Skinflick

by Joseph Hansen

  She went away. So did the bartender. Dave worked his way through clusters of balding men talking talent, talking albums, talking contracts, to the little platform. One of the angular youths had gone off. The other one sat at the keyboard, fiddling with switches, playing runs. Dave stepped up onto the platform. Drumsticks lay crossed on a snare. He picked one up and tapped a cymbal. The youth at the keyboard turned to him, flinching.

  “Mustn’t touch,” he said.

  Dave put the stick down carefully and told him about Charleen and Gerald Dawson.

  “He’s a bad dancer,” the skinny youth said. “The worst she ever brought. But she only brought the other ones once. They liked it. He hated it. It figured she’d bring him back over and over.”

  “Sensitive to others, was she?” Dave said.

  “He was a jerk. He deserved it. What did he need with her? She was like a ten-year-old. No boobs, no nothing. But he fell all over himself. She could make him do anything. And she wasn’t even smart.”

  “You sound like you knew her,” Dave said.

  His hair was black and lank, lusterless, uncombed. It went inside the greasy collar of his shirt when he shook his head. He ran long, knuckly fingers under it to free it. “You sit up here and run through the same sets night after night it gets mechanical and boring,” he said. “So I watch, you know? What you see isn’t Aldrich or Coppola or Scorsese, and it’s only clips, but I make up the rest of the script. She’s this turkey-ranch hick, right? And she runs away from Gobbler Gulch to the bright lights, and the town preacher comes to fetch her and it’s Sadie Thompson all over again. You know that old Joan Crawford flick? That was John Huston’s father in that, did you know? John Huston is old as God himself. That was a long time ago, man.”

  “You made this up,” Dave said. “But you never talked to her?”

  “Did I say that?” The knuckly fingers played a phrase from “The Maid with the Flaxen Hair.” The electronic sounds came out tinkling, silvery. “I talked to her. She was a talker. Anybody she could grab. She was going to get into films. She was peddling her scrawny little ass up and down the Strip all night. And the Johns she got all told her the same thing. They were agents, directors, producers. They’d get her into films. And she believed them. They told her she had beautiful facial planes, all right?” Woodwinds faked themselves inside the circuitry. What came from under his fingers sounded tender, yearning. It contradicted the sourness of his words.

  “What did you tell her?” Dave asked. “That you could get her a recording contract?”

  “My sheets needed changing,” he said. “My decor is piles of dirty laundry. She liked my cock very much but I don’t think my life-style convinced her I had the clout to help her with her career.” He snapped off a little what-the-hell laugh but the music kept on sounding sentimental.

  “Dawson wasn’t an agent, a director, a producer,” Dave said. “He couldn’t get her into pictures.”

  “I don’t know.” The shoulders went up and down without affecting the smooth work the fingers were doing. “He sure as hell didn’t look it. Him I’d have figured to be paying the rent or something, you know? But about the time I saw him with her first, a little before, she said she’d made it. She had a part. A big part. She was going to be a movie star. She’d even met the producer.”

  “Did she name him?” Dave said.

  “How could she name him? Somebody drives a new Seville along here waving an open door at the girls on the sidewalk—he’s going to give his real name?” The Debussy piece came to an end. He looked at Dave. “Who are you and what do you want with her?”

  “You said the man would do anything for her,” Dave told him. “I think he died for her. He died, that’s for sure. If I can find her, maybe she can tell me why.”

  “She hasn’t been around,” the musician said.

  “For how long?” Dave said. He named the date of Gerald Dawson’s death. “Would that be the last time?”

  “You think she’s dead?” His skin never saw sunlight. The darkness of his hair and moustache, the intensity of the little light glaring off the sheet music on the instrument, reflecting into his face, made it look like ivory. Now it turned to chalk. “Christ, she was only sixteen.”

  “Is the date right?” Dave said.

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know. Who reads calendars all the time? Every night is the same in here.” His mouth trembled. He sounded as if he were going to cry. “Jesus. I guess that’s right. Ten days ago, right? Yeah, it must have been about that long.”

  “She hasn’t been back to her apartment,” Dave said. “Where else would she go?”

  “I don’t know, man. She slept around, right? For bread. I mean, nobody’s ever going to get her into that glass slipper. A pumpkin is always going to be a pumpkin for her. What a dumb, crazy little kid.”

  “Do you write your own lyrics?” Dave said.

  He grinned wanly. “That’s a quote from some flick.” But the tune under his fingers now was “Pavane for a Dead Princess,” the celesta sound giving it a toy-shop aptness. “Who knows? You could check who’s suddenly signed million-dollar contracts and moved into Beverly Hills mansions.”

  “Million-dollar contracts I don’t think she’d get,” Dave said. “Did you ever hear of a producer called Odum? Spence Odum?”

  “They keep making those pictures about that Little League baseball team. The Bad News Bears. She could be in the next one. The Bad News Bears Meet the Dirty Old Men?”

  “She didn’t tell you this producer who signed her was named Spence Odum?”

  “She didn’t give me the name,” he said. “She stuck out her tongue when I asked her. She flounced away, right? Grammar-school stuff. ‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.’” He made his voice simpering. His hand flipped switches. Ravel mourned. Then stopped. The cover came down over the keyboards. “I’ve got to eat.”

  Dave gave him a card. “If you remember anything about her that you haven’t told me, call me, will you?”

  The card went into a shirt pocket where there were ball-point pens and cigarettes. The skeletal thighs slid off the high bench. “Later,” he said, and dropped off the platform and wove in and out through the knots of talkers, and after a pause to put on dark glasses, out into what was left of the daylight. Dave set down his unfinished drink and followed. Eating still went on. So did Peter Frampton. The temperature had cooled and shirts had come from nowhere to cover the suntan-oiled shoulders. Priss came at him, empty tray at her side.

  “Charleen Sims,” she said. “A big, dumb kid was here with a picture. Scrawny little blond. In a high-school yearbook from some tacky little town in the boonies. Showing her picture to everybody. Had anybody seen Charleen? I forgot before.”

  “Now is a good time,” Dave said. “What did this big, dumb kid look like? Did he have a name? What was the name on the yearbook? What tacky little town in the boonies?”

  “You know what you could take him for?” she asked.

  “A two-toed sloth?” Dave said.

  “Big Foot,” she said. “The monster that’s supposed to run the woods in Oregon or Washington or someplace? You’ve seen those fake movies, haven’t you? Bad, grainy, eight-millimeter shots of some naked guy with a lot of hair and beard tromping through the underbrush? They don’t have sound but you can hear the grunts?”

  “He didn’t grunt his name for you?”

  “He was very paranoid. No names.” She clasped the empty tray to her chest with crossed arms. “He hung onto that book like this, wouldn’t let anybody see the cover, only her picture. He didn’t want questions, just answers: where was she. A week later he was back. It was sad. He’d lost the book. It figured. Charleen was dumb but she’d wised up a little here. He was childish. Naturally somebody ripped him off. He was lucky they left him his undershorts. He cried about the book, really cried, like a little kid. It was the only picture of Charleen he owned.” She looked past Dave, frowned and nodded. “I’ve got to pick up an order. Look, I’m sor
ry I forgot before.”

  “One more second,” Dave said. “Have you seen him lately? Big Foot?”

  “No, it’s been, what, two weeks? He was frantic. About the book. Thought he might have left it here. He hadn’t.” She tried to go inside. Dave stepped between her and the door.

  “You never saw her with him? He didn’t find her?”

  “There are nine million people in this town. How could he find her? He was lost, himself.” She tried to edge around him. “Look, I have to—”

  “What about Spence Odum? Did you see her with him?”

  “What’s a Spence Odum?”

  “A movie producer. You get film people in here.”

  “Did he tell you he was a producer?” she said. “They lie a lot, you know.”

  “A poster told me,” Dave said. “In Charleen’s apartment. Over her bed. He makes the kind of movies she might just luck into.”

  “I don’t get told people’s names much.” A shout came from the dusky sunset room. “Sorry—I have to go,” she said, and this time he let her.

  Kids with soft-drink cans sat on the hood and trunk of the Triumph where he’d left it, halfway up the hill. Skate boarders curvetted past him. He didn’t speak to the kids. When he stopped and took out keys, they got off the car.

  8

  THE SKY STILL HELD leftover daylight but when he tilted the Triumph up Horseshoe Canyon Trail the trees made it night. Big brown supermarket sacks crowded the passenger seat. He had to juggle with his knees to get a grip on them all. Slapped at by branches, he blundered through the dark to the cookhouse. He had to set the sacks down to unlock the door. Then it took him a while to find the light switch. The bulb that answered it was weak. He brought in the sacks and set them on a sink counter of cracked white tile that Amanda had already condemned.

  She’d condemned the cabinets too—of greasy, varnished pine, none of the doors willing to stay shut. The stove and refrigerator, chipped white enamel, were probably good for another ten years, but she wanted him to have new ones. He wondered what color she would choose—copper, cinnabar, heliotrope? He emptied the sacks, stocked cupboards and refrigerator, where the bulb was out but the air was cold. He’d bought a plastic bag of ice cubes. He unwrapped a squat drink glass—he’d picked up six at the supermarket—dropped ice into it, and built a martini.

  He left it to chill, crossed the uneven terra-cotta-tiled courtyard under beams from which vines hung in reaching tendrils, drooping big white trumpet flowers, to the third building, where fencing masks and foils rusted on knotty-pine walls. His stereo components sat on the dusty floor. He’d plugged them in and strung them together the day he hauled them up here from the rooms he’d shared with Doug above the gallery. Now he took the top album of the handiest stack and, without reading what it was, set the record on the turntable and started it going. The Mozart clarinet quintet. He turned up the volume, left the door open, and went back to the kitchen, the music trailing after him.

  He’d forgotten to buy a can opener, but one hung off a divider between windows over the sink. Food from who knew what cans it had opened for how many years crusted the blade, but he overlooked that and cranked open a can of chili. He dumped the contents into one of his new supermarket aluminum saucepans and, while it heated, shredded lettuce with a dull, shiny supermarket knife onto a supermarket plate. He chopped up half an onion. There was no place to put the other half. He let it he, shaved strings from a block of creamy Monterey jack cheese, then sat on the floor with his back against loose cabinet doors, drank the martini, listened to the music, and smelled the chili heating.

  “You son of a bitch.” Johnny Delgado stood in the doorway. He needed a shave. His clothes needed changing, had needed changing for some days. With a lot more gray in it than Dave remembered, his hair was shaggy and hung in his eyes. They glittered black in the bad light of the kitchen. He was unsteady on his feet. He hung onto the door frame and swayed. “You fucking vulture, perching in the trees, watching them tear me up, then coming down to feast off—feast off—the fucking carcass.”

  Dave got to his feet. “I can hardly find this place by daylight.” The chili was bubbling. He set down his glass, turned the fire low, and gave the chili a stir with a shiny new perforated cooking spoon. “And sober. What kind of guidance system have you got?” He cranked open coffee, rinsed out the sections of the drip maker he’d also brought from the supermarket, and used a yellow plastic scoop to put coffee into it. He filled a pan with water and set it on a burner. “They didn’t tear you up, Johnny. You tore yourself up.”

  “You took my job,” Delgado said.

  “I didn’t take it,” Dave said. He got the lettuce out of the bin in the bottom of the fridge and shredded another plateful and put the lettuce back. “You gave it back to Sequoia and they didn’t know what to do with it, so they’re handing out pieces of it. The piece I got is what I’m told I do best—a murder case with everything wrong with it.”

  “They never tried to get me.” Delgado found a kitchen stepstool and sat on it. “They’ve got my phone number.”

  “They had one.” Dave poured the chili over the beds of lettuce. “You’d left that place. No forwarding address.” He strewed handfuls of cheese shavings on the chili, where it started to melt right away. “You also hadn’t paid your bill in a while.” He sprinkled on the chopped onion. “They told Sequoia that.” He stripped cellophane off a glossy box that held cheap stainless-steel knives, forks, spoons. Each was in its own soft plastic sheath. He tore the sheaths off two forks, laid one fork on a plate, and held the plate out to Delgado. “It made a poor impression. So did the news that you were drunk all the time.”

  Delgado made a face at the plate. “I don’t want that. What’re you trying to do? Man, that takes balls. Steal somebody’s job, then offer to feed him.”

  “I offer to feed you,” Dave said, “because you’re a friend, you’re a guest in my house, I’ve got the food, and you need something in your stomach besides bourbon. Eat it, Johnny, or I’ll put it in your hair.” He pushed the plate at Delgado and Delgado grunted sourly and took it. He fumbled with the fork.

  “This is a crazy place,” he said.

  “And that fact got it through escrow very fast.” Dave stood at the counter and ate.

  “I went over there.” Delgado tilted his head. “Where the music’s coming from. What is that place?”

  “A man taught fencing there,” Dave said. “Eat.”

  “If I throw up,” Delgado said, “you deserve it.” He filled his mouth. It opened. Chili dribbled down his chin. His eyes got big. “Jesus! Hot!”

  “Cold chili never did much for me,” Dave said.

  Tilting the plate dangerously, Delgado got off the stool, kicked it aside, tore open the refrigerator door. Bottles of Dos Equis glittered on one of the wire shelves. He reached. “Beer. Yeah.”

  “Beer. No.” Dave shut the door. He kicked the stool against the door and pushed Delgado down on it. The man gave off a stink of neglect. Dave had never seen him in any shirt but the white, short-sleeved kind with a tie. The tie had vanished and the shirt collar was greasy. “You eat now. Here’s water if you have to wash it down.” He dumped out the last of his martini, rinsed the glass, filled it, pushed it at Delgado, who was staring at the bottles of bourbon, scotch, and gin on the counter. Dave passed the glass in front of Delgado’s eyes. “Drink.”

  Delgado waved a hand. He ducked his head over the plate and began shoveling down the chili. “Take it the fuck away. I hate the goddamn stuff. I’ll eat. How do I get into situations like this?”

  “Running around trying to find people to blame for the shambles you’re in,” Dave said. “Nobody else wants the blame any more than you do.”

  “Marie,” Delgado said, with his mouth full. “She gets the blame.” He laughed harshly, spraying chili, onions, cheese. “Why not? She got everything else—house, car, bank account. Let her have the blame.” He pawed at the food stains on his shirt, his trousers. “Christ, I l
ook like a goddamn wino.” He got off the stool and set the plate on the counter. Shakily, so that it rattled. It was still half full. He looked into Dave’s eyes. “Don’t shove food down me, okay? Just leave me the hell alone?”

  “I didn’t come to your house.” The water in the pan bubbled. Dave poured it steaming into the waiting pot. “You came to my house, remember? Sit down. No, you don’t have to eat any more. You can drink, now. Coffee. A whole lot of strong, black coffee.”

  Delgado started out the door. Dave dropped the empty pan clattering into the sink, took two long steps, and caught his arm. Delgado tried to jerk away. There was petulance in the gesture but not much strength. Under the soiled suitcoat, his arm felt wasted, an old man’s, and he wasn’t even forty. Dave turned him around and set him on the stool again. Delgado glared at him.

  “And then what?” he said. “You push me into the shower, right? And I’m still not sober enough to drive? So you put me to bed to sleep it off? Am I on track? Sure, I am. And sometime in the night, you’re in the bed with me. Yeah, oh, yeah.” He nodded, mouth twisted in a sneer. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. A scrap of beef came away in his fingers, he flicked it off. “You know what you are and so do I, and that’s tonight’s scenario, isn’t it?”

  “You wrote it,” Dave said. “You tell me.” The Mozart turned itself off. The only sound was the drip of water through the coffee grounds and the whirr of crickets out in the sweaty canyon darkness. “You need a shower. You need clean clothes. I can lend you a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. You are too drunk to drive. That doesn’t matter. I can drive you home. Where are you living?”

  “Crappy motel in Santa Monica,” Delgado mumbled. “If they haven’t locked me out.”

  Dave studied him. “You want to stay here, don’t you? That’s why you came. Not to chew me out for taking your job. To have a place to stay.” He unwrapped a supermarket coffee mug, rinsed it under the tap, filled it with coffee. “You are broke. You’re lonely.” He held the mug out to Delgado, who was watching him with nothing in his bloodshot eyes. “You’re also horny. And you’re offering yourself in payment for anything I can do for you, only what mainly interests you is getting your rocks off.”