All Eyes on Her
Page 23
“Luke.” I stood up.
“You didn’t avoid making a mistake, Monica.” He continued, “You ran screaming because you couldn’t handle that you were opening up.”
“You’re wrong.”
“You’re closed off,” he concluded as matter-of-factly as if he had mentioned that he was allergic to mushrooms.
“Luke, I am sorry that you need to accuse me of these things to massage your ego, but I am not closed off.”
“Prove it,” he challenged.
“What? How?”
“I don’t know. But if you really mean it, then prove it.” He was so smug.
“You want me to prove to you that I feel nothing more than embarrassment when I think of you.”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” I went calm, suddenly seeing the most obvious way to kill at least three birds with one stone. “Why don’t you join me and my friends for dinner on Friday night?”
twenty-six
“APPLES AND BLUE CHEESE FOR THE SALAD?” CASSIE HOISTED herself up onto my counter and popped a few pecan-halves into her mouth that Friday night. “This doesn’t look very Indian to me.”
“You know I can’t serve Indian food.” I shooed her away from the pecans, handing her a Granny Smith and a peeler instead. “It’ll never be as good as my mom’s cooking.”
“So?” She took a bite out of the apple.
“So…I have no problem serving mediocre French or Italian food, but I will not serve sub-par Indian food.”
“Then why don’t you learn how to make better Indian food?”
“I will…one day. Why don’t you stop eating the things that you’re supposed to be chopping up for the salad? What are you, pregnant?”
“No.” She pouted, swinging her heels off the edge of my counter. “I’m nervous. I can’t believe you invited Jonathan.”
I stopped stirring to wave a ladle at her. “You two need to decide whether you’re gonna kiss and make up or grow up and move on. No more games. No more wasting time. Stop messing around.”
“But…”
“Stop it.”
“Well.”
“Cut it out.”
“Monica, I—”
“Don’t make me force everybody to play Seven Minutes In Heaven just to get you two alone together!”
“I miss that game,” she said wistfully.
“This is not for fun, Cassie. We all need to get things out in the open and act like adults,” I ordered, wondering why I had chosen to step into my party clothes before finishing up with the cooking.
“You’re mean.” She snatched another pecan.
“And you’re tall.” I skimmed the recipe for my entrée one more time, to make sure I hadn’t left anything out.
“So?” she asked.
“So, that makes you a mutant among Indian women. And it also makes you useful in the kitchen because you can get me another boullion cube from the top cupboard without my having to climb up onto the countertop in my dress.”
I was breathing heavily onto one of the soup spoons, so that I could shine it on my apron, when the doorbell rang a little while later. I lined the spoon up with the fork, grabbed a matchbox from my pocket, and lit the five votives positioned down the middle of what I had to admit was an impeccably laid table. After a final once-over, I yanked off my apron and swiveled in the direction of the door, shoving the apron into the closet.
“I don’t remember you having such a domestic side to you” came a voice from the other end of my hallway that stopped me in my tracks.
“Alex?” I almost whispered.
“And dessert, too!” Josh barreled past him to thrust a cake box at me before heading toward my dining room. “I brought wine. See? Two presents!”
I gritted my teeth and headed for the kitchen.
“Why don’t I help you with that?” Alex appeared behind me. “You know you always leave the cork in the bottle.”
I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Not one bit.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve seen me open a bottle of wine,” I said, yanking the cork out in one clean gesture, and then yelling to Cassie, “Cassie, can you please set another place at the table?”
“True, Monica. But people don’t change that much,” Alex said.
I gently shooed him away from the oven door. “What are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to talk to a dinner guest?” he asked my behind as I leaned down to check on the chicken in the oven. And to ponder what it might be like to stick my head in.
Inside the oven, not the chicken. Try to keep up.
“Josh told me that you and Raj ended your engagement…and it got me thinking.”
Before I could respond, or vomit, or fake unconsciousness, the doorbell rang again. I bolted upright, slamming the oven door shut. Oh crap. Luke and Alex and me and Cassie and Jonathan and Josh and Sheila musing about the state of the economy over chocolate cake? What could possibly go wrong?
I was pulling off my oven mitts when I heard Sheila’s voice booming through the apartment. Her signaling was about as subtle as a train wreck.
“Oh, hello! You must be Luke!” she bellowed. “It’s nice to meet you! And you brought a bottle of wine, too! Well, how thoughtful! What is that, red wine? Is it a cabernet or a merlot? Really?”
“Luke,” I called, swooping down the hallway with a glare in Sheila’s direction to rescue the confused man who didn’t understand why my cousin was trying to deny him entry. “Come in, come in! We’ve uh…got a full house here, tonight. But I’m glad you could make it.”
“Hey, man.” Alex offered the first firm, eye-contact-intensive handshake of the evening. “Good to meet you. I’m Alex. Can I take that bottle of wine off your hands?”
His voice must have dropped three octaves. And to drive the point home, he laid a hand on my waist before swinging nonchalantly toward the kitchen. “I got it, babe. I know where you left the corkscrew.”
Luke replied with a short, upward nod that men have been using to acknowledge each other for centuries. The kind that says everything and nothing at once.
“Ah-huh-huh-huh” was all the awkward banter I could manage.
“Hey, people,” Jonathan cut his wobbly salutation short, having wandered in just behind Luke.
He took one look at Luke, nodded in Cassie’s direction, and then threw his coat over a chair with a satisfied and inebriated flourish.
“Awesome,” he said. “Soooo, anybody need a stiff drink? No? Just me?”
“Um, Luke,” I began. “This is my cousin Sheila and her husband Josh, and Cassie and Jonathan from work, and well…you already met my friend Alex…”
“Friend?” Jonathan guffawed, while blowing into my martini shaker, as if it might be filled with dust.
“Are you drunk?” Cassie came up to my wet bar and accused Jonathan, while Sheila and Josh stared nervously at one another.
“Are you frigid?” he shot back, loosening his tie.
“Idiot,” she mumbled, before heading back toward the kitchen.
“Tease!” Jonathan called after her.
“Alex!” I said, way too cheerfully. “It’s time to bring out the salads. And why doesn’t everyone, um…er…have a seat?”
“You invited that guy from the TV show to dinner?” Alex’s nostrils were flaring when I got into the kitchen.
“What’s with the attitude?” I asked, lifting up the tray of mushroom soup, and whisking them out of the room…
…and almost slamming into Luke, who also suddenly seemed to have developed the need to make himself useful.
“Can I get that?” He took the tray from my hands. “It seemed like your cousin and her husband needed a minute alone, so I thought I’d come hang out in here.”
Two men, a hot kitchen, a lot of wine…I think I had a dream like this once. Although I couldn’t be sure which one of them would be feeding me strawberries, and which one would be dipping me gingerly into the massive vat of chocolate fondue.
“You don’t look so good, Sheila,” Cassie was saying while I ladled chicken onto everyone’s plates.
“Oh, I’m a little distracted. My husband here thinks we should give the baby a Hebrew first name and an Indian middle name, but I think it should be the opposite.”
“It’s just another one of the many things we should have talked about before we got married.” Josh lifted her hand from her belly to kiss it. “But at least we’re working through it all now…just the two of us.”
I couldn’t resist a smile in Alex’s direction. Back in college he had always said that he loved my grandmother’s name so much that he would gladly have swapped it for the promise of an annual family trip to Italy. He must have been thinking the same thing, because our eyes met when I looked up.
“So, you guys dated in college, huh?” Luke slopped some spinach onto his plate rather abruptly. “Jonathan mentioned it didn’t end very well.”
“Jonathan, I can’t believe you’re gossiping like that!” Cassie admonished.
“You don’t tell me what to do,” he slurred in her direction, while chomping on an olive.
“Honey, don’t you think maybe you’re overdoing it with those peppers?” Josh asked Sheila.
“Not at all,” she replied, before dropping her fork with a clatter and palming her belly. “Seriously, though. Back me up here, ladies. Don’t you think I’m justified, Cassie? Monica?”
“So Monica’s opinion is relevant, but mine isn’t.” Jonathan burped.
Cassie shoved a hunk of bread in his direction with a glare that apparently amused him into momentary silence.
“Well, I can see both sides,” I began carefully. “I will say that it’s gonna be easier for your child to lose out on the Indian part of its heritage in this country than it will be to lose out on the other part…just by virtue of the lack of Indian visibility in the popular media and landscape…as opposed to the Jewish synagogues on practically every street corner in Beverly Hills. So maybe an Indian first name wouldn’t seem so unfair. But then again…”
“Seriously, Sheila. Maybe you should take it easy on those peppers,” Josh urged.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “And don’t cut Monica off!”
“You don’t have to finish it just for her sake!” Josh pushed. “It’s not like she’s married and cooks all the time or anything. She’s not gonna take it that personally.”
“So now single women can’t cook?” Cassie sprang to my defense, waving her wineglass at him.
Jonathan grinned, satisfied that her irritation had really been inspired by him.
“Oh…I’m sure that’s not what he meant.” I tried to keep the peace. “More chicken, anyone?”
“Don’t tell me what I meant,” Josh said, rendering the table silent.
Until…
“When have you even managed not to burn a Pop-Tart?” Jonathan snapped.
“Insults will not win me back.” Cassie stood up and headed for the bathroom.
“Then what will?” he mumbled, but she didn’t hear him.
“Josh…” Sheila said.
“No, Sheila. If she can speak her mind while we’re eating, just because we’re family, then so can I! It goes both ways!” Josh lifted his napkin from his lap and dropped it onto his plate.
“I already apologized for what happened at brunch!” I said.
“You’re doing a lot of apologizing these days.” Luke was snide.
“How exactly did you two manage to…er…reconnect?” Alex hacked into his chicken and shoved a heaping spoonful into his mouth. “After he humiliated you on national television, I mean.”
“Los Angeles is a small town.” Luke took a massive mouthful of his own, before starting to gag on an oversize pepper.
It might not have been Tandoori, but at least it was spicy.
“What’s the matter, buddy?” Alex sneered, lifting a similar pepper off his own plate and chomping proudly into the middle. “Can’t handle the heat?”
“Excuse me.” Sheila stood up and started to wobble toward the bathroom. “I think I’ll go powder my nose.”
Jonathan dropped an armful of dinner plates into my sink rather theatrically: “Are you going to do something about the situation in the dining room?”
I was hovering over the cake, dropping raspberries onto each plate.
“Monica!” He practically stomped to get my attention. “Are you listening to me? Josh went after Sheila to make sure she didn’t fall into the toilet bowl, so now it’s just Alex and Luke growling at each other. The tension’s so thick it sobered me up.”
“Are you gonna do something about the situation with Cassie?” I raised an eyebrow, while drizzling a little too much powdered sugar over the raspberries.
“What can I do? She obviously hates me.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Because women always get that worked up over men they don’t give a damn about. Kind of like how stripclub owners with names like Bruno always marry for love.”
“I wonder where Bruno is these days.” He smiled to himself. “I should look him up.”
“Get out of my kitchen,” I said, putting on the coffee. “The sooner we all eat this damn cake, the sooner I can kick you all out and move on with my life.”
“What’s Luke doing here, anyway?” He sprayed whipped cream down the length of his finger, and then licked it off.
“Do you have to be so unsanitary?”
“I think you know that I do.” He faked a bashful expression.
“Long story.” I counted out the teaspoons. “I kind of almost slept with him this weekend, and then I ran out, and then I called to make amends and he wouldn’t accept the apology, so I invited him here as a peace offering. Sort of.”
“Almost?”
“What?”
“Almost slept with him? What does that mean? I know what it means to me, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean the same thing to a nice Indian girl like you.”
“It means I mauled him in an elevator, did a striptease in a hotel room, made out with him in a hot tub and then ran away. You know, high school stuff.”
“What high school did you go to? All of your old boyfriends must still be blue from the neck down.”
“Shut up.” I smirked.
“I take it back! You’re a bad Indian girl. A bad, bad Indian girl!”
“Down boy.” I quelched that hungry look in his eyes before sending him on his way with a towel snap to the butt. “Or better yet, out!”
“Monica?” he yelled a few seconds later from the vicinity of the front door. “Monica!”
“What now? No, I am not mediating between you and Cassie from opposite sides of my bedroom door. Everybody needs to grow up and stop hiding and take care of themselves!”
“Um…there’s someone here you’re gonna want to see!” He sounded as if he was trying hard to remain calm.
Which was odd, since I hadn’t even heard the ringing of the doorbell.
twenty-seven
“YOU GOTTA HIDE ME!” A FIGURE IN A PURPLE TRACKSUIT bolted toward me, hunched over as if a hail of gunfire was going off overhead.
And they might not have had guns, but the avalanche of flashes that proceeded to flood through my bay windows nearly blinded me.
“Goddamn paparazzi!” she moaned, before yanking off a bobbed, blond wig, dark sunglasses and peeling off a prosthetic nose.
It was Lydia. In my living room. With no explanation and no idea what she had walked into.
“It’s like something out of Alien!” Jonathan commented, to nobody’s amusement.
“Don’t just stand there, Jonathan! Make yourself useful and go and close the damn shades! I’m not paying you for nothing!”
“Actually, Lydia,” I said, stepping forward, “you aren’t paying us at all…remem
ber? We’re off your case. You’ve reconciled with Cameron.”
“Well, it looks like I’m hiring you again.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and picked at the last of the faux-skin lingering on her nose. “We need your help tonight.”
“Paparazzi scum!” Cassie complained while helping Jonathan shut the shades, and then let out a giggle. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
“We?” I interrogated Lydia.
She smiled. “Okay, here’s the deal. I have a confession to make. But first, are we on the same page that I’ve hired you again so you have to maintain confidentiality?”
“You’ve barged in unannounced and ruined my dinner party.” I crossed my arms. “I don’t think you get to set the conditions.”
“Yeah, and it was such a great dinner party in the first place,” Jonathan shared.
“Cool, cool. Look.” She breathed deep and took a seat at my table. “This whole marital-mediation-thing? It’s a bunch of crap. Cam and I are fine. We always were. We’re solid. But my career needed a boost, so…and this was all my publicist’s idea…so we staged this whole ‘rocky marriage’ thing.”
“And?” Cassie was on pins and needles.
“And,” she continued, “my publicist thought my fans needed a new reason to root for me, and if they thought Cam and I were working through a rough time, and actually came out on top, it would boost record sales. I have a new album coming out in a month, so time’s a-wasting.”
“Why the wig?” I asked.
“I’m the mystery woman,” she said, as if it was obvious. “My husband is cheating on me with me. We needed a hussy for him to run around town with, but we couldn’t really trust anyone not to leak it to the press.”
“And why did you hire Steel?”
“Because it made it look more real. Think about it. If I hired the most private divorce firm in the city, then we must really be on the verge of a breakup, right? I even had to put on that show for you at Barneys because we knew the manager would leak it to Pucker immediately. I was expecting them to run photos of me having a meltdown on the floor of that dressing room.” She winked and went on. “Pretty good, huh? My agent wants me to do some movies next year, too, once the album’s out. I told him I’d think about it.”