The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  Mouse sat by the lagoon all day long, doing a jigsaw puzzle with Shirl. It had a thousand pieces which fitted together to depict a cluster of headlines from the New York Times announcing world disasters. After she finished this puzzle, she would start another one, preferably a landscape.

  In the evening, Mouse wrote notes to everyone invited to the wedding, explaining. She wrote on cheap, plain bond in her own hand. She couldn’t think of one good reason to leave the backyard.

  Mouse had already received a few wedding presents, and these she returned. She paid Nita her commission. She was not sure what to do about the shower presents. To her knowledge, they were all still on the table on the deck, up at the Big House. When she called up there, hands shaking, willing Tony to answer the phone, she got the machine. Suddenly shy, she asked anyone there to call her back. Darryl did within the hour. He said not to worry, Lisa had taken care of everything.

  On the day Mouse and Shirl would have otherwise finished the puzzle, they were drawn away by Till Death Do Us Part: The Cinematic Genius of Ivan Esparza, which aired locally on prime time.

  There was a woman on the show named Mouse FitzHenry with dark hair, large light eyes, an odd dimpled chin, a bruised chipmunk cheek, talking with great authority about Ivan’s approach to documentary, about his commitment to reshaping reality so it would conform to the truth he was dedicated to conveying, about how he died in the heroic attempt to capture and control the uncapturable and the uncontrollable.

  “You have always been my smartest,” said Shirl, easily impressed by multiclaused sentences.

  Mouse was appalled. What was she talking about? She found herself hoping that Tony had been right all along, that metaphorically she was a swimsuit model, that in her past life she was an elephant, anything but this earnest person with Answers.

  When asked by Yvonne how Ivan had chosen her as a collaborator, Mouse rambled about The New Stanley, about the films on tropical diseases, singing bats, and African killer bees, the tiny, little-known tribes whose ancestral homes were at the bottoms of narrow caves, the Berber rock climbers.

  “Just little ole me, capturing the uncapturable, controlling the uncontrollable,” snorted Mouse.

  Shirl told her if she did not stop rolling her eyes they would become permanently stuck up there.

  The next morning, while Mouse was eating a bagel and reading the comics, she received a phone call from someone at one of the studios, an assistant to one of the vice presidents, Allyn Meyer, who wanted to meet with her regarding an African project she had recently acquired, a love story set in Kenya.

  Mouse demurred, saying she needed to check her schedule.

  Actually, she was anxious to finish the jigsaw puzzle. She could not possibly think about leaving until it was complete. She went outside in her big purple robe to where the puzzle lay sprawling on the patio table. Just as she was about to snap the penultimate piece into place there was a healthy, but minor, earthquake; a rumbling shudder that bounced half the puzzle off the table. A few pieces disappeared forever into the pool filter.

  Mouse called back Allyn’s assistant and said she would love to meet Allyn anytime anywhere.

  Tony would also love to meet with Allyn, but that was apparently no longer an option, now that she had purchased Love Among Elephants. Her People talked to his and Ralph’s People, was how it now worked. Her People were the studio business affairs people; their People was a lawyer Ralph was referred to by his boss, Keddy Webb. No one but the lawyer returned Tony’s calls, including V.J. Parchman, who now worked for Michael Brass, wore penny loafers and was called “Vincent.” Ralph, who recently discovered he was going to be the father of twins, was more than happy to accept Writers Guild Minimum and waive the option to do the first rewrite. The day they signed the papers they celebrated, sort of, at a seedy bar called Ye Olde Rustic Pub, around the corner from the apartment he and Elaine now shared.

  “We’re on the map,” said Ralph. “We acted smart. You should always take the money and run.”

  “I just wasn’t quite so keen on relinquishing so much control. Who knows who’ll come in now and bugger the thing up.”

  “I got news for you, just the fact you’re in this business means you relinquish control. Listen what I just said, ‘you’re in this business,’ I’m in this business. We have sold a screenplay. It’s something. This alone separates us from about a half a million other people staggering around this terrible city, their calendars filled with pitch meetings, their heads filled with ideas capable of being explained in four words. Next year, on our income tax, we can put screenwriter. I’m hoping to God there’s at least one girl in there. They did the ultrasound today. Elaine and I razzed the technician, ‘How many penises do you see in there! Don’t say two, please, don’t say two.’ Girls are easier, that’s what we hear.”

  “Like Mouse and Mimi, for example.”

  “Jesus, I forgot about them.”

  Ralph had to take off after one drink, some baby-related business. Tony wandered around the quiet streets of Santa Monica, writing down phone numbers of apartments for rent, enjoying the lonely smell of the damp salt air. With his share of the money he would buy some kind of used car and move out of the Big House. He did not think he could take another Lakers game. He knew he could not take the memory of Mouse pounding on the bathroom door, moments after that self-important sod had plummeted headfirst into the cactus patch, her voice frayed with horror, nearly unrecognizable: “Tony, please, Ivan’s dead.”

  Mouse’s meeting with Allyn Meyer was postponed twice, then, on a cool bright day in early May, a week before she and Tony, then Ivan, were supposed to be married, it finally took place.

  When Mouse returned from the meeting, Shirl was standing on the front porch in a flutter.

  “A boy called you!” Shirl hollered across the lawn, flapping her hands. “Some foreigner here for the wedding! He needs to be picked up at the airport. I didn’t know what to do. I wrote down his flight number. Pan Am number 137 from London. He came all the way from wherever it was. Stanley was his name.”

  “I think we should call Tony.”

  “Tony! This poor man’s come all the way from Africa, Mousie Mouse. You better hustle your butt down to the airport.”

  “It’s not that.” She didn’t mind going to the airport. She felt terrible that Stanley had made this long trip for nothing. Gabrielle had obviously never told him the wedding had been called off. She had taken all that trouble to find him, then forgot about him. Mouse imagined Stanley on his skateboard going round and round on the carousel in baggage claim, abandoned like a lost suitcase.

  No, it had nothing to do with Stanley.

  “Mom, call Tony.”

  “I’m not your social secretary. You call him when you get back.”

  “Please, tell him I’m not here. Tell him you just got home. Say you don’t know where I am, and you found Stanley’s message on the machine. Say you didn’t know what to do, and that’s why you’re calling him.”

  Shirl pursed her lips to keep from smiling.

  THE RELIEF MOUSE felt when a calm woman at the Pan Am ticket counter told her Stanley’s flight was just clearing customs was doubled when she reached the waiting area and saw the familiar lean back of a tall freckled man with curly strawberry-blond hair.

  Tony anxiously peered over the heads of people streaming in from the International Terminal. People covered with the film of travel, wan from no sleep, bad airplane air, and noxious pear cobbler.

  “Well, if it isn’t Tony Cheatham!” said Mouse. Calm down, advised The Pink Fiend. Hysteria does not become you. Nervously, Mouse fingered the collar of her green silk blouse. This was absolutely ridiculous.

  “What are you doing here? Your mum just rang me up, said she didn’t know where you were. I can’t believe no one told him the wedding – about the change of plans.”

  “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here.” She felt her face bloom pink with the lie.

  “It’s no t
rouble, no trouble at all.” Tony tugged on the end of his nose. “Be good to see Stanley again – say, I saw you on the box the other week. Very smooth.”

  “Oh, that. The Revenge of the Masked Pedant,” said Mouse. It was difficult to look him in the eye. She was sure her scheme, a profoundly silly one that violated every firmly held value and belief she had about such things, a scheme worthy of How to Get a Teenage Boy and What to Do with Him Once You Get Him, could be read clearly on her forehead.

  “You all right?”

  Don’t tell him. Do not tell him. Do not let him think that you orchestrated this whole thing just so you could see him, just so you could circumvent that age-old female problem: how to make it look as though fate, and not a crafty woman in love, was behind a chance meeting. “I made Shirl call you,” Mouse blurted out. “I was home. I made her call you and tell you I wasn’t so that you’d come here. Then we could accidentally run into each other.”

  “You could have just rung me up, you know.” To hide his smirk he bent his head, taking a sudden interest in a hard beige bud of chewing gum mashed on the linoleum.

  “That would’ve been too obvious,” said Mouse.

  “Quite. This is much more subtle. Making it look as though our meeting was an accident, then confessing you planned it. But really, you could have just popped by. Were you afraid I’d send you packing?”

  “After you saw this, yes.” Mouse reached into her laundry basket-sized purse and pulled out a copy of Love Among Elephants.

  “Where in the bloody hell did you get that?”

  “Allyn Meyer. She saw me on TV and we had a meeting. I’m rewriting it.”

  Tony’s show-dog grin dropped from his face. “You’re what?”

  They were interrupted by the hum of an electric wheelchair at the far end of the hall. It was Stanley, looking raffish in a double-breasted black linen sports coat, the tip of a red handkerchief peeking from his pocket. He steered the chair between two bouncy flight attendants. They yattered with the high spirits of the hugely entertained.

  “Where on earth did he get that jacket?” said Mouse. “He looks terrific.”

  “You’re rewriting my script?”

  “What do you think Stanley will make of Rodeo Drive?”

  “But you’re not … you’re not a … a frigging screenwriter. This is absolute madness.”

  “What will Watts look like, to Stanley? Or the Venice Beach Boardwalk?”

  “Just tell me one thing – I know this is rather rude – how much are they paying you?”

  “Enough.”

  “Enough? Are you daft? There’s no concept of enough in this city. One meeting and you’re hired. Have you any idea how many meetings I’ve suffered through?”

  “I’ve got an entire case of ECN left over from Wedding March. After I get paid I’ll have enough to process and print it. There’ll be enough to pay us real salaries, Tony. Small ones, but real ones.”

  “The first thing you’ll take out is the swimsuit models on safari, isn’t it? Be honest. I can take it.”

  “Never. That’s my favorite part.”

  Tony and Mouse traded grins. To Mouse, their smiles felt dangerously familiar, like those they’d once carelessly tossed to one another in a dusty African village.

  “Perhaps we could call it The New Stanley Goes Hollywood. Or no, The Newer Stanley,” said Tony.

  “We could do a whole Stanley in America series,” said Mouse.

  “Here are my friends who get married!” said Stanley. “Tony and Mouse, may I present Janine and Tracy.”

  “Congratulations,” said Janine or Tracy.

  “Thank you,” said Mouse. She reached over and squeezed Stanley’s shoulder. She imagined him, suddenly, propped in a patio chair by the lagoon. The chair she saw had a bright red and pink floral cushion that would complement Stanley’s rich umber skin. In the background the gurgle of the lagoon’s waterfall would harmonize with the oceanic sound of the wind in the palms overhead, conveniently covering the whir of the camera. At Stanley’s elbow, a touch of visual irony in the form of either a bottle of overpriced designer water or a cocktail with a parasol in it. She and Tony would interview him after a trip to Disneyland. There would be the usual battle over who would get stuck rolling sound.

  “We should probably wait until he’s had some sleep and a meal before we pitch our idea, don’t you think?” Tony whispered to Mouse, looping his arm around her shoulder.

  “I do,” she whispered back.