Skinflick (8 page)

Kids with soft-drink cans sat on the hood and trunk of the Triumph where he’d left it, halfway up the hill. Skate boarders curvetted past him. He didn’t speak to the kids. When he stopped and took out keys, they got off the car.

T
HE SKY STILL HELD
leftover daylight but when he tilted the Triumph up Horseshoe Canyon Trail the trees made it night. Big brown supermarket sacks crowded the passenger seat. He had to juggle with his knees to get a grip on them all. Slapped at by branches, he blundered through the dark to the cookhouse. He had to set the sacks down to unlock the door. Then it took him a while to find the light switch. The bulb that answered it was weak. He brought in the sacks and set them on a sink counter of cracked white tile that Amanda had already condemned.

She’d condemned the cabinets too—of greasy, varnished pine, none of the doors willing to stay shut. The stove and refrigerator, chipped white enamel, were probably good for another ten years, but she wanted him to have new ones. He wondered what color she would choose—copper, cinnabar, heliotrope? He emptied the sacks, stocked cupboards and refrigerator, where the bulb was out but the air was cold. He’d bought a plastic bag of ice cubes. He unwrapped a squat drink glass—he’d picked up six at the supermarket—dropped ice into it, and built a martini.

He left it to chill, crossed the uneven terra-cotta-tiled courtyard under beams from which vines hung in reaching tendrils, drooping big white trumpet flowers, to the third building, where fencing masks and foils rusted on knotty-pine walls. His stereo components sat on the dusty floor. He’d plugged them in and strung them together the day he hauled them up here from the rooms he’d shared with Doug above the gallery. Now he took the top album of the handiest stack and, without reading what it was, set the record on the turntable and started it going. The Mozart clarinet quintet. He turned up the volume, left the door open, and went back to the kitchen, the music trailing after him.

He’d forgotten to buy a can opener, but one hung off a divider between windows over the sink. Food from who knew what cans it had opened for how many years crusted the blade, but he overlooked that and cranked open a can of chili. He dumped the contents into one of his new supermarket aluminum saucepans and, while it heated, shredded lettuce with a dull, shiny supermarket knife onto a supermarket plate. He chopped up half an onion. There was no place to put the other half. He let it he, shaved strings from a block of creamy Monterey jack cheese, then sat on the floor with his back against loose cabinet doors, drank the martini, listened to the music, and smelled the chili heating.

“You son of a bitch.” Johnny Delgado stood in the doorway. He needed a shave. His clothes needed changing, had needed changing for some days. With a lot more gray in it than Dave remembered, his hair was shaggy and hung in his eyes. They glittered black in the bad light of the kitchen. He was unsteady on his feet. He hung onto the door frame and swayed. “You fucking vulture, perching in the trees, watching them tear me up, then coming down to feast off—feast off—the fucking carcass.”

Dave got to his feet. “I can hardly find this place by daylight.” The chili was bubbling. He set down his glass, turned the fire low, and gave the chili a stir with a shiny new perforated cooking spoon. “And sober. What kind of guidance system have you got?” He cranked open coffee, rinsed out the sections of the drip maker he’d also brought from the supermarket, and used a yellow plastic scoop to put coffee into it. He filled a pan with water and set it on a burner. “They didn’t tear you up, Johnny. You tore yourself up.”

“You took my job,” Delgado said.

“I didn’t take it,” Dave said. He got the lettuce out of the bin in the bottom of the fridge and shredded another plateful and put the lettuce back. “You gave it back to Sequoia and they didn’t know what to do with it, so they’re handing out pieces of it. The piece I got is what I’m told I do best—a murder case with everything wrong with it.”

“They never tried to get me.” Delgado found a kitchen stepstool and sat on it. “They’ve got my phone number.”

“They had one.” Dave poured the chili over the beds of lettuce. “You’d left that place. No forwarding address.” He strewed handfuls of cheese shavings on the chili, where it started to melt right away. “You also hadn’t paid your bill in a while.” He sprinkled on the chopped onion. “They told Sequoia that.” He stripped cellophane off a glossy box that held cheap stainless-steel knives, forks, spoons. Each was in its own soft plastic sheath. He tore the sheaths off two forks, laid one fork on a plate, and held the plate out to Delgado. “It made a poor impression. So did the news that you were drunk all the time.”

Delgado made a face at the plate. “I don’t want that. What’re you trying to do? Man, that takes balls. Steal somebody’s job, then offer to feed him.”

“I offer to feed you,” Dave said, “because you’re a friend, you’re a guest in my house, I’ve got the food, and you need something in your stomach besides bourbon. Eat it, Johnny, or I’ll put it in your hair.” He pushed the plate at Delgado and Delgado grunted sourly and took it. He fumbled with the fork.

“This is a crazy place,” he said.

“And that fact got it through escrow very fast.” Dave stood at the counter and ate.

“I went over there.” Delgado tilted his head. “Where the music’s coming from. What is that place?”

“A man taught fencing there,” Dave said. “Eat.”

“If I throw up,” Delgado said, “you deserve it.” He filled his mouth. It opened. Chili dribbled down his chin. His eyes got big. “Jesus! Hot!”

“Cold chili never did much for me,” Dave said.

Tilting the plate dangerously, Delgado got off the stool, kicked it aside, tore open the refrigerator door. Bottles of Dos Equis glittered on one of the wire shelves. He reached. “Beer. Yeah.”

“Beer. No.” Dave shut the door. He kicked the stool against the door and pushed Delgado down on it. The man gave off a stink of neglect. Dave had never seen him in any shirt but the white, short-sleeved kind with a tie. The tie had vanished and the shirt collar was greasy. “You eat now. Here’s water if you have to wash it down.” He dumped out the last of his martini, rinsed the glass, filled it, pushed it at Delgado, who was staring at the bottles of bourbon, scotch, and gin on the counter. Dave passed the glass in front of Delgado’s eyes. “Drink.”

Delgado waved a hand. He ducked his head over the plate and began shoveling down the chili. “Take it the fuck away. I hate the goddamn stuff. I’ll eat. How do I get into situations like this?”

“Running around trying to find people to blame for the shambles you’re in,” Dave said. “Nobody else wants the blame any more than you do.”

“Marie,” Delgado said, with his mouth full. “She gets the blame.” He laughed harshly, spraying chili, onions, cheese. “Why not? She got everything else—house, car, bank account. Let her have the blame.” He pawed at the food stains on his shirt, his trousers. “Christ, I look like a goddamn wino.” He got off the stool and set the plate on the counter. Shakily, so that it rattled. It was still half full. He looked into Dave’s eyes. “Don’t shove food down me, okay? Just leave me the hell alone?”

“I didn’t come to your house.” The water in the pan bubbled. Dave poured it steaming into the waiting pot. “You came to my house, remember? Sit down. No, you don’t have to eat any more. You can drink, now. Coffee. A whole lot of strong, black coffee.”

Delgado started out the door. Dave dropped the empty pan clattering into the sink, took two long steps, and caught his arm. Delgado tried to jerk away. There was petulance in the gesture but not much strength. Under the soiled suitcoat, his arm felt wasted, an old man’s, and he wasn’t even forty. Dave turned him around and set him on the stool again. Delgado glared at him.

“And then what?” he said. “You push me into the shower, right? And I’m still not sober enough to drive? So you put me to bed to sleep it off? Am I on track? Sure, I am. And sometime in the night, you’re in the bed with me. Yeah, oh, yeah.” He nodded, mouth twisted in a sneer. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. A scrap of beef came away in his fingers, he flicked it off. “You know what you are and so do I, and that’s tonight’s scenario, isn’t it?”

“You wrote it,” Dave said. “You tell me.” The Mozart turned itself off. The only sound was the drip of water through the coffee grounds and the whirr of crickets out in the sweaty canyon darkness. “You need a shower. You need clean clothes. I can lend you a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. You are too drunk to drive. That doesn’t matter. I can drive you home. Where are you living?”

“Crappy motel in Santa Monica,” Delgado mumbled. “If they haven’t locked me out.”

Dave studied him. “You want to stay here, don’t you? That’s why you came. Not to chew me out for taking your job. To have a place to stay.” He unwrapped a supermarket coffee mug, rinsed it under the tap, filled it with coffee. “You are broke. You’re lonely.” He held the mug out to Delgado, who was watching him with nothing in his bloodshot eyes. “You’re also horny. And you’re offering yourself in payment for anything I can do for you, only what mainly interests you is getting your rocks off.”

Delgado made a sound and knocked the cup across the room. Coffee splashed the cabinets and ran down. The cup was tough. It didn’t break. Delgado lurched off the stool and stumbled out the door. On hands and knees, he vomited. The sounds he made were loud and miserable. Dave stood in the doorway trying to see in the poor light from the kitchen and from the building across the way whether a garden hose was coiled somewhere among the broken hibachis, splintered surfboards, and bent lawn furniture beneath the hanging vines. Delgado’s stomach spasms eased off. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth.

“I warned you,” he groaned. “You had to feed me. You just had to feed me.”

“Come get some coffee,” Dave said.

“You think I’d take anything from you now?” Delgado staggered to his feet. He spat. “Knowing what you think?”

“Is what I think any uglier than what you think? Come on. Forget it.” He led Delgado back into the kitchen. He stood him at the sink. “Wash your face.” Delgado splashed water with hands that hadn’t seen any for a long time. Dave handed him a supermarket dishtowel. He picked up the fallen mug and poured coffee into it again. “Drink this. Take the shower. Sleep it off.”

Silently, sullenly, Delgado did as he was told. Dave led him across to the room with the fencing masks. He lifted folded jeans and the promised sweatshirt out of a carton on the floor. He steered Delgado to the bathroom where grit crunched on the white tiles. He shut the door on Delgado, and while the shower splashed, he set up the steel frame, lowered onto it the box spring that had been leaning against the wall, the mattress. He lifted sheets and blankets from other cartons and made up the bed. The shower ceased.

“Don’t try to shave tonight,” Dave said. “Tomorrow.”

He took a blanket for himself, left the building, closed the door behind him. He unlocked the big front building, threw the blanket inside, clicked light switches until somewhere outdoors around a corner a glow came from untrimmed brush. He went out again. Someplace he’d seen a garden hose. He went toward the light, shoes crackling dried oak leaves and eucalyptus seed pods. The smell of the eucalyptus was strong in the night heat. He found the hose. He prowled for a connection. He screwed the hose to it and turned the tap handle and got a lot of hard spray in his face. He dragged the hose around the house corner and reached the mess Delgado had made and, using his thumb to increase the force of the water, washed the vomit off the tiles into the Uttered earth under the shrubs.

“The midnight gardener,” somebody said.

Dave turned. He knew the figure—slight, trim, the overgrown grounds-light behind him haloing gray hair. It was Doug, whom he’d lived with for three years and didn’t live with anymore. “Right around to your left,” he said, “is the turn-off. Turn it off for me?”

Doug stepped into shadow. He gave a yelp that said the leaky connection had doused him. The hose quit running and Dave dropped it Doug came to him. He wore a safari jacket of crash linen with the cuffs turned back. He was brushing water off it. Dave asked, “What brings you here? Did Christian fling himself into a volcano?”

“I wanted to see if you were all right,” Doug said.

The door of the building where the fencing masks hung opened. Delgado stood there in the fresh clothes. The light behind him shone off his wet hair. “Listen,” he said, “I want to thank you. I feel a hell of a lot better.”

“You sound better,” Dave said. “There’s a carton of medicine-chest stuff on the bathroom floor. Take some aspirin. It might ward off a headache in the morning.”

“I hate taking your bed.” Delgado saw Doug and jerked. “Oh, hell. Who’s that?”

“Never mind me,” Doug said. “Just carry on as if I hadn’t come. Obviously, I shouldn’t have.”

“Ah, Christ,” Delgado said. “Dave, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Dave said. “Sleep well.”

Delgado hesitated, then turned, slump-shouldered, went back inside, and shut the door.

“You can still surprise me,” Doug said.

“You want some coffee?” Dave said.

T
APPING WOKE HIM. HE
flinched at the brightness of the big empty room and thought extra windows might be a mistake. Groaning, he rolled onto his back on the creaky chaise he’d dragged in from the courtyard—webbing slack on a frame of aluminum tubing, the stuffing lumpy in the gaudy flower-print plastic pallet. He clutched the blanket around his nakedness and sat up.
Tap-tap-tap.
He squinted at the French doors. Where Amanda had made the circle on the dusty pane yesterday, she was smiling in at him. He lifted to her a hand that felt as if it belonged to someone else. It was early to smile, but he worked at it.

“You’ll have to clear out,” she called. “All sorts of physical types are coming with crowbars.”

He pointed to the door, tottered into pants, and went barefoot to let her in. He raked fingers through his hair. His mouth tasted sour. He and Doug had drunk Dos Equis and munched tortilla chips until late—how late he didn’t know. The talk had been guarded, mannerly, but he hoped Doug wouldn’t keep coming back. What you used to have was only that. And what they used to have was flawed from the start. He’d lost Rod to cancer, Doug had lost Jean-Paul in a car smash. They’d tried to make the losses up to each other. Life didn’t work that way. Love didn’t work that way—if love worked any way. What did they coat those tortilla chips with? Rust-color dust. Garlic was what he tasted. He ran his tongue over his teeth and opened the door to Amanda. Her T-shirt read
HIS TOO.
She was in ninety-dollar jeans. She was ready for work.