5
“Reggie, can you believe it, I got in another store.” I am holding my cell phone with my right hand, steering my truck with my left, and trying not to let my euphoria increase my speed as I weave through the choked lunch-hour traffic on Beverly Boulevard.
“It’s that new one I told you about last week that Bill hooked me into and, okay, short version for now, but she bought tons of stuff, so now I’m in two stores. Well, Tizzie’s probably counts only as half since Lizzie still hasn’t paid me for that last batch that sold, but you know what I mean, and Jesus, I’m so happy, I feel so much better since this morning with Suzanne which, you know, fine, she’s my sister and a bride so that’s like everything annoying about either role multiplied, but who cares, I just made a sale, okay, sorry sorry sorry for the long message, but I just had to tell you, and call me later, I’ll be home tonight, okay, I love you, bye.”
I press the red button to end the call, then continue holding it down, turning off the phone. Suzanne always tells me I should leave it on in case of an emergency, and after Momma’s accident, I guess I should, though maybe that’s why I don’t. Traffic has taken over the road. I crawl through two more intersections, then push the red button on the phone to turn it back on to check my voice mail at home even though I am on my way there. Maybe Reggie’s left a message since I called him this morning after Suzanne’s. Or maybe Michael called. Thank God Reggie got over our Michael contretemps. I hope. I punch in the number to autodial my home as I come to a dead stop behind a car that is double-parked.
The one and only message, besides yet another hang-up—a wrong number probably, but I seem to get those constantly—is from Michael, who is already back to calling himself “me.” As in “Hey, it’s me.” I love “me.” Love that he didn’t identify himself, like he did the few times he called in the first months after our breakup, as if our not having sex suddenly meant I shouldn’t know his voice anymore the way he could no longer know my body, nor I his. I play his message three times, listening again and again to him asking if he can see me tonight, and leaving his cell phone number (I guess he thinks I didn’t keep it—I did), for me to page him so we can make a plan immediately. This clearly elevates our date to extremely extremely urgent, and that makes me extremely extremely happy, so I’ll page him right now and make a plan for us to celebrate my sale and our reuniting. Jesus, I love life right now.
I punch in his Westside area code, and am about to press the first number of his cell phone/voice mail/pager, when I realize that maybe I should not. Maybe this gushy, happy, rushy feeling means I should slow down. With him, at least. Because the thing about starting to see someone I’ve already had a relationship with is, I can’t just give him a kiss at the door. That would be weird because the whole how-soon-do-we-have-sex thing has already been done, so my only option for maintaining some control over not immediately falling headlong into him is to wait a bit before I see him. Dammit. I wish I hadn’t thought of this. My body so loves the idea of him tonight. Okay, I’m just gonna page him right now and see him this evening, I don’t care, what difference does it…No I won’t. I’ll wait until later to call him back—that won’t kill me—then I’ll figure out some night this week to hook up. God, I hate restraint. Maybe he can go to that opening of my friend’s show with me tomorrow night. That’d be waiting long enough. Jesus, just kissing him yesterday was so divine. Maybe tonight really is okay. No, this is better (keep repeating that) because I need to focus on getting this order together, though I’d really rather see him instead.
Traffic has finally started moving now that I am east of La Brea and in the genteel pseudo–East Coast world of Hancock Park, which my neighborhood would be described real-estate listing-wise as “adjacent to.” I’ve never had a jewelry order this large before. For Lizzie, I just take new pieces to her store every four or five months, leave what she wants, then get a check (usually) after they sell. As for private sales, the most a customer has ever purchased at once was when a forced-retired-because-she-was-past-forty movie star ordered a ring, two bracelets, three necklaces, and four earrings. That was great. She loved everything, raved on and on, and wore four pieces in a picture for a Los Angeles magazine feature about her comeback film that then came and went, but the magazine tear sheet looks great in my press kit. She’s someone I should send a brochure to, whenever that gets done.
But first I need to concentrate on Rox, especially since I told Sandra that everything would be delivered in a month. And then they’ll send me the check, she said. Jesus, that’s different from Lizzie’s. Paid before the stuff even sells. Like real retail. Maybe now that I’m selling to Rox, I won’t sell to Lizzie anymore. But no, it is another store; I just wish she’d get better about paying me. Although I’m not going to worry about that right now, I’m too thrilled about Rox. I hope everything flies out of the store, selling so fast that they order more more more. I start a quick prayer about that, then realize that I said one just a little while ago for Roxanne to buy my jewelry in the first place, and now here I am with something else. I guess if I’m in that pray-for cycle, it never ends.
And I do pray about stuff, but mostly to Mary, because growing up Catholic in a South Louisiana family (which is redundant), when I first met Mary as a child, I picked her out of everyone in that crowd because God was clearly way too busy and Jesus always looked so unhappy up there on that cross, but Mary was something else. I figured she had gone through so much: being pregnant, but still telling everyone she’s a virgin; having to mother, of all people, God. But in spite of all that, she always appeared okay and calm. I wanted that.
Not that I pray to her in mass. I quit going when I was fifteen and I was seeing widow-man and was having premarital sex, which the nuns said was a sin that turns your heart black and the priest can see it in your eyes right before he gives you communion, then I guess the altar boys bodily eject you from the church, I don’t know, but I didn’t want to find out, so I just quit going and never went back. About four years ago I started studying Buddhism, so I meditate every day, but frankly I’m still a lot more comfortable around a crucifix.
I was first introduced to Buddhism by an artist friend of mine, Steve, who took me to a meditation session that was held weekly at a Buddhist monk’s crummy apartment in West Hollywood. It was very informal, and En Chuan, the monk, taught for free, so I really have no business saying anything about the crumminess of his building, but this was 1994 and the whole of Los Angeles was wrapped up in that “if you are really spiritual, then you’ll manifest in all areas; i.e., you’ll be rich” bullshit, so at first En Chuan’s large and ugly 1980s junk-bond-built apartment building was a shock. But then it was a relief—I never could believe that harmony with God always results in large bank accounts.
What did convince me of En Chuan’s authenticity was his constant smile and easy happiness; I wanted that. He was a doctor of Chinese medicine, sending most of his money each month to his family in Vietnam, and was a personal guru to several low-to-medium-wattage TV stars plus a hugely world-famous pop singer who would call for immediate (and free) in-person spiritual teachings at all hours of the day, though mostly night.
The weekly meditation group consisted of six of us who met every Wednesday night in En Chuan’s beige-walled, brown-carpeted, lots-of-plants living room. We sat on black meditation cushions in a half-circle facing him—though one woman brought her own special leopard-print pad—and En Chuan would talk to us about Buddhism. Steve and the rest of them had been going for months, so my first few sessions were mostly concerned with trying to get used to this higher level of cross-leggedness that everyone else was able to hold for what seemed hours on end, then stand up and walk around without charley horses or limbs that were asleep and half dead.
After a few months of going to meditation and getting inspired by the Buddhism, I decided to try not praying to Mary but to Kuan-En, the Buddhist goddess of love and compassion. Or I started meditating to her, is how I think the Buddhists would say it. I sat in my best effort at the lotus position and repeated her mantra (syllables whose vibrations engender love and compassion to yourself and all sentient beings, meaning animals, too, and plants, I think) over and over in my head.
A few weeks into this, once her mantra came easy and fast like a lullaby I could sing without knowing I remembered the words, a feeling would come over me, or up from within, of being comforted and held in Kuan-En’s warm arms. It reminded me exactly of how I had felt as a child when I’d pray to Mary after waking up in the middle of the night from a bad dream. I’d be all turned around in bed, still terrified from the dream and of falling over the edge, so while I groped in the dark to find my pillow at the head, I’d say Hail Marys again and again, and that made me feel safe immediately. That was how Kuan-En’s mantra made me feel—as if Mary were with me and meditating from within.
One night at the end of a session as everyone was putting their shoes back on, I pulled En Chuan aside and explained the familiar sense I’d get from Kuan-En’s mantra while meditating.
“She’s Mary,” En Chuan replied, looking at me with his dark, twinkly eyes. “That’s why Kuan-En’s mantra feels like Mary’s prayer—it’s just different forms of one energy. If it’s more comfortable for you to use Mary’s name, do. It doesn’t matter; either way, it will help you.”
I was so relieved—to continue meditating, but to have Mary part of it, too, because I just feel better with her around. Even though I automatically use the word God, I’m really talking to Mary, not the Big Guy in the Sky. I like that I can relate with whomever (or whatever) I’m praying to from a female point of view; and she was a female who actually got it all figured out. Even as a kid, I always knew that there was no way my experiences here on earth could ever be as difficult as hers. Of course, she didn’t live in L.A.
I decide to stop at the wine and cheese shop on Larchmont Boulevard to pick up one of their special mozzarella/tomato/olive paste sandwiches and a cappuccino to fuel my work this afternoon and into tonight. I’ll turn some music up loud when I get home—I figure since Gloria’s never said one word about my screams, music isn’t going to bother her. Maybe I’ll put on that blues CD Reggie gave me on the disc rotator, with Lucinda Williams and Roxy Music, and let the hours slip away in a harmonic reverie of working on jewelry that will keep me distracted until I see Michael again.