clair

“Waiting for the knock, he sat, blind to the whiteness of his room.” Clair reads this out of some story in some magazine, maybe Vogue, maybe the New Yorker. She used to read only Vogue but she wanted to “broaden her horizons” so she had been reading her father’s subscription to the New Yorker. Clair has the magazine folded over itself so I can’t see the cover and I’m not interested enough to ask her. We’re driving home from the Arroyo Grande and I’m not looking at her because every time I make eye contact she reads another line out loud. As if my eyes are telling her, Yes! Please give me these clips of life from a magazine. Outside my window are golden hills of dying grass and clouds. We are hours north of LA. To our right is the Pacific, a heavy gray-blue, the color of compressed thunderclouds.
I look over at her again and she is reading, one hand holding the magazine, the other resting on her forehead to keep the hair out of her face. She isn’t wearing any sunglasses and she has to squint to see the pages through the light. Instead of meeting her eyes I look at her legs and her feet, anything not to look at her face. Clair places one of her legs up on the seat with her foot crossed over her other thigh. She takes her hand from her face to remove the shoe. Her shoes are baby girl pink leather pumps with an open toe. Her toenails are painted the same color as her shoes and when I look at her face I realize that her lipstick and earrings also match. The color is so repulsing that it stars to turn me on. I wonder if I should fuck Clair.
The last time I slept with her must have been…August? It was lousy sex, she had energy but it wasn’t doing it for me. She made these little girl sexual moans that would get louder and louder for no apparent reason. Usually I like it when a girl makes some noise, it’s encouraging, but this was just creepy. Clair’s moaning was so distracting that I couldn’t get off and finally gave up, went home and jerked off in the shower. Maybe I went over to Kristi’s. No, I must have gone home, but I probably just went to bed.
I consider pulling the car over and making out with her right here. I always like sex in cars. I look up at Clair, this time meeting her eyes and she reads another line. “His feelings were like a cloud and it had become impossible to navigate his way through them...” I don’t listen to the rest of it. Maybe I should pull over and leave her here. I could go straight back to my parents place in Santa Monica and not have to go all the way in to the hills. I imagine her standing by the side of the road, clutching her magazine as I drive off, a tear falling down her cheek. The color of her hair blowing in the wind enhanced by the golden color of the hills behind her. Several cars would drive by before a convertible with a young, handsome, male driver stops to rescue her. She would sit close to him telling him the horror story of how I left her and what could her attractive savior do but agree with and console her. He nods his head sympathetically and takes his hand off the gearshift putting his arm around her. Holding her, firmly but gently, the perfect support. I ask her if she is going to Paul’s party tonight.
“What do you think of him?” She asks.
“Paul?”
“No, Bernard.”
“Who?”
“The guy in this story.” She says lightly smacking me in the nose with the magazine. I take a hand off the wheel to bat the magazine away and we swerve a little. Before I put my hand back on the wheel I check my jacket pocket to make sure I have my flask. The cold metal reassures me and I look over at Clair. She roles down her window. The wind blows in off the ocean putting goose bumps on my exposed skin and I am glad I wore a jacket. Clair is wearing only a small white t-shirt and tight new blue jeans rolled up to the middle of her calf. Her hair flies up in the wind and she drops the magazine on the floor to brush the hair out of her face. Her hair is bleached to a platinum blonde, the way her hair is moving in the wind reminds me of a night we spent alone last summer.
We were out in the desert at my grandfather’s house; he died the previous year leaving the house empty until it sold. Clair and I were lying on a blanket in the back yard. The wind started picking up and the breeze was warm but thee feeling of it going across by skin sent an electric shiver through my whole body. My grandfather has no neighbors and no fences anywhere. His backyard is a square half-acre of grass perfectly green all the way to the edge and surrounded by the desert. The lawn was still perfect because my father hired a gardener to keep the yard in shape. We were lying so close; her hair was blowing all around my face and hers. What I really remember is the way her hair smelled. Kind of like peaches or maybe… nectarines? No, peaches but authentic natural peaches, not artificially sweet.

Clair speaks and I look at her back, tanned, tight skin below her shirt, as she leans over to pick up her magazine. “You could learn from this story.” Then in an off hand way, as if reading a headline. “To many people let their fears control them.”
I shudder. She asks if I am cold and then starts to roll up the window. She pauses, rolls the magazine in half and tries to put it into her bag, which is a small pink leather clutch but it wont fit and she sets it down on the seat between us. “He’s lost but it doesn’t overcome him. I feel like that sometimes.” I lean over to smell her hair.
“You smell like chlorine.”
“I went swimming this morning.”
“With who?”
“Nobody. Myself. I just put on music and floated on the water.” She goes on to name some band I’ve never heard of, then asks me if I like them.
“They’re great.” I say.
“It was wonderful. After the music stopped I kept floating there and the only thing I could hear was my heartbeat through the water.”
I concentrate on the road. “Sounds pretty sad.” after saying this I immediately feel depressed. For some reason I think of my old bed and the sheets I used to have. Red and yellow stripes, comfortingly ugly. I wouldn’t let my mom wash them and when I left for college she threw them out. They smelled like me. My new sheets are clean and white, they smell like starch.
“It’s wasn’t sad,” Clair says. “It was…restful.”
“Miserable,” I mumble not knowing if I mean Clair, or the story, or me. She doesn’t respond and I hope that means she didn’t hear me. She starts to fidget with her hands rubbing them over each other slowly and deliberately. She asks if I can give her a ride to Paul’s tonight. Her fingernails are baby-girl pink.
“Yeah, sure.” I say.
My hands are clenching the steering wheel tight enough that my knuckles go white and I force myself to relax. Traffic is good and we ride in silence until we reach her house. When she gets out she tells me to pick her up at eight and gives me a kiss on the cheek. Her lips are gentle on my face and linger there for a moment. I watch her walk up to her house and go inside. She left her magazine on the seat (the New Yorker) I stare at it for a moment thinking about her floating in her pool. I open my flask and take a long hit of the whiskey. It burns my tongue for a while then mellows out and I take another hit. Then I peel out, drive away, and toss her magazine out my window.

At home I go straight to the kitchen and make myself a double vodka and cranberry juice. I drink this quickly, make another and drink it just as fast. We have a small TV in our kitchen and I flip through all two hundred something channels without pausing, then turn it off. After that I fix another drink and put away the juice but leave the vodka on the counter. I take my drink to my room, sipping it. When it is finished I set it on my floor and call Clair from my cell.
“Hello?” a girls voice, not Clair.
“Clair?”
“Oh hey, it’s Sheila.”
“Is Clair there?”
“Yeah, hold on.” I listen to the static like noise and muted voices as Sheila hands the phone to Clair.
“What’s up?”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing, I was just in the other room.”
“I can’t pick you up tonight.”
“That ok, I can get a ride with Sheila.”
“Yeah, I just have to do something.” Clair sighs, sounding like she hasn’t slept in weeks. I sigh back, an automatic response, and she says, “OK.” Sheila says something in the background but Clair doesn’t respond.
I have the receiver pressed tight against my face and can hear myself breathing. I count to ninety-seven before Clair starts to say something and I hang up. I toss my phone on the floor next to my drink and look around my room.
I came home from school last week and everything that used to be in here is in the attic, or the basement. Plain white walls, matte black Venetian blinds, black and white stripped comforter. That’s all I have in my room, a bed, a stereo, a TV, and a mini-fridge. The stereo, TV, and fridge I bought last week at Ikea. I don’t even have an end table. My room is huge and these things seem to be made for abnormally small people when compared to the size of my room. All of my things are within arms reach of my bed, which is in the center of my room. My bed is an island in the middle of my floor with smaller islands scattered around it. I take off my jacket and wristwatch, throw my jacket in the closet and set my watch on top of my stereo. Stepping around my empty glass on the floor I go back to the kitchen, put away the vodka, and take out some whiskey. My flask is still in my jacket in my closet so I turn on the TV and flip through all the channels again. I do this twice using the buttons on the TV because I can’t find the remote. I pause to watch news footage of a seven-car pile up on the 101then switch off the set and go back to my room to get my flask. I grab my flask and pick my glass up off the floor and take them both back to the kitchen. All the ice in my glass has melted and I pour it out in the sink and take the last shot of whiskey from the flask before refilling it. While I do this I think about school. I never do homework. I haven’t been to class for a week and a half because I came home ten days early for fall break. I wonder if I’m failing any courses. I go back to my room and set the flask next to my stereo. I put on a porno called Ass, Ass, Ass! The whole video was shot in black and white and it seems that defeats the purpose of have visuals at all. I don’t really watch it because I am buzzed and thinking about how you have to keep alcohol in a flask at all time or it will mold and rust. I have seen this particular video seven times. Twice with Clair. The girl with the nice ass is screaming “yes nigger yes!” The guy who is fucking her is some white guy. Clair took this video from her parent’s collection, I wonder if her parents are racist. Her mother always introduces her as Bethany, and they have a collection of over thirteen hundred pornos, all on video, no DVDs. I’ve never seen her mother without a drink. They travel a lot, her father because of his job and her mother because she has nothing else too do. My parents don’t bother me most of the time. I try to figure out how or what I feel for my parents but nothing comes to mind. The harder I think about it the less they seem to matter and then I am not even sure of the shape of their faces. I pick up the flask and run my hand over the initial engraved in the metal then I pocket it and leave for Paul’s party.

“Hey! Theresthefucker.” Paul slurs these words together so they sound like one word. He is wearing a bathrobe made out of a lime green shower liner. I can’t tell if he has anything on under this. I don’t know where he would get a shower liner this color. He leaves the group of people he was talking to and comes over to me.
Paul has to shout because someone has just cranked the music. “I have to talk to you.”
“Nice robe.”
Paul opens his robe to reveal that he is wearing a lime green string bikini and a matching bra that says HOT on one up and DIVA on the other. Paul’s swimsuit is made from the same shower liner as his robe.
“Made it myself.” Paul leans in close to say this as if it were a secret between us.
“Never would have guessed.”
Paul ignores this and asks me why I don’t have a drink in my hand. I ask if he has seen Clair and he say he saw her with some dark haired hottie with short hair and eyes that he says are either blue or green.
“I hope they’re green,” he says to me in the same confidential manner.
“Looks like green to me,” I say while looking at his bikini-robe ensemble.
Paul slowly and deliberately pours his drink into the base of a potted palm tree. I scan the room for Clair and notice that there are several other large plants mixed in-between the guests.
“Let’s go make you a drink.” I follow Paul into the kitchen. It is quieter in here and we don't have to shout.
“Here man.” Paul hands me a drink, which looks like it could be either muddy water or diarrhea. “What is this?”
“It’s rum and orange juice.”
I just hold the drink. The kitchen counter is crowded with several small potted plants.
“Are these always her?” I ask him and he looks around.
“Naw man these people are here for the party.”
“I meant the plants.”
He looks at the plants for minute then very slowly rips a couple leaves off one at a time. He rips the leaves in half and in half again then sprinkles them on the ground.
“I hate these fucking plants.”
Before I can ask him if he has any Valium Paul gets called off by a group off pretty young girls who look to be fresh out of high school, if that old. I pour the drink down the drain and search the kitchen. I find some cola in the fridge and a near full bottle of whiskey in the freezer. There is not much room on the counter because of all the plants. I move a couple of them to the floor so I can mix my drink. When I stand back up Clair is standing in front of smiling at the plants on the floor. Neither one of us says anything so I find another cup and make us each a rum and coke, which she tests tentatively before taking a deep swallow.
“Not bad.”
“Not poison anyway.”
“No.” She gives me an odd look, looking through as much as at me. I start to feel hot and look out the kitchen window into Paul’s backyard.
“You come with Sheila?” I ask looking back at Clair. She looks away from me. Her eyes are glazed over but she isn’t wobbling or anything. She looks down at her feet and absently runs her finger along the rim of her plastic cup.
“Sorry?”
“Forget it. Nothing.” I ask her when she got here but she just shrugs and asks what time it is now. I don’t bother to check my watch.
“It’s one.”
“OK,” she puts down her drink and looks down at her feet again. “I have to go.”
I don’t say anything. She walks out of the kitchen, into the living room where most of the people are. I finish my drink and then take hers and the bottle of rum out to the backyard. The backyard is empty except for two girls passed out on a large picnic blanket. I finish Clair’s drink and then throw the cup over the wall into the neighbors yard. It is cold out. I sit down on the blanket next to the two girls. They are both wearing tank tops and jeans. I can see goose bumps on the arms of one of the girls and a gust of wind blows her hair over her face and they both stir. I freeze and wait to see if they are going to wake up. I am holding my breath and I pull in a huge noisy gasp. I panic cause my breathing seems so loud now that I am afraid I will wake them. I struggle to get up and it takes more effort than I expected. My eyes blur as I get to my feet. I stand there a while, watching them sleep. The wind picks up again and covers the one girls face with her hair again. Still asleep she brushes the hair out of her face. I used to watch Clair sleep like this in the mornings after staying at her house. Sometimes I would be there just sitting in her room for half an hour before she would wake up. I cover up the girls with the excess of the picnic blanket. I can see Clair inside with Paul, she has her arms around him and they are talking to a group of people, most of whom I don’t recognize. I take a swig off the bottle of rum then stare at it. It’s still half full and I take great care to hide it in one of the planters near that back door. Then I go home.

***

I’m still hung over from the night before. I lie in bed staring at my ceiling drinking water. I drink about a half gallon of water and then I have to piss but I don’t feel like getting up. I search my clothes for my cell phone and call Clair on her cell. No answer I call again and get her answering machine. I listen to her message and the beep and hold the phone in silence until the machine hangs up on me and then I get up and go to the bathroom. When I get back to my room I just stand in my doorway holding my phone while I try to decide if I should call her house. My mom walks by with my sister’s laundry.
“Something wrong honey?”
“No, what are you doing?”
“The maid has the day off.”
I don’t know why my mother insists on trying to be domestic. The maid could do this tomorrow. I am certain that she will ruin my sister’s clothing. She tried to cook a whole chicken last Sunday and she gave herself food poisoning. My sister and I were fine because I had refused to eat it and my sister was I don’t know where, either in her room on the phone, or at her friend’s house, on the phone. I haven’t seen my sister once since I got back from school. Sometimes I can hear her music but I can’t hear any right now, her door is always closed. I think she still goes to the same high school I went to.
“Where’s…” My sister’s name slips my mind and I don’t finish.
“I told you she has the day off.”
My mother drops the laundry and I watch her struggle to pick it up and then go into my room and close the door. My mother looks much older than I remembered. I take a bottle of aspirin out of my mini fridge and take three. I drink a whole glass of water to wash the pills down. I got to the kitchen and take five bottles of water out of the pantry and take them back to my room. I drink two of the bottles while I take two more aspirin one at a time, drinking a whole bottle of water with each pill. I put the other three bottles into my mini fridge. I call Clair’s cell and get no answer then I call her house and her mom tells me that she checked Clair into Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Hills this morning at seven. They found her passed out and with a swollen face in the back of her car, which was parked down the road from her house. Her father found her this morning when he was walking their dogs.

At the hospital I have to wait for forty-five minutes before they let me see her. The desk clerk tells me that no “unnecessary” visitors are allowed to visit for at least two hours after any operation, sometimes longer. Posttraumatic recovery.
“Look,” I pause to read the clerks name tag. “Look Doreen its not like I want to see her before she dies or anything like that but I am here so I might as well see her.”
“Aren’t you mister compassion, what are you her boyfriend?” Doreen said the word boyfriend like a curse. “Sit down, if you’re going to be upsetting to the patient then you wont be allowed to see her.” I open my mouth and the close it. I make my hand into fists, squeezing so hard that my nails dig into my palms. Then I speak calmly and evenly.
“Just let me know as soon as I can see her.” Then I sit down.
Sitting across from me is a young couple. They look exhausted, their clothes are wrinkled and the skin on their faces is sagging off their bones. The young man’s hair is out of place. I can’t stop starring at his hair and eventually he gets up. The woman doesn’t let go of his hand until he bends down and whispers in her ear. She nods faintly and she lets go of his hand. He kisses her on the forehead and then walks down the hall. Her eyes are swollen and red and staring to tear up. I make eye contact with her and she turns away then puts a tissue to her face and I know she is trying to hide it but I can hear her crying. After a while she stops and slowly folds the tissue and sets it on her lap. A few moments later the man returns. His hair has been combed and when he sits back down her places his hand on her leg and she starts crying again. She puts the tissue to her face again and them an tries to give her a fresh one but she just shakes her head and cries even more. She tries to say something to him but the words come out in a jumble that I can’t understand but apparently the man understands because he whispers in her ear. She leans against him with one of his arms around her, after a while she is silent. The man looks at his hands, I can see them shaking slightly and he closes his eyes.
Clair used to cry a lot when we were seeing each other, for no reason that she would ever tell me. I never really pressed the matter. One night we were coming home to her place, she was driving because she thought I’d had too much to drink. We had just turned on to her street and we hit a dog, a German shepherd. Clair has two German shepherds; she thought it might have been one of hers. She wouldn’t look at it and she made me check the collar to see if it was her dog. It wasn’t and when I read the name off the tag she started crying. The collar read “Stacy” it seemed an odd name for a dog. Clair’s dogs are named Rocky and Coco.
A nurse comes out and the young couple follows the nurse out of the waiting room. I notice that the tissue is on the seat where the woman was sitting. I walk over to the seat and pick up the tissue. It is still damp from her tears. I hold the tissue in my hand and sit back down. I sit there staring at the tissue for several minutes before the nurse comes back out and calls me in. I throw the tissue away and follow her to Clair’s room.

The nurse tells me I have fifteen minutes then shows me how to call for help and then leaves us alone. I just stand in the doorway for a minute looking at Clair. For the first time it seems odd that her parents aren’t here. Finally I sit down but I don’t say anything. Her face is all bruised, purple and brown shapes mounding up and distorting her features. I take her hand and she turns her head to look at me and tries to say something that's just comes out like the sound of breathing. I notice that her nails are still pink and drop her hand.
All I can say is “OK. OK.” There are several stitches on the left side of her face running across her cheekbone. She starts to cry and I see that her eyes are red, redder than woman’s eyes in the waiting room. There is a barrette on the stand next to her bed and I use it to pin her hair back. My hands feel clumsy and large as I try to pin back her hair without hurting her. She says hi and this time the word comes out clearly.
“Hi.” My voice comes out more faintly than I expected and I swallow to clear my throat.
“My face.”
“Your mother said you were ‘lumpy’ looking.”
“Six stitches in my check.” She moves her hand as if to touch her face but puts her hand back down and winces. I don’t say anything. I’m looking at crack in the plaster behind her bead.
“It’ll scar.”
“They could have put you in a better room.”
Clair turns away and looks out the window. We sit like that in silence. We don’t say anything until the nurse comes back to tell me my time is up and I say goodbye. Clair makes a motion for me to come closer. I lean in to hear her but her voice is to quite. I have to lean in close to her face and her breath on my check makes me want to pull away.
“It’s raining.” She locks her eyes with mine. After a moment she sighs, her eyes close, and her body goes limp. For a second I think she is dead but then I see her chest slowly, and shallowly rising and falling. I look out the widow. Droplets of water are starting to build up on the window. Rain is falling faintly against the glass, barley audible. I take one last look at Clair, eyes still closed, nails still baby-girl pink, then I follow the nurse back to the waiting room. It is only on the way out that I think to ask the nurse what happened to Clair. The nurse doesn’t know and the desk clerk tells me they can’t release that information. Outside of the hospital I call Clair’s house and both of her parents cells but nobody answers at any of the numbers.
I hail a cab and ride for four blocks before I remember that I drove to the hospital. I ride until the cab gets to Westwood before I ask the driver to turn around.

I don’t see Clair again. Two days later her father calls me on my cell and asks if I know Clair.
“We’re friends.” I say.
“Your number was in her phone book. Since you’re friends I should let you know she passed away last night. There was a clot in her brain. My wife is a mess.” His voice is flat and even. The same voice that comes out of the intercom at the airport listing delays. I don’t say anything. “The funeral is next week. If you give me your address we can send you an invitation.”
I can’t remember my address and have to go downstairs and sift through the mail to find it. This takes five minutes and I can hear a TV program playing in the background over the line. I give him my details; he thanks me and hangs up without saying goodbye.
I try to remember the way Clair’s face looked (before the hospital) but can only think of the word ‘lumpy’. Instead of Clair I think of a puppy I used to have, a chocolate lab that my father ran over on accident. The puppy’s skull was crushed under one of the tires of his car. Lying on its side it kept twitching like it was running and I held it in my lap while it was dying like that. I must have been young, maybe twelve, maybe eight. My father bought a baby rottweiler the next day but I wouldn’t play with it and eventually he gave it away.
Outside my bedroom window the sun is setting and a dirty yellow haze of light fills the sky. The street is empty, no people or animals anywhere to be seen. Even most of the driveways are empty; the cars parked in the garage, their own private world.

The invitation to Clair’s funeral comes some days later. I only read the return address before I throw it away unopened. The TV in my room is showing only static because the cable was knocked out or my parents forgot to pay the bill. It seems strange that they would not have setup an automatic bill pay from one of their bank accounts. I change through a few channels, everyone static and snow. With each new channel I turn to the TV emits a hissing sound of blown speakers before it mutes itself. Out of my closet I take my suitcase, moderately sized, black leather. I open it up and start packing. This only takes five minutes. The few clothing I am taking I just cram into the suitcase before closing it. I go to my parent’s bathroom and get my father’s electric razor. He recently got a new one so he doesn’t need this one anymore. Back in my room I open thee suitcase and place the razor on top of my clothing and close it up. In my fridge is my flask half full of whiskey. I take it out and hit it while I walk to the kitchen where I pour the rest of the whiskey into a tall glass and mix it with some coke from the fridge. After refilling my flask with a different whiskey I take it and my glass back to my room where I gulp down half my drink then slowly sip the rest of it. I open the suitcase again and put my flask next to the razor and close it back up. As I finish my drink I walk slowly around my room several times. I put my glass on the stereo then I move it to the floor so that it doesn’t leave a ring. I reopen my suitcase and take out my flask and take hit off it and put it back. I stare at the clothing in my suitcase and take out a white collared shirt and put it back in my closet. I change my mind and put the shirt back in the suitcase plus a white silk tie and take out the razor and put it back in my parent’s bathroom. Then I also take out my flask and put it in my back pocket and close the suitcase, this time spinning the combination lock. Classes started today or yesterday and I have no reason not to go back. When I get there I will have to break the locks on my suitcase because I don’t know the combination.