the Golden Orange (1990)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Bet you were an only child, with an old man riding that hard."

  "You win the bet."

  "Daddy's girl, huh?"

  All the time she was talking about her father, Tess Binder looked away from Winnie, toward the night, toward the crashing surf beyond the long white sand beach. She didn't answer him at first, then she smiled sardonically and said, "Daddy wasn't much for girls, as it turns out. Shall we go?"

  "Sure," he said, finishing the last bite of cheesecake.

  "Let's go to your club."

  "My club?"

  "Spoon's Landing."

  "Well . . . tonight's likely to be a little rough. The gang from the boatyards get paid."

  "Super! Let's go!"

  "Hey, I do belong to a club," he said. "Sort of. Let's stop at my club for one and then to Spoon's."

  Ten minutes later, Tess, who looked as though she might be feeling the drinks, parked the Mercedes in the parking lot beside the American Legion Post on Fifteenth Street. The building happened to rest on some of the most valuable land on the Balboa peninsula, city-owned property on Lido Channel.

  Winnie had joined the Legion for three reasons: cheap drinks, pretty good steaks you get to cook, and a restful channel view. Those members who'd seen combat were mostly vets of W. W. II or Korea. There were only a few from Winnie's war, but everyone seemed friendly and real. He never could get used to older folks calling him "comrade" all the time. Still, when you get an honest shot of good booze for a buck and a quarter, you had no bitch coming. And unlike Spoon's Landing, the worst argument he ever heard here was about whether or not you can talk during a salute.

  The old babe who played the piano was in full swing when they arrived. All in all, the Legion was like any mid-America lodge. Tess seemed to enjoy the down-home hospitality, so they killed an hour listening to the piano, during which Winnie downed four vodkas because at that price you couldn't afford not to. Just before they left, the old lady played "Where or When," and a widow of a W. W. II naval aviator stood up and sang in a thin quavery soprano.

  It seems we stood and talked like this before We looked at each other in the same way then...

  But I don't remember where or when.

  "That's how I feel about you!" Winnie said suddenly. "Like the song!"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Since I first met you I've felt like I've seen you before. Maybe talked to you. Something."

  He shook his head slowly, groping for it. D6jd vu.

  A snatch of a melody. The smell of her perfume: jasmine. What?

  "Haven't we met someplace before, babe?" she said. "That what you mean?"

  "No, I'm serious," he said.

  The clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore We smiled at each other in the same way then But I can't remember where or when.

  "I'd remember you, old son," she said. "Shall we go?

  Winnie stopped when they reached the sidewalk outside.

  "Anything wrong?" she asked.

  "You ever drink at that jazz club in Laguna?"

  "Winnie!" she said, shaking her head. "I'm offended. Are you saying you could forget me?"

  "No, I guess I couldn't," he said.

  The voice drifted outside, the tin soprano, so full of sadness.

  And so it seems that we have met before And laughed before and loved before But who knows where or wheeeennnn.

  Tess chuckled and said, "Maybe we were chums in some other life?"

  "Maybe," Winnie said. "But I'd be happy to be your pal in this one."

  Spoon's Landing was, as Winnie feared, full of fishermen and boatyard gypsies and off-duty cops and other waterfront vagabonds. Four boozy cops in jeans and T-shirts were playing snooker and punching large holes in their paychecks. The L. A. Kings were playing hockey on big screen, and there were some petty but boisterous bets being made in the corner of the saloon. A dory fisherman in huaraches and cutoffs-a wiry guy with alligator hands-accidentally lurched into Tess before they got to the bar. He offered a leering apology, disappointed to see Winnie right behind her.

  "I was afraid a this," Winnie said. "Looks like a panel for the Geraldo Rivera show. Sure you wanna have a drink?" .

  "Wouldn't miss it," Tess said cheerily, and Winnie wasn't too bombed to see that she didn't seem all that sober either.

  "Let's sit at the far side," he said.

  Spoon moved Guppy's empty glass twelve inches down the bar to make room for the new arrivals and told her, "Wake up and go home!"

  The old woman opened her eyes, banged her hand on the bartop and said, "Somebody stole my drink when I went to the ladies room! I demand another one!"

  "Cut it out!" Spoon said.

  "Cut what out?" Guppy's velvet hair ribbon was undone and dangling in front of her nose, unleashing an explosion of gray hair, "/'ra the one got ripped off by one of your low-life customers! Look at em!" She waved her hand in the general direction of the dory crews. "I've seen more gentility at a cockfight and better wardrobes. Their idea of style is tying the thongs on their deck shoes and they don't need socks 'cause their ankles're green."

  Then she located her glass and smacked it down on the bar, yelling, "Publican! Bring me a screwdriver!"

  "I'll put one through your heart!" said the saloonkeeper. "This bar's inlaid with shell from Galapagos turtles! You can't get giant turtle shells no more!"

  "Well, you shouldn't have a goddamn endangered bartop!" Guppy countered. "You environmental pirate!"

  "I'll buy Guppy a drink, for chrissake!" said Winnie. Anything to quiet things down.

  "She ain't gettin no drink!" Spoon said. "She's been drinkin rum since noon. This always happens when she takes that noon balloon to Jamaica."

  Guppy smiled demurely at Tess, extended her gloved hand and said, "Howja do, my dear. I'm Guppy Stover. What's Winnie doing with a lady like you?"

  Tess Binder smiled and shook hands with Guppy, who then said, "Don't get too close to those guys playing snooker. They're cops. And stay away from the bunch of thugs watching the hockey game. They think class is when most of the words on their tattoos're spelled right." Then she pointed to Bilge O'Toole and said, "Don't even look in his direction or you'll be wearing him like a fox stole. We're talking here about a guy that drinks from the faucet without a glass. He smiles at you, you'll feel like you just been flashed."

  The old woman, forgetting she was eighty-sixed, yelled to the saloonkeeper: "Spoon, bring me a brain tumor! I feel like mixing."

  "I ain't serving drinks to a drunk!" Spoon said. "If I wanted to get thrown in jail I'd attend a Grateful Dead concert. Go homel"

  Bilge O'Toole, who probably had a higher blood-alcohol reading than Guppy, said, "Stop whining about a drink! What is this, the days of whine and roses?"

  Then Carlos Tuna moved in close, carrying his turtle, Regis, around his neck in a leather pouch designed for comfy riding. He stuck up for Guppy. Soon everybody was fuming and fussing about who should or should not be served an alcoholic beverage.

  "What this is really about," Winnie explained to Tess over all the yelling, "is a debate over what Regis, who's Carlos's turtle, did to Irma, who's Bilge's turtle. They're looking for an excuse to fight. Jesus, where's the ghostbusters when we need em?"

  "I'm enjoying myself immensely!" Tess said. And for once her gray eyes looked a bit less opaque.

  Finally Carlos said to Bilge, "Listen, I was you I'd go back down the bar with the rest a that barge garbage!"

  "Careful, Bilge!" Guppy sneered. "Don't mess with Carlos. He's one of those hard guys, blows his nose on the sidewalk."

  "He'll be wipin it there along with his ass, he messes with me or my turtle!" Bilge countered, his face red and sweaty, his white hair standing in stalks.

  "This'll be a one-punch fight," Spoon said disgustedly to Winnie. "Whichever one throws it, he'll have a coronary on the spot. They'll be hemorrhaging cholesterol if they so much as break skin." Then he turned to both big-bellied turtle wranglers and said, "Break it up, or you're all eigh
ty-sixed!"

  "I came here and paid good money for a laugh or two!" Guppy cried in utter despair. "They had more laughs in WutheringHeights*"

  Tess had trouble hitting the ashtray when she snuffed out her cigarette. "I think there's only one place to go," she said boozily.

  "Yeah?"

  "My place. Wanna see my house?"

  "I'll need a microsecond to think it over," Winnie said.

  Guppy Stover was being removed from Spoon's Landing by the proprietor himself when Winnie and Tess arrived at the Mercedes parked on the street in front.

  The old woman's hair ribbon was long gone and her mass of hair had fallen forward, hiding all but her strawberry nose.

  "Unhand me, you lout!" she cried, as Spoon gently propelled her down the sidewalk in the general direction of her apartment.

  "You're not wanted here tonight," Spoon said. "Go home."

  "What am I, a pariah?" she cried. "A leper? Why don't you brand me? Why not make me wear a scarlet letter? I bet Hester Prynne got kindlier pub service, you big tub a pelican puke!"

  "That's what you get when boozers have an education," Spoon explained to Tess just before she opened the door to the Mercedes. "Always bringin up people I ain't met."

  Tess was quiet during the ten-minute ride from Spoon's to her home on Linda Isle. So was Winnie, but only because he was being lulled to sleep by the metallic chug of the diesel car.

  His head bobbed when she said, "What else did he say? That man?"

  "What man?"

  "The tall one at the club."

  "The guy wearing the rug? I don't know. Bought me a couple drinks and was filling me in on some a your members."

  "And what about my group? I mean, the women I was drinking with?"

  "I don't know," Winnie said, realizing that tonight of all nights he should've shut it off after the eighth or tenth vodka. "Just more or less that they got the social consciousness of Marie Antoinette."

  "Well, he wasn't exaggerating all that much."

  "No?"

  "About a few of them. Corky Peebles, for example."

  "I liked her haircut," Winnie said, as Tess stopped at the guarded kiosk of Linda Isle. "Reminded me a the Beatles when they started out. Very nostalgic."

  The uniformed guard waved and pressed the button to raise the wooden car barrier. Tess drove onto the island and made an immediate right. Into the ghetto.

  A few homes on her side of the island were listed for $2.5 million, but there were a few you could pick up for as little as $1.2 million on leased land. Tess Binder's house was one of those. She detested it. She'd gotten by with the furniture that Ralph Cunningham gave her when he'd bolted. She could've bought different furniture on credit, but had refused to put a penny into a house she hated. She didn't even have the emotional energy to try to sell the horrible marble sculpture her husband had bought during their honeymoon in Florence. The "art dealer" in Florence had told Ralph that the sculptor was a young Michelangelo. Tess said, sure, if Michelangelo had freebased for about ten years and had the taste of Imelda Marcos.

  Winnie Farlowe was one of the few human beings she'd invited into the house since Ralph deserted her for his tennis partner and what would surely be a costly doubles match.

  She was about to apologize and concede that the place was ghastly, when Winnie said, "This is the most beautiful house I've ever seen! I love marble floors and a sweeping staircase and a crystal chandelier! Where does Scarlett O'Hara sleep?"

  "So glad you like it, old son," Tess said, leading him down into the sunken living room, tossing her purse on one of two sofas that Ralph had done in florid raw silk. She unsteadily turned on two lamps and pulled her shoes off, dropping them on the biggest glass and gilt coffee table Winnie had ever seen. "I need a drink," she said, walking to the mirrored wet bar. She hated smoked mirrors. So gauche!

  Winnie moseyed around the room admiring an enormous oil painting from that Italian honeymoon. It was a Mediterranean version of Claude Monet lily pads that Tess had left on the wall only because it reminded her of fresh water with limits. Finite water that did not come at you like an assailant, and rush away like a slave to the moon.

  Winnie sat down on the sofa next to Tess only after she put a glass of Russian vodka on the table next to her double Scotch.

  "Sorry I don't have Polish vodka."

  "I was thinking I had enough," Winnie said, eyeing the drink.

  "I know I've had enough," Tess said, taking a good hard hit on the Scotch, closing her eyes as it slid down her throat. Winnie had never seen someone drink Scotch the way she did-erotically.

  He caressed his glass while she lit a cigarette and tucked her legs underneath herself, revealing all of one thigh. Tess clapped her hands and a sensual saxophone riff surrounded them: Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood."

  "John Coltrane was the best ever on tenor," Winnie said. "Wish I coulda seen him in person."

  "I'm not a real jazz buff," Tess said, "but I like certain pieces. My husband owed his life to Japanese technology. Me, I'd rather have a radio you can see and turn on with a knob."

  "Okay if I take my coat off?"

  "I certainly assumed you'd take your coat off," Tess Binder said, looking him right in the eye. She did it the same way she shook hands. Confidently.

  The implication stopped him for a second. Those gray eyes behind the oversized glasses were impossible to read, especially since she kept going out of focus. He knew he shouldn't have another swallow of booze.

  Then she did that trick again. She sipped the Scotch and leaned her head back like a bird. He could almost see it slide down. He couldn't decide. Was it the booze in his belly or the Scotch slipping down that long graceful throat? Anyway, Winnie Farlowe was getting mightily aroused.

  She sat catlike, exposing that muscular thigh. Those goddamn white stockings! Winnie was a sucker for willowy babes in white stockings. Made them all look like lascivious nurses in blue movies, the kind his team used to see at a movie house in Santa Ana when he was a high school kid playing football.

  "Why re you afraid of me?" Tess asked abruptly.

  "Shows, huh? Well, maybe after this Russian potata juice ferments I'll relax more." He took a big hit on the vodka.

  "Why do you drink so much, Win?"

  "Oh, I don't usually drink so much. Not like this. Not like tonight."

  "No? Why tonight then?"

  "You're buying."

  "You're lying."

  "I guess so. I'm jist nervous."

  "So why're you afraid of me?"

  "Well, let's see . . ." His speech was getting slurred and he knew it. So he took another drink. Too late now!

  "Lie down," she said.

  "What?"

  "Here. On the sofa. Lie back and put your feet up.

  Tess dropped to her knees on the white carpet, lifted Winnie's legs onto the sofa and slipped off his cheap penny loafers. She plumped the sofa pillows behind his head, got up and swayed toward the fireplace. She lit a small gas fire for effect. The logs were fake. Then she came back and knelt beside him.

  Winnie watched her take her jacket off and toss it carelessly onto the matching silk sofa on the other side of the glass table. She picked up his drink and held it to his lips, showing him an unreadable smile. She was acting just like a goddamn nurse! Was this one of those blue movies, or what?

  "Comfy?" she asked.

  "You kidding?"

  He thought she was going to lean over and kiss him, but she didn't. She giggled softly. Wind chimes again.

  "Still scared?"

  "Sure."

  This time she chuckled out loud. "Win Farlowe, you're perfect!"

  "I know. You said. A straight-ahead guy. Can I ask you something?"

  "Okay," Tess said. "Anything." She crept a little closer, resting her arm on the cushion beside his. He could feel the soft down on her forearm. In the firelight it was the color of polished brass.

  "I mean, I wasn't conceived in a Cal Tech sperm bank. But I'm not stupid."r />
  "Of course not," she said.

  "I mean, I don't like poems that don't rhyme, but I'm no dummy."

  "You are definitely no dummy," she agreed.

  "So why me?"

  "Why you, what?"

  "Someone like you. Looks. Brains. Money. A real babel I don't get it."

  "You're the world's only ex-cop who ever broke up a parade all by himself. You're different."

  "I'm different. Slumming, is that it?"

  "You're going to force me to get specific? Okay, starting with your looks, well, you look like ... like daybreak at Catalina. When I was a girl and my dad took me over to the island for weekends, we'd sit out there on the water at dawn, fishing. Or rather, he was fishing and I was watching the sunrise. I thought, if there's one thing you can depend on it's that beautiful sunrise over the island. All this, after my mother and father had been screaming at each other all night and my fingers were bleeding from chewing my nails to the quick. Unlike you, I've always thought of the sun in masculine terms. Old mister sun rising up out of the sea at dawn. Anyway, I look at you and I think of that. That's how you strike me, old son. There's something certain and reassuring about you."

  "That's why you call me old son? You mean like in the big sun up there?" Winnie pointed toward the twenty-foot ceiling.

  "Could be a subconscious choice of words," she said. "I don't pretend to understand myself any more than I've understood the men in my life: my father, my husbands, all three of them. But I think I understand a few things about you. You're a straight-ahead guy."

  "Got any kids?"

  "No," she said. "Guess I couldn't bring myself to inflict the men I married on some helpless child. How about you?"

  "My ex talked me into adopting her brats, I guess, so she could get a little more when her lawyer opened my veins. Never had any a my own. Sometimes I wish I had a son. Me, I had a great old man." Thinking of his father, he sighed, then said, "So, how about all the guys around here? All the guys at your club? You don't like em?"

  "They bore me or threaten me or repel me. Maybe they seem as ruthless as my father, I don't know. But you, you're different."

  "I don't scare you, huh? That figures. I don't scare anybody."