The Diamond Lane (15 page)

Mimi had taken a mental-health day off from work. There was not enough time on weekends to write her blockbuster, clean the apartment, read the book for Bibliothèques, and get all her errands done. Plus, even though Mouse had been back over a month, that night Mimi was cooking her a welcome-home dinner.

It was no secret that in L.A. you could make a career out of running errands. What would take twenty minutes in an average town took an hour and a half here. Today Mimi and Mouse had spent two hours and a quarter-tank of gas in search of a can of Solo Poppy Seed Filling for Mimi's famous lemon poppyseed cake.

She didn't mind, though. In the car, driving, she and Mouse had a chance to catch up. There were times when they didn't even turn on the radio. It was good, talking in the car, especially in traffic. You were like people stuck in a cabin during a snowstorm with no books, no TV or jigsaw puzzles or games. You had to talk, there was no way around it. It was cozy.

During the week Mimi hadn't seen much of Mouse, who was busy trying to set up screenings for her documentaries.

When Mimi worked, Mouse took the bus. No one in L.A. took the bus if they could help it. The poor, the blind, the
foreign took the bus. The demented took the bus. Mouse took the bus. She liked it. It was cheap, and you got an all-important glimpse of how the average man lived. Tony, on the other hand, happily borrowed Mimi's car. He dropped her at Talent and Artists in the morning, then picked her up at night. Tony had bought a Walkman. He had discovered the Venice Beach Boardwalk. He had made friends with Mimi's boyfriend, Ralph.

If Mouse's destination was within five miles, she walked, a plastic 7-Up bottle retrieved from Mimi's garbage full of tap water, half a sandwich wrapped in a recycled swatch of crinkled aluminum foil stowed on her back in a knapsack. She claimed that true knowledge of a place could be gained only through the soles of one's feet. Twice in one day she was stopped by the police. What, they wanted to know, was she doing? Walking, she said. They remained suspicious.

Mimi was suspicious, too. She was beginning to realize that half a lifetime spent making documentaries in Africa had turned Mouse eccentric. She wondered – sometimes to herself, sometimes aloud to Carole or one of the drudges at work – what Tony saw in her. Besides, of course, the dreary obvious: small hips, big boobs. Those light eyes and cleft chin. That aloofness. She seemed to take Tony for granted and he loved it.

Mouse was not really interested in L.A., to Mimi's lasting irritation. Lepers and cannibals her sister was hot for, but point out a good health club or the salon with the cleanest tanning beds and her eyes glazed over. Mouse needed to relearn Los Angeles for one reason and for one reason only: so she could find her way to some film society at a sleepy junior college in Glendale, or the Kenyan consulate located somewhere on Wilshire Boulevard, or the struggling theater that showed only art films in Los Feliz, the Society for the Preservation of African Customs in America somewhere in Inglewood, the Southern Californian Animists League on Cahuenga – which smartypants Mouse, despite her smattering of French and Swahili and a number of tribal dialects, kept mispronouncing
Ca-hew-ga
instead of
Ca-wheng-a
– any and all places, however obscure, which would be interested in giving her a screening. She'd spent hours spread out on the living room floor, assembling packets of videotapes, still photographs, résumés, clippings from reviews, days on the un-airconditioned bus, going to the copy shop, the photo developers, the film lab.

Despite the knowledge she had gained through the soles of her feet, Mouse kept getting lost. With the exception of the film lab, which was in a graffiti-covered warehouse on a boiling, treeless street in Hollywood, everything else she needed was in a minimall. They all looked alike to her. Once she passed the copy shop where she'd left her clippings and résumés, then demanded to see the manager at a similar-looking shop one block down, certain they'd lost her order.

Finally, after she'd assembled the packets, made the correct-sized videotape for the people allegedly interested in screening the films, ridden the bus for an hour and a half to deliver the material in person, they always said no.

Once, by the time she had taken the bus back to Mimi's apartment, there was already a message on the answering machine.

Sorry, the voice told her, but there was really no interest in Africa, unless it was South Africa, or a rock group putting on a concert to send wheat to people who were starving. Did Mouse and Tony have anything like that?

The best, the voice continued, would be a full-blown concert featuring many rock stars for South African famine relief. The best would be anything with lots of images of bony black children, tin cups dangling from their clawlike hands, or exploited black diamond miners intercut with images of fat white Afrikaaners in madras slacks lawn bowling, over which was laid an anthemlike rock hymn. Anything like that? Anything at all?

People are starving in Mozambique, said Mouse, returning the call. They're starving in Rwanda.

But no one's heard of Mozambique, the voice countered.
And who was Wanda? Hopefully no relation of Winnie Mandela, because the market for Winnie Mandela had most certainly dried up. Now, Ethiopia. Ethiopia was a possibility. Mouse said no. They had no starving Ethiopians, no rock stars. Nothing like that.

After this particular rejection, when she went back to retrieve her material, she realized, looking through the plastic window of the tape, the guy hadn't bothered to rewind it, and that he'd watched only two minutes' worth.

Sometimes, as she was leaving the film institute, the university, or junior college, they felt sorry for her. Here was this painfully suntanned, painfully earnest woman, dressed in raggedy flares (Flares! Mimi could not believe her eyes. They had been Mouse's favorite pants in
high school
), hauling around an African laundry basket-like purse that smelled of camel, a raft of impossible-sounding documentaries on her résumé.

Documentaries on tropical diseases, singing bats and African killer bees, tiny little-known tribes whose ancestral homes were at the bottom of narrow caves, the tops of remote mountains, expatriate hot-air-balloon enthusiasts who practiced their sport high over the Sahara, Berber rockclimbing clubs that scaled the chilling peaks of the high Atlas in sandals and
djellabas
. Documentaries which, when you happened to catch them on some obscure cable channel at an ungodly hour, you thought, “This stuff is incredible, but
where in God's name was the camera?
”

She prompted a mixture of pity and admiration, so they would ask to keep the tape, to hold on to it just a little bit longer, in case they got any good ideas as to someone else who might be interested in showing it. They would keep the tape, which would disappear into the universe of their cluttered desks and credenzas, and Mouse would never hear from them again, leaving her frustrated but determined.

Mimi found all of this maddening. Mouse was getting married in six months – pressed by Shirl, they'd finally set the date, May 11 – and she was obsessed not with the wedding, like any normal woman, but with some dumb movies about Africa. Exercise
in Futility City if you asked Mimi, though Mouse never did, even though she was the only one in the family plugged into the film business.

“Let's plan your wedding,” said Mimi.

“A judge, me and Tony, rice,” said Mouse. She and Tony had not actually discussed it. Their decision in front of the hospital had been enough, had kept her from being a liar. She figured eventually they'd decide where, and how, inching forward like timid bathers facing a cold ocean. They'd move slowly, get used to it. She half wished everyone would just sort of forget about it. “I talked to the LAFI yesterday, did I tell you? They turned us down. They did a series of docs on Africa a couple years ago. Apparently it's like leap year.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“Imagine a theatrical exhibitor saying, ‘Oh, sorry, Warner Brothers, we booked a violent cop movie last month, we're not interested.'”

“No one gets married by a judge anymore. You want to go for elegance, and a priest is much more elegant than a judge. You only get married once, or once for the first time, anyway. You think you just want to get it over with, but you don't.”

“Maybe we can get the Pope.”

“You slough it off. That's what I did too. Just a wedding, no big deal. But as it gets closer you'll realize you want the cake and the dress and the whole megillah. You'll want everything to be perfect. It's only natural. It's normal.”

Mouse reached over, punched on the radio. It was an oldies station playing an Ivan song, a girl singer with a deep rich voice moaning about faithless love. Mouse wondered how hurt she would be if she jumped out of the car. They were only going forty-five.

“I'll help you. I've got fabulous taste. I mean that's what people tell me. I did my own wedding. You didn't get to see it, it was really lovely. I should really be a production manager instead of an actress-writer. Maybe we could do a medieval theme,
which is what I had. Or no, mine was more Victorian. We could get old-fashioned flowers in blues and pinks, lilies and stuff, snapdragons. I had the most gorgeous snaps! The ushers could wear morning coats. We could have a string quartet. We could even rent some little girls to be flower girls, people do that now. There aren't enough kids around anymore.”

Mouse sighed. She had thought she'd organize a wedding in the same way she'd organize a shoot. Budget it, break it down, see where she could save money by getting services or locations donated (a ceremony on the beach, for example, would cost nothing; she could buy bulbs and grow the few flowers she wanted herself), make the necessary phone calls, have the necessary meetings. Working a few hours in the morning each day, she estimated it would take a week. Rent flower girls! An image of acres of shiny girls in white patent leather shoes parked in rows, surrounded by a Cyclone fence, like used cars, came to Mouse's mind. It was ludicrous.

“– a wedding weekend,” Mimi was saying, “you have the ceremony on a Sunday, the day before have a brunch for your friends who've come from out of town and who aren't in the wedding party. If you have it around a holiday that's always fun. You can have a theme then, like an Easter Egg hunt if it's around Easter. Or a Dickens Christmas. You can get snow brought down from Big Bear. Then the rehearsal dinner. I had a really nice one at –”

Jet lag. Culture shock. The hum of the wheels on the grooved asphalt. The drippy crooning of the girl singer. The hollow crash of the empty diet soda cans on the floor of the back seat every time Mimi slammed on the brakes or accelerated. Mimi's eternal yattering. Mouse slid into a waking nightmare of the future. She saw herself, days or weeks later, washing her face before bed, Mimi leaning in the doorway yammering about the pros and cons of having gold-lined envelopes for the invitations. She saw herself waking up on a cool winter morning, and there is Mimi, at the foot of the futon, saying lilies and tulips are
de rigueur
, that anyone who has anything else in her bouquet is a hopeless boob. She is walking alone in the evening – something she loved to do – and Mimi is on her heels, proffering advice about the cake, the veil, the ring. She is trying to read and Mimi pulls the book from her hands, what about the silver pattern! The china pattern! The crystal!

“– save one bottle of champagne and drink it on your first anniversary. That's what I would have done if I'd have had a first anniversary,” Mimi laughed.

A tiny Mimi stood on each of Mouse's shoulders, angel and devil both, yapping in her ears: For
my
honeymoon, on
my
cake, in
my
ceremony, at
my
reception, with
my
dress, from
my
wedding party, by
my
maid of honor, since
I've
been through it once already, Mousie Mousie Mouse!

And never a mention of Mimi's groom. Never.

Mouse rolled down the sleeves of her thin gingham blouse and buttoned the cuffs with shaky fingers. For some reason the air conditioning was on. Fury burned in her throat. Her puckered sunburned lips stretched into a painful smile. “We'd like to keep it small.”

“If it's a
time
thing, if you don't want to hassle with it, you should use a wedding consultant. My friend Nita does great work. She'll probably give you a deal because you're my sister. I would have brought it up before but I didn't think you'd be into it. Wedding consultants are the in-thing these days, and you're so… well. You're the girl who thought a prom dress was an unnecessary expense.”

“That pink one you and Mom liked at Bullock's could have clothed and fed India for a year.”

“You wanted to wear my old one, remember? With the spaghetti straps? You used those words, ‘unnecessary expense.' I remember. You probably should have worn it, too, it really was meant for someone with less of a waist. Nita can do anything. Or else, well, I don't have tons of time, what with my job and my writing and acting and stuff –”

“I'll call your friend tomorrow,” said Mouse.

THEY EVENTUALLY FOUND
the poppyseed filling at Rancher Bob's market. The overstuffed grocery stores of America still made Mouse's head swim; she read a magazine in the car while Mimi ran in.

Mimi found two dented, dusty cans at the back of a shelf, lurking behind some Italian cooking chocolate. Her sense of victory momentarily tempered her bad mood. She hated that Mouse would not take her advice. Mouse thought she knew everything, when, in fact, it was she, Mimi, who knew everything, at least about planning weddings.