victoria peak

it was six AM in hong kong and she was all alone. she was flying to india and had a ten hour layover there, so she decided to leave the airpot and explore, but as soon as she emerged from the sterile dome of the metro station she realized that it was a saturday, that it was rainy, and that it was her birthday.
she hadnt completely forgotten, she knew it was coming up but had gotten confused what with the time changes and the hours in the air. it was when she saw a british newspaper, flapping and soggy from the rain, that she realized with a sad thump. she was twenty years old.
she got in a taxi and pointed to the #1 tourist attraction in her tiny guide book- victoria peak. it was the highest point in the city and there was a lift which would lower you all the way down the side of the mountain, supposedly giving one of the most spectacular sights. there was no one on the road, no one walking around. hardly anything was open and the taxi driver looked half asleep. she herself should have been exhausted, she hadnt slept at all on the flight from san francisco, but there was something extremely alive inside of her, making everything look almost scary- too textured, too real. she knew what this feeling was, though, and right where it had come from- it had come from a tiny coffee shop on the corner of grant and vallejo. it had come from ethan.
they had met in a too-stereotypical way, he was serving her coffee and over the bar they looked at each other and laughed a little, even though nothing was funny. it was the first time that alive thing had happened inside of her, it was the beginning of the feeling. she asked for a spoon and he had said, you can have anything youd like. and from there they began talking, outside of the cafe on his cigarette breaks, about how san francisco is the lonliest place on earth, and beacuse of that somehow its impossible to feel lonely there. then they began walking. she would meet him after his shift at midnight right on that corner, and they would walk briskly around san francisco holding hands, as if they were late, as if they had anywhere at all to go. they walked past the waiters blowing out candles of sidewalk cafes; they walked past people asking for money, people he usually knew and stopped to talk to; they walked past other pairs of people, hurrying to get somewhere, or hurrying to stay; and as the night slumped into dawn they walked past street cleaners, past the whack of newspapers hitting the cool concrete. one night they climbed through the fog up to coit tower, and looked over the blanketed city, the city that belonged to them. one night they went to the presidio and sat on a hill listening to the seals bark, and he told her of the nights he used to spend there, when where he was sleeping that night wasnt certain, and the voices he thought he heard. how silence can become so menacing. it was there, on the grassy hill in the middle of the night that he tried to kiss her. there was nothing more tremulous or scintillating to her than the thought of kissing him, but still, she turned her face into his neck and said she couldnt. he knew this already, he knew about her boyfriend at school, he knew that they looked perfect together without having ever seen him. he knew that she was too scared to go back without the safety of him. it would be a year before he tried to kiss her again.

after lunging up the enormous mountain the taxi driver pulled up to the back of an institutional looking building and turned around to look at her. oh...she said...oh this is it? she saw no lift, no restaurants no gift shops, no people. go around, he said, pointing. it was misting rain outside and she had no umbrella in her backpack. but she paid him, giving him what she later learned was a ridiculous tip, and walked towards the greyish builing. she saw a couple of people who looked like janitors busying about outside, and eventually found the entrance, which, to her surprise, she found open. she wandered around the lobby, looking at the closed stores and the dark restaurants. she got in the elevator and took it to the top floor. when the doors open she sighed auidibly with relief- there were people, non-workers sitting on chairs and couches. it was an internet cafe, and the entire thing was windowed so that the vast expanse of hong kong and kowloon was gaping in front of her. she sat down and stared. the buildings in front of her looked like ethans drawings- tiny, geometrical details, massed together to create industrial mazes that, for all of their sharpness, looked beautiful. he used markers that bled through to the other side of the paper to draw creatures, unidentifiable but completely familiar, all made of layers upon layers of excruciating, delicate detail.

she went back to school and she didnt hear from him for 8 months. he was supposedly going to columbia, to live in an artists residence there. every morning she checked the news for reports of dead americans in columbia- she just assumed he had to be dead, or else married to a south american artist who could understand him in ways she didnt believe she could. sometimes, the worst days, she believed that she had made him up altogether. there was not a minute during those 8 months that she wasnt on the verge of tears, not one minute separate from him, not one minute more than a knifes' stab away from remembering it all and coming wholly unravelled. and the whole time, she was dating her boyfriend, laying awake beside him as she searched the ceiling and begged for sleep.
it wasnt that she didnt love her boyfriend, it wasnt that at all. in fact she did love him, the whole time they were together. she loved him because he was funny and sweet, and good to her and because he was creative and interesting and everyone she knew adored him. but still, they would be sitting at dinner and suddenly, as if being shot in the gut, a memory of ethan would enter her and leave her breathless, devastated, alone.
one day, as she was walking to lunch, her cell phone rang. it was april, it was drizzling rain, and she didnt recognize the number. she answered it hurredly and a voice said her name. he had thought she didnt want to hear from him, thought it would only complicate her life there. he hadnt gone to columbia after all, but went travelling around asia with a friend's band. he had just returned
her boyfriend and she broke up a month later, at least for the summer they said. since she was going to india, and he was planning on staying in LA. and as she drove up to san francisco, the part of her ethan had given returned, creeping up through the soles of her feet and landing in her scalp, her fingertips. her nerves were like trees, she had found it again.

days before she left for india, he had drawn on her back. they were staying in a two story apartment that wasnt finished yet. wood was exposed, no walls had been made yet. it was a puzzle, like being inside one of his drawings. another one of his friends had been staying there and had put in a refrigerator and a stove and a matress and all over the walls were treasures that ethan had collected over the years. everywhere was something unusual, a porcelain doll with a red lipstick kiss on her forehead, a series of glass slides of xrays from decades ago, comic strips done by a famous friend of his, the ink smudged. nothing wasnt lovely.
she lay on her stomach, naked, and as he put the tip of his marker on her bare skin it was as if the color, though she couldnt see it, existed separately from anything else she had ever known. he worked on it for hours, until she fell asleep. she had become what she always wanted to be. his.

hours passed and she figured the lift would be opening shortly. she left the comfort of the cafe and walked outside. she noticed, in the opposite direction from where the driver had let her out, a lush green path winding down the hill. she walked over to it in the mist and stood looking at this completely different angle. all nature, all organic. green and soft and imperfect. it was then that it began to really rain. she ran down the path a bit to hide under a tree and it was there that she saw it- a childs umbrella, open and fluttering in the breeze. it was light blue and had wonderful round faced creatures on it with mandarin writing. how perfect! she thought. an umbrella, just when she needed one. a birthday present.
but when she picked it up she thought to herself, ive come this far... so she folded it up so that it wouldnt blow away and laid it gently on the ground, for the next wet person.

choose your own adventure (redux)

we are driving down the 101, its almost dawn and james is furious. we've been at beth's house, listening to clouds taste metallic and eating jello shots, just the five of us. it was supposed to be a big party, we think, but when we showed up at midnight it was just beth and danielle, spray painting the background of beth's next art project and slurping down vodka and jello powder, not quite gelatinous. things were already tense between the three of us, james, frank and me, when we showed up, but we did what we always do, which is get drunk and talk to anyone but each other. it hadnt been this way for the whole time we were living together, and of course the reason we wanted to live together was because none of us could ever forsee this being our collective future. before we lived toegther, last year, the thought of talking to anyone else besides each other was almost a nuisance. but there we were, leaving her apartment at four thirty in the morning, after having gotten into one of our now familiar "epic" debates and successfully either scared beth and alice into a coma, or bored them to sleep. this one was about whether or not quentin tarantino was a chauvenist, and though i didnt really have an opinion one way or the other, i was screaming until veins popped out of my forehead in order to convince james that he was the most heinous offender of recent memory.
frank and i werent talking when we arrived at beths. this is because a couple of weeks ago, at a party at our then unfurnished house, he was doing what he always does at parties, films. he would document the parties and we would sit around james's giant television the next afternoon, shredded from the night before, and watch in silent horror at our own truths seeping out through the holey screen of intoxication. but at this particular party he decided to ask me a question, on camera, that he knew, even in the drunkest of states i would never be able to answer. and when i ran into my bedroom with the door that never shut, literally or figuratively, he followed me in. we hadnt spoken since but as the night at beths progresses and our cheeks warm up, we begin making eye contact and sometimes laughing at each others jokes, our thinly veiled attempts at reconciliation.
we decide to leave and frank insists on driving, beacuse james is not only gummy kneed, hes so angry that his hands are clutching his hair and hes saying "i just cant believe it...i cant believe it." frank and i are now complicit in our mockery of him, and james's understanding of this is like the last scratch on an insatiable mosquito bite- this is when the blood comes out and you wish you had just put up with the itch.
frank says, im driving, and you know that.
fuck you, james says and opens the door viciously. get the fuck in the car, we're going home.
frank and i look at each other for a long minute. without taking his eyes off mine, he opens the back door and gets in. i get in the front door, and see james's head in his hands, his fingers white from gripping it.
i cant live like this, my two fucking best friends, my fucking roommates, not talking to each other.
i look back at frank and have to make a concerted effort not to laugh.
i think we're good, actually, james. i think we're back to normal. why dont you let him drive?
he looks at me and his watery blue eyes are blood shot, stale. he turns the key in the ignition and i grip the side of the door. i keep thinking surely he'll surrender and let frank drive, surely he will. but before ive realized it we're on the freeway, in the far right lane, going almost a hundred miles an hour.
hes screaming about our passive aggressiveness, about our drama, and he's right, but the tone of his voice and the speed of his volvo and the knowledge that there isnt much either one of us could do to stop him from ramming the car into the concrete wall and shutting us all up is making me want to laugh. its that feeling that you had in math class, when your teacher just yelled at you- the only thing more inappropriate than breaking into tears would be to laugh, so your body goes there, because crying would just make it all too real.
he can sense this, he can see frank and i glancing at each other, sharing this uneasy combination of terror and hilarity. he beats his hand against the rim of the steering wheel so hard that it honks, and i cant help but let a tiny laugh out.
i cant fucking believe youre doing this! im moving out, its over, this is all over you have to find a new fucking roommate, his voice is screechy and ragged.
oh come on, james! just calm down, youre being drunk and ridiculous and thats why we're laughing.
he exits onto echo park boulevard and as soon as the car is off the ramp he throws it into park and the car stops absurdly, as if it too has had enough. hes leapt out of the car and frank and i jerk a glance at each other before we're both in the street. james is running along the park, towards sunset, and im running after him. there are ducks on the water and a couple sitting in front of the paddleboat rental office, bodies involved in each other. frank runs back and gets into the car and begins to follow us.
i speak in a low voice. i am trying to calm him down, to bring him back to the essence of it- we're friends, this is insane, its almost daybreak.
just please wait james, just for one second, lets talk.
he swivels around and looks at me and his face is twisted in the most honest expression of anger ive ever seen.
i will move out, he says this as a threat, and for some reason it reassures me, all of this does, because it means he wont really. if he had said this to me on monday afternoon i would have been worried, i would have taken him seriously. but this, this is too raw to be what he says it is. he keeps walking, and im trailing behind him, two of my steps for every one of his. frank is driving beside us, wishing he had the camera.

choice a
no you wont, i say, and before the last word is out of my mouth james has reared back his right hand and plunged it through the drivers side window of a black jetta. he pulls it back, its dripping with blood. frank is out of the car the second it happened and im standing there, silent and numb.
nothing i say means anything to you, he says, and walks home.

choice b
no you wont, i say, and before the last word is out of my mouth james has reared back his right hand and thrown it into the left side of my face. the pain is both piercing and vague, and im not sure if my skull is broken or if he has reached inside of my face and ripped it out- my eyes, my nose, my cheekbones. im kneeling on the ground, and im not crying yet, and frank is beside me, saying holy shit tell us youre alright. i look up at james, his heaving chest and his jigsaw puzzle face.
nothing i say means anything to you, he says.