Book Lover. Karen Mack
time. She smiles at me.
“Thanks for the rescue. It’s so peaceful here, I hate to leave. Plus, as soon as I walk in the door, Andy is on me to help type his Alzheimer’s speech. He’s such a pain.”
This is my favorite subject and I’m rolling. “Why doesn’t he just hire someone? He can afford it. Why do husbands take their smart wives and turn them into secretaries?”
Virginia laughs. “Tolstoy’s wife copied War and Peace in longhand three times.”
“No offense, Virginia, but Andy isn’t Tolstoy.”
“Oh well, Dora. What can I say? Do you want to come over for dinner? Andy’s probably home wondering which bridge I drove off of.” (We give each other a knowing look—and laugh.)
“I can’t,” I lie. “Meeting some friends.”
“Oh, who?”
“Just some old friends from work.”
“I know a nice guy. Friend of Andy’s.”
As if that would be an asset. “No thanks.”
“You know, Dora, L.A. isn’t like New York. You have to make an effort here. You can’t just walk into a bar on East Fifty-seventh Street and start talking to your neighbors. It’s not that kind of town.”
“And what? You want me to join a dating service? Go on the Internet? I’d rather shoot myself. Anyway, I’m not looking” (except at the bookstore, but no need to mention that here). “I’m fine.” Even to me, I sound defensive.
“You’re turning into a hermit. Even Andy says so.”
“Fuck Andy. Go home. You’re late.”
Virginia’s mouth curls up in a mock petulant scowl as she leans over to kiss me good-bye. “Okay, Dora, but you really should meet his friend. He’s nice and he reads.”
“Big deal. No. I love you. Good-bye.”
Virginia gathers all her stuff, gently picks up Camille, who is now sleeping soundly, and she’s gone.
I wish people would stop trying to fix me up. It never works out and things are always strained. From the moment we say “hello” and I start listening to his life story, I’m waiting for a chance to escape. I think back to my conversation with Fred at the bookstore. He’s a flirt, no doubt about it. Not really my type. If I saw him on the street, chances are I’d walk right past him. Still, I’m definitely attracted to him. I bet right now he’s fucking some Brentwood housewife in her faux English Tudor mansion while her husband, the dermatologist, is at Men’s Week at the Golden Door. What’s the matter with me? We had a three-minute conversation. He’s probably one of those moody, dysfunctional guys who’s critical of everything and doesn’t even like the sound of the surf.
I turn on my goofy garage-sale radio and grab my latest tome. I always feel best about myself when I’m engrossed in a good book. Then I don’t worry that I’m in limbo, living in a place that’s not really my home, spending my days floating around from one thing to the next. Tomorrow is a big day. I’m interviewing for a writing position at my old newspaper. I’m going to try not to think about it.
So now it’s three a.m. and tonight, like so many others, I’m wide awake. I look out the window. The world is dark and deserted. All the normal, well-adjusted people are asleep. Insomnia. Why do I feel that I’m the only one that suffers from this affliction? I give up. Turning on the light and opening my book once again is generally the only alternative to this misery. Although Dorothy Parker would definitely disagree. In her philosophy, the whole institution of reading was responsible for her sleepless nights. She joked that all the best minds had been “anti-reading” for years.* She even said, “I wish I’d never learned to read … then I wouldn’t have been mucking about with a lot of French authors at this hour …”*
That leaves the question, what to do if you don’t want to read to get yourself to sleep? Sheep are out. Dorothy Parker hated sheep. “I can tell the minute there’s one in the room. They needn’t think I’m going to lie here in the dark and count their unpleasant little faces for them.”*
I can make lists of things I need to do. No, that would only stress me out. I could get up and make a glass of warm milk. I could organize my closet. Or my desk. I could call the 1–800 number for the Bank of America and check my balance. No, that’s another stomach-churning exercise.
People don’t realize how serious a problem this is. There was a case last year in the Valley where a man with insomnia would go into his garage in the middle of the night and use his power saw. His woodworking was the only thing that gave him solace. And the neighbors were suing. This doesn’t help me.
I grab a book on my bedside table that my sister gave me a few weeks ago. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. It says here it’s a “self-help manual for the intelligent person.” I could use some help right now.
* Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.
* “The Little Hours,” The Portable Dorothy Parker, Penguin Books.
“The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.”
∼ Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) ∼
Getting dressed is a lot trickier than I imagined. What an ordeal. All these things I used to take for granted, like putting on an outfit and rushing out the door without worrying what I looked like, are so much more difficult now. Plus, it’s been a long time since I wore “work clothes,” whatever that means. I have already put on and taken off a couple of Gucci suits, thinking they were too trendy, one Banana Republic outfit, thinking it was too suburban, and a sweater and shortish pleated skirt that gave me that “trying to look too young” look. By the end of it all, I’m sweating, harassed, late, and thoroughly discouraged. I finally settle on a simple black suit I purchased three years ago at Bloomingdale’s for the funeral of my brother-in-law’s mother, who died of dementia and everyone said it was a blessing. Okay, I’m ready. I hate the way I look. Ordinary.
I get in the car and head downtown. Here’s the thing: I do not drive on the freeway. That’s not something I admit to anyone except my closest friends, because in this city it’s like having a debilitating disease or being bipolar. When I first moved here, the intricate network of concrete and steel was daunting, to say the least. Anybody’s vision of automotive hell, right down to the banshee-screaming sirens and thunderous din that assault your consciousness as you brave the elements, strapped to your seat. Like a fighter pilot. Driving in this town is certainly not for the fainthearted. When you factor in road rage and all those zoned-out bizarros and angry people who are just on the edge of insanity, it’s even more frightening. Nevertheless, I always managed to motor up and down the ramps like any other normal commuter on the 101 or the 10 and to dutifully yield to the zooming traffic that was muscling down on top of me.
Then one night, I lost my nerve. I was driving to USC on assignment to interview a seventeen-year-old freshman who had just sold a screenplay for a million dollars when my car stalled in the fast lane of the Santa Monica freeway. It was black-dark, impossible to see anything but a blaze of out-of-focus exploding nebulas that enveloped my car. Semis blasted their horns as they swerved to avoid hitting me. And I remember praying that I would wake up from this nightmare and the burning, white-coal core of panic would subside. I was shivering and drenched in