Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [71]
Then we were driving again in the Dart, and Grady was murmuring to himself, “They got a bridge. She said.”
He drove up and down the streets, and I said, “The full moon rises in the east. Papa said. Look.”
He drove east, and the moon was like a dirty dime in front of us, and we took a beautiful bridge over the Los Angeles River, which raced along the concrete, not like our river. Grady said, “We can’t get on the freeway again.”
“Why not?”
“Shit, Fantine, cause I stole this car, and you ain’t but fourteen. John Law see me, I’m goin to jail.”
He drove down side roads along the freeway, past factories and small houses and winding around hills. The Dart ran out of gas in Pomona.
We were on Mission Boulevard, and Grady said, “You wanted to come. Now walk.”
I walked slowly back toward 8th. It was nearly 5:00 and the sun was behind the buildings, but the sidewalks were still warm. I was carried along in a wave of people leaving work. Homeless men were already staking out sidewalk beds in alleys. Back at the bar, the blackness was like a cave, tile and door so dark it was as if someone had carved out the heart of the building. The film crew was gone. A pink curtain waved in an open window where they’d trained the camera.
A bucket slammed down on the sidewalk, and someone began to wash off the tile. A homeless guy. Green army coat, black sneakers glistening with fallen foam from his brush and rag, and black jeans shiny with wear and dirt. His hair was thin and nappy, and a brown spot showed on the side of his head, like the entrance to an anthill.
Grady. No. Uh-uh. Grady?
He’d had ringworm in Mississippi, when he was a kid, and he’d always combed his natural over that place. Grady. His hand moved back and forth over the tile, washing off fingerprints and smudges. He was missing the end of his right ring finger.
I couldn’t do it. I pressed myself against the building across the street. Hey, Grady, remember me? I wish I could get to know you again, have lunch, tapas or sushi, and then take a couple weeks before I tell you Glorette got killed by somebody in an alley, and she still only loved a guy who left her.
I watched him for ten minutes. He washed the tile, wiped down the door, and polished the gold handle with a different rag. Then he stepped back and turned to look at something above my head.
I didn’t move. His eyes crossed over me but didn’t pause. He went inside, and he never came back out.
Other people stepped in now that the door was open. Two actors from The OC. Three young women wearing heels and carrying briefcases. A guy in a suit.
I crossed the street and went inside. This was not a dive. It looked like Liberace had decorated, with chandeliers and black pillars and even little lamps with gopher shades in gold. I squinted. The jukebox played Al Green. My eyes hurt from saltwater and darkness, and I didn’t see Grady Jackson.
The bartender leaned forward and said, “You okay?” He had a two-tone bowling shirt on, and a porkpie and side-burns.
“Does Hattie Jackson work here?” I said. The bar was cool under my fingers.
“Who?”
“She’s about forty. She was a bartender here.”
A young woman—Paris Hilton—blond but with cool black roots, and a satin camisole—came up behind the bar and squinted. “She means Gloria, I’ll bet.”
Gloria was in an alcove to the side. It was like a little liquor store, and she was arranging bottles of Grey Goose and Ketel One. Her nails were red. But her lips were thin and brown. She looked old.
“Hattie?”
“Gloria Jones,” she said to me. I leaned against the wall. My hips hurt, somehow. She knew me. She said, “When I came here, you had Pam Grier and Coffy and all them. My mama named me Hattie after the one in Gone with the Wind. Who the hell want to be a maid? I changed my name long time ago. After you was here with my fool-ass brother.”
“Was that him? Outside?”
She nodded. “Comes to clean, and then he walks again. He got five, six routes a day. You know. He goes all the way along the river till Frogtown.