“Cream or sugar?” Lorraine asked.
“Just cream. Want some help?”
“It would be easier if you got your own cup.”
The kitchen resembled a kindergarten room with all the furniture adjusted to a different perspective on the world. Lorraine had an old gas stove like mine with reachable knobs in the front, but in her chair she could use only the front burners.
I took my mug of coffee and sat on the bare living room floor. The rap on the door didn’t wait for a response. In strode a magnificent set of legs. Long-toed feet reposed in sandals in mid-November. Ankles protruded delicately but muscles corded and bulged from bulky tibia and fibula. These were not the calves of a body builder, but of an innately strong person—elemental legs. I could imagine them reconstructed from an anthropological dig.
“Hi,” the man boomed, calling my eyes to cornflower blue, twinkling ones. He carried a towel-covered plate on his fingertips. When Lorraine rode into the room, he stooped and gave her a resounding kiss on the lips and a crushing one-armed hug. “Hi ya, baby,” he said cheerfully. “Has anyone told you today that you’re beautiful?”
Sudden and unaccountable jealousy surged through me. The guy’s energy warmed the whole room. No wonder he wore sandals in November; he was a walking boiler room.
Malcolm didn’t stay fixed in place long enough for Lorraine to introduce us. “These puppies are still warm,” he announced, whizzing by Lorraine and into her kitchen as though he owned the place. As dishes rattled, I mouthed to Lorraine, “I’m interested.”
She stared at me blankly. When Malcolm had shown up, I’d thought her motive for inviting me patently apparent, but I’d either misjudged, or Lorraine couldn’t read lips.
Malcolm returned with coffee in one hand and three small plates resting on the table of his forearm. Short, fine blond hair capriciously rearranged itself as he bent to hand each of us a serving.
“Beside the scone, you’ll find Devon’s cream,” he intoned like a professional waiter as he settled on the floor. “I’m not one for rich stuff,” he switched to his own voice, “but normal people love it.”
The bright eyes turned to me. I busied myself with slathering Devon’s cream on my scone with a knife he’d thoughtfully provided for each of us. “I’m Malcolm.” His irascible eyebrows that looked like part of an Einstein disguise danced melodramatically up and down. “But most people call me Mac.”
“I’m Cecile,” I said, trying to mimic his brows. “But most people call me Ms. Knutsen.”
“She’s a teacher,” Lorraine said, not apologizing for the lack of introductions.
I self-consciously sampled the scone, savoring the sweet, white cream and flavor bursts from dried fruits. Currants?
Mac watched me as he munched his plain scone, crumbs collecting about his mouth and sprinkling his black shirt. “Do you like it?” he inquired, as though his soul depended on pleasing the ones he served.
“Nirvana,” I purred.
“Cecile, I was wondering if you’d do me a favor?” Lorraine asked.
“You can always ask.”
“Would you show Malcolm the available apartment, save my wheelchair the trauma of banging off the step?”
I glared at her. She must have read my lips after all, but the obviousness of this move embarrassed me. She had no shame, either, about using her handicap to manipulate people. Maybe she felt it evened the score.
“When are you going to get a ramp?” Mac asked.
“Immediately, now that I’m manager. The problem is how to construct one that doesn’t protrude too far into the driveway.”
“Piece of cake,” Mac stated. “I can build it. All you have to do is put a turn in it.”
“It’s harder than that, Malcolm. I’d get stuck in a ninety-degree angle.”
“Show me what you need, buy me the wood, and I’ll build it.”
Mac collected the plates and rose. “Let’s go look at that place. I’m anxious to get out of the St. George.”
When we went out the door, we encountered Bucky and Dudu leaving the water meter pipes. Today Dudu sported a vibrant orange ribbon.
“Hi ya.” Mac greeted them. “Aren’t you the guy and the dancing dog from down on Pacific Avenue?”
“Yes! Yes!” Bucky said, excited to be recognized. “Watch this.” Bucky commanded Dudu to dance and the dog obediently performed.
“Fantastic!” Mac proclaimed. “Outta sight.”
“It’s better with music,” Bucky demurred.
“I live at the St. George, so I know all the acts on the street. I like yours the best.”
Bucky glowed.
As we made our way along the drive, Mrs. Bean parted her curtains to watch us pass. Malcolm waved and beamed at her like a golden sun.
Down the road, Vince carried a box from Punky’s.
“Hey, man, you need a hand?” Mac said.
“Naw, we’re doing this bit by bit.” Vince gazed approvingly at Mac. “Thanks.”
I unlocked the door to Lefty’s, feeling dejected. On the way, Mac had focused on everyone except me. What I’d taken as flirtation at Lorraine’s was obviously only his usual, outgoing behavior.
The apartment seemed perfectly anonymous. The floor plan duplicated mine, with the same new carpet and knotty pine in the small kitchen. Lefty’s belongings had been removed and the place purged of any vestiges of his personality.
Mac beelined to the kitchen. “Gas stove,” he noted. “Muy importante. I couldn’t fix you a proper gourmet meal on an electric one.”
Mac the Knife
Since the St. George Hotel stood less on ceremony than most establishments and required only a week’s notice, and since Mac had pared his life to fit into one of its rooms, he transported all his possessions in two trips the following Friday. By Saturday, he was ready to serve me the promised dinner.
I gussied up for the occasion in my red, black and white silk dress and invested in a pair of black nylons with seams.
He threw open the door as I climbed his steps with my offering of chardonnay.
“Hey, gorgeous, I hope you like steak because I bought you a fourteen-ounce sirloin, and I exchanged shifts with a buddy to have this night off to prepare it for you.”
My heart plummeted. I hadn’t eaten red meat in eight years. I could manage a bit for the sake of politeness, but the sight of a huge slab of beef would nauseate me.
“Just kidding,” Mac kissed my cheek and received the bottle of wine. “I know you don’t eat steak.”
“How do you know that?”
“If you ate a bit of succulent, juicy, rare beef, you wouldn’t look anemic and malnutritioned.”
Before I could even be offended or correct malnutritioned with the word malnourished, he hurried into his kitchen, adding over his shoulder, “And this is Santa Cruz.”
“No it isn’t.” I hovered at the kitchen entry, as he efficiently popped the cork and poured each of us a water glass of wine.
“I can tell we’re going to have a wonderful time,” he said cryptically.
The aromas of fish and cooking rice permeated the apartment. He tipped his glass back and forth. “Good legs.” He peered at me through his glass. He swirled and sniffed the wine. “Excellent nose. I propose a toast.”
“I have one.” I touched my glass to his. “Here’s to you and here’s to me; may we never disagree, but if we do, to hell with you, and here’s to me.”
“Good toast.” He swallowed a bit. “And good wine.” He turned back to his work. Open bottles of soy sauce, plum sauce, five spice, and sesame seed oil and a bag of blanched almonds filled the small, splattered counter.
“Let me tell you about sirloin steak.” Mac crunched across rice spilled on the floor and placed a red bell pepper and green onions on a cutting board. “Back in the time of the Crusades, King Richard returned victorious and naturally a great feast was prepared for him.”
With expert thwacks, Mac diced the vegetables. “Richard’s chef wanted to
make something outrageous for the king, so instead of cooking off a hindquarter or a whole pig as was the custom, this chef cut out just the tenderest loin meat to cook.” Mac leaned and pulled a beat-up plastic bowl from the under-the-counter refrigerator and added the red bell pepper and green onion to an Oriental noodle salad. “Anyway, King Richard loved the meat so much he knighted it, and that’s why we have Sir Loin of Beef.”
“Is that true?”
He shrugged, raised his whimsical eyebrows, and wiped his hands on his 50l Levi’s. They hung perfectly on him, not too tight, but sexy, worn soft in the right places, and less splattered with proof of cooking than his black T-shirt.
As he bent to pull another pan from the refrigerator, I admired the roundness of his buns. He straightened and I averted my eyes to the pan extended from his Popeye forearms. In it two fish beseeched with dead eyes.
“I’m preparing the trout Szechwan style. I marinated these overnight in raspberry wine vinegar, fresh thyme and ground black pepper.”
In sympathy my eyes bulged back at the fishes’.
“Oh, darling,” he said, pronouncing it dahlin’, “do the heads bother you? I’ll remove them after I’ve baked the fish, even though the Chinese consider the eyeballs a delicacy.” He slid the pan into the oven. “Everything’s all set.”
He clearly did not plan to tidy the kitchen. As for the living room, it was nearly empty except for a bulky armchair flanked by an upright crate full of books topped with a reading lamp. In the center of the room was a small table draped with lace tablecloth, and set with two white china plates, rose cloth napkins, two rose tapers in crystal holders, and a pink rose in a bud vase.
“Very elegant,” I said as he seated me at the table, the only place we could sit together.
“Actually I owe it all to Punky.”
“Punky?” Momentary panic clutched me. I could visualize them as a couple. They matched one another in emotional volatility.
“You know. Your neighbor? Our neighbor.” He struck a match and lit the candles. “I went to borrow a candle to make the atmosphere a little more romantic, but when she wheedled out of me that I was going to use paper plates, she loaned me all this stuff.” He shut off the lamp and sat across from me.
“Punky knows we have a … .” I searched for the right word. Could one call this a date?
“Are you embarrassed?” He sounded hurt. Candlelight softened his face. It wasn’t handsome, not in the G.Q. or even in the Sears Catalog fashion. It was rugged, even haggard, like a blond version of Charles Bronson, a face with character.
“The whole neighborhood will know.”
“Are you embarrassed?” he repeated.
“No. But I’m a private person.”
“Well, Miss Private Person, while I continue to torture those two little fishies in a three-hundred-seventy-five degree oven, would you like to look at my etchings?”
The End
“I can’t believe he used that line,” Lorraine chuckled.
I raked her with a scathing look, one that shut up or withered most disruptive students, even though she was my hostess, and I sat on her living room floor.
“And then what happened?” she pumped, undeterred.
“This isn’t fair.” I sipped my mug of coffee. “You want every detail, but you haven’t even introduced me to your boyfriend.”
“If you didn’t go to bed with the chickens, you could have met Chuck a number of times.” She maneuvered her wheelchair so it was closer to the side of her desk and her coffee. Or maybe she was just maneuvering away from the topic of her private life. “What time do you go to bed—eight thirty?”
“Nine,” I corrected. The dark French roast Lorraine served was both richer and mellower than my cheap Bustello brand.
“Anyway, Malcolm asked if you wanted to see his etchings,” she savored this information, “and … ?”
“And he showed me etchings.”
“Seriously?”
“Lorraine, let me confide in you.”
She leaned closer and looked about to tumble from her chair.
“I am the world’s worst liar.”
“That’s all then?” she said.
“Well, he showed me his watercolors, too. He actually had more watercolors than etchings.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Why?” I asked impatiently. “Is he usually a sex fiend?”
“No, but it does sound like you had a taming influence on him.”
Great. Just what I wanted—a taming influence on men.
“Since you’re firing all these personal questions at me, what about you and Chuck?” I said. “What’s the nature of your relationship? Are you guys headed toward the altar?”
“I don’t think so.” She sighed. “Two old handicapped Vietnam Vets. We share memories and common problems. We’re great friends, but we’d make lousy life-long mates.”
“Why?”
“Too much in common.”
“I’ve heard of too little in common.” I thought of my last relationship. I had been wrong for Angelo. Not Greek. We’d grown up in different lands with different customs, different languages, and different religions. Angelo was a self-made man with less than a high school education while I’d spent seven years in college.
My pregnancy had forced us to see how unsuited we were for each other.
“Imagine two English teachers married,” Lorraine said to clinch her point.
“God forbid.” I crunched one of the chocolate-covered biscotti she’d offered with this mid-afternoon break. I had only a three-day workweek ahead and felt relatively relaxed, even sitting on the hard wood floor. “A nightmare.” I pictured two English teachers propped in bed, both reading papers. Angelo, for all his faults, kissed and cuddled and curled around my back.
“Now take someone like Malcolm,” Lorraine said.
I scooted more firmly against the wall. “Yes, let’s take him.”
“With that joie de vivre, he’s a gem, but definitely in the rough. A lot of that bonhomie is nervous energy. It’s like he must keep the patter going, or there might be silence. Or, worse yet, probing talk. He needs a calming influence, someone to polish him a bit.”
I gathered she meant me. “The cat’s enough,” I said. “I have something important to do before I get involved. With anyone.”
She fiddled with her cut-off pink sweat pants, tucking the ends neatly under her stumps. “What’s that?”
“Writing.”
“Are you a writer?” Her head bobbed up with rekindled interest.
“I don’t deserve the title. I haven’t written a word in almost two years.”
Lorraine’s eyes sharpened in attentiveness.
“A professor once advised me, ‘Don’t become a writer unless you have to.’ Well, I had to. Even as a kid, I’d write these survival stories. My protagonists would get lost in the woods or some such and have to start making everything from scratch.”
“Making a new life here should be a piece of cake then.” She grinned.
I chewed my lip and reflected on my long-ago heroines. Even as a ten-year-old it seemed I’d been prepping myself to escape my hometown. Of course, in my stories, axes magically appeared so my character could hew trees to create a shelter. And my character knew how to do all of those things—build houses and make fires. Build a life out of nothing.
“When I was in high school,” I continued, “I took a correspondence course in writing from U.C. Berkeley. That’s kinda how I ended up out here.”
“So what are you getting at?” Lorraine chomped on her biscotti. “What does all of this have to do with Mac?”
“I stopped writing so I could earn a living.” My words caused a small sob, the quick intake of air sucking a bit of biscotti with it. My eyes teared.
Lorraine watched as I coughed and thumped my chest.
When I recovered, I said, “I woke up this morning and my fingers were tingling. All I could think about is this story in my head.”
/> “What’s the story?” she asked.
“Suffice it to say it’s based on what’s been happening here.”
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Fictionalized, of course.”
“Of course.” She waited a beat. “Am I in it?”
“Mmmmm. But you won’t recognize yourself. I’ve changed your name to Gertrude.”
“Gertrude!”
“Don’t malign it. It’s my mother’s name.”
Her face fell and she looked at the floor.
“I’m kidding.” It felt good to rib her for a change, to feel my sense of humor reviving. “However, I’m changing your handicap.”
Lorraine digested all of this. “Does this mean Malcolm’s dust?”
I shrugged. “I don’t need a man in my life, but I sure want one.” I stood and stretched, empty mug in hand. “But I’m a first-year teacher, and I want to write. There won’t be enough of me left for a relationship.” I set the coffee cups and platter on her low kitchen counter. “Thanks a lot, Lorraine, but I have to get to work—lessons to plan and novels to write.” And a cat to feed. And to name. Maybe Milagro. Miracle.
“I want to know the plot,” Lorraine said.
“Hemingway said it’s bad luck to talk about a story too much. A writer has to conserve that energy for the writing. But, here’s the elevator pitch: an emotionally wounded young woman finds herself alone in an apartment complex that’s so full of drama she can hardly process her own problems, but that turns out to be a good thing—a healing thing.”
Needs work, I thought, leaning over her desk and peering out her window at my stoop. I squatted down and viewed how Lorraine would have seen me, lugging my book bag and purse into my apartment. At an angle, hulked the charred remains of Mrs. Bean’s and with a twist, the laundry room and Florence’s old place. It was a different perspective on our little neighborhood, but still much the same. In three months, the community had fluxed in and out, like a breathing organism, and I’d become part of it.
I turned to my friend. “When the protagonist gets to know everyone, she no longer feels cut off from the world. And, she has a story to write.”
“I look forward to reading it,” Lorraine said.
I floated across her room, engrossed in the world I would create. Who would enter through those magical fictional doors? Mac?
Lostart Street Page 17