“Doesn’t sound like much of a problem.”
“You wouldn’t think so. But the next day she drags me to another bawdy house and the same thing happens. And she wants to go again tonight! I’m all for trying out different things. Hell, I didn’t even object the time she dressed up like Cleopatra and made me dress like Julius Caesar - don’t you tell Duncan - but I’m not a young man. I don’t know how much more I can take.” Woody fanned his face with his hat. “What the hell should I do?”
Benjamin stood. For once he felt a real empathy with Woody. He threw ten dollars on the table for the beers and picked up his hat.
“Just do your best, Woody,” he said. “That’s all anyone can do. And if she makes you pay for lunch, let me know. I’ll pay you back.”
For once, and despite her swelling rage, Fiona regretted her attempted attack on Benjamin. Not that she ever thought about attacking, it was all reflex. But as she stared at the crumpled check in her hand, she felt like an ass. Woody came in and sat beside her.
“I should have listened to you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have tried to buy that woman off. It was the wrong strategy all together. I see that now.”
“I don’t like to say it, but I said as much.”
“I know you did.” Fiona picked up the phone and dialed. While the phone rang, she asked, “what were you two talking about anyway?”
Before Woody could respond her call was answered and she said, “Hello, William, Fiona here. I know. It’s terrible. I’m in Los Angeles right now trying to set it right. Uh huh. That’s why I’m calling. Yes, I’ll wait.”
“We were just talking,” Woody said.
“What?” Fiona had already forgotten her question. She held up a hand for silence. “Yes, it’s Fiona. I’ve encountered a small problem. Pack your bags and come on out. I’ll make the arrangements.” She looked at Woody and put a hand over the phone. “You get ready,” she said. He anticipated her words and he shuddered as she spoke. “We’re going out tonight. I found another club in the sports section of the Times.”
Duncan did not feel like painting that evening.
He turned off the lights and sat with Cat in his window, the night breeze cool against his face. He scratched Cat’s ears and watched men go in and out of the Hollywood. He sipped a beer and observed traffic flow by beneath him. Exhaust mingled with the smell of his paints as a bus roared by. Misty parked her BMW beneath his window and got out. She took her lingerie bag out of the back seat and slung it across her shoulder.
“Hi, Duncan.”
“Hey, Misty.”
“Want to invite me in for a beer later? I get off at two. You could paint me. You haven’t painted me yet.”
“I don’t feel much like painting,” he said.
Misty looked like she might cry. “Why don’t you like me?”
“I like you fine. Why do you say that?”
“Champagne and Cassandra talk about you painting them all the time. I feel left out. They act like they’re better than me.”
“There’s lots of girls I haven’t painted.” Duncan wished the bottle he held was whiskey instead of beer. “I’ll paint you, Misty. Just not tonight.”
“Great.” She started to go, but then stopped and turned back. “I could still come up after I get off. We could just, you know, talk.”
Misty was taller than Pris, with hair as blond, bigger breasts, and with legs that could crush the breath from his lungs. But the blond was out of a bottle and the breasts were enhanced and if they discussed who Duncan painted they would no doubt confer on with whom he slept. And I must stay pure for Pris, he thought. He laughed bitterly.
“Does that mean yes?”
“It means not tonight. I want to be alone tonight.”
Misty looked down. “The girls wonder why you don’t hit on them.”
“I’m just being professional.”
“Bull.” Misty looked up. “When are you going to give up? She doesn’t even like men. You could have any other girl at the Hollywood.” Misty not so subconsciously emphasized the any. “Why do you waste your time?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a lousy liar.”
Duncan’s face burned. He looked down the neck of his beer bottle.
“Ok.” Misty laughed. “I’ll see you later. When you paint me.”
She crossed the street and went inside. Maybe she wouldn’t tell, Duncan thought, and I could go for a tune-up. He leaned back against the sill and closed his eyes. God, why do you torment me with strippers? Two motorcycles parked across the street. Skinny men with long hair and tattoos dismounted and went into the Hollywood.
“I got to get out of here,” Duncan said to no one.
He put his hat on and went downstairs. He went for a long walk nowhere. When he returned the Cadillac was still absent. He went into the mini-mart.
“Good evening, Duncan my friend. Hey you!” Assan yelled to a pimply child of fifteen who stood by the magazine rack. The boy’s greasy brown hair was stuffed into a backwards baseball cap. “Yes, you! If you want to read it, buy it first! I am not a library.”
The kid dropped the magazine on the floor and brushed past Duncan.
“Fuck you, towel-head,” he said as he left.
Duncan put the magazine back. “Don’t sweat it, Assan. He’s just a kid.”
“I would like to shoot him with my twelve gauge police model semiautomatic Benelli shotgun. It has a pistol grip.” Assan reached under the counter. “Would you like to see it?”
“No,” Duncan said. “You just keep your gun concealed.”
“As you wish. But it is quite an equalizer. I am very proud of it.”
Duncan put a quart of nonfat milk and a pint of butter caramel crunch ice cream in his basket. He took a frozen chicken enchilada dinner out of the freezer and scrutinized the directions. He put it and another in his basket. He grabbed a six-pack and brought it all up to the counter.
“Ah yes,” Assan said, “health food.”
Duncan paid and left. He stopped at his stairs, put the bag down and reached into his pockets for a stick of gum. Cat meowed from above. He looked up and smiled. Someone hit him hard in the back. Duncan cried out as his knees buckled. He tried to catch himself, but his hands were still in his pockets. His face hit the wall and then the sidewalk. Cat hissed from above. He was pulled by his hair to his knees. A fist slammed his mouth. His lip split and he tasted blood. He was hit hard in the kidney and he fell again. His assailant kicked his ribs and kicked him again. Duncan moaned and tried to get up. Cat screamed in rage and the blows stopped.
“Get it off me!” a high voice yelled.
Duncan blacked out. He woke to the sound of engines. He got to his knees. Two motorcycles pulled out of the lot beside his building and drove west down Sunset. He heard a woman’s fading laughter. He touched his face and looked at the blood on his hand. He sagged to the ground and Cat nudged his cheek. Cat’s claws were wet and red.
“I hope that’s not your blood, buddy,” Duncan said.
He passed out again.
Hours later, as Misty walked to her car, she saw Duncan slumped against the stairs, Cat pacing before him like a sentry. She ran across the street. Cat bared his teeth and hissed when she neared.
“Knock it off, Cat.” She sat Duncan up and saw his face. “Oh, Jesus!”
One eye was swollen above the brow and his lip was badly split. Dried blood painted his face a dark red that looked black in the darkness.
“Hi,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Hell if I know.” Duncan tried to get up. “Think you could help me get inside?”
She pulled him up and half-carried him up the stairs. She put him on the couch and went back to gather his groceries. But the beer was gone and the ice cream melted and the frozen dinners looked unhealthy to her vegetarian eye so she just came back up. Duncan was staring at his face in the bathroom mirror when she returned.
�
�Was my hat down there?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Damn.”
“Forget about your stupid hat. You need a doctor.”
“I’m okay.”
She dabbed the blood off Duncan’s face with a wet cloth. “That explains you lying unconscious in the gutter.”
“It wasn’t the gutter. It was the sidewalk.”
“That makes a big difference, doesn’t it?” Duncan winced as she wiped the blood from his lip. “Sorry.”
“I wasn’t unconscious. I was resting.”
She rinsed the cloth. The water in the sink colored pink. She threw the cloth into the laundry basket.
“It’s not as bad as it looked.”
“I need a beer,” Duncan said.
Misty opened the refrigerator. One bottle lay on a shelf above a dry head of lettuce. There were three eggs in the door. A mayonnaise jar sat beside a loaf of bread. She brought the beer to Duncan. He touched the bottle to his torn lip and drank half. He shut his eyes against the pain. He drank the other half and dropped the bottle in the trash.
“I’d like another,” he said.
“That was your last.”
Duncan limped to the closet, took out his coat, and struggled to put it on.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to the store.”
“Oh, god.” She picked up her purse. “I’ll get your damn beer.” She stopped at the door. “Stupid men. Why can’t you be more like women?”
“Well, for one thing,” Duncan said, “the penis would get in the way.”
“Ha, ha.” She slammed the door as she left.
Duncan looked in the mirror again. Blood painted crimson streaks in his hair. His eye was a splendid purple. His lip was black against the white of his chin.
“God, but you’re colorful,” he said to his reflection.
He set up his easel by the mirror and placed a canvas upon it. He set his paints and brushes on the sink. He sat on the toilet and urinated. When he got up the water in the bowl was brown. He drained the sink, flushed the toilet, and closed the lid. Cat curled up on the toilet seat. Duncan picked him up and kissed him. Cat purred and closed his eyes.
“Thanks, buddy. Looks like I owe you again.”
Duncan set him back on the toilet seat and stared in the mirror. He began to paint. Misty found him that way when she returned with the beer. She gave him a bottle.
“You’re nuts,” she said.
Only the light from the bathroom illuminated the studio. She turned on the stereo and danced alone in the dark, watching Duncan work as she swayed. The compact disc stopped and she put on another. She took off her blouse and her jeans. Duncan did not notice. She took off her bra and panties and lay naked on the couch. Duncan kept painting. She sighed, opened her work bag, took out a white tube top and a white miniskirt, put them on, and pulled on black vinyl boots. She brushed her hair and looked at her face in her compact. She got two beers and joined him. She dropped his empty bottle in the trash. She picked up Cat and sat on the toilet. He rubbed his head against her ribs. Duncan gulped his beer and stared at her. He looked at her legs, at her hips, at her bare stomach, at her breasts, and finally at her face and eyes and hair. Misty blushed and started to get up.
“Don’t move.”
“You make me feel naked looking at me like that,” Misty said. “I know, that’s a crazy thing for a stripper to say.”
“You wanted me to paint you, didn’t you?”
With a few strokes Duncan began painting her into the picture. Misty was amazed at how quickly he worked.
“Sure,” she said, “but I wanted you to paint me alone.”
“This is better. You’ll be in my first ever self-portrait.”
“How come you never painted yourself?”
“I’ve never been worth painting.”
Misty looked at the canvas. The swollen eye, the bloody hair, and the split lip were all there, painted in deft, bloody strokes, lacking only detail to bring the portrait to life. And there she was, growing rapidly in black and white and yellow, coming to life too. He was right. The other girls could not match this. She sipped her beer and tried to look pretty for his brush. And all the time he painted, Cat lay sleeping in her lap, his purrs sounding to her ears like the thunder of a distant Harley.
Duncan finished at dawn. Misty put Cat down and stood behind him. It was all there, Duncan and the easel, the brush in his hand poised near the canvas while his eyes, one swollen red and the other clear blue, stared out of the mirror into nothing. He looked terrible, and yet, the way he looked out of the canvas was beautiful. And there Misty sat on the toilet, her makeup and clothes making her look hard and her eyes on Duncan making her look soft. She had never felt so naked on stage as she did looking at herself in Duncan’s painting. She thought of her eighth grade graduation picture. Her hair was brown then, like her eyes, but the innocence she now saw in the canvas had vanished from her smile long before that photograph was taken, and now she wanted it back.
“What’s wrong?” Duncan asked when she began to cry. “I thought you liked it.”
“I’ve never liked anything so much.”
“Why are you crying then?”
“You know, for someone who can see so clear to paint a picture like that you sure are blind.”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
“Don’t say anything.”
She took his hand and led him to the couch. She pulled her boots off, took off her skirt and her top. She pulled his shirt over his head.
“Misty,” Duncan said, “I can’t.”
She took his shoes off, undid his belt, then pulled off his pants. She pulled him down onto the couch and pulled the sleeping bag over them.
“I just want you to hold me. All right? Just hold me.”
He put his arm around her. She pressed her head into his shoulder. He smelled roses in her hair and felt her breasts against his ribs. He found himself with an erection. He fought it, but he could feel Misty’s leg across his hip, her pubic hair tickling his groin. He was flustered and he tried to move away. Misty would not release him.
“We don’t have to make love if you don’t want to,” she whispered.
“I want to. I just can’t.”
“Poor Duncan,” Misty said. “You’re in love with someone who can’t love you back. And she’ll never know how lucky she is.”
Lucky? Duncan did not know about that. He had not been anything special in Cheyenne. He really was not even a cowboy. Sure, he could ride and do odd jobs about the ranch, but he had never roped a steer and never fired a gun and did not care to, and the girls back home liked their steaks tender and their men tough, and Duncan cried at the rodeo when he was ten and a wrangler’s rope jerked a calf’s head into an unlikely position. Fiona, shamed by Duncan’s tears, had dragged him by the ear from the grandstand to the general amusement of those around them. And she brought him to a psychiatrist when he told her he wanted to be an artist.
His chest ached, not so much from the beating, but from the desolation within. He pondered his emptiness until Misty’s breathing softened and slowed. He lay his face near her hair and breathed deeply, her hair’s rosy smell mixed with her skin’s sweet and sour odor.
Mother, he thought, if you could see your pansy son now.
Duncan held Misty, his breathing synchronous with the pressure of her breast on his side, and holding her, fell asleep, and sleeping, dreamed of a mountain stream in Canada where he returned with his father in the penultimate month of Sean Delaney’s life.
Eleven
“Maybe you ought to slow down,” Danny Carpenter said.
“Maybe you ought to stop being such a weenie.”
Tiffy changed lanes and punched the gas. The new red Mustang Cobra convertible shot around a Lincoln driven by a woman with steel wool hair and telescopic glasses. Tiffy laughed and waved when the old woman honked and then the Lincoln was a half mile behind and mattered not at all. Danny h
ad first rented a four-door Lumina, but when he pulled to the curb at the airport and popped the trunk, Tiffy refused to put her bags into the car much less her body. Danny had to visit five more rental counters before he finally found a vehicle satisfactory to Tiffy.
“After all,” she had said, “we are in Los Angeles.”
She swept through four lanes of freeway to the Sunset Boulevard exit. Danny gripped the door handle. The sign on the ramp said twenty-five miles per hour. He did not know their exact velocity, but he knew it was significantly greater. Attendants ran to the car when they pulled up to the Beverly Hills Hotel. A valet opened Danny’s door and he fell out. He had forgotten to let go of the door. He lay panting on the driveway until the valet pried his white fingers from the handle. He watched Tiffy enter the lobby, marveling at the perspective his placement against the planet afforded of her legs and firm buttocks. It was an indication of Danny’s pure love that, though he would rather she turn to him for comfort than to Duncan, ultimately he only sought her happiness, and if getting Duncan back accomplished that, he would be sad but satisfied. And forty years hence, when Tiffy cried over Duncan’s casket like Fiona had over Sean’s, Danny planned to be there with a handkerchief and a shoulder for her tears. Still picturing a gray haired yet magnificently built Tiffy leaning on his arm, he allowed the valets to help him to his feet and dust him off. He followed a bell hop pulling a cart with Tiffy’s four suitcases and his duffel bag. Tiffy already had her key when he reached the front desk.
“I’m in bungalow 35,” she said.
“What room am I in?”
“How would I know? Fiona made my reservations. I assumed you made your own.”
Danny turned to the girl behind the desk. “I’d like a room.”
“I’m sorry, we’re booked up. May I suggest another hotel?”
“Well,” Danny said, “I guess I’ll stay in your room, Tiffy.”
Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom Page 13
