An Inconvenient Woman

by An Inconvenient Woman (retail) (epub)

  I smile thinly. “Very nice.”

  Mehdi’s mood dims. “You don’t like?” he says with a slight sulk.

  “Okay, let’s get started.”

  I recall the glass table.

  “How about the living room?” I suggest.

  Mehdi looks as if some subtle plan has been thwarted.

  “Uh . . . well . . .” he sputters. “Yes, okay . . . living room.”

  The living room is large and luxurious.

  I’m about to take a chair, but Mehdi directs me to an L-shaped sofa upholstered in dark red velvet. The angle of the sofa blocks me on the left, and there is a large table in front of me. I have the uneasy feeling that I have been corralled. I fight the sensation and stay put.

  “Do you have the study sheets I gave you last time?” I ask.

  Mehdi is wholly at a loss.

  “The vocabulary list,” I remind him. “And the present tense conjugations.”

  “Ah, yes . . . Can we?”

  I look at him quizzically.

  “Can we what?”

  He spreads his feet slightly and places his fists at his sides, like a soldier at parade rest.

  “I did something for you today, Claire.”

  He waits for me to ask what he did, but I say nothing.

  “I got . . . clean.”

  I have no idea what he is talking about.

  “Brazilian,” he adds with a proud smile, as if recounting a tale of heroism. “Wax.”

  He clearly expects me to be pleased by this news.

  “It hurt,” Mehdi informs me. “But I know you like it.”

  He knows no such thing.

  He takes my silence for encouragement and sweeps down beside me, blocking my only exit.

  “All clean for you, Claire,” he repeats. “All smooth. Soft as baby.”

  I point to a chair.

  “Sit over there, Mehdi.”

  He looks hurt.

  “You don’t like Brazilian wax?”

  “Sit over there.”

  He doesn’t move.

  “I know you have feelings for me,” he says. It strikes me that he actually believes this. “And I have these same feelings for you, Claire.”

  His hand crawls across his lap to settle on his leg, which he presses lightly against mine.

  “Stop, Mehdi.”

  I edge my leg away.

  “Stop!”

  He stares at me like a little boy denied a sweet.

  “Claire,” he says softly. “You know that I love you.”

  I want to leap up, but I fear that such a move might inflame him. He has dressed himself like a groom for me. He has gotten waxed for me. This is a man who has lost control of himself. It is up to me to control him. My next move will cause his next move. I must calculate them both.

  “Mehdi. You are my client. Nothing more.”

  His hands curl into his lap and lie there like dead birds.

  “I could give you so much, Claire,” he says in a kind of croon. “Flowers every day. Beautiful jewelry. Beautiful like you. Anything you want.”

  His large, sad eyes take on the hollow ache of displaced longing.

  “Caicos. Champagne.”

  I look at him sternly.

  “Mehdi! Stop!”

  He sees his horrible misstep.

  “Oh, okay, so can we start again, Claire?”

  He inches away from me.

  “Can we forget and start again?”

  A tiny smile flutters onto his lips.

  “We just do French, okay?” he asks.

  “All right,” I answer calmly. “But not tonight. I don’t want to have a class tonight.”

  Mehdi is now fully conscious of his dreadful miscalculation.

  “Okay,” he whispers.

  He is hollowed out, stung with embarrassment.

  Regardless of his retreat, I’m still not sure I should rise.

  I let a beat pass, then another. With each ticking second, the bomb seems to defuse more safely.

  I rise slowly.

  “I’d better be going.”

  Mehdi sits in the same devastated posture, his head lowered.

  I am standing over him now.

  Peering down.

  Waiting.

  He stays in place, blocking my way.

  “Mehdi, I need to get by.”

  He comes to life.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  He quickly gets to his feet.

  “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  He steps aside and lets me pass in front of him, now careful not to touch me.

  We walk together toward the door. There are small dots of perspiration on his brow. I also detect a smell. Cologne, but faintly sour.

  He opens the door.

  “Well. Goodnight, Claire.”

  I step into the evening air, then move down the stairs.

  At my car, I look back. He has gone inside. The door is closed.

  2.

  After leaving Mehdi, I drive and drive.

  I am shaken by his aggressiveness.

  I need air.

  The city’s streets sweep by. I feel myself losing my connection to them. It’s as if some part of me has already left Los Angeles, or that the city is now only a backdrop.

  In order to ground myself, I decide to drive to Venice and look at the drowned girl’s painting. Perhaps that will bring me down to earth again.

  The painting is exactly where Destiny said it would be, on a large cement wall near McDuffy’s.

  Much of the wall is covered with the usual graffiti, but I see the house Destiny described. The windows are red squares and the door is black, like the mouth of a cave. There are some trees, all with dark brown trunks, thick green splotches for leaves. Also a shrub or two, mostly done in swirls of a somewhat deeper green. A pale road leads to the house. It is streaked with thin gray lines, by which the girl may have meant to suggest cracks of some sort. Beyond these markings there is little added detail. Nor is there any sense of perspective. The house, trees, shrubs, and even the road occupy the same flat surface.

  She has little technique, but her work has a force that goes beyond artistic skill. It’s raw and fierce, and there is something in it that grabs my attention, a crying out.

  Her struggle fortifies me.

  I return to my car and head toward home.

  On the way a text comes in. I pull over to read it.

  A telephone number, followed by a brief message: If you change your mind.

  Phil.

  It is almost ten when I reach home. I glance toward Mr. Cohen’s house as if seeking a friend. Sometimes he sits on his front porch, but tonight he is not there.

  Once in the house, I lock the door behind me, check the windows.

  I find everything secure, then turn on the television.

  The movie is called Phantom Lady, and in the opening scene a man and a woman meet in a bar. He has two tickets to a show, one of them for a woman who has jilted him. He asks the unknown woman to go with him. When she agrees, he starts to tell her his name, but she stops him cold. “No names and no addresses,” she says. “Just companions for the evening.” They leave in a taxi, and during the ride to the theater the woman suddenly becomes afraid of what she’s done, the rash act of trusting a stranger. She tries to leave the cab, but the man stops her. There’s nothing to fear, he assures her, they’ll just have a few laughs. The woman’s face is veiled in a strange, heartbreaking sorrow. “I’d like to laugh,” she tells this unknown man. “It would be fun to laugh.”

  I know exactly how she feels.

  I snap off the television.

  I’m done with the Femme Fatale Network. It stokes my anxiety and fear. There are too many stories of victimized women. Women being deceived, cheated. Gaslighted. I think of poor, frantic Ingrid Bergman. Those jittery eyes. The flitting movement of her hands. She channels her husband’s malice, is wholly distorted by his manipulation. No one will believe her. She is just another “frightened little bird.�
�

  I walk into my bedroom. I have no desire to sleep. I have slept very poorly since writing to Simon, and each encounter I’ve had with him has made any form of relaxation more difficult.

  I know that tonight when I close my eyes, I’ll see SUVs and muscular men in dark glasses.

  Have I become the woman Simon has described to others and whom Dr. Lind diagnosed?

  Yes, I have.

  Because when my phone rings, I jump. My dread spikes as I glance at the phone and see Unknown Caller.

  I stare at the phone.

  When I finally pick it up, my hand is quivering. “Yes,” I say in a flat voice.

  “Hi, Claire.”

  “Destiny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you using a different phone?”

  “Oh, shit. Yeah. It’s a burn phone.”

  “Burn phone?”

  “You know, a throwaway.”

  “Why do you have a—”

  “Can I come over?” Destiny interrupts. “I really need to talk to you, Claire.”

  “Oh, okay,” I tell her. “Come.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  She arrives a few minutes later. “Hi,” she says. She is tense. From her expression, I know that something’s happened. There’s been a turn. She’s been thrown off course by it somehow.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  She looks at me worriedly. “Do you think that writer is after me?”

  “After you?”

  “The way she stared at me. Like maybe I hurt that girl. I had nothing to do with her.”

  She says this with a fierce insistence, accustomed to having people doubt her stories.

  “And those questions,” she adds. “That stuff about Vicki Page. Like she suspected me of being connected to her.”

  “Nobody suspects you of anything,” I assure her.

  “You don’t know her, right? You just met her.”

  “Yes.”

  “At the pier, like you said.”

  “At the pier.”

  Destiny glances toward the street, half expecting to see some sinister figure lurking melodramatically under the streetlamp. When she turns back toward me, her eyes glint like those of an anxious animal.

  “Come inside,” I say quickly.

  She walks into my foyer warily, looking about like a cat suddenly put down in an unfamiliar setting, already looking for a place to hide.

  I escort her to my living room.

  “Look, Claire,” Destiny says, “you’ve been really nice to me. I want to be straight with you. And the thing is, what I said to that writer, maybe I shouldn’t have said some of that stuff, you know?”

  Destiny’s sudden change of attitude surprises me.

  “I thought you liked Julie. You seemed to.”

  “Yeah, sure. She was okay, but . . .”

  She hesitates before going on. She seems unsure of where to begin.

  “The thing is, when she mentioned Vicki Page, whether I knew her or not, I said I didn’t. Which isn’t true. And shit, maybe she already knows I’m lying. She looked like she knew.”

  “Why did you lie?”

  “Because if I told you I knew Vicki, she’d think I was one of her girls. But I don’t do that.”

  She is briefly silent, gathering in the plot points.

  “Vicki wanted me to work for her. Be one of her girls. She said it was easy money. I didn’t care. I never did that, Claire.”

  I see an almost animal desperation in her eyes.

  “And about that girl. Yeah, I knew her.”

  She yanks her backpack from the floor, unzips it, pulls out a few squares of cardboard, and thrusts them toward me.

  “I brought these to show you.”

  They are watercolor renderings of various scenes. The first is a strangely violent seascape. The waters are boiling and the beach cringes, as if in anticipation of their assault. It has the same raw power as the house I saw earlier. Like that painting, it has an aura of impending destruction, of furious winds and tidal waves. The second is of a forest with trees that appear to have been ravaged by a storm. The third is a city street, the buildings leaning brokenly.

  “Why did she give them to you?” I ask.

  “She gave them to anybody who’d take them. It didn’t matter who. I mean, it’s not like I was a friend of hers.”

  When I try to hand the paintings back to Destiny, she refuses to take them.

  “No, you keep them,” she says. “I don’t want them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they could be, like . . . evidence against me.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “That I had something to do with her . . . which I didn’t.”

  If I don’t take these paintings, Destiny will simply toss them into the nearest dumpster. That would be an insult to the girl’s memory, almost a sacrilege.

  “Okay, sure,” I tell her. “I’ll take them.”

  Destiny is relieved.

  “Thanks, Claire.”

  She fidgets nervously with the handle of her backpack.

  “I’m spooked, that’s all. By her knowing about Vicki Page.”

  She seems almost to be talking to herself, searching for a way to undo whatever mistake she thinks she has made.

  “I should have just kept my mouth shut,” she says finally.

  She is now in full self-condemnation.

  “Stupid. Stupid!”

  She looks at me almost pleadingly.

  “I just wanted to be in the paper, you know? See my name in the paper. Be important for, like, five seconds. How screwed up is that?”

  She shakes her head violently.

  “Now I got this reporter on my tail.”

  This is an extreme reaction to her meeting with Julie. Something in it doesn’t ring true.

  “Do you know more about the girl in the water than you’re telling me?” I ask.

  “No,” she answers vehemently. “No. I swear.”

  “Then there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Julie’s just writing a story about girls who manage to get themselves off the street,” I assure her. “She’s not writing about the girl in the water or Vicki Page.”

  I touch her shoulder.

  “Don’t worry.”

  She calms slightly.

  “Okay, Claire.”

  We talk for a few more minutes before Destiny decides to go home.

  “I got the breakfast shift in the morning,” she tells me.

  I walk her to the door, then out to her car, a broken-down relic left behind by Time Warp, his parting gift to her.

  She waves as she drives away.

  At the end of the block, she turns to the right and disappears.

  I walk back into my house.

  I feel a need to check the windows and the doors again, but I force myself not to do it.

  I also have an urge to call someone.

  Just to hear another voice.

  I think of Ava, then of Ray.

  Even more, I think of Julie Cooper.

  Our last conversation.

  She’d seemed instinctively to understand my uneasiness and sense of helplessness. She was one of those people who didn’t require everything to be explained. Her antennae were always out, probing the unsaid, the unseen.

  Briefly I consider making that call, but I decide against it and turn on the television, using its steady drone and flashing images as a substitute for real companionship.

  The movie is In a Lonely Place.

  Humphrey Bogart is accused of something he didn’t do. I watch for a while, then drift off to sleep, my body curled up on the sofa. I am still there when dawn breaks the next morning.

  3.

  It’s almost as if Simon has shaken me awake, because the instant I open my eyes, I think of him.

  I imagine him talking to fellow lawyers.

  To judges.

  To fr
iends in the police.

  I try to get rid of my fear that he really is invulnerable.

  It’s only the beginning of the day, but I already feel exhausted.

  I sit alone in the building light.

  I have a coffee.

  Time passes.

  It’s nearly nine. I have thirty minutes before I meet Ray at Starbucks. I grab my bag and rush for the door.

  Then I stop dead.

  A huge spray of flowers rests on my doorstep. There must be two dozen of them, nestled in a thicket of tropical fern. Lilies. But rather than white, they are a dark, mournful color and hang heavily from their stalks, like a ragged shroud. Sinister. The flowers of death.

  Is this Simon’s next move?

  Is this the way he intends to intimidate me?

  A threat disguised as a peace offering?

  He is laying the groundwork for his own defense. Trying to establish how kind he is, how conciliatory. I know better. This is just his latest ploy.

  A white envelope is attached to one of the flowers. Simon has no doubt written some sweet sentiment.

  I snatch the envelope from the flower and open it. The card inside is small, square, and the words I read are engraved.

  Persian lilies for my Persian queen.

  Mehdi.

  I am shocked by how I instantly assumed the flowers were from Simon. My dread of him is distorting everything. Inflating everything. He would like nothing better than for me to become completely deranged. Cry out that he is watching me from behind the unlighted camera eye of my computer, listening to me through its tiny speakers.

  In a parting nightmare vision, I imagine Simon viewing me on some remote screen, grinning fiendishly while I stare transfixed at the flowers.

  I am still in the grip of this image when I arrive at Starbucks for my class with Ray.

  “Good morning, Claire,” Ray says when I reach his table.

  I sit down in the chair opposite him. “Bonjour.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yes, quite okay.”

  Since he is in the art business, I pattern the day’s lesson to that field. I have made a list of art terms. My plan is to use them as a base for teaching him the rudiments of the language.

  I hand him a sheet of French words: Tableau. Peintre. Luminosité.

  “La couleur,” I say. “The color.”

  He pronounces the word as if the final syllable is ure. I correct him, and he tries again. Still wrong. He tries again. This time it’s better.