The Twelve O'clock Chapters 1-17

"What do you mean complicated?" Billie Cooper says, looking up from the electric typewriter she's been making sweet music on.

"I told you before," I say, "you use too many words, very long sentences, and sometimes it's hard to follow." I show her a sentence on the page I've been proofreading. "See, eight lines plus six words, including three 'ands' - one, two, three; two ‘buts’ - one, two; four 'which’s' - one, two, three, four; and a dangling participle, this is a dangling participle. You also left out at least two verbs, here and here, which really confuses me."

"I write too fast," she says, taking the page from me, peering at it intently.

"Then simplify. That's all you need to do," I say. "Break up this long sentence, make it into maybe three or four short sentences, and you don't have a problem."

"Okay, fine," she says, an obvious tightness in her voice. "I'll do it."

"You don't have to do it. I'll take care of it," I say, snatching the page back from her.

"No, I don't want you to take care of it," she says sharply, reaching for the page and grabbing it from me. "I'll do it myself."

We're sitting across from one another at the dining room table. For her economics class she's writing a paper that's due on Tuesday. Her conclusion that American-style socialism keeps American-style capitalism from falling into the ashcan I totally agree with. Why then, I ask myself, did I rub her nose in that lousy paragraph, when I should have been concentrating on its content and shortened the damn sentence myself, as I'm still willing to do, except now I'm afraid to mention it to her. Instead I stare gloomily at her, feeling guilty, wishing I could take back everything I’d said about the paper, while she, hunched over the typewriter, fingers flying across its keys, ignores me.

What extraordinary talent, I think, to be able to concentrate like that, putting thoughts into words in her head, as simultaneously typing at the speed of light. But in everything she does she's quick, focused, and energetic, so I'm not surprised. She's also a pleaser, burdened since birth with this irrepressible need to make other people happy. The next time she looks up at me, she's relaxed and clear, and smiling warmly. Turning off the typewriter, she reminds me she's promised we'd go to Dr. Minzeezi's fundraiser at the college. To get dressed and drive to the campus in less than an hour isn't a problem for her, but I can't move as swiftly as she does. While I'm still putting on my shoes, she's ready to head out the back door. "I hate to be late," she says, glancing anxiously at me, as if she thinks I'm conspiring to make us late, but I'm not, and we aren't.

When we arrive at the college center, Minzeezi's friends and supporters, as well as students from his anthropology classes, crowd the main meeting hall. Classmates Billie's been close to since she started school at night have saved seats for us. On the speaker's platform Dr. Minzeezi is arranging his notes and making nervous attempts to adjust the microphone. Flashing his irresistible smile at us, as the students, led by Billie, applaud noisily, he begins by reviewing why he and others in the audience have organized the Healthy Mouth Opportunities Group to raise funds to build a dental clinic in his native village in Sundazi.

"If we stick together, the clinic will be built, and the people in the village will get the kinds of modern, clean, safe dental services they so desperately need," he proclaims proudly, in his robust Sundazian-accented English. "What they have now, as I told you when we met in December and raised more than seven hundred dollars, thanks to your very great generosity, is outmoded, badly maintained, and under-staffed. Three or four or maybe five or more villages in Sundazi share one dentist, and the equipment he has is so inadequate it can be extremely dangerous to patients with diabetes or high blood pressure."

Describing in excessive detail how most of the villagers have major tooth and gum problems, he shows slides of sore mouths, blistered gums, and rotting teeth. Half of the audience holds their hands over their eyes. When the wrinkled face of a gray-stubbled man with a carbuncle on his chin, a nasty boil on his tongue, and no visible teeth, comes on the screen, the woman in front of me slumps back in her chair as if she can't stand looking at him and in self-defense has passed out.

Funds are desperately needed, Minzeezi says, stressing that Sundazians, badly damaged by European colonialism, don't produce enough nutritional foods to keep them healthy. Snapping off the projector to a mass sigh of relief from the audience, he announces that at least four of his students, including Billie, are thinking seriously about going with him to Sundazi. When he calls her name, she rises quietly to her feet, looking pleased with herself and also, I think, guilty. That she'd be willing to abandon me to run off to Sundazi with him is so unexpected I try to yank her down into her seat, but she squirms away from me.

Doesn’t she realize she's never once told me why she’s contemplating betraying me like this with a guy she hardly knows except for his being her anthropology teacher? It affects me directly, doesn't it? Can she possibly deny she has an obligation to discuss with me her going to Sundazi before he tells me about it? And hasn't it occurred to her that maybe I'd object, or feel ignored or put down, or resent being treated with such indifference and contempt? But how can I say anything to her about any of this without embarrassing her? She's among her friends. Minzeezi is standing beside her. His appeal has raised an additional $926 for the clinic. Hugging everybody he can get his arms around, he kisses Billie on both cheeks and gives me a vigorous handshake. If I didn't love the clinic and getting those people's teeth fixed so much, I would have walked out. When we get to the car, Billie's still excited, and I'm ready to blow up. I don't mean to yell at her but I can't help myself. "You should've told me! I didn't know a damn thing about it until he introduces you and says you're going to Sundazi with him. I couldn't believe it."

"I did tell you," she says.

"No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did."

"When?"

"When I got home after Thursday night's class," she says, "we had a long conversation about it."

"We didn't have a long conversation about it, I say. "I'd remember a long conversation, wouldn't I? And I don't remember."

"Because you don't listen. You never listen," she says. "You're so wrapped up in yourself you don't hear a word I say. But I did tell you. I guarantee I told you, and I don't want to talk about it, okay?"

No, it's not okay, but regardless of what I say, or how I plead with her, she refuses to talk about it, or anything else, or even look at me. Is that fair, when I'm so agitated? Don't I deserve a reply, if my question is reasonable? Yet the entire trip back to our West Hollywood apartment I don't get a single answer out of her. How frustrating, I think, and rude. While I'm pulling open the garage door, she disappears into the apartment.

The light in the upstairs bathroom comes on, as I'm hurrying across the backyard to the apartment's rear door. Maybe she's calmed down. At least she hasn't locked me out. Immediately I go upstairs. The bathroom door is shut. I hear water running. I call softly to her. She doesn't respond. I again call softly. Again she doesn't respond. The water is turned off. Knocking on the door, I jiggle its knob. "Don't come in," she says.

I apologize. "You're right," I say. "Sometimes I don't listen like I should." I offer to make her favorite black olive scrambled eggs. "You must be hungry." When she again doesn't answer, I go back downstairs, get an apple out of the refrigerator, munch on it furiously, then race upstairs to confront her as she exits naked from the bathroom, carrying what she'd worn to the fundraiser - jeans, underwear, and the tan cashmere sweater I'd given her two weeks ago on her twenty-eighth birthday.

Dumping her jeans and underwear on the bedroom's upholstered armchair, she gets a flannel nightgown from her part of the closet and quickly puts it on. She's carefully folding the cashmere sweater, when suddenly she bursts out laughing. "This is silly. I've done nothing I shouldn’t have done. I told you about Sundazi. I didn't make a secret commitment to Minzeezi. And I haven't tried to hide from you that I'm thinking seriously about helping him to get his clinic built. That's what we both want, isn't it?" she said.

“Of course, it's what we both want," I say.

Throwing her arms around my neck, she gives me the wettest, most eye-popping kiss I'd ever gotten from her, knocking both of us down on the bed. Stripping off our clothes, we make great, joyful, exhausting love and fall peacefully asleep in one another's arms. Then abruptly I wake up. Untangling myself from her, I go to the bathroom. She's awake, when I come back to bed. I glance at the clock. It's almost four-thirty. She can't keep her eyes open, she says. I can't fall back to sleep. "I'm worried about Minzeezi," I say.

"You're jealous," she mumbles, rolling against me, hooking her arm across my chest.

"I don't trust him," I say

Groggily she snorts something that doesn't sound defensive or annoyed, which gives me courage to tell her how humiliated I am that she's still debating whether to choose me over him. "Suppose the situation is reverse," I say, "and I have to decide between you and some other woman. How would you feel, if I couldn't make up my mind?"

"That's not what's happening," she says.

"It's happening to me," I say, "so I'm warning you I intend to do everything I can to prevent you from going anywhere with him."

Instantly she's wide-awake and making disapproving faces at me, despite my clumsy attempt to explain I didn't mean to insult her, that my tremendous panic about losing her is my fault not hers, that humiliated is an overstatement, and that disappointed is more accurate and less hurtful, because I'm deeply disappointed she hasn't talked openly to me about Sundazi, which, in an outraged voice, I blame on Minzeezi.

Pushing me roughly away from her, she bounces off the bed.

"This proves it," she screams. "You don't respect me. You don't respect me as a woman. You don't accept I can make decisions as a woman on my own. What you want to do is to control me, and don't try to deny it, because your only choice, if I do decide to go to Sundazi, and you sincerely want me to come back to you, is to stop telling me what to do. Is that too much to ask?"

Out of bed and on my feet, shouting so loud I shock both of us, I passionately remind her how splendid our days together have been, pointing out that she often jumps to the wrong conclusion about something I say or hope to do, that she's been too quick on too many occasions to condemn me if I even mildly disagree with her, and that I don't want to control her, have never wanted to control her, and wouldn't try to control her if I could, but I can't.

That we'd get ourselves into this bitter argument about Minzeezi and Sundazi doesn't make sense. We're in love with one another.

Certainly I'm in love with her.

Yet too much has changed between us I don't understand. Wasn't the first time I saw her, on that fantastic Tuesday night in downtown L.A. at the Ambrose Franklin Forum, a genuine miracle? Shouldn't we be grateful for it and stop acting as if it's no longer important to us?


2.


Keep in mind the Ambrose Franklin doesn’t have a proscenium, or a curtain, that its audience sits in semi-circular rows, that at twenty minutes-to-eight the auditorium was filling up rapidly, and that many of its seats were already occupied.

When I spotted Billie, she was coming toward me along the crowded aisle we both sere sitting in. Navigating around a group of early arrivals, she squeeze past a heavy-set man, who suddenly wined, pulled sharply back from her, and pointed down at his foot, which she’d apparently stepped on. Despite her obvious and immediate apology, he rocked irritably out of his seat, indicating with agitated gestures he’s gotten up to gie her more room, though his large belly was now blocking most of the aisle.

Looking radiantly beautiful, Billie towered over the heavy-set man. At five-ten and a half, was I tall enough for her? Would she tower over me? What about those long arms, her long neck? Was her height being accentuated by her tight-fitting, sleeveless, dark green dress and closely cropped golden hair? A rare beauty, I decided. Arriving at her seat, she lowered herself regally into it and smiled a gentle, embarrassed smile.

How significant was it that we were sitting in the same row, Row G, the lucky number seven row? Should I have taken seriously the unobstructed view I had of her as another favorable omen? Though she was on the far side of the Franklin’s stage that jutted out into the audience, only when a certain fidgety person, halfway between her and me, turned his oversized head in the wrong direction, did I have to stretch up in my seat to see what she was doing. Otherwise, I could look at her whenever I wanted, which was often.

Definitely not true was what my friend Al Kipper has been saying about the pink shaft of light that was supposedly shining on her head. There was no pink shaft of light on anybody’s head. I might have said I saw an aura from her, or an unusual radiance that seemed very mysterious to me but he’s exaggerated totally out of proportion what I told him, and a lot of people, many of whom we’ve both known for a long time, believe him over me, which is ridiculous, because I was in the Ambrose Franklin, and he wasn’t.

Important Questions about The Twelve O’clock’s Principal Characters:

Why does the narrator, an ambitious but uncompromising real estate appraiser, think a discontented press deputy / graduate student is perfect for him, when she’s tempted to run away to Africa with her anthropology teacher? Why is this teacher so eager for her to go to Africa with him? And why does someone attempt to intimidate the teacher by putting a baby rattlesnake in his pajamas? Also, why is the narrator’s neighbor, a stockbroker, trying to impregnate the two women he shares an apartment with? Why do these women want to get pregnant by the same man? And why have they been competing with one another to get pregnant first?

Why does the narrator’s best friend, a talented aspiring actor, who is unable to act on stage or in front of a camera, act so brilliantly in getting himself fired from his job as a parking garage attendant?

Why do four or more boys (young men) parade a 15-year-old girl through the neighborhood, mauling her enormous breasts, fingering her vulva, mindlessly taking advantage of her rebelliousness, desperate need for love, and misunderstood sexual desires.

Why has the narrator’s hoped-for client, a hugely successful shopping center developer, at age 56, after a 32-year-career as builder and manager of shopping centers, including the shopping center the actor gets fired from, lately concluded his centers have done more harm than good, putting major doubt in his head about the methods he’s endorsed to build, manage, and promote them? And, why, when the developer admits his company’s strategy toward low-wage, unskilled, untrained workers is designed to take advantage of and profit from even the harshest inequalities created by differences in class, culture, race, education, and gender, has he continued to insist class warfare doesn’t exist and is not inevitable?

The Twelve O’clock is a comic novel about the pursuit of sex, love, power and magic by the above-described cast of characters, unsuspecting victims of not only deader-than-a-doornail corporate capitalism but also politicians and lobbyists who claim to promote jusice and democracy and produce instead baby steps to class warfare.


3.

The play that night was called THE SERVANT OF or TO TWO MASTERS. The playwright's name, if I remember correctly, was Gondoli, somebody Gondoli, Gino or Mario Gondoli. The play's plot is what its title says it is. A rich guy has a servant. He doesn't know the servant is also working for another rich guy. Both rich guys abuse the servant outrageously. The servant survives by outfoxing the rich guys who are dumber than he is. One of the rich guys turns out to be a woman disguised as a man, who's been trying to track down her long-lost lover, the other rich guy.

A farce, played in the commedia dell'arte style, which meant lots of noise, movement, and surprises, it starred Ronnie Blatt, a talented and very funny actor, artist, musician, acrobat, and juggler. As the servant, he was all of the above, standing on his head, juggling dishes of various shapes and sizes, playing at least a half dozen musical instruments in a sensational, crowd-pleasing performance, except, as I think about it now, much of what he did with such ease and grace is extremely hazy in my mind, partly because my fascination with Billie in her dark green dress had completely overwhelmed me.

"The stage is that way," my date, Margaret Roland, whispered. She'd noticed me staring into the audience. "Who are you looking at?"

"Who?" I said, also whispering.

She nodded. "You're looking at somebody, aren't you? Who?"

I didn't reply. On stage the servant was doing cartwheels. I glanced toward Billie. She was watching him with a wonderful, innocent look on her lovely face. In a hoarse whisper Margaret said: "I'm going to get up and leave if you don't tell me. And you know I'll do it."

"No, please," I said. The woman sitting in front of us turned her head slightly as if she'd heard what we'd been whispering and was annoyed by it.

"Watch me," Margaret said, narrowing her heavily mascaraed eyes and peering at the audience. "Some woman, isn't it? You take me out, and look at somebody else. What kind of game is this? I have feelings. I've been hurt enough no matter what you think of me."

Again I didn't answer. The man in the next seat flicked a nervous smile at us. "If it's a woman, say so,” she said, “and that's it. I promise. All I'm asking is to know where I stand. Is that unreasonable?" Her whisper was stronger and more emphatic. One of the masters on stage was ordering the servant to do something for him. I glanced at Margaret. How can I distract her, get her to watch the play instead of me?

"See that guy?" I said finally, pointing toward the auditorium's rear rows that were shrouded in such serious gloom I couldn't make out anybody who was sitting so far way from us. The man to my right put his finger over his lips, warning us we were distracting him from the play.

"Which guy?" she said.

"Next to last row," I whispered forcefully as if I could actually see somebody in the next to last row, which I couldn't. "With the big hair and the bow tie." Noticing Billie was laughing along with the rest of the audience, I laughed.

"Where?" Margaret said. When I hesitated, she repeated in a loud whisper: "Where?"

"Two seats in. From the aisle." My whisper sounded strained.

She leaned forward, shook her head. "Too dark. Can't see him. Can't see anybody." When I tried to look puzzled as if I couldn't understand why she couldn't see him, she stared at me suspiciously. "I don't appreciate being treated like you think you're putting something over on me, which you're not."

I took a deep breath. "He owes me money," I said, barely able to get the words out of my mouth. Someone shushed at us.

"Oh?" she said, lowering her whisper, sounding calmer suddenly.

"A lot of money."

There was another huge laugh from the audience. "How much is a lot?" she said.

4.

During the six weeks I'd been dating Margaret she'd often talked to me about money. A dancer by profession with loads of stage, movie, and tv credits, she'd made up her mind, she said, to make a fortune before she was thirty-five and was investing whatever she could scrape together in the stock market. "I'm salting it away."

She also seemed to know everybody in showbiz, and that was very attractive to me. Too bad she always looked so disappointed when I arrived to pick her up as if she'd been expecting somebody else but instead was stuck with me.

A great looking woman, she had thick brown hair with natural red highlights in it. Her olive skin was smooth and, above her shoulders, unblemished. Her strong nose was straight and slender. Her mouth was definitely kissable, soft and full-lipped. She didn't smile too much around me but whenever we bumped into somebody she knew from having worked with them, especially if she thought they could get her a job, she unhesitatingly showed them what she rarely showed me, her brilliantly sparkling teeth.

I wish we hadn't been so formal and reserved with one another. I can think of only one time, for maybe three or four terrific hours, when we both were genuinely relaxed and spontaneous, the night I took her to dinner at Hayden-Gluck's on Hollywood Boulevard.

That morning Martin Longhi, the choreographer who'd been such a strong influence in Margaret’s life had called her from Las Vegas. "Out of the blue," she said. "I'm thrilled. It's been too long. Do you know Martin? Do you know Judi, his wife?"

"I've seen them on television," I said.

"Wonderful people. Very good to me."

Longhi's wife was Judith Mills Rosen, the documentary photographer, who'd made a sensation with a photographic expose of the garment industry in Mexico City. "Also took a million pictures of me," Margaret said. "A joke mostly, but they're marvelous and very flattering." She laughed. "Am I blushing? I should be."

A waiter arrived to take our order. She wanted pork chops. I couldn't make up my mind; finally decided on pot roast and red cabbage.

"Traveled with them for almost two years. His chief assistant on every show in South America and the two he did in Paris. Never should have split like we did. Could have worked it out if we'd tried harder, but we didn't."

Margaret's pork chops looked grand. "Perfect," she said, sniffing them. I told her I'd always been a big fan of red cabbage. She asked to taste it. I loaded my fork and held it out to her. Licking the fork clean, she began to chew slowly.

"You approve?" I said.

She grinned, revealing those gorgeous teeth, wiping away the solemn hurt she usually carried on her pretty face.

"Good choice," she said, winking at me. I gave her more of my red cabbage, which, along with the pork chops, a heaping mound of mashed potatoes, and a generous mixture of carrots and squash, she ate ravenously. Before I'd half-finished the pot roast, there wasn't a scrap of anything left on her plate. The waiter returned. I was on my last bite. She was sitting back in her chair, watching me, with pleasure, I think. As he started to clear the dishes, he asked if either of us wanted dessert. "Not for me," I said, looking to Margaret.

She glanced up at the waiter, then at me. "I'm not into sweets," she said, "but I would like something."

"Sure," I said. "What?"

"Another order of pork chops."

5.

The intensity and passion with which she devoured those pork chops she never again even hinted at on any of our subsequent, subdued, unemotional dates until that night, at the Franklin, when she became so incensed about the non-existent deadbeat who supposedly had borrowed money from me. "No telephone number for him, or address?" she asked, struggling to control the disapproval she was obviously feeling.

"None. He moved without telling me."

"That's so awful, to do something like that, when you have an obligation. Lend money, lose a friend. I've had the same experience," she said, again peering into the gloom of the Franklin's next-to-last row. "I still can't see him."

Meanwhile, I was taking quick peeks at Billie, who looked, from where I was sitting, as if she were completely engrossed in the play, laughing as hard as everybody else in the audience, as on stage Ronnie Blatt, the servant, was making extravagantly contemptuous gestures behind the back of one of his rich-guy employers.

At intermission Margaret insisted we rush to the lounge at the rear of the auditorium to track down the deadbeat. We also searched the inner and outer lobbies. Having invented him, I wasn't surprised we didn't find him. "Must've seen you coming," she said, glancing around the lobby. When she noticed the men's room was directly across from us, immediately I knew what she was thinking: that she'd discovered the villain's hiding place, and that I was elected to check it out.

The men's room was crowded. I had to wait before I could get to a urinal. Then I took extra time washing and drying my hands. When I returned to the lobby and told her what I'd found, that he wasn't in the men's room, she gave me such a disappointed look I felt bitterly ashamed. How can I continue doing this to her? I thought. I've lied. I'm still lying, which I hate to do, even in self-defense, except Billie is worth it, isn't she? Suddenly I realized I hadn't seen Billie since we'd left the auditorium. I began to worry that she and her escort - I haven't mentioned her escort before - had decided to skip the rest of the play. Then she'd be lost to me forever.

"I need to go," Margaret said, grinning uncomfortably. While I waited for her in the lobby, she hurried to the women's room. As chimes were being sounded, that the second act was about to begin, she reappeared, moving quickly toward me. A few steps behind her, smiling gloriously, looking impossibly gorgeous, also coming directly at me, was the golden-haired Billie.

Instantly my heart was pounding so loud I was sure Margaret could hear it. For about thirty seconds I couldn't breathe, my body stiffened so I couldn't move, and my stricken face, I knew, was showing in unmistakable detail the infatuation and massive guilt I was feeling. Margaret picked up both instantly, staring with disbelieving eyes at me, then at Billie as she walked swiftly past us, disappearing through the open lobby doors into the auditorium.

"It's her, isn't it?" Margaret snarled, pointing first to Billie, then at my nose. "That's who you were looking at, not some slob who owes you money. There's no slob, right? The whole thing is one hundred percent about her. Admit it. Tell me you don't give a damn what happens to me. I'm nothing to you and never will be. You can have her, and she can have you if she even knows you exist, which you can bet she doesn't because you're too small and insignificant for anybody who has half a brain in her head, which I do, and you don't." Tears were streaming down her cheeks. I tried to put my arms around her. She punched me in the stomach. "I'm getting out of here," she shouted.

"No, wait, you can't. There's one more act," I said, stumbling after her, as she stormed across the outer lobby into the street. "Where are you going?"

"Home," she shrieked, eyes blazing, "and you're taking me. Right now!"

6.

The trip in the car was dismal. Intermittently she screamed at me, calling me the worst, most selfish, self-centered, unfeeling person she'd known in her entire life. "Don't you realize how rotten and miserable you are?" She shook her fist at me. Trying not to provoke her, I purposefully didn't apologize because I knew she wouldn't believe anything I said. The only time I dared to open my mouth was when she started on Billie who, from my standpoint, was a completely innocent party and wouldn't have been involved with Margaret or me, if I didn't have such an overly stimulated imagination about falling in love with somebody who might be willing to fall in love with me.

Margaret lived in Beverly Hills, south of Wilshire. Her Monterey-style, two-story apartment building had full-length, covered balconies on each story, a thick, neatly trimmed lawn, and an outside staircase to the second balcony. Though she warned me, as we were both getting out of the car, to stay away from her, I followed her across the lawn and up the staircase. Her apartment door was at the far end of the balcony. Glaring fiercely at me, she unlocked the door, pushed it open, squeezed past it, then slammed it in my face. Mortified at being rejected so brusquely, even if I did deserve it, I was about to pound on the door to tell her how wrong and irresponsible I was, when suddenly it was yanked open from the inside, and Hector, her wildly affectionate Labrador, came bounding out of the apartment, pouncing on me ecstatically, as Margaret thrust his leash into my outstretched hand. "Walk him," she snapped, slamming the door shut again.

For twenty minutes Hector and I romped around the block. I couldn't have denied him what probably was the last chance for us to frolic together.

Demonstrating how delighted he was to see me, he kept leaping on my arms and shoulders, slobbering kisses on my face, getting his leash repeatedly entangled around my ankles, while grinning joyously as he hit every tree, bush, and blade of grass from one end of the street to the other.

When we got back to Margaret's apartment building, we sat on the bottom steps of the outside staircase and had an intimate conversation. While he whimpered grumpily, I told him the story of my life. I’m a total flop, I said. Look what I've done to Margaret. My pal Al says I'm not neurotic enough for women like her. Stick to your own kind, he says, somebody who doesn't know Freud from a pickle. Hector rubbed his head against my chest. Maybe I won't see you again. That could happen if she doesn't change her mind. Hector growled. It's not my choice so you shouldn't be mad at me.

Tail between his legs, head slumped, face depressed and minus its grin, he followed me up the stairs, then moped after me until we arrived at Margaret's front door.

Getting down on my knees, I hugged him, which seemed to revive his spirits slightly. Then I knocked on the door. Almost immediately it was pulled open.

Reaching out, showing only her right arm to me, Margaret grabbed the leash. Hector gave me one more sweet, unhappy look and walked dejectedly into the apartment, as Margaret, still concealed behind the door, began to close it again, this time easing it shut.

"I'll call you," I said lamely to the closed door. Inside the apartment Hector barked. I barked back, then, feeling dejected myself, quietly departed.

7.

My first idea, after getting into the car, was to stop at Schubert's Parlor, a late-night, meeting-and-eating place on Sunset Boulevard. I needed cheering up. My friend Alonzo (Al) Kipper, whose acting name was A. Lonzo Kipp, was a Schubert regular, which meant he showed up at Schubert's six nights a week. Schubert's was closed on Mondays.

As I started up La Cienega, I began to worry Al might say something nasty about Margaret that would make me even more depressed so I decided to go straight home.

Home for me was a courtyard apartment off Holloway Drive. In my section of the courtyard there were two buildings, facing one another, with two apartments in each building, and a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room downstairs and a bedroom and a bath upstairs in each apartment. I also had a small, fenced back yard and a narrow garage. I drove into the garage carefully.

Sometimes the back door lock got stuck, and the key couldn't unstick it. Tonight, when I was feeling so miserable after my disastrous date with Margaret, it happened. No matter what I did with the key, how much I wiggled it, how hard I pushed and shook it, the lock wouldn't budge. I considered walking around the building to the front door but that seemed too wishy-washy to me. Doesn't a key have the responsibility to get its door open? Am I, a strong, fundamentally reasonable man, supposed to roll over for a sticky lock? With these thoughts in mind, I slipped the key back into the lock, gave a gentle twist, and presto the door swung open.

The kitchen light I'd left on, and also the lamp beside the couch in the living room. I put some water up to boil, ran upstairs to the bathroom, came back down as quickly as I could, and made myself a cup of tea. Dousing the kitchen and the living room lights, I carried the tea up to the bedroom.

The brown tweed jacket I’d worn that night was too tight and pinched my shoulders, making me look as if I'd been stuffed into it. This may sound silly, but I think that jacket and the distorted way it made me look had contributed to my debacle with Margaret. I just didn't feel comfortable wearing it anymore. As I was hanging it up, I seriously considered exiling it to the back of the closet to which I'd already consigned my faded, moth-eaten maroon bathrobe and the much-too-big plaid mackinaw sent to me by my cousin Edgar Rubenstein, who owned and managed a mackinaw manufacturing company in Medford, New Hampshire.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I was having trouble unknotting my tie, when I noticed that the shade on the bedroom window behind the bed was only half pulled down. As I reached over my pillow to grab the shade, I glanced toward Mrs. Haber's apartment, diagonally across the courtyard from mine. Her living room windows were ablaze with light. Why did this seem so odd to me? It took me a couple of seconds to realize that the drapes and the shades had been stripped from the windows. I couldn't believe it. I also couldn't believe that two guys I'd never seen before were carrying Mrs. Haber's dining room table out of her apartment. "They're doing it again," I said aloud. "What nerve these people have!"

Six months ago somebody had backed a truck up to another tenant's apartment, while the tenant was at work, and cleaned out everything he owned, except an old pair of hiking boots that were too worn-out to steal. "They're not getting away with it," I said, also aloud.

Immediately I called the cops.

"How can I help you?" a voice said.

As I breathlessly described what was happening to Mrs. Haber's furniture, the same two men carried a second table from the apartment; then a woman appeared with a chair.

"Are you sure they're burglars?" the telephone voice said

"What do you mean?

"Well, they could be anybody, couldn't they?"

I described how the other tenant had lost his entire household, including every stitch of clothing, except his worn-out boots.

Apparently the voice wasn't impressed. "Look," he said, I thought, condescendingly, "this is a very busy place. We don't have people we can just send out unless we're absolutely certain a crime is being committed. That makes sense, doesn't it?"

"No."

"Are you telling me you know for a fact these guys definitely are burglars?"

"I didn't say that."

"Exactly," he said, "because you don't really know whether they're burglars, or some friends of the family, helping this woman to move."

"Then what should I do?" I said, trying to remain calm.

"Ask them."

"Ask them?"

"How else can you find out?"

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You want me to go to these people and ask them if they're stealing Mrs. Haber’s furniture?"

"No, absolutely not. What you have to do is talk to them, size them up. There could be a very logical explanation that has nothing to do with them stealing anything."

"Suppose they say yes."

"Yes, what?"

"That they are stealing her furniture?"

"Then there's no problem. Call me back."

"Call you back? Is this what you want me to say to Mrs. Haber when she gets home and sees what they've done to her apartment, that you won't send anybody to find out who they are unless they're dumb enough to tell me they’re stealing her furniture?"

"Best I can do," he said and hung up.

Now I was really worried about Mrs. Haber. It doesn't make sense, as far as I'm concerned, to ask these people if they're burglars. I'm not a cop, but I refuse to turn my back on what these people are obviously doing to her, no matter what that guy on the phone says about the cops being too busy to find out who they are and why they're taking her furniture.

Mrs. Haber was a widow. I'd had maybe a dozen conversations with her. She'd lived in the courtyard for over twenty years since shortly after her husband Izak died. Once she invited me to her apartment for coffee, muffins, and marmalade jam. She'd made both the muffins and the jam, but clearly wasn't a very attentive baker or jam-maker. Her coffee was also too bitter for me. As a talker, she was impressive and powerful. Even her gestures were intimidating. To stop me from interrupting her, she'd snap her fingers in my face, or whistle and hold up her hand like a traffic cop, or guffaw so loudly she'd permanently distract me from what I'd been trying to say to her.

Occasionally her son Stefan showed up. He'd studied at Oxford and taught for three semesters at Holmtwist College in Maine. Each time I saw him, he was drunk. They had terrible rows, shouting at one another, he threatening violence, she vowing noisily to have him locked up. One morning she appeared with a large bruise on her left cheek. "He did it," she said. "Get him started, and he doesn't stop." She also had a daughter, Lillian. A mathematics teacher at a community college in Anaheim, she'd been married four times and had children from each of her husbands, a grand total of six, two boys and four girls. The complete opposite of Stefan, she was quiet, smiley, thoughtful, and polite. I also noticed she blushed easily. "Can I depend on her? It’s not possible," Mrs. Haber said. Lillian had had two nervous breakdowns, both short-lived. "The children suffer. They always do."

8.

When Mrs. Haber went out of town, to Lillian's in Anaheim, or to her sister Brenda's in Newark, New Jersey, she'd knock on my door and ask me to keep an eye on her place, "if it's not too much trouble." Well, something was happening, these people were emptying out her apartment, and didn't I have a responsibility to fulfill my promise to her? Grabbing a sweater, slipping it over my head, I hurried downstairs to the front door, eased it open, and stepped out into the courtyard. From where I was standing I had a clear, deep view into Mrs. Haber's living room. Gone were her overstuffed, high-backed sofa, her cherry-wood coffee table, which she valued so much, the gold-trimmed side chairs she'd bought in Paris, and the tall, aquamarine Chinese vase she and Izak had brought back from Hong Kong.

To get a better look into the apartment, I started down the courtyard path toward the street. Moving slowly, as I passed the drapeless front windows, I could see three men and one woman, a mixed assortment of furniture, and numerous cardboard boxes of various sizes. The woman and one of the men were packing the boxes. I didn't recognize any of the men or the woman. She certainly wasn't Lillian, and none of the men was Stefan. Despite the strong advice I'd gotten from the police telephone dispatcher to talk to them, I couldn't bring myself to do it. How would I know if anything they told me was true? On the street, at the foot of the courtyard path, was a huge moving van, packed with Mrs. Haber's furniture, her dark blue refrigerator, her chopping-block table, and her shiny chrome stove. My heart sank. What do I do now? I asked myself.

Glancing up toward Sunset Boulevard, I saw at the corner, on the opposite side of the street from the courtyard, sitting on his parked motorcycle, apparently watching traffic on Sunset, was a uniformed County Sheriff. We're saved, Mrs. Haber, I said, also to myself, as I rushed up the block to the corner, waved excitedly at the Sheriff, then started across the street toward him.

He wasn't sympathetic. I could tell from the disinterested look on his face he'd already heard too many stories like Mrs. Haber's. When I'd finished describing the furniture that was being stolen, he said irritably: "Call the Police."

"I've already called them. They won't come."

"So what do you expect me to do about it?"

"See those guys," I said, pointing toward the two men who were loading Mrs. Haber's sideboard into the van. "And that woman?" A woman had arrived with a large box and was handing it to one of the men in the van. "Would you please go down there, on your bike, of course, and ask any one of them if what they're doing has been approved by Mrs. Haber? If they tell you she's told them to do it, then I'm completely satisfied, and you won't hear from me again."

His immediate answer was no, no, no, he was a County Sheriff, and it wasn't his beat to do something like that, but I persisted and pleaded and told him how desperate I was to fulfill my solemn obligation to Mrs. Haber. "Everything I've tried to do for her is a failure."

Reluctantly, very, very reluctantly, he gunned his bike and cruised slowly down Holloway toward the van, with me, crossing back to the courtyard side of the street, running as fast as I could after him.

I was halfway to the van, when he made a u-turn. Pulling up beside the van, he leaned toward the woman and said something to her.

Whatever she replied obviously was okay with him. Heading back toward Sunset, picking up speed as he roared past me, he gave me the index-finger-to-thumb, All Is Well/ Mind Your Own Business sign, and that was it. The deed was being done, and I was powerless to stop it.

9.

To avoid the van, and, more importantly, the people I was still convinced were stealing Mrs. Haber's furniture, I walked rapidly back to my apartment via the access road that ran behind the courtyard's buildings. I was pushing open the gate to my backyard, when I heard someone say in a mellow, English-accented voice: "Hi there, neighbor." It was Dora Spencer-Higgins. Recently Dora and her friend Lulu Bogg and the man they shared, Howard Neville, had rented the next-door apartment. "Lovely evening, isn't it?"

"Not for me," I said, explaining briefly what had happened to Mrs. Haber’s furniture and how frustrated I was not being able to do anything to stop the burglars from stealing it. "The police are useless," I said, "totally uncooperative."

Coming up behind us were Lulu and Howard. In the garage next to mine they'd parked Lulu's car. Giggling affectionately as she grabbed my hand and yanked me into their backyard, "I'm pregnant," Lulu said.

"You can have coffee with us," Dora said.

Howard made the coffee. "Found out I'm pregnant Friday night," Lulu said. "How do I feel? Fine, terrific, never better, except Dora is jealous, which I don't blame her for, because she's always wanted to be first."

"I'm not jealous. I'm envious. In case we can't afford two babies at one time, which is possible," Dora said, "I might have to wait."

Lulu took me upstairs to see the custom bed they'd just bought. It was the same length as a queen-sized bed, ten inches wider than a king. Pushing me down on the bed, throwing herself on top of me, she gave me such a remarkable kiss on my mouth I could barely breathe. Leaning back her head, she peered mischievously into my eyes. "You like it?" she said.

"I like the kiss."

"How about the bed?" she said, wriggling off me. Before I could answer about the bed, or push myself out of it, she turned abruptly away from me and headed downstairs. Scrambling to my feet, I was about to rush after her, when suddenly, from the kitchen, I heard a loud burst of laughter. What had she said about me that made them laugh like that? I certainly hadn't enticed her to jump on top of me, and the kiss she gave me was her idea, not mine.

Admittedly I'd had a small, physical response that was entirely unintentional and so mild it didn't seem possible she would have noticed it enough to ridicule me for being aroused without implicating herself. If I could have escaped out the second-story bedroom window and avoided seeing her again, I would have done it, gladly. Instead, expecting to be laughed at the instant I showed my face, I crept quietly down the stairs, arriving in the kitchen, as Howard was wiping up the floor, the legs of several chairs, the stove, and the cabinet under the sink. He'd accidentally knocked over a carton of milk, he said. Milk had splattered everywhere. "You must've heard them laughing at me."

"Laughing at you?" I said

"Of course, at him," Lulu said. "He did it, didn't he?"

"That's not funny," Howard said. "I didn't do it on purpose. You'd think I'd get some sympathy." Lulu got down on her knees beside him. Putting her arms around his neck, she gently hugged him. Then Dora asked my opinion of their new mattress.

"Howard hates it," Lulu said, pushing away from him.

"I don't hate it," he said.

"You don't like it," she said.

"Too soft," he said, looking to me. "It's breaking my back."

"But three adults in a queen-size bed didn't work," Dora said, "especially if one person refuses to relax."

"And I'm the person, right?" Lulu said.

"She doesn't like other people to sleep if she can't," Dora said.

"That's so untrue," Lulu said. "I may be nervous in bed, but I'm also neat and cuddly, and never in my life have I tried to stop anybody from sleeping if they wanted to sleep."

"Except Howard and me," Dora said.

"Oh, come on. You're much worse than I am," Lulu said, "and so is he." Howard was at the sink. He'd finished cleaning up the milk and was rinsing out the sponges he'd used. He began teasing Lulu about her more objectionable sleeping habits, which included, he said, eating, singing, and “jumping idiotically like she’s the only one in bed.”

"I don't jump in bed," Lulu said, grinning innocently. "Do I?"

The conversation switched to Lulu's pregnancy and the new responsibilities they were all going to have. He might need a second job, Howard said, especially if Dora also got pregnant. Dora said she had enough savings to pay for her share of their expenses for at least a year, and Lulu said she could probably get a loan from her brother in England. They'd definitely have to move, which wasn't a problem for any of them. They'd want two baths and three bedrooms, and a house would be preferable to an apartment. They all talked enthusiastically about buying a house.

These were such remarkable people. Discounting the kiss Lulu had given me, they seemed to love one another openly, casually, without guilt or regret, as if threesomes like theirs were a dime a dozen. "It's against my code to hide behind anything," Dora said, "no matter who disapproves of me or Lulu or the man of my dreams who's going to give me a baby tonight if possible."

Howard was smiling sweetly at her. "More coffee?" he said, filling my cup. Six-foot-two tall, slender as a string bean, bald as a cucumber, with dangling arms that reached below his knees, huge hands, huge feet, no neck, birdlike shoulders, intriguing buck teeth, and loving-cup ears, Howard possessed so much warmth and unpretentiousness he could charm anybody he turned his attention to.

What a catch for intense, ambitious, determined Dora and giggly, scatter-brained, manipulative, flirtatious Lulu. Both were barely five-foot-two. As Dora walked her jaunty walk, her thick, wavy, brown hair bounced rhythmically off the tops of her broad shoulders. Lulu was short-red-haired, green-eyed, and pasty-faced. A rapid, breathless talker, she did marvelous, sensual things with her thick-lipped, fleshy mouth, which caused me to smile excessively at her. Will I get another kiss? I wondered, as I was preparing to leave, having finished off my second cup of coffee. Dora pecked my cheek. Howard gave me an extravagant hug, while Lulu remained on the opposite side of the kitchen and wiggled her fingers at me.

10.

It was after midnight by the time I got back to my bedroom. The burglars, I saw, were gone. The lights in Mrs. Haber's apartment had been turned out, and her courtside windows were dark. Poor Mrs. Haber, I thought. She goes away without telling me she'd be gone, and look what happens. Imagine the shock she'll get, when she comes back. For my own sake, so I can sleep tonight, I was determined to put her out of my head, forget how the police had mistreated me, and accept that my failure to stop the burglary wasn't my fault. What else could I have done to prevent those people from stealing her furniture?

Pulling down the shade, I undressed quickly, took care of my bathroom needs, and got into bed. The soft light from the glass-shaded lamp beside the bed gave an eerie glow to the room. Lying on my back, I stared at the pale, textured ceiling and began to think about my next-door neighbors and the closeness and harmony they'd created for themselves. Lulu's kiss, I didn't understand at all. Actually I'd expected her to make a joke or tease me about it, but she didn't even mention it, or hint at it, or give me any indication it had ever happened, or could have happened, or that she would have wanted it to happen, which confused me. Should I be worried? If only I hadn't told her I liked the kiss, though I did like it, and I liked her mouth and the feel of her body on me, none of which I wanted to think about anymore.

That got me back to Margaret and how shamefully I'd treated her. Imagine being out with some person who spends the entire evening ogling somebody else. I'd be furious if it had happened to me. And then to have that person lie about doing it and claim to feel hurt and rejected, as I had done, when I clearly deserved having more than the door slammed in my face.

My excuse, of course, was Billie. Switching off the lamp, I lay in the dark, trying to bring her shadowy image into sharper focus. What I recollected most was her golden hair and fleeting shots of her in action, much more vague than I would have hoped for, which made me wonder if I'd even recognize her again. This sobering thought woke me from my dozing. Where should I start to look for her? To put an ad in a newspaper, pleading with her to contact me, sounded futile and dumb. I could ask, I suppose, at the Ambrose Franklin box office if they had the name and address and telephone number of the woman who that night had sat in a certain fifth-row seat, the number of which I didn't know. They'd think I was out of my mind, right? Like Mrs. Haber's furniture, Billie had vanished from my life. I get one microscopic, wafer-thin chance at what my heart tells me is true love, and immediately it disintegrates before I can take advantage of it. Maybe I should call Margaret and apologize. Instead I demonstrate my deep-rooted shallowness and insincerity by expunging her from my head to concentrate solely on Billie, as a distant voice that sounds like mine is singing softly:


I think I love you.
But don’t know your name.
What can I do
to find you again?
Where are you now?
O my, what a shame,
to lose you forever
and not know your name.

Zonk! Snore.

11.

The next morning the first thing I did was to open the front door, go out into the courtyard, and look into Mrs. Haber's apartment. Though I'd been expecting it to be empty, seeing it empty was a shock. Nothing whatsoever had been left behind, including her black and brown doormat with WELCOME written on it in Chinese.

Now I had to do a very sad duty on her behalf. Call Reggie at the Management Office. "Got rotten news," I said.

"Yeah?" he said. "What?"

"Someone took Mrs. Haber's furniture," I said.

"So?" he said, sounding unreasonably cheerful.

"You know about it?" I said.

"Of course, I know about it," he said. "She moved."

"Moved? Where to?"

"Daughter's in Anaheim."

“Daughter's in Anaheim?” I said. That she’d be willing to move to her daughter’s in Anaheim after she’d been so critical of her “undisciplined life style” shocked me. He gave me the daughter’s address and telephone number, but I was too annoyed at Mrs. Haber to copy it down. I also didn't appreciate his laughing nastily at my emotional description of the ordeal I'd gone through with the police, when I was so desperately trying to convince them the furniture movers were burglars who were stealing her furniture.

“She hired them,” he said. “Didn’t consult me, except I did agree to open the apartment for them, so she could get an early start on her vacation in Bermuda."

"Bermuda!," I said.

"Two weeks before she goes to Anaheim. Deserves it, doesn't she? Worn out from being alone so much since Mr. Haber died. Couldn't stand it anymore."

When finally I hung up the phone, I was outraged. While she was having fun in Bermuda, I was battling the police to save her furniture, which didn't need to be saved, because she'd hired somebody, without telling me, to move it to her daughter’s in Anaheim. Angrily I asked myself why hadn't she called or knocked on my door to wish me luck or say goodbye?

The possibility she might have moved hadn't even entered my head. How could I have overlooked that I didn't know all the facts? Was my ego so distorted I automatically presumed she would have talked seriously to me about wanting to move in with her own daughter?

Jumping to the wrong conclusion caused me to suffer intense upset and disillusionment with the cops that could have been avoided. I checked my refrigerator. At the back of the top shelf was one of Mrs. Haber’s walnut cookies. Throw it out, I said aloud, stamp on it, get rid of it, disrespect it as she'd obviously disrespected me.

Instead I decided to eat the cookie later.

12.

At eleven-thirty that morning I had an appointment downtown in the Dundee Pearl Building with Blackman and Blackman, insurance brokers. Built in the nineteen twenties, the six-story, tan-brick, narrow-windowed, flat-roofed Dundee Pearl was a handsome, sensitively designed, high-quality building. Waiting impatiently in its marble-floored, mahogany-paneled lobby outside one of its three elaborately sculptured, brass-doored elevators, I had this vivid premonition that something extraordinary was about to happen to me.

The floor-indicating arrow above the elevator's sliding doors was pointing at four. A half minute later it moved down to three. It took more than a minute before it dropped to two. Forty seconds later, it started down again, moving slowly past M for Mezzanine, stopping finally at L for Lobby, as the brass doors slid open, revealing an exceptionally crowded elevator. First off was a tall, orange-haired woman. She was followed by two men in gray, pin-striped suits, a priest, a man with a bushy black beard, a woman carrying a baby, another man wearing a tan raincoat, four smartly-dressed young women, among whom, looking as spectacularly gorgeous as she had at the Ambrose Franklin, moving with the same obvious calm and grace, not once glancing in my direction, was the golden-haired Billie I'd never expected to see again. Wow!

She was past me and halfway to the building's main exit before I got words enough to call out to her. "Miss! Miss! Please. Wait."

Turning toward me, she smiled quizzically. "Yes?" she said.

"Do you mind?" I said. "I'm sorry. I have to ask."

"Ask what?" she said, looking doubtful, her smile fading.

"Didn't I see you last night at the theatre?" I said.

Her eyes narrowed. "What theatre?" she said.

"The Ambrose Franklin."

"The Ambrose Franklin?" Her face instantly broke into a broad grin. "The Servant of Two Masters?" I nodded enthusiastically. "Wasn't it wonderful?" she said. "And isn't the servant great?"

"No matter what those bosses do to him, how much they try to beat him down, he's still the master of his own spirit. They're on one side, and he's
on the other, refusing to give up this terrific vision he has of himself." She laughed, wrinkling her lovely nose at me. "I love how he stood on his head so much."

"And twirled those batons," I said.

"And played the trombone with such fury. To prove he's better, smarter, shrewder, and more independent than they could ever hope to be." She laughed again. "Which is only my opinion, of course."

She gave me a pretty smile. "I'm late," she said. "I've got to run."

"Can we talk again?" I said, thick-voiced and sounding embarrassingly anxious. "I'm downtown a lot. We could have lunch if you're available. Maybe some time this week? Friday? I've got another appointment."

She dug a card from her purse. "Call me Thursday," she said, handing me the card. "About eleven. Okay?"

"Eleven," I said, with a large grin on my face.

Then she hurried off through the Dundee Pearl's main exit into the busy street. Not until she was out of sight did I look at her card. BILLIE COOPER, it said. Printed below her name was a telephone number. Later, after my meeting at Blackman and Blackman, I called Al Kipper from the Dundee Pearl's lobby, described in detail everything I knew about Billie, where I'd first seen her, how she'd walked out of that elevator practically into my arms, and why I was so convinced a miracle had happened to me. "I'm definitely in love," I said, then asked him to meet me at eight thirty at Schubert's Parlor.

"Can't wait," Al said.

13.

Schubert's Parlor was located in a domed building on Sunset Strip that until recently had housed an antique furniture dealer. In converting the dealer's showroom into the Schubert's dining room, maximum advantage was taken of the room's remarkable architectural features, including its curved, floor-to-ceiling, front window, its walnut-stained wood floor, its raised, wood-burning fireplace, and its arched, acoustically-hot ceiling, which sometimes allowed somebody's whispered conversation on one side of the room to be heard clearly by somebody else on the opposite side of the room.

It was said that one Saturday morning, Mimi Stutz, a New York stage designer went to Schubert's with a large pad and a couple drawing pencils and made a rough sketch of the room that became her final interior design. The long, marble-topped buffet, flanked at both ends by a towering concrete vase, containing a fanlike kentia palm, was the central focus of Mimi's original sketch. She put high-backed benches along the curved rear wall and upholstered them in black and tan striped mattress ticking. It was her idea to paint the room a soft, yellowish tan and to cover the wall behind the benches with a tan, marbleized wallpaper. The coffee bar was her design. She also designed the marble-topped, iron-based tables and chose the black director's chairs and the brass, frosted-globe chandelier that hung over the buffet. The only important feature in the entire room that didn't originate with her was the Italian-made, chrome-plated, 1903 espresso machine that John and Chip, the two guys who owned and operated Schubert's Parlor, had found in Greenwich Village and shipped back to L.A.

A showbiz hangout, Schubert's Parlor was almost always crowded and noisy. Many of its customers came regularly and often to meet friends and make business contacts. When I arrived that night, Al was waiting for me at one of the small tables that rimmed the benches along the rear wall. Immediately I could see from his sly, flirtatious expression he'd been attempting to work his magic on the twenty-year-olds at the next table. He already knew their names, Audrey Frost and Pam Bender, that they were both actors, that they'd each been in a low-budget movie, and that they earned their livings in the same profession as dental assistants.

"This guy," he said, introducing me, as I sat in the director's chair opposite him, "no matter what you think of how he looks, and he's not that great looking to begin with, is a world famous, enormously talented and skilled brain surgeon."

“Brain surgeon?” Instantly Pam was intrigued. "Where's your office?" she said, flashing a bright, inviting smile at me.

"Scanlon Building," Al said quickly. The Scanlon Building was Beverly Hills' most prestigious medical address.

"What floor are you on?" Audrey said.

"Third," Al snapped, winking inanely at me.

"Do you know Dr. Rockport?” she said, ignoring Al. “He's my mother's doctor. He's also on the third."

"Bosom buddies," Al said before I could reply.

"Hey," Pam said, thrusting her chin at Al, "she asked him. Let him speak for himself."

"Doesn't have a voice," Al said. "Too many operations in too few days. Dries up the vocal chords." Pam's eyes narrowed. "Is that true?" She was talking to me. Then she turned to Al. "If he can't talk, tell him to whisper something. That won't hurt his vocal chords."

"On the contrary," Al said, slapping his hand over my mouth. "Could ruin them forever. Even the slightest strain on his throat."

"I think you're making this up," Pam said. She glanced at Audrey who was staring at me suspiciously.

"Operated on me," Al said.

"Who did?"

"He did. Frontal lobotomy." Now both women looked suspicious "See that scar," Al said, pointing to a small scar above his left eyebrow that he'd gotten at age five when he walked into a flagpole. "That's where he drilled the hole." First Audrey, then Pam leaned forward to get a closer look at the scar. Audrey actually touched it.

"He took this instrument," Al said, "the size of a miniature button hook, poked it into the hole, grabbed the lobotomy, and yanked it out."

"How big was it?" Audrey said.

"Size of a coconut."

"A coconut? Are you telling us this guy put a button hook in your head and pulled out a coconut?"

"Didn't hurt," Al said. "No fuss. No bother. Not even one spot of blood." He looked to me. "Right, doc?"

"He's not supposed to talk. Remember?" Pam said, eyeing me skeptically, as Audrey was shaking her finger at Al. "I think you're crazy," she said, "that you've got a screw loose someplace, that you get some rotten kick out of insulting a person's intelligence.”

"Kid's got moxie," Al said, as she was pushing to her feet.

"And you need your head examined," Audrey said, making a nasty face at him. Then she paid their check, and they were gone. As soon as their dishes were cleared from the table, another couple, a nervous-eyed woman and a glowering man, replaced them.

14.

"Can we talk about Billie now?" I said.

"Not quite," Al said. He wanted a second cappuccino. I ordered a mocha frost, a specialty of the house. “This morning,” he said, “I started that new job.” He flexed his eyebrows mischievously. Not a good sign, I thought. "First of all,” he said, “I get there at nine o'clock. This guy, who says he's the boss that I don't know from Adam, asks what happened, didn't anybody tell me they start at eight, which is when he says he'd expected to see me. Now, he says, he has to take time out from his busy schedule, which I'm supposed to feel guilty about, to show me how to operate the machine. He sits me down, says okay, Al, just do what I tell you to do, and there won't be a problem. Then he shows me this foot pedal under the machine about three inches above the floor on the left. You push it with your left foot, he says, so I push it with my left foot, and some wheels turn. Then he shows me this lever also on the left and tells me to pull it with my left hand, which is what I do, and more wheels turn. Okay, he says, same with the foot pedal on the right, you push it with your right foot, and the lever on the right you pull with your right hand, and that's the rhythm you get into, push on the left, pull on the left, push on the right, pull on the right. Okay?

"Try it," he says, so I try it, and what I do is just the opposite of what he tells me to do. Instead of starting by pushing on the left, I start by pushing on the right. Wait a minute, wait a minute, he says, you got mixed up, and he goes through the routine again, push, pull, push, pull, first on the left, then on the right. Not too bad if you concentrate, he says. But how can I concentrate? There's no way. This machine's a monster, and I've already made up my mind I don't want anything to do with it. So every time he says left, I do right, and every time he says foot, I do hand, and I'm driving this guy nuts until finally he says, okay, you did your best, and you're just not suited, and he asks me to leave, which I'm prepared to do, except, as soon as he isn't watching me anymore, I sneak back to the machine and do left, left, right, right twenty times in a row to prove to myself I really can do it."

"And that's it?” I say. "Did you tell your sister?" His sister Rhonda's friend, Harry, had recommended him for the job. "He'll probably ask her what happened, won't he?"

"I quit, that's what happened," Al said sharply, his voice seething with anger. "Whatever he’s trying to do to me, I'm not taking it from him, okay? The guy's a creep. She should stay away from him, which is what I've already told her. How can she be that desperate?"

"You still have to talk to her," I said.

"No, no, it's not possible to talk to anybody," he said, suddenly clutching his right knee.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Cramp,” he said. “It's killing me. Can't sit this long. I've got to get out of here."

Schubert's, as usual, was mobbed. It took time to get a check from the waiter; then paying it took more time. Al's agitation seemed to increase. The cramp, he said, was now also in his left knee. With a terrible scowl on his face, he was vigorously rubbing both knees. "I'm in agony," he said. The woman at the next table identified herself as a nurse and offered to call an ambulance for him.

"He'll take care of me," he said, meaning I'd take care of him. Struggling to his feet, he grabbed my arm, leaned heavily against me. The nurse reached for his wrist and tried to feel his pulse. He shook her away from him.

"This could be serious," she said.

"Of course, it's serious. It's always serious, but I can manage," he said, limping with such an exaggerated limp I could hardly hold onto him. Almost magically, Schubert's bedlam hushed, the crowded aisles ahead of us cleared, as he maneuvered me through the dining room, the lobby, and out the front door. Like the star of a hit play, he waved goodbye to customers who were peering at him from the inside the restaurant’s front window. Was he putting them on? Was he putting me on? Were his knee cramps as severe as he claimed? Did they justify his outrageous limp?

15.

"I don’t normally give up my table this early," he groaned, squeezing my arm tightly. Then in less than a block of torturous limping he completely walked off the cramps. "I'm cured," he said, dancing a few fancy steps on his toes, “except they could come back, couldn’t they?” When I accused him of faking the cramps as well as the limp, he rolled his eyes at me, as if he was about to share some big, delectable secret.

“Acting,” he said, a triumphant smile spreading across his face, “to pay them back for what they’ve done to me.” “Them” were the Schubert’s showbiz clientele, “ the same kind of assholes who’ve been denying me a legitimate shot at demonstrating how talented I am.” He detailed his complaints against a producer and a casting director, Schubert’s Parlor customers, who, he said, had undercut him. I was sympathetic and didn’t interrupt, but I’d heard both stories before. He also told me again, for maybe the sixth time, about a guy who was president of one of the major movie studios. He’d met this guy at a party. The guy had said that as soon as he got to be top dog in the studio he didn’t hesitate to “dee-stroy” anybody who’d tried to stop him from getting ahead. “Exactly what I intend to do – ‘dee-stroy’ or give one helluva scare to all these birds who’ve refused to give me a chance to prove myself.”

We were heading east on Sunset Boulevard. It was almost ten-fifteen. The night was warm and clear. Traffic had started to thin out. Small shops lined the street on both sides. Their brightly-lighted windows were stocked with upscale, colorfully-displayed merchandise, most of which I couldn't afford.

Before we got to the next cross street, Al had completely changed his tune and was contrite, first about Audrey and Pam and how harshly he'd teased them, then about his fake limp and disrupting the Schubert’s business, then about the boss at the factory and the contemptuous way he'd rejected the job, then about his sister Rhonda and the frightening possibility he'd gone too far, and she'd kick him out of her apartment where he'd been staying for the past eight months, and finally about her boyfriend Harry, who'd been trying so hard to find him a job. "Maybe he thinks he's doing me a favor," Al said, taking my arm again. "You and Rhonda are my only true friends. Everybody else I don't trust, and they don't trust me."

He asked me about Billie. "Smart, isn't she?" he said. "That stuff she told you about the play makes sense. Shows she has strong opinions and isn't shy about making them known, which is okay, if that's what you want, somebody who's always ready to run circles around you."

"That's not how she is," I said.

"How do you know how she is?” he said heatedly. “Or who she is?"

"It's what I feel about her," I said, which provoked from him a big, noisy, bitter, discouraging laugh. He also gave me an impassioned lecture about finding a woman like his sister Rhonda to give meaning and substance to my life.

"Too bad she's too old for you," he said.

Rhonda was three years older than Al, who was two years older than me. "How about you finding a woman like your sister Rhonda to give meaning and substance to your life?" I said.

"That's a tricky subject," he said. "Namely this schnoz, right?" He tapped his strong beak-like nose, which fitted perfectly among his strong cheekbones, strong chin, strong jaw, strong forehead, and strong Adam's apple that protruded brashly from his short, ruddy neck. His entire, expressive, brown-eyed face was ruddy as if he'd been thrusting it into a gale for a week. They make storm-on-the-high-seas movies, don't they? Why hadn't he at least had a bit part or a walk-on in one of them?

It definitely wasn't his height, though he was slightly on the short side. It wasn't the stockiness of his muscular body. It wasn't his extra broad shoulders, which looked great in a sports coat. It wasn't his deep, sonorous voice. And it certainly wasn't that he lacked talent. In somebody's living room, at Schubert's Parlor, and always on the telephone, he was brilliant. But put him on the stage or bring him to an audition, and he froze up like an ice cube. I saw him in action twice, and both times he could barely move or speak or respond appropriately to what the other actors were saying to him, which may have been the reason he couldn't stop performing off stage and why he insisted on giving such a massive headache to Rhonda and everybody else he got involved with by constantly putting them on.

Even I was annoyed at his incessant teasing, especially when he turned it full-blast on me. What kind of friend was this guy that he’d do such a thing to somebody who’d spent so much time catering to him? Maybe I should have dumped him and concentrated on my own troubles for a change, regardless of how many great laughs we continued to have together.

16.

Thursday I couldn't sleep past four a.m. I'd awakened three times previously, once to go to the bathroom, twice to look at the clock. Exhausted and aching from too little sleep, I suddenly began to worry I was making a mistake, that it was wrong for me to pursue Billie, that she didn't need me to cause her heartache, and that I should take Al’s advice and stick with women I knew how to relate to, because she was obviously so different from them I couldn't possibly make her happy.

With only seven hours till my scheduled eleven o'clock telephone call, I had to get my mind on something other than why I wasn't good enough for her. I tried a variety of distractions from boiling an egg, which I overcooked, to meditating in the lotus position, which strained my back, to taking a bath in chlorine-smelling water that refused to get hot. I called my mother in New York, then remembered she was visiting my sister in Boston. I also attempted to rework the conclusion of an appraisal report on a defunct brewery and fourteen acres of prime, high-valued industrial land in East L.A., but couldn't concentrate enough to get it done.

It was light now and closing in on seven o'clock. I tried writing down what I was planning to say to Billie. I'd seen someone do that in a movie. It was funny in the movie but doing it myself seemed silly. Then I tried speaking aloud an imaginary dialogue with her, taking both parts, of course, and that seemed to relax me.

At eight-twenty I drove to Westwood. A friend of mine, Chuck Seebey, had asked me to check out a house he and his wife were thinking about buying. It was located on Apex Drive, a couple of blocks off Westwood Boulevard. I'd collected comparables. I looked first at the house my friend was interested in, a two-story, 1800 square-foot Spanish, which appeared from the outside to have a load of deferred maintenance. The comparables were in much better shape. When I got back to my apartment, I called another friend, a broker, Annie Muller, who'd sold a lot of properties in the area. She'd seen the house, hadn't liked it, thought it was overpriced, and told me to tell Chuck not to buy it. Chuck wasn't at his office so I called him at home.

The phone rang about six times before his wife Verna answered. Chuck had gone to the Post Office, she said. When I told her what Annie had told me about the house, she got so angry she began to scream at me I had no right to stick my nose in her business. "I want that house," she said and slammed down the phone.

17.

The time was now ten-forty-one. I went upstairs to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. At eight minutes to eleven I couldn't stand waiting any longer. I dialed Billie’s number. A woman answered: "Supervisor Klein's office." She also told me her name but I was too nervous to hear what she said. I asked if I could speak to Billie.

"She's not here," the woman said. "She's at a meeting with the Supervisor about the new hospital the County's building and won't be available all day to talk on the telephone."

"Oh," I said, sounding crushed.

"Are you the one she met at the play?" she said.

"We didn't exactly meet," I said.

"Well, she did leave a message. She'll be waiting tomorrow at the Fish Net Restaurant." My spirits shot up. "Do you know the Fish Net on Seventh Street?" she said. "Very fine food, particularly if you're out of your mind for prawns and lobster like I am." She gave me the Fish Net's address and described how to get there.

"What time?" I said.

"Noon sharp. And please don't be late. She's on a tight schedule," the woman said, sounding so concerned about me I apologized for not catching her name the first time she’d told it to me and asked her to repeat it. “Evelyn Von Hewger,” she said, carefully spelling Hewger for me. “My husband’s family, the Von Huggers, actually say Hugger, but Hewger is much more dignified, don’t you think, though none of them agrees with me, including my husband Ollie, who’s still a Von Hugger, Hugger.” She laughed. “Or as I always remind him: Ugher!”

That afternoon I made two quick stops to meet potential clients. A major shopping center developer needed an appraiser to do a market study on a large project in Riverside County. The other involved three partners who sounded serious about asking me to appraise some special properties for them in Canada, Hong Kong, and Japan. By the time I arrived at the Hollywood Public Library I was so excited I had to walk around the block to calm myself. What a glorious day I’d had. First, Billie agrees to have lunch with me, and then I’m told by these influential guys that my sales pitch makes sense to them. Can you imagine? Could hardly believe it!

The Library’s reference room was on the second floor. What I was looking for was information on the play, “The Servant of or to Two Masters,” and its author, Gino or Mario Goldoni, in case Billie wanted to talk about him or the play at tomorrow’s lunch. Certainly I’d feel more comfortable if I had something unique or especially interesting to contribute to our conversation instead of having to depend on her to do most of the talking for both of us.

Surprisingly it turned out that Goldoni’s first name was neither Gino nor Mario. It was Carlo. It was also surprising that the play had been known by both titles: “of two masters,” and “to two masters.”

Goldoni, who was born in Venice in1707 and died at age 86 in 1793, had had a successful career as a lawyer, when in 1745 he was commissioned to write a commedia dell’arte style play, which, as one of the articles points out, completely contradicted the commedia dell’arte tradition.

Until Goldoni commedia dell’arte actors had improvised their own plays within the established roles of their traditional stock characters. Once Goldoni imposed on these actors his scripted play, he undermined the spontaneity of their performances, and eighteenth century commedia dell’arte was dead.

Fascinating stuff to discuss with Billie, I thought, provided she understands I went to the library because I was curious about Goldoni, and not because I was trying to show off by exaggerating my meager knowledge of him or his plays, which I knew wouldn’t work with her. She’d certainly find me out, and I’d feel even more inadequate in expressing my opinions about the play than I already did.

So I made up my mind that tomorrow at lunch I definitely wouldn’t mention Goldoni. If she brought him up, then we’d talk about him, but to risk saying something dumb or inappropriate about my research at the library that might cause a misunderstanding between us made no sense whatsoever, when we could easily postpone talking about Goldoni and the play until we had more experience with one another, and I felt less anxious about making an upbeat impression on her, having already decided, based on what my heart was telling me, that we’d be perfect together.