Aftermath of Dreaming(72)

“I didn’t know if you were going to call me,” Andrew said.

“What?”

“When I first met you at the restaurant in New York. You in that uniform and more beautiful than any woman there, including the one I was with.” He looked me in the eyes, nodding his head. “You know who I mean—Lily—and she could tell, too. After you brought me the phone, she kept saying ‘You like her, don’t you?’ over and over all through the rest of our meal. She bitched about you for weeks—you really threatened her.”

It was shocking to hear that she had noticed me, much less been worried about what effect I might have on him.

“Then all Sunday morning,” Andrew went on. “After I met you the night before at the coat room, I was kicking myself for not getting your phone number. I didn’t think you were gonna call me. Thought I’d have to go back to that restaurant for another meal just to talk to you again, which, by the way, was the only reason I went there two weeks in a row was to meet you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you that whole time in between.”

“Me, too.”

“I didn’t even need to go to the bathroom, remember, after we talked? You were still in the coat-check room, and I went in the men’s room and thought, Fuck, now what do I do? So I washed my hands, then had to tip the attendant a dollar for handing me a towel.”

It was funny he had remembered the attendant. I had forgotten all about him, a small wiry man who would continually run out of the men’s room when no one was in there and stand outside the ladies’ room, shouting in to the female attendant to come out and talk to him. Then he’d race back whenever anyone entered the foyer or came down the stairs—shooting in and out of the men’s room like a hermit crab from a sand hole.

Andrew wrapped his arms around me, holding me close and kissing me, and I tried to gather in as much of him to last me before I saw him again. It almost made up for him saying nothing about my art.

After Andrew left, as I was working in the dressing room on the new piece, I wondered if he would ever talk to me about my art again—the work he’d seen that afternoon, all of it—the way he had finally spoken to me about his experience when we first met. Maybe I should bring it up, just ask him one day, “So, what did you think of the work you saw at my apartment?” But I didn’t think I could do it without caring too much. Especially after all that had happened with it and me and him. Maybe I wouldn’t bring it up. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to because he would. Dear God, I hoped so. And I hoped it wouldn’t take him years, as it had for him to reveal his feelings about when he first met me. I didn’t think I’d be able to wait that long.





21




Early that November, having lived in L.A. a couple of months, I figured I’d embrace the culture, which as far as I could tell meant working out and not eating lots of things in complicated variations that changed with each person I met to the point where it seemed that basic vegetarians had more food options than most Angelenos allowed themselves. Not that there isn’t real culture in L.A., there are museums and the Music Center and all that, but they are pushed aside somehow, ignored. Culture in L.A. is like the sidewalks there; nice to have, but not used very much.

I decided to try the working-out part of L.A. culture, so one morning I found a bright and airy but intense-looking workout studio in West Hollywood that offered all sorts of classes. I picked salsa dancing because it sounded fun and was starting in ten minutes. I went into the studio, found a spot in the front row, and looking around at the strategically spandex-clad women, realized I was probably the only person there who at no point in life would ever think I might professionally need that skill. In the row behind me and just to the left was a famous pop star I recognized named Viv. Her career had started off phenomenally huge a few years back with a Top Ten album that garnered her the Grammy award for best new artist, but then it had stalled midair with her second album’s release. She was still in the pantheon, but in the unenviable position of having to prove herself once again to the industry and to her fans. A few minutes later, class began in a burst of ecstatic musical sounds, and I tried to follow the steps that the teacher was exuberantly executing, but didn’t do very well. Just keeping count to the fast Latin tempo was a problem, but I was having a good time, so I didn’t care and besides, I figured I’d get it sooner or later.

I decided to make the salsa class a regular part of my week. Every Tuesday and Thursday at nine A.M. there I’d be in the front row so I could follow the teacher’s moves, which were still not completely easy.

On the Tuesday of my third salsa class, in the middle of a particularly tricky combo, Viv, who had also been going regularly, suddenly sidled over to me, put her hands on my hips, and said in my ear, “Just focus on the legs, forget the arms and hands until you get the footwork down. Two, three, four. One, two, three…” As she alternated pressure on my hips with her hands, helping me feel the rhythm change and shift, I remembered her dance-filled videos, then she moved to a spot next to me in the front row for the rest of the class. As unusual as her gesture was, it felt perfectly normal, like a big sister California-style.

At the end of class, Viv asked if I wanted to have a juice with her. There was a sundeck with a health food bar in the back of the studio, far away from the traffic sounds of La Cienega and outfitted with lattice screens and potted palms and hanging ferns to obscure the ugly apartment building that abutted it. Dark green wrought-iron tables with chairs that left crisscross marks on my legs were spread throughout to relax at while we replenished what was burned off.