Crooked Little Vein

Chapter 43

Leaning over Trix, I looked out at Los Angeles. An orange bowl inverted over the city. From a distance, you wonder how anyone can live there.

Stop-start shuffling our way through LAX security into Arrivals, she spotted something and pointed to me. An Asian girl in a business suit behind the cattle-fencing human funnel that pours people out into the hall, holding a clipboard with TRIX +1 scrawled in marker on the top sheet.

Trix grabbed my hand and tugged me through the crowds to the girl. “I’m Trix Holmes, and this is my plus-one. Brom sent you?”

The girl showed us a row of bleached teeth. I wouldn’t call it a smile. “Well, hi. I’m Blair? Brom’s assistant? I’m to drive you out to the house? Follow me?”

Bone-chilling air-conditioning gave way to a sweat-and grime-laden wall of hot air as we got out onto the street. I actually took a step back from the force of it. Blair struck out across the street like a native guide, giving the finger to cabs and limos as she strode toward the short-stay parking lot. A neutral silver SUV bleeped hello to her keychain, and she left us to throw our bags into the trunk and clamber in.

“I’m going to have to leave you at the house? I’m running late for my vaginal tightening appointment?”

Trix frowned. “Honey, you’re twenty-one if you’re a day. There’s no way in hell your vagina needs anything of the sort. Besides, everyone’s a different size. It’s just nature.”

Blair turned around in her chair and looked Trix up and down as if considering a circus freak. “Yeah, well. You’re from New York.”

Trix looked at me like it was my fault and leaned back in the chair. It was a long drive. On and off freeways, wending up and down ramp roads. My attention would drift, and then I’d look back out the window and have no idea where we were. Blair wasn’t in the mood for a guided tour, and just shrugged her shoulders at every question. Her mind was obviously on the minutes ticking away toward her prized vaginal tuck.

An hour of this, and we pulled up in front of a blindingly white house perched on the edge of what looked like a cliff face, looking down on the valley of Los Angeles. I got out of the car first, eager to relieve my aching ass. The light was beautiful. I never realized, until I was there, exactly why the movie business settled out there. It wasn’t just getting out of New York and living an economic version of the Wild West. Up there, over the smog line, the light had a sharp clarity that would have made a painter cry. Somehow, though, I figured every artist in L.A. was probably down there under the orange, cutting up sheep and making funny boxes and calling that art instead.

I tried explaining the thought to Trix, but she told me about the acquaintance of hers down there who performed his art by breaking into abandoned hospitals and reenacted horrifying nineteenth-century medical procedures with morbidly obese mental patients and strippers covered in blood.

Blair let us into the house. The hallway looked like a four-star hotel lobby. Blair explained that Brom was tied up for much of the day, but wanted us to treat the house as ours until he got home. She gave us the once-over one more time, as if judging how much of Brom’s stuff we could steal, and then took off at a brusque speed, eager for stitches in her nether regions.

Once the door was shut, I made a show of looking around. “Your friend does okay for himself, huh?”

“Brom’s very successful. Takes on big corporate cases to fund pro bono civil-liberties cases. He used to be in New York, fighting Giuliani. Moved out here after 9/11.”

“Good friend of yours?”

“We dated a little bit, I guess. He’s a very good friend, yeah.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mike, we had this conversation. Are you going to be weird about this?”

“No, no. Just tired. It’s been a bad couple of days, you know?”

“You’re telling me.”

“You’re coping pretty well.”

She grinned and kissed me fast and hard. “Why shouldn’t I? You saved me.”

“Just remember that when your lawyer ex wants to do pro bono in your pants.”

“Beats paying rent. I’m joking. Quit looking like you just shit yourself.”

“I’m going to go exploring for food. If I’m not back in a couple of days, call the police. I may have gotten lost in this guy’s closet or something.”