Читать книгу Book Lover - Karen Mack - Страница 7

“It is with books as with men; a very

small number play a great part.”

∼ Voltaire (1694–1778) ∼

Normally in my neighborhood it’s gridlock at this hour. There are five exclusive private schools within a four-block radius and Sunset Boulevard is jammed with Range Rovers, BMWs, Mercedeses, and Hummers, many sporting vanity license plates that say things like “US2BHIS.” In between, people in exercise clothes and leather Pumas hang out in the local Starbucks, power walk, bike along San Vicente Boulevard’s tree-lined bike path, or shop in specialized boutiques that sell hundred-dollar tie-dyed T-shirts. Palmer used to marvel at the large numbers of people who spend their days with no visible means of support. “We could be in Florida,” he said, “except nobody’s old.”

I’m heading home when I get a second wind and decide to take a slight detour. It’s one of those spur-of-the-moment things that you can’t seem to explain. Especially after what can only be described as a seriously awkward moment. No. Inept would be a better word. I think about what I said to Fred and then what I should have said. Then I go over it again in a different scenario. It turns over and over in my mind like an annoying melody that I can’t get out of my head. First I say this, then he says that. Oh, this is so ludicrous I have to stop. It’s a comment on my state of mind that I’m even analyzing this at all.

So, instead, here I am, sitting in my car like an undercover agent, while I wait for Palmer, my second husband, to emerge from the gated house that he and I shared for five years. This was our oasis, at least for a while. The house is one of those hybrid architectural buildings reminiscent of Old Hollywood. Part Italian villa, part Spanish hacienda. When we first moved in, I had it painted a faded terra-cotta, which is just now starting to look authentic. The driveway is lush with impatiens and lined with the requisite palm trees. I park on the narrow windy road in front of our house, my car wedged between a crisp navy van advertising Bel Air Plumbing and a battered wooden gardener’s truck. In Bel Air, you’re either a guest and you’re parked inside the gates, or you’re service personnel and you’re outside the gates, an L.A. version of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Then there’s that in-between category: personal trainers, yoga instructors, dog walkers, and masseuses. These people are often privy to the codes of their clients’ alarm systems and a few end up living gratis in the guesthouse. I remember right before I moved out last year, my neighbor’s masseuse, a rather sensitive young man named Roy, was held up at gunpoint by the now-infamous Bel Air Burglar as he entered their gate. Their dog, an imported German shepherd, sat immobile on his bed as the robbery was taking place. The dog was trained in Frankfurt and only understood commands like sitzen and attacke!

I reach behind me and grab one of the six books I had thrown into the car. One thing I’m glad about: I’m never bored and I never mind waiting—anywhere. Unless, of course, I’ve forgotten my book, in which case I just run off and buy another one. I read at the DMV, in movie lines, in bank teller lines, or when the shuttle from L.A. to San Francisco is four hours late. Layovers in unfamiliar airports are a treat, as are jury notices that arrive at my home and give me license to sit around and read all day, knowing that I’m doing my civic duty. On my last jury duty, I was rejected from two trials, one because I told the judge in voir dire that I thought the defendant, a skinhead with tattoos, looked guilty, and the other because the attorneys got a load of the hostile jury pool and settled the case. That day, I actually got to finish Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.

What to read now? Maybe Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women. A quote on the back talks about the dark side of womanhood. Maybe something lighter. How about Kate Braverman’s Lithium for Medea? Oh god, forget it. This is even more depressing. A woman who has a terrible relationship with her mother as well as every man in her life.

I burrow through the trunk of my fifteen-year-old cobalt-blue Mercedes 280, a graduation gift from my father. It is still a lovely old coach with faulty wiring and a broken windshield wiper that I’ve been meaning to fix for the last five years. Every time it rains, which isn’t very often, I vow to take the thing in and then immediately lose interest when the sun comes out.

It’s a sad commentary that I’ve been with my car longer than any man in my life. I’m not one of those people who affectionately bestows a name upon their car, but I can understand the inclination to do so.

The gates to the long sloping driveway slowly begin to open and I dive behind my car as a grim-looking plumber carrying his toolbox emerges. We were always having trouble with the water system, which belched greenish-looking water no matter how many experts we called in. I used to joke that our house was West L.A.’s version of the Love Canal. I do have some sense of pleasure that this problem has not been resolved and that my replacement will have to deal with the endless stream of aeroscopic engineers, construction supervisors, and plumbers.

Palmer is now living with an elegant, beautifully put-together woman named Kimberly, who he thinks will be the next domestic diva. She first came to Palmer for legal advice regarding a line of cookware she wanted to sell on the Home Shopping Network. Already the host of a cheery little show on the Food Network, she had just signed a multimedia deal that included her own magazine. She uses phrases on the air such as “Ladies, we can make our families happy without working our tushies off,” and includes tricks like turning old bed linens into junky tablecloths.

Last year, the top job at Sony Pictures opened up, and in a surprise move, the Sony brass named Palmer to replace the retiring studio head. His latest string of movies has been financially successful, and now he has a house on the Vineyard, another in Cabo, and I see his name on the letterhead of a dozen charities.

I’ve spent the last year trying to figure out how I feel about all this. I thought back to the times when I’d toss and turn all night worrying about something, and in the morning, when I’d wake up bleary-eyed and conflicted, he’d get that look on his face and effortlessly work it all out. There was this calm brilliance about him that had nothing to do with money. I think I loved him. I certainly admired him. But not for his success. That just seemed to get in the way.

One day, shortly before the breakup, I found him arranging his neckties according to color and pattern. He used to collect Hermes ties with their endless whimsical micro patterns—sailboats, penguins, golf clubs, whales, baseball bats, hot air balloons, beach umbrellas, trotters, fox hunters, Labradors, and so on, ad nauseam. I scanned the array of expensive patterned silks that covered the entire king-size bed—a sea of ties. “You must have five hundred of these, and look at them,” I said with disdain, “they all look alike. Wait! You’re missing the one with the dollar bills all over it.”

He picked up a tie and threw it at me. “How come you’re always such a downer, Dora?” That’s me, Dora the Downer.

For a while, Palmer and I tried the marriage counselor route. I remember the therapist took a look at us and said, “Couples shouldn’t divorce unless one of you clearly doesn’t like the other.” It was good advice and I went with it for a while, but eventually he found solace in his work and his new girlfriend. A friend of mine says that I have deficient wiring because I’ve never been dumped. What she doesn’t realize is this: I always manage to extricate myself first, before things get too dramatic. It’s easier that way. But now I’m thinking maybe I should have tried harder. Oh god, it’s all so confusing. I do wish him well, although it wouldn’t make me unhappy if his next movie is skewered by the critics and flops at the box office. No. I don’t mean that.