I Wish I Was Like You Read online

  I was sitting on the top step of the stairwell a couple of cigarettes later—the aroma of tobacco thoroughly mixed with the odor of sweat and sandalwood drifting up from the yoga studio on the ground floor—when the door banged open next to me. I flinched and felt vaguely nauseated. I stifled the queasiness with a gulp of coffee from my to-go cup.

  The woman who walked in and sat on the step next to me was already smoking. Not American Spirits. A Marlboro hung from the corner of her lips, ash curling in a mad, gravity-defying spiral. She reminded me of fashion models I’d seen in the 1960s magazines stored in my mother’s closet. Her dark hair hung in long, messy strands, with blunt bangs and several ‘frosted’ white streaks. Her boots climbed to mid-thigh. She wore a fox fur stole over one shoulder, draped elegantly against a purple silk blouse and a black mini skirt. A gigantic black silk purse hung from her crooked elbow.

  “I’m Vanessa,” she said and raised a gloved hand in my direction. “What’s your story?”

  Her attempt at hunkering down with lowbrow little me couldn’t disguise her accent, New England Old Money with a dash of European joie de vivre. She enunciated as though her front teeth were too large.

  “I’m here to write theater reviews,” I replied.

  “I’m told by the higher-ups you’re supposed to shadow me for a week. Why? Don’t you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “I have a little experience. But the editor thought...”

  “Eve,” she said. “God, she’s an imbecile. Have you ever heard of a competent American fiction editor who hasn’t read Melville? My granny read Melville to me when I was a toddler, for god’s sake. Eve’s knowledge of pre-World War II literature would fit in a thimble with room left over for a tea party.”

  “When was Eve a fiction editor?” By now I realized being the new girl was a good means to ferret out information.

  “1983, allegedly,” said Vanessa. “When Minimalism ruled Manhattan. The woman’s education is absolutely shocking. What are you reading?”

  “Oh,” I said. “These days…?” I took a drag on my cigarette, to buy time. “Cortázar, Calvino. Latin American and European writers, mainly.”

  “And romance?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me your guilty pleasure fiction,” she said.

  “Oh. I don’t know. I used to read crime fiction.”

  “Crime? What kind of crime? Hardboiled? Domestic? Noir? Psychological suspense…?”

  I took another drag. I let it out.

  “All of the above,” I said. “Hey, where is everybody today?”

  Vanessa raised her hand and flicked her cigarette butt down the stairwell to the concrete landing below.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Forty minutes later—because Vanessa would only take a taxi and would only climb inside the taxi if the driver responded favorably to the fake smile she offered as a down payment—we were sharing a table at the Weathered Wall. The throb of indistinct sound on all sides made me queasy.

  Vanessa emptied her purse onto the table and combed through the mass of lipsticks, brushes, compacts, art gallery postcards, handwritten invitations, three pieces of Italian candy, a baggie half full of weed, a pillbox containing five black beauties, one of which she popped into her mouth and washed down with a dry martini she’d talked the bartender into mixing on the sly, a red dildo, a monogrammed handkerchief (VV), a gold and white dildo, a press pass with a picture of her wearing a push-up bra and zebra-striped Capri pants, eleven dollars in ones and change, a paper fan from Uwajimaya, a rubber stamp of Kali, individually wrapped condoms in two sizes, a cocktail napkin from a sleazy bar called Charlie’s, a tampon, a bottle of purple nail polish, and what appeared to be an expensive emerald ring (which she tossed back into the purse with a shake of her head and a chuckle).

  “You like crime fiction,” she said, voice pitched only slightly above the band playing across the room. “But you haven’t named a subgenre or which authors you admire. You have to give me more to go on or I can’t figure out who you are.”

  I scanned the crowd, a broad tangle of people my age, most of them skinny and most wearing some variation on the ripped flannel grunge costume of the moment. Only a few had anything approaching Vanessa’s sense of style.

  “Atrocious,” she said suddenly.

  “What’s atrocious?” I asked.

  “This band,” she said. “They call themselves Atrocious, and they’re terrible. What is this, funk and slam poetry fusion? They have no idea what they’re doing. Let’s go.” She up-ended her martini glass, raked the pile of her belongings back into her bag, and before I knew she was standing up, she went striding through the crowd. She didn’t bother to push people out of the way. They moved aside as she walked or she trod on their feet.

  On the sidewalk, the music was muted but still throbbing in the background. Vanessa slung her bag over one shoulder and I followed her up the street.

  “Tell me your influences,” she said. “Give me something to go on. Who are your mentors?”

  “Have you heard of Lee Todd Butcher?” I asked.

  “Oh, god,” she said. She was putting another cigarette between her lips when a handsome boy sidled up next to her and offered a light. She ducked her head, ran the tip of her cigarette through the flame, and kept walking without breaking her stride. The boy watched her go with an expression of irreparable sadness. “Butcher. You like Butcher?”

  “Well, he isn’t my favorite author but I’ve studied his books.” I scrambled for something more to say. “He’s no Chandler or Hammett.”

  “He’s no Leonard,” she said. “He’s no Ellroy. He’s no Willeford. He’s a hack.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, wondering how to disown my implied endorsement. “I only mentioned Butcher because I know him…”

  “Uh-oh,” said Vanessa. “A friend of yours?”

  “No, nothing like that. I took a class he taught, a long time ago.”

  “You didn’t fuck him?” she asked.

  “No, no,” I said. “Why would I…?”

  “Well, I did,” she said. “I thought he fucked every woman he ever met under the age of twenty-five.”

  I was already out of breath trying to keep up with her long-legged stride. I tried not to sound shocked when I said, “Oh. Where did you meet him?”

  “Cocktail party in Manhattan,” she said. “A book release. Not his. He was washed up, making the rounds for free drinks. One of my girls pointed him out and dared me to fuck him, so I did. I heard he left the city before I moved out here. God knows why I came to this place. The west coast is over.”

  “I guess you met him before he decided to start teaching,” was all I could come up with.

  “Must have been,” she said. “I wouldn’t know. Butcher wasn’t writing, anyway, he was beginning ‘the slow descent,’ as my granny used to call it. He just died recently, didn’t he?”

  There are moments when you forget where you are. A gut-punch renders you blind and speechless. When the surrounding space comes into focus again it is with clarity so stunning you will never forget the smallest details. This is how Lee Todd’s death, his absence from the earth, came to be associated with the smoky trail of a Marlboro, the cool click of heels on uneven pavement, the ice-tinged night air, and the blue-black sky spiraling above and away, into infinity.

  “Are you coming?” Vanessa asked. She was up ahead, waiting with her bag slung over her shoulder. “We have to catch a taxi. I have five bands to see tonight.”

  The rest of the evening spun on an enormous wheel around us—loud music, bad beer, and sad-faced lanky boys trying to impress Vanessa with lame jokes and bravado—and overhead a silence as deep and merciless as the sky itself. It was after four o’clock when I finally stumbled up the stairs to my shitty apartment, lurched from the front door to the bathroom, and threw up all over the tiles.

  This fringe theater on Capitol Hill is wedged between a l
ong-ago-gutted mechanic’s garage and a pizza joint where they serve by the slice. These drafty, partially underground buildings all have their legends. One story describes a fire in which three auto mechanics were killed. They’re said to haunt all of the businesses on this block, turning on lights employees swear they left off, cracking windows and mirrors, tripping customers on the stairs. All lies, of course, as far as I can tell.

  My eyes don’t have to adjust to the darkness backstage. I can see all I want to see. You clutching your linen handkerchief, dabbing your nose with it, mildly allergic to the dust embedded in the velvet drapes and the chairs, even in the shabby gold carpet lining the lobby.

  For some reason I feel more than the usual awareness when I see you here. Call the sensation déjà vu. Dreamlike yet vivid, I have a vague memory of the dainty chin and round blue eyes. Nostalgia brings to our encounter a piquant intimacy. Do you feel it?

  I watch you observing the performance from the wings. Longing suffuses your body, desire hums within your delicate bones. The actress on stage is playing the role you were born to play. You know this character by heart, you know her so well—Masha—she fills your nights with raw suffering and endless desire. By sheer will you’ve drawn her toward you, merging with her soul and separating, merging and separating, sailing across pale skies.

  “I am in mourning for my life…” How many times have you recalled the line and murmured it to yourself? In a park in the moonlight, under a canopy of oak leaves, in your chair at the box office, or backstage setting props in place, you catch your breath and say the words. This is your line, your meaning, your Masha, and no one has ever cast you in the role.

  You’ve spent eight years teaching scruffy kids how to stand and deliver the words of Chekhov, your god. You teach them to ask why they speak these words and not those, why they ought to care about the characters they mangle in poorly rehearsed classroom scenes.

  You volunteer to handle the box office at one production after another. You spend sleepless nights preparing bake sales. You donate books to the theater company library. You run errands for the artistic director and compliment him on his children, his condo, his knowledge of the classics, and his taste in furniture. You alienate friends by begging them for odds and ends for the annual auction.

  You study French and renew your passport in hopes of being invited to Marseilles for a month-long workshop where you will be nothing more than the housekeeper picking up after ungrateful students. At the last minute you discover you’re not invited.

  Younger, prettier, more fuckable ingénues are given scholarships and recommendations, while you work and struggle to be noticed. This season, the artistic director’s favorite niece is cast in the role of a lifetime, the character that has lived in your broken heart for twenty years.

  Hungry girl standing in the wings, waiting, watching one more Masha weeping on stage, I put my hands on your shoulders, feel the loneliness raging inside you, and the murmur of something yet unknown metastasizing in your heart and lungs. I know there’s nothing more I can do here, no more damage I can cause that hasn’t been inflicted by life itself, and I leave you watching, waiting, longing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Daisy dropped a textbook on the table. News Reporting and Writing.

  “I’m supposed to read this,” she said, pouting. “It’s like going back to high school.”

  “Are you reading it?” I asked.

  “Fuck no!” She sat down opposite me and glanced out the café window. I was drinking one cup of coffee after another to master my hangover while Daisy smoked and studied my face. “Want to read it and tell me what I need to know, in a page or two?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Maybe,” she whined, one corner of her lips curling.

  “Your editor gave you a reading assignment?”

  “I know. It sucks,” she said. “I’ve got, like, my own style and I know the rules. I do. I’ve paid my dues, Greta. In classes and workshops, and internships, all of that shit, you name it.”

  “A weekly paper in Portland hires you to write features and the editor gives you a textbook?”

  “He gives the same book to everyone he hires. It’s like an in-house style guide. I guess it isn’t such a big deal. I can read it tonight. I just…” Her gaze followed a boy and girl, maybe fifteen years old, making out while walking down the street. Beside them a crew had begun to break up the sidewalk with jackhammers.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” she said and exhaled a stream of smoke. “I like it when people trust me. I’ve gone to all these places—Peru, Tibet, New Zealand—I’ve interviewed Exene Cervenka and Lydia Lunch and Janet Fucking Reno.”

  “I know.”

  “This isn’t a thing I’m doing for fun until I get married and have a baby. Shit!” She stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. “Fuck it. Tell me what you did last night.”

  For the first time I wondered where Vanessa had ended up after our excursion. Too many images clipped through my head at once. Vanessa dancing to Big Chief with a drummer who kept begging her to come see his band; a girl in a baby doll dress offering a flask; a guy with jeans ripped across his ass leaning into Vanessa and calling her a cunt; the flash of a smile in a crowd, wheat blond hair and blue eyes; a couple sitting on a sidewalk holding their hands over their ears while the music thrummed away indoors; an outer wall covered in Home Alive posters.

  It occurred to me Vanessa’s last trip to the women’s toilet for a line of whatever she was snorting might have been followed by a swift exit through the alley and a speedy change of venue, without me. I had no idea how I got home.

  “The bitch dumped you,” Daisy said and laughed, after I recounted my night out. I hated to talk or even think about it. Every route I attempted was bound to lead me back to Lee Todd.

  “Are you going to read the textbook?” I asked. The blood pulsed hard in my temples and it was all I could do not to lay my head down on the table.

  “Are you listening to me? I said I would. Man, you had a crazy one,” she said and laughed again. “I love this gig in Portland. But I’ll fucking miss you.”

  “When will you have time to miss anybody?” I asked.

  “Listen to you. We’re both working writers now. We have no lives.”

  “Features? Shit,” I said. “You’re on your way.”

  “To Portland,” she said with a grin. “It’s a real start. This is exactly what I want. It’s all coming true!”

  “Are you moving there?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “But I’ll drive up to Seattle every couple of months.”

  “We’ll hang out, then.”

  “We better!” She slapped my arm. “Don’t shit me, you bitch. You better make time to hang out with me!”

  We finished our coffee and Daisy dragged me up Broadway to the Deluxe for a round of rejuvenating Bloody Marys. It was Saturday and this would be the last time we were both free of deadlines for several months.

  We walked back down Broadway, wandered into a vintage shop to buy silk scarves. We followed a lanky young guy with beautiful hands until he met a tattooed girl with maroon hair in the reservoir park.

  “Gross,” said Daisy. “I’m not going in there. My friend Gigi stepped on a needle in the grass.”

  “Yeah, fuck that,” I said. “Dog Shit Reservoir.”

  We walked arm in arm past Bonney-Watson Funeral Directors and on to Pike. Next door to the Army-Navy Store we stumbled into Ballet, a Vietnamese restaurant where I used to hang out with Tam when she and I worked together.

  Daisy and I ate lunch at one of the little Formica tables and added hot sauce to our pad thai. Fortified, well fed, we spent the day shopping bookstores and thrift shops, lost and contented in the quiet pockets of the lazy city on a Saturday afternoon.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I never told anyone about my relationship with Lee Todd. Vanessa didn’t ask me for details ab
out him and I decided to let her think he was nothing to me, a teacher I barely remembered. In reality I only thought about him more as time went on. Whenever the blues took hold of me or I stopped to consider what the hell I was doing with my life, Lee Todd came sauntering back to my consciousness with his droopy eyelids and his words of wisdom in cadences that implied exhaustion beyond comprehension.

  “If anyone in this classroom decides to ignore my advice by becoming a writer, for fuck’s sake don’t try to offer the world a message. These hulking novels full of allusions to this classic book or that philosophy, they’re bullshit. Nothing you have to say is going to make the slightest difference to society, or humanity, or even the handful of readers who buy your work. If books had the power to change the world, we’d all be sitting around laughing our asses off in Utopia by now. The world is still the same shithole it was the first time some prick put ink to paper with ‘the best idea anybody ever dreamed up.’

  “The same ten stories get written a thousand times every year. Some drunken critic randomly hails one of them as the greatest story ever written and people get wound up about how it changes everything. Let me tell you, stories don’t change a goddamn thing. People still kill other people, and rape other people, and beat up animals and kids and old folks. People are people. People are shit. You’ll never change that. Nothing you write will change it. All you can do is entertain yourself and maybe if you’re talented earn some money. So forget crusading and saving the world. The best story you’ll ever imagine won’t make any goddamn difference.”

  The only story in my head at the moment was Lee Todd wandering around Manhattan in a shabby suit, crashing book release parties for booze and snacks. Fucking snide young women like Vanessa and maybe thinking, while he was inside her and she was making the right noises, Hey, this could be my ticket…

  I knew how he thought because I’d observed him closely, if briefly. I watched him lean in when he spoke to a woman, not threatening but listening with his whole body, listening at a championship level. He didn’t take women’s books seriously but he knew what young straight women wanted—to be listened to by an older man. If a guy can pull it off, the expression that says, ‘I’m all ears and I’m all yours,’ he never has to sleep alone.