by William Poe
Sandra reached across the table and took my hand. “Lyle was my best defense against the maître d’. You know how she’s always flirting with me.”
In fact, the woman was standing near the door, watching us even then.
“Let’s drink,” Scott said, raising his glass. “To the good times ahead, or else, time for good head.”
Lyle downed the scotch and ordered another. He and Sandra began carrying on. Scott, drunker than I had realized, leaned close and pawed my arm. “Where you been?” he slurred. “I’ve missed you.”
“Waiter, can I have a barf bag?” Lyle blurted out.
“Fuck you,” Scott countered.
Sandra added another dimension to the playfulness. “Give me a kiss,” she said to me, puckering up and half closing her eyes.
I was going to oblige her when Lyle kicked me under the table.
“I can’t believe you two moved so far away, all the way to fuckin’ Long Beach,” Scott said, chewing on a morsel of escargot. He snapped his fingers to get the waiter’s attention so he could order another drink. “So, what are you doing down there?” he asked me, picking up the thread of his thoughts.
“Painting,” I said.
Scott sucked down the water at the bottom of his empty scotch glass. He struggled to recall what he had just asked. “Houses? Did they teach you to paint houses in the church?”
“He scribbles all day,” Lyle said impatiently. “That’s what he calls painting.”
“It’s art,” I said.
Sandra yawned.
“Okay, fuck you people.”
“Well, I’d like to see your work,” Scott said in a consoling tone. “You are always so ‘au currant’—a hippie in high school, a cult member in the seventies, and now an artist in the eighties. What a guy!”
“You’ll see some day,” I said conclusively.
For dessert, we had a choice between chocolate mousse and cherries jubilee. After placing our orders, Sandra took a long draw from her glass of scotch and said, “I have to tell you something, Simon. Masako called Maury’s office today.”
A hush fell over the table. Scott and Sandra looked at Lyle. I rolled my empty espresso cup on the saucer.
“Does she want Maury to handle our divorce?” I said, breaking the silence.
“Maury won’t say. Here’s her address.” Sandra handed me a slip of paper torn from the office message book. “That’s the name of the restaurant where she’s working.”
My hand trembled as I took it.
Scott’s face twisted deviously. “Call her now,” he said.
“You’re such a drama queen, Scott. This is serious. I can’t talk to her until I’m ready.”
Lyle took a cigarette from Sandra’s pack of Pall Malls, lit it up with her gold lighter, and blew a stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth.
“You do want to divorce her, don’t you?” Sandra asked. “I mean, now that you and Lyle are back together.”
Lyle looked away to feign disinterest in the conversation.
Scott again insisted that I call her right then and there. Either I would do it, or he threatened to make a scene and get us kicked out of our favorite restaurant. In the end, I said I would. And Scott wasn’t going to let me fake a conversation, so he stood beside me at the pay phone and watched me dial.
A man with a heavy Japanese accent answered. When I asked for Masako, he said to wait, that he’d get her.
When the timid voice came on the line, I choked up. “Masako?”
“Simon-san!” she said, anxiously. “You get message, finally! You get message. How you doing?”
“I’m okay, Masako. How are you?”
“Working this Japanese restaurant. Sometime babysit for Japanese couple. You not know?”
“I heard you left the church.”
“I must see you, Simon-san. Please. Meet me restaurant. San Pedro Street, near Second. Yokohama Restaurant.”
If Masako hadn’t sounded so sweet, I might have said what I really needed to say—that it was over, she’d hear from my lawyer. But her voice melted my heart. She truly loved me, and I didn’t want to turn my back on that.
“All right, Masako,” I agreed, not for a minute considering the ramifications.
“What are you saying?” Scott prodded me.
I shooed him away.
“You come now?” Masako asked. “No phone at apartment. Only work phone.”
“Not tonight. I will call again, though. I promise.”
Before going back to the others, I told Scott I wanted cocaine.
“Finally! Here you get that windfall from the church and horde it all for yourself,” he said. “How much do you want?”
“Let’s get an eight ball and go to Sandra’s.”
Scott managed to get some good stuff. Two days later, we were still up, talking.
CHAPTER 9
Yokohama was an elegant restaurant with a Japanese bridge at the entrance that spanned an indoor pond stocked with koi. Speakers were concealed inside artificial logs that were inlaid with pots of flowering bromeliads. Koto music, mysterious and alluring, played in the background.
Masako, dressed in a traditional kimono, spotted my dinner party at the hostess’s station. She rushed over and took my hand.
I had called in advance to let Masako know that I planned to bring friends. Scott and Sandra hung on each other’s arms, but Lyle’s presence was harder to explain. Masako led us to a private room with a table low to the floor. Guests sat on pillows, allowing their feet to dangle in a pit under the table. I supposed it was a compromise with Asian style, which would have required patrons to sit uncomfortably cross-legged.
A few days had passed without drugs or alcohol. Lyle and I had been sunning ourselves on the beach, working on our tans, and talking. I had tried to explain about my life in the church and confessed that I had left him to marry Masako.
“Sounds like a green-card wife,” Lyle assessed the situation. “You didn’t fuck her, did you?”
“There’s more to a marriage than fucking,” I said. “I think I really do love her.”
“You want kids. Everyone does,” Lyle said in a rare moment of astuteness. “You just think you love her. Forget it, Simon—you’re gay.”
Seeing Lyle and Masako together made me think. One attracted with warm feelings of companionship but without a sexual charge; the other had an allure that was all about sex. Why couldn’t they merge into one person? Then my life would be complete.
Every time Masako came to our table, Sandra seemed to intentionally pay me extra attention. At the same time, Scott would flirt with Lyle. Anyone watching the table would guess that Scott and Lyle were a couple, and I was on a date with Sandra. I wondered if that was the plan—to make Masako jealous in order to stir up trouble.
By the time dinner arrived, Masako’s eyes began to display genuine fear. She must have realized that she didn’t know why I had come, much less brought guests, and that I might have agreed to this meeting only to show her that I wasn’t interested.
I encouraged Sandra to pay attention to Scott and leave me alone, but right at that moment, Scott and Lyle disappeared into the men’s room. Masako, who had not made eye contact with me since bringing out the sukiyaki, returned with a fresh pot of green tea. Her hand was remarkably steady as she filled our cups.
“Get the fuck off my case,” Lyle’s voice resounded as he and Scott burst from the men’s room. Lyle chased Scott over the bridge and out the front door.
What now? I thought as I quickly signed the charge slip that Masako had just returned to the table. I raced after them. Sandra grabbed her purse and followed.
Masako caught up with us at the exit. “Simon-san, what wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Please don’t go,” Masako said, pulling on my sleeve.
“When do you get off work?” I asked.
“Midnight,” Masako said, her expression heartbreakingly doleful.
“Wait for me out fr
ont.”
Scott and Sandra were driving away in her Trans Am by the time I arrived on the scene.
“They’re going to the Spotlight,” Lyle said.
“What in the hell is going on?”
“Fuckin’ Scott didn’t want to give me a line unless I sucked his cock. The motherfucker.”
“Let it pass,” I said. “Scott’s been a scumbag since I first met him.”
“Fuck,” Lyle said. “Scott might not score for us now that I’ve pissed him off.”
“If we go find him,” I said, “you have to swear you’ll be good. I don’t want to get us kicked out of the Spotlight, or get my other ear trashed by someone.”
“Well, I ain’t suckin’ his dick.”
“By now, Scott probably realizes he’d better give us a good deal to make up for what he tried to do back there.”
At the Spotlight, the same bouncer who had thrown me out was on duty. I was sure I saw dried blood on his silver-spiked gloves. He paid no attention as I passed by him. He wouldn’t even remember that a few weeks earlier, he had thrown me onto the sidewalk like so much Hollywood refuse.
I was relieved to see that Twiggy was bartending. He had a shot of Boodles gin poured before I’d even gotten to my seat.
“Something to steady your nerves,” Twiggy said. “Someone told me you’d gotten killed, but lover, here you are.” Twiggy weighed over three hundred pounds, but he maneuvered with the élan of a ballerina as he dealt with the drunken johns and needy tricks. “I didn’t see who hit you that night, or I would’ve knocked him cold.”
“You’re a good friend, Twig,” I said.
“Tonight, the gin’s on the house.” Twiggy tossed an air kiss in my direction.
The bar was crowded. I recognized most of the patrons, except for a couple of guys too old to be hustlers and too young to be tricks. Twiggy often cautioned about those types, always suspecting that they were vice cops. Serving alcohol to an underage patron or overhearing a hustler-john negotiation could mean a citation that would shut down the bar for two weeks.
Nervously, I ran my finger along the grooves where the slices of my ear had been pieced together as I followed Lyle into the back room. Scott and Sandra were sitting on stools at the wall behind the pool table. Scott hid behind Sandra when he saw us.
“Lyle told me about your proposition,” I said. “That was a crappy way to behave. What are you going to do to make it up to us?”
Sandra took a sip from her glass of Chivas Regal. She placed a hand on my arm. With a giggle, she said, “I think Masako’s cute.”
I knocked her hand away.
“Oh, honey. This is Hollywood! Don’t take things so seriously.”
Lyle asked Scott to light a cigarette that he had bummed from a fellow making eyes at him. He sucked smoke into his nostrils as it poured from his mouth. “Tell him to make it right,” Lyle said to me, cocking his head toward Scott.
“The call is already in,” Scott said.
Lyle gave him a menacing look. “It’d better be good stuff!”
“Colombian Blue, ether-based. You won’t believe it.”
Lyle and Sandra knocked back shots as we waited. Scott and I drank Boodles, challenging each other to see who could hold the most alcohol. Scott usually won such contests. After three shots of the 90 percent gin, I nearly teetered off the barstool.
Someone put money in the jukebox, and everyone sang along with the lyrics of the Spotlight theme song, “Life is a Cabaret.”
Drinking made Lyle horny, even amorous. We were wrapped up in each other’s arms when I noticed Scott talking to a man I didn’t know. As soon as the guy left, Scott went straight to the men’s room. Lyle stood watch as I followed.
As its name advertised, the powder had a bluish tint against the white paper that Scott unfolded.
“Like flakes of arctic snow,” I marveled. “It’s beautiful.” I already had a dollar bill rolled up in anticipation of the moment.
Scott was right about the potency, too. The muscles in my throat tightened. For a moment, I lost my breath.
Cocaine acts like a truth serum. After two snorts, Scott felt compelled to offer a confession. “I was wrong to treat Lyle like a hustler.”
The drug enticed me to forgive. I told him it was nothing, that everything was fine. Even though we stood next to a broken toilet seeping slimy water, the world was beautiful.
“Let’s get back to the others,” I said. “They should do some of this.”
Toward midnight, a weird equilibrium established itself from the balance of cocaine and Boodles.
“I’m going back to see Masako,” I told my companions.
Scott lightly knuckled my forehead. “Hello? Is anyone in there? What are you planning to do, bring her here?”
“Why not?” I said. “If she wants to be part of my life, she needs to know who I am.”
Lyle was agreeable to anything at that point. “If you really love her, I won’t stand in the way,” he said.
I knew it was the cocaine talking, but I wanted to believe it anyway.
CHAPTER 10
Masako was in front of the restaurant, clutching her purse. She had changed from the satin kimono to the type of demure street clothes worn by sisters in the church. Struck with a bout of paranoia, I thought maybe I was being set up—that Masako would try to lure me back into the group.
I leaned over to open the door, and she got in the car. “Sorry about the trouble my friends caused,” I said. My thick tongue made the words difficult to understand.
“You drunk?” Masako asked. “Maybe we park car. Take taxi.”
I threw the car into gear and hit the accelerator, upset that she was challenging me. Masako fastened her seat belt and gripped the edges of her seat.
The drugs still held more sway than the alcohol, but I was beginning to feel woozy. The strobe-light effect of the streetlights had me mesmerized.
“I need to tell you something,” I said as we pulled onto Cahuenga Boulevard in the last stretch of road before reaching the Spotlight. “I need to explain why I left the church.”
Masako wasn’t listening. Her eyes were fixed on the road. Twice, she reached for the steering wheel, nervous that I was about to veer into the wrong lane.
“The reason I left—” I paused as I remembered an event that happened in the church. A brother under my charge killed himself by jumping down an elevator shaft in the church’s New York headquarters. He had admitted to me that he was homosexual, and after conferring with church leaders, we sent him to a psychologist. The man claimed that homosexuality was a mental illness that could be overcome through aversion therapy. After two weeks of it, Martin chose to kill himself. Masako would understand the comparison.
“I’m like Martin,” I said. “Do you remember? The brother who jumped to his death?”
Masako didn’t respond.
“Lyle is my lover. We live together.”
Masako, not fully understanding my words, took my hand, and said, “All I want know—do you love me?”
My thoughts were in such a whirl that I didn’t know how to respond.
“Where are we going?” Masako asked.
“Lyle and the others are waiting for us at a bar. Do you drink?”
“Sometimes I drink. I drink with you. But now you look at road. Drive safe.”
The Spotlight was busier than when I left; the ratio of hustlers to tricks now weighed heavier on the hustler side of the equation. Soon, the competition would bring down the prices, and men and boys would pair up and leave together, the hustlers calculating how much money they could get for putting out as little as possible, the tricks drunkenly expecting to have the time of their lives but in the end finding themselves lonelier than ever.
Lyle had taken off his shirt and stuffed it through his belt. As Masako and I pressed through the crush of bodies, I thought I saw Scott’s hand on Lyle’s ass, but I couldn’t be sure.
A gang of hustlers was competing for Sandra’s attention. All th
ree were shirtless, older tricks with hairy chests—definitely Sandra’s type.
Masako clenched my arm as I led her toward Lyle and Scott.
“You can sit here,” Lyle said to Masako. “I was just going to the bathroom.”
The jukebox was blaring so loudly, I hardly understood what Lyle said, but when he headed toward the rear of the bar followed by Scott, I knew exactly what was up. I wanted to follow them, but Masako had tightened her grip.
Twiggy was shocked to see me with Masako and came over as soon as he caught a break. Masako ordered a mai tai.
“Don’t get much call for mai tais,” Twiggy said. “But I do make a killer kamikaze.”
“That good. I take kamikaze,” Masako said.
Twiggy found a paper umbrella to put in the glass. “This makes it a little bit like a mai tai,” he said.
Masako sipped her drink while I downed shots of Boodles. Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” started up on the jukebox. Every time the song came to its two-word refrain, the entire bar seemed to join in. Tainted love, o-oh, tainted love.
The bouncer patrolled the crowd with a stance that signaled he was just waiting for the opportunity to bash in somebody’s head. Masako watched his every movement.
“Why he wear dangerous gloves?” she asked.
“It’s a dangerous place,” I said, hoping the Spotlight would convince her that I wasn’t anyone she wanted as a husband. “I come here a lot. I like danger.”
“Me too,” Masako said, casting a furtive glance at the bouncer.
Lyle watched Masako and me intently, the cocaine in his system dampening the sparks of jealousy. Scott kept his distance, playing darts with a hustler. But he kept one eye on us, waiting for, hoping for, an explosion of drama. Sandra was absorbed with the attentions of her admirers, hustlers who, she failed to realize, flocked near her because every trick’s fantasy was to make it with a straight boy. Being seen with her would up their price in the waning minutes before last call.
Suddenly, Masako hopped off her barstool and raced out the door. I caught up just in time to find her retching on the sidewalk.
