The Idea of Love (7 page)

“I adore movie theaters,” he said. “Everything about them. The smell, the chairs, the sticky floors, the hushed waiting.”

“Me, too,” she said, “but I have to drive a half hour for that. Sometimes I go alone, just to sit in the air-conditioned quiet and eat Milk Duds and popcorn.”

“Raisinets for me,” he said.

She stared at him for a minute. What an odd creature. He looked the part of the writer, with his glasses and rumpled hair, his notebooks and satchel. But he seemed interested in everything but what he said he was writing about.

They reached the slave relic museum and the sign, handwritten with a handless clock image, said
CLOSED
.

Ella made a noise in her throat. “Sorry. I don't really know the opening hours. It's not somewhere I go. In fact … I've never been.”

Hunter touched her arm and then pulled away quickly. “No big deal. Just to know it's here is enough to write about.” He shook his head. “The South. It's a funny thing sometimes. Even though I grew up in the South, it was definitely not Southern.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“South Florida,” he said. “The Everglades. The snake and alligator part of the South. But definitely not
Southern
like this, with the history and plantations. It's not the same.”

“Yes. It's different.…”

“Your husband,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Was your husband from here?”

Ella didn't know what to say, how to describe a dead man who was still alive. This was absurd. They could run into him any minute—not that he'd be strolling through the slave relic museum—but they were standing in the middle of town. “Yes.” She stopped. If she kept going, she'd trip over her lies.

“Tell me about meeting him,” Hunter said.

He looked at Ella through those black-rimmed glasses. “I didn't want to love him,” she said. “He was all bravado and smoothness, all wonderful and hip and cool. And my boss.”

“Yes?” he asked in this quiet voice that made Ella want to tell him everything.

“His family had always owned the marina,” she said, walking slower now and glancing sideways at Hunter. This was more fun than she'd had in months and yet it also felt wrong. Yet she continued. “He had a big sailboat and I was hired to work on it, a ‘stewardess' if that's what you want to call it. The rules were strict: absolutely no fraternizing. It was grounds for firing. I needed the job. Badly. So I lived in an eternal state of longing. Constantly passing him in the tiny passageways or on the docks.” Ella closed her eyes as if she could see what never existed. There'd been no sailboat. No yacht. Only the docks and some rental boats. But she'd talked her way into the story this far.

“How long did this go on?” Hunter asked.

It had been so, so long since someone asked about her life that she dove back in. “A year or so,” she said, and looked at Hunter. “Have you ever been in love for that long and just known you were supposed to be together but also knew there was just no way? That it was impossible?”

“I don't think so,” he said.

“You'd know,” she replied.

“So what finally happened?”

“He offered to teach me to sail. We'd come back to port and we were unloading the boat. His girlfriend ran off to the spa because she needed an emergency mani-pedi and a blow-dry. We were there, just standing on the edge of the boat, the wind blowing…” She paused and looked away. “And that was that.”

“Love arrived,” he said

“Yes. Love arrived.”

four

FADE IN:

EXT. DOCK OF WEATHER-BEATEN MARINA IN SMALL HARBOR. DAY.

Late afternoon. Slightly tackily dressed, silly woman saunters off, leaving her boyfriend, NAME TK, to finish tying up boat with female crewmember, WOMAN. Departing woman seems indifferent, ignoring his good-bye.

WOMAN and MAN TK
—who is clearly the boss—work together easily and efficiently, though he is continually indicating what she should do; this is new to her, clearly. His hand brushes hers when handing her a rope and he jerks back as if electrified. WOMAN pretends not to notice, but smiles.

WOMAN
breaks tension by laughing at little boy on dock who is chasing seagull.

MAN

Do you know how to sail?

WOMAN

No. That's bad, right?

MAN

Bad? Why bad?

WOMAN

(laughs)

Well, I DO work on a sailboat.

MAN

(laughs)

Good point. Do you want to learn?

WOMAN

Yes, I just haven't had the chance.

MAN

You've got the chance right now. How about it?

WOMAN

(friendly smile)

Great! Do I get overtime?

MAN

Not until you can tie a clove hitch and steer by the North Star.

Blake shut his notebook and leaned back on the hotel bed. He felt peaceful for the first time in a very long time. It could have something to do with the slow Southern pace of the world he'd found himself in, or Ella's delicate voice. But no matter. He would relish the moment for what it was: happiness.

The day nudged into evening. He thought of what hell the past year had been. It was nice to feel good again, if only for a moment. He'd spent the entire afternoon with Ella and told her more than he meant to about himself and his life. If she suspected he was up to something, or lying about his job, it wouldn't take more than a quick Google search to discover that a man named Hunter Adderman had never written a book about anything, ever. But she had seemed so trusting, so accepting.

So he'd told Ella that his father died and that he had a fifteen-year-old daughter. He would tell her nothing about his L.A. life, his ex-wife.…

His ex, Marilee, hated him. It wasn't exactly a mystery
why
. The bigger mystery was that they had ever loved at all. Love. It was supposed to be the
be all
and
end all
. Wasn't that what his movies were about? How he made a living? But in the real world, the world where people lived and ate and slept and made love and worked … well. That was a different matter. Love was just something else to muck up, something else to fail at or with. It was the hammer to the heart.

This was his new life philosophy. Yet, if they hadn't loved each other, what had it all been about? Status? Survival? His ex could probably answer this. What was therapy for if not to help her process her hatred of him? Okay, so he deserved her disgust. In the black-and-white world of deserve or not-deserve, he was getting his due. He cheated on her. There wasn't a dainty way to say it. He drank too much JD on the night of his movie premiere three years ago and slept with a rising TV starlet who had been cast as the main character's best friend. She'd been known for her offscreen hijinks as much as her drama. He couldn't even really pretend it was a mistake because he'd wanted to sleep with her since he met her. But he'd resisted. Until that night. Oh, the paparazzi didn't care about him, but unfortunately they most definitely did care about her.

There were photos.

Even if Marilee did love him still, which she said she didn't, she couldn't stay with him. Didn't he understand that there were pictures out there—in magazines, on their friends' computers, out in the big wide world? How could she stay?

He'd wanted her to stay. He'd wanted to sleep with the actress, but he hadn't wanted to lose his family. As Marilee said when she kicked him out, “You can't always get what you want … but—”

He didn't stay to hear the end of it. He knew the Rolling Stones as well as the next guy.

*   *   *

Ella walked up the back stairwell of the Crumbling Chateau, running her hand along the brick wall to guide her because the overhead light was out—again. The dog, the damn dog from the apartment below, was yapping—again. Ella paused in front of the door on the second floor. She'd do it. She'd tell the guy to shut that damn dog up when it barked at all hours and minutes of the night. What was wrong with people?

The door opened just as she lifted her hand to knock. She looked straight into the apartment and saw a small white puff running in circles. It was an apartment just like Ella's but different, full and cluttered with furniture and flowered patterns, rugs and books, and knickknacks. Everywhere knickknacks. Where was the stinky old man and the dirty dog? A woman appeared in the right side of the doorframe. “You scared me,” she said. “I heard you out there in the hallway.”

Her snowy hair spread in every direction like a compass. Her face was lined in the way happy people's faces were, an unidentifiable pattern. She was short, five feet tall at the most. She held her hand up to her face and smiled. “But you don't look so scary after all.”

Ella's anger about the dog and the barking stopped in her throat. “I live upstairs,” was all she said.

“Well, how nice. I thought I heard footsteps the past month.”

The woman wore a floral dress appropriate for a fifties dance. She held out her hand. “I'm Mimi.”

“I'm Ella. I just moved in about a month ago but I won't be here that long.”

Mimi laughed and it was a tinkling sound. “Oh, dear. I said the same thing years ago. Just a transitory place. You know, until I decided where I really wanted to live.”

Ella smiled. She couldn't help it. This woman deserved a smile. “It's nice to meet you.” The dog, the one that never stopped barking, wasn't barking. Ella looked past Mimi into the apartment and pointed. “Yours?”

Mimi motioned for Ella to step in, which she did. The apartment smelled of chamomile and lavender and buttered toast. Framed pictures and books were stacked everywhere, in corners, on tables, underneath furniture and against walls, double deep on bookshelves.

The couches and chairs were plush, overly plump, as if in opposition to Mimi's tiny self. Mimi motioned to the kitchen and Ella followed. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” Ella said. “I was just on my way to…”

“Oh.” Mimi's face fell. Her disappointment was palpable. She leaned down and picked up the dog. “This is Bruiser.”

Ella, despite her best intention to hate the dog, reached forward to scratch his head. Her fingers sank into his downy hair and she felt the fragile bones underneath. “That's a funny name for a tiny dog.”

“Irony. It's one of my best qualities.”

Ella laughed. “Okay, yes, I'd like that cup of tea but I won't stay long.”

“I'm sorry about the barking. I really am. Bruiser has sort of a condition that irritates his vocal cords and he feels he has to bark all the time. Or that's my theory. The vet has no idea what is wrong with him, and wants me to put him down because he is obviously miserable. I can't. We could remove his vocal cords, but that seems so … barbaric.”

“It's okay,” Ella said. And it was okay. Knowing why this little guy was barking seemed to make all the difference.

“It's not, but it's nice for you to say so, dear.” Mimi put Bruiser on the ground. “He's not barking now because I gave him a sedative, but it won't last long. Beware.”

“Forewarned,” Ella said.

Mimi placed a kettle on the stove and hummed under her breath, a song Ella recognized but couldn't name. “So how did you come to live here?” Mimi asked.

“To Crumbling Chateau?”

“I like to call it Manderley,” Mimi said.

“From
Rebecca
!”

“The very one. I like to think that everything has a past. Even a place as downtrodden as this. So, what brings you to Grumbling Gateau?”

She liked this Mimi.

“My husband left me,” Ella said. “I had a day to find a place to live. This was open and cheap. A short story, I'm afraid.”

“Ah, exactly why I came.”

“Your husband?”

“No!” She waved her hand in the air. “Never had one of those. I had a bookstore here in town. It closed and I needed somewhere fast and cheap. That was twelve years ago.”

“I heard we once had a bookstore. Where was it?”

“In the town square, two doors down from the defunct movie theater.”

“Why did it close?”

“Oh, for all the reasons bookstores close these days. I couldn't make enough money to keep it afloat. They mourn when it's gone but don't help to keep it. I hear it's the same everywhere. But it still was a great loss to me.”

“I'm sorry. That's rough.” Ella sat on a kitchen chair and watched Mimi prepare the loose tea leaves, scooping them out of a tin and placing them in an infuser ball, which she dipped in and out of the boiling water until she seemed satisfied with the timing. She placed a cup in front of Ella. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Milk would be nice.”

Mimi opened the refrigerator. There were two bottles of water, a container of strawberries, and a quart of milk, which she handed to Ella.

“Yes, everyone went to my store when they were kids but not when they were adults. Everyone just stopped coming.” Mimi shrugged. “Everything changes. It's a law of life.”

“A law of life.” Ella took a sip of her tea and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “This is delicious”

“Rose petals. That's the secret.” Mimi smiled.

“So you moved here after you closed the store?” Ella asked.

“Yes.”

Ella wanted more. She wanted to know how this woman got over such a setback and still stayed this damn happy. She wanted to know how she lived in a place like this when she'd never planned on such a life. She wanted more than a “Yes.” Ella prodded. “So you like it here?”

“It's a great place to live, what with the convenience to everything and the big windows. This was once the most beautiful building in town.”

“It's not anymore,” Ella said.