“Because it’s too huge—this city—”
“That’s not the city. That’s life. Life is huge. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Greg sounded earnest and impatient.
I meekly agreed with him, but something inside me did not. Maybe that was the moment things started to fall apart between us. Maybe it was also the moment I started to realize how na?ve I’d been about Los Angeles. I’d come here thinking that the sunny metropolis would catalyze me to a second start, but instead its staggering possibilities left me paralyzed.
Later that afternoon, I went downstairs to the galleries to check a wall label and ran into our exhibitions manager, Yegina, standing in the center of a room of hand-stitched photographs by a Cuban artist. Her dark head was cocked and her lips parted as her eyes followed the lines of red thread the artist had used to finish the Havana buildings that the Castro regime had left half constructed. Yegina looked more like she was listening than looking. Listening to a sublime symphony.
I’d heard that she and the curator had made a huge effort to get the artworks past the U.S. government embargo.
“It was worth it,” I said, coming up beside Yegina. We didn’t know each other well yet. I knew she’d just gotten married, but that was all.
“I hope so.” There was a wistful tone in her voice. Though the museum had been open two hours, the galleries were nearly empty.
“It’s going to get great reviews. Jayme told you, right?”
Yegina looked back at the photographs, the black-and-white images of the half-completed buildings, the delicate red stitching that suggested their final facades, their arches and roofs.
“Richard is leaving,” she said, referring to our old director, who’d been with the museum for fifteen years. “He’s resigning tomorrow. The fiscal-year reports came in yesterday, and we overspent by six million. Again. Janis told the board last night that this is the last time she’ll bail out the Rocque.” She nudged me. “You might want to keep your eyes out for another job.”
I could tell by the way Yegina said it that she wasn’t warning me of my own layoff, though layoffs were sure to come. Everyone on the staff knew that the Rocque was in trouble—various board members had stepped in over the years with big contributions, but we could never get our revenues up to meet the costs of our exhibitions.
“You, too,” I said, trying to imagine the museum with our long-term director gone.
Yegina gave me a small, sad smile. “I can’t leave this place. I don’t want to be anywhere else. It’ll have to leave me.”
Maybe the best friendships begin with admiration. It’s true of my feelings for Yegina. On the same day I panicked at my unknowable future in Los Angeles, Yegina reminded me of the value of being part of something greater than myself. She also had a deliciously subversive sense of humor and knew the best hole-in-the-wall restaurants downtown. We started to spend more time together, weathering the layoffs that came and the hiring of Bas Terrant over French café lunches in the fashion district and happy hours at Luster’s Steakhouse before we stumbled home to our significant others, then later stumbled home alone.
Through all those close moments, I never told Yegina about Nikki Bolio. I could never tell her, because she’d want to analyze it, this place she’d never been and these people she’d never met. She’d want to break my big, heavy grief into smaller griefs, and then into dust so that I could stop hauling it around. But I want to haul it around, the whole clumsy story: Nikki’s testimonial, our failure to protect her, her mysterious death, and the sad truth about small towns and how they can smash down the person who dares to stand up.
Besides, there have always been so many other things for Yegina and me to talk about, and for once, today, she asks my advice.
“What should I wear to the riding party?” she says as we’re parting at my office after Craft Club.
I tell her boots, jeans, and a relentlessly positive attitude.
“Yuck,” she says. “Do you even like this Kaye person?”
“I love her,” I tell her truthfully. “But you’ll see.”
SATURDAY
10
Of all the creatures at Griffith Ranch, Uncle Bud is the most desirable. A great black gelding with a grizzled nose, he has aged into a melding of flora and fauna—an earthy slowness has crept into his limbs; his legs are like fence posts, and his gait like an Ent’s. To ride Uncle Bud over the steep hills will be no more challenging than sitting on a sawhorse with a saddle slung over it. For the sixteen (of the nineteen total) people at Kaye’s party who have never ridden a horse outside of a petting zoo, Uncle Bud is a dream come true. But alas, he is only one, and all the other horses have their defects: too much prancing energy, too much height, a mouth that flashes yellow teeth, ears that roll back. But the sun is slowly sinking toward the sea beyond Malibu and we have to choose. Or be chosen.
The second most desirable creature at Griffith Ranch is Rick, the ranch hand who is leading us to the paddock to claim our horses. Rick has the easy, loping grace and tawny skin of a man who spends most of his time outdoors. Under his shocks of shaggy blond, his smiles are inward and fleeting. He knows how to wear the admiring glances of women, and from all directions they fly at him like feathers and drift off again. Yegina has so far sent a whole peacock’s tail his way, but she’s not alone. It’s mostly women in our party, except for two rather concerned-looking husbands, and Greg, whom I have so far avoided because he never returned my call back to him. Or my text with Kevin’s sister’s name and number. Or the dozen follow-up messages I’ve sent in my mind, alternately begging him to answer and telling him off.
Rick leads us past the gate to the paddock to a low mounting platform, and motions for us to climb. The extra two and a half feet give us a great view of the ranch: a red barn situated between jutting tan hills, the walls flanked by steel fences and three dozen milling horses. It’s a sight I’d expect to find in rural Wyoming or Montana, but half a mile down this slope, clay-roofed mansions rise beside pools and brightgreen gardens. Beyond them surge the giant apartment buildings that line the east-west streets of Los Angeles, and way off, there’s downtown. The skyscrapers jut like tiny, sharp blocks, but the city doesn’t end with them. It goes on far into the haze beyond: hundreds more streets, maybe thousands. Now they look like a chaotic mosaic, but by night they will become a smooth, endless tapestry of light.
A woman in jeans and chaps is throwing saddles on the horses who pass her, stepping forward to lightly cinch straps. Past her, another woman fixes their bridles, shoving bits in with quick fingers. Then she tightens the saddles and slaps the horses toward the gate. Everything and everyone wears freckles and splashes of dust. Everything and everyone is making noise—the women are clicking and shouting, the horses are whinnying, their hooves are thudding the earth, which is already dry and cracking, even in April. I find the hubbub as comforting as a cocoon—it reminds me of friends’ farms back home. Then I hear, ever so faintly, the bleat of car horns from below, and I look out again at the thousands of buildings below me, their western walls ablaze.
“Beginner or intermediate?” Rick asks each person, then jabs his thumb at a line on either end of the platform. So far, Greg is the only intermediate. I’m not going there.
When it’s Yegina’s turn, Rick says “Beginner” without even asking her.
“What about her?” Yegina asks, nudging me. “Can you tell she used to own a horse?”
“You just told me,” Rick says. He points to Greg and says to me, “Behind him, then.”
“I haven’t ridden in fifteen years,” I protest, but Rick has already sauntered on.
Yegina squeezes my arm. “I’ll be right next to you,” she says. “In the pack.”