Tales of a Drama Queen (20 page)

I tell them the whole story, except for the bits about Joshua. I'm not sure if Mr. Goldman understands what the job was, but when I finish, he says, “You're a good girl, Elle. Helping those people.”

“I don't know,” I say. “I tried. Anyway—if either of you hears of a job, let me know. I don't care what it is. Anything. And Monty…this is for you.” I slide him an envelope with next month's rent. So I have another month free and clear.

He slides it back. “I can't take this.”

But I insist. It's not for him, not really. “Besides,” I say. “Six hundred a month for that apartment? You can't even pretend the market value's less than eight hundred.”

Monty and Mr. Goldman exchange a glance, and I get the impression they've been plotting behind my back. “Nine-fifty,” Monty says, pocketing the envelope. “But who's counting?”

“Not me. I couldn't afford nine-fifty even when I was employed.” I finish my iced tea and ask when Maya's coming in. She's not due for a couple hours, so I call her from home and tell her how much I love her. She asks if I'm drunk. Yeah, I say. On iced tea and freedom.

I have a month, with no expenses but food and gas. I have an empty apartment, an empty calendar, an empty social life and empty closets.

I check the classifieds in Merrick's newspaper, and dash off four letters. House cleaning, receptionist, retail clerk and
even the home health aide job. If I have to stick a hose up someone's butt, for $6.50 an hour, I'll do it. Because it's not about me. It's about Miu. It's about paying debts—not just to the credit card companies, but to the people who believe in me: Maya, PB, Monty, Mr. Goldman, even Carlos. And I guess it
is
about me. I'm ready to believe again.

I
spend the morning at the shelter, reassuring Miu that I'll be back tomorrow, and telling her about the apartment. It's Spartan, I tell her. Clean lines and surfaces. Uncluttered. A white linen chair for me, and a den in the corner for her, with a folded cashmere blanket and two throw pillows.

I tell her about her exciting new bowls and her exciting new food and my exciting new job prospects. She doesn't seem reassured. I kiss her goodbye on the forehead—one of the few patches with fur—and leave her in the capable hands of a vet who looks sixteen years old.

I (speedily) complete applications at Manpower and Kelly Temporary services. In “previous employment,” Martha Washington has been joined by Spenser and Superior, which means I fill all three spaces. I'm absurdly pleased.

Back at home, I'm famished. Fortunately, about thirty pounds of rice is left in the sack. I slip into something
more comfortable—a gray Georgetown sweatshirt and DKNY leggings—grab the measuring cup and go downstairs. I pop my trunk, unfold the edge of the rice sack and dig inside.

I am filling the cup to the three-quarters line when I hear footsteps. I don't bother turning. It can't be Neil. It can't be Monty. It can't be some anonymous person. It can't even be the old lady who's stalking me. It can only be Merrick.

He has his portfolio and car keys. “That bag of rice,” he astutely observes, “is still in your trunk.”

I hide my face behind my hair. I tried carrying the bag upstairs, but another rice eruption threatened. So I've been sneaking downstairs and carrying it up a cup at a time. It's a system. “It seemed like a good place to store it.”

“I see.” He beeps his car door open, and puts his portfolio on the passenger seat.

Goodbye, Merrick. Drive away. Goodbye. I liked you.

I stick my head in the trunk, eyes stinging, and nudge a few spilled grains into the measuring cup. I'll have to sort it before cooking, but can't afford to let it go to waste. I have a sense that I've let too many things go to waste already.

Merrick's car beeps again. I look, and he's standing beside me.

“Out of the way,” he says. He grabs the bag of rice and heads for the house.

“What if I want it in the trunk?” I ask.

He stands at the top of the front steps. “Open the door.”

I do, and silently follow him upstairs, where the door to my apartment is already wide open. He places the bag on the kitchen counter and looks around.

“I like what you've done with it,” he says.

I can't tell if he's teasing. The place is empty, except for the chair and pillows, the three-wick candle and a few little accent pieces.

“I'm serious,” he says. “I like it. It's clean. Brings out the lines.”

“Spartan,” I say, and risk a smile.

He grins back, and I'm more relieved than I should admit. He raises an eyebrow at Miu's corner, with the dog bowls and cashmere throw.

“For my new dog,” I say. “She's a boxer. She comes home tomorrow.”

“You actually found a purebred at the shelter?”

“Well…she's a mess. She has mange. She's bald and she's twenty pounds underweight. She's sick to death, but she has the sweetest little face, and she's… I'm going to—” I shrug, embarrassed. “I like her.”

He squats at her doggie den, and lifts one of the bowls. It's covered in a sort of mosaic-design of stamps. “Pretty bowl,” he says.

“I made it myself.”

He looks closer. “Um…Elle? These look valuable.”

“Don't tell me you're a stamp-collector. Please, please don't tell me.”

“My nephew is. He badgers me for them, on birthdays. Where'd you get these?”

“Ex-fiancé. He collected.”

“Ah.” He nods.

I prepare myself to be scolded, but he says: “Looks good.”

Should I blurt something? Should I tell him something? I think I should, but I'm afraid.

He puts the bowl down. “I was on the way to my house. You want to come?”

He's asking me to his house?

“If you have a minute, I mean,” he says.

I glance around the empty room. “I'm kinda busy with things here.”

He smiles. “I can see that.”

“Wait five minutes?”

He nods and settles into my ink-stained chair. He looks good sitting there—plus he hides the spot.

I race to the bathroom thinking about Merrick's dream
home. The key to his inner life. I can't wait to see it. I put on mascara and lipstick, twist my hair into a knot, and change out of sweatshirt and leggings into a TSE sweater and Marc Jacobs denim mini. I emerge from the bathroom, flushed and excited.

We take his car. Riding with him again reminds me of driving home after our date. We take Cabrillo Boulevard along the ocean, up to the Mesa, down a side street, through a bland neighborhood, to the ocean. His house is a charming little gem, perched on the cliff over the beach.

“And you live in your office instead?” I say, as he parks in the drive.

“The office is finished.”

I look more carefully. The house is a soft gray two-story, with lavender and Mexican sage planted around it. The roof is covered in whimsical shingles, which remind me of the Moody sisters, these architects who designed fairy-tale cottages in Santa Barbara in the fifties or sixties.

“What does that mean?” I ask. “Unfinished? Walls, a roof, windows…looks finished to me.”

“You'll see.”

“If it has no kitchen, that doesn't count,” I tell him. “I saw three places for rent without kitchens, and nobody seemed to care.”

“It has a kitchen.” We walk up the stone entryway. A warm gust of wind swirls the scent of the ocean at us, over-laid with lavender and sage. I stop a moment, listening, and Merrick waits.

“I can hear the surf,” I tell him. I love the sound of surf.

“I love that sound,” he says, and leads me inside. “It's why I bought here, I can barely afford it.”

Windows span the ocean side of the house, floor to ceiling. Cream walls, accented with dramatic but unaggressive modern-type paintings. Oil pastels, Merrick tells me, by a local artist. Warm terra-cotta tile floors in the kitchen and bathrooms, with a light beige carpet in the rest of the house.
An island in the kitchen, which opens into the living room. Open beams along the ceilings. Talk about clean lines—my mother would applaud the feng shui. The energy, the light and air, flows clean and sweet through the house. I can feel it on the back of my arms.

“You like it?” he asks, a little unsure. The first lack of confidence I've noticed in him. I find it endearing.

“You know I do. The outside reminds me of…do you know the Moody sisters?”

He smiles. “The perfect thing to say.”

“But the inside—”

“I know. Everyone says I shouldn't have carpeted.”

“Not as elegant as wood floors, but that's not what I was going to say. It's comfortable. Livable.”

“That's what I thought. Carpet is more livable. With wood floors, you get dust stuck to your bare feet.”

“I hate that,” I say. “Plus, you can't roll around on wood like you can on carpet.”

“Carpets are definitely better for rolling.”

I'm sure I'm blushing. “I don't see how you can say it's not finished. Windows and doors. Two toilets. Running hot and cold.”

“Let me show you.” He leads me to the master bathroom. The clawfoot tub is roughly the size of my ex-trolley. The window extends below the lip of the tub, so you can soak up a bath and the view at the same time. The walls are sand. I suppose it would be wrong to ask him to leave me alone for an hour so I could have a bath. Or he could join me. That would work, too.

“See?” he says, pointing to a window frame with a combination of triumph and frustration. “There. The wrong color.”

It's white. Exactly the same white as the other two window frames. “The other ones too?” I ask.

“No. Those are right.”

I squint at the windows. “They're exactly the same.”

He insists they're not, blathering on about color samples and paint mixing.

“Even if they
are
the slightest bit different,” I say. “There's no way anyone could ever tell.”

“I can tell,” he says.

“That's it?” I ask, dumbfounded. “That's the reason you're not moving in?”

“No, there's more.” He leads me to the kitchen. “Notice the knobs?”

They are unpolished nickel and beautiful. “Are they antiques?”

“Well, yeah. But don't you see it?”

“What, are they a millimeter crooked?”

“No, they got that right the third time. But look. They messed up the color gradation. This one, in the middle, is darker than these two. It should have gone at the end. Now they need to redo all the knobs, starting here.”

Bubbles of delight rise within me. The ocean, the house, his company: I laugh. “Merrick, you're
neurotic!”
I say it like it's the most wonderful thing, and maybe it is.

“You think so?”

“You are obsessive-compulsive, with borderline ridiculous disorder.” I open a set of French doors and step onto the patio. It's Jerusalem stone, surrounded by palms. An oasis, overlooking the ocean. “In fact, it's a miracle you can live here at all. I think the waves break in an irregular pattern.”

He stands beside me and we watch the waves. He seems satisfied with himself. I can't tell why. Because he showed me how anal he is? Because he discovered that I don't share his obsession? Did I just pass a test, or fail one?

But I don't think he's the sort for pop quizzes. More the sort to try to send a message. I give him a sidelong glance, and he's looking at me. I know there's some perfect thing to say, to figure him out and send a message of my own, but instead I point to three white wooden boxes perched on the cliffside. “What are those?”

“Bees.”

“Neil got his honey from the sea, huh?”

“Temporarily.”

“You know you're never gonna get rid of them now.”

“Yeah. I won an argument with Neil exactly once, and that's because he passed out.”

“Did he build the house for you?”

“Most of it.”

I give him a thoughtful expression. “Ah, now I get it. Things are all starting to make sense—now that I've seen your house, I mean.”

He gives me the gray eyes. They match the color of the ocean in the sunlight. “I'm afraid to ask.”

“Neil's argument group,” I say.

“You mean discussion group.”

“Right. Anyway, he started the argument—”

“Discussion—”

“—group because of inner rage, right?”

“Well, that and his wife,” he says.

“Now I know where his rage comes from.” I smile. “Clients like you.”

“Sure,” he laughs. “
I'm
infuriating.”

Is he saying I'm the infuriating one? Probably. But it doesn't matter. We stand, in a comfortable silence, watching the surfers and dog walkers on the beach. That will soon be me and Miu. The thought makes me happy.

“I heard how you got fired,” he says. “Monty told me.”

Monty told him? Is nothing sacred in that bar?

“I wanted to say, that was really decent of you. You should be proud.”

“For getting fired?” I ask.

He doesn't answer, but I know what he means.

“Thanks,” I say.

“And now you can get a real job.” He must see something in my face, because he immediately says: “I mean, instead of a
surreal
job, like that one.”

“Easy for you to say. You're good at everything. Look at this house, your career. Meetings in New York.” I pick at the pins holding my hair back, and stare out to sea. “I suck at everything. Real employers don't want to hire me.”

“Well, if you could do anything, what would you do?”

I'm surprised to hear the same question I asked Nyla. It sounded good when I said it, but now it's clearly crap. “I don't know. I was really good at the psychic thing.”

“Elle.”
He says it like he's been taking lessons from Maya.

“No, seriously. I was good at it. Maya says I should go to school to be a therapist. But I don't want to deal with real problems. I want the silly stuff, you know—the little, girlfriendy things they need another perspective on. Things they're too embarrassed to tell their therapist, because they think they're supposed to be doing serious Freudian work. I'm good at that stuff.”

“You're good at a lot of stuff.”

I snort. “Sure. My fiancé married another woman. I'm six thousand dollars in debt and have no income or prospects. I've been fired from two jobs in three months. I—”

“Your fiancé did what?”

“You didn't hear about that?” I look at him. “I thought everyone told you everything about me.”

He shakes his head. “He married another woman?”

“After six years,” I say, bitterly, and it all comes tumbling out: “Six years, and we're planning the wedding, and he leaves town for a business trip, and in like a week comes back married to another woman. And so I…I mean, how ready was he to get married? Totally ready. And we'd been together six years. But one short trip to Iowa—
Iowa!
—and he finds someone he loves more than me. And all I know are people from his firm, and my parents are no help, and it's like I don't have anyone, except Maya, so I come back here, and I can't find a job or a place to live or…or…” I suddenly want to be naked in front of Merrick. I want him to see who I am, who I really am. I want to strip away all the crap and bullshit, and just tell him.

So I do. At length.

I start crying halfway through, but keep talking. He keeps listening. I finally end with a sobbing: “…I suck. I just suck. I fail at everything, and every time I think it's gonna work out, it falls apart.”