The Diamond Lane (51 page)

“Sure,” said Mouse. To Tooty she sent a stiff nod in hello.

Tooty sat on the edge of the bed, a few feet away, clutching her clothes to her lap. Her blond bob clung to her head, smeared mascara had found a home in the lines beneath her dilated eyes. She didn't seem quite so outdoorsy in the dreary mess of Ivan's windowless apartment. Instead, she looked stringy and weathered. Nevertheless, Tooty lifted her chin, tried on the indulgent smile of a good sport. “Ivan, I really should be going.”

“Tooty, you must stay. Now I have two of you. This is perfect. Please. I need you both. If you will just watch this tape, you'll see what I mean. Please.” He coaxed her back down onto the edge of the monk's pallet. “Mouse, please, sit.” He patted the bed next to Tooty.

He snapped on the TV, which sat on an overturned crate, slid in a tape, fast-forwarded to a scene where a Hispanic family of six was crowded around the dinner table.

Tooty and Ivan, Ivan and Tooty. It was impossible. At the same time it made perfect sense. She was rich and bored. He was arty and bad. He stood watching the videotape, his baseball player arms crossed over his chest.

Mouse watched while the family passed a bowl of gray mashed potatoes around, then a tub of margarine. The sheets beneath her were still warm. Tooty stared grimly at the video, her skinny bare legs crossed beneath the wad of clothes on her lap. Mouse couldn't help wondering how long this had been going on. Had she gotten him the gig at the fundraiser or had they met there? Did they have furtive public rendezvous? Did Mr. Mega Bucks suspect?

“Valentino's family, their first meal without him,” said Ivan. The mother looked as if she'd had every fluid drained from her body; still, she went through the motions of making sure everyone had enough to eat. Her husband, who taught world history, driver's ed, and coached basketball at the local high school,
complained about budget rollbacks. The youngest son wondered, what was going happen to Valentino's car. “The sound is too busy, isn't it? It sounds like a banquet, not six people in mourning.”

He clicked off the video. “Now what I need you to do …” He cleared stacks of books and papers from his wobbly Formica table, then set it with dishes from the sink, where they were apparently stored in their permanently dirty state. He added a few glasses, crusty with flecks of orange juice, greasy silverware abandoned at the bottom of the dish strainer.

“Excuse me,” pleaded Tooty, creeping into the phone booth-sized bathroom to get dressed.

“We must get this done before someone decides to do laundry,” said Ivan. “You know how loud it gets in here. This is our window of opportunity.” He patted the back of one of the folding chairs. “Come. Sit.”

Stupefied, Mouse moved from the bed to the table. “How long?” She nodded toward the bathroom.

“We met at the Oscars. She has a serious interest in my documentaries,” said Ivan.

“We're shutting down
Wedding March
,” said Mouse. “Tony and I have broken it off.”

“Oh?” Ivan adjusted the shotgun mike in its stand, set it on the edge of the table. The mike was six inches long, encased in a gray foam windscreen designed to absorb ambient noise.

Tooty emerged fully dressed, with hair brushed, makeup freshened, her humiliation left in the bathroom along with Ivan's T-shirt. She swung her fluffed-up bob, resorted to her beguiling overbite. She was a trouper. “Ivan, this is
silly
. Can't we do this later?”

“
Wedding March
is off,” said Ivan.

“It's off?” said Tooty. Her face said this was a personal affront. “How can it be off?
L.A. Today
is coming to the shower. It's been all arranged. Michael had to call in quite a few favors to get it set up.”

“Tooty has been very generous in supporting the project,
both in terms of cash and in-kind donations,” said Ivan. “Tooty, sit right here across from Mouse.”

“I'm sorry,” said Mouse. “It just didn't work out.”

“
What
didn't work out? Isn't the thing nearly shot? And what about the distribution deal?” said Tooty. “We've got a major distributor lined up. It's going to play in
theaters
.”

“Tony and I. The relationship.”

“Who's Tony?”

“Her fiancé,” said Ivan, “her ex-fiancé. Now, what I need you to do is pretend you are eating, but slowly, slowly. Take time to chew, do not hurry. Remember what they are eating. Mashed potatoes, peas. Think. How does it sound when a woman in mourning eats her peas?” Then, into the mike, “This is dinner at the Escobars', the night after Valentino's death, take one.”

“Ivan,” said Tooty, exasperated.

He threw her a murderous glance. “Cut. Tooty, we must get this done before someone does their laundry. Dinner at the Escobars', the night after Valentino's death, take two.”

Tooty and Mouse obediently chewed with nothing in their empty mouths, scraped their empty plates with their forks, picked up empty glasses, tipped them up to drink, placed their knives on the rim of the plate, swallowed.

“And cut.”

“How much money have we spent on this?” said Tooty.

“Hundred, hundred-ten thousand.”

“There's no chance you'll patch it up?” said Tooty.

“Sorry,” said Mouse.

“This was going to be Ivan's breakout film.”

“Well, I suggest this,” said Ivan. “Mouse and I should get married. Dinner at the Escobars', the night after Valentino's death, take three. This time even slower.” He picked up his dirty orange juice glass and pretended to drink.

Mouse and Tooty stared. The spools of tape on the Nagra recorded the appalled silence. Ivan cut an imaginary piece of meat.

Marry Ivan.
Marry
Ivan! Yes! It was perfect.

He doesn't love you
, shrieked The Pink Fiend,
how can you marry a guy to make a movie? It was one thing when you were making a movie because you were getting married! Benazir Bhutto had an arranged marriage, Mouse said to The Fiend. He was married to your sister! You're sitting here with his mistress!
Mouse speared her invisible peas with the tines of her fork.

“You don't mean that,” said Tooty. “What about us?”

“It would be good for us. You are never going to leave Michael. I wouldn't want you to. This way, any suspicions he may have about your interest in my work will be put to rest.”

Mouse laughed. Six months ago she resisted marriage to a man she then loved. Now it seemed she would marry anyone. It proved that Shirl's worst admonitions about teenage sex, that once you got your feet wet you'd do it with anyone, actually applied to getting engaged. She cut an invisible wedge of butter from an invisible butter dish and laid it on her invisible mashed potatoes. If an arranged marriage was good enough for the Prime Minister of Pakistan, it was good enough for her.
It's not even a feature!
moaned The Pink Fiend.

“I would leave Michael. You know that. All you need to do is say the word.”

“No. It's better this way. Mouse and I are friends, Tooty, old old friends. It's nothing like with us.”

“I just – I'm sorry – I'm not very modern. I love you.”

“Mouse and I are like brother and sister. We grew up together.”

Mouse looked from Tooty to Ivan and back. Shirl was right. Mimi was right. Mouse was a love rube of the first order. She snuck some of her invisible peas to the invisible dog begging by the side of her chair. Yuck, peas! “What
did
happen to Valentino's car?” she asked.

“Mouse and I are
friends
, Tooty. Nothing would change between you and me.”

“I wish you'd quit saying that,
honey
,” said Mouse.

“Will you…live together?” Tooty's voice trembled.

“We can always say the stress of making the film broke us up,” said Mouse. “Good publicity.”

“After the release date is set,” said Ivan.

“Read my mind,” said Mouse. “We should go on
The Newly-wed Game
.

A sob escaped from Tooty's throat.

“Think of it like Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Bhutto,” said Mouse.

“What are you
talking
about? Ivan, what is she talking about?” Tooty dabbed at her eyes with her fingers.

Ivan got up and went to where Tooty sat across the tiny table. She wrapped her arms around his thighs, buried her face in his groin. Ivan stroked her head. Mouse dropped a dollop of invisible mashed potatoes on her tongue and stuck it out at them. Ivan caught her. He smiled his slouching half-smile and winked. Mimi was wrong. Ivan didn't have the soul of a felon; he had the soul of Lucifer. He was recording all of this.

24

IN APRIL THE CITY SUFFERED A HEAT WAVE SO FIERCE
people thought spray deodorant had finally done in the ozone layer. It was a hundred and four degrees at noon, at midnight, eighty-five. The evening news opened with the latest weather report, bumped from its normal back-of-the-bus position after sports. Records were broken in both humidity and bad air quality. The favorite excuse of the optimistic, “at least it's a
dry
heat,” expired on damp lips. Smog sealed sweat into people's pores, then laid on a coat of grit for good measure. Even at the beach and high up in the Hollywood Hills it seemed as if the earth had abandoned its orbit, leaving Los Angeles stranded under its own foul, toast-tinted sky.

Mimi walked through the parking lot of Valley College, the first chapter of her blockbuster in a manila folder under her arm. Already the folder was turning to mush where she gripped it in her sweaty hand. Her blond curls were sticky with melted setting gel. She passed three boys on bikes peddling lazily between parked cars, gouging the doors with keys from their bicycle locks. She thought she should tell them to stop, threaten to call the cops, but she was too hot and nervous to speak.

The chapter was the product of Mimi's recent great revelation, which, like most great revelations, had been inspired by nothing and everything. It occurred at work, in the ladies' room, the day after Mouse dropped the bomb about Ralph and Elaine, while Mimi was purging her lunch: bacon-bleu cheeseburger,
steak fries, mocha milk shake, wedge of Kahlua cheese cake, bag of Sugar Babies.

It was not just Mouse's news about Elaine's pregnancy that had done it. Nor was it Ralph's using her “sweet cheeks” slip-up at Bibliothèques as an excuse to snub her, saving him from having to tell her they were finished. Nor was it that after Ralph had snubbed her, he hadn't had the guts to call to see why she'd missed three weeks of How to Write a Blockbuster, like a good instructor should. Nor was it that after all this he then had the nerve to phone late one night, skunk drunk at a baseball game, asking would she be up later. Could he just stop by? He missed her, he said, missed the
fun they used to have
. What fun? He complained, she listened, they screwed, roll credits.

It was not just that Alyssia, her fellow drudge, bee-stung lips, twenty years old, Yale grad, was promoted to assistant. Nor that Alyssia now had a real office with a real chair and had to answer the phones only when the secretary was away from her desk. Nor that until the new secretary was hired, Mimi would slave for both Solly and Alyssia's boss, Thaddeus Herman.

It was not that she was thirty-six going on thirty-seven and still had to rely on money from her mother to help pay her bills.

It was not that her little sister was getting married.

It was all of these things coupled with what had happened that very morning. Mimi had kitchen duty that week, which meant sprinting between her desk and the kitchen, making sure the glasses and coffee cups left on the counter all morning long by the agents and assistants were rinsed, dried, put away in their proper places. The president of Talent and Artists had a fetish for a clean kitchen, and more than one drudge had lost her job when too many cups were allowed to pile up in the sink.

All four of Solly's lines were ringing at once. Mimi tore from the kitchen to her desk, wiping her hands on her skirt.

“SollyStein'soffice … He's out at a meeting, may I leave word?”

“SollyStein'soffice … Mom, hi, it's a madhouse here lemme call you back.”

“SollyStein'soffice.”

“Bob Hope calling for Solly, please.”

“Solly's out at a meeting, may I leave word?”

“Please, He can reach me at home after seven.”

‘'I'll tell him.”

She hung up.

She stared at the poster over her desk. Bob Hope! Her salvation! Bob Hope! Her ace in the hole! Bob Hope had called
her office!
She had him right there on the phone, right there on the other end of the line. And she had done nothing.

After she finished disposing of her burger, fries, shake, cheesecake, and Sugar Babies, she brushed her teeth. Bob Hope right there on the line. She had done nothing. She was all show and no go. She spat into the sink, wiped her mouth with a scratchy paper towel. She had done nothing. She was almost thirty-seven years old. If she didn't do something soon, she would be an old lady, bent over some public john in a dress that looked like upholstery, ridding her shriveled self of a box of chocolate-covered cherries or some other old-lady candy. Her hair would be short and brown by then, if not gray. Miniskirts would be ancient history. She would be single, childless. She would have done nothing.