Miss Fortune (27 page)

“Those three dots are the gang symbol for a major Mexican gang in East Los Angeles. Mi vida loca. Did you really not know that?”

Now that he mentions it, I do remember noticing the three dots when I volunteered in the LA county jail. Women had them on their hands or on their faces. I'd never seen the dots on the inside of a wrist but I'm sure rival gangs won't be sticklers about it when they gun me down in the 7-Eleven.

I do a search for “best place to get a tattoo cover-up in LA.” The first one that comes up is Zans Tattoo on Venice Boulevard. The king of cover-ups is a rockabilly guy in a fedora named Rand. I like him. He laughs at my Boise tattoo story. “Oh no!” he says when I talk about the shit-talking baby part. “Are you kidding me?” he asks when I describe the girl's shaking hands. The first thing he assures me of is that he's going to fix that circle.

My friend Dan is worried that I'm going to spend the next five years trying to repair my bad tattoo and will end up with a dragon that goes all the way up to my forehead. I'm worried about this too. My only request to Rand is to keep it small. He sketches out an image of an old cracked mahjong tile. “This way you still keep the original tattoo but I'll use it as the design for the tile . . . get it?”

I hate it. It has no meaning to me whatsoever. I've never played mahjong in my life.

“You know what may be bothering me is . . .”

The entire tattoo shop is giving a “cool or not cool, Grandma?” stare down.

He asks me what I don't like about it. I'm not quite sure. As I'm trying to figure out what to say, the other tattoo artists come to his rescue and gather around the image he's sketched out. They all agree that it's the best tattoo that he's ever designed. “I'm not kidding. This is unbelievable.” The receptionist gasps when she sees it. The last tattoo artist to see it drops the image back on Rand's station. “Fantastic, Rand. It's your best for sure.”

Oh god, they're so clearly trying to boost him up. I've done it again; I've found the weak one. The one who's about to be fired or having personal trouble. I'm going to let him do the tattoo. I know it. Because he needs it. It will help him. Please god, let him not be single. Story of my life. “Well,
he
wants it. It would make
him
happy.” A British guy tells me, “You and I will be wonderful together. You live close, I can bring dinner over, and we can watch
The Muppet Movie.
This is perfect for me.” I'd liked aspects of that, but it wasn't anything I'd suggested. Nobody ever asked me what I wanted or wanted to do. It works for me because I do like a man to be in charge sometimes so I can giggle and complain about being fat and getting my period. In that order. I'm not sure what I would say if someone asked me what I wanted; I'd be so thrown. Or I'd worry that if I told them what I wanted they'd
suppress who they were and only try to please me and I'd never see who they are. Love sucks.

I offer Rand the inside of my right wrist. “Go ahead.”

As the needle digs into my skin, I stare at the sketch on the piece of paper that was passed around the room. It's not that bad. When people ask me what it is or why I got it, I'll say it was the last mahjong tile my grandmother played before she died. Or that it's an homage to one of my favorite writers and fellow Hoosier Kurt Vonnegut, who died yesterday.

“You don't remember the mahjong game in
Cat in the Cradle
?”

The redo doesn't take very long. The way Rand has colored in the circle with red makes it look like I got a tattoo on top of a herpes sore. I can't look at it for very long.

“Thank you so much,” I say and shuffle toward the door.

The receptionist stops me. “Hey! You have to pay!”

“Oh, right.” She runs my credit card. Three hundred and fifty dollars.

I ask her if she wouldn't mind handing me one of the tattoo-removal pamphlets behind her.

She wants to know if I'm kidding.

“Oh yeah, I'm kidding.”

A tall, willowy woman strides through the door, platform shoes and a million feet tall. Her backless sundress reveals angel-wings tattoos that cover her back. She glances down at me, gives me an “I'm beautiful, no?” smile, right as she notices my tattoo. She is incredibly beautiful. Please don't steal my husband, I think. Oh wait, I don't have one.

“Oh my god, what is that?” She takes her sunglasses off and bends down like Big Bird talking to one of the working-class kids of the neighborhood.

“Is that a Flintstones iPod?”

“No,” I tell her. Give her a polite smile.

“Oh, okay. Sorry. Let me see it again. Oh! Oh! Is it money?”

“Yeah, it's money. Eye on the prize. Right? I'm kidding. No, it's not money.”

“Okay. Okay. Hold on . . . I know! Is it toast?”

“No. As passionate as I am about toast, no.”

Now she's got me wondering . . . what the hell is it? Really. I look down and study the tattoo along with her, trying to figure out what I'm looking at . . .

“Let's see, it's an old dirty cracked piece of concrete with a fucked-up circle and a gang symbol in the middle of it.”

She wrinkles her nose like the tattoo smells bad too, and turns away from me toward the receptionist. The two of them share an eye roll.

“Yeah, I'm here for my eleven o'clock appointment. I'm just getting the last two feathers on my wings done.”

I'm sitting in my car staring at my wrist. It's the most awful tattoo I've ever seen. I have a cracked piece of concrete on my arm. A symbol that says, “I can be talked into anything by anyone.” I'm scared to drive my car. I don't even trust myself to do that, for some reason.

What will I tell my date, Kevin, the yoga guy from Venice, tonight? I'm going to tell him it's a tattoo I got for a short story that Kurt Vonnegut wrote called the “The Mahjong Tile,” not well-known except to his die-hard fans.

The parking lot attendant, a Hispanic man in his sixties, with glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, is very handsome, Eric Estrada–like. He could very well be Eric Estrada; that's how bizarre and great this town can be. He sticks his head in my window, giving me a burst of cologne that smells like what my high school boyfriend wore. It's lovely. He's lovely. His hands are so smooth. His fingernails
look buffed, the little moons so white and perfect. “Hello, sweetheart, I'm sorry. I'm closing valet. If you want, you can street park.” As he's talking to me, I'm admiring his hands and I see it. Three dots. Mi vida loca. Speechless, I stick my wrist out and put it next to his hand. His eyes narrow. “Mi vida loca,” he says. “Did you grow up in East LA?” In my white Prius with the toddler seat in the back, I'm so flattered.

“No,” I tell him. “North side of Indianapolis. Did you really think I could have grown up there? That makes me so—”

“No, I didn't, but those three dots are Mi vida loca tattoo. It's big-time, you know. I did a lot of bad things with gangs. I was a gangbanger, you know, all that stuff. Bad times. I'm out now. Never go back.”

I ask him if the tattoo ever gets him into trouble, if people think he's in the gang. “Not when I'm working in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica, and you know, it could get you in trouble, but I think, hey, it's good. I look down and I remember, you know. It's who I was but it's not me. It's a good reminder, you know. Bad times behind me, good times right now, sweetheart.”

He tells me to go ahead and park in the parking lot. “I'll keep an eye on your car.”

Before I go in for my date with Kevin the yoga instructor, I give Erik Estrada my keys and ask if I can take a photo of our tattoos next to each other. Nothing says gangbanger like posing for an Instagram photo.

Kevin is a tall suntanned man in a cardigan sweater. He smiles and nods at me while I'm talking.
Listening.
He's very attentive and kind and he's married. It's an open marriage. “Would you rather know someone in this life or be lied to?” he says with a smile, salsa dripping down his white cable-knit cardigan. This could work, actually. Why not? I'm not looking for a relationship. It would be nice to
know there was really no chance of it getting too serious. Maybe I'm one of these evolved hippies I've been reading about and fearing for so long. Kevin never notices my tattoo; he's far too absorbed texting his wife to tell her how much he likes me. No. This is not what I want to do. Not even for another five minutes. Without much explanation I stand up. “Thank you so much, Kevin. Tell your wife she's very lucky.” I ask the hostess on the way out if valet is still open and she gives me a confused look. “Well, no, there's no valet.” Hearing that they don't have a valet and have never had a valet doesn't worry me at all. Not even for a second.

I
'm on an airplane flying to Portland, Oregon. It's my first trip away from home since David and I split.

Walking into the living room to say good-bye to Leo before I left this morning, before his dad came to pick him up, I considered pretending I heard someone calling my name outside—“Who's that? I'll be right back”—and running out.

After I finally did manage to say good-bye, I had that “I'm about to cry” bubble sound in my voice, which was more upsetting than if I'd just lain down on the floor and howled with tears. Leo asked me if I was crying. I told him of course not. Bugs had just flown in both of my eyes and I was eating a brownie that got caught in my throat “and it's so cakey.” This made Leo mad. He's four, so brownies and bugs in his eyes are the stuff of fancy parties.

The plane is about to land and all I want to do is make it back to my hotel in time to Skype with Leo. I haven't spent that much time in Portland. I was here once before a few years ago doing my play
Bust
at a local theater, but that's been it. I have no idea how many bridges I'll have to cross or naked bike-rider parades I'll encounter that will slow me down.

I lean across the aisle and ask the no-nonsense composter-type lady sitting there if she's from Portland. The neon-green Crocs on her feet and bright red fleece pullover she's wearing have already answered my question, but I don't want her to feel racially profiled so I go ahead and ask her.

I've never seen anyone happier about being asked a question. It was like I'd asked an evangelical Christian if he knew anything about Jesus.

“Yes! I am. I am from Portland! I've lived there my entire life. I'd love to help you out. Please ask me. Ask me!”

In my best “you don't want to get stuck talking to me—I'm a manic depressive burden” flat tone, I ask her how long she thinks it will take to drive from the airport to downtown.

“Guess what!” Composting Lady, whose name I'm now changing to Public Transit Lady, says to me, still excited. “You don't have to drive! You don't have to! There is a train right there in the airport. You'll see it as soon as you get off the plane. It's called the MAX. M-A-X.”

“I think the theater I'm working for is sending an airport pickup for me . . .”

“Oh well, maybe for your return flight.”

I sigh. Traveling with Leo after he was first born had been so easy. We'd shove him in a pocket like a kitten, and off our little family would go to Vermont, New Mexico . . . Orange County.

After the first year, though, David started getting tired of being stuck in a hotel while I was onstage performing. It wasn't like I was coming home every night with my arms full of roses, smelling of champagne cocktails and gushing with tales of “not one but
three
standing ovations!” Most nights, I couldn't wait to get back to the hotel so I could complain to David about the row after row of sleeping old white men who were dragged to the theater by their
wives against their will and viewed theater as nothing more than a planned nap time.

David, the greatest champion and supporter of my work, was also a man who wanted adventure, travel, and to be working
in
the theater. These are not things that happened a lot in a hotel room with a toddler. David started complaining that I was treating him like a glorified babysitter. Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore and decided to stay at home and glorify our actual twentysomething babysitter.

David doesn't like it when I call her “the babysitter.”

“She's a human being, Lauren,” he says to me. Her being a human being was never in doubt. You don't see doorknobs with cleavage like that.

She's twenty-one years old. I am not. If you take a handful of my neck skin, you will see from its elasticity that I am decidedly older than twenty-one. Or else I'm a chicken.

“What
time
is your return flight?”

Without thinking I tell her my actual return flight time. “Eight
A.M.
” As soon as I say it I know it won't be early enough.

“Perfect! The first train leaves downtown at Pioneer Square at four forty-five
A.M.
You'll get to the airport in plenty of time.”

The plane touches down, but she doesn't notice; she's too preoccupied with insisting I call the theater right now and cancel my pickup.

“You'll be able to catch them if you call now. The airport is twenty minutes away from everything. It was voted number one commuter airport in the nation. Portlanders love their airport. In fact, they put some googly eyeballs and a seat belt on a rolled-up piece of carpet that matches the carpet at the airport and named it the grand marshal of this year's Grand Floral Parade . . .”

Walking to the baggage claim, I know Public Transit Lady is
walking behind me. I can feel it. The first sign I see for the MAX, I crouch down and pretend to tie the laces of my loafers. She runs past me, yelling, “Hurry, the train's on time!” I watch her neon-green Crocs disappear down the escalator.

A roll of carpet as the grand marshal of a parade is a million kinds of wonderful. A train that takes you from the airport and saves the planet is as well. I know I should take the train, but I'm not going to.

Tonight will be the first night my sweet three-year-old blond boy is spending at his father's new apartment somewhere in the Valley. I don't even know exactly where he is. I don't care if I have to ride in a Hummer that runs on fuel made out of dolphin faces; I want to see Leo's little blond head tonight.

My airport pickup is not a spry retired teacher in a vintage Prius but a very tall gay man named Kelsey in a teeny-tiny car that he's just driven back from his parents' wind farm; he apologizes if it smells like dog. He tells me he's got exciting news for me that he wanted to wait to tell me in person—the hotel where I'll be staying while I'm in Portland is a LEED-certified building. I'm letting out a huge sigh of relief—“Oh good!”—even though I have no idea what that means, when I see the child's car seat in the back of the car. I forgot to tell the theater that Leo wouldn't be joining me until after his preschool let out for the summer in two weeks. Kelsey arranges travel for the theater. He knew I was traveling alone. The car seat is for his disabled pug.

“Things have changed since I was a kid,” Kelsey says to me as he picks dog hair off the lid of his glass water bottle. “I'm from Pennsylvania. Missing two weeks of preschool when I was little would have meant missing two weeks of eating Play-Doh. If you live in Portland, pulling your kid for two weeks would mean they'd never learn to humanely slaughter a pig or say ‘It makes me
angry that I haven't had a turn holding the goat cheese' in French during the class trip to the local farmers' market.” I love that. I've got to remember to ask Kelsey if I can use those lines in my show and act like I came up with them. He's so delightful, why stop at a few lines? I should steal his entire personality.

Leo's preschool teachers advised me that in times of chaos, routine is key. Whatever they tell me to do, I do it. I've also been leaning heavily on my friend Chuck's advice. Chuck's a gay midwestern motivational speaker whom I've known since high school. He told me to bring Leo with me. “No matter what, he should be with his mother.” He's right. I should have brought him with me. Or not. I don't know. Chuck writes books about choosing to love and being nice to gay people, but last week he posted a photo on Facebook of his teenage son in a closet with his hands tied behind his back and duct tape over his mouth. “Look what the appraiser is going to find during his inspection today!” It's possible his parental instincts can be a little off.

“It's only two weeks,” I tell Kelsey, hoping I seem stable enough to continue to employ. “I can handle it. Army parents are gone longer than that, right?” Kelsey gives me a quizzical look. Coming to do a play in America's top beer city and going to fight in a war. Same, same. I'm going to get my ass kicked in Portland.

Once I'm in my hotel room I set my computer up to Skype. We connect and I talk to David about how Leo is doing. Great, apparently. They're watching Leo's favorite Talking Heads videos, drawing pictures of monsters, and getting ready to read stories, but heads-up, the Human Being is there, so . . . Okay. I don't want to talk to him with her there. I don't want to abandon him, but I'm not ready for this. But he's okay. He's his normal fun hyper self. He's okay. This is so odd. I'm used to dragging myself into hell, but mostly my hells are familiar to me. This is a new one. Worrying
about someone else being dragged down with me is not familiar. I ask David if Leo is ready to talk to me.

He's not. Okay. That's fine. As long as he's okay. Tell him good night.

Turns out, a LEED-accredited building means it's dark all the time. I call the front desk to ask how to turn the lights on. The front desk girl gives me her “Welcome to civilization, you caveman,” speech and explains how in order to save energy the lights operate on a motion-detection system. If they don't sense a human in the room, they shut off.

I'm jumping up and down, waving my arms, yelling, “
I'm here! I'm here!
” Nothing. I knew it. I'm dead. Good, now I don't feel as bad about wiping with a towel.

Maybe I just need a cup of coffee. Seven
P.M.
may be a bit late for coffee, but I'm here to write a play about Portland and am supposed to be gathering material. Not sure how I should go about doing that. You know what? I'll grab whatever the local
Village Voice
is here and hope that there are some wacky things happening this week in the city.

I'm one step out of the hotel and a full-grown man wearing cutoff jeans and no shirt rides up the sidewalk on a miniature bike. He's wielding an enormous machete that he is swinging at anyone who passes by. It's dinnertime, the sidewalks are busy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would rather not see an arm get hacked off, so I run back into the hotel to get help. My screams for someone to “call 911!” are met with bored shrugs from the front desk staff. “Oh, that's just the machete guy. That's Ron.”

Less than five minutes later, I'm about to walk into a coffee shop attached to a bike store when I hear what sounds like the wails of bagpipes, and here comes a man with purple hair riding a unicycle in a kilt and playing the bagpipes.

A chubby teenage boy walks by and looks up from the graphic novel he's reading and says, “I assure you it's way better when he's got the fire coming out of the pipes.”

This play is going to write itself.

The barista is a twentysomething hipster dude. His beard is three times as long as his face.

“Hey, that's my favorite candy bar. Did you know that when you got it?” I point to the Butterfinger candy bar on his right forearm. He responds with a blank stare. He was flirty and nice to everyone in line in front of me. Why doesn't he like me? Do I look like some middle-aged blond lady from Los Angeles? Please god, don't let me look like what I am, because that's not what I am.

I order a pour-over and ask what it is I've just ordered. “Isn't all coffee some form of a pour-over at some point in the process?”

Words like “bloom” and “pour length” and “angle” and “Himalayan” are coming out of his mouth, but I'm not listening. He could be being cold to me to hide his attraction.

“Your total is eight fifty.”

“Wow. Can I pay with two cards?”

My phone rings. It's David. I start to answer it and the barista points to a sign on the front of the register:
IF YOU'RE TALKING O
N YOUR CELL PHONE, DO
N'T BOTHER ORDERING.

“It's my kid . . . I'm going through a divorce and—” He stares at me with a mixture of hatred and boredom. I hit ignore and take my pour-over to go.

As I walk out the door, the barista calls after me, “Have a good day, LA.” How does he know I'm from LA? Out, out, damn spot! I can't get the stench of that city off me.

Back in my hotel room, I'm not only depressed; I'm anxious, thanks to the coffee. Sure it's a green building, but it smells like black mold. I can't relax. I should go out. But what will I do? Wait
a minute. What am I doing? I can do whatever I want. I'm . . . single now. In fact, this is the first night that I've been single, without my kid, in a hotel room, for years. Would you look at that? The depression has lifted.

Mama is going out tonight.

The concierge suggests I go to the Kennedy School. It's a converted old schoolhouse, and there are bars, restaurants, movie theaters, little nooks to smoke cigars, and a soaking pool. “Skip the soaking pool. It used to be amazing but now it's a bunch of depressed parents and their obnoxious kids. It's hell.”

Thankful for the good advice, I hobble out on my high heels pretending to search for a bus stop and hail the first cab I see. Texting in a moving vehicle makes me yack; I wish I'd remember that before I started texting Jack. Is Jack my “ex” stepson now? No. That's awful. In fact, Jack's the only one who intimately understands the impact of what happened. In a way, he's the only witness to the family that was lost. Jack and Simone are the same age. Maybe that's gross, yet kind of “my dad's still got it!” David was an amazing father to Jack; I'm not going to ask him any questions where he feels pressured to trash talk his father. I have plenty of friends who
love
to do that. My text
“Miss you, Jack. Don't get too high at work”
sounds like I'm hinting for him to call me so I can talk about Simone and David. It is. That's why I'm worried it sounds that way. Jack's been living in Boston since he graduated high school. Jack and I talk on the phone now more than we ever used to. I haven't felt this close to him since he was in juvie. All the big bombs—divorce, death, and parole—really bring people together. It's been a year since I've actually seen Jack's face. I miss that face. “Your
face
misses my face,” as Jack would say. My text was halfway done—“You're still my stepson even if”—and I have to throw the phone on the taxi seat and stare at the horizon to let the nausea pass.