The Elizas: A Novel(22)
“Uh, hi?” I say uncertainly. “What’s going on?”
Steadman snorts, the very action making his blond, feathery bangs lift from his forehead. His eyes are dark-rimmed, as if he has applied eyeliner. He’s pear-shaped, with a big ass, a lot to grab on to. Today he’s got on a gray sweatshirt that’s too tight as well as fitted black jeans and shiny high-top leather sneakers. By the smell of it, there’s bone broth in that mug—I have some in the house, as it’s supposed to annihilate all bad cells in the body, and though I can’t take the flavor, he finds it delicious.
Kiki stands at the island with a meek look on her face. The only similarity between her and Steadman are their striking, ice-blue eyes. I met Kiki at the writing group I joined earlier this year. I’d been working on The Dots, and I needed someone to read a draft, but I didn’t want that someone to be anyone I knew—I couldn’t imagine letting my mother look at it, and all of my college friends were majoring in business or some sort of useless science-like mumbo-jumbo having to do with quarks; I doubted they’d be useful in offering critique. When I saw the poster for a writers’ group advertised on a bulletin board at Trader Joe’s, I’d thought, Why not?
The woman who started the group, Sasha, held the meeting in her apartment, which overlooked the very Trader Joe’s parking lot where I found the ad. The apartment was filled with a lot of Native American décor—masks, beaded things, feathers, a wooden canoe mounted on the wall—and smelled like tobacco. Low, atonal, rhythmic chants played over the stereo. There was a bowl filled with small, smooth stones on her coffee table; I worried them between my fingers, terrified to pull the six sets of eight stapled pages I had made for the group out of my bag. It was the first two chapters of The Dots. I was terrified for anyone to read it. Then it would be real.
Kiki sat next to me that first day. She had threads of gray through her hair and carried herself with the air of a much older, wiser woman, so I was surprised to find out later she is only twenty-seven. She wore a flowing skirt sewn together with rainbow-colored quilted strips, and she smelled like Strawberry Shortcake’s little plastic head. When she noticed me, I must have been putting off a serious fear vibe, because she gave me a comforting pat on the hand.
The others in the group sat on the wicker chairs and beanbags Sasha had piled together in the room. Sasha cleared her throat and looked at me. “Eliza? Ready to pass around?”
My fingers crimped around my pages. I wasn’t sure I could let go of them. They were so unvarnished and inadequate. All at once I desperately had to pee. That always happened when I got nervous.
“How about I go?” Kiki piped up. “I have some new poems.”
Sasha looked at her evenly. Someone near the door groaned.
Kiki passed out her poems. Pages riffled. The room went silent. As I read, I began to relax. Her poems were about astrology and vaginas. They were written in iambic pentameter and couplets. She’d rhymed uterus and Oedipus.
The critique began. As everyone tactfully pulled Kiki’s pieces apart, she sat quietly on the couch, her posture perfect, her expression serene and pensive. By the end of the session, I finally felt ready to show my work, but Sasha deemed that the group was over for the night. Everyone stood to leave. Kiki turned to me and smiled. “Well. I think I need a drink after that.”
I went with her out of guilt—I’d sent her lousy writing to slaughter in place of mine. But Kiki didn’t see it that way. “I appreciate everyone’s feedback, but I’m submitting those pieces to Poetry just as they are,” she announced, smoking a joint as she walked.
At the bar, Kiki Germ-X’d the tabletop while we waited for the bartender to get the drinks. “Bar counters are worse than public bathrooms,” she said in that same placid tone that never seemed to leave her voice. She told a long, convoluted story about various relationships and breakups with seamy-sounding men at least thirty years her senior. Her parents had owned a dandelion farm when she was young, and they made special tea that hippies bought through mail order. But now the dandelion industry has dried up, and they live in a subdivision near Pasadena, where Kiki lived as well. At one point, Kiki sipped her vodka, made a face, and plucked an extra lime out of the cubby behind the bar that contained maraschino cherries, olives, and cut-up fruit. I liked how she looked right at the bartender when she did it, daring him to say something to her about presumptuousness and personal hygiene.
A few months later, when my book sold and I collected some cash, I asked Kiki if she wanted to be my roommate. I didn’t enjoy bumping around in the new, free-from-my-parents’ house by myself. I kind of wished I were still in the dorm at UCLA—I liked the idea of having fifty-five sleeping coeds just a knock away. Kiki was happy to leave her parents’ dumpy tract home. Her deal, though, was that if she moved in, her brother, Steadman, who was also living at home, had to come, too.
“Otherwise he’s never going to leave my parents, and they’re so sick of him,” she said. I knew the feeling.
I asked what Steadman did, and Kiki said he managed a curiosities shop in Venice. “Does he need extra employees?” I asked immediately. I’d pulled eighteen-hour days working on my book, but once I’d finished, I needed something else to occupy my time. I was up to taking four baths a day. Many hours passed where all I did was thumb through a big Edward Gorey anthology.