Tart

I had lived for twenty-eight years just fine, following my sexually nomadic heart, stretching out my elastic adolescence for as long as it would last, and now suddenly half my instincts were urging me to make a nest, while the other half screamed “Flee!” Just because I’d decided to try the nesting thing didn’t mean I had the slightest idea how to pull it off.

And so I did what most people do in lieu of a solution; I denied there was a problem until I could arrange for a full-on disaster. In the fall of my last year in grad school, seven months into my experiment in cozy living with Jonathan, I had a flash-in-the-pan affair with my Set Design professor. He was in his forties, with distinguished graying temples and a gruff, Tom Waits-style lecturing voice. He was nothing to me; I had no illusions that we were doing anything except blowing off steam. The guy wasn’t even very good in bed; he was married, and felt terrible about me, so his rushed, guilt-driven exertions were never very satisfying. After two seedy sessions in a dank hotel, I called it off. He sighed with relief and gave me an A in the class, even though my final project looked like a kindergartener’s shoe-box diorama.

Of course, I had to tell Jonathan. I may not be your classic stickler for integrity, but I do have my own idiosyncratic moral code, and honesty is a central tenet, right behind tartery. Besides, half the reason I had the affair was to loosen the stranglehold my life with Jonathan exerted; telling him was key to this loosening. I’d needed a little tart back, and I’d taken it by force, but now it was necessary to fess up.

I sat him down on a cold Saturday in December. Christmas was just a week away. I summarized with my eyes averted, peeling the label from a bottle of Corona. His reaction fell short of violence, but he did dash into the john to throw up, and afterward he stared at me with the sort of expression a baby might use on his mother as she shoves his finger in an electrical outlet. At that point I felt more than a little sick, myself.

I might be saying this just to soften the sting of him leaving me months later for Rain, but in retrospect I see our relationship from that cold Saturday on as filled with him calculating his revenge. Even proposing was just one more form of payback; he knew my promise to marry him meant I’d publicly renounced all tartness, and so when he left, he took with him not only my future, but my past.

CHAPTER 5

It’s six o’clock, I’ve got three vodka tonics in my bloodstream, and I’m in love.

Okay, that’s probably not it. It’s probably just culture shock. I haven’t been home to California in three years. Obviously, the ocean air is salt-rotting my brain. That’s why I feel so reckless and giddy, like a thirteen-year-old at a slumber party.

“Where are we going?” I ask as Clay leads me out of the Owl Club and into the startling sunlight.

“We’ve got to get Medea someplace cat-friendly,” he says.

“You’re right,” I say. “Let’s strap her back onto your bike.” I giggle at my stupid joke.

Clay steers me gently east and picks up the pace. “My friend Nick lives right around the corner,” he says. “She’ll like him. He’s a spaz around people, but he’s a genius with cats.”

“What sort of spaz?”

“He’s got a mild case of Tourette’s.”

“No,” I say. “Seriously?”

“Mostly around customers. Unfortunately, he works for me at the record store. One time he called this sweet little old lady a ‘rug-eater cunt.’ You should have seen her face.”

“Oh, my God,” I say, laughing. “Isn’t that a little hard on sales?”

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t a return customer.”

As we walk the two blocks to Nick’s, my eyes keep straying to the half-moon scar near Clay’s ear. I can’t stop thinking about kissing it.

“Everything okay?” he asks, shooting me a sideways glance.

“Mmm-hmm. Why do you ask?”

“I think you might be getting that gleam in your eye again.”

I laugh. “Different gleam. You’ll have to learn the difference.”

“Right. Well, here we are,” he says, striding through a little wire gate and up the steps of a run-down house. The tilting porch is covered in thick strands of ivy and nasturtiums. “Chez Nick.” He pushes open the front door and hollers, “Nick! I brought you some kitten for dinner.”

A short guy with a receding hairline and a too-tight Ramones T-shirt appears in the living room doorway. “No need to yell.” He’s eating a doughnut, and when he sees me a big blob of jelly slips out of it and lands on the R.

“Fucking-shit-whore,” he blurts out.

Clay looks from him to me and back again. “What? She makes you nervous?”

“Sorry,” Nick says, swallowing the doughnut without chewing. He starts to choke, and Clay whacks him on the back a couple of times.

“Maybe you should wait outside.” Clay nods toward the door I’ve barely stepped through. “I’ll be there in a second.”

“Um. Okay.” I shuffle back out to the sidewalk. “Nice to meet you.”

In a couple of minutes, Clay reappears, sans Medea. He’s shaking his head.

“All righty,” he says, slapping his palms together happily. “Now we’ve officially begun the tour.”

“The tour?”

“Yes.”

“What tour, exactly?”

“The Santa Cruz Freaks and Tasty Treats Tour.”

I look over his shoulder at Nick’s dubious house. The windows are draped with purple, rust-streaked sheets, and there’s a strange sculpture made of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans dangling from a tree. “Are you sure she’ll be okay in there?”

“Positive. Like I said, he’s a disaster with women, but with cats, he really shines.”

He starts to guide me away, but still I hesitate. “I may not be a model pet owner,” I say, digging in my heels, “but I do worry. She’s sort of all I have at this point.”

With both hands on my shoulders, he looks into my eyes. “Claudia. I swear, she’ll be happy as a clam. Trust me.”

I bite my lip, studying his face. I’ve known him all of four hours and am shocked to realize I do trust him. “If you say so.”

“I promise. Now, right this way, madam, and I’ll introduce you to what Santa Cruz excels at.”

“Freaks and Treats?” I ask.

“Precisely.”

Clay Parker’s Freaks and Treats Tour:

1) Nick and his jelly doughnut. Freak with treat. I’m skeptical, but willing to proceed.

2) Fancy place downtown with white linen tablecloths and waitress with sparkly red thong peeking out of black slacks: wolf down a dozen oysters on the half shell and beer in frosty cold mugs. Clay confesses he’s having the best day he’s had all summer. I blush. I hardly ever blush.

3) En route to destination, we spy our second freak: long-hair on unicycle playing a plastic recorder. Due to high speed of vehicle, can’t be sure, but suspect he’s playing “Little Red Corvette.”

4) Gold mine. Downtown farmer’s market. Peaches, fried samosas, free samples of calamari. Too many freaks to name: mullet guys, drag queens, belly dancers, skate punks, goth girls, rasta drummers. Clay points out Dad in a Sierra Club baseball cap scolding toddler for not recycling apple juice bottle. At first we laugh, but when kid cries, start to feel depressed.

5) Manage to discreetly disappear into Rite Aid for tampons. Inside, more freaks: three betties in 80’s neon and teased bangs, filling cart with jumbo Junior Mints and Pall Malls.