L.A. Weather

by María Amparo Escandón

  “What’s going on?”

  “Felix and I got into a fight,” said Olivia, half whimpering. She’d never dare worry her family with details of Felix’s impulsive behavior and nasty reactions, his aggression against her, thankfully always stopping right before committing battery.

  “Come on, sweetie. No man is worth your tears.”

  “This is my husband, Mom. And it’s not the first time I’m crying because of him.”

  “I’m only trying to be supportive. It’s all right if you feel you need to reject my advice. I’m not worthy of your trust,” she said, thinking about the twins’ accident under her watch.

  “Mom, please, that’s an entirely different situation. Focus on the issue here: Felix wants to get rid of the two leftover embryos.”

  Still a bit hurt after not hearing Olivia say she’d regained even a sliver of trust and at the same time understanding the crisis at hand, Keila shyly volunteered: “Why? Is it the money? I thought you were paying for the storage.”

  “I am, but that’s not it. I don’t care about the money. He’s just fed up with the problem. He believes that this whole process damaged our marriage.”

  “I get why you want to preserve the embryos indefinitely. I can only imagine your pain at the thought of destroying two potential little people. I’m surprised Felix doesn’t understand this. They’re fifty percent his!” said Keila, trying to move past her sudden outburst of guilt-triggering behavior.

  “I’m starting to think this whole thing is doomed. I’m so tired of all the fighting. We bicker for no reason since the twins were born.”

  “There’s always a reason, but sometimes we don’t see it,” said Keila, tiptoeing around the subject so as not to upset Olivia even more.

  “I know the reasons, but what I mean is that they’re not terrible enough to justify a big fight. We argue over which school the girls will go to, the color of the bedroom drapes, which days of the week Lola gets off, if I use the towel next to the shower, or if I wear my hair up in a bun. I give in most of the time and I’m exhausted. Come over here, Mom. Let’s not hurt each other.”

  Olivia extended her arms and Keila joined in the embrace. To a stranger, these three women might have looked like a tightly twisted human Oaxacan cheese ball of compassion, but to Keila, the gesture was a vivid demonstration of her profound motherly love for her daughters. She felt a snippet of hope for reconciliation, a first step toward forgiveness. She thought that a future series of sculptures could depict this very moment of familial solidarity, a knot of arms, legs, and torsos exuding love, and came up with the concept for a couple of pieces in high-fired clay right on the spot.

  “I know you’ll find a way to resolve this situation with Felix. Your brilliant mind is already at work. I can hear the gears clinking and clanking in your head.” Changing the subject to lighten the moment, she said, “Are you all coming to the egg hunt on Easter Sunday?”

  How could they miss it? Easter celebration was one of their most cherished traditions. They regularly skipped Mass and went straight to the champagne brunch and egg hunt in their backyard, the latter being, according to Daniel, the best part.

  “I tried calling Claudia to see if she can bring dessert, but she’s not answering her phone. Do you know where she is?”

  “Definitely not at Barneys,” said Patricia.

  Friday, March 18th

  When Oscar arrived at Happy Crunch Almond Orchard, Lucas, his right hand, was waiting for him under the shade of a tree.

  “I’m glad you came to watch the beekeepers move the colonies away,” said Lucas, pointing with his gaze at four men loading beehives into a truck, not far from where they were.

  “Of course. I’d thank each bee, if I could, before sending them off.”

  “They’re taking them to Idaho this year. They’ll be back in California in November.”

  Lucas had worked the orchard along with his cousins Mario and Saúl, Los Tres Primos, as they were known, since Oscar had purchased the land. He’d arrived years before from Tulancingo in the state of Hidalgo, deep in Central Mexico, a city famous for being the birthplace of El Santo, the legendary wrestler. Lucas had immigrated young and hopeful, knowing nothing and owning less, and thanks to his drive to succeed he had become an authority in all things almond farming. Not just Oscar, but neighboring growers went to him for his advice.

  “They’re going to want the balance when they’re done,” said Lucas.

  Oscar knew that once the check he was pulling out of his billfold cleared, he’d have near zero funds left. He’d need to get another loan. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and gave the check to Lucas.

  “I hope the amount is correct. Here, you pay them, please. Make sure you get a receipt.”

  Oscar didn’t wait to watch the bees start a new journey. He got into his car and drove back to Los Angeles, imagining the disastrous scenario of running out of money and not being able to pay Lucas, Mario, or Saúl, his guys, his team, his beloved people.

  Sunday, March 20th

  When she first met Gabriel, Claudia was not as wildly fascinated by his gym-toned body, or by his exceptional abilities between the sheets, as she was by his line of work. He presented himself to her as a story hunter, launching her imagination into worlds of cultural espionage and discovery that she had never visited, let alone inhabited. As a chef, she mostly lived in kitchens among pots, pans, and ingredients, dealing with male cooks in cramped spaces, wielding sharp knives, and yelling expletives in Spanish. She spent hours on end catering events, shooting her TV show, and writing recipes for her cookbooks. She’d always considered her job to be exciting, but when Gabriel described his business to her she concluded that his was the most exotic profession she’d ever heard of, even more than that of arctic explorers, astronauts, or circus acrobats. Gabriel sensed her interest and played it to his advantage during their brief dating period, to lure her into marriage. To anyone else who heard him, he sounded cocky and conceited, but not to Claudia, who had quickly become smitten with him.

  “The most powerful thing that can be traded among people, more valuable than gold or painite, is a fucking good story,” he told Claudia on their first date.

  His pitch went like this: “Literary scout is an incomplete title. My job is to search for, find, and broker stories between authors and movie studios, TV networks, streaming platforms, and publishers. I know that the best stories may be in a secondhand bookshop in Prague, or the attic of a long-dead writer in Mississippi, or in the backstory of a YouTube sensation, or even in the fading memory of an old war hero succumbing to dementia. My work is part detective, part cultural anthropologist. I am a spy, a researcher, a negotiator, a trendsetter, a socialite, and a dealmaker. This is the reason I own this one-man niche. I supply the world with the most brilliant stories in adrenaline-packed adventures concocted by writers, stalkers, hackers, and odd characters, and then produced and marketed by heads of studios and publishers who come to me with preemptive offers. I have the power to turn someone’s obscure dream into one hundred TV episodes, then syndication. I can find a screenplay written in film school and turn it into a blockbuster. That’s why I have open doors to every Hollywood studio executive and New York publisher’s office.”

  * * *

  During the three years Claudia and Gabriel had been married, he’d found stories that had become improbable hits, like the voluminous and mesmerizing sci-fi trilogy written and self-published online by an unknown young Mexican author who had taught himself to write in English. The books had morphed into box-office-record-breaking movies, and a much-anticipated TV series spin-off was underway. During a subsequent Oscar party, to which Claudia wore a Chanel dress that she returned intact to the store the following day (not even a little champagne drop), she realized that Gabriel was a celebrity in his own right and that there were several people who’d be happy to have a piece of him, some of them men climbing the Hollywood ranks, but in particular a blonde with fake breasts that spilled out of her
plunge. And by the way, wasn’t her dress a Valentino from last year? It was hardly vintage, and that gave Claudia self-assurance, but still, as prevention against a potential hostile takeover, she held Gabriel’s hand tight for the rest of the evening, except when she had to abandon her cocktail or greet the CEO of a major movie studio.

  Gabriel’s regular trips back and forth across the country and the fact that he owned an apartment overlooking Gramercy Park in New York and lived with Claudia and Ramsay, a yappy Yorkie, and Velcro, his cat, in her beach house in Malibu, qualified him as a bicoastal creature. “It doesn’t matter if I fly east or west, I’m always heading home,” he’d say.

  “I’m struggling with all his absences,” Claudia confessed to Patricia one afternoon while shopping for jeans on Melrose Avenue. “When I see him packing his suitcase I get flaming heartburn. How can you stand living apart from Eric?”

  “Your situation and mine are complete opposites. You didn’t ask for Gabriel’s constant travel. It just fell on you to endure. In my case, I negotiated with Eric so I could stay in L.A. with Mom and Dad and Daniel. See? I want it, you don’t. Take charge, Clau!”

  Patricia was right. To Claudia, Gabriel’s eastbound flights felt like a sword slicing her life in two: with and without Gabriel. She resented the fact that she had been forced to withstand his weekly absence, even though she knew from the beginning that his nomadic life was part of the package. On most weeks, he’d go to New York from Tuesday to Friday. He’d set up breakfasts, lunches, cocktails, and dinners with an assortment of industry people that Claudia had never met. “I can’t talk now, I have back-to-back meetings,” he’d tell her in the blunt, demanding, tough New York mode that he adopted when he was there. Successful bicoastal navigation meant more than just ping-ponging between coasts. True bicoastalites knew that they needed to morph into New Yorkers or Angelenos as they flew in each direction.

  To illustrate why he chose to conduct business on weekends by the pool when he was in Los Angeles, Gabriel once told Claudia, “In New York, you brag about pulling all-nighters. You take your laptop to your Bahamas vacation and boast that you had conference calls every day. You self-exploit, you wear the bags under your eyes like badges of honor, and you erroneously believe that Angelenos are laid-back and lazy. In Los Angeles people are like ducks on a pond. They glide effortlessly on the tranquil surface, but when you go underwater you can see that they’re frantically paddling along. They just won’t admit it to anyone. You think they’re just walking the dog at eleven in the morning, but they’re really making some deal on their cellphone. Don’t be misled when you see two women chatting over manicures. They’re actually negotiating a contract. To survive you have to keep your cool. Angelenos only sweat in public at the gym.”

  On the days he was in New York, or wherever his story hunting took him, Claudia stayed back in Los Angeles, ate avocado-and-bacon tacos, refused to make her bed, binge-watched TV series on her laptop, and didn’t shave her legs. She rarely went to New York with Gabriel, except when going on a gastronomy trip to peruse the ever-changing restaurant scene. The six years she lived there when she was a student were not enough to get used to the Manhattanite tone and manner of speech. Oblivious to her own habitual rudeness, she often ended up getting her feelings hurt by random people, mostly obnoxious waiters and disrespectful cabdrivers who had obviously adopted the prevalent stance.

  The Sunday before Easter, when Claudia missed serving a catering event at the Skirball Cultural Center (an unheard-of oversight), Gabriel did not hear Claudia’s assistant’s frantic voicemail: “She never told us about this event!” He was in New York having brunch with his Simon & Schuster contacts to discuss the true story of a musician who had voluntarily gotten crucified, so he found out about his wife’s crisis only that evening when there were no more flights available to come home. By the time he came back to Los Angeles on Monday, the situation had been sorted out, except for a lawsuit the Skirball Center was threatening to file.

  After Claudia had failed to answer calls from her office on Sunday afternoon and Gabriel could not be reached, her assistant called Olivia for help.

  “She was supposed to be the star of the luncheon. They had to cancel and send everyone away. There was no food whatsoever.”

  Olivia drove to Malibu in the hope that she’d find her sister at home. Her house was a skinny one, sandwiched between others like it in a long row that separated the Pacific Coast Highway from the ocean. The façade was not impressive in any way: a garage door, a front door, and three trash bins, a blue one for recycling, a black one for regular garbage, and a green one for garden trimmings. There was barely a space to park and no sidewalk to protect pedestrians from cars barreling down the road.

  Olivia parked her minivan next to Claudia’s Audi TT, picked up the spare key tucked in a downspout behind a flowerpot, and went into the house, calling her sister. Ramsay greeted her with little jumps, and for a second Olivia thought he wanted to tell her something important, but he just looked her in the eye and barked and ran to the terrace.

  Claudia was lounging by the pool in her bikini, a spread of gossip magazines by her side on the deck floor, Velcro rolled up by her feet, and an empty glass of wine on the side table.

  “Where have you been? You missed the Skirball Center’s event. Your staff didn’t even know about it.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Yikes is all you’re going to say? Everyone’s been calling you. Where’s your phone?”

  “It might be out of juice. I haven’t heard it.”

  Olivia walked to the edge of the terrace, leaned on the handrail, and looked out at the Pacific Ocean in front of her. Its undulating surface shimmered in bright oranges and reds, sequins in a drag queen’s gown. This was a light—a hyperreal, Technicolor light—that existed only on celluloid and in Los Angeles. She wondered why Claudia didn’t seem to care about having missed a catering event. It was so unlike her. Under normal circumstances she would have jumped out of her lounge chair and initiated immediate damage control. In fact, under normal circumstances this would never have happened to her sister. She wondered if Claudia was drinking too much.

  “How did this happen? Didn’t you have the event on your calendar?”

  “I haven’t checked it lately.”

  “Wasn’t the Skirball Center in touch with you, especially right before the event? Didn’t your people know?”

  “I’m not sure I ever told them, so don’t blame them. The event might have just slipped my mind, or something. Stop asking me all these questions!”

  “Look, I have no idea what’s happening here, but it’s your business. You’ll have to deal with it. I just came to see if you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “I’m just chilling here, can’t I?”

  Olivia couldn’t conceal her concern. She worried that Claudia would catch her and start mocking her, as she always did.

  “See you at Mom and Dad’s next Sunday, then,” said Olivia.

  “Yes, I’ll be there.”

  Claudia took her sunglasses off and picked up a magazine, waving her sister good-bye.

  “Promise?” Olivia looked her sister in the eye in search of a nonverbal commitment and noticed that her pupils were unusually large. Maybe it wasn’t alcohol. Was she using drugs?

  “I’ll be there, I said.”

  On her way out, puzzled by Claudia’s lack of reaction to the situation, Olivia stopped in the kitchen to get a bottle of sparkling water for the road. She sensed a faint smell of gas in the air and noticed that one of the stove’s burners was slightly on. She turned it off and opened the window to let the stench out. She then refilled Ramsay’s empty water bowl, fed Velcro, and drove home.

  Lola was bathing the twins when Olivia arrived. Felix had arranged a twilight open house in the Hollywood Hills, an ever more frequent practice among Realtors like himself who wanted to show the property for sale in
all its dusk glory, and would not be home until later that night. He hadn’t landed a deal in months and his foul mood was beginning to irritate everyone around him.

  Rolling up her sleeves and kneeling in front of the bathtub, Olivia joined Lola in the soapy procedure of getting Diana and Andrea clean. As a result of the swimming pool accident, Olivia had asked Lola to fill the tub with as little water as possible.

  “I think you’re exaggerating. The girls don’t seem to be afraid. Look at them, so happy in the water!” said Lola.

  “It’s really just me. I’m scared of going through another accident,” Olivia told Lola.

  “There’s more, Olie. You’re sad, worried. What is it?”

  There was no point in trying to hide her anguish from Lola.

  “It’s about that letter in the kitchen, am I right?” asked Lola, knowing the answer.

  “Felix wants me to tell the lab to destroy the embryos, but they’re my babies too, Lola. I can’t obey him.”

  “He plays games with you all the time, Olie. He knows you’re a better mother than he is a father. He is jealous of your success, but he wants you to make money for him. He wants to be the boss, but he can’t and he is bitter because of this. That’s why he’s torturing you.”

  “I want to divorce him, Lola.”

  * * *

  Olivia went to bed without waiting for Felix to come home, as she always did. She heard him walk into the bedroom in the dark and pretended to be asleep. She heard him bump his foot against the ottoman by the armchair, and heard him brush his teeth in the bathroom, before she felt his body by her side, under the sheets.