Don't Make a Scene

by Valerie Block

  “Dear friends,” he wrote, forwarding Yasmina's letter and his response in a new group e-mail to friends, Cuban and otherwise.

  “Although I am aware that one does not share private correspondence, I couldn't stop myself from passing on this exchange. Please do not share it. Best, Vladimir.” He sent this message off to his Spanish-speakers.

  Now, to business: Diane smelled like citrus and was only an inch or so shorter than he was; she seemed a practical woman, but she had understandably been taken aback by his confession. Would she still be interested after she had “processed” the story?

  What now? He had no idea what to do for the twenty-eight hours until he saw her again. He called Bebo. No one in the office spoke Spanish, but he went out in the hall for privacy. He described the situation.

  “What if she's not interested?” he asked Bebo.

  “They're all interested, Vladimir. You are just too interesting.”

  “I can't do this anymore. I think she's older than I am.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don't know, meaning more serious? She seems very reasonable.”

  “Well, that's good, isn't it?”

  “What do I do? I'm completely distracted. I can't work,” he said, although he hadn't actually tried. He thought of other women he knew, Ellen, most recently. She was ready to throw herself at him; he probably didn't have to give her a moment's notice. It depressed him, although it was flattering.

  “So come help me: my car was towed.”

  “I don't want to help you pick up your car.” “So go with Olga and Martica to the pediatrician.” “I don't want to be involved with sick children.” “So go to the movies, then.” That wasn't such a bad idea.

  Dennis was out of town .There was Italian takeout for dinner, and Rachel's kids started off the meal demanding to see a new action movie that night.

  “Everyone has seen it, Mom,” said Jason, nine, who had his mother's thick, straight, dark red hair and freckles, and lived mainly inside video games.

  Rachel was opening mail as she ate. “Oh yes?”

  “We have been telling you for three days now” said Cheryl, eleven, who had Dennis's dark blond hair and green eyes. She routinely pranced around like a sleazy pop star dry-humping for the MTV cameras.

  “We'll talk about it after dinner.”

  “If you don't get those tickets over the phone right now, I won't eat!” Cheryl announced.

  “Go to your room,” Rachel said, and Cheryl flounced off.

  “She's right, Mom,” Jason said, looking up from his device. “The tickets are selling really fast.”

  “You, too. Go to your room.”

  He took his device with him. Their rooms hardly seemed like punishment.

  “They're so spoiled; I don't understand it,” Rachel said, writing something in her crowded date book and eating pasta with a bored expression.

  Cheryl emerged dramatically to slam the hall door closed. Rachel let out a low chuckle and went to the phone to order tickets.

  You rarely heard anymore about American children of privilege being subjugated to austere, punitive regimens on principle, like Rose Kennedy freezing her ass off in a French convent, or Christina Crawford's bizarre, inexplicable incarceration for not writing thank-you notes soon enough, or the Lardner boys being chased out of doors in all kinds of weather by a Prussian governess, and sleeping on a screened porch year-round, including when it snowed.

  “How is Dennis?” Diane asked.

  “A bit cranky since the vasectomy”

  “What vasectomy?”

  “He had a vasectomy,” she said impatiently, as if Diane should have known this. “About a month ago. Finally. I've been begging him for years.”

  “Why are you telling me this? How can I eat dinner with the man?”

  “Oh, relax. It won't come up in conversation unless you bring it up.”

  “That's hardly the point. Would he want you talking about it with everyone?”

  “You are hardly everyone.”

  “Well, thank you, but if you're telling me, your eight best friends already know.”

  “So what? When you get married—and you will—you'll understand.”

  Diane felt hot. What a patronizing (matronizing?) thing to say.

  “What does that mean, ‘and you will’? Says who? Where is it written?”

  Rachel looked at Diane as if she might tell her to go to her room.

  Diane had better be grateful. The forty-five-ish layout designer she'd met the previous day in the Flatiron District two-bedroom spoke very slowly, as if she were medicated, or underwater. Although Diane liked the location and the apartment, it was close quarters with a stranger—Single White Female (Barbet Schroeder, 1992) was a hard film to forget.

  To SEE RACHEL as Diane remembered her, at the age of sixteen— lounging on her bed on an average Friday night with a head full of hot rollers, drinking Tab, chewing gum, scarfing down cupcakes or French fries, or both; watching Wheel of Fortune and listening to the dance station while simultaneously doing her homework, painting her toenails, tweezing her eyebrows and calling up all four of her best friends to gossip about Bruno, Massimo or Ioiahnn—was to understand that Rachel had an appetite for trash, trash in Sensur-round, trash in every orifice. To see her at the age of thirty-seven in a robe and curlers at nine a.m. getting ready for a committee meeting was like being in a time warp.

  “Keep me company while I put on my face,” she commanded, and Diane sat down on the carpet in her sister's boudoir as she put on makeup, blew on nail polish and fielded phone calls with the television and the radio on. Marcelina vacuumed in another room. The New York Post lay on the dressing table amid sticky lip-gloss wands, eyelash curlers, plastic toys, gum wrappers, candy canes, used cups and glasses, snapshots, magazine clippings and Q-tips. The doorbell rang, and Diane began to get up; Rachel signaled that she should sit. Rachel hung up the phone. It rang again immediately.

  Diane had slept on a very uncomfortable foldout couch in the maid's room. She would get juice on the way to work, and of course arrange to be out every night. That day's lineup at the cinema included the wartime housing-shortage farce The More the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943); reminding Diane of her meeting with another potential roommate at ten-thirty. Rachel hung up, raised the volume on the TV and began stroking mascara on her eyelashes in front of a magnifying mirror.

  “I'll be coming home late, so I'll need a key.”

  “I'll have to think about that,” Rachel said, painting eyeliner on her lid.

  “Do you really want me ringing the doorbell after midnight?”

  Rachel opened up a drawer and pulled out a key. She held it up, looking at Diane in the mirror.

  Diane took the key. “I'll be very quiet. As soon as I get a place, I'll move out and give it back.”

  Lara Freed walked into the room carrying a smooth caramel leather case. “Shake a leg, Rachel. Hey,” she said, catching sight of Diane sitting on the floor. “What are you doing here?”

  “I'm Rachel's sister. Perhaps you've heard of me?”

  Lara had been Diane's best friend during and after college. They rarely spoke anymore. This was fine; Lara and Rachel had much more in common now.

  “Did you pick up the tickets?” Rachel asked.

  “I did, and I gave them to you.”

  “You did? What did I do with them?”

  Lara opened the drawer from which the key had just been extracted, pulled out tickets and presented them to Rachel. She was dressed up in a tight tweed suit, a low-cut lace bustier underneath and high, high heels with pointy, pointy toes. What went on at these committee meetings? Diane couldn't wear shoes like this anymore. Lara removed a stack of magazines to sit down on a bench that Diane hadn't noticed. Her skirt fell open, exposing most of her legs. Lara had married a neckless, balding, golfing banker bore, and she believed that Diane was jealous of her. Lara's mother had approached Diane at Lara's wedding to say “I hope you won't be a stranger now, just becau
se Lara's a married lady.”

  “So,” Lara said. “What's new at the theater?”

  “We're expanding next door, to add a second screen for new releases.”

  “Good for you,” Lara said, as if presenting her with a consolation prize. “Do you have an architect?”

  “We're using Chris Wiley and Vladimir Hurtado Padrón. They're terrific.”

  “Oh, no,” Lara gasped, “not Vladimir!” She was smiling.

  “You know him?”

  “He did Sarah's place. He also did a number on Sarah's sister. You know he's married, right?”

  Rachel was suddenly interested. “Who's married?”

  “He's very attractive, Diane, but beware. He's a piece of work.”

  “Are you seeing this guy?” Rachel swiveled to face Diane directly.

  “He's our architect.”

  “You didn't say he was attractive and straight and married.”

  “That's irrelevant, as far as the design is concerned.”

  A look passed between Rachel and Lara in the mirror.

  “How'd it go with that divorced lawyer I sent you?” Lara asked.

  “The guy who said, ‘Every day I wake up and ask myself, How can I be a better rock climber?’ Not well.”

  “Oh, I didn't think it would.”

  “So why did I have to go out with him?”

  “I'd be a bad friend if I didn't pass on every possible lead.”

  Diane's single status hung in the air like a problem she was too vain to solve. If she could tell some rueful, self-deprecating story and play the Eve Arden role, these two would understand her and perhaps let her hang around. But it was clear that they would rather share intimacies about their husbands, their help or their children than include her by talking about politics, the weather, or even the real estate market. So she said goodbye.

  Rachel walked her out; Lara stayed behind in the boudoir.

  The front door closed behind Diane and she pressed the button for the elevator in the dimly lit hallway. On the way down in the wood-paneled box she wasn't sure if she was afraid that they would talk about her in her absence, or if she was afraid that they wouldn't even bother.

  Although she had perfectly embodied the wisecracking working gal unlucky in love, Eve Arden had a happy second marriage with four children, many domestic pets and livestock. Never mind: Diane had a date that night. Moreover, she'd never aspired to be a married Committee Lady living very fancy with floor-to-ceiling taffeta curtains on the Upper East Side. So perhaps the situation that Vladimir had delineated was not a problem, but an issue.

  And who wasn't a piece of work at this age?

  In a gleaming glass office tower in Midtown, Diane underwent security measures and was sent upstairs with a badge and a computerized elevator key. Her potential roommate—a knife-thin, aggressively groomed editorial assistant in her early twenties in a miniskirt, fishnets and stiletto heels—met her at the elevators in front of the offices of a women's magazine. The party girl's impatience was palpable even before they reached her cubicle. The interview, if it could be called that, lasted less than three minutes. It felt like a mutual allergic reaction, or a bad blind date. Diane waited for the elevator feeling huffy that she'd wasted the time.

  Fishnets, stilettos, miniskirts: once upon a time, in another life. Who could walk around like that now? On the way down in the elevator, a TV broadcast a chat show whose host was asking an actress how she kept her sex life exciting after fifteen years of marriage. Diane didn't want to share an apartment. With anyone, not even her best friend—whoever that was. Come to think of it, she hadn't spoken to Claire since right before her eviction—almost two months.

  At the bank, a man cut in front of her on line, asking if she minded, as he had diarrhea and needed to reach a bathroom.

  “Please go right ahead.”

  “Thank you.” He grimaced, adding, “I ate too much beef last night.”

  What did intimacy mean anymore, when there was so much of it in circulation? What did friendship even consist of now, if everyone told everyone everything, and anyone dining at the next table heard about the mental illness in the family, the cheap behavior of the in-laws, the bitchy airs of the former friend? When everyone knew everything, what was there to talk about, really? Did the value of the information plummet with the range of its dispersal? Or was there just an insatiable appetite for more up-to-the-minute trashy details, not only about the stars, but about everyone?

  Diane reached her office and sat down, already angry. Storm reported a toilet clog. Both cards in the suggestion box featured Sid Bernstein's spidery print with random words in block capitals, like notes from a serial killer. “A Concerned and Anonymous Film Lover,” demanded to know why Every Girl Should Be Married (Don Hartman, 1948) and My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940) were not included in the current series, and what the Management had against Cary Grant.

  Vladimir hopped on the downtown local train at six o'clock. He didn't want to be late. Diane hung up the phone as he walked into her office. She was looking hopeful in a bright green sweater and jeans, with her hair half up, half down. She suggested they see the movie first, and then have dinner. Why always a movie? He held her hand during the film, which was old, British and not funny. It was about a man and a woman in London both in love with the same guy—a loser, as far as Vladimir could tell. They had friends in common, and also shared an answering service as well as the lover. This movie was a waste of time; he asked to leave.

  “I wouldn't put up with that,” he said as they left the theater.

  “What's that?”

  “I wouldn't share a lover with anyone.”

  “You should talk,” Diane said, and pushed open the door to the street.

  This door was in bad shape, he noticed. They would have to replace it.

  A very strict aesthetic was on display at Vladimir's apartment: white walls and black furniture, everything stowed away on shelves behind a wall of sleek, frosted-glass doors that reminded her of an interior in an Antonioni or Visconti film that she couldn't pinpoint. It was the nicest apartment she'd seen in a long time.

  “You're very neat.”

  “I do my best,” he said, and went to make some tea in the kitchen.

  “I notice you have no extraneous paper around,” she called.

  “I keep things in files,” he said. “It's better that way.”

  “Fellini had a problem with paper. He said it slowed him down. He threw everything out. Wouldn't even keep a letter. After he read it, he threw it out.”

  “That's good discipline,” he said with approval. “Although you can get into trouble if you don't save your bills.”

  “It's hard to imagine Fellini paying bills.” She walked to the window. He had a view of a baseball diamond and a schoolyard, lit by bright sodium-vapor lights shining behind a chain-link fence. It would be noisy during the school day, she supposed. It had begun to snow lightly.

  He arrived in the living room carrying two cups of tea on a tray.

  She sat down next to him on a black leather couch. His hair was down tonight, and it fell into his eyes. He was a darkly beautiful man, an architect with a sensitive face in a black turtleneck, but she knew next to nothing about him. He wanted to leave Sunday, Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger, 1971) halfway through the film. This was all right—she'd seen it many times—but it didn't bode well. Diane was reminded of a first date in the mid-eighties whom she'd taken to an obscure and early Jacques Rivette experiment. On the street afterwards, the fellow had given her arm something between a squeeze and a pat, as if regretting to tell her she hadn't made the cut. Would he have been interested in her if they'd seen Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) instead?

  This memory led to another memory of an erstwhile date, a tall, bald labor negotiator (specialty: Duke University Basketball) who'd told her that his all-time favorite movie was Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987).

  “I hate Nicolas Cage,” she had said, without thinking.

 
; He gave her a quick side-look. “People tell me I look like him.”

  “I don't mean what he looks like,” she said. “I mean the essence of him.” But, in fact, she wasn't attracted to the negotiator—not physically, and not to the essence of him. End of that story.

  She'd been doing this for so long that perhaps this was her specialty: first and second dates with specialists. But why was she thinking about this now? Vladimir put his arm around her shoulders. She was attracted to Vladimir. She sipped her tea and looked around, refusing to be rushed.

  “This apartment is like a gallery without the art,” she said finally.

  “I'm hardly ever here, so it doesn't really bother me.”

  “Don't you sleep here?”

  “Sometimes,” he said, after a pause.

  Now, what did that mean?

  “You could put a poster on that wall.” She had just the one in mind: a poster for Stolen Kisses (François Truffaut, 1968), which was among the seven that she had put into storage in Queens when she'd been evicted.

  “When I'm sleeping, I don't see it.”

  “And when you wake up?”

  “I have work on my mind, and I get to the studio faster.”

  Another single man in his late thirties with nothing on his mind but the office? She had no way of knowing. Who would he spend the holidays with? His empty walls didn't say “Adorn me,” they said “In the five minutes between work and sleep, he won't see you, either.”

  “Just trying to figure you out,” she said.

  He took her hand. “What can I tell you about myself, Diane?”

  His sudden use of her name reminded her of an insurance salesman (specialty: Peanuts memorabilia) who had dropped her name so many times between the drinks and the main course that she had cut out before dessert, claiming to be in the throes of an asthma attack.

  “What do you do for fun?”

  “Well, I don't watch baseball, basketball or that thing you call ‘football’ in this country. I don't watch real football, either. That movie was the first one I've seen in a long time. I like music, but I may be the only Cuban who doesn't dance. I don't cook, so I eat most meals out.”