Death of an Orchid Lover Read online

  We took our seats. “I’ve been thinking,” Sharon said. And actually being here, in a theater, settles it. “I’d like to get back to the stage.”

  I turned to look at her. I wondered if she was fooling herself. She’d get cast in some play, and opening night would approach, and she’d suddenly be overcome by bad memories and go screaming out into the street. “Just like that?”

  She shrugged. “When I really faced what I was avoiding, when I told you about it, it didn’t seem so horrible anymore. Sometimes when bad things happen you think you’ll never get over them, but when you look at them later, they’re nothing. Like relationships that fail. Six months later you run into the person and wonder what you ever saw in them.” It was a funny thing for someone who hadn’t had a lover in ten years to think of.

  She took my hand. “Anyway, I was thinking … you were considering getting back to the theater as well. What with your going to Laura’s scene study and all. I thought maybe we could sort of lean on each other as we dived back in.”

  “That implies we’re going to be together a while.”

  “I don’t have any problem with that. Do you?”

  I shook my head. The house lights went down and the stage lights came up.

  The play was much better than I’d anticipated. Both leads were very good, though the woman cast as Grandma Moses occasionally lapsed into Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies. The story was set in 1961, right before Grandma died. The Moseses were scheming to embezzle three million dollars from the City of New York. Robert Moses was in on it because he was pissed off over them not naming Shea Stadium after him. Grandma just wanted to do something dishonest before she kicked off. During the first act they assembled their criminal crew, including Diane as the Transit Authority accountant who was going to cook the books.

  I sat comfortably beside Sharon, sometimes holding her hand, sometimes not, and not endlessly calculating in my head what that meant. Albert Oberg never entered my thoughts, and Laura only once, when Diane first entered and I thought, this would have been a good part for Laura too.

  Intermission came. Sharon stayed in her seat while I went to the rest room. The years stripped away. There was new paint and a new low-volume toilet, but the bare porcelain sink was the same one that had been there since the Cubs won the pennant. I recognized a ding where I’d dropped a pipe wrench on it, way back when.

  I hung around the lobby for a while, sucking in the theater atmosphere. Just as they blinked the lights the first time, I ran into Joe Parlakian.

  He’d been our token Armenian at the Altair, and never let us forget it. Everyone knew the dates of the Armenian Genocide and what an awful country Turkey was. Our names had been the subject of endless lame confusion. “Hey, Joe.” “Which one?” “Joe P.” “Which one?” Theater humor.

  He came up and wrapped his big arms around me and pounded my back. Then he held me at arm’s length and told me I looked good.

  “You look good too, Joe.”

  “What have you been doing? Besides the commercials. It takes a bug,’ right?”

  “Right. That’s pretty much it. How about you?”

  “Some voice-over, a little movie work. I have a recurring part on a soap, too, can you believe that, me in a soap?” He frowned. “I was up for Nine Armenians at the Taper, but the director …” Big, exaggerated shrug. “What an aboush.”

  “Sounds great. Not the thing at the Taper, but the rest.”

  “I got married too. Three little ones. Life is good.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “What about you, any kids?”

  “No kids. No wife.”

  “You should try it. You’d like it.” The lights blinked again. “Better find my seat. Good to see you.” He started walking away, stopped, turned. “Some friends and I are starting a theater company. Equity-Waiver, or whatever they’re calling it these days. You’d fit right in.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Call me. I’m in the book.”

  During the second act I thought a lot about Joe Parlakian’s invitation. It would be good to be in a theater company again. And Sharon could join too. We could merge our artistic and personal lives into one fabulous synergistic whole. Jumping the gun? Maybe. But it seemed right.

  When the last curtain call was over, we made our way to the thronging lobby. We waited until Diane came out and stood in a little semicircle with three or four other friends while she held court. I got to meet Tom, her real husband. He was short, fat, and jovial. Visually, she and I went together better than they did.

  A couple of the others were going out with them afterward. I wanted to go. But I wanted to be alone with Sharon more.

  We got to her house. We exited the truck. I hesitated on the sidewalk.

  “Are you coming in or not?” she said. She unlocked the door and led me in.

  The living room was nice. Nothing spectacular. The furniture, tasteful but not memorable, stood on hardwood that could have used a polishing. The right pictures were on the walls and the right knickknacks in the right places. My flowers sat on the coffee table in a cheap vase, the kind that comes with a flower shop arrangement. The place smelled slightly musty, like a long-unused room that’s been opened up for company. “This is the living room, she said.”

  “Is there more?”

  “Not much.”

  “Oh, come on, give me the tour. You’ve seen enough of my place.”

  She smiled. “Sure.” She stepped over to the kitchen. “This is the kitchen.”

  “Nice microwave.”

  “I like popcorn.” She led me down a short hallway. One door on the left, one on the right, one at the end. “Guest room on the left. Then the bathroom. This …” She took a couple of steps into the room on the right. “This is my bedroom.” Like the living room; nice, practical, nothing to write home about. More hardwood flooring. The bed was a queen. It had a blue comforter on it. “Why are you staring at my bed?” Sharon asked.

  “I was trying to figure out if that was a down comforter.”

  “I see.” She gave me a Mona Lisa smile, retreated from the bedroom, led me back into the kitchen. She poured us a couple of glasses of Amaretto, handed me one, directed me to the sofa. I sipped my drink, slipped my arm around her. She smiled, put her glass down, turned her face up to mine. I put my glass down too.

  It was the first really serious kiss we’d had, with all the attendant slipping and sliding and hands wandering who knew where. It lasted a minute or two. When it was over, she gave me a big solemn look. Then she stood and took my hand and pulled me off the sofa. Still holding my hand, she headed down the hallway and into the bedroom.

  She pointed me toward the bed and said, “Sit.” She began to unbutton her blouse. She’d gotten just far enough for me to know she had nothing on underneath when the doorbell rang.

  “Ignore it,” she said, undoing another button. “They’ll go away.”

  They didn’t. They knocked on the door. Then again, louder. “I don’t think they’re going anywhere,” I said.

  Then I heard yelling. “Joe! Joe, are you in there? I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “That’s Gina,” I said.

  “I know who it is. What’s she doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” I also didn’t know how the hell she’d found us, but my contemplation of that question was interrupted by more yelling from the front door.

  Sharon uttered a disgusted sound. “She’d better have a damned good reason for being here.”

  She stomped out, fastening buttons as she went, and headed toward the door. I followed. She opened the door. Gina stood there, hand poised to bang again.

  “Hi,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt.” She spied me across the room and pushed in. Sharon made a move to stop her, but wasn’t quick enough. “We need to talk,” Gina said.

  “Not that again,” I said. I turned so I was addressing both of them. “You girls know each other, right?”

  “Come on,” Gina
said. “This is important.”

  “I’ll just bet it is,” Sharon said. “Look, no one invited you up here. What are you, a stalker? You getting uptight because Somebody’s about to grab the guy you’ve been taking for granted all these years?”

  “Lady, if I’d have wanted Joe I could have had him any time I wanted him.” She turned to me. “Sorry. I know how you hate being talked about in the third person.”

  “This is really awkward,” I said. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

  “No. It’s about Albert.”

  “Gi. Go away. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  Sharon stormed over. “Get out. Now.”

  “No.”

  They glared at each other. Sharon said to me, “Get her out of here or the evening is over.”

  What to do, what to do. I looked at Sharon. Then at Gina. Back to Sharon. “I have to follow up on this. I’m sorry. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She went to the door, opened it wider. “Fine. Be with your little friend. Go. Now.”

  I went out. Gina followed. When we reached the sidewalk, I said, “This had better be good.”

  “Not yet. In the car.”

  We got in the Volvo. “Okay.” What is it?

  She pulled a big coffee table book from the backseat, dumped it in my lap, turned on the interior light. “Where the dust jacket’s stuck in.”

  I looked at the book. New York Theater Scene 1986. I opened it to where Gina indicated. Each page had photos from some play or other, with a paragraph or two about the production and the personnel. On the right-hand page, bottom left, a scene from something called Pablo and Veronica. Two actors, one actress. The hair was shorter and black, she was much younger, but the actress was definitely Sharon.

  “She wasn’t in high finance before she came back here,” Gina said. “She was an actress. She’s lying to you, Joe.”

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Larry Edmunds.” A big theater bookstore, new and used, on Hollywood Boulevard.

  “Why’d you go there?”

  “For proof. I mean, I thought I had proof, but sometimes you don’t believe stuff I find on the Internet and—”

  “You looked up Sharon on the Internet?”

  “Yeah, I did a search on her name. Eventually I came to a site where some theater fanatic has records on every show that’s run in New York for the last twenty years.”

  “You went searching the Internet to dig up dirt on the woman I’m going out with?”

  “I don’t trust her, Joe. I haven’t from the beginning. And I don’t like what she’s doing to you.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “How can I put this? She’s leading you around by your penis.”

  “What penis? We haven’t even done anything yet, although if you hadn’t shown up …anyway, there’s more to this than just my penis.”

  “Fine. You have a deep emotional attachment.”

  We were getting nowhere. “You said this had something to do with Albert.”

  “I think your new friend is mixed up with his death. And Laura’s.”

  “And what’s the basis for this amazing intuitive leap?”

  “I just thought, she’s so full of shit, there has to be a reason. And the reason could be that she’s involved in the killings, and, if so, I didn’t want you to be alone with her. So I went to your place, but you weren’t there, and that left her place, so I called Sam, and he called one of the orchid people who had a membership list, and I got the address and came to save you.”

  “Save me?”

  “She may be planning on doing you in next.”

  “This is so stupid, Gi.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  I sighed, shook my head. “She already told me about her past. This afternoon.”

  “She what?”

  “She’s been covering it up because something crappy happened to end her career and she didn’t want to think about those days.” She told me about it because she trusts me.

  “You’ve known her for a week and she trusts you enough to expose her big secret life.” Do you really believe that?

  “Sure.”

  An important moment, this. Because, even as I said “Sure a tiny seed of doubt, smaller than the microscopic seed of an orchid, took root.” It sounded all right for me to say, Gee, Sharon trusts me enough after a week to lay her life bare, but when someone else said it …

  Defense mechanisms sprang into position. “I think you’re jealous.” You just want to drive Sharon and me apart.

  “Jealous? Me? Jealous of an orchid woman?”

  “Stop calling her that.”

  “Your love life is your own, Joe. I’m not interested in it.”

  “Then why’d you buy those Trojans?”

  “I’m telling you, there’s something not quite right with that woman.”

  “There’s something not quite right with you, right now.”

  “Will you listen to me? Wasn’t I right last time I got a hunch about someone not being who they said they were? Something that happened during the Brenda business.”

  “So lightning’s going to strike twice.”

  She kind of curled into herself. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”

  “No. Goddamn it, Gi, I’ve got a chance for a normal relationship here. I don’t want to blow it.” I looked at Sharon’s house. Only one light was on. “If you haven’t already blown it.”

  I grabbed the handle and swung the door out. Gina put a hand on my arm. “Where are you going?”

  “Back in there. To try to salvage an evening you’ve probably ruined.”

  “Don’t.”

  I shook off her hand. “Leave me alone.”

  I got out of the car and went to the front door. I reached for the doorbell, looked back, saw Gina still sitting in her car at the curb. I made a little motion with my hand, like go away, making it as dismissive as I could. A couple of seconds later I heard her engine start up. Then she left.

  I rang the bell. Eventually the door opened. “Well?” Sharon said.

  “I told her it could wait. Can I come back in?”

  “I’m not sure I should let you.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I ran out. But what could I do?”

  “You could have sent her away.”

  “I couldn’t. She’s my best friend.”

  “Too good a friend, I think.”

  “I thought you were over that.”

  “Maybe I’m not.” She shook her head. “I don’t want you to come back in. I need to think about things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Things. I’ll talk to you.”

  “When?”

  “Don’t try to pin me down.” She swung the door closed. I stood on the front step for a couple of minutes, waiting for her to have a change of heart, like the star-crossed lover in the movies always does. When she didn’t. I went out to the truck. I sat watching the house until that one light went out. Then I went home and straight to bed. I thought I would lie awake, agonizing over the two women in my life and how upset they both were with me. But my body took mercy on me, and dragged me quickly down into restless sleep.

  29

  WHEN I WOKE UP MONDAY MORNING, I DECIDED I WAS worthless. Not only couldn’t I carry on a decent relationship, but I’d reached an impasse in the only other worthwhile element in my life, the search for Albert and Laura’s killer or killers.

  It took what seemed like hours to gather the wherewithal to crawl out of bed. I seemed to have no particular reason to do so. Finally my eyes focused on the socket I’d spirited away from Gartner’s. It had fallen on its side and rolled to within an inch of the nightstand’s edge.

  I decided to take it back. Getting rid of it would make me feel a little more honest, a little less worthless. It would also give me an excuse to get in the car and go somewhere. It was a bad excuse but, hey, it was all I had.

  The sky was clear, the temperature
in the sixties. A cool, crisp, perfect Los Angeles spring morning. On another day I would have loved it, thought a morning like that was the most wonderful thing in the world.

  The direct route to the Valley and Gartner’s would have been up the San Diego Freeway. But there really wasn’t any hurry. So I made my way to Pacific Coast Highway, planning to turn up Topanga Canyon Boulevard and take the long way into the Valley, then double back to Reseda. That would eat up more of the day.

  I passed Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. By the time I got to Topanga Canyon, I’d thought of another reason to take it. Austin and Vicki lived up there. Austin would probably be home. He’d have marijuana. I could get high and try to forget that I was worthless.

  But once I came down from the temporary euphoria that smoking dope would bring, the miserable state of mind would return. In spades. I needed to think things out, figure out what I had to do to become a useful member of society again. Reverting to my days as a pothead wasn’t going to help that effort. I was afraid if I headed up Topanga, even if intending to go to Gartner’s, I’d end up at Austin’s and descend into reefer madness.

  So I kept going on P.C.H., followed it as it turned inland, and drove all the way up to Santa Barbara. I spent hours wandering up and down State Street, first in the truck, then on foot, trying to shake the feelings I was experiencing, being wondrously unsuccessful at doing so.

  Eventually I got hungry. I found a mini-mart, came out with some bananas and a bag of pretzel nuggets and a bottle of water. I ate a banana and some pretzels.

  Sometime after two I got in the truck and headed back south. I was going to take the freeway all the way home, realized the only advantage to this would be getting there more quickly, and what advantage was that? So I turned off in Oxnard and drove back toward P.C.H. Around Port Hueneme I remembered the socket in my pocket. Too bad. But there was always another day for that. There was always another day when you worked only six days a year.

  As I approached Malibu I remembered a rocky little cove full of rounded stones and driftwood, where sandpipers piped and pelicans flaunted their crops. A surfer girl I’d dated in my theater days had shown me the spot. It was a good place to think. I’d spent several fun-filled hours there after she dumped me.