All That Was Happy (21 page)

“
That won’t be hard,” Beckie said.
“Because I won’t be playing.”

“
I’ll see you around 7,” Leah
said.

She had a few hours to kill before Leah got
there. She set aside the stogie and the port and opened her glass
hutch to examine the variety of ceramic figurines on display.
Center-most was a statue of the Blessed Virgin, her right foot
pressing firmly on the head of the snake, whose twisted, sin-warped
coils covered the blighted earth at the Virgin’s feet. She took the
statue from the hutch, setting it atop the fireplace mantle before
kneeling and making the sign of the cross.

“
It’s been a long time, Blessed
Mother,” she said. She wondered if she had the right to just start
in praying without making some small act of penance first, but
decided that in the long run, even a small something with sincerity
was better than the twenty-nine years of nothing she’d accomplished
thus far.

“
Hail Mary, full of grace,” she began.
She’d say a rosary in memory of Huntington--a rosary dedicated to
helping him find his true vocation in life.

“
Blessed art thou among women,” she
said. The doorbell rang. She hurried to answer it. A delivery man
with a clipboard, his mini-truck with its camper shell parked
behind the Roadster. Her stomach knotted at the sight of the object
protruding from the open back window of the camper
shell.

The Robert August surfboard.

She instructed the man to bring the board
inside, to the living room, where he carefully laid it out across
the arms of the big leather easy chair before accepting a generous
cash tip and a couple of the Macanudo cigars, after favorably
commenting upon the ripely scented air of the room’s interior.
After she was alone, she worked up the courage to run her hands
along the surfboard’s rails, as if by so doing, she could
resurrect, somehow, a tangible memory of the man to whom, only a
day ago, she’d first given her true passion in the form of an
explosive kiss. Her hands reached the end of their journey along
the rails and came upon the discovery which broke her down to her
knees, convulsed with sobs for that which could never be, for what
was once alive, and now fading to a distant memory.

Huntington had waxed the nose.

Chapter
38

“
I wanted him,” Beckie said. “When he
lifted me up in front of all those people, and I could see the
entire city spread out below us like a jeweled carpet, I wanted him
more than life itself. I wanted him deeply, and forever--and when
he proposed to me, I felt a completeness I’ve never known before.
But now, it’s over and done. I’m back with Bernie. He called me
from the plane just before you came by. We’re definitely doing
Paris when he gets back from Japan.”

“
You did the right thing,” Leah said.
“I know it can’t be easy on you, coming back the way you did, but
in time, you’ll adjust and be glad you didn’t throw away your
marriage. And if its passion you two need, well--you’re going to
Paris in the Spring--what more can I say?”

Having made the short hop up Wilshire to
Westwood Village--a decaying pocket of upscale shopping urbane
which had declined markedly since the advent of the more successful
Third Street Promenade--which Beckie, this night, was trying to
avoid--the two friends impulsively took a table at Eurochow--a
splashy place resembling, from the outside, a lunatic’s back lot
fashioning of the Dome of the Mosque--their table for two being far
enough away from the large communal table to afford some privacy,
but close enough to the 25-foot marble, light-emitting obelisk to
risk being crushed by the thing should an impromptu earthquake
decide to shake the place.

Beckie, finding her appetite somewhat grief
impaired, picked apart a somewhat unappetizingly gluey Veal
ravioli.

“
I don’t know why we eat here and pay
these prices,” Leah said, examining minutely a sad, greasy pork
sparerib. “You can find better Chinese at any mall.”

“
We’re here because they have valet
parking and otherwise there is no parking in Westwood--there hasn’t
been for years,” Beckie said. “The prices are so high because it’s
in a historic building. I admit it’s really just a tourist trap,
the way everything in L.A. seems to be going these days--this isn’t
the real Mr. Chow’s anyway, it’s a sort of a fake one--the young
Hollywood set still eats at Chow’s original place in Beverly Hills.
But to be fair about the food, you’ve got to admit you can’t get
fresh lychee nuts at the mall.”

“
There’s rumors they’re putting in a
Gelson’s in the Village later next year,” Leah said, referring to a
supermarket legendary for its shelves laden with upscale,
overpriced gourmet items. “You’ll be able to get your Lychee nuts
there without the hassle of a forty-five minute wait for a
table.”

“
I might as well face it,” Beckie said.
“My heart is broken--nothing’s going to taste good ever again. I
just can’t get over the feeling that I’ve failed, somehow, in some
very important way. Maybe I shouldn’t have given in to Bernie so
easily--it’s just starting to dawn on me what he did to me--the man
has been seeing another woman for the past six months. How could I
have simply surrendered to him just because he’s through with her
and wants me back?”

“
It doesn’t make you a wimp,” Leah
said. “There’s no need to beat yourself up for what you
decided--remember, it was you who decided what to do, not
Bernie--you’re holding all the cards. As far as his affair with
Nolene goes, I know it’s hard for you to stomach that, but we often
have to bend a little and make compromises.”

“
I feel dirty about being with Bernie
again,” Beckie said. “When I walked into the house, the whole place
felt dirty to me--I needed a nap, but I couldn’t bring myself to
lie down on the bed--instead, I slept on the couch.”

“
It takes time,” Leah said. “You feel
violated by what Bernie did. That’s why you two need Paris--you
need time to walk and talk and cry together--you need time to
heal.”

Beckie sipped her wine, an oily red which had
been served too warm. “Ugh,” she said. “Forget the Lychee
nuts--we’re getting out of here.”

“
Maybe we can stop by Baskin-Robbins on
the way home,” Leah said. “I think maybe some of their Rocky Road
will clear the taste of this place out of your system.”

“
If I’d had any backbone,” Beckie said.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today. Last night, in Huntington’s arms,
I felt like a whole person--I was on top of the world. Tonight, I
feel like I’m sitting in solitary confinement awaiting
execution.”

“
Just stop at 31 Flavors,” Leah
said.

The big Roadster shot beneath the massive
Wilshire/405 Freeway underpass and wound it’s way past the
palm-studded park-like grounds of the VA Hospital--a reminder to
all that life in the lap of luxury often came with a price--before
plunging into the morass of clamoring high-rises and upscale strip
malls of the eastern section of Santa Monica wherein one might
find, if nothing to satisfy the soul itself, at least the answer to
many things concerning touching, seeing, tasting, smelling, and
feeling--things which in their own right had to be satisfied, and
usually were in Los Angeles--by any means available.

“
This whole thing’s really taken its
toll,” Beckie said, wheeling into the requested parking lot of the
three-story strip mall where the best ice cream on the planet was
sold.

“
You’ll bounce back,” Leah
said.

“
Perhaps you’re right,” Beckie said.
“Maybe I’m spending too much time feeling sorry for
myself.”

“
Sometimes,” Leah replied, “whenever
I’m down about myself, I’ve found that all it takes is a dish of
Rocky Road to get things started in the other
direction.”

They headed into the brightly lit store to
negotiate the purchase of said directions, finding themselves in
good company, as they did so, with a lot of other people who
obviously had come to the same conclusion regarding the best and
fastest way to obtain a sure sense of equilibrium.

“
What’ll it be?” the server
said.

“
I wish I knew,” Beckie said. “I really
wish I knew.”

“
Sometimes it’s hard to decide,” he
said.

“
That’s truer than you know,” she
said.

Chapter
39

“
I’m sending you home,” Beckie said. “I
can’t do the old-movies and popcorn routine tonight.”

“
I understand,” Leah said. “You need to
collect yourself--you’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

The ladies were finishing up their Rocky
Road, having elected to do so while standing on the sidewalk in
front of the store to take advantage of the distractions of lights
and people moving in and around the various levels of the tiny
tri-level strip on Wilshire Boulevard, a habit held my many
Angelenos, who, when in doubt, unlike their country cousins in the
rural regions to the north, could always simply step outside to
avoid their loneliness by watching the passing parade.

“
You’ll be okay alone?” Leah
said.

“
I have Mr. Boopers,” Beckie said.
“He’s more company than most.”

They returned to the house and Leah bid her
good-byes before setting a course for Agoura. Upon entering the
house, and while playfully batting at an overjoyed Mr. Boopers with
her foot, mimicking an excitement he obviously felt but she did
not, Beckie noticed once again a dry, empty smell, as though the
house was no longer fresh, and had decided to return unto the dust
a bit earlier than anybody had expected. Likewise, the place seemed
dark, and Beckie, on an impulse, as though to offset the darkness
within her soul, made the rounds, turning on every light in the
place until the interior resembled more a movie set than a home.
This accomplished, she furnished herself with a square tumbler of
Bailey’s on ice, the choice of chocolate liqueur being made to
further the intrusion of chocolate into her veins, the better to
attempt the suppression of the dark mood she was currently falling
under. It remained but to move the Robert August board to a leaning
position on the wall beside the living room entryway before finding
a comfortable spot on the leather couch whereupon she clipped and
lit yet another Macanudo bomber in Huntington’s honor and blew a
single, sad ring into the center of the brightly lit room, the ring
hovering over the heavy glass-topped coffee table before breaking
up and fading like the last of her hopes.

To try and close the gap between accepting
Bernie’s offer to start their marriage over again and really
accepting, inside herself, the starting over of the ruptured bond
between them, she quaffed the Bailey’s quickly and poured another,
this time mixing in a shot of vodka into the liqueur to further
power the chocolate to new levels, at which point she felt the
beginnings of release deep down in her guts and sat back to await
some sort of peace, however temporary, from the gloom inside
her.

The statuette of Mary atop the fireplace
mantle caught her eye, and she remembered her attempt to say the
rosary earlier, an effort cut short by the arrival of the Robert
August board. Not bothering this time to kneel, nor to extinguish
her cigar, she made the sign of the cross and started gamely back
in.

“
Hail Mary, full of grace,” she
said.

The phone rang. She stretched to pick up the
receiver.

“
You bitch,” the voice said. “You’ve
ruined me.” Bernie’s voice--badly slurred, perhaps from the effects
of too much rice wine or whatever it was they drank in Japan.
Brought to her clearly, without a trace of trans-oceanic fog by the
miracle of satellite technology.

His words, delivered point blank into her
right ear canal, rocked her backwards onto the couch.

“
I don’t suppose you’ve seen the
papers,” he said. “You’re front page news with your society boy,
Huntington--the two of you posing like Tarzan and Jane in front of
every important financier in the world--did you plan that little
stunt to purposely destroy me, or were you just being your usual
fat stupid self? Whatever it was you did, you did it good. The Jap
bankers just threw the L.A. Times in my face and laughed me out of
their office. Needless to say, they weren’t impressed with my
ability to lead the consortium--apparently--according to them--I
can’t even control my own wife.”

Beckie idly rubbed her swollen right eye as
the hole she’d dug for herself was slowly filled in with further
poisonous accusations and epithets which spewed from Bernie’s mouth
with a venom any Western Diamondback would have envied.

“
Bernie!” she finally
shrieked.

There was a pause--her shout across the
oceans had contained sufficient power, if not to kill, at least to
stun.

“
Do you have anything to say for
yourself?” he said.

“
I have just two words for you,
Bernie,” she said. “Just two words, and then I’m hanging up the
phone.”

“
I’m listening,” he said.

There were a lot of things she could’ve said,
things which perhaps she was expected to say, or things which, in
the combative environment she currently found herself in, she could
have said and it would be understood why she said them, but what
she finally elected to say was lost on him, and was something he’d
have had to get up a lot earlier in the morning than he did to
fully understand. But to her, what she said, said it all.