Lila stood in front of the mirror in underwear and a sports bra and stared at her face, puffy and red from a rough October night.
In spite of its breezy locale high up the hillside, in spite of visible slivers of the sky where the cabin walls weren’t flush with the ceiling, in spite of adventitious air streams that inevitably accompany such primitive construction, the Mack house wrapped itself around the squirming heat and held it down as if forcing an apology. As soon as the late-afternoon sun settled across the roof shingles, they worried and throbbed with the swimmy waves of a highway mirage, heating up the living quarters well into the night. The brick floor that ran throughout, probably installed with the intention of cooling overheated occupants, instead digested the soaring temperature and enveloped the family with an
inescapable degree of closeness. In cool winter months, this intimacy was homely and sure. In the heat of California autumn, it grew yeasty and thick, making the simple act of falling asleep a formidable task.
And then there was the Angels’ dog, who’d been up serenading the canyon much of the airless night. There had been three glorious acts: a beseeching episode of wailing just after one o’clock; another, more fed up installment of what sounded like a jilted teenage girl weeping into her pillow around four-thirty; and then the crescendo—a frenzied climax of groaning and warbling that started up around five-forty, just as Lila began to drift off again.
As for her school situation, something had to give. Student loans were out of the question. Victor had flat-out refused to allow her to submit one piece of personal or household information to the government, citing immigration red tape that still hadn’t been cleared up since they’d moved from Canada. Besides, he’d said, coming out of art school hip-deep in debt was like starting a race with not one but two feet encased in cement.
So now the only other means of funding even a church basement art class was filling out an application—and actually getting hired—at someplace like Mel’s Drive-in or Book Soup or anyplace else that would require regular attendance and would take her further and further away from her mother opening up that most excellent issue of
Vanity Fair
. Lila now realized she’d made a grave mistake quitting her modeling gig. She realized she had little choice but to put on a repentant face, go to Lichty’s studio, and hope like hell he’d let her get naked in his class again.
She squared her body and examined her upper arms. What had Lichty called them? Scanty. Unbalanced. Disappointing
to future lovers. She balled her right fist and flexed her bicep. The elongated muscle leaped into action, forming a hardened knoll that was only somewhat reassuring. She dropped her arm to her side.
There was a scuffle in the yard, followed by a high-pitched wail, then silence. There, not three feet from her window, stood a large coyote, sandy gray tail tipped with black. One enormous, feathery ear stood erect, the other drooped at half-mast, having been chewed up in a long ago brawl. The gold eyes didn’t blink. While coyotes were rampant in the hills, this particular canine, notorious for his mangled ear, had simply become known to the locals as Slash.
Mythology portrayed coyotes as either heroic—with heart and even a sense of humor—or clever, impulsive, and greedy. Slash lived up to the latter by finding a way into even the most carefully bungeed and locked trash cans. If you tried to beat him by putting your trash out the morning of pickup, it was as if he knew it was Thursday, waiting in the bracken to dart out, not when your front door slammed shut and you might still hear the outdoor tussle, but once you turned on the shower, climbed in, and lathered yourself up with soap.
Cunning to the core.
As if mocking her, the wild dog stared back and shook the bloodied limbs of the headless hare he held between his teeth. She reached for her discarded boot on the floor behind her and hurled it through the open window. “Out of here! Go!”
The animal blinked at her calmly, then loped away into the bushes.
“Lila? What’s all that screaming?”
“Nothing.” She threw on a tank top and shorts and padded to her father’s doorway, watched him smooth his hair in the mirror, then lick his thumb and use the saliva to paste his locks to one side. Seven-thirty
A
.
M
. and the man was all decked out in a gray suit, Egyptian cotton shirt, suspenders. The flesh under his eyes looked puffy and sore.
She yawned into her hand. “Did the dog keep you up too?”
“Only half the night. The other half it was the heat.”
“I heard you snoring sometime around two, Mister.”
He thrust his chin upward and fussed with his collar. “I’ve half a mind to steal it.”
“Steal what?”
“The Basenji. Deserves a better home than living out back in a half-buried rain barrel. The breed originated in the Congo. Was used by the Pygmies as a hunting dog. It’s not suited to living outside in the winter. Even in Southern California. The nights can be quite cold. Gen used to have one.”
She squinted. “Since when do you know about Pygmy hunting dogs and who is Gen?”
“There’s quite a bit you don’t know about your old dad.”
“Like what? He was a warrior in the rain forest in a past life?”
“Like he did a project on the breed in his last year of high school because his extraordinarily attractive science teacher was a breeder and he thought it would impress her.”
“Ah. Well then. On the basis of pubescent efforts toward love that was ultimately doomed, your Basenji facts are allowed.”
“It’s one of the only dog breeds known to have no bark.”
“Why bother when you have far more annoying sounds at your disposal?”
“They can only mate during one thirty-day period each year because—”
“No.” She covered her ears. “Please. No canine gynecology before I have my coffee.”
With an impish expression, he turned to face the mirror over his dresser. “Who knew I raised such a lightweight?” A green tie hung loose from his neck and he picked up one end and wound it around the other. When she saw he’d left the narrow end too short, she moved to help. Positioning herself behind him, she wrapped her arms around the front of his neck and began looping the silk around itself into a triangular knot.
The dog crowed again from next door.
“I did a bit of research,” Lila said, smoothing his now-perfect knot. “The neighborhood bylaws say no excessive noise between eleven and seven.”
He let out a long tired breath. “If only you would throw these research skills into learning the value of a good business education. You can do anything with a business degree. You don’t have to follow in my footsteps. Start an arts-based business. It’s the best damned foundation for almost any career.”
“Dad…”
“I mean, look how you’ve spent the last few weeks. Holed up in the cellar all day every day. You’re wasting your life.”
“I’m working.”
He grunted in disbelief. “Working? What kind of work?”
“Painting.”
“Well at least show me what you’re working on. Where do you keep these paintings?”
She pushed her toe into a snag in the rug. “I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“I work like crazy on them. I just don’t keep them. Not yet.”
“You destroy them?”
“For now.”
He seemed distressed, wiping his forehead and looking around. “I just don’t want you to turn out like…”
“Like?”
He exhaled. “No one. But I’d feel better if you’d show me a painting.” He slid the business school brochure along his dresser until it lay in front of her. “Better still if you looked at this.”
Ignoring it, she picked up a pair of silver cuff links and set about adjusting his cuffs. “Don’t worry about me. I’m working on a plan.”
“Plan. I’d like to hear more about this—”
The dog let out a long, plaintive wail that sounded sickeningly human.
“You know that dog’s a Basenji,” Victor said. “The only breed in the world that doesn’t bark. Comes from the Congo, you know, once used as a Pygmy hunting dog. Extremely unsuited to spending its nights outdoors. It can be quite cool at night in Los Angeles.”
Lila studied her father, searching for a sign he was joking. But Victor just blinked, sincere as anything. It was then that she noticed his shirt collar was rumpled on one side.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing. It’s just…you just told me about the Basenjis. Then you told me all over again.”
He edged closer to the foot of his bed, dropped down onto the folded duvet, and pressed his mouth into a defiant frown. “Pass me my black shoes,” he said in a quiet voice.
Lila stood frozen for a moment, unsure what to say. She searched the situation for reason. Had she not reacted appropriately the first time around? Was he testing whether she’d been listening? Was age catching up with him and this was a sign of senility?
“Pass me my goddamned shoes!”
She jumped up to grab a pair of black loafers from his closet and held them up as a question. When he nodded, she set them on the floor by his feet and watched, mute, as he slipped them on.
The Basenji yapped twice.
Of course. Her father was sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation could do terrible things to the mind. Confusion, memory problems. Hallucinations, even.
She sat on the bed and pressed her hand over his. “I’ll go next door and get them to quiet their dog. Threaten them with animal services. Things will get back to normal once we both get a full night’s sleep.”
E
VERYTHING ABOUT THE
neighbors’ house was weighty and thick, like a bunker. Tiny cypress-framed windows were sunk deep into pinky-brown adobe walls. Planks of dark wood, held together with hammered iron straps, formed the arched front door. No wonder they let the dog screech and bray. Living in this fortress, they probably couldn’t hear it. When Lila rapped twice with the twisted knocker, the animal started trumpeting again from out back.
Chinking and clinking sounds, then the door flew open to reveal a woman in her early forties with long, muscular legs and wispy brown hair pulled back in a knot. Her freckled face was devoid of makeup, and papery lines fanned out from the corners of her eyes. Her shorts appeared to be army issue, as did her black boots, and her sleeveless
LIVE GREEN
T-shirt was tied tight at the waist. “Yes?”
The trumpeting out back twisted itself into high-pitched squealing.
“Hey. I’m Lila. From next door.”
The woman looked toward a dark room as if a pot were about to boil over or a child about to fall off a change table. Lila hoped it was the first. “Corinne. Can I help you with something?”
Yip. Yip yip yip.
Lila shoved her hands in her pockets and raised her voice to be heard over the noise. “We need to figure something out. About this barking. Or whatever.”
The woman wiped loose hairs off her face, then pushed her upper body through the door and cocked her head, listening. “I can barely hear it.”
“I can. So can my dad. It doesn’t stop. It
never
stops.”
With eyes roving Lila’s body, the woman laughed. “Something tells me you’re not an animal lover.”
Lila looked down at her abbreviated skirt, wondering how her fashion sense had managed to make such a statement. It wasn’t as if the mini was made of fur. “I just think you should bring your dog inside. At night anyway.”
“Anaïs is very happy where she is.”
“Dogs are social animals. They need to be around peop—”
“Honey, I know what dogs need. We’re from Arizona.
We’ve lived in the desert. We’ve raised orphaned wolf pups in our own kitchen.”
Lila tried to look past her.
“We released them once they were grown.”
Lila glanced back toward the cabin and noticed her father at the window. She stood up taller. “Basenjis come from the Congo. They shouldn’t be sleeping outside. They’re equator dogs.”
“Since you seem to be so interested,” Corinne said, crossing her arms and moving closer, amused, “the breed adapts very well to colder climates. Even as far north as Alaska.”
A detail Victor failed to share. “Still, your dog is disturbing the whole neighborhood.”
“And yet you’re the only one complaining. The same family who left a threatening note on our car.”
“Look, my dad’s not sleeping. And when he doesn’t sleep, he gets—”
A telephone rang from deep within the house and Corinne backed inside. “You take care now.” The door thumped shut and the backyard exploded into yelps and yodels.
Lila tugged her skirt down closer to her knees and pressed her face into the closed door, shouting, “…confused!”
Around ten o’clock that morning, after a final check in the mirror, Victor slipped his signing pen into his briefcase and made his way toward the elevator with plans to drop in on a West Covina medical clinic run by a husband and wife. There’d been an issue two weeks prior whereby they’d run out of gloves and sterile needles. The Guzmans were longtime clients and Victor had promised to deliver the shipment himself to save time. But when he arrived, Rona Guzman had turned up her nose at his supplies. Insisted she’d asked for nasal swabs, alcohol wipes, and specimen containers.
It was never Victor’s style to argue with a client. In spite of his irritation, he’d smiled politely, arranged to have the new order filled the next day, and tucked the unwanted supplies into the back of his car. Chalked the whole thing up to overwork on the part of the Guzmans.
He heard papers being shuffled and stacked as he walked past his boss’s corner office. Douglas Siniwick was already halfway through his day, starting as he did at five
A
.
M
. so he could “get his thoughts straight” before the phones started ringing and his assistant started bursting in looking for signatures and flight confirmations. At six-foot-five, his college quarterback frame appeared comical behind his modern desk, as if the glass desktop were sitting directly on his knees. Douglas looked up when Victor passed, his fair skin toasted pink and peeling at the tip of his nose. “Vic, do you have a minute?”
Victor stopped. “Can it wait until later? I’ve got an important call this morning. Two, actually.”
Douglas pulled a file from a credenza behind his desk and motioned toward a chair. “Come on in, big guy. And shut the door behind you.”
T
HE FOURTH FLOOR
of L.A. Arts’ visual arts building was dark. Empty too but for the back of someone’s head at a studio entryway. Lila nearly turned around when she realized it was the teacher’s assistant, Adam Harding. He pressed a notice to the door with one elbow while tearing a piece of masking tape with his teeth. The sign said class was canceled due to the heat. “Hey,” he mumbled through the tape.
She dropped her backpack to the floor, took the roll of tape from him, and stuck a short curling strip on each of her spread-out fingertips.
“Thanks.” He took a piece and affixed the top of the poster. “Lila, right?”
She nodded, tearing more tape. “Are Lichty’s classes canceled too?”
“The whole school.”
“Is he still here?”
“Not sure. Check his office if the studio is empty.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “I don’t mind classes being canceled. Midterms are going to suck and I need time to study.”
She’d kill to have a problem like midterms.
“One more semester and I’m out in the real world. Scary as hell.”
“Yeah, well. You and millions of other college grads.”
The muscle in his jaw bulged and he chanced a quick glance at her, saying nothing.
She shrugged. “Sorry, but it just doesn’t sound that bad. Try taking your clothes off in front of a roomful of people your own age. Nothing will seem scary after that.”
“You get nervous?”
“Only to the point of having to swallow my own vomit.”
“Huh. Well you look pretty darned good to me.”
The TA leering at the art model? She dropped the tape to the floor. “Do you even hear yourself?”
“What? No—”
“Jesus
.” She scooped up her bag and marched down the hall.
S
HE SLIPPED THROUGH
the studio doors and closed them behind her, hoping Adam wouldn’t come after her. “Asshole,” she muttered under her breath.
Behind her, she heard a ticking sound. She spun around to find Lichty staring at her, clicking a ballpoint pen. A wicked smile unfurled across his face. “Well, Miss Mack, to what do I owe this foul-mouthed outburst?”
Lichty. She was completely unprepared now. And why did he have to click that pen? It sounded as if something was about to explode. “Uh…”
“As eloquent as ever, I see.” He set the pen on his desk, picked up a stack of essays, and slid them into his valise. “I’ll have to ask you to take your games and go. This is a place of learning, not a kindergarten playground. Besides that, we had a conversation, about you and me and places you are not permitted to enter in the futu—”
“I made a mistake,” she blurted out. “I never should have quit. I wasn’t thinking. I was new.”
“New?” He touched one hand to his chest. “Well, now I am shocked. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I believe you said you’d modeled before.”
“I did. I have. Lichty, I came to say I’m sorry. I realize now how badly I need this job and I’m asking you to forget what happened.”
He appeared amused. Like a cat that’s just come upon a three-legged mouse. “I’m afraid I never forget. If I’m known for nothing else, it is my unfailing memory.”
“Forgive, then. Please.”
Silence. Then, “No model has ever walked out on my classes.”
“Why would they? You’re the best. Everybody knows it.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I mean it.”
“Posing in my classes is a thing models aspire to, not a thing they escape from.”
“I know. Think of all they can learn while they’re standing there.”
His face changed. With one tilt of his head, he was at
once surprised and vindicated, as if he’d been wondering for years whether the models take in what he is saying in his classes. “You’re telling me you want to model again so you can learn from me?”
The wetness beneath her scanty arms spread now. A hot trickle ran down her side. How to answer this? Anything she said could infuriate him, send him into a haughty tirade about how models should be focused on the pose and nothing else, for how—if a model is taking internal dictation—can he or she possibly offer the students the most of a particular posture? Her answer would likely determine her future with Lichty.
She decided to go with honesty. “Yes.”
He huffed out a bit of air and nodded, assessing her. “Interesting.” Then he reached for his leather case and started toward the door.
“Lichty?”
He spun around.
“May I come back?”
He disappeared into the hall. A few moments later, she heard him call, “I have a nine-fifteen watercolor class in the morning. I’ll change the schedule with the office. Don’t even think about being late.” And he was gone.
L
ILA DROPPED ONTO
the stool by the blackboard and let herself spin in slow circles. So Lichty had a heart. Somehow, knowing this made her feel better about baring herself again. As if at least one person in the room might be, if not on her side, at least not 100 percent against her.
She kicked out at the floor to spin herself harder and watched the windows, cupboards, blackboards, speed past in a blur.
She’d never been alone in a real studio before. The first day there’d been at least a dozen students by the time she’d arrived. Now, sitting on one of the student stools, she stopped spinning and focused on seeing the room as they did. Did any of them realize that day, as they yawned and scratched and shaded her scapula and highlighted her pubic bones, how she envied them?
She crossed the room to the slatted cabinet that housed the mason boards, the paper. Like the students had so many times before her, she slid her hand inside one of the shelves and pulled out a board. Right away something feathery and multilegged skittered across her fingers and she dropped the board on the floor with a silent shriek. The back of her hand was sticky.
Lila moved closer. Deep inside the shelf, stretched across the far corner, was a dense tangle of threadlike webbing. A black spider hung from the center. Its shape was both graceful and deadly—smooth inky abdomen polished to a sheen, long front and back legs with shorter, tidier legs in the center, red hourglass shape on the underside of its round belly.
A black widow.
Her fifth-grade teacher had had a fear of them and had brought in photos of one her husband found living in their mailbox. Lila stepped back and burrowed her sticky hand into her T-shirt.
A brush with death. Though people didn’t actually die from black widow bites. There were hospitals, there were antidotes. Maybe this was more a brush with agony and panic followed by a quick scramble to find someone to administer the cure. She was entranced by the arachnid. Beautiful and terrible, delicate and revolting.
Quickly, before her subject developed stage fright and scuttled off into the gaping seams of the cabinet, Lila pinned paper to board, grabbed a pencil from Lichty’s desk, and—leaning the board against the shelving—peered into the shelf and started to sketch with only the light from the window to guide her.
The spider was blacker than black. Her outer shell appeared plastic, hard, as if it might make a sickening crunch under your shoe. The only real way to depict her menacing curves was to leave slices of white paper untouched to show the highlights. Lichty would hate this, Lila thought to herself. Nothing gray about this subject. Nothing soft, shadowy, open to interpretation. The black widow may have had nothing more sinister planned for the day than repairing the tear in her web or pushing a giant sac of babies out her swollen belly, but her very form demanded respect. You were drawing horror in cold, hard black and white.
Lila heard footsteps behind her and looked up, stiffening when she saw Adam walking toward her. He held up a black bag. “You took mine.”
“Oh. Sorry.” They exchanged backpacks. “You’re done with your posters?”
“Ran out of tape. And paper. Plus I lost my Sharpie.”
“Excellent progress.”
He looked at her art board. “Lichty has a thing about people using the supplies when he isn’t here.”
She looked up at him. “What…You’re going to tell on me now?”
“No. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I was about to leave.”
Renderings of herself, as well as other models, dotted the walls, and she bristled when she realized he was looking
at the drawing tacked above Lichty’s desk, a closeup of her shoulder, hair draped across her skin, only a sliver of her downward-turned face visible. It was exquisite, actually. A private moment. This was done by the Indian girl with the navy hair, a quiet and a sensitive artist Lichty singled out the first day for her ability to zoom in on the real charm of a pose.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
“What?”
“Their interpretations.” He pointed to another drawing. “Surfer dude did this one. I can tell. Shows you with Jessica Rabbit breasts and hips so narrow you should be unable to walk.” Then he nodded toward another Lila. This one was padded around the middle. The nose was longer too. “Remember that older woman? She had short, grayish hair?”
Lila nodded. “So they’re not really drawing me.”
“More like the you they see through their own crap. And noncrap. The model can offer whatever pose she wants; it will never be interpreted the same way by two students.”
“Are they all female?”
“The models? No, why?”
She shrugged. “You said she.”
“No. We’ve plenty of guys. I’ve even modeled here. I fill in sometimes when a model doesn’t show.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Nope. Makes me feel good about my body.” He sniffed and stretched his neck from one side to the other as if to prove it. “If you ever need a model, I’m happy to pose.”
“No. I’m good.”
“Whatever.”
Hoping he would take the hint and leave, she went back
to her drawing, sharpening the edge of the spider’s front leg. Instead of sensing her desire for privacy, he moved closer and peered down at her work, and she tried to lean forward to block his view. “I don’t really like people to see my drawings…”
“You’re good.”
The praise felt wonderful. She allowed herself a quick glance at him. With a nonchalant sniff, she asked, “You think?”
“You could be a student here.”
“Yeah. Well. I’m not.”
“Money? Because you could try for a scholarship.”
“I’m not that good. They’d never take me.”
“You never know, right?”
“No. Sometimes you really do know.”
He said nothing, just pulled out his bottle of NyQuil and twisted open the lid, sipped hungrily. “I’m going to New York.”
She turned her pencil around to erase a tiny mistake. “So you said.”
“Right. Sorry.” He burped into his hand, then stuffed the bottle in his bag. “I say it twice and now you think I’m this self-centered jerk who loves his own stories so much he can’t keep track of what he’s said to who.”
She couldn’t resist. “Whom.”
“Perfect. Now you’re thinking, ‘Linguistic ignoramus.’”
Trying not to smile, she said, “Actually, the who/whom thing wasn’t a deal-breaker for me, but ‘linguistic ignoramus’…You don’t actually expect me to move past that one.”
He hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and started to weave backward, clumsily, toward the door, then half squinted, half smiled. Stopping, he tipped his head to the side. “Wait. Did you just ask me out?”
“No. Good-bye, Adam.”
“It didn’t come out right—what I said back there in the hall. It sounded creepy, but I just meant your pose was so thought out; you challenged the students the way other models should but usually don’t. It’s good. It’s why Lichty just told me to schedule you for more than half his classes.”
Taken aback by his honesty, Lila stared down at her drawing and said nothing. By the time she looked up to thank him, he was gone. She returned to her drawing. Not one minute later, she heard a muffled cough behind her and turned, expecting to find he’d returned.
He hadn’t.
In the center of the room was a tanned woman in her early forties, maybe late thirties. Not especially tall, but the way she stood, hunched over herself, hands squeezing each other for support, and clutched to her chin—it was as if she was waiting for a blow. The woman said nothing at first, but inched a bit closer. Coppery curls hid part of her face, and her eyes—round and hoping, like a child’s—blinked furiously.
It was the same woman in the flowered mini Lila had seen on her way in. The secretary was giving her a hard time, something about nonstudents not being allowed to wander through the halls. Lila might not have recognized her but for the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her gauzy blouse.