by David Pierce
"Bet you were gorgeous back then too," I said as we danced.
"I wasn't," she said. "I had pimples. They used to call me zit-face."
"No!"
"They did."
"So when did you realize you were a dish?"
"The first time you told me, dreamboat," she said.
"You tell the sweetest lies," I said.
"What about you? Did you have zits?"
"No."
"The odd boil on the back of your neck?"
"No."
"Acne?"
"No. All I ever had was too much size."
"Sure makes you easy to find in bed, though," she said.
"Who's hiding?" I said.
"So when did you start being comfortable being a giant?"
"I start tomorrow," I said.
"My God!" she said suddenly. "I bet I've still got it!"
"The sheet's slipping," I said. "Try and be a little more careful, please. Got what?"
"His autograph!" She threw on the first thing to come to hand—my shirt—and headed for the hall, where she started rummaging around in the hall cupboard. And there, in a cardboard box, among other faded souvenirs of yesteryear, she finally came up with her old autograph book. Rapidly she flicked through the multicolored pages, and there it was, signed with many a loop and whirl and artistic flourish—that cad Jerry's name, written in green ink.
Hence half of my mixed emotions—how would she behave when she came face-to-face with lover boy again after so many years? Naturally she had every record he and Tom made, or she used to, anyway. So you can well imagine that, when she discovered that not only had I met him but we were fast becoming good old buddies, how little rest I got until I promised to get them together. Would she get all coy and giddy? Would she get plastered from nervousness and throw up all over his bell-bottoms? Only time would tell, amigos, as it does so often. Speaking of mixed emotions, I was in Dave's Bar once minding my own business pretty much when a glum-looking postman two stools up said to Dave, "Know what mixed emotions are? It's when your teeth are killing you and you know this dentist that'll give you fifty percent off, but she's your mother-in-law."
My other cause for anxiety was none other than S. Silvetti, scribess. When I'd phoned Evonne from home to fix a specific time and place for our rendezvous that evening, which was to be at her place after supper, she'd said, "OK, babe, we'll be waitin' on needles and pins."
"This 'we,' " I said. "Is it like the royal 'we' or the editorial 'we,' we hope?"
"Nope," she said. "It's like the 'we' in 'us.' Meaning I asked Sara to come along."
"Oh," I said. "In that case, we is not amused."
I picked up the girls, as scheduled, at Evonne's place shortly before ten. Evonne looked ravishing in a salmon-colored pantsuit, white high heels, and white silk scarf around her fluffy tresses. Sara looked ravished in a man's three-piece suit complete with tie, color dark gray, black nurse's shoes, and diamond-patterned socks. Her short, mousy-colored hair was rigorously parted, and slicked back with water like some hick from the sticks. Topping off—or is it bottoming—her ensemble was a breast-pocket hankie, carefully arranged to come to three points, a fake boutonniere, a huge man's wristwatch, and a cheap-looking tie clip shaped like a horseshoe.
"What?" I exclaimed as soon as I caught sight of her sprawled in an ungainly position on Evonne's couch. "No whangee cane? No treasured old briar? No terbaccy pouch?"
"Oh, leave her alone, Victor," Evonne said, giving a final primp to her hair in front of the hall mirror. "I think she looks terrific."
"Me too," Sara said.
"Well, two out of three ain't bad," I said.
"You should talk," Sara said. "What are you dressed up for, anyway, some kinda cowboy's Halloween?"
I looked down complacently at my gorgeous fringed suede cowboy shirt, string tie, and the clean chinos tucked into the high-heeled, hand-tooled Mexican boots that I could almost walk in without wincing.
"Sir," I said, "I'm dressed to go shit-kickin', so anytime you're ready is jake with me."
Shit-kickin' we went, to a huge barn of a place just this side of Glendale called the Bar-Bee-Q. In no time at all we were ensconced at a beer-soaked table near the small stage in the merry company of Tom, Jerry, Cherry, wife of the pianist, Big Red, Lola (short for Delores), girlfriend of the steel guitar, and a couple of other friends of friends whose monikers I don't recall, and in no time at all after that, Evonne and I joined the throng on the dance floor and were cutting a pretty mean Texas two-step, if I do say so myself. I might also say that spirited sort of foxtrot is one of only two sorts of dances I can actually do, the other being the slow, which, as is well known, practically everyone can do because all you have to do for it is stand up, then hold on, and the tighter the better.
Shortly thereafter, Evonne told Jerry of her senior prom and her teenage pash; shortly thereafter that he was dancing a slow, a very slow, with her. In revenge, I took Cherry for a brisk turkey trot, or whatever it was, despite the fact she only came up to the enameled cactus thing on the bottom of my string tie. What the hell, I even gave Sir Sara a break once, but once was all—I couldn't have gotten near her for the rest of the evening even if I'd wanted to because, surprise, surprise, guess who was the belle of whole darn ball? Yep; none other, pards. And could she dance, too, the little snippet, especially jive; them rednecks were going crazy trying to figure her out. Well, they weren't the only ones.
At one stage in the soiree, when she thought I wasn't looking, she slipped Jerry a piece of paper; I figured it probably had her phone number on it. She'd be lucky.
Shortly after my third tankard of ale, Rick and the boys took a break. The ageing MC, who was decked out in elaborate cowboy finery, said he had the great pleasure to welcome to the Bar-Bee-Q that night two special guests, Tom 'n' Jerry, would you take a bow, please, boys. The boys half stood up, waved to one and all in a friendly fashion, then sat down again. The MC said, maybe, just maybe, given a little encouragement, the boys might actually be persuaded to sing one or two of their old numbers. Try and stop them, said one cynical customer quietly into the dregs of his beer.
To give them credit, that's exactly what Jerry said as he was taking his guitar out of its case. "Try and stop us, mates," he said, to be precise. "We didn't just come to see how many sensational girls you could fit into one room." Which didn't go down all that badly with the assembled company, either; it was probably a coincidence that he was directing a smarmy-eyed look Evonne's way as he said it.
Tom 'n' Jerry's songs didn't go down all that badly with the folks, either, in fact they loved them, and sang along with the best-known ones. Imagine writing a song that other people, lots of them, all over the world, know the words to—amazing, really. But then, what the hell—could it really be that hard? Semi-illiterate, acne'd teenagers do it all the time.
Then Rick and his boys came back, well refreshed by the look of them, and with Tom 'n' Jerry pitching right in, played out the last set, then the last dance, then the lights came up and all drinks were hastily finished and Rick went off with Big Red and Cherry with the piano player and Lola with the steel-guitar player, and Sara said don't worry about her, this guy she met was gonna drop her off, and the MC went off with his fancy embroidered vest and huge Stetson hat and Tom 'n' Jerry went off with two fetching young ladies dressed alike in skintight stretch jeans, high heels, and deep décolletés—off for a nice game of bridge, I figured. And Evonne Louise Shirley sighed and went home with me. She held on to my arm all the way.
TELL YOU SOMETHING about dreams, kids—they are true.
While they last.
Chapter Twelve
I had this little package they'd requested me to deliver—
It wasn't strictly legal, but hell, tell me what is today?
IT WAS EIGHT-TEN the following morning, a bright and breezy Wednesday. The Dodgers were only four games out, the radio told me. I was in the kitchen area waiting for the toast to pop—seven-grain bro
wn for Evonne, good old plain white for me. King was sitting at my feet and looking up hopefully. Evonne was in the shower showering. One minute she was singing away loudly—seems she wanted to borrow her father's T-Bird, or something—the next she was wailing away and crying out, "Oh my God, just look at me!" So I hastened to the bathroom and did just that—it takes more than the sight of a lissome naked woman to spoil my appetite.
"What is it? Did you hurt yourself?"
"No! Worse!" She was turning this way and that in front of the floor-length mirror.
"Worse than hurting yourself?"
"Yes!" she said. "Don't look, I'm starting to sag!" She also started to snuffle.
"Sag!" I exclaimed. "Where? I can't see any sag, can you, King?"
"Right there!" she said, pointing to her curvaceous buns. "And here and here!" At which she pointed to two other delectable items. "Oh, Vic," she moaned.
"Oh, baby," I said. "Come here." I wrapped a bath towel around her and then wrapped my arms around the both of them. I stroked her wet hair while she sniffled into my shoulder. "Those aren't sags, honey, now come on. You're talking to a sag expert here. I had sags when you still had zits."
"Well, what would you call them, then," she said, "being the big expert on the subject?"
I thought fast. "Newton," I said. "I'd blame it all on him, he's the one who invented gravity, after all. That's all you got, babe, a little gravity breaking out here and there."
"Oh shut up," she said. "Get out of here, both of you."
"Yes, dear," I said. "Come on, King. Brekkies."
"And don't come back!" she shouted, slamming the door behind us.
"All right," I called back with admirable dignity. "I won't. I will never enter my own bathroom again. Not even to hang up your wet towels you never hang up yourself."
She emerged, attired and made-up, some short while later. No, she did not want any breakfast, thank you, give it to the dog. So I did. No, she did not want a cup of fresh-brewed Colombian coffee. She wanted to be taken to school, please, if it wasn't too far out of my way.
"Certainly," I said. I drove her to school, in a deafening silence.
"Thank you," she said, getting out of the car.
"You're welcome," I said. She hurried up the school steps and vanished inside. King looked at me inquiringly. "Want to hear a great sag joke I just thought up?" I asked him. "No, eh? Don't blame you. Come up front for a change, my friend, suddenly I'm feeling mighty low."
I patted the seat beside me; he hopped over from the back into it, and I drove us the few blocks to my office. I parked out front for a minute, thinking, while King investigated our little parking lot. Why does everyone assume, I thought, that it is harder for a woman to grow old than a man? And why does everyone assume that it is harder for a beautiful woman than a plain one? It's insulting; it's not fair. I dare anyone to prove that I'm not suffering as much with the passing of the years as Raquel Welch, Lauren Bacall, and Brigitte Bardot all put together. And I dare anyone to prove that the most hopeless of the world's most pathetically hopeless wallflowers don't suffer equally as much as those reknowned celluloid beauties. The proof is simplicity itself: 100% = 100%; with me so far? Therefore, 100% of X = 100% of X. Therefore, 100% of suffering = 100% of suffering. Therefore, 100% of (my) suffering = 100% of (your) suffering, like it or not. The point being that, far from belittling Evonne's anguish, I understood it only too well; Father Time and I had already sparred many a bloody round together in the prelims and the main event was creeping up, creeping up. Oh dear. Hi ho. Off to work we go. Sometimes I think that whoever invented work wasn't such a fool after all.
The first thing I did after opening up and generally setting up shop was to look up Mrs. T. E. Flint's number in the phone book. Amazingly, agin all the odds, it was there. I was going to call her then, but put it off for a while as it wasn't even nine o'clock yet, and I didn't know what her early morning habits might be. Instead, I made a list, which turned out to be a fairly lengthy one, of all what I considered to be anomalies in the pile of printouts from Sneezy, and all the questions arising from them one might want answers for. If it turned out that one came up with even the slightest reason to ask them, of which there was no evidence at all so far. Desperation, however, acquaints a man with strange bedfellows (John T. Milton), as does the frayed remnants of a Puritanical conscience that says give value for money, as long as it doesn't cost too much.
I finally phoned Mrs. T. E. (Deborah) Flint shortly before ten. She answered by reciting her phone number.
"Would that be Mrs. Flint?"
"It would. And who would that be?"
I explained who it would be, and how it came about that I was calling her, and said I hoped I wasn't disturbing her.
"What's to disturb?" she said. "All I'm doing is sitting here looking at a lot of packing cases. Disturb, please."
"Would you mind if I disturbed you in person for a few minutes, Mrs. Flint? I promise I'll help you wrap the china."
"I don't see what good it'll do," she said. "But come if you want to—Mr. Daniel, was it? I'm not going anywhere. Until Saturday, that is—then I'm going somewhere—away from here."
"Thank you," I said. "I'll be by in about half an hour, if that's convenient." She said it was fine by her, and did I know where she lived and how to get there? I said I knew where she lived and could look up how to get there, and see you soon, then.
All my maps were in the bottom right drawer of my desk; I got out the Rand McNally street map of Los Angeles, and looked up her street, which was Baxter. Baxter, Baxter—there it was, right next to the Silver Lake Reservoir, east-southeast of me. I stowed the map away, locked up, shooed King into the backseat where he knew he belonged, and off we went. East on the Ventura Freeway, change-o to the Golden State, pick up the last bit of the Glendale Freeway, cut back up Glendale Boulevard, and hello, Baxter. Mrs. Flint's home was the last one on the right-hand side before Baxter ran into Rockford; the reservoir sparkled away some hundred yards in front of me. It was a pleasant residential area, with lots of trees and good-sized yards with well-tended lawns.
As I was getting out of the car, Mrs. Flint came out the front door and walked across the lawn to greet me. She was a slim, fortyish lady, in paint-spattered overalls, and with a bandana protecting her hair. She held out a hand to me. I took it.
"I'm Debby Flint," she said. "Pardon my getup."
"Vic Daniel," I said. "Don't give it a thought."
"Who is that?" she asked, with a nod in the dog's direction.
"That's my boy," I said. "King."
"Might as well bring him in too," she said. "I presume he's housebroken, not that it would matter, the mess the house is in."
"Well, I'm not sure," I said. "We've been staying in hotels."
She cast her eyes heavenward. "I'm not so sure I'll let you in after all," she said. "But, seeing as you're here . . ."
We followed her across the lawn, up the steps, in through the front door, then wended our way around half-filled packing cases and cardboard boxes to the kitchen. She gave one unoffending carton a none-too-gentle kick on the way. Once arrived, she said, "Plonk yourself down." I did so, in one of four aluminum chairs in the breakfast nook. "Want some cold bad coffee, or should I make some hot bad coffee?"
"Neither, thank you," I said. "When are the movers coming?"
"Friday morning," she said. "I can hear the sound of breaking glass already."
"If you really need a hand, Mrs. Flint," I offered, "I'm available for an hour or two."
"Well, aren't you the sweetest thing," she said. "Nah, it'll be all right, the two kids from next door are coming in after school to give me a well-greased hand." She tucked an errant strand of hair back under the bandana. "Also, my name is Debby."
"Victor," I said. "Where are you going, Debby?"
"Would you believe Minnesota?" she said. "Hutchinson, Minnesota. In the unlikely event that you haven't heard of Hutchinson, Minnesota, it's about fifty miles west of Minneapo
lis."
"Why there?" I said, restraining a shudder.
"Family," she said. "Licking my wounds and all that in the bosom of. Least I'm out of here. We never liked it here. However, Victor, as you may well know, if you choose to work for a large corporation, you do not always get to choose where you want to live, like before we were stuck up outside Oakland. I bet even you know that, don't you?" She said to the dog, who was investigating an interesting-looking stain on one of her rolled-up cuffs. "Now. Victor. It's been over six months, I'm over the worst of it, except for the occasional backlash that only wops me fifteen or twenty times a day now, to say nothing of the nights. So pop me the dreaded questions and I'll give you the dreaded answers and then go back to trying to figure out what to throw away and what to give away and what to pack away. Want a brand-new skiing outfit, forty-two short? No, I guess not. Oops, here I go again." She began to cry, quietly. "Where do it all come from?" She headed for the door. She was back a few minutes later, bandana off, hair combed, and with fresh lipstick on. She sat down opposite me, gave King's back a brisk rub, then said, "Business, as in down to, please, Victor."
"Yes, ma'am." I cleared my throat officiously, and got out my memo pad, list of questions, and a ballpoint pen, courtesy the D. Jacobs Funeral Home, which I picked up who knows where, but it sure wasn't the D. Jacobs Funeral Home (Open 24 Hours Daily For Your Convenience).
"Please, Debby, understand, as I said on the phone, I'm only doing what King was just doing, sniffing around, trying to justify the rather large fee Jonesy gave me."
"I understand." She twisted her plain gold wedding band around a couple of times, then gave herself a slap, then folded her hands together primly on the tabletop.
"OK. In no particular order. Did you know Mrs. Jones too?"
"Sure."
"Well?"
She shrugged. "I wouldn't say well, no. We'd see each other three, maybe four times a year."
"How did you and your husband know her?"
"They worked together, didn't you know?"