Death of an Orchid Lover (9 page)

Nearly two hours later. Austin, Vicki, and I were lounging around the living room. Everyone else had left except Vera Berg, who wouldn’t be gone until the last crumb of food was.

The doorbell rang. I went to answer it. Eugene Rand stood at the door.

Eugene was thirty-five, short, and bald, with a discolored spot shaped like Argentina marking a failed hair transplantation attempt. He was an odd little guy who was never very comfortable around other people. He’d been Brenda’s assistant at the Kawamura, and when she died he’d more or less taken over the place. This increased responsibility, coupled with some serious therapy, had gone a long way in the last several months toward taming Eugene’s antisocial tendencies. He was still a weirdo, but one a lot nicer to be around than
he’d been the previous spring, when his chief positive attribute was that he’d probably saved Gina’s and my lives.

“Hi, Joe.”

“Hi, Eugene. The meeting’s pretty much over.”

“I didn’t come for the meeting. But I knew you’d be here because of it, and I wanted you to be meet someone.”

He turned and gestured out to the lime-green Renault Le Car parked in front of the house. A woman emerged and came up the walk.

Eugene’s “someone” was at least four inches taller than he was. She was thin, just this side of Ally McBeal. Fine brown hair hung to her shoulders. In fact, everything about her was brown. Her clothes. Her shoes. Her eyes, bright, curious, with a hint of mischief.

“This is Sybil,” Eugene said.

I shook her hand, invited them in, and offered them something to drink. They declined. Everyone stood around awkwardly. Then we all sat, maintaining the awkwardness level. Eugene clutched Sybil’s hand.

“Eugene’s told me so much about you,” Sybil told me.

I gave him a look. “Well, he’s been keeping you a secret.”

Eugene fluttered his eyes. “I, uh, I didn’t want to jinx things by telling anyone I had a, uh, a …”

“A girlfriend,” Sybil said.

“Yes,” he said. “A girlfriend. Isn’t it odd? Isn’t it strange?”

I stopped him before he broke out into a chorus of “Send In the Clowns.” “It’s not so strange, Eugene. You’re a good-looking guy.” I was stretching things there, but the cause was just. “Why shouldn’t you have a girlfriend? And a beautiful one at that.”

The two of them turned various shades of red. “Oh, Joe, you’re too sweet,” Sybil said.

We made chitchat. Eugene and Sybil, mostly Sybil, told us
about their ice-skating date at the rink over on Sepulveda. But it was clear a crowd of five—Vera didn’t count; she was by this time in the kitchen clearing out my refrigerator—was more than Eugene was comfortable with. “Come on, Syb,” he said. “It’s time to go back to—to go.”

I escorted them to the door. Eugene hadn’t let go of Sybil’s hand for an instant. “You’ll be at the conservatory Tuesday afternoon to help move the euphorbias, right, Joe?” he said.

“Sure will.”

“Good. See you then.”

I shut the door behind them. When I got back to the couch, Vicki stood and gave me a hug.

“What was that for?” I said.

“For being so sweet. For telling her she was beautiful.”

“She thinks I’m sweet. You think I’m sweet. Yesterday my bug-commercial wife Diane thought I was sweet. Every woman in the world thinks I’m sweet. So why can’t I get a date?”

Austin rolled his eyes. “Not this again.”

“No,” I said. “I mean it this time. I mean, even Eugene Rand’s got a girlfriend, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’ve heard you say he was making great strides,” Vicki said.

“Yeah, but he’s only been seminormal, and thereby eligible for a girlfriend, for a month or two. Whereas I, whatever strangeness I may exhibit, have been in the running for years. Decades, even. So what gives?”

“Man,” said Austin. He was shaking his head. His ponytail swung from side to side.

“What?”

“How many times have I told you?”

“Jeez, Austin, don’t start in about Gina again.”

“I don’t know, man. You’re like oil and vinegar together.”

“Austin, honey?” Vicki said.

“Yeah, hon?”

“Oil and vinegar don’t exactly mix.”

“Yeah, but they go well over salad.” He pulled out his pocket watch. “Time to go.”

Austin shook my hand, and Vicki hugged me again, and they went home. Eventually Vera went away too, and I was left alone, picturing Gina and me lying limply on a bed of romaine.

The phone rang while I was washing up. I would have let the machine get it, but it had a something’s-wrong ring.

“She dumped me,” Gina said.

“She what?”

“She tried to make it sound like it was all about a job, but I know she’s just moving to San Francisco to get away from me.” Her voice was a little off.

“Have you been drinking?”

“A little. I downed the wine after she left.”

“A glass of wine’s not so much.”

“Not the glass. The bottle. She came over and gave me five minutes and then she sprang it on me. ‘A great opportunity,’ she called it. ‘Everything I’ve always wanted in a job.’

Bullshit.”

“She’ll change her mind.”

“She won’t change her mind. We talked for hours, for Christ’s sake. After a while we were talking about other stuff, and I realized I was already thinking of her as a former lover.” She wasn’t crying, but she was close, and that had me
worried. The only time I ever saw Gina cry was at her father’s grave.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I said.

I actually made it in eighteen, though I nearly ran over a late-night skateboarder in doing so. I buzzed and ran up the stairs. She was waiting in her doorway. I wrapped her in my arms and held her. I could smell the wine on her breath, but she was entitled, I guessed, to get a little tipsy in a time of romantic trauma.

After I got her inside and onto the sofa, I kept an arm around her and stroked her hair, just letting her go on about how she couldn’t keep a relationship going with anyone, and how she was so lucky to have me around to try to make things better.

And still, she didn’t cry.

Finally, when she was quiet, I spoke. “How long have I been here?”

She looked at me like I was insane. “I don’t know. Fifteen minutes? Twenty?”

“And in all that time did you even once mention Jill?” “What? Of course I did.”

“No. The last time you mentioned her was on the phone. And even then you didn’t say her name. All you’ve been moaning about was how you can’t have a relationship with anyone. You’re more upset about that than about any particular person.”

She considered it for a while. “You’re wrong.”

“It took too long for you to say I was wrong for me to be wrong. Admit it. You weren’t that much into her.”

“Sure I was. We really had something going.”

“You could move to San Francisco with her.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’d never move up to America’s Most Impressed With Itself City just to—” She looked up at me,
pursing her lips. Her eyes might have been wet. “Damn you, Portugal, you know me too well.”

Silence for several minutes. Then she said, “I need to get drunk.”

“You
are
drunk.”

“No, I mean
really
drunk.”

“Is this a good idea?”

“Who gives a shit? I’m always in such control, and now I have a perfect reason not to be.” She shifted her position so she was looking squarely at me. “Come on, Joe, get drunk with me.”

“Why drag me into it?”

“Because it’s no fun drinking alone.”

“You don’t drink enough to know that.”

“I heard it on
Oprah.
Come on. Let’s tie one on.”

I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. “Okay.”

She wanted vodka, which she was out of, so we went out and walked to the all-night Mayfair Market on Santa Monica Boulevard. We passed a pizzeria on the way, and Gina decided we needed a pizza. So we ordered one and continued to Mayfair while it was baking. Gina grabbed a couple of pints of Häagen-Dazs, then said we needed some beer to go with the pizza. I pointed out that she hated beer, but she said something about penance, and since she’s Catholic and I’m only half I figured she knew what she was talking about.

When we got back, we dealt with the pizza in short order, each consuming a beer or two in the process. Then Gina filled a water glass half full of vodka and topped it with V-8 juice. She asked if I wanted one. I said, what the hell, why not. Soon we were seated on the sofa with our drinks and our ice cream.

I brought her up to date on my visit to the orchid show. I
left out the part about Sharon turning me down. One miserable social life an evening was enough.

We turned on the TV and watched a terrible TV movie with Tori Spelling, which is probably redundant. We kept packing away ice cream and cut-rate Bloody Marys, and an hour later we were both in rather sad shape, sprawled at opposite ends of the sofa, with our legs in a jumble somewhere in the middle.

“I’m going to pass out,” Gina announced.

“Thanks for the update.”

“I need to go to bed.”

“A fine idea. You’ll sleep it off, and everything will look better in the morning.”

“Everything will look like shit in the morning. And I won’t have the booze to make it look better.”

“I’m glad to hear this trauma isn’t turning you into an alcoholic. Come on, I’ll tuck you in.”

“No.”

I tried to figure out what “no” meant. My vodka-saturated brain finally decided she was concerned about my well-being. “Don’t worry. I won’t drive home drunk. I’ll sleep on your sofa.”

“You hate sleeping on my sofa.”

“I’m not going to throw you out of your bed.”

“So we’ll sleep in the same bed.”

“Didn’t we have this exact same conversation about a year ago?”

“Yes. And then we didn’t share the bed. Now I think we should.”

“Bad idea,” I said. “Because when we
did
sleep in the same bed a couple of nights later—”

“Nothing happened.”

“But it almost did.”

“And, if it had, would that have been so bad?”

“That’s the alcohol talking.”

“I don’t think so.”

I sighed. “It would have changed things.”

“There’s a fresh toothbrush under the sink. Go use it.”

I went and used it. When I came out of the bathroom Gina was sitting on the side of her bed in T-shirt and panties. She popped up, nearly lost her balance, righted herself, headed for the bathroom. When the door closed behind her I listened for retching sounds. When there weren’t any, I undressed. I kept my underwear on. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t ever seen me naked. But the last time had been seventeen years before, and it didn’t seem the right moment to break the string.

I slid under the covers. Soon she came back in. “You’re on my side of the bed,” she said.

“Right. Sorry.” It was my side too. But that time a year before when we’d shared a bed, we decided that, if we ever did it again, the one whose place we were at would have dibs on it. I shoved over.

She turned out the light, got under the blanket, snuggled up next to me. She was cold, her feet like ice cubes. But she warmed up nicely.

Eventually she said, “This is nice and cozy. Why don’t we do this more often?”

“Because Jill would have minded.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have told her.”

I felt her pressed up against me. It was, indeed, nice. It was, indeed, cozy. My loins stirred. I willed them not to. Gina and I were, after all, just friends. My loins ignored me.

“Do you think it would?” she said.

“Do I think what would what?”

“Making love. Screw up our friendship.”

The moon was behind a cloud. I couldn’t make out her expression. I could, though, smell the alcohol on her breath. “I don’t know. This isn’t the right time to find out.”

Half a minute later she said, “You’re probably right.”

“You don’t sound too sure.”

“I’m not. But how do we know?”

“We don’t. Go to sleep, Gi. We can talk about this some other time. When you’re not quite so vulnerable.”

“You promise? You promise we’ll look into being lovers?”

“I promise.” I gently kissed her dry lips. “Now go to sleep.” Within a minute or so she did, and as soon as I saw she was safe in dreamland I joined her there.