The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (13 page)

I remember the years after I kissed Suky in fragmented clusters, as though seen on a TV with rotten reception. I can flip through the channels as often as I like, but no narrative coheres. All I can glimpse is fixes I got myself into. Not how, not why. I see a young Finnish actor lying beside me, so thin, like a boy, except for his phallus, which stands wavering nobly. I see his girlfriend, Oxanna, sitting beside me in a restaurant as the boy hands us each a bunch of roses. I see myself on the street being slapped by a woman with short black hair and a livid face. I see myself lying on a table. A man wearing a wedding ring is standing between my open legs (somewhere in here I must have lost my virginity). And, like snowy static, I see pills – pink pills, white pills, blue pills – falling across the screen. Okay, I understand, of course, I took every pill I could get my hands on, no wonder I can't remember anything. Wait, I can see an ashtray littered with cigarette butts on a coffee table. A man – Sergei – clamps a cigarette between his thick, sensual lips, lights up, and inhales deeply, with real enjoyment, his bulging, black eyes open wide. I see the man's wife, Amelia, also Russian. She is blonde, very thin, exhausted looking. I work for these people. I teach their daughter English. Her name is Anya. Sergei is glowering, emphatic. The skin on his arms is very smooth, tawny, and hairless. His body is of an almost comical shape – potbelly, short, muscular legs. He is a Trotskyite and a cellist. He plays for me. Dense, dark waves of music rise from beneath his fingers. I find the sound powerful, melancholy, hypnotic. Sometimes I spend the night here so I don't have to go all the way downtown on the subway. On these occasions, Sergei reads out loud to me from
‘The Revolution Betrayed'. I see myself kneeling in front of the couch, Sergei's penis in my mouth, while his wife and daughter sleep next door. How much worse can this get?

At around this time, the images become so flimsy, I can't make them out. I see my hands bound together at the back. I strain to catch a glimpse of myself, I worry, what the hell am I doing now? Then a clear color image quickens: I see people holding plastic cups filled with wine, talking. I see myself in lace-up leather boots, white-blonde hair, a muddy coat. My skin is pale, there are circles under my eyes. I am here with friends, ah yes, now it is all coming clear, I see better now, wait, now I'm inside the screen, I am standing next to myself, I can't believe how real this all is, I can hear the voices – it's an art opening. These are the people I used to serve margaritas to at El Corazón! Remember? The ones with paint on their hands. What are they doing here? My boyfriend, Craig, the skinny one with the poker face, is standing beside his painting, a hyperrealistic rendering of a sink filled with dirty dishes. There is a red dot beside it. Our friends cluster around us. Jed, a very tall, part-Sioux sculptor from Nebraska City, his heavy work boots spread wide, checked woolen jacket flapping open, congratu lates Craig. ‘You are one lucky fuck, man, Gigi Lee is a major collector.' Jed looks over at a very beautiful woman in her forties with a nearly impossibly large bust and tiny waist, wearing a cat suit, her long black hair falling to her waist. Her lovely face is surprisingly tired looking, and her voluptuous mouth droops at the corners, as though it has been borrowed from someone else. Jed the Sioux now puts his hand on the small of my back. Have I got it wrong? Is Jed my boyfriend? Terry, the short young woman from El Corazón, with a soft, exposed midriff, chunky high heels, and a cartoonish, glossy red mouth, says, ‘She's an heiress.' Now the beauty in the cat suit walks over to the ratty little clump of us and looks up at Craig with an impish smile.

‘I love my painting.' She has a thick Italian accent.

Craig clears his throat. ‘I'm … glad you bought it.'

‘I am Gigi Lee.'

‘I know. Nice to meet you.' Craig shakes her hand stiffly.

‘You like to paint from the sea?' she asks.

‘I usually paint in the studio,' says Craig. ‘From photographs.'

‘You must come to our house at the sea, you could make a beautiful painting of it,' says Gigi. Then, turning to acknowledge the rest of us, ‘You must all come this weekend. Stay the night!' Craig introduces each of us. Gigi nods at us all, her tiny nose pulling itself in like a turtle seeking its shell. ‘Herb!' she calls. An older man walks out of the crowd. He must be in his fifties. Swarthy, with deep creases in his skin, a crooked nose, and clear blue eyes, he has an open, amused expression on his face. ‘I want them all to come to the party,' Gigi says, opening her arms.

‘The more the merrier,' says Herb drily, teasing.

‘It is this weekend. You can come? There is a bus if you have no car.'

‘I have a car,' says Craig. I nod. Craig has hit a vein of gold, a big commission. And the prospect of free food and drink is something none of us will pass up.

*

We are all in Craig's car, a vast vanilla 1967 Riviera convertible with crimson upholstery. The car used to belong to Craig's deceased aunt Ginny. I am beginning to remember that Terry, the girl with the smirking red mouth, and I sleep with either poker-faced Craig, Jed the elegant Sioux sculptor, or ornery Calvin, the chunky abstract painter. Don't get me wrong; this is not a free love situation. It's a rotation. Each of us is the girlfriend of one or another of these three guys at any given time. Occasionally, a third girl is brought into the group from outside, but usually it's just Terry and I, so one of the guys is single for a while and becomes neutered, essentially another female, hanging out with us girls and whining about his loveless status, until a pregnant lull in the conversation when one of us is alone with him. Eyes lock, and away we go; he's a man again. Now
it's someone else's turn to be single. We have managed this game of musical genitalia for over a year without much jealousy, our friendships intact. But all that is about to change, for me anyway. As I lean my head back on Aunt Ginny's red leather seat, the wind in my mouth, I have no idea that I am driving straight out of one life and into another.

Their house was right by the sea; Gigi had told us that much in her vague directions. We drove slowly beside the long hedge that hid the big houses, looking for their name. At last we found it: ‘Lee,' painted in light blue script on a white mailbox. We turned in to the gravel driveway and drove toward the strangest building I had ever seen. It was a huge glass box with one metal wall. Inside the box was a small, old-fashioned yellow cottage with a red door – a house in a house. It was the middle of the afternoon; there were several cars parked in the driveway. As we approached the Lee home, we could see white leather couches in the outer, modern part of the dwelling. We knocked on the tall metal door of the outer shell. A doleful looking, middle-aged man answered. His shirt was half-untucked. He ushered us in with some sort of Eastern European accent, asked us mournfully if we would like some iced tea. We said yes. He took it like bad news and disappeared. A small, dark, smiling woman in a light green uniform bustled in carrying a tray of glasses filled with amber liquid. The Eastern European man picked up a couple of our bags and made for the stairs.

‘That's okay,' said Craig.

‘We'll get 'em,' said Calvin. The man stayed them with a raised hand. ‘Please,' he said. He had a way about him that made it hard to tell if he was kidding, as though someone had dared him to pretend to be the butler for the afternoon. ‘Mr and Mrs Lee are on the beach with the other guests,' he said, gesturing to a set of French doors that looked onto the sea. ‘Mrs Lee says, come down if you like, or relax up here. Whatever you prefer.'

‘Thanks,' said ornery Calvin, grabbing a handful of salted
peanuts from a large clamshell on the coffee table and looking up at a ten-foot abstract painting on the landing. ‘Fucking Dieter Carlson,' he snarled through a mouthful of nuts. ‘He's everywhere. And he can't even paint.'

Poker-faced Craig had ventured out onto the porch. I followed and stood beside him. I felt I was standing on the prow of a huge, beached ship. The sky stretched up from the horizon, a dome over our heads; occasional perfectly formed clouds were frozen in the blue expanse. All below – glittering water, white-blond sand – was awash in heat and light.

‘Can you imagine owning a house like this?' I asked.

‘We do own it, honey,' said Craig, his hand sliding down my back. ‘I just bought it, remember?' I leaned on the railing and surveyed the beach. Several people were having a picnic down there. A woman in a red bathing suit and long black hair – Gigi – was wading in the water. Several others reclined on multi-colored bath towels. I sipped the sweet, cold tea. The best I'd had in my life. ‘We probably shouldn't have invited so many people with a new cook in the kitchen,' I said.

‘They'll be so drunk, they won't notice the food,' said Craig with a convincing drawl. He took to the role of a rich man easily. In fact, he was poised for a huge success; within ten years he would be one of the highest priced artists of his generation.

The others ambled onto the porch. ‘I'm gonna go down to the beach,' said Jed, our current odd man out. ‘Maybe there's a single lady down there in need of a real man.' Terry and Calvin smoked in silence. Gigi was looking up at us now and waving. We all descended the splintered wooden stairs to a narrow path that led us down the dune. I clung to the fantasy of ownership, breathing in the salty air, looking back at the gleaming glass house proprietarily. ‘We have to get those stairs fixed,' said Craig in his deadened voice. When we got to the beach, though, it was over.

Gigi was on her belly, recumbent on a cerulean towel, a cherry red bathing suit clinging to her impossible form. Her black hair
was drying in brittle, serpentine waves down her back. As we approached, she propped herself up on her elbows, clamping together her cleavage. ‘Hello!' she said. A bronzed, lithe young man sat beside her. He had a sharp-ridged, hawklike nose, which seemed to stretch the skin on his face very taut. He gave us a surprised look from under bushy black brows. We must have looked like aliens, the druggy-pale, black-clad, sleep-deprived clutch of us standing on that costly stretch of coastline.

‘This is Sam Shapiro, the novelist,' Gigi announced. ‘Sam, this is Craig Simms, the painter I was telling you about. And these are his friends, let me see …' Craig introduced us all again. Gigi smiled at us vaguely, taking nothing in. I was hot in my dress, socks, and boots. ‘Do you have your bathing suits?' Gigi asked. I had mine on under my dress, but I didn't feel ready to reveal my pasty form to this goddess. Gigi jumped up and took Craig by the arm. ‘Come,' she said. ‘Let's discuss the commission.' They were off. Jed sat on the sand, legs splayed, his ancient black raincoat spread out behind him, ebony hair glistening down his back, and glared at the sea.

‘It's fucking hot,' said Terry, tugging off her T-shirt. Her bright purple bra encased large, soft breasts that jiggled like mounds of custard.

Sam smiled. ‘Don't mind me,' he said.

‘I don't,' said Terry, leaning back on her elbows and squinting at him.

Ornery Calvin lit a cigarette. ‘So there's going to be a party tonight?' he said.

‘There's always a party at Gigi's house,' said Sam.

I got up and walked toward the water. When no one seemed to be watching me, I unzipped my tattered thrift store dress, unlaced my boots, rolled my sweaty socks off my feet, and left it all in a neat pile. My bikini top didn't match the bottom. I was hoping people would think this was intentional. My icy blonde hair, fried by Terry's dubious skills as a colorist, was wound
up into two little onions at the top of my head. I walked into the water, looking down at my skinny, pallid body. The water felt cold. I splashed the backs of my knees, then dove under a wave and swam a few strokes. When I came up, I was less than a yard away from two men paddling in the water, talking. I recognized one of them as Herb Lee, Gigi's husband. He had a cigar in his mouth. The other man was wearing thick, black-framed glasses. His hair was wild and graying. ‘I don't see how you can possibly think,' he was saying, ‘that I should cram all that into part one.'

‘It's like I told you,' said Herb in his deep New York yet somehow aristocratic voice. ‘Those scenes
belong
to the childhood.'

‘But I'm moving back and forth in time. That's the structure of the thing! The narrative is
liquid
.'

‘What I'm saying is,' answered Herb, ‘let the sequences build up more power – less staccato. You want it to be a good read, don't you?' I had drifted a little closer to them by now and was eavesdropping shamelessly. Herb turned and acknowledged me. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘Are you with our party?'

‘I'm with Craig, you bought his painting? We met at the opening …'

‘Oh yes, sorry, this is Max Kessler, Max this is …'

‘Pippa Sarkissian.'

‘What kind of a name is that?'

‘Swedish and Armenian.' Max Kessler had paddled away and was struggling toward the shore, dragging his feet through the undercurrent, his black swim trunks clinging to his legs, shoulders bowed.

‘You're very welcome, Pippa,' said Herb, the laugh lines driven down the sides of his face deepening slightly, his light eyes twink ling with amusement – at life itself, it seemed. Standing in the waves now, cigar clamped between his teeth, he looked mischievous and anarchic, like some distant cousin of Poseidon, ruling his patch of sea.

‘Thank you,' I said, diving back into the water.

As the sun lowered on the horizon, spattering the sea with its golden, trembling reflection, the butler and the maid trudged down the path to the beach lugging a large wicker basket, each of them holding a handle, faces flushed. Inside the basket, bottles clinked against one another promisingly. Several other guests had joined us for predinner drinks. All of them cheered as the butler arrived. ‘Hurrah for Jerzi!' they cried. The gloomy butler allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up very slightly at this welcome. Guests hurled orders at him as he unpacked the full bar.