helen McMartin’s parents were right. In a manner. She did want the car for a boy, but not for the reasons they suspected. She wanted to break up with Bobby Goralnick but felt it would be wrong to do it over the phone. Until a few weeks earlier, Bobby had been the bass player for a band called Highs, Mostly in the ’80s—a joke referring to the marijuana the band regularly smoked and their repertoire of hard rock songs popular in the 1980s. She’d met Bobby at the Salty Cat, a bar in Venice that featured live music on the weekends and karaoke the rest of the time. She and her friend Siri had snuck in using fake IDs they’d ordered over the Internet. She was pretty sure the guy at the door knew they were underage, but they both looked so hot in their handkerchief halter tops and low-slung jeans, he let them in anyway. They ordered drafts of the cheapest beer and drank them slowly. A couple of guys tried to sit with them, but Helen lied and said they were waiting for their boyfriends.
Until just a few months earlier, Helen did have a boyfriend. The son of a well-known rock-and-roll biographer, Roy Beaudell lived three doors down from her in a mock Tudor house with a swimming pool in the shape of a guitar. At fifteen, Helen was so infatuated with Roy, she would scrawl his name followed by a string of hearts moving upward like bubbles from a fish’s mouth in all her books. Just last week, her sister had picked up a once-beloved copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance only to find the title page defaced by:
I Love Roy
I lOve Roy.
I loVe Roy.
I lovE Roy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was hard for Helen to believe it, but there was a time when she had actually gone to Venice beach to tattoo his name on her belly. Thank God for parental consent laws. Her family never understood what she saw in him, but she loved his swimming pool eyes, the way his skin seemed to hold the warmth of the sun even indoors, and the slim, loosely slung muscles of his body. Who knows? If they had never had sex, Helen might still be in love with him, but one November night when the Santa Ana winds had been blowing harder than usual, she finally said yes to Roy’s constantly murmured “Please, baby, please, baby, please.”
“Really?” Roy asked, pulling back. He was so taken aback by her sudden change of heart, he briefly lost his erection.
Unfortunately, the sex wasn’t that good. In fact, it was kind of awful. Everybody said the first few times were always lousy, so Helen had reduced her expectations, but with Roy, sex started out bad and remained that way. When they kissed, every thing was fine. She liked his warm breath on her neck, and the growly moans from the back of his throat made her feel powerful—who’d have thought she could transform passive, dreamy Roy into someone so animal? But once their clothes came off, his focus became single-minded, like a dog burying a bone. Lying underneath his huffing body, she felt that she could have been anybody. Or anything. Even his eyes were squeezed shut against her. Afterward, when he said thank you and collapsed sweatily on top of her, she felt even worse. Thank you? She tried to shift her body so that she could breathe more comfortably. Thank you? She had not done him a favor. Giving someone a ride was a favor. Lending him twenty bucks. Letting him use your cell phone. Wasn’t sex supposed to be something they both liked?
Her love began to fade. People talked about what a romantic couple they were. Her girlfriends called her Mr. and Mrs. Roy. She smiled and played along, but inside she was wondering how she was going to get out of it. Then, at the beginning of the summer, Roy’s father was busted for growing hydroponic marijuana in his basement under a set of old klieg lights he’d bought in an online auction. While reading the meter in the basement, a worker for the electric company spotted the plants and reported him to the police. Under the government’s zero-tolerance policy, the Tudor house was seized as the asset of a felon. The arrest sent a shiver through their gently left-leaning community, where it was not uncommon for parents to be smoking marijuana in the master bathroom, windows open, exhaust fan roaring, at the exact same moment teenage children were doing the same in the basement, two stories below. Roy’s father got three years in a federal prison and Roy was sent to live in New Jersey with his mother, an ex-model who had made her own fortune selling dietary herbal supplements. Everybody assumed Helen’s heart was broken, but the truth was, she was relieved. On the eve of his departure, Helen told him he was free to date other girls.
“I don’t want anyone but you,” Roy protested.
“You’re too young to tie yourself down,” she told him. “You should experiment.”
“You think?” he asked.
“I think,” she said, and nodded. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t write.”
“You’re the best,” Roy said, his eyes tearing up.
For her next boyfriend, Helen had resolved to find somebody older, a man of experience. Not a Polanski or anybody like that, more like someone’s older brother. So when Bobby Goralnick approached her table at the Salty Cat, she could hardly believe her luck. “Y’all want to meet the band?”
“Yeah!” Helen answered before Siri could say anything. All night, she’d been watching him at the guitar. He wore a leather vest, faded blue jeans, and a bandanna around his head. The muscles on his arms were long and stringy, like a ballet dancer’s. If she got to pick, he’d be the one. Backstage, the musicians greeted the girls by making the sound of chewing gum.
“Jaysus,” Bobby laughed at the way they blanched in embarrassment, “how old are you two?”
“Old enough,” Helen said, pretending a confidence she didn’t have.
Bobby handed her a beer. A Heineken. “Oh, I think you are, darlin’.” His long, floppy bangs stopped just above his eyes and his smile seemed to engage every plane on his face. He was from a place called Slidell, Louisiana, and could say things like “darlin’” without sounding queer. Somebody lit a joint. When it got to Helen, she passed.
“You don’ smoke?” Bobby asked, inhaling so the end of it lit up and a piece of ash fell on the thigh of his jeans. She reached out her hand to brush it off. Bobby jumped with alarm.
“You had an ash,” she said.
“I’ve got a fire now,” he said. The men laughed. Helen wondered if she was in over her head.
Later that night, Helen and Bobby kissed for a long time in the alley behind the bar. She liked almost every thing about it, from the way he pushed her against the soft leather cushion of his motorcycle to the confident way his tongue moved around her mouth, exploring the nooks and crannies of her teeth as if they were his own. She could see how different it was to kiss a man with experience—like the way he breathed calmly through his nose, so he didn’t have to keep coming up for air, and the fact that there was no extra saliva to worry about the way there sometimes had been with Roy. He wanted her to go back to his house that very night but she said no. It was already long past the time she should have been home.
Two nights later, she snuck out the back door while her parents slept. Bobby picked her up on his motorcycle in front of Roy’s old house. She tried not to dwell on the significance of that. In a gesture of loyalty, she and her friend Anya had stolen the For Sale sign out of the front yard the night before. She noticed a new one had already replaced it. This time, she and Bobby went to his place, the small back house of a ranch-style home three blocks from the beach. In his tiny bedroom, with its acoustic tile ceiling, stained carpet, and smell of unwashed clothing, she took a deep breath and lay back, letting him do whatever he wanted. The next morning, as the sun was rising, he dropped her a block from her house. She walked the rest of the way home barefoot, dangling her sandals from two fingers and paying close attention to every thing about the morning—the pht, pht of the automatic sprinklers, the water on the sidewalk, her wet footprints on the concrete, the tangerine light of dawn—she wanted to remember it all.
For the next few weeks, she hoarded the plea sure of her secret, making excuses to her friends and lying to her parents about where she went at night. She’d only told Miranda about Bobby after running into her early one morning in the bathroom. “Nice pajamas,” Miranda had said. Two nights later, Miranda came to see a show. Afterward, Helen asked her what she thought.
“Sexy,” she’d said, and nodded, then narrowed her eyes. “But skeevy, too. You know?”
“Mmmm.” Helen nodded, hiding her hurt.
After that, she would sit alone at a front table, nodding her head to the beat which, truth be told, was sometimes hard to find—even she could tell Bobby wasn’t much of a bass player. Occasionally, there would be some trouble with club owners wanting to see some ID or guys hitting on her but she learned to say, “I’m with the band,” without rolling her eyes.
Everything changed when Forrester, the lead singer, announced he was joining the navy. The remaining band members placed an ad in Variety looking for a replacement, but it seemed like every person they auditioned was worse than the next. When they did find someone who seemed promising, the candidate would inevitably turn them down. “That hurt,” Bobby said to Helen of the rejection, pounding the spot on his chest where his heart lay beating.
To supplement his income, Bobby had always taken the occasional house-painting job. With the band gone, now it was all he did. Helen would look at his brown hair speckled with white latex paint at night and think, That’s how he’ll look when he has gray hair, a thought inevitably followed by, I hope I am not around to see it. Evenings they used to spend in clubs were now passed at his home, sitting around his dingy apartment watching television and drinking beer. She became restless. Helen had always felt that her parents shut themselves up in too many dark rooms on sunny days, a book propped in front of them. But the lack of any reading material in Bobby’s apartment—not even a newspaper—began to grate on her. Even sex became less exciting and more of a chore. This is my boyfriend, she would sometimes think while they were doing it; he used to be in a band but now he paints houses. She knew the contours of the water stain on his ceiling like the back of her hand. “It looks like the boot of Italy,” she said to him one night.
“Italy has a boot?” He took a swig of beer.
She might have been able to wait out the bad spell if it weren’t for the drinking. When he was in the band, the constant beer in his hand was like a barely noticed but ever-present accessory. Since the breakup, the beer had become the main focus. What was the Latin phrase her father always used? Sine qua non. Without which nothing.
“Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”
“Let me just grab a fresh one.”
“Let’s go see a movie.”
“After this beer.”
She began to keep track of how much he actually drank—one for breakfast, two at lunch, four in the afternoon, and another six-pack before the night was over. Helen was used to the genteel drinking of her parents—wine with dinner and never during the day unless there was a special event, such as a wedding or bar mitzvah. Bobby drank on a different scale. The only time she ever saw his naturally sunny disposition darken was the night she told him she was worried about his drinking.
“If I wanted to date my mom, I’d still be in Louisiana.”
A week before, he’d gotten so drunk he peed in the bed. She wasn’t there to witness it, thank God, but he actually told her about it, thereby confirming what she was beginning to suspect—her boyfriend was both a drunk and a loser. Who would be dumb enough to admit something like that? Senior year of high school was starting in a few days. She could feel the promise of her life ahead of her like an engine in idle, and Bobby Goralnick was not part of it.
The last few days, she had been practicing with Siri how to leave him.
“I’m sorry, Bobby, it’s just not working out.”
“What are you talking about? I looove you.” Siri answered in a bad imitation of a Southern accent.
“Siri, be serious.”
“I am being serious. You’re the one who is squelching my creativity as an actress.”
“Please?”
Siri sighed. “Fine. ‘How can you leave me now when I’m down?’”
“We’re just too different. We have nothing in common.”
“You liked me when I was in a band. Now that I’m a nobody, you think you’re better than me.”
“God,” Helen answered, “you think he thinks that?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“It’s not his fault he had to drop out of high school.”
“Just call him.”
Helen refused. Breaking up over the phone was cowardly. She already felt guilty enough. She’d once read in a magazine that public venues were the best place to break up, because people were less likely to make a scene. She suggested lunch at an outdoor café in Venice Beach, her treat.
“How?” he asked suspiciously. Helen never had money.
“I babysat last night for the couple across the street.”
Not getting the car threw a major wrench into her plans. She went upstairs to her bedroom and called Siri on her cell phone.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You want to go to the beach?”
“I can’t,” Helen sighed. “I’m breaking up with Bobby today.”
“Finally.”
“But Miranda won’t give me the car.”
“No.”
“Please, Siri.”
“Do it over the phone.”
In the end, she took a bus and arrived fifteen minutes late. “I’m sorry,” she said. Apologizing already.
Bobby didn’t seem to mind. He was sitting at an outdoor table, wearing Ray Ban aviator glasses in the bright sun and drinking a beer. From his good mood, she doubted it was his first of the day. “You know, sweetheart, this was a good idea.” He leaned forward and squeezed her thigh in a proprietary way. “We ought to get out more often, see what the world has to offer.”
Helen tried to smile and act normal, but the idea of normal with Bobby had already receded in her mind. Was she normally this nervous around him? The waitress, a bony brunette wearing cut-off jeans and peacock-feather earrings, brought a menu. Helen could tell by the unsmiling way the woman placed the menu in front of her that Bobby had been flirting with her before she arrived. She wished she could tell her to stick around, he’d be available soon.
“I’ll have the Cobb salad and a Diet Coke,” she said.
“That’s good,” the woman said, glancing at Bobby. “I was afraid you were gonna order a beer, and we don’t serve minors.”
“Well, then, you needn’t have feared,” Helen answered. Needn’t? She cringed inwardly at the way she seemed to become her parents when she was offended.
The waitress rolled her eyes.
“Meow,” Bobby laughed, watching her leave.
“Bobby,” Helen sighed.
“Oh, I know, honey. You don’t have to say it.” He raised the sunglasses and winked at her.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He finished his beer and pointed to the empty bottle as the waitress passed. “I might be dumb, but I’m not stupid. When your girl says, ‘Let’s have lunch in public,’ I know what’s coming. I don’t blame you. I know being with me has not been a picnic these last few weeks. If I could break up with my sorry ass, I would, too.”
Helen was so taken aback by his sudden stroke of perceptiveness that she wondered for a second if she was making the right decision. Then she remembered the faint smell of urine that lingered in his bedroom.
A Mexican busboy brought her salad. “’Njoy,” he said.
Helen stared at the waxy patina of the Swiss cheese. The article had not mentioned whether it was better to break up before eating or after.
“You don’t mind?” she asked.
“Naw,” he answered, “you’re just a kid, you got your whole life in front of you.”
“Well.” Helen pulled the salad toward her and began to eat. “Thank you. I mean, for being so understanding.” Suddenly, she was ravenous.
“I do have one favor,” he said.
“Anything.” She was feeling magnanimous.
“How about one more for old times’ sake?”
Helen stopped chewing. She could picture a “Sex with an Ex?” headline in the same magazine that advised breaking up in public, but since Roy was making no moves to come home, she hadn’t actually read the article. In fact, the last e-mail she received from her ex had cryptically alluded to “the cool people” he had met in New Jersey, which she understood to be code for “I have a new girlfriend.” Bobby’s glasses were back down over his eyes and she was having some trouble reading his request. Was it a ploy to get her back or a wanton appeal for a futureless fuck?
“I’m not going to change my mind,” she said.
“I’m not expecting you to. I have some news myself. Tomorrow I’m gonna sign up with the navy. Forrester gets a three-thousand-dollar signing bonus for every buddy he recruits. He’s promised to split it with me. I only need to stay six months. I figure it’s a good way to dry out, shape up, and get paid for it.” He patted his belly as if it were fat.
Helen’s head was reeling. It was all happening so fast—the breakup, the news that Bobby was joining the military, the acknowledgment that he had a drinking problem. She didn’t know what to say, so she said what women have always said on the eve of their men shipping out. “I guess once more wouldn’t hurt.”
Bobby smiled and pushed the bill toward her. His four beers cost more than her lunch. In front of the restaurant, Bobby kissed her on the lips. “I miss you already,” he said, handing her the spare helmet he always carried on the back of his motorcycle. The yeasty smell of beer on his breath made her feel queasy. She wondered if he had been drinking before they met, but didn’t say anything. In a few hours, Bobby Goralnick’s problems would no longer be hers. She tightened the helmet strap, swung a leg over the seat of the motorcycle, and put her arms around his waist. He leaned forward, forcing her body into the curve of his spine and down into his ass. She cursed her body for the tremor that ran through her. They had broken up, shouldn’t that break the magnetic pull of his body?
“Hold tight,” he said over his shoulder. Helen loosened her embrace. She hated it when people told her what to do.
“You’ll take me home afterward?” She couldn’t hear his answer over the roar of the engine.