Skin Deep sg-3

by Timothy Hallinan

  4

  The Spice Rack

  My knees were up somewhere around my chin, and my heart was competing with a hamburger for space in my throat. Toby drove even worse than Dixie said he did.

  The roof of the Maserati was about four feet above road level. The console looked like a transplant from the space shuttle. Toby used both hands and both feet constantly just to keep us on the road, which, unfortunately for my peace of mind, was Laurel Canyon.

  "Got your belt on?" he asked, taking a sharp downhill curve on two wheels. The burger, to which Toby had graciously treated me at a McDonald's, was refusing to obey the laws of gravity.

  "Are you kidding? I'd have yours on, too, if I could get to it."

  "Good. Because I can feel that load coming on."

  This piece of news, added to the burger and my heart, was too much to swallow. "Toby," I said, "tell me that's a joke."

  "In the trailer," he said. "Jesus, champ, I've been straight as a string all day."

  "I wouldn't go that far," I said, looking for something to hold on to.

  He popped the clutch and downshifted, keeping his eyes on the road. "That wasn't dope," he said finally, sounding uncomfortable. "That was just old Toby."

  "You want to tell me why you did it?"

  "I don't know. She just got me so damn mad. Whatever you think about my face, it's my only valid ticket. The wrong picture, even on the cover of Baby-Kiss or whatever it is-that's serious."

  "Horsefeathers. You set it up."

  The road straightened again, and he pressed down on the accelerator. "If I were you, champ," he said, "I'd let me concentrate on driving."

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "I don't know how to answer it. Listen, I like women, I really do. I always want them to be different, and they never are. They always say something stupid or fuck up in one way or another, and then it happens."

  "What happens?"

  "Yaaa, yaaa, yaaa," he said. "Something. Like pressure in my head, like, I don't know, like a headache, and my jaws get all stiff and tight, and then I want to break things. Why am I telling you this?"

  "Because you like to talk about yourself."

  "Boy, are you wrong there. I'd rather get a rabies shot."

  "And when you hurt somebody, the feeling goes away."

  He pulled up at a stoplight. Sunset Boulevard. He gunned the motor once, looking down at the tachometer. He examined his wristwatch as though it had just appeared on his wrist through spontaneous generation. He checked the fuel level and wiped a speck of dust off the glass on the gauge.

  "Would you like to clean the ashtrays?" I asked. "Maybe get out and polish the car?"

  "The sun comes out," he said brutally. "There are double fucking rainbows in the sky. For about two minutes. Then I start to feel like shit. But at least I'm not mad anymore. Haven't you ever hit a woman?"

  "No. What was your life like at home?"

  "I don't talk about home," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "What's to say? I was born, I grew up, I left. Same as everybody else."

  "Go out and get dirty, go in and get clean."

  "Say what?"

  "According to a friend of mine, that's life in ten words."

  We were speeding down Sunset now, and the sun was all the way down. Toby's face looked green in the glow from the Maserati's console.

  "That's not bad," he said. "Except that sometimes you can get dirty when you're inside, too."

  "Depends, doesn't it?"

  "Don't moralize. You don't know me well enough. That's not what I need from you."

  "So what do you think you need from me?"

  "Protection."

  "From whom, Toby?"

  "Whom, whom," he said. "I'd have said, 'From who?' " He changed lanes and sped up. "Whom, whom, whom," he said, pushing down on the accelerator each time.

  "Increasing your word power?"

  "I'm a car," he said. "I'm also getting pretty loaded."

  "So why did you leave?" I asked, checking my seat belt for the fifth or sixth time.

  "We're going to talk about this, huh?"

  "Unless you want to say good-bye to me whenever we get where we're going."

  "I wouldn't use that one too often, if I were you."

  "I won't. That was the last time."

  He navigated a couple of turns. "Who wouldn't leave? You ever been to South Dakota?"

  "No."

  "Keep it that way. It's a good place to leave."

  "What's wrong with it?"

  At first I thought he wasn't going to answer me. "To me, South Dakota just means cold," he said at last. "And clothesline."

  "Clothesline? Why clothesline?"

  "There are lots of reasons. The one I'll tell you about has to do with cold. Ever heard of a white-out?"

  "Something to do with snow."

  "Champ, it's everything to do with snow. In a white-out you can't see anything, not three feet in front of you. So I was supposed to string the clothesline from the house to the barn and to the garage and back again. Like a big ropy spiderweb."

  We pulled up at the corner of Sunset and Doheny. A sudden squeal to our left caught my attention. A beat-up convertible with three teenage girls crowded into the front seat had pulled up next to us, and the girls were gawking and squealing and flapping their hands at Toby. They looked ecstatic. Toby smiled and gave them an extravagant wave and then made a sudden right-hand turn down Doheny to get away from them. "Dumb bitches," he said. "Did you see their faces?"

  "That's your public," I said. "The clothesline."

  "Wind-chill factor," he said, sounding grumpy. "It gets down to fifty or sixty below zero. Honest, champ, you can get killed in a white-out just going out to start your car. So you go hand over hand along the clothesline, like a blind person, feeling your way through the freeze and hoping your nose won't break off if you bump into the garage. Great way to start the morning."

  A stoplight went yellow in front of us, and a car popped into the intersection from the right. Toby leaned on the horn and fishtailed the Maserati in front of the other car, heading left on Santa Monica. Brakes squealed behind us. "And one day Hollywood beckoned," Toby said with an air of finality. "Hollywood said, 'Come on out, Toby, and be a big star. Come on out and get warm.' "

  "And that's the end of the story."

  "Must be all that college," he said. "You don't get that smart on the street." He hummed something that sounded like "Camptown Races" and confirmed it by singing, " 'Doodah, doodah.' What's a bobtailed nag?"

  "A horse with its tail bobbed."

  "There's nothing like education. You keep talking about quitting. Is that on the level?"

  "Yes."

  "You really think you could give Norman his check back?"

  "What do you know about Norman's check?"

  "Are you kidding? Half of it comes out of my share of the syndication rights."

  "To you it's small change," I said.

  "Ho, ho, Simeon. Small change? Ten grand will get me through Bullock's in an afternoon. It'll pay for a lot of girls if the time ever comes when I need to pay for girls."

  "Norman told you your half was ten grand?" I had a sudden insight into Hollywood bookkeeping.

  "It's worth it to me," Toby said virtuously. "You still don't understand, do you? You still think I like to act the way I do."

  "Toby," I said, "I'm tired. You don't want to talk to me about anything that matters, and I'm not going to waste my energy doing dime-store psychology on you."

  "I don't need a psychologist," Toby said. "I need a friend."

  I couldn't come up with anything to say, so I said the wrong thing. "That's the load talking."

  "You think so?" He sounded stung.

  "Toby, I don't know. I like part of you, too. Maybe it's just that I can't figure out whether it's the part that's named Toby Vane or the part that's named Jack Sprunk."

  "They both suck," Toby said petulantly. "Here we are."

  I co
uldn't see that we were much of anywhere. The block was an indiscriminate string of pizza parlors, furniture showrooms, office equipment stores, and little "showcase" theaters offering pay-for-play wish fulfillment to aspiring actors. And then, on the right, in hot pink neon I saw the words SPICE RACK. Above that, printed in black on a yellow background was the legend LIVE NUDES. The letters were about six feet high.

  "I love that," Toby said. "I always wonder what's the next hot ticket. Dead nudes?"

  "This is where Nana works?"

  "Sure. What did you think she was? A research chemist?"

  We passed the Spice Rack and turned right into a little street and then right again into an alley. Toby pulled the Maserati into an empty parking space and leaned back, closing his eyes. "Made it," he said.

  A minute loped by. I messed around with my door, looking for anything that resembled a handle. "Are we going to get out, or what?"

  He opened his eyes and looked around. "Just hold on. Got to get a little riper." Reaching back into the pocket of his leather jeans, he produced a little jar with a black plastic top, unscrewed it, and poured a little of it onto the back of his left hand. "Want some?" His hands were shaking slightly.

  "What is it?"

  "Same old pink coke. Best there is, remember?"

  "No, thanks," I said.

  "More for me, then." He raised the back of his hand to his nose, sniffed sharply, and then repeated the ritual. "10 on the rise," he said.

  "Toby," I said, "you do the loads to slow down and the coke to speed up. Why don't you just stay in the middle?"

  He regarded me gravely. "That's the first stupid thing I ever heard you say. This stuff is going to make me very popular tonight. Out we go, champ." He opened his door and climbed out. I was still fiddling with my seat belt when he opened my door from the outside and made a courtly bow. "After you, madame," he said.

  "How the hell do you get out of this thing?"

  "Professional secret," he said. "Comes in handy some- times." I got out and closed the door behind me, and the car barked at me. I jumped.

  "What was that?"

  "The car. It's half Maserati and half Doberman." He'd almost reached the building's back door. "Remote alarm. I just push a button and the thing's on red alert. Jesus, this is some cocaine."

  He went up a couple of steps and knocked heavily, first three times and then, after a beat, two more times. "Private entrance," he said over his shoulder. "Secret code. Real Hardy Boys stuff."

  He waited, and I caught up with him. "Why the Spice Rack?"

  "Used to be a restaurant, and neon's expensive. Tiny just gave all the girls spice names." As he was speaking the door opened about four inches, and a blast of music shredded the night. "Hey, Tiny," Toby said, producing the magazine-cover grin.

  The door opened the rest of the way. The man called Tiny was sallow and coarse-featured, with oily black hair and thick, loose lips. His clothing, a white safari shirt and white pleated slacks, encased a body that must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. He ignored me, grimaced in welcome at Toby, and held the door wide. Toby went in. I followed, squeezing past Tiny's barrel of a belly, into a narrow hallway. "How's business?" Toby asked.

  Tiny shrugged before I was completely by him. It was like surfing on an ocean of fat. "The recession," he said in a voice that sounded like several tons of gravel rolling downhill inside a steel drum. "Everybody's hurting."

  "It'll pick up," Toby said. "Even poor people like girls."

  "Go in and tip somebody," Tiny said, ignoring the offer of comfort. "These jack-offs have never heard of money, or if they have, they don't believe in it." He closed the door behind us, and even over the music I could hear the clatter of locks being forced into place.

  Entering the Spice Rack through that hallway, I felt like Gepetto sliding down the whale's throat. The walls and ceiling were covered with a thick red paint with flecks of glitter mixed into it, something a serial killer might choose for his Christmas cards. Toby opened the door, and the music, already loud, exploded into the corridor.

  Nothing remained to suggest the restaurant the Spice Rack had once been. The linen-clad tables and large bouquets of this month's fashionable flowers had been cleared away to make room for three stages, each raised about a yard off the floor. One of them was dark. Customers sat around the other two, working slowly on their drinks and staring at girls who were writhing around under pink and amber lights. One of the girls was wearing a ragged feather boa and cut-off jeans, and the other was completely naked. The naked one was lying on her back on the floor of the stage, doing gymnastic exercises that consisted mainly of lifting both knees to her chin. As if the girls on the stage weren't enough, nudes painted on black velvet hung in heavy museum frames on the walls.

  Toby pulled out two chairs by the side of the other stage and plopped down. The blonde in the feather boa was cradling her breasts in her hand and paying special attention to customers who had put a buck or two onto the stage. She looked bored.

  "Toby," I yelled over the music as I sat next to him, "are you sure we want to be here?"

  "Of course," Toby said. "Don't you want to see Nana?"

  "This is the kind of place I'm supposed to be keeping you out of."

  "No prob," Toby said. "That's why the back door and the code. Tiny takes care of me."

  A blond girl wearing a transparent, thigh-length negligee, a G-string, and about thirty-seven bracelets, gave Toby a peck on the cheek. "Hi, heartthrob," she said. "The usual?"

  "Sure, Pepper. A Seven-Up from my private stock, and the same for my friend here." He winked at her, and she made little kiss lips and headed for the bar. The G-string disappeared completely between her buttocks. They were buttocks to remember.

  "Pepper?" I said.

  "Like I told you, all the girls are spices. This is Saffron on the stage here. The naked one is Clove." He put a ten on the counter, and Saffron shuffled over and did the breast-cupping act. By now they were tucked under her chin.

  "How you doin', Tobe?" she said.

  "Holding on. You're looking good."

  "I'd better," Saffron said, "or I'll be sitting on the sidewalk. Tiny's got the rag on."

  Toby looked nervous. "Does he?"

  "And how. Nobody's tipping, and they're making their drinks last until their birthdays. What a bunch of stiffs."

  "You wish," Toby said. "Go make them rise to the occasion."

  Saffron picked up the ten quickly, as though she were afraid it might disappear, and danced away in a leisurely fashion, focusing her charms on an embarrassed-looking Chicano with two crumpled dollar bills on the counter in front of him.

  "This must be someone's idea of fun," I said.

  "Loosen up, champ. You want to die before you even get tired? Here's the gorgeous Pepper."

  Pepper put a tall glass in front of each of us, her bracelets jangling. Toby gave her a tightly folded twenty and said, "Keep the change. Not much happening, is there?"

  "I've had a bigger time in a library," Pepper said, slipping the twenty into the front of her G-string. "Who's your sweet little friend?"

  "This is Simeon," Toby said. "He's my baby-sitter."

  "He's a baby himself," Pepper said. "Jesus, what'd you do to Nana? Is she ever pissed off."

  "Not for long. I've got some pink, Pepper."

  "Darling," Pepper said, brightening visibly. "I think I have to go to the little girls' room."

  "It's in the twenty," Toby said. "Don't hog it. I see a lot of hungry noses."

  "My sisters will get theirs," Pepper said, "don't worry. Nice to meet you, Simeon." Her beautiful bottom twinkled at us as she headed for nostril heaven in the ladies' room. I picked up my 7-Up and took a big swallow. Then I began to cough, and it felt as though several pounds of steam were billowing out of my ears.

  "Careful, champ," Toby said. "That's straight vodka."

  "Thanks for the warning," I said, my eyes watering. "How come it's disguised as Seven-Up?"

  "They
can't serve liquor because the girls take their pants off. Go figure. Like I said, private stock for regular customers."

  I blinked back tears and became aware that the music had ended. There was a scattering of applause. Saffron climbed down from the stage. The girl who had been dancing on the other stage blew a sarcastic kiss at the customers and then walked across the club, elegantly and carelessly naked, to disappear behind the same crimson curtain that Saffron had lifted only moments before.

  "If they made twenty each, they're lucky," Toby said.

  His voice sounded abnormally loud. We were the only ones in the place who were talking. All the other customers sat staring at their drinks or at the counter in front of them. I realized for the first time that there was an empty chair separating each customer from his neighbor. Chair, customer, chair, customer. Except for three Asian men, an obvious group, no two men were seated together. No one had looked at Toby for the simple reason that no one had looked at anyone.

  "What do you care how much they make?" I took a careful swig of vodka. It tasted better this time.

  "Who says I care?" he asked belligerently and altogether too loudly. "They dance, they should get paid. You think I'd do what I do for free? Where's Pepper, anyway?"

  The music drowned out my reply, whatever it was. Then I forgot what I'd been going to say and leaned forward to watch.

  It took me a few bars to recognize the song, even though the Kinks had been my favorite band for years. I was too preoccupied. Then Ray Davies began to sing, and I placed it.

  Look at that lady dancing round with no clothes,

  She'll show you all her body, that's if you got the dough.

  She'll let you see most anything, but there's one thing that she'll never show.

  And that's a little bit of real emotion. …

  Saffron came back onto the stage. She was wearing nothing at all, but I was watching the other stage. The girl on it was Nana.

  "And on the small stage," said a fat Tiny clone seated next to the entrance, "is our bit of spice from the Far East. Let's bring both hands above the table and have a big round of soy sauce for the lovely Cinnamon." Three men clapped.

  A little bit of real emotion, Ray Davies sang. In case a bit of real emotion should give her away.