The Muffia

by Nicholas, Ann Royal

  “I don’t know, but she needs us to stay positive—as in cheerful, not death sentence. That’s what she wants. Anyway, she’s having the lumpectomy at one o’clock and we could maybe hang out and have a coffee while she’s having it.”

  I thought Kiki was taking being positive into the realm of denial. But instead of commenting on that, like any trained attorney would—lapsed or otherwise—I went back to my original line of questioning. “Listen, Kiki. Did Jelicka just call you, or did she call everyone about this? I mean about her stolen-nuclear-material idea.” It didn’t surprise me that Jelicka had told the Muffs. It just surprised me a little that I’d gone through the ritual of asking her not to talk about it, thinking I might get a different result. Isn’t that the definition of an idiot?

  “She thought we needed to know in case we wanted to be tested,” said Kiki. “But truthfully, it sounded far-fetched to me, too.”

  Not so far-fetched as to keep her from having some fun at my expense.

  Thor came back on the line after what had seemed like an hour.

  “I’ll call you back,” I told Kiki.

  “’K. And don’t worry—we can always get a tester to come to you if it comes to that.” Then she hung up.

  Once I’d gotten Berggren’s number from Thor, I called, hoping I’d catch her during a break in rehearsals.

  “Berggren?”

  “Who’s this?” Berggren asked, as if speaking through twelve layers of cheesecloth with her lips tangled up in the first layer.

  “Berggren, it’s Madelyn.”

  “Madison, how are you?”

  “Ma-de-lyn,” I said louder, glad I was at my house and could talk as loud as I wanted to. “Is this a good time?”

  “Mad . . . be . . . long . . . hard.”

  I think that’s what she said. “I just wanted to tell you something, but if you’re really busy right now, I can call back.”

  “It’s . . . fff . . . go ahead.”

  Berggren had a way of being distant and approachable at the exact same time. This was one of those instances when I didn’t know if I should continue or just hang up.”

  “Udi, remember Udi? The guy I met at your house?” I began.

  “The Israeli, yes!—very hot. I heard from ZsaZsi that he’s really into you. It was so sexy watching you two that night, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. How did the second date go?”

  “Not so well.”

  “What?”

  “He’s dead, Berggren.”

  There was no point in leaving that part out. In fact, she might know this already. But anything else I told her I’d have to filter, given that she and Nissim’s fiancée were business partners.

  “ZsaZsi didn’t say...I had no idea...Oh my God. How did he die?”

  “I think he had a heart attack.”

  She gasped. “Oh, you poor thing. Did this just happen? Is he there?”

  “No, no. It was a couple of days ago but, well, the thing is, it was just so sudden, you know?” I wanted to see how much information she might provide without my having to ask. “We’d barely gotten started and his death was so sudden. I hardly knew anything about him and now I feel like there’s no closure.”

  I try to avoid using that word whenever possible, particularly in mediations. It has so much pop-cultural baggage attached to it, and it’s never been a satisfying word anyway because so few painful events ever receive real closure. You can’t just zip-lock the bad chapters in your life away like so many leftovers; they’ll still spoil eventually. But in this conversation, closure suited my purposes.

  “Oh, Madelyn, I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could say.”

  “Did ZsaZsi say anything? You know, about him? Anything she may have told you? I just need to know.”

  “I don’t think ZsaZsi knew much about him. She’d only just met him, too. All she told me was that Udi and Nissim met in the Israeli army.”

  She was breaking up, but I think that’s what she said.

  “The army?” I asked.

  “Because in Israel—”

  I don’t think she heard my question. But I remember Jelicka telling me that all Israelis had to serve in the army, so it might make sense that that’s how Udi and Nissim knew each other.

  “Yeah, I remember ZsaZsi saying that’s where they met,” she said again. “Nissim stayed in for like ten years or something, which I guess is a long time. Maybe Udi did, too, and that’s how he got into sky marshaling.”

  Well, she was trying to give me something, I guess.

  “Where are they?” Now she was speaking to someone else, presumably in the rehearsal hall, and she was clearly annoyed. “I needed them here half an hour ago. Call their agent, the little flakes.” There was a garbled exchange before she came back to the phone. “Sorry. Where was I?”’

  “The army?”

  “Oh yeah, the army. Well, here’s the thing. I don’t think she’d mind if I told you because it’s over now, but ZsaZsi told me that Nissim had been an assassin.”

  Granted, we had a bad connection, but I could have sworn she said assassin. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I think it’s sexy, though, even if it is a little scary and dangerous. I mean James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer—”

  She had said assassin.

  Then, without covering the mouthpiece, she yelled in a cheerful voice, “Mary Kate! Ashley! Over here!” Then she returned to the line. “They finally deign to make an appearance. The word contract means nothing to these people.”

  “The Olsen twins are in your movie?”

  “Who knew? But the movie’s about twins separated at birth, so I wanted real twins. Anyway, I’ve gotta rehearse now, babe. I’m so sorry to hear about all this. Let’s get together next week when I get home and we can talk about it. Come to my dinner party?”

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  Yay . . . another dinner party at Berggren’s house! It was exactly what I’d been hoping for and a surefire opportunity to find out more about Udi. But that would have to wait because I had other pressing concerns—Vicki's lump, Lila's volleyball game, then there was a mixer at Lila's school with me as one of the parent chaperones. At least Lila’s friends would distract her from asking about “Mom’s special friend.” So far I’d been able to avoid telling her what had happened, but sooner or later she might press me on the subject and I hadn’t figured out what I was going to say. I just wanted to present a believable alternative to the truth. Why upset her?

  In retrospect, I think I must have been starting to get caught up in Jelicka’s plot. Perhaps she wasn’t so crazy after all—particularly since some new information had emerged about Nissim—assassin! The whole thing could actually turn out to be very serious.

  Despite that possibility, however, I didn’t thoroughly think through what could happen to us if Jelicka was right.

  Chapter 22

  Vicki sat propped up in her hospital bed, a silvery curtain hanging from chains strung from an oval ceiling rod pulled around it, staring wide-eyed at Kiki and me. The anesthesia had kicked in and her eyes, along with her pale skin and spiky blonde hair put me in mind of a teenage drug addict rather than the conscientious filmmaking Muff I knew.

  “This is the best mmmooovie I’ve ever had an opportunity to be involved in,” she said with conviction. “Whatever happens with this l-l-lum-l-l-lummpec-tomy”—

  Vicki’s anesthesia was making her unable to form words, not to mention the problems it was causing to her synapses.

  “—annn-ddd I wanna have Jelly or somebody shoooot me—”

  “Honey, Jelicka’s not here.”

  “OK, OK, OK…then you guys shoot me, the lumcotopeee. The trunk is my video camera in my car. Prommmisssse you’ll finish me with this film.”

  Kiki and I exchanged a worried look. Kiki shook her head.

  “We promise,” I said.

  “I wannnna die making this Muffie. Pleeeassse. It’ll be my . . . gift of parting to the world.”


  Kiki and I each took one of Vicki’s hands. “You’re not going to die, Vick,” Kiki said. “It’s probably a benign fibroid.”

  “I love you guys. I just, it’s just, so sig-nif-i-cant!” Vicki belted, startling even herself. She reached for my hand. “Sad Maddie. Are you sad? You’re sad, aren’t you?”

  “I am a little sad,” I told her.

  “All right, ladies,” said a Filipino nurse in pale yellow scrubs with a nametag that read: Gloria P. “I’ll take her now. How are we today, Victoria?”

  “I’m so lu-luh-cky,” Vicki said as Gloria P. began pushing her down the hall.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Soooo luuuhcky . . . my frienddzzs . . .”

  “Mmmmm, hmmm.”

  “They’re the Muff-eeyaa. Ya know what a muffia is—GloriaPee?” It had taken awhile for Vicki to focus on the nametag.

  “Ah, no, Vicki. I don’t believe I do,” Gloria said with some trepidation.

  “It’s the bush on your twat!” Vicki screamed, then began laughing, turning heads as Gloria P. continued rolling the gurney toward the OR. “I’m a luuuhhhhckkk-eee gurrrlllll . . .”

  Then both were gone, beyond the double doors and out of sight.

  We were in the new cancer center at Cedars-Sinai, a huge hospital serving most of Los Angeles. We were there to support Vicki and not, as Kiki wished, to have me tested for radiation. Which was preposterous.

  The waiting room was scarier than any other hospital I’d ever seen—probably because it was dedicated to advanced-stage cancer patients. Most of the people looked very ill, and many probably didn’t have long to live. But I found myself looking at their drawn faces, feeling guilty and so happy I wasn’t one of them and, all the while, worried for Vicki. My mind flashed on the Rabbit for no clear reason, and though I felt particularly not sexy at that moment, it was still a shocking thought that one could go from orgasm to the nasty realities of the scourge of our age so quickly.

  “How long?”

  “Couple of hours,” Kiki said. “Wanna walk around? Get a coffee?”

  “I don’t know,” I said taking in the fragile souls in the waiting room. “I’m a little afraid of knocking someone over.”

  I stood and stretched, glancing at the patients, their attendants and loved ones, trying not to dwell on anyone for too long. In some cases it was hard to tell if someone was offspring, parent or paid staff. I decided Jack Kevorkian was not such an evil person after all. If someone wanted to spare himself this end, I reasoned, he should have the right to.

  Chapter 23

  The sliding entrance doors swished open with a ding, and I spotted a cute older woman being pushed toward Kiki and me in a wheelchair. The woman—wearing black and with her hair cut in a chic style—had that pert, defiant look of the cancer fighter.

  Letting my eyes drift higher to whoever was pushing the chair, I saw that it was Cullen—as in Babeland/Fleshlight/Andalucia Cullen. He’d spotted me, too, and was smiling broadly, just as handsome as I remembered.

  “Hi, there,” he said, taking his hands off the wheelchair and standing up to his full height. I hadn’t remembered him being over six feet but, then again, I’d been wearing heels and a power suit when we’d met, and now I was clad in sweats and flip-flops. He had on a light blue linen shirt that wrinkled and draped tastefully and, though he probably hadn’t put a lot of thought into his appearance, he looked great—far better than I did, that's for sure.

  “Hi,” I said, glancing at the woman in the wheelchair who suddenly didn’t seem quite so cute. This had to be his mother. She was a smaller, shrunken version of him and, to me, didn’t look sick at all. She was staring at me with a distinctly hostile expression. I couldn’t make out her ancestry any better than I could her son’s—Italian, maybe, or Spanish? She had a head of thick black hair and eyebrows to match. I wondered what kind of cancer a woman with hair like that could possibly have. Then I realized she was wearing a wig.

  My hands went to my own head, attempting to adjust my own fine, fragile hair into something bordering on a style. I think I’ve mentioned that I consider my hair to be my worst feature, requiring a lot of daily attention and product in order to create the illusion I had hair at all—and I didn’t even have cancer. That day it was particularly wispy and I remember wishing I were wearing a hat.

  We stood there—except the woman in the wheelchair, obviously—for a couple of uncomfortable seconds, Kiki looking at me oddly while the woman in the chair glared at Cullen, waiting for an explanation.

  “This is my mother. Mom, this is Madelyn. She’s a lawyer.”

  “What do we need a lawyer for?” the woman snapped. “I’m sick. I need a doctor.”

  “She’s not our lawyer, Mom. She’s just a lawyer.”

  “More of a mediator at this point, actually,” I said, hoping to clarify.

  “I don’t believe in meditation,” said Cullen’s mom.

  Kiki’s eyes opened wide, I believe in an effort to tell me there was no point in discussing anything with this one.

  “This is Kiki,” I said. “She’s one of the women in the book club I told you about.”

  “Right, I remember. The Muffia.”

  Mom cleared her throat loudly, again turning around to glare at Cullen. She reminded me of an overacting vaudeville performer from another era, mugging and grimacing in exaggerated style. The only thing she didn’t do to show her displeasure was use hand gestures.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess I should check her in, but let’s get together.”

  I found myself nodding. “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “Psshaww,” said his mom. Really.

  “Still have my card?” Cullen asked.

  “I do.” And I did. Of course I did, though after meeting Udi, I might have tossed it like so much garbage. I didn’t, however, tell him that I had been thinking of calling. I remembered really enjoying the time we’d spent with each other, despite the fact I’d been slightly embarrassed that he’d used the opportunity of my purring Aphroditty to start a conversation. I’d actually thought about him quite a bit before I’d met Udi (B.U.), but after I met Udi (A.U.), I was consumed with Udi, even if things with Cullen might have ultimately worked out better. Of course, at this point I know things would have worked out better. Cullen was still alive, after all.

  Here fate had thrown us together again—in a cancer hospital, no less. I hoped it wasn’t a bad omen; certainly it was no worse than Babeland.

  He turned and, over his shoulder, mouthed, “Call me.”

  “Very good-looking,” Kiki whispered in my ear as we watched him roll his mom toward reception. “And he loves his mom. That’s nice to see.”

  She was giving me a very non-Kiki expression. In fact, Kiki seemed to be breaking through at least some of whatever had been bothering her. She seemed more content, somehow. And that day she was looking and acting less like the grown-up married Kiki and more like the Kiki I’d known fifteen years ago. She was wearing her hair kinky and wild—the way she’d worn it before she’d met Saul—and her clothes were less conservative. Deliciously Disturbed had worked some kinda magic on her after all. I just couldn’t tell what it was yet.

  “You realize that he’s the one I met in the vibrator store,” I told her, no longer too concerned she might give me a lecture on safe sex.

  She nodded then turned to face me when Cullen and his mother rounded a corner, out of sight. “I think I can forgive him that.”

  Chapter 24

  “Good to see you again,” Cullen said when we met up one afternoon several days later for coffee.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Though seeing you at the hospital was a little jarring, particularly after meeting the way we did.”

  “Mmm, I see what you mean—sex and cancer don’t naturally go together. Then again, why shouldn’t cancer patients have sex?” he asked. “My mother has a vibrator—not the fancy one you have, but I’m sure it gets the job done.”

  Good for her. Everyone should sta
y sexually active, I thought. We’d all be happier.

  “I was hoping you would call me,” he went on. “I thought we had a nice connection that day in the Andalucia.” Cullen, now in a dark blue version of the light blue shirt he’d been wearing at the hospital, lifted his cup to his lips.

  “We did,” I said, trying not to smile too provocatively.

  We had had a connection, but so much had happened since then, not the least of which was the death of a lover with whom I’d shared an even deeper connection.

  Also: Vicki’s lump had come back negative; Kiki had told Saul she wanted a trial separation and for him to respect her decision to go to church now and then; Jelicka had put together several more wild scenarios as to how Udi had met his end; Sarah had miscarried (which was sad but probably a good thing, since she didn’t know who the father was); Paige was being stalked by a tennis dad whom she admitted leading on; Rachel was full-on into her new series of paintings entitled “Nude Men Without Faces”; and Lauren, even though she hadn’t lost any weight, had started to consistently wear mini-skirts and high-heeled boots in marked contrast from her previous customary attire of baggy, though trendy, sweats made in countries that didn’t treat their workers well. The book, and all that it had awakened in us, was still having positive effects.

  All that and I’d forgotten just how easy the rapport had been with Cullen.

  “It was a nice surprise getting your call,” he said, taking another sip of his chai latte. “You look pretty today.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” I found myself saying. Lame.

  I did look pretty good. On this particular day I wore fashionable jeans and a jacket borrowed from my navy blue power suit with a lacey, form-fitting blouse peeking out. Necklaces of different lengths completed the look. Though I was dressed for success of any kind, I was not yet over Udi, so flirting for success really wasn’t on my mind. Still, I saw no harm in looking good while picking Cullen’s brain about Jelicka’s scenario regarding Udi’s early demise.