All Eyes on Her (9 page)

A
FTER A FEW MORE HOURS OF WATCHING
L
YDIA BOX AWAY HER
aggression, I decided I deserved a Mango-tini or twelve. So instead of returning to the office, I headed over to
The Wilshire
for their Thursday Night Happy Hour. Amid your usual West Los Angeles mix of aspiring agents in Ferragamo blazers with their barely legal girlfriends, struggling screen-writers in T-shirts and a few days’ stubble alongside the real estate agent buddies they bummed their drinks from, and roving packs of men in their fifties who were convinced that they fit in, I made my way to the bar.

Predictably, all of the barstools were taken, and typically, none of the men were in any rush to give up their seat for someone showing as precious little skin as myself. So I scanned for any two people with their backs to each other, and settled on a fortysomething bodybuilder who was chatting up a disinterested, blond Asian woman, and an oppressively tall and awkward-looking Nordic type in a three-piece suit. A good four inches separated them, so I twisted my body sideways and led with my arm. I squeezed my way between them and struggled for eye contact with one of the many bartenders who had forgotten to wear a bra.

I would have lent her mine, but trust me, she needed something a lot stronger.

I was reaching for my wallet when Jonathan interrupted from a corner of the bar. “Put that on my tab, beautiful. Monica’s earned herself a drink today.”

“Well, she decides to grace us with her presence.” Stefanie approached and raised a wobbly glass at me, clearly on her second drink already.

Roaring territorial orangutan: 1.

Latecomer on her first Mango-tini: 0.

But that was about to change. After my afternoon at the boxing ring, I was armed and ready to throw some truly poetic comebacks in her drunken direction.

“You know, Stefanie…” I began, before Cassie interrupted.

“Hey, Stefanie,” she said, smiling at me while taking my nemesis by the elbow and leading her off, “why don’t you join me in the ladies’ room?”

Disappointed, I walked over to Jonathan and dropped my purse on the table.

“So this is a coincidence. Where’s Niles and the other partners?” I asked, settling in.

“Don’t worry so much, slugger.” Jonathan wrapped his arm around my neck and mock jabbed at my jaw with his fist. “I always make sure the positive news about my co-counsel gets back to them. I already told Niles all about how you handled Lydia today. Above and beyond as usual, Gupta.”

“But I didn’t fix it, Jonathan. You came up with the solution.”

“Mere details,” he cried and waved the credit back to me. “We all know who makes the connection and who handles mere details on this case.”

I noticed Stefanie’s reflection. She was glaring at me. In the massive mirror over Jonathan’s shoulder. And all of a sudden it started making sense.

“So you’re pretty popular these days.” I licked some sugar off the rim of my glass just to rub it in, in case Stefanie was still watching. “It must feel good.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, and signaled the bartender for another beer.

“It looks like someone has a crush on you.”

“Really?” He perked up and asked. “You really think Cassie would go out with me?”

“Cassie? No. I was talking about Stefanie. I think she hates me because we’re friends and she thinks I’m a threat to her chances of mating with you. You thought I was talking about Cassie?”

“Mating?” He coughed, nearly choking on the beer.

“I’ve been watching animal sex documentaries.”

“Kinky.” He looked impressed. “Is this what you do when your fiancé’s out of town?”

“Uh, now you’re hot for Cassie?” I wasn’t gonna let him change the topic that fast.

He shrugged. I knew I was going to have to work a little harder, so I used the only ammunition I had.

“What is it with the secretaries, anyway?”

“Maybe it has something to do with them being a lot less picky than your average female attorney,” he thought out loud. “Or maybe it’s just because they’re hotter.”

I nodded, thinking to myself that I, too, would have been a lot
hotter
if I hadn’t spent all those late nights studying for the bar exam. What was I thinking?

“Present company excluded, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Or maybe it’s the image of them licking all those envelopes.”

“Ape.” I shook my head at him, then noticed my grin had been misinterpreted by one of the earlier fortysomethings—he was raising an eyebrow at me over blondie’s shoulder. I quickly tilted behind Jonathan to get out of his line of sight.

“News flash, Monica. We’re all apes. Every last one of us. Even your precious fiancé. Deep down inside he’s just as disgusting as I am.” Jonathan licked his finger clean of the beer foaming over the side of his glass before wiping it on his pants.

“That’s comforting. Anyway, I’m not so sure that I even have a fiancé anymore.” I twirled the stem of my glass.

“You might want to figure that out before the company party next week.” He winked, quickly diverting his gaze toward the glossy waitress gliding by. “It’s a great place to pick up pity sex. If you’re looking.”

“I think I’ll pass.” I noticed that Cassie was making her way over to us.

“So what are you gonna do with your life if you’re too good to sleep with any of us apes?” he asked. “Sit around and stare at the walls all day? Spend your weekends going to the movies alone?”

“Maybe,” I replied, watching the Norwegian slip Blondie’s coat over her shoulders and lead her out of the bar. “Why not?”

“Oh, speaking of which,” he remembered. “Have you seen the commercials for that new movie? The one that’s supposed to be a remake of that 1970s movie
Love Story?
”

I scanned the room for signs of more intelligent life.

“It’s supposed to be fantastic. I can’t ask any guys I know to go see it with me, obviously. And if I go to see it with an actual woman then I won’t really see it because, well, I like to take advantage of the dark. But I’ve heard good things. And it was cowritten by the guy who wrote
Like You Mean It.
So do you want to go see it this weekend? Come on, it’s not like you have anything better to do.”

I was a ball of nerves when
Like You Mean It
hit the theaters, even though it had been years since I broke up with Alex. I didn’t just want the movie to do well at the box office; I wanted this film to put Alex on the map. Being in a committed relationship with Raj by that time, I was completely ashamed of myself. Watching the movie with him was out of the question, of course. Watching it with anyone who didn’t know Alex would have cheapened the experience. And watching it with Sheila would have given her license to force me to verbalize and then try to make some sense of my unresolved feelings for him. So I did what any well-adjusted woman who felt as if she was committing emotional adultery would do. I bought a ticket online for the Sunday matinee at a small theater in suburban Orange County where I was sure nobody would recognize me. I drove out there alone in a nondescript tracksuit, minimal makeup and a large pair of generic sunglasses.

I settled into my chair in the back of the theater among the empty rows and the occasional teenage couple who had nowhere else to make out. I clutched my jumbo tub of buttered popcorn and sank deeper into my seat as they rolled the opening credits. And I hated myself for beaming with pride when Alex’s name burst forth next to the words Screenplay By.

Mouthing the familiar dialogue of the opening scene where Obama—now a Sudanese refugee working as a busboy—and Ling—now an illegal Chinese immigrant working in the garment district—meet at the crowded lunchcounter of a New York diner in the late nineties, I began to recognize how much had changed. In the last version of the screenplay I saw, the refugee was a former white supremacist recently released after three years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, the immigrant was a tolerance activist and granddaughter of holocaust survivors, and the New York diner was a Halloween Party in San Bernardino.

Despite the Hollywood airbrush, buff and polish, the message of his story hadn’t changed. It was about the power of love to transform people against all odds. I smiled at the affirmation that even after all these years he still believed that. But it wasn’t until halfway through the film that I got the validation I had been seeking in the first place: the confirmation that he still missed me.

Why does she keep pushing me away?
Obama tearfully asks his boss, the kind Italian restaurant owner, on the evening after Ling asks him to forget that he ever met her.

I ever tell you about the Indian chick I used to go with when I was your age?
his boss answers, hacking into some veal medallions.

Obama shakes his head.

Yeah, she was somethin’,
he continues, adding tenderizer.
Real fiery, but a good girl at the same time, ya know? Of course, she left me in the end. She was the only girl I never cheated on, too, ’til I got married. But she was too smart to stick around with me. It turns out she was smart enough for the both of us.

I do not understand,
Obama replies, searching the man’s eyes.

The owner pauses, thinks, and then looks directly at Obama.
I always thought I was Italian, ya know? Not white. Because where I grown up, there was always a lot of fighting between the Irish, the Polish, the Italians. I thought that my whole life. White people were British or somethin’, but they weren’t from my neighborhood. Then one day, me and Seema, we’re walking down the street, and someone yells out at her something I won’t repeat, just because she’s walkin’ wit’ me. And she looks up at me with those big brown eyes, biggest roundest eyes you ever seen…and it’s like she’s all alone in the world and there’s no way I can get to where she is, even if she stood right next to me for the rest of our lives. Take it from me, Obama. You can eat all the lo mein in the world, and you can want to be everything she needs so bad it tears ya up inside. But you ain’t never gonna be Chinese, man. And she ain’t never not gonna be.

Even though we never had that conversation, the scene stabbed as much as it substantiated something in my memories of him. Did he believe I had broken up with him over race? Of course not. Had he felt there was a part of me he could never reach? I hoped not. Had he taken the screenplay as an opportunity to rewrite our history by implying that he was the one who had decided I was too much to handle? Maybe. More importantly, could I have been so far off target to believe that he had known me better than that?

When I walked into my apartment that night the first thing I heard was Raj, singing along with my Norah Jones CD. Whatever he was making for dinner smelled heavenly. When he heard me in the kitchen, he spun around with an apron across his waist and a ladleful of something for me to try.

I broke into tears. I felt so guilty for having gone to see the movie that I couldn’t hold them back. On the one hand I had a cinematic kiss-off from a man who had concluded that we’d never really known each other, and on the other hand I had a real chance of a simple life with a man to whom I would probably never have to explain myself. Effortlessly, he would understand, instinctively, he would empathize, and often, he would make me dinner. I was sure of it.

Raj took one look at my face, set down the ladle, and came over to wrap me in his arms. And then he said those five little words that did as much to make me love him as they did to make me feel more alone than ever:

“I thought it would help.”

That was when I recognized the scent wafting through the apartment. My boyfriend was cooking my father’s signature dish, Rajma stew, from scratch, to comfort me. Since it would have been my parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary that night.

I buried my face in his neck and considered whether anyone could ever really know me at all. Or maybe, just maybe, I had never given anyone the chance. Either way, I looked into Raj’s eyes. Was it presumption on my part? Maybe Raj had been associating the expressions on my face with some catalogue of emotions he’d compiled in his mind because he’d never lost anyone of true importance to him, to death or to anything else. Still, I had the sense even then that he would happily stand beside me, without a hint of resentment and try to make sense of me for the rest of our lives.

Why do they even call it Happy Hour?
I wondered this Friday morning while ripping off the top of my venti vanilla latte, and tipping it down my throat with both hands.
There were the following facts to consider. That Stefanie wasn’t happy when she saw Jonathan buying me a drink. That Cassie wasn’t happy when she bumped into an ex she had gotten rid of by claiming she was joining the Peace Corps. That the bodybuilder wasn’t happy when, after no less than three failed attempts at getting a coed’s number, the only proposal that made its way over to him came from another bodybuilder who was nearly twice his size. The owners of The Wilshire couldn’t have been happy with the razor-thin margins they made on the discounted drinks they served just to keep the crowd thick and the impression of their popularity alive. And I certainly wasn’t happy when I woke up the next morning with the sense that tiny angry rabbits had entered my apartment through the vents and decided to use my head as a Capoeira drum while I slept.