Chapter 7 - Beatrix
Chapter 7
Beatrix
Tuesday, December 28, 1999
Loud knocks against the window wake me.
It’s entirely different from the last time I woke up in the driver’s seat—this time is instant, my entire body snapping to life as my eyes open. A dream slips away, some nonsensical dramedy involving my mother, decades younger than she is now, and a traveling circus, a wayward band of handsome magicians.
The dream, strange as it was, feels much more rational than the reality that awaits me now—Rocco, standing just outside the car, peering in at me. He pulls his knuckles away from the window, releases his fingers to give an uncertain wave.
Several mostly unpleasant truths hit me, one after another in rapid succession:
One, sunlight is flooding into my car, so we’ve made it to a new day.
Two, I’m still here, with Rocco, on this mansion-free hilltop overlooking the Pacific, which means we’re still trapped in our ’99 nightmare. Death, purgatory, a coma, dot dot dot. I can’t reflect more on that dot dot dot without proper caffeination.
Three, my head feels as if it’s being spliced down the middle courtesy of a dull axe, and my mouth tastes like a decomposing rodent, either because of the side effects of death/purgatory/a coma/dot dot dot or the, oh, six or seven shots of whiskey I drenched my liver in last night during our cozy little BBQ with Tony. Which leads to—
Four, if I’m able to feel a hangover, especially one this brutal, I’m surely living in my corporal body, not existing in some more metaphorical, metaphysical state. Which would imply this is somehow, impossibly and against the course of all nature as I know it . . . real?
Nope.
Refer back to one—somebody get me a damn coffee first.
And five, the last and most irritating truth: Despite the fact that there’s not a drop of rain to be seen on the car windows, Rocco’s hair is slicked back and dripping onto yesterday’s now very wet shirt, a look that screams “I just took a pleasant, invigorating dip in the Pacific to start my day,” which, upon zero seconds of further reflection, seems exactly on par for him. Even in this bizarre hellscape we’ve found ourselves in, Rocco would absolutely start his day with a refreshing jaunt in the sea. And look like a goddamn GQ pinup while doing so.
I throw open the car door with a satisfying thwack to his abs. “Sorry,” I say, making no effort to sound convincing.
Rocco winces, rubbing his hand over the twelve-pack that’s all too clear under his wet shirt. “I’m sure you are.”
“Enjoy your swim?”
“How kind of you to ask.” He leans against Delilah’s hood, looking far too at ease. With me. With this place, this situation. It must be nice to go through life like that. No self-doubt, no uncertainties. Because there’s a Rocco Riziero-shaped hole waiting for him everywhere he may deign to go, on every conceivable (and, apparently, inconceivable) timeline. “Yes and no. I love that frigid morning jolt, always kicks my brain into high gear. Bit of a hike downhill without a car this morning, but I do my best thinking after a swim. I was hoping it would somehow unlock the mysteries of this . . . perplexing situation we’ve found ourselves in. But no such luck. Maybe you should try it?”
I laugh out loud. “Hell no. You couldn’t pay me to jump in that water right now. Only when it’s at least ninety degrees outside.”
“You forget you’re talking to a millionaire. I could pay you a lot of money to make it happen.”
“No, not even with your dirty blockbuster heartthrob money. Or should I say, especially with that money.”
“Whoa. Hold on there, Bea. Did you just call me a heartthrob?” He grins, the brightness of it even more staggeringly offensive to my hangover than the rays of Los Angeles sun beating down into my bloodshot eyes.
“It was an accident. My brain is suffering from acute caffeine withdrawal.”
“Ah, you’re in luck then. I ran into Tony on his way out this morning, and he hooked me up with some instant coffee and a hot plate. The best-by date on the coffee is ’98, so I imagine it won’t kill us.” He pushes off the hood and reaches up and over me to the roof of the car, his bicep—somehow warm despite the cool morning and much cooler dip—grazing my cheek along the way. When he pulls back, he’s holding out a steaming paper cup.
“Expired instant coffee,” I say, forcing my gaze away from the offending bicep. “Sounds utterly delightful.”
“Better than nothing for that acute withdrawal of yours. We’ll get you something more luxurious as soon as we can scrape up some vintage bills. Almond milk might be harder to come by in this decade, though. I hope your bowels can handle some good old-fashioned udder byproduct.”
“Please refrain from ever commenting on my bowels again,” I say, grabbing the cup from his hands, taking care to avoid any slip of skin contact. I may be proud and stubborn, but not nearly enough of either to resist coffee right now, even when factoring in the cheap grounds and annoying benefactor.
“Bit hypocritical, no? Didn’t you want to talk about my morning routine?”
“My body, my rules.”
His sigh is so exasperated and long suffering, it sounds physically painful.
I grin.
“Listen.” He sighs again as he reaches for a second cup, thankfully with a few more inches of distance between us this time. “I know I’ve been an ass, I do. Fully cognizant of that fact. But could we perhaps, just for now, be on the same team? A temporary truce. I promise, as soon as we’re back to normal, you can absolutely rip me a new one. I deserve your worst. And I imagine you’ve probably spent ample time these last seventeen years daydreaming about a suitable punishment.”
“How predictably egocentric to think I’ve dreamt about torturing you for nearly two decades. I assure you, I’ve had no shortage of other asinine men vying for top spot on my shit list. Including an ex-husband who had several years to irritate and infuriate me in a myriad of wondrous ways, which makes the weeks you gifted me paltry in comparison. The difference with you—the only one that matters now, anyway—is that none of my other exes have been cast to play, oh you know, my fucking father in a movie.” I take a large sip of coffee to punctuate that last bit, only to quite possibly singe all the tastebuds off my tongue. “Shit, that’s hot!” I spit it out, narrowly missing Rocco’s fresh white Sambas. “You should have warned me.”
“Er, yes, you’re right. Sorry? For not explicitly stating that your steaming coffee was hot.” He takes a more delicate sip, closes his eyes for a second like he’s somehow savoring instant coffee. Goddamn him. “And for, ah, assuming you spent any time at all thinking about me since Y2K. I suppose your dislike of me just seems so . . . fiery and intense . . . I thought perhaps the memories were something you’d stewed on from time to time. My mistake.”
I start to turn away, to go where, I’m not sure. Anyplace that I can drink this scalding hot cup of bitter brown water in peace. Collect my thoughts. Come up with anything that remotely resembles a plan for how to get the hell out of here.
“For what it’s worth,” Rocco continues, and something about his voice stops me mid-step. “Which I realize is little to nothing with you. But. I am sorry to hear you had an ex-husband who sucked. Genuinely. I didn’t know. That’s why I’ve steered clear of the whole marriage thing. Or, if I’m being honest, most romantic entanglements that threatened to make it past a few dates. I knew I’d inevitably be the shitty ex, so why take up a few of their years rather than just a few of their nights?”
I stare at him straight on, collecting myself. “Thank you? And for the record, Damon—my ex—wasn’t an awful human, he was just . . . awful for me, it turned out, once the honeymoon blinders came off. But I’m genuinely stunned that your words could somehow be so sincere and yet . . . so gross at the same time. Or maybe I should feel blessed? That I was given more than just a few precious nights with you?”
“Beatrix,” he says, sighing, and there’s a tiny, regrettable piece of myself that’s almost disappointed to not hear my nickname. “I just cannot win with you, can I?”
I take another sip, more conservatively sized this time, and while it still tastes like coffee that burned on the bottom of a Mr. Coffee a few days ago and sat around stagnating ever since, I at least don’t scald my esophagus as I swallow. “What can I say? I’m not big on second chances, I guess? I screwed my own up royally when it came to my family, so maybe I hate to hand them out to anyone else.” The words tumbled out, brain to lips, too fast for me to sort properly. They were intended as a joke, but now, hearing them out loud in the cool morning air, replaying them over in my mind, they feel uncomfortably true.
Rocco seems to recognize this, too, looking perhaps as uncomfortable as I’ve ever seen him, suddenly far too interested in something lurking at the bottom of his cup—like he’s reading our futures somewhere in the dark water. “I’m not idiotic enough to ask for a second chance, at least when it comes to anything beyond coexisting amiably on set, for the sake of your movie’s success. You deserve far more than I’d be able to give you otherwise. I’m just asking if we could . . . ease up on the feud until we figure this mess out. If there’s even a way to figure it out at all, that is. But we can’t know if we don’t try.”
I take a few sips as I consider. I’m all too aware of my penchant for stubbornness. And how wildly ineffective it can be when it comes to achieving anything positive. “What does trying look like?”
He shrugs. “Hell if I know. Like I said, my arctic swim failed me this morning, for the first time ever. I figured you’d be the brains of the operation after your delicious cup of joe, and I’d be the muscle if needed.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
“Yes, a truce. And yes, agreed that I’ll obviously be the brains.” I take the last sip of coffee, feeling only slightly fortified, and rest my empty cup on Delilah’s hood.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll be needing this,” I say, grabbing his still mostly full coffee cup from his hands, “and that big rock out on the overlook—the one I saw you ogling yesterday. Let’s go do a little thinking. Or I’ll think, at least. You can, I don’t know, pop some squats or do push-ups next to me while you wait.”
If I’m being honest with myself, I know Rocco is genuinely rather bright—I remember being pleasantly surprised the first time around, that there was much more going for him than just his A-list exterior. He was self-deprecating, though, cracking jokes about his Jersey public education and the teachers on set who did more coddling than grading. Telling anyone who would listen that Rudy got the brains and the heart and he, Rocco, was just the sexy Tin Man—or the Scarecrow, depending on the day and the role. He was wrong about that. He had depth and dimension, but he kept it closely guarded, subconsciously or not. It hadn’t felt like a “blessing” to spend that time with him—I have more self-worth than that—but it had been nice, feeling like I was handed a golden ticket to a private Rocco showing, one the vast majority of the public would never see.
“I served that insult up on a bejeweled platter, didn’t I,” Rocco says, rolling his eyes, though he looks more amused than insulted as he follows me to the overlook.
We sit side by side on the rock, carefully arranged so as not to brush knees or elbows. The coffee grows on me, tasting slightly more acceptable with each sip. Caffeine is a beautiful drug. And I can see why, when he could afford to live anywhere in this city—anywhere in the world—Rocco chose this spot. It’s like we’re the only two people who exist. The rest of the city, the noise and the chaos, the stench of desperate ambition that’s bandied about with the palm trees in the breeze, all of it gone. It’s just us, Rocco and me, in this place, no matter the year.
My mind wanders, and I think about Dad again. How there’s a chance that he’s out there somewhere in this impossible new—old?—reality, still taking breaths in a hospital room in Tucson. But going to Arizona feels like the wrong answer. Right for my heart, maybe, but wrong for this twisted puzzle we’ve found ourselves in. Because why be here, with Rocco, if the way out of this loop isn’t in LA—rooted somehow to our past together?
“So today is presumably December twenty-eighth,” I say, rolling my empty paper cup around in my hands, “if yesterday was the twenty-seventh, both in 2016 and 1999.”
“Unless this is like Groundhog Day.”
“Shoot. Good point.”
Rocco’s eyes go wide. “Whoa. Thank you.”
“A good leader knows the value of positive reinforcement.”
“In that case,” he says, a slow grin spreading, “you’re about to be doling out a second dose of praise.”
“Oh?”
“Yep. I already covered that question when I got the coffee from Tony. You’re right—it is the twenty-eighth. I just put the Groundhog Day idea out there to recognize the fact that there could still be other options we haven’t considered.”
“Well done,” I say, pretending to grit my teeth.
“This might be my new favorite high. Scoring praise from you. Even lukewarm will do. I won’t be picky.”
I laugh at that. I can’t help myself. “Well, hopefully we make it out of here fast, before you get too addled by the high. I wouldn’t want you becoming addicted to me.”
“There are worse things,” he says with a shrug. “Besides, I’m the toxic one between us. You’re more like a pleasant buzz.”
“Thank you for the unusual compliment. Moving along, maybe we should try to remember what we were doing that day? Apart or together. I stayed put in LA for Christmas.” A pathetically sad day that I mostly don’t remember, spent gulping down too much cheap booze with roommates who were too broke to leave for the holiday. I’d had a ticket to fly home, my mom’s last-ditch effort, but I’d shoved it down the trash compactor on Christmas Eve. Out of sight, out of mind. Naively thinking I’d have more than a week to pull myself together. More than a week to make things right with Dad. “You spent Christmas in Jersey, but you came back soon after. . . .”
Rocco closes his eyes, nods. “You and I spent that whole week together, didn’t we? Besides a few meetings and run-throughs for the New Year’s Eve party. I’m pretty sure I came back the day after Christmas to start prepping. And . . . to be with you. Shit.” He turns back to face me, blue eyes open wide again. “I remember being excited on the plane ride back. To see you again. Christmas with my family had been weird that year, Rudy being all moody. His first semester was over, and he was missing . . . well, you know. I’d never wanted to get away from him before, but I did then. It was too much. And seeing you again had felt like the bright light at the end of the Riziero family holiday tunnel.”
I hesitate for a second, not sure what to do, or not do, with that admission. “I remember feeling the same way,” I say, quietly, opting for the simple truth.
Because while I have no clue what will get us out of here—if getting out is even a possibility—it seems like honesty might be the best way to start.
Maybe honesty would have helped us the first time around, too.
Rocco clears his throat. Starts. Stops. Starts again. “We were probably still at my place, at least at this time in the morning. I wasn’t much of an early riser those days. Hadn’t discovered the joy of freezing my ass off in the ocean to kickstart the day. And, if memory serves, we, uh, spent a lot of time . . . laying around. Especially in the morning.”
Heat floods me from all directions—every appendage suddenly a lit torch, each one pointed in toward my lower core. Rocco’s wrong; he was an early riser. Up with the sun and always ready. For me.
I hadn’t had sex much before him. A few clumsy encounters with a high school boyfriend, a smattering of casual hookups when I moved to LA. Sex with Rocco was the first time it had lived up to the hype, the first time I didn’t have to use my mediocre acting skills when I was ready to be done. My first morning sex, too. Slow and lazy and lingering, like neither of us had anywhere else in the world to be. Sex with Rocco was like the double-scoop chocolate gelato cone I’d shared with him that December, when he flew me to New York City, outside on the streets as snowflakes dusted it like sprinkles. There was no rush to suck it down fast, no risk of dripping precious gelato onto the sidewalk. It was there for as long as I wanted it to be, while I savored it in tiny licks. The polar opposite of most of the sex I’d encountered in life, before and after—soft-serve ice cream on a blistering LA day, melting in on itself as soon as the cone was put in my hands. The mad frenzy to swallow as much as you could before it was reduced to nothing but a messy splatter on hot cement. Or then, as it had become with Damon, learning it was far easier to just skip the ice cream, avoid the splatter altogether.
“Bea?” Rocco says, and I shake off all thoughts of savoring any gelato with Rocco, past or present. I give him a quick sidelong glance. He at least has the decency to look a bit flushed, too.
“Yep. That memory seems accurate. And sleepovers were always at your place. Never mine.”
“The feral roommates,” he says, laughing. “You had a herd of them, right?”
“Four, sometimes five. We weren’t all glamorous child stars. I had a few years’ worth of pizza shop tips to get me started here, and most of the movie money went to Delilah. But then I left LA, gave up my spot. I found a new sublet when I got back.” I shrug, turning back to the Pacific—a much easier blue to face than the icy blue of his eyes, a blue that seems to somehow cut straight through me. Then and now.
“So, my place. I was living by Runyon Canyon then, right? I’d just moved there.”
I nod. I still never drive by that stretch if I can help it.
“Why don’t we head over there, scout it out? Wait for . . . them? Us? Hell, you know what I mean. Our ’99 selves. To come outside.”
“What then?”
“Haven’t made it that far. That’s where your brains come in. I don’t know about you, but I think I need to see us for any of this to start making sense. Actually be confronted with our flesh and blood former selves, walking around these streets, talking and partying and living their damn lives. Exactly like we did the first time around.”
“But couldn’t they be just part of whatever”—I twirl my hands around vaguely in the ocean breeze—“this is? A dream or purgatory, something my sick, twisted mind invented for its own amusement? A final hurrah before I disappear into the ether.”
“My mind. I’m here, too.”
“How do I really know that?”
“How do I know that you’re really here, and I’m not just imagining your existence right now? Writing the dialogue subconsciously?”
I turn to face him. “Because I’m telling you I’m here.”
“Again, hard for either of us to prove, isn’t it?” He smiles at me, like he’s somehow enjoying this conversation.
“I’m. Fucking. Here,” I say, slowly, like Rocco is a toddler who doesn’t yet have a grip on basic vocabulary. “Just believe me and move on.”
“Great. Well—I’m here, too. So, we’ve established that much then. We both are equally convinced we exist, so whatever this is, we’re in it together.”
“Okay. Just pretending for one second I’m going to follow your logic . . . what does seeing our former selves do to help us get back to the real world?”
“I don’t know, Bea.” He sighs, in an annoyingly pleasant way, though, like he’s now the kindly old teacher to my clueless toddler. “But I do know I’ve got no other ideas, and we have to start somewhere. Unless we want to just sit on this rock and drink instant coffee all day, have another rager here tonight, sans Tony. How about you? Any ideas?”
I close my eyes, frantically scour through my mental database for any suggestion that might outdo his. Problem solving is usually my strength; it’s had to be, for the many varied jobs I’ve worked, most of which involved thinking on my feet under at least semi-hostile conditions. I prided myself on that. I hadn’t gone to college, didn’t have a degree, but I’d learned everything I needed through experience, carved out a path on my own terms. It’s something Damon had never understood—something he’d never failed to be a complete ass about, reminding me at every opportunity he’d gone to Columbia University and I’d gone to “Hard Knocks U,” laughing like that was even marginally original. Fucker.
Right now, though, all that real-world training feels useless. I’m coming up blank. I have nothing. Not a single better suggestion.
“Fine,” I grumble under my breath.
“What was that?”
“FINE,” I repeat, pushing myself up from the rock to stand. “But I’m in the driver’s seat again. And we need disguises if we’re going to do this right.”
* * *
“Tell me again,” Rocco says, frowning down at me from his post behind a gigantic palm tree, “why I’m wearing a cowboy hat and this godforsaken Kid Rock wig—which, by the way, I’m fairly certain has already infested every hair on my body with lice.”
I sigh, attempting to smooth out my own wig, a curly brown monstrosity that surely was a Sexy Little Bo Peep castaway from a long-ago Halloween. “Because the pickings were slim at the thrift shop you chose—the one that had just replaced your favorite surf shop, so you were, quote, ‘cool with dropping futuristic Monopoly money on them and ditching.’ And anyone who’s ever seen or read any story involving time travel knows the cardinal rule is that past you can’t see present you. No one from ’99 who knows you can see forty-year-old Rocco, because—”
“Thirty-seven, how dare you,” he says, clutching the ancient fringed leather jacket covering the space in his chest where his heart presumably resides.
“Close enough. Point is, it throws off the whole time-space continuum”—shit, is that the right term? I wish I’d re-watched Back to the Future at any point over the last two decades. It sounds relatively impressive at least, so I run with it—“if anyone from the past, yourself included, sees this present version of you, it could unravel the natural order of things as we know it. Screw everything up for our future selves, create drastic changes that would make our 2016 lives unrecognizable.”
“Let’s hope our visit to Tony was forgettable enough that he won’t have flashbacks when I move in next door a decade and a half from now.”
“Right, well—hopefully this period of life is . . . hazy for him. He did throw back a lot of that bottle. And besides, he’ll have no proof. No photos. I think we’re okay.”
“Maybe we already saw our future selves in ’99, too, and just . . . forgot about it.”
“Yep, seems quite forgettable. Seeing your middle-aged clone.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t be able to forget seeing you. . . .” He grins widely. “Not in that rainbow tie-dye Earth Goddess number you’re wearing.”
“Piss off, the selection was limited.”
“It reminds me of those Lick-A-Color popsicles growing up. They were my favorite.”
“Great, thank you. Let’s stay focused. It’s—” I reach for my phone in my pocket to check the time, only to remember it was dead on arrival yesterday. Rocco’s, too. Our iPhones are apparently not compatible with this prehistoric ’90s world.
“Eleven-oh-five,” Rocco says, looking smug as he taps the screen of his ungodly complex-looking sporty wristwatch. The only device still standing. “Guess I’m good for something, eh?”
I’m sifting between several cutting reply options when the door to Rocco’s old bungalow-style house opens.
“Shh!” I lunge from where I’m standing—far too exposed, directly in their line of sight—to hide behind Rocco, clutching his biceps to brace myself.
We both go rigid, waiting, as the door seems to take forever to swing all the way open, a pair of fresh white Nikes appearing first, then black-and-white-striped Adidas track pants, and . . . holy shit.
There he is, Rocco—my Rocco—in all his glory, nearly fluorescent with pure radiance, looking like he rules the world in the unique way that only a baby twentysomething can. The perfect embodiment of youth.
I was utterly helpless against it then. A petal twirling aimlessly in his windstorm.
Thank god I’ve grown the hell up.
Rocco, that Rocco, is looking back toward the open door when he lets out a loud, rolling laugh. Another softer peal of laughter follows.
My laugh. The way I used to laugh, anyway.
And there I am—grabbing onto Rocco’s outstretched hand as the bungalow door swings shut behind me. Wearing washed-out high-waisted black jeans and a baggy technicolor sweater, chunky black boots.
He pulls me in closer, swings his arm over my shoulder as we continue to laugh. Harder now, higher pitched, like we’re both ravenously feeding off the other’s joy. I can’t imagine what either of us said to possibly warrant such extreme amusement, but I’m stunned to see it. To see myself back then, floating so perilously high, no way of knowing how soon it would all crash to the ground.
“Wow,” Rocco whispers, this Rocco here and now, the one, I realize, I’m clutching too tightly. I release my grip, though I stay put behind him. Not that our former selves would see us, anyway. They only have eyes for one another. “We look . . . really happy.”
“We were,” I whisper back. My eyes burn at the edges. I blink hard, willing off any tears. “At least, I thought so.”
Neither of us says anything more as young Rocco abruptly stops laughing, whirling young me around in a messy pirouette until our faces are inches apart. She instinctively rises on her tiptoes as Rocco leans his head down, their bodies pressing tightly together, no air left between them.
I watch the two of them—holding one another up, kissing like it’s their oxygen, their lifeblood. I wonder how that could be bone-deep truth for one of them and nothing at all to the other. Just a casual, temporary high.
I watch them, swallowed up whole in the memory. Until it suddenly goes dark, and I’m falling away.