Don't Make a Scene Page 5

  What exactly did her uncle think she'd be doing in his apartment?

  “You have so much going on, Diane.” Her mother sat down next to her, squeezing her arm. “It would be great to have less to worry about. Stay here. I'll cook for you.”

  “Sometimes I leave work after midnight. I'd prefer not to take a forty-five-minute train ride at that hour. If there are trains at that hour.”

  “The bus is twenty minutes at that hour,” her dad said, sitting on her other side.

  “Stay with us,” her sister said. “It's a cab ride.”

  “Maybe you'll meet somebody on the train,” her mother said. “Remember Robert De Niro in Falling in Love?”

  “Diane isn't waiting for the man on the train,” Uncle Mort said. “She's waiting for the man who'll climb up her hair and rescue her from the tower.”

  What did that mean? Diane got up to make juice. From the kitchen, she heard muffled talk at the table. Everyone looked up at her when she returned. On the bus ride back, she decided to find a way to make her uncle regret his behavior.

  THE PHONE awakened her at eight the following morning.

  Nothing good comes of phone calls at that hour.

  The apartment on East Twenty-sixth had been rented, her latest broker told her.

  “That's right.” Diane cleared her throat, trying to wake up. “I rented it.”

  “No, this is what I'm trying to tell you,” the broker said. “The apartment was already under contract to be rented when we saw it.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I'm sorry, it happens. Let me round up some other places for you to see.”

  Connie and Gene were ready to let her stay on indefinitely; her friend Claire Giancarlo had offered her a room in Westchester without an end date; Rachel would put up with her for a few weeks, perhaps.

  “A wrecking ball will crash through my window in a month.”

  “So let's go this afternoon, then,” the broker said.

  OCTOBER

  VLADIMIR WOKE UP breathless in a sweat. He'd dreamed he was back in Cuba. In the peeling blue bedroom with the open window overlooking the decrepit house opposite. His family was raging outside his door; soon they would storm in without knocking. He was trapped and sweating on his bed. He could hear neighbors fighting, diesel trucks shifting gears to get up the hill, the yowling of neighborhood cats. The Authorities were in possession of his passport. They would now begin the process of retaliation. He'd brought this on himself. Why had he gone back? How could he have been so stupid?

  “Nice of you to show up,” Chris called as Vladimir walked into the studio. Then he gave him the news: Jan Mattias's office renovation was on hold. A firm that had just been featured in The New York Times Magazine would get a crack at it. Jan Mattias apparently needed to be on the crest of the wave at all times. The good news: Jan Mattias had invited Chris and Vladimir to discuss a movie theater expansion.

  “Well, I don't mind not doing another office,” Vladimir said.

  “Me neither. It'll be interesting.”

  Vladimir checked his e-mail. In his in-box was a letter from Migdalia Rosario, forwarding a speech by the Minister of Foreign Relations about the tight new U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba, and the new, more lenient Cuban policy toward Cubans returning to the island. She wrote, “Perhaps the gusanos should read the following.”

  He let out a scream.

  “What happened?” Chris asked.

  “Every day, I am bombarded with BULLSHIT! I haven't seen this woman in twelve years, and now she sends me propaganda and calls me a worm.”

  Chris laughed out loud. “She called you a worm?”

  “Gusano is Castro's word for everyone who went to Miami, or anyone who opposes him. And whatever he says, people repeat it. Some exiles call themselves gusanos now. They think it's a badge of honor to say they're worms. Such nonsense!”

  Chris mentioned a meeting at the cinema later and left the office.

  Vladimir poured himself a cup of coffee. Why waste time getting into a discussion with this robot? On the other hand, how dare she reveal his e-mail address to twenty strangers?

  “Dear Migdalia,” Vladimir wrote back rapidly.

  “If I wanted to read the blood-drenched propaganda of the Regime, I'd go to the official website.

  “Why are you proselytizing? It's one thing to be trapped in Havana, with no information, promoting the ‘Revolution.’ It is quite another to sit in Mexico, as you do, with access to a free press and the Internet, and extol the virtues of a totalitarian regime that has completely destroyed our country. You must be suffering from amnesia and blindness. I am sorry for you.

  “Vladimir.”

  Vladimir pulled out a roll of vellum and began to sketch. He preferred the pencil and vellum for thinking through new ideas. He could work on the computer if he had to, although since Chris had hired Magnus, one of his old students, as an intern, Vladimir wasn't so motivated to keep up with the new programs, or the updates of the old ones. It was nice to be alone in the studio, without Chris on the phone.

  But there was someplace he was supposed to be. The movie theater!

  He raced outside. The sky opened up a block away from the subway. He didn't have an umbrella. He began to run. It was the end of hurricane season. Many of his childhood memories involved tropical storms that swept down, scattered everything, damaged buildings and made people do foolish things. A single storm can alter your whole life, all your plans.

  A woman with a silver spike coming out of her face led him into the theater, where seven people were sitting at a large table directly in front of the screen.

  Chris stepped down from the stage to greet him in the aisle. “You're half an hour late,” he whispered. “How many times do we have to go through this?”

  Vladimir climbed up the stairs to meet the people at the table.

  “Okay! I am late, I am wet, please forgive me. You play wonderful movies, Bedford Street Cinema. I've seen many great films here. There's a scary building next door. Tell me about it.”

  He sat down across from a woman with long black hair and vivid blue eyes. She turned her pointy face to him and smiled.

  How could this man have attended many films at her theater? Wouldn't Diane have noticed him? He was distinctive, serious—and drenched. She sent Cindy back to her office to get a towel for him. His thick black hair, shot through with white threads, was done like Toshiro Mifune's in Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)—a messy samurai knot at the back of the head.

  Sidney Lumet, in his unpretentious, process-oriented memoir Making Movies, wrote something interesting about the mysterious alchemy between star and audience: “Every star evokes a sense of danger, something unmanageable. Perhaps each person in the audience feels that he or she is the one who can manage, tame, satisfy the bigger-than-life quality that a star has.” Vladimir Hurtado Padrón exuded something dangerous and unmanageable, like a film star. Was it just the foreign, unfamiliar aspect of him that made Diane feel that he was bigger than life?

  “We should tell you up front that we've never designed a cinema or a theater,” said Chris Wiley, “and we're very excited.”

  “We learn so much doing things we haven't done before,” said Vladimir, with an accent she couldn't place. He seemed simultaneously sophisticated and naïve. Gary Masters caught her eye; he counted Clearview Cinemas as one of his clients, and had given her the name of the firm that handled all their New York construction work. Go learn on someone else's dime, Gary's face said.

  Chris Wiley, a tall, elegant blond man in his late thirties with alert green eyes and a diplomatic demeanor, had kept the meeting moving before Vladimir arrived, peppering the renovation committee with questions about the space, the history of the theater, the connections each Board member had to the cinema. He worked the crowd like an old pro. Dorothy and Estelle were charmed by him; Jack Lipsky Daniel Dubrovnik and Gary Masters were not. When fifteen minutes had passed, and it became clear that his partner might no
t show, Chris had begun to present their portfolio, which included photos, paintings, sketches and two small models. Diane was impressed with the thought that had gone into the design of the public spaces. She complimented Chris on one sketch, an analysis of the traffic flow in the lobby of an apartment building, which he had used to determine where to put floor joists.

  “If I had to tell you how we differ from most firms, I'd say that this is it,” Chris responded. “We don't come in with a design. We investigate the space, and the design really flows out of that. You have to put floor joists somewhere, so instead of putting them every two feet, why not add more where there's more traffic? The floor will last longer.”

  “But it's uneven,” Daniel Dubrovnik had said.

  “Underneath, which no one can see. But the tiles on top are regularly spaced.”

  Chris impressed her. Then this wet, beautiful, serious man showed up. She'd felt off-kilter ever since he bounded up the steps and sat down across from her and fixed her with a direct gaze.

  “Tell us how you'd like to use the extra space,” Vladimir said.

  “We want as wide a screen as possible, and as many seats as possible,” Diane told him. “But the lobby is cramped and we have ticket holders lining up around the block. So I'd want to add as much space to the lobby as we can.”

  Vladimir seemed to be listening actively. It took guts for a man to wear his hair like that. She felt out of breath, but she couldn't stop talking.

  “Also, the bathrooms are a disaster. My ideal renovation would include ripping out both bathrooms and starting from scratch.”

  “What kind of feeling would you like the space to convey?” Chris asked.

  She had been thinking that this was the perfect opportunity to really give the theater an identity. “We are about the glamour and mystery of classic movies in a comfortable, neighborhood place.”

  “The glamour of black-and-white movies themselves, or the glamour of the old movie palaces?” Vladimir asked.

  That was a good question. “Yes, we don't want stars on the ceiling and Moorish décor. I think we'd like a clean, sleek, glamorous look.”

  “You like the art deco look?” he asked, passing a book to her.

  “Very much.” It was a book of photos of deco theaters all over America. “Wow. I've made pilgrimages to some of these places.”

  He smiled at her. She felt everyone around the table watching her. But it was probably just a professional smile. She smiled back at him, and then looked down at the book.

  “Where are you from, Vladimir?” Dorothy asked.

  He exhaled, as if he were tired of this question. “Cuba.”

  “Oh,” everyone around the table said, as if this made everything clear.

  “How long have you been here?” Estelle asked.

  “Almost five years in the U.S. Before that, seven years in London.”

  “You grew up in Cuba,” Dorothy said and sighed. “It's not the way it was.”

  “No, they ruined it,” Estelle agreed.

  “We used to go down there every year, to Havana, to Varadero. Have you ever been there?” Dorothy asked Vladimir.

  “Cubans aren't allowed in Varadero. Only foreigners. And I should tell you, they didn't just ruin your vacation. They ruined the entire country.”

  “I don't think we want a retro look,” Gary Masters said.

  “No, you want something sleek and contemporary that evokes nostalgia without imitating the deco look,” Chris said.

  “Exactly,” Diane said.

  “I like black marble,” Daniel said. Diane had forgotten he was there.

  “Black marble! That would cost a fucking fortune,” Lipsky said.

  “I don't think we should be specific about the materials yet,” Diane said. “Why don't we get a picture of what the whole thing is going to look like, and cost, and then we can fight over the materials.”

  The meeting broke up to make way for the first screening of the day. Diane stayed behind with Vladimir and Chris, who began to look around the space as the early crowd of partisans pushed in to grab good seats for Royal Wedding (Stanley Donen, 1951). The “Song and Dance” series had just started, and would sell out. Diane had a limited appetite for sticky-sweet musicals, but they paid the rent, so to speak. It irritated her, in the movies, when people just burst into song on public transportation, just as it irritated her, in the movies, when two people met and romance bloomed immediately, because he was a man and she was a woman, and this was how it worked. Her life was proof of how this didn't happen. But these movies had an eternal allure. During the Depression, people flocked to see men in top hats expensively courting fur-draped ladies and gliding over shiny white floors. Didn't their drab lives seem that much more depressing afterwards?

  The two architects began to take rough measurements, and Diane became self-conscious; she felt superfluous. “I have nightmares about the place next door, so I'm going to let Floyd take you over there,” she said, giving Floyd the keys. “Come see me when you're done and we can talk about the next step.”

  Diane walked back to her office, wondering what to do with herself.

  Ten years of sitting across the table from men with tedious verbal tics and annoying personal behavior (on with the glasses, off with the glasses, into the case with the glasses, snapping shut the case with a BANG! And on again with the glasses when the waitress arrived). Ten years of trying to get interested in men with careless hygiene, disagreeable politics, questionable business practices, dreadful taste in music and/or lousy table manners. Many of these men seriously overestimated their importance in the world. Quite a few were sexually dysfunctional, when it got to that stage, which was rare. Often an ex-girlfriend hovered in the background, sometimes even in the foreground. Everybody had somebody, it seemed, for the purpose of ending the evening, whether or not the date with Diane worked out. These arrangements often didn't surface until Week Six, which was the step-up-or-cut-off point.

  The films Vladimir remembered seeing at Bedford Street were martial arts movies and Italian comedies. Diane looked at the schedule to see if there was anything coming up: nothing till February. But if he and his partner were doing the renovation, she'd be seeing quite a bit of him. She wondered how she might make sure that they got the commission.

  She heard a ruckus in the lobby and went out to investigate. Four busloads of senior citizens had showed up two hours early for South Pacific (Joshua Logan, 1958), mobbing the theater, singing “Some Enchanted Evening” on the ticket holders’ line. A rival faction chanted “I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy” from the concession stand. It was only noon, only Monday!

  She stalked up Hudson Street in search of quiet and fresh air. A massive headache had lodged itself above her left eye. How many times had she tried to work herself up over an otherwise unattractive specialist because he was there, only to find herself ignored or dismissed? Nobody came close to what she was looking for, so it wasn't truly tragic. But the pattern was tedious. An entire decade of her life had drifted by in the mood of Summertime (David Lean, 1955), in which Katharine Hepburn plays a single American woman of a certain age, in Venice for the first time. She puts on a brave face, marching through the streets solo with her movie camera, perching at cafés as the sensual Italian street life swirls around her. She is exalted by the beauty of Venice and humiliated by the difficulty of experiencing it as a woman alone. She is flummoxed when an attractive Italian man of a certain age begins to follow her around, and receives his attentions with a clumsy rigidity that does not disguise her longing. Of course, her handsome Italian suitor is unsuitable—married, etc. Pauline Kael had written: “There is an element of embarrassment in this pining-spinster role, but Hepburn is so proficient at it that she almost—though not quite—kills the embarrassment.”

  Diane couldn't remember the last time she'd wanted something to happen.

  After viewing the carriage house, Chris Wiley and Vladimir Hur-tado Padrón were cornered in a narrow area near the concession sta
nd by the two older women present at the meeting. Chris noted that they addressed themselves to Vladimir.

  “You know, Diane started the revival repertory here,” said the one who carried herself like a theatrical actress.

  “She's a very lovely girl,” said the one who had been a chorine.

  Vladimir gave them both the blankest of slight smiles.

  “She seems like a wonderful person,” Chris said, when the silence from Vladimir became rude. Vladimir could be so tactless.

  “So, where do you live?” asked the chorus girl casually.

  “I live in NoHo,” Chris said.

  “And you?”

  “SoHo,” Vladimir said.

  “Oh, so you don't live together,” said the theatrical actress, casting a look at the chorus girl, as if there had been a discussion, and a bet.

  “Would you ladies excuse us?” Chris said. “We're on our way to another meeting, but we wanted to take a quick look at these bathrooms to see if they're as horrible as advertised.”

  “Oh, they're worse!”

  The chorus girl was right: the bathroom was a horror show.

  Chris and Vladimir bumped into Diane in the lobby, and she pointed out problems in traffic flow.

  “So when do we get to see you again?” she asked, looking from one to the other, her gaze lingering on Vladimir. They made a date, there were handshakes and she gave them a cheery goodbye.

  “Oh! Vladimir,” she called after him.

  They turned around.

  Diane came running toward them. “May I borrow that book?”

  “Certainly.” He presented it to her with a slight bow of the head.

  “Thank you,” she said, suppressing a smile in a shy way.

  This Diane wa s quite charming, Chris thought, although in desperate need of fashion advice and a serious haircut. On their way up Seventh Avenue South to the subway, Chris said, “Don't be put off by those busybodies.”