Tuesday, 1 Snap

I made a vow to myself that I would have to repost an oldie if I didn’t finish my new post by 9am so that’s why you’re seeing what you’re seeing. Hopefully it will be new to some of you. Thank you for reading it again if it’s not. xo Deirdre

Toluca

Let’s just say it was a healthy bar, where all the people inside it were clean and had careers and nice clothes from Nordstrom Rack. They had their teeth whitened and got waxed regularly. They used air freshener in the bathroom and kept 8 decorative pillows on their bed in a tidy arrangement. They talked about carbs and steps and took yoga every Sunday at 7am and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Standing by the door and scanning the scene I had the same feeling I had in school of both wanting to be included and knowing it would destroy me. Destroy!

I don’t know why I’m talking like this. I get dramatic when I’m uncomfortable or alone or out in public with strangers. I become a character in a movie that my 3 kids are watching together with a bowl of popcorn. They say, “Oh God”, “Mom just go in” “What is she doing?” their voices overlapping, faces lit up from the big screen. In truth they are all grown and couldn’t be bothered, but still, I think of them. They are the anchor to my balloon string.

I find a seat at the bar, order a beer and go back to the safety of my interior wo--

I see her from across the room. She used to be friends with my sister but she committed a crime and went away for a few years. It’s her, all right. I’d know her anywhere. When I say she committed a crime, I mean she and my sister were friends, and she did something you shouldn’t do to a friend. That kind of crime. At any other time I would tell you she was dead to me, but because we’re in a healthy bar where people behave themselves and because she’s headed towards me right now, I –”Veronica, hey how are you?”

We have a polite exchange while below the surface we are mud-wrestling, groaning, and pulling hair. It’s not good for my heart but we do it anyway. We both know the rules. “Well nice seeing you,” she says tapping the bar twice, a move that has a little sass in it, a move that says I know that you know that we’ve left something unopened here, but that’s just the way it is sometimes. And it makes me like her despite her criminal record. Maybe “like” is too strong. It makes me see her as more than just a villain, let’s put it that way. I watch her walk out the door and I imagine the overhead crane-shot of her walking down the sidewalk while the camera pulls back and back and back until she is a tiny speck on the face of this tiny world.

It always comes back to that, the fact that we are tiny specks, made up of all the things, not as different as we think, united occasionally by joy or sorrow. Sometimes we do things to escape discomfort, sometimes we meet it head on.

I wonder if the woman I am meeting is already here, if she is on a stool at the bar looking at her phone or staring into space like me. We did a reading together recently but it was night and there were a few other writers and I don’t remember exactly what she looks like.

I look at the photos of old time actors from the 40s and 50s behind the bar mixed with headshots from the 70s and 80s. They are matted and framed as though the photos themselves are props from Hollywood Setz over on Magnolia. That’s how it is here in Toluca Lake, a town that sounds like the location in a movie scene where the body is found in the trunk of a car.

Someone taps me on the shoulder, “Deirdre?”

It’s her. We hug and she apologizes for being late. Her son is sick and she is still not used to leaving him. I tell her we can do it again another night and she says no way, she is out now. We both just stand there looking at all the people with nice haircuts and polo shirts. We look at each other, “You want to get out of here?” I ask as she is already turning and heading out the door.

Toluca Lake may sound like the name of a crime scene but in truth it is a suburban town that closes at 5. We walk down Riverside to the corner liquor store. No matter where you are in LA there is always a corner liquor store. It sells random things like Aqua Net, Campbell’s soup, 40s and hot takis, the last two which she buys. I get a topo chico and follow behind her.

I wanted to meet her because she is a great writer who has published two novels, had stories in the New Yorker and is currently working on a TV show. She is not even 40 yet. There are things I want to ask, know, absorb but instead she is telling me she never goes out and her son is still little and he has a cold and--

“Do you live close by?” I ask her. She nods and points over her shoulder with her thumb and I say we should walk there and sit on the front lawn which we do. She runs into the house, a small ranch style just like the one on the left and on the right and when she comes back she says both the baby and her husband are sound asleep. As she sits down, she starts to cry and laugh at the same time, “I’m sorry,” she says “I’m so emotional right now.” She asks me when it will stop.

“Never,” I say. She asks me if I want some beer and I shake my head while she takes a sip, “I’ll have some of those though,” I say pointing to the hot takis and then we clink our bottles and she tells me important things and I tell her important things and we talk into the night and an old Buick with one headlight creeps by and there’s a slow overhead crane shot that begins and the camera goes up and back and back and back until we are just tiny specks on the face of this tiny world.