The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  “That’s right,” said Elaine. “When is the wedding?”

  Mimi told her. Elaine enthused about Tony to the point where Mimi thought they were having an affair. What was Elaine even doing here? Mimi paced through the kitchen to the deck and back, trying to look deep in thought over where to put the buffet table. She cursed herself for not acting as though she had as much right to be here as Elaine.

  “It’s not going to be a shower shower. I had a shower shower when I got married. A bunch of bimbos oohing and aahing about spatulas was what it was. This is going to be like a pre-wedding party brunch. It will have a theme, though. It’ll be kitchen/garden or paper/barbecue. Something.” Why was she rattling on? She clamped her arms across her ribs and leaned against the sink.

  “I keep forgetting you were married,” said Elaine.

  “I know, I’m such the single girl. It was a good marriage. Not a long one, but a good one. It didn’t dangle on into infinity. When it was over we knew it and got divorced.”

  “You were married to Ivan Esparza, weren’t you? The man making the documentary on Mouse and –?”

  “– I told Ralph not to blab! You want the world to know something, tell Ralph Holladay a secret.”

  “I haven’t told a soul. Girl Scout’s honor.” She held up three long skinny fingers. “Ivan is pretty hot these days, according to Ralph.”

  “He won an Oscar. For Total Immersion. I don’t know if you ever saw it. It was about baptism or something. He started it right after we got married –”

  “– behind every great man …” said Elaine.

  “I did encourage him. I knew he had a lot of talent. Even though we were the poorest people on earth, I said, ‘Ivan, do what you have to do.’ I like a woman like that, who appreciates a man’s ambitions and doesn’t rag on him. It must have been a harder situation with Ralph, since he’s been at it so long without a break. Ivan won an Oscar, even if it was just documentary. Ralph’s still a secretary.”

  “An assistant,” said Elaine, “like you.”

  “Keddy’s pretty hard on him,” said Mimi. “At least I don’t have to go to my boss’s house and wait for the plumber to come fix the toilet.”

  Elaine shrugged. “I’m like you, I guess. Through thick and thin.”

  Why are you getting a divorce then? Mimi wanted to ask.

  Darryl brought out another bag of chips and ripped them open with his teeth. Sather passed around more beer. Elaine lectured for a few long minutes on the Americanness of Larry’s spiritual odyssey and its juxtaposition with Elliott Templeton’s snobbishness. She was a bore, but her voice was husky. Mimi thought, all you need are toothpick legs and a husky voice and you have it made. She sucked in her stomach, waiting patiently for Elaine to shut up. She wrapped her ankles around the leg of her chair and accidentally spilled her beer.

  She leaped up. “God, I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll ruin our fine carpet,” said Darryl. He tossed an old sports page over it. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Mimi went to the kitchen in search of paper towels. There were no paper towels, also no napkins. She blotted it up with a roll of blue toilet paper while Marty and Sather argued about how many film versions there had been of The Razor’s Edge and whether it was true that a new one was in the works, a musical starring a former Olympic diver.

  “They make a movie like that and they won’t touch Girls on Gaza,” said Ralph.

  “We want to hear about your new one,” said Marty.

  “We’re still ironing out the kinks.”

  “Come on, you’ve been ironing out the kinks for months. You think we’re going to rip it off? Or, wait, don’t tell me, it’s ART,” said Darryl.

  “Marty might rip it off,” said Ralph. Marty had recently left his hair-washing job at the Beverly Hills salon and was now the Director of Development for one of his ex-clients, who had a deal at Fox.

  “Ralph, I can almost guarantee that I would never be interested in stealing something you were involved in,” said Marty.

  “Let’s guess,” said Sather. “It came from an idea by the skateboard king …”

  “… how is his poor nose, anyway?” asked Elaine.

  “It’s only made him cuter,” said Carole, through a mouthful of chips.

  “Give us a clue,” said Darryl.

  “No clues. Let’s get on with the fucking book.”

  “It’s a thriller set in Nairobi, with lots of tit,” said Sather.

  “Give me a break, would you? I’ll let you all read it when it’s done.”

  “It is a thriller set in Nairobi with lots of … a sexy African thriller,” said Lisa. “Are we warm?”

  “I like it,” said Sather. “Marty, close your ears.”

  “Ice,” said Ralph. “Not even close.”

  “We’re warm. The main character is the son of a British Foreign Service officer, dashing but offbeat,” said Lisa.

  “Look, why can’t you lay off?” Ralph was red-faced, spitting with frustration. “There are other reasons I don’t want to talk about it. Tony, for one, wants it kept under wraps for a while. He’s my partner. I am not going to screw my partner. You think this is a big laugh. Ralph has another hopeless and stupid project –”

  “– we don’t think your projects are hopeless, sweet cheeks,” said Mimi.

  A thud of silence.

  “Sweet cheeks?” said Sather. “Sweet cheeks?”

  “Whoooooooo!” Darryl clapped his hands and stomped his feet.

  Ralph’s oval face went slack. He had the numb, dumb look of someone who’s just spent six hours at the dentist.

  Elaine stared at Mimi with an expression which changed over a few long seconds from confusion to suspicion to realization, then loathing. Finally she smiled, arching one eyebrow. “Sweet cheeks?”

  “All Ralph’s girls call him sweet cheeks. I mean, in his class.” The blood pounded in her face. She scrunched her hair madly. “It’s like a joke. Oh … sweetie pie, honey bunch. Not all of them call him ‘sweet cheeks,’ some say sweetie pie and honey bunch. It’s a joke.”

  The meeting broke up about a half hour later. While Mimi was in the bathroom discreetly tossing her beer and chips, Ralph took Elaine home. Mimi was too embarrassed to hang out until he returned.

  BEFORE IT WAS a restaurant, Thai Melody was a swimming-pool showroom. In the middle of the dining room was a kidney bean-shaped pool, the sidewalls tiled with blue and orange Spanish tiles. In an attempt to disguise it, the owners of Thai Melody had installed a model of a Thai palace, white with gold filigree trim, which stood on a table sunk in the shallow end.

  There were pennies at the bottom of the pool. People will throw pennies into any public body of water in the dumb hope it will help make their wish come true, Mimi thought.

  Mimi had invited Tony to lunch. Her rationale was that since they were going to be brother and sister-in-law it was time they really talked, instead of just trading one-liners in the hallway as they took turns in the bathroom. Also – she hated to resort to this teenage tactic, but – Ralph might have said something to Tony about the stupid “sweet cheeks” business. Was Ralph really that angry? He couldn’t be.

  She ordered a Thai coffee, gnawed on an already raw cuticle.

  It was eleven-thirty. The restaurant had just opened. The radio was cranked up, tuned to a station that played one tired pop song after another. The suffocating smell of a newly lit stick of incense made even the ice water taste like perfume. Watching the beautiful Thai waitresses in black skirts and white blouses setting tables, Mimi decided that in her next life she wanted to be a small Asian woman.

  She stabbed the whipped cream on her Thai coffee with her straw. She had told Mouse that morning, “I am having a nervous breakdown.”

  It was keeping all these secrets that had done it. It was against Mimi’s nature, keeping a secret. She was open and honest.

  She was worried about herself. Solly was out of town and she still felt torqued out. Usually it was the time
when she felt the most relaxed, when she almost liked her job, when she felt more like an average overworked, underpaid secretary than an indentured servant. Solly was at a film festival three or four time zones away. Not only was he not in the office, whenever it was convenient for him to call in she wasn’t there, either. Really not in the office, as opposed to hiding in the ladies’ room.

  The downside was he called her at home, at midnight, at seven in the morning, just to check in. He’d called her at one o’clock the night before to see if she would go up to his house in the Palisades and get his CD player to take it in to be repaired. Her heart hurled itself against her chest at the sound of the phone. She wanted it to be Ralph, calling to apologize.

  When it wasn’t Solly calling at odd hours, it was Ivan. Mimi could not believe that Mouse had not told Ivan that she did not have Tony’s consent to do Wedding March.

  Whenever Ivan called, Mimi was supposed to pretend it was someone else, without letting Ivan know. Mouse expected her to say, “Hey, how are you!” “Great, great!” “No kidding!” before passing the phone off, when Mouse would pretend it was Nita Katz or Shirl, with Tony sitting there watching TV.

  This morning Mouse was out with Ivan, filming at Bullock’s, where she was registering for china, crystal, and silver. Mouse, who had never entertained a day in her life. The china was English bone, over five hundred dollars a place setting. The stemware was full lead crystal, mouth-blown in Japan by Zen masters. Mouse hadn’t even known what stemware was. It wasn’t the most expensive stuff in the place, but the most expensive that looked best on-camera. It made Mimi sick. Not that Mouse shouldn’t have everything she wanted. It was her wedding, after all.

  At about nine-thirty, after Mouse had already left and Mimi was in the shower, Ivan called and left a message on the machine. Ivan always left long messages, never saying who they were for or identifying himself. When she rewound the machine it took forever and she thought, wow, this must be something exciting. Hope rose in her throat. Maybe this was Ralph. But no, it was just egomaniacal Ivan, hogging the tape.

  “Hell-o-o … Please pick up if you’re there. You’ve already left. Damn. I need you to stop by Kodak and pick up ten, no, make that twenty, no, ten, ten is fine, rolls of ECN. We wanted the ninety-one, and they sent us VNF. Make sure it’s the ninety-one, not the ninety-two. I repeat, do not get the ninety-two, it’s too slow. We need the ninety-one. Also, we do need to begin shooting with Tony, so let’s set something up soon. We can just talk when I see you.”

  Hell if Mimi was going to transcribe that. She left it, knowing Mouse would beat Tony home, because Tony would be at lunch at Thai Melody with her. All these things she had to worry about. And then this “sweet cheeks” business with Ralph.

  Last Wednesday at How to Write a Blockbuster, the night after her slipup at Bibliothèques, Ralph was suddenly colder than a frostbitten corpse. He was Mr. Holladay, Adjunct Instructor, instead of her babyfaced lover inventing excuses to follow her to her car at the break, sneaking a greedy squeeze in a far-flung hallway.

  When he did speak to her, it was not as teacher’s pet but as teacher’s pest. She was not stupid, she recognized the tone of voice. He used it with Poor Peg, the Brillo Pad-permed fifty-plus ex-nun.

  Mr. Holladay criticized Mimi’s homework. He read it aloud to the class as an example of what not to do. It was the dust-jacket copy for her projected blockbuster on love and betrayal in the business. He called it feeble and trite, in that soft, insultingly patient it’s-not-too-late-to-consider-beauty-school-you-talentless-nitwit tone of voice. He also said it was over three weeks late. Why hadn’t she started writing?

  Only the week before, Ralph had said her story was timely and spicy. It featured famous actresses who were secret lesbians, famous shits who were closet nice guys, a team of famous Israeli producers whose training for Hollywood had been the raid on Entebbe, and, of course, the Mob. Now he accused her of pandering to middle America’s view of the business.

  There was no love and betrayal in the film business, he said. No one ever returned your phone call, how could they love you? Betray you?

  Five other people were also writing on the same topic, including Poor Peg. To them he said, “Hollywood is like sugar. People can never get enough, even though it’s empty and bad for you. And remember, writing a blockbuster is not about writing, it’s about panning for gold.”

  Mimi’s face fried with embarrassment. The tips of her ears felt as though they were blistering under her head of crunchy curls. She thought she had never been so humiliated in all her life. She couldn’t even remember why she’d signed up for this dumb class.

  At the break, Ralph announced officiously that he had to pick up a handout at the Xerox center, then scurried away before anyone could nab him. He was avoiding her, there was no denying it. Mimi bought two cookies from a vending machine and tucked the second one into her purse to eat in the car on the way home. It couldn’t be the “sweet cheeks” business. It had really been so harmless. She said “love you” every day to clients of Solly’s whom she’d never met. No, it couldn’t be that but, she knew, it was. She had humiliated him in front of his friends and his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Cookie crumbs still moist in the corner of her wide mouth, she bought a package of Sugar Babies.

  Poor Peg, who’d just lost her last quarters in the coffee machine, sympathized with her.

  “I don’t think he likes women,” said Peg.

  “He likes women all right,” said Mimi. Despite herself, she loaded the sentence with innuendo, then thought, why not? He deserves it. “He’s been after me since the first class. I don’t know what this feeble-and-trite business is all about. Maybe because I won’t sleep with him. He’s married, plus he has that premature ejaculator look about him.”

  “Fidgety,” Peg agreed.

  Before returning to class, Mimi vomited in the very ladies’ room where, only a few short weeks before, Ralph had boldly followed her for a brief, stolen, makeout session. Hell, she thought, eyes smarting, throat burning, if I’m going to let some stupid man make me fat. She slapped on the Extra Fuchsia and blotted her eyes. She glared at her bleary face in the mirror and tried to make herself think she didn’t look so bad for thirty-six. She was thin. She still had long hair. That was more than most thirty-six-year-old women could say for themselves.

  While sitting in Thai Melody, waiting for Tony, Mimi tried to muster up the self-confidence she’d felt that night in the ladies’. But it was useless. Her belief in herself was like a petulant, hard-of-hearing servant who rarely heeded her demands. So what if she had long hair? She was going to base her whole sense of self-worth on the length of her hair? She longed for the kind of confidence Mouse possessed, reliable and quiet, like a heartbeat. Having a good man wouldn’t hurt, Mimi thought.

  The door opened, admitting a rectangle of clean winter glare, then Tony. He gently pulled off his sunglasses with one finger, watching out for his nose. He saw Mimi and saluted, waiting politely until the hostess flew to his side to do her job. She tipped up her elegantly shaped head and dimpled. He snuck a handful of pink and green pillow mints from the glass sundae dish by the cash register, followed her to Mimi’s table.

  He slid into the booth, smoothed his strawberry-blond hair behind his ears. “Traffic,” he said, “sorry.” He pursed his freckled lips, rubbed his eyes with the butts of his hands. He was tired from smiling and nodding, the sure sign of someone who’s just been released from an interminable meeting.

  “How’d it go?” asked Mimi. “Or am I not supposed to ask?”

  “Very well, I think. We did the last batch of changes. V.J. adores the project. He apparently had a meeting with one of the vice presidents and they’re already thinking of casting ideas.”

  “Hmm,” said Mimi, in a way she hoped was enigmatic. Bored parking attendants with an eight-hour shift to kill entertained themselves tossing around casting ideas. Without taking her eyes from Tony’s, Mimi poked her tongue into the end of her straw, fishing for t
he last bit of whipped cream. “What’s Ralph’s take on it? Thai coffee’s great. Want some of mine?”

  “Ralph is not quite so positive. He calls it the joyride to nowhere, all these meetings. But you know, time is money. Isn’t that the American perspective?”

  “It is.” Time is also filling up your appointment book so it looks like you’re working. You’re “developing” projects but not making any decisions over which you could be fired.

  “I’ll take a beer, thanks.” He motioned to the waitress. “V.J. liked what we did, on the whole, but thinks there are ways we can make it even more perfect.”

  Without going into details, Tony enumerated the sorts of things V.J. was looking for: more plot, but not at the expense of character; more character, but not at the expense of the plot. He wanted more local color, more “sparks” between the main characters, more of an environmental slant. He wanted it cut by ten pages. He wanted all this before he sent it out to the VPs.

  It was like listening to someone’s medical history. And it was being told, the same story laced with hope and frustration, at a hundred tables, a thousand tables throughout the city at that very moment. Maybe that was the real cause of smog, thought Mimi. The chemical reaction between kitchen grease, ozone, and a jillion sour dreams and ruined hopes.

  “Ralph is not so sanguine. This is our fifth meeting with V.J. and he keeps forgetting the name of the project. I tell Ralph he’s a busy chap. It’s a mark of all he’s got happening.”

  “How’s he doing – Ralph? I’ve been so busy with Solly out of town and all, trying to catch up. Really trying to get into my writing, too. I told you I’m working on that blockbuster.”

  “The film business, isn’t it? Seems like a good topic.”

  “It’s been done to death, That’s why it’s perfect for a blockbuster. I’m still sort of in the outline phase. Has Ralph … said anything about it lately?”