The lady from Letgo wrote back, Your a fuckin pyscho cunt!
I wrote back, You spelled you’re and psycho wrong. I deleted that and wrote, WHATEVER CHEAPO.
Then the bell rang and Alice walked in. She wore a long gray sleeveless cotton dress. Her hair was pulled back into a wet ponytail. Her eyes didn’t need makeup.
—Is it closing time? Can we have some beer on the patio?
—Sure.
—You don’t have somewhere to be?
Her grin was acerbic, vaguely judgmental. She took out a ten-dollar bill.
—I didn’t pay for our second round yesterday, this one’s on me. I hate people who pretend to forget to pay.
Within moments we were in the middle of our conversation from the previous afternoon. Then she said something that made me feel we were speaking on a heightened plane. They were similar to the experience of psychedelic drugs, those first conversations with Alice.
—There’s something about your story—Big Sky—all of it, I feel like there’s a purpose. Do you know? Like we are getting somewhere. Of course I sound crazy. This is colder than yesterday. It’s fucking beautiful.
Of course the beer was colder. I’d turned the dial down on the beer fridge for her. It was so cold it glowed. I pictured her mother’s lips with my father’s lips.
—You’re going to hate the women here, she said to me.
—Aren’t they the same as in New York?
—I think they’re worse. They’re opossums. This one woman, Lara, I’m giving her private lessons in her Japanese garden in Santa Monica at six in the morning. She wants to have these talks with me. Her child is with the nanny staring out the window. Hands and face pressed to glass. Lara wants to talk about nothing, about how her hairstylist gives her preferential access, more so than celebrities. She wants me to be jealous of her. One time her husband came out to the garden and saw me and then she switched our time to nine a.m.
Alice had a light accent, maybe affected, but the artifice would have made her sexier to me. She pulled a cigarette from a new soft pack. I thought to light it for her. But I didn’t want to be the man between the two of us. I took a sip of beer and the flavor was suddenly bad. I felt an inch-thick lake of saliva coat my throat. My head buzzed. I willed myself back into the moment.
—Where did you grow up? I asked her.
—Are you asking because of my accent? Continental? Does it sound affected? Sometimes I think I’m affecting it. I totally am. I’ll try to be more genuine because I like you.
She explained that she’d been born in New Jersey but had spent much of her childhood in Italy. I told her I was from there, too. We “discovered” we both had Italian mothers.
—What brought your family to Italy? I asked, trying to neutralize the acid rising in my throat.
—We went back there when I was a toddler. Then we returned to the States for high school. Italy was not as my mother remembered it.
—And your father?
—Out of the picture, she said, fluttering her hand like half of a bird, squinting, and taking a drag. You have to tell me the rest of the story, she said. We are getting somewhere.
My dress felt too tight. She was right, we were getting somewhere. As I told her each part, from the end backward, we were getting to the beginning. We were getting to the reason why I was there. Some people say they do work inside their own brain. They learn that jealousy is a childish emotion. They teach themselves such things. But I could do no work inside my own brain. The interior of my brain was a snake pit. I couldn’t survive in there alone.
—I’m not the important one.
—Yes, you are! Alice said. I won’t say I feel like I’ve known you forever because that’s the kind of thing that woman Lara would say. Over bee pollen shots. She has celiac disease, so the housekeeper has to be very careful.
—Maybe one day the housekeeper won’t be careful enough.
She reached over, laughing, and placed both of her palms on my shoulders. Her forehead went into my chest. I thought, grotesquely, of my father having a type.
—Everybody is full of shit, she said. I called my mother Maman from the age of ten until the age of sixteen.
—What happened at sixteen?
—She died, Alice said, still laughing.
—I’m sorry.
—She was only in the hospital for two weeks, getting gray. She was an amazing woman. A perfect mother. I really think I’d think that even if she weren’t my maman.
I asked her to tell me about Rod Rails. She said that he was one of these gurus who left his penis inside of a woman to calm her. That he would never thrust.
—How did you get the job?
—You mean why did I take the job? she asked, as though of course, if a man were hiring, she would get the job. I want to open my own place someday. Not in LA. Back in Italy, maybe. A small oak studio amid the olive groves and the cypresses. And this is the best. Rod, for all of his tantric nonsense, is the best at combining business and the spirit of yoga. He may not believe in it, but I believe in what he claims to believe in. And that’s all I need.
—You’re very smart for your
