Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [32]
I changed out of my work clothes, soaked the shirt in some bleach. I looked at myself in the mirror. There was nothing wrong with me. I was just small. Small ass, small tits, short legs, a bit bowed, but I knew how to dress, you’d never notice it. Big blues and bright skin, though nobody had seen my skin in quite a while. Okay, I had a problem with men. I was easily bored.
I reached for my pajamas and thought of the guy Richard, waiting for me at the Firehouse. The quick brown eyes, the mocking quality of the mouth, those gestures, their ironic self-consciousness. The graceful looseness of his walk. He looked like a writer but he moved like a dancer. Slouchy but light on his feet. I wondered what his story was. I kept thinking of the way he looked at me, like he had a secret he was enjoying. People I knew didn’t have secrets. They told you every microscopic detail of their lives. A leaf blew across a sidewalk and you got fifteen minutes worth. The upstairs neighbor went to the bathroom twice, God, do you think he’s got prostate? I wasn’t like that, and I could tell this guy Richard wasn’t either.
That time of night, you could park on Rowena without having to hike a mile. The Firehouse still had the high tin ceilings from when it was a working fire station, the wooden bar long and narrow. Richard sat halfway down, drinking something brown on ice. It wasn’t crowded, a few older guys scattered along the bar who watched me walk down to the bald man in the beat-up jacket. Richard didn’t say hello as I took the stool next to him. He didn’t even look at me. “Did you get the spot out?” he asked, lifting his drink to his lips in that stylized, mannered way of his. Slower than necessary. With the elegant pause.
“Out out, damned spot.” I flagged the bartender, asked for the wine list. They had an interesting-looking Dry Creek Zin. That made me feel good, a girl from Kearney who could look at a wine list and know the Zin from the Cab, prefer the New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs to the French. Waiting tables had educational advantages.
The Zin came, plummy, I could even taste figs, and pepper too. Richard put the wine on his tab. Touching those long fingers to his lips, again, that slightly gay self-consciousness, as if placing every motion in ironic quotes. Suddenly I knew. Actor. Actor actor actor.
“How are you liking L.A.?” he asked.
I knew it was intended to startle me, like using my name, but it was such an easy bet. Everyone here was from somewhere else. I wanted to show him I could return a serve. “I like it,” I said. “I like every fucking thing about it. How about you? Where are you from?”
He shook the ice in his drink, looking down into it with a half-smile. He raised his glass to his lips slowly and spoke before it arrived. “Right here.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I went to Marshall. A mere five blocks away. I’m nostalgic already.” He pointed west. “King Junior. Franklin Avenue Elementary.”
“Hard to picture you as a child,” I said.
“I was a difficult child.” He posed, lifting his drink as if it was the skull in Hamlet. “I never lived up to my potential.”
“I did well,” I said, sipping my wine. “I was valedictorian. I played flute in the marching band.”
“And then you decided to act. At … Champaign-Urbana? Or was it Lawrence, Kansas?”
It was Lincoln, but I didn’t need to confirm a run of insight that was now getting eerie.
“And now you’re here to break into the big time. How’s the climb to fame going?”
“It seems they tore Schwab’s down awhile back, but nobody told me.”
“Naturally, you take class. Boyd Stocker?”
“Chris Valente.”
“Ballet at 3rd Street—”
“Tap.”
That made him smile. I smiled too. I knew it was stupid but I really liked tap, it reminded me of old Busby Berkeley movies.
“You’ve come close,” he said, “but so far, the star never broke her ankle.”
Asshole. “Actually, I had a feature.”
“Never released.”
How could he know these things? Well, of course, if the feature had been released, I wouldn’t be slinging pasta at Orzo. Not that I’d have any money, but I wouldn’t want