River liked Japanese folk tales. He sold solar panels to celebrities in the Canyon. The company was owned by a couple of bros in Santa Monica and they’d promised him a stake. He drove the work truck during the week and on the weekends he had his fixed-speed. If he went out with friends they’d pick him up. They’d drive all the way into the Canyon from West Hollywood or downtown LA or Culver and they’d head down to Bungalow and drink whiskey near the water. Last week he’d sold a bundle to Lisa Bonet. Her hair was all cornrows and she was in raw silks. She had hundreds of children around her and they kept goats and the children drank the milk of the goats. River tasted it and said it was the flavor of grass.
—How do you get home at night, from the bars in Hollywood? I asked him. Kathi had told me there were no real taxis that went from Hollywood up to the Canyon. Or if they did, they were hundreds of dollars.
—Usually I don’t come back up here, he said. And of course I knew what that meant.
River was from Nebraska. He talked about hunting deer with his father and selling the meat to local purveyors.
—Where I’m from, he said, they sell deer meat at the gas stations. You can pay at the pump and someone will walk out a big bag of meat.
I pictured the bloody bag and the snow falling at a gas station on a country road. He leaned back in his chair and rested one foot on the bottom rung of my seat. He was wearing very light jeans that I don’t think were in style. You will always meet a new kind of man just when you thought you’d exhausted the supply.
“Werewolves of London” played again. Something must have been stuck in the system.
—Good thing I like this song, I said.
He laughed in a way that meant he’d never heard it. Sometimes I dreamed of being married to Warren Zevon, eating drugs with him at Joshua Tree and curry out of stained boxes in the rains of Shoreditch.
—Have you met Lenny? he asked.
—No.
—He’s an odd duck. He lost his wife a few months ago. He’s still pretty fucked up over it.
—How long do you think people should grieve?
—My father died eighteen months ago. That’s why I moved out here.
—I’m sorry.
—He had a heart attack while he was shoveling snow. I came home and found him on the driveway. You could see the asphalt in some parts. He was almost done.
I shook my head in pity. I meant it. I felt so much for him, but I was always feeling more than I should when it came to death. The bartender came and removed our dirty glasses. I was about to ask for another round when River said he should be going. He needed stamina to ride his bike up the two treacherous miles.
—I can give you a ride if you want.
He thought for a moment and said that would be great. For a third time, “Werewolves of London” came on. I said I hoped it would go on forever and realized that made me sound ridiculous.
—So nobody told you how the bills work, he said.
I told him no. The word bills filled me with dread. I was deeply in debt across many different cards. I’d sold some of the things Vic had bought for me and that had paid for the trip across the country, the movers, two months of rent.
—How it works is you and Kevin and Leonard are on the same propane, water, etcetera. I’m totally off the grid, so every month I read my meter. My total kilowatt-hour usage hovers around twenty-one hundred. My last reading was twenty eighty-five. So over the last twenty-four days I used ninety-seven. My total solar-power production is nine hundred eighty-seven. That means I produced a hundred and thirty-seven kilowatt-hours over the last twenty-four days, and that was directly subtracted from the group bill. So I’m responsible for minus-forty kilowatt-hours. I owe zero dollars and ten dollars was subtracted from the bills. Does that make sense?
I just looked at him.
—I save you guys money. I produce energy.
—And the rest of us suck it, like cows.
He laughed.
—It’s a good thing we like this song, he said.
I left two twenties and followed him into the warm, fragrant night. At the valet stand we waited behind a man in his sixties with a woman in her twenties. The woman wore a pink bandage dress and cheap shoes. The man had his palm on her rear. He moved his finger pads in concentric circles. He didn’t tip the valet.
River looked from them to me and smiled. Few things are more aphrodisiacal than looking down on another couple.
In the car his knee touched mine. And his hand touched mine when I shifted in the parking lot. Something about his youthful spirit made me think of all the times before something terrible happens.
—There are a lot of wild places in the Canyon. Great hiking spots. I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. But the coyotes.
—And the snakes? I said.
His bike bumped around in the back. I drove slowly because the trunk was open. The first thing he did was open his window all the way and stick his elbow out.
—The snakes are not as bad as the coyotes. Listen, be careful around Leonard. Lenny. I mean, he’s a great guy. But he’s really needy.
—Okay, I said, thinking of the way the young feared need. I was concentrating on the curves, which frightened me. I felt like the side of my body was scraping against the faces of the rocks. I was still wearing the white dress but I’d added lime oil to my neck and wrists and a thin gold bracelet of my mother’s.
River told me that Leonard’s father had envisioned something of a commune back when. A McCarthy-era bunker. Had I seen the Japanese soaking tub behind Leonard’s place? At one time there had been a fixed stream of tan ladies, porn stars and Satan worshippers and your general loose fun-loving types coming through the place. Their big bouncy breasts would float at the black surface of the tub.
He talked about the missile launch in North Korea. He talked about it the way young men spoke of threats, with political engagement and zero fear of radioactive death. River was deathless; I knew the mark of the deathless. They ate wasabi peas and used the same unlaundered towel for weeks.
—I practice stoicism, he told me.
In the driveway we stayed in the car for a few minutes. He was talking about Rotterdam. I thought it would be nice to have sex, mostly because I was thinking about the loss of his father, and that endeared him to me. The problem is it’s very difficult to find someone who will feel your loss with you. The same people who cry at movies will not blink an eye if you relate a tragedy. They will say, I’m so sorry for your loss. Like you have lost a thousand dollars on a horse race. Like it’s something replaceable. A pittance, in the grand scheme of things.
* * *
SOMETIMES HE DOESN’T COME OUT of his house for whole days, River had said of Leonard. But he watches from his window, so don’t do anything you wouldn’t want anyone to see. Like hanging laundry in a bikini or grilling topless.
I was imagining how many girls River had slept with. Probably he saw women naked several times a week. I liked the way he said topless like it was nothing. I’ve tried to explain that to other women—the feeling of liking men who don’t look for sex actively. Most men are crabs, crawling around with their pincers out.
I looked to the side and did the thing I always did when I moved into new, cramped quarters. I imagined a bassinet beside the bed. How crazy and stupid it would look. How terrible the staircase would be for going up and down with an infant. How dangerous everything was and how exhausting it would be to safeguard a ratty home. The bassinet was always wicker and white, something old-world that tottered when you walked into the room. I myself had never been in a bassinet. I’d slept between my parents for longer than was reasonable. They used to pass Marlboro Reds across my tiny body. I remembered the long reach of my mother’s slender arm across me and over to my small but muscly father. He would tip the ashes off. The ashtray was always on his side. Mimi, my mother called him when the cigarette was waiting over my head. Yes, Cici, my father said back.