by A. W. Gray
Rusty got up in a hurry. He yelled out, “Pete. Wait. I’ll walk out to your car with you.” Then, as he took off in hot pursuit of his client, Rusty hissed at Bino, “Thanks a whole heap, pal.”
Bino was now alone with three full drinks on the table. He considered chasing Rusty down to remind him that they still hadn’t discussed the trial, but changed his mind. He could bring up the subject once Kinder had gone and Rusty had cooled off. If Rusty hadn’t already punched him out by then, that is. Jesus, Bino thought, what’d he have to ask me for?
Nightfall had brought the clubbers out in droves. Men and women now stood three-deep around the bar, gesturing and yelling for service. The tables were full as well, couples, unescorted ladies in twos and threes, men who traveled mostly in pairs and shot glances at the ladies. The dining room was now open for business, and Bino looked in at white linen tablecloths, at jacketed waiters hustling to and fro, delivering meals by candlelight—veal or chicken hidden beneath shiny chrome half-spheres. A slim brown-haired girl had set a podium at the restaurant entrance and was taking names for seating purposes. Ten or twelve couples waited in line, men in suits and women in filmy summer dresses.
The combo swung into the crescendo finish to “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” and the raven-haired singer got all of Bino’s attention as she raised up on the balls of her feet, her breasts thrust proudly forward in the strong-voiced, emotion-packed finale (“What’s it all abowwwwwwwt...”). The song sent chills galloping up and down his spine. It seemed to him that the singer was looking his way, but he was certain he was imagining things. Probably it seemed to all the other guys in the place that she was watching them as well.
She received a blockbuster of an ovation, some standing to applaud, others cheering at the top of their lungs as she bowed from the waist and uttered a few breathy thank-you’s into the mike. Then the band swung into a bouncy take-five theme. She did a little hop-step-prance up to the U-curve in the bar, covering the twenty yards or so with thighs flowing under snug green fabric. The bartender had a drink made for her, ice and clear liquid in a rock glass, likely gin. She picked up her toddy and headed straight for Bino’s table, lightly bumping a stool with her hip as she did.
At first Bino thought he was dreaming, but as she drew closer he sat up straighter. The corners of her eyes were crinkled in a smile. Her gaze was fixed on him, no doubt about it. She held the glass in both hands as she bounced along; though she almost collided with a man in the aisle, her hip-swinging gait never missed a beat. As she halted before the table, she bumped lightly into Rusty’s empty chair.
She said, “Oops. Rockin’, huh? Tomorrow night they’ll be bringing in Artie Shaw and having me do ‘Accentuate the Positive.’ Where’s Rusty?” She looked around.
Bino stood, flustered. “He’s … just stepped away for a minute, he’s … ” He glanced toward the exit. No sign of Rusty.
Her lips parted and she cocked her head. “Wait a minute. You’re too tall.” Bino decided that if this girl wanted him to shrink a few inches, he’d do his damnedest to oblige.
Tinted glasses in big round frames hung from around her neck. She perched them on her nose and peered at him. “Why, you’re not him,” she said.
Bino’s neck flushed. “I’m not? Excuse me, but I’m not who?”
“My guardian.” She giggled the cutest giggle that Bino had heard in a coon’s age. “Rusty’s friend, the guy he usually sits with. I’m really sorry, but the white hair fooled me. You’re not him, you’re too tall and you’re not old enough. Is your hair bleached? Okay if I sit down?”
Bino said, “No.” Then, as she backed away a hesitant step, he stood quickly and said, “I mean, please sit down, but no, my hair’s not bleached. I was born with it.” She slid gracefully into the empty chair as Bino sat as well. He wondered fleetingly, What guy that Rusty usually sits with?
She leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table as she regarded him over the rim of her glass. Her bare upper chest and shoulders were flawless and her skin the color of rich vanilla ice cream. Or, he thought, maybe vanilla with just a touch of dark rum added. The tautness of her upper arms told him that this was a girl who got some exercise. Indoor exercise; with that complexion she didn’t spend a lot of time baking in the sun.
Bino cleared his throat. “So you’re a friend of Rusty’s.” He did his best to sound casual, but felt he’d put it over about as well as he’d done at the country club playing poker.
She moved her pointed chin a bit sideways, her eyes knowing behind the big round lenses. “You might say that,” she said, smiling a secret-keeping smile.
“Oh. So, do you see him often?” He couldn’t keep the disappointment from his tone.
“Weh-ell. Just when his wife isn’t around.” She took a slow and deliberate sip of her drink. “Here lately it’s every night.”
He sagged in his chair.
She laughed, hunching her shoulders, showing a bit more of the crease between her breasts. “Oh, he’s just a customer. Fan, or whatever you want to call it. Rusty’s one of our regulars. Sometimes he catches us at this other gig we’ve got, down on Lower Greenville Avenue. Here at Arthur’s we’re the Dinner Hour Quartet. Wow-oh. You should see us on Greenville, down there we’re Garla and the Greepers. So. I’m Garla. Who are you?” She glanced at his hair. “Please don’t tell me you’re Whitey. God.”
“Well, no, I’m … Wendell Phillips,” Bino said. She looked as if she wasn’t too crazy about that name, either, so he said quickly, “That’s my given name. Bino is what everybody calls me. Short for albino. It’s … sort of like being called Whitey, I guess.”
“I suppose it is,” she said, “but how can you be an albino when your eyes are blue and you’ve got a tan?”
“It’s just this nickname,” Bino explained. “I picked it up when I was playing basketball. Just like some white-haired guys are Gotton. Or Whitey. Same difference.” He grinned hopefully.
“Bino,” she said, rolling the name over her tongue as if trying it out. “Hmm. Well, it beats Whitey. Or Cotton. So, Mr. Bino, we’ve got one more set to do. We finish here at nine, then it’s down to the Greenville strip. Want to come along and rock with the Creepers?” Just like that.
Bino wasn’t sure he’d understood. “Huh?”
“Look,” she said. “Just so you’ll know, I don’t go around walking up to every man I meet and saying, Hey, you want to go someplace with me? Believe it or not, I’m not that hard up. I came over to the table because I thought you were Rusty’s other friend, I really did. I’m nearsighted as hell, and that’s something I can’t help. So now that I’m here, I like what I see.” She took off her glasses and let them dangle between her breasts. “So please don’t make me feel like a dope by sitting there and saying something dumb like, ‘Huh?’
Bino couldn’t believe that she was actually talking to him. From all around the club, jealous male glances came in his direction. Eat your hearts out, boys, Bino thought. He rolled his head around on his neck, Burt Reynolds fashion, as he said to Carla, “Sure, I guess I could. Just take a couple of minutes for me to tell old Rusty I’ll have to see him later, okay?”
She lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Thanks. The suspense was killing me.” The tops of her breasts quivered slightly as she stood. “Last set. We’re going to rock the joint with ‘Tennessee Waltz.’ Don’t go ‘way.” She headed for the bandstand with her bottom jiggling nicely.
Bino thought, Hot damn. Then he looked around in an effort to spot Rusty Benson, wondering if good old Rusty could spare a few bucks until tomorrow. Where was old Rusty when you needed him?
Bino got up and went over to peer through the window into the parking lot. The valet attendants were gathered underneath the awning, chewing the fat, but otherwise Bino didn’t see anyone. No sign of Rusty, and no sign of—what was his name?—Pete Kinder.
It dawned on Bino that Rusty seem
ed to have left. He couldn’t have, Bino thought, we haven’t talked turkey regarding the trial. Surely Rusty couldn’t forget something that important. Naw, good old Rusty wouldn’t desert a guy.
But it appeared that good old Rusty had.
He headed for the bar, conscious of Carla onstage in the periphery of his vision as she took the mike from its stand. A yellow spot shone on her as the combo played the lead-in to “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” The old Burt Bacharach tune.
His pal the bartender was still on duty, the thin fortyish guy watching suspiciously as Bino approached. Bino put one elbow on the counter and leaned close in a buddy-buddy attitude. “Say, friend. Is there any way I can get a check cashed in here? Say, for our drinks over there and a few extra dollars? Oh, yeah, and for a pretty good tip to boot.” He winked.
The bartender was filling a tumbler with soda from a liquor gun, and now froze like a store window dummy. He stood unmoving as the fizzy liquid filled the glass to the brim, then cascaded over the tumbler’s edges to drench his cuff and hand. The soda dripped down and puddled on the drain-board. Still he didn’t move. His eyes widened. His lips parted.
“A check. A fucking check?” the bartender finally said.
• • •
After her final number, Carla showed the clapping, whistling patrons a couple of extra bows. She wondered if she was making a big mistake. God, what if … ? She’d never even seen the guy before. What had gotten into her, coming on like that to a total stranger? He looked all right. Cute, too, super-tall dude with snow white hair. Too late to back out now, she thought. So they find me in a ditch in the morning, I won’t be the first ravaged female to wind up that way. Ha, ha. Big headlines. Singer conked, whatever. She told the boys in the band that she’d meet them at the Greenville Avenue gig, then hustled on her way. Halfway to the bar she froze in her tracks.
Bino stood by the door. A uniformed security guard was over there as well, his hands folded behind his back, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet like a middleweight fighter. Vernon, the night manager/bartender, was on the phone, saying, “Yeah? Yeah, good. We’ll hold him till you get here.”
Carla went up to the counter and said, “What’s the trouble, Vern?”
“Just another deadbeat, happens all the time,” Vernon said. “Ordered drinks and then tried to pass a check on us. Jesus Christ, you’d think they’d learn.”
Bino shrugged and showed Carla a weak grin.
God, Carla thought. God, God, God, can I ever pick ’em. She got her purse from underneath the cash register. “He’s with me, Vern,” she said. “Here, I’ve got some money.” Then she said to Bino, “You do have a car, don’t you? Or should I bring cabfare?”
3
“AND I CAN’T REALLY KNOCK IT,” CARLA SAID. “DOING summer road shows was great experience, but... let me give you an example. The last job I had was in Music Man. I was in the chorus and even had one solo singing line, which is like, you’re on your way up, you know? ‘A hundred and one clarinets close behind,’ or some such, but the main thing was, I was first stand-in for the lead. Never know when the big break’s coming in that business. Lana Cantrell, an Aussie yet, plus I thought she was a bit, shall we say, mature for the part, but anyway, she was Marian. So like I said, I’m first stand-in and, boom. Second night, Cantrell comes down with the flu. There they are, making me up. Ta-taaa, instant librarian. So I’m waiting in the wings, the overture’s playing. And guess what.”
“You were a hit,” Bino said. “The director married you.”
“Not even close. Right at the last second Cantrell shows up, smelling like a locker room. Not b.o., Ben-Gay. And would you believe it? They put her on and let her croak through the performance like a frog. So I tell them, Look, if somebody with pneumonia does a better job than I do, well, you can kiss my ass, you know? It’s been rock ’n’ roll for little Carla ever since.” She pursed her lips and smacked off two pantomime kisses. “You’re cute, baby. What’s hap’nin’?”
Bino had a sip of J&B. “He’s a fish, Carla. Not a dog. An Oscar fish.”
Cecil was getting quite a show. Carla had blown her kisses at the Oscar over her shoulder, wearing black bikini panties, her glasses, and nothing else. Bino thought that Cecil was opening and closing his mouth faster than normal. At any rate, the stupid fish wasn’t turning his back on her and swishing his tail, which was Cecil’s version of the cold shoulder. Bino should know; Cecil had shown him the act often enough. But Carla seemed to have the Oscar’s undivided attention.
She came out of her hootchy-koo posture and strutted over to the couch to drop bouncily onto the cushions beside him. She took off her glasses and let them dangle, then crossed her ankles on the coffee table and rocked one foot in rhythm to the music. Bino had put on an old Harry Chapin tape, and heavy guitars moaned over the speakers in the lead-in to “Dog Town.” Carla’s toenails were painted a bright iridescent pink.
“Our fifties night is Sunday,” she said. “You should catch us, the bass player can sing ‘Walkin’ to New Orleans,’ and if you closed your eyes you’d think Fats Domino was up there.”
Bino watched her calf muscle bunch and elongate in time to the beat. “Not this week,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.” He was clad in white Jockey briefs, and his bare ankles were crossed on the coffee table alongside hers. Her feet, he thought, were less than half the size of his Number 13 clodhoppers.
“I didn’t think lawyers did any work,” she said. “I thought they just stood around and collected everybody’s money and then ran around getting drunk every night. By the way, I’m not forgetting that you owe me. Twenty-two bucks so far, and the interest meter’s running.” She wrinkled her nose.
“I got it in my bureau drawer,” Bino said.
“Why didn’t you tell me that when we were in bed?”
“I had other things on my mind. It may not look like we do any work, but the fact is I’ve got a trial starting a week from today. Next Monday. And the only reason I was out tonight is that I had a hearing scheduled in the morning, but the prosecutor told me he was getting it postponed.”
“The prosecutor probably wanted to get drunk tonight himself,” she said.
“Not this prosecutor,” Bino said. “He doesn’t drink anything stronger than a carrot juice cocktail. I don’t think this guy even fools around with women. He’s so in love with himself there isn’t any room for anybody besides him to gaze at his reflection.”
“Sounds like Rusty Benson. God.”
“I wouldn’t touch that one with a fifty-foot pole,” Bino said. “Rusty is ... well, Rusty. Hey, Carla, who’s the guy you thought was me? You know, Rusty’s friend.”
“My guardian? I don’t even know his name. Sweetest old guy. He’s come into Arthur’s with Rusty at least twenty times. I’d sit with him on my breaks. You’d be amazed what sitting with somebody who looks like your dad will do to discourage other guys from hitting on you. He’d get awfully silly sometimes and kind of lonely-sounding. I don’t think he’s got a family.”
“Why not?” Bino said.
“You can just tell. A man his age out on the town every night. The night I met him was also the only time I’ve ever seen Rusty with his wife. You know her?”
Bino pictured Rhonda Benson, tall, willowy, a lot more body than one noticed at first glance. There’d never been much flash to Rhonda until the past couple of years, when Rusty’s success had seemed to make her bloom. The last time Bino had seen Rhonda was the previous spring, in the gallery at the Byron Nelson Golf Classic. She’d been in tight shorts then, and a halter top which bared her midriff, and there’d been a sultry gait in her walk. The lipstick she’d worn had matched her flaming red hair. He remembered thinking at the time of a butterfly hatched from a cocoon. Bino said to Carla, “Yeah.”
“Well … you see a lot of things when you’re working these clubs. First I knew Rusty. Then I knew he
r. But not together. She came around the rock clubs a lot. Redheads, especially the ones built like her, well, they really stand out. She always came alone, and as far as I know that’s the way she left. She was older than most of the Lower Greenville crowd, but God, did she ever have the dance floor moves. The young guys were always trying to hit on her.” Carla cut her eyes mischievously. “You know how that works, don’t you, Mr. Lawyer? The young guys seem to dig the older stuff and the old guys …
“Anyway,” Garla went on, “one night I’m playing at Arthur’s and all of a sudden there she is, sitting at a table with Rusty. And the older guy, the one I mistook you for. At first I thought Rusty had come with a date, but when I went over at my break Rusty goes, Carla, I’d like you to meet my wife. If you want to know the truth, I’d never figured either of them for married. Usually you can tell.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
Her purse was on a chair beside the big-screen Mitsubishi TV. Carla boogied some to Harry Chapin as she crossed the room, then fished in her purse. “Easy,” she said. “They’re always looking around to see if anybody they know is hanging around. Both Rusty and his wife walked around those clubs like they owned them. Like neither of them cared if the other knew what they were up to. Kind of a strange relationship, if you know what I mean.” She came up with a Virginia Slim and a disposable lighter, set her purse down, and headed back for the sofa.
“To each his own,” Bino said.
She curled up her legs and sat on her ankles, hooking her elbow over the back of the sofa. “That’s what I say,” she said. She started to light her cigarette, then paused. “So how ’bout it, big fella? Ready for a rematch?”
Bino decided that he was really going downhill in a hurry. He was a respected member of the Bar and pretty well known around Dallas, especially by those who remembered his Final Four basketball days at S.M.U. But Christ, was he ever slipping, hanging around Crooked River Country Club with Barney Dal ton and gambling on golf and poker and doing a lot of drinking. And now here he was, really scraping bottom, a milk-skinned girl in her twenties who sang like Barbra Streisand or Janis Joplin, depending on the mood she happened to be in, running around his apartment in black bikini panties and saying, Hey, you ready for another roll in the hay?