She had a very good idea of what kind of weirdoes might be hanging around, as he followed her through the parking lot.
“Where’s your car?” he said, close to her ear.
“Over there.” She waved in the direction of the motel, which was separated from the diner lot by a few hundred yards of unpaved dust and weeds.
“Staying there all by your ownself?” His smile glittered in the reflected neon.
She wondered whether she could outrun him if she kicked off her sandals.
“No. Me and my husband.” She said it too loud. Her phoniness hung in the air. “My, um, husband and I were—well, he just wasn’t hungry, so…”
“You don’t have no husband.” He grabbed her left hand and held it up to the dim light from the diner’s sign. “No ring.” How come you’re lying to me? I hate to hear a little girl lie.”
Camilla kicked off her Ferragamos and broke into a run. The dust felt dry between her toes. The heavy room key in her jacket pocket knocked against her side as she ran.
“What’s the matter with you, little girl? You need me, honey!”
Room four. She was in room four. She pulled the key out of her pocket.
“There’s nothing in that room is gonna save you, honey. You gotta spend some time with me.” He ran toward her across the dust.
She had the key in the lock. It turned. She pushed her shoulder against the door, squeezed inside, and started to close the door, but above her head, the cowboy’s huge, sinewy hand pushed against her. She tried to duck past him, thinking only of getting to her car and escaping this terrible place, but his body blocked her exit. She looked wildly for the phone, until she remembered there was none.
He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Get out right now!”
“I will, honey; I will. But not until I’ve changed your life.” He circled her, like an animal stalking its prey. “You’re alone, little girl, am I right?”
She looked around the room for something she could use as a weapon.
“You’re in a lot of trouble, am I right?”
She backed toward the bedside lamp—a large chunk of hideous avocado ceramic. It might do some damage.
“The last thing this world needs is one more sinful little girl.” The man’s eyes glazed and a terrifying grin crept over his face as he reached into the bulging pocket of his denim jacket.
She reached for the lamp. But it fell over with a wimpy thud. In that instant, all she could think was that this was too wrong—too stupid. She couldn’t die here, shot by some cowboy with bad teeth. She tried to scream, but no sound came out.
“Here,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket. “I want to give you this.”
It wasn’t a gun. It was a small magazine.
On the cover was written, “Have You Heard About Jesus?”
He pushed it into her hand, opened the door, and disappeared into the night.
Chapter 6—Avocados in the Hot Tub
The house in Ocean Beach was an unappealing little box of crumbling mustard-colored stucco, wedged between two equally bleak hovels, on a narrow, dead-end street near a rocky stretch of sand that Wave called “Dog Beach.” Camilla hadn’t yet determined if the name referred to the four-legged creatures that were allowed to run free there, or the unattractive men and women who seem to make it their home.
There was a fair-sized kitchen and a long, skinny living room, carpeted in a matted shag that might have, in the distant past, been one of those colors called “harvest gold” or “sunset yellow,” but now resembled the sands of Dog Beach. There were three minuscule bedrooms, the smallest of which was hers—because “you have, like, no stuff,” Jennifer explained.
But in the back yard was a hot tub. It wasn’t a spa or a Jacuzzi—just a redwood tub full of water that could be hot if somebody remembered to turn on the heater.
~
The heater was running when Camilla got home from her job at the San Diego Union on an afternoon in late July. The water felt tepid, so the heater had probably not been on long. Nevertheless, she put on her bathing suit and climbed into the tub. The water was soothing after her miserable day at work.
All her days at the paper were miserable, but today had been the worst yet. Answering the phone and writing down a few lines of advertising copy seemed at first to be an easy, if not fulfilling, way to begin her journalism career, but it wasn’t. Getting all the little letters and numbers right was hard. And getting to her phone station at exactly the same time every day was even harder, with all the crazy freeway driving.
Today, when she walked in only ten minutes late, her supervisor had been close to rude. Then, when it turned out that yesterday she wrote up a La Jolla “sx cu gm 499K ” instead of “dx vu hm 499K”, the woman had been really nasty—as if she’d never moved her hand one letter to the left by mistake. The woman said if Camilla made one more mistake, or was late again, she would be “let go”.
But she couldn’t get fired—at least not until Plantagenet got back. Her savings were evaporating so fast she couldn’t bear to think about it.
Sinking deeper into the warming water she looked up at the fat leaves and ripening fruit of the avocado tree that grew in the neighboring yard and extended over much of theirs. The strong afternoon breeze from the ocean trailed wisps of fog across the blue sky and jostled the leaves, which clicked softly as they touched.
Camilla wondered if Plantagenet had been in California long enough to learn to enjoy hot tubs. He hadn’t come back from Samoa yet—if he was really in Samoa—but his phone was still connected. She called it every day, but nobody had ever answered again. She was beginning to wonder if the mysterious landlady hadn’t been some sort of hallucination brought on by too much freeway fatigue, country radio, and grits.
With a sudden plop and splash, an avocado dropped from the tree, just missing her head. She fished it out and added it to several others lined up on the narrow ridge around the edge of the tub. It was time to make guacamole again. She hadn’t quite decided if she liked guacamole—it did look so much as if it ought to be floating on top of a stagnant pond—but she always ate a little, just to be polite.
“Hey, Camel, want a beer?” Wave’s voice called from the kitchen window. Before Camilla could answer, the inevitable sounds of Wave’s favorite Pat Benatar album blared from the speaker on the redwood deck next to the tub.
“Oh dear,” Camilla said to the avocados as she sank deeper into the tub. She wasn’t ready for Pat Benatar’s Best Shot.
“I bought Oly Light,” Wave said, emerging from the house with a can of beer in each hand. She had her short, sun-streaked hair tied in two little-girl pony tails, and looked very beachy in a halter top and some ragged athletic shorts that showed off her long, muscular legs, and a good deal of her butt. “Jennifer said it has the fewest calories.”
Camilla sipped the watery beer. “How come you’re not at work? Doesn’t your shift last till six?”
“Fired,” Wave calmly pulled the thermometer out of the water and studied it.
“But—what are you going to do for money?” Camilla started to feel panic. “Didn’t your dad say he wouldn’t give you a cent if you didn’t go to summer school? It’s your turn to pay rent. I paid first and last and everything because I had the money—”
Wave splashed her.
“Cool your jets. You sound like my dad. And—speaking of parental units, your mother called this afternoon.”
Camilla nearly choked on her beer. Now the tepid water in the tub felt like ice. She’d sent her mother a couple of postcards to say she was OK, but with no return address. She did not want Lester Stokes to know where she was. Ever.
“How did she get the number? I’m not listed.”
“But I am. How many people do you know in California? Your mother’s not a moron.”
“What did she want? You didn’t tell her I’d call back, did you?”
Camilla hadn’t
told Wave all the sickening details, because she was afraid they’d sound crazy when she said them out loud, but Wave could be counted upon to treat all parents as the enemy.
“Are you kidding? When I tried to tell her you were taking want ads for the Union, she said you weren’t. You should have heard her— ‘Camilla is not working as a menial.’ I said ‘no, she’s working as a want-ad clerk.’ Then she said you were going to be in New York for the wedding, and that you would call her.” Wave’s little ponytails wiggled. “Your mom’s a major loony. Almost as bad as mine. No, cancel that. At least she didn’t sound strung out on Valium.”
Camilla drained her beer.
“If she calls again, tell her I’ve moved, OK? You don’t know where I am.”
She stared up at the sky—now streaked with wispy fog. The wedding. How could her mother even think she’d go to that wedding? She shivered and moved toward the jet that was blowing slightly warmer water.
“Hey, I could use another beer. Have we got more?”
Wave laughed. “Of course—a whole case. Also four bags of chips and a bunch of salsa. And we can make a ton of guacamole with all these avocados.”
“Why all the food? I thought Jennifer decided we’re on a diet.”
“Because, gerbil-brain, we’re having a party tonight. You forgot?” Wave started picking up the fruit from the side of the tub.
“A party? A real one?” Camilla had not yet been able to pinpoint the difference between “partying”—a daily activity with Wave and Jennifer that involved beer, drugs, loud music, and sometimes, but not always, members of the opposite sex—and “having a party” which seemed to be a larger version of the same thing, with tortilla chips.
“Yes, sweetie, a big-girl party. With boys and everything.”
“What time?” Camilla sat up and pulled back her dripping hair. She hadn’t had it cut since she arrived, and it was getting long, so it took forever to blow-dry.
“Oh, you know, whenever.” Wave opened the screen door with her elbow as she balanced the avocados against her chest.
“But—who’s coming?”
“Oh, everybody.” She disappeared into the house.
“You mean Jennifer’s usual collection of foul-mouthed idiots in Hawaiian shirts?”
“Jennifer’s what?”
Jennifer had materialized at the door. She was still wearing the heavy make-up and Liz Claiborne suit she wore to work, but her feet were bare and almost all of her long, wispy Clairol-blonde hair had strayed from the combs that were meant to secure it.
“Uh—hi, Jennifer.” Camilla sank back into the tub to hide. “I was just asking who’s coming tonight.”
She hoped Jennifer hadn’t heard her previous remark. Getting along with Jennifer wasn’t easy. She was only two years older than Wave, but ruled the house with the world-weary bossiness of an older generation.
“So little Camel wants to know who’s coming to our party tonight?” Jennifer lit an extra-long Benson and Hedges. “Oh, nobody special is coming. Just Mike and Wolfman, and that guy Tooter I met last week, and—” Jennifer paused to take a dramatic Bette Davis drag off her cigarette. “And oh, yes…Jon-Don Parker said he’d stop by.”
“What!” Wave exploded in squeals as she bounced through door. “Jon-Don Parker? The TV star? Did you say Jon-Don Parker? The Jon-Don Parker?”
“Apparently I must have,” Jennifer accepted a beer from Wave. She maintained a deadpan expression as she pretended to be engrossed in popping open the top. “Jon-Don is so sweet. And he’s finally broken up with his Halloweeny girlfriend, True.” She balanced her cigarette on the arm of a deck chair and started to remove her clothes. Camilla saw that Jennifer was wearing one of her own silk blouses under the suit, but said nothing. Jennifer and Wave were always trading clothes.
“Jon-Don. Is he just as gorgeous in person?” Wave jumped up and down on the deck. “Are his eyes really—Oh, I will melt!”
“Yes Waverly, his eyes really are that color green. But hands off. This one is mine.” Jennifer blew dramatic smoke. “Camel, you can stop drooling.”
Camilla wasn’t drooling. She had watched the TV cop show “Darrell and Darryl” enough times to know Jon-Don Parker was one of the stars, but she couldn’t remember if he played the San Diego private eye who never shaved and sweated a lot in pastel suits—or his half-brother, a San Diego cop who never shaved and sweated a lot in pastel suits.
“What do you mean ‘hands off’—what about you and Mike?” Wave said.
“Mike and I are fine,” Jennifer said. “In fact, he gave me a little present today.” She fished in the pocket of her discarded jacket and held up a vial of white powder.
Wave jumped around like a little kid with ice cream, but Camilla tried to ignore it. Anybody who’d seen Margaux Hemingway or Bianca Jagger without their make-up in the ladies’ room at Studio 54 would not choose to go the druggy route.
“Mike doesn’t mind if you get it on with some TV star?” Mike was a large person Camilla thought it wouldn’t be wise to annoy.
Jennifer responded with something just short of a sneer. “Don’t be stupid. He’s the one who introduced me to Jon-Don. Mike and I don’t own each other. For God’s sake, Camel, are you wearing a bathing suit again?”
“No.” Camilla tried to imitate Jennifer’s cool tone. “I’ve had turquoise and black stripes tattooed on my torso.”
Jennifer looked as if she was thinking about laughing, but she didn’t. Instead, she stared up at the avocado tree and said, “What you need, Camel, is a man. In fact, I’ll tell you what—Tooter’s coming tonight, and with Jon-Don here, I’m not going to want to hassle with him. Especially if Mike’s here, too. You remember Tooter?”
“I think so,” Camilla said politely, although she never could tell Jennifer’s men friends apart. Not one seemed to have a neck.
“Good, so you know he’s a hunk. So you keep him occupied when Jon-Don gets here, OK? If you two hit it off, that’s fine with me. He likes your type.” Jennifer dried her hands to light another cigarette. “Hey, can I borrow that Norma Kamali top tonight?”
“And what’s my type?” Camilla would have preferred a roommate who wore her own clothes.
“Oh, you know—big tits,” Jennifer was model-thin, and her chest was nearly concave. Wave said she was saving up for implants, although Camilla didn’t know how, since Jennifer was always buying drugs.
“I already have a man,” Camilla said. “He’s in Samoa right now, working on a film.” She reached for her towel.
OK, it was a stupid lie. But if Edmund could pretend Plant was straight and in love with her, why couldn’t she? That episode in New Jersey had to have been about something. Anyway, pretending Plant was her boyfriend was better than being fixed up with Jennifer’s druggy neckless wonders.
“You mean what’s-his-face? The writer? People say he’s faggy or something.”
“People say stupid things.” Camilla stepped out of the tub. Her head hurt. It usually did after a day on the phones.
“Hey, where are you going?” said Wave.
“To lie down a while. I’m getting a headache. Have we got aspirin?”
“Aspirin? Oh, get real. Have a toot.” Jennifer moved a cupped hand to reveal a mirror holding three rows of white powder.
“I’m not ready to party yet.” A small lie of omission. “Didn’t you buy aspirin?”
“No, but there’s Valium in the bathroom,” Wave said. “I ripped it off from my Mom.”
Jennifer spoke in a stage whisper when Camilla was not quite out of hearing range—“Waverly, that chick is a major wimp.”
Camilla tried not to care as she searched in the medicine cabinet until she found the bottle of tiny yellow pills. Her head pounded. Her mother took Valium all the time, so she figured it couldn’t be terribly dangerous. She popped off the cap and took two.
Chapter 7—Making Guacamole
When Camilla woke up, the clock by her bed said 10:49. The noise around her was surreal. E
lectronic Devo grunts chugged in her ear, and hordes of humanity yammered outside her door. She forced herself out of bed and hoped nobody would walk in as she dressed. There was no lock on the door.
She knew she shouldn’t look like a “major wimp” for Jennifer’s TV star, so she put on a slinky little Bob Mackie gold slip dress with a plunging neckline. Her hair didn’t look as bad as it might have, even though it was limp from the hot tub. It had turned very blonde in the California sun. With some eye make-up, she managed to make herself look fairly human. Finally, she felt prepared to open her bedroom door.
She had to try about four times, but when she got it open enough to squeeze outside, the man who had been leaning against it gave her a nasty look—as if she had no right to be there.
She couldn’t believe how many bodies were crushed into the tiny living room. Was this really better than going back to Connecticut?
Yes. She thought of her mother’s call today and realized anything, even this, was better than going to that wedding.
Searching the crowd for a familiar face, she caught sight of Wave, perched on the back of the couch. She still wore her micro-shorts and beach top, to which she’d added a leather motorcycle jacket. She’d gelled her hair to look dark and spiky, and wore one huge, dangling black earring—a sort of a “Gidget Goes Punk” look. She was talking to a darkly handsome man wearing what appeared to be an authentic 1940’s pinstriped suit over a T-shirt printed with an advertisement for shock absorbers. Wave stared into his tanned face with unconcealed rapture.
As she made her way toward them, Camilla tried to picture the actors on “Darrell and Darryl” and wondered if Mr. Pinstripes was the famous star. But by the time she had squeezed her way to the couch, he’d gone.
“Camel!” Wave said. “Welcome to the land of the living. Awesome party, huh?”
“I’m not really awake yet.” Camilla was feeling not so much awed as squished.
“No problem. I’ve got your wake-up call right here.” Wave reached into her shorts pocket. “I saved enough for a few lines.” She put the glass vial in Camilla’s hand.
Randall #01 - The Best Revenge Page 5