The Pisces(17)

Now Sara was filling her Stanless days and nights by attending an “Opening the Heart” workshop down the street in Santa Monica.

But Sara’s heart already seemed pretty open to me. How much more open did she want it to get?

“We’ll see how it goes,” she said. “Already I feel a little triggered by it, because some of the women at these workshops end up pairing off with the men. It’s as though they become a couple for the week. But this has never happened for me. Where is my workshop boyfriend?”

Dr. Jude reminded Sara that she wasn’t cleared to be dating yet anyway.

“I know,” said Sara, glumly biting into a fig. “But it would be nice to know for once that I could have a workshop boyfriend if I really wanted.”

Brianne’s son had found a girlfriend, and this was hard for her.

“It’s triggering for me, because it means I’ve been isolating a lot more,” she said from under her wide-brimmed hat, face covered in a chalky substance that I guessed was zinc. She looked like she was wearing a clown mask.

“He never had many friends, but now he is out most of the time and I don’t have any companionship.”

I wondered, too, if Brianne’s son was also in therapy. If not, he would be soon.



“I’ve been staying the course with Match and Millionaire Match,” she said, gently patting her lips to make sure they were still huge. “And we will just have to wait and see. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. If not, it’s okay. I don’t need anyone. I have a very full life.”

I wasn’t buying it today.

“So you’d really be okay to never fall in love again for the rest of your life?” I asked her.

Brianne looked at me through her clown paint.

“I’m feeling judged,” said Brianne.

“Sorry,” I said.

“What about you, Lucy? You don’t believe that a person can be alone and be content with that?” asked Dr. Jude.

“I don’t know. Probably not,” I said.

“Mmmm.”

“Do you?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Dr. Jude, yellow teeth flashing. “I don’t believe we need another person to complete us.”

“Not even to fuck?”

“Let’s be sure to be conscious of any triggering language,” she said.

“Yes, I’m feeling triggered,” said Sara.

“Right, sorry,” I said.

The room got quiet.

“Are you in a relationship, Dr. Jude?” I asked.

She paused and toyed with an angel card on the table next to her. It said Awakening.

“No,” she said. “Not at the moment.”

“When was the last time you were in one?”

“Well, if you want to know, I’m pretty recently divorced,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Would you say you’re content?”

“Hmmmm,” she said, sipping her green tea. “Actually, yes. Most of the time I would say yes, I am content.”

Nobody said a word. Sara was slowly peeling a clementine with the hand she used to massage her foot. The amount of time it was taking could not be worth the bite-sized little fruit. I watched her peel and peel the white-and-orange rind, and began to shake. It was the clementine of Sisyphus. Everything was hopeless. Then Sara offered Brianne a slice of her foot-fruit and Brianne accepted gleefully, as though she were giving her a jewel. I felt sorry for them. None of them had anything left to look forward to in the romance department. Maybe they would go on some tepid controlled dates, but no dark alleys. What did any of them have to live for, really? A son who would just grow up and forget all about you? Some man in hemp pants at a workshop saying you had a nice aura? An office filled with shit? At least I still had sparkle in my life. I was going on an adventure.



Of course, I didn’t say a word about Adam. I didn’t want them reprimanding me or giving me any healthy advice. I knew what they would say: I wasn’t supposed to be dating yet. And meeting up with strangers in alleys doesn’t constitute conscious dating. But maybe I didn’t want to be conscious.





13.


Later, as I waited for Adam on Ocean Front Walk, near Marina del Rey, where the homeless cleared and the vibration of the boardwalk became more desolate, I was so excited that I was nauseated. The Santa Monica Mountains were covered in fog, so the pink and palm-tree silhouettes of Venice looked like their own island—an old beach scene frozen in time. It was windy out and I was cold, but I felt important—momentous—like I was on a timeless mission. I could be anyone standing by any beach in history, waiting for a lover. I could be Sappho, unafraid of Eros, calling Aphrodite to her shrine.

But as soon as I saw him coming, I thought, Oh God no. He sort of looked like his picture, but more the monkey aesthetic than the hot one. Also, he had an additional werewolf essence that the photo had not captured. It wasn’t just his jagged teeth, the scruffy goatee, but something else that was distinctly werewolf. He waved to me, and I waved back, cursing through my teeth, already disappointed. When he crossed the street I tried not to let it show, to be warm, though I wasn’t sure why I cared what he thought. I guess I felt bad about rejecting someone without even knowing him. I felt sort of ashamed that I was judging him for his looks, but with an alley make-out what other attributes could there be? It figured. Of course this werewolf-monkey creature was the best that I could do.