Motel. Pool. (5 page)

J
ACK
PICKED
up the bottle and considered drinking his breakfast, but his stomach rebelled at the idea. He showered and shaved instead, dressed in clean clothes, and ventured into the glaring sunshine. A half-dozen people were splashing in the pool, while a few more lounged nearby. They were loud and cheerful: vacationers without a care in the world.

The Bluebird Café was crowded and noisy, and Lillian wasn’t on duty. Instead, Jack’s waitress was a girl about his age who flirted with him and accidentally brought him ham steak instead of sausage. His stomach settled once he’d filled it, but the rest of him remained in turmoil.

The market was open, so he bought a six-pack of beer. Then he went up to his room and waited for Sam’s familiar footsteps. Jack wished he could see the parking lot, but the angle was wrong. He wished he could go swimming, but then he might miss seeing Sam. So he moved restlessly between the bed and the chair. He watched television for a few minutes at a time, but the soaps depressed him, the news bored him, and Johnny Carson and Art Linkletter failed to amuse. He ended up leafing through the Gideon Bible, hoping that the familiarity of the passages would calm him. But although he was reminded of the Sunday-morning smells of sweat and perfume, and although he could almost feel the scratchy collar of his church suit against his neck, he wasn’t soothed.

The fan in the window moved hot air around the room but didn’t cool anything. Jack’s skin itched.

Almost out of desperation, he lay on the rumpled bedspread, unfastened his pants, and began to stroke his soft cock. Usually he jerked off while imagining himself screwing movie stars, or sometimes he pictured fans so adoring that they dropped their trousers at a twitch of his finger and then begged the great Jack Dayton to give them a fucking they’d never forget.

Today, though, Jack’s thoughts turned elsewhere. A handsome face with a few days’ growth of whiskers, a head of dark curls, sad hazel eyes, a full mouth that quirked into a crooked smile. This fantasy man didn’t resemble anyone Jack had ever met, and yet Jack felt as though he knew him, memories of the fellow tantalizing him like a word on the tip of his tongue. The man was soft-spoken, and his equally soft hands skimmed over Jack’s body. He was on the short side, lean, with a nicely proportioned cock jutting proudly. Jack was perplexed as to why he imagined a tattoo of an octopus on the man’s chest. He had previously seen tattoos only on the arms of former sailors—World War II vets, most of them—and this guy didn’t look like a sailor. Also, why an octopus?

But the tattoo didn’t matter for long, not after its owner pressed lips and tongue to Jack’s body and Jack responded by bending him over the dresser and licking sweat from the knobs of his spine. Jack sank inside the man and felt the torso beneath him shudder, the man making guttural sounds of encouragement and ecstasy. Soon Jack was lost too, crying out at his own release.

A good orgasm usually relaxed him, but not this time. He washed up and rearranged his clothing, but he felt even more on edge. It was as if someone was waiting for him or he was late for an appointment. He felt as if someone was lingering in the room, just out of sight. Maybe the place was haunted.

He drank all the beer, then went to the market and bought more. He didn’t eat lunch.

Sam wasn’t coming. Probably he didn’t take Jack’s threats seriously. Probably he shouldn’t. Christ, Jack didn’t want to ruin Sam or anyone else—not even Benny Baxter. Jack understood what Sam meant when he said the industry was a business, and Jack had always been well aware that Sam took business very seriously. You didn’t get the fancy houses and the Oscar nominations if you acted like an amateur.

But all Jack wanted was a chance, dammit—the opportunity to prove he had that enigmatic star quality. Give him a good role with top billing and the camera would love him, the fans would love him. Everyone would love him.

The worst of it wasn’t that Sam had promised him a chance—people broke promises all the time. And it wasn’t even how Jack had earned it—if he focused on how he’d paid Sam, he’d feel cheap and dirty and used. No, the worst of it was that without his shot at stardom, he was nobody. Nothing but a meatpacker’s son from Nebraska. Not special or desirable. Just… empty. He’d go back to Omaha and reclaim his job among the blood-and-shit reek of the plant. He’d rent some crappy little house, spend his nights watching TV and drinking, occasionally meet up with a stranger for a quick and furtive fuck. He’d grow old and die and never matter to anyone.

He drank the second batch of beer.

Somewhere nearby, a baby was crying. A woman spoke in low, angry bursts, and Jack couldn’t tell whether the voice came from another guest or someone’s television. He thought he heard the crunch and groan of two cars colliding, followed by the echoes of a scream, but when he looked out the window, the families at the pool were as jolly as always.

If he stood in exactly the right spot in his room and pressed his cheek to the window glass, he could watch the sun setting behind a faraway bluff. The earth would spin, and soon, five hundred miles away, that same sun would sink into the Pacific. Those lucky few who owned houses in Malibu and Santa Monica could stand on their balconies and watch as the sky turned fiery orange and the sea swallowed the light.

He was sitting in the darkened room, holding the almost empty whiskey bottle in one hand, when someone knocked on the door. It wasn’t Sam—Jack would have heard his footsteps. For a moment he considered pretending he wasn’t there. But the person knocked again, more insistently this time, and Jack rose slowly onto his bare feet. The floor sloped as if his whole world had tilted.

“Hello, Jacky.”

Doris Richards wore sunglasses despite the hour and a long fur coat, although the air had barely begun to cool. She smelled like Jack’s mother’s lilac bush, and her hair was done up in a new style—short but glamorous, with smooth curls. “You look like Grace Kelly,” Jack said, stepping aside so she could enter.

“Grace Kelly’s mother, maybe.”

As confidently as if she had lived there for years, Doris crossed the room and clicked on the light. Jack stood at the door a few seconds more before closing it. “Sam sent you?” he asked.

“My husband doesn’t
send
me anywhere. He and I talked, and we agreed it would be best if I came.”

“Best.” He leaned back against the door and scrubbed his face with the hand that wasn’t holding the bottle.

“Baby, I thought you were smarter than this.”

“’M pretty, not smart.”

She laughed as if he were being very clever. “It’s possible to be both, you know.” She picked up an empty beer can and frowned at it for a moment before setting it down again. “You’re far too young for this.”

Muzzily, he misunderstood what she meant. “I’ve been drinking since I was twelve.”

“Not that.
This
.” She waved her arms in an expansive gesture that seemed to indicate the entire world. “Too young to know what you want.”

“I want to go swimming.”

“Jacky….”

“I want to go swimming in my own fucking pool in my own house in Beverly Hills! I want my boyfriend swimming with me and he loves me and we don’t fucking care who knows it because I’m so goddamn famous it doesn’t matter! I want people begging for my autograph and girls fainting when they see me. I want my face on movie posters all over fucking Omaha and when everyone sees them they’ll say, ‘There’s Jack Dayton. Look what our boy has done for himself.’ I want to get so many goddamn Oscars that after a while, every other fellow in Hollywood gives up even trying ’cause they know they won’t win.” He cradled the bottle as if it were a gold statuette.

Doris shook her head. She fumbled in her purse until she found a small oval box with a mother-of-pearl lid, then opened the box and pulled out a pill. “Here,” she said, stepping closer and holding it out. “You’ve got yourself all worked up. This will calm you down.”

He didn’t want to calm down. He wanted to rage, to kick and scream and punch until his throat and fists were raw. But he took the pill and swallowed it with a swig of whiskey. So did she, but she took hers dry.

“Have another,” Doris ordered, so he took that one too.

She walked across the room to inspect one of the ugly paintings. “You don’t understand,” she said with her back to him. “You’re just a kid and you’re so sure about the ways things are… but they don’t have to be that way. When you get a little older, you’ll see you had so many more possibilities, only now it’s too late and those chances have slipped from your fingers.” Doris turned to look at him. “But they haven’t slipped from
your
fingers yet, Jacky. You still have so many ways to be happy.”

Jack lurched across the room and collapsed into the chair. “I’m not happy.”

“Not now, no. You’re disappointed and your feelings are hurt. But that’s just today. Tomorrow… who knows what will come along?”

“Nothing will fucking come along. I’ll be standing in congealed blood, hacking at chunks of dead animal until my hands cramp and my knees lock.”

“There are other options.”

“What? Bending over for some goddamn car salesman and his pervert non-nephew? Maybe I should just sell myself on the streets.” He’d seen the hustlers, the hungry, feral-looking boys who gave it up for a few bills.

“Baby,” Doris breathed. When she gave him more pills, he took them with quick gulps from his rapidly emptying bottle.

Doris sat on one of the beds—the one with the unmussed comforter—and frowned at him. The light made her blonde hair glow like a halo, and giant wings unfurled from her back. They weren’t feathery and white, but gray and furry, like her coat. “Like a myth,” he said to her, or at least tried to say. His tongue was stupid and slow.

“Jacky, did you mean what you said to Sam last night?”

He couldn’t answer; his thoughts were too jumbled. “I didn’t have a script. Didn’t know my lines.”

“You threatened to go to the press and tell them Sam’s secrets. You didn’t mean that, did you? You’re a good boy, Jacky.”

“Not a good boy. Never have been. Ask Dad.”

“But you have to understand—if you talk to the press, Sam will be ruined, but not just him. Me too, honey. And all those people who work for him. Some of them are your friends.”

“No friends,” he snarled. He tried to drink more whiskey, but the bottle was empty. Maybe there was more somewhere. Hadn’t he bought beer? If the light wasn’t so glaring and the air so thick and fuzzy, he could see. He could see, goddammit.

Doris’s wings brought her over to him. He struggled not to cry; she was beautiful, but she wasn’t what he wanted. He couldn’t… couldn’t remember what he wanted. “I wanted to swim,” he croaked. “Like flying.”

“Here. These will make it all better, Jacky.”

He swallowed what she gave him. Like candy, but bitter. “Nobody wants bitter candy.”

“But you want—”

“I want to swim, Doris. Please?” He was small and young and helpless and the world was far too big and difficult.

She stared at him for a million years. A million million years, so that while he waited, the Grand Canyon eroded away and was reborn. He got tired of waiting and struggled to his feet. “Swimming.”

She took his arm and steadied him. He should take off his clothes. But that wasn’t allowed, not without a suit, and the suit was from some other boy Sam fucked. Maybe Benny Baxter.

When they got out on the walkway, he could see the pool below, lit up and sparkling like a jewel. It wasn’t California blue, but it would have to do.

He started to climb over the railing, but Doris tugged him back; he fell, landing hard on his ass. It should have hurt, but right now
nothing
hurt. Nothing and everything, and the world was all cotton wool and jagged glass. “I was going to dive,” he said when she helped him to his feet.

“C’mon, Jacky.”

With Doris’s help, he made it to the end of the walkway. There were stairs, which scared him. They reminded him of going down into the basement when the tornado siren went off, and he hated the basement because it was full of spiders and broken bits of things and there was a scummy green drain in the middle that might—
might
—be hiding something beneath. Something that caught at the ankles of little boys and dragged them down down down and they couldn’t breathe anymore and their family forgot they ever existed.

“What’s the matter, Jacky?”

He collapsed heavily onto the cement at the bottom of the stairwell and tried to keep the whimpers from escaping his mouth. “Doris,” he whispered.

She gave him more pills. One or two or three or four. Couldn’t count and didn’t count, spinning around and whirling like a top. Didn’t make the pain go away. Didn’t make everything all better. “Bad medicine,” he said.

“Let’s get in my car, baby. You can lie down in the back and sleep and I’ll do the driving. I’ll take you back to Iowa—”

“Nebraska.”

“I’ll take you back to Nebraska and your family will be happy to see you again. You can get some rest. Make the big decisions later.”

“Won’t go.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Going to swim to LA.”

He had to lean against the wall to stand up, and even then everything spun. But he knew where he was going—to the water that glimmered like false promises, and the water was a lie too, appearing blue only because the plaster was tinted. Doris took his arm, either to stop him or guide him, but he pulled away. Didn’t need her. He was on his own.

He made it to the very edge. But he couldn’t bring himself to face the water, so instead he stood with his heels hanging over the pool’s lip. When he looked up, he could see right through the glare of the motel lights into the heavens, and the sky was a deep pool too. Deep and dark, with tiny stars floating at the surface.

“The stars like to swim,” he told Doris. “It’s what stars do.”

“Jacky….” She reached out for him.

Her fingertips touched his arm. The touch of an angel. He fell backward and he hit the water with a splash that was too loud for him to hear whether she screamed.

The water closed over him and he was so heavy. Not immune to gravity. A tiny chunk of dying star caught in the heavy grip of the earth and falling down, falling down.