Samson's Deal: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) (23 page)

This was not easy to tell with the kind of people who hung out here. Drunk was not what one was supposed to be. So they paced themselves, most of them, or failing that sat quietly in a corner until they pulled themselves together enough to go home or have a Perrier with a twist. Some of them, I guessed, just didn’t want to go home. I could understand that. A little apartment somewhere, where the only other living thing was a philodendron. The divorced ones. The aging singles of various sexes who didn’t think it was all so much fun anymore.

The guy on the barstool next to mine was tall and chubby, with sandy hair and moustache. He was wearing brown corduroys, a Levi jacket, and a T-shirt that said he was a great lover. He was watching two women at the end of the bar. To my right, three stools down, a young gay man was leaning on the bar sipping a light beer and talking to the bartender about a bar on Castro Street in San Francisco. In the booth across the aisle from me, a woman was telling her friend she would never again fall in love with a punk type. I got the impression the punk was another woman.

“Yeah, well, listen,” her friend said, “pink hair?”

“It was purple.”

In the booth next to them a young couple sat holding hands, out on a date, he wearing a suit, she wearing a dress.

Farther away, more stray men and a few more women.

I had no idea what the late crowd was like. This time of evening it was a neighborhood bar and these people represented the neighborhood. Or that part of the neighborhood that went to bars.

The sandy-haired guy turned to me. “Can’t seem to catch her eye,” he said, blushing a little. I looked down the bar. The dark-haired woman’s light-haired friend was looking our way. She turned her head and pretended she hadn’t been.

“Which one?” I asked him.

“The dark-haired one. Of course.” I looked again. I didn’t understand why it was “of course.” The dark-haired one looked gaunt and affected to me. The light-haired one had a nice smile.

“Oh,” I said. “The other one was looking this way.”

He shrugged. “I like dark-haired women.”

“Oh,” I said again. He reminded me of a woman I once knew who said she only went out with long-legged men. I didn’t have anything to say to her, either. I glanced again at the two women at the end of the bar. Sure enough, the light one was watching chubby T-shirt next to me. The dark one was running her fingers through her own hair. No one was watching me.

I’d no sooner had that thought than I realized it wasn’t true. The young guy who’d been talking about Castro Street was trying to make eye contact. A very pretty young woman at the far end of the bar was smiling at me. I killed two birds with one stone by smiling at the woman.

The guy turned to see who I was grinning at, smiled, and shrugged. I also smiled and shrugged at him. He went back to his conversation with the bartender. The young woman turned away. I was supposed to give chase, but I didn’t know whether I felt like it. Alienation and objectivity can also be amusing. Besides, I hadn’t planned on spending a lot of time in the place, and I hadn’t planned on meeting a woman there.

Inflexibility is one thing, though, and absurd obstructionism is another. I finished my wine and caught her eye again. She really was awfully cute. Dark brown hair, sensual mouth, small, rounded, soft-looking body.

My plan: go to the men’s room and maybe stop near her on my way back. Not original, not even subtle, but better than marching over to her, all the way down the bar, like it mattered how she responded.

Have people truly always gone through this nonsense?

So I went to the toilet. When I came out, I nodded to her and she said “Hi.” She had changed her position just enough to place herself in the path from the men’s room to my barstool.

Abandoning my sandy-haired friend and his hopeless passion for the dark-haired woman, I stood next to my new companion, ordered another drink, and asked if she would like anything. She was drinking old-fashioneds. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw anyone drinking those.

She was about twenty-six and her name was Kim. After Novak, I assumed. Every generation saddles its girl children with movie star names. If you eat the heart of your enemy you will have his courage. If you bear the name of a movie star you will look perfect and be famous. Or burn out on drugs or alcohol or multiple marriage.

I don’t think Kim was famous, but she didn’t look burnt-out yet, even though she was drinking her old-fashioned a little fast. She told me she was a commercial artist and that she worked for an ad agency in The City. She didn’t say what she did, and I didn’t press it, just in case she was doing menial production work and didn’t want to admit it. Instead, I babbled on about a woman I had known who had been a fine graphic designer and how she threw it all away to become a sculptor.

“What happened?” Kim wanted to know.

But the story had no end, and I felt a little silly. “I don’t know,” I admitted. She laughed. She had a nice laugh and a sexy smile, and she touched my arm from time to time when she talked. But ten minutes into our relationship I realized I wasn’t remembering anything she said. She’d had one drink too many and was tending toward run-on sentences, leaving me no openings for response. I was fading out on the whole thing.

“Kim,” I interjected finally, in desperation, “you are talking too much and too fast. You’re not giving me a chance to know you.”

She stopped, stared at me, said, “Who says I want you to get to know me?” and burst into tears and left the bar.

I hung around for another half hour and then took off for Carmino’s jazz club.

There was a pretty good crowd for a Monday night. A group of musicians was standing on the small stage messing with its instruments, leaning down to catch what the pretty redhead was saying, talking to each other softly with much use of hands. Four guys in various colors and various styles of dress. One of them was wearing a pair of baggy tweeds that looked like something he’d inherited from his father, with a yellow button-down shirt. One was wearing black stovepipe pants and a black turtleneck jersey. One was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that didn’t say anything. The fourth, the drummer, hadn’t come out from behind his drums long enough to show what he looked like.

The tables were small, and I knew from experience that the chairs were uncomfortable. I never drank enough to make them bearable for more than an hour. I stood at the bar. That gave me mobility and a good view of the population.

Carmino’s is not small. There’s the bar, farthest from the stage, about twenty of the aforementioned tables, and several large booths for the dinner crowd. One booth was full, and about half the tables.

Sitting at one of the tables near the bar were two young women. They were looking at me and giggling. Too young. They thought my beret was funny. No woman I could ever be interested in would think my beret was funny. The woman lounging a few stools down the bar from me looked more interesting. She was dressed in boots, baggy knickers, a T-shirt, and an embroidered vest. She was rangy and tall, with a strong high-bridged nose and full lips. Her hair was dark. She looked arrogant as hell. Letting my eyes rove the bar and bringing my focus back to her from time to time, I saw that she seemed to be alone. She wasn’t talking to anyone. One or two men glanced her way and then looked away again. Maybe they were afraid she had a riding crop hidden in those boots. She turned toward the bar and, en route, caught me looking at her. She raised that beautiful arched nose a little higher and ordered a drink.

The musicians were looking more organized. They stopped fiddling with their instruments, and one of them fiddled with the microphone. He mumbled some introductions, and each player, in turn, nodded, smiled, or raised a drumstick in casual salute. They began to play. I glanced back at the baroness with the beautiful nose. She was looking at me. We gazed coolly into each other’s eyes for a moment, then I turned away and listened to the music. It was okay. But her voice sounded better.

“Nice hat,” she said.

“Thank you,” I replied, and turned to her. She looked amused, the way an Amazon might look if she were challenging a man to combat. I sent the same look back at her, and she didn’t flinch.

Her name, she said, was Faye, an oddly old-fashioned name for a woman who looked like she did. She bought me a drink and I bought her one. We listened to the music. We both got bored with it.

She said she was a landscape designer and I said I was a writer.

“I did my own yard,” I told her.

“I can imagine,” she said.

“Would you like to sit at a table?”

“No, I’d rather stand.”

“Would you like to go somewhere else?”

“No, I’m in the mood for this.”

“So was I. But I’m not so sure anymore.”

Faye gave me a slow smile. “I’m still in the mood for it.”

A couple of barstools opened up, and we took them. Our knees touched. She was listening to the music again. I didn’t interrupt her. The group finished the set and dropped off the stage to join friends at a nearby booth. Faye turned to me. This was the point at which, by the old rules, she was supposed to ask me about my work or my hobbies. Draw me out. Get to know me. But Faye was a very direct woman.

“You married?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not lately.” I was surprised by the question, one that people don’t seem to bother to ask anymore. If you were out alone—well, you were out alone. Surprised and impressed. Then it occurred to me that she might simply be looking for common ground. “You?” I asked.

She smiled. “Not ever.” I liked her smile and was about to say so when a familiar figure came in the door, followed by an unfamiliar one. It was Debbi, with a good-looking if nondescript young man in a suit that could have fit him better. They found a table. I watched while the young man ordered drinks, unbuttoning his jacket and leaning back casually and precariously on the small, wobbly chair.

I didn’t think Debbi would be glad to see me, but I felt that it behooved me to know as much of Debbi’s business as possible.

“Please don’t disappear,” I said to Faye, “but I have to talk to those people for just a minute.”

She looked at them. Debbi and her companion both in prim little office suits. “Whatever for?” Faye asked. Then, “Don’t tell me.”

“Will you wait?”

She looked around the bar and laughed. “Sure. I don’t see anyone else to talk to.”

Small comfort, but I strolled off anyway.

Debbi looked up as I approached the table. She stared at me blankly, as though she were going to deny knowing me. The young man followed her gaze. His eyebrows raised a fraction when he caught sight of my beret. I got the impression he was expecting to see a rhinestone brooch clipped to it.

“Hi, Debbi,” I said with a nonthreatening grin, “nice to see you again.” That proved I knew her name. She couldn’t very well ask her escort to get rid of the fresh stranger. He stood.

“Joe,” she said listlessly to her companion, “this is Jake Samson. Jake, this is Joe Sharpies,” and she added with great clarity and emphasis, “a co-worker of mine. Joe, Jake is a writer.” This was, I assumed, by way of explanation for my eccentric dress.

For some reason the explanation seemed to reassure him. He relaxed a little and stuck out his hand. I shook it. Then I grabbed a chair from the next table and sat down. Debbi frowned slightly when I plunked my glass down on the table. Joe looked me over very much like an executive assessing the suitability of a job applicant. I smiled back stupidly.

“So,” I said to Debbi, “what have you been doing with yourself?” Then I added, “It’s been at least a year since we last ran into each other—at the drugstore, wasn’t it?”

“At least,” she said, smiling slightly for the first time. “And it was at the supermarket.” Joe began to look bored. He had evidently decided I was no threat to his romance, and he probably wanted to settle down for a nice long chat about the money market. Debbi, I decided, was in good hands for the moment. I rose, said it was nice to see her again and nice to meet him and all that sort of thing. Debbi bade me a cordial good-bye. I think in that moment she almost liked me. I walked back to where Faye stood at the bar.

“You didn’t stay long,” she said.

“With you waiting here?”

She threw me a sardonic glance. The musicians were leaping acrobatically back onto the stage. I was beginning to wish we were sitting down. Close.

“Ready to sit at a table yet?” I asked her.

“All right,” she said, and our relationship advanced a notch. From casual just-meeting at the bar to actually sitting down together and admitting, thereby, that we were in some way together.

I didn’t want to talk about my exciting work as a writer, so I got her to talk about her work instead. She was happy with it.

“I love drawing up the plans, designing a yard, an environment, really, and then letting someone else do the physical labor.”

“Do you have an aversion to physical labor?”

“Yes,” she said, and then she surprised me. “I grew up on a farm in the Central Valley. Hot and dusty and always something dirty to do. Where did you grow up?”

“Chicago,” I said. “Hot and muggy and always something dirty to do.” If Faye had been a lesser woman, the “Where are you from?” game would have deteriorated into a “Where are your moon and Venus?” conversation. Very few people are so gauche as to ask “What’s your sign?” anymore. And, bless her, she didn’t make some idiotic remark about the “Windy City” either. I glanced over to where Debbi and Joe were sitting. They were holding hands and talking eagerly. And he didn’t look anything like a soldier. I pulled my chair closer to Faye’s and put my arm around her. She moved against me.

“Jake, I think I should tell you something about myself.” I gazed at her lips. They were wonderful.

“You’re a lesbian,” I said.

She laughed. No, that wasn’t it.

“You’re bisexual.” She pulled my earlobe. I drew back in mock horror. “You’re a man in drag.” She squeezed my hand and smiled at. me. “You eat garlic before sex to ward off pregnancy.” She kissed me on the lips. “You’re a sex maniac.”

“No, no, and no, or however many there were. What I wanted to say was that I’m free Thursday night, and I never go to bed with anyone the first time I meet them.”