by A. W. Gray
“Or ever will,” the woman said.
“Ass I’d crawl a mile to let it sit on my face.”
The woman pressed a button with a red-nailed index finger. The picture started in motion, the limo moving forward. “I was on my way. Had a speaking part I signed up for.”
Gerald got up, went around the coffee table to switch off the VCR. The screen blanked into dancing snow. He turned on a standup lamp. “I didn’t figure to see you again.”
“Well, you were wrong. Everybody is sometime.” The woman relaxed, stretched out her legs, crossed her ankles. She wore gray cuffed pants and a blue silk shirt. She picked up sunglasses with the L.A. Eyeworks emblem etched into the right lens and put them on. Auburn hair hung to her shoulders.
Gerald went into the hall for his beer and boots, dropped the boots on the living room floor and opened another Silver Bullet. “You really have a speaking part, or is that a lotta bullshit?”
“Supposed to start shooting two days after we got busted.”
“You got busted.”
“I took the dope, Gerald, told the DEA it was mine. Thanks to your lawyer.”
“Our lawyer. You okayed the guy.”
“He said you had a record. That I didn’t, and that I’d get probation.”
Gerald sat beside her on the sofa. “So I can help it he was wrong? How’d you get in?”
“A little tool a man gave me. Will open most anything.”
“What man?”
“A guy. I’ll tell you.” She reached to the floor and picked up a small quirt with a woven handle. She dragged leather thongs lightly over her thigh.
Gerald watched her.
“I’ve been out over a year,” she said.
“I heard. You haven’t called or anything.” He licked his lips, his gaze frozen on the quirt, thongs brushing gray cotton material stretched over thigh muscle. “I heard you had a thing for this guy you met in there.”
“That might be just because you forgot to come to visit,” she said. “Pleasanton’s not that far.”
“That’s…the lawyer. Said it wouldn’t look too good.”
“The son of a bitch.” She touched the whip’s handle to his shoulder, then trailed the thongs down his chest.
He stiffened. “Guy said they might get suspicious, me visiting.”
“They had contact visits. Lot of private places in the corners where people could—”
“Jesus.” He closed his eyes.
“—do things the hacks didn’t see. One girl I knew, gave her man head right there in the visiting room.”
He humped his pelvis forward as the quirt touched his inner thigh. “Right-right there in prison?”
“Turned the guy on something else.” She stood and stepped out of her slacks, tanned legs flashing in semi-light.
“Jesus.” He left the sofa and got down on all fours, pulling at his belt, undoing his fly, yanking pants and briefs down to his knees. She straddled him from behind. He looked at her over his shoulder, baring his teeth. “Don’t…don’t cut my legs. Jesus, don’t, I got to dance tonight. But, Jesus, hit me hard.”
Gerald came out of the shower toweling himself and entered the bedroom. Darla was on the king-size, propped on pillows piled against the headboard, reading a People magazine. She wore pale blue French-cut panties along with her sunglasses. Her breasts were small with pointed nipples. He touched a welt on his rear and winced. “I told you, don’t cut me.”
She laid the magazine aside and watched him, removing her L.A. Eyeworks and sucking on an earpiece.
“I got to appear tonight.” He held both ends of the towel and briskly dried his shoulder blades and upper back.
“You said, don’t cut your legs.”
“Part of my ass shows, these briefs I wear. Goddam earthquake… ”
“Knocked me down,” she said, “right in your entry hall.”
“Four-thirty in the morning?”
“I thought I’d catch you in bed. I saw your pictures out there. When did you start stripping?”
“Come on, dancing. Eight months. I took a few lessons.”
She adjusted her position, leaning on her elbow. “You ever see Marvin?”
“He calls. I don’t do that shit anymore.”
“It was good money, for getting established in acting. Let us get by.”
He lifted one foot to a chair and toweled his thigh. “Too much AIDS going around. You hear about the guy, was John Holmes?”
“You ever work with him, Gerald?”
“Naw. Just knew who he was.”
“I did once, this one movie,” she said. “Never had him for a partner because of a script change, thank God. He was into gay.”
“That’s how it gets around, people going both ways. What turns them on is their business, but, hey. They need to tell whoever they’re doing it with what they’ve been up to.”
She rolled up the magazine and slid it up and down in a circle formed by her thumb and forefinger. “We came out lucky. You’re pretty lucky your lights are on. What I heard on the radio, a lot of places don’t even have power now.”
“Fires, too. A lot of houses out in the Valley. Earthquakes scare the shit out of people.”
“Not you?”
“Naw.”
She smirked. “You don’t get scared, Gerald?”
He lowered his foot and dried his scrotum, lifting his balls, squeezing with the towel. “Didn’t bother me. Bothered this woman I was with.”
She folded the earpieces over and laid the sunglasses on the bedside table. “I think you’re bigger than I remember.”
He looked down.
“Your shoulders and arms,” she said.
“I’m bulking up, for this dancing. More bench-press weight.”
“Taking steroids?”
“Certain kinds.”
She raised one knee and crossed her legs, rocking her foot. “I’ve got something for us to do.”
He paused with his foot on the chair. “I told you, I’m making no more pictures. Except the real thing, maybe someday.”
“This has nothing to do with pictures. We’d have to leave town.”
He rubbed down his thigh and calf with the towel. “Can’t. I’m auditioning at Chippendale’s, end of the month.”
“We’re talking a million dollars, Gerald. Maybe more.”
“Yeah? Whose million?”
“Ours, eventually. There’s a guy I met, Randolph Money.”
“Bet they changed his name,” Gerald said, “to Harold Thrust or something.”
“Nobody in pictures. He was at Pleasanton. An older man.”
“Oh. His million. He a drug guy?” Gerald finished drying his butt and sat on the end of the bed.
“His plan. He’s done a lot of things, this guy. Has a law degree. Was into some banks, savings and loans. He’s traveled a lot, knows people all over.”
“What was he doing in prison?”
“I told you, savings and loans. Only Randolph was doing a lot of things, the S&L was an investment. Had to do with loans he got when he was on the board of directors. There were some other inmates that knew him on the street. Word was, you could get just about anything done knowing Randolph Money. Get someone murdered…”
Gerald stretched out on his side, facing her. The head of his penis dangled on his thigh. “I can’t be messing with anything unless for a lot of money.”
She lowered her gaze and scratched her forearm. “For this kind of money . .
“Chippendale’s is big bucks.” Gerald said.
“Not this big,” Darla said. “And Chippendale’s only pays if you get on there, at the audition,”
“I will. I got this new act.”
“But suppose you don’t? Don’t tell me, I’ve known strippers.”
“Dancers. Jesus.”
“One guy, built just like you. I met him doing pictures. Outside of Chippendale’s, most of the places you starve to death. Have to hump old women to make ends meet.”
“Or old men, like you did,” Gerald said. “Those plays you used to try out for paid what?”
“I was advancing my career.”
“I went one night, remember? You were running around onstage yelling at the top of your lungs. Front row, you’d bust people’s eardrums.”
“You have to be heard in back,” Darla said, “or you’re not effective.”
“You do that in a movie they’ll throw you off the set.”
“You have to adjust,” Darla said. “The motion-picture medium is more intimate.”
“That’s what Marvin thought. Liked to zoom in, get the real close come shots.”
“Not that kind of intimate. That’s one reason for this thing I’m talking about. Get some real money, you can relax and work on your acting technique until opportunity knocks. In those days I’d have an important audition, either I was too tired from filming all night or Marvin would have paid the rent on some motel. He wouldn’t let me off to audition, said we only had a certain amount of time for shooting.”
“Had to get it over with,” Gerald said, “before the vice people zeroed in on his location. It’s how I got to do the eighteen months. Marvin wouldn’t let me off so I could go home and move the cocaine out of my apartment.”
“What about the sentence for assault, Gerald?”
“That was a guy wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. He had it coming.” Gerald sat up, reached into a nightstand drawer for a small jar of flesh-colored cream. “It’s good makeup, won’t streak when I get to sweating. Put some on me, okay?” He handed Darla the jar, then scooted around on the bed so that his butt was facing her.
Darla leaned over to inspect his muscled ass. “They’re not that noticeable.”
“You’d be surprised what these women ringside will see. I had a little pimple once, this fat old broad kept yelling about it.”
She made a face and uncapped the jar, then dipped her index finger into cream. She sniffed her finger, then spread some of the makeup over a blood-colored welt.
“Don’t press too hard,” he said. “Jesus, it stings.”
“This thing we’re talking about,” Darla said. “There’s some danger involved.”
“Why don’t you get your boyfriend from the joint? Chippendale’s is the big time—no way will I miss out on that for anything that isn’t sure.”
Darla pressed his flesh with her fingers. As Gerald said, “Ow,” she said, “Let’s get it straight about this boyfriend. I had a little thing in there—that’s all.”
“The guy must have dumped on you then.”
“Shut up, Gerald.”
“You’re forgetting I know you all this time. The only guys you act through with are the ones that dumped on you. All the others, you keep them on a string in case you need them for something.”
“You mean, like you?”
“Difference is, I know what’s happening,” Gerald said. “We got no big romance, okay? You give me what I want, do pretty good at it, I do the same for you. Fuck you till you can’t stand up no more, same as I do a lot of broads. Nothing to be ashamed of, the guy dumping on you. Happens all the time.”
Darla sucked air in through her nose. “One last time. Nobody dumps on me, okay? If you’ve got to know, this thing we’re planning, this guy is what Randolph Money calls the mooch?”
“What, the guy wants to borrow some money?”
“That’s what I thought it meant at first. It’s a con-game term, the mooch is the sucker. The one getting the shaft in the long run. This guy is in a position, we can use him. Only he won’t know he’s being used until it’s too late.” Darla dipped more cream, studying a smaller laceration. “On a scale of one to ten, say your chances of getting on at Chippendale’s was a Five. This thing I’m talking is probably an eight. We’re not systems go until April, but we’re supposed to go down early and get some things established.”
Gerald bent his elbow and laid his cheek on his palm. “Go down where?”
“To Texas. Dallas. Get us a base of operations.”
“Asshole of the world. I did a picture in Longview, Texas, one time, this girl had the worst fucking breath. Couple of hick deputy sheriffs ran Marvin out of town.”
“Dallas is more cosmopolitan.”
“Still a lot of rednecks,” Gerald said.
“We’ll have to work on our accents. You’re from New Mexico and already have a start on the dialect. I’ll really have to work on my diction.”
“Yeah?” He raised his head. “With an acting coach, or…?”
“I rented this video. Michelle Pfeiffer in Love Field, about a Texas woman and the effect the Kennedy assassination had on her. I’ll work on my accent listening to Pfeiffer.”
“I saw that,” Gerald said. “She was playing some trailer-park trash.”
“I’ll have to upgrade it some, but there are some things all Texans say pretty much alike.” She inspected her handiwork, screwed the cap back on the jar, and set it on the nightstand.
Suddenly the room shook, the floor vibrating, the jar toppling from the nightstand. In an instant, all was still.
“Aftershocks scare the Jesus out of me,” Darla said.
“They’re getting weaker. A couple earlier were damn near as strong as the main event. They’ll go on for a year or more.”
“Another argument for leaving town,” Darla said.
“So, in Texas they got tornadoes. Good luck down there. If you stay long enough I might be through there with Chippendale’s road show.”
“Your audition is in February?”
He lowered his head to the pillow. “The first. Listen, I need some sleep.”
“Gerald, let me proposition you.”
“Make it fast, before I doze off.”
“Say Chippendale’s doesn’t accept you. If we drive down the second week in February, that’s still plenty of time for what Randolph wanted done. There’s a man I’m going to contact down there.”
“Sure. The guy you were screwing in prison.”
“No, someone else. An actress friend of mine told me about, this guy that runs the Theater Center down there.”
“This thing you’re talking,” Gerald said, “we have to kill somebody?”
Darla scooted up behind him and hooked her chin over his shoulder. “You’re still a hunk, you know that?”
“Well, would we?”
She sighed. “We’re talking a ton of money here, Gerald. Also talking a pile of time if we get caught. I’d have to say there’s that possibility. On a scale of ten, call it an eight.”
4
There were times when Frank White would imagine himself saying to Meg Carpenter, something like, “Well, I had some legal problems a while back.” and then trying to laugh it off, as if twenty-eight months in federal custody wasn’t any big deal. At other moments he’d consider getting really down-to-earth serious and saying to her, his voice deepening, “Meg, there’s something about me it’s time you knew.” Neither scenario played out well in his mind. Whichever the manner in which he broke the news, the thought of losing her over his past scared him to death.
All of which he could have avoided, he thought, if he’d leveled with her the first time they’d met at the reading table in the Dallas Public Library, North Branch. But introducing himself as Frank White, currently on parole from the federal joint, would have sounded dumb as hell, and before he’d known Meg Carpenter for twenty-four hours they’d been to bed together. Then it had been too late, they were already involved.
He pondered the question of telling her as he munched on a cold turkey sandwich, Meg watching him over her shoulder from her seat at the picnic table. Her
mouth puckered slightly, fine brown strands of hair waving in front of her face in the breeze as she said, “Penny.”
He chased the turkey with Pepsi, deciding it was time to let her in on his secret, right now,
As she said, “Okay. Make it a dime.”
And he lost his nerve, saying instead, “Hmmm?”
“Something’s on your mind. Those girls flying kites aren’t over fourteen, if that’s it.”
He looked down the slope toward the shore of White Rock Lake, three lithe bodies in shorts and halters, one girl holding a red and green triangular kite while another unraveled a ball of string and the third teenager stood by with hands on hips. “Nice day for it,” Frank said. “Two weeks ago it was thirty degrees. Can you believe it? Another month and they’ll be swimming.”
She left the table and sat beside him on the quilt, drawing her legs up and hugging her bare knees. “It’s always this way in February. Freezing your butt one week, warm the next. Beginning mid-March there’ll be thunderstorms every other night. Talking about the weather’s a good way to change the subject.”
He shrugged and crossed his ankles. “Bet it’s over eighty degrees.”
“Bet it is. You’re not going to tell me, huh?”
He laid his half-eaten sandwich on the paper plate and munched a Frito. “It’s nothing. Just thinking about work. Thinking we need to add a couple of flavors.”
“And that’s why you’ve been staring off into space? Over ice-cream flavors.”
He leaned back on his elbows, stretched out his legs and pointed his toes. “It’s more serious than it sounds. Certain flavors attract adults, believe it or not. You have too much cookies ‘n’ cream or fudge brownie nut, you’re going to wind up with a bunch of gang-bangers hanging around. Grown people go more for the vanilla, butter pecan. We learn that in training.” He thought he’d improvised his answer pretty well, and added, “Was I staring off?”
“Like the Mad Bomber. If you don’t want just the kids, do away with the whipped cream.”
“We have to have that for sundaes. You need a mix of business. If you get nothing but teenagers acting tough, they’ll scare all your other business off.”
She half smiled, showing prominent dimples. “Why don’t you just lay your gun up on the counter. That’ll teach ‘em.”