Fade to Blonde

dumb I was. If it was Halliday, he most likely carried a gun the way he carried a handkerchief. The big car coasted to a halt, glittering. It had been polished to within an inch of its life. The driver sat still for a moment, then got out. I was even dumber than I thought.

He reached back into the car and set a ten-gallon hat on his head. It was Lorin Shade.

I started laughing.

He walked halfway up to us, then stopped. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said. “I thought it was some fancy fella, in those clothes. You can put that iron down now. I guess you got the right to laugh. I guess it’s laughable.”

His eyes were steady, and so was his voice, but you could see what it cost to keep them that way. He was bitterly humiliated. At the sound of Shade’s voice, Rebecca shot out of the car and stood staring, motionless. I put the tire iron away and closed the trunk. “Don’t mind me, Shade,” I said. “It’s just nerves. You gave us a fright.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Then he looked at Rebecca. That was worse than looking at me, but he managed it. “Hello, Becky. I’m awful sorry I worried you.”

“What.” She shook her head. “What.”

“I know you’re in trouble, Becky,” he said. “I guess you kid about it sometimes, but I know it’s bad. And I’ve been trying... I thought, if maybe I could just sort of quietly keep an eye. Just quietly. And, and they gimme some time at the Ever-Brite, and I know about, I guess I think about all these, these men you talk to, and, uh.” He couldn’t make it. He dropped his eyes. “I guess it’s all no part of my business anyhow. I’m awful sorry for the trouble.”

“All right, Lorrie,” Rebecca said. “It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry, Becky.”

“Go home, Lorrie,” she said, eyes closed. “Just... go... home.”

Shade nodded, and then nodded at me, and then walked, a little jerkily, back to his car. It was an old Buick, not a new Lincoln. It was awfully shiny, though. He backed up all the way down to the highway, and then we watched him turn and head south.

Rebecca began to tremble. Her arms hung limp at her sides, but her hands were in fists, and the tremors started small and then got bigger, until it seemed someone angry was shaking her. I put my arms around her, and she set both hands flat on my chest and stared at them, then slipped her arms under my jacket and hugged me tight around the waist, mashing her face against me. The shuddering almost shook both of us. It went on for a little while. Then she grew still, gradually, and then she leaned back and looked wonderingly up at me. I lay my hand on her cheek and her eyes closed. I smelled the eucalyptus, and the chaparral all around us. I lowered my face slowly toward hers. Her lips parted and she let her head sink back luxuriously.

When our mouths were an inch apart, I whispered: “You’re a goddamn liar.”

She tried to jerk away.

“You’re a liar,” I said. “Maybe it’s not even your fault. You were probably born that way, but you’d think you’d be better at it by now. I called Ciro’s yesterday. They never heard of you.”

“What? I—”

“Why lie about a little thing like that, unless the whole thing was a fairy tale?”

“I used a different—”

“Why use a false name to take a job as a hat check girl?”

“Let go of me.”

“It’s okay. I lied too. I never called Ciro’s.”

“Please, I can’t—”

“Think straight, sure. That’s why we’re talking now, because when you think, you lie. How much of that story was true?”

“He’s going to burn me. Let me go.”

“What’s up between you and Lance Halliday?”

“He’s going to burn me.”

“Why?”

“Let me—”

“Why?”

“Because I stole his money!” she screamed into my face. “I stole his goddamn money!”

I let go of her and stepped back.

“There,” I said, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

She pushed herself upright with a hand on the fender, and stood there with her eyes closed, breathing.

“Keep going,” I said. “Why’d you steal from him? Don’t think. Tell.”

“Because I had the chance to,” she said. “Because he’d, because I had been in a movie for him. Two movies. I lied when I said it wasn’t him. And, afterward... And I did sleep with him. He always has them himself, afterward. Has us. He, you’ve met him, he’s very charming, and treats you like, like you were a real actress. And makes you think you’re being very brave and glamorous, even, and that everyone else is just stuffy, and that you’re just the most beautiful thing. I can’t help how stupid that sounds. It’s true that I fell for him. That part was true. And it was only after, when he was lying there, half asleep, it’s as if I didn’t know until then how much he’d taken from me. I had to get out of the room. He keeps this woman’s dressing gown in his closet. For whoever, you know. I put on the gown and slipped out of the room, just to be away from him and think, and he’d left his jacket in the living room, on that flowered armchair there. And there was a pocket in the dressing gown. I think that’s what gave me the idea. I just picked up the jacket and took out his wallet and took the money from it and put it in the pocket of the gown. Because if he was going to take from me... And my purse was on the dining room table, and my shoes were by the sofa, so I just kept going. I knew it would take him a while to see I’d gone, because my clothes were all on the floor of his room, but I didn’t want to see any of those clothes again, and I drove home in the shoes and dressing gown, just like that. I knew there was a lot of money, but I didn’t know until I got home that there was nearly fourteen hundred dollars. It must have been money he’d gotten to pay us all.”

“When did he threaten you?”

“Right away. I’d gotten back to my room, and then the landlady knocked on my door, and I thought maybe she’d seen me coming home like that after all, but what she had to say is that there was a phone call for me, from my — ” She laughed briefly. “From my brother. And he was sorry to call so late, but it was an emergency. And I got on, and he said, You have a pretty face. He told me to keep the money, because I’d need it, and then he told me what he was going to do.”

“Did you actually meet him at Ciro’s?”

“No. He knows where to find girls like me.”

“When’d you take the photos? The photo-booth photos.”

“That was the way I told you. He did take me out and try to show me a good time. After. And then we went back to his house. He likes to think the girls he hires are really his.”

“You were smiling pretty good in the picture.”

“I wanted to be having a good time. Don’t you ever do that? Smile when you wish you were enjoying yourself?”

“Maybe I ought to try it. Where’s that fourteen hundred?”

She flushed. “I gave you everything that’s left of it.”

“What did you do with the rest?”

“I, ah. I thought it would be better if it was more.”

I started laughing again. “You took it out to the track and lost it.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t look at you and — No. It was poker. I really am pretty good at cards, like Lorrie said. But not that night.”

I was laughing, shaking my head.

She began to smile herself, shakily. “I had a system, you know. I had it worked out.”

“Sure. You know how many times I’ve had it all worked out?”

“Yes,” she said, laughing shakily. “I believe I do.” She stopped and gave me a little punch in the chest, then hit me there hard. “Someday,” she said fiercely, “I hope somebody about ten feet tall comes along and bends