A Model World And Other Stories Read Free

Kleenex, enough to decorate a small parade float, Ira spotted a miniature bottle of airline gin, a plastic bag of jellybeans (all black ones), two unidentifiable vials of prescription medication, a crumpled and torn road map, the wreckage of a Hershey bar, and a key chain, in the shape of a brontosaurus, with one sad key on it. The map was bent and misfolded in such a way that only the fragmentary words S ANGEL , in one corner, were legible.
    “Carmen Wallace, this is my adorable little cousin Ira,” Donna said, using the hand that was not resting on Carmen’s bare shoulder to pull at Ira’s cheek. “He asked to meet you.”
    “How do you do,” said Ira, blushing badly.
    “Hi,” Carmen said, setting her cigarette on the indented lip of the ashtray and extending the tips of her fingers toward Ira, who paused a moment—channeling all of his sexual energy into the center of his right palm—then took them. They were soft and gone in an instant, withdrawn as though he had burned her.
    “And this is Audrey—”
    “Hi, Audrey.”
    “—and Doreen, who’s a—friend?—of the groom’s.”
    Ira shook hands with these two and, once Carmen had moved her appalling purse onto the floor beside her to make room for him, soon found himself in the enviable position of being the only man at a table of five. Doreen was wearing a bright yellow dress with an extremely open bodice; she had come to her friend Barry’s wedding exposing such a great deal of her remarkable chest that Ira wondered about her motives. She was otherwise a little on the plain side and she had a sour, horsey laugh, but she was in real estate and Donna and Audrey, who were thinking of buying a house together, seemed to have a lot to say to her. There was nothing for him and Carmen to do but speak to each other.
    “Sheila says you live next door to her folks?” Ira said. Carmen nodded, then turned her head to exhale a long jet of smoke. The contact of their eyes was brief but he thought it had something to it. There was about an inch and a half of Sauza left in Ira’s glass and he drained a quarter inch of it, figuring this left him with enough to get through another five questions. He could already tell that talking to Carmen was not going to be easy, but he considered this an excellent omen. Easy flirtation had always struck him as an end in itself and one which did not particularly interest him.
    “Is it that big wooden house with the sort of, I don’t know, those things, those rafters or whatever, sticking out from under all the roofs?” He spread the fingers of one hand and slid them under the other until they protruded, making a crude approximation of the overhanging eaves of a California bungalow. There was such a grand old house, to the north of Sheila’s parents, that he’d always admired.
    Another nod. She had a habit of opening her eyes very wide, every so often, almost a tic, and Ira wondered if her contact lenses might not be slipping.
    “It’s a Hetrick and Dewitt,” she said bitterly, as though this were the most withering pair of epithets that could be applied to a house. These were the first words she had addressed to him and in them, though he didn’t know what she was talking about, he sensed a story. He took another little sip of tequila and nodded agreeably.
    “You live in a Hetrick and Dewitt?” said Doreen, interrupting her conversation with Donna and Audrey to reach across Audrey’s lap and tap Carmen on the arm. She looked amazed. “Which one?”
    “It’s the big pretentious one on Orange Blossom, in Altadena,” Carmen said, stubbing out her cigarette. She gave a very caustic sigh and then rose to her feet; she was taller than Ira had thought. Having risen to her feet rather dramatically, she now seemed uncertain of what to do next and stood wavering a little on her blue spike heels, It was clear she felt that she had been wrong to come to Sheila’s wedding, but that was all she seemed able to manage, and after a