Death of an Orchid Lover (32 page)

The phone woke me Sunday morning. It was Sharon. When I’d gathered about sixty percent of my wits, I told her what I’d found out about Laura’s activities the latter part of the night Albert was killed, and Casillas’s take on it. I didn’t say anything about Yoichi. I felt it would be betraying a confidence. I was developing a high degree of consideration for plant smugglers.

“I agree with your policeman friend,” she said. “Even if Laura fed her cat, it doesn’t clear her.” There was silence. Then she said, “Um, Joe …” and I knew, I just knew, I was about to hear the four worst words known to modern man.

She didn’t disappoint me. “We need to talk,” she said.

W
E NEED TO TALK
. W
OMANSPEAK FOR
“I’
VE THOUGHT IT
over and I just want to be friends.” Or “I’ve decided to join a biker gang and move to Montana.” Or “The Samoan’s back in town.” It’s usually followed by a somber discussion guaranteed to destroy the guy’s self-esteem. Then come a chaste hug, a parting of the ways, and a night spent staring at the ceiling.

The cotton in my mouth parted enough for me to speak. “This is bad, isn’t it?”

“You know, as soon as the words left my mouth I realized how ominous it sounded.”

“And how ominous
is
it?”

“I’d rather talk face-to-face.”

“Oy.”

“Can we? Do you have a little time?” I could always make time to be dumped. Sure I do. Are you going to come over? “Or do I get to see your place at last?”

“How about we meet on neutral ground?”

Neutral ground? What was this, the Paris peace talks? “Where’d you have in mind?”

“Do you know the big tree on National?”

“The ficus?”

“Yes. Can you meet me there in, say, half an hour?”

“Okay.”

For fifteen minutes I thrashed around all the possibilities of the impending conversation. None were good. Finally I got up, washed my face, brushed my teeth. I made it to the tree on schedule.

It’s a landmark. Literally. It’s got the plaque and everything. It’s also the biggest tree I’ve ever seen, a Moreton Bay fig with branches spreading a hundred feet or more over the grounds of St. John’s Presbyterian Church. Its trunk is probably thirty feet around, but it would be hard to measure because the huge buttress roots reach so high up. The ground underneath, if you come at the right season, is littered with thousands of inedible little figs, pretty until they get crushed beneath your feet into a mess of seeds and pulp.

I try to visit the tree once or twice a year. It’s a life-affirming experience, sitting under this plant that’s been there, according to the plaque, since 1875, and knowing it’s lived through earthquakes, smog, and the mayoralty of Sam Yorty.

I found a place on the brick coping atop the foot-high wall surrounding the trunk. Across National Boulevard was a special bonus tree, a eucalyptus with layer upon layer of peeling bark, with an otherworldly shape that made it resemble a cast member from
Fantasia.
A couple of pigeons were in the gutter, playing chicken with the cars as they investigated the dribs and drabs deposited there by the so-called dominant species. Pigeons don’t care about romance, I thought. They don’t care about murder.

“Hi,” said a voice off to my right.

She had on yet another of those sleeveless tops, this one light blue. Her naked arms were captivating. Her shorts, soft navy cotton, had a Big Dog emblem down by the hem. Her legs were as engaging as her arms. She had black sandals on. I could see her toes. These I did not find particularly appealing. I have my limits.

“Hi,” I said, patting the brick next to me. “Have a seat.”

She crossed in front of me and sat. The sight of the backs of her legs sent an inexplicably strong wave of desire through me. Then she sat a prim foot away, and the wave washed over, and I was back to my normal level of unbuffered testosterone. “What did you want to talk about?” I said.

She gave me a slightly displeased look. “Fine, thank you, and you?”

“Sorry. I guess I got a little shaken. We need to talk’ is the four worst—”

“Words known to modern man. I read the column too.”

“There was a column?”

“Yes. In the
Times.
About a month ago. Some ‘My Turn’ kind of thing. It was very pathetic.”

“I’m sorry I’m pathetic.”

“He was pathetic. You’re not pathetic.” She held out a hand, took one of mine in it, said nothing more. It seemed like a deliberate dramatic pause. Then: “I was going to tell you eventually.”

“About what?”

A couple of unidentifiable syllables made it out of her mouth. A tear ran down her right cheek. Just as it arrived at her jawline, another flowed down her left. As it reached her chin, a third escaped, back on the right.

She opened her purse and pulled out a tissue, seemed to
be gaining control, when suddenly she looked at me and burst out in big sobs.

I slid over and took her in my arms and let her outburst wear itself out against my chest. Her tears fell on my shirt. A teenage boy walking by took in our behavior and stepped up his pace, as if afraid of being infected by whatever had come over us.

Eventually the crying stopped. I was aware of Sharon dabbing at the wet spots on my shirt with the tissue. “Don’t worry about that,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For losing it.”

“Stop. Just tell me why you lost it.”

“Two reasons. One, just thinking about what happened sometimes makes me cry.”

“You going to tell me what it was?”

“In a little. I have to tell you the other reason first.”

“Which is?”

“I’ve just been so tentative, so afraid of getting hurt. I really think we might have something together, but I’ve got all these protective mechanisms in place, and I’ve been keeping you at arm’s length, and I lied to you about some things, and now you probably think I’m a big liar and—”

The crying was about to resume. In my best Archie Bunker voice I said, “Aw, little girl, not the waterworks again.”

She laughed, and the new tears dried up almost instantly.

“I don’t think you’re a big liar,” I said. “Just tell me what happened.”

She pulled away, opened her purse, took out a mirror. “I’m a mess.”

“You look wonderful.”

“You really think that, don’t you.” She ditched the mirror, sat up straighter, and took one of my hands in both of hers. “I always knew I wanted to be an actress.”

This had not been included among all the horrible things I was expecting. “An actress?”

She nodded. Even when I was a little girl watching TV with my parents, I knew. In elementary school and junior high I was in all the plays. And I was the best actress in high school. “And I went to Yale Drama School and was the best actress there too.”

“I had no idea you were into acting.”

A wry smile. Of course not. “I was hiding it.”

She looked out toward the street. A young woman was going by, pushing a stroller, with an infant on her chest in one of those backward papoose things.

Sharon shook her head. I wanted kids someday. “I was going to go to New York and be a big star and when I’d established myself be one of those women who has it all.” She shrugged. “Now I don’t have theater and I don’t have children.”

“You could still have both.”

“No.” She turned to face me again. “When I graduated, I worked awhile to save up some money, and then I did go to New York. I gave myself five years to make it. I supported myself waitressing and temping and doing all those other things struggling young actresses do, and I waited for the theater world to discover me.”

“When she said temping,” I thought of Laura. Sometimes older struggling actresses had to do those things too.

Sharon sighed. “After five years I’d had a number of parts Off-Off-Broadway, and one Off-Broadway. Character roles. And I worked with a group that went around town doing free theater in neighborhoods that usually didn’t see any.”

“But you didn’t get your break.”

“I didn’t get my break.”

“So at the end of five years you gave it all up.”

“No. At the end of five years I gave myself another five years.”

“What you must have gone through.”

She reached up and touched my cheek. “Sweet man.”

“That seems to be the conventional wisdom.”

She put her hand in her lap, leaving the other still clutching mine. “I started getting better parts. I did a lot of Off-Broadway,
a lot
being a relative term, of course. One or two plays a year. Certainly not enough to live on, but enough to be encouraging. But I had that ticking clock.”

“Although no one said if you weren’t a star you couldn’t just keep working at it. Some people keep working at it.”

She nodded. “Like Laura.”

“And my friend Diane.” Who had, I recalled, recognized Sharon’s name. It must have been from when Diane worked in New York.

“And I might have done that. But somehow I was developing a cosmic sense that everything was leading to that ten-year mark. Something wonderful was going to happen to my career just then.”

“And what? It didn’t happen, so you chucked the whole thing and came to L.A.?”

She shook her head. “Three months before my deadline I auditioned for a new Broadway show. A new drama by a new playwright with a lot of advance word. I talked my way into the audition and, like they say in
Variety
, I wowed ’em.” She looked out at the street again. “It was almost too perfect. The part was perfect, the timing was perfect. Well, almost. We were to open four days after my ten-year anniversary in New York.” A smile. “I allowed myself a four-day extension.”
Now she was looking right at me. The way she kept changing her focus reminded me of someone delivering a monologue. You would think the play was about the beautiful leading lady until, halfway through the first act, you realized it wasn’t. It was about the best friend, the plain one. “I was the plain one.”

“Not typecasting.”

“Thanks, but I know I’m not a leading lady. There’s more.”

“What more?”

“My social life was kind of slapdash during those years, but shortly after we started auditions I got involved with the director. It was the kind of relationship I’d never had before. Intellectual. Emotional. Intensely physical.”

“Spare me the details.”

“Of course. In any event, we were cruising along smoothly to opening night. The only fly in the ointment was, I was having a little trouble with the character. Most unlike me. The director thought everything was going too smoothly for me, keeping me from getting in touch with the turmoil the character was going through. I was ninety percent there, just not quite plumbing the emotional depths I needed to. But I thought I’d have it by opening night.”

“And did you?”

She looked away again. “The day of the opening, he broke up with me.”

“What?”

“He said it was time to move on. It seemed very strange, the timing and all. And I hadn’t had a clue it was coming. Everything had been lovely.”

“I think I see what’s coming here.”

“Do you?”

“I’ve worked with asshole directors before. Guys—women
too—who’ll put the cast through anything to get the effect they want onstage. He thought if you were distraught by his breaking up with you, you would, what did you call it, ‘ plumb the emotional depths’ more thoroughly. By being hurt in real life you’d find the character.”