by Karen Karbo
Ivan stared at him, hands on his hips. “I was married to her sister, you know.”
“Busy little bastard, aren’t you?”
“I knew we should have talked about this before.”
“Really. Before what?”
“I cannot get into this now,” said Ivan. “They’re ready to start the auction. V.J., my pleasure. One day perhaps you’ll tell me more about your experiences in Africa.”
“Hey, all right.”
Ivan joined the cameraman at the front of the room. Michael Brass stood wringing his hands apologetically in front of a table set up by the fireplace. On display were ebony carvings, Maasai beaded jewelry and weapons, wooden masks, baskets, Someone had dragged in an ancient podium and thrust a gavel into the hand of the talentless but handsome actor who was privileged to play auctioneer.
“Tooty and I are thrilled you all could make it. We would especially like to welcome our friends from Tanzania, Gabon, Taiwan, and Zimbabwe. We thank you not on our own behalf, but on behalf of the elephants. In the last ten years more than four hundred thousand elephants have been slaughtered, most of them with the use of automatic weapons …” Michael Brass rolled out the horrific statistics.
Tony had heard them many times before. Where was Mouse, anyway? He looked around the room at all the smooth upturned faces.
Michael Brass explained that the idea of the auction was to encourage native handicrafts in the hopes of discouraging the trade in ivory. It was a heroic, misguided notion. No three-dollar basket was going to compete with the millions of dollars Hong Kong businessmen forked over for a few tons of ivory every year. Tony pulled the bottle of scotch from behind the weather vane, topped off his glass.
“… the poacher is typically an illiterate villager living in poverty. He sells a tusk for forty dollars, which a businessman in Japan will turn around and sell for one thousand …”
After he gave Mouse the boot, would she take up with Ivan? Tony swallowed a belch. She’d be sorry when he was a top screenwriter, pulling down a few million a script. Poor elephants. They really didn’t have a chance.
He felt someone’s eyes on him. A few feet away, a woman admired him. She was in her fifties. About thirty years ago someone had told her she looked like Brigitte Bardot and she’d never forgotten it. She wore white stretch pants tucked into white boots, a white hand-knit curve-clinging sweater. She had big rings, teeth, and breasts, little eyes, legs, and tact. Tony toasted her with the bottle of scotch.
“Noni Bertlestein,” whispered V.J. “Minimall magnate.”
“Worth millions, no doubt.”
“Maybe she’s interested in putting money into a movie.”
Tony waggled his eyebrows at her. Noni Bertlestein pursed her wrinkled, heavily lipsticked lips.
“And so,” said Michael Brass, “with only a bit more ado – please bear with me – I’d like to introduce someone here tonight who’s worked on the front lines, as a member of one of the Kenyan Wildlife Federation’s anti-poaching patrols. Rumor is, he captured quite a few single-handedly. Tony Cheatham, are you here?”
Tony dropped his eyelids, affecting what he supposed was a languid sexy gaze. He stared at Noni Bertlestein’s magnificent breasts. Why not? She had them out there like a crook selling watches on a street corner. Being a nice chap got you nowhere. He reluctantly let his gaze catch hers. She cocked her head, bit her lips.
“Tony Cheatham?” said Michael Brass.
“Tony,” hissed V.J.
He took a swig from the bottle. Fuck the glass. The thing you always had to remember about women was that they were like those people who said, “Don’t get me anything for Christmas,” then were upset when you didn’t. Women didn’t want respect. They said they did. In fact, they were perfectly happy if you just ogled their –
“TONY! The man wants you!” V.J. elbowed him, panic-stricken.
Noni Bertlestein is a man? What? Suddenly V.J. plucked the bottle from his fingers, pushed him up to the front of the room. A round of polite applause. What the – had he bid for something and didn’t know it? No, the auction hadn’t started yet. Walking confirmed his worst suspicions. He was dead drunk. He could not tell his feet from his shoes. The sides of his head felt as though they were curling toward each other. Michael Brass put an arm around him. “So, please tell us.”
“Yes, Michael, certainly.” He cleared his throat. The scotch rolled back up his esophagus. Would he vomit on Tooty Brass’s antique hook rug? Dear Lord. “What is it you wish to know.”
“Well.” Michael laughed. “Anything you think is relevant.”
“Relevant. Oh dear. Bit dodgy, that. Relevant.” Tony wondered if perhaps he was supposed to be answering questions about the items up for auction. He picked up a carving. “This is an elephant.” Obviously. “An elephant carved … carved by Africans.”
“How many are out there, Mr. Cheatham, at this very minute, would you say?” asked Tooty, her brow furrowed with concern.
“Thousands, I should say. Hundreds of thousands.”
“They must be everywhere,” cried a woman with a foreign accent.
“Yes. We had a half dozen or so in Nairobi. You can pick them up anywhere.”
“You had them in your home? Shouldn’t they be locked up or something?”
“Oh no, I shouldn’t think so.”
“You believe in death, then,” said Michael.
“I’d say the evidence is quite conclusive.” Tony laughed. That was a good one.
Mouse, who had been loitering on the fringes of the party, went outside for a smoke. Tony drunk was not one of the world’s more appealing sights. A member of the Kenyan Wildlife Federation anti-poaching patrol? What had he been telling people? And why? What was apparent was that he had been trying to hoodwink some Hollywood person into thinking he was more than just a humble documentary filmmaker. Mouse was surprised to find she was intrigued, not angry. It was so un-Tony-like.
A flight of rickety steps led from the deck down to the beach. The moon hung in mid-sky, casting a column of light on the ocean. At the bottom of the steps Mouse reached under her dress and pulled off her black lace stockings, burying them in the cold sand with her toes. The elephants were enclosed in a pen, built especially for the occasion, under the watchful eye of the San Diego Zoo. Steel poles had been sunk into the beach about four inches apart, around which ran a chain-link fence, five feet high.
The elephants lumbered around in circles, desultorily flipping their skinny tails. The sand cush-cush-cushed beneath their huge feet. A rent-a-cop stood by the shoreline, legs spread, staring up at the moon.
Mouse wondered if the elephants felt as out of place as they looked. Not many had ever seen the ocean, she imagined. Cush-cush-cush, around and around they went, a couple of fat, arthritic old ladies, their hides as furrowed as parched desert beds. Their tusks cast sharp shadows on the sand.
The zookeepers listened to a Spanish radio station on a transistor radio slung over the fence. Mouse nodded hello, put her face against the steel poles. When one of the elephants unceremoniously dropped a few loaves of elephant waste, a zoo-keeper cleaned it up with a shovel.
Mouse remembered once, she and Tony were driving up near Ngorongoro Crater, barreling around a hairpin mountain curve in the Land Rover. They came upon an elephant and her calf standing by the side of the road, waving their ears, their trunks entwined. Jaded expatriates though they were, scoffing at anything remotely safari-related, they leaped from the Rover, cameras cocked. Before they could shoot, a man jumped from the bush, yelling “Photo op! Photo op!” and demanding a shilling a shot. These were his elephants, trained, apparently, to stand by the side of the road cutely waving their ears, trunks entwined. The man was a toothless Karamojong in Western dress with a lip plug made from a 35mm film canister and a command of American English. For ten shillings apiece, they could ride the mother for five minutes. Her name was Madonna.
The zookeepers hummed along with the radio. It was feeding time. They to
ssed forkfuls of grass through a special slot in the fence. The elephants fed each other, twisting their trunks around a skein of reedy grass, placing it in the other’s pink mouth. Their tangy wild scent was tempered by the smell of the ocean, and one of the zookeeper’s overpowering aftershave. Even so, it made her homesick for Africa.
“Trying to lose me, are you!” Tony cried behind her.
She turned to see him standing behind her, straight as a general, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“What were you telling them in there?”
“I’m afraid I can’t marry you!”
The zookeepers looked up briefly from their pitchforks and sniggered.
“What’s wrong with you? Let’s go sit down.”
“I don’t love you anymore.”
“Can we please sit down?”
“Are you deaf, old girl! The wedding is off!” There was the vague possibility he was shouting. He couldn’t quite tell. No matter. All that mattered was The Look. Like an expectant child anticipating a brief solar eclipse, he stared at Mouse’s beloved face and waited. The look of heartbreak. The look of utter devastation. Of dull-eyed, slack-jawed, ashen-faced anguish. The look that said, “You have ruined my life! I trusted you and you shat on me!” At this moment, under the beady gaze of four suspicious elephant eyes, two dutiful zookeepers, and the baleful California moon, he wanted to make her pay, to wreck her, to send her creeping back to that smarmy Ivan with news that the wedding was off. The wedding was off! The movie was off! Her life was ruined! Then he would forgive her. If she behaved herself he might marry her.
He peered closer. She had the same exasperated look on her face as she did when Air Zaire had lost their luggage.
“I don’t understand –”
“– you don’t understand that I’ve had a bloody change of heart.”
“When did you decide all this? Was it in there, making eyes with that, that woman?”
“Noni Bertlestein is not a woman. She’s a minimall magnate.”
“I think we should discuss this later.”
“It’s quite simple. It’s over.” He was shaking. Between her and Ivan! “I cannot discuss this now.” “I think we should discuss this later.” It was a well-known but little-documented fact that language patterns were transmitted like venereal diseases. Proof, as though any was needed, they were having an affair. Shooting a movie about his own bloody wedding behind his back and having an affair. No. No, no no, no no. He promised himself he would not get into that.
“Fine, it’s over. Can we discuss it tomorrow?”
“You don’t seem to hear me!”
“They can hear you in fucking Nevada.” She wasn’t wrecked, she was disgusted and angry. She picked up her shoes and marched toward the house.
“Your swearing. One reason I’ve become disenchanted.”
She said nothing. He struggled behind her; his cowboy boots in the loose sand made catching up impossible.
“You lack spontaneity. One thing you can say for Noni Bertlestein, she is spontaneous.”
Mouse said nothing. Was she ignoring him?
“I’m moving out,” he shouted after her. He stared at her brown, lightly freckled back, her strong stalk of a neck, her dark curls. God, he loved her!
“With Sather and Darryl! They’ve said I could move in tomorrow!”
She was ignoring him. At the bottom of the steps leading up to the house, she stopped to wipe the sand off the bottoms of her feet. He caught up with her, winded and panting.
“They’ve said since Ralph is moving back with Elaine. I’ll move first thing in the morning.”
Mouse stopped. She stared at the crinkled sole of her foot crooked up on her knee. “Ralph is moving back in with Elaine?”
“She’s preggers,” he said, exasperated.
A look, not the look, but a look akin to the one Tony had hoped for passed over Mouse’s face. “Does Mimi know?”
21
THIS IS WHAT YOU GET. YOU IGNORED TONY’S SCREEN-WRITING. You made no secret of the fact you don’t like his friends. You are not here when he comes home. You don’t like to cook. You have secrets. No wonder. A man wants a helpmate, not an equal. Pretend you are an equal so he is made to feel modern, intelligent, and tolerant, but never forget that what he really wants is a maid/concubine/therapist. You are a liar. You have your own mind. You are retarded in the most basic ways of femininity. No man as good as Tony wants someone like that. In Nairobi, where the pickings were slim, he tolerated you. Now he has his choice. He has blond, fanny-tucked minimall magnates willing to give him everything. No wonder.
Mouse grabbed handfuls of just-washed hair and pulled. A futile attempt to strangle The Pink Fiend, who excelled in kicking her when she was down. When she was down, she believed everything The Pink Fiend said. It was the morning after the fundraiser, Saturday. She was going through all her wedding things, stored in Mimi’s closet. Her bridal lingerie, the leftover invitations, the files full of brochures on Caribbean honeymoons.
Tony had snuck out while she was in the bathroom. She had been brushing her teeth. She heard the zip of his suitcase and the front door slam. Her hands shook so much the thick worm of blue gel fell off her brush and whirled down the drain.
Mouse rustled the ecru body brief with open cotton panel from its bed of tissue paper. It bore the flowery odor of Sins. She wiped her tears on the lace trim. She tried to get a grip on herself.
This didn’t mean there couldn’t be a wedding. This didn’t mean pulling the plug on Wedding March. She had been faced with more difficult production problems than this. There were ways to get around anything. Look at the business with Marriage Under Mobutu. The bride had backed out, and they had gotten around it. Hardship was her specialty, wasn’t it?
Maybe Ivan would agree to doing the film solely from the bride’s point of view; it could become the story of an engagement in trouble. Now that they were no longer actually getting married, Tony might agree to play the part of the groom. They could always say after the film was finished that the stress of making the movie had caused their separation, which would make for a good bit of publicity. It could work! She must tell Tony! She refolded the tissue paper around the body brief and slid it back into the bag. But then she realized she couldn’t tell Tony. He was no longer her partner – in anything.
Mimi was still in bed, the sheets pulled up to her eyebrows, trying to recapture the oblivion of sleep. When she was depressed her capacity for sleep rivaled that of a teenage boy. Her shoulders hurt from being in bed so long. She thought the scrabbling in the closet was Sniffy Voyeur searching for forgotten candy. Outside she could hear the Armenians beating their rugs on top of the carport, where they had strung a clothesline. Thwap-thwap-thwap. She cracked her eyelids to find Mouse staring down at her, the picture of dread.
“Are you awake?”
She stood at the foot of Mimi’s bed, fully dressed, fresh from the shower. Her damp dark hair curled around her cleft chin. Circles hung beneath her light eyes.
“What?”
“We’ve got to talk,” Mouse croaked.
“I’m too depressed.”
“Please?”
“Hand me my robe.”
Mimi got depressed when she gave in to introspection, which, she was convinced, caused only confusion and misery. You started by contemplating your own pitiful lot and moved on to fretting about pollution on Venus. To what end? She thought the compulsion to think deep and hard was like the baby toe, useless to modern man and bound to get selected out of existence any generation now. Still, she gave in, last night, over a package of pink-frosted animal cookies and a bag of Hershey’s Kisses. This morning she had canker sores on the side of her tongue and complete loathing for every aspect of her life. She was almost thirty-seven years old, single, with a job that wouldn’t challenge a tenth grader and a dwindling affair with a married man she loved but didn’t like. She hated L.A. She hated her clothes. Her little sister was getting married. She was lonely. Sniff
y Voyeur padded in, thrusting his nose under her hand.
“I don’t want to tell you this.” Mouse followed her down the hall to the kitchen.
“Can I have some coffee?”
“Someone’s got to tell you. It would be very easy for me not to tell you.”
“Tell me.”
“Don’t think I get any pleasure out of this. I know we’ve had our differences. But this is not something I relish. Someone has got to tell you.”
Mimi pulled the canister of coffee beans from the freezer. If no one was dead, how bad could it be? “I think I know what you’re going to say, but go on.”
“Ralph brought his ex-wife or whoever she is to the fundraiser last night.”
“They’re friends,” said Mimi, swallowing. “Ralph and I aren’t like you and Tony. We aren’t like Mr. and Mrs. Monogamy. We’re sort of more bohemian. We go out with other people. All that jealousy stuff you guys do is so, like bourgeois. Like Valentine’s presents. You guys go in for chocolate hearts and stuff.”
“According to Tony, who was drunk when he told me, Elaine is pregnant. According to Tony, Ralph is moving back in with her.”
“She’d been trying to get pregnant for some time, I know.” Mimi ground the coffee beans, staring through the plastic top at the brown tornado inside. She imagined a tiny Ralph whirling around in there, being pulverized to a nice drip grind. She knew it. Ralph and Elaine, she just knew it. She went to the stove, shook the rusty teakettle, checking for water. “Is this fresh?”
“Yes. Well, it’s yesterday’s. So you already knew?”
“That’s not fresh. This isn’t Africa, you know. We can afford fresh water here.” She poured the water out and refilled the pot, slamming it back on the burner. “Ralph and I, it was just a sex thing with us. We’re both really sexual, you know how it is, well, you probably don’t –”
“– I know how it is. What do you mean, I don’t know how it is?”
“Don’t be so sensitive. I just meant it wasn’t love or anything.”
“I thought you wanted to marry him,” said Mouse.