Dana Spiotta - Lightning Field

“But it goes with your contradiction theory — social but antisocial at the same time,” Mina said.

“Yes, but some things are not appropriate for public space. Masturbation is fun, but the point of it is its privacy. I wouldn’t have masturbation bars. Next idea, Jake. What have you been up to, Mina, you’re flushed.”

“OK. Incense and Peppermints, a surreal retro sixties club. Sort of Dada— Clockwork Orange. White plastic. Call the food ‘strawberry steak shortcake,’ that sort of thing. Or munchies drug food, Oreos and peanut butter sandwiches. Potato chips and ice cream. Saltines and ketchup. Furry teacups, that sort of thing.”

Lorene shook her head. Mina shuddered.

“Nice stockings, Mina,” Lorene said. Mina extended one oatmeal-colored cashmere leg against Lorene’s silk-covered thigh. Lorene put one manicured hand on Mina’s knee.

“Oh, my. Yes. Cashmere. Wow. Cashmere cable knit, no less. Very sort of Ali MacGraw-ish, I think.”

“That’s what I was going for.”

“OK, one more idea,” Jake said, and the women turned to him. He took one of Lorene’s cigarettes and Mina lit it for him.

“We call it Blow Up. A sort of Antonioni-inspired milieu where model-perfect indifferent women are draped about in various throes of ennui and the food takes a really long time to come to your table.”

“Maybe it never comes,” Mina said, and all three of them started to smirk.

“OK, OK, I’ll work on other ideas.” Jake shook his head, laughing.

“Really, you’re getting closer, Jake. Just remember, it actually has to be pleasurable as well as high-concept. Pleasure.”

“Are there really throes of ennui?” Mina said, touching her stocking.

Lorene shook her head. “He’s too awful. Completely tragic.” They watched Jake shrug away and retreat to the floor, where the one o’clock rush was suddenly upon him.

“I got a postcard from Michael,” Lorene said. Mina drained her glass.

“Yeah, I know, I know. Jesus. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You want another drink?” Ray asked them.

“Yes,” Mina said. “Something red.”

“An NC-17, straight up.”

“I forgot, does that get fruit?” Ray asked, lining up the glasses.

“Natch.”

Lorene and Michael. Mina met Lorene through Michael. Only after Michael was gone from L.A. did they become friends, years after they had met for three seconds, it seemed to Mina, at a party her suddenly grown-up brother had thrown for her at their father’s house in L.A. After the first school year they had spent apart, Mina at boarding school, Michael in L.A. at an art school for gifted youth.

Mina had spent most of that night sitting on the stairs, feeling lumpen and fourteen, examining the crowd. A party, she thought. This is one of those strange parties like you see in movies from the seventies; there was something plastic and explosive and inevitable about it, with the odd L.A. retro lightweight irony that went as far as how you dressed — flapper dresses with clear plastic go-go boots. Nineteen seventy-nine punk bondage pants with a pink tube top. Sixties op-art minidresses with combat boots. S&M stilettos with dyke hiphop jeans and Twiggy-lined kohl eyes. It was six decades of fashion mistakes all juxtaposed, recontextualized, “deconstructed” by people who really believed fashion was the heart of subversion. Not the badge, not the consequence, but subversion itself was found in a Bakelite bracelet on a tattooed wrist. She felt both superior to this and deathly envious, the way she felt about fashion in general, longing for days of Catholic-schoolgirl uniforms, blue-skirted and neutral. She wanted uniforms, fascism of some kind, to take away the tinkling, enticing fashion distraction. Brown shirts and sackcloths. Then we’ll see what you have to do to be subversive. Not piercing and tattooing, I tell you. She was nearly mumbling to herself about this when Michael interrupted with a squeeze on her arm.

“I remember when I first started seventh grade. It was theheight of punk. British class war hit suburban L.A. and transformed into a beautiful mall-driven, middle-class American nihilism. Everyone said shave your head, pierce your nose, mutilate yourself to prove you’re not just a weekend rebel. Make yourself unhirable, undesirable. But now it is desirable, and practically required for hire. It is absorbed and digested, thrown in your face to mock you. It makes me feel old.” Michael smiled, seventeen and handsome, a closed-mouth and sheepish grin. He had the disturbing habit of nearly reading her mind. She put her face on his shoulder.

“You have such cool parties, Michael,” she said.

“It’s your party. You could actually, you know, sort of walk around, talk to people. I threw it for you.”

“Yeah, threw it in my face.” She leaned on him as if he was a fifties boyfriend — a man’s chest felt fantastic when it was a place you could look up and out from, the whole world at a distance from the weight of your head. He put his hand in her hair.

“What’s wrong? Are you just sleepy, or do you want to talk about it?”

“What? Oh, no. My psyche feels like it shrank in the wash and now the edges don’t quite reach anymore. It’s a coverage problem.”

He stroked her hair and the side of her face. His fingers felt soft and light-touched. An incredible gentleness. He pulled her down the stairs and abandoned her at the cocktail table. She moved to the edge of the bar, her mouth smiling and slightly open. She poured some vodka in a highball glass, some cream, then some Kahlúa. She drank it down fast. Like ice cream. She poured another, feeling something classic and teenage take hold of her, an archetype setting in. Drunk. Party. She watchedvinyl and satin and leather go by, spikes and skin, and she felt almost sexy and slightly removed. She stared down, looking at her feet in low-heeled leather boots. She groaned. Got to stop dressing like such a dyke, swear it. Jeans and boots and these goddamned baggy shirts, oversized and softly worn through. No makeup and long, straight blond hair. A fucking yogurt commercial, a Pepsi commercial, a goddamned milk ad. She shuddered.

“You seem to be having an interesting conversation with yourself.”

Mina jumped at this, caught, smiled at the speaker.

“You’re reading yourself the riot act?”

Mina had never seen this woman before. She had certainly not noticed her all night. She was a bit older than most of the people at the party. She wore a long fur coat, leopard skin, ankle length. It had not-too-stylized shoulder pads and was tapered to the waist. Mina would date it about the late thirties. Her hair was black and combed sleek and shiny at shoulder length. It was parted at the side rather dramatically. Cyd Charisse meets young Joan Crawford. Vixen hair. And she had the delicate small features that people would call “doll-like and porcelain,” but hers actually were porcelain and doll-like.

“Is that a real leopard-skin coat?” Mina asked.

“Of course. Feel it,” she said. Mina looked at the glossy soft sleeve, the deep black and warm orange-gold colors. It made her hair look ebony, blue-black, Superman-comic-book black. This in turn made her skin whiter. She examined her hands, white and manicured and red-nail painted. She looked at her feet. Pumps with sheer black stockings. She wondered about seams. She wondered what her dress was like under the coat. The coat, my God, the coat.

“No, thank you. It looks real, I’ve just never seen one before.”

“If you’ve never seen one before, how do you know it looks real?” She smiled and looked in Mina’s eyes.

“It’s like too beautiful not to be real,” she said. The doll woman laughed and laughed. She had one of those condescending, amused laughs, knowing but genuine. Mina liked it. Mina liked her condescension. She was sure this woman did know more than she. More about everything in the whole world. All she could think was, Good, I made her laugh.