a first reaction, Mark came up with the response, “Wow,” which of course was insufficient, but it was meant to be an open gate for more.
She said, “So I’ve got something, too, I’m dealing with.” She smiled.
“You had to be a ‘Selfless Person’ for some while. Gee.”
Her eyes glided away. “Yup. Selfless Person. For a while. And got the Inappropriate Survivor Guilt you mention.”
“Well, Blythe, you. You feel guilty about everything. Leaving the airport on the 405, you were apologizing to us for other drivers’ cheating in the carpool lanes.”
How amazing. For a few years she’d been a “Selfless Person,” as he’d phrased it.
He started organizing his place setting—centering his water glass, aligning it vertically with his wineglass, restoring the silverware to perpendicularity, sheathing the knife blade and the tines of his fork inside the linen napkin out of sight, the way he preferred, because it always felt like good luck, not to have sharp, shiny points exposed—then gripping the table edge symmetrically to left and right. Meanwhile he was getting Blythe Cress into a better focus. There was a life-arc developing here. She’d gone to art school; and all the while, her Rod was a musician, so she and Rod, when they were starting out, would have been an “artistic” young couple beginning a heedless, carefree, bohemian life together. Then would have come the symptoms, the medications, the unreasonableness of the patient, the chores for the caregiver.
He took up his own wine, while receding. She led a complicated life. The media-escort job, for her, was only a sideline. She’d said she’d gone to the Rhode Island School of Design. Her real career was as an antique appraiser at some auction-house establishment. She was an expert on old textiles from Asia, kimonos and samurai outfits. She’d said she did appraising in other departments too—cloisonné, netsuke, woodblock prints, exotic textiles. Supposedly it amounted to a parttime job, occupying a carrel of her own in a warehouse building on Sunset Boulevard; the place was called Gladstons, handling old weavings and garments, assigning minimum-bid estimates for auctions. Now, in addition, she’d had a crazed, deathly ill boyfriend living on the streets.
“What was Rod like?” Mark said.
“Talented pedal steel guitarist. He’s on people’s CDs. What he really was, though—I don’t know if you’ve heard of Wrecked Records. It still is an L.A. institution. It started on Melrose, and then it moved and got bigger, and got other locations. Records and CDs and collectible vinyl. And some furniture? Like sarcastic furniture? So that was his real thing. But he caught the AIDS virus from needles. He once had a drug habit, back in the ’90s. In the end he was very nasty and cantankerous and insisted on living outside and looking like a fucking Lordof-the-Rings slimy orc,”—she could have almost giggled—she hadn’t expected herself to say such a thing. All the while she was lifting her purse flap, taking out her wallet.
She opened the wallet bookwise to a photograph, and she revolved it 180 degrees and slid it across to him, still holding it down to keep it from springing shut, implying she would keep custody of it.
Rod—in better days—had long silky black hair with a wave at the end, and bangs cut straight across the forehead. It was a Prince Valiant style.
“He looks like Veronica Lake,” he said, insensitively. “His hair does.”
Unlike Veronica Lake, Rod had a small black goatee. He smiled broadly in the photo, as people did once in yearbook photos.
“Hm,” said Blythe. “Except not blonde.”
“Veronica Lake was brunette. Betty was the blonde.” He was trying to remind her of the cartoon characters in the Archie comic books.
“Veronica Lake was a movie star.”
“No, Veronica is Archie’s girlfriend. She and Betty. In the comics.” He had a general sense of losing traction, and he knew he shouldn’t be insisting, but the resemblance was perfect. At least in the hair department, Rod did look exactly like the svelte brunette in the comic book. Rod even had the girl’s heart-shaped face. Plus goatee.
“In the Archie comics, that was Veronica Lodge, not Lake. But you’re right. Rod did have hair exactly like that.”
“Veronica ‘Lake,’ Veronica ‘Lodge,’” he flipped a hand. All the stars were always interchangeable. At least to him.
So, for a funereal moment, they were both looking at the image of a man no longer alive. All that remained was his picture in a wallet. And his historical resemblance to a comic book character. And the record store he’d founded. And the pedal steel playing that appears on people’s CDs. Not a bad life. Blythe was folding her wallet and putting it away.
“Veronica in the comics was the bitchy one,” she clarified. “With the little tycoon father. Betty was the blonde one. She was the ‘nice’ one.”
A good-looking small platter arrived in the hands of a waiter. And a pair of ceramic mugs.
At that moment, a cell phone was chiming. It might have been coming from anywhere in the room, but it was, in fact, buried in Blythe’s purse. “Uh-oh,” she said, recognizing a ringtone, while she dug for it, “That’s Billie at the office.” She seemed puzzled as she examined her phone’s incoming-call window. “Billie should be at home. Tonight’s not her night.”
Whatever this was, it could ruin their dinner. And he found he was—like a teenager—furious at any threat to his selfish plans. Earlier tonight, he’d been contemplating dying of a heart attack. Now he was a jealous, angry boy. Philosophy is only for the dying. Objectivity, stoic dispassion, “wisdom,” all only for the dying.
Blythe said into the phone, “Well, when was the last time she was seen?”
Here was the nightmare that couldn’t possibly happen, the disaster that could be forfended by, alone, carefree reckless ignorance. He watched her, while trying to summon a communicative look, but she kept her eyes down on the plate that had just arrived before her, little wafers of raw fish flesh fanned out.
“I see,” she said at last, having done some listening. “He’s here with me. We’re at Avignon. All right.”
She folded her phone and looked at Mark.
She told him, “I guess Lotta was upset.”
“Was?”
If he were showing any anxiety, Blythe’s hands were rising, patting, tamping down. “It’s nothing awful, she’s fine, she’s great. We’d better go, though. Maybe we can get them to wrap this up. Take it with.” She touched the midpoint of the tablecloth between them with a little tickle on the fabric and explained. “Lotta seems to have left the group. She was in Bodie’s car.” She lifted a shoulder. “But she got out of Bodie’s car. She’s on Sunset Boulevard somewhere.”
Mark was getting out his credit card. “So it’s a romantic snafu,” he said. He pictured Bodie, planted deep in the car seat with his paralysis, yearning sidewise and trying to kiss Lotta, while Lotta squirmed and stiff-armed the poor fellow.
Blythe was pulling on her little jacket-thing. She cried, “Oh, too bad! And just when I wanted to ask you about physics and get an explanation why there’s no such thing as a ‘moment in time.’ As you say
