“Are you an actress or model?”
“No,” she answered. But there was something else. The way her eyes moved and her body twisted, a whole volume of mystery passed from her to the waitress.
When Selena was gone I said, “So tell me something.”
“What?”
“Did Leon have money from that robbery? Is that what he’s after?”
She shook her head again. “They let him out of jail today and he was at my door an hour after. All he said was that he wanted his bond.”
I wrapped a slice of salami around a semi-sour gherkin and popped it in my mouth. I chewed for a while, enjoying the loud crunching in my ears.
“I didn’t mean to get you into trouble, Mr. Minton. I was just looking for a way out.”
I took Elana to that restaurant instead of putting her out on the street because I wanted to know about the trouble I had fallen into. I had found out a few things, but they didn’t help much.
“So what do you intend to do now?”
“I don’t know.” She made a gesture of hopelessness with her hands, but I had learned by now not to trust when she was acting weak.
“What about that place on Hazzard you wanted to go before? You wanna go there?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Are you going to help me?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t go back to the store because of Leon. That’s where he’d go for sure.”
“We could go to your place,” she suggested.
“I live at my store,” I said.
“Oh.”
“But there’s a motel down at Venice Beach take us. It’s cheap and there’s the ocean outside. The waves help me think.”
“Let’s go there.” She reached across the table and laid her hand over mine. And damn if my fingers didn’t curl around hers.
4
THE MUSSEL BEACH INN was half a block up from the water, perched on a small hill. You couldn’t see the ocean in the darkness, but you heard and smelled it just fine. I left the sliding doors open because of a false sense of security I had. I mean, Leon wouldn’t find us at the beach if he searched for seven years.
The lights were down and the linen curtains were waving in and out from our little cement patio. Every now and then the moon appeared in a curve of the flowing fabric.
Elana told me that she was from Georgia, that her mother had brought her to live in L.A. when she was only twelve. But then, just three years later, her mother moved to Jackson, Mississippi, with a merchant marine who later abandoned her.
“She left you on your own when you was just fifteen?” I said, sounding more concerned than I actually felt.
“We didn’t see eye to eye, my mama and me,” Elana said rather callously. “And anyway, I had a boyfriend I was livin’ wit’ when she left.”
I said that that was sad and tried for a kiss, but she turned away before I got there.
Leon, she said, was a strong arm and a robber. She worried that Sol Tannenbaum had to give up part of his life savings for his thuggish protection. That’s why she left him. She wasn’t going to be a moll or an accomplice. She needed a man who was going to be sweet and gentle.
I didn’t believe a word she said, but that didn’t matter. I told her that my mother raised me as a gentleman. “A gentle man,” I said before launching another kiss. That one missed too.
It was late, and there was no immediate danger. She was a young woman, and I was the young man who had just saved her life. I couldn’t see where a kiss was out of line.
