Black Wave (22 page)

Michelle stopped at the Unfair and picked up a bloated jug of wine, one meant for a large Italian family to sip over a Sunday dinner. She brought it home and consumed the entirety of it. Each time she considered stopping—That's it, that was the last glass, time to go to bed—a feeling like heartbreak washed through her body. It was the saddest feeling in the world, the feeling of going to bed, of ending the drinking. You can drink again tomorrow
,
Michelle promised herself. Go to bed. But she couldn't.

In the morning she trod to work, stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. The black wave of vomit stirring inside her commanded she pause in the middle of the sidewalk to lean against a street sign. The metal pole burned her bare arm but it didn't even register. Michelle felt crazy. How was she sick like this again? How had she stayed up until four in the morning—again—when she had not wanted to do such a thing? She did not want to stop at the Unfair to Gays after work, but she felt scared. She knew that she would. She knew that she would forget how she felt right then, dizzy and trembling on a burning street sign, she would forget all about it, and the lure of the wine would somehow seem the only sane impulse. Michelle fished in her army bag for a pen. She pulled out a receipt from the bottom of the sack and kneeling on the ground she wrote,
YOU WILL WANT TO BUY WINE DO NOT BUY WINE REMEMBER HOW YOU FEEL RIGHT NOW DO NOT BUY WINE DO NOT BUY WINE
. She folded the note and put it in the front pocket of her bag, where important things like house keys and Chap-Stick were stored. Then she took the pen and wrote
NOTE
on her knuckles, a letter on each finger.

Michelle thought of a Dean Koontz paperback, the kind she purchased from junkies for a quarter. It had been in Michelle's house growing up, Wendy was a voracious consumer
of the sort of mass-market horror novels you could buy at Walgreens. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and books by women in which the protagonist's handsome new husband turned out to be a serial killer. In this Dean Koontz book, teenagers were being diabolically controlled via waves that were broadcast through their town. The teenagers would band together outside the reach of the waves and make plans to save themselves, but once they got home the power of the waves lulled them and they did nothing. It was such a creepy story. It was Michelle's story. One of the teens wrote themselves a note in a moment of lucidity, only to destroy it once under the influence of the brainwashing waves again. At the bookstore that day, Michelle flushed her note down the toilet. It had made her feel crazy to see it, the desperate, capitalized handwriting, how the force of the pen had torn through the receipt, the word
NOTE
inked on her fingers that all the annoying junkies kept asking about. In the bathroom she rubbed the word from her skin with antibacterial soap, then ripped up the note and sprinkled it into the toilet. After work she bought a bottle of wine.

If I take Lu out of the story, how does Michelle get sober? Michelle wondered. If there is no Lu to witness Michelle's degradation, to watch Michelle jump out of the car at the red light by the freeway, run onto the freeway's shrubby shoulder, and sit there under a bush, smoking, gazing down at the red lights of the passing cars blurred with her tears. Michelle couldn't even remember what they were fighting about, she never could, and this put Michelle at a terrible disadvantage. As long as she was drunk she would lose every fight with Lu, she had no comeback for
You were drunk
. Did Michelle get sober in order to win their arguments?

If I take Lu out of the story there is no one to chase Michelle down when she runs away to the Frolic Room. You wouldn't even be able to call it running away because there'd be no one to run away from. Michelle would just be another alcoholic warming a barstool in one of Bukowski's old haunts, staring at a mural of dead Hollywood stars, trying to figure out who was who, but it was such a bad mural. Only Marilyn in her famous white dress was for certain. If Michelle couldn't run away then she couldn't be found. The bartender would never look at Michelle and say,
Someone on the phone wants to talk to the girl with blue hair. Are you here or not?

If not Lu, then who would have come to find Michelle in the bar where she drank wine with some new friends? Who would have yelled,
Do these people even know that you have a problem? That you are trying not to drink?
Who would have convinced her to go home, still in the grip of fine, she was fine, it was fine for her to drink some wine—only to wake up in the morning full of despair. How had she gone and drunk again when she had sworn she wouldn't? She must be crazy. If Lu wasn't there to show her this insanity, how would she ever know something was wrong? How would Michelle ever get better?

12

You really can't tell half the story. People wrap around each other like trees planted so close that they fuse together. If something happens they both fall. Then you're just this busted tree walking around. Learning how to think again, learning how to be. It's like you had a stroke. In an AA meeting where Michelle had shared that she was exiting an eight-year relationship, an old woman had held her hand and said,
It's like a death
, and contorted her face in understanding. Because the woman was old Michelle presumed she had known death personally and was grateful for her condolences. Michelle felt like a part of her
had
died, the part that believed in love.

Michelle had always felt annoyance at the dramatics of jilted people claiming to have given up on love. It sounded so silly. No one gave up on love. Who could resist its pull? But now Michelle got it. It wasn't a pose. She had pulled back the curtain and found nothing. No forever, no loyalty, nothing to stake a life on. She supposed this is what it had been like for Andy. Andy had really loved her, and Michelle
had shat upon that devotion. Understanding for the first time Andy's pain, wondering if she was perhaps a sociopath for it having taken so long, Michelle guessed she deserved it. She deserved to have the illusion of love ripped from her heart. Everyone did.

13

Most days at the bookstore Michelle worked alone, but Beatrice or her husband could pop in at any minute, so she could never really relax into slacking off the way she would have liked to. She would select a book that looked interesting, sit on a ladder, and try to look like she was just checking what shelf it should be placed on. This prevented her from really being consumed by the story the way she liked, but the husband especially was always looking for proof that Michelle was not earning her seven dollars an hour, and so she had to be vigilant. It also made it hard to steal books. Michelle had no qualms about stealing from the bookstore. Indeed she felt like she was doing them a favor by taking some of the dead weight of inventory off their hands. She never stole money and she didn't steal first editions or anything bound for eBay. She just clipped titles she wanted to read but would never be able to really get into while balancing on a ladder at work. Besides reading and stealing, Michelle also enjoyed masturbating in the bathroom and talking on the telephone
long-distance to her moms—but all these activities were risky. On that day, the second day of the end of the world, the husband came in unannounced. He was furious about permit parking.

You know what will happen?
he raged, stuffed in the kiosk behind the counter, making it impossible for Michelle to retain her post there.
The businesses will die. All of them will die. People won't come here if they can't park.

Well, The Businesses Are Going To Die, Michelle said. Right? She said this for herself more than the husband. It seemed she should be making an attempt to lift herself out of shock, but it was hard because so many other people were also in shock, and Michelle was finding it creepily easy to just carry through her day, ringing up records and purchasing paperbacks from junkies as if they hadn't just officially entered the End Times.

The husband looked at her, first blank and then offended.
We cannot lose our humanity because of what has happened
, he proclaimed
. We cannot aid in the unraveling of civilization. Do you want to spend the next year living like a dog? Because people will. People will die like dogs, you can go join them.
The husband pointed to the door with such a fierce look on his face Michelle wondered if she was being fired.
I refuse to die like a dog. I refuse to allow my world to go to hell because of this. We have built this neighborhood into the thriving commercial strip it is today through hard work and cooperation and I am not going to let permit parking destroy it, even if we're all going to be dead in a year.
He clutched at his heart as acidic bile rose inside him like molten lava.
Especially if we are going to be dead. How do you want to spend your next twelve months, Rochelle?

Michelle, Michelle corrected him. She wasn't mad, she didn't know his name either. He was her boss. How did
Michelle want to spend the next twelve months? She hated questions like that. She hated having to have a plan, ever. She knew that any plan she came up with would be a little pathetic. She'd rather keep it open, invite the randomness of the universe to toy with her. I'll See Where Life Takes Me, she said airily.

The boss snorted.
That's imbecilic. You should know what you want. If this turn of events has a silver lining it is that people will have to know what they want. Why don't you know what you want?

What Do You Want? Michelle asked, defensive. She had never talked to this man for more than two minutes and now they were having a deep, existential fight. And Michelle had started it.

I am living the life of my dreams,
he said grandly, stretching his arms out toward the store.
I built this place, every little shelf. I filled it with books and records. I make my living transferring works of art between people who love art, who love to read books and hear music. I help recycle. I have my woman.
Michelle blanched.
We have no children, nothing bringing us down, no drain on our resources. This is everything I've ever wanted. And I won't let permit parking suck the vitality out of what I've created.
He brought his fist down on the counter, jostling some office supplies and a copy of Jayne Anne Phillips's
Black Tickets
.

Michelle wrote a book.
Beatrice had crept into the store and hovered off to the side, listening to her husband's grand pronouncements. The skin beneath her eyes was so pale Michelle could see tiny veins ferrying blue blood around her face. The husband turned.

Oh yeah? Maybe you want to do that, then. Maybe you want to write another book? Or maybe a screenplay?

I Was Going To, Michelle said slowly, But Now I'm Not
Sure It Would Be Worth It. It's Hard To Write A Book. It Might Take Me A While And Then You Have To Find A Publisher—

Your agent does that, doesn't he? He does all that for you?

I Don't Have An Agent, Michelle said.

Well, there's one thing you can do, find an agent. This town's crawling with them. They come in here all the time, I'll introduce you.

Michelle shrugged. She hated when people acted like there were simple solutions to the huge problems of her life. The husband wasn't just going to introduce her to an agent. And even if he did she'd still have to write the book, which would take her forever, and then it took so long for books to come out once they're finished, by the time the thing got published the world would have been pulped. It was useless.

Don't you want to write for the joy of it, the joy of writing?

Michelle used to. Back when she had first moved to San Francisco, when she'd had no friends. She was so grateful to have something that felt meaningful and filled up her nights. She would sit alone in bars and coffee shops writing, writing. But things were different now. There were stakes at stake. Getting published changed things. Her writing wasn't a fuck you to her job, it had become her job, one that paid even worse than her day job but was somehow more important. Michelle tried to explain this to the husband but felt embarrassed. It made her sound like she thought she was so important, and she wasn't. She wasn't important
at all.

I'm a writer
, the husband proclaimed. He sounded like he was trying on the declaration and liked how it fit. It brought a smile to his bearded face.
I wrote a letter to the
editor, about permit parking. And when I wrote it, I'll tell you, honestly—I did not think they would publish it. I wasn't thinking of it being good, I wasn't thinking like that at all, I was just in that place of flow. I was expressing my feelings and it felt right. And I think that came through because the editor published it. He even asked me to write an op-ed about it! You just have to find that flow and do the work for the joy of it. That's another silver lining.
He stroked his beard meditatively.
There won't be any time for things to pay off so you'll have to only do things because you love them. Here.
He pulled a scrap of scratch paper from under the register.
Here, make a list. I love lists. They're so helpful. Make a list of five things you want to do in the next year. Think about it.

Michelle allowed the pen to be shoved into her fingers. She stared at the red piece of paper. She procrastinated by scratching out the numbers one through five.

       
1. Have sex with Matt Dillon.

The husband looked at her with raised eyebrows. His eyebrows were wild, the hairs looked like they were having a party.

You're serious? I want you to take this seriously.

Mmm-hmmm. Michelle chewed the pen.

We can help you with that, he comes in here—Beatrice, doesn't Matt come in here all the time?

Oh, yes.

Michelle wants to have sex with him.
He studied Michelle.
I thought you were a lesbian?
Michelle shrugged.
Okay, okay, continue,
the husband prodded.

       
2. Stop drinking.

       
3. Leave the country.

       
4. Meditate.

       
5. Write something good.

The husband analyzed Michelle's list.
I see you have a negative,
he observed.
“Stop” drinking. Try to reframe that in a positive way.

Nearby, Beatrice leaned on a pile of books, her elbows jammed into the top paperback, the whole stack trembling with her breath. She looked at her husband adoringly. Michelle realized they were in love. She had assumed they were just resigned to each other.

Paul used to be a counselor,
Beatrice said dreamily, brushing moisture from her cheek.

Paul winked at his wife, a twitch that brought the unruly tuft of his eyebrow in contact with the brush of his mustache
. I did. But then I had an acid trip and realized that people need to find their own way. It isn't for me to say what experiences are healthy or not healthy. Maybe it's beneficial for a soul to, for instance, sink into depression and end their life. They could take that experience into their next life and become a healer, how do I know? The picture is much, much bigger than we think it is. Anyway, back to you.

This game, or whatever it was, made Michelle uneasy. It was absolutely the opposite of how she lived her life. Michelle didn't have goals or plans or wants or needs. The chances of them coming her way were slim, and then what? Then you were a loser. If you just stayed open and rolled with things you could be a champ. Plans led to disappointment, to regret, to chain-smoking and sadness. Michelle refused to be tragic. She would resist having plans.

Paul pointed at number two.
How about “I want to be sober”?

I Don't Want That, Michelle gulped and shuddered. That's Not What I Wrote.

You wrote you want to stop drinking, it's a negative. What's the positive? I want to be sober. You want to be sober.

No, No, No Way, Michelle said. I Just Want To Stop Drinking The Way That I Do. I Want To Drink Differently.

Like how?

I Want To Not Get Drunk? Michelle said.

Okay, well, why do you drink, when you drink?

To Get Drunk, Michelle said.

Hmmm, you want to stop drinking to get drunk. But you drink to become drunk. So you want to continue to drink why?

You Know, Just To Be Able To Drink.

For what reason? How often do you drink? Do you drink every night?

Yeah.

And do you get drunk every night?

Yeah.

And how often would you like to drink, ideally?

Michelle shrugged in a full-body jerk, like Paul's hands were clamped onto her shoulders and she was trying to throw him off. I Don't Know. I Don't Want It To Be Such A Big Deal. I Want To Drink Whenever I Want To Drink And Not Have It Be Such A Big Deal. I Don't Want To Be Sober.

And the store became full with the shrill sounds of alarms then, of ambulances and fire engines tearing down the street, coming to a halt outside the gates of the Scientology Celebrity Centre. The gates were long and iron and very majestic, the trio could see it through the front window. More vehicles came, and then more and more again. Ambulances, mostly. Their sirens were unbearable.
Oh,
Beatrice expressed pain in her face, clamping her thin, spotted hands to her ears. Michelle took her list
and crumpled it in her fist, tossed it in the basket. She didn't like seeing it there, red in the otherwise empty bin. She wanted it to not have ever existed. Outside in the street a maid was hysterical. She was waving her hands and screaming and crying, her body racked with sobs as if her crying were vomit, a deep heaving. EMTs took her to the side. Gurneys were being relayed from the compound. The street filled with clogged traffic. Cars honked. Ambulances pulled away only to be replaced by more. Smaller cars managed to scoot around the flashing spectacle, driving up onto the sidewalk and peeling off. One woman, her car too large, climbed out of it. She was crying too, not as terribly as the maid, more like Beatrice, her expression calm below the tears, her face wet as if she'd lifted her face from the sink while washing it. She threw her keys to the street and left her car. She walked away from the traffic, back in the direction she'd come. The car behind her couldn't accept this. It rammed into the abandoned vehicle, rammed it again.

Oh no,
Beatrice said.

Not good,
Paul agreed.
Not good, not good.

The bookstore shook with the impact of the abandoned car being rammed through the French restaurant next door. The breaking glass sounded the way fireworks looked—a sparkling, bright explosion, slivers and shards pushed brilliantly into the air, a rain of tinkles growing lighter and fainter, a wind chime. Piles of books throughout the shop tumbled and slid, paperbacks and LPs skidding down the aisles. The shelves, crammed as they were, held together. Michelle and her bosses were ducked into themselves, as fetal as a person can go and still remain standing. In the silence left by the fall of glass, close enough to be heard
above the constant ambulatory wail, a man yelled,
Fuck this! Fuck this!

Oh, please don't let anyone be hurt,
Beatrice prayed.

They don't open till dinner,
Paul said.
How often do I complain about that, huh? How many times have I told Allan to start opening for lunch? What do I know. They could be dead now. I could be dead, I could have been sitting there eating a croque monsieur.

They're so bad for your condition,
Beatrice said.

You get my point, though. You can't listen to other
people.
Remember that, Rochelle.

Poor Judy,
Beatrice sighed.
This is going to ruin her vigil.