“I think your boss is cuter than that bartender.”
“That’s just because you like skinny guys. TJ turns sideways and he disappears.”
Yelling from outside made Vonnie look to the window. She meandered toward it but didn’t look out. “Geo is skinny,” she said. “He’s taller than I pictured him.”
“Yeah, he’s like six three or six five. You’re pacing, eat a cherry.”
“Eating is better than pacing?”
“The pacing is making me nervous.”
Vonnie made one more lap around the cream colored room. It reminded her of Barry’s office, with its pale-blue couch and not-quite-white curtains. It should have been comforting. She relented and sat on a pale-yellow hammock chair next to the distressed-white coffee table.
“Eating might make me vomit. Doesn’t Geo break your eight-year rule?”
“I changed my eight-year rule.”
“Really?”
“First I bounced it up to a ten-year rule,” Chloe paused to spit out a cherry pit. “But then I decided even that was limiting and therefore probably transitive. So I settled on nobody old enough to realistically be my father. Which I figure gives me seventeen years.”
Vonnie set her tongue against the roof of her mouth to stop it wagging. But something in her eyes gave her away.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just…your new rule…”
“What!”
“Didn’t keep you from sleeping with Frankie!”
Chloe turned redder than the watermelon in her hand. “He told you.”
Outdoors, more hollering and a siren yipped. Red and blue lights splashed through the gaps in the window paint.
“We’re both lonely,” Chloe explained. Needlessly. “My parents are dead, his wife is dead.”
“Frankie is hot.”
Chloe laughed. “There’s that, too. We’re not, like, dating. It was a one-time thing. Well, three-time thing.” She flushed again. “He’s so good-looking. And so nice.”
“I know it. I’ve known it since high school. I mean, I don’t think he’s hot, but I knew you did.”
“See, I never thought TJ was attractive at all.”
“Of course not, he’s too skinny for you! They don’t look anything alike, either.”
“Not a bit. Weird. That’s not why I was mad at the airport, though.”
“I know that, too.”
Chloe picked at a grape stem. “You’re not seriously thinking about getting back together, are you?”
“I don’t know. I still love him. Maybe it’s stupid, but it’s true.”
“Have you heard from him?”
“No.”
“What’s Frankie say?”
“The same thing he told you, that TJ isn’t good enough for me but he likes having me as a daughter.”
Vonnie shrugged, gazing at the floor. “I told him he can be my dad whether I’m with TJ or not, and we left it at that.”
Chloe tossed her head back. “That’s fair. But—”
A sharp crack rang from outside. Gunshot? Could have been a car backfiring, but L.A. always makes you think. And screaming followed this one.
Chloe snagged Vonnie by the arm and led her to the window. “Look at these people. Look at them!”
Vonnie cupped her hands around her face and peered through the holes in the paint. Outside seemed unreal, like a war or something from TV. Two trash cans had been set on fire. The hurricane fence separating TJ’s fans from hers had been pushed down in places. People punched and slapped each other. And a complementing the violence like a soundtrack: “TJ is making truckloads of money off his hate…the potential to translate into mass misogynism…will they ever make it work?”
Would they?
The door to the dressing room flew open and three large men with headsets stormed through.
“We’re taking you out through the side, they’re canceling tonight.”
The guards rushed Vonnie and Chloe through the back hall, down echoing steel stairs with fire alarms and extinguishers on all three floors. Outside a limo waited to carry them through the chaos.
The site of boxy ambulances and EMTs reminded Vonnie of the hospital nurses. The guards grabbed her and hauled her through the line of burning garbage cans and people trying to murder each other through the hurricane fence. Hollering hate-filled nothings about her and about TJ: “How can you spend your money to see that stupid slut bitch!”
“How can you waste your time listening to a womanizing wife beater!”
How easy people were to manipulate. As if the lives of Vonnie Upchurch and TJ “Bagga Chips” Fallon had anything to do with anything. The guards marched her to the Limo and everything slowed down like she’d heard it does in a car crash. Slowed down and went quiet, despite the screaming and pushing and burning that surrounded her.
Then the Limo door slammed, and Chloe sat next to her.
“Move, move, MOVE!” The headset guys shouted, running alongside her Limo as it crept through the side lot and onto the relative safety of the street. At the corner, on the street running in front of the two venues, TJ’s limo swung up next to them. Its mirrored windows nearly matched the silver tone of it, though right now they reflected fabulously the orange fires and the red and blue police bubbles. And the cream of Vonnie’s limo.
Her tinted windows reflected images back out as well, so that the two extended cars side by side acted as two opposing mirrors, producing an infinite repetition of each other.
Limos always reminded Vonnie of New York, and New York reminded Vonnie of TJ, back when he still was TJ, and they met at the school holiday dance and it turned out he was in her Math class and he helped her with her math homework and they watched movies and just hung out until school was done and then all that summer TJ parked his Chevelle under the overpass and she’d watch the sun set across the Hudson behind the New York skyline.
“Wouldn’t it be cool to live there instead of here?”
TJ would frown at the cityscape. “Why?”
“I dunno. Stuff happens there.”
“Stuff happens here, too.” He slid a hand under her shirt.
“Keeps me happy.”
And TJ had been happy, content with the idea of marrying her and working in his uncle’s garage, raising Irish setters or Weimaraners (he’d never wanted kids) and vacationing in Florida once a year.
Then senior year TJ met Evan. Evan who played bass and snorted speed, trucker speed he stole from his father who drove an 18-wheeler three weeks out of every month and then came home to sleep, fuck a woman who lived in the house but was not Evan’s mother, and smack Evan around.
TJ started hanging out there. Playing guitar, snorting speed, then showing up at Vonnie’s reeking of beer and Spaghetti-O’s, and they’d sneak into the basement and have hot gorilla sex, then cuddle and kiss on her Dad’s futon couch.
They graduated, got married. TJ kept working at his uncle’s shop and she got a part-time job and went to school at night to be an X-ray technician. TJ stayed with the band which meant he still hung out with Evan and eventually he got signed, moved to L.A., made it big, backhanded her across the dining room, and wrote a record about what a bitch she was. them, side by side. Vonnie waited for TJ to roll down his window, but he didn’t. She waited for him to call on her cell phone, but he didn’t. The light changed and TJ’s car veered left while Vonnie’s continued straight. She watched the image of her limo peel away from the windows of TJ’s, then continued to stare after the silver car as it shot off into the night, looking small and alone.
“What will TJ’s next album be about?” Vonnie wondered out loud.
“Who cares?” Chloe pulled a huge green apple from her pocket, scored the top of it with her thumbnail and snapped it in half. She then raised
a shoulder, let it drop. “Well,” she said, handing half the apple to Vonnie, “I guess Barry got what he wanted.”
“Yeah.” Vonnie took a big bite from the tart apple, let it sit on her tongue while she sucked the juice from it. “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
CHAPTER 6
Benjamin Myers, wearing only his boxers, stood in the entrance of his Spanish bungalow scratching his head and squinting at the man on his doorstep. Palm trees blazed bronze in the early morning sun. The still air, thick and stale, carried the promise of triple digits by noon, but also the tantalizing scents of breakfast from the cafés on Melrose Avenue, half a block away.
The man who’d pounded on Ben’s door, dragging him to wakefulness, looked to Ben like he could use some breakfast. But despite his nervous eyes and flaring nostrils, this lean stranger had the face of a handsome boxer. Semi-famous, certainly. Mid-list? Maybe porn. Probably not, though, with those silver-grey temples. Where’d I see this guy? Ben wondered.
He realized the man was talking, apparently had been.
“I’m sorry, what?”
The man sighed, shoved a hand at Ben. “This is yours.”
The hand held a wallet, black and worn.
“I don’t think so,” Ben started. He glanced toward the bedroom where his black linen trousers lay folded over a chair. Was his wallet in them? Wasn’t his wallet brown? Maybe he should check. But the prospects of leaving this wild-eyed, disheveled man alone at the threshold disconcerted him.
The man made his decision for him. “The address is yours! Take it. Take it!” He yanked Ben’s hand from its akimbo post, shoved the wallet into it and fled.
Ben slammed the door. Dust bunnies scurried across his blonde wood floor, seeking shelter beneath his blocky black couch and armchair. He peered through the slats of his wooden blinds, but didn’t see the man or hear a car leave, just the murmur of early yuppies and ambitious tourists. In the talavera tiled kitchen, the sun’s sharp angle told him it couldn’t be past eight. Far too early for a bartender whose shift ended at two-thirty in the morning, and who attended an after-hours that brought him stumbling through the door—womanless—at quarter past seven.
But curiosity overrode tiredness. He reheated a cup of yesterday’s coffee and opened the wallet. The license was in one of those flip-out plastic things. The address indeed matched Ben’s. Ben didn’t recognize the guy in the photo, but he’d bought the house from someone who had rented it out, so this must have been one of the previous tenants.
Examining the picture, he decided that the madman at the doorstep must have been either blind or incredibly generous in his physical assessments. The photo guy shared the wallet bearer’s high-cheekboned face, but offset by blue eyes and red hair. Not grey, as Ben’s had turned (nearly completely as of last year), betraying him at the comparatively young age of 34. Women described Ben as “cute,” sometimes “handsome,” but he’d never graduated to sexy.
The microwave beeped. On his way to it, he yanked closed the yellow curtains over the porcelain sink. Who was this previous tenant guy? What was his name? Ed Bloodworth. Blood worth. Even his name was alarming!
Ben riffled through the rest of the wallet. Not much in it. A library card. No Norton’s Food card, no video rental place cards, no photos. A bank card; maybe he could drop the wallet off at BankZilla and they could hunt Eddie down.
What unnerved Ben was the money. Hundred dollar bills. Lots of them. And some weird orange certificate things. Foreign currency? Ben felt uncomfortable touching it. He thought about calling 411 but what could he tell the guy if he did find him? No, dropping it off at the bank seemed better. Good and anonymous.
He left the wallet on his dresser. Some superstitious feeling made him check his pants to make sure he still had his own wallet, his own identification, was still Ben Myers.
He took a shower, mostly cold. The cool water left him refreshed and sleepy, so he went back to bed. At three in the afternoon, his radio clock came on, the Clash pulling him from sleep. Thursday. Thursdays meant the comedy club. In lieu of the previous night’s linen pants, he dug a pair of brown, wide-wale cords from his drawer and put on a brick-red jersey-cut T-shirt. Safe, earth colors. The cut of the shirt hid his little teddy-bear belly. The fact of the colors and cut, that he knew this and didn’t mind, made Ben feel old.
* * *
Busta’ Guts: “Food and Funny, See?” The sign featured a typecast mobster, smoking a fat cigar and rubbing his belly as he laughed. In fact, the drawing was a caricature of Buster DelGrosso, the unfunny comic (but shrewd businessman) who owned the place. Dark, small, and dirty with a shallow stage facing six rows of scarred bistro tables, Busta’s lived off its reputation, and like so many places in Hollywood, was frequented mostly by tourists
Back in the 80’s, when stand-up had reached its pinnacle, Buster DelGrosso made comics. His club had once provided the brightest new talent to the screen. As of late, stand-up seemed positioned for a come-back, and the Home Piracy Network had begun filming their half-hour specials of up-and-coming comics at Busta’s, including one tonight. So who knew?
The girl showed up early, but that wasn’t the only reason she stood out. People dressed tourist-nice at Busta’s, khakis and pressed shirts. This chick had on a baseball jersey—Pitt—over a short plaid skirt and boots. Plaid boots. Plaid Doc Martens with gold laces that matched the writing on the jersey. Underneath the skirt were black fishnet stockings, and she wore the jersey open, revealing a lace tank top.
Just enough skin, Ben thought. He hoped she didn’t come near him. She did, of course.
“Bar open yet?”
“Only for you.” Geez what a cliché! Ben wanted to slap himself.
“What’s your special?”
“What’s your pleasure?”
Her ice-blue eyes sparkled. “I asked you first.”
Ben faltered. He wasn’t supposed to serve his personalized drinks here. But no one else was around yet, he wouldn’t be upstaging anybody….
He leaned in conspiratorially “Sweet or sharp?”
“What?”
“If you had to choose between, say, Jaeger Meister and peach Schnapps, which would it be?”
“Jaeger.”
That meant he could make her a sit-and-spin. He selected a pilsner glass, poured a half gin, half vodka base (mixed over ice), then two magical liquors that sat on top of each other, blue over red. He set it in front of the girl, inserted a stirrer. “Watch.”
He stirred it with vigor. The drink swirled and turned patriot blue. It kept spinning and the blue faded, passed to purple for just a moment, then flushed fire engine red.
The girl grinned, cocked her head of loose black curls and examined him. “You work at Tattoo.”
“Maybe.”
“He does,” said a different woman, a swank redhead. “He makes another drink called the Kafka. It’s grey, and a little city forms at the bottom, disappears each time you take a sip then reforms again, reconfigured.” She dropped onto a stool and shot him a smile. “He also juggles broken bottles and breathes fire.”
“Hello, Heather.” Ben sort of smirked, like a fond older brother. “What’ll it be?”
“The usual. And: Lacy was prowling around here earlier.”
“I thought Buster banned that crowd.”
“He doesn’t know Lacy hawks. He thinks she’s just a starlet. Besides, she was prowling around for you.” Heather turned to Ben’s new friend. “Comedy is like acting: The porno industry snatches up the failures. Eats them up and shits them out.” She aimed her smarmy smile at the girl. “Are you on tonight?”
Ben glared at Heather. “I’d introduce you two but I don’t know Pitt’s name. This is Heather.”
The girl put out a hand. Ben prepared Heather’s whiskey sour, glad for the respite. The pornography hawks made him prickle. T
hey stalked joints like Busta’s, made good-sounding offers to fame-starved kids. “Hey baby, you’re gorgeous, you’re talented, you could make three hundred bucks a day working in film!” Buster had cracked some guy’s skull open one night and promised to shoot him next time. So what was Lacy chasing?
Ben set Heather’s drink on a napkin.
“Her name is Chloe,” Heather told him, and pranced off. After Heather left, Chloe asked him, “Your girlfriend?”
“Absolutely not.”
“She’d like to be.” She eyed him over. “And… you’ve slept with her.”
Ben felt himself flush. “Only once. We were both drunk.”
“Maybe you’d like to get drunk with me some time.”
Ben’s face absolutely burned. He pointed to Chloe’s jersey.
“Did you go to Pitt?”
“No.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you did because of the shirt. That’s where I’m from.”
“I bought this in Venice. I thought it was funny, you know, to buy a Pittsburgh shirt in California.”
“Funny peculiar, or funny haha?”
“Funny ironic.” She sipped her sit-and-spin.
“You ever been there?”
“You couldn’t pay me enough.”
“How do you know if you’ve never been?”
“Let’s just say Pittsburgh is aptly named.”
“You’re pretty funny.” He gazed at her suspiciously. “Are you on tonight?”
“No, one of my friends is. Vonnie.”
“Connie Anders?”
Chloe shook her head. “Vonnie Upchurch. The one doing the HPN show tonight.”
Ben nodded, pursed his lips slightly, hoping he disguised how impressed he was. And jealous. Upchurch was the headline, the one whose special was being filmed. Former wife of rap-rock star Bagga’ Chips, comedienne Upchurch had taken the horrific and slanderous lyrics he’d sung about her and twisted them against him. Now half the country laughed at him. Naturally, this had gained her quick access to the talk-show circuit. Brilliant. Ben wished he’d thought up some similar approach with his own, now long-abandoned shtick.
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