A Date You Can't Refuse Read online

  “Tell! What you are doing?” She spat out the words. “On my table? Horrid girl!”

  “It was a stupid thing to do, I admit,” I said.

  “Horrid!”

  “Okay, horrid even. I was just looking for something, and I thought it might be in the chandelier.” True enough: I was looking for a place to plant a bug. “Let me just—” I tried to stand. This was tricky, given the high heels and the tight skirt, so I grabbed onto the table.

  “Off,” she said, squirting her Windex bottle at the table with violence, suggesting that it could be turned on me. “You swing from my chandelier? No. Ha. I tell this to Yuri.”

  Okay, I had to do better in the plausibility department. Where was my tough-cookie character? “It happens,” I said, getting to my feet, “that my Uncle Theo has a birthday. And he is a fan of the Art Deco era, the Bauhaus movement, and if this chandelier is a Rolf Solomon or a Mies van der Rohe, then of course I can't afford it, but if it's a knockoff, from, you know, Pier 1 or Cost Plus World Market… so I wanted to find out. Do you know where it's from?”

  Grusha was looking at me with lips clamped together. “No,” she said finally.

  I smoothed down my skirt and made my exit at a sort of dignified trot. Maybe Grusha bought it. It wasn't the worst story in the world. Okay, it wasn't great either. I needed to get to the office fast, or the bathroom, anywhere I could close the door and be alone and decompress. Tough Cookie, her assignment ended, had retreated, leaving me shaken.

  I made my way back to the office, where I closed the door and examined myself for bruises. I counted five, in the incipient stages.

  “Testing,” I said once more, addressing the cubbyhole. I looked underneath it, making sure the bug was still there. “So, I guess you guys heard what happened in the dining room just now. Assuming I planted that bug properly. If I did, then that's the good news. The bad news is, I have no aptitude for espionage. I have a hard time thinking on my feet. In heels. On tables. And if Yuri Milos interrogates me, I don't stand a chance. I'm just saying. Expect no miracles.” I picked up the phone and put it to my ear, just in case someone burst into the office and wondered why they'd heard me talking to myself.

  This reminded me to call my cell phone voice mail, except that I didn't know how to do that from a remote phone. The best I could do was my home machine. There were two messages. One was from P.B., asking me, once again, to bring him a copy of Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything. The second message, like the first, contained no preamble, no “Hello, Wollie.” This was simply a name, Yusuf, and a number. I tried Haven Lane first, to talk to my brother, but got no answer. Then I called “Yusuf.”

  I knew I shouldn't talk to Simon on a phone that was being monitored by his own colleagues, in a bugged room, but the message had come in only forty minutes earlier and who knew how long he'd be at that number?

  He was there now. He answered.

  “Yusuf,” I said. “I can only talk for a second, but I'll call from my cell in an hour.”

  “Will you be there this afternoon? I need to see you.”

  “No, I won't be here. I'll be in Beverly Hills, and—”

  “Three o'clock. In front of Neiman Marcus.”

  “I can't promise,” I said. “And even if I can get there, I won't be alone, and—”

  “Try,” he said, and hung up.

  I left the office. If I hurried, I could return to House of Blue and retouch my makeup and fix my startled hair, making me more worthy of Beverly Hills, where such things matter. Okay, to heck with Beverly Hills. I wanted to look good for Simon.

  I tiptoed so as not to disturb Nell's class now convened in the library, discussing prepositions. I moved so silently, I passed Yuri and Vlad, who had their backs to me, without making a sound. I knew this because I heard Vlad say very softly to Yuri, “… much does she know?”

  “Nothing,” Yuri replied. “Keep it that way. I don't need another Chai on my hands.”

  There wasn't a doubt in my mind that they were talking about me.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The only reason I go to Beverly Hills on a regular basis is for the knife sharpener on Little Santa Monica. The cutlery shop is in Old Beverly Hills. I love the craftspeople of Old Beverly Hills, the aging artisans toiling away in rent-controlled buildings from the 1920s, the bookbinder, the engraver, the shoe repair guy. I like the history. Fredreeq goes to Beverly Hills because that's where her hair colorist is. Joey goes there to see her shrink. There are also, of course, those who go to shop, but these are people I have little personal knowledge of, people whose idea of a sale is a purse marked down from four grand to $3,500. The stores that cater to this clientele are minded by salesclerks trained to ignore riffraff like me, shoppers without the watch or shoes that signal excessive income or a face so staggeringly beautiful it has charging privileges on some Old Rich Guy's credit card. I avoid these stores. Life's too short to be snubbed by minimum-wage sales staff.

  Felix's cosmetic surgeon was Dr. Eli Rosen, on Brighton Way. It was hell getting there because the Suburban was too big for the streets, and Beverly Hills is the rare L.A. neighborhood overrun by pedestrians. I found street parking, but after stalling traffic on Roxbury trying to squeeze into it and getting honked at by seven or eight cars, three of them Mercedeses, I gave it up and moved on. Relinquishing a parking spot is a huge psychological defeat, but so is the public humiliation of having others, many in luxury cars, witness one's efforts to parallel park the vehicular equivalent of a humpback whale.

  “Wollie, don't worry how people think at you,” Felix said as we hit the street after pulling into a lot six blocks away. “Jesus too, if He is living today, I believe people will honk at Him. Can He park a big car? Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe He is thinking of other things.”

  “Felix, that is comforting,” I said, leading him down Beverly Drive, “because if the entrance exam to heaven includes parallel parking, I'm not making the cut.” I paused to let a family of seven—tourists, as seen by their matching Birkenstocks and number of children—pass in front of us. “Tell me something. Does Jesus ever condone crime?”

  “Yes, maybe,” Felix said, ogling a store window. “Which crime?”

  I pulled him onward. “Well, stealing. Could He justify stealing? Not like a pizza if a guy's starving to death, but dealing in stolen goods?” Was I being too obvious? “Maybe to raise money for a worthy cause, or something.”

  “I think this answer is no. ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's,’” Felix said. “What is this store? It is so beautiful.”

  “Scandia Down, which we don't have time to explore,” I said, pulling him away from the window. “Where, for the price of a down comforter, one could feed a village of hungry children.”

  I instantly regretted bringing up children, as Felix's eyes filled with tears. “In my country, the orphanage, so many children, no mother, no father.”

  “Was this because of a war?” I asked.

  “The war, yes. Also Chernobyl. Long time ago. Still, people gets sick. Or the children. Because maybe birth defects. I learn this from Zeffie. Chernobyl heart, they call this. This is what I do with my money from my book. I save the children.”

  His humanitarian zeal impressed me, even though his sadness was short-lived, giving way to a keen interest in Bijan, Yves Saint Laurent, and Pierre Deux. Affluence delighted him. He smiled at people as if the whole neighborhood was made up of old friends. This affability accompanied us into the doctor's office.

  Dr. Rosen's office was staffed by two strikingly lovely women in lab coats, who asked eagerly about Donatella, Kimberly and Yuri. And Chai. When I told them that Chai was dead, their smiles drained off their faces, leaving them curiously expressionless.

  I took the clipboard I'd been handed and helped Felix with the paperwork. As I was armed with his medical records, provided by Kimberly, I now felt useful. After this, I perused the brochures in the waiting room, which told me everything about th
e beautifying procedures available to mankind, except for how much they cost and how much they'd hurt. Felix was there for a “full-body lift” consultation.

  On impulse, I hopped up and went to the window shielding the nurses from their clients. “Can I ask, how long will Felix be in with Dr. Rosen?”

  “Oh, an hour minimum,” one of the nurses assured me.

  “Fabulous. Mind if I leave and come back?”

  “No problem. We'll take good care of him.”

  I stepped out of the office and was dialing Daniel Lavosh within sixty seconds. I left a message that Harriet Spoon would be unreachable at three, but was currently on her way to Neiman Marcus and would wait there a full hour on the chance that he might be available. I left the same message on his cell phone.

  I was there in five minutes. Twenty-six minutes later, so was he.

  The window displays at Neiman Marcus, on the South Roxbury side, used shiny white mannequins that appeared to have landed from Neptune. They were bald and featureless and dressed in squares of iridescent paper. It was not clear to me what they were advertising, beyond existential anxiety. I looked away from them, scanning the faces of the pedestrians, hoping to see the one I loved.

  And there he was, crossing Wilshire Boulevard. Coming toward me. He was dressed in a suit but carried the jacket, as the day was hot. When he reached the halfway point in the crosswalk, I started moving too, to meet him, legs shaky with anticipation, feet wobbly in my heels, stride short in the tight skirt.

  I reached him. Without a word, he took my hand and led me around the side of Neiman Marcus, to steps leading to rooftop parking.

  The roof was populated by cars, but devoid of humans.

  Once I'd determined this, I turned to him and untied his tie and opened the top buttons of his shirt. Skin. Chest. The heart beating underneath. I put my hand there, the first move toward satisfying my need for touch. Then I put my forehead on his collarbone and breathed him in. His skin was hot; I tried to remember the last time I'd seen him in sunlight.

  He let me do all this to him. We didn't speak. When a car drove up the ramp and passed us, we separated. Simon, his shirt still open, walked away a few feet, studying the parking lot, practicing his “situational awareness.” I took in the big picture, Saks Fifth Avenue to the east, Wells Fargo Bank to the north, jacaranda trees all around, blooming madly, advertising the color purple.

  The car drove back down the ramp. We were alone again.

  Simon came back to me and took my hand, leading me to the southeast wall.

  A rectangle was formed by the edge of the stairwell and the corner of the parking structure, maybe four feet wide and six feet long, a tiny bastion of privacy.

  Simon threw down his jacket, displacing some leaves and an empty bottle of Vitaminwater. After a glance behind him to the parked cars, he pulled me down, hiding us from view.

  We knelt on his jacket. He took my face in both of his hands, looked at me a long moment before his eyes dropped to my mouth, and then he moved in on it and kissed it.

  The sun beat down on us.

  After a while, he pushed the hem of my tight skirt up to my waist and I undid his belt buckle and unbuttoned his pants and then he grabbed my thighs and I grabbed the back of his neck and he pulled my legs around until they were straddling him and after that I was falling backward in slow motion, with his hands holding the small of my back, until I came to rest on hard concrete, pebbles, and a Milky Way candy wrapper. We were already sweating, and we were about to sweat a lot more.

  We didn't talk much.

  A half hour later we walked back down the stairwell to the street. We moved languidly. Our clothes were wrinkled and my blouse was dirty. I felt beautiful. We smelled like each other.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine, thank you, and you?”

  He put an arm around me and kissed the top of my head as we strolled. We reached Wilshire and broke apart, walking side by side. We no longer held hands.

  Now that inches separated us, I realized I wasn't all that fine. Crispin was dead, partly because of me, I was in the midst of a conspiracy I didn't understand, in a job where people shot guns and dealt in stolen goods, and no one was telling me the entire truth about anything, including those I was really working for, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  And I couldn't tell any of this to Simon, and my frustration about it was enough to wipe out the postsexual nostalgia I was feeling.

  “I'm thinking of quitting my job at MediasRex,” I said.

  His head turned. “When?”

  I reached over and flicked away a piece of gravel that was stuck to his cheek. It was a gesture more proprietary than romantic and still my in-sides went wiggly touching him. “I'm not sure. Soon. A few days. I need to finish up some things before I can back out gracefully.”

  He stopped. I stopped too, and turned to him. “Closer,” he said, and I came closer, but didn't touch him. We were in public now and public displays of affection were to be avoided. This wasn't something we'd ever discussed, it was a tacit understanding.

  I hated understanding it. I wanted to renegotiate the whole thing.

  “I'm glad you're quitting. I want you to,” he said quietly. “I never want to go through this again. Not knowing where you are or if you're safe.”

  “We want the same thing,” I said. “I want all that and I want never to use a code name again. I want to do what we just did and do it in a bed. Not always, but mostly. I want to be able to call you at the office and ask you what time you'll be home for dinner.”

  He looked away.

  “What?” I asked.

  He looked back. He'd recovered and was smiling. “Are you going to cook for me?”

  “I could cook.” I'd planted bugging devices that morning. Could a pot roast be any harder?

  He looked away again.

  “That's not what you're talking about,” I said. “We don't want the same thing. You want me to be home safe, but you want to be out there, doing whatever it is you're doing.”

  He scratched his head. “It's not a good time to discuss this.”

  “When's a good time?”

  “Things are heating up on the case. We've put in a lot of work toward this end. I need it to succeed. I need this.” He turned to me again, with the same intensity he'd had earlier, when we'd been sweating on each other. “When it's over—I don't know. I can't look ahead right now. I'm in the middle of something and I can't question myself the way you want me to. I won't be able to do my job.”

  “When's a good time to talk about this? When won't you be in the middle of this?”

  “Weeks, maybe a month. And Wollie?” He touched my chin with a finger. “Chances are I won't be able to see you again till I've wrapped it up.”

  To hell with it. I reached out and grabbed his hand. “A month?” I was fighting now to stay calm. “Do you see what you're asking? You want me to endure something that drives you crazy when it's me we're talking about. Being in danger. Being incommunicado. I'm not saying I can't or won't endure it, but look. Do you see what you're asking of me?”

  “It's not the same—”

  “It is exactly the same.”

  “I'm trained to do this, I have years of experience in this, while you're doing God knows what for Yuri Milos—”

  “It is the same. You don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what you're doing, no one's home for dinner, nobody gets to fall asleep wrapped around each other or wake up together in the morning, it's a long-distance relationship in the same town, it's sex with a married man, except you're married to the FBI and you're never getting a divorce, it's—”

  “Why do we have to talk about this now?”

  “Because,” I said, “it's my best chance of making my case, of making you see what it's like to live with the kind of uncertainty you're putting me through—”

  “Not now, Wollie.” His voice held a note of command that must have slipped out. He didn't usually let himself do that, know
ing it set me off.

  “No problem,” I said, and dropped his hand. “When it's convenient, I'm sure you'll be in touch. June or July? And will we start over at the beginning of the alphabet? With A or do we do jump to B and do the even-numbered letters this time?”

  “Wollie.”

  “For the record, what's the record? What constitutes a long-term relationship? Three times through the alphabet? What's the longest anyone's lasted with you?”

  “Screw this.”

  “This?” I asked. “Or me?”

  “At this moment? Take your pick.”

  I stared at him, waiting for him to take it back, then saw he wasn't going to.

  I turned away. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell I was letting him see me cry right now. Or ever again, maybe. Ahead of me, the light at Wilshire and Brighton Way turned green. I took it as a sign and hurried toward it.

  Simon didn't stop me.

  THIRTY

  Felix was waiting for me on the street outside Dr. Rosen's office, people-watching, eager to be off to Tiffany's. “So famous!” he said. “I feel like a movie star. I feel like—”

  “Audrey Hepburn?” I asked, wanting his mood to infect me. “George Peppard? Whoa—you have to watch the jaywalking in Beverly Hills, Felix.” I reached for his arm. “The cops will swoop down on you and—”

  “Okay!” Felix jumped back onto the sidewalk with such alacrity, I feared being knocked over.

  “Felix, is it my imagination or are you unnaturally frightened of cops?”

  “Of cops? No. Frightened? No.” He accompanied this with a jolly chuckle that sounded forced. “My goodness, what you have been doing?” he asked, turning his attention to me—a classic diversion technique, I realized. Still, it worked.

  “You mean my clothes?” I said, blushing. “A little dirty, aren't they? I— fell. Sort of.”

  “You must have fallen hard.”

  “Very hard.”

  “On your back?” Felix asked.

  “Look, the light's changed. Come on.”