“I did well,” I said, sipping my wine. “I was valedictorian. I played flute in the marching band.”
“And then you decided to act. At… Champaign-Urbana? Or was it Lawrence, Kansas?”
It was Lincoln, but I didn’t need to confirm a run of insight that was now getting eerie.
“And now you’re here to break into the big time. How’s the climb to fame going?”
“It seems they tore Schwab’s down awhile back, but nobody told me.”
“Naturally, you take class. Boyd Stocker?”
“Chris Valente.”
“Ballet at 3rd Street-”
“Tap.”
That made him smile. I smiled too. I knew it was stupid but I really liked tap, it reminded me of old Busby Berkeley movies.
“You’ve come close,” he said, “but so far, the star never broke her ankle.”
Asshole. “Actually, I had a feature.”
“Never released.”
How could he know these things? Well, of course, if the feature had been released, I wouldn’t be slinging pasta at Orzo. Not that I’d have any money, but I wouldn’t want people to see me working for a living.
“There was a problem with the funding.”
He drew his finger across the condensation on his glass. “These things happen. But you’ll catch on. You’ve got something, a certain sense of authority. People watch you. All you have to do is soften up a little. You’re all barbed wire.”
Chris Valente said the same thing. Show your vulnerability, Holly. It just made me want to slug him. I lost my vulnerability a long time ago. Along with my innocence. Or so I thought then. “Maybe I’ve got a corral to fence.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. You just want to layer, hold it in reserve, until it’s time to show it.” He looked down the bar to where the bartender, a blond boy with shaggy hair in a tight black shirt, stood laughing with an older man. “Miles, I’ll have another Jack Daniel’s, if I may.”
The bartender came down and took Richard’s glass, giving him a sweep of blond eyelash.
“So why don’t you act anymore?” I asked. Seeing if I could play the clairvoyant too.
He turned toward me, propped his head on his hand. He looked at me very directly, and I felt the full force of his personality in those eyes, that mocking mouth. “What is the attraction of acting? Seeing where our personalities line up with those of fictional characters? Infusing them with the stuff of life? But the day comes when one’s own personality is more interesting than those one is paid to animate.”
Miles handed him his new drink. Richard made me wait while he took a sip. Controlling the silences. God, he was good. What a shame he’d stopped acting.
“So what do you do now?” I said. “Unemployment?”
“Write. Coach. A number of things. Mostly I study the human condition.” He paused a beat. “I saw something in you tonight, Holly. Something I’ve been looking for.”
I smiled inwardly. He was too old for me and bald to boot, but he fascinated me, with his slightly gay gestures that contrasted with the bright brown wolfishness of his eyes, the flat wide mouth playing with its private joke. I itched to know that joke.
“Do you like animals, Holly?”
Just when I thought I knew what he was talking about. “Animals? You’re kidding.”
“I have a little problem,” he said, steepling his long fingers with hair on their backs. “Can I be frank for a moment?”
I had the feeling that he couldn’t be frank on his own deathbed.
“I found a dog. And I need to return it,” he said.
“So why don’t you?”
He moved his wide mouth around, pursing the lips, pushing them from side to side. “It’s not that simple. The dog belongs to Mariah McKay. Do you know who that is?”
An actress from the ’70s, sexy, sort of a dark Kathleen Turner.
“I found it on Los Feliz Boulevard. One of those little greyhounds. I saw the name and address on the tags, and was about to return it, but then I wondered, what if they think I stole it?” He opened his eyes wide, to show how innocent he was. “A problem, don’t you think?”
“Only if you want a reward. Otherwise just be a good neighbor.” A shitty little scam. I had to laugh.
He smiled. He knew I knew he was full of it. I was liking him more and more. “But I’m not such a good neighbor, Holly. I really do want the money.” A fucking petty crook. I finally meet a guy in L.A. who is actually interested me, and he’s into some shitass doggie scam. “It’s probably good for a couple hundred. If you found a hundred dollars lying in the street, would you give it back?”
I looked at us in the bar mirror-Richard with his dark, sharp-peaked eyebrows, and me with my pale face and pointed chin, my dark curls caught up in a ribbon band. And I knew we were the same. That’s why he recognized me. I smiled. “I’ll let you know when I pawn my Girl Scout patches.”
The McKay place was off Commonwealth, up in the hills, a Spanish mansion that had seen happier days. In the morning light, you could see the paint peeling off the pink stucco. I parked down the hill and made like I was jogging. The little greyhound had a tag that said, Gilbert, with an address and phone number, but nowhere did it say he belonged to Mariah McKay. Richard’s story stunk, but so what. He fucked like an angel, and I could use a hundred bucks.
Wearing my track pants and U of Nebraska sweatshirt, holding onto the shred of rah rah Americana I could remember, the marching band at halftime on a November Saturday, I jogged up the steep hill in the cold December damp. The little dog easily kept pace with me. It was about 11:00, nobody around but a couple of mow and blow gardeners. When we got to the house, I pocketed the leash and held the dog in my arms. I rang, then knocked. Making sure my barbed wire was tucked out of sight.
A little window in the door opened. “Yes?”
I figured the maid. “Yes, excuse me. I was running down on Wayne and I found a dog…?”
The door opened. It wasn’t the maid. It was a darkhaired, older woman with the odd puffy lips of an actress who’d had work done, and she held her arms out to the little dog, who jumped into them. She kissed that narrow, hard head. “Where the hell have you been, mister? You’ve had me worried sick.” She smiled at me. “Please, come in.”
Though it was high noon, the living room was dark and smelled of mold. A row of red theater chairs sat against one wall instead of a couch. A TV, squatting on a wire cart, played a soap opera. If she’d made money in the ’70s, she hadn’t hung onto it. She put the dog down and he skittered out of the living room, probably toward the kitchen and his bowl. I gave up on a reward. She could probably cough up a twenty, but no way was Richard seeing any three C’s. Couldn’t he have stolen a richer woman’s dog?
“I can’t thank you enough.” Mariah extended her hand, large, the back grown ropy with age. Her famous voice was throaty as ever. “Damn dog got out of the yard. I can’t find the hole either.” She took a pack of cigarettes from a pocket in her goat-hair sweater, lit one, coughed. “What’s your name, baby?”
“Holly,” I said.
“Very Christmasy. I was just making some coffee, Holly, want some?”
Should I tell her I’d seen her movies? “Yeah, that’d be great.”
She shuffled in her mirrored Indian slippers back the way the dog had gone, and I followed her without an invitation. There was a dining room up some steps, the long dark Spanish table covered with mail and piles of junk, and then into the kitchen painted salmon with black trim, a Deco feel. The sink was full of dishes. She put a battered blue enamel kettle on the stove and ground some coffee in a small grinder. No maid, no help. The whole thing was pathetic beyond words.
“Have you lived here a long time?” that high school flute player asked.