How Long Has This Been Going On (22 page)

"...'You're going to break the...' Johnny boy?"

The Kid had hung up.

By now it's New Year's Eve, heading into 1953, and Larken has invited everyone he knows to Thriller Jill's to see the new act. There have been a few problems. First, the new girl singer objected to Desmond, the deaf pianist. (Lois said, "It'll be Desmond, or Larry the bartender on that stupid harmonica," and Larry, cleaning up at the bar, called out, "Any time, Lo.") Second, Larken told Lois he needed a backdrop of fir trees with snowy branches so the audience could believe in the
Nutcracker
effect he was going for. (Lois said, "I can get that nutcracking effect without a backdrop; and Elaine said, "Lois!," in a merry warning manner; and both Larken and Lois shrugged.) Last, part of the stage collapsed. ("Cancel the future," said Lois, as everybody raced around.)

Maybe there should be a few problems: for then you will appreciate the results all the more. You have to earn your title.

So the show goes on. Larken is there with Hudson, but Frank has brought some guy, too. They're all at one table, and Frank is trying to figure out how this is supposed to work, with all these rivals within punching distance.

Aw hell, be nice about it, he thinks.

The lights are dimming.

"I staged this whole thing," Larken whispered, "and I helped choose the songs, and I... This act is my baby." Hudson darted an admiring look just as Frank did, but Larken was beaming at the stage, rapt, gone into the art, as the singer walked out in simple black, leaned against the piano, and broke into "Sam and Delilah." It was Larken's re-creation of the moment in the Gershwin musical
Girl Crazy
when Ethel Merman became a star.

"It was splendid, Lois," said Elaine, later that night. "It was renewal."

"I could dump the club," Lois told her. This was something she had been thinking about for a while now. "We could move on."

"To another club?"

"Another place, I mean."

"Good heavens."

"Would it scare you to leave Los Angeles?" Lois pronounced her hometown's name with the hard
g
that, even as late as the early 1950s, marked descendants of the immigrants who settled the area in the century's first decade. Elaine thought it sexy, a kind of symbol of what Lois was, set in her ways yet wild, unlike.

"I'm not sure about starting all over somewheres," Lois went on, "seeing as how I got it all set up locally already. But see what it says in the article here." Lois passed the
Reader's Digest
to Elaine, indicating a line with her thumb. "Yeah, right there. Read it up."

"You mean, read it aloud?" said Elaine, putting down her novel, Nancy Mitford's
Love in a Cold Climate.

"Yeah."

"'Studies indicate that Lois Rybacher has scored a hundred percent on her sexitivity test, tracing the electromagnetic emendations from her lips, muff, nipples—'"

"Tell what it
really
is!"

"When I tell what something really is, people become upset at me. All my life, Veronica."

"Look, just read it, huh?" Lois snorted.
"Veronica."

They were in bed, late, as usual getting in their culture after the mild storm and intense sunshine of their lovemaking. Married straight couples do this, too, I understand, with matching lamps at each side of the bed. Or sometimes the male dozes while the woman reads. Frank and Larken, when they lived together, tended to cap their day with the sex alone, exhausting themselves till, panting, one or the other doused the light. Then they would reach for each other, stretch out, and sleep.

Lois and Elaine, however, observed what we might call a neutral period between lovemaking and rest. An intellectual period. Sometimes Elaine launched it by slipping into the shower, and sometimes Lois came along. "Boy, what I can do with a soap," Lois would announce in her low-key yet intent Lois way; and sometimes Elaine said something like "Oo, I can't wait," and sometimes she was silent.

The article Lois had handed to Elaine to read from was "Moving Saved My Life," by someone who claimed to have redeemed himself by moving first from one part of town to another, then out of state, then by kicking off all traces and heading for the metropolis of Evanston, Illinois. Elaine gave a relatively somber account of the indicated passage, then, more warmly, told Lois, "I've always wanted to see Evanston. The lights! The people! The Jell-O with bits of fruit inside!"

"Okay, make fun."

"Keep your Paris Opéra, your Prado," Elaine went on, "when I can applaud the sandwich makers at the Evanston Fourth Street Diner."

Lois shook her head. "Lady of the wisecracks. It doesn't have to be Illinois, does it? The
Reader's Digest
knows
something,
or they wouldn't print it, and they're saying that a change of scene perks you up."

"Does crabby Lois need perking, hmm?"

"I
hate
that baby stuff. But, yes, I am ready to pack it in with Thriller Jill's. Singers and acts and New Year's parties. Even the stage is coming apart! I could sell the place and be free."

"I thought you just managed the club. You
own
it?"

"Sure. My parents left it to me."

"Veronica!"

"Lois to you, Miss Fancy."

"Your
parents
owned a nightclub?"

"It was an eatery when they opened it. Italian-style, because spaghetti was a real craze then. Christ, all those movie people coming in from all over the country! Raised on beans and eggs and cheese sandwiches. Suddenly, pow!, Italian food, and they were babies in my parents' arms."

"But you're not Italian."

Lois shrugged. "You figure out a need and you fill it. That's the rule. And that was them and now it's me. I could sell it. What do you say?"

"Wait. Where were you in all this? The toddler running under the tables and crawling under everyone's legs? The little darling?"

"Oh... something like that." Lois was grinning.

"But then what? After the restaurant, before you opened Thriller Jill's. Where were you then?"

"Teaching second grade."

"Surely not."

"What do you know about it, Miss Smarty?"

"You were a grammar-school teacher?"

"I told you, I like kids. Now—"

"I'm trying to see this. Miss Rybacher leads the class in the Pledge of Allegiance..."

"What do you say to New York? We throw it all behind us and light out. Have an adventure."

"What will we do?"

"Open another club, maybe." Lois shrugged. "It's what I know, at least."

"So," said Elaine. "There is no Thriller Jill per se?"

"Nope. Just Hazel and Mike."

"Your parents?"

Lois nodded.

"Nice ones?" Elaine asked.-

"Did the job" is all Lois would say.

"Where does the name Thriller Jill come from, then?"

Lois laughed. "Named it after a dildo some sly Frisco lizzy tried to use on me in 1944 or so."

"A
dildo?"

Elaine looked at her. "Haven't I mentioned that ever? A rubber dick. You strap it on and—"

"Sheer terror!"

Lois chuckled. "It doesn't get used much. Women have such a... what? A graceful... construction... down there. I mean, why spoil it with this vile thing bobbing around? What do you want to bet some man invented it? They're the ones who are so fascinated with dicks."

"They're not the only ones, Veronica."

"Look, I'm not Veronica."

"And I'm not Elaine. They named me Joan. But so what? A name is like an address. You change it."

"Then how do you feel about moving?"

"Very ready, I expect. Because everything about L.A. is what I was. Every street leads to my former lives. New York... New York would be transformation, a rehabilitation of my genre."

Lois gave her a funny look.

"Poetry," said Elaine.

"If I sell Thriller Jill's," Lois reasoned, "it could easily go off the Other Side. The guys will have other places to go, but not as nice. You see what I mean?"

Elaine nodded.

"Can I let them down? is what I'm asking."

Elaine replied, "Look at it so: You started them off, gave them the model. They can copy it, can't they? It's not your job to be the Statue of Liberty forever."

"Larken could start a new place up... or Jo-Jo..."

"How do
you
feel about New York?"

"Curious, I guess. Except I hear you can't run a car there."

"How ever do they get around?" Elaine wondered.

"They don't have to. It's all right there, in the center. You walk to everything."

"It sounds like Evanston."

They've been up for so long that Lois is moved to have some more of Elaine, a little coda to the symphony earlier. She sucks on Elaine's nipples, which always drives Elaine wild, because Lois is very determined and takes her time. Then they hold a pussy-tasting contest, and it's a draw, and the light goes out, and they sleep. Lois dreams about cities with boats instead of cars, and Elaine dreams that men are fucking her with dildos.

Derek Archer checks into the Y and heads for the showers, because he has nothing to lose now. The place looks hot tonight, and Derek is handsome and trim and barely thirty-two. Everything is going to belong to him.

Oh, I am a roving man, and find the Planet Moon anywhere. Tenderly I take out the book of confession for the Midnight Queer to sign. I will find him in the showers, and bring him to my room for a chat. Some hot-blooded freek, you'll see. Surely I have known the blood of freeks, for I have caused it to flow.

Derek made contact quickly, which disappointed him. He liked to shop at first, lose himself in the scene. His partner was a sailor who said, "I need to score a ten off you, Mister." Derek offered him five and the sailor said okay, but he isn't going to do a heck of a lot for five.

Frank closed his door as the guy left. Some guy he picked up cruising Hollywood Boulevard. The sex was okay, but Frank missed Larken. Missed talking to him.

Lois took four books out of the library, all on New York. While Elaine wrote stories, Lois studied. Occasionally she would read a passage aloud and Elaine would smile.

Derek waited three days, then slipped into the Y again. Walking into the showers, he found two nondescript, oblivious strangers and Griffin Finlay, one of the outlaws from Derek's loan-out western. Except for the tiniest start when he spotted Derek, Finlay played it cool till the two other men left. Dripping like some torpid walrus and rubbing himself all over with the most irritating pleasure, Finlay came up to Derek with an ironic smile. Derek hated that look.

"Well! And here we thought you had too much class for this place, Archer. You're coming down in the world."

"Research for my next picture."

"Oh? What picture is that, I wonder?"

Finlay's one of those big hairy numbers that some people mysteriously find attractive. Derek thinks of them as great horrid dogs.

"It's a detective thriller," said Derek, turning off the water and going for his towel. Finlay followed him. "Very
Lower Depths.
Everyone's either a creep or a pervert. I should probably interview you to authenticate my characterization."

"It's a date," said Finlay, strolling off, unperturbed. "I'll meet you on the unemployment line."

Jill's new singer walked in with her own pianist and promised to quit if they didn't replace Desmond. Lois and Elaine shared a look.

Jo-Jo said, "We're family in this club. We don't go around replacing each other."

"Nevertheless," said the singer, as Desmond looked dismayed and the singer's accompanist loitered in a blasé manner. "California," Lois murmured, "here I go."

Frank's father, on his way to the kitchen in the splendor of his cups, takes a shortcut down the stairs—ass over teakettle—and is put into traction. Frank visits in the hospital, and, after the salutations, the two of them have not a word to share between them.

The Showers Moon is hopping tonight. Freeks are everywhere. I like the furtive ones. They think they know a secret about you. Yeah. I'll be opening the book of confession tonight, and some geezer will sign in, drooling.

The guy at the shower next to mine is staring.

I tell him, "Relax."

He says, "You're so green and incomplete. I could help you."

I tell him, "I don't need any help. I do it all myself."

He's young and smart-looking. He would be nice to talk to. I can go to work later.

Derek finds it charming that the young man doesn't towel off before they visit Derek's room, just picks up the neatly folded terry cloth and carefully wipes himself here and there. He's a shy youth, Derek's favorite kind.

Derek's room is early-middle Spartan: brass bed, wooden table and chair. The boy sits on the bed, his towel, still folded, next to him. Derek, towel around his middle, sits at the chair and lights a cigarette. They sit in silence, Derek smoking, smiling.

The boy asks, "Are you an actor?"

Startled, Derek says, "Why? I mean, what—"

"The way you do that. The match and your legs crossed. It's like on a stage."

"I just made a western for Paramount."

"A
movie
actor. That's great."

"Yes, I cleaned up a lawless town."

"How'd you do it?"

"Well, I... I got all the black hats together in a room and sucked them off, one after the other, and with such thorough
pull
that there was nothing left inside them. They became harmless zombies."

The boy is silent.

Derek laughs. "Let's talk about you, shall we? What sports do you like?"

The boy cocks his head as if conferring with distant voices.

"You have a beautiful body," Derek observes. "Such white, white skin."

Their voices are low in the room. Traffic noise drifts up from the street. Two men laugh as they pass in the hall.

"I thought you were different," the boy says.

"From... what?"