RIGHT AFTER THE FOURTH OF JULY, WHILE JOSEPHINE struggled in Paradise with hypocrites and thieves, Julian met up with Ashton for a drink at Tequila’s Cantina, their favorite hangout on Magnolia. Beer followed a plate of taquitos and some small talk. Well, small but pointed talk about Cabo, where Julian did not go, and where Ashton and Riley had gone by themselves instead.
Julian smiled anxiously. “Ash, I want to show you something.” He took out a black velvet box from his pocket.
Jumping off the bar stool, Ashton raised his hands. “Dude, no.”
“Will you look?”
“I said no.”
Julian’s hand was still proffered. With a great sigh, Ashton took the box, opened it, glanced inside, closed it, and stuffed it back into Julian’s pocket.
“What do you think?”
“Do you really want to know what I think?” said Ashton.
“As long as it’s ‘that’s incredible, Jules, congratulations,’ yes.”
Ashton was silent.
Julian waited. “Come on. I gotta go soon.” He didn’t want her waiting for him alone in that parking lot at the Greek. It wasn’t safe.
“You’re going to ask her to marry you?”
“I’m trying to find the perfect moment, but yes.”
“How about three years from now?”
“Not helping, Ashton.”
“What kind of help are you looking for? Do you want to practice your moves on me? Or do you want my advice?”
Julian studied Ashton’s face. They had spent so many years together, living and working together, drinking, traveling, meeting women together, that Julian didn’t need long to know how Ashton felt about anything. And most of the time, Ashton was the most chill, sunny guy despite coming from a disastrous childhood, the kind of childhood that made you question the point of existence itself. So when Julian saw the worry on his friend’s face, the tension around the normally relaxed mouth, the darkened indigo rings around the light eyes, when he caught sight of the long shadow of anxiety in Ashton’s expression, Julian couldn’t continue to press him. He was going to have a hard enough time with his family, considering they’d never met Josephine and thought he was still with Gwen.
“I just want you to be happy for me, Ash.”
“I know that’s what you want.” He said nothing else.
Sighing, Julian picked up his beer. “You don’t like her.”
“I don’t know her. That’s my problem.”
“You’re right. That’s your problem.”
“Not just mine.”
“I know her,” Julian said. “And you will get to know her. And when you get to know her, you’ll love her.”
“Yeah.”
“You think I’m moving too fast?”
“Among a thousand things. And I don’t think it. It’s fact.”
“What else?”
“Are you sure it’s love?”
“Excuse me?”
“Have you considered the possibility that it might be something else?” Ashton said. “Something as pleasing but more misleading.”
“Stop it.” Julian gulped his beer.
“Do you even know the difference between love and sex?”
“Do you?”
“I’m not getting hitched, am I?”
“You want to know what the difference is?” Julian said. “Nobody dies for sex.”
“Oh boy. It’s already like that, is it. Also not true. The male praying mantis dies for sex. That’s his whole life. Dying for sex.” Ashton tutted. “What do your parents think? I can’t imagine your mother approves.” He paused for Julian’s reply, in a way that suggested he already knew there wouldn’t be any. “Have they even met her?” There was another pause. “Sweet God, Jules, do they even know about her?”
Julian refused to return Ashton’s incredulous stare.
“Tell me, when were you planning to tell your mother?” Ashton said. “When she received your wedding invitation in the mail?”
“If you’re like this, how do you think she’s going to be?”
“What does that tell you?”
“That no one understands or cares about a single fucking thing.”
“Yes,” Ashton said, “that’s me.”
Julian regrouped, lowered his voice. “Okay, but then why are you being like this?”
“I can’t fathom,” Ashton said. “Have you told Riley?”
“You two just came back from Cabo! And I’m hardly going to tell her before you. Plus I know what she’ll say. She’ll tell me to eat more yellow food like bananas and pineapples to balance the fire in my life.”
“Maybe you should listen to her for once,” Ashton said. “What’s the rush, Jules? I don’t get it. Did you knock her up or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“So why not wait? If it’s real, it will stand the test of a few . . .”
“You want me to jump through your arbitrary hoops? And wait for what? You said stand the test of a few . . . few what?”
“Parsecs,” Ashton said. The stress in Ashton’s shoulders did not recede despite the joke. “What happened to being spooked by commitment?”
“It’s not the commitment,” Julian said. “It’s the girl.”
“Did no one tell this girl that if she wants to make it in show business, she should never get married?”
“I certainly hope not.”
“Where’s your common sense?” asked Ashton. “You didn’t always have it, but you got it the old-fashioned way. You bought it with your life.” He took a breath. “You’re careful, meticulous with time, reliable, trustworthy. You’re not impulsive. You don’t do things like this. It’s not you. It’s not even the old you.”
“Ashton, but she’s the one!”
All his friend said was, “The one what.”
Julian fell back on the bar stool. “Is that why you were such a jerk the other day?”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“What I don’t get is why you were rude to her friend. What did she do?”
“I wasn’t rude, I was making small talk. What else were we going to talk about, you?”
They finished their beers.
“Have you lovebirds discussed where you’re going to live?” Ashton said. “Is she going to move to L.A.? What about her career? Theatre is my life and all that? Or are you the one making other plans, like a relocation to New York, perhaps?”
“I’m not going anywhere, Ash,” Julian said. “I promise.” Affection crept into his voice. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
“Who’s worried? But why the rush? To keep her from returning east? Is her visa expiring? You do know New York is still the United States of America,” Ashton said. “You can travel freely from coast to coast.”
Julian peered into his friend’s face. “Dude, what’s going on with you?”
Ashton stared into his empty beer glass. “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling, that’s all,” he said. “Even at Cherry Lane when I saw her perform, there was something about her that wasn’t right. And I’m not the only one who thought so. Look at Gwen and Riley’s reaction to her. Everybody’s but yours, frankly. I can’t explain it. Something’s off. Maybe she’s not the girl you think she is. Maybe what you’ve found is the Hollywood version of what you think you want. You think you’ve found day, but what you’ve really found is night.”
“You’re wrong,” Julian said. “She is the most open, heart on sleeve girl I’ve ever met. She lives her life out loud.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“She’s like a female you. Are you telling me you’re not the guy I think you are?”
Ashton didn’t answer. “She is trouble,” he said. “I can’t help it. That’s what I feel.”
“You’re wrong.”
“For your sake, I hope so.”
The men fell quiet, focusing on other patrons’ conversation, on the song playing on the jukebox, “Burn it Blue.”
“I know how you are,” Ashton said. “Quiet but ruthless. I know you won’t be talked out of anything unless you want to be talked out of it. When are you planning on popping the question?”
“Soon. Waiting for the right time,” Julian said.
“Oh, that’s wise.”
“I don’t have much of it, though.”
“Wisdom?”
“Time.” Julian leaned in. “The Brentwood Country Club has a cancellation four weeks from Friday!”
At first Ashton didn’t react. “Four weeks from which Friday?”
“Don’t be like that.” Julian rocked on his seat.
“You want to marry a girl you met five minutes ago, four weeks from this Friday?” Ashton’s stunned expression was priceless.
“I’m not crazy, Ashton.”
“Of course, why would I think a marriage after knowing someone not even two months is crazy?”
“You think marriage after knowing someone three years is crazy,” Julian said.
“Am I wrong?”
“We cook together! Have you ever known me to cook with a girl?”
“Oh! Well, if you cook together!” Ashton slapped the counter. “Why didn’t you say so? Holy shit. Mario! Two of your best beers, por favor. Our Jules here is cooking with a girl. He totally forgot the best piece of advice Oscar Wilde ever gave us. Mario, are you listening? Because Jules sure isn’t. A man can be happy with any woman,” Ashton said, “as long as he doesn’t love her.”
***
First they had blood orange jello shots. When they were slightly four to the floor, Josephine asked if he had a frying pan. She was going to attempt to make him dinner.
At Pavilions on Santa Monica (to which they stumbled, not drove) she marveled at the high prices and the shiny apples. They bought steak, French fries in a bag, a mix for salad.
Things they forgot: dressing, butter, oil.
One more thing: salt.
“You don’t have any salt?” Josephine rummaged through his cabinets.
“Do we need it?”
“Without salt, there is no life,” she said. “What kind of Mr. Know-it-All doesn’t know that? How do you eat popcorn at night?”
“I go to Arclight Cinemas on Sunset and buy popcorn. And use their salt shaker.”
“Every night?”
“I don’t eat popcorn every night.”
When he returned after a trip to buy salt without which they couldn’t live, the apartment smelled of rotten eggs. She had left the gas on and forgot to light the burner. Julian opened the windows and doors.
“Didn’t you smell it?”
“Smell what?”
“They inject that terrible smell into gas on purpose,” Julian said. “To warn you that you’re about to die.”
“Is that one of your life hacks?” She was so blasé about leaving the gas on.
“It’s everybody’s life hack. Your mother didn’t teach you that?”
“No. Ironic, since she’s a teacher and all,” Josephine said. “You’d think she’d teach me how to stay alive.”
“Yes, it’s one of the first principles.” Julian found a theme for his next morning’s newsletter. “First Principles.” Clearly nothing was so well known as to be common knowledge. “Your mother doesn’t cook?”
“My mom is a fantastic cook,” Josephine said. “She grows her own vegetables in the garden behind our house, she makes her own bread, has fresh herbs, she could write a book, she’s that good.”
“She never taught you about the smell of death?”
“No, because she didn’t let me near the gas burners. My mother,” Josephine said, “took care of everything. I danced the mambo till I felt the pain and ate her food. You want another shot?” She gave him the glass before he answered.
Like a dolt Julian stood near the cold stove. Josephine was barely dressed. She wore a thong and one of his tank tops. Her hair was bed-messy. Where was the little black box? He reached into his pocket.
“They should put the smell of death into death itself,” Josephine said. They clinked and drank. “For easy detection.” Instead of wiping her mouth, she let him kiss the blood orange vodka off her lips. “Have it built in, like a death hack.” She giggled. “That way, everybody would instantly know what was coming.”
“You’d want that?”
“To know when you were going to die? Absolutely,” she said. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Barring that,” Julian said, going down on one knee, “they inject an odorant into gas before it runs through the pipes. Eggs is your smell of death.”
“And that’s no yoke. What are you doing?”
He took her hand. “Josephine, I want to tell you something,” he said. “I want to tell you about the first time we met. You stood at the wall in silhouette, backlit by the pink lights. It had started to rain, and the man you were with couldn’t be bothered to get you an umbrella. So you stood in the rain by yourself. You were a stranger to me, but all I wanted at that moment was to have the right to call your name and offer you my umbrella. I’m a regular guy, and I thought that regular guys don’t fall in love like they’re constantly clutching their chests and living on their knees. I never got too empty, but I never got filled up either.” Julian paused. Because the one thing that filled me up got taken away, and nothing else sufficed, not even love. “But at that moment,” he continued, “when you stood alone by the wall, I asked God that I could once in my life know what it meant, what it really meant, to love another.”
“That’s what I ask for, too,” she said. Her hand clenched inside his.
“Josephine, I love you. He popped open the black box. “Will you marry me?”
There was a stunned, glazed-eyed silence. “You want to marry me?” she said. “Why? I haven’t even met your mom. She’s going to hate me. You haven’t met my mom. She’s definitely going to hate you.”
“It’s not for them. It’s for us. For you and me.”
She cried. She said yes. Her hand remained clenched.
Julian saw the sun during his day for night and all the comets blaze down, the eyes of the planets like flames, the whole world on fire, not gentle or nostalgic or soft, but an ocean, raging with the swell of one human heart colliding against another.