Deborah Shapiro - The Sun in Your Eyes

“So, when we get to the airport, is that it?” asked Viv. “I kind of feel like you’re sending me away, and it’s going to be years before I see you again.”

“It’s not as dramatic as you’re making it sound.”

“If I’m being dramatic, it’s because you fucking made me that way.” Viv shook her head. “Stop laughing. It’s not funny.”

“I’m going to see Linda and hopefully get some answers, and then I’ll go back to New York and you’ll see me as much or as little as you want to. As much or as little as Andy wants you to.” Lee’s mind landed on something. “Remember that girl at that party, like, years ago, who thought we were a couple?”

“Yeah!”

Neither of them knew how to finish the thought.

ELLEN SHELLEY HADthe air of someone continually carrying a clipboard. Her whole body hummed.

“Lee- eeeee! What are you doing here? I mean, come in!” Ellen, at the door of Linda’s house, like a mad scientist steering Lee into a chamber where ordinary humans were subjected to abnormally high levels of energy. Lee almost expected to be given a jumpsuit to change into. “I thought you were in New York? I mean, I thought you were on vacation? I mean, fuck, you know what I mean. I wish you’d called and let us know you were coming. I would have prepared.”

“What would you have prepared?”

“Shit, I don’t know. A snack? I would have ordered something special. Made a goddamn reservation.”

“A snack reservation?”

“I don’t fucking know. Something, okay ?”

Ellen swore gratuitously, the way that actresses profiled in men’s magazines do. Lee recalled that Ellen used to go on auditions when Linda first hired her as a personal assistant seven years ago. Linda had had a number of assistants over the years, and while all of them performed more or less the same tasks, they each seemed to serve a different purpose for Linda. One or two were Linda manqués, also-rans of her scene who never burned as brightly and always needed money. Some of them were strivers, absolute Linda loyalists, never a bad word about the boss. A couple of them, by the end of their tenure, couldn’t hide their grumpiness, and Lee probably should have sympathized, though she never really did. She had only ever cared about one. Sally Andrada, who had worked for Linda while Lee was in high school. Sally looked and dressed the way Lee thought she ought to look in ten years. Long, not very neat, light brown hair with blond streaks, as if she surfed a lot when she wasn’t on the clock. T-shirts, jeans, boots. Sometimes skirts, long or short, but almost always with a pattern, textiles being her thing. Always as if she never tried too hard (though maybe she secretly did), and as if she knew you probably wanted to be her, but she wasn’t going to make a big deal about it, or even a small deal (which was usually worse, as these things go, than a big one). No reverse-snobbery: Look at you people and your money. But nothing of the sycophant about her. Just a conscientiousness: she wanted to do a good job, she wanted to move beyond where she came from (Sally from the Valley) and she understood how Linda could help her get there. Her talent had brought her under Linda’s tutelage, but she still couldn’t keep a note of protective sarcasm out of her voice when she referred to herself as a “textile artist.”

“Don’t ever talk like that! Don’t deprecate yourself or your art that way,” Linda had admonished her. “Your art is your work.” Sally thanked her. Linda then allowed a little time to pass before asking Sally to book her an appointment for a wax.

Lee cared what Sally thought of her. She imagined Sally had a boyfriend who wasn’t entirely worth her time, but still. Lee never wanted to do anything that would make Sally complain to this boyfriend. Can you believe that girl? But what do you expect? Sally left sometime when Lee was away at college. She could look her up, find out what had happened to her, but she preferred to just hope it was something good.

“Is my mom around?”

“She is, she is! Um, I think she’s out back. You want to wait here?”

Ellen hustled her into the living room, sitting her down on the eraser-pink George Sherlock sofa, its cushions like giant hamburger buns. This wasn’t the house where Lee had grown up, but that sofa was like a floating home.

“Hey, just so you know, Linda hasn’t exactly been herself the last few days. I don’t know what it is, but she’s been a little, like, withdrawn or something. She canceled a few meetings. There was this benefit dinner she bailed on last night. I don’t want you to be alarmed or anything, but. Just FYI.”

“Okay, thanks for letting me know.”

It didn’t matter that Lee hadn’t answered Ellen’s question about what she was doing here. Talking to Ellen was like being at a cocktail party or trying to have a conversation with someone looking after a toddler. Ellen spirited herself through a set of French doors and while Lee waited, she looked at her hands, at her father’s agate ring. As a girl, she had worn it on a thin chain around her neck and then at sixteen she had it resized for her finger. She rarely thought to take it off because it was so much a part of her. It had been a talisman of sorts, a silent marker of a special power granted to her. In the way that children play one parent off the other, the ring was a reminder to her mother: I come from someone else. But she had forgotten that Linda had given her the ring in the first place, after Jesse died.

Ellen reappeared carrying a tray with two glasses, a pitcher of still water, and a small plate of cut-up lemon.

“Linda’s coming in a sec. Um and she told me to go home early, so I’m gonna”—Ellen set the tray down on the wide coffee table and rotated her hands in front of her like turbines as she searched for the words she wanted—“head the fuck out!”

“Okay. Have a good rest of the afternoon. Evening.”

“Would you. Could you just. I mean, go easy on her, okay? Whatever it is. Like I said, she’s having a rough time.”

Lee wondered when she’d developed a reputation for being a bitch. She had heard “standoffish” before but she didn’t think she’d been particularly known for nastiness. Though she’d never thought Linda needed coddling, either.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Linda approached just then, from around a corner. Looking very British Woman in Kenya in a rumpled white linen camp shirt tucked into wide-legged khaki pants and flat sandals. Big Mort’s pendant peeking out of a lapel.

“Thank you, Ellen,” Linda said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She put her hands in her pockets, her Charlie Chaplin — slash — Marlene Dietrich — in — menswear move, and shuffled into the living room, looking at once apologetic, stern, and worried.

“Hi,” she said. “Did you just get in?” She poured two glasses of water, released a lemon slice into each, and dropped into an armchair facing Lee.

“Yes and no. I was with Viv, in Big Sur. I dropped her off at the airport and then came here.”

“Big Sur, huh? You’ve been to see Marion, then.”

Of course. Of course Linda would have known.

“Yes.”

“And what did she tell you?”

“She told me what she remembers.”

Linda’s face twitched preemptively into a kind of bullying expression Lee had last seen on Will, a half-English, half-French director of high-concept music videos. They had gone away together for a weekend to a Mediterranean villa, where he asked her to sleep with his good friend Max. A variety of motivations were supplied, chief among them that it would get Will off. He didn’t need to watch, just knowing it was happening would do.