An Accidental Affair (7 page)

I had a flashback from the Bergs; then I asked, “How’s the staff?”

“Shocked. Worried. Gossiping. Speculating. Hoping they don’t lose their jobs.”

“Who are they blaming?”

“Some blame you. Some blame her. Some don’t care one way or the other.”

“Who is blaming Johnny Handsome?”

He shrugged. “Should I fire the ones that blame you?”

“Don’t fire anyone yet.”

“Instructions?”

“At the house?”

“Yeah. Instructions.”

“Tell them to sign for nothing in my absence. Accept no packages.”

“Okay. The police have been by there twice. You can only hide so long, Thicke.”

The moment Driver left, I showered and put on the same jeans that I had worn the last three days along with a severely wrinkled T-shirt. I grabbed my sullied sheets and headed downstairs. The elevator was still out, so I went down two flights of concrete stairs. The musty and badly painted laundry room was barely big enough for the three washers and three dryers, each a different color and model, each ancient and dented and marked with vulgar graffiti scratches. Only one washer and one dryer worked.

Someone had loaded their dark clothes in the only working dryer, then had been rude enough to abandon their belongings. My washing was done in twenty-five minutes and they still hadn’t returned. I yanked out the clothing and saw that it was the earthy apparel of a woman. I pulled out wrinkled, colorful T-shirts that had comical and incendiary sayings across the front:

ALL WOMEN MASTURBATE. GIVING BLOWJOBS IS AN ART. BUKKAKE QUEEN.

Reading her T-shirts distracted me. As did her lingerie. She had a ton of lingerie. Twenty minutes later I was taking out the last of her lingerie, folding and putting each item in her light blue plastic basket when she staggered in yawning and wearing Mickey Mouse pajama bottoms, a beat-up and severely wrinkled T-shirt that read
NOBODY DIES A VIRGIN: LIFE FUCKS ALL, SO DO ME DOGGIE
, and no makeup. Looked like she was living on very little sleep. She came my way and
I still offered her no sound, no expression. She was tall enough to be a runway model, with keen features and clear skin. Eyebrows severely arched. Her dreadlocks were long, light brown waves that framed her face and cascaded over her shoulders like a cape.

She snapped, “
Vell, mudda sic
.”

She snatched up her clothing, yelled some vulgar pieces of her mind, then pushed me out of her way, and stormed out like she was going to get a gun to come back and shoot me.

After I finished drying my sheets, I returned to my hideout and made the bed.

There was another knock at my door.

The confrontation from earlier came to mind. Laundry Room Girl had probably tracked me down and had come seeking vengeance. But it wasn’t Laundry Room Girl. It was Sweet Isabel. Like an actor, I began to play the role of another character.
The Life of Varg Veum
. Isabel had on black pants and a short casual jacket, flat ballet-style shoes. She brought me a small fruit basket. Bringing food to a neighbor was the
Desperate Housewives
way of getting invited inside to snoop. Discomfort took root, but I remained cordial. I thanked her and carried the fruit to the kitchen, set everything on a circular cherry wood table that was bar height.

Isabel said, “Blimey. Look at all of these wonderful books you have.”

“Blimey? Did you just say
blimey?
”

She said, “This is a Hemingway.
In Our Time
. First edition of his second book.”

She handled the novels with care, then returned them as she had found them.

She said, “This is like being in a quaint library. Hope you don’t mind my browsing.”

Isabel picked up
The Pregnant Widow,
then sat at my kitchen table and started to read.

She said, “So you’re a book collector and screenwriter,
Varg Veum
.”

The way she said my name made me pause. Isabel had come here for a reason.

She asked, “From where did you matriculate?”

“USC.”

“From Norway and went to USC?”

“Exchange student.”

“With no accent.”

“I still have it packed in one of these boxes. I’ll take it out and wear it later.”

“Varg Veum. USC. I’m a UCLA girl. I matriculated from Sarah Lawrence back east, had left London to go to school in Yonkers. But when I came out West, I never left. Loved the weather. I went back to UCLA for my master’s. So, on this coast, I’m a UCLA girl.”

Isabel looked around, again took in my leather-bound books, my furniture, my bruised right hand, curious, but too cultured and polite to ask the questions inside her head.

Then she said, “I’ll tell you this, Varg Veum, just so you’ll know.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“I’ve read all of the long-dead authors like Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Joyce. But I also read crime novels written by Norwegian author Gunnar Staalesen.”

I nodded in return. She had me cornered. And she knew that she had me cornered.

She said, “You’re a bad liar. A very bad liar.”

“I’m a damn good liar. I’m just a bad actor.”

She asked, “Married?”

“I just left my wife.”

“You left abruptly.”

“What brings you to that accurate conclusion, my dear Sherlock.”

“No one would move in during the middle of the night in the rain.”

She motioned in a kind yet firm way and I sat down at the dining room table across from her. Isabel reached across the table and took my right hand. She pulled her lips in and looked at my bruised knuckles, stared at each one, read each bruise as if it was a horrific chapter in my life.

“The wife?”

“Not the wife. Didn’t touch her.”

“With whom did you have a row?”

“The guy she slept with.”

“She had an affair. Not you.”

“Her. Not me.”

She patted my bruised knuckles, and then she let my wounded hand go.

She said, “No matter what you do, or what she did, Varg, don’t put your hands on her.”

I nodded. She said that like she’d been through more pain than I’d ever imagine.

She asked, “Mind if I sit here and read for a while?”

“Sure. Have a seat.”

She read while I unpacked. I opened my iPad 2 and MacBook Pro. I unpacked the screenplay that I was working on.
Boy Meets Girl
. That was the next film, the one that I was writing for Regina Baptiste. It was a love story. And now it felt like I’d constructed a well-written lie. Not long after, there was another knock at my door. It was Mr. Holder. He was coming to check on me too. When I invited him inside, he was surprised to see Isabel reading.

He told Isabel, “You’re cheating on me already?”

“Tell that to that child who lives with you, Chet. You have three babies in your home.”

“Sweet Isabel.” Mr. Holder chuckled. “Where are you coming from looking that fresh?”

“Changing the subject, are we? Are we being polite in front of Varg Veum?”

“Yes, we are.”

Moments later, there was another knock at my door. Again my nerves were on edge.

I’d left my estate in search of solitude and landed in the middle of Union Station. This was why people lived behind gates and had bodyguards and Dobermans. Not for protection, just to keep people from ringing their fucking doorbell and dropping by whenever they felt like it.

I opened the door and it was a smiling young woman who looked like she was old enough to be in college, but her face still belonged in high school. She had two kids with her, one walking and the other in a stroller. The one walking looked about three and the one in the stroller a little over a year old. The young girl had the body of an exotic dancer and a church-going smile. There were two plates of food resting on top of the stroller.

She said, “Varg, right?”

She had shoulder-length hair dyed shocking pink, same hue as her nails.

“Yeah. I’m Varg.”

Mr. Holder stood up when he heard her and her kids outside my door.

Mr. Holder was surprised to see them. He smiled, but his eyes told the truth.

She said, “I’m Vera-Anne Trotman. Guess he didn’t tell you about me.”

“He was just talking about you.”

The giggling had ended and she set free a smoky, mature voice that sounder older and wiser than she appeared. Before me stood a dozen wonderful, sensual contradictions.

I stepped back and she and her children came inside. She spoke to Isabel. No hugs.

She told Mr. Holder, “I didn’t know how long you’d be up here, and you haven’t eaten since breakfast, so I cooked and brought you some dinner. I brought you a plate too, Varg. Miss Isabel, I can go back and get you one. I didn’t know that you were up here too.”

She had brought food so she could come in and spy on Mr. Holder.

And just like that, I knew that I was sitting in a room filled with dishonesty and liars.

It was the same feeling I had whenever I had a meeting with studio executives.

Vera-Anne froze, her eyes wide. She trembled.

I said, “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“Your art. He told me that you had nice furniture, but he didn’t mention anything about your art. Am I dreaming? Oh my god. Is that glass sculpture a Chihuly? Can I look at your art?”

It was too late because she had already moved across the room.

“You have art by Frida Kahlo. She is my inspiration, believe it or not. Love it. Colorful, but depressing, in my opinion. Whoa. Is that Van Gogh? And Elizabeth Catlett Mora. Are you serious? Hirschfeld did a celebrity caricature of you? Get out. You have the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt too? You have at least one piece by everyone that I study and admire.”

A few steps later she was in front of my bedroom. The door was closed, but she pushed it open without asking. Vera-Anne clicked the lights on and looked at my furniture, ran her hand over the smoothness and richness of my dresser, then gazed at my bed like she was in awe.

Her mouth fell open. A moment passed before she whispered, “Wow. Nice as hell.”

I smelled Patrice in the room. Her scent was still there, moving in circles, fading.

And I smelled Regina Baptiste. Everything that I owned possessed her energy.

Vera-Anne said, “Have you known Poppa long?”

“Poppa?”

“Mr. Holder. Chet. I call him Poppa.”

“We met yesterday when I was moving in, just like he said.”

“So you and my old man aren’t really friends then.”

“We’re friends.”

“Where did you get all of this nice art?”

“It fell off a truck.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Unemployed.”

“What did you use to do?”

“As little as possible.”

She stared at my face, at my chin, at my lips, her head tilted; then she licked her lips and proffered me an erubescent smile. Her heated smile was the harbinger of danger.

I offered a cautious smile. “We’d better move this party back to the living room.”

“Oh. I’m in your bedroom. Yeah. Good idea. Very, very nice bed, by the way.”

“It fell off of the same truck.”

“Must’ve been a truck that was heading to Rodeo Drive.”

I directed her back into the communal area and her family.

We ate dinner followed by cookies and sipped water and Vita Malts, then fell into a forgettable conversation until I moved on toward the kitchen area to throw things into the garbage. Vera-Anne Trotman remained ecstatic. When Isabel and Mr. Holder weren’t looking, she made envious faces as she evaluated the art again and again, her eyes moving around the room. Her smile was broad. She was young and owned the generous beauty that came with youth. But there was something about her that the camera wouldn’t like and that would leave her on the cutting room floor. Mr. Holder and Isabel were talking as Vera-Anne made her way into the kitchen and stood near me with her youngest baby on her hip.

She asked, “Can I get a cup of water for Reyonce Beyhanna? She’s thirsty.”

“Yes, you may.”

“I don’t think Junkanoo wants any. He’s always up under Poppa.”

While she gave her baby water, she told me that more than a few women in the complex had taken notice, especially with me being the mysterious new guy on the block, the nice dressing man who was rumored to be single and who had expensive Italian furniture, the man with more books than a library, and how many had said they would love to meet me.