Noelle August - Boomerang

She leans forward, steepling her fingers and giving me a scrutinizing look. “And you think that why?”

“Well, for starters, your thong was in my toaster oven.”

“Hey, it’s a great place to store them. I might start doing that all the time. It could be the next big thing. Think about it. Thong warming drawers.”

“Are we really talking about hot thongs right now?”

“Apparently. But a hot thong does not a sexual encounter make.”

“Fair enough, but we did wake up naked in my bed.”

“Still doesn’t mean anything.”

I put my hand to my chest. “That hurts. Okay, how about this: I’ve never been naked with a beautiful girl, in a bed, and not had it happen.”

Hold up. Did I just call her beautiful? Yeah, I did.

Once again, Mia doesn’t react. She’s either used to being called beautiful, could care less that I just called her beautiful, or is hiding that she likes that I called her beautiful.

I catch my train of thought and want to beat the shit out of myself.

The job, Vance. Focus.

“Let me think about this,” Mia says. She taps her fingers to her chin and narrows her eyes like she’s pondering the meaning of life. “So, you’ve been in bed with ten naked girls, and every single time, you’ve had sex with them?”

“That’s right. I have a perfect record.”

“And you’re counting me?”

I spread my hands. “You were naked in my bed.”

I remember the way she looked, all gorgeous curves, green eyes, and that wild curly hair. It’s a damn good thing this desk is providing some cover, because I’m pitching a tent under it right now. Nice fucking timing.

Mia smiles and gives a little shrug. “Then I guess your number’s only nine.” She taps a few keys on her keyboard, changing it in my profile. “Sorry to spoil your winning streak.”

But the sparkle in her eyes tells me she’s not sorry at all.

Mia

Q: Tell us about your family.

Immediately upon arriving at Casa Galliano that evening, I am shoved onto a stool under lights bright enough to produce an x-ray, at which point a giant wooden spoon coated in something green is thrust at my face.

“Joe, you’re in the middle of my shot,” my mom complains, popping out from behind her Linhof Technikardan to adjust the lens, glare at my father, and shoot me a volley of air kisses. Her bottle-red hair is threaded with silver, and she’s in grungy pink sweats and a black tank, so I know she’s on a creative bender.

“Pearl,” dad replies, “you’re in the middle of my tasting.” He turns back to me and winks. “What d’ya think of the pesto, Mia Moré? Good? Bad? Too salty? Needs more basil?”

Resistance is most certainly futile, so I take the spoon and taste—“Needs some chili paste, Jo-Jo, a little spezia”—then I wipe my mouth on my father’s apron, finger-comb my hair, and strike a pose for my mom, which she immortalizes with a couple of quick shots.

“What am I this time?”

“The face of unchecked capitalism,” she says. “I’m going to silkscreen you onto an eight-foot dollar bill. It’s for an installation at the New York Stock Exchange.”

It amazes me what they let my mother get away with, but when you’re as famous as she is, you get to call the shots. “Really?” I tease her. “That seems so tame for you.”

“Well . . .” She disappears behind the camera again, so I barely hear the rest, but I think I catch the word, “impaled.”

I’ve had worse.

Looking around at the array of equipment and the wall-wide bulletin board cluttered with images, I think about how sure my mother seems to be, how all of her projects—as bizarre and otherworldly as they can sometimes be—seem so absolutely and perfectly her.

“Hey, mom,” I say. “How did you . . .”

I’m not sure what I want to ask, exactly, and it always feels like cheating, somehow, to go to my mother for advice. Like taking a shortcut through private property. “How did you decide, umm—like what your artistic perspective would be? Like how to, I guess, see things the way you see them?”

“I just let myself play,” she mutters. “I didn’t hold on as tight as you.”

I swallow, disappointed, and stare past her out to the sage scrub dotting the walls of the canyon beyond our backyard.

“Where’s Nana?” I ask, changing the subject. “How’s she doing today?”

“Good day,” my mother says, but my father scratches the gray stubble under his chin and shakes his head. My mom’s special gift—and curse—is seeing what she wants to see. It’s great for art. Not so much for life.

I sigh, staring past my mother as she snaps a few more pictures.

Dad drops onto an original Eames that they treat like a yard sale find, completely heedless of the pesto that drips from his spoon onto the spongy yellow linoleum floor of my mom’s studio. Luckily, my mom has the equivalent of Ethan’s color-blindness when it comes to stains.

Which, of course, makes me think of him, of the things I’d learned during our mutual interview. I learned that he practically grew up in his folks’ bowling alley and once missed a perfect score by one spare. I learned that his eyebrows swoop upward over his nose when he’s deep in thought. And I learned—without him telling me—that he loves kids. His face shined brighter than my mom’s studio lights when he talked about coaching youth soccer.

It doesn’t matter. I know that. Though I suppose if you have to wake up next to someone after a night you can’t remember and work with that person in your face every single day, it’s better if that person is decent, smart, and sexy.

“How was your first day, kiddo?” asks my dad in that creepy way both my parents have of reading my mind. “Make any friends?”

“Great,” I say. “Though it turns out I’m competing with another intern for a job there. And we’re in marketing, which isn’t my thing.”

My mom clucks her disapproval, but my dad brightens.

“That’s great,” he says. “Best thing in the world is winning something you really fought for. And it doesn’t matter if it’s your thing. Make it your thing.”

“I guess.”

“Trust your old man on this one.” He stands again. Since his accident—when an apprentice electrician turned off the wrong breaker, putting my dad in contact with a live wire, he’s physically incapable of sitting for more than two minutes. He hands me the spoon and threads a precarious maze of light umbrellas, coiled electrical cords, and boxes of props that look like they come from a production of Lysistrata set on the moon.

Ducking behind my mother, he wraps his arms around her and nuzzles her neck. “This one said no to me about a hundred times before she gave me a yes.”

“What are you talking about?” I say. “You got pregnant with me on your first date!”

“Yeah, but it took me a hundred tries to get to that date. No wonder we were so goddamn randy by then.”

Laughing, my mom tilts her head up and draws him in for a kiss—my cue to gather up the shreds of my psyche and flee.

I grab my camera from the hall closet, where I’ve stashed it since some party guest of Sky’s used it to shoot a highly meaningful vignette about his balls.

Heading through the sunny Tuscan kitchen to Nana’s suite, I snag an apple from the basket, peek through the stacks of mail to see if anything’s for me, and put aside my mom’s copy of Aperture to steal later.

Nana’s TV is set a notch past ear-splitting, so I knock vigorously and then open the door.

I find my grandmother in underwear and sneakers, trying to wrestle into silk pajama pants, the only thing she’ll wear these days because, she says, everything else makes her legs itch. About a hundred bobby pins stud her wavy hair—also auburn out of a box—which means she’s just had it washed and set.

“Oh, good, you’re here!” she exclaims. Behind the thick lenses of her eyeglasses, her lively hazel eyes look clear, focused, and I’m thankful for that.

Sometimes, it feels like Nana’s on a boat, and I’m on the shore, waving goodbye and watching her grow smaller and smaller in the distance. I can’t swim out after her, and I can’t bring her back. I can only capture the parts of her that remain in sight.

I shake off my gloom.

“Hey, Nana!” I give her a kiss on her cool papery cheek and then coax her back into a chair. “Let me help.”

She lets me take off her shoes and then steps into the pajama pants, which I draw up her legs and then, lifting her from her chair, secure around her waist. I tug the drawstring tight, like she likes it, aware of how hollow-boned and small she feels to me these days.

“Is the top in here?” I ask, going to her closet.

But she just shrugs and gives me a look that tells me she’s lost the thread. I find a soft cotton top in midnight blue with tiny white hibiscus spilling down the sleeve and help her into it, buttoning the buttons for her.

“I’m glad you brought that,” she says, gesturing at the video camera I set down on her bureau. “They told me to film my things in case the girl comes back and takes them.”

“What girl? Who told you?”

“The girl they have come help me.”

She must mean one of her aides, though I can’t imagine any of them stealing from her.

“Can we start?” she asks. “Bring me my purse.”

I do and turn on my camera, focusing on her crisp bed linens to help me adjust the white balance and then opening the iris to let in a little more light.

She fishes around and pulls out a long strand of pearls with a diamond pendant in the symbol of a chai—the Hebrew symbol for life.