Equivocality

[This is Eva Konstantopoulos' winning entry to the 2009 Writers Travel Scholarship. We're all terribly proud.]

“According to the Federal Trade Commission, when planning for a funeral, shop around in advance. Compare prices from at least two funeral homes. Remember that you can supply your own casket or urn. Ask for a price list. Resist pressure to buy goods you don’t really need. Avoid emotional overspending. It’s not necessary to have the fanciest casket to properly honor a loved one. Recognize your rights. Funeral laws vary from state to state. Apply the same smart shopping techniques you use for other major purchases. Jeremy, are you ok?”

“Mmhmm.”

“You can cut costs by limiting the viewing to one day or one hour before the funeral, and by dressing your loved one in a favorite outfit instead of costly burial clothing. Your mom loved that red dress, remember? The one that poofed at the end?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Plan ahead… It allows you to comparison shop without time constraints, creates an opportunity for family discussion…lifts some of the burden…Did you fall asleep on the phone?”

“Mmhmm.”

I hear him breathing. I think of his breath traveling all those miles between us, from Hoboken through the plains over the Rockies and down the coast of California and then to Los Angeles, into Los Feliz, and then my tiny studio, all in a couple of milliseconds.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Nope.”

“You sure?

“Mmhmm.”

“You can get the “traditional” full-service funeral. Direct cremation is another option, too.”

“Mom hated fire.”

“Okay.” I cross off direct cremation on my list. “Next step is a funeral provider.”

There’s shuffling on the other end. Static. “You know…I just remembered I have a date tonight.”

I tap my pencil on the paper in front of me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, she’s picking me up.” 

“Smooth.” As soon as I say it I wish I hadn’t. He acts like he doesn’t hear me.

“Anyway, mom wouldn’t have minded if you picked.”

“But you’re her spawn…Her flesh and stuff.”

“Yeah, I think Nancy is here.”

“Jeremy…”

Click. I listen to the dial-tone in my ear. Dead, dead, dead. I place the phone back in the receiver. I’m still in my work clothes, brown slacks and a button down shirt from Target, although I told fat Cecile at the front desk that I got it from Banana Republic. In front of me is the list I printed from the website. I clear my throat and place water on the stove to boil. A date. Tonight? I look over the list. There are a few funeral providers down the block from his house, and right across the street from where my aunt still lives. The way the site’s set up, it’s meant to be reassuring. They give dos and don’ts in bulleted response that are supposed to prepare you for the inevitable. I turn off the stove and all the lights and stand in the shadows. If Patrick was here, he’d tell me how weird I was being, standing in the dark waiting for my tea to boil, but my thoughts are quieter in the dark, safer. I don’t want to think of Jeremy all alone, or the way his mother died, crushed in the family car in between an upturned truck and the railing of a highway, splat.

Outside my window, the sky’s yellowish pinks and reds have twisted into a muted gray. My neighbors have erected a Christmas tree by their front door and I can hear the mechanical melody of Jingle Bells even with the window shut tight. The phone rings. The echo reverberates through every corner of the apartment. Sometimes it feels like my life isn’t my life and I’m standing in for someone else. I pick up the phone.

 “So, you’re coming, right?” A voice whispers, muffled and low. “To the funeral?”

It takes a moment for me to place his voice. “Jeremy, why are you speaking like that?”

“I’m at the restaurant. At a payphone in the back. So?”

I shift my weight from foot to foot. “I don’t have enough money to go home.”

“Thought you were some big time Hollywood gal.”

“I work at the Observatory.”

“So, what were you going to do for Christmas? Spend it with Paaaatrick?”

“I don’t know.” This is a lie. I do know. Patrick’s away on business for the holidays, and I have no life, so I’ll probably fall asleep with A Christmas Story on TV, listening to the mechanic jingle of the lighted tree outside my window. “Isn’t Nancy gonna wonder where you are?”

“She’s fixing her make-up at the table.”

“She must be very beautiful.”

“Eh.”

“You gonna fuck her?”

“Probably,” he sighs deeply. Like it’s his job to fuck beautiful women and they don’t pay him enough for it. “So, where are you spending the holidays?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I hear Red Robin has a great Christmas Dinner.”

“Sounds delicious.”

I let out a little laugh and then press my lips together. “No, it doesn’t.”

There’s now another voice in the background. It raises above Jeremy, fake sugar sweet. The voice sounds controlled, like it belongs to the type of girl that never has to pay for anything. The type of girl that only takes pictures before eating and never after, because she thinks consuming food makes her look fat. I twirl the phone cord around my finger into a makeshift ring. The fake sugar voice is farther away now, not even there.

“Jeremy, go back to your dinner.”

“If I came to visit, Patrick probably wouldn’t like it, would he?”

This time, he says Patrick’s name in a distinguished faux British accent.

The teakettle whistles in the kitchen and the windows by the stove begin to fog.

 “What does this have to do with anything?” I ask. “If you must know, he’s away. On business. ‘Till next Monday.”

“Really?” There’s a conspiratorial note in Jeremy’s voice and then the phone clicks. I feel the plastic in my hand and try to imagine a human voice coming out of it instead of the flat-lining dial tone.

 

That night and for the rest of the week I have this recurring dream of Jack Something-Or-Other, who was my boyfriend in high school. He and I were close, and I even thought about marrying him until I found him with Mindy the oboe player behind the piano on a Tuesday afternoon. He had her plaited skirt above her thighs, pushed up over her stomach, and her mouth was open really, really wide, which I always thought odd, because I had never even considered she had the capabilities to open her mouth that wide until I found her fucking my boyfriend. Poor Jack Whatever His Name Was, he was concentrating so hard, you know? His face was all red, and he was squeezing his ass, and you could tell he was giving it his all when he propped her up against the piano stool; her legs all spread eagle with her striped tube socks high in the air and her flabby thighs jiggling with each rhythmic thrust. I mean it was impossible not to watch. It was like those surgeries on TV where the camera does close-ups of a stranger’s intestines and all you see are the surgeon’s latex gloves and the sharp scalpel and the pink insides of a person you don’t know, and once you look, you just can’t turn your head.

I woke up before the sun rose and tried to erase the memory from my mind, but I could still see him thrusting with careless glee like he wanted to get caught, which was also funny because he had never rushed with me. I remember wondering at the time how I could ask him next time to hurry up: “You know, can you do me like you did Mindy behind the piano Tuesday? Because you take too long, and I get bored.” Don’t get me wrong, when it happened, it was a troubling experience. Not because of the whole “I-was-cheated-on” thing, but because then I started to imagine what my boyfriend was like when he fucked other people (besides Mindy and Me), and then I thought about how my parents before they died had fucked to have me, and how the Principal probably fucked his wife or whoever he lived with, and then I thought about the other students in the band, and the people at the supermarket and the bank and everyone in New Jersey and definitely the city and then there was cow country and Middle America and all those people on the other side of the oceans, and it reminded me that underneath our clothes and jewelry and plastic surgery, we were all just animals, and no matter what I felt, people would go on fucking other people whether they had husbands or boyfriends or girlfriends or wives or children…because that’s just what people did.

In the dream, when neither the fucker nor the fucked had noticed me, I walked over to Jack Whatever He’s Called and stood behind him. Then, I was about to tap him on the shoulder, and was thinking about what I would say, when Mindy, that observant oboe player, saw me and quickly pulled down her skirt, and then Jack turned around, too, and he just had this look on his face. It wasn’t guilt; more like annoyance that he hadn’t finished. The funny thing is if it hadn’t have been for that look, I would have taken him back. He was an animal, after all, and I don’t believe in love so I wasn’t concerned about that, and when it was all said and done, he was a good-looking guy, which also means that he was perfect (at least for me). He had high cheekbones, deep eyes that you could fall into, and a good set of hair, and he played three sports: Track, Football, and Lacrosse, and I’m sure his sperm would have been smart and healthy and would have found my egg and we would have had intelligent, healthy, good looking children with high cheekbones and deep eyes, and I wasn’t even mad at him for cheating, I was just annoyed that he was annoyed at me.

 

On Saturday morning, I see the speckled light falling through the window and shimmy downstairs to the kitchen in my worn out bunny slippers and ratty tank top. I place the kettle on the stove to boil, and then I pick up the phone, punching in the numbers I’ve known since high school. I don’t want to do this, but he said he needed my help, right?

 “RI-ING, RI-ING, RI-ING. This is Jeremy, you know what to do. BEEP.”

“Jeremy, you wanted to know about prices and we didn’t get to it before so I’m leaving you a message even though this is awkward for me. So, okay. The lady I talked to was really nice and she finally gave me the prices. For about 3,000 you can get the primo stuff, 1,500 will buy you the aluminum sulfate cover, and for about 500 you can get a…cardboard box. The lady says these are usually an unfinished wood box or other non-metal re-cep-ta-cles, as well. They’re usually made with…I…can’t read my own writing…fiberboard, pressed wood, and they’re lower in cost than caskets…I hope your date went okay…”

 “BEEP. IF YOU ARE SATISFIED WITH YOUR MESSAGE PRESS ONE. TO RE-RECORD PRESS TWO. Click.”

I sit down at the table and recall the conversation I had with the lady. She was not a nice lady. The truth was she sounded brittle. She could have been the walking dead for all I knew.  “What exactly are you looking for?” She had asked after listing the prices to me in a robotic tone, like she did this all the time and had better things to do than talk to me. “Not sure, this is for a friend of mine,” I replied. I heard her cluck her tongue, but it wasn’t a sound you made out of sympathy for someone else, it was a sound of impatience. She said something else, but that cluck was ringing in my head – cluck, cluck, cluck – I hung up.

I go out on the front porch and there’s a little girl in pigtails next to the Christmas tree that mechanically jingles. She’s the daughter of the landlord, and she’s shaking the cardboard presents and putting her ear up to the wrapping paper to listen. I guess I live in a safe enough neighborhood where someone can leave wrapped presents under an outdoor Christmas tree and no one will steal them. Then again, what do I know? Maybe no one cares.

The phone rings, and I trip over the rug before limping over and answering it.

“Nice bunny slippers,” a creepy voice whispers.

“What?”

The line goes dead. I put the phone back in the receiver and walk towards the door to look out the peephole, but there’s no one there. Then, the phone rings again. I limp back towards the phone.

“LUCIA!”

 “Did you just call?”

“Somebody call you?”

“Tell me the truth or I’m hanging up.”

“Define…truth.”

“Good-bye Jeremy.”

“Wait.”

There’s a knock at my door. This is a very strange game. Normally, I’m used to games, but this one makes me uneasy, like I don’t know the rules. I open the door with the chain lock still on.

Jeremy stands in a dark coat and blue stonewashed jeans, simple brown shoes on his feet. He’s carrying a coffee tin and a duffel bag and there’s this wild looking grin on his face. I unlock the door.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you, too.”

He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into him. He smells like musk and sweat and something else, like the street I grew up on, the trees along the sidewalk when I used to ride my bike home from school. I wrap my arms around him and realize I can feel his ribs poking through his shirt. I pull back and look at his face. There’s a few days worth of stubble on his chin and his gray eyes seem tired, wrinkles around the edges now, but the lines compliment him, define his sadness. 

 

Jeremy gingerly places the coffee can in the more comfortable upholstered chair, arranging the pillows around it, and then sits down on the half-broken ottoman next to it. I’ve been in this apartment for over a year and still haven’t bought decent furniture. This, and the fact that I’m not wearing a bra, should embarrass me, but it doesn’t. Not with Jeremy.

I nod to the coffee can. “What is that?”

“It’s my mom,” he answers.

I blink. “What is she doing here?”

“I cremated her.”

“You cremated her?”

“No, I didn’t. The guy at the parlor did. He wanted to charge me an arm and a leg for a plastic fucking vase, so I just dumped out my mom’s favorite coffee and then shook her in. Don’t look at me like that, Lulu. She loved this coffee!”

“But you said she hated fire!”

“I know for a fact she hated being swindled more. So,” he clasps his hands together. “Aren’t you going to ask me how my date went?”

“With?”

“The predictably satisfactory Nancy.”

This, I know, is a test. But I can’t figure out what I’m being tested for. “How did your date go with Nancy?” I say carefully.

“I fucked her. Here’s the best part. The next day I went out with her sister, and do you know who her sister is?” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Marcia I-got-a-nose-job Pickings. From Physics senior year.”

“You’re lying. How is she?”

Marcia was my arch-nemesis all throughout high school. If I was Carrie, she’d drench me in pig blood.

“Fat. Well, no. Skinny. But fatter than her sister. You know why? It’s because she likes eating those little chocolate bonbons…we went to dinner and she hardly ate anything, only the appetizer bread and then she just saved herself for dessert. After, she took me back to her sister’s place. They’re roommates. Isn’t that a hoot? I fucked her on her sister’s bed. Doggie style.”

He laughs here. It’s a malicious laugh, hollow. I’ve never heard him laugh like this before, and it scares me. His face gets all red, and he can’t stop. When he quiets down, he still chuckles.

“Jeremy, I really don’t need to know the details of your conquests anymore.”

“But it’s funny.”

“What are you going to do with your mom?”

“I got it all planned out.”

“You do?”

He pauses, triumphant. “I’m gonna give her to the one man that never let her down.”

I always thought every man in his mom’s life was a disappointment. I wait for Jeremy to tell me who this mystery man is, but he doesn’t.

 “You have to trust me,” he says with his little wolf grin.

 

He doesn’t tell me where we’re going, just that I have to believe him to get to where we need to be. As we walk down the street to my car, he carries the coffee can proudly under his arm, like he’s strolling with dear old mum. Women look at me. Well, not necessarily me, but him. He doesn’t notice this or care. He never does. And that just makes them look again, turn on their thin legs, in their high heel pumps and furry boots. Businesswomen. Bartenders. Street vendors. The checkout girl in the window at CVS. Beautiful women. Ugly women. Aggressive women. Women who slouch, who stand up straight. Everywhere we go, I notice their eyes following him. Curious.

“You know, you can have any one of those girls,” I say.

“I know.”

He’s looking down the street, trying to see what’s in front of him.

“So, why don’t you?” I try to stand as indifferent as him as I unlock my car. It’s parked on Vermont, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I see that there are two parking tickets on my windshield.

“Who says I’m not?” He lets out his laugh, and takes the two parking tickets and throws them to the ground. Problem solved.

I study the backs of his perfect molars. I honestly don’t know why we’re friends. I don’t love him. I don’t want him to fuck me. And I definitely don’t want to fuck him. One time, maybe, I thought I did, but then he told me what happens to the girls he sleeps with, that they become his ghosts. He’s always up front with the girls. He tells them the night of or maybe weeks before. He’ll say: “I have issues.” Big smile. “I never sleep with the same girl twice.” And these girls will nod, sometimes hold his hand, already scheming about how they’ll change him; open him to the wonder of a real bon-a-fide relationship, though the next morning it’s always the same. 

He’ll wake up and pat the girl on the shoulder or maybe he’ll stroke her cheek. Then she’ll smile, the dew in her eyes, and he’ll throw back the covers, pull and zip up his pants. I used to ask him what he would say to these girls, how they could stand being abandoned, but he claimed he usually didn’t say much. If he was lucky, the girl was still sleeping went he left, but if the girl woke up, the usual response was to glare hatefully or roll over and go back to bed, some tried to shake him with words (“I thought you were sensitive!”), others just cried and turned to the wall, no matter what the reaction, he would always shrug – “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?” – And walk out.

Most of the time, the girls didn’t try to contact him. Their pride or stubbornness kept them away, or maybe they just knew when not to chase a lost cause. Sometimes though, someone would try to reach out. A girl would send him a card, maybe a note or a stack of cupcakes; try to confront him at the supermarket or the bank. Our neighborhood in Jersey wasn’t small, but it wasn’t big either. You could find people if you wanted to.

 

We’ve taken the 210 freeway to the 5 and my air conditioning’s not working and we’ve rolled the windows down and the hairs on Jeremy’s arm are whipping in the wind. The sky is blue above us, and pretty soon, the city falls away and yellow flowers dot the hillside. We pass Magic Mountain parkway and the metal and steel of the roller coasters rise like serpents over the dry, arid land. The north and south freeways intercross and then we’re climbing past Pyramid Lake and the Paradise Ranch.

 I’m a bit perplexed that he won’t tell me where we’re going, and I don’t remember the last time I left Los Angeles. I swerve around the turns, trying to shake him, but he just laughs and hollers at the sky. His voice sounds wild and alive. I wish I had a tape recorder or something to capture that sound, to keep it with me always so I’d have it when I don’t want to go to work in the morning or I forgot what it feels like to have a friend. On the steering wheel, my hands seem foreign, like they belong to someone else. It’s hard to imagine that I can control them. I can steer the wheel right or left or off this cliff if I want to. And what’s stopping me? Something stops us from killing ourselves, but what?

One night a few months ago, Jeremy told me one of his ghost girls brought two of her brothers into the bar where he worked. The girl stood behind them, her eyes drawn into slits, her little fists clenched tight. They lunged at him behind the bar and dragged him over the counter, throwing him through a table and crashing a chair over his back, and he let them. He let them punch him and kick him and slam him up against the wall. He let them bruise two ribs and split open the skin above his eyebrow. He let them laugh at him, he let her laugh at him, and then he took his first swing. 

At the end of it all, according to Jeremy, he pulverized one man’s nose and the other had a gash down his jaw from when Jeremy’s right hook hit skin. SWACK! Six ribs broken, one wrist fractured, and one foot twisted almost the whole way around. Everyone could hear the bones break, the blood oozing down the bigger guy’s chin before he fell to the floor. After the fight, Jeremy’s boss let him keep his job. He even patted Jeremy on the back for defending himself like he did, as if to say, only manly man here.

I steal a sideways glance at Jeremy when I think he’s not looking. Good ol’ Jeremy. Reeking of alpha dog distinction. He wasn’t wearing cowboy boots, but any girl would have to admit he was unnaturally cartoonish in his good looks. I feel a wave of guilt rush through me and tell him I have to make a call. He nods and thrusts his hands in his pockets, grinning at me to go ahead. I glare at him and he covers his ears.

 “Tell Paaaatrick I say hi.”

I ignore him and pull out my cell-phone. Patrick picks up on the third ring and sounds generally surprised to hear my voice. “You never call me at work, what’s up?”

“I…do…too.” I’m a liar. “And nothing happened. I’m just wondering how you’re doing. I’m going for a walk. Down Hillhurst. It’s sunny.”

Jeremy shakes his head. Paaatrick talks of Canada and the weather and then when the conversation goes on long enough to the point where I think it’s okay to end it, I say good-bye, forcing myself to laugh so we leave on a friendly note. I tell Paaatrick good-bye again. For the second time (or is it the third? I can’t keep track). Jeremy is strumming his hands on the window, boom boom boom…Patrick tells me he loves me, and I say it back (even though I don’t believe in love, but don’t tell him that). We hang up. I watch the display screen and his number blink a few times before it disappears.

 “So, how’s Paaaatrick doing?” Jeremy bats his eyes.

“Paaaatrick is good. Don’t be a smart ass.”

“I’m not a smart-ass, though I am smarter…than you.”

Jeremy straightens in his seat. When he says this, I know he’s just trying to annoy me. It doesn’t work. I punch him softly and we drive on, though I squint over at him occasionally. The sun is behind him and if he moves forward, the light blinds me and I have to close my eyes briefly to make the swirling purple and yellow dots go away.

 

We stop at a gas station and then walk into a convenience store, me first, and then him. When he enters almost every girl in the establishment looks his way. I try not to notice. I get an extra large soft drink for Jeremy, and he gets me a bottle of Iced Tea even though he knows I like Seven Up.

I sit down by a table at the window, and Jeremy brings a chair over and places the coffee can on it so his mom can join us. We watch the cashier girl ring up people when she’s not batting her eyes at Jeremy. I sip my Iced Tea and it’s bitter. Jeremy rubs his hands over his forehead. He must be tired. I never asked him how long his flight was. Two high school girls enter the convenience store and give Jeremy the once-over, and then they look at me with distaste, almost contempt, like how could someone like me be sitting at a grimy table with a guy like him. J-E-R-E-M-Y.

“How do you do it? How do you make them fall in love with you?”

“Who?” He theatrically looks behind his shoulder, as if scared. Then he nonchalantly shrugs. “Remember when we first met, what I told you?”

“That you’re an asshole?”

“YES! I just don’t care. Except for you, Lu. I care about you.” He reaches across the table and pats me on the hand. 

“But we’ve never…”

“Yeah,” he smiles then. “That’s true.” His teeth are small and white.

“It’s a good thing I’m broken.”

“Normal girls don’t make any sense. It’s the broken ones that are worth something. Anyway, why are you so concerned with what happened yesterday?”

“…So, all those girls you’ve been with. They don’t mean anything to you?”

“Of course not,” he shrugs. He narrows his eyes, studying me. “Should I be apologizing?”

“But they were beautiful? The girls?”

“Of course,” he says. Then he thinks about it. “Some.”

“I could never love someone that wasn’t attractive. And I could never trust someone that was.”

“You love and trust Patrick.”

“Besides Patrick every man I consider loving is a liar.”

“But you trust me?”

“I don’t trust you. I just know when you’re lying.”

“God forbid.” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

“You smoke now?”

“Hey, I don’t want to live past forty. I got - what?” He pretends to count on his fingers. “Shit. Better have two.”

He places two cigarettes in his mouth and pushes the pack my way. I shake my head. He smiles again, that little wolf grin. “You know who told me it’s better to die young?” He points at my chest.

“The older I get, the longer I want to live.”

“Shit.” He stands up and walks backwards towards the door. “All the interesting people are in hell. Who told me that?” 

He points at me again and walks into a few people waiting in line. A very tall man and an old lady, who lets a little yelp escape her lips and stumbles back into a cart of chips.

 

When Jeremy comes back into the convenience store, a few women sneak peeks his way, placing him on their radar. Then he walks over to me, and they eye me challengingly, already staking claim. ‘Go ahead,’ I think. ‘He’ll just leave you like he leaves everyone else.’

Jeremy sits down across from me, the chair squealing on the floor when he pushes it away from the table.

“So, LA, huh? Looks like a bunch of buildings to me. A lot of cars and sun.”

I shrug. “It can’t be defined.”

“Hot. Ugly. Sounds like a good definition to me.”

I raise an eyebrow and don’t say anything. Jeremy coughs, bored with my response, and lightly touches the coffee can like he’s patting Mom’s shoulder.

“Remember when my Mom brought home that guy? What was his name? Tom. Fucking Tom. Remember when she brought him home for Thanksgiving?”

I try to recall Tom, and then it hits me. White shirt, tight jeans. Hair slicked back straight from the 1950s. A James Dean complex. Jeremy’s father was the spitting image of James Dean, that’s why Jeremy kind of looks like him, and why when his dad left, we saw a parade of James Dean look-a-likes swaggering in and out of Jeremy’s house. There was something about the actor that had clicked with her. Jeremy’s name was even supposed to be James Dean, but his father wouldn’t have it, said he had to be named for his grandfather, so his mom settled on Dean being his middle name as homage to the fallen star. Jeremy Dean Sinclair. Whether it was James Dean in a business suit, or James Dean in a Hawaiian shirt, her men all had that same desperate look in their eyes, that sense of quiet determination and broodiness, be it the mailman or the county clerk.

             When we sat down for dinner, we used to make fun of them, repeating dialogue from Rebel Without a Cause. “You’re TEARING ME APART!” Jeremy would declare as he passed the asparagus, and I would throw up my hands: “I don’t want any trouble.” The James Dean imposters never got the joke, and his mother didn’t say anything except occasionally purse her lips as she tried to play the good housewife. After these dinners, we would usually watch the Rebel trailer on repeat, turning it up high hoping to scare off his mom’s suitor, screaming the movie’s headlines into the night: “SENSITIVE! So sensitive its performances will throb deep in your heart!” or “Entertainment of UNFORGETTABLE emotional impact!”

We were such little shits. I don’t know why his mom didn’t just tell me to go home, but she probably knew that I didn’t have a home to go to, not really. My sister and I were staying with my aunt at the time who worked double shifts at Target, at the register during the day and then stocking shelves through the night. This was before my little sister, Maria, “accidentally” set the kitchen on fire and our aunt kicked us out.

The last time I was over Jeremy’s house about six or seven years ago, his mom still had pictures of his dad around, smiling next to her, the handsome couple at the drive thru, and then later, holding little Jeremy, although the smile was gone from his father’s face by then, and he just looked trapped.

Jeremy and me. He used to call me his Natalie Wood, but I’m no movie star. I don’t have that glistening smile and men won’t come up to me if I don’t glance at them first, if I don’t try to shake my hips, and even then, they hardly look. Jeremy says it’s because I hardly acknowledge them, but I do. I notice everyone. People are just so odd, it’s hard not to. My favorite kinds of friends are those that don’t care about me, not in the slightest, because then, I can care about them and look at them without any obligation or expectation. That’s why I like Los Angeles, because we’re all strangers here, and there’s not that fake sense of community that happens back east where you brush past people you don’t know and think you’re part of something bigger. The only way I slightly feel that sense of community is on the freeways when my car’s stalled in traffic and I can look at what the people in the cars next to me are doing (though they’re never doing anything that exciting, just picking their noses or singing to themselves or staring off into space), or when I’m at that part of the 110 that goes past downtown and I see those big buildings, and there are a few lights at the top floors, and sometimes I think I can see a shadow of a person, but I’m not exactly sure it’s a person or a figment of my imagination, because the window is too far away to know for sure.

We walk out of the convenience store and down to my car, and to the right of us, on the side of the building, is a mural of James Dean himself, just his face, his squinting eyes and brooding disposition. Jeremy walks up to James Dean and holds the coffee can up a little higher, so that from where I stand, it looks like he’s trying to give Mom a better look.

Then he turns to me. “James Dean.”

“Yup.”

He studies the mural, the larger than life face. “I need your help. Are you up for it?”

“Up for what?”

He grabs my hand and drags me down the street. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll let you drive.”

We pull out of the gas station and get back on the freeway. The road tightens into two lanes, and we go down into a valley. There’s a sign that slower traffic should keep right. The palm trees seem exotic in this flat realm, the haze hiding the mountains on all sides of us.

We pass signs:

CLICK IT. OR TICKET.

CSU BAKERSFIELD

We pass nothingness. The power lines are giant soldiers standing at attention, emptying out into the horizon.

SAFETY BELT LAW ENFORCED

FOOD GROWS WHERE WATER FLOWS

Jeremy plays Miles Davis as we drive by low trees without any fruit.  I look at the spaces in between the neat rows and feel like I’m traveling a long, winding way, until, that is, we get stuck behind a truck filled with different sized pipes and have to slow down to 30 miles per hour. It’s then that I really feel the heat, because the wind is not as fierce, and I get so dizzy that I reach into my glove box and bring out a pink battery powered fan. Jeremy turns it on, and we listen to the slight whir and the shifting of the shaking pipes as we cruise down the road, reading the signs on either side of us:

Locally grown

PISTACHIOS

Locally grown

ALMONDS

There’s the smell of orange blossoms in the air, and there are oilrigs like tired old men, standing and sitting and standing again. We pass barns made of thin metal sheets, and globs of bugs stain the window, but just their insides, the skin falling away, and the fields of plowed soil and waste from the cattle ranch is rich in our nostrils as we drive through this landscape of tractors and trucks, dusty red with canisters that read flammable, the warning tags blowing in the wind. In these fields, the Cacti are stunted and the land is open, flat as a rock. And then we’re at the last gas station with a couple of rusty looking pumps and a sign over the entrance to a cozy convenience store: NEXT STOP 53 MILES and CONOCO PHILLIPS PIPELINE and LOCALLY GROWN.

There are fences claiming the land as property of the Pacific Almond and a dilapidated vineyard to the right of us. We pass a basin – the remains of what looks like a river (but now it’s just the cracked lines of the earth), and when I take my sunglasses off, the ground isn’t as brown as I think. It’s a healthy green.

And then we see a sign:

CHOLAME    POP 116

 

Instantly Jeremy perks up. “Slow down, slow down,” he says, touching my shoulder. I look out my window, but the landscape doesn’t look that much different then before. We pass a lazy intersection and there’s a small green rectangle:

JAMES DEAN MEMORIAL SECTION

A yellow caution light for oncoming traffic, and everything seems baked and hollow. Up ahead, there’s a small building.

“Pull over,” Jeremy says. I switch my blinker on and turn into the small parking lot. There’s a wooden sign, the Jack Ranch Café, by the door of the building, and in the center of the lot is a large tree and a sleek monument with hard edges underneath it.

Jeremy gets out of the car and walks around. He looks at the mountains in the distance and sniffs. I strum my hands on the steering wheel. ‘This better be good,’ I think. ‘You made me drive three hours to the middle of nowhere, this better be good.’ Then I check my reflection in the mirror. Sweat drips down my temples, there’s a smudge of lipstick at the corner of my mouth and my mascara is runny. I swat at my face, trying to smooth out the lines, but then stop – It’s only Jeremy. With the back of my hand I wipe off the remaining lipstick and get out of the car and walk away from him, towards the sleek, foreign-looking monument. There are pennies thrown down on the engraving, something about cherry blossoms and when you die young you live forever. I bend down and brush away some of the pennies to try to read the inscription, an apparent homage by a Japanese man with a lot of money and time on his hands, or maybe they just know how to revere the dead over in Japan. Anyway, I’d rather have a sculpture with some nice words on a plaque than the display we find inside the café. 

There are books and mugs and trinkets by a No Smoking Sign, and a 50s jukebox next to a life-size cardboard cutout of James Dean in his leather jacket and jeans, and paintings where Dean is in good company with Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra. The faded sepia toned images seem comical in this small-town diner, out of place.

The counter girl sees me looking at a James Dean eraser next to a whole row of postcards and stamps.

“What can I get you?” she asks after taking care of a few customers and watching me eyeing a book on East of Eden. I always thought James Dean fell off the cliff of a mountain, the car tumbling down, but first soaring through the air Thelma and Louise style and him looking at a blank blue sky, the canvas of his life. I thought he maybe did it on purpose. Smiling to the heavens, he pressed his foot down on the accelerator, and screamed a definitive ‘fuck you’ to the world for trying to make him into something he’s not.

Jeremy is close by, examining a James Dean eraser. My voice sounds shaky. “Did James Dean really die here?”

The counter girl sighs like she’s been asked this question too many times before.

“41-46,” she states. “At the junction a few hundred yards away.”

Jeremy is not happy to hear this. I can tell because he comes over and aggressively starts to flirt with the girl, leaning his elbows on the counter and holding her gaze.

“So, I heard his last words were ‘fuck you, world’…something like that?”
            The counter girl shakes her head. “More like ‘that guys gotta stop…he’ll see us.’”

“Really?”

“Actually, James Dean wasn’t even speeding. If you must know,” the girl smoothes back her hair, “the actual crash site is in the middle of a field. The intersection was realigned when the highway was repaved back in ’73.”

“And how would one get to this land?”

“Got to get permission from the State Water Department. Then they’ll let you walk or drive the 8 miles of the old highway. But just between you and me, it’s just a field.”

She smiles as if she’s said something witty, and Jeremy nods and then promptly walks into the next room, living the counter girl dazed.

In the room, there’s a dusty map of Central California in the corner, and a few men drink coffee and sit on their haunches in coffee-stained booths. Jeremy lights up a cigarette and then scratches his crotch. He puffs away and shakes his head at the life-size cardboard cutout of James Dean.

After a minute the counter girl walks up to him and taps him on the shoulder.

“You’ve got to put that out.” 

He looks at her. “Put what out, sweetheart?”

She points to the cigarette.

“Mmhmm.” Never taking his eyes off her, he snubs the cigarette out on the wall. The ashes fall on the floor and leave a dirty smudge on the wall. The counter girl’s mouth opens like he’s just slapped her in the face. She turns on her heels and disappears into the kitchen. A few moments later the manager approaches Jeremy, a stocky old man that doesn’t want any trouble, and that’s when I walk over to Jeremy and drag him out the door and back into the parking lot, where the heat hits us like a fist.

Jeremy wriggles away from me and throws his hands to the boring blue sky.

“This place is so…”

I nod at the flat land, the fields. “What were you expecting?” I ask.

“Something. Something worth a damn. Mountains. Not this.” He shakes his head and squats down in the parking lot, lost in his own thoughts. Then, he looks up at me, decision in his eyes. He jumps up and takes my hand, leading me back to the car.

“Keys please,” he states, revealing his open-faced palm.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” I fish them out of my pocket and he snatches them from me before I can say anything more.

“Come on, get in. I’m not going to kill ya.” He winks and jumps into the driver’s seat. I put one hand on the door, unsure, and then sit down next to him. He turns the key in the ignition, looking both ways before getting back on the main road.

The street’s busy for being in the middle of nowhere. Jeremy drives back around towards the fake intersection where James Dean lost his life and that blinking yellow light and the cars turning into incoming traffic. A few hundred yards from the intersection he does a U-Turn, the tires skidding.

I sigh, “Jeremy, can we go home now?”

“Home?” He looks at the globs of bug on the windowsill.  “He wasn’t even fucking speeding.” He shakes his head again. “Are you wearing your seatbelt?”

“Why?”

He smiles and presses his foot down on the accelerator. The car lurches forward. The speedometer rises. I put my hands up in front of me.

“Jeremy! Slow down!”

He doesn’t. I brace myself and my life doesn’t flash before my eyes, but I’m aware of everything around me, the grass on either side of us, the sun beating down. This isn’t my life. This isn’t me. Ahead of us, cars turn at the intersection, cutting across our lane. Jeremy looks over at me and nods reassuringly.

 “That guys gotta stop…he’ll see us.”

Jeremy closes his eyes and presses his foot on the gas for all he’s worth. I don’t scream. If I’m dying I’m doing to do it with my eyes open. About twenty feet in front of us, a blue Mazda starts to turn into our path.

“Jeremy!”

I brace myself, but then the Mazda screeches to a halt, and I know this because I can hear the crunch of the metal when my rear view mirror slams into the Mazda’s door as we zip through the yellow caution sign at 90 miles per hour. On the other side of the intersection, Jeremy opens his eyes again. I move my arms and legs to make sure that I’m still here, and then I punch Jeremy as hard as I can. He slows down, saluting the James Dean Memorial Section and letting out a little whoop. I punch him again, harder, and then again, and when that doesn’t faze him, I pummel him with both hands. He swerves slightly and then slows down.

 “What? Ow! Why did you do that?” He rubs his arm.

Jeremy looks behind him to make sure the coffee can is still intact in the back seat, and it is, except the lid has slipped and some of his mom is now on the cushions.

“What is wrong with you?” I feel pressure behind my eyes and warm salty tears streak down my cheeks. The fact that he’s hardly bothered makes me want to kill him. I hit him again and again, and he lets me. I scratch his skin and leave red streaks down his arm.

“I want to go home,” I say.

“But….”

“Let me fucking drive.”

He doesn’t say anything. After a few minutes, he clears his throat. “I’m an asshole. I told you that.”

“Fuck you.”

He doesn’t turn around to go back the way we came. We pass Cholame Creek. “I think this will take us west, to the ocean. We can go down the coast.”

It will, but I don’t say anything. After awhile, we climb back into the mountains and we see more houses and then there’s a McDonald’s sign, the yellow arches high above the hills.

He chuckles, trying to break the silence. “That’s the most comforting McDonald’s sign I’ve ever seen. Back to civilization, yeah?”

I cross my arms and look out the window. We pass vineyards. He puts on Bob Dylan, but I turn it off. We ride on. There are sheep frozen in place. Purple lilies blanket the fields. A painted lady with a red scarf smiles a pearly white smile on the side of a barn with lop-sided wreaths on the doors. There are more vineyards, more construction, more RV parks, and then, suddenly, we’re on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean, the water reaching out towards the horizon for as far as I can see.

After heading south on the 1, Jeremy pulls off to the side of the road. Vehicles whiz by, rocking the car back and forth. He looks past me, and then reaches around to the back seat, sweeping the fallen dust into the can again. I watch him, arms crossed, as he gets out of the car to walks towards the ledge of the cliff. I half expect him to jump, but he just stands at the edge and doesn’t move. My fists hurt from punching him, and the skin is red and raw at the knuckles. After a moment, I get out of the car and stand by him, albeit a few feet away, not willing to forgive him yet, but wanting to see the view.

The waves twinkle under the brilliant sun. When I was little I’d study the surface of the ocean, try to find a fin among the ripples, a breaching whale or a shark or a submarine, but I don’t look for whales anymore. After standing still for some time, Jeremy takes the coffee can and places it between us. I watch him as he nods next to me, as if to say, ‘this’ll do.’ Then he uncaps the can and crouches down.

“Come on, Mom,” he coaxes. “Go be with James.”

He pushes the can away from him, but there’s no wind where we are, so he has to nudge his mom into the world by himself. When only a few dusty rolls drift out, he takes the coffee can and heaves it like a bucket of water, and a cascade of muck falls flat on the ground; then he rubs the muck with his shoe and tries to kick it, but when that doesn’t work, he sprints to the car and brings back my little pink fan, and although it’s almost out of batteries, he turns it on and places the whirring fan by his mother’s dust, which soars up a few feet and then back down again, and that’s when a wind picks up, thank God, and we watch her swirl through the air and out over the mountains until we’re not even sure what around us is his mom or the dirt or the air or the sky.