by Karen Karbo
“– Barb, for crying out loud! If I want to be taken advantage of that’s my own damned business.”
“You think us Oregonians don’t know what’s what.” Tears filled Auntie Barb’s eyes.
“You Oregonians don’t know when to shut up, is what I think,” said Shirl, slamming the wedding album closed and ramming it back in its box.
Mouse shared the mauve sofa with Shirl. Together, they pored through the portfolios of prospective florists, read aloud to one another menus from prospective caterers. Shirl had become a fixture in Nita’s office, along with Ivan and Eliot. Nita listened to all of Shirl’s thoughts and suggestions carefully, her chin resting on interlaced fingers, dabbing her still-running new nose.
Eliot, it turned out, was a master cappuccino-maker and made them all cappuccinos in the industrial-sized white china cups. He made a special mocha variety for Shirl, to satisfy her sweet tooth. Ivan told Shirl, in his soft, coaxing voice, that the camera loved her. They decided, unanimously, that the wording on the invitations would read:
Mrs. Shirley FitzHenry
requests the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of her daughter
Frances Anne FitzHenry
to
Anthony Noel Cheatham
Shirl sobbed noisily with joy. Ivan gently reminded her not to look at the camera. She said she just wanted to make sure he was getting it all.
Money was no object. Tony was, though. He was The Groom. The reason for the wedding, but otherwise besides the point. Heeding Nita’s advice, Mouse tried to include him. When she asked him whether he thought her attendants should carry frilled rosettes or a modified crescent bouquet, he picked up the TV remote, “just to check on the ball game.”
Somewhere along the way, Mouse had lost track of him. She didn’t know what ball game he was talking about. She didn’t know what he did all day. His big job was to get the marriage license, also put together his guest list. Instead, he bought a skateboard that said dog cheese! across it in bold hot-pink letters. Mouse didn’t know what this meant.
Tony slouched on the couch at night, the board across his lap, making minute adjustments on the wheels. He borrowed a set of tiny screwdrivers from the ten-year-old Armenian boy downstairs, his adviser on all matters relating to the sport.
The guest list worried Tony. The only person he knew in Los Angeles, besides all of Mimi’s friends, was V.J. Parchman, and he certainly could not invite him. V.J. thought Tony and Mouse were married years ago in an intimate Rwandan mountain wedding, in the fog, among the gorillas. Tony wondered what would happen to the project if he admitted that the wedding scene was pure fancy, the only lie in an otherwise true story. Nothing, perhaps. Then again, it could be the card that toppled the house, one more small problem, not insurmountable in and of itself, that made Love Among Elephants more trouble than it was worth. Tony decided he would think about it later, then promptly put it out of his mind.
The next day, trying to airwalk off the Armenian boy’s launch ramp, Tony fell and broke his nose.
Mouse was furious because she was so frightened. She was very good at imagining the sudden death of someone she loved. She ran red lights in the new Toyota, racing to the emergency ward for an X-ray. Dusky circles bloomed beneath Tony’s eyes. His nostrils were plugged with Kleenex.
“You could have cracked your head open. You could have broken your stupid neck.”
“You’re so cute when you’re hysterical,” said Tony.
“I just don’t want to be a widow before I’m a bride.”
“Bit of an impossibility, that.”
“Do me a favor and don’t be calm and witty, all right? You scared the living shit out of me.”
MOUSE TOLD IVAN that Tony would be unavailable for at least a month. They were hunkered over the production schedule at a Mexican restaurant on the Boardwalk near his apartment. She thought Ivan was getting suspicious. He had twice asked her when Tony could give them some of his time. He just wanted to talk to Tony, no camera, maybe they could do some audio.
First she’d said Tony had a two-week stint sound-editing on a TV show, then that he was busy finishing up a draft of his script with Ralph. The first excuse was an outright lie, the second a presumption. After it became apparent that Tony and his nose would survive, she allowed herself to appreciate her fiancé’s good timing. She was grateful for a truthful excuse.
“It’s painful for Tony to talk,” she said. “They had to put him under and go in and readjust things. It’s not your average broken nose.”
Ivan stared at her over his taquitos with his insinuating blue gaze. He had cut his hair. He now wore it combed straight off his forehead. He had put on weight, thanks to all the meals paid for by the production. He looked more like the Ivan whom Mouse remembered. She was no longer nervous around him, although there were moments when he pinched her waist, rested his chin on her shoulder to deliver a quiet aside, when she wondered what she was doing marrying Tony.
“Anyway,” said Ivan, “I would like to meet with him before next month. After that I have another project beginning. Time will be tight.”
“What project?” Mouse suddenly felt left out. He was doing a project without her?
“An environmental thing. They are paying me a lot to do nothing. Which reminds me, I have some bad news and some bad news.”
Mouse laughed. “I’m good at bad news. What’s up?”
“The footage we shot at Sins is unusable. Six thousand feet, out of focus. I don’t think it was Eliot. Some problem with the lens. He’s having it looked at.”
“I suppose we had to pay for the processing and printing?”
“That’s the other problem. Some of our funding has fallen through.”
“Some? How much, some?”
“Sixty thousand. It is not the end of the world. I have several other places I can go. In the meantime, I’d like to borrow half of it from your wedding account to buy a few more cases of film.”
“Absolutely not,” she said without thinking.
Ivan chuckled lazily. He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. He rolled out her fingers and stroked each pearly-pink nail with his thick thumb. “If you had been this tough before, I never would have married your stupid sister.”
“What about, about the sixty thousand?” she said. Maybe she should think about this. She could borrow the money from the account without saying anything, then replace it… no, she knew that story. Sinking your own money into a documentary was like lending money to a compulsive gambler in Reno.
“Something will come up,” he sighed.
“Donating your other kidney?”
His gaze roamed the room, finally settling on the pack of cigarettes they were sharing. “Where did you hear that?”
“Is it true?”
“I am excessive, but not that excessive.”
“Where will you get the money?”
“There are a few private individuals in town interested in nurturing my vision.”
“Women?”
“Of course, women. You could be one of them.” He smiled broadly and asked for the check, which he paid.
Mouse was not sure she even liked Ivan anymore. He was a politico. There were reasons beneath his reasons. He reminded her of one of those sexy, inscrutable drug kingpins in a B-movie featuring money laundering and international intrigue. At the same time she realized that liking him seemed to have nothing to do with the nature of their unfinished business.
19
WHEN BIBLIOTHÈQUES MET AT THE BIG HOUSE, ANYONE with an aversion to sitting on L.A.’s filthiest square of shag had to bring his own chair. Even though Sather’s cat had been eaten by a coyote six months before, fleas still bivouacked in the carpet, waiting for a warm body to happen past so they could hop aboard. In addition, there were the usual stains and the snappy odor of old cat piss. The chairs were set up in a circle. A bag of sour cream ‘n’ onion potato chips yawned open on the floor: the hors d’œuvres. Every time
the meeting was held at the Big House, Mimi felt like she was camping out.
Mimi had tried repeatedly to get Mouse and Tony to come along, but they thought it sounded too much like school. They weren’t sure they understood the point of it. Mimi tried to explain that you got more out of a text if you discussed it with other people. Mouse said, “I don’t read texts, I read books.” The closer the wedding got, the snottier Mouse became. Mimi knew for a fact that Mouse read nothing but magazines.
This month the book was Ralph’s pick. The Razor’s Edge, by Somerset Maugham.
“The difference between us and the Larry character,” said Ralph, “is that at least he could find God without needing a couple million bucks. At least he could be spiritual, he had that kernel of satisfaction. I’m a producer-director, but I’ve never produced, I’ve never directed, I will never be able to do the thing I love unless someone gives me a lot of money. Larry, at least, could do the thing he loved.” He took a slug from his beer, stared moodily at the toes of his tennis shoes.
“How do you know you love it if you’ve never done it?” asked Lisa. She had broken out her pleated linen shorts, a sign that spring had arrived. An ashtray balanced on one sleek knee, brown from a recent trip to the Cayman Islands. She flipped her straight red hair over her shoulder, inhaling deeply on her Gauloise.
“I went to film school, Lisa. In case you’d forgotten.”
“Whoopee,” said Lisa.
No one had read much of the book because of the weather. This was the stock excuse. There was an unspoken understanding among the Bibliothèques that reading was done only under optimum meteorological conditions, preferably when there was nothing else better to do.
It was the time of year when for two or three blessed weeks it did not seem insane to live here. The days were warm and smogless, the nights cool, tinged with the smell of jasmine. Vast islands of peach, pink, and lavender snapdragons bloomed on the front lawns of the mansions up and down Sunset, nurtured by the hands of a thousand dutiful Mexican gardeners. High school and college students in convertibles slathered on suntan lotion at stoplights, already working on a spring-break tan. Music blared from open windows. The Dodgers were in training.
There were also the spring movie releases, so everyone was going to screenings. Luke, who was a runner at Warner Brothers, reported that no one was even reading coverage, it had been so nice.
“Then why am I doing this?” asked Carole. She sat next to Lisa, a script open on her lap. Carole could talk and read a script at the same time.
“Rent,” said Sather. “The entire world boils down to the quest for rent.”
Mimi hadn’t read the book either. It had nothing to do with the weather. She sat next to Ralph, munching potato chips daintily from a cupped hand, jiggling her foot. She wore her turquoise knit mini, his favorite, and a pair of black strappy sandals. She had just had her legs waxed. She felt good.
She had not read the book because self-improvement suddenly seemed a waste of time. She had decided to get married. Helping Mouse plan her wedding made her realize it was time to give up her options and tie the knot. She would marry Ralph, get pregnant ASAP, and kiss off Solly and his teeny, torturous steno chair. They would find a starter home, maybe in Thousand Oaks or Agoura, and she would go back to school to get her teaching credential. She’d always loved kids and could do wonders with construction paper. If that didn’t work out, she could always go back to being a drudge and an aspiring actress. She could always call Bob Hope.
Mimi and Ralph had never talked about how they felt about each other. She loved him, she was now sure. It was the deep, abiding love necessary for marriage. She knew, because the idea of shopping for a dishwasher with him was more palatable than the idea of having sex, which hadn’t been the way she had felt about Ivan.
To this day she still wasn’t sure what had gotten into her. All she remembered was that she wanted an excuse to throw a big party and was sick of all the complicated scheduling involved in sleeping together. He lived at home and she lived at home and the pool cabana had long since lost its charm. In retrospect, it sounded as though it was convenience she had been after, and maybe it was. She’d felt the same way recently when she bought an exercise bike and set it up in her bedroom because she was tired of schlepping to the gym.
Sometimes she could not believe she was that shallow, even at nineteen and hoped she had stolen the boy Mouse loved for some complex Freudian reason. The shrink Mimi saw for a while after the divorce suggested it was not Ivan that Mimi had wanted but the bond between him and Mouse. She wanted to relate to a man in a way that had nothing to do with sex. Why would I want to do that? she’d thought. “Sure, that sounds good,” she’d said.
“Let’s talk about your need to agree with everything I say,” said the shrink.
Therapy made Mimi feel like a failure. The shrink always thought she was guiding Mimi into uncovering her true feelings, when in fact the agonized look that crossed Mimi’s face was often the result of her realization that she hadn’t put enough money in the parking meter. Mimi felt like she spent the entire fifty minutes making up things just so the shrink would feel like it was working. Then, the time would be up, Mimi would write her a check for $125, hoping it wouldn’t bounce, and stumble out to her car to collect the parking ticket from under her windshield wiper.
Now, at thirty-six, almost thirty-seven, Mimi saw that the reason her first marriage failed was youth, pure and simple. At nineteen, marriage was just industrial-strength going steady. Once you got sick of being roommates, provided there were no kids to complicate matters, you moved on. The fact that you had no life insurance, no health insurance, no savings or assets made no difference. You were nineteen. You had no gray hair, no cellulite, and no crow’s-feet either. There were more where he came from. You never thought, I would rather be unhappy with him than alone in a garden apartment with my aging reproductive organs. You moved on.
After Mimi got tired of sleeping with Ivan, it became apparent they had nothing to talk about. He drove a beer truck and took night classes in film. She went to school and worked on campus.
The marriage was like the houseplant they got for a wedding present: some exotic thing meant to live in South America. The leaves drooped and turned brown around the edges whether she watered it or not, whether she stuck it outside on their little balcony or shoved it in the back of a closet. She cosseted it with expensive fertilizer. No improvement. She talked to it, took it into a nursery for consultation. Nothing. Finally she stopped watering it completely. It lived on in its same old withered fashion for a few more months, then died. She assumed it was the lack of water. A friend who knew about such things came and looked at the wrinkled ropy stems, stuck a finger in the soil and pronounced it dead of rot. Mimi told this to her shrink. The shrink said, “Let’s talk about your need to use complex metaphors to obscure difficult issues.” She stopped going.
Tonight, Mimi finally felt like an adult, sitting at Bibliothèques next to her future fiancé, listening to him voice his frustration over his career. She offered him a chip in solace. He shook his head.
She hoped they could have a heart-to-heart after the meeting. Then they could set the date, toss out her birth-control pills, collect their wedding money from Shirl. Ralph had never officially divorced Elaine, because he had had no reason to. Now he would. Maybe Mimi would use some of their wedding money to help pay for his divorce.
“I think you’re doing great, Ralph,” she said. “I mean you’ve got this thing happening with Tony –” She didn’t like Ralph always making himself out to be such a loser. She wondered, idly, if he would take his baseball cap off for the wedding. She hoped so.
“– nothing’s happening. What’s happening? You start thinking a meeting is something. A meeting is nothing. A meeting is filling up some development slut’s datebook. Until the check has cleared the bank, nothing has happened. And even then, that’s just money, not something up there on the screen.”
“Just money
,” said Carole. “I thought paying the rent made the world go ’round.”
“But you have hope. As long as there’s hope –” continued Mimi.
“Hope is not a directing credit,” said Darryl. “Everybody has hope. The fact your fucking heart’s beating makes you a candidate for hope.”
“In other words, Ralph has as much chance of getting a ‘go’ movie as some human vegetable kept alive by machines,” said Sather.
“Provided the vegetable has slept with the right people, yes,” said Darryl.
“I like it,” said Sather.
“In fact, there are many well-connected vegetables with films in production right now.”
“Fruits, too. Har-har-har.”
“Please,” said Lisa.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance we can leave this philosophical debate for another time and talk about The Razor’s Edge?” said Elaine the Pain. She had missed the last four or five meetings. Mimi had hoped maybe she’d dropped out. “I read this when I was studying at Cambridge. It has held up remarkably well.” She pulled her long twig-hair over her shoulder, combed the split ends meditatively with her fingers. She was as pale and disdainful as ever. Although Mimi liked to think she was above wishing this on another woman, she was glad to see that Elaine had put on weight.
Mimi had arrived at the Big House an hour early, hoping to talk to Ralph then. Elaine was already there, sitting at the kitchen table, sipping herb tea and browsing through one of Darryl’s weight-lifting magazines, her cute toothpick legs crossed neatly at the knee. She had recently left her job selling car FAX machines to corporate raiders for a job selling home-exercise equipment to corporate raiders. Elaine looked as startled to see Mimi as Mimi was to see her. Ralph was out picking up the beer and potato chips. Mimi, flustered, said she was here to scope out the house; Ralph, Sather, and Darryl had said she could use it for Mouse’s wedding shower.