Billy Lives

by Gary Brandner

  “It will be a long time before I forget that,” Mr. Lockett said. “And a long time before I forgive the people responsible for it.”

  “It was in doubtful taste,” Hardeman agreed, “but I’m sure the people there meant no disrespect to Billy or to you.”

  Helen Lockett came through a swinging door and crossed the living room to join her husband. She brought with her the aroma of fresh baked bread. Thomas Lockett made the introductions.

  “Please come in, Mr. Hardeman,” she said. “I hope you can stay for dinner.”

  “Thank you, but I’ve got a car waiting for me outside. I’ll eat at the hotel.”

  “The hotel food in this town is unfit for human consumption,” said Thomas Lockett. He looked out the open door toward the street. “I see you’ve got Art Ingersoll’s cab. If I know that fat blabberbouth, he’s already given you a few of his own notions about Billy.”

  “As a matter of fact, he has,” Hardeman admitted.

  “Why don’t you pay him off, and I’ll take you to your hotel after dinner.”

  After a token protest, Hardeman accepted the invitation. He went out and settled with Ingersoll, who was surly about having his expected windfall cut off; then he carried his small bag back into the Lockett’s house.

  Dinner was a generous pot roast in rich brown gravy. Potatoes, carrots and onions were roasted and browned with the meat. They drank rich coffee and finished up with squares of dark chocolate cake. Hardeman found the meal delicious and said so, to Mrs. Lockett’s obvious pleasure.

  After dinner Mr. Lockett and Hardeman took second cups of coffee into the living room and sat down. Mrs. Lockett stayed behind to clean up the dinner dishes. She would just stack them in the sink, she said, then join the men.

  The living room, or front room as Hardeman noted the Locketts called it, was furnished with overstuffed pieces from forty years ago and marble-top tables and shelves that used to be called knicknacks, along with newer things. There was no apparent attempt at achieving an effect or a certain style, but the room had a charm that made you want to smile when you walked in. Thomas Lockett settled into what was obviously “his chair.” Hardeman sat in a comfortable wingback facing him.

  “All right, what was it you wanted to know about Billy?” Mr. Lockett asked.

  “What kind of a boy was he?” Hardeman said, thinking as he did so how inane it sounded.

  Thomas Lockett thought it over. “I guess if I had to come up with just one word to describe Billy, the word would be lucky.”

  “Lucky?” Hardeman repeated.

  “I’ll try to explain. Billy was my son, and I was always proud of him, you understand, but the truth is he was never awfully good at anything. Not bad, but just not outstanding. But one way or another, he always made out. He was no better than average in school, I could see that, but when the important exam came up Billy would somehow get the right answers and come out near the top. He played on the baseball team, that was the only sport he made a letter in. Outfielder. He couldn’t hit much, but it seemed when the winning runs were on base he could bloop one off the end of the bat that would drop just out of somebody’s reach, and Billy would be the hero of the game. Luck.”

  Thomas Lockett paused to take a look back at the closed door leading to the kitchen. “I’d never say this with my wife present, but I personally don’t think Billy was much of a musician, either. I played some dance band trumpet in my younger days, so I know something about it. It’s true that Billy worked as hard at his music as he did at anything, which is not to say he knocked himself out. The thing is, he just never had any real talent. Not for music. What he had was a genius for making people like him and believe in him. That’s what came through when he played and sang — likability, believability. Luck.”

  Abruptly the father’s shoulders slumped, and his face seemed to age. “But when Billy’s luck ran out, it ran out all at once, didn’t it.”

  Mrs. Lockett came in from the kitchen, saving Hardeman from having to respond.

  “Is anyone ready for another piece of cake?”

  Both men declined the cake, and Mrs. Lockett took a seat near her husband.

  “So you’re writing a book about our Billy,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never read any of your books, Mr. Hardeman. But then, I never was much of a reader. Maybe Thomas has.”

  “Afraid not,” said Mr. Lockett. “I don’t read much but John D. MacDonald any more. Everybody else is writing pornography or trying to sell me his crackpot political ideas. Pornography puts me to sleep and I can come up with my own crackpot ideas.”

  Hardeman smiled, liking the man.

  “I hope your book will treat Billy kindly,” Mrs. Lockett said. There was an unexpected quaver in her voice. “The things they’ve been writing in some of the magazines aren’t very nice.”

  “I try never to write unkindly about anyone,” Hardeman said.

  Mrs. Lockett looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe you’d like to see some pictures of Billy when he was a little boy?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  Billy’s mother left the room and returned with a thick album of photographs. Hardeman moved over to the sofa and sat next to her as she turned the pages. Thomas Lockett stayed in his chair.

  The earliest pictures were of a round-faced, smiling baby posed in a crib or holding a toy or in the arms of a younger, slimmer Helen Lockett. The pictures that followed were those that might be found in any family album. A bundled up Billy standing next to a snowman. Billy holding onto a pet dog. Billy on a new bicycle. Billy looking uncomfortable in a necktie. Hardeman could almost see the boy grow before his eyes as a plant seems to grow in stop-motion photography.

  Conspicuously missing were any pictures of Billy with friends his own age. Even in group shots he always stood a little apart. A solitary boy. A loner. A gift for being loved, but unable to love in return?

  The last picture of Billy in the album showed a teenage boy with longish blond hair, holding a guitar. The boy’s eyes had the distracted look of seeing something beyond the camera that was so familiar in later pictures of Billy.

  “He was sixteen here,” Mrs. Lockett said. “It was taken just before he left home. We have a scrapbook of pictures and clippings about Billy after he became famous, but I don’t suppose you’d want to see them.”

  “Thanks, I’ve probably seen most of those,” Hardeman said. He cleared his throat, wanting to ask more, but reluctant to bring back painful memories to these people. “How … how did you feel about Billy’s leaving home?”

  Thomas Lockett answered. “We were absolutely against it. I’d always thought Billy would go on to college, but the parents don’t make those decisions any more. Billy was too restless. He had a year left to go in high school. There was no way to stop him, so all I could do was help him. Billy did agree that if he wasn’t able to support himself in two years he’d come home and finish school. Well, I told you about Billy’s luck. A year after he left home he was working steadily in clubs and making records. Then he signed a contract with Al Fessler, and you know what happened after that.”

  Mrs. Lockett put the album away, they all had another piece of cake, and at eight o’clock Thomas Lockett drove Hardeman to his hotel. It was a turn-of-the-century brick building with small, clean rooms that smelled of fresh linen. The night was so quiet it seemed lined with velvet. Hardeman slept like an innocent and was up early for a huge breakfast before taxiing to the airport to catch the twin Beech out of town.

  On the flight back to Los Angeles Hardeman penciled a few notes on his impressions of Belford and the meeting with the Locketts. He read the notes over and nodded to himself, satisfied. He knew the writing would go well today, and tomorrow he would be with Joyce.

  CHAPTER 21

  Conn Driscoll stretched out on the bed until his joints creaked. He let out a long, contented sigh and turned his head to grin at the lithe, auburn-haired woman who lay besid
e him. He leaned toward her and kissed her lightly at the corner of her mouth.

  “Delicious,” he said.

  Joyce Hardeman smiled back at him. “My, aren’t we pleased with ourself today.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, “tell me you didn’t enjoy it.”

  “Better than watching a bad old movie,” she teased.

  “What about a good old movie?”

  She put a finger to her cheek and pretended to consider. “That would be a difficult choice. Who’s in the movie?”

  Driscoll laughed. “Okay, I won’t insist on comparisons.” He laid a hand on the smooth, taut skin of her stomach. Joyce put her hand on top of his.

  “Can you reach my cigarettes?” she said.

  He turned away from her for a moment and took the package of Parliaments from the night stand. He shook one out of the pack and gave it to her, chuckling as he touched the flame of her lighter to the cigarette.

  “What’s funny?” she said.

  “I am reminded of an old joke.”

  “Well?”

  “The guy says to the girl, ‘Do you smoke after sex?’ and she says, ‘No, but I perspire a lot.’”

  “God, I am trapped with a bedroom comedian.”

  “Would you like to hear my impression of W.C. Fields?”

  “Not if I have another choice.”

  “John Wayne?”

  “God!”

  “You have no appreciation for talent.”

  Joyce reached down and stroked his relaxed organ. “I don’t know about that.”

  He kissed her, feeling his desire stirring again, but he could not help noticing that while she returned his kiss, she was carefully holding her cigarette so the ashes would not fall in the bed.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “A quarter to six. Hungry?”

  “No, I had a late lunch.”

  “Then who cares what time it is?”

  “I have some work I brought home with me that I should be getting started on.”

  “Work? After I connived to get a whole evening free from promoting Billy?”

  “I have to earn a living, you know, I’m not a madcap heiress.”

  “Why don’t you play hooky tonight? I’ve got a pair of freebies to the Dodger game.”

  “No, thanks, baseball is not really my thing.”

  “Is it baseball or is it Conn Driscoll?”

  “You can lie here naked in my bed and ask that?”

  “It’s just that I’ve known you three weeks now, and you’ve never let me take you out anywhere.”

  “Don’t you like coming here?”

  “Of course I do. It’s just that I’d like to take you somewhere once in a while. Show you off.”

  “Like a trophy?”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Yes, I know, Conn, but you’re pushing me, and that makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Well, excuse me,” he said moodily.

  She reached over and ran a finger down his jaw and across the line of his lips. “We’re not going to sulk now, are we?”

  Driscoll held the stern expression as long as he could, then relaxed into a grin. “Are you sure that at one time you weren’t a nurse?”

  “Why?”

  “All this ‘we’ business.”

  She kissed him lightly on the mouth and stepped out of bed. “Shower time.”

  “We?” he said hopefully.

  “No, you. I really do have work to do, and taking a shower together would not put me in the right frame of mind.”

  Driscoll sighed with elaborate resignation and padded into Joyce’s blue-tiled bathroom. There he showered, lathering himself generously with her scented soap, and came out into the bedroom rubbing himself dry with one of her oversize bath towels. Joyce was not in the room.

  “How about tomorrow night?” he called.

  “Can’t,” she answered from the living room. “I have an art class.”

  “Friday?”

  “I’m having dinner with Dean.”

  Driscoll fastened the towel around his waist and walked to the doorway. “How come you go out to dinner with him but not with me?”

  Joyce was seated at a small desk, wearing a short, pale green robe. She turned from the papers she was studying to look at Driscoll. “Would you rather I went out to dinner with you and brought Dean up here?”

  “Damn it, Joyce, I’m serious.”

  “I know you are.”

  “And you’re not ready to be serious, is that it?”

  Her answer was a long, level look.

  Driscoll went back into the bedroom and hurried his dressing. He deliberately did not watch Joyce as she came in and prepared to take her shower. He recognized the dull ache in the region of his solar plexus as jealousy. Jealousy, for Christ sake, that most juvenile and unrewarding of emotions. He had thought himself much too sophisticated for that. Echoes of high school days — waiting in the shadows for the hated rival to emerge from the house of the loved one, terrible imaginings of their intimacies. By now, he told himself, he should be cured of such nonsense.

  He finished putting his clothes on. She stood in the bathroom doorway, still wearing the robe, waiting for him to leave.

  “Okay,” he said, putting on a smile, “no more serious.”

  “Not for a while, anyway,” she said.

  “It’s a deal. I’ll call you.”

  She watched him, saying nothing.

  He wanted to swing jauntily out of the apartment without looking back, but he could not make himself do it. He went over and put his arms around Joyce and kissed her. She kissed him back, but there was a coolness between them that had not been there before.

  “See you,” he said.

  “See you.”

  He walked out through the living room and let himself out.

  • • •

  Driscoll’s mood was unsettled as he pulled onto the San Diego Freeway and headed south for the Marina. It was the closest he and Joyce had come to having a real argument, and he didn’t like it. What depressed him the most was that he knew he was wrong. Neither he nor Joyce had made any committments other than to enjoy each other when circumstances permitted. An arrangement like that had always suited him before, so why should it be any different this time?

  Could he be falling in love?

  He rejected the idea at once. He was too hip for such childish notions. Besides, he had too many other things going for him right now.

  Tonight, however, he did need a diversion to keep his thoughts off Joyce Hardeman. The baseball game. That would do it. While he was not an all-out fan, Driscoll enjoyed baseball. The setting was restful and orderly — red dirt infield, clean white chalk lines, rich green grass. Yes, it was still real grass at Dodger Stadium. The geometric pattern of the diamond was pleasing to his eye, and the shifting strategies of the game itself stimulated his mind.

  But whom to go with? Going to a baseball game alone was unthinkable. None of the women he knew cared anything about sports, and Driscoll hated it when they faked an interest. The married men among his friends were unlikely to go out on such short notice. The unmarried men who came to mind were more interested in adding to their scores at the singles bars.

  A name popped suddenly into his mind. Kitty Girodian. She seemed like the kind of a girl who just might enjoy a baseball game. And he would not have to put on an act to entertain her. What the hell, he had nothing to lose.

  At the first opportunity Driscoll pulled off the freeway and called Kitty’s number from a telephone booth outside a service station.

  “A baseball game? Tonight?”

  “I know this is short notice, but I just got the tickets from a sportswriter friend this afternoon.”

  “Who’s playing?”

  “Dodgers and the Reds.”

  “That ought to be good. Will you feed me at the ballpark?”

  “All you can eat.”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  “Great. I’ll pic
k you up in a few minutes.” Driscoll left the phone booth whistling.

  The baseball game turned out to be a huge success. Not only did the Dodgers win a thriller from Cincinnati, 7-6, but Kitty Girodian showed a real knowledge of the game and an enthusiasm that delighted Driscoll. They ate hot dogs and drank beer and criticized the umpires.

  On the way home they talked animatedly about the game. Sometimes in making a point Kitty would touch his leg lightly with her fingers. Driscoll found himself unusually sensitive to her touch.

  “That was fun tonight,” he said, turning up Kitty’s street in Palms. “I mean it.”

  “Good. It was fun for me too. That was my first ball game since I’ve been in Los Angeles.”

  “I’m glad it was a good game,” he said.

  “I think I would have had a good time even if we had lost 10-0.”

  Driscoll looked over at the dark-eyed girl and laughed. “Me too, only not quite as good.”

  She answered his laugh, and Driscoll returned his attention to the apartment-lined street.

  “Am I seeing things,” he said, “or is that really a parking place right in front of your building?”

  “I believe it is,” she said. “Fantastic. Another first for me in Los Angeles.”

  Driscoll pulled into the vacant space and got out. He went around to open the door for Kitty, and they walked together through the tropical shrubbery to the entrance. Kitty fished through her bag for a key, found it, and looked up at Driscoll. Her eyes seemed luminous in the dark. Neither of them were laughing now.

  “Thanks for the game,” she said. “I really enjoyed myself.”

  “So did I,” he said. He put his hands behind her shoulders and she came easily into his arms. He kissed her and could not help comparing her kiss to Joyce Hardeman’s. Kitty’s was softer and not as insistent, but it seemed more spontaneous and promised other things to come. Driscoll knew she was going to ask him to come in. He also knew that if he went inside with her, they would wind up in bed.

  He said, “I know you’ve got to go to work tomorrow, and so do I, so I won’t keep you out here necking until all hours.”

  She looked up at him, a little surprised, then smiled and fitted her key into the lock. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ll have to try this on a weekend.”