Green Card, part 1

Chapter One of my novel-in-progress:

The Proposal

 

In the fall of 1975, I moved to Los Angeles with $41, a car payment, and movie star dreams.

After several months, I realized to my chagrin that I hadn’t had the courage to go to even one audition. It takes more guts than I had to face the constant appraisal. Just living in that place oozing with desperate ambition made me depressed.

So I slunk away to lick my wounds at my mother’s place in San Jose. I got a job in a pizza shop and wondered what to do next.

Then, I had an epiphany.

I drove back to L.A., determined to straighten out my finances, get an apartment and get my son back. Two years earlier, I’d given him up to avoid a custody fight with his father. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, and now was the time to make it right.

I got two full-time waitress jobs, rented a room in a cheap hotel and settled into my 16-hour-a-day routine. One night I came home from work and walked into the tiny elevator with a large, intimidating man behind me. He was probably just another schlump trying to survive like me, but I didn’t like that elevator. I went to my room, packed my bag and checked out. I found a place with better vibes and no elevator.

I worked the morning shift at the Mayflower Hotel coffee shop downtown. Between shifts, I went to my room and took a two-hour nap, then drove to Langer’s Deli across from MacArthur Park to work the evening shift. I liked the pace of working there, the food and the customers, who treated me as more of an equal than did the foreign businessmen and tourists at the Mayflower. At night, I went home and flopped on the bed until 5 am, when it was time to start over again.

I have never been so exhausted in my life.

Sometimes as I poured hot coffee for customers, I would deliberately scald my fingers to wake myself up. I remember one Japanese businessman looking at me strangely as I fumbled with my check book and pencil, nearly dropping them in his coffee. Like a drunk pretending to be sober, I acted like everything was perfectly normal. “May I take your order?”

There was a fat, older bartender at the Mayflower who seemed to have a bit of a crush on me. I kidded with him and enjoyed his attention as I got my drinks, but didn’t take it seriously. A nice-looking Mexican bus boy named Miguel seemed to like me too. He asked me for a date once but I explained that I didn’t have the time or the energy to go out because of my other job.

Then he confessed that he wasn’t really free to date because he was married, he said, for his green card. I had heard of this practice, but had never met anyone who actually did it. I was fascinated. Miguel looked very sad and said it was not a happy situation for him.

A few days later, I overheard one of the waitresses, Maria, asking another one if she knew anyone who would be willing to marry a Greek for $300. As a joke, I pretended to be hurt that she hadn’t thought of me.

She was surprised. “You would do it?”

“For $300, sure,” I said, thinking that she knew I was kidding. On the other hand, I remember thinking that I could rent an apartment sooner and bring my son to live with me if I had $300. I could even quit one of my jobs and get some sleep. Let’s say I was kidding, but interested.

Maria was getting off duty and said that she would send the Greek to see me at the end of my shift in a couple of hours. Suddenly the waitresses, bus boys and cooks were buzzing with the news. I admit that I was enjoying the attention, feeling quite brazen. Of course, I told myself, I had no intention of marrying a stranger. I told another waitress, Pearl, that I would let the Greek down as gently as possible when he arrived.

Then he was there.

He walked in, looked around nervously, and sat at the counter. There was no mistaking him. He had that lost look of a stranger in a strange land. And he was gorgeous. A dark shock of wavy hair, deep brown eyes, slim body, well dressed. He didn’t look like the poor immigrant I expected, but a European aristocrat or movie star. I gulped.

Pearl said, “That’s him!”

I said, “No, it can’t be.”

“It has to be him! You’d better go talk to him.”

“I can’t! He’s too good-looking!”

“What are you going to do, just let the poor guy sit there?”

I saw the scared look on his face and knew that Pearl was right. I took a deep breath, picked up a coffee pot for reassurance and walked up to him.

“Hi,” I said, trying to smile casually.

“Are you–?” His accent was very heavy.

I nodded and held out my hand. “My name is Molly.”

He breathed a huge sigh and said in barely understandable English, “Thanks God! I was afraid you would be ugly.”

We managed, mostly through sign language, to agree to meet at a nearby coffee shop after my shift was over. My plan was to apologize for getting his hopes up for the sake of a joke, and go home to my room. I was ashamed of myself for playing with this poor man’s life so casually.

His name was Alexi.

Did I mention that he was good-looking? His accent was charming too — or should I say his sign language. He knew very little English, but managed to explain proudly that he had learned what little he knew from American TV during his 20 days in this country. He had been staying at the home of a Greek friend. The problem was that his tourist visa had run out. Members of the Greek community had advised him to look for an American woman to marry.

He told me about his life in Greece. His father was a publisher of art books (the coffee table variety) and he grew up in a nice home at the foot of the Acropolis. He had been a co-pilot for Olympic Airlines but he was really an artist. He had owned a commercial art agency in Athens. He showed me snapshots of himself in a sunny, comfortably furnished apartment.

His life in Greece sounded so good that I couldn’t understand what he was doing in the U.S.

“Why did you come here?” I asked.

He pulled out some cartoon drawings that showed definite talent.

“I going to work at Disney,” he said. “Some day, I will be millionaire.”

I was hooked. Big dreams were something I could understand.

“Now,” he said, “tell about you.”

“Well,” I said, “I wanted to be an actress, but now I don’t know. That’s why I came to L.A. I grew up in Minnesota–”

“Minnesota!?” He looked surprised.

“Yes, it’s a state in the northern part of America, very cold–”

“Yes, I hear of this place. Many Swedes live there.”

“Yes!” I said. “I’m Swedish.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “This explains why you look so nice!”

“What?!”

“Everybody tells me American women are not nice, you know, bad women — but you, you are not like that.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“This is why I am so happy to see you in restaurant before. I can see that you are nice woman, good family.”

I blushed.

“Yes, this is what I mean!” He smiled at me and I blushed deeper. “You are nice woman.”

“Well, maybe not,” I said. “You should know that I am divorced and I have a son who lives with his father right now. I’m hoping to have him back with me soon.”

“This is not bad thing,” he said, nodding his head. “How old is boy?”

“Eleven. His name is Alex.”

“Ah, my name, Alexi!”

“Yes, I noticed,” I smiled.

He looked at me seriously.

“We talk more later,” he said. “Now, the question is, yes or no?”

I looked into his dark eyes, hesitated for a long moment, and heard myself blurt a surprised, “Yes.”

Green Card, part 2