Roulette (8 page)

I feel the press of tears. I am not going to cry! I can’t very well drop a bomb like “
I don’t know
” and then think I can whimper my way out of it. I stand up straighter. “I just don’t
know
!” I say with defiance. “You seem so sure about
everything
, and I’m not! Wouldn’t you rather know now instead of after I move in?”

“Yeah, I guess. But when I
really
would have rather known is, like, a year ago—that I was putting all my effort into something with
no long-term benefits
.”

Does he have to make me sound like an annuity? And a poorly performing one at that?

“What has gotten into you?” he asks. I think he feels a bit guilty as soon as he says it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It must have been really hard with your dad and everything that happened in Russia. And your uncle bugging you all the time now and not letting you get on with your life. I’m sorry. Maybe I haven’t been understanding enough about how all that is affecting you.”

I get the feeling he’s talking to me in some conciliatory way he learned at medical school, about how to talk to people suffering from post-traumatic stress or something. He loosens his grip on my arms and starts to smooth where he was holding me. “I’m sorry. I just never thought of you and your father as all that close. Maybe you need more time to deal with it.”

Shit.
Now I really
am
going to hell if I pretend my father’s death is the reason I’m acting like a flip-flopping airhead. I look down. I kick the pine needles at my feet.

“Maybe you’re right,” I agree. “I think I need some more time.”

He lets go of my arms. “Shit,” he curses under his breath, and turns away from me but doesn’t go anywhere. I reach out to touch his back, then stop before I actually make contact. Do I really want renewed intimacy, or am I trying to withdraw? I let my hand drop. I need more time. That’s the simple truth.

He takes a deep breath, then turns to face me. “Right. Okay.” He exhales slowly. “Do what you need to do.” He smiles—or tries to smile—then leans in to kiss me, a light, sweet kiss on the lips. I sigh and we hold hands as we walk farther down the path, until it narrows and we go back to single file.

The ride home is mostly quiet. It’s not horribly uncomfortable, and I figure Landon is trying to go with the flow, but he’s obviously having to work at it. He is not a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. When the Saab pulls up in front of my house in the funky Abbot Kinney neighborhood of Venice, Landon puts the car into park, pulls up the hand brake, and turns to face me.
Uh-oh, here we go
.

“Miki . . .”

“Yeah?”

He looks at my house, then back at me. “I really think you should call your uncle and tell him you’re not going to be able to help him with any of the Voyanovski stuff anymore. He shouldn’t be making you do that.” For some reason, Landon has decided that my new role at Voyanovski Industries is the main reason I’m wavering about the future of our relationship. He’s brought it up a couple of times over the course of the weekend. He rubs his cheek with the palm of one hand, a nervous gesture he always does when he isn’t getting his way.

“Lan, he’s not making me do it. I
want
to do it.”

“No, you don’t.”

Okay. This is the part of Landon I like the least. In fact,
hate
might not be too strong a word.

“Yes,” I answer patiently, “I
do
.”

“Look, Miki.” His veneer of being cool with everything is beginning to crack. “I think you’re being a bit too
que sera, sera
about this whole thing.” He gestures between himself and me; I guess we are
this whole thing
. “I don’t want to be a jerk, but I’m thirty-five years old, and I want to be married and having kids, and I don’t think it’s expecting too much that the person who’s doing that with me feels equally committed to the idea—enthusiastic, even—about one day being my wife.”

I look out the window. He’s right, of course, but why does it sound so wrong? If he had said it in a different tone, I might feel slightly guilty or sympathetic or whatever—I’m certainly not standing on any moral high ground lately—but the way he says “
my wife
” makes my skin crawl. It’s about as far from “you deserve perfect” as one could possibly get. He says it like I should be grateful, that I should feel lucky—which, I suppose, with a different man, maybe I would. But the way Landon says it feels very much like he is doing me a favor.

I also feel like there’s a much deeper problem that Landon will never see, and that I’m probably guilty of perpetuating on some level because, until very recently, I thought it was how I wanted to live my life as well. His life is all about what he
does
and not at all about what he
feels
. Of course I want to
do
things—I thrive on accomplishing projects at work, and I love taking care of my own house and enjoying the day-to-day world I’ve built—but something clicked in Russia, and now I know I also want to feel things. I want to surf harder; I want to have spontaneous sex in the back of a car if I feel like it.

And not as some self-destructive, thrill-seeking kick, either, but to feel alive. Even if I were to quit my job and become the perfect doctor’s wife with two-point-something kids and an SUV someday, with the right person by my side, I would
feel
the joy of my day-to-day life. I would love my life. I’m still holding out a thin hope that maybe Landon and I could try really hard to have that life, but the way Landon is looking at me right now? There’s not a whole lot of life loving going on.

I don’t want to lose my temper. I told him I needed time to think, and I want to leave it at that for now. There’s no way I’m going to be drawn into another argument. “I’ll think about it,” I hedge.

Landon leans over and kisses me. “Good.” He is matter-of-fact, but I also sense a possessive thrill underpinning that kiss, as if he thinks he’s won—as if my thinking about it means I will automatically do what he tells me to do.

I unbuckle my seat belt and reach for the door handle.

“Don’t forget we have the big black-tie thing Friday night, okay?” he reminds me.

I get out of the car, then reach into the backseat to grab my bag. I swing it over my shoulder and shut the door. “I won’t forget. Have a great week.”

He flips down his sunglasses and smiles that Captain America smile of his. “You, too, sunshine.”

I wave good-bye and turn up the narrow stone path that leads to my front door. I like how he calls me sunshine. He is like a really great older brother.

Ugh.
I shake my head, dig my house keys out of my bag, and walk inside without looking back.

CHAPTER NINE

I
drop my bag by the front door and take a deep breath. I love this little house. It’s kind of quirky and holds a mishmash of country-casual furniture that I’ve picked up at garage sales, mixed in with a few modern glass side tables and chrome reading lamps. One wall is all shelves, packed with tons of books and Russian knickknacks and black-and-white photos in small, mismatched frames. I also made a copy of the picture I found in Russia, of my mom and dad, and put that on one of the shelves last week.

I walk into the kitchen, pour myself an iced coffee, and stare out the French doors leading to my small backyard. On either side of the doors are two beautiful fauvist paintings that my mother gave me, and I feel a pang of longing for her.

She is so generous, but it’s always in the most impractical way. Or maybe I’m just ungrateful. This house is the perfect example. My mother bought it on her eighteenth birthday, or so the family lore goes. I think she may have already been sleeping with the producer who made her famous and he may have given her the house. But she likes to tell it this way. She started modeling in Paris when she was fifteen. Her real name was Marie Simone Durand, but she renamed herself Simone. Just Simone. It’s pretty ridiculous that my mother has only one name, like she’s Madonna or something, but that’s how it is.

Simone got a combined print-and-TV modeling job in Los Angeles when she was seventeen and made a name for herself as an early-’80s It Girl. On her grand piano in Bel Air, there are silver-framed photos of her hanging out with Sting, for example.

Anyway, she unexpectedly hit it big as the face and voice of a new men’s cologne that had a silly—but damnably catchy—tagline, “Roulette: Take Your Chances.” When it came out in her throaty, French-accented voice, from her wide-eyed, innocent face, apparently people went crazy. Simone made a small fortune.

Despite her father’s careless parenting in some respects, he was an excellent attorney and incredibly shrewd and attentive when it came to her career. He used Simone’s popularity in France to leverage an unheard-of deal with the American cologne company. Namely, Simone got a percentage of the profits on the product in perpetuity. A year later, wanting to wrest a bit of independence from her father’s control of her finances, she bought the house in Venice, California.

Either she knew what she was doing in terms of real estate (or that producer did) or she lucked out, because the house is a gem. It’s a two-bedroom Cape Cod, with a rickety white picket fence out front and a tiny studio building out back. It’s right on one of the nicest canals and walking distance to all the galleries and restaurants on Abbot Kinney.

For a few years, she pretty much lived the life of a Brat Pack idiot, partying in Venice Beach or flying around the world on the arm of one producer or another. Then she met my father and had me, which put a bit of a wrench in her wild youth, but only a bit. By the time I was two, Simone hit it big with her first feature film. It wasn’t a really significant part, but it established her as a young actress, rather than a young partier. After that, she could no longer afford to be seen as some flake living on the beach with a baby. She needed to entertain in style, so she bought The Monstrosity. We moved to Bel Air when I was two and Simone was a Real-Life Movie Star. Our house is on all the star maps.

I won’t go into any Norma Desmond foolishness about how grim and melancholy it was to grow up rich in Bel Air. Other than the aforementioned normalcy fantasies, I had it pretty damn good. There were a few hiccups. My mother was gone most of the time, and she always hired irresponsible, pretty nannies. One of them left me at the movie theater when I was eight.

My mother laughed over the crackling phone line from Budapest and told me to
quit crying. “In certain countries, girls are married when they’re eight! Be a big girl!” As if that were supposed to make it all better. In Simone’s world, there was always a starving eight-year-old getting married against her will. Whatever.

Then, on my eighteenth birthday, she gave me the house in Venice. I d
on’t think she ever really knew what to do with me when I was a girl, but when I turned eighteen, she kind of got the hang of it.

The following week is hectic like the last. I burn the candle at both ends, as spring term ramps up at work and Alexei pulls me deeper and deeper into the everyday running of Voyanovski. To be fair, he’s no longer having to pull very hard. I start looking forward to my ten o’clock calls. I start volunteering ideas for some new projects, without his prodding. I start becoming far more interested in what’s happening in Segezha than I am in what’s happening with my whiny graduate students’ final projects.

And I’m trying to respect Landon’s justifiable wish for me to make a decision about our next step. I decide to go all out for the party on Friday night. It’s a hospital fund-raiser, and I know how much he loves to squire me around at those sorts of things. I don’t even resent it—if he wants arm candy, I’m perfectly willing to give him arm candy.

I leave work early, waving to one of my colleagues about having a doctor’s appointment. Well, it’s only a white lie. It is an appointment. At my mother’s favorite salon.

Three hours later, I’m feeling like a goddess (and looking like one, or so they tell me). My hair’s been blown out in long, sexy waves; I’m all waxed and buffed and shiny. I even go over to my mom’s house and rifle through her closet and borrow a vintage Pucci gown. It’s long and stretchy and wonderfully sexy without showing much skin, which is a bit of a sticking point with Landon when we’re out with his stodgy colleagues.

I call a cab to take me to the hotel and feel like a million bucks. Or a billion. I don’t know what the exchange rate is for fabulous anymore. Anyway, I’m cruising along really well, seriously schmoozing all the board members of and major donors to the hospital, but I sort of feel as if my face is going to crack right off after about an hour.

While we’re all standing around, having multiple conversations at the same time, I overhear Landon tell someone, “Yes, she’s also a professor at USC.”

It kind of makes me cringe, that
also
. If Bill Gates were hot, would anyone say, “He’s
also
the founder of Microsoft”? I try not to let my feminist hackles get up on Landon’s big night, but he’s bugging me. I tell myself to get over it; he’s happy and proud of me, so I try to leave it at that.

Unfortunately, in the next breath he refers to me as “the whole package.” And I kind of snap.

This is not the first time he has referred to me as “the whole package,” and I used to think it was kind of funny and endearing. Suddenly, when I hear him use that phrase at the Beverly Hilton, while he is all puffed up in his tuxedo and bragging to a bunch of likewise-tuxedoed cardiologists, I can’t stand another minute of it.

“Hey, honey,” I say, pushing my way gently into his conversation. He looks at me and smiles, waiting for me to add something to his witty banter. “The whole package, here. Present and accounted for. I’m standing right here.”

He looks at me like I am trying to be funny and not quite succeeding. One of his asshole colleagues, James Galmoy,
EMM-DEE
, shakes the ice in his glass of scotch and gives a low whistle. “Uh-oh. Someone’s in trouble.”

Give me a break. Seriously? Am I Landon’s mother?
Now I’m really peeved. I look at James, try to bite my tongue, but he winks, the stupid bastard, and I blurt, “Hey, Jimmy, you know what?
Someone’s
being a prick.”

Landon puts his hand on the soft part of my arm above my elbow and squeezes. “Miki?”

“Yes?” I turn and give him my mother’s best megawatt smile. If he wants “the whole package,” he is damn well going to get it.

“Why don’t we go dance.” It isn’t a question. He leads me away from the jerk posse and then pulls me aside before we get anywhere near the dance floor. “What the
hell
are you thinking? James is about to set up one of the most important specialty practices in Los Angeles, and we might become business partners. What is the
matter
with you? Have you been drinking?”

I look down at the untouched champagne I’ve been carrying around for the entire endless hour. I have never felt more clearheaded in my life. “Barely a sip.” I stare into his eyes. They are perfect. Sparkly blue. And empty. In that moment, I know I would rather be alone than be with this man. “I think we’re finished here, Landon.”

“What? We haven’t even gone in to dinner yet.”

“I mean we are
finished
.”

“You’re going to break up with me at a fucking cardiologists’ fund-raiser at the Beverly Hilton?”

“Would you rather I call your receptionist and schedule a more convenient time?”

Turns out Landon might have a bit of a violent streak. Through clenched teeth he whispers, “How dare you make fun of me at a time like this?”

I shake out my long hair. I
am
the whole package, damn it, a 100 percent American woman. Well, technically half-Russian, but whatever. I’m channeling Lenny Kravitz.

“I’m not making fun of you, Landon.” I unhook the diamond necklace he gave me for my birthday and hold it out to him. He won’t take it, so I end up slipping it into the side pocket of his tuxedo jacket. I reach up to touch his upper arm. He isn’t really a bad guy; he’s just completely wrong for me.

He pulls away from my attempt at a conciliatory touch.

“Fine.” I shrug. “Think what you want.”

He looks around the party, probably to see if we’re making a scene. “We need to talk about this, Miki. How can you go from wanting to move in together to wanting to break up in the course of a month?”

I look up at the ceiling—absurdly ornate, fake Italian Renaissance rosettes—
and count to five. I exhale and look him right in the eye. “I do not want to marry you, Landon. It’s just that simple. I’m sorry if you feel I led you on, but it has taken me until this moment to really know my own mind. I’m sorry, again, for what you see as a waste of your time.”

“You are such a cold bitch.”

Well, that pretty much seals the deal. I extend my left hand and ask for my lipstick.

“Your what?”

“My lipstick. I asked you to carry it in your jacket pocket because it wouldn’t fit in my narrow clutch. May I have it, please?”

“Miki, honey, come on. This can’t be over.”

“Landon. You just called me a cold bitch. Let’s not go down this road. I’ll call you in a couple of weeks, and we can go to a movie or something and try to be normal so we’re not awkward at our friends’ parties. All right?”

“I don’t even know who you are anymore. Ever since you got back from Saint Petersburg, you’ve been this judgmental, arrogant cun—”

I hold up my hand and put two fingers over his lips. To anyone across the room at the party, it will look like a gentle, momentary passion. Maybe I do have a drop of my mother’s theatrical blood in my veins after all.

“You really,
really
do not want to finish that sentence, Lan. You know what they say—some things can never be unsaid.” I let my fingers come away from his lips. “Keep the lipstick.”