Eye to Eye Read online

  And although the odds might be against us, at least now I’ll know that I gave it every shot I could. That Zach and I tried to be one for the decade if not one for the ages. It’s also nostalgia that makes me forward the e-mail of my itinerary immediately to Ronnie, even though I know she’s doing final edits on her novel and I should probably be leaving her alone. Because as much as I love my new life, I still clearly have one foot firmly planted in the old. And maybe it’s disjointed, and maybe it’s dislocated, and maybe there’s not much else for a modern girl to be but a little fragmented and unsure, but this evening, I am ninety-nine percent positive that I’m making the right decisions.

  ronnie

  The great irony of being an academic, or professor, or teacher of any kind is that you’re likely the biggest idiot on the planet when it comes to real life. The last to know what any B-list actor would know. Perhaps it is unfair to say likely, but damn, it’s been a coincidence that in my life I have observed this to be true any number of times.

  Like, I actually thought I was in some epic power struggle with Ian, but he’s just a kid. He’s still just a kid who’s a colossal pain in the ass, although I’d forgotten what it was like to be sixteen, for one, and I’d also mistaken his insecurity for some sort of threat against me and who I was. When really, in spite of all of his dough and privilege, and big-mouth bravado, he has a huge deficit in the Figuring Out Who He Is Department, whereas I—even if I have been stumbling around a bit since coming home to L.A.—pretty much know what I am. It’s just a matter of applying who I am to the world at large. You can read a ton of books, teach a ton of classes, and still take a while to come to what Oprah calls “The Aha Moment.” I call it the “Duh! Moment.”

  Ian and I put the hip-hop showcase fiasco behind us. We revisited the hip-hop video paper he had written, and now after going to that show, Ian said he understood some things. He looked miserable, having to tell me I was right, but he told me anyway. He was scribbling on his paper, doodling stars and daggers.

  “So, like, does your nephew think I’m a dick or something?”

  I watched him doodle and started scribbling on my legal pad. I did happy faces. “You didn’t make a good first impression, no. Not your strength, first impressions.”

  Ian kept scribbling and then threw his pencil down on the table. He turned up his lip like Billy Idol used to, back in the day. “At least I admit I’m an ass.”

  “Now you do.”

  And Ian rolled his eyes for, like, the hundreth time since I’ve known him.

  Today is my last session with Ian, but I’ve got a lot of other students set up thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Bernstein. They think I’ve worked a small miracle by tutoring Ian into a B+ in his English class. Turns out there are all kinds of lazy, overprivileged kids in Hollywood, Bel Air, the Palisades and Malibu, with parents who are desperate for somebody to bully their children into shape. This is what Ian is telling his “friend” and my new tutee, Shonna, built like a brick house, dressed “down” like she’s still got money to burn, chew up and spit out. Punker chic is how I’d describe her. She twirls her bone-straight, blue-black hair and stares at me with heavily lined brown eyes. She’s got three blue stars tattooed up her forearm, and is wearing a black T-shirt that says YOU SUCK. The old lady in me wants to say, “Honey, why, oh, why would you wear a mean shirt like that?” But after almost half a year with Ian, the not-so-old lady in me thinks her shirt is practically charming.

  “So you guys aren’t dating?” I have to ask. I’m packing up all my books except the one I gave Ian as a We Survived Each Other Gift. It’s Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. When Ian asked if it was fun or a bummer, I said it was a sneaky-fun book. It snuck up on you and you ended up liking it for all the lessons it taught you about the way you didn’t want to live your life. He said that sounded like a fucking bummer, all right.

  Shonna grinned at Ian, who’s as red as the polish on Shonna’s nails. “Nah, we’re not dating,” she replies. “We just hooked up a couple times.”

  I know that “a hookup” can be anything from kisses to marathon intercourse, so I quit while I’m ahead. “That’s cool,” I say. “Ian’s a good guy.”

  Ian gives me a look like, I am?

  Shonna grabs Ian’s hand from across the table. “Ian says he thought you were a total bitch and a complete idiot when you first started tutoring him, but that’s just because you didn’t take any of his shit.” Leaning in, she gives him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Well, Ronnie couldn’t stand me, either,” Ian adds defensively, chewing his metallic green fingernails. “She totally hated my guts.”

  “Not your guts,” I clarify, standing with my book bag slung over my arm. “Just your completely fucked-up attitude.”

  Ian grins when I say that. “See?” Ian turns to Shonna. “I told you she’s no bullshit.”

  “Are you sure you want me to tutor you?” I ask, checking my watch. I have to meet Earl and Bita in a little bit.

  “Yeah,” Shonna says, nodding slow and easy as if she’s listening to music on headphones. “I’m totally cool with you.”

  “Good.” I move to leave the study. “Because I’m cool with you, too.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Ian tells Shonna, and follows behind me.

  “What?” I adjust my book bag as we make our way down the hallway and toward the door. “Don’t tell me you’re walking me out. What a gentleman.”

  “Fucking with me to the end,” Ian says, shaking his head.

  “Old habits die hard.” I open the door and step out. “Thanks for the word of mouth. I may actually make a living.”

  “And get a cell phone, I hope.”

  “The very next thing on my list.”

  “Later.” Ian leans on the door. “I hope your car starts.”

  “Fucking with me to the end,” I say before I get in my car. Ian juts his chin out, the cool person’s goodbye, and it’s a small miracle, but my car starts—loudly—and I watch Ian close the door in my rearview mirror.

  As I drive away, I remember when I returned Ian’s phone call after the hip-hop show. He said he’d learned something about himself, something he thought was really shitty. And I told him I’d learned something about myself, too, since I knew, on some level, that things were going to happen exactly the way they did. And maybe there was something shitty about that. Very know-it-all and obnoxious, since Ian was too easy a target. He was no match for me, not ever, really. I’m a “grown-ass woman” as my mother says. I had to leave academics and teaching in Langsdale, Indiana, for my home-grown academics and teaching in Los Angeles, California, to figure that out.

  Earl’s still bartending—and going on auditions. I can barely say that without gagging, but since he was the supportive boyfriend all these months, I have to be nice about this, surreal as it is. When I think how concerned I was about Earl, concerned about how the good old boy would blend in L.A. I have to laugh. It’s amusing as hell. He’s still the same old Earl, thank God. Sincere. Charming. Hot. But he’s also figured out that he doesn’t really want to do anything but give this whole singing, acting thing a shot. There’s something in the water, I swear, that makes perfectly normal people want to take their shot at show business once they get to Hollywood. So now that I’m pulling in reasonable dough with the six kids I tutor, it’s time for him to see what he can do. He did get that bit part in a film. One line: Jack on the rocks, bud. Coming at you. He says that might get cut. But he doesn’t care. He’s happy, and if he’s happy, so am I.

  Tonight, we’re celebrating four things. For one, I’ve finished tutoring Ian, and everybody I know is happy about that, glad that it all turned out okay. Doris called and left a message on our phone, asking if I was dancing up and down the street naked with joy. She also said that I’d be all right, even if I didn’t see Ian every day. “You were secretly in love with a sixteen-year-old!” she yelled into the answering machine. The second thing we’re celebrating is Earl getting that teeny part in the movie, t
he third thing is a bit premature, but I’m about to see the cover of F: The Academy in a day or two, and the fourth thing we’re celebrating is the fact that Bita’s divorce is final, which is a happy and a sad thing. We’re eating in the neighborhood at Farfalla, a place where a man like Earl can get an actual piece of meat if he wants it, but a place that’s medium-scale Italian that actually feels fancy. And I can pay for my and Earl’s meals—for a very shocking change.

  “Let’s toast,” Bita says above the jazz softly playing in the background. She raises her glass. I was busy swirling my bread in olive oil and shove the bread in my mouth, so that I can hold up my glass. Earl holds up his glass of beer and puts the other hand on my leg underneath the table.

  “I see that, Earl.” Bita grins, but then stares off into the distance. Her hair is in a loose bun and she’s wearing huge gold hoops. I think she’s the most gorgeous woman I know.

  “You okay, Bita?” I lean into the table, peering into her face and Earl and I exchange glances.

  “Hey, buddy.” It’s been Earl’s nickname for Bita and it always makes her smile. “You all right?” he asks.

  “Ah, hell,” Bita says. “You guys look so happy. I guess I miss that asshole sometimes.”

  “Sure you do,” I say softly. I reach across the table and grab her hand. She let’s me hold it for a while and then she pulls away, brushing her bread crumbs off the white tablecloth.

  “I’m better off without him,” she says, shaking her head, making up her mind.

  “He didn’t treat you right, buddy,” Earl points out.

  “You knew it the whole time,” I remind her. “You just didn’t listen to yourself.”

  “I was so scared.” Bita pushes around the asparagus on her plate. “I was scared to leave and scared to stay. And I kept thinking how had this happened to me? The hard-ass, the woman who was always so together.”

  “You were a baby when you met him. We were just kids in college, barely older than Ian.”

  “I believe you are in love with Ian, just like Doris said,” Earl says, pinching me on my side. “That’s going on, what, the third time you’ve mentioned him tonight.”

  Bita agrees. “If you leave Earl for Ian, I got dibs on Earl,” she says, winking at him.

  Earl blushes. “You got yourself a deal, buddy.”

  “Sick.” I put more salt and pepper in my olive oil and soak my bread in it. “You guys are sick.”

  All the talk of Ian reminds me of the last time I saw Charlie. He wasn’t with Bita, he was at the Bernsteins’ house for dinner—with the little chippie he was dating. He’d been long kicked out of the house and was staying at the fancy-ass W Hotel in Westwood. It was strictly a horrible accident that I’d run into him in the first place. Ian’s tutoring session had gone late. We were talking about James Baldwin and Dostoyevsky—more bummer stuff that Ian still liked, even if he pretended not to. I was walking down the hallway as usual, leaving the house, when the Bernsteins came through the door, with Charlie and the chippie in tow. The Bernsteins knew Bita, of course, knew I was her close friend, so we all stood in the hallway looking miserable until Charlie summoned up the balls to introduce me to Kiya, who looked about as old as Shonna, which made Charlie a big fat cliché. If I’m to be the mature woman that I’m claiming to be, I should honestly say that the child was pretty (in a predictable kind of way) with manners (gave me a sincere hello) and didn’t seem to have a bitchy bone in her body (unlike myself at that moment). And God bless her, Kiya seemed into Charlie, who seemed alcoholically bloated.

  “Kiya’s our receptionist,” Mr. Bernstein said, nervously tugging at the cuffs of his Oxford shirt. He had a thick shock of wavy, grey hair that he was fussing with the whole time. Mrs. Bernstein appeared to give me a look, a look that said, Can you believe this motherfucker? But I couldn’t be sure.

  “Liking your job?” Charlie asked, wasting no time in reminding me that I had a check coming to me every week because of him.

  “I do,” I replied, my eyes darting between Charlie and Kiya. “I love working with kids, just like you.”

  “Charlie,” Mr. Bernstein said, “let’s get you a drink.” He pulled Kiya and Charlie into the sitting room, and that was the last time I saw Charlie.

  “What was the ‘kids’ business?” Ian asked. “I’m not a fucking kid.”

  “Mouth, Charlie,” Mrs. Bernstein said. “Goddammit.” She turned to me. “It won’t last,” she blurted. “And I never liked Charlie, anyway. He’s not that great a writer. Ira has some attachment to him, for some reason.”

  “Yeah,” Ian said, snapping what seemed like two dozen black bands on his wrist. “That guy’s a complete tool.”

  Mrs. Bernstein shrugged. “Whatever that means. Night, Veronica.” She looked at Ian. “And if you sit down to dinner with us, you didn’t hear any of this.”

  “Whatever,” Ian said, and took the stairs up to his room two at a time.

  I let myself out.

  And I thought, Good for you, Bita, for letting yourself out. Kids grow up, kids in college who marry too soon. And she had the smarts to get out when it all went wrong.

  Coming back to the conversation at hand, Bita and Earl are talking about Bita taking some head shots for Earl. Jesus. Head shots.

  “I will capture your true essence, Erardo Lo Vecchio,” Bita says, laughing. “The rugged you, the country boy, all that.”

  “Sounds good,” Earl says, taking the final bite of his steak. He’s chewing thoughtfully when we both hear someone calling his name, all squeaky and excited.

  “Earl!”

  Before I see her, I know it’s Katie. What in the hell is she doing here?

  “Hey, Earl-y,” she says.

  Earl-y?

  She’s with an older man who, I hope, is her father. His thinning black hair is combed back, sleek and greasy, and he’s wearing a white silk shirt, khakis and sneakers. Very chic. Or something. She’s hardly paying attention to him, she’s slobbering over Earl so much.

  “Hey, Katie,” Earl says, tense. He grabs my hand under the table as if to say, do not go postal. “Who’s this you got with you?”

  “Oh. I almost forgot.” Katie tugs on the man’s arm. “This is Reginald. We met at the bar. He’s recently divorced,” she says, tugging on her pink belly shirt. “He lives in Bel Air and I’m just showing him the neighborhood.” Her hair is in two ponytails, which at twenty-six she can barely get away with.

  Reginald gives her a look that says, Bitch, tell everybody my business, why don’t you, but then he composes himself and puts his arm around Katie’s waist. “Hello, everyone,” he says.

  Katie still hasn’t thrown in the towel. She’s looking at Earl as if he’s her last supper, meanwhile, she and Reginald are blocking all the waitstaff’s way, standing around like they are.

  “Reginald, this is Earl, Vanessa, and…” She raises an eyebrow at Bita.

  “Bita,” Bita supplies, picking at her bread. She shoots me a look that says, don’t get crazy.

  Hard not to. “It’s Veronica, Katie. You have to know that by now, as many months as you’ve been chasing Earl and pretending to ignore me.”

  “Veronica Williams,” Earl warns, part amazed, part keeper of the peace. “Easy now.”

  Bita drinks, long and silent from her water glass, and I know she’s thinking that this little catfight is so not good for the sisterhood, but I don’t care.

  “I’m sure!” Katie says, looking at me like I’m crazy.

  “Honey.” Reginald turns to her. “We should sit down now.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Go eat something. You look hungry.”

  “Ron,” Earl warns again. But Katie and Reginald are already walking away. “See you later, Earl-y,” she singsongs, as Reginald leads her no doubt toward her life of trophy wife-dom. I share this theory with Bita and Earl.

  “Naw,” Earl says, “I don’t believe I see that lasting for the long haul.”

  “And you.” I scoot away from Earl. “I’ve
never seen you tell her to really and truly knock it off. You just let her get away with murder.” Maybe it was my two glasses of wine, but I was suddenly pissed at Earl and his humoring Katie all this time.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Bita tells us, and carefully lays her napkin on her chair before hurrying off.

  Earl lays his napkin on the table and shifts his body to face me. “We worked all this out, didn’t we?”

  “You’ve never, ever told her off, not really and truly, not that I’ve ever heard.”

  Earl strokes his face and blows out a puff of air. He rubs his palms on his jeans and shakes his head. “You’re going to make this our third big fight? Over the same thing?”

  “Tell me I’m wrong.” I glare at Katie and Reginald across the room. She’s laughing and tossing her hair all around, not eating her bread, even though the waiter had brought it to them right away. Typical.

  “I got one word for you. Ian.” Earl takes my hand.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Remember when we were on about Ian the other day, and you said he was just a kid, trying to figure himself out, that he wasn’t a threat to you, no how, no way?”

  “Uh-huh.” I’m coming down from my sudden, irrational anger. It was Katie and her True Religion jeans and her calling me Vanessa that upset me. I squeeze Earl’s hand and slide closer to him on the bench.

  “Well, that’s Katie. A kid. Harmless. Never going to be a threat to me or you, so ain’t no need of me paying her no mind, not anymore.”

  I guess. And just like that, I’m almost feeling bad for Katie, for the fact that she’s got a whole mess of mistakes ahead of her, a whole lot of stumbling around. Earl is right. I fast-forwarded Katie’s life and if she didn’t wise up, she was going to be stuck with some guy who doubled as her dad. She was a kid, making kid mistakes. But me, I had the higher ground. Thank God I was a grown-up and picking drunken fights in a restaurant for no reason at all.

  We have some Frangelico after our meal, which Earl doesn’t drink, and some tiramisu, which Earl doesn’t eat. He just has another beer. “If it ain’t plain and simple chocolate cake like Mamaw makes, I don’t want none.” And he waits until Bita and I are good and drunk to ask me if I wouldn’t like to take a trip to Langsdale with him, to see some family and be there with Doris for Zach’s theater opening.