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  Sarah flops into the seat beside me and blows her bangs off her forehead. “Would you hate me if I left early?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ve got cramps so bad I think I’m going to faint.”

  I fight a smile. Sometimes Sarah reminds me of myself. We both have a tendency to lean a little too heavily on gynecological excuses. “You need some Advil?”

  She shakes her head. “I already took like seven.”

  “Seven? Doesn’t that constitute an overdose?”

  She grabs a section of her long blond hair and begins examining it carefully for split ends. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think I want to be a professor like you. How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  She squints at me. “Really? God, I hope it doesn’t take me that long.”

  I chuckle to hide my despair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, twenty-nine? That’s like—middle age.”

  I slap her playfully on the shoulder. “Sarah! Go on, get back to your scene work. I want to see a really brilliant Antigone next week, okay?”

  “Whatever,” she whines, dragging herself back to the stage.

  I let out my breath, my body deflating like a withered balloon. Oh, my God. I’m fucking ancient. In a couple months I’ll be thirty. What did I do to deserve this? My worst fears are confirmed; I’m old and I’m alone. I spent the night with a married man before I’d been in town twenty-four hours and now all the women want me buried alive. I’ll have to leave Santa Cruz before they drive me out. I’ll wander the country in my unreliable Volvo and have serial flings with emotionally unavailable men. I’ll pump gas, deliver flowers, mix Carlo Rossi Chablis with Kool-Aid and call it sangria, like Aunt Jessie.

  By the time class is over, I’ve convinced myself that being flattened by a bus abruptly and painlessly is the best future I can hope for. I trudge back to my office through the first splattering drops of rain and stare at my e-mail in-box blankly, wondering what the point is. Monica Parker hates me, and so will the rest of the faculty once the word gets around. Ruth Westby just wants to complete the formality by evaluating my teaching so she’ll have an official list of my inadequacies when she fires me. “Ah, yes, Claudia, here are the results: Sluttish, Lazy and Ancient. That wraps it up. Please remove your belongings by Monday.”

  I haven’t even noticed that Rosemarie is twenty minutes overdue until she comes running in, out of breath, clutching a leash attached to an enormous, braided Thing. “What,” I ask, “is that?”

  “You mean who, Claudia. This is Rex. He’s part Saint Bernard. Aren’t you, Rexy?” Rex is drooling happily on a pile of my student papers. He’s the size of a small horse, and he’s sporting so many tiny braids he looks vaguely ethnic.

  “Rose, I don’t think they let dogs in here.”

  “What? It’s your office, isn’t it?” She looks around, as if she expects to spot a supervisor she’d overlooked.

  “Yeah, I just mean—come on, let’s get out of here. I need a change of scene.”

  Just as I’m ushering Rosemarie and Rex out of my office, Monica Parker comes striding down the hall in her lemon-yellow pantsuit. She’s got a little white sack in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. I see Rex’s nose twitch, as if in slow motion, and then I watch helplessly as he bounds toward Monica, making a beeline for that sack.

  “Rex!” I cry, lunging for his leash, but he’s free and he knows it. Before I can do a thing he’s forced Monica into a corner, where she holds the white sack as high as she can. Unfortunately, she’s not very tall, so Rex takes on the challenge; he balances on his hind legs and presses his muddy paws against her torso for balance, his tongue coming dangerously close to the coveted bag.

  “Hey—stop that,” Monica’s sputtering. “Get off me, you stupid mutt.”

  “Come on, Rexy.” Rosemarie, thankfully, has sprung into action, a little late as usual. She takes hold of Rex’s leash and gently yanks him away from his victim. Monica is pale with fear, and tiny beads of perspiration are breaking out along her hairline.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rosemarie says. “He’s just friendly.”

  “Friendly? You call that friendly?” she spits out.

  “Really, he’d never hurt anyone.”

  “What a dog is doing here in the first place is beyond me,” Monica says, shooting a look at me, then at the skid marks Rex’s paws have left on the lapel of her yellow blazer. “This is a university, you know. Not a zoo.”

  “Look, lady, I’m sorry,” Rose repeats. Rex gets away from her for a second and nuzzles Monica’s crotch before he’s yanked back again. I see Rose is about to laugh at Monica’s mortified expression, so I chime in.

  “Come on, let’s take him outside. Really sorry about that. It’ll never happen again.”

  “No,” Monica says, her voice full of warning. “It won’t.”

  As soon as we get outside, I groan and Rosemarie bursts into giggles. “God,” she says, shaking her head. “What’s up her ass? You’d think she’d never seen a dog before.”

  “Well, he did kind of maul her.”

  “He was just saying hello, weren’t you, baby?”

  “Plus, she doesn’t like me,” I say. “In fact, she hates me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m in love with her husband.”

  I don’t know why I say it; it just slips out. Maybe because I’ve been so alone for so many weeks, constantly trying to be more than I am. Maybe it just sounds better than “Because I’ve been giving head to her husband.” Anyway, it’s just a slip of the tongue—I’m sure it couldn’t be true.

  It just couldn’t.

  CHAPTER 13

  Top Eight Reasons Why Rosemarie Lavelle Is the Best Cousin Ever:

  1) She combs my hair when I’m sad.

  2) If there are two guys coming onto us, she never leaves me with the ugly one.

  3) She lets me borrow anything, even her underwear, though normally she doesn’t have much to lend.

  4) In restaurants/bars/parties she doesn’t sneak looks over my shoulder at interesting strangers.

  5) Her idea of luxury is a day at the river when you never put your shoes on and there’s a cooler of beer with real ice in it.

  6) If asked to be quiet, she will, and doesn’t taint silence by sulking.

  7) Her hands are soft and pudgy, even now that she’s skinny.

  8) She just is.

  It’s funny how you don’t notice what’s missing from your life until you get a taste of it again. Sitting with Rosemarie at the Front Street Pub, nursing a pitcher of IPA and waiting for our food, I wonder how I’ve made it these two and a half years without seeing her. She’s so alive; her eyes sparkle and her expression changes every few seconds, like a little kid. Hanging out with her always reminds me of being little, the way a whiff of suntan lotion invariably sends me spinning back through a hundred beach days gone by.

  She catches me up on her life since she “finished being crazy,” as she puts it. Jade’s death, the months at the Napa State Hospital and her breakup with Jeff are all boxed up somewhere, but the rest of it she takes out with twinkling eyes: her torrid love affair with a tantric guru in Port Angeles, the three months she spent growing pot in British Columbia, her “Summer of Bees” on Orcas Island, when she lived with a balding beekeeper and fought off his pesky advances. Underneath the bubbling enthusiasm, I can feel the other stuff tugging at her smile; it’s unsettling, like resting for a moment in the ocean, waiting for the undertow to kick in.

  It doesn’t, though. Rosemarie just keeps riding on the slick surface of light anecdotes. She barely touches the salad she’s ordered. She drinks glass after glass of water and goes on about inheriting Rex from a junkie in Oregon, working at a health food store in Arcata, ’shrooming at Reggae on the River.

  It’s not her style to skim the surface like this. When we were kids, Rosemarie could never hide a th
ing; the family nicknamed her Stormy because every emotion she went through had the intensity of a hurricane. She could be sobbing one minute and laughing hysterically the next. Now it’s all blue skies and fluffy little white clouds; it makes me wonder what sort of thunderheads are looming on the horizon.

  “What about the hospital?” I ask gently, when I can’t stand it anymore. “How long were you there?”

  She shrugs, looks away. “I don’t know. Months. Too long.” She picks up her fork and pushes lettuce leaves around on the plate, takes a bite out of a cucumber, then mixes it back up with the lettuce. “It was an endless acid trip. Except there weren’t any good parts.”

  “Why’d you end up there?”

  “The usual reason. I lost it.” She tries a brave smile, but then thinks better of it and bites her lip instead.

  “Did Aunt Jessie take you there?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “What’s she doing now?”

  She lets out a quick bark of joyless laughter. It comes out louder than she meant it to, I think. Several heads swivel in our direction, and she stares at her lap, letting the curtain of brown hair swing down around her face. “Didn’t your mom tell you?” she asks, without looking up. “My mom’s in jail.”

  “Oh, my God. You can’t be serious,” I say. When she still doesn’t look at me, I reach across the table and grab her hand. “Rose, why? What did she do?”

  Finally she raises her eyes to meet mine. Her fingers are icy. “Third DUI in like, I don’t know—five years. They show no mercy when you fuck up three times. Plus, she caused an accident and left the scene.”

  “How long has she been in?”

  “Over a year.”

  “What?” Now it’s my turn to make heads turn. “Rose,” I say, forcing my voice to a quieter register. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  She shrugs, slips her hand out of mine. “You were in Texas. Your mom probably didn’t think it was all that—I don’t know—”

  “Important? That her sister was in prison?”

  “Is in prison,” she corrects me. She smears a trace of butter on a piece of bread, takes a bite, looks at me. My face must still be registering disbelief, because she says, “Aunt Mira’s weird that way. She’s—well you know, she’s your mom—”

  “She’s what?”

  “Secretive.” She almost whispers it, and I can tell by the look in her eyes that what she really wants to say is “Fucked up.” An irrational instinct to defend my mom flickers through me, but I realize it’s stupid to pretend with Rose. She knows everything.

  “Yeah,” I say. “She is.” There’s an awkward pause. “Anyway, when does Aunt Jessie get out?”

  “You know what? I don’t have the slightest idea. I’m just so tired….” Her eyes go glossy with tears. She puts the piece of bread down and rests her head in one hand. “I swear, I could fall asleep right this second.”

  “Hey, Claudia.” I hear my name and flinch slightly in surprise. There’s Clay, hovering over our table in a pale yellow T-shirt, looking freshly scrubbed and adorable. His hair is slightly damp and messy, his cheeks are tinged with pink; in his arms he cradles his motorcycle helmet. For a good three seconds I forget about everything: Rose and Aunt Jessie, my neurotic mother, Monica Parker—

  Wait a minute. Monica Parker.

  “Hi,” I say coolly. Then I look out the window.

  “Everything okay?” he asks.

  “Sure. You?”

  “Fine. Sure.” He looks uncertainly at Rosemarie, but I don’t introduce them. He sticks out his hand. “I’m Clay,” he says.

  “Hi.” She beams up at him. “I’m Rosemarie, Claudia’s cousin.”

  “Really? I didn’t know you had family here,” he says to me.

  “Oh, I don’t live here,” she says. “I’m just—visiting.” For some reason she blushes. “We haven’t seen each other in forever, so I decided to look her up.” She nods, as if agreeing with herself on this point.

  Clay nods back. There’s an awkward pause. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and I’m vaguely aware that this is where I’m supposed to ask him to have a seat. Our eyes lock for an instant and I can feel my heart pound, but I don’t open my mouth. Two words, I tell myself: Monica Parker.

  He clears his throat, as if he’s read my mind. “Well, I guess I’ll push off. Uh—good to meet you, Rosemarie.”

  “Don’t hurry off,” she says, smiling her best smile, all white teeth and pink lips. For a second, I feel like I’m drowning. “Why don’t you join us?”

  Clay looks at me. Oh, God. He’s so irresistible. The Monica Parker taboo only makes me want to ravish him more. That’s so fucked up. I need therapy. I have to confront him and I can’t with Rose here and she’s flirting with him, for Christ’s sake. What am I supposed to do? Kick her under the table?

  I kick her under the table.

  “Yeah,” I say weakly. “Pull up a chair.”

  Ugh. Why am I like that? Why couldn’t I just say look, buddy, not only are you married but your wife is gathering the villagers as we speak, preparing to stone me in the town square? Or better yet, why can’t I stand up and slap him cleanly across the face like Audrey Hepburn would? Why am I such a puddle of jelly under his blue gaze?

  As I silently self-flagellate in my seat, Rosemarie and Clay strike up a conversation about music, and within minutes they’re laughing ecstatically and exchanging intimate little jabs when they disagree. Rosemarie is suddenly luminous. When she was fifty pounds heavier, she always had this Rubenesque charm to her—a voluptuous earth-mama charisma that made plenty of men weak-kneed. Now that she’s whittled herself down to this nymph body, her appeal is more ethereal and—let’s face it—way more Kate Moss. Watching her with Clay, I get this slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The vibrancy of Rosemarie’s smile, the light in her eyes that had all but gone out just seconds before he appeared, is nauseating me more than a little.

  What are you up to this time, Bloom? Getting possessive about someone else’s husband?

  “Oh, absolutely,” Rosemarie’s saying. “They’re awesome. Some of their stuff makes me want to slit my wrists, but I’m a huge fan, anyway.”

  Groupie bitch, I think. Then a pang of guilt shoots through me, and I feel like sliding under the table in a pool of remorse.

  “Have you ever heard Gillian Welch?” Clay’s asking.

  “She drives me crazy.”

  “I really like her.”

  “No way!” Rosie practically screams. “She’s this fake hillbilly from L.A. Please. I’ll take Patsy Cline over her any day.”

  They go on like this for a good fifteen minutes. I gaze out the window. I’m just a conduit. My fate is to bring unlikely pairs together, then disappear without a trace. Jonathan and Rain. Clay and Rosemarie. Who knows, maybe Monica and Esther will embark on a wild lesbian tryst, set off by their mutual hatred of one Claudia Bloom. The thing with Clay and me was just a fluke, like everything else in my life. I’m destined to roam the earth in unreliable vehicles and watch other people skip off into the sunset.

  “You’re awful quiet, Claudia.”

  I turn to face him and try to smile, try to think of something witty and light to banter with, but my mind goes blank.

  “Everything okay?” His eyes are so startling—green with streaks of gold that make them look blue in certain lights.

  “Yeah. Sure. Anyone want more beer?” They look at each other like a couple that’s been together so long they can read every nuance with just a glance.

  “Okay,” they say in unison, then laugh.

  Aargh. What a hideous Wednesday. I go to the bar and order us another pitcher, not minding when the bartender takes his time about it. From across the room, I watch the sunlight bringing out the reddish tones of Rosemarie’s silky brown hair. Her slender arms gesticulate, dancerlike. Allegedly, her father was Italian; no one except Aunt Jessie remembers him. I believe it, though. Rose has always had that Italian magic to her—
expressive, passionate, totally uninhibited. Now she pushes Clay playfully in the shoulder and he breaks into a boyish grin.

  Oh, Clay. I should have known. You’re just a ten-year-old kid living in a circus tent, aren’t you? Your wife is now your mother and you’re out looking for a good time with the girls.

  I deliver the pitcher and take a seat. I pour us three glasses of the light, golden beer and down mine before they’ve touched a drop. They’re talking architecture, now, feng shui and the effects of round structures on the psyche. Christ, next they’ll be organizing a drum circle. Isn’t this why I left California in the first place?

  “Claudia, you know what I’m talking about,” Clay says, as if suddenly remembering my presence. “Wasn’t the yurt much cooler than you thought it was going to be?”

  “Sure. I guess.” I pour myself another beer—my third—and gulp down a swig.

  “Oh, come on. Admit it. You loved it,” he says, beaming at me.

  I look across the table and notice that Rose is wearing a quizzical expression; I see her connecting the dots, and I don’t think she’s pleased with the picture.

  “So you’ve…been to Clay’s…yurt?”

  A weird, sweaty little pause. “Uh-huh. Just once.”

  “Oh. And you liked it?”

  “Sure. It’s cute.”

  Clay scoffs. “Cute?”

  “Hold on,” Rose says, her brow furrowing. “Where did you two meet, again?”

  “I know.” My tone is bitter and sarcastic. “It’s confusing. Let me explain. One day Clay saved me from an exploding bus. Then he took me home to his cute little yurt, where I met his wife—granted, I was naked, which was slightly awkward, but we worked it out. Oh! I almost forgot. Clay’s wife not only works at the same university as me, but in the same department. Isn’t that great? She’s the one your dog attacked this afternoon. Small world, huh?”