Carousel Court (17 page)

“Someone needed to man up.” The door swings open. She stands before him in the doorway with a sympathetic expression. “Baby,” she says, “you're the worst drinker.” She brushes past him.

“You're unbelievable.”

“Unpredictable? Yes. Unproductive? No. Unworthy. Unfulfilled?” She stops. She's not looking at Nick, who stands over his sink, checking his gums, which are bleeding. “Underwhelmed?” she says, and turns off the bedroom light. “Always. Which may have something to do with why I don't want to feel you pressing up against me.”

He sees his cell on the vanity. He checks the call history and sees the number from the Encino firm and the call length: four minutes, twenty-two seconds. He considers her spine. Again. He's standing in the doorway.

Phoebe stares at him. “Don't move,” she says. “You actually look tough like that.”

“You're insane.”

“I like that look for you. Like our first date when you were showing
off, carrying those huge jugs of water for my neighbor. It worked. Very hot.”

“You need help.”

“Come lie with me.”

“If I do, we aren't stopping.”

“Come.”

He sits next to her on the bed, stares at the wall. She takes his hand, pulls him until he's on top of her. She guides him inside of her.

“Apologize to me,” he says.

She's silent. Her eyes are closed. He's still talking, but she's somewhere else. Then she snaps out of it and says, “We were supposed to be at Marina and Kostya's tonight.”

He stops. “Apologize for what you did.”

“But they barbecue every weekend,” she says in a decent Russian accent. “Come inside me.”

“Apologize.”

“We'll see them Saturday. And we'll bring something.”

“Now.”

“This
is
my apology.” She pulls him until he falls on top of her, and as she digs her fingernails into him, rips his skin, he feels it, the pointed, fragile thing, the spine that holds Phoebe together. He could snap it in two. And inside of her, he's realizing that may be one of the few things he could do that she'd respect.

28

S
he's on her way down to Newport, then Laguna Beach, and JW is sending text messages. She just finished ninety minutes at Equinox, mostly the StairMaster, then some core work. She feels strong, focused. She's looking for a house to rent, maybe a Craftsman, walking distance from the beach. A rental she and Nick can afford when she starts her new job, the one JW is delivering.

Polo Lounge is a bit passé.

No job news. It's brutal out there. Things aren't picking up like I thought. Could be a while.

She responds:
MOTU JW can't move mountains? What's next with me and D&C?

She steers with her knees while she pulls her hair into a ponytail. She swallows and her throat is tight. This morning she upped her Klonopin. She was plateauing; all the signs were there: grinding her teeth at night; pitched forward in the Explorer as she drove, the hot tension between her shoulder blades, the gauze lifted from the brown sound-barrier walls and wilted palms that line the gray cracked freeways.

Today she was steady. Until now. JW cuts through the warm psychotropic fog, ruthlessly, right now.

His response:
Soon maybe.

Rules don
't apply to u. Your words. Don't start now with bullshit about what u can't do.

Easy babe. Wheels are in motion. Come see me.

Then when do I hear something?

Can we at least Skype? If you can't get away?

When can you tell me something real?

Very soon. Can you get away?

Maybe

When?

Soon

It's almost four. Phoebe pushes a full cart of groceries through a Bristol Farms she spotted on her way home.

Texts pour in from JW.

It's Saturday night. No Skype: get away. Come for drinks and sushi?

Monday,
she responds.

When Monday?

It's not Saturday. Today is Monday. Labor Day.

I don't care if it's Sunday morning. I want your middle-class ass over here NOW!

She calls him. He doesn't answer. He sends a series of messages:

If my extended weekend comes and goes without a Phoebe sighting I'll just have to come back. Again and again.

There's a knock at the door: is it you??

Damn it, girl. I've decided: I need you NOW

Zen Suite. Hotel Bamboo. As late as you like

Want to go to Japan? My attorney just called and I'm free! One ex-wife down, one to go. No payments, no damages no debts. I.D.L.E.

She messages back:
???

I. Don'
t. Lose. Ever.

She calls again. He answers.

“IDLE? Kind of childish. And don't make me the bitch who keeps asking.”

“So don't be that bitch.”

“Yes or no?”

“Do I ever lose? Is that your question? I think you know the answer, babe.”

“Does that extend to me?”

“I. D. L. E.”

“I'm not you. Same rules don't apply.”

She drops the call.

He messages her instead of calling:
Answer one question for me. Can we without a condom this time?

29

T
he barbecue is winding down. Outside at dusk, another hot Saturday in September, the two couples, Kostya and Marina, Phoebe and Nick, lie on chaises by the pool. They've been out here for hours. Kostya produces a joint, offers to share. Nick reaches for it and takes a long drag.

Kostya drops a cicada on Marina's head and she doesn't notice. Phoebe starts to warn her, but Nick grabs her arm. The cicada is grotesque, with bulging red eyes and orange wings. It crawls from Marina's hair to her neck, and she casually brushes at it, then realizes that it's something larger than a mosquito or a fly, and in one motion she pinches it, wraps her hand around it, pauses to take a drag from the joint Phoebe passed to her, then drops and crushes the thing with her bare heel.

“You're my hero,” Phoebe says to her.

The charcoal briquettes are dimming. Nick walks over and scoops up Jackson, holds the boy in his arms on a chaise longue while Phoebe helps Marina collect the red plastic cups and paper plates and empty beer bottles. Nick finishes off the rest of Phoebe's warm daiquiri. He
closes his eyes. Jackson is calm, resting on his chest. He could lie like this forever. He feels the presence of someone standing over him but doesn't open his eyes, doesn't want to break from this. When he finally opens his eyes, he sees the wide silhouette, the ember of a lit cigarette.

“Jesus, Metzger,” Nick says softly, not wanting to disturb Jackson. “What are you doing here?”

“He's out there,” Metzger says.

“Does Kostya know you're here?”

“Fuck Kostya. He's all talk.”

“I don't know what you mean.” Nick lowers his voice.

“Forget it. So he's burning shit again.”

“Who is?”

“Your neighbor,” says Metzger, his voice rising. “He's loading up the truck.”

Nick makes a shushing noise and says, “Do you mind?”

Metzger stares at Jackson for an unusually long time.

“Good night,” Nick says.

Without taking his eyes from Jackson, Metzger says, “He's burning more of his shit.”

“That's great, Metzger.”

“We just sit back and watch until what? He burns the whole place down?” Metzger looks at Nick with disappointment on his face. “Well, I called it in.”

“Fantastic,” Nick says, reflexively wrapping both his arms around Jackson's warm body.

“They don't mess around during fire season. They'll be here.” Metzger drops his cigarette on the concrete, steps on it, then struggles to keep his balance as he tries to light another. Nick is waiting for the request for money. He turns toward the sliding glass door that opens into Kostya and Marina's kitchen and breakfast nook. He wants to go inside, but not until Metzger leaves. He starts to say something about heading home when Metzger spits on the patio, then turns to Nick before he leaves and says, “Going to Buffalo to bury my father. The Mossberg's yours.” Nick eyes him carefully and can't decide if Metzger is sentinel or symptom or both.

• •

Inside Kostya and Marina's cool kitchen everyone is smashed. The kids are watching some Pixar thing in the living room that's clearly too sophisticated for Jackson, but the animation has him mesmerized. Marina and Phoebe lean against the emerald-green granite kitchen island. Nick sits opposite them, squeezing the last drops of juice from a wedge of lime into something Kostya mixed. Nick wonders how close he and Phoebe are to asking about summer camps and local schools. A couple of breaks, a few thousand dollars? What would it take to make this more than a wrong turn? To make it their home?

• •

Kostya grabs his wife's breasts and she shrieks and slaps him and he growls and they're both laughing and he says, “Healthy woman here,” and she punches his ass with a closed fist twice, hard, as he leaves the room to take a piss.

Nick tries to remember when he and Phoebe last felt so carefree, satisfied with the moment, their home life, their place in the world, their outlook. A few thoughts flash across his mind, teasing stretches of time around their wedding, their honeymoon in the French Quarter, and the plans each dreamed up in their king hotel suite after breakfast in bed seven years ago. A trip they took to Rehoboth back east when Phoebe was pregnant, walking barefoot along the cool, wet sand, the lights of small boats glistening on the horizon as they narrowed down their list of names: Jasper, Jonathan, Rex, Sebastien, and Jackson. Two nights they spent on Nob Hill in San Francisco for a documentary film festival.

“We're not exactly where we planned to be,” Nick says to Marina, responding to a question no one asked.

“Yet,” Phoebe adds.

Kostya returns, drying his hands on his shirt.

“We're closer, though,” Nick says.

“Closer to what?” Phoebe asks.

“I'm thinking about New Orleans again.”

“You are?” Phoebe snaps, stands up, walks to the kitchen counter,
and pours another drink. “That's news to me,” she says, and laughs out loud.

Marina smiles. Kostya turns to Nick, then back to Phoebe.

“I told you this the other night,” Nick says.

“Was I in the room when you said it?” She's baiting him.

“You were passed out on the sectional.”

“Continue, Nickels,” she says, her new nickname for him. “The next phase of our grand plan.”

The expression on her face, with her ponytail, reminds Nick of the Phoebe he wants to fuck. For some reason, right now, in their neighbors' kitchen with his wife emasculating him, he wants to fuck her.

“There's something about it down there,” Nick says. Phoebe returns to her stool, carries it over to Nick's side of the island, sets it too close to him. With the kitchen island obscuring their lower bodies, Nick takes her hand and places it over his crotch and holds it there. “Right after Katrina, being down there,” Nick continues, and Marina and Kostya actually seem to pay attention to his story about the footage he was putting together and the Discovery Channel and the bloated bodies he found in the flooded shotgun house and the dogs left behind, moving in packs, cannibalizing each other. Phoebe's hand, surprisingly, remains on his crotch.

Kostya laughs. “Sound like Ukraine.”

“Why do you feel this compulsion to bullshit everyone?” Phoebe pulls her hand from him. She turns to Nick, inches from his face. “Your hair is thinning,” she says, reaches for his head.

Nick slaps her hand away.

The room is hushed.

Addressing Kostya and Marina, Phoebe continues as if nothing happened. “We're not going to New Orleans. We're not going anywhere.”

“We honeymooned down there,” Nick says. “And housing is dirt-cheap.”

“We have a house,” Phoebe says. “Remember? The rock-climbing wall, the hourglass-shaped pool with quartz rendering? The Italian marble bathroom?”

“Well, I don't care where we go,” Kostya says, and slaps Nick's
back. “Camping, the beach, New Orleans, Vegas, we are going somewhere. All of us go together. Take week or two somewhere new and sexy.”

“Anything to avoid his
zalupa
father,” Marina says.

“Did he call?” Kostya asks, walking across the kitchen to help his wife put away dishes.

“He says he can have bonus room,” she says.

The rumor around Carousel Court or, more accurately, coming from Metzger, is that Kostya and Marina paid cash for their house. Another rumor: They owned stores in Chicago that sold Russian groceries and liquor that did quite well. The rumor that Kostya was involved in loansharking is bullshit, Nick says, part of Metzger's conspiratorial fantasies. The truth is, unlike most on the block or the city of Serenos or the counties of San Bernardino, Riverside, and L.A., Kostya and Marina appear unmovable.

Kostya is shaking his head, his bloodshot eyes without focus. “I'll buy him his very own house before we move him here.”

“Buy his dad a house, Nick,” Phoebe says, voice rising. “But wait, can your garbageman job cover that?”

Nick grins and his lips are tight and instead of slapping the smug expression off Phoebe's face he says, “Eat something.”

Kostya's laughter is uneasy. He interrupts, invites Nick to come with him.

Nick follows Kostya upstairs, down the long wide carpeted hallway to the master bedroom. Kostya keeps running his hands over his hair, mumbling something to himself. When he raises his voice, he says, “See this.”