“Because I don’t give my phone number to strange men,” she said, fire in her eyes.
That
was the answer. I don’t have to tell you the question. We’ve all been
there. We’ve all heard this story a million times before. But I’m going
to go back and tell you how it started, because context matters, man.
Context is important.
Context is what’s going to keep me from looking like a complete jackass when you learn how this all turned out.
Rebecca
isn’t one of those sexy names. It’s hard to say “Rebecca” in a flirty
way. You can’t really imagine yourself crying out “Rebecca!” in the
heat of … well, whatever. Rebecca’s not a sexy name.
But God. She made up for it.
She
had this smile. I don’t know how to describe it. There are all these
clichés. A smile that lit up the room. Smiling from ear to ear. Blah
blah blah. It’s all nonsense. Just empty words.
Rebecca’s smile
is indescribable. Literally. It cannot be described. You have to see it
to understand it. It’s like … when she smiles, pure joy just surges out
of her eyes and hits you full in the face, like being sprayed with a
riot-control firehose wielded by puppies and kittens. And that’s just
the side-effect. That’s just what it feels like to be in the room when
she does it.
When she turns that smile on you, full blast …
It’s like seeing the face of God.
The
first time she ever smiled at me, I wanted to call in sick the next
day. I wanted to call in sick and get on a plane and fly to Tibet or
wherever the hell it is and climb Mt. Everest. And when I got to the
top, I wanted to carve her name into the glacier where it would exist
for all eternity.
Do they even have glaciers on top of Mt.
Everest? I don’t know. Whatever. I wanted to name a river after her. Or
plant a flag with her picture on it on Mars. Or discover some new
species of glorious bird and name it after her.
It took about
three seconds for me to decide that I would do anything in the world
for her. I’d cross an ocean, found a republic, raise up an army,
anything at all.
I was nine years old.
We were in the
fourth grade. Rebecca was a transfer student from out of state. We were
halfway through our unit on fractions when there was a knock at the
door. The assistant principal — somebody I knew all too well after that
little incident in the cafeteria the previous fall — opened the door
and led her in.
You know that scene in the movies where
everything goes into slow motion and some cheesy 80s love song plays on
the soundtrack? It’s supposed to be a joke, but I swear to God, that’s
exactly what it was like. I got dizzy. The room spun. “Class,” Mrs.
Emerson said, “this is Rebecca … Rebecca … Rebecca.”
She was
shy. God, she was shy. I could just see it, the way she kept her eyes
on her shoes the whole time. The way she clutched her Bionic Woman
Trapper Keeper to her chest as if she was trying to hide behind it. The
way a lock of honey-brown hair came loose from her barrette and fell in
front of her face and she didn’t brush it out of the way.
There
were a lot of empty seats in our classroom. Our school was built in the
50s, during that postwar boom when it seemed like everybody in the
country was having kids as fast as possible. There were enough desks
for at least thirty kids, but there couldn’t have been more than
twenty-five of us.
There were a lot of empty seats in the room.
One of them was beside me.
I
prayed. I honest-to-God prayed. And when Mrs. Emerson spoke, it sounded
like the teacher in those Charlie Brown cartoons, all muted horns and
no words.
She came over and sat down.
Next to me.
That’s when it sunk in. What Mrs. Emerson said. She’d said, “Rebecca, you can sit next to Andrew.”
Thank you, God.
She
put her Trapper Keeper on the desk, opened it with a velcro explosion.
Some of the other kids snickered. She turned bright pink, looked
straight down into her lap. My heart broke a little bit.
Then it
was back to fractions, two-thirds of this and five-sevenths of that —
who the hell measures out five sevenths of something, anyway?
To
this day, I’m convinced that I blew the math portion of my SATs because
I spent the entire unit on fractions staring wide-eyed at Rebecca
Galloway.
“Mom,” I said in what I guess in retrospect was a pretty whiney voice. “Can you take me to the store tonight?”
“What for?” she mumbled, not looking up from the Ladies’ Home Journal or whatever she was reading.
“Andy wants to buy a butt brush to wash his butt!”
“Shut up, Steven!”
“Andrew, don’t tell your brother to shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am. But can you take me to the store tonight?”
“What do you need at the store, sweetie?”
“You know,” I said. “School stuff.”
“Butt brush, butt brush, Andy wants a butt brush!”
“Shut up, Steven!” I slugged him in the arm hard enough to raise a goose egg.
“Mooooom!” Stevie whined. “Andy hit me!”
“I don’t blame him,” Mom mumbled.
The next day I showed up to school with a brand new Six Million Dollar Man Trapper Keeper.
Rebecca
totally noticed. She didn’t say anything, or make eye contact with me,
or acknowledge my existence in any way. But she totally noticed.
Recess
was right after lunch. This was back when elementary school playgrounds
were all concrete and wrought iron, before the child-safety people came
through and wrapped everything in foam padding. The kids affectionately
called the jungle gym “the Toothchipper,” and on a sunny day the slide
got hot enough to cause first-degree burns through thick school-uniform
pants.
Kids spent a lot of time making their own fun in those days.
Usually
that involved some kind of physical or psychological torture. The boys
played tag, and the smallest and weakest kid was perpetually It. The
girls did their own thing, hopscotch or double-dutch or whatever girls
did.
Once in a while, a fight would break out.
“Rebecca No-Hair! Rebecca No-Hair!”
It
was the biggest, dumbest kid in our class. Alan, his name was. God, he
was dumb, and he hated everybody. At least he acted like it.
Rebecca
was standing next to the swing, waiting her turn. There was only one
swing, because the other one had a jagged wooden splinter sticking up
out of it that would have sent any kid stupid enough to try it on a
one-way trip to the proctologist. Alan was on the other swing, pulling
himself higher and higher, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“No-Hair, No-Hair, glows in the dark in her un-der-wear!”
It
didn’t make any sense, but it wasn’t supposed to. Maybe Alan thought it
made sense, but as I mentioned, Alan was dumb. You know that thing kids
do where they tell each other that “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?
He never did figure that one out.
After a couple more verses,
Rebecca started to cry. Not all screamy and snotty like the other
girls. Just silently. Not moving. Hot tears coming down her cheeks.
“Hey, fatass, leave her alone!”
I looked around to see who said that, and realized it was me.
Alan
zeroed in on me with his bully-powered precision-guided laser eyes. He
launched himself off the swings into midair, which would have been
really cool if he hadn’t landed on all fours. He got up, grass stains
on both his knees, and came after me like a kid-seeking missile.
I
got a three-day suspension. So did Alan. But he also got a trip to the
school nurse to get his bloody nose packed. I felt pretty good about
that. Almost good enough to offset the dull ache in my hand from where
his teeth had torn my knuckles up pretty good.
Mom practically
had kittens. She grounded me for a month, which didn’t make all that
much difference because there weren’t any other kids on our street
anyway. I spent the three days in my room reading G.I. Joe comics and
whispering dire and gory threats in Stevie’s ear late at night.
On
Friday, when my suspension was up, I got to school early. Mom was in no
mood for any shenanigans that morning — she’d said so: “I’m in no mood
for any shenanigans, Andrew” — so I got my bike out of the garage and
rode to school.
Most of the kids in my class either walked to
school or rode their bikes. A few took the bus. Rebecca was a bus kid.
She came in just as the first bell rang, the “no, seriously, go inside
and sit down so we can try fruitlessly to teach you something that will
keep you from growing up to be axe murderers” bell. She came in, opened
her Bionic Woman Trapper Keeper, got out a pencil.
“Hi, Andy,” she said.
I
was, at that moment, the stupidest kid in the world. Because instead of
just smiling, all cool, and saying something suave like “Hey, good
lookin’,” I stared at her slack-jawed and said, “What?”
She looked away, letting her hair fall in front of her face again.
“I mean, hi,” I said, scrambling like crazy. “Hi, is what I meant to say.”
And that’s when it happened.
She reached up with one hand, tucked her hair behind her ear, kind of glanced at me out of the corner of her eye … and smiled.
I
bet you think you know what’s coming. We passed notes in class, held
hands at recess, shared a stolen kiss under the mulberry tree on the
way home from school.
None of that happened.
The next
week, Rebecca wasn’t at school. I thought maybe she was sick. But she
didn’t show up the next week either. Or the week after that.
I
asked Mrs. Emerson. This was way before teachers had anything like
ethics or a sense of privacy. “Rebecca and her mother moved away,
Andrew.”
It was a total déjà vu moment. I got tunnel vision. The room spun. I felt dizzy.
Only that time, I got so sick to my stomach I thought I was going to throw up.
We’re
skipping ahead a little now, because the truth is nothing happened for
the next fifteen years. Well, not nothing nothing. I went to high
school, got my driver’s license, smoked some weed, lost my virginity,
graduated (a C-minus average is still passing, thank you very much),
got into a state school, pledged a fraternity, got my degree, got a
job, moved across the country. You know, life.
But none of it was really important.
I
guess one important thing happened. Not important by itself, but
important in the sense that it shapes the rest of the story. See, I
always wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to
write comic books. By the time I grew up, I decided I wanted to write
screenplays, which are basically the same thing only with more money.
So
I got an English degree, which to my dismay had more to do with reading
than writing. And as soon as I threw my cap in the air, before the ink
on my B.A. could dry, I loaded everything I owned into half a dozen
stolen milk crates, packed them in my Honda hatchback and hit the road
for Hollywood, California.
Stupid? You better believe it. I
didn’t have the first idea what I was doing. For a week I actually had
to sleep in my car. Then I waited some tables at an all-night burger
diner in Westwood, made enough to move into a shithole in East Covina.
Life was pretty awful for a while.
But
then things changed. I met a UCLA kid who knew a guy who knew a guy who
got me a P.A. job at Warners. It was a rotten job, mostly delivering
script pages to D-list TV movie stars and getting coffee that no matter
how carefully I followed the instructions I somehow always managed to
mess up. And the money was actually worse than what I made waiting
tables.
But it was work, and it was steady, and it opened doors.
After
a couple of years, I scrabbled my way up the ladder a little bit. I
went from being a production assistant to a production associate, which
is basically the same job only they pay you a little more and yell at
you a lot more. Then I became a production coordinator, and so on, and
so on, and eventually I discovered that I’d gotten myself into a pretty
decent place. I was making enough money that I could afford both an
apartment and a car at the same time, which is a very big deal in L.A.
I had half a dozen screenplays in circulation among friends who swore
they used to be roommates with people who totally work with guys who
know agents. Once in a while, I managed to get into a decent party.
And that’s where it happened.
You
know those houses up on Mulholland, the ones over toward the 101 that
are nice but, you know, not that nice? There’s this producer who lives
over there. Not somebody you’d know, unless you’re in the habit of
reading the credits on unsuccessful TV pilots. But he knew people, and
the people he knew knew other people, so when he threw a party, it
wasn’t an entirely awful place to be.
The previous summer I’d
worked on one of this guy’s shoots, and I met a continuity supervisor
there who one time in the wee hours after an incredibly
out-of-proportion wrap party had drunkenly slurred to me that she would
totally sleep with me if she hadn’t decided to try being a lesbian for
a year to see how it worked out.
A few months later that
continuity supervisor started dating a make-up girl who knew a casting
assistant who lived with an executive assistant at a talent agency on
Sunset, you know the one I mean, and when the invitation to this party
trickled down I decided what the hell.
No, I didn’t take any of
my screenplays with me. But if I said I didn’t think long and hard
about it, you could call me a damn liar.
So we get there, this
house in West Hollywood that had probably sold for five million bucks a
decade ago but that wouldn’t go for more than one point five on the
market today. There are valets, of course, because God, how pathetic
would it be not to have valets? We go in, and it’s just your typical
vapid Hollywood scene. There’s a guy who was on “L.A. Law” for a few
years back when I was in grade school. There’s the girl who married
that big-shot producer and then divorced him when she caught him
casting-couching day-players for “Baywatch.”
And there, over in the corner at the bar talking to a suit in an unbelievably bad hairpiece, is Rebecca Galloway.
Rebecca fucking Galloway.
I
needed a drink, and I needed it bad, and the only way to get it was to
go over to the bar, but that’s the one place in this guy’s house I
can’t possibly go, because that’s where Rebecca fucking Galloway is.
Jesus Christ.
And
this suit. My God. Why do people like that even come to parties like
this? What is he, an insurance salesman? Does he really think he’s got
a snowball’s chance with Rebecca fucking Galloway?
His glass is
empty. He’s chewing open-mouthed on the ice. He turns to the bartender,
and that’s when I see it. That’s when I see Rebecca fucking Galloway
look desperately around for somebody, anybody to rescue her from this
putz.
Sometimes opportunity doesn’t knock, you know? Sometimes it just clinks softly at the glasses.
The
crowd parts for me like I’m Moses and it’s the Red fucking Sea. Next
thing I know I’m at the bar, and the bartender’s looking at me, and I
don’t even want anything any more, but I ask for a Makers on the rocks
and when she hears my voice she turns around and looks at me and
without even recognizing me she’s got this look of utter, blissful
salvation.
And then the moment’s gone, because the fucking
insurance guy’s got his martini-rocks and he actually says to her, “As
I was saying.”
God, who talks like that?
“Excuse me, is it … Reggie?”
I look around to see who said that, and realize it’s me. Like, again.
“Ronald,” he says, sticking out his hand.
“Ronald,
right. Listen, I just came from … over there” — I wave in the general
direction of, like, the entire party — “and … Ian was asking if
anybody’d seen you.”
“Ian?” he says. Then his eyes get big.
“Really?” He turns to Rebecca and pours on the charm. He’s all “Excuse
me, my dear,” and I want to laugh so badly I almost choke on my drink.
And
then he slides off his chair and wanders into the crowd and Rebecca
turns back to the bar and puts her head in her hands and say “Oh,
merciful God!”
She’s shaking. Christ, is she crying? What have I walked into the middle of here? I make half my drink disappear.
“Hey,” I say. “Hey. I … um. Are you okay?”
Hand
on her shoulder. Her bare shoulder. She’s wearing this
halter-dress-thing and it’s red and her shoulder has, like, nothing
covering it at all and then I’m touching it.
She reaches up with
one hand and tucks her hair back behind her ear, and God, I’m nine
years old again. There are tears streaming down her apple-red cheeks,
but not because she’s crying. She’s laughing so hard she can barely
breathe.
“Did you see that?” she stage-whispers between gasps. “Did you see that? I think that guy’s toupee was wearing a toupee!”
The
rest of my drink is gone, and I’m not sure where it went. “Yeah, sorry,
I didn’t mean to, like, interrupt you there. I could see you were
getting your mack on.”
“Oh, you read me like a book,” she says,
eyes sparkling like the room’s filled with a thousand candles. “But you
were just being polite, right? I mean, if Ian wanted to talk to him” –
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, it must be important.”
“Right,” she says. “If it’s Ian it’s got to be important.”
“Right.”
“Who’s Ian?” she asks all innocent, setting me up and knowing I’m not just gonna fall, I’m gonna run right to the edge and jump.
“No
idea,” I say, and then she’s laughing, and I’m laughing, and when she
stops laughing she’s smiling, and I’m wondering where the nearest
mountain is, and whether it has glaciers on top.
“Excuse me,” I
call to the bartender, who’s been ignoring all this in a way that’s
nothing short of commendable. “Can we get … we’re gonna need” — I look
at Rebecca out of the corner of her eye and she’s smirking at me.
“Could we please have a lot more drinks over here?” I ask. “Thanks.”
Life
stories. Small town in Illinois. Yeah, I know that part, skip ahead.
Parents divorced when she was ten. Okay, that explains a lot. Bounced
around for a few years. Mom settled down and got a good job, moved them
into a house in the burbs. Junior high, made friends. Shopping at the
mall one day when all of a sudden there’s this guy with a business
card, and next thing she knows she’s in a soup commercial. She’s twelve
years old and she’s selling soup.
“You were a soup spokesmodel,” I say.
“Yes.”
“A soupsmodel.”
“Yes,” she says, draining her drink. “Can I finish my story now?”
“Not on an empty stomach,” I say, and I wave to the bartender making the universal gesture for another round.
“Big spender, huh?” she says, cracking an ice cube between her molars.
“Well, it’s an open bar,” I say.
She
just kinda stares at me for a minute, like she can’t believe what I
just said. “Big spender … huh?” she says slowly, carefully enunciating
around each word.
“Are you kidding?” I say. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I throw money around like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Good,” she says, stirring the swizzle stick in the drink that’s just appeared by her elbow. “Where was I?”
“Soupsmodel,” I say.
“Right. Anyway, so there I was, twelve years old, in a nationally televised commercial.”
“For soup,” I say.
“Reggie,” she says.
“Ronald,” I say.
She
smirks. “Clever. Okay, let’s do this the old-fashioned way.” She sits
up straight, sweeps her hair over her shoulder. I almost fall out of my
chair. She holds out her hand. “I’m Rebecca,” she says.
I almost
lose it then. I almost give it all away. But no, I hang on to it by the
skin of my teeth. “Andrew,” I say, taking her hand and never, ever,
ever wanting to let go.
And you know, she’s not exactly racing to let go of mine, either.
Moments
like that feel like they last a lot longer than they really do. We’re
talking like a second here, maybe a second and a half. In the movies it
would be at least ten seconds, long enough for the camera to push in
and the soundtrack to swell. But here, it’s two heartbeats, and it’s
gone.
“Andrew,” she says, “the soup isn’t really an important
part of this story. This story is going to continue, you see, and the
soup isn’t going to be a part of it. The soup, its purpose fulfilled,
is now going to exit gracefully to stage left. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, and nobody has ever been in love like I am right now.
She
tells me the rest of the story. TV commercial at twelve, another one at
fourteen. Made enough money to tuck away for college, but hardly a big
break into stardom. A degree in broadcast communication, then after
college, the starry lights of the Hollywood way.
“So what do you do now?” I ask her, not giving half a damn, just wanting to watch her mouth as she answers.
Only she doesn’t. She sips her drink instead. “What do you do, Andrew?” she says.
“I asked you first.”
“I asked you most recently.”
And there it is again. That fire in her eyes. Have you ever stood beneath a 10,000-watt klieg light? That’s what it felt like.
“I’m a writer,” I say.
“Uh-huh,” she nods. “And what do you do when you need to pay the rent?”
“Well,”
I say, squaring my shoulders, “I don’t like to blow my own horn. But
I’m a pretty influential production coordinator at a … major motion
picture studio.”
“Really?” she gasps.
“I’m trying to keep it low-key tonight, though.”
“But you’re a very powerful man.”
“I don’t like to blow my own horn.”
“Is
that your way of saying you’re looking for somebody to blow it for
you?” she says. Her eyes go through me like spears, and I’m just a
wriggling fish.
“And what do you do?” I say, operating totally on autopilot at this point.
She
clears her throat, sips her drink again, blows a stray hair out of her
face, basically goes through a petit mal seizure of tics and quirks.
“Lately, mostly recording work,” she says.
“You’re a singer?”
“Only bad karaoke, and only when I’m so drunk I … come to think of it, I’ve never been drunk enough to sing karaoke.”
“Night’s still young.”
“And so are we,” she says.
“You’re changing the subject,” I say.
“I’m trying, but you’re not letting me. What happened to the suave, chivalrous gentleman who saved me from that awful wretch?”
“You forgot powerful.”
“No, I didn’t,” she says. “Not for a second.”
“You’re doing it again,” I say.
“And yet you’re still not letting me.”
I
just let that sit there for a second. Oh, sure, I could pretend I’m
being all cool. But the truth is my mind is completely and utterly
blank. I think I’m literally hypnotized. Any minute now, she’s gonna
have me clucking like a chicken. Or climbing a mountain for her.
Whichever comes first.
“Voiceover work,” she says. “Mostly.”
“You mean like … radio?” I ask.
“Sort of. Television.”
“Are you the girl in the monster truck commercial?”
“If that were the truth, I’d be about a million times less embarrassed than I am right now,” she says.
“It’s like pulling off a band-aid. Just tell me.”
“I dub cartoons,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
“I dub imported cartoons. From other countries.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Mostly from Japan,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
She kinda stares for a minute. “That’s it?” she asks. “Just ‘okay?’”
“Yeah,” I say. “What did you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know, something sarcastic.”
“I’m not sarcastic.”
“You’re incredibly sarcastic.”
“See what I did there? When I said I wasn’t sarcastic, I was being sarcastic.”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.”
For
what must be the fourth time, maybe fifth, her drink is empty. So’s
mine, but I forgot about it a long time ago. She’s playing with the ice
cubes, stacking up against the side of the glass with her swizzle then
knocking them down again.
“You want another?” I ask.
“No,” she says without really thinking about it. “It’s getting late.”
“It’s eleven-thirty.”
“I’ve got a call in the morning,” she says.
At
this point in my life, I want nothing more than to ask her, “Did I do
something wrong?” I’m a profoundly stupid man, but I’m smart enough to
know that that would be a mistake. So I just sit for a minute, not
saying anything, letting her not say anything, wondering whether this
is an uncomfortable silence or a comfortable one.
“It’s getting late,” she says again.
“Want me to walk you out?” I ask. Look, I’m doing the best I can here. Get off my back.
“No, that’s okay,” she says. She opens this microscopic little purse and pulls out her valet ticket.
“Give me your number.”
I look around, but who am I fooling. You’ve heard this joke before.
“What?” she asks, then immediately: “No.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because
I don’t give my phone number to strange men,” she says, fire in her
eyes. Fire like a thousand candles, fire like a 10,000-watt klieg lamp,
fire that gets inside my head and burns out every last vestige of
reason or self-awareness.
“I’m not a strange man,” I say to her. “We’ve known each other since we were nine.”
If this were an Old West saloon, the piano player just would have stopped.
“What?” she asks, hitting the T so hard I can feel her breath on my neck from three feet away.
“Rebecca Galloway, from Culverton, Illinois,” I say. “J.F. Pierce elementary. Mrs. Emerson’s class.”
She starts to get it.
“Andy?”
“Andrew now, but yeah.”
“Glows in the dark in her underwear,” she half-whispers.
“Yeah.”
“You kicked that kid’s ass.”
“Got suspended for three days for it, too,” I say.
“I remember,” she says.
“You do?”
“Like it was yesterday,” she says.
I just sort of roll that one around on my tongue for a second.
“I don’t, really,” she says.
“What?”
“Glow in the dark in my underwear. I don’t, really.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I just wanted to tell you that,” she says.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
Everything sort of goes into slow-motion.
“Are there glaciers on top of Mt. Everest?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” she says.
“You sure?”
“No,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
From somewhere on the other side of the house, about fifty people all laugh at the same joke.
“Give me a piece of paper,” she says. “Right now, right this second.”
I
fumble in my pockets. There’s a piece of paper, thank holy God above.
No pen. The bartender’s been listening to this whole thing, apparently,
because man, he is right there.
Her hands are shaking a little as she writes her number down. I think she thinks I don’t notice.
My hand’s back in my pocket now. It’s wrapped around that piece of paper like I might never let it go.
“I’m gonna call you,” I say.
“Good,” she says.
“Not tomorrow, though.”
“No?”
“No. I don’t want to be creepy. Not tomorrow. Not the next day.”
“Oh,” she says.
“Maybe this weekend.”
“I’ve got plans this weekend,” she says.
“Do you really?” I ask.
“Does it matter?” she says.
It doesn’t. She knows it, I know it. There’s no point in saying it.
“I’m gonna call you,” I say.
“When?” she says.
“Tonight,” I say. “As soon as I get home. Probably in the car on the way home.”
“Good,” she says.
She
doesn’t say anything else. Neither do I. I can’t think of anything. I
don’t know what her reason is. Anyway, she turns her body without
turning her head. She starts to walk away without looking where she’s
going. She bumps right into this guy. This actor. You’d know him.
Household name. Very, very important guy.
“Oh, excuse me,” he says, standing straight as an arrow and smiling at her like she’s the most important person in the world.
“Uh-huh,” she says, and just keeps walking.
There
wasn’t any point in staying at the party after that. I made an orbit
around the room, saying good night to some people I knew, who
introduced me to people they knew so I had to say good night to them
too.
I went through it all in a fog, with the stupidest grin on my face you’ve ever seen.
Then
I was at the door, making my way past people smoking cigars and
cigarettes and maybe something else. The valet was leaning against the
stand in one of those ubiquitous red jackets that seem to cover a third
of the population of L.A. at any given time. I fished my ticket out of
my pocket, gave it to him, waited while he pulled my old hatchback
around from the very, very remote spot where he’d parked it. I slipped
the guy a bill — I didn’t even look at it; it might have been a fifty
for all I know — got in, and drove off. Headed down Mulholland toward
the 405, windows open in the cool California night.
I didn’t
actually mean what I’d said. I didn’t actually mean that I was going to
call her from the car on the way home. But suddenly, looking out over
the glowing hills as I weaved my way down into the basin, I knew that’s
exactly what I was going to do.
I fumbled for my phone, got it out of my pocket, then reached for the piece of paper with Rebecca’s number on it.
It wasn’t there.
Checked my other pocket. It wasn’t there.
Checked every pocket. It wasn’t there.
That’s when it hit me.
I’d
had exactly one piece of paper in my pocket. Just one. And I’d given it
to her without looking at it. And she’d written her number down without
looking at it either. And then I stuck it back in my pocket without so
much as glancing at it.
And I didn’t look at it when I handed it to the valet, either.
She’d written her number down on my valet stub.
Son
of a bitch. Son of a bitch! I did everything. I yelled. I pounded the
steering wheel. I screamed curse words I hadn’t said since high school.
I think I made up some curse words.
Fifteen years. I’d been in
love with this girl for fifteen years. With absolutely no chance of
ever seeing her again, ever, in my entire life. And then I ran into her
by coincidence at a party I wasn’t even technically invited to.
And I lost her number.
There was just no way this was my life. There was no way this could possibly be real.
It just wasn’t fair.
For
a second, I seriously considered wrenching the wheel over and driving
right off the hillside. I was that angry. Angry at myself, angry at
life. Angry at everything that ever was or that ever would be.
It
wasn’t until I got halfway to Santa Monica that I realized what an
idiot I’d been. I don’t mean for losing her number. Of course that made
me an idiot. But the kind of guy who loses a girl’s number is just a
garden-variety, everyday idiot. Any of us could be that guy.
I was a much bigger idiot than that.
I
tore across four lanes of freeway traffic with just a cursory glance in
my rear-view. Horns and swears, blah blah blah. Blew through the red
light at the exit without realizing it, rolled through the red light at
the onramp without giving a damn. Then back on the freeway, pedal to
the metal, rocketing north toward the Hollywood Hills. Realizing that
was my mountain all along, and that if it didn’t have a glacier at the
top, at least it had a valet with a trash can full of used tickets next
to him. And I didn’t have to carve her name in it myself. It was
already there.
I weaved through traffic, screaming at the cars to get out of my way, laughing at the top of my lungs.
God, this is going to make a great story someday.
---
http://theshapeofdays.com/2007/06/29/the-glacier-with-her-name-carved-in-it.html
That
was the answer. I don’t have to tell you the question. We’ve all been
there. We’ve all heard this story a million times before. But I’m going
to go back and tell you how it started, because context matters, man.
Context is important.
Context is what’s going to keep me from looking like a complete jackass when you learn how this all turned out.
Rebecca
isn’t one of those sexy names. It’s hard to say “Rebecca” in a flirty
way. You can’t really imagine yourself crying out “Rebecca!” in the
heat of … well, whatever. Rebecca’s not a sexy name.
But God. She made up for it.
She
had this smile. I don’t know how to describe it. There are all these
clichés. A smile that lit up the room. Smiling from ear to ear. Blah
blah blah. It’s all nonsense. Just empty words.
Rebecca’s smile
is indescribable. Literally. It cannot be described. You have to see it
to understand it. It’s like … when she smiles, pure joy just surges out
of her eyes and hits you full in the face, like being sprayed with a
riot-control firehose wielded by puppies and kittens. And that’s just
the side-effect. That’s just what it feels like to be in the room when
she does it.
When she turns that smile on you, full blast …
It’s like seeing the face of God.
The
first time she ever smiled at me, I wanted to call in sick the next
day. I wanted to call in sick and get on a plane and fly to Tibet or
wherever the hell it is and climb Mt. Everest. And when I got to the
top, I wanted to carve her name into the glacier where it would exist
for all eternity.
Do they even have glaciers on top of Mt.
Everest? I don’t know. Whatever. I wanted to name a river after her. Or
plant a flag with her picture on it on Mars. Or discover some new
species of glorious bird and name it after her.
It took about
three seconds for me to decide that I would do anything in the world
for her. I’d cross an ocean, found a republic, raise up an army,
anything at all.
I was nine years old.
We were in the
fourth grade. Rebecca was a transfer student from out of state. We were
halfway through our unit on fractions when there was a knock at the
door. The assistant principal — somebody I knew all too well after that
little incident in the cafeteria the previous fall — opened the door
and led her in.
You know that scene in the movies where
everything goes into slow motion and some cheesy 80s love song plays on
the soundtrack? It’s supposed to be a joke, but I swear to God, that’s
exactly what it was like. I got dizzy. The room spun. “Class,” Mrs.
Emerson said, “this is Rebecca … Rebecca … Rebecca.”
She was
shy. God, she was shy. I could just see it, the way she kept her eyes
on her shoes the whole time. The way she clutched her Bionic Woman
Trapper Keeper to her chest as if she was trying to hide behind it. The
way a lock of honey-brown hair came loose from her barrette and fell in
front of her face and she didn’t brush it out of the way.
There
were a lot of empty seats in our classroom. Our school was built in the
50s, during that postwar boom when it seemed like everybody in the
country was having kids as fast as possible. There were enough desks
for at least thirty kids, but there couldn’t have been more than
twenty-five of us.
There were a lot of empty seats in the room.
One of them was beside me.
I
prayed. I honest-to-God prayed. And when Mrs. Emerson spoke, it sounded
like the teacher in those Charlie Brown cartoons, all muted horns and
no words.
She came over and sat down.
Next to me.
That’s when it sunk in. What Mrs. Emerson said. She’d said, “Rebecca, you can sit next to Andrew.”
Thank you, God.
She
put her Trapper Keeper on the desk, opened it with a velcro explosion.
Some of the other kids snickered. She turned bright pink, looked
straight down into her lap. My heart broke a little bit.
Then it
was back to fractions, two-thirds of this and five-sevenths of that —
who the hell measures out five sevenths of something, anyway?
To
this day, I’m convinced that I blew the math portion of my SATs because
I spent the entire unit on fractions staring wide-eyed at Rebecca
Galloway.
“Mom,” I said in what I guess in retrospect was a pretty whiney voice. “Can you take me to the store tonight?”
“What for?” she mumbled, not looking up from the Ladies’ Home Journal or whatever she was reading.
“Andy wants to buy a butt brush to wash his butt!”
“Shut up, Steven!”
“Andrew, don’t tell your brother to shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am. But can you take me to the store tonight?”
“What do you need at the store, sweetie?”
“You know,” I said. “School stuff.”
“Butt brush, butt brush, Andy wants a butt brush!”
“Shut up, Steven!” I slugged him in the arm hard enough to raise a goose egg.
“Mooooom!” Stevie whined. “Andy hit me!”
“I don’t blame him,” Mom mumbled.
The next day I showed up to school with a brand new Six Million Dollar Man Trapper Keeper.
Rebecca
totally noticed. She didn’t say anything, or make eye contact with me,
or acknowledge my existence in any way. But she totally noticed.
Recess
was right after lunch. This was back when elementary school playgrounds
were all concrete and wrought iron, before the child-safety people came
through and wrapped everything in foam padding. The kids affectionately
called the jungle gym “the Toothchipper,” and on a sunny day the slide
got hot enough to cause first-degree burns through thick school-uniform
pants.
Kids spent a lot of time making their own fun in those days.
Usually
that involved some kind of physical or psychological torture. The boys
played tag, and the smallest and weakest kid was perpetually It. The
girls did their own thing, hopscotch or double-dutch or whatever girls
did.
Once in a while, a fight would break out.
“Rebecca No-Hair! Rebecca No-Hair!”
It
was the biggest, dumbest kid in our class. Alan, his name was. God, he
was dumb, and he hated everybody. At least he acted like it.
Rebecca
was standing next to the swing, waiting her turn. There was only one
swing, because the other one had a jagged wooden splinter sticking up
out of it that would have sent any kid stupid enough to try it on a
one-way trip to the proctologist. Alan was on the other swing, pulling
himself higher and higher, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“No-Hair, No-Hair, glows in the dark in her un-der-wear!”
It
didn’t make any sense, but it wasn’t supposed to. Maybe Alan thought it
made sense, but as I mentioned, Alan was dumb. You know that thing kids
do where they tell each other that “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?
He never did figure that one out.
After a couple more verses,
Rebecca started to cry. Not all screamy and snotty like the other
girls. Just silently. Not moving. Hot tears coming down her cheeks.
“Hey, fatass, leave her alone!”
I looked around to see who said that, and realized it was me.
Alan
zeroed in on me with his bully-powered precision-guided laser eyes. He
launched himself off the swings into midair, which would have been
really cool if he hadn’t landed on all fours. He got up, grass stains
on both his knees, and came after me like a kid-seeking missile.
I
got a three-day suspension. So did Alan. But he also got a trip to the
school nurse to get his bloody nose packed. I felt pretty good about
that. Almost good enough to offset the dull ache in my hand from where
his teeth had torn my knuckles up pretty good.
Mom practically
had kittens. She grounded me for a month, which didn’t make all that
much difference because there weren’t any other kids on our street
anyway. I spent the three days in my room reading G.I. Joe comics and
whispering dire and gory threats in Stevie’s ear late at night.
On
Friday, when my suspension was up, I got to school early. Mom was in no
mood for any shenanigans that morning — she’d said so: “I’m in no mood
for any shenanigans, Andrew” — so I got my bike out of the garage and
rode to school.
Most of the kids in my class either walked to
school or rode their bikes. A few took the bus. Rebecca was a bus kid.
She came in just as the first bell rang, the “no, seriously, go inside
and sit down so we can try fruitlessly to teach you something that will
keep you from growing up to be axe murderers” bell. She came in, opened
her Bionic Woman Trapper Keeper, got out a pencil.
“Hi, Andy,” she said.
I
was, at that moment, the stupidest kid in the world. Because instead of
just smiling, all cool, and saying something suave like “Hey, good
lookin’,” I stared at her slack-jawed and said, “What?”
She looked away, letting her hair fall in front of her face again.
“I mean, hi,” I said, scrambling like crazy. “Hi, is what I meant to say.”
And that’s when it happened.
She reached up with one hand, tucked her hair behind her ear, kind of glanced at me out of the corner of her eye … and smiled.
I
bet you think you know what’s coming. We passed notes in class, held
hands at recess, shared a stolen kiss under the mulberry tree on the
way home from school.
None of that happened.
The next
week, Rebecca wasn’t at school. I thought maybe she was sick. But she
didn’t show up the next week either. Or the week after that.
I
asked Mrs. Emerson. This was way before teachers had anything like
ethics or a sense of privacy. “Rebecca and her mother moved away,
Andrew.”
It was a total déjà vu moment. I got tunnel vision. The room spun. I felt dizzy.
Only that time, I got so sick to my stomach I thought I was going to throw up.
We’re
skipping ahead a little now, because the truth is nothing happened for
the next fifteen years. Well, not nothing nothing. I went to high
school, got my driver’s license, smoked some weed, lost my virginity,
graduated (a C-minus average is still passing, thank you very much),
got into a state school, pledged a fraternity, got my degree, got a
job, moved across the country. You know, life.
But none of it was really important.
I
guess one important thing happened. Not important by itself, but
important in the sense that it shapes the rest of the story. See, I
always wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to
write comic books. By the time I grew up, I decided I wanted to write
screenplays, which are basically the same thing only with more money.
So
I got an English degree, which to my dismay had more to do with reading
than writing. And as soon as I threw my cap in the air, before the ink
on my B.A. could dry, I loaded everything I owned into half a dozen
stolen milk crates, packed them in my Honda hatchback and hit the road
for Hollywood, California.
Stupid? You better believe it. I
didn’t have the first idea what I was doing. For a week I actually had
to sleep in my car. Then I waited some tables at an all-night burger
diner in Westwood, made enough to move into a shithole in East Covina.
Life was pretty awful for a while.
But
then things changed. I met a UCLA kid who knew a guy who knew a guy who
got me a P.A. job at Warners. It was a rotten job, mostly delivering
script pages to D-list TV movie stars and getting coffee that no matter
how carefully I followed the instructions I somehow always managed to
mess up. And the money was actually worse than what I made waiting
tables.
But it was work, and it was steady, and it opened doors.
After
a couple of years, I scrabbled my way up the ladder a little bit. I
went from being a production assistant to a production associate, which
is basically the same job only they pay you a little more and yell at
you a lot more. Then I became a production coordinator, and so on, and
so on, and eventually I discovered that I’d gotten myself into a pretty
decent place. I was making enough money that I could afford both an
apartment and a car at the same time, which is a very big deal in L.A.
I had half a dozen screenplays in circulation among friends who swore
they used to be roommates with people who totally work with guys who
know agents. Once in a while, I managed to get into a decent party.
And that’s where it happened.
You
know those houses up on Mulholland, the ones over toward the 101 that
are nice but, you know, not that nice? There’s this producer who lives
over there. Not somebody you’d know, unless you’re in the habit of
reading the credits on unsuccessful TV pilots. But he knew people, and
the people he knew knew other people, so when he threw a party, it
wasn’t an entirely awful place to be.
The previous summer I’d
worked on one of this guy’s shoots, and I met a continuity supervisor
there who one time in the wee hours after an incredibly
out-of-proportion wrap party had drunkenly slurred to me that she would
totally sleep with me if she hadn’t decided to try being a lesbian for
a year to see how it worked out.
A few months later that
continuity supervisor started dating a make-up girl who knew a casting
assistant who lived with an executive assistant at a talent agency on
Sunset, you know the one I mean, and when the invitation to this party
trickled down I decided what the hell.
No, I didn’t take any of
my screenplays with me. But if I said I didn’t think long and hard
about it, you could call me a damn liar.
So we get there, this
house in West Hollywood that had probably sold for five million bucks a
decade ago but that wouldn’t go for more than one point five on the
market today. There are valets, of course, because God, how pathetic
would it be not to have valets? We go in, and it’s just your typical
vapid Hollywood scene. There’s a guy who was on “L.A. Law” for a few
years back when I was in grade school. There’s the girl who married
that big-shot producer and then divorced him when she caught him
casting-couching day-players for “Baywatch.”
And there, over in the corner at the bar talking to a suit in an unbelievably bad hairpiece, is Rebecca Galloway.
Rebecca fucking Galloway.
I
needed a drink, and I needed it bad, and the only way to get it was to
go over to the bar, but that’s the one place in this guy’s house I
can’t possibly go, because that’s where Rebecca fucking Galloway is.
Jesus Christ.
And
this suit. My God. Why do people like that even come to parties like
this? What is he, an insurance salesman? Does he really think he’s got
a snowball’s chance with Rebecca fucking Galloway?
His glass is
empty. He’s chewing open-mouthed on the ice. He turns to the bartender,
and that’s when I see it. That’s when I see Rebecca fucking Galloway
look desperately around for somebody, anybody to rescue her from this
putz.
Sometimes opportunity doesn’t knock, you know? Sometimes it just clinks softly at the glasses.
The
crowd parts for me like I’m Moses and it’s the Red fucking Sea. Next
thing I know I’m at the bar, and the bartender’s looking at me, and I
don’t even want anything any more, but I ask for a Makers on the rocks
and when she hears my voice she turns around and looks at me and
without even recognizing me she’s got this look of utter, blissful
salvation.
And then the moment’s gone, because the fucking
insurance guy’s got his martini-rocks and he actually says to her, “As
I was saying.”
God, who talks like that?
“Excuse me, is it … Reggie?”
I look around to see who said that, and realize it’s me. Like, again.
“Ronald,” he says, sticking out his hand.
“Ronald,
right. Listen, I just came from … over there” — I wave in the general
direction of, like, the entire party — “and … Ian was asking if
anybody’d seen you.”
“Ian?” he says. Then his eyes get big.
“Really?” He turns to Rebecca and pours on the charm. He’s all “Excuse
me, my dear,” and I want to laugh so badly I almost choke on my drink.
And
then he slides off his chair and wanders into the crowd and Rebecca
turns back to the bar and puts her head in her hands and say “Oh,
merciful God!”
She’s shaking. Christ, is she crying? What have I walked into the middle of here? I make half my drink disappear.
“Hey,” I say. “Hey. I … um. Are you okay?”
Hand
on her shoulder. Her bare shoulder. She’s wearing this
halter-dress-thing and it’s red and her shoulder has, like, nothing
covering it at all and then I’m touching it.
She reaches up with
one hand and tucks her hair back behind her ear, and God, I’m nine
years old again. There are tears streaming down her apple-red cheeks,
but not because she’s crying. She’s laughing so hard she can barely
breathe.
“Did you see that?” she stage-whispers between gasps. “Did you see that? I think that guy’s toupee was wearing a toupee!”
The
rest of my drink is gone, and I’m not sure where it went. “Yeah, sorry,
I didn’t mean to, like, interrupt you there. I could see you were
getting your mack on.”
“Oh, you read me like a book,” she says,
eyes sparkling like the room’s filled with a thousand candles. “But you
were just being polite, right? I mean, if Ian wanted to talk to him” –
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, it must be important.”
“Right,” she says. “If it’s Ian it’s got to be important.”
“Right.”
“Who’s Ian?” she asks all innocent, setting me up and knowing I’m not just gonna fall, I’m gonna run right to the edge and jump.
“No
idea,” I say, and then she’s laughing, and I’m laughing, and when she
stops laughing she’s smiling, and I’m wondering where the nearest
mountain is, and whether it has glaciers on top.
“Excuse me,” I
call to the bartender, who’s been ignoring all this in a way that’s
nothing short of commendable. “Can we get … we’re gonna need” — I look
at Rebecca out of the corner of her eye and she’s smirking at me.
“Could we please have a lot more drinks over here?” I ask. “Thanks.”
Life
stories. Small town in Illinois. Yeah, I know that part, skip ahead.
Parents divorced when she was ten. Okay, that explains a lot. Bounced
around for a few years. Mom settled down and got a good job, moved them
into a house in the burbs. Junior high, made friends. Shopping at the
mall one day when all of a sudden there’s this guy with a business
card, and next thing she knows she’s in a soup commercial. She’s twelve
years old and she’s selling soup.
“You were a soup spokesmodel,” I say.
“Yes.”
“A soupsmodel.”
“Yes,” she says, draining her drink. “Can I finish my story now?”
“Not on an empty stomach,” I say, and I wave to the bartender making the universal gesture for another round.
“Big spender, huh?” she says, cracking an ice cube between her molars.
“Well, it’s an open bar,” I say.
She
just kinda stares at me for a minute, like she can’t believe what I
just said. “Big spender … huh?” she says slowly, carefully enunciating
around each word.
“Are you kidding?” I say. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I throw money around like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Good,” she says, stirring the swizzle stick in the drink that’s just appeared by her elbow. “Where was I?”
“Soupsmodel,” I say.
“Right. Anyway, so there I was, twelve years old, in a nationally televised commercial.”
“For soup,” I say.
“Reggie,” she says.
“Ronald,” I say.
She
smirks. “Clever. Okay, let’s do this the old-fashioned way.” She sits
up straight, sweeps her hair over her shoulder. I almost fall out of my
chair. She holds out her hand. “I’m Rebecca,” she says.
I almost
lose it then. I almost give it all away. But no, I hang on to it by the
skin of my teeth. “Andrew,” I say, taking her hand and never, ever,
ever wanting to let go.
And you know, she’s not exactly racing to let go of mine, either.
Moments
like that feel like they last a lot longer than they really do. We’re
talking like a second here, maybe a second and a half. In the movies it
would be at least ten seconds, long enough for the camera to push in
and the soundtrack to swell. But here, it’s two heartbeats, and it’s
gone.
“Andrew,” she says, “the soup isn’t really an important
part of this story. This story is going to continue, you see, and the
soup isn’t going to be a part of it. The soup, its purpose fulfilled,
is now going to exit gracefully to stage left. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, and nobody has ever been in love like I am right now.
She
tells me the rest of the story. TV commercial at twelve, another one at
fourteen. Made enough money to tuck away for college, but hardly a big
break into stardom. A degree in broadcast communication, then after
college, the starry lights of the Hollywood way.
“So what do you do now?” I ask her, not giving half a damn, just wanting to watch her mouth as she answers.
Only she doesn’t. She sips her drink instead. “What do you do, Andrew?” she says.
“I asked you first.”
“I asked you most recently.”
And there it is again. That fire in her eyes. Have you ever stood beneath a 10,000-watt klieg light? That’s what it felt like.
“I’m a writer,” I say.
“Uh-huh,” she nods. “And what do you do when you need to pay the rent?”
“Well,”
I say, squaring my shoulders, “I don’t like to blow my own horn. But
I’m a pretty influential production coordinator at a … major motion
picture studio.”
“Really?” she gasps.
“I’m trying to keep it low-key tonight, though.”
“But you’re a very powerful man.”
“I don’t like to blow my own horn.”
“Is
that your way of saying you’re looking for somebody to blow it for
you?” she says. Her eyes go through me like spears, and I’m just a
wriggling fish.
“And what do you do?” I say, operating totally on autopilot at this point.
She
clears her throat, sips her drink again, blows a stray hair out of her
face, basically goes through a petit mal seizure of tics and quirks.
“Lately, mostly recording work,” she says.
“You’re a singer?”
“Only bad karaoke, and only when I’m so drunk I … come to think of it, I’ve never been drunk enough to sing karaoke.”
“Night’s still young.”
“And so are we,” she says.
“You’re changing the subject,” I say.
“I’m trying, but you’re not letting me. What happened to the suave, chivalrous gentleman who saved me from that awful wretch?”
“You forgot powerful.”
“No, I didn’t,” she says. “Not for a second.”
“You’re doing it again,” I say.
“And yet you’re still not letting me.”
I
just let that sit there for a second. Oh, sure, I could pretend I’m
being all cool. But the truth is my mind is completely and utterly
blank. I think I’m literally hypnotized. Any minute now, she’s gonna
have me clucking like a chicken. Or climbing a mountain for her.
Whichever comes first.
“Voiceover work,” she says. “Mostly.”
“You mean like … radio?” I ask.
“Sort of. Television.”
“Are you the girl in the monster truck commercial?”
“If that were the truth, I’d be about a million times less embarrassed than I am right now,” she says.
“It’s like pulling off a band-aid. Just tell me.”
“I dub cartoons,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
“I dub imported cartoons. From other countries.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Mostly from Japan,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
She kinda stares for a minute. “That’s it?” she asks. “Just ‘okay?’”
“Yeah,” I say. “What did you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know, something sarcastic.”
“I’m not sarcastic.”
“You’re incredibly sarcastic.”
“See what I did there? When I said I wasn’t sarcastic, I was being sarcastic.”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.”
For
what must be the fourth time, maybe fifth, her drink is empty. So’s
mine, but I forgot about it a long time ago. She’s playing with the ice
cubes, stacking up against the side of the glass with her swizzle then
knocking them down again.
“You want another?” I ask.
“No,” she says without really thinking about it. “It’s getting late.”
“It’s eleven-thirty.”
“I’ve got a call in the morning,” she says.
At
this point in my life, I want nothing more than to ask her, “Did I do
something wrong?” I’m a profoundly stupid man, but I’m smart enough to
know that that would be a mistake. So I just sit for a minute, not
saying anything, letting her not say anything, wondering whether this
is an uncomfortable silence or a comfortable one.
“It’s getting late,” she says again.
“Want me to walk you out?” I ask. Look, I’m doing the best I can here. Get off my back.
“No, that’s okay,” she says. She opens this microscopic little purse and pulls out her valet ticket.
“Give me your number.”
I look around, but who am I fooling. You’ve heard this joke before.
“What?” she asks, then immediately: “No.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because
I don’t give my phone number to strange men,” she says, fire in her
eyes. Fire like a thousand candles, fire like a 10,000-watt klieg lamp,
fire that gets inside my head and burns out every last vestige of
reason or self-awareness.
“I’m not a strange man,” I say to her. “We’ve known each other since we were nine.”
If this were an Old West saloon, the piano player just would have stopped.
“What?” she asks, hitting the T so hard I can feel her breath on my neck from three feet away.
“Rebecca Galloway, from Culverton, Illinois,” I say. “J.F. Pierce elementary. Mrs. Emerson’s class.”
She starts to get it.
“Andy?”
“Andrew now, but yeah.”
“Glows in the dark in her underwear,” she half-whispers.
“Yeah.”
“You kicked that kid’s ass.”
“Got suspended for three days for it, too,” I say.
“I remember,” she says.
“You do?”
“Like it was yesterday,” she says.
I just sort of roll that one around on my tongue for a second.
“I don’t, really,” she says.
“What?”
“Glow in the dark in my underwear. I don’t, really.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I just wanted to tell you that,” she says.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
Everything sort of goes into slow-motion.
“Are there glaciers on top of Mt. Everest?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” she says.
“You sure?”
“No,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
From somewhere on the other side of the house, about fifty people all laugh at the same joke.
“Give me a piece of paper,” she says. “Right now, right this second.”
I
fumble in my pockets. There’s a piece of paper, thank holy God above.
No pen. The bartender’s been listening to this whole thing, apparently,
because man, he is right there.
Her hands are shaking a little as she writes her number down. I think she thinks I don’t notice.
My hand’s back in my pocket now. It’s wrapped around that piece of paper like I might never let it go.
“I’m gonna call you,” I say.
“Good,” she says.
“Not tomorrow, though.”
“No?”
“No. I don’t want to be creepy. Not tomorrow. Not the next day.”
“Oh,” she says.
“Maybe this weekend.”
“I’ve got plans this weekend,” she says.
“Do you really?” I ask.
“Does it matter?” she says.
It doesn’t. She knows it, I know it. There’s no point in saying it.
“I’m gonna call you,” I say.
“When?” she says.
“Tonight,” I say. “As soon as I get home. Probably in the car on the way home.”
“Good,” she says.
She
doesn’t say anything else. Neither do I. I can’t think of anything. I
don’t know what her reason is. Anyway, she turns her body without
turning her head. She starts to walk away without looking where she’s
going. She bumps right into this guy. This actor. You’d know him.
Household name. Very, very important guy.
“Oh, excuse me,” he says, standing straight as an arrow and smiling at her like she’s the most important person in the world.
“Uh-huh,” she says, and just keeps walking.
There
wasn’t any point in staying at the party after that. I made an orbit
around the room, saying good night to some people I knew, who
introduced me to people they knew so I had to say good night to them
too.
I went through it all in a fog, with the stupidest grin on my face you’ve ever seen.
Then
I was at the door, making my way past people smoking cigars and
cigarettes and maybe something else. The valet was leaning against the
stand in one of those ubiquitous red jackets that seem to cover a third
of the population of L.A. at any given time. I fished my ticket out of
my pocket, gave it to him, waited while he pulled my old hatchback
around from the very, very remote spot where he’d parked it. I slipped
the guy a bill — I didn’t even look at it; it might have been a fifty
for all I know — got in, and drove off. Headed down Mulholland toward
the 405, windows open in the cool California night.
I didn’t
actually mean what I’d said. I didn’t actually mean that I was going to
call her from the car on the way home. But suddenly, looking out over
the glowing hills as I weaved my way down into the basin, I knew that’s
exactly what I was going to do.
I fumbled for my phone, got it out of my pocket, then reached for the piece of paper with Rebecca’s number on it.
It wasn’t there.
Checked my other pocket. It wasn’t there.
Checked every pocket. It wasn’t there.
That’s when it hit me.
I’d
had exactly one piece of paper in my pocket. Just one. And I’d given it
to her without looking at it. And she’d written her number down without
looking at it either. And then I stuck it back in my pocket without so
much as glancing at it.
And I didn’t look at it when I handed it to the valet, either.
She’d written her number down on my valet stub.
Son
of a bitch. Son of a bitch! I did everything. I yelled. I pounded the
steering wheel. I screamed curse words I hadn’t said since high school.
I think I made up some curse words.
Fifteen years. I’d been in
love with this girl for fifteen years. With absolutely no chance of
ever seeing her again, ever, in my entire life. And then I ran into her
by coincidence at a party I wasn’t even technically invited to.
And I lost her number.
There was just no way this was my life. There was no way this could possibly be real.
It just wasn’t fair.
For
a second, I seriously considered wrenching the wheel over and driving
right off the hillside. I was that angry. Angry at myself, angry at
life. Angry at everything that ever was or that ever would be.
It
wasn’t until I got halfway to Santa Monica that I realized what an
idiot I’d been. I don’t mean for losing her number. Of course that made
me an idiot. But the kind of guy who loses a girl’s number is just a
garden-variety, everyday idiot. Any of us could be that guy.
I was a much bigger idiot than that.
I
tore across four lanes of freeway traffic with just a cursory glance in
my rear-view. Horns and swears, blah blah blah. Blew through the red
light at the exit without realizing it, rolled through the red light at
the onramp without giving a damn. Then back on the freeway, pedal to
the metal, rocketing north toward the Hollywood Hills. Realizing that
was my mountain all along, and that if it didn’t have a glacier at the
top, at least it had a valet with a trash can full of used tickets next
to him. And I didn’t have to carve her name in it myself. It was
already there.
I weaved through traffic, screaming at the cars to get out of my way, laughing at the top of my lungs.
God, this is going to make a great story someday.
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http://theshapeofdays.com/2007/06/29/the-glacier-with-her-name-carved-in-it.html
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