The Genealogies: Chapter 5, The Parable of the Pancakes

Lexie loved her Vespa. It allowed her to zip through and in between traffic, speeding through traffic as if she were an extra in La dolce vita. When she really pushed it, she could reach 70 or 75, though at such speeds the frame began to vibrate a little, and she began to have visions of appearing as a salutary example on a Fox-TV special, “Blood on the Highway 2003,” or “Too Stupid to Drive at Any Speed.” But, just as often, she would tap herself on top of her black, quasi-Germanic helmet and gun the engine, reveling in the exhilaration of roaring down the hill on Sepulveda that led from the edge of Culver City into the Westchester flats. She’d let out a little yelp, trees and pavement whizzing by, the wind beating on her sunglasses, the rest of her face protected from bugs and random debris by the windshield. She didn’t drive it at night; she wasn’t quite that brave, even though she often thought of showing up at a club with a friend on the back seat, both of them dressed to salivate over, and handing the stricken attendant the key, leaning in and whispering that they were both commando. It was a minor fantasy, but it gave her the occasional smile. No, at night she would drive her old Nissan which had stood her well for years—unexciting, but much less likely to be the cause of permanent disfigurement. However, during the day, and especially on the weekends, her Vespa purred between her legs, taking her shopping, to work, eating out, to the beach. She especially liked taking it to the beach, the sun working on her tan before she hit the sand, the boys and girls looking at her legs almost-straddling the frame, able to pull into any available space. She adored the Vespa. If she could say that anything had been made for her, it would be the Vespa, so attuned it was to her soul.

This particular Sunday, Lexie wasn’t on her Vespa. She was, in fact, in bed, her head swathed in an alcoholic miasma from the previous night. She was 27, and was getting to that age when all night drink-fetes were no longer fun, when it took longer and longer to recover from them. But, if nothing else, she was social, and there was nothing more social for her than being in a bar or club with friends, sharing drinks, dancing, kissing strange boys or strange girls—she wasn’t too choosy in that regard, something that no-one outside her circle knew. She’d hinted at it to Marcelo, knowing intrinsically that he wouldn’t care, but had never quite come out and said it. She didn’t know what held her back; if anyone in the family would understand, it would be him. Perhaps it was that she didn’t think about it much herself. It was all so natural and unpracticed for her. Men, women, both possessed different yet similar attractions. However, she did want to settle down, eventually, and couldn’t think of doing that with a woman. The pebbly Catholic in her still insisted on monogamous heterosexuality when the time for happily-ever-aftering came. She castigated herself for that failure in imagination—or that failure in courage. She knew men who lived with men, and women with women, and had done so for years, and had no intention of giving up those relationships, and were contented, happy, and whole. She didn’t know why she couldn’t see herself waking up next to a woman every morning, from now unto death. Perhaps despite her protestations, she was secretly homophobic, and only played the bisexual role on T.V. But when such thoughts came, she laughed, for there was much dancing yet to be done, and many more drinks to be had.

Lexie clutched at her blanket and stuffed a pillow over her head, willing her headache to go away. It hurt to open her eyes, so she kept them shut, shut beneath the comforting coolness of the pillow. She could hear a buzzing rustling beyond her closed door. She wondered at the time. She knew it was probably earlier than she assumed. It always was. She had an unnerving ability to wake up on time—or early—without aid of an alarm clock. That was a welcome trait, as she hated both the LED glow of an electric clock, or the harping, clattering tick-tock of a wind-up. Clocks were her enemy. They represented an inanimate measurement of time that constantly deducted from what should be an infinite storehouse. Time is infinite; humans are not. Clocks reminded her of that sad law, and thus she banished them as much as she could from her life. If she absolutely had to know what time it was, there was always her cellphone, or the clock on her computer, which, oddly enough, she kept in accurate synchronicity by a little program that pinged the atomic clock at the Naval Observatory. She couldn’t explain this need for a perfect time on her computer when she exiled time from the rest of her life. The nearest she could come to it was a need to do things correctly, if they needed to be done at all.

Something clattered on the other side of her door. Her room was hot, as she had turned off the fan because it made too much noise for her delicate state. She groaned and pulled the covers tightly over her, despite the heat. She knew she would hear a knock soon, but willed it away for as long as she could. The previous night was a bit of a blur. She wasn’t in the habit of doing drunks every night, or even every weekend. But last night was her best friend’s birthday, and it capped off a lousy week at work, and she felt she deserved it. She had always been her family’s wild child, and she played the role, if not to the hilt, then without much reservation or apology.

“You’re like my cousin Fonsa,” Mamá would say. “No-one could tell her what to do. Dios mio.” A clicking of the tongue. “And you know how she wound up.”

“Yes, Mom, I know—knocked up, then married to a communist. But I bet she got a nice house out of it.”

Mamá would stare chancletas at her. “We lost everything, mija. Don’t forget that.”

Outside her window Paco chirped. She’d never actually seen the bird, but she recognized its warble every morning, starting somewhere around sunrise and continuing more or less uninterrupted for two or three hours, coloring her near-waking dreams, pulling her slowly out of sleep on the weekends, or after benders such as these. He had been at his station for the entire two years she had lived in the apartment, which was quite good, considering all the feral cats prowling around, looking for a juicy, feathery morsel. A younger Lexie would have cursed the incessant morning birdsong, and her first few months she had. But slowly it had grown on her, and she had found as much comfort in it as she did in having Mr. Twiggles laying his furry body right on top of her bare feet as she slept (which he was, in fact, doing at that moment). It was something certain in her life, an everyday touchstone that served to give her some structure in a life that was rather without structure. One day she had decided that the bird needed a name, and “Paco” had sprung up, as she had eaten the previous night at Paco’s Tacos, her favorite Mexican restaurant—a choice which Gloria, her best friend, derided mercilessly.

“Cubans are too stuck up to know anything about real Mexican food,” she remarked as the occasion demanded.

“Yeah, and Mexicans don’t know how to make real beans. The shit looks like, well, worse than what comes out during a bad stomach flu.”

Gloria was a year younger, but had been in Lexie’s class due to her having skipped a grade. Like Marcelo, Lexie had been relegated to St. Iggy’s. Unlike Marcelo, she had to wear a uniform, the school having been caught up in the general approbation of a uniform’s efficacy in holding at bay the more violent and pernicious of society’s aspects from swamping over its charges. Certainly, all the string of school shootings that stalked the 1990s: Moses Lake, Washington, 1996; Bethel, Alaska, 1997; Pearl, Mississippi, 1997; West Paducah, Kentucky, 1997; and so on, all leading to the ur-shooting at Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, all could have been avoided, vitiated, negated if the students had been made to wear uniforms, marching, if not in lockstep, then at least in a similar shuffle. And of course, Catholic schools were more susceptible than most to the blandishments of uniformity’s benefits; Marcelo, upon entering St. Iggy’s from his New York parochial center was flummoxed at not having to wear a jacket and tie and uncomfortable, too-tight shoes. He hadn’t known whether to be giddy at the sudden sartorial freedom, or suspicious that this was another pernicious L.A.-ism, another thing L.A. got patently, almost blasphemously, wrong.

“It’s just like selling newspapers in a supermarket. It’s simply not right. You go to the newsstand or candystore to get the Daily News, not the A&P.”

Lexie would roll her eyes, no less because Marcelo had then proceeded to thoroughly enjoy his four years at St. Iggy’s with only the most modest of dress codes. But the 80s had been a much more innocent time. School shootings, drugs, teenage pregnancies, and other scourges were relegated to ghetto schools. Such things didn’t intrude into the better parts of town.

They were both LAX area girls—Lexie from Inglewood, Gloria from Hawthorne—both without the obvious advantages of their peers from Playa del Rey or Westchester, both thrown together as lab partners in freshman biology. It hadn’t been an optimal pairing at first. Lexie, even at that age, especially at that age, pushed things, tested limits, and had a mouth on her that would’ve been slapped if Mamá had believed in such things, although she was sorely tempted on more than one occasion. In contrast, obviously, Gloria was the studious type, quiet, reserved, from a family as strict as Lexie’s, a common Latin weltanschauung informing both, but more prone to acquiesce to its boundaries and barriers. Great things were expected out of Gloria, and nothing would get in the way, no distractions would be allowed. Gloria seemed to possess the saddest, deepest eyes that Lexie had ever seen on anyone near her age. Gloria stammered around Lexie, unsure what to make of the older girl, and Lexie felt both bothered by being twinned with someone younger than her and a surreptitious elation at not being the youngest one, finally having someone to lord over in some fashion. She didn’t hide her disdain for Gloria, and did the bare minimum work necessary to avoid having Mrs. Goodreau report her to the dean of girls, and hence to her parents.

Things carried on in that fashion for the start of the semester, until one day Gloria wasn’t in class. It was late October, and Gloria had never missed class, never even been late, and Lexie felt a letdown, as if a routine had been disrupted, one she hadn’t realized, until then, had become a key part of her life. The following day Gloria didn’t show up either, nor the day after that; until finally on the fourth day Mrs. Goodreau called the class to order with an announcement.

“Gloria Arroyo’s mother, Gisela, died on Sunday. She had a massive stroke, and never regained consciousness. Father MacClarty will make an announcement later during homeroom, but I thought we should all take a moment now and send a prayer out to Gloria and her family during this awful time.”

And that was it. The children bowed their heads for a minute, some saying prayers, some thinking of other, less holy things. A short announcement, a death noted briefly, and class resumed.

Lexie tried to focus on the class. She followed along as Mrs. Goodreau expounded on Mendel’s experiments with pea plants, but couldn’t quite zero in on what she was saying. She usually depended on Gloria to grasp the gist of the lecture, and then rework it for her afterwards in their study sessions. She had never paid much attention to Gloria; they were so unalike. She tried to remember anything personal about her, if she had ever talked about her life at home, mentioned her parents’ names, whether she had brothers or sisters. Nothing came to her. Gloria was a blank slate, a lab partner and someone to leech off of for a passing grade. Nothing more. And now her mother was dead, a mother who for all Lexie had known never existed. It was the first time death had glancingly touched Lexie, and it had visited someone for whom she had had only the most perfunctory of uses.

The rest of the day, in her classes and with her friends, Lexie was in a sort of fugue. She only remembered little things Gloria did—the way she methodically cleaned her glasses, wiping them the moment they acquired any smudge of dirt, the way she chewed on her hair when trying to explain something difficult to Lexie. Small things which, aggregated, turned Gloria into someone other than Lexie had thought she had been. Then to that she added the fact that the girl’s mother was dead. She suddenly was no longer the girl on whom she relied for biology, but a person unique in Lexie’s cosmology, graced with a grief she couldn’t imagine. Her mother’s death brought Gloria to life.

Gloria didn’t appear for class that Friday either, but Mrs. Goodreau took Lexie aside and informed her Gloria would return Monday.

“I hope you’ve been taking good notes, Alexandra. Gloria’s going to need your help.”

Lexie had been taking notes, but in her usual desultory fashion. She began to panic. That night she called friends, canceling any plans she had with them, and shut herself in her room. Mamá and Papá looked at each other from their matching recliners, not sure what to make of her sudden, precipitous studiousness, wondering if it was a last-minute attempt to stave off academic disaster.

“Maybe I should go and see if anything’s wrong.”

“Ay, no, mujer. Leave her alone. We always complain she’s not serious enough. Let’s not screw it up.”

Over Saturday and Sunday, with breaks for eating and grooming (and not church; Mamá and Papá, though quite observant themselves, never forced their children to attend Mass once they had reached a certain age, thinking that was between them and their consciences), Lexie molded her disparate notes into a semblance of a usable study guide, with the aid of heavy reading of the biology text. She couldn’t recall the last time she had worked so hard on anything. She wasn’t used to it. At times she felt lightheaded with the concentration, and thought she was going to faint away. Somehow, she managed to maintain awareness, and that Monday she was in her seat, ready and waiting for first period biology.

Gloria walked into the classroom. She shuffled in slowly, her head hanging down low. The room hushed as she walked in, all eyes on her, watching her as she made her way to her seat. Lexie tried to catch her attention, tried to grab her with her eyes. Gloria passed by her, as she sat two seats behind her. Lexie thought briefly about reaching out, touching her arm in sympathy or support or some show of solidarity. The grief wafted about her like steam from a manhole cover in a cold Northern city. Lexie didn’t touch her, not wanting to break whatever spell in which Gloria was enmeshed. She finally sat down, and Mrs. Goodreau brought the class to order, telling Gloria how good it was to see her again, and nothing more, because anything else would have been intrusive and trite. Lexie looked behind her, and Gloria met her eyes. Gloria’s eyes were red, though not swollen, her crying jag having been far enough in the past for the effects to have subsided somewhat. Lexie froze, the look of friendship she had wanted to give suddenly turned to confusion and a patina of shame. Gloria wasn’t her friend, had never been her friend, had barely been a person, and now suddenly she wanted to offer the beneficence of her amity as a consolation for the loss of her mother. She felt, looking into Gloria’s eyes, small. In the week she had been gone, Gloria had aged far beyond Lexie, had experienced something Lexie wouldn’t for some time yet, and had experienced it suddenly and crushingly. Lexie turned back around to face Mrs. Goodreau, her face flushed and burning. She had intended to hand Gloria her notes as soon as she had settled in; she felt somehow unworthy.

The class and the day unwound as they normally did until lunchtime arrived. Lexie was moody, and didn’t sit with her usual gaggle. They shrugged collectively and left her to simmer in her solitude. Lexie glumly ate her lunch of chicken strips and chili fries, unsure of why she felt the way she did, unsure of how she felt. This wasn’t her. She didn’t know why all on a sudden she cared about Gloria. Sure, it was sad that her mother died, that was awful. But really, what was it to her? Gloria was merely her lab partner, a mousy, friendless girl that she had been paired with unwillingly. The logic of her feelings eluded her. And yet there they were. They were undeniable. She felt an unutterable sadness for Gloria; but, more to the point, she felt like a glorious asshole, her preening self-importance laid bare by a real, tangible tragedy—a common tragedy, true, but a tragedy nonetheless, and a tragedy whose effects Lexie could barely imagine. Gloria was now more than Lexie, and Lexie wanted to understand what she’d become.

As she chewed on a greasy, chili-smeared French fry, someone sat opposite her.

“Hi,” Gloria said.

Lexie looked up, gagging on the potato.

“Oh, hi Gloria.” She swallowed. “Um, how are you?”

“Oh, you know, I’m okay.” She rubbed at her nose with the flat of her palm in an upward motion, blinking behind her glasses.

“That’s good. That’s good.” Lexie grabbed for another fry, but didn’t bring it to her mouth, just holding it, using it to stir the chili around on the rest of the fries.

“I-I’m sorry, you know, about your mom.” Gloria scrunched her nose, making a little frowning moue with her mouth. “Oh, god, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I mean, I bet you’ve been hearing that over and over all these days. I imagine you don’t need to hear it from me.”

“N-no, it’s okay.” Gloria sighed. “I really haven’t heard it from anyone at school, except for teachers. And Father MacClarty had me in his office before class started. My dad was there, and he was kind and all, telling us he had prayed for my mom, that if I needed anything all we had to do was ask. He smelled like he’d been drinking already, though. I guess all the rumors’re true. But no, none of the kids have said anything, not really. Except for you.”

Lexie broke out into a giant smile, then quickly shut it, castigating herself for showing such unalloyed joy in front of Gloria. Gloria returned her smile, though, and laughed a little.

Lexie brought the fry to her mouth and took a bite out of it, narrowing her eyes as she looked at Gloria. Quietly, “How is it? What’s it like?”

Gloria cocked her head.

“How does it feel—I mean, how do you feel? You know? Having someone die. Having your mom die. I’ve been trying to imagine what you’re going through, but I just can’t. I can’t.”

Gloria’s voice caught in her throat. “You think it’s never gonna happen. I mean, who thinks their mom’s gonna die, you know? It’s Mom, it’s Dad, it’s abuela and abuelo, and they’re gonna be around forever. But, see, they’re not. If everything works out right—this is what my dad told me—if everything works out right, they’re all gonna die before me, because they should, because the parents should die before their kids, that’s just the way it should be. So Mom did what she was supposed to do, I guess, in a way. But not so soon. No-one was ready. Maybe if I was forty or something, maybe then I’d be ready. But not now. I mean, I’m just a kid. I know I’m just a kid. And now I don’t have my mom. I love my Dad, but I don’t have my Mom anymore.” She stopped, covered her mouth with her hand, coughed. “My dad told me about when his mom died. This was before I was born, so I never met her. And he said he felt like someone had carved into his chest and taken out a piece of him. But I don’t feel like that, Lexie. It’s like Mom is still here, still inside me. But now she’s sort of a stranger, she’s this strange thing inside me that’ll never leave me. That’s how it feels.”

Gloria looked at Lexie, with an intensity Lexie had never seen in any of her peers. That’s what it looks like when someone dies, she thought. It suddenly came to her that that was why she was now so solicitous towards Gloria. She could teach her something, show her something no-one else could. Gloria now had a gift to offer. It was almost as if she had descended into the grave with her mother, and returned with something to impart. Lexie still wasn’t sure why this knowledge was so important; she felt it was one of the hallmarks of adulthood, something which was supposed to be spared children, at least children in America, in tree-lined Los Angeles. She wanted to hold onto Gloria like a talisman, a pioneer into maturity. Gloria’s tragedy jarred Lexie into seeing beyond her social gracelessness, her shyness, the ever-present glasses, the too-long skirt. Death had made Gloria, oddly, cool.

After that lunch, they—slowly, surely—became friends. They orbited each other like binary stars, maintaining their own gravities, but drawn to each other, joined, unthinkingly ignoring other friends or family if one needed the other. Some of the girls, and not a few of the boys, spoke vile things about them. Lexie was mortified, and Gloria couldn’t quite understand what it meant. But their friendship wasn’t leading down any road that would bring shame to their families, and require expulsion from St. Iggy’s. It was the most intense sort of friendship: one of mutual need. Gloria needed Lexie for her grace, her ease with people, her popularity with all the disparate groups in school. Lexie could get just about anyone to do just about anything for her, boy or girl, student or teacher, and do it so gently, so smilingly that they almost didn’t notice. Lexie needed Gloria for her groundedness, her ability to see beyond the quotidian and ephemeral into serious things. St. Iggy’s teachers took the Church’s social justice theology quite seriously, and would organize yearly protests at the Nevada nuclear test sites, a protest that would often incur at least a symbolic stay in the local jail. Gloria participated every year, and dragged Lexie with her, at first unwillingly, but, year by year, with, if not an equal fervor, at least one that approximated hers, where she began to see beyond the dramatic machinations of her acquaintances, the latest fashion lines, the most current music. They helped to complete each other, more than a lover would have, more than family did.

One would have been forgiven for thinking that if either of them was ever in the position to have a roommate, they would have chosen the other. But they knew the secret to a successful relationship: a modicum of distance, a personal space in which to operate. If only the men who wandered in and out of their lives could understand that. Instead, they beached on their shores like despondent whales, flailing about without the ocean’s warm envelopment.

There was a knock at the door.

“Lexie? I made pancakes if you want any.”

Lexie moaned and reached for her cellphone to look at the time. She moaned again at how early it was, relative to how late she had gone to bed. She would have preferred to have stayed in bed for several more hours, but the room was starting to get hot, and, it being Sunday, she didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in bed. Lazy weekends, much like consequence-free drinking, were quickly becoming things of the past.

“Ok, Em. I’ll be out in a sec.” She slowly pulled herself from beneath the covers, smacking her lips together, still able to taste the residue of too many cosmopolitans. She reached down to the floor, picking up a tanktop and shorts and putting them on. She blinked, trying to wet the contacts in her eyes so that she could focus. She could smell the pancakes, and that woke her up a bit. Although getting going was tedious, Emily’s pancake breakfast was a sure cure for a hangover. Emily’s mother, like many mothers of her generation and political milieu, thought that cooking was a bourgeois imposition instituted to keep women homebound and family-tied. She would have none of it. Oh, she could make basic things: pasta and a jar of Ragu or Prego, hot dogs, a simple tossed salad—which was her staple food most days—and, of course, coffee, a bowl of cereal, instant mashed potatoes from a box. Most nights cooking duties were left in the hands of Emily’s father, who, by dint of necessity, had been forced to become a rather excellent cook. He, being a man of a certain age and political inclination, supported his wife’s shucking of traditional gender roles intended to keep her servile and dependent. As a freelance technical writer, Emily’s father worked mostly out of the house, so that a parent would almost always be home for their only child, and his wife could slowly claw her way up the ladders of several public relations firms, tending to the public personae of privately questionable people. Needless to say, Emily’s father was almost always in charge of breakfast. Those rare times when he was away on a writing assignment, and feeding duties fell perforce on Emily’s mother, were dire. She would stock up on frozen waffles, frozen pancakes, frozen French toast, frozen breakfast meals, and organically grown, cooperatively sold coffee. Emily grew up looking at these interregna as spiritual and physical purges that would allow her to more fully and deeply appreciate her father.

Her father’s pancake breakfasts were reserved for Sundays, because only on Sunday was there enough time to truly savor a stack of perfectly cooked, fluffy, golden pancakes. He cooked many things well, and Emily benefited from his culinary aptitude, but pancakes, as far as she was concerned, were his chef d’oeuvre. He made all sorts of pancakes: blueberry and strawberry, of course, but also fig, kiwi, pecan, walnut, peanut butter; Austrian, German, and Swedish (she wasn’t sure that there were such things as Swedish pancakes, but she never doubted her father while he made them); buttermilk, wheat, a combination of the two; with butter or with margarine; with bacon, with sausage, with eggs. All sorts of pancakes flew off the griddle on Sundays, and such were their excellence that even her mother enjoyed them, though on any other occasion she wouldn’t allow herself the calorie blast they entailed. On Sundays they approximated a normal family. During the preparation of the pancakes, Emily would watch, not helping, but absorbing everything, her pale green eyes adeptly following everything her father did, how he made the batter from scratch, how he sliced fruits, spread nuts, measured butter and milk. As she grew older, she’d be entrusted with a peripheral task, like making the scrambled eggs or frying the sausage; her father, however, would preserve the right to the pancake making only to himself. Towards the end of her senior year, with college away from home looming, she demanded that her father begin writing down recipes for his panoply of pancakes so that she could continue the tradition even when she lived away from home. He demurred at first, saying that she’d be living in a dorm for at least her freshman year, so there was no immediate need for recipes. But she insisted, wanting a record of the recipes so that she could study them, immerse herself in the ingredients, prepare herself for her own kitchen and spending weekends in it. Finally, he gave in, and, much like a writing assignment began to set down, in detail, a booklet of 101 pancake recipes. She was sure he had more recipes trapped in his brain, but he defended his choice as a good number, an easy to remember number, a literarily significant number. At any rate, he wrote down 102 recipes, and never discovered his mistake. The recipes, moreover, weren’t mere recitations of ingredients and cooking times. They included asides like: “When shopping for the strawberries for a strawberry glaze, take your time. Don’t just pick up the first basket that accosts you as you enter the market. Examine the berries, peer at them closely. Sneak one into your mouth while no-one looks—an entire basket, and the sweetness of the glaze, can be determined by one surreptitious taste.” Or: “Although having a little girl staring at you intently as you handle the ingredients isn’t a requirement, it does have a very concentrating effect on the chef; if you do not have a little girl of your own, try to borrow someone else’s. It will reflect in the finished pancake.” Ever since acquiring a kitchen of her own, Emily had prepared pancakes for any number of friends, friends of friends, lovers; she had yet to make a single pancake for her father, afraid to do so, for many reasons, none of which she dwelt on for long. It was enough that she banned herself from doing so, and continued to allow her father be the cook on her visits home, or his visits to her.

Lexie came out of her bedroom, running fingers through her loose brown hair, craning her neck and tilting back her head as the smell of breakfast hit her. Ah, yes! Banana Mush Pancakes! And—yes, bacon. And scrambled eggs, made with a dollop of milk to make them fluffier. The different smells collided in the apartment, mixing, riffing off each other and enhancing each other, the sweet, musaceous odor of the pancakes slapping against the smell of the sausage’s fried flesh, the eggs coating both with a healthy neutrality, everything enfolded by the aroma of strongly brewed French roasted coffee. Lexie could feel her hangover dissipate on the scents alone. She sat down at the table, languidly, resting her face on her hand, watching as Emily made her a plate and poured coffee.

“You’re going to ruin me for anyone else, Em. I’ll have to hire you to make these breakfasts at least once a month.”

“Oh! This could be a side business! I could go from home to home preparing Pancake Breakfasts for the forlorn. That should be pretty lucrative in L.A.”

“Except for the too-loud, acrobatic sex, you’re the perfect roommate.”

“Except I haven’t had too-loud, acrobatic sex in—oh, a longer time than is healthy, I think.”

“That’s what I mean. I’ve had no entertainment from you for weeks. I’ve had to resort to Cinemax after-hours.”

Emily sat down with her own plate and cup of coffee, pouring a stream of syrup over the pancakes. She was one of those odd people who didn’t mind if the syrup mixed with the eggs. Lexie always ate her eggs first before slathering on the syrup.

“Who ever thought I’d be moving into such a culinary paradise.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty lucky I chose you.”

Lexie nodded. “My life was completed the night you called me with the news.”

They giggled. They had been brought together by a mutual acquaintance of an acquaintance, Lexie looking to get out of a nightmarish living arrangement, Emily looking to replace a nightmarish roommate, both hesitant of their next moves, their lives seemingly on hold over such a paltry decision. They hit it off instantly, a brief coffee meeting turning into a three hour dissection of their personal histories, any other appointments rearranged. If not congealing like long-lost sisters, they were at least very close first-cousins.

“Where’s Troy?”

“Elsewhere.”

Lexie crinkled her nose. “That’s a very stark answer.”

“It’s a stark situation.”

“You may as well make it official and break it off with him. You’re not fucking him, anyway. Once the sex goes, why even pretend?”

Emily shook her head. “And to think you went to Catholic school.”

“That’s where I learned all this. They’re great incubators for moral degeneracy.” She sipped on her coffee. “I never liked him, anyway. It was his name. ‘Troy.’ I have an innate distrust of people named after ancient mythological cities.”

“Actually, he was born in Troy, Michigan. I think that’s where he got the name.”

“He admitted this?”

“In a roundabout way, yeah.”

“That’s even sadder.”

Emily ran a hand through her thick red hair, pulling it off of her face, forming her face into a mask of disapproval at herself.

“He’s sort of the perfect guy.”

“If he were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And I’d have to share my pancakes with him—or you’d be at his place and I would have to trudge to Denny’s for breakfast.”

Emily, shaking her head, “I think there’s something truly wrong with me. There comes a point in every relationship where, often against my will, mind you, I sabotage it. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic moment—it usually isn’t. I … just stop caring, bit by bit…. And it often has nothing to do with the guy. I just go cold.”

Lexie used one hand to shovel a forkful of pancake into her mouth, reaching out with her other hand to pat Emily’s arm. “Now I see why you don’t let your mother get to you. You do such a wonderful job of beating up on yourself.”

“I expect nothing out of Mother. For myself I have higher standards.”

“Start lowering them. I’m not saying Troy—ugh—is the guy you should be with. But it’s obviously important to you that you wind up with someone, and self-flagellation isn’t very attractive to most guys. The ones to whom it is … well, you’re a bit too innocent for them.”

“We can’t all have reached a place of enlightenment like you have.”

“It’s tough being the Bodhisattva of Fairfax. But I haven’t ascended just so that I can help folks like you.”

“Gloria always says you’re odd for a Cuban woman.”

“Well, she’s prejudiced. And I think I’m just odd, Cuban or no.”

The phone rang in Emily’s bedroom. She went to answer it, leaving Lexie alone with the quickly cooling breakfast. She finished up the last bits of pancake and sausage, and curled her legs up underneath her, cradling her mug of coffee in her hands. She stared out the window, watching the empty streetscape before her, punctuated by the occasional pedestrian walking to his car or heading the few blocks down to Beverly to have breakfast or brunch, the day sunny and placid, the sound of birdsong and barking dogs filtering in, washing over her in an aural blanket, the wind rustling, leaves rubbing against each other, everything just about right, just as she wanted it. She wouldn’t say that the moment was perfect, because what kind of pressure would that be for all the subsequent moments of life, but it did bring a measure of contentment that she relished, enfolding her like the aroma of the Pancake Breakfast’s residue, comforting her, settling into her. It was in these moments that she realized her unusual good fortune, how she had been created by a fortuitous convergence of accidents that produced a life that she in great part loved, regardless of its occasional annoyances. She had friends. She had a job that provided certain rewards. She had a gorgeous, hardwood floored apartment at a relative steal with an excellent cook and general all-around good gal for a roommate in a neighborhood she adored for its urban cachet. Lexie lacked for nothing.

Emily closed the door to her bedroom; Lexie heard her voice raising through it, falling, then raising again louder, then dipping, a sine wave of frustration emanating out of her room. Lexie sighed and tried to block it out, her eyes fixed on the duplex across the street. She willed the door to open, knowing it would afford her a glimpse of Rex. She didn’t actually know his name, but she had always wanted to know a “Rex”, so an imaginary one would do. Usually, his too-thin, too-tall girlfriend wouldn’t be there to ruin the fantasy. She imagined him coming out in a pair of baggy shorts, topless, to collect the morning Times, pausing momentarily to scan the headlines, enjoying the burgeoning sun, before heading back in. Just enough time for Lexie to surreptitiously appreciate the Grecian perfection of his arms, his smooth, hairless torso, the shorts riding just low enough so that she could catch a hint of the V of his pelvis. He had only recently moved in, and truthfully she wasn’t sure whether the girlfriend was a live-in or not. If she did live with him, she was away quite a bit, which suited Lexie fine. Even though she freely admitted her attraction to women, when a woman came in between her and a male objet d’amour, however fantastical, she brooked no rivals. They could all go to the wall. She stared at the duplex’s door, going into a semi-reverie, the buzz of Emily’s phone conversation fading into white noise, imagining what it would be like to slowly pull down those shorts, and—oh, my, why, no underwear, well, what a little perv you are, but that’s okay, it suits you. We can’t let it all go to waste, not after all the trouble we’ve both gone to. Ah, there—yes! I’m Cuban, you know—we have secrets to make boys like you happy that your little skinny model couldn’t begin to fathom.

Lexie jumped and spilled lukewarm coffee over her t-shirt as Emily stormed out of her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Emily sat down forcefully in front of her now-cold breakfast, crossing her arms across her breasts, her face twisted into a knot of frustration and desperation, somewhat like a room whose furniture had all been rearranged haphazardly; everything looked familiar, yet somehow out of place. Her skin was flushed, and her bottom lip quivered ever so slightly, which, Lexie had come to know, indicated a great, untapped reservoir of raw feeling to which she would never admit. Lexie didn’t say anything, but just let her sit and sink to whatever natural depth she required, knowing the inefficacy of words at the moment. She just wished all this kerfuffle wasn’t over someone named Troy. It was such a whitebread, suburban name, and Troy conformed to the attributes of his name to the most trivial detail. He was a nice enough guy, she supposed, but so ordinary, so of the times. There wasn’t a single facet to him, physically or spiritually, that set him apart from any other number of pleasant-looking, well-built boys of a certain age and background. He never said anything shockingly original or even barely out of the ordinary. It would be misleading of her to say that he ignored the depth to focus on the surface: that would indicate a knowledge of depth on Troy’s part which Lexie doubted he possessed. In sum, Lexie avoided boys like Troy; they drove her almost rabidly mad.

Emily stewed for a few minutes, eyes fixed firmly down at the table, her breathing hard and heavy, almost as if in her mind she was running a race. There was nothing for it save to clear the table, which Lexie set about doing, collecting their plates and mugs, shoveling the stray bits of food into the garbage disposal, rinsing off the tableware and placing it into the dishwasher. She walked back towards Emily, putting a hand momentarily on her shoulder, squeezing briefly, then walking back to her room, figuring out what to do with her all-too-early day. She knew dinner at her mother’s was etched into her card, unavoidably. At least that was one meal a week she never had to worry about; more could be had, but the drive from Fairfax into Inglewood was such a bitch during the week. However, she always knew she would be fed to the full at her mother’s, food crammed down her gullet, glorious, possibly not healthy food, but she didn’t care. Food was not her enemy; as with most things, it was a friend whose boundaries had to be set; once they were, the relationship could proceed along quite amicably, to the benefit of all parties.

Lexie thought she heard Emily crying softly in the other room. She groaned, unsure of what to do. She picked out an outfit, a tanktop and jeans, and left her bedroom, heading for the bathroom for a shower. She was right; Emily had her head buried in her hand, sniffling more than sobbing, in tiny little heaves which barely moved her body. Lexie sighed quietly, and sat beside Emily.

“I don’t really want to go into it,” Emily said, her voice remarkably steady. “It doesn’t do me much good to go into it, anyway. You know? All these fucking words—with you, with everyone, with him. Words either change nothing, or change everything. They can never move things in little bits, just dribs and drabs, which is all we can handle, realistically. We don’t do too well with stasis or chaos, but those are all that words bring.” She rubbed her eyes. “Are you going anywhere in particular today?”

Lexie smiled. “Get ready. We’re taking the Vespa out for a Sunday ride.”

They got ready quickly. Lexie grabbed the helmets and handed one to Emily, charging out the door with her in her wake. The day was beautiful, and she had an itch to get on the bike, pull out onto the street and ride. She mounted the Vespa, Emily wrapping her arms around her waist, and turned the key in the ignition, feeling the engine purr beneath her. She kicked up the kickstand, backed out of her space and zipped down the driveway, pulling out into the street and speeding away, the wind whipping at her hair beneath the helmet. She loved this, almost nothing between her and the street, just a small piece of aluminum and an engine, feeling the sun and the wind, the smells of lawns and trees and exhaust enfolding her, turning her head left and right to take in all the sights, all the ordinary everyday sights that existed in another world from what people normally thought of as L.A. They drove down Beverly to La Cienaga, down La Cienega to Wilshire, west on Wilshire through Beverly Hills, Westwood, West L.A., Santa Monica, for miles and miles, the city stretching out, street after street, thick with pedestrians in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, given over to cars everywhere else, a city made for cars seemingly, people only incidental, from Wilshire north onto Ocean Avenue and thence onto PCH, and she knew exactly where she was going, a bit of a drive but well worth it. She liked the feel of Emily’s arms around her waist. She felt protected, held so tightly. She could feel Emily’s warm breath on her bare shoulders, her thighs rubbing up and vibrating against hers. She focused on the road, but Emily was a pleasant distraction. Too bad that Emily was so straight. If she were to ever fall for a chick seriously it would be for someone like her, someone who could temper her excessiveness, keep her grounded in some sort of reality.

They rode up the coast, the Pacific rolling stately and steadily off to their left, greenish brown hills rising up on their right, passing by beach homes, restaurants, well-appointed gas stations, bicycle riders, surfers crossing against traffic with their boards balanced precariously on their heads, wetsuits half-on, half-off. The sky was a brilliant blue, and bathed everything in a blue light, coloring everything as in a movie.

“Are we going where I think we’re going?”

“Yeah. I thought you could use some getting away. And it’s early enough that there shouldn’t be too many people there. Thanks to you and waking me up from my hangover.”

A squeeze on her abdomen. “You’re welcome. Anytime.”

They finally pulled into the middle turn lane, waiting for opposing traffic to clear, and turned onto a dirt road.

Emily said, “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I never knew this place existed till you told me.”

“You lived a life wasted in the Valley.”

Lexie parked the scooter and they dismounted. Emily secured her backpack, and they headed along a dirt track down the side of a cliff, the sound of the ocean washing over them, the water soon hovering into view, vast and greenish blue, whitecaps breaking on a rocky beach. They reached the base of the cliff, and walked along a rocky strand, sunbathers spread out at discrete intervals. Lexie looked off to her right; a woman was lying out topless, her breasts oily and shining in the sun. Lexie grinned and hoped that a park ranger wouldn’t traipse by, or an easily-offended beachgoer. This was her beach, her little escape away from the city, from anything that bothered her. She brought few people to her haven, not wanting to spoil the relative obscurity of the place. One had to make a willful decision to visit this beach; the mass kept to Zuma and the southern environs. This place was special, only for those willing to make the drive and able to appreciate its stark, rocky beauty. Out on the water a few surfers paddled, getting past the beds of seaweed lying on the surface.

“Here?” Emily pointed at an empty expanse of beach.

“Sure.”

Emily unpacked towels from her bag, handing one to Lexie, laying them both out onto the rocky sand. They peeled off their tops and shorts, stripping down to their bathing suits. Emily slathered sunblock on her fair skin, while Lexie sprayed herself with suntan lotion, not believing the scurrilous dangers attributed to sunlight, wanting to soak as much of the sun as she could into her already browned skin, wanting to melt into the sun and sand and sea. She lay down, eschewing plugging into her mp3 player, just letting the sounds of the beach and ocean enfold her, the cawing of seagulls, the incessant lap of the waves onto the strand, faintly echoing human voices, screaming, laughing, shrieks as the cold Pacific water wrapped around a child’s bare feet. She settled down, turning her head to look at Emily, her head pointed straight up at the sky, unsure whether her eyes were closed or not behind her chunky sunglasses, her skin almost reflecting off the sunlight, steady breath raising and lowering her chest. Emily turned her face towards Lexie, and smiled.

“Too bad,” Lexie whispered.

“What?”

“Oh, too bad Troy can’t see you now. You look all sorts of hot.”

“Yeah. Yeah. His loss.”

Lexie turned away from Emily, blinking behind her sunglasses, and dove once more into the sounds around her, the scent of Emily’s perfume and sunscreen serving as an olfactory under-melody. She sighed, taking in deep breaths, and folded herself into sleep.