Til the Real Thing Comes Along (35 page)

“God, you look adorable,” David said. “When I spotted you in the middle of that group of kids, for a minute I thought I was
mistaken and that you were one of them.”

She smiled. He was a charmer. There was no doubt about that.

“I’ve got to hurry back to my office,” he said. “Why not walk me back to my car?”

R.J. hesitated.

“Go ahead, Mrs. Misner,” Natalie said. “He looks like Robert Redford.”

Oh, God, R.J. thought, realizing that all the kids had been taking this in.

David smiled at the girl and then winked and said, “Only infinitely more attractive.”

“This is Mr. Malcolm, everyone,” R.J. said.

“And you’re gonna walk him to his car,” Matt said.

“Yeah.”

David offered his arm and R.J. took it and they walked toward Wilshire Boulevard. It had been nearly a month since Big Sur,
and R.J. had thought about him, dreamed about him, had fantasies about him. Never even imagining that in a spread-out place
like Los Angeles she could ever hope to bump into him again. Once at the movie studio had been outrageous luck. This was too
good.

“Why does the license plate on your car spell out the word
rainbow?”
she asked quietly. She’d thought about asking him that over and over.

“Because Rainbow Paper is the name of the company where I work,” he told her.

It was silly. It wasn’t an omen. It was a coincidence. They were nearly at the corner.

“You don’t really have to walk me all the way to the parking lot,” he said. “It as just such a treat to run into you having
so much fun with all the kids, and I wanted to ask you how you were doing. You seemed to be under a lot of pressure when we
were together. Have you found a job yet?”

“No job yet, but I sold a short story to
Women at Work
magazine.”

“That’s great. I’m proud of you. What was it about?”

“About ten pages.”

“Still doing those one-liners,” he said.

“It’s about a failed romance,” she said, serious now.

“Ahh,” he said, knowingly. “I’ll wait until they make it into a movie.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” she said.

They arrived at the corner and stopped, both of them knowing she should go back and attend to the kids.

“Why don’t we have dinner tonight?” he asked.

Dinner. It would feel so good to put on something pretty, to leave her Blue Chip-stamp card table for a while and go to a
restaurant and look across a dinner table at that gorgeous face. If that’s all the date would be. But inevitably after dinner
there would be tension about whether or not they should spend the night together, and that would lead to wondering if there
should be a relationship, and of course it could never be what she wanted, because she was so wrong for him and vice versa
and… No, a dinner date would be nice, but she didn’t feel as if she had the strength for the aftermath.

“Nothing’s changed, David,” she said. “We still don’t have a chance and—”

“And you know what you want and it’s not me,” he said with a little smile, and then he ruffled her hair and walked away across
the street.

All the way back to where the kids were waiting, as her sandals scuffed along the sidewalk they sounded as if they were saying
shmuck shmuck shmuck.
How could she have let him go again?

“He’s gorgeous,” one of the girls said when R.J. returned to the blanket, where all the kids were lying sprawled on their
stomachs.

“Yeah,” R.J. replied. Then she ate one more cookie and started packing up the picnic supplies. When everything was packed
she said, “All aboard the Yellow Mustang,” and the kids jumped up to join her.

Manuela made a chili casserole, and R.J. poked at it, barely tasting it as she ate. Jeffie kicked the table base with his
sneakered foot in a regular rhythm as he wolfed his down.

David. So often after the time they’d spent together in Big Sur, R.J. had wanted to call him. To tell him he was terrific.
To tell him she had appreciated his grace despite her lousy behavior. She’d certainly never tell him the dumb thing about
the rainbow and how she felt it was a sign from her dead husband. And wasn’t it a coincidence that Rainbow was the name of
the company he worked for? It would have sounded so crazy. Surely he already thought she was bananas to want marrige so badly
that she wouldn’t, couldn’t continue to see him, a man who was an obvious impossibility, so clearly not a candidate.

After dinner she helped Jeffie work on an English paper about Sydney Carton. She had been reading
A Tale of Two Cities
every night before she fell asleep so she could keep up with what her son was doing in school. Jeffie made some notes. R.J.
thought about David.

“C’mon, Mom,” Jeffie said, bringing her back. “We only got a B on the one you helped me with about Madame Defarge. We gotta
do better this time.”

“You never told me we only got a B. What didn’t the teacher like?”

“I think it was the part you said I should put in about Madame Defarge being like a spider knitting her evil web. That was
a tip-off to Miss Flood that you were in on it. She underlined it in red and wrote ‘Get off it, Jeffie’ in the corner.”

“You mean because she suspected that your mother was a writer who helped you?”

“No, I mean because it was dumb.”

“I’m going to sleep,” R.J. said.

“It is a far, far better thing that you do,” Jeffie teased. R.J. grinned and yawned and stood.

“Mom, what are we gonna do about my bar mitzvah?” he asked before she got to the door. “I mean, I don’t care if it isn’t fancy,
but I’d like to have a party and maybe have music or, I don’t know. Just something neat,” he said. He looked so much like
Arthur when he said that. The way he held his head to the side, cast his eyes downward as if he was embarrassed to ask her
for something for himself. Afraid that it might be too much bother. R.J. felt a rush of love for him. In a world where she
heard so many parents complaining about problems with their children, this was a great kid. A funny warm boy who was always
helpful and cheerful, even after the tragedy of his father’s murder, which could have left him a cynic.

“We’ll figure out something great for your bar mitzvah,” she promised, and then wondered how she could pull it off. “You sure
I shouldn’t stay and work some more on Sydney?” she asked as she stood in the doorway.

“I’m sure,” he said, and stood and kissed her, and the phone rang.

“I’ll get it in my room,” R.J. told him.

By the time she got to her room the phone had rung four times, and she snatched the receiver from its cradle.

“H’lo.”

“R.J., long time no see. This is the long-lost Michael Rappaport”

The temptation simply to put the receiver down was enormous. What in the hell did he want? She was amazed at how her breathing
changed and she felt shaky just hearing his voice.

“Hello, Michael,” she said.

“R.J.,” he said, “I know this is really out of left field, but I had to talk to you tonight. I’ve felt for a long time that
I owed you this call.”

“Believe me, you don’t owe me anything. I don’t—”

“I know. You don’t care. And I don’t blame you for not caring. But I needed to make this call because I wanted you to know
that I’m in major therapy.”

Major.
Major was a big Hollywood word. Anything that was important or serious was major. There was always some word like that going
around. When people used it, you knew they were trying to sound “in on it” and you should stay away from them. Now Michael
Rappaport calling
to confess that he was in major therapy was dearly supposed to have some profound effect on her.

“Good for you, Michael.”

“R.J., you’re being cold and I don’t blame you. I suspected you would be, but despite your feelings, see if you can hear what
I need you to acknowledge.” The lingo. He had the lingo down pat. He was in therapy all right. “You embodied my worst fears.
That is to say that everything you needed and wanted in a relationship was everything I was afraid to give. I’m learning that
I’m incapable of intimacy, and marriage speaks to a kind of intimacy I couldn’t handle. Well, my shrink thinks that I should
have married you anyway and worked my problems out within the marriage with your help. But of course, I told him that—”

“Michael, let me stop you,” R.J. said, “and may I just say the following to you….” She paused and took a deep breath. “Bye
bye.”

She sat with her hand on the receiver for a very long time. Then she opened her night table drawer, shuffled through some
slips of paper, found the one she wanted with the telephone numbers on it, and dialed. After a few rings, David Malcolm’s
answering machine clicked on, and his sweet pleasant voice said, “Please leave your name, telephone number, and a message.
Thank you.”

Then there was the beep. This was it. Put up or shut up, as her friend Francie used to say when she challenged R.J. to do
something that she feared. She knew that she could hang up. David would never be the wiser. Or she could tell him she’d changed
her mind, hoped that he hadn’t changed his, and have another chance to be with this sensational younger man, who, aside from
all his other obvious charms, had mental health. Mental goddamn health. No whining. No apparent fears. No locking himself
indoors. Straightforward mental health. What was it he’d said to her about Norman Vincent Peale? Positive thinking. And she
had laughed.

No, he was not the package she had ever imagined, and vice versa. There would never be the kind of future with him she felt
she required. But there could be fun and joy with him, like their time together in Big Sur. And lust and heat. There was no
denying the siren call of lust and heat. She had to let herself enjoy him and not be afraid. Because if she stayed afraid,
she was as bad as Barry Iitmann
and Hobart Fineburg and Michael Rappaport and all the others.

“This is R.J.,” she said to the waiting message tape, “and I really would like to see you,” and then she put the receiver
down.

She took a shower, reread the last few chapters of
A Tale of Two Cities,
which never failed to put her to sleep, and just as she started to doze, the phone rang.

“H’lo.”

“Last eligible gentile man before the freeway,” David said.

R.J. smiled. “I changed my mind and I’d like to see you,” she said quietly.

“I’m glad,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ve got some black-tie event to go to on Saturday night. A friend’s party. Why don’t
we go there, then duck out early and have a late supper alone?”

“I’d love that,” she said.

“Pick you up at eight”

R.J. hung up the phone and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

I
t was the end of May, and the fallen blossoms of the jacarandas spread like lavender fans on the street beneath each tree.
R.J. drove down Valley Vista Boulevard on her way home from Fashion Square, where she’d browsed in every shop. Black tie.
There wasn’t one article of clothing in her closet that qualified as something to wear to a black-tie party. Well, maybe one.
The dress she had bought for the Emmy awards, five years ago—or was it six?—when Patsy’s show and the writers were nominated,
but it was blatantly out of style and even though she hated to admit it, it was a little too tight. But after a morning of
looking everywhere, it was obvious a new dress was out of the question. Formal dresses cost a fortune, and the money she had
left had to be stretched until heaven knew when.

The drugstore. She had to stop at the drugstore to pick up a few odds and ends for the house. The truth was that the drugstore
could wait and she was just trying to avoid what was becoming the hateful moment of sitting down at the card table and trying
to work. Trying to invent work in her head. What a bizarre profession writing was. Putting words down on paper to amuse other
people? Putting words down on paper to expel the words from your soul? She would go to the drugstore. She was about to turn
into the Thrifty parking lot when she saw the sign on the storefront across the street and it made her laugh.
USED STAR’S CLOTHES.
She added her own thought: Stars who haven’t been used
need not apply. Surely they had meant the sign to say
STARS’ USED CLOTHES,
and then she shook her head as she parked the car.

“It’s come to this, Misner,” she said out loud. “Now you’re so desperate for work, you’re rewriting signs on stores.”
CHEAP
it said on another sign underneath. Well, maybe before she went into the Thrifty she’d stop in and take a look at the clothes.

A little bell jingled as she opened the door and was confronted by the clusters of racks and more racks of ladies’ clothes
which were crowded into the tiny space.

“Be right with ya, hon,” came a voice, and from behind a rack emerged a woman with salt-and-pepper gray hair cut into a style
that had been called a “pixie” when R.J. was in school. Bright-blue eyes shone from the woman’s very wrinkled face, and on
her tiny body she wore a perfectly tailored suit.

“Just browsing,” R.J. told her.

“Browse away. I’m Frieda Seltzer. This is my store. So if I can help ya, gimme a holler,” she said in a voice and accent that
sounded to R.J. just like Ruth Gordon’s. “I got recent arrivals; I got some not so recent; I even got vintage. I buy outright,
buy on consignment, even buy at estate sales. So look around. You want to try on, be my guest. My prices are very fair and
if you’re serious, I’ll negotiate.”

“Thank you,” R.J. said, and began moving clothes along a rack just to get Frieda Seltzer to go away, but Frieda stood her
ground. If R.J. stopped for more than a second to look at something, Frieda Seltzer would immediately wax historic about it.
“Ann-Margret, poor darling, fell from a stage in Las Vegas and came back looking more gorgeous than ever. So brave. Imagine.
Ahh, Eva Gabor. A stunning human being, and she only wore that once. Can’t you picture her in it? That one, the one you’re
looking at With the beads? Cher. When she did that special. So many have tried it on, but who else is built like that, if
you know what I’m saying. If a toothpick gets invited to a fancy dress ball, maybe I can sell it.” She smiled. She had lipstick
on her teeth.