The four of them spent hours together that day. Lala learned that Gérard and Marie-Laure had recently left the New York branch of the publishing company and returned to work at the Paris offices. They lived together in an apartment near the Eiffel Tower, and they often spent weekends at Gérard’s grandmother’s estate in Reims, where they insisted that Lala and Clive must join them for the weekend sometime very soon.
They walked along the Seine together for a few blocks and exchanged contact information when they parted company. They made a plan to make a date to get together again the following week.
“They are great fun!” Clive enthused on the way back to Lala’s place. “I am so glad we bumped into them. I had a blast!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lala grumbled. “Listen, you are coming up to my apartment. And do NOT get any ideas.”
Lala and Clive were lying on the sofa in Lala’s living room. Charles Aznavour was playing. The lights were low. Wine had been poured. Robin the Now-Much-Loved-Cat was sleeping next to Lala and was purring almost loudly enough to distract from the chansons. Lala and Clive had the tops of their heads pressed together, so that they were stretched out on their backs facing in opposite directions. Clive was expounding. Vividly.
He’s acting it all out, Lala thought. The sofa is bouncing from his theatrical gesticulations. What a freakin’ ham.
“I mean, seriously,” Clive said. “I knew you were formidable, but I had no idea how strong you are.”
Oh, for god’s sake, Lala thought.
“You went right up to the guy at the museum. You let him see you. And you let her see you. After experiencing what really is one of the most poignant stories of humiliation that I have ever heard, you marched right up to the guy and you stood proud. Lala Pettibone, I admire you!”
“Clive, you have got to quit so emphatically lifting your head and smacking it back down on the sofa, or I may get seasick and, worse still, spill some of my wine.”
Clive lifted himself on his elbow and turned to look at Lala, who had her eyes closed and was managing quite beautifully to choreograph the dance that delivered her wine glass to her lips over and over again without losing a drop, despite her concerns regarding Clive’s acrobatics.
“Lala, I grant you that I haven’t heard much of anything about the manuscript for your new novel, what’s the title . . .”
“A Woman of a Certain Age.”
“Of course! That was my idea!”
“No, it was what you called me. I had the idea of writing a book about it. In which your character gets taken down a few pegs, I might remind you,” Lala said. She switched the wine glass to her left hand and used her right hand to once again pet Robin. “What a good girl. Who’s a good kitty?”
“I like that! I like to play heroes who suffer.”
“Who says you’ve got the part? Who says the part based on you is a hero? Are you getting me more wine? That might go some way toward at least getting you an audition for the part.”
Clive leapt off the couch with enviable energy and ran to the kitchen. He modulated the volume of his voice on his travels so that he could continue his lecture and be heard.
“Anyway, I want to very, very, very strongly suggest that you include this entire story in your new novel. The whole thing about you and Gérard and Marie-Laure.”
He bounced back onto the couch. Lala lifted herself onto her elbows so Clive could refill her wine glass. Then they both plopped onto their backs again.
“It’s just such a story,” Clive continued.
I know, Lala thought. I was there. Remember?
Lala noticed something going on outside the window.
“Clive, I think the sun is starting to come up . . .”
“There you are, in love with your boss and thinking he’s in love with you, though how you could believe that when he hadn’t made a move on you in a year is just so delightfully . . . well, I was going to say naïve, but I think ludicrous is a better word . . . and then his girlfriend shows up at work and she’s moving to New York and you have a full-on bat-shit-crazy meltdown at work! And then you see him at a museum in Paris, and you don’t run screaming in shame and humiliation!”
Okayyyy, I think we’ve had just about . . .
“Clive, it’s getting late, so maybe—”
Without any warning, and certainly without wine having been called for again so soon after it had just been fetched, Clive—in one incredible leap that involved bending his back and going entirely up on his shoulders and then thrusting himself into the air in a high arc and securing his landing like a gold-medal gymnast—got himself off the couch.
“Whoa,” Lala said. “All those stage movement classes at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art clearly paid off.”
Clive seized Lala’s wine glass and put it on the table next to the sofa.
“Whoa! Let’s not get crazy here,” Lala yelped.
Clive grabbed her hands and lifted her off the sofa so that she was standing and was facing him.
“Lala,” he said, “you’re my hero.”
Ohhh, man, Lala thought. And she let herself give Clive a tight little smile. Because she was genuinely pleased that Clive had paid her that oddly charming compliment, despite having had to relive her epic, overwrought non-history with Gérard via Clive’s one-man-show to get to the point where she ended up being the victor of the tale. In a manner of speaking.
“Fine, fine, I’m very impressive. Listen, grab that bottle of wine, and you can come impress me by helping me put fresh food and water out for my feral cats.”
It’s Another
Lala’s computer had been grinding her last gear all morning. Not because of any failure or shortcoming on the part of the machine’s technology or service, but because it was the unhappy and blamed messenger of way too much mishegoss for Lala to have to put up with on a good day. Which this one was decidedly not turning out to be.
By the time she and Clive had cared for the feral cats and Clive had headed home to get some “magical beauty sleep, luv,” Lala had tried to take a nap but was forced to admit after less than fifteen minutes of spinning and twirling underneath the covers of her bed that she was wide awake and that that wasn’t going to be changing anytime soon. So she opened her laptop and got to work. Her plan was to deal with any urgent correspondence, then check in with her aunt and avoid checking in with David, and then work on her new manuscript.
The positive forward momentum of that trajectory was immediately halted by an e-mail from her colleagues, Zoe and Eliza. Lala opened the e-mail, instantly got herself agitated before she even finished reading the first sentence, and, with stiffened self-righteousness, hailed the young women via Skype.
“Hiiiii!” Zoe trilled cheerfully into the screen.
“Hiiii!” Eliza said.
“Yes, hello,” Lala said with clipped disappointment. Ample use of air quotation marks punctuated the words that followed. “I got your ‘e-hyphen-mail’ about the ‘e-one-word-no-hyphen-mail’ from our film supplier. I’ll deal with that right away. What I wanted to discuss with you is that we in our production company always hyphenate the word ‘e-mail.’ I thought that went without saying.”
“Umm . . .” Zoe began. Lala cut her off.
“We do that because The New Yorker does that.”
“Umm,” Eliza said, “it’s just that when you look at most of the world, I mean the English-writing world, they don’t hyphenate—”
“My dears,” Lala interrupted, “you must realize that I don’t give a royal shit that the rest of the world has chosen to cease using the hyphen, because if a hyphen is good enough for The New Yorker, it’s good enough for me. And, as a result, for our production company.”
Lala’s foster cat had jumped on her lap while she was fussing and sputtering at Zoe and Eliza. Lala picked her up and cradled her like a baby. The cat immediately fell asle
ep and purred loudly. The sound and the vibration against her arms had a much-needed soothing effect on Lala.
“I’m sorry,” Lala said. “I’m just not myself lately. Nevertheless, we are still going to use the hyphen.”
“Are you okay?” Zoe asked.
“I’m fine,” Lala lied.
“Are you upset because you’re sleeping with a very, very sexy famous movie star while still being engaged-to-be-engaged to a very, very sexy veterinarian?” Eliza asked.
“I am not sleeping with Clive!” Lala yelled at the screen. “And I saw you two smirking about that ‘engaged-to-be-engaged’ part, don’t think I didn’t. Okay, I love you both. Get back to work.”
Lala clicked off on their Skype connection. She cuddled the sleeping cat with even more aggressive urgency and kissed her precious little head.
Robin the Cat had been renamed Minou by Kenny, her official new papa, because her status as a female had been confirmed at the veterinary clinic. When Lala returned to the United States, Minou would have a wonderful forever home with Kenny. But for the present, Minou spent a lot of her time and most of her nights sleeping in Lala’s apartment because Lala was aching from missing her precious dogs so much, and so she especially needed to have an animal’s comforting presence and energy with her.
Lala was especially aching and missing her dogs because her aunt was being a real pill whenever Lala spoke to her. And as a result, Lala wasn’t contacting her as much as she would have if all were well with their relationship. And so she wasn’t seeing as much of her pups. And that was breaking her heart.
With equal measures of anticipation and dread, Lala called her aunt.
“Hi,” Geraldine said on the Skype screen. She was in her loungewear and Lala could see just the top of Petunia’s grey head peeking over the side of the desk in Geraldine’s study.
“Hello, my dear ones!” Lala said with an attempt to convey the comfort and security of nothing being wrong between them. Lala felt as though she could almost hear her aunt thinking, “The envelope, please . . . And the award for Least Believable Performance by a Profoundly Disappointing Niece goes to . . .”
Other than Geraldine’s blank face and Petunia’s snoring, Lala’s greeting elicited no response.
Oy vey, Lala thought.
“So, how’s everyone over there?”
“Fine,” Geraldine said. Her voice was Switzerland in its dedicated neutrality.
“That’s great!” Lala cheered. “I’m fostering a kitty!”
Lala smiled broadly and imagined that her smile looked incredibly forced. She held Minou up to her chin to show her off. Her aunt’s face allowed only a tight little smile to transform it from the blank slate it had been since the Skype call began.
Words, once again, were not going to be forthcoming.
Okay, so she only responds to direct questions, Lala thought. Fine.
“So, anything new going on over there?”
“No.”
“Do you think you’ll ever respond to me in more than one syllable ever again for the rest of our lives?”
Geraldine shrugged. Lala sighed and decided to put the issue to rest for the present.
“Could you maybe hold up my little Petunia so I can see more of her?”
Geraldine silently complied.
“Look at mommy’s baby!” Lala cooed. “Mama loves her Petunia sooooo much!”
The sight of her precious old girl banished, for the moment, any concern about her aunt’s coldness. And any thought of why her aunt was angry with her. Geraldine had been surprisingly reticent on the subject of David for the past few weeks. And her silence had spoken volumes.
Petunia and Minou slept through all of the audible and inaudible tension of the call. Lala felt a tear leave her eye and start to roll down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away, and as she did, she saw her aunt’s facial expression soften for just a moment, before Geraldine caught herself and put on her disdainful mask again. It looked to Lala as though her aunt wanted to convey that she almost couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to hold Lala in as much contempt as she did.
Lala had to quickly numb her soul so she wouldn’t start crying.
I know how much I’m disappointing you. And I won’t give you the satisfaction of seeing that I know, she thought.
“Okey doke! Well, thanks a lot, Auntie Geraldine! Talk to you soon!”
With a prim click of her mouse and her head held high, Lala ended the Skype call. Without much debate, she made a rapid series of decisions.
“Must have Ambien,” she told Minou. “Want to dors comme cher chat, without a care in the world or much of a thought in the keppie, either. No disrespect intended, Minou. Will rest on the couch with the TV on in the background. Not sure why suddenly allergic to the use of pronouns. Probably delirious from exhaustion and stress.”
Just before Lala fell asleep with Minou curled up right next to her head, she had a passing thought that she was just so damn grateful to be falling asleep. When Lala woke up hours later, it was almost a good time to go out for an early dinner. She decided to check her laptop in case anything urgent needed to be handled, and that was when the wonders of modern computer technology brought an initially unwelcome conversation.
Despite all of Clive’s commentary about how fun Gérard and Marie-Laure were and how he and Lala just had to do something fun with them again soon, Lala was determined to avoid spending more time with her late husband’s doppelganger and his lovely girlfriend. So when she saw an e-mail from Gérard with the subject line, “Encore une fois?” she shuddered.
“Merde,” she whispered to Minou, who had turned over onto her back when Lala sat up on the couch and still wasn’t conscious. Lala remembered how cats sleep eighty percent of the day and once again envied them. She opened the e-mail and immediately noted that it had been sent to her and to Clive.
“Merde,” she repeated. “Now I can’t just pretend that this communication never happened. Because Gregarious Movie Star has seen it as well. Double merde.”
Lala began reading the text aloud, clearly of the opinion that Minou needed to hear a version of the correspondence with editorial comments appended.
“Salut, nos chers amis! We had such a great time at dinner with you both! How about another adventure par quatre!—okay, Gérard, I’m thinking we’re overdoing the exclamation points, and that’s quite an observation, coming from generally-quite-excitable me—Marie-Laure and I have two high flying adventures in mind for us, if you’re game?”
Lala wrinkled her forehead downward in a frown and tapped Minou’s little tummy.
“Is he suggesting we all join the Mile High Club together? Twice?”
Lala continued reading to Minou.
“Give a call and we’ll discuss. And, P.S., Lala, we got your novel on our Kindle, and we binge-read it to each other, and we both absolutely LOVED it! Brava and congratulations! Can’t wait to see the movie!”
Lala paused. Her lips slowly melted into a thin, wide, reluctant smile.
“Oh, okay, well . . . who doesn’t love kudos?”
Her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and snorted.
“Let me guess,” she said.
“I just got off the phone with Gérard!” Clive gushed. “We’re meeting them at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow afternoon, okay?”
“Why? Where? To do what?”
“IIIIII’m not gonna tell you, because it’s a surprise!” Clive crowed.
“Okay, fine, but I just want to make it understood right off the bat that I am not having sex with any of you in an airplane, ’kay?”
Getting dressed for almost anything was almost never a fun or energizing or even vaguely tolerable event for Lala. And this day was especially daunting, because Lala’s wardrobe for her trip to Paris had not benefited from her chic aunt’s guidance. Geraldine had made it clear t
hat she was annoyed that Lala was choosing to put a continent and an ocean between herself and her “What? Fiancé? Boyfriend? What should I call him at this point, Lala?” and as a result the most help she would be giving Lala as she got ready to leave would be to remind her that carry-on liquids had to be in small bottles, which Lala had testily reminded her was something she and the rest of the world knew, merci mille fois, ma chère tante. So Lala had enlisted her new friends Zoe and Eliza to go shopping with her, warning them that her saturation point at stores was usually reached after about fifteen minutes in a dressing room. The young women had hatched a plan together to keep Lala comfortably distracted from the task at hand by locating their spree at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, with the idea that walking from retailer to retailer in the fresh ocean air and sunshine, and taking in the sounds and sights of their fellow pedestrians and the cute dogs and the street musicians, would refresh Lala on each passage so that the fifteen-minute limit could be extended to maybe half an hour in each store and result in a substantial and successful day of shopping.
Their hopes had been dashed at Banana Republic, their first stop. They had gotten Lala into the dressing room with three shirts and with a pair of sleek black pants.
Lala hated the way the shirts looked on her. She loved the pants.
“Okay,” she announced as the salesperson was ringing her up at checkout. “Let’s go to lunch and then maybe we’ll catch a movie. I’m buying.”
“But, but . . .” Zoe sputtered.
“We . . . we’ve got to . . .” Eliza began.
“We’ve got more shopping to do!” Zoe declared.
“Nuh uh,” Lala said. “I’m done.”
And so now she was trying to figure out how to dress for her second double-date. She had been told by Clive, when she whimpered, “Where are we going? What should I weeeaaaare?” that she should put on comfortable shoes and bring a sweater in case the wind got very strong.
Standing Room Only Page 19