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Animal(8)
Author: Lisa Taddeo

 

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LOS ANGELES WAS BOTH MORE remarkable and less beautiful than I expected. Cayennes and narrow streets and skinny women and the air of posh mystery. The grand homes of Beverly Hills were gruesome up close; the paint was chipping and everything felt empty, as though once-famous actors were dying inside.

But the canyon was different. It was orange and rocky, and the greens, the ragweed and the beach burr and the saltbush, were not plush but dry and brown or a singed yellow. In between the rocks sprouted sedge and mule fat. In the pictures I’d seen there had been up-close images of Indian paintbrush, the shocking canary of a beach evening primrose and the carpets of California poppy, like the Technicolor land of Oz. But now I saw it for what it was. The golden yarrow rattled with snakes.

A few weeks earlier it would have been just fine. I’d always taken comfort in knowing that as long as I could scrape together the money for gasoline, I could drive. I could visit the Grand Canyon. I could sleep in the Argo Tunnel and rise in the morning before the tour groups came through. But I couldn’t leave Los Angeles. It was the last place and I knew it. And here I was in the queerest part of it. I had to get a place minutes from where she worked. Just as when I was a child and I wanted a tennis skirt and tennis sneakers before ever once striking a tennis ball. As an adult I was no different. I needed to feel that I owned real estate before I used a bathroom.

There was no nucleus, no central village, of Topanga Canyon. Just clusters of shops a mile or more apart.

The old hardware store was otherworldly. It was not California-precious but neither was it a holdover from the fifties. It smelled of chalk inside. I loved the smell of hardware stores nearly as much as I loved the smell of chlorine.

I stopped at the thrift store scratchy with tutus and sequined dresses and polyester palazzo pants and vintage greeting cards and postcards that once upon a time were cherished.

Dear Mom,

The weather is beautiful, even in winter. School is going well. They sell 24-karat gold in the shops for a good price and I’m enclosing a necklace for Susan for Christmas. Please give it to Susan, Mom. Tell Dad I saw a Ferrari 312 here, just coasting the streets of downtown Padua. Cherry red, with a tan leather interior. Love to all.

Jack

 

Not too long ago everyone wrote in script. My father wrote in script. I used to think he had the most beautiful handwriting in the world. But everyone from his era did.

I drove up and down streets where you couldn’t see around the curves. People seemed to drive blind, on instinct. Every so often there was an impressive Spanish-tiled house, grazing horses. There were art installations and peace signs made of hubcaps. There were bamboo fences and no clouds in the sky. When I got hungry, I stopped at a place called La Choza, next to a dry cleaner. I was in the same white dress. It smelled of sweat but I hadn’t come across anyone who would notice.

A Mexican woman behind a counter waited with a wide tin spoon. There were instructions for how to order written on a piece of cardboard. PICK ONE: CHICKEN ADOBO, STEAK, CHAR VEG.

I wanted half chicken and half charred vegetables. I didn’t want any rice.

—You only pick one, said the woman.

—Can I have half of each, and you can charge me for the chicken, which is the more expensive one.

—No, you pick one. The woman wore a honeycomb hairnet that starred her dark head.

—But I want half of each, and you—the store—will be making money off this order. Because the chicken is more expensive and I am having less of it. Do you understand?

The woman shook her head.

—Why? I asked. Can you explain to me why?

The woman set the spoon down and wiped her plastic gloves on her apron, stained with yellow and brown juices. She picked up the spoon and aggressively scraped it under a section of rice.

—I don’t want rice, I said.

The woman walked away then, into the kitchen. I was still hungry.

Back in my car I drove and listened to Marianne Faithfull and Joni Mitchell. I will make a list for you of all the songs that meant something to me.

I parked at the health food café next to her studio, which happened to be world-famous. Rod Rails Power Yoga. Rod Rails was one of the phony stars of the yoga community. Shirtless and long-haired with a crooked erection like the bone of a porterhouse, I would come to hear. In one picture holding a malnourished child in Nepal, the next with his arm around the spiky shoulders of an older actress. He led two times a month but mainly traveled to high holy grounds and franchises. Most of the classes were taught by girls like Alice. Hot girls who had never smoked a cigarette.

I walked up to the door. My legs trembled and I felt like a nobody. On top of that, I hadn’t planned what I would say.

There was a schedule on the door. I looked for her name. The day was a Tuesday. She wasn’t teaching until Friday. I was so relieved that everything inside of me quieted immediately. I would come back on Friday, I told myself. But I didn’t have to come back at all. I could find a nice used-car dealer, let him buy us a split-level in Baldwin Park and refuse to fuck in any position but doggy-style.

The other thing I always wanted to put off was getting a job. After running out of the money that came from selling my parents’ home, I’d held a lot of different jobs. Often I didn’t have a job at all. I would sell something a man gave me, and the profit might last several months.

Next door, I walked through the beaded curtain of the health café. Fat flies buzzed inside. The café sold kombucha, rope baskets, chapbooks of poems by local writers, chocolate bars made with Oregon peppermint. A sign that said HELP WANTED looked like it never came down. There was a bright pink La Marzocco machine. A young girl in a cowboy hat with two long braids stood behind the counter. An unlaminated name tag pinned to her chest said NATALIA. She was young enough to have been my daughter had I gotten pregnant at seventeen.

—May I have the frittata, I said.

—The spinach or the kale?

—Spinach.

—It comes with corn fritters.

—I don’t want them.

—I can wrap them up and you can take them home.

—You want to take them home? I said.

I ordered an Americano to see the girl use the bright pink machine. She was pretty, the kind of simple, inarguable pretty that I had never been. I was sexually attractive. Sometimes other women didn’t see it.

—May I also have a job application?

—Sorry?

I tapped the HELP WANTED sign with a dusty fingernail. The girl leaned across the counter, craning her head to see it. Her breasts were big and jammed together. She wore a rose quartz Buddha on a leather string around her neck.

—Oh, huh.

—Do they not need help?

—Yeah. I’m actually leaving for school.

—Great.

—How many do you need?

—Just the one.

—You want the frittata to stay or to go?

—I’ll stay.

I walked outside with the application and the coffee to the partially covered patio with bright butterfly chairs and old sewing tables and round wood tables, each with a bottle of Cholula on top. I felt a terrible premonition; I’ve had these throughout my life and few people have believed me because I’m always relating them after the fact. I don’t trust myself enough to say something when I have the feeling. So this time, like every time, I quieted my mind the best I could. I concentrated on the paper in front of me. I hadn’t filled out this type of application since I was in my teens. It asked if I was available to work weekends, holidays, how many hours I desired to work per week. It asked what subjects I studied in school. Yes, yes, many, I wrote, and art history.

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