“I wouldn’t have said it, even if that was the case.” Now his candor is replaced by nervousness and eyes that dart from the dark booths to the shaded windows, anyplace to avoid looking into mine.
That alone makes me ask,“Wasit the case?”
He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have talked to her or anyone else about Julie. I probably said there were positions in our company, and that she could be like Julie, but on a local level. There are others like that, at all our centers.”
As the creepy reality sets in, I put down my fork. It clacks on my salad plate like a bad-manners alarm. All I can think of are all those centers, all those women, Lisa.
“Women who want to be Julie Larimore?” I ask.
“I know it’s strange, but something about her inspires that kind of imitation. I’ve seen it at the centers. There’s always at least one with some version of the dress and the belt, and they all have the pendant. Lisa had the look, though. It was organic with her. You, too.”
I ignore the sudden rush of color to his cheeks, not to mention my own quaking self. I am certain of only one thing. I am going to burst into tears if I sit here another minute.
“I’ve got to get some air,” I manage, and get out of the booth, almost running by the time I hit the door. I stand on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, gulping air, realizing I’m not handling any of this as well as I thought I was. Now I’ve made a fool of myself in front of Lucas Morrison. I’ll have to lie when I return to the table, make up some story about a dizzy spell.
I don’t get a chance. He’s beside me, hand on my arm.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod and try to arrange my features. “I just couldn’t sit any longer. I needed air.”
He grimaces. “What there is of it. I don’t know how anyone lives here.”
“They get used to it,” I say. “You can get used to anything.” I look up at the putrid sky. “There are two Californias, three, if you count the Central Valley, and many don’t. Perhaps because we’re in the middle, most of the people where I live identify with either the Bay Area or Los Angeles.”
“I can guess which one you prefer.”
“What about you?”
He stops, lifts an angry chin to the sky. “I don’t like the film-driven emphasis on style over substance,” he says, counting off his complaints on his fingers. “I don’t like all of the blue eyes, blond hair and pedigreed dogs. And I can’t imagine why anyone would tolerate the endless tangle of freeway, that slow, claustrophobic crawl, even for the rewards of being close to Catalina Island or being able to spot Winona Ryder at the drugstore.”
We take the narrow walk toward the parking lot in back. I have the feeling I could yellraperight now, and the people jogging by would just turn up the music they’re mainlining through their headphones.
“So, where are you happiest?” I need to probe, to figure him out, to discover through these questions, answers to the ones I cannot ask.
“Out there.” He points in the general direction of the ocean.
“Santa Barbara?”
“It doesn’t matter. When the land slips away, and it’s just the ocean, there’s no place to hide from yourself.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“A necessary thing, for me. Remember what Socrates said. The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“And you know what happened to him.” We reach the back lot, more gray and black, more dust. “Why did you stamp Lisa’s card?” I ask.
He turns, his eyes narrowed, as if trying to sense a trap. Finally, he says, “I didn’t.”
“Well, there was a stamp on it.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was marked Corporate,” I say. “Red ink, and the type was in caps.”
I can’t read his thoughts, but I know he’s trying to decide how much to reveal. “We do have a corporate stamp,” he says. “Bobby likes to comp his friends. Amazing he ever got so rich with that empire of his. He’s always trying to give away the store.”
“Who can use the stamp?”
