Don't Make a Scene

by Valerie Block

  “What's the matter?”

  “I don't know.” Here finally was a woman who wanted something, and what was happening? He wasn't interested in her, but so what? She was willing. How to get out of this gracefully?

  “Well, the fact is, I like someone else.”

  She froze. “Who?”

  “You don't know her.”

  “Okay, tell me all about her,” she said, and lay down on the bed, patting a place next to her. This was strange. But he didn't want to insult her, so he sat next to her and leaned back, propped up against the pillow. He was still holding on to the spoon.

  “Well, she's the sister of a guy I see on the skateboard jump. Zoë.”

  “Zoë what? You don't know? Have you asked her out? No? Why not?”

  “I haven't got her phone number.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How old is she?”

  “I don't know. Fifteen or sixteen.”

  Her face stiffened. “I am ready, willing and here, Javier. You are talking about a teenager whose last name you don't even know.”

  “But we work together.”

  “And?” She noticed the spoon, suddenly, and seized it from him and threw it into the kitchen. It clattered on the floor.

  “Well, it is a delicate place, the cinema. It will be rare tomorrow if we”—he racked his brain for the polite verb—“eh, do this.”

  She laughed. “Rare?”

  “What's the word?”

  “Don't you think it would be rare tomorrow if we don't do this?” She guided his hand to her chest. It took him a moment to process the sentence and the physical sensations. She kissed him in an open manner that revolted him.

  He pulled his head back and sat up on the bed. “It will be rare, one way or another. But I cannot do this, Cindy. I am so sorry.”

  “Fine.” She rolled off the bed and stalked into the bathroom.

  He was letting himself down. Néstor and Paco, too. He was letting down all Cuban men. But he just couldn't bring himself to move forward.

  He heard her weeping. “But I like you, Cindy! No crying.”

  She came out. “You are awful.”

  He kissed her cheek. “I want to thank you. Dinner is delicious.”

  “Dinner was delicious, and you are a tease.”

  “I don't understand, but okay, I am tease. You tell me how I go home?”

  Diane walked up crooked, carpeted stairs that seemed too narrow and steep. The open-house apartment was teeming with people inspecting the renovated kitchen with pass-through to dining area and an exposed brick wall.

  In the bedroom, she saw Paul Zazlow checking out the closet space.

  They looked at each other.

  “You're not supposed to be here: you have a broker,” he scolded her with a sly look after kissing her on both cheeks.

  “You're not supposed to be here: you are a broker.”

  Voices were raised in the other room. They passed back into the foyer.

  “You're an idiot if you don't use a broker,” a squat woman with a red face was saying to a man in the open kitchen. She looked unstable, perhaps because she was wearing a thick black-and-white wool suit in July. Her chin-length jet-black hair had at least an inch of white roots showing.

  “This is my property, and I can do whatever I want with it, including selling it myself.” The owner was a stout, gray-headed man in his mid-fifties.

  “You won't list it because you're too cheap to pay the fee,” said the woman, making short choppy gestures that displaced a name tag on her lapel. It fell to the floor, and everyone looked at it.

  “It's time for you to leave,” said the owner.

  “Okay, let's calm down,” said Paul.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded, bending down to pick up her name tag.

  “I'm Paul Zazlow, a broker with Fiedler. You have no business here.”

  “Well, neither do you!”

  “I am calling your office,” the owner told the unstable woman.

  “You bastard!” she screamed, throwing her weight against him and knocking him into the refrigerator.

  “Don't!” Diane said, reaching out.

  “Take your hands off me!” The problem broker shrieked, turned and swiped all at once. It happened so fast that Diane barely felt it, but blood began spurting out of her face. She felt a fog of nausea in the back of her throat, and slid down to the floor against the wall beneath the pass-through.

  “Are you all right?” Paul asked, kneeling down beside her.

  Blood was seeping between her fingers. “Dizzy.”

  Meanwhile, the owner had shoved the broker across the kitchen into shelves on the far wall, where she fell to the floor, taking glasses and dishes down with her. She lay among the shards with her legs exposed.

  “You bastard!” the woman howled. “I'm bleeding!”

  “Are you all right?” the owner asked Diane, handing her a paper towel.

  “I just want a place to live,” Diane said, holding the towel to her face.

  Paul dialed 911. “We have a fight here, a real estate fight!” he said, giving the address of the apartment as he ran a paper towel under the tap. “A psychotic broker menaced the owner and she's just attacked an innocent client and everyone is bleeding.”

  “You'll pay for everything you broke here,” the owner shouted.

  “You brought this on yourself,” the broker shouted back.

  Paul dabbed at her face with wet paper towels and asked, “Did you disturb a coven of witches who put a hex on your head, Diane?”

  “R.I.P. Consuelo,” she said, trying to slow down her pulse by breathing consciously. When she closed her eyes, her head spun, so she kept them open.

  A woman poked her head in, took in the broken dishes, the two women on the floor, the two men with a pile of bloody towels between them, and asked, “When did you buy the dishwasher?”

  The broker stood up, shedding dishes, picking a shard of pottery out of her hand. She gathered her pocketbook and leather portfolio.

  “You stay and wait for the police!” the owner shouted, but the broker had barreled her way into the open-house throng and out the door.

  “What's the maintenance here?” someone else asked.

  “Listed on the sheet,” Paul called, dropping another bloody towel onto the pile.

  “Where's the sheet? I didn't get a sheet.”

  “The sheet is in the foyer!” he shouted. “And this woman is bleeding!”

  The owner knelt down on the floor and opened a first aid kit.

  “I have that lunatic's card,” he said, taking out an antiseptic to clean Diane's wound. “I'm calling her agency. This is insane. This is actionable.”

  “Oh, that stings,” Diane said.

  “What were you doing here?” the owner asked Paul.

  “Same thing she was. I'm Paul, by the way. And your patient is Diane.”

  “Gregory.”

  “Sometimes,” Paul said, “when an owner sees what's involved, the lunatics who show up at an open house, he's glad to let someone else take care of the sale.”

  “That assumes that the broker is saner or more savory than the apartment hunters,” the owner said, fishing through the first aid kit. “Not always true.”

  “When did you buy the dishwasher?” the woman asked again.

  “Last year,” he called, applying an ointment to Diane's face.

  A big, dark blue presence pushed into the kitchen: two cops presented themselves and asked who had called and what had happened. Another woman poked her head in as the owner began describing the situation.

  “Is there a storage bin in the basement?” she asked.

  The day was dark and dank, with a greenish cast to the light over the baseball field. Vladimir dressed for work. “What's this?” Javier held Diane's sweater.

  “That's Diane's,” Vladimir said.

  Javier buried his face in the sweater. “Shall I give it to her today?”

  That was the best solution, although it
was bizarre that Javier wanted to wear the sweater around his shoulders, and on such a sticky day. They took the No. 1 train uptown. A conductor emerged from his cab and walked through the car. Vladimir sensed his son's anxiety. He tried to remember when his fear of subway personnel, postal carriers, ticket takers, bus drivers, policemen, doormen and neighbors had faded. He couldn't pinpoint a time, but he had lost much of that fear along the way.

  “I want to have a job to earn money,” Javier said, for the third time this week.

  “You really can't, not legally.”

  “I need money. Twenty dollars is nothing here!”

  Vladimir sighed. “What do you need?”

  “I want to take Diane to dinner.”

  “Diane doesn't expect that.”

  “I don't care. I want to take her to dinner. And I want to take you to dinner.”

  “I appreciate that. But nobody expects you to pick up the check. It's inappropriate.”

  Javier slid down in his seat. He'd asked for permission to take over the grocery shopping for the household, and Vladimir had been delighted to say yes. Javier had insisted that they eat at home at least twice a week, and the previous evening he had made a pretty good although overcooked hamburger with a salad of special lettuces that he'd found at some market Diane had taken him to. Over dinner, he told Vladimir that for the next meal, he would smoke meat on the stove using only tinfoil, a wire hanger and an egg timer; he'd seen it on the Food Network.

  “Perhaps that's a bit ambitious. What about pasta?”

  Javier straddled a chair and fixed the big brown eyes on him: he loved pasta! He had seen a pasta-making machine the day before with Diane at Bed Bath & Behind—would Vladimir let him buy it? On the counter, as they washed up, Vladimir found the source of an odd smell that had been tormenting him over dinner. It was a bowl of coagulated milk wrapped in gauze.

  “What is going on here?”

  Javier was making yogurt.

  “Did you know that they sell yogurt already made?”

  “Just because I came from Cuba a month ago, you think I'm unsophisticated? You think I'm a hick?”

  “Only hicks have to make their own yogurt.”

  Javier corrected him with a pious tone: if you made it yourself, it was healthier and it tasted better. He wanted to make his own pasta; he wanted to make his own pizza; he wanted to make his own beer. Diane knew how to make bread, and she was going to show him how.

  Vladimir could see his kitchen becoming cluttered with bulky, dust-collecting equipment from Bed Bath & Behind. He pointed to the bowl of milk. “Will this experiment go the way of the flan, is all I'm asking.”

  Javier stood up a little straighter and looked him in the eye. “It is an honest attempt.”

  “Okay, fine, but I don't want it hanging around for a week. Either eat it or throw it out, right away. What a bizarre smell.”

  At his office building, Vladimir set Javier up in the café downstairs and gave him some money. Upstairs, he motioned to Chris that he needed to talk privately. Chris gave Magnus a pat on the back and joined Vladimir in the pantry.

  “I have an awkward request,” Vladimir began. Chris looked at him directly. “Just say it.” “Can you take over the Bedford Street Cinema?” “What do you mean, can I take over the Bedford Street Cinema?”

  He took a deep breath. “I am afraid that it has gotten very awkward with Diane. I don't know how to put this.”

  “I speak to Diane all the time. She's fine. Don't worry about her.”

  “Javier is hanging out there. She spends more time with him than I do.”

  “You're a professional. She's a professional. You'll finish the job. Period.”

  So much for gay men being emotional and understanding about personal issues! Vladimir had never been handled with such efficiency. He went downstairs to talk to Javier over coffee. He presented him with the description of the English immersion class.

  Javier read the printout, sipping his coffee. He looked very mature, Vladimir thought, and felt proud of his son, how he had turned out. A motorcycle idled at the red light in front of the café, shredding the air with unnecessary engine noise.

  “That,” said Javier, mesmerized by the motorcycle and no longer reading, “is so cool. I want one.”

  Some adult! “Not on my watch.”

  “Well, this is fine,” Javier said in English. “But I have to say, my English is improving every day that I live here and work at the cinema. I don't know if a class is necessary, and it's very expensive.”

  “Don't worry about that.”

  “I'd rather use the money to buy that fermenting equipment.”

  “Not a chance. I think an English class this summer would be a good way of getting ahead in the language, which will be an issue if you decide to stay.”

  Javier looked at him with the big round wet brown eyes.

  Vladimir switched back to Spanish. “Javier. I don't know what you plan to do. You may want to think about it for a while. Just know that I will do everything in my power to help you stay, if that's what you want. And if you want to go back, I'll understand that, too. The one thing you can't do is go back and forth. If you stay, that's it. And if you go back, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to get out again.”

  Javier nodded. “I will think about it.”

  “Good. You have until September third. If you do stay, and you go to school, things will be more normal. I mean, you'd meet people your own age, and your social life won't be so limited by your cranky old man.”

  Javier smirked.

  “In the meantime,” Vladimir continued, “don't you think you'd learn more English in a class?”

  “Not necessarily. I learn so much from Diane. And not just English.”

  Javier really had been blossoming under Diane's attention.

  Vladimir stopped by Diane's office late that day. She had a bandage on her face, and it appeared that she had been crying. He pointed to the bandage. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  He cleared his throat. “Diane, thank you. You've been a big help with Javier.”

  “He's a big help to me, and a lot of fun.”

  “Good. You deserve fun.” He was immediately annoyed with himself: such an American thing to say. “I think he's going to be doing an English immersion, so he won't be around so much. In your hair.”

  “He's not in my hair. I'd miss him, but whatever Javier wants to do is fine by me.”

  He walked out, disturbed. Of course Javier was fun! He didn't have a job, rent to pay, or even a date book to carry! He didn't have a business to run, or friends, or school, or anything else in his life to distract him: of course he paid attention to her!

  “Diane, you have done wonderful sing wiz zhe museum,” Catherine Merveille said after they had ordered salads.

  “The cinema, you mean?”

  “Yes, zhe cinema. Zhe museum of cinema.”

  Catherine had called her up out of the blue to ask her to lunch. Diane was in no mood for surprises; she still had a big gauze patch on her cheek, and no apartment, and she wasn't inclined to chat. But why turn down a legendary film star? It wasn't polite to ask people right up front what their agenda was. So she waited, and studied Catherine's makeup.

  “I want to talk to you about an organization I am involved wizh. Dario is also on zhe committee. In Chamonix. It is very close to my 'art because I spend winters there all through my shildhood. You have been in zhe area, of course.”

  The area was memorable for the day Diane had spent skiing, or, more precisely, the day she'd spent falling. This adventure had been in her early thirties; it seemed impossible now that she would do anything so reckless again.

  “I 'ave a chalet on zhe mountain. We 'ave goats. So sharming. Zhe shildren love to ski,” Catherine was saying. Diane was aware of people staring at her patch. She was possibly on the verge of tears. Some unknown thing was operating at a very deep level, keeping her life stalled, malfunctioning. The fact that an accomplished woman wit
h long hair was talking at great length about her second home was no comfort.

  “We make big, new, exciting event. I sink you are zhe one to run it.”

  “Run what?”

  “Zhe Chamonix Film Festival,” she said, as if they'd been discussing it all along.

  “Well, thank you for thinking of me.” It sounded stilted, canned. “I—things are very out of joint for me, as I don't have a place to live right now.”

  “So zhis is zhe perfect time to make a moof.”

  “I've had bad luck in the real estate business. Perhaps it is a sign.”

  “And I understand sings are finished in zhe personal business, so why not try a new place? Zhe pay is probably more zhan zhat slave driver give you here. And Heuropean men are so mush heasier for a woman like you.”

  Diane looked at the film star, so composed, so stylishly casual, and sitting so close that one could actually reach out and strike her.

  “Sink about it,” she said, putting a cool, jeweled hand on Diane's hand. “It's a good time for you to take sharge of your life.”

  The last time Diane had attended the film festival at Cannes, a world-famous Italian director became fixated on her hair. “I know you won't let me touch it, but let me dream,” he whispered to the back of her head in an elevator. She was so creeped out by his hot breath in her hair that she shot out of the elevator like a greyhound when the doors opened.

  “I make a film about your hair,” he said the next time he saw her in front of the hotel, slipping his card into her hand as his wife, daughter and dog folded themselves into a limousine, casting evil looks her way. The farce continued when this nutcase scratched on her door in the middle of the night, begging for admission. She sent him away: she happened to be in bed with another ardent Italian at the time. (This was many years ago. Things like that happened to Diane back then.)

  The next morning, she saw him in the elevator. He was accomplished and legendary; he was also on the verge of senility. Again he told her that he was intoxicated by her hair and announced that she forbid him to touch it.

  Enough, she decided.

  “You can touch it. Go ahead.” She held out some hair for him to touch.