Chapter 8 Zombies #2
“I wasn’t going to get snooty,” he said reflexively, though a TV show about zombies based on a video game was exactly the sort of thing he would get snooty about.
He did suspect zombies would be too heavy-handed a metaphor.
Weren’t they always? But if he hated it, he could just keep his opinions to himself.
He could, right?
At least The New Yorker wasn’t here to listen to him opine. And hey, even if they were heavy-handed, zombies had endured for decades as a cultural trope.
“What time?” he asked. “And can I bring anything?”
She smiled brightly. “I’ll cook. Are you a vegan, or do you have any allergies or restrictions?”
“You’re the LA person.”
“Is that a no?”
“That is a no.”
“All right. Let’s say seven. Just let yourself in.
” She reached into her pocket and extracted a fob, which she tossed to him.
“I’ve been meaning to give you this. It only works on these sliding doors.
I figure you should have it in case I’m ever…
” She trailed off and for a moment looked almost confused.
“In case I’m ever out late and I need you to feed Edward or something.
” She made a silly face that struck him as overly performative. “But don’t worry. I’m never out late.”
Edward, slobbery and jumpy, greeted Jack at the door that night.
The sliding doors to Blair’s house from the pool opened onto a small room that on the one hand seemed to be a mudroom—it had a bench and hooks on which coats and dog leashes hung—but that also resembled a kitchen in that it contained cupboards, a sink, and a wine rack.
“Hi!” Blair called. “We’re in the living room.”
He followed the sound of her voice through a kitchen that flanked an open living and dining space. As in the pool house, the overall impression was both airy and cozy, which should have been a contradiction but somehow wasn’t.
“‘We’?” he asked as he rounded the kitchen island.
She was setting out cutlery on a wooden coffee table, and she hitched her head toward one wing of an L-shaped sectional on which was perched possibly the largest cat Jack had ever seen.
It was black and fluffy and stretched out fully like it thought it was Superman. It must have been three feet long.
“Morticia and me.” She pointed to the cat-Hulk. “Have a seat.”
“Morticia looks like she’s bigger than Edward,” he said as he tried to slide by her.
“She is. She’s a Maine coon.”
He didn’t know what that was, but he gathered it was meant to explain Morticia’s startling size.
“She won’t move for you, but you can just shove her off the sofa.”
“I would never,” he said, moving past the creature to the other part of the sofa. Blair moved one of the place settings, which had been placed at ninety-degree angles to each other, meaning they would be sitting side by side.
“Morticia has always been aloof, but when Reggie and I split up, he took our other cat, and she’s still mad about it. Which is funny, because Morticia was not nice to him. We never would have separated them if we thought either of them gave a crap. But apparently she misses him.”
Jack could relate to the idea of not liking something but being pulled toward it nevertheless. How else to explain why he was here, at Zombie TV Night specifically but also in LA generally?
“Anyway, sit,” she said. “I’ll be right back with dinner.”
She served the best macaroni and cheese he’d ever had.
“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” she said as they tucked into plates laden with the cheesy casserole.
The TV wasn’t on yet. She’d set the coffee table intending that they would watch while they ate, but as she’d served the food she’d thought better of eating the gooey pasta while zombies ate human brains.
“Eat first, watch after,” she’d announced.
“This is delicious,” he said. It was cheesy and creamy, but it had bite, as if there were some funky cheeses mixed up in there with the usual cheddar, and the breadcrumb topping was herby and crunchy. It was highbrow and lowbrow at the same time, complex but comforting.
“Mimi—that’s what we called my grandmother—was a master of Southern comfort food.”
He had been expecting LA food. A salad of microgreens. Or even a hearty meat dish, but it would have been locally raised beef tenderloin from cows that had listened to Mozart and gone for long walks on the beach until they were humanely and efficiently killed while they were distracted by hypnosis.
He moved on to trying the tomato salad that was the evening’s other dish.
“Oh,” he said, the outburst involuntary.
It was a flavor explosion, a complex vinegary hit leavened with a hint of sweetness.
It was novel to be eating an in-season tomato in October.
“I’ve never had a tomato that tasted so…
tomatoey.” He paused. “For the record, I am disappointed in my own lack of descriptive acumen there.”
“If you like the tomatoes, and you like the mac and cheese, you are a prime candidate for Mimi’s tomato and cheddar pie. It’s divine.”
A ping rang through the room.
“What is that?” Blair said. “Oh, wait. That’s one of the cameras—I’m not used to them yet.
” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s probably Mrs. Afonso.
” She got out her phone and futzed with it.
“Yep.” She scooched closer and turned the screen to him.
The older lady they’d seen before was looking over the fence out back by the pool.
“How is she that high?” Jack asked. “That’s a tall fence.”
“I get how she can peek over the hedge that separates our front yards, but in back, with this fence, you got me. Watch.” She played with some settings and spoke into the phone. “Mrs. Afonso? Are you OK? Can I help you with something?”
The woman looked around in exaggerated fashion. It was almost comical.
“It’s Blair. I’m in my house. You tripped one of my alarms.”
The woman sniffed and lifted her chin, a parody of disapproval. She slowly sank until she was out of view.
“Was she levitating?” Jack asked, strangely fascinated.
“Once again: you got me.” Blair dropped the phone on the coffee table.
The sofa was upholstered in a textured navy fabric that, when you looked closely, was actually a mixture of a bunch of different colors.
There was a long, dark gray line that ran parallel to her thigh, which was bare.
It hadn’t been a moment ago. She’d been cuddled in one of the room’s many blankets, but the act of showing him her phone had revealed her leg.
That it was muscular shouldn’t have been a surprise—he was the one huffing on their daily hill climbs.
The combination of those muscles and the smattering of fine hair visible on a silver dollar–size patch of her thigh, as if she’d missed it shaving, was disconcerting. Potent.
It was like seeing the part in her hair the other day. Seeing the part—no pun intended—of her that other people didn’t see. The mask slipping.
“Maybe she was levitating. Maybe she’s cursing me.”
Jack was pulled out of his thoughts. “How long has this been going on?”
“Just since I’ve been back. She wasn’t there the first time I lived here.”
“What do you mean the first time you lived here?”
“Is it possible that you are the only person in America who hasn’t read about my real estate comedown?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I love you, Jack Branksome.”
The idea, even in jest, was alarming. “No, you don’t.”
“This was my first house in LA. Initially, I rented it with a couple roommates, but when I met Reggie and got knocked up, he moved in, and we asked the landlord if he wanted to sell to us, and he agreed. We lived here until Cal was two and I got pregnant with Esme. Reggie thought we needed a bigger house, so we moved.”
“You didn’t agree?”
“There are only three bedrooms here.” She held up a hand.
“I get that for a family of four, three bedrooms is the norm. It’s just that when my career took off, it took off.
And Reggie was… how to say this without making him seem like an asshole?
He was very socially ambitious. We argued about it for a couple months, but then one day Cal was being dropped off by his nanny and there was an overly aggressive paparazzo waiting in the driveway, almost as if he knew our schedule.
He probably did. It freaked me out. So I thought, hell, let’s just be the Hollywood power couple we were becoming. So we moved to Calabasas.”
That explained why she was always so particular about double-checking the gates. “Is Calabasas a rich area?”
“A bunch of the Kardashians live there.” She paused. “You do know who the Kardashians are?”
“Vaguely.” He knew they were a reality show family and that there were a lot of them. He couldn’t tell them apart, but to be fair, he had never tried.
“They live there, along with assorted billionaires of the more low-key variety. And honestly, upsizing was the right move for us at that point, on paper at least. But I couldn’t let this house go.
I loved it. Objectively, but also because it represented what was initially a hard-won freedom from my parents.
So I rented it out all these years while we were in the big house. ”
“The big house. You make it sound like jail.”
“That was the point. I called it that on purpose, and I was only half kidding. I probably should have bought something else, but I liked the idea of one thing being familiar, given that the rest of my life was in flux.”
“So you evicted your tenant and lived happily ever after.”
“Well, I evicted my tenant, which I felt terrible about.” She rotated her head, pausing in one spot to stretch her neck. “Jury’s still out on happily ever after.” She stretched her neck the other way. “But it is nice to be back.”
“I have to say, I thought you would live in a gated estate.”
“I have a gate.”
“Two of them. But the house, and the property, aren’t that big—for a Hollywood mogul, I mean.”