“What do you mean?”
She took a flyer for a rave from her pocket and handed it to me: a neon-yellow sun setting over a desert landscape. Fluorescent lettering announced what must have been the party of the century—or so it seemed from the looks of the crowds in the flyer’s background.
“It’s the moon tribe party in January. I really want to go.”
“Well…we have time then.” I winked at her.
“You can dance for three days in the middle of the desert. Nobody knows where you are and you don’t either. It’s so much fun.” She sighed longingly.
It sounded like an agoraphobic nightmare to me.
“I can’t wait,” I said.
It was impossible to tell what it was that ailed her, but it was all right there in the way she looked through me, engaging only my contours, avoiding my eyes and trying to get close at the same time. I wanted to talk more, but she pulled her hair back up into a ponytail and trailed off through the restaurant’s back door. She ran into the kitchen and jumped on a sous-chef who was assembling sprouts and tofu inside a bowl.
“What’s up, José! Let’s have a shot of tequila before we get to work!”
The door swung shut and I was left alone on the quiet terrace. Frogs croaked in the brook below. Shadows were setting in the canyon and the wooden cottages lit up.
—
The main house at Deva and Chris’s place looked dark. Everything was silent now. I took a few steps on the birch in the yard. Chris’s cabin door was cracked open, but when I tried to creep in, a hand tapped my shoulder. His father was behind me. A red, plump nose erupted out of his puffy beard. His cap was off now, revealing his thinning ponytail and receding hairline. He told me his children were not allowed to have friends over during the week. He had Deva’s eyes, except hers were hypnotic and otherworldly, his beady and exact. They peered inside you and made their mind up fast.
Chris was inside the room on his mattress, drawing. He looked up at his father and straightened his back.
“I just came to get my backpack,” I said.
His father waited in the doorway for me to get my bag and leave. While I gathered my things, he disappeared into Deva’s cottage. She had locked the door, but he unscrewed the handle with a tool and pried it open, screaming about how she would get in trouble for locking her room and how rules were rules and he was sick of this shit.
I glanced down at Chris.
“I thought you were gone,” he said in a whisper.
“I saw you fighting with him. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
He looked away, worried. “He wasn’t supposed to be back so early. We’ll do it some other time, okay?” His eyes were gloomy with defeat.
“Yeah, for sure,” I answered, but I didn’t really believe that we would.
We heard the shuffling sound of plastic from Deva’s cabin, things getting slammed to the floor. Chris’s father rushed out with two full trash bags on his shoulders and marched to the bins at the end of the driveway.
“I told her I’d throw her shit out if she keeps this mess up! And I am. I’m throwing it all out,” he proclaimed.
“Dad, come on,” Chris tried to call after him, but the man didn’t listen. He threw the bags in the bins and headed back up without looking at him.
“You gonna go or what?” he asked, realizing I was still in his way.
I grabbed my backpack and ran down the driveway without saying goodbye. I waited around the corner a few minutes, then returned to the bins. I picked up the trash bags with Deva’s stuff and headed down the canyon toward the Valley.
The air was light and warm. The rocks on the side of the road turned gold in the afterglow of the day’s end. Wind chimes tinkled. In a distant pasture I could hear the bells of a flock of sheep heading home for the night. What was this place where sheep grazed and time stopped, this canyon brimming with luminous corners and oak trees that looked like they’d been airlifted from Tuscan hilltops? How was it possible that all this could exist above the Valley’s sirens and boulevards and strip malls? My fingers buzzed with the same electricity that moved leaves in the wind. I was welcomed to the place above. I knew it would be my haven from the place below.
At home I dumped Deva’s trash bags on my bed and examined my loot: fairy-princess dresses, silk tops, velvet bell-bottoms, and turquoise shirts woven with golden threads. I slept in them and what I couldn’t wear I spread out on the bed to keep close to me. They smelled of incense and patchouli and essential oils I’d never encountered before. I wanted those new smells inside me so much that I tried not to let them end after each inhale. I trapped them in my nostrils and then inhaled some more. Every sniff was a trip to another place that didn’t look like lava lamps and didn’t smell like Max’s cigars.
14
“What the fuck are you wearing?” Henry sneered at me, turning on his swivel chair, plastic wheels screeching against the floor.
“It’s a fairy-princess dress,” I replied, defensively.
“A fairy what?”
“Fairy-princess dress.”
“More like a grandma’s baby doll.”
“It’s Deva’s.”
“Who is that?”
He rolled the chair over to Street Fighter. He had carved out a pathway between the cash register and the video game so he would never have to get up from the chair.
I knocked him off his seat.
“Put double player on.”
T. Hawk, the exiled Indian warrior, versus E. Honda, the sumo wrestler.
“So, who’s this girl?” he asked again.
“Oh my God, Henry. She’s amazing. You would love her. She’s, like, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh yeah? Does she like handicapped men?”
“Shut up.”
“What? Some women are kinky like that.”
“You are not handicapped!”
“Dude, I’m missing an ear.”
“Could be worse. You could be missing a leg.”
“Not like I use these much. I’m always in this shitty store. Oh, you fucking cunt!” he screamed at the screen while my wrestler unleashed his hundred violent sumo hands move.
“I kicked your ass. And I haven’t even played in two days! It’s not like I practice constantly like you.”
—