Notes From the Backseat Read online

  Anyway, it’s a good thing she lent me something, because so much happened tonight, it’s dizzying. I’m afraid if I don’t get it down now, the details will be surrendered to the deep, dark void that swallows wild nights, leaving behind only alcohol-blurred snapshots and tiny, disposable mementos like matchbooks and crumpled cocktail napkins.

  I guess it was about eight-thirty when Joni knocked softly on my door, saving me from myself for the second time since I’d met her that afternoon. I’d been writing and stewing for too long and I was so wrapped up in my childhood when she pushed the door open a couple inches, I had to blink a few times before her face came into focus.

  “Gwen? Can I come in?” Her voice stirred me from my trance.

  “Yeah.” I slammed the notebook shut and put it down on the dresser, knocking a glass of water over on accident. “Shit,” I mumbled.

  “Do you want the heater on?” she asked.

  “Goddammit. What?”

  “The heater. It’s freezing in here.”

  She was right. I hadn’t noticed that my feet and hands were practically blue. “Oh, yeah, please.”

  She spun the dial on a small space heater, then flipped the switch on the overhead light. A golden glow filled the room and exposed the puddle of water cascading over the bedside table and onto the tiled floor. I hunched over it, embarrassed, looking around for something to wipe it up with.

  Joni said, “No big deal—I’ll get a towel,” and returned quickly with a thick blue terry-cloth one that absorbed the water on contact. For some reason—I guess I’d been sifting through the wreckage of my family for too long—even the spilled water made me sad and I sank back onto the bed, feeling lost and depleted.

  Joni sat in the leather chair near the window. “So I guess you’re a writer?”

  “Me? No. It’s just a few letters.”

  “Be careful,” she said, “that’s how it starts. Next thing you know you’re collecting rejection letters.”

  “I don’t think so.” I sighed. “I’m not very good with rejection.”

  She twisted one of her dreads around her finger and studied me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I tried a perky tone, but it fell flat. “No,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. This is the weekend of your wedding. I shouldn’t be dragging my own troubles into it.”

  She propped her chin up on her fist. “Commandment number one at FUBAR Ranch: Thou shalt not fake an emotion for the convenience of yourself or others.”

  I laughed. “That’s cool. I like that. What are the other commandments?”

  “I don’t know, I just made that one up. It’s good though, isn’t it? Maybe I should give up poetry and try my hand at bibles….”

  “You may be onto something.”

  A silence fell over us, but it wasn’t awkward. It was like the moment before snow falls; you feel a shift in the air, a change in climate. “Did you and Coop have an argument?”

  Normally, I’d find it presumptuous for someone I’d known for seven hours to pop such a question, but with Joni it was welcome. “I don’t know. We had something.”

  “Something…delightful?”

  “No, not exactly. It was confusing. I think he was trying to tell me not to screw things up between him and Dannika.”

  She guffawed. “Gwen! You have to get off that.”

  “How can anyone compete with all that history? And all that blond,” I added under my breath.

  “He’s loyal to Dannika, like brother and sister. That’s it. End of story.”

  “Hmph.” I wasn’t convinced, but I loved hearing it, anyway.

  “I’m serious.” Her buttery eyes were even more intense than usual as they bore into mine. “Coop is crazy about you. Stop obsessing about Dannika, okay? It’ll only create problems.”

  I looked away. “I just don’t trust people very easily.” I picked at the quilt on the bed compulsively. “Men, specifically. I’ve never been with anyone for more than three months.”

  “How long have you and Coop been dating?”

  I swallowed. “Three months tomorrow.”

  “Aha. So we’re at a turning point, here.”

  I nodded. “You might say that.”

  She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Well then, we’re both about to commit tomorrow, aren’t we?”

  “Maybe…”

  “What good is a commitment if it’s only ‘maybe’?”

  “It’s just that I don’t know if he’s going to come through.” A touch of whininess had seeped into my voice. “Men rarely do.”

  “Gwen, I don’t say this lightly, okay? Coop is one of the rare keepers. Believe me…he’s worth taking a chance on.”

  I grinned. “You really think so?”

  “I know so.” She paused, watching my face as if to make sure her words had sunk in. Then she slapped her thighs abruptly and stood up. “Since we’re both going to the guillotine tomorrow, I say we party hard tonight.”

  I giggled. There was something magical about Joni. Who would’ve guessed I’d ever be so entranced by a hippie chick with dreads? “What’s the plan?”

  “First stop is Dick’s.”

  “Ominous name,” I quipped.

  “No kidding. After that, your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Who’s going?” I tried to make the question sound innocent.

  “You, me, the blonde downstairs.”

  I tried to keep my face neutral. I told myself that having her in plain sight was definitely better than sending her off with the boys. Still, I was sick of her. “Anyone else?”

  “My friends Portia and Miranda.”

  “Is that a coincidence? That they’re both named after Shakespearean heroines?”

  She laughed. “No, they’re twins. Their father’s Henry Rhymes.”

  My eyes went wide. I designed for one of his plays a couple years ago—a comedy set in the late 50s. “The playwright?”

  She nodded. “I grew up with them. Mendocino’s full of eccentric artist-types. And then there’s Ohm.”

  “Ohm?”

  “Yeah, Ohm Nix—I know, weird name—he was conceived in a meditation hut.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Are boys allowed at bachelorette parties?”

  She waved a hand at me. “He doesn’t count, he’s gay. So come on, let’s get cracking!”

  Miranda, the designated driver, picked us up in her dust-coated Subaru, her twin sister riding shotgun. They were redheads, and though Miranda wore her hair short and Portia’s hung to her waist, their pale, freckled faces and pouty bee-stung lips were identical. Dannika, Joni and I piled into the backseat and listened as they argued about which novel they should try to adapt for the stage, Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice. Miranda favored the former, while Portia was partial to the latter.

  “How the hell are we going to convey the moors in Cotton Auditorium?” Portia was saying. “For P&P you get a couch, a couple chairs, you’re set.”

  “Bor-ing,” Miranda sing-songed.

  “Hardly! Austen’s the master—her dialogue can carry the whole thing.”

  “Where are we going to get all those hoop skirts and petticoats?”

  “The high school just did The Misanthrope. We’ll borrow from them.”

  Joni leaned toward me. “They’re obsessed with adaptations. They did Ulysses our junior year and they’ve been totally into it ever since.”

  “I was in a play one time,” Dannika said. “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

  I watched Miranda and Portia exchange looks. “Let me guess,” Portia said. “Were you the blonde?”

  Dannika looked delighted. “How’d you know?”

  Portia smirked. “Just a lucky guess.”

  Dick’s turned out to be a tiny, old-fashioned dive right in the middle of Mendocino that seemed startled by its posh surroundings. All the other businesses on that oceanfront street were clearly expensive, arty and decadent, with finicky window displays and calculated lighting. The clientele at Dick
’s ranged from crusty old beer-bellied fishermen to tourists decked out in cashmere pashminas and tasseled loafers. The large, tinted windows looked out over the bluffs and, beyond that, where the fog thinned, you could see patches of the sea shining with an abalone luster in the moonlight. The contrast between the plain, brown interior of Dick’s and the rugged romance of the view was striking. I looked from the half-moon above the fogbank to the aging vinyl stools and the TV mounted on the wall. All in all, it looked like a decent place to start.

  When we got there, Joni, Portia and I all ordered Heinekens. Miranda ordered a 7-Up. Dannika propped her elbows on the bar and asked for a vodka mangotini. The bartender leveled his gaze at her, his bloodshot eyes peering out from under white, bushy brows, and said, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  She threw her head back and laughed while his eyes soaked her in: the pale, sculpted throat, the inch of cleavage showing beneath her thin white blouse, her skinny hips in faded jeans, the radiant swirl of blond.

  “Just Stoli, neat, then,” she said.

  He delivered her drink like a man in a trance. Portia cleared her throat, saying, “Hey, Mack, think you can handle getting our drinks, too?” He tore his eyes away from Dannika and hurried to serve our beers, but had to be reminded about the 7-Up. I saw Portia and Miranda exchange another look.

  When Dannika went to the bathroom, Portia said to Joni, “Where’d you meet Malibu Barbie?”

  Just the word Malibu was enough to set my teeth on edge, but I have to admit, I was sort of enjoying the twins’ cattiness. It made me feel like less of a loser.

  “She’s an old friend from college,” Joni said.

  Miranda raised an eyebrow. “You want her at your wedding? Twenty bucks says she tries to upstage you.”

  Portia nodded. “She’ll wear something see-through and white.”

  Joni waved a hand at her. “She’s okay. Mostly, she came because of Coop—Gwen’s boyfriend. They’re tight.”

  Both twins looked at me with pity.

  “God help you,” Portia said.

  “If you need a good hit man, I’ll hook you up,” Miranda added.

  Just then Ohm swept into the bar, turning heads. I knew it was him even before Joni pounced on him, squealing his name. He had a chiseled, theatrical face: bright blue eyes fringed in dark lashes, a regal nose, jet-black hair, high cheekbones.

  “Ohm,” Joni said, pulling him by the arm over to me, “I want you to meet Gwen. You’re going to adore her.”

  “Is that an order?” When he saw me, he stopped dead in his tracks and touched a hand to his cheek. “My God,” he said, “it’s Audrey Hepburn.”

  I couldn’t help grinning at that. I’d put on my orange trapeze dress—the one I always seem to wear when I’m about to get violently drunk—and a few of Dick’s patrons had snickered when I’d walked in. It was gratifying to see Ohm’s eyes light up with impish glee. He was wearing an old-fashioned tailored tweed vest, and though it wasn’t exactly set off by the striped shirt he’d paired it with, I appreciated the effort.

  I stuck out my gloved hand. “Nice to meet you,” I said, “love your vest.”

  “She’s Holly Golightly in the flesh,” he murmured, nudging Joni.

  “That’s possibly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I told him.

  “A woman who recognizes a compliment. I like that.” His eyes gleamed as he looked me up and down, taking in everything: leopard-print car coat, matching clutch, gleaming white go-go boots, a double strand of pearls.

  “She’s exactly your type,” Joni said, “elegant, exotic and pathologically original.”

  “You’re right,” he said, “I adore her.”

  They were still talking about me in the third person, but I didn’t mind. I felt an instant kindred spirit-thing with Ohm. I studied his face. Though his complexion was radiant and his posture exemplary, there was also a slight whiff of sadness about him—just a tiny creasing around the eyes and mouth that said he knew what disappointment tasted like. Or maybe I was reading into things. Joni had told me quite a bit about him already. Apparently, he’d tried his luck in New York after a dazzling high school career playing every leading role available up and down the coast, including a campy Desdemona in drag. But Broadway hadn’t flung open its doors the way he’d hoped it would, and after a bad stint living with a controlling sugar daddy, he’d packed it in and come home. Now he waited tables in Fort Bragg and took care of his arthritic grandmother. He hadn’t acted in more than a year.

  Ohm was just greeting Portia and Miranda when Dannika emerged from the bathroom. She held out a hand and flashed her perfect teeth at him. “I’m Dannika.” She had a fresh coat of lip gloss on and she looked beguiling. “You must be Ohm. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Ohm gave her a quick once-over. “Pleasure’s mine,” he said, but it was gratifying to see that his face didn’t light up for her the way it did for me.

  “Great,” Joni said in her matter-of-fact way. “Now we’re all acquainted. Let’s get drunk.”

  After we left Dick’s, the six of us wandered around the corner and up the street until we landed in a cheerful little Irish pub filled with a pink-faced, slightly rowdy crowd that looked to be well on their way to inebriation. There were peanut shells all over the floor and a rotund man in suspenders pouring pints of Guinness behind the polished mahogany bar. It was warm inside from the many bodies. We were lucky enough to nab a booth just as four dour-faced German tourists were leaving.

  Looking around the room, I decided the coastal uniform was depressingly pragmatic. Tennis shoes or hiking boots, bulky sweaters, down vests and waterproof parkas were everywhere. An occasional jewel-toned scarf or an off-the-shoulder sweater were the only concessions made to fashion. Some of the patrons were obviously visitors; even if they’d aped the locals’ jeans and sweaters, their hair was too expensively cut and their shoes too urban to quite fit in. The coastal hairstyle was the ubiquitous long gray ponytail. Every man and woman for miles seemed to be sporting one and even the youngsters looked like they were just biding time until they could sprout their own.

  Ohm went to the bar and ordered a pint for each of us except Miranda, who asked for Perrier. While he was standing there, waiting for the Santa Claus bartender to finish pouring, a cute little blonde in hip-hugger jeans sidled over and started laughing hugely at everything he said. Joni saw me watching, leaned in close and said, “The guy’s a chick magnet.”

  “But don’t they know?”

  She shrugged. “Pickings are slim out here. They figure he can be converted.”

  “Does he have a boyfriend?”

  She pursed her lips, thinking. “Not really. There was a guy who’d fly out from New York every now and then, but I think that’s cooled off.”

  “He shouldn’t be here,” I said. “I should abduct him, drag him down to L.A.”

  Joni scoffed. “Great—just waltz right in and steal my best friend.”

  “You know it’s true,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she admitted, “he’s not exactly thriving here.”

  Her expression was a bit gloomy, so I changed the subject. “How are you enjoying your last night as a free woman?”

  She looked around the room. “Honestly? I’m panic-stricken.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She turned and looked me in the eye. “Yes. I am.”

  “What are you panicky about?”

  “Put yourself in my position. Just look around the room at all these men.”

  I did as I was told. The breakdown at the pub was roughly seventy-thirty in women’s favor, and some of the guys were decent-looking. There was a tall blond guy sitting at the bar with great forearms, and a lumberjack type in a nearby booth who happened to be a dead ringer for Elvis—before the bloated years, of course. Though their fashion choices were disappointing, at least three or four of the specimens in that room probably had the smell. It’s weird, you know, because intellectually and aesthetica
lly, I’m attracted to clean, crisp forms, but when it comes to men, they’ve got to have a specific, slightly dirty smell, or my pulse stays as calm as a corpse’s.

  Coop’s got the most amazing smell.

  Somehow he takes the essence of sawdust, pipe tobacco, varnish and wool, then mixes them together with his own secret ingredient and—voilà! You have la crème de la crème of the smell.

  “Now,” Joni said, when she was satisfied I’d assessed the room thoroughly. “Tell yourself: I’m going to have sex with just one man for the rest of my natural life.”

  Ohm reappeared with our beers before I could reply. Anyway, I don’t think Joni expected me to comment. The look she gave me just before she picked up her pint and downed half of it indicated that she’d just summarized everything I needed to know about her current state of panic.

  The disconcerting thing: this thought didn’t make me feel like gulping my beer in one swig. For the first time in my life, having sex with just one man forever seemed almost natural. I mean, sure, if I had to pick one of these guys—even the well-built Elvis in the black T-shirt—I’d be hyperventilating. But when I told myself, I’m going to have sex with Coop and only Coop for the next half a century, the prickly sensation it left me with was more like pleasure than panic.

  As Joni and Ohm gossiped about mutual friends, I looked around the room again, and this time my gaze fell on Dannika. She was sitting across from Joni, staring vaguely toward the bar. Her long fingers toyed absently with the red straw in her drink. Miranda and Portia’s heads were bent toward one another, locked in conversation. Dannika looked completely alone. I suddenly felt sorry for her.

  As if she sensed a shift in the air, her eyes found mine and she studied me for a moment. I’d like to say we exchanged a look of mutual understanding and sisterly bonding, but that would be a lie. Her eyes were shining with cold, reptilian calculation. She reminded me of an alligator in a National Geographic special, luring the prey closer through stillness but preparing all the while to attack.

  “Idn’t that right, Gwen?” Joni was starting to slur a little.