Extricating the bra, I heard the name Roger Valcovich. I faced the television. A puffy man encased in a beige suit sat behind a functional-looking desk. His round little hands were folded tightly in front of him. Except for the potted fern, they were the only objects on the desk. He talked carefully into the camera.
“Even if you have a prior drunk-driving conviction, we can help. Whatever your legal needs, the law offices of Roger Valcovich are here for you.” He tilted his oblong head toward the camera. Curly silver-gray hair caught the light and twinkled. “I’m Roger Valcovich. I can help. Remember, justice does not have to cost a high price.” Small lips inched into a frozen smile.
Coincidence—there had to be more than one Roger Valcovich in Los Angeles. Ellis Kenilworth used a very conservative, expensive lawyer. He certainly wouldn’t be using an ambulance chaser who had to advertise. I was feeling uneasy. Kenilworth had never involved me in a meeting before, imperative or not.
I turned off the television and finished dressing. Black skirt. Pink shirt. Black patent sling-backs. Black-and-pink tweed jacket with big shoulder pads. Shoulder pads make me feel less melancholy. They also make me look like I don’t have a neck. You can’t have everything.
I grabbed my grandmother’s rosary. She’s eighty-five but thinks she’s a hundred and helps Willard with the weather on the “Today” show. I took a paperback of Madame Bovary and, along with my rosary, dropped it into my leather sack of a purse. I was reading Bovary for the third time. I understood why she had to kill herself. But I kept hoping.
I turned on the phone machine, a small lamp by the bed, and the radio. I found the classical station. It was the only kind of music my landlady let me play all day. Maybe if I get robbed the classical music will soothe the burglar and he won’t vandalize the place.
I stepped outside my tan stucco apartment. The architecture was third world. Locking my door, I made the mistake of taking a deep breath. The smell of burritos, swimming-pool chlorine, exhaust, and early-morning coffee brewing at the 7-Eleven across the street, violated my body. I had not come out to Los Angeles to live in the San Fernando Valley. That was not part of the dream. But the rent was cheaper on this side of the hill, and that was part of reality. Another failure to torture myself with.
Maneuvering my Honda east on the Ventura Freeway, I rolled back the sun roof so my hair could dry. The radio rocked. I loved being alone in my car. I loved driving. My Honda was the only thing in my life I had control over.
I kept thinking about virginity making a comeback. What form would she take? She wouldn’t dare return in the bowed and draped form of the Blessed Mother. Virginity wasn’t coming back because she was sacred or moral. No. Virginity was traipsing back into our lives like an old ex-movie queen. Big tits jiggling. Flabby hips swaying. A thin halo of platinum hair. Diseased pink flesh stuffed in hourglass white.
“I’m back in town, big boys,” she’d coo, scared to death.
Beauty Dies Page 23
