The Pisces
Page 13

“He never had many friends, but now he is out most of the time and I don’t have any companionship.”
I wondered, too, if Brianne’s son was also in therapy. If not, he would be soon.
“I’ve been staying the course with Match and Millionaire Match,” she said, gently patting her lips to make sure they were still huge. “And we will just have to wait and see. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. If not, it’s okay. I don’t need anyone. I have a very full life.”
I wasn’t buying it today.
“So you’d really be okay to never fall in love again for the rest of your life?” I asked her.
Brianne looked at me through her clown paint.
“I’m feeling judged,” said Brianne.
“Sorry,” I said.
“What about you, Lucy? You don’t believe that a person can be alone and be content with that?” asked Dr. Jude.
“I don’t know. Probably not,” I said.
“Mmmm.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, definitely,” said Dr. Jude, yellow teeth flashing. “I don’t believe we need another person to complete us.”
“Not even to fuck?”
“Let’s be sure to be conscious of any triggering language,” she said.
“Yes, I’m feeling triggered,” said Sara.
“Right, sorry,” I said.
The room got quiet.
“Are you in a relationship, Dr. Jude?” I asked.
She paused and toyed with an angel card on the table next to her. It said Awakening.
“No,” she said. “Not at the moment.”
“When was the last time you were in one?”
“Well, if you want to know, I’m pretty recently divorced,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Would you say you’re content?”
“Hmmmm,” she said, sipping her green tea. “Actually, yes. Most of the time I would say yes, I am content.”
Nobody said a word. Sara was slowly peeling a clementine with the hand she used to massage her foot. The amount of time it was taking could not be worth the bite-sized little fruit. I watched her peel and peel the white-and-orange rind, and began to shake. It was the clementine of Sisyphus. Everything was hopeless. Then Sara offered Brianne a slice of her foot-fruit and Brianne accepted gleefully, as though she were giving her a jewel. I felt sorry for them. None of them had anything left to look forward to in the romance department. Maybe they would go on some tepid controlled dates, but no dark alleys. What did any of them have to live for, really? A son who would just grow up and forget all about you? Some man in hemp pants at a workshop saying you had a nice aura? An office filled with shit? At least I still had sparkle in my life. I was going on an adventure.
Of course, I didn’t say a word about Adam. I didn’t want them reprimanding me or giving me any healthy advice. I knew what they would say: I wasn’t supposed to be dating yet. And meeting up with strangers in alleys doesn’t constitute conscious dating. But maybe I didn’t want to be conscious.
13.
Later, as I waited for Adam on Ocean Front Walk, near Marina del Rey, where the homeless cleared and the vibration of the boardwalk became more desolate, I was so excited that I was nauseated. The Santa Monica Mountains were covered in fog, so the pink and palm-tree silhouettes of Venice looked like their own island—an old beach scene frozen in time. It was windy out and I was cold, but I felt important—momentous—like I was on a timeless mission. I could be anyone standing by any beach in history, waiting for a lover. I could be Sappho, unafraid of Eros, calling Aphrodite to her shrine.
But as soon as I saw him coming, I thought, Oh God no. He sort of looked like his picture, but more the monkey aesthetic than the hot one. Also, he had an additional werewolf essence that the photo had not captured. It wasn’t just his jagged teeth, the scruffy goatee, but something else that was distinctly werewolf. He waved to me, and I waved back, cursing through my teeth, already disappointed. When he crossed the street I tried not to let it show, to be warm, though I wasn’t sure why I cared what he thought. I guess I felt bad about rejecting someone without even knowing him. I felt sort of ashamed that I was judging him for his looks, but with an alley make-out what other attributes could there be? It figured. Of course this werewolf-monkey creature was the best that I could do.
He might have been disappointed in what I looked like too, but he didn’t show it.
“You’re really cute,” he said, as though assuring both me and himself. “You look a lot younger than forty. A lot younger.”
“I’m thirty-eight,” I said.
“Not that I don’t like older women. I love older women. You’ve got seasoning. But you look like a young older woman. Or an old younger woman—”
“Okay,” I said, relieving him of having to speak. “I got it.”
“So what do you want to do?” he asked. “Do you want to stay here and have a drink or do you want to go for a walk?”
“Let’s have a drink first,” I said.
“God, you’re really cute,” he said.
We turned in to a little dive. I ordered myself a vodka tonic. Rarely did I drink liquor anymore but I felt that the situation called for it. I needed to be less lucid than I was. He didn’t offer to pay for my drink. But he got two tequila shots, offering me one, and a Jack and Coke. I declined, laughing.
“So what have you been reading lately?” he asked, after toasting me with one of his two shots. I had told him over the Internet that I was a librarian, and he loved that. He had asked me to wear my glasses, but I didn’t wear glasses.
“I’m almost always reading the Greeks,” I said. “I’m doing a project on the poet Sappho that I’ve been working on for a number of years. Trying to finish it this summer.”
“Oh yeah, I read him in high school,” he said. “I’m really into the Beats right now. Do you like the Beats?”
I liked the Beats for a second when I was fourteen. By sixteen I realized they were mostly just good for picking out a douchebag. There was something about douche bros and the Beats. They just gravitated there.
“Yeah, I love them,” I said. “Who is your favorite?”
“Kerouac,” he said. “I’m really into Kerouac, Burroughs, and Bukowski. Kerouac just keeps it so real, like the way he writes his characters it’s just so—legit. I would love to write like him someday.”
“Right,” I said.
“So how about that walk?” he said.
Outside it was almost dark. He lit up a cigarette and offered me one. I declined and watched him squint and inhale, then exhale. Clearly he had studied that move: a James Dean kind of smoking pose. But he was no James Dean, and his hands were even more monkey-werewolf than the rest of him: monkey in the way they curled around the cigarette like they were clutching a banana and werewolf in the way his arm hair crawled well over his wrist and onto the hands themselves. He was hairy to the knuckle. We started to walk and I felt like I was going to vomit. I kept wanting to say, “You know what? Thanks, but I’m not feeling so great and I’m just going to walk home.” But we kept walking.
Suddenly he grabbed my hand and said, “Can I kiss you?”
But he didn’t wait for me to respond. His palm was sweaty, but his lips were full and I closed my eyes and it felt shocking to be kissing someone new. The new mouth shape was exciting, also strange. After eight years I forgot that lips could come in different shapes and feels. Also, the taste of cigarettes and whiskey was exciting. I was half nauseated and half turned on. I felt rebellious and young.