The Diamond Lane (33 page)

She caught Mouse staring at her nose, tapped the end of it lightly with her knuckle. “Business was booming, so I splurged. An early fortieth-birthday present.”

A forty-year-old girl in a children's story.

“We've changed our minds about the wedding,” said Mouse, once again snuggled in the mooshy mauve sofa, the manhole-sized white saucer balanced on her knee, the heat from the bowl of cappuccino warming her chin.

Nita closed the door from her desk with the same kind of gadget Shirl used to open the garage door from her car. They both watched, transfixed, while the door inched shut over the thick white carpet. Mouse explained more than she needed to: about the accident, about Mr. Edmonton, about the out-of-court insurance settlement. She felt it was important to lay this groundwork so that Nita would understand immediately that she was serious. So that Nita would not require proof, in the form of a phone call to Mimi, or to Tony, or even to Shirl.

Occasionally Nita touched a finger to either side of her nose and sniffed daintily. She took two phone calls, one from someone she was meeting for lunch.

“… they settled out of court for about three hundred fifty thousand, a hundred she's given to me for the wedding. It's sort of outgrown the beach, the wedding. I was thinking, I have no ideas actually. I'd love to have a formal big-city wedding. Whatever is typical is what I want.”

“So what can
I
do for you?” asked Nita. She ran a silver letter opener idly under her nails, now shorter, now painted pearly pink. Mouse could see the toe of her white flat tapping impatiently under her desk.

Mouse was thrown. Perhaps Nita ran into hundred-thousand-dollar wedding budgets all the time. Perhaps a hundred-thousand-dollar wedding financed her secretary, her office door
opener, her new nose. Perhaps she was already booked, or had a two-hundred-thousand-dollar wedding coming in. This could not be true. In Pakistan the average annual income was one hundred and twenty-seven dollars. Mouse felt like a scuba diver diving at night without a flashlight.

“I'd like you to do it. The wedding.”

“I'm sorry about your mother's accident. I am. And I'm flattered you're so anxious to work together, but, as I think I mentioned, I do work on commission, and an extra hundred dollars from –”

“–
hundred thousand
.”

“Hundred thousand?”

“Yes.”

“Dollars?”

“From the insurance settlement.”

“That's considerably different.”

“I thought it was. But I've been in Africa.”

“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

“No,” said Mouse, after a long second. “Not yet.”

Nita became very quiet. Not a continuation of the quiet she was before. Not the polite quiet of someone forced to listen but actually trying to figure out how to squeeze in a trip to the dry cleaners. She was predator quiet. She was strolling through the forest and came upon something big and delicious without expecting it and now did not want to scare it off. Mouse knew this quiet from Africa. She didn't mind it. Nita would be in the movie, too.

“There's something else we need to talk about,” said Mouse.

“None of this is going for the honeymoon, is it? Honeymoon expenses, the sky's the limit. Brides come in here, say they have X-amount to spend on their wedding, not realizing they can blow half of it on a honeymoon.”

“We're looking into the possibility of a documentary. A ‘the making of' kind of thing.”

“A documentary?”

“Like for a dramatic film, a feature, sometimes they'll make a documentary on the making of a film.”

Nita laughed. “Like the way, in the ladies' john, always at department stores. There are two opposing mirrors, you can see the reflection of you looking at your reflection looking at your reflection looking at – not that I don't think it's a good idea.”

“Have you heard of Ivan Esparza?”

“Your fiancé –”

“– no, no, that's Tony. If anyone is known for documentary, Ivan is. He did a doc on baptism,
Total Immersion
, that won an Oscar. He would like to film this, my wedding. Rites of passage are his specialties. It's all just in the talk stages right now. Nothing is firmed up.”

Nita dabbed the end of her nose thoughtfully. “I would be in it, then? I'm a very private person.”

“You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Of course not.”

“– I'm just so private. Could we at least wait until the swelling goes down? I'm also getting a new rug in the waiting room.”

“Nothing's firmed up yet.”

“Thank you. You're being honest. We have to be honest with each other if this is going to work. If I suggest rubrum lilies for your bouquet and you have your heart set on orchids, you have to tell me. I assume you'll want a sit-down dinner. I also have in mind the perfect person to do the cake. A local artist whose
métier
is food art. None of this is going toward funding the documentary is it? The money. Movies aren't cheap, you know. Of course you know.”

“No, the funding is already in place.” To say those words! The funding is already in place. Mouse had never said those words in her entire life. Before it was always, “I have some grants out” (along with sixty thousand other people all applying for the same five hundred dollars) or “It's funded primarily by private individuals” (the major private individual being herself).
“The funding is not a problem.” Those words she had never said. The funding had always been a problem.

Nita bowed her head in thought, resting her puffy lips against her hands, held together as though in prayer. Could Mouse give her one minute, just one minute to take care of a few things? Then they would begin. She would be Mouse's from that moment until the honeymoon. She already had ideas.

The Bel Air Hotel, for example. Rent the whole place for a weekend for the wedding party and out-of-town guests. The string section of the L.A. Philharmonic for the reception. The designer who used to do the gowns for
Dynasty
for the dress. These were all just ideas. This was presuming Mouse did not want to do a theme wedding. Theme weddings could be fun. A Victorian- Christmas wedding with snow and reindeer. A South Seas Island wedding with a Fijian Feast. These were all just off the top of her head. She would, of course, do whatever Mouse wanted.

“You'll have the wedding of your dreams,” said Nita.

Mouse nodded. She blew on her cappuccino, sending tufts of foam scudding to the other side of the bowl. Outside, the gray sky spit.

Nita went out.

Britty, the bride, had come to pick up her favors. There was a major problem. A major, major problem. Britty's voice quaked with emotion. “What about the fucking doilies! Blind Irishwomen tatted those doilies!”

The secretary's voice was too low for Mouse to hear. Mouse hefted the saucer from her knees onto the coffee table and went out, curious.

Britty was short and stocky, a feature she tried to mitigate with elegantly manicured hands and purple eye shadow. A stack of gold bracelets ascended up her thick arm.

The doilies sat accusingly in a small pile on the secretary's desk. They were supposed to go under the chocolates, They were the size of a quarter, the same champagne shade as the tiny silk boxes, the same champagne shade as the piece of paper
under which the pile had been accidentally hidden. Everything was ruined, moaned Britty. These favors were her mother's idea. Her mother would accuse her, now, of trying to sabotage the one thing Britty had allowed her to do for the wedding.

“There are four of us,” said Mouse. “Can't we just take out the chocolates and –”

“Oh God! It'll take
forever
. The truffles'll look all, all
finger-printy
.” Tears dribbled out of Britty's purple-mascaraed eyes.

The phone rang. The secretary jumped. “Nita Katz Creative Moments!… who?” She covered the receiver with a wrinkled brown hand, “Are you Mouse FitzHenry?”

Only Mimi knew she was seeing Nita this afternoon.

“Yes.”

The secretary thrust the receiver at her impatiently.

“If we are going to do this film you should not be there.”

“Ivan, what –”

“– Her reaction to you will be tainted. You have never met, remember? We need her selling you on what a wedding coordinator can do for you –”

“– wait, wait, wait. What are you
doing
? How'd you get this number?”

“– it is her reacting to you and you reacting to her. For the first time. I don't want to direct two old friends
acting
like they are meeting for the first time. Get out of there now. Come over.”

“I don't know where you are,” Mouse stalled. She did not want to go over there now. She was afraid to go over there ever. Ivan's apartment. Ivan's bed.

“Four-twelve Eastwind, apartment B2. You know where Eliot lives? Bomarito?”

“Not him.”

“In the basement, past the laundry room.”

IVAN'S APARTMENT WAS
next to the laundry room, once a storage room. Even Mouse, no stranger to squalor, was appalled. She stood in the hallway, sweat breaking out on her temples,
rapping on Ivan's unfinished plywood door. The noise of the washing machines echoed off the dingy walls. You'd think, you win an Oscar. You'd think, you get kudos in a major magazine for finishing a film. You get that, and this is all you get. Before Ivan opened his door Mouse had a final fantasy that he actually lived in a subterranean penthouse.

He came to the door without his pants, only a T-shirt, Jockey shorts. He was on the phone, the receiver pinned to his shoulder with his jaw. His face shone with sweat. The dishwater-blond hair at the base of his scalp, too short to fit in the ponytail, was wet.

“– the lights will be set up before anyone arrives – two camera operators in addition to – yes, five-thirty – talk to you then.”

“Catching you at a bad time?” she said.

“It's a sauna in here.” He pointed to the dusty hot-water pipes which lined the ceiling. “I got dressed for you.”

“I'm honored.”

“Come in. Another project.” He nodded at the telephone. “Something very easy I'm getting paid a lot of money to do.”

“I'm jealous.” She looked around the apartment. There were no windows, save a barred, cutting board-sized slot near the ceiling, which afforded a nice view of ankles promenading on the Venice Beach Boardwalk. The window was wide open, but did nothing for the heat. If you pulled over the single chair, a wobbly folding chair with ripped upholstery, and stood on tiptoe, you could see past the ankles, to the blue-gray slat of the Pacific.

There was a hot plate, convenient storage for several abandoned pans of aging soup. There was a bed, less than a twin. A pallet, fit for the writhings and midnight thoughts of a monk or a madman. No love happened on this bed, Mouse thought, surprised at her relief. Somehow the size of Ivan's bed was supposed to protect her from … then she flashed on the times with Tony in the Land Rover, in tents, on random uncomfortable floors. If one person could fit on that bed, two could too. Two people could fit anywhere. “I like your place,” she said.

Posters from Ivan's movies were stuck to the walls with silver tape. The rest was a nest of books and newspapers: books towering armpit high against the walls, books stacked to form a sort of nightstand. Newspapers as an area rug. Dust coated everything.

A black and white guinea pig ran on a wheel in its cage atop the small refrigerator. Fresh wood chips lined the bottom of his cage, making the apartment smell like a hot, dingy pet shop.

“Does he have a name?” asked Mouse, putting her finger between the bars. He scuttled over and bit it. She blotted the pearl of blood with her tongue.

“Dostoyevsky,” he said. Ivan unhooked the bottle from the holder on the side of the cage and filled it with bottled water from the refrigerator.

“Dostoyevsky's too good for tap water, huh?” Mouse said over the roar of a spin cycle next door.

“If that stuff will kill us, just imagine the effects on someone his size,” said Ivan. “Please, sit down.” He pulled out the folding chair and wiped the seat off with his palm.

She sat. On the card table were books on weddings. The history of. In America.
Emily Post's Guide To
. The modern. The budget. Bridal magazines Mouse thought no one but Shirl bought. It was slightly hilarious. There was a letter on crisp white parchment, the names of the board of trustees of somewhere marching down the left-hand margin. “Dear Mr. Esparza: It is with great pleasure…” She picked up the letter. “May I?”

“It's our money for post-production. Without that we would be forced to post on videotape, something I am loath to do. I loathe videotape. I need to edit on a Moviola, to feel the film in my hands. It's erotic, the feel of film, the smell of film. To me, videotape is one more sign of the end of Western Civilization.”