Shopgirl (7 page)

AT BREAKFAST, EARLY BECAUSE SHE
has to get to work, Mirabelle becomes age seven. She sits, waiting to be served. Ray Porter gets the juice, makes the coffee, sets the plates, toasts the bread, and pours the cereal. He gets the paper. Mirabelle is so dependent, she could have used a nanny to hold open her mouth and spoon-feed her the oat bran. She speaks in one-word sentences, which requires Ray to fill the silences with innocuous queries, like an adult trying to break through to a disinterested teenager. In this snapshot of their morning is hidden the definition of their coming relationship, which Ray Porter will come to understand almost two years later.

“You like your breakfast?” Ray decides to try a topic that is in both their immediate vision.

“Yeah.”

“What do you usually have for breakfast?”

“A bagel.”

“Where do you get bagels?”

“There's a shop around the corner from me.”

Total dead end. He starts over.

“You're in great shape.”

“Yoga,” she says.

“I love your body,” he says.

“I have my mother's rear end. Like two small basketballs covered over in flesh, that's what she said once, on a car trip.” She emits a little chuckle. Ray gets an odd look on his face, and Mirabelle reads him and she says the only funny thing of the morning:

“Don't worry, she's older than you are.”

He wants to reach over and slide his hand in between the opening in the robe that he has lent her. He wants to relive last night, to trace his hands over her breasts, to analyze and codify and confirm their exact beauty, but he doesn't. This will take place on another night with dinner and wine and walking and talking, where the seduction is not assumed, and the outcome undetermined. His sexual motor is already whirring and purring for their next date.

Ray's libido is exactly twenty-four hours ahead of his reason, and tomorrow at this time he will recollect that Mirabelle became quite helpless in the morning and wonder about it (his mind works slowly when it comes to women; he often does not know that he has been insulted, slighted, or manipulated until months or sometimes years later). But since he does not know what to expect from a woman––his four years of dating have not really educated him––he accepts Mirabelle's morning behavior passively. Ray's former experience has been with tough-minded, outgoing, vital, ambitious women, who, when displeased, attack. Mirabelle's dull inertia draws him into a peaceful place, a calm female cushion of acceptance.

He drives Mirabelle home, just in time for her to get ready and be late for work.

THE STENCIL ADHERES TO THE
amplifier by manila tape, and Jeremy has learned to evenly apply the paint in one skillful squirt of the airbrush. The Doggone Amplifier Company has a logo of a dog with cartoon speed lines trailing out behind it, with the brand name laid out in a semicircle underneath. It is not easy to fill in the delicate speed lines; some of the earlier paint jobs, before Jeremy joined the ranks, are uneven and sloppy. When he works he crouches in an uncomfortable position that only someone under thirty could bear for long before he would have to seek work elsewhere. His salary is so small that his paycheck could read “so and so
measly
dollars” and no one would contradict. But it's Jeremy's work clothes that tell the story of his line of business: his jeans look like a Jackson Pollock and his T-shirt looks like a Helen Frankenthaler––he is working at the bottom end of the arts.

His boss, Chet, ambles through the warehouse with a client in tow, and their faint muffled voices waft over the stacks of amps to Jeremy's straining ears. He catches a glimpse of them and notices that the client is a sharply dressed businessman, presumably the manager of a rock band trying to make a deal for a ton of amplification in exchange for promotion. The problem in the negotiation, of course, is that Chet only wants to sell amps, and the manager only wants them for free. There is no middle ground. Chet's business is waterlogged and about to sink and he simply can't afford to ship out fifteen thousand dollars worth of equipment for use months later. The manager slips away with a handshake and Chet stands there as the Mercedes disappears out of the lot through the chain-link fence.

For Christopher Columbus, it was the sailing of three ships that launched his life's great journey. For Jeremy, it is the sight of the sinking Chet watching the ass-end of a hundred-thousand-dollar car shrink to a vanishing point down an industrial street in Pacoima. He lays down his spray gun and gets in Chet's field of vision.

“You know what I was thinkin'?”

“What was that?” Chet barely replies.

“You know who hangs out with rock musicians when they're on the road?”

“Who?” says Chet.

“Other rock musicians.”

“And?”

“If you had someone on the road with one of the bands using our stuff, someone who looks sharp, like that guy does . . . ” he thumbs in the direction of the dust of the Mercedes, “ . . . someone the musicians could relate to, I bet you could sell a lot more amps.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

“Me.”

Chet looks at the specter of ineptitude that is standing in front of him. He does not see a sharply dressed businessman; he does not see a clever salesman. But he does see someone he thinks a rock musician could relate to.

“And how much would you like to be paid to do this?” says Chet.

“I could do it for . . . ”

Jeremy has never, ever been asked such a question. He has always been told what he would be paid. He can't even fill out an employment form that asks “desired salary” as it confounds him: he always wants to write down one million dollars. But Jeremy has been asked, so he has to answer:

“ . . . nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“I could do it for . . . ”

Jeremy has heard only one financial phrase in his life, and he opens and closes every door in his memory bank until he finds it:

“ . . . a finder's fee.”

“And what would you find?” says Chet.

“Bands to use the amps. And if another band starts using the amps because of a band I got to use the amps, I'd like a finder's fee for them, too.” And then hastily adds, “of five hundred dollars.”

Chet can't see any reason not to take Jeremy up on his proposal. After all, it's a kind of commission basis, an Avon Calling of rock and roll. Since a set of amps can cost fifteen thousand dollars, it will be easy to shoot five hundred Jeremy's way. He doesn't see any problem in finding a new stenciler; in fact, his nephew is just out of high school and is looking for a job in the arts. Jeremy, overestimating his own value, is thinking the exact opposite: “I hope he doesn't realize he's going to have to find someone else to stencil.”

Chet accepts the offer but does have to lay out some cash. Two hundred and twenty-two dollars for Jeremy to buy a new suit. Jeremy is enterprising enough to stretch the dough into an extra pair of pants so he won't look like a carbon copy of himself day after day. He then spends five dollars on a copy of
GQ
for his road bible on dressing and finds cool ways to manipulate his own six shirts into a weekly wardrobe. On the road, he learns to scan newsstands and surreptitiously tears pages out of magazines with ideas for style.

Jeremy's first gig is with the only professional band currently using Doggone amplifiers, Age––pronounced AH-jay. Age has scored some success with a one-shot hit record and Jeremy offers to accompany them for free in exchange for on-the-road amp repair. He will travel on their bus and bunk with a roadie. His real mission, of course, is to convince some other band, somewhere else, that he is a genius acoustician who has developed the ultimate amplifier and that Doggone amps are the only amps that any hip band can possibly consider.

Three days before Thanksgiving, he boards Age's auxiliary bus for a sixty-city road trip, starting in Barstow, California, heading toward New Jersey, and ninety days later, in a masterpiece of illogical routing, ending in Solvang, California.

RAY AND MIRABELLE'S SUBSEQUENT DATE
after the night of their consummation is as good as the first, but Ray will be out of town on Thanksgiving, so Mirabelle is forced to rely on her unreliable friends. She speaks to Loki and Del Rey several days before, who say they are going to a backyard feast in West Hollywood, but they don't know the address yet and will call her when they get it so she can come. Several days before, she lays out her clothes for the occasion so she won't accidentally wear them too soon and have nothing to wear on the big day. Mirabelle's real ache comes from not being with her family, but it is either Thanksgiving or Christmas, and Christmas is the better and longer stretch during which to get away. Because of her unimportance to Neiman's she swings it so she can get a full five days off, assisted by a big lie that her brother's psychiatrist is going on vacation and the whole family is needed during the holidays to keep him straight. Mirabelle delivers this plaint to Mr. Agasa with a slight cry in her voice that says she is about to break down in tears. The genuine sympathy Mr. Agasa shows for Mirabelle's perfectly healthy brother embarrasses her, especially when he volunteers several book titles that link good mental health with exercise, forcing Mirabelle to dutifully write them down and file them in her purse.

On Thanksgiving morning, Mirabelle wakes with dread. She worries that there might be no call from Loki or Del Rey, which wouldn't be the first time they'd let her down and not thought twice about it. She can't dump them as friends because she absolutely needs even the slipshod companionship they give her. They are also her only source of party info, as she has been ostracized as a loner by the Neiman's girls. She waits till 10
a.m.
to make calls to them both, leaving messages on their machines, asking for the address of the Thanksgiving dinner. At this point, Mirabelle foresees a disastrous day ahead of her unless one of these two flakes calls her with the address. First, she has no cash. Second, even if she did, she knows that everything is shut tight on Thanksgiving, except the classic diner that she would have to dig out of the Yellow Pages and perhaps drive to downtown L.A. to find. She opens her refrigerator and sees a Styrofoam box containing a skimpy half sandwich she had rescued uneaten from a lunch two days ago. Horrified, her brown irises narrow in on this leftover, which she sees as her potential Thanksgiving dinner.

She goes for a walk on the vacant, empty street in front of her house, hoping when she returns to see a flashing red light on her answering machine. There is absolutely nothing stirring in the short blocks around her house. She can hear activity, the slam of a car door, voices chatting, a dog barking, but these sounds are distant and disembodied. She passes the school yard near her apartment and hears the clanking of a chain, swinging in the breeze against a metal pole. She sees not a person.

By the time she angles her way back and up the stairs to her apartment, it is noon. From across the room, she can read that the light is not flashing, is not signaling an end to her worry. She goes back outside and repeats her thirty-minute walk.

This time, she calculates. She calculates the time it will take for Loki or Del Rey, once they retrieve the message, to actually call her. Once home, they will probably play the message within the first ten minutes of arrival. There might be other messages on their machines to return, there might be other things to do. This means that it will be a half hour from the playback to her phone call. Mirabelle knows that her walk is just a half hour long, and using a calculus discerned from Ray Porter, figures that there is going to be no new call on her machine when she gets back. So she takes a sideways turn and extends her walk by ten minutes.

When she gets home, she jiggles the door open and sees––out of the corner of her eye, not wanting to betray to herself her own anxiousness––the red light of her machine blinking at her in syncopation. She waits a minute before playback, occupying herself with a made-up kitchen chore. It is Jeremy, calling from the road, vaguely wishing her a happy Thanksgiving and simultaneously canceling out the thoughtfulness of his call by boasting that he's using the phone for free.

Mirabelle sits on her futon, knees to her chest, and sinks her head over. Her foot taps impatiently on the floor as the clock ticks over, first an hour before the party is to start, then an hour after the party is to start, then it rolls upward to 4
p.m.
, when darkness begins to creep around the edges of her windows. She gets out her drawing paraphernalia and during the next hour fills in a background of oily black and leaves the eerie, floating nude image of herself in white relief.

The phone rings. Any call will be good on this deadly day. As it rings, she glares at it, momentarily getting even with the caller for the delay, then snatches up the phone and listens.

“Hi. What are you doing?” It's Ray Porter.

“Nothing.”

“Are you going somewhere for Thanksgiving?”

“Yes.”

“Can you cancel it?” says Ray.

“I can try.” She amazes herself with this answer. “Where are you?”

“Right now I'm in Seattle, but I can be there in three and a half hours.”

Ray has felt at 4
p.m.
what Jeremy once felt at midnight: the desire to be swimming in Mirabelle. Except that the distance is shorter from Seattle to Los Angeles than it is from Jeremy's to Mirabelle's when two people want exactly the same thing. Ray has a plane standing by, at a mere nine thousand dollars, and by the time she has hung up the phone he is out the door.

In the hours between the phone call and Ray's arrival, Mirabelle's body chemistry changes hourly, and sometimes a flash picture of deepest love coming her way bursts upon her consciousness. Mr. Ray Porter, twenty-eight thousand feet up, sees her two bright pink nipples resting on top of her cushiony flesh. But somewhere, as diverse as these two images are, Ray and Mirabelle's desire intersects, and within a narrow range, they are in love on Thanksgiving Day.

Ray brings airplane food for two, which on the private service he uses isn't bad. Shrimp, lobster, fruit dessert all wrapped in Saran. They nestle on her bed with their feast spread around them, candles burning, and he tells her how beautiful she looks and how much he loves to touch her, and later, Mirabelle takes out the gloves he has sent her, stands before him wearing nothing but them, crawls onto the bed, and erotically caresses him with the satin Diors.

They make love slowly, and afterward his hand wraps around her waist and holds her. And even though the gesture is somehow compromised by a lack of final and ultimate tenderness, Mirabelle's mind floats in space, and the five fingers that pull her toward him are received into her heart like a psalm. It is a comforting touch, a connection however tenuous, that makes her feel attached to something, someone, and less alone.

Later, as the millionaire lies next to her in the too-small bed in the too-small room, with one arm around Mirabelle and a cat lying on his chest, they talk back and forth in small packets of conversation. Ray listens to her work woes, her car woes, and her friend woes, and Ray makes up a few woes to tell her in response. They talk back and forth, but their conversation is second in importance to the contact of his hand on her shoulder.

“Holidays can be tough on single people. I generally don't like them,” says Ray.

“Bad for me, too,” says Mirabelle.

“Christmas, Thanksgiving . . . ”

“ . . . all bad,” agrees Mirabelle.

“Halloween I hate,” says Ray.

“Oh, I like Halloween!”

“How can you like Halloween? You have to figure out what to dress up as, and if you don't you're a killjoy,” says Ray.

“I like Halloween because I always know what to go as,” says Mirabelle.

“What do you go as?”

“Well, Olive Oyl.” Mirabelle implies a “stupid” after she speaks. Mirabelle says this without the slightest trace of irony, in fact, with glee that at least this one part of her life is solved.

Although he does not know it, Ray Porter fucks Mirabelle so he can be close to someone. He finds it difficult to hold her hand; he cannot stop in the street and spontaneously hug her, but his intercourse with her puts him in proximity to her. It presses his flesh against hers and his body mistakes her flesh for mind. Mirabelle, on the other hand, is laying down her life for him. Every time she jackknifes her legs open, every time she rolls on her side and pulls her knees up so he can enter her, she sacrifices a bit of herself, she gives him a little more of her that he cannot return. Ray, not understanding that what he is taking from her is torn from her, believes that the arrangement is fair. He treats her beautifully. He has begun to buy her small gifts. He is always thoughtful toward her, and never presses her if she isn't in the mood. He mistakes his actions for kindness. Mirabelle is not sophisticated enough to understand what is happening to her, and Ray Porter is not sophisticated enough to know what he is doing to her. She is falling in love, and she fully expects her love to be returned once Mr. Porter comes to his senses. But right now, he is using the hours with her as a portal to his own need for propinquity.

In the morning, at a coffee shop around the corner, Ray ruins everything by reiterating his independence, even clearly saying that their relationship is not exclusive, and Mirabelle, in a logical and rational mode and believing that she, too, is capable of random dating, agrees for both of them, then adds that if he does sleep with someone else, she should be told.

“Are you sure you want that?”

“Yes,” says Mirabelle, “it's my body and I have a right to know.”

Ray believes her, because he is naïve.

Ray stays in L.A. for three days, sees Mirabelle one more night, calls her twice, hurts her inadvertently one more time, levitates her spirit once, makes love to her again, buys her a watch and a blouse, compliments her hair, gets her a subscription to
Vogue,
but rarely, maybe twice, kisses her. Mirabelle pretends not to notice. When Monday finally comes, she goes to work, passing the perfume girls with confidence, inspired by the undeniable evidence that someone is interested in her.