“Watermelon juice and vodka?” she offered.
“Not drinking these days,” I said, but I sure wanted to.
“Come sit.”
She lay on the sofa enticingly, and I sat next to her, a schoolboy with an obvious itch.
“I haven’t seen Raymond in a week,” Lynne said, pouting a little.
“You know where he’s been?”
“No. He said it was serious business. That meant he didn’t want me to ask where he was going or when he was coming back.”
“Was he worried?”
“Ray never worries. He’s never scared of anything. But I know better than to fall in love with a man like that.” She was on her back, looking up into my eyes. I could see her left breast clearly, and she could see me looking.
“Has your girlfriend come back?” she asked, sitting up. Her black hair fell down around the sides of her face.
“She’s getting married.”
A combination of mischief and sadness formed itself on Lynne’s perfect face.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Can I do anything for you?”
She touched my left forearm with her fingertips.
“Yeah. Yeah, you could.”
“What?” she asked through a knowing smile.
“Go put on something so I don’t lose my mind and get us both killed.”
This brought about a series of changes in the actress. First her face straightened out, then she stood and nodded. As she walked from the room, I wondered if I understood anything about women . . . or men.
I went over to the bookshelf and pondered the titles, which were eclectic. There was a physics textbook and
While I was pondering Lynne Hua’s library, she returned. Now she was wearing a schoolgirl’s green-and-white plaid skirt and a white blouse buttoned up to her throat. She even wore black shoes and white ankle socks.
Her smile seemed to be suppressing a sneer.
She sat and I did too.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been working, and Raymond is gone for I don’t know how long. And . . . and sometimes I drink too much.”
I had all the information I needed from her, but I couldn’t just walk out after making her get dressed.
“You haven’t been working?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting for a job to start.”
“What’s that?”
The hidden sneer receded.
“There’s a new TV show called
“What is it?”
“You’re a funny man, Mr. Rawlins. I a Chinee girl speakee funny, lookee like ugly duck next to beautiful white swan.” She mimed the last part for me, and I smiled in condolence.
“Oh.”
“They pay okay,” she said. “The bachelor dad has a Chinese houseboy who takes care of the kids. The houseboy, Ralph, has a girlfriend who’s always yelling at him and cursing in Chinese. That’s all she does. He tells her something and then she screams. Once every three weeks I’ll go in to do that and they’ll pay my rent.”
“But why would they make a woman as beautiful as you into an ugly woman?” I asked.
“You think I’m ugly,” she said.
“You know that’s not true, girl. You look so good to me I have to cross my legs to keep decent. It’s just that Ray’s my friend and, as you said, he’s serious.”
The smile she showed at the hint of death was everything I needed to know about Lynne Hua.
“Blow jobs,” she said.
“Say what?”
“I give great blow jobs. There’s one guy casts for commercials, acts like he’s my agent because he knows that if I get a job he does too.”
She was trying to shock me and succeeding. It’s not that I was surprised what a man would do to get a woman down on her knees in front of him, but I was amazed that she would admit it so blithely.
