The April morning in Studio City was warm, promising an afternoon in the mid-80s. Sally and I were killing time at a sidewalk table of the Coffee Bean on Ventura Boulevard. The majority of the clientele were single Gen-Xers doing what Gen-Xers do in the Starbucks, Peets, and lesser-known coffee houses that proliferate on the thoroughfares of California. There was a lot of chit-chat between tables. One not especially attractive girl was getting a great deal of attention since the puppy she had on a leash was irresistibly cute and cuddly and every new arrival came to pay some attention to it and question the dog's mistress about age and breed.
Though old enough to have parented most of the clientele and garbed more conservatively, we were tolerated as we threaded through tables, carrying lidded grande coffees with those little brown heat shields that slide up the paper cups, to find our niche in the shade. Sally had her monumental best-seller biography of Alexander Hamilton in her shoulder bag and I was equipped with the LA Times Sunday magazine crossword to be mastered using the ball point pen lodged between ear and scalp. Both reading material and puzzle were methods of disguising the fact that we were tuning in on the conversations and mating games of the habitus, most of whom were in small same-sex groups looking to chat with their gender opposites. It's healthier than what I went through in singles bars as a bachelor, I thought, recalling all the lame conversational gambits I had tried out on women who caught my interest. The Irish coffees I swilled at the Buena Vista in San Francisco back then were cheap! er than the nonalcoholic brews of today's coffee houses, but I shudder to think of what the whipped cream and sugar were doing to my body - not to mention the Bushmill's or Jameson's.
I pretended intense concentration, gazing above my crossword with a thousand-yard stare, but actually ogling the display of mammalian cleavage, studded navels, tattooed shoulders, arms, and lumbar spines exposed by low-riding pants and shirt tops that provided minimum coverage.
Sally nudged me with her foot under the table as I was inking in twelve down on my puzzle. The opening word of the Aeneid four letters beginning and ending with "a."
"Don't be obvious about it," she said, "but look to your right at the woman in white standing under the big clock between this place and the dress shop next door." I did as I was asked, disguising the move by stretching and appearing to unkink a stiff spine, and turned back.
"Attractive, fairly trim older woman - maybe mid-50s - just kind of standing there as though she's waiting for someone," I said.
"You'd make a lousy detective and a worse spy," Sally said after sipping her latte. "Did you see what she had in her right hand?" I stole another peek.
"A single, long-stemmed rose" I said. "Not a bud like those you can buy individually, but a mature, well-opened blossom, sort of like the woman herself," I added, trying to re-establish my inherent sensitivity to symbolism.
"Well, let me tell you what I think is going on and why she's just standing their holding a flower and watching the sidewalk and the traffic. When I first looked at her I thought she was a manikin of the dress shop, she was standing so still. But then she looked down and spun the rose in her fingers. Her pretty white hair looks like it's been done recently. Her white pants and long-sleeved blouse are beautifully cut and definitely did not come from Mervyn's. Her fingernails and toenails that you can see in those darling sandals are done in the same color as that rose. That silky print scarf around her neck is the only color she's wearing other than white, except for the gold bracelets on her right wrist along with the tennis bracelet. I'd like to own a white leather purse like the one hanging from her shoulder. Ten to one this is an eHarmony or match.com situation. She's divorced or widowed. She has money probably lives in the Hollywood hills behind us. Mulholland D! rive or someplace. She's filled out some long questionnaire on her computer and they've come up with a guy from their data base she's going to meet, have coffee with and maybe date. She's let the guy know by phone or email that she'll wait for him around noon under the big clock near the Coffee Bean wearing white and holding a single rose.
"You got all that out of her standing there with a flower in her mitt?"
"Actually, the flower thing is becoming a cliche," Sally said. "'I'll meet you at noon under the clock and I'll wear a lily in my navel.' Not very original."
"What's with you and all this computer dating, Men Seeking Women columns, and internet chat room stuff? Is there something I should know?" I asked.
"Wait! I'm not finished. She's wearing long sleeves on an 80-degree day because she's getting up there and doesn't like the look of her bare arms. Same goes for her neck and that scarf. I didn't see it before because of the scarf, but she's got an omega necklace just like mine and it looks like an opal pendant that picks up the scarf's colors. I wish her date would come so I can get a look at him, see if the computer knows what it's doing."
"He'll probably be a fat guy with a lot of tattoos wearing bib overalls, no shirt, and an Oakland Raiders cap -backwards," I suggested, draining the last of my coffee. "Or more likely some guy has come along the street, checked her out, said 'No way! Too old and too prissy. Didn't I say on that form I filled out that I liked big tits?'''
"Oh you! Let's give it five more minutes and see what happens."
I began to consider the possibilities and ironies of Sally's scenario. The setting's perfect. Studio City- film and entertainment capital. Our woman is having a screen test, tryout, audition. Whatever you want to call it. Ventura Boulevard. Is that an abbreviation of "buenaventura," or "good fortune"? Will it be the woman's lucky day? But "ventura" also imparts the idea of risk, and danger. Think of venture capital. You win some and you lose some.
Less than five minutes later Sally reported that the woman had frowned at the clock and begun descending the steps to the sidewalk. We also left the Coffee Bean, walking several paces behind her. She took a tissue from her purse and blew her nose or wiped her cheek and eyes. We couldn't tell which. As she reached the corner, she threw her wilting rose into a rubbish container. She pulled out her car keys and clicked the door locks on a late model BMW convertible. Before getting behind the wheel, she snatched something angrily from under the windshield wiper blade. Her expression convinced us that it was a parking ticket and not a piece of advertising. She started her engine as the traffic light changed to green and sped off.
That's somehow fitting," I mumbled.
"What are you talking about?" Sally asked.
I pointed at the street down which the Beemer was rapidly receding. "She just turned off Ventura onto Coldwater Canyon."