The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  “Will you please allow me to explain?”

  “No. Just leave. I want you to leave. Riding through the savanna nude with an AK-47? And the key, please.”

  “That was V.J.’s idea.”

  “I have a mind to call my mother’s lawyer.”

  “It didn’t begin that way – exploitative. It began as a true account of our romance. That’s the script I wrote. If you’d read it, you’d see.”

  “Did you think I’d never find out?”

  “I was going to tell you. I was always going to tell you. Nothing’s actually jelled yet, you know. It seemed pointless until there was something concrete. I was going to change the names, am going to change the names. There was some … confusion. It’s all part of the bloody game, you know. Getting a ‘go’ movie. The names will be changed. I knew you’d be livid.” He heard the pleading in his voice. She stared, her gaze glued to his, silently allowing him to indict himself. He knew this technique. It was the way you got the goods from someone you were interviewing on camera. Ask a simple question, never interrupt, then wait for the victim’s natural compulsion to justify and overexplain to do the rest. Well, he was smarter than that.

  “Anyway, what right do you have accusing me? That blasted wedding documentary. You and Ivan carrying on behind my back.”

  “That’s completely different.”

  “How is it different? I don’t see how it’s different.”

  “In Wedding March truth isn’t just a gimmick, for one thing.”

  “You know bloody well that the presence of a camera, any camera, turns an event into a performance. Documentary’s as much a pack of half-truths as anything else. You think Ivan isn’t exploiting you? Isn’t going to make the film say whatever he damn well pleases? At least if something is freely adapted from a true story no one suffers under any illusions. Besides, I strove for a metaphorical truth, which is a far deeper and more honest truth than you find in any documentary.”

  “A more honest truth?”

  “True to the spirit of the event rather than the actual occurrences.” This sounded pretty good. If he didn’t make it as a writer-director, he could always be an executive.

  “You made me a swimsuit model, Tony. A dimwitted, morally irresponsible, slutty swimsuit model.”

  “Based on how smashing you look in that black bikini.”

  “You think I’d sleep with a man to console him? In my past life I was an elephant? I cannot talk about this. It’s not bad enough that you trashed my life, then you …” She shook her head. “You disgust me.”

  “Can’t we just put this behind us, poppet? Those things I said? On the beach? Didn’t mean any of it, not a syllable. I found out about the wedding movie, I was furious. You know how I get. I wanted to, I don’t know, get back at you. I behaved badly.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? When I think of you I get nauseous.”

  “I’ll do the movie, all right? I’ll do Wedding March.”

  “I want to take a shower. When I think of you, of us, I feel polluted. I feel like those people living next to toxic-waste dumps, only it’s like the dump’s inside of me.”

  “And Love Among Elephants? It’s rubbish. Come with me back up to the house and watch me burn it. I’m going to be dead honest with you, all right? I came here tonight to ask you to marry me because that’s how the picture ends. The head of production comes from documentaries and is very partial to stories based in fact. It was necessary for us to live happily ever after. For the picture. I told Allyn Meyer we were getting married for the sake of the movie. But now I’m here, I see you again. I’m miserable up there, away from you. I do want to marry you, I always did, movie or no movie. And even though we had a terrific meeting today, even though Allyn Meyer is very very very hot on Love Among Elephants, I will burn it. I will call her tomorrow and tell her everything’s off. That’s how much I love you.”

  “Call her now.”

  “Pardon?”

  Mouse strode across the room to the telephone, picked up the receiver, held it out to him. “Call her now.”

  “It’s after six. She’s liable to have left already.”

  “Leave a message.”

  “This isn’t the kind of thing you leave a message about, poppet. There’s a certain protocol. Anyway, I should speak with Ralph, you know, he’s my partner, after all. Can’t just pull the rug out from under one’s partner.”

  “You pulled the rug out from under me.”

  “We pulled it out from under each other. Tit for tat. And you, old girl, are getting the better deal. I’ll do Wedding March. Call Ivan and tell him it’s back on.”

  “It was never off,” she said.

  “One of the things I adore about you is your persistence, Mouse. What were you planning on doing in the way of a groom, if I may ask?”

  “I’m marrying Ivan,” she said. “When you go, please leave the key.”

  23

  THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT MOUSE HAD READ Love Among Elephants, she had called Tony. She called him again in the afternoon and again the following day. She left three messages on the answering machine. His failure to return any of her calls had given her full license to drive to Venice to see Ivan.

  She hopped in the car without phoning, failing to heed one of the city’s unwritten laws: never ever drop in. She sped down residential side streets, odd routes she’d learned from Mimi that circumvented freeways, stoplights, and signs. Routes known only to natives. Her next-up-from-the-bottom-of-the-line Toyota still seemed the height of luxury, with its plastic new-car smell, its radio with speakers in the backseat, its jet liner-like meters and dials.

  Every radio station DJ seemed nostalgic that night for songs popular during the Watergate summer, the summer of Ivan, and for other love songs, too, songs about which a suspicious Shirl used to say, “My love does what good? Let’s get what on? Why don’t we do what in the road?” Songs that – when you heard the song, your song, on the car radio on the way to meet him – were enough to make you believe in destiny. Never mind that it played six times an hour, twenty-four hours a day.

  Mouse stopped at a 7-11 for a pack of cigarettes and a Coke. It was drizzling; the air heavy with the acidic smell of wet smog. Clouds sat low on the city. She drove with the Coke clamped between her thighs. She rolled down the window and yowled at the top of her lungs into the orange night, sailing down the wide streets, rolling through intersections after a careless glance, beating out the bass line on the steering wheel.

  Love was a rose, a flame, a drug, a heat wave, an opening door, a key we must turn; you can’t buy it, hurry it, keep it; it can be right or wrong, weak or strong, short or long; it don’t come easy, it takes a little time, it’s a game of give and take; it can break your heart, tear you apart, make you happy, make you weep.

  The songs were dumb but potent. They transformed her into something dangerous: a boy-crazy sixteen-year-old with the determination and birth-control savvy – if not the wisdom – of a grown woman. Tonight’s the night! she sang. Time to settle up, she thought.

  Her wedding was off. Tony – just the sound of his name caused aftershocks of fury – Tony was history. She would have a few days or weeks with Ivan, then head back to Nairobi. Perhaps she would move into his overheated subterranean basement apartment. Perhaps, now that Wedding March was off, they would find another project to do together. Perhaps they would even return to Africa together.

  The dim basement corridor leading to Ivan’s apartment was strangely quiet. Mouse, exhilarated from the drive, was unsure how to approach this. To she of the meticulous production schedules, the superannotated date books, this felt reckless, unwise.

  No one was in the laundry room, which accounted for the lack of sloshing, banging, whirring. She dragged her fingers along the stucco wall, enjoying the light tearing of her fingertips. She wore lipstick, her good-luck green silk blouse.

  As she passed the laundry room, Ivan’s door opened a few inches. A woman’s tan bony arm reached out from
inside the apartment. Dangling from her hand was the immaculate cage of the coddled guinea pig, Dostoyevsky. The hand gently placed Dostoyevsky on the floor just outside the apartment. The door closed.

  Mouse would later admit to every charge Shirl and Mimi ever made about her disabled feminine instincts, for she found it more curious that Dostoyevsky was transferred from his normal place of honor atop the refrigerator to the hallway than that a woman with a slim tan arm was inside Ivan’s apartment. The woman, she assumed, was a friend, a neighbor, perhaps a fellow member of the Venice Documentary Consortium. She squatted in front of Dostoyevsky, who was more interested in running in his exercise wheel than biting her finger. Eeekk-eeekk-eeekk, the wheel squeaked as he trotted in place.

  The door opened again. This time it was Ivan, shirtless, the top button of his low riding jeans undone, a cigarette between his lips. “Doss, we can hardly record with you making all this noise – Mouse! What are you doing out there?”

  She stood up. Her body pounded inside her skin like a swollen ankle bandaged too tightly. She stared at Ivan’s body. She had never seen his scar. She’d never thought to look for it, assuming his alleged kidney donation to the wealthy, desperate Newport Beach couple was like all of Mimi’s other exaggerations and white lies. The scar was little more than a seam, slightly puckered, white against his honey skin. It began just under his sternum, swooped down around his side, ending in the small of his back. She saw the whole of it when he turned to pull on a shirt.

  It was then she also saw Tooty Brass hastily pulling up the rumpled sheets of Ivan’s narrow monk’s pallet, wearing one of his old T-shirts. The love song Mouse was humming to herself dropped from her mind like a stone.

  When Ivan invited her in, she was too thunderstruck to protest.

  “Tooty, you remember Mouse FitzHenry? Mouse, Tooty Brass.” Ivan ground out his cigarette on a bent beer can, hoisted his Nagra onto the kitchen table. He flipped back the cover, checked the tape. “We were just about to record some effects. I’m cutting El Funeral to broadcast length for PBS and thought while I was at it I would remix the sound. I have always been a little ashamed of it.”

  “Sure,” said Mouse. To Tooty she sent a stiff nod in hello.

  Tooty sat on the edge of the bed, a few feet away, clutching her clothes to her lap. Her blond bob clung to her head, smeared mascara had found a home in the lines beneath her dilated eyes. She didn’t seem quite so outdoorsy in the dreary mess of Ivan’s windowless apartment. Instead, she looked stringy and weathered. Nevertheless, Tooty lifted her chin, tried on the indulgent smile of a good sport. “Ivan, I really should be going.”

  “Tooty, you must stay. Now I have two of you. This is perfect. Please. I need you both. If you will just watch this tape, you’ll see what I mean. Please.” He coaxed her back down onto the edge of the monk’s pallet. “Mouse, please, sit.” He patted the bed next to Tooty.

  He snapped on the TV, which sat on an overturned crate, slid in a tape, fast-forwarded to a scene where a Hispanic family of six was crowded around the dinner table.

  Tooty and Ivan, Ivan and Tooty. It was impossible. At the same time it made perfect sense. She was rich and bored. He was arty and bad. He stood watching the videotape, his baseball player arms crossed over his chest.

  Mouse watched while the family passed a bowl of gray mashed potatoes around, then a tub of margarine. The sheets beneath her were still warm. Tooty stared grimly at the video, her skinny bare legs crossed beneath the wad of clothes on her lap. Mouse couldn’t help wondering how long this had been going on. Had she gotten him the gig at the fundraiser or had they met there? Did they have furtive public rendezvous? Did Mr. Mega Bucks suspect?

  “Valentino’s family, their first meal without him,” said Ivan. The mother looked as if she’d had every fluid drained from her body; still, she went through the motions of making sure everyone had enough to eat. Her husband, who taught world history, driver’s ed, and coached basketball at the local high school, complained about budget rollbacks. The youngest son wondered, what was going happen to Valentino’s car. “The sound is too busy, isn’t it? It sounds like a banquet, not six people in mourning.”

  He clicked off the video. “Now what I need you to do …” He cleared stacks of books and papers from his wobbly Formica table, then set it with dishes from the sink, where they were apparently stored in their permanently dirty state. He added a few glasses, crusty with flecks of orange juice, greasy silverware abandoned at the bottom of the dish strainer.

  “Excuse me,” pleaded Tooty, creeping into the phone booth-sized bathroom to get dressed.

  “We must get this done before someone decides to do laundry,” said Ivan. “You know how loud it gets in here. This is our window of opportunity.” He patted the back of one of the folding chairs. “Come. Sit.”

  Stupefied, Mouse moved from the bed to the table. “How long?” She nodded toward the bathroom.

  “We met at the Oscars. She has a serious interest in my documentaries,” said Ivan.

  “We’re shutting down Wedding March,” said Mouse. “Tony and I have broken it off.”

  “Oh?” Ivan adjusted the shotgun mike in its stand, set it on the edge of the table. The mike was six inches long, encased in a gray foam windscreen designed to absorb ambient noise.

  Tooty emerged fully dressed, with hair brushed, makeup freshened, her humiliation left in the bathroom along with Ivan’s T-shirt. She swung her fluffed-up bob, resorted to her beguiling overbite. She was a trouper. “Ivan, this is silly. Can’t we do this later?”

  “Wedding March is off,” said Ivan.

  “It’s off?” said Tooty. Her face said this was a personal affront. “How can it be off? L.A. Today is coming to the shower. It’s been all arranged. Michael had to call in quite a few favors to get it set up.”

  “Tooty has been very generous in supporting the project, both in terms of cash and in-kind donations,” said Ivan. “Tooty, sit right here across from Mouse.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mouse. “It just didn’t work out.”

  “What didn’t work out? Isn’t the thing nearly shot? And what about the distribution deal?” said Tooty. “We’ve got a major distributor lined up. It’s going to play in theaters.”

  “Tony and I. The relationship.”

  “Who’s Tony?”

  “Her fiancé,” said Ivan, “her ex-fiancé. Now, what I need you to do is pretend you are eating, but slowly, slowly. Take time to chew, do not hurry. Remember what they are eating. Mashed potatoes, peas. Think. How does it sound when a woman in mourning eats her peas?” Then, into the mike, “This is dinner at the Escobars’, the night after Valentino’s death, take one.”

  “Ivan,” said Tooty, exasperated.

  He threw her a murderous glance. “Cut. Tooty, we must get this done before someone does their laundry. Dinner at the Escobars’, the night after Valentino’s death, take two.”

  Tooty and Mouse obediently chewed with nothing in their empty mouths, scraped their empty plates with their forks, picked up empty glasses, tipped them up to drink, placed their knives on the rim of the plate, swallowed.

  “And cut.”

  “How much money have we spent on this?” said Tooty.

  “Hundred, hundred-ten thousand.”

  “There’s no chance you’ll patch it up?” said Tooty.

  “Sorry,” said Mouse.

  “This was going to be Ivan’s breakout film.”

  “Well, I suggest this,” said Ivan. “Mouse and I should get married. Dinner at the Escobars’, the night after Valentino’s death, take three. This time even slower.” He picked up his dirty orange juice glass and pretended to drink.

  Mouse and Tooty stared. The spools of tape on the Nagra recorded the appalled silence. Ivan cut an imaginary piece of meat.

  Marry Ivan. Marry Ivan! Yes! It was perfect.

  He doesn’t love you, shrieked The Pink Fiend, how can you marry a guy to make a movie? It was one thing when you were making a movie
because you were getting married! Benazir Bhutto had an arranged marriage, Mouse said to The Fiend. He was married to your sister! You’re sitting here with his mistress! Mouse speared her invisible peas with the tines of her fork.

  “You don’t mean that,” said Tooty. “What about us?”

  “It would be good for us. You are never going to leave Michael. I wouldn’t want you to. This way, any suspicions he may have about your interest in my work will be put to rest.”

  Mouse laughed. Six months ago she resisted marriage to a man she then loved. Now it seemed she would marry anyone. It proved that Shirl’s worst admonitions about teenage sex, that once you got your feet wet you’d do it with anyone, actually applied to getting engaged. She cut an invisible wedge of butter from an invisible butter dish and laid it on her invisible mashed potatoes. If an arranged marriage was good enough for the Prime Minister of Pakistan, it was good enough for her. It’s not even a feature! moaned The Pink Fiend.

  “I would leave Michael. You know that. All you need to do is say the word.”

  “No. It’s better this way. Mouse and I are friends, Tooty, old old friends. It’s nothing like with us.”

  “I just – I’m sorry – I’m not very modern. I love you.”

  “Mouse and I are like brother and sister. We grew up together.”

  Mouse looked from Tooty to Ivan and back. Shirl was right. Mimi was right. Mouse was a love rube of the first order. She snuck some of her invisible peas to the invisible dog begging by the side of her chair. Yuck, peas! “What did happen to Valentino’s car?” she asked.

  “Mouse and I are friends, Tooty. Nothing would change between you and me.”

  “I wish you’d quit saying that, honey,” said Mouse.

  “Will you…live together?” Tooty’s voice trembled.

  “We can always say the stress of making the film broke us up,” said Mouse. “Good publicity.”

  “After the release date is set,” said Ivan.

  “Read my mind,” said Mouse. “We should go on The Newly-wed Game.