Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [81]
“Yeah.”
“That’s great. Mmm, I got to get up soon. Wake me up at 7, ’kay?”
“Sure.”
He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, sets it on the nightstand next to his pillow. Does the same with his keys, his change. He reaches into the suit jacket. The right pocket. He finds it there.
The bell, washed clean by the river, traveled on its journey, has arrived here.
Maybe it’s the fatigue, but he’s not so concerned with how as he is with why. The bell demands a story, a confession.
He holds it in his hand, examines the detail.
He does not move. He stays this way for a long time, as long as he can.
His concentration broken, he looks at the clock.
Five till 7.
Everything seems to change.
He rings the bell.
CITY OF COMMERCE
BY NEAL POLLACK
Commerce
The call came at 4 p.m., just when I was starting my prep for the day’s first bong hit. It had been weeks since I’d heard from my agent. I put down my gear and listened.
“Some cherry producer at New Line likes your treatment for Cedar Fever,” he said.
This was a crappy horror comedy that I’d written two years before, about people whose allergies get so bad they start turning into plants. Not exactly what I’d dreamed about when I moved here. But after a while, you’ve sleepwalked long enough so you’re not really dreaming anymore.
“No shit?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Stupid fuck read your book, and he thinks you can still write.”
Silence, as I decided whether or not to defend myself.
“You got a clean shirt, one with buttons?” he asked.
“I am still married,” I replied. “So probably.”
“Good. Because I scored you a sit-down at 3:30. Do not be late to this one …”
He bitched at me for a few minutes, then turned nice when he asked if I knew where he could get some weed. By the time I got his ass off the phone, Karen was coming in the door, looking fine as ever. Admissions of love came less and less frequently from her these days, not that I blamed her. One minute she was at a Santa Monica beach party getting felt up in a hammock by a promising novelist, and before she could hiccup, she found herself paying the mortgage on a two-bedroom condo in Glassell Park and coming home every day to an unshaven, unemployed stoner. She was as bitter as an unripe plum, so I was glad to have some good news for her. I just about fell on my ass when she threw her arms around my neck and put her tongue in my ear.
“You get this gig,” she said, “and I’ll cruise you up to Ojai for a weekend of blowjobs you’ll never forget.”
I hadn’t received an offer like that in nearly a decade. She still loved, me, maybe. But I was feeling a little jittery at that moment, and I told her so.
“Maybe I should …”
She blanched whiter than a snow leopard in February.
“No, Nick,” she said. “You’re not fucking going to the casino. Not tonight. Not before the biggest meeting of your life.”
“I’ll play a few low-stakes hands and be home by mid-night,” I said, reassuring myself as much as her.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Come on, babe,” I said. “You know it relaxes me.”
“It does anything but.”
I picked my keys off the kitchen counter and headed for the door.
“You’re going now? You’re not even going to have dinner with me?”
“The 5 can be a real bastard this time of night,” I said.
I was out the door so quickly she couldn’t possibly have jinxed my opening flop.
Before I moved to California, I played poker occasionally at basement tables with ten-cent antes, where the real object was to drink as much Old Style as possible without vomiting. Winning meant zero, and losing even less. I had no idea that I was coming to a place where poker transcended hobby, leaped above pastime, and approached something near civic religion. The first couple of home games almost turned me back toward the path of righteousness; one was full of twenty-five-year-old schmucks hatching plans to date-rape a stripper in Malibu, and the other featured new dads who were busy discussing home renovations and the difficulties of finding a reliable nanny