“Can you stay for dinner?” Lucas asked.
“Another time. I’m going to see Celeste tonight.”
“Hah!” he barked. “But good luck trying.”
I smiled, but I felt a sudden torque. I counted off the people on the old indictment with Emily.
“Lucas,” I said, interrupting a game of patty cake. “There’s a great big world out there, with wrongs to right in every corner. How did so many of you end up in L.A.?”
“Sometimes, I think they’se poison in th’ life in a big city. The flowers won’t grow there… “
“I’m supposed to recognize that, right? Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger, maybe.”
“Mr. Dooley. 1892.”
“If it was 1892, he wasn’t talking about Los Angeles,” I said. “What’s the point?”
“It’s simple. If you’re going to make flowers grow, then go where the sun shines.”
Chapter Twelve
Emily’s apartment had a cold, unused feeling. First thing, I switched on all the lights and turned up the radiator. Mrs. Lim had tidied up from the night before.
For the services at La Placita, Max had taken the field jacket from the bag of clothes I had carried home from the hospital. The rest of the stuff, jeans, shirt, underwear, Mrs. Lim had rinsed out and hung up to dry. The sweats I had borrowed to wear while my own things dried were neatly folded on top of the dresser.
I took off the jeans I had worn all day and slipped into the sweats again. I was feeling the lack of sleep and had begun to notice that I hadn’t eaten all day. Without much optimism, I headed for the kitchen to see what I could find.
Mrs. Lim, bless her, had considerately laid out tea-making things for me on the kitchen counter. Silently, I apologized for any less-than-kind thoughts I had ever entertained about her.
I turned on the fire under the kettle and looked in the refrigerator for something to eat, knowing how bleak the prospects were. Again, I had underestimated Mrs. Lim. Sitting next to a block of tofu, I found a beautiful, thick, chicken sandwich with sliced tomatoes on the side.
I took Vivaldi off the CD, put in Phil Collins, and turned up the volume. Sitting on the floor with my back against the sofa, I ate the sandwich and washed it down with hot tea. If the room had been warmer, I would have fallen asleep right where I sat, with crumbs on my lap and an empty cup in my hand.
But I was cold and grubby. I had a lot of repair work to do before I confronted Celeste Baldwin Smith at the Century Plaza.
I went into the bathroom, stripped, and stood under a hot shower for longer than is kosher in drought-stricken California. I shampooed my hair with Emily’s shampoo, shaved my legs with her razor, wrapped myself in her terry robe when I got out. It felt very strange to be there, handling her things, without hearing Em rattling around in the next room or popping in and out to talk to me. I kept hearing noises that I knew existed only in my memory. It was spooky to be there alone, but it was also reassuring to be among her ordinary, private little essentials.
The many dramatic events of our lives had, I think, overshadowed my recollection of the texture of our everyday routines. I regretted that. Emily was more than the radical peacenik, more than the sainted doctor. She could be incredibly funny. She sang off-key in the shower and left wet towels and dirty clothes all over the bathroom. On the few occasions when I had come to stay with her, or her with me, she would come into the bath-room while I bathed, sit on the toilet lid and talk to me. Generally with a glass of wine in her hand.
Emily could be an incorrigible tease. She often made me furious. I thought about those times, too, because I needed to re-member everything about her. I dabbed on some of her L’Air du Temps and breathed in her scent from my skin.
Emily was six feet tall. She had bought her robe at a men’s big-and-tall shop, the only place she could find one to reach her ankles. I had put on her robe because it was all there was other than a skimpy bath towel. The robe was so big that I kept trip-ping over the hem while I blew my hair dry and used her makeup to correct a night without sleep. The thing was a nuisance. I was tired and my fuse was very short. By the time I had finished with the bathroom routine, I was plain old cranky.
I didn’t expect Garth with my clothes from Desert Mode for another couple of hours. So I went to the kitchen, opened Emily’s bottle of celebratory Chardonnay, and poured myself a glass. We had already shared so much, why not this?
I turned on the television and sat down on the sofa with my glass of wine to watch the evening news. The Ken and Barbie news team told me nothing that I didn’t already know: Emily was being moved to Stanford, there was a new rainstorm on its way down the coast, Aleda had been bailed out and was in seclusion. The single new story was about the Vice President’s official Christmas card going out in the mail with an embarrassing typo. I don’t remember what the typo was, because I heard it just as I drifted off to sleep.
Someone banging on the apartment door interrupted a dream I was having about swimming in a pool with no water. It all made perfect sense, until I woke up. Disoriented, I staggered through the apartment in the direction of the knocking and opened the door.
“Jesus, Maggie,” Garth said, looking me over. In his perfect silk tux, he looked like the ornament from the top of a wedding cake. “I thought we had a date.”
I was a mess, hair and makeup undone, the nubbly weave of the couch upholstery pressed into one cheek. I took the garment bag Garth carried and waved him in.
“There’s wine in the kitchen,” I said. I won’t be long.”
“Take your time, honey. Take your time. Party starts at eight. We don’t want to get there too early or too sober.
“What time is it now?”
“Eight-fifteen.”
“I don’t want to miss Celeste. What if she decides to go home early?”
“She won’t. It’s her bash.”
“Just the same.” I tripped over the robe and he caught me by the elbow.
“How much of that wine have you had?” he asked, laughing.
“Obviously, not enough. Go away. I’ll only be five minutes.”
My hands were filled with the long garment bag, but I managed to gather up enough of the robe’s hem to stumble into Em’s walk-in closet. I spent some time repairing the hair and face, in essence girding my loins before I braved a look at the creation Desert Mode had sent me. At last, I pulled the zipper on the garment bag.
I had been right: sequins and shoulder pads. That is, one shoulder pad. The basic dress was a slinky, black-sequined tube that covered one arm to the wrist and left the other one bare, as well as a good part of the chest. A massive red-sequin poinsettia bloomed atop the single shoulder and leafed across the cleavage. The flower’s stem was a spangley green-and-silver vine down the front of the dress, ending where the slit in the skirt began, about five inches below my crotch.
I didn’t know whether I could walk in the thing, much less sit. This confection was almost funny to me, whose only after-five attire is a well-cut black-silk suit I bought on sale at Saks six years ago. The suit looks great and no one ever remembers it. If it didn’t get wrinkled in a suitcase, it would be perfect.
There was a fur coat in the bag. I hung it up and intended to leave it behind. A paper sack in the bottom of the garment bag held the rest of the costume essentials: three-inch silver sandals, metallic silver hose, underwear, accessories. I started with the strapless bra. It was too small around the back, and too big up front, so I tossed it aside and did without a bra. Everything else fit beautifully, to use beautifully loosely.
The piece de resistance was a pair of crystal earrings long enough to dust the top of my single bare shoulder.
When I was in full regalia, I took a long look in the mirror on the back of the closet door. As a whole, it was okay, certainly not to my taste, but what the hell? I have worn jungle fatigues in El Salvador, a chador in Iran, Laura Ashley in England, medium gray on Wall Street, all to blend into the environment. Reminding myself that this rig was only another form of camouflage, I opened the closet door and slinked out to dazzle Garth.