I set about winning Liana over to Los Angeles the way a Don Juan plans a seduction, only it turned out to be unnecessary because Liana took to the place immediately, in fact much more intensely than I ever did, and she was so thrilled when she saw the plans for her store and all that I had done in advance that it was obvious that I had made the right decision. And Liana’s gallery seemed to be the right thing not just for Liana but for the customers of Beverly Hills as well, and as she created an even greater success than she had in New York with her partner, I was proud to observe it and to acknowledge my own part in it.
Each night we’d meet after work and I would take Liana to a new place, sometimes places I’d frequented before and enjoyed like the numerous little cafes in Westwood or the fancier places on Sunset or La Cinega. Sometimes we’d just go exploring together to see what we could discover as a team, and it was always fun and exciting. Liana loved the malls, and we visited each one, prowling through every department, whether for her, for me, for Violet, or for household items. “Ace look at these bargains,” Liana would squeal, “Saks at home never had sales like this. Ohh, this is great!” And then we’d buy whatever the many-times discounted item was and congratulate ourselves on the acquisition and on our good fortune.
I wanted Liana to connect with some friends, something I really hadn’t managed to do all that well, so I planned parties and lunches for her, and in doing that cemented my relationships with my clients and got Liana launched as well. Then we began getting invited to parties and being included in some of the social activities and it was clear that if I had made more of an effort to know the people I trained, I might have found in them the friends I longed for all along.
I introduced Fauna to Liana, and hoped that the good qualities of each would rub off on the other, but there never seemed to be much chemistry there. Fauna is a crackerjack business woman with the soul of a lonely little girl and Liana is classy and independent, and I guess Fauna felt a little intimidated. They were polite and friendly, but I knew that there were no sparks. Liana did give Fauna a crystal, which Fauna seemed to love, and in return Fauna spent some time helping me find a nice little house in Rancho Park, where she had bought her first home. Of course how any place that expensive can be called a nice little neighborhood, I can’t imagine, but it had the kind of homey quality that I crave and I was sure it would be an ideal place for Violet to grow up and to find new friends when she moved here from New York and completed our family. Liana helped me pack and we moved in after Christmas, after Violet had gone back from her holiday visit, filled with tales of Disneyland and the Santa Monica Pier merry-go-round and enthused about coming here to live.
Week by week the time passed. Liana’s gallery was a fixture in Beverly Hills and she even started considering other locations as possible branch galleries. I became busier and busier, and so I built a room onto the back of my house to contain a fully equipped gym so that clients who didn’t have their own exercise rooms could come to me. Liana suggesting offering sessions for couples or groups at reduced rates so that I could enlarge my clientele and could help more people and I took her suggestion and she and I both made more money than ever.
No women I wanted to date came along, not since Tawny, but it didn’t matter because I had Liana for good company and fun outings. It was amusing to watch Liana fling herself into dating in Los Angeles, and I kept warning her about the rules here for dating and mating, but she was as incredulous as I had been. She kept meeting these bozos and it distressed me deeply every time she would recount one of her romantic experiences. I couldn’t stand it to think of her being with these jerks who were coming on to her, and every conversation began and ended with one word, condoms. Liana promised me that she would be a safe sex practitioner, but that wasn’t the half of it.
What was she doing with these semi-literate guys who could hardly hold a pencil let alone a conversation? I thought she was selling herself short and kept trying to point out that she belonged with a better grade of partner. She just laughed at me, but I know that it was eating at her as well. I suspected there was someone in her past who had done a job on her, and once she mentioned a guy who’d broken her heart, but she didn’t want to talk about it, so I couldn’t press her to confide in me. All I said was that any guy who didn’t want her was a fool, and she should consider herself lucky to be rid of him rather than deprived and disappointed. She would smile and hug me when I said things like that, but the flicker of pain that crossed her beautiful face each time we discussed it made it clear to me that she was burdened with some heartache that never cleared away, and there was noting I could do to make it better.
There we were together, brother and sister, best friends, locked into our warm relationship and happy, responsible, successful members of society, but neither of us could find personal happiness or a loving mate. Why was that? We laughed over our mutual spouseless status all the time, and laughing made us each feel better, but it did little to solve the problem.
By then it was fall and Violet was with us and we were a happy family in my little house in Rancho Park. Liana had been in Los Angeles for more than a year and she seemed to fit in comfortably. Violet was settling into her new school and enthusiastically arranging play dates for the weekends. Carmen, a wonderful housekeeper who loved Violet and seemed to think she was related to us all, came to work every day so that our household could run smoothly and Violet would have someone there after school while Liana was at work and I was busy with clients.
It had been more than a year since last I saw Tawny when we bumped into each other in Hobson’s on Melrose. I was taking Violet for an ice cream cone and showing her all the weird looking people with blue stripes in their hair who liked to frequent the area. We’d been into a number of shops specializing in toys and knickknacks of all kinds and she had been having a great time. At Hobson’s we had ordered a super-duper sundae with all sorts of candies blended into the ice cream and lots of gooey sauces on top. As we watched the kid build our treat, Violet instructed him on what to add when, like the Julia Child of the ice cream world.
Tawny was at the other counter buying a truffle, and as we turned to sit on the bench in the window, we came face to face. She looked at me and blushed and looked at Violet and blushed again. I imagined she thought that I had gotten married and this was my stepdaughter. For a moment I considered letting her think that, letting her believe that I was happy and in love and settled down, so soon after our breakup and much improved despite it.
But then she smiled her friendly California girl smile, her blue eyes twinkled happily and she beamed at Violet, saying, “I bet you’re Violet! You’re much cuter than the picture I saw of you a while back. I didn’t realize that you were a teenager—what are you, fourteen?”
Of course—I had shown her family pictures. I’d forgotten about that, and Tawny obviously knew the score and was in no way worried over the possibility that I had married or was happy without her. She wasn’t even thinking about that. Naturally.
“Thanks,” said Violet, smiling and friendly and won over by Tawny’s golden charm and the idea that someone thought she was a teenager when in fact she was only twelve. “Want to have some ice cream with us? We have enough for a lot of people, and we planned to wedge on it ourselves, but you can have some too if you want.”
Wedge on it? Where did kids pick up the slang they use? I shook my head and laughed, and so did Tawny, apparently for the same reason. I expected her to use good manners and leave the store so that we wouldn’t have to be together any longer, but she surprised me by answering, “Wow, really! I’d love some of that sundae. I bet it’s the best sundae I’ve ever seen. What all did you have them put in it?”
As we walked to the window seat and Violet and Tawny chatted over various ingredients, the virtues of chips on top, Reeses pieces inside, marshmallow versus whipped cream, my heart pounded unreasonably. I was still attracted to her, and she looked as beautiful as ever. It didn’t matter that I knew that she had s
crewed me, I still had feelings for her.
We sat eating, and finally Tawny looked me in the eye and asked shyly, almost regretfully, it seemed, although maybe I imagined it, “How have you been, Ace?”
“Very well, and very busy. How about you?”
“Well,” Tawny sighed, “I’ve been kind of lonely. I’ve missed you a lot. I thought about calling you just yesterday, in fact.”
“Really?” I tried to sound casual and disinterested and hoped that it came out that way. “Still acting?”
“I’m still trying to act. Right now I’m doing temp work, sales, promotions, all sorts of stuff. Have to make money, unfortunately.”
Our conversation went on like that for a while, but eventually Violet grew tired of her ice cream and reentered the chatter so that we couldn’t really talk. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. When it was time to leave, we rose, and I put my arm around Violet to guide her out the door.
“Ace, could I call you sometime? Just to talk, I mean or to invite you to dinner?”
Tawny seemed so sincere and so genuinely lonely that I decided to say yes. Maybe she was sorry for how she’d acted, and maybe she wasn’t as bad as I had thought. So I reached into my wallet and pulled out one of my cards, “Here, Tawn, I have a new number.”
She accepted the card with a smile, tucking it into her expensive handbag. We walked out together, Violet and I getting into my Porsche and Tawny heading in the opposite direction after waving and calling out, “Super wheels!” As we drove west on Melrose, I realized that I had bought that car to impress her and I felt a little disgusted with myself. Her rejection of me had affected me and I obviously wanted to flaunt my success a little more that I had before as result of that rebuff. Finally I growled to myself, so what, it’s the local custom. When in L.A., and all that stuff.
Violet let out a huge burp then, and I laughed at the sound of such an emission exiting her usually proper preteen mouth. She smiled happily at me, and I tried to do an even bigger burp, a game we used to play when she was five.
Tawny did call me for dinner the next evening, and we made a date for the following night, something that filled me both with happy anticipation and agonizing dread. She was the fire that had burned me, the big wave that had nearly drowned me, and I was afraid to get too close. Yet in some part of me, I knew that I had to go, not because I wanted to be with her or to sleep with her again, both of which I did, but because I had to see just what effect she had on me. I had to test my mettle.
Our dinner seemed casual and friendly and almost boring, and it might have been that we were two old friends meeting briefly to recapture the past, but for the fact that I was scrutinizing my own heart for signs of treachery. Could Tawny make me fall in love with her all over again? I hoped not. I scrutinized her even more thoroughly than I did myself, trying to find the flaws that I could catalogue as evidence to use against her. I wanted to see that she was nothing more than a dumb, blond bimbo, out to sell her charms to the highest bidder. It just didn’t work. Tawny is not dumb and she’s no bimbo. She’s sweet, friendly and charming, and I couldn’t help liking her, despite what I knew about her values and the way she was raised to believe that a man should become her ticket to whatever she wants because she is all the things she is.
I asked her what happened between us, why she cooled off so completely, wondering if after all this time she were willing to provide me with the satisfaction of an honest answer. Once again she passed the test by opening up to me with a sigh, “I met another guy, Ace, a guy kind of like my father, only not nearly so nice, and I guess he swept me off my feet a little.”
I felt curious and hurt at the same time, and wanting to hold out my arms for her to use as a safe haven. I decided instead to harden my resolve and pursue the matter. “Tell me about it.”
“Well he was this rich doctor, and he kept promising me all sorts of things, like marriage and a home, and you know how I feel—I’m twenty-six now and my mother was married by twenty-three.”
“Truthfully, Tawn, I wasn’t aware that you were so worried about getting married again.”
“Every girl is worried about that Ace, even the ones who say they aren’t, sometimes especially the ones who say they aren’t.”
“So—why didn’t you marry him?”
“I don’t know. He dumped me in a really mean way, and I never knew why. I thought we were really close and were having a good time.”
“I know how you feel.” I let my own pain reveal itself then and I wondered if she would pick up on it, and she did, reaching her hand out to cover mine in a gesture that was filled with sorrow and frustration about the poor choices we all make that rechart the courses of our lives. I looked into her blue eyes and saw there an equal degree of pain to match my own. I saw regret and compassion and I let my own gaze rest on hers steadily for a long moment and in that exchange I was healed. She hadn’t screwed me like the callous, money-grubbing cunt I had thought her to be. She had simply done what she thought was best in the only way she knew how, and because of that we both became victims of her faulty decision making. She chose the wrong guy. She threw away what she really wanted because she didn’t see clearly enough that it was more available with me than with the next guy, the one who didn’t come through for her.
Finally I laughed a bitter laugh. “Life is hard, Tawn. Love is hard. Relationships are hard, whether they work or not. Sometimes I think we’re all doomed to remain prisoners in this black comedy version of some love connection type TV show.” But as I spoke the words, I realized something—that the pain was gone. This girl who had stolen my heart had returned it intact to me, and now we could be friends or friendly acquaintances, or even former lovers no longer in touch. It didn’t really matter any more because my heart was liberated and so was I. Even Tawny smiled more cheerfully. Perhaps things would improve for us both.
Everything was better after that moment, including the food, which we ate relatively cheerfully as we let ourselves enjoy the moment and the meal. We were congenial again, and we shared a few laughs, the good conversation, and positive exchanges that had always characterized our relationship. But it never occurred to either of us that we were going to retreat back into a love affair because we had gone beyond that to another place from which we could no longer connect on that plane. Like space travelers who had overshot their mark, our window of opportunity had passed us by. Strangely, it didn’t matter, though, because I felt peaceful and calm and restored.
When I was ready to leave, I opened my arms for Tawny and she stayed there a long time in a passionless embrace that was warm and loving. Our dinner was over and our lives had taken new turns down separate pathways, something we both acknowledged silently. I thought nothing of Tawny asking me to drop off a few movies at the video store on my way home, something small that I was easily able to do for her now that all the greater things I had imagined sharing were no longer within our frame of reference.
What a relief that our paths had crossed again, or who knew but that all the resentment and pain I felt would have stayed buried within my system like decade-old toxins weakening my vitality. I opened my window to feel the wind on my face as I drove to the video store, and I let any last remnant of despair blow away.
After handing in the movies, I was planning to return home to tell Liana all about my evening, when I decided instead to walk through the aisles of the store, checking out the movies in an aimless way. I love movies, and there are very few that I haven’t seen on first release, but it’s also fun to collect them so that they’re available to watch at home in the den whenever I want.
It was then that I spotted this amazingly healthy looking girl. I walked right over to her, thinking we would have a conversation about movies for a while, sort of to reorient myself back into the present and to let my tension-packed evening with Tawny fade completely. She smiled at me and I couldn’t help returning her grin, so full of merry anticipation, as if she knew who I was and somehow was expecting me.
“Can I help you find a movie?” she asked smoothly, in a voice that was so lively and bright that I just wanted her to keep talking.
“Well, I’m really just browsing, now, but if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.” I sounded like a customer, and she sounded like a salesperson, but it seemed that we were just reciting lines, because the real conversation we were having was taking place in our eyes, eyes that had locked and refused to let go. Her eyes were brown and flashing with the most amazing lights that I thought to myself they twinkled like rubies, which I know made no sense at all since rubies are red, but it seemed to fit nevertheless. I looked in those ruby twinkling brown eyes and felt myself falling into them, like Jimmy Stewart felt himself falling down the stairs in Vertigo. There was an intensity to them, and more than that I recognized something within their depths that held me there, fascinated and aware that the light I saw within was a light that was somehow familiar. It seemed that she was having a similar sense of recognition as well.
We began a conversation about movies that took all my energy to continue because my mind had become so unfocused. She asked, “What sort of movies do you like, action-adventure, romance, comedy, drama?”
I caught my breath and answered, “I like them all. I love movies.” And as I spoke casually, I was flooded with images of this girl and me together. I saw her soft body lying cradled in my arms in a big four poster bed, a bed I don’t even own. I saw soft arms and soft breasts as a pillow for my head. I imagined her warm thighs pressed companionably against my own down deep in that old fashioned bed, a billowy down comforter sealing us in and the world out.
On the monitors throughout the store, Fred Astaire was dancing and singing to Ginger, and the lyrics he sang wafted through my thoughts, punctuating them and our conversation. “I was a roaming Romeo; My Juliets have been many.”
The Sportin' Life Page 13
