Now that I was no longer collecting autographs in front of grocery stores, Lila and I were able to have a more relaxed visit, primarily meaning I was more relaxed when she returned from work. In the area of economics, our prospects undeniably were less rosy than we were expecting them to be the week before, but not wretched, although, if I had a gift it was for remaining relaxed when facing less than rosy, even wretched economics. We removed Bob’s from our evening schedule in as much as it had now “changed.” Closer to the truth, was that we chose to spend more of the remaining time together sequestered, the two of us cozy inside the country house. This was our twosome’s vacation from the capricious habits of humans, each of us enough of a comfort and a challenge to the other.
I interacted with Cindy more out of willed bonhomie than anything else; and her reciprocation was in the same vein. These interactions tended to occur when I passed by, in transit from the kitchen, or coming into the house, and I would join her in the living room as she lazed on the sofa watching what I believe was called the Home Network, programs on landscaping, decorating, or renovating and the like. The will behind my bonhomie was seldom able to sustain itself through the battering inflicted upon it by recommendations on patio construction, barbecue tips, and ideal flowerbed locations. Once this happened, the country house would become a house divided. We would fight, Cindy challenging the horror of my choice of clothing, and the disintegration of my moral fiber, accusations so overused against me that the shots were not merely cheap, but completely devalued as legal tender in any attempt to purchase a wounded reaction in a war of words.
Soon enough though I would be back in the stable of my pimperary, hitting the streets, or at least the offices within the circumference of a fairly large loop encircling my hotel room. The goal set by Lila and me was to be far enough in the black after about a month, to begin searching in earnest for a place to live. After that, our joint incomes would provide us with the tawdry, yet culturally overheated style of life to which we had become accustomed. As the CEO of the operation, Lila directed me to keep my eye out in the coming weeks for housing prospects on my own side of The Big Social Status-Determining Mountain. She would cover the ground, on what for the moment was her own side, and we would jump on the first inhabitable place available, like squatters on a just condemned building. Condemned buildings were off our personal list, but only barely. Someone at the Essex, or at one of my job sites had tipped me off to a prospectively “hidden jewel” of an apartment in the vicinity of Beachwood Canyon. But given the gloss on real estate prices in that desirable sector, unless it was invisible to naked eyes other than mine, I wasn’t getting my hopes up.
We spent our last few days of cohabitant bliss doing the things each of us was happy doing separately, but doing them alone together in the same room. This sort of loving, benign indifference surely was the key to our romantic success. When the time came, I got back on the Red Line holding a bag of buffalo wings from Cindy’s refrigerator, hauling a few of Lila’s sketches to put up in my room, and with a warning not to talk to strangers. I waved goodbye to fire-tested, in-the-clinch companionship and connubial-like affections, and thirty minutes later waved hello to something else.