I knew the Fauborg because I drank there. The lounge at the back was smallish and dim with nothing to prove, paneled in dark riff oak and hung with middling Barbizon landscapes. The eighty-year-old hunchback behind the bar concocted the best sidecar in town and Robin likes sidecars. An assortment of pianists, mostly former studio musicians on pension, worked the big black Steinway in the left-hand corner, never intruding upon the pleasant buzz of conversation and the harmonious clink of crystal glasses. The staff was attentive without being nosy, the snacks were decent, and you left the place feeling as if you’d been re-civilized.
Robin and I spent a lot of Sunday evenings in a cracked leather rear booth holding hands, nibbling on cheese crackers, and inhaling Gershwin.
One Saturday morning in the spring, Robin was delivering a new guitar to an aging rock star who lived in the flats of Beverly Hills and the drive took her past the Fauborg. A sign strung up over the fanlight announced
LAST NIGHT TOMORROW: COME CELEBRATE—OR MOURN—WITH US. THANKS FOR THE GOOD TIMES.
The Family of Marcel Jabotinksy
Robin shouldn’t have been surprised; the previous week we’d shown up at a Thai place we’d enjoyed for half a decade only to find an abyss surrounded by chain-link where the buildings had stood. The month before that, she’d run into an old high school friend and asked how her husband was.
“Which one?”
“Jeff.”
The woman laughed. “Jeff’s ancient history, sweetie. Cliff’s recent history but he’s gone, too.”
Tissue paper city.
Robin said, “Not much of a choice, is it? Surrender to the inevitable or risk a whole bunch of mawkish nostalgia.”
We sat on the living room couch with Blanche, our little French bulldog, squeezed between us, following the back-and-forth.
I said, “I can go either way.”
She pulled on a curl, let it spring back. “What the heck, I’ll never get a sidecar that good and it’s a chance to put on a dress.”
“I’ll wear a suit.”
“I like you in a suit, darling. But not the black one. Let’s pretend it won’t be a funeral.”
Who knew?
CHAPTER
2
We showed up at nine p.m. The light behind the fanlight was dingy.
Crescent Drive was depopulated except for a man with a walkie-talkie leaning against a parking meter just north of the hotel. Thirties, tall, broad, with short yellow hair, he flashed us a slit-eyed appraisal before returning to watching the empty street.
His suit was black and it draped his bulk uneasily. An interesting bulge swelled his breast pocket, a spiral cord ran from an earpiece down the back of his collar.
Robin whispered, “If someone needs serious guarding, where are the paparazzi?”
I said, “Good question. They swarm like blowflies at the first whiff of moral decay.”
“Flies that don’t have to use their noses. Once I was delivering a mandolin to Bite and sat in his kitchen as his publicist phoned the paps to tell them where The Star would be for lunch.”
Something made me turn back to Mr. Black Suit. His head jerked away quickly and he studied the sidewalk; he’d been watching us. Despite the theatrical apathy, his shoulders were tight, his profile less animated than Rushmore.
We must’ve lingered too long because he half-turned and stared. Robin smiled and gave a fluttery finger-wave. Her curls were wild, copper-bright in the moonlight, her dress a tight black tulip set off by red stilettos.
Usually that has its effect.
Black Suit was no exception and he smiled back. Then he stopped himself, returned to reviewing the pavement.
Robin said, “Guess I’m losing my touch.”
“He’s a robot.”
“I used to be good with machines.”
A push of the brass door leading to the Fauborg’s lobby plunged us into a sooty semi-darkness that turned the damson-plum carpeting to soil brown. All the furniture was gone, no one worked the desk, gray rectangles marked the walls where paintings had been removed.
One thing hadn’t changed: the familiar olfactory stew of roasted meat, disinfectant, and grassy perfume.
The ancient air-conditioner thumped the ceiling at odd intervals but the air was close, musty, dank.
Robin squeezed my arm. “This might be a bad idea.”
“Want to go?”
“You and me quitters? Not in our DNA.”
Half the light fixtures had been removed from the lounge. The room was a cave. As my eyes adjusted, I made out the overstuffed leather and green-plaid seating. Here, too, the artwork was gone.
Same for the big black Steinway with its gigantic brandy snifter for tips. Tinny music seeped into the room from an unseen speaker. An easy listening FM station. As we stood waiting to be seated, Barry Manilow was replaced by a commercial for auto insurance.
Like pedestrians in a fog, the other patrons materialized gradually. A group of handsome white-haired people in their sixties who looked as if they’d driven in from San Marino, a quartet of well-dressed Continental types ten years older, both of the men wearing ascots.
One exception to the maturity motif: two tables from our usual corner, a young woman in white sat alone, checking her watch every fifteen seconds.
No one came forward to greet us and we settled behind a scarred coffee table stripped of snacks, flowers, candles.
The insurance commercial ran on. Glass rattled from the bar.
Gustave wasn’t bent over the slab of polished oak. In his place, a grim, big-chested brunette who looked as if she’d finally given up on a film career mixed what looked like a standard martini while consulting a cheat-sheet. The concept of gin with a shot of vermouth seemed overwhelming and she grimaced. Clots of moisture created tiny reflecting pools along the bar-top as her fumbling fingers spilled as much booze as they splashed into the glass. She took a deep breath, reached for an olive, shook her head, and put it back in the bowl, health code be damned.
Her third attempt at carving a lemon twist was partially successful and she handed the drink to a server I’d never seen before. Looking too young to be allowed in a place where spirits flowed, he had floppy dishwater hair, a soft chin, and a dangerously overgrown bowtie. His red jacket was a flimsy cotton rental, his black pants ended an inch too soon.
White socks.
Black tennis shoes.
Ralph, the Fauborg’s waiter for decades, had never deviated from an impeccable shawl-lapel tux, starched white shirt, plaid cummerbund, and patent leather bluchers.
Ralph was nowhere to be seen, ditto for Marie, the middle-aged Savannah belle who split busy shifts and offered naughty one-liners with refills.
Red Jacket brought the martini toward the young woman in white, plodding cautiously like a five-year-old ring-bearer. When he arrived, she dipped her head coquettishly and said something. He scurried back to the bar, returned with three olives and a pearl onion on a saucer.
As the commercial shifted to a pitch for the latest Disney movie, Red Jacket continued to linger at the girl’s table, schmoozing with his back to us. She wasn’t much older than him, maybe twenty-five, with a sweet oval face and huge eyes. A white silk mini-dress bared sleek legs that tapered into backless silver stilettos. A matching silk scarf, creamy as fresh milk, encircled her face. The head covering didn’t fit the skimpy dress; winter on top, summer on the bottom.
Her bare arms were smooth and pale, her lashes too long to be real. She used them to good effect on the waiter.