The Diamond Lane (40 page)

Sometimes she could not believe she was that shallow, even at nineteen and hoped she had stolen the boy Mouse loved for some complex Freudian reason. The shrink Mimi saw for a while after the divorce suggested it was not Ivan that Mimi had wanted but the bond between him and Mouse. She wanted to relate to a man in a way that had nothing to do with sex. Why
would I want to do that? she'd thought. “Sure, that sounds good,” she'd said.

“Let's talk about your need to agree with everything I say,” said the shrink.

Therapy made Mimi feel like a failure. The shrink always thought she was guiding Mimi into uncovering her true feelings, when in fact the agonized look that crossed Mimi's face was often the result of her realization that she hadn't put enough money in the parking meter. Mimi felt like she spent the entire fifty minutes making up things just so the shrink would feel like it was working. Then, the time would be up, Mimi would write her a check for $125, hoping it wouldn't bounce, and stumble out to her car to collect the parking ticket from under her windshield wiper.

Now, at thirty-six, almost thirty-seven, Mimi saw that the reason her first marriage failed was youth, pure and simple. At nineteen, marriage was just industrial-strength going steady. Once you got sick of being roommates, provided there were no kids to complicate matters, you moved on. The fact that you had no life insurance, no health insurance, no savings or assets made no difference. You were nineteen. You had no gray hair, no cellulite, and no crow's-feet either. There were more where he came from. You never thought, I would rather be unhappy with him than alone in a garden apartment with my aging reproductive organs. You moved on.

After Mimi got tired of sleeping with Ivan, it became apparent they had nothing to talk about. He drove a beer truck and took night classes in film. She went to school and worked on campus.

The marriage was like the houseplant they got for a wedding present: some exotic thing meant to live in South America. The leaves drooped and turned brown around the edges whether she watered it or not, whether she stuck it outside on their little balcony or shoved it in the back of a closet. She cosseted it with expensive fertilizer. No improvement. She talked to it, took it into a nursery for consultation. Nothing. Finally she
stopped watering it completely. It lived on in its same old withered fashion for a few more months, then died. She assumed it was the lack of water. A friend who knew about such things came and looked at the wrinkled ropy stems, stuck a finger in the soil and pronounced it dead of rot. Mimi told this to her shrink. The shrink said, “Let's talk about your need to use complex metaphors to obscure difficult issues.” She stopped going.

Tonight, Mimi finally felt like an adult, sitting at Bibliothèques next to her future fiancé, listening to him voice his frustration over his career. She offered him a chip in solace. He shook his head.

She hoped they could have a heart-to-heart after the meeting. Then they could set the date, toss out her birth-control pills, collect their wedding money from Shirl. Ralph had never officially divorced Elaine, because he had had no reason to. Now he would. Maybe Mimi would use some of their wedding money to help pay for his divorce.

“I think you're doing great, Ralph,” she said. “I mean you've got this thing happening with Tony –” She didn't like Ralph always making himself out to be such a loser. She wondered, idly, if he would take his baseball cap off for the wedding. She hoped so.

“– nothing's happening. What's happening? You start thinking a meeting is something. A meeting is nothing. A meeting is filling up some development slut's datebook. Until the check has cleared the bank, nothing has happened. And even then, that's just money, not something up there on the screen.”

“Just money,” said Carole. “I thought paying the rent made the world go 'round.”

“But you have
hope
. As long as there's hope –” continued Mimi.

“Hope is not a directing credit,” said Darryl. “Everybody has hope. The fact your fucking heart's beating makes you a candidate for
hope
.”

“In other words, Ralph has as much chance of getting a ‘go'
movie as some human vegetable kept alive by machines,” said Sather.

“Provided the vegetable has slept with the right people, yes,” said Darryl.

“I like it,” said Sather.

“In fact, there are many well-connected vegetables with films in production right now.”

“Fruits, too. Har-har-har.”

“Please,” said Lisa.

“I don't suppose there's any chance we can leave this philosophical debate for another time and talk about
The Razor's Edge
?” said Elaine the Pain. She had missed the last four or five meetings. Mimi had hoped maybe she'd dropped out. “I read this when I was studying at Cambridge. It has held up remarkably well.” She pulled her long twig-hair over her shoulder, combed the split ends meditatively with her fingers. She was as pale and disdainful as ever. Although Mimi liked to think she was above wishing this on another woman, she was glad to see that Elaine had put on weight.

Mimi had arrived at the Big House an hour early, hoping to talk to Ralph then. Elaine was already there, sitting at the kitchen table, sipping herb tea and browsing through one of Darryl's weight-lifting magazines, her cute toothpick legs crossed neatly at the knee. She had recently left her job selling car FAX machines to corporate raiders for a job selling home-exercise equipment to corporate raiders. Elaine looked as startled to see Mimi as Mimi was to see her. Ralph was out picking up the beer and potato chips. Mimi, flustered, said she was here to scope out the house; Ralph, Sather, and Darryl had said she could use it for Mouse's wedding shower.

“That's right,” said Elaine. “When is the wedding?”

Mimi told her. Elaine enthused about Tony to the point where Mimi thought
they
were having an affair. What was Elaine even
doing
here? Mimi paced through the kitchen to the deck and back, trying to look deep in thought over where to put the
buffet table. She cursed herself for not acting as though she had as much right to be here as Elaine.

“It's not going to be a shower shower. I had a shower shower when I got married. A bunch of bimbos oohing and aahing about spatulas was what it was. This is going to be like a pre-wedding party brunch. It will have a theme, though. It'll be kitchen/garden or paper/barbecue. Something.” Why was she rattling on? She clamped her arms across her ribs and leaned against the sink.

“I keep forgetting you were married,” said Elaine.

“I know, I'm such the single girl. It was a good marriage. Not a long one, but a good one. It didn't dangle on into infinity. When it was over we knew it and got divorced.”

“You were married to Ivan Esparza, weren't you? The man making the documentary on Mouse and –?”

“– I told Ralph not to blab! You want the world to know something, tell Ralph Holladay a secret.”

“I haven't told a soul. Girl Scout's honor.” She held up three long skinny fingers. “Ivan is pretty hot these days, according to Ralph.”

“He won an Oscar. For
Total Immersion
. I don't know if you ever saw it. It was about baptism or something. He started it right after we got married –”

“– behind every great man …” said Elaine.

“I did encourage him. I knew he had a lot of talent. Even though we were the poorest people on earth, I said, ‘Ivan, do what you have to do.' I like a woman like that, who appreciates a man's ambitions and doesn't rag on him. It must have been a harder situation with Ralph, since he's been at it so long without a break. Ivan won an Oscar, even if it was just documentary. Ralph's still a secretary.”

“An assistant,” said Elaine, “like you.”

“Keddy's pretty hard on him,” said Mimi. “At least I don't have to go to my boss's house and wait for the plumber to come fix the toilet.”

Elaine shrugged. “I'm like you, I guess. Through thick and thin.”

Why are you getting a divorce then? Mimi wanted to ask.

Darryl brought out another bag of chips and ripped them open with his teeth. Sather passed around more beer. Elaine lectured for a few long minutes on the Americanness of Larry's spiritual odyssey and its juxtaposition with Elliott Templeton's snobbishness. She was a bore, but her voice was husky. Mimi thought, all you need are toothpick legs and a husky voice and you have it made. She sucked in her stomach, waiting patiently for Elaine to shut up. She wrapped her ankles around the leg of her chair and accidentally spilled her beer.

She leaped up. “God, I'm sorry.”

“You'll ruin our fine carpet,” said Darryl. He tossed an old sports page over it. “Don't worry about it.”

Mimi went to the kitchen in search of paper towels. There were no paper towels, also no napkins. She blotted it up with a roll of blue toilet paper while Marty and Sather argued about how many film versions there had been of
The Razor's Edge
and whether it was true that a new one was in the works, a musical starring a former Olympic diver.

“They make a movie like that and they won't touch
Girls on Gaza
,” said Ralph.

“We want to hear about your new one,” said Marty.

“We're still ironing out the kinks.”

“Come on, you've been ironing out the kinks for months. You think we're going to rip it off? Or, wait, don't tell me, it's ART,” said Darryl.

“Marty might rip it off,” said Ralph. Marty had recently left his hair-washing job at the Beverly Hills salon and was now the Director of Development for one of his ex-clients, who had a deal at Fox.

“Ralph, I can almost guarantee that I would never be interested in stealing something you were involved in,” said Marty.

“Let's guess,” said Sather. “It came from an idea by the skateboard king …”

“… how is his poor nose, anyway?” asked Elaine.

“It's only made him cuter,” said Carole, through a mouthful of chips.

“Give us a clue,” said Darryl.

“No clues. Let's get on with the fucking book.”

“It's a thriller set in Nairobi, with lots of tit,” said Sather.

“Give me a break, would you? I'll let you all read it when it's done.”

“It is a thriller set in Nairobi with lots of … a sexy African thriller,” said Lisa. “Are we warm?”

“I like it,” said Sather. “Marty, close your ears.”

“Ice,” said Ralph. “Not even close.”

“We're warm. The main character is the son of a British Foreign Service officer, dashing but offbeat,” said Lisa.

“Look, why can't you lay off?” Ralph was red-faced, spitting with frustration. “There are other reasons I don't want to talk about it. Tony, for one, wants it kept under wraps for a while. He's my partner. I am not going to screw my partner. You think this is a big laugh. Ralph has another hopeless and stupid project –”

“– we don't think your projects are hopeless, sweet cheeks,” said Mimi.

A thud of silence.

“Sweet cheeks?” said Sather. “
Sweet cheeks
?”

“Whoooooooo!” Darryl clapped his hands and stomped his feet.

Ralph's oval face went slack. He had the numb, dumb look of someone who's just spent six hours at the dentist.

Elaine stared at Mimi with an expression which changed over a few long seconds from confusion to suspicion to realization, then loathing. Finally she smiled, arching one eyebrow. “Sweet cheeks?”

“All Ralph's girls call him sweet cheeks. I mean, in his class.” The blood pounded in her face. She scrunched her hair madly.
“It's like a joke. Oh … sweetie pie, honey bunch. Not all of them call him ‘sweet cheeks,' some say sweetie pie and honey bunch. It's a joke.”

The meeting broke up about a half hour later. While Mimi was in the bathroom discreetly tossing her beer and chips, Ralph took Elaine home. Mimi was too embarrassed to hang out until he returned.

BEFORE IT WAS
a restaurant, Thai Melody was a swimming-pool showroom. In the middle of the dining room was a kidney bean-shaped pool, the sidewalls tiled with blue and orange Spanish tiles. In an attempt to disguise it, the owners of Thai Melody had installed a model of a Thai palace, white with gold filigree trim, which stood on a table sunk in the shallow end.

There were pennies at the bottom of the pool. People will throw pennies into any public body of water in the dumb hope it will help make their wish come true, Mimi thought.

Mimi had invited Tony to lunch. Her rationale was that since they were going to be brother and sister-in-law it was time they really talked, instead of just trading one-liners in the hallway as they took turns in the bathroom. Also – she hated to resort to this teenage tactic, but – Ralph might have said something to Tony about the stupid “sweet cheeks” business. Was Ralph really that angry? He couldn't be.

She ordered a Thai coffee, gnawed on an already raw cuticle.

It was eleven-thirty. The restaurant had just opened. The radio was cranked up, tuned to a station that played one tired pop song after another. The suffocating smell of a newly lit stick of incense made even the ice water taste like perfume. Watching the beautiful Thai waitresses in black skirts and white blouses setting tables, Mimi decided that in her next life she wanted to be a small Asian woman.