Quarry's Deal (13 page)

26

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THE OUTSIDE OF
the place was classy-looking charcoal- colored brick with white mortar. There was more brick inside, but whorehouse-red brocade wallpaper dominated. And that’s the whole story of DiPreta’s Italian Restaurant: it was alternately sleazy and luxurious, as plush as the backseat of a millionaire’s limo, as tasteless as a girl whose panties have the day of the week on them.

Lu was waiting for me just beyond the huge .wooden front doors, with their elaborate carved wood handles shaped like rearing, roaring lions (you grabbed a lion around the belly to pull open a door), and she looked genuinely worried.

“What was that all about?” she wanted to know.

“I thought somebody was following us,” I said.

We walked past the area in front where some guys in white outfits and chef hats were making pizzas in front of the street window, the pizza ovens built of that same fancy charcoal-color brick, and moved into the subdued lighting of the dining area.

“
Was
somebody following us?”

“Yes,” I said.

A lady in her forties wearing a dark red evening gown and a white corsage, with dark black brittle hair piled as high as a small child, and a mole as black as her hair next to a mouth as red as her dress in a face as white as her corsage, said, “Party of two?” and Lu told her we were with the Tree party and the lady asked us to walk this way, and I resisted the urge to turn
that into an even bigger joke than it already was.

There were booths on either side of us, as we walked, and each booth had its own tiffany shade hanging lamp and its own original oil painting, which ran to matadors and still lifes and crying clowns and big-eyed children and frozen summer landscapes. We followed the lady in red into a large open area, where a mammoth cut-glass chandelier was suspended which no one seemed anxious to stand under, with an ornate bar off to the left, the prerequisite reclining-nude oil painting in the midst of an obscenely well-stocked series of wine and liquor racks, and an open stairway rising before us to reveal the second floor, or anyway a hallway thereof, with more oil paintings and the closed doorways to banquet rooms, apparently, and we went off to the right, to a private nook (or was it a cranny?) where Frank Tree and Ruthy sat at a table big enough for twelve.

“Jack Wilson, Frank Tree,” Lu said.

Tree stood and extended a hand and I shook it. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it.

He said, “I’ve seen you around, Jack. You been winning some money off me, if I’m not mistaken.”

I said he wasn’t and sat down.

Ruthy raised a hand to boob level and milled her fingers in a sort of wave. “I’m Ruthy,” she said.

“I guessed,” I said.

She gave me a schoolgirl grin and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Jack.”

“If it isn’t bad, it isn’t true,” I said.

We were in the middle of the big table. I was across from Ruthy, who was wearing a yellow short-sleeve sweatshirt that had a dancing Snoopy on it. Her blond hair was pulled back from her face and she had little make-up on. She looked good, though. Nice tits. Lu looked good, too, in her pants suit with the halter top. Tree was wearing a sportcoat and open-collar shirt, and seemed to have sobered up considerably since this afternoon. The range of clothing at the table was in keeping with the rest of the patrons at DiPreta’s; there was everything from evening wear to sandals and sweatshirts and all the stops between. It was like being on Mars, or in Cleveland.

A middle-aged waitress in traditional black-and-white uniform with black hose came over to take our order, asking first if we wanted anything from the bar. Tree and I both declined, but Lu asked for a Bloody Mary and Ruthy a screw- driver. Then Tree recommended the rigatoni and Lu and I went along with him, but Ruthy wanted an anchovy pizza.

When the waitress had gone, I told Ruthy how much I enjoyed the play Sunday.

“Did you really?” It lit up her dark blue eyes, which darted around as she spoke, never looking at you, never landing. “It’s too bad you couldn’t see me in something heavy.  I mean,
Born Yesterday
, after all. How shallow can you get? Anyway at least it was fun, and, well, you can’t go dropping Edward Albee in the laps of these little old ladies in tennis shoes at the matinees, can you?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said.

“Not that anybody in Des Moines is ready for something heavy.” She shook a Virginia Slims out of the pack in front of her; she’d already had several. Tree used a lighter to fire it for her. “The theater’s a once-or-twice-a-year thing for Des Moines—birthday, anniversary. . . . Before curtain the manager comes out and has everybody in the house applaud for people celebrating ‘special days.’ But you know that. You were there. Bunch of smalltown bullshit, but what can you expect? Now this
Fourposter
play coming up isn’t so bad, but I’m not in it. A good woman’s role for a change, too. I guess I’ll be playing these lousy ingénues and sexpot roles till my teeth fall the fuck out. It’d be nice to play something sensitive for a change. Like when I was at Drake.”

“Drake?”

“The university here. I did a lot of good stuff there. I did
Rhinoceros.
”

“I don’t think I know it.”

“It’s a wonderful play. It’s about everybody turning into rhinoceroses.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Oh, it is. It’s very symbolic.”

“What of?”

She gestured with her cigarette. “Uh, people getting insensitive, I think. People turning into monsters and nobody noticing or caring and pretty soon everybody’s a monster. Our director at the time said it was about Vietnam, even though it was written before Vietnam. I think it’s about conformity. It’s a comedy.”

“I like a good laugh.”

“I played an ingénue in that, too, but at least the play was heavy. There are so few good roles for women. That’s because most of the playwrights are men. If it wasn’t for the queer ones, we wouldn’t have any decent roles.”

I started to ask  something and Lu, who knew I was leading Ruthy on, cut in.

“How’s your work coming?” she said. “Those sets struck yet, kiddo?”

“God, no, and we been working all day without a real break and am I famished. And here we sit in the slowest restaurant in town, and it’ll be years before the food comes. We really should’ve gone to Babe’s or Noah’s.”

“Then why’d we come here?” I asked.

“First, some friends of Frank’s own the place and even at the busy times we get a private place to eat, and second, they got the best anchovy pizza in town.”

Tree had been silent through all of this. He’d been watching Ruthy throughout, hanging on her every word, savoring everything about her with that special fatherly sort of lust that gives incest a bad name.

And she was a fine-looking girt. She had a lot going for her besides her chest, too. There was a fascinating mouth on the child, a fascination having nothing at all to do with the words that came out of said mouth. Puffy, pouty lips and little white teeth. It was easy to imagine that mouth doing things other than eating an anchovy pizza.

But watching her eat the pizza, once it came, wasn’t especially fascinating. She wolfed it down and kept up her chatter as she did, which was impressive in its way, but a sexy girl eating with her mouth open is just as obnoxious as if it were you or me.

Between bites of rigatoni I asked her how she and Lucille met.

“We got together down in Florida,” Ruthy said. “We lived in the same apartment building. I was working a dinner theater down there. I was there a year. You should’ve seen my tan. But I got a chance a couple years ago to move back to Des Moines and work the Candle Lite, and Des Moines is sort of home to me, since I went to college here, before I dropped out, so I was glad to come back . . . even if it meant kissing my year-round tan goodbye.”

Tree finally decided to join the conversation. “The nice thing about the Candle Lite, for Ruthy,” he said, “is she gets to work other places, too. The Candle Lite is linked with a number of other dinner theaters in the Midwest, and in many of them she gets to appear with name actors. Just last March she was in Milwaukee in
The Seven Year Itch
with one of the actors from
Gilligan’s Island
.”

“It usually keeps me out of the
hard
work,” Ruthy said, feigning sheepishness. “This is actually the first time I’ve had to help strike a set since I came to the Candle Lite . . . which is why I’m working so hard at it. The rest of the company thinks I’m going to loaf my way through it, and I’m going to show ’em.”

“Not to change the subject,” Lu said, apparently a bit bored with Ruthy’s show biz patter, “but Jack here’s been looking for work for the past week or so and hasn’t had much luck. Jack has better manners than to bring it up now, but I’m not a shy type. Think you might have something for him at the Barn?”

“What line are you in, Jack?” Tree said. Nothing in his voice, but a little something in his eyes.

“I’m a salesman. I used to sell ladies underwear, but you can see how much the girls here care about that.”

The air was chill in there and four nice nipples were standing out and we all laughed a little.

“Well, I know what kind of poker player you are. And I’m thinking of replacing one of my dealers. Interested?”

“Very.’’

“Come around and play some cards tomorrow night . . . and try not to win too much more of my money . . . and stay and talk to me after closing.”

“Fine.”

Just as we’d prearranged.

Then I asked Ruthy how exactly “striking a set” was accomplished, and she told us. Tree and I listened intently. Lu had a couple of Bloody Marys and stared off someplace.

27

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ON THE STAGE
was an antique oak bed, a post rising from each corner to support a lace-trimmed, blue satin canopy. There were several other pieces of antique-looking furniture, a chair, table, trunk; another chair, and all of them, including the bed, were pushed forward, almost to the edge of the stage, as Ruthy and another member of the repertory company, a lumpish female in curlers and workshirt and rolled-up jeans, painted the light blue “walls” of the set, which had a doorway off to the left and a window to the right.

It was mid-morning and the front doors of the Candle Lite Playhouse had been open. I walked up the short flight of stairs onto the stage, where day before yesterday I had filled a plate with food, and my footsteps clumped hollowly on the floor of the stage.

Ruthy, on her hands and knees painting, turned and looked up at me and said, “Hi! Where’s Lucille?”

“The apartment,” I said. “She kicked me out. She had a bunch of cleaning to do.”

(Which made it convenient for both of us, as I could go do the snooping I needed to, and Lu could continue her surveillance of Tree, without either of us getting in the other’s way. And since I knew Frank Tree would not be leaving his apartment before nightfall and the Barn, and would in fact be spending the day in front of his television with a revolver in his lap—with time out only for bodily functions and perhaps the preparation and consumption of a TV dinner—I had few worries about what might happen while I was out.)

Ruthy was, like her lumpy companion, wearing jeans and a workshirt. Ruthy’s jeans, however, were tourniquet tight, and her workshirt knotted into a halter, leaving a succulent tummy, complete with navel, exposed, the buttons at the top open and giving me a skyscraper look down her impressive cleavage. It was a view she was aware of, and even exploited. Whether she was just a cock-tease in general, or had something in mind for me specifically, was, like my teased cock, up in the air.

She gave me a sly look that I had seen before (in her performance Sunday) and said, “Sure she isn’t cheating on you? It wouldn’t take twenty minutes to clean that place of hers stem to stern.”

I squatted down to talk with her and look her in the eye and not the gland.

“Lu’s like anybody else,” I said. “She’s just got to have a little privacy sometimes, and she’s got a right to it. It’s her apartment. I’m just a guest.”

“Well, if I had a guest at home like you, I wouldn’t send you out in the cold.”

“It’s not so cold. In fact the sun’s out for a change. Kind of a nice day out there. Too bad you’re stuck in here working.”

“Oh I don’t mind. It’s all a part of theater. It’s just as exciting to me to be backstage as center-stage.”

The lumpish girl, standing, stroking with a paint brush, rolled her eyes, without Ruthy seeing.

“Did you tell Lucille you were gonna stop by and see me?”

“No,” I said.

“I’m gonna be busy all day, Jack.”

“I figured you might be. I’ll tell you why I stopped by. I noticed in your program, Sunday, that there’s something called Candle Lite Productions, that does advertising work, locally. TV and radio spots, that sort of thing.”

“That’s right. This place used to be a church that did its own radio shows here. There’s a studio set-up on the second floor, where we do the recording. Why?”

“I thought maybe I could pick up some extra work. I thought your production company might be able to use a salesman, part-time, maybe?”

“Well, Jack, it’s not my production company, but I sure can talk to the boss lady for you. She’s here, now, if you want to see if you can see her.”

“That’d be great.”

“I’ll go get her for you. Give me about fifteen minutes. She’s probably just finishing her breakfast about now, and might not be dressed yet.”

“She lives here?”

“Sure. So do I. There’s four apartments here. She uses one, her ex-husband who manages the place has another, and me and another permanent member of the troupe use the other two. When I say I
live
in the theater, I ain’t kidding, booby. Be back in a flash. A fifteen-minute flash, that is.”

She stood up. Her jeans were so tight they were sucked up into her pubis. It was a wonder she could walk in the damn things, but she did, and then I was alone with her stocky coworker, who put down her paint brush and said, “Buy you a cup of coffee, friend?”

I took her up on it, and soon we were sitting at a ringside table, drinking instant coffee. Her name was Martha and she had pretty features buried in a pale round face and smoked two Camels in rapid succession as we talked.

“You want some free advice?” she asked.

“Price is right,” I shrugged.

“Stay away from that little cunt.”

I acted surprised by her language, then pretended to recover and said, “Well, I doubt it’s little. I get the idea she gives it plenty of exercise.”

“That she does. But you get my drift. I’m talking figurative cunts, not literal. And that’s a figurative cunt if I ever met one.”

“I’ve met a few myself. What makes her qualify?”

“You know that innocent, dumb, sexy blonde act of hers? Well, it is just an act. She comes on that way to the guys in the company, except for those she’s had in the sack a few times who she gives the cold shoulder once she’s bored and who come to hate her guts as much as the women, some of whom she comes on to too, though to most she’s shit personified from the start. The pits, my friend.”

“How so?”

“Aloof. Conceited ass, first class. The cunt thinks she’s Glenda Jackson and she isn’t even Mamie Van Doren. The pissy part is she gets all the good roles, or most of ’em, anyway. She really must’ve fucked her way into somebody important’s heart.”

“Isn’t she striking the set, like anybody else in the company?”

“That’s just what I mean. This is the first time since she came here she ever lowered herself to that. I don’t know how she rates, playing all those other dinner theaters all over, I mean that just isn’t done. You’re either part of a rep company or you aren’t. You got to be a name to be on the circuit. Unless you fucked somebody important, I guess. Look, I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, but I
heard you guys talking, I mean I was standing right there . . .
and if you’re shacked up with somebody already, don’t throw it away for her. Look the other way when she comes on to you. Ignore the cunt. She just isn’t worth it. Whatever you got now, it’s better. Believe me.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Besides,” she said, pulling some smoke up in her head and letting it out her nose, “she isn’t even all that hot in bed.”

I thought about that a while, and went back to the bar where the hot water was and made myself a fresh cup of coffee. Martha came along. She was starting on her third Camel.

“I hate these things,” she said, referring to the cigarette. “If I had a left nut, I’d give it for one goddamn half-smoked roach.”

“I hear it’s hard to score in this towm.”

Which I really
had
heard, having spent an hour on the East Side trying to score myself, before coming here this morning. The closest I came was a black guy in a khaki outfit in front of a place called Soulful Record Shop who said maybe next week. Things were as lean as Tree had said. The local anti-drugs campaign seemed pretty effective, from my superficial investigation, at least.

“Hard to score?” she said. “No harder than shaking oleo out of a dairy farmer. Haven’t you seen those hokey posters in the storefront windows? And heard the bullshit on the tube? And on the radio, and in the papers . . . D.O.P.E.? If ever an organization was aptly named, that’s it. You wanna know the ironic part?”

“What’s that?”

“Des Moines is supposed to be a sort of retirement village for Mafia types. Yeah. You can’t turn around in Des Moines without bumping into an Italian restaurant, did you notice? Even the food served here at the Candle Lite is catered by one of them.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“It’s just kind of funny. These Mafia types move out of Chicago and places like that and come to nice, quiet Des Moines to retire, to watch their grandkids grow up in zero crime rate. Only they can’t escape what they put in motion, you know? I wonder how many of these butts shouting law and order, how many of these D.O.P.E.s are Mafia types who started the problem themselves?”

It was a mice irony, but when I questioned her about it further, gently, she said it was just rumors. She wasn’t a Des Moines native, and only knew what she’d heard longer-time residents say.

“Hey, Jack!” Ruthy said, moving toward us remarkably quickly, considering the tight jeans. “The boss lady says she’ll see you, now.”

And Ruthy put an arm around my waist and showed me the way.