Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (30 page)

He told her his name and for several minutes they sat side
by side in a shared silence. Carlson returned after escorting
the soldier outside.

"Sorry, folks, I'm back," he announced, and moved behind the bar to fulfill his enabling duties.

"Hey, look," Randolph said, "let me get your second G
and T, okay? I'm not, you know, trying anything funny."

"Thanks but no thanks, Avery." She'd swiveled her body
toward him slightly and was touching his arm. "I better get
going. Inventory tomorrow, so I've got to be in early."

The young widow got off the stool and strolled out of the
landlocked Seaside Lounge.

"You get her number?" Carlson asked when he came back
over to Randolph.

"Kind of," the piano player answered, looking off, then
readying the order of songs in his head for the next set.

A week later, Randolph was finishing off a loud and fairly incoherent sing-along version of "Volare" when Lori returned to the bar. She was wearing a modest skirt, a shirt and sweater top
combo, and earrings that sparkled in the low artificial light.
Randolph banged the keys with his heel a la Little Richard for
the climax, everyone clapping and laughing. He stood, breathing heavy, pumping both fists in the air to more acclaim. A
patron shouted, "Right on, baby," above the din.

"Glad you came back," he said to her. She lingered at the
side of the piano, her purse atop the instrument. Normally
he'd say something about that but he didn't want to break the
mood-his at least. People came by and gave him pats on the
back and shoulders. The brandy snifter was brimming with
bills tonight.

"Want to go somewhere, have a sandwich or something?
I'm hungry."

She leaned in closer to him. "Hungry for what?" Her
smoke-colored eyes remained steady on him.

"There's a little hole-in-the-wall place over on Cerritos,"
he answered neutrally, but not breaking his gaze from hers.
"They have great vegetarian burritos with fire-roasted peppers. Magnifico."

"But I like meat."

They grinned at each other like overheated teenagers as
Randolph collected his tip money. Over in the corner at her
customary table, Emily Bravera sipped her martini carefully as
if testing the stuff for poison, watching the couple above the
rim of her glass.

Randolph and the woman descended the outside stairs
of the Seaside Lounge, which was lodged on the second floor
of an aging '80s strip mall. Down on the parking lot asphalt
he became aware of a familiar odor and glanced up to see
Carlson the bartender taking one of his Camel breaks. He
leaned on the railing, the unfiltered cigarette smoldering in his blunt fingers. Lazily he looked at them. The two men then
nodded briefly at each other. Randolph walked the woman to
her eight-year-old bronze Camry that had a dark blue driver's
door. He gave her the directions to where they were going,
standing near her and pointing off into the distance.

"See you there." She gave him a peck on his cheek, her fingers holding onto his upper arm. Her hair was freshly washed
and smelled of blueberries and mint.

At Agamotto's Late-Nite Eatery and Coffee Emporium,
they ate and talked. Lori McLaughlin was originally from Buffalo. She'd met her late husband Jeff, a local boy from Long
Beach, when she'd come out to Southern California four years
earlier, winding up with a job at a dog food manufacturer.

"That's a trip," Randolph remarked. "Like big vats where
the meat and whatnot is all mixed together?"

"This place, Emerald Valley, is like the Escalade of dog food
makers," she said, biting into her barbequed meatloaf sandwich.
She then pointed at her food. "Good cuts of meat like this,
natural ingredients, grains-they make a high-end product for
trendy pet stores in West L.A. and further down south here in
Orange County like Newport Beach and Lake Forest."

"But not for its peasants here in Los Al." They both
chuckled. "You have family back in Buffalo?" Randolph
asked.

She sipped some of her beer and dabbed a napkin to her
mouth. "Let's just say there's a reason I came out here, putting as much distance as I could between me and that socalled family." Still holding the napkin, she squeezed his hand.
"Okay?"
?

"Okay."

A lanky youngster in a stained apron behind the counter
gave the couple a grunt as they departed. He returned his at tention to a news item on the small TV he watched, an image
of Long Beach cops leaving a burglarized condo in Belmont
Shores earlier that day.

Back in Randolph's car, after she had him pull behind
a closed liquor store, they made out. There was a bare bulb
streaked with an oily substance over the metal back door of
the establishment, and slivered fractions of the light filtered
into the car's interior and over their grasping forms. Randolph had his hand over her sweater, cupping one of her
breasts as they kissed. He moved his thumb across her hardening nipple. She placed one of her hands on his zipper and
rubbed.

"That feels good," he murmured.

"This'll feel even better." She tongued his ear and unzipped him. Involuntarily, he sucked in his stomach. "I didn't
catch any hairs did I, Avery?"

"No. Lightheaded is all."

"Mmmm." She worked his shaft and then bent down.
Randolph leaned back, eyes fluttering, noting that he needed
to clean his headliner. Try as he might to fixate on prosaic
matters to prolong the sensation, he soon wheezed, "Hey,
careful, I'm ... I'm about to come."

She gave him a lingering lick along his penis, returning
to the tip. "Uh-huh." And then she let him climax in her
mouth.

"Sweet mother of mercy!" Randolph exclaimed, grinning
like a goon.

From her purse Lori McLaughlin produced a half pint
of Jack Daniel's, broke the seal, took a swig, and handed it
across.

"Remember your motto," she said as he had a taste. "Everything in moderation."

"Most assuredly," he retorted.

She took something else from her purse and presented it
to him. "Because you're not through, piano man. You have
encores tonight."

He took the offered orange tablet of Cialis. "I'm not that
old, you know."

"I know, darling." McLaughlin had pulled up her skirt and,
using her middle finger, was touching herself. He stared and
said nothing. She continued this for several moments, then
slipped off her light blue panties and pressed them to his face.
He breathed in deep and popped the Cialis in his mouth, not
bothering to wash it down with the booze.

Two hours later, at her three-and-a-half-room apartment not
far from the joint-forces base, Randolph pulled on his cigarsmoking Woody Woodpecker boxers and went into the kitchenette in search of juice or cold water. He spotted a past-due
notice from SoCal Edison on the counter.

On a book ledge crowded with knickknacks, he noticed a
picture of a square-jawed, handsome lance corporal he took
to be the late husband. He picked up the photo to see it better
by the moonlight. The confident look of the soldier reminded
him of his father, a decorated combat captain who died in
Vietnam. A man he never met and only knew from Polaroids
and letters his mother kept. He sighed inwardly, set the picture down, and traipsed to the refrigerator.

Inside he found an open can of Diet Pepsi. One hand on
the door, the light from inside the refrigerator casting its glow
about the compact kitchenette, Randolph glanced at a print
of a leafy country lane hanging on the wall. It wasn't anything
special, more like the kind of mass-produced image demonstrating the virtues of the frame.

Guzzling the soda, looking sideways at the lane, cold air
blowing against his lower legs, he suddenly felt a massive,
pulsing erection.

"Magnifico," he said, proudly stalking back into the bedroom, moving his hips to let his member swing from side
to side. He hummed "Rocket Man" and sent up a prayer of
thanks to the horny bastard who'd cooked up the orange tablet wonder.

In the morning Randolph stretched, scratched his side, and
rubbed his whiskered face. In the other room he could hear
Lori McLaughlin talking on the phone.

"... No, you listen to me, Karen, that's not going to happen, you understand? I won't stand still why you try that kind
of shit with me."

He got up and used the bathroom. When he stepped out,
McLaughlin was sitting on the edge of the bed in her cloth
robe, hunched forward, arms across her upper thighs like a
player waiting to get called back into the game. He sat next
her her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

"Can I help with anything?"

She made a sound in her throat. "I could lie to you and
tell you it's nothing," she began, "but you might as well know
now." She regarded him for a moment. "I was talking to my
wonderful ex-mother-in-law. A woman who would make Big
Bird slap the shit out of her." She chuckled scornfully.

"This involve a child?" he asked, having also noticed last
night an assortment of toys in a cardboard box in a corner of
the living room.

"Yes. My daughter Farley."

"Farley?"

"Jeff had a good buddy who lost his legs over there. She's just two and a half and, well, you can see I'm not exactly living
the O.C. lifestyle."

"Who is around here?" He gave her a squeeze.

She jutted her chin in a westerly direction. "Over in Rossmoor they are. Them and their wall."

"Screw'em," Randolph said. "They think they shit gold."

She snuggled closer to him, putting a hand on his thigh.
"Jeff's mother, Karen, has recently stepped up her alleged concern about how tough it is for me to feed and raise Farley on
my own. How she can provide for her and all that. Her third
husband, not Jeff's father, owned a firm that supplied some
kind of guidance system for missiles. Anyway, he dropped
dead of a stroke and left her sitting pretty in a mortgagefree McMansion in Irvine. That's where Farley is now." She
rubbed his thigh and, eyeing him, continued, "I didn't plan on
seducing you, Avery. But Karen suddenly showed up yesterday
when I went to pick up Farley from the sitter after work. And,
well, she demanded time with her granddaughter. She lords
it over me, what with her paying for the child care and other
things for Farley."

She scooted over to her pressboard nightstand, opened a
drawer, and took out a digital print. She handed it across to
Randolph, who smiled at the photo of a bright-eyed toddler
held aloft by her beaming mother. She took it back, lingered
on it, then returned it to the drawer.

"So I was just a way for you to blow off steam? A revenge
schtupp aimed at your mother-in-law?"

She shoved him playfully and clambered on top of him as
he lay on his back, wrapping her in his arms. "How observant
of you, Dr. Phil." They kissed eagerly as he undid her robe.

On a Thursday evening several days later, they lay in bed in Randolph's apartment near the racetrack. Intermingled
yells of delight and disappointment could be heard through a
cracked sliding window over the bed as the last race finished.

Randolph dialed the radio from the news on the rock station Lori had put on to the jazz station from the college campus in Long Beach. "Suddenly," a McCoy Tyner number, was
in midplay. Randolph let his mind drift as the pianist-composer
did his thing.

"You bet much?" she asked, laying partially on top of him.
His finger gently followed Tyner stroke for stoke on her shapely
butt.

"Now and then I go over there, but I play the ponies like
I know poker, not too damn good." He began kneading her
flesh, getting aroused.

She nuzzled his neck. "What if you could make about
thirty thousand on a sure thing?"

"You know a horse doppler?"

"I know where to get sixty, maybe seventy thousand taxfree dollars. Half for you and half for me, Avery. Between your
couple of nights a week at the Seaside and substitute music
teaching, you're not exactly living la vida loca either."

He stopped rubbing and focused. "What are you talking
about, Lori?"

"Remember I told you about Emerald Valley?"

"The dog food company."

"The owner, Brice, he's an old hippie, still smokes marijuana, gives his money to saving the rain forest and all that
crap.

"Okay. But I'm not comprehending."

"He has a safe in his office. He's still down with the people, don't trust the system, so he's always kept cash around,
different places, you see? One of them is his office cause he's always got some burned-out acid head or old surfing bro falling by for a touch." She paused, placing her hand firmly on his
chest. "Even gives it up to an ex-employee or two. I had to go
see him for a loan and he's always had a thing for me. Gave me
a handful of those Cialis pills, saying to leave a trail of them
through the forest and he'd find his way to me. Laughing and
having a good time." Her tone had frosted.

"This about keeping Karen at bay?"

"She told me she's going to initiate, her words, legal action. If I just show her I can afford a lawyer, she'll back down.
I know how her wormy mind works. She's cheap in so many
ways.

"Why not ask Brice for a loan? Sounds to me like he'd do
it for you and not sweat when you could pay him back. The
good fight and all that."

She pulled slowly on his limp penis. "Because he'd want
something in return, Avery. Brice is a freak, get it? He's been
in trouble in the past for beating off in his office in front of
females. He'd want me to do kinky things to him regularly for
repayment. Do you want me to do that?" She started to stroke
him slowly. His breath got short as he grew hard. "I might be
willing to be a thief, but I'm no ho."

She continued with her handjob. "Unless you're going to
bitch up. Turn your head when I have to shove a studded
dildo up his ass and hear him scream `Mommy.' Make like I'm
not your woman." She took his balls in her hand.

"Not likely," he groaned, as he put his fingers to her throat
and applied pressure. She gasped and he leveraged her under
him.