Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [4]
Meanwhile, Eduardo, my Brazilian suitor, had embarked on a full-court press. He’d joined our free-floating group of revelers, joining us for late lunches, café conversations, and wee-hour meals, and no encounter with him ended without an invitation to dinner. I was definitely attracted to him but afraid of getting involved, though I wasn’t sure why.
I was thinking about this one glorious summer evening as I sat at a sidewalk café, watching the unhurried crowd float by like driftwood in a lazy river, when my senses opened up to the beauty that surrounded me. It was one of those moments in which your mind captures every detail, impression, and feeling, and seemingly preserves it as a hologram of memory. I glanced at the snifter of Campari on the table in front of me and noted the last ray of the setting sun flare off the dwindling ice cube that bobbed in the rose-colored liquid. There was a man in a beret who smoked a very black, thin cigar and I will forever remember the exact scent of it. Time stopped, or seemed to, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted this magnificent spell never to end. How did a girl from West Seattle end up in this marvelous place? I asked myself. In Rome, with a friend like Charlie, and a pal like Bangs, and an extended family of warmhearted, creative, life-embracing people?
Yes, I’ll stay here, I thought to myself. Forever, maybe. Who could want anything more?
“Dyan.” I stirred from my trance to find Eduardo standing next to me. His hand was on my shoulder. I smiled up at him. He certainly was an attractive part of the landscape, but I wasn’t going to go forward until I was absolutely sure he was on the up-and-up. My high school misadventure with Larry had left me watchful and wary. No amazingly handsome, impossibly brilliant South American god was going to make a Brazilian pie out of this gal.
CHAPTER TWO
Back to Earth
As the plane descended over Southern California, I felt something in my tummy that was halfway between butterflies and queasiness. It wasn’t like I was plunging into the unknown. I was returning to a welcoming circle of good friends, and I’d be back in the ring auditioning, doing what I loved best. It was just that my Roman carriage had turned into a pumpkin faster than the stroke of midnight. As if without knowing it I’d been gazing into a mirror that someone had hit with a sledgehammer, leaving me to stare at a blank piece of wood. Plus, I was coming back to L.A. with no home, no car, and no money. I felt a little like a prodigal daughter. I didn’t want to worry Mom and Dad with it, though. I knew I had to get cracking and find some work. It was late January, a beautiful time of year, and it was nice to be in the crisp sunshine of Southern California.
God bless Addie Gould! Other than my mom, there was no one I could’ve been happier to see when I got off the plane. The beautiful Addie had a heart as big as the San Fernando Valley, which is where she lived with her adolescent son, and now she was taking me in like one of her own. That was Addie: surrogate mom to the world. The third time I asked her whether I was imposing, she shushed me and said, “Dyan, you’re family. Mi casa es tu casa.”
I hit the ground running, and for the next two weeks it was back-to-back auditions—tiring, but exhilarating too. I needed work. I needed a new life. And I needed my friends.
Charlie called the morning after I got back. “Mr. Wonderful asked me for your number in Los Angeles,” he said. “I didn’t give it to him, but as a man of my word, it is incumbent on me to relay the message—just in case your appetite for deceit hasn’t been completely satiated.”
“Oh, it has,” I said. “I left