White Oleander

We were smoking hash under glass while we worked. I let the smoke fill up under the little shot glass that Niki stole from the Bavarian Gardens, it had an upside-down Joh

"What difference does it make?" Niki said, putting a chunk of hash on the pin for herself. "It's not like you're going to keep it."

The corners of her mouth turned down. "You think that way, I don't want you taking me to baby class," Yvo

I started coughing. I tried to do Butterfly McQueen from the childbirth scene in Gone with the Wind. "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies," but I couldn't get my voice to go high enough. I thought of Michael, he always did Butterfly better than me. I missed him.

"At least you have good thoughts," Yvo

Childbirth. I shuddered. "I'm not even eighteen."

"That's okay, they don't serve liquor," Niki said, throwing a finished bag on the pile. She picked up another one that was all cut out and ready for sewing.

Stoned, I traced a rising smoke pattern into a scrap of leather with an X-acto blade. I was good at this, better than my mother used to be. I could do a crow, a cat. I could do a cat in three cuts. I did a baby with a curl on its forehead and tossed it to Yvo

The door banged open behind us, letting in a rush of cold air. Rena came in with a roll of dark green suede tucked under her arm. "Georgi sell whole thing, trade for lamp," she gri

I nodded. I blew whatever I made on art supplies and food and going in with Niki on dope. College had already vanished, disappearing like a boat into fog. At Claire's, I'd begun to think of my life as a series of Kandinsky pencil sketches, meaningless by themselves, but arranged together they would begin to form an elegant composition. I even thought I had seen the shape of the future in them. But now I had lost too many pieces. They had returned to a handful of pine needles on a forest floor, unreadable.

Sergei came in carrying a bag, his cheeks flushed pink in his handsome, wide, un-Californian face. He unloaded two bottles of vodka, put one in the freezer, set the other on the counter, and took down two green glasses. He sniffed the air. "Mmm, di

"So who invites you?" Rena said, hopping up to sit on the counter, unscrewing the cap of the vodka. She poured three fingers into each glass.

"Oh, these girls not starve Sergei," he said. He opened the oven, peered in at the bubbling dish I was making for Yvo

I cut a tiger into a leather scrap, reminding myself that Sergei was just Rena with a better facade. Handsome as a Cossack, a milky Slavic blond with sleepy blue eyes that caught every movement. By profession, a thief. Rena occasionally moved merchandise for him, a truckload of leather couches, racks of women's coats, a shipment of stuffed animals from Singapore, small appliances from Israel. Around here, he was a constant sexual fact. He left the bathroom door open while he shaved in the nude, did a hundred push-ups every morning, his milky white skin veined with blue. If he saw you were watching he'd add a clap to show off. Those wide shoulders, the neat waist. When Sergei was in the room, I never knew what to do with my hands, with my mouth.

I looked over at Yvo

She smiled down at her sewing, ducking her head. She didn't like to show her bad teeth. "It's no sweat. I do all the work. All you gotta do is hold the towel."

"Huff 'n' puff," Niki said. "Bunch of beachballs blowing it out the wrong end. A real laugh riot. You'll see." Niki broke off another chunk of hash, put it on the pin. She lit it and watched the smoke fill the glass like a genie in a lamp. When she took the hit, she broke into a coughing fit even worse than mine.

"None for me?" Sergei asked, pointing at the shot glass.

"Fuck you, Sergei," Niki said. "When did you ever buy us any?"

But she put a little out for him anyway, and I tried to ignore the way he looked right at me as he stooped to put his lips where mine had been. But I felt my face burn right up to the hairline.

We all ate, except Rena, who smoked and drank vodka. As soon as she left the room for a moment, Sergei leaned over, broad white hands folded before him. "So, when we make love, devushka? "

"You sleazebag," Niki said, pointing her fork at him. "I ought to tell Rena."

"Anyway, Astrid's got a boyfriend," Yvo

I'd told her all about Paul Trout. I'd finally picked up his letters from Yellow Brick Road in Hollywood, on the same street where I pulled the knife on the girl who thought I was Wendy. Niki took me there after school, on the way to meeting some guys who needed a singer. I felt bad I hadn't written to him before, I'd thought of it many times, but I was afraid. Chances were he never looked back. On the drive into Hollywood, I looked nervously at the envelope, marked Hold for Paul Trout. The hope implied. It was a mistake already. I thought of a song Rena played that I hated like death, "Love the One You're With." It was the tune life kept forcing on me, and yet there I was, hope fluttering like a bird in my hand.

The shop was tiny, more crowded even than Rena's. Comic books everywhere. Niki and I leafed through the stacks. Some of the comics were jokey, like Zippy the Pinhead and old Mr. Natural. Others were dark and expressionist, Sam Spade meets Murnau. There were racks of homemade magazines full of bad poets. Comics in Japanese, many of them pornographic. Tongue-in-cheek stories of career girls and supermodels drawn in the Lichtenstein pop style. A Jewish rodent trapped in a Blackshirt paranoid nightmare. They sold everything from the standard DCs to locally drawn, Xeroxed, staple-spined 'zines. While Niki read a gangster girl tale, I went to the counter, told myself there 'd be nothing for me.