Our Town (11 page)

“Wake up, Clover. I’m tired of you always complaining, too. You can’t help me out with Dylan ever? He just does whatever he wants. Wake up. Wake up, and grow up. I can’t take much more of you, either. Neither of you!”

Dorothy walked through the narrow, picture-lined hallway to her bedroom. She opened the door, stepped two steps to her bedside table, picked up the spring-loaded, dancing hula-girl figurine—dancing in her hand as she surfed through the air—and grabbed up a small copper key. She put the figurine down. She also noticed a rolled-up twenty, which likely meant she had a line left over. She picked up a newspaper—the arts section, the
Calabasas Beetle
—and there she was. She put out her cigarette in the ten-gallon hat ashtray—the one she got in Big Sur. At times she could be sentimental—then she rolled the
twenty tighter and took the line—half up her right nostril, half her left—then she went back out the door and closed it behind her and locked it. She’d lock it from now on, forever. Her hand was oily from the doorknob—freshly greased—and she rubbed her palms together. As she walked to the kitchen, she outstretched her arms and spread out her fingers. They grazed the white walls to the left and right of her. And she painted the walls with the grease from her fingers like the flame decals on a muscle car. She got to the kitchen and stared into her toaster reflection and smiled and then reached up and squeezed her wig down. And she was okay. A hopeful disposition. But then Seth banged in through the door.

“Seth, I need your help, baby. Sethy, I need your help. I need you.”

He walked by her and went to the fridge. He stood—staring—awhile, then looked at her over the icebox door with a large pretzel in his mouth. He must’ve come in with it. Maybe his daddy’d bought them for the crew. Seth called Dorothy “Mama” because it turned him on. His actual mother wore stockings and was gray and was a paralegal. He held an orange juice carton in one hand and dropped the cap on the floor. In the other was a stalk of celery. A seemingly odd combination of food.

“What?” He exchanged the pretzel in his mouth for the celery. He crunched the stalk.

“I need you to go get Dylan. I can’t do it right now. I need you to go get him. He’s done it to me this time, for cryin’ out loud!” Her nose was runny so she wiped it with her thumb. “How am I supposed to live with kids like these? You tell me. And stay pretty for you, too. I’m tryin’ to stay pretty for you!” She stomped her foot on the ground. “You get him. Maybe you can show him. Maybe that way he won’t do it again. He’s a brat. He’s a brat. Just like his father. That fag.”

“What’d he do, now?” he asked, still chewing.

“He used my perfume to kill some bugs in the yard or something. Perfume that I’d bought in New York that they don’t sell here. Real one-of-a-kind stuff! Can you believe it? He went into my room and stole my things.
My
fucking things. He used my expensive perfume to kill fucking bugs. Bugs!”

“All right. I’ll do it,” Seth said, putting down his food and jokingly saluting her. “Whatever you say, boss,” he laughed.

“It’s not funny,” she screamed. “Do it! Now! While he still stinks, so he remembers.”

“In a sec.” He picked up the OJ and took another swig.

“No. Now. It needs to be now.”

“In a sec. I’ll do it in a sec. Jesus. Let me eat a little.”

“No, goddamn it.” She ran up to him and pushed him in the chest.

“Jesus, Dorothy.” He stumbled back and dropped the carton. “Fine. Fine. I’m going. You clean that shit up.” Luckily for her all the juice was already drunk.

He took a bite off his pretzel then dropped it next to the juice carton on the floor so it rested against its paper side. He continued chewing as he walked to the kids’ room.

“Don’t forget to get a switch,” Dorothy chirped.

“Oh. Right,” he said, and turned around and went to pick a branch from the fir.

CALL ON ME. I’LL BE THERE ALWAYS.

D
ale was also competitive. When the kids visited from their mother’s, he’d often garnish them with presents, not because he thought them things they might enjoy—he didn’t even know what the gifts were much of the time, gifting the buying responsibilities to his personal assistant—but he liked to win, and in this instance he wanted his children to prefer his house to hers. And they did eventually. They had fun when they were there—when he wanted to win, that is. And when he eventually did win, when they no longer wanted to go back to their mother’s, most of that fun stopped. Because he was just being competitive. He only just wanted to win.

This competitive nature—his edge, most likely how he became successful—applied to other aspects of his life as well. His dealings with women, for example, since Dorothy, had become rather extreme in nature. More extreme than one-night stands. His ability to get off became contingent on his ability to have stolen a woman—a variety of different hers and shes—from someone else, and the closer he was to the situation, the more exciting he found it to be. In other words, he only liked fucking his good friends’ girlfriends. Or wives. Especially wives. And so his friendships didn’t last long. But when you’re famous it’s easy to make new friends. That’s what they say, anyway.

He used to joke that, while he looked at himself in the mirror, before he left for the night, he had to go “find his pups a new mother.” And then he’d wink at himself, and smile, real devilish, knowing that in fact quite the opposite was true.

Tonight, Dale was meeting with a friend. A new friend and that new friend’s new girlfriend. A friend who didn’t yet know better than to keep his new girlfriends away from Dale. A friend who still trusted him. They were to meet for dinner and then perhaps go dancing. Dancing was Dale’s idea. He knew some people. People that worked at night. The night’s more important than anything. But you already know that.

Dinner went fine. It was somewhere that didn’t matter. Dinner didn’t matter. Never did. Afterward, they’d go to Downstairs at the Upstairs, which was a tough door. They walked past the line at Downstairs, as it was called, and past the door guy—“Hey, Rob,” Dale waved. “Kells!” Rob answered. “Just you three?” and he showed them around the ropes. Dale ducked—the door not seemingly befit for tall drinks—ducked and waited for the others to enter before he shepherded them along. The hallway was dark, brick—a catacomb—and candles were the only light. The walls inherited the music, which you could not only hear, but feel, as you made your way “downstairs.” They arrived—the couple before Dale—to the light at the end of the tunnel. They looked down a naked flight of stairs to a beach of dancers—each body compressed to another, grains of connected, kinetic sand—and the couple smiled at each other and then they took their first step toward the sea. But Dale grabbed them by the shoulders and held them there still. “No, no, no,” the imp smiled. “That’s for everybody else. We keep going.” And he cocked his head and winked, pressing his hand too hard against his male friend’s shoulder, and pulling his female friend along. As they continued to walk, Dale, now leading, moved past the bathroom and, to its left, stepped toward a small door, painted black, with a black doorknob, so as to blend into the dark, black wall. If one didn’t know better—wink—one might think this was a utility closet. Just simply a place for mops. But no, it seems, as Dale reached into his pocket with one hand and pointed up to a sign—block print letters
etched into plastic, no different from a company nametag—with the other.
The Upstairs
, it read. Dale removed a small black key from his pocket. He turned the handle and pushed the door, and they heard music—different music than before. Better. His friends’ eyes widened as Dale held the door open for them, and when they stood frozen, Dale quit waiting and pushed them through. A long bar edged along one side of the rectangular room, and a few booths lined the right wall. The scattered few that had made it all smoked—weed if they wanted. Whatever they wanted. A blonde in a backless white leather suit and luscious figure was tending bar. She nodded to Dale as she wiped down a flute with a dishrag.

“Hey, Daddy,” she said to Dale.

“What’s up, gorgeous?” he replied. He was fucking her. So was Warren Beatty.

“We good in the corner?” he asked.

“You know it’s already reserved for you, beautiful,” she pointed.

“Thanks, hun. You feelin’ good tonight?”

“Yeah, I do, baby. You know I do.”

“Okay, good. But if you need anything now or later you just let me know.”

“Ten-four!” she saluted.

“Very funny,” he shrugged, jokingly, but also enough to make her stand down. “Could you do me a favor and send us over some vodka pineapples? With lemons? Two lemons on mine? And make ’em strong and keep ’em coming? Thanks, honey. You’re the best.”

He left a twenty on the counter, which he never normally did, but tonight he wanted her to know she was an employee. He wanted her to know that she was working. He wanted her to know that he was busy. He wanted her to know the night was his.

They sat in the corner enjoying their drinks and then more of their drinks and then some tea sandwiches, which they’d ordered from the club next door. Dale loved tuna salad, and The Roxy’s were the best.

Dale bobbed his head along to the music for a while, waiting, until his new friend—let’s call him Bobby—eventually leaned in and asked
Dale if he had any drugs. Dale did have drugs, and he removed his cigarette pack from his leather jacket’s pocket, where his drugs were, then removed his drugs and handed them to Bobby under the table. Discreet, even though that wasn’t really necessary. It’s the early ’70s, you know, so Bobby’s attempt at concealment was really rather precious. Anyway, Bobby promptly got up, walked to the bathroom, and helped himself to Dale’s drugs. There was a line, so he waited. And when he finally got inside, he took his time, too, wiping down the toilet with tissues before drawing long lines with a credit card on its white porcelain hat. Then he rolled up a fifty—a fifty he was saving just for this—and then he put it to his nostril, and then he breathed. And then he switched nostrils, and then, again, he breathed. Then he poured two more, and he breathed again. This was Bobby’s one night out this week. He’d better enjoy it, right?

Dale, back at the table, waited awhile before he made his move. He watched the dance floor—smaller in the private room, but still filling—and he watched the people dance. Bobby’s girlfriend—let’s call her Sam—looked at the dance floor, too. She wore a Kentucky Derby hat—black, but blooming with red flowers—over her long black hair, which hung down over her ears and then down over her shoulders. Over her pressed white button-down shirt, she’d strapped men’s suspenders to her high-waisted jeans, and her bellbottoms flared out so wide that you couldn’t even see her tan clogs. She sipped on a vodka pineapple—this one mostly pineapple, given that she’d already had three. She finally looked away from the dance floor and smiled at Dale, shy, still sipping on her drink through two red straws. Three red straws. She was shy, again—or playing shy—so then she looked down and then back out at the dance floor. Oh, and she was beautiful, too.

“Why haven’t we ever talked?” Dale leaned in, finally, and asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked and blushed. Dale made her nervous. Because Dale was a movie star. And Sam wasn’t used to movie stars. How excited she must’ve been.

“I mean, we’ve met a couple of times, when we’ve gone out with Bobby. But I feel like we’ve never talked.”

“I don’t know,” she answered, still talking through her straws. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know either,” Dale answered as he slid toward her in the booth. “I guess I just wanted to talk, you know?” He took her drink from her hand and drank from it, evading all her straws. “Just get to know each other. For curiosity’s sake.”

WHEN BOBBY RETURNED
from the bathroom, he found that Dale and Sam had already left. Later that night, after they fucked, Dale convinced Sam to leave Bobby—“You don’t think he’s sort of a loser?” he asked—and so Sam left Bobby to be with Dale. But after a few weeks Dale stopped calling Sam back because Sam wasn’t with Bobby anymore and he found her boring. Question: what’s interesting, or exciting, about a stupid, single girl? Answer: nothing. Nothing at all.

*
  
*
  
*

Later on, another day, Dorothy was still upset with Dylan. And when she was upset with one of them, she took it out on both her kids. But she couldn’t discipline them these days. She was just too overwhelmed. Exasperated. So she asked Seth for another favor. And Seth liked Dorothy—she let him be, and the sex was good. She kept him happy. Kept him satisfied. So he said sure. Whatever you need, baby. I’ve got you. He brought the kids down to the lake by the edge of the property, and he told them to bring their pet rats. Clover would sometimes wander around the yard near the trees and the bushes, near the bounds of the property, and would find rats and bring them back home and would keep the rats she found in a wood-flapped shipping crate beside the porch. And she’d feed them and give them water. And she’d walk them, and pet them. She’d take care of them—make sure they were safe—and give them love. Always give them love. And they loved her back. And Dylan, too. They liked being taken care of. They weren’t used to it. But now they followed her and Dylan down to the lake. They arrived, single-file—Seth then Clover then Dylan then
rats—then Seth told Clover to put the rats in the box—he’d carried the shipping crate down to the water with him—and then made the children sit in the love swing in the gazebo. As the children swayed back and forth, Seth reached into the box and then took each rat, by the tail, and swung it into the water. And with each one he swung harder. The last one almost made it to the other side of the pond. And the children wailed from the gazebo. And soon the shipping crate was empty except for droppings.