Tart (16 page)

“One's for Nick.”

“Oh. How's he?”

“Crazy. Yesterday he called this teenage boy a cock-sucking maggot.”

I smile. “Cock-sucking maggot. That's a new one. Do you think he meant faggot?”

“Hard to say. He's not very linguistically precise. But you know, it could be worse. I could have an employee who spouts all kinds of clichéd bullshit, like ‘have a nice day.'”

“Yes,” I say. “That would be tragic.”

“I feel like an idiot, by the way,” he says. “About the other night.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't usually get all drunk and toss pennies at peoples' windows.”

“I thought it was kind of seductive, actually.”
Bloom, what are you doing?

“Well, I'm not in the habit of seducing anyone. Obviously, I need practice.”

“Obviously.” I'm unable to keep from smiling.

“Ouch.” It comes out barely a whisper; he doesn't look like he's in any pain.

We hold each other's gaze for a long moment, long enough for a tremendous heat to gather force inside me. I think about spontaneous human combustion and wonder if this is how it starts.

“Well,” he says, standing up and retrieving his paper cups. “I better get back. No telling who Nick's calling a cunt as we speak.” He hesitates, as if he'd like to say something more, and the gray-tinged sunlight filtering through the plate-glass windows makes his eyes even brighter than usual. “I guess I'll see you around. Merry Christmas. If you're into that sort of thing.”

“Not really,” I say, suddenly awash in loneliness. “But same to you.”

It's my birthday,
I want to scream.
Love me. Ravish me.
But thankfully, I'm spared my own version of Tourette's. I just wave pathetically as he navigates the Monday crowd and vanishes out the door.

C
hristmas puts me in a black, desperate mood. These seasons when families are supposed to go all gooey with affection totally freak me out. Any warmth I have for my parents goes cold under all the pressure. This year, I spend the actual day with my father and the Vegetarian Girlfriend, Didi. We sit together in his tragically sterile tract home and exchange weird, well-intentioned gifts. I get my father a book he already owns and a weed-eater he no longer needs, since he long ago hired a gardener, unbeknown to me. He gets me a gift certificate to a clothing store in Calistoga that specializes in T-shirts featuring hand-painted kittens. Didi and I are even less successful; she gets me the
Sound of Music
video, and I give her a fantastic bottle of wine, only to learn that she's active in the local AA.

After this embarrassing ritual, we settle in for an hour or two of TV, which inspires in me a powerful desire to slit my wrists. I haven't watched TV since I left home twelve years ago, and the sound of the laugh track makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Eventually, I escape, and brave the drunk-driver-packed highways until at last I'm safe in my flat. It may not be chic or elegantly furnished, I tell myself, but it's definitely more bohemian than my father's snowy-white couches and his alphabetized DVD collection.

What greets me when I open the door is definitely on the extreme side of the bohemian spectrum: Rosemarie is half naked, handcuffed to the refrigerator, and a very short, ropy-muscled gnome of a guy in boxers is dripping wax onto her nipples.

I'm not a prude, you understand, but this isn't exactly the scene I expected to come home to on Christmas.

“Oh—Claudia.” Rose struggles to free herself of the handcuffs, but only succeeds in yanking the refrigerator door open. “Bruce, c-can you…?” she stammers, jerking harder on the cuffs.

Bruce is relatively nonplussed; he merely looks from her to me and back to her again. I try not to stare at the embarrassing bulge in his boxers.

“Bruce,”
Rose practically shrieks, blushing crimson. “Get the key. This is Claudia. My cousin.” When he still doesn't react, she adds, “This is
her
apartment.”

“Sure,” he says, his voice petulant and distant. “Whatever you say.” He struts past me to a large backpack on the couch, retrieves a small key and unlocks Rose before putting on a pair of tattered black jeans.

“I'm really sorry,” Rose whispers to me as she's throwing on her clothes. “I just—we met downtown and I was—we were…” She looks at Bruce, who's eyeing me in a slightly predatory way, probably plotting out a cousin sandwich. “I think you better go,” Rose tells him, her tone apologetic.

“Doesn't your cousin like to party?” he says, his bloodshot eyes on mine.

“I'm sorry,” Rose says to me, “I didn't think you'd be back tonight.”

“Hey, cuz,” he says in a booming voice, as if from a great distance. “Everything's cool, right? It's Christmas, after all.”

“Listen, no offense,” I say to Bruce. The guy's really giving me the creeps. “But I'd like you to leave.”

Still, he hesitates. Rex edges closer to Rose and fixes Bruce with a fierce, wild stare, a low growl issuing from his throat. For once, I'm grateful to the mammoth mutt. Bruce seizes his pack and stalks out, mumbling something about stupid bitches under his breath.

When the door's slammed behind him, I lock it and turn to Rose. “What was that?”

“I'm so sorry, Claudia—”

“Did you seriously like that guy?”

“Don't be mad—I can't stand it if you're mad,” she says, slumping into the couch, her shoulders hunching over like a gawky teenager's.

“Was that another soul mate?”

“It's Christmas. You were gone. I was lonely….”

“I asked you to come with me. I begged you.” Just this morning I stood here and practically bribed her to help me face my father; she said she wanted to stay home and take a bath.

“Yeah, but you have a family.” She bursts into tears; her hair forms a curtain around her face. “I have—Rex.”

“Rose,
I'm
your family,” I say, sitting down next to her, trying to ignore the smell of candle wax and acrid sweat. “My family
is
your family.” Thinking of the pathetic gift exchange I just endured, I add, “For whatever that's worth.”

“I miss Jade,” she says, and makes a strangled little sobbing sound in her throat.

“Shh,” I say, wrapping my arms tightly around her. “Shh. It's all right. Of course you do, sweetie. Of course you do.”

“Sometimes I can barely remember her face. Or her smell. I used to love her smell so much.”

I just hold her and stroke her hair, wishing I could do something more. I rack my brain for some brilliant insight
to offer—a one-liner that will induce a movie-of-the-week epiphany, but nothing occurs to me except trite clichés, so I whisper those instead.

After she's cried for the better part of an hour, I make us both strong martinis, which we carry carefully up the fire escape to sit on the roof and share a hand-rolled cigarette, a secret little vice we like to indulge in when things get desperate.

We sit together sipping our drinks, staring out over downtown, watching the leaves of sidewalk-planted maples shimmer in the streetlight.

“I think it's good for you to talk about Jade,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I don't know. It doesn't seem to help.”

“Yeah, but you keep so much bottled up—about your mom, too. That can't be good.”

She stiffens. “Claudia, don't take this the wrong way, but there are some things you couldn't possibly understand.”

“I know that. It doesn't even have to be me you talk to. Maybe a therapist.”

“I had enough therapy in the hospital to last me a lifetime.”

“Maybe,” I say, passing her the cigarette. “But I think if you could talk about all this heavy shit you're carrying, it might make things easier.”

“How do you know what would make things easier?” Her brown eyes are flashing a warning.

“Okay,” I say, backing down. “You're right. It was just an idea.”

I consider telling her about Jessie's letter—I've been looking for the right moment since I received it—but something tells me not to bring it up. Even mentioning Jessie puts Rose instantly on the defensive.

We sit there for a while in silence. The soft, bluesy moan of the train floats on the air, along with the smoky smell of winter—or what passes for winter in California, anyway.
There's a couple down on the street walking hand in hand, a tiny dog yapping at their heels. Rex sticks his big nose out of the window and barks at them halfheartedly.

“Claudia?”

“Yeah?”

“Merry Christmas.” She barely whispers it, peering at me sadly over her martini glass.

“Merry Christmas to you, Rosemarie,” I say, and take another drag off our cigarette.

N
umber of Hours Since I Last Had Sex: 3,366.

But who's counting?

Jonathan and I had tearful, achingly tender sex on the Fourth of July—all locked eyes and whispery caresses, both of us muttering soul-binding promises just before we climaxed. Three days later, he was packing his bags for New York City, the glamorous mecca we'd always planned on venturing to once we were married, while Rain, with her mouth full of starlet teeth and her neatly waxed brows, waited in a taxi outside.

For some reason I wake up on Friday the thirteenth with this memory clouding my brain like a hangover, and an empty sensation in the pit of my stomach no breakfast can cure. All I want to do is hide under the covers and flip through J. Crew catalogs, but I've got too many things to do before rehearsal. We're already two weeks into February; we've got barely three weeks until opening night, and the stupid creatures aren't even off book yet.

Miranda's play,
Heirloom,
has proven the ideal distraction
from my involuntary celibacy; it's so demanding, and the cast so talented yet challenging, they drain me of all sexual energy and then some. There are only four actors, but each one is such a head case it might as well be a cast of thousands. There's Sarah Lundy, aka Beach Barbie of the Owl Club. She's playing the lead role of Olivia, and she's constantly amazing me with her stellar talent and her emotional instability. Every other day she's in crisis.

Then there's Ben Crow (my hot hunka burnin' love, if you believe the rumors). It was a risk, of course, to cast him, but he read beautifully for the role of Ray, Olivia's shy, introverted brother, and it was criminal not to cast him because of vindictive gossip. He's proved to be a challenge in his own way. He's perfectly adept, but he's never really performed before, and he's got the worst case of stage fright I've ever encountered. I have to talk him down from his phobias every time we rehearse.

I personally discovered Cheryl Spratt, the fortysomething sociology grad student I cast as Olivia's mother. She's frighteningly intelligent and great on stage, except she's got this eensy-weensy voice you can barely hear. She'd be perfect for film, but unfortunately we're performing in a theater that seats over five hundred, so the back row (who am I kidding? the front row) is going to be pissed if we don't fix her projection problems pronto.

Which brings us to Mr. Seth Grumm, the former off-off-Broadway actor who never tires of reminding us that he met Sam Shepard once at a party. I'm convinced he was put on the planet specifically to torture me with egomaniacal episodes. He's good—sure he's good—technically speaking, he's practically flawless, but the time I save in not teaching him technique I more than make up for curbing his rampant attitude. He's constantly bickering with me about directorial choices, he can't respond to the simplest request without dishing out hyperacidic sarcasm, and he's perpetually hitting
on Sarah, which adds an ominous layer of incestuous subtext I keep trying to eradicate from their scenes together.

I guess I should count my blessings. At least this quarter I don't have Ralene Tippets in any of my classes, and she didn't audition for
Heirloom
—not that I would have cast her. She was a nightmare, but now that I don't have to deal with her in class, I sometimes wonder why I let her get to me. Once the Ben Crow scandal was drained of its juice and she saw that her complaints hadn't gotten me fired, she went from rabid to despondent and then, once she was no longer my student, she became almost conciliatory. At the end of the quarter, she left a jar of homemade jam outside my office, which I found utterly mystifying. The note said simply, “Thinking of you.”

And there are other blessings to count this quarter: Miranda, thank God, has been my comrade, collaborating with the maturity and poise one wouldn't automatically expect from someone sporting purple hair and (her latest addition) a bone through her septum. As the playwright, she attends rehearsals often, hunting for clues about the script's weaknesses and revising accordingly. When we discuss the play she offers her insight with humor instead of the usual writer's rancor. Even working with Jonathan, back in the early days when he was trying to get in my pants, there was never this smooth synergy in our collaborations; he and I had to fight it out whenever our visions forked. Miranda and I, miraculously, see eye to eye on just about everything, and though she's not super verbal, I've gotten so I can read her face pretty well.

Tonight we're working on a crucial scene between Olivia and her father, Gus. Unfortunately, Sarah is in the throes of near-fatal PMS, according to her, and though Seth isn't firing as many sarcastic shots as usual, he's been giving me withering looks all night.

“Olivia, get me a cup of coffee,” booms Seth.

“Sure.” Here Sarah disregards the blocking and clutches her abdomen, a grimace momentarily rendering her pretty features grotesque.

“Goddammit,” Seth shrieks, after Sarah's recovered from her spell of cramps and has mimed handing him a cup. “This is cold. You know I despise cold—”

“Jesus, Seth,” she says, breaking character. “Do you have to scream? You're damaging my eardrums.”

“Sarah,” I scold. “Focus.”

The one good thing about Seth being smitten with Sarah is it keeps him from snapping back at her. Heaven forbid if anyone besides her critiques his “work,” including me. He practically removed my jugular with his teeth when I suggested he stop convulsing during his death scene. It's
hard
to die convincingly; even someone who met Sam Shepard once has to work on it a little.

“Seth, can you sit a little farther upstage, please?” Again, I earn a venomous glance, but he does as I say. “Good. Perfect. Okay, Sarah, just take it from there.”

“Okay, Dad. Sorry. I'll warm it up.” Sarah takes the cup from him again, mimes putting it in a microwave. Then she takes it out and mimes adding the cyanide. This, obviously, is a defining moment, since it's in this beat that Olivia impulsively decides to go through with the crime she decided two scenes earlier she wasn't capable of, but Sarah enacts it in a bored, listless fashion, as if murdering her father is just another item on an endless to-do list. Buy Saran Wrap, call dentist, commit patricide…

“Sarah,” I say, my voice betraying my fraying patience. This is the fifth time in half an hour we've rehearsed this particular beat, and I'm developing a nasty case of life-threatening PMS myself. One side effect of spending so much time with your cast: the women's cycles tend to sync up, making for some serious collective mood swings. “How's the audience supposed to know this matters?”

“I don't have the poison yet,” she bristles. “I'm doing the best I—”

“You're going through the motions. Don't blame it on the
props. You look utterly uninvested,” I say, tapping my pen against my clipboard. I sigh and try a different approach. “Why are you doing this? Why do you want your father dead?”

“Because,” she says, looking pointedly at Seth, “he's an asshole.”

“And what makes you decide, right here, right now, that you can kill him, when just ten minutes ago you told your brother you wanted to but you couldn't?”

“Because he yelled so loudly he, like, damaged my hearing?”

“Is this Sarah talking, or Olivia?” I ask.

“Sarah is hemorrhaging, okay? You're lucky Sarah's even here.”

“To hell with Sarah,” I say, “I'd like Olivia to show up.” I mean it to be playful, but it comes out more like a threat.

“Oh yeah? Well, to hell with you!” she yells, and flounces off stage right, slamming the back door as she goes.

“Okay, then,” I say. Miranda and I exchange a look. “Guess we'll have to work this scene another time.”

I look at Seth, who's cradling his face in his hands, Ben, who's asleep in the front row, and Cheryl, with her head retracted deep into her shoulders like a frightened turtle. All of a sudden I feel way too exhausted to move. I desperately want to call it a night, even if it is dangerous precedent. I don't want them thinking they can pull a prima donna anytime they want out of rehearsal, but then again, a collective nervous breakdown won't help the show.

“Look, everyone's tired—have a good weekend. Run your lines like crazy. We'll be working act three again next week, then we'll start over at the top.”

As Miranda and I are trudging through the halls on our way to my car, a poster on one of the bulletin boards catches my eye:

Viva Vinyl and Medealovesmotorbikes, Inc.
presents
The First Annual Anti-Valentine Ball
for cynics only Come:
·Resist the Hallmark Holiday, but party anyway
·Shake your Moneymaker
·Get drunk enough to surf in the buff with fellow anti-Valentiners

 

DJ'ed music from nine till whenever
BYO Whatever
It's Beach, Valentine's Night

 

The lettering is cut from newspaper headlines, like a ransom note, and photocopied a little sloppily, giving it a rough-hewn, indie-production charm. At the bottom there's a sketch of a cat driving a Harley, all puffed up and wild-eyed. I stand there, beaming at it like an idiot.

“What is it?” Miranda asks, peering over my shoulder.

“Oh. Nothing,” I say, snapping out of it and walking away. “Where's It's Beach, anyway?”

“On the west side, you know, where the hippies play bongos on Sundays.”

“Oh,” I say, having no idea what she's talking about. “Okay.”

I give Miranda a ride back to her dorm; she keeps her skateboard and her backpack piled in her lap, even though I insist there's plenty of room in my back seat. She's got this weird thing about her stuff; I figure maybe she grew up poor, because she clings to her few ratty possessions with noticeable intensity.

I'll admit I've been increasingly puzzled by the enigmatic Miranda, the more I spend time with her. I've even resorted privately to hammering away at an equation I've always ar
gued is irrelevant: the old “which part is real?” game people can't resist playing with writers.
Heirloom
is about a wealthy CEO who terrorizes his family until Olivia, his daughter, finally poisons him. The father's a closeted homosexual who enjoys secret trysts in public bathrooms and then goes home to yell at his wife for buying books written by “faggots.” Though Miranda seems incredibly different from her rich-girl protagonist, Olivia, it wouldn't surprise me if her real-life family had a few dark secrets. She's just got that feeling about her; she holds herself like someone who grew up tiptoeing around violence.

She stares out the window in pensive silence, and when we arrive at her dorm, she says, “Do you think Olivia's insane?”

I give myself a moment to consider before answering. “I think she's disturbed… I mean, her family's got serious problems, obviously. But in a way she reacts sanely to an insane situation.”

“Exactly,” she says, slapping my dashboard happily. “I let my brother read it, and he thought Olivia was totally certifiable. He said it didn't work, because nobody could like her.”

“I like her,” I say. “I like her a lot.”

She nods and, as she moves, the streetlight plays on her purple curls. “I like her, too,” she says. “Thanks for the ride. See you Monday.” And with that she hops out, hitting the pavement and skating toward the dorms, looking scrappy and agile as a sprite.

Her parents named her Miranda, the sappy innocent who gets the guy, but if I ever do
The Tempest
here, I'd cast her as Ariel in a heartbeat. She's got that androgynous, impish thing going. Then I remember that I probably won't be here past this year, so I won't be doing
The Tempest
—or working with Miranda again.

Back in September, I wondered how I'd make it through the year. Now that I'm more than halfway there, I'm beginning to wonder how I'll manage to leave gracefully. As much
as I hate to admit it, I'm starting to hope against hope that Westby will decide I'm worth keeping.

Well, she could. Monica's backed off some, since I haven't molested her ex recently, and my student evals were fairly glowing—aside from Ralene Tippets's contribution, anyway. They're supposed to be anonymous, but even with the comments typed, I recognized Ralene's signature bitchiness instantly:

Professor Bloom (if you can even call her a professor) is consistently unprofessional and inappropriate. She frequently shows up late, clutching a muffin and looking frazzled, then tries to make it up to us by offering us bites. Please. She flirts with her pets while berating the rest of us. More than once I've caught her examining a
Victoria's Secret
catalog while the students rehearsed. You call this an education, Ms. Bloom? I think not. Please buy your underwear on your own time.

I was a little discouraged, I'll admit, especially considering that none of Ralene's allegations were bald-faced lies. I am late sometimes, I do frequently show up with a muffin, and yeah, I've been known to peruse
Victoria's Secret
when things were slow. I'm not perfect, God knows, but I prefer to focus on my more encouraging evals, such as this two-word one: “Bloom rocks.”

As I drive home, my mind drifts from teaching to my default setting: Clay Parker. So he's planning a little anti-Valentine bash. My curiosity is definitely piqued by his sweet little flyer, but I remind myself to be cautious. He's almost definitely in the throes of a post-relationship-give-me-the-antidote delirium, or the Big Swing, as Ziv used to call it. Practically everyone does it: you get out of a relationship with a neat freak, you find yourself crazy about a lice-infested grease monkey with fourteen rotting cars in his yard. After a week of gazing adoringly at his mountain of laundry, you come to your senses and flee. It's the way we are. Clay is fresh off the Monica boat, so naturally he'll find me irresistible. She's a tightly wound, overachieving, expensively
groomed and probably (deep down) tender brunette. I'm a disheveled mass of walking blond chaos with a battered little peach pit where there ought to be a heart.