Inexpressible Island Read online

  She started to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, taking out a pack of tissues from his jacket pocket and handing them to her.

  “Aren’t you the hero, carrying around tissues in case somebody cries.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Trust me, I can’t be any good to you like this.”

  “Who says I want you to be good to me?”

  “Come on . . .”

  With shaking hands, she put on her sunglasses. He put on his. They still stared at each other but now through black barricades.

  “You asked me to be honest,” he said.

  “Yes, and thank you very much.” Her lip quivered.

  “You’re a nice girl.” Very nice. “Any guy would be lucky to call you his.”

  “You mean any other guy.”

  “Yes,” Julian said. “That’s what I mean.”

  “But I don’t want another guy to call me his,” Mirabelle whispered.

  “Are you not listening to me?”

  She rummaged through her bag and pulled out the crystal necklace. At the sight of it, Julian flinched as if she had hit him across the face with it. “Do you remember this?” she said.

  “Oh, yes,” Julian replied, looking down into his plate. “I keep seeing it in my nightmares, exploding like a tactical nuke, its shards slicing up everyone I care about until we all bleed to death.”

  Gasping, Mirabelle stood from the table, marched across the short sidewalk to the curb on Sunset, and flung the crystal quartz into the storm drain. It dinged when it hit bottom. She came back to her seat. “It’s been in my family since the Second World War,” she said. “But I don’t care about the stone. I’m sorry I ever showed it to you. What happened to you up there has never happened to me. I stand inside a festival of color and I make wishes, that’s all. It’s harmless fun. I thought you and I could make a wish together. I didn’t know it was going to be so upsetting, honest.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “But thank you for telling me,” she said. “Because now I won’t make the same mistake with some other poor schmuck who might be into me. I was trying to entice you, not drive you away.”

  “I know.” Julian’s gaze was turned to the street. He couldn’t take his eyes off the grate through which the crystal had fallen. It’s like the stone had a life of its own. He was going to be picturing the quartz in that storm drain for the rest of his life. The crystal lying there, eventually splintering apart, the glass ashes melting into the water table, rising up with the wind, being carried through the air, forever infusing the earth and the plants and the fruit and the atoms of all living things with its great and terrible power.

  Not looking at each other, they sat stabbing their pancakes until they were dead.

  “Do you want to tell me about your dreams?” she said.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Sometimes talking helps.”

  “This is not one of those times.”

  “Why?” she said with a sniffly chuckle. “Are they about me?”

  He didn’t look up.

  “Wait,” Mirabelle said. “Your dreams are about me?”

  “Not like that.”

  “Julian, can you please look at me?”

  He looked but he was hiding behind his shades.

  “You dream about me?”

  “Not like that.” Though sometimes like that, too. Not often enough.

  “Like what?” Her soft breathy voice lowered a notch, the tempo of her words slowed.

  “It’s nothing good.” Though sometimes it was.

  “But just so I’m clear—you see me at night in your bed when you take off your clothes and go to sleep?”

  “Nothing good, Mirabelle.”

  “You dream of me,” she said, relaxing slightly. “Not about that tall blonde supermodel you left the gym with.”

  “Who, Riley? She’s Ashton’s girlfriend. No, I dream about her, too,” Julian said.

  “Does your best friend know you’re seeing his girl on the side and dreaming of her?”

  Julian almost laughed. “I’m not seeing her on the side. She’s my friend.”

  “Do all your female friends look like her?”

  “No. Just her.” Behind the sunglasses, his eyes twinkled lightly. If this was a normal brunch, they would have twinkled long ago. There would’ve been teasing and flirting and joking. “She likes to watch me box.”

  “I bet,” said Mirabelle.

  “She thinks she’s my life coach. She gives me health tips.”

  “I have a health tip for you,” Mirabelle said, leaning forward. “Smiling for sixty seconds triggers the serotonin in your brain and makes you feel better. Even if you’re in a crap mood and don’t want to smile, it still makes you feel better.”

  “Huh.”

  “Try it now. Like this.” She took off her sunglasses, wiped her eyes, and shined her shining shine on him.

  He grimaced.

  “Not good, Jules,” Mirabelle said. “Not good at all.” She sat quietly, pondering something. He motioned for the check. But she shooed the waiter away after asking for some fresh coffee and a chocolate shake, and continued to sit, still mulling, still thinking.

  “Mia, I gotta go—”

  “So here’s my question,” she said, interrupting him. “How do you know your dreams won’t stop as soon as you take me to dinner?”

  “Why would they stop if I took you to dinner?”

  “Why would they not?”

  “You think dreams can be bribed?”

  “I don’t know how dreams work, I’m not Freud,” she said. “But how do you know it’s not your suppressed desire to take me to a movie and dinner that’s causing them? I mean, what have you tried so far? Sleeping on the other side of the bed? Leaving the lights on? Pfft. Piker. Maybe the answer is a movie and dinner. With me.”

  Julian shook his head as Mirabelle’s drinks arrived.

  “That’s fine,” she said, examining her nails. “Clearly the dreams must not be that bad. Because if you really wanted them to stop, you’d try anything.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “If you know how it works, then why are you still having nightmares?” She took a long slurpy sip of her milkshake. “This is clearly a problem in search of a solution. Personally, if it was me, I’d try everything until they went away.”

  Julian took a breath. “Everything?”

  “Everything,” she repeated, lowering her voice another notch.

  What was a man to do?

  Her freshly washed long-flowing hair, her musky floral perfume, her slinky snug summer dress, the scent of coconut (!), her lovely face, all of her was stirring the swirling hot molasses inside his body.

  He remembered that in his dreams she died. And he watched her die, knowing every second until her death that she was dying.

  She rolled up a piece of napkin into a spitball and blew it at him from her straw.

  “Are you thinking about how much you want the dreams to stop?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “So much that you’re finally willing to take a nice girl out to a movie and dinner?”

  “Something like that. But you mean dinner and a movie, right?”

  “No,” she said. “Movie first. Then dinner. You pick the movie.” She could barely keep her voice from exultation. “As long as it’s something vaguely superhero-y. And I’ll pick dinner. That’s only fair. But I pay for the movie, and you pay for dinner.”

  “That’s only fair,” Julian said.

  They went to ArcLight on Sunset to see a matinee of the latest Marvel flick. Mirabelle said she didn’t want any popcorn, and then munched on his the entire movie, sitting pressed against him, half turned to him, taking up his entire armrest, and constantly leaving her hand inside the bucket. “Popcorn’s good here,” she kept whispering. Of course it was freezing in the theatre and he had to give her his jacket. Now it smelled like her.

  For dinne
r she chose the Chateau Marmont. She’d never been, she said, and always wanted to see what it was like. “Plus,” she said, as they were driving back west along Sunset, “it’s like the boxer Jack Johnson says—just because you have muscular strength and the courage to use it in violent contests with other men does not mean that you should lack appreciation for the finer things in life. I don’t know if you know this, Julian, but Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion of the world.”

  Julian suppressed a laugh. “You’re quoting Jack Johnson to get me to take you to Chateau Marmont?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “A simple ‘I’d like to go’ would’ve done it.” He didn’t want to add that even a smile and asking nicely wasn’t necessary.

  The valet at the Marmont said, “Are you staying with us tonight, sir?”

  “No, no, just here for dinner,” Julian quickly replied, ushering Mirabelle up the steps to the elevator before she could make a joke out of it.

  “Am I dressed okay?” she asked, applying bright red lipstick in the elevator mirror.

  “Yes, you’re fine.”

  “It’s a Diane von Furstenberg.” She twirled around. “Cost me a month’s rent, but it’s called a Julian chiffon wrap dress. Some coincidence, right? How do I look?”

  “Fine.”

  Shaking her head, she rolled her eyes. “You may look fly, Jules,” Mirabelle said, sauntering past him as the elevator doors opened, “but you got no game.”

  Julian had never been accused of that before. “I meant, you look very nice.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  They walked up to the hostess podium. “It’s pretty here,” Mia whispered, looking around. “Swank. Art deco.”

  The hotel lounge was long and dark, lit by fake candles and lined with velvet couches that were at the moment empty as it was still early. She said she liked it. She took Julian’s arm, pressing her body against his jacket. “Okay, Mister Smooth Talking Romeo, let’s go dine with the beautiful people.”

  Under the glass ceiling of the outdoor veranda they sat in the back near the bar and watched the glitzy world fill up the restaurant, the famous filtering down into the center lounge, draping themselves carelessly over the low-backed chairs.

  “Only celebrities can sit in the center, huh?” Mia said enviously. “Look at them, like they all live in The Great Gatsby. Don’t they know Gatsby was an indictment to their shallowness, not a tribute?”

  “It was a little bit of a tribute, too,” Julian said. “No one wished harder or worked harder than Gatsby to turn his dream into reality. If only the beautiful people hadn’t been so shallow.”

  The Avett Brothers kick-drummed their hearts and approached her door, and the Moscow mules went to Julian’s head. They must have gone to Mia’s, too, for she was half his size and was matching him drink for drink.

  After they sat for hours, and he paid the check, they strolled to the darkened lobby lounge, where they ordered more drinks and she too draped herself carelessly over the arm of a red chair, her chiffon dress riding up, uncovering her thigh. “What do you think, do I look beautiful and shallow?” she asked, throwing back her head.

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  They sank into the plush velvet couches. The glam of Hollywood filled up the rooms. Tipsy hours drifted by at the castle on a hill, while the chic celebrities bustled past them in their designer faded denim, wearing their rehearsed indifference like jewelry. The night was hot, and the fans failed to cool the stars whose skeletal bodies tottered by in their flamingo heels, the dazzling women with their fake casual men by their sides. Julian’s dazzling woman, dressed in petals and daisies, was neither skeletal nor indifferent, and he was neither fake nor casual. Z once took her to a bar downtown, Mia said; did he want to go? Julian said no. Too many Moscow mules for him to drive, and she said that was fine; and why would they leave here anyway when they had a lobby like a fantasy, and he said, yeah, that’s the reason.

  “Well,” she said, bobbing sideways and affecting a serious tone, which was difficult considering her intoxicated reclining posture. “Aren’t you going to ask me what my favorite movie is?”

  “Sure. What’s your favorite movie?”

  “When We Were Kings. I don’t know if you know it. It’s about Muhammad Ali’s fight with George Foreman in Zaire.”

  “Um, yes, I know it,” Julian said, his amusement rising, his tenderness rising, his lust rising, everything rising along with his heartbreak.

  “Ask me what my favorite book is,” she said. “Besides yours, of course.”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “The Fight,” she replied. “It’s Norman Mailer’s account of the Zaire match between Ali and Foreman.”

  “I’m aware. It’s one of my favorites, too.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “When did you read it?”

  She waved her hand around to some nebulous past. “So what’s a boxer’s favorite part of a joke?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “The punchline!”

  And Julian laughed.

  “Oh, and I have a life hack for you,” she said, languidly turning her head to him. “Did you know that alcohol is a fire starter?” She let her words linger.

  “I knew that, yes,” Julian said, his head already turned to her. He let his words linger.

  “Okay, now you tell me a life hack,” she said.

  Not quick enough on his feet to come up with something more suggestive, Julian told her to put the little soaps she took from hotel rooms into her dresser drawers at home to keep everything smelling fresh and clean.

  “What little soaps?”

  “The ones they give you in hotel rooms,” he said.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Mia said. “I’ve never stayed in a hotel room.”

  “You’ve never stayed in a hotel room?”

  “Never,” she said nonchalantly. “We lived on the ocean. My dad and I worked the boardwalk. Where would we go, to another ocean, to other Luna Parks? After my dad died, my mom and I lived carefully and never went anywhere. She had money, but she was saving it for my Ivy League education—joke on her.”

  “But not even later, by yourself? With . . .” Julian circled the air alluding to the guy she’d written to him about.

  “The guy who wouldn’t watch my favorite movie with me?” she said. “Nah.”

  Julian stared at her, unable to say all he wanted to say. Or anything, really.

  Mirabelle waited, saying nothing herself, slurping the last of her icy drink, gazing around the dim lobby. The velvet place was dark, alit with firelight and chandeliers blue, and glimmering with L.A. goldlust.

  “Mia, would you like me to ask if the Marmont has any rooms avai—”

  “Yes,” she said before he was finished. “I’ve dreamed about seeing one of these rooms ever since Dominick Dunne lived here when he covered the OJ trial in 1994. It sounded so romantic.”

  “The OJ trial?”

  She giggled. “No, living in this hotel, writing copy on the balcony.”

  They meandered to the front desk. The hotel had only one kind of room left—a two-bedroom suite on the top floor overlooking Los Angeles.

  “That sounds nice,” Mia whispered. “And two bedrooms is perfect. One for you, one for me.”

  The clerk trained his slow-blink stare on Julian.

  “Thank you,” she said to Julian as he was paying. “I hope it wasn’t too expensive. It’ll be worth it if your dreams go away.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Tough break, then.”

  “Do you have any luggage we can help you with, Mr. Cruz?”

  “We have no luggage,” Mia said, holding on to Julian’s arm, swaying from the booze, her breast pressing into his tricep. “Not even a toothbrush.”

  “Very well, miss. Have a good evening.”

  The suite was spectacular. The stucco balcony, part of it covered by a stripe
d awning, was forty feet long and lined with red-flowering planters. They could see the last of the dying sun streaking violet and pink over a million palm trees. The view took their words away, and for a few minutes they stood in silence. For some reason, even that felt painfully familiar to Julian—standing with her on a balcony, looking out onto the beauty beyond.

  She slipped off her strappy sandals and walked around barefoot, excitedly examining the dining room table, the TV, the fully equipped kitchen. She checked out the two bathrooms, the two bedrooms. “I call dibs on this one,” she called to him from the master. He saw her bouncing up and down on the bed. “I could live here. It’s the nicest place I’ve ever been to.”

  Julian’s fists were clenched, and he said nothing. His visions showed him she had been to many places.

  She bounded out to the balcony and stood by his side. “Is your house nice like this? Does it have a view like this? How many bedrooms do you have? Four? Hey, so I could stay with you, too, in one of your spare rooms. What do you need so many rooms for? So, what do you dream about? Come on. You know the first fight we’ll have, you’re going to attack me with those dreams. You’re going to use them against me as a weapon. So why don’t you neutralize their power by telling me about them now, when you can use them on me not as vengeance but seduction.”

  Mutely he regarded her. Was she joking?

  “Don’t give me your penance stare, Ghost Rider,” she said, leaning back on her elbows against the stucco balustrade. “I can’t be shamed, I’ve done nothing wrong. Just tell me what you dream about.”

  “No.”

  She dropped herself into a chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs. “Okay, so what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.” He stared out onto Los Angeles. “What do you want to do?”

  “I wanted to talk.”

  “Okay.” He sat down. “But not about the dreams.”

  “Fine, about anything.”

  But Julian couldn’t form words. She undid him. There was no sun in his bones, no light in his body. Free of gravity he flew above the moon, his soul broke loose. She was some terrible mutated sexual wandering spirit, almost whole. And then a different thing—an intoxicating, breathtaking thing—but death still came for her. All those graves, and a million miles of her to fill them all.