Voodoo Ridge

“I like living in LA.”

Part of being human is making pronouncements without weighing their full consequence. Words pass through your lips unfiltered and, suddenly, they’re out there, irretrievable, like some unguided missile. I don’t know whatever possessed me, sitting there in that loud, crowded diner, at a lunch counter that was anything but romantic, to say what I said. Maybe it was the on-screen image I’d seen of that tiny beating heart. My child’s heart. All I know is that the words just came.

“What if we got remarried?”

Sava

“What did you just say?”

“We could fly to Lake Tahoe tomorrow,” I said, “and get a license. No waiting on the Nevada side.”

She searched my eyes.

“Please don’t say that if you don’t mean it, Logan.”

“I meant it. Every word.”

Her own eyes were the color of some exotic strain of golden-hewed wood. It felt like they could see straight through me.

“You do mean it, don’t you?”

I nodded solemnly.

Her arms were suddenly around me. Her lips found mine. I could taste the salt of her tears. We held each other, oblivious to the smiles of other diners.

“OK, then,” she said.

“OK, then.”

She wiped away her tears and said she was going outside to call her father, to tell him the news — but not before kissing me once more.

I felt good inside. As good as I could ever remember. Watching her head for the door, I was reminded of something I was taught at the academy, how the biggest mistake you can make in war is being too afraid to make a mistake. The same, I suppose, can be said for life in general. I didn’t think I’d screwed up asking Sava

Fate would prove me as wrong as I’d ever been.

TWO

You haven’t lived until you’ve walked in on your octogenarian landlady, a retired gym teacher from Brooklyn, as she grunts out squat thrusts while trying to keep up with some hunky Israeli physical fitness guru on her ancient, black and white console TV.

“Working the glutes,” Mrs. Schmulowitz panted, up and down, up and down. “Melting chicken fat like it’s going out of style.”

Her joints sounded like somebody stepping on broken glass.

“Careful you don’t hurt yourself, Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

“Don’t you worry about me, bubby. I taught physical education for sixty-one years. And the first rule of physical education is, if your legs don’t feel like they’re falling off your body, you’re being a lazy schlep.”

With her lime green high-tops, raspberry leggings, tangerine leotard, and a blue New York Giants sweatband, she looked like an eighty-eight-pound Jell-O parfait; one topped with a thi

“So, how was Los Angeles?” Then she caught sight of Sava

“You’re looking as lovely as ever, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Sava

The two embraced before Mrs. Schmulowitz took a step back and gave her the once-over. Sava

“I’m go

“Right,” I said. “The campfire. In Brooklyn.”

“You’re not that old, Mrs. Schmulowitz,” Sava

“Not that old? What, are you kiddin’ me? You know that key Ben Franklin stuck on the end of his kite? It was to my apartment on Bay Parkway.”

I tried not to laugh. It would’ve only encouraged her.

“Sava

She was momentarily speechless and obviously delighted. It was the first time I’d ever seen Mrs. Schmulowitz at a loss for words.

“Mazel tov! May the both of you find as much joy as I did with my third husband. OK, granted, so the man could get a little kinky at times. You take the good with the bad, am I right?” Mrs. Schmulowitz pecked us both on the cheek, then gave me an affectionate, coach-like slap on the butt. “Way to go, bubby. Smart move. She’s a keeper.”

I politely declined her offer to cook us a celebratory di

“Then at least let me watch your cat for you while you’re away,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said, “unless, of course, you want him in the wedding. I can see it now, that meshuggener kitty coming down the aisle, the ring tied around his neck. A kitty ring bearer. You could get on the Internet. You could get on Letterman!”

As if on cue, my cat, Kiddiot — so named because no feline in history was ever more intellectually challenged — came strolling in from Mrs. Schmulowitz’s kitchen looking like an orange balloon mounted on short, ski

“He’s decided he enjoys chopped liver,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “The secret Schmulowitz family recipe. He prefers it on rye bread.”

“Toasted?”

“Of course, toasted. How else is anyone supposed to eat chopped liver?”

In the next life, I most definitely want to come back as my cat.

A resort community as affluent as Rancho Bonita isn’t hurting for fine dining. California Street, the main drag, which ambles up from the beach for a tree-canopied mile before doglegging inland, boasts dozens of restaurants where di

Mrs. Schmulowitz suggested that I take Sava

The menu was in Italian. Not that I could’ve read it anyway, not in the dim candlelight of our corner table. I was getting to that stage in life where I needed reading glasses. I hated it. Our tuxedoed waiter, an anxious little man with a dented nose and dark, slicked back hair, sounded like a guy from New Jersey trying to sound like a guy from Naples.

“For the belladona?”

Sava

“I’d like to start with the Mozzarella di Bufala con Pomodoro e Basilico, please,” she told the waiter, “then the Tagliolini del Campo as an entree.”

“Eccellente. And for the signore?”

“What do you recommend?”

He recommended the Tortino di Granceaola as an appetizer, followed by Rustichella d’Abruzzo all’Amatriciana. Whatever the hell those were. Both, he assured me, were “molto delizioso.”