“Which one?”
“You want to get back into it, don’t you?”
“I’m thinking about it,” Karen said. “I’ll let you know.”
13 
Chili wondered if Leo was attracted to sweaty women in sundresses. Across the counter from him in Hi-Tone Cleaners on Ventura, Studio City, Annette looked kind of damp, clammy. She was on the heavy side, needed to fix her blond hair, but wasn’t too bad looking. It was seven P.M. The help had left and Annette was closing up when Chili walked in, timing it to be the last customer. He gave his name, Palmer.
Annette stood looking through an alphabetical file on a turntable. “You don’t have your receipt?”
“No, I don’t,” Chili said. He didn’t have a pair of pants here, either, but that’s what he told Annette he’d brought in. “They’re light gray.”
She said, “Are you sure? I don’t see no Palmer in the file.” She said
Chili had on his dark-blue muted pinstripe, a blue shirt with a tab collar and rust-colored tie. He appeared reasonable about his pants, not too concerned; he told her if she couldn’t find them it was no big deal, and smiled, easy to get along with.
“Well, if you’re sure,” Annette said, nice about it because he was, “I can check, see if there’s a pair of pants without a ticket on them.” She stepped over to the conveyor loaded with clothes hanging in clear plastic covers, reached up and pressed a button. The conveyor started moving, bringing the clothes past her before it circled and returned them to the back part of the shop. Annette said, “I think you’re gonna have to help me out here.”
Chili walked around behind the counter to stand next to her. He looked at clothes going past for a minute before saying, “I’ve seen you someplace. . . . You weren’t by any chance in Vegas last week.”
Annette had her hand raised to the button, so she could stop the conveyor if they saw his pants. She looked past her bare shoulder at him and he could tell she was smiling, even though he couldn’t see her mouth. She said, “No, but I was in Reno. How about that?”
“Getting a divorce?” Kidding with her.
“I took care of that ‘fore I come out here. Got rid of excess baggage. No, this fella I was with took me.
“I hope your luck was better than mine. I dropped a bundle and it wasn’t my laundry,” Chili said, getting into it, showing Annette what a nice simple guy he was.
She told him she only played the slots and did okay. “But would you believe the fella I was with lost
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over a hundred thousand dollars and it didn’t even bother him?”
“Jesus,” Chili said, looking from the cleaning going by to Annette. “Guy must be loaded, drop that much and not worry about it.”
“His philosophy is you win some, lose some.”
“I guess that’s as good a way to look at it as any.”
“He’s from Miami, Florida, too, originally.”
“Yeah, what’s his name?”
“I doubt you’d know him.”
“He move out here?”
“I’m trying to get him to. He spends the whole day out to Santa’nita, loves the racetrack.”
“You don’t lose it as fast betting the horses.”
“Oh, he wins, don’t worry about that. You know the state lottery in Florida?”
“Yeah? He won that?”
“He won, I mean, big. But soon as his wife found out . . . His wife—listen to this. She’s divorcing him at the time, but then when she finds out about the money she wants half as part of the settlement. He said the hell with that noise and took off.”
“I don’t blame him,” Chili said.
“Changed his name, too. The wife never even played the lottery herself. But soon as he won, oh, now she wants in on it. Larry said he’d burn the money before he’d give her any.”
“I imagine he’s doing what he never dreamed of in his life,” Chili said. “Right up there on top.” He turned his head to look at Annette’s bare shoulder and blond hair, dark strands of it combed up from her neck and held with a plastic comb. He said, “Your friend knows how to pick winners,” waited for Annette to look at him and gave her a nice smile.
“Why don’t you shut this place down and we’ll go
have a drink.”
“What about your pants?”
“I got other pants. Come on, let’s do it.”
“Gee, I’d like to,” Annette said, “but I have to get cleaned up and meet my fella. He gets back from Santa’nita we meet at his ho-tel, have a drink in the Polo Lounge and go on out for dinner.”
“Sounds good.”
“You been there, haven’t you?”
“Where’s that?”
“The Polo Lounge, in the Beverly Hills Hotel? It’s late now—the best time’s around six, you see all kinds of celebrities in there.”
“Is that right?”
“I’ve seen movie stars right at the next table.”
“You have? Like who?”
Annette said, “Let’s see,” and thought about it staring at the clothes going by. She pressed the button to stop the conveyor. “I can never think of their names, after. There was one, he played in a western use to be on TV. What was his name? . . . They give you, with your drinks they give you corn chips with that guacamole dip? No charge. You see men, they have a phone brought to their table and you actually hear them talking about movies they’re gonna make and what stars’ll be in them. It’s exciting to hear it, movie stars being mentioned like they’re just, you know, regular people.”
“I’ll have to stop by there,” Chili said, “maybe next time I come out. The Beverly Hills Hotel, that’s where your friend stays, huh?”
“He has a suite costs him four hundred a night. Living room, bedroom, a balcony you can sit out on . . .”
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“Sounds good. Listen, I was thinking,” Chili said, “your friend’s wife, she could have somebody looking for him, hire somebody.” He watched Annette giving it some thought. “In case anybody comes by asking about him . . .”
“I’ll just say I never heard of him.”
“Yeah, except if the person happens to know you’re an old friend maybe.”
“I see what you mean,” Annette said, giving it some more thought. “Just say he hasn’t been here then.”
Chili moved back around the counter telling her not to worry about his pants, he said those things happened. He was anxious to get going, stop and have a bite to eat before taking that canyon road, full of hairpin turns, back over the mountain to Beverly Hills. For a moment he wondered what the mountain was called and thought of asking Annette, but changed his mind and was almost to the door when she said, “I remember who it was now, the movie star? Doug McClure.”
Chili paused to say, “Oh,” nodding.
“He was so close,” Annette said, “I could’ve touched him.”
He wondered if maybe the lights outside the Sunset Marquis had been left over from Christmas: little pinpoint lights in the trees along the front, on both sides of the canopy that came out from the entrance. It was a slick place, only three stories hidden away in a lot of foliage down the hill from Sunset Boulevard—outdoor dining and the pool
