Read Online I'll Love You When You're More Like Me by M.E. Kerr - Free Book Online Page B

big crowd around the table anyway.”

8. Sabra St. Amour
    â€œThe in place with the locals is a place called The Surf Club,” Lamont Orr said after we’d finished eating charcoaled steaks out on the deck. “How about popping in there for a while later?”
    â€œOh shush and listen to these words,” Mama said. She had on a tape of Frank Sinatra old favorites. She shut her eyes and moved her face in heartfelt frowns while Sinatra sang “A Foggy Day in London Town.” The new Elton John tape Lamont had brought us for a gift still had its cellophane wrapper on.
    Lamont stuck his feet out and admired his Roots shoes. Then he put his right arm up on the arm of the director’s chair and admired his wrist hair, and his gold Cartier signet ring.
    Lamont was a walking/talking borrower of other people’s glory. He always wore the little knit shirts with the Lacoste alligators on them, the Frye boots, the Gucci loafers, the Burberry sweaters, everything had someone’s famous label or signature or symbol on it. When he spoke he often began sentences with “I think it was Camus who said,” or “As R. D. Laing once said,” or “Wasn’t it Freud who said—” Lamont never seemed to wear anything or say anything original.
    If you went out to dinner with Lamont in a restaurant where Lamont faced a mirror, you lost Lamont for the whole evening. He was always watching himself in the mirror.
    He seemed to always shop until he found just the right shade blue to match his eyes, or rust to match his newly curled hair. He used QT so he was bronze all winter, and in the summer he was Mr. Wonderful on any beach with his tall, lean, brown body.
    Something inside Lamont told him that he was hated by nearly everyone, so Lamont invented these psychological games and tests to help people forget they felt like barfing when he was around.
    The first time he ever came on the set, he must have sensed Mama’s overprotective nature right away. He completely ignored me and got her all involved in drawing a house. What kind of a house, Mama asked him and he said any kind she wanted to, and Mama got out this piece of paper and worked on this house through most of my rehearsal. Then Lamont studied it like he was some big-shot psychologist, interpreting one of those Rorschach inkblot tests. He frowned and tsk-tsk ed over it, and finally he said, “You are a very warm person, very warm, because look at all that marvelous chimney smoke. Some people draw chimneys with no smoke coming out and some people don’t even put chimneys on their houses, but you are a person of extraordinary warmth. I can tell that instantly.” Then he told her she was someone who liked people because she had sidewalks leading up to her house, and she made it easy for people to visit her because she had doorknobs on the doors, and she was an optimist because there was the sundrawn over the house. By the time he was finished telling her about herself, Mama was leaning so far over toward his director’s chair, she looked as though she was about to spill into his lap. He reached out and pushed back a lock of her hair which had fallen forward, and it was as though someone had hit Mama over the head with a mallet. Mama straightened up and stared at him and thanked him for “administering the test” (Mama always got terribly formal when she was seething inside), and that was the last time Mama went anywhere near him, unless he was near me. Then she bird-dogged him.
    It was Fedora’s idea for Lamont to come out to Seaville and talk with Mama and me about the storyline. He was supposed to renew his acquaintance with us and get our ideas, and see if we could all work it out.
    He was being diplomatic by not bringing up anything about the show his first night in town; he was pretending he’d been planning to come out that way all along, and delighted to know we were in the vicinity.
    When the