I also picked up some young-girl things, such as sweaters and dresses—to balance things out. Each time I bought something for Lettie I felt it was some kind of victory.
Later in the evening, I called the bald girl, which I always knew I would. Though strictly speaking, I had not exactly put in a good day’s work, I felt the need to reward myself with a little socializing.
I asked her if she was free to have a drink and, as luck would have it, she said she was.
We met on the patio of a restaurant on Ocean Avenue. I had to fight my way through an army of people to get to it. Everyone in the world seemed to be in Miami Beach, yet from what I could see, the only thing they did when they got there was form crowds and try to spot Bianca Jagger or someone like that. But I guess that every publication they picked up had told them it was the place to be and to get down there as fast as possible.
The restaurant at which we met was almost deserted, even though it seemed identical to the crowded ones I’d passed along the way. Either there was something wrong with it, or the restaurants got popular street by street, and they hadn’t reached our place quite yet.
She had changed her outfit and wore a lacy white blouse and some bluejeans that did not show the outlines of her vagina. She was still bald, of course, but her face seemed softer, to the extent that this is possible in the case of a bald individual. She flickered back and forth between being pretty and quite beautiful. For a split second, she looked like a bald Marilyn Monroe.
I felt a little uneasy about sitting out there in the open with a bald date, but several other hairless girls strolled by, which helped me to relax. So being a little bald was obviously nothing to fall down the steps about in Miami Beach.
“I had an awful fight with Mahmoud,” she said. “I finally told him to fuck off and go back to the desert.”
“I thought he lived in Chicago.”
“He summers there. But his heart is in Riyadh.”
“Did he spit on you?”
“Actually not, but in many ways it was worse. At least then, we had some interaction. He said I was untidy.”
“How untidy are you?”
“Oh … a few leftover eggrolls under the bed … some sandwich wrappers here and there … but certainly nothing to bust my hump about.”
“Then maybe it’s for the best,” I said, aware that to a degree my comment was self-serving.
She was something of an expert on wines and took a long time studying the list before asking for one that they were out of. So she chose her second favorite. Then we ordered some pasta, which I thought was fine but she felt needed to be ten times spicier.
“He’ll never change,” she said as she poured on the ground pepper. “His ambition is to live at the Playboy mansion.”
“Would Hugh Hefner allow that?”
“Hef?” she said, with a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
She twirled some pasta around her fork and then looked up in alarm.
“Oh shit, that’s him. Let’s get out of here.”
I glanced over at the indoor part of the restaurant and indeed saw a sad-looking bearded fellow slumped over the bar, sipping a frosted drink. That was enough for me. The last thing I needed was a knife fight in Miami Beach with a pissed-off Arab.
I threw down some money and followed her across Ocean Road to a dark section of the beach.
“He won’t come after us, will he?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “He hates sand.”
“An Arab hates sand?”
“He’s definitely in the minority.”
“And besides,” she added, “I crack the whip.”
I took a careful look around anyway and when it seemed that the coast was clear, I took her hand, which was attractively clammy, and we strolled along the beach.
“How was your cocktail party?” she asked.
“It was fine until somebody choked to death on a corned beef sandwich.”
“The food is awful here,” she said.
I was dying to tell her what I was doing at the cocktail party, but it would only have been in the interest of showing off; amazingly, I kept quiet about it. And I’d had it in mind to kiss her, so I thought I might as well do it and get it over with. When I did, she didn’t pull away and she didn’t get into it either. I could tell she was a veteran of a thousand sudden kisses.
“Feel better now?” she asked.
“A lot.”
And I did, having gotten that out of the way. If all else failed, I’d kissed my first bald girl.
We continued our walk along the sand, and she said: “So you’re quite the ladies’ man, are you.”
“What makes you think that?”
She stopped walking, put her hands on her hips like some kind of defiant Southern belle and looked at me squarely.
“Well just how many women have you slept with?”
“I don’t keep count,” I said, which wasn’t quite true. “Eight.”
She sighed and said: “If you only knew how many men I’ve slept with … and the things I had to do with them …”
Ordinarily, I get unsettled when I hear about a woman’s vast sexual experience—as a younger man I would vomit—but maybe I had changed, since I found myself adopting a roguish and worldly stance.
“Trying to turn me on?” I asked.
“I haven’t slept with anyone since I began dating Mahmoud,” she said, which I felt was an off-kilter response to my question. “There was my accountant,” she continued reflectively. “I owed him a blowjob … but I’m not going to start counting that.”
Up until that point, I have to admit I wasn’t exactly consumed with passion. But there is something about hearing an attractive woman, bald or not, say “blowjob”—and I don’t even have to get one—that turns me into a different person. Suddenly I was a little bit consumed with passion and pulled her down on the sand where I gave her head a few licks—to get the ball rolling.
“I knew you’d do that.” she said.
“Was it inappropriate?”
“Only time will tell,” she said.
“You’ll have to forgive me. I haven’t dated for a while—for personal reasons—and I’m a little out of shape in the romance department.”
“I find that charming. But this is romance?” she asked in what seemed to be a serious inquiry.
I had a hard time answering that question, and so I didn’t. Instead, I held her surprisingly full breasts (why are they always surprisingly full?) and kissed her and she said: “You’re concentrating on my tits. Try to relax and smell the roses.”
That was another one. A woman saying “tits.” Next thing I knew she’d say “pussy” and I would become a madman. (And I’m not one of those phone-sex people either. I have to have the individual right there in front of me where I can grab on to her.) And she was right, of course. But how was I not supposed to concentrate on her breasts, or tits, as she preferred. But I tried to put them out of my mind and we rolled around on the sand for a while, where I noted, not with displeasure, that she had elected to go bald throughout. (Normally, when I hit pubic hair, I take it as an indication that I’m home free; but obviously there were to be no such guidelines in this case.) She made some additional corrections in my style, as if I had enrolled in a driver’s-ed course. And I had to wonder what it is in my technique that causes women to shout instructions at me while I’m trying to concentrate on making love to them. On the other hand, it was better than that time in America when everybody clammed up in bed, leading to failed marriages and broken hearts.
Carefully following her instructions (“Easy there, fella … slow down … there you go …”) I proceeded, in Little Irwin’s words, to “do the deed.” And I was just about to hit my stride when Mahmoud came out of the shadows, hollering out what I took to be some kind of Arabic imprecation.
“Oh, Christ, Mahmoud,” she said, sitting up in irritation. “You’re doing it again.”
He lunged at me, and I hit him in the stomach, more o
ut of fear than combat alertness, noting that it was the first punch I’d thrown since lashing out at a rich boy in Tennessee for having too many toys. I waited for a knife to come out, but Mahmoud sat down softly and seemed to be more concerned about the sand in his suit than the tableau he had just witnessed.
“You don’t really want her,” he said bitterly. “You’ll just use her and cast her aside.
“Like stinking fish,” he added, invoking (unnecessarily, I felt) some kind of Levantine metaphor.
“How can you be sure of that?” I asked, ignoring the possible truth to his allegation. “Besides, you’re the one who spits at her.”
“How does he know that?” he said, turning to the bald girl, whose name was Laramie, incidentally.
“Oh, stop it, Mahmoud,” she said dismissively. “It’s practically been written up in the columns.”
“Admit it,” he said to me. “She’s just one of your playthings.”
“I’m not Hugh Hefner,” I said.
“He knows about Hef, too?” he said, glaring at her.
“Right, Mahmoud,” she said derisively. “I really had time to recite the whole megillah.”
“Don’t say megillah,” he said.
Then he turned to me and raised his bearded jaw.
“Go ahead. Hit me. See how far it gets you.”
It was a strange invitation, considering the circumstances, but before I could respond, the bald girl got to her feet and said: “That’s it. I’m through dicking around. Shoo! Both of you. I just want to air out my snatch and get the sand out of my ass.”
“Jesus,” I said to myself. “This is some person!”
Normally, that kind of hot talk from a woman, bald or not, would have sent me halfway to Jupiter and back. But with Mahmoud standing by, I thought it best to keep myself in tow.
“Let’s go, Mahmoud,” I said. “She’s got a point.”
We both turned and walked toward the boardwalk, as if we were partners, which in some kind of drawing-room comedy sense, we were.
“And leave the keys under the mat,” she called after him.
“Have I ever forgotten?” he shouted back.
“You see what I have to put up with?” he said to me.
“Must be a bitch,” I said.
Then, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, I asked him what kind of work he did in Miami.
“I’m in a band,” he said. “We’re trying to get a recording contract. If you know a good agent, I’d appreciate your mentioning my name. I play acoustic guitar.”
“I don’t happen to know any agents, but what do you do, Arab stuff?”
“Sometimes. It depends on the crowd.”
“There must be a lot of competition.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, then added with blazing eyes. “But we’re very good.”
I could see that it was one thing to roll around on the sand with his girlfriend and quite another to be casual about his music. I thought of asking him to have a drink, maybe finishing off the bottle of wine on the patio, but I felt it might lead to some kind of complex love triangle, and I did not feel that I was up to one. When we reached Ocean Avenue, I slapped him on the shoulder in a show of good fellowship.
“Good luck, Mahmoud.”
“The same to you, fella.”
Then he reached into his pocket and handed me a card.
“Take this,” he said. “We also play at parties and benefits. If things are slow, we’ll do a bar mitzvah.”
It was unlikely I would see Laramie again. If I got back down to Miami Beach, I might give her a call—not to start up an affair or anything—if something happened, it happened—but just to see how she was doing. And maybe get some more of that hot talk. But I certainly did wish her well. With no hair, a shaky modeling career and a disgruntled Arab boyfriend, she had her hands full.
There are those who would consider the episode a disaster, but I did not see it that way. I had not dated a woman since my tragic loss and was not sure how I would do. Under the circumstances—the bald head, Mahmoud jumping out of the shadows that way—I felt I had performed decently. And though I had not experienced a full-blown romance, I felt I had something to build on.
My spirits were high as I hit the highway the next morning. But as I made my way through the Everglades (taking a shortcut), it occurred to me that the $75,000 I had been advanced might not be mine. And I had already spent a nice chunk of it. It’s true that Dickie Moué was out of the picture. But strictly speaking, I had not brought it about. If Peabody’s operation wanted to split hairs, they could make the case that I might as well have stayed home. And he would have choked on the corned beef sandwich anyway.
If they wanted to get tough about it, they could claim that I owed them the full $75,000, including the $18,000 that I had spent.
Which, unfortunately, is exactly the position that they took.
Chapter Nine
We are not an affluent community, but we are rich in barbecue restaurants and probably have more than we need. Every time you turn around, someone is opening another one, not stopping to think that there are only so many lovers of barbecue to go around.
I had heard of Otis and was aware that it was high up there in the rankings for the excellence of its cuisine. A noted travel guide had awarded it two stars—and would have added a third had they not fallen down on the corn bread. Yet I had never eaten at the restaurant, having been advised that it is best to have a black individual accompany you there. (It is in a poor all-black section of town, which is unfortunately a haven for crime.) It’s a sadness of mine that I do not have any black friends—yet at the same time I had never felt it was necessary to just go out there and round some up—just to have some.
If a black person came into my life in the normal course of things, I would welcome him with open arms.
Otis turned out to be a ramshackle place with about a dozen tables, more like somebody’s kitchen than a restaurant—and it smelled great. Peabody had gotten there before me and was talking to someone at an adjoining table, a black fellow who had on horn-rimmed glasses and was wearing a business suit and a tie. The fellow had shown him pictures of his two children, and Peabody was carrying on about them as though he had never seen pictures of kids before.
“Come over here, Binny,” he said. “You’ve got to see these pictures. They’re remarkable. And this is Leonard—he’s a management consultant. Extraordinary fellow.”
I said hello to Leonard and looked at the pictures and thought they were nice, although truthfully I didn’t see anything remarkable about them. Nor did Leonard come across as being extraordinary. But Peabody thought otherwise. He soon learned that Leonard had a house on the lake and owned a sailboat, which Peabody thought was remarkable, too. He obviously felt that the way to deal with black people was to make a huge fuss over them—and you would get credit for being a liberal-minded fellow. I do not make a fuss over black people unless there is something to make a fuss about—which to my mind makes me an authentically liberal-minded person.
But try explaining that to Peabody.
He and the black executive exchanged phone numbers, and he finally turned to me.
“Fascinating fellow, isn’t he? But where’s Lettie? I thought surely you’d bring her along.”
I said she had her schoolwork to do, although I knew she was back at the house and probably parading around in her choker. I wasn’t sure how she would feel about it, but she had loved it and wanted to wear it to school. Though I did not think it was appropriate for a schoolgirl to come to class in a diamond choker, I compromised and said she could wear it to school and show it to her girlfriends while I waited in the schoolyard. And then I would take it back to the house with me, which I did.
“I’m so disappointed,” he said. “She’s lovely, and I feel certain she’d like me. Besides, I think it’s important that a young girl at some point be exposed to an older and somewhat sophisticated man.”
I wondered how he knew that Letti
e was lovely and once again concluded that it was probably Ed Bivens who had given him a report on her looks. As to the need for her to be exposed to an older, sophisticated man, I wasn’t too sure about that. No doubt she would come in contact with one in due time. Which is not to say that it could really hurt for her to meet Peabody. If nothing else, she would probably enjoy his English accent, which I certainly did.
“Why not come over to the house for a drink sometime,” I suggested.
“Unless you have cats.”
“Are you allergic to them?”
“I don’t like animals,” he said, pursing his lips, which for a second made him look like an animal.
“We do have a few cats.”
“I was afraid of that. But thank you for the invitation all the same.”
We ordered buckets of ribs and diet cokes, which is the only drink they serve. Peabody picked up a rib, inspected it, discarded it, then picked up another and discarded that one, too. He looked over some others, put them back and finally shoved the bowl aside.
“They’re not very good, are they.”
I hadn’t tried one yet, but considering all the awards that Otis had won, I could not imagine that they would be anything but superior. But before I could sample one for myself, Peabody had called over the waitress and ordered cheeseburgers for us as a substitute.
Then he leaned across the table, his eyes moist with emotion.
“We did it, didn’t we, Binny …”
“We certainly did,” I said, letting the “we” part slide by.
We reminisced about our modest start at the Ed Bivens Diner and how beautifully it had all come together in Miami Beach.
“He was a prick, wasn’t he?”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Dickie.”
“I didn’t really get to know him.”
A Father's Kisses Page 10