Part 17 (1/2)

”No, I'm going to try the meat loaf.”

”It's pretty good,” she admits, jotting it down. ”What the h.e.l.l are you doing all alone on a night like this?”

”I'm always alone at Christmas,” I tell her.

She rolls her dark eyes and says, ”You're lucky. I've got four kids. Two of my own, two of my husband's. Tomorrow is going to be h.e.l.l. Somebody is going to start screaming by ten o'clock. I can't wait till they leave home.”

”Don't say that,” I offer mildly, not meaning it.

She says, ”Honey, if you only knew. Christmas is all about the children, and they never let you forget it. My feet hurt so bad, I'm thinking of asking my doctor to cut them off. How bad can a wheelchair be? People have to push you places. Sounds good to me.”

”You don't mean that,” I tell her. Gloria is a diabetic, and I realize that the eventuality of having her limbs cut off is in the proverbial cards.

People who get sick do it for a reason, I figure. And if you want someone to push you around in a wheelchair, you must have a sound purpose. Gloria is tired, and I can see where the idea of being pushed around might appeal to her. But those of us who eat at Rae's don't want to reckon with that just yet.

”I'll get your meat loaf,” she says, sounding exhausted. ”Anything else?”

”Just some iced tea.”

”No problem,” she says, moving away.

I am reading the print on the back of a Tabas...o...b..ttle when I hear my name.

”Pearl,” the voice says.

I look up. Patrick is sitting not far down the counter, eating a hamburger.

I feel embarra.s.sed and annoyed. I don't want to see anyone from work here. Not on Christmas Eve, when I'm supposed to be on vacation.

”What brings you here?” he asks.

I shrug, embarra.s.sed, wanting to invent a story, but at the same time wanting to tell the truth. I strike a compromise.

I say, ”I have some parties to go to. Thought it might be smart to eat first.”

Patrick smiles. He says, ”Yeah, I have some parties, too. It's always smart to eat.”

I stifle a yawn, then say, ”Where are your parties?”

He says, ”Where are yours?”

”Here in Santa Monica,” I answer quickly. It's true that I've been invited. Clive asked me to a party down in Venice, and my next-door neighbor asked me over for drinks. I declined both invitations. No need for him to know about that.

Gloria brings my meat loaf. She shoots a look at Patrick and says, ”Now, don't make trouble.”

”You know I wouldn't,” he tells her, and smiles at me.

I start eating my meat loaf, hoping he'll ignore me, but he doesn't. He is staring at me. He eventually moves down a couple of seats till he is two seats away from me.

He leans toward me and says, ”I have to go to a party, and I don't want to go alone. How would you feel about going with me?”

”I'd feel cranky,” I say, biting into the meat loaf. It's good, and I know I'd feel a lot less cranky if I could be left alone.

Patrick says, ”I live in Venice. In a loft near the beach. This party is close to my house. I could drive us. I could drive you home. I just don't want to go by myself.”

Keep in mind that all of these sentences are laced with his particular speech impediment, the s's sounding like sh's.

The meat loaf is really good, so I feel happy and comfortable enough to say, ”Patrick, I just want to eat, and then I want to go home and go to bed.”

He smiles. His eyes are a brighter blue than I had imagined. I am remembering Cive's eyes and thinking that if they were as piercing and sincere as Patrick's, the subsequent morning would not have ended so badly.

But this is a dangerous thing to think.

Patrick says, ”Just come with me to this party. I'll drive you home. What do you say?”

”I'd say you are relentless.”

He grins. He says, ”That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.”

I know I am going with him. I just don't know what it means.

THE PARTY IS AT someone's house on one of the Venice ca.n.a.ls. What most people know about Venice Beach is its history of crime, wackiness, and weirdos. They know about Muscle Beach, that bizarre stretch of sand where the denizens of the Sun Belt come to show off their peculiar talents. Weight lifters, fire-eaters, breakdancers, in-line skaters, human mannequins, chain-saw jugglers- the list goes on. It is the place you take visitors from out of town, ostensibly to show them the local color, but secretly (I believe) to discourage them from moving here. It usually works. People leave Venice shaking their heads, laughing and amazed but a little bit sick to their stomachs, the way you feel leaving any circus. A little taste of freakiness goes a long way.

Not many people, even the ones who live in L.A., know about the Venice ca.n.a.ls. The city itself was built in homage, as it were, to the real Venice, and in true Los Angeles fas.h.i.+on, the developer (a Mr. Abbot Kinney, I'm told) culled everything that was bad about the original city and omitted the good. The bad being an impractical array of houses on unstable land, surrounded by vaguely smelly and polluted waters. The good being excellent Italian cuisine, hundreds of years of architectural superiority, a profitable gla.s.s factory, and a link to the European continent.

That is my jaded view of the Venice ca.n.a.ls, but the truth is, they are reasonably quaint and romantic, particularly at night, when the murky waters are invisible and the Craftsman-style houses are softly lit. The sound of the water lapping against the sidewalks is soothing, and on this particular night, Christmas Eve, the atmosphere is almost magical, with a tasteful display of white Christmas lights linking the houses in a common theme. It is almost breathtaking.

Patrick leads me to one of the nicer houses on the block, which is full of happy people holding festive drinks, talking in moderate tones, laughing, and clapping one another on the back. The house is lit mostly by candles, and an enormous Christmas tree takes up most of the living room. Cla.s.sical Christmas carols are playing softly on the stereo, and as soon as I walk in, I never want to leave. I want to be friends with every person in this house, and they seem to want to be friends with me, too. Patrick introduces me as Pearl, giving no explanation as to how he knows me (leaving us open to speculation that we're a couple, I'm thinking), and goes off to get me a drink. No one asks me what I do for a living; nor do they offer such information about themselves. Which might not seem so strange to an outsider, but in Los Angeles, what you do for a living is everything.

I've engaged in half a dozen conversations before Patrick returns. I've talked to a pleasant man named Gerald, who seems to be Austrian or German, and his attractive girlfriend, Lucia, who seems to be not Austrian or German, and I've talked to a large, funny woman named Justine, who revealed to me that she's recently divorced and this is her first Christmas alone, but it's not so bad. I've talked to a large, bearded man named Toby, who offered a positive dissertation on the NFL, and I've talked to a quiet blond Englishwoman with a baby on her hip. The woman is named Rosemary; the baby is named Imogen. They both seem to live here, and Rosemary is worried that the eggnog is not up to snuff. Excusing herself and her baby, she goes off in search of a man named Simon. This is when Patrick returns, offering me a gla.s.s of white wine. I accept it gratefully.

He clinks gla.s.ses with me (he's drinking an amber-colored drink on ice) and says, ”Merry Christmas.”

”How do you know these people?” I ask.

”From my former life,” he says enigmatically.

”What former life?”

”When I was a teacher. Simon and I were in the same department.”

”Where did you teach?”

”At UCLA,” he says without much fanfare.

I feel a kind of jolt, the kind you feel when two entirely disparate worlds accidentally collide. When that happens, I feel that either G.o.d or the devil is at work, and I can't relax until I know which one.

”Do you know Mark Hooper?” I ask.

”No. What department is he in?”