by Maria Semple
“I’m fine.” Sally opened her eyes and straightened. She must have been leaning against the wall for some time, because the bride was touching her back. The mother and salesperson were looking over. “I’m fine!” Sally said with a wave. “Nothing to look at!”
The other bride returned to the desk.
Sally made a show of spotting a dress in the center of the salon and walked toward it. Just the couple of steps were enough to make Sally feel like fainting. What was wrong? Hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia never made her feel sick in this way. And her blood sugar was 120 when she left the apartment half an hour ago.
The trio were whispering and glancing over.
Did that mean Sally looked as sick as she felt? She smiled, but the effort almost made her barf. She touched the first gown she saw. “Aaah.” She stepped behind the mannequin, as if to inspect the back of the dress. She was now in a secret hollow of outward-facing headless brides.
Oh God. Tulle, bows, rhinestones, flowers, crystals, glass slippers, necks, corsages — they all spun fantastically around her. Sally had trouble fighting her way out of the kaleidoscope of dreams. One mannequin teetered. Sally was about to be sick. But not all over the beautiful dresses! She fumbled her purse open, buried her head in it, and hoped she wouldn’t vomit.
IT had been two and a half hours since Teddy’s car disappeared down Venice Boulevard. Violet had dispatched LadyGo and Dot to the Ritz-Carlton with a credit card, then trekked to the Whole Foods on National. She now sat on Teddy’s steps, teeming grocery bags against her shins, and brooded over whether Pascal had said they went out this morning or he went out this morning.
Zey, he. Zey, he. Zey, he.
The words did sound similar. For argument’s sake, if Pascal had said they, who would they be? Teddy and who? Surely not Coco. As of Friday night, she was on a plane to Japan. And it didn’t make sense for her to be back in Los Angeles two days later.
“Sick!” Teddy leapt up the stairs and stood over the groceries. “You have no idea how hungry I am. Whole Paycheck is like Oz for an evil junkie like me.”
“Hello.” Violet closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the possibilities. They had the apartment to themselves. What would it be? Would Teddy drag her by the arm into his bedroom, pimp-style? Would he take her right here on the steps? Would it start with a tender kiss? . . . She opened her eyes.
Teddy was hoisting himself up by the handrail, clearing Violet and three steps’ worth of groceries. He let himself into the apartment.
“Oh,” Violet heard herself say.
She gathered the bags and deposited them in the kitchen. Teddy was splayed on the couch, chimplike with one arm stretched overhead, listening to his cell phone messages. Terror shot through Violet: something had happened, something terrible.
“I can’t wait to crash after I eat.” Teddy kicked off one motorcycle boot, then the other, and scowled at their smell. He shut his phone. “That was my white-trash aunt from Palm Springs.” Palm Springs. The words scalded Violet, a cruel reminder of the history Teddy shared with Coco. “My aunt has this son who wants to learn to play bass, and she asked me if I could find him a used one. I said I had an extra I’d sell to her for forty-five bucks. So, I box it up and stand in this long fucking line at the post office, and then they tell me it’s gonna cost twenty-five bucks to ship. So I call my aunt and ask if she’ll pay that, and she says no. She wants me to drive it out. Sure, I say, if she pays for gas —”
“Where did you go?” Violet said.
“Huh?”
“I’ll pay to mail the bass, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Fuck you.” He looked genuinely hurt. “That’s not why I was telling you. I was sharing something that was going on in my life. Or isn’t that something the hoi polloi like you and David Parry concern yourselves with?”
He had confused hoi polloi with hoity-toity, but this was no time to scrap it out over a malapropism. “I’m sorry,” Violet said. “What did your aunt say?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter.”
“That was rude of me,” she said. “I duly apologize. Let’s have some dinner and start over.”
“Do-over granted.”
“Good.” Violet retreated to the kitchen and emptied a still-warm container of brown rice and vegetables into a clean-enough bowl and placed it on the counter. “So,” she asked, “how are you?”
“I had a really rough time last night.” Teddy pinched some rice in his fingers and ate it standing up.
“Why?” Violet handed him a fork. “What happened?”
“I came this close to using. It was like three in the morning, and Pascal had some Almond Roca and I ate the whole fucking can.” Teddy pulled out a julienned green pepper and flung it on the counter. “Next time, don’t buy me anything with peppers. Peppers make me fart. Anyway, I started going through the trash to see if there were any nuts left in the foil. That’s what you do with crack. You go through the packets of foil to see if you missed any. I felt like I was on the verge of slipping.”
“Why?” Fearing a body blow, Violet crouched down and made busy with the groceries. “What happened?”
“I cheated on my girlfriend, that’s what happened.” Teddy stood agape. A square of tofu rested on his tongue. “God, am I that bad in bed? Did you forget?”
“But you said you were only eighty-five percent faithful to her.”
“Ha! Did I say that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m such an alcoholic! No wonder I’m on a ninety-in-ninety.” He chuckled and took a giant bite of food.
“So what happened?” Violet asked. “Did you drink last night?”
“Jesus! Of course not.”
“So stop calling yourself an alcoholic.”
“We don’t say, ‘Hi, I’m Teddy, I used to be an alcoholic.’ We say, ‘Hi, I’m Teddy, I’m an alcoholic.’ It’s a progressive disease.”
“Whatever.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Teddy pointed at the bag. “What’s that I see?”
“Rice cakes?” She had debated buying them, on account of their being so cheap and ordinary.
“I fucking love rice cakes. You have no idea how many of those babies I can scarf down.” Teddy’s vim was appreciably on the rise.
Violet decided to ride its momentum. “But Friday night,” she said, “didn’t you have fun . . . you know . . . ?”
“Fucking you? Of course.” He let out a loud belch. “I’m a sex fiend. I guess I’m just not mature enough to fuck a married woman and not feel like shit afterwards.”
“I don’t think it’s a matter of maturity.” Violet pulled out a spray of ranunculus and stuck them in a pitcher.
“You and me can fuck,” he said. “And it’s instant gratification and all, but eventually I end up back in my shitty apartment with the chain-smoking Nigerian and I have to go for days eating the free shit they put out at AA meetings just to pay my cell phone bill.”
Violet dithered. This might be the perfect time to announce she had left David. Or might that spook Teddy? She needed to work on him a little more. She held up a pastry bag. “Sugar-free vegan ginger cookies.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done for me,” he said. “You’ve opened the door to everything I’ve been praying for my whole life. To be a famous musician, to eat good food, to have a friend I can count on.” Friend: the word was an arrow slung into Violet’s chest. She opened the refrigerator door and stood behind it for cover. “Our friendship is a gift from God,” he said. “I don’t want it to get all muddy from fucking. I think I told you, I’m a much better friend than boyfriend.”
Violet was in that Far Side cartoon where the man scolded his dog, Ginger, but all the dog heard was: Blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah, Ginger. All Violet could hear was friend. She felt like screaming for Teddy to stop, but the words caught in her throat.
“God has blessed me with your friendship and generosity,” he continued. “He’s blessed me with Coco, who’s so
beautiful. It’s ridiculous to think I have to choose. So I want to offer you my friendship. I usually charge a million bucks. But I’ll give it to you for the low price of five hundred grand.”
“Wait,” Violet said. “She aborted your baby.”
“I don’t really know if that happened.”
“You mean she’s still pregnant?”
“Fuck no,” Teddy scoffed.
“What are you saying? She lost the baby?”
“You never know with Coco Kennedy.”
“What does that mean?” A torrent was rising within Violet and she was powerless to quell it. “You’re either pregnant or you’re not. You have an abortion or you don’t. Those things are immutable.”
“You sure like to concern yourself with stuff that’s none of your beeswax, don’t you, Baroness? That’s what I should start calling you, Baroness von Beeswax.”
“It is my fucking business!” Violet slammed the refrigerator door. “Two hours ago you were shoving your tongue in my mouth and now I’m a treasured friend!” Violet picked up the box of milk thistle tea bags that the lady who worked in the nutrition aisle had said helped balance the liver. Not the three-dollar box of tea bags, or the eight-dollar box, or even the twelve-dollar box, but the sixteen-dollar box of milk thistle tea bags because only the best for the king of 90066! She threw it full force at Teddy’s head. He swerved just in time.
“Gee, Violet,” he said, “have you communed with God yet today?”
“I don’t believe in God.” She looked around Teddy’s apartment, with its thrift shop decor and Holy Bible on the table, and thought, God is for poor people.
“Godless Violet. It’s all starting to make sense.” Teddy picked up the tea bags and walked over. Violet took them. His hand and hers, not even touching, just touching the same dented box, it was enough to make her melt. Teddy brushed his hand across her cheek and pushed her hair behind her ear. “Let me see that ink again,” he said. Violet lowered her head and leaned into his hand. “That is so fucking rad.”
Violet was mute, a beggar. This was Teddy’s chance to erase the past ten minutes. She’d forgive him everything if he’d just kiss her. . . .
“Do you think I should get a tattoo?” he said. “They say you should get one on the best part of your body.” He turned to a wall of mirrored tiles and lifted his shirt. “I’m so fucking obese.”
Violet blinked. She breathed in through her nose. She touched the counter. Yes, it was true: she was standing in squalor, and the bootless pauper who had just rejected her preened in a mirror. She opened her phone and dialed LadyGo.
“I need you to come back,” she told the long-suffering nanny. “Pick me up at the empanada place on Venice. The one we went to that time after the beach.” Violet hung up.
“You let a fucking beaner drive your car?” Teddy still hadn’t peeled his eyes off his reflection. He held his hair in a topknot, which he admired. “That car costs a hundred and fifty grand.”
“Probably.”
“What do you pay her, like a million a year? Oh Violet. Why did we fuck? Now I can never be your nanny. It wouldn’t be clean.” He dropped the clump of hair.
Violet folded the grocery bags, stacked them on the counter, and headed for the door.
“Wait, you’re going?” He dove into the grubby sectional. “Come on. Just because we fucked once doesn’t have to change anything. I’ll always love you.”
“At last,” Violet said. “My poem. I thought you had forgotten.” Her phone rang. She didn’t look to see who it was. Anybody would be better than this vainglorious dirtbag.
Of all people, it was Sally. “Don’t you go to that fabulous hard-to-get-into gyno, Dr. Naeby?” she asked breathlessly. “The one who’s really good with delivering babies? Well, could you get me an appointment? I’ve tried in the past and the nurse said he wasn’t taking any new patients.” Violet said she would and hung up.
Teddy examined something he’d mined from between his toes. “Does this mean we won’t be spending Christmas with Geddy Lee?”
“Affirmative.” Violet opened the door.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m more than okay. In fact, this moment marks the end of my self-immolation and the rehabilitation of my amour propre. If you don’t know what those words mean — and why would you, they have nothing to do with seventies television — I invite you to look them up in a dictionary.”
The screen door slammed behind Violet. She didn’t bother looking back to see if Teddy would come after her. She knew he wouldn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fantastic Voyage
IT WAS A SUNNY DAY, BUT SALLY KEPT THE WINDOWS OF HER TRUCK ROLLED UP to seal herself into her hothouse of happiness. Was it possible? Was she really out of debt? Out of debt! If she’d known that declaring personal bankruptcy would be this easy, she’d have done it years ago. After the debacle in the bridal salon, she’d spent all week downloading forms and gathering her financial records. She made an appointment at an out-of-the-way law office and had just dropped off the paperwork with a check for three hundred dollars. It took all of ten minutes. The only thing left to do was attend a hearing — which, she’d been assured, was a mere formality — and the whole nightmare would be in the past. She could now indulge herself in her delicious future.
“Woo!” Sally screamed as she reached Santa Monica Boulevard. “Woo-hoo!” But she was too happy to go home. She wanted to keep going. At the top of La Cienega, she got in the left lane and headed west down the curvy part of the Strip. Mulholland, PCH, Sunset: driving these streets made Sally feel as if she was Los Angeles. Like in that movie Fantastic Voyage — where shrunken scientists were injected into a dying man’s bloodstream — Sally zoomed along Sunset with the flow of traffic. She caught the light at Sunset Plaza, then surged ahead with the pack. She felt integral to the city she loved, as if her driving were keeping it alive.
In that interview David had given, another thing he said was “Go with the green lights. Don’t try to make people do things they don’t want to do.” Sally finally understood what he meant. She was literally going with the green lights, and her courtship with Jeremy had been just the same. Their setup, their humble life at his apartment, his audition, the proposal, there was such a beautiful inevitability to it all. And now she was going to be a mother!
Dr. Naeby had accepted Sally as a patient and confirmed that the episode in the bridal salon was morning sickness. So Sally was carrying the ultimate accessory, a Naeby baby. Sally loved, loved, loved Dr. Naeby. He was so handsome and relaxed. During her appointment, he’d accidentally left the image of Sofia Coppola’s uterus up on the ultrasound monitor. So that was cool. Sally hadn’t yet shared the news of her pregnancy with Jeremy. The books said not to tell people until the second trimester, in case something happened.
She adjusted her hand on the steering wheel so the diamond looked bigger than two carats. “Woo-hoo!”
Could it be that not having to worry about money was really this transformative? Back in the days, Kurt began every morning by chanting. It was part of the Buddhism he was into where you’d chant for money. Sally didn’t think it was all that Buddhist to have your one wish in life be to get rich. But Kurt had explained he was only chanting for money so, once he had it, he could devote himself to world peace. Money first, world peace second. Sally was suspicious. Still, as a show of support for his spiritual journey, she went to Pottery Barn and bought big golden letters that spelled out the words WISH and DREAM and hung them from fishing line over his altar.
Traffic slowed as Sally passed what used to be Le Dôme. Once, when she had her convertible Rabbit, some men had pulled up alongside her and asked if she’d like to have a drink at Le Dôme. They were Seiko reps in town for a jewelry show. Over drinks, they opened a display box and offered Sally her pick of glittery watches. She chose a gold with mother-of-pearl inlay. She hadn’t had to “do anything” for it, because she told the guys she had to run home and change before meeting t
hem back at their hotel. She slipped them a wrong phone number and never saw them again. Later that night, she told Kurt the watch had been a gift from David.
Kurt . . . Kurt . . . Now that Sally was free of his debt, she felt a pang of guilt about how psycho she’d gone when he dumped her. Was it really necessary for her to have retaliated by hacking into his e-mail program and sending a group message to his entire address book, as him, saying he liked to have sex with dogs? Now that she had some perspective, it did seem immature. Sally rounded the bend where Tower Records used to be and found herself stopped at the first red light. Right outside Mauricio’s Boot Shop. Where Kurt worked. There was a parking spot smack in front. With time left on the meter. This had to be some kind of sign. Sally glided into the space.
She entered the tiny atelier wedged between Duke’s Diner and the Whiskey. Mauricio was a quiet man who made custom cowboy boots for rock stars, socialites, and Japanese tourists. The walls of the shop were plastered with framed magazine covers, autographed pictures, even gold records given to Mauricio as thanks for his master craftsmanship. All boots were handmade to order and started at eight hundred dollars. For the truly hip, it was never a question of if you owned a pair of Mauricio’s but how many. Get some margaritas in Kurt and he’d be hi-larious about the “shit that went on.” Sally thought he should partner with Violet on a sitcom about Mauricio’s. Kurt had considered it but decided he didn’t want someone to rip off his stories and steal all the credit.
The store was empty. Part of Mauricio’s mystique was that there were no boots on display, just a wood bench that ran the length of the narrow store. Kurt would chat up the customers and determine whether they were worthy of Mauricio’s. If Kurt deemed them unhip, he’d say Mauricio was backed up for three years. Japanese tourists were preapproved because they’d pay three grand for a pair of eight-hundred-dollar boots.
Kurt emerged from the workroom carrying a box. He wore one of his vintage Hawaiian shirts and the Peter Criss cat boots Mauricio had made for the 2004 KISS reunion tour, which Kurt got to keep when Peter Criss quit the band. Kurt’s shoulder-length ringlets were as perfect as ever, just blacker. He looked up and saw Sally, but nothing registered on his face. He was always so cool, so Zen. He stepped behind the counter and shelved some bottles of leather conditioner. Sally wished she could just turn around. But she was stranded in the middle of the empty store.