The Little Black Dress

by Linda Palund

  My house was at the top of our hill, but just down the hill from us lived the movie director, whose daughter, Wendy, introduced me to the Sugar Shack on Sunset Strip. Next door to me was one of those rock stars’ lawyers. He had two sons. The younger son was my little brother’s best friend. Up around the bend lived an artist who designed album covers. His son was an artist too. His name was Steve, and I was pretty certain he was gay. He hung around with the rock star lawyer’s oldest son, Sam. They were the ones who’d introduced me to Shakespeare’s in Santa Monica, which became my favorite hangout.

  Even though the house across the street probably sold for a mint, it wasn’t really that spectacular. It was a hybrid of New England colonial and Hollywood-style ranch house constructed of white-painted clapboard, with green shutters purely for decoration and surrounded by a low white picket fence with a hedge behind it. The house was about a mile long but only one story high. It should be noted that the house once had the title role in a movie called Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. A sweet older couple, retired from the wardrobe department at 20th Century Fox, had made it their dream house until they suddenly packed up and moved to a retirement village near San Diego last April.

  The day after the new family’s arrival, my mom had the bright idea to have Constanza bake some of her special Mexican chocolate spice cookies so I could have an excuse to go over to the new girl’s house. I didn’t even know her name yet. I didn’t know anything about her at all. But when the cookies had cooled sufficiently and Constanza had put them on one of our fancy cookie platters and covered them with plastic wrap, there was nothing for me to do but break the ice.

  In the meantime, I had spent the morning perfecting my makeup and trying on about half a dozen outfits until I found one that didn’t make me look fat: tight jeans and a long black stretchy top, which I accessorized with lots of silver chains and big hoop earrings. I wore a pair of wedge sandals, as close as my mom let me come to high heels.

  I summoned all my courage and traipsed across our road and up her walk, holding tightly to Constanza’s tray and trying not to stumble. I rang the doorbell, which was one of those chiming doorbells that played a tune so old I couldn’t recognize it, and within seconds, there was the new mom, all made up and dressed like she was about to step out onto the set of Dallas.

  “Well, hello, y’all,” she drawled, and by that I mean she had a gorgeously lilting Southern accent. That was when I knew for certain she wasn’t from around here. That and her hairstyle. Her glossy blonde hair was done up in the kind of coiffure that called for at least a can of firm-hold hairspray to hold it in place.

  “Why, are those for us?” she asked, smiling a toothpaste-advert smile and looking for all the world like the mother in Leave It to Beaver, that fifties sitcom they still run on the Nickelodeon channel.

  “Yes,” I answered, grinning brightly and hoping she would invite me in. “My mom baked these for you to welcome you to the neighborhood,” I lied.

  “Well, isn’t that just the sweetest thing,” she said. “Why don’t you come on in?” And she held the door open and made a sweeping gesture to point me in the direction of what I assumed was the living room, and that’s when I clocked that she was drunk.

  I found myself in their vestibule, which was much like the one at my own house, only theirs was full of enormous cardboard packing crates, and I had to navigate around these to find the hallway—which, if I followed the mom’s pointing fingers, complete with crimson nail polish and what I thought were several real diamond rings, was through the left-hand doorway with the sham pillars painted on the walls. So I turned in that direction and headed down the hall, padding carefully around the piled-up boxes until I came upon one of those big double doorways that usually signaled an important room, and sure enough, they opened into a grand room with actual furniture in it, already set about in a cozy living room sort of fashion. Big fat sofas and overstuffed easy chairs and coffee tables and lamps and what you would expect in a living room. Except for the stacks of boxes piled against the walls, it was pretty much ready to be lived in.

  We had a living room at our house, of course, but we never actually lived in it. It was strictly for formal occasions, special guests, and cocktail parties, and was kept shut up most of the year. We used the family room, which we called the den, to watch TV with the adults, and we had a “rumpus room” on the kids’ level (it was a split-level steel-and-glass wonder my dad had designed with some famous architect) where we watched TV and my brother played those boy-type computer games. Our living room had classy black-and-white furniture and included an ebony grand piano and a fantastic stereo system that only got to be played on holidays. Anyway, here was a real living room, big and inviting, with a huge brick fireplace on one wall and all that lovely soft furniture waiting to be sat upon.

  “Now, just you make yourself comfortable, sweetie, sit anywhere you like, and I’ll see if Carmen can come out to meet you.” And she swept out of the room, tipsy but graceful, while I set the platter down on a coffee table and made myself comfortable on a plump red-and-white striped sofa. Then I stared around the room and pondered the name Carmen.

  So that was her name. How dramatic and how fitting, I thought, remembering the vision of thick dark hair and pale skin. But my reverie was short-lived. The mother came back into the room without her daughter.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, darling,” she drawled, “my Carmen’s not at all well. The move just took too much out of her.” And she sort of fell back into one of the armchairs and smiled brightly at the cookie plate.

  “Now, let’s just try one of these,” she said politely, sitting up and looking relatively alert. She pulled back a corner of the cellophane and picked out the smallest cookie on the plate. She took a delicate bite and exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, these are simply delicious! I must get your mother’s recipe!” And she put the cookie down beside the platter and beamed her gorgeous smile at me and never touched it again.

  “Where are my manners? I don’t think we have been properly introduced. My name is Angela Caruso, but you can call me Angela.” As soon as she said her name, all I could think about was her daughter’s name, “Carmen Caruso.” Such a beautiful name, almost musical, and so much more glamorous than mine.

  “Oh,” I said, smiling politely back at her. “My name is Lucy. Lucy Linsky, I live right across the street.”

  “Oh, you live in that spectacular house with all the glass and decking!” she marveled.

  “Yes,” I answered. “My dad’s Dr. Linsky. He’s a heart surgeon, and my mom’s a psychiatrist. I’ve got a younger brother too.”

  “How nice.” And she leaned across the table and looked at me wistfully. “Poor Carmen’s daddy has just died, and we’ve come out here to make a new start.” Then she sat up again and added brightly, “I have a son too, Carmen’s older brother, James, but he’s not with us right now. He’s at the academy in Virginia.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I mean about your husband… and your son… it’s too bad that I can’t meet him yet,” I added, not knowing exactly how to respond to this news, “but actually, I was just wondering what grade Carmen would be in. I saw her when you moved in yesterday, and she looked like she might be about my age.”

  Mrs. Caruso clapped her hands and made with the toothpaste smile again. “Oh, just how old are you, darlin’?”

  “I’ll be sixteen in August, and I’ll be in the eleventh grade. I’m a sophomore,” I answered.

  “Now, isn’t that just ducky,” Angela exclaimed. “Carmen will be sixteen in July! And she’ll be in the eleventh grade just like you. I just know you two are going to be the best of friends!”

  “Gee, I hope so,” I said, cringing at how lame that sounded, but all the while I couldn’t stop myself from getting excited about the prospect. There wasn’t one person in the neighborhood and hardly anyone in the school I could relate to, and here was someone I just knew was going to be special, living right across the street from me. I don’t
know how I knew this, and I certainly didn’t know then whatever it was that made her so special was what would also make her so tragic.

  CHAPTER 3

  MORE THAN FRIENDS

  IT WAS to be several anxious days before I finally met Carmen. I kept my eye on her house all the while, though, hoping for another glimpse of her, but all I ever saw was her mom going in and out carrying bags of groceries or bottles of booze, it was hard to tell which. Various delivery people and workmen rang the bell, but the door was never answered by anyone but her mom. And then one day, a few weeks after they moved in, when I had actually begun to give up hope of ever meeting her, our doorbell rang. My little brother Jeffrey ran to answer it, and a few seconds later, he came running wild-eyed down the stairs to report that some amazing-looking girl was at the front door asking for me.

  It was summer, so I was dressed casually in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, but this being LA, I grabbed a quick peek in my bedroom mirror and touched up my eyeliner before trotting up the stairs to meet her.

  No matter what I had imagined her to be like in person, seeing her in the flesh was another experience altogether. There she was, standing outside my front door, holding that same cookie platter I had brought over to her house and looking back at me with luminous brown eyes with eyelashes I swear were about a mile long. But it was the way she was standing that was so awesome: she was so completely composed, so totally nonchalant and sure of herself, I knew she was absolutely aware of the impression she was making.

  She was dressed in a little black dress that clung to her body as if it were painted on, and her thick dark hair framed her perfect heart-shaped face. I could feel myself becoming more shy and awkward with every second I looked at her until she suddenly flashed this brilliant smile at me, a smile so amazing I was immediately lost in it, lost in the warm sparkle of her sturdy white teeth and the most delicious dimples I had ever seen.

  I tried not to show how astonishing I thought she looked, and I mustered a casual “Hello,” which she answered with a husky “Hello” back, and I invited her in. That was all there was to it. We deposited the platter in the kitchen, and I brought her downstairs to the rumpus room, where I introduced her to my nerdy but eager brother, then took her into my bedroom and showed her my laptop and my collection of indie-weird music, and in one afternoon, she became part of my life forever. When she wasn’t hanging out at my house, listening to my music, or watching my DVDs, I would be over at her house, listening to her music and watching her DVDs.

  We were like twins separated at birth. We shared nearly everything, and what we didn’t already know, we accepted and learned to love. She turned me onto Sylvia Plath, and I had her reading Shirley Jackson. We ravaged each other’s libraries and lay on our backs on our beds in my bedroom or hers, reading out loud to each other from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  There was no doubt in my mind she was special. She was charismatic and beautiful enough to be a movie star, but all she wanted to be was a poet. That was a hugely wondrous ambition for a young girl and slotted into my life perfectly, as I planned to be a novelist. But where I had only written a few short stories at that time, mostly school assignments, Carmen already had a collection of astonishing poetry, all of it exquisitely dark.

  We lived like no other teenage girls in Bel Air, and we took great pride in that fact. All that summer, we made a point of never going to the beach or visiting a mall. Everything we wanted, from books to cosmetics, we ordered from Amazon or downloaded from the Internet. We created a bubble in which we could live like the artists we dreamed we were: intense, intellectual, and beautiful. There were only a handful of places we would leave our bubble for, like the NuArt cinema, where we went to watch foreign films or weird old retrospectives. And then there was Shakespeare’s and The Sugar Shack.

  Shakespeare’s was this retro coffee house in the basement beneath an acoustic instrument store in Santa Monica. It was owned by a couple of older ex-hippie gay guys, Sebastian and Cedric. They welcomed anyone who wanted to hang out there, no questions asked. It seemed to be open all day long and had the ambiance of a cavern, with lots of little café tables with candles and chessboards or Dungeons & Dragons game boards on them. There was a giant espresso machine on the counter and a kitchen that seemed to serve only coffee and brownies. Bookshelves lined every wall except the one where they had put up a small stage.

  Shakespeare’s had its share of nerdy college students playing chess all day and several obvious runaways, gay or otherwise, who seemed to live there all the time. It was kind of a misfits’ retreat, and I immediately felt at home there from the moment I trotted down the rickety staircase.

  Cedric was working the counter that day. He was an extraordinarily handsome black man, who, for some reason, maybe because it was LA, always walked around barefoot. He had amazing-looking feet. I didn’t know what the health department would make of them, but as long as they didn’t bust him, I didn’t care. His brown eyes lit up when he saw us, and he greeted us with his usual welcoming grin, his gigantic teeth gleaming in the dim light as he came around from behind the espresso machine.

  “Hi, Lucy,” he said. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Carmen,” I answered. “Carmen, this is Cedric. He owns the place with his partner Sebastian.”

  “Cool,” said Carmen, looking around, taking in the dark cavernous space with its candlelit tables, the walls covered in bookshelves, and the unusual clientele. There were still some kids sleeping on benches in the back, and a skinny boy was sitting on a stool in the farthest corner, strumming a guitar and singing mournfully. Several of the tables had young couples sitting at them, talking in low voices, some of them holding hands. Most of these couples were boys, but I noticed Cathy and Linda were there, sipping coffee and looking into each other’s eyes. By the door, two boys I didn’t recognize sat together, their arms around each other, and one of them had his head lying on the other’s shoulder. “Cool,” she repeated, squeezing my hand.

  “So, you’re new here, aren’t you?” asked Cedric. “I detect an accent.”

  “You got me, y’all,” Carmen drawled delightfully. “From Virginia. I’ve been in LA for exactly four weeks, but I like it here already.”

  “I see that Lucy is bringing you to all the best places,” he said, walking back behind the counter. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Coffee would be very cool,” answered Carmen. I just stood beside her and beamed happily at Cedric, who obviously approved of her.

  “You take it black like Lucy?”

  “Oh no. I take it sweet and white,” she answered. “Can you make me a latte?”

  “Oh yes, pretty one. Sweet and white for the pretty little lady, coming right up.”

  I led Carmen to the table closest to the counter. I usually sat at the counter when I came to Shakespeare’s because I liked to chat with Sebastian and Cedric. That was also because I always came by myself. This was the very first time I had brought anyone with me. I knew most of the regulars, though, like Cathy and Linda, but a lot of kids drifted in and out, following the runaway route up to San Francisco through Walnut Creek and on up to Portland, Oregon.

  It was a curious bit of synchronicity that led to my discovery of Shakespeare’s. A few years ago, just when I was entering my first year as a teenager and my last year as a junior high school student, I dropped by our next-door neighbor’s house to fetch my little brother home for dinner.

  Sam was the older brother, and he hung out a lot with Steve, the album artist’s son from around the corner. They were a lot older than I was, so I never had much to do with them, but I liked them all right. I could tell they were different from most of the other high school boys I’d seen. I thought that was because they were both sort of artsy types. “Artsy type” was a label I gave myself. They had working parents like us, and the kids had been mainly brought up by their housekeeper, Portia, who was the coolest black woman you could ever hope to meet, so being right next door, I liked to spend time
over at their house, just to listen to her talk.

  As usual, Sam’s parents weren’t home, and Portia was fixing them dinner. The two older boys were sitting on the deck just outside the kitchen, chatting and drinking that strange adult beverage called coffee.

  “Hey, Lucy,” Sam said. “Come sit down for a while. Leave the boys alone a little longer. Let them finish their big Xbox tournament downstairs.”

  I was impressed Sam even remembered my name.

  “You know Steve, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I answered.

  “Well, come on, then. Sit down. Have a cup of coffee.”

  “I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Of course you do,” he said, smiling charmingly. Sam was tall and lean, with very curly sandy-colored hair that never seemed to be in any particular style. He had deep blue eyes and a narrow, lightly freckled face with quite an impressive nose and a good smile that made his eyes sparkle. His friend Steve had been a surfer, or maybe he still was. He had that bleached-blond surfer hair with bangs that hung down over his forehead and nearly covered his green eyes, making him look both boyish and mysterious. He wore this kind of knowing grin, which made him seem a bit arrogant, but he’d always been nice to me.

  “Portia? Could you bring another cup of coffee for Lucy?” Sam called through the screen door.

  “Here, Miss Lucy,” Portia said, a moment later, putting a mug of black coffee down in front of me.

  There was nothing for me to do but take a sip. It tasted awful, hot and bitter, but drinking it made me felt terribly sophisticated.

  “Sam tells me you’re an aspiring writer,” Steve said.

  “Well, I like to write,” I answered, taken by surprise.