Eye to Eye Read online

  Ronnie gives me her patented eyebrow raise.

  “Seriously. Desert island. Ryan Seacrest and Ian. With whose nubile young body would you rather wile away the afternoons. And no booze. Just ass. Whose do you pick?”

  “I don’t know, Doris. Let’s make it challenging. You’re on a desert island—Maxwell or Zach? The ass you know, or grab-bag ass?”

  “Silly woman,” I say, looking for a star of which I can be proud. Finally, I stumble on Mary Tyler Moore. “Who’s to say that it’s grab-bag ass. It might well be ass that has been both grabbed and bagged.”

  “Nothing like an informed shopper.”

  We’re close to the actual theater by now. A theater I know well from Academy Awards shows on television and old footage of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell vamping it up goddess-style even with hands coated in cement. Now that is the glamour for which I came to Hollywood.

  “You know how you feel about talking about Earl and Ph.D.’s and the future and teaching Ian and all that? You know how I felt wearing my space shoes on the soul train last night? Take that level of discomfort, and that’s the pit I have in my stomach when I think about choosing wrong. And it’s like I’m paralyzed. Like there’s a right choice to make, and I’ll only figure out what it is when I don’t make it.”

  Ronnie and I push our way through a crowd of tourists who look straight from Langsdale. They’re all ooohing and aaahhhing over Mel Gibson’s tiny little paw prints.

  “Remember that Lucy episode where Lucy’s hands fit in all the different imprints, and Ethel’s only come close to fitting Trigger’s?” Ronnie bends over Ava Gardner’s square, her hands expanding well outside their slender outline. “I think I’m more of an Ethel than a Lucy.”

  I move from square to square, imagining what it was like to be Marilyn, or standing next to Gary Cooper when he signed off. “Look, I say. I think I fit Sylvester Stallone. How totally tragic.”

  “Man hands,” Ronnie says. “Better put that in your Internet profile.”

  “Rocky’s hands,” I say. “It could have some homoerotic fascination for a slightly repressed yet still-straight jock. Don’t kid yourself, m’dear. There is something for evvveryone on ye olde Internet.”

  One of the old fellows from the Langsdale-esque group, whose mother clearly never taught him that it was rude to eavesdrop, gives me a knowing nod. For all I know, he might actually have seen my profile on the Internet. Deeply, deeply terrifying.

  “Earl wants us to do karaoke tonight. You game?” Ronnie asks. “Barragans, this Mexican joint down the street, is Earl’s new favorite L.A. stomping ground. He wants to show it off. Don’t break his heart.”

  “It’s not his heart I’m worried about,” I say. “You ever heard me sing?”

  “Noooooo.”

  “With good reason. But it’s not like I know anyone in L.A. And if it makes your fellah happy, who am I to rain on his parade.”

  “Indeed,” Ronnie says.

  Before returning to the apartment, Ronnie and I pit stop at a purely functional Internet café. Ronnie’s computer is on the fritz again, and I am far too paranoid to be toting mine around, residual fear from hearing urban legends of disappearing laptops with non-backed-up dissertations. I weigh my desire to check e-mail against my irrational paranoia of someone taking my password, and sign on to a computer that looks like Fred Flintstone hocked it when the new models hit Bedrock.

  “Classy,” I say to Ronnie.

  “Welcome to poverty. Enjoy your stay.”

  I’m actually nervous as I check my e-mail, mostly because having violated so very many of the dating commandments early in the evening, I violated the remaining few about playing hard to get, not putting out on the first date, and waiting for him to contact you. I dropped a “had a groovy time, am now going out of town” note as a last-minute gesture of self-sabotage before heading to the airport. So I’m curious, of course, as to whether the dating laws are right, or if one can, in fact, defy the universe and reap an occasional reward.

  And as the universe so cruelly and frequently answers: maybe, maybe not.

  Maxwell has, indeed, written back, but it’s beyond cursory and doesn’t really allude to a definitive future date. The requisite, “I enjoyed meeting you, too. Travel safely. Peace.” I resist the urge to send a long e-mail asking how Maggie Mae is holding up, and whether he’s binging on kalebone to make it through the night without me. One cannot be one’s version of funny with someone who might not even think that you are funny. Once upon a time, I might have moped slightly about the e-mail, but today I actually feel detached in that surreal way that makes Maxwell more like a character in some sitcom version of my life, not a man I actually considered a potential short- or long-term partner.

  “Lame,” I say to Ronnie. “That desert island question is looking easier by the minute.”

  The e-mail that I most dread opening has the subject line as, “CLASS YESTERDAY” and is sent from none other than HRH Paige Prentiss, who probably wants to pass down another order or two from on high. I debate letting her ruin my day, but curiosity gets the better of me.

  Dear Dr. Weatherall—

  I would like to talk to you about class the other week. Your office hours say that you are out of town on business. Is there a time that I can reach you when you return? Thanks.

  Typically cryptic little princess. One of the downsides of teaching is that it quintuples your volume of “I need to talk to you about something, but I’m not going to say what,” conversations, which are up there on my list of things I love with black jelly beans, parsnips and root canals. For a solid week after her mother’s visit, Paige refused to speak in class. And because I am a masochist, I even noted that her posts on the “Dr. Weatherall is a Liberal Bitchess” Web site had subsided. However, I have watched enough horror in my life to know that just when you think the Freddie, Jason or Hannibal of your life is down for the count, there’s always the chance that they might jump out of a closet, or show up at the door when you very least suspect it. The devil, in my life, does in fact wear Prada.

  “Almost finished?” Ronnie asks.

  “You know when you were talking crazy about that whole back for the Ph.D. thing? Well, you should think long and hard about it. It doesn’t remove the Ians from your life, it simply triples their number and gives them institutional channels by which to torture you. Just some food for thought.”

  “So long as it provides food proper of the nonegg variety, tell the little monsters to have at it.”

  On the way home, traffic has slowed from “jogger” to “glacial.” I’m starting to get my bearings, and wondering what every visitor to L.A. must wonder: how any sane human being ever survives this traffic. Atlanta is no walk in the park, not by a long shot, but this is positively masochistic. My cell phone keeps cutting out, but I leave Toni a message asking if she’s talked to Tino. For just a moment, having seen how hard Ronnie and Earl are struggling, I admit how lucky I am at this juncture in my life. I may not have long-term friends, but I do have kind acquaintances. And if the Paiges of my life, or the smug Asas, or the indifferent Maxwells occasionally get me down, Ronnie is right to point out that at least I go home to a sweet apartment with a fixed computer and yuppie snack food in the refrigerator.

  “This is insane,” Ronnie says. “We’ve moved approximately two city blocks in the past ten minutes.”

  “But there’s Mexican food at the end of the rainbow. And Earl behind a microphone. I miss the way he used to sing at the Saloon.”

  Earl used to serenade Ronnie back at the bar in Langsdale, changing the words to whatever song was on the radio to some rhyme-free bluegrass yodel like, “When you gonna ride my hooooooog, city gaaaaaaal,” or “L.A. woman, ride away with meeeeeeee.” Ronnie always put her hands over her ears, but deep down she liked it. And Zach would shake his head when I asked why he never sang to me like that.

  “You on a bike?” he’d say. “That’s a laugh. Pardon me if I don’t know any diddies about you
riding off into the sunset after you’ve finished the latest eBay auction for your twelve thousandth pair of shoes. But seriously, I’ll be thinking about it.”

  I looked out the window at a pair of half-naked blondes teetering down the street in too-high slingback heels, and I knew exactly why Ronnie was thinking about leaving.

  “You know any car games?” I ask. “This is worse than traveling cross-country.”

  “Tell me about it. On a normal road we could have been in Vegas by now.”

  Ronnie fiddles with the radio, and my cell phone rings.

  “You mind if I take this?” I ask. “It might be Toni.”

  “No problem,” Ronnie says, turning the volume down slightly.

  “Doris?” I hear a man’s faraway voice through the static, “Doris? Where are you?”

  “L.A.,” I say. “Who is this?”

  “Zach. What are you doing in L.A.? Are you with Ronnie?”

  “I am,” I say, mouthing the word “Zach,” to Ronnie when she looks over. “She says hello.”

  “Did you tell me you were going to L.A.? Must have slipped my mind.”

  I think of saying something snippy about teenager girls causing brain-rot, but bite my wicked tongue.

  “I won’t keep you,” he says, “but I wanted to put this thing in the mail to you about the opening of the theater. We’re shooting for December, but I don’t have your address.”

  It’s a good thing I’m biting my tongue because the following thoughts are vying for first place in racing from my mouth: Why, why, why would anyone EVER open a theater in DECEMBER, when you can’t even walk to your driveway because of the snow in Langsdale, when all the little ticket-buying children of the corn are heading home for the holidays? And THEN I’m thinking YOU DIDN’T EVEN KEEP MY ADDRESS, YOU ASSHOLE! But since I am in some form of Zen, pre-decision-making mode, and I know Zach well enough to know that this is, in fact, his anemic version of effort, I do what my mother and kindergarten teachers once taught me: I say nothing at all.

  “Doris?”

  “Bad reception. I sent you my address, ages ago. Twice, even.”

  “Well, I can’t find it. And I’d really like for you to come. I checked your school calendar online, and the opening is after you’re done with exams, before the holidays, so if you want to, I’m hoping you can squeeze it in. I’m even screening What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in your honor.”

  And I know I’m just being pissy because I say, “Thanks a lot. Why? Because you think I’m some kind of hag so you’re starting with a hagfest in my honor? I’ll be sure to block out the dates.” About halfway through I stop saying it bitchy and start laughing. Zach laughs, too, because he’s the kind of guy to whom you can say “hag” without his thinking “breakup.”

  “That’s exactly right, Doris, and you can tell your cohag that I’d love to see her and Earl there, as well. I’ll save you seats front and center and you can recite every word.”

  “Which, of course, we know from our years in hag school.”

  “Naturally.” He sounds like he’s smoking, and I feel a little worried for him. Zach may date a youngster, but he’s not the sort made happy by just anyone. No, it takes a special breed of faux hag to keep him on his toes. “It’s not the same without you two here, but have fun tearing up the town, and say hi to Earl.”

  “Okay. Can do. I’m down to a bar, but I’ll call you when I’m back in Atlanta.”

  “Miss you,” he says. “Really.”

  And then the phone cuts out.

  There must be some mystical force at work in California that turns people healthy before it turns them homeless and or overcoiffed and or skeletal. Like in vampire movies when the victim is first bit and looks eroto-ravenous, rather than simply corpselike. Whichever force it is, and however tired he may be at the end of the day, Earl looks fabulous. He and Ronnie have both dropped a bit of weight from the I’ll-be-rich-in-my-next-lifetime diet, but underneath Earl’s teddy-bear exterior is a clearly defined set of muscles and abs that, while not washboard, are hardly the doughy mass I’ve come to expect on myself, or even Zach. His hair has lightened a bit, and Ronnie is still bitching about the fact that Katie, the nymphet with whom he works, convinced him to wear tighter T-shirts for bigger tips from women and men. And while I completely understand Ronnie’s territoriality, I have to say that Earl looks hot.

  But if his exterior has morphed, the Earl I remember is still the one who greets us at the door, spatula in one hand and the other giving me a half hug, then squeezing Ronnie on the arse.

  “You ladies have a good afternoon?” He stares at Ronnie a little longer, searching her face. She walks over to him and kisses him softly, holding his hand. It looks like a makeup kiss to me, but for what, I don’t know.

  “Mellow,” I reply. “We’re conserving our energy for karaoke. And fictional shopping with our fictional money tomorrow. I have a whole pretend L.A. life now, with imaginary Chanel sunglasses, an imaginary fake tan and an imaginary tight little ass. If only I could move out here and live the dream.”

  Earl gestures us into the kitchen, where he’s been slaving over a hot stove, grilling shrimp in the pan. Huge, elegant, expensive shrimp. It’s one of those “Gift of the Magi” moments where I wish that I could make the meal disappear and give Ronnie and Earl back whatever portion of their income went into making my evening special.

  “I figured you’d had enough of the steak with Bita,” he said. “We’ll load up on dinner here so we can stick to drinking at karaoke. Get yourself ready, Doris, because they make one mean margarita.”

  “Mmm,” I say, my eyes glazing over only slightly. “I can’t wait to get good and toasted. That’s the thing about Atlanta, it’s destroyed my tolerance. I have to drive myself everywhere, and one does not drink and drive on the freeways. It’s not like Langsdale where you could sort of fake it down the back roads. I’m practically a teetotaler these days.”

  Ronnie frowns. “So that would explain your evening with Maxwell?”

  “Maxwell?” Earl asks, the “tsk tsk” in his voice barely masked. “What happened to Zach?”

  I give my best vacant Hollywood answer. “He says ‘hi.’” Earl leaves it and I go back to Ronnie’s question.

  “Okay, so there was that little glitch. Let’s not talk about Atlanta. I go back soon enough, and I’m so enjoying being around you both. Even if you are morphing into scary ‘beautiful people,’ and I may be reduced to eating pork products and ice cream all alone by my next visit.”

  “Not likely,” Ronnie says. “As soon as I get that check from Burning Spear, I am never, ever touching an egg again. Not even on Easter.”

  We eat dinner on the small patio behind the apartment, and even if Ronnie and Earl are living on the cheap, the view from outside is both free and beautiful. I wonder how it is that L.A. gets such a bad rap, when as much as I love New York, there aren’t any vistas quite like this, not available to the underemployed, at any rate.

  “Look,” Earl says, as if reading my mind, “smog finally lifted.”

  After dinner, we head over to the Mexican dive bar. In some ways, it’s an L.A. equivalent of the Saloon: unpretentious surroundings, cheap liquor, sauced clientele. However, you can’t miss that this is L.A. Every other song is some heartfelt Mexican ballad, sung in Spanish, blending seamlessly into the tragic renderings of Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash. Tragic largely in that they’re sung by hipsters who no doubt discovered Johnny from his American Recordings and own At Folsom Prison in a strictly ironic manner.

  “I love this place,” I say to Ronnie. “We don’t even have to sing. It’s great just watching.”

  “Nice try, Doris,” Earl winks at me. “But I’ve already signed you and Ronnie up.”

  Earl changed into a fitted black T-shirt and equally fitted jeans. When he saunters up the bar to get the songbook, I notice that Ronnie isn’t the only one checking him out. In fact, as he was standing at the bar, a slight, blond woman sidled up beside him and gave his lef
t butt-cheek a firm squeeze. And much to my surprise, instead of telling her to mind her own person, Earl hugs the girl.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I ask.

  “Every day of my life,” Ronnie replies. “That’s Katie. If you look her up in the dictionary, the second definition is ‘obvious’ and the third is ‘really, really obvious.’ She once had the nerve to tell me that she and Earl had some inside joke that involved her hands on his ass. I can only guess it involves Earl showing her what one looks like, since she clearly doesn’t eat enough to have one herself. Earl says he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I said that as long as the punch line doesn’t involve his pants below his knees, to suit himself.” She shoves a chip in her mouth and chews it like a robot.

  I can’t believe that Ronnie is being so calm. It’s either a manifestation of extreme security or defeat. I, however, am racked with sympathetic paranoia.

  “Okay. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if that was Zach, I would like seriously be thinking of murdering both of them. What is the matter with that girl? And not to be the stunningly huge bitch that we both know I can be, but she’s not even that cute, especially in this town. She’s clearly a C-list kind of blonde.”

  “Which is why I pay her no mind.”

  Earl returns to the table with drinks for us and Katie trailing behind him.

  “Doris,” he says. “This is Katie.”

  She barely looks in my direction.

  “Hey, Doris,” she says, then gesturing in a cutesy half-wave, “Hey, Rhonda.”

  Ronnie takes a loooooooong sip from her glass. I detect the faintest smell of blood diffusing through the proverbial waters, but Katie continues, “I’m begging Earl to sing one of those sweet country songs. He’s so funny. I tell him he’s like that Uncle Jesse guy in the Dukes of Hazzard movie. The singer.”

  Now she’s starting to piss me off.