"Sorry," Jake told her as he pulled the dirty dishes from her tray and put them in the industrial sink before him. "I've got a lot on my mind lately."
"Pondering life again, huh?" she asked, sidling up close to him, close enough that her leg was touching his. "I told you about that. Life sucks. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to live it."
"Don't forget unfair," he said. "That's the big part. Life is unfair."
"That too," she agreed, putting her hand up on the back of his neck and giving him a caress.
He relished the sensation, letting his head fall back. He had not had an intimate relationship with a female since leaving Heritage and his body cried out for a woman's touch. And though he had not succeeded in bedding the luscious Angie after his illegal concert the other night, he had certainly made some inroads with her. Though they had shared a flirtatious relationship since he had been hired, it wasn't until he sang for her, had played his guitar for her, that she started to take him seriously. The power of music never failed to amaze him. "That feels good," he told her. "Can you keep it up for a few more hours?"
She laughed. "I wish I could. You want to talk about what's wrong with you?"
He shrugged, an action that caused her to put her other hand up to his neck as well. "It's about our recording contract," he said. "It's a long story."
"You want to know something?" she asked.
"What's that?"
"Don't be mad at me or nothing, but I didn't think you really had a recording contract until the other night."
"Really?" he asked, turning to look at her.
"Like I said, don't get me wrong. It's just that this place... this city, is so full of phonies. Hell, I may even be one of them. When someone tells you they have a roll in a movie or that they're going to be getting one of their screenplays produced, well... usually they're just... you know... exaggerating."
"Yeah," he said. "I've noticed that." And he had. Never had he met so many liars, cheats, and outright con artists as he had here in L.A.
"I guess I figured that you were just the same," she said. "But then I heard you play and sing."
"And that changed your mind?"
"Oh my God," she said. "You're good, Jake. In fact, you're one of the best I've ever heard. You really do have a recording contract, don't you? You really are going to have an album come out."
He nodded. "We really are, although they pretty much screwed us on the contract. I had that pointed out to me the other day."
"Screwing people is what Hollywood is all about," she said sadly. "Look at me. Half the guys in America got boners looking at my naked body in a bathtub because they thought it was Lynn Harold's. And for this I got a two hundred dollar check and my name mentioned in the credits, but way down in the credits, the part just before the Dolby Surround Sound label, the part that shows up long after everyone's left the damn theater."
Jake knew the movie she was referring to. It was a second rate psychological thriller in which second-rate actress Lynn Harold's character had been pitted against a psychotic murderer. The bathtub scene in the beginning of the movie was legendary, mostly because it was one of the first R rated scenes to show, not just bare breasts but pubic hair as well. And hardly anyone realized that the breasts and pubic hair in question were not really Lynn's, they were Angie's. "That always was one of my favorite scenes," he said slyly.
She giggled, removing her hands from his neck and slapping him on the butt. "You pervert," she said. "What you doing after work tonight?"
"I don't know. I thought I'd go home, drink my last can of generic beer, and then hit the rack."
"That does sound like a lot of fun," she said. "But if you're interested, I got a joint back at my apartment. Some pretty good shit too."
"Yeah?" he asked, looking at her face, seeing a twinkle in her eye.
"Yeah," she confirmed. "Sound like a date?"
"You bet your cute little ass."
Angie's apartment complex was just off Santa Monica Boulevard, in a part of Hollywood that was slightly more upscale than Jake and Bill's neighborhood. The LAPD only visited her complex once or twice a day and the number of parolees and sex offenders living there in the single digits. The apartment itself was only a one bedroom, and a very small one-bedroom at that, but it was cozy and well decorated, the furnishings both feminine and practical.
They sat on her couch, Saturday Night Live playing on the television before them, and Angie brought out her tightly rolled marijuana cigarette. They smoked it slowly, relishing it. It was a fairly new variety of greenbud that was making the rounds of late, a high quality domestic product known as Humboldt Skunkbud, named for the Northern California county where it was grown. True to its name, its taste and aroma strongly resembled that which emitted from a skunk's scent glands, although not as potent. Once you got used to it, it was actually pleasant. And it was certainly potent. By the time the joint was a roach, both of them were quite annihilated.
"When are you going to sing for us again?" Angie asked as she leaned back on the couch, her eyes locked onto a framed Ansel Adams print over the television set.
"I can't," he told her, his eyes locked on her legs. She was still wearing her waitress uniform, which featured a skirt that fell several inches about her knees when she was standing. Now that she was slumped backwards the skirt had crept considerably higher, well above mid-thigh. And what lovely thighs they were. The very sight was making him extremely horny. "Not anymore."
Silence descended for a bit-how long, neither could be sure since their sense of time was horribly distorted. Finally Angie asked him, "Why not?"
"Why not what?" he asked, having forgotten what it was they had been talking about.
She giggled, covering her mouth for a second and then slapping at his leg. "Wow, this is some good shit," she said. "Why can't you sing for us, you hoser?"
This gave him the giggles for a few moments as well, although just why, he was unsure. Finally, he got himself under control and answered her. "It would seem that playing my guitar and singing out in the parking lot after work is a breach of my recording contract. I'm not allowed to do any live performances without National Records' say-so."
"Wow," she said. "That's fuckin' trippy." She did not seem to be particularly surprised by this, however.
"Those assholes actually have a spy in the restaurant. That's why they got me a job there, so they could keep an eye on me." It suddenly occurred to him that Angie might be the spy. Was that possible? Hell, anything was possible in world where they implied they would ruin your career if you didn't say your name was JD King and that your parents were criminally negligent boozers.
"Tom's your spy," Angie said, as if reading his thoughts. "He and Marcus like to slip into the back room and suck each other's dicks every few days. Haven't you ever noticed how friendly the two of them are?"
Now that she mentioned, he had noticed that. And he knew she was not being figurative about them sucking each other's dicks. Tom was a flaming, flamboyant homosexual who had in fact made more than one pass at Jake since he arrived on the scene. And though Marcus, the manager, was not flamboyant or flaming, he was a forty-two year old, never-married man in a predominantly gay line of business.
Jake shook his head in bewilderment. "Spies and threats and positioning people where they can be watched. It's like Nazi Germany around here."