Tart Read online

  “Sometimes theater itself can be disturbing, you know? Doing scene work can be quite intimate.”

  She looks slightly aghast. “Don’t you want to know what’s happened?” Before I can answer, she leans in very close and whispers, “He asked me out.” She pulls back, smug and wide-eyed. “On a date.”

  “Well, I’m sure he didn’t—” I begin, and stop myself. Didn’t what? Didn’t have the remotest intention of touching an old scarecrow like you? “Maybe you misunderstood. People do get together outside of class and—you know—rehearse, or discuss the material. It’s not uncommon.”

  “Claudia, what are you running here? An academic course or a dating service?”

  I hear Miranda stifle a giggle behind me.

  “I’m not saying that you have to go out with—”

  Ralene’s gaze flicks to Miranda quickly and back to me. “You know, there are laws now about sexual harassment—not just between professors and students, but among the students themselves. If I feel no action is being taken to protect me from inappropriate sexual advances, I won’t hesitate to bring this to Dr. Westby.”

  I sigh. The last thing I need is a student complaining to Westby. She’s been very cold these days. I’m sure Monica’s been doing what she can to cast me in the worst possible light, so I’m creeping around on thin ice. “Look, Ralene, I’ll talk to Ben on Tuesday, if you like—I’ll get his perspective on it. Would that make you feel better?”

  “‘Get his perspective on it?’” She looks at me with withering disbelief. “Just tell him to knock it off. I’m a married woman. I didn’t come back to college after all these years so I could be stalked by some fireman.” My God, I think, can she really be this delusional? “Boundaries,” she says, her voice as pious as a nun’s, “are essential.” With that she spins away from me and stalks off, her skeletal legs slicing the air like scissors.

  I turn to Miranda, and resist the urge to indulge in catty remarks. “So, about your script…”

  “What a bitch,” Miranda observes, her eyes following Ralene’s retreat. I hide my smile unsuccessfully. “Vindictive, too. Glad I’m not stuck with her.”

  I feel delightfully validated by Miranda’s diagnosis. I mean, sure, anyone can tell Ralene’s got issues, but it’s also her unique gift to make me wonder if I’m a little crazy. It’s good to hear someone else say what I can’t.

  “Yeah, well, anyway. Tell me about your play.”

  “I suck at summarizing. You just have to read it.”

  “Okay. I wasn’t kidding about presentation, though. Directors don’t want old binders with unbound pages. Get it all in order, three-hole-punch it, use brads. It’s good practice.”

  She blushes. “Yeah, I know. It’s just, I stayed up all night writing it, and I was so stoked about it, I wanted you to see it right away.”

  I smile. “Did you write the whole thing in one night?”

  “Oh, no.” She looks horrified. “I stayed up all night for like, three nights doing it.” She shrugs, tugs at the ring in her left nostril. “It probably sucks. I don’t know. But yeah, I’ll get it together and give it to you next week.”

  “Good. I can’t wait to read it.”

  This is partially true. The scripts I’ve flipped through so far have been so patently miserable I didn’t get past page three on any of them. I’ve divided them into two piles: terrible, self-involved drivel in which absolutely nothing happens, and over-the-top, TV-inspired drivel in which just about everything happens. Miranda’s, I think, will be different. But I hate to get my hopes up.

  “I’m an insomniac,” she says. “Writing is what I do to keep from going crazy at four in the morning.”

  “A teacher of mine used to say, ‘If your writing doesn’t keep you up all night, how can you expect it to keep your readers up?’”

  “I can sleep when I’m dead.” She fidgets with her bracelet, and I notice for the first time the jagged, faded scar on the inside of her wrist. I try to look away, but she’s caught me staring. She laughs—a sharp, percussive bark of a laugh—and stuffs both hands in her pockets.

  A long, embarrassing pause ensues, which I break with self-conscious small talk. “Any big plans for the weekend?”

  “Sure,” she says sarcastically. “Nonstop disco.” Then she gives me a little wave, mumbles “Later on” and skates off.

  Miranda. Funny kid. Wish I knew what made her tick.

  Or maybe I don’t.

  Driving home, I unbutton my skirt and turn up the boom box as loud as it will go without getting all fuzzy. Sometimes I feel so confined by my professor-wanna-be clothes and my need to placate the Ralene Tippets of the world. Today I just want to be an animal. I mean yes, I am an animal, technically, but I want to be the breed of animal that doesn’t comb its hair (okay, actually, I don’t comb my hair, but that’s because it would go seventies Afro on me if I did, not because I am blissfully unaware of my appearance). Stuck in traffic, I fight the desire to pull over, tear off my clothes and race for the hills. I want to tromp about in the mud and hide in a canopy of leaves. I want to stalk something smaller than myself, pounce with lightning speed and tear into its quivering flesh…

  Actually, forget the quivering-flesh bit. That’s repulsive.

  As I let myself in, I see Rosemarie sitting in lotus position on the floor, while Rex sprawls hugely nearby, his dreadlocks rising and falling as he snores. Medea eyes both of them reproachfully from my futon. Rose springs to her feet as I enter, her face aglow with excitement. “I’ve figured out what I’m going to do with my life,” she cries. “I really have this time.”

  “Mmm. Let’s hear,” I say, kicking off my clogs and heading for the fridge. This may seem like a lackluster response to such a monumental announcement, but you’ve got to understand that this, varied occasionally with the gushing description of her life-partner-of-the-week, is altogether routine.

  “Claudia, I mean it. It’s so absolutely me I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

  She pauses as I open my yogurt and nod at her. “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “I’m going to manage a band. I know, I know, it’s not loads of money coming in right away, but—”

  “What band?”

  “I don’t know yet, I have to find one, but in the meantime I can cocktail at the Catalyst, because so many groups play there—and then I’ll find, like, the absolute perfect band of my dreams that might be really hot but nobody’s ever heard of them because they don’t have any business sense (creative people usually don’t) and I’ll make them really awesome posters and book all their gigs and recruit homeless kids to hand out flyers (all these fifteen-year-olds on corners, they need work). And it’ll just be so, so great. I know it will.” She chews a strand of hair, looking dreamily out the window. “Maybe once I get good at it, I’ll take on more bands, start like this super-hip PR firm (for musicians only—and just good ones—I’d never touch sappy commercial shit, just the cool geniuses). Isn’t it so perfect? I can’t believe we never thought of it. Isn’t it totally me?”

  This is the delicate part: first response.

  “Well, it does suit your personality,” I begin cautiously. “You’re very charismatic.”

  She nods solemnly. “It’s true. When I was six, my mom caught me selling blueberry Popsicles to half of Portland.”

  “You made blueberry Popsicles when you were—”

  “Just blue food dye and water. But I convinced them. Music’s like that.”

  “Like blueberry pop…?” I begin, but she interrupts.

  “The actual music’s only about five percent of what makes a band hot—image is the other ninety-five. If owning a certain CD will make you feel more amplified, sexier, then you’ll buy it. Music’s an aphrodisiac—we use it to turn each other on.”

  “Sounds right to me,” I say, having no idea, since music’s never been a priority for me. I probably spend more on tin foil annually than I ever have on CDs. “And cocktailing at the Catalyst’s not a
bad idea. You could walk to work and tips are probably decent. You’d meet cool people.”

  “Guys, you mean.”

  “Yeah, well, that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you.” Since she moved in last month, she’s been through four soul mates. Three of them lasted only forty-eight hours.

  Rose cocks her head to the side and smiles at me quizzically. “You think I treat guys like shit, don’t you?”

  “No. You’re very sincere, in the moment.”

  “I am. I just can’t seem to maintain the high. I love the buzz when you first meet someone. Too bad it wears off.”

  “Mmm. Yes.”

  “And it’s like that with jobs—I’m so stoked and then…I don’t know…I lose my steam.” She studies her split ends sadly, then suddenly drops the strand of hair and smiles at me brightly. “But not this time. This is definitely it. I can feel it in my bones.” She darts off to the bathroom. Rex looks at me for a moment, then turns and follows her, nearly tangling himself up in her long brown legs in his eagerness. He senses I’m not his biggest fan, and consequently avoids being alone with me.

  Rose calls from the bathroom, over the sound of running water and apparently through toothpaste, “Should I go buy some more vodka to celebrate?”

  More vodka? What happened to…? I go to the freezer and see that the big bottle of Absolut I bought on Monday is now down to a thin film coating the bottom. Either Rose is taking little medicinal nips from it almost hourly, or I’m a sleepwalking party animal.

  “If you want, I’ll cook,” she offers.

  I do want. This is Rose’s major bargaining chip, and she’s playing it for all it’s worth; I pay for the food, she transforms it into a gorgeous homage to California produce. She can do magic with fresh tomatoes and basil. My stomach growls just thinking of it.

  After I’ve handed over sixty bucks and the flat is blissfully empty, I drain the last of the Absolut and collapse in the patch of sunlight warming my futon. Medea slinks over and makes herself comfortable on my belly. How did this happen? Just a couple years ago I was a free-and-easy honorary Texan with a fabulous roommate (who paid his way—usually more—plus furnished endless espressos) and a little black book bursting at the seams with easy-to-access past-and-future one-night stands. Things were simple then. Now I’m a former fiancée (oh, the shame—can’t believe I fell for it), a car thief and accidental arsonist, a celibate, crabby professor and the unwilling patron of a lovely but unstable neo deadhead in the midst of an enthusiastic, slightly overdue quarter-life crisis.

  If this is what it means to grow up, I want a one-way ticket to never-never land.

  The phone rings, and I gently shove Medea off to answer it. As I cross the room, I fantasize briefly that it’s Clay, then remind myself that Clay is married, dishonest and—well, married and dishonest.

  “Claudia. It’s me, Mira.” When I was thirteen, around the time my dad got custody, out went the word “Mom” and in rushed “Mira.” She also changed her last name from Bloom to the rather eccentric invention, Ravenwing, though she ditched that as soon as she started marrying again. I think she was embarrassed by Ravenwing almost immediately; it was the kind of thing that only seemed cool for a very brief spell in the eighties.

  “Hi.”

  “You sound tired. Are you getting enough iron?”

  “Yeah, I should think so. Rosemarie’s been cooking me loads of spinach—doesn’t that have iron in it?”

  “You should get some supplements. Or eat more steak. Why is Rose still there? I thought you were making her get her own place.”

  I sigh. “Well, she doesn’t have a job yet.”

  “Oh, Claudia…” I can hear her lighting a joint and taking a long toke. “Christ. That flake. Let me guess; she’s got hundreds and hundreds of leads, but nothing ever turns into actual work. She cooks for you, and she’s a great help, but she’s showing no signs of paying rent or leaving.”

  “How did you…?”

  “Claudia, you’ve got to wise up to Lavelle women, okay? You know Aunt Jessie’s just like that. There are family traits—” she lets out a long sigh, and I can almost smell her killer Humboldt weed through the phone “—most of which are inescapable.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a Lavelle and you’re not like that.”

  “Well,” she says. “I try.”

  My mother’s voice always contains a potent mixture of bitterness and amusement.

  I suspect her reefer habit helps keep her amusement quota up, and perhaps the bitterness down. Unfortunately, it also wreaks havoc on her short-term memory. I’ve often thought it was lucky she became a stoner long after my infancy, or she would have left me in a grocery store. (“Let’s see, I got the butter, milk, oranges…what am I missing?”) Probably stunting her awareness of the immediate past is precisely why she gets stoned every day, though; she was supposed to leave her husband Gary last spring when she discovered he was sleeping with the voluptuous landscaper, only somehow this item lost rank on her to-do list. I think bitterness is slowly winning out over amusement, except it’s a deeply resigned sort of bitterness, the kind that makes you tired rather than motivated to seek revenge.

  “I can’t bring myself to give her the boot,” I tell her.

  “Who?”

  “Rose.” I say, exasperated. “She’s so sweet and sincere and—”

  “Broke.”

  “Well, yeah,” I say, a touch defensively. “That’s part of it. I don’t want to see her on the street.”

  “Right. Empathy is a Bloom trait—can’t take credit for that. Your father was always too nice for his own good.”

  This is true. My dad is the kind of guy who’ll pick the runt of the litter, or even the saddest fruit on display, because he feels sorry for it. He’s pathologically attached to the underdog. I suspect he wasn’t very popular as a kid; nowadays, all the most picked-on creeps at Calistoga High flock to his shop classes in droves. He’s like a beacon of hope for the pimply and the greasy-haired.

  “Speaking of your father, I hear he has a girlfriend.”

  “He what?” My dad hasn’t seen anyone since Sandra the Dental Assistant left him ten years ago.

  “You heard me.” She coughs a deep, rattling cough. “Margie Standish told me he’s dating the new librarian at the high school. Word is she’s anorexic with one foot in the grave. Sounds like your father’s type.” I resist the urge to remind her that she was once his type; of course, that was before she divorced him and transformed herself so thoroughly I couldn’t even call her Mom anymore. “You should go see him, by the way. I think he’s hurt you haven’t visited since you found a place.”

  “Did Margie tell you that, too?” I wonder why she doesn’t urge me to come visit her; we haven’t even shared a meal together since I moved back to California.

  “It’s just a suggestion,” she says. “Anyway, I have to run. Emily’s got to find an outfit for her big date tomorrow night.” Emily is my spoiled stepsister—a terminally cute teenager who owned more designer shoes at age ten than I ever will.

  “Is she seeing someone?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? She’s going out with—” and here she lowers her voice to mention a very prominent musician, someone so huge even I know who he is, though admittedly he was much bigger six or seven years ago.

  “She is? How old is he?”

  “I think he’s thirty. Early thirties, anyway.”

  “Emily’s only sixteen.”

  “Oh,” she sighs. “Yeah, I know. It does look a little suspect. But she’s her own person. I mean we couldn’t stop her from seeing him, right?”

  “Why not?”

  “Claudia.” She clucks her tongue at me reprovingly. “Haven’t I taught you anything? Don’t you know that we can’t control other people? If it’s her destiny to have her heart crushed by—” again, she lowers her voice to mention him by name, which is one of those absurd one-word stage names, making the impact even weirder “—then our interfering would only…interfere. Hav
en’t you read Romeo and Juliet?”

  It’s my turn to sigh. “I think I’ve heard of it. Still—sixteen and thirtysomething?”

  “She’s got decent judgment,” my mother says, in an I-can’t-be-bothered-with-this-right-now tone. “All right, Em, I’m coming!” she yells away from the phone. Em. She never had cute little nicknames like that for me.

  After we hang up, I trudge back to my patch of sunlight and curl up, wanting chocolate and a thoroughly escapist book. I don’t want to think about my mother or the explanation she offered when I asked why I shouldn’t call her Mom. (“I’ve spent thirteen years being Mom, and now I’d like to be Mira Ravenwing for a change.”) I don’t want to think about the cell-phone-wielding, perky-breasted Em and her rock star boyfriend. I want to melt into the soft release of bitter and sweet on my tongue. God, chocolate and sex would be nice, wouldn’t it? Wonder what Clay’s doing—

  Bzzzzzzzzz.

  Dammit. Who’s that? Did Rose lock herself out again?

  I open the door, prepared to tease her about her forgetfulness and pounce on any chocolate products she’s bought, when I find myself face-to-face with a very broad-shouldered, hulking man with a vast bald patch in the midst of his crew cut, dressed in—oh, God, no—a police uniform. Catch your breath, Claudia. Maybe Ziv has sent you one of those awful male strippers to cheer you up; he’s going to produce a little boom box blaring “You Sexy Thing” and start unbuttoning any second now. But he’s got all these little ominously sheathed gadgets and—Jesus, a gun—strapped to his waist, and he’s not, frankly, the type who would inspire lavish tips if he took off his clothes, because his skin is pretty pockmarked and he’s got several layers of flab hovering near the gun and he doesn’t look even remotely like a good time.

  “I’m looking for Claudia Bloom,” he says. He’s got a voice that is weirdly high and girlish, like he’s been sucking on a helium tank, which disturbs me. Of course, I’m already disturbed, since I’m about to be dragged off, shrieking in terror, and thrown into solitary confinement for thirteen years, where I’ll take my meals of lumpy gruel squirming with larvae through a tiny slot in the door, going slowly insane as I sit motionless in the pitch black, dreaming of Clay Parker. I wonder if they let you have a vibrator in solitary confinement? Probably not; you might use it to gouge a guard’s eye out. “Ma’am? Are you Claudia Bloom?”