The little black Coach clutch is everywhere except in my hand. Uncool.
Gucci-Pucci-Coo, the unfortunate pooch, went head first in the garbage like a chihuahua cliché: crazy about day-old Taco Bell. It ended up all over the hall rug.
Sophie’s house is a two-bedroom apartment in a square and somewhat generic neighborhood in BH. Only parking’s on the street, it looks like a there’s a party every night because of the cars. Inside, the carpet’s stained. No one knows its original color—heaven forbid, but maybe it was white once, a long time ago. There is no room for anything, she has shoes and purses lining the walls and scattered between mismatched furniture. There is a general impermanence and carelessness about the apartment, the knowledge that this set-up is not forever and therefore not worth the effort in any sense.
At some point, Sophie tried to explain why she would never move in with someone she was dating before marriage by likening shacking up to having an apartment and marrying as a buying a house. I disagreed, but as I reflect about her apartment and the one before and the one before that in Honolulu, I realize there are legitimate roots to this phobia.
At Kate Mantalini’s on Wilshire, sipping a coffee at the bar. Next to me, a man in emo-core black glasses is tossing papers at a woman for her to sign. Everything is very fast, very unceremonious. You turn over your property, rights, assets, life in a matter of seconds. Like a game of Monopoly, mortgaging everything for a chance at another gamble, this one double or nothing, for the big time.
They say that today, 2.2 million is all you need to live a nice life of leisure.
Obviously whoever says this doesn’t live anywhere near California.
The first time I came here was with Johanne, the only man I know who can turn musical notes into dollar signs as gracefully as a ballet. He’d suggested the place, “small and not busy”, he said and I thought for some reason it was going to be something, you know, small and not busy. But I got to the address and where did I find myself but at Kate’s. I should have known. This is Johanne, afterall, and Johanne is teh Fashion.
The bartender’s name is Gary. He must think I’m a kid, drinking coffee-no-cognac and reading the trash tabloids while scribbling in a college-ruled notebook. I like that, being a kid.
Gary stops bringing me the sugar packets and brings me the white sugar lumps. He knows I’m not a Splenda girl. He winks and asks what I’m writing, “a diary or something for school?” I tell him that I’m not sure yet. He says to watch it or I’ll be writing a novel in a few more pages. Winks blue eyes, white grin and a little bit of blonde hair over his forehead in the light. I bet that took some work.
California makes fake real, the involved looks effortless. We believed once, we believed that people could be this beautiful, this perfect. We dreamed and obsessed and chased them. Then we became Psyche, and leaned over them with the lamp while they slept. The fantasy escaped; we realized we could be beautiful, too, imperfect, though we are. Now we know how long it takes to achieve this perfection and when we look at it, we’re no longer awed, but sad, at all the time we’re wasting.
Or maybe that’s just me bitching about how long it took me to get my nails done at Hands On yesterday.
The National Enquirer has some celebutante crying on the cover. Sadistic vultures and mutinous dogs all of us for feasting. Then again, the only place you can get a better deal this side of North America is McDonald’s. You know how it is.
