by Maria Semple
“Are there dating groups for people with hepatitis C?” she asked.
“It’s called AA,” he said with a laugh.
“How are you impregnating all these girls? Don’t you use condoms?”
“I hate condoms.”
“Oh man. I am sorry, but that is not cool.”
“The doctors say you can’t catch hep C from hetero sex.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“You’re totally disgusted by me, aren’t you? See, this is AA at work. Three years ago, I never would have said that to anyone. Now I’m all like, Hi, I’m Teddy, I’m a junkie, I have hep C, and I don’t use condoms. What’s your name?”
“You’re certainly honest,” she said. “I have to give you that.”
“Certainly. Listen to you with your five-dollar words.”
“Wait until you hear me use the word insouciant.”
“Break me off a piece of that.”
She assumed airs and said, “Your prejudice against condoms whilst infected with hepatitis C would indicate an insouciant disregard for safe sex.”
The waitress had walked up. “I’ll come back,” she said, and pivoted away.
“Whoops,” said Violet.
Teddy let loose a big, appreciative laugh, then stared into her eyes. She sunk deeper into his. Was he jaundiced? She couldn’t tell. His bloodshot green eyes with the angry dark circles couldn’t be considered beautiful. But they were arresting. And she couldn’t look away.
“You’re the one who’s honest, Violet. You have this natural honesty that erupts from your heart then straight out of your mouth. I’m a manipulative junkie. Any kind of honesty I have has to be drummed into me by going to meetings every day. With you, it’s pure.”
Violet lolled in this gorgeous moment. Then she said, “You bring it out in me. I’m like this naturally, I suppose. But with you it’s extreme.”
“Jesus. I don’t even know you and you’re already using the word extreme. See what I do to people?”
“No, no, no,” Violet said. “Extreme is good. We like extreme.”
“No, we don’t. Extreme is bad. I’m over extreme. I just want to play my music and write poetry.”
“You’re a poet?” Violet’s heart swelled.
“Yeah, I’m always writing poetry,” he said. “Poetry keeps me sane. And golf keeps me present.”
“Golf?”
“I always start the day with golf. It pimp-slaps me into the here and now. There’s no such thing as the past or the future when it’s just you and the next shot.”
Violet frowned. “I can’t picture you on the links.”
The waitress returned. “Have you decided?”
“Whatever she orders, I’ll have the same,” Teddy said. “And make it quick, because we’ve got somewhere to be.”
SALLY already felt better. Concrete action was the only thing that worked in times like these, and here she was, taking it. The teakettle whistled. Sally held Jeremy’s Visa envelope an inch over the steam. If she got one edge loose and peeled the flap from there, she’d stand a chance of not mangling this one the way she had Kurt’s.
She realized this was not her finest hour, but she wouldn’t have been reduced to standing here if what had happened back on the street were an isolated incident. No, a troubling pattern had formed. Jeremy always put his routine above her. He had difficulty looking her in the eye. He never shared his innermost feelings. What was he hiding? Another girlfriend? Could he be one of those men who had another secret family? Could he be opening up emotionally with his wife? Of course not! That’s what was so maddening. Jeremy was faithful and predictable. Sally had never caught him in a lie or whispering into the phone, and his e-mails were all spam or work related. With Jeremy, what you saw was what you got.
Sally had once broached the subject with Maryam. “Compared to my other boyfriends,” Sally had said, “I feel like there’s something with Jeremy that’s . . . missing.” Maryam shot back, “The asshole part? If you’re having problems with a guy who has a job and isn’t running around on you, maybe you’re the problem. Some girls can’t be happy unless a man is treating them like garbage.” Sally couldn’t dismiss Maryam’s analysis, as coarse as it was. Still, she didn’t quite know what to make of Jeremy.
She tested the flap of the envelope. It lifted right off. She scanned the first page of the bill:
Hamburger Hamlet
El Torito
Hamburger Hamlet
El Torito
Hamburger Hamlet
El Torito
Hamburger Hamlet
In case anyone didn’t believe the man loved his routine! She turned to the second page.
El Torito
Hamburger Hamlet
El Torito
Hamburger Hamlet
El Torito
Cabot & Sons
Hamburger Hamlet
El Torito
Hamburger Hamlet
El Torito
She would have missed it if the dollar amount in the right column hadn’t popped out: $8,800. Cabot and Sons was the jeweler just around the corner on Ventura! Sally neatly folded the bill and surrendered it to its envelope. The adhesive stuck, leaving no trace of her minor trespass.
“FOLLOW me” was all Teddy said when Violet asked where they were going. She found herself zooming along Wilshire Boulevard, lacing amid traffic, gunning through yellow lights, swerving into bus lanes — anything to keep up. The battered Mazda teased her late-model Mercedes through the Beverly Hills corridor, turned left at what was once CAA, then left again through Century City. Teddy’s speed and recklessness were a throw-down, a sexual tease. Pure adrenaline, Violet was right there with him, proving herself worthy of the challenge. Approaching a red light, Teddy sharked into the left lane, as if to turn east on Pico. Violet, two cars behind, put on her blinker. But when the light turned green, Teddy lurched right. A car screeched to a stop and its engine died. Violet rammed into reverse, then drive, and stepped on the gas. She glimpsed Teddy’s tail a long block ahead, sailing west, making no concessions to her. The light was green, but the walk signal a solid red. Violet was four cars back. She swerved into the right-turn-only lane and made it through the intersection. Violet neared Twentieth Century Fox. Right now, writers in smelly rooms were slogging through rewrites, eating take-out, unbuttoning the top button of their pants, putting in their order for the afternoon’s coffee run, and debating where they’d order dinner. None of them had a clue that right now, Violet was airborne. She looked up. The light at Motor was red — it was too late to stop.
Fifteen years old: Violet’s father drove her from the Zurich airport, up a verdant Alps road, for her first year of boarding school at Le Rosey. They entered a particularly long mountain tunnel. As they emerged from it, her father’s eyes were closed. Violet screamed. “My dear,” he said, in that blasé way of his, “when in the dark, it’s easier to see with your eyes closed.”
Now Violet closed her eyes and flew through the red light. She opened them. She had cleared the intersection unharmed. Teddy turned left into a parking lot outside Rancho Park. Just as she had thought . . . he was taking her golfing. Her phone rang.
“Have you arrived at the undisclosed location?” he asked.
“I’m here.” Violet looked for a parking spot.
“May I draw your attention to the office building across the street.”
Violet passed his car. It looked like he was taking off his shirt. “What are you doing in there?”
“Hey!” he said. “Don’t look.”
She found a space. “Okay, what?” she said.
“My ex-wife, Vanessa, used to work there while I stayed home smoking crack. And I wanted to fuck her, so I’d call her at work every five minutes saying, When-are-you-coming-home-when-are-you-coming-home-when-are-you-coming-home? She was busy, so I just sat on the couch all day, smoking crack and watching Sanford and Son.”
“Come on. Sanford and Son?”
“You d
idn’t love Sanford and Son?”
“I never saw it,” she said. “I was at Le Rosey.”
“What you say?”
“Forget it. Okay, I’m parked. Where do I go now?”
“Stay right where you are,” said Teddy. “So there I was, out of my mind on crack, wanting to fuck my wife for sixty-five hours straight, but she was in a meeting all afternoon. And see that Jewish synagogue next door? Well, they were all worried about terrorist threats because it was right after September eleventh.” There was considerable grunting coming from the other end of the phone.
“What are you doing?” Violet got out and walked toward his car, looking down.
“Stop. Hang on a second.” After a long pause, Teddy resumed. “Okay. Anyway, I wanted Vanesa to come home, so I called up the lobby of the building and said there’s a bomb. And they evacuated like a mile of Pico. Everyone who worked up and down here was out on the sidewalk.”
“Jesus! I remember that. I was working at Fox. It was after lunch, right? I was off the lot and couldn’t get back on.”
“Yeah! They evacuated the movie studio, too.”
“That was you? You could have been arrested for calling in a bomb threat. That’s a federal offense.”
“See how far I’ll go for the love of a woman?”
“I should be mortified to be having a conversation with you.”
“But you’re not,” he said. “You think it’s rad.”
“It’s pretty rad.”
“Ha-ha. I just got you to use the word rad.”
“It was my first time,” Violet admitted.
“Okay, you can look.” Teddy had changed into long black pants, a short-sleeved black knit shirt, and the black-and-white golf shoes. Topping it off was a straw porkpie hat. He leaned against a golf bag and had one of the toothpicks from the restaurant sticking out the side of his mouth. It was hard not to love him, standing there, jaunty and confident.
“Dress more like that,” she said.
“Oh man. You don’t get it.”
Violet walked toward him, still talking on their cell phones. “Frayed clothes?” she said. “Who doesn’t get it?”
“Maybe I get it on a whole other level that you don’t.”
“We can stipulate that. All I’m saying is this is one natty look.”
“Who you calling natty?” Teddy barked, as Red Foxx. “And whatchyou doing wasting my minutes, woman?”
Violet snapped her phone shut. “Hey, look.” A BMW had pulled into the space next to hers, about five cars down. A plump man had squeezed out and was writing something in the dirt on her window.
“What’s he doing?” asked Teddy.
L-E-A-R-N T-O, the hothead spelled in the dirt. “Learn to park, probably,” Violet said. “The car next to me was parked over the line, so I had to park over the line, too.” Indeed, the next word was P-A-R-K.
“There’s more,” said Teddy. They watched, side by side, Teddy leaning into Violet’s arm. It was all she could do to concentrate on the man finishing his sentence: Y-O-U-D-U-M-B A-S-S-H-O-L-E.
“That’s amazing,” Violet said. “Not only did he know I’m an asshole, but a dumb asshole, too!”
The guy got his golf clubs out of his trunk and stomped off. Teddy stormed over to Violet’s car and wiped the words off the window. “That’s not right,” he said, blackening. “Hacker with his brand-new Pings.” Teddy returned to his car, Violet at his heels.
“Once,” she said, “I worked on a show on the Radford lot, and my parking spot was outside the Seinfeld writers’ offices. They got so traumatized by my dirty car, which they had to stare at all day, that they wrote all over it ‘Eat more meat, I love chicken.’ Because I’m a vegetarian and they knew it was the only way to get me to wash my car.”
“What a fucking hard-on,” Teddy muttered. “I’ll meet him on the dance floor.” He pulled a ratty putter from his golf bag, then opened his trunk and threw the rest of the clubs back in. He choked the putter and headed toward the clubhouse, a wild look in his eye.
WHERE would it be? Sally had already scoured Jeremy’s dresser, medicine cabinet, and jacket pockets. She pulled open his bedside drawer, which was filled with loose earplugs and scraps of paper scrawled with variations of “H-H-H-T-T-T-H.” Jeremy had a habit of flipping a coin, then marking down if it was heads or tails. To what purpose, she had no idea. Why he kept them, still no idea. Sally sifted through the fluff and shuddered: it was like running her fingers through the bottom of a hamster cage. She returned to the living room and opened his desk drawer.
There it sat, a pink velvet cube. She cracked it. Inside was a diamond ring. She opened it all the way. Her spirits flattened. She had always imagined nothing smaller than a four carat, and this was barely a two. Sally bucked herself up. The ring was gorgeous. Classic. Tasteful. And if anyone gave her attitude about the size, she could say it had belonged to his mother —
“Sally?”
She spun around. It was Vance. She dropped the ring box on the desk. “Vance! Hi! I thought you were at lunch!”
“I wanted to see how you were.” He stepped closer.
“I’m dandy.” Sally hopped up onto the desk to block his view of the ring, and closed the drawer with a calf as she twisted her legs.
“I know sometimes Jeremy can be tough. Today — the thing with lunch. Well, that’s going to happen. But it’s nothing personal.”
“Couples disagree. It’s healthy.” She reached behind her, closed the ring box, and tented it with her hand.
“I know,” he said. “And I’m glad you do, too. I always knew he’d find someone who appreciates him as much as I do.”
“I’m an appreciator!” she said with a laugh.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Jeremy’s big shoes pounded the stairs. His shadow rippled across the venetian blinds.
“Oh look, Jeremy’s home!” Sally pointed. Vance turned. Sally opened the desk drawer, dropped in the ring, and slammed it shut just as the door opened. “Welcome home, my love!” she cried.
VIOLET followed Teddy through the cheesy wood-paneled clubhouse and out to the putting green. The darkness that had befallen Teddy in the parking lot was still in effect. His jaw worked the toothpick; his lion eyes scoped out the scene. Then Violet understood: the man from the parking lot was practicing his putts on the far side of the green.
“That guy thinks he can buy game,” Teddy grumbled. “He doesn’t have game.” Teddy’s animal spirits were on the rise, and Violet rose with them. He reached into his pocket and removed a ball. In one sinuous movement, he let it roll down his fingers and onto the tight grass. He gripped the putter with one hand, then the other, then snuggled both hands to form a grip on his old familiar friend. Violet caught herself staring and had to remember to breathe. She looked up. Teddy had seen her hunger. Violet waited — forever, it seemed — for him to call her on her carnal desire, to sentence her, humiliate her. Instead, he winked.
“So?” He putted the ball. He was loose, confident, unbelievably sexy. “What about you?” he said, his eyes never leaving the ball.
“What about me?” She looked around, hoping all could see that he was hers, and she, his.
“What’s a rich husband doing letting you spend the afternoon with a guy like me?”
“Letting me?”
“No woman of mine would ever be allowed to eat at a restaurant like that with another man.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s my pimp nature,” he said. “If you were my woman, there’s no way I’d let you run around the way you do.”
“It’s lucky I’m not your woman,” she said. “Because I don’t like being told what to do.”
“You would with me, though.”
“I would not,” she said.
“Oh, you would like it.”
“I would not.”
“Okay, then, you wouldn’t.” Teddy pointed to a hole about thirty feet away. “You think I can make it?” He hit the ball. It stopped just short.
Violet followed him to the cup. “Wait a second. You do realize that no guy will ever break me of my independence.”
Teddy tapped the ball in and retrieved it. “I’ll give you that one.” He let the ball roll down his forearm, then snapped it high in the air. He spun around and caught it behind his back.
“Deal with it,” said Violet. “You could never break me.”
Teddy flashed a smile. “I already have.” He hit his ball and called to someone, “Whoa! Look out!” His crusty ball knocked into a gleaming one, causing it to ricochet off course.
“What the fuck!” It was the BMW guy. He dropped his putter and glared at Teddy.
“Sorry about that, bro.” Teddy made the putt.
“Are you done?” said the guy, yet to pick up his fallen club.
“I don’t know.” Teddy picked up the sparkling putter and returned it to its owner. “This hole is lucky for me. How about we putt for it?”
The guy picked up both balls and threw them fifteen feet away. “Happy to,” he said.
“Jesus, here we go.” Teddy shook his head. He putted his ball, and it swerved to the right. His rival made the shot. “Lucky shot!” cried Teddy. “Bet you a buck you can’t do it again.”
The guy reached into his pocket and rummaged through some bills. “All I got is a ten.”
“If we’re talking real money, I’ll have to use your putter.”
“Since when is ten bucks real money?”
“I’m not the only one playing at a public course. What, were there no tee times at Riviera?”
The guy took some phantom strokes, then lined up his shot and missed. “Fuck!”