Death of an Orchid Lover (22 page)

The other half of the smile was gone. I’d blown it. Whatever made her think she wanted to be with me had been as ephemeral as a discocactus flower. Richard Dawson yelled,
“Show us, ‘Jump your bones,’” and the big red
X
appeared and Dawson said, “Bad answer, family,” and the studio audience moaned, “Awwwwww.”

It was like it had always been, all the way back to my teens, seeing a date go wonderfully until one thing went awry, and suddenly things turned mushy and I ended the evening alone, wondering if I’d ever see the person again. I felt like someone was playing a cosmic joke on me.

“I can’t come in tonight,” she said. “I have to be up early.”

“Does not tonight mean maybe some other night?”

“Let’s just play it by ear.” I knew what that meant. It meant she was trying to get rid of me as quickly and with as little fuss as possible.

She walked to her car and unlocked the door. I could hear the bubbling sound as the whole evening went down the drain. She slipped in and fastened her seat belt. “Are you free tomorrow night?” she said.

“Tomorrow?”

“The day after today.”

“Yes, I’m free tomorrow.”

“Do you want to go out again?”

“Sure.”

“Good. But this time I pick the place. I’ll come by for you at seven.” She blew me a kiss, started the engine, pulled away from the curb, and left me standing in the gutter like a bewildered adolescent.

M
ORNING
. T
HE CRAZY PEOPLE NEXT DOOR WOKE ME.
They’d moved on from Iron Butterfly to African drums. Loud ones, played with no discernible sense of rhythm. I dragged myself out of bed, did my bathroom stuff, went in the kitchen for tea. The ants were back, eight or ten of them in a ragged trail originating somewhere behind the refrigerator. I considered dealing with them, decided to give them one more chance to leave the premises of their own accord.

Out in the greenhouse, every cactus bud I looked at was infested with aphids. Some of the ants’ handiwork, perhaps; they liked to tend the aphids, protecting them from predators in exchange for tiny bubbles of honeydew. The aphids didn’t seem be doing any damage; their wee green bodies merely performed that peculiar little dance aphids do. Call Olsen’s,” I said. “Get ladybugs.” I amused myself greatly.

Before I could split my sides too much, the phone rang inside. It was Elaine. “You got it.”

“The toilet bowl commercial?”

“The toilet bowl
cleaner
commercial.”

“That’s what I meant.” I grabbed a pencil and paper. “All right, when does it shoot?”

“Tomorrow. At Riverrun Studio in Sunland.” Way up in the foothills.

“I have to go to Sunland to shoot a toilet bowl commercial?”

“Twice. You have to go up today for a costume fitting.”

“Costume? What costume? Why can’t I wear my nice suburban dad clothes?”

“They didn’t tell me. Is there a problem?”

“No.”

She gave me the details of where I had to be and when I had to be there. Then, “I’ve got a million calls to make. See you Saturday night.”

“You will? Where?”

“At your father’s. Our big family gathering.”

“What big family gathering?”

“He’s having us over. He hasn’t told you about this?”

“No. He’s getting forgetful.”

We ended the conversation. I put the handpiece down. Something occurred to me. If I was with my family, it would preclude having a Real Saturday Night Date with Sharon. If a Real Date was a big deal, a Real Saturday Night Date was an order of magnitude bigger. No work that day, so you’re not worn out. No work the day after, so you can stay out as late as you want. Then, if you get lucky, sleep in the next morning. Or, at least, stay in bed. With the person you were with Saturday night.

I glossed over the fact that since I had no real job, I didn’t have to worry about being anywhere most any morning. And that Sharon had mentioned she worked Saturdays, thereby negating the not-worn-out factor. She’d switched her day off the week before to attend the orchid bash.

Didn’t matter. The principle held.

I took stock. It was Thursday already. What made me assume Sharon would be free Saturday?

And, if she were, why would I let being with her interfere with plans with my loved ones?

Of course, I could make the family thing part of my big date, the one that hadn’t been arranged. But I didn’t want to do that. I hated when the family met someone I was seeing. Because then, when the inevitable breakup happened, they delighted in telling me how much they liked her and how sad they were that I wasn’t seeing her anymore.

Gina and I were back at French Market for breakfast. In celebration of my latest commercial triumph, I was buying. Gina began quizzing me the minute we sat down. “So how was your big date last night?”

“pretty good. Though I nearly screwed things up at the end.”

“What, you tried to score and she didn’t like it?”

“No.”

“
Did
you score?”

“What is this, the boys’ locker room?” “Did you?”

“No. I really didn’t try very hard.”

“When are you seeing her again?”

“Tonight.”

“Really?”

“Really.” I took a sip of water. “Gi?”

“Yeah?”

“You know your theory?”

“Which one?”

“That when I get mixed up in a murder I get horny.”

“Oh. That theory.”

“Yes, that theory. I think you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“It’s not only Sharon. Yesterday I was viewing Burns’s butt with lust in my heart.”

“It’s a nice butt, all right.” “You remember her butt?”

“Bisexual Woman remembers all butts. Boy butts, girl butts—all fodder for my libido.”

“Fodder for your libido?” “It has a certain ring, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

The waiter came and took our order. When he left, Gina said, “Do you think Laura did it?”

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And I keep coming back to, if she didn’t do it, why would she lie about being at her place feeding the cat? Damn it, I wish I knew if the police had decided whether she killed herself. Because if she did …” I plucked a sugar packet from the dispenser. It had a picture of Grauman’s Chinese on it. Sorry, Mann’s Chinese. Part of a chain now. “I kind of want to drop the whole thing. I want to go back to my orderly life.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because I promised Laura.”

She picked up her purse and pulled out a tissue. There was something odd about the way she was handling the purse.

“You’ve got your gun in there, don’t you.”

“Yes, and now the whole restaurant knows, thank you very much.”

“Given that you’ve armed us, it doesn’t sound like
you
think I should give up my detective work.”

Considering the orderly life that’s the alternative, “I’d say the murder thing’s a lot more exciting.”

“But is that reason enough to keep doing it?”

“That’s a decision only you can make.”

But, of course, I’d already made it.

Gartner’s Tires was on a depressing strip of Reseda Boulevard. The mix of businesses was similar to the one in Hawthorne, but here everything was more tawdry, more used-up, more sad. Car dealerships, new and used, with tattered colored flags snapping in the breeze. Fast-food joints, both chains and locals. Nail parlors. Property managers. Martial arts places. It was at least ten degrees hotter than it had been in West Hollywood. The air was motionless.

Gartner’s was on a corner, an L-shaped building that surrounded a parking lot in which a half-dozen cars waited with numbered magnetic hats on their roofs. A big sign announced WE CARRY ALL BRANDS. Hundreds of old tires were piled into mountains in the empty lot next door.

As I pulled up, a fat guy wearing a light gray shirt and pants strolled out to the parking lot. He squinted at his clipboard, using a finger as a reading aid, got into a giant Mercedes with ridiculous mag wheels, and squeezed it into one of the stalls inside the building. He got out, spotted me, grabbed a car hat, came over. “The embroidery on his shirt told me he was Ronnie and that he was the assistant manager. Those front tires look pretty bad,” he said. He knelt beside the Datsun. His knees cracked. He face registered concern, whether for my tires or his knees I couldn’t tell. He whipped out a tiny ruler, measured my tread, shook his head. “Only two-thirty-seconds.”

“Or one-sixteenth, as we say on my planet.”

“We got a special today, Pirellis, special purchase, special price. Two for fifty-three fifty, plus balancing, of course. And valves, of course.”

“And tax, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Sounds like a good deal, Ronnie, but the tire money in my budget doesn’t break loose until around the Fourth of July. I’m really here to see Helen. Or David. Or both.”

“The cops stop you with tires like that, they’ll—”

“Look, I’ll think about the tires, okay? I really need to see the owners.”

He stood back up, emitting a groan, and shrugged. “It’s your truck. Helen’s in the office. David’s somewhere.” His customer radar sensed the VW Cabriolet turning into the lot. He rushed off to push Pirellis.

I shouldered open one of the twin glass doors and went in. Tire paraphernalia surrounded me. On one wall hung a tire that had been cut through to show its interior construction. Next to it a display proclaimed one tire was GOOD and another was BETTER and another was BEST. A fourth was FOR RV’S, as if this were some measure of quality better than BEST. Across the way a poster showed the horrible things that could happen to your tires if they weren’t properly balanced. Another, a decade old, informed me Goodrich was the one without the blimp.

A couple of customers sat on low black couches. The vinyl seating surface was about a foot off the ground, making it easy for them to select from the pile of
Tire Retailer Gazettes
and out-of-date
People
magazines on the chipped wood-grain table before them.

The office area was visible through an interior window. “I cruised by the displays to the adjoining door, knocked, heard
a woman’s voice say, Come in.” I opened the door and stepped through.