The light is murky when I step inside. She flips the switch and it stays murky. The bulbs emanate a weak yellowy color, soupy, strange. The living room is filled with eccentric objects. Everything is half a work of art, shockingly functionless: a marble statue of a woman that looks like an animal, two tall column bookshelves on either side carved with intricate shapes like scales or dead leaves.
The rug is modern spatters of red and blue and black, so it looks like blood—but not fake blood, not the blood you see in movies, but the real, thick dark blood, the blood no one ever talks about.
“It would look nice if there was any fucking light in here.” She heads to the kitchen, opens the fridge. “There’s beer, red wine, gin.” The light from the fridge is white bright in the doomed house. “Make what you want. I’m going to the bathroom.”
It’s only when she doesn’t come out right away that I realize she is probably doing heroin in there. The bathroom is in the center of the guesthouse, between the living room and the bedroom. I hear her puttering around inside. I pour myself a glass of wine, but I am so hungry, I gulp it down, and then I feel sick, like I can’t even enjoy normal things anymore.
I go to the living room, walk along the perimeter, from the windows to the walls.
The place is so strange. One side is suctioned to the steep hill and the other side is open, with rows of small windows looking out into the slanted yard, where mismatched trees wind high, high above it. Between their trunks you can see little glimmers of the other houses on the hill across the canyon: white, sleek, modern, walls of windows, but this place is sunken; this place is clawing; this place is burying itself in the hillside.
I pour myself another glass of wine. I know I am just drinking because I am hungry. I think of all the food in the refrigerator, how she probably wouldn’t even notice if something went missing, but she didn’t offer me anything, so I can’t take it, can’t even open the door to look at her food, and I think how much I hold myself back, how polite I am, how it has contributed to my downfall. As I walk around her guesthouse, I think, God, if I didn’t care so much what people think, even now, even when they have proved, again and again, that they don’t care about me . . .
What if she won’t help you? What if you do something wrong and she won’t help you? When I know better, know enough to know that won’t be the reason she doesn’t help me.
I put the empty glass down. My head feels expanded and dizzy, like a balloon tug-tugging away from me.
I hear my dad’s voice in my head, Fuck her. Take what you want. Take everything. Fuck ’em all.
I force myself to open the fridge. I blink in the brightness of the blue-white light. Everything is packaged exquisitely, like little food gifts. There are premade salmon salads, boxed sushi, sliced prosciutto ham, buttons of cheese with sprigs of rosemary. It’s almost too pretty to eat. I could just take one thing, just one sleek little box. She would never know. She probably wouldn’t even care.
I shut the door so hard, the bottles inside rattle.
I want to leave. I want to get out of here. I don’t want to see it anymore. How the other half lives. Even just this fridge will haunt me, flash into my mind late at night when I’m shivering on my stacked cardboard.
Her sandwiches have nicer homes than me.
My eyes drift to the glass windows, where the view of LA peeks from between the trees. Where shadows undulate. I have this vision of the house collapsing, the roof caving in, the floor sliding swiftly down the mountain, snapped into pieces by the thick tree trunks.
“Hey?” I want to tell her good-bye but I don’t know her name. I walk across the living room to the bathroom door. I knock. “Hey? I’m just gonna go.” I expect complaints, protest. I expect her to tell me she’s almost done. Just wait!
I hear nothing.
DEMI
I can’t hear her breathing, I think, but that’s illogical. I know that’s illogical. I wouldn’t hear her breathing through a door.
The trouble with living a hard life is that you start to see the world differently. Your mind and your instincts and your outlook are forever altered by negative experiences. You expect bad things to happen. When you’re crossing the street, you imagine every car veering to hit you. You plan escape routes in tight alleyways. You think, What would you do if that man—that one, right there—suddenly punched you? Would you duck? Would you block? Would you hit back? What weapons are at your disposal? What are your emergency exits, safety nets?
Oddly, this leaves you less prepared to deal with bad things when they do happen. You have become accustomed to not trusting your instincts. You are so used to telling yourself that it is all in your head that you can’t tell when it’s not.