Tart Read online

  I had lived for twenty-eight years just fine, following my sexually nomadic heart, stretching out my elastic adolescence for as long as it would last, and now suddenly half my instincts were urging me to make a nest, while the other half screamed “Flee!” Just because I’d decided to try the nesting thing didn’t mean I had the slightest idea how to pull it off.

  And so I did what most people do in lieu of a solution; I denied there was a problem until I could arrange for a full-on disaster. In the fall of my last year in grad school, seven months into my experiment in cozy living with Jonathan, I had a flash-in-the-pan affair with my Set Design professor. He was in his forties, with distinguished graying temples and a gruff, Tom Waits-style lecturing voice. He was nothing to me; I had no illusions that we were doing anything except blowing off steam. The guy wasn’t even very good in bed; he was married, and felt terrible about me, so his rushed, guilt-driven exertions were never very satisfying. After two seedy sessions in a dank hotel, I called it off. He sighed with relief and gave me an A in the class, even though my final project looked like a kindergartener’s shoe-box diorama.

  Of course, I had to tell Jonathan. I may not be your classic stickler for integrity, but I do have my own idiosyncratic moral code, and honesty is a central tenet, right behind tartery. Besides, half the reason I had the affair was to loosen the stranglehold my life with Jonathan exerted; telling him was key to this loosening. I’d needed a little tart back, and I’d taken it by force, but now it was necessary to fess up.

  I sat him down on a cold Saturday in December. Christmas was just a week away. I summarized with my eyes averted, peeling the label from a bottle of Corona. His reaction fell short of violence, but he did dash into the john to throw up, and afterward he stared at me with the sort of expression a baby might use on his mother as she shoves his finger in an electrical outlet. At that point I felt more than a little sick, myself.

  I might be saying this just to soften the sting of him leaving me months later for Rain, but in retrospect I see our relationship from that cold Saturday on as filled with him calculating his revenge. Even proposing was just one more form of payback; he knew my promise to marry him meant I’d publicly renounced all tartness, and so when he left, he took with him not only my future, but my past.

  CHAPTER 5

  It’s six o’clock, I’ve got three vodka tonics in my bloodstream, and I’m in love.

  Okay, that’s probably not it. It’s probably just culture shock. I haven’t been home to California in three years. Obviously, the ocean air is salt-rotting my brain. That’s why I feel so reckless and giddy, like a thirteen-year-old at a slumber party.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as Clay leads me out of the Owl Club and into the startling sunlight.

  “We’ve got to get Medea someplace cat-friendly,” he says.

  “You’re right,” I say. “Let’s strap her back onto your bike.” I giggle at my stupid joke.

  Clay steers me gently east and picks up the pace. “My friend Nick lives right around the corner,” he says. “She’ll like him. He’s a spaz around people, but he’s a genius with cats.”

  “What sort of spaz?”

  “He’s got a mild case of Tourette’s.”

  “No,” I say. “Seriously?”

  “Mostly around customers. Unfortunately, he works for me at the record store. One time he called this sweet little old lady a ‘rug-eater cunt.’ You should have seen her face.”

  “Oh, my God,” I say, laughing. “Isn’t that a little hard on sales?”

  “Yeah, well, she wasn’t a return customer.”

  As we walk the two blocks to Nick’s, my eyes keep straying to the half-moon scar near Clay’s ear. I can’t stop thinking about kissing it.

  “Everything okay?” he asks, shooting me a sideways glance.

  “Mmm-hmm. Why do you ask?”

  “I think you might be getting that gleam in your eye again.”

  I laugh. “Different gleam. You’ll have to learn the difference.”

  “Right. Well, here we are,” he says, striding through a little wire gate and up the steps of a run-down house. The tilting porch is covered in thick strands of ivy and nasturtiums. “Chez Nick.” He pushes open the front door and hollers, “Nick! I brought you some kitten for dinner.”

  A short guy with a receding hairline and a too-tight Ramones T-shirt appears in the living room doorway. “No need to yell.” He’s eating a doughnut, and when he sees me a big blob of jelly slips out of it and lands on the R.

  “Fucking-shit-whore,” he blurts out.

  Clay looks from him to me and back again. “What? She makes you nervous?”

  “Sorry,” Nick says, swallowing the doughnut without chewing. He starts to choke, and Clay whacks him on the back a couple of times.

  “Maybe you should wait outside.” Clay nods toward the door I’ve barely stepped through. “I’ll be there in a second.”

  “Um. Okay.” I shuffle back out to the sidewalk. “Nice to meet you.”

  In a couple of minutes, Clay reappears, sans Medea. He’s shaking his head.

  “All righty,” he says, slapping his palms together happily. “Now we’ve officially begun the tour.”

  “The tour?”

  “Yes.”

  “What tour, exactly?”

  “The Santa Cruz Freaks and Tasty Treats Tour.”

  I look over his shoulder at Nick’s dubious house. The windows are draped with purple, rust-streaked sheets, and there’s a strange sculpture made of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans dangling from a tree. “Are you sure she’ll be okay in there?”

  “Positive. Like I said, he’s a disaster with women, but with cats, he really shines.”

  He starts to guide me away, but still I hesitate. “I may not be a model pet owner,” I say, digging in my heels, “but I do worry. She’s sort of all I have at this point.”

  With both hands on my shoulders, he looks into my eyes. “Claudia. I swear, she’ll be happy as a clam. Trust me.”

  I bite my lip, studying his face. I’ve known him all of four hours and am shocked to realize I do trust him. “If you say so.”

  “I promise. Now, right this way, madam, and I’ll introduce you to what Santa Cruz excels at.”

  “Freaks and Treats?” I ask.

  “Precisely.”

  Clay Parker’s Freaks and Treats Tour:

  1) Nick and his jelly doughnut. Freak with treat. I’m skeptical, but willing to proceed.

  2) Fancy place downtown with white linen tablecloths and waitress with sparkly red thong peeking out of black slacks: wolf down a dozen oysters on the half shell and beer in frosty cold mugs. Clay confesses he’s having the best day he’s had all summer. I blush. I hardly ever blush.

  3) En route to destination, we spy our second freak: long-hair on unicycle playing a plastic recorder. Due to high speed of vehicle, can’t be sure, but suspect he’s playing “Little Red Corvette.”

  4) Gold mine. Downtown farmer’s market. Peaches, fried samosas, free samples of calamari. Too many freaks to name: mullet guys, drag queens, belly dancers, skate punks, goth girls, rasta drummers. Clay points out Dad in a Sierra Club baseball cap scolding toddler for not recycling apple juice bottle. At first we laugh, but when kid cries, start to feel depressed.

  5) Manage to discreetly disappear into Rite Aid for tampons. Inside, more freaks: three betties in 80’s neon and teased bangs, filling cart with jumbo Junior Mints and Pall Malls.

  6) Dessert at the Saturn Café. Sullen waitress with pink Afro. Clay orders us Chocolate Madness and a side of chocolate chip cookie dough. We feed each other the mess until we’re groaning in pain.

  7) Insist on the Boardwalk. Remember visiting a hundred years ago, am seized with uncharacteristic nostalgia. Clay grudgingly admits Boardwalk is chock-full of freaks and therefore justifiable addition to itinerary. Ancient roller coaster nearly forces oysters, calamari, peaches, samosas, cookie dough and Chocolate Madness back up. Discover Clay has adorable, girlish
scream when terrified.

  8) Nightcap at Blue Lagoon. Lots of beefy guys in leather. Want to kiss Clay so desperately can taste it.

  CHAPTER 6

  Clay Parker lives in a yurt. Before tonight, I’ve never heard of such a thing. It’s round and wooden and is shaped like a circus tent. It’s more homey than I’d imagined. In fact, it has solid wooden floors, glass windows, running water and electricity. It’s the sort of place a hobbit might live in, if he was born and raised in Northern California.

  You’re wondering what I’m doing here. So am I. But things are much more innocent than they sound—really—in fact, Clay’s insisted he’s going to lend me his bed while he spends the night at the smallish cottage down the road, where Friend lives. So far, the gender of Friend is a mystery my gentle probing has failed to pierce. Here’s the paltry sum of clues I’ve managed to procure:

  1) Cottage has a couch, which he’s indicated he occasionally sleeps on.

  2) Friend is “an old friend.” Assuming this refers to years of acquaintance, rather than somewhat comforting possibility that Friend, regardless of gender, is ninety and incontinent.

  3) Friend will not mind the late hour (is now 1:00 a.m.), lack of prior notice or burden of making extra coffee come morning.

  4) Friend makes great coffee.

  Nancy Drew I am not. Even after nine hours of drinking, gorging and drinking again with this man, I am steadfastly incapable of asking about his romantic or (God forbid) marital status. It’s one of those sick dances we do: tell ourselves if we don’t ask, magically no obstacles will interfere. Equally sick is the assumption that, because sleeping-with candidate has not asked our status, said candidate wants what we want.

  Ugh. Cannot believe I’m embroiling myself in this brand of mess yet again. But Clay Parker is absolutely bristling with sex appeal. His eyes are wise and knowing, his face all the more appealing for its minor irregularities. He’s got that endearing tiny half-moon scar near his left ear and a bicuspid with a minuscule chip missing. His left eye squints just a little more than the right, especially when he’s smiling. And then there’s the nose: that swerve toward the top, so subtle it makes you think you’ve imagined it, until you see it from a new angle and notice it again. Somewhere between the oysters and the peaches, I asked him about it. He blushed crimson.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Don’t tell me—does it involve bondage and thigh-high boots?” He chuckled, but there was something wrong, and I instantly regretted asking. “You know what? It’s none of my business.”

  “No, it’s fine. You can ask me anything.” Except, I thought, are you currently doing anyone? “It’s just—my dad. He was a little rough on me when I was a kid.”

  “Oh. I see.” There was an awkward silence, followed by me blurting out, “He hit you?”

  “A couple times.” We watched a tiny slip of a woman struggling to control her Great Dane as they crossed the street. He shrugged. “I guess nobody’s perfect.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Dead.” He swallowed and held my gaze. I felt that weird surge of maternal warmth that always freaks me out—the impulse to stroke the stray wisp of hair back from a man’s forehead.

  “What about your mother?”

  He laughed, and though I was relieved to see him smiling again, there was something a touch hardened in the sound he made. “Oh, she’s still kicking. That old girl will outlive me, no doubt.”

  “Do you like her?” Pop psychy as it is, I cling to my theory that boys who like their mothers are more satisfying in every way.

  He thought about it a couple of seconds, which seemed like a bad sign, but when he answered I could tell it was just because he took the question seriously. “I do like her. I mean, we’d never hang out if she wasn’t my mother, but she’s feisty and she loves me more than anyone. That’s always irresistible.”

  I just smiled, wondering if there’s anyone who loves me more than anyone.

  Now that we’re here in his yurt, I’m a little daunted by the intimacy of it. I find myself standing in one big round room, lit by several candles and a brass lamp. I look around at the kitchen sink and the rustic, homemade-looking armoire and the (oh, God) king-size, quilt-covered bed all right there in plain view. We’ve been wandering for hours from one indulgence to the next, the ocean breeze messing with our hair, and now suddenly we’re encased by his bookshelves and his record player and his barbells on a thick wool rug. His dog, an old mutt the color of caramel that answers to Sandy, pants and wags her tail in a frenzy of joy as her master runs his hands all over her paunchy body.

  “You surf?” I ask, noticing a large surfboard, yellowed like a smoker’s teeth, propped up next to the armoire and another, bright turquoise, near the door.

  “Yeah.”

  I nod. Usually, I find surfers to be a bit of a turn-off; California clichés generally make me want to heave. In this case, I can’t even work up to a sarcastic remark. Even surfing seems cool on him. “It’s a sweet place,” I say, stuffing my hands into my pockets.

  “Oh, yeah? You sound surprised.”

  “Well…” I shrug. “I’d never heard of a yurt. The way you described it—I mean, its Mongolian origins and all—I was picturing some yak skins stretched across a driftwood frame.”

  He laughs. I like his laugh very much. It’s throaty and resonant, sexy as hell. Is it my imagination, or is it tinged now with just a shade of nerves?

  “Here.” He hands me Medea, who is back in her box, probably puffed up again and pissed off. At least we did her the favor of leaving the motorcycle at Nick’s and getting him to drive us out here. She couldn’t reasonably be asked to put up with another death-defying ride, especially after all the drinks we’ve had. It was ten miles, easily, and though they were spouting off names at me—“Empire Grade” and “Bonny Doon”—I’ve no idea where we are. You’d think I might be wary, given my habitual fixation on mass murderers, but nine hours of continual conversation have allayed those fears. If Clay Parker is in any way homicidal or rape-inclined, then my instincts are so terrible I deserve to be strangled and cannibalized.

  “I’ll put Sandy out so we can let Medea get her bearings.”

  “Are you sure? It’s her—” I struggle to remember its name “—yurt, after all.”

  “Oh, she’s dying to get out. It’s no problem.” He slips out the door with her. The yurt walls are canvas-thin, so I can hear him saying soft, reassuring doggy things to her as they crunch around in the grass.

  I coax Medea out of her big-haired, frantic state again, though she can’t stop smashing her nose against all the canine-scented furniture with a mad, panicked expression. “Yes,” I murmur, trying to make my voice as warm and reassuring as Clay’s. “We’re in dog territory, babe. Don’t worry—they don’t all bite.”

  The weird thing—I mean the really weird thing—is that this afternoon-into-night-into-wee-hours with Clay has got me pursuing lines of logic I’ve never dared pursue before. Not even with Jonathan. Studying Clay’s face in the dim, reddish glow of the Saturn Café, I found myself wondering what a baby would look like with his eyes and my mouth. God, is this my baby clock talking? I spent a whole semester of Fem. Theory my sophomore year writing papers on the topic: how the patriarchy created the baby clock mythology to con women into surrendering to mommyism. At the time I was twenty-one, giddy with the right to get drunk in seedy bars and swivel my hips against this boy and that to frantic techno rhythms. What did I know about biology, except that beer gets you drunk and sex makes you—momentarily at least—something like happy? Now, eight years later, I find myself contemplating how a stranger’s eyes would look in my theoretical baby’s face over a plate of Chocolate Madness.

  What do we know about each other? Hardly anything. I know he’s an atheist, owns a record store, graduated from Berkeley and was a drummer in a punk-rock band called Poe when he was fifteen. He knows I love theater, directing more than acting, that I grew up in Calistoga and went to Austin in search of cow
boys. Hardly enough résumé fodder has been revealed to warrant the swapping of spit, let alone genetic material. So how can I explain these freakishly domestic fantasies streaking though my psyche like shooting stars?

  “You two okay?” Both Medea and I spin round at the sound of his voice. “Still a little skittish, huh?”

  “Who, her or me?”

  “Both.” He’s standing in the doorway, keeping Sandy from entering by gently nudging her away now and then with one leg. “Come out here, will you? I want you to see something.”

  For a fraction of a second I hesitate—Dismembered Arm and Paw Found in Remote Woods—but then I remember Clay’s story about adopting a baby raccoon when he was eight. He named it Zorro and fed it with a bottle, for Christ’s sake. Would a guy like that dismember a girl like me? I extricate Medea from my lap carefully and follow him outside.

  He leads me down a short path in the dark, mumbling, “Watch your step.” When we get to the middle of a broad, grassy meadow that smells of yarrow and pine, he looks up and I follow his gaze. Oh, my God. Above us, the stars stretch out in luxurious multitudes, crowding the sky with a million pinpricks of light. I feel suddenly minuscule and happy. I think briefly of Jonathan’s bus packed with all my belongings, reduced now to a charred pile of ash sweeping off on the night breeze. Out here, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. I’ll figure it out. Dwarfed by the enormous carpet of stars, I take a deep breath for the first time in days.

  “Smells so good out here,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I think it’s the stars, myself.”

  I squint at him in the dark, wanting my eyes to adjust so I can study his eyes. “The stars have a smell?”