The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (2 page)

The other person was the guy I’d been waxing nostalgic with the night before. His name was Mike. That was about all I remembered about him. That, and the fact that he had something to do with a head shop. Owned it, or worked at it, or just spent endless hours hanging out at it.

He was a few years older than me, a little shorter, gray-haired, with a bulbous nose and wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a black terrycloth robe and flip-flops, and holding a mug brimming with dark liquid.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“You’re up.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “We woke up upstairs. I mean
I
.
I
woke up upstairs.”

He and the woman exchanged glances. “Cool,” he said.

Maybe he knew something. All I had to do was ask. I was afraid to. I did anyway.

“No idea,” he said. “But right on, man.”

“I’m sure nothing happened. Ronnie’s a friend of mine.”

“Wish I had friends like that.”

“You’re sure you have no idea how we ended up in bed up there?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “Want tea?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“What kind?”

“Hot.”

“Black, green, oolong …”

“Black, I guess.”

“Lu, could you make some of that nice Yunnan?”

“Of course, Mr. Lennox,” the woman said.

“Thanks.”

“‘Mr. Lennox’?” I said.

“Yeah. Denny’s dad.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, there you go. By the way, I think your shirt’s in a tree out front.”

Half an hour later I had half a grapefruit and a couple of pancakes and two mugs of tea in my stomach. My shirt had indeed been found dangling from a palm tree in front of the house. Lu’d gotten it down with a fruit picker on a long pole.

She went off to do laundry. It was just Mike and me in the kitchen. I asked where Dennis was.

“Dunno. Maybe he went to the office.”

“On a Sunday?”

“Hey, I did my best to drill my work ethic into him. Guess I didn’t do so good. You got kids, Joe?”

“Nope.”

“Want any?”

“Gina—that’s my wife—is forty-eight.”

“Your wife.”

“Well, yeah.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I told you. Ronnie’s just a friend. Besides, I’m old enough to be her father.”

He frowned. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“About what?”

“Nothing. Want to know the good thing about kids?”

Not particularly.
“Sure.”

“It’s when you’re older, like us, and you have this adult person who’s the fruit of your looms.”

“That’s ‘loins.’”

“Whatever,” he said.

Soon as someone plays the
whatever
card, the conversation generally meanders to a halt. So it was that morning. Twenty minutes later a cab was whisking me home. The fare went on Dennis Lennox’s tab. Mike insisted on it.

Gina was up in San Francisco visiting her old friend Annie. She was due back that night. I spent the rest of the day wondering what I was going to tell her. Hey, babe, funny thing happened this morning. I woke up in bed with Ronnie. I don’t know if sex was involved, but if it was, I’m sorry. You want to go into the kitchen where the knives are?

Having a big hole in my memory worried me. What if the dope had been laced with something more potent? Ecstasy or horse tranquilizers or something I’d never heard of because I was so unhip.

Maybe Ronnie would know. Or if not, at least she could tell me why she ran off screaming. Whether she was embarrassed because we’d had sex. About the fact that we’d had it, or about my performance.

I went next door to see if she would talk to me. But Theta said she wasn’t there. She’s Ronnie’s cousin, and she owns the house. I had no reason to believe Theta had ever lied to me, but blood is thicker, et cetera. I pointedly looked at Ronnie’s Miata parked in the driveway, and Theta said she’d gone off shopping with Stephanie Urbano, the other Galahad Sister, and that she’d tell Ronnie I was looking for her.

Ronnie wasn’t back by the time I had to leave for the airport to get Gina. Unless she’d been back all along and was hiding in her bedroom. Lacking any input from her, I decided to just tell Gina the truth. Plead that if anything had happened, if I was too out of it to remember, I probably wasn’t responsible for my actions.

She came out of the terminal. Kiss-kiss, hug-hug. I weaved my way out to Sepulveda. We stopped at a light. I opened my mouth to confess. “How’s Annie?” came out instead.

“An emotional wreck.”

“How come?” I said, knowing what the answer would be.

“Guy she was seeing. She thought he was the one. Found out he was fucking his personal trainer.”

“Oh.”

“What an asshole.”

I sat there, hands on the wheel.

“Guys are such jerks,” she said.

“Not all.”

“Most of them. Not you, of course. But most of them.”

“Women too. Most of them are jerks.”

“Agreed. Most people are jerks.” One of our points of concurrence. A belief in the basic unworthiness of the majority of human beings.

The guy behind me honked. The light was green. I got moving. Gina told me some more about her friend Annie, then went off on an exhibit she’d seen at a gallery up there.

When we got home I decided to wait until bedtime to tell her my story. But when I came out from brushing my teeth she was already asleep.

When she woke up in the morning she jumped my bones. Afterward, I considered blurting out my sad tale. But I’d seen too many movies where the revelation that ended a relationship happened during the afterglow. People were particularly vulnerable then.

Gina went to see one of her interior design clients a little after noon. The minute she left I ran next door. Ronnie was probably on the set, but maybe she’d told Theta something.

Ronnie wasn’t on the set. She wasn’t even in Los Angeles. She’d gone to Hawaii to film a “very special episode” of
The Galahad Sisters
. She wouldn’t be back for a week.

“I thought that was next week.”

“It got moved up,” Theta said. “Whole schedule got switched around. We just found out Friday. Didn’t Ronnie tell you?”

“If she did, I don’t remember.”

“Is there more you don’t remember?”

“I don’t get you.”

“Sure you do. Sunday morning. You. Ronnie. Between the sheets.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“That she doesn’t remember what happened with you two.”

“Me neither. Nothing, I hope.”

“So does she.”

“Can’t a woman tell?”

“Usually.”

“Even if the guy uses a condom?”

“We have ways.”

“So?”

“So she didn’t get laid, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“So there’s no problem.”

“Not unless the two of you did something else. Us MacKenzie girls are very fond of, you know, mouth stuff.”

“Oh.”

“We’re good at it too.”

“This isn’t helping.”

“Sorry. Look, if anything happened between the two of you, since neither one of you can remember it, you probably had something in you that made it not be your fault. So I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I’m married now. I have to worry about it.”

“You haven’t told Gina yet.”

“No. I thought I could gather some more data first.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen, honey. Get your ass over there and tell her. Sooner the better.”

But I didn’t tell Gina. That night we went to my father’s house, and we were there late, and I just chickened out. Tuesday morning Gina left early to have breakfast with another client. She had a professional society meeting Tuesday night. I resolved to confess when she got home. Longer it took before I told her, more it would look like I had something to hide.

Tuesday afternoon. The phone rang. “Hello?”

“It’s Mike. Mike Lennox. You doing anything tonight?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“You like hockey?”

“Sure.” I did, more or less, though that whole offsides thing was too confusing. Not to mention icing.

“I got Denny’s tickets for the box. Want to go?”

“You mean one of those luxury boxes?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sweet one, right at center ice. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty. Give me your address.”

“I didn’t say I’d go.”

“You didn’t say you wouldn’t.”

I gave him my address.

“You idiot!”

This, strangely enough, was me. Jozef Stumpel had just blown a breakaway, the puck skittering off the end of his stick and dribbling harmlessly past the opposing goalie.

It was late in the third period. The score was tied. I understood offsides and was well on my way to comprehending icing too. The other people in the luxury box were entertainment industry types, but pleasant company nonetheless. A while back a prime-quality dessert cart had come around.

I turned to Mike. “Hey, man,” I said, “Thanks for the ticket.”

He put down his binoculars and said, “Any time, man. That’s what friends are for.” He turned back to the ice, jumped up, clapped his hand to his head, sank back into his seat.

Friends?
We were friends already? After one dope-riddled evening, a kitchen conversation, and a hockey game? How could this have happened?

I’d spent my entire adult life without any close male friends. The only true friend I’d had since high school was Gina. Then, after nine years, things turned romantic. And while she was still my best friend, in that goopy way people speak of their mates, things were different. I didn’t have that person anymore to hang with when I needed to hang and be rid of when I wanted to be alone.

The Kings lost on a last-minute goal. We walked over to the Pantry and had a bite. I got home after midnight. Gina was asleep. Another opportunity down the tubes. Or maybe I’d agreed to go to the game because I knew I’d be home too late to confess.

I got together with Mike three more times over the next week. We saw
Master and Commander
. The Russell Crowe character and the ship’s doctor, they knew what it was like to be buddies. They blew up French sailors together, and when things quieted down they played duets on violin and cello. Things were so simple in those days.

Each time I saw Mike I asked him if he had a clue about what had happened with Ronnie and me. Each time he said no. The last time around he said blackouts were nothing to worry about. That they were nature’s way of washing the bad stuff from your brain.

I found out some more about my new pal. He’d gone to work in a head shop in Venice as a kid in the sixties, bought the owner out in the early seventies, owned the place since. It was called Feed Your Head, and now he was happy to let the new generation run it. There wasn’t much money to be made, but it stayed in the black, and that was enough for him. That, and hanging out there when he didn’t have anything else to do. And being the nexus of a large colony of freaks and activists who lived and worked nearby.

He lived in an apartment above the shop, though he also made reference to a house and another source of income that had something to do with his wife. When I asked about the house and the wife he got vague on me. I got the feeling they were divorced but still friendly and that she had the house. When I went after more information he changed the subject.

The next time he called Gina picked up the phone. She listened a minute and said,“I’d love to. But I’ve got a meeting with one of my clients. Right, though actually we prefer ‘designer.’ But Joe’s free. He’s right here.”

She pressed the mute button. “Your buddy. He called me an interior decorator.”

I hadn’t told her yet. The whole surrealistic Sunday morning experience was fading from memory. The longer I waited, the more I could convince myself that nothing sexual had happened with Ronnie. Our waking up naked together—except for that one sock, whose owner I never did discover—was the result of some drug-driven foolishness. Years in the future, we’d laugh about it.

Though Ronnie never did drugs. She hardly even drank.

And it didn’t matter if nothing had happened. I still had to tell Gina.

And I was still being an asshole.

I resolved to tell her. Just as soon as I got off the phone.

We went to a club called Voom, Mike and I, where some friends of his were in a band called the Chickenfries. It was on Sunset, not far from the Whisky and the Roxy and the other rock and roll landmarks. It was dark and narrow, with a tiny stage at the end, a dozen Lilliputian tables, and a bar tended by one guy who was about six-ten and another who was a midget.

We ordered a couple of beers and talked about bands. I told him how I’d been in one called the Platypuses when I was a kid, how I’d gone in search of Toby Bonner, the lead guitarist who’d disappeared a couple of decades back, how the whole thing had deteriorated into a bunch of criminal activity. How I was still in touch with one of them, a guy named Frampton Washington. Frampton was foster-fathering a girl named Aricela, whose entrance into Gina’s and my lives had exacerbated a round of midlife crises. We saw her once or twice a week, and that, I told Mike, was as close to parenthood as we were likely to get.

Which was a good thing, given how rotten a father I’d probably be. How could I teach my kids about honesty and all that if I couldn’t even summon a little myself ?

I seemed incapable of doing so. When I’d hung up with Mike, Gina was on the other line, and by the time she got off, my resolve had melted.

When I get home,
I promised myself.
No more excuses.

The Chickenfries emerged. The drummer and the bass player were gray-haired twins. The guitarist was twenty years younger than the rest, with long blond hair and a babyface. A heavyset woman was on vocals and keyboards, an earth mother type, hair in that twilight between auburn and gray, long muted Mama Cass dress. And beads. Remember beads?

They launched into Cream’s “Strange Brew.”The woman’s voice was full of honey. They finished the song and moved on to “Red House.”Then they played an original, something mean and slow. After that it was half covers, half originals.

They played for nearly an hour and took a break. Mike got us up and headed for the backstage area, a tiny room with two beat-up easy chairs and a miniature refrigerator. There was one dim naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and a subtle odor of old beer and new dope. I shook hands with the three men, turned to meet the singer.“Joe Portugal,” Mike said, “Sarah Jennings.”