“That film noir stuff is passé. Don’t you get it?” Emi told Gabriel over her Bloody Mary. She squeezed the lime, dumped it in, shook in the Tabasco, more black pepper and stirred the whole mess with the celery stick, licking her fingers, watching him, watching the waiters, watching the cocktail hostess walk away, watching the entire clientele in the restaurant, taking hold of the situation as if she had produced it herself. “Stop being such a film buff. Raymond Chandler. Alfred Hitchcock. Film nostalgia. I don’t give a damn if Chinatown, The Player, or everybody in Hollywood owes these old farts their asses. I’ll give you this: at least they’re in color. Except for Roger Rabbit, if I have to spend another evening with you viewing another video in black and white, this relationship is over.” She laughed, tossing the silky strands of her straight hair over her padded shoulders. She didn’t mean it. She never did.
She had started dating Gabriel because he was Latino, part of that hot colorful race, only to find out that, except for maybe his interest in tango (and even that was academic), he wasn’t what you call the stereotype. But that was back in college (the things you learn in college); since then, they had been on again/off again. And considering someone like herself—so distant from the Asian female stereotype—it was questionable if she even had an identity.
“Hot colors,” she said sipping the Bloody Mary. “Color TV. When I was born, black-and-white TV was already passé. Monochrome monitors are passé for godssake. The other day I saw a thirty-inch Super VGA. Know what it looks like? Like my hand. Here.” She pointed with the celery at her other hand, at the big ruby ring and the red nail polish. “Next step is high-def. You know what I say?” She stopped scanning the ongoing surrounding scene long enough to look Gabriel in the eyes. “Colorize ’em all.”
Emi watched Gabriel’s reaction, watched his dark eyes under powerful brows, the aristocracy of his Incan nose, his trim goatee. Wouldn’t you know it; his lips turned in a subtle grin. He was chuckling. Maybe he was even secretly hoping that everyone in the restaurant could hear Emi. They were all an assortment of Hollywood types—screenwriters, producers, wannabees, gophers of varying dispositions, moguls of varying degrees of power or lack of, graduates of the UCLA film school. Here they were at the very center of the Westside power plays, cushioned in pastels and glass bricks and remakes of David Hockney, and she was trying to be obnoxious. And he was smiling. Go figure.
Emi looked at her watch. “Don’t worry. I can take a long one today. Only I gotta be back to segue the weather report. Can you believe it? We got a sponsor for a midafternoon cut to weather report. Ninety seconds. Didn’t want the heat of anything controversial so probably suggested wea-tha. Also ultracheap time slot, not to mention short. In L.A. how can you lose? Monday. Overcast in the morning. Sunny in the afternoon. Tuesday. Overcast in the morning. Sunny in the afternoon. Temperature holding at seventy-eight degrees. That’s what’s wrong with your precious L.A. detective films. It’s always raining. It never rains here! The only reason it rains in those films is so Bogie can wear a trenchcoat. What’s the point? It’s like those freeway signs that tell you you’re in traffic. So what’s new? It’s either overcast or sunny. And you know who bought the slot don’t you? Some tanning lotion company. Summer’s over and it gets dumped.”
“Summer solstice today,” Gabriel mentioned since the subject seemed to have changed to the weather. “I was thinking about my place in Mexico. The Tropic of Cancer runs right through it.” He picked up a knife and sliced the air. “That means the sun is right there, directly on top of my place. Now.” He looked at his watch.
“Does it affect broadcast reception?”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel shook his head.
“I thought the sun could do that. Why am I asking you? I should ask one of my technicians. On the other hand, I shouldn’t. You ask a technical question and you want a yes or no. But these guys are starved for any little talk. They’ll technilese you to death. Really, they get off on it, like sex. All I wanna know is if my program is gonna get up and for godssake don’t screw up the commercial.”
Gabriel sipped his water.
“At least order Perrier. This is on me you know. I’m expensing this one.” Emi crunched into the celery and waved around the stringy end of it. “Order a Sauvignon Blanc. Go ahead. For my sake, you could try to blend in with this crowd.” Blend in with this crowd. Blend in with all these white studio types. That comment should get his goat.
“You blend in,” he quipped and pushed the glass of water toward her. “Try this. Tap water from Northern California. It’s got a very subtle bouquet.”
Emi smiled. Being obnoxious with Gabriel was a great pastime. She liked trying to push his buttons. For example, she liked trying to be anti-multicultural around him. Right in the middle of some public place, she might burst out, “Oh you’re so Chicano!” Oppressing him with images of television was another tactic. He was such a film aesthete, it made her sick. Sometimes she really made him mad, and he’d cuss in Spanish. On occasion, he’d walk out. Oops. Went too far. Oh, well. But today it occurred to her that Gabriel was on to her, on to this purposeful (for whatever purpose) display of obnoxiousness. He seemed to be sitting there waiting for it to pass.
Her mother had said her big mouth was always getting her into trouble and that it was no wonder any boyfriend didn’t stick around very long. “Whatsa matter with you? Your dad and I don’t talk like that. Your brother and sister don’t talk like that. In fact no J.A. talks like that.”
“Maybe I’m not Japanese American. Maybe I got switched in the hospital. There were three sets of switched kids on the daytime Donahues last week: Montel Williams, Rikki Lake, and Sally Jesse Raphael. (Ratings were all up. Caress sold a lot of Caress.) But get this, they discovered each other by genetic testing. If three talk shows found three different sets, imagine how many more of us there must be! There’s probably a support group out there for people like me. I should check the net.”
“It’s your dad’s genes. Not mine. We Sakais keep our mouths shut, that’s what. Besides, I like Gabriel.”
“Really? I like Gabriel, too.”
“If you like someone, how can you treat him like that?”
“He can take it. Think of it this way. I’m not hiding anything from him. What he sees is what he’ll get. It’s really just a test. Rigorous, but hey, some fail. Like Human Feats on cable. Like paddling across the Pacific in a canoe. Crossing the Sahara on bikes. Climbing Mount Whitney.”
“It’s more like jumping off Mount Whitney.” Emi’s mother rolled her eyes. It was useless to talk seriously about these things.
“If there’s one thing you and dad taught me, it’s that you can never appreciate anything that just comes to you. You’ve got to struggle for something to really appreciate it. Like when you made me make my payments on my Civic. Or when I saved to buy my first Panasonic VCR. I really struggled. That’s what Gabriel is doing. Struggling.”
The most Gabriel was struggling with at the moment were the foreign words on the menu. “Pappardelle con funghi al vino marsala,” he muttered.
“As menu items go, it’s probably passé. But it is to die for,” she suggested. “I know the chef. Go ahead. Die.”
“Poison fungi?” he asked, attempting a mild joke.
But she said, “Fugu. Fugu’s poisonous. If you wanted Japanese, you shoulda said so.”
“Fungi.” He looked up. “Mushrooms. Fungi are mushrooms. Some mushrooms are poisonous.”
She took a swig of Bloody Mary and licked her lips. The Tabasco burned her lips. She licked them again and puckered, “So. What? It’s just a little oral gratification. Afraid to die?”
“No shit. I’ll go to hell, and you’ll be there, with your big mouth, dumping on me till eternity.”
“That’s the trouble with you. Live on the edge I say. Live to the max. It’s like riding the crest of a wave, staying current with it, right there, on top, top of the news, before it breaks.”
“I’d rather be in Mexico.”
“You’d rather be in the nineteen thirties back in black and white with that detective Philip whatshisname. It’s not like I’m not interested in your habit. I mean this Philip Morris—
“Marlowe.”
“—Marlowe guy could have a revival. Then okay. But otherwise, strictly current affairs for moi.”
Gabriel had heard this harangue before . . . he didn’t even seem to be listening. His thoughts were far away. He didn’t try to defend his hero or even the possibility that a Chandler revival might be more than just a current affair. He knew that she knew. It was just one of those absurd conversations with Emi. He changed the subject.
“I talked to Rafaela at my place near Mazatlán. I think I’m finally going to get the house finished.”
“That’s great.”
“I’m thinking of going down in a couple weeks.”
“Maybe I’ll go with you.” She reached down and pulled the electronic scheduler from her purse, entered some items on the screen and said, “You should get one of these. Then you’d have all my numbers and your calendar all together. I’m going to get you one for your birthday.”
“I like my calendar book better.”
“This is what the future is about. A paperless existence. Gabriel, you’re murdering trees.” She paused, “Two weeks from this one, I could get a Friday off. Make it a three-day weekend.”
“I don’t know. Actually, I’m thinking of driving. I may have to take some toilet bowls down.”
“Toilet bowls? What’s wrong with Mexican toilet bowls?”
“Rafaela says they’re too expensive.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“That’s what she says.”
“Gabe, this back-to-nature thing of yours? It’s a nice vacation, but how about golf?”
“I don’t know how to explain it. I get a kick out of planting a tree every time I go. It’s not like this news business. I plant; I get fruits. I get to make something I can actually touch and eat for a change. Seriously, I sometimes think to hell with all this.” Gabriel’s eyes wearily surveyed all this.
So did Emi’s. “I read somewhere that these days, if you are making a product you can actually touch and,” she emphasized and, “making a comfortable living at it, you are either an Asian or a machine.”
Suddenly a beeping. Emi reached in her purse and turned it off. Then she scrambled with the rest of the contents in the purse until she found the folded cellular phone, pulled out the antenna and punched in memory. “I knew this was gonna be a weird week. We’re calling it Disaster Movie Week. Every night we’ve got another disaster movie. Tonight it’s Inferno in the Tower. Tomorrow The Northridge Quake. Then it’s Canyon Fires. Airport III. Bomb Threat at the Pacific Exchange. Burn Baby Burn. And for the final insult, The Day After. Can you believe it? The lives of ordinary people with petty problems who now have a big problem.” Emi grimaced at Gabriel and directed her voice into the phone. “. . . You paged? This was supposed to be an easy day. Yeah, yeah. No! Shit. Oh shit. Whadyamean you can’t find the tape? I put it in your hands personally. Personally. Remember? That’s not what you said. Okay, so what’s the problem? What mix-up? We’re not going to lose this. No way. Or it’s your pay. You pay for the slot! Okay. I’m coming. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She slapped the phone together. “Gotta go. You eat my linguini.” She pulled out a lipstick and a mirror, twirled up the baton, and quickly reformulated her lips. “Wrap it up. Bring it home. Damn. Damn weather report. Three minutes. Prerecorded this morning. I saw it myself. Perfect for tanning lotion. Like I said. Overcast in the morning. Sunny in the afternoon. The second spot comes up in an hour and no tanning sponsor tape for the time. Damn.” She flung the purse to her shoulder and headed away from the table rushing past the waiters with their steaming plates of pasta. “I’ll call you this afternoon.”
Gabriel stared down at the pappardelle con funghi al vino marsala, the sweet fragrance of wine and rosemary rising, the delicate slices of wild mushroom limp and appealing coyly to his senses just under and between the firm ribbons of pasta. But this was passé. So what was in? Probably burgers.
Someone was knocking at the glass in the window pane next to his table. He looked out. It was Emi. Her two fists were clenched in front of her face, a kind of demonstration of frustration and boxing technique all at once. He watched her mouth and lips move, trying to decipher her silent scream through the thick panes. “It’s raining!” Her lips formed the ridiculous words. In fact, the terrace and street beyond were awash, water pouring as if from a thousand chrome-plated faucets, pouring out of the gray L.A. skies.