Literacy and Longing in L. A. (9 page)

Happy Talk

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”

~
Logan Pearsall Smith, American essayist (1865–1946),
Afterthoughts ~

H
ow long does it take for a man to call a woman he’s interested in, presuming of course he IS interested, which I think he is. One thing I refuse to do is sit by the phone and wait, although I did give him my cell phone. Let’s see, he gets in around ten, probably distracted and busy until lunch. He could call then, but men usually wait until about five, the twilight zone, when the promise of something is in the air.

I look at the clock, seven a.m. The phone rings.

“God, Dora, I’ve been trying to reach you all night. It’s me, Brooke.”

“Brooke?” I hear a loud roar behind her.

“Did I wake you? Dora? Can you hear me? I’m on this shit assignment covering some security breach at the airport…. Wait a second…I’ll walk inside.”

“Hey, Brooke,” I say, half asleep.

“Listen, Dora. Focus. Are you there? I had a late meeting with Eddie in Metro and I told him about the interview and he wants you to e-mail him your résumé, and include a portfolio with some of your better articles.”

“That’s great. You’re so nice. It may take me a while to get it all together, though.” Shit. Where did I put all that stuff?

“Well, don’t let it sit too long, okay? Do it today. Gotta run. I’ll call you later.”

“Thanks, Brooke. I really appreciate it.”

I rack my brain trying to remember where I put the box with all my old articles. The last time I remember seeing it, I think it was in Palmer’s garage. But then, I moved most of that stuff to a storage facility on Jefferson by the airport. Or maybe it’s in the basement here. I don’t know where the hell it is. Why can’t I ever get organized? My sister has every piece of paper she’s ever owned in plastic file boxes with airtight lids organized in alphabetical order.

I spend the better part of the morning going through the basement storage and Containers R Us by the airport. After four fruitless hours, as much as I didn’t want to, I decide I better call Palmer. I call him at the studio. His second assistant answers.

“Mr. Palmer’s office.”

“Hi, Stacy. This is Dora. Can I talk to Palmer?” A pause. I’m clearly getting the “pain in the ass ex-wife” treatment.

“Well…I’ll see if he’s in.” Like she doesn’t know.

Palmer picks up immediately. “Hey, Dora. I’m on the other line. Let me just get off.”

“That’s okay. I can call back.”

I hear him say to the other person, “I’ll get back to you.” And then to snotty Stacy, “Close the door, will you?

“So. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Palmer, I have a little problem.”

“Okay…” he says tentatively.

I tell him what’s going on and that I need to get into his garage.

“Is there someone who can let me in?”

“Why don’t I just meet you there around noon?” he offers.

“Oh, that’s okay. You don’t really need to.”

“I know I don’t need to. Be gracious, Dora.”

“You’re right. I’ll see you at noon. But I can’t stay.”

He laughs. “That’s not gracious. How about lunch afterwards?”

“I’m a mess. I’ve been digging through boxes of garbage all morning and I have to get everything organized by the end of the day, and you know that’s not my forte.”

“Oh. It’s not?” he teases. “Come on. Let me take you to lunch. I don’t care if you’re a mess. You always look great.”

I fall for it every time. He CAN be charming. “Thanks. That’s nice. Okay. See you later.”

A few hours later, I ring the bell, drive through the gate, and go directly to the garage. No hiding in the bushes for me. No siree. This time I’m an invited guest but I’m still not going inside. I wonder where the girlfriend is.

The garage door automatically opens from a remote somewhere. I am faced with a tower of my old boxes of books. I’m amazed at the sheer numbers, books from my childhood, from my old school, from all my old apartments. I guess I’ll have to take this stuff home. If I don’t watch out, I could end up in
People
magazine—one of those old ladies with cats who meets an untimely death from all the crap they collected. I can see the headlines now, “Literary Pack Rat Dies in Fiery Inferno.” I can’t believe Palmer hasn’t asked me to get rid of it all.

I start to go through the boxes. Books from my European period, my Victorian period, my Russian lit period, my Faulkner period, my Fitzgerald period, and my “I can’t stand my life” period. And there it is, my productive period, all my stuff from the
Times
.

“Do you want the girls from the office to help you get it together?” Palmer asks from behind me. I’m sure Stacy would be thrilled.

“No, thanks. I can do it.”

“I made a reservation at the Bel Air Hotel.”

“Palmer, look at me.” I’m wearing old sweats and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt my sister gave me right after the separation that says “tranquility” down the arm. I won’t even talk about the nervous sweat.

“You look like you belong. We’ll eat outside. Only the tourists dress up.”

We pull up to the Bel Air Hotel, a pink Spanish oasis surrounded by twelve acres of lush gardens with towering palms and cascading willows. As I walk past waterfalls, arched bridges, and tranquil ponds, I come to the big attraction. A family of snow-white swans that serve as a backdrop for the hundreds of weddings that take place here every year. I’ve seen wedding pictures with the bride standing regally next to Athena, the prized mother swan, and her five gray cygnets, appropriately named after the daughters of Atlas.

We approach the terrace, an idyllic loggia with a eucalyptus-burning fireplace. The tables are covered with luxurious Italian linens, and the whole room exudes a kind of low-key elegance. Carla, the hostess, a former Scandinavian actress, greets Palmer with a peck on the cheek and shows him to his usual table. I smile meekly as we walk to the corner banquette.

We slide into the circular booth and I try not to take the tablecloth with me. I glance over at Palmer. I sometimes forget how good-looking he is. It’s not only the noble profile. It’s his hands. When I first met him, I told him his hands reminded me of a Rodin sculpture, those large, strong hands with long graceful fingers. I could never date a man with stumpy, gnomey little hands. I am hit by a whiff of his aftershave and a wave of nostalgia slams into me. I have to stop this. It’s no wonder the French say lunch is the sexiest meal.

The waiter gives us the menu. I briefly consider white asparagus soup (it’s in season now) and a grilled vegetable salad. And then I see it. A twenty-dollar burger—eight ounces of succulent black Angus beef, crispy fries, and your choice of cheese, bacon, or mushrooms. It’s calling to me. Women in L.A. don’t order cheeseburgers. They order things like the spa Cobb. I look at Palmer and say, “You go first.”

He says, “I’ll have the spa Cobb.”

Oh well. It’s been close to the worst six months of my life. I’m going for it. “I’ll take the burger with bacon. And cheese.”

Palmer doesn’t say a word, although I think I see a slight smile dancing at the edges of his mouth. “Would you like a glass of wine with that?” Would I like to belt down a drink? At this awkward juncture? It sure would ease up the conversation. Maybe he should have a drink. No, I can’t. If I have any chance of putting together that portfolio this afternoon, I’d better not. “No, thanks.”

“So. You’re going back to work,” he states rather than asks.

“I hope so. It was a mistake for me to quit.” Oops. I hope he doesn’t take this personally. He does.

“Who asked you to quit?” There’s a slight edge to his voice.

“Well, you know. My dad and that whole thing…”

“I know, but I always thought you were too good a writer not to work. Plus, I think it’s when you’re the happiest. Am I right?”

“I think the only time I’m really happy is when I’m reading. ‘Books make sense of life’
^*
—somebody said that. Anyway, that’s how I feel.”

“Really? No other happy moments?” His tone has suddenly turned intimate and intense. “Didn’t I ever make you happy?”

I am disarmed. I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t this. I think back to the times when Palmer and I would get in bed and talk half the night about nothing, or when I’d wake up to blaring TV news, running water, banging drawers, and the bitter-roasted smell of steaming coffee by my bedside. It was good, really good, when we’d get all dressed up to go to yet another event and then decide, right before we got there, to bag it and go out to dinner, just the two of us. Or when he’d get that look when I’d enter the room and his hand would brush my arm, signaling our own special code. And then there was that couples thing in the evening, sitting outside on the loggia when we didn’t talk at all. It’s nice when silence is comforting like that.

“Yes, Palmer. You did make me happy.”

He is quiet for a moment. “Thank you for saying that.”

There is an awkward silence as we both stare at nothing across the room. He studies my face for a moment and starts to smile.

Then my cell phone rings. I answer it.

“Hey!” Oh god, it’s him. Why did I answer it? I wasn’t thinking.

“I had a great time last night,” Fred says.

I have to get off the phone right now. I look at Palmer as I respond in my most businesslike tone. “Can I call you back?”

“I guess this is a bad time. I’ll call you back later,” Fred says.

I hang up. I can tell Palmer knows it’s another guy. Men have a sixth sense about this. The conversation makes an abrupt turn back to polite small talk. He asks about Virginia (they always did like each other). I ask about his mother (yuck).

Then he says, “I never meant to hurt you, Dora.”

“I know you didn’t.” I should say more here. I should tell him that I never meant to hurt him. That I’m sorry I was so unhappy at the end. That I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely happy. But I don’t.

He asks for the check. “If you need anything else, let me know.” A polite kiss on the cheek. “Keep me posted on the job, okay?”

I get into my car and try to figure out that lunch. He still cares about me. That’s clear. I still find him attractive. Neither one of us has recovered from the split. Wait. What am I thinking? Of course he’s recovered from the split. He’s living with gorgeous, together Kimberly. I think about calling Fred back. I’m not really in the mood. Lunch was confusing.

The phone rings. “Is this late enough?” It’s Fred. He’s cute. Funny. Easy. I laugh. He laughs. He wants to see me…tonight. A real date at a jazz joint with, hopefully, some kind of alcoholic beverages. Sounds fun.

Well, as Edith Wharton once said, “If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”

Of Cabbages and Kings

“Dancing is a wonderful training for girls:

it’s the first way you learn to guess what a

man is going to do before he does it.”

~
Christopher Morley, American novelist (1890–1957),
Kitty Foyle ~

G
lendale. Who goes to Glendale? It’s the Valley. How did he ever find this place, in the middle of fucking nowhere? I feel like I’ve been driving for a week. It’s my own fault. I didn’t want to tell him about my freeway phobia, not yet anyway. And I didn’t want him to pick me up because then I would’ve been stuck if things didn’t go well. So now I’ve been driving for an hour and I’m at least twenty minutes late.

I tried not to be judgmental when Fred told me the club was in the Valley. But really, I don’t know anyone who comes out here except to go to Costco. Oh, thank god, there’s a valet parking guy. I pull up and he says, “What’s the password?”

I throw back, “Rosebud.”

He doesn’t laugh. As it turns out, he really does want a password. I try to explain. “I guess my date forgot to tell me. His name is Fred…Fred…” Shit, I don’t know his last name.

As I slip him a five-dollar bill, I ask him sweetly, “Can you park it close by?”

“No problem, ma’am.”

I enter Paddy’s Crab Shack and Jazz Club. Dancing and oysters on the half shell. The place looks like an old-fashioned, New Orleans–style seafood bar with beamed ceilings, cozy leather booths, dark wood paneling, and sawdust on the floor. The only way you could tag it as L.A. are the signed photos from old movie stars that line the walls. The ornate art deco bar is in the back and is flanked by a small, wooden dance floor. The jazz crowd mills around near the makeshift stage and I notice they are nothing like their hip N.Y. equivalents. From my vantage point, they’re mostly graying nondescript guys who look like academics or maybe insurance adjusters, a few of whom are accompanied by their very bored-looking wives.

I find Fred sitting in a back booth nursing a bottle of Becks. There is a giant platter of half-eaten oysters on ice on the table.

“So I give up, what’s the password?”

He looks up at me and smiles. “O Oysters, come and walk with us. The Walrus did beseech.”

“Very cute. So what is it really?”

“It’s sax.” He winks.

I can’t remember much of the evening. We started out with beer, and then switched to shots of tequila. The jazz trio didn’t sound that great at the beginning, but by the end of the evening they were Duke Ellington performing one of his
Sacred Concerts
.

We never did get to his background or mine. I still don’t know his last name. But I do know that he’s writing a play, and that he’s witty and smart, loves poetry, and has a photographic memory for everything from Lewis Carroll nonsense rhymes to obscure couplets by Alexander Pope.

Early on, I asked him if he ever heard of Ellen Bass’s poem “Pray for Peace.” At this point I was still sober enough to try to impress him. Blatantly showing off, I threw out, “There’s a Buddhist flavor to one of her poems that’s almost like an invocation of prayer. I love the image of bicycle wheels and the way Bass keeps repeating, ‘Do less harm, less harm.’”

“Oh, ‘Pray for Peace,’” he answered without hesitation. “I don’t usually read poetry, but I liked that poem because it’s good and it’s easy to understand. Accessible like Robert Frost. Much of today’s poetry is so damned obscure, it’s frustrating to read. Deeply moving jabberwocky.”

Uh-oh. This guy really knows what he’s talking about. Now I’m going to have to think up an intelligent response. I gulp another shot of tequila. “You know, there’s this pretentious theory”—(like I’m not being pretentious)—“that you should have to work a bit to understand a good poem. It’s the element of obscurity that allows you to draw more personal meaning.”

Fred smiles (the booze is kicking in for both of us, thank god), and recites, “‘You were lavish, daunting, a deluge of presence.’”
^*

At that, he offers me an oyster.

God, is he sexy!

“C. K. Williams. Won the Pulitzer in 2000. It’s good, huh?” he says with a drawl. Or maybe a slur?

Who cares! I try to keep my head and stay on topic, but it’s not easy.

In the middle of all this esoteric foreplay, something stunning happens. The jazz band takes a break and the canned music comes on. As Frank Sinatra croons “Fly Me to the Moon,” Fred gazes drunkenly into my eyes and whispers romantically, “I’m tanked. Let’s dance.”

Now let’s back up a little—I am a terrible dancer. I always feel self-conscious about it. I first discovered I had no talent in this area when my mother sent my sister and me to Mrs. Tavistock’s Cotillion. I was seven years old and disco fever was sweeping the nation. Not, however, at the Meadowbrook Country Club, where forty captive second and third graders congregated twice a week to learn the fundamentals of ballroom dancing. I remember thinking that the only thing I could do well was the box step, and when would that ever come in handy?

But tonight I’m smooth, seductive, and sensuous. Fred whisks me out onto the dance floor. Just once in my life, I want to feel whisked. And I do. I don’t worry about the song or my nonexistent sense of rhythm. As Lord Byron wrote, “We chased the glowing hours with flying feet.” At least it feels that way. We’re also completely hammered.

Fred puts his palm in the arch of my back and the slow, slow, quick, quick routine rapidly morphs into fancy footwork with lots of twirls and arm expression, double turns, erotic holds, and sexy hip action. At one point, I kick off my shoes as he bends me over and whispers in my ear, “‘Ah, the female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet. She has been dancing forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.’”
^*

“Who’s that?” I murmur, still swaying away in his arms. He has his hand on my neck and I can feel his warm, moist breath on my face.

“That’s Billy Collins—he’s a jazzman, a Buddhist, a charmer, and a prince.”
^†

“Like you,” I sigh, buzzed to the brink, barely moving, unable to navigate any more than a simple bear hug. Bass’s lines keep going through my head: “Do less harm. Do less harm.” But I’m thinking, The harm’s already done.