Paul Kolsby - Ear to the Ground

“Uh-huh?” Ian was charmed.

“My palm.” She pronounced it PAL-lem. “Do you know what she telled me?”

Ian shook his head.

“Destiny await you.”

Then she hit the back of her hand against the table, as Italians sometimes do, and made a gap-toothed smile so stupendous that Ian had to fight the urge to grab her by the waist.

She played the saxophone, she told them, and then pulled one out of a suitcase she had lugged to the table. It was tarnished, but she sat holding it, with a reed in her mouth, smiling into Ian’s eyes. Someone turned down Perry Como, and she stood up.

Sometime after midnight Ian and the actress ended up in Silver Lake, at his place. Leonetta was her name, and she blew her saxophone through the night while Ian fiddled with his trumpet. Actually, they weren’t bad together. What they lacked in technical skill, they made up for with chemistry. And as they inched toward that morning hour where spending the night becomes a foregone conclusion, Ian noticed the light blinking like crazy on his answering machine, while he played an unpleasant, abstract riff, and considered how to go about suggesting the sleeping arrangements.

GRACE WAS PISSED. IAN’S RIDICULOUS AGENT HAD CALLED and harassed her — at home, for Christ’s sake — about Ear to the Ground. What a joker Michael Lipman was. Here it was, Saturday night, and he had set up some kind of meeting. Grace was so angry she hardly even looked up when Ian headed for the door. “I’ll call you,” he told her.

Three hours later, though, Ian still hadn’t called, and Grace had moved toward the numb realization that she’d been taken for granted again. It was almost summer, and the days were languid, nearly tropical. As twilight settled over the city and fog began to drift across the Hollywood Hills, Grace found herself pacing the rooms of her apartment, imagining a man who wouldn’t leave her hanging on a Saturday, who would maybe buy her flowers once in a while, clean up the kitchen after himself, or at least replace the coffee when he’d used it up.

She dialed Ian’s number, left a nasty message, and went to get her keys. Fuck him, she thought. She didn’t need Ian. She was an adult. She could take care of herself. There was that new place on Beverly they’d been wanting to try, where she could get a nice piece of fish, lightly grilled, and a glass of wine. And after that … well, she could always read a couple of scripts.

Navaro was on the building’s front stoop when Grace reached the bottom of the stairs. Please don’t talk to me, she thought, and then: I don’t have to deal with you, I can just go on my way. But he said hello and, of course, she said hi, cursing herself for not having the strength to be rude.

“All alone tonight?” Navaro asked. In her faded jeans and T-shirt, Grace clearly was not dressed for a date.

“Ian’s working.”

“He don’t know the meaning of the word.” Navaro shook his head with a bitter little laugh. “He sits around all day and works on Saturday night ? The whole time me and Elise, God forgive her, were together, I’d always be home by six-thirty, every Saturday night.”

God forgive her? Grace thought. “That’s nice,” she said.

“Yeah. Elise.” Over Navaro’s shoulder, the last dregs of daylight faded to black. “I ever show you her picture?”

“No.” Grace’s stomach tightened like a fist.

“Wanna see?”

She hesitated, and Navaro took that for a yes. He headed for his front door, leaving her on the steps to wait for him.

Just then, a Honda Civic pulled up in front of the building, and Charlie climbed out the passenger side. He leaned into the open window and looked at Kenwood, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, hands tight on the wheel.

“You’re not gonna go home and stare at her picture, are you?” Charlie asked.

Kenwood shook his head.

“You want to get some dinner?”

“Not hungry.”

“Then do me one favor? Don’t go jumping off any bridges.”

“What bridge did you have in mind?” Kenwood looked up.

“Good point.” Charlie smiled, and backed away from the car. “So I’ll see you Monday?”

Kenwood nodded, and the Civic crawled away from the curb.

Grace watched the sandy-haired man walk up the path, flickering in and out of patches of lamplight.

“You must be Charlie,” she said.

“And you must be Grace.”

They smiled for a moment that stretched nearly into discomfort. Then Navaro’s door squeaked open, and Grace’s face fell like a stone.

“Do you know about computers and everything?” She spoke quickly, moving her face toward Charlie’s ear.

Charlie didn’t understand.

“I mean, you work with them, don’t you?”

“Yeah …”

Before Grace could elaborate, Navaro came up behind them, bearing a photograph of a middle-aged woman in a ratty bouffant. “I see you two met,” he said, wheezing a little, a Pall Mall hanging from his lips.

“Incorrect path, incorrect path,” Grace said to Charlie. “Every time I try it, I keep getting ‘incorrect path.’” Her eyes sparkled, and a smile crept from the corners of her mouth. “I’m so confused.”

Briefly, the three of them stood in suspension, and even the crickets in the cool Los Angeles night seemed to grow still.

“Probably have to defrag the system,” Charlie told her. “Right away.”

“You guys with your computers,” Navaro laughed, shaking his head. And as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

“Thanks,” Grace said to Charlie when they reached the second floor landing.

“No problem.” He turned slightly toward his door. Something in his way reminded Grace of an old boyfriend who’d never taken the initiative, always waiting for her to make the first move. Charlie would be like that, she figured. But it didn’t matter, she was with Ian, and Ian …

… was nowhere to be found.

“Hey.” Grace made sure to keep her voice neutral. “What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing.”

“You hungry?”

“I am, actually.” He patted his stomach. “But I have work to do.”

“Me too, but you gotta eat.”

“That’s true.”

“We could order Chinese.”

Charlie nodded. “I like Chinese.”

“Great,” Grace said. “Why don’t I go dig up a menu, and I’ll knock on your door?”

In her apartment Grace grabbed the bottle of good red she’d been saving, dialed Ian’s number, and was happy to get his machine. On her way out, she looked at the pile of scripts, and wondered about falling behind. But once she stepped onto the landing, and approached Charlie’s door, work was the last thing on her mind.

IF YOU LOOKED AT A MAP, YOU’D THINK NORTH AMERICA began at the Atlantic shore and ran west to the Pacific — through that wide, misunderstood state of Ohio, across forgettable Indiana and the confounding yellow-green flatness of Kansas and eastern Colorado. Suddenly, there are the Rockies, whose remotest peaks and crags were never touched by man or woman.

Past those mountains, to the southwest, lonely desert winds swirl among the Mojave’s dunes and bring dust to the blacktops and souvenir stands, whirring by the gilded death they call Las Vegas, and carrying a whore’s cheap perfume to the California border. The bleakness is broken by San Bernardino; and beyond, at the edge of the continent, lies the great salty municipality of Santa Monica. There you go — from sea to shining sea. But here’s the catch: The earth has only one continent, one floor, one ground. We live on an assemblage of tectonic plates, joined casually, sometimes grinding, and always sliding underneath us. Perhaps this is what we mean when we speak of the connectedness of all things.