Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“How do you do,” Katherine said nervously. Glory’s handshake was firm and warm, with long silver-pink fingernails.

“Come on in. I guess I should say come on out; we’re sitting on the patio.”

Partly but not completely reassured, Katherine followed Glory across a landscaped yard, through a dark interior-decorated room, and outside again. Wicker and wire furniture, beach umbrellas, bright cushions, and orange trees in tubs surrounded a swimming-pool. A beautiful girl in a bikini lay on the diving-board. It was like an advertisement for success, or pleasure, or Los Angeles—except that the pool was completely dry.

“Mona,” Glory said. The girl in the bikini lifted her head. “This is Ramona Moon.”

“Hiya.” Mona propped her face on her hands in order to observe Katherine more comfortably.

“Hi,” Katherine echoed. She was relieved to see a third person, any third person. She ran over in her mind what Iz had told her about Ramona Moon. She was Glory’s best friend, a TV actress from the Italian section of Los Angeles. Iz had described her as a simple, good-natured, practical girl, which was not what she looked like.

“Well, siddown,” Glory invited. “Take a chair over there in the sun if you want to; I just got to stay out of it so I won’t tan.” She sat down under a large umbrella, and for further protection wrapped her robe tightly round herself. “Mona has to get brown; but I hafta stay white, so they can paint me green.”

“Oh?” Katherine did not understand, but she was too nervous of Glory’s great dark sunglass eyes, so she looked inquiringly towards Mona. “How is that?”

“It’s account of my type,” Mona explained. “I always do the passionate-Latin parts, see, so I’ve got to be very dark. What a drag, huh?”

Aware that Mona was trying to be friendly, or at least polite, Katherine tried to reciprocate. “Yes, that must be an awful bore,” she began, and paused. She had never thought of herself as having an accent—her speech was simply that of any educated New England person. But now, in contrast to Glory and (especially) Mona, she sounded prissy and affected. She made a conscious effort to moderate her tone, and went on: “But do you really have to do that? I mean, I don’t know, but couldn’t you just wear dark makeup?”

“Yeah, sure I could, for the cameras. On TV everybody’s got a ton of gunk plastered over them, anyhow. Only the trouble is, you have to look right when you go for a part. That’s when it counts.” She shook back a mass of black Latin curls.

“Sun is bad for you,” Glory announced, speaking from the shadows of the umbrella like some strange idol. “It ages your skin, and gives you freckles.”

“Maybe.” Mona frowned. “But geez, you know, being out of a job is worse for me. That really makes me sick.” She laughed; Glory joined her briefly, and so, tentatively, did Katherine. But when this laugh died away there was an awkward silence. Out of the corner of her eye Katherine saw Glory’s sunglasses apparently fixed upon her, and felt guiltily conscious.

“Well,” Glory said finally. “So how’s Iz making out these days?” For the first time she really spoke aloud, projecting her theatrical voice with force. This, as well as the question itself, made Katherine start.

“Uh, oh, he’s just fine.” Obviously this was an inadequate answer—inaccurate, too, and even insulting, since it implied that Dr. Einsam was doing just fine without Glory. “He’s as well as you could expect.”

Now she had said too much. Glory was still staring at her; she wanted her to betray Iz somehow, Katherine felt. But she must defend him, she must give nothing away, not even neutral information, because there was no neutral information. This was an impossible situation; she wished she had never come, and even blamed Iz for sending her. But since she was there, she had to make an effort. “I mean, really, how can I possibly tell you how he is now, when I don’t know what he was like before?”

“Well, okay.” Glory smiled a little, paused, and went on. “You like working there at the university? It’s a pretty easy job, huh?”

“No. I mean, I like it; but there’s usually plenty to do,” Katherine lied, sensing a criticism (there can’t be much work at U.C.L.A., or you wouldn’t be here now—or, I work harder than you do).

“Mm. And how’s Iz getting on with the other professors up there? Are they still speaking to him?”

“Why, yes,” Katherine said, stiffening against this continuing inquisition. “They all seem to get on very well.”

“What d’you know,” Glory remarked sceptically to Mona. “You think he’s reformed? Maybe he’s turned into a nice guy.” Mona giggled. “Or maybe they’re just finally seeing it his way. ... Of course, the fact is he’s a fantastically brilliant person,” she added, now to both of them. “He knows he’s got it all over the other professors in brains, and he doesn’t bother to keep it a secret, so naturally the rest of them are screaming jealous. I mean he may be a complete shit personally, but in his own scientific work he’s practically a genius. Isn’t that so?”

As Glory looked at Katherine now, her voice vibrated not only with theatrical tone but with genuine nervous emotion. Why, she’s more upset about him than I am, Katherine thought with surprise—much more. She’s really in a state. She tried to think of something calming to say, and to get out of the line of fire, as it were. She had never heard anyone at U.C.L.A. suggest that Dr. Einsam was a scientific genius. The idea had not occurred to her nor, as far as she knew, to Iz himself. But rather than contradict Glory and sacrifice Iz’s prestige, she chose to sacrifice her own.

“Heavens, I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I just wouldn’t know. I’m no psychologist: I’m only the secretary for the project. They dictate their ideas, and I just take them down, I don’t have to understand them.”

She seemed to have said the right thing; both girls laughed this time.

“Yeah,” Glory said. She pushed back her hat and removed her dark glasses. Blinking and squinting at the light, she felt her hair, which was rolled up on about two dozen large metal curlers. Her face was round, shiny, and completely bare of make-up. Why look, she’s not beautiful at all, Katherine thought; she’s just an ordinary pretty girl.

“Hey.” Glory smiled more openly. “Would anybody like some iced tea, or a beer or something?”

“Have you got any Coke, hon?” Mona asked. “I could really use a Coke.”

“Yeah, I think so. If you want to ruin your teeth. You want a Coke?” This was to Katherine.

“No, thank you, I’d rather have iced tea.”

“Okay.” Trailing her robe behind across the dust and grass, Glory went into the house. Katherine looked after her, frowning. She was beginning to feel, of all things, sorry for this vulgar, nervous girl who had a hateful job, had lost Iz, and wasn’t even beautiful.

“Aww.” On the diving-board, Mona sat up and stretched voluptuously. “Holy gee, I wish there was some water in this goddamned pool,” she complained, looking down into the empty cement hole, in the corners of which dead leaves and trash had collected.

“What happened to it?”

“Ah, it’s all a big mess. The pool is sliding downhill, see, ’cause they put it in wrong. You can see the cracks in the ground over there at the other end. It’s really something.”

Curious, Katherine walked down the length of the empty pool. She looked into a deep, branching fissure with walls of dried mud. “Heavens. That’s awful,” she said, returning.

“Yeah. The way it looks to me, that whole side of the hill is falling off. I told Glory she oughta sue them, but she’s so down now she won’t do anything. ... Mona lowered her voice as Glory came out of the house, carrying a tray. “Say, that looks great! Thanks a lot.”