THE NEXT DAY WE WENT to another house party. Inland, though the air still smelt like ocean.
More tequila, more names thrown at me.
And more mushrooms.
We all started playing some kind of game, some kind of charades—I think? Someone handed me a joint. Lovely. I took a hit, looked at the rinsed creamy blue of the California sky. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, said they wanted me to meet Christina Aguilera. Oh, hello, Christina. She looked rather mannish. No, apparently I’d misheard, it wasn’t Christina Aguilera, it was the guy who co-wrote one of her songs.
“Genie in a Bottle.”
Did I know the lyrics? Did he tell me the lyrics?
I’m a genie in a bottle
You gotta rub me the right way
Anyway, he’d made a boatload from those lyrics, and now lived in high style.
Good for you, mate.
I left him, set off across the yard, and the memory trails away for a time.
I seem to remember yet another house party…that day? The next?
Eventually, somehow, we made our way back to Monica’s. That is, Courteney’s. It was night. I walked down some stairs to her beachfront and stood with my toes in the ocean, watching the lacy surf come forward, recede, come forward, for what felt like ages. I looked from the water to the sky, back and forth.
Then I stared directly at the moon. It was speaking to me.
Like the bin and the toilet. What was it saying?
That the year ahead would be good.
Good how?
Something big.
Really?
Big.
Not more of the same? No, something special. Really, Moon?
Promise.
Please don’t lie to me.
I was nearly the age Pa had been when he’d got married, and he’d been considered a tragically late bloomer. At thirty-two he’d been ridiculed for his inability or unwillingness to find a partner.
I was staring thirty-two in the face. Something has to change. Please? It will.
I opened my mouth to the sky, to the moon. To the future.
Aaaah.
