The Palace of Illusions. Kim Addonizio

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      “I get thirsty this time of day.”

      “Always.”

      All my friends are drinkers. Most Fridays we gather after work at some bar, then go to dinner and order carafe after carafe of house red. In my circle, the parties last long—until the revelers slip to the floor or stagger off to pass out on a neighbor’s lawn, maybe climbing into their cars, if they have them, to wend their erratic way home through the deserted streets. We start the weekend mornings with a Bloody Mary or Mimosa or Ramos Fizz, with Walprofen and Aleve and Excedrin, with groans and nausea that gradually slide into hilarity. We get through our McJobs with flasks, and have beer with lunch. We head out of Starbucks and Kinko’s and financial district offices for fifteen-minute cocktail binges on our scheduled breaks. Forget AA. AA is for losers who can’t handle their shit.

      “Let’s go to the Redwood Room at the Clift,” Mona says. “I haven’t seen it since it’s been renovated.”

      On her TV, a girl’s voice goes, Oh, God, no. Oh, God, please, no, no.

      “Pick you up in an hour,” I say.

      “I’ll treat, of course. But make it sooner. I don’t want any fucking little kids at my door.”

      Mona always treats me. She has that appealing combination of wealth and carelessness with money. Hundred-dollar bills spill from her Italian leather wallet. She’s big on cashmere coats; she owns five. Gucci and Fendi bags, Ferragamo shoes, Dior scarves—Mona always looks like she stepped out of a photo shoot, materializing into the air on a breath of floral perfume from a fashion magazine. Her hair is white-blonde, sleek and smooth as metal, and falls straight to her shoulders. Her eyes are a color of blue that looks like it has metal in it, too. Mona exudes an aura of ease and luxury, of eternal impossible beautiful moments in exotic locations where even the inanimate objects, like chaise lounges and sea walls, admire your flawlessness.

      In honor of Halloween I put on a long leopard-print skirt with slits on each side up to mid-thigh, and a black velvet bustier with leather laces. For good measure I wear my black hat with the square of lace hanging down the back and the fake roses on the brim, and slather on the makeup. I drink a quick toast before I leave, a cold shot of Estonian vodka raised to dodging the bullet of sitting at home in my bathrobe, in thrall to scenes of a couple being terrorized by a doll in overalls. I’ve been transformed into a sexy twenty-seven-year-old jungle cat out on the prowl, ready for whatever magic the night may bring. When I get in my car, a guy in a George Bush mask whistles, and his friend, encased in an alien creature with eyes the size of tennis balls, meows at me.

      At the Redwood Room I get a Clift Cosmopolitan, and Mona a Manhattan. I don’t know anybody who drinks Manhattans except Mona. I feel like I should have ordered something more classic, like a martini. There’s a purple flower floating in my drink that the waitress identifies as a pansy; she tells us it’s edible.

      Though I’m kind of hungry from not having any dinner, I don’t think a pansy or two will make a difference, so I just pluck it out and set it on my napkin.

      The waitress looks about my age, a slim thing in a sleeveless black dress with a tattoo of Chinese characters running down the back of one bare shoulder. She says they mean, “only the moon.” As in, only the moon will do.

      “It’s all about following your dreams,” she says.

      “Follow your bliss,” I say. “Joseph Campbell said that.”

      “How perfectly lovely,” Mona says, sipping her drink. When the waitress goes, she leans toward me. “Pushing drinks in an overpriced hotel bar,” she says. “Dreams, my ass.”

      “She probably makes ten times more than me.” I look around the room and think that’s probably true of everyone in here.

      “That’s right, you work,” Mona says, like she’s forgotten this distasteful fact. “Please let’s talk about something more scintillating than Starbucks.”

      “Colloquially known as Starfucks,” I say.

      “Star fucking. There’s a promising subject. Would you fuck Brad Pitt?”

      “Under what circumstances?”

      “That qualifies as a no.”

      Mona starts rattling off actors’ names, but my mind is on the waitress and her tattoo. I know I’m not exactly following my bliss. It’s more like the path of least resistance. I went from counter help to shift supervisor, from making lattes and Frappuccinos to making sure people take their breaks on time and the store stays picked up and the right hot sleeves for the cups get ordered. Health benefits and everything, but come on.

      “Leo DiCaprio,” Mona says. “Will Smith. Robert Pattinson.”

      It’s not inconceivable that one of them could walk into the Redwood Room. The Redwood Room is the hip place to go since the trendy hotelier bought the Clift and put his trendy stamp on a San Francisco institution. The walls are paneled from a single two-thousand-year-old redwood, the bar is U-shaped and seventy-five feet long, the chandeliers and wall sconces are deco. He’s added a few touches, like a glass bar and plasma-screen images of Klimt paintings to replace the ones that used to hang there. When we arrived it was busy enough, but now the room’s seething with people. Every seat is taken, except for a row of them at a long low table, another trendy addition. People keep trying to sit there, on glass stools that look like vases, but after an uncomfortable minute they get up and go over to stand by one of the bars.

      We’re at the U-shaped one, people jammed in on both sides. Mona has given up on pimping me to movie stars and has struck up an acquaintance with the guy across from her. Pretty soon he’s offering her shrimp cocktail and french fries off his plate. He’s a salesman staying at a different hotel who just came here for dinner, he says, but I can tell he was secretly hoping to meet some willing young thing he could take back to his room and fuck the life out of. He’s in a nice suit he probably saved for tonight, and the cologne is rolling off him in nauseating waves. I bet there’s a wedding ring sitting on the sink in his hotel room, that he had to soap off his pudgy finger.

      Across from me, there’s a different kind of guy. He’s my age, or maybe a little younger—he has baby skin, not a line on it, and a sparse blond goatee that looks like it’s been trying to grow in since eighth grade. He’s hunched over the bar, wearing a faded T-shirt with a faded Spiderman leaping on it, his shoulder bones sticking out like a famine victim’s. There’s a barely touched glass of beer in front of him. In the middle of the Redwood Room, surrounded by dressed-up people laughing and getting shitfaced, he’s reading The Portable Nietzsche. Right away I figure I know things about him, like that he doesn’t own a car, but feels superior to people who do. He labors at some shit office job, maybe even temp work, and writes bad poetry nobody understands. He’s got poser written all over him, but he’s got nice eyes, pale blue or maybe gray, fringed by the kind of sweeping lashes any girl would kill for. By now I have three damp pansies arranged on my napkin from the drinks I’ve had, and I’m feeling friendly. Also hungry. I can feel the alcohol traveling around my stomach, looking for a scrap of food to connect to, to lose itself in. I take a couple of chilly shrimp from the salesman’s plate without asking, knowing he won’t say anything.

      “Hey, Nietzsche,” I say to the poser, by way of an opener. “Thou shalt.” I remember a little of my Nietzsche—the golden-scaled dragon in Thus Spake Zarathustra who’s like the superego, telling you all СКАЧАТЬ