We don’t actually stay in the town of Morro Bay, which is usually overrun with tourists and traffic. Instead, we stay in a cheap motel from yesteryear overlooking the muddy estuary of the south end of the bay in Baywood Park, a sleepy hamlet with one bar and a couple of good seafood restaurants.
As we drove into the parking lot of the Back Bay Inn, I asked Carol, “Is this where you stayed?”
“Of course not,” she answered. “This is our place, Guy. I couldn’t come here without you. I stayed at the Super 8 in San Luis Obispo,” Carol said. “Cheap and clean.”
“You stayed in San Luis all weekend?” I asked. “Doing what?” We got out and I opened the trunk to get at our suitcase.
“I had a pretty good time,” she said. “I went to every used bookstore from Cambria to Pismo Beach. But you know what I didn’t do?”
“What?”
“I didn’t have dinner at Cafe Roma.” She grinned. It was our favorite restaurant in San Luis. Make that our favorite restaurant period.
I grinned back. “You’re on. Let’s register and get settled. You hungry?”
“Starved,” she said.
***
After dinner we walked on the path beside the estuary. It was low tide, but there was still enough water to reflect the lights of Cuesta-by-the-Sea on the hillside across the bay. We stopped, wrapped our arms about each other, and kissed.
“So how come all the bookstores?” I asked her. “You went to all these used bookstores?”
“Within driving distance,” she answered. “I love old books.”
“So do I,” I said.
“I kept thinking,” she went on, “how much fun it was dealing in old books instead of trying to market new ones.”
“Sounds lovely,” I agreed.
“So you didn’t tell me yet,” Carol said. “Did you have any fun while I was away?”
I laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” she said. “I really would like…I want to know, Guy: what did you do?”
“Nothing much,” I answered. “Cleaned the warehouse.”
“Was young Kitty there?”
“Kitty?”
“Kitty Katz. Your assistant in the shipping department.”
“Kitty?”
“Guy, talk to me.”
“I was by myself,” I answered. “What’s this about Kitty?”
“You like her.”
“No I don’t.”
“You don’t like Kitty?”
“Of course I like Kitty. I just don’t—”
“I just don’t trust her,” Carol said.
“Oh for crying out—”
“She has the hots for you.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Hots for me.”
Carol stopped walking and turned me around by the elbow. “Yes. Hots for you.” She put her hands on my cheeks and drew my lips up to hers. “I got hots for you myself, Guy Mallon.”
“You do?”
“Major hots. I’m slippery down to my knees.”
I chuckled. “You’re exaggerating.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Let’s go back to the room and find out.”
***
While Carol was in the bathroom I changed the light bulb in our bedside lamp. We had a special red bulb that we always brought to this room. Then I turned down the covers and stripped out of my clothes. I stood naked in front of the window, gazing out across the bay at the twinkling lights of Cuesta-by-the-Sea. The tide was coming in, filling the capillaries of the estuary, and I could feel myself start to grow.
Carol came out of the bathroom, turning off the light behind her. She wore a silk camisole that picked up the soft red from the bedside lamp. The light glowed on the smile that spread across her face as she looked me up and down across the room. I grew some more.
Even more when she peeled off the camisole and tossed it over her shoulder. She stuck out a hip and posed for me, lightly scratching the fiery blond curls of her thatch. More.
I continued to grow as she crossed the room, humming “I Cover the Waterfront,” and by the time her pale pink-tipped handfuls touched my eager chest I was six foot two.
***
The next morning we strolled through the Sweet Springs Nature Reserve on the outskirts of Baywood Park. We held hands along the path under a canopy of eucalypti full of nesting herons, till we reached the shaded pond, which was busy with mallards and lazy with turtles. Then out of the grove to the marsh, where we sat on a warm bench and watched two egrets wading, silent and still between each careful step. Redwinged blackbirds flitted and twittered among the reeds.
I laughed.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re not really jealous of Kitty Katz, are you?”
She laughed too. “Of course not. She does have the hots for you, and she may be a bisexual porn star, but I have something she doesn’t have.”
“Oh?”
“You.”
One of the distant egrets bent forward, reached into the water and brought up something to eat, an eel or a fish, something long and brown. “Oh my God,” I said. “I completely forgot to call Sam Welch back to tell him we can’t publish his crappy book.”
Carol groaned.
I said, “Carol, I’m sorry you’re stuck with a job you hate.”
She shook her head. “I don’t hate it. It drives me crazy, but I can take it. It means we get to work together, and I know how much the business means to you. But I’ll tell you this much: if Kitty Katz ever comes between you and me, I’ll kill her.”
“She won’t, of course.”
“No, of course she won’t. But if the business ever comes between you and me, I’ll kill it. I mean that.”
“How would you kill a business?”
“I don’t know. Burn down the warehouse?”
“That seems kind of risky,” I said. “It would be cleaner just to let Fritz Marburger have the business. We’d have to work for him for five years, but we’d have to earn a living somehow anyway, so—”
“No,” she said. “No fucking way. Number one, I’m not working for that creep. Number two, he expects to take over all our assets, you told me.”
“Yeah, but what assets? Our bank account’s running on fumes, our warehouse is full of backlist inventory that doesn’t sell diddly, plus some fifteen thousand copies of a hardbound novel that even the author doesn’t want anything to do with. Who needs it? And who needs all our payables?”
“Guy, listen to me. I’ll say it one more time: Marburger wants all the company’s assets. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about being a publisher. He just wants the company’s assets, which include, in case you don’t remember, your priceless collection of first editions of postwar Western American poets. That’s what he’s after, Guy.”
“Those aren’t company assets,” I said. “Those books belong to me.”
She shook her head. “You’ve been buying them with the company credit card.”
“But most of those books I’ve owned since before the company existed.”
“And we listed the entire collection as one of our assets when we took out a bank loan to finance the last Arthur Summers omnibus.”
I squirmed on the bench. “That loan’s paid off,” I tried.
“Fritz Marburger knows what he’s doing, Guy.”
“But why would he want a bunch of poetry books? He doesn’t like poetry, or so he says.”
“Money, babe. He’ll sell them all. He’ll make a killing, and meanwhile we’ll be running a business that’s broken our hearts.” She rubbed my neck and said, “Or maybe he doesn’t care about the money. Maybe he just likes to destroy people. Misses the action of cutthroat business. It doesn’t matter. Guy, promise me you won’t do this stupid thing.”
“I promise,” I said.
“I refuse to work for that asshole, and I don’t want you to lose your books.”
I stood up and face
d her. “I could lose the books. I could live without them. But I can’t live without you.”
***
We went back to the motel and packed our car. Before hitting the road we stopped at the mini-mart next door for a couple of coffees to go. Then the Los Angeles Times caught my eye. It wasn’t the main headline, but it was right there on the front page, above the fold so I could read it in the rack: “LORRAINE EVANS IN INTENSIVE CARE.” The subhead continued, “Overdose of sleeping pills blamed for singer’s critical condition.”
Chapter Nine
Luckily, Lorraine didn’t succeed and the emergency room at Cottage Hospital saved her life. Unfortunately, Naming Names didn’t fare so well. I hoped that Lorraine’s misfortune would create some interest in her book, but on that score I got what I deserved. The book was dead in the water. Just as she wanted it to be.
***
“Tough luck about Lorraine, Good-Guy.” Samuel Welch towered over me in Barnaby and Mary Conrads’ backyard. It was the annual cocktail party, where the inner circle of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference gathered once a year to drink and shmooze on a late Monday afternoon. “I hear she couldn’t take the heat, right? People giving her a hard time about her private life?”
“Right,” I mumbled. I was out of Scotch.
“So I have a question for you, Good-Guy,” he said. “And you know God damn well what it is.”
“Let’s go belly up to the bar,” I said. “I’m gettin’ powerful thirsty.”
Me and the bad guy moseyed across the lawn, but even before we reached the outskirts of the drinking crowd, he draped his heavy arm down across my shoulders and said, “Did you read it? Did you read my manuscript? I know you been busy, but what did you think? Huh?”
I didn’t even wait until I had a drink in my hand. “Sam,” I said, “that is a truly beautiful collection of tales. Especially Rita Hayworth’s.”
“Dear Rita!” he sighed. “So? Are you going to publish my book?” he whispered. “That’s all I want to know.”
Cut bait. “Nope,” I answered. “No can do.”
“Why not?” He looked as if he’d been bonked on the bean with a beer bottle.
“Broke,” I said. I faced him and turned my pants pockets inside out. “We spent all our cash flow on Lorraine Evans’ novel. I can’t afford to publish anything these days.”
The world’s highest-paid professional villain looked down at me and smiled. “Just tell me how much money you need, my friend, and we’ll work out the rest of the details.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it, kiddo. Win-win situation.”
I thought: Don’t call me “kiddo.” I said: “Are you serious?”
He nodded and smiled, one eyebrow cocked. “How much money are you in the hole?”
***
“You what?” Carol said that evening when I told her about the deal I had cut.
“Think about it, kiddo,” I said. “Win-win situation.”
“Don’t call me ‘kiddo,’” she retorted, picking up a wooden spoon and prodding me in the chest. “Don’t ever call me ‘kiddo,’ okay?”
“Okay.”
“Guy, aren’t we in bed with enough assholes as it is? I mean Fritz Marburger and Roger Herndon, and now this two-bit heavy? What in the world were you thinking of?” She slammed the spoon down next to the sink.
I turned my back on her and rattled the martini shaker furiously, then poured her a cold cocktail that I hoped would help her see reason. I handed it to her and we walked together into the living room. “You’re not having a drink?” she asked.
“I already had four scotches at the party,” I said. “I’m good for now.”
“That explains it,” Carol said as she sat down. “And it’s an out. Nobody can be held to a promise they made under the influence.”
I plopped down in the other armchair and said, “Carol, I’m just trying to save the company is all. We need the money. It’s as simple as that. Sam Welch is going to pay off our printer’s bill. Without him, we’d lose everything.”
“I could take out a second mortgage on this house,” she offered.
“No. I’d rather turn the company and all my books over to Marburger Enterprises than to let you risk your house. Look, it’s just one book we have to publish, and then we’ll be back on our feet, okay?”
“And whose book will we have to publish to pay off the printing bill for Mister Welch’s ego trip? Have you thought about that? And where are we going to store Welch’s book? We don’t have any room left in our warehouse. Have you thought about that? Jesus, Guy.”
“It’ll work out,” I said. “Trust me,” I told her. “No problem.”
“My two least favorite phrases,” Carol said. “Pour me another drink.”
***
The day after the Fourth of July I went to the warehouse to process a few orders that had dribbled in. I opened the warehouse door all the way, because it was a hot day and I needed the air. I turned on the lights, put the orders on the work space, and sat down to type labels. I was disappointed but not surprised that nobody else was there; it would have been fun to swap a few jokes with Kitty. But the Caslon Oldestyle folks didn’t keep regular hours. I was on my own to wrap books and stew about the stew I was in.
Not quite. “Guy?”
I stood up and saw Gracie’s head poking out from behind a row of Naming Names.
“Hey, Gracie,” I said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“You alone?”
“I was till now.”
“Can we shut the door?” she asked. She ventured out into the aisle. She was dressed for the weather, in cutoff jeans and a loose sleeveless tee shirt, pink as usual.
“Why? What’s up?”
“There’s some creep stalking me,” she said. “Oh shit, here he comes now.”
I turned and looked out the warehouse door into the parking lot, where I saw a tall man walking forcefully toward us, dressed in a tan suit and carrying a briefcase.
“Who is that person?” I asked.
“I don’t have any idea who he is. I want you to stick by me, Guy. Don’t let this guy do anything, okay?”
He was almost upon us. “You don’t know him?”
“No.”
“Seen him before?”
“Yes.”
“At the Kountry Club?”
“No, at the post office, about an hour ago. I was on foot because it’s such a nice day. I picked up Roger’s mail, then started out of the P.O., and that’s when saw this weirdo giving me this look, like he’s seen me naked or something, but I don’t remember him from the club. He followed me out of the P.O. and all the way to the Paseo Nuevo. It was like I could feel his eyes licking the backs of my legs. I lost him in Nordstrom’s. But it looks like I didn’t really lose him. Shit!”
“I’ll handle him,” I said. “Maybe you’d better go on back to the office till I get rid of him.”
Too late. “No you don’t, missy. You stay right where you are.”
I turned around to face the man standing in the doorway, backlit by a bright sunny day, so I couldn’t see much of his face. A tall man with a gray crewcut. He stepped into the warehouse, and his face came into focus. I’d seen that face before. “So,” he said. He was talking to me, not to Gracie. “We finally meet. You can’t hide from me anymore, Mister No Street Address. Your little Miss Priss here led me straight to your door.” He took a few steps into the warehouse.
“Hold it right there,” I told him. “Back off.”
He stopped, but he didn’t back off. “You don’t answer my letters, you don’t take my phone calls. Just who the heck do you think you are, Mister?” He set the briefcase down on my workspace, next to the typewriter.
“Mister,” I replied, “just who are you and just who the heck do you think I am?”
“As if you didn’t know,” he answered, “my name is Bob Worsham. I’m the author
of Onward Christian Sailors, and you’re my darned publisher, or at least that’s what the contract says. Ten thousand copies of my book. Where are they?” His gaze drifted back to the phalanx of pallets, all piled high with Lorraine Evans’ disaster. “That them?”
I chuckled. “Look, Mister Worsham—”
“Commander Worsham.”
“Okay, Commander. Look. You’ve made a mistake here. See—”
“I’m beginning to realize that,” he thundered, back on the move now. He strode around the work space and stood two feet in front of me, so that I had to tilt my head far back to look him in the face. “A twenty-seven-thousand-dollar error. But let me tell you something, Mister Herndon—”
“See, there’s your error, right there,” I said. “I’m not Roger Herndon.”
He took a step back and bent forward to look me straight in the eyeballs. Then he swirled around and opened up his briefcase, then swirled again and held a copy of the Caslon Oldestyle sales brochure six inches in front of my face.
“That’s you, Sir. That’s you, unless my eyes deceive me. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“That’s my face all right,” I said. It was the picture of me and Carol standing in front of piles and piles of our own books. “But I have nothing to do with Caslon Oldestyle Press or with Roger Herndon.”
“Oh yeah?” Commander Bob looked over at Gracie, who was twisting the bottom of her pink tee shirt in her hands. “And how about your little chippy here in her shorty-short pants? Is she Roger Herndon?”
“That’s enough,” I said. “Listen—”
“No, you listen to me, Mister Whatever Your Name Is. I don’t care what your real name is. All’s I want is to see my books. Every copy. Ten thousand of them. Show me those books, and I’ll be on my way. Let’s go. On the double.”
“My name is not Roger Herndon,” I told him once again. “I have nothing to do with Caslon Oldestyle Press. I don’t have to show you a thing. You’re trespassing here. Gracie, go phone the police.”
But before Gracie could move, Worsham nailed her with a question. “Gracie, is it? Do you work for this man?”
Gracie nodded and whispered, “Sometimes.” Her lip was trembling.
“And do you work for Caslon Oldestyle Press?”
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