Chapter 5.

In the clear light of hindsight, I can see that we had begun to simply avoid certain sides of our lives. We became reluctant to explore the enormous chasm of difference that existed in our two philosophies of life. I didn't believe that I had to be my fellow creatures' caretaker, while Karoline had a drive to help others and make their lives better. All that Karoline's philanthropic urge did was cause her guilt, as far as I could see, since she never really acted upon her desires other than giving a large percentage of her salary to charity. Which she promptly used for tax deductions.

When I look back now, I wonder if Giulio and I were her 'hard luck cases'. Perhaps she felt she was already dedicating her life to good. Without the burden of these two absurd friends, Karoline might have been a crusader, a nun or a leader in the war on poverty. A politician perhaps.

Sexuality was only one of the topics we began to avoid discussing intimately or privately. The topic still figured in debates with others, along with charity, politics and religion, but there ceased to be any sharing between the two of us. Those discussions would have come too close to placing our fractured relationship under a formidable microscope.

Since Karoline's death, I have polished the table to a sheen that resembles very old wood, even though the table is one that she and I bought new. It was the single most expensive piece of furniture either of us had ever purchased. At first it was a source of pride and excitement. This was where we ate either alone, together or with our friends. This was the focal point around which our heated debates took place. This was the displayer of our most prized souvenirs. This was the center of our life.

Karoline religiously kept it clean and polished. She dictated its care, as she did with the Turkish carpets and the other artifacts we brought home from our minstrel wanderings. Her obsession with keeping the souvenirs clean and polished was a good thing, I'd thought. I for one immediately abandoned them and would have sent them off to a closet, alone and neglected. Under Karoline's rigorous attention, the mementoes still looked new and I was appreciative. I could look at them and remember each step, each breathtaking view, every moment that we stood shoulder to shoulder gazing over a place or a building or a world wonder that I'd only read about in books.

Over the years I began to believe that those journeys were like the men in my life. I loved visiting them for the first time, feeling the newness of their surface, getting to know a little bit about how they came to be, intrigued by their mystery and mystique. Soon after that initial visit I would get bored, anxious to get on to the next world wonder. Already thinking about future possibilities and places to see even as I stood in their midst. Unlike the towers and ruins and statues, which appeared unmoved by my indifference, the men would often cry, beg or storm away angrily. Perhaps to them I too was an unfeeling relic. All of that changed with Karoline's murder and the advent of Ethan.

The day after Karoline died, Halina and my parents arrived unannounced on our doorstep. Still in my silk nightgown, my hair was frizzier than ever. My eyes red from lack of sleep. All I remember was the suffocation. The hugs, the housecoat thrown around me. The coffee pressed into my hand. The endless questions, the tears.

My mother is an enormous woman. Folded under her belly and boobs are layers of jiggling fat that swim underneath the sundresses she favors. Always colorful with prints, flowers or joyful patterns, she wears them in winter or summer. Her long hair-once dark black and now striped with grey-is usually tied in a bun at the back of her head. Her eyes are a startling combination of light and dark brown flecks. Wide and guileless, they give her face a beauty that distracts nearly everyone from her size.

Vera Williams fills up a room in more ways than one. Gregarious, loving and loud, she is the stereotype of a black mama. She loves to cook, entertain and wallow in other people's dramas. She is fond of retelling the story of her roots, the American slaves who came into Canada and married Indians. Vera, she would have us believe, was a Mohawk-African Princess. She treats me as though I were a trophy, sculpted to honor the roots of both royalties. I, in my hidden and secret self, am utterly ashamed of her flamboyant, in-your-face personality. She smothers me with adoration. Yet I am aware of a distance that keeps me from believing in her love as genuine.

Halina is the polar opposite to my mother. Tall, slim, polished, Halina is completely self-absorbed and couldn't stand her daughter for turning out to be short, homely and stocky like her father. Gordon Mikulski died very young, when their only girl was just a baby. Probably to get away from Halina.

Neither Karoline nor I really talked about it, as per usual, but we both acknowledged somewhere deep inside us that we didn't have normal mother-daughter relationships. When our two mothers were in the same room, no one else could speak. Their words flowed over one another like ocean waves, now and then smashing up against each other in a roaring crescendo. In their life and in their conversation, everything was about them, from their point of view. They allowed no intrusion from others.

My mother isn't actually self-absorbed. She is merely consumed with my father. She didn't really have anything left for me or my sister except her native traditions, which she dishes out to everyone in general. Thus I, like Karoline, never felt special or unconditionally loved. We were both pretty much ignored.

My father is tall, slim and extremely good-looking. I never could understand his obsession with Vera, but he lives that old adage, there is no accounting for taste. When he is near her, he cannot keep his hands off her. They always hug, kiss or touch in some way. Originally my bedroom was next to theirs, until I grew older and figured out what the nightly bumps, moans and thrashes meant. I convinced my father to make me a room in the attic and slept far more soundly after that.

My sister Elizabeth is very similar to our mother, though she would probably not approve of that statement. She's more like our dad physically but she has the same exuberant personality as our mother. She's the consummate hostess. A store greeter. A woman whose phony sweetness feels like cardboard dripping with syrup.

The dichotomy of our half-and-half appearance doesn't bother her. Ten years older than I, Elizabeth is much lighter skinned. When our parents moved to the U.S., Elizabeth was old enough to choose, so she stayed behind. Later she married a black man and had three children who nearly cover the whole spectrum of skin colors. She appears to be comfortable in both worlds. Perhaps that's the Canadian way. Certainly my mother proclaims that her birth country is as perfect as her first daughter.

With my swarthiness I am often, ironically, mistaken for Italian. By the time I moved with Karoline and Giulio to Los Angeles, I'd gotten over my shame and confusion about my own heritage. I learned to simply ignore it.

All these years later, I can see what lured my father to move from our small Canadian enclave to the United States, even notwithstanding the financial considerations. The place we landed in was fairy-tale perfect, at least from the outside.

Bell Canyon is ringed by hills dotted with lush native plants and rounded boulders. Huge sycamore and oak trees cover the area. Their enormous limbs straddle the roadways and hillsides like giant muscular legs.

Bell Creek, a lovely, peaceful blue stream, winds its way through the community. It's known as a 'horse community'. Most of the homes are enormous. A lot of them include stables and paddocks for the horses.

Originally our house belonged to my grandparents. They bequeathed it to their only son with the stipulation that he live in it. Ten years after their death he would be allowed to sell, but that time frame has come and gone and my mother and father are still in the Canyon. From their house my parents have a breath-taking view into the valley. The place isn't one of the larger residences, nor a part of the gated upper class, but it is huge in comparison to our home in Canada. So spectacular are the sunrises and sunsets that they are causes for celebration each and every day.

When Karoline, Giulio and I trekked through the Canyon Trail, we encountered deer, hawks, squirrels, foxes, woodpeckers and quail. We'd often spied coyotes from afar, but we'd been taught not to investigate. The area is a stunning combination of modern sophistication and country wild.

The Mikulskis did live in one of the more ostentatious houses. A white southern-style mansion with a wide porch that stretched all the way around the front and side, the place sported big, airy rooms with tons of windows. The hardwood was always shiny. A wooden staircase, the same deep brown color as the tree in front, wound its way from the entry to the landing and then up to the floor with all the bedrooms.

It was a romantic and mysterious house to little girls. Outside Karoline's window the slanted roofline of the porch led to one of the fat white columns gracing the outside. When Karoline first talked me into sliding down it in the middle of the night, I felt I'd desecrated something holy.

Behind the house an old barn that contained empty horse stalls served as a storage and tool shed. It had one magnificent secret. A closed-in loft became our clubhouse. Even Karoline's two older brothers never discovered the hidden door to our hideout.

Despite its stuffy heat and cobwebs, Giulio and Karoline and I spent hours in that attic. We read, played games, made up jokes and tried cigarettes. The sweat poured down our faces in summer. We shivered inside our jackets in winter. We told stories of the places we would go and the things we would do.

Once, we went through a spurt of shoplifting, snatching whatever was at hand when the storekeeper's back was turned. We hoarded our stolen wares in the leftover hay inside our loft. We blatantly styled ourselves as The Young Thieves Association, or the YTA, but we were neither brave enough to enjoy our plunder nor smart enough to steal something useful in the first place.

For a very long time I thought that the Mikulskis were rich and that Halina was cool compared to my mother. I thought of Vera's tight curls, her plain brown face, her stubby fingers and wide girth and I decided Halina was a movie star. She paid a great deal of attention to me, too, which naturally added to my childish worship. She always gave me tips on how to wear my hair, the kind of lipstick and make-up I could use once I was old enough and whether or not a blouse looked good on me. With enormous effort I learned enough Polish to please her.

Halina played our music. She even smoked, painted her nails and wore bright red lipstick. She drank something that made her breath smell sharp. Her accent was exotic. In her kitchen we danced and sang to Elvis, the Beatles and every other popular fifties and sixties band. Karoline and her mother were happy together while we wiggled our butts and hollered the lyrics. As the attention Halina lavished on me splashed over onto Karoline during our frenzied dancing, my friend floated. Later our own apartment sang with the same joy, often fueled by the same alcohol stimulus, even the same tunes.

I never could understand why Karoline completely ignored her mother at any other time. It only occurred to me later on that it was actually the other way around.

Karoline's brothers were big hulking shadows who grunted and ate their meals sloppily and speedily. They didn't go to school once they turned sixteen but joined their father in whatever mysterious work he did. When they were in the kitchen, however, they invariably picked Halina up in their huge arms and swung her around. She would giggle and flush the same way I did whenever a boy I liked said hi.

I didn't remember Karoline's brothers ever paying attention to me or to their sister. Halina was the center of their world. When they grew up they married women who looked exactly like her. In fact, the wives were younger duplicates of Halina in personality as well. To focus and keep the attention on themselves they moved their husbands hundreds of miles away from their mother-in-law.

Much later I discovered that the house was rented and that the money source was Halina's mother. Unfortunately, Karoline's Boosha was a traditionalist. In her will she gave all of her estate to her sons, creating a rift between Halina and her brothers that, as far as I know, never went away.

Imagine how angry Halina would be if she knew that Karoline had received a significant sum from Boosha just before the old woman died. An amount that paid off the mortgage on the apartment.

Bell Canyon, the town where we grew up, prided itself in being far enough from L.A. to be considered innocent yet close enough to be sophisticated. The population was largely upper class. Many made their livings in the city, especially in the film industry, but absconded to the boonies to have their children or hide from their fans. As a result, there were a great many families who, during the week, were husband-and-fatherless, and some wife-and-motherless, because they worked in Smog City while the rest of the family stayed at home.

My father, Ian Williams, was born in the States, but he'd been brought to Canada so young he didn't remember Bell Canyon. Like Elizabeth, he'd been old enough to choose not to leave when Granny and Gramps moved back to the U.S.

I met my paternal grandparents exactly four times that I can remember. Suddenly they were both dead of cancer a few months apart and our lives were irrevocably changed.

Dad, the only child, inherited his parents' house and a monthly stipend from their investments that could keep our family in an elevated status. In Canada my father was a teacher and my mother was a nurse. Neither profession was well paid in the United States.

When we were transplanted to the U.S. to take advantage of the inheritance, my mother and I were, in the beginning, very unhappy. My mother was unable to work as a nurse. My father, with his dual citizenship, landed a plum job in L.A. teaching at a college, so he was gone all week like many of the others. And we missed Elizabeth's calm presence.

At nineteen she was already grown up in her mind-and mine-and engaged to her high school sweetheart. Both my mother and I grieved for her every day until Karoline became a fixture in our household.

Suddenly Mom and I replaced Elizabeth as easily as changing our clothes. My sister was such an independent, self-confident creature, whereas Karoline was warm and lively and fiercely connected. She nosed around our house like a pet, doing a loyal bulldog impression with her beady eyes and protruding teeth. She had an interest in the minutia of daily living that was contagious. Karoline was confident in her intelligence, in her ability to know or discover the answer to every question.

In our youth and up to the incidents over this past year, I worshipped Karoline. I thought of her as the smartest person on the planet. When our relationship disintegrated I realized that I had never told her how much I admired her. Now I never can.

By the time Halina and my parents arrived, Karoline's mother had the funeral already planned. The casket chosen. The cemetery in Bell Canyon would provide the space for my friend's new residence. Halina must know how much her daughter would have hated living forever back in that boring little town.

Halina put Karoline away in shame and horror. Shame that she had committed this selfish act of suicide. Horror at the idea of jumping from a balcony. So ignominious. Thoroughly thoughtless. At least she could have taken pills. A far less messy result, easier to explain to the neighbors. Or Karoline could simply have gone home and buried herself under Halina's grasp. At last the ugly little duckling had done something worthy of Halina's attention, even if it continued a misperception of Karoline and me.

Of the funeral and the reading of the will and the burial, I remember very little. I allowed my parents and Halina to haul me around that week. Back in Bell Canyon, the pillow in my old room afforded me no rest.

People stared. Their mouths flapped. Everybody's talkin' at me, I can't hear a word they're sayin'. They touched me with ice-cold fingers, patted my hand, my shoulder. I wanted to scratch out their eyes, their ugly piggy eyes. The rage inside me pounded against my skull, hammered in my chest.

I lowered my own eyes so the people would think I'd been crying. I didn't want them to see the hatred and fury that would surely turn them to ashes on the spot. Karoline would detest this ceremony. She would roll around in that grave for centuries to come, writhing with contempt. Here she was, back in the Canyon, the little white bread community from which we had escaped. All the people whom she had scorned now looked down at her both literally and figuratively. A disgraced suicide. My sin and her humiliation.

Dear Diary, She often reminds me of a puppy dog. Curled up at your feet at night, completely oblivious, licking your hand for attention, jumping and rolling over when you tell her to. Attached to her master for no real reason other than animal comfort. If someone came by who offered her a better treat, she'd be off like a shot.

Chapter 6.

The old adage that time heals all wounds didn't work for me. My odd behaviors began to betray me as the weeks went by. It was as though my wound became infected, filling my whole being with pus, clogging my thought processes.

Karoline and I co-owned a sporty little red convertible whose roof we rarely saw. The air going past was thick, noisy and smelled of fuel, but we didn't care. As long as it was warm and a bit of sun shone through the smog, we had the top down. Scarves tied jauntily around our heads like 1940's movie stars.

For the first couple of weeks after the funeral I drove to work as though everything was still the same. I imagined Karoline beside me, chatting, sharing breakfast sandwiches and coffee.

"Did you see this article about the murder in that movie theatre? Gruesome or what?" she might say, peering over the newspaper at me.

Her nose was far too turned up, so you could see right up her nostrils when she lifted her chin this way.

"What do you think about that smarmy old councilor? Do you think he's really guilty of fraud?" or "I hate these bloody ads. Look at that. Advertising sanitary pads. Is nothing sacred?"

Her opinions were always sarcastic, always designed to get a reaction. More often than not, Giulio and I responded to her comments with a smile, a giggle or a shrug, but sometimes we'd get into a merry old discussion.

I adored being with Karoline at the end of work because I was always the one doing the talking. Almost every day I would be asking her opinion, getting her advice, telling her about my clients, nattering on and on. Mornings, Karoline was the passenger. Evenings were my time while she drove.

Before Italy Giulio was there, too. He'd always sit quietly in the back seat. Looking up now and then from his reading, he'd smile indulgently at our babble or join in with a pithy comment or two. Those were the days when we shared everything. Or at least, I did.

Until Karoline was gone I had forgotten how blatantly the commuters paid attention to me. When I stopped at a red light or crawled along in insect trails of traffic, someone was bound to look over and whistle. Or ask me out. Or ask me who I was. Stopping dead still was like being under a spotlight. It was Karoline who had shielded me from their intrusiveness. She'd give them her famous stare, which froze people in their tracks, as Giulio always said.

I remember someone referring to Karoline's eyes as beady, her look witchlike. I thought her eyes, small and framed by bushy brows, mirrored intelligence and an I-don't-care-what-you-think-of-me attitude. Her hair was plain, her dress commonplace, her demeanor unassuming. No one stared at her. I admired the fact that she wasn't noticed, and respected that she didn't care. I was so imperceptive.

The staring eyes on the freeway were piranhas piercing my armor. I was at their mercy without Karoline.

I didn't really think I was speaking aloud to Karoline-not-there. At first I was convinced my fellow commuters were reading my mind. They stared at me even more ferociously as I gabbed away inside the convertible. There wasn't anyone else but Karoline to whom I could voice my complaints or my opinions or tell about my day, so I deliberately imagined she was still there listening raptly. I decided I needed to confide in my friend as though she could hear me. I needed her to tell me what to do as she always had. What could be the harm?

Once I began to talk to Karoline again I suppose I paid less attention to the road. Particularly in the evenings when it was her turn to drive. Sometimes I pretended it was three years ago and the oddballs were still an indestructible trio. The Polack, the Half and Half and the Eye-Tie lived and worked in the most fascinating city in the world, traveling every day to our amazing, challenging, well-paid jobs. We had left Shirley O'Connor and our small-minded hometown far behind. We had prospects. We knew lots of important people. Most of all, we had each other.

Until the incident when I ran the car up onto an embankment, I hadn't realized how preoccupied I was with our conversation. On that day I realized abruptly that I had stepped over the edge, the one that takes you from the shore of daydream to the sea of nightmare without noticing that you're wet.

I also hadn't realized how utterly, completely and definitively I had eventually shut out every single other person in my life. For all my years in school I'd been part of a trio. When we graduated we acquired jobs close to one another. Giulio lived two blocks away. Karoline was my roommate. They were my friends, my confidants, my travel companions. More often than not they were my dates on a Saturday night. I didn't need anyone else. I was safe from the terror of establishing relationships, looking for love, finding the right man.

Only the drive for a sexual encounter ever led me to go out with men. As Karoline and I regularly discussed, those liaisons often caused tears over the agony of unrequited devotion. Or they resulted in obsession and stalking. And not from my side. There were ways, Karoline said, to satisfy my sexual urges by myself. Over the years I slowly began to refrain from dating. We made a pact with Giulio to father our children should we ever want them but Karoline and I came into our thirties with no ticking clocks. We were too busy with careers, travel, shows, openings, parties and dinners.

Then Parris Jeffrey, followed by Glenn Simpson, entered our lives.

Dear Diary, Everything was so perfect. We didn't need anyone else in our lives. Then those two started to fuck up big time. I've been patient a long while and I don't see how I can put up with it much longer. Am I the only one with brains?

Chapter 7.

Parris is a tall, lanky girl with long red hair and luminous blue eyes, two years younger than I. Not quite beautiful with her beefy thighs and knobby hands and freckles smeared all over her cheeks, she is nevertheless the kind of woman to whom attention is paid. Men follow her hearty laugh down a street or a hallway and watch the sway of her hips. She has thick lips that she paints bright red and she uses her long black eyelashes without compunction. She looks and sounds lusty. Parris can tell an off color joke, curse or fart in public and get away with it. She makes everyone laugh and brings everyone into her circle.

Parris worked for me at Grace Productions. These days she has my desk.

At the time, I was thrilled to acquire an assistant. We had a huge number of projects on the go and I found tracking all of them exhausting. Joseph Grayson, one of my employers, approved hiring someone to groom and mentor as well as assist. Grace Productions was expanding. There was even talk of a branch in New York City. For our business, the 80's recession passed right over and flung us toward the future without a blip. Thus I had no thoughts or concerns about competition from a new hire. I sat in on the interviews. Parris was our number one choice.

She immediately proved that we had been correct in our assessment. Smart, funny and personable, she handled the clients like a pro. She asked questions, watched carefully and requested help or advice when she needed it. Parris was a dream. Before I knew it, we were having lunch together or going out for coffee at breaks. She told me her thoughts, ambitions, about her family and her love life. In time I told her some of my secrets, too.

Very slowly it dawned on me that Parris wasn't simply a colleague. She was a friend. It also occurred to me that she listened to and shared far more of my thoughts and opinions than Karoline did. Where my lifelong friend and I were drifting apart, this interesting, younger female was edging closer. It was like a husband and wife who'd become estranged.

Karoline noticed, too. "So you had lunch with your assistant again today?" she asked on our homeward commute, peering at me sideways as she slowed for traffic.

"I did," I replied happily because I had no inkling that I should not. "Remember I told you about that project, The Silver Fox?"

"The screenwriter who's a prick and the story that sucks but somehow Joseph loves?"

"The very one. Parris and I have been putting together a plan for handling him. The screenwriter that is. I think it just might work."

"She sounds rather manipulative."

I looked up in surprise at the criticism, but Karoline's eyes were on the car in front of us.

"I don't think so," I said, making it a definitive statement with my tone. "Diplomatic maybe. I know we have to be somewhat controlling, I guess, but only for the sake of the film. We simply have to get it up and running, even if we have to do end-runs on the writers."

"We? Isn't she just your assistant?"

I was silenced at the strength of dislike in Karoline's voice.

"I like her," I said finally.

Karoline gave me her beady stare.

The following week I decided I should introduce Parris to Karoline. Maybe they would hit it off. I knew there was an underlying aversion to my assistant from my best friend's corner, but once they met in person I was certain Karoline's reservations would disappear.

She was just looking after my interests, I knew. She probably thought Parris was overly ambitious, trying to move in on my position. I had to prove to Karoline that such was not the case. Parris is lively, bright and down-to-earth. Surely no one could dislike her for long. Maybe she'd be our new third.

At the last minute, as we were setting up for a dinner party with the usual suspects, I told Karoline that Parris was coming, too.

"Joseph and Vicki are going to bring her with them," I said. "She lives near their building."

Karoline continued folding the napkins. She loved real cloth napkins. We had collected a dozen or so from different countries, so the table was always colorful and eclectic.

"Okay. Seven napkins then. Seven plates. Seven dwarves."

"You'll like her, Karoline. She's really not trying to replace me at work, you know. In fact the place is expanding so much that we'll probably have lots of room for Exec Assistants. Vicki will soon need one of her own, instead of splitting me with..."

Karoline laughed. "Sweetie, I never thought she was going to try and take your place."