Skin Deep

4

My knees were up somewhere around my chin, and my heart was competing with a hamburger for space in my throat. Toby drove even worse than Dixie said he did.

The roof of the Maserati was about four feet above road level. The console looked like a transplant from the space shuttle. Toby used both hands and both feet constantly just to keep us on the road, which, unfortunately for my peace of mind, was Laurel Canyon.

"Got your belt on?" he asked, taking a sharp downhill curve on two wheels. The burger, to which Toby had graciously treated me at a McDonald's, was refusing to obey the laws of gravity.

"Are you kidding? I'd have yours on, too, if I could get to it."

"Good. Because I can feel that load coming on."

This piece of news, added to the burger and my heart, was too much to swallow. "Toby," I said, "tell me that's a joke."

"In the trailer," he said. "Jesus, champ, I've been straight as a string all day."

"I wouldn't go that far," I said, looking for something to hold on to.

He popped the clutch and downshifted, keeping his eyes on the road. "That wasn't dope," he said finally, sounding uncomfortable. "That was just old Toby."

"You want to tell me why you did it?"

"I don't know. She just got me so damn mad. Whatever you think about my face, it's my only valid ticket. The wrong picture, even on the cover of Baby-Kiss or whatever it is-that's serious."

"Horsefeathers. You set it up."

The road straightened again, and he pressed down on the accelerator. "If I were you, champ," he said, "I'd let me concentrate on driving."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't know how to answer it. Listen, I like women, I really do. I always want them to be different, and they never are. They always say something stupid or fuck up in one way or another, and then it happens."

"What happens?"

"Yaaa, yaaa, yaaa," he said. "Something. Like pressure in my head, like, I don't know, like a headache, and my jaws get all stiff and tight, and then I want to break things. Why am I telling you this?"

"Because you like to talk about yourself."

"Boy, are you wrong there. I'd rather get a rabies shot."

"And when you hurt somebody, the feeling goes away."

He pulled up at a stoplight. Sunset Boulevard. He gunned the motor once, looking down at the tachometer. He examined his wristwatch as though it had just appeared on his wrist through spontaneous generation. He checked the fuel level and wiped a speck of dust off the glass on the gauge.

"Would you like to clean the ashtrays?" I asked. "Maybe get out and polish the car?"

"The sun comes out," he said brutally. "There are double fucking rainbows in the sky. For about two minutes. Then I start to feel like shit. But at least I'm not mad anymore. Haven't you ever hit a woman?"

"No. What was your life like at home?"

"I don't talk about home," he said.

"Why not?"

"What's to say? I was born, I grew up, I left. Same as everybody else."

"Go out and get dirty, go in and get clean."

"Say what?"

"According to a friend of mine, that's life in ten words."

We were speeding down Sunset now, and the sun was all the way down. Toby's face looked green in the glow from the Maserati's console.

"That's not bad," he said. "Except that sometimes you can get dirty when you're inside, too."

"Depends, doesn't it?"

"Don't moralize. You don't know me well enough. That's not what I need from you."

"So what do you think you need from me?"

"Protection."

"From whom, Toby?"

"Whom, whom," he said. "I'd have said, 'From who?' " He changed lanes and sped up. "Whom, whom, whom," he said, pushing down on the accelerator each time.

"Increasing your word power?"

"I'm a car," he said. "I'm also getting pretty loaded."

"So why did you leave?" I asked, checking my seat belt for the fifth or sixth time.

"We're going to talk about this, huh?"

"Unless you want to say good-bye to me whenever we get where we're going."

"I wouldn't use that one too often, if I were you."

"I won't. That was the last time."

He navigated a couple of turns. "Who wouldn't leave? You ever been to South Dakota?"

"No."

"Keep it that way. It's a good place to leave."

"What's wrong with it?"

At first I thought he wasn't going to answer me. "To me, South Dakota just means cold," he said at last. "And clothesline."

"Clothesline? Why clothesline?"

"There are lots of reasons. The one I'll tell you about has to do with cold. Ever heard of a white-out?"

"Something to do with snow."

"Champ, it's everything to do with snow. In a white-out you can't see anything, not three feet in front of you. So I was supposed to string the clothesline from the house to the barn and to the garage and back again. Like a big ropy spiderweb."

We pulled up at the corner of Sunset and Doheny. A sudden squeal to our left caught my attention. A beat-up convertible with three teenage girls crowded into the front seat had pulled up next to us, and the girls were gawking and squealing and flapping their hands at Toby. They looked ecstatic. Toby smiled and gave them an extravagant wave and then made a sudden right-hand turn down Doheny to get away from them. "Dumb bitches," he said. "Did you see their faces?"

"That's your public," I said. "The clothesline."

"Wind-chill factor," he said, sounding grumpy. "It gets down to fifty or sixty below zero. Honest, champ, you can get killed in a white-out just going out to start your car. So you go hand over hand along the clothesline, like a blind person, feeling your way through the freeze and hoping your nose won't break off if you bump into the garage. Great way to start the morning."

A stoplight went yellow in front of us, and a car popped into the intersection from the right. Toby leaned on the horn and fishtailed the Maserati in front of the other car, heading left on Santa Monica. Brakes squealed behind us. "And one day Hollywood beckoned," Toby said with an air of finality. "Hollywood said, 'Come on out, Toby, and be a big star. Come on out and get warm.' "

"And that's the end of the story."

"Must be all that college," he said. "You don't get that smart on the street." He hummed something that sounded like "Camptown Races" and confirmed it by singing, " 'Doodah, doodah.' What's a bobtailed nag?"

"A horse with its tail bobbed."

"There's nothing like education. You keep talking about quitting. Is that on the level?"

"Yes."

"You really think you could give Norman his check back?"

"What do you know about Norman's check?"

"Are you kidding? Half of it comes out of my share of the syndication rights."

"To you it's small change," I said.

"Ho, ho, Simeon. Small change? Ten grand will get me through Bullock's in an afternoon. It'll pay for a lot of girls if the time ever comes when I need to pay for girls."

"Norman told you your half was ten grand?" I had a sudden insight into Hollywood bookkeeping.

"It's worth it to me," Toby said virtuously. "You still don't understand, do you? You still think I like to act the way I do."

"Toby," I said, "I'm tired. You don't want to talk to me about anything that matters, and I'm not going to waste my energy doing dime-store psychology on you."

"I don't need a psychologist," Toby said. "I need a friend."

I couldn't come up with anything to say, so I said the wrong thing. "That's the load talking."

"You think so?" He sounded stung.

"Toby, I don't know. I like part of you, too. Maybe it's just that I can't figure out whether it's the part that's named Toby Vane or the part that's named Jack Sprunk."

"They both suck," Toby said petulantly. "Here we are."

I couldn't see that we were much of anywhere. The block was an indiscriminate string of pizza parlors, furniture showrooms, office equipment stores, and little "showcase" theaters offering pay-for-play wish fulfillment to aspiring actors. And then, on the right, in hot pink neon I saw the words SPICE RACK. Above that, printed in black on a yellow background was the legend LIVE NUDES. The letters were about six feet high.

"I love that," Toby said. "I always wonder what's the next hot ticket. Dead nudes?"

"This is where Nana works?"

"Sure. What did you think she was? A research chemist?"

We passed the Spice Rack and turned right into a little street and then right again into an alley. Toby pulled the Maserati into an empty parking space and leaned back, closing his eyes. "Made it," he said.

A minute loped by. I messed around with my door, looking for anything that resembled a handle. "Are we going to get out, or what?"

He opened his eyes and looked around. "Just hold on. Got to get a little riper." Reaching back into the pocket of his leather jeans, he produced a little jar with a black plastic top, unscrewed it, and poured a little of it onto the back of his left hand. "Want some?" His hands were shaking slightly.

"What is it?"

"Same old pink coke. Best there is, remember?"

"No, thanks," I said.

"More for me, then." He raised the back of his hand to his nose, sniffed sharply, and then repeated the ritual. "10 on the rise," he said.

"Toby," I said, "you do the loads to slow down and the coke to speed up. Why don't you just stay in the middle?"

He regarded me gravely. "That's the first stupid thing I ever heard you say. This stuff is going to make me very popular tonight. Out we go, champ." He opened his door and climbed out. I was still fiddling with my seat belt when he opened my door from the outside and made a courtly bow. "After you, madame," he said.

"How the hell do you get out of this thing?"

"Professional secret," he said. "Comes in handy some- times." I got out and closed the door behind me, and the car barked at me. I jumped.

"What was that?"

"The car. It's half Maserati and half Doberman." He'd almost reached the building's back door. "Remote alarm. I just push a button and the thing's on red alert. Jesus, this is some cocaine."

He went up a couple of steps and knocked heavily, first three times and then, after a beat, two more times. "Private entrance," he said over his shoulder. "Secret code. Real Hardy Boys stuff."

He waited, and I caught up with him. "Why the Spice Rack?"

"Used to be a restaurant, and neon's expensive. Tiny just gave all the girls spice names." As he was speaking the door opened about four inches, and a blast of music shredded the night. "Hey, Tiny," Toby said, producing the magazine-cover grin.

The door opened the rest of the way. The man called Tiny was sallow and coarse-featured, with oily black hair and thick, loose lips. His clothing, a white safari shirt and white pleated slacks, encased a body that must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. He ignored me, grimaced in welcome at Toby, and held the door wide. Toby went in. I followed, squeezing past Tiny's barrel of a belly, into a narrow hallway. "How's business?" Toby asked.

Tiny shrugged before I was completely by him. It was like surfing on an ocean of fat. "The recession," he said in a voice that sounded like several tons of gravel rolling downhill inside a steel drum. "Everybody's hurting."

"It'll pick up," Toby said. "Even poor people like girls."

"Go in and tip somebody," Tiny said, ignoring the offer of comfort. "These jack-offs have never heard of money, or if they have, they don't believe in it." He closed the door behind us, and even over the music I could hear the clatter of locks being forced into place.

Entering the Spice Rack through that hallway, I felt like Gepetto sliding down the whale's throat. The walls and ceiling were covered with a thick red paint with flecks of glitter mixed into it, something a serial killer might choose for his Christmas cards. Toby opened the door, and the music, already loud, exploded into the corridor.

Nothing remained to suggest the restaurant the Spice Rack had once been. The linen-clad tables and large bouquets of this month's fashionable flowers had been cleared away to make room for three stages, each raised about a yard off the floor. One of them was dark. Customers sat around the other two, working slowly on their drinks and staring at girls who were writhing around under pink and amber lights. One of the girls was wearing a ragged feather boa and cut-off jeans, and the other was completely naked. The naked one was lying on her back on the floor of the stage, doing gymnastic exercises that consisted mainly of lifting both knees to her chin. As if the girls on the stage weren't enough, nudes painted on black velvet hung in heavy museum frames on the walls.

Toby pulled out two chairs by the side of the other stage and plopped down. The blonde in the feather boa was cradling her breasts in her hand and paying special attention to customers who had put a buck or two onto the stage. She looked bored.

"Toby," I yelled over the music as I sat next to him, "are you sure we want to be here?"

"Of course," Toby said. "Don't you want to see Nana?"

"This is the kind of place I'm supposed to be keeping you out of."

"No prob," Toby said. "That's why the back door and the code. Tiny takes care of me."

A blond girl wearing a transparent, thigh-length negligee, a G-string, and about thirty-seven bracelets, gave Toby a peck on the cheek. "Hi, heartthrob," she said. "The usual?"

"Sure, Pepper. A Seven-Up from my private stock, and the same for my friend here." He winked at her, and she made little kiss lips and headed for the bar. The G-string disappeared completely between her buttocks. They were buttocks to remember.

"Pepper?" I said.

"Like I told you, all the girls are spices. This is Saffron on the stage here. The naked one is Clove." He put a ten on the counter, and Saffron shuffled over and did the breast-cupping act. By now they were tucked under her chin.

"How you doin', Tobe?" she said.

"Holding on. You're looking good."

"I'd better," Saffron said, "or I'll be sitting on the sidewalk. Tiny's got the rag on."

Toby looked nervous. "Does he?"

"And how. Nobody's tipping, and they're making their drinks last until their birthdays. What a bunch of stiffs."

"You wish," Toby said. "Go make them rise to the occasion."

Saffron picked up the ten quickly, as though she were afraid it might disappear, and danced away in a leisurely fashion, focusing her charms on an embarrassed-looking Chicano with two crumpled dollar bills on the counter in front of him.

"This must be someone's idea of fun," I said.

"Loosen up, champ. You want to die before you even get tired? Here's the gorgeous Pepper."

Pepper put a tall glass in front of each of us, her bracelets jangling. Toby gave her a tightly folded twenty and said, "Keep the change. Not much happening, is there?"

"I've had a bigger time in a library," Pepper said, slipping the twenty into the front of her G-string. "Who's your sweet little friend?"

"This is Simeon," Toby said. "He's my baby-sitter."

"He's a baby himself," Pepper said. "Jesus, what'd you do to Nana? Is she ever pissed off."

"Not for long. I've got some pink, Pepper."

"Darling," Pepper said, brightening visibly. "I think I have to go to the little girls' room."

"It's in the twenty," Toby said. "Don't hog it. I see a lot of hungry noses."

"My sisters will get theirs," Pepper said, "don't worry. Nice to meet you, Simeon." Her beautiful bottom twinkled at us as she headed for nostril heaven in the ladies' room. I picked up my 7-Up and took a big swallow. Then I began to cough, and it felt as though several pounds of steam were billowing out of my ears.

"Careful, champ," Toby said. "That's straight vodka."

"Thanks for the warning," I said, my eyes watering. "How come it's disguised as Seven-Up?"

"They can't serve liquor because the girls take their pants off. Go figure. Like I said, private stock for regular customers."

I blinked back tears and became aware that the music had ended. There was a scattering of applause. Saffron climbed down from the stage. The girl who had been dancing on the other stage blew a sarcastic kiss at the customers and then walked across the club, elegantly and carelessly naked, to disappear behind the same crimson curtain that Saffron had lifted only moments before.

"If they made twenty each, they're lucky," Toby said.

His voice sounded abnormally loud. We were the only ones in the place who were talking. All the other customers sat staring at their drinks or at the counter in front of them. I realized for the first time that there was an empty chair separating each customer from his neighbor. Chair, customer, chair, customer. Except for three Asian men, an obvious group, no two men were seated together. No one had looked at Toby for the simple reason that no one had looked at anyone.

"What do you care how much they make?" I took a careful swig of vodka. It tasted better this time.

"Who says I care?" he asked belligerently and altogether too loudly. "They dance, they should get paid. You think I'd do what I do for free? Where's Pepper, anyway?"

The music drowned out my reply, whatever it was. Then I forgot what I'd been going to say and leaned forward to watch.

It took me a few bars to recognize the song, even though the Kinks had been my favorite band for years. I was too preoccupied. Then Ray Davies began to sing, and I placed it.

Look at that lady dancing round with no clothes,

She'll show you all her body, that's if you got the dough.

She'll let you see most anything, but there's one thing that she'll never show.

And that's a little bit of real emotion. …

Saffron came back onto the stage. She was wearing nothing at all, but I was watching the other stage. The girl on it was Nana.

"And on the small stage," said a fat Tiny clone seated next to the entrance, "is our bit of spice from the Far East. Let's bring both hands above the table and have a big round of soy sauce for the lovely Cinnamon." Three men clapped.

A little bit of real emotion, Ray Davies sang. In case a bit of real emotion should give her away.

"Nana's first song," Toby said. "She always uses it. She thinks no one gets it."

"Maybe nobody does," I said, looking at the customers. Most of them had their mouths open.

Nana was almost fatally beautiful. Her T-shirt, slashed strategically here and there, ended a good ten inches above a pair of crimson hot pants that stopped just this side of the melting point of platinum. Her hair had been teased into a lioness's mane. She had sprayed her body with droplets of water. She looked like a feral animal mistakenly rereleased into polite society.

Saffron did whatever she did, but it was wasted effort. Even the men around our stage-her stage-were watching Nana, or Cinnamon, or whatever her name was. If Nana had been wearing a tuxedo, an overcoat, a scarf, and a pair of hip-high wading boots, eighty men out of a hundred would have been watching her, no matter how naked Saffron was.

"Maybe there is a God," Toby said. He didn't sound like he was kidding. For a couple of minutes we sat there like everyone else, staring at Nana.

The song ended and Saffron picked up her tips, including another ten from Toby. Nana had already disappeared behind the crimson curtain that obviously led to the dressing room. Saffron worked her way clockwise, grabbing a dollar bill here and a five there. One customer, vaguely Middle Eastern-looking, tried to snatch back a few of the ones he had laid on the counter. Saffron kicked at the stage with her spike heels, and he gave up. She picked up the money and laughed.

"Golly," she said. "Thanks, Ahmed."

"Toby," said a gravelly voice. "Let's you and me talk."

It was Tiny, looming white and mountainous above us. Toby looked at me apologetically.

"Time to go," Toby said. "Have a good time, Simeon. Tip the girls with Norman's money." He got up and patted Tiny on the arm. "Lost some weight, Tiny? Six months from now you'll be wearing Yves St. Laurent."

"Eve who?" Tiny rumbled.

"New girl," Toby said. "Dancing at the Kama Sutra, up on Sunset."

"I don't need girls. I need customers." He hauled Toby toward the back of the club.

The music started again, anonymous heavy metal from a band whose idea of a good time was probably rusty iron spikes on the inside of their underwear. The intellectual theme of the song seemed to be "Get down and crawl."

Crawling was exactly what Nana was doing on the other stage. Wearing nothing now but the hot pants, she moved on her hands and knees, arching her back, tossing her mane, and hissing like a cat. The lurid pink light caught her high cheekbones and defined the fine, straight gully of her spine. I realized that I was definitely interested.

In fact, I was so interested that I didn't notice the newcomer on my stage until she lifted a foot and whacked the counter in front of me to get my attention. Snatched away from the vision of Nana, I looked up and then tried, without much success, to turn a cringe into a smile.

At about five two, she couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds. Her face was tight and drawn, every muscle standing out in aggrieved relief. She was wearing more eyeliner than all the Egyptian queens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art put together, but it couldn't mask the infinite weariness in her eyes, the eyes of an ancient lizard glutted on spiders and flies. She wore a silk camisole over her bones, leopard-spotted panties, and elbow-length formal gloves. Her dancing consisted of shifting from foot to foot listlessly in front of me, her ravaged eyes focused on something in another galaxy a trillion light-years away.

Pepper touched my arm and pressed a little packet into my hand. "Tell Toby thanks," she said, sniffing. "Where'd he go?"

"He's with Fatso."

"Tiny," she said severely. "You want to be careful what you call Tiny, okay? He's touchy. Put out a little money, huh? She needs it."

I reached into my pocket, and my fingers encountered the serrated edge of Norman Stillman's check. Ten thousand dollars seemed excessive somehow, so I fumbled around until I produced a crumpled five. Pepper thumped the stage and hissed, "Amber." The girl named Amber tore herself away from whatever deep-space supernova she had been watching and contorted her mouth into a smile that missed me by a yard. Her teeth were stained and broken. "Shanksh," she said to the chair next to me.

"Ahmed," Pepper said to her, and I saw that the Middle Easterner had dropped a couple of ones on the counter in front of him. Amber trudged in his direction and then leaned over and swung her long, lifeless brown hair back and forth in a gesture that had probably been sexy ten years and a million dances earlier. Trying to straighten up, she lost her balance and fell on her tail. She didn't seem surprised, and Ahmed laughed. Nana looked over from the other stage.

"Wasted in excess," Pepper said. "She'll never make it until closing time."

"Wasted on what?"

"Name it, sweetie," Pepper said. "Don't give her any of Toby's coke, okay? Ambulances are bad for business."

I put the coke away and turned to watch Nana.

She was standing upright and toying with the top button of her hot pants, looking down at a hugely bearded customer who had put down a small mountain of money. With a smile that made me want to put on sunglasses, she undid the button and then swung her leg in a high arc over his head. He dropped a few more bills on the mountain and licked his lips, exaggerating the gesture to cartoon proportions. Nana gave him the classic "shame on you" signal, rubbing one forefinger over the other, and moved on to the next customer.

The music came to a merciful halt, and Nana left her stage quickly. She threw me an appraising glance, helped Amber climb down the stairs, and then put a protective arm around her waist. They disappeared together behind the red curtain. Amber kept getting her feet mixed up.

I took a long gulp of the vodka and, feeling its glow inside me, surveyed the room. In addition to Pepper, there were four women working as waitresses, all of them dressed for the first two pages of a Penthouse centerfold. Lingerie was conspicuously in evidence. Most of the girls seemed to be on the shy side, if that's the proper figure of speech, of twenty. Bellies were flat, buttocks were firm. Gravity was still lurking offstage, preening its villain's mustache. Cellulite and stretch marks were as absent as an intellectual at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. Despair was a decade away. At the same time, I felt as though I were watching balloons of bright hope passing through a sewing machine. On the other side of the needle was Amber.

During the long pause between songs, nobody said a word.

Then a cash register clanged to introduce Pink Floyd's "Money." The crimson curtain parted, and Amber's skeletal figure wobbled toward the stage with Nana's hand poised supportively in the middle of her back. Amber had taken off the camisole but retained the leopard-skin panties and the elbow-length gloves. Nana wore nothing but a slender gold chain that swaggered its way around her hips, about halfway between her navel and real trouble. She got Amber onto the stage and then, after a moment of concerned surveillance, went to her own. Her black hair, rippling and knotting as though it had a life of its own, cascaded down her back and brushed the dimpled cleft of her buttocks. Nana presented a new standard of nudity, like a third and, as yet, undiscovered sex. If all women looked like that, I thought, there would be no fashion industry.

Amber teetered precariously in front of me and then, more to keep her balance than for any other reason, abruptly turned her back. I was staring at the backs of her knees, and their delicate tangle of wrinkles and blue veins reminded me of the sturdy, inviolate legs of my first love, who had helped me through the demanding mathematics of third grade. I thought of her name for the first time in twenty years, and for a moment Amber was a child named Lynn Russell.

And then she turned back to face me, keeping her balance in defiance of all the laws of physics. Perspiration trickled down her face, taking vertical lines of mascara with it. Her elegant gloves had slipped down her arms, and I could see the tracks, red and angry-looking sores, that began on the insides of her elbows and reached almost to her wrists. Junkies often search for veins in the wrong direction. Down instead of up, farther from the heart instead of closer. I was watching a dead woman dance.

A shrill yell from the other stage cut through the music, and I turned to see the bearded man grabbing at Nana's legs. She was flat on her back on the stage floor, and he was trying to pull her toward him by the ankles. I was out of my chair and halfway there before I realized I was redundant. An avalanche of white descended on the bearded man, and Tiny literally picked him up by the collar of his shirt. The man struck out awkwardly, and Tiny shook him two or three times, like a terrier killing a rat. The man went slack. Tiny flipped him over, slipped an arm under his knees, and, looking like a parody of Rhett carrying Scarlett upstairs, toted him to the front door and through it. Nana, still flat on her back, had managed somehow to move to the next customer. She didn't look particularly disturbed.

Toby slid into the chair next to me. "Skip it," he said. "No one fools with the girls when Tiny's around. Anyway, Nana's used to it." His voice was controlled, but the muscles around his mouth and eyes were tight. "Having a good time?"

"I haven't had this much fun since I was circumcised."

Pink Floyd petered out, and Nana went around the stage collecting her tips. It looked like quite a wad. Amber had collected from no one but Ahmed and me, and now she sat on the edge of her stage and waited for Nana, her eyes closed. Nana took her arm, helped her to stand, and got her into the dressing room.

Toby drained his glass and signaled for another, holding up two fingers. A different girl, a brunette with spiky hair who looked all of fifteen, took our glasses.

"Toby," I said, "don't you think this is kind of sad?"

"Come off it," he said. "It's a job for the girls, and it's a place for the guys to go. Jesus, look at them. Do you think there's anyone here who could ever see a girl like Nana naked without coming to a place like this? Who's getting hurt?"

The spike haircut showed up with our drinks. Toby reached into his pocket, but the girl waved him off. "It's on Tiny," she said.

"Whoa, Nellie," Toby said. "This is a first. Wait, darling, this is for you." He gave her a ten and put a hand out to me. "The envelope, please."

I passed him the coke, and he palmed it and slipped it to the waitress. "Have a blast," he said. "It's pink. Just save some for the other members of the commune."

As she headed for the ladies' room, the Stones blared from the speakers. Pepper emerged from the dressing room and took the other stage, and Amber, anorexically naked, made the long climb onto ours. At the same time someone pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. I turned to look at Nana.

"Well, lookie who's here," she twanged. "The hero of Malibu." She was carrying a waitress's tray and wearing a sort of spangled bikini that featured her navel. She had a navel an orange would have written home about.

"And I thought you were mad at me," Toby said, grinning.

"Oh, hi, Toby," Nana said. "Are you here?" She turned away from him and looked down at the counter in front of me. "You're tipping Amber twenty bucks? Good for you."

"No one else looks very enthusiastic," I said. "It seemed like the thing to do."

"A romantic," Nana said. "The vanishing American."

"I'm not a romantic?" Toby asked. "Remember Santa Barbara?"

"Santa Barbara was two months and a couple of punches ago. Oh, I forgot. I'm not talking to you." She glanced up at Amber, who looked like someone who was trying to remember how to dance.

There was a silence, if you didn't count the music. Toby fooled around with his watch again and tossed back four ounces of vodka. His face was setting into sullen lines that made him look ten years older.

"Amber?" I said, just to say something. "Why Amber? Amber's not a spice."

Toby remained silent, taking another pull off his drink.

"Jeez," Nana said. "There are only so many spices. She didn't want to be called Garlic."

"What about chamomile?" Toby said, trying to rejoin the conversation. "Or tansy? I've always wondered what tansy was."

"Chamomile's an herb," I said since Nana showed no sign of replying.

"Herb, schmerb," Toby said impatiently. "Who cares? As long as you can eat it."

"Toby just drips class," Nana said to me. "Sometimes we have to mop the floor after he leaves."

"I came here to say I was sorry," Toby said. "But maybe you two would prefer to be alone."

"Honest to God, Toby," Nana said, "do you think you can just punch me out and leave me on the floor and then come back and make kissy-face? What do you think I am, a blow-up doll?"

The Stones faded out as Toby sulked, and Amber crawled around to pick up her tips before going very carefully down the steps and teetering toward the dressing room.

Nana shook her head, watching her. "Maybe six months," she said to herself. She caught me looking at her. "You can't junk like that and expect to collect an old-age pension."

"Nana," Toby said as though it cost him an effort. "I'm sorry." He was staring at his lap. "That's why Simeon and I came here. So I could say I was sorry."

"Sony's a word, Toby. Like caring. Like love, if you'll pardon the expression. When I want words, I'll read a book."

The girl with the spike haircut put her hand on Toby's shoulder and tucked the coke into his shirt pocket. "Terrific, Toby," she said. "You've made my day. Maybe tomorrow, too."

"Great, baby," Toby said. He gave her the grin.

"So your name is Simeon," Nana said, lighting a cigarette and tilting her head up to blow smoke into the air. "I don't think I've ever met anyone named Simeon."

"Swell," Toby said truculently. "A new name. Maybe you want I should leave with a new girl."

"Why not two girls?" Nana said, turning on him. "Why not three? Why should you be a cheapskate your whole life?"

"Fine," Toby said, standing up and pushing his chair back. "See you lovebirds later."

"Where's he going?" I asked, watching him move toward the back of the club.

"He's going to pack his cute little nose," Nana said. "He's fine until about six, and then it's a long downhill slide until midnight. I don't know how his system stands it."

"What about your system?"

"Fooey. Half a load or so every night. Listen, you think I could dance like that straight?"

"What's the hardest thing to do?"

"Smiling," she said. "The hardest thing is smiling. Listen, I haven't said thank you."

"Nana," I said, "Toby really did come here to say he was sorry."

"Too late," she said. "You know, the dumb thing is that he really is sorry. It just doesn't last." She blew some more smoke and looked critically at the coal on her cigarette. "Sooner or later even someone as turkey-stupid as I am has to figure it out."

"Tell me something."

"Let's hear it first."

"How come you look like Madame Butterfly and sound like Tex Ritter?"

She laughed. It wasn't a ladylike laugh. There was no apology for not covering her mouth or for letting her teeth hang in the breeze. It was a laugh that came straight from the belly, without detours. She drummed her feet on the stage by way of emphasis.

"I mean, you're Korean, right?"

"Fifty-fifty," she said, fanning her face. "Whoo, pretty good. But Tex Ritter? God, honey, you must be older than snails."

"Half American," I ventured.

"You know what's an army brat?" she said. She waved the question away. "Aaah, skip it. Daddy's American, Mommy's Korean. Daddy took his gonads to Korea during the war. Hell, there wasn't anywhere he could park them. So he came home with Mommy and me."

"Home to Texas," I said.

"Home to Killeen. Home to wherever they stuck him. And her, and me, by the way. And now I'll ask you one, okay?"

"Shoot."

"What are you doing with Toby?"

"It's a job," I said for what felt like the fiftieth time. "I'm protecting the world from him."

She nodded, thinking it over, and the music kicked in again. A new girl climbed onto the stage, blond and pretty except for a slight postacne moonscape that had been imprinted on her cheeks a couple of years ago, when she was maybe sixteen. Pepper followed, naked from the waist up, and went onto the other stage.

"What kind of a job?" Nana finally said. "What do you do, anyway?"

"I'm a private detective," I said, feeling as foolish as I always did when I told anyone.

She sucked in her cheeks reflectively and nodded again, then looked up as Tiny rippled whitely across the room and disappeared into the dressing room. "Hope Amber's not doping in there," she said. "Tiny will kill her."

"Of course she's doping," I said. "She has to stay up there or she'll fall apart."

Nana patted my hand. "Honey, I know that. And he'd kill himself before he'd kill her. She used to be his girlfriend, and he hasn't got the faintest damn idea what to do about her. He can't fire her because he's afraid she'll kill herself all at once instead of slow, like she's doing now." She glanced over my shoulder and stood up. "Excuse me," she said. "Here comes the Dutch elm disease." She walked to the bar without looking back.

"Somehow," Toby said, sitting, "I don't think a simple apology will suffice." He waved for another drink. "Counting down," he said.

"To what?"

"The climax. Don't you know? Every scene should have three stages, a beginning, middle, and end. You need a climax-we're talking dramatically here-to punch up the end of the scene. Otherwise, things get sloppy." He finished his drink and waved his hands around to demand the refill. "An actor's work is never done."

Miss Spike put the drinks in front of us at the same time that Amber and Saffron emerged from the dressing room in street clothes and headed for the back of the club. Amber's blue jeans were tightly belted, making vast ripples of excess denim gather around her waist.

"What gives?" I asked, watching them.

"Probably a private party," Toby said, inhaling part of his new drink. "You know, bachelor parties and shit. They dance around, take off their clothes, sit on a few laps, and come back to the club a hundred bucks richer. Tiny lets them go when things are slow, like tonight."

Tiny came out of the dressing room and looked angrily in the direction Amber had gone. Shaking his head, he went to the bar and talked to Nana, obviously asking her a question. Nana gave a negative, opening her hands to indicate her lack of information.

"Nana does that, too?" Somehow I didn't like the idea.

"Sure, champ. Who's Nana, anyway, the Virgin Mary? Believe it or not, I am going to make that girl happy with old Toby before we split tonight." He sounded full of cocaine confidence.

"Give it a couple of days," I said.

"It's a challenge. I'll do it if we have to stay here all night."

Tiny came over from the bar and tapped Toby on the shoulder. He still looked upset. "I need a minute," he rumbled.

"Tiny," Toby said, "I can't leave my friend alone in this environment. He might get corrupted."

"That's his problem," Tiny said. "Now, Toby."

"Watch my drink," Toby said to me, getting up to follow Tiny.

I hit my own drink lightly. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night. The record ended, the girls left the stage, and Nana sat down next to me. "Give me a gulp," she said. "Some nights are rougher than others." I watched the fine working of her throat as she swallowed several times. "I think Tiny caught her," she said, lowering the glass. "Whoo, is he mad."

"I don't think I'd get into a fight with Tiny," I said, "if I could borrow somebody else's body."

"Borrow Toby's," she said absently.

"So tell me about the parties."

"What parties?" She lit another cigarette, beating me to the lighter. "Skip it. I got two hands, same as you."

"The private parties, bachelor parties, whatever they are. Wherever Saffron and Amber went tonight."

"There aren't any parties tonight," she said. "They're scheduled days in advance, and it's my turn."

My stomach tightened. "Oh, Jesus," I said. "Oh, Jesus Christ. Hold on a minute, will you?"

I got up, feeling more of the vodka than I had anticipated, and lurched toward the hallway. I opened the door, careened down the hall, and threw the bolts between me and the parking lot. Toby's Maserati was gone.

I stood there like one of Faulkner's idiots, like Big John outside the dressing room, staring slackly at the empty space until I heard someone behind me. Nana put a hand on my arm.

"The son of a bitch," she said. "He's taken both of them."

Toby had engineered his climax.