Til the Real Thing Comes Along (55 page)

According to those standards, R.J. Misner was hardly the right woman. Not even in the ballpark. Nobody was going to mold her
into anything other than what she was. She didn’t understand a goddamned thing about business, could barely keep her household
accounts straight, had never even known a Republican before she met David, and though they’d never entertained together, he
knew she couldn’t care less about the social graces and had no interest in food or wine. The only dish she’d ever cooked for
him was something she called “chicken in a pot,” and it was godawful. Not to mention that since he’d known her she’d had the
same two bottles of Blue Nun in the lettuce drawer of her refrigerator. “Letting them age,” she had joked when she’d seen
him look at them and then at her, as if to say “You must be joking.” R.J. was not what Rand Malcolm would call the right woman.

In the long silent times he had spent in what he now realized, since his call to R.J., was four weeks, and in the hours he’d
spent with Casey, David knew there was no getting around that. When it came to the way things were supposed to be, he and
R.J. couldn’t be more ill-suited: As R.J. once put it, “Unless I was Tina Turner,” and then she’d added, “Okay, maybe it would
be worse if I was Ike Turner.”

“Yes, you can treat me to lunch,” David said quietly now to Casey, though he knew that when his father fell into that deep
drugged sleep he was oblivious to the sounds in the room. Casey took his arm as they left Mal’s room, and as they walked down
the hall to the elevator they passed a group of nurses who, David noticed, looked at the two of them together and smiled knowingly,
as if the story of a match made at the bedside of two seriously ill fathers was one they were looking forward to gossiping
about.

The right woman. His father’s message was clear and very easy to understand. Once, at a dinner party, David
remembered hearing a man say, “I’m certain this is horribly narcissistic, but I think the reason I love Julia so much is because
if I were a woman, she’s the woman I would be.” As they walked into the hospital restaurant, David looked again at Casey and
thought that if he were a woman, he would probably be Casey Baylor.

There is something very soothing about the familiar. When two people share a common vocabulary of gestures and timing and
behavior. When nothing about the other comes as unexpected or jarring. When most words become unnecessary. A kind of wonderful
shorthand between two people whose upbringing has been unswervingly alike. Who seemed to have had, as Casey liked to say,
“the same trainer.” The two of them talked about it again and again. How they’d been taught the same lessons at home. Stand
up straight. Sit up straight. Have a firm handshake. Speak up. Say what you mean. Make your point. Rise when an older person
comes into the room.

“I remembered another one,” Casey said over lunch today. “I sit behind my father’s desk at Baylor Steel, running the whole
shooting match when Dad is out, and when one of my father’s friends calls, I still get on the telephone and say, ‘Sorry, but
Dad’s out of town, Mr. Warren.’ Mister! Can you imagine? I’m a thirty-one-year-old woman.”

David laughed a laugh of recognition. “I do that too,” he said. “And then I ask, ‘And how is
Mrs.
Warren?’”

“Always,” Casey said, laughing for the first time since she’d been in Houston. The laugh lit up her beautiful face.

“It feels good to laugh,” she said, but couldn’t look at David when she did, because she was struggling to keep down the emotion.
“This has been a grueling vigil,” she said. “You’ve made it easier for me.” The doctors would tell her today if she could
take her father home the following morning.

“Likewise, Case,” he said.

David reached for the handkerchief he always carried in the pocket of his blazer, to offer it to Casey, at the same time that
she reached into the pocket of her blazer for a tissue, and as she did, the sadness on her face turned into a grin.

“I can’t believe what I nearly forgot to tell you,” she said. “I’m a terrible pack rat, and the other day I called my
secretary and asked her to go back and look through some old memento boxes I have, to see if she could find this.”

And from the pocket where she’d also located a tissue she pulled a folded piece of what looked like the kind of notebook paper
David remembered from Hollingsworth, and handed it to him.

“If this is what I think it is…” David said in disbelief, opening the paper and then shaking his head as he saw the note he’d
written nearly twenty years before in the perfect penmanship he’d learned from his early tutors:
There isn’t a moment while we’re apart that I don’t long for you. You are everything I prayed my love would be.
Even now, so many light-years later, David felt a flush of humiliation for the boy who had written that letter. A sadness
for the overwhelming need he must have felt to write those words. And the P.S. Sweet heaven. He had completely forgotten about
writing that.
P.S. Someday, Casey, you will be my wife.

He looked at Casey, who looked flushed now too.

“You do know,” she said, “that I have a law degree, and I believe this will hold up in court if there should be a breach-of-promise
suit.”

“Is that right?” David said, smiling. This woman was something special. There was no doubt about that.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, standing. “You finish your salad and think about your defense. In the meantime, I’m going
to run up and be with my father. His doctor’s coming by any minute to give us news about going home.” She started to walk
away.

“Casey,” he said. She turned. “Why don’t we have a late supper tonight after our fathers are asleep and talk some more?”

Casey took a deep breath, nodded, and was gone, the sweet scent of her perfume still in the air.

Two of Mal’s doctors and Eleanor were in the hospital room with Mal when David got back.

“I want to go home,” Mal announced by way of explaining their presence. His angry eyes flashed in his pale, drawn face. “Die
in my own bed,” Mal said. “Not in some goddamned hospital.”

David looked first at the doctors, then at Eleanor. She was nodding in agreement with Mal.

“Really, David,” she said. “He’s right. It’s time to go back. We do have doctors there. It’s not as if—”

“We want to try one more drug.” one of the doctors interrupted. He spoke directly to David.

“What in the hell for?” Mal asked.

“To improve the derangement in his liver and kidney function which has resulted from the heart failure.”

“Dad, a few more days. That’s all it would be. Right, doctor?” He looked at both white-coated men. The one who had already
spoken didn’t respond; the other one made a gesture that looked like a combination nod and shrug. Eleanor sighed and looked
appraisingly down at her fingernails, as if, David was sure, she was worried that she might never again see her Beverly Hills
manicurist.

“A few more days,” David said, and the doctors, who sensed that the only way Mal might consent was if they left him alone
with David, walked out the door. Eleanor walked out after them. David moved closer to the bed. Where there’s life there’s
hope. Where there’s life there’s hope. He remembered R.J. telling him that’s what she had repeated over and over to herself
when she stood at her own father’s bedside. He remembered how she described that intensive care ward in the hospital in Pittsburgh
where her father lay dying, with only a curtain surrounding him so that R.J., at his side, could hear the pain of the other
dying fathers and mothers and their children. She had wept in David’s arms the night she told him about it. Remembering how
she’d stood there trying to keep her father alive by telling him jokes. Jokes. Only R.J.

“Dad,” David said, “let’s give it a few more days, and then we’ll go home.”

His father nodded, a tired nod, and David sat close to the bed for the rest of the day. There was a baseball game on television
that both of them looked at, but neither of them had any idea who was playing. After Mal’s dinner, when he had taken some
medication to sleep, David walked out of the hospital and across the street to the hotel. When he got to his room he sat on
the bed, picked up the phone, and dialed R.J.’s number. He couldn’t let this be like the call he had made the other day. Fumbling
for words. Not saying what he had to tell her. This was going to be the hardest
call he’d ever had to make. Somewhere in the deepest part of R.J. she would have to understand. His father was dying and he
didn’t have much time. He had to do the right thing.

Ring after ring, he counted them. Nine, ten, eleven. No one home. He put the receiver down and breathed a little easier. Tomorrow
morning would be soon enough to tell her. Then he took a long shower and got dressed for his dinner with Casey.

R.J.
’s eyes were heavy with exhaustion.

“… Why did you have to let this happen? I thought we were going to have our whole lives ahead of us. I love you more than
anything, and now it looks like you’re leaving me.”

“Do
you love me, Red? Do you really? Well then, maybe my life was worth something after all.”

“I think this cut should be the last. It’s by far the best,” Burt Cohen said.

R.J. nodded in agreement. Cohen was the tape editor, an associate of Eddie Levy’s who had been sitting at the editing computer
at Teletronics between R.J. and Eddie for the last two days and nights. He had transferred reel after reel of Lily Daniels’s
films to tape. As many of them as they could get their hands on, and for hour after hour he had pored over every one of them
with R.J., finding just the right dialogue, expressions, moments at which to cut away, to create a perfect reel for her to
take with her to Houston.

Sometimes R.J. would look at Lily in a scene and be amazed at how much David was like her. A certain turn of the head, the
way she wrinkled her nose when she smiled. Watching the old films on the monitor had made her remember the nights she’d sat
in the Manor Theater with Bubbe, and the recollections warmed her in the cold, hollow editing studio.

“You’re right. This is our finale,” R.J. said, and then couldn’t hold back a yawn.

“Looks to me like two
A.M.
is past your bedtime,” Burt Cohen said, smiling at R.J. He was a darling guy. Early forties, straight dark hair, green eyes,
sweet sense of humor. R.J. could tell that, despite her haggard face, tired eyes, and disheveled unwashed hair, he was interested
in her.

“Are you kidding?” Eddie Levy said. “When we were working for Harry Elfand we didn’t start
warming up
until two
A.M.
“

“Burt, this reel is wonderful,” R.J. said, “but I don’t want to leave until I have
it
and a backup copy of it in my hands.”

“Why don’t you go home and get some sleep,” Cohen said, and helped R.J. to her feet. “And trust me to finish this. We’ve got
it all down, and all it will take now is a little refining. I’ll bring the original and the backup cassettes to you first
thing in the morning.”

R.J. was reluctant to leave.

“He’s right,” Eddie said. “You’ll feel better if you catch a few winks before your flight”

R.J. picked up her purse. “I’ll come by on my way to the airport,” she told Burt.

“I pass your neighborhood on my way home,” he insisted, and took her arm to walk her out to her car. But first she gave a
quick hug to Eddie Levy, who was pouring a last cup of muddy studio coffee into a white Styrofoam cup.

“Good hick,
meydek,”
he said, patting her back tenderty.

“Thank you both for everything,” she said. “This means so much to me.”

The parking lot behind Teletronics was lit by a bare light bulb above the back door. R.J. unlocked the door to the Mustang,
Burt Cohen opened the door for her, and she slid into the driver’s seat

“This must be some special guy,” Burt Cohervsaid.

“He is,” R.J. told him.

“If you ever find out otherwise,” Cohen said softly, “look me up.” Then he closed the door to the Mustang, and R.J. backed
up and drove into the Hollywood night.

The airport in Houston was busy, but R.J. had no bags to worry about Only a small overnight case and the envelope
of precious cargo she had carried on and tucked carefully under the seat. Every now and then during the flight she had reached
for it with her foot, relieved to feel that it was still safely in place. David needed her. That was dear. Needed someone
to help him through this. So what if he hadn’t asked her to come there? Probably he hadn’t been able to say it. Afraid she
couldn’t leave her job. Afraid after her little tirade that she was so angry with him about the month he had stayed away that
she would never consider coming to Houston to comfort him.

She was tired. In the few days that had passed since his mysterious call she had hardly slept. Working nonstop to assemble
the tapes.

“The Warwick Hotel,” she told the cab driver. And as the cab sped along she sat looking out the window, into the passing cars,
wondering about the people in them. Where they were going. What they were thinking, and if any of them felt as shaky as she
did now. She held the large envelope on her lap. David. Suddenly a surge of panic filled her. Maybe this was wrong. Not just
wrong. Idiotic. Ridiculous. His father was dying. She didn’t even know the man. Met him one time. And now, without even announcing
herself, she was showing up in Houston, Texas?
Turn around,
she wanted to tell the cabby. She should turn around and get on the next plane back to Los Angeles.

Why had this stupid idea made sense to her for the last few feverish, sleepless days and nights? Like a crazy person she had
worked, knowing she was racing against a dock. And now, finally, stopping to be rational, she was sure the whole idea was
embarrassing, dumb, pushy, wrong. She was tired, very tired. Maybe she would feel better after she got to the hotel and had
a bite of food. Maybe…

“This is it, lady,” the cab driver said.