always the joker, even then.
Afterward she sings to you about your endless numbered day for nights. Sometimes it sounds like she’s saying our endless day for nights are numbered.
At Whisky a Go Go, a drunk fool crawls into your empty bar stool, and as you come back from the men’s, you drop your shoulder and knock him to the ground and pretend it was an accident. Sorry, man, so crowded, didn’t see you, do you mind, this one’s mine. Julian! your girl croons, did you just knock that guy off the chair? I don’t know what you mean, you say. He fell.
Later, after she rushed you home because she had urgent need of you, in her dizzying voice she purrs that you have surpassed her expectations. You demur, you do the humblebrag. You’re pleased she’s pleased, you say with a faux shrug. You have a knack for selling without selling. You have nothing to prove. First you sell, then you deliver.
She says she thought you might be the Nightcrawler who has the appearance of a demon and the heart of a preacher. But that isn’t you. You have the appearance of a preacher and the heart of a demon.
And not just the heart of a demon, Julian.
Sometimes she stays with Z. And sometimes you haul your ass up and choke out a cheat sheet of advice even though you have no wisdom for anyone anymore, all your sayings swooshed into the trashcan icon on your laptop. Make a list of the things you thought you wanted and burn it—that’s your advice. Because where you are, there’s nothing but glory.
She makes you wish for a different car: a convertible, a dazzling two-seater with a chrome grille and suicide doors. You both love the beach at Zuma. You leave before sundown because the rings of hell are waiting for her at the Greek. But sometimes, if you are lucky, she makes love to you in the Zuma lot, her bikini thrown to the side. She straddles you in the backseat of your old man Volvo like you’re sixteen years old and just learned to drive.
Like you just learned to do everything.
The taste of her is always in your mouth.
The rehearsals for Paradise in the Park are at night. At the Greek, you wait for her in the sea of ghostly seats that look soaked in blood and watch her glide across the stage as the sun sets and it grows dark. Julian, she breathes, I may speak Dante, but I dream of you.
Everywhere you go, you stroll hand in hand. The beaches of Venice and Hermosa are worn out with your lovers’ walks. The flowers bloom. The nights are warm. The desert days are long.
This is the realest dream you’ve ever lived.
The Scurvy Kids and Slurry Kids play by the local hotel pool while the chairs are being cleaned for the guests to suntan in. There’s a pounding soundtrack of hip hop and jazz, of indie rock and big bands, of grunge and electric blues, of Buffalo Springfield and Wasted Youth in Los Feliz and Hollywood. L.A. has never sparkled like it does these summer nights when Voodoo Kung Fu and the Destroyer Deceivers squeeze out every last beat of joy down by Luna Park, the city has never been a more shimmering blinding work of art.
At Scarpetta on Sunday nights, you sit outside in the verdant courtyard overlooking Canon Gardens lit up like Christmastime. You drink Fortuna cocktails—pear Absolut, St. Germain, and peach puree—and make wishes to the stars, you wish for this, you wish for that. You order steak tartare, and ravioli, and foie gras. Have you told each other everything? There doesn’t seem to be much left to say, yet you talk and joke and argue, you never stop. You spend until three in the morning at the Laugh Factory on Sunset being singled out by some stand-up talent. “Look at you two, you got yourselves some white people love,” the comic mocks you in his high-pitched falsetto. “Oh, baby, am I hurting your arm?” “What you talkin’ ‘bout, honeycakes, you are my arm!”
You sleep and eat and live and love and lie entwined. Your souls are without borders because your bodies are without borders.
Or is it the other way around?
Oh, Jules, she whispers. There is nothing better than you.
In the book that is my life, you say, in the chapter when I first met you are the words and so begins my life anew.
I want my own book, she says, not just a measly chapter.
From Zuma to Agoura it’s easy to fall in love in Southern California.
You know what’s not easy to do?
Find the ideal spot to ask her to marry you.
Sure, she’s happy to be adored by you—for now—but does she understand that this thing between you isn’t something that begins and ends.
Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
JULIAN KEPT SUGGESTING THE FOUR OF THEM GO OUT. HE STILL had not met Zakiyyah. And Josephine met Ashton only once, if you didn’t count that other time (and who wanted to count it) at two in the morning when Ashton banged on his door like the KGB, and when Julian opened it—with Josephine half-naked behind him—he said, “Oh, so you are alive,” and stormed back down the stairs.
Josephine said why should we all go out.
So our two sidekicks can meet.
Why?
So they can approve of our union.
Why do you care if they approve? What if they don’t?
Why would they not approve?
People are strange, she said. Ashton doesn’t like me.
He’s just mad at me right now. Ashton will love you.
It’s not Ashton I’m worried about.
Z? But I’m a nice guy, Julian said. I shave, I don’t overpraise, I’m polite, I reply to invites. I can make a joke, take a joke. Why would Zakiyyah not like me?
I told you, Jules, people are strange.
One problem was their work schedules. Weekends Zakiyyah was off, but weekends were slammed at the Treasure Box, and Josephine was about to premiere in Paradise, narrating the adventures of Dante and Beatrice six nights a week and a matinee on Wednesday.
At the end of June, Julian finally managed to arrange a Sunday brunch for the four of them. He couldn’t get a reservation at the Montage in Beverly Hills, but they met nearby on an outdoor patio in cloistered Canon Gardens, at the cheap sandwich place across from the five-star luxury hotel.
Zakiyyah and Josephine arrived together. Josephine wore a loose lime-green beach cover-up and a bikini. She and Julian were off to Point Dume afterward. Under the red beret, her long hair was down. She wore minimal makeup and remnants of an arousing sunburn. She was a hipster goddess. She took his breath away. After she
