Hanging Loose (3 page)

“Could I draw you?” I asked.

He looked at me, surprised. “What, now?”

“Whenever you have time,” I replied, already regretting my boldness. I was making a nuisance of myself, I was sure.

Jez glanced at the kitchen clock. “I got half an hour before I need to head out. Is that good?”

“Sure.”

“How do you want to do this?”

“Living room.”

It’s much harder to sit or stand still than most people realize. A seemingly easy pose can become strained after a few minutes. I had Jez lie on the sofa for one pose and stand up for another one. I did quick charcoal sketches. I wished he was nude, but I wasn’t daring enough to ask.

“Okay, you can move,” I said when time was up.

“Oh, thank God. My nose itches.”

“It always does when you can’t scratch it.”

“So, don’t you normally draw people nude?” Jez asked, walking toward his room.

I made a choking sound that he apparently took for a yes. He came out of his room, shrugging into a T-shirt.

“Just ask if you want me to drop trou.” He winked at me, and I felt my face heat up.

He headed out the door but yelled back, “Could you take those cookies over to Arthur? I need to drive up to Silver Lake. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

The door slammed closed behind him.

* * *

Arthur looked unwell, but his watery, pale blue eyes lit up at the sight of the treats. He immediately started chewing on one. He waved me in, and since he didn’t take the plate, I had no choice but to comply. There was a lingering odor of medicine in the air. I noticed a small oxygen tank in the corner. I took a deep breath and tried to smile. I put the plate on the coffee table while Arthur shuffled out to the kitchen. He came back with two glasses of milk. I don’t like milk, except in my coffee, but didn’t want to be rude. I took one of the offered cookies when Arthur dismissed my protestations.

We sat at the coffee table in silence for a minute. I cast around the room to look for a conversation topic. It was packed full of stuff—the debris of a lifetime crammed into a one-bedroom apartment. Along one whole wall were bookshelves crowded not only with books, but with all sorts of objects. The other walls were covered with photographs, many of them obviously publicity shots, headshots—all signed.

I spotted something on a shelf.

“Is that the Golden Sphinx of Cairo?” I gasped.

A wide grin spread out on Arthur’s wrinkled face.

“Yes, it is! I was the set decorator on
The Golden Sphinx
.” He puffed his chest out a little.

“That’s so cool,” I gushed.

I must have just made Arthur’s day, because he lit up like Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on opening night. He walked me to the shelves and let me hold the statuette. It was much lighter than it looked, but of course it wasn’t really made of solid gold. In the film, it was coveted by homicidal men and the equally murderous femme fatale. She was exposed at the end by the gruff private eye who handed her over to the cops despite the crackling sexual tension between them. I sighed. I loved that movie.

Arthur took my sigh of rapture as a prompt to tell me about his other mementos. He prattled on and on, but I didn’t mind; an inexplicable sense of well-being spread through me. He was like an unexpected treasure chest cracked wide open. Arthur’s sickly look faded, and I bet he enjoyed having an attentive audience. Some of his stories—well, a whole bunch of them—were deliciously gossipy. Evidently there was a great deal of naughty business going on in Old Hollywood. I suppose that had never changed. When there was a lull in his narration, I asked him about the photos.

“Did you know all these people?”

“Oh yes, some more intimately than you’d expect.” I swear he winked at me lewdly. It was very strange look on that old face. “Being a set designer isn’t as glamorous as being an actor or director, but I got around,” he went on. “The best thing about not being in the limelight was that people cared far less about your love life, whether you liked men or women. As long as you were discreet enough, they didn’t pay much attention to you. Not that there weren’t plenty of homophobes around, mind you, like that dimwit Cotten.”

“Joseph Cotten?” I risked the guess, since the costar of
Citizen Kane
was the only Cotten I could think of.

“Yeah, him.” Arthur waved his hand dismissively. “I’ve always thought idiots like that were protesting too much. They either had a secret taste for cock or were insecure because they had a small one.”

I definitely turned red. The last thing I expected from an old geezer like Arthur was to have a dirty mouth. He delighted at my mortification and clasped me on the shoulder.

“I wasn’t always old and decrepit, you know. Well, I am now, and all I got is my memories of them to keep me warm.” He gestured at a particular group of photos on the wall. I took a good look at Arthur. He had to be over eighty, had liver spots, wispy white hair, and faded blue eyes. The skin of his face was like old parchment—wrinkled with fine creases. Still, he had very fine bone structure; he had to have been a good-looking man once.

I took a better look at the group of pictures he pointed out. They were photographs of men, young and not so young, in casual poses. In some photos they stood next to the young Arthur, who was indeed quite handsome. Some of the men I recognized; others I didn’t. My eye snagged on one photo: the man in it was sort of handsome, sort of bland, but something about his face looked eerily familiar. Then it clicked.

“Is that—” I choked it out in disbelief. I couldn’t make myself utter the name of that once small-time actor who later became a household name.

“It is indeed!” Arthur chortled gleefully.

“You didn’t! He wasn’t even…” Words abandoned me.

Arthur seemed delighted at my incredulity.

“I sure did, and he was!” He winked at me. “Well, bi, anyway. Oh, he had such a fine ass,” he waxed, not exactly poetically. “I always knew he wouldn’t amount to much. He didn’t have a lick of talent. Comes to show you how little I know.”

I think my world tilted just a bit sideways then, and I saw Arthur in a whole new light. His giddiness, too, started to infect me.

“You’re a dirty old coot!” I said.

Arthur tittered.

Chapter Four

“Oh, you son of a donkey! Work, you bastard!” I cursed, possibly a bit too loud.

Jez poked his head into my room.

“You okay?” he asked, concerned.

“I’m fine. Sorry for the noise. My laptop is dying, I think.”

“You can use mine if you want. It’s almost as old as that one, but it was working last time I checked. Was there anything specific you needed it for?”

“I was just going to Google the nearest DMV office. My boss seems to think I should have a California driver’s license. For some paperwork he has to file, or something.”

“Why didn’t you just ask? It’s not that far. I can drive you over.”

“I don’t want to be a bother. I’m sure I can manage.”

He gave me an exasperated look. “Don’t be a dumb-ass. You’re no bother. Wanna go now?”

“Okay, sure,” I answered, grateful.

* * *

The DMV office was alarmingly busy, but for some strange reason, Jez looked pleased.

“Good. It’s pretty light today. We should be done in a couple of hours,” he declared.

“Light? This? And what do you mean, ‘a couple of hours’?” I sputtered.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” He smirked at me.

“You don’t have to wait with me. I can find my way back,” I said, scanning the crowd.

“Shut up and take a number.”

So I took a number, and we sat down on the uncomfortable plastic chairs. I glanced around and saw a wide variety of people, even a few interesting characters among them. I pulled out my pocket sketchbook and a small pencil I kept in my pocket for just these occasions. Trying to appear inconspicuous, I started to draw the likeness of a Hispanic youth in comically oversize clothes. I did a quick sketch, then turned the page and drew him as a cartoon character, all exaggerated.

“You’re good,” Jez said, peeking over my shoulder.

“I’m decent,” I corrected him.

“Look slowly toward the entrance,” he said, nudging my elbow.

I casually lifted my gaze and shifted it toward the door. A beauty, indeed: a man with the world’s worst comb-over had just walked in. I took him in and started to draw, looking up and taking a few “disinterested” glances in his general direction a few more times till I got him right.

We whittled the waiting time away in this manner for a good while, Jez scoping out my next subject while I sketched. I finally put the sketch pad away when a middle-aged woman with inches-long purple fingernails gave us the evil eye. As the countdown got closer to my number, I dug up my old driver’s license. Jez took it from my hand and inspected it curiously. I expected a comment on the picture, but he handed it back without a word.

“You went to school for this drawing stuff, right?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got a BFA.”

“So if you have a college degree, why are you waiting tables?”

It was a fair question and easy to answer.

“I picked an art major because that was the only thing I was any good at. At first I had a naive idea of becoming a great artist, but then realized I wasn’t that special. I could probably get a job as a designer in an Internet company or some other nine-to-five place, but it’s not my thing. I tried it once, had an internship one summer. I quit after three weeks and went back to roofing.”

“Roofing?”

“Yeah. My stepuncle has a roofing business. Back in Indiana. I used to work for him during summer breaks. It’s hard work, and you sweat like a monkey’s ass, but I’d rather do that than sit in a cubicle all day. It pays pretty well too.”

Jez nodded in agreement. He clearly wasn’t the office type either.

“Waiting tables is fine,” I went on. “I get to see a lot of different people, and I like to observe. The tips are pretty good too where I work now, much better than at that Mexican place in the Valley from before. I also like working part-time and having extra time to do stuff.”

“But there must be something creative out there that you’d enjoy more.”

I thought about that myself now and then, but not very fruitfully. I shrugged.

“Maybe. If there is, I haven’t figured out what.”

At last my number was called. In the end, we got out of the DMV office in a little over an hour with my temporary license. It seemed less with Jez there.

* * *

I’m not exactly a morning person. Jez was. The scent of freshly brewed coffee nudging me awake with the gentleness of a lover meant Jez was home. Quiet, odorless mornings usually signified that he was gone, and there’d be a yellow sticky note stuck to the fridge letting me know when to expect him back and giving instructions regarding Arthur. I preferred coffee-scented mornings. There was something very comforting about knowing he was about.

I found him in the kitchen, mixing batter.

“Good morning,” I said politely.

“Mornin’. You got mail.”

I picked up the official-looking envelope from the table and opened it.

“Oh look, my driver’s license! And it only took three weeks.”

“Perfect timing for your birthday.”

“That’s not till tomorrow… Wait, how did you know?”

“It was on your driver’s license. The old one.”

“Oh.”

It took me by surprise that he’d paid attention in the first place and then remembered. Like it mattered to him.

“When’s
your
birthday?” I asked.

“April twenty-second. Long way off. Anyway, I’m making banana pancakes. What do you want on top? Maple syrup, jam, or whipped cream?”

“How about all three?”

“Now you’re talking!”

Mondays were to me like Sundays to other people since the restaurant was closed. That Monday, we ate our breakfast in the dining room on account of the “special occasion.” When I stood to clear the empty plates away, Jez stopped me.

“Sit down. Stay put. I got something for you.”

He left and came back a few seconds later with a flat, rectangular box.

“Happy birthday! I figure I might as well give it to you a day early.” He put the box in front of me.

Judging from the size, it was probably a large sketchbook. Oversize even. Just in time—the old one was getting full. I opened the box, and my jaw dropped at the sight of the sleek brushed-aluminum case of a laptop.

“You’re crazy!” was my first, uncensored reaction.

“You’re welcome,” Jez said, unruffled.

“I can’t accept it. It’s too much.”

“You won’t last a day in LA with that attitude.” He harrumphed. “It was an impulse buy, if it makes you feel any better. I was walking down Colorado Avenue in Pasadena, and this beauty was sitting in a window. I couldn’t come up with any good excuse to buy it, since I don’t need it for much else than to check the surf reports, but then I remembered your birthday and your struggles the other day.”

“I still can’t take it,” I insisted.

Jez rolled his eyes and looked unhappy. Then he brightened again.

“How about joint custody?”

“What?”

“We keep it in the common areas and both use it as needed. If one of us needs to take it somewhere, we let the other one know. How does that sound?”

I considered it. It sounded very reasonable.

“Okay.”

Jez shifted the laptop to the other end of the table and poured himself some coffee. I helped myself to more pancakes.

“Just remember to label your porn clearly,” he said. “The last thing I need is to innocently click on a video and get an eyeful of lady bits.”

I nearly choked on my coffee. Jez patted my back till I stopped coughing. I still needed to get used to this side of Jez. I was all open-minded in theory, but not used to so much openness in practice. There’d been gay guys in college, at least a couple in the art department, but I hadn’t known them well. Definitely not well enough to talk porn. I felt vaguely embarrassed for being such a hick.

To hide my embarrassment, I started hooking up the laptop. Soon it was ready to go. I fired up the web browser and from memory began to find and bookmark my favorite URLs.