The Diamond Lane (41 page)

She stabbed the whipped cream on her Thai coffee with
her straw. She had told Mouse that morning, “I am having a nervous breakdown.”

It was keeping all these secrets that had done it. It was against Mimi's nature, keeping a secret. She was open and honest.

She was worried about herself. Solly was out of town and she still felt torqued out. Usually it was the time when she felt the most relaxed, when she almost liked her job, when she felt more like an average overworked, underpaid secretary than an indentured servant. Solly was at a film festival three or four time zones away. Not only was he not in the office, whenever it was convenient for him to call in she wasn't there, either. Really not in the office, as opposed to hiding in the ladies' room.

The downside was he called her at home, at midnight, at seven in the morning, just to check in. He'd called her at one o'clock the night before to see if she would go up to his house in the Palisades and get his CD player to take it in to be repaired. Her heart hurled itself against her chest at the sound of the phone. She wanted it to be Ralph, calling to apologize.

When it wasn't Solly calling at odd hours, it was Ivan. Mimi could not believe that Mouse had not told Ivan that she did not have Tony's consent to do
Wedding March
.

Whenever Ivan called, Mimi was supposed to pretend it was someone else, without letting Ivan know. Mouse expected her to say, “Hey, how are you!” “Great, great!” “No kidding!” before passing the phone off, when Mouse would pretend it was Nita Katz or Shirl, with Tony sitting there watching TV.

This morning Mouse was out with Ivan, filming at Bullock's, where she was registering for china, crystal, and silver. Mouse, who had never entertained a day in her life. The china was English bone, over five hundred dollars a place setting. The stemware was full lead crystal, mouth-blown in Japan by Zen masters. Mouse hadn't even known what stemware was. It wasn't the most expensive stuff in the place, but the most expensive that looked best on-camera. It made Mimi sick. Not that Mouse shouldn't have everything she wanted. It was her wedding, after all.

At about nine-thirty, after Mouse had already left and Mimi was in the shower, Ivan called and left a message on the machine. Ivan always left long messages, never saying who they were for or identifying himself. When she rewound the machine it took forever and she thought, wow, this must be something exciting. Hope rose in her throat. Maybe
this
was Ralph. But no, it was just egomaniacal Ivan, hogging the tape.

“Hell-o-o … Please pick up if you're there. You've already left. Damn. I need you to stop by Kodak and pick up ten, no, make that twenty, no, ten, ten is fine, rolls of ECN. We wanted the ninety-one, and they sent us VNF. Make sure it's the ninety-one, not the ninety-two. I repeat, do not get the ninety-two, it's too slow. We need the ninety-one. Also, we do need to begin shooting with Tony, so let's set something up soon. We can just talk when I see you.”

Hell if Mimi was going to transcribe
that
. She left it, knowing Mouse would beat Tony home, because Tony would be at lunch at Thai Melody with her. All these things she had to worry about. And then this “sweet cheeks” business with Ralph.

Last Wednesday at How to Write a Blockbuster, the night after her slipup at Bibliothèques, Ralph was suddenly colder than a frostbitten corpse. He was Mr. Holladay, Adjunct Instructor, instead of her babyfaced lover inventing excuses to follow her to her car at the break, sneaking a greedy squeeze in a far-flung hallway.

When he did speak to her, it was not as teacher's pet but as teacher's pest. She was not stupid, she recognized the tone of voice. He used it with Poor Peg, the Brillo Pad-permed fifty-plus ex-nun.

Mr. Holladay criticized Mimi's homework. He read it aloud to the class as an example of what not to do. It was the dust-jacket copy for her projected blockbuster on love and betrayal in the business. He called it feeble and trite, in that soft, insultingly patient it's-not-too-late-to-consider-beauty-school-you-talentless-nitwit
tone of voice. He also said it was over three weeks late. Why hadn't she started writing?

Only the week before, Ralph had said her story was timely and spicy. It featured famous actresses who were secret lesbians, famous shits who were closet nice guys, a team of famous Israeli producers whose training for Hollywood had been the raid on Entebbe, and, of course, the Mob. Now he accused her of pandering to middle America's view of the business.

There was no love and betrayal in the film business, he said. No one ever returned your phone call, how could they love you? Betray you?

Five other people were also writing on the same topic, including Poor Peg. To them he said, “Hollywood is like sugar. People can never get enough, even though it's empty and bad for you. And remember, writing a blockbuster is not about writing, it's about panning for gold.”

Mimi's face fried with embarrassment. The tips of her ears felt as though they were blistering under her head of crunchy curls. She thought she had
never
been so humiliated in all her life. She couldn't even remember why she'd signed up for this dumb class.

At the break, Ralph announced officiously that he had to pick up a handout at the Xerox center, then scurried away before anyone could nab him. He was avoiding her, there was no denying it. Mimi bought two cookies from a vending machine and tucked the second one into her purse to eat in the car on the way home. It couldn't be the “sweet cheeks” business. It had really been so harmless. She said “love you” every day to clients of Solly's whom she'd never met. No, it couldn't be that but, she knew, it was. She had humiliated him in front of his friends and his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Cookie crumbs still moist in the corner of her wide mouth, she bought a package of Sugar Babies.

Poor Peg, who'd just lost her last quarters in the coffee machine, sympathized with her.

“I don't think he likes women,” said Peg.

“He likes women all right,” said Mimi. Despite herself, she loaded the sentence with innuendo, then thought, why not? He deserves it. “He's been after me since the first class. I don't know what this feeble-and-trite business is all about. Maybe because I won't sleep with him. He's married, plus he has that premature ejaculator look about him.”

“Fidgety,” Peg agreed.

Before returning to class, Mimi vomited in the very ladies' room where, only a few short weeks before, Ralph had boldly followed her for a brief, stolen, makeout session. Hell, she thought, eyes smarting, throat burning, if I'm going to let some stupid man make me fat. She slapped on the Extra Fuchsia and blotted her eyes. She glared at her bleary face in the mirror and tried to make herself think she didn't look so bad for thirty-six. She was thin. She still had long hair. That was more than most thirty-six-year-old women could say for themselves.

While sitting in Thai Melody, waiting for Tony, Mimi tried to muster up the self-confidence she'd felt that night in the ladies'. But it was useless. Her belief in herself was like a petulant, hard-of-hearing servant who rarely heeded her demands. So what if she had long hair? She was going to base her whole sense of self-worth on the length of her hair? She longed for the kind of confidence Mouse possessed, reliable and quiet, like a heartbeat. Having a good man wouldn't hurt, Mimi thought.

The door opened, admitting a rectangle of clean winter glare, then Tony. He gently pulled off his sunglasses with one finger, watching out for his nose. He saw Mimi and saluted, waiting politely until the hostess flew to his side to do her job. She tipped up her elegantly shaped head and dimpled. He snuck a handful of pink and green pillow mints from the glass sundae dish by the cash register, followed her to Mimi's table.

He slid into the booth, smoothed his strawberry-blond hair behind his ears. “Traffic,” he said, “sorry.” He pursed his freckled lips, rubbed his eyes with the butts of his hands. He
was tired from smiling and nodding, the sure sign of someone who's just been released from an interminable meeting.

“How'd it go?” asked Mimi. “Or am I not supposed to ask?”

“Very well, I think. We did the last batch of changes. V.J. adores the project. He apparently had a meeting with one of the vice presidents and they're already thinking of casting ideas.”

“Hmm,” said Mimi, in a way she hoped was enigmatic. Bored parking attendants with an eight-hour shift to kill entertained themselves tossing around casting ideas. Without taking her eyes from Tony's, Mimi poked her tongue into the end of her straw, fishing for the last bit of whipped cream. “What's Ralph's take on it? Thai coffee's great. Want some of mine?”

“Ralph is not quite so positive. He calls it the joyride to nowhere, all these meetings. But you know, time
is
money. Isn't that the American perspective?”

“It is.” Time is also filling up your appointment book so it looks like you're working. You're “developing” projects but not making any decisions over which you could be fired.

“I'll take a beer, thanks.” He motioned to the waitress. “V.J. liked what we did, on the whole, but thinks there are ways we can make it even more perfect.”

Without going into details, Tony enumerated the sorts of things V.J. was looking for: more plot, but not at the expense of character; more character, but not at the expense of the plot. He wanted more local color, more “sparks” between the main characters, more of an environmental slant. He wanted it cut by ten pages. He wanted all this before he sent it out to the VPs.

It was like listening to someone's medical history. And it was being told, the same story laced with hope and frustration, at a hundred tables, a thousand tables throughout the city at that very moment. Maybe that was the real cause of smog, thought Mimi. The chemical reaction between kitchen grease, ozone, and a jillion sour dreams and ruined hopes.

“Ralph is not so sanguine. This is our fifth meeting with
V.J. and he keeps forgetting the name of the project. I tell Ralph he's a busy chap. It's a mark of all he's got happening.”

“How's he doing – Ralph? I've been so busy with Solly out of town and all, trying to catch up. Really trying to get into my writing, too. I told you I'm working on that blockbuster.”

“The film business, isn't it? Seems like a good topic.”

“It's been done to death, That's why it's perfect for a blockbuster. I'm still sort of in the outline phase. Has Ralph … said anything about it lately?”

“No, actually. Sorry –”

“– I just wondered –”

“– say, you've been in this business for some time, let me get your thoughts on this.” Tony leaned toward her as though he was including her in some dark secret.

“I've heard it all,” she said.

“This is supposed to be a true-life story, which is what V.J. found intriguing in the first place. After all the rewrites it's virtually unrecognizable, but he still insists on calling it a true story, insists on using the names of the real people involved. Ralph says we can cheat it by saying ‘freely adapted from a true story,' but it's gone so far afield now …”

Tony had startling eyes, one bluer than the other. Mimi only now realized this. Ocean eyes. Nice smell, too. Cheap shampoo, the kind that always smells better than it works, a tinge of musky sweat.

“What's truth, Tony?” She fluffed her blond bangs with the tips of her fingers, cocked her head. “I mean really. It's just one more high concept.”

“That's just fashionable cynicism.”

“Wait to argue until after you've gotten paid.”

Tony laughed, his head dropping between his shoulders. He took his chopsticks out of their paper envelope, then folded the envelope into a little square. “I was just a bit troubled by the ethics of it. I don't want to queer the project. I'm sure it will all come right in the end, but …”

Ethics
? You are so cute, she thought. The waitress glided up with Tony's beer and took their order. Mimi ordered a beer too. She could blow this meal, no problem. The ladies' room was way in the back, far from the dining room and the kitchen.

“I'm not against getting paid,” said Tony. “Don't get me wrong. I don't go in for suffering for art. Mouse and I can't impose on you forever. I'd like to set us up somewhere nice before the wedding. Probably sounds a bit corny to you, but I would like to provide a nice place for her. She needs a home base. She may seem happy as a lark living out of a rucksack, sacrificing everything for her work, but …” He looked down, scratched a fleck of dried food off the rim of his plate with his thumbnail. “Well, just this morning she went out to pick out her china pattern. It's bloody touching, isn't it?”

“It just goes to show you,” said Mimi.

“She's become interested in the wedding in a way I'd never imagined. It says volumes about her complexity, about her as a woman. Don't you think?”

“
Volumes
. My own
sister
. I can't believe it. It's probably no secret that – not that she didn't want to marry you, she always wanted to marry you – but a wedding is, well she's kind of cheap, I guess that's no surprise either, and practical, plus she's sort of one of those hippie chicks, under the skin. She doesn't know how to have a good time. Not like me, I know how to have a good time. In fact, that's one of my main problems.” What did she just say? She had no idea She kept stabbing at the same pulverized mass of glass noodles. “Anyway,” she added brightly.