“Won’t Daddy be surprised when he learns it was all a joke?” Mrs. Chen said gaily. A slim briefcase of fine- grained leather lay across the front seat, filled with silicone chips. There was plenty of room left over for passports, one-way tickets to Shanghai, and a paperback novel. They would stroll right through security and onto a plane winging its way over the Pacific.
“Are you sure Daddy’s going to meet us there?” asked Pearl.
“Daddy, Daddy,” chanted four-year-old April.
Leila Chen pursed her pastel lips and allowed herself a moment of silent triumph.
“Of course he will, darlings,” she said finally. “You two are the
PART II.
THE METHODBY JANET FITCH
It was cold in Los Angeles. Fifty-eight, sixty degrees. In Nebraska, I’d have been scraping ice off the windshield while the wind bit my face like a Rottweiler, but in L.A., when you have to put a sweater on, that’s winter. The dark deodar cedars brooded over Los Feliz Boulevard, trailing their boughs over the traffic creeping toward Griffith Park and the DWP Holiday Tunnel of Light, all eighty million drive-through lightbulbs of it. Christmas. People complained about being “stuck here” for the holidays, joking about the ribbons on the palm trees, saying how it just didn’t seem like Christmas without the old yule dog. But not me. You’d never catch me whining that I couldn’t get back to Kearney for the holidays, sit around listening to Paul Anka and tracking Aunt Phoebe’s phlebitis.
If you met me, you might think you knew me-a smalltown girl, fresh from state college productions of
I was working the 5-to-11 shift at Orzo, a trattoria on Hillhurst that catered to the Los Feliz/Silverlake hipsters, men in leather jackets and perfect two-day stubble, women with clean hair and long knitted scarves. That night it was busy, customers lined up out the door. Whenever the thermometer plunged below sixty, everybody wanted Italian. A man sat in my section; if I’d seen him on the street I’d have thought he was too broke to eat at a place like this. Dark and bald, in a thick turtleneck and a beat-up leather jacket, about forty-five I’d guess. But there was something about him. I can’t say what it was and I can’t say I liked it. The way he looked at me when I came over and took his drink order.
“What do you recommend?” Brown eyes, with a funny light in them, like he was enjoying a private joke and I was the punch line. He pissed me off. Like me or don’t like me, I don’t give a rat’s ass, but there’s nothing funny about me.
“We have a Barolo, by the glass.” It was fourteen bucks. Even the cuffs of his jacket were worn.
“I think… I’ll have the Classico.” He pointed at the board with a languorous finger, a gay gesture though he didn’t seem gay. He seemed like a straight guy who was being annoying. I guessed him for a writer. They’ve got a look about them. They come alone, watch everything from some corner, sometimes they take notes. This guy didn’t have a notebook, but he had the look.
I brought him his Classico and recited the specials.
“Would you say the ahi, or the osso buco?” He stroked his lips with long fingers. They had hair on them. I imagined shoulders like a gorilla. Hair everywhere but that dome. Too bad for him.
I knew if I said the ahi he’d order the osso. I wanted to tell him to stop wasting my time, it wasn’t intriguing and he was twenty years too old for me. “The osso’s our specialty.”
“Then bring that.” He folded his menu and handed it to me. “And the heirloom tomatoes to start.” He spoke better than you’d think, with a jacket like that and the edge of his turtleneck unraveling.
It got crazy busy then. People and wine and opinions, big steaming bowls of pasta, steaks, and veal between closely packed tables. I didn’t have a moment-and yet, I could feel his eyes, following me, from the corner table by the exposed brick wall. I’m an actress. When I have an audience, I act. Even if I don’t, the non-acting is also acting. He made me aware of each small movement, the way I carried an armload of plates, uncorked a bottle of wine, flourished the pepper mill over a bowl of penne regate. He lifted his glass, showing me he needed a refill. I brought it over.
“I’m Richard,” he said as I filled his glass.
“Enjoying your meal?” I said, distant, professional. In case he couldn’t see I had five tables waiting.
“You’ve got a spot, exactly… there.” His long finger, pointing to my left tit.
I glanced down and saw he was right, I’d somehow got a spatter of red on the white linen right over the nip.
“It’s very provocative,” he said, looking at me over the rim of his wine glass.
I purposely didn’t do anything about it. First of all, if I tried to clean it up, it would just make a bigger spot, right there on my boob; and two, I didn’t want him to think I cared what he thought. He was trying to throw me, but I wasn’t that kind of girl. Not even then. I did better with an audience.
When I brought him his check, he asked, “Do you ever go to the Firehouse?”
A trendy bar on Rowena. “Sometimes,” I said.
“I’m going over there later,” he said. “Why don’t you join me for a drink after you’re done?”
“I’m going home,” I said. Forcing myself to meet his eyes. “I have to wash my shirt.”
He shrugged, paid the bill. “I hear they make an elegant martini. If you change your mind, I’ll see you over there… Holly.” He put his long finger to his mouth, hooking it over the lower lip, a good gesture, maybe I’d use it someday.
I was startled he knew my name, until I remembered that I’d signed the check. Anyone could have seen it, but people were rarely that observant.
He rapped the check on the table, left it there. “See you later.” He was taller than I thought he’d be, slender, his posture relaxed and surprisingly graceful. He didn’t move like a writer, none that I knew.
When he left, the place went flat, like old soda pop.
After I cleaned my tables and tipped my busboy, I walked around the corner to my apartment, a two-story ’40s court on Los Feliz Boulevard. Twelve units facing an identical building across a little yard where a box hedge corralled a flock of white calla lilies. Most of the residents were old ladies living on dead husbands’ pensions. A genteel crowd, these broke old grannies. We all lived here for the same reason: the address.
Most actresses who came here went straight for Hollywood. Three roommates and cereal for dinner, green apple martinis, X-bras from Victoria’s Secret. Others chose Silverlake, a bass player boyfriend in a punk band, a new tat, and an STD for every six months you lived there. But Los Feliz meant you could take care of yourself, you’d been here long enough to know your way around. Sometimes I drove up into the hills, imagining how it would feel to have money like that, old money, houses from the teens, silent-screen stuff, before Beverly Hills was even a gleam in some developer’s eye.
I let myself in, turned on the lights. Nothing but the glorious emptiness of no roommate. It was a luxury I could ill afford, but the last one, a dancer named Audrey, just got a show in Vegas. I liked dancers the best, they were
