The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  She folded her arms, stared at the spot on the floor under his swinging tennis-shoed feet. She’d forgotten he’d also gone to law school, the sadist.

  “I’d do it, make a promise like that,” said a softspoken, fortyish minor actress who always seemed to get stuck playing the beautiful woman hacked up in the first ten minutes of classy slasher films. “You know, heat of passion.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Mimi. “There was passion. At least at first.” She glared at Ralph. “Plus, who’s to say that Rolf isn’t a big jerk? Who’s to say I’m not going to have him hit by a train in the next chapter?”

  “I know how that is,” said the actress.

  “A woman might make that kind of faux pas,” said the Yank with eight fingers, “but I’m with Ralph. I don’t think a man, even a stupid one, ever would.”

  “So besides having constructed a completely unbelievable scenario, you don’t really know the simplest things about your characters, Mimi, do you? Any other comments?” Ralph flashed a wide, condescending smile.

  “Mr. Holladay? I’m a little confused. Where does he tell Mina he wouldn’t sleep with his wife? I mean, I see where Mina says that’s what he told her, but where does he actually say it? Don’t we need to see that?” asked a thin girl in black, who looked too young to know about any of this sleaziness first hand.

  “It’s here, on page –” Ralph flipped through the pages.

  “He never says that,” said Mimi. “In my book he never says it. Only in real life. That time we got food poisoning from the scallops at that place in Hermosa, Ralph.”

  A few gratifying giggles erupted behind her.

  He skimmed each paragraph, pretending he was looking for what he knew wasn’t there, for what he realized were his own lying words. His face turned the purple-red of what is known in blockbuster talk as his throbbing member. “I must have been thinking of something else,” he muttered.

  “Where’d you say it was?” asked someone else.

  “Scratch everything I just said,” Ralph stammered. “I was thinking of another story.”

  “Same story, final chapter,” Mimi said, scooping up her file folder. She slung her purse over her shoulder and strode out.

  She heard Ralph hurriedly announce a break, after which they would return to discuss the all-important use of the adverb, then anxious footsteps echoing behind her in the empty hall.

  He was coming after her. Ralph, full of explanations. He had sounded so desperate the night he’d called from the baseball game. He probably genuinely did miss the fun they used to have.

  “Mimi,” he called.

  She turned, in what she hoped was a dignified manner. Dignity was something she needed to do more of. “Yes?”

  “Elaine wasn’t really buying a thousand dollars’ worth of hats, was she?”

  Over Ralph’s shoulder she saw the class clustered just outside the door, bombarding a patient Lex Waldorf with questions. She should be there! Didn’t he stop taking his phone calls while she read her chapter? Didn’t he laugh? She couldn’t very well go back now. It was the chance you took when you went for the grand exit.

  “No,” she said. “You aren’t a rich and famous director, either.”

  She kept walking.

  25

  SKILLET, SKILLET, SKILLET, SKILLET, SKILLET, SKILLET, skillet, skillet, skillet, skillet, skillet, skillet. You see how it is when a word is repeated over and over again? It becomes no more meaningful than the sounds made by an infant struggling for speech. It begins to sound silly. Imagine the word was “marriage.”

  Mouse had said this word to herself so much, repeated it aloud so often during interviews conducted by her brand-new fiancé, heard herself repeat it over and over again while syncing up the rushes of these interviews, that she didn’t know what it was anymore.

  Now the wedding, she knew what that was (candles from the Vatican, Fijian orchids, a twenty-two-pound wedding dress, a sit-down dinner at the Bel Air Hotel). She knew what Wedding March was (the euphoria of pre-production, the grind of production, the tedium of post, the amazement and satisfaction that the final product makes any sense at all; distribution, exhibition, awards), but marriage? Marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage? She couldn’t remember why she was against it, and she had no idea why now it seemed no more odious than signing up for a summer softball league. As a result, she was looking forward to it.

  It was a little less than a month before the wedding. The afternoon of the wedding shower, Mouse dropped over to see Shirl. She found her in the backyard spraying fixative on a plank of découpage lying on the perennially struggling patch of dichondra. A pad of paper hung from a piece of black yarn around her neck, the better to help her remember things. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass blared from the hi-fi. The waterfall burbled into the newly refurbished Lagoon. Despite the cruel heat, celebration hung in the air.

  Mouse had told no one about the change in grooms, except Nita, who, for a moment, paled with the idea of losing her commission. They debated about whether they should send out announcements:

  Mrs. Shirley FitzHenry

  requests the pleasure of your company

  at the marriage of her daughter

  Frances Anne

  to Ivan Jose Esparza

  instead of

  Anthony Noel Cheatham

  Nothing sounded quite right. Anyway, after doing some quick figuring, Nita didn’t think there would be time to get the announcement printed and mailed out before May 11. Instead, she suggested treating the shower as an engagement party. Mouse agreed this would be the easiest way, but felt her mother deserved advance warning.

  Shirl pulled down her air filter mask and stood back to admire her handiwork, humming along with the Tijuana Brass. She didn’t hear Mouse, who came and stood beside her.

  “What’s up, Mom?”

  “It’s you! I thought it was Barb! Don’t look, don’t look. It’s your present.” Shirl smacked her palm over Mouse’s eyes.

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  “You saw it!”

  ‘’I didn’t.”

  She did, though. It was photograph of her and Tony, taken during the making of The New Stanley in Stanley’s village in northwestern Kenya.

  She remembered the moment it had been taken. Tony had just told the crew about the time he left the windscreen for the shotgun mike at a hotel where they’d been staying in Dar es Salaam. The maids had found the six-inch gray-foam tube under the bed. Mystified and titillated, they turned it over to the proprietor. When Tony went back to find it, the proprietor pulled him aside and asked him where he, too, could get such a wonderful American sexual aid.

  In the background of the photograph the crew members were doubled over in laughter. A group of villagers off to one side tittered shyly into their hands. Mouse and Tony were in the foreground, throwing a sideways grinning glance at each other, the proud glance of possession that says, you are really the one, aren’t you.

  “I thought you were Barb, coming back with the wrapping paper,” said Shirl. “Go ahead and look. Isn’t it nice? I have a bigger thing for you anyway. This is just a little thing. I love this picture. You two have a good time, is what it shows.”

  “Mom, come inside.”

  “Inside, why inside? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s cooler inside. We need to talk about something.”

  “Are you pregnant? You’re not pregnant. You should have waited a year, gotten used to married life. Your father and I made a mistake that way. I barely knew how he liked his socks folded and there I was morning sick with your sister.”

  “Can we go inside?”

  “Tell me now!”

  “Mom.”

  “Tell me! You’re frightening me!” She stamped her foot. Tears filled her faded spaniel eyes.

  “Tony and I aren’t getting married.”

  “Aren’t getting married? The wedding’s off. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, t
he wedding’s still on.”

  “Oh God, that beautiful dress! And all those lovely flowers.” Shirl sobbed into her paint-stained hands. “Mimi so wanted to be your Maid of Honor. That kind of thing means so much to a girl like her.”

  “Mom, please, come sit down.”

  Shirl allowed herself to be led to the patio table, muttering about the invitations and the Limoges, the five-foot wedding cake, the shoes she’d had dyed special. Mouse went to the kitchen and got a glass of water. By the time she brought it back to the patio table the ice cubes had melted.

  “The wedding is still on, Mom. Listen to me. The wedding is still on.”

  “That nice Nita had to pull all those strings just to get the church on the day you wanted.”

  “Mom, I’m marrying Ivan. Tony and I had a falling out. We had no business thinking about marriage in the first place. And then, you know Ivan and I have always been friends. It just seemed like, why not? There’ll still be a wedding. I’ll still wear the dress.”

  “Ivan? Ivan who?”

  “Ivan, Mom. You know Ivan.”

  “Not that confused Mexican boy Mimi was married to?”

  “Yes.”

  Shirl pulled a Kleenex out of the pocket of her pantsuit, dabbed at her nose, considered this for a moment.

  “I liked that Tony.”

  “I did, too. It just didn’t work out. L.A. seems to have brought out the worst in him, in us.”

  “So now you know the worst. That’s the perfect time to marry. No surprises. The week before I married your father, come to find out he had a habit of cleaning his fingernails at the table with the salad fork. I still married him, and had you two lovely girls. That Tony’s nice and tall. He’s got a good jaw. You should think of your children.”

  “It’s complicated, Mom.” She didn’t think she should drag his offensive screenplay into this. “If it hadn’t been for your accident, we never would have gotten engaged in the first place.”

  “My accident? What in God’s name does that have to do with it? I wake up in my hospital bed, next thing I know Mimi’s there telling me she’s called you in Africa and that you’re getting married.”

  “We didn’t get engaged until after we came home.”

  “No, no. Mimi said you were getting married. She found you in that Zaire place. She thought at first maybe you already got married. The connection wasn’t so good.”

  “We were working on a film about marriage, Mom, a film. We weren’t getting married. We were never getting married.”

  “Frances Anne FitzHenry, I lay right in that hospital bed and you promised me you’d wear white. You promised me you’d do it in a proper church.”

  “I – I did. But I thought you were dying. I’d been away all those years. Here you were in the hospital, and after what happened to Dad. I thought you wanted me to get married.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” said Shirl. “You’re a grown woman. You do whatever you want. Did I ever make a stink about you living in a foreign place? I certainly did not.”

  “You didn’t want me to get married?”

  “Of course I wanted you to get married, but that doesn’t mean you should get married on account of me. Those are two different things. I want you to get married because that’s a mother’s job. If the truth be known, I always in my heart of hearts expected more from you than just marriage. Mimi always used to tell me that when she had her period she felt like she was doing something. You were never like that.”

  Mouse stared at the waterfall tumbling over the red rocks into the shallow end of the lagoon. Her father’s pride and joy.

  If Fitzy hadn’t stopped to pick up the earring in the crosswalk, he’d be alive today. If she and Tony had gone to Mimi’s book group instead of straight to the hospital …

  “Is that your ring?”

  “Oh,” said Mouse, holding her hand up for Shirl to admire. Ivan had immediately presented her with a hefty white diamond, a single carat in a platinum setting. She swore she’d seen it before on Tooty Brass’s stringy brown finger. Shirl examined it, then Mouse’s thick pearly pink fingernails.

  “Well, that’s lovely. Nice he gives you a ring. Tony never sprung for a ring.”

  “He wanted to give me one, but I wouldn’t take it.”

  “You still have that fungus under your nails?”

  “I’ll always have it.”

  “Oh, well. I like your polish.”

  They sat for a moment. Shirl sipped her water. She took a pencil from behind her ear and wrote on the pad slung around her neck: get picture of Mouse and Ivan. Mouse suddenly envied her mother’s genius for adjusting to improbable circumstances. She would outlive all of them.

  “Ivan is all for black and white as the colors? He’s all for prime rib and baby carrots at the reception dinner?”

  “Everything. He’s being a prince.”

  “You gave me a scare, honey. I went to six different shoe places to find the right shade of taupe for my shoes.”

  THE DAY OF the shower, the Big House was busier than Heathrow over the holidays. The carpet cleaner. The window washer. For some undisclosed reason, the plumber. The house had a merciless western exposure, no air conditioning. After about one o’clock it was ten degrees hotter inside than out. Forget frying an egg on the sidewalk; an egg fresh from the fridge would be hard-boiled by the time you cracked it on the edge of the counter.

  Nevertheless, the parade of service people marched on. Rental tables and chairs were delivered. A sheet cake arrived. Phone calls from the florist, the caterers, the assistant to Mr. Futake, the corn syrup sculptor, inquiring as to the number of burners on the stove.

  Tony felt like the bleeding butler, letting people in, answering the phone. He felt put upon, abused, a forgotten stick of suddenly very important humanity there at the top of the frying city, for at 12:27, between a phone call from a guest needing directions and one from the window washer asking should he bring an extension for his ladder, V.J. Parchman called with good news. Solid good news, unlike the normal spongy Hollywood variety rife with contingencies and suppositions.

  Allyn Meyer wanted to buy Love Among Elephants.

  Allyn Meyer wanted to buy his script! They’d turned in the new draft (really the original first draft with new covers) only the week before. It was the Romeo and Juliet in Kenya version, wherein he and Mouse exchanged vows in the Rwandan mountains in the fog, among the gorillas. Tony hadn’t expected an answer this quickly.

  “Get yourself a lawyer if you don’t already have one,” said V.J. “She’s only offering Writers Guild Minimum, which is hardly enough to qualify as money, but there it is.”

  “This is bloody fantastic!”

  “There’s another thing – I suppose you should have your lawyer get with her about this – she wants you to waive your option to do the first rewrite.”

  “So she really went for the love story. Did she say anything? Did she like it? Obviously, she must have liked it.”

  “She’s getting the idea off the street, is what’s happening here.”

  “Have you rung up Ralph, yet? He’ll go berserk.”

  “I don’t think she has any intention of following through with it once I’m gone.”

  “Once you’re – you’re not headed back to Nairobi, are you?”

  “Nairobi? You gotta be kidding. I’m going over to head Michael Brass’s new production company. I’d love to take this project with me. We couldn’t offer you anything up front, of course, but there’d be a lot on the back end, including a guarantee that we won’t hire any other writers. You’ll see it through to the final print.”

  “I’ve got to speak with Ralph. We’ve got to speak with Allyn, What is Writers Guild Mininium anyway?”

  V.J. told him. It sounded like a hefty sum until he figured what it would be after he split it with Ralph, then paid taxes and a lawyer to negotiate a contract. Then it sounded like just enough to buy a next-up-from-the-bottom-of-the-line Toyota.

  T
ony reiterated that he needed to speak with Ralph and rang off. Allyn Meyer wanted to buy his script.

  Ralph wasn’t at the office, nor was he at home. Tony left messages at both places. He tried to call Mimi. She was at lunch. He even tried to call Darryl and Sather at the editing rooms, despite the fact he was furious with them for still allowing Mimi and Lisa to use the house for the wedding shower when the wedding no longer included him. It was positively inhumane. What was he supposed to do? Hang about like a good old sport, wish Mouse and that creep his best? Propose a toast?

  “You don’t have to be there,” Darryl had said before they left that morning. “I’ll come home, give you the car, you can take off.” Then Sather called and said they had to have a reel on the dubbing stage at seven the next morning, and probably wouldn’t be home until after midnight.

  “You promised you’d lend me your bloody car!” Tony had shouted.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  Now, now that he was a working screenwriter – Eow! Allyn Meyer wants to buy me bloody script! – he really had to get out of there. No working Hollywood screenwriter would be caught dead lurking about the shadows of the wedding shower for the woman he was at one time engaged to marry, but who was now marrying someone else. No working screenwriter was obligated to be a good sport.

  He stood on the deck in the full rage of the sun, toasting the view with a fresh bottle of gin. “I sold a script!” he called to the smog. “I am a screenwriter!” he sang to the limp forest of prickly pear stretching down the hill beneath the deck. The strong urge to call Mouse with the news was a knife in his heart.

  Lisa arrived, a little after six, struggling through the house with a deck chair from her own patio, the backs of her wet legs imprinted with the pattern of the upholstery on her bucket seats. She’d been dropped off by Carole, who was already headed back down the hill to pick up some of Mimi’s potted plants.

  “Potted plants!” Tony followed her out onto the deck. “What do you need potted bloody plants for? It’s a wedding shower, for God’s sake, not a meeting of the frigging ladies’ auxiliary. I desperately need to borrow your car.”

  “You guys live like cavemen is why we need the plants.”