Flat Spin

Mrs. Schmulowitz insisted first on serving us breakfast at her kitchen table in honor of my “sister’s” visit. There were scrambled eggs cooked with onion and smoked salmon, and bagels from the only bakery in Rancho Bonita that made them fresh daily. I tried to explain that Sava

“I’m telling you, it’s the water,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, a small glob of cream cheese clinging to the corner of her mouth. “People make jokes about New York water. Go ahead. Laugh. But they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. The United Nations took a vote. New York water is the best — the BEST, period. End of story. You can look it up but why bother? I’m telling you!”

Sava

“Could be your mother knew the milkman,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said with a wink. “It’s very possible she didn’t have enough money to pay the bill for the milk. Maybe the milkman gave her a little break if you know what I mean and I think you do. Hey, I give you some milk, you give me some ‘sugar.’ I’m not saying it occurred, yes or no, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Sava

“I myself enjoyed such an arrangement during my second marriage,” Mrs. Schmulowitz confided, cutting her off. “He should’ve been a movie star, this milkman. Talk about biceps. Carrying all those milk bottles up and down all the stairs all day? We took one look at each other and all of our clothes suddenly disappeared. It was off the charts. Sometimes, these things happen. What can I say?”

Sava

“Hello?… Who?… Arnie! Hello, my love, one minute.” Her eyes lit up and she cupped her hand over the phone. “It’s my son, the doctor — well, he’s not really a doctor doctor. Not the kind that does hysterectomies. He’s a teacher, a professor of history. The greatest. Will you excuse me, dears?”

“Of course,” Sava

“Arnie,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said into the phone. “How are you, doll? Is everything OK?”

I cleared the table and Sava

They were still chatting and laughing by the time we left.

FOURTEEN

“I always wanted kids,” Sava

“You never said anything about wanting kids when we were together.”

“You just weren’t listening, Logan. Six years, I never heard you say a word about wanting a family.”

I checked my side view mirror again. Nobody on our tail. We were on the 101, heading toward Los Angeles, the Pacific to our right. Sava

“Arlo didn’t want more kids,” she said. “He said one was enough for him.”

The thought of Sava

“You should be grateful you didn’t have a kid with that guy,” I said. “He was an abysmal failure at fatherhood.”

“And I suppose you wouldn’t have been?”

The blood was pulsing in my neck. “What makes you think you’d make such a great mother? All you cared about was your career. Now that the phone’s no longer ringing off the hook, you think it might be fun to go shopping at Gymboree and learn all about potty training? Gimme a break.”

Sava

“I didn’t mean that,” I said.

“Yes, you did. Every word.”

A stylist needs 1,600 hours of formal training before he or she can legally trim a single head of hair in the state of California, but you don’t need five minutes of instruction to bring another human being into the world. Nobody knows whether they’ll be worth anything as a parent until they’re already on the job, and by then, it’s usually too late. I thought about sharing my observations with Sava

The intimate West Hollywood lounge I remembered as the Wet Spot was no more. It was now a discothèque called Propaganda. Gone were the leather banquettes and piano bar, replaced by a throbbing dance club done up all in red, with mirror disco balls hanging from the ceiling, and Bolshevik-chic posters of Lenin on the walls. The cocktail waitresses wore glossy jackboots and red leather, form-fitting Commie uniforms that showed plenty of thigh. The only element that apparently hadn’t changed, aside from the name over the door, was the clientele. There was still plenty of chest hair and Eurotrash. Techno tunes pounded from the speakers, loud enough that I could feel the bass throbbing in the pit of my throat. Propaganda was mobbed. It wasn’t even happy hour.

“They make a mean apple martini here,” Sava

“You’ve been here?”

“Once or twice.” She headed off toward the bar, through throngs of gyrating dancers.

A bouncer dressed like a Soviet infantryman stood guard near the door. I walked over and asked if Ge

“You want to see Mr. Bondarenko?”

I nodded. His accent was working-class British. A Sig Sauer pistol rode his right hip in a pancake holster.

“And what, if I may ask, is the purpose of your visit?”

“I’m from Publisher’s Clearing House,” I yelled into his ear. “I’m here to give Mr. Bondarenko his million dollar grand prize. I left the balloons in the van.”

The bouncer leaned his head back and laughed. He had no fillings. He asked me to turn around with my hands on the wall, and gave me a quick pat down. I’d left my revolver in Sava

“Who shall I say is here to see him?”

“Tell him a friend of Laz.”

The bouncer typed a text message on his iPhone. Two brunettes in hip-huggers and spandex tops strutted past us to go have a smoke outside. One of them smiled at me. I smiled back despite my better self.

The bouncer’s phone beeped. He read the response to his text message. Then he yelled in my ear. “Straight back, up the stairs. There’s a door marked, ‘Private.’ Off you go.”

I nodded my thanks and started working my way through the club. The dance floor was packed with young women and stylishly unshaven young men all trying desperately to look their sexy best, gyrating and toasting each other with shouts of, “Za vas!”—“To you!”—when “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees began playing and everybody started cheering wildly like they’d all just won the lotto. A gym rat with too much gel in his hair started to rock out and backed straight into me.