The Muffia (8 page)

Chapter 9

Before Friday rolled around, and with it the promise of Berggren’s dinner party, another onslaught of e-mails bounced off satellites and streamed through cables and modems to land on the computers of the members of the Muffia. As usual there was a delay from the time one person would send out a request for information and when all the responses came in. In the meantime, other questions would get asked, some answered, and pretty soon you didn’t know if you were commenting on Jelicka’s sister’s husband’s rug company, what florist in NY we should use to send an arrangement for Rachel’s gallery opening, or what Paige should do about being stalked by the dad of one of her tennis pupils. It wasn’t necessary for everybody to “Reply All,” but that’s what everybody did.  When weeding through emails, I was always glad that we hadn’t signed up any new members—nine was enough, even if some of them didn’t even weigh in on some subjects, like Kiki whenever the topic was sex. I knew she
had
sex, but, like me, she didn’t enjoy discussing it via the Internet.

Because of geography, I miss out on a lot of the in-person communication that goes on between the Muffs who live in closer proximity to each other. Consequently, I get most of my Muffia news by e-mail, usually long after most of the others know about it—Sarah’s fooling around and possibly getting pregnant by a guy other than her husband, for example. This little fling of hers had apparently begun a few weeks
before
I picked
Deliciously Disturbed and Distracted
as our next read.

If Sarah was disturbed
before
I assigned that book—a fact clearly not in dispute— and I had become deliciously disturbed as soon as I cracked the book open, it hadn’t taken long for the rest of the Muffs to get disturbed in ways of their very own:

[email protected]
: I just read an article about a woman who’s become a porn star at 50! What do you think? Might take my mind off my soon-to-be-ex-husband. I’d send the article but I can’t figure out how. Quinn, help! How do you do the link thing again? Signed, Luddite on Lantana Lane.

[email protected]
: What do you mean what do we think? Are we supposed to support your going porno? It could ruin your life!

[email protected]
: Nothing surprises me anymore.

[email protected]
: BTW I was KIDDING. What do I know about porn? Just sounds scary. What does Roscoe say?

[email protected]
: I don’t think she cares what Roscoe thinks. I think that’s the point. Kiki we need to get you a surprise or two.

[email protected]
: BTW I’m NOT kidding, though I’d change my name to Mia Vanta Mann so if anyone’s life gets wrecked, it’s hers.

[email protected]
: If I were you, Jel, I’d just call one of those guys from the
Geek Squad
to help you with your computer . . .and other things. There’s gotta be some value added.
Nerd Herders
might be cuter though. I’ll check online to see if there’s a blog that’ll tell us for sure.

[email protected]
: Go for it. Why not? Whatever. Life’s too short not to do porno. Especially if it pays well.

[email protected]
: Can I come to the set?

[email protected]
: Does anyone know anyone who’s had that little “tightening” procedure? And I don’t mean on the face.

[email protected]
: You mean vaginal rejuve? Don’t get your twat tightened, Lauren. I looked into it. You can’t have sex for like ten weeks and then it stretches out again in a year or two.

MDCMediate.com:
I kind of like the idea of porno for older people. You’d probably be good at it, Jel.

[email protected]
: Thanks, M—I think. The woman’s kids and husband are cool with it and she’s really enjoying herself. The market’s growing and they’re looking for people. I’m not going to find a job with the geeks and nerds, that’s for sure.

[email protected]
: Just have an affair, Jel. It’s easier and less pressure. Think of the HiDef display of your bod, fine as it is, for all to see. Every hair, vein; every wrinkle (not that you have any).

[email protected]
: Can’t believe you’re saying have an affair Sarah, after what's been going on with you and STDs and everything! But if you’re looking for a career, nurses are still in demand.

[email protected]
: Are you speaking from experience when you say it’s easier, Sarah? What part would that be?

It had been my idea to do a sort of pseudo-reverse intervention on Sarah at a centrally located Starbucks one mid-week morning on my way to another role-play for the Olympic committee. I confronted her about the mess her life was in and how she needed to deal with it. She still hadn’t told Nate that he might not be the father of the baby, and soon she might lose some of her choices.

“Nate was spotted with another woman,” I told her. "I saw him."

She made a grimace then let out a resigned sigh. I was proud of her for taking it so calmly and not overreacting. If she had, she would have been a hypocrite. She went on to say something I didn’t expect—that after reading
Disturbed
(the whole book for a change), she actually felt more of a sense of belonging with other women and peace with her own choices; that, until then, she thought having sexual desires for many men at once wasn’t normal.

“It’s not that it’s normal or not normal,” I said. “It’s that sometimes we need to keep our desires in check. Lucky girl wasn’t able to do that but maybe you need to try harder. You have kids—Nate Jr. and now this new little person.”

“I know it’s irresponsible of me, Maddie, but I’ve come to accept that even though I love Nate, he’s never going to be everything for me—nor am I for him, apparently. That's too much pressure anyway. So instead of bemoaning the fact, I'll just have to fill my needs in other ways and if he does the same, so be it. We aren’t going to talk about it though.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would destroy the illusion.”

The illusion of what?
That everything was fine? That she and Nate are “happy”? Well, news flash: It’s pretty obvious they’re
not
happy, so keeping up the illusion isn’t working. Besides, in a marriage, if you’ve got to pretend to be happy, how happy can you possibly be? I’m all for sticking it out, weathering the tides and all that, but not at the expense of your health and sanity. Generally my
modus operandi
in life has been geared more toward breaking down illusions. That’s because a lot of people who build illusions can be dangerous. They often operate like members of religious extremist groups who concentrate so hard on what they see as the truth about God, upcoming Raptures, second comings, everlasting virgin fucking, future lives and things like that, that they’re totally missing what’s happening in front of them at that very moment—things like polar melt, the decline of democracy, corporate greed, poverty, even that their spouses doesn’t love them, circumstances that people might actually be able to do something about if they made an effort and didn’t shut themselves off in protective bubbles with the similarly fantasy-minded.

Then again, perhaps I’m just envious that I can’t look at things through those proverbial rose-tinted glasses. Sarah seemed content with her illusions. But I find it too difficult to shake the knowledge of what actually
is
or
isn’t so
only to focus on what I
wish
were true.
Whatever
. No one was listening to me, least of all Sarah. who was, at that moment, washing Nate’s underwear.

Chapter 10

Berggren Wolfe lives, along with her identical twin daughters, in a terrific house in a section of Greater Los Angeles called Mar Vista. Mar Vista is bordered on the west and south by Venice and its famous beach, by Santa Monica to the north and Palms to the east. The words
Mar
and
Vista
are Spanish for something like sea-view but every time I hear them together, I think of something
ruining
that view—as in marring my vista. I realize it may seem a little odd, but I can’t help sub-consciously thinking this every time I go to Berggren’s house.

This particular Friday night was no different. I saw the mental hurdle looming before me as I started up my fuel-efficient automobile and headed to Berggren’s sleek and lovely home, which offers guests a
poquito
peek at the Pacific from her roof deck. That night, however, I was determined to remain positive—about the view, the guests, everything. I would remain open, available, and not let anything mar the evening.

If I’d never actually met anyone I wanted to sleep with at any of Berggren’s parties that was probably just as much my fault as that of her guests. The root of my concern could be the fear that if I ever get coital with someone too close to any of my inner circle of friends and acquaintances, I’d find out he was once sexually involved with someone with whom I’d rather not have shared a penis.

This almost happened once when Ben, a guy I knew through Paige, kept making passes at me at her house while I, and he, were still married. I was even more disgusted when I found out he did this on a regular basis to many women we both knew, regardless of their marital status, and he did it in front of his wife! Worse than his flirtatious, obnoxiously persistent harassment was that I thought he was a complete idiot for being so coarse about everything. His wife surely had to know he was making a play for countless women, many of whom his wife counted among her friends. And he had to know that all the women he hit on would talk to each other and realize he perceived all of them as prey. He was attractive enough, I guess, but even if I were desperately horny, I draw the line at extra-marital coitus with people in my regular planetary rotation, and this guy was in too many of my friends’ concentric orbits. To sleep with him could disrupt all our lives. Luckily I had safely avoided him, and all like him. Though the fear of sharing a penis was still real, it was now tempered by my desire to get laid.

I arrived at Berggren’s right on time at 7 PM and was just stepping up to the open door and over the threshold, when I heard an odd shuffling of feet on the driveway behind me.

“’Allo there. Make way, please,” said a strapping young blonde man with a ponytail and Scandinavian accent. This must have been one of Berggren’s new assistants. He was rolling her table enlarger—a ten-foot diameter piece of particleboard—toward the front door and me. “Are you Madelyn?”

I nodded my head.

“I saw your picture, yah. I am Thor. So excuse me, Madelyn. Coming through vith the big round piece of vood.”
Thor had one very cute accent
. He looked to be about twenty. Seducing him would be a shade short of cradle-robbing, so I made myself content watching him with the big wood.

Perhaps the table enlarger requires a little explanation. When one enters Berggren’s house on a typical evening, one sees a smallish round piece of glass resting on an architecturally striking pedestal in the dining area. But when she has dinner parties with a head count over fourteen, the glass table can't handle the bodies. So voilà, Berggren created the table enlarger to place on top of the glass. With this
big piece of vood
in place, she can accommodate the cast of a play, film or perhaps a small orchestra. The only drawback was that when everyone was seated and talking, anyone on the opposite “side” of the table was completely inaudible.

“Yah, could I get a hand here?” An older male guest I didn’t recognize stepped in to help Thor lift the big vood and fit it snugly on top of the glass. Thor pushed on the enlarger, making sure it was balanced and wouldn't fall off if somebody leaned on it wrong.

"OK, Berggren—I’m off, yah?”
What a shame, handsome Thor is taking off.

Still in the foyer, I looked beyond the table to the sunken living room with vintage 1960s furniture and a grand piano framed by the vista—marred by nothing. Berggren stepped up and gave Thor a hug goodbye before turning to me.

“Maddie. I’m
so
glad you could make it. We’re going to have so much fun. But I’m running late, what else is new? And Carl just left with the girls.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “I’ve got to finish getting dressed. So go introduce yourself. There are people you know.”

I watched her walk down the hallway then glanced into the kitchen where I saw about six people munching on appetizers and sipping wine. Two of them I thought I’d met before—at Berggren’s, of course— but the rest were new faces. I didn’t see anyone who immediately attracted me on any level, but I reminded myself of my commitment to remain open-minded; Berggren’s friends and acquaintances were
all
interesting and every one of them had something to say if I’d give them a chance.

I entered the kitchen and started chatting and pretty soon I began not to care that even though I’d come to the dinner party seeking
exciting
and
moving
, I was now extremely pleased to talk with individuals who were simply
interesting
. The wine certainly didn't hurt. Wine can make anyone seem more interesting.

People kept arriving and eventually we sat down to eat, conversation flowing freely and loudly. On my left sat a gorgeous man named Christian who’d recently arrived in California from Italy to make his name in production design. He’d come with Berggren’s mother’s husband’s sister, Petra, and was off limits because he was married with a wife socked away in some charming hillside village on the Italian coast. But since it was hard to hear anyone who wasn’t right next to me, he and I struck up an easy Italian-English exchange under the watchful eye of Petra.

At one point in the evening, I considered suspending my “no married men” rule for at least an hour after he informed me
sotto voce
that he and his wife have an open relationship. It’s not for me to judge what other couples do, especially Europeans, I reasoned, even if I wouldn’t have wanted that lifestyle myself. I was fantasizing about what sex would be like with Christian in a gauzily decorated bedroom with a sea breeze drifting over our naked bodies in a villa on a Sardinian mountain top, when I saw Petra glaring at me. So I pretended to busy myself with my napkin.

There was an empty chair on my right and I noticed another empty chair across the table next to ZsaZsi, Berggren’s new producing partner on an English-American collaboration. I waved to her over the yellow table-clothed expanse between us, and we had a brief, semi-audible conversation about their upcoming film project, which it sounded like they hoped to shoot in I-think-New Mexico in I-couldn’t-hear-how-many months. I like ZsaZsi. She’s a smart girl—smarter for having hooked up with Berggren. She yelled to me that her fiancée was expected at any moment, pointing to the empty chair next to her. I also had an empty chair next to
me
but had no idea if there was someone else coming who would fill it.

Dinner was going along—salmon, pasta, salad, plenty more wine—and conversation was flowing smoothly. Berggren was in her element, breaking the ice and getting us all to talk about ourselves by answering the question, “What would we do to make the world a better place?” It was like the Miss America pageant only we were all too old and jaded to suggest we could end world hunger.

It was just coming up on my turn and I was debating if I should fold and suggest something innocuous about planting trees and flowers, or if I should rant about impeaching elected officials and enforced ball removal for convicted pedophiles, when the doorbell rang and spared me the decision.

ZsaZsi’s fiancé came in, along with another guy. Introductions were made, but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention because I was using the opportunity, and Petra’s well-timed visit to the bathroom, to gaze at Christian and ask him questions about his Italian hillside village.

During all this, I was faintly aware that ZsaZsi’s fiancé, Nissim, and his friend had sat down and, I assume, started to eat. I remember seeing Petra come out of the bathroom and, when she spotted me monopolizing Christian again, glowering at me even more harshly than before. At that point, I turned to my right to find Nissim’s friend looking at me, probably thinking me rude for not at least acknowledging his presence and including him in my conversation with Christian. But he smiled an unreal smile, which caused his entire face to light up and his green-gold eyes to sparkle. His hair was very close-cropped and his cheekbones were those of a model, though thankfully a model older than the ones in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. He said something and I thought I heard an accent, but I was so entranced by his eyes, I couldn’t be sure of what he’d said, let alone in what language he’d said it.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Would you pass the pepper?”

“The pepper?” I remember mumbling, still mesmerized. He
did
have an accent.
Middle Eastern maybe?
His eyes were penetrating, making me feel completely naked with my clothes on.

“The pepper. Of course—
pepper
.”

On my left, Christian was talking to the American costume designer on
his
left who’d recently returned from shooting a
Lifetime
movie in Bulgaria and who’d said she thought she could improve the world by dressing people in colorful clothes, thereby making it more difficult for them to be sad and depressed.

I reached for the pepper without so much as a glance from Christian and handed it to my new dinner companion. Our hands touched as I gave it to him and I swear I felt electricity. He said his name was Udi—
Udi Hamoudi—
like
OOOO-dee
, rhymes with
BOOO-tee.
Udi with the most beautiful, intoxicating eyes I’d ever seen. How had I not noticed him when he walked in? Christian seemed like wine dregs in comparison to this fine glass of Syrah.

Was it the fourteen point five percent alcohol acting on me? Possibly. But I didn’t care. All I was aware of was having a deep physical connection to my new dinner partner. I remember feeling warm and turned on as I gazed into those eyes. It felt as if we were alone instead of surrounded by eighteen other people; I was aware of only myself and Udi. Everyone else had been banished to Berggren's roof deck.

He said he was from Israel—he and Nissim both—where they’d met in the army at the age of seventeen. That explained his sexy accent. He told me he’d come for a visit because he hadn’t seen Nissim since his friend had moved to LA five years earlier. I could have listened to Udi talk forever with his Israeli accent and imperfect grammar. Grammar
shwammer
. I hung on every word.

More and more he drew me to him as he told me, between mouthfuls of salmon and salad, that he'd wanted to meet ZsaZsi before she and Nissim got married. He liked her, he said, and was happy for his friend. It turned out Nissim was now selling real estate in California and, by his own account anyway, doing very well. I could tell Udi was a little disoriented. Understandable. I would be too if I’d been in his place—foreign country and all, unfamiliar language, jet lag and a bunch of new people all at once. But he didn’t seem nervous. I was the nervous one. Heart racing, mouth dry.

Udi was charming, with lots of smiles and eyes that just kept sparkling. He was younger than I, I could tell, which kind of turned me on and made me self-conscious at the same time. I was trying to remember the last time I’d worked out, when he put down his fork and out of nowhere said, “You are beautiful.”

My breath caught and my heart beat even faster. Emotions darted around my body, making me weak. And my face flushed—all of which combined to make me speechless.
I’m beautiful? When had anyone told me that when I believed it? My dad when I was sixteen, going to the prom? And yet I believed Udi.

He smiled, picked up his fork again and resumed eating. He’d said it so simply—it couldn’t have been a line. He had me at shalom. My bullshit detector was working, but the batteries were obviously fading. Still, I believed he’d said it without agenda, plan or design, perhaps because he thought he’d never see me again so it didn’t matter what we said to each other. But he was at least convincing.

“Oh, thanks, but, no, that’s, well . . . thanks,” I said, or something inane like that, not wanting to dwell on whether I was or wasn’t beautiful—a topic on which reasonable people might differ.

“You are. You know this, I think.”

I remember shaking my head and blushing again. It all really sounds kind of trivial now, trite to even mention it, but I was so stunned. He disarmed me of not only the barriers I’d put up, but of my fear. He just had this way of looking at me that made me feel completely exposed—emotionally stripped and vulnerable and helpless to resist. And I had the sensation that he was, too. Through his eyes, I felt like I could see inside him, and that I’d be safe there.