Yes, Mr. Caruso. The fantasy begins the same way. Mr. Caruso doesn’t mean to interrupt, but he has been so concerned about my happiness, he had to pay a visit. Do I feel I made the right choice, choosing the one bedroom with the terrace above the Apple Store, instead of the two bedroom with no terrace, overlooking the inner courtyard? I was sure you’d forgotten about me, I blush, swinging the door open soundlessly. He streams across the premium wood floors, grazing his longest finger along the marbled countertop of the deluxe kitchen island. It’s as if my back can feel the weight of his steps, as if my hip can feel the stroke of his fingertip. With the terrace doors open to the whole mall, I feel a luxuriant breeze on the back of my neck. Oh, Susan, he exclaims, and I sense his pride, without him having to utter another word. Standing before the white leatherette sofa, the neck of my tee expands, 100% cotton, all by itself. It stretches from a V to a horseshoe. It widens into a boat. It deepens into a cowl. It drops over my fleshy shoulder. I am exposed, but I feel no shame. Mr. Caruso rushes to me. He holds my breasts in his adoring hands. He whips me around to press himself against my back. He buries his face in my neck to inhale my scent. He enters me soundlessly. He fucks me soundlessly. I watch the fountain dance. It surges as he comes.
***
I know it is 10am only because the music has started and the central fountain has begun its first performance, short bursts then tall gushes in time with the regulated rhythms of family-friendly trends. The fountain’s forceful exhales add their own bass to every song. Every morning at 10am, seven days a week. Ka-woosh. Huff. Ka-woosh. Huff. Some days, I feel shelled. Like Anne Frank pursuing her Jewish fame. It isn’t the fountain’s surges, but the sound of its submission to falling back down that makes me ache. Is there anything more nauseating than gravity? This morning, though, the jazzy tones lull. Below me, Sinatra and Swift are gently encouraging the first impulse purchases of the day. Here, on my terrace of six-square feet, with its bespoke rattan chair, they make me feel cradled. Permeated. Casually stroked like a credit card machine. You know, I feel triumphant today. Like a freshly grass-sewn Greenspace on an island between directions on a highway. I should get a pedicure today. I should go outside. In fact, I think I will. In fact, I will. Ka-woosh. Huff. Ka-woosh. Huff.
***
Great choice. How can I help? What can I do for you today? What would you like? In the mood for something new? Let me know if you need anything. Would you like any sizes? Oh, I love this piece as well. There is a matching blazer. Care for a glossier gloss? Have a sweet tooth? Fancy a snack? Welcome back, Susan. I’m here if you need anything. Come on in. Excellent choice. Do you need any assistance? You’ve such an eye. What brings you in today? Have you been here before? Beautiful day isn’t it? Did you see the Thanksgiving décor? Fantastic choice. Need a fuller pout? We’ll get your table ready. This way, please. Are you looking for practical or fun today? The usual? I love your eye. Do you prefer the cream or the gold? Are you planning a getaway? What are your priorities this season? I think you might like this one. Let me show you our specials list. Autumn tones are perfect with your coloring. There’s so much to enjoy today. Right away. Let me walk you there. You know, we live in with our choices for the rest of our lives.
***
It’s such a pleasure to shit in the Cheesecake Factory. Everyone knows you shit in your apartment. This is where she shits, is really the first thing people think when they walk into your home, even at the Americana at Brand in Glendale, California. But nobody knows that I save my shits for the Cheesecake Factory, just four stories and four doors down. It has its own soundtrack of family-friendly trends to which I time my easy releases. The floors are a polished slate marble I can see my face in, at those times when it is necessary to lean. The toilet paper is lotioned and there will always be enough. The soap is perfumed and there is no need to wipe it up when its excesses dribble. Sometimes I sit on the patio of the Cheesecake Factory, enjoying a low-fat latte, admiring my own terrace from below—the ferns swaying, the linen curtains behind the windows swaying, my latte swaying inside me. Other times I sit on my terrace and admire from above the Cheesecake Factory and the storied consistency of my last shit.
***
Caruso is coming. Rick Caruso visits each of his developments twice a year, to be sure everything is in perfect order. Just like Walt Disney, he says. The first time I set my eyes on him, my hands gripped the cool steel banister of my balcony tighter and tighter as he bent forward, backside towards me, his gray suit jacket lifting, his pants tightening, almost reaching his knees to pick up a silver gum wrapper a careless non-resident had probably strewn. He was surrounded by a team of assistants, obviously oblivious. He soiled his own suit, used his own hands. They were large hands. Caruso has said he admires Disney because he wants his guests to feel as they do at Disneyland. I haven’t seen a bobble-headed person in a mask but there is a story at the Americana. Caruso will make a cameo in the next few days. I know the signs: the crisper shirts, the wary eyes of the concierge. Also the elevator operator gave me our sign: he pushed four, even though he knows I live on five! I don’t know how I can wait. These days, everything seems pregnant with itself.
***
Do you know what kind of eggs she likes? Richard Gere asks each of Julia Roberts’ jilted grooms in my third favorite but most watched movie, “Runaway Bride.” Poached, one said. Scrambled, one said. Egg white omelets, one said. But they all said, Same as me. I’m smart enough to know a moral and a metaphor when I see one monthly on TBS, cuddling my tasseled Madagascar Wedding throw from Anthropolgie. Julia Roberts must discover herself by discovering her tastes by discovering (in the end) Eggs Benedict (disgusting). I too am on a journey of self-discovery. When I place my order at Pete’s Coffee & Tea, I am asked my name. I give a different one each time: Susan, Susie, Su, Su-Ann (even though there isn’t a hyphen in my name at all!). I like to cuddle my sweating cup with my new name, misspelled in Sharpie, and drink my Blended as if I am drinking in my new self. I like to discover myself by discovering my tastes by discovering (in the end) Madagascar Vanilla Blendeds (delicious).
***
The statue emerging from Americana’s fountain is named the Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves, but I call him Sasha. Sasha is 18ft tall. He is finished in 23-carat gold leaf. I agonize about busboys scraping Sasha’s taught little ass with their forks, but I am assured of Sasha’s 24-hour security. Bronze statuary is one of the glories of the civilized world, is it not? There, within yards, are Sasha’s gold glean and Apple’s shiny silver apple, classic besides modern ingenuity. Anytime I am confronted with a fresh gadget, I remember Ronald Reagan, Nancy, and little Maureen, Sunday nights on General Electric Theater. Mr. Reagan lived to explain how things worked. In his mouth, state-of-the-art technology seemed so magically matter of fact. Don’t worry about the details, I felt him soothing me, your house will stay cool, even in the summer, the air conditioned through the miracle of science. You too, can live better. A handy placard tells me Sasha is about the story of our country, of people coming together with hope in their hearts to make something great. The grass doesn’t grow here. It’s being grown.
***
Everything in Lilly Pullitzer is white. All the dresses are white. All the tops are white. All the suits are white. All the purses are white. All the blouses are white. All the slacks are white. Is it boring? How could it be! Consider the hues of beige and ivory and eggshell and alabaster and milk. It’s amazing what variation one notices amongst the shades when there is not a single other color in sight.
***
The concierge delivers my meals and my dry cleaning. The maid washes the dishes and hangs up the clothes. The elevator operator—I won’t elaborate but his work is impeccable. The trolley—named Gigi—whisks me from my doorstep to the shops and back to my doorstep. I do not know the name of the elevator operator, but I remember quite well the place where his gold nameplate presses against his snug navy suit. Any change you make to the Americana—a sock on your apartment floor, a crumb from a Napoleon Macaron on the promenade, debris from your latest pedicure as you hobble along with your toes spread open by that silly purple foam—all are erased by morning. Reset. Forgiven. At dawn, before public hours, even before Yoga on the Green, I can rejoice in this daily cleansing, staring down at Tiffany’s, just like Holly Golightly, that sorry whore. Is there anything so erotic as hygiene? A few days ago, as the elevator operator pressed the elevator button with his index finger arched just so, his hand did not stop. The button expanded to accept his finger, then his hand. A cavern stretched into the heart of the Marc Residencies, devouring his elbow, his shoulder. The doctor refers to these experiences as episodes, but I prefer the gentler incidents.
***
I’ve never gone to the square and passed my reflection in the Anthropolgie window, and, through that window, seen an Americana guard tilt his Mountie hat me. Yet this afternoon, when I go to the square, and pass my reflection in the Anthropologie window, and see in that window an Americana guard tilt his Mountie hat at me, I know, at once, that this moment has already occurred. Yes, the tipping of the hats is a habit of the guards, suited daily in their Royal Canadian garb. But today’s triangulation is an exact repetition of another—erased—time before, when the guard appeared in the window, both in the middle of the dinnerware sets as well as by the pretzel stand outside, and I appeared, wearing my Herringbone Wrap, within the matching candle-holders as well as on the promenade. In 1984, Reagan gave a speech about putting a letter into a time capsule—to be opened on America’s tercentennial. Would California be as beautiful in 100 years, he asked. Have we solved the problems of the day, ensured the freedom of our markets? Have we prevented nuclear war? I swore I’d heard him make the speech before. And after some urgent digging, I confirmed that in 1976, at the Republican National Convention, he also gave a speech about a letter for a time capsule. Would California be as beautiful in 100 years? Have we solved the problems of the day, ensured the freedom of our markets? Have we prevented nuclear war? And so I tell the doctor, I know what déjà vu is, and nobody knows Regan more than me.
***
I love to see Julia Roberts’ real childhood photos in a movie. Did her mother or father or adoring aunt know, snapping the photo of Julia brushing the silky mane on an immense chestnut stallion, that the photo would eventually serve a greater purpose? That it would one day be swallowed by the plot of a film, in this case Notting Hill? Each time I see a childhood photo of Julia Roberts in a movie, I know it’s meant as evidence of her character’s past, but I can’t help but feel it helps me get to know the woman herself. In Notting Hill Julia Roberts plays a movie star, with the most brilliant eyes and the most beautiful smile. The photo is meant to prove her character, Anna Scott, was once just a person, a doe eyed child, with a startling grin. The photo is meant to help us understand why it isn’t fame Anna Scott ultimately wants, but love. And I know Anna Scott isn’t Julia Roberts, but I can’t help but feel Notting Hill helps me get to know the actress herself. (A romantic, just like me.) Before the happy ending, Julia Roberts makes the most rousing speech, with her brilliant eyes and beautiful smile: I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. It’s times like those that Sasha’s surging glory makes all the sense in the world.
***
It’s been a week without Caruso’s arrival. The elevator operator must have been misinformed. The hole in the button panel has been repaired, it seems, so no other arm will get through. The buttons have a sturdier look to them. There is a camera in the left side of the elevator. On some days, I wave to it. On other days, I do not. On still others, I do not even bother to remember it is there. Today, I reach my arm up as if to wave, but fix my hair instead.
***
I shuffle back to my apartment. Leaded feet. Hollow knees. Crooked gaze. It all passes by in a blur. I seek the balcony. It finds me. I look across The Green to where the beach pop-up shop had been, next to Pacific Theaters—watermelon towels draped across inflatable flamingos for the pool. Now there is a shuttered gate and a mysterious sign. Change is coming. Caruso’s own signature is printed in a slat cursive that makes my head twist to the side, then spin. I thought things would make more sense from the balcony. With the mountains behind it all. Outside, looking in. Instead, it’s worse. Everything flattens. The Green looks like a drawing, forced perspective raking distance out of nowhere. The buildings wither into wood panels, their depth some kind of tawdry trompe-l’œil. I hear the fountain beginning. I hope things will come back into shape. Instead, the fountain’s streams seem like large strips of painted canvas, shaken across the scene like a rug being beat. The mountains themselves are cartoon smears of purple watercolor. I can spot the rope from which the puffs of clouds dangle. Then one of the buildings rolls out of sight, as if on a track. Another rolls into its place. Then the mountains themselves are whisked away, retracted, maintaining their form as they go. I think I see a hint of skyscraper enter from the left, but the red curtains come down, and everything goes black.
***
From my bed, I can see the topmost part of the Pacific Theaters marquee meet the mountains behind it, and the sky meet that, an endless blue. I’ve been turning my head from the window to the television and back again, as if the less I move, the fewer thoughts can emerge. I let the concierge-delivered containers pile up by my side each day, before morning comes and housekeeping sweeps them away. I give my eyes the window. The marquee meets the mountains meets the blue. Occasionally, there is a pigeon. Rarely, a crow. Suddenly: too big a shape. Too many colored. Much too close. I close my eyes to be sure I’m not undergoing again. But this is not an incident, nor an episode. It is truly there. A pear shape, but upside-down. Like a light bulb, but giant. It is red and blue and striped and rising slowly. Caruso. I see the name. I sit straight up in a single motion. For Mayor is revealed. I see a basket, dangling from the shape. A man at the center, waving. I grab the remote. My fingers rush to the Americana channel. A close up of his face, his waving hand close by. “Caruso,” I say aloud. Up he floats, crossing the threshold of my window. I lie back down to catch all of him that I can see. Then I close my eyes to keep the memory in view.
***
I think it was Law and Order that got my vote. I shiver at Reagan’s delivery of the title line, guarding the sheriff’s office with a wide stance and a shifting hip, “you want law and order, you got it” (he’d be the one to give it), the California dessert spread open behind him. That’s the thing about California, the cowboys scooping out reasonable bounded shapes within the desert’s staggers and kinks. I like to imagine Rick Caruso in cowboy garb, swaggering before our own Pacific Cinemas, choreographing the perfect ballet of the city with his own swaying hips, the aspirational hum of humanity playing out all around him. The thing is, with America, Reagan wasn’t just delivering the lines he was making up the script!
***
Vera Bradley. Gone. Vera Bradley. Gone! Replaced with a Caruso campaign outpost. I pout for an instant standing outside, for that Baroque couch set, the perfect place to rest and decide between patterns and colors, all pulled from another glorious century, and for all the clerks who called me by name. I consider holding a grudge. There are three women in blue jeans, white tee shirts, and red hats, signing up passersby for emails, taking donations, handing out flyers, inviting them all to a speech. One of them is not nearly pretty enough for the work. Before I can even think to consult my datebook, I announce, “I volunteer!”
***
His for-mayor sign might be here, but where is he? Santa is taking up too much space. Yes, it’s adorable that the children and their parents can line up to get their photos taken with Santa and his UGG-clad elves. Yes, it’s impressive that in a mere few days, a structure emerges from the lawn, a perfect hexagon trimmed in white crown molding, honored with garlands of red and green. I wait my turn on the winding path, carved from the grass, velvet ropes tidying the crowds into a neatly curved shape. I enter the kiosk. I know the white beard will be a distraction. I study the brows and the eyes. It doesn’t look like him. But can I be sure? I purchase the Claus-and-Me photo for later study. Besides Santa, there is a tree lighting ceremony for our 100-foot-tall Christmas tree, and my favorite: twice nightly snowfall. Once at 7 and once at 8pm, December 15th through 25th. The white flecks descend from the top of each of the residences, evaporating as soon as they hit your nose, just like real snow. For a song or two the Americana is wrapped in a wondrous calm, just like Christmas morning. The children giggle. Parents clap. Even sullen teenagers twirl. It’s as if Caruso himself has reached down with his immense hand, picked us up, and shook the snow from our globe.
***
What would Julia Roberts’ face look like without that freckle just below her right eye?
***
Caruso says the epiphany for his Grove and Americana came from his strolls along the Via Veneto in Rome. Studying the ring around the fountain at its center, his eyes took in the seventeenth century buildings, housing contemporary luxury shops. Gucci, Prada, Tods, all were cradled by the ancient stone. He remembered La Dolce Vida, centered on this vital space. What if Los Angeles had its own? An echt-urban enclave, classic architecture unencumbered by the demands of a retrofit. Where Caruso could dream his old buildings into the future. Like our Chinatown, constructed in 1938, after the old one was cleared to make room for Union Station. Or our Olvera Street, an authentic taste of the old pueblo, also built in the 1930s. In California, our replicas are our history. Even Fellini’s Via Veneto was shot on a set, built near the real thing nearby. I think of my mother, resting in her Oxford’s-Christ-Church-themed mausoleum, just a few miles away from the Americana, yards from Walt Disney himself, in Glendale’s Forest Lawn. “Time has worked its mischief on the beautiful original.” The mausoleum promised, “Here you see it as the first builders dreamed of it long ago.”
***
Yes, Mr. Caruso. The fantasy begins the same way. Mr. Caruso doesn’t mean to wake me up, but he had to pay a visit, and just couldn’t wait until I rose. How did you…? I begin to ask him, before he presses his hand against my mouth, urging my head back down to the pillow. With the other, he jingles a key ring, hundreds and hundreds of keys, one to each apartment in the Americana. I smile beneath his fingers, pulling back the edge of the Donna Karen Silk Essentials Luxury Bedding Collection duvet, beckoning Mr. Caruso inside. Mr. Caruso pulls his body alongside my own. His hands travel along my sides, caressing me with the smoothness of my Donna Karen teddy. I reach instantly for the fullness under his pleats. Hold me, he whispers, whipping his body around to push his eager bottom at my crotch. I wrap myself around him dutifully, and there I sleep, dreaming of the twin lions that grace the Americana branded outdoor clock, ticking away just outside.
***
It is like walking into the center of the Church of Sant’Ignazio, finding the very spot where the arches no longer slant, but greet the sky, where the angels no longer leap towards you but at each other, where the whole picture presses perfectly into the heavens, just as it was meant to, so that you are completely immersed. Just a summer ago, I followed my feet across the stone, and found this spot. I gazed up, and then down at my feet, strapped sandals perched on a marble disk, for this and this purpose alone. My course through the church was preordained to bring me to that spot. That moment. And that is how it feels to face Caruso at last.
***
“You can’t have my vote,” I flirt. “Too bad,” Caruso says, and turns away. A part of me snaps off, like the sun you watch through a pinhole camera, coming apart in an eclipse. He is seated in an armchair, in the center of a kiosk, constructed just for this purpose, at the center of the Americana, just like those for Santa every winter and the Easter Bunny every spring. I can see Sasha’s hand gleaming through doors, which let the stately breeze inside. He chats easily with an aid, as if waiting for me to move on. I can’t move. Won’t. “Because I live in Glendale,” I stammer. He brings his face around. “Here, at the Americana.” “Well, that’s only a little too bad,” he jokes, a bit too stiff. A feint silver light shines around him. The edges of his form begin to blur. I can sense the peopled groan of the line behind me. Can’t they wait? Is this all I get? Can’t I say something else? Can’t he? He senses my expectation. A mensch, as the Jews say. “Happy to have you here,” he says, extending his thick arm towards me. I lunge, bracing his hand with mine. And then I set my left hand down on top of our shake, just as I planned. I see his pleasure mix with surprise. I wore the exact right shoulder bag for this maneuver. I wore the exact right shade of cream. “Congratulations,” comes out of my mouth. Probably the most foul, stupid word I’ve uttered in a life just teeming with embarrassments. I whisk myself away at once, so he won’t see the tears.
