Roulette

by Megan Mulry

  Give me a break. Seriously? Am I Landon’s mother? Now I’m really peeved. I look at James, try to bite my tongue, but he winks, the stupid bastard, and I blurt, “Hey, Jimmy, you know what? Someone’s being a prick.”

  Landon puts his hand on the soft part of my arm above my elbow and squeezes. “Miki?”

  “Yes?” I turn and give him my mother’s best megawatt smile. If he wants “the whole package,” he is damn well going to get it.

  “Why don’t we go dance.” It isn’t a question. He leads me away from the jerk posse and then pulls me aside before we get anywhere near the dance floor. “What the hell are you thinking? James is about to set up one of the most important specialty practices in Los Angeles, and we might become business partners. What is the matter with you? Have you been drinking?”

  I look down at the untouched champagne I’ve been carrying around for the entire endless hour. I have never felt more clearheaded in my life. “Barely a sip.” I stare into his eyes. They are perfect. Sparkly blue. And empty. In that moment, I know I would rather be alone than be with this man. “I think we’re finished here, Landon.”

  “What? We haven’t even gone in to dinner yet.”

  “I mean we are finished.”

  “You’re going to break up with me at a fucking cardiologists’ fund-raiser at the Beverly Hilton?”

  “Would you rather I call your receptionist and schedule a more convenient time?”

  Turns out Landon might have a bit of a violent streak. Through clenched teeth he whispers, “How dare you make fun of me at a time like this?”

  I shake out my long hair. I am the whole package, damn it, a 100 percent American woman. Well, technically half-Russian, but whatever. I’m channeling Lenny Kravitz.

  “I’m not making fun of you, Landon.” I unhook the diamond necklace he gave me for my birthday and hold it out to him. He won’t take it, so I end up slipping it into the side pocket of his tuxedo jacket. I reach up to touch his upper arm. He isn’t really a bad guy; he’s just completely wrong for me.

  He pulls away from my attempt at a conciliatory touch.

  “Fine.” I shrug. “Think what you want.”

  He looks around the party, probably to see if we’re making a scene. “We need to talk about this, Miki. How can you go from wanting to move in together to wanting to break up in the course of a month?”

  I look up at the ceiling—absurdly ornate, fake Italian Renaissance rosettes—and count to five. I exhale and look him right in the eye. “I do not want to marry you, Landon. It’s just that simple. I’m sorry if you feel I led you on, but it has taken me until this moment to really know my own mind. I’m sorry, again, for what you see as a waste of your time.”

  “You are such a cold bitch.”

  Well, that pretty much seals the deal. I extend my left hand and ask for my lipstick.

  “Your what?”

  “My lipstick. I asked you to carry it in your jacket pocket because it wouldn’t fit in my narrow clutch. May I have it, please?”

  “Miki, honey, come on. This can’t be over.”

  “Landon. You just called me a cold bitch. Let’s not go down this road. I’ll call you in a couple of weeks, and we can go to a movie or something and try to be normal so we’re not awkward at our friends’ parties. All right?”

  “I don’t even know who you are anymore. Ever since you got back from Saint Petersburg, you’ve been this judgmental, arrogant cun—”

  I hold up my hand and put two fingers over his lips. To anyone across the room at the party, it will look like a gentle, momentary passion. Maybe I do have a drop of my mother’s theatrical blood in my veins after all.

  “You really, really do not want to finish that sentence, Lan. You know what they say—some things can never be unsaid.” I let my fingers come away from his lips. “Keep the lipstick.”

  I turn on my very high, very sexy heel and walk out of the ballroom. I cross the lobby and pull my cell phone out of my too-slim purse. I loved that lipstick. I am going to miss it.

  There is only one thing I need to do.

  I hop into a cab in front of the hotel and hit the speed dial for Vivian.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It is loud in the background when she picks up. “Hello!” she screams into her cell phone.

  I raise my voice slightly so she can hear me. “Viv? It’s Mik. Where are you?”

  “Wait! I’m stepping outside! Hold on!”

  I wait about a minute, then hear the sound of a loud door banging and the relative silence of a sidewalk full of people. Vivian is an executive producer at Paramount. Her husband, Peter Travkin, is a viciously successful entertainment lawyer. So it’s entirely likely that one or the other of them has some fancy party going on.

  “Mik? What’s going on? Where are you?”

  “I just broke up with Landon.”

  “Oh, honey, where do you want me to meet you?” Vivian takes life by the balls. She has probably done more in her thirty-three years than most people do in three hundred. She even plans her vacations like Rommel planned for Egypt.

  “Where are you? It sounds loud and irresponsible, which is exactly what I need right now.”

  “It’s totally grubby, but you should come. Are you wearing that purple-and-yellow vintage Pucci dress?”

  “Vivian. Only you would give me fashion advice at a time like this. Where are you?”

  “Peter’s cousin is in that stupid band, and we came to support him. It’s a bunch of rich kids pretending they’re skate rats at Whisky a Go Go. Get over here. We’ll stay for a set, then go have proper drinks at the Rainbow. Landon’s a dick.”

  “Oh, cut it out. You said he was ‘husband material’ just last week.” Peter loves to tell people about their meet-cute—it was an adorable fender bender on Mulholland that threw them together—mostly because he never loses his sense of awe that he was able to convince this brilliant, beautiful woman to marry him. Vivian knew she had found husband material.

  “Well, I know how you look up to me, and I wanted it to be your own decision.”

  I tell the patient taxi driver the address and then turn my attention back to Vivian. “Thanks. I guess. I’ll be there in ten minutes. See you soon. And, Viv?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome, sweetie.” Then she’s gone.

  I disconnect the call and begin to wonder what the hell just happened in that hotel ballroom. I think of the Bob Dylan lyric about mathematicians and carpenters’ wives, and I realize my overwhelming feeling is plain old relief. I am simply relieved that I am no longer on the road to ever becoming Mrs. Dr. Landon Winslow Clark III.

  I am free! I am as light as a bubble. And maybe as fragile, but I am free, so I don’t care about fragility at the moment. I want to get falling-down drunk.

  I succeed.

  I wake up the next day with my face pressed into the sofa cushion of Vivian’s playroom with her youngest child, six-year-old Eli, dragging a neon-pink feather across my forehead and down my cheek.

  When I open my mouth to speak, I almost throw up on him.

  “Hi, Aunt Miki. You look like a scary monster. Your eyes are all black like the mean girl on Pokémon.”

  “Thanks, Eli,” I say in a scratchy whisper.

  “You’re welcome,” he answers politely, then goes back to his meticulous block-building project.

  I groan as I sit up and hold my face in my hands. There is something final about being this hungover. I definitely threw out all the babies with the bathwater last night, that’s for damn sure.

  I stand up on wobbly feet and practically float, Chagall-style, into the kitchen, following the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Vivian must have changed me into one of her T-shirts, I realize as I look down at myself. I vaguely remember peeling off my dress in front of a ro
omful of faceless people and suggesting we all go skinny-dipping.

  “Hey, sunshine!” Vivian cries in a too-loud voice. She hands me a coffee, and I scowl at her. “Okay,” she says more quietly. “I’ll try to be nice. That was a stellar performance, by the way. Your mother would be proud.”

  I growl into my coffee and take a big sip. Heaven. I put my other hand around the warm ceramic mug and lean my hip against the white marble countertop.

  “Did we stay at Whisky a Go Go?” I ask casually.

  Vivian turns from the scrambled eggs on the stove and puts one hand on her hip while she holds a black spatula in the other. She has on some crazy, domestic, frilly white bathrobe that makes her look exactly like June Cleaver. Her straight red hair and porcelain skin complete the wholesome facade.

  “You’re unbelievable,” she chides. “Whisky a Go Go? You’re lucky you’re even in the United States, much less still in Los Angeles County.” She turns back to the eggs and keeps talking. “At first you just wanted to get up onstage with the band; then, after we convinced you that was a bad idea, you wanted to go to a bar over in West Hollywood, because someone told you there was a French torch singer or something. Then we ended up going for martinis at the Hotel Bel-Air, because you said you missed your mother. Then you said you were going to get on a plane to Acapulco to go visit her or your cousin Olga, and we had to convince you again that that was not a good idea. Then you had a few more martinis and told us you were on your way to Paris.” She turns back again to face me. “To marry Rome de Villiers.”

  I take another sip of my coffee and look at her over the rim of the mug. “Wow,” I say. “Sounds like I was really drunk.”

  She points the spatula at me. “You were drunk, but you’re not getting off that easily. Go jump in the pool and borrow something of mine.” She turns back to the stove. “Peter went in to the office, so you don’t have to worry about bumping into anyone . . . not that you left anything to the imagination with your striptease—”

  “Please,” I beg. “Please have mercy on me. First, let me suffer my physical humiliation. Then we can begin the emotional portion of our show.” I shuffle out of the kitchen, toward the pool, and try to rejoin the living. I can hear Vivian laughing at my expense as she calls all three of her children in for breakfast.

  I float around in the pool for a while, the heavy T-shirt clinging to my body in a morbidly comforting way. I feel like I am being mummified. Maybe that’s what is happening to my life: a slow, asphyxiating death.

  Maybe I’m reenacting Sunset Boulevard after all, I think as I float like a corpse facedown in Vivian and Peter’s pool. Either that or The Graduate, neither of which bodes well for my future. I get out of the pool and drag myself to the outdoor shower on the side of the small guesthouse. I am starting to revive, and I turn off the shower with a renewed faith in my own abilities to act like an adult. I have a great job. I have great friends. I have an amazing house in a vibrant, thriving neighborhood. I need to quit obsessing about dudes for a while and get on with my life.

  My pretty awesome life, now that I think about it. I’ve been ready to give Landon the boot for weeks, and I was just too much of a coward to admit it. Now that he’s officially out of the picture, I can really focus on work and do some of that joyful life living I’m supposedly after. I towel off with a renewed sense of life’s grand possibilities and walk upstairs to Vivian’s room, where I stand for a few minutes in her insanely vast and organized closet. I grab a purple T-shirt and a long peasant skirt from Calypso.

  When I get back to the kitchen, the kids are nearly finished with breakfast and Isabel, my ten-year-old goddaughter, looks up.

  “Hi, Aunt Miki. What are you doing here?”

  “I had a sleepover.”

  “Aren’t you kind of old to be having sleepovers?” Isabel has entered the not-always-charming double digits, marked by sarcasm with a dash of ridicule.

  I reach for the chair next to her, pull it out, and sit down. “I hope I’m never too old for a sleepover.”

  “Me, too,” she says through a smile. “I just wish you had come earlier last night. We could have watched a movie or something.” She takes another bite of her eggs.

  “Well, why don’t we hang out today?” I realize it’s the first Saturday I’ve been free in ages and hope she bites. “Do you have anything going on?”

  Isabel looks at her mother. “You’ll probably say I have to practice the piano or do homework.”

  “Oh, please. Would you cut it out with the aggrieved-preteen thing? I have never told you to practice the piano or do your homework. Go spend the day with Miki and say mean things about me behind my back. I was mean to her long before I was mean to you.”

  Isabel smiles, gives me a clandestine thumbs-up under the countertop, and whispers, “Yay!”

  “Viv, do you have time to take us back to my place to get my car, or should I call a cab?”

  Vivian looks up at the wall clock above the sink and then out the window. “I think if we all hustle I can drop you off and still make it to Ryan’s soccer game.”

  “I do not want to be late, Mom!” Ryan is eight going on eighty. We all joke that he was born in a coat and tie.

  “Then go upstairs and get ready. And just because we need to move quickly does not mean you don’t have time to brush your teeth. You, too, Eli and Isabel. Go!”

  All three leap from their stools and run upstairs.

  “Thanks for that,” Vivian says. “I can’t believe the I-hate-my-mother phase now starts at ten. I don’t remember hating my mother until I was at least twelve.” She rinses off the breakfast dishes and loads them into the dishwasher. A few minutes later, she has wiped down the counters and the kitchen table, answered a couple of emails on the large Mac that sits at the end of the counter, and fed the dog.

  I sit staring at her, ashamed of my own domestic uselessness. I can barely keep a plant alive.

  “What are you staring at?” she asks, without turning around from the computer screen.

  “You’re just ridiculously productive.”

  “Don’t start with the wonder-mom crap. You know I have a nanny and a housekeeper every minute of every day except Saturday. It’s not like I do this on a regular basis. And you’re basically teaching some kind of statistics that Albert Einstein would have had to think about and running a Russian paper empire—”

  “It’s hardly an empire—”

  “Whatever,” she interrupts with a quick eye roll. “Don’t start being modest with me. It’s far too late for that, Ms. Supermodel Brainiac.”

  I smile and finish my coffee in silence. Vivian goes into the laundry room and comes out two minutes later in a pair of bike shorts, sneakers, and a zip-up hoodie.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Okay, chief,” I answer with a small salute. Vivian is unstoppable.

  We all pile into the enormous Escalade (that Vivian drives only on Saturdays, when her nanny is off), and Isabel and I go back to my place. We walk all around Venice Beach. We have lunch down near the pier, eating lots of food that is bad for us—that Vivian would never allow—and laugh about how we’re being sooooo bad. We drink too much soda and eat fried dough and feel sick after. I suggest we go to LACMA for one of its afternoon drawing classes for kids. Isabel is just on the verge of that age where she doesn’t want to do anything specifically geared toward children, so it is only after I agree to participate that she gives in.

  We drive across town and walk through the lamppost forest to find a group of parents and children convening near the information desk. The teacher is a handsome young college professor named Mark. I think he might be sweet on me. I look down and realize I probably look like a teenager myself. Vivian’s too-small purple top and flowy long skirt make me look as if I’ve just been airlifted in from Coachella.

  Something about wearing someone else’s clothes makes me feel li
ke someone else. Like someone who flirts with a docent. I smile at cute Mark, then follow him as he directs us through several galleries, until he stops in front of the piece we are going to discuss and draw this afternoon.

  Perfect. Just perfect. The Matisse.

  This particular Matisse and I go way back. An ultra-wealthy family who lived near The Monstrosity commissioned this tile confection in the 1950s. They have grandchildren my age, and I used to go over there to play, not realizing that it was rather unusual to have Picassos and Giacomettis scattered around the house. What I would now call the more aggressive pieces in their collection always made me nervous. The Picasso over the piano was downright terrifying—not the image itself, but the painting sort of radiated its priceless importance to the point that none of us even liked to walk anywhere near it.

  But La Gerbe is different. As ten-year-old Isabel would say, “Le sigh.”

  I sit cross-legged on the floor next to Isabel and start sketching. Of course, all I can think of is Rome leaning into my neck and talking to me about the red painting in the Hermitage. I force myself back to the present and focus on the shapes of the leaves, the joyful explosion of color and motion.

  But I also think about that woman who is arranging the fruit bowl back in Saint Petersburg, frozen in time. It is hard to believe the same artist created both pieces. This is one of the last things Matisse did before he died, and it feels entirely free—bright ceramic leaves explode across a pure white background in a carefree, joyful array. It’s as if the woman cocooned in her red and blue–vined cell has escaped. She’s flown. I worry that I will squander my life, busying myself at a table like that. This one, with all of its white openness and free-floating expression, makes me think of Rome. It makes me think of how Rome makes me feel.

  My pencil slows and then stops. Isabel is really into it, drawing the outline of each leaf with precision. I feel the tears on my cheek and reach down to the silly bohemian skirt and use it to dry my eyes.