In New York, when I ran a bookshop, if anyone talked that way to me, they would have been fired. In LA, I blow off my boss over text and get this in return: Dude I think I smoked too much weed whoa peace out talk soon.
Living is so easy in LA and Love tells me to hang on as we veer onto the 101. Hundreds of cars clog the arteries and it reminds me of that SNL sketch where they talk about the 101 and the 405. I can’t imagine growing up in this madness, in cars.
Love’s mom calls and I look at pictures of Love on Facebook. She’s at the beach a lot, but she doesn’t post full body shots. She drinks but she never looks wasted. I think I was wrong this morning. I think maybe this is my lucky day.
23
PEOPLE who pay thousands of dollars to board Glamorous Germ Boats (aka cruise ships) are trying to embrace a philosophy about life, the idea that it’s about the journey, not the destination so you best enjoy the ride. I have always had a hard time with that philosophy. I am goal oriented. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be a productive member of society. Even now, I do my best. I keep one hand in Love’s vagina and one hand on my phone. I am a multitasker. I don’t bask. While Love drives, I review my accomplishments. Because of me, Benji’s Home Soda label was dissolved. Because of me, no publishing houses are wasting electronic ink writing to Guinevere Beck to say no to her stories, and because of me, someone more deserving has Peach Salinger’s job. Because of me, Dr. Nicky Angevine is not practicing, not licensed to manipulate patients into blowing him. Because of me, Henderson’s talk show does not go on and someday this moment will be remembered as the initial end of the age of narcissism in America. Because of me, Mr. Mooney was inspired to go away too. He’s in Pompano Beach, happy as fuck, banging a broad named Eileen.
I also deserve a vacation. I came all the way out here and as the wind burns my cheeks and pulls my hair back and as we get closer to the ocean, I decide that this is the road away from everything bad, from Amy, from my self-destructive pursuit of her, from my paranoia and my lies. Everything with Love is good and everything bad is in the past. I look out the window and I let Amy go. Let her fall off a ladder into a chute or let her hang herself with a resistance band. I have better things to do with my time. I put down my phone.
“Finally!” Love says. “I was starting to worry your eyes were gonna pop out of your head from looking at that thing so much!”
“I know,” I say. “I had to take care of some work stuff. But fuck it. Ima be here now.”
She laughs. “I like this plan.”
“I like this view,” I say.
“So beautiful, right? I love the Pacific. You’ve been out here, right?”
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
“What?” she shrieks. “Wait, wait, wait. This is your first Pacific Ocean experience?”
I admit that she is correct and I love the way Love is like love itself, boundlessly enthusiastic. My first time here is her first time here and she is crazed with joy, veering into the left lane, gunning it and blocking traffic to squeeze into a space on the shoulder.
“I thought we were going to your parents’ house?”
“We’ll go after,” she says.
“After what?”
“After you put your toes in the Pacific, of course!”
She opens the car and strips off her tiny T-shirt. “I’ll race ya,” she says and all this time, my whole life, I thought horny white people in bathing suits only raced each other to the water in movies and Don Henley music videos. I let her win and when I get there, she takes my hand in hers and pulls me in for a kiss.
“Close your eyes,” she says.
I hold her hand and close my eyes and it’s not like I’m some poor farm kid from Nebraska. I’ve been in the ocean. But never like this. The stretch at the shore is so wide. The waves are loud. The seaweed is oversized, like the ocean itself. And then a wave comes and hits us and I pick her up and run through the wall of white water into the thick of it.
“Have you been to the Maldives?” she asks, when we resurface.
“Don’t do that,” I say.
She looks at me. She wipes her mouth. “Do what?”
“You know I haven’t been to the Maldives,” I say. “So don’t ask me if I’ve been to the Maldives.”
“How do I know you’ve never been to the Maldives?” she asks, and she’s not being sarcastic. Love Quinn must be the least judgmental woman alive. She swims up to me and embraces me before leading me back to shore. She has towels in the trunk—are rich people always prepared to get in the water?—and puts on a new Pantry playlist. The first song is Eric Carmen’s “Make Me Lose Control.” I tell her I love this song and she says she knows. She says she took some of my songs and some of her songs and made a bunch of infinite musical nesting dolls. I don’t know what this means, but she explains that each song mentions other songs.
“Oh, so after this comes ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Back in My Arms Again,’” I say.
She nods. “You really are the Professor.”
I wish we could keep going, all the way up north, through summer, away from Amy, from Henderson, from Delilah, from LA. But then she puts on her turn signal and veers off the highway, and we take one dirt road to another dirt road until we approach a gate. Hanging over it is a brass sign in the shape of a half-moon: The Aisles.
“Your home has a name?”
She laughs. “You know I like to name everything.”
Love smiles into a camera and the gates open and I hear Elvis— “Never Been to Spain”—and holy fuck, wow. The road is paved with patchy grass and seashells and white sand that must have been shipped in from Bermuda, and is shaded by canopies of trees they don’t have in Hollywood. We crunch along, passing Maybachs and Ferraris.
“Are your parents having a party?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” Love says as she dabs her lips with gloss. “Forty’s in tonight’s episode of True Detective so my parents got the family together to watch it in the screening room.”
“He’s an actor?”
“I mean, not an actor-actor,” she says. “He doesn’t work that much. Just once in a while. I think he and Milo have a friend who is doing music on it and got him on? I don’t know.” She sighs and puts her gloss away. “I can’t keep up and I don’t try to keep up.” She pats my leg. “Don’t look so nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” I say. But I am nervous. I know how to worry about getting betrayed by Amy Adam or judged by the police. I do not know how to worry about being a bookseller on an estate.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Love assures me. “Everybody already loves you.”
A little barefoot girl with a popped collar chases a barefoot boy who will never work in retail or file for unemployment. We’ve entered some upscale Rob Reiner world of Rich White People and I don’t think I’ve seen children since I was in New York. What strikes me more is the safety. In New York, you’re constantly vulnerable. There could always be a psycho on the subway, on the fire escape, in the dark near the stoop. I’ve had my fair share of mentally ill, potentially violent patrons in the shop. My Hollywood apartment is on the first floor with bars on the window and I walk to and from work. I get into Uber cars and Lyfts with drivers I don’t know and they could always be crazy. But this is so safe and it’s gonna take me a minute to get used to it, the total absence of criminals.
We pull over to a sandy embankment and she leaves the keys on the dash. I offer to help with the bags but she says the helpers can do that and she takes my hand and leads me onto a path that’s been landscaped to perfection, to make it seem like God and wind made this when really, it was Mexican laborers.