“Are you apologizing?”
“I don’t think so.”
He was right about the begging, though. She found herself carrying rolls of coins for pay phones because she never knew at what odd moment of the day the longing would seize hold of her—between freeway exits miles away from his place in West Hollywood, in the produce section of the Safeway, during some fugue for woodwinds, all at once this humiliating heat would envelop her, and there was nothing she could think of to do but call him. He didn’t always answer the phone. Once or twice she went crazy and parked outside his place, and waited, for hours, in fact overnight, till he came out, and by then, afraid of his anger, which was unpredictable both as to when and how dangerous, reluctant to face him, she followed him instead out to wherever he was working. And waited. And would fall asleep. And be awakened by the police telling her she had to move on.
“So I said, ‘Puck, it’s all right, I won’t do anything violent, I just want to know who she is,’ and Puck started to laugh and wouldn’t tell me. But that was around the time I found out about Einar, and one day I was coming out of a rehearsal at the Shrine Auditorium obsessing about this particular B-flat, and there was Einar with all these Hawaiian orchids and the sweetest look on his face, and it was at least a month before he admitted he’d worked his way like a pickpocket through the crowd at a debutante ball in the Ambassador and stolen the corsages right off people’s gowns. . . .”
Being the continuation of a long story Doc had forgotten, or maybe missed, the beginning of.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
Doc didn’t either, though he wished he had a small aggravation fee for each time somebody had spilled more than they meant to and then said they didn’t know why. Sortilège, who liked finding new uses for the term “Beyond,” thought this was a form of grace and that he should just accept it, because at any instant it could go away as easily as it came.
According to Trillium, Puck and Einar had met in the license-plate shop at Folsom. Sex immediately became an issue, and the boys were soon known for their ill-tempered bickering, on and on about the age-old question ¿quién es más macho? Numberless cartons of smokes were wagered and lost all up and down the block over how long the arrangement would survive, and to everybody’s surprise it outlasted both their sentences. One fine day, as the Chiffons like to put it, there they were, domiciled in West Hollywood, south of Santa Monica Boulevard, in a courtyard complex with more subtropical shrubbery than anybody could remember what half of it was, and throwing so much shade that you could lie out by the pool all day and never lose your prison pallor. . . .
“Wow Trillium, what happened to our food man, it’s taking them an awful long time to bring it.”
“We ate it already?”
“What. Did the check come? Who sprang for it?”
“Can’t remember.”
They headed out to Curly’s. By the time they got there, Doc had decided he wasn’t going to drive in Las Vegas any more than he had to. Everybody here drove around like a dedicated loser, expecting moment to moment to get into an accident. Doc could relate to this—it was like the beach, where you lived in a climate of unquestioning hippie belief, pretending to trust everybody while always expecting to be sold out—but he didn’t have to enjoy that either, especially.
Curly’s had once been a crossroads saloon, and reminded Doc of Knucklehead Jack’s back in L.A., except for the slot machines in every plausible piece of floor space. The band was playing covers of old Ernest Tubb, Jim Reeves, and Webb Pierce tunes, so Doc guessed Puck and Einar might not be in tonight.
Trillium had a sort of feverish look. Doc was starting to think there was some strange vibe about her, some tattoo reading Come On In, Darlin’, invisible to all but the larger, more brutal types of individual. She may’ve been aware of this herself, while at the same time denying it. Howsoever, over strolled this towering party in a black cowboy hat who without so much as a nod to Doc took Trillium by the hair and one bare thigh, lifted her courteously enough off the barstool and began Texas-two-stepping her away. You would’ve thought at least she’d scream in protest. But she only managed to whisper to Doc on the way past, “I’ll see what I can find out.” Doc wasn’t sure but thought she was already smiling.
“You betcha,” he muttered, shaking his head slowly at the longneck in front of him and wondering how John Garfield would’ve dealt with the situation.
“You mustn’t judge Osgood too harshly,” advised a voice to which Time, if it had not exactly been kind, had at least contributed some texture. “The man is a natural-born pussy hound, and there ain’t a woman breathing between here and Lake Mead don’t know that by now.”
“Thanks, that’s good to hear.” Doc looked over to find an elfin geezer in a hat even bigger than Osgood’s, waggling an empty beer bottle. “Sure thing.” Doc went to signal the barkeep, who, blessed with extrasensory gifts, had already placed two more bottles on the bar. “All I came in for tonight,” Doc pretended to sigh, “really, was to see this fella owes me some money. The ol’ lady there thought I was invitin her out for a night on the town. Meantime there’s the rent coming due and so forth.”
“Damn,” said the oldster, introducing himself as Ev, “time was a man’d sooner dry up and blow away than renege on his debts. There’s a lot of deadbeats come in this place, maybe I even know the one you want.”
“Somebody said he’s a semiregular here. Puck Beaverton?”
A mirthless cackle which went on longer than Doc felt it should have. “Good luck with the landlord, young fella! that crazy Puck owes everybody in town and never paid a cent back that I ever heard of.”
“Where’s he work? Maybe I should go there and visit him.”
“Puck’s basically a slot hustler, him and his partner, this is the impression I get, though it ain’t like we’re none of us real ace buddies. The little one, Einar, has these hypersensitive hands you find in rare cases that can feel through the lever, feel the exact point where each of them reels lets go one by one, he can fine-tune the amount of spin onto each reel, get whichever symbol he wants to stop exactly at the payline. I seen him do it. Classy work.”
“What about Puck?”
“Sooner or later, the house security gets on to Einar, so there’s no more point him trying to collect his winnings. Puck’s job is to wait nearby, playing some nickel machine, till Einar hits on his—then Einar disappears while Puck steps over and claims the jackpot.”
“But then pretty soon they must get on to Puck.”
“Right. Which is why they both long ago got eighty-sixed from the Downtown and Strip casinos, so if you’re lookin to find Puck, you’ll want to check some local rooms, like out along Boulder Highway. The Nine of Diamonds comes to mind.”
Trillium came back with a few buttons loose, an unidentified wet patch on her little skirt, and a lack of focus to her gaze. Osgood was out on the floor now with a blonde in Levi’s and a cowgirl hat, and a live band was now playing “Wabash Cannonball” with psychedelic steel-guitar licks now and then. “Having a good time, Honeybunch?” Doc inquired as cheerfully as possible.
“Yes and no,” in a chastened voice which despite himself he found erotic. “Buy me a beer?”
She drank in silence till Doc said, “Well! and what’s ’at there Osgood got to say for himself tonight?”
“I feel kind of stupid, Doc. I should never have brought Puck’s name up.”
“He owes Osgood money, too, I’ll bet.”
“Yes, and now Osgood is all upset. He’s not really as insensitive as he looks.”
“He didn’t happen to share any thoughts on Puck’s whereabouts?”
“North Las Vegas. That’s as close as he got. I don’t think he knows the address, or he would have gone there by now.”
“And that would have made the papers.”
> On the way out, they were accosted by Ev. “Leavin so early? Merle usually comes in and does a set around midnight when he’s in town.”
“Merle Haggard’s in town?”
“No, but that’s no reason to leave.” Doc blinked a couple of times, bought the old-timer a Ramos gin fizz, and left anyway.
Out in the parking lot, Doc noticed a Cadillac of a certain length whose arrangement of dings seemed familiar.
“Hey Doc! I thought that was you.”
“Is this another of them strange and weird coincidences, Tito, or do I have to really start getting paranoid?”
“I told you we were gonna be in Vegas. Inez is off at a show, and I’m picking up some change. You should see the way some of these guys tip, I already made more on my vacation here than a whole year back in L.A.”
“And no, uh”—Doc made dice-rattling motions—“like under the spell of Vegas or nothin.”
“Some spell. Look at this place. How real can any of this be? how can you take it seriously?”
“You’re a fuckin gambling addict,” announced an enormous voice from somewhere inside the limo, “you can’t take it any other way.”
“My brother-in-law Adolfo,” Tito frowning. “Can’t shake him. Ain’t a buck comes in he don’t snatch and grab it before I can.”
“It’s in escrow,” explained Adolfo, who it turned out had been commissioned by Inez to ride along in the limo and keep Tito out of trouble.
“Lowlife Escrow Services Inc.,” Tito muttered.
Trillium, appearing a little distracted, had decided to go back to the room and get some sleep, so she took the Camaro, and Doc joined Tito and Adolfo in the limo.
“You know a place called the Nine of Diamonds, out on Boulder Highway?” Doc said.
“Sure,” Tito said. “You mind if I come inside with you, just wander around a little, maybe hit the buffets, catch some of the show?”
“Sound a li’l eager there, Tito.”
“Yeah, you’re supposed to be kicking,” Adolfo put in.
“Homeopathic doses, you guys,” Tito protested.
According to Bigfoot Bjornsen, for whom this piece of western trivia had won him many a bar bet, the nine of diamonds had been the fifth card in Wild Bill Hickok’s last poker hand, along with the black aces and eights. The parking lot was full of pickups with contractors’ racks on them and Ford Rancheros with hay debris in the bed, ancient T-Birds and Chevy Nomads with the chrome strips long torn away, leaving only lines of rusty streaks and weld spots. The lighted marquee out front, a Jetsons-style polygon, mentioned an appearance tonight by a band called Carmine & the Cal-Zones.
The customers inside didn’t seem to be from too far out of town, so the action was less compromised by the unthinking pursuit of “fun” as defined over on the Strip. Players here tended to play for the money, going about their business hopeful or desperate, loaded or on the natch, scientifically or gripped in superstitions so exotic they couldn’t be readily explained, and somewhere out of the light the landlord, the finance company, the loan-shark community sat invisible and unspeaking, tapping feet in expensive shoes, weighing options for punishment, leniency—even, rarely, mercy.
Carmine was a longhaired lounge tenor with a Les Paul model Gibson that he may have had a few lessons on but tended to use more as a prop, often including tommy-gun gestures, while the other Cal-Zones assumed standard rock-quartet parts. A pair of cupcakes in red vinyl minidresses, black fishnet hose, and lacquered hair sang backup while doing white-chick time steps. As Doc made his way onto the casino floor, the group were performing their latest release,
JUST THE LASAGNA (semi–bossa nova)
Izzit some U, FO?
(No, no-no!)
Maybe it’s—wait, I know! it’s
Just the Lasa-gna! [Rhythm-guitar fill]
Just the La-sa-hah-gna . . .
(Just-the-La-sa-gna),
Out of the blue, it came,
(Blue, it came)
Nobody knew, its name, just
“The Lasagna” . . .
Just—“The La-sagna,”
(Just “Th’ La—”)
Oh, wo, Lo-
Zon-yaaah!
Who could ever get be-
-yond ya,
Ya just sit there goin’
“Nyah, nyah!”
Whoo! Lasagna, shame
On ya! Dog-
Gone ya!
How come you’re ask-in me,
(Ask-in me)
—Hey,
Ain’t no big mys-tery, it’s
Just th’ La-sagna—
Or so they say . . . (oh,
Wo wo-oh wo)
I’m uh-under your spell, L-
A-S-A, G-N-A!
Doc spent a while chatting up change girls, bartenders, dealers and pit bosses, ladies of the evening and ladies of the later shifts, including a young woman in a wine-colored velvet minidress, who finally informed him, “Everybody knows that Puck used to work for Mickey. Nobody here’s going to rat him out, especially not to a stranger, nothing personal.”
A house comic, working the audience, pilot lights of malice flickering in his eyes, approached. “Evening, Zirconia, see you made bail again, who’s this? Having a good time, sir? He’s going, ‘What planet is this? Where’d I leave the UFO?’ Nah, seriously, pal, you’re okay, the hair—I just adore it, it’s stunning. See me in the garage later, you can buff my car. . . .”
The quipster, along with Zirconia, moved on, nearly colliding with Tito, who arrived in some agitation. “Doc! Doc! You gotta watch this guy work, he’s a true genius. Come on, have a look.” He led Doc in a complicated path through the casino, toward the deeper regions slotplayers avoid in the belief that machines closer to the street pay off better, till they finally rounded a corner into a remote corridor of slots and Tito said, “There.”
From Tito’s mental state, the least Doc had expected was an acid-trip glow surrounding the machine, but all he saw really was one more old-time unit with a faded and scuffed image from the fifties of a smiling cowgirl, presentable after the fashion of those times—oversize tits for example, plus short permed hair and bright lipstick. A long line of half-dollars went disappearing down a chute of yellowing plastic, the milling around the edges of the coins acting like gear teeth, causing each of the dozens of shining John F. Kennedy heads to rotate slowly as they jittered away down the shallow incline, to be gobbled one after another into the indifferent maw of Las Vegas. The player at the machine had his face turned away, and Doc at first noticed only the fine careful attention to how he was pulling the lever, another customer intent not so much on Fun as paying down a grocery tab somewhere in the neighborhood, until, quickly scanning the other slots nearby, Doc recognized the swastikaed head of Puck Beaverton, who was busy pretending to play a nickel machine. That would make the “genius” working the other machine Puck’s running mate Einar.
No time like the present. Doc, shifting into a word-with-you-my-man mode, was just about to step forward when several kinds of hell broke loose. To a military fanfare heavy on the bass horns, plus train whistles, fire sirens, and canned athletic-stadium cheering, a quantity of JFK half-dollars began to vomit out of the machine in a huge parabolic torrent, falling onto the carpeting in a growing heap. Einar nodded and stepped away and—had Doc blinked or something?—just like that disappeared. Puck gave one last yank to the handle on his nickel machine and got up and headed over to claim the jackpot, when suddenly the laws of chance, deciding on a classic fuck-you, instructed Puck’s nickel machine also to hit, with even more noise than the first, and there stood Puck, paralyzed between the two winning machines, and here on the run came a delegation of casino personnel to confirm and certify the two happy jackpot winners, already one short. At which point P
uck, as if allergic to dilemmas, broke for the nearest exit, screaming.
With nobody else around any more plausible than Doc and Tito to step in, it took them only a tenth of a second to agree that Tito should have the jackpot from the half-dollar machine, and Doc, not being greedy, would claim what looked by now to be several cubic feet of nickels.
Adolfo took charge of Tito’s, or actually Einar’s, winnings, and they all drove back to Ghostflower Court, where Doc found Trillium asleep on one of the water beds. He headed for the other one and must have made it.
Next thing he knew it seemed to be early afternoon and Trillium wasn’t there. He looked out the window and saw that the Camaro wasn’t either. He wandered out through the desert breeze to a little store down the highway and bought smokes and several containers of coffee and some Ding Dongs for breakfast. When he got back, he flipped on the TV and watched Monkees reruns till the local news came on. The guest today was a visiting Marxist economist from one of the Warsaw Pact nations, who appeared to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown. “Las Vegas,” he tried to explain, “it sits out here in middle of desert, produces no tangible goods, money flows in, money flows out, nothing is produced. This place should not, according to theory, even exist, let alone prosper as it does. I feel my whole life has been based on illusory premises. I have lost reality. Can you tell me, please, where is reality?” The interviewer looked uncomfortable and tried to change the subject to Elvis Presley.
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