The Diamond Lane Read online

  Preface

  THIS NOVEL, MY SECOND, WAS FIRST PUBLISHED TWENTY-TWO years ago. You would think enough time has passed that I might be able to look back at the experience with nostalgia and fondness, to see with the clarity afforded by time what I was trying to accomplish and how I’ve grown as a writer. You would think.

  But for reasons that remain an utter mystery to me, I’m unable to do any of these things. It’s a well-known fact that people can’t tickle themselves, and that’s how this kind of literary self-reflection strikes me.

  Rereading The Diamond Lane, my primary feeling isn’t expansive and mellow but akin to the alarm a high-strung horse feels when an unexpected plastic bag skitters across his path: In my lifetime there was a smoking section on airplanes? Owning a car FAX was once the height of high tech?

  The 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street, whose reverberations could still be heard as I sat down to begin writing The Diamond Lane two years later, spawned a disappointing, mildly embarrassing sequel in 2010. The best scene from the latter film offered one great visual joke: when Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas) is released from prison, he collects his personal effects, including his big brick cell phone. That’s how long he’d been in the joint. Paging through this novel, I feel not unlike Gecko on the day he picked up that phone and tried to call out on it. Videotapes? Walkmans? Answering machines?

  And yet, perhaps not surprisingly, the basics of human nature, the timeless desire of women over thirty to wed, and the odds that most people will never break into Hollywood haven’t changed one bit. VCRs may be a thing of the past, but competitive sisters, the fear of growing old alone, and taking pointless meetings in which nothing happens are right this minute.

  In terms of how I’ve grown as a writer … it’s possible I’ve shrunk. Especially when it comes to putting my butt in the chair until the allotted daily word count (1,000, then as now) has been squeezed out like the final nub of toothpaste from a cheapskate’s crumpled tube.

  I wrote the novel over the course of thirteen months, working from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. five days a week. My desk was an adjustable Art Deco drafting table with cast iron base that I’d inherited from my father, an industrial designer and engineer, and my favorite method of procrastination consisted of reading the style section in the morning paper. Sometimes I really went crazy and called a friend before I sat down to write. The leviathan distractions for those of us who make our livings sitting at desks of e-mail and the Internet were then glimmers in the farsighted eyes of a handful of brainy geeks.

  What I can speak to were my intentions in writing this book, which I do remember clearly. My first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here, had been purchased by Stacy Creamer at G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1988; a few weeks after she bought it, I asked her what I was supposed to do now.

  “Just write your next book,” she said. “That’s your job.”

  There was no expectation that I would spend the next year mounting a one-woman, four-figure publicity and marketing campaign, including but not limited to jazzy new website complete with giveaway contest and podcasts, tedious Facebook author’s page, completely irrelevant yet somehow absolutely necessary Twitter presence, Goodreads whatever.

  I was the writer, and my job was to write.

  It really was a simpler time. And a much better time to be a serious writer.

  So I set about writing a new novel, per Stacy’s instructions. All I knew was that I wanted it to be different from Trespassers, a collection of linked stories, each chapter told from the point of view of a different character. I’d stumbled upon the structure of that book by accident. I’d written the first story for a fiction writing class, and the instructor, Joyce Thompson, made an off-hand remark that she liked the characters in the story so much she could imagine each of them having their own story. After having spent the decade before writing screenplays (eight; rights still available) that were optioned once in a while but otherwise went nowhere, I was an expert at taking the off-hand notes of strangers. So when Joyce said each character could have their own story, I sat down and wrote them.

  I wanted The Diamond Lane to be a big novel stuffed with lots of characters and ideas, the opposite of Trespassers, which relied on brevity and voice. I was a big believer, and still am, in the power of emotional autobiography, which means not telling true tales, necessarily, but inventing stories that tap into true, powerful, and usually conflicting emotions. Those emotions – my emotions in this case – animate the characters and power the action.

  As I was writing my thousand words a day over those thirteen months, I often felt a little strapped, like I was trying to make the best meal I could out of only the ingredients I already had on hand. Into the giant pot of the plot went my love/hate relationship with my home town of L.A. (into which I indiscriminately tossed suburban Whittier, where I grew up); the incomparable joy I experienced learning to make movies in film school; the culture shock I experienced returning to L.A. from a trip to Africa in college; the enduring questions I had, and still have, about the institution of marriage; and the deep frustration I felt at trying (and failing) to make it in Hollywood. That it came out funny, as the reviews all noted, is a function of temperament, not of intent.

  Most poignant for me in rereading the book is revisiting the ceiling fan accident that befalls Shirl, the mother of Mouse and Mimi, the precipitating incident that sets the plot in motion. Like Shirl, my own mother had had brain surgery. Hers was not the result of a darkly comical accident but of a malignant brain tumor. The Diamond Lane includes the fantasy that my mother recovered from her surgery and went on to boss me around and annoy me into my thirties and beyond. Instead, she died. I was seventeen, and it was the loss of my life.

  The novel represents my first (admittedly immature) effort at putting characters on the page whose catastrophes come close to echoing those of our family’s. It would be many years before I could approach it again, and I still don’t think I’ve done justice to my mother’s life, sudden decline, and death.

  When The Diamond Lane published in May 1991, I remember being ecstatic and somewhat taken aback with the positive reception: the New York Times thought to give it a full page review, complete with short interview and author photo, and later named it one of their notable books of the year.

  That spring, fittingly, I was working on a movie, walking foley on Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, a gig I’d landed through my then-husband, who was the supervising sound editor. (Foley is a post-production chore, performed on a foley stage, where the walker “covers” every natural human sound – mostly footsteps – that appears in the film; the foley track is then used to either replace muffled sounds on the original recording or augment existing sounds.) I “was” Keanu Reeves, or at least his footsteps and squeaky leather jacket.

  During the production I got to know Laurie Parker, the film’s producer. She took an interest in the novel and eventually optioned it for a feature film. Predictably, there was a lot of enthusiasm, but nothing ever came of it.

  Perhaps the most amusing, gratifying part of having written The Diamond Lane, seeing it published, and now, decades later, reissued in this beautiful Hawthorne Books edition, is witnessing the degree to which it was far ahead of its time. The central conceit of the book, far-fetched and satirical in the early 1990s, foretold the future. As of 2014, there are dozens of “reality” wedding shows, among them TLC’s hit Say Yes to the Dress, in which an hour-long episode revolves around the drama of a woman shopping for her wedding dress. The show has enjoyed an eight-season run, and also spawned a gaggle of spin-offs (Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta; Say Yes to the Dress: Bridesmaids; Bridal School; Something Borrowed, Something New.) Every show focuses on the tempest in a teapot that is the modern first world wedding.

  You gotta laugh.

  KAREN KARBO

  Portland, 2014

  Love is an ocean of emotions, entirely surrounded by expenses.

  LORD DEWAR

  THE DIAMOND LANE

&nbs
p; 1.

  FREAK ACCIDENTS RAN IN THE FAMILY. WHAT ELSE WAS Mimi to think? First Fitzy, now Shirl. What happened to lingering diseases? What happened to people dying in their sleep at eighty-five? The world was as reliable as patio furniture in a hurricane. It was so awful it made her laugh. The day after it happened she called in sick. She was convinced if she went to work, on the twenty-first floor of a building on Sunset Boulevard, the FitzHenry luck would bring on an earthquake. Mimi and Mouse were ten and nine when their father, Fitzy, was run over by a dolly. Fitzy had been crossing the street at the bottom of a freeway ramp, on his way to get new keys made for the front door of Fitzy’s, his bar. A truck waiting to merge at the top of the ramp was towing the dolly, which was not properly hooked onto the trailer. The safety chain was taped together with hundred-mile-an-hour-tape, the silver duct tape that lazy truck drivers used to patch everything from wobbly rearview mirrors to broken radiator hoses.

  Fitzy stooped down to pick up an earring in the crosswalk. The truck jerked, snapping the tape. The dolly hurtled down the ramp. Fitzy leaped out of the way, only to trip and crack his head on the curb. He was thirty-four, dead on arrival.

  It was a Thursday. By the next Tuesday he was in the ground. They found the earring when they pried open his fist at the coroner’s office. It was an 18k gold clip-on knot. Seven different women called up to claim it when the description ran in the paper. Shirl, Mimi and Mouse’s mother, was comforted by the fact that at least he stooped for the genuine article, not gold-plated.

  Mimi recounted this to her fellow drudge, Alyssia, who was answering Solly’s line while Mimi tried to track down Mouse in Nairobi. Alyssia was a Yale graduate with curly brown hair, squinty eyes, and lips so full Mimi wondered if she’d gone in for silicone injections. Alyssia was only twenty. She made Mimi feel too old to be doing this job.

  Calling Africa was not cheap. Mimi vowed that after Mouse came home, if she came home – Mouse hadn’t come home for her wedding, why should she come home for this? – she would get Mouse to reimburse her. Her phone bill was already two months past due.

  Mimi tried the BBC office, then Mouse’s place in Nairobi. They had never heard of either Mouse FitzHenry or Frances FitzHenry at the BBC. Mimi was sure that was where Mouse worked. Who else made documentaries in Africa? At the house some African girl with a fluty voice answered the phone and told her to call Zaire. Zah-ear. She felt stupid. All this time she had thought the word rhymed with hair. Where in Zah-ear? Mimi asked. The girl on the other end of the line didn’t know.

  At the American Express office, in one of the two or three places in Zaire where they had American Express offices, Mimi left this message: Mouse FitzHenry, phone home. Zaire was apparently the type of place where you could leave messages like that. The lady Mimi talked to in Kisangani said, “I tell her you called,” as if the country was a house and Mouse was just out walking the dog. Wasn’t Zaire the size of India or something?

  Then, the next morning, a modern-day miracle: Mouse returned her call.

  But she called at the worst possible time, nine o’clock in the morning. Mimi placed calls to New York every morning at nine-thirty in hopes of reaching New York film people before they bolted out the door to “do” lunch.

  Her boss, Solly, needed New York. He needed Mimi to get New York for him. He hovered over her while she dialed. He chomped on a chocolate croissant fresh from Gourmet-on-Wheels. He dribbled crumbs. She did her best to ignore them.

  When Mimi heard the Gourmet-on-Wheels vendor rattling through the front door of the office, she locked herself in the bathroom and chewed sugarless gum so as not to be tempted.

  Mimi tried never to touch the stuff. Any eating she did, she did in private, as if she wouldn’t gain weight as long as there were no witnesses, And since she also enjoyed an active social life, she was thin. Thin enough, but not as thin as she could be. She was not anorexic, but would love to figure out how to be for about two weeks a month. She liked to wear bright-colored cotton-knit miniskirts, which showed off a concave abdomen stretching between the bony parentheses of her hips.

  Solly, on the other hand, was the Goodyear blimp incarnate. He kept his own appointment book, the better to schedule double-header breakfast meetings, triple-header lunch meetings, without anyone knowing it. But Mimi knew about it. All the drudges in the office knew about it. Solly weighed in at about two-eighty. Mimi saw it one day when she was sending off some life insurance forms.

  Sometimes, when Solly infuriated her, when he accused her of being stupid, negligent, unappreciative of the importance of talking to New York at nine-thirty in the morning, she went to the Xerox room and found another drudge who had in some way been driven over the edge. Behind his back they sang: “Fatman! Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, Fatman!” to the tune of the old Batman theme song.

  The flakes from Solly’s croissant trickled onto Mimi’s shoulders as she put in calls to ICM, CAA, CBS, NBC, and a couple of ritzy farmhouses in Connecticut where clients were holed up, working on screenplays.

  “Solly Stein calling for Jonathan Wild. He’s in a meeting? Could you leave word?”

  “Solly Stein calling for J. J. McIntosh. When is he expected back from lunch? Could you please leave word?”

  “Solly Stein calling for Hillary Madison-Edelman. Is she reachable in St. Bart’s? Fine. Just leave word.”

  In desperation, Solly chewed faster and faster. Mimi could hear his molars clacking together inside his mouth. He swallowed a lump of croissant the size of an egg. Glunk. “Get me Lore Director at Orion, no, no Marty, get me Marty Schepsi, no, Christ, Marty’s in Geneva, what time is it in Geneva? Did you send that thing out to what’s his name?” He wadded up the plastic wrap the croissant came in, then between tubby thumbs and fat forefingers frantically pinched it into a teeny ball. “What about Rocky Martini?”

  The phone rang. Mimi sighed. Saved!

  Solly had already deposited the tiny wadded-up Saran Wrap ball at her elbow and was poised in the doorway of his office.

  “Who is it?” he hissed, before the receiver had reached her ear. “Is it Wild? I need Wild.”

  Mimi felt the blood pounding in her throat. She waved him to shut up. Through the earpiece, the telephone equivalent of a snowstorm. Then, “ALLO! COLLECT PERSON-TO-PERSON FROM FRANCES FITHENRY!”

  Shit, she thought. It’s Mouse. Solly’s going to have my head. And collect? She has to call collect?

  “Who is it, for the love of Christ?”

  “It’s long distance.”

  Rubbing his fat dry hands together, Solly bounded into his office and hurled himself into his big black leather chair. The sound the chair made was the same as if it’d just been hit by a wrecking ball. Suddenly, he came on the line. “Mazel tov!”

  “Solly, it’s personal.”

  “Who is this?” he bellowed.

  “It’s Mimi, Solly. It’s a personal phone call. I’ve got to take it.”

  Then, from through the snowstorm, a third voice. Under the static the voice was thin and faint. “Mimi? crrrrrrrrr Mouse!”

  “Solly,” said Mimi, “get off the phone. It’s my sister in Nairobi.”

  “Crrrllo?” yelled Mouse. “Mimi?”

  “Mouse! It’s Mimi!”

  “Crrrrrrrrr Kissing Gani,” yelled Mouse.

  “Kissing who?” said Mimi.

  Solly banged the phone down in Mimi’s ear.

  “What’s going on?” said Mouse. Even through the snow she sounded uneasy and a little suspicious.

  “It’s Mom!” yelled Mimi. Hearing herself say “Mom,” the tears she’d been swallowing all morning filled her throat. “She has a, there’s been an accident. They’re doing surgery this morning, drilling some hole in her head.”

  “Crrrrrrrrr God,” said the other end of the line. “Middle crrrrrr crrrrrr marriage.”

  “You are?” Mimi yelled. “You must be thrilled. I remember how I felt when –”

  “– crrrrrrr now.”

  �
��I need Rocky Martini.” It was Solly. Mimi could smell his chocolate breath on her neck. He stood behind her, loudly fondling the change in his pockets.

  “Just a second,” Mimi said to Solly. Then into the snowstorm, “It’s a hematoma thing she’s got. It’s bad. They’re drilling a hole in her head. You got to come home!”

  “I need Miƚosz Benik,” said Solly, pouting. “I need Rocky Martini.”

  Mimi thought she heard Mouse say okay, then the hollow far-off roar of nothing. She hung up. She hadn’t talked to Mouse in over five years. And here was Shirl having, having, brain surgery. Mimi thought if she was older – she was thirty-six, practically an adult – it wouldn’t be so awful. Everyone has to go sometime. But death was the easy part. If you’re dead, you’re dead. It’s the in-between. It’s the decline part, the part between bouncing around rosy-checked healthy and some guy with cold hands dragging the sheet over your face. Not that she knew one whit about decline. But she worried she was about to find out.

  She worried that Shirl wouldn’t be able to do her crossword puzzles anymore. That her hands would shake so much she wouldn’t be able to do her découpage. Would her hair grow back? Would she have to wear a bad wig? Mimi gingerly wiped her eyes with her ring fingers, so as not to smear her mascara or tug the extra-sensitive skin under the eyes. She felt better, glad to know that even under the most excruciating circumstances she was not one to let her looks go.

  Solly glared. “If you’re done –”

  “My mom is dying, okay?” She wasn’t technically, but she was in intensive care. Mimi stood up so fast she knocked her steno chair over. She loathed that chair. It was a slave chair. The assistants to the agents at least had chairs with arms. The agents, of course, had massive leather-upholstered thrones. Whose butt was supposed to fit on her chair, anyway?