For some reason I remember standing in a phone booth at a 76 Station in Palm Desert at nine-thirty on a Sunday night, late last August, waiting for a phone call from Blair, who was leaving for New York the next morning for three weeks to join her father on location. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and an old baggy argyle sweater and tennis shoes with no socks and my hair was unbrushed and I was smoking a cigarette. And from where I was standing, I could see a bus stop with four or five people sitting or standing under the fluorescent street lights, waiting. There was a teenage boy, maybe fifteen, sixteen, who I thought was hitchhiking and I was feeling on edge and I wanted to tell the boy something, but the bus came and the boy got on. I was waiting in a phone booth with no door and the DayGlo light was insistent and giving me a headache. A parade of ants marched across an empty yogurt cup that I put my cigarette out into. It was strange that night. There were three phone booths at this particular gas station on that Sunday night last August and each booth was being used. There was a young surfer in the booth next to mine in OP shorts and a yellow T-shirt with ‘MAUI’ etched across it and I was pretty sure that he was waiting for the bus. I didn’t think the surfer was talking to anyone; that he was pretending to be talking and that there was no one listening on the other end and all I could keep thinking about was is it better to pretend to talk than not talk at all and I kept remembering this night at Disneyland with Blair. The surfer kept looking over at me and I kept turning away, waiting for the phone to ring. A car pulled up with a license plate that read ‘GABSTOY’ and a girl with a black Joan Jett haircut, probably Gabs, and her boyfriend, who was wearing a black Clash T-shirt, got out of the car, motor still running, and I could hear the strains of an old Squeeze song. I finished another cigarette and lit one more. Some of the ants were drowning in the yogurt. The bus came by. People got on. Nobody got off. And I kept thinking about that night at Disneyland and thinking about New Hampshire and about Blair and me breaking up.
A warm wind whipped through the empty gas station and the surfer, who I thought was a hustler, hung up the phone and I heard no dime drop and pretended not to notice. He got on a bus that passed by. GABSTOY left. The phone rang. It was Blair. And I told her not to go. She asked me where I was. I told her that I was in a phone booth in Palm Desert. She asked ‘Why?’ I asked ‘Why not?’ I told her not to go to New York. She said that it was a little too late to be bringing this up. I told her to come to Palm Springs with me. She told me that I hurt her; that I promised I was going to stay in L.A.; that I promised I would never go back East. I told her that I was sorry and that things will be all right and she said that she had heard that already from me and that if we really like each other, what difference will four months make. I asked her if she remembered that night at Disneyland and she asked, ‘What night at Disneyland?’ and we hung up.
And so I drove back to L.A. and went to a movie and sat by myself and then drove around until one or so and sat in a restaurant on Sunset and drank coffee and finished my cigarettes and stayed until they closed. And I drove home and Blair called me. I told her that I’ll miss her and that maybe when I get back, things will work out. She said maybe, and then that she did remember that night at Disneyland. I left for New Hampshire the next week and didn’t talk to her for four months.
Before I leave I meet Blair for lunch. She’s sitting on the terrace of The Old World on Sunset waiting for me. She’s wearing sunglasses and sipping a glass of white wine she probably got with her fake I.D. Maybe the waiter didn’t even ask her, I think to myself as I walk in through the front door. I tell the hostess that I’m with the girl sitting on the terrace. She’s sitting alone and she turns her head toward the breeze and that one moment suggests to me a move on her part of some sort of confidence, or some sort of courage and I’m envious. She doesn’t see me as I come up behind her and kiss her on the cheek. She smiles and turns around and lowers her sunglasses and she smells like wine and lipstick and perfume and I sit down and leaf through the menu. I put the menu down and watch the cars pass by, starting to think that maybe this is a mistake.
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‘I’m surprised you came,’ she says.
‘Why? I told you I was going to come.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she murmurs. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I had an early lunch with my father.’
‘That must have been nice.’ I wonder if she’s being sarcastic.
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‘Yeah,’ I say, unsure. I light a cigarette.
‘What else have you been doing?’
‘Why?’
‘Come on, don’t get so pissed off. I only want to talk.’
‘So talk.’ I squint as smoke from the cigarette floats into my eyes.
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‘Listen.’ She sips her wine. ‘Tell me about your weekend.’
I sigh, actually surprised that I don’t remember too much of what happened. ‘I don’t remember. Nothing.’
‘Oh.’
I pick up the menu again and then put it down without opening it.
‘So, you’re actually going back to school,’ she says.
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‘I guess so. There’s nothing here.’
‘Did you expect to find something?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been here a long time.’
Like I’ve been here for ever.
I quietly kick my foot against the terrace railing and ignore her. It is a mistake. Suddenly she looks at me and takes off her Wayfarers.
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‘Clay, did you ever love me?’
I’m studying a billboard and say that I didn’t hear what she said.
‘I asked if you ever loved me?’
On the terrace the sun bursts into my eyes and for one blinding moment I see myself clearly. I remember the first time we made love, in the house in Palm Springs, her
body tan and wet, lying against cool, white sheets.
‘Don’t do this, Blair,’ I tell her.
‘Just tell me.’
I don’t say anything.
‘Is it such a hard question to answer?’
I look at her straight on.
‘Yes or no?’
‘Why?’
‘Dammit, Clay,’ she sighs.
‘Yeah, sure, I guess.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘What in the fuck do you want to hear?’
‘Just tell me,’ she says, her voice rising.
‘No,’ I almost shout. ‘I never did.’ I almost start to laugh.
She draws in a breath and says, ‘Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know.’ She sips her wine.
‘Did you ever love me?’ I ask her back, though by now I can’t even care.
She pauses. ‘I thought about it and yeah, I did once. I mean I really did. Everything was all right for a while. You were kind.’ She looks down and then goes on. ‘But it was like you weren’t there. Oh shit, this isn’t going to make any sense.’ She stops.
I look at her, waiting for her to go on, looking up at the billboard. Disappear Here.
‘I don’t know if any other person I’ve been with has been really there, either . . . but at least they tried.’
I finger the menu; put my cigarette out.
‘You never did. Other people made an effort and you just . . . It was just beyond you.’ She takes another sip of her wine. ‘You were never there. I felt sorry for you for a little while, but then I found it hard to. You’re a beautiful boy, Clay, but that’s about it.’
I watch the cars pass by on Sunset.
‘It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who doesn’t care.’
‘Yeah?’ I ask.
‘What do you care about? What makes you happy?’
‘Nothing. Nothing makes me happy. I like nothing,’ I tell her.
‘Did you ever care about me, Clay?’
I don’t say anything, look back at the menu.
‘Did you ever care about me?’ she asks again.
‘I don’t want to care. If I care about things, it’ll just be worse, it’ll just be another thing to worry about. It’s less painful if I don’t care.’
‘I cared about you for a little while.’
I don’t say anything.
She takes off her sunglasses and finally says, ‘I’ll see you later, Clay.’ She gets up.
‘Where are you going?’ I suddenly don’t want to leave Blair here. I almost want to take her back with me.
‘Have to meet someone for lunch.’
‘But what about us?’
‘What about us?’ She stands there for a moment, waiting. I keep staring at the billboard until it begins to blur and when my vision becomes clearer I watch as Blair’s car glides out of the parking lot and becomes lost in the haze of traffic on Sunset. The waiter comes over and asks, ‘Is everything okay, sir?’
I look up and put on my sunglasses and try to smile.
‘Yeah.’
Blair calls me the night before I leave.
‘Don’t go,’ she says.
‘I’ll only be gone a couple of months.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘There’s always summer.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘I’ll be back. It’s not that long.’
‘Shit, Clay.’
‘You’ve got to believe me.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You have to.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘No, I’m not.’
And before I left, I read an article in Los Angeles Magazine about a street called Sierra Bonita in Hollywood. A street I’d driven along many times. The article said that there were people who drove on the street and saw ghosts; apparitions of the Wild West. I read that Indians dressed in nothing but loincloths and on horseback were spotted, and that one man had a tomahawk, which disappeared seconds later, thrown through his open window. One elderly couple said that an Indian appeared in their living room on Sierra Bonita, moaning incantations. A man had crashed into a palm tree because he had seen a covered wagon in his path and it forced him to swerve.
When I left there was nothing much in my room except a couple of books, the television, stereo, the mattress, the Elvis Costello poster, eyes still staring out the window; the shoebox with the pictures of Blair in the closet. There was also a poster of California that I had pinned up onto my wall. One of the pins had fallen out and the poster was old and torn down the middle and was tilted and hanging unevenly from the wall.
I drove out to Topanga Canyon that night and parked near an old deserted carnival that still stood, alone in a valley, empty, quiet. From where I was I could hear the wind moving through the canyons. The ferris wheel pitched slightly. A coyote howled. Tents flapped in the warm wind. It was time to go back. I had been home a long time.
There was a song I heard when I was in Los Angeles by a local group. The song was called ‘Los Angeles’ and the words and images were so harsh and bitter that the song would reverberate in my mind for days. The images, I later found out, were personal and no one I knew shared them. The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. Images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. These images stayed with me even after I left the city. Images so violent and malicious that they seemed to be my only point of reference for a long time afterwar