The Girls From Corona Del Mar (24 page)

“Sure they are,” Lor said. “Women have vaginas and men have
penises. I’m sick to death of people who claim to be feminists arguing that women are the same as men. They aren’t. They should be equal to men in our esteem, but they are not the same as men. And as history shows, men are prone to kill people for almost no reason at all. Women hardly ever do that.”

I felt we had gotten off track. This didn’t need to be an argument about the difference between men and women. This was about Zach. This was about the grossness of Playboy bunnies holding dead sloths and marriage proposals you forgot about in the morning. I used a washcloth gently on the bottoms of her feet.

“I think there’s a piece of glass in there,” Lor said.

“Do you want me to get the tweezers?”

She nodded, biting her lip, and I ran to the bathroom to get some tweezers. When I got back, the kettle was singing and I flicked off the burner. “Do you even want any more tea?” I asked.

“No.”

I left the kettle steaming on the stove and knelt in front of Lor again. “Which one?”

She held up her left foot. “In the heel.”

I smoothed the side of my finger up and down the skin of her heel until I found the lump and the sharp point of the shard of glass. “What I’m saying,” I said, “is that I think the current system works most of the time. It doesn’t work for you, but for most people it’s the best thing. So it’s imperfect, but it’s the best we can do.”

“Well,” Lor said, “it’s not good enough. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s the best we can do at all! I don’t think anyone is even trying to make it better. That’s like saying a canoe is the best we can do!”

I got the little sliver of glass with the tweezers—I could hear that I had it by the scraping glass and metal sound, but it kept slipping as I tried to pull it out.

Lor went on, “Why not strive for perfect justice on earth? Why not try to find something that works absolutely perfectly all of the time? I mean, it’s like we’ve just given up on justice. No one’s even trying
anymore. We just have all these shitty stupid laws, and people always say, ‘Well, it’s the best we’ve got!’ Fuck that. Fuck them. Oh, ow, that hurts!”

“It’s out,” I said, holding out for her inspection the sliver of green glass I had extracted from her heel.

“Listen,” Lor said, as she plucked the glass from me to see it closer, “we all know that the current justification for abortion is just bullshit. It’s not yet a life? Come
on
! That’s not the point! That’s semantics! It would become a life if you left it alone, and everyone, everyone knows that. Women who get abortions, they don’t feel light and easy about it—but they know, they know deep in their blood that it is their right to kill their children.”

Her argument made me uncomfortable. When I had had my abortion, I had not considered it a “collection of cells.” I had thought of it as a baby, and I had decided it was my right to kill it.

“That is not the point. That is not the point,” I said. “The point is, even if what they are doing is morally wrong, that doesn’t mean Zach deserves to be all alone.”

“You want me to be party to actions I believe are unethical, and I just can’t. You want me to sit there and watch while they torture my boy. Well, I’m not that brave. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not asking you to be brave,” I said, flustered.

“But you would rather I was sober,” she said. “And it takes being brave to be sober. Part of the reason I do drugs is because I can’t handle any of this, and you want me to be able to handle it because you would feel better about that. But, Mia, I don’t make decisions in my life based on how it makes you feel.”

I stammered because of course it sounded absurd, the idea that she would make major life decisions according to my feelings, and yet that was exactly what I wanted her to do. “But you know this is gross. You know it is.”

“Exactly,” Lor said, “which is why I choose to be high all the time.”

“I think I might be pregnant,” I blurted. It was almost as if her
honesty had pulled it out of me the way a metal filing is drawn to a magnet.

Lor looked up at me as though I had rung a gong. “That’s so exciting,” she said.

Just then, Franklin walked in the door with Bensu on his shoulders.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Franklin stood there for a moment, his hands on Bensu’s ankles, taking in the scene. Bensu was wearing little black patent-leather dress shoes. I remembered suddenly the tea set I had bought her. I wasn’t entirely sure how much Franklin had heard. He could read me as easily as he could read Inanna, and he knew he had walked in on something, but had he heard the word “pregnant”? Had he heard that it was my voice saying it?

“Hey, baby,” I said. I caught his eye, but his face was a mask of friendliness.

“Look who I found out in the hall,” Franklin said.

“I refuse to betray my country,” Bensu said. “Do whatever you want to me.”

“She’s a spy,” Franklin explained. “And you must be …?” He reached out a hand to shake with Lorrie Ann, and Bensu had to cling to his hair in order to keep her balance as he leaned. If it hurt him, the way she grabbed his hair, he gave no sign of it. My pulse began to regulate as more and more it seemed that Franklin hadn’t heard anything.

“Lorrie Ann,” she said.

The change in Franklin was instantaneous and so genuine it almost broke my heart. “Oh my God!” he cried. “Why didn’t you call me and tell me?” he asked, turning to me. “We’re so, so happy to have you here. I’m so glad to meet you!”

Behind him I mimed to Lorrie Ann a zipper across my lips. I mouthed: “He doesn’t know.”

Lorrie Ann was clearly flustered, trying to greet Franklin and take
in my frantic sign language. “It was a surprise,” she said, smiling winningly at him. I noted that she did not say: “I called Mia for help when I was barefoot and bleeding in the Grand Bazaar.”

“How crazy!” Franklin exclaimed. “Still, you should have called me, Mia. I would have picked up something special.”

“I’m making chicken,” I said.

“Chicken will be fine,” Lorrie Ann said. “More than fine.”

She flicked her eyes at me, and I knew she was saying: “He didn’t hear. It’s okay.” Once more, we were co-conspirators, the way we had been as girls. That was how easy it was to regain: one secret, and suddenly we were a team.

“You should see how she cooks the chicken,” Franklin said. “She rubs it with cinnamon and all these crazy spices—unbelievable.”

“If you are going to kill me,” Bensu said from above him, “please have mercy and do it quickly.”

“Oh, okay,” Franklin said and swung her down from his shoulders. “Where would you like me to kill you?”

“In the living room,” Bensu said.

“Come this way then,” Franklin said. “I’ll be right back,” he assured us, but Lorrie Ann and I were both too curious to see how he was going to kill Bensu in the living room, and we followed them.

“Now you have to stand bravely against the wall,” he said, “and close your eyes and then I’m going to shoot you with this gun”—he gestured with his fingers, making the shape of a handgun—“and then you have to die, all right?”

Bensu nodded gravely and readied herself against the wall.

“Any last words, spy?” Franklin asked.

“I only want to say,” Bensu said, “that I have chosen to die instead of to betray my country. And also that I am very jealous that she got to meet Leonardo DiCaprio.” Bensu tried to point at Lorrie Ann, but her eyes were closed and so she wound up pointing at the ottoman beside the red chair. So that was why I had kept hearing someone out in the hall; Bensu had been spying. Had she heard me say I might be pregnant?

“I see,” Franklin said and raised his eyebrows at me and Lorrie Ann. “Prepare to die!”

Bensu smoothed her brow, her eyes still closed, and waited bravely for death.

“Pow pow pow!” Franklin said, shooting her with his fingers. “Pow pow!”

Bensu’s eyes flew open, those emerald eyes, with a look of pure betrayal. She clutched at her chest as she slowly slid down the wall, her legs buckling beneath her. “Shame on you,” she said. “I’m just a child!”

Franklin just shrugged, still smiling, as Bensu went through her death throes. She moaned and spasmed for a very long time. When it seemed she was finally done, he went over and offered her a hand. “Very good dying,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Hey Bensu,” I said, “I have a present for you.”

“What is it?” Bensu asked skeptically.

“Why don’t you come in the kitchen and see?”

Franklin and Lorrie Ann watched from the doorway as I presented the tea set to Bensu. I was dimly aware that I was being slightly theatrical, trying to show Lorrie Ann what a good person I was, trying to show Franklin how good with children I was. My mind flashed briefly to the Yes or No test right there in the kitchen drawer, tucked alongside the place mats. Was I auditioning somehow?

“Isn’t it pretty?” I asked, pointing at the pattern of golden triangles along the edges of the teacups.

Bensu could smell the falseness a mile away. “Why were you yelling at her?” she asked me, still not taking the tea set from my hands.

“At who?” I asked.

“That one,” Bensu said, indicating Lorrie Ann with a nod of her head.

“It was just a misunderstanding,” I said.

“You shouldn’t yell,” Bensu said. “It isn’t proper for a lady to yell.”

“Take it,” I said, trying to hand her the tea set. Had I been yelling at
Lorrie Ann? Was that how it seemed? It had seemed to me only that we were arguing.

“I should get home to my mother,” Bensu said, and backed off a few paces, walking backward until she bumped into Franklin’s legs.

“You don’t want your tea set?” I asked.

“I already have one,” Bensu said.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “You’re always pretending to drink out of doll shoes!”

“Are you going to have a baby?” she asked, and it felt exactly like she had stabbed me in the stomach with a metal barbecue skewer.

“No.” I laughed. “What gave you that idea?”

“Then is she?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said, trying to act confused and baffled by her questions. Kids! They say the strangest things! I was smiling, but my cheeks were numb, as though they were shot full of Novocain.

“That is a very nice tea set,” Bensu said, trying to make it up to me. “Too bad that I already have one.”

“Too bad,” I said.

“I’ll take you downstairs,” Franklin said, and Bensu nodded, holding up her tiny hand to be taken in his big one and placidly following him out the door.

“Well, that was fucking weird,” Lorrie Ann said once they were gone and out of earshot.

“I know,” I hissed.

“So do you know for sure yet?”

“No, I haven’t even taken the test—I just, it just feels like I am.”

Lorrie Ann nodded, eagerly. “Are you done being mad at me?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, even though I was in no way done being mad at her. It was more that, in the end, my love for her trumped everything.

“Thank God,” Lorrie Ann said. “It’s the worst feeling in the world when you’re mad at me.” She took the tea set out of my hands and hugged me, long and hard.

Her hair smelled of lavender covering over something greasy and unclean, like rancid cooking oil.

One of Franklin’s most profound gifts was social ease. I didn’t consider myself socially awkward, exactly, but there was an unbendingness in me as well as a propensity to say cruel, but mostly true, things that seemed to make other people uncomfortable, whereas everyone, absolutely everyone, loved Franklin. I wasn’t jealous of him about it; I was extremely grateful.

When he returned, sans Bensu, he brought with him an air of bonhomie so great that the moment he set foot in the apartment I could feel the muscles in my shoulders sag with relief. He opened a bottle of wine and began asking Lorrie Ann questions about herself almost as soon as he was through the door. He had retained every detail of her life, and he asked after Dana and Zach by name.

He asked her if she still worked at The Cellar.

He asked after Arman.

He even asked about the cat.

I was shocked and amazed by how much he knew about her, and Lorrie Ann was very obviously both flattered and alarmed, since she couldn’t remember the first thing about him and could ask him nothing in return. But even more than Franklin’s encyclopedic knowledge of her life, I found myself amazed by the answers his questions elicited.

About Zach, Lorrie Ann said simply, “His disease had progressed to the point that in-home care was no longer an option. He’s in an inpatient care facility and I miss him every single day. Every day.”

About The Cellar, she said, “Maybe I had just gotten too old to be a waitress anymore. I was struggling with my mom in the hospital and with Zach, and even though I had worked there four years, they wouldn’t cut me any slack. They treated me like I was a teenager, late for work because I’d overslept. The whole experience kind of stunned me, to be honest.”

About Arman and the trip to India, she said, “We had both always wanted to see the world, and for the first time in my life, I was free to. So we traveled around India. Ultimately, I wound up traveling with another girl I met along the way and he went back to the States. He owns a smoke shop there and he has this whole life, whereas I didn’t have anything to return to, so it just made sense for me to keep traveling.”