Los Angeles Read Online Free Page B

what?”
    “Something perverted.”
    “You
want
me to be a pervert?”
    “I wouldn’t mind.”
    I turned onto my side, facing her.
    She dropped her cigarette into a glass by the bed and slid down, pressing her entire self against me. Angela crushed her face
     into my neck and squeezed her legs around mine, her surprisingly strong arms tight around my torso.
    “You’re not really white, Angel, do you know that?”
    “I’m not?”
    “Your aura, your true colors.”
    “My aura?” This erection would not go away. “What color am I, then?”
    “Red. Orange. Bright yellow.” She laughed. “Burning.”
    I thought for a moment about what this could mean. “What color are you?” I asked.
    “Blue,” she whispered. “Blue, blue, electric blue.”
    “Like your eyes?”
    She reached inside my boxers and placed her hand over my penis. Her fingers were cool. It must have been around six in the
     morning because a blade of incandescence appeared on my bedroom wall, a thin band of yellow-white that was growing exponentially
     brighter.
    Red. Orange. Bright yellow. Burning.
    It was cast there by a fissure in the miniblinds, like a crack in the shell of the universe itself.
    “Sure,” she answered, “like my eyes.”
    “Your eyes are brown,” I said, as though exposing a terrible secret.
    “Tell me something,” Angela insisted another night. “Tell me anything.” Her lips touched the back of my neck, and I could
     feel the dampness of her mouth, and I thought I could hear the liquid insides of her body.
    “There isn’t anything.”
    “Do you like this?” She touched her tongue to my skin, just below my ear. She tucked her knees under my knees, burrowing into
     me.
    I didn’t answer.
    “This?” She bit the edge of my earlobe. Her teeth felt huge.
    I was quiet.
    “This?” She nuzzled into my neck, pushing her wet lips over my skin.
    Mornings, after she left, I would slip downstairs and look around the parking lot for that cat. She was so desperate for contact,
     it seemed, screaming for attention, and I wanted to find out if I could quiet her, soothe her screaming even for a moment,
     by scratching that patch of sensitive skin behind her ears. But as soon as I stepped into the lot, she would vanish, hiding
     under a car or running into the old man’s garden next door. It had become a kind of game, actually, though I didn’t know why
     I was playing. I wasn’t sure what I was planning to do if I found her, either. I certainly wasn’t prepared to take an alley
     cat into my apartment. Can you imagine the fleas? I just wanted to touch her, I guess, to see if she would stop wailing, if
     only for a few moments.
    And sometimes I would get stuck, caught by the impossible gorgeousness of the Los Angeles morning, catatonic in the apprehension
     of a phenomenon too beautiful, too cinematic to be real.

I T WAS BECAUSE HER EYES KEPT CHANGING COLORS. IT WAS BE cause her breasts were fake. It was because she came home at half past three in the morning but acted like it was three in
     the afternoon. It was because she said she was a vegetarian and made me lamb stew. It was because she was older than me but
     wouldn’t admit it. It was because she constantly contradicted herself, denying entire conversations. It was because she was
     a liar and so was I. It was because she wore way too much perfume and way too much makeup and way too high high heels. It
     was because when she slept, she rested the back of her hand on her forehead like Scarlett O’Hara. It was because of her laugh,
     soft and low and wicked. It was because sometimes she bit me. It was because of the way she pressed herself into me, as though
     she were literally trying to crawl under my skin. It was because she had those tiny cracks at the corners of her eyes. It
     was because she never asked me why I lived alone, staying awake through the Hollywood night, writing my senseless, pointless
     scenes. It was because she understood every crazy thing I