“Is one fork for me?” she asked, wanting to laugh.
“If a person doesn’t like this pie,” he responded, “they’re out. So yes, a fork is for you. And then we’ll see about the room.”
She suspected the room would be the size of a closet and he sounded crazy, but the savings in rent would buy film and a new telephoto lens this month alone, so she had her foot on the clutch of her Rabbit within minutes, wishing she were hungry.
There, on the sidewalk by the diner, was one of the fattest dogs she’d ever seen. A golden retriever whose rolls slunk around his haunches. Olivia, who’d once missed an entire day of high school and spent all the money she’d had on turkey to lure a kitten from under a building, a calico her father still has, could never stop herself from greeting animals.
“Hi there, handsome,” she said to the dog. The dog looked up, and she smiled.
“Hello,” a voice said.
She’d not seen the man holding the dog’s leash, but there he was. In patchwork brown velvet pants and a white linen shirt that roped across the top of his chest. More than handsome, in fact. The kind of good-looking that makes you take a step back, which she did.
“I was talking to him,” she said, pointing to the dog.
The man’s skin was slightly olive toned yet still managed to hint with red. Instead of looking away, however, he let his smile grow, as if the twist had both embarrassed and delighted him. “How do you know I wasn’t saying hello on his behalf?” he asked as he tied the dog to the base of a phone booth.
“Then hello.” She gave him a small wave to get him moving, heat resting below her eyes, and let him go into the diner first to avoid further humiliation. Five minutes she waited, scanning the street for anyone who looked like they had a room to rent, anyone who might like chocolate pie, and then she went in.
There, of course, was the same man, sitting in the first booth with chocolate pie and two forks.
“I was wondering when you were gonna come in,” Delan said. “Thought you were stealing the dog.”
“You didn’t say you had a dog.”
“I don’t.”
“All evidence to the contrary.”
“His mother is shooting a scene for Laverne & Shirley. He is my child for one day only.” Then he watched her, silently, that unwavering, unapologetic gaze of someone who’s made it their job to study people. “You’re tall,” he finally said. Her eyes must have showed her surprise because he quickly added that she was lucky.
Sliding into the booth, she was aware his legs were inches from her own. The space beneath the table suddenly seemed smaller than it should be, in part because he was right—she was tall. Distracted, she started talking. “I was the one forced to buy beer. Let on roller coasters when I was way too young and way too scared, and I can’t blend in even if I try.” She stopped, hearing her own reveals. “Lucky is a matter of perspective.”
He smiled widely. “You’re right. You don’t blend in.”
She shifted in her seat, unsure if it was a compliment, though her face seemed to interpret it as such, her cheeks again filling with heat.
He pushed the slice of pie in her direction, and as she cut down with her fork, she felt his gaze, intense and curious, and realized that this bite was actually the interview and that this man was going to be her roommate. And he had a girlfriend, she figured. Which was good because she’d just started dating a musician named Ted, who at that point hadn’t yet begun to bother her, and she knew that if there was a line that could not be crossed, it existed within a living space. Off-limits, she told herself, but even then watched his fork as he brought it to his mouth.
Delan’s house became hers. A peeling Craftsman in the heart of Hollywood. The site of parties where artists of all types smoked and talked and often sang on the couch or the patio and once from the roof, which was ill advised. After only a few months of living there, she felt the restless lack in what she had with Ted and called it quits. Because Olivia wanted love. Romantic, consuming, distracting love. The true kind. But she kept this to herself; most of her friends were women who relished in their freedom, in their lack of ties, and so the desire to love and be loved made Olivia feel youthful and unevolved. Made her feel as if all the progress women had made with sexual freedom simply slid from her like something that wouldn’t stick, because commitment was what Olivia wanted, what she’d always wanted. She could take care of herself but craved someone’s caring.
That night, after ending things with Ted, she made a neatly lined list in her steno pad of qualities she wanted in a man. On a new page she wrote FOR ME and underlined it three times. It was a night when the air held a green shock of rosemary from the neighbor’s dog’s wandering forays, Delan was at rehearsal, Rebecca on a date, and Mason—her other male roommate, an artist and activist who’d gone against Vietnam and ended up in prison for more than a year—was out prowling for women. Olivia’s room felt tower high in its isolation, and she worked on the list for over an hour. When she was done, she went into the bathroom and burned all but the bottom part, which she held between her fingers, attempting to send her requests into the ether, into the heavens, to her mother, or to anyone, and in the
