by Julia Dumont
“Proceed along Ocean Avenue, passing the absurdly over-rated Shutters on your left…I, for one, wouldn’t think of patronizing the dump. Bing-bing! Continue, for several blocks, taking note of Palisades Park, overlooking the mighty Pacific Ocean. Bing-bing! The Camera Obscura, also on the left, then______bing-bing!______the lovely statue of Saint Monica herself, the namesake of the town. I think when she was very young, possibly under-age, she had a wild affair with Chaplin or somebody. Probably several somebodies.”
Lolita couldn’t believe that Max the dog was putting up with this. He would never have tolerated any other man being so intimate with her, especially in the close quarters of a car.
“Continue for three tenths of a mile,” intoned GPS Max, “avoiding sun-dazed tourists, movie stars, and homeless jaywalkers and then——bing-bing!______take a right on Wilshire Boulevard. Your destination, the Fairmount Miramar Hotel and Bungalows, is on your left. You have reached your destination. The route guidance has ended. Bing-fucking-bing!”
As Lolita pulled into the drive and got into a line of cars, Max nuzzled under her short skirt with his snout like a French pig searching for truffles. She started to push him away, but his warm breath felt good. There were four cars ahead of her and it seemed like only one valet on duty, so they had a few moments. She grabbed a pink and purple polka-dotted sweater from the back seat and placed it over his head, tucking it in around his head, pushing him down further for good measure, deep between her thighs.
He inhaled like he was ingesting a powerful drug and, for Max, that was pretty much what it was. He kissed her deeply, sloppily, slowly.
Three cars back.
Now his right hand came into play. Moving from knee to thigh. It was warm in there. He pushed his tongue against her, the moisture from inside and out quickly saturating the thin fabric. Max slid his other hand under her top, up her belly, under her bra, and over her breast…holding steady there, moving ever so slightly, then holding steady again. The nerve endings of her flesh were perfectly in sync with his. With every tiny adjustment of his hands and mouth, she breathed in sharply, her lip trembling, her head tilting almost imperceptibly to one side, trying to contain her impulse to arch her back and slide deeper into the seat as the symphony of pleasure that he was orchestrating down below continued to build toward crescendo.
Two cars back.
“Max,” she said, “you have to stop. We’re getting close to the front. This is just a bit much.”
But Max was merely the most persistent sexual instigator on the planet. He dove deeper, miraculously circumnavigating the damp cotton to pass through the right leg hole with his tongue…probing, searching in the warm, wet darkness. By the time he reached his destination, she was already ninety-nine percent there. So the rest, as they say, came easily. Fifteen seconds later, she let out a small sharp scream. One of her arms shot straight up, her fist hitting the car ceiling. Her right foot slammed down hard on the accelerator, causing a loud revving sound that startled the valet and patrons.
Max the dog let out a tiny yelp. Not threatening, not an expression of distress…more like he was duly taking note of Lolita’s happiness. “Bing-bing!” said Max, kissing her a few more times, causing further spasms.
Luckily, she had put the car in park or they might have soon been on their way to the Santa Monica Police Station. Multiple charges of involuntary manslaughter are a damper to romance.
The valet approached. Lolita lifted Max’s head off of her lap, sweater and all. He looked like he was wearing a brightly colored, absurdly unorthodox burqa. Lolita’s face was flushed. Afterglow was written all over it.
“Hello, Madame, are you checking in?”
“No, I mean yes. Obviously yes.”
Max pulled the stifling garment from his sweaty face. His hair was hilariously askew. He looked like a cat crawling in out of the rain.
“I guess that’s why they call it a sweater,” he said.
“Oh, hello, David. Is bungalow seven available?”
Lolita rolled her eyes. Max was apparently a regular everywhere in Santa Monica. Probably everywhere on Earth.
“Oh,” said the valet, obviously surprised to see an old friend. “Mr. Ramsey, good to see you again. Yes, I believe seven is available. But if not, I’m sure we can find something else to your liking.”
Lolita and Max got out of the car. Lolita tried to flatten her skirt, using her hands like two ineffective irons. Max the dog followed along behind…no leash, but totally well behaved, like he was just another member of the entourage.
“David, this is Lolita. Like the book…only better. I just read one of her best chapters.”
“Very nice to meet you,” said David. “Welcome to the Miramar. How long will you be with us?”
“Who knows?” asked Max, shaking David’s hand as he and Lolita headed for the entrance. “Three hours, three weeks, three years? Life is a mystery. Love is ten times that. Garbo lived here for four years…should we try to break that record?”
Lolita shook her head and rolled her eyes as they crossed the lobby. But she also smiled. “We have to get out of here by Saturday morning at the latest. I have a party on a yacht to go to.”
“Whose yacht?” asked Max, stopping dead in his tracks.
“Nobody special,” she teased.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “What’s the difference? You know I’ll get it out of you eventually. Come on.”
He was right. They were a terrible combination when it came to keeping secrets. His prosecutorial passion to find things out dovetailed perfectly with her desire to reveal. Whenever Lolita held something in, she felt she might literally burst apart. And he was like a prisoner digging away at the wall of his cell with a nail file. He would chip and chip until a tiny crack revealed the smallest ray of sunshine. And then he’d dig harder, with more intensity, until the entire wall came down, chances are revealing more secrets that you were even trying to protect in the first place.
“Come on, Lolita. Don’t I share everything with you?”
This was so patently absurd that they both burst into laughter.
“But really, Lolita, you know you want to tell me. Come on. I’m not going to let up for one second until you do. In fact, I will not leave this lobby.”
He sat down in the middle of the floor. “Come on. Come on. Come on!” Max the dog sat down next to him.
Patrons were forced to walk around them.
“For god’s sake,” said a young woman pushing an elderly woman in a wheel chair, having to negotiate between man, dog, and a couch.
“Don’t blame me,” said Max, rolling his eyes and tipping his head toward Lolita, “it’s all her fault. She tripped me and my guide dog here. I’m considering pressing charges.”
“Okay, okay,” she whispered, a bit embarrassed, but also trying not to laugh out loud. She slapped him on the side of the head, not hard enough to hurt, but not really that softly either. “You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
“I promise,” he said standing up.
“And I cannot bring you along. This is totally an invite-only thing. No guests allowed. Period.”
“All right! Who cares? I don’t even want to go. I’m not a big boat fan.”
“Oh, really?” said Lolita in a low voice. “Well…it’s only the yacht of one Ava Dodd Radcliffe.”
This actually stunned Max, someone who is almost impossible to stun.
“Wait. This is epic. How did you happen to be invited?”
“Never mind.”
“Come on. Do you want me to sit down again? I’ll lie down this time.”
“Okay, but you can’t tell her I told you.”
“Tell who?” Max’s eyes got wide. “Oh…so this is a Cynthia Amas production?”
Lolita didn’t say anything. She just walked toward the check-in desk, Max the dog at her heels. Max the man caught up to them and kissed Lolita’s neck.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Ramsey,” said the young woman behind the des
k. “Did you enjoy your swim?”
Max and Lolita gave each other perplexed looks, but then realized how sweaty and drippy Max was and understood the confusion.
“Yes, Megan,” said Max, putting his arm around Lolita’s waste. “I was practicing my diving.”
“We might have to schedule another session,” said Lolita, slapping and shooing Max’s hand away from her backside, when she realized he was slowly moving it southward, sneaking his fingers under the hem of her skirt. “He’s got a lot to learn.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” said the girl with a smile. This was the kind of familiarity that would be unthinkable with any other guest. Max was a special case. She registered them without asking another question. “Bungalow seven it is. Here are two keys. Check out time is…well…whenever you want it to be I guess. Will your dog be needing any special foods or accommodations?”
“No,” said Lolita, “room service will be fine. He eats human food.”
Max interjected: “He eats better food than 99% of the world’s humans.”
“Got it,” said the girl.
As they walked out of the lobby, Max’s phone rang. He looked down at it. “Ugh…Emily,” he said, sending it to voicemail.
“I’ll bite,” said Lolita. “Who’s Emily?”
“She’s just some girl.”
“Wait, I thought Emily was the dog on the phone in Dublin.”
Max was momentarily confused. “Oh, right the hotel dog. Yes, that was Emily too. But Emily was also an assistant in the office. She keeps calling…bothering me with stupid details that I don’t need to know about. I don’t know what her problem is.”
Lolita rolled her eyes. “I have a feeling her problem is you. Just a guess. You’re almost everybody’s problem.”
“Me?” asked Max, pretending to be hurt. “Don’t be silly. I’m almost everybody’s solution.” He put his arm around her, kissed her, and reached down to scratch behind the dog’s ear as they crossed the garden to bungalow number seven.
Chapter 13
WEDNESDAY LUNCHTIME
Cynthia stared at her computer screen while picking at the salad that Paloma had delivered from down the block. The neighborhood was a good one for variety. It would take months to get into a rut.
There were more than seven hundred names in the Second Acts database. That number was fluid, because people kept signing up, while others paired off, and those would not be taken off the rolls until their membership expired.
For Operation Radcliffe, Cynthia would cross-reference the records for artistic, literary, cultured types who also happened to be sexually adventurous. She had a thought.
She wrote an email:
Hi Ava:
Putting together your first event. I think we may have covered this, but just to make sure. If two individuals meet at one of your soirees, I don’t think you or I should stand in the way of them making subsequent one-on-one dates together. Make sense?
Cynthia
Then she went back to selecting names that fit the guidelines she had set. Unfortunately, there were at least two clients involved in this weekend’s dates who would have fit in nicely at a Radcliffe affair:
Ingvild Hamsun, a Norwegian visual artist and intellectual, had signed up about a month ago. She was a visiting professor at U.C.L.A. and had come from a wild background that included years in a free-love commune in Sweden immediately following her college years. She had listed her sexual preferences as “varied.”
If her date with Tony Barlow, a mystery writer and fiction teacher at Occidental, went nowhere, she would ask Ingvild if next time she’d like to be involved. She scrolled through Tony’s biography.
Longshoreman, bus driver, Harvard graduate, Iraq war protestor, itinerate boxer, newspaperman, travel writer, mystery writer…this guy is open to anything. Maybe he is on the right wavelength for the Ava adventure too. But I can’t exactly pull that on them after their date together has been confirmed:
“Hi, sorry about this, but you know how I put you two together through my patented ultra-personal method of matchmaking because in my estimation you have the makings of a long-term love connection? Yeah, well how would you feel about cancelling that date together and being potential pawns in the fantasy of an obscenely rich and possibly unhinged woman instead?
She could not, would not ask them that question.
Then she remembered that there were several clients, maybe more than several, who had so far been difficult to match. Men and women whose pasts and predilections were less compatible with others…somewhat worse bets for monogamy. Every time one of their names popped up as a possible match for someone, there was something about them that wasn’t quite right. And it just occurred to Cynthia that the unifying factor of these people was that she doubted their sincerity about wanting to find a long-lasting, more or less permanent relationship. And, of course, because that was what she had been looking for, she’d passed them by, thinking that next time, with the right partner, they might be more right.
Well, maybe this is next time. Maybe these birds of a feather would flock well together. Since people often fall in love when they’re not looking to, maybe a group of “not-necessarily-lookings” would result in surprisingly strong pairs. She loved how counterintuitive, yet thoroughly feasible the logic behind this was.
She had flagged those clients as “complicated.”
Searching “complicated.”
Searching…searching…
Bingo: two hundred and eleven “complicateds.”
She smiled.
I believe Operation Radcliffe is underway.
Plink. Email from Ava.
That was quick.
Cynthia-
Oh, absolutely. That was the whole idea. Let the love chips fall where they may. As you know, I am not strictly interested in finding a special someone anytime soon_____but I’d be delighted to see it happen to others. It would renew the group with fresh faces for next time, for one thing. Also, it occurred to me that the first soiree could happen on one of my yachts, Que Sera Sarong. Sorry about the dumb name. My husband named it, so I blame him. I must confess I like it, though. Anyway, it’s docked in Long Beach, so we could head out into the open sea a bit, then north along the coast, and then back down. Short and sweet, but still a fun outing. Sutherland will be on board with his team. It sleeps thirty, plus captain and crew.
Cheers,
Ava
Wow. Her yacht sleeps thirty. Excuse me: one of her yachts. I wonder how many the entire fleet sleeps.
Plink. Another email.
Ava is becoming a real chatterbox.
Cynthia-
Also, I just found out that I’ll be leaving the country for a few weeks. I’m leaving next Wednesday. So if the Que Sera Sarong thing could happen this weekend, maybe a Saturday-Sunday cruise, that would be fantastic. I know it’s short notice, but I have complete confidence that you can pull it off. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with the preparations. I’ll alert Sutherland and the crew. And I’ll forward their contact information. Also, the LACMA show opens on Friday. I’d be honored if you would come.
Thanks again.
Can’t wait.
Ava Dodd Radcliffe
My God. This weekend? Impossible. Totally impossible. I would have to be stark raving mad to agree to that.
Cynthia quickly composed a reply.
Dear Ava-
Okay, great, no problem. This weekend it is.
Cynthia
Okay. Friday: the erotic art opening, and the normal weekly dates that same night. Saturday: more weekly dates and then some kind of floating mixer-odyssey for thirty.
Monday: check myself into a loony bin. Straightjacket, optional.
Cynthia was in a bit of a daze when Paloma came around the corner.
“Hey, Boss, are you all right?”
“Oh, yeah, just lost in thought.”
“Okay, well, Lolita’s on line two. By the way, I’ve got preliminary itineraries fo
r Friday’s dates. They’re in “dates in progress.” There really wasn’t much to do…you left extensive notes. You didn’t tell me you’d already basically worked it all out, Boss. But when you get a chance, give them a look and if you’re good with it, I’ll start making reservations.”
“Awesome, Paloma,” she said as she punched line one. “Hello, Lo. What’s up? Did Max finally straggle in?”
“Oh, he did a lot more than straggle, sweetie,” replied Lolita. “In fact, I’m with him right now.”
“You took him home?”
“No, actually we’re at the Miramar…”
“Oh. That’s nice. Give him my regards.”
“But I’m calling about something else. My dog Max, the wolfhound, disappeared. Max_____the man I mean_____and I were, you know, fooling around for, you know, a while. And Max the dog was asleep on the couch. He was with us and then suddenly wasn’t. With us.”
“Well, your dogs are known for that, aren’t they? He probably made his way to your house. Or your shop.”
“Yeah, I just got off the phone with Tanya. He’s not at the shop, but she’s heading over to the house.”
“Well, I’m sure he…”
“Hold on, Cynthia…she’s calling.”
Beep.
Cynthia turned back to her computer screen and opened dates in progress. It looked pretty good. Paloma was right; Cynthia had forgotten that she’d done most of it already. But she rechecked and made a few more adjustments, Cynthia switched around a restaurant here, a club there, and cultural events, here, there, and everywhere. She utilized a blend of data and intuition that could not be taught.
Beep. Lolita was back and now she was distraught.
“Cynthia! All three dogs are gone!”
Chapter 14
WEDNESDAY 6:30 PM
Donald O’Brien’s café was uncharacteristically empty, but he was fine with that. He and Adriana were catching up with Seamus.
“So, how much do you know about this Paloma girl?” asked Seamus, taking a large sip of Jameson, and then chasing it with black coffee.
“I know I like her,” said Adriana.