The Starter Wife (37 page)

Gracie’s best friend was in the throes of a major problem; Joan was looking down the line at a future of morning Bloody Marys followed by mid-morning Tequila Sunrises followed by afternoon tugs on fat joints followed by bottles of Trader Joe’s cheap but amiable Chilean reds topped off with a mountain of wet cigarettes piling up in a sink somewhere in the Hollywood Hills where once-glamorous actresses and writers go to retire.

“What is it?” Gracie whispered. She realized she’d been so caught up in her homeless boyfriend’s antics that she’d forgotten about her friend’s pain—the friend who had given her and her daughter a place to stay, the one who always made sure her needs were taken care of, the one who held her as she realized the love of her life ate out of trashcans and peed in alleys.

Only a true friend could tell you these things and live.

“Pappy called me,” Joan said. “He definitely wants a divorce.” She tossed the cigarette into the sink before it was done, then lit another.

“I’m so sorry,” Gracie said, even though she wasn’t so, so sorry—she never thought Pappy was right for Joan or anyone who could get around without need of orthopedic shoes.

“I know you think I never should have married him,” Joan said.

Gracie just looked at her. When did Joan start reading minds? This could be dangerous. Gracie chided herself not to get annoyed at Joan’s more annoying tics. “Of course I did. You married Barnaby Jones. I thought it was insane. I still do,” she said, building strength. “In fact, you shouldn’t even waste your time being sad, as far as I’m concerned.”

Instead of screaming at her, Joan nodded. “That’s the fucked-up thing about love,” she said, taking another long drag on the cigarette. “It doesn’t discriminate.”

Gracie stared at Joan, at the sadness of her posture, the languid, tragic way she stared out the window. In the muted light of the morning fog, she looked like an actress in the kind of French film that seemed important when you talked about it, but that really made no sense at all when you watched it.

Gracie found herself shaking her head with a sense of wonder. “Love has no taste,” she said. “You’re in love with your grandfather, and I’m in love with a guy whose idea of a job is squeegeeing windows.” Gracie mimicked being on the phone with her “husband.” “How’s work going, honey?” she asked. “Oh, yeah? Forty-three windows today? Wow!”

“Damned profound, huh?” Joan asked.

Gracie thought about this for a second. “Friends Über Alles. C’mon,” She continued, pulling on Joan’s sleeve. “Let’s go out on the deck and welcome the unwashed masses.”

Gracie jumped up and ran out on the deck, leaving Joan to contemplate her sudden vivacity. “What’s making you so fucking
happy?” Joan called after her. “Don’t you know your life is a complete shambles?”

G
RACIE STOOD
out on the deck, which abutted the fence dividing Surfrider from the Colony. The fence was as ridiculous a deterrent as a constitutional monarchy on a third-world island nation. First of all, it was made of rusted chicken wire which probably started showing the effects of nature and age soon after it was erected thirty years ago. Secondly, though there was barbed wire woven onto the top of the chicken wire, it was a deterrent without teeth. Because thirdly, there was four feet of fence, and anywhere from three to five feet of open space underneath, depending on the tides. Also, as if all this were not enough, the fence was not built past the low tide line. Anyone could walk
around
the fence, if they were not eager to bend down the five inches it would take to walk
under
it.

But what the fence did have was a sign. A simple sign, which read in big black block letters against a white backdrop:
PRIVATE BEACH. DO NOT TRESPASS.
And then, in fine print:
TO THE MEAN HIGH TIDE LINE.

Well, Gracie had checked out the mean high tide line. She had asked J.D., the bulky, world-weary security chief at Malibu Colony, what the hell a mean high tide line was.

“You’re trying to get me in trouble,” he’d said to her.

“I’m just curious,” Gracie’d said. She’d seen the news crews out by the fence from time to time. There was a class storm brewing—rich people did not want “others” in front of their houses on their private beaches.

There was only one catch: The California coastline—all 1,100 miles of it, was public. There was no private beach in California.

Oopsies.

J.D. had taken a walk with Gracie along the beach and pointed out the mean high tide line.

The mean high tide line could be found in the spacious living rooms of most people living in the Colony. The mean high tide line could reach all the way to their plasma screen television sets, to the minor Picassos they deemed worthy of their second homes. The mean high tide line was definitely beyond the French chaises and $20,000 barbecue grills gracing the deck.

In other words, the hoi polloi could legally eat out of their KFC family-sized tubs right at the dinner table, alongside the chateaubriand and Cristal.

For days after her conversation with J.D., Gracie had watched in earnest as people would walk up to the unassuming fence with the intimidating sign. She could predict their behavior, depending on what the person was wearing, what they were carrying, how many children they had, their ethnicity. She could do her own sociological study, based on people’s reaction to what she regarded as an infamous sign, now that she questioned its legality.

American tourists—usually a mother bogged down by an enormous tote which held everything, Gracie surmised, from Handi Wipes to psychedelic Fruit Roll-Ups to pepper spray (this being Los Angeles, after all), a father toting a camera and a fat wallet in his waist purse, two prepubescent kids exposing their soft white bellies for the first time in a year to sunlight—would walk slowly up to the fence, their eyes never leaving the sign. They would read very, very carefully, then look up the beach, then reread, then look up the beach again, consult each other for a minute or two, read the sign again, take note of the people walking onto Surfrider from the
Colony. Then, in a towering gesture of defeat, they would turn and walk away.

German tourists, tall, broad, tan, and violently blond, would try to read the sign, take note of the barbed wire, and then take pictures of Joan’s, er, Pappy’s house. They, too, would stay on the Surfrider side of the beach.

Mexican families would barbecue and lay out their picnics on the other side of Joan’s, er, Pappy’s house, but generally they would ignore the damned sign if they felt like sticking their toes in the water or even fishing on the rich, pristine side of the beach (thus, and so, Fourth of July).

Surfers carrying their boards under their arms would just bend down far enough to get under the fence, chatting loudly. The sign wasn’t their concern. The sign was there to keep the landlocked out.

Gracie and Joan stood at the foot of the deck nearest the sand, where Gracie could see the fence most easily. Just as she predicted, there was a family standing there, the father’s face red from exertion and sun, the mother staring quizzically at the sign. Two kids. Gracie waved at the family, signaling that it was okay to make the seemingly verboten trek to the other side of the fence. They looked at her and smiled. They always did.

“You can’t do that,” Joan said.

“I do it all the time,” Gracie replied. She grabbed the drink in Joan’s hand and placed it on the outdoor table. “Come on. It’ll make you feel good,” she said to Joan.

For the rest of the afternoon, Joan and Gracie sat on their chaise longues waving in a steady stream of people who wished to continue their walks along the beach.

“You know how this feels?” Joan asked her as the sun set
over Point Dume and the Great Painter washed the sky with reds and oranges and purples.

“It feels like we just had a party,” she sighed. Gracie just nodded and watched as her friend bounced back inside the house.

26
 
CHILI’S REVENGE

T
HE MALIBU CHILI
Cook-off is traditionally held on the hottest day of the year, no matter the actual date. The scent of twenty different types of chili mixes with the smells of perspiration and popcorn and the sounds of ten different thrill rides spinning and twirling and rising and dropping and kids screaming and parents yelling for their lost children, and generally speaking, it’s the kind of thing that looks like great fun from a distance of about a quarter mile.

Which is where Gracie was, at the Malibu Colony security shack directly across the street from the fairgrounds.

Gracie and Lavender were staring at the jumble of rides that had risen overnight like neon sphinxes.

“They’re gonna be coming now,” Lavender said, shaking her head. “You know I got to drive here from Inglewood?”

Gracie nodded. She’d heard about the Inglewood drive before. Many times.

“Don’t eat that chili,” Lavender warned. “Nothing good comes out of that chili.”

“I hear it’s pretty good.”

“Don’t listen to me then,” Lavender said. “You pay the piper one way or the other.” The clever positioning of her hands made it clear that payment would include either vomiting or having the runs.

But Gracie was lost to her, staring at the giant, lit-up Ferris wheel exuding both thrills and danger, and the promise of vomit. Gracie trusted the safety of thrill rides that were set up in less than twenty-four hours at outdoor fairgrounds about as much as she trusted a Hollywood agent to tell her she had something in her teeth.

“Jaden’s never been on a Ferris wheel. I think she’ll love it,” Gracie said. She was already planning on taking her daughter across the street in their little red wagon. Though she had issues with Malibu, there was something to enjoy about the village atmosphere—the multimillion-dollar-village atmosphere.

“D
ADDY’S ON
a magazine,” Jaden announced as she walked in the front door. Kenny was right behind her. Gracie couldn’t be certain, but it sounded as though Jaden had been coached. She had that “child actor auditioning for a Burger King commer-cial” tenor in her voice.

“Is that right?” Gracie said. “Will wonders and slow news days never cease.”

“It’s really nothing,” Kenny said, in a way which virtually broadcast the opposite. “It’s just the cover of—”

“Us?”
Gracie asked.

“Oh, so you saw it,” Kenny said, his left hand stopping midway to the magazine tucked under his right arm.

“No,” Gracie smiled. “Just a good guess. I was pretty sure it wasn’t
The New Yorker.”

Kenny, as oblivious to insult as a Jim Carrey movie, was off and running. He whipped the magazine from under his arm. “It’s a shot of us, you know, me and Britney—” He looked up at her.

Gracie nodded, as though trying to communicate with a toddler. “Somehow, I didn’t think it was you and me.”

“I guess I’ll just have to get used to it,” Kenny said. “You know, all the paparazzi.” He sighed with all the skills of a Method actor and pushed his hair back. Jaden had gone up to her room. Gracie noticed she was back in her Jaden clothes—tennis shoes, a knee-length dress. No belly dynamics. Something had changed.

Kenny smoothed the magazine on the kitchen counter. “I have other copies,” he said. “You can have this one.”

Gracie looked at the magazine. “Wow, really?” she asked. “You would do that, for me?”

She went back to staring at the magazine as curiosity wrestled her powers of sarcastic detachment and won. She saw Britney, her brown eyes smiling in one direction even as her full mouth pouted in another. She was in black. A great deal of her skin was covered.

Gracie recognized the outfit—Britney had worn it to Lou’s funeral.

What she didn’t see was Kenny.

“Where are you?” Gracie finally asked, after studying the photo for clues. She took heart in the fact that Britney was obviously wearing false eyelashes. Gracie had always had nice eyelashes. One point in Gracie’s favor.

Maybe half a point.

On the other hand, if Gracie was wrong, and Britney’s
eyelashes weren’t fake—Gracie could lose about five points. Comparing body parts with international superstars, even those who admit to lip-synching during live concerts, was a tough game for Gracie to be playing at this or any point in her life.

“I’m right there,” Kenny said, stabbing a finger into the cover.

Gracie looked to where his finger had dented the side of Britney’s body. She wasn’t above noticing that Kenny had gotten a tattoo around his ring finger.

But first traumas first.

“Kenny, I don’t see it—”

“That’s my hand,” Kenny said. “You see? Inside her elbow. I was leading her down the stairs.” And then he said, in hushed tones, “You know, at Lou’s funeral.” He lowered his eyes.

Gracie looked at the picture again. Then looked up at him. And for the first time in years, she felt sorry for her soon-to-be ex.

“Kenny.”

“Also, you can see part of my face,” Kenny continued. “At the edge here.”

He peered closely at the page, outlining the edge with his finger. “And I’m mentioned inside—”