At First Sight

by Stephen J. Cannell

  But on a good day, when she’s trying to be nice, Evelyn can be quite charming, and like I said, from the neck down, you can’t find a more toney-looking woman. This evening, in preparation for our dinner with the Ellises, she had dressed way down. Gone was the push-up water bra, the Lycra pantsuit, and crop-top, navel-baring ensemble. Her show-stopping cleavage was modestly out of view. In its place, new duds: a tasteful, silk Perry Ellis blouse; tailored Dior slacks; jeweled Manolo Blahnik sandals. Grand total: $1,793, plus tax. But at least the outfit wasn’t one of her titbaring, all-hanging-out-and-in-your-face specials like the ones she usually wears.

  Evelyn and Paige chatted about Paige’s art and the children she and Chandler were planning to eventually have. It came out that Paige’s wedding and engagement rings were being resized because they had almost come off in the water two days ago, clearing up that mystery.

  “It’s amazing. She takes off her rings and all of a sudden, every unattached Romeo on the beach thinks it’s his cue to turn into a complete ass,” Chandler said, shaking his head.

  “Unbelievable,” I agreed, sheepishly.

  Evelyn and I both told lies about Melissa … said she was planning on college in two years. But after looking at her last two report cards, the only way I could see her getting into a university was if the Devil’s Disciples opened a pharmaceutical college to teach better chemistry to that bunch of stringy-haired crystal cookers who kept blowing up their mobile homes in the Angeles Crest mountains.

  Chandler and I talked about L.D. kids, something I had to struggle to stay focused on. I was still trying to keep from gawking at Paige.

  Of course she recounted the story of my heroic shark rescue. “You never told me about that,” Evelyn smiled, acting amused and pleased, when I knew she was pissed to the core that I’d kept it from her.

  “It was nothing, really.” As this ridiculous cliché popped out of my mouth, Evelyn rolled her eyes, a look that said I was gonna catch hell over this later.

  A little further into the evening, I hit them with my next clever plan. I’d been working on it all afternoon.

  “You know what might be kinda fun?” I said, softly, dangling it like fresh bait over a still pond.

  “What?” they all asked, thinking I had a great idea for where to go for a nightcap. But my idea was far more complex than that, more devious and infinitely subtler. “I was thinking it might be fun to get a few of Paige’s paintings and see if we could sell them on bestmarket.com, maybe raise her artistic visibility with an Internet marketing campaign.”

  “Really?” Paige said, leaning forward. “I’m not sure I’m ready.”

  “Honey, I’ve been saying for years you should have your own art show,” Chandler chimed in. “If we could afford it, I’d pay for it myself.”

  At first I was thinking, Who the fuck is he kidding? This guy’s family builds music centers, owns media companies, and he can’t rent a one-room studio for an art show? But it came out a few minutes later that he’d turned his entire trust fund over to an L.D. Foundation he had formed and now managed, for almost no salary, drawing off most of the funds for brain research. I’m telling you, there were times with this guy Chandler where my gag reflex was on overload.

  “We could sell Paige’s art on the Internet,” I continued. “I get millions of hits a day. We could build a website, call it the Art Paige, spelled like your name, scan a few of your paintings on there, and set up an online auction.”

  “We could even say the money was going to go for Chandler’s L.D. Foundation,” Paige suggested, sparking immediately to my idea.

  “Right. Maybe bestmarket.com could match anything we raised,” I enthused. Of course, if it was over a few thousand, we’d have to take out an IOU on my car to cover it.

  I glanced over and caught a dark look passing across Evelyn’s face. She doesn’t like giving away any of my money. She’d rather spend it herself. I was going to have to be more careful, lest my clandestine motives unexpectedly porpoise into full view.

  “Anyway, it might be kind of fun to see what happens,” I concluded.

  “I could help Paige design the web page,” my wife unexpectedly offered, leaning forward and smiling. “I have my master’s degree in marketing from Stanford.”

  She did, too, but it had never been worth much to us, because even though Evelyn had a master’s in marketing, she had a doctorate in shopping, so we were destined to lose fiscal ground annually.

  “It’s worth a try,” I said.

  “We don’t want to take advantage,” Chandler cautioned.

  “He’s right. I mean, you’re so busy,” Paige added. “We don’t want to be a burden.”

  “Nonsense,” I thundered extravagantly.

  “It’ll be fun,” Evelyn shrieked and clapped.

  “Well, okay … why not?” Paige said, and she reached out and took Evelyn’s hand.

  Chandler took mine and I took Evelyn’s. Of course, Chandler and Paige were already holding hands. They always held hands, so now we had a ring of clasped hands, all of us smiling.

  “To new friendships,” I said, and we all reached for our wineglasses.

  “New friendships,” they caroled.

  Okay, okay, not exactly the Peace Conference at Malta, I admit, but not bad, all things considered. I had managed to go from a leering pool-cabana stalker to a “new friend,” and it had taken me all of two and a half days. Better still, I had involved Evelyn in the plan so she wouldn’t be a liability, and we could all interact as couples, which I have come to learn is the best way to do it. I’ve sold half a dozen accounts this way. When you include wives, it gets everybody’s guard down.

  We left Correlli’s and all walked along the beach back to the hotel. The moon was full and the water lapped over our toes. We carried our shoes, with Paige and Chandler walking ahead of us, arm in arm. Evelyn and I held hands in a decent imitation of marital bliss, although, to be honest, her hand was no delicate bird’s wing. It was hard as a blacksmith’s anvil, cold and damp. She applied no pressure. I’ve held dead trout that communicated more emotion.

  When we arrived at the Four Seasons, Evelyn and I said good night and left Chandler and Paige on the beach.

  I was feeling pretty good about all of this until I looked back and saw them standing in the sand, lit by a three-quarter moon, kissing each other, locked in a passionate embrace.

  That night in our bedroom, I did something I hadn’t done in months. I made love to Evelyn, all the time pretending I was having sex with Paige. My fevered imagination transformed Evelyn’s muscled body into Paige’s soft goddess proportions. I got so sexed up I had a diamond-cutter erection. You could have bludgeoned a baby seal to death with that hard-on. When she was close to climax, I thought I heard Evelyn grunt, “More, Mickey, more!” which sort of ruined it.

  When it was over, we lay in an exhausted embrace.

  “What got into you?” Evelyn asked. “Man, you were pneumatic.”

  “Did you just call me Mickey?” I asked, my voice flat with suspicion.

  “Honestly, Chick, where do you come up with this shit?” Then she got out of bed to go to the bathroom and left me there. It pissed me off, but I didn’t dwell on it, because I was more resolved than ever to get out of the marriage. One way or the other, I was determined to move on, to become Paige Ellis’s lover.

  How I was going to accomplish this still hadn’t become clear. When it finally did, it took on a shape more devastating than I could have ever imagined.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE REST OF THE WEEK WE ALL HUNG OUT TOGETHER. Evelyn and I shared our power cabana with the Ellises. There were four chairs in there anyway, and after Melissa secured it each morning she disappeared. She told me she’d rather be staked out over an anthill than sit with us. My daughter, exercising her uncommon gift for colorful metaphor.

  Evelyn actually got Paige into the workout room and started her on a light aerobic routine, using knowledge gained over years of Mickey D’s training and my
money to fashion a new body for a woman who could already stop traffic wearing a trench coat.

  I let it happen, though, because I didn’t think in four days Evelyn would be able to turn Paige’s softness into the kind of anatomical gristle that she had struggled so hard to achieve for herself.

  Now, just so you won’t think that I was going over the falls in a barrel here, let me tell you that I really, really tried to put the brakes on my emotions, to rein myself in.

  I kept saying what I’m sure you’re saying: This is crazy. The woman adores her husband. You’re much older, half as good looking. Your father didn’t build downtown neighborhoods from Hispanic slums into architecturally renowned music centers, or city newspapers into global media empires. Your dad built opening-act comedians playing rathole dives like the Comedy Cabana into cheesy middle acts at transvestite clubs like the Cross Walk in North Hollywood. While Chandler Ellis was winning football games at Andover prep and then Georgetown, you were fighting for rectal purity in the Hawaiian state prison or throwing up in a Cost Plus wastebasket at rehab.

  On every scale, the Chick Bests of the world didn’t measure up against the Chandler Ellises.

  I said all these things to myself.

  I even locked myself behind the frosted, etched glass door in our bathroom, sat on the shitter, and wrote all of it down on a piece of hotel stationery.

  Then I did something even more proactive: I started looking for flaws in Paige Ellis. I collected them, diving deep for each one like a bum in a supermarket Dumpster. I even cataloged her few physical imperfections.

  For instance, she had a kind of goofy laugh, something between a squeal and a giggle. Of course, on further introspection, I found it irresistible.

  She had a birthmark on her left calf that was almost the size of a quarter. The more I looked at that birthmark, the more I loved it.

  She had an odd habit of constantly jiggling her foot when she was seated. I asked her about it, putting on my most friendly “you can tell the doctor” expression. She explained that she had suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder as a child. It’s what first drew her to Chandler. They had that interest in common. She understood learning disabilities firsthand. She said that even though she had more or less grown out of it, she still found it difficult to sit completely still … hence the little foot jiggle. Adorable.

  I found every one of these imperfections delightful.

  After a week of constantly being with our new friends, Paige and Chandler, we had a farewell dinner at the hotel and promised to stay in touch. We all kissed each other goodbye. Our first kiss—only a cheek peck. But I swear, I almost fainted from ecstasy.

  We exchanged digits and addresses, and under most circumstances, that would have been the end of it. We would have never seen each other again, except I was more hopelessly in love with her now than I had been in the beginning. I’m not just talking infatuation here, either. I’m talking deep, soul-defining devotion.

  I was dreaming about her now almost every night, and every time I looked at Evelyn, I was shocked that I’d ended up with such coarseness when there were creatures like Paige in the breeding pool. I told myself if I’d married someone like Paige, Melissa wouldn’t be as angry as she is, frowning with a face that had more holes than a pool-hall dartboard.

  Of course, Melissa used our infatuation with the Ellises to get lost. During the week, I saw her now and again, usually at our changing-of-the-guard ceremony under the poolside cabana each morning. She had taken up with a huge Hawaiian guy. A primo-warrior. Big, with lots of island tattoos. I cornered her once and asked her what was going on with him.

  “Bite me,” was her cute reply.

  What do you do with kids when they won’t listen to a thing you say, or care at all about any of the things you think are important?

  We left Hawaii on January 8th and flew back to L.A. I reentered my nightmarish business fiasco. I was standing on the bridge of my fast-sinking Titanic, driving a leaking dot-com straight to the bottom of a sea of bullshit.

  The first couple of months back at work, I noticed that most of my executives were making new resumes and taking long lunches. Who could blame them?

  A few weeks later, I took a walk through our warehouse. There had been a time, a few years ago, when I would walk through this acre-sized building and swell with pride, looking at shelves crammed full of studio movie DVDs and recording company CDs. I had been like a rancher surveying my livestock. Pallets piled high with American pop culture whizzed past on forklifts on their way to the loading dock, where twenty FedEx vans were parked, doors open, engines idling. Now, as I walked around the place, my own footsteps echoed in the emptiness. We had some old movies nobody wanted, a few Eagles CDs, some Steely Dan—all stuff that wasn’t on the current hot list. As I said, none of the studios would trust us with product anymore, so we were imploding, crashing from the inside.

  Then, as if watching years of my life dissolve like an Alka-Seltzer tablet wasn’t a big enough load to carry, Melissa picked this exact time to get arrested.

  We were called by the narc squad in the middle of the night and had to drive down to Juvenile Hall to talk to a vice detective. It seems she’d been caught in a Valley drug raid, arrested in a house full of crystal meth. She’d been sound asleep when the cops kicked in the door. The house was, of course, rented by Big Mac, but Melissa was the only one being held.

  The way it was explained to us was our sixteen-year-old daughter was claiming that the forty or more bags of “Go Fast” the cops had recovered in Big Mac’s house were hers alone … that Big Mac had nothing to do with it, didn’t even know she’d hid it there.

  It was pretty damned clear to everyone that Melissa was taking the rap for McKenna, but they weren’t even holding him.

  “That’s nuts,” I told the cops. “This guy is the president of the Devil’s Disciples. They sell meth. That’s their main business. It’s obviously his stash.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we think, too,” the ropy black detective with prematurely gray hair said. “But what’re we gonna do? He’s saying he never saw it. She’s saying it’s hers.”

  “Can’t you see she’s trying to take the blame for him? She claims she loves him,” I said, thinking these cops can’t possibly be this blind. They can’t let this tattooed asshole with a shaved head get away with this. “He probably threatened her to get her to say that,” I reasoned. “It’s duress or something.”

  “If you can get her to change her story, we’ll work with it,” he said.

  So Evelyn and I went back into the holding cell where they had her and sat on metal chairs, talking through the bars. The place smelled of vomit and disinfectant. I had a flashback from my short jail term in Hawaii. I won’t bore you with that misadventure here, except to say that I know my daughter had no idea what she was signing up for.

  “Honey, you’ve gotta tell the truth,” Evelyn said. She never calls Melissa honey, and I could see the metal in our daughter’s face shifting light as she frowned.

  “Melissa, believe me, you don’t wanna go to jail on this drug bust,” I said.

  “You oughta know, right, Dad?” she shot back.

  “Melissa, don’t do this. You’re going to ruin your life,” I pleaded.

  “Would you two mind getting out of here? I can’t listen to any more of this shit. You both ruined my life years ago.”

  An hour later, Evelyn and I were back in our threemillion-dollar French Regency Beverly Hills home on Elm. We were in our overdecorated foyer fighting about what to do about Melissa. As always, we ended up with recriminations.

  “It’s because she hates you,” Evelyn said. “You’re such a hypocrite, telling her you never used drugs, then she finds out you did half a year in Hawaii for dealing hash.” Forgetting to mention that she was the one who’d busted me to Melissa.

  “She’s punishing both of us for her feelings of emotional abandonment,” I said, bringing two semesters of junior college abnormal psychology into pla
y. “You haven’t done a good job of raising her. You made a lot of mistakes.”

  “You’ve made the mistakes, buddy,” Evelyn snapped. “I’ve always been there for her. I’ve been busting my ass!” I wondered if getting butt-fucked by Mickey D could technically be described as busting ass. Maybe.

  We argued for almost an hour, did a nice two-out-ofthree falls, while Melissa sat it out in a detention cell in Sylmar Juvie.

  The next morning, I hired the best lawyer that money I didn’t have could buy. He was a balding, skeletal guy with a Talmudic beard named Jube Shiver. I got him from one of my dot-com account managers whose younger sister had a drug history.

  “Can you get her out?” I asked our new liar for hire, worried about what might happen to her in jail … visions of lesbian rape hovering at the edge of my every thought.

  “I’ll have her out by noon,” he said with the confidence of a gunfighter cracking the knuckles on his shooting hand. “But the bigger problem is, what happens when this comes to trial. Her association with this biker isn’t going to be helpful.”

  “But the biker is the one who got her into this. All that crystal isn’t hers—it’s his. She’s taking the blame for him. Aren’t you listening to me?”

  “She confessed,” Jube Shiver said, dismissing my argument with a wave of a freckled hand, leaning back in an office littered with B’nai B’rith awards and team pictures of the North Hollywood Little League Pirates. He steepled his fingers under his Talmudic beard, which was graying theatrically at the edges, and studied me like I had just tracked dog shit into his office. I was beginning to take an intense dislike to our new Jewish attorney.

  “I know she confessed. That’s because he threatened her,” I said. “It’s under duress.”

  “It’s not duress unless the police force it. Let me lawyer the case. You just give me her personal background, answer my questions when I ask, and sign the checks.”

  He lost the whole Talmudic thing with that one sentence. Then he made some notes and nodded as I told him everything I thought would be helpful. I left out the bad stuff like all the cocaine we’d found in her purse and under her jewelry box; all the money and the portable electronic equipment she’d stolen from us and fenced to feed her habit.