by Bill Albert
“Way to go!” a voice shouted.
Someone else gave a loud wolf whistle.
From the ground Harold looked up and saw his aunt, her robe now firmly gathered together, moving down the path toward him.
“Harold? Are you alright, dear?”
“Fine,” he whispered pleadingly. “Fine.”
She bent to help him. He scrambled to his feet and ran for the pickup. He didn’t look back.
Mourning After
She sat in the living room staring out into the back yard. Reflecting off the white gravel and the pool, the morning sun sliced into her eyes. She closed them slowly. It didn’t help, the throbbing ache in her head remained. Her stomach felt hollow and queasy. She was hungry but couldn’t face the thought of eating.
Next to her on the coffee table were dirty glasses, two empty bottles of wine and a full ashtray, the tips of the crushed butts ringed with red lipstick. The room reeked of stale smoke. There was a half-empty pack of cigarettes on the floor. Charlene’s L&Ms. Her friend hadn’t left until well after two in the morning.
Enid got up shakily and pulled the belt of her robe tight around her waist. She pushed open the sliding door and stepped outside. The smooth concrete was warm under her feet. She took a deep breath. The dry air made her cough. She grabbed a canvas-backed chair, dragged it into the shade of a palm tree by the pool and sat down heavily. From one of her pockets she pulled out a large pair of sunglasses. The world looked marginally better after she put them on although she still felt awful.
Enid had never been much of a drinker. That was a handicap, for drinking was the essence of social life in Palm Springs. The night before she had gone out to dinner with Charlene. Charlene didn’t find drinking a problem.
“Come on honey, cheer up, get another drink into you. You look like the ol’ well’s run dry.”
“Charlene, will you can that down-home stuff, please.”
Charlene looked hurt. She signaled to the waiter.
“This time, Bobby, dry, dry. OK? And I’d like two of them little ol’ olives.”
The waiter nodded, folded the small round tray under his arm and walked over to the bar. Charlene watched his behind as he crossed the room.
“He’s sorta cute, huh?”
“Come on, Charlene! He’s a kid, for Christ’s sake.”
“I dunno,” she said speculatively, “he’s gotta be over twenty-one. Yeah, at least over twenty-one.”
“And you gotta be out of your tiny mind.”
Enid sipped her drink and while Charlene bent down to get something from her purse she turned and had a quick look at the waiter. He was leaning with his elbows on the bar talking to the bartender. They were both laughing. The waiter had shiny dark hair and a trim body. Enid compared him to Archie. She tried to picture the young waiter naked in her bed. She couldn’t decide if it was an interesting picture or not. Her daydream was interrupted by Charlene’s voice.
“So?” cackled Charlene. “You are interested after all.”
Enid blushed.
“Not really,” she replied, trying to recover, “just looking, just thinking.”
Charlene leaned across the table. She lowered her voice.
“Yeah, Enid honey, I know, just looking, just thinking. I mean like thinking about doing it with a really young guy like that? I mean, you know, like how it used to be? All them firm muscles, that excitement, that energy, not to mention them being able to keep their little dingus up for more than a couple-a-three minutes.”
Enid smiled. Charlene was always so direct about things. It was refreshing. The women she was friendly with at the club were much more circumspect in conversation. They did share intimacies, complained a lot about their husbands, most of whom only came down to see them on weekends, but if they were having affairs they were careful not to mention them. Palm Springs was a very small town.
“You’ve got sex on the brain, Charlene Briggs.”
“And why not? Shee-it, honey ol’ John he gets himself interested maybe once a week, if that. And when he does it don’t last long. Wham, barn and then there ain’t no ‘Thank you ma’am’ neither. Rolls off and goes to sleep, snoring, his belly going up and down like a hound dog in a heat wave. Hell’s fire, we’re—you and me that is . . .” Charlene’s voice took on a more precise tone, “we’re at the peak of our sexual power just about now. You knew that, didn’t you?”
Enid choked on her drink. It was all she could do not to spit it up.
“Where’d you get that from?” she finally managed to say.
“In some book or other I was looking at, can’t remember what it was called. Guy’s name’s Have-a something-or-other. In there it says that we hit the top of our sex lives about thirty-five or forty, whereas for men it’s all down hill after eighteen. Poor bastards. Shee-it, honey, eighteeen! Can you believe that? I mean to say, that goes to explaining a lot of things, don’t it?”
She sat back and laughed. The waiter brought her two-olive martini, put a paper coaster on the table and set the glass down carefully. Charlene gave him a warm smile.
“Thanks a load, honey. You ready for another now, Enid?”
She nodded and the waiter moved off again. This time both women watched his progress back to the bar.
Enid shook her head ruefully. She took one of Charlene’s cigarettes and lit it. Tomorrow she would stop smoking. Definitely tomorrow. She looked across the table at her friend.
“Charlene, what the hell am I going to do about Archie?”
Charlene wasn’t paying attention, her eyes still lingered on the waiter.
“Charlene!”
“Yeah. What?”
“Archie. What am I going to do?”
Charlene gave a last look at the waiter and then turned to face Enid.
“I really don’t know. It’s a tough one, no getting round it . . . Hey listen, Enid honey, how’s about this. When Archie comes you can send Harold over to our place. He can stay in the spare room. I reckon Big John won’t mind.”
“What about Joan and John, Jr.?”
“You don’t wanna worry about them two, they’re still away to camp. God, I don’t know what I’d do without that summer camp.”
“Gee, Charlene, that’s real nice of you to offer and all, but I . . . Ah, I don’t know.”
“No trouble, honey and if you do that Archie don’t have to know nothing. He’ll be here, what, a week, ten days? That ain’t long. Whadda you think?”
It was very tempting. It would make everything much easier for her. She saw the pain on Archie’s face as he told her about his daughters. Then she saw Harold’s face at the funeral, saw him looking around his new room, saw his records all neatly arranged in boxes, saw him watching television, saw him lying in a red-faced heap on the ground in front of the house. She shook her head.
“But, I can’t do it, Charlene. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I’m telling you, honey, it would be OK. There is . . .”
“I know that, but it’s Harold. I can’t do it to Harold. Poor kid. Shunting him around like that when he’s just barely settled. No, I appreciate it, Charlene, but I just can’t.”
Enid felt guilty for even having thought about it. Charlene shrugged and picked up her drink.
“Maybe you’re right on that, honey. Maybe. But then you’re just going to have to tell Archie straight out when he gets here.”
“Yeah,” said Enid, resigned to her fate. “I know that. I suppose I’ve known that all along.”
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.
“This damn place, it’s so dead!” exclaimed Charlene, blowing out a jet of smoke and sweeping her arm around to take in the empty restaurant.
“It’s the same everywhere,” Enid said. “You know that.”
“Yeah, of course I know that. Still and all, it don’t make it a
ny easier or any less dead.”
Between mid-July and September the population of the town dropped by three-quarters to only about 12,000. The Chi Chi, the town’s only nightclub, didn’t book any class acts, only a pick-up band for the few people who wanted to dance. The piano bar in the Garden Room at the Biltmore was definitely not the spot, and although the Palm House had decided for the first time to hire a singing trio for the summer, they had been taken off after a couple of weeks. No one came because the feeling was that if you had to play Palm Springs in the summer you weren’t worth going to see. Many of the big hotels, where in the season you could find a singer or a small dance band, were shut, as were most of the good restaurants. Even the Racquet Club, which boasted New Year’s Eve every night, was closed.
The only people who stayed in Palm Springs during the summer were those who for one reason or another couldn’t afford to escape to somewhere cooler. The Agua Caliente Indians, to whom the government had so thoughtfully given about half of their own land, they couldn’t escape. Neither could the working people who kept the place going: guys that cleaned the pools, policemen, firemen, gas station attendants, plumbers, gardeners, real estate agents—like Charlene’s husband—check-out clerks at May fair, Safeway and at Thrifty Drugs, carpenters, doctors, and mailmen. None of them could get out. Neither could Enid. Archie’s wallet didn’t stretch to two houses. Summer in the desert was really tough for her, and it didn’t make it any better knowing her misery was shared.
Enid moved the chair closer to the pool and stuck her feet into the water. The coolness soothed her, seemed to travel upwards, clearing her head, easing the pain behind her eyes. She was thinking about having a quick swim when she heard the side gate open. A few moments later a young man wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off Levis and tennis shoes appeared carrying a pool skimmer and a large bottle of chlorine.
“Hi, Mrs. Carlson. How you doing today?”
“Fine, Manny. Just fine. How are you?”
“Not bad really, that is considering . . .”
He sat down on the diving board. Enid got up hurriedly and started for the house. She wasn’t in any condition for one of Manny’s endless, rambling conversations. They were always more endless, more rambling in the summer when he rarely found anyone to talk to out by the swimming pools. She stopped at the door and turned around.
“Manny darling, don’t put the chlorine in just now. I want to have a swim soon. I’ll put it in myself later. OK?”
“Sure thing, Mrs. Carlson. That’s no trouble at all. I’ll just leave it here, where . . .”
Enid went inside and slid the door closed firmly behind her.
SUN-AIR DRIVE-IN
HORROR DOUBLE BILL
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN
THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
Complete Show from Sundown
The sign was the only illumination on the long stretch of darkness which ran beside Highway 111 just outside Cathedral City, a small town a few miles from Palm Springs. Behind the circle of light the big screen, like a giant curved wall, rose straight up over a hundred feet from the desert floor. Above it was the sky, white with stars. A clapboard fence curved away from either side of the screen and out into the desert. Earl turned the pickup off onto the dirt road and stopped abruptly at the side of a small wooden hut. The cloud of following dust washed over Harold and the other two boys sitting in the back of the truck. From the ticket window a middle-aged woman in a sleeveless flower-print dress stared out at them. Her fleshy arms were pockmark white. She leaned forward, squinting through her glasses, carefully counting the number of boys in the truck.
“How many?” she asked suspiciously.
“Just what you see here, ma’am,” replied Earl, nodding toward the back of the truck.
Hands pressed hard down on the table, she stood up to get a better look, to make sure no one was lying down out of sight, trying to sneak in without paying. Having satisfied herself, she let her body collapse back into the chair and counted out six tickets. Her lips moved silently over each number.
“That’ll be six dollars.”
Earl handed her the money and took the tickets.
“Thank you kindly,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.
“Y’all behave yourselves now!” she called after them.
Harold and his companions held on as Earl gunned the truck into the drive-in.
One of the movies had already started. Up on the screen a man and a woman were talking to each other on the deck of a boat. Harold had seen this one before. He reckoned it had taken two or three years for The Creature from the Black Lagoon to make then Sun-Air Drive-in. He sighed, closed his eyes and tried to picture Hollywood Boulevard at night: the brightly lit marquees, the record stores, the crowds, the noise, the excitement. His friends would probably be there now, walking around trying to decide which movie to go see. And, here he was in the middle of nowhere bouncing around with a couple of hicks in the back of a pickup truck. At least he hadn’t been able to hear the country music from Earl’s radio on the drive out. He was thankful for that.
He opened his eyes. The place was full of the dark shapes of cars all on slight rakes, their noses pointing up toward the screen. They looked expectant, reverential. Earl turned off his headlights and drove slowly to the very back of the lot. He parked with the cab facing away from the screen.
“You OK, Harold?” asked Earl, swinging up into the back of the truck.
“Uh-huh, fine.”
“You met Jingles and Tommy,” said Earl. “That there’s Tody, Tommy’s little brother, and this one here is Garf.”
“How the fuck ya doing. Big Red?” said Garf, clambering over the tailgate.
He was a little guy with bandy legs. When he got closer and smiled, Harold saw he had buck teeth and fierce, slightly crossed eyes. Like all the others he wore boots and a cowboy hat.
Garf had a cocky bantam swagger and squeezed extra hard when he shook hands. Harold recognized him as the kind who invariably gave him a bad time. Taller and heavier than most kids his own age, Harold was the target for every little guy with a chip on his shoulder. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of them. Even his music and the implicit protection of the Negro kids couldn’t save him from their attention.
“Come on, Big Man. You wanna get into it? Huh? What’s a matter, you pussy or what?”
Harold never made eye contact. That would have been fatal. Instead he would smile to himself and walk away. Sometimes they would grab his arm or push him, trying to provoke a response. Harold didn’t respond. He didn’t know the first thing about fighting and had no desire to learn. It seemed utterly pointless and inescapably painful.
“Sure, yeah, look at him go. Chicky, chicky . . . Big Man!”
Harold found he could live with that. After a while they got bored and left him alone.
But Garf seemed friendly enough. It was the other kid. Tody, who was touchy. He never looked up, never acknowledged Harold, just grunted angrily and wandered off into the dark.
“Don’t pay him no never mind,” said Earl. “His old lady dumped him and he’s pissed is all.”
“I hope to hell, he don’t go and find her here with that there Carpenter guy,” said Tommy anxiously.
Tommy was a skinny kid. His ears stuck out.
“Shit, Tommy, you ain’t scared of that dumb fuck? Let him find Carpenter,” snorted Garf, puffing up. “Shit man, we’ll kick us some ass for sure!”
He slammed his boot into the side of the truck. It gave a hollow ring.
“Fuck yes we will!” Garf spat.
“You wanna go easy on the truck, Tiger?” cautioned Earl.
“You guys wanna watch this movie or what?” asked Jingles, reaching over and grabbing the speaker from the pole.
Somewhere from the mass of dark cars in front of them came the sound of breaking
glass. A girl screamed. No one took any notice, except Harold. He wanted to ask about it but felt he shouldn’t. If it was important someone would tell him.
“Yeah, OK,” answered Earl. “You calm yourself now, Garf, little buddy. We don’t want no bother with that crowd tonight. Who’s got the brew?”
“You say,” shot back Garf.
“That’s right, Peanut, I say,” Earl said with friendly menace.
Harold felt the tension. He didn’t like it. At Fairfax High he had developed a highly sensitive nose for trouble and worked on his moves to avoid it. He made sure he posed no threat to anyone, that he didn’t hang out with guys who got into fights. And, there was the music. His fierce and specialized knowledge was like a magic shield setting him apart and protecting him. But out here in the desert night no one knew him or cared about the invaluable, detailed rhythm-and-blues lore that he carried around in his head. And he didn’t know who was who or exactly what was going on. Newborn and helpless in a desert drive-in movie. A big fat kid. A big soft target.
He stared out into the darkness. A car door slammed. Someone shouted. Shadows danced among the parked cars. Up on the screen the girl was just about to go for a swim in the lagoon. He couldn’t understand why she wanted do that. He wouldn’t have done it. Harold hoped that Tody didn’t find Carpenter. Five minutes ago he hadn’t heard of either of them. Now he was involved. He wished he had stayed home.
Tommy picked up a gunny sack, took out a six-pack of beer and began handing them around.
“You like Country Club?” Jingles asked Harold.
Harold knew nothing about alcohol. He had tried the occasional drink at friends’ houses when their parents were out, but he didn’t particularly like the taste. He was told he would have to get used to it, that it was an acquired taste, like drinking black coffee. It didn’t make any sense to him that someone should want to acquire a taste for something he didn’t like. So, he had never bothered.
