Cici’s party is in Escondido, a town a little up the 15. The hot air of the evening rushes past as we roar over the asphalt. Cici is driving, fast. She is talking and talking and talking, telling me about the people I’m going to meet, about Sage, who is some sort of a model, and John, the photographer who discovered Sage.
“She was on a freaking park bench; can you believe it?”
I can, because aren’t there a million stories just like that? Isn’t that how California works? The California story, a little like Cinderella. All those beautiful people who were once just average, living from paycheck to paycheck, then their beauty arrested the right person, and now they are living the high life. I doubt it really happens like that. I’m sure that’s just the publicity department trying to maintain the influx of stupid young women coming from all over the country to be “discovered.”
I tell Cici as much, and her insult is personal. “I swear it! That’s exactly how it happened.”
I let it go; it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t really talking about her friends anyway. I was just thinking about the stories you hear. I don’t want Cici to wish she hadn’t brought me.
We pull up in front of a small stucco house with no lawn, the grass replaced with rock. In front of the big window looking into the living room is a cactus. The orange-tiled roof echoes the Spanish heritage that permeates the Southwest, as does the rock lawn. The landscaping concludes with palm trees at the end of the drive, breaking up from the smooth coral and beige rock. There are two bushes, one set at each corner of the house, to add a touch of green to the otherwise barren space. The fence is painted white, like all the privacy fences on this street.
California is booming and has been all through the last several years. “Hundreds of these subdivisions cropped up,” Cici says, and I wonder for a second about the tone of ownership in her voice. It’s as if California has become hers, and she is very proud of it. She has claimed it, and it has claimed her. Should I feel that way, too? Should I feel suddenly at home here in this desert? Should I forego all the history that brought me to this point and embrace the glamour that everybody keeps trying to tell me is real? People seem to be more plugged in here, more aware of their human condition, or rather, the appearance of their human condition.
“The developers,” Cici explains, “buy whole hills and put in neighborhoods.”
Looking down the road, I see that she is right. They’ve planted three or four styles of houses that spring from the dry desert, probably overnight, rotating in color and pattern down the block. There are plenty of tenants to fill the sprouting subdivisions and the many apartment complexes, and most of those people seem to be transplants from someplace else. The understanding that I am one of them, those transplanted people, makes me feel strange and disconnected, and when we get inside the house, I have that sense of watching myself from the outside as I take in the neutral paint on the wall, the tans and ivory of the carpet and the ceiling.
The house is put together straight out of a furniture store advertisement. There is a simplicity in the art, which is in black and whites. Japanese calligraphy, with its simple lines and flourishes, framed in simple black-lacquer frames, are visible on several walls from where I stand in the entry. In the living room, just barely in my sight line, is a black and white image of a woman, sitting on one folded leg, her naked back to the camera, her leg out the to the side and her shining black hair hanging down to the ground, pooling. The curve of her spine and the curve of her barely visible cheek angled to the sky, suggest something so sensual that I feel my face heating as the color rises.
Sage greets us, leaning in to kiss Cici, leaving a small smear of her lipstick on the bone of Cici’s cheek. She does not lean in to kiss me, but puts her long, elegant hands on my shoulders and studies me. I glance from her to Cici, feeling that strange sense of being outside of my body again. She is taller than I am, with long bones sneaking out the sleeves of her shirt.
“So, you are Jade,” she says to me, and I draw my eyebrows together in confusion.
“No,” I say slowly. Am I supposed to be somebody else? “I’m Alison.”
“Oh, yes.” She releases me and waves her hand between us. “Of course you are.” A small, throaty laugh rolls out of her. “But you are very much Jade.” She turns to look at Cici. “Those eyes.”
“I know, right?” Cici says, “And that hair.” I feel her hand lifting a hank of my hair and letting it whisper through her fingers.
“Oh my gosh,” I say, embarrassed, feeling awkward.
“It’s true,” Cici says, leaning toward Sage and mocking a whisper. “She doesn’t know.”
“Well, damn, let’s not tell her,” Sage mock-whispers back, her voice husky and almost masculine. She turns to look at me again. “So, I’m going to call you Jade because it suits you better, for me.” She smiles, showing all of her white and shining teeth, her hand fluttering to touch the narrow V at the base of her neck.
“What do you call Cici?” I ask.
“Well, that’s complex. I was calling her Spike, but she stopped being spiky, so I’m in a bit of a quandary as to what I should call her.” She lets all of her vowels round and elongate, almost like boredom has overtaken her.
I laugh. “I like Spike.”
Cici shoves my shoulder.
“Well, come on, Beautiful, let me introduce you around.”
Perhaps Sage indeed was discovered on a park bench. She is the most gorgeous person I have ever seen. She is tall and embraces her height, her shoulders drawn back and her head held high on her long, slender neck. I go with her, feeling my own shoulders pushing back, my spine elongating, stretching up to my full height. Cici slides her hand down my arm and leaves me, heading across the living room toward the kitchen. I hear voices and then the sounds of conversation uninterrupted. I am rushed through the house, Sage holding my elbow, leaning into me, introducing me as, “My good friend, Jade,” in her low, melodic voice.
Her words roll, and she talks the entire time we are moving. “You’ll meet John out here. He is going to love you. Have you ever thought about having headshots done? What are your numbers?” I shrug; I have no ideas what language she is speaking. She continues introducing me as we pass the many guests. I realize there are a few others who have names that seem somehow associated to their appearance. A girl named Amber is coming out of the bathroom, holding one side of her nose and sniffing, her eyes watering a bit. She has the most unusual yellow-orange eyes and freckles that look almost like a tan. Another woman comes up from behind us, wrapping her arms around Sage’s waist and dropping a kiss on her cheek. I turn my head upward, because this woman is even taller than Sage.
“Darling, I have to go,” the woman says. Her voice undulates in the same rhythm as Sage’s, with long vowels and fraught with boredom.
Her name will be Blue, I know, with pale blue eyes, rimmed by a dark ring of blue, and dark radials sparking out from her pupils, wavering through the pale blue, to bleed into the rim. She looks exotic with her black skin, slick with lotion.
“No,” Sage pouts.
“I’m sorry. Dom calls,” she says, letting her finger trace Sage’s jawline.
“Tell Dom to join us.”
“I would, but you know Dom,” Blue says and gives me a wink. “Who do you have here?”
Sage introduces me, and Blue leans in, dropping a kiss on my cheek. It’s all too much—this touching and fawning and preening. I just want to melt into the floor. Sage and Blue spend a few minutes bemoaning Dom before Blue finally turns and heads to the front door.
Sage and I have reached the kitchen, and I am surprised at how many people are here. They are drinking from wide-bellied glasses and eating chips and salsa. Several trays of cut vegetables and fruits line the counters. There is music coming from a speaker mounted high up in a corner. “Erykah Badu,” Sage explains, bouncing her hips with the groove.
Cici is talking to Amber and gives me a smile. Sage ladles some liquid concoction with orange rings floating on top into a cup and hands it to me. The ladle clinks against the crystal bowl when she places it back. She gives me an overall introduction to “everyone” and fills her own glass before we move into the rest of the house. As we go, with her voice filling the air, bouncing from the walls and echoing through my head, I recognize the same quality of “hostess” my mother always had been when she was at her best. Sage is better at it than my mother was, but it is so familiar and makes me miss her so much that my stomach sinks, draining out. I take a quick drink of the potent liquid to fill the emptiness.
All of the women are beautiful creatures, as if they’ve simply stepped from the pages of magazines. They are glorious, dressed in matching sets of pants and blouses and jackets, silk and chenille. Their elegance drops me back to high school, with my dirty jeans and greasy hair from the pitiful showerhead and its weak stream that could never really get all the shampoo out. Cici did my makeup tonight, and I know I look fine, wearing clothes from Cici’s closet—a snug, black, sleeveless sweater and jeans. I look fine. I am just a different breed of human. Their lithe bodies move in their clothes as naturally as a fish in water.
Sage throws open the door to a game room, a renovated garage. There are several men, some around a pool table and others along the benches that line the walls. They are less attractive than the women. They are normal men, dressed in fatigued jeans and collared Polo shirts. They look normal, like the boys I grew up with, like Dylan. They range in age from somewhere not far off of eighteen up to the mid-forties, although none of the women I met could be much over thirty. The room itself looks more like something from the Midwest. It has wood paneling, a shade darker than the paneling that had been in the trailer. There are padded benches along the walls, built-in. It is very functional, but certainly not decorated like the rest of the house. It seems to be a separate building from the crisp, clean lines that flow smoothly through the rest of the house, opening from one room into the next.
“And these,” Sage’s voice lifts over the silence around the table and chatter along the walls, “are the boys.” Their game pauses only briefly, and we are there only long enough to wave and return to the smooth lines of the rest of the house. We are barely back into the house before an arm falls across Sage’s shoulder. He is the oldest of the men I saw in the game room. He leans in to peers at me.
“I didn’t catch your name?” His eyes work over the flesh of my face in a very critical fashion. My skin creeps because of the intensity of his look, but the creep falters because there is nothing in the way he is looking at me that is uncomfortable. He is studying something about my features, and there is not a sexual component to it. I let my shoulders relax and laugh a little. He reaches out and touches my chin, tilting my face slightly to the left, then the right.
“This is Jade. She belongs to Spike,” Sage says.
“That’s Cici?” he asks, and I glance around to Cici is still in conversation with Amber.
“Yes, John. That’s Cici.” Sage rolls her eyes, and he clicks his tongue, the way teenage girls do, mocking her.
“Well, I didn’t feel like I got a proper introduction.” He winks and straightens, brushing the forelock of hair out of his face. “I’m John,” he says, putting his hand out to me.
“I’m Alison,” I say quietly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Alison. Thank God you have a real name.” He laughs, rolling his eyes in some pantomime of exasperation. “You have great bones,” he says, low, intimate, but not in a sexual way. He isn’t hitting on me; it’s just an observation.
“Why, thank you. That may be that the strangest compliment I’ve ever had.” I laugh, and he laughs.
“I can see that.” He nods. “I should work on that.”
“Yeah, maybe.” We laugh again, and the doorbell rings. Sage leaves us to admit the next guest.
“Where are you from?”
“Illinois.” I nod, not even curious how he knew I wasn’t a Californian.
“I love Chicago,” he says with enthusiasm.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” I say, then, “Actually, I’ve never been.”
“What? No! Chicago’s a great city. Not like here, where everything just rolls into each other and they keep jamming stuff in. Chicago has character, you know. It has a vibe.”
“I’d like to go, someday.” I take a sip of my drink.
“You have to. It’s a tragedy to be from Illinois and not even know Chicago. A real tragedy.” I smile; there are a lot of tragedies in my life, I don’t think not knowing Chicago qualifies as one of them. “What brought you west?”
“Cici,” I admit, a little embarrassed.
“Oh.” He glances over at Cici, laughing at something Amber has said. “You an item?”
“No.” I shake my head and realize that I should adjust my answer in future conversations. “Just friends.” Cici catches my eye and smiles. “She was coming here, and it sounded like a good plan.”
He nods, as if this makes perfect sense. We are walking as we talk and come again to the kitchen. John opens the fridge and comes back with a long neck bottle of a beer called Tecate. He twists the top and slides a wedge of lime down inside. The liquid bubbles as he covers the mouth and turns the bottle up, we watch as the wedge of lime is hustled into the belly of the bottle by the carbonation. He looks at me with a smile, when he turns the bottle back upright, as if he has accomplished a magic trick.
“You here to model?” he asks, and I quickly shake my head. “Oh, you should be. I mean, you’re a little short, so you couldn’t do runway, but you’ve got good proportions, so you could do a lot in print.”
“You think so?” I ask, amused.
“Oh yeah. Seriously, great bones.” He tilts and pulls out his wallet, taking a business card out and handing it to me. It reads John Martin Photography. “Come by the studio, and we’ll do some test shots to see how you photograph.”
“Wow, okay. That would be cool.” A flutter flaps against my ribs, and I hear some future version of myself saying “I was discovered at a party,” and my smile spreads.
“I work with a couple of talent scouts and have at least one campaign I think you’d be great for. I’m serious. Come by tomorrow.”
“Great, I will. Did you discover Sage?” I ask, letting the small fire in my stomach spread out through my body.
“I did. She was sitting on a park bench.” He smiles, remembering.
“So that really happened?”
He nods.
“Did you take the picture in the living room?”
“I did,” he says, and we shift slightly out of the kitchen and into line of sight of the portrait. “It’s all about shadow, you know?”
I nod, because I do. “All art is, really. Don’t you think? It’s all that absence of light that makes an image appealing.”
“Yes.” He claps his arm across my shoulder, but only for a second before his hand falls away. We walk farther into the living room, admiring the image of Sage gazing up at the sky, with all her curves soft and lit. “So you are an artist, then?” There it is, that hint of an accent.
“Well, when I was in school, I thought I wanted to be an artist, but really I’m not that good,” I admit, too shy to claim a title such as “artist” in the present company.
“It’s not really about being good,” he whispers. “It’s about trying harder than anybody else.” He reconsiders. “Or longer, maybe.”
