Skin Deep

hurriedly, edging away from me.

Four chairs down she picked up a full ashtray and replaced it with a clean one from her tray.

'So little Miss Jaws took a bite at you,' Nana said. 'One of these nights she's going to get a spike heel planted about four inches into her belly button.'

'She told me Toby was paying for these drinks.'

'Yeah, well, that's Toby. Do something shitty with one hand and make some lame apology with the other. Listen, no problem with Tiny. One of the girls who's supposed to be off tonight just had a fight with her boyfriend, and she called to ask if she could come in and work because she knows it ticks him off.'

'You're sure this is no trouble.'

She looked down at me with a perplexed expression. 'Either you're very, very long on manners, or you're thick. I want to take you to your car. I will enjoy taking you to your car. Maybe I'll take you farther than your car. In fact, maybe I'll take you to dinner.'

'Good idea,' I said. 'I'm finally finished with Toby's burger. But I'm buying.'

'Bet your boots you are,' Nana said. 'What do you think I am, a feminist?'

'He's still not home.' I pulled out my chair and sat down. Some of the food had arrived while I was gone, and Nana was in it up to her elbows.

'That's just good old Toby,' she said happily around a mouthful of Thai noodles. 'He never answers that phone. I counted fifty-one rings once, and he never even seemed to hear it. It would drive me crazy.'

'Why doesn't he answer it?'

She helped herself to the pepper-and-garlic beef and spooned some white, sticky rice out of a carved wooden bowl. 'Eat something,' she said. 'Don't worry your food cold, as my mama always used to say. Of course, she said it in Korean.' She put a dollop of rice on my plate and pointed toward a sizzling iron platter of grilled prawns that I didn't remember ordering. 'He doesn't answer it because it's always someone who wants something. They want to sell him dope or get dope from him. They want to invest his money or borrow some. They want him to do a part or help them get one.' She worked on a prawn for a moment and then washed it down with some Singha beer. 'He says that when you're a star, nobody ever just says Hello. They always say, Hello, listen, I've got this proposition.'

'I just want to know he's home, that's all. I want to know he's not on some baseball field, using Amber as the bat and Saffron as the ball.' I drank some beer, too. On top of the vodka, I felt it immediately.

'Maybe he's playing bird croquet,' Nana said mushily. She swallowed. 'Remember Alice in Wonderland? With the flamingos? I've always wanted to do that. I hate birds.'

'Why in the world would anyone hate birds?'

'Because they're so stupid. Have you ever seen a flock of chickens? How they peck at each other? The one at the bottom of the pecking order is always bald from the wings back. Birds.' She gave a mock shudder. 'They give me the willies.'

'I've got two birds.'

'I'm sorry to hear that. Men should have big, fierce dogs, not teeny, stupid birds.' She shrugged off the birds and wiped briefly at her mouth with her napkin. 'I got to go to the toilet,' she said. 'I'll call him for you while I'm up. He might answer this time.'

She sashayed across the room. There was a kind of liquid languor to her movement, as if she were walking underwater. All over the restaurant, Thai men looked up at her admiringly, and Thai women looked at Thai men sharply. The Thai men looked back down at their food. Thai women could be fierce.

An hour earlier she'd driven me back to Universal and smiled at the guard until he'd let us in so I could get Alice. Then I'd followed her home to a little circle of cottage apartments surrounding a courtyard on Vista, a narrow street lined by one-story stucco houses just north of Sunset in Hollywood. It was the kind of street, left over from the twenties, where the dominant foliage is birds of paradise and decorative banana trees with their big, fringed, indolent, rubbery leaves. Very California. We'd left her car there and headed east on Sunset to Jitlada, my favorite Thai restaurant, to start in on the beer and noodles.

The food was good, but I picked at it. I was worried, and beer was more to the point. Mine was almost empty, so I drained it and then grabbed Nana's, waving to the hurried waitress for two more. They were on the table before Nana got back.

'Eleven-thirty,' she said, consulting a big yellow plastic watch that encircled her right wrist. She was left- handed. 'Still no answer.' She hoisted her beer. 'This is interesting,' she said. 'It got full while I was getting empty.'

'It's that kind of restaurant.'

'It's pretty fine. Nothing like this in Texas.' She downed about six ounces of beer, directly from its brown bottle. Nana wasn't a glass girl.

'How come you have this fund of information about chickens? You don't look like the farmer's daughter.'

'Toby told me. He grew up on a farm, you know.'

I felt myself get interested. 'Toby told you about his childhood?'

'He was pretty wasted. He usually doesn't talk at all.'

'I know. What did he say it was it like?'

She stopped chewing and parked her food in one cheek, looking guarded. 'Why do you want to know?'

'Nana,' I said, 'even if I'm a screw-up, I'm still supposed to be looking after the boy. Maybe it would be a little easier if I knew something about him.'

'Stop knocking yourself. It's too pitiful. How'd a fragile soul like you get to be a detective, anyway?'

'I was in college and someone threw an inoffensive little girl-a friend of the woman I was living with at the time- off the top of a dormitory.' I drank some beer. 'She splattered pretty good. The cops all seemed to be more interested in writing parking tickets, so I decided to figure out who did it.'

'And did you?'

'Yes.'

'And then?'

'And then I broke a few of his bones and turned him in. It seemed like a good way to make a living. I thought we were talking about Toby.'

'You were talking about Toby.'

'Would you like another beer?'

'Does a chicken cross the road?'

'Then tell me what Toby said. About his home. About his family.'

She finished her bottle before handing it to the waitress. 'You're looking to get me killed, you know that?' She put both elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. Her wrists were smooth and slender. The brown skin on her arms was lined faintly by fine blue veins. I decided that the big vinyl wristwatch was definitely the yellowest thing I'd ever seen. I didn't say anything. She didn't, either. The beer arrived, and I took a slug at mine.

'Toby,' she said at last. 'Real nightmare time. He grew up on a farm, you know that?'

'South Dakota,' I said.

'Right. Just lots of dirt and a little house in the middle of it. Snowed to beat the band.'

'I already know about the climate in South Dakota.'

'No, but he said it made the house seem smaller. Like there was nowhere else to go, you know? Inside was awful, but outside was worse. Are you sure I should tell you this?'

I shrugged. 'Either you trust me or you don't.'

She picked up her beer. 'He cried the night he told me,' she said.

'I promise I won't cry.'

'I cried, too.'

'Maybe you're an easier cry than I am.'

'Don't be flip.' She drank. 'This isn't flip stuff.'

'Nana,' I said, 'cut the shit and talk to me.'

She drew a deep breath. 'Well, it was mainly his daddy.'