The Diamond Lane (12 page)

“He was,” said Mouse.

“How can you remember?”

“I do,” said Mouse. She blotted the tears from her own eyes with her knuckles.

“Be careful of that skin under your eyes. Remind me to give you some cream before you go. I have a sample of some of that Estée Lauder Mimi gave me. It's for women my age, but you look like you could use it. Did you put anything on your skin when you were in…”

“… Kenya.”

“I know where you were!” she suddenly yelled. “Don't treat me like… I have trouble remembering. I was in that Gateau on Melrose, you know, no, you wouldn't. I ordered and the girl came with the coffee and suddenly I've got a tube coming out of my nose and a damned IV and my wrist –” She lifted up her cast, then dropped it back in her lap. “When's the date? All I ask is it's after my hair has grown back.”

“Of course, Mom, of course.”

MOUSE STOLE A
glance at Tony as they stood shivering on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, waiting for yet another cab to come and take them to Mimi's apartment. He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, like some fair-haired, broken-nosed Maasai warming up for a tribal dance.

She was dead set against allowing a sense of guilt about leaving her mother and sister to live in Africa or about her mother's recent brush with death to change her mind about marriage. Anyway, even if she wasn't dead set against marriage, she was dead set against marrying Tony. She loved him, she supposed, but he was basically Not Her Type.
It would make your mother so happy
, said The Pink Fiend.

He was attractive, intelligent. All right. But he was too tall and rangy. He laughed very loud at things that were only marginally funny. He had large, loose joints, and was forever dislocating fingers, even elbows. He was lazy, congenial, uncritical. He was the dancing-on-a-sinking-ship type, whereas she was inclined to discover why the ship was sinking and see if it could be remedied. Give me a brooding Latin, she thought, a hairy, compact, cross-eyed Arab. Give me someone more dangerous, less decent. Tony was that – decent, and an awfully good companion into the bargain.

She could always call the thing off. Get engaged, then, if she absolutely could not bring herself to go through with it…

It was eleven o'clock. Hardly the time to broach the subject. They'd been waiting in front of the hospital for fifty minutes. They were freezing. They were jet-lagged and constipated, depressed and cranky. A cold wind blew in off the desert, rustling through a windbreak of eucalyptus trees growing in a vacant lot next door.

All she had to do was mention the conversation she'd had with her mother. Tony would do the rest. Although this was hardly his style. Standing in front of the Good Samaritan of the Valley, duffel bags leaning against their shins, surrounded by a ragtag assortment of camera gear and an impossibly heavy light
kit which they had not sent ahead, for fear it would disappear into the black hole of international shipping.

Tony was a devotee of the hackneyed flourish. He would require flowers, champagne, proper music. This would hardly do. It was the opposite of a memorable romantic moment. It was one of those horrendous bits of transitory time which, mercifully, our memories generally refuse to have anything to do with. Mouse had to go to the bathroom but was afraid if she scurried back inside the cab would arrive and refuse to wait. She pressed her thighs together and tried to conjure up images of the drought in Sudan.

No. This was definitely not the time.

“Do you still want to get married?” she asked.

“Pardon?” He was daydreaming about the Lakers. He'd read an article about them in the in-flight magazine on the airplane and was wondering how one went about getting season tickets.

“I think we should get married. If you still want to.”

“Eow Gawd! M' girl's gone off 'er bean.” He did a silly cockney accent at serious moments that drove her crazy.

“Do you have to do that?”

“What happened to marriage as a prison without walls?” He dropped the accent. “A method of self-sabotage synonymous with stagnation? You quoted someone. Auden, perhaps? No, Voltaire. ‘Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.' Am I missing any of your major points?”

These were the reasons she had refused him before, and he had not forgotten. His ego had taken a drubbing. The first time he had proposed was on the balcony of their hotel during a vacation in the Kenyan seaside town of Malindi. He went to a great deal of trouble to get an ocean view and a bottle of decent wine sent up. Thereafter he'd popped the question when he was drunk and feeling disgusted with himself and looking for an argument.

Even though Mouse insisted she loved him, he didn't believe her. He didn't believe that any normal woman in love
could resist marriage, even if it wasn't in her own best interest. Which left two disturbing options: either Mouse wasn't normal or she wasn't in love.

“You can't just say yes or no, can you?”

“Considering our history, I certainly think I'm entitled to whip you a hefty rasher of shit.”

“You mean considering the number of Peace Corps girls and embassy wives you passed up in the interest of fidelity.”

“I didn't pass up so many.”

Mouse looked into his face, just to double-check that he was teasing. “So all that graffiti I read about you on the ladies' room walls of East Africa was true.”

“Quite. Give you a demonstration on our honeymoon.”

“Our honeymoon.” Mouse tried not to cringe at the thought.

6.

NINE O'CLOCK CAME AND NO MOUSE. TEN O'CLOCK. TEN-THIRTY
. Mimi was beginning to worry. What if their plane had crashed? What if they'd been taken hostage? If it would happen to anyone it would happen to a FitzHenry. If the plane was simply delayed and Mouse had not called, she would be pissed.

The Bibliothèques struggled to discuss the book for an hour, then gave up. Elaine left, off to Dallas the next morning for a car-FAX-machine convention. Luke and Marty begged off too. The rest of the women migrated to the kitchen to slouch against the counter, finish the wine, complain about men and the business. The men turned on the World Series, forgetting everything. Then Mouse and Tony arrived.

Mimi thought Mouse looked terrible. She'd expected someone tan and fit in a safari suit with big shoulder pads and a cinched waist, not this broom with teeth.

“Mouse! You look great. You still look nineteen.” Her eyes looked great, anyway, light as green glass next to her sunfried skin. And that weirdly sexy cleft chin. Mimi suddenly understood a law of beauty: all you needed was one exotic feature. Mouse had two, the eyes and the chin. Everything else about her was plain and parched. She had the look of someone who'd been camping out for the last sixteen years. She was wearing some Mom Outfit even Shirl wouldn't be seen in. A-line skirt, pumps, a blouse. A brown-and-beige blazer with food stains on it. Mouse was still a dolt when it came to normal girl stuff, which
only made Mimi happier to see her. Who said travel changed you? Mousie Mouse hadn't changed a bit. Mimi tried to imagine her in a wedding dress and couldn't.

“Sorry we're late, we went right to the hospital. Mom seems to be doing okay.”

“She's fine
now
. It's the aftereffects you got to worry about.”

Mouse put down her duffel bag and camera. They hugged. Mimi could feel Mouse's bones through the back of her blazer. Bird bones. She was too thin. Mimi felt proud of herself for thinking
someone
was too thin. That proved she did not have an eating disorder. Mimi felt that if she wanted to she could pick Mouse up with one hand and wave her over her head. “You're so skinny. You really do look great.”

“You do too. You're a blond.”

“I have a great haircutter guy now!” cried Mimi, releasing Mouse to wildly scrunch her stiff blond curls. “I used to go to this woman who was great until she permed me. I looked like I'd been electrocuted. My new guy cuts my hair on the front lawn of his house. Sometimes the neighbors come and watch. It's cheaper at his house than at the salon. I'll have to give you his name.” Over Mouse's shoulder Mimi peeked at the future husband-boyfriend-fiancé. He stood to one side politely, a suitcase dangling at the end of each long, freckled arm.

Mimi was an expert on men, especially the kind like Ralph who grew on you. Men whose weak chins you could ignore because they had nice eyes. Men whose funny jokes could be loved instead of a good bone structure. Men who were plain old nice, who had a couple of okay features which always seemed more than okay when there was no one else. Ugly men whose power or wealth made up for everything. Men you needed to know to find attractive.

This guy was none of these men. He was the type whose careless glance made you feel as if you were standing on your head while riding an express elevator to the top floor of a building during an earthquake.

At the sound of the doorbell Lisa and Carole had drifted back into the living room, curious about Mimi's little sister, and about what type of man was to he found roaming around East Africa. Now she noticed them discreetly rearranging themselves, leaning at more alluring angles against the doorjambs. Mouse had lucked out. Unless, of course, Tony turned out to be a serial killer or an aspiring director. Mimi wasn't sure which would be worse.

“Where should I deposit these?” he asked.

“You're English!” Mimi cried.

Tony turned round as though Mimi was talking to someone behind him. “So he is.”

“Let me show you where to put your junk.” Mimi led Mouse and Tony back to her bedroom at the end of the hail. “I can't believe you made it here in one piece. I was really starting to worry. It's such a long trip. I know how long a flight can be, just from when I flew to Miami for that Bob Hope thing.”

“You did a film with Bob Hope?” asked Tony.

“A credit card commercial. It aired nationally. Maybe you saw it? I was the one in the red bikini with the hot-dog buns.”

“First time I've been to the States, I'm afraid,” said Tony.

“Maybe you saw it in Kenya. Do they even have TV in Kenya? I'll clean out a shelf for you in the medicine cabinet. And the closet. I have towels and stuff, sheets, I can get that later, I guess. It's just so good to see you!”

Mouse put her bag down in the corner by Mimi's bureau. She looked around the room. Mimi had obviously spent her energy and money on the living room. The carpet was brown and threadbare. There was a double-bed box spring on the floor, a faded blue comforter covered with dog hair tossed over it, an unfinished dresser clotted with junk: jewelry, mail, a Diet Pepsi can, blow dryer, diaphragm case, an oak-framed mirror with two curling postcards tucked into the frame. The postcards were from Mouse. Two postcards in sixteen years.

“It's nice to be home,” said Mouse.

“Ugh, wait'll you're here awhile. You'll hate L.A. as much as everyone else,” said Mimi.

A burst of clapping and hollering rolled down the hall.
GOGOGOGO
, ohhhh.

“What's happening?” Mimi trotted back out to the living room. “What happened?” She stood behind Ralph, massaged his shoulders.

“Thompson –” began Ralph, leaning away from her hands.

“–
COME ON
,
YOU PUTZ
!”

“Who's playing?” asked Tony. Ralph made room for him on the green wicker settee.

“Reds and the A's. Top of the seventh.”

The men stared at the set in communal silence, a circle of snakes held rapt by the charmer.

Mimi said, “I love baseball,” and returned to the kitchen.

Mouse stood behind the settee, staring in the direction of the set but seeing nothing. She wondered whether she was really here or still on the plane imagining herself here. What time was it? What day?

No one asked her to sit down. She marveled at how Tony had plugged right into this gang of guys like a reliable travel appliance. A beer appeared in his hand. During the commercials he regaled them with tales of Africa. He exaggerated, making the stories seem more exotic than they were, transforming them from interesting personal experiences into uproarious party chat.

Mouse fumbled for her pack of cigarettes in the pocket of her blazer. She lit up, glanced around the room. Was it just her, or did everyone in Mimi's
bok
group seem only slightly older than the Manhattan Beach Women's Volleyball Team? Mimi in particular looked frantically teenage, her grass clippings-colored hair frozen in a permanent state of tousle, her thin lips outlined in light pink lipstick. It made Mouse nervous and shy.

“Can I bum a cigarette?” asked the jittery redhead standing next to Mouse. Lisa, she thought her name was.

Mouse passed her the pack. “They're Kenyan.”

“Mimi says you're getting married,” said Lisa.

“Boy, word travels fast,” said Mouse. Shirl must have telephoned Mimi the minute she and Tony left the hospital.

“I doubt I'll ever get married. I'm thirty-four. I want to have at least two children but the odds of that are shit. I
want
my life to be narrow and uninteresting, stuck at home with the kids, baking cookies. I
want
to be bored out of my skull. I'm bored out of my skull now anyway. I'm a sound editor,” she added as if that explained everything.