Chapter seven ~ Partiers
As Natasha climbed the six long flights of stairs to her mother’s apartment she was crying. A feeling of so much dread surrounded her it was like a cloud. She slipped inside and nobody was home, so she reached for Alladin and carried him with her. She curled around him as she wept into his long beige fur, while he padded at her and purred, as cats always do. It was in this little ball, on her bed, where her mother found her a few hours later.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
“Honey, you can tell me.”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“What is it?”
“I just had a bad day.”
“At least tell me what happened?”
“It was just, I saw a really sad movie.”
“Oh Natasha, you always cry at movies.”
“I know.”
“How’s your friend Cheryl?”
“She’s great. She cried too.”
“Then where did you go?”
“We had a coffee in Westwood.”
“That’s nice.”
“She’s moving back east soon, Mom.”
“Oh, that’s too bad Tasha. You two are such good friends.”
“I think it’s because of Augie and what happened. She wants to go home and be with her Dad.”
“Honey some friends and I are having dinner down at the Bicycle Shop Cafe on Wilshire. Want to come? They have the best Spanish omelettes. You know you love it there.”
“No, Mom.”
“It would make you feel better.”
“That’s okay.”
“All right then, I’ll be back by 11:00 tonight. It’s Nancy, Ellen, Patsy and I. We’re celebrating Ellen’s promotion and Nancy’s birthday.”
“Have fun, Mom.”
Natasha hadn’t even been able to tell her own mother. She had lied about the afternoon. Everything about John Sandman seemed like a lie in that moment, on that day. When her mother left, Natasha went down to her car and opened the trunk. It was filled with the drying stems of roses, one on top of the other, and on the other side were photographs in a silvery pile. All of them were black and white, and all of them had been made with his Leica, or her little Russian camera. She had taken some rolls of him and he’d developed them for her during the break. *What am I supposed to do with everything now?,* she wondered.
The semester was going to be ending soon. At the beginning of June. It was May, and so that only meant another month and a half of Mr. Sandman’s class. It’s just that he was in her department -- the Art Department.
She picked up one of the pictures of the two of them, wrapped around each other on a park bench in Venice. All that day they had “walked with the light” as he called it. All that day they had photographed each other, and she had finally stopped trying to hide her face in her hands. It had been so fun that day. Just to be with him. It had been like Georgia and Steiglitz. It had felt like love.
She stirred the petals with her hand. They had become a potpurri in two hundred colors. The scent of rose was intoxicating as it lifted up into the air around her. One hand slammed the trunk down on the whole thing, but she carried the picture of them kissing back upstairs. It made her cry again even harder, and since she was alone she could. She must have cried for four hours that night. Actually, she cried herself to sleep -- with Alladin, her beautiful cat by her side.
* * *
I didn’t even know what to say when I got off the phone with Natasha that night. I mean, she always treated me like I was her older brother and nothing more. But I was in love with her from the moment I saw her in High School. To her I was nobody but Tim. Good old Tim, the poet from English class. Oh sure, she didn’t know half of the poems I’d written were about her, did she? I’d never shown them to her. I was way too shy in those days. So what if I was only twenty five. I didn’t love her like a sister, that was for sure. She wasn’t anything like my sisters, and besides she was younger than me. *Good old Tim,* that’s all I was ever going to be to her, wasn’t it?
I don’t think I ever heard a girl cry like that. All I wanted to do was put my arms around her and hold her as the story came tumbling out of her over the phone. I wanted to ask her how school was going. By the time we were through talking, I wanted to punch that guy.
“I think I love him, Tim.”
That’s the last thing she said before we hung up. After that call I called Jeff and we went to a party. Both of us got laid that night. Some chicks are just one-nighters you know? But girls like Nastasha weren’t. I was so hungover the next morning I couldn’t even see. So was Jeff.
“Let’s go surfing, Dude.”
He was groaning as he woke up. I could hear his headache over the phone, as if it were hammering just like mine. “Dude, let’s just go. Now.”
“Meet you at Hammonds,” he said. “In half an hour.”
* * *
What had happened at the motel had made Natasha cry. But that isn’t what happened for John Sandman. He felt fantastic. While she lay there crying in a little heap he had a party to go to, with his wife Cathleen that night. He had forgotten all about it though, and in fact he was late coming home. Cathleen was pretty angry at him, when she heard him bang the front door and not only that he had forgotten to stop by the store and pick up what she needed. Her terseness meant nothing in that moment, because he had the scent of Natasha Evergreen all over him. He could still smell her, even as he brushed past Cathleen in the kitchen where she was chopping vegetables up for the dinner party. He brought his hand to his nose, still redolent with the scent of her while he watched his wife smash her knife over and over against the mountainous pile of colored vegetables before her.
“You were supposed to bring back the dressing, and some broccoli for this,” she said sharply.
“I forgot, it was a long hot day.”
“I don’t ask you for much John, do I?”
“No.”
“Well what am I supposed to do now?”
“We can think something up.”
“Like what?”
“You will Cathleen, you always do.”
“Listen just, can you go to the store for me?”
“No, I need a shower.”
“John?”
“I said I’m taking a shower.”
He hated to wash Natasha off of him. She seemed so much sweeter than Cathleen had ever been. Slowly the water ran down the drain, washing away their afternoon completely. He emerged wrapped in a towel, and wandered back to the kitchen. Even their towels were as worn thin as their marriage. As if all the emotion had been bleached out of them.
“Trying to feed an army?”
“John, can you please just get me the broccoli and the dressing?”
“Okay.”
It was with resignation that he said it. Why did he always have to go, performing the list of unending errands? It seemed like her list never stopped. There was something every day almost. In the interest of keeping the peace between them, he dressed hurriedly and grabbed for his keys. He had looked at himself for a long time in that little bathroom he didn’t like. It was as sterile as the motel’s had been. Cathy and her sanitary world where everything was so cold, that to stand on the little white octagons froze his feet every time, even in late Spring.
“Get some more wine too,” her voice barked down the hall. “There are going to be a lot of people there tonight.”
Natasha’s scent was in his car, too. He hadn’t realized how attuned to her he was going to be. What if Cathleen could smell her?
Opening the sunroof and all the windows wide would take care of that. He had to be careful. There couldn’t be any traces. No reason he couldn’t luxuriate in it for the ten minute ride to the store, though. Since he’d had to wash her off.
“Finally,” she said when he got back.
“There are going to be a lot of Hollywood people at the party tonight, maybe you can sell some of your prints.”
“You know I hate that Cathleen.”
“It’s about time that Master’s paid off don’t you think?”
“Don’t fucking start in on me.”
“Just get dressed, can you?”
He had to admit his wife looked stunning, with that long fall of blond straight hair and the shimmering evening dress she had put on for the fundraiser. All those Hollywood types were always getting together for wine and cheese as if they could actually do something about the social problems in Los Angeles. Mostly it was so they could be seen. The same types peppered Zero Gallery whenever there was an opening. Only a few of them ever bought anything though.
“How’s this?”
He was wearing a fake Bundeswher T-shirt and some black Converse hi-tops. She had finally gotten him a replacement jacket. It was black leather with a few studs. Just the sort of thing and aging 1960’s Hippie guy needed to fit in with the twenty year old Punk Rock set sixteen years his junior. It gave him that artful edge he craved.
“I look good,” he said to her. “Love this jacket.”
“You do.”
“Where is your wrap?”
“In the hall closet.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
For a minute it seemed like they could almost kiss. There was something warm like a little twinkling strand between them, and John pecked her on the cheek.
“That looks fantastic,” he nodded at her platter for the party.
The vegetables did. He was proud of his wife, in the way that men are proud of their wives while still looking around the room at other women. She had designed the large glass plate so that the colors radiated out in concentric rings. She had needed that green after all. He was glad he had gotten it for her. Running out for broccoli was a small thing, in the larger order of things that kept the marriage purring rather than sputtering.
“Where are we going again?”
“Laurel Canyon.”
“They’re friends of Greg’s. Movie people.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Marla set it up with me when we were out there last week. I guess I forgot to tell you. She’ll be there.”
Cathleen pulled down the sun visor to get at the mirror, so she could check her lipstick. It was the palest pink, like a shell.
“We don’t have to stay too long,” she puckered and applied it slowly, thinking she needed more eye make-up.
“Great, It’s been a long day.”
“What did you do?”
“I wanted to shoot in Bell.”
“That’s where you were?”
“Way out there in the dead end boonies.”
There was no scent of Natasha left in the car. His wife didn’t like perfume. She claimed she was allergic to it. So there was nothing to give away the memory of Natasha with her dark hair in the wind, or Natasha the way he had grabbed her thigh, or Natasha the way she had smiled at him before they got to the motel.
Watching her face fall as he’d told her about his marriage was worthy of a shot, he’d thought. She looked so pathetic, as if she were a kind of crushed kitten.
* * *
“John-John,” Marla squealed as she saw them arrive. “You’re here!”
“Is that the famous John Sandman I heard was going to be here tonight?”
John felt someone brush up against him from behind. Way too close for comfort. It was Randy Gammerten, the biggest art critic in Westside circles. He could make or break you. Most of the time he was drunk and flaming, trying to cop a feel wherever he could. He like to think of himself as the biggest bi-sexual in Hollywood. There was no one he hadn’t done.
‘Marvelous, marvelous,” Randy gushed. “Let me have a look at you.”
“Ooooh. Love the jacket. And that shirt.”
“Is this the little woman?”
“My wife, Cathleen.”
“Well darling I’m so happy to get to meet you. Marla’s told me all about you. Don’t we look ravishing tonight.”
“Marla that perfume you are wearing,” he said. “Tigress in Tinseltown.”
“Grrrrrrrrrr”
He made little pawing movements in the air as if her perfume had really made him shiver.
“Carrot sticks, just what the doctor ordered.”
He began to paw through the plate Cathleen was holding until he had destroyed all of her arty design. “I’m sorry Baby, it just looked so good I couldn’t help myself.”
“Kiss kiss, I have to run.”
“Sell some work,” Cathleen hissed at John. She glanced over her shoulder as Marla was about to lead her through the throng of mostly B grade actresses or less, all dressed in outfits that were more revealing than the last.
“Maybe one of these little sluts wants one.”
It only took a minute before John began to thread his way to the bartender on duty.
“Gin and tonic.”
It slid into the place in his throat that called out to it with a rasping self-centered yowl. The stars in the sky even looked dark in that atmosphere. He tried his best to see the constellations, as if there was some purity in the world but her knew there wasn’t. There was nothing but the void of darkness Vietnam had left. Nothing but a black hole in the soul.
“Want another?”
It was Rona Petermann, the biggest collector in town. *Obviously she was slumming,* John thought. *Why else would she possibly be here?*
“Let’s go see the view.”
He followed through the crowd, the slinky black dress cut nearly to her waist on one side was just the sort of invitation he was looking for. Trading work for favors wasn’t beneath him and besides she had all the right contacts. He’d known of her since his San Francisco days. Almost everyone referred to her as the Dragon lady. She hadn’t bought one of his yet, but miracles sometimes happened late at night in that city. He was in need, tonight.
“We can get some air out here,” she said, curling her finger at him in the semi-darkness. “And then, we’ll go see the private show.”
“What show?”
“Greg has some theatre going on, upstairs.”
“Theatre?”
“Bodies.”
“What?”
“Just bodies.”
“Oh.”
“So, that’s your wife?”
“Yes.”
“What does she do?”
“City Policy. She’s thinking of going into politics I think.”
“Really.”
“She’s good at it. What she does.”
“What are you good at?”
“Taking pictures.”
“Where do you show?”
“Gallery Zero.”
“Oh, I know it. That little place on Melrose that has the most interesting windows.”
“Yes,” he nodded.
She had a whole bottle of gin in her hand. The Sapphire kind.
“More?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
* * *
Los Angeles is a city of dreams where a thousand hearts per hour fall through the sky and litter the pavement. In Hollywood, the lost dreamers litter the dirty boulevard, and slink up into the canyons like the snakes with a perpetual death rattle that live there. It’s all for sale, everything you could ever imagine including souls. Los Angeles is a veteran riddled in holes, black holes, black darkness, just void. You can find the lost there under the concrete piers and pilings, in the bones that litter the waterways, while crows fly overhead watching while the vultures pluck the last remnants from the eyes of a dead rat that washed up by the river. Gallery Zero welcomes all. The masquerade is on tonight, as the dresses unwrap, as the girls line up like so many rubies waiting to be plucked for a Sultan’s turban. He tries to write in cursive, with light, undercover, his blackened smile like such a lost, lost sun. The camera aims in the heat, tries to catch it. There is no summation, only the next day. Only the endless driving.
* * *
“Dude, I have got to get Tasha out of there.”
Tim tries to explain it to Jeff, who doesn’t understand at all. He’s too far gone at the next night’s party. Far too stoked by what was available to care. There is so much beer he pours it back -- tilting his cherubic face and that tangle of curls, and he’s winking, doing his party dance all over again, and Tim tries to follow because Jeff always rounds up the girls, one by one, every night if they want them. He knows how to find them in the corners, where they look at their broken nails and feign helplessness. He’s always been their savior, humming into their hair, humming near their lips, crooning everything they always needed to hear as he peels off their shirts while he whispers.
“Jeff, listen to me.”
“She’s just a chick.”
“You know how I feel about her.”
“Tim there are millions of chicks.”
“What am I going to do Jeff?”
“Just wait till she needs you I guess”
“Huh?”
“Cece. You know how our relationship works, right. She always calls me when she needs me and I’m there.”
“You don’t even love Cece.”
“How would you know, Tim?”
“Look Dude, I just want to get Tasha out of there. Before that guy makes her cry like that again.