“What did you come here to do?”
“Why don’t you keep telling it?”
“You came here to write. For pictures. But you didn’t have any luck. You did a few treatments for Republic and Severin gave you a few scripts to read. He liked you, there were a few of them who did, but he didn’t know quite what to do with you. He gave you extra work and a few bit parts. You even had a line in one. You were the palooka the promising young boxer knocked out in the first reel. What was your line, by the way? If you don’t mind my asking?”
After a minute, I said, “ž’So you’re the Kid. They tell me you’re pretty good.’ž”
She smiled again, still faintly. She was still looking up from between my feet, shading her eyes. When one arm got tired, she’d use the other hand. “I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
“I’m comfortable.”
She patted my boot. “I just don’t want you to kick me in the face. At least not until we’ve been properly introduced.”
I slowly pushed my boot out toward her chin, and she walked backward to keep ahead of it, her hands clasped behind her hips, smiling faintly up at me the whole while. When she was back far enough, I jumped down. “Thanks,” she said. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
“This is private,” I said.
She looked up the street. “Yes. I guess it is. You seem to be the only one working this morning.”
“The contractor’s going bust. Our pay’s been late.”
“But you’re still here.”
“I like to keep busy. Who’s been singing my praises?”
“A man named Reece who does security at Republic.”
“How do you come to know Mattie?”
“He’s not difficult for a girl to know,” she said. “When the acting didn’t work out, you tried a little bodyguarding.”
“If you want to call it that. I put on a suit and stood around behind some guys. Every once in a while I’d lay my hand on someone’s shoulder and give him the look.”
“Show me,” she said.
The hell, if that’s what she wanted. I reached out and let my hand fall on her shoulder. I gave her the look.
She clasped her hands together and laughed delightedly. “I take it all back. You are an actor. Unless you really want to beat my head in with a pipe wrench and dump my body in a ravine?”
“Not until we’ve been properly introduced,” I said. “Anyway, that’s not what the look says. The look says, Are you sure you want me to kill you with a pipe wrench and dump you in a ravine? Because I’d really rather not be bothered.”
“Yes. You’re right. That’s what the look says.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rebecca LaFontaine.”
“What’s your real name?”
“It’s not very pretty.”
“Yeah, well. Still.”
“Out here, I go by Rebecca LaFontaine.”
“Where are you from? Middle West someplace?”
“That’s close enough.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“Why does anybody come here?” She shrugged. “It didn’t work out. I can’t act. I got some offers. Of a certain kind.”
“But not for movies.”
“I got offers for movies of a certain kind.”
“But none you wanted to do.”
“No,” she said steadily. “I did a couple. I don’t want to do that again.”
I looked up the street. It was still just a dirt track. You could hear the whisper of the cars from the freeway across the valley. It was one of those bone-dry days when sound travels. There were big rolls of cyclone fencing lying around, I don’t know what for. No one had bothered to put them up. I looked back at her and said, “That’s terrible. You know where they’re showing any of them?”
“You wouldn’t recognize me,” she said. “I parted my hair differently back then. Look, let’s not keep standing around like this. Let’s go sit in the car.”
She turned and walked off. After a moment, I followed. She got in on the driver’s side, and I rode shotgun, if we were riding. The seats were white vinyl and already hotting up in the sun. She took hold of the steering wheel, closed her eyes, and let her breath out through her nostrils. Then she gave the wheel a little pat and dropped her hands in her lap. “So. You’re a screenwriter, an actor, a bodyguard. And a roofer, too.”
“I do odd jobs.”
She said, “I want a man killed.”
“Not that odd.”
“I didn’t mean that. Not killed, really. Just hurt.”
“I’d think you could do that work yourself.”
“Or scared.”
“Like I said.”
“I’m serious. There’s a man who’s, who’s got to leave me alone. I don’t know what to do about him. I need someone to help me.”
“What’s he doing?”
“I can’t tell you that unless I know you’ll help me.”
“Does it have to do with those movies?”
“It has to do with a lot of things. I can’t tell you unless I know you’re with me.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“Like you. Odd jobs.”
“Such as.”
“Sales clerk, lifeguard — I swim pretty well. Hatcheck girl. Perfume girl. One of those girls who stands around department stores smiling, with a bottle of perfume, and asks if you want a little puff. I tried modeling, but clothes don’t fit me.”
“Where’d you meet this man?”
“I was a hat check girl.”
“That pay pretty well?”
“No.”
“Nice car.”
“He didn’t buy it for me, if that’s what you mean. My folks left me a little money, and I came out here and got a place and bought a car, because I thought it would help, you know, to look right. The car’s what’s left. I can’t even afford to have it washed.”
“Why don’t you sell it?”
“I did. To him. He holds the note on it now.”
“But he lets you go on driving it.”
“He says one night when I’m out miles from anywhere, he’ll pull up behind me at a light and make me get out and give him the keys. And then I’ll have to walk home. In my high heels and little dress. So that by the time I get home, my feet will be bleeding and my stockings will be torn and my legs will be black with dust, and my face, and I’ll stink with sweat like a farm animal, like a cow, which, you see, is all I am, and I won’t be pretty anymore. Except he knows I’ll hike up my skirt to get a ride from somebody, some, um, farm hands — yeah, that’s about right — and be taken into some field and, and raped by the whole bunch of them, one after another, raped to death, which I’ll love, because that’s the kind of skinny bony filthy whore I am.”
“Nice,” I said.
“He really is crazy, but he’s got a business and I don’t suppose he wants that interfered with, so there must be some way to reach him. Don’t you know how to do things like that? Mattie seems to think so. He’s got to leave me alone. He’s got to stop threatening me. Just when I’m beginning to get somewhere and get myself normal for once.”
“You could’ve picked someone else to sell your car to.”
She let her head flop back against the seat. “Well. You know. He used to be very sweet.” She reached out a knuckle and rapped me softly on the chest. “I’ve been hit a few times, too,” she said.
Her eyes were large, pale, and set wide beneath a broad, low forehead. Her chin was pointed, but her fine-lipped mouth was wide. There wasn’t really room for it on her face, any more than there was room for that chest on her skinny frame. Her arms and legs were too long. Sitting there behind the wheel, she looked like she’d folded them up the wrong way, the way you’ll fold a road map the wrong way. I could see why she’d flopped in pictures. She was disturbing-looking. Ten thousand guys had made a play for her, but I don’t guess any of them kidded himself it was a good idea at the time. I rubbed my face and said, “Let’s see what we’ve got. There’s a man, you’d rather not say who, and you want me to make him stop doing something, you’d rather not say what. Kill him, threaten him, you’d rather not say. And you’d rather not tell me your real name. And you’re broke.”