L.A. Woman

by Cathy Yardley

  Don’t call. This is a really bad idea.

  The litany continued in her head as she picked up the phone and started to dial. She knew it was a bad idea. However, it was the only idea she really had available right now. Besides, it probably was a hell of a lot more productive than going over to see Ms. Peccorino and Jeremy the Cute with a baseball bat.

  “Becker Electronics.”

  “I’d like to speak to Benjamin Slater, please.” She made her voice sound as businesslike as possible.

  Apparently, that wasn’t good enough. The secretary’s voice was definitely suspicious. “May I ask who’s calling, and what this is pertaining to?”

  “This is Sarah Walker. He’ll know what it’s pertaining to.” At least, she hoped he would. Or maybe she hoped he wouldn’t—if he knew that she was calling to lambaste him, he’d hardly answer the call.

  “One moment, please.” Oh, the woman’s voice was frosty.

  She was put on hold, the cheesy music played some instrumental version of a romantic tune. It was ironic, considering her mood.

  “Benjamin Slater.”

  His voice. Traitorously, her heart panged, just a little bit. “Hello, Jam.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Sarah. You know, I wasn’t even paying attention when Mathilde told me who was on the phone.”

  “I see.” Okay, now she’d gotten him on the line. What was she supposed to do? Suddenly, her bad-but-only-option idea seemed like bad-and-what-was-I-thinking? The resulting pause seemed interminable.

  Finally, Benjamin spoke. “What do you want to yell at me about, Sarah?”

  The comment caught her off guard. “What makes you think I want to yell at you?”

  He sighed. “I know you. You’ve probably been working yourself up for weeks. You obviously have something to say.”

  “I…” Well, she did. But what exactly? You ruined my life? You’re a selfish bastard? “You haven’t even called to see if I was alive.”

  Somehow, that sounded bad. Deflated. Downright wimpy.

  “Well, you’re obviously alive,” he said, a little bit of a smile in his voice. No, she wasn’t going to cave. The guy was…what was Joey’s term for it? A prick, an absolute prick. “How have you been, Sarah?”

  “Oh, now that’s low.”

  “What is?”

  “You sound all nice and concerned, when I know if I hadn’t called, you probably wouldn’t even have thought of me at all.” Now she knew where she was going. “You selfish, rotten…”

  “I do think about you, Sarah,” Benjamin said quietly. “I think of you a lot.”

  That punctured her balloon of ire. “You do?”

  “All the time, actually.”

  She thought about it. “What, do I owe you money or something?”

  “That’s not nice.” His voice was coolly reprimanding. “You know I care about you, Sarah. Just because I didn’t agree with what you did doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you.”

  Now Sarah felt like an idiot. An immature, whining fool. She gripped the phone tightly. “You didn’t support me. You made me feel all alone.”

  “I didn’t make you feel anything, Sarah,” he said, in a calm and reasonable tone. “I just pointed out that quitting your job—a job with a career path that you were interested in, that your best friend stuck her neck out to get for you—with no notice was really a bad idea.”

  When he put it that way, yes, she did sound pretty… No. Stick to the subject at hand. Don’t start second-guessing yourself!

  “I was upset, Benjamin,” she said, softly. “You always shut me out or told me to grow up. You never once paid attention to how I was feeling or why I was doing what I was doing.”

  “Do you even know why you were doing what you were doing?”

  “Of course I did!” she countered passionately.

  “So why did you quit?”

  She rubbed at her temples. It all seemed so long ago now. Why had she quit? “Because the place was intolerable. They were verbally abusive, and I was working all these hideous hours, and they were never happy. And I was waiting for you to come down and help me out, and then you just abandoned me!”

  “You were waiting for me to rescue you, Sarah.”

  Sarah felt heat suffuse her cheeks. “You go to hell, Jam.”

  “I’m not saying that to make you feel bad,” he said. “I’m just pointing out a fact.”

  “I don’t need you to rescue me. I just need you to be there for me! And you never were—you were always too busy. Every single other thing in your life was more important than I was because I let you get away with it!”

  She stopped, thinking about that. Because I let you get away with it.

  “I’m more important than that. I deserve better than that.” Her voice quavered slightly, and she took a deep breath, steadying it.

  “I guess I did take you for granted, in some ways. You know how important the job is to me. I just wanted to get a good solid foundation…”

  “I don’t care.”

  She heard Benjamin sigh. “You actually picked an okay day to talk to me about this—things are under control. Why don’t we have lunch, talk about it?”

  Have lunch? Sarah blinked, pulling the receiver away for a second and staring at it. Talk about it? “Um, okay. I guess.”

  “My treat,” he said. “How about…what’s that place they keep talking about. Jozu?”

  “Um, okay.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Um….”

  “That all right?”

  She shrugged. “Sure.” Spend your gas money, not mine. Why not?

  She got dressed three times. The first was a dynamite, sexy outfit. Then she realized she didn’t want him to get the message that she was trying to win him back, so she changed into jeans and a little T-shirt. Then she changed her mind again, thinking that was too obvious. She finally settled on a sundress that wasn’t too risqué, but wasn’t too casual. She thought, anyway. The door buzzer sounded.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Benjamin.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute.” She snatched up her purse and locked the door behind her.

  He looked good, she thought miserably. He was wearing a suit, one she hadn’t seen before. What worked in Fairfield probably didn’t work in his L.A. office. She knew about that one. He looked serious, and a little too conservative. Then again, considering how much time she’s spent at the ultracasual temp job and then around the likes of Martika, Taylor and Pink, who knew what was normal anymore?

  He frowned at her. “You changed your hair.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a lot shorter.”

  She frowned. “I like it. So do lots of other people.” There! Let him decide who the lots of other people were. Probably men. Ha!

  “I’m not saying I don’t like it. I’m just saying it’s a lot shorter.”

  She knew what he was saying. She shrugged and smiled. “Shall we?”

  They went to the restaurant in relative silence. Once they got there, in the cool air-conditioned atmosphere, she began to relax. At least until he started talking. Then she gripped her water glass nervously. She wondered if it would be tacky to order something to drink. Like a Red Screaming Zombie. She figured she’d need superstrength muscle relaxants at this point, or her shoulders would be permanently pinned together.

  “So why did you decide to call me today?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I had been thinking about it for a while.”

  “What’s been going on in your life?”

  She sighed. “Let’s see. I work as a temp now.”

  “I see.” To his credit, his voice wasn’t all that smug. “I worried. I hoped that you were okay.”

  “Why didn’t you just call me?” she asked, thinking of the times she’d felt lonely and horrible over the past four months.

  He shrugged. “Hurt too much.”

  The words pinched at her heart. He was h
urting. Because he missed her. She felt a little traitorous warmth, and had to force herself not to reach over like she used to and take his hand. She focused on the waiter instead, putting in her food order and asking for a glass of white wine. Within a short period of time, their meals arrived.

  “So how has work been going?” she asked, more to change the conversation than anything. She knew it was a topic he’d warm to.

  He shrugged again, to her surprise. “It’s going well—but not like I expected. I’m not really a Los Angeles sort of person, I think,” he said slowly. “I mean, I’m getting used to it, but it’s not really my first choice of cities to live in.” He looked at her speculatively. “Don’t you miss Fairfield?”

  “A little.” Like when she was broke, when she’d quit her job and dumped him. Or when she had that horrible time at the club with Tika. Or, say, this morning. She shook off that thought with a shudder. “Sometimes. But L.A. has a lot going for it.”

  “Ha.” His face was molded into that classic look of disdain Sarah remembered so well. “It’s like an amusement park.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “I guess if you’re just looking for a little fun, it’s okay.” He sipped his water. “We were going to talk about us, Sarah.”

  She frowned. “There is no ‘us,’ Jam.”

  “And whose idea was that?”

  “I already explained why.”

  “Well, now I’m listening. I just think that you’ve kind of…” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “You went off the deep end there for a bit.”

  “I what?”

  “You came down here, and you started changing. I mean, you were always sort of flaky…”

  “Flaky?”

  “You know what I mean. You never really settled on anything.”

  “I settled on you!” She had to deliberately lower her voice, before she created a full-blown scene. “You were my life, Benjamin. I didn’t need to have a career—you were a full-time job!”

  He was silent for a second.

  She felt like crying. All this time, and he didn’t get it. He never got it. He probably never…

  “I love you, Sarah.”

  She blinked. Inexplicably, she felt tears welling up. “What? What?”

  “You heard me. I love you. You made me feel…you really were devoted to me, and only after I lost it did I realize what I’d been missing.”

  She looked at the walls, at the other diners—anything but him. “You can’t be saying this to me now.”

  “Let me try making it up to you.” He’d paid for the check, and was looking at her with eyes that were dangerously persuasive. “Spend the afternoon with me.”

  “Don’t…don’t you have to get back to work?” Sarah said, clutching at straws. If going to lunch with him was a bad idea, getting anywhere where you might be tempted to sleep with him is a hugely bad idea.

  “I don’t care. Work’ll still be there when I get back. In fact…”

  Sarah watched in dazed disbelief as he called his frosty secretary and let her know he was taking the rest of the afternoon off. “Yes, really, I am,” he repeated. Obviously, the secretary couldn’t believe it any more than Sarah could. He looked at her. “Want to see my house?”

  She was about to say no before she realized she was already nodding.

  Alarm bells rang in her head, but she ignored them. The fact of the matter was, she missed him. Her chest was achy with missing him. Talking with him, walking to his car with him, feeling the brush of his hand against her shoulders…all of that felt normal. This was what she’d planned for—being with him, a happy team. Not what she’d been living, with the uncertainty of being a temp or trying to fit into Martika’s glam world. Sure, it was exciting, but it was temporary. All of it was temporary. Benjamin was solidity and stability and purpose. Benjamin was permanent.

  By the time they got to his house, her stomach was fluttering in that nervous, vaguely-turned-on way that she hadn’t felt in what seemed like a long time. And best of all, no guilt pangs, no feelings of infidelity/insecurity. This was what she remembered, she thought as she stepped out of the car. This was right.

  The house was a generic stucco job in West Los Angeles. They had passed Westwood, and UCLA was not that far away. He let her in, and her heart felt a different kind of pang. This was what she’d been expecting, when she moved down to Los Angeles. All of his furniture was positioned in various rooms, taking up all the space. She would have had him put the TV on the other wall, she thought, and move the couch. She noticed that the dining-room table looked stark, probably would have gotten him a runner and maybe a centerpiece. She saw that the kitchen, what little she could see of it, looked barren and utilitarian.

  “This is it.”

  She sighed.

  “Would you like to see the bedroom?” His eyes were low-lidded, and he smiled slightly.

  Her conscience sent up one last warning.

  She solidly ignored it.

  “Honey? I’ve got to go…I’m supposed to do a business dinner tonight.”

  Sarah stirred. She was sex-sated and sleepy. Make-up sex really was best, she thought with a smile. “Oh. Give me a minute to wake up.”

  He chuckled. “That was pretty incredible.”

  “Mmm.”

  He got up, walking naked over to the bathroom attached to the master bedroom. She heard him shut the door, and then heard the running water of the shower. She got up, stretching, wincing at the discomfort she was feeling. It had been a long time since she’d had sex. She felt bruised, but not in a bad way.

  She got up, stretching from one side to another, then slipped on her clothes. She’d be shame-walking. She hoped that Martika wasn’t looking for her, that she’d be home a little later…Sarah knew that Tika would not approve of this latest development. Especially since it looked like she was walking on the road to reconciliation. Tika would just have to deal with it, Sarah thought with a determined nod. Besides, maybe she’d just move in with Benjamin…she was pretty sure he was renting this house, and it wasn’t like she had a lot of stuff to move. Maybe Tika could just take over the lease.

  The phone started ringing. “Want me to get that?” she called out.

  Jam obviously couldn’t hear her over the shower. She debated, then decided to just let the machine get it. She wandered out into the hallway, wanting to see how his home office looked.

  She was halfway down the hallway when she heard the recorded greeting echoing loudly from the answering machine.

  “Hi. You’ve reached Benjamin and Jessica. We’re unable to come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you as soon as we’re free. Thanks.”

  It was Benjamin’s voice, she thought.

  Who the hell was Jessica?

  She quickly turned. Her heart was racing, her stomach’s quivering turning to queasiness. Everything was Benjamin’s…she recognized the furniture. She shot a furtive look at the door to the bathroom. The shower was still running.

  She went to the closet: there were two sliding doors. She opened one and saw a row of suits, neatly lined up. She shut it quickly and moved to the other one.

  Dresses.

  Relatively petite dresses.

  I love you, Sarah. The words rang in her head.

  That bastard, she thought, feeling numb. That lying, cheating bastard.

  Chapter 9

  Strange Days

  It was a Thursday night. Judith sat at her home office computer. She was wearing her nightgown—it was getting late, and David was still at work. Strangely, she still had her makeup on.

  Judith stared at her computer screen, watching the chat transcript of the “Busy People” Room scroll slowly up the monitor. She was waiting for Roger to log on.

  It’s simply the Internet, she reminded herself. Silly, to feel like she was having an illicit affair simply because she had friends in cyberspace. And that she e-mailed one friend more than the
others, maybe.

  She had been getting e-mail from Roger steadily since she’d posed her “am I happy?” question in the “Busy People” Room, and they’d been growing steadily more—intimate. Not, as Seinfeld would say, that there was anything wrong with it. They were just kidding around. It was nice to talk to someone (even if it was type-talking) who understood her, that knew when she was having a bad day, that made her smile. She never felt like she could reveal the fact that she was having a bad day to David, for some reason. No, not for some reason—she knew precisely why she felt like she couldn’t. Because compared to law, nothing was that important, or bad. If she was having a client giving her hives, he had a client who was going to lose $100 billion in fraud and was raking him over the coals. If she was stressed because of something related to the house, or balancing his home environment and her job and being the perfect wife, then he was even more stressed, bringing in the huge amount of cash that he felt she needed to have for the life she’d become accustomed to.

  If she mentioned she was late in getting her period, she felt sure he’d somehow announce he was expecting triplets.

  “So how are you, beautiful?” the instant message came over.

  Judith sat down, inexplicably straightening her hair with her fingers, letting it tumble rakishly over her shoulders. “How do you know I’m beautiful?” she typed back.

  Roger: You’re Judith, aren’t you?

  She smiled at that. “Charmer.”

  Roger: Probably. So how’s it going?

  “Terribly.” She sighed, leaning back farther in her office chair. “Work has been hellish, husband has been out a lot.”

  Roger: Not to be forward, but he should pay more attention to you. You sound tired. Whatever he’s doing can’t be that important.

  She shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “Nature of the business. Lawyerlyness is closer to Godliness.”

  Roger: I thought that was just us doctors. :)

  She smiled. “One of those rich, good-looking George Clooney look-alikes, right?”