Roadmap Part 4

The other role that Suki was understudying came available and she was going to tread the boards again in the starring role.  She would set aside comps for us again.

This time I pull out all the stops with my nod to Jean Seberg in a red and white striped  Breathless mini-dress that clings and lets go in the right places.  And, going really whole hog, mascara.

My love life aside, I know how special this night is for Suki.  Her acting is unforgettable in this role, too.  But of course it’s Shane who absorbs my consciousness.  I sit in the darkness and experience his silences and his words.  Every time his hands touch something, I feel it on my skin.

Afterward, waiting again in the lobby with Edward, I suddenly feel shy.  I don’t belong at dinner tonight.  This is beyond déjà vu.  This is foolish.  My come-hither dress now makes me feel silly.  I drove here.  Perhaps I should escape gracefully?

Grace ushered tonight, wearing a body-skimming beige mini-dress that accentuated her long arms and legs.

"Shane and I have to meet my girlfriend at midnight in Old Town," she told Edward before the show.  "She's leaving for Vassar tomorrow.  You want to come with us?"

Now she and Shane are standing on the ramp leading to the backstage, talking in low voices, heads bent towards each other—a good-looking couple.

Wondering if I should bolt, I settle on a round cement bench under a tall lamp in front of the theater, surrounded by milling actors and theater goers.  When I look up, I see Shane and Grace now stood near me, talking to friends.

I don’t know where Edward is.

Shane breaks from the group, moving in front of me.  As he passes, he throws me a smile and holds out his hand, moving on even as he catches mine and says, "Good to see you again." Then he disappears into the theater. I feel double the awkward agony of my position. But I stay put.

He returns and chats with Grace about the Vassar thing in Old /Town.  His back is to me.  So close I could touch him.  Still talking, he casually sinks down next to me.  During a lull, Grace turns away, but she doesn’t move.

Now or never.  I talk to him.

"Your character's way of speaking, it has a Shakespearean cadence, like a method actor doing Shakespeare."

"I don't know what you mean exactly." Was that the wrong thing to say? I keep going.

"It had a poetic lilt to it, like a poet's." Since he was playing a philosopher, I thought it might have been intentional.

His eyes register me as he fully takes me in and leans slightly toward me, but at an angle.  The way you'd study a statue. He nods, getting it. "Maybe it's because I was going for the thought rather than the line, so it comes out like 'The girls dressed in their summer clothes they'd never look at me still I didn't care.'"

"So you were going for the..."

We say it together.

"...rhythm."

A moment of surprised understanding passes between us.  I look up to see Edward and Suki are now in front of us with Grace, patiently waiting. But Shane keeps talking to me as if we’re alone. We talk a bit more about his speech patterns and then he stands, saying:

"That's a good...observation." Not taking his eyes off me. Evaluating? I try not to show the surge of pleasure I’m feeling.

xx

As before, there’s confusion about where to go.

"How about Chinatown?" Shane suggests. "Full House?"

I silently rejoice. To eat in Chinatown. With Asians.

 "I don't want to go so far," says Edward.  "I'm starving."

They settle on a Thai restaurant in Silver Lake which is an ex-hamburger joint.  I think Chinatown would have been magical.  This is just a place to eat.  But I’m invited. So I go.

Once there, Edward surprises me by offering me a spot at the table directly across from Shane.

"You were stuck on the end last time," he says. "I remember."

Does he know? Did Tony tell him? I refuse, choosing to sit again on the end.  Only this time Shane sits closer, diagonally across.  Last time, Shane and I dominated the conversation. What’ll happen if I say nothing?  Carrie's Lab.

What happens next is fifteen minutes of non-stop actor's shoptalk.  Edward had run into his former acting teacher from Chicago at the theater.

"He's putting together an all-Asian cast of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf."

"I was going to audition for that," says Shane.  "But I have to go to France."

France. Why? Our dinner specials arrive and everyone bends over their food and eats in silence.  Finally, still looking at my plate, I venture, "Why are you going to France?" Spearing a wonton with my chopstick, listening for his reply, but instead, I hear everyone laugh.  When I look up, I see that he's spilled food on himself.

Good naturedly wiping his shirt, he shrugs at me, "Sorry, it’s like that vaudeville routine Slowly I Turn? Every time anyone says 'FRANCE,’ I spill my food." From that moment on, it’s as if we’re the only two people at the table.  Shane turns his full attention on me and tells me why he has to go to France.  Of course, the others already know it, so maybe that’s not such a big deal.  That dark, steady gaze of his holds me hypnotically, and my heart beats to the soft rumble of his words as he tells me his story without hype or drama.

"I had an uncle who was interned in a concentration camp here during World War II.  He volunteered to fight.  One of those Japanese American boys who enlisted to prove their patriotism.  He died in a battle on a hill in France.  His father said, 'Bury him there.' 

"I'm going over with some Japanese American vets and the families of vets.  Last year, I did a performance piece at Highways about my uncle.  I'd just found a box of the letters he'd written.  And I told the audience, ‘I’ll read them and the first time you hear what they say is the first time I hear.’  Know what the very first one said?”

"What?"

"'P.S.  Don't worry, I'll be back.’"

"Are your parents bitter about it?"

"My mother's passed away, but even when she was alive, my parents were always proud Americans.  They were teachers."

As our talk tapers, we look around as if waking up out of a dream.  Everyone has stopped eating. Grace is glaring at Shane, her plate still full. As if finally realizing what he’s done, perhaps sensing her unhappiness, Shane taps playfully on her plate with his fork as if to say, "I haven't forgotten you." She takes her own fork and pounds back loudly on his plate as if to say, "Oh, yes, you did!".

"You take, you eat!" he teases, pointing at her food as if she were a child.  Ignoring her anger or oblivious to it? I can’t tell. I don’t care. I could tell he knew what was happening between us.

When Grace goes to the restroom, Edward begins to beg Shane to take him fly fishing.  "I really want to learn."

"You go fly fishing?" I ask.  "You stand around in water up to your knees?"

"It's refreshing," he says with a seductive smile that makes my knees weak.

In the parking lot saying good-bye, Shane once more reaches for my hand. 

He tells me to take care.

During my debriefing with Tony in Topanga, he tries to help me scheme: "When's he comin' back from France?" and "Maybe you can go fly fishing with them."

"I think you can rope this guy, " he says.

"He hasn't even asked for my phone number," I admit. Hard to say out loud, but there it is. So. Until lightning sees fit to strike a third time, it was (as Shane and I had agreed twice now) nice meeting each other.

CHAPTER 15- COMMUNITY PROPERTY

Boris’ note comes in the mail:

"Why can’t I call you? We must get together and talk about who gets what.  P.S. - Please see attached bills."

We’re doing our own divorce out of the Poor Folks California Divorce book.  But I let Boris file the papers.  Edward finds me sitting on the deck steps weeping.

"Boris wants...wants me to...wants us to divide up our...stuff."  In the end, it all comes down to stuff.  "What do you have?" Edward asks.  "Nothing."  He laughs.  I have to laugh, too.

"There’s some stuff in a safe deposit box,” I add.  “But that's his."

"Community prop-er-ty..." Edward sings.  When I smile, he puts his hand over mine and says quietly:  "You're doing the right thing."

"I know."

"I have to say...when Eva first told me that we had this divorcing woman moving in, I thought, 'Uh oh.  What have we here?'  But now I'm glad."

Tony comes crashing out of the door dressed in T-shirt and shorts.  "Fucking Championship Basketball Game was just cancelled."

"Why?"

"O.J. Simpson's on the run and they’re taping it."

Headlines in the morning paper had screamed:

O.J.’S WIFE MURDERED. 

The ex-wife of ex-football star O.J. Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, had been found stabbed to death in front of her house.

"He's running on foot?" asks Edward, half-standing up.

"In a white Bronco. Cops chasin' him."

"Tony, please.  On TV?" I ask.

"What about my game?" Tony whines.  "Hey, Carrie, wanna go for a walk?"

I do.  We hit the trail.

In a hundred and twelve degree heat. But neither of us notices.

CHAPTER 16 – CARMELITA

Eva’s due back in two days.

All she told me about how to find Consuela and her husband was that they were lodged somewhere deep within the bowels of a Mexican shantytown just off Topanga Canyon Road.  And Consuela doesn’t speak English.  Using my Spanish dictionary, I write a note asking them to come and clean Eva's place.

I pull my car to the side of the main road next to the chain link fence that obscures any view of the "shantytown."  Feeling intimidated by the swarthy Latinos in wife-beaters who lounge there, I decide to ask for help at the Canyon Crystal Shop next to it.  A blond, pony tailed man who looks like he remembers the first Woodstock is sweeping steps.

"Consuela and her husband are kinda on a vacation," he drawls.  "There’s trouble in Mexico.  Sick aunt or something."

"When will they be back?"

He shrugs. "I will go crazy if I come home to a dirty house," Eva had said.  So what now?  Go home and mobilize the troops?  Ha!  Edward would be gone or hiding in his cabin.  Lately he's been so short with me that I hated talking to him.  Last night, I sat up in my sleeping bag as he made his way up the stairs with his toothbrush.

"Eva might be home in three days."

"Thanks."

Tony's new love didn’t pan out. She told him she needed a six-month "hiatus."  This means that he’s now spending a lot of time at Venetia's (an old flame whose major appeal seemed to be that she could either take or leave him) or with his boy pals trying to start a band or moping with his door shut.  When I get back, I see that he’s M.I.A.

If Eva thought she'd go crazy if Consuela didn't clean the house, my cleaning would totally push her off the edge.  And one other thing…Eva left me a Voice Mail that she was bringing back her niece to "go to school."

Contemplating dusting, I go to the kitchen and whip up some fresh tahini.

There she is. Through the kitchen window, I see Eva trudging up the stairs, as bedraggled as an Argonaut setting foot on dry land after schlepping through Ulysses’ Odyssey. And she’s not alone. After the shock, all I feel is joy. I rush out to greet them:

"You're home! I can't believe you're home!"

She smiles wanly but with appreciation.  I hug her.

Behind her stands a pretty olive-skinned teen with curly auburn hair done up in a twist, looking freshly bathed and made up. Her bright mini-dress is cut high and low, showing off her compact, curvy figure and shapely legs.

"Carrie, this is Carmelita." As I hug the niece, my first thought is not noble.  Here's a nubile, bursting young female, come to tip the sexual scales of The Relationship House.

Then I block their path with a half-joking "You can't come in.  I've got to go inside and clean first!"

"I don't give a shit how dirty it is," Eva says in a whispery voice. 

I make them sit at the deck table and bring them fresh tahini, crackers and ice tea.  In between bites, Eva explains how she lost her voice.

"They forgot my vegetarian meal and I had a screaming fight with the flight attendant," she rasps.

Carmelita giggles, "You look so funny! Your face, it look like..." Her face suddenly rubbery, she mimics Eva's angry, bulldog face. Then laughs again. Carmelita's eyes flash mischief under their heavy mascara-lash fringe. 

Eva doesn’t seem to mind her niece’s teasing. "They gave me bread and a small salad."

Eager to change the mood, I ask how Columbia was.

"Awful, you can't imagine," she replies. "The drug cartel is still very much alive.  Somebody was blown away in front of my mother downtown. It's all about IMAGE.  What you look like, what you can do. Like Hollywood gone even crazier. Everybody is rude, out for themselves. The Cubans told Carmelita off in Miami."

Carmelita screams, "Ayee!  It was so funny. In Columbiana, nobody stands in line, right? If you do, you are a stupid." She tells the rest of the story half in English, half in Spanish. They had to change planes in Miami. "I needed cigarettes, so I get in front of ....(asking Eva for the English) the line, okay?  And the people, somebody say, 'You are in the wrong place.'"

"They say it in Spanish," interjects Eva.

Carmelita is up now, demonstrating how she stood, hands on hips, legs apart, dress straining at her thighs, "And I say, 'Too bad for you because I am here.’"

"In Columbia, they push and shove," explains Eva.  "Whoever can be first is first."

"But they say, 'Too bad for you.  You in America now, get to back of the line!'" her laugh is like delighted seagull cries.

New country. New ways.  Carmelita, you’re not in Columbiana anymore.

After Carmelita goes inside the house to unpack (she'll be sharing Eva's room), Eva tells me in her non-voice that she brought her niece here to get her away from her parents. "She likes to dress to show off what she's got and why not?  She's got a great figure. One night she was about to go out with some friends in a dress cut down to her nipples and her mother yelled, 'You can't go out with your tatas showing!’ Well, tatas, that’s tits in Spanish, but much worse, just humiliating when somebody says it to a young girl like her.  Like she should be ashamed."

It's unclear to me how she convinced this girl's wealthy parents to let her leave.  Especially since Eva claims to have confronted Carmelita's parents about their "values." ("Her mother just wants her to be a perfectly nice lady so she can get the money, you know.") And there's something about Carmelita being molested by an uncle but nobody believes her.  I don't know.  Anyway, she's here.

Needing to get ready for bed, I enter the bathroom while Eva’s explaining to Carmelita that she should close the drapes if she doesn’t want to be seen by passersby.

"She is modest," Eva explains to me.  Looking closer at Carmelita's nervous smile in front of the curtain, I glimpse the green teenager beneath the bravado.  Eva leaves as I pick up my toothbrush.  Carmelita hangs next to me.

"Ayee, who wears contacts?" Carmelita glances at the lens case on the sink.

"I do."

"I have blue to change color of my eyes."

I turn the water on to brush my teeth, "I always wished mine were a different color."

"Your eyes are so beautiful. So green! What color would you make them?"

"Brown."

"Brown! You want BROWN?" she mimes plucking her own out. "Here, take mine!"

From that moment on, I love her.

I can’t sleep.  Decide to stay up to catch the guys' reactions.

"Eva's here," I tell Edward as he trudges up the house steps.

"I figured.  Her car's here."

"And she's not alone."  His eyes snap shut, then open wide in mock horror:

"Who'd she bring?"

"Her niece."

Wincing.  "How old?"

"Fifteen.  Going on twenty-five."

He shakes his head, as if  she'd brought home a piglet to raise. 

"You'll like her," I call after him.  "She's cool."

xx

Carmelita is already in bed by the time Edward goes inside.  And Eva is still in the bathtub where she’s been for the last two hours.  I sit on a stool in the kitchen and talk to Edward while he rinses raspberries.  He says: "Did Tony tell you about Belinda?"

"She dumped him.  Kinda."  I say it the way Tony did.

"Poor guy," Edward grips the edge of the counter, straight armed, standing with crossed legs, as if protecting his privates.

"I just don't get it," And I really don't.  "If someone really likes someone, wouldn't they want to be closer?"

"Not necessarily," he says stiffly.  "I've been there.  It can be scary."

Tony walks in from outside.  "Eva's back."

"And she brought someone," Edward says glumly.

"Who?"

"Her fifteen-year old niece," I tease.

"And she's in your bed, Tony," Edward says, deadpan.

Taking his cues from our Late Night Kitchen Theater, Tony rips open his denim shirt and heads for the door to the inside, "Guess I’ll see you guys later..."

But he backs off as the door swings open and Carmelita—looking fifteen sans makeup but still sexy in her little white baseball shirt and upswept hair—suddenly enters.  One look at all of us and she gives a shy smile and shuts the door, going back inside.

"What was that?" laughs Tony.  "Do we have mice again?"

"You ain't seen nothin', yet," I say, opening the door.  She’s standing right behind it.  I pull her in.  She smiles winsomely up at the two awestruck men.

"This is..." I hesitate, trying to recall her name. 

She helps me: "Carmelita."

Tony, already joking, shakes her hand, "Tone-a-lita."

Edward follows suit, "Ed-a-lita."

Then she's gone. Tony rolls his eyes at me, "You ain't seen nothin', yet..."

I smile.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Edward asks.

"I'm just glad I'm not in your shoes," I answer like the forty-year old I am.  Might as well take a matronly tone.  But in my own psychic-neurotic way, I wonder if I've just seen Tony's future.  What I’ve seen for sure is:

A fifteen-year old nymphet turn two grown men to jelly. All my life, I've had a tendency to compete sexually.  Will this new addition to the Relationship House force me to confront my deepest Baby Boomer fear about aging? More to the point: Will Tony be asking Carmelita on hikes now instead of me? Will the magic that happens between us disappear?

Will I lose the man I consider one of my best friends?

Eva enters the kitchen in her kimono, head wrapped in a towel, barely able to say hello. "You lost your voice," observes Edward.

"And your hair!" Tony points at the turban.

For the past few days, all Tony’s talked about is an offer to do some physical therapy with some missionaries in China.  Should he or shouldn’t he? Will he lose this place if he goes?

Yesterday I told him: "Wow. First, you couldn't decide if you wanted to live here and now you can't decide if you could move out."

"I didn't know if I wanted to live with other people."

"And now?"

"Now I know I do."

In the kitchen, Tony is spilling everything to Eva while she towel dries her hair.  When he’s done, she smiles lovingly and says, "We can work something out.  Maybe Carmelita can stay in your room." 

"I'm going to be gone in November and December," Edward announces, "to do 'Christmas Follies' again in Indiana.  Maybe my friend Lilith can sublet, like last year."

"Not Lilith," Eva says. Then she leans in to me, teasing, "Maybe Boris would want to move in."  Everybody groans.