Play It as It Lays

59

"TELL HIM TO COME up," Larry Kulik said, handing her a drink while she waited for the operator to page Benny Austin. In the other room there were some of Larry Kulik's well-manicured friends and a couple of girls, one of them the Cuban she had seen in the ladies'room. The Cuban had given her no sign of recognition.

"Guys like that interest me, you'd be surprised."

"I wouldn't be surprised at all. Tell that spic to turn the music down."

She waited. 'Benny?" She raised her voice over the clatter of the slot machines downstairs. "Benny, I got sick, I—"

"Christ, Maria, why didn't you say something, I got a good friend, house doctor at the Mint."

"I just need some rest. Benny? Can you hear me? You come see me the next time you're in Los Angeles, all right? Promise?"

'Sure, honey, swell. I'd like that."

Maria felt a rush of shame. Benny Austin never came to Los Angeles. "Listen," she said suddenly. "You remember the last time you saw me? Remember? You and Mother and Daddy put me on the plane at McCarran? And before that we ate spare ribs at the house? Remember?"

"Sure, honey, you bet. Next time I'm over we'll paint the town."

For a long while Maria lay on the bed and stared at a large oil painting of a harlequin. In a sense the day they ate spare ribs and drove to McCarran had ceased to exist, had never happened at all: she was the only one left who remembered it. Maria followed this thought for as far as it would go, which was not very far, and then she got up and opened the door. A second-string comedian had come in with some of his entourage, and a girl Maria had seen drinking in the lounge.

"New talent," the comedian said, looking at Maria.

"She's not talent," Larry Kulik said.

At dawn she woke Larry Kulik and told him she was taking the seven o'clock flight out.

"Stick around," he said. "What is it with you, you want to get paid for your time or something? So I crapped out on you last night. So what."

"That's not it."

'Suit yourself," Larry Kulik said.