Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle

by Carlos Allende

  Josie knocked on the window.

  Victoria heard the girl and trudged into the kitchen. President Buer was sitting on the stove, his feet dangling over, trying to get the last bits of marmalade out of a jar with his tongue.

  “Can you please call me a cab?”

  The old woman nodded. She picked up the telephone.

  “You’re a doll,” Josie thanked her and ran back upstairs to finish her makeup.

  President Buer sneered at the girl’s haste.

  Forty minutes later, Josie asked her driver to stop at the entrance to the Pig ’N’ Whistle on Hollywood Boulevard.

  “Your wife is a lucky woman, Fred,” she said, leaning forward, pretending to do so in order to check her makeup in the rearview mirror but actually to give the cabbie a last chance to spy her cleavage. “I’d be watchful if I were her, with you driving strange women all day. What’s her name?”

  “Lucille,” the man responded with a big smile.

  “Lucille?” Josie raised an eyebrow. “Well, tell Lucille to be careful. You’re quite a catch.”

  The man giggled.

  “Now, hold on for just a second, Fred,” she said. “I’ll go get my friend. He will pay.”

  The driver nodded. His eyes followed the girl’s behind as she stepped out of the car and entered the restaurant.

  A dollar twenty-five for the ride? Josie was cleverer than that. She ignored the hostess, walked straight to the back door, and left the place. She crossed two parking lots, walked up through one of the side streets back to Hollywood Boulevard, crossed the street and finally entered Musso & Frank Grill, where Richard awaited.

  This was a trick that she had to use often. The secret was to talk to the driver, to ask him the right questions, to make him talk, and make him feel you were worth his trust.

  She had been at Musso & Frank twice before, but she still felt a rush of nervousness course through her spine as the maître d’ led her through the stained glass doors. Everything inside announced wealth and refinement. Carved wood panels, crystal chandeliers, scenes depicting the English countryside on the wallpaper. And there were so many beautiful women inside, some boasting furs (in the middle of summer!) and expensive jewelry. Josie felt so out of place. She avoided the eyes of the staff for fear that they would ask her to leave the premises.

  Richard waited at one of the wooden booths in the back.

  “How’s my little convict?” He welcomed the girl with a cheerful grin.

  “Richard, please,” Josie begged with a jumpy smile. They exchanged kisses and Josie sat down. “It was a horrible experience.”

  “I bet it was,” Richard tittered.

  He was a handsome man, for his age. How old could he be? Forty-five? Fifty? Not that it mattered. He was rich. And single.

  “Champagne?” Richard asked.

  Before Josie had a chance to say yes, he raised a hand and snapped his fingers, calling a waiter. A young server appeared from nowhere and filled up the girl’s glass. Richard thanked him with a wink. Josie laughed. Richard laughed with her. She had been in such a haste trying to arrive on time, but she felt much better now. Richard’s good spirits were contagious.

  He was probably old enough to be her father. And he had a belly. But he had beautiful eyes, white teeth, and he didn’t look bad in his graying hair. It became him.

  “And here is Lina,” Richard announced suddenly.

  Josie turned back and saw a young girl approaching the table. She seemed younger than Josie. Seventeen, perhaps? She had a feral look, with long bangs and a clear and impenetrable gaze that reminded Josie of a mountain lion.

  The girl smiled coldly and sat next to Richard. The millionaire raised a hand and with a twist of his wrist made the introductions: “Lina, this is my friend, Miss Josie García. Josie, this is Miss Lina Barnett, my fiancée.”

  “Pardon me?” Josie asked with surprise.

  “We’re engaged. You didn’t think I was going to remain single until you felt like calling, did you?” Richard asked, disdainfully. He signaled a waiter to come and fill up Lina’s glass. “You had to get arrested first.”

  Josie looked again at Lina. His fiancée? Her ears stuck out too far, like a couple of jug handles.

  “We haven’t talked about being exclusive, though,” Richard continued. “If you know what I mean. Perhaps we three could come to an understanding.”

  Josie let out a timid laugh. He had to be joking. Lina thanked the waiter for filling up her glass. This time, it was the waiter who winked at Richard.

  “If that’s that what you like,” Lina mumbled.

  “Ew, no. Gross. Just teasing you,” Richard tittered. “You’re supposed to get jealous. I’d never ask my wife to share her bed with another girl—or another man, if that’s what she’s into.” He smiled at Josie. “I’m just teasing you two.” He patted Lina’s hand. “What do you think of Lina, Josie?”

  Josie took a second to respond. “I think she’s beautiful. I’m happy for you two.”

  “Of course you are, you bad liar,” Richard replied. “Well, I’m glad you’re not jealous of my dear sweet love.” He turned to Lina: “Josie and I almost had a fling, but she never called me.” He turned to Josie: “I call Lina ‘my dear sweet love’ and she calls me ‘Pancakes;’ isn’t that cute?” His body shook with forced laughter.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call before,” Josie replied.

  “I started to think you didn’t like me.”

  “But I do like you,” Josie cried.

  Richard leaned back.

  “You like champagne, you sneaky mouse, that’s what you like. And eating for free at expensive restaurants.” He smirked. “You must have thought that I was too old, or too fat, and not rich enough, didn’t you? I should have shown you the balance in my checking account first.” The smirk grew bigger. “You would have pissed in your panties. Fortunately, I didn’t make that mistake with Miss Barnett here, though. We became friends first, didn’t we?” He turned to Lina. “And then lovers.”

  “In that order?” Lina asked.

  “Yes, of course. And then I proposed,” Richard turned back to Josie. “And only after I proposed and she accepted—because she did, immediately, no hesitation on her part—I told her I was disgustingly rich.”

  “I didn’t know that I didn’t know,” Lina said.

  The millionaire glowered at her.

  “I was shocked,” Lina corrected herself, showing the enthusiasm of a mortician.

  “She said,” Richard went on, “patting my belly, ‘Pancakes, I prefer you poor, but I’ll still marry you’—didn’t you say that?”

  “Most certainly I did. I can’t remember.”

  “It’s taking her a while to adapt—but you will, my dear sweet love,” Richard patted Lina’s hand again, “you will. And you will learn some manners too. Take your elbows off the table.”

  Lina complied with a scowl.

  “Of course she didn’t say that. Who am I kidding? I had to bribe her,” Richard continued, his eyes fixed now neither on Josie or his fiancée but on the round posterior of the server attending their table. “Rich old men need to date fancy, beautiful ladies, don’t they? Anyway, tell us about you, Josephine.” He opened his menu. “How was prison?”

  “It was just a detention center.”

  “Did you get raped?”

  “No!”

  “I’m just teasing you, silly,” Richard chuckled. “It must have been a very unpleasant experience.” He opened the menu. “What do you want? Anything but lobster, doll, too expensive—I’m just kidding, order whatever you want; my treat. You sure you weren’t raped?”

  “Richard,” Lina laughed.

  “I told you to call me ‘Pancakes,’ my dear sweet love. I’m paying you good money… Oh, c’mon, Josie. I’ve heard horrible things about the bucket. About the br
utal, salacious, muscled-up men locked in there. Covered in grease and sweat, yearning to feel the insides of a female.”

  The server couldn’t avoid a simper. Richard noticed it and looked away, pretending to be offended.

  “I was put in a cell with women only.”

  “Were you?” He gazed at the waiter. “Bummer.”

  “Before that, though, and if you must know, I almost got raped, by four Negroes.”

  “Were you?” Richard’s face lit up.

  Josie took a sip of her glass and opened the menu. “Fortunately, the police showed up,” she browsed through the list of entrées. “Well, not so fortunately, because I ended up being arrested. They put me in a cell with this horrible hag—she smelled so bad! She was full of scabs and she had this monstrous leg the size of—”

  “Ew. Stop it,” Richard interrupted. “Sweetie-pie, please. You’re being far too explicit. You weren’t raped? That’s good enough. We’re having dinner—better luck next time. Lina doesn’t want to hear more of your depressing stories.”

  “But I am interested,” Lina put down her menu.

  “Of course you are, Delilah,” Richard said. “Shall we order?” He put his menu away and addressed the server. “Bring the mussel soup and the bobwhite quail for me, the most expensive item on the menu for her,” he pointed at Josie, “and a Caesar’s salad for this lady, without cheese. And another bottle, of course. Don’t let any of our glasses get empty.”

  His, however, was still full.

  “I want an appetizer, too,” Josie raised her hand to stop the server. “Escargots?” she asked with a dignified pose, but putting the emphasis on the a and pronouncing the t and the s.

  “Et des escargots for my friend,” Richard corrected her pronunciation. The server celebrated the choice with a nod. “You know what they are, right?” he asked Josie.

  “Snails?” Josie responded with a smile.

  “Good. Because you’re going to eat them. That’s it, boy—chop-chop,” he clapped to the waiter. “Move those round sloppy muffins. We’re starving.”

  “I want more than a salad,” Lina complained.

  Richard snorted. “Of course you do, my dear sweet love, but I told you I’m not marrying a fatty. I have enough for both,” he pinched his belly. “It’s all grass and sunbeams for you until the wedding.”

  Lina rolled her eyes and had a gulp of champagne.

  By the time the food came, Richard seemed to have lost his appetite, however. “I’m not having this soup,” he said, raising the plate to his nose. “I just want to smell it. It reminds me of the years I spent in Brussels. You can have it,” Richard pushed the plate to Lina.

  “I’m starving. But there’s no way I’m going to eat that,” Lina responded.

  “You have it then,” he passed the plate to Josie. “Lina is from the prairie. She’d be happy with a corn dog and ketchup.”

  And when the quail came, Richard nibbled just a little.

  “They don’t know how to cook quail in Los Angeles,” he removed a morsel from his mouth with his napkin. “I’m not having it, either. Do you want it?” the millionaire offered his plate to Josie.

  The girl was fighting to pull some meat off a lobster tail with a pair of pliers that she didn’t know how to use. She said no with a polite grin.

  “I’ll have the bird—Pancakes,” Lina pulled the plate to her.

  “Alright,” Richard consented with an angry look. “But I’m taking away some of the gravy and all of the smashed potatoes. I want Lina to wear my mother’s wedding dress,” he explained to Josie, “but she’s resisting. She was so small, my dear mother. Smaller than the two of you put together.”

  However disappointing it had been to discover Lina’s existence, by the end of the main course, and after finishing a second round of champagne that loosened their tongues and made Richard’s sense of humor more tolerable, Josie had started to like her. She found out that they had in common more than their grizzled companion. Both had grown up in the countryside, and for both their lifelong dream had been to move to the city. Lina seemed amused by Josie’s combination of good looks and callow conversation, and eventually Josie recognized that, despite her big ears and contemptuous manners, Lina was a beauty.

  At one point, Richard mentioned that his fiancée used to be an actress.

  “I’ve always wanted to be an actress too!” Josie exclaimed.

  “Forget about it,” responded Lina, gnawing on the bones of the quail. “They want them blonde and blue-eyed. They want them tall and they want them pale as an English muffin. A Mexican will never play anything other than a maid or an Indian in a Western movie. Look at me, white skin, brown eyes, brown hair—I got to play only extras.”

  She said it in such an unemotional, matter-of-fact way that Josie couldn’t take offense. She accepted her words as one accepts a gloomy day in the middle of winter.

  Champagne continued to flow. Richard pretended to take small sips from his glass.

  The conversation deviated from movies to Josie’s bohemian life in Venice and her eccentric landladies—how religious and old-fashioned they were, and how mean they could be when she was late with the rent.

  “They never leave the house, except on Sundays,” Josie explained, interrupted mid-sentence by a sudden hiccup. “If they have money, they go to play bingo after church. That should be an incentive for me to pay on time, I guess, because I have the whole house to myself for at least a couple hours.”

  Later, Richard swanked about being an art collector. He was curious, he said, about what he had read in LIFE magazine about the beatniks living in Venice.

  Josie seized the opportunity to talk about some of her friends’ talents. She dropped a few names, all unknown to Richard. Nonetheless, it piqued his curiosity.

  “We should go to Venice,” Lina proposed. “Tonight.”

  “To the Gas House?” Josie asked with a breathy voice.

  No one had mentioned the Gas House Café. There were at least ten other places she could have mentioned instead.

  “Yes,” Richard agreed. “Let’s go to that place. I read about it. Let’s do something crazy!”

  “I haven’t been there in a long time…” Josie sunk into her seat.

  The idea of running into Russell scared her. She felt dizzy. She realized she had drunk too much. With Richard never emptying his glass, she and Lina had finished almost two bottles alone.

  “We don’t need to go there if you don’t want. But what else could we do?”

  The Venice West would be closed by the time they got there, Josie thought. It wasn’t an option. Where else could she take them? The Kumbala? The Cheetah? She’d love to drag Lina to either one of them, but none would be of Richard’s liking. She remembered then her two friends’ request to meet him. The twins would certainly appreciate it if she took Richard to the coffeehouse, wouldn’t they?

  “I have a friend who’s a playwright,” Josie ventured. “He said he wanted to meet you.”

  “Really?” Richard asked tauntingly. “Is he handsome?”

  “He is,” Josie laughed. “All of my friends are.” She exchanged a look with Lina. “But none has a pot to piss in.”

  “Well, then, we do need to go to that coffeehouse and meet him. I have a thing for poor handsome people.”

  “I do too,” Josie agreed. Now that she thought about it, feeling the bubbling sensation of the champagne running up her cheeks all the way to the back of her head and through her temples, the idea of accidentally running into her treacherous ex-boyfriend in the company of a millionaire didn’t sound too bad.

  “Maybe I’ve punished them enough already,” she said aloud. “Let’s go.”

  Richard took a little spoon and hit his glass repeatedly to ask for the check, Lina put out her cigarette, Josie ran fast to the bathroom, and soon after the three of them were in Ric
hard’s car on their way to Venice.

  16

  In which we again visit the coffeehouse

  Now, a few things had changed at the Gas House Café during the previous two weeks. The author of “Funky Blues for All Squares, Creeps, and Cornballs,” Mr. Lawrence Lipton, had published a book, The Holy Barbarians, a semi-biographical novel that described in extensive detail the true nature of the members of the beat generation in Venice West: their recurring use of recreational drugs, their relaxed views on sexuality and integration, and their offensive disdain for society. Despite its crudeness—or probably because of it—the book became an instant bestseller and hordes of tourists and beatnik-wannabes flooded the beach community wanting to experience firsthand the unconventional lifestyle described by the author. As a result, the up-until-then inconspicuous existence of the coffeehouse—where Lipton reigned as tribe shaman—became acutely conspicuous. Parties at the Café became an every night event that extended well into the first hours of the morning, and for once the tip jar that fed the famished colony of artists lodged at the Grand Hotel had enough funds to buy chicken.

  The conflict between the homeowners association and the management of the Gas House Café escalated. This time, what hurt the sensibility of the members of the Civic Union the most were the contents of The Holy Barbarians’ first chapter, which referred to the area as a “jerry-built slum,” full of “rundown apartments and tumble-down shacks,” and home to “all the misfits of the world, the broken, the doomed, the drunk, and the disillusioned.” The book, the members of the Union claimed, was a subversive work of counterculture propaganda that threatened to lower the already depressed property values in Venice. They demanded the coffeehouse be closed down.

  Mr. Lipton apologized for using the word slum. The term, he explained, had been used with “love and affection,” and to demonstrate the good nature of the patrons that frequented the coffeehouse, who shouldn’t be blamed for his mistake. He called upon his fellow barbarians to start a Venice beautifying campaign: “Bring your trash cans to the Gas House,” he said to the neighbors, “and have them painted with flowers and colorful designs.”