the weekend
IT IS 9 A.M., AND for the second time that morning Mirabelle is awake. The first time was two hours earlier when Jeremy slipped out, giving her a kiss good-bye that was so formal it might as well have been wearing a tuxedo. She didn’t take it badly because, well, she couldn’t afford to. She also is glad he’s gone, not looking forward to the awkward task of getting to know a man she’s already slept with. A little eye of sunlight forms on her bed and inches its way across her bedspread. She gets up, mixes her Serzone into a glass of orange juice, and drinks it down as though it were a quick vodka tonic, fortifying herself for the weekend.
Weekends can be dangerous for someone of Mirabelle’s fragility. One little slipup in scheduling and she can end up staring at eighteen hours of television. That’s why she joined a volunteer organization that goes out and builds and repairs houses for the disadvantaged, a kind of community cleanup operation, called Habitat for Humanity. This takes care of the day. Saturday night usually offers a spontaneous get-together with the other Habitat workers in a nearby bar. If that doesn’t happen, which this night it doesn’t, Mirabelle is not afraid to go to a local bar alone, which this night she does, where she might run into someone she knows or nurse a drink and listen to the local band. As she sits in a booth and checks the amplifiers for Jeremy’s signature stencil, it never occurs to her to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred. She never feels sorry for herself, except when the overpowering chemistry of depression inundates her and leaves her helpless. She moved from Vermont hoping to begin her life, and now she is stranded in the vast openness of L.A. She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is some omniscient voice to illuminate and spotlight her, and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one over here, the one sitting in the bar by herself, and then to find her counterpart and bring him to her.
But that night, the voice does not come, and she quietly folds herself up and leaves the bar.
The voice is to come on Tuesday.
monday
MIRABELLE AWAKES TO A CRISP L.A. day with an ice blue chill in the air. The view from her apartment is of both mountains and sea, but she can see it only by peering around her front door. She feeds the cats, drinks her potion, and puts on her best underwear – although it is unlikely anyone will see it today, unless someone bursts in on her in a changing room. She had a nice day on Sunday because her friends Loki and Del Rey finally called back and invited her to brunch at one of the outdoor cafés on Western. They gossiped and talked, about the men in their lives, about who is gay and who isn’t, about who is a coke head and who is promiscuous, and Mirabelle regaled them with the Jeremy story. Loki and Del Rey, who were obviously named by parents who thought they would never not be infants, told similar stories and the three of them cried with laughter. This buoyed Mirabelle, as it made her feel normal, like one of the girls. But when she went home that night, she wondered if she had betrayed Jeremy just a little, as something in her believed that he would not have told about their exploits over lunch with the guys. This little thought was a tiny foundation for Jeremy’s tiny redemption, and it made part of her like him, if only just a little bit.
The day at Neiman’s plods along, made extra viscous by the promise of a fun evening with the girls. It is Art Walk night in Los Angeles, when the town’s galleries stay open and offer free “wine” in plastic cups. Most of the local artists will be spotted tonight at one gallery or another. Mirabelle’s own talent for drawing makes her feel comfortable and confident in this group, and having recently placed several of her recent works with a local gallery makes her feel that she is an equal.
Finally, six o’clock. Tonight’s walk past cosmetics and perfumes has special fascination for Mirabelle. Being Monday, there are no customers and the she-clerks are idle. Mirabelle notices that when they are in motion, these perfume nymphs look breezy and alive, but when they are still, their faces become vacuous and frozen, like the Easter Island of the Barbie Dolls. She then retrieves her truck from the dungeon of the parking garage, slams it into fourth, does her thing down Beverly Boulevard, and is home in nineteen minutes.
At eight minutes after seven, she hits the Bentley Gallery on Robertson where she is to meet Loki and Del Rey. The joint is not jumping but at least it has enough people in it so everyone is forced to raise his voice, giving the impression of an event. Mirabelle wears her tight maroon knee-length skirt over low heels and a smart white sweater that sets off her blunt-cut nut-brown hair. Loki and Del Rey aren’t there yet, and Mirabelle has the annoying thought that they might not show. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d left her stranded. As Mirabelle never shows her distress, it is assumed she is fine in all circumstances and Loki and Del Rey never figure that their failure to show is really a thoughtless ditching. She gets a plastic cup of wine and does the thing she always does at these openings, something so odd that it sets her apart from all the others. She looks at the paintings. It is a perfect disguise. Holding the wine dictates her posture so she doesn’t have to think about where to put her hands, and the pictures on the walls give her something to focus on while she stands sentry for Loki and Del Rey.
Twenty minutes later, the two women appear, snag Mirabelle, and head two blocks up to Fire, an avant-garde gallery – or at least one that thinks it is. This opening has more of the party atmosphere that everyone is looking for, and some of the revelers have even spilled out onto the street. For Loki and Del Rey, this is the warm-up party for their final landing spot, the Reynaldo Gallery. The Reynaldo Gallery, representing the big money artists, is set in the heart of Beverly Hills and needs the prettiest girls and the most relevant people to populate its openings. After getting enough alcohol at the Fire Gallery to hold them they know the bar at Reynaldo’s will be impossible they drive into Beverly Hills, park and lock, and cross Santa Monica Boulevard to the gallery. They push their way in and finally slink through the crowd and into the heart of the matter. The party needs a volume control but there isn’t one, and everyone would be straining to hear each other except they are all talking simultaneously. Loki and Del Rey decide to brave the tumult at the bar, and at first Mirabelle hangs loosely by them, but eventually the chaos separates them and she finds herself in the vacant narrow rim that circles the room between the crowd and the paintings. Only this time she is less intent on the pictures and more intent on who and what is going on in the room. In a sea of black dresses, she is the only one wearing any color, and she is the only one wearing almost no makeup, including the men. Her eyes scan the room and spot several celebrities dressed in the latest nomad/wanderer fashion and several very handsome men who have learned to give off the seductive impression that they would be consummate fathers.
One in particular attracts her, one who looks as though he does not know he is handsome, who looks slightly lost and like an actual working artist, whom she dubs the Artist/Hero. She sees him notice her staring, so she skillfully moves her eyes away, where she sees the absolute opposite of his pleasure-giving radiance. It is Lisa. Lisa is one of the cosmetics girls at Neiman’s, and Mirabelle can’t help but recoil. What is she doing here? This girl does not belong at an art opening. She is on Mirabelle’s turf, where an eked-out high school diploma is just not enough. But Lisa holds her own, and here’s why. Lisa, thirty-two, can be counted among the very beautiful. She has pale red hair that hangs in soft ringlets against skin that has never seen the sun. She is slender and oval faced, with shapely legs that pin themselves into a pair of provocative high heels. Her breasts, though augmented, rise above the line of her dress and seem to beckon, successfully keeping the secret of their artificiality. She appears sunny, a quality that Mirabelle can call upon only for special occasions.