Notes on Scenes from the Novel About Being In Your Late Twenties in Los Angeles That I Am Not Writing
Standing in the dim kitchen with S, in the old apartment, each of us barefoot and hungover. She offers me broth from the guy at the local farmers’ market. It’s not marrow broth, not that expensive New York stuff, for winters and colds; this is vegan, and maybe somehow fermented, and anyway, for a detox, which is what we both need.
I don’t want it, though. I don’t trust things that come out of that fridge unless I put them in there myself. Instead we each find an avocado in our separate fruit bowls, and then knives. We cut them in half and cut the halves into squares. I put mine in a bowl of rice, with kale, and hers goes on pita. “I don’t think I would still be alive if it wasn’t for avocados,” she observes. She’s a vegan. “I don’t really understand what people who don’t eat them, like, eat.”
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Stopping on my way to a wedding shower to pick up weed for the bride, who’s in from out of town and doesn’t have a card of her own, anyway. We danced around it in text messages, using the plant emoji like we might mean joints, eighths, edibles of cacti. Finally I called her on the phone to ask, “Indica or sativa?” She didn’t know what I meant because you don’t buy that way where she lives now– there are dealers, not dispensaries, and they show up with what they show up with.
I don’t have a card, because I don’t smoke. I can’t explain the difference between indica and sativa because I always mix up which one is which. Trying to translate her east coast order to my west coast friend is like playing a game of telephone in a language I don’t really speak. “I’m just going to give her whatever’s in the freezer,” X. says.
“The freezer?”
“Best way to keep it fresh.”
When I do the pickup, the light is winter-white and hot to stand in, even though it’s too cold for the thin jersey dress I’m wearing in the shade. I can’t find parking so we do the hand-off on the sidewalk. A friend of X.’s is in town and we have friends in common, so we talk about that, and where to go for dim sum, and how much of the weed the bride should eat so that she gets high– but not too high– in her parents’ house that night.
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After T.’s car caught on fire somewhere between Venice and Silver Lake, we gathered at her apartment. She was, understandably, shaken. It was midsummer and late enough that the sun had already set. A 30 rack of Tecate someone had brought over for the Fourth of July was still sitting on her kitchen table. I drank one, and everyone else got high; we ordered burritos to be delivered even though it cost more than picking them up ourselves. We smudged sage and pulled tarot cards, hoping to explain the car’s combustion, and everything else in our lives. We were still wearing the temporary tattoos we’d put on together at that celebration on the Fourth, ice cream cones lovingly rendered on each of our wrists. When we washed our hands, it was in a sink filled with rocks: feng shui, T. explained to me, something to do with keeping money from running down the drain.
I know the farmer’s market broth Z is talking about, salty and miso-y, they sell it in plastic jugs or you can buy a small paper cup of it, warm, to sip on while you browse the vegetable stands. I also bought a bottle of their miso dressing and this week I’ve been eating it on everything. I know that soon I’ll be tired of the taste of miso but right now I can’t get enough of it, taking little sips out of the bottle, soaking my lettuce, salads as a miso delivery system.
