Steve Martin - Shopgirl

Next stop is Theodore on Rodeo Drive. This is a hip, sexy store and features gloves so youthful and spirited that Mirabelle longs to deal in them. She can imagine the coolest people coming to her, swapping fashion tips as they try on the merchandise. To take advice from her current customers would be fashion suicide, unless she somehow wanted to be mistaken for fifty.

As she drifts around Beverly Hills, she finds herself a block from La Ronde. This arouses no particular emotional response, it is not “the place where they rendezvoused,” but it does make her feel less like an outsider in Beverly Hills. She has actually eaten in one of the actual restaurants, which is what 90 percent of the out-of-towners roaming around this afternoon haven’t done. She wanders into the Pay-Less and buys sanitary napkins, because she needs some, and because it will reinforce her lie to Mr. Agasa should he see her purchase.

She goes back to Neiman’s, where Lisa tells her that someone has been looking for her. “Who?” asks Mirabelle.

“Well, I don’t know, a man.”

Mirabelle assumes it is Ray Porter. Perhaps canceling. She will call her message machine at her first break.

“What was he like?” Mirabelle asks Lisa.

“He’s a man, over fifty. Normal.”

“What else?”

“A little overweight. And he asked for Mirabelle Buttersfield. By name.”

Ray Porter is not overweight and would not ask for Mirabelle by her last name, which she is not even sure he knows.

“He said he’ll come back,” adds Lisa, vanishing toward the stairwell.

Mirabelle slides back into her berth behind the counter. She stands there a minute and is suddenly struck by an overwhelming wave of sadness. This causes her to do something she has never done at Neiman’s: she pulls out a low drawer in the counter and sits on it for several minutes, until she recovers.

LISA CRAMER’S BODY IS GOODenough for any man or woman on this planet, but it is not good enough for Lisa Cramer. She believes that she has to be flawlessly pleasing to a man, and that she has to be an expert at fellatio. This talent is fine-tuned and polished through extensive conversations with other women and the viewing of selected “educational” porno tapes. She even once attended a class given by Crystal Headly, a down and going sex-film actress. She is not reluctant to roll out this expertise, either. Within several dates, and sometimes sooner, Lisa will demonstrate this skill to the lucky fella, thus making herself feel that she is the kind of woman any man would want. The men, however, feel confounded by their good fortune. Who is this person who goes down on them so easily? Lisa can only judge her success by the frequency of follow-up phone calls from the men, who are eager to take her to dinner, or a play. The fact that they are willing to take her to a play – low on the list of L.A. date priorities – demonstrates just how far they are willing to go. Lisa knows it is the sex they are after, but it is sex that is the source of her worth. The more they want it, the more valuable she is, and consequently, Lisa has made herself into a fuckable object.

Lisa is not interested in sex because it is fun. It is the fulcrum and lever for attracting and discarding men. They come to her because of a high hope, an aroma that she gives off, as delicious as baking bread. But when she’s done with them, they are limp and drained, and ready for their own bed. She has literally absorbed all their interest, and she wants them to retreat before they discover some horrible flaw in her that will repulse them. Thus Lisa, with all her power, never feels quite good enough for anything beyond her ability to create desire in men. In fact, several prohibitive compulsions appeared in her early twenties that keep her from widening her circle of experience. She cannot get on an airplane. Fear of flying grips her so intensely that she has forever banished air travel as a possibility. She also cannot ingest any medicine of any kind. Not aspirin, not antibiotics, not even a Tums, for fear of losing her mind. And she can never, ever, be alone, without worrying that she will suddenly die.

Lisa has developed a taste for Mr. Ray Porter, even though she has never met him. There is simply a problem hat he has selected Mirabelle and not her as his arbitrary object of desire, and Lisa is sure that once he lays eyes on her, correct thinking will occur. Lisa cannot imagine Mirabelle being an expert sex partner. Of course, Mirabelle’s lack of advanced training might be exactly why Ray Porter wants her, but this reasoning is way beyond Lisa, because she has no idea that her own sovereignty could be usurped by one square inch of Mirabelle’s skin, glimpsed under a starched blouse.

The day Lisa heard Mirabelle blab her story at the Time Clock, a vestigial memory was jarred in her head at the mention of the name Ray Porter. Lisa went home that night, concentrated, and remembered that his name had been in the air a few years ago because he had picked up and had an affair with a shoe clerk at Barneys, the fashionable department store two doors down. Then, when he came in with another woman six months after the affair was over, the salesgirl went berserk and threw two pairs of Stephane Kelian shoes at him, with one falling into an open fish tank, and she was promptly fired. Barneys has a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy when it comes to customers and employees, and throwing shoes clearly violates the “don’t tell.” Lisa also remembers that Ray Porter is powerful.

Lisa doesn’t see an interposition of herself between Mirabelle and Ray Porter as unethical. In her mind, Mirabelle deserves no one, and Lisa will be doing him a favor. What would Ray Porter do with a leaden Mirabelle lying nude on his bed with her legs open? What would any man do with a soggy girl who can’t assert herself, who has a weak voice, who dresses like a schoolgirl, and whose main personality component is helplessness?

BEFORE THURSDAY’S DATE, THERE AREseveral formal phone conversations between Ray and Mirabelle, which establish that he will pick her up, that the time will be 8 P.M., and that they will go to a fun local Caribbean spot that Mirabelle knows called Cha Cha Cha. She is concerned about him seeing her apartment, which, at five hundred dollars a month, is only slightly more than the cost of their meal at La Ronde. She is also concerned that he’ll have trouble finding it. The apartment is at the conjunction of a maze of streets in Silverlake, and once found, still requires complicated directions to achieve the door. Down the driveway, second stairway, around the landing…

When Thursday comes, Mirabelle speed cleans the apartment while simultaneously dusting herself with powders and pulling various dresses over her head. She settles on a short pink and yellow plaid skirt and a fuzzy pink sweater, which sadly prohibits any of Ray’s peeking. This outfit, in combination with her cropped hair, makes her look about nineteen. This look is not meant to appeal to something lascivious in Ray but is worn as a hip mode-o-day that will fit right in at Cha Cha Cha.

Then, finally prepared, she sits in her living room and waits. Mirabelle doesn’t have a real sofa, only a low-lying futon cradled in a wood brace, which means that anyone attempting to sit on it is immediately jackknifed at floor level. If a visitor allows an arm to fall to one side, it will land on the gritty hardwood. If he sits with a drink, it has to be put on the floor at cat level. She reminds herself not to ask Ray to sit down.

The phone rings. It is Ray, calling from his car phone, saying he is only a little bit lost. She gives him the proper lefts and rights, and within five minutes, he is knocking at her door. She answers, and both of them scurry in to avoid the harsh glare of the bare hundred-watt porch bulb.