This One Is Mine: A Novel (16 page)

“Don’t!” cried Sally after him.

The waiter swung by. “Would you be needing anything more this evening?”

“Just the check,” Jeremy said.

D
INNER
was delicious and the conversation, covering topics from Teddy’s favorite movie (
Vanilla Sky
) to his theory on the origin of hepatitis C (invented by drug companies), airless. Violet had let Teddy’s misnomers, conspiracy theories, and harebrained schemes go undisputed, and even feigned interest in his idea for a TV show he proposed they team up to write.

“I can’t believe it’s almost ten o’clock,” Violet finally said.

“What is that, a hint?”

“Not at all.” She stood up and cleared their plates. He had eaten around the cloves of garlic. She didn’t trust people who didn’t like garlic, especially big fried pieces.

“It is a hint!” he said with a laugh. “Look at you. You’re throwing me out.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Well, thanks for dinner.” He reluctantly got up. “I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in years. I hope David realizes what a cool chick you are.”

“Who knows anymore.” Violet walked to the front door, but Teddy lingered at a painting.

“Is that you?” he asked.

“It’s a portrait David had commissioned for our anniversary. That’s me at the pool. You’ll recognize the view.”

“Coco’s family is totally into art, too,” he said. “They just sold a Picasso for like seventeen grand.”

“Seventeen grand? It must have been a print.”

“No, it was a painting. It was just really small.”

Violet let that one go, and opened the door.

“So, we’ll hang out again?” he said. “Maybe with your husband?”

Teddy and David friends? David would last about two seconds in conversation with this jejune nitwit.

“Teddy?” Violet said.

Teddy twitched.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“That’s like the second time I’ve heard you actually say my name. I still kind of can’t believe I know you.”

“I was about to say something intimate.”

“Shit,” said Teddy. “What?”

“I want you to know that the intensity I felt for you wasn’t something that had ever happened to me before.” Hopefully, Teddy would find comfort in these words when she stopped returning his calls.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow? You want to see me play in this gooney Rolling Stones cover band in Long Beach? We totally rock, even though the lead singer is a fucked-up junkie. I’m going to fire him after the show.” He couldn’t have known that David had once managed the Rolling Stones, and Violet had spent her honeymoon jetting through South America on the
Steel Wheels
tour.

“Really?” she said. “Bill Wyman kicking Mick Jagger out of the Stones? That can happen?”

“Shut up. Just come check us out.”

“I wish,” said Violet. “But I’m driving up to meet David at the yoga retreat in the morning.”

“I thought he was going alone.”

“I decided to join him.”

“While we were having dinner? Jesus. Am I really that dull? I told you I’m tired, right?”

“Like you said, relationships are complicated.” She kissed him on the cheek and closed the door. She returned to the kitchen and started the dishes.

Then her cell phone rang.

Without even looking at the number, she went to the front door and opened it. Standing there, phone in hand, was Teddy.

T
O
be on the road with a rock band was to become intimately familiar with
Scarface
. The movie was on a constant loop in tour buses, dressing rooms, and hotel suites. Roadies had
Scarface
tattoos. Production offices were indicated by life-size cutouts of Al Pacino in that white suit. The video game was a recent annex to the riders of David’s bands. Snippets of the movie’s dialogue were played between songs on the precurtain mix tape. David knew them all: “First you make the money, then you get the power,
then
you get the women.” “You think you can take me? You need a fucking army if you gonna take me!” “You’re all a bunch of fucking assholes. You know why? You don’t have the guts to be who you wanna be. . . . You need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers and say, ‘That’s the bad guy.’ . . . Well, say good night to the bad guy.” “I never fucked anybody over in my life didn’t have it coming to them.” Before their encore, Commonhouse would blast, “You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend!” Then they’d rip into “Light Sweet Crude.”

David’s personal favorite moment was when a business associate suggested doing something that displeased Tony Montana. Tony considered it, then said, “So that’s how you wanna play it?” One of the most sinister lines in the history of cinema.

So that’s how you wanna play it?

Violet had sent David off to a yoga retreat so she could fuck some guy named Teddy Reyes in David’s ten-million-dollar house while their daughter slept at LadyGo’s in Pasadena. Did Violet take him for a fucking chump? Had lust damaged her brain? Didn’t she realize that David had spent the past fifteen years beating off groupies? What did she think happened on the road, anyway? But had he ever cheated on his wife? Never once.

When David had first met Violet, he was seeing a girl in Sacramento whom, to this day, he had never told her about. Sacramento Sukey, she was known to any band that rolled through town. She was famous for the blow jobs she generously bestowed, not only on the band members but roadies, too. No doubt, she was a skank. Still, David found her kindhearted and a good listener. She had a kid and cut hair or something. David found himself spending hours on the phone with her every night. He even flew her to Japan and Australia on one of the tours. He kept her quarantined in his hotel room, of course, for fear of getting ruthlessly teased if anyone discovered he’d developed bona fide feelings for the blow job queen of central California. In the early days of Violet, David had rendezvoused with Sukey a few times. But the moment he got engaged, he cut Sukey off. And now, sixteen years into a marriage, fresh from weaning their baby daughter, Violet was cheating on
him?

So that’s how you wanna play it?

David zoned out into the wet tea bag stuck to the side of his handmade cup. Dinner was over and everyone had trickled outside for the sweat lodge ceremony. He was alone in the mess hall, frozen, a state he had found himself in more than once since his arrival at the Matilija Retreat Center. During the afternoon yoga class, Shiva had asked David if he was okay. Only then had he realized he’d been standing, lost in a knot in the wood floor, while the other students were arched in backbends at his feet.

David looked up from his tea. A hand-painted sign on the wall read
ONLY TAKE WHAT IS FREELY GIVEN.

Did Violet think David had earned eight million dollars last year in a music industry that had turned to shit because he didn’t enjoy a
street fight?
For starters, he’d throw her out of the house. Change the locks. Cancel the credit cards. Shut off her cell phone. Impound her Mercedes. Send LadyGo and the rest of the minions packing. Then he’d kick the party into high gear and go about winning sole custody of Dot.

You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough?

All it would require was money. Any judge would sympathize with hardworking David, whose stay-at-home wife spent more time with her south-of-the-border lover than with the baby she could barely conceive.

Her womb is so polluted she can’t even make a fucking baby.

David couldn’t wait for the scabrous trial so he could enumerate Violet’s maternal transgressions. The time she was changing the battery on a smoke alarm and Dot swallowed a bunch of pennies and David had to perform the Heimlich in order to save her life. When Violet had left Dot unattended in the rocking chair while she went outside to show the phone guy some junction box. Or when Violet was in another room and Dot had sucked on an indelible-ink marker, which left her with a sickening black mouth and tongue for a week. The jury would gobble that shit up. David wasn’t the one who had been desperate for a baby, but at least he understood that once she was born he had an obligation to keep her alive!

The table David sat at was made of wood. Burned into its surface in wavy lettering were the words
THIS PLACE OF FOOD, SO FRAGRANT AND APPETIZING, ALSO CONTAINS MUCH SUFFERING
. David pondered its meaning, then caught himself softening and looked away: anger reloaded.

So that’s how you wanna play it?

Did Violet actually think she could get by without David? The most she’d ever earned in a year was a million. And that was before she took five years off. The television business, like the music business before it, was fucked. If she was even able to get a job, she’d be lucky to make two hundred grand, one hundred after taxes. He’d love to see her try to scrape by on that! Private trainers, nannies, assistants, maids, first-class travel, limos, restaurants, shopping sprees whenever she got bored. That cost
real
money. Their nut was a million a year. Did Violet even know that? Had she ever thought to ask? Did she fucking care? She’d start caring come Monday, when she’d return home from some goddamned manicure and her gate clicker wouldn’t work. When she finally tracked down a pay phone — she’d have to, as he’d have canceled her cell phone — David would be unreachable because he’d be out to lunch with one of the long list of women who would die to be seen with him. And how old would they be? Twenty-five. What would they look like? A perfect ten.

I never fucked anybody over in my life didn’t have it coming to them. You got that?

She thought things were rough now? She didn’t know the half of it. Her life would be spent
never knowing.
Would Dot get dropped off for her supervised visit? Would the alimony be there this month? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. David would fuck with her payments as much as possible without getting hauled into court. There were pettifoggers who specialized in shit like that. Violet would become one of those divorcées deformed by plastic surgery who descended into madness and isolation because all they could talk about was how evil their ex was. Violet would be forced back into the workplace. She liked houses; she could always become a realtor. He pictured her face on the bus bench,
VIOLET PARRY, THE CONDO QUEEN OF ENCINO!

You think you can take me? You need a fucking army if you gonna take me!

What did Violet think was so great out there for a fat, divorced, forty-two-year-old woman with a kid? Oh, that’s right, some guy who didn’t have the wherewithal to fix his own car! For that Violet had sabotaged sixteen years of marriage and a family? For that she was willing to abdicate all claims to David’s riches?

Say good night to the bad guy.

David hoped Teddy the King would still be there for Violet when the money dried up and the friends mysteriously scattered. LA wasn’t kind that way. All their friends would fall in line behind legendary impresario David Parry, not his aging, unemployable wife. How long would it take Violet to realize that all she was to Teddy Reyes was a rich lady who paid to have his car fixed? If
Señor Reyes
could stomach fucking
Señora Gorda,
there might be more bills paid. Perhaps a new cell phone. He’d gladly eat some stretched-out gabacho pussy for one of those stylin’ Apple phones! Was Violet deluded enough to think Teddy Reyes was in it for her sparkling personality?

“David?” It was Shiva. She stood in the open door. “Are you going to join us for the sweat lodge?”

“I’ll be right there.”

And David
would
be there. He honored his commitments. Violet had been the one to sign up for the yoga retreat, but she apparently preferred staying home and getting fucked by a beggar!

David brought his cup to the kitchen. Above the sink hung a colorful sign,
WASHING THE DISHES IS LIKE BATHING A BABY BUDDHA. THE PROFANE IS SACRED
. He smashed his cup in the sink and went outside.

The night sky was not an LA night sky, where streetlights hit the haze and ricocheted back a constant glow. It was a night sky that meant business: black, the stars-you-could-touch each had their own twinkle. David walked under the canopy of ancient California oaks and startled as the stars popped out from between the web of branches. The roar of the water sliced into his ears. He had noticed a river before, but only now really heard it. David hung at the perimeter of affluent yogis and yoginis who, like him, had driven up from the city. They stood around a roaring fire, attention rapt on Ruth, an abdominous woman with tough skin and scarecrow hair.

“The ceremony will last for roughly an hour and a half,” she said. “Hot stones will be brought in between each prayer round. . . .”

“Can I see your wrist?” whispered a young guy with a scraggly beard who wore pajama bottoms. “This sweet grass will form a band of protection around your heart.”

“If it’s supposed to protect my heart, why are you putting it around my wrist?” asked David.

“It’s to protect
your heart,
” the kid said. He was either stoned or stupid. David offered his arm. The hippie, tongue hooked over his lip in concentration, braided some grass around David’s wrist and gave it a tug. “Make sure you let this fall off naturally. If you cut it off, everything you receive tonight from the Great Spirit will disappear.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“There are about thirty of us,” Ruth was explaining. “That means we’ll need to have an inner and an outer circle. It’s going to be a tight fit.” She nodded to a chest-high dome constructed from branches; it measured about twelve feet in diameter and was covered in animal hides.

Tight fit?
When Shiva had said there’d be a sweat lodge, David pictured a
lodge
lodge, like an Ahwahnee or an El Tovar. Not as grand, obviously, but something wood paneled, with a place to sit, like a big sauna.
That puny twig thing was
the
fucking sweat lodge?
During the evening yoga class, David had contemplated some hippies pulling pelts out of a plastic storage bin, the kind Violet kept stacked in the carport to store Christmas decorations and the like. The hippies had laid the pelts across this wood structure. David had assumed there’d be one structure per person.
Jesus,
they were all expected to fit into this
one?
And hot stones, too?