Several times I thought sleep was imminent. Errant thoughts kept snatching me back. After an hour I slipped out of bed, went into the living room, and sat on the couch. I turned the TV on, way down low, and looked for a movie. I found something noirish called Murder, My Sweet and settled in to watch. There was a character called Moose Malloy in it. Any movie with a character named Moose is okay by me. I watched it through. Moose got killed at the end. It made me sad. I kind of liked the big lug.
Let My Love Open the Door
When I went to bed again I had no trouble sleeping. I dreamed about a guy named Moose. Then he turned into a talking moose. He and Captain Kangaroo were talking about Volkswagens. The talking moose liked the new ones and the Captain preferred the old.
When I woke up the shower was going, and I was alone in bed. I checked the clock. Ten to eight. I fell asleep again, woke up again. Nine-thirty. Gina was gone. So was Aricela.
I got up, got dressed, let myself out, drove home. When I got there, Theta’s cousin Ronnie was standing on the lawn next door, almost dressed in a bikini top and snug chartreuse capris. She was talking to a guy with green hair and an orange dab under his bottom lip. She saw me, waved, and ran over. “Hey, neighbor.”
My eyes—sometimes they have a mind of their own—went to her cleavage. It was quite a cleavage. Some might call it spectacular. “Hey,” I managed.
“How you doing?”
“Fine. You?”
“Just peachy.” She dropped her voice. “That’s my cousin Raoul. He has the hots for me. I told him it was gross to think about your cousin that way. He still looks at me like … well, you can guess.”
An admission: When I was sharing a house with Elaine, I thought of her that way once or twice, after I accidentally saw her naked one day. I was sixteen. I had no control over my hormones.
“Anyway,” Ronnie said, “I hear you’re an actor.”
“You might say that.”
“I’m an actress.”
Sure, kid, you and every other pair of tits in town. “Really.”
“Think you could give me some pointers?”
“I don’t know. I—”
“Just some real basic stuff, like where I get pictures and how I get to try out for movies and things like that.”
“Why don’t we talk about this later?” I said.
“Okay. If you want, come over later. I’ll make us some lemonade.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and escaped inside.
Elaine had called with an audition that afternoon for AT&T Broadband, whatever that was. I looked at the time and planned my day. Any way I cut it, I had more time than things to fill it with. I did some straightening-up and watched a program about Vietnam. I wondered what I would have done if I’d been called.
Around two I called Gina.
“Hello?”
“Me,” I said. “You took her in?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How’d it go?”
“Okay.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“What’s to talk about? I explained where we got her from and they took her and said they’d try to find where she belonged.”
“It’s for the best, Gi.”
“Then I suffered through the look she gave me as they took her away.”
“I’m sorry. I should have gone with you.”
“Come over, okay?”
“What’s going on?”
“Just get your ass over here.”
“Give me half an hour.”
Without a word, she took my hand and led me to the bedroom. She pushed me down on the bed and went after my shirt buttons. A minute later she was riding me and in another we were both done. She lay atop me for a long time, then rolled off and climbed under the blankets. After a few seconds I joined her.
“What was that all about?” I said.
“It has to be about something?”
“You haven’t been like that … I can’t think of any time you’ve been like that.”
“I don’t know what’s happening to me. I cry, I get all gaga over some kid, I come almost as soon as you’re in me.”
“The last one is a bad thing?”
“It wasn’t today. I wouldn’t want it as a steady diet.”
After a while I said, “I’m sorry about Aricela. That I let you give her back by yourself. I should have been with you.”
“If I’d wanted you there I would have woken you up.” She sat up, reached behind, and arranged the pillows into a sort of throne. She looked down at herself, then at me, and said, “I’m in pretty good shape for someone my age, aren’t I?”
“You’re in great shape for someone any age. I love your shape.”
“My boobs are starting to sag.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re sweet.” She nestled a hand under one, gently bounced it up and down. “Good thing I didn’t have any kids. They’d be dragging on the floor by now.” She switched to the other breast, gave it a quick taste of the same treatment. “You know when this started?”
“When you started bouncing your boobs around?”
“No, idiot. Getting uncomfortable about my life.”
“When?”
“When you started playing your guitar again. There you were, almost fifty and trying to do what you never did what you were a kid, and what was I doing? Looking through fabric books for people I can’t stand.”
“You can stand some of them.”
“This is my breakdown. Give me some leeway.”
“Sorry.”
“Then I almost got shot, and I saw Squig almost die, and it’s like, whoops, that could happen to me tomorrow. And then I had to go off to San Francisco, so I didn’t even have you around, and I lay there in that hotel bed and got all weird.” She looked me in the eye. “Don’t say it.”
“What?”
“‘More weird than normally?’“
“I won’t say it.”
“Then I come home and there’s this kid on my doorstep, and she’s a neat kid and she’s beyond the diapers-and-doodoo stage, and I’m having a good time with her. And I’m thinking, whoa, maybe I’ve been wrong all along, maybe kids would be a good thing, and now that I’m forty-seven it’s not likely that I’m going to have any, and then I have to take her to that place.”
“Where they’ll find her parents, and there’ll be a happy reunion.”
“Maybe it’s menopause.”
“The other night you thought you were pre-menopausal, and now you’re already there?”
“Did I say that?”
“Uh-huh. Do they even have early onset menopause?”
“I’ll have to get on the Net and check it out.” A big sigh led to a small smile. “I need to make a confession.”
“Always what a guy likes to hear.”
“It’s about your guitar renaissance.”
“What of it?”
“I had a hand in it.”
“I know you did. You took me to the Aerosmith concert, screwed my brains out till my guard was down, and connived me into playing again. Why are you grinning like that?”
“I didn’t buy the Aerosmith tickets.”
“No? Who did?”
“No one.”
“A gift from God. Your mother should be pleased.”
“Someone in the biz got them for me.”
“Who?”
“Think about it.”
It took me two seconds. “Oh. My. God.”
She kept smiling while it finished sinking in.
“Bonnie put you up to it?” I said.
“She figured, thirty years, you might not care about being in a band, so she thought she’d check things out before she got hold of you. She’d seen the bug commercials, so she called SAG to find out who your agent was, got hold of Elaine, explained what she was up to.”
“Elaine was in on this too?”
“Uh-huh. She sicced Bonnie on me. I told her I thought it would be good for you to be in a band,
what with your mood lately. I mentioned how you always talked about picking up your electric guitar. We decided I’d go to work on you. Aerosmith was a good place to start, and with her connections it was easy to get us tickets.”
“So she knew all along I had a girlfriend.”
“Why? Did she put the moves on you?”
“Of course not. It’s just that she acted like she didn’t.”
“Makes sense. She couldn’t admit she knew about me, could she? By the way, she did the same thing with Frampton.”
“That schemer. She had me believing it was some cosmic force at work, me playing my SG again.”
“It was, sort of.”
“And you just went along with this?”
“For free Aerosmith tickets? Of course I did.”
We lay there like a couple of slugs until I had to get cleaned up for my audition. I drove to the casting office on Highland. The casting director had me sit in front of an imaginary computer and complain about how much time I was wasting because of my narrowband Internet connection. Then my pet parrot told me about AT&T Broadband. One of the assistants read the parrot’s lines, and not all that well. I was in and out in ten minutes.
I called Gina when I was done, and we each drove to my place. We had an early dinner plan with our friends Sybil and Eugene. Then Gina had to drive back because her great-aunt Consuela was in from Santa Maria and she’d promised her mother to sit and listen to Auntie C. bitch about everything. I was invited but begged off. I’d gotten roped into tagging along the last time the old witch was in town. Once was enough.
We got to Culver City a little after five. My new buddy Ronnie got up off the porch next door and sauntered over. She’d changed into short shorts and a tight T-shirt. Welcome to Nipple City.
“Hey, neighbor,” she said.
“Hey.” I made introductions. “Ronnie’s from Arkansas.”
“Really?” Gina said. “Where in Arkansas?” Like she’d know one part from another.
“Little town called Bonesaw,” Ronnie said.
“I don’t believe I’ve heard of it. What brings you to L.A.?”
“I’m an actress.”
“Really?” Gina gave me an evil look. “Did you know Joe here is an actor?”
“I sure did. I was hoping he could show me the ropes. He hasn’t decided yet.”
The evil look morphed into an equally devilish grin. “Go ahead, Joe. Show the girl some ropes.”
“Umm …”
“Come on, make some time for her. You remember how tough it was when you were first starting out.”
It wasn’t tough at all. Having a cousin who was an agent helped a lot. Not giving a shit whether I got acting jobs or not helped more.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell you some stuff. In a couple of days, okay?”
“You mean it?” Ronnie said.
“Definitely.”
“Wow. I got to tell everyone.” She jiggled back to her place. “Theta! Raoul! Wait’ll you hear this!”
Gina waltzed to my front door and waited for me to let her in. When we were inside I said, “Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome. Give her some help, you might get to show her your rope.”
“I’ve seen her naked, you know.”
“In your dreams.”
“I stumbled on her sunbathing. Theta too.”
“Does she look as good naked as she does with clothes sort of on?”
“Theta?”
“Arkansas Barbie.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going bi again.”
“I’ve never stopped. I’d do her in a minute if I wasn’t with you.”
“Can I watch?”
“Girl on girl. Every man’s dream.”
Sybil and Eugene showed up at five-thirty. We went to East Wind, got caught up, and were back at my place by seven-thirty. Ten minutes later I was alone. I turned on the television, found nothing worthwhile, watched anyway. A little after nine the phone rang.
It was Deanna. “Toby did another drop-in,” she said.
Rough Boys
“Where?” I said.
“A biker bar near Ojai.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“Used to go out with a biker.”
“You do know how to pick ’em, don’t you.”
“I’m headed up there while the trail’s still hot. Want to go?”
“Now?”
“That a problem?”
“How biker-y is this place?”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
Not enough to admit it. “Of course not.”
“Cool, dude. You come up here, I’ll drive to Ojai. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Deanna and I passed the time relating our life stories. She’d lost interest in drumming in the early seventies and gone to court reporting school. Did that for a couple of years, liked the money but not the work, was thinking about quitting when she got busted for pot. I didn’t tell her I already knew about that. That I’d been checking her out with the police.
The bust settled the court reporting question, and she drifted through a series of pointless jobs. One day she woke up and found she was forty and decided it was time to have a real career. She went for vocational counseling. They put her through a battery of tests and suggested court reporting. She took this as a sign and found an old guy who wanted to support her in exchange for occasional sex. This lasted six or seven years, until she found Jesus and dumped the old man. A couple of months later she found Mott and dumped Jesus. Between her temp work and his dope dealing, ends met. He did his running-off thing once or twice a year. She would retaliate by finding someone of her own to screw around with. When Mott came back this time more quickly than usual—the teenybopper went back to Bakersfield—Deanna decided she was still entitled to an extracurricular fuck or two, which was why she was still coming on to me the night before.
“You still looking to even the score?” I said.
“No.”
“Because you decided not to, or because you got some?”
“I’m not saying. A girl has to have a little mystery, you know.” Same thing Gina’d said the morning before.
We passed Oxnard and Ventura and picked up Highway 33. Half an hour later we pulled into the lot of a place called Muskie’s. There were half a dozen pickups there, several souped-up Mustangs, a Trans Am or two. Plus about two dozen motorcycles, in two neat lines, one parallel to the road and one perpendicular.
Deanna found a spot at the back of the lot, under a big evergreen. A man who resembled a Viking, tall and broad and blond-bearded, was relieving himself on the other side of the tree. He said, Hey, and I said, How’s it going? and he said, You know.
Deanna dragged me away by the arm, and we walked toward the entrance. Music blasted into the chill air. A million points of light winked down at us.
The entrance was in front, off a porch a couple of wooden steps up from ground level. The area was poorly lit and smelled like old beer. A bug-zapper at the far end was doing landmark business. There were a couple more Norsemen on the stairs, laughing hysterically, blocking the way. One was holding a bottle of Corona. The other was holding two of them. Deanna walked up behind Two-beer and said, “Hey. Lardass. Out of my way.”
The laugh cut off like someone flicked a switch. The other guy tossed off one more guffaw, which trickled off into a manly giggle. The first one turned around and looked straight out, then, like a cartoon character, ratcheted his gaze downward. He peered at Deanna and frowned. I tried to remember if my affairs were in order.
A huge, missing-toothed smile appeared in the middle of the behemoth’s beard. He clodhopped down the stairs and wrapped Deanna in a bear hug. The beers smashed together alarmingly behind her back. After a while she told him to let go. When he didn’t she gave him a shot to the kidneys that did the trick.
He handed her one of his beers. “Dee. Ain’t seen you in months.”
“I ain’t seen you neither, H
oss.” She tossed me a look that said, What can you do?
“Where you been?”
“Down in the city.” She threw back the remains of the beer.
“What’re you doing there? You still with that motherfucker Mott?”
“Still with the motherfucker.”
“Whyn’t you bring him up?”
“He didn’t want to come. I brought Joe here instead.”
The shaggy head creaked in my direction. He looked me up and down. I’d worn jeans and a denim jacket and some weird old fur-lined boots, but I still looked as out of place as a pig at the opera.
“Hello, Joe,” Hoss said. “Just got back from a rodeo show.”
I hadn’t heard that one since junior high. Emy de la Fuente used to say it. “Hey, Hoss. Good to meet you.” He shoved the other beer in my direction. I took it in self-defense. He held out a hand. I did the same. Ten seconds later I took it back. The damage wasn’t too bad. I could get some ice from the kitchen to pack it in on the ride back.
“Look at us. Hoss and Little Joe. Like on Bonanza. How do you know Dee here?”
“We like the same music.”
“Very fine, very fine.” He turned to the other leviathan. “Hey, Buck. Meet Joe.”
I avoided further digital damage by shooting him a salute.
“Hey, everybody,” Hoss said. “Dee’s here. And some guy named Joe.”
My new biker friends came down to greet us. They all made a lot of noise. They were all drunk. When the ceremonies were over Deanna grabbed my hand and squeezed us through the crowd and into the place.
There were half a dozen neon signs advertising as many brands of beer, a pool table, a couple of pinball machines. A big racetrack-shaped bar in the middle, staffed by two skinny guys with handlebar moustaches and two skinny women with cleavage. They were handing out beers as fast as they could pull them from under the bar or squirt them from the tap. More people than the fire department wanted to know about were squashed against the bar or standing around watching the band. The crowd was about half bikers. There were roughly three men to every two women. Cigarette smoke grayed the air. In L.A. no one smoked indoors anymore. There were laws. There were probably laws here too.
We pushed toward the bar and deposited our bottles. Deanna yelled, “Hey, Pam!”
One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries) Page 18
