by Harry Bryant
"Wow," I said.
"What?" She tucked some of her hair behind her ear.
"That's quite the transformation," I said.
"I just let my hair down."
"And I'm glad you did."
Freesia put another daiquiri on the bar, and she refilled my water glass. "Any food?" she asked.
"Yes," Dolly said, eager to not be talking about her hair anymore. "Can I have the hummus plate?" She looked at me. "Did you want to get something?"
"I ate already," I said. "Tacos."
"Just the hummus then," Dolly said to Freesia, who nodded and wandered off before I could order another glass of bourbon. Probably on purpose.
"You haven't told me what you do for a living." Dolly pulled her drink closer. It was a strawberry daiquiri with a red straw.
Some things were consistent in every bar in the world.
I watched her lips close around the straw.
"This and that," I said.
"Are you working on this or that right now?"
"A little of both."
"Does it get confusing?" she asked. "Keeping them straight."
"Not really."
"It sounds confusing."
"You get used to it."
"Do you ever get to do stuff?"
"As compared to this and that?"
She nodded, closing her lips around the end of the straw again.
"Once in a while," I said. "Usually on a Thursday."
"There's a Thursday this week," she pointed out.
"Handy."
"Any stuff planned?"
"Depends on how this and that go."
She sighed heavily. "You are a very busy man."
She laughed, and I laughed with her. When she turned slightly on her stool, our knees bumped under the bar.
I didn't mind.
"How long have you been working at the hotel?" I asked.
"Awhile," she said with a shrug and a coquettish curl of her lips.
"And before the hotel?"
"This and that."
"I see how this is going to go."
"You started it."
"I did."
"You want to try again?"
I took a drink of water as I thought about answering her question.
"I missed most of this decade because I was in prison," I said.
"Me too," she said. "I mean, missing the decade part. I was in school."
"For what?"
She laughed. "I was going to ask the same thing. For what? Isn't it funny how that question works for both of us?"
"I would have rather been in school," I said.
She put her elbow on the bar and leaned her head against her hand. "I can imagine," she said, the levity gone from her face.
I connected her change in mood with something she had said earlier. "Your brother, the one who works at the Shell station, he did time, didn't he?"
She closed her eyes as she nodded slightly. She rolled her head off her hand and reached for her drink. "He was young and dumb, and now?" She shrugged. "He's older and dumber, but he's still my brother."
"Any other family?"
"Dad was in the Air Force. He dragged David and Mom and me all over the world. Vandenberg was his last post. He died of a heart attack right when we were starting high school. Mom didn't see any reason for us to move again. She thought we'd appreciate staying in one place long enough to make friends."
"Here in Los Alamos?"
She shook her head. "No, over in Santa Maria."
"So what are you doing working in Los Alamos?"
"What were you in prison for?" she asked, deflecting my question.
I thought about deflecting too, but decided to be honest with her. "Drugs," I said.
Her face changed, and her knee moved away from mine.
And that told me something else about her brother.
"How about this weather?" I asked, changing the topic. "It's been the same for what? Eighty days now?"
"Eighty-five," she said.
"What happened on the eighty-sixth day?"
She made a face. "Fog."
"Fog? Really?"
"Haven't you ever seen fog before?"
"We call it an inversion layer down in LA," I said.
She laughed. Some of her perkiness was coming back.
I had almost said We don't get fog in prison, but that would have been the wrong joke to make.
Her hummus arrived, and I managed to catch Freesia's eye this time for another drink. My toes were warm, and the little counter in the back of my brain reminded me that this drink should be my last one—Freesia's careful ministration of a round of water between rounds of bourbon notwithstanding—but the company was pleasant, and I was inclined to ignore that reminder.
It had been a long day, after all. Lots of driving around. Not much to show for all the work except for getting tossed out of Hidden Palms. Oh, and dick punching a security guard.
I almost deserved an extra drink for that.
"What are you thinking about?" Dolly asked.
"Oh, just someone I ran into today," I said, rousing myself from the mental replay of the afternoon.
"Someone you know?"
"Not especially."
"What are you doing in Los Alamos?" she asked.
"That's an awfully personal question," I responded.
She shrugged. "You've dodged all the other personal questions. A girl can keep trying, can't she?" She nudged the hummus plate toward me, indicating that I should have some. The plate was loaded with soft pita triangles and a whole mess of salty and savory additions to layer on.
"A girl should keep trying," I said. I took a pita triangle and some hummus to be polite. The tacos had filled me up, but when an attractive woman indicates you should share her food . . .
"So?"
"I'm looking for a friend," I said.
"Like a bounty hunter?"
"No, not like a bounty hunter? Why would you think that?"
"It's the way you said ‘friend.'"
"How did I say it?"
"Like they aren't really a friend."
She raised her shoulders as she smeared hummus on a pita and then layered feta and a tiny tomato on top.
Freesia returned with my drink, asked Dolly how she liked the hummus just as Dolly shoved the loaded pita into her mouth, and then smiled as Dolly made unintelligible noises around the mouthful of food.
"She either likes it, or she's choking," I translated for Freesia.
"I've been doing this long enough to know the difference," Freesia said.
"It's nice to be in the hands of a professional," I said.
She quirked an eyebrow at me, and she smiled again when Dolly managed to swallow and actually articulate an opinion about the food.
"They do that on purpose," Dolly said after Freesia wandered off.
"What do they do?"
"Ask you if you like the food when your mouth is full."
"It's an important perk of the job," I said. "Balances out the leering jackasses and the drunks who vomit on the bathroom floor."
"God," Dolly said. "I don't envy them that. There was a guy at the hotel last week who made a real mess in the bathroom in his room. The maids complained about it for days."
"That wasn't the room you put me in, was it?"
"Oh no. It was down on the ground floor."
"I bet you see all sorts of interesting characters at the hotel."
"You have no idea." She took a sip from her drink. "But we're not talking about them."
"We're not?"
"No." She tucked her hair back behind her ear again and looked at me. "Why are you looking for your not-friend?"
"It's a favor."
"For wh
o?"
"Another friend."
"There you go again. I don't think this person is your friend either."
"Someone I know, then."
"And the first friend? The one you're looking for? How do you know she's in this area?"
"I didn't say it was a woman."
Dolly gave me a look. "But it is, isn't it?"
"Maybe."
Dolly shook her head. "Men always get vague when they're talking about women."
I smiled at her. "Is that so?"
She returned the smile. "You're easy."
"Not that easy."
"No?"
She blushed lightly as soon as she said the word, and she busied herself with her hummus for a moment. I picked up my glass and took a tiny sip. The bourbon was a trickle of warmth sliding down my throat.
"She's up at the Hidden Palms Spiritual Center," I said. "I drove up there today, and tried to see her."
"Did you?"
"They wouldn't let me in. Not without an appointment."
"Did you get one?"
"An appointment?" I shook my head. "Not exactly."
"I've heard about that place," she said.
"What have you heard?"
"Rich people go there. Hollywood types. But not, like, important Hollywood types. Not the sort that you'd read about in those glossy magazines you buy at the store."
"Right. Not A-listers. More like the next tier down."
"The guy who runs it is an ordained minister. Of something—what is it?—oh, yes, the First Church of the Holy Relic."
"The what?"
"The Holy Relic."
"Which relic?"
"The holy one, I suspect."
"Well, they're all holy. You wouldn't have a Church of the Marginally Special Relic, would you?"
"Probably not a church that celebrates a crap relic either."
"I think you mean garage sale tchotchkes."
"Five for a dollar?"
"Exactly."
She thought about that for a minute. "It's more of a free-wheeling religion, though," she said. "You know, every Saturday. Before ten."
"Free-wheeling, huh?"
She smiled, her teeth around the end of the straw in her drink. "You like that?"
"I see what you did there. All those housewives, driving around neighborhoods, checking out garage sales. Fighting over the boxes of relics."
"I'm right, though, aren't I?"
"I think you might be."
"I like being right," she said. She rocked on her stool a bit, her knee bouncing against mine.
I thought about the amphitheater I had seen at the retreat, mainly so I wouldn't think about her knee banging into mine. "So, this minister dude . . . what's the connection with the Spiritual Center? Do you have to join his church to stay there? Do you have to listen to sermons and take Sunday School lessons?"
"I don't know," she said. "I've just heard stories."
I waited.
"What?" she asked when the silence went on too long.
"I want to hear the stories."
"They're just rumors," she said.
"So?"
"They probably aren't true."
"You want to talk about why you're in Los Alamos instead?"
She wrinkled her nose at that question. "That wasn't very nice," she said.
"I'll make it up to you later."
"Promise?"
I gave her one of my most charming smiles. She saw something in it that made her blush again, and while she busied herself with her hummus, it was my turn to apply pressure to the contact between our knees. I felt her leg tighten and push back.
"What do you do when you're not trapped behind that desk?" I asked.
She furrowed her brow as she held a hand in front of her lips, her jaw moving around a mouthful of food.
Silly man. Asking a woman a question when she was eating.
I traced a finger down her bare arm. "This isn't the skin of a woman who sits in an office all day," I said. "She gets out into the sun. Regularly."
"Surfing," she said after she had swallowed.
"Really?"
She tightened her arm so that her muscle definition was more definite, and I saw that as an excuse to touch her again. "You ever done it?" she asked.
"Surfing?" I shook my head. "It looks like a lot of work to not get wet, and then you get wet anyway. And I bet water goes up your nose a lot."
Dolly smiled at me. "If you're any good at it, water doesn't go up your nose."
"Yeah, but how long does it take before you reach that point?"
"How long does it take for a person to get good at anything? Before you went . . . you know, before—"
"Prison?"
"Yeah, before that. What did you do before? And don't say ‘this and that.'" She read the cagey glint in my eye.
"I was in the movie business," I said.
"Doing?"
"Movies."
She shook her head at my obstinacy. "Regardless, whatever you were doing there, it took awhile before you got any good at it, right? But that didn't stop you from trying. You wanted that job. You wanted to do good at it, and so you kept working at it. Working through those moments when water went up your nose, or whatever the equivalent was for you."
I thought about what the equivalent of water going up your nose would have been on a porn shoot.
"Fine," I said, shrugging off that mental image. "I never tried it because I was lazy and a bum. That better?"
She laughed. "You are not a bum," she said.
I inclined my head at that, but didn't say anything to contradict her. "You were going to tell me stories," I said, reminding her.
She ran her hand through her hair, and let out a long breath. "Can we not do that?" she asked.
"Do what?"
"That thing where you ask me all sorts of questions, and I answer them because I like sitting here with you, and you listen to me because while I think you like sitting here with me too, I suspect you're probably more interested in these stories than me."
"That's not true," I said.
"Okay," she said. "But let's stop right there, so I don't have to find out if you're just being polite."
"Okay," I said. I took a drink from my glass. I repositioned myself on my stool so I was turned even more in her direction. "Tell me about surfing," I said. "Convince me."
She laughed.
And she was very convincing.
At least two drinks later, we left Rye and stood awkwardly in the parking lot. The sun had vanished, leaving fading trails of gold and rose in the west, and there was a salty tang in the air. Sea change. Weather was coming.
She pointed at the grey sedan parked near the middle of the lot. "That's mine," she said. She turned and pointed over toward the tree at the edge of the lot. "That's yours."
"It is," I said. I was standing between her and the restaurant, and my line of sight covered part of the road along the restaurant. There was an SUV parked down the street with a rack of lights on its roof. It had a two-tone paint job.
"Are you okay to drive?" I asked.
She nodded, pushing back her hair from her face. "I think so. You?"
"Not quite yet, I think."
Her teeth worked her lower lip. "Maybe you should walk me to my car."
"I can do that."
She was steady as she walked. I had to concentrate a little to not sway and bump into her. Not that she would have minded, but I didn't want to give the guy in the police car any extra reason to follow me back to the hotel.
Dolly unlocked her car, and I held the door for her as she climbed in. I was a little disappointed that there hadn't been some last contact between us, but she quickly powered down the driver side window.
"
I would like nothing more than to offer you a ride," she said, looking up at me. "But I'm afraid that if you get in my car, I will not drive you back to the hotel. Instead, I will take you and a towel I have in the trunk to one of my favorite spots along the beach, and we will get very naked and very sweaty."
I crouched down, and rested my arms on the door of her car. "How sweaty?" I asked.
"Very, very sweaty."
I thought about leaning into the car and kissing her, and it was clear she was thinking the same thing too. As I leaned, she touched a button and the window started to rise. I had to move my arms, and off balance, I took a step back from the car.
She stopped the window halfway up. "Good night, Bliss," she said. Her lips remained parted. Her breathing was shallow and quick.
"Good night, Dorothea," I said.
"Dream well," she said.
She started her car, and with a last, lingering glance, she drove out of the lot and turned right. Away from the parked cop car.
I stood in the parking lot, listening to the sound of her car grow fainter.
The police car didn't move.
I closed my eyes, and imagined that I was on a surfboard, rolling back and forth with the swells. I exhaled like she told me I should when I was on board, letting my breath take out all the tension in my legs and arms. Until there was nothing left of me. That's how you have to be, she had said. There is no you; there's just the board and the sea.
I opened my eyes, coming back to myself, and glanced up at the darkening sky.
It was a nice night. The hotel wasn't that far away. I might as well enjoy the walk.
I went to my car, and retrieved my bag from the trunk. A couple of cars passed on the road, and when I got to the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, the cop car was gone.
CHAPTER 9
When I got back to my room, I realized I wasn't alone a second before someone's fist rocketed against one of my kidneys. I dropped my bag and sagged a little. Someone grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me fully into the room, tossing me onto the bed. The door was shut, and before I could twist around and get my bearings, I got smacked in the lower back two more times.
I slid off the bed with a groan, and lay still, my chest and face pressed against the comforter on the bed.
"Be smart," someone said, and I recognized the voice and the advice.
His voice came from over by the door, and he hadn't been the one hitting me. The hitter was the taller one, the one who drank his beer fast and hadn't liked me—as was evidenced by his keen desire to do damage to my kidneys.
