Blood Oranges

My father is a photographer and my mom was his model. She was his Marilyn in white furs and milk, his Garbo, his pearl-girl-gloved, rose-in-the-mirror, emerging from the smoke like Beauty in Cocteau's film. I don't look like her.

I started painting when I was thirteen. That was the one way I could forget about my body. Huge portraits of Beauty. But always with something a little off. The eyes of one has bars shadowing them, one bites her hand, one is pale and hollowed, one's mouth bleeds. My mother really looked at them, But when she died I stopped painting. My father never said anything about it. He's in Europe now freelancing-slick fashion shots.

I just graduated high school and I'm trying to act. I played Cordelia in Lear in my acting class and they liked it but I'm not sure I'm right for TV or movies. I've gone on a couple of interviews but they're nightmares-all these gorgeous girls in line with their headshots. For money I work in the art gallery where my father used to show his photos. One of the gallery artists does these marble figures in a classical style but the bodies are Nautilus-machine perfect. After work I go home to my dad's apartment. I eat salads for dinner usually, something low-calorie, and drink mineral water with lime. Whenever I have extra money I buy clothes-crunchy cropped sweaters in silk and cotton, short, bare dresses, long sheer ones covered in Victorian bouquets. I'm trying to be beauty, to be seen. And maybe that was the reason for this-for Mark and Camala.

I met Camala first at the gym. She's a trainer there and I used to try not to stare at those mysterious muscles she has-the arcs of her biceps, her ladder-like abdomen, tight rear end, strong, narrow quads, powerful calves. Everything tanned evenly where her clothes weren't. I wanted that perfection.

She flirted with everyone, going around asking, "How are you doing?" in her pleasure-promising voice.

One time she patted my bare stomach. One time she said, "Your arms are looking good, miss girl."

And then one time we were alone in the jacuzzi together. Soft, bluish light and the sound of the jets and my body was pulsing in the water. She was brown, beaded with wet, shiny. My father used to photograph his models in water. "It brings out beauty more than anything else." he'd say. gazing at my mother as her eye make-up ran in the steamy air. I'd gaze too. "Could you get the lights, Gigi?"

Camala asked me my name.

"Gigi," I said. "For Giselle. My mom was a ballet dancer."

"Is that how you learned to work your body hard?" she asked.

"I'm kind of obsessed," I said.

"Well, good for you. You're looking good."

I felt light-headed from the jacuzzi and her eyes on me. "You inspire me."

"I'm glad." she said.

"How do you get your body like that?"

"My boyfriend helps. He's pretty tough on me. He says it's all a sacrifice. I mean, anything really beautiful takes sacrifice. L.A. was a desert first and now look at it. And going into space. Mark says the Challenger crew were like a gift to knowledge, to understanding the universe."

Camala tossed her dark hair and the ends, damp from the jacuzzi, slapped against her dazzling shoulders as she rose up out of the water. There was a bruise on her left hip under the tan where the skin was thin. She must have seen me flinch at that one imperfection because she looked down at it.

"He's crazy," she said. "A biter."

She laughed, wrapping herself in a thick, red towel. "I'll see you next class."

"See you."

The next week in the locker room she was disarmingly naked again, arms lifted above her head as she brushed her hair. I was asking her about the best foods to eat.

"I live on fish and brown rice and lots of vegetables. Hardly any fats. There's this great restaurant in Hollywood we always go to. Mark and I'll take you. He knows everything about that stuff."

I met them in the shady courtyard restaurant where tanned people sat discussing astrology or reading movie scripts. Camala wore a short black skirt and the muscles in her calves were flexed even more than usual from the tilt of her platforms. Her hair was slicked back and her mouth very pink.

"This is Mark."

He was tall, perfectly built, with the kind of skin that looks like the sun is shining from underneath it. His teeth were white, big.

"Giselle's a pretty name." he said. He had a soft voice. His white shirt was rolled up to the elbows showing off big, veiny forearms.

The actor-type waiter came with menus and said. "Hi you guys. I'm surprised you're here when Matt's off."

Camala smiled at him, stroking her shoulders. "I knew you'd give us free soup anyway, Charlie," she said.

When he left, she told me, "Matt's my little brother. He works here and always gets us free stuff. WellÉhe used to."

We ordered and the waiter brought us carrot juice, miso soup, cold, cold salads with grated vegetables, a basket of corn bread. Mark watched me while I ate.

"You're really pretty, Gigi. Don't you think, Camala?"

"I told you already," Camala said.

I looked down.

"I mean unusual looking right? Not what you'd usually consider attractive, but it works."

"I think you're embarrassing her," Camala said. "Tell us about your work, Gigi."

"I'm trying to act," I said. "But I haven't had any luck yet. Right now I just want my SAG card."

"There's a lot of competition in this town," Mark said. "A lot of beautiful people. In L.A. you can't be too beautiful or gorgeous."

"Where can you?" Camala laughed. When Mark's fish came he said, "Fish is the perfect food." He squeezed a lemon slice, lifted a pink segment of fish with his chopsticks.

"But he eats steak, too," Camala said. "Really bloody. He just doesn't admit it."

"Once in a while flesh is good for you," he said. He kept staring at her. "Gigi, you should train. You have a cute little body. You could get to be really amazing. Camala looked like you before she met me."

"We'll help you," Camala said.

They both turned to look at me.

We started the next week. I'd sit in the outer-thigh press machine leaning forward, straining, with Mark kneeling between my legs, my hands on his shoulders. Camala would stand with one hip thrust out, telling me to breathe. Or I'd be on my stomach, curling up my calves, while they stood on either side of the machine watching me, guiding my legs. Then I'd lie on my back while Mark pushed on my thighs, helping me to stretch.

"It's important to stay flexible," he said. "The muscles in our quads can get so strong that if lightning struck, they could go into spasm and break the bones."

After training we'd go out to eat or sometimes to the Venice boardwalk to watch the body-builders and roller-skaters, eat frozen yogurt, get our fortunes told, work on our tans.

I don't know what it was, why I needed them. Maybe because they made me feel visible. I didn't question anything. I was bored with my life, my acting classes, the gallery-always tired and ravenous except when Mark and Camala were around.

One night after training we went out for sushi and saki. Mark ordered for us and we tried all different kinds of fish-translucent, firm, glossy pieces on neat beds of rice. Mark and Camala had a contest to see who could handle the most wasabe. They gobbed the pale green stuff into their mouths until their eyes teared. We laughed, sipping the saki that burned pure in our throats. Camala kept leaning up against me, giggling, her hair getting in my face. I felt her breasts pressing into me. Mark sat watching us quietly, his fingers wrapped around his saki cup. I saw the veins standing out in his neck and hands.

After, we went to a bar and drank shots of tequila and danced. We were wet from our tequila sweats, flinging our bodies around in the spill of lights. Wasted. When we left the bar, Camala leaned on me. She looked up at the full moon.

"It must have been so mysterious before they went there," she said. "Now we know it's just dust. But what makes it glow? What makes it glow, Mark?"

He came between us, putting his big hands on our shoulders. I felt the current created by all our bodies. The wires buzzed. You could almost see the blue electricity racing between the telephone poles above us, almost smell it.

"What makes you glow, baby?"

They lived in an apartment building in Hollywood called the Nefertiti. It had lotus-shaped columns in front and a lot of orange trees, heavy with fruit. Their room was all bed, dominated by this massive bed that became more and more beds reflected in the mirrors on the walls. On the walls, where there weren't mirrors, were photos of parts of lean, tan, body-builder bodies. It took a while to figure out what was what-knee or shoulder, breast or hip. Mark lit candles. It seemed like a thousand candles. There was music playing-something that gave me a thrilled feeling in my throat and at the nape of my neck.

Camala sat on the bed, took a hand mirror and looked into it, pursing her lips. She held it up to me.

"What do you see in there?"

Lit by candles, I saw myself beautiful. I touched my hair. My nipples showed through my still-damp silk shirt.

Mark came over and sat between us. He took the mirror from me and set it on big knee, that strained the fabric of his jeans. He emptied the coke onto the mirror, making a perfect, razor-sharp line with it, gesturing to me. I bent down and inhaled. It sparked through me like exploding crystals, like fireworks. I looked down at my face resting on Mark's knees. My eyes were like candles.

Camala inhaled. She sat up, tossing her hair, blinking. The candlelight shone on her brow bone, her lower lip.

"Tell us a story, Mark," she said. I could hear her breath in her voice.

He was gazing into the mirror at his face and the line of white powder. He leaned over and inhaled.

"A story? You want a story?"

"Tell us."

Still looking at his reflection, he touched his hair.

"Once there was a girl who loved a beautiful boy but he wouldn't pay any attention to her. He was in love with this girl he saw in a pool of water. He would sit staring at the girl in the water all day long. He didn't realize that she was his reflection. The girl who loved him went crazy with pain and died and the boy was turned into a flower. The Greeks told that story. I think it was really about the blood sacrifices they used to make to nature. The boy's too beautiful, dies, becomes a flower. There's blood sacrifice in almost every culture."

Mark looked up at me, took my face in his hands. Camala came and knelt at my feet. I felt her fingers unbuttoning my shirt. I was reflected in the mirrors. I was reflected in their eyes.

After that night I woke up with a hangover in my own bed. They must have brought me home but I couldn't remember. My muscles felt like water. I looked at myself in the mirror. Although I was pale, my hair a mess, I knew I had never looked so good. My skin had that milkiness that my mother's always had and I've never been able to get, even with layers of moisturizer, good cream base, a dust of silk powder. My eyes looked kind of lit up and I was shaking. I got up and tried to eat something but my stomach clenched so I drank some hot water with lemon out of a rattling cup and slept all day with the curtains shut.

I wanted Mark and Camala but I didn't want them. I didn't go to the gym and I let my answering machine pick up everytime the phone rang. Camala was the only one who called, leaving a message saying she and Mark wanted to take me out soon. I erased her voice. She called again, saying, "Why aren't you at the gym? Mark says you don't want to get fat. Call me, girl."

I didn't want them but I wanted them. I dreamed of our bodies impossibly tangled underwater, writhing in seaweed and tentacles, cut by jagged shells, our blood marbling the water. I dreamed of my toes becoming the roots of a tree, my arms extending, growing leaves, becoming branches, my hair a bouquet of fruit blossoms. I woke up and the sheets were wet from my sweat. My muscles felt so heavy I could hardly get up and the cramps in my stomach made it impossible to eat anything except a light vegetable broth. But I thought about food all the time- when I woke up, all day at the gallery, before dinner, before I went to sleep again. My muscles and my blood were pleading with me. Steak, sweet potatoes, buttery corn-on-the-cob, quarts of vanilla bean ice cream, pizza, pancakes, grilled pink salmon steaks. I remembered Mark eating his salmon that first day, his big, chewing teeth, moist lips. I thought of the restaurant. Maybe I'd see them there. I better not go, I thought. I didn't want to see them. I wanted them. I better not go.

The waiter looked like Camala. But Camala without the tan- a younger, pale Camala with dark circles under the eyes. He moved gracefully among the tables like a deer in a forest. There was something hunted looking about him. When he came over with the menu he smiled. He had deep dimples that looked like lines because his face was so lean.

"Are you Camala's brother?" I asked. The smile disappeared.

"Yes," he said. "Matt."

"I'm a friend of your sister's and Mark's." I noticed how thin the skin was over the bridge of his nose and the tops of his cheeks- almost translucent, lightly freckled. Those dark circles under his eyes. He didn't look well.

"What do you do?" he asked when he brought my food.

"I'm an actress. Trying to be. I work in a gallery."

He smiled again. "Do you paint?"

I never talked about my painting. I wanted to be the work of art myself. But when Matt asked I said, "I used to a little."

"Great. You need to in this city. Do something creative or it eats you alive."

When I finished eating he said, "I'd really like to see you again, where we could talk."

I wrote my name on a napkin and gave it to him. Before I left he looked right into my eyes- not at my breasts or legs. I thought of Camala's and Mark's eyes like mouths ready to eat my body. Then Matt's eyes disappeared as he smiled and shook my hand. He had a warm, dry, firm grip.

"I'll call you," he said.

He called the next night and I lay on my peach satin comforter as the sky darkened, talking to him. I hadn't talked about art for so long. I remember how it used to feel when I worked. I'd forget about my bone structure, my hair. The blood would be rushing through me and when I was done I'd feel weak but light and clean. Matt and I talked about Klimt's women in gold mosaic, the fall and pattern of the fabric. Picasso's Blue and Rose periods. The Rodin museum in Paris.

"There's this whole world I want to see. I forget sometimes. I can't breathe here," he said.

"Can you see the moon?" I asked, watching it rise outside my window.

"Want to go out next weekend?" he asked.

It was the third of July. I gave myself a clay mask, deep conditioned my hair, did my nails, my make-up. Matt came to the door looking like a pale Camala. I got him some mineral water and he looked around. He stood in front of one of my Beauty paintings, one with green hair like leaves, like she was becoming a tree.

"This is good. Is this yours?"

I nodded. "It's old."

"Can I see more?"

And I showed him.

He stood and looked at each one for a long time. Then he looked into my eyes. "You should keep working."

I shrugged. I wanted to get away from the pictures.

We ate in an Italian restaurant. Matt took a roll from beneath white linen, cracked the gold crust, buttered the soft inside, handed it to me over the red candle. Since I'd tasted the food he'd served me at the restaurant where he worked my stomach had been feeling better. He ordered angel hair pasta for us.

"How'd you meet my sister?"

"I work out with her.

He was silent.

"It helps release tension," I said. "It makes me feel better about myself."

"You sound like me," he said. "I used to work out with them. I was trying to do acting too. I started training with Mark and Camala. But then I realized how obsessive it was. That was my life. Not that it's bad to work out. But those guys are just obsessed." He paused. "You have a lot of other reasons to feel good anyway, like your painting."

"Are you acting now?" I asked.

"No way. When it comes down to losing a part because your eyes are the wrong color, trying to flirt with everyone to get commercial work you don't want anyway. It kind of made me sick."

"So what now?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. Living."

After we'd eaten he got up, took my hand, danced me around in front of the bar while an old man in a red vest played piano. It was late and the restaurant was empty. Matt's hair smelled of smoke, corn bread and leaves. Feeling his heart beating I forgot about myself. It wasn't until later in the restaurant bathroom, seeing my reflection, that I thought about my face, my hair, what he was seeing while we danced.

We drove to Santa Monica and walked in the park overlooking the water. Some homeless people slept in the gazebo or on the damp grass. A man staggered up to us, asking for change. Matt gave him some, looking straight into his eyes.

"It blows me away to see how people live in this city," he said, his mouth twisting. "This oasis."

We were quiet for a while, walking. I could smell the ocean.

"I have so much," I said. "But for some reason I can't seem to appreciate it. I'm always wanting more things to make me feel better."

"It's hard here," Matt said. "There's no real nourishment."

I thought about my job, the gym, my closet full of clothes. Maybe if I got away from this city for a while. Painted again.

Matt turned to me and I saw him very white and almost fragile looking in the moonlight.

"I know we don't even really know each other but I just think you should be careful with this thing with my sister and Mark. It really screwed me up. I just think you should think about it."

"What do you mean?"

He shivered, hunching into his denim jacket. "Just be careful, okay?"

We stayed there a long time. People started arriving with the pinkish light to see the fireworks at dawn. We stood against the railing looking out over the pier as the sky exploded with fire flowers. Matt put his arm lightly around my shoulders.

When we got back to my apartment my heart was pounding. I asked him in and went into the bathroom to wash my face. In the mirror I saw that my eyes were glazed and circled with shadows and my make-up was smudged. My skin looked blotchy. As I stood there staring at myself, feeling a queasiness in my stomach, there was a knock on the half-open door and Matt came in. He stood behind me, reflected in the glass.

"Your paintings are really a trip, Giselle," he said. "Can I call you Giselle?"

I nodded. That was how I signed the Beauties.

"You shouldn't need Mark and Camala to make you feel beautiful," he said.

I wanted to undress for him then, in front of the mirror, stand there exposed so he could see me, really see. My hand went to the buttons of my shirt, hesitated; our eyes met in the mirror.

Matt shook his head and reached for my hand. I turned to him, running my free hand through his soft hair. Then my fingers traveled along the side of his face to his throat. I unbuttoned the shirt collar, feeling the warmth. He pulled away. On the smooth, pale skin of his neck I saw a scar-precise, painful looking, the memory of some deep fruit-like wound. But he had pulled away. Had I really seen it?

"Matt?" I said. I shut my eyes and there was an image of three bodies tangled on a bed. Two men and a woman. Candlelight. Mirrors. Blood flowering the sheets. "There's blood sacrifice in almost every culture," I heard Mark's voice say.

Matt turned and I followed him out of my bathroom to the front door. "Be careful, Giselle," he said again before he left.

I went back into the bathroom and undressed. I took a bath, tenderly soaping my body. I got into bed, held myself as I fell asleep.

I waited for two weeks, hoping Matt would call. Then I went by the restaurant during his shift but he wasn't there. I called but they said he'd quit. He wasn't listed in the phone book.

During that time I'd avoided Camala but now I called her.

"Where've you been?" She sounded cold.

"I've just been really tired lately," I said. "I haven't been feeling too well. Camala, I called to ask for your brother's number."

"What?" I could hear her breathing out through her nostrils. "Matt? Don't tell me you're all into Matt."

"Could you just give me his number?" Suddenly I didn't care what she thought.

"Listen, Gigi, my brother's sick. He has a blood disease. And he's always getting people involved with him and then just cutting them off. Just forget about Matt. You have enough of your own problems."

"He has what?"

"Something's wrong with his blood. They're doing tests. I can't believe you got involved with Matt."

"I need to talk to him, Camala. Where is he?"

"Forget it," Camala said. "Listen, Gigi, Mark and I are working out tonight and getting dinner. You should come. You'll feel better." Her voice was the pleasure voice again.

"Aren't you even going to go see your brother?" I asked.

"Gigi, Matt has people, okay? He used to be really close to Mark and me but now we don't talk. He's crazy. I mean, it's sad he's sick but, you know, just because he's my brother doesn't mean I have to like him."

I hung up.

That night I dreamed about Mark. I was standing naked in front of him and he wouldn't look at me. He was staring into a mirror and nothing stared back at him. I woke up shaking, sweating. I knew I needed to see Mark and Camala again one more time.

"I heard about this guy who went insane. He got into his orange trees so much he went to the hospital and brought human blood for the soil," Mark says, tearing a segment of orange and putting it into Nina's mouth with his long fingers.

"No way, Mark. Someone made that up because of the name of those kind of oranges," Camala says.

"It's true."

"I don't believe it. Hospitals don't just sell blood like that."

"Maybe he got it some other way."

"You are sick sometimes, Mark."

I am sitting with Mark and Camala on the lawn above the sea. It's dark now after a sunset where the sun hung low in the sky like one of Mark's blood-bred oranges. The moon is rising. Camala strokes her bare, tanned shoulders and Mark turns to her. His teeth are white in the moonlight, big.

"And you are my little blood orange," he says.

He leans toward her. I know the wound will be fruit-like like the one on Matt's throat.

I get up and start to run.

Shivering on the bus that will take me home, I know I will never see them again. And Matt is gone. I'll go home, take out my paints, my canvas, squeeze some color onto a palette. Paint beauty. Maybe not a woman this time. Maybe a crystal, a light, an explosion of lights, a tree covered with suns. The paint I squeeze out will be wet and red like blood but it will be paint.

A different sacrifice to a different beauty.