“I’m not going to join,” I say, giving one last effort to avoid the tour. “I’m wasting your time.”
“That’s okay, I’m paid by the hour.”
He leads me toward the main gym, which is packed with the after-work crowd—every one of the dozens of treadmills and elliptical machines is being used. I give a quick scan of the room for Daniel and, as expected, don’t see him. Which is good—I want to take him by surprise, not the other way around.
“So what are your fitness goals?” Javier asks.
“To work out for one day.”
He gives a deliberate glance to my backside. “You’ll have to do more than that if you want to lift that any.”
Oh, nice! “I happen to wear the same size I’ve always worn,” I say, tugging my shirt down.
“And you look good. But as a woman ages, gravity takes a toll. You have to do more than diet and—”
“As a woman ages? What—men don’t age?”
“I’m only saying, a few squats and the right machines could tighten all that up. Lift the tush. Flatten the tummy. Get those”—and he tips his head toward my chest—“up and out. Who doesn’t want a perkier bustline?”
A familiar voice behind me says, “I know I do.”
I want to die—right here in the middle of the gym. If an earthquake caused the floor to crack open and swallow me whole, it would be a relief.
“Daniel …” I say, turning around. “Hi.”
“I didn’t know you still came here,” he says.
Grrr, that’s my line. This is precisely what I didn’t want.
“I don’t. I might rejoin.”
Javier beams. “You have a friend here! A workout buddy is key to keeping your fitness goals.”
I glare at him—it’s his fault I was caught off guard. “I don’t have any fitness goals.”
“Of course not—not yet. That’s where I can help.”
“Actually,” I say in sugary tones, although it’s possible my expression is more grimace than grin, “I’d like to work out with my buddy here. Get all motivated. Then I’ll come find you. How’s that?”
Javier must figure Daniel stands a better chance at scoring him a commission than his own attempts to bully me because he says, “Super idea.” He gives us a double thumbs-up as he leaves.
Daniel is wearing the BILLY GOAT TAVERN T-shirt I bought him. We liked to go there for burgers. “So how come you’re not looking at a gym closer to your house?” he says.
My house. He doesn’t know.
Where is a bolt of lightning to strike you dead when you need it?
“I don’t have my house anymore. I sold it.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment—the only sound is some techno song playing low on the gym’s speakers and the thump-thump-thump of people’s feet slamming on treadmills.
Finally he says, “How come?”
“I needed the money.”
He nods—he’s already figured out why I’d need cash. “So where are you living?”
And there I have it: the segue I needed to get my plan back on track. “Remember I said I was organizing that woman’s house? I’m staying in her guesthouse.”
“So it’s near here?”
“Oak Park.”
“Oh.”
I can tell he’s trying to piece together why I had to walk into this gym of all gyms. Before he has a chance to ask me again, I say, “You’d be amazed by the movie memorabilia she has.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
I’d rehearsed this, but now nothing is coming to mind. Being face-to-face with Daniel again is throwing me. Since I can’t recall a single item I’d planned to tempt him with, I improvise with something Marva doesn’t in fact own but will sound impressive. “She has the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore during the filming of The Wizard of Oz.”
Daniel frowns. “Those would be fake. The real ones are at the Smithsonian.”
Shoot, now that he mentions it, I recall reading that in the newspaper once. I feel like a fool, but then I realize he’s playing right into my hands, and I remember the rest of what I planned to say. “Really? See, I’d never know something like that. I’d probably sell them for thousands of dollars and then get myself sued for fraud.”
“If they were real, thousands would be a bargain. They’re considered priceless.”
“Hmm. That’s certainly valuable information.” I step in closer, as if I have such hot news I fear being overheard. “She also has the robe from Rocky.”
“Rocky I?”
“Mmm-hmm.” I twirl a strand of hair. “Only I won’t get much for it because it’s used. Sylvester Stallone wore it during all that filming and they never even washed it.”
He scratches the back of his head. “Um … that’d make it more valuable, not less.”
“Oh. Gosh. I didn’t think of that. There’s so much in there that I get overwhelmed. I’ve had to sort through hundreds of those collectible figurines. Some date back to the 1940s. Now those will fetch a high price at the yard sale because I’m going to pull them out of those annoying boxes she’s been keeping them in all these years and put them real nice on display.”
He winces at the words pull them out of those annoying boxes. “No, you should never—”
I don’t let him finish. “Luckily, most of what she has is in great shape. Except for that screenplay for Casablanca, which at first I was excited about—say, isn’t that one of your favorite movies? Anyway, it turns out it’s practically ruined because Humphrey Bogart scribbled these notes all over it.” I exhale dramatically. “At least it’s on white paper, so it’s recyclable.”
He’s looking at me, stroking his chin, clearly at a loss for words. Perfect—right where I want him.
“Hey,” I say, as if I had this swell idea. “Maybe you’d like to come see! For fun, before I sell it all. I could probably get you in, although I’d have to do it in the next couple days because everything will be out the door soon.” I smile brightly.
Daniel grins back. “So, basically, you have no idea what you’re doing and you need me to come there and help you price things and tell you how to sell them. Or even do it for you.”
My smile fades. I am so busted. “Um, yes?”
“Is there really the screenplay with Bogart’s personal notes on it or did you make that up?”
“It’s there.”
“You think she’d let me read it?”
“If you help me out, you can lick it for all I care.”
He tosses his workout towel over his shoulder. “Then count me in.”
Daniel and I make plans for him to stop by Marva’s house after he’s done with work tomorrow, meeting up with me first in the bungalow. I give him her address but not her name—I only say she’s someone who used to be moderately famous. In case he changes his mind, that’s one less person in the loop. Then I beg out of exercising and head directly to the locker room. My work here is done.
The next morning, I’m already getting a jump on dreading Daniel’s visit when Marva calls me into her bedroom with uncharacteristic cheeriness. “I need your opinion on an ensemble. Be a dear and get it out for me. See it? The plum pantsuit hanging there in the closet.” This instruction is delivered as if I can merely walk over and pull it off the rod—as opposed to what I’m doing, which is climbing over a dune of clothing, then attempting to pry it from where it’s sandwiched so tightly that I fear one tug will bring the closet’s entire contents with it.
Finally, I succeed in my quest and lay before her an elegant, silky pair of purple pants and a matching loose, flowing jacket.
“It’s lovely,” I say. And clearly expensive, not an outfit one wears around the house—certainly not in bed. She must be on the mend. I’m surprised at how pleased I am to realize Marva must be planning to go out. It’s been bothering me that she doesn’t seem to have a friend left in the world. “What’s the special occasion?”
Instead of answering, Marva picks up the jacket and lays it against he
r chest. “How about the color? Does it make my skin look sallow? Hmm, perhaps a scarf … but I suppose it has to be the right sort of scarf.”
“Right for what, exactly?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she says, “I’m aiming for a look that says, ‘Oh, this old thing?’ I want to look like a million, but not as if I’m trying.”
“Why, Marva!” I say teasingly. “Are you going on a date?” No wonder she’s being so evasive.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Now, upstairs in one of the rooms I have a basket of scarves—go fetch them for me. There’s one that will be perfect for this.” She scowls at me. “And wipe that smirk off your face. It’s positively insufferable.”
I look for a scarf for the next hour. It’s a waste of time since I never find one, but it made me so happy to think Marva might have something special planned, I didn’t want to let her down.
At six fifteen, Daniel knocks on my door, though it’s already open. He’s dressed in his version of work attire: polo shirt, jeans, and Vans shoes. He pauses to look around the bungalow. “This is cute. Cozy.”
“That’s a nice way to say crowded.”
“I mean it. And the main house is unbelievable. You can see there’s a lot of care put into maintaining it in the Craftsman style. It’s so nice on the exterior, it’s hard to believe there’s as much crammed inside as you say.”
“Believe it.”
He perches on the arm of the couch. “You going to tell me who lives here now? You said famous. What—a producer? An actor?”
“No, she’s a painter. I might have oversold you on the ‘famous’ part. You’ve probably never heard of her. I hadn’t. Her name is Marva—”
“Meier Rios? You’re working for Marva Meier Rios? Are you kidding me?” He gets up and starts pacing around, hands in his hair as if trying to keep his brain from exploding. “Do you have any idea how amazing that is?” He stops and looks at me. “You don’t, do you?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I mean, I looked her up on the Internet.”
“Is Woman, Freshly Tossed here? Will I be able to see it?”
“I don’t know if she has it here.”
“You’ve been in this house for weeks now, and you don’t know if you’re in the vicinity of one of the greatest pieces of art ever created?”
I cross my arms—I didn’t invite him here for a lecture. I invited him here to do my job for me.
He knows the arm-cross well enough to back off. “I’m excited, that’s all. It’s a big deal. She’s a big deal. As far as I’m concerned, she started the neo-Expressionism movement, although she doesn’t always get credit for it.”
I manage to uncross my arms, but I can’t shake off the defensiveness. “How is it you know so much about her?”
“What do you mean, how do I know so much? I’m a designer.”
“A graphic designer. For advertising. Using computers.”
His brows knit together. That’s his version of the arm-cross. “So, that’s my medium. It’s still art. You wrote a nonfiction book about organizing instead of a novel. Does that mean you’re not a writer?”
“Yes.”
He’s about to say something, but then he stops. He tips his head. “You don’t think you’re a writer?”
“Look, can we move on? Now, I’ve told Marva that you’ll be—”
“No, I want to know. You don’t think you’re a writer?”
“If you must know, no, I don’t. A book of household advice on how you should fill a trash bag every day with clothes for the Goodwill until you have a week’s worth is not exactly Hemingway.”
“But it’s words on paper. That you wrote. That got published. And it probably helped a lot more people than Old Man and the Sea ever has.”
“All five people who read it? Face it, I talked to experts, I gave examples about people with overstuffed closets and cluttered basements. But I had no idea squalor like that”—I gesture toward Marva’s house—“ever existed.”
“Most people don’t live like that.”
“Daniel, it’s fine. I honestly don’t care about the book anymore. Plenty of books never get off the ground, and it so happens mine was one of them. So come on—are you ready to meet Marva?”
“You bet.”
“Fair warning: She can be … for lack of a better word, eccentric.”
“Of course she’s eccentric. She’s a genius. I’d be disappointed if she was normal.”
We start walking toward the house. “I’ll give you the tour first. I’d like to get a sense from you whether there’s anything that falls into that area between fine art and yard sale. Then we’ll go to what Marva calls the theater room. That’s where most of the memorabilia is. It’s also her bedroom, so be prepared. As I started to say before, I’ve warned her you’re coming. Hopefully she won’t be lying there in her scanties.”
“That might not be so bad. As I recall, she was quite an attractive woman.”
“That was a long time ago,” I say, realizing as soon as I do how uncharitable I’m being. “I didn’t mean …”
“What is she now? Late fifties? Sixties?”
“I believe sixty-four.”
“That’s nothing. Look at the Rolling Stones—they’re about that age, still banging twenty-year-olds.”
“You want to bang Marva Meier Rios?”
He gives me a teasing nudge. “You think she would?”
It’s testimony to how far I’ve come in my recovery over Daniel that I laugh, since months ago even the notion of that ridiculous pairing would have crushed me.
We go through the upstairs first. As I suspected, Daniel says there’s plenty of value there. I feel utterly vindicated when we get to the white retro chairs that Smitty scorned and Daniel nearly births a cow he’s so excited. “Do you have any idea how rare these are in this sort of condition?” he says, stomping over the Easter hats to pull one chair from its place (and nearly causing an avalanche in doing so).
“Be careful!” I scold, as though there’s a big market for bonnets.
Daniel sets the chair in the hallway and spins in it as if it were a ride at Disneyland. Seeing him makes me remember how he could at times be a big kid. It’s both his charm and his flaw.
There’s no way he can see it all, but even at a glance, I have my answer. I’ll be cheating Marva if I simply throw all this in a yard sale.
We pass Nelson in the kitchen on our way to see Marva. He’s been staying during the day since she took ill. “How’s she doing?” I ask.
“Good spirits,” Nelson says. “When she threw the Jell-O cup at me, she wasn’t even aiming.”
I don’t bother with introductions—it’s not as if Daniel will be sticking around after today. He and I head to the theater room. He’s repeatedly tucking and untucking his shirt.
“It’s better out,” I say. He pulls it untucked, staring at the door, which is slightly ajar. “Nervous?”
“Excited. Thank you for this.”
“You’re the one helping me.”
“That’s right. You’re welcome.”
With that, we head inside. Marva is propped up in bed, fully clad, in silky slacks and a caftan. “Marva, this is Daniel Kapinski. He’s the memorabilia expert I told you about. Daniel, this is—”
“Marva Meier Rios,” he says—and he must be worked up because he steps on a boxed figurine in his zeal to run over and shake her hand. Normally, he’d sooner step on his own mother. “I feel as if I should genuflect. I can’t tell you what an honor it is to meet you.”
She must approve of his goofy enthusiasm because she gives him a smile that from her is more rare than those chairs upstairs. “Nice to meet you, too. Daniel is it?”
He nods. I think I hear brain rattling. I’ve never seen him like this.
Trying to save him before he makes a fool of himself, I say, “Daniel, perhaps we should get started. If you want to come over here, I can show you the posters.”
He doesn’t so much as glance my way. He grabs
the stool that Nelson uses when he’s checking Marva’s vitals and sits on it. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw one of your paintings. I was ten. It was a class field trip to the MCA. They had one hanging with a few other artists’ just off the lobby.”
“Which painting?” Marva asks.
“She Felt Herself Aggrieved.” Marva nods, and Daniel continues, “I sat down on the bench in the middle of the room, just wanting to look at it for a minute. Pretty soon all the kids filed through, and the teacher started telling me I had to get moving. But I wouldn’t. It was almost as if I couldn’t. I’d never seen art like that in real life … ever. I wasn’t prepared for the power of it. To see the actual brushstrokes. To have the energy of it right there in front of me—nothing blocking it. It was … the difference between looking at a girlie magazine versus seeing your first actual naked woman.”
“There’s no naked woman in that painting.”
“Ah, but what a woman there was. Those eyes. I don’t know what you were thinking when you painted those eyes but—” He stops—he makes a sound that’s somewhere between a squeak and a gasp. “You’re here! The artist is here right in front of me. Wow. Please. I’m begging. Tell me. What were you thinking?”
“Oh, that was so long ago. I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“I don’t believe for a minute that you don’t remember. But fine, you don’t want to say. I respect that—although if you change your mind, feel free to shout it out at any time.”
“Duly noted.”
“Anyway, I wouldn’t leave. One of the moms that was chaperoning said she’d sit with me.” He gives a cheerful shrug. “I turned out to be the laughingstock of the fifth grade—apparently there were naked paintings further on.”
“A shame you missed out.”
“If only it was Woman, Freshly Tossed that was in that first room. I wouldn’t have had to spend the rest of the year defending my manhood. Plenty of naked in that one.” He’s quiet for a moment, then he jumps off the stool as if it were spring-loaded. “And I’m taking way too much of your time.”
Marva doesn’t tell him to stay, but I get the distinct impression she was in no hurry for him to leave her side. She picks up her book. I can’t imagine she can concentrate on her reading, though, with all of Daniel’s carrying on. He’s calling off each item to me as he sees it as if he were pitching As Seen On TV merchandise. A banjo from Deliverance! A gen-u-ine Willy Wonka golden ticket!
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