'Depends on what I find- probably within a day or two.'
'Do you have a place to stay?'
'I found a hotel.'
'A hotel,' she said. 'You, alone in some room…' She shook her head.
'Could you please stay with Milo and Rick while I'm gone? I know it's disruptive and unnecessary, but I'd have a lot more peace of mind.'
She touched my face again. 'You haven't had much of that lately, have you? Sure, why not.'
• • •
I tried a couple more times to reach Milo without success. Wanting to get Robin settled as soon as possible, I phoned his house. Rick was there and I told him we'd be coming over.
'We'll take good care of her, Alex. I'm really sorry for all this crap you've been going through. I'm sure the big guy will get to the bottom of it.'
'I'm sure he will, too. Will the dog be a problem?'
'No, I don't think so. Milo tells me he's pretty cute.'
'Milo never expressed any affection for him in my presence.'
'Does that surprise you?'
'No,' I said.
He laughed.
'Are you badly allergic, Rick?'
'Don't know, never had a dog. But don't worry, I'll pick up some Seldane in the ER, or write myself a scrip. Speaking of which, I have to head over to Cedars pretty soon. When were you planning on coming?'
'This evening. Any idea when Milo'll be back?'
'Your guess is as good as mine… Tell you what, I'll leave a key in back of the house. There're two sago palms growing up against the rear wall- you haven't been here since we relandscaped, have you?'
'Just to pick up Milo.'
'Came out great, our water consumption's way down… the sago palms- do you know what they are?'
'Squat things with leaves that look like fan blades?'
'Exactly. I'll leave the key under the branches of the smaller one- the one on the right. Milo would kill me if he knew.' More laughter. 'We have a new alarm code, too- he changes it every couple of months.'
He rattled off five numbers. I copied them down and thanked him again.
'Pleasure,' he said. 'This should be fun, we've never had a pet.'
• • •
I packed my carry-on and Robin packed hers. We took the dog for a walk around the property and played with him, and finally he got sleepy. We left him resting and drove into town for an early dinner, taking Robin's truck. Cholesterol palace on South Beverly Drive: thick steaks and home-fried potatoes served in lumberjack portions at prices no lumberjack could afford. The food looked great and smelled great, and my taste buds told me it probably tasted great, too. But somewhere along the line the circuitry between my tongue and my brain fizzed and I found myself chewing mechanically, forcing meat down a dry, tight throat.
• • •
At seven, we cleaned the house on Benedict, picked up the dog, locked up, and drove over to West Hollywood. The key was where Rick had said it would be, placed on the ground precisely at the middle of the palm's corrugated trunk. The rest of the yard was desert-pale and composed, drought-tolerant plants spread expertly around the tiny space. The walls were higher and topped with ragged stone.
Inside, the place was different, too: whitewashed hardwood floors, big leather chairs, glass tables, gray fabric walls. The guest room was pine. An old iron bed was freshly made and turned down. A single white rose rested on the pillow and a bar of Swiss chocolate was on a dish on the nightstand.
'How sweet,' said Robin, picking up the flower and twirling it. She looked around. 'This is like a great little inn.'
Sheets of newspaper were spread on the floor next to the bed. On them were a white ceramic bowl filled with water, a plastic-wrapped hunk of cheddar cheese, and a shirt cardboard lettered in fountain pen, in Rick's perfect, surgeon's hand: POOCH'S CORNER.
The dog went straight for the cheese- nosing it and having trouble with the concept of see-through plastic. I unwrapped it and fed it to him in bits.
We let him explore the yard for a while, then went back inside. 'Every time I come here, they've done something else,' Robin said.
'True. You know, sometimes I have trouble imagining Milo living here.'
'I bet he loves it. Refuge from all the ugliness, someone else to worry about the details for a change.'
'You're probably right- we can all use a refuge, can't we?'
• • •
At eight, she drove me to LAX. The place had been rebuilt a few years ago, for the Olympics, and was a lot more manageable, but incoming arteries were still clogged and we waited to enter the departure lanes.
The whole city had been freshened up for the games, more energy and creativity mustered during one summer than the brain-dead mayor and the piss-and-moan city council had come up with in two decades. Now they were back to their old apathy-and-sleaze routine, and the city was rotting wherever the rich didn't live.
Robin pulled up to the curb. The dog couldn't enter the terminal, so we said our good-byes right there, and feeling lost and edgy, I entered the building.
The main hall was a painfully bright temple of transition. People looked either bone weary or jumpy. Security clearance was slow because the western-garbed man in front of me kept setting off the metal detector. Finally, someone figured out it was due to the metal shanks in his snakeskin boots, and we started moving again.
I made it to the gate by nine-fifteen. Got my boarding pass, waited a half hour, then stood in line and finally got to my seat. The plane began taxiing at ten-ten, then stopped. We sat on the runway for a while and finally lifted off. A couple of thousand feet up, L.A. was still a giant circuit board. Then a cloud bank. Then darkness.
• • •
I slept on and off for most of the flight, woke varnished in sweat.
Kennedy was crowded and hostile. I lugged my carry-on past the hordes at the baggage carousels and picked up a cab at the curb. The car smelled of boiled cabbage and was plastered with no-smoking signs in English, Spanish, and Japanese. The driver had an unpronounceable name and he wore a blue tank top and a white ski hat. The hat was rolled triple so the edge created a brim. It resembled a soft bowler.
I said, 'The Middleton Hotel, on West Fifty-second Street.'
He grunted something and drove off, very slowly. The little I saw of Queens from the highway was low-rise and old, bricks and chrome and graffiti. But when we got on the Queensboro Bridge, the water was calm and lovely and the skyline of Manhattan loomed with threat and promise.
• • •
The Middleton was twenty stories of black granite sandwiched between office buildings that dwarfed it. The doorman looked ready for retirement and the lobby was shabby, elegant, and empty.
My room was on the tenth floor, small as a death row cell, filled with colonial furniture and sealed by blackout drapes. Clean and well ordered, but it smelled of mildew and roach killer. A dead quail-hunt print hung over the bed. The air-conditioner was a heavy-metal instrument. Street noise made it up this far with little loss of volume.
No rose on my pillow.
Unpacking, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, ordered a three-dollar English muffin and five-dollar eggs, then punched the operator's 0 and asked for a wakeup call at one. The food came surprisingly quickly and, even more amazing, was tasty.
When I finished, I put the tray on a glass-topped bureau, pulled back the covers, and got into bed. The TV remote was bolted to the nightstand. A cardboard guide listed thirty or so cable stations. The last choice was an early morning public access show featuring a dull, pudgy nude man interviewing dull, nude women. He had narrow, womanish shoulders and a very hairy body.
'Okay, Velvet,' he said, leering. 'So… what do you do for, uh… fun?'
A painfully thin blond with a beak nose and frizzy hair touched a nipple and said, 'Macrame.'
