A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

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      Larissa wrote to Che, mentioning the Jag as a postscript omitting the real reason for her agonizing.

      Che wrote back.

      Larissa, why so much commotion over a small matter? I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. To bring up a car in an occasional letter? It’s a car. You didn’t finish telling me why Bo doesn’t throw Jonny out or move out herself. Since when do you care so much about what you drive? Buy or not buy. I’m forty next year too, you know. You’re worried about a car, and my mother couldn’t live long enough for me to have a baby. Soon I’m not going to live long enough for me to have a baby. I’m sending you a recent picture of Lorenzo. Tell me if you think he’s worth it. Send me a recent picture of the Jag. I’ll tell you if the car is worth it.

      Larissa read newspapers, magazines, to keep ahead of the times, but being versed in current events made her more anxious, not less. The only news out there was that everything was going to hell, spinning out of control.

      She wrote to Che about this. There was mental illness, homelessness, robberies, random shootings, sometimes all related, Larissa wrote. Shark attacks, poison oak epidemics, rabies. Seventy-year-old women giving birth, severed heads abandoned outside newsrooms. There were bombings and threats to peace. Is peace just an illusion? she asked Che. Will the Jaguar bring me an illusion of peace?

      “That’s a philosophical question, Larissa,” replied Ezra, while she was still waiting on Che’s reply. “The question is, will the Jaguar bring you something tangible? Is it a desire for something you don’t have? If so, what is it? And after you get it, will that be it, or will there be something else you want that you don’t have? Is it the quest you’re after, not the object?”

      “How about,” said Jared, “the car is gorgeous—she’ll turn all heads while driving it?”

      “She turns all heads anyway,” said Maggie, looking admiringly at Larissa, in jeans and a red silky top, with a bit of décolletage and red lipstick.

      “Hardly,” Larissa said, embellishing her embarrassment and turning to Ezra.

      “I know, Larissa, that you read Ecclesiastes only because you had to, to get a pass/fail in your philosophy course in college,” said Ezra, “which is not the same thing as understanding Ecclesiastes, but nonetheless, it will do you well right about now to remember what he said.”

      Larissa stared at him vacantly.

      “All is vanity,” said Ezra. “To buy, not to buy. To eat, to shop, to hire women to clean your house, to not clean it. All is vexation of spirit, except union with God. All is vanity.”

      “So buy the Jag then?” said Jared.

      Che wrote back.

      Larissa,

       Here is your real answer, the one Father Emilio gave me when I asked him. You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye not be troubled. For all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet.

       For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.

       All these are just the beginnings of sorrows. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

       Lorenzo’s love is waxing cold, Larissa. And I’m still without a baby. All these years I have been living in poverty, and I don’t mean the money kind. I’m so far from what I want.

       Please don’t be far from what you want.

       I wish for a baby more than anything. I desperately want a little girl so I could raise her to make all the mistakes I made, only start younger.

       You are a wonderful person. You don’t drive anyone crazy like Lorenzo. Get the car.

      Would it be nice to have a Jag, rather than live amid unclaimed wishes yet unwished for?

      But what if you knew that the car would lead you to penury and destitution, the things Che speaks of, writes about, feels, lives? What would you do then?

      But you don’t know.

      But what if you did?

      But you don’t.

      And if you did?

      But … you don’t.

      And … if you did?

      The whole thing filled Larissa with slight shame. She even threw out the business card Kai had given her, which was the most shameful thing of all. How ridiculous that was. How ridiculous she was.

      But now what?

      What would she wear to a Jag dealership? She couldn’t go in sweats. But she couldn’t go too dressed up.

      She couldn’t go.

      The eternal moral order was the real question, the Aztec gold buried like a treasure in the hills of Mexico. Was there such a thing, and was Larissa turning her back on it?

      Kai Passani. The first time she said his name out loud to herself, she turned red like she’d accidentally cursed in front of the children. Peeking into the magnifying mirror, she stared at her flushed face, her glassy eyes.

      His name was Hawaiian. Kai. She looked it up. In Hawaiian, it meant the ocean. Ocean, as in bottomless?

      Oh, what was wrong with her!

      Passani. “From the Champagne region of France.” The urban legend goes that the monk who discovered the sparkling wine ran to his Benedictine brother with the cry, “J’ai goûté des étoiles!” I’m tasting stars.

      Kai Passani.

      To save herself from the Jaguar, Larissa replaced all thought of it with Gucci. Gucci, Chanel, Zanotti, Dior. She bought herself a pair СКАЧАТЬ