Fridays at Enrico's (25 page)

She felt a little gas, and was about to sneak it out when she remembered Charlie's hilarious discussion of farting at the no name bar one night. He said that women sneaked their farts not to be polite, as everyone assumed, but to take people unawares. “A man lets a fart, wham, and you know to cover your nose, or light a match. An honest warning, like a rattlesnake's rattle.” Charlie kept a straight face while everybody at several tables around were laughing and falling off their chairs. Of course everybody was drunk.

“I'm about to fart,” she warned Charlie.

He gave a little yell and jumped up and ran into the bathroom. Jaime laughed and farted simultaneously. “Is it over?” he called through the door. “Is it safe yet?” he asked her, looking frightened, like a little boy.

“I'm afraid to light a match,” Jaime said between giggles.

“The explosion that destroyed Telegraph Hill,” Charlie said in a normal voice, and sat on the bed next to her. They'd been lucky to get Charlie's old apartment, but Jaime had furnished it herself. No more Zen literary purity, now the place had a real bed, a real easy chair, a rug, and, on the walls, a couple of the woodblock prints Charlie had brought back from Japan. On the desk next to Jaime's typewriter, a single pale yellow rose in a blue glass vase.

“What time is it?” Charlie asked. Jaime went in to the stove to look, drawing herself a little water in a cheese glass. It was almost one. “Early,” she said. She came back into the front room. Charlie stood looking at her completed manuscript. Charlie looked bigger naked than dressed.

“Let's go down to G and C's,” he said. “My throat's dry.”

“I'll get dressed,” she said. “You look fine as is.”

“When do I get to read this?”

His words put panic in her heart. If Charlie didn't respond perfectly, she wasn't sure she'd have the courage to send it in. He could say all the right things, but there might be the smallest amount of condescension or amusement or even nervousness, and she'd know the book was trash. Two years' hard word destroyed in the lift of an eyebrow. Well, not two years' hard work, more like six months' hard work over a period of two years. Still. Could she say, No darling, I don't want you reading it at all, not until it's in print. Then you may, but only if you control your face and restrict your comments to extreme praise.

“Can we go home instead?” Jaime said. “We can stop at the no name for a nightcap. I just don't feel like facing all those drunks at Gino and Carlo's.”

“Leave the book here?” Charlie asked. “Let's take it with us. I want to read it.”

“Okay.”

It was three days before he actually finished the book. Jaime was only a little surprised to feel the resentment building up. Why hadn't he just sat down and gone at it? Only 226 pages, he could read it in a couple of hours. He didn't. He told her he was “savoring” the book. She knew this meant he was having trouble plowing through it. On the third day he came out of his office carrying the manuscript, his face composed. He really looked very funny, his hair all up and sticking out. Obviously he'd been running his fingers through his hair as he read. He looked like a bomb-thrower, but sweet.

“It's a lot better than your first,” he said pedantically. “There were some passages of real emotion. A superior piece of work.”

“Do you like it at all?” Tears welled up. He must have seen the effect his clowning was having, because he put the manuscript down on the dining room table and came to her and put his arms around her, consoling her for having written such a waste of time book.

“I loved it,” he said into her hair. But it took about ten minutes of him describing in detail what he'd liked, and how much, how well it compared not only to her first book but to all books, before she believed him. “Shall I send it in?” she asked. He laughed.

Before she actually did put a professionally typed copy of the manuscript in the mail to Mills, she wanted a woman's view of it. She took the carbon over to her friend Tanya Devereaux. Tanya ran her call girl service from a flat on Alpine Terrace, a couple of blocks above Castro. It was owned by a couple of gay guys, who lived upstairs. Tanya read everything, and had strong opinions. Jaime parked her Porsche in front of the respectable-looking building and rang Tanya's doorbell. Tanya answered naked.

“Oh, I thought you were somebody else.”

Jaime followed her down the carpeted corridor into her living room. Tanya had a long narrow Indian peasant face. If the Indians had peasants. Jaime knew Tanya was part Indian, but she didn't know which tribe or anything. Tanya had taken on the whole police force and beaten them at their own game. Not that they didn't arrest her every once in a while, but never on anything that would stick, and she'd walk out of the Hall of Justice thumbing her nose at them. “All it takes is an IQ over seventy,” she had said. “Don't get me wrong. Most cops are good guys. But some are sadistic little bastards, and you can't give 'em an inch.”

“Am I going to be in the way?” Jaime asked her.

“No. I have a fifty-dollar john coming in a few minutes, but you can wait here in the living room.” She arched her eyebrow in amusement at Jaime. “I fuck them downstairs. I only do my own tricks here. Special people.”

“What do you have to do for fifty dollars?”

A grin. “The same thing I'd do for twenty-five. Only the john offered fifty his first time, so he always pays fifty.”

“I've heard of two-hundred-dollar girls, in places like Las Vegas, Hollywood, you know.”

“A two-hundred-dollar hooker is a twenty-five-dollar hooker with a two-hundred-dollar john,” Tanya said, showing pink gums.

“Ah.” The door chimed.

“Relax,” said Tanya, and went to answer the door. She came back with a man in a dark blue suit. He had a round face and thinning hair. He looked very well cared for, his shoes shined to perfection, his suit obviously cut by a tailor, his pudgy fingers beautifully manicured, his jewelry gold. He looked surprised to see Jaime.

“I didn't ask for a three-way.”

“She's a friend.” Tanya led the man by the hand down the staircase. Twenty minutes later they returned. This time Tanya wore an old kimono open down the front. She escorted the customer out the door. Jaime could hear them whispering. When Tanya came back she said, “He couldn't get it up.” She went into the kitchen for a Coke, and coming out, added, “He wanted you. He asked me how much.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I'd ask you. You ever think about turning a trick? I could book you solid. Too bad you can write.” Tanya loved
Washington Street
.

“Maybe I'll end up turning tricks, I don't know.” Jaime said it to be light, then worried she'd insulted Tanya.

“I finished my book,” she blurted. “I've got a copy of the manuscript outside in my car.”

Tanya's face lit up. “Oh God, I'm so excited!” she said. “Can I read it? Please?”

That was more like it.

46.

Why did she do these things to herself? When Jaime handed her the typing paper box with the carbon copy inside, Tanya had just put it aside on the kitchen counter and said, “I'll read it right away.” Jaime had somehow expected to drive away from Alpine Terrace with Tanya's opinion. Instead she drove away depressed. She'd forgotten how depressing the whole business was. She'd been living in her own secret world with people she'd made up herself, doing things she made up and turning out the way she intended. Now she was back in the real world, where everything was out of control. Charlie's reaction had been horrible. He hated the book but didn't want to give up his cushy life as her husband. It was certainly possible. It was possible he'd never loved her, but always seen her as a meal ticket. He was clever about it, too, always being so careful not to use her money.

Driving down Divisadero she shook her head. Paranoid thoughts kept hounding her. That Charlie wasn't what he obviously was. That she was unworthy of her success. It wasn't really success, anyway, it was a lucky event, and she'd better be prepared to have her second novel treated the way most people's first novels were—no reviews, no money, no big paperback or movie sales, and so on. She'd be prepared for this book to fall through the cracks. The critics laid for you if your first book was, in their estimation, given too much attention.

She drove north over the Golden Gate. Her movie deal had seemed so fabulous a couple of years ago. Joseph E. Levine, the big shot producer, famous for importing from Europe the shittiest movies he could find, had bought her novel sight unseen, based on something he'd heard at a cocktail party. Paramount Pictures. How flattering. He'd bought the book outright, the contract eighteen pages of dense boilerplate, which Mills blandly explained as “Pure slavery. He owns your book forever, in all media and
all versions. He owns the characters, and if you wrote a sequel he'd have first right to buy it, and you couldn't sell to anyone else with the same character names. Slavery, as I say.” Mills was for holding out. Jaime wanted that thirty grand. You could live three years high wide and handsome on that kind of money. But the thirty turned out to be twenty with ten to come when the picture was actually made. Which was apparently never. Joseph E. Levine finally read the book, and exploded. “These people are Communists!” he was reported to have said, and buried the project. No use explaining that they weren't really communists, more like idealists. Try explaining that subtlety to the man who got rich importing “Hercules” starring Steve Reeves.

In the process, Jaime had become fascinated. Movies were where the real money was, and Jaime wanted a lot of money. It was where the big audience was, too. She daydreamed about moving to Hollywood and breaking in as a writer, then moving on to director. Charlie was pretty cold about it. “There aren't any women directors that I know of,” he said.

“Ida Lupino,” she said, but Charlie went on about how terrible Hollywood was to writers. “Look what they did to
The Naked and the Dead
,” he said.

“I didn't see that.”

“Did you see
From Here to Eternity
?”

“I thought you liked
From Here to Eternity
.”

“I loved it,” he said. “But it was a real mess. They never went into the stockade scenes, and they had the army bust Captain Holmes instead of promoting him to major, as in the book.” Charlie was adamant about Hollywood. “It's a whorehouse,” he insisted.

Having just left a real whorehouse, Jaime wasn't sure that was necessarily a bad thing. Noticing a police car behind her on the bridge, she looked at her speed. Fifty-two in a forty-five zone. She slowed to forty-eight. Surely that would mollify the CHP guy behind her, but no. He pulled her over on the Marin side of the bridge, then walked up to the car, a little guy, blond hair, tight mouth. He looked down at her grimly.

“Hello, Officer,” she said, smiling what she hoped was a friendly smile.

“Tell me something,” he said. “How come you didn't slow down to forty-five when you saw me?” So she was going to get a ticket after all.

“Conditions didn't seem to warrant absolute conformity,” she said. She pulled her driver's license from her wallet and handed it to him. He frowned at her. Did he recognize the name? Had he read her book?

No. He just looked at her and wrote her a ticket. She had to laugh at her insane expectation. When the cop drove on, she decided not to follow him, but to take the Sausalito exit, drop down to the no name bar, and have a drink. Talking to the policeman had made her feel slightly soiled.

The no name bar was almost empty, just a few afternoon alcoholics widely spaced at the bar, gazing down into their drinks. Neil Davis, the owner, was behind the bar, KJAZ playing over the sound system. Jaime sat in her husband's favorite seat at the end of the bar, where she could look out the open front window at the people. “See Charlie?” she asked Neil.

“Not today.” But he would have said that if Charlie had just walked out the door. Good old Neil. He ran the best bar Jaime had ever drunk in. Even better than Tosca. Tosca was a big-city bar, but the no name was a world bar. People from everywhere stopped in, and not just people, famous people, people who were doing things. Interesting people. Although none of them were here today.

“What can I get you?” Neil asked.

“Ramos Fizz,” Jaime decided. A candy-ass drink, according to her husband, but they made them so well here. The telephone behind the bar rang, but Neil continued making the Ramos Fizz. Only when the drink was perfect, sitting in front of Jaime on its napkin, did Neil turn to the telephone.

“Jaime?” he said politely, his hand over the mouthpiece. “Are you here?”

“Ah,” Jaime said, and slid off her chair, going to the telephone by the front doors. It was Tanya.

“Where the hell have you been? I've been calling your house, your apartment, Charlie said you were at my place, then I thought about the no name. I'm only about a third of the way through, but I just had to call you. I love your book! You must have been following me around when I was a kid. Where did you
learn
all this stuff?”