You Don't Love Me Yet (15 page)

“I don’t want to manage anything, thank you.” Examining his work, Falmouth ran fingers spotty with ink over his sweaty dome and left a blue smudge high on his brow. He shrugged conclusively and tore the page from the waitress’s pad. “Here. I award you the first result, a token of my affection.”

“Thank you,” said Lucinda.

“It’s great,” said Matthew, barely looking.

“Are you hungry again?” said Falmouth. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I could eat.”

“I’m starved,” said Matthew inattentively. He stretched his legs under the table, his posture oblique and catlike. He’d shifted back into his body, recovered his vanity.

“Let’s go to San Pedro and get crabs,” said Lucinda. “It seems like nobody ever goes to San Pedro anymore.”

“That’s a long way,” said Falmouth.

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d had these crabs. Also the Mexican garlic bread they’ve got on the wharf. When’s the last time you saw the Pacific Ocean, Falmouth?”

“Oh, I’ve seen the ocean. It’s you pale starving musicians who never go west of La Cienega.”

“And the beer,” said Lucinda. “The beer tastes good by the water.”

“I’d have to get gas,” mused Matthew.

“Do they have bibs?” said Falmouth, glancing at his spotless white shirt. He flagged the waitress, motioning with her own pen for the check. They’d go to San Pedro, it was unmistakable, but there was pleasure in protracting the debate, letting their craving grow. Hugo’s kitchen was still pumping out frittatas heaped with curds for late brunchers, while sparrows crept at their feet pilfering crumbs and the indolent hours unfurled. Maybe elsewhere Lucinda’s phone rang off the hook. Maybe a disgruntled Shelf shredded Matthew’s shower curtain or was pillaging his kitchen, maybe Falmouth’s gallery had been set on fire by irate complainers, it didn’t matter. Today, the day after the Aparty, they were escape artists, had dissolved their grievances in the coffee and sunlight, and now nothing could touch them. They’d become that rarest version of themselves, uncomplainers.

h
e did not call. He had not called. There was no call. Not, anyway, on Saturday. By the time Matthew dropped Lucinda at her doorstep it was nearly dark again and, happily polluted with beer and lemon butter–drenched crabs and just one margarita, fingernails still grainy with pepper and salt, she’d not troubled to think of Carl, her complainer, for hours, since the moment on Hugo’s deck when, long having decided not to speak of him to Falmouth or Matthew she’d also realized she could free herself of any thought of him, for at least the day. If she were in love with him he’d return to her mind, just as if he were in love with her he’d surely ring her phone. Not that it meant the opposite if he hadn’t. He never had, she realized, never at that number, only on the complaint line. Not that she’d rushed home to check. Blotted with beer and sunshine, she’d thought of anything else, or nothing, at her doorstep. Instead embraced her friend-exes, each of whom had stepped from the car to make farewells. Or perhaps Falmouth only moved from the backseat to the passenger seat she’d vacated. Anyway, they embraced. She kissed them both with tongue, for sport. Falmouth, then Matthew. Both met her with surprised but willing mouths, as if caught forming a word to remain unspoken. They tasted of garlic and beer. Falmouth of cigarettes too. If neither utterly swooned to her kiss neither rebuffed her. Besides, she gave them barely a chance. Just tongue and a smudge of her hips and goodbye. She checked the machine with her keys still in her hand, the light switch unreached, not so much thinking of the complainer in particular, just drunken automatism. He hadn’t called. He didn’t call Sunday, either.

four

t
he receptionist wore a lab coat and black-frame glasses, and perhaps wasn’t a receptionist at all but a zoological veterinarian who’d taken a seat at the receptionist’s desk. She was too young, though, to be Dr. Marian. The girl sat alone paging through the newspaper and eating a drippy egg-salad sandwich and Lucinda had to speak to get her attention, feeling more like an intruder than she’d expected, Matthew’s paranoia rubbed off on her. She was within her public citizen’s rights to stroll into the zoo’s offices, she reminded herself.

“Excuse me for bothering you. I, ah, need to pick up some checks.”

“Checks?”

“For, um—” Lucinda mimed questing for a name on her tongue’s tip, then glanced at a scrap of paper yanked from her pocket: “Matthew, yes, Matthew Plangent.”

“I think he’s sick.”

“Sorry?”

“He’s out sick.”

“Oh, right, that’s why I’m picking up his—materials.”

“What kind of materials?”

“Paychecks and any other materials that would be waiting here for him.”

The girl shrugged and tipped her chin in the direction of a grid of twenty or thirty cubbyholes on the wall at Lucinda’s left. These were labeled with last names, alphabetically. Lucinda scooped the bundle of envelopes and circulars that filled Matthew’s cubby and tucked them into her bag, trusting the checks to be among them.

“Is there a Dr. Marian or someone with that name here?”

“Down the hall to your right.”

The brass nameplate beside the pebbled-glass door read
MARIAN RORSCHACH
,
B
.
V
.
SC
.,
M
.
R
.
C
.
V
.
S
.,
PH
.
D
.,
DIRECTOR
. The door was ajar, but Lucinda paused to rap on the glass. Classical music seeped from the room.

“Yes?”

“Dr. Marian?” Lucinda parsed a silhouette moving against a daylit window, fragmented to pixels by the door’s glass. She felt her heart lurch, regretting her gambit at the last moment, too late.

“Come in.”

Marian Rorschach wore a white coat too, over a black turtleneck that reminded Lucinda of Matthew’s own frequent costume, though Dr. Rorschach’s had been stretched around gallon-size breasts where Matthew’s was draped on a skeleton. Her heavy-fleshed face was deeply handsome, dark eyes glittering in pouchy seats. Her full black hair, bound Japanese-style in a sagging bun, bore a skunklike streak of white. She gnawed a paper clip while she studied a sheaf of papers open on her computerless desk as Lucinda entered. Now she removed the clip from the corner of her mouth and twisted a dial on a small transistor radio at her desk’s corner, lowering the volume.

“Can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”

“Concerning?”

“I write for the
Echo Park Annoyance
,” said Lucinda. “I’m here concerning an alleged marsupial that may have been expropriated from your premises.”

“Expropriated.”

“In so many words, yes.”

Dr. Marian raised one eyebrow and gestured at a leather chair to one side of the desk. “Sit down.”

“Thank you, I’ll stand.” The chair was low and soft, a possible bid for advantage on the part of Dr. Marian.

“What’s your name?”

“My name isn’t important.”

“I see, I see.” Dr. Marian tapped her pen against her desk and studied Lucinda. “You talk like a cop,” she said suddenly, her tone heavy.

“Thank you,” blurted Lucinda.

“But I don’t think that’s where you got this wrong impression of yours,” Dr. Marian continued. “In fact, I don’t think you really know anything about any alleged marsupials at all, not from the sound of things.”

“You might think that and be wrong,” said Lucinda. This sport of insinuation recalled a game she’d played as a child, of pulling her fingers from underneath another child’s hands and slapping them on top, an escapade which inevitably turned frantic, then painful. “For all you know this rookie reporter might have stumbled into a very close encounter with the alleged aforementioned.”

“I’m glad you say rookie,” said Dr. Marian. “It saves me saying it.”

“I meant eager and tireless, not gullible.”

“Gullible is another excellent word I thank you for supplying.”

Lucinda opted for bluntness. “Your establishment is missing a kangaroo, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. We’re missing nothing.”

“One of your protégés has gone guerrilla.”

“The person in question is a malingerer who takes too many sick days, nothing more.”

Lucinda found herself trembling under Dr. Marian’s imperious command. She understood Matthew better now, seeing the regime he’d been negotiating. It aroused her sympathy, and a kind of jealousy as well.

“The person in question liberated a martyr kangaroo,” said Lucinda, working to keep any sulkiness from her voice.

“A foolish legend that I’ve heard circulating.”

“I’ve seen the captive, living anonymously among apartment dwellers, like Patty Hearst.”

“As I told the police, no sane person, let alone a zoo employee, would keep a kangaroo in an urban apartment. For one thing an adult kangaroo defecates three or four times a day with results approximately the size of a baseball glove, a catcher’s mitt specifically.”

“No sane person,” Lucinda echoed.

“That’s what I said.”

“There’s sense in that.” Lucinda felt herself bent helplessly, like light in a prism, into service to Dr. Marian’s interests.

“I’m glad you see the sense in what I say.”

“Of course certain persons might in certain local situations have acted less sane than other certain persons might have hoped. And would now therefore be facing more or less exactly a three-to-four-catcher’s-mitts-per-day type of situation.”

“There’s only one answer for a person in that type of situation,” said Dr. Marian. Lucinda noticed, perhaps too late, a susceptibility in Dr. Marian’s responses for matching her interrogator’s rhythms. Might this have been exploited? More likely it was only a glimpse of Dr. Marian’s ability to absorb and redirect what came within her orbit, particularly anything threatening to the zoo’s priorities.

“What’s the answer?” said Lucinda.

“Get sane in a hurry.”

“I see. And if that person were to want to come in from the cold, so to speak?”

“As you should understand from what I’ve said, it is and always will be a nonevent.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Dr. Marian gestured at the door. Lucinda found herself moving toward it.

“Dr. Marian?”

“Yes?”

“You haven’t ever given any thoughts to lending your gifts to a greater variety of causes, say for instance to managing a very promising rock-and-roll band?”

“Is that a question you ask at the end of every interview?”

“Sorry?”

“I don’t read the
Annoyance
, and I was wondering whether that was some sort of generic question, like what is your favorite color or are you a morning person or a night person, or if it had something to do with my work at the zoo.”

“No, it isn’t generic. You’re an extraordinary negotiator and I just wondered if you would ever think of representing a musician or group.”

“I’d have to hear their music first.”

“Thank you very much,” said Lucinda. “I won’t take any more of your time.”

a
carpenter pried with his hammer’s claw at the joints of the cubicle, squeaking a bent nail from agonized plywood. Beside him Lucinda sat in the middle of the gallery floor with an un-ringing telephone between her knees. The complaint office was being hurriedly disassembled, subject to Falmouth’s hostility to lazy transitions. Lucinda and the interns had convened to handle a last round of calls, while Falmouth himself tore the black paper from the storefront windows. The phrase “no more complaints,” with which he’d instructed them to answer the phones, had already cued sobbing panic in a few habitual callers.

The cubicle dividers fell and bands of afternoon light saturated the deeper recesses of the gallery. The interns appeared exhilarated by the destruction. In intervals between murmured farewells to their complainers they refreshed themselves with yoga postures and cigarettes, with takeout Chinese and flirting with the carpenters. Falmouth fretted among them, sidestepping whisk-broomed piles of chips and dust that might accrue to his black cuffs. After the weekend’s dissolution he’d donned a crisp suit, scraped head and chin free of stubble. His firm gaze didn’t confess any memory of a crab-salty kiss. Lucinda sat alone taking sporadic calls, pining for what she hadn’t known she’d miss. The only complainer who mattered hadn’t called. Now the stage set was being struck.

By evening the carpenters were gone. Falmouth’s interns wandered like cats in the lengthening shadows, cradling their phones. But by seven the calls had begun to trail away. The interns yawned, asked to be excused, delivered a round of hugs, vanished. Falmouth rinsed their chopsticks and he and Lucinda set into the cold ruin of takeout, prawns and snow peas sunk in an aspic of cornstarch and vinegar.

“I guess I need a job,” said Lucinda.

“Or a number-one record.”

“I need to pay the rent in two weeks. I may have to go back to the factory where they assemble cappuccinos.”

“Stay on the payroll. You can write my grant proposals.”

“What are you doing next?”

“Our official line will be nothing.”

A neatly zipped black leather portfolio leaned against Falmouth’s desk. He bore as well a telltale smudge of graphite on the heel of his right hand. Crumbs of pink eraser decorated his lap. He’d been drawing again. She didn’t confront him.

“Why can’t you say you’re doing nothing yourself?” she said.

“It’s better if I pay you to say it.”

They pushed the meal into the garbage. Falmouth moved to the master panel to switch off the overhead lights, but Lucinda said, “I think I’ll stay a bit longer.”

Falmouth raised his eyebrows.

“They’ll start ringing again around nine,” she said. “They always do.”

“I was afraid someone would get sentimental,” he said. “I didn’t realize it would be you. I asked the phone company to cancel the number. It should be cut off shortly after midnight.”

He left her alone there. The institute was an ember flaring on the brink of ash. Falmouth was right. Lucinda stayed for more than just the hope of the complainer’s call. She was a secret curator now. When they rang she answered in the old way. Let them think nothing had changed, until it was too late. She was Florence Nightingale, or a nun among the lepers. A man told her he’d suffered a paper cut on his testicle. Another said his nephew had stolen his collection of vintage lobby cards. A woman or possibly a child made a sound like a rabbit gnawing a carrot.

She thought about dialing the complainer’s number and didn’t.

The sixth or seventh caller was Denise. “There you are,” said the drummer. “Let’s go out.”

“I’m sort of on a vigil. A person might phone me here.”

“The one from the other night?”

“Yes.” They both knew who they were talking about. “Maybe you could come here.”

“You want something to drink?”

“Maybe pick up a six.”

“A six it is.”

“And hey, Denise?”

“Yes?”

“Who cut your hair?”

“I did it myself.”

“A six and scissors.”

h
e walked into the storefront, an hour after Denise. They’d forgotten to lock the door, and sat deep in the gallery’s rear, ignoring the line’s sporadic ringing. Lucinda sat encircled by her former hair, which lay in a pattern suggesting a controlled explosion. She’d removed her shoes and shirt, wore above her jeans only a pale blue brassiere, its surface furred with a hectic chiaroscuro of hair, as were her neck and shoulders and the knees of her jeans. Denise maypoled around Lucinda in her chair, a bottle in one hand, shears in the other, squinting and burping, making hedging adjustments to her initial ferocious attack. They had no mirror.

The complainer appeared in their ring of light and Lucinda’s hands flew up to feel the spiky new contours of her head. There was an obscure shame in his seeing the haircut sooner than her. A trickling of hair rained from her lifted arms into the hoisted cleft of her breasts, making her feel even more unhidden. Not that there was any privilege he hadn’t already claimed, or she hadn’t offered gladly. He smiled and scratched his jaw and she was struck again by the slightly penisy glamour of his cleft chin and nose, his sculpted lips, his baggy eyes. His hand slid to his stomach, to stuff his flopped shirttails into his belt, as though unconsciously feeling he ought to make some effort, having intruded on a scene of grooming.

“You’re the drummer,” he said.

“Denise.”

“Carl. Nice to meet you.”

“You were at the show.”

“Oh, yes,” he said shyly. “It was sensational.”

“Thank you.”

“Want a beer?” said Lucinda.

“Sure, thanks.”