Death of an Orchid Lover (34 page)

“So why don’t you just sell off your old tires? Get some money out of them.”

“We do sell them off. If we didn’t, we’d all be buried fifty feet deep in them. We just keep enough around so we can move on a moment’s notice. Orchid people move slowly, but when they do, we’ll be ready.”

“And why didn’t you just tell me about this before?”

“You were asking about being in business with Albert. This had nothing to do with Albert. So there was no reason to mention it, was there?”

“I guess not.”

I examined both their faces. I was virtually certain they were telling the truth.

So. I’d discovered the Gartner’s big secret. And it had nothing to do with Albert. Once again I’d been on a wild-goose chase.

But there was another secret. I caught Helen’s eye. “I guess I’ll get going, then.”

“Good idea,” said David. “And don’t forget my socket.”

I walked back through the gate. I waited at the truck. I wasn’t surprised when Helen came out to the curb. “You know, don’t you?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I suppose you want to ask me all about it.”

“Not really. All I want to know is this. Yoichi says he was with you the night Albert was killed. Is he telling the truth?”

“He is.”

“You and he didn’t have anything to do with Albert’s death, did you?”

“No. What reason would we have?”

At the moment I could think of only one. Albert’s opposition to illegal activities like Yoichi’s. But Yoichi had said Helen didn’t know about that.

I could tell her. Measure her reaction. “But I’d promised not to. What would happen if David found out?”

“He’d probably go down to Yoichi’s place and try to beat him up.”

“And you? What would he do to you? Would he beat you up too?”

“Of course not. There’s not any domestic abuse going on here. David’s actually a fine husband.”

“Then why’d you take up with Yoichi?”

“I don’t know. For the thrill of it, I guess.”

“Oh. Yes. It seems very thrilling, sneaking around like that.”

“Don’t make me feel any guiltier than I already do. I dread the day he finds out. I dread hurting him. He’s very good to me. His hatred of the Japanese is his only real fault.”

“That’s like saying Hitler’s hatred of the Jews was his only real fault.”

“Consider what you just said. It’s very stupid.”

“Sorry. Bad analogy.” I groped for something more intelligent to say. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know.” She looked at me for a few seconds more, before turning and walking into the house.

I
DROVE HOME, CALLED GLNA, LEFT HER A MESSAGE ABOUT
what I’d found out in Tarzana, threw in a little about the Sharon situation. Then I got in the shower. I washed every part of my body I could reach and let the water beat down on that part of my back I couldn’t. I used the nail brush until the last bit of dirt had disappeared from my fingertips, along with a portion of my fingertips themselves.

I took my time shaving, then picked out a nice pair of Dockers from my audition stash, topping it with a colorful, as yet unworn shirt Gina talked me into buying several months before. I stopped at a Conroy’s and put together a bunch of flowers, then drove to Sharon’s house in Westchester. It was on a quiet side street, not far from Loyola Mary-mount University, in that area between Lincoln and Sepulveda that Gina calls Whitechester. A magnolia sat out front, with a sprinkling of dead leaves and flower corpses littering the sidewalk and street below. Impatiens and begonias were planted in the thin strip of earth along the front of the house. Several pots full of epidendrums sat by the front door.

My flowers and I went up to the entrance and rang the bell. Half a minute later Sharon showed up at the door. She was wearing a cranberry-colored linen blouse and a long skirt in a muted print.

She spied the flowers. “For me?”

“No, they’re for me. I came over to borrow a vase.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“I picked them out myself.”

“You did a fine job.” She kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll just put them in some water and be right back out.”

I stood out there awkwardly, then wandered down the driveway and looked over the gate. The grass was patchy. Then again, so was mine. The trees were trimmed, the bushes pruned. Colorful annuals poked out of the ground.

She had a lath house, about ten by fifteen feet, with redwood lattice on top and on three sides, open to the north. A couple of hundred orchids grew inside. Some kinds I recognized and some I didn’t. Something in there was broadcasting a fruity scent I could detect halfway across the yard.

I turned at the sound of footsteps. Sharon had added a thin sweater to her outfit. “Maybe you can see the lath house … later,” she said.

“Sounds good.” I checked my watch. “We should get going.”

We made it to the play with fifteen minutes to spare. We parked half a block away on Santa Monica Boulevard, and walked over to the theater.

Some things had changed—the marquee was new, and even from outside I could see they’d redone the lobby—but some remained the same. The brickwork above the marquee, punctuated by windows sporting ancient venetian blinds. The industrial-looking pipe heads jutting out of the sidewalk to the left, a perfect place to lean against and stare at traffic
when you’ve had a big argument with one of your artistic co-conspirators.

I stood there motionless as images of the Altair of yesteryear merged with what was there now like some cheesy sci-fi effect. Eventually, the old ones faded. I wasn’t looking at the Altair Theater. I was staring at the John Diamante Theatre. Spelled with an
re.
Pretentious.

I picked up our comps at the box office. The young woman guarding the door tore them in half. She looked exactly like the young women who took tickets when I was running the place. Smiling, but with an edge of desperation, of deep disappointment that someone else had gotten the ingenue part. Next time she’d show them. She was only paying her dues, right?

We passed through the lobby and into the theater itself. The seats were new. The walls were a different shade of black. The tech booth still overlooked the last row. I watched a techie climb the three steps and go in. She had dark frizzy hair and her overalls were frayed. Techies never changed.

The set was essentially a couple of easy chairs and a bed in someone’s yard, with a porch behind. “I guessed having the furniture outdoors was the experimental” part of “experimental yet commercial.”

We spotted some seats in the center, about halfway back. To get to them we had to squeeze by a couple of couples. They had the look of people from Beverly Hills or Bel Air who came to small theaters because they thought it legitimized them as supporters of the arts. You’d hear them in the lobby at intermission, complaining that they didn’t understand the play.

We took our seats. “I’ve been thinking,” Sharon said. And actually being here, in a theater, settles it. “I’d like to get back to the stage.”

I turned to look at her. I wondered if she was fooling herself. She’d get cast in some play, and opening night would approach, and she’d suddenly be overcome by bad memories and go screaming out into the street. “Just like that?”

She shrugged. “When I really faced what I was avoiding, when I told you about it, it didn’t seem so horrible anymore. Sometimes when bad things happen you think you’ll never get over them, but when you look at them later, they’re nothing. Like relationships that fail. Six months later you run into the person and wonder what you ever saw in them.” It was a funny thing for someone who hadn’t had a lover in ten years to think of.

She took my hand. “Anyway, I was thinking … you were considering getting back to the theater as well. What with your going to Laura’s scene study and all. I thought maybe we could sort of lean on each other as we dived back in.”

“That implies we’re going to be together a while.”

“I don’t have any problem with that. Do you?”

I shook my head. The house lights went down and the stage lights came up.

The play was much better than I’d anticipated. Both leads were very good, though the woman cast as Grandma Moses occasionally lapsed into Granny from
The Beverly Hillbillies.
The story was set in 1961, right before Grandma died. The Moseses were scheming to embezzle three million dollars from the City of New York. Robert Moses was in on it because he was pissed off over them not naming Shea Stadium after him. Grandma just wanted to do something dishonest before she kicked off. During the first act they
assembled their criminal crew, including Diane as the Transit Authority accountant who was going to cook the books.

I sat comfortably beside Sharon, sometimes holding her hand, sometimes not, and not endlessly calculating in my head what that meant. Albert Oberg never entered my thoughts, and Laura only once, when Diane first entered and I thought, this would have been a good part for Laura too.

Intermission came. Sharon stayed in her seat while I went to the rest room. The years stripped away. There was new paint and a new low-volume toilet, but the bare porcelain sink was the same one that had been there since the Cubs won the pennant. I recognized a ding where I’d dropped a pipe wrench on it, way back when.

I hung around the lobby for a while, sucking in the theater atmosphere. Just as they blinked the lights the first time, I ran into Joe Parlakian.

He’d been our token Armenian at the Altair, and never let us forget it. Everyone knew the dates of the Armenian Genocide and what an awful country Turkey was. Our names had been the subject of endless lame confusion. “Hey, Joe.” “Which one?” “Joe P.” “Which one?” Theater humor.

He came up and wrapped his big arms around me and pounded my back. Then he held me at arm’s length and told me I looked good.

“You look good too, Joe.”

“What have you been doing? Besides the commercials. It takes a bug,’ right?”

“Right. That’s pretty much it. How about you?”

“Some voice-over, a little movie work. I have a recurring part on a soap, too, can you believe that, me in a soap?” He frowned. “I was up for
Nine Armenians
at the Taper, but the director …” Big, exaggerated shrug. “What an
aboush.”