'Wintering,' by Thessaly La Force

This short story appears in the June 2015 Fiction Issue of VICE Magazine.

At the museum, they stood in front of the artwork. It was a rectangular black pool of water that had frozen over. Large rubber tubes wound across the floor, feeding the installation with cold air. They emitted a soft hissing noise, like the sound of an air mattress deflating. Cynthia asked Flora to check if there were any snakes. She had a phobia. She couldn't even say the word. She called them S's.

"I had a dream last night," Cynthia said. "I woke up screaming."

"You're afraid of penises, right? That's what it's supposed to mean?" asked Flora.

"I don't know. George, when we were dating, used to do an S sweep. He'd look under the bed for me. This time I woke up by myself. It was on me, in the dream. Someone had given me a present, but the box was already open. And I said, 'Where is it? Where is the present?' My mother was there, and she said, 'It's right here.' It was curled around me—its tail was hanging out of the sleeve of my coat, and my mother began to pull it out from my sleeve."

"That's dark."

They passed by a tank filled with brackish water where a large rock was suspended half in, half out, as if it were floating. Neon tubes dangled overhead. Cynthia was heading to Switzerland in two weeks to write a story about the artist. "This is cool," she said. "I like it."

"I don't know what it means."

"I don't either."

"But we like it."

"We like it."

Flora's phone buzzed. It was the actor. "He says to meet us in Los Feliz," she said, reading the text. "At his house. He wants us to bring frozen French fries. Crinkle-cut. Is there a store on the way?"

"Yeah, Gelson's." Cynthia was looking at a painting. "I like this, too."

"Are we done here? I'm over it."

"We're done." Cynthia checked her reflection in the glass of the painting. "We're going to be fucked with traffic." She stepped back over the black rubber tubes of the installation. "See," she said, pointing down. "I don't like this."

Cynthia was in Los Angeles for the winter. She was working on a script that she never talked about. Presumably it was being written. She still had magazine assignments. She had just come back from a house in the mountains, owned by a writer who had made it. He had a show on HBO and was now working on two movies. He didn't have time anymore to stay there. So he doled it out to friends, and friends of friends. Other writers. There was no internet, Cynthia said. And two nights in a row, the water stopped running. She hadn't realized she'd need a car with four-wheel drive, and she was scared driving down the dirt roads at night to the Safeway 20 miles away, to get gallon jugs of Arrowhead water. She had to go to the public library to make phone calls. Which she did every afternoon.

"I'm just tired of what I do," she said, over and over again, to Flora but also to herself, to anyone who would listen. "I'm a journalist. Who wants to be a journalist anymore? Who even reads magazines anymore?"

Flora liked to read them. She read them in the dentist's office, and she read them on the subway. She had just gone to the dentist to get her teeth cleaned. It had been two years. "Is it bad?" she asked the hygienist. "You can be honest with me." The hygienist made a face. "It's not pretty," the hygienist said. "Not like you." Was the hygienist flirting? Flora couldn't tell anymore. She never thought so before, but now her meter was off. But that was her thing, after the divorce. In one of the fights she had with her husband, her ex-husband now—that was hard to remember to say, and she wondered if that was a thing, too, she would have to ask her shrink—her ex-husband had said, "Don't you see it? I'm tired of playing second fiddle."

Flora's shrink had been working on her for years. On bad days, she was convinced her shrink had been on a mission to get her divorced. She accused him when she was pissed. And then they analyzed what really upset her. She also questioned his masculinity when she was mad at him, said she thought he was gay. He wouldn't confirm or deny. It was crazy, she knew. He wasn't gay. And she had asked for the divorce.

Flora had met her husband when she was young, and they had married young. Two big families, lots of money, not a lot of taste. She hadn't really worked. She had never paid rent in her life. She had been in New York until just three weeks before. "It was so cold," she said. "You don't understand." She was now in an Airbnb in West Hollywood. It was probably way too expensive for what it was, but she had no perspective.

This had been a problem with her friendship with Cynthia. Cynthia was tired of being poor. Of working on what she loved for no money. But Flora had never really figured out what she loved. She had thought it was a marriage. She had kept a food blog.

Posting recipes. Instagramming what she cooked. She had about 500 followers. She always posted selfies, used hashtags: #food, #homemade, #alicewaters, #farmersmarket. Now she never cooked. When she was alone, she bought frozen food from Trader Joe's.

In the middle of their long friendship, Cynthia and Flora didn't talk for almost two years. "I couldn't handle you," Cynthia explained on the phone. She had been in Shanghai on assignment, profiling an architect. She was a gifted mimic and could imitate Flora. She said, "Firm but not chalky yolks." Her voice warbled on the Skype connection. "That food-blogging stuff. Freaked me out. You only wanted to talk about these artisanal blueberries. And the thing is, you're actually smart." The divorce had brought them back together.

And now Flora was dating this actor. In the hills of Los Feliz. He was famous, pretty famous, actually. But she hadn't seen any of his movies when she met him. She really hadn't. That had probably appealed to him. She knew that she was also appealing for all of the reasons a noncommittal man with too many options would like. He was intrigued by her relationship to money.

The way she didn't dye her hair blond. She didn't want him to buy her anything. She was over jewelry. Nice clothes. He liked her small breasts. The moles on her back. The way she preferred to use a grapefruit spoon. She didn't tell him about the food blogging. Or the divorce. They had been set up by a friend back in November when he had been in New York, shooting for a movie. He thought Flora was here in Los Angeles for him.

Cynthia drove. "Fuck," she said. "I took a wrong turn and now I can't get off." She didn't know the city yet, and she drove with one hand holding her iPhone, the other on the steering wheel.

"Want me to navigate?" Flora always asked, and Cynthia always said no.

"No, it's OK."

"I feel like this is a power play," Flora said. "Asking for the French fries."

"It's not—he just wants some."

"I have a feeling."

"I mean, OK," Cynthia said. "If it is a power play, then what is the play?"

"Just, like, making me do something."

"It's called dating."

"I don't even think we're dating. I come over. We hang out. We sleep together."

"But you don't want to even—you don't even want that, his life. If he asked you to a red carpet, would you go?"

"I don't know."

"You wouldn't. You're working your own stuff out."

"The other night, he wanted me to talk dirty," Flora said. She had flipped down the sun visor and was looking at her face in the mirror. "I'm so ugly," she said.

Cynthia laughed. "What did you say?"

"I just say the same stuff. Very vanilla. You know. Oh, I missed your big, hard cock. I'm so wet."

"Men are a game for you. They have always been a game for you," Cynthia said. "One day you'll actually meet someone and fall in love and, God, who knows who it will be, but you won't be able to figure it out."

"Fuck you."

"It's true, and you know it."

"And what about you?" Flora said.

Cynthia had stopped dating after the last breakup. She said it was because she traveled too much. Work came first. She was 36. But after every assignment was finished, she called Flora and cried. "I'm lonely." she would say. "I'm tired of being lonely. And I want a baby."

Cynthia ignored the question. The car coasted onto Sunset Boulevard with a left turn. Her one hand was still holding her iPhone, the other sliding across the top of the steering wheel. "God, I love Sunset," she said. "It just makes me feel like I'm actually living in LA."

The actor lived in a modernist house in the hills. The sun rose on the left and set on the right. It was big but not too big. There were three bedrooms upstairs, the office downstairs, three bathrooms. There was the pool and the hot tub. He had planted an avocado tree, and one day Flora discovered a fruit hanging from one of its branches, still green, the skin dimpled and hard. He asked Flora to move in every night she stayed over. "Just while you're here," he said. But she didn't see the point. They weren't in love, and what little she brought was already in the house in West Hollywood. That was why she was convinced the French fries were a power play.

As they pulled up, he called her.

"What?" she said.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"We're right here. We literally just parked."

"We?"

"Me and Cynthia. Remember? You met her."

"Oh, right." He never remembered. "I was going to ask you to get ketchup. I don't have ketchup."

"I mean. We'd have to go back."

"Yeah, never mind. If you're here."

"Do you want the ketchup?"

"No, it's fine."

She and Cynthia had stepped out of the car, and she was now walking to the house. They kept talking.

"I can still go." She hit the doorbell. She heard it on his end of the phone.

He buzzed her in. The big gate pushed open without her touching it.

"No," he said. "Come here." They walked to each other holding their phones to their ears. She heard the loop of the feedback. He kissed her. "Hi, Cynthia," he said.

"Hi," Cynthia said.

They walked into the kitchen. The house had been decorated by someone else. All Danish modern. Slowly, he had been filling it with his own stuff. Some books, though he didn't really read. Photos. There was a picture of a girl in one of them. He didn't take pictures of Flora. She didn't mind. When this was over, she would prefer there to be no trace of her in his life.

"I'm grilling," he said.

"Is anyone else coming over?" Flora asked. It wasn't controlling. After having been married for so long, she easily slipped into playing house like a wife. He enjoyed that, too, she suspected, coupled with how she matched him in emotional distance—they were like two people running side by side but never actually touching.

"Rob might be stopping by," he said, referring to his manager. Rob was a lush, an affable guy who didn't mind peddling the actor's fame to get what he wanted. But he was good at his job, and more importantly, he fit in with the hierarchy. There was a group of guys who laughed at the actor's jokes, who let him have the last glass of wine in the bottle at the end of the night.

They sat out by the pool while he grilled burgers. He made two for himself and one for each of them. He told Flora he ate normally when he wasn't working, whatever he liked, and then, when he was prepping for a movie, he'd cut it off entirely—just baked salmon, kale, veggies, and lean protein, basically—and work out "like a maniac." His words. What was so maniacal about his workouts, she didn't know. She had seen all of his movies now, they watched them together, though she found it bizarre that it didn't bother him to see himself on the screen with her. In one, he played a soldier. She thought he looked puffy—his arms, his legs, his pecs—as if blown up by air, like a balloon human. He lost weight for another role, a drug dealer, and she realized she preferred him skinny. "It's probably not good for your kidneys," she said. She didn't know, she had no idea, but she was guessing. "I know," he said, "but there's no other way." Maybe, she thought of telling him, he should just take different parts. But it was his career, not hers.

Rob stopped by on the later side—he had been to a screening before with a young woman. That's what Flora's mother would have said. A young woman. She was an assistant to another publicist. She was delighted to be meeting the actor. But she sat back and played it very cool. Smart, Flora thought. The girl understood that no one, especially the actor, was interested in what she had to say. She was clearly not that into Rob, but she would fuck him for a respectable amount of time. Later, when Rob asked if anyone wanted to get into the hot tub, the girl was the first to volunteer. "But I don't have a suit," she added. She made a show of being modest in front of Flora.

"I have one you can borrow," Flora said. She didn't mind, why not let the girl look beautiful, go back to her friends, and tell them the story of hanging out at the actor's house in Los Feliz? Flora wore her Lululemon sports bra and underwear while the girl wore her Eres. It looked good on her. If she were a crazier woman, she'd make the girl keep it. Rob and the actor discussed the actor's career—Flora had long given up following along, she didn't recognize all the names, and it was meant to be a kind of display, anyway. She and the girl sat and listened, the bubbles beating against their backs. Cynthia sat on the lawn chair above them, fully clothed.

"What do you do?" asked the girl, eventually, when it was acceptable to break off.

"I don't do much."

"She's having an Eat, Pray, Love moment," Cynthia interjected.

"Oh, I love it," said the girl. "Well, amazing, good for you." The girl was decades from an Eat, Pray, Love moment, but she projected empathy.

"Yep," Flora said.

"And what about you?" the girl said to Cynthia.

"I'm a journalist," Cynthia said.

"She's also working on a script," Flora said.

"Oh, amazing—what's it about?" the girl asked. The actor and Rob had stopped talking.

"Tell them," Flora said.

Cynthia paused. "It's, it's a rom-com, kind of."

"I love rom-coms," the girl said.

"Me too," Rob said. Everyone laughed.

"Go on," Flora said. "Give them the premise."

Cynthia's eyes flashed at her. "Fuck you," she said. The actor stiffened. He didn't like conflict.

Cynthia got up. "I'm sorry," Cynthia said calmly. "I don't know all of you." She looked at Flora. "But I know you." She did her Flora impression. "I don't mind," she said, shrugging her shoulders the way Flora did. Flora was the only one who understood—she always said it when she gave up trying. As if not caring were an excuse. The others were confused. Cynthia stopped. Her body resumed its more natural stance. "Why don't you stop sitting around doing nothing, watching the rest of us while we actually try to figure out what we want in our lives. You might actually find that it makes you happy. I mean, whatever. Whatever." She shook her head. "Yeah, so I'm just another idiot out in LA with a screenplay."

"Jesus. I'm sorry," Flora said. "I didn't mean it."

"That's the thing," said Cynthia. "You don't mean anything you do." She turned to go. There was the sound of a helicopter moving overhead, they always flew so low, and Cynthia brushed her palms against the top of her thighs. She took a few steps along the pool. A plastic dinosaur floated in the water, belly up. She had left her shoes by the pool's edge, and she lifted her right foot to put on one, and then did the same with her left. A smoke alarm went off, distantly, from inside the house.

"Oh, right," Cynthia said. "Your French fries." She was looking at the actor—her eyes bright with anger, but her entire face expressionless, still as stone. "Well, they're probably burned. But thanks, thanks for the burger." Then she walked out.

Flora knew better than to chase her. She waited a minute before getting out of the hot tub to pull the crinkle-cut fries out of the oven, waving the smoke away with a pot holder. They were now charred black; squiggly lines on the pan—rather S-like, she thought—and then she dumped them all into the trash.

The next morning, the actor had a bunch of meetings across town and left early. She had the house to herself until Magdalena, the cleaning lady, showed up. Flora decided to wait—she liked Magda. It was clear Magda was only into preserving her job, it was a sweet gig, and he must have paid her a lot; she also didn't pay much attention to what the actor did with his life. Flora sensed that she wasn't the craziest woman to step into it. Whatever she was going through right now—whatever you would call this strange, floating time when money slipped through her fingers like sand, when Wednesday felt no different from Saturday—Magda had seen it already, or in some variation. She lay in bed, not really sleeping but not really awake. The skyline of Los Angeles glittered across the deck of the bedroom, contrails in the sky. It really was pretty here. She liked to text Cynthia and say, "Want to hear a joke?" And Cynthia would always text back, "Yes, I do." And then she would send her a screen shot of the weather in New York. Cynthia always wrote back, "Hah, hah."

She heard Magda let herself in. She began in the kitchen and then moved around the house, picking up the pool towels, the dirty clothes, the abandoned glasses, cleaning everything until it looked brand-new, putting everything back into its proper basket or box or closet. The actor liked slippers; he liked to steal them from the Bowery Hotel, which was where he asked to be put up every time he went to New York. There was a closet full of white slippers with the B embroidered across the top. Flora had thought for a while that his real name started with a B—and when she asked him once why he didn't have his shirts monogrammed, too, he laughed with real surprise and told her she was adorable.

"Hi, Magda," she said, walking into the kitchen wearing just a bathrobe.

"Hi, Flora," Magda said.

"We grilled last night. You probably need to clean it, if he didn't tell you already."

"He didn't. Thank you."

Flora took a grapefruit from the bowl and halved it perfectly with a sharp knife on the wooden chopping board by the espresso machine.

"What are you planning to do today?" Magda asked.

"I don't really know. Maybe I'll sit out by the pool."

"Oh yes, what a great day for sitting out by the pool." Magda always agreed with what Flora said. If Flora had said she was going to jump off a cliff, Magda would have found it agreeable. Flora took a grapefruit spoon from the drawer and began to segment each piece from the skin.

"Or maybe," she said, testing Magda, "maybe I'll go shopping."

"Oh, yes, isn't shopping so much fun?" Magda said. "Where is Mr. T?"

That's what Magda called the actor. "He has a lunch, and then he has to be in Santa Monica."

"Oh, how lovely," Magda said. "I hope he doesn't have bad traffic."

"Me too."

Magda wiped down the counters. The marble was new, without any blemishes. Everything in the house was new. Maybe he likes me because I'm not, she thought. I'm old and I'm broken.

"What would you do, Magda?" Flora asked. "If you had the day for yourself." But Magda was fishing a fresh trash bag out from under the sink and didn't hear her.

Flora stepped outside. Magda wouldn't tell her, anyway. The stones of the patio were hot against the soles of her bare feet. She would sit out all afternoon—yes, that was what she would do. She would spend her day in the house of a man she didn't love but didn't mind. Maybe tomorrow, she would do the same. At some point, she would call Cynthia and apologize. Eventually, she'd go back—slightly sun-kissed—to New York. She'd return to her empty apartment, to the thawing city, and figure out what she was going to do with herself. Cynthia would probably move to Los Angeles. She'd write her screenplay and sell it for a million dollars, or maybe not. Either way, Cynthia was right. She had never called Flora's marriage a failure. She always said, "It's a good thing where you are right now. A really good thing." Which wasn't what other people thought. Her honeymoon had been perfect. They had traveled to the Maldives, where the ocean was the truest color of blue she had ever seen. But she had been so bored that she dropped a diamond stud into the sea, knowing he would replace it. She had been so careless. And anything worth doing was worth doing badly. That much she knew.