The Pleasure of My Company (9 page)

I
called the number on the rental sign, expecting to get, and prepared to deftly
handle, the instructions that would take me through the telephonic maze that
would finally connect me to her voice mail. But a miracle happened. She
answered.
Crackle pop,
she was on a cell phone in her car. I explained
who I was, Daniel Cambridge (a swell-sounding name when I leave out the Pecan),
that I live near the Rose Crest, and that I was looking to move up. I left out
the part about the Mao bio because, jeez, she’s not an idiot.

She
told me she was between appointments, had twenty minutes free, and could meet
me there in ten. I hardly had time to bathe. Well, okay, I said. I could
postpone my conference call, I said. I hung up and cranked on my shower with
stunning accuracy. Perfect temperature with one swing of the wrist. I stepped
in, knowing I was on the clock, and yet I still experienced one recurring
sensation intractably linked to my morning shower. The flowing, ropey hot
water sent me back in time to home, to Texas, to the early hours of the
morning. To save money, my mother had always turned off the heat at night,
which made our house into an ice hotel. Every wintry morning, as a frosted-over
adolescent, I made the chilly jaunt from bedroom to spare bathroom. Stepping
into the steamy shower was the equivalent of being cuddled in a warm towel by a
loving aunt, and now I’m sometimes rendered immobile by an eerie nostalgia in
the first few moments of even a quick rinse. This sensation slowed me down like
an atom at absolute zero, even though Elizabeth was at this very moment probably
running yellow lights to fit me in.

I was towelling
off at the window when Elizabeth the Realtor pulled up in front of the Rose
Crest. She remained in the car for several minutes talking to herself. I
realized she was probably using the hands-free car phone, at least I hoped she
was, as one nut in the family would be enough. I threw on some clothes and scampered
down the stairs, skipping across the street at the driveways. I was overcome
with an impression of myself as an English schoolboy. I might as well have
been wearing a beanie and short pants. As Elizabeth got out of her car, I
appeared from behind her and greeted her with a “Hello y’all, I’m Daniel
Cambridge.” I had not intended the slight country twang that affected my
speech. And I do not know, if I perceived myself as an English schoolboy, why
my greeting came out as though it were spoken by the cook on a wagon train. I
suppose I was confused about just who I actually was at that moment. I had now
committed myself to a drawl, and I was rapidly trying to uncommit. So over the
next few sentences I fell into a brogue, then a kind of high nasal English thing,
then migrated through the Bronx, searching until I found my own voice. I
finally did, but not before Elizabeth had asked, “Where are you from?” to which
I saved myself with, “I’m an army brat.”

I
followed Elizabeth up one flight of stairs. She reached into her purse,
producing a daunting ring of apartment keys that jangled like a tambourine.
There was a delay while she flipped and sorted the keys on the ring, and she
managed to open the door on the sixth try. There were three odours inside. One
was mildew, one was tangerine, both emanating from the same source: a bowl of
fruit rotting in the centre of the kitchen table. The third aroma was from
Elizabeth, a familiar lilac scent that made itself quite known now that she was
contained within the four walls of the sealed apartment. This scent thickened
and intensified as though it were pumped into the room by a compressor.

Elizabeth
swept the pungent tangerines into a paper bag and stuck them in the waste can
under the sink, all the while talking up the glories of apartment 214. She wore
a tight brown linen skirt that stopped about three inches above her knees, a
matching jacket, and a cream silk blouse with a cream silk cravat. She turned
on the air conditioner to max, which intensified the mouldy smell, causing us
both to sneeze. She flipped on the built-in kitchen television to make the
place seem lively and swung open the refrigerator to show me its massive cubic
feet interior. Price seventeen hundred a month, she said, first and last, plus
a security deposit.

“This
is a great building,” she said. “Usually they want references, but I can get
you around it.”

“Don’t
worry, I have references,” I said, wondering who I meant.

This
was the first time I’d had a chance to really see Elizabeth. She had always
been either too far away or too close up. Now I could frame her like a
three-quarter portrait and see all her details. She was ran. Probably not from
the sun, I guessed. She wore several gold rings studded with gems; none was on
her wedding finger. She had a gold chain around her neck, at the end of which
was a pair of rhinestone-encrusted reading glasses. Her eyes were blue. Not her
irises, but her lids, which had been faintly daubed with eye shadow. Her skin
had a hint of orange; her hair was a metallic gold, which darkened as it neared
the roots. She was a collection of human colours that had been lightly tweaked
and adjusted. Her efforts in the area of presentation made me admire her more.

Elizabeth
was a prize object. She had picked up beauty tricks from everywhere; she had
assembled herself from the best cosmetics had to offer. Any man she chose to
be with would be envied, and made complete by her. A man who built an empire
would certainly need Elizabeth by his side; he would need her and he would
deserve her. I knew now that no matter how much I lied to her, the truth would
come out about who and what I was, but I just stood there anyway, continuing my
dumb charade while she radiated perfection.

She
asked if I also wanted to see a three-bedroom down the hall that had just come
up. I must have said yes, because the next thing I knew I was in the apartment
next door, being shown each closet and bathroom. This place was unfurnished,
and Elizabeth’s high heels clacked on the bare floor with such snap that it was
like being led around by a flamenco dancer. I looked at the apartment with
longing, as it was roomy, filled with light, and freshly painted. No tangerine
rot here, and I told Elizabeth, who by now was calling me Daniel, that I would
check with my co-biographer Sue Dowd to make sure the size of the place wouldn’t
intimidate her and thus hinder her writing.

After
the ritualized locking of both apartments, Elizabeth led the way back down the
stairs and onto the street. She sprung her car trunk from forty feet, reached
in it, and handed me a brochure. She stood there on the sidewalk just as I had
seen her do so many times from my window. Only now it was me to whom she was
saying, “This is a very desirable area,” and “Each apartment has two parking
spaces underground.” I was in on it. I was in on the conversations I had only
imagined. Even after these few minutes of talking with her, spending time with
her, trying to see her as fallible, Elizabeth lived on in my psyche as
unattainable and ideal, and I was still the guy across the street dreaming
beyond his means.

“What
is your current apartment like?” she asked.

“It’s a
one-bedroom. But I’m starting to feel cramped,” I said. “Is it in this area?”

“Yes,”
I said.

“Perhaps
I should look at it. I can do swaps, deals, all kinds of things,” she said.

I
nodded happily, indicating that I appreciated her can-do, full-service attitude.
The thought of Elizabeth in my apartment delighted me; it would be a small
tryout of our cohabitation. But I wasn’t about to take her on my crazy-eights
route to a destination only a few linear steps away. She might look at me
askance.

“I
could come by tomorrow, or next week,” she said.

“Next
week is good.”

“What’s
your phone number?”

“I’m
changing it in two days and don’t have the new one yet. We could make an
appointment now.”

“You
want to give me directions?”

I said
sure. “You come down Seventh Street toward the ocean.” She began to write in a
spiral notepad. “Make a right on Lincoln, left on Fourth, right on Evans, left
on Acacia. I’m at 4384.”

Elizabeth
looked at me askance. It didn’t take her realtor’s mind long to compute that my
apartment was right across the street. It seemed absurd not to take her over
there now, let alone to have given her directions to a location within skipping
distance. She didn’t call me on it because I guess she’d seen stranger things,
and we made arrangements to meet next Friday, right after Clarissa’s visit.

Elizabeth
drove off while I pretended to be about to step off the curb. My stall involved
bending over and acting as if I had found something urgently wrong with the tip
of my shoe. Once she rounded the corner, I took my regular paper-clip-shaped
route home, checking the mailbox and retrieving what I already knew would be
there, the second letter from Tepperton’s Pies telling me that Daniel Pecan
Cambridge was in competition with Lenny Burns, Sue Dowd (who, if she turned out
to be Elizabeth’s half sister would be bad luck for me), Danny Pepelow, and
Kevin Chen, who was probably a spy.

It was inconceivable that
Clarissa hadn’t shown for her Friday appointment. I confess that disappointment
rang through me, not only because our sessions were the cornerstone of my week
but also because I couldn’t wait to observe her from my new perspective of
secret knowledge. Something else besides disappointment went through me too; it
was concern. For Clarissa not to show meant that something was seriously wrong;
she didn’t even know how to be late. Her earnestness included fulfilling her
obligations, and I guessed she would have called if I had had a phone. I used
the hour constructively. I imagined Clarissa’s life as a jigsaw puzzle.

The
individual pieces hovered around Clarissa every time I saw her or thought about
her, which now included a small male child, a raven-haired woman, her pink
Dodge, her ringless fingers, her stack of books and notepads, her implied
rather than overt sexuality. I stood her next to Elizabeth, her opposite. What
I saw was Elizabeth as woman and Clarissa as girl. But something was confusing.
It was Clarissa who had a child, and Elizabeth who was trolling for a husband.
Clarissa, girl-like, had done womanly things, and Elizabeth, woman-like, was
doing girly things. It was Clarissa who was being tugged at the ankles by a
one-year-old, her schedule dictated by baby-sitters and play dates, and it was
Elizabeth who made herself up every day, whose life was governed by the cell
and the cordless. In my mind, Elizabeth was all browns and golds; Clarissa was
pastels and whites. And although Elizabeth was adult and smart and savvy and
Clarissa was scattered and struggling and a student, it was Clarissa who had
every adult responsibility and Elizabeth who remained the sorority deb.

I put
this information on hold. I turned my focus to the Clarissa rebus I had laid
out in airspace above the kitchen table. One piece missing: Where was Clarissa’s
man? Her impregnator. I assumed he was already gone or in the process of being
gone, that he was the source or subject of the distressed phone calls. He had
been replaced by Raven-Haired Woman, who, I assumed, was a friend filling in
for baby-sitters. Raven-Haired Woman was now demystified into Betty or Susie.
Clarissa was living advanced juggling and was probably in a mess. Oddly, I now
knew more about my shrink than my shrink knew about me, since I had never
allowed her to penetrate beyond my habits, which of course is the point of their
existence.

I
anticipated my next session with Clarissa because I would see what form her
apology would take. Or at least the extent of the apology. If she explained too
much, she would reveal too much (“my husband is gone and I’m on my own and
couldn’t find someone to take care of my one-year-old”), and she’d risk
violating what I suppose is a shrink tenet. On the other hand, if she
under-explained, she might seem callous. She’d found herself in a spot all
right and I was going to enjoy watching her wriggle free, because how she
handled it would reveal how she felt about me.

Forty
minutes later Elizabeth, former woman-of-the-world turned sorority deb, showed
up at my place on her tour through the available apartments of Santa Monica.
She mistakenly knocked on Philipa’s door, which set Tiger barking. I called up
the landing to her and her voice, like a melodeon, greeted me with an “Oh,” and
she turned her scrap of paper right-side up causing the 9 to be a 6. She came
down the steps at a bent angle, her torso twisted from trying to see the steps
from around her breasts.

I tried
to appear richer than I was, but it was hard as I didn’t have much to work
with. Mostly I had put things away that would indicate poverty, like opened
bags of Cheetos with their contents spilling onto the Formica. I did set out a
packet of plastic trash liners because I thought they were a luxury item. She
came in and stood stock-still in the middle of the living room. As she surveyed
the place, wearing a tawny outfit with her knees thrust a bit forward from the
cant of her high heels, she gave the impression of a colt rearing up. Nothing
much seemed to impress her, though, as she only seemed to notice the details of
my apartment as they would appear on a stat sheet: number of bedrooms, or
should I say number of bedroom, kitchenette, cable TV, which she flipped on
(though it’s not really cable, just an ancient outlet to the roof antenna),
A/C, which she tested, number of bathrooms (she turned on the tap, I presume to
see if rusty water would come out). I loved it when she looked at my bedroom
and declared, “This must be the master.” Calling my dreary bedroom a master was
like elevating Gomer Pyle to major general.