Fade to Blonde

Excuse my manners, Mr. Corson, but I’m almost done giving this fellow a whuppin’.”

“She is, too,” he told me.

He looked like a whuppin’ from Rebecca was what he’d prayed for as a child on Christmas morning.

I watched them play for a couple of minutes, each turning over the cards very intently. Finally Rebecca laid down a card and said contentedly, “That’s gin. Lorrie, I’d like you to meet Ray Corson. Mr. Corson, Lorin Shade.”

Shade got up at once to shake hands with me. Just when I thought he was done standing up, he’d stand up some more. He shook my hand carefully, like he’d learned that hands break easy. He had a short nose and a pocked round face, and he really was a size. I’d put roofs on smaller things than Lorin Shade. She said, “Mr. Corson and I might be doing a little business together, Lorrie. Mr. Corson used to be a boxer.”

“A boxer! I like that,” he said. He put up his fists, smiling, and I obligingly put up mine, and he faked a few hooks and jabs at me. I was annoyed to find I could barely keep them off me. He was fast, along with the rest of it. He dropped his hands. “I like that,” he said wistfully.

“You could do the work,” I told him.

I wondered what she wanted with me if she had a big boy like Shade on a string.

“Lorrie’s from Warren City, Oklahoma,” she said. “But he lives right down the hall. He’s a stunt rider for the movies.”

“Well, that’s my plan,” he said. “That’s my long-range plan. Right now I’m at the Ever-Brite Car Wash over on Del Amo.”

“Got to start somewhere,” I said.

“That’s right. We’re over on Del Amo, just near Anza. You keep going like you’s headin’ for the beach? You’ll see us on the right, just before Anza. Cain’t miss it. You a friend a Becky’s, come by some time and I’ll give you a shine. Make your car like new. On the house, if you’re a friend a Becky’s”

“I thought your car looked pretty nice,” I told her.

“I said I couldn’t afford to wash it,” she said merrily. “I didn’t say I wasn’t washing it.”

“You come on down to the car wash and I’ll fix you up, too,” Shade said. “Make you shine. It’s right before Anza. Cain’t miss it.”

“Lorrie hasn’t gotten his break yet, but he really is something in the saddle. Lorrie rides,” she said sweetly and emphatically, “like a dream.” Shade flushed with pleasure. Then he thought about it a little and began to look panicky. But Rebecca was moving smoothly onward: “He’s a real ride-em cowboy. But I keep telling him, no stunt director’s going to put a fellow his size on one of his horses.”

“Aw, I told you, Becky,” he said. “I sit real light. You know how to sit light, you can ride any size a horse.”

“You did tell me that. So you did. But right now I have to talk to Mr. Corson, Lorrie. Could you be a honey right now and give us a few minutes?”

Shade stood up at once and gave my hand another careful squeeze. He told me it had been a real pleasure, and that he hoped to see me around, and maybe we could all three have us a game of poker sometime, because Becky there was quite a hand with the cards, don’t think she wasn’t, you might not think so but you’d be wrong, at which point Rebecca smiled at him again with almost terrifying brightness and he shut up as if he’d been kicked. “Well, so long,” he said, and left, closing the door softly behind him. Rebecca smiled distractedly at the door and said, “Lorrie is the sweetest man in the world, and he’s been a true friend to me. So no remarks.”

“No remarks,” I said.

As she had been the other day, she was dressed neatly and primly in good-quality clothes that were a little dressy for the middle of a weekday. This time it was a dark oatmeal dress, high-necked, with tiny brass buttons shaped like knots down the front and one on the cuff of each short sleeve. She took a powder-blue engagement book from her bedside table, the kind that closes with a zipper, and unzipped it. I saw she’d been using it as a notebook. What looked like a draft of a letter or an essay ran straight down the page, the words sidling around the numbers of the days like surf rolling around rocks. She opened it to a fresh page, took a pen from the little loop inside the cover, and uncapped it. Then she was ready for business. She patted the bed beside her and I sat down in Shade’s place.

“I knew you’d come,” she said, her eyes shining. “You have every cent I own in the world, and you could have just taken off and no one the wiser. Or you could have just laughed at me and said what money, because what proof would I have? But Mattie told me you were honest.”

“Old Mattie,” I said.

“I knew I picked the right man. And now I guess you deserve a little information.”

“I do,” I said. “First off, are we talking about Lance Halliday?”

She went completely still. She looked almost resentful. Then she leaned forward and gave me a sharp little punch in the leg. It hurt. “You’ve been busy,” she said, beaming. “I knew I picked the right man.”

“All I did was what you did,” I said. “Talk to Mattie. What’s Halliday been doing?”

“He’s going to burn my face with lye,” she said.

“Seems a perfectly nice face. What for?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“It’s too early for believe and don’t believe. Why’s Halliday want to hurt you?”

“He’s in love with me,” she said, eyes downcast. “No, I won’t use that word. He’s obsessed with me. I’m, I suppose it sounds arrogant to say it, but I’m someone men get obsessed over, sometimes. Many times. I met him when I was a hat check girl at Ciro’s. He’s a very good-looking man, tall and very good-looking, I guess Mattie told you he was supposed to be a leading man. But I guess he was like me. He couldn’t act. And he strikes everyone who meets him as awfully nice, and he was nice to me. I told him I’d have dinner with him, and then we had another dinner after that, but by then I’d found out a few things about him. He’s a gangster,” she said.

She said gangster as if it were her vocabulary word for the week.

“He makes pornographic movies,” she said, “and sells them, or charges money to show them, I guess is the way it works.”

“He the one you made the movies for?”

“No. Not him. And I told you, I don’t ever want any more of that. Not ever. That’s why it was so horrible when I found out. I didn’t know if he liked me or if he was just trying to get me into one of his movies. I didn’t care. I told him I didn’t want to see him again. And he, he just went crazy. He just, do I have to tell you the sorts of things he said?”

“I don’t know yet. You’d had two dinners?”

“I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean. I’m no virgin, Mr. Corson. I suppose anyone who wanted to has a right to call me a whore. And that’s why I want to get out of all this, and start over, and have a life where no one has any right to call me that.”

“So he went crazy. What did you do?”

“I ran out of the place. I didn’t know what to do. He’d made all sorts of threats, and I knew he was someone who could have people hurt, have anybody hurt he wanted. So I went back in, and I told him I was sorry I’d hurt him, and that I never meant to. I told him I’d stay with him all weekend and do anything he wanted, and that way he could see I was no one to be obsessed over and get me out of his system, and afterward he’d let me go. Everyone always thinks I’m going to be so wonderful, and then they find out I’m not at all. I don’t ever, well, I’m just not very good. You can see I’m telling you everything, Mr. Corson.”

“What did he think of your offer?”

“Oh, it was awful. It was worse than before. For a minute I almost thought he’d started beating me, hitting with his fists, but he was just talking, saying things to me I didn’t think anyone could ever say to anyone. Wild things. And that’s when he said about the lye. He said if I didn’t want him, he’d make it so no one ever wanted me. Oh, it was horrible.”

“How’d you get free?”

“I just walked out. He didn’t try to stop me. I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt he’d already thrown acid in my face, that he’d burned me all away. I was shaking, and on the way home I almost had a wreck.”

“When did you sell him your car?”

She blinked. “That was on our first date. I told him I was worried about money, and he said I shouldn’t ever have to worry about anything, and he gave me a check right then and there, and by the next time I saw him he’d