This Is Where We Live Read online

  Claudia tore herself away from the spectacle of the teenager and her grandmother. She unlocked the door of her Jetta—they were driving separately tonight—and waved at Mary one last time. “See you tomorrow,” she called to Mary. “Don’t forget that the David Lynch essay is due.”

  Mary nodded. “I already finished it.”

  “Of course you did.” Claudia smiled, a note of indulgence in her voice, but something about the expression on her face was pinched shut, as if the existence of the girl was physically painful to her too. But Jeremy didn’t have time to wonder about this, as he gunned the engine of the convertible to life, backed out of the driveway, and headed down the hill.

  They caravanned in the waning light down the 110 and then across the 10, Jeremy following behind Claudia as her car grew harder and harder to spot. Traffic was heavy. The highway pulsed, then snagged, then came to a near stop. Three of the radio stations Jeremy tuned to were playing the same song, a pop tune by Beyoncé, or was it Rihanna? He couldn’t tell the difference. The drivers in the cars on either side of him were talking on their cellphone headsets, having adamant conversations with some indeterminate point on the horizon, hermetically sealed in their air-conditioned luxury bubbles. Jeremy felt as if he were shrinking in size as the urban sprawl spread out before him; just one more set of braking red lights in a vast, convulsing automaton. Near La Cienega, they crept by the wreckage of a horrific car accident, crumpled steel and glass spattered across the road, two tow trucks waiting to hoist the twisted remains to their flatbeds. Someone, somewhere, was probably dead.

  He wondered what would happen when he arrived at the opening. Would Aoki be waiting for him at the door, anxious to make a scene or to confront Claudia? Would he be some sort of demi-celebrity, still her most famous subject? Maybe her old New York art friends would be there, a crowd he’d mostly forgotten but still sometimes missed in the abstract. They were probably doing the same things they had five years before—getting falling-down drunk at art openings and then finishing the night at cheap Russian diners, hosting dinner parties that ended as all-night cocaine binges at converted warehouses in Williamsburg, having ugly affairs with each other’s significant others. Her friends were rowdy and irresponsible and always in the process of creating. Once, he’d fit right into this scene; maybe it wasn’t unrealistic to imagine that some things hadn’t changed. But it was hard to imagine explaining the mundane, earthly details of his current life to those nomadic butterflies.

  He wanted desperately for something thrilling to happen tonight; he wanted, equally, for nothing interesting to happen at all, so he could just move on.

  At the gallery, he hesitated only briefly before valeting the car, and then felt guilty when he spied Claudia in her high heels, moving painfully down the street from a parking spot two blocks away. He waited for her on the sidewalk in front of the gallery. It was an enormous white concrete box, sandwiched on either side by luxury boutiques, with a wall of glass windows giving way to the scene inside. Aoki’s name hung just inside the entrance in eight-foot-high red plastic letters—just the one word, AOKI, as if her last name had been subsumed entirely by the power of the first. He was perspiring heavily, even thought it wasn’t at all hot outside, and he worried that he might appear shiny or even start to smell.

  Claudia arrived at his side, reached out for his arm. “That accident,” she said, with a shiver.

  “I know,” he said, moving her toward the gallery door, his pulse beginning to race.

  “I’ll only be able to stay fifteen minutes, now,” she said. Her face was pale and anxious.

  “I’m sure that’ll be plenty of time,” he said, not knowing what he meant. Time for what?

  The gallery was packed wall-to-wall, the noise level incredibly high, thanks to atrocious acoustics. Waiters passed trays of smoked salmon canapés and champagne in glass flutes. He saw a famous actress and a Grammy-winning musician, and a smattering of artist types with neon-bright clothes and curious hair; but mostly the crowd was middle-aged and wearing conservative attire. Donna Karan and Emporio Armani. Striped ties and linen pants. An elderly lady in an argyle sweater who could have been his grandmother; women in Eileen Fisher dresses that draped over their yoga-mommy bodies. Curators and collectors, he supposed: The only people who could afford Aoki’s work anymore. He was strangely disappointed.

  Jeremy looked around the room and didn’t see Aoki, though he guessed that she was somewhere in the far corner, where the flow of gawkers thickened into a dense clot. He took a glass of champagne and melted into the crowd, drifting aimlessly toward the gallery walls. The show was vast, a mix of old and new pieces. Claudia’s elbow jabbed him in the soft spot below his rib cage. “That’s you, isn’t it?” she asked, pointing to the far wall. It was. Three different times, although Claudia was probably referring specifically to the painting of his profile in orange, rendered from a strange high angle as he looked warily at some point in the distance. There was also a salmon-pink painting of his hand, thickened with calluses from his guitar, and another of his torso, limply splayed across a filthy bed. Their bed. He remembered it clearly; the paint-smeared sheets that smelled of unwashed hair, the mattress sitting starkly on the floor of the walk-up, the stains on the ancient ticking. Each painting landed with a visceral jolt, a reminder of a time before, and by the time he’d located them all he was short of breath, as if he’d been shocked back from near death by a defibrillator. Breathing heavily, he pointed each one out to Claudia. He could feel her tensing beside him, registering the blatant sensuality in the images. As he stood there and stared at himself replicated across the wall, he felt as if he were onstage again, the whole world waiting for him to start performing.

  “Claudia? Jeremy?” They turned together, too eagerly, but it was only Cristina, weaving through the crowd toward them. She wore a long knit dress that looked purposely homespun and showed off her growing baby bump, with her hair swept behind her in a curling bun. Her cheeks were bright pink with excitement. She arrived before them and gripped them each in turn, hugging them close as if they were already old friends instead of new acquaintances.

  “Have you seen the show yet? It’s transcendent,” Cristina said. “There are three of yours, Jeremy; did you see them?”

  “We did. They’re very”—Claudia searched for a word—“vibrant. Obviously. They don’t look much like Jeremy. Though I’m not much of an art critic, honestly.”

  Cristina smiled. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  Cristina’s presence seemed to diffuse some anxiety inside Claudia, and she laughed. “Oh, it definitely is. I’d rather not expose my ignorance, if that’s OK? I don’t want them to kick me out.”

  “That wouldn’t happen,” said Cristina. “Art should be democratic. No one person’s interpretation is more valid than another’s, if you take the universalist approach. Eye of the beholder, la la la.” She stepped aside, to let an elderly bearded man who smelled strongly of pot squeeze past.

  The clot in the corner had moved down the room, toward the front of the gallery. Jeremy craned his head to see if he could spot Aoki, but she was still engulfed by the crowd, just a flash of shiny black hair hinting at her position. He was crazy to have thought it was possible to have some kind meaningful interaction in this place; he’d be lucky if he even managed to squeeze in the briefest of greetings. He realized he was standing very straight, trying to increase his own profile with an inch or two of height. Would anyone here recognize him from the paintings? He glanced around and realized he might as well be invisible for all the attention being paid him. A young starlet type in a leopard-print dress pushed by, knocking him aside with her elbow.

  Embarrassment crept in. Who was he, really? Just a guy in some pictures. He was an outsider here; it was idiotic ever to have imagined anything different. The Jeremy he’d become didn’t belong here at all; he understood. Once Claudia left for her meeting and he was on his own, he would probably end up standing lamely in a corner by himself or fol
lowing Cristina around the room, waiting pathetically for a moment when he could break in and say hello to Aoki. Maybe he would just leave with Claudia. It might even be a relief—honestly, he didn’t need any more confusing distractions in his life.

  “Is Daniel here?” he asked Cristina.

  Cristina shook her head. “I’m here with my boss.”

  He turned to Claudia. “What time do you have to leave?”

  She checked her watch for the third time, visibly twitchy. “Now-ish. Are you going to introduce me to Aoki?”

  If they left now, he could avoid that encounter entirely, he realized. They would escape completely unscathed. “If we can find her. I don’t even know where she is. Too popular for us, I guess.”

  “Well, I guess this was a waste of time?” Claudia didn’t look like she thought this had been a waste of time; she looked happy, as if the last quarter hour had proved something important to her. Jeremy could guess what it was: that Aoki was no threat to Claudia after all. That here, in Aoki’s world, Jeremy was now just as much of a stranger as she herself was. “Are you going to leave too?”

  “You can’t go yet.” Jeremy felt a hand on his arm, freezing cold even through his shirt. The expression on Claudia’s face had changed, from relief to cordial wariness. The flush on Cristina’s face increased in intensity, to a giddy violet. He looked down to his left and there was Aoki, wedged in just beside him. Her high-pitched voice broke through the din, almost childlike with disappointment. “You just got here,” Aoki complained, “and already you want to ditch me?”

  She wore a loose white shift that shimmered silver when she moved, tall mirrored gladiator sandals that snaked up her calves, and almost no makeup at all except for a slash of red lipstick. Her hair was twisted into two thick braided buns, which braced her head like apostrophe marks, signing Here is Aoki! She looked like a creature you might find dancing in the woods in the moonlight, barefoot. Next to Aoki, all three of them—Claudia, Cristina, and Jeremy too—appeared enormous and ungainly, humans who had stumbled into a fairy’s nest.

  “Oh, I don’t have to leave yet,” Jeremy found himself saying. “Just Claudia. She has a meeting to get to.” Claudia glanced sharply at him, and he realized that he hadn’t introduced her yet.

  Before he could, Aoki reached across to grasp Claudia’s hand, pulling her in. Claudia tipped over uncomfortably, a strange smile on her face. “So you must be Claudia, then?” Aoki asked.

  “And you’re Aoki,” Claudia said as she pumped Aoki’s hand nervously up and down like an overeager discount rug salesman. “Thank you so much for inviting me.”

  Aoki smiled and released Claudia’s hand. “Of course! I was desperate to meet the mysterious Claudia. I wish I knew more about you. Jeremy is so reticent sometimes, isn’t he?”

  You didn’t want to hear about her, Jeremy thought to himself. And: Reticent?

  Claudia blinked. “Oh, I’m not so very mysterious,” she said. “It’s just that Jeremy likes keeping secrets. Sometimes it takes a crowbar to get information out of him.”

  “Oh, I remember that well,” said Aoki, and rolled her eyes, and then the women both laughed, a touch too loudly.

  “How long are you in town for?” Claudia asked.

  “I take the red-eye out Friday night, headed back to Europe for a while,” Aoki said. “Frankly, it couldn’t be soon enough. I loathe Los Angeles.”

  Jeremy absorbed this with a dismay that startled him; but Claudia was looking looser and more relaxed by the minute. “I used to hate it too, when I first got here,” she said chummily. “I know a lot of New Yorkers can’t stand the concrete sprawl. But it grows on you after a while. It’s a really complex city, so many layers, if you give it a chance.”

  “It’s the cars that get me,” Aoki continued, half-ignoring Claudia’s explanation. “People here seem to live their entire lives in these rolling leather-lined coffins.”

  Jeremy was beginning to feel left out. He should have been relieved—the fireworks he’d feared weren’t materializing at all; it was all just a cordial meeting between two women who happened to have a person in common—but instead he found himself resenting the fact that he’d been somehow rendered invisible by this conversation. It was as if he weren’t standing there at all. Had he wanted to be fought over?

  “By the way, this is our friend Cristina,” he interrupted.

  “Such a huge fan.” Cristina grabbed Aoki’s hand with both of hers and flapped it up and down. “I work at the Modern, here. We have a few pieces of yours in the collection?”

  “Yes, a very pleasant little museum.” Aoki extricated her fingers from Cristina’s grasp.

  “I’d love to talk with you sometime about your work, maybe do an interview with you for our patron newsletter?”

  “I’m afraid I’m allergic to interviews. I break out in hideous rashes. Doctor forbade them entirely.” Aoki turned back to Jeremy, tuning out Cristina. “Come with me. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, Pierre Powers.”

  Cristina persisted. “The fashion designer? He’s here?”

  “He was a huge fan of This Invisible Spot; he’s told me many times,” Aoki continued, ignoring Cristina’s outburst. “He’s here and wants to talk to you.”

  Jeremy battled the murk that had settled in around his brain, making everything Aoki said seem confusing and dangerous. Claudia asked the question that he couldn’t quite seem to form. “He wants to talk to Jeremy about what?” she asked.

  Aoki swung to look patiently at Claudia. “Working together, of course.”

  Jeremy found his voice, finally. “He wants me to design T-shirts for him?”

  Aoki laughed. “God, no. Music. It’s all about cross-platform artistic collaborations these days. I’m painting a line of bags for him. Anyway, he has money and he knows people and he just loves you.”

  “Really?” His voice was uncharacteristically high; he was giddy. He turned to look at the back of the room, wondering if he would recognize Pierre Powers if he saw him. He knew the name, of course, but had no idea what he looked like in person. His expectations for the rest of the evening took an unexpected, lurching turn, headed toward a much more interesting destination.

  Aoki’s face was growing pinched with impatience. She took a step away from their cluster. “Just come with me. All the fun people are in the back, in the VIP room. We’re going to have dinner after this is over and we want you to join. You don’t mind if I steal him, do you, Claudia? You’re leaving anyway, yes?”

  Claudia’s face flickered unhappily. She looked from Jeremy to Aoki and then back to Jeremy again, visibly torn. “It’s fine,” she said, finally. “I’ll see you at home, honey.” She leaned over and kissed Jeremy on the mouth, a damply possessive kiss. Jeremy could feel Aoki’s cool eyes on them, assessing, patient. He realized he was reddening.

  “Don’t ground him if he gets home late,” Aoki said, her voice as dry as a chilled gin martini. She put a hand on his side and began gently to press him away from the other women.

  Claudia’s face seemed to freeze, with her smile half-collapsed into a distorted grimace. “Nice to meet you, Aoki,” she said, and there was a brief moment while Jeremy waited for her to shake Aoki’s hand again, or even attempt an air kiss, but Claudia just stood there, immobile. “Congratulations on a really terrific retrospective,” she finished, flatly.

  “Oh, this?” Aoki glanced at the walls, gripping Jeremy’s waist harder. He felt helpless in her grasp, as if he’d voluntarily relinquished the right to his own will. “Yes, sometimes the oldest things are the best of all.”

  Claudia

  SAMUEL EVANOVICH TUCKED A NAPKIN INTO THE TOP OF HIS shirt, where it protruded straight out from his bulk like a plastic baby’s bib. On the plate before him was half a cow, sitting in a pool of its own bloody juices. He smeared butter over the grill marks and then stabbed the flesh with a knife, sawing off a sizable hunk. He chewed it three times, swallowed, and grunted with satisfaction, washing the whole thin
g down with a slug of watery scotch. Claudia had heard about Samuel Evanovich’s legendary appetite, but seeing it in action was something else completely, like watching a private performance by an accomplished maestro. She couldn’t decide if she was fascinated or repulsed.

  The restaurant was Italian, a wood-paneled den with red leather booths lit from above by yellow glass shades. Waiters in tuxedos hovered just on the periphery, proffering sweaty martini shakers and enormous pepper grinders as if they were holy relics. The clientele was graying, stout, self-satisfied, predominantly male. It looked like someone’s approximation of an Old Hollywood hangout. Maybe it was an Old Hollywood hangout. Claudia wondered whether it was a sign of her status as an outsider that she’d never heard of it before.

  She picked up her fork to prod at her own entrée, pumpkin ravioli with black truffle. It was the sort of decadent treat she would never have chosen if she was picking up the bill herself, but after watching Samuel Evanovich’s gastronomical feats she found she didn’t have much of an appetite. Instead, she pushed the ravioli around her plate, acutely conscious of the leaden silence at the table. Already they’d spent half an hour on small talk—the discovery of mutual film industry acquaintances (Samuel had once hired RC for a script rewrite), a discussion of the merits of the current Oscar contenders, and a long soliloquy from Samuel recalling a six-month sojourn in Cambodia, shooting a motorcycle movie back in 1978—before running out of comfortable conversation. The only subject they hadn’t yet touched was the only one she truly cared about. Was he waiting for dessert to mention her screenplay? Was he waiting for her to bring it up? What was the proper protocol in this scenario?

  Samuel Evanovich sopped up a puddle of congealing jus with a golf ball of baked potato and then sighed, as if the effort of dining was almost to much to take. “It’s like this,” he began. “Your script is a smart piece of writing, but it’s absolutely unmakable. It’s not going to play in France or Germany, so you can forget foreign financing. Your leads are teenagers, so there goes your shot at getting a bankable name. And the love interest goes off to Iraq in the end? Investors are going to run screaming. Three years ago, I might have been able to scrape up ten or twenty million, but dark little dramas like this are going the way of the dodo bird.”