There was an old couple at a nearby table with their thirtysomething son who looked like he had cerebral palsy. His hair was trimmed into a crew cut and when he stood his limbs jangled like a puppet’s. His father helped him to the bathroom. His mother, a pale and pretty woman in her fifties with glazed eyes, sat at the table when her men had gone and squeezed a lemon into a Coke. There was someone, I thought, who might understand me.
I watched a career waitress say to the bartender, You have to take my tables. I gotta go back there. I’m gonna be some time. Somethin didn’t agree with me.
The waitress ran into the kitchen, her gray ponytail thwapping behind her. Now that I was looking in that direction, I saw the next wrong thing sitting at the bar with dirty-blond hair and light eyes the color of blue hydrangea. He looked back at me and smiled and then suddenly he was smiling more and walking over.
—Hey, he said, I saw you walking out to your car before, at the house. I would have come over, but I was.
He didn’t finish his sentence. He was one of the sexiest men I’d met in person. He didn’t have to do anything except not be cruel.
—Sorry. I’m River. I live in the yurt. You must be Joan.
—Must be, I said, biting my lip inside my brain.
—Mind if I sit?
He was twenty-two, I’d been told by Kathi, who also called him eye candy. He had pink cheeks and his bottom lip was thick and I thought I’d learned my lesson. He’d brought his mug of beer with him. His demeanor was gentle but indifferent, the gutting indifference of the young.
I said, I don’t mind, even though he’d already begun to sit down. “Werewolves of London” was playing. Behind his head a great silver and blue marlin hung from the wall. He asked what had brought me to California, and I said, Acting. That was what I was telling everyone so they would leave me alone. I figured there was enough shame associated with trying to be an actress in one’s late thirties that they wouldn’t press me.
River liked Japanese folk tales. He sold solar panels to celebrities in the Canyon. The company was owned by a couple of bros in Santa Monica and they’d promised him a stake. He drove the work truck during the week and on the weekends he had his fixed-speed. If he went out with friends they’d pick him up. They’d drive all the way into the Canyon from West Hollywood or downtown LA or Culver and they’d head down to Bungalow and drink whiskey near the water. Last week he’d sold a bundle to Lisa Bonet. Her hair was all cornrows and she was in raw silks. She had hundreds of children around her and they kept goats and the children drank the milk of the goats. River tasted it and said it was the flavor of grass.
—How do you get home at night, from the bars in Hollywood? I asked him. Kathi had told me there were no real taxis that went from Hollywood up to the Canyon. Or if they did, they were hundreds of dollars.
—Usually I don’t come back up here, he said. And of course I knew what that meant.
River was from Nebraska. He talked about hunting deer with his father and selling the meat to local purveyors.
—Where I’m from, he said, they sell deer meat at the gas stations. You can pay at the pump and someone will walk out a big bag of meat.
I pictured the bloody bag and the snow falling at a gas station on a country road. He leaned back in his chair and rested one foot on the bottom rung of my seat. He was wearing very light jeans that I don’t think were in style. You will always meet a new kind of man just when you thought you’d exhausted the supply.
“Werewolves of London” played again. Something must have been stuck in the system.
—Good thing I like this song, I said.
He laughed in a way that meant he’d never heard it. Sometimes I dreamed of being married to Warren Zevon, eating drugs with him at Joshua Tree and curry out of stained boxes in the rains of Shoreditch.
—Have you met Lenny? he asked.
—No.
—He’s an odd duck. He lost his wife a few months ago. He’s still pretty fucked up over it.
—How long do you think people should grieve?
—My father died eighteen months ago. That’s why I moved out here.
—I’m sorry.
—He had a heart attack while he was shoveling snow. I came home and found him on the driveway. You could see the asphalt in some parts. He was almost done.
I shook my head in pity. I meant it. I felt so much for him, but I was always feeling more than I should when it came to death. The bartender came and removed our dirty glasses. I was about to ask for another round when River said he should be going. He needed stamina to ride his bike up the two treacherous miles.
—I can give you a ride if you want.
He thought for a moment and said that would be great. For a third time, “Werewolves of London” came on. I said I hoped it would go on forever and realized that made me sound ridiculous.
—So nobody told you how the bills work, he said.
I told him no. The word bills filled me with dread. I was deeply in debt across many different cards.
