The Gold Coast

28

But he hasn’t been sleeping for long when he wakes to the sound of Virginia Novello coming in the door.

“What are you doing, still sleeping?”

“Yeah.” Didn’t she give her key to his place back to him last week? Throw it at him, in fact?

“Christ, this place is a mess. You are so lazy.” She sits on the bed hard, rolls him over.

“Hi,” he says fuzzily.

Kiss on the forehead. “Hello, lover.”

And suddenly he is in the world of sex. Virginia gets up, turns on his bedroom video, undresses, climbs into the rumpled bed with him. He watches the screens goggle-eyed.

“Want me to cook you some breakfast?” she says when they’re done.

“Sure.”

Jim rolls over and begins to wonder what Virginia is doing there. Officially they broke up their alliance at the famous softball game, but since then they have gotten together pretty frequently, for no real reason that Jim can see. Except for some easy sex, and perhaps a stimulating fight or two.… He gets up, feeling uneasy, and goes to the bathroom.

From the shower he can just hear her voice, raised to carry over the sound of the freeway. “You really should try to keep your kitchen cleaner. What a mess!” After a bit: “So where were you last night?”

“San Diego.”

“I know. But I don’t know why you didn’t ask me along.”

“Um,” Jim says, drying off. “Couldn’t find you at Sandy’s, you know—”

“Bullshit, I was there the whole time!” She appears in the bathroom doorway, potholder on one hand clenched like a boxing glove. Jim pulls up his shorts more quickly than usual.

“The truth is,” she says sadly, “you’d rather be away from me than with me.”

Sigh. “Come on, Virginia, don’t be ridiculous please? I just woke up.”

“Lazy bastard.”

Sigh. From endearment, to complaint, to recrimination: it’s a familiar pattern with Virginia. “Give me a break?”

“Why should I, after you skipped off my track last night?”

“I just went with the guys to another party. You and I didn’t have anything on last night.”

“Well whose fault was that?”

“Not mine.”

“Oh yeah? You wanted to go off with your friends that you’re so queer for. Sandy, Tashi, Abe, you’d rather do anything with them than something with me.”

“Ah come on.”

“Come on where? Admit it, you and those guys—”

“We’re friends, Virginia. Can you understand that? Friendship?”

“Friends. Your friends are all heroes to you.”

“Don’t be silly.” Actually that may be true, sure; Jim’s best friends are heroes to him, each in his different way. “Besides, what’s wrong with liking your friends?”

“It’s more than that with you, Jim, you’re weird about it. You idolize them and try to model your life on theirs, and you aren’t up to it. I mean none of you even have jobs.”

Jim has gotten used to Virginia’s logic, and now he just follows wherever it leads. “Abe has a job. We all have jobs.”

“Oh, grow up! Will you grow up? Ever?”

“I don’t know—”

“You don’t know!”

“I don’t know what you mean, I was going to say. Let me finish what I’m saying, all right?”

“Are you finished?”

“Yeah, I’m finished.”

Jim stalks past her to the kitchen, disgusted by the stupidity of their debate. Scrambled eggs have gone black in the pan. “Shit.”

“Now look what you made me do,” Virginia cries, rushing past him and putting the pan under the faucet.

“Me? Get serious!”

“I am serious, Jim McPherson. You don’t have a real job and you don’t have a real future. Your little jobs are just part-time excuses for work. You laze around all day writing stupid poems, while I work and make the money we use to go out, when you can be dragged away from your friends to go!”

Part of Jim is thinking, Fine, if that’s what you think then leave, quit bothering me. This alliance is over anyway! Another part is remembering the good times they’ve had, with their friends, out together, talking, in bed. And that part hurts.

Jim shakes his head. “Let me make some breakfast,” he says. Why does she even bother, he thinks, if she feels this way about him? Why did she come by? Why doesn’t she make it easy for him and leave for good? He doesn’t have the courage to tell her to leave him alone; she would crucify him with how cruel he was being to her. Besides, is he sure that’s what he wants? She’s smart, beautiful, rich—everything he desires in an ally, in theory. When she sloshes across the jacuzzi with everyone watching her, to sit on his lap with that perfect rounded bottom, he thinks that it’s worth all the fights, right? That’s right. Jim likes that. He wants that.

Ach. Just another tricky day with Virginia Novello. How long have they been doing this? One month, two? Three? And it’s been like this from the start. It’s gotten so he can cook and eat and carry on a fight and at the same time be considering what else he should read before tackling his next poem. Sure, why not? Everyone can run parallel programs these days.

But this time he really loses his temper. They aren’t allies anymore, they’re ex-allies, there’s no reason he has to stand for this kind of thing! He tells her that in a near shout and then storms out the front door.

Oops. He’s on his street; he’s just stormed out of his own ap. Bit of a mistake. He had thought, momentarily, that he was at Virginia’s. Now he’s in kind of an embarrassing position, isn’t he. What to do?

He drives around the block, returns, looks in his window surreptitiously. Yes, she’s gone. Whew. Got to remember where he is a little more securely.

Well, enough of that. The day can begin.

But when he sits down to write, a knot in his stomach forms that won’t go away: he keeps reimagining the argument in versions that leave Virginia repentant, then naked in bed; or else crushed by his bitter dismissal, and gone for good. And yet those and all the other self-justifying scenarios leave him feeling as sick as the reality has. He doesn’t write a single word, all day; and everything he tries to read is dreadfully boring.

He turns on the video and replays the tape of this morning’s session in bed. Watches it morosely, getting aroused and disgusted in equal measure.

He’s twenty-seven years old. He hasn’t learned anything yet.