All Eyes on Her

by Poonam Sharma

  “Congratulations, Alex.” I cupped my hands together before me, since I wasn’t sure what else to do with them. “I heard the wonderful news.”

  “Monica.” He enveloped me in a hug that seemed to startle him in its familiarity, causing him to detach swiftly and awkwardly. “Thanks, thanks.”

  “You deserve it, Alex.” I stifled the pained expression I could feel creeping onto my face.

  And I am prouder of you than you will ever know.

  “Yeah, well,” he murmured, then shoved one hand into a pocket and rubbed at the back of his neck with the other.

  Silence while I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and we both stared at the floor between us.

  “Anyway, I should be congratulating you, too, Monica. Josh tells me you just finished up law school. Your mother must be very proud. How is she?”

  Before I could answer him, his date strode over and he introduced us. I don’t remember what her name was. It’s not important. But in that moment, as he waved goodbye, I could have sworn that he lingered in a stare. Or perhaps I was assuming too much. Either way, I knew whatever chance we might have had was gone.

  And about a month after Josh and Sheila’s wedding, Raj moved back to Los Angeles.

  “Alex?” I clutched my papers to my chest, unabashedly horrified. “You’re the client?”

  “Are you disappointed?” he asked, with a smile that was a little too cozy.

  I huffed and moved over to the conference table, plunking the papers down and tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “Surprised is more like it.” I smoothed over the silk of my shirt at the stomach, as if to hold my own guts in. “Or at least, caught off guard.”

  “It’s nice to know that Steel really does its homework, then.” He took a seat opposite me, weaving his fingers together and planting them on the table.

  “Seriously,” I tried, though I was still dumbfounded, “this is so…I’m sorry.”

  He looked like a lightbulb had gone off in his head. “Monica, I am just as surprised as you are. It’s not like I was trying to hide behind that mini-palm tree or anything.”

  We both laughed. Alex and Monica. Laughing together. As naturally as if the world wasn’t standing on its head.

  “Besides, if I was trying to surprise you, don’t you think I would have come up with a better disguise than that? A mask, at the very least?”

  Wait a minute…was that a reference to the Fete?

  Was he the werewolf?

  Was I on Smacked! again?

  My eyes darted around the room, searching for any hint of a candid camera.

  “Um…hello?” he asked. “I’m trying to break the ice here. I hope this doesn’t have to be awkward.”

  “No reason for it to be awkward.” I pulled myself together and started flipping through his file. “I’m sorry to hear about your divorce. Actually, I didn’t even realize you were married. To, uh…”

  “To Carolyn,” he said, shaking his head. “You met her at Josh’s wedding.”

  Of course.

  “Well, I’m not sure it’s the best idea for me to handle this. In case there is a mediation it’s very important—”

  “This is not a mediation.” His voice was resolute. “This is the end of a marriage that never should have happened in the first place. I wasn’t ready for marriage. I was simply crazed over all the success and I guess I needed someone to hold on to. And she had demons of her own. We were impulsive, but at least we never had any kids.”

  Fascinating, I thought. And you know what else would be great? If you could tell me all about just how often she cooked for you in the nude.

  “Be that as it may—” I adopted a more formal tone to distance myself “—I think that given our history…”

  “Given our history, I think I would feel more comfortable having you help me with this, rather than some stranger. I want it over quick and easy. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. So, will you do it?”

  fifteen

  “SHH!” SHEILA PRACTICALLY YELLED THAT EVENING, AFTER ripping the front door open and doubling back toward the television. “Don’t talk to me until Extra’s over!”

  In fact, she was so vehement in her shushing that she spat on me a little bit just then. But whatever. In the wake of her debacle with the in-laws, I felt a tad selfish running over to her place right after work to spew about Alex at Steel. Naturally I picked up a couple of tiramisus on the way.

  So I was bribing a pregnant lady with food. Don’t act like you’re above it. At least the fact that she was so transfixed on the television meant she was no longer apoplectic over her in-laws. Hence we would be able to focus the conversation on me. I slipped the desserts out of the Whole Foods bag and set the plastic forks alongside them, while she turned up the volume.

  “I can’t believe this!” She gestured at the screen with the help of a pickle wrapped in cheese and exclaimed, “Can you believe this?”

  I grimaced at the sight of pound cake and a small tub of olives on the corner of the coffee table.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t stop farting. It’s disgusting, I know.”

  “Actually, I hadn’t noticed. But thanks for pointing it out. I was making a face at the little picnic you’ve got going here.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, did you want one?” She indicated her pickle.

  “I’ll pass.” I dug into my tiramisu and asked, “What’s so unbelievable?”

  “Ooooh, that’s right. You wouldn’t care. I always forget that you’re above celebrity gossip.” She tightened her jaw, I suppose to indicate that I was British?

  “I never said that.”

  “You act like it. Just because you work with these people.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna chalk that up to pregnancy crankiness. But anyway, speaking of work…”

  And then I noticed the headline as it flashed across the screen. “Camydia’s Latest Outbreak!”

  Yes, you read right, folks.

  The host explained with a bawdy grin, a bustier, and a nose that I am sure cost her at least ten thousand dollars, “That hot on the heels of rumors Hollywood’s Prince and Princess of Drama have been working on a reconciliation, basketball superstar Cameron Johnson has been spotted around town by the paparazzi again with the same unidentified blonde we’ve been hearing about for months.”

  “Monica?” Sheila snapped her fingers before my face. “Earth to Monica?”

  “What?” I waved her away, sinking back into the couch.

  “What about work?” she asked, sniffing at her tiramisu.

  “Oh, um…”

  “Oh. My. God!” She dropped the container and grabbed me by the shoulders, yelling, “Tell me that Camydia is not your client!”

  “Camydia is not my client,” I simpered.

  “Bullshit!” She slapped her own knee, hollering some more. “I’m calling bullshit! I cannot believe that all this time you didn’t tell me!”

  “I still haven’t told you,” I warned her.

  “Not directly.” She scarfed down the remaining nub of her pickle, and then licked her fingers. “But I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Look, Sheila. I came here because I have some big news. And normally you know I wouldn’t talk about a client. But in this case, I just can’t not talk about it.”

  “I’m listening.” She wiped her fingers on her pants.

  “It’s Alex. He’s my firm’s newest client. He’s getting a divorce.”

  “Mon-i-ca.” She raised her eyebrows.

  “What?” I was defensive.

  “Monica, you cannot represent him,” she insisted. “I’m too pregnant to remember my husband’s cell phone number or to think that there’s anything wrong with mixing tiramisu and pickles…but even I know that.”

  “Does pregnancy kill brain cells?”

  “Possibly. It’s like having a parasite inside of you that you love with all your heart, although you know it is slowly draining all of your energy and resources for its own use. Literally. Some wom
en never recover, even if they make it through it alive.”

  “Okaaaaaaay…”

  “I’m serious. Like, did you know that if a fetus demands too much nourishment, then the pregnancy is full of complications, like maternal diabetes and high blood pressure? It’s no wonder I’m so tired. I’m in a battle for survival!”

  “You’ve been watching PBS again.” I scraped at the remaining bottom layer of the tiramisu I had just torn through.

  “What else am I supposed to do? I can’t sleep because my mind is racing and I can’t have sex because I disgust my husband and I can’t go outdoors because my gassiness will disgust everyone else and I can’t leave the house anyway because I might forget where I live and never be able to find my way back!”

  “You could always write your address on your hand,” I yelled from the kitchen before pouring us each a glass of water. “Or hang it on a dog tag around your neck.”

  “That’s a lovely idea.”

  “I’m kidding.” I set the glasses on the table and sat back down beside her.

  “Okay, okay. Stop trying to distract me.” She gulped half her glass of water at once. “Don’t take advantage of a pregnant woman’s scattered brain. That’s bad karma. Listen very carefully—you cannot represent Alex.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because one of you is still in love with the other one.”

  “Sure,” I said. “And also, I’m due for a breast reduction.”

  But she wouldn’t be dismissed. “It’s true. I’m just not sure which one. Not the breasts. Your breasts are fine. Which one of you, I mean. You and Alex. You know what I mean.”

  Damn her and her telepathy-inducing pregnancy.

  All right, so perhaps there were still feelings.

  Maybe even issues.

  Possibly even of the unresolved variety.

  But was that really such a surprise? Or even a crime? Are these feelings so dangerous that all former lovers should be condemned to a lifetime of averting their gazes and keeping at least a five-hundred-foot distance at all times?

  I voted No.

  And I cast my vote by choosing to tackle Alex’s case head-on when I got back to the office the following morning. Not to prove that I felt nothing for him, but to prove that I could work the case despite those feelings. I had to believe that we are not slaves to our instincts any more than we are ruled by our neuroses. That while our desires may be governed by the animal in all of us, our actions most certainly were not. That we all had a series of choices to make every day, and that it was those choices, rather than the instincts, which distinguished the Stefanies from the rest of us.

  The more I thought about it, the more I was resolved. Not because I wanted to dive into the details of his marriage to that horrible slut, you understand. But because I could spend time with him, without it meaning or turning into anything. Why couldn’t a friend help a friend in his time of need?

  Like, for example, his time of divorce.

  Because in my opinion, the lingering emotions for former lovers are no more indicative of a propensity for sexual indiscretion than the cultural vulgarity of Los Angeles is indicative of a propensity for its residents to eat their own young.

  The argument made total sense. Trust me. I’m a lawyer.

  I will scrutinize and sift through every detail of their finances in search of inconsistencies, I told myself, while zipping down Wilshire Boulevard the following morning.

  I will inspect and interrogate every mole, paparazzo and passerby in their world until I find irrefutable proof of her sordid past, I mused while awaiting my Grande White Mocha at the Starbucks.

  I will pull out all the stops and make use of every underhanded technique that Steel has ever unofficially employed, to make sure that Carolyn doesn’t get the best of Alex, and to make good on the terrible thing that I said to get rid of him all those years ago, I decided while logging on to my computer.

  This mission kept me energized for most of the day, while Stefanie presumably buried herself in the relevant case law. Sometime around 3:00 p.m., my eyes started glazing over. I decided to take a break, and tilted my head backward just for a minute. And about a millionth of a second had presumably passed when…

  “Nice to see you contributing, counselor.”

  I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that it was her. I smelled the malice the instant she entered the room. I also noticed her new haircut, which was actually quite flattering. But I didn’t tell her that.

  Instead, I weaved my fingers behind my head, clear my throat and asked, “Anything interesting so far in the precedents?”

  “Monica,” she said, hovering in my doorway as if crossing the threshold would trigger the door to slam shut and lock us both inside, “let’s not act like we enjoy each other’s company. Why don’t we just e-mail each other our findings by the end of the day, and then we can conference call it tomorrow morning?”

  “Fine by me.” I stared at a spot to the left of her chin, to test the theory that refusing to look someone in the eye would necessarily make them nervous.

  “Fine. Okay then,” she concluded with an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

  Maybe I was the one with the powerful eyes. Maybe she wasn’t as tough as she looked. But the pep in my seat lasted for just another fifteen seconds because that’s how long it took for the subject matter of the next folder I lifted from my discovery pile to register in my mind: It was Alex and Carolyn’s list of assets.

  Their two bedroom condo in the Hollywood Hills.

  Their hunter-green Range Rover SUV and white Jaguar convertible.

  Their stock portfolio.

  The heirloom furniture from his family’s side.

  The century-old bone china from hers.

  Their stereo system.

  Their wall tapestries.

  Their entire kitchen full of pots and pans and ladles and melon ballers and chicken skewers and lemon zesters and baking pans…

  …all of which were intended for a life they just weren’t meant to live together. Because someone messed up. And according to my paycheck and to what I had been told, that person was her. But was divorce ever really one person’s fault? And did it matter even if it was? I thought about it the rest of the workday and through my entire drive home. Something about the process of poring over the details of Alex’s married life to another woman must have made me feel even more nostalgic for Raj. By the time I made it to San Vicente Boulevard, I was in tears.

  What would Raj be doing at exactly that moment? I wondered. And with whom?

  I couldn’t call him this time because I couldn’t handle the possibility of having him send me to voice mail again. And Sheila would probably force me to make some sort of sense, or find some way to twist it around and make it about Alex. So I headed home with the radio blaring, grateful to be living in a city where nobody ever looked closely enough into anyone else’s car to notice such a tiny detail as a steady stream of mascara leaking down someone’s cheek.

  Some women reject flowers on the principle that they are wasteful because they will die within days. I suspect these are the same women who deny that faking an orgasm is a masochistic gesture on the principle that it is better to spare a man’s ego.

  I am not one of these women.

  My attention can almost always be had for the price of a fistful of blossoms. And it’s not just because someone might have wanted to beautify my world. Truth be told, it’s the gesture of offering up a pretty, living thing, solely for my fleeting entertainment.

  How poetic.

  How decadent.

  And how very non-Hindu of me.

  But anyway.

  I bounced down my hallway with all the grace of a soccer mom in a mall on Black Friday. I’d spotted the bouquet of flowers waiting in front of my apartment when I got home that night. It was a bundle of white roses wrapped in a generous silk bow. And everybody knows that white roses symbolize new beginnings.

  At least Raj does. He’s thoughtfu
l that way.

  I swooped my pretties up into my arms and whisked them inside, as if I were about to make love to them. I dropped my bag on the floor, closed my eyes and shoved my nose deep into one of the buds to take an enormous whiff of its fragrance.

  It’s dizzying. And almost as satisfying as knowing that this means Raj must be coming back to me.

  As an afterthought, I dug out the minicard and read. But it wasn’t from Raj at all.

  Monica,

  I really am sorry.

  It was all just for the show.

  Any chance that we can start over?

  Luke

  Luke? But how did he even know where I lived? And what about Raj? I fell into a chair and promptly slammed the traitorous roses down on the table. I was racking my brain with millions of questions and rubbing my face over and over with both hands when my cell phone started to ring.

  And it wasn’t a number that I recognized.

  “So…” Luke began before I could even say hello. “Get any interesting deliveries today?”

  Pushy, presumptuous bastard.

  “Luke, what the hell is going on?”

  “I wanted a chance to explain, Monica.”

  “Tell it to the tabloids,” I snapped, realizing instantly that it was a bit melodramatic and that none of the tabloids were actually even the least bit interested in me.

  “Wait. Please. I’m not that obnoxious guy from the house. It was all an act. I was under contract and I was doing what I had to do.”

  “And that makes it okay?” I yanked out a petal and began tearing it in half.

  “I just thought of you as the mark in the beginning. But I started to really get a kick out of you. And then when you kissed me back…I was surprised…pleasantly surprised.”

  The nerve.

  “Big surprise. I’m a good kisser. Everybody knows that.” I knew I sounded more ridiculous by the minute, but I needed fuel for my indignation, so I used what I could find.