La Brava

by Elmore Leonard

  "I passed through it once," LaBrava said, "on my way to Independence, Missouri. It looked like a pretty nice town."

  "Passed through it... You know, I was thinking," Joe Stella said, pouring. "Guy like you--I could fire three of my dumbbells, pay you twelve bucks an hour and give you just the cream, supervisory type work. What would you say to that?"

  Chapter 10

  AGAIN HE EXPERIENCED the strange sense of time. Having lunch on the front porch of the Cardozo Hotel with a movie star out of his memory. She wore dark glasses, round black ones, and a wide-brimmed Panama straight across her eyes. He watched her.

  He watched her take dainty bites of marinated conch, raising the fork in her left hand upside down, her moves unhurried. He watched her break off a piece of French bread, hold it close to her face, elbow resting on the table, wrist bent, staring out of shade at the ocean in sunlight, then slowly bring the piece of bread to her mouth, not looking at it, and he would see her lips part to receive the bread and then close and he would see the movie star's masseter begin to work, still unhurried. He wasn't sure where the masseter was located, Franny hadn't told him that. Franny said the movie star used some kind of secret cream, placenta tissue extract, and very likely said Q and X with exaggerated emphasis in front of mirrors and wore sunglasses till sundown so she wouldn't get squint wrinkles. His gaze would shift briefly from Jean Shaw and he would see:

  Franny sitting on the wall in the strip of oceanfront park across the street, taking Polaroid shots of the hotels. Franny in cutoffs cut so high they must be choking her.

  Della Robbia women in lawn chairs talking about Medicare and Social Security.

  Maurice coming along Ocean Drive with a grocery sack, skinny legs, faded yellow shorts that reached almost to his knees.

  Cars with tourists passing slowly, sightseeing.

  A young Cuban guy talking to Franny now. The guy fooling with his ear, Franny laughing. The guy posing, hand on his hip, seductive, strange, as Franny aimed her Polaroid at him.

  And his eyes, behind his own sunglasses, would slide back to the movie star's face, pale but in full color. The skin was smooth, without a trace of what might appear to be a tuck, a lift. He believed it didn't matter even if she'd had one. He believed he was in love with her face.

  She would turn her head to him and seem to smile, used to being looked at. He wanted to see her eyes but would have to wait.

  She said, "You know, that's a lovely shirt." Then surprised him, lowered her sunglasses to the slender tip of her nose, letting him see in daylight a line beneath each of her eyes, slightly puffed, a look that he liked, a slight imperfection. She replaced her glasses as she said, "I don't believe I've ever called a man's shirt lovely before, but it is. I love hibiscus." She said, "I almost married a man who wore only dark brown shirts and always with a dark brown necktie. Odd?... Maybe not. He made three thousand dollars a week as a screen writer, he kept an apartment at the Chateau Marmont and died of malnutrition." She said, "I want to see more of your work, I think it's stunning. Will you show me?"

  He said, "I want to photograph you."

  "I've been photographed."

  "Maybe you have..."

  Maurice said, "Well well well," on the street side of the stone-slab porch railing, stepping up on the base to look at their table. "What're you having, conch? You ever see it they take it out of the shell? You wouldn't eat it. Gimme a bite." He lowered the grocery sack to the railing and leaned over it, face raised waiting as Jean Shaw speared a piece of conch and offered it.

  "Another? You can have the rest, I'm finished."

  "I don't want to wreck my appetite. We're eating in tonight, fried steak and onions, railroad-style. Gimme a sip--whatever it is."

  She offered her glass. "Plain old Scotch."

  "How many you had?"

  She looked at LaBrava. "How many, six, seven?"

  Maurice said, "It's three o'clock in the afternoon!"

  "We've had two, Maury. Don't have a heart attack." In that quiet, unhurried tone. He left them and she said, "Do you like his shorts? They have to be at least twenty years old. He may be the most eccentric guy I know. And I've known a few, I'll tell you."

  "Well, he's different," LaBrava said.

  He saw Franny, alone now, farther down the beach... Paco Boza coming along the sidewalk in his wheelchair, a ghetto blaster in his lap; it looked like an accordion.

  "Joe, when you're as well off as Maury and you choose to live in a place like the Della Robbia, that's eccentric."

  "He said he used to have money, but I don't know that he has that much now."

  She said, "Oh," and paused.

  He said, "That was my understanding. Had it and spent it." He could hear Paco's blaster now, turned up all the way. "In fact the other night, he was telling me when he sold the hotel next door, the Andrea, he could've kicked himself for not waiting, get a better price."

  She said, "Does he confide in you?"

  "I wouldn't say he confides."

  "But you're close. I know he likes you, a lot."

  "Yeah, we get along. We argue all the time, but that's part of the routine."

  "He's an actor, Joe. He plays the crabby but loveable retired bookie, hangs out at Wolfie's, Picciolo's, all those places from the old days."

  "That's his age--he lives in the past."

  "He's a fox, Joe. Don't ever sell him short."

  He wanted to say, Wait a minute, what're we talking about exactly? But now Paco Boza was rolling toward them, his ghetto box playing soul against his body, Paco letting it run up through his shoulders and down his arms to turn the silver wheels of the wheelchair wired to the beat, no hurry or worry in the world.

  "Hey, the picture man. When do I get my pictures, man?"

  LaBrava told him maybe in a few days. Maybe sooner. Come back when you're not busy.

  Paco Boza left them, taking his sound down the street, soul with a kick that got into LaBrava sitting there in his sunglasses drinking Scotch with a movie star on the porch of the Cardozo Hotel.

  She said, "The poor guy. He's so young." He told her there was nothing wrong with Paco. He had stolen the chair from Eastern Airlines, had his girlfriend push him out of Miami International in it because he didn't like to walk and because he thought it was cool, a way for people to identify him. She said, "What does he do?" and he told her about two-hundred-dollars worth of cocaine a day. She said, "You're part of this, you feel it." She said, "I love to watch you. You don't miss anything, do you?" He did not move or speak now. Close to him she said, "You think you're hidden, but I can see you in there; Mr. LaBrava. Show me your pictures."

  "At Evelyn's gallery they sip wine and look at my photographs..."

  Looking at them now spread over the formica table, Jean Shaw picking up each print and studying it closely--in his rooms on the second floor of the Della Robbia. 201. He paid for the rooms, he had been living here eight months, but there was nothing of him in the rooms. They were rooms in a hotel. He had not got around to mounting or hanging any of his prints, or was sure there were any he cared to look at every day. There were other prints in envelope sleeves in the bookcase and among magazines on the coffee table. He told her Aperture magazine had contacted him about doing a book. Call it South Beach. Get all the old people, the art deco look. He was working on it now. No, he was thinking about it more than he was working on it. He wanted to do it. He wouldn't mind having a coffee-table book on his coffee table. It seemed strange though--ask thirty or forty dollars for a book full of pictures of people who'd never see it, never be able to afford it.

  "At the gallery they sip wine and look at my pictures. They say things like, 'I see his approach to art as retaliation, a frontal attack against the assumptions of a technological society.'

  "They say, 'His work is a compendium of humanity's defeat at the hands of venture capital.'

  "They say, 'It's obvious he sees his work as an exorcism, his forty days in the desert.' Or, another one, 'They're self-portraits. He
sees himself as dispossessed, unassimilated.'

  "The review in the paper said, 'The aesthetic sub-text of his work is the systematic exposure of artistic pretension.' I thought I was just taking pictures."

  Jean Shaw said, "Simplicity. It is what it is." Then paused. "And what it isn't, too. Is that what you're saying?"

  He didn't want her to try so hard. "I heard one guy at the gallery--it was his wife or somebody who said I was dispossessed, unassimilated, and the guy said, 'I think he takes pictures to make a buck, and anything else is fringe.' I would've kissed the guy, but it might've ruined his perspective."

  Jean Shaw said, studying a print, "They try to pose, and not knowing how they reveal themselves."

  He liked that. That wasn't bad.

  "Your style is the absence of style. Would you say?"

  He said, "No tricky angles," because he didn't know if he had a style or not. "I'm not good at tricky angles."

  "Some of them look like actors. I mean like they're made up, costumed."

  "I know what you mean."

  "When you're shooting them, what do you see?"

  "What do I see? I see what I'm shooting. I wonder if I have enough light. Or too much."

  "Come on. Tell me."

  "I see 'images whose meanings exceed the local circumstances that provide their occasion.' "

  "Who said that?"

  "Walker Evans. Or somebody who said he did."

  "What do you think about when you look at your own work?"

  "I wonder why I can't shoot like Stieglitz."

  "How long have you been doing it?"

  "Or why I'll never be able to. I wonder why my people don't look at me the way August Sander's people looked at him. I wonder if I should have moved in closer, taken one step to the right or left."

  There was a silence.

  "What else do you see?"

  "But it isn't what I see, is it? It's what I wonder when I look at the picture. I wonder if I'll ever have enough confidence."

  She said, "Yes? What else?"

  "I wonder, most of all I wonder what the people are doing now. Or if they're still like that, the way I shot them."

  He heard her say, in the quiet afternoon apartment, "What do you see when you look at me?"

  And almost answered, turning from the table of black and white prints. Almost. But as soon as he was facing her, close to her, he knew better than to speak, break the silence and have to start over. No, they were now where they wanted to be, if he could feel or sense anything at all. So he touched the face he had watched on the screen, bringing up one hand and then the other just before he brought his mouth to hers and felt her hands slide over his ribs.

  They went into the bedroom and undressed without a word to make love in dimmed silence, to make love as soon as they were in bed and she brought him between her legs, Joe LaBrava believing this was unbelievable. Look at him. He was making love to Jean Shaw, he was honest-to-God making love to Jean Shaw in real life. He didn't want to be watching, he wanted to be overwhelmed by it, by Jean Shaw, making love to her, but he didn't want to just do it either, he wanted the overwhelming feeling of it to take hold and carry them away. But her eyes were closed and maybe she was just doing it, doing it with him, moving with him, but she could be doing it without him because he didn't know where she was with her eyes closed so tight. He wanted to see her eyes and he wanted her to see him ... so close to her face, her hair, her skin and not a blemish, not a trace of a tiny scar... He had to stop thinking if he was going to be overwhelmed. He had to let himself be overwhelmed...

  It wasn't something he would tell anyone. He would never do that. Though it seemed like the kind of thing you might tell a stranger on a train without naming names. On a train? Come on. He was making an old-time movie out of it looking for a way to tell it. Or maybe write it in a diary. Though he could never imagine, under any circumstances, even in solitary confinement, writing or talking to himself.

  No, he would never be able to tell anyone there was more to making love to a movie star than just... making love. Or, maybe he should qualify it. Say, making love to a movie star the first time... there was more to it than just making love. The idea of it, the anticipation, the realization, was more overwhelming than the doing of it. Although he could not say that would be true of all movie stars.

  What he had almost said to her when she said, "What do you see when you look at me?" was:

  "The first woman I ever fell in love with, when I was twelve years old."

  But the mood, something, had saved him from maybe getting pushed out the window. He was able to move through the next steps letting heavy breathing bring them along, into the bedroom to the act itself. But you see, with all the anticipation, thinking back twenty-five years to the first time you saw her and were knocked out by her, finally when you're there and it's happening, it's almost impossible to quit thinking about how great it's going to be, how unbelievable, and do it without watching yourself doing it.

  The movie star smoked a cigarette after. In bed. She actually smoked a cigarette. He went in the kitchen, fixed a couple of light Scotches and brought them back. The movie star acted a little like a kitten. She seemed much younger with her clothes off, not at all self-conscious. She gave him those secret looks, sly smiles that were familiar. (But did she have secrets? Now?) She asked him how he would photograph her. He said he'd like to think about it.

  What he thought about though, what he was most aware of, was a feeling. It was not unlike the way he felt and wondered about things when he was looking at his photographs.

  He felt--lying in bed with Jean Shaw, after--relief. There, that was done.

  And wondered if he had learned anything about illusions, since that time when he was twelve years old and first fell in love.

  There were other feelings he had that he would save and look at later. All things considered, he felt pretty good. The movie star was a regular person. Underneath it all, she was. Except that she was never a regular person for very long.

  She said, "You're good for me, Joe. Do you know that?"

  Familiar. But he didn't know the next line, what he was supposed to say, and the words that came to mind were dumb. So he smiled a tired smile and patted her thigh, twice, and left his hand there.

  She said, "I have a feeling you're the best thing that could happen to me, Joe."

  Another one, so familiar. He sipped his Scotch. He looked at the ceiling and a scene from Deadfall, early in the picture, began to play in his mind. Jean Shaw saying to Robert Mitchum, "I have a feeling you're the best thing that could happen to me... Steve."

  And Robert Mitchum, giving her that sleepy look, said...

  Chapter 11

  THERE WAS THE Had a Piece Lately Bar. There was the Play House, the Turf Pub. There was Cheeky's. "Don't go in there without me," Cundo Rey said. "They liable to tear you to pieces, fight over you."

  "Queers," Nobles said. "I love queers. Jesus."

  There was Pier Park. Go in there at night and get anything you want, light up your head.

  Nobles said, "Those guys have dough, huh, that sell it."

  Cundo Rey said, "Yes, is true." Low behind the wheel of the Trans Am, holding the beast in as they cruised, he said, "But they got guns."

  Nobles said, "Shit, who hasn't."

  They cruised Collins Avenue and Washington, staying south of the Lincoln Road Mall, Nobles peering through smoked glass at the activity along the streets, all the little eating places and stores and bitty hotels, every one of the hotels with those metal chairs out front. Nobles said, "You ever see so many foreigners in your life?" After a few more blocks of sightseeing he said, "I think I'm having an idea."

  Cundo Rey was learning not to say anything important unless he was sure Nobles was listening. Nobles didn't listen to very much. Sometimes Cundo wanted to tie him to a chair and press a knife against him and say, "Listen to me!" Shout it in the man's ear.

  He said, "I thought you had an idea already."

 
"I got all kinds of 'em."

  He was listening. Talk about him, he listened.

  "The woman is still there," Cundo Rey said. "I saw her again. The guy is there, I think. I didn't see him good to know what he look like, but he's there. Why wouldn't he be, if he live there?"

  "I'm waiting on the spirit to move me. It ain't the same as heisting cars, Jose. You gotta be in tune." Nose pressed to the side window. "You know what it's like down here, you read the signs? It's like being in a foreign country."

  "You want to hear my idea?" Cundo Rey said.

  "I want to get something to eat, partner. My tummy says it's time."

  "Listen to my idea."

  "Well, go ahead."

  "Shoot the guy," Cundo Rey said. "You want to shoot him, shoot him. You want to shoot him in the back, get it over with, it's okay. You want to use a knife, you want to push him off a roof--any way you like, okay."

  "That's some idea, chico."

  "No, that's not the idea. That's to get him out of the way, so you can think of the woman."

  "Watch the road. I don't want us having a accident."

  "Okay, you want the woman? You know how to get her?"

  "I'm certainly anxious to hear."

  "You save her life."

  "I save her life. Like out swimming?"

  "Listen to me, all right? You listening?"

  "Go ahead."

  "She gets a call on the telephone or she gets a letter that say, Pay me some money or I'm going to kill you. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand--how much has she got? You have to figure that out, how much you want to ask for. Okay, then you find the guy that sent her the letter and kill him. You her hero and she loves you. She say, take me, take my money, anything you want, baby, I'm yours."

  "I find the guy sent her the letter..."

  "Exactly."

  "What guy?"

  "Any guy. What difference does it make? Go in the La Playa Hotel, down the end of this street, is full of guys you can use. Set the guy up--don't you know anything? Make it look like he's the guy, see. Tell him to come to her room in the hotel--somebody want to buy some poppers from him. He goes up there, you shoot him. The woman say, 'Oh, my hero, you save my life.' She give you anything you want."