Like a Woman (17 page)

C.N. walked down the aisle, brushing past pirate costumes, ballroom gowns, corsets, slinky nightclub dresses, top hats and tails. James picked up a milkmaid's skirt, held it against his waist, gave a twirl. “
Fiddler on the Roof
,” he said. “Can you tell?” She kept walking. “C.N., darling,” James whined. “Talk to me. Tell me what you need. I can make you into whoever you want to be.”

C.N stopped in front of a dressing room mirror, looking at the strange woman looking back at her: blonde—for now—good looking, not bad for thirty-two. She stood there for a moment, wishing she could read the desire she saw in that woman's eyes, wishing that woman wasn't her. “I'm looking for something, James,” C.N. said, turning to walk back to the car. “Give Jason my love.”

She drove out of the studio and down Lankershim Boulevard, turning right on Barham. A few miles ahead on the left was Jimmy's studio, Stud City. She pulled into the lot, nodded at the parking attendant, and eased the Trans Am in next to Jimmy's black El Dorado. The on-camera light was on but she walked into the studio anyway, adjusting her eyes to the scene.

The lights were low. A huge hookah pipe stood in the center of the room, smoke curling up. Madras bedspreads were hung around the room. Lava lamps bubbled. On a low table next to an ashtray, a small brass dancing Ganesha figure stood, balancing on one leg, his elephant trunk covered in sequins, his four arms and wrists adorned with bracelets. The floor was covered with mostly naked bodies, groaning in a drug and sex-crazed stupor. C.N. shook her head. She knew they were supposed to sound like they were in orgy heaven, but their cries sounded like cattle mulling about, waiting for grain.

C.N. came up behind Mike, the cameraman, shooting down into the love fest, and pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his back pocket. “Hey,” he whispered. “Get out of my pants, would ya, C.N.”

“Hey, Mike,” she said, keeping her voice low. “What's going on.”

“We're just finishing up the hero comes to California scene. You know, stud comes to Hollywood, meets up with some hippie chicks, they all suck down the hookah pipe then suck down each other.”

C.N. spotted Rocky, the star, sitting on a trunk over to the side, off camera. Behind him were piles of wigs, pompoms, and blue and-white costumes. He was smoking a cigarette and holding his long, legendary penis wrapped in a steaming lavender towel. “What happened?” she asked Mike. “Somebody step on it?” He chuckled, not bothering to answer. She looked around the mass of bodies sweating and swarming on the Persian carpets, hot under the blue stage lights. “Anybody interesting?” she asked.

“Nah, not really,” Mike whispered, keeping his eye on the camera view box. He panned the crowd. “Well, now that I think of it, you'd probably like the new kid, Taylor. She's too skinny for my taste, but she's got that feral,
don't fuck with me asshole
look you seem to go for.” He nodded to the left. “She's down there, underneath Shawn. Skinny white girl. Long brown hair. Comes in here, doesn't talk, sits reading fucking Camus's
The Stranger
while everybody else grabs a smoke.”

C.N. looked down at the girl, watched Shawn grind away on her, saw the faraway look of boredom that the camera was careful not to catch on her face. The girl's mind was clearly somewhere else. For some reason, C.N. found herself wanting to know where. The girl's slim, muscled body moved without thought under the man's weight, not even bothering to fake excitement. C.N. wondered where she went, wondered where she hid her desire, wondered if, and with whom, she let her desire be known. She thought the girl looked like she was about to pass out.

“She high?” C.N. asked Mike. Across the room she saw Jimmy reach over and turn the music up. Jefferson Airplane was singing “Go Ask Alice.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Always takes her ration of ludes and a little H before shooting.”

“She with anyone?”

Mike smiled. “Down, girl,” he said. “She looks like trouble, even for you. But no, I never see her with anyone. Just comes in, gets loaded, does her thing, grabs her fifty bucks, and she's outta here. I heard she's on the streets, but who knows. Nobody's seen her drive. Personally, I think she's bait.”

“So what else is new.” C.N. laughed. She pulled off her jacket and began unbuttoning her silk blouse. She wanted to know what that girl with no desire would feel like pressed up against her skin. She wanted to go inside her, wake her up, find where she hid her desire, flush it out. In this room of drugged and scripted sex, where no desire could possibly exist, in this girl who kept hers buried, C.N. hoped to find her own desire again. Tired of always being wanted, of so rarely really wanting, she wanted someone who did not desire her to suddenly want her. She wanted the rush of this strange girl's new desire the moment it awoke, wanted to feel that moment when she would blink, come to, slip beneath the drugs, slip beneath her mind, slip into her body's private wanting. She stepped out of her shoes, her hose, her skirt, patted Mike on the ass, and set out to find the girl.

the particulars of her emergence

she crashed through this unlocked door. bike roaring, wood splintering into my chest. frame holding. dust unsettling. quite pleased with herself, hot engines screaming. head tossed, pain throttled, glaring to be loved (they said she was too difficult). she revved her engine twice, and could have roared right on through and out my back door had she not been so very easy to love
.

Let the Girl Talk

Taylor leaned back into C.N.'s arms and watched Shantelle run her tongue along the perfectly rolled joint. Diane reached over to light the thin, cream-colored reefer.

“Girl, how come you always gotta be using these straw rolling papers, anyway?” Diane asked, tucking the lighter back in her purse. “I think they taste like shit.”

Shantelle took a long drag on the joint, held it for a while under a smile. She leaned her head back and struck a pose. “'Cause, girl, don't you know,” she said, letting the hit out long and easy, “I just refuse to put my tongue on anything white.”

Diane roared, gave her five, and reached for the joint. “Girl, you
wish
you didn't have to be putting your tongue on anything white. Don't even try and tell me those motherfuckers what come to see you aren't ninety-nine point nine percent white boys.”

“Yeah, honey, ain't it the sorry truth,” Shantelle said. “Of course, a girl's gotta go where the money is. And don't you know, the brothers don't need to be
paying
for this shit anyway.”

The four women were gathered on C.N.'s huge round bed. Taylor felt her lover's breasts move against her back as C.N. reached over to take the joint. She wished the two of them could just be alone, but she'd learned this Sunday afternoon ritual had to play itself out. Besides, she enjoyed watching Shantelle and Diane in action. Taylor waited for C.N. to exhale and hand her the joint. Instead, she felt C.N. shift from behind her, nuzzling her ear, pulling her hair back out of her face. Taylor turned around and C.N. kissed her hard, blowing the hit deep into her lungs.

“Damn it, you two. Knock it off,” Diane said. “Fucking newlyweds. Can't you see we be trying to have us a conversation here.”

C.N. busted up laughing. “What's with this ‘we be trying' shit, Diane? Since when did God take your sorry white ass and make you black? Why you be talking so funny lately, huh, girl?”

Taylor smiled at C.N.'s imitation of Diane's recent speech patterns. She thought C.N. sounded more like Desi Arnez doing a Rocky Balboa imitation than anything else, but what did she know. As far as she could tell, all three of the others had more ways of talking than she had even imagined possible. C.N. spoke Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and her English ran the gamut from a soft Southern drawl to a tight East Coast clip. Her accent, like her intelligence, could disappear or emerge at will, depending on her date. She mostly fucked foreign dignitaries, ambassadors, politicians, and she could play the hot and sexy Latin lover or the light-skinned, well-bred, highly educated conversationalist as she pleased, slipping the roles on and off like shoes. Usually, her dates demanded something in between—sexy without being too ethnic, just bright enough to fully appreciate the superior intelligence of the important man escorting her. Shantelle usually worked the entertainment industry and could range from slow and sultry to hot urban sophisticated chic in a snap of her fingers.

Taylor knew she was way out of her league with these women. C.N. and Shantelle both had PhDs, and Diane had just started graduate school at UCLA. Taylor had barely made it through junior high school.
Why is it all so fucking complicated?
she wondered.
Why can't people just talk like they talk?
Her heart gave a tight catch as she remembered how Jackson and Jimmy used to laugh about learning to speak “California black,” and how bewildered she was when Jackson told her she didn't think, or write, the way she spoke. “I talk like I have to talk,” Jackson would say. “But my thoughts are my own.”

Taylor took the joint from C.N. and weighed taking another hit before passing it on. She'd lost her first hit laughing at C.N., but she didn't want to look like she was bogarting.

Shantelle reached over and took the joint from her, putting an end to her dilemma. “Hey, leave the girl alone, okay. She can talk however she damn pleases. As long as she's off the clock, that is.”

Taylor wondered if Shantelle and Diane had something going on, but C.N. had told her they both were born and bred heterosexuals. Diane mostly worked the “Three C's”—cops, council members, and conventions. So far her biggest trick was with the three Japanese businessmen who'd hired her for a $7,500 all-you-can-eat package that summer—no talking, barely any fucking, they had just flown the big beautiful blond up to Pebble Beach to play golf with them for a week. Lots of photos, another grand in tips.

Now Diane blushed, a blotchy pink flush running down her cheeks and neck. “I don't know,” she said. “Ever since I got back into school, I can't remember how I'm supposed to talk. Tricks are one thing, that's just a role, but this goddamn Academese just turns my stomach, makes me want to puke, makes my juices dry up just when they wanna be flowing, you know? I mean, don't all that enunciating and pontificating get on y'alls nerves?”

“Yeah, I remember that academic bullshit,” Shantelle said. “Rich white boy fools babbling on and on about
problematic
this and
problematic
that, till I just wanted to grab their motherfucking throats and say, ‘Hey, Jack, it ain't
problematic
. It's
fucked up
, okay. And
you're
the one fucking it up.'” She took another hit and passed the joint to Diane. “Yeah, but girl, you might as well give it up thinking you can be talking like any kind of human being if you want to get that degree.”

“Yeah, I know.” Diane sighed. She grabbed hold of Taylor's knee. “Hey, kid, speaking of talking, how's your new job working out? You're awful quiet for someone who gets paid to talk.”

“Yeah, like anyone can say anything once you all get to going,” Taylor said, wishing she'd taken that second hit. The joint was taking forever to come back her way. “Besides, I don't get paid to talk, I get paid to let the tricks talk. There's a difference.” She felt C.N. smile into the back of her neck, her arms tightening around Taylor's chest. “Anyway, it's okay,” she continued. “Eddie's cool, takes good care of me. The money's all right, I get whatever I want to drink, and the motherfuckers can't touch me or Eddie kicks their asses. I got no complaints.”

“Hey, I'm serious,” Diane said. “What do you guys talk about? I wanna know.”

“Aw, man, that shit would make me crazy,” Shantelle interrupted. “When it comes time to fuck, my tricks better not be trying to make me talk with them. Motherfucker opens his mouth when it's time to take care of business, he's gonna get my pantyhose stuffed in it.”

Diane laughed and gave Shantelle a push. “Come on, let the girl talk.”

“Hell, I don't know,” said Taylor. “Mostly they just talk shit about how their old ladies don't understand them. Or their bosses. Some assholes just gotta talk about how much I look like their daughter. Once they get to going in that direction usually I gotta call Eddie. Then there's some just want to talk about their theories.”

“Their theories?” C.N. asked.

“Yeah, like conspiracies. Why they don't got more money than they do. Who's really running this country. Who shot Kennedy. You know. Aliens. Economics. Shit like that.” Taylor noticed Diane had let the joint go out. Damn, she thought, these girls know everything about everything except getting high.

C.N. gave her a squeeze. “Hey, baby, tell them about your literary friend.”

“Well, I got this one guy, comes every day at lunchtime, stays for an hour, tips good, and all he wants to do is talk about books. It's pretty cool, really. Gives me shit, too. Books to read.”

“Sounds pretty kinky to me.” Shantelle laughed. “Why doesn't the motherfucker just go to the library if he wants to talk about books so bad?”

Taylor reached over and took the joint from Diane. She pulled out her roach clip and lit the joint, taking a deep hit and holding it. She felt suddenly pissed, tired. She exhaled slowly, then said, “Because everybody knows they don't let people
talk
in the motherfucking library, that's why.”

Taylor felt C.N.'s body shake with laughter. Then the other two joined in, hooting, doubling over, holding their stomachs. Taylor wasn't quite sure if their joke was the same as hers. All she knew was she was gonna hold onto the joint this time and smoke the roach down to nothing all by herself until she was good and loaded and she didn't care if shit didn't make sense.