Aftermath of Dreaming (24 page)

“No, no, don't…” Michael says. “That's enough. I feel bad. Don't eat the tomato; you don't like it.”

“No, really, maybe just with some bread on it…” Kevin pleads.

At this moment, the maid comes in to clear the salads. The two remaining tomato slices on Kevin's plate are squished under the weight of other plates, Kevin's conquest of them thwarted forever.

I have an almost overpowering impulse to start speaking Spanish to the maid, but she is moving too quickly, and I have no idea what I'd say; in fact, I can't remember any of the words Kitty taught me.

After dinner, we move out onto the terrace to look at houses jammed into the hillside. I know they don't have emergency brakes on them, and I am astonished at the people who live in them, these high-rising, stilt-depending structures built on air. Does Isaac Newton mean nothing in this town?

Slim's husband, I think, whose name I still don't know, starts raving about the last kilo of pot he bought, then says, “You'd think the government would take the power back and legalize the goddamn stuff” to which Kevin replies that “pot is for pussies” and “LSD is where it's at.”

Michael declares that “everyone should do hallucinogens at least twice in their life. No, make that twice a year, just to keep it fresh.” Then the four of them simultaneously expound on their many different trips, when abruptly Kevin looks at me for the second time in the entire evening and says, “What about your acid trip?” and they all stop talking to stare at me.

I have not said word one since my “tomato like an apple” disclosure, but before I can think, I find myself saying, “Oh, well, ever since I was fourteen and my friend took LSD and got gang-raped with a broomstick, I've only tried speed and cocaine. You know, aware and alert.”

Slim doesn't skip a beat. “Oh, I've got some coke from the last diet I was on, you want some of that?”

Her husband, I think, says, “There's cocaine in this house right now?”

He is suddenly sounding very Republican, as if it wasn't him who just made a pitch for legalized marijuana. I wonder if his political alliances switch with the drug.

I look at Michael. I do not want any of this woman's cocaine, and I really do not want to be around while her husband or whoever he is finds out about it. Michael takes my hint and we leave the palatial home.

The moon has climbed farther and farther up the sky. Before I get in my truck, I stand looking at it for a moment, wondering what it would be like to rise knowing exactly when and how you would fall.

I follow Michael's car down the hill to my apartment. He has promised me that he'll spend the night, but I'm not getting my hopes up. The street we are driving down angles sharply around blind curves; it is barely wide enough for one vehicle to pass.

L.A. defies gravity. The cars, the skin, the houses, the light. I keep waiting for it all to fall. A day when the cars will crash, the faces will drop, the houses will collapse, and the light will hit hard and direct like a black-and-white film shot in a wintry Midwest. But so far, its emergency brake continues to hold. I know I should be comforted by that; I'm just not.

My first winter in Los Angeles,
a few months after I moved from New York, was a new experience of that season. December that year was one of stunningly clear mild days with nights that were cold, as if my freezer door had been left open, and I could walk through the frigid air knowing warmth was on the other side. And the mountains all of a sudden were there. In the fall, they had been hidden by haze and smog, but suddenly, miraculously, they appeared closer than ever before. I'd be driving along, up on the freeway or turning a corner, and I'd see them standing out against the sky: near, crisp, photo-ready. God's art department working overtime.

I was juggling my waitress shifts with my job for Bill, while creating new art and learning about L.A.'s gallery scene. Not to mention thinking about Andrew and the sex we were having underneath, centered in, and on top of everything. Life is what I did around thoughts of him. And seeing him.

Which we were doing pretty regularly. Stephanie apparently had no interest in spending every night with him, God knows why, so it was normal for Andrew to call me at eleven
P.M.
, usually our third or fourth call of the day, and say, “What're you doing?” in that low, quiet, inside-of-me way. Then, “Get over here.” And I would. Drive the long road to his home in Bel Air, up and up and up to his world that I was part of during our regular hours of eleven at night to one-thirty
A.M.
The time of night that makes things invisible; we were veiled by everyone else's sleep. The hours a road into the country of us.

One night after a long and deep and wonderful bout of each other while Andrew was being particularly cuddly after I had rubbed his back, I asked him if I could sleep over, and leave very early in the morning. The January night was cold, his bed was layers of soft warmth, and the sweetness of him was too delicious to part from.

“I don't want people asking me who my new wife is,” Andrew said, then looked at me gravely, as if hordes of photographers and journalists descended upon him every morning at six
A.M.
, and there was nothing he could do about this lack of privacy.

I almost said, “Who's gonna ask you? Patrick or the maids? They all know I come here anyway, and do they really arrive for work that early?” But I didn't. Though his excuse clearly had no basis in reality, I suddenly understood, as I lay there in his arms, that in his mind it did. That even though media hounds wouldn't actually show up on his extremely private practically-impossible-to-get-onto grounds, he was so used to guarding his life and self from the public for over thirty-two years, that this rule he had come up with that only the “girlfriend” spends the night protected him somehow. And what was even more clear in that moment was that he was trying to protect himself from what he felt. Which made me see that I just needed to break through that wall, slowly and steadily.

 

That month, Andrew missed my birthday. He knew when it was or I figured he did. I hadn't told him the first time it came around after we had
met because he was in Malaysia, but on all of the subsequent ones he knew because I would call him.

“It's my birthday today.”

“Happy birthday, sweet-y-vette,” he'd say, but nothing ever appeared. All those years in New York, I wanted flowers, roses delivered to my door, a huge bouquet to fill my bedroom, then petals to press between heavy books and laminate onto rice paper—his love in floral form. And it was pretty obvious how easy that would be for him. Patrick could have handled the whole thing. But I decided it just wasn't who Andrew was. Some people don't give birthday presents; they grew up in families where it wasn't a big deal.

But on that birthday in L.A., my twenty-fourth, since we were involved in a deeper way, I was crushed when nothing arrived. And so pissed off that I avoided his calls on that day and the next two; I lay on my futon listening to the phone ring, knowing it was him.

Finally, I gave in and called him. He grilled me about where I'd been, worried I'd disappeared, and I was just happy to hear his voice again. So, he doesn't give gifts. Okay. I knew he loved me. He asked me all the time if I loved him, and though he rarely said it himself, I knew it was what he felt inside. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me, and could hear it in his voice. And no other woman that he wasn't working with had been in his life for years platonically. And the armor that Andrew wore got heavier with each passing hour. I could hear the changes in his voice as we talked throughout the day, then when I'd see him at night, it wasn't just his clothes that came off, but that solid suit would be removed, revealing a softness inside that very few people knew.

And I felt backed up by him, protected. Loved and adored. His arms holding me, his sweet voice on the phone caressing me, his never vanishing, always taking my calls. Many times in the midst of dealing with an annoying customer at the restaurant, or struggling with an art piece, or a gallery offering me only a maybe and not a definite yes, I would automatically think,
But Andrew loves me
. He was myself. A part of me that I didn't have came from him. And his voice daily and his body frequently sustained that belief.

 

I started going to parties with Viv. She was still seeing Craig, so I met a lot of his friends, and began recognizing names and faces in the social section of the
L.A. Times
—Craig and his cohorts' parties were covered extensively. Men at the parties would ask me out and I couldn't really say I was already seeing someone because Viv would wonder who that was. So to be able to keep seeing Andrew, undercover in a way, I'd go on some dates, but I'd never have sex with them. We'd just make out a little bit, schoolgirl-in-a-car kind of stuff, then I wouldn't go any further, and after a while, I'd break up with them.

And they were all very nice men. An entertainment lawyer who took me to the best gourmet vegetarian restaurants and gave me a book on Buddhism for Valentine's Day. An actor who was stuck in TV hell, successful by most people's standards, but he only wanted to do films. And an architect who spent three months of each year in Bali acquiring a new tribal tattoo each time and wearing only sarongs there, plus a bunch of kinda-date guys (meet for coffee or a hike in the canyon) thrown in. Interesting, nice men. I just didn't want to be with them. I wanted to be with Andrew. Constantly. The men couldn't say anything without my comparing it in my mind to what Andrew would have said. And who could compare to him? And that was a problem because if it didn't work out with Andrew—but it had to—what would I do? I was dating interesting, attractive, successful men, but none of them compared to Andrew.

And Andrew knew I was dating. He would call; I'd be on my way out. He would call; I'd still be out or would have just gotten home. And he'd want to know who they were and what we did—like he knew them, and sometimes I had a feeling he did or he made it seem that way, that he was having them checked out. There was no piece of information unattainable by him. He never acted jealous (like he had about Tim, derisively calling him Tim-my) and it was pointless to wish that he was. He so fully gathered the men into our experience that they practically weren't people anymore, just fodder for the mill.

So it wasn't a big jump when he asked which of them I was sleeping with. Or fucking, as he said.

“None of them, I'm seeing you.”

We were in his bed, it was past one
A.M.
, and a February wind was moving and talking in the trees outside, though I knew it would abandon them by daylight.

“Yvette, you can fuck other men.”

I looked up at him from where I was below.

“I think you should,” he went on. “It'll be good for you.”

How?

Then his movements came harder still.

I drove myself home in the chill quiet dark. My futon was always a depressing refuge after leaving his bed. I lay awake, trying to imagine if that was something I could do. Have sex with two men. I had a feeling it would be like drinking milk and beer in the same sitting. Nice on their own, but stomach-curdling in proximity. It wasn't something I would do. Or wanted to.

But Andrew was pretty persistent. He started asking all the time, so finally…I lied. I figured that what Andrew really wanted was an additional barrier, another thing to put between us to protect how he felt. Me with someone else. Like him with Stephanie. And for me to betray him—even though he instigated it—was the only way for me to stay near him. So I pretended I did, but didn't. And even though I wasn't betraying him sexually (the make-outs hardly counted), I was, in fact, betraying him because I lied to him. About being faithful. That I wasn't. But I was. I had known since I moved to L.A. that Andrew wasn't only sleeping with me, he was seeing Stephanie. And supposedly, purportedly a bunch of other women as well, though that part I wasn't sure about and couldn't tell. But even if he was, I didn't care. To be upset about any of that was as futile as moving to the Arctic and throwing a fit about the cold, a condition you knew existed before you went. Wear enough protective layers or move south.

And my lies were simple. It's not like he needed details. Okay, sometimes he wanted them. But a “yes” instead of a “no” to the query
usually handled it. He seemed comforted by it somehow. That I'd changed? I didn't know. He'd ask if I loved him the best—that was easy and true. “Yes,” I'd say. “I love you the best.” I just never wanted to leave his bed, and if pretending to be in other men's helped me stay there, then okay.

 

A few weeks later, Viv and I were having lunch on the patio of a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. It was a dumpy little health food place that had a huge following because the food was great, plus they made their own special salad dressing. Tour bus companies paid for the meals of certain celebrities to dine on the patio, which was visible from Sunset Boulevard, so their tourist customers could “unexpectedly” spot stars when they went by, but from what I could tell, Viv wasn't one of them. Viv was going on and on about a meeting she had had the day before with Andrew, while I pretended to need to look intently at my veggie burger to get the tomato and lettuce situated on it just so. I couldn't believe his name was coming up with her again. It had been a nice couple of months since she had complained about how horrible he was, and poor Stephanie, blah, blah, blah. Viv's agent had decided she should do a movie—and how different can that be from the characters she creates for her videos, Viv had told me—so he had arranged a meeting for her with Andrew.

“It went incredibly great,” Viv said as she popped vitamins in her mouth. She had a different combination she took with each meal. “Though I still hate him. And it was clear he wanted to fuck me and would have tried to if Stephanie wasn't my best friend.”

Then she started her diatribe against him, but it was interspersed with waves of excitement that she would be in Andrew's next film. My appetite was gone from listening to her go on and on. Some of the cheddar cheese on my veggie burger had melted into a hard, shiny surface of orange on my plate. Viv hadn't gotten cheese on hers because she didn't eat any dairy; her nutritionist had told her it goes straight to the hips. I imagined Viv's food lining up in her mouth with marching orders in hand that would direct it to its bodily destinations, like travelers on the
mother ship, to enhance her perfect skin, tight body, and soft lips. Viv was going strong with her “poor Stephanie being led astray” monologue. As I sipped my carrot juice, I thought that “poor Stephanie” looked to me like she could take care of herself. She was the epitome of Nordic beauty; I found it frightening. Her physical perfection was so high, it appeared calculated by a force other than God. Finally, an opportunity to end Viv's vitriol presented itself—Viv's ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend walked in, thank God—so I signaled to Viv with my eyes, and we pushed back our chairs, grabbed our purses, went to the parking lot, and said goodbye. Viv was so grateful that I had noticed the new girlfriend so she could make her exit without having to say hello that she forgot all about Andrew.

As I headed west through the sunlit, neon-drenched, billboards-blazing brightness of Sunset Boulevard, I wondered again why Viv disliked Andrew so much. Her anger was so vehement and personal for a man she had only just met. And she had had it before they ever said hello.

But that was only one of countless conversations I found myself in where Andrew was discussed extensively by (
a
) people who kind of knew him, (
b
) people who knew people who knew him, and (
c
) people who knew
People
magazine articles about him. It was excruciating to sit and pretend that I (
a
) didn't know him, (
b
) had little to no interest in him, and (
c
) agreed and/or believed all the crap they said about him. All the women who did it seemed to be inwardly angry that they had never slept with him, and the men appeared jealous of everything he'd gotten. Mostly their conversations were mean, with an undercurrent of reserved awe that I don't think they were even aware of. It was their inability to comprehend doing everything that Andrew had achieved, and it permeated their rumors and stories, disclosing the envy and inferiority they felt. I'd make neutral sounds and facial expressions to keep my true thoughts and feelings opaque, all the while counting the minutes for their gossip to end.

The hardest part was not being able to defend him, to talk about who he really was, about what I liked and loved in him. Keeping quiet
and pretending, while they tore him down and chewed him up. It made me want to protect him; I couldn't believe this went on so much. But Andrew seemed to know it did; at least he knew that Viv instigated a lot of it. As I turned onto my street, I wondered how he could have lived with it for so long, but then I realized it must be like underbrush on a path that his boots kick through while he emerges unscathed.