L.A. Woman (19 page)

“I would naturally insist on participating.”

Sarah turned her head back to Mindy so fast, her neck cracked.
“WHAT?”

Mindy smiled, and stroked Sarah’s cheek. “This is the real adventure. I’m so glad Jeremy found you. You look like a high school freshman…and this whole surprised indignant thing is delicious.” She leaned in, and Sarah felt Mindy’s breath on her neck. “You might like it. If you’re looking for an adventure…”

Sarah bolted past her toward the door. She didn’t stop running until she was down the block, holding her side, wincing against the stitch there. She leaned against her car, setting off the alarm. She hit two of the wrong buttons before finally shutting the damned thing off.

Oh, God. Oh, God.

It was then she realized she’d forgotten her bra, and the reality of the situation hit her. She clambered into her car, locked all the doors, leaned her head on the steering wheel and started to cry.

J
udith sat at the food court in the Century City Mall, right across from the AMC movie theater. She knew what he looked like. He knew what
she
looked like. If that wasn’t enough, she was wearing a very cliché red rosebud on her jacket. To the best of her knowledge, there were no other Chinese women in the Century City Mall food court wearing a red rosebud, so the likelihood of Roger going off with one of them seemed fairly slim.

Oh, God, what am I doing?

She was hyperventilating, was what she was doing. She should have talked to somebody about this, she thought hastily.

Talked to who? Sarah, whose idea of love is having sex with carefully selected strangers?

Face it, the only person she’d even gotten close to in the past few months was Roger—the caring “voice” on the other side of her computer screen. Only in the twenty-first century, she thought bitterly, where infidelity crossed state lines without any physical contact.

She sighed. It’d be funny, if it were happening to somebody else.

But the things he’d said to her, the way he’d made her feel…that wasn’t a joke. She hadn’t felt that way with David in a long time.

She frowned. Maybe ever.

“Judith?”

She looked up, then clamped down on a gasp of horror.

“Dean Matthews?” She looked around wildly, hoping she was wrong, but there he was, pompous tweeds and all. “What are you doing here?”

He gave her a strange look. Her tone
had
been a trifle accusatory, so she tried for a casual smile, the way the question
should
have been asked. He smiled tentatively in return. “Oh, you know, Marta and I are just doing a little bit of shopping. I left her in the Disney store. She loves that stuff.”

He was waiting for her to strike up some conversation, while
she
was waiting for her illicit not-quite-in-the-flesh lover to show up.
Perfect. Now all I need is David here and have him witness Roger doing a striptease for me in front of Dean Matthews.

“So…how is Marta?” Judith asked.

“Doing fine. I’ve been staying home a bit more—trying out retirement, as it were—and I think it’s a nice change for both of us. Marriage suffers when there’s too much work, you know?”

She nodded.
This is God laughing at me.

“You know, when I was in my first year of law school…”

Oh, no, he’s going into lecture mode!

“I had this professor…God, what was his name? Anyway, he said something I’ll never forget.” He grinned, putting up a finger like some historical figure pontificating. “He said ‘Students, look to your right, then look to your left. I promise, only one in three of you will still be with whoever you’re in a relationship with before your law school career is over. Married or not. Life here is too hard.’” Dean Matthews shook his head. “God. And the numbers only got more grim once you graduated. I hit lucky with Marta. She’s stayed by me all this time, through everything…impossibly long hours, well, you know what it’s like.”

Judith kept nodding. She felt like one of those bobblehead
dolls that people put in cars. She didn’t trust herself to say anything.

“Just like David’s hit it lucky with you! Eh? Eh?” He winked at her, then glanced at his watch. “Well, I’m sure Marta’s cleaned the place out. Better go find her before she goes wandering. Tell David I said hello?”

“Um, sure.”
And explain what I’m doing at the Century City Mall on a weeknight? Oh, certainly. That could happen.
She let Dean Matthews give her a polite half-hug. Then he stopped, glancing at the lapel of her almost-new black blazer.

“That’s a very pretty rosebud.”

“Thanks.” Judith was surprised at how cool she kept her voice. “I’m trying to spruce up the old image.”

She didn’t know if he bought her explanation as he walked away. What if he told David? What if he told Marta, and she told everyone else, and David found out? What if…

“Judith?”

A nasal twang jolted her out of her thoughts. She turned.

Roger.

He was just as amazingly handsome as he appeared in his picture. He had a rose in one hand. The flower was exotic looking—orange with scarlet at the edges. His tiny grin was impossibly sexy.

“Roger?” she whispered.

“In the flesh, as it were.”

She winced.

That can’t be his real voice.

And yet it seemed to be. It kept going, relentlessly. “I waited until you were finished talking to that gentleman…didn’t want to walk into anything, y’know.”

“Gentleman” came out sounding like
gintlemihn.
Worse, it had a painfully high pitch…almost girlish, with a slight whine.

She stared at his face instead—that strong, chiseled jaw, those deep, intelligent eyes.

“Did you, er, want some food?”

Don’t speak. Please, please don’t speak.

She shook her head, staring at him. “No, I’m not talking…I mean, I’m not hungry.”

“Oh. Okay.” He gestured to a table. Numb, she sat down.

They sat there for a moment, blessedly silent. Then he cleared his throat.

“It’s so good to see you.” His gaze was soulful. “I’ve been wondering what you’d be like, you know, in the flesh.”

“Uh-huh.” If only there were some way to
type
this to him!

“I’m a little nervous.”

“I’m a little married,” she said, a little more curtly than she’d intended. “This is hardly a meditation session for me.”

He was silent then, and she felt guilty about it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, finally. “This is…I don’t know. I don’t know how I thought this was going to pan out. Maybe like in the movies—something like
The English Patient,
where the lovers just can’t help being in love. Deep, tortured looks.”

A more manly voice,
she thought uncharitably.

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I know that this isn’t quite the way I pictured it, either.” He took a deep breath.

She frowned. “It isn’t?”

“Well…it’s just
different
over the Net, that’s all. I don’t…I mean, I can’t…” He ran his fingers through his hair, looking for all the world like a Guess model. She could overlook the voice for a face like that.

But could she overlook
marriage?

“Different how?” she said instead.

“I don’t know. You were just so lost and unhappy when you started writing to me, and I thought…hell, I still think I could help you. I don’t know. Save you, or something.”

“
Save
me?” Judith didn’t know why she bristled at that, but she did.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I thought I’d come here, and we’d kiss, and then I’d sweep you home to Atlanta with me. But from the look of you, that’s not a workable plan.” He took a deep breath. “And from talking to you…”

There was a long, painful pause. “You’ve only talked to me
for a minute, Roger,” she pointed out. He couldn’t possibly have a problem with her voice, could he? God, the irony here was thick enough to cut with a knife. “What’s the problem?”

“You’re—well,
cold.
”

Her eyes flew wide-open at the blunt words. To further her shock, he actually blushed.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he drawled in his squeaky voice. “Honest. It’s just—you’re so much more
vulnerable…
on Instant Message.”

She blinked. She seemed more
vulnerable
through baud rate and bandwidth? “And how do I strike you now?”

“Like if I get too close to you, you’ll hit me.”

She sighed.

“This isn’t working, is it?” she said sadly.

He shook his head. “We could try taking it easy. I’m here for a week…on a little vacation. I’ve got a friend out here that I’m staying with. We could just talk on the phone…maybe jumping from the Internet straight to a face-to-face conversation was more than we could handle…”

“No, I don’t think that would work.” Okay, she
knew
that a few hours’ conversation with that voice would not work. His voice, God help her, already grated on her nerves like a rasp. “Maybe…maybe we should stick to the Internet.”

“Maybe.” He scooted his chair closer to her. “I really thought I loved you, Judith. After all those things you told me, I thought we loved each other.” He stroked her face, and before she could help it she shied away. “I don’t really know you, do I? Not the real you.”

She shook her head slowly. “If it’s any comfort, neither did I.”

He sighed, and the sadness of it would have broken her heart if it hadn’t sounded as if it had come from Minnie Mouse. “Well. Maybe we shouldn’t talk for a while, then.”

She shrugged, but she felt a pang. He was her closest friend at this point—she wasn’t sure if she was ready to lose that.

“I won’t vanish,” he assured her, in off-key tones. “But…this is weird. I’ll just need a little space.”

She nodded.

“I think I’d better get going.”

She nodded again.

To her surprise, he leaned in, kissing her softly, full on the lips. It made her tingle, ever so slightly.

“It really is a shame,” he said, close to her ear, making her spine twitch more uncomfortably, like nails on a chalkboard.

“You have no idea,” she murmured.

She watched him walk away…watched other women give him appreciative glances. Watched him disappear into the crowd.

So what was this really all about?

She thought she’d found a grand passion—the
English Patient
variety. What she’d wound up with was a complete farce. Something funny, ironic, ridiculous.

She’d wanted romance, and gotten none.

She still did, she realized. She wanted more from her life.

This wasn’t about Roger, she realized.

This was about David.

She stood up, taking her rosebud off of her lapel and leaving it on the cold metal table.

More importantly, this was about her.

Martika sat on the couch with her hand absently on her stomach. Her belly was slightly poochy, she noticed. Of course, it had
been
slightly poochy. To be honest, it had hardly been a washboard since she’d turned twenty-four or so. She was now thirty, so the bump of her stomach was probably fat, not baby—yet. She had no right to be sitting here on the couch, watching TV, patting her stomach like some bad TV-movie-of-the-week expectant mother.

But you are an expectant mother.

She’d told Taylor, naturally, and he was aghast, just as she supposed she should have been. Hell,
she
was. She prided her
self on being unflappable, but this—she was completely flapped. She credited her hormones for the roller coaster of emotions raging inside her—she really ought to go though with the abortion, and chalk it up to a really, really bad experience. And naturally, she’d be more careful in the future. No more random fucks, for one thing. That was hardly a sacrifice. She’d be more careful. She’d have a relationship. Maybe she’d even find “the one.”

But her hand continued to rest where it was.

Wonder if it’s a boy or a girl?
By this point, there would be no way to tell. But it was weird. She’d only thought of babies in relative terms—other people’s, to be specific. Kids hardly fit into a clubbing lifestyle, frankly, and her life as it was now was her own. Kids represented responsibilities. Permanence. PTA meetings and day care. Getting no sleep. There was also that weird thing they did when they were two and turned into little monsters. She’d seen enough of them on TV to know.

But it still didn’t stop her from wondering. This wasn’t just a kid. This was
her
kid. She could feel its presence in her body like some alien taking up residence, but not in the bad, X-files sort of way. She thought that all that stuff in movies about “feeling” the baby, especially in this early stage, was just bullshit, but the beginning tenderness in her breasts and the nausea were all accumulating with amazing rapidity.

As much as she loved him, Taylor didn’t understand about this. She needed to talk to a woman about this.

That meant Sarah.

She hadn’t been exactly cordial to Sarah, but still, this was an emergency. She felt sure Sarah would understand.

She heard Sarah’s key in the dead bolt, and her hand twitched reflexively. She supposed she looked like Al Bundy, sitting on the couch with her hand on her stomach. She moved it to the couch, fighting the urge to put it back on her abdomen.

“Hi, Sarah,” she called before Sarah even walked down the hallway. “Got a minute?”

“Today has been from hell,” Sarah said. “I’ve just been
fired. And, worse, the guy I was planning on sleeping with turned out to be a complete asshole. Don’t even get me started on his wife.” She groaned and plunked down in the love seat. “I want to go out to a club and get drunk until I don’t remember my own name or how I got home.”

This wasn’t exactly how Martika had planned on sharing her story. Obviously, Sarah needed to vent a little. She hoped it wouldn’t be too long—she really didn’t have the perspective for this.

“So, I guess you’ll be looking for another job, then?”

Sarah glared at her. “You think?”

“No need to get bitchy.” Martika’s voice was sharp. She
definitely
didn’t need to hear this twenty-five-year-old’s woes when she was sitting here pregnant. “I just had a problem that I wanted to talk about, that’s all.”

Sarah’s eyebrows jumped to her hairline. “Oh, for…of course, Martika.
Tell
me about
your
problems.”

Martika’s eyebrow quirked at her.
Oh, nuh-uh.
“Excuse me. Tone.”

“Don’t you get sick of the mother bit?”

Martika made a little gasp-noise, genuinely shocked. “What?”

“You put the mother in smother, I think is the term. You do it with me and Taylor and anybody else you get close to—for as long as they
can
stay close to you. I swear! You tell me not to pay attention to my job, to get a fuck-a-thon-life, and I do, and here’s where I wind up! I’m miserable!”