Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [31]
It got crazy busy then. People and wine and opinions, big steaming bowls of pasta, steaks, and veal between closely packed tables. I didn’t have a moment—and yet, I could feel his eyes, following me, from the corner table by the exposed brick wall. I’m an actress. When I have an audience, I act. Even if I don’t, the non-acting is also acting. He made me aware of each small movement, the way I carried an armload of plates, uncorked a bottle of wine, flourished the pepper mill over a bowl of penne regate. He lifted his glass, showing me he needed a refill. I brought it over.
“I’m Richard,” he said as I filled his glass.
“Enjoying your meal?” I said, distant, professional. In case he couldn’t see I had five tables waiting.
“You’ve got a spot, exactly … there.” His long finger, pointing to my left tit.
I glanced down and saw he was right, I’d somehow got a spatter of red on the white linen right over the nip.
“It’s very provocative,” he said, looking at me over the rim of his wine glass.
I purposely didn’t do anything about it. First of all, if I tried to clean it up, it would just make a bigger spot, right there on my boob; and two, I didn’t want him to think I cared what he thought. He was trying to throw me, but I wasn’t that kind of girl. Not even then. I did better with an audience.
When I brought him his check, he asked, “Do you ever go to the Firehouse?”
A trendy bar on Rowena. “Sometimes,” I said.
“I’m going over there later,” he said. “Why don’t you join me for a drink after you’re done?”
“I’m going home,” I said. Forcing myself to meet his eyes. “I have to wash my shirt.”
He shrugged, paid the bill. “I hear they make an elegant martini. If you change your mind, I’ll see you over there … Holly.” He put his long finger to his mouth, hooking it over the lower lip, a good gesture, maybe I’d use it someday.
I was startled he knew my name, until I remembered that I’d signed the check. Anyone could have seen it, but people were rarely that observant.
He rapped the check on the table, left it there. “See you later.” He was taller than I thought he’d be, slender, his posture relaxed and surprisingly graceful. He didn’t move like a writer, none that I knew.
When he left, the place went flat, like old soda pop.
After I cleaned my tables and tipped my busboy, I walked around the corner to my apartment, a two-story ’40s court on Los Feliz Boulevard. Twelve units facing an identical building across a little yard where a box hedge corralled a flock of white calla lilies. Most of the residents were old ladies living on dead husbands’ pensions. A genteel crowd, these broke old grannies. We all lived here for the same reason: the address. Los Feliz Boulevard called to mind the mansions in the hills north and south of the street, but this was Granny Los Feliz, who counted her pennies and voted Republican, who drank cream sherry out of cut glass.
Most actresses who came here went straight for Hollywood. Three roommates and cereal for dinner, green apple martinis, X-bras from Victoria’s Secret. Others chose Silverlake, a bass player boyfriend in a punk band, a new tat, and an STD for every six months you lived there. But Los Feliz meant you could take care of yourself, you’d been here long enough to know your way around. Sometimes I drove up into the hills, imagining how it would feel to have money like that, old money, houses from the teens, silent-screen stuff, before Beverly Hills was even a gleam in some developer’s eye.
I let myself in, turned on the lights. Nothing but the glorious emptiness of no roommate. It was a luxury I could ill afford, but the last one, a dancer named Audrey, just got a show in Vegas. I liked dancers the best, they were 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