Poodle Springs

20

There was a Santa Ana wind blowing in Hollywood and it had blown the smog out past Catalina. The sky was as blue as a cornflower and the weather was in the low seventies when I parked on Sunset and walked back toward Western to Reno's cafe. It was just after noon and most of the hookers had broken for lunch. North and east across the Valley past Pasadena I could see the snow on top of the San Gabriel Mountains.

I went into Reno's. It smelled as if they hadn't cleaned the grill in a while. I went to the bar and sat at one end. There were two guys in plaid suits hunched over a notebook at the other end, and in the booth I'd sat in the other day a white-haired guy in a black western-style shirt was feeding drinks to a hard-faced old woman with the faint memory of blonde in her hair.

She was wearing bright blue harlequin glasses studded with rhinestones. The old guy's teeth had that perfect even quality that only comes from a store.

There was no one else in the place. The bartender slid down the bar as if he had more time than anyone needed. He was a tall narrow guy with a bald head. Wisps of black hair were carefully plastered over it to make it look worse. His teeth were yellow and he had the color of a man who goes out only at night.

"What'll it be, pal," he said.

"Rye," I said. "Straight up."

He pulled a bottle from the display rack behind him and poured me a shot of Old Overholt, rang up the cost, put the check on the bar in front of me.

"Lola Faithful come in here much?" I said.

The bartender shrugged and started to move on down the bar. I took a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket and folded it the long way and let it stand like a small green tent on the bar in front of me. The bartender moved back down the bar toward it.

"Thought you'd want to run a tab," he said.

"I do," I said.

He looked at the twenty and moistened his lips with a tongue the color of a raw oyster.

"Lola Faithful come in here much?" I said.

"Oh, Lola, sure, I didn't get you the first time. Hell, Lola comes in here all the time. Christ, that's what she does. She comes in here."

He grinned with his big yellow teeth, like an old horse. He was looking at the twenty. I picked it up by one end and looked at it poised on my fingertips.

"What can you tell me about her?"

"She drinks Manhattans," he said.

"Anything else?"

"I think she used to be some kind of a hoochie-cooch dancer," he said.

"And?"

"And nothing," he said. "That's all I know."

I nodded.

"Know a guy named Larry Victor?" I said.

"Naw," the bartender said. His eyes followed the movement of the twenty. "Only a few regulars, I know. Most people ain't regulars." He stopped looking at the twenty for a moment and swept the room with a glance.

"Hell," he said, "would you be a regular here?"

"Les Valentine?" I said. He shook his head.

I let the twenty fall from my fingers and slid it over the bar toward him. He picked it up in long fingers and folded it expertly and tucked it into the watch pocket of his tan poplin pants. Then he picked up the bottle of rye and topped off my glass.

"House bonus," he said.

I nodded and he went down the bar and began to polish glasses with a towel better suited to other purposes.

I waited.

The two guys in plaid folded up their notebook and left to make their fortune. The old guy in the booth was succeeding too well with his date. She was drunk already and pawing him. A Mexican kid, maybe ten, came into the bar.

"Shine, Mister?" he said.

"No, thanks," I said.

"Hey, Chico," the bartender said. "How many times I got to tell you, out." He started around the bar.

"Pictures?" the kid said to me.

I shook my head.

"Reefers, maybe? Coke?"

The bartender came around the bar and swiped at the kid with his towel.

"Go on, kid, take a hike."

I took a dollar from my pocket and handed it to the kid.

"Here," I said. "Thanks for asking."

The kid took the bill and dashed for the door.

"You keep coming in here, kid, you're going to end up down to juvie hall, goddammit."

The bartender went back behind the bar shaking his head.

"Beaners," he muttered.

I sipped my rye. The bartender cut up some limes and lemons and stored them in a big-mouthed jar.

The old couple in the booth had another round. She had her head on his shoulder now, her eyes half shut, her mouth dropped open. A fly circled slowly in on the wet spot where my glass had sat. It lazed down close to it, its translucent wings blurred, then it landed and sampled some and rubbed its forefeet together in appreciation. I had another sip of rye.

A red-haired woman came into the bar and glanced around and saw me and came to the bar and sat two stools away. It was the same woman who had played the jukebox during Lola's argument with Victor.

"White wine, Willie," she said.

The bartender got a big jug of wine out of the under-bar refrigerator and poured some in a glass and set it in front of her on a napkin. He put the jug in a sink full of ice, where it was handy, rang up the bill on the register and put it near her on the bar. She picked up the wine and looked at it for a moment and then carefully drank maybe half the glass. She put the glass down on the bar without letting go of the stem and looked at the bartender.

"Ah, Willie," she said. "You can always trust it, can't you?"

"Sure, Val."

She smiled and got out a long thin cigarette with a brown wrapper and looked in her purse, then turned toward me with the cigarette in her mouth, held in place by two fingers.

"Got a light?" she said.

I got a kitchen match out of my coat and managed to snap it into flame with my thumbnail on the first try. I held it steady for her while she leaned forward and put the tip of her cigarette into the flame. She took a deep inhale and let the smoke out slowly as she straightened.

Her hair was red, brighter than any God had ever made, but probably a version of its original shade. She had a soft face in which the lines at the corners of her mouth had deepened over the years into deep parentheses. She wore all the make-up there was and maybe a little no one else knew about. She had on false eyelashes and green eye shadow, and her mouth was made wider than her lips with thick strokes of lipstick. There was a line low on her throat where the make-up stopped short of the collar of her blouse, and the soft flesh under her chin made her neck line blend in with her chin line. Her blouse was white with a frilly collar and her skirt was black and above her knees. Her fingernails were very long and sharp and painted the same harsh red as her lipstick. She wore two large gold hoops dangling from her earlobes. Even in the dim bar I could see fine vertical lines on her upper lip, and the cross-hatching of fine lines around her eyes.

"Wine, cigarettes and a good man," she said. "All anyone can ask of life."

She drank the rest of her wine and gestured with her head for the bartender to pour some more.

"The first two sound all right," I said.

"You don't want a good man?" She laughed, a hoarse, raspy, mannish laugh that ended in a wheeze.

"Not a man's man, 1 guess," she wheezed as she pushed the laughter back in place. She coughed a little and drank some wine. I smiled encouragingly.

"Wish I could say the same," she said. "Easy to get wine and cigarettes. Hard as hell to find a good man."

She coughed again and drank some wine and picked up the little paper napkin that came with the wine, and patted her lips with it.

"And God knows I've tried a lot of them."

Her wine was gone. She glanced at the bartender, but he was looking at the old couple in the booth.

"Willie," I said, "lady needs a refill. Put it on my tab."

Willie decanted the jug wine without comment. Rang it up on my bill.

"Thanks," she said. "You seem too nice a guy to be hanging out here."

"I was going to say that about you," I said.

"Sure you were," she said. "Then you were going to put me in pictures, weren't you."

"If I'd been in the picture business a few years back," I said. I could see my face in the bar. It had the innocent oily look of a coyote stealing a chicken.

"You look like a guy could get things done if he wanted."

"I was here the other day, and saw you," I said. "There was an argument. Man and woman were hollering at each other and you were playing the jukebox."

Val drank some of her wine. Her cigarette had burned away to an unsmokable roach in the ashtray. She dug another from her purse and I had the kitchen match ready. Marlowe the courtier. I'd have made a great manservant.

"Yeah," she said, "Lola and Larry. Are they a trip? What I mean about men, you know."

"What were they fighting about?" I said. She got some wine in. She was drinking it as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had been sighted in Encino.

Val's shrug was elaborate. Everything about her was exaggerated, like a female impersonator.

"What's your name, honey?"

"Marlowe," I said.

"You ever been in love, Marlowe?"

"As we speak," I said.

"Well, wait'll it goes sour," she said. I nodded at Willie and he filled her wine glass.

"When it goes sour, it's like rotting roses. It reeks."

"Lola and Larry?" I said.

"For a while, a while back." She shook her head in a slow, showy sweep. "But he dumped her."

"What was the fight the other day specifically about?" I said.

"She had something she knew," Val said. "She was going to get even, I guess."

She drank.

"A woman spurned," she said heavily. "We were made for love. We can get pretty poisonous when it turns."

She drank again. A little of the wine dribbled from the corner of her mouth. She dabbed at it again with the paper place napkin.

"She had something on him," I said.

"Sure," Val said. "And she was going to make him pay."

"What'd she have?" I said.

"Hell, Marlowe, I don't know. There's always something. Probably something on you if somebody looks hard." She laughed her wheezy laugh again, gestured at me with her wine glass.

"Prosit," she said and laughed some more. The rim of the wine glass was smeared with her lipstick.

"You know Larry too," I said.

She nodded and fished in her purse, taking things out. Compact, lipstick, a crumpled tissue, chewing gum, rosary beads, a nail file.

"You got any quarters, Marlowe?"

I slid a five at Willie.

"Quarters," I said.

He made change and put the quarters in five neat piles of four on the bar in front of me.

"You're a gennleman," Val said and took a pile and walked to the jukebox. In a minute she came back and sat on her bar stool as the first wail of a country song came on about a woman who loved a man and he done her wrong. Mood music.

"What was you asking me?" Val said.

"Did you know Larry very well?" I said, carefully. Drunks are fragile creatures. They need to be carried like a very full glass; tip either way and they spill all over. I knew about drunks. I'd spent half my life talking to drunks in bars like this one. Who'd you see, what'd you hear? Have another drink. Sure, on me, Marlowe, the big spender, the lush's pal, drink up, lush. You're lonely and I'm your pal.

"Sure, I know Larry. Everybody knows Larry. The man with the camera. The man with the pictures."

She finished her wine. Willie poured some more. He was not a boy to miss the main chance, old Willie. She needed another cigarette. I took one out of her pack on the bar and lit it and handed it to her. Maybe I wouldn't have made a good manservant. Maybe I would have made a good gigolo. Maybe I didn't want to think about that. Maybe that hit too close to home.

"I used to pose for Larry, you know."

"I can believe that," I said.

Val nodded and stared at me. "Wasn't that long ago I still looked good with my clothes off."

"I can believe that too," I said.

"Well, I did."

"Larry usually take women's pictures with their clothes off?"

"Sure," Val said. "Larry looked at more nudes than my gynecologist."

She was pleased as hell to have said that and laughed and wheezed until she got coughing and I had to beat her on the back to get her to stop.

"Wise old Dr. Larry," she gasped. "Used to peddle the stuff around the boulevard when it was harder to get. Now he wholesales it, I guess. I don't know. Who cares about dirty pictures anymore. You know?"

"Get 'em on any newsstand," I said. "Did he do any legit photography? Fashion stuff?"

Val repressed a belch, touched her fingertips to her lips automatically.

'"Scuse me," she said brightly. The jukebox moaned out another sad country ballad. The old couple in the booth got up and stumbled out, arms around each other's waist, her left hand in his back pocket, her head on his shoulder. Val was still smiling at me.

"Did he ever do fashion stuff?" I said.

"Who?"

"Larry."

"Oh, yeah, fashion stuff." She paused a long time. I waited. Time is different for drunks.

"Nooo," Val said. "He never did none. He said he did, but I never saw any or knew about anybody he photographed."

She had trouble with photographed.

"Where'd Lola live?" I said.

"Lola?".

"Yeah."

"What about her?"

"Where'd she live?"

"Kenmore," Val said. "222 Kenmore, just below Franklin."

"She in any trouble lately?"

"Naw, Lola, she was fine. Had some alimony checks coming in every month. Me, I got to go to court to get mine. I'm in court more than the judge, for chrissake."

"Nobody mad at her or anything?"

Val grinned. Her lipstick had gotten blurred from frequent trips to the rim of her glass.

"Jes' Larry," Lola said.

"Because of the fight they had."

"Un huh."

Val drank some more wine. Some of it dribbled down her chin. She paid it no mind. She was singing along now softly to the mournful music.

"You wanna dance?" she said. "Used to dance like a swan."

"They're good dancers," I said.

"You don't have to," she said, "if you don't want." She was swaying a little to the music.

"As long as it's slow," I said. I stood and put out my arms. She slid off the stool and wavered a bit, got centered and stepped in close to me. She was wearing enough perfume to stop a charging rhino, and it hadn't come in a little crystal flagon. She put her left hand in mine, and her right lightly behind my left shoulder, and we began to move in the empty barroom to the lonesome country sound.

"Ain't supposed to be dancing in here," Willie said from behind the bar. But he said it weakly and neither of us paid him any attention. It was dim in the bar and most of the light reflected off the bar mirror and the bright array of bottles in front of it. We danced among the tables and along the booths, down toward the front where a little sunlight filtered through the dirty windows. In addition to the old cooking smell there was the fresh, delusive smell of booze that made the air seem cooler. Val put her head against my shoulder as we danced in a slow circle around the room, and she sang the song that we danced to. She knew the lyrics. She probably knew all the lyrics to all the sad songs, just like she knew just how many four-ounce glasses of white wine you got out of a half-gallon jug. The music stopped. The quarters she'd put in were used up, but still we danced, with her head on my shoulder. She sang a little more of the song and then she was quiet and all the sound was the shuffle of our feet in the empty room. Val started to cry, softly, without moving her head from my shoulder. I didn't say anything. Outside on Sunset somebody was power-shifting a car with dual exhausts and the snarling pitch changes bored through our silence. I danced Val gently past a table and four chairs and as I did she suddenly went limp on me.

I spread my feet and bent my knees and slid both my arms around her under hers and edged her to a booth. She was as limp as an overcooked noodle, her legs splayed and dragging. I bowed my back and heaved her into the booth and arranged her with as much dignity as she had left. Behind the bar Willie watched without comment.

"No need to help," I said. "She can't weigh more than a two-door Buick. I'll be fine."

"Drunks are heavy," Willie said.

I got out another twenty; they were getting scarce in my wallet. I walked over to the bar and gave it to Willie.

"When she comes around," I said, "put her in a cab."

"When she comes around," Willie said, "she's going to want to drink another gallon of white wine, until she passes out again."

"Okay," I said. "Then let her do that when she comes to."

"You spending an awful lot of dough on an old wino floozie," Willie said.

"I got a rich wife," I said.

I paid the bar bill with my last twenty and went out of there into the hot, hard, unkind sun.