by James, David
A few minutes later, while waiting for the valet to retrieve my car, my cell phone rang. As I struggled to open my cell phone and hit the Answer button, my salad container opened unexpectedly and the contents spilled to the ground. Well, only after hitting most of my leg and soaking my shoes.
“Amanda Thorne.”
“Hi, this is Denise Flaherty with Sonora Realty. I just showed a client your listing at 2666 Boulder Drive.”
“Oh, why thank you so much, Denise.”
“Well, Amanda, you probably won’t thank me when you hear what happened.”
Thoughts slammed through my head—none of them good. Another body? A rattlesnake in the kitchen? Four feet of water in the home?
“Well, we were coming out of the front door and my client slipped on a bunch of colorful rocks that were spread outside the door. He’s suing you and the owner.”
The curse of Eagle Feather Margie struck again.
I went home and showered. Then I placed a call to Alex.
“. . . so Mary Dodge came into Spenser’s while Cathy was running out, huh? Maybe you better sleep at my house tonight,” Alex said.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Alex, you think that Mary Dodge is going to kill me because she saw me with Cathy?”
“Amanda, you know I still love you very much. You are still my soul mate, the closest person in the world to me. Would you please do just this one thing for me? Just tonight?”
“Okay, but just for one night.”
“I’d feel safer with you staying with me.”
“But you forget that I have Edwin at my house.”
“Yes, Amanda, if Mary or one of Marvin’s henchmen come to kill you, he can turn the hose on them . . . that is, if the plumbing works.”
“Hey, don’t make fun of my house. Mine will be done a lot sooner than yours, seeing that you started four months after I did. And when I’m luxuriating in mine, you can come visit me and I’ll let you flush the toilets and you can marvel over my indoor plumbing.”
“All the same, I’d feel better if you came over.”
“Only if you have electricity.”
“I do. The cell phone reception sucks, though.”
“I’ll be there. What time?”
“Make it seven. I’ll cook.”
“Oh, Alex, not on that little hibachi! Do you still have that?”
“I have a stove, Amanda. See you then.”
I hung up, thrilled. This was my first chance to see his house. We had both made a pact that neither of us would see each other’s house before it was finished, but in light of the current situation, it looked like Alex was willing to make an exception.
Even more thrilling than seeing what Alex was planning was the chance to snoop into what his life was like now that he was single. And gay—almost forgot that part. Were there signs of lovers coming and going? A misplaced sock here, a jockstrap or condom there? Was he alone? Did he hole up in his house, reading poetry, or did he just sit on his porch, smoking a cigar? Did he think about me? A little? A lot?
I sucked in a gasp, fighting back the tears that threatened to gush out from my eyes. My phone rang.
“Alex, I am not going to tell you again, Carrot Top and I are just friends . . .”
“Miss Thorne?”
It was not Alex.
“This is Detective Becker. I was just talking with Cathy Paige and she told me about lunch. She’s very upset. And so am I.”
“About the Carrot Top thing? Don’t worry, it’s purely platonic. And I just can’t move to Vegas to be with him. My career’s here.”
“You’re quite the comedian, aren’t you?”
“I try.”
“Miss Thorne, let’s get back to lunch, can we?”
“Good, I’m famished. All I had was a small salad.”
“I don’t want you questioning witnesses in this case. And I don’t want you snooping around. Whoever did this isn’t kidding around. They’re killing those who get in the way.”
“I’m just trying to clear my name.”
“I’m a detective. Let me do the clearing for you. Plus, it would be a shame to have you get hurt. Leave the detective work up to me.”
“Okay, then can I at least help?”
“No.”
“Pretty please with sugar on it?”
“No, Miss Thorne, this isn’t a game. I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“Why, detective, I’m beginning to think you . . . care for my concern.”
“I do. It’s not just for your concern . . . I’d hate for the world to lose such a great comic mind . . . then we’d be left with Adam Sandler, and you know what that means for the future of comedy.”
My heart raced. Cute and funny. And I was detecting a definite softness for me.
“Can I funnel information to you, then?”
“If you have material facts, then, yes, you can call me with them. But I don’t want you going around talking to people. You don’t know who you could be talking to.”
“Okay, did you know that Mary Dodge, Her Highness of real estate, has been buying up land for Marvin Sultan up in the Chino Cone. Plus all the land that borders it?” I stated proudly, like a secret witness in the trial of the century. Aha! Gotcha!
“I’m way ahead of you, Miss Thorne.”
“Amanda, please.”
“Okay, Amanda Please.”
“So you know all about Mary Dodge?”
“I do my homework.”
“Okay, so you don’t think something’s funny when she—or Cathy Paige—went into my listing at seven-thirty in the morning?”
“Seven-eighteen. That’s what your electronic key report said.”
I whistled. “Like a steel trap!”
“What?”
“Your mind.”
“Miss Thorne, I can’t really comment on the case, but I would like to interview you again.”
“Down at the station?”
“No, over dinner.”
“I’d love to. When?”
“Tomorrow, if you’re free. Seven-thirty?”
“Not seven-eighteen?”
“Whatever time you want.”
“Seven-thirty, then. Where?”
“Pesca.”
“Fabulous. I’ll be there.”
I hung up the phone, thrilled twice in less than twenty minutes. I entered the appointment into my cell phone. Then made a mental note to myself: Don’t wear bondage skirt to dinner tomorrow. Something plain. Maybe jeans this time. With a zipper fly. Nothing that will catch.
CHAPTER 13
Come Into My Parlor Said the Spider to the Fly
Iarrived at Alex’s house at 7:00, tight skirt on, tall heels, flowing blouse, and enough fake pearl necklaces to choke a horse. I was clearly out to show Alex that I wasn’t the devastated person that I really was. I was cool, confident, powerful, immensely happy.
I grabbed my overnight bag from the back seat of my car and headed up the driveway, my heels clicking on the broom-finished concrete. The landscaping seemed to be upside down, with irrigation pipes stacked near his garage and dozens of potted plants lined up like soldiers on the side of the garage. I rang the doorbell, a European doorbell if I ever heard one. More of a tone you’d hear in an airport in Berlin than in an American home. No Westminster chimes for Alex.
A few seconds later, the door pivoted open (Alex had a thing for doors that pivoted instead of those that opened on banal hinges) and Alex stood there, our signature vegan martini in hand: three different cucumber-infused vodkas, rosemary syrup, and an olive speared by a sprig of rosemary—more food than drink. Even more tempting was Alex, who had dressed up for the occasion. It was funny, here we were, two divorced people, trying to impress the hell out of each other, even now. Why? To seduce each other? Maybe, or at least I was trying to? Or to show that we were getting on with our respective lives in the most fabulous way possible?
“Cheers,” he said, as he handed the glass to me and took my bag. “Come in.”
I followed him in as the door pivoted closed behind me. I was stunned. His place was finished.
“How the fuck did you mange this?”
“I hired contractors who knew what they were doing. Plus, I offered the construction manager an extra $15,000 if he finished by the twentieth.”
“Well, I am impressed.” And I was. While I found that it is not true that all gay men have impeccable taste, Alex had it in spades.
His house was unlike many of the other hard-edge modern reconstructions using terrazzo floors, glossy walls, and an oh-so-tasteful splattering of orange or lime green as a nod to the mid-century pedigree most Palm Springs houses had. Alex’s was a study in highly masculine browns, woods, soft travertine, and bronzed metals. His home embraced the outside pool and entertaining areas, but cuddled you in sensuous luxury while you were safely inside. Very tactile, his house was Alex in the flesh—chiseled and confident on the outside, and cuddly, warm, and protecting when you got close to the interior.
I was so jealous.
He showed me around. All-new furniture. Sleek as an Armani dress. Some pieces of old art that he had taken with him, and more than a few new pieces. No pictures of nude men—a dull cliché in a city as gay as Palm Springs. A photograph of cowboy boots taken toe-on with a fish-eye lens, seven-feet wide by two-feet high. They seemed to leap out at you, kicking you in the face. Perfect Alex. Unexpected and provocative. Over on a hallway wall was my favorite photograph he had collected before we were married: a two-foot female child mannequin dressed in traditional German alpine garb, crying hysterically, tears running in torrents down over the plastic cheeks. (My mother, when she saw this photograph in his home back in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, begged me not to marry Alex. “I don’t want to find parts of you in Ziploc bags all around town.” Of course, seeing this photograph made me want to marry Alex all the more.)
He showed me the guest bedroom, throwing my overnight bag on the mink bedspread (politically correct—it was made of old mink stoles picked up at yard sales by a company in Los Angeles that made such bedspreads, so it was recycled).
Then he showed me his bedroom. There was an uncomfortable moment between us as I stood in the pivoting doorway, my eyes searching a place I had once occupied, emotionally and physically. The low bed was immaculately made and covered in soft, earth-toned linens, backed on the wall and acting as a headboard was a wall of square panels, covered in ultrasuede, that reached to the ceiling, making the bedroom feel more monumental that it could have otherwise been with thirteen-foot ceilings. And there, on his bedside table, perfectly lit by a low-voltage halogen pinpoint spotlight, was his photograph of me, taken just before we were married. There were no other photographs—just mine.
I turned quickly away, a single tear squeezing out from the corner of my eye. I had hoped my head’s quick motion would fling the tear off, unnoticed into the deep-pile rug, but Alex, never missing a thing, pulled me close to him and hugged me in that comforting, reassuring way that only he could do. I felt safe again. Loved.
And, again, in that way that only he could do, he read my mind.
“Amanda, no matter what happens in my life, your picture will always be there. Just like you.”
I felt an upwelling of anger in me. Anger at myself. Anger at Alex. Anger at the world. Then I thought of what Jimmy Carter once said, that life is unfair, and I had to laugh. I laughed at the thought of a peanut-farmer-turned-president uttering one of the most profound thoughts in the history of the world. He was right, life wasn’t fucking fair.
Alex didn’t say a thing. He took my hand and eased me along, out of the bedroom, along the artfully silent corridor and down another hall to his kitchen. He sat me down across the large countertop on a minimally Italian high stool, refreshed my martini and his, then shuttled a procession of bowls out of his glass-faced refrigerator, fired up the flames, and began the process of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.
As I watched him sauté, fling, and toss meat and vegetables into bowls and then skyward, it struck me that the one thing that was so devastating about our divorce was the realization that I was giving up living with such an extraordinary individual. He cooked, he climbed sheer rock walls, he cycled, he photographed, he sculpted, he read, he wrote, he made love in an extraordinary way—everything like a man with a year to live, squeezing out every minute of every second of every day. It was like living and being married to Michelangelo and then having to give him up. Knowing that you couldn’t live with a genius anymore, but you could have one right next door or across town didn’t help much. And, yes, the irony that the only genius I could think of at this moment was also a homosexual didn’t escape me.
We talked about real estate a little—we couldn’t help it. Mostly the crazy stuff we ran into, or houses with incredible mid-century architecture. We talked about me getting sued. We talked about going to see some of the exhibitions in Los Angeles. The LACMA. The Getty. MOCA. It was like old times . . . almost. I just couldn’t have him again. Not 100 percent. I guess I had to settle with ninety percent of the total . . . not a bad deal, considering. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Tennyson was right.
My cell phone rang.
“Amanda Thorne.”
“. . . Cathy Paige here . . . you got me thinking . . . lunch the other day . . .” came the broken conversation on the other end of the line.
“Cathy, I’m not getting everything you’re saying. You’re going in and out.”
“. . . lied . . . don’t have my electronic key . . . missing. . . maybe lost it . . .”
“Cathy?” I pleaded. “Cathy?”
“. . . at Pappy and Harriet’s . . . Pioneertown . . . figure out . . . Doc.”
“Cathy, you’re dropping out. What about Pioneertown?”
“. . . Monica Birdsong . . . other . . . clear my name, too . . .”
“Cathy, could you call me later when you get home? I just can’t hear you now.”
And the call dropped.
Alex looked at me. “Trouble in Pioneertown? Wagon train broke down on the way to the Donner Pass and she’s running short of food?”
“Cathy Paige called me. I think she’s up at Pappy and Harriet’s.”
“Let me guess, she’s in a band called the Rockin’ Realtors and she’s testing out her new act?”
“No, it sounds like she’s doing a little investigative work herself.”
Alex was marshalling meat and vegetables in and out of frying pans like a general in an all-out battle. God, that man could cook!
Alex could see that my mind had shifted noticeably after the phone call.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, just a feeling.”
“Cramps?”
“Close. Woman’s intuition.”
“And that feeling is . . . ?”
“I don’t know . . . something strange . . . something’s off.”
“It’s not the asparagus, is it? I paid a lot to get white asparagus this time of year.”
“No, the asparagus is fine. Everything you do is always fine . . . God, I miss you,” I said as I had yet another rosemary-vegan martini. Oops, that last part just slipped out. I meant it to sound like I missed Alex like an old friend, but it came out sounding like “marry me.”
“I miss you, too, Amanda. You know that.”
“I do.”
“It’s just so frustrating . . . you know . . . you and I . . . life.”
“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
“That’s too spooky. I was just thinking that a minute ago.”
“You know, we could always tell what each other was thinking.”
“Let’s put it to the test, Alex,” I said, smiling. “What am I thinking about right now?”
Alex leaned over the counter and looked deeply into my eyes.
“Coelacanths.”
“Correct,” I answered, not knowing what a coelacanth was.
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“You don’t know what a coelacanth is, do you?”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“No, but I could see it in your eyes and on your face. And I can read your mind just like you can mine.”
Indeed, he could.
“See, I’m good.”
“Yes, you are,” I said with a wink.
Alex stopped his cooking for a minute . . . the only sound came from the slowly bubbling sauces and fry pans.
“Amada, you know you will always be first in my life. No one will ever replace you. And you know, you will always have me.”
I hesitated. “Well, not have you. More like, have you near me . . . have you to talk to whenever I need some support. Or have you when I need a gorgeous man on my arm for parties.”
“And that’s different from being married how?”
“Good point. Touché, Alex.”
Dinner was superb, dessert sublime, and the after-dinner sauterne was heavenly. We talked about the problems of dating, of eating alone, and all the new adjustments one has to face when finding oneself suddenly single again. Despite our intentions that I should sleep over that night, I decided it was best to go home to my own bed.
I went home that night feeling just a little more at peace with my situation and a little more feeling not so alone. I slept well that night, dreaming that I had climbed a huge mountain naked. What would Freud say?
Tomorrow was just another day. I wished.
The next morning, the doorbell rang at 6 A.M. I threw on a robe and suspiciously approached my front door, peeking through the peekhole. A nervous Detective Becker stood on my doorstep, looking around as if for suspects lurking in the bushes behind him.
“Detective? You’re working this early in the morning? Or did you join Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
“When was the last time you talked with Cathy Paige?”
“Last night. She called from Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown.”
“Do you know what time that was?”
“Let me get my cell phone . . . I’ll tell you from the call log. C’mon in.”