“I love you,” Topper says over lunch in the garden. “Do you know why?” He looks up from The New Yorker.
I feel some force field ripple between us.
“You’re making a girl flush.”
He sits up straighter. “I need you to know,” he says, fixing me with that intense gaze. “It’s your insistence on being free.”
He sets the paper aside, crosses his legs, folds his arms.
“You’re this mysterious creature, always just out of reach.”
He pauses. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” though I don’t, not really. I feel like he’s put me on a pedestal again.
“What I mean is, you’re more spirit than earth.”
I smile, surprised. I’m already a little bored with this sentimental speech.
“And I think that’s what keeps you tethered to the boy,” he goes on. “It’s why people out here think you belong on the silver screen. You have that… ethereal thing.”
He watches dust motes drift in the warm air. “Mythical. Mystical.”
He uncrosses his legs and sips his coffee.
“What I’m trying to say…” He puts the cup down. “I understand you. I see what you need, even if you never quite tell me.”
He gazes out at the garden.
At last, I get up, cross over to him, and settle in his lap, ruffling his thick sandy hair.
He slips his hands around my waist. “There’s no need to perform around me,” he says softly. “That’s all I’m trying to tell you.”
“I know,” I say, squinting at him.
He shakes his head. “I’m just saying.” His fingers trace down my arm.
I wrap my arm around his back. Together we look out at the terrace and the hills beyond.
He laughs quietly, and I ask what’s so funny.
“I was just thinking,” he says. “You really did use America as your way out, as your escape.” His voice shifts. “Coming here from postwar Europe in ’48, you came to live in a dream. In the movies.”
We both giggle a little; it’s true and, in hindsight, absurd.
“I can’t believe I ever told you that,” I say.
Topper strokes my hair, unreadable. “But you have. And somehow you made it real. All those dreams of America, look at you now. You’re surrounded by movie stars and society girls. All the people you imagined as a child: Cary, Sinatra. You pulled them into your orbit.”
I feel exposed, unsure if he means praise or criticism.
“But the boy isn’t part of that,” I say. “He’s just a boy I met at school. I don’t care about class or status. The person who means the most to me might be Miss Mary.”
I disagree with him completely, and I’m disappointed he’s got me so wrong.
Topper is quiet for a moment. Then: “Yes. But look at what you’ve made the boy become.”
I blink. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “I’m not saying you’re to blame for his fame. But you made him feel the need to be larger-than-life, to become a myth, so he could fit inside your world of dreams. You’ve shaped him into something legendary, whether you meant to or not.”
“Can’t you see?” he presses. “He’s always reaching for you inside that dreamland you pull us all into.”
“I don’t agree,” I say. “I live right here, in reality. I don’t need anyone to be mythical or larger-than-life.”
“But you do, Birdie,” Topper says gently. “And it’s not a bad thing. It’s what makes you who you are.”
“I’m not seeking fame or fortune,” I protest. “So how can you say that?”
He smiles, a little sadly. “You’re not famous because you don’t want to be. If you wanted it, you’d have it. But then the fantasy would disappear. You and the boy, you thrive in your inner worlds. This way, you can live in the dream and step out whenever you choose. That’s what I mean about you being free. Your inner life saves you from the banality of just existing.”
Now I’m annoyed.
He sees my expression, my almost allergic reaction, and stops himself.
We sit in silence until he shifts the mood back to lighter ground: friends, family, our future. What he said dissolves into the background, and we laugh again in the California sun. I look at his handsome face and accept we don’t always see eye to eye, and he likely thinks the same of me.
L.A. is lush and alive, but there’s a dread beneath it. I feel the strange pull toward him, that sense of being both rooted and free, held here, and hovering above it all. For some reason I think of reading Leaves of Grass at school, of Topper and of the boy and the poem:
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
My novel GREAT ARE THE MYTHS will be serialised (one chapter each day) over the summer of 2026. If you would rather listen to the audiobook, the full story is available for free on all the usual platforms. Info and links HERE
My World of Interiors 