The boy’s work was flowers, plants. He believed it was people like the mad garden designer, with his need to manipulate nature like plastic putty, who brought problems into their world. The designer’s artificial aesthetic was a poison in the garden. The boy wanted to feed the thirsty plants water, to restore them to their native, less flamboyant color. He wanted to return the missing leaves to the anemic branches that rustled above them. Michelle wanted that, too. She imagined how damp and green the air would feel beneath a lush canopy, how shaded, how the boy would kiss her, brushing the animal fur of his cheeks against her skin, his gentle mustache. With every step Michelle could feel the pressure of a ghost hand between her legs and knew that the imprint was his, the boy had been there, had worked her like a puzzle box. With each step she savored the sweet, dull pain of how he’d solved her.
In her dream Michelle pulled a cell phone from her purse to check the time. Dreaming Michelle had a cell phone — observing Michelle noted this absurdity. Michelle didn’t want to be late to meet Kyle, Kyle was in the garden, too, strolling alongside a row of succulents with a man, his boyfriend. Kyle was in love, too! I’m In Love, Michelle said happily, for in love was her favorite place to be. I’m In Love, she blissed, Just Like Kyle. The thoughts came to her in Mandarin and she enjoyed the choppy, chunky noise of it inside her head, words beginning in a call and ending in a trill, squeezed, almost sung. She wanted to tell the boy how special it was that everyone she loved was in love, but her cell phone melted away into a Salvador Dali jumble of floating nonsense and Michelle realized then that she was in a dream.
Swiftly, reality slammed down on the part of her mind that could comprehend Latin, Armenian, Mandarin. With great sadness she understood it had all been gibberish, gobbledygook, she could not speak Cantonese or Tagalog or Portuguese. She was in Kyle’s bed, a single damp sheet knotted around her, the Los Angeles smog coming through the open window like the exhalations of a chain-smoking god. Michelle lay on the mattress feeling the dream evaporate from her body. In the next room she could hear the low chatter of the television broadcasting the apocalypse and hoped her brother had at least fallen asleep out there.
I Dreamed Of You, Michelle told her brother. We Were In A Garden And We Both Had Boyfriends. We Were In Love.
You had a boyfriend? Kyle asked skeptically.
Yeah Who Cares, Michelle shrugged. He Was Pretty, Like Johnny Depp. He Spoke Very Pretentiously And Seemed Well Educated.
Wait! Kyle winced. His neck was tangled and sore from sleeping on the sectional. The television had infiltrated his dreams all night, but he had dreamed, and where had he been? In a great garden, with his sister. We were in the Getty! he said. I did have a boyfriend! Oh my god. . He turned and stared at Michelle. Not only did you have a boyfriend, Kyle said, you had a cell phone. That’s how I know it was a dream!
Kyle’s dream boyfriend was a terribly handsome interior decorator who was not promiscuous and had glittering blue eyes. He was gentle with Kyle and in the dream Kyle had enjoyed it! They had strolled hand in hand, discussing the health of their surrogate, a college student who had agreed to carry their baby. Their surrogate was robust and loved the feeling of her body morphing in pregnancy. Having babies and giving them to gay men was her greatest joy. The dream had been a good dream. Kyle would have liked to contort himself back onto the sectional, finding the exact terrible pose he’d slumbered in and call for the dream to return, but he’d promised Michelle he’d drive her back to Hollywood.
11
On the second day of the end of the world, Michelle changed into something worthy of a run-in with Matt Dillon and left for work through the back door, passing through a small, sad square of concrete that functioned as a sort of pathetic backyard. Little green shoots came up through the rocky gaps in the pavement. Seasons of dead leaves moldered along the perimeter. Sometimes homeless kids slept there in the afternoons, protected by the building’s constant shade.
Turning the corner, Michelle walked along a stretch of sidewalk owned by the Scientologists. They had landscaped the walkway with those expensive fake plants, they trusted that the scant foot traffic of Los Angeles would prevent them from being messed with but Michelle couldn’t resist. She would pluck a single yellow orchid blossom from its stalk and vivisect it as she strolled, wondering at the plasticky fibers, the cool gloss of the petals. They felt so real but they weren’t. She kept the stolen flower low, they were as protected as endangered plants had once been. She couldn’t afford to replace even a bud and didn’t need to get hauled into court by a bunch of Hollywood Scientologists.
Michelle stuffed the shredded flower in the pocket of her cutoffs and watched the Scientologists dash in and out of their compound. She especially appreciated the maids, who wore real, old-fashioned maid uniforms, black and white with little aprons and nursing shoes. Michelle longed to get a job at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, cleaning the rooms of visiting celebrities while wearing such an adorable costume, but she knew they would never hire her. The Hollywood sign sat wearily on the dead grass, a wavering mirage in the smog. Michelle entered her bookstore.
Beatrice was already there. Every day Michelle had to tell some customer that Beatrice was not a Scientologist, that their store was not a Scientologist bookstore, though they did keep a lot of dictionaries on hand because new Scientology recruits came in daily, having been instructed to go out and buy themselves a dictionary. The customers remained skeptical about Beatrice’s affiliations. Really, Michelle would insist, She’s Just An Old Hippie. In San Francisco there were a million ladies like Beatrice, but here in Los Angeles she was such a rare breed people thought she belonged to a cult.
Beatrice had written a poem about the wonders of the world and had hung it in the front window. Michelle’s project that day would not be her regular Sisyphean task of finding space on the buckling bookshelves for yet more books, but to find art books containing photos of some of the planet’s high points. Waterfalls, canyons, mountain peaks swathed in mystical clouds. Beaches with gentle, curling waves — nothing too awesome, we didn’t want to make people think about the coming tsunami. Just lush canopies of glossy leaves and flowers as big as your head. Jungles and fields of flowers, forests and the tiny bear cubs that clawed honey from the beehives that dangled from branches.
Never mind that most of these things had been gone for some time. Beatrice was in the grip of an anxious nostalgia and she was paying Michelle an hourly rate to indulge it. She also had a migraine. And her husband’s esophagus wasn’t operating right. She left the shop soon after installing the poem behind the glass. Michelle got to work culling books from the cramped Art section.
Joey stopped by briefly to place a copy of Metallica’s Kill ’Em All in the window beside the poem. She’s Not Going To Think That’s Funny, Michelle said. She Has Me Looking For Pictures Of Rainbows And Pine Forests. She’ll Take It Out.
Yeah, well, Joey said sadly, with a small smile and a smaller shrug. The more Michelle worked with Joey the more he revealed and the more she enjoyed him. He was intensely mystical, new age, belonged to some faggoty men’s group that gathered in the desert and did man-witch activities. He had the important retail skill of being able to make fun of a customer to their face without them knowing it. He had a knotty, gnarled scar running up his torso from his big New York City drug overdose. Someone was in here earlier and said there was nothing to stop him from going out and killing a bunch of, um, “faggots and niggers” is what he said. That he’d just be beating the government to it.