The Decent Proposal (6 page)

“My mom's crazy worried,” he said. “
Of course
.”

“That bitch.”

A crash drew their eyes to the fifty-something waiter who'd been about to deliver her second vodka-soda. He might have slipped for no good reason, but Mike suspected he was shocked to hear a dainty Asian woman curse instead of covering her mouth and giggling like a geisha. For this reason she didn't try very hard to suppress the laughter she and Richard surrendered themselves to now. The man hurried off, embarrassed, in search of a towel and a fresh drink. If either of them had been alone they never would have laughed so openly, but they couldn't help it when they were together: their good humor was infectious, inexorable, and occasionally cruel.

“She thinks whoever's behind it must be a psycho or something,” said Richard when he could speak again.

“Well, she's probably right. Only a crazy person would pay you half a million dollars to sit on your ass and talk to someone.”

“Actually, they wanted to know what
you
thought about it.”

Richard's parents adored Mike, and insisted on having din
ner with her whenever they came to L.A. His presence was optional. Richard's dad in particular was still crushed the two of them had broken up.

“What
I
think?” Mike accepted vodka-soda number two from the returning waiter with an oversize smile by way of apology. She swirled the tiny black straw around the rim, creating a miniature whirlpool before looking up and locking eyes with Richard. “I wish it was me.” It was nice to tell the truth occasionally, especially when there were no consequences. “I mean, we already hang out together way more than two hours a week. And we
never
shut up. We'd have it in the bag.”

Mike knew exactly what
she
would do with the money, and for a moment she thought of her father, counteracting the image of his tired, lined face with a healthy gulp from her glass. For a split second her eyes lost focus; she was already tipsy. At 105 pounds, her tolerance was terrible.

“That's funny,” grinned Richard, “cuz that's exactly what Keith said.”

Mike knew Richard considered Keith his
second
-best friend, but she was annoyed he had come up at all.

“I'm sure he's beside himself,” she said. “This ruins his plan of turning you gay and making you his
lovah
.”

She teased Richard constantly about his gay business partner's alleged attraction to him, but it dawned on her now that her attraction might be just as doomed, their college years notwithstanding. Was she fooling herself?

“So what's the plan?” she said. “Are you gonna take her out for an egg cream with two straws in it and stare into her eyes?”

“Mm, egg cream.” He paused. “I dunno. We haven't set the first date yet.”

There was that hesitation again. When Mike's star had begun to rise, she worried that Richard would pull away from her,
especially since he was having such a hard time with his own career. But he had, if anything, overcompensated for any potential jealousy by tightening their already tight connection. Was it tight enough, however? For the first time this was
his
thing, not hers, and she could already feel the distance growing between them. Or maybe she was just being paranoid.

“What's she like? We didn't really get to talk about it Saturday, we were all so shit-faced.”

“Yeah, totally.” He took a second to consider. “Honestly? She's kind of . . . severe. I mean, she's a lawyer who doesn't watch TV.”

“That's almost as bad as a virgin who can't drive.”

“Tell me about it. She's got great boobs, though.”

“Well, that's something.” Mike decided it was time for vodka-soda number three.

“You'd probably think she was fat.”

Better
, thought Mike, though she hated herself for thinking it, and hated just as much the way Richard ascribed unkind opinions of the female sex to her, which was his cheap way of expressing what were actually
his
opinions without taking responsibility for them. She craned her neck in search of the clumsy waiter. She was determined to get drunk now, Monday or not.

“I don't think she really sees the fun in it, you know?” He paused. “God, you're so right, could you imagine if it was us? How much fun we'd be having right now?”

Mike's heart expanded, floating upward. Of course he understood how it was with them. Of course he did. She hadn't lost him yet.

“Well,
no one's
as fun as us, right?” She drained the dregs of her drink.

“True dat.” He said it ironically, with an emphasis on the
d
to indicate his awareness that a white boy like himself had no
business slanging. “Hey, let's go down and get some food. You're gonna get wasted if you don't eat anything.”

“I'm already wasted,” she said a little forlornly, before pulling herself together and accompanying him to the dining room, where they assumed their rightful place as the most attractive couple in the room.

“HOW ABOUT IN-N-OUT?”

Richard had asked the question casually, but when Elizabeth paused to consider her answer, he felt like a fallen gladiator waiting to see which way the emperor's thumb would point. She might be a strident vegetarian, or a disciple of the gluten-free regime (when had that become a thing? and why?). Maybe she ate only locally sourced organic foods (blegh), or considered fast food beneath her (bigger blegh). There were a million different reasons, he knew, to deny oneself the simple joy of a burger.

It was Saturday night, one week after their coffee. “Date night!” as he had tweeted (
#DecentProposal
was trending—among his followers, at least). They were at the Universal CityWalk, an outdoor mall adjacent to the Universal Studios theme park, pint-sized cousin to Times Square and the Vegas Strip, a wide promenade cut off from traffic by parking garages named after Universal brands like Woody Woodpecker and Jurassic
Park. Even now, at 7 p.m., there were enough children there to constitute a swarm—limbs flailing, fingers sticky from a day's worth of churros and cotton candy. Every storefront seemed to be shouting (T-SHIRTS SOLD HERE!! BEST MILKSHAKE IN L.A.!!); every light flashed; every color dazzled; it was as though each square foot of the place had its own set of jazz hands. Richard had suggested the CityWalk partly because it was just over the hill from a club in Hollywood where he'd be meeting up with friends afterward, and partly as a joke. If Elizabeth had balked he would have willingly gone elsewhere, but she had agreed without comment, and he was beginning to wonder why, the longer she stood there dithering over In-N-Out versus . . . what? Bubba Gump Shrimp? Panda Express? If she really was a foodie, she was screwed.

“Let's do it!”

Her enthusiasm was overcompensating. In-N-Out was Elizabeth's Friday night ritual, an end-of-the-week treat she devoured in her car, and while she liked to think she couldn't get enough of it, two nights in a row felt a little gluttonous to her. But if she told him, then they'd have to go somewhere else, and In-N-Out was by far their best option in this menagerie of horrors. Why had he chosen this awful place? It was the ideal spot for a couple half their age.
Maybe that's the point
, she told herself. It wasn't a
real
date. She was the one who had insisted on acknowledging they were only going through the motions. The motions were what she had wanted; the motions were supposed to be instructional. Well, here was lesson number one, then: the motions were exhausting. Earlier in the week she'd decided all her nice clothes were daytime-specific, and had squandered several billable hours finding a somewhat slinky, glossy “evening” skirt to wear. The better part of this afternoon had been spent fussing over her hair and nails. She'd endured an hour and fifteen minutes' worth of traffic—the 10 to the 405 to the 101—in getting here. How did
people do this night after night, year after year, and maintain the goodwill necessary to search with an open heart for a connection they knew very well they might never find? Maybe it wasn't as difficult for other people. Maybe there was something wrong with her, something essential she lacked, the absence of which made the process of dating such drudgery for her and her alone. Or maybe everybody was miserable.

Stop it
, she scolded herself. The venue notwithstanding, she had to admit he'd made an effort too. It was true he was still wearing jeans, but they were
different
jeans: clean(er), with no visible rips. His shirt had an actual collar, and when he held the restaurant door open for her she caught a whiff of something nice—nicer, anyway, than the Axe body spray and Drakkar Noir-ish stuff that clogged the hallways of her firm. The scent vanished a moment later, replaced by fried beef and deeper-fried potatoes—a greasy aroma that greeted her like an old flame she couldn't quit no matter how many times she tried. Elizabeth's spirits lifted. Was it really so bad to be “forced” to eat In-N-Out two nights in a row? True, it had been hellish getting here, but she was out now—out, on a Saturday night—and though she was considerably overdressed for fast food on a tray, he didn't seem to care, so why should she be embarrassed? The whole thing was ridiculous, but the only rational response was to throw up her hands (lavender nail polish included) and relax, to attempt to have some version of what other people called
fun
.

In-N-Out had a fifties aesthetic, all clean lines and hard plastic edges, with a two-toned color scheme of bright red and blinding white, so simple it would have been stark if the place weren't always bursting with people. At the moment a dozen smiling servers were racing behind the counter like natives cheerfully fleeing a volcano. Richard knew from experience his eyes would adjust eventually, as if to the dark, discerning a frenetic sort of assembly line underpinning the chaos. This was
the way it had been done at In-N-Out for nearly seventy years, starting with a single burger stand just outside L.A. He loved the chain as much for its association with Southern California as for its mouthwatering cuisine, and hated that in the past decade it had begun expanding eastward, inching across the continent like a pioneer in reverse. For now it was confined to the western United States, but if ever there came a day when those little red palm trees appeared on the awning of some gray New York City block, Richard knew a little part of him would die.

“You've eaten here before, right?” he asked her, as they joined the back of the line.

Little did he know.
“I grew up on it,” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, no way! So you grew up out here?”

She nodded.

“That's so cool! I don't know anyone who grew up in L.A.”

“That's because you're in entertainment.” It amazed Elizabeth that this idea—of no one being
from
L.A.—persisted in the zeitgeist. Everyone loved to talk about how “fake” L.A. was; they called it a “dream factory,” a place where people came to pretend to be someone else, to escape their pasts and start over, but to the extent that that was even true, it pertained to the entertainment industry only. For most people who lived here, L.A.
was
their past, and their future too. It was their home. There were literally millions of people who'd grown up in Los Angeles, whose families had lived here for generations. Many of them had nothing to do with film, television, or music. But they were as much a part of the city as the flashy transplants who sucked up all the attention. In fact, entertainment made up only a sliver of the city's wealth—a sliver that was shrinking daily due to tax breaks in other states (New Mexico, Michigan, Georgia, New York) for locally sourced film and television productions. Did he know anything about this? Did he ever read a newspaper? Even just online?

“Fair enough,” he said. “So where'd you grow up exactly?”

“South Central.” Elizabeth watched these two little words go off like a hand grenade. (The man ahead of them glanced backward, as if she'd said something lewd or controversial.) Usually she was vague about where she grew up or, if pressed, became overly specific and said either Westmont (her immediate neighborhood) or South Los Angeles, which was what the area had been renamed in an attempt to wash away the stink of recent history. Upon learning she grew up in South Central, most people were tempted to make a success story out of her, a modern spin on the old Horatio Alger “rags to riches” trope, a pull-herself-up-by-her-bootstraps, Hallmark Hall of Fame narrative that began in the slums of L.A. and ended in the sparkling offices of Slate Drubble & Greer, Elizabeth stationed in her very own office with her very own assistant, business suit stretched modestly over her full Mexican figure: cue triumphant music.

Her story was nowhere near as tidy, but she had no interest in untangling it for strangers, or even for acquaintances. Fortunately most people didn't really care what her story was, and a cursory answer almost always served the purpose. But what else were they going to talk about for 104 hours? (She stole a glance at her watch: 8:06. Make that 103.9 hours.) At the very least, they could talk about the riots a little. She knew from experience it took about three seconds for the riots to come up after referencing South Central. It was like a word association.

“Oh, wow,” he said. “So how old were you? During the . . .”

“Riots?”

He nodded.

“Twelve.”

She'd been in the sixth grade, immersed in a book report on
The Diary of Anne Frank
. It was embarrassing to remember, but she'd changed topics by the middle of the second day (school had been canceled), opting for a personal essay that likened her
situation to Anne's, holed up in her apartment like Anne in her annex.
Except for not getting taken away in the end and murdered by the Nazis
, she thought to herself now. Her English teacher had submitted the essay for a city-wide contest calling for responses to the riots, and she'd actually won. There had been a local news segment, a reading at the Rotary club, a signed letter from the mayor. It had all been pretty exciting.

“That must've been intense,” he said.

“It was,” she said solemnly.

“So do your parents still live out there?”

Elizabeth's shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. She nodded stiffly. She didn't want to talk about her parents. But it was her own fault. She'd opened the door.

“What do they do?”

“They manage a restaurant together.”

“That sounds nice!”

“It's in Studio City,” she added, hoping this would dampen his curiosity. He probably didn't get up to the Valley very often.

“Oh, cool, I eat up there a lot.” Knocking the Valley was about as wrongheaded and outdated as disparaging Brooklyn had become for New Yorkers. “Lots of great sushi up there.”

“Well, it's not a sushi restaurant,” she said. “It's Italian, and it's pretty much a dump.”

Okay
, he thought.
Moving on.
“Well, it must be nice to have them so close.”

There was a pause, inside of which Elizabeth scrambled for an answer while at the same time praying:
please don't ask it, please don't ask it, please don't
—

“How often do you see them?”

Crap.
She opened her mouth to tell the lie she'd told many times before—
oh, every few weeks or so
—when suddenly she thought:
why bother?
She could have worn a paper bag to this
“date” and it wouldn't have mattered, so why lie to him now? He wasn't one of her bosses, who might think twice about making her a partner if he knew that on top of lacking a significant other, she and her parents were estranged. There was no reason to lie to him. He wasn't going anywhere.

“I don't,” she said, breathing out, her shoulders descending to their original position.

“You don't see them? Ever?”

“Well, we have dinner on Christmas. And brunch at Easter. And they call me on my birthday. But that's it.”

There was another pause, inside of which she watched, amused, while he churned through this information.

“But you live in the same city.”

She nodded.

“Why don't you see them more, if you don't mind my asking?”

“To be honest I
do
mind,” she said. “It's complicated.”

“That's cool,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender and taking a step backward. (He nearly collided with a red-aproned worker restocking the ketchup dispenser.) “You're allowed to be mysterious.”

Mysterious?
“Well, I'm not trying to be,” she said.

“If you were, you wouldn't be very mysterious, would you?”

“Fair enough,” she said, with the ghost of a smile.

“What about siblings?”

“I have a brother. Two years younger.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you ever talk to him?”

She shook her head,
no
. He just stared at her.

“What about you?” she asked. “Siblings?”

“Only child,” he said. “Much to my chagrin.” If
he
had a little brother, he had no doubt they'd talk all the time.

Not a shocker
, thought Elizabeth, while gesturing toward the bare-bones menu printed behind the counter: burgers, fries,
fountain sodas, shakes. “What do you usually eat?” She was getting a little bored.

“Oh, just a burger,” he said. “Protein-style.”

As a supplement to its bare-bones menu, there was a “secret” menu at In-N-Out wherein almost any variation on the few items offered was possible, no matter how outlandish or disgusting, such as ordering four—or forty—patties of beef in a single burger, or umpteen slices of cheese. Protein-style meant the hamburger would be wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun.

“Protein-style?” Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. She'd tried protein-style once out of curiosity, and could still recall the way the cool, crisp lettuce contrasted with the hot gooey meat inside. It had reminded her of picking up after a college friend's dog in winter—the soft warmth radiating nastily through the cold plastic bag. “Are you on a diet or something?” The manorexic lawyers at her firm all ordered their burgers protein-style.

“What? No!” he protested. “I just like it that way.” The truth was he
had
started ordering protein-style a few years back at Mike's suggestion. But he was so used to it now, it had become his preferred mode.

It was their turn to order. When Elizabeth asked for a double-double (two burger patties and two slices of cheese), Richard whistled softly, but she pretended not to hear him. She insisted on splitting the bill in half, and he agreed immediately. Earlier that morning he'd accidentally glanced at one of his credit card statements, and the image was still burned in his mind like footage from a grisly auto accident or torture-porn horror movie.

“Y'know, we should probably get reimbursed for stuff like this anyway,” he said.