Aftermath of Dreaming (36 page)

 

I almost had a good look this time. As my screaming reached its peak, I almost saw the face of the man about to grab me, but he disappeared.

I sit up on the couch in the glow of the street lamp pouring in. It has been a couple of months since the arboreal massacre and the sad little clumps of leaves growing on the tree almost make it more depressing somehow.

I go to the kitchen to make myself a cup of chamomile tea. As I am waiting for the water to boil, a memory comes to me from when I first started going to meditation sessions at En Chuan's apartment.

It was a night when I got there before the others, so I helped him set up the circle of cushions on his living-room floor. Water for tea was working its way to a boil, and the open windows were letting a breeze in.

“Do you think all this is real?” En Chuan suddenly said to me. We were sitting across the floor from each other. He was on a black meditation cushion with his back so straight and hands so relaxed on his lap that his short thin body seemed to expand in that cross-legged pose as if
it were most powerful like that. “Your life and perceptions, experiences and beliefs—are they real?”

I told him I thought so. They certainly felt real.

He nodded, then said, “While you are having a dream, you believe it is real; your nervous system reacts as if it is real; sometimes you even wake up thinking for a moment it is real.” He paused and his hands refolded themselves on his lap like a cat elegantly finding a new pose. “How do you know you won't wake up to discover that none of this was real? That an entirely different reality exists for you to one day awaken and see.”

I had no response for that. The kettle began to whistle, so I got up to set out the tea, then Steve and the others arrived. It felt like he had planted something in me, had replaced an organ I didn't know wasn't working, and my body was still deciding if it should reject or welcome the foreign aid.

Curling up with my tea on the couch, I have no idea what this other reality is that En Chuan was speaking of, but just the idea that it may exist is comforting. It isn't heaven he meant, but something else, something here. A way of seeing that is freeing, not limited by dreary reality. I doubt I'll ever have it the way En Chuan probably does, but even just a peek of it—one altered view—would be enough.

I have been trying to avoid
what I've been thinking lately. I got the order shipped to Greeley's on deadline three weeks ago, so my prayers that it will blow out fast have begun. I asked Dipen and the vendors if I could have an extension on paying my bills, but they need the money, too, and I can't afford to jeopardize those relationships.

All last week, I walked into, then out of, every restaurant on Melrose. They all asked for a picture and a résumé.

“I just want a waitressing job,” I said. “I'm not an actress.” I had thought that would help—no auditions for me to bail out of a shift for—but they just shrugged and showed me stacks of other applicants' glossy eight-by-tens with smiles and sex abounding within. Who knew never being on TV would handicap me to serve food? Not that any of them were hiring anyway.

I even tried nightclubs. Got dressed up in smallish outfits and went
around in the early evening hours. Gloria tried to talk me out of it when I told her what I was doing.

“Those real tall girls can do it, but even they wear the heels, 'cause, hon, you have to keep that tray up and over your head to get through those crowds. You never thought of that, did you? It's hard, hard work. I wouldn't try it if I were you.” Like I wanted to.

Every nightclub in town was fully stocked with fully stacked girls and my checkbook was in free fall. I was trying to brace myself for my own personal crash, when the last number would hit and the zero would explode up and out and rain poverty on me, silent nothings crushing me in their wake. Years ago, I met a homeless woman when I was volunteering in a food line on Santa Monica City Hall's front lawn. She was in her early thirties, and I could tell she had been rather pretty once. Long brown hair that she was trying to keep neat, large blue eyes, someone you might meet at a party, not tons of distance between her and me like I always thought there'd be. She was last in line, and as I served her a plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce, she told me about the sliding steps that had gotten her there and how the process back to a rehabilitated life was a sheer vertical cliff. Not that I think I'll end up where she was, but her sunburned face and hopeless eyes have started peering at me from my mind.

 

I want to jump out of my skin. But each morning I sit at my worktable with coffee, music on, and the jewelry that Greeley's sent back along with what was in the safe—a few tourmalines, peridots, citrines, and jet. I play around with ideas to remake the old pieces while I try not to think about my smashed bank accounts and seeing Andrew. I get caught up in the juxtaposition of color and surface and sparkle and matteness, envisioning a whole new line, and I want to run downtown and scoop up more gems and pearls and jet to create this world, then I remember that I don't have the money, and the panic comes, so I try to get my breath back and look at my options. I could call Matt and Suzanne for a loan, but that's a phone call I really do not want to make.

 

I couldn't sleep all last night thinking about it, so I got up at two
A.M.
and drove on the 10 and the 101, going between them on the 110 again and again, looking at the skyscrapers that are always standing no matter what is happening, shiny and bright like perfectly cut jewels, until finally I was sleepy and went home. I woke up at seven and have been waiting until mid-morning when Andrew will be at his office. I tried to limit my caffeine because I am already nervous enough, but not drinking coffee made me edgy, so it was a toss-up as to which was worse.

I am sitting on the couch with my back to the tree. Maybe I should just put the damn couch in front of the windows, but then I'd have to face the butchery head-on whenever I sit down. Draperies may be unavoidable now but that pisses me off because I'm not big on window treatment. Okay, focus on what I have to do. Or have decided to do. I try to form the question in my mind, to rehearse it, but the words slip around, and unrelated ones jump in and join sentences they should never be in, and I realize it is useless to try to make this a comfortable thing to do. I just need to breathe, if I can.

“Are you okay?” is Andrew's hello when he answers his cell phone. He sounds very concerned, like something is terribly wrong. I guess he saw my number on his cell phone, and I don't usually call him.

“Andrew, I'm broke.” The words come out so fast that the breath they were on barely left my body.

“Oh.” He sounds startled, like someone just handed him a curious prize.

“Can I borrow some money?” I realize that I am clenching my calf hard, like it's the safety latch on a theme-park ride.

“Of course, but I don't want it back.”

Relief is pouring into me, but it has to get past the words tumbling out. “I'm sorry to ask, it's just I've been looking for commissions and a new store, but there hasn't been anything, and I told you how Greeley's isn't paying for this order, and I've even looked for waitressing jobs, and I really will pay you back, is it just horrible that I asked?”

“Not at all, don't worry about it, and I don't want money from you. I told you you were like a daughter to me. How much do you need?”

The ease in his voice envelops me and I am able to get a real breath in. “A few thousand? To keep the wolves from the door until something turns up. I'm sorry to—”

“Stop, it's fine. Do you have health insurance?”

“Health insurance?” He could have asked if I had a condo at the beach. “No.”

Andrew sighs. I have a feeling I have become a face to a statistic he has fought for and lost.

“I'm happy to get you the money, but this is embarrassing because I don't have any on me. I never do, so it might be a while before I can get any to you. Will you be okay until then?”

“Yeah, I'm not being kicked out, I just don't—” I annoyingly start to cry.

“Yvette, it's okay, don't worry about it. I'm glad you asked. I would've been mad if you hadn't. Now just let me call you later today, okay, honey? I'll call you later.”

His protectiveness feels so tangible, I should be able to take that to the bank.

 

I need to get out of my head. It's been two weeks since I asked Andrew for money, and every day on the phone he says he's getting it, but he hasn't yet. I alternately lambaste myself for asking—maybe Suzanne was the better choice, after all—and wish he would just get it already because my request has been hanging in the air between us all this time, getting distorted in our minds, or mine at least.

Or maybe he's not even going to give it to me. At what point do I stop believing he'll come through? Fuck, I don't want that to happen for so many reasons. I decide to give it another week, and if still nothing's happened, then I'll come up with plan B. Though God only knows what that would be.

But staying in my apartment is making me batty. I need to do some
thing besides pursue work and create jewelry because neither are happening, but “free” is the deciding factor for me and in L.A. that means the Getty. I call Steve to see if he can join me. I considered calling Reggie, but since Betty's been around it's felt better not to. Steve and I are finally going to do that Zen for Christians retreat in a couple of weeks, so it'd be nice to see him before three full days of silence when I can let go of thinking. And worrying.

 

The late October afternoon at the Getty Museum is God's own artwork, though the land that it is situated on helps. The promontory doesn't jut straight into the ocean, but the area below it, Brentwood, becomes so much scenery as the sea takes all the attention. Steve and I walk through the antiquities, or ancestors as he calls them, then spend our time in a photography exhibit of the Mississippi Delta in the thirties, i.e., dire poverty, but softened by the exposure and printing. Looking at a particularly beautiful bleak view, I am transported to the unforgiving sun and land of my home state. The seasons' sharpness overpowering anyone who lacks the resources for simple body-comforts defense. I have a moment of seeing my being broke as a split second in the hours of my life, a click in time with barely enough import to make a sound. Then the panicky feeling that my breath has been navigating around returns and it is all I can do not to run out of the gallery and call Andrew.

 

Driving home from the museum, I make it halfway before I am unable to resist any longer. I dial his cell phone and listen to Andrew's silent voice mail message pick up. Fuck. Okay, I shouldn't have called him anyway. I just need to be patient. Or seriously consider a plan B. A mile later, I press the redial button and his voice comes on the line.

“Where are you?” Like he already knew I was driving around, able to meet him.

“On Beverly near Fairfax, why?”

“Come to Crescent Drive at little Santa Monica, I'll meet you at the gas station there.”

I turn my truck around. We drive toward each other, describing the rush-hour obstructions we weave through, the web of our words pulling us together at its center point.

I pull in to the gas station, look at the cars at the pumps, but don't see him. Traffic on little Santa Monica is oblivious and insane.

“I'm here, where are you?” I stop my truck a good distance from the pumps. I have no idea what I'll say if a serviceman walks over.

“One street over on Canon—meet me here.”

I don't understand what we are meant to do once we meet so publicly.

As I turn onto Canon, Andrew says, “I see you.”

“Where?” I swivel around in my truck, searching for him.

“Behind you, the dark Mercedes-Benz.”

I spot an “affordable” version of that car just behind me. “That one?”

“No, the fucking big one, you think I'd drive that piece of shit? Two cars back.”

“Oh.” I look farther back, but still can't find him. I feel pursued, a cops-and-robbers game, but we're on the same team.

“Head north, cross Santa Monica, turn right, and pull in by the park there,” he says.

I feel the thrill of a cop forcing my actions, directing my drive. It makes me tremble behind my knees and farther up. And this cop is Andrew.

Life in L.A. is a constant car chase, so having one with Andrew doesn't seem strange. Although really it is more of a car following. When I pull into a space by the park, he comes into view. Behind me. Approaching. Close. I wonder how he was able to stay invisible for so long. He is in my rearview mirror, then next to me in a parking space, his Mercedes engulfing my vision like his force does my life. When he gets out of his car, a giant no longer contained, the air splices into Technicolor, the traffic a soundtrack to his smile. Then he is up in my truck next to me, so close and real and big and I haven't seen him in what feels like years and like seconds. I kiss his lips and neck and face, his well-cared-for skin, so unlike
anyone's I have known, as if the years settled like stardust into his cells, plumping them to become a soft radiant shield.

“Let's go somewhere else,” he says, glancing around through the windows. “Take Rexford north.” I half expect him to duck down.

We are robbers now from the cops, driving through Beverly Hills on a mission whose goal I'm unsure of. Andrew directs me through a series of complicated turns in the hills above Sunset, then stops us at the end of a cul-de-sac in front of a house hidden by a stone wall and a dense line of trees. No one is around.

“Do you know the people who live here?”

“No.” He looks startled, as if he might without knowing it. I realize this was a choice of anonymity he made, not the protection of a close-lipped friend. “Here. I know it took weeks to get it, but I hope it'll help.” The envelope Andrew hands me is sealed. “It's all I could get for now. Let me know if you—”

“Thanks, Andrew. I really will pay you—”

“Stop, I don't want your money.”

A gray cat crossing the street stops upon seeing us, paw suspended midair, then walks on.

“When you asked me, I felt very paternal toward you. I wanted to help you. I always have.” He looks embarrassed and proud, like a major highway with a gentle yield that enables you to come on.

 

Once I can no longer see Andrew's car receding, I stop at the red light at Santa Monica and Crescent, open the envelope and count three thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. The light turns green, and I drive with it on my lap, a piece of his protection left for me.

The city is deep into Friday night. Cars are no longer solo-filled for work, but hold pairs and groups. Andrew is driving home to his wife and daughter and son. The daughter whom he won't know when she's my age, I suddenly realize. Unless he reaches eighty-four lucidly, the age he'd be when she's thirty. I wonder if he has thought about that, has let himself imagine how much of her life he'll see and which of her
years he'll miss, as I at times in the past sixteen years have tried to imagine my life with my father in it.

And what happened to the dreams my father must have had for me when I was young? Where did he put them when he left and lived in Florida? Underneath, probably, deep down inside where he couldn't find them. But maybe they flew up into the air when he died and merged with the sunlight so they could find me here in California where they have settled into my cells and will redirect their growth correctly.