. He's yelling at me and isn't yelling abusive? Then again, I'm letting him yell because I want to be yelled at.

Freshly depressed, I turn away towards his screen door.

"Wait!"

I turn around. Glen squeezes me into his belt buckle as he hugs me, then takes a foot long chocolate bar from his freezer and hands it to me. I eat it on my walk to Shane's. He's there, lying in the dark watching CNN. Barely turns his head, "Oh...hi."

Maybe he's not feeling well. I sit on the floor, back against the wall and let Cleopatra cuddle against my feet. She rolls over to have her belly stroked, looks happy to see me.  His eyes are on the news. O.J. found not guilty. No reaction out of either of us. He clicks to another news report about O.J. And then another. I feel the noose tighten. If ever I had enough rope...

"Are we going to the movie?" I ask, hating the sweet tone of my voice.

"I guess." He switches off the TV and swings his bare legs around to sit up.  In his shorts, bare-chested, he doesn't look so good tonight. A little flab over the belt.  I follow him out to the patio and watch him light up. He sits in a chair, facing away from me. I sit in the doorway looking at his profile. He looks different, face tight. The acne scars which I used to think enhanced his face now quilt his skin in a sagging, tired way.  His eyes clench into slits as he drags and blows out the smoke.  If I was in a different frame of mind, I might wonder how I could ever have been attracted. 

But right now, all my attention focuses on the CHILL. Not again. Am I the only one here with deja vu?

He flicks the butt into the ferns and stands, "Well..."

"Shane," I wish my voice didn't sound so calm, "are you withdrawn because of me?" Didn't I ask this once before?

"Kinda.  Yeah."

All that can come out of my open mouth is "Why?"

He turns away to pick up a bag of cat food, "I think we've gone about as far as we can go with this."

"What? Why?"

"There's no future in it." 

I yank the bag out of his hands, "No. Stop. Talk to me."

Anger crosses his face. The first time I've seen him off guard.Then he turns away. "There's nothin' to say." He goes to the living room and flips the TV back on.  I follow and turn it off.

This is war. All is fair, right?

"Shane, are you telling me you have no feelings for me?"

He doesn't answer.  I ask again.  He spits it out:

"Not enough to keep doin' what we've been doin'."

I pick up my purse off the floor—that beautiful hardwood floor on which I sat so many nights watching his tapes while he was in France, as I tried to cut a window into him. But...this can't be the end. We can't just never see each other again. I'm old enough to know better, but I say: 

"Can't we be friends?"

"Yeah, maybe down the line," he moves to the kitchen near the front door, lights another cigarette, blows the smoke outside. Then shaking his head, "No, no!  You and I can never be friends!"

I go.

xx

A few days later, I stumble out into the garden wearing green silk pajamas. Glen is watering his newest (“American Beauty”) rose bushes.

"You look depressed," he observes.

"Shane says that our casual, sexual relationship..."

"Is too committed?"

I have to laugh. "That it has no future."

Glen lets the hose dangle in one hand, puts the other on his hip, and declares, "This is a man for whom prostitutes were invented."

"Yes, only prostitutes should be allowed near him."

"Well, I'm relieved. It's for the best, even if you're feeling blue right now.  This leaves you available for other...possibilities."

"Yes."

"And if it had gone on longer, you would have put an awful lot of time and energy into something that is dead in the water. "

I say nothing. Glen switches off the water. Turns to me:

"He's narcissistic, immature and he doesn't know who he is."

Narcissistic. Immature. And I don’t know who I am.