Henry religiously attended my mother’s classes. The more he loved my parents, the less I wanted to have anything to do with him. I went on long solitary walks downtown—the only place in Los Angeles that wasn’t a mall or a boardwalk, where people used their feet. It smelled like smoking manholes and street food, like what a real city was supposed to smell like. Ethnic stores and pawnshops, Indians selling jewelry, Chinese offering household appliances, Thai food joints, Latino music stores pumping salsa onto the sidewalk with massive speakers. No cops, but plenty of homeless people and cholos smoking pot. Alleyways where crack was exchanged for money in the light of day. People walked around with their flimsy shopping bags like burned-out souls—zombie faces lurching forward and inhaling smog, remembering only faintly if at all the joys of a green pasture or a blue sea. Most downtown inhabitants had never even seen the Pacific Ocean. I walked next to them, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine that ancient wave of glamour. I could feel them there—dancers, producers, and actors with their tea parties, card games, and soirees. Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Mae West, and Rudolph Valentino chitchatting next to me on the sidewalks of Spring Street. I heard their ice cubes clink inside invisible cocktail glasses and smelled their smoke as it crawled out of ivory cigarette holders.
In a building that looked similar to the Alexandria, I discovered a whole floor where Vietnamese ladies, curved over sewing machines, manufactured women’s tops with blossom and bamboo patterns in fine-ribbed weaves. A tailor welcomed me and asked if I was looking for something. I told him I was working on a film—my new business card for talking to store owners. His eyes lit up. He offered a series of silk and satin curtains for free.
“Bring them on set. See if you want more. All I ask is you mention our company in the credits.”
I made promises I could not keep in exchange for beautiful fabrics. A whole new chapter of vintage finds opened up for me and I began to put aside things I thought Deva would like. I collected bat-sleeved shirts from a Bombay shop, vintage haute couture, cocktail dresses, and antique-lace lingerie from a vendor in the basement of another historic building. I hauled everything back to the Alexandria and began arranging and cataloguing my finds in the back of the changing room, the same way I’d done at Henry’s store. My parents had fueled their passion and I was fueling mine. At home I opened my secret drawer and looked at the letter from the University of Southern California. We strongly encourage you to apply. I read the words over and over.
Sometimes I got carried away and returned late on set. It happened on the day when they were shooting in the Valentino apartments. The suite had been mentioned in the Variety article and everyone wanted to see it, so when I arrived in the dressing room to drop off my new purchases, no one was there. Max’s muffled voice spoke on the phone in a small, adjacent room. When I passed in front of him, he gave me a look I’d never seen before, a kind of goofy embarrassed grin. He switched to Spanish and I kept on walking.
18
It rained hard, soaking the earth. No more ancient glories and haunted ballrooms for me. The canyon’s life force drew me as I made my way back in. Terraced apple orchards, ancient olive trees, meadows, and crooked cottages with wind chimes and prisms refracting through dirty windows. Wooden homes guarded by statues of angels and saints. Bells with rainbow tassels hanging from their clappers. The earth was claylike and the smells coming from chimneys took me back to Tuscan winters and Christmas parties. Topanga was one of the few places where seasons felt real. I walked on the fringes of the main road, high on Vicodin. Deva had been on painkillers for days. She’d said she hurt her shoulder falling off the hammock in her yard, rolling down the garden knoll. Bob was right. She needed to pay more attention. She’d guzzled all her prescription meds and wanted more from him.
We were soaking when we arrived at the commune. Heide noticed us from the windows of the main house and walked out. She pointed ten fingers in our direction as if lightning rods and pestilent rats could spout out of them. She shooed us away with a witchy face, muttering incomprehensible Dutch words.
I wanted to leave, but Deva insisted on finding Bob and gave me her last two pills so I’d shut up.
We climbed back, avoiding the front fa?ade of the main house so Heide would not see us. The open sewers around the barracks were overflowing. Strong winds had ripped the Tibetan flags off their poles and sent them flowing down the drains. The commune dwellers abandoned the flooded cottages, running into the main house to take shelter.
When we reached Bob’s studio on top of the hill my Vicodin started to kick in and I relaxed. He was in a session so we had to wait outside in the rain. We perched under the tin roof, looking through the fogged-up windows like we’d done so many times before. He breathed on a naked woman’s belly, pounding against her chest with open hands. The woman sprawled on the floor, copied his moves.
“I’m a worthy mother!” she howled.
“More!” Bob encouraged her, rolling over her body with sinuous motions.
She kept screaming about how good a mother she was, while we stared at her big bush in a daze. Mud was starting to pile behind the cottages. One of the smaller ones farther up the hill began to slide down. A young man came running out barefoot with an umbrella, a bongo drum, and a knapsack. Bob didn’t interrupt the session, but kept looking at the window with a ghastly expression. It was raining so hard I thought the muddy ground might wash away the commune along with its screaming naked ladies and feral children.
When the session was over Bob rushed out and we startled him with our wet hair and our indifference to rain or mud. Deva gave him a belligerent hug, still far too laid-back considering the urgency of what was happening around us.
Bob glanced at me. “Are you serious? Look at yourselves.”
But we insisted on Vicodin even though the place was coming apart. Alarmed naked young women ran, sliding down the muddy hills. We didn’t care. We got what we wanted and took off in the storm.
Deva’s face changed once she had her pills. It opened and fleshed out. We sledded down the muck laughing, shoes and pants squelching in mud. We chain-smoked wet cigarettes that kept going out and laughed at how loose our body parts felt. The stream we usually crossed to visit the bathtub cabin on the other side of the woods was a flowing river now. When we finally reached the main road, it was crowded with firefighters and police cars flashing their lights. They looked like fuzzy luminous gems. In front of us stood a colossal, oval-shaped rock. It sat firmly on the small highway with a majestic presence, twenty-five feet tall. The boulder had fallen from the mountain, blocking traffic and tearing up a section of the highway that connected the Valley to the Pacific Coast Highway. Commuters and visitors were off-limits until further notice. We were isolated from the rest of the city.
When we got to Deva’s house, we spread bay leaves over our mouths and hair to hide the cigarette smoke, but the leaves were wet and didn’t smell like much. The windows and doors to the main house were open, banging into the storm.
“Deva! Is that you?” her father called from inside. “Get up here!”