God-Shaped Hole

  I ended up spending the night with a cute cyclist from Berkeley. We just fooled around a little and spent most of our time talking. I guess we liked each other and all that baloney, but the last thing I wanted was a long-distance relationship—I need way too much attention and immediate gratification to be content with an absentee boyfriend. I had a hard time getting rid of the guy. He called every day for three weeks straight. He even flew down once to visit me. The only thing I remember about him now is that he shaved his legs. I was surprised at how much I dug the shaved legs.

  “Thanks for sharing,” Jacob said.

  I hadn’t realized I’d been thinking aloud.

  Jacob had booked us a room at the Ritz-Carlton—an elegant hotel that looked like the White House, and was within walking distance of Chinatown, North Beach, Nob Hill, and Union Square. The Ritz was one of those stuffy places where the staff looked at you like you won the lottery when you walked in looking the way Jacob and I did. I was wearing a skirt, but nothing fancy by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not like I had diamonds on like everyone else in the lobby. And Jacob always looked like he’d just rolled out of bed in last night’s clothes, which, on occasion, he had. I loved him for that, but some people can neither appreciate nor understand a holy lack of narcissism.

  I knew the Ritz had to set the bank account back a few hundred bucks a night, but it had beds that felt like clouds, and there were chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne next to our bed when we arrived. I looked at the room service menu and almost fell over when I saw how much they charged for a dish of sliced bananas.

  “I bet I could go to a nursery and get an entire banana tree for less than that,” I said.

  “Forget it, we’re on vacation,” Jacob said.

  I didn’t feel good about Jacob spending so much money on me. I asked him if I could help pay for the room.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said. “It’s your birthday. You’re not paying for the room.”

  He reminded me about the assignment he’d just been given by Los Angeles magazine. It was a going to be a three thousand word article, and at a dollar a word, he said, he could afford it.

  “Let me blow half of my paycheck on you, okay?”

  I tried to tell Jacob there were plenty of hotels in San Francisco that were cute, romantic, and nowhere near as fancy as the Ritz. He wouldn’t hear of it.

  “I don’t want to stay in some trendy-ass place that caters to the hip, People magazine-reading, blow-snorting crowd,” he said. “We’d stay in L.A. if we wanted that.”

  Jacob would have rather looked out of place at the Ritz than look like he cared to fit in anywhere.

  TWENTY-TWO

  We ate Thanksgiving dinner with Jacob’s Uncle Don. He wasn’t really Jacob’s uncle, not by blood anyway, he was just a guy that Joanna had lived with for a few years when Jacob was a kid. Don and Joanna went their separate ways when Jacob was in elementary school, but they all still kept in touch.

  “He taught me how to catch a baseball and how to change a flat tire,” Jacob said.

  Uncle Don was the spitting image of the Boo Radley of my imagination—an obtuse-looking guy with wiry gray hair and a Jimmy Stewart stutter. He lived in a crummy duplex off of Polk Street and grew orchids in his spare time—he must have had twenty-five plants, all different varieties, all over the place. He had to keep the air warm and humid for them, and walking through his front door was like walking into Florida. Don had been a plumber for most of his adult life but, at the age of fifty, decided he wanted to be a chef. A week later he enrolled himself in the California Culinary Academy. He was six months into the program when we showed up for Thanksgiving. Don had no family in the Bay Area and was thrilled to have us, not only as company, but as guinea pigs.

  “I’m experimenting tonight. Ha…Ha…How does a Pan-Asian Thanksgiving sound?”

  We told him we were game, and he served us the most interesting holiday meal I’d had in a long time. Duck with citrus-coriander sauce, cucumber and papaya salad, garlic noodles, and vanilla bean ice cream with lychee for dessert.

  “What exactly are lychee?” I had to ask because they looked like big, round bugs, and smelled like sugar-coated trash.

  “It’s a…a…a fruit. Though some people call it a nut.”

  Uncle Don hated Los Angeles more than Jacob and I did. All through dinner he listed for us the many reasons why we had to get out as soon as possible. He said it was the best thing he’d ever done.

  “Los Angeles is a…a…a black hole. A Bermuda Triangle. A va…vast wasteland of vacant infidels.”

  When we told him our plan for leaving, he went on to explain his theory of people who lived there.

  “As…as…as far as I’m concerned, there are three kinds of people who live in Los Angeles. Number one: those…those who love living there. Number two: those who love living there but pre…pretend they hate it because they know they’ll be found out for the hollow shells they are if…if they admit how much they enjoy all the pointless drivel.”

  I was pretty sure Jacob had underestimated Uncle Don’s influence. Undoubtedly, more than how to change a tire had rubbed off way back when.

  “So where do Trixie and I fit in to your theory?” Jacob said.

  “I’m…I’m getting to you,” Uncle Don said. Uncle Don had beautiful, working-class hands. Strong and without mercy. Father hands. But not my father, of course, he manicured regularly.

  “Then there’s number three: you and…and…and this lovely young lady of yours. You’re in the minority. You’re part of those who want to escape but can’t. Am I right?”

  We nodded in agreement.

  “And I bet it’s not so much the smog, or the traffic, or the…the fact that every night on the evening news, someone has been shot, run over by a car, beaten up by a member of the LAPD, or kill…killed by a natural disaster. No, it’s more than that. It’s the whole vibe down there. You don’t fit into that world. I guess I can’t speak for you, Beatrice, but you never did, Jake.”

  “We’re moving to Georgia,” I said.

  “Mississippi,” Jacob corrected.

  Jacob and I had both been doing our southern research. I wanted to move to Athens, Georgia. It seemed like the kind of place that would offer small town southern charm, but with an art house movie theater and some decent restaurants. And I met a girl from Athens once—she had virtually no accent. I didn’t want Madeline and Simone speaking French with a twang. Jacob wanted to live somewhere closer to the river, in a place where barbeque joints with greasy windows and our fantasy Eggleston diners were the most renowned culinary establishments within a twenty-mile radius.

  “It should be noted, however,” Jacob said, “that as far as we can recall, neither of us have ever set foot in the states of Georgia or Mississippi.”

  We told Uncle Don he could come and visit us when we moved to the Heartland.

  “Whichever part of the Heartland we end up in,” I said.

  Before we left, we had Uncle Don take a photo of us holding the half-eaten duck carcass. It was the first picture we’d ever been in together.

  Friday, Jacob and I spent our time doing silly touristy things. First we rode a cable car, but I was cold so we went back to the hotel to get the car. We drove down the crooked street, checked out the view from Coit Tower, and had shrimp cocktail smothered with red sauce and served in a cardboard cone at Fisherman’s Wharf. After lunch we went to Steinhart Aquarium, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. The aquarium made me sad. I feel bad for anything that’s locked up. Jacob loved it. He wouldn’t leave until he’d seen everything: a poison dart frog, a living coral reef, dolphins, puffer fish. You name it, we saw it. Jacob got to touch a sea star, and for a price, even got to name a black-footed penguin. There is now a flightless aquatic bird in San Francisco called Trixie.

  We had dinner that night at a Peruvian place
in the Mission district, then found some live music at a bar on Valencia Street. That’s where we met Ryan Chuck Montgomery. Ryan Chuck was a cab driver waiting outside for fares. He offered to cart us around town all night for twenty bucks.

  “Thanks, but we have a car,” I said.

  Even if we hadn’t had our own mode of transportation I would have told him that. Ryan Chuck scared the hell out of me. First of all, what kind of name is Ryan Chuck? Normal people don’t have abbreviated middle names like that. His yellow, tobacco-stained teeth and the Confederate flag tattoo on his forearm didn’t make my feelings toward him any fuzzier. When he warned us to watch out for all the Spics in the neighborhood, I saw Jacob’s face begin to burn. He wanted to set the guy straight, I know he did. I squeezed his hand and pulled him into the bar. One doesn’t need enemies named Ryan Chuck.

  “Jacob, do you worry about guys like that once we move to the South?”

  “Not really,” Jacob said. “Ryan Chuck told me he was from Oregon.”

  On Saturday, we went bargain shopping in Chinatown. Jacob bought me a pair of slippers and a pink silk robe that had a dragon embroidered on the back. For lunch, we had vegetable chow mein and Kung Pao-something at a place called Nan King. I wasn’t crazy about the way the restaurant smelled, kind of like a pet store, but our bill was nine bucks and it was the best Chinese food I’d ever tasted. We left there and walked down Broadway to browse the sex-toy shops. Jacob gave me five minutes and ten dollars, and told me to buy us something to play with.

  “But you can’t spend any more than ten dollars,” he said.

  I told him to go into the shop next door, which had virtually the same stock as the one I went in, and do the same. When we finished, we met on the sidewalk.

  “I like this better than picking out records,” I said.

  “Here, happy early birthday.” Jacob handed me a jar of chocolate body paint, and some battery-operated, bullet-shaped contraption called The Pocket Rocket. “Look what it says on the back.” He turned it around and read it to me: “‘For muscle relaxation.’ Which muscles do you think they’re talking about?”

  I’d picked out a pair of handcuffs. The clerk wrapped them up like crazy in a plastic bag, and it took Jacob a while to get at them. He grinned when he realized what they were.

  “They cost ten ninety-five. I hope that’s okay,” I said.

  “It is.”

  “It is what?”

  “It is okay,” he said, exaggerating the last syllable.

  Jacob had finally caught on to my okay infatuation. It only took him eight months, but he was wise to me. Still, he sated me nevertheless.

  TWENTY-THREE

  City Lights Bookstore was right across the street from the sidewalk we were standing on. Jacob had never been there. I told him a writer’s trip to San Francisco wasn’t complete without a stop in City Lights. We put our toys away and walked over.

  As soon as we entered the store Jacob went downstairs to nonfiction and history. He came back up ten minutes later with two books in his hand. One was a biography of Joe DiMaggio, the other was a collection of political essays by Noam Chomsky.

  I was looking for a copy of a book called The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante. I’d loaned mine to Kat, and I rarely got back anything I loaned to Kat. I wrote it off and wandered over to fiction and literature to pick up a new one. I walked with my head tilted to the right so that I could read the books as I traced the shelves. I did that every time I went into a book store because I was afraid I was going to miss something, even though it made me dizzy and gave me a kink in my neck.

  Passing through the Ds on my way to F, Morning Glory caught my eye. They also had another one of Thomas Doorley’s books, something called Tijuana Stories.

  “Hey, Jacob, come here for a second.”

  Jacob walked to me from the independent press shelf. His pile had grown by a book, but it was on the bottom; I couldn’t see what the new addition was.

  I set Morning Glory down on top of his stack.

  “I already have that. Thanks though,” he said.

  “You said you wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon in the park. We’ll go there and read. No stress attached. Come on, it’s time.”

  He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t put the book away either. I interpreted that as a thumbs-up.

  “Are you ready to go?” he said.

  I found my Fante and we went to the check-out counter.

  “This is a great book,” the cashier said to me when he bagged my purchase.

  “I know. I lost mine,” I said.

  When my transaction had been completed, Jacob set his four books down. As the cashier scanned Jacob’s pile, one by one, he commented.

  “Cool. Chomsky rules,” the cashier said.

  Jacob’s additional purchase was a Mobil travel guide for the southeastern United States.

  When the cashier got to Morning Glory, he chuckled and said, “Doorley, huh? He comes in here all the time. He’s a real wacko.”

  Jacob took a terrified glance around the store and bowed his head down an inch, as if Thomas Doorley were hiding behind the shelves, about to jump out and say, “Boo!”

  “Does he live around here?” I said.

  “Trixie, let’s go,” Jacob said.

  “No, he lives over in Marin County,” the cashier said. “But he frequents the bar across the street.”

  I knew the bar across the street. It was called Tosca. I once spent a long weekend going to Tosca every night. U2 was in town and someone told me they liked to hang out there. I never saw them. Instead, I got hit on and harassed by a well-known actor who happened to be filming in the area. It was just like being in L.A. so I never went back.

  The actor, who shall remain nameless, had dirty fingernails and smelled like he bathed in Heineken. When I turned him down, Kat’s gay friend Doug cried fool and didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night.

  “Doorley practically lives in Tosca,” the cashier said. “He drinks cheap whiskey, then comes over here all drunk and cranky and yells at us for not having more of his novels around. And he always buys Lolita. I don’t know if he collects it, or if he just forgets he has it, but I’ve personally sold him three copies.”

  Jacob didn’t say anything. He didn’t even acknowledge the cashier was still speaking. He just picked up his bag and walked out.

  “Do you know where in Marin Thomas Doorley lives?” I whispered to the cashier.

  “He lives in Mill Valley, I think.”

  Jacob and I went straight to Golden Gate Park. We lay our coats down near the botanical gardens and read, hanging out like we had nothing pressing to attend to for the rest of our lives. We didn’t talk much while we were there, but we always made sure some parts of our bodies were in direct contact. Jacob was like that. He wanted to be touching at all times.

  It was almost dark when Jacob closed his book and stood up. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  We stopped at a crepe place on Cole Street for dinner. Jacob hadn’t said anything about Morning Glory, but he’d made it halfway through without any breakdowns; only a few pauses when he would look up from the book and stare off into space.

  “So, are you going to tell me what you think, or do I just have to try and read your mind?” I said.

  A homeless woman wandered in to the restaurant. She was heavy-set, wrapped in a blanket, and her thick green socks were bunched up around her fat ankles. She sat down on a bench inside the door.

  “No more mashed potatoes, no more coffee,” the woman mumbled. “Just eat hair.” She grabbed a knotted chunk of her dirty mane and put it in her mouth. A waiter went over to her and asked her if she needed some help.

  “I’m Mary,” she said.

  “Hi Mary, I’m Sam,” the waiter said. Sam gave Mary a Styrofoam container of left-overs. I was glad he didn’t make her leave. For his ch
aritable gesture, Sam earned himself an extra few bucks tip from our table.

  If we’d been in L.A., Mary would have been out on her ass.

  “Well?” I said to Jacob, as gently as I could.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know. It’s weird. I have mixed emotions.” He took a deep breath and peered into my eyes. I could see the vein on the left side of his forehead—the one that popped up when he was concentrating. He was looking to me for answers but, regrettably, I was the last person equipped to offer any enlightening familial words of wisdom. All I had was my opinion.

  “Don’t you think it’s eerily familiar, metaphorically anyway?”

  “Yeah,” was all he said, while he trimmed the nail of his left index finger with one of his sharp teeth.

  “You’re a better writer than he is,” I told him.

  I saw the glimmer of a faint smile sneak onto his face as he spat the nail onto the floor. “I know.”

  While Jacob was still eating, I got up like I was going to the bathroom. I went to the pay phone and called information. I asked if there was a listing for Thomas Doorley. I spelled the name for the operator and requested an address. Mary was still sitting at the door eating her dinner. I smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.

  “As soon as you’re off the phone, I need to check my email,” Mary said.

  The operator came back a second later and read me Thomas Doorley’s address. Then she connected me to a recording of his phone number. I wrote it all down and stuffed it into my wallet.

  We attempted to play with our newly acquired sex toys that night, but Jacob’s heart wasn’t in it. I even tried ordering a skin flick from the pay-TV station to rile him up, something called Naughty Nurses, but that didn’t do the trick either. Problem was, I found Jacob incredibly attractive when he was brooding. I got under the covers and climbed on top of him. Writhing my body on his dick made it hard, and once it was hard I could do whatever I wanted with it, even if Jacob wasn’t in the mood. We always obliged each other that way.