never home, they weren’t sociable, they didn’t cook. Someday I wouldn’t need a roommate at all. It was just a matter of time. I sat on the flowered couch and counted my tips. You’d think people who could spend fifty on dinner could cough up ten for a tip.
I changed out of my work clothes, soaked the shirt in some bleach. I looked at myself in the mirror. There was nothing wrong with me. I was just small. Small ass, small tits, short legs, a bit bowed, but I knew how to dress, you’d never notice it. Big blues and bright skin, though nobody had seen my skin in quite a while. Okay, I had a problem with men. I was easily bored.
I reached for my pajamas and thought of the guy Richard, waiting for me at the Firehouse. The quick brown eyes, the mocking quality of the mouth, those gestures, their ironic self-consciousness. The graceful looseness of his walk. He looked like a writer but he moved like a dancer. Slouchy but light on his feet. I wondered what his story was. I kept thinking of the way he looked at me, like he had a secret he was enjoying. People I knew didn’t have secrets. They told you every microscopic detail of their lives. A leaf blew across a sidewalk and you got fifteen minutes worth. The upstairs neighbor went to the bathroom twice, God, do you think he’s got prostate? I wasn’t like that, and I could tell this guy Richard wasn’t either.
That time of night, you could park on Rowena without having to hike a mile. The Firehouse still had the high tin ceilings from when it was a working fire station, the wooden bar long and narrow. Richard sat halfway down, drinking something brown on ice. It wasn’t crowded, a few older guys scattered along the bar who watched me walk down to the bald man in the beat-up jacket. Richard didn’t say hello as I took the stool next to him. He didn’t even look at me. “Did you get the spot out?” he asked, lifting his drink to his lips in that stylized, mannered way of his. Slower than necessary. With the elegant pause.
“Out out, damned spot.” I flagged the bartender, asked for the wine list. They had an interesting-looking Dry Creek Zin. That made me feel good, a girl from Kearney who could look at a wine list and know the Zin from the Cab, prefer the New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs to the French. Waiting tables had educational advantages.
The Zin came, plummy, I could even taste figs, and pepper too. Richard put the wine on his tab. Touching those long fingers to his lips, again, that slightly gay self-consciousness, as if placing every motion in ironic quotes. Suddenly I knew.
“How are you liking L.A.?” he asked.
I knew it was intended to startle me, like using my name, but it was such an easy bet. Everyone here was from somewhere else. I wanted to show him I could return a serve. “I like it,” I said. “I like every fucking thing about it. How about you? Where are you from?”
He shook the ice in his drink, looking down into it with a half-smile. He raised his glass to his lips slowly and spoke before it arrived. “Right here.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I went to Marshall. A mere five blocks away. I’m nostalgic already.” He pointed west. “King Junior. Franklin Avenue Elementary.”
“Hard to picture you as a child,” I said.
“I was a difficult child.” He posed, lifting his drink as if it was the skull in
“I did well,” I said, sipping my wine. “I was valedictorian. I played flute in the marching band.”
“And then you decided to act. At… Champaign-Urbana? Or was it Lawrence, Kansas?”
It was Lincoln, but I didn’t need to confirm a run of insight that was now getting eerie.
“And now you’re here to break into the big time. How’s the climb to fame going?”
“It seems they tore Schwab’s down awhile back, but nobody told me.”
“Naturally, you take class. Boyd Stocker?”
“Chris Valente.”
“Ballet at 3rd Street-”
“Tap.”
That made him smile. I smiled too. I knew it was stupid but I really liked tap, it reminded me of old Busby Berkeley movies.
“You’ve come close,” he said, “but so far, the star never broke her ankle.”
Asshole. “Actually, I had a feature.”
“Never released.”
How could he know these things? Well, of course, if the feature had been released, I wouldn’t be slinging pasta at Orzo. Not that I’d have any money, but I wouldn’t want people to see me working for a living.
“There was a problem with the funding.”
He drew his finger across the condensation on his glass. “These things happen. But you’ll catch on. You’ve got something, a certain sense of authority. People watch you. All you have to do is soften up a little. You’re all barbed wire.”
Chris Valente said the same thing.
“There’s nothing wrong with it. You just want to layer, hold it in reserve, until it’s time to show it.” He looked down the bar to where the bartender, a blond boy with shaggy hair in a tight black shirt, stood laughing with an older man. “Miles, I’ll have another Jack Daniel’s, if I may.”
The bartender came down and took Richard’s glass, giving him a sweep of blond eyelash.
“So why don’t you act anymore?” I asked. Seeing if I could play the clairvoyant too.
He turned toward me, propped his head on his hand. He looked at me very directly, and I felt the full force of his personality in those eyes, that mocking mouth. “What is the attraction of acting? Seeing where our personalities line up with those of fictional characters? Infusing them with the stuff of life? But the day comes when one’s own personality is more interesting than those one is paid to animate.”
Miles handed him his new drink. Richard made me wait while he took a sip. Controlling the silences. God, he was good. What a shame he’d stopped acting.
“So what do you do now?” I said. “Unemployment?”
“Write. Coach. A number of things. Mostly I study the human condition.” He paused a beat. “I saw something in you tonight, Holly. Something I’ve been looking for.”
I smiled inwardly. He was too old for me and bald to boot, but he fascinated me, with his slightly gay gestures that contrasted with the bright brown wolfishness of his eyes, the flat wide mouth playing with its private joke. I itched to know that joke.
“Do you like animals, Holly?”
Just when I thought I knew what he was talking about. “Animals? You’re kidding.”
“I have a little problem,” he said, steepling his long fingers with hair on their backs. “Can I be frank for a moment?”
I had the feeling that he couldn’t be frank on his own deathbed.
“I found a dog. And I need to return it,” he said.
“So why don’t you?”
He moved his wide mouth around, pursing the lips, pushing them from side to side. “It’s not that simple. The dog belongs to Mariah McKay. Do you know who that is?”
An actress from the ’70s, sexy, sort of a dark Kathleen Turner.
“I found it on Los Feliz Boulevard. One of those little greyhounds. I saw the name and address on the tags, and was about to return it, but then I wondered, what if they think I stole it?” He opened his eyes wide, to show how innocent he was. “A problem, don’t you think?”
“Only if you want a reward. Otherwise just be a good neighbor.” A shitty little scam. I had to laugh.
He smiled. He knew I knew he was full of it. I was liking him more and more. “But I’m not such a good neighbor, Holly. I really do want the money.” A fucking petty crook. I finally meet a guy in L.A. who is actually interested me, and he’s into some shitass doggie scam. “It’s probably good for a couple hundred. If you found a hundred dollars lying in the street, would you give it back?”
I looked at us in the bar mirror-Richard with his dark, sharp-peaked eyebrows, and me with my pale face and pointed chin, my dark curls caught up in a ribbon band. And I knew we were the same. That’s why he recognized me. I smiled. “I’ll let you know when I pawn my Girl Scout patches.”
