Page 82 of Vera Stein Is Fine
They walk close but don’t hold hands.
POPPY (V.O.)
If he kissed me, it would break the spell. And I really liked being under hisspell.
March 12, 2011
Vera S.
Is it still a love story if he doesn’t love her back?
Chapter Thirty-Four
I buzzed myself into the building and noticed that a new lobby display entitled “Starlight Palms Throughout the Decades” had been set up.
A wall of frames displayed various photos of former guests from when the place was still a resort. Some were even very famous, like Robert Redford and Doris Day.
In the glass case were memorabilia like coasters, swimming caps, beach towels, cocktail glasses, and valet keychains.
As I perused the photos, I found a small picture of Ruby. My fingers traced over the glass as I studied the image. She was lounging in a cabana with four other friends. One of them, a woman, sat behind her at a table with a cigarette dangling between her fingers. Over her modest one-piece swimsuit, she wore a flowy linen shirt. Her gaze was solely on Ruby while two men and another woman laughed hysterically with each other, cigarettes dangling from their fingers.
The other woman was Hollis. It had to be. It felt so odd to see the two of them like this in a glass case, like they were just another relic of the past. And yet, their story was still very much alive.
I walked back to my office and settled at my computer with an inappropriate amount of beverages. Ice water, raspberry tea, and a coffee I had no business drinking after six o’clock at night. As I waited for the computer to run an update, my thoughts wandered back to the display case and how, at a certain point, our lives become memories. Inactivechunks of time. Things that had been or could have been, but would never change. For so long, Eli had felt like a memory. But then he reappeared in my life, opening our book. Unsettling the dust.
I knew that life was supposed to be a journey and not a destination. I’d seen those words on hundreds of inspirational posters and embroidered pot holders. But that felt so easy to say when your journey was worthy of a destination.
I knew all the countless reasons why Eli and I were a bad idea. I knew all the things it could ruin. My job. My living situation.
The computer screen lit up and I opened the document I’d been tinkering with.
My job. My living situation. Those things were not worth risking by giving in to hormones and lust.
Because that’s all this was.
* * *
My time off for the next few days was spent running errands with Ruby. Having her gown for the awards ceremony tailored. Hair and nail appointments. Last-minute shopping. It was the kind of busywork that kept me out of the apartment. In between all of that, Ruby would type text messages to Hollis or sometimes even attempt to write them out like a script. Some versions were as simple as a hello while many were paragraphs long. (I knew this because the text size on her phone had to be at least twenty points.) Every text was deleted before it could be sent and every piece of paper torn.
Eli was hardly around. He came back late just about every night, and I told myself it was easier this way.
I’d come home from New Orleans and I’d get serious about finding a place of my own. Then Eli and I would once again be a memory. A piece of time so far removed from the present that there was no point in untangling it.
* * *
The morning of Leonard’s living funeral, I left my little homework assignment under his doormat.
To my surprise, I didn’t hate what I’d written. After several failed attempts at resurrectingThe Wunderkind, I used the character survey from the writing workshop instead and ended up with a few aimless pages about a postal worker who delivers letters from the afterlife. It was actually sort of... clever.
The invitation Leonard sent out specified that the dress code was Disco Western. When he came by my office to ensure I had something appropriate to wear, I told him I was hoping to swing by the costume aisle at a party store beforehand. His upper lip curled in disgust and he told me he’d have options for me in the morning that were not made of flammable textiles.
And options there were! The contents of the bag he’d left in my office this morning looked like Elton John and Dolly Parton had a baby and then donated their wardrobe to a less fortunate middle-aged woman.
I pulled out a multicolor fringe cape and then slid on pink leather gloves. It was what my childhood self probably imagined fancy dress to be.
“Very funeral appropriate.” Eli hovered in the doorway, wearing snug black jeans and a pearl-snap shirt with a cactus embroidered on each chest pocket. His hair was longer than he usually kept it, and I wondered if he was busy or just not paying close enough attention to himself.
“You really dropped the ball on the disco part,” I told him.
