The
scent evoked memories of my father at the kitchen counter with a hammer
and a brown hairy thing.
"Coconut," Gina
said. "What smells like coconut?"
The guy who looked
like Humpty Dumpty overheard her. He snatched a potful of plant off
a table and rushed over. It was a mass of long skinny leaves erupting
from bulblike bases. Its flowers, maroon and yellow and about an inch
across, resembled old-fashioned airplane propellers with spotted tongues.
He stuck the thing
in Gina's face. "Maxillaria tenuifolia," he said.
"Very nice," she
said. "Would you please get it out of my nose?"
Humpty's forehead
creased as he considered his faux pas. He pulled the plant back, cradling
it against his substantial gut. "I only wanted you to enjoy the fullness
of its fragrance."
"Which she couldn't
do with leaves in her nostrils," said Sam Oliver.
We were at the
Palisades Orchid Society's spring social. Throughout the spacious house
overlooking Mulholland Drive, people darted from plant to plant, uttering
"oohs" and "ahs" as they alit on one orchid or another. There were plenty
for them to alight on. A pot or two on each table, a bunch on shelves
near the windows and sliding glass doors. In a corner at least a hundred
miniature plants grew under lights on an antique rack.
Why we were there
was Sam, the goateed elder statesman of the Culver City Cactus Club.
A friend of his was hosting the event and had insisted he come. Sam—who
wasn't particularly into orchids—had dragged me along. I, in turn,
had dragged Gina.
I took the plant
from Humpty. "Is this thing an orchid?"
His eyes flitted
from me to Gina to Sam and back to me again. Then, as plant people are
apt to do, he spewed. "It is indeed. Not being orchidists, you probably
think orchids all resemble the corsages teenagers wear to proms. But
there's an infinite variety. There are large orchids, small orchids,
white orchids, red orchids, orchids of every hue. Except black. There
are no black orchids. Not true black, anyway. Oh, some of your growers
say they've created a black orchid, but it isn't a true black, just
as there isn't a truly black rose." He took back the plant, brought
it to his nose, took a big whiff. "If you like scented plants you might
consider Oncidium Sharry Baby, with a chocolate fragrance. And
of course vanilla comes from an orchid, and—but I'm forgetting
my manners." He reached a pudgy hand over to me. "Albert Oberg."
"Our host," Sam
said.
I took the hand.
Albert surprised me with a solid grip. I'd expected a mackerel. "I'm
Joe Portugal," I said.
"Gina Vela," said
Gina.
Albert looked
to be around sixty, though I suspected his chubby face was hiding a
few years. His features were slightly too close together, accentuating
his resemblance to one of those stuffed pantyhose dolls. His head sprouted
an incongruous mushroom of luxurious blond hair. He was tall as well
as round, several inches more than my five-ten, and he had one of the
most impressive stomachs I'd ever seen. It wasn't like a beer belly,
suddenly erupting somewhere south of his nipples and hanging off him
like he was about due for a cesarean. Instead, it slowly rose just below
his shoulders, climbing smoothly to its full rotundity and tapering
off equally gracefully, eventually beveling into his stick legs. He
didn't seem to have any room for genitals, but with looks like his,
he probably didn't need them very often.
To his credit,
he wasn't one of those fat guys who wear size 34 pants by slinging them
below their guts. His belt threaded directly across his huge expanse
of stomach like a pipeline traversing the Alaskan wilderness. The pants
were wide-wale corduroys. A herringbone sport jacket over a pale yellow
dress shirt completed the picture.
"Well, Albert,"
I said. "I'm sure these are all fine orchids, and I'm sure there's a
lot of interesting things I could learn about them, but I'm more of
a succulent kind of guy."
"Succulents?" He
said the word like it was an expletive, like I'd told him I collected
Nazi war helmets or Charles Manson memorabilia. "Succulents?" He turned
to Sam, received a dirty look, came back to me. "What is it about those
spiny things that makes them so attractive to some people?"
"We've had this
conversation a million times," Sam said.
"So we have. Well.
Come along, Sam, I want to show you my new eulophia."
Sam turned to me.
"Coming?"
I shook my head.
"I've seen enough eulophias for a while."
The two of them
wandered off. "What's a eulophia?" Gina asked.
"I have no idea.
Come on, let's explore."
We walked into
the living room, where a group had gathered around a big flameless stone
fireplace. They had the look of plant people. Dressed subtly behind
the times, with conventional hairstyles and earnest expressions. One
pair stood out, a middle-aged woman standing behind an older one in
a wheelchair. Each had a moon-shaped face, watery gray eyes, and a British
accent.
Two guys were discussing
fertilizers. One said he liked 10-10-10, and the other told him that
was fine for growth but not for blooming, and the first said, "Oh, you
and your manure." Mr. Manure retorted by saying a lot of the winners
at the Santa Barbara show had been over-potashed.
I listened awhile,
nodding at appropriate places. When a woman wearing a muumuu decorated
with Day-Glo hibiscus began haranguing a man in a priest's collar about
tissue culture, I caught Gina's eye and we moved into the kitchen. There,
three or four people were dissecting the cancellation of Ellen.
Gina rolled her eyes and went outside to get a snack. I stood near the
sink, looking busy fixing myself a Coke. Someone invaded my space. "Hi,"
she said. "I think I know you."
She was blond,
average height, a few years older than my forty-five, with a look of
ethereal intensity. She wore a well-tailored lavender blouse and cream-colored
pants. She seemed vaguely familiar, but anyone will if you look at them
long enough.
"I'm Laura," she
said.
"Joe. Wait. I've
got it. The Altair. Boondale, right?"
"That's it." We
managed a half-assed hug. "How are you?"
Fifteen or so years
before, when I managed the Altair Theater, Laura Astaire—no relation
to Fred—had done two shows there. The first, about the decline
and fall of a West Virginia coal mining town, was called Last Train
to Boondale. It was one of the occasional plays I acted in, portraying
Laura's brother, a ne'er-do-well who ended up getting run over by the
eponymous train.
Laura followed
that with a fine turn in the title role in Lysistrata, one of
our rare dips into the classics. She'd been an excellent actress. It
was a pity that she was mired in the Equity-Waiver scene.
"I'm good," I said.
"And you? Still acting?"
"I am. Things have
never been better. I did the lead in an Unsolved Mysteries last
year."
I hadn't seen her
in fifteen years and the best she could come up with was an Unsolved
Mysteries? Things couldn't be that much better.
"And how is your
career going?" she asked.
"I'm not into acting
anymore."
"Then what do you
do?"
"I grow cacti and
succulents."
"For a living?
How unusual."
"For pleasure."
"Then what work
do you do?"
"I kind of make
a living doing commercials."
"I thought you
said you weren't into acting."
"You call commercials
acting?"
"Good point. What
does 'kind of make' mean?"
"It means if I
didn't live in my parents' house I would have to find real work, but
since I do, I don't."
"You live with
your parents?"
"No. My mom's dead.
My father lives in another house." I remembered one of the things I'd
most associated with Laura. "You still into est?"
Back at the Altair
I'd suffered a plague of actors who were into pop-psych crazes, of which
est was the worst. I couldn't go an hour without one of them buttonholing
me with talk of commitment and intention and keeping your word and the
great works of Werner Erhard, the movement's founder. One show we did,
five out of six actors were into the thing.
I didn't know if
est had survived into the late nineties. It seemed to have been replaced
by Scientology as the acting fraternity's pop-psych drug of choice.
Maybe poor Laura here was the last remnant, still spouting commitment
and intention, a sad reminder of something deservedly left in the past.
"No," she said,
to my considerable relief. "I stuck with it for several more years.
Then I somehow stopped being involved."
"I see. So are
you an orchid person now?"
"I'm becoming one.
Isn't it odd? For half a century I wasn't at all interested in plants,
and now suddenly I'm starting to know about cymbidiums and dendrobiums
and all those other -iums." She looked around. "Too noisy here. Let's
go outside."
We passed through
a den of sorts, filled with more orchids and featuring a big array of
framed diplomas on the wall, like you'd see in a doctor's office. An
open door led us out into the fabulous mid-April day. Up above, a cloudless
sky promised a fine growing season. A windstorm the night before had
blown away most of the smog, and I got a good view of the mountains,
with a smidgen of snow still on their peaks.
The place was landscaped
to the hilt. Mostly tropicals, not the kind of stuff a succulent guy
like me generally goes for, but I had to admit it was gorgeous. There
were mature palms and huge split-leaf philodendrons. An enormous clump
of giant bird of paradise lorded over one corner of the lot. At the
far end of the property, an impressive greenhouse sat reflecting the
midday sun.
We stopped in the
shade of a big king palm. Unseen speakers played classical music. Several
blooming orchids sat on a small wrought-iron table. One had a three-foot
stalk with scores of inch-wide yellow and red flowers. The inflorescences
on the others were much shorter, with roughly half a dozen blooms apiece.
Laura reached into
her purse, pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims, gracefully lit one.
"You really should think about acting again," she said. "Real acting.
Not just commercials."
"Oh?"
"No one ever really
stops being an actor."
"Is this going
to turn into some airy-fairy thing?"
"No. You were good.
I hate to see talent going to waste."
"I didn't have
that much talent. Not like you."
"Thanks. But I
just think you ought to consider—"
I smiled and shook
my head. "Just drop it, okay? I'm not going back to the stage."
She didn't say
any more, but I got the feeling I hadn't heard the end of the conversation.
She reached out and plucked an orchid off the table. The flowers were
three inches across, shaped sort of like moths, mostly white with some
dull red around their throats. There were only two leaves, straplike,
hugging the surface of the potting mix. Laura reached a finger out toward
one of the blossoms, stopped a fraction of an inch short. "One mustn't
touch the flowers," she said, in the tone of a child who's just learned
some important rule. "Our fingers have oils."
She carefully replaced
the pot. "He gave me a few seedlings and keikis. That's how I got started."
"Who did?"
"Albert. He's always
giving people plants. Hello."
Gina had magically
appeared at my side. I made the introductions. Then: "Maybe you two
met at the Altair. Gina worked there too."
"Actress?" Laura
said.
"Set design," Gina
said.
"Do you still do
that?"
"Not exactly. I'm
an interior designer."
"I see. So are
you two ..."
"We're just friends,"
I said.
Laura looked amused.
"Well," she said. "I suppose I ought to mingle some more. But I'd love
to get together, talk about old times. Let me give you my card." She
looked at her cigarette, which she hadn't puffed on since she lit it,
rubbed it out on the underside of the table, laid it down. She produced
a business card from her purse. Above a phone number with a Hollywood
prefix, it said, Laura Astaire, then, Actor. There weren't
any actresses anymore, it seemed. The Screen Actors Guild had awards
for best performance by a male actor, and best by a female actor. Not
that I'd ever be up for any of them, but by virtue of my commercial
work I got to vote on them.
Laura handed over
the card. She waited for me to produce one of my own.
"I don't have one,"
I said.
"My, my. You really
are out of the game." Out of her purse came a pen and tiny leatherbound
pad. "Tell me your number."
I did. She wrote
it down, snapped the pad closed, made it disappear. Suddenly her arms
were around me. The est people were into hugging. This was a typical
est hug, where you stick your butt out in the air so there's no possibility
of any midbody contact. "Good to see you again, Joe. I'll give you a
call. We'll talk about acting." She looked at Gina, who seemed horrified
at the prospect of being hugged, picked up the dead cigarette, and walked
back toward the house.
"You want her,"
Gina said.
"I don't think
so. A little too brittle for me." I looked her in the eye. "Do you?"
"Probably not.
Anyway, I'm being faithful to Jill."
Something put my
radar up. "Trouble in paradise?"
She shook her head
a mite too quickly. "No. Everything's great. Come on, let's go get some
ribs."
We moved on to
the food area and filled our plates. Albert had brought in mass quantities
of barbecued ribs and chicken. The rest was potluck. We found a couple
of relatively isolated lawn chairs, but in a few minutes we were surrounded
by the orchid people. They did their best to draw us into conversation.
We did our best to stick to our own. We didn't do badly, except for
a woman who told us more than we'd ever care to know about pleurothallids,
whatever they were.
