Daphne_A Novel Read online

  It was hard to imagine Teshawn having enough energy to even get on top. He went on detailing his technique. I could tell he was cracking himself up, though he only rolled his head once. I listened with reluctant fascination. The forums had endless threads on sex. I’d scrolled through them a few times, though what was the point when it would just turn into a freak show? But, Jesus, if there were people here who could get it done . . .

  “I just lie there,” Teshawn was saying, “and she’s working on me, and I’m thinking, ‘Wait till I come out of this, just wait, we’re gonna start all over again.’ ” Another titter went around the circle. There was kinship here, when we confessed our most awkward or excruciating moments. But Teshawn had to be exaggerating. Were these things he did or things he wished he could do?

  Sherman signaled it was time to wrap up. Everyone else had been enjoying Teshawn’s bragging, but Sherman had taken up his pencil again. Nearly the whole page was black, the lead pressed so hard it shone. I lingered to help him with the clearing up.

  “Well, that was an interesting meeting.”

  “Good to hear Teshawn open up like that.”

  “Sherman,” I said, “everything okay?”

  He dumped the last of the snack tray into the garbage.

  “Were you thinking about Olivia during that con- versation?”

  Olivia, his ex-wife, who’d left him shortly before he started our group. She’d told him she needed to be with someone who could keep up with her, share her lifestyle, get through a dinner party without threatening to face-plant in the entrée. She just couldn’t let her own life be run by his “allergy.”

  “It’s just that . . .” Sherman teetered on the verge of answering. “Prince Hairy, he’s been sick. But what else is new, right?” He took out his phone, swiped through some photos: his lordship in better days, apparently, though the thing still looked the color of raw chicken, all alien eyes and translucent, bat-like ears.

  “Adorable,” I said. “He doesn’t look a day over a hundred.”

  Sherman kept swiping: Prince Hairy resting on Sherman’s belly. Having his eyes stroked back to slits. Batting at a little felt punching bag with the feeblest of paws. “Look at him.” Sherman couldn’t help another smile. “On his own, he wouldn’t last a minute.”

  THIRTEEN

  MONDAY: UP AT 6:15, PRACTICALLY A LUXURY. Throw together an outfit, lollygag my way to the train, into the lab by 8:15, a little bickering from Byron, tune out till he’s just a general braying in the background. Midmorning, put my head down, email, datasets. Afternoons for tending to everyone, but Staci seems steady, Hidalgo quietly stoned, Pin distracted, dogs healthy. Mondays still endless, grueling, but, after the intensity of a weekend with Ollie, almost a relief.

  Tuesday: He comes for dinner at the Grove. Start with prosecco or a crisp, dry Sémillon. Sort through the week’s produce box, ten different ways to cook kohlrabi, Ollie chopping, me marinating the pork loin or tenderizing the milk-fed veal, listening hungrily while he tells me about whatever prime bit of real estate he and the Irish guys are working on. Eat like beasts, pudding onto the couch. Hour or two of TV, try to get him into The Grand Design, but just reminds him of work. Make out for a while, sleepy enough it’s luxurious, not wild blind desire, until he has to pull himself away, get the bus home, get up early. Take the cushion he’d been sitting against up to bed, wrap myself around it, fall asleep like a lofted feather gently, gently swinging to the ground.

  Wednesday: Our night out. Quiet neighborhood bistro down in Glen Park or Diamond Heights, somewhere out of the way, the regulars middle-aged, comfortable, childless, lives of mild professional setbacks and commendations, Bikram, home brewing, and matching bicycles. Ollie and I finish our tofu-avocado-quinoa bowls, set out for Bernal Hill and the sunset razing the Bay Bridge and downtown, trembling, liquid fire balancing on the Transamerica spire before bedding down in fat peach clouds, everything copper then bronze then every flashing shade of gold. Ollie wraps his arms around me, I sag forward—how can anyone stand not to live in California? Flinty April evenings, everyone zipping up hoodies and fleeces, dogs yipping, dog owners calling out in the half-light to half-strangers and strangers alike—“Good to see you! Good to see you! Aw, what is he, French Bulldog?”—Ollie and I tumble down the impossibly sheer hill for a slice of chocolate-walnut at Mission Pie before he has to get the bus home, then he’s gone, the taste of his kiss lingering, not knowing what to do with myself, wandering my improbable neighborhood—brunch place, quinceañera dresses, brunch place, vacuum repair shop, Santería candles, needle exchange, brunch place—almost home, staring up at the body shop sign—ERFECT DETAILING—they’d tried to fix it, but the P keeps flickering, ERFECT PERFECT ERFECT PERFECT . . .

  Thursday: Catch-up day. Stay late at work, later at the company gym, forty minutes on the stair climber, forty kicking and punching the heavy bag, constant exertion to keep from thinking of him every minute. On the train, Brook texts me—Shit, slept with Halloween. He wanted a meeting at his place, bunch of people were rolling, so it wasn’t not fun, but how shitty exactly should I be feeling today?—not knowing what she expects me to say, letting it go, probably better just to let it go. By the time I get to the Grove, I’m jelly. I don’t fall into bed, I dissolve.

  Friday: Midnight, half-asleep, clothes still on in bed thinking about calling Ollie, still thinking about what to text Brook, getting lost in Interior Life instead. Space and light and order . . . Maybe I should get a Corbusier armchair . . . Mentally reshuffle all the furniture, imagine rehanging my vintage national parks prints, read an article telling me drapes are sumptuous but blinds trending . . . Get so worked up looking at all the half-ass “Appealing Apartments” on their site that finally I kick off the sheets and start pushing and dragging stuff around—the Noguchi here, the old card catalog I use as an end table there—but when I get out the Nikon to snap a few photos, thinking I might wing them off to Interior Life’s editors, the whole apartment looks weirdly abandoned, an exhibit on “21st-Century Spiritual Exhaustion.” Fall asleep on the couch, dreaming of smoke drifting over picnic tables, diamonds glinting on the river . . .

  Saturday: Take the N-Judah to the Outer Sunset, Ollie’s place, practically all the way out to the beach. Huge, raw space, high ceilings, concrete floors, divided into rooms and almost-rooms by hand-sewn curtains and salvaged drywall. Obvious where Ollie had a hand in it, the work straight clean solid, but he “doesn’t fuck with other folks’ habitats,” so the rest is just comfy chaos. One Saturday a drum kit and guitars set up in the common area, the next some frightening wire/scrap-lumber sculpture being formed into the shape of . . . a head? Ollie’s roommates: artists of some kind, musicians of some kind, hazily welcoming stoners, bewildering entrepreneurs. One guy’s online business—giveashit.com—delivers . . . shit, to your friends and enemies alike. Cow shit, dog shit, llama shit—he runs down the menu for me, then a couple of weeks later he’s gone, moved back to Portugal. (“He wants us to liquidate his inventory,” Ollie says and doesn’t seem to be joking.) People come, go, no one has an actual lease, all just making a shaggy, improvised life till the landlord wises up to the market. Ollie’s room is his workshop: half-rebuilt Victrolas, handsome console radios with their guts pulled out, tackle boxes filled with old fuses and transistors, stacks of dog-eared paperbacks, crates of LP records, and in the middle of it all his mattress; we lie staring up at the silvery gray afternoon filtering through the frosted skylight, kissing in a diffuse, dreamy way, half-undressed, running my fingers along his arms, his legs, through his hair, stay diffuse, detached, pull ever so gently away. Get dressed, drink beers with the roommates on the old, half-sprung couches, everything loose and funny, act like I’m passed out a little, so funny, after a few beers, Ollie pulling me in tight, listening to everyone laughing, not wishing this was my life, just nice to visit now and then, every day could be different, every day new, and you wouldn’t need all this order, order, order . . .

  Sunday: Alameda
flea market. Get there early, always start from the back. Move quick if I see something, no mercy for the old and tentative. A brass table lamp Ollie can rewire for me, a couple of majolica flowerpots, a lot of vintage hand mirrors that might hang nicely on the TV wall. Hunt for a shade to fit the lamp, find a red velvet one like a fez, Ollie, of course, plopping it right over his head. Have to sit cross-legged on the asphalt for a bit—Christ, so adorable—finally getting it together to snap a few photos of him. Grinning on the train with all of our finds. “Hey, aren’t you going to miss your group today?” Telling him not to worry, everyone misses a week here and there. (Then skip the next three weeks in a row.) At home, order in sushi or Thai, nuzzle on the couch, kiss on the couch, let him touch me a little on the couch, push his hands gently down when he gets too excited. When I get too excited. Start letting him see my funny faces, he whispers, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” says he likes it, it kind of turns him on. What can he do? How can he make me comfortable? Take his hands in mine, keep them from exploring further, tell him, “Hang in there, okay? Okay?”

  And as the weeks rush along let him go further. Let him touch me right up to the brink, right up to the point I can no longer push him away. The buzzing—long to push through, as if the deadening electricity won’t come and, after, the nausea, the depletion. Touch his sun-bleached stubble, sharp hip bones, tanned, grooved forearms, left index finger healed crooked after some job site mishap—men are so careless with their beautiful, unwieldy bodies. Tell him, “I’m kind of falling for you. And I don’t even mean that as a bad pun.” Him not flinching, not laughing either, telling me the same, he means it, truly. His erection against my thigh. “Soon,” I tell him. “Soon.” Start kissing again, slowly, imagining my river, cattails, willows, trying to retrieve every detail, straining to stay in control.

  In the morning, he wakes me, sits on the edge of the bed, kisses me good-bye, dressed already, work boots, jacket, jeans, as I swim up into consciousness, back into a world suffused with his presence, the warm sheets, the ghost of his body printed next to mine, his actual body hovering over me, almost translucent in the honeycomb light, I murmur good-bye, he murmurs good-bye, kisses good-bye . . . dissolves into light. A drowsy, suffused hour to myself before leaving for work, a little space before jump-starting another week. But on the train, on the bus, at my desk, in the company café, with the dogs, lost in blocks of code—even in the deep thickets of work now I feel him close, his care and desire trying to wrap around me. I feel harried, breathless, never a moment to pause and rest, and there is no routine, all moments tumble into one another, everything prelude to seeing him again, everything the resonance of having seen him. And sometimes I pray I could just stop dead in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, and root myself fast in place.

  Then, almost immediately, I want him again.

  FOURTEEN

  WE WOKE LATE AND DECIDED TO STROLL OUT TO THE Richmond, to a dim sum place on Clement that Pin had recommended. The fog had already burned off of a glorious, high-skied morning. Then, on our way up Mission, I saw Jeff looming. I tried to catch his eye, give him a little twinkle to say, I’m walking with this good-looking guy on my arm here, just trying to enjoy the weather and a lazy Sunday, just like anyone—so if you could give me a break today, let me slide past, I’ll get you back with a ten when I see you next, okay? Are we okay here? And I saw him raise his tiny hand, a gesture of acknowledgment: Yup, I see you, we’re good, hey, we respect each other, would I hassle you on a day like this?

  But as we were passing him, Ollie stopped, reached into his jacket pocket, took out a lighter, and bent over to light the cigarette I now saw Jeff had between his lips. He hadn’t been signaling me but asking for some flame. I stood there awkwardly. He stared up at us with the crystallized gaze of a Byzantine saint.

  “Hey, Jeff,” I said, “happy Sunday.”

  He took an enormous drag, exhaled a Hiroshima of smoke. Slowly, he seemed to recognize our human specificity. “Bud,” he whispered at Ollie, “watch out for this one. She speaks her mind.”

  Ollie gave me a look—Who’s this guy? and She does?—but demurred.

  “Say, bud, which kind you smoking?”

  Ollie dug in his pocket again and pulled out a crumpled pack of American Spirits. He knocked a couple out and handed them to Jeff. Or, anyway, politely deposited them in Jeff’s lap. “What, no Luckies?” Jeff drawled. “No Camels?”

  “Watch out for this one,” I said. “He always asks for more.”

  In slow motion, Jeff wiggled his feet. “See my new shoes?” The Nikes were gone, replaced by sad, grimy tube socks several sizes too large. “I’m taking donations.”

  The sight was too depressing, as was the thought of what he’d probably sold those Nikes to buy. “Next time, Jeff,” I said and pulled Ollie away. We cut along 16th and into the Castro, where the brunch lines were already backing up and the streetcars grinding cheerily along. “Friend of yours?” Ollie said.

  “Perks of your block being ‘on the edge.’ ” I didn’t want to think about addicts or the general human wreckage of the city, not this perfect morning. “Since when do you smoke?” I’d never even smelled it on him.

  “Good way to sneak a break on the job.” He looked sheepish, his hair still bed-tousled. “Sorry, I thought you wouldn’t like it.”

  A gust of affection hit me. I pulled him close, drew his arm around me. “Hell, I might even bum one.”

  “After lunch”—he kissed my forehead—“I can do delayed gratification.”

  The dim sum place was bright, loud, hectic. But being the only white people in a huge room of Chinese families made me feel somehow detached from the bustle. Between the unending small dishes, I reached under the table, held Ollie’s leg. We stuffed ourselves, paid the bill, reeled out into the early afternoon sun. “Fuck it,” Ollie said, stepping into a corner store, “after a meal like that.” He came out with two tall cans of Tecate wrapped in paper bags.

  “Well, since it’s Sunday,” I said, happy and loose. We walked and smoked and drank. The warm, the pleasant, the fond—give me all of that and forget the rest. That’s what youth missed, the enormous consolation of everything mild and plush. Meanwhile the middle-aged thought they wanted all that old frenzy back, just one last time, and launched into their crises and embarrassing affairs—my mother, dating again, suddenly molding her life around this random stump yanker. But, if it gave her some company, some insulation, I couldn’t begrudge her a little care or attention. Floating through my city, cigarette on my lips, my man on my arm, I just couldn’t bring myself to worry about her.

  “There’s somewhere I want to show you,” Ollie said as we crossed Geary.

  “What, is your singer buddy playing the Chinese brunch circuit now?”

  “This is cool. Hardly anyone knows about it.”

  “Please,” I said, “show me.”

  At Arguello, he took us south for a block, then up a slight hill. We turned onto a cul-de-sac lined with manzanitas and stucco bungalows. A large domed building stood behind high wrought-iron gates, somehow hidden on this brief, pretty street. We left our beers tucked outside the gate and crunched around the gravel path that circled the building. A silver-haired woman knelt near the entryway, planting dark orange marigolds in a narrow flower bed. “What a beautiful day,” she said, her gaze placid, her voice ethereal. “Would you like to go inside? Visiting hours until seven.”

  We went through slab-like oak doors into an echoing marble rotunda. Smaller halls extended off the central room, two more levels stretching above, their chilly air pressing down on us. Over the arches leading into the halls were chiseled “Zephyrus,” “Olympias,” “Arktos,” other Greek words. Everywhere I looked, there were niches cut into the stone—arched, foot-high, fronted with glass doors with last names stenciled on them. Behind the doors sat little groups of objects: an open Bible, a vase of fake flowers, a sheaf of sheet music, a statuette of two men with their arms around each other, a
child-size baseball mitt. “What is this?” The temperature dropped another few degrees. “A cemetery?”

  “A columbarium!” Ollie tipped his head back to the noon light hazing through the glass dome. “The only place you can be laid to rest in city limits. Not even death can afford to live in San Francisco.”

  The woman came in, started misting the windows with Windex. “Any questions?”

  Each small glass door was an eye staring back at me. “We’re fine,” I said tightly.

  “We were built in 1898, the design by Mr. Bernard Cahill, also a noted cartographer. Each room, as you can see, is named after one of the mythological winds.”

  I tugged on Ollie’s arm, dizzy, cold, the air being pushed out of my lungs.

  “How many plots are left?” Ollie said, picking the worst time to be polite.

  “Only twenty-five, out of five thousand.” The woman put down her Windex and rag and stood admiring. “You’re welcome to go upstairs. Just keep walking in a circle if you get lost. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get lost.”

  My limbs prickled with panic, glimmering on the edge of an attack. “Please,” I got out. “Let’s go.”

  “Sorry,” Ollie finally said to the woman, “we’re a little late for something.”

  Outside, I could barely catch a breath. I kept going, as far from that place as possible. At the corner, Ollie stopped me. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “Why the fuck did we go in there?”

  “I thought it’d be . . . You know, all those little doors, it’s kind of . . .”

  My teeth ached, the taste of steel was so strong. “I need home. Now.”

  Ollie stopped, turned back to the columbarium. “Shit, our beers.”

  “Leave them,” I growled.

  “What is this? What’s wrong?”

  I was almost running now, all but stumbling down the hill.