I squeeze her hand. “So, let’s do it. Let’s stay.”
“What about your job?” she asks.
I tell her I’m selling more valuable books on my own than I am at the store. I can set up a PO Box and form an LLC and go for it. Love is thrilled for me and says I can borrow an old Prius no one uses anymore so I can hit estate sales and stock up on merchandise. I love that she thinks this is a wonderful idea and I love that she does not use the phrase yard-sale-ing. She kisses me. She straddles me and I live here now, in Malibu, in Love. Hunting season is over. I will not think of Amy. I will not worry about Amy. I will not beat myself up. Now it’s time to rest. That’s what you do when you find love. Amy couldn’t. I can. I’m the lucky one, not her.
26
TWO weeks into the Summer of Love and there’s only one time of day I dread. Tennis time! You have to understand, I am living in a dream world. Every morning begins with Love riding my dick. After we fuck, I put on one of the new shirts I bought at the stupid expensive stores on Abbot Kinney in Venice and drive to Intelligentsia and buy an overpriced coffee. I sit with my back against the wall of this coliseum-style coffee shop, so austere, so clean, so California cold that you never see anybody smiling and you get dirty looks for ordering iced coffee.
I go back and forth between working on The Mess and The Third Twin and then, around lunchtime, I mail books if I have inventory that moved. Then, every day at four P.M., I wish for rain so I can get out of tennis time! I suck at tennis. My forehand is too big and the balls go soaring over the fence. My one-handed backhand never makes contact. My two-handed backhand makes Forty piss his madras shorts. Sometimes Milo is here, calling out, Loosen your grip, kid. And sometimes Love walks all the way around to my side of the court as if I’m a fucking child.
Today it’s just me and Love because Love’s parents have gone to Europe and Forty and Milo are out on the Donzi. Love is feeding me balls and I am missing them or whacking them to China and finally we decide to just walk on the beach.
“Okay,” she says when we reach the water. “I just need to say that I know you hate tennis but you wouldn’t hate it so much if you actually tried to get better. And I love you but you are stubborn and I’ve never seen anyone refuse to get better at something. You need to make an effort.”
I look at her. I heard all of it. She’s right. And buried in there, in the middle of all her earnest frustration, there were three little words. She didn’t mean to say it. I mean I have been feeling it, the love, but I wouldn’t say it either, not this early. We’ve only had two weeks. And yet in two weeks we have built a thing between us, a bridge, a shorthand, and I never had this with anyone. Amy and I had sex and heat. Beck dangled a carrot and I bit. But Love and I grow the carrots, peel them, and eat them together.
“Look!” she cries, pointing to a dolphin out in the ocean. “Did you see it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I see it. And don’t worry. I got a gun.”
She bursts out laughing and falls back onto the sand and I laugh too and she rolls onto her side, giggling, and I smack her ass, payback, and that’s all it takes with Love, one joke, one smack and she’s slipping out of her little skirt and climbing onto me and pulling me out of my shorts and holding my head by the temples and looking into my eyes, close.
“Are you deaf?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I was being nice.”
“Well, don’t be,” she says.
“Okay. I love you too,” I say.
She kisses me as my cock delves into her and we are perfect together and I am better for knowing her and I’m still convinced that there’s a special department in heaven where they build vaginas and if you’re lucky like I am, one day you happen upon the one that was built for you. I tell her this when we finish, when we’re lying there on the sand.
“You should write,” she says. “You say some good weird shit sometimes.”
I want to tell her that I do write but it can wait. “Thanks,” I say. “Maybe I will.”
She nudges me. I turn to her. She smiles. “You realize you still have to get back out on the court, right?”
Yes, the Summer of Love is a dream. My skin is glowing thanks to Henderson’s products and fucking Love. My screenplays are coming together. Forty and I meet at Taco Bell every couple of days to talk about “our work.” He reads, he raves, and then he tells me the buzz he’s building.
I really am proud of myself that I’m finally on a true vacation. You can’t even call the screenwriting work; I love it too much. I’m better at tennis after Love’s big lecture and I almost think it’s a good thing that she won’t suck my dick because if she did, I might become so happy that I wouldn’t be me anymore.
The Corinthians are right and Love is patient. We go horseback riding and I don’t know how to ride a fucking horse so here we are again, Love teaching me.
“Robert Redford is a good learning horse,” she says.
“Robert Redford?” I ask, and her mom named all their horses.
Love says it’s a miracle they’re not all named Robert Redford. “My mom is kind of obsessed with him,” she explains.
We trot along and now she wants to know how I lost my virginity and I tell her to go first.
“It was with Milo,” she says. “We were staying on his family’s boat and were docked at Wianno Club and the three of us, me and Forty and Milo, we used to sneak out and steal the flags off the golf course.” That’s why he’s always wearing those shirts, Martha’s Vineyard, yacht clubs, all that cocky pink and green. “And then one night, Milo was like, let’s hide from Forty and freak him out. And then, you know, and it was terrible and it hurt and did I mention that it hurt?” She gazes upward and all the pain in her life, she’s found a way to process all of it. “And then Forty got nailed for stealing all the flags.” She laughs, and of course the three of them collectively refer to that night as the night they all got nailed and I am so happy I grew up poor and that there is nothing so cute about my coming of age. Love elbows me. “I showed you mine,” she says. “Your turn.”
“Well,” I say. “I was having dinner at Chateau Marmont and this waitress came up to me with a piece of paper.”
She smacks me. “That’s not funny.”
I shrug.
She pats my leg. “When you’re ready,” she says. “No rush.” We are quiet together. Like I said, Love is patient.
Love is kind. We ditch plans to go to a ceremony in Culver City where Love is supposed to get an award because Milo calls from Commerce Casino. Forty trashed a room and they’re holding him.
“Can’t Milo take care of it?” I ask. And I worry about my business partner, but at the same time, this is what I expect from Hollywood.
Love says it’s better we go. “Why?” I ask.
Her eyes well with tears. “Because with Forty, you have to step in or people get sick of him,” she says. It’s a long drive to Commerce. It’s ugly in Commerce. It’s not glamorous. It’s vinyl. I watch Love stay up holding her brother all night. He’s a blubbering mess. She tells him it’s okay. When he realizes this was the night of her award, she tells him it’s okay.
“They canceled it, honey bunny,” she says. Her voice is aloe vera. “I didn’t miss anything. Try and sleep.”