mouth while glancing at the condoms he might be purchasing had he not expressed his eagerness to hang with Rodrigo. What is he thinking? Maricela is young enough to be his daughter. Overman pulls a wad of cash out of his wallet and checks his look in the mirror behind the register. He determines it best to lose the tie and ballpoint pen before knocking on Maricela’s door.
The Mercedes fits neatly into a space in front of Le Monde Garden Apartments on billboard-infested DeSoto Avenue. Despite its location on a busy, ugly thoroughfare, Overman can’t help but notice how much nicer the place is than his. And Maricela’s just a receptionist. With no alimony or child support, he reminds himself. He works his way over to the apartment buzzer. 303. Flores. No boyfriend’s last name. She lives there alone. Promising, unless the boyfriend is some sort of professional freeloader. Overman presses the buzzer.
“Who is it?” bellows the ominous voice that could only belong to the imposing Rodrigo.
“Hi there. It’s Ira. Ira Overman. From Steinbaum Mercedes.”
“Who the fuck is Ira Overman?” he hears the boyfriend ask.
“One of our salesmen,” Maricela says. “I told you. We’re having wine with him.”
“I ain’t havin’ wine with no fuckin’ salesman—”
“Come on up.” Maricela cheerily buzzes him in.
Overman considers making a run for it, but it’s too late. Maricela has stuck her head out the window.
“I’m glad you came, Ira.”
“Me, too.” I am so fucked right now, he thinks, sorry he ever agreed to such foolishness. “Are you sure this is okay?” he asks. “’Cause I’ve got a million things to catch up on at home.”
“Name one,” Maricela snaps.
She’s got him. Even if he could think of something it would sound ridiculously phony.
“I suppose I could stay a little while.” Overman takes the longest three-floor elevator ride of his life. He is expecting that when the door opens, he will find himself face to face with Rodrigo and a machete. But what he sees instead is Maricela smiling at him in a tight black tank top and low-rise jeans that expose a stomach so flat there is nothing left to crunch.
“Hi.” She gives him a kiss on the cheek and a full-on hug, smelling like the sweetest wildflowers he could ever imagine. Having never actually smelled a wildflower, imagination is his only frame of reference. Maricela takes Overman by the hand and leads him through the open door to her apartment. Rodrigo is in the kitchen, guzzling a beer.
“Rodrigo, say hello to Ira,”
The boyfriend nods disinterestedly.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Overman offers with car salesman-like geniality.
Rodrigo doesn’t bother looking at him, grabbing a jacket off the chair. “I’m going out,” he announces, heading out the door.
“Nice meeting you,” Overman calls out.
“As you can see, I have horrible taste in boyfriends,” Maricela confesses.
“Everybody has their issues,” Overman offers.
“He’s a pig. That’s his issue.”
Outside the office, Maricela is as direct as Overman is phony.
“I brought you something,” he says, thinking it best to drop the subject of Rodrigo.
Maricela’s eyes light up as she is presented with the elegant Grey Goose. She is in love with the hand-painted bottle, and its contents happen to be her favorite premium vodka. She caresses the glass with a tenderness that more than justifies the $27.95 price tag. Overman starts to envision what those hands might do with human flesh, but wisely thinks better of it.
There are no mixers in the house so they decide on shots with Pabst Blue Ribbon chasers, ironically the lagerly equivalent of the Gordon’s rotgut he left on the shelf. Overman pours and they head for the sofa. As Maricela’s body moves, it generates more molecules of lilac or lavender or whatever that heavenly smell is.
“So,” she says.
An ominous first line in that it is an invitation for Overman to dictate play. Where will he direct the conversation?
“So,” he fires back, an ingenious deflection.
“Tell me something about yourself.”
Now he is truly fucked. “Let’s see,” says Overman, having no clue which uninspiring facet of his being to lead off with. He downs his first shot hoping the liquor will produce something exciting, or at least help him summon the on-demand vulnerability that comes so naturally to his friend Rosenfarb.
Overman gives it his best. “Maybe this sounds crazy, but until yesterday, I felt like my whole life amounted to nothing. Now it seems like my luck is going to change.”
Maricela smiles. “That’s awesome. You know, I kind of saw that in your eyes after the Zero Downapalooza meeting.”
“Believe me, it had nothing to do with Steinbaum and his inane gimmicks.”
“Hal’s an asshole,” she nods. “You don’t have to tell me.”
It’s official. This girl is much sharper than she lets on. In addition, she has now made Overman feel comfortable enough to share some choice biographical tidbits. He imparts how the Depression mentality of his parents turned him into a “people pleaser” who feared confrontation. This set the table for accepting jobs he didn’t want, entering into relationships he wasn’t excited about, adopting a nose-to-the grindstone mentality rather than seeking a more fulfilling life.
Maricela shares her story as breezily as she juggles responsibilities at the dealership. She grew up in Panorama City, California, one of seven children born to a Mexican father and Filipina mother. Dad drove a roach coach that stopped at construction sites to feed the Mexicans who were building homes for white people. Mom cleaned houses and brought the kids along whenever she could. Maricela was a happy child. She was a high school cheerleader who did reasonably well in school, then made her big mistake getting married at nineteen and not going to college.
“I was so naïve. I thought Jacob was going to take care of me. That we’d have babies and live happily ever after.”
“Jacob?” Overman has to ask. “Jewish?”
“His dad was Jewish, his mom was black.”
“What happened?” Overman asks, strangely high on the image of Maricela’s rock hard body davening at High Holy Day services.
“Turns out Jacob was running a meth lab and they put him in prison.”
She wasn’t kidding about her taste in men. And this was the one she married.
“Thank God we didn’t have kids,” she sighs.
Overman tells her he has two: Peter, in his junior year at Brown, and Ashley, graduating from Harvard-Westlake and bound for Columbia in the fall.
