where I come from, that would be considered a compliment.”
“Where I come from, too.” She stretched, her arms hitting the roof of the car. “Z and I are on the second floor. We have a balcony.” She pointed to the side of the two-story house. “We have flowers on it. Can you see them? Red azaleas. Yellow petunias.”
“You’re lucky someone doesn’t come up and steal them.” He glanced up and down the street.
She wasn’t offended. “I mentioned this about the balcony,” she said, “in case you wanted to stand under it and recite a life hack or a poem or something.”
Swaying from her, he had nothing in reply, nothing clever.
Slowly she picked up her bag from the footwell. “I’m just messing with you. Thanks for today. I had fun.”
“Me, too.”
She opened the door and turned to him. Julian was about to cry nonsense into the confused air, literally to open his mouth and pour forth on her his plans before getting lost, how much he had once wanted a different life, how it hurt to let it go, and how hard it was to make peace with it, but the upside-down longing for her that felt like plunging into orchards of roses, thorns and all, made it impossible for him to breathe and therefore to speak.
Her hand was still on the open door, her right foot already out.
Leaning across, she kissed him softly on the cheek, close to his mouth. She smelled of chocolate cherries, of palm trees, of fire. A sense of something helpless rose up inside him.
After he watched her wave and vanish, he sat in front of her house, staring at the crumbling yellow balcony with the wilting azaleas, his fists pressed into his chest. He opened the window so he could hear the Hollywood Freeway on the next block, lights of cars flying past, whooshing like a turbulent ocean. A mile north, at the end of the long, straight Normandie, rose the giant inky forms of the Santa Monica Mountains, and etched into them the HOLLYWOOD sign whitely lit against the high darkness. Normandie was a through street, and cars often sped by before climbing up the hill behind Julian and disappearing. Directly across from Z’s place stood a low apartment building behind a locked gate, like a halfway house, a cheap duplex, gated off. All the lights were on. It was loud. Barbed wire hung over the barred windows and the stucco balconies, draped down, dangled like icicle lights at Christmas.
Julian peered closer. No, it wasn’t barbed wire. How retro. How WWII of him. It was razor wire. That was the modern way, the L.A. way. When regular barbs weren’t deterrent enough, the straight-edge blades sliced your Romeo throat as you climbed up to sing a sonnet to your lover. Josephine, Josephine.
Why would a house need razor wire on its windows and balconies?
Julian didn’t want to think about his day. He wanted only to feel. When he was thirteen he had a mad crush on a girl in the schoolyard. The crush was so bad it had rendered him speechless. Every time he was within fifty feet of her, he would start to sweat and pant. In the middle of the school year she had open heart surgery and died on the operating table, and that was that. It was the last time Julian had felt this way. Since then, he kept in control of himself. None of the later women he was with, and some of them had been awe-inspiring, made him feel like that tongue-tied kid at recess. He tried to avoid it at all costs, the feeling of being out of control. It was so debilitating. He wanted a sane love life. He wanted a sane life.
And until today, that was exactly what he got.
WHEN GWEN OPENED THE DOOR, AT TEN AT NIGHT, SHE stared at him like he was about to tell her someone had died.
Gwen was right to be worried. They had a weekly schedule from which they rarely deviated. They went out on Thursday nights, and she stayed over at his place. They went out on Saturday nights, usually with Ashton and Riley. The four of them had Sunday brunch together. On Wednesdays he and Gwen tried to grab lunch if Julian didn’t have meetings and she wasn’t swamped. She was a legal secretary for an entertainment law firm.
She lived in a ground floor apartment with two other girls. All three had been watching Desperate Housewives. The other two waved to Julian, annoyed by the interruption. “What’s wrong?” Gwen said. “Were we supposed to go out today?”
“No, no.”
“I didn’t think so. Tuesday is not our day.” She smiled.
“Can we talk?”
Gwen glanced at the couch where her roommates were waiting. “Can it wait till tomorrow, Jules? Because we have fifteen minutes left of our show and then I gotta hit the sack. I have to be in at eight. Contract crisis. Can it wait?”
“No.”
Gwen grimaced.
He didn’t want to talk in the kitchen, and Gwen was already in pajamas. There was no way he was getting her into his car for a distressing heart to heart. “Let’s go to your room.”
Smiling and misunderstanding, she took hold of his wrist. “Girls, finish without me.”
In her room, she fell on the bed, while he took a chair across from her, his hands tensely threaded.
“Why are you all the way over there?”
“Gwen …”
Sitting up, she cut him off. “No. Don’t start any conversation with Gwen. Jules, I’m so stressed at work, I never work fast enough or long enough. Tonight I was there till eight-thirty. If I’ve been off, it’s because I’m overworked.”
“You haven’t been off.”
“I’m so tired all the time. I can’t deal with any bullshit right now, Julian,” she said. “Can’t this wait until I have more energy?”
“It can’t. I’m sorry, Gwen. I don’t know how to say it. There’s never a good time for this.” He stiffened his spine, took a breath.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her hands together. “Julian … are you … breaking up with me?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Please don’t be upset. Don’t cry.” He came to sit by her on the bed, tried to touch her. “You’re a great girl. You won’t be alone for a minute. And I hope we can stay friends—”
“You’re not serious!” she cried, slapping away his arm. “We can’t break up! We have brunch reservations at N/Naka this Sunday! We’ve been waiting three months for them!”
“About that—”
“And we’re going away to Cabo next month. You already booked the hotel.”
“About that …”
“Why are you doing this?”
What could he say? What could he say that would hurt the least?
