“I can’t.”
“Tell him you got called in to work.”
“He might walk around to the store.”
“So he finds out. You’re too good for that jerk. Leave him, Zora. Come with me. You’ll never have to worry about a thing.”
Ken jiggled the knob before opening the door. His wife and his boss were a few feet apart on the sofa. She was tucking in her blouse. “He wants to switch spaces.”
“Forget it,” Zora said. “He gets the space on the chart.”
“I told him.”
Al got to his feet. “Do you have to work today?” he said to Zora.
“Half a shift,” she said. “I go in from four to eight.”
“I think we have a good tenant there. Nice work, you guys.”
When the landlord was gone, Ken said, “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you outside. You’re going to his place.”
Zora went into the bathroom and began brushing her teeth. Ken followed her, stood behind her as she bent over the sink. She rinsed her mouth and turned to face him. He took a step backwards in the small room. “You have to wake up, Ken,” she said. “We need Al McGee. You and I can’t pay rent. Can you work at a normal job?”
“Was he doing something to you?”
“What does it matter? You don’t do anything.”
Ken stormed out of the apartment. He reached Santa Monica Boulevard and headed east. There was a bar around the comer on La Brea. He went inside and perched on a stool in the scented dark.
He ordered a glass of the house red. The bartender served it in a goblet. Then he went back to talking with a woman two stools away. She was a neat young person with cropped mahogany hair framing a plump face. She must have been in her twenties.
Ken had almost finished his wine when he realized he had left home without having any supper. Would it happen here, with no money to be won? Like a crack opening in his skull, the pain came and flashed and went. He rocked back on the stool, gripping the rim of the bar with both hands.
A man came in and stood surveying the room. There was something in his right hand, pressed against the side of his trousers. It was a gun. The man was the outdoor type, weathered face, Marine haircut. The sleeves had been cut from his denim shirt to reveal thickly muscled arms and shoulders.
The man focused on the girl talking to the bartender. He walked purposefully in their direction. When he arrived behind her, he did not hesitate. He raised the gun, held the muzzle inches from the back of her head, and pulled the trigger. She was knocked forward across the bar. The bartender lunged backwards, his shirt spattered with blood.
The intruder, moving at the same steady pace, walked from the bar. Ken rubbed his eyes. He saw the girl laughing at something the bartender had said. The atmosphere was serene.
“Can I talk to you?” he said to her. “This is important. There isn’t much time.” The bartender moved away. “You are in danger. There’s a guy coming in here. Looks like a soldier. He has a gun.”
She took him seriously. “You know Dalton? When did you see him?”
“Come with me.” He led her to a door with an Exit sign above it at the back of the room. They hurried out into an alleyway leading to the parking lot.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Ken Rose. I can explain but there’s no time. This guy is going to shoot you in the head.”
“Are you a friend of his?”
“Listen!” Voices were raised inside the building. A man was demanding to know where Rachel had gone. The bartender was saying things to calm him down. Ken said, “I suggest you get out of here. Have you got a car?”
“It’s in the lot.” She concentrated on him for the first time. “You saved my life. I’m Rachel Hagerty.”
“I’d like to see you again.”
“How about here, same time next Monday night.” When he looked dubious, she said, “Dalton Lee is not a fool. He’ll be in hiding now for a while.”
Ken saw her to her car. When she had driven away, he went back inside. The bartender said, “I’m glad you got her out of here.”
“What happened?”
“This crazy guy used to work for her father. He got fired. And Rachel stopped seeing him. He’s been stalking her. She got a restraining order, but those things don’t always work.”
Two days later, after an intense conversation with Al McGee, Zora made up her mind. Things were never going to get any better with Ken. He was a pathetic case, but she had her own future to consider. Al might decide to dump her sometime down the road. But her chances of controlling him were good. He was old and she looked young, so she could use that to keep him in line. Above all, he was rich. Whatever took place, she should walk away with a nest egg.
It only remained to break the news to Ken. They agreed to do that as a team, over dinner at Al’s place. Late that afternoon, when she walked back to the apartment from the market, she found Ken watching yet another news program on the box. He would switch from channel to channel, soaking up the same headlines over and over, told by different talking heads. She wanted to throw her shoulderbag through the screen.
“We’ve been invited out for dinner!” she said.
“Where?” He was suspicious of her delight.
“Al’s place.”
“That’s weird.”
“Don’t you want to dine on a penthouse patio under the stars?”
“He wants you, not me.” Ken’s mind was adrift, nudging thought after thought of Rachel Hagerty.
Zora was encouraged. Her husband’s mellow response boded well for the announcement to take place later. They both dressed up for the first time in months. Before leaving, Zora ate some chocolate cookies and drank a large glass of milk. “You want some?”
“No, I want to be hungry. Who knows what slop I’ll have to pretend to enjoy.”
A taxi drove them to Al McGee’s building, a seven-story structure of recent design. It was a black slab, gated and barred, with door buzzers and a uniformed guard packing heat.
Al greeted his guests in black slacks, an open-necked black shirt, and a white silk ascot tie. A giant Irish setter was sitting beside him, waiting for the word. The dog looked old and it was overweight. “This is Argo. Say hello to Ken and Zora, Argo.”
The dog pranced forward, reared up, balanced a paw on either shoulder, and tried to lick Ken’s face. Ken liked animals in their place. Argo took the hint and turned his affections on Zora.
“That’s enough,” McGee said. “Come here, you mutt.” Argo ran to her master and rose like a heavyweight at the count of nine. McGee took hold of the front paws and they danced together, man and animal pirouetting through a doorway onto the penthouse patio.
“This is gorgeous,” Zora said, admiring the table elegantly set for three. Some day soon, she would live here.
“How about a drink,” Al said, dismissing Argo with a whack on the flank.
Zora took bourbon on the rocks because that’s what her host was drinking. Ken asked for a glass of red wine. It was smoother and drier than what they served in bars.
McGee said, “Let’s get business out of the way and then we can eat. Did you break it to him?”
“He has the idea.”
“This is me you’re talking about?” Ken said.
“You must have noticed how things are. Between me and Zora. She tells me you guys are not as close as you once were. There are no children to worry about. Listen, you can stay on in the apartment as long as you want, rent-free. Zora would be up here, of course.”
The arrival of the pain between the eyes was subtle this time. Gradually, it intensified. Ken pressed fingertips into both sockets. The other two took this to be his reaction to the news. They waited for him to collect himself.