“I think for a lie to be effective, it must have three essential qualities.”
The booming voices of the men fade and the trebles of the women trail off. Ray Porter quietly worries inside.
“And what are those?” says a voice.
“First, it must be partially true. Second, it must make the hearer feel sorry for you, and third, it must be embarrassing to tell,” says Mirabelle.
“Go on,” the room implies.
“It must be partially true to be believable. If you arouse sympathy you’re much more likely to get what you want, and if it’s embarrassing to tell, you’re less likely to be questioned.”
As an example, Mirabelle breaks down her lie to Mr. Agasa. She explains that the partially true part is that she did sometimes need to go to the doctor. She then made him feel sorry for her because she was in pain, then she embarrassed herself by having to explain it was a gynecological problem.
The agile minds in the room click open the brain files and store this analysis away for future use. Ray Porter, meanwhile, is tilted momentarily one centimeter off axis and for the first time in almost a year wonders if it is not he, but Mirabelle, who is determining the exact nature and character of their relationship.
They don’t make love that night, or for a while, but within a month everything resumes, and the letter and its dark information is mentioned only one more time, ever: Mirabelle tells Ray that if something similar happens again, it is better left unsaid. But the sandy foundation of their relationship has been eroded. It has been eroded by the unmentionable being mentioned; their silent agreement not to discuss Ray’s devotion or dedication has been broken.
Mirabelle no longer knows what she believes about her relationship with Mr. Ray Porter. She no longer asks herself questions about it; she simply resides in it. Ray continues to see her and make love to her, with their erotic interest never waning, not even one pheromone. He pays off her credit card debt, which had whopped up to over twelve thousand dollars. Months later, he pays off her slowly accruing student loan, which has recently crossed the forty-thousand-dollar mark. He replaces her collapsing truck with a newer one. These gifts, though he doesn’t know it, are given so that she will be all right after he leaves her.
He continues his quest elsewhere for a single appropriate love with occasional dates, road trips, and flirtations, but he continues to care about Mirabelle in a way he cannot explain. His love for her is not the crazy love he expects to feel, the swinging delirious rhapsody that he has promised himself. This love is of a different kind, and he searches his mind for its definition. Meanwhile, he maintains a belief that their relationship can go on undisturbed until the absolute right woman comes along, and then he will calmly explain the circumstance to Mirabelle and she will see clearly how well he has handled everything, and wish him well, and congratulate him on his reasonable thinking.
l.a.
”I’LL HAVE A HOT DOG,” says Mirabelle. It must be noted that this is not an ordinary hot dog but a Beverly Hills hot dog with none of the unspeakable ingredients of a carnival hot dog. So Mirabelle is not violating the purity of the tender blood flowing under her dewy skin. Lisa, on the other hand, orders a salad that fulfills her personal view of the two main qualities of diet food: it looks ugly and tastes bad. She has not allowed that some foods, perfectly low in fat, can actually taste good. She saves ordering normal food, food that might not be so dietary, for those times when a man is watching, hoping to come off as a vixen who never gains an ounce. This is the importance of dating for Lisa; without it, she would wither away, barely able to lift a spoonload of sliced carrots.
Lisa and Mirabelle sit outside as usual, under the California sun on a perfect eighty-degree July day.
“How’s your love life?” Lisa knows that her real inquiry is twenty questions away on her list, and she’d better start circling the topic early.
“It’s fine.”
“He doesn’t live here, right?”
“He lives in Seattle.”
“That must be hard.”
“It’s okay, we get to see each other once, sometimes twice a week, sometimes more or less.” Then Mirabelle, oblivious to undercurrents and thinking that Lisa might have an interest outside Rodeo Drive, says, “Have you ever read Idols of Perversity?”
This question passes through Lisa like a cosmic ray: no effect. Mirabelle then does a neat and tricky little analysis of her favorite book while Lisa handles her disinterest by staring in Mirabelle’s face and dreaming of makeup. As Mirabelle winds down, and as her break recedes into the land of lost lunch hours, Lisa pushes hard.
“When do you get to see him next…?”
Mirabelle never, ever would betray any personal information about Ray Porter, even his name, though in this case the fully briefed Lisa already knows it. But in her excitement she does tell Lisa that she will see him next week: “We’re going to the Ruscha opening at Reynaldo Gallery.” Mirabelle assumes Lisa will be there already, as no one who attends anything ever at the Reynaldo Gallery would miss the next event. In a clear instant, Lisa sees herself wrangle Ray away from Mirabelle and, with a simple toss of her lasso, utterly make him hers.
collapse
RAY PORTER’S QUEST FOR THE right woman is not going well because he is living in the wrong eternal city. He is still in the city of his youth, where women in their twenties frolic like bunnies, and speak in high tones, and cajole him and panic him. He still believes that here he will find a china-skinned intellectual who will dazzle him with a wild laugh and a sense of life.
A bridge is being built in his subconscious. The bridge is to span from this eternal city to a very different eternal city. This new city is where his true heart will live, a heart that bears the marks of his experience, that knows how and whom to love. But the bridge is several powerful and painful experiences away from being finished, and right now he sits in his Seattle house with a woman he has no idea he isn’t interested in.
Christie Richards is thirty-five and a fashion designer of some local note. She has a saucy body that given the right astrological moment and an exactly measured dose of Cabernet can arouse Ray’s memory of adolescent backseat conquests. And as Christie sits across from him at his dinner for two, which has been prepared and delivered to the candlelit table by a nearly invisible chef, all the essential ingredients of lust converge on him. As he rotates her body in his mind so he can see it from all sides, Christie drones on about Seattle fashion.
“…but I want windows, because without windows you’re a rack designer. I have an overweight design that sells well, but no store is going to put an overweight design in their window, they want to bury them in the basement…“ And she talks on and on, sometimes mentioning a recognizable fashion name as she continues to drink and pour, drink and pour, finally coming to the dregs of the Cabernet, with Ray, hiding his enthusiasm for getting her steaming drunk, casually opening another bottle and filling her glass.
But by the end of dinner, Christie starts talking with a slur, a big slur, and Ray begins to wonder if he has perhaps shoveled a few too many drinks her way. He takes her outside for some refrigerated Seattle air, which he thinks will do her good. It does her good, but not him, as now she is energized with oxygen and ready to forgo the foreplay, which at this point Ray Porter needs desperately if he is going to do what a man’s gotta do.
She then drags him to his bedroom, which she has been in before, but only on a polite-host guided tour. The lights are already at dim and she kneels down before him and tugs at his belt buckle with the words, “I’m gonna suck your dick.”