The Diamond Lane (19 page)

“Isn't she great?” asked Mimi.

Nita hung up. “One of my clients. She's getting married in Death Valley.”

“In the desert?” asked Mouse.

“They met on a camping trip. They wanted to get married on the site of their first kiss. Everyone wants something special. I had a couple last year who did it on a float in the Rose Festival Parade. But let's get on with what
you
want, shall we?”

“Something small,” said Mouse.

“They don't have much money,” said Mimi. “I told her you were a whiz with a small budget.”

“Okay.” Nita wrote in her notebook. “What, two hundred?”

“Oh no,” said Mouse. “No, no, no. More like twelve.”

“Twelve hundred?”

“Twelve
people
,” said Mouse, feeling her cheeks go hot. Quickly, she outlined her ideas, which she had been formulating without knowing it. Beach wedding. Few close friends. Nondenominational minister. No bridesmaids, save Mimi, who would buy her own dress. As for Mouse, she could either sew her own or pick up something at a used-clothing store. Tony had a few nice suits. “Flowers are optional. So is rice. So is the ring.”

“They just want something basic,” said Mimi.

“The reception will be potluck,” sighed Nita, holding her mechanical pencil up like a syringe, slowly rolling in the lead.

“Yes,” said Mouse.

“Potato salad. Pork ‘n' beans.”

“We were thinking more along the lines of london broil. A buffet.”

Nita closed her notebook and stood up. With one hand she relieved Mouse of her cup and saucer. “It sounds like you don't need me,” said Nita.

“But I do!” said Mouse. “To organize everything.”

“Sounds like you've got everything under control. The brides I generally work with aren't like you. They don't know whether they want to run away to Las Vegas or have a sit-down dinner at the Bel Air Hotel. They don't know whether they want to wear their grandmother's dress or plunk down fifteen grand for something new.”

“Fifteen
grand
?”

“Six hundred for flowers. That's just for the bride's bouquet.”

“Fifteen thousand dollars for a dress?”

“Not just any dress,” said Nita. “One you'll wear for three hours, then put on once every ten years to see if you've gained weight.”

“I see.” Mouse pulled herself up from the couch, her chest leading, dignified. But hauling her bag up on her shoulder she upended it. A few videotapes bounced out.

“Ideally, I need thirty thousand dollars to create something truly wonderful,” Nita said.

Nita stooped down to pick up a tape. She read the label on the side. “
Elephant Men: Elephantiasis in the Sub-Sahara
. Sounds fabulous. Best of luck in your new life and let me know how it goes.”

Nita uncurled her long white fingers and shook Mouse's hand, opening the door at the same time.

Outside, walking to the car, Mimi said, “That Nita is really a bitch.”

“I understand,” said Mouse. “I'm small potatoes.”

“It wasn't
that
. Did you see the way she looked at your outfit? That's a nice blazer. I mean, it's not, like in, but still. It's classic. You know, your style. And the way she said ‘sounds fabulous.' What a snot. Just because it's a documentary. I got a half hour before I have to be back, want to grab a bite?”

“No. I think I'd just like to walk.”

“Want me to drop you anywhere? ‘Mowz,' she thought your name was Mowz, ‘something exotic'! Anyone could tell by looking at you you're just plain old whitebread American. You sure I can't drop you? I can take you back to the apartment. Don't let this get you down. We'll plan a great wedding. After I get home we'll go get some of those bridal books. Fuck her is what I say.”

THE EMPTY WHITE
sidewalks of Beverly Hills in the rich afternoon light. Mouse walked. She had left Los Angeles when people still used words like “far-out” with a straight face. She left Los Angeles when people, when they got married, got married on the beach and had potluck receptions. They had weddings that were the most like not having a wedding without not having a wedding.

She stumbled down the street in her tight brown pumps, the mesh of her pantyhose embedded in the backs of her thighs from sitting on the edge of that infernal designer sofa. Impulsively, she ducked into a doorway. In one brisk move she reached up under her skirt and rolled down her pantyhose, She stepped out of her shoes. She wasn't the least embarrassed. She may as well have been changing her clothes on some unknown, unnamed beach in Africa. There was no one around. Most of the cars that slid by had tinted windows. Even if they could see her, she couldn't see them, so what did she care?

She walked on, looking back once. In the shadow of the doorway the withered hose drooped over the shoes, looking as
though a wicked witch had melted. She dragged her old Moroccan sandals out of her bag and put them on. She strode down the sidewalk, the sandals slapping out her anger on the hot, clean pavement. She passed her bus stop and kept going.

Fifteen thousand dollars for a dress! Six hundred dollars for flowers! In Afghanistan the average annual income was one hundred and twenty dollars. A Ugandan civil servant made the equivalent of ten dollars a month.
SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!
went her sandals, statistics rocketing around her head. She was supposed to spend the annual income of 125 average Afghanis on a dress that has the lifespan of a mayfly? She was supposed to fly in orchids from Tahiti, or whatever that Death Valley-bride person was doing? It was insane. And if she didn't succumb to the insanity?

Mimi. Ho, ho, Mimi! It would confirm her worst and most cherished suspicions. She would think Mouse was a freak. A loser. Deficient in the basic ways of girliness, ignorant in the ways of the world.

Oh sure, thought Mouse, the World. The world is a piece of cake. Over, under, on and by, anywhere a mouse can go, Mouse could go. It was this other business that gave her fits.

And Tony. How would Tony take it? That was a tough one. Men always seemed to gripe about the amount of time, energy, and money women put into weddings, then became misty-eyed and faint of heart when they saw you walking down the aisle wearing the down payment of your first house. Tony, who thought he'd found himself a wise and levelheaded woman, would be profoundly disappointed if she said, “Yo babe, let's just forget about it and live together.”

And Shirl. Oh, Shirl.

“Who invented marriage anyway?” Mouse asked the empty Beverly Hills sidewalk. It wasn't that she was against it, but look, just for a minute, at who invented it! Human beings. The same species who kept insisting there was an organizing principle to the universe! The species that suspected new cars were the root
of human happiness! Didn't Mouse know this from experience? Was there one
Zairois
who, despite his hunger, would not feel more blessed if the barge that slid into Kinshasa once a month from upriver delivered not the bags of manioc, the slats of smoked fish he'd been expecting, but a Toyota Tercel with air conditioning?

And this was the species that applauded your decision to marry! It lent its support by reminding you that Your Wedding Was the Most Important Day of Your Life. That You Only Do This Once. That You Only Have One Time to Get It Right. That if you didn't have engraved matchbooks, a private heart-shaped hot tub in your honeymoon suite
YOU
'
D REGRET IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
. This was what you were fed from the moment you announced your wedding. And it was layered on top of something which, if you were a sensitive woman, a thinking woman, was even tougher to swallow: you were expected to spend the rest of your life with your date to this event! A man who, the instant you decided to marry him – like magic the scales fell from your eyes! – you realized had a paunch like your father's, a hairline like the Pope's, a view of women and the family like the Pope's, a nasty habit of gargling in Dolby Stereo morning and night, or any other number of revolting behaviorisms and philosophies that once upon a time seemed harmless if not downright cute. Habits which you may have prided yourself on accepting in the name of compromise, because good relationships require compromise. And of course you have a good relationship. Why else would you be getting married! Mouse's brain was asizzle. All these thoughts.

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, dizzy and hot. She thought that since she had cheerfully filmed in one hundred twenty-degree African heat, that no piddling warm autumn afternoon could touch her. The sun baked her scalp. Her sweat tickled it. The strap of her bag cut into her shoulder. Before her eyes, the well-scrubbed buildings, the trimmed palms, the expanse of white sidewalk broke up into a jostling bunch of
angry gold dots. Suddenly she heard a strange chirping sound. The sound of, what was it? A macaw? Something from the jungle canopy, only robotic.
CHI
-
RUP
.
CHI
-
RUP
.
CHI
-
RUP
. She thought she was having a recurrence of malaria, or perhaps, an awful thought, a new jungle disease was popping up after having gestated for the past fifteen years.
CHI
-
RUP
.
CHI
-
RUP
.
CHI
-
RUP
. She was going mad. She felt faint. She had never felt faint in her life, but in the same way they always said you just know when you met Mr. Right, she just knew that she was going to collapse if she didn't sit down. She knew she would keel over, cracking her head on the sidewalk, and no one would ever know. Rigor mortis would set in before anyone walked by. The chirping bird robot would pick at her remains. Of course, Mouse was not going mad. She was probably not even going to faint. The chirrups issued from the bleeding-heart-liberal Beverly Hills stoplights. They were supposed to be for the blind. A seeing, hearing, able-bodied member of the middle class could hardly afford to live in L.A., period; what blind person could afford to live in Beverly Hills? The mysteries of life multiplied like mold in a bag of cheap hamburger buns during a heat wave.

What was happening to Mouse was simple. She was having a realization. It was: she could not get married.

Mouse thought, if she could only sit down. Sit down and think. Where was she? Near the Academy. They had a library, didn't they? She would go in, cool off, have a bit of a think. Or no, not think. Escape.

Like the movies it had a tendency to honor, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was housed in a solid but unimaginative building of toffee-colored concrete, dark-tinted glass. Getting into the fourth-floor library made getting into the Pentagon look like going to a neighbor's garage sale. Just inside, there was a squinty-eyed guard with a gun who made Mouse sign in, then directed her to the elevators. On the fourth floor, past a set of bulletproof glass doors, she had to sign in again. What company was she with?
Self
, she wrote. What was she there to
research? How to (
A
) Get out of the wedding; and (
B
) Get back to Nairobi without ruining or ending anyone's life, including my own, she thought.

Trends in American Documentary
, she wrote. She noticed that everyone else who had signed in above her was also with
Self
. Odd, she thought. Not at all, Mimi could have told her.

No one ever came to the Academy Library in an official capacity. Desperate people came here, people twitching with ambition. They hunkered over books on breaking into acting, directing, writing, even casting. Or else a biography of someone who had, against mega odds, broken into acting, directing, writing, and casting. People who actually worked in the movies had no need for libraries. The more successful you were in Hollywood, the less you had any need for books of any kind. It was true when Mouse came here so many years ago with Ivan. It was true now.

She got a few magazines on independent filmmaking from the librarian, who looked as if he was part of an experiment to see how long a human being could go without sunlight. His skin was the color of an almost-cooked onion. He was narrow-chested, his weak-looking arms splattered with brown moles. He wore a rag of a T-shirt, a limp thing silk-screened with a faded
MR
.
SUCCESS
across his narrow chest. Mouse guessed it was a souvenir from a student film he'd worked on years ago, when he was brimming with dreams.

His ear was being talked off by a man in a white dress shirt and lint-ridden black slacks. A Xerox repairman, a Mormon missionary, a waiter. A respectable middle-class man, whom the film industry had turned into a zealot, with a light-gray face, pink-rimmed eyes.

“– says they can give me fifteen hundred dollars. Fifteen hundred, I say. Okay. Okay. Not great. Humiliating, really, but okay. A producer, director, creative-what-have-you makes up to something like a hundred thousand
per episode
, but I say okay. Fifteen hundred. It's something. So then they say Business Affairs
has gotta call. I'm thinking that's it, that's the brushoff, Business Affairs is never going to call, but then they do. A miracle, I think how I'll spend the fifteen hundred. I'll send it to the Feds, is what I do. I make shit wages, but I owe 'em anyway. I feel good about this. Success is not getting to my head. I'll pay the Feds. They call, Business Affairs does, and they say, ‘Oh.' They say, ‘Oh no, oh no.' They say, we have a special thing in television, an if-come clause. Why it's called this pornographic thing, who knows. But what it boils down to is, they get a free option. They've given it a name though, see. You hear the words free option and you think, ‘I'm not gonna get screwed again!' But they say if-come clause, ohhh, very businesslike, and you think, ‘Huh, well, I guess that's how things work.' But not me! I've broken my ass on this thing for three years. I took out another mortgage on my house to finish this sucker. I borrowed money from my
parents
. I'm forty-eight years old, Marvin. Forty-eight years old and they're telling me they don't have any money for an option. Warner Fucking Brothers doesn't have any money?”