She did not draw her hand away, but her eyes went across the room to Elizabeth Targ. “You were needling Earl.” She nodded in Elizabeth’s direction. “You know her?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
The girl looked at Tommy, shook her head. She walked off, leaving Tommy alone.
Tommy stood for a moment, holding his glass. Trent and Faraday were out on the terrace. Flo Randall had left him. Elizabeth Targ seemed to be carrying on an animated conversation with a short, heavy-set man in a loud sport coat. Tommy’s vision was more than a little hazy from the drinks he had tossed off so rapidly. He felt uncomfortably warm and more than a little nauseated. He’d mixed it with the other kind and he had not come off too well. But he had a twenty dollar bill in his pocket, no, a twenty and a ten, which was more money than he was accustomed to having so late in the week.
He decided to call it an evening, and setting his glass down on a mahogany end table where it would leave a nice ring he started across the room to the bedroom, passing within two feet of Elizabeth Targ, who was completely oblivious of him.
In the bedroom he found his tool kit where he had left it and picking it up went back into the living room. No one spoke to him, no one seemed to notice him. He opened the hall door, stepped out and closed it again. He went down the corridor, turned left and after a moment reached the elevator.
It was down on the first floor and he pushed the button to summon it up to the fifth. He heard the machine whine its tedious way upwards. Finally the light appeared in the elevator door. He opened the outer metal-sheathed door and was reaching in to pull open the inner door when a voice behind him called: “Hold it.” He looked over his shoulder. Elizabeth Targ, carrying her mink coat so that it dragged on the dingy carpet, was coming toward the elevator.
Chapter Four
He held open the elevator doors for her and she entered without looking at him. He stepped in after her, let the doors swing shut and pushed the pearl button for 1. The elevator groaned and whined and began descending and Tommy, tingling in every nerve of his body, shot a surreptitious glance at Elizabeth Targ.
She was looking at the closed door, her mind elsewhere — in Trent’s apartment, no doubt.
Tommy thought: We’re all alone here in this little elevator. I wonder what d happen if I just grabbed her — and kissed her? What would she do? He answered the questions: She’s not the yelling kind and I don’t think she’d slap me or try to scratch my face. She’d probably just stiffen and not do a thing. Which, Tommy decided, would be worse than active resistance. Yet he still toyed with the idea. Of course he’d never see her again after now, but he could think about her for a long time.
Then suddenly she was looking into his eyes, coolly, impersonally and Tommy’s hand came up automatically. It stopped in mid-air. She did not even seem to notice.
The elevator came to a stop at the lobby floor and Tommy, with an inaudible curse, reached past her and opened the inner door. He held it with one hand and with the other pushed open the outer. Elizabeth stepped out of the elevator into the lobby without even a nod of thanks. He followed her through the lobby and again held the street door.
Out on the sidewalk he said: “I’m sorry, I can’t give you a lift. I came here in Trent’s car. Mine is over on Melrose.”
“That’s all right, I’ve got my own car here.”
She took a step, stopped and turned. “Maybe I can give you a lift.”
“It’s all right, I can walk down to the Boulevard.”
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “My car’s right here.”
Tommy had already seen it, the yellow Cadillac convertible. She walked to it, got in on the curb side and closing the door remained seated on the right.
Tommy came up and she said: “I don’t feel like driving.”
He walked around, got in behind the wheel and saw that the brass key he had made for her the night before was in the ignition lock. He turned it. “This is the way you lost your keys last night.” He stepped on the starter, released the emergency brake and worked the car out into the street, making a sharp U-turn. He applied the brake as the car coasted down the hill to the next block where the street leveled off.
At Hollywood Boulevard he tooled the car toward the curb. “I can get a bus here.”
“Keep driving.”
“Where to?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Anywhere.”
He turned right on Hollywood Boulevard, thought better of it and at Cherokee turned left and again at Sunset Boulevard. At Cahuenga lie had to wait for the light, but when it became green, he turned the car right and sent it rolling toward Melrose. On Melrose he drove until he spied his own jalopy parked near the bowling alley. He pulled the Cadillac to the curb and shut off the ignition.
“What are you stopping here for?” Elizabeth asked.
“My car’s across the street.”
She looked at the bowling alley. “Can we get a drink in there?”
“Only beer.” He turned on the ignition again. “There’s a place over on La Brea.”
He waited a moment but when she did not speak again he stepped on the starter and worked the car out into traffic. Five minutes later he parked on La Brea and, climbing out of the car, walked around to the curb. He opened the door for her and she got out.
The Saigon Spa had bamboo on the outside and plenty of it on the inside. The waiters were Filipinos in Malayan costumes. The place was very dark, the tiniest of yellow electric light bulbs lighting up the individual booths. Rum drinks were a specialty of the house, but Tommy still felt the drinks from Willis Trent’s party and ordered bourbon and water for himself and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, however, countermanded her own order and asked for a Demerara Dry Float.
“Pretty potent,” Tommy observed.
“The idea’s to get drunk, isn’t it?” Elizabeth retorted.
Tommy shrugged. “Suits me.”
Elizabeth looked at him sharply. “Actually you don’t want to get drunk at all, but you’d like to get me drunk, wouldn’t you?”
“You said that, not me.”
The waiter came with the drinks and Elizabeth tasted her heavy rum drink. She made a wry face. “Tastes like molasses.” She raised the glass. “How!”
Tommy drank half of his bourbon.
Elizabeth put down her glass. “Silly, isn’t it?”
Tommy was deliberately dense. “The drink?”
Being here like this. She laughed shortly. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Tommy Dancer.”
She repeated the name. “Tommy Dancer. Mine’s Elizabeth Targ.”
“I got it off the wheel of your car last night.”
“You remembered it?”
“I wanted to remember it.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Why?”
“Maybe because you gave me tire half dollar.”
She grimaced a little at that. “Stupid of me, wasn’t it?”
“I’m satisfied.”
“You’re satisfied with what?”
“Being here with you.”
She drank some more of the rum concoction and leaned back in her seat. She regarded him thoughtfully for a long moment. “Just what do you think of me, Tommy Dancer?”
Tommy’s eyes surveyed the table for a moment, then suddenly he raised them. “I think you’ve had a fight with Earl Faraday and—”
“Earl Faraday!” she cried.
“I’m not exactly blind.”
“Earl Faraday,” she repeated in a low tense tone. “If he were here right now I’d throw this glass in his face.”
“Sure,” said Tommy, “you probably would at that. And if Flo Randall were also here you’d pull out her hair or scratch her face.”
“Let’s get out of here!” she exclaimed and got to her feet.