Poodle Springs

37

It was suppertime when I got back from terrifying Eddie Garcia. I took a long shower and put on dry clothes and made myself a stiff Scotch and soda and sat down and called Linda. Tino answered.

"Mr. Marlowe," he said. "I am sorry you are away. I hope you will be back soon."

I murmured something encouraging, and waited while he got Linda. When she came on her voice was as clear as moonlight.

"Darling," she said. "Are you sheltered and warm?"

"I wanted you to have this phone number," I said, and gave it to her. "It's a furnished apartment on Ivar. No houseboy, no pool, no piano bar. I don't know if I can survive."

"It is frightful, isn't it, how people choose to live,"

Linda said. "I hope at least you can get a civilized gimlet there."

"Sure," I said. "Anything you want, you can get in Hollywood, you know that."

"Are you lonely, darling?"

"Lonely, me? As soon as word got out that I was back in town there was a stampede of Paramount contract starlets up Western Ave."

We were both quiet for a moment on the telephone. The wires between us hummed faintly with tension.

"Darling, now don't be angry, but Daddy is opening a plant, something to do with ball bearings, in Long Beach and he suggested you might wish to consider a position there as, ah, director.of security."

"No," I said.

"We could live in La Jolla, we own some property there, and you could drive to work in the morning and be home every evening by six-thirty."

"Can't be that way, Linda."

"I know," she said. "I knew it when I said it, but darling, I miss you so much. I miss you all the time and especially at night. I hate to sleep alone, darling."

"I miss you too," I said, "except when the starlets are here."

"You bastard," she said. "Why are you a bastard, why must you be so hard, why can't you bend a little?"

"It's all I have," I said. "I don't have money. I don't have prospects. All I have is who I am. All I have is a few private rules I've laid down for myself."

"I hear that, but damn it, I don't know what it means.

All I know is that I love you, and I want you with me. Why is that so bad?"

"It isn't, it's good. But you want me to be different than I am. And if I change, I disappear. Because there isn't anything but what I am."

There was a long silence on the line and then Linda said softly, "Damn you, Marlowe, Goddamn you." She hung up softly and I held the receiver at my end for a moment and then put it gently back in the cradle.

I took a long pull at the Scotch and looked around the rented room at the rented furniture. It was as charming as Sears and Roebuck. I got up and walked to the window and looked out. It was dark. There was nothing to see but my own reflection in the black glass, streaked with rain: a 42-year-old man, drinking alone in a rented apartment in Hollywood while above the clouds the universe rolled slowly eastward over the dark plains of the republic.

I turned away from the window and headed for the kitchen to refill my glass.