The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  Ralph went berserk. He adored the concept. It was a three-hankie weepie. It was a thousand theaters at Christmas. Every other movie love story paled in comparison. With Tony’s permission he called V.J.’s office and briefly pitched it over the phone. The assistant pitched it even more briefly to V.J., who was interested enough to set up a meeting. Could I, Ralph asked reverently, read the script? Tony dropped it off at his office on Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock. By the time he got back to the apartment there was a message on the machine. Ralph loved it. He would love it to be his directorial debut. He had a good relationship with V.J., or at least with his assistant, and he was sure this was something V.J. would really spark to. Tony had not told Mouse.

  “Lucky? What do you mean? This is our life, not entertainment.”

  “It’s the wedding that’s gotten you so on edge.” Tony sat down next to her on the diving board.

  “Why am I the only one it’s gotten on edge? You’re involved in this too, you know.”

  “Yes, but as the groom, my job is merely to get myself to the church on time, whereas –”

  “– whereas I’m responsible for everything else. Great.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to get married?”

  Mouse looked through a wobbly, dissipating smoke ring at Mimi, Shirl, and Auntie Barb in the kitchen. They seemed to be engaged in careful debate over the appropriate salt and pepper shakers. “No.”

  “Good.” He took a drag off her cigarette and gave her the smoke back in a kiss.

  The end of his screenplay ended not with Mouse coming to him in Rwanda but with their wedding on the mountain, in the fog, among the gorillas.

  8.

  NITA KATZ’S OFFICE WAS IN AN OLDER BUILDING IN Beverly Hills, the kind that used to house third-rate detective agencies in film noir from the nineteen-forties. It was on the sixth floor, between two mediums, each of whom was allegedly possessed by the spirit of one of the original Warner Brothers.

  “How do they both stay in business?” asked Mouse. She perched uncomfortably on the edge of Nita’s mooshy mauve sofa. Nita handed her a cup of coffee in a big white cup balanced on a steering wheel-sized saucer. Mimi stuck to an Evian. Sometimes even the bubbles in a Perrier brought on a binge.

  “One channels Jack, the other channels Sam,” said Nita. “You should see the studio executives in and out of there. All day long. Fiancé of a client of mine has been to both. Jack always counsels making the picture but keeping the cost down. Sam says don’t make the picture unless you can get somebody big box office.”

  “How are they in life or death situations?” asked Mouse.

  “Those are life or death situations,” said Mimi. “She just got back from Africa.”

  “Really? Safari?”

  “She lived there,” said Mimi. “That’s why she needs you. I told her you were a genius.”

  Mouse had to hold the cup and saucer with two hands. They were special café au lait cups imported from Italy, Nita said. Used to drinking everything from goat’s milk to vodka from the odd jar or tin camp cup, Mouse was stunned by the size. They held enough coffee and milk to float a tanker.

  In fact, everything in the office, from the coffee cups to the eight-by-eight-foot lithograph of Nita’s eerily poreless face – executed by, Mouse presumed, some well-known artist – hanging behind her big black laminate desk, to Nita herself, red corkscrew curls, a wonderful Roman nose, was oversized and gleaming. Mouse felt as though she had gone through a shrinking machine.

  But Mouse liked Nita. She had a soft, Southern accent-tinged voice. She didn’t tell Mouse what Mouse was supposed to want, would wind up wanting, or would regret she didn’t have. She listened. She took discreet notes in a black snakeskin notebook.

  “What kind of name is Mouse?”

  “It’s Frances, really. Mouse was a nickname growing up.”

  “Just like I’m Mimi. Our real names are Margaret and Frances. Yucky, huh?”

  “When Mimi said her sister Mouse I thought it was Mowz or something. Something Arab.”

  “Nothing so exotic. Mouse, like it sounds, M-O-U-S-E. Frances, Fran, that’s not such a great name. There was a girl in high school, Fran Martinotti – she’s probably your cousin – anyway, she had a huge mole on her eyelid. So Frances, no. Mouse is good professionally, too.”

  “It is?” said Nita. “In what sense?” She scribbled a few notes. On what, Mouse could not imagine.

  Mouse was nervous. That morning she had tried on everything in her suitcase, wondering what the bride-to-be wore to one of these appointments. She settled on the Uniform of the Adult Western Woman: the oatmeal tweed blazer, khaki twill skirt, and brown pumps she’d bought in Nairobi. She saw now she could have stuck to her jeans. Mimi had warned her. Nita wore ballet tights, flats, an old linty black sweatshirt turned inside-out. She sat sideways in her chair, her legs slung over one arm.

  Mouse’s stomach sputtered and gurgled, making the kind of sounds rarely found outside a high school chemistry lab. “I don’t know if Mimi told you,” she continued, too late to disguise them. “I make documentaries. That is, I try to. In Nairobi I found myself specializing in hardship films, documentaries that because of their location or subject are more difficult than usual to make. For example, I did a film on stalagmites. I shot for ten days in a cave a mile and half long, the width of a phone booth.”

  “Oooghh.” Nita shook her wide elegant shoulders.

  “You know what they said in third grade about prepositions: anywhere a mouse can go. I’m like a preposition in that sense. Or that’s how I bill myself.”

  “Anywhere a mouse can go?” said Nita doubtfully.

  “Under, over, in, on, by –” said Mimi.

  “– with,” contributed Nita.

  “With, yes, with is a preposition.”

  Nita stared at Mouse blankly, her thin silver pen poised above her notebook.

  “Now I’m getting married,” said Mouse. “I figure I can shoot in a cave the width of a phone booth, I can get married, right?”

  Nita pointed at Mouse with the end of her silver pencil. She tapped the air in front of her pale face with it. “You,” she said, “are a smart woman. What I call a Thinking Bride.”

  “That’s what I thought I was,” Mimi sputtered into her water glass.

  “You want the most and the best for your money. You don’t have time to waste.”

  “The Thinking Bride,” laughed Mouse. “Now there’s an oxymoron. Not that I don’t want to get married. I do want to get married. It’s just, I want something…”

  “Perfect.”

  “Perfect,” Mouse echoed. “The adjective on everyone’s lips.”

  Nita petted the glossy red nails of first one hand, then the other. Mouse watched, mesmerized. The nails were wide and shiny. They looked like the hoods of ten tiny foreign sports cars.

  Mouse raised her cup with two hands and sipped her café au lait. Suddenly she said, “I tell people I’m getting married, and they’re all so happy for me. Even people who’ve never met Tony and hardly even know me.”

  “They’re jealous you have someone to work the VCR and they don’t,” said Mimi.

  “As a rule, the people whom you think are the most happy for you are those whom are the least happily married.”

  Mouse couldn’t help noticing that even though Nita seemed intelligent, she did have trouble distinguishing between that puckish grammatical duo, who and whom.

  “You know,” said Mouse, “things have changed since I’ve been gone. I left in the early seventies and marriage was out. Out, out, out. Everyone thought of it as a prison without wails, being strapped to the same person. It made sense. Even though I was pretty young, it made sense. Why would you want to enslave yourself for life? Now I come back. I come home, and women – Mimi’s friends, women I meet around – are frantic. Dying to tie the knot with anyone who’s remotely eligible. Falling all over themselves to become their mothers, which is what I always thought we never wanted
to be,” Mouse blurted out. Her knees were shaking beneath the giant saucer resting on her lap.

  “We’re all finding out it’s easier to be our mothers than ourselves.”

  “Are you your mother?” asked Mouse. “You’re not your mother, surely.”

  “I was my mother. I was a first grade teacher and clipped coupons in Rochester. Who could stand it? I left Gary and moved to L.A.”

  “I was Shirl, Mouse,” Mimi said. “You weren’t here while I was married. I made tuna casserole and scrubbed the bathroom tile once a week.”

  “And now what are you?” Mouse asked Nita. “Happy?”

  “I’m happy,” said Mimi.

  “Lonely, mostly.” Nita laughed. The chair she was sitting on was taller than the mooshy mauve sofa. Mouse glimpsed the pink roof of her mouth; her teeth were fillingless, bone-china white. Even the back ones. “Used to be, everyone wanted to be free. Now everyone wants to be trapped. But at least they can do it in style, right?”

  The phone rang, a modern melodic purr. Nita slid off her chair and went to her desk. “… no, no darlin’… they’re going to airlift the crystal in… uh-huh, as in an airplane… six hundred thirty, wine and water… you decided on the orchids? The Fijian ones are the perfect shade, but they do wilt, I can still FAX that florist in Sumatra… I know darlin’, I know… it is important… overnight service… right…”

  “Isn’t she great?” asked Mimi.

  Nita hung up. “One of my clients. She’s getting married in Death Valley.”

  “In the desert?” asked Mouse.

  “They met on a camping trip. They wanted to get married on the site of their first kiss. Everyone wants something special. I had a couple last year who did it on a float in the Rose Festival Parade. But let’s get on with what you want, shall we?”

  “Something small,” said Mouse.

  “They don’t have much money,” said Mimi. “I told her you were a whiz with a small budget.”

  “Okay.” Nita wrote in her notebook. “What, two hundred?”

  “Oh no,” said Mouse. “No, no, no. More like twelve.”

  “Twelve hundred?”

  “Twelve people,” said Mouse, feeling her cheeks go hot. Quickly, she outlined her ideas, which she had been formulating without knowing it. Beach wedding. Few close friends. Nondenominational minister. No bridesmaids, save Mimi, who would buy her own dress. As for Mouse, she could either sew her own or pick up something at a used-clothing store. Tony had a few nice suits. “Flowers are optional. So is rice. So is the ring.”

  “They just want something basic,” said Mimi.

  “The reception will be potluck,” sighed Nita, holding her mechanical pencil up like a syringe, slowly rolling in the lead.

  “Yes,” said Mouse.

  “Potato salad. Pork ‘n’ beans.”

  “We were thinking more along the lines of london broil. A buffet.”

  Nita closed her notebook and stood up. With one hand she relieved Mouse of her cup and saucer. “It sounds like you don’t need me,” said Nita.

  “But I do!” said Mouse. “To organize everything.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got everything under control. The brides I generally work with aren’t like you. They don’t know whether they want to run away to Las Vegas or have a sit-down dinner at the Bel Air Hotel. They don’t know whether they want to wear their grandmother’s dress or plunk down fifteen grand for something new.”

  “Fifteen grand?”

  “Six hundred for flowers. That’s just for the bride’s bouquet.”

  “Fifteen thousand dollars for a dress?”

  “Not just any dress,” said Nita. “One you’ll wear for three hours, then put on once every ten years to see if you’ve gained weight.”

  “I see.” Mouse pulled herself up from the couch, her chest leading, dignified. But hauling her bag up on her shoulder she upended it. A few videotapes bounced out.

  “Ideally, I need thirty thousand dollars to create something truly wonderful,” Nita said.

  Nita stooped down to pick up a tape. She read the label on the side. “Elephant Men: Elephantiasis in the Sub-Sahara. Sounds fabulous. Best of luck in your new life and let me know how it goes.”

  Nita uncurled her long white fingers and shook Mouse’s hand, opening the door at the same time.

  Outside, walking to the car, Mimi said, “That Nita is really a bitch.”

  “I understand,” said Mouse. “I’m small potatoes.”

  “It wasn’t that. Did you see the way she looked at your outfit? That’s a nice blazer. I mean, it’s not, like in, but still. It’s classic. You know, your style. And the way she said ‘sounds fabulous.’ What a snot. Just because it’s a documentary. I got a half hour before I have to be back, want to grab a bite?”

  “No. I think I’d just like to walk.”

  “Want me to drop you anywhere? ‘Mowz,’ she thought your name was Mowz, ‘something exotic’! Anyone could tell by looking at you you’re just plain old whitebread American. You sure I can’t drop you? I can take you back to the apartment. Don’t let this get you down. We’ll plan a great wedding. After I get home we’ll go get some of those bridal books. Fuck her is what I say.”

  THE EMPTY WHITE sidewalks of Beverly Hills in the rich afternoon light. Mouse walked. She had left Los Angeles when people still used words like “far-out” with a straight face. She left Los Angeles when people, when they got married, got married on the beach and had potluck receptions. They had weddings that were the most like not having a wedding without not having a wedding.

  She stumbled down the street in her tight brown pumps, the mesh of her pantyhose embedded in the backs of her thighs from sitting on the edge of that infernal designer sofa. Impulsively, she ducked into a doorway. In one brisk move she reached up under her skirt and rolled down her pantyhose, She stepped out of her shoes. She wasn’t the least embarrassed. She may as well have been changing her clothes on some unknown, unnamed beach in Africa. There was no one around. Most of the cars that slid by had tinted windows. Even if they could see her, she couldn’t see them, so what did she care?

  She walked on, looking back once. In the shadow of the doorway the withered hose drooped over the shoes, looking as though a wicked witch had melted. She dragged her old Moroccan sandals out of her bag and put them on. She strode down the sidewalk, the sandals slapping out her anger on the hot, clean pavement. She passed her bus stop and kept going.

  Fifteen thousand dollars for a dress! Six hundred dollars for flowers! In Afghanistan the average annual income was one hundred and twenty dollars. A Ugandan civil servant made the equivalent of ten dollars a month. SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! went her sandals, statistics rocketing around her head. She was supposed to spend the annual income of 125 average Afghanis on a dress that has the lifespan of a mayfly? She was supposed to fly in orchids from Tahiti, or whatever that Death Valley-bride person was doing? It was insane. And if she didn’t succumb to the insanity?

  Mimi. Ho, ho, Mimi! It would confirm her worst and most cherished suspicions. She would think Mouse was a freak. A loser. Deficient in the basic ways of girliness, ignorant in the ways of the world.

  Oh sure, thought Mouse, the World. The world is a piece of cake. Over, under, on and by, anywhere a mouse can go, Mouse could go. It was this other business that gave her fits.

  And Tony. How would Tony take it? That was a tough one. Men always seemed to gripe about the amount of time, energy, and money women put into weddings, then became misty-eyed and faint of heart when they saw you walking down the aisle wearing the down payment of your first house. Tony, who thought he’d found himself a wise and levelheaded woman, would be profoundly disappointed if she said, “Yo babe, let’s just forget about it and live together.”

  And Shirl. Oh, Shirl.

  “Who invented marriage anyway?” Mouse asked the empty Beverly Hills sidewalk. It wasn’t that she was against it, but look, just for a minute, at who invented it! Human beings. The same species who kept in
sisting there was an organizing principle to the universe! The species that suspected new cars were the root of human happiness! Didn’t Mouse know this from experience? Was there one Zairois who, despite his hunger, would not feel more blessed if the barge that slid into Kinshasa once a month from upriver delivered not the bags of manioc, the slats of smoked fish he’d been expecting, but a Toyota Tercel with air conditioning?

  And this was the species that applauded your decision to marry! It lent its support by reminding you that Your Wedding Was the Most Important Day of Your Life. That You Only Do This Once. That You Only Have One Time to Get It Right. That if you didn’t have engraved matchbooks, a private heart-shaped hot tub in your honeymoon suite YOU’D REGRET IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. This was what you were fed from the moment you announced your wedding. And it was layered on top of something which, if you were a sensitive woman, a thinking woman, was even tougher to swallow: you were expected to spend the rest of your life with your date to this event! A man who, the instant you decided to marry him – like magic the scales fell from your eyes! – you realized had a paunch like your father’s, a hairline like the Pope’s, a view of women and the family like the Pope’s, a nasty habit of gargling in Dolby Stereo morning and night, or any other number of revolting behaviorisms and philosophies that once upon a time seemed harmless if not downright cute. Habits which you may have prided yourself on accepting in the name of compromise, because good relationships require compromise. And of course you have a good relationship. Why else would you be getting married! Mouse’s brain was asizzle. All these thoughts.

  She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, dizzy and hot. She thought that since she had cheerfully filmed in one hundred twenty-degree African heat, that no piddling warm autumn afternoon could touch her. The sun baked her scalp. Her sweat tickled it. The strap of her bag cut into her shoulder. Before her eyes, the well-scrubbed buildings, the trimmed palms, the expanse of white sidewalk broke up into a jostling bunch of angry gold dots. Suddenly she heard a strange chirping sound. The sound of, what was it? A macaw? Something from the jungle canopy, only robotic. CHI-RUP. CHI-RUP. CHI-RUP. She thought she was having a recurrence of malaria, or perhaps, an awful thought, a new jungle disease was popping up after having gestated for the past fifteen years. CHI-RUP. CHI-RUP. CHI-RUP. She was going mad. She felt faint. She had never felt faint in her life, but in the same way they always said you just know when you met Mr. Right, she just knew that she was going to collapse if she didn’t sit down. She knew she would keel over, cracking her head on the sidewalk, and no one would ever know. Rigor mortis would set in before anyone walked by. The chirping bird robot would pick at her remains. Of course, Mouse was not going mad. She was probably not even going to faint. The chirrups issued from the bleeding-heart-liberal Beverly Hills stoplights. They were supposed to be for the blind. A seeing, hearing, able-bodied member of the middle class could hardly afford to live in L.A., period; what blind person could afford to live in Beverly Hills? The mysteries of life multiplied like mold in a bag of cheap hamburger buns during a heat wave.