Golden Orange (5 page)

Spoon's navy cap—according to a has-been movie star who left it in the bar during those days when John Wayne was The Golden Orange's greatest living celebrity—was the cap James Cagney wore in
Mister Roberts.
Even though it perfectly fit Spoon, who had a head like a beer keg, twice the size of Cagney's.

It was almost impossible to exaggerate the impact of John Wayne. Everyone knew he didn't
really
win The Big War and settle The West, and yet … And yet as far as Orange County was concerned, the Duke could replace Kennedy and Roosevelt on U.S. coins any old day. But why stop there? Why
not
the Duke on a fifty-dollar bill? In an era when heroes were routinely demolished, his icon hung everywhere. He was clearly the patron saint of The Golden Orange.

There's an annual softball event in a Southland beach city wherein dozens of teams enter a three-day elimination event, mainly just to drink and party. Entrants are encouraged to pick imaginative names for the teams, and crassness is not discouraged. For example, one team composed of police detectives called itself “The Swinging Dicks.” And yet, the
only
caveat insofar as picking a team name is that no entrant can, in any way, denigrate the United States of America, or John Wayne.
That
is how profanity gets defined in
these
parts.

Spoon had acquired his sobriquet back in The Big War because of his incredible ability to rap out the beat of any popular song with a pair of inverted tablespoons. He still won lots of bets by playing identifiable melodies with the rat-a-tat-tat on the hopelessly battered bartop.

“We gonna have to visit you every other Saturday or what?” Spoon finally asked. His voice was a drone, usually. Everyone said Spoon could put you to sleep yelling “Fire!”

“Probation,” said Winnie. “They didn't wanna go and persecute a guy that's served his country and his community as many years as I did.”

Guppy Stover said, “I figured that big spade'd put you on ice, Winnie.”

Which won her a nod from Winnie to Spoon. She chose an Alabama slammer since Winnie was buying. Straight up.

There wasn't much more to talk about. By 9:30
P.M.
Bilge O'Toole's patchy gray hair was standing up in sweaty tufts. He obsessively twisted and pulled it when he was loaded, and the booze had raised his temperature till the veins were popping, not just on his blood-bucket nose but on his chin and dumpling cheeks as well. Another six fingers of Spoon's bar whiskey and they could grow orchids in the clumps protruding from his ears. He had a plaster cast on his wrist, but few even questioned it. The answer was obvious: Drunks fall down.

Bilge was getting weepy,
very
weepy. Winnie hoped that he wouldn't sing “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ra,” but when there wasn't a single sporting event on the big screen TV, anything could happen.

Suddenly Bilge looked at Winnie and said, “I'm getting away from the ocean. I'm moving inland. Maybe out to Riverside or San Bernardino. I'm sick a tasting salt every time I lick my lips.”

“That's from the tequila,” Guppy offered, amazing everyone because she wasn't comatose yet. “You always got tequila salt stuck to your chin. That's what the problem is.”

Bilge said to Winnie, “I knew I'd been around the ocean too long when I saw one a Spoon's cockroaches hanging sixteen on a swizzle stick.”

“I think I'll go home,” Winnie said. “This place is too zany and full a fun. Like an East German embassy.”

“I used to
have
a home,” Guppy offered, tucking half a bale of gray under her red velvet hair ribbon, “before Franklin dumped me for that hog in Honolulu back in forty-five.”

Winnie found a quarter and walked to the old Wurlitzer jukebox in self-defense. He had to choose between Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, Peggy Lee or Bobby Darin. Spoon considered them to be the great saloon singers of our time and was convinced that any song written after the fifties was bad for business. Spoon liked old songs with ocean water in them, like “Red Sails in the Sunset.” Winnie punched Peggy Lee's “Fever.”

When he got back to the bar there was a blonde in an ivory cardigan, with navy blue and ivory striped pants, sitting at the bar. She wore a funnel-necked navy pullover under the cardigan. The outfit looked nautical without any of those corny little anchors.

Winnie tried not to stare. Her boyfriend or husband might be in the John. Another wealthy couple out slumming, probably. He figured her for the old yacht club. She was understated but elegant. Tiny ear studs and a platinum wristwatch with art deco dials, that was it for the jewelry. Not even rings on those long elegant pampered fingers. Not even a wedding ring!

Winnie sipped his brew and looked toward the door to the men's room. One of the painters from the boatyard got up from the bar and staggered in. A minute later he staggered out. Still no boyfriend or husband! She wore those round, no bullshit, yuppie eyeglasses. Winnie
loved
glasses on classy women like this one.

Her hair was the color of melted butterscotch, streaked with golden highlights, like that last halo before sunrise he used to see from his boat when he was bobbing level with the horizon. Before that bitch Tammy took his sloop and anything else with a salvage value.

The woman at the bar might as well have been wrapped in razor wire, she looked so unapproachable. She smoked, and sipped something that looked like an Americano. Winnie knew he was blasted when he heard himself blurt, “I used to have a twenty-nine-foot sloop. She was Danish, a double-ender with a canoe stern. A production boat, glass, but sweet. Once I was sitting in her cockpit at four
A.M.
And … Do you know that water boils at a higher temperature at sea level?”

“I only know about water in my kitchen,” she said. Smiling!

“Anyways,” Winnie continued, “the coffee was very hot. The sun was beyond the curvature of the earth but getting ready to rise at the stern. I put my coffee down and watched this light start at the horizon. And there were these cottonball clouds so heavy you couldn't star-sight. The clouds were so full in that breeze, well, the fan spread and it sorta backlit the clouds. That's the way it
must
a looked before there were continents. The light, it was something like ... it was like the color a your hair. Well, I jist wanted to tell you that.”

She was
really
smiling now, not the way a beautiful woman usually smiles at a drunk. He had lots of experience in such matters. She smiled like she meant it, with those wide vermilion lips of hers!

“My name's Tess Binder.” She held out her hand and he took it. She was strong.

“I'm a sucker for women that shake hands like a man,” he said.

She chuckled. Like wind chimes! She said, “That's flattering. I guess.”

“I don't know why I said all that. I don't know why I told you about the sun backlighting the clouds. It's like when you've seen something like that, you can't take life's other crap too seriously. And I took a lot of it today.”

She was looking him over, but subtly. Still, she
was
looking at him. Winnie was dressed better than usual: a Reyn Spooner aloha shirt designed inside out for that faded look, Levi jeans bleached nearly white, Sperry Top-Siders. Suddenly, he wished he was wearing socks. Were his ankles cruddy?

“Is it something you'd like to talk about?” she asked, causing Winnie to nod to the ever-alert saloonkeeper, who fixed two drinks before they could change their minds.

“I went to court today,” Winnie said.

“And what happened?”

That was strange. She didn't say, “Traffic Court?” or “Divorce Court?” She was looking at him like she
knew.

“I'm the guy that hijacked the ferry,” Winnie said.

“Did he mind?”

“F-E-R-R-Y. The boat.”

Wind chimes again! “I knew what you were talking about,” she confessed. “I get silly when I drink these.”

“You knew? How?”

“I saw your picture in the paper. You're the ferryboat skipper. So what did you get from the judge?”

“You saw my picture? You a reporter?”

“I came here partly because of the article. This is a place I've been wanting to see. Everyone I know's been here once or twice.”

“Probation. I got probation. You read about me, huh?” They were quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Yacht club. You belong to the yacht club, I bet.” He moved his leg until the knee of his jeans was just touching her pants.

“Wrong. The other club.”

He was disappointed. She looked like
old
money. Then she pleased him by saying, “My grandfather was commodore at the yacht club many years ago. I grew up there but I've always
hated
boats. I joined my club because nobody cares about boats. They just own them. Huge ones.”

“Whadda they do at your club?”

She shrugged. “Aerobics class. Dinner sometimes. Lie on the beach. Gossip. Drink.”

He'd never seen a serious drinker order Americanos. Campari reminded him of the cough medicine he got drunk on in Nam when it was all he could get.

“So you read about me and you came here to have a look?”

“I admit I'm curious about you, Mister Farlowe, and …”

“Win.”

“… and you seem an extraordinarily colorful character. I
hoped
I might see you. I like unusual people.”

She hadn't said, “You seemed
like
a colorful character.” She talked the way they did on
Masterpiece Theater
! With an English accent, she could be called Beryl or Elspeth! Winnie felt de-boned. This woman was turning him to jelly. But she'd probably call it jam or marmalade.
Masterpiece Theater!

“Whatever your reason,” Winnie said, “I'm jist glad you came. You look like a Daphne or Sybil, but I like Tess. In fact, I'm crazy about the name.”

Tess Binder took a cigarette from her purse, and Winnie searched the bartop for a match. She lit it with a gold lighter.

Winnie looked apologetically at the wormy ship timbers holding up the oppressively low ceiling. The walls were padded from the floor at least six feet up so the drunks didn't get hurt when they stumbled against (or were knocked against) the bulkheads. A post in the middle of the room was wrapped by three-strand hemp. There were obligatory nautical maps on the walls, and nets, and wooden blocks and ship lanterns. A huge outrigger hung from the ceiling, and someone had stuck a bobble-head doll at the prow. The doll wore an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap.

Life preservers bearing the names of World War II fighting ships hung on the walls, as did an old Mae West, supposedly retrieved from the U.S.S.
Arizona
when Spoon was transported to a hospital after being wounded during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

In short, it was the kind of waterfront saloon where members of yacht clubs might drink or shoot snooker with dory fishermen and boatyard roustabouts. The bumper sticker over the bar alluded to the kind of rogue Republicanism practiced by the Orange County working class. They were pro-choice all right. In fact, they favored free abortions for every welfare mother in the country. The bumper sticker said:
ABORT A FETUS, KILL A DEMOCRAT
.

“What're you going to do now?” Tess asked. “Got another job?”

“Oh, that ferry gig was jist part time. I have a Coast Guard license and they needed somebody during the holidays, so …”

Her teeth were the most perfect he'd ever seen up close. Rich people's teeth. And she had those cheekbones. Did rich women get them the same way they got those teeth? he thought boozily.

“The newspaper said you're an ex-policeman.”

“Medical retirement. Bad back. Fifteen a my best years I gave them.”

“The pension isn't enough to live on, is it?”

“I gotta work. Besides, I
wanna
work. I'm still young.”

“Forty,” she said. “The article was
very
revealing.”

This woman was interested in him! He felt his goddamn pump starting to miss beats again. The scary heart business had started when he was just weeks from facing the hanging judge: two beats off every sixty.

“I think I gotta cut down on my worries,” he said, massaging his chest.

“You feeling okay?”

“The court appearance. It was … stressful.”

He could feel the sweat break out on his forehead. He really
wasn't
feeling that well. Tonight of all nights, when his miserable luck was changing for the better!

“Perhaps you ought to get a good night's sleep,” Tess Binder said, snuffing out her cigarette. “After what you've been through.”

She was leaving! And now his pump was firing on every fourth stroke, and there was a fire in the engine room!

“I like this place,” she said. “I'll be back.” She smiled for the last time and floated away from him. He thought he heard wind chimes as she drifted through the doorway.

Winnie remembered a photo he'd once seen of a blond model with twin Borzois on a double leash: elegant leggy animals with long aristocratic Balkan noses. The dogs looked like Marlene Dietrich, and the woman was like this one. He took a quarter off the bar to play Tony Bennett's version of “Sophisticated Lady.”

A roar went up as Carlos Tuna's turtle, Regis, got cheered on by a small group at the other end of the bar. The reptile had stopped racing and had mounted Bilge O'Toole's Irma. Regis was gasping open-mouthed and struggling to find his way inside Irma's armor plate.

Bilge was in the corner crying in his beer with a rich guy from Bay Island who
never
should have said, “What's wrong tonight, Bilge?”

Bilge didn't know about the ravishing of Irma until the cheering started. When he saw it he roared like a sea lion, and Spoon had to scramble over the bar to break up a brawl.

Winnie got up, staggered to the men's room, splashed cold water on his face, but felt no better. By the time he got back to the stool, Bilge was drinking alone, twisting his patchy hair into dreadlocks, wailing, “You okay, Irma?” to the turtle, who was sound asleep in a puddle of spilled beer.