How Long Has This Been Going On (8 page)

The Lieutenant heard all this in a not abundantly friendly silence. He thought about it awhile, glancing over at the Chiefs office as if considering how
he
would take it.

"The arrest was made last night?"

"Yes, sir."

"So it won't go to the D.A.'s office till Monday. Where's the crook now?

"Released O.R." On his own recognizance.

The Lieutenant nodded and thought some more.

"You weren't sure what you heard last night?"

"Not entirely, sir."

"But
now
you're sure, that it?"

"Yes, sir."

The Lieutenant paused, probing this inconsistency simply by looking unconvinced, but Frank held to his story by keeping his expression neutral.

"Where's your partner now, Hubbard?"

"He's probably at home, sir. I haven't... He doesn't know about this."

The Lieutenant stared at Frank for a while, then nodded. "Let's talk to the Captain," he said.

The Kid's sitting backstage, waiting to go on for the early show that same Saturday evening. The Kid's in black and feeling keen. Black slacks, black silk shirt, black string tie; and he's keen because you can learn from your mistakes. It's smart to make little ones, like blowing up at a party, because then you won't make big ones, like blowing up at a producer.

The Kid's okay, he tells himself, checking the view in the mirror. The Kid's superb, oh yes, because he now knows the Three Rules of Dating Etiquette:

Rule 1: Never wear what everyone else is wearing.

Rule 2: Never get mad because there are better-looking guys than you. The potential for better-looking is infinite, so even Griff, Clonk, and Pec have that problem.

Rule 3: Never let your boy friend see you cry.

Oh, and here's a tip for you younger boys: Stay younger.

"Johnny, I still don't understand the cue for the new song," said Desmond, pattering up in his usual good-natured fog.

"Desmo," says the Kid, taking the music from him and looking for a pencil. "It's simple. I do three minutes on the Contessa Dooit and this sailor she picked up the night before. Then I go"—marking the music—"'And this is what she said to him,' and I'll start right in. Just remember to pick up with me. No piano intro,
comprende?"

Desmond fussed. "I hate these last-minute changes. And the Contessa Dooit, Johnny, it's so
strange!"

"Desmo, how many different ways are there to say 'And now, an old favorite'? I'm just spicing up the patter, is all."

"Yet who
is
this Contessa? And what would a sailor be doing in her palace?"

"Desmo, just study your music, will you?" "It's such
strange
music, Johnny."

"Come on, it's some old pop tune. Fanny Brice sang it. I thought I'd try a comic number for once."

Derek Archer had given it to him, antique sheet music adorned with a photo of Brice looking surprisingly glamorous in an evening gown. The song was called "Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love," from an early talkie,
Be Yourself,
and the oxymoron of an affable grotesque coming off as a movie star charmed the Kid's imagination.

"What's it like out there?" he asked Desmond. "Empty?"

Desmond struck a pose, left hand on hip, right limply fanning the air, trying to imitate the queens. "It's men, men, everywhere. And me without my Kotex!"

"Don't make fun of women, Desmond. Something tells me they're our natural allies."

"Who's the enemy, then, Johnny?"

"Derek Archer's coming tonight," said Lois, brisking in and heading for the desk. "His butler phoned. Made a big deal about it. Second show, Mr. Archer's favorite table, if I please."

Nosing around in the desk, shuffling papers, inspecting, staying
on
top and
in
charge: That's Lois.

"Imagine having a favorite table in this dump," she said.

"Especially that one," the Kid put in. "He's so far back from the stage, he's halfway to Hawaii. Derek in the dark."

"Well, you know these Hollywood boys. They think they're the world's best-kept secret." She looked up. "Meant to tell you. Jo-Jo isn't coming in tonight. You'll have to introduce yourself."

"Fine by me. New song tonight, Lois."

"What do you get, a medal?"

"No, appreciation."

"Nice crowd out there for a nine-thirty show. Sing nice and you'll get all the appreciation you want."

Bustling back into the club, Lois found Larken looking tired and sad.

"What's with you?" she asked, sitting with him.

He didn't speak at first, though he seemed to be working on a sentence. Finally: "I got arrested last night. Griffith Park."

She slowly shook her head, mad.

"It's a cheat, too, Lois. I mean, I never even got to come on to the guy and everything. They just clapped me in irons and dragged me away."

"The bastard fucks." "Yes, I guess they are."

"You going to fight it?"

Larken made a helpless gesture. Judges and straights?

"You know what's funny about it?" he said. "The guy they used as a lure. The cop? I could've sworn he was..."

"A fag?"

"I thought I saw something gentle in the way he looked at me. Just gentle and calm and strong."

Too bad I'm not a toucher, Lois thought. He could use a little fancy stuff right now.

"You don't have family here, do you?" she asked.

"I don't have family. I'm an orphan. Alumnus of the Second Foundling Hospital and Orphanage of the Latter-day Saints, class of '44."

"Shit, you poor kid!"

"It wasn't so bad. Everyone's terribly nice to you and everything, in a sort of genetically charitable way."

Lois was just looking at him. Funny, the stuff you find out about people when they're ready to spill it.

"That's why my surname is Young, you know. Half the kids are named Smith and the other half Young."

"Any reason?"

"They're kind of like Mormon Number One and Mormon Number Two."

"Lois," said one of the bartenders as he passed, gesturing toward the bar. "Someone to see you."

Lois turned to look; it was Elaine. Lois blinked at her, and Elaine came forward, smiling.

"I had a free evening," Elaine began. "And I thought, Well, I believe I'll just make my way over to the Thriller Jill club and see what the world of Lois is like."

Lois got up, stunned, thinking this new thing over.

"Not in your wildest dreams?" asked Elaine.

"Sit," Lois replied. "What'll you drink?"

"I'll drink with you," said Elaine, settling in. "Whatever you're—"

"This is Larken Young. Elaine..."

"Denslow."

"Last names don't matter," said Larken, shaking Elaine's hand. "It's all Betty and Bob around here."

"Yeah? Where's Betty?" said Lois, holding three fingers up to the bartender.

"You
are
surprised, aren't you?" Elaine asked, as Lois turned back to join them.

"Nothing surprises me," said Lois, knowing that she was glad about this yet feeling a bit encircled.

"What would surprise you?"

"I'll tell you someday," and the lights were going down and Johnny the Kid came out to a nice hand and the bartender dropped off three beers and Lois was off on a private tour of her life to that point.

Describe yourself.

Twenty-nine, dark blond sort of wavy hair—at least, I call it wavy; the kind that, like, half of it hangs there and the other half is always going
doing
?—and a nice figure. What do I mean
nice
? I call it slim, with good breasts—round, solid, just this side of big, with sharp, dark buttons that get really out there when I'm onto something. Pleasing skin tone. I bite my nails and I walk tough.

What do you hope for?

Survival, independence, and no shit from men, especially cops and touchers.

What else?

Nothing else.

Be honest, Lois.

A friend.

What kind?

Close friend.

Close how? Close who would it be?

Close like how, I could talk to her and she can get me all the way home. Like, we could construct a world and move into it, just us. A smooth world, very smooth and knowing. Separate from everyone else. A refuge, like. Close like who, that's anyone's guess.

Elaine?

The lights came up as Johnny the Kid gave Desmond his bow and they walked off together. The applause was strong.

"It's getting better and better," said Larken. "It really is, Lois. Whose idea was it to put in that old Fanny Brice number?"

Lois shrugged.
Songs.

"You know what I really liked?" said Elaine. "'So in Love.' I know it from the radio, but it's amazing to hear someone so youthful perform love songs, isn't it? He looks so sweet and yet so... knowing...."

"That's his charm," said Larken. "His act is the precocious kid playing the sophisticate."

Elaine raised her beer with "Here's to Thriller Jill's," and Larken touched his beer to hers, and they looked at Lois.

"I hate that fancy stuff," she said. "But
hell,"
and she hit their glasses so hard she nearly broke them.

"'Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love,'" Larken mused. "It's an ironic statement in a place like this. Because everyone..." He stopped, mindful of what Elaine might represent to Lois, and how little she might know about the place.

"Talk free," Lois told him.

"Well. Here, it's all quick dates. Thirty minutes or so. It would take you longer to bring your partner home than to have the sex. But that song is about... well, housekeeping. And all that preamble about a Contessa picking up a sailor just—"

"It was dumb," said Lois.

"No.
No,
Lois. It was more irony. It's the Kid's analysis of what's on every mind in the room. It's the ultimate queen picking up the ultimate trade.
Passion.
Then the Kid goes into the music.
Deflation.
I think it's neat."

Elaine caught Lois's eye and said, a touch apologetically, "I liked it, too."

Lois shrugged. "You've the right."

"No, listen, Lois, you've got something here," Larken went on. "The Kid's working up his own style of act. Something new. He could easily have turned himself into another Mickey Rooney, the way they all do. But instead—"

"What difference does it make?" Lois countered. "Look around and say what you see. A joint, huh? So who cares if we got Mickey Rooney or—"

"You care. Because it would make the club more successful if the act became an attraction instead of part of the furniture, the way it is in every other club like this one. You could move to better quarters, maybe."

"Huh. You mean, like, have a real place? Cross back over to—"

"No, no! We need this place as it is,
our
place. But you could up the tariff a bit. Go a little Hollywood."

"Business advice from Mormons, now," Lois told Elaine.

"Mormons run a sound church, Lois," Larken told her with a smile. "It's just their sex that's problematical."

"The imp is here," Lois announced, as the Kid pulled up at their table.

"They liked the new song," the Kid said. "You heard them, Lois."

"Larken liked it."

"Yeah?" "I'd say you should turn your whole act around," Larken explained. "Build up the Contessa patter and do more of those old comedienne specialty numbers instead of the current hit parade."

"Lois?" the Kid asked her.

"Listen to him," said Lois, and Larken talked to the Kid while Lois talked to Elaine.

"All right, like, first," said Lois, "where's Mr. Denslow?"

"On the road."

"What is he,
Oklahoma!?"

"A salesman."

"Okay..."

"I don't," Elaine began, and stopped. Then: "Please tell me, just... very directly... if I did the wrong thing... or, let's say, an impetuous thing... in coming here."

Her defenses penetrated, Lois managed to force herself to grunt out, "I'm glad you came."

"That's Dewey telling Truman, 'I'm glad you ran.'"

"Shit," said Lois, "why can't I just be... Hell. Look, I really am, chick. Glad you're here. Question is, are you?"

"I've never seen anything like it! Everyone's so
interested
in everyone else!"

Meanwhile, Larken was giving the Kid a fast lecture in the discography of Sophie Tucker, Ruth Etting, and other top mamas of the torch-and-novelty-song circuit, and the Kid was drinking it in.

"'My Friday Man Is Busy Saturday Night'?" he echoed. "Where can I get a copy?"

"You'll have to get an arranger to take down a lead sheet from the record," said Larken. "This was specialty material, written on commission for the singer herself and never published."

"How do you know so much about these dead songs?" the Kid asked him, genuinely curious.

"I don't know. Listening and watching, I guess."

"But this stuff is
old.
It's gone. Where did you find it? There isn't a club you can join, is there?"

"I wish."

Lois had some managing to do and the Kid had to get ready for the second show. Larken decided to go home early. Now that the music had stopped, he was back to confronting what was happening to him, getting arrested and looking toward a trial and being found guilty of his life. Anyway, he hadn't gotten much sleep last night.

"Yes," said Lois. "Okay. Don't be..." What do you say in a case like this? "Look, it's your dues. It's dues we all have to pay."

Lois was giving Elaine the details as Larken left; he turned and waved at them at the door, but it was a very depressed wave. It was funny how just being in Jill's could cheer him up, though he never put it to use the way everybody else seemed to, the johns morosely chatting with the hustlers, the queens sizing them up, and the hustlers making their deals. Twenty to twenty-five bucks was the going rate, and Larken usually had it to spare. But he didn't want sex with a stranger: He wanted love with a friend.

It was after ten o'clock by the time Larken reached his semi-attached hacienda, Los Angeles's single-story equivalent to the urban apartment building. All he could think of was This New Trouble, and That Guy in the Park, and having to go to court, and he sat in the armchair and fretted—nothing doing, no radio, even. Just Larken and his worries as the night drew on.