Alison Lurie: The Nowhere City

Iz paused. For about a year after their marriage he had had a sort of superstitious dread of disturbing this unique psychological organization that was his wife by any sort of prying, but lately he had begun to let what he thought of as professional curiosity get the better of him.

“Well,” he said; “there are a number of possibilities. Maybe you really don’t want to go to Mexico. Maybe you don’t want to expose your body to the Mexicans; or maybe that’s just what you do want. We know already that you prefer to swim nude. Or maybe simply you don’t like any of your bathing suits.” As every one of these explanations was correct, and no secret to her, Glory smiled and said nothing.

“Or maybe more than one of these reasons applies. Most of our actions are after all multiply determined. I mean,” he translated, since Glory had left school in the eighth grade, “most people have more than one reason for whatever they decide to do.” Glory did not mind her husband’s using technical language; she liked it, even when she did not quite understand. The roar of long words breaking over her head made her feel as if she too swam in deep intellectual seas, washed about by great ideas. There was practically nothing she went for in a man as much as a really brilliant mind. She had therefore been gazing affectionately at Iz; but when he began explaining as if she were a feeble-minded kid, she pouted. Both of these expressions were hidden from Iz by the shadow of her hat and glasses; he continued. “I think it might be interesting if we were to ask sometime why you ‘forget’ so often.”

This was not a new or original idea, though it was new that Iz should express it. Glory’s headlong rush through her life had left a trail of abandoned objects. She had forgotten handbags, suitcases, packages, contracts, and every imaginable and unimaginable piece of clothing, in every imaginable and unimaginable place. She had also, at one time or another, misplaced a pregnant police dog, a pink Edsel automobile, and two husbands. Some of these things later turned up in unexpected places; others were never recovered. Glory was already mildly famous for this, and Maxie, her press agent, was doing his best to make her more so.

“Oh, I think you’re right,” Glory said. “We should do that some time. But right now, how about getting off your ass? I mean we aren’t going anywhere here.” She gestured at Mar Vista laid out below the freeway: a random grid of service stations, two-story apartment buildings, drive-ins, palms, and factories; and block after block of stucco cottages.

“So what’re you going to do about your bathing suit?” Iz persisted. Glory shrugged, raising both her shoulders and her celebrated breasts, but did not answer. Silence was her best weapon and also her best defense; nothing she could say was half so eloquent as her beauty. “Goddammit. You try to go in without one somewhere along the coast, and we’ll both end up in the jug. No thanks. I can see the headlines.” He stopped smiling. “Or is that what you want? Maybe you’re planning a publicity stunt?”

Here Iz did Glory an injustice; it had not occurred to her that she might be arrested for indecent exposure in Mexico. Maxie would shit poodles if she got herself into anything like that without clearing it with him first. For a couple of seconds she considered doing it just for that. But she decided not: after all, this was supposed to be a vacation.

“What do you want; you want to stop somewhere on the way down?” Glory shrugged again. “Or do you want to try to buy a suit in Tijuana? So tell me.” Iz did not mention the possibility that he might turn around and drive back to their house in the hills above Hollywood, or else to the Beverly Hills shopping district, which was nearer. He abhorred all retrogressive movement. Also, he was determined to force Glory to ask him for what she wanted or, as he put it to himself, to assume responsibility for her own actions.

“Like where? In the desert I could pick something up, but not in Tijuana.”

“I see.” Iz smiled, and actually stroked his new beard. He contemplated her, and she eyed him, through their sunglasses; in the cars that sped past, drivers and passengers, mostly in sunglasses, continued to stare at them.

“Okay,” Glory said finally. “I’ll feed you the line. ‘Whadayou see?’”

“Let me ask you,” Iz said, holding his pose. “What do you see?” Glory did not answer. She continued to look at Iz almost inquiringly, as if she had not heard the question. Had Iz been in his office he would have accepted this as the sign of total resistance to interpretation—so wait patiently a few sessions, at fifteen to thirty dollars an hour, then offer the interpretation again. But he was patient only in his office.

“You want to go to Palm Springs,” he said. “You always wanted to go to Palm Springs.”

“That’s a lot of crap,” Glory said.

“It should be,” Iz said. “Because you know what would happen if we went to Palm Springs. As soon as you showed your face there you’d be surrounded by a crowd of voyeurs and parasites, massaging your ego, trying to participate vicariously in—”

“Talk talk talk talk,” Glory interrupted.

“All right. Ass-kissers and creeps, to you; sucking up to you, so they can get in on a good thing, just the way they are on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And I don’t think you need that any more. I don’t think that’s what you really want.”

“You know what I want, ass-head,” Glory said. “I want to go away somewhere with you. I want to get out of this phony nowhere city and go somewhere where we can swim ... and lie in the sun ... and sleep.” Glory’s voice deepened and slowed into a vibrating whisper of the kind that comes out of theater amplifiers during close-ups.

“Right. That’s what I thought you wanted,” Iz said in an appropriate voice. He leaned towards Glory, putting one hand under her pink silk thigh, another at her neck, pulling her up to him. Their large dark glasses stared into each other and the plastic rims grated together as they kissed passionately, much to the interest of the passing vehicles.

“I want to be warm,” Glory murmured, her mouth and tongue fluttering at the margin of his beard. “We could go like somewhere out in the desert where nobody goes. Just get out there and keep driving until we hit some way out place. Mm?”

“Mm,” Iz replied.

Unwisely, Glory pushed her advantage. “And then, well like tomorrow, I could just run into Palm Springs without anybody seeing me and pick up a bathing suit.”

Iz drew his head back, and replaced Glory in her seat of the car.

“You really are a spoiled child, beautiful, aren’t you?” he said. “A beautiful, spoiled child.” Glory did not agree with him. “You’ve got to have everything your way.” Glory opened her mouth, but he continued. “Oh, I know it’s not entirely your fault. Since you really were a child chronologically you’ve been flattered and indulged and taught to think that all Glory’s little whims were very, very important. Because you weren’t like other people. You were a child entertainer, a little third-rate goddess, so charming and so talented and so pretty. When you reached adolescence you got a big shock: nobody loved you any more. You had a tough time before you started making it again, and you should have learned something then. Maybe you did learn it, only I wonder if now you aren’t forgetting. Maybe you’re beginning to feel that all those years were just a bad dream. You know what I think is your problem now? You’re starting to believe all that crap that Maxie grinds out about Glory Green, the beautiful, crazy, way out starlet. Ya, I think so. You’re starting to believe your own publicity.”