“Gee, Sherri, I don’t know. I’d like to go, but I wonder if it’s a good idea.”
She shrugged. “What are you worried about?”
“Is this because I gave you that bonus last night?”
“You mean do I feel like I have to be nice to you because you gave me money? No.”
“I didn’t give it to you because of something I wanted you to do. It was for things you’d already done. Good work, I mean. And being a cheerful person.”
“It meant something to me to know you were paying attention to me. You noticed that I was working my ass off for the tips, and you knew that I had a few bills I was worried about, because I’d bought some things that I really couldn’t afford unless everything went perfect. And it doesn’t. It never fucking goes perfect for long. And I was in one of those bad times last night.”
“So you’re trying to pay me back.”
“I’m not doing that. I realized that I had a friend, and it felt good. You looked down tonight, so I’m just trying to show that you have one too.”
“Sherri, I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll admit it. I’m having one of those nights when I don’t feel like being alone.”
“I could see that. I know you’re thinking about what you lose if you come over. Unless you’ve got a better-looking girl waiting in your car, you’ll lose nothing. Nobody will know, and I won’t remind you of it later. Just come over, and we’ll talk and have a drink, and relax a little. No promises, no pressure.”
“Thanks, Sherri. You want to ride with me?”
“No, thanks. I need my car tomorrow. You follow me. If you get lost, it’s 3907 Willow Oak Avenue in Sherman Oaks. Can you find it?”
“Off Moorpark. Right?”
“That’s it.”
“3907.”
She slid off the desktop and walked to the door. As she passed him, she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, but he wasn’t sure how to interpret the glance. “See you in a few minutes.”
“Right.”
Kapak couldn’t help watching her as she went out. In the tight waitress uniform with the long stockings, she still looked good enough to attract the wistful eyes of the young customers. He wondered whether he was just making a fool of himself. He turned off the lights, locked the door, and went out through the club. He stepped behind the bar, surveyed the shelves in front of the long mirror, and picked up a bottle of Hennessy’s cognac. He looked at it, put it back, and then reached up to a higher shelf and took an unopened bottle of rare Armagnac that cost over three hundred dollars, took the bartender’s pad, and wrote on it, “I took one bottle Armagnac. Kapak.” He was careful to put a big diagonal line below the name, so nobody later could write in “and a case of Dom Perignon” or something. He walked out with the last security man and watched him lock up before he got into his car.
Driving in the Valley at night was almost automatic for Kapak. He’d had various enterprises all over the more commercial parts of it, and he knew his way around. He arrived on Willow Oak just behind Sherri’s Volvo. He watched her pull it in the driveway and into a garage, then close the garage and lock it.
He watched her walk up an exterior staircase to the upper floor on the left side of a double duplex, then switch on a light. Then he took his bottle and followed. He had been thinking about Sherri all the way here and wondering. He reached the top of the stairs and found the door open an inch, so he pushed it inward and stepped inside.
Just as he was closing the door, she entered the kitchen. “You didn’t have to bring your own bottle. I have some things here to serve a guest.”
He held his hands out to his sides in a helpless gesture. “After two A.M. it’s hard to find fresh flowers.”
She smiled and shook her head to herself, then stood on her toes and reached up to a cabinet and took down two small aperitif glasses. “I don’t have snifters.” He uncorked the bottle and poured an inch for each of them. She lifted hers to the light. “It’s pretty, like amber.”
He sniffed his. “Salud.”
She sipped hers. “That’s nice. Come sit down.”
He brought the bottle and followed her into the small living room, set it on the coffee table, and sat beside her on the couch that faced the dark television screen.
“Thanks for inviting me over. Sometimes being the boss gets a little lonely. People get uncomfortable around you.”
“I didn’t think I’d get you to come. I’ve heard the women you went home with were much younger.”
He brushed the thought away. “How old are you?”
“How old? Who tells men how old they are?”
“I’m sixty-three.” He wasn’t sure why he had shaved one year off.
She took a bigger sip of her drink. “Forty-one.” She watched him with intense, furtive eyes like a small, distrustful animal.
“That wasn’t so hard. You’re twenty-two years younger than me, and you look terrific. You’ve got a sexy, healthy, woman’s body and a beautiful face. Be happy about who you are.”
“Men like younger women, like the dancers at the club.”
“Everything looks different from different spots. From where I am you’re young—in your prime right now. Most of the dancers could be my granddaughters. I look at the dancers sometimes, just to see how they’re doing—are they pretty enough? Is what they’re doing the right thing to keep the customers coming in the door? If it’s yes, then I start watching the bartenders.” He chuckled. “And the waitresses.”
She nodded. “I’ve seen you do it.”
“Too bad. I wasn’t always so clumsy that women knew I was staring at them.”
“That’s part of being the boss. You lose your fear that people notice what you do.” She pointed at the bottle on the coffee table. “That’s magical stuff.”
“Why? Does it make me look good to you?”
“No, it makes me look good to me again. I just noticed my reflection in the dark window, and I liked it.” She turned to look at him. “You just look the way you are.”
“How?”
“Strong.”
“Are you divorced?”
“You don’t see him here, do you?”
“And you’ve been happier since then?”
“I’ve lived alone in places like this and gone to work and come home again. After a year or so, I started to think it would have been better if I had pretended not to know about the girl, and not divorced him. By then I was serving alcohol in little costumes like this one. I had learned a lot that I didn’t know about normal male behavior. It occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t as bad as I’d thought he was. Fortunately it was too late to go back, so I saved my pride.” She sipped. “How about you?”
“She came from Romania to Hungary like I did when we were students. Eventually we came here. We had two kids here, and I thought things were working out, but I got caught doing something foolish and went to jail for about a year. She went with somebody else.” He gulped his drink and refilled his glass, then hers.
“That’s sad.”
“Pay your taxes. That’s how they got me.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant her.”
“It was a long time ago.” Kapak leaned close to Sherri and waited to see whether she would turn away and make it clear they were just having a drink together or if she would turn toward him to indicate she wanted him to kiss her.
She turned her face toward him, lowered her right shoulder to bring her the rest of the way around, and their lips touched in a gentle kiss. After a moment he was ready to let her pull back and end it, but she didn’t. She put her arms around his neck and prolonged the kiss for a minute, and then pulled back only a few inches so she could see him. “You’re sweet.”