Alice looked sheepish. “I haven’t been here since my marriage.” She looked around. “I didn’t really want to come here. Ethan and Tony don’t want me here…”
Lorena broke in. “Look here, Alice. I own half of this place. You’re my good friend.” Then she laughed. “As I say, the food and drinks are free.”
But I noticed Alice looking around, uncomfortable. The apple-dumpling widow of Lenny Pannis, accused of murder by Ethan and Tony, now back behind enemy lines.
Anyone looking for paradise would not locate it in that dimly lit dining room with red-and-white checkered tablecloths on wobbly tables, circled by wrought-iron ice-cream parlor chairs. A line of booths hugged the kitchen wall. At the back an old walnut-stained bar with red-leather-and-chrome stools. As we settled in, a burly waiter placed a bud vase on each table. Each one contained a white carnation tied with a red ribbon. A red wicker-covered bottle held a lit candle.
The Paradise Bar amp; Grill was one step up from the Automat. Archie and Veronica holding hands over a New York strip steak, medium rare. Which, of course, was what I ordered, and it was surprisingly good-toothsome, robust, tender, though served with canned green peas and onions, alongside a baked potato unnaturally titanic, stuffed with chives and slathered in sour cream. Alice, I noticed, barely picked at her grilled Catalina swordfish. Lorena ordered an avocado salad, the turkey club, and a pitcher of martinis.
Lorena had brought five clippings of Louella’s nasty column. She bubbled over, and in seconds she had Alice and me laughing, though I’d resisted. Last night’s melee at the Beachcomber still upset me…Max’s bloody jaw and Frank’s feral eyes. Lorena glibly termed it the “Mai tai Massacre.” A natural mimic, she assumed a haughty, imperious tone last heard, I supposed, from the throat of stuffy Margaret Dumont in the Marx brothers’ films. She arched her back, trilled her r’s, imagined a pince-nez slipping off an aggressive Roman nose, and oozed condescension. I laughed like a schoolgirl on holiday.
Yes, Lorena kept saying, she felt sorry for the poor bruised Max. Yes, as she patted Alice’s wrist, she was happy he was on the mend, luckily nothing broken, just an ego sorely compromised, a man who now insisted it (and everyone) go away.
“Thank God Max can’t hear us carrying on,” Alice said. Then, smiling, she mimicked Max with affection: “‘Please leave me alone to lick my wounds.’”
Lorena raised her voice. “Poor Louella. Tsk, tsk. It was all very sad for her to witness. Wasn’t Frank Sinatra a downright thug and a bounder? She worked herself into a Victorian lather over the blood-splattered white napkin-‘An affront to the refined Polynesian eatery, an elegant watering hole.’” Lorena’s voice cracked, and we all erupted into gales of silly hilarity.
She’d underlined the particularly enlightening phrases and insisted on reading aloud. “She saved the coup de grace for the last paragraph,” Lorena added, even though I’d already read the tripe more times than I cared to acknowledge. In her Margaret Dumont operatic singsong, “‘I had to witness this travesty. I’m used to sophisticated dining, with candlelight and crystal, not gladiator bloodletting and profane language. Dear Reader, I now draw a discreet Edwardian curtain over that crude farce.’” Lorena raised a glass. “To Louella, the best show in town.”
Alice bit her lip and confided in a low tone, “You know, Frank carries a gun on him.”
A chill swept up my spine. “What?”
“It’s hidden.”
“But why?”
“Ava told me.”
“But he sometimes travels with a bodyguard.” I thought of the gentle giant I’d met, the dapper thug in a double-breasted suit, gun hidden.
“Yeah, that same bodyguard threatened to kill a photographer unless he handed over the film in his camera. But Frank likes his own gun. No one knows.”
I whispered. “Has he ever used it?”
Alice shrugged. “He’s shot it off a few times. He likes to play cowboy. Once, in New York, when he and Ava battled, he called Ava to say he was killing himself, and then fired two shots into a mattress, holding the phone close. She came running, hysterical. And in Indio, outside L.A., Frank and Ava, both drunk as skunks, shot up the town’s streetlights with two.38 caliber Smith amp; Wessons, his guns, and…Frank grazed this man and…”
I raised my hand. “Enough. No more. This is frontier out here, no man’s land. Barbaric.”
“Welcome to the wild west, Edna,” Lorena quipped.
I looked at Alice. “So Max is all right?”
“Right now he’s sleeping like a baby. What the doctor ordered.”
“Poor Max.” But I smiled. Poor Max, that performance so out of character last night. Well, a man who could still surprise me.
“He should never have kissed Ava,” Alice whispered. Then she grinned. “I didn’t like the drinking, of course, but I’ve never seen him so…frivolous, flirtatious. It was…delightful. Until the end.”
Lorena chuckled. “I used to hope Ethan would do something spontaneous. During the three years of our fragmented marriage, even his husbandly kisses seemed measured out, charted on a military map. It was maddening. A drunk with a slide rule.” She leaned into Alice. “I didn’t tell you that I called your home a little while ago. To make sure you were coming.”
“I decided to walk over.” Alice looked perplexed. “Max answered?”
“Yes, but he said he was feeling queasy and was headed for bed. He said you’d just left.” A pause. “He told me something interesting. He mentioned that he’d heard through the grapevine that Tony lost his stand-up job at Poncho’s. Lord, I just heard about it late last night. Ethan called me. But just like Max to worry about others! He told me he’ll get Tony a job.”
“Sounds like Max,” Alice said. “Turn the other cheek. Did you tell Tony?”
Lorena nodded. “I was calling just as Ethan and Tony came in. Ethan whispered to me that Tony started drinking early this afternoon-he’s so depressed. When I told Tony about Max’s kindness, he refused to believe it-said Max was playing a game. Imagine! God, you can’t please him. But a few minutes later I saw Tony on the phone, so I thought he was calling Max. No, he told me when he hung up, he was calling Liz to tell her what Max was up to.”
“How did she react?”
“She wasn’t home, which bothered him. Ethan told me-‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘He’ll only lose that one, too.’”
Alice looked pleased. “Max’ll do what he says.”
“Ethan is right-Tony will lose another job.” Lorena tilted her head to the side. “You know, Max didn’t hang on the phone. He said someone was knocking at the door.”
Alice looked worried. “What? He wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“He thought it might be his doctor.”
Alice glanced toward the pay phone near the entrance. “Well, maybe…”
“It’s all right, Alice,” Lorena assured her. “He’s probably asleep now.” She pointed across the room. “Well, speak of the devil-may-care. The co-owner of Paradise. Adam is here…with, of course, the sequined snake.”
We watched Ethan and Tony Pannis walk in from the kitchen, settle into the corner booth near the kitchen. Ethan spotted us, nodded formally to me, but avoided looking at Alice. He purposely turned his back on us. Tony seemed lost in his own world, leaning into his brother and blubbering about something.
Lorena whispered a little too loudly. “I feel for Ethan, frankly. This is gonna be a long evening, I mean, with Tony/Tiny fired from that club. He’s already soused. It was just a matter of time. Lately he’s only been filling in a couple nights a week. He’s lost his steam, really. That, and the fact that he is just not funny.”
Alice fidgeted. “Ethan is not happy I’m here, Lorena.”
Lorena lit a cigarette and blew sloppy rings in the air. “Who cares? You’re my friend. He’s begrudgingly accepted that fact.”