Chapter Four
Karen had met Samir on the way to the ladies' room at the Blue Martini in Birmingham.
He said, "I'm Samir." He took her hand and kissed it. "Where do you want to have dinner?"
Karen said, "I'm with someone."
"Now you're with me ." He said it like a guy used to getting what he wanted.
She liked his confidence, thinking he could stop someone, a stranger, and ask her out. She found him attractive, but she was also curious. Who was he? Karen went back to the table and told her date, a stockbroker named Jon Uffelman, that she was leaving. She'd heard enough about economic indicators, the devaluation of the dollar and the risk of deflation. Uffelman was talking to her like he was giving a seminar. It was their first and last date.
He said, "What're you… kidding? We just got here."
She stood up and said, "It wasn't going to work anyway," and walked across the room past the scene makers, up the stairs to the foyer. Samir was standing by the door ready to open it for her, Omar Sharif from Doctor Zhivago, dark hair going gray and a silver mustache.
A car was waiting, a white Mercedes, and a man in a suit was standing at the rear door holding it open. Karen got in and Samir got in next to her, close but he didn't crowd her. They had dinner at the Lark. Karen asked him how he could walk in and get a table at a restaurant that was booked for months in advance.
Samir said, "There must've been a cancellation."
He owned the big Mercedes and had a chauffeur, but he was cool. He made fun of himself. He was in the grocery business. He sold fruit and vegetables and owned a few stores around town, and then it hit her: he was the guy that owned a chain of gourmet markets called Samir's. Karen said, "You're that Samir?"
He said, "I'm a greengrocer, like my father."
That's what Karen liked about him. He was a down-to-earth rich guy with no ego. She liked his accent too, and his deep voice that sounded gentle.
He said, "What about you?"
He was staring at her tan legs, crossed and sticking out of a black miniskirt. "I model," Karen said.
"You mean fashion?"
"Sportswear and swimwear, and I do TV commercials."
"Where would I see you?" Samir said.
"I just did a Chevy spot," Karen said. "I'm driving a red Corvette convertible on the Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu."
"That was you?"
"And a few weeks ago I did a swimwear spread for Lands End," Karen said. "Do you get the catalogue?"
"You think that's the way I dress?" He said it serious, but smiled.
She touched the sleeve of his sport coat. It was custom-made. She could tell by the buttonholes, they were real. One was unbuttoned, the way it was done. "You dress well for a guy who sells fruit and vegetables."
He smiled again.
"How did you get into modeling?"
Karen told him it was a long story that started the night her father was killed. "He was a manufacturer's rep. He sold injection-molded parts, door trim panels and center console assemblies to Chrysler and GM. How do you decide that's what you want to do with your life?"
"It's luck or timing or maybe bad luck," Samir said. "You do what your father did. Or you get a job, get married and get stuck in something. I sell fruit and vegetables. You think I planned it?"
"My dad was driving home after having dinner with a Chrysler purchasing guy," Karen said, "and was hit head-on by a drunk driver, killed instantly at forty-four. I remember him in the kitchen, tying his tie, getting ready, excited because he was sure he was getting a contract for the new X platform cars. With the commission we'd be able to move to a bigger house." She paused and sipped her wine that tasted like butterscotch. Samir's eyes were on her as if he couldn't look anywhere else. "It's strange because when I think about that night, I think of the movie Grease. I was watching it with my mom and sister, Virginia."
Samir said, "Travolta was skinny then with a pompadour."
"He reminded me of my dad, who was still a greaser from high school-slicked-back hair and a black leather jacket. He could've been an extra. Travolta was singing a duet with Olivia Newton- John when the Garden City police came to the door. I remember my mother was hysterical while they were belting out You're the One That I Want.'"
Samir met her gaze and reached for her hand.
"I'm not a big fan of musicals," Karen said.
"Me either."
She didn't tell him about the funeral home, her dad's life told in photographs displayed around the visitation room. Shots of a skinny teenager in a bathing suit, someone squirting water from a hose outside the frame. Her dad in a white tux on his wedding day, smiling, holding a drink, his bow tie hanging from one side of his collar. Her dad posing with his bowling buddies-four dudes decked out in their red King Louie shirts with black trim. In another one, her dad was holding up a center console assembly.
Karen had been a senior at Garden City High at the time. She'd planned to go to Michigan State and major in advertising. It looked like a fun business. She liked TV commercials, the funny offbeat beer spots like the Bud Light spot where the only word of dialogue is "dude." She had $1,700 in the bank, money earned working part- time at Meijer's Thrifty Acres in the toy department, wearing a red vest, making $7.25 an hour.
After her dad died Karen knew she'd have to postpone college for a while and get a job and help support her mom and sister, Virginia. But doing what? Friends had always told her she should model. She had a unique look and a great figure. Karen would stare at herself in the mirror, thinking she didn't look bad. Five seven, a hundred and fifteen, and she was in shape. She was a former twirler and started on the volleyball team.
Rumor had it that a girl in her English class, a tall quiet brunette named Stephanie, was modeling and making a lot of money. Maybe it was true. She was five ten and good-looking, and she drove a BMW. Stephanie, as it turned out, was surprisingly nice and helpful. She knew a photographer who agreed to take some shots of Karen for her comp sheet, and helped arrange interviews at talent agencies around town, and two weeks after graduation Karen was posing for Hudson's fall catalogue.
Samir fixed his kind dark eyes on her, sitting close, a table against the French doors, and touched her arm. They'd been together for maybe an hour and she was relaxed, comfortable with him, like they were old friends.
Over dinner-four courses-Samir told her he'd been married for twenty-three years, divorced for five, the marriage arranged by his father and a friend of his in the village where they lived outside Beirut. He didn't even know the girl, who was only sixteen at the time, and he, twenty.
Karen said, "How can you marry someone you don't know?"
"It was custom, tradition," Samir said. "You didn't have a choice."
"Was she good-looking?"
Samir took a sip of wine, holding it in his mouth as if he was trying to decide.
"Very," Samir said. "I couldn't believe my good fortune. But she didn't speak English and my Arabic was not so good."
"Maybe that was a bonus," Karen said.
Samir smiled at her and said, "She didn't know how to cook, either, and that wasn't a bonus. I said to her one day, what do you know how to do?"
"What did she say?"
"She looked at me and said, 'I know how to shop.'" He finished his wine, picked up the bottle, poured some in her glass first and then his own.
"Girls are the same everywhere, huh?" Karen said.