For had my sojourn
Been longer on this earth,
The love I bore you in return
Would’ve put forth
more than blossoms.”
The producer sat mutely, like Julian, but less open-mouthed. Then he said, “Miss McKenzie, what was that? Was that Dante? Because I cannot find it in my book.”
“It was from memory, sir,” she said. “I rewrote it a little. Condensed some lines.”
Silence from the front row. “You rewrote Dante?”
“Yes, sir. I wanted to do my best.”
“Thank you, Miss McKenzie. We’ll be in touch. Next!”
“That was excellent, Mirabelle,” Julian said as they walked to his car across the street. “Really. If it was my play, I would’ve given you the part on the spot.”
“You would have given me a part in your play?” Her whole face lit up, even her little nose. “Like a walk-on? Or a lead role?” She laughed when he could find no response. “I’m just teasing you.”
“I know,” he said.
“And would I first need to tell heaven from hell?”
“No, just a smile from a veil,” he said.
She high fived him for the musical wordplay. “The being-prepared, I learned that from your blog, you know,” she said. “You can’t over-prepare, you wrote. You said always do your best but learn to accept that it is probably not going to be enough.”
“I sound like a real pill. Did I ever say anything remotely cheery?”
“So many wonderful things. Lessee, you said to always go out into the world dressed like you were about to meet the love of your life.”
“That’s not too bad, I suppose.” They squinted at each other, him in his suit, her in her mini skirt. “Can I give you a ride somewhere, Mirabelle?”
“Like where? Maybe the Vietnamese food truck by Freddie Roach’s?” She smiled.
“You’re funny. Right now, I’m afraid I have to run.” It would take him a while to drive home in rush hour. And Ashton commanded him under penalty of death not to be late. Riley and Gwen were coming over for dinner. They had announced they needed to talk to the men about their relationship status. Julian was forbidden to leave Ashton high and dry.
Mirabelle gave him her address, and Julian drove her home. She kept talking, telling him about the other auditions she had lined up, and how after New York she couldn’t get used to L.A. weather, always so sunny and mild, but her friend Zakiyyah took to L.A. like fish to water, but on the other hand had terrible taste in men (Julian was going to ask Mirabelle if she too had terrible taste in men but couldn’t find a spot to interject), always picking the worst guys, “like she’s sort of seeing this guy now named Trevor, and if his name isn’t bad enough, we went out the other night and he orders a Sloe Gin Fizz! I said to her, Z, your new boyfriend drinks Sloe Gin Fizzes? Does he wear flip flops, too? This is who’s going to be your rock in times of trouble? Is he going to put down his green drink before he sandal straps your assailant—”
Abruptly Mirabelle stopped talking.
Julian had been driving, catching the breath of her words, until there was nothing to catch. “Please continue,” he said. “I’m fascinated by Zakiyyah’s romantic travails.”
Mirabelle was staring at him with a peculiar expression. Like troubled disbelief. “Julian . . . why did you bring me here?”
Blinking, coming to, he looked around. “This isn’t where you live?”
“No, I told you, I live off East Hollywood, on Lyman.”
“Sorry,” he said, putting the car into reverse. “I must’ve misheard.”
“Julian, wait.” She reached over and touched the top of his hand. An electrical charge went through him. His fingers, gripping the gearshift stick in the middle of the console, twitched. “Why did you bring me here?”
He wasn’t sure where here was. The Hollywood Freeway was on the next block, but he’d never driven down this street before.
“I brought you to the wrong side of the 101,” he said. “Sorry.”
“That’s not what I mean. You brought me to Normandie Avenue. Why?”
He looked around. “I don’t know. You don’t live here?”
“No!”
“Weird.” He couldn’t get off the road fast enough.
“That’s not the weird part,” she said. “The weird part is that Z and I used to live here. You pulled up to our old house. The neighborhood was so bad, somebody was always getting whacked, so we moved.”
“See, so you did live there.” Julian didn’t wait for the light to change before he made a right on Melrose and sped away under the 101. If his hands were clenched any tighter around the wheel, one or the other would break. He tried to be casual but couldn’t turn his head into her flummoxed gaze. With tremendous effort he straightened his tense fingers, took one hand off the wheel—the left one—and drove on.
“I did live here,” Mirabelle said, “but how could you have known that?”
Julian could not explain it. “You must’ve given me the old address by mistake and not realized it.” But he didn’t remember her saying Normandie. She had said Lyman. He was sure of it. And she shook her head like she was sure of it, too.
Baffled, incredulous, she stared at him for a few more moments. Julian kept his eyes on the road. Something inside him started to hurt, and he didn’t know what it was.
They dropped it, because what else could they do? But the conversation, so delightfully free-flowing a minute earlier, ground to a halt.
It took him ten silent minutes to drive down East Hollywood. Lyman Place was sleepy and gum-lined. The girls were renting the top half of a small two-story blue stucco house, covered by overgrown foliage. “Well, here we are,” Julian said fake-brightly. “Is this the right place?”
“Yes,” she said. “Would you like to walk me to the door?”
Hers was a private entrance off to the side. On the upstairs patio bloomed some well-tended yellow petunias in two large plant pots. She pulled out her keys. “Do you want to come in for a minute? Z is not home from work yet.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m already late.”
“For a very important date?” She smiled, but there was tension in her previously carefree grin, a new puzzled concentrated intensity. “Are you sure? I can make you something to eat. I’m not the best cook, but I can . . .”
“I really can’t. Thanks, though.”
They stood awkwardly.
“You said to always end on a joke,” she said.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
“What do you call a pile of kittens?” She paused. “A meowntain!”
When he laughed, she extended her hand. “Well, nice to meet you, Julian Cruz.”
And he, without thinking, brought her soft hand to his lips and kissed it. Afterward he became even more awkward.
“They teach you that in boxing school?” she said breathily.
He couldn’t return her warm liquid gaze. He stumbled back on the steps.
“You sure you don’t want to come in?”
“Another time perhaps,” Julian said.
“Okay, when?” Mirabelle said. “Or were you just being polite?”
38
Hollywood Hills
“I DON’T WANT TO SPEAK TO YOU,” ASHTON SAID WHEN Julian ran into the house at nearly eight.
“Traffic was a motherfucker. Sorry.” He threw down his keys on Ashton’s front hall table, right below the Bob Marley poster.
“Pick those up. You can throw the keys around at your own place. The girls will be here in ten minutes, and you’ve left me to do fucking everything. You didn’t even set the table. I had to do it.” The table was set out on the pool patio.
“Sorry, man. I’ll make it up to you.”
“What am I, Gwen?” Ashton said. “You’re going to make it up to me? Buy me flowers, take me to dinner?” They stood. The smoke from the grill wafted inside the house. It smelled good. Ashton loved to grill.
O
n the way to his own house, Julian sank into a chair by the blue pool. Ashton had turned on the LED lights, lighting up the palms and the ficus trees in shimmering aqua.
“Dude, are you insane?” Ashton stood over him. “They’ll be here any minute. What’s the matter with you? Go get changed.”
“I will. I need a minute.”
“Time for sitting is over. You had a whole lengthy car ride from wherever you were to sit. No more sitting.”
“Ashton, five minutes, and then I’m yours. Five.”
“Fuck, Jules.”
“Five minutes without you speaking.”
After five minutes, Julian got up, his body like concrete.
The traffic was bad on Benedict Canyon. It was a bitch driving up the mountains at rush hour. Gwen and Riley were running late, too. But the girls being late gave the men a chance to calm down. Julian changed, got the music ready, made an extra large pitcher of margaritas. He and Ashton opened two beers, sat by the pool and chatted about the Fox meeting, the inventory at the store, about Buster “The Executioner” Barkley’s fight coming up in Vegas next month, and about Riley.
“Last Sunday she told me I wasn’t meeting her emotional needs,” Ashton said. “She said that after three years I was still nothing but potential.”
“So, like a parent–teacher conference?”
Ashton laughed. “I said, Riles, I’ve been the same the whole time you’ve known me. She said that was one hundred percent her problem with me. I never changed.”
“Did you ask her why she went out with you in the first place if she wanted you to change?”
“I did! She said she went out with me because she had hoped I would. She said I was too wild. Like I was an untrained poodle or something. I’m not wild!”
“Sometimes you are.”
“You’re not helping. Don’t say that in front of her. Call me domesticated and house-broken. Next time you buy coconut water at Whole Foods, talk to her, put in a good word for me. I really don’t want to have another fight. I’m beat.”
“Me, too.”
“You too what? You love fighting.”
Julian took a breath. “I think I met a girl,” he said.
Ashton downed his beer, laughed, and sat up straight. “Which part are you not sure about? Whether or not you met her, or whether or not she is a girl?”
“Oh, she is most definitely a girl.”
“Really? Dude!” Ashton grinned. “What did she look like?”
Julian was quiet a moment. “Bliss,” he said.
“Dude!”
The doorbell rang. Gwen and Riley were here.
“Whose idea was it to build a place on Mulholland?” Riley said, striding into Ashton’s house, holding what looked like a bakery box. Despite the long ride, she looked as effortlessly creaseless as ever. “It took us an hour and a half to go eleven miles.”
“Definitely Julian’s,” Ashton said, cheerfully throwing his friend under the bus.
Julian took the bakery box from Riley. “What’s this, Riles? Don’t tell me—bean sprout cookies?”
“Yes! Wait—are you mocking me? Ugh. You two are impossible. Not everything has to be a joke. These are very good. They’re made with honey.”
Julian turned on the music too loud, deliberately, so no one would feel any need for real conversation. He drank the margaritas liberally, but had no appetite, making the odds of success for any later, more serious conversation negligible. He didn’t want to talk to Gwen because he had nothing specific to say. His feelings were a jumble. He couldn’t talk to Gwen about every girl he casually chatted with. And when Julian had nothing specific to say, he always preferred to shut the hell up.
Unfortunately it was taciturn Julian’s very nature that Gwen wanted to address. The couples ate, swam in the pool, lounged in the Jacuzzi, sat on the upstairs deck, drinking and chatting about nothing, and then retreated to their respective homes.
Gwen was all set to have a long discussion about the state of things between them. After a pitcher of tequila, Julian was less inclined to do so. She said his brooding nature was getting under her skin. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t brooding, he just had a lot on his mind, but didn’t want to detail exactly what it was he had on his mind and didn’t want to lie. So he said nothing, trying to smooth things over between them with his silence, which was precisely the wrong thing to smooth over the problem of his silence with—more silence. Gwen continued to bristle, and Julian continued to respond in monosyllables. She suggested taking a break, and instead of the requisite protest, he gave her no argument. He said—because he wanted to be agreeable—if you think that’s what you need, that’s fine. I want you to be happy.
Clearly, what would’ve made her happy was a fight. As if she didn’t know him, as if she didn’t know he didn’t like fighting with girls. She announced she was going home, which was difficult since she had come in Riley’s car. Julian offered to drive her. “Are you insane?” Gwen said. “What kind of a storming out is it if you drive me home?” She called a taxi, shouting at Julian before it came, shouting and shouting, and then stormed out.
Afterward Julian sat a long time in the silence by the lit-up nighttime pool trying to hack through the jungle inside him. That night he dreamed the brown-haired girl was on top of him, completely naked, her hips gripped in his hands, while he was fully clothed, wearing his suit and tie and even his shoes, sexy, yes, but also as if to protect himself from her. When he woke up, he thought, yeah, right, no confusion there.
39
A Dress for Beatrice
IN THE EARLY MORNING, AFTER RILEY LEFT, JULIAN DRAGGED Ashton to the gym with him. They sparred, talked about Gwen, used the speedbag, the weights, then Ashton hung out and watched Julian fight Lopez, his former trainer’s son and his boxing buddy since UCLA. They were showered, dressed, at HomeState for breakfast tacos by eight and at the Treasure Box by eight-thirty.
The store was not even open when the front door bell trilled, a few minutes before nine. Julian was in the back on the computer, doing the books. Ashton went out to see who it was.
“Jules,” he heard Ashton call. “Come out here. Someone’s here for you.”
It was Mirabelle.
She wasn’t alone. Next to her stood a striking, serious, black woman, dressed business-plain, with wild curly hair more or less tied up.
Mirabelle was breathy. Her boots were black and slick today, not brown and coarse, and her denim skirt was even shorter than yesterday, though that didn’t seem possible, and her coral blouse was even more see-through, though that also didn’t seem possible, and her slim bare legs were even more smooth and shiny, though that didn’t seem possible either. The tank underneath didn’t cover her belly button. There was light makeup on her face and gloss on her lips and the loose bun piled on top of her head looked designer messy, not rolled out of bed messy. She looked casual but top to bottom put together, not thrown together. She wore hoop earrings and bangles on her wrists.
“Hey, Julian.”
“Hey, Mirabelle.” They stood wordlessly for a moment until they remembered their manners.
“Z, this is Julian.” The way Mirabelle emphasized this made Julian feel awkward. Had they been talking about him?
Ashton coughed. Zakiyyah coughed.
“Sorry,” Julian said. “Ashton, Mirabelle. Mirabelle, Ashton.”
“Yes, sorry,” Mia said. “Ashton, Zakiyyah. Zakiyyah, Ashton. But, Ashton, you can call me Mia. My friends do.” She smiled. “And you can call her Z.”
“Zakiyyah will be fine,” said Zakiyyah.
Mutely Ashton studied Mirabelle, and then Julian. He said nothing. He turned to Zakiyyah. “Zakiyyah,” Ashton said. “Like Obadiah?”
“What?”
“Hey ya, hey ya,” Ashton said.
She looked annoyed. “What is that?” she said.
“Um—a song? By Obadiah Parker?”
“Never heard of it. What’s it called?”
Ashton spoke real slow. “
‘Hey Ya.’” He gave Julian a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look.
Meanwhile, Mirabelle was looking around the chock-a-block prop store, her jaw open.
Among other things, Ashton had a display shelf of tin Brodie helmets and gas masks. “Why do you have those?”
“Productions like to rent them,” he said. “Plus my old man was born in London during the war, so it’s a hat-tip to him. Not that he’s ever been here to see it.”
Ashton had an I Dream of Jeannie bottle, a perfect replica of the original.
“Where did you get that?” Mirabelle asked in fascination, as Zakiyyah stood with her arms crossed, saying nothing, and not looking around.
“I ask the top Jeannie bottle guy in the country to make them,” Ashton said. “One at a time.”
“And the guy makes them for you to order?” She smiled.
“Sure, he does. Because I ask nicely.” Ashton beamed his full-teeth smile back at her.
“You can get a lot, asking nicely.”
“You sure can.”
An unsmiling Zakiyyah rolled her eyes. “Mia, I gotta go, I’m going to be late. Can we hurry it up?”
“Oh, yeah. Actually, I came to ask Julian a favor—asking nicely.” Mirabelle beamed a full-teeth smile at Julian, who tried to maintain a poker face. “I have a callback for that Paradise in the Park audition at the Greek you drove me to yesterday. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Sorry it ran so late. Did you get to your dinner on time?”
“No,” Ashton said. “He was unforgivably late. But is that why he was late? Because he was at auditions with you?”
“Uh . . .” Mia said.
“Ashton,” Julian said.
“Mia,” Zakiyyah said.
“Oh, yeah, sorry, Z. Anyway, they want me to play Beatrice, isn’t that great?”
“Yes,” said Julian.
“Mia,” repeated Zakiyyah.
“I remembered that you told me you two had a prop store, and I was wondering if you might have some kind of a glittery snazzy dress I could borrow for like a day. But something spectacular. I need to look like the kind of girl Dante would go all the way to hell for.”
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