Die a Little (12 page)

I sit down and read it one more time.

I turn it over, look at the picture again, and then read it even more slowly, studying the address, the turned corner.

What could it possibly ...

I take a long pause, then pick up the phone. Then put the phone down. Then grab the phone book for Hollywood. Dragging my finger up the page.

Redux Stereophonies

Red Tag Appliances

Red Sam's Pawn

Red Rooster Coffee Shop

Red Room Lounge

Red Room Lounge. 12614 Hollywood Boulevard.

"Hello. I'm trying to find someone. I think she may be a customer."

"Honey, we're a bar and grill, not an information service."

"You just might know her name."

"I don't know names. I don't know nothing. You want a drink, come on by."

My chest is vibrating. It is six o'clock, or nearly so. If I change and leave immediately, I can be there by seven, but for what? An employee eager to tell me something? A customer? If so, why doesn't the card specify a day and time? I put the card down and start peeling potatoes for dinner.

Die a Little -- 72 --

Soon, however, I begin to feel a tug in the back of my head.

Something on the postcard keeps ringing in my ears, but I can't place it. I find myself thinking about Joe Avalon and about the playing card. About many small, taunting whispers in my ear, whispers I'd heard and keep on hearing.

Within fifteen minutes, I find myself in the car, driving toward Hollywood.

Tucked between an Italian restaurant and a peeling office building, the Red Room Lounge is a basic shoe box building distinguished only by a heavily painted crimson door and a chain of paint-spattered lights across the dusty window.

The curtains are pulled across, but as I draw nearer I can see through the gaping edge. There is a mirrored bar, Naugahyde booths, and a few bustling waitresses with red scarves and blank expressions. My hand on the varnished wood handle, I take a breath and walk in.

Youngish to middle-aged men in cheap shirts and flashy grins turn to the door when it shuts behind me, and a few of the dull-faced girls with tightly curled haircuts and painfully arched brows glance over casually.

I guess I must have expected an immediate response, a stranger approaching me, an unmistakable clue. When nothing happens, I find a small table and sit down. A grim-faced waitress with a painfully shorn poodle cut takes my order and brings me a Seven & Seven.

I sit, brushing off the occasional offer of a drink from pointy-jawed scenesters. I sit for nearly two hours, feeling the smoke , and grease and desperation fill my pores, wondering what in the world I am doing there, how I happened to fall for this.

"Fuck a duck, it's Big Bill's baby sis."

It is a long, blue drawl followed by the sharp clack of brightly polished nails on the table in front of me.

I look up: Lois. In all her crooked-faced, ruby-lipped glory.

She sits down, rakishly tugging her tiny evening hat over her eye.

Plastic cherries dangle from it, over her shiny white forehead.

"What you doin' here?" she says, dragging the words slowly, looking me up and down amusedly.

"Oh, I don't-- I just wanted a drink. I stopped by on my way to meet a friend."

"Is that a fact? Funny. Don't seem like your type of haunt."

"It's not really. I just-- I didn't know. I ..."

Her twisty grin suddenly turns broad and her eyes light up.

"Oh! Oh, I get it. Don't worry, honey. I won't tell."

"Won't tell what?" I say, my mind racing over what it might mean that Lois is here. Could she have sent the postcard? But if she Die a Little -- 73 --

wanted to tell me something about Alice, why not come right out with it?

"You got a secret admirer," she murmurs. Then, "Scotty, another,"

pointing to her lipstick-rimmed glass.

"No."

"A randy-voo. Don't worry, sugar cake. I won't tell."

"I don't. I just wanted a drink and--"

"And you just thought with your stiff hat and your starched gloves you'd dip into this dive. Don't worry, honey. I'm not bracin' you."

"Are you here alone?"

"I'm never alone." She brings the fresh drink to her lips.

"I'm with that party over there." She points to a corner table filled with raw-boned servicemen and one baby-faced woman whose brightly gartered leg is tucked beneath her, flashing a half mile of creamy, gleaming thigh.

"Friends of yours?" I say.

"Sure."

Looking over at us furtively, the girl at the table mouths Lois's name. Or at least I assume it's Lois's name. For a split second, I think she's mouthing "Lora."

Lois merely waves and turns back to me.

"Who's that girl?" I ask.

"Some gal I met at a casting call. Why? You looking to join the party?"

One of the servicemen slams his glass down, sending ice everywhere. The others laugh even as the girl jumps in her seat, smile stuck on her face. Another grabs her leg and rubs it under the table. Her expression betrays nothing, and he keeps rubbing roughly, eyes fixed on her. A trace of fear skims across her face, but she quickly suppresses it, shifting her leg and slightly shaking herself away, bouncily downing her drink.

She looks back over at Lois fleetingly, eyes jumping anxiously. Lois merely winks back at her.

"No. I ... I wondered if, well, if Alice might have been with you tonight. Do you-- Did you ever come here with her?"

"Alice?" Her painted-on brows shoot up and she laughs. "I don't think so." So, I realize with something like relief, it isn't Lois who sent the postcard.

She looks over at the increasingly loud, throbbing table of soldiers, then rises, sliding her drink into her other hand, along with her cigarettes and lighter. "Looks like I should rejoin my party, angel face. Don't miss me much."

"Okay. Good-bye, Lois." I hunch my shoulders together, suddenly wishing she wouldn't go. Suddenly afraid for her to go, to join those Die a Little -- 74 --

boys with their hard, tight, coiled hands, shoulders, faces. They look ready to pounce.

She pauses a long, silver moment, looking at me, the comb in her hair glittering in the low lighting. Her smile slides away and she just looks at me, thick, fringy lashes casting shadows across her face. I feel something. I feel something fall away.

And then the smile returns, at its usual half-mast. "Hey, be careful, peaches. You know?"

"Right," I say, watching her and watching the servicemen behind her, now all pounding their glasses hard on the table, red-faced and primed.

"You, too." She turns, the back of her shiny purple dress sliding after her, swaying like a fish tail, swaying after her as I watch and feel a keen shudder.

I grab my purse, take a sip of my now-watery drink, and stand up. I am out the door before Lois slinks back into that murky red corner.

Later that night, I think about the postcard. Probably just a bitter old boyfriend of Alice's or a romantic rival trying for some measure of revenge. The image of sharkskinned Joe Avalon passes through my head. Were he and Alice once lovers? One thing feels sure: The writer of the postcard didn't expect that I'd actually go to the Red Room Lounge, figured that the postcard would be enough to stir suspicion. I decide that I'd better forget it.

Die a Little -- 75 --

[?]*[?]

Three hours of cocktails and crowded dancing in Bill and Alice's living room, their Labor Day party just kicking up at nearly eleven o'clock, a cutthroat game of canasta in the kitchen, an impromptu dance contest on the living room's wall-to-wall, a gang watching a boxing match on the Philco, a bawdy conversation spilling from the powder room into the hallway. And there's my brother standing to the side, looking like a wrung rag, shirtfront wet from crushed rumbas with tireless Alice. He is nearly a foot taller than Alice when she is in her stocking feet, but she exerts so much presence that you never think of the height difference. Bill is always receding into the background, leaning back on the couch, hanging back from the circle gathered in the middle of the party, while Alice looms forward, saucer eyes and manic energy, her red-ringed mouth huge, like a beautiful fish against the glass.

Finally, Mike, an hour late, arrives with an orchid as delicate as a doll wrist.

"My apologies, King. Budding starlet, too much dope, car tipped over half into the canyon. You didn't hear it from me."

"Can I take your hat?" I hold my hand out.

He smiles, handing me both his hat and his attache. "Girl's had a few?"

"It's just the atmosphere. It's like a sponge."

I walk down the hall to the bedroom and deposit his things on the bed, where a small mound of ridiculously out-of-season fur chubbies and cowls sit. I set his hat on the bedside table and turn around to see Mike standing in the doorway.

"These bulls sure can swing," he says, as he says many things, as though almost wanting to yawn.

"That they can." I move toward the door. With a clean gesture, he steps in and shuts the door behind him.

"You are fooling yourself, sir," I say, "if you think I would kiss you in my brother's bedroom."

"Any brother who throws parties like this could hardly care." He nudges me backward with a thick forefinger. The backs of my legs brush up against the silk coverlet.

"It's Alice's party," I say, knowing he is playing me.

"Is that how you frame it?" He places the heel of his hand on my collarbone and actually shoves me this time. I fall back onto the bed, the span of furs curling under me, bristling against my neck and arms.

Die a Little -- 76 --

"Tough guy now," I say, waiting for him to break into his characteristic ironic grin.

"That's right." He looks down at me, no grin.

I feel suddenly hot with shame. All the things that happen in Mike's cool, self-contained apartment start to flash before me.

"Don't--"

His mouth untwists and releases itself into a self-aware smile. "I'm just kidding, King. You know I have your number. I wouldn't hold it against you."

I manage a return smile, and take his hand. As I rise, my shoe hits something soft, and my ankle wrenches. We both look down to the floor and see a small steel-blue book slide out from under my foot.

I pick it up and set it back down on the bed.

"I don't think that was on the bed," Mike says. "More like under it."

"No?" I pick it up again, running my finger along the gold edges of the pages.

"See if there's a name in it."

I open it up and see pages and pages of what appear to be some kind of strange shorthand, all initials and numbers.

"Not another Red," Mike says.

"It's an address book," I say, gesturing to the small lettered tabs on the page edges. "In code."

"Lots of people don't want their numbers getting around.

Especially in this town," Mike says offhandedly as he opens the door.

"Should I just leave it here?"

Mike shrugs, already halfway out the door, eyes thirsty for a drink.

Suddenly, Alice appears in the doorframe, almost as though she's been hovering just outside of view.

Without knowing why, my heart jumps and I find myself gripping Mike's arm. On instinct, I tuck the address book between the folds of my skirt.

"Look who I find in my bedroom My, my," Alice says, shaking her head.

"I was dropping off Mike's hat," I say.

Alice nods with a teasing smirk. But something in her eyes--

"Where's these drinks I keep hearing about?" Mike says, dropping an arm around each of our shoulders.

"Oh, I see ..." Alice laughs with low, raw tones.

Mike laughs too, and we walk together down the hall. We walk with the address book sliding, as if not by my own hand, into my pocket.

Die a Little -- 77 --

[?]*[?]

Later that night, back at my apartment, I try to steady my party-clogged, smoke-drenched head by lying down. The address book slips out of my pocket onto the bedspread. I pick it up. On the inside cover are the words "Deau Stationers." And the tiny address: "312

Hill Street, Los Angeles." I think about the postcard, trying to see any possible connection.

It isn't the next day, but the day after that I find myself at a small shop with old-fashioned green shutters just around the corner from the funicular railway that creeps up and down a yellow clay bank from Hill Street. The store looks the part of a once-grand remnant of the sagging, shaggy Bunker Hill neighborhood.

As I walk toward it, I wonder what exactly I am doing. Isn't this likely just some party guest's item, fallen from a coat? But the code is so strange, and the book so fancy, fancier than a schoolteacher or a policeman or any other likely party guest would have. Too ornate for any of those men and too masculine for the women.

I open the door and see a horseshoe glass counter filled with buttery leather-bound books, pale-hued stationery blocks, and sterling silver fountain pens.

A young woman with cat's-eye glasses looks up from her sales sheet.

"Yes?"

I move closer to her, suddenly very self-conscious. What is my plan here? "I'm wondering if you could help me," I all but whisper.

"A diary?"

"Pardon?"

She pulls a small, cream-colored leather book from the glass case to her left.

"It has a gold lock and key, gold edging, the most charming gold studs in the tufted padding." She runs her hand across the top of the book, then looks up at me.

"I ... I don't understand."