Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore (9780385538398)

by Mosley, Walter

  “I don’t need two mornings,” I said, a little breathless with gratitude, not in appreciation for the free offer of therapy but for the generosity itself. I might have been near tears.

  “Yes, you do,” Anna Karin said. “As a matter of fact I will only agree to see you if you consent to meeting me twice a week.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Anna’s eyes were a pale blue, like a day that had been bright but was now being covered by a thin layering of clouds.

  She smiled.

  “I don’t want you to leave yet,” I said then, realizing that she wasn’t going to answer my question.

  She sat back in the plush chair and eyed me closely.

  I enjoyed the scrutiny. This made me think of the pleasure Lana got when I gazed so closely at her.

  “I know you don’t,” Anna said. “But there’s a delicate line here. We are about to embark upon a very fragile phase of our relationship. This is not about friendship. A friend would not be able to break the bond that you’re held by. A friend would not be able to let you go.”

  Again I felt something. There was some kind of truth in her statement. I knew what she said was right but I couldn’t have explained why.

  Anna stood up then and nodded.

  “Wednesday and Thursday,” I said, because it was a week away and I needed time.

  “Six in the morning,” Anna added.

  “Do you have to go?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  The next thing I knew I was on my feet holding Anna with all my might. She gripped me in an embrace that was almost a restraint. I was surprised by her strength.

  We let go at the same moment, as if the movements had been choreographed.

  “I will see you this coming Wednesday,” she said. “Six a.m.”

  I watched as she walked away, unable to bring myself to accompany her to the door.

  I got to Threadley’s at a little after nine that evening. The door was locked, so I pressed the bell and waited patiently. Lewis Dardanelle was somewhere inside. He was like a vampire who only came out to work at night. Most of the people he met were by appointment only.

  I was still wearing the faded dress and tattered sneakers. But I had showered and so felt presentable.

  “Mrs. Pinkney,” a voice spoke from a speaker embedded in the wall.

  “Yes, Mr. Dardanelle. I’m here about your call.”

  “I’ll be right down.” His voice was crisp, almost buoyant.

  I thought about my mother. She still lived in the small house where I was raised, off Central Avenue, down around Watts. I wouldn’t be able to send her any more checks. That would make my older brother, Cornell, happy. He always wanted to be seen as the breadwinner of our family but I was the one who supported Mom. I wondered how Cornell was, if he’d speak to me ever again.

  The extra-wide door of the mortuary swung inward and the lean mortician bowed for me to enter.

  “Let’s go to my office,” he said with a wan and yet somehow a profound smile. Or maybe I was just reading things into every gesture and motion; maybe the only truth in my world was a fabrication perpetrated by a state of shock.

  He led me through the barren stone room to a small hallway. At the end of this shabby lane of coffin-lid-thin doors we came to a small elevator. It was crowded in there with just the two of us.

  The vestibule moved slowly past the second floor and the third. I could hear Dardanelle’s bellowslike breath coming slowly and strong.

  “He wants to what?” I had asked Theon one evening when he had come home from planning the burial of Sack “Big Daddy” Pounds.

  “He wants to have sex with you in this special coffin he keeps in a room next to his office,” Theon said, as if my answer were a foregone conclusion. “He says that he’ll give us Sack’s coffin at half off if we do.”

  “We?”

  Passing the fourth floor of the six-story house of death I was brought back to the night Theon expected me to whore for his dead friend. I considered walking out, calling Theon a bastard, breaking the glass I held in my hand. It wasn’t so much that I was appalled by Lewis or by having sex with someone and being paid for it. Almost every woman I knew considered the monetary value of the man she took off her clothes for.

  What upset me was the thought of having to fuck for money after I died (even if that death was only a metaphor), of being lowered into a coffin and having some man with a hard-on put on top of me instead of a cool muslin shroud.

  I wanted to scream and run from the image Theon had conjured up for our death-house discount, but instead a pastel calm came over me.

  “Theon,” I said, looking into his eyes with my head cocked and my fake blue eyes beaming.

  He saw in me the turmoil of a life under hot lights, of marriage to a man who was sometimes no better than a pimp, of sores and viruses and intimacies that no living being could endure without some kind of protection.

  I saw my thoughts roll around behind his eyes and he saw me observing his most vulnerable insights.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” he said.

  When we went to bed that night he held me and kissed my neck.

  There was a cricket somewhere in the house calling out for a mate. I smiled at the memory of a husband who, for all his flaws, managed to get it right every once in a while.

  “Here we are,” Lewis Dardanelle said.

  The elevator had stopped and the towering man was holding the door for me.

  I wondered why I wasn’t afraid. Why hadn’t I, in years, felt the tremors of fear around violent men who hated women with their sex and their words?

  Slap her tits while you’re fucking that cunt, one director said in every scene I did for him, and I did four scenes a day, three days a week for eighteen months.

  Dardanelle’s office contained the dark and cool calm of a peaceful dream about to end. His desk was white ash and there were paintings of flowers hung on every wall. There was no bookcase, just a round oak table with various religious texts strewn upon it.

  “Let’s sit at the table,” Lewis said, gesturing for me to choose a seat.

  He sat after I did, lacing his arachnidlike fingers and smiling just under the threshold of humor.

  “We have received sixty-eight thousand dollars in cash and credit card accounts,” he said, explaining the smile’s nature with these words.

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “We could take the big chapel up at Day’s Rest.”

  “I like the idea of having the service near the grave,” I said. “How many people have given money?”

  “Four hundred and ninety-eight.”

  “Then we should plan on a service for, say … seven hundred?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess the big room would be appropriate then.”

  “Yes. Would you like to view coffins this evening?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I want him in a plain pine box, Lew. Light wood with no flourishes, no finish, if you can find something like that.”

  “I’m sure we have something.”

  “Take what’s left from the service and get Talia to see to the catering at our house. You have the address?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get Lana Leer to call Talia. I’ll give Lana the key, so all they have to do is work out the logistics.”

  Dardanelle and I were as peaceful as the grave; there was no conflict among the dead.

  We sat there in the soft light of the silent office. Now and then an errant sound wafted up from the street.

  I don’t remember leaving Threadley’s that evening: not standing up from the round table or saying good night, not thanking Lewis for the work he and Talia had done or filling out the papers that I must have signed. The next thing I knew I was pulling into my driveway, wondering if Richard Ness would be waiting for me.

  The night passed like waves that back up on themselves and then press forward again. This feeling was in the form o
f dreams and half-conscious musings. The ideas from both states of awareness traded places, moved back and forth almost as if I were a fabricated notion of some other being who had conjured me as a character in fiction or a play.

  The character, me—young Sandy Peel—was fifteen and on the run from the police. I had been giving blow jobs in a parking lot south of Hollywood Boulevard and the cops were cracking down on that activity. My best friend at the time, Amy Chapman, had been arrested and sent to jail for thirty days even though she was my age.

  I saw the cops and they saw me. I went through a wire gate into an alley that split into three directions. I went straight ahead, climbed into a backyard where a dog tried to bite me, and made it to the boulevard. I walked into a chain coffee shop and took a seat at a table where a man was drinking expensive coffee served in a paper cup.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the gentleman. “Can I sit here with you for a little while?”

  “You solo?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  He smiled at my naïveté.

  His smile made me mad and I would have gotten up and left, but I saw the uniforms that had been chasing me right outside the coffee shop window.

  The man saw my fear and its source with a glance and moved his chair so that his body blocked me from being seen.

  “My name is Theon Pinkney,” he said.

  He was around forty, ancient to my teenage eyes, wearing gray slacks and a maroon dress shirt open to show off his chest hair.

  “I’m Debbie Dare,” I said, making up a whole new life then and there.

  “My car’s in the parking lot out back,” he said. “Would you like me to drive you somewhere?”

  “Out from this life into another one where a girl could hit a break,” I said.

  I had heard these words from Mela David, an older prostitute who sometimes threw work our way. If all a guy wanted was a fifteen-dollar blow job, she’d send him to the parking lot that Amy and I haunted.

  Theon smiled and gestured toward the back of the restaurant with his right hand. He wore three thick gold rings, with a single gem embedded in each: one ruby, one emerald, and a yellow diamond. The brightness of those jewels took my breath away.

  He drove a red Rolls with the softest calfskin seats I ever sat in.

  He reached over and pulled my seat belt on for me. This was also a first in my experience. Every other time I got in a strange man’s car it was to suck his dick, and you couldn’t do that in a harness.

  As he turned left onto Hollywood he asked, “Now, where is this life you were talking about?”

  “Where you live at?” I asked, and he smiled again.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No.”

  “You ever watch X-rated movies?”

  “Sometimes I be wit’ a boyfriend who watch ’em but I never paid much mind.”

  “I bet it takes a lot to impress you.”

  “I like your rings,” I said with some emphasis.

  “How old are you?”

  “Old enough to get arrested for suckin’ a white man’s dick in the front seat’a his car.”

  “Do they arrest the man?”

  “No. They give him a summons an’ send him home.”

  “They should arrest the john for child molesting and send you home to your mother.”

  “I ain’t no child.”

  “Only a child could be as beautiful as you are, Debbie Dare.”

  I was very young and he was older than my dead father but that didn’t matter. The place I was looking for was a room where somebody looked at me and called me pretty. I was a wild thing when I climbed into Theon Pinkney’s car but he tamed me with just a few words.

  When I woke up the morning sun was streaming into the polar bear room. There was drool down the side of my face and my crotch itched.

  In the bathroom I peered into the mirror, half expecting to see white roots coming in at the baseline of my brown hair.

  I brushed my teeth and ran a comb through the short dark brown mane.

  There were three messages on the answering machine. I wondered if I had missed them when I got home, or maybe the phone had rung in the night but I was too deep asleep to hear it.

  Marcia Pinkney had called again. She said that she’d be home for the entire day tomorrow and would be happy to see me at any time.

  I wondered again at the time of her call. It was ten in the morning and Marcia was an early riser. If the call had come in on Thursday then she meant for me to drop by today; if it was this morning that she called she’d be expecting a Saturday visit.

  This displaced feeling fit perfectly with my state of mind. I was lost in time, experiencing the past as clearly as (in some cases more so than) the present.

  For long minutes I considered Marcia Pinkney’s call and its origins. It didn’t occur to me to call her. Marcia had never spoken to me directly. When Theon brought me to her home, on the occasion of his brother’s death, she had said to Theon, “Please tell this woman that she is not welcome in my home.”

  Finally I moved on to the second message.

  “You’re fired!” Linda Love shouted, and then she slammed her receiver down.

  “Coco Manetti here,” the third caller said, his voice smooth and somewhat sinister. “I’m an associate of Richard Ness.…” He left a number and said that he hoped I would call him.

  I knew of Coco. I’d have to shoot him if ever I brought out my father’s piece.

  A pang of hunger made its presence known. I was starving. This feeling confused me. For so long I went hungry by choice.

  LeRoy’s Chicken and Waffle House was on Venice Boulevard very near the ocean. Absolutely everybody ate there at one time or other.

  I had the pecan waffle with two spicy thighs and a side of hash browns along with coffee and orange juice.

  I sat at an outside table that faced in a westerly direction but did not afford the view of the ocean; it was just that much too far away.

  The sky was clear and vacant like nearly every day in Los Angeles, like most of the people who came to California.

  The feeling of Los Angeles is that of free fall, I wrote in the little journal that I pilfered from our housekeeper. There’s nothing to grab onto but it’s beautiful if you could only stop and appreciate the view.

  It felt good eating all that food and sitting outside in the stupid but beautiful day. No one came to talk to me because of my dress and shoes. It was the perfect disguise in that part of L.A., the shabby, faded look.

  Hey, Debbie, I remembered a male fan once shouting at an adult film event, I just wanna fuck that red dress, baby, that’s all.

  Kip Rhinehart lived in a converted schoolhouse way up a steep driveway deep in Malibu Canyon. It was a horseshoe-shaped building with the hump facing toward the entrance drive. The arc of the front of the building was two stories high. Kip had an apartment on the second floor. The rest of the place was composed of single-story classrooms. These were leased by the day or week to people in various businesses, including my own.

  I parked behind Kip’s red pickup in the circular area in front of the informal business. Then I rang the doorbell and waited patiently.

  You could smell the ocean up there—something to do with the wind currents. There was a wildness to that particular section of the canyon that almost made it seem alive—not filled with life but like a huge creature with a single mind and a long, long life span.

  “Can I help you?” a man called from my right.

  He would have been shorter than I even standing straight, but Kip was a little hunched over from some natural malady or condition. He wore a white T-shirt and dark blue jeans. He also had on hard-looking light brown cowboy boots.

  “Hey, Kip.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you recognize me?”

  The sixty-year-old’s face was wrinkled and brownish but he was a white guy. When he squinted he aged a decade. The surprise made him younger again.

  “Deb? That you?
”

  “Do I have to put on a wig and contact lenses just to come visit?”

  “No,” he said.

  He rushed over and hugged me.

  Kip was one of the few men I allowed this privilege. Guys tried to grab me so often that I naturally avoided cuddles, clinches, and bear hugs. But with Kip it was always friendly, considerate.

  “What happened to your hair?” he asked.

  “I’m just tired, Kip.”

  The empathy in his eyes reflected some decision that he’d reached long ago, before I was born no doubt.

  “You wanna cup’a java?” he asked.

  Kip’s property ended at a cliff that overlooked the ocean. The tiny bands of waves were far enough away that you could see but not hear them.

  There was a stone dais laid out at the far edge. On this platform sat a pink table and four shabby plastic white chairs. It was there that Kip served me his Spanish coffee and canned evaporated milk.

  I accepted this hospitality not because I wanted or needed it but because he offered. The kindness was like a high-denomination poker chip: valueless as a thing but representing something of significance.

  “I’m so sorry about Theon,” he said after we were seated and looking out.

  It was early afternoon. The sun was high and hot.

  “He went out with a beautiful girl on top of him,” I replied.

  “He loved you though.”

  “Yeah. I guess he did.”

  “It’s hard being an old porn star, Deb,” Kip said. “I mean, it’s harder on women but guys feel it too. There’s no retirement plan and unless they can use a camera there’s no work to speak of.”

  “It’s quiet around here,” I said, because there was no reply to Kip’s pronouncement.

  “Not rentin’ out too much. I took in Jolie ’cause Theon asked personally. Place is paid for and I got my government check for the bills.”

  Kip gazed back at the vacant area inside the horseshoe. It was a brick playground turned patio, with grasses and weeds growing up through the cracks. Looking at that space I remembered seeing Kip gazing down from his second-floor window when I was taking one man’s hard-on down my throat while his German friend was fucking my ass.

  “I was chokin’ at one end and trying to relax at the other,” I told Theon that night.