EXTREME CLOSE-UP of Wolf’s hands, strong and manicured, on Barbie’s waist, fingers gripping her body . . .
Their clothes drop away . . . they slip into the pool . . .
BARBIE (cont.) (breathless)
I like it . . .
MONTAGE Wolf fucks her in the pool . . . he fucks her in his
Porsche . . . he fucks her in the barn . . .
Elizabeth stared at the computer screen and wondered if Volfmann would like the scene. She could see his face. It moved toward her, its mouth open, yelling, its eyes narrowed in anger and disgust. It moved closer. And closer. The eyes closed. The mouth was pressed against hers.
Oh, God, she thought. Not this again. She had been thinking of Volfmann far too much.
She stood up, a little wobbly. She walked downstairs reminding herself of how loud Volfmann was, how rude. But Volfmann’s hands, strong and manicured, kept grabbing her waist. Like it? he asked. I like it, she said. His words were kind and brilliant. His mouth was sad and sensuous.
She tried watching old movies on television. But every movie was Madame Bovary, just as Volfmann had said. Dodsworth, Niagara, Thelma and Louise were all Madame Bovary. The Postman Always Rings Twice was Madame Bovary. Move Over, Darling was Madame Bovary. Madame Bovary c’est moi, Flaubert had said. She is me, too, Elizabeth thought.
She tried to work again, then tried television again, then reminded herself of Volfmann ranting and stamping his feet. But it didn’t help. Movies she had always dismissed as trivial and hackneyed seemed like towering achievements compared to her own efforts. Every frame she watched was a rebuke: You didn’t write this scene; you can’t write this scene; you can’t write any scene half as good as this scene; you can’t write any scene at all.
She went outside. It was gray and cool. She sat on her steps and stared at the garden and wondered what sitting on the front steps looking at the garden would have made her feel if, like Greta, she were a gardener. Would she be thinking, I ought to be digging a hole, I should be planning a herbaceous border. She remembered Volfmann digging a hole in the sand with Harry when they visited his house in Malibu. She pushed the thought away. She wondered how her mother was doing. Greta had said she was going out to meet an old college friend that night and wanted to rest up, so Elizabeth hadn’t gone over.
I should go to Grandma’s then, Elizabeth thought.
This was an absurd way to spend a morning. Feeling guilty and imagining new ways to feel guilty? She tried to stop. Then she wondered if having an affair would make her feel guilty. In Volfmann’s office, there was a back staircase that had once been used to sneak starlets in to service the studio head. I could use that staircase, she thought. Volfmann could throw me down on the desk the way he threw down the copy of Tikkun. She laughed. Then she felt sick.
Of course, I would feel guilty toward Brett, she thought. I already feel guilty toward Brett just contemplating adultery.
She got up and picked some daylilies.
Would adultery also make me feel guilty about my unfinished screenplay about adultery?
The sun came out and she blinked. She watched the eighty-year-old twins next door in their SKIDMORE BASKETBALL caps watering their roses. Did they commit adultery? The two graduate students in architecture who rented the house on the other side of her came out onto their front steps. Elizabeth waved hello. Did they have any weight hanging over them, a guilty daydream of sleeping with someone unsuitable, say, or a mother with cancer? It seemed impossible. They looked so light and free, so young and unencumbered. She offered them the daylilies.
Edie, the shorter blond one, took the flowers inside the tiny cottage. The other girl, whose name was Sophie, leaned over the fence. “We’re going to Fred Segal,” she said, “to do research.” They were designing a shopping mall for their thesis and did research every weekend, coming back loaded with shopping bags. “Do you have any research to do?”
Elizabeth wondered why she hadn’t thought of this before. Fred Segal was an overpriced paradise. Who could withstand the call of a morning at Fred Segal? Not Elizabeth. And certainly not Barbie Bovaine. When you got right down to it, what did a woman like Barbie Bovaine do if not shop?
Elizabeth sat in the backseat of Edie’s car, happy not to be the one determining whether to take surface streets or freeways. How luxurious to let someone else make a decision. Let these cheerful girls, who were not that much younger than she was, take charge. For these few minutes, Elizabeth could be free. She was anonymous. Not the mother, the daughter, the sister, or the unmarried wife. Not the granddaughter. Not the professor or the screenwriter. Just the neighbor. She had no role to play, no duties to perform. No one required her services.
The girls were planning to divide their shopping mall into areas determined by lifestyles rather than brands. Where would Barbie Bovaine shop? In the Social Climbing Section? The Adultery Boutique? The Naive Romantic Department? The Slut Shop?
Elizabeth browsed, trying on things she thought Barbie might consider essential. A pair of sunglasses in a neoaviator style, the lenses graduated shades of pink, which she bought for herself. A pair of silk pants, bright red, embroidered with gold dragons, not really capri length, not pedal-pusher length, not clam-digger length, but some new essential length that made those other lengths look frumpy, which she decided Barbie would wait to buy until they were on sale. A sun hat was too silly, a bag too big. But several T-shirts were just right for Barbie, and Elizabeth bought them along with a chartreuse bikini. Barbie would wear the bikini. In the pool. With Wolf.
At one of the jewelry counters, she asked to see several tourmaline rings. She put two on each hand and held them up in front of her. Rose gold. Elizabeth loved rose gold. Barbie would not go for these, she thought. She would prefer a more gaudy and expensive gemstone. But these are just right for me. She admired the stones sparkling on her hand until, through her outstretched fingers, she saw the familiar face of Daisy Piperno.
Elizabeth expected to see Daisy at her parents’ house—she was always turning up there, and that was fine, nice for Greta, convenient for Elizabeth. But she did not like seeing Daisy popping up here, where Elizabeth was posing as the anonymous neighbor. It was like being stalked. Soon she would see Daisy everywhere, around every corner, like an apparition, a ghoul in a horror movie.
Daisy caught sight of her and blushed, a bright obvious red against her normally pale skin.
Why did I make her blush? Elizabeth wondered.
Daisy grabbed a small package from the saleswoman and stuffed it into her bag. She bit her lip and seemed to will the blush to recede, then looked back at Elizabeth.
“Small town,” Elizabeth said. No it isn’t, she thought. It’s a gigantic sprawling city. Why are Daisy and I always in the same corner? Didn’t Daisy have anything else to do? Daisy swimming in the pool, drinking ice tea, bringing flowers. She seemed to think up excuses to drop by . . .
“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Daisy said, composed now, back to her distant, curious manner.
“Research,” Elizabeth said.
Edie and Sophie came up to them, their arms loaded with packages. Daisy introduced herself while Elizabeth stood stupidly twisting the tourmaline rings on her fingers.
Daisy is into women, Elizabeth thought.
“Research is good,” Daisy was saying. She smiled at Elizabeth. Elizabeth remembered Daisy telling her what a great smile she had when she mopped up the spilled Pepsi. She heard Daisy’s voice calling her Cookie. She saw the hooded eyes, felt the appraisal in the glance.
Is she interested in me? Elizabeth wondered. It seemed ridiculous. But why? I am a woman, she thought.
“Up to a point,” Daisy said.
“Up to a point?” Elizabeth was the one blushing now. What point?
“Bye, babe,” Daisy said. She leaned toward her, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then put her fingers to her own lips, then touched Elizabeth’s lips.
“Oh,” Elizabeth said. She was flustered. She
said, “See you later?” She had meant to say, See you later, meaning, Good-bye. But she had said, See you later? Meaning, Can I see you later? She was lost in the confusion of her own embarrassment. She stared at Daisy without really seeing her.
Daisy tousled Elizabeth’s hair. “Not tonight,” she said. “I got me a hot date tonight.”
Elizabeth mumbled something. Then she turned and hurried away.
She heard a baby cry. She heard a saleswoman call, “Miss!” She heard someone yell, “Security!” She heard a man say, “How the hell should I know?” A slender girl spritzed her with perfume. A uniformed man appeared at Elizabeth’s side and took her arm.
“Excuse me, sir,” Elizabeth said, “you’re squeezing my arm.”
But the man said nothing as he led her back to the jewelry counter.
“That’s the one!” said the saleswoman.
People were gathering, staring at her. The saleswoman was pointing at Elizabeth’s hand, at four tourmaline rings set in rose gold.
Ah, Elizabeth thought.
She pulled the rings off with some difficulty, having to suck on one finger and lick another. She dropped the rings gently on the counter. “How incredibly stupid. I just wasn’t thinking . . .”
As the saleswoman waved the security officer away and sternly told Elizabeth to watch her step in the future, Daisy, who had been observing the whole episode with a puzzled smile, picked up one of the rings and held it to the light.
“Pretty,” she said.
Elizabeth stared at the floor, humiliated.
“It was a mistake,” she said.
“Yes, it was,” Daisy said. “They’re definitely not you, Elizabeth.”
Not me? Elizabeth sat irritably in the backseat surrounded by parcels and wondered, all the way home, why not.
When she got home, she opened a can of Diet Pepsi, watched Harry as he made potions while standing on a chair at the kitchen sink, and thought of Daisy tousling her hair and calling her Cookie. And what was with the finger on the lips?
The phone was ringing.
“It’s for you,” Brett yelled from upstairs. “Volfmann.”
She imagined Volfmann on the phone, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. Then leaning across the desk and grabbing her hand. She put the cold can of Pepsi against her cheek and picked up the receiver.
“I saw Daisy at Fred Segal’s,” she said.
“I see how you two spend your days.”
“I was doing research,” she said. “I just bumped into her. Or she bumped into me.”
She watched Harry pour and stir, pour and stir. He made a growling, grinding sound, then said, “Coffee.”
“Was she doing research, too?” Volfmann said.
Elizabeth was afraid Volfmann had called to scream at her. Or as she had once heard him describe the process when it referred to someone else who had failed him, to ream her a new asshole. Or worse, to fire her. She tried to put off the inevitable.
“So, she doesn’t have a partner or whatever they call it? A lover?”
“Why, Elizabeth, you intrigue me,” he said.
You intrigue me, too, she thought, but no words came out of her mouth.
“Daisy is quite the girl about town,” Volfmann was saying.
How about you? she thought. What is your status about town?
“Look, we have to talk, Elizabeth.”
We do? Yes, we do, she thought. She could see him so clearly, the phone crammed between his ear and his shoulder, his elbows on his desk, his body leaning forward, his face like a serious, intelligent dog’s.
How was it that she had never noticed the hoarse, deep timbre of his voice before?
“Come and meet me for a drink, okay?” he said.
She read to Harry before bedtime. She kept skipping pages and he kept noticing. He told her he wanted to be a gardener when he grew up.
“Like Grandma,” she said.
“No,” he said. “A gardener with a leaf blower.” And he fell asleep holding her hand.
Then she drove to meet Volfmann at Shutters, a place she had never been. It was on the beach, close to her, on Volfmann’s way to Malibu. It seemed an unlikely place to meet someone to fire them. It seemed an unlikely place to scream at her. It seemed more the kind of place where you use your power and status to get someone to sleep with you, she thought. She smiled.
She reminded herself that she had never been unfaithful to Brett. He was so calm and even tempered and smug and self-satisfied that it didn’t seem possible, really. Even now. When it seemed possible. Still, you never know. Adultery is wildly exciting, a powerful, intoxicating temptation. I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere.
But only if you’re married, she reassured herself.
And remember, too, that adultery is messy, filled with lies and heartbreak.
If you’re married.
Adultery is ludicrous as well, a series of embarrassing comic predicaments, locked doors, naked men on balconies, girls in the closet.
If you’re married, if you’re married, if you’re married.
So, Elizabeth thought, it is marriage, ultimately, that causes adultery. It is marriage that is to blame.
Out the window, she saw her mother driving much too fast. On her way to her dinner date, no doubt. Elizabeth waved. But Greta did not notice her, and Elizabeth thought that perhaps, all things considered, it was just as well.
Greta was meeting Daisy at a hotel. They couldn’t go to Greta’s house, obviously, and Daisy’s sister had come to the house in Silver Lake for a visit, so the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey was chosen, as unfashionable a place as they could think of. It was unlikely that anyone they knew would show up there, but even if someone did see them, Greta could say she had bumped into Daisy unexpectedly, that she’d gone to the hotel to meet the old college friend. And then, she’d say, Daisy and I thought we’d have a drink while I waited. A drink. Getting a drink sounded awfully good to her as she entered the lobby. She could get a drink for real, quickly, before Daisy arrived, and then she could go home.
She walked up to the desk. There was an enormous and hideous flower arrangement on it.
“I need a room for tonight,” she said.
The desk clerk had scrupulously combed and gelled hair. Wide tooth marks had been left behind by the comb. He had light brown hair and a thick pink neck. He asked for her credit card.
“I lost my wallet,” she said. “I’ll have to pay cash.”
The clerk said nothing and punched something into a computer. Greta gave her name as Gretchen Bernhardt, carefully reciting the incorrect spelling.
“I don’t have any,” she said when the clerk asked her for ID. “I lost my wallet. So I don’t have any.”
Stupid charade, she thought. I’m a grown woman. Give the man your credit card. Give the man your name.
The clerk looked at her for a minute with bored blue eyes, then shrugged.
Greta had dressed with care, choosing her least matronly undergarments, the silk sweater Elizabeth had given her for her birthday, a pair of tight-fitting pants and sandals her mother had forced her to buy at Barneys. She had gotten a pedicure and had her legs waxed, too.
“I haven’t had my legs waxed in years,” she told the woman who was ripping the strips of fabric off her burning legs. “Now I remember why.”
The woman had given her a smirky smile, which could have been interpreted in a number of ways, one of them being a suspicion that her client was about to embark on a love affair.
The silk sweater was too heavy. Greta was hot. She noticed a mousy person on her way to a conference room. I’m wearing the same sandals as that dowdy woman, she thought sadly. She stood, sweating, worrying over her shoes and wondering what she would say if someone she knew walked in. I could leave, she told herself. I could still leave, walk out of here with my virtue and dignity intact. But she wouldn’t leave. Nothing could make her leave, as she well knew. She had taken a leap and could see the ground coming at her faster and faster,
and as far as she was concerned, it couldn’t come fast enough. Even the appearance of Tony himself would not have stopped her. And what would he be doing here, anyway? she said to herself, outraged at the thought of her husband arriving for a sleazy, illicit assignation in a hotel lobby.
The clerk handed her a key.
“Luggage?” he said.
Greta, still fuming about Tony, thought again that she could simply walk out. She had handed the man $250 in cash, but she really could leave, right now. The lobby blurred a little. She mumbled something and headed toward the elevator.
In the room, she pulled the curtains and sat on one of the queen-size beds. This will be my bed, she thought. Daisy can have the other. Like Ozzie and Harriet. If Daisy even shows up. She imagined the door handle turning. Daisy’s sweet, plump hand would turn the knob. Above Daisy’s hand was her wrist and her smooth curved arm. Greta saw Daisy’s bare shoulder, felt the warmth of her shoulder beneath her own hand.
She opened the drawer on the bedside table, wondering if there would be a Bible there. Sure enough . . . She opened it and looked for the Song of Solomon. I’m a cliché, she thought. A woman in a hotel room, about to have an affair. Would she have felt better if she were more of a cliché, if she’d been waiting to have an affair with a man instead of a woman?
“Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats . . .” Greta smiled, picturing a flock of goats on Daisy’s head. “Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing . . .” Woolly teeth. Didn’t it also say somewhere that the beloved smelled like Lebanon? Greta lay down on the bed, her questionable shoes still on. She reached into her bag for her reading glasses so she could stop squinting. She heard her mother’s voice. Stop squinting. You’ll get wrinkles in your forehead. She put on her reading glasses. “Thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.” The thought of a belly made her suddenly self-conscious. She was not twenty years old. She’d had two children. She imagined Daisy finding her like this, a middle-aged woman in spectacles with wrinkles in her forehead, stretch marks on her heap of wheat, and the same sandals as a dowdy woman in the lobby. And she wondered why she didn’t care, why she knew it didn’t matter. “Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins,” she read, “which feed among the lilies.” Greta could feel the book’s binding in her hands, the bumpy black cover, as if it were skin. “Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices! Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue . . .”
She Is Me Page 17
