The Diamond Lane (39 page)

“It makes it even more special, Mom. Have any of your friends at the craft shop had a movie about their kids' weddings shown on TV?”

Shirl considered this. “She hasn't had a
date
since the hostage crisis, Lorraine's daughter.”

Out of the corner of her eye Mouse saw Auntie Barb dashing her golf club to the ground. She stomped over, fists on her hips, the tendons in her scrawny neck taut. “I cannot bear this a minute longer. Shirl, open your eyes. She's taking advantage of your good nature, can't you see? You already said you were against this
movie
idea and she's gone ahead and done it
anyway. You are footing the bill, and here she is waltzing around like the world was made for her own pleasure. You wouldn't see a girl in Oregon getting involved in some foul
movie
nonsense. In Oregon, children respect their parents –”

“– Barb, for crying out loud! If I want to be taken advantage of that's my own damned business.”

“You think us Oregonians don't know what's what.” Tears filled Auntie Barb's eyes.

“You Oregonians don't know when to shut up, is what I think,” said Shirl, slamming the wedding album closed and ramming it back in its box.

Mouse shared the mauve sofa with Shirl. Together, they pored through the portfolios of prospective florists, read aloud to one another menus from prospective caterers. Shirl had become a fixture in Nita's office, along with Ivan and Eliot. Nita listened to all of Shirl's thoughts and suggestions carefully, her chin resting on interlaced fingers, dabbing her still-running new nose.

Eliot, it turned out, was a master cappuccino-maker and made them all cappuccinos in the industrial-sized white china cups. He made a special mocha variety for Shirl, to satisfy her sweet tooth. Ivan told Shirl, in his soft, coaxing voice, that the camera loved her. They decided, unanimously, that the wording on the invitations would read:

       
Mrs. Shirley FitzHenry

       
requests the pleasure of your company

       
at the marriage of her daughter

       
Frances Anne FitzHenry

       
to

       
Anthony Noel Cheatham

Shirl sobbed noisily with joy. Ivan gently reminded her not to look at the camera. She said she just wanted to make sure he was getting it all.

Money was no object. Tony was, though. He was The Groom. The reason for the wedding, but otherwise besides the point.
Heeding Nita's advice, Mouse tried to include him. When she asked him whether he thought her attendants should carry frilled rosettes or a modified crescent bouquet, he picked up the TV remote, “just to check on the ball game.”

Somewhere along the way, Mouse had lost track of him. She didn't know what ball game he was talking about. She didn't know what he did all day. His big job was to get the marriage license, also put together his guest list. Instead, he bought a skateboard that said
dog cheese!
across it in bold hot-pink letters. Mouse didn't know what this meant.

Tony slouched on the couch at night, the board across his lap, making minute adjustments on the wheels. He borrowed a set of tiny screwdrivers from the ten-year-old Armenian boy downstairs, his adviser on all matters relating to the sport.

The guest list worried Tony. The only person he knew in Los Angeles, besides all of Mimi's friends, was V.J. Parchman, and he certainly could not invite him. V.J. thought Tony and Mouse were married years ago in an intimate Rwandan mountain wedding, in the fog, among the gorillas. Tony wondered what would happen to the project if he admitted that the wedding scene was pure fancy, the only lie in an otherwise true story. Nothing, perhaps. Then again, it could be the card that toppled the house, one more small problem, not insurmountable in and of itself, that made
Love Among Elephants
more trouble than it was worth. Tony decided he would think about it later, then promptly put it out of his mind.

The next day, trying to airwalk off the Armenian boy's launch ramp, Tony fell and broke his nose.

Mouse was furious because she was so frightened. She was very good at imagining the sudden death of someone she loved. She ran red lights in the new Toyota, racing to the emergency ward for an X-ray. Dusky circles bloomed beneath Tony's eyes. His nostrils were plugged with Kleenex.

“You could have cracked your head open. You could have broken your stupid neck.”

“You're so cute when you're hysterical,” said Tony.

“I just don't want to be a widow before I'm a bride.”

“Bit of an impossibility, that.”

“Do me a favor and don't be calm and witty, all right? You scared the living shit out of me.”

MOUSE TOLD IVAN
that Tony would be unavailable for at least a month. They were hunkered over the production schedule at a Mexican restaurant on the Boardwalk near his apartment. She thought Ivan was getting suspicious. He had twice asked her when Tony could give them some of his time. He just wanted to
talk
to Tony, no camera, maybe they could do some audio.

First she'd said Tony had a two-week stint sound-editing on a TV show, then that he was busy finishing up a draft of his script with Ralph. The first excuse was an outright lie, the second a presumption. After it became apparent that Tony and his nose would survive, she allowed herself to appreciate her fiancé's good timing. She was grateful for a truthful excuse.

“It's painful for Tony to talk,” she said. “They had to put him under and go in and readjust things. It's not your average broken nose.”

Ivan stared at her over his taquitos with his insinuating blue gaze. He had cut his hair. He now wore it combed straight off his forehead. He had put on weight, thanks to all the meals paid for by the production. He looked more like the Ivan whom Mouse remembered. She was no longer nervous around him, although there were moments when he pinched her waist, rested his chin on her shoulder to deliver a quiet aside, when she wondered what she was doing marrying Tony.

“Anyway,” said Ivan, “I would like to meet with him before next month. After that I have another project beginning. Time will be tight.”

“What project?” Mouse suddenly felt left out. He was doing a project without her?

“An environmental thing. They are paying me a lot to do
nothing. Which reminds me, I have some bad news and some bad news.”

Mouse laughed. “I'm good at bad news. What's up?”

“The footage we shot at Sins is unusable. Six thousand feet, out of focus. I don't think it was Eliot. Some problem with the lens. He's having it looked at.”

“I suppose we had to pay for the processing and printing?”

“That's the other problem. Some of our funding has fallen through.”

“Some? How much, some?”

“Sixty thousand. It is not the end of the world. I have several other places I can go. In the meantime, I'd like to borrow half of it from your wedding account to buy a few more cases of film.”

“Absolutely not,” she said without thinking.

Ivan chuckled lazily. He reached across the table and grabbed her hand. He rolled out her fingers and stroked each pearly-pink nail with his thick thumb. “If you had been this tough before, I never would have married your stupid sister.”

“What about, about the sixty thousand?” she said. Maybe she should think about this. She could borrow the money from the account without saying anything, then replace it… no, she knew that story. Sinking your own money into a documentary was like lending money to a compulsive gambler in Reno.

“Something will come up,” he sighed.

“Donating your other kidney?”

His gaze roamed the room, finally settling on the pack of cigarettes they were sharing. “Where did you hear that?”

“Is it true?”

“I am excessive, but not that excessive.”

“Where will you get the money?”

“There are a few private individuals in town interested in nurturing my vision.”

“Women?”

“Of course, women. You could be one of them.” He smiled broadly and asked for the check, which he paid.

Mouse was not sure she even liked Ivan anymore. He was a politico. There were reasons beneath his reasons. He reminded her of one of those sexy, inscrutable drug kingpins in a B-movie featuring money laundering and international intrigue. At the same time she realized that liking him seemed to have nothing to do with the nature of their unfinished business.

19

WHEN BIBLIOTHÈQUES MET AT THE BIG HOUSE, ANYONE
with an aversion to sitting on L.A.'s filthiest square of shag had to bring his own chair. Even though Sather's cat had been eaten by a coyote six months before, fleas still bivouacked in the carpet, waiting for a warm body to happen past so they could hop aboard. In addition, there were the usual stains and the snappy odor of old cat piss. The chairs were set up in a circle. A bag of sour cream ‘n' onion potato chips yawned open on the floor: the hors d'œuvres. Every time the meeting was held at the Big House, Mimi felt like she was camping out.

Mimi had tried repeatedly to get Mouse and Tony to come along, but they thought it sounded too much like school. They weren't sure they understood the point of it. Mimi tried to explain that you got more out of a text if you discussed it with other people. Mouse said, “I don't read texts, I read books.” The closer the wedding got, the snottier Mouse became. Mimi knew for a fact that Mouse read nothing but magazines.

This month the book was Ralph's pick.
The Razor's Edge
, by Somerset Maugham.

“The difference between us and the Larry character,” said Ralph, “is that at least he could find God without needing a couple million bucks. At least he could be spiritual, he had that kernel of satisfaction. I'm a producer-director, but I've never produced, I've never directed, I will never be able to do the thing I love unless someone gives me a lot of money. Larry, at least,
could do the thing he loved.” He took a slug from his beer, stared moodily at the toes of his tennis shoes.

“How do you know you love it if you've never done it?” asked Lisa. She had broken out her pleated linen shorts, a sign that spring had arrived. An ashtray balanced on one sleek knee, brown from a recent trip to the Cayman Islands. She flipped her straight red hair over her shoulder, inhaling deeply on her Gauloise.

“I went to
film
school, Lisa. In case you'd forgotten.”

“Whoopee,” said Lisa.

No one had read much of the book because of the weather. This was the stock excuse. There was an unspoken understanding among the Bibliothèques that reading was done only under optimum meteorological conditions, preferably when there was nothing else better to do.

It was the time of year when for two or three blessed weeks it did not seem insane to live here. The days were warm and smogless, the nights cool, tinged with the smell of jasmine. Vast islands of peach, pink, and lavender snapdragons bloomed on the front lawns of the mansions up and down Sunset, nurtured by the hands of a thousand dutiful Mexican gardeners. High school and college students in convertibles slathered on suntan lotion at stoplights, already working on a spring-break tan. Music blared from open windows. The Dodgers were in training.

There were also the spring movie releases, so everyone was going to screenings. Luke, who was a runner at Warner Brothers, reported that no one was even reading coverage, it had been so nice.

“Then why
am
I doing this?” asked Carole. She sat next to Lisa, a script open on her lap. Carole could talk and read a script at the same time.

“Rent,” said Sather. “The entire world boils down to the quest for rent.”

Mimi hadn't read the book either. It had nothing to do with the weather. She sat next to Ralph, munching potato chips
daintily from a cupped hand, jiggling her foot. She wore her turquoise knit mini, his favorite, and a pair of black strappy sandals. She had just had her legs waxed. She felt good.

She had not read the book because self-improvement suddenly seemed a waste of time. She had decided to get married. Helping Mouse plan her wedding made her realize it was time to give up her options and tie the knot. She would marry Ralph, get pregnant ASAP, and kiss off Solly and his teeny, torturous steno chair. They would find a starter home, maybe in Thousand Oaks or Agoura, and she would go back to school to get her teaching credential. She'd always loved kids and could do wonders with construction paper. If that didn't work out, she could always go back to being a drudge and an aspiring actress. She could always call Bob Hope.

Mimi and Ralph had never talked about how they felt about each other. She loved him, she was now sure. It was the deep, abiding love necessary for marriage. She knew, because the idea of shopping for a dishwasher with him was more palatable than the idea of having sex, which hadn't been the way she had felt about Ivan.

To this day she still wasn't sure what had gotten into her. All she remembered was that she wanted an excuse to throw a big party and was sick of all the complicated scheduling involved in sleeping together. He lived at home and she lived at home and the pool cabana had long since lost its charm. In retrospect, it sounded as though it was convenience she had been after, and maybe it was. She'd felt the same way recently when she bought an exercise bike and set it up in her bedroom because she was tired of schlepping to the gym.