“Did you mean it?”
“I did. I mean, chalk it up to being in LA too long, but you just don’t meet a girl like you here. You know? Phoenix isn’t country but it’s the same thing as a New York boy meeting a girl west of the Mississippi. He’s so used to city-hardened girls cut to look like boys or else top-dollar chicks that take a thousand dollars to get ready every morning that when he meets somebody west of the Mississippi—someone friendly—it’s almost always love at first sight. So I’ve either got to hook up with you or move to New Mexico or Arizona or something.”
“I have a saggy pussy.”
“I don’t care.”
“Do you know what that means, to have a saggy pussy? It means after I gave birth to Asha my pussy, instead of being like this..is like this. It’s very unattractive.”
“I want you anyway.”
“Even with a loose as a goose pussy?”
“You know, did it ever occur to you that what I like about you isn’t your pussy? That maybe it’s your spunk, your spark, your bad-ass attitude and with that attitude..I could put up with some variation in pussy.”
“Look, you should come to visit, as a friend. Come back to Phoenix for a weekend. Play with Asha—she loves you. And meet Ruiz.”
“Who’s Ruiz?”
“That’s my fiancé.”
“When are you getting married?”
“In two months.”
“Is this like a for-sure thing or a tentative thing.”
“It’s for sure.”
“Damn.”
“There’s a perfect girl out here for you, I’m sure.”
“Well try living here for a couple years and then be sure. The only thing girls drop trou for out here is if you’re a movie producer—no matter how small—or if you drive a really expensive car—like a five-hundred-thousand dollar car. These are the same girls that back in Ohio, when you met them at college, would go all the way with you the first night you met them on some fifty-cent draught beers in your dorm room on the flip-n-fuck.”
“What’s a flip-n-fuck?”
“It’s one of those cushion chairs that turns into a bed by unfolding it—it’s just a cheap piece of furniture that college kids fuck on, forget it.”
I pour Clarity some more wine.
I pour some for myself.
We drink. It’s good chianti. She gets me smiling again. She winks. She kicks me under the table.
“What are you gonna do after this?”
“Prob’ly go to my drug dealer’s house get high on crystal meth risk my life overdose end up in the hospital and die.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Ok.”
“Why don’t you try online dating?”
“This doesn’t need to turn into a troubleshooting session for my love life, ok? If all I wanted was a girlfriend, I’d have one.”
“You want true love—like a Disney film.”
“It’s like this: this weekend: yesterday and today, with you..was true. I can live off this for a couple more years, just in memories of two days that actually meant something, that were pure, and yes, maybe that weren’t tarnished by sex. I’ve got ‘girlfriends’ here..me and Mike I think have fucked all the costume girls in the city—that’s the one class of film person who isn’t so full of themself they won’t fuck anyone who drives anything less than a Lotus.”
I stare up into a palm tree. Then I realize it’s fake, and it’s just a holder for a security camera.
“Hey,” Clarity says.
I look her in the eyes.
“You fell in love a little bit, didn’t you?”
“Uh..”
“You did! I can see it in your eyes. The things that thrill us..sometimes kill us.”
Clarity laughs and drinks her wine.
“ ‘Cause you know unless you come to visit me Asha and Ruiz, you and I are never going to see each other again—you know that, don’t you, Matthew?”
I lean in toward Clarity, over the table.
“You know Jem?”
“No,” she says. “What’s that?”
“That’s music. Something you just said reminded me of her. She has this song, it goes: It’s just a ride, it’s just a ride. No need to run, no need to hide. It’ll take you all around. Sometimes you’re up. Sometimes you’re down.”
“Sing me more of that.”
“Ok. Then she goes: It’s just a ride, it’s just a ride. Don’t be scared now. Dry your eyes. It may feel so real inside. But don’t forget—enjoy the ride.”
I roll my body with the tune in my head.
And soon Ashley and Purity arrive at Fabiolus.
And they grab bread and swipe some of me and Clarity’s food.
Then me and Clarity stand and we all kiss and hug and Clarity gives me a lovers’ hug—touching all the way down—and she whispers to me:
“I have to tell you something.”
“What.”
“When we went down Goliath, I peed myself.”
Our foreheads are pressed together.
“You did!”
She nods.
“I tried to walk a certain way so you wouldn’t see—did you see?”
“No.”
“But I figured it would be going against the nature of our weekend for me not to tell you. So. There’s my secret to you.”
She lets go of me.
She and Ashley go to the car.
Purity stops for another bite of the gorgonzola.
And then it’s just future Wonder Woman in black glasses turning halfway ‘round to kiss a peace sign and throw it up from her lips like a rapper (in slow motion, of course) and the three girls get in Ashley’s Honda and they pull out of the parking lot onto Sunset Boulevard. And though Purity and Ashley did move to LA and we had many adventures together, that turned out to be the last time I saw Clarity, ever, in this short life.