“How was the interview?” I asked.
“The reporter was a dyke,” he said. “She spent the whole goddamn time giving the eye to some broad at the next table.” He looked genuinely injured as he related this. Another sandwich was brought to him.
“Was Sandy there?” Rennie asked.
“Hell,” he said, his mouth full. “He was after the busboy. This town’s a regular Sodom… Sodom and…” He looked at me for help.
“Gomorrah,” I said.
“That’s right, gonorrhea. You ever had the clap, Ambassador?”
I shook my head.
“Smart man,” he said. “Keep your peter in your pocket. But you’re queer, huh?”
Rennie said, “Tom, stop that.”
“It’s okay,” Zane said. “I’m a little queer myself.” He held up his hand and measured an inch between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe this much.” He shone a beautiful smile on me. “Maybe more.”
“I think all people are basically bisexual,” Rennie said, irrelevantly.
“That right?” Zane asked. “You ever made it with a dyke, honey?”
“You know I haven’t,” she replied.
“What about you, Ambassador? You fuck girls, too?” He looked at me, smiling. “I bet you’re not even a real queer. I bet it’s just a line. Does it work?”
“All the time,” I replied.
He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “You try it with Rennie?”
Rennie said, sharply, “You’re drunk, Tom, and you’re embarrassing my guest. Stop it.”
He attempted a smile that withered under her gaze. To me he said, “Sorry. Too much to drink.” He rose, stumblingly, from the table. “I need some sleep. Excuse me.” He looked at Rennie who was lighting a cigarette. “I’m just tired, honey.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s all right.”
His face relaxed into a grin and he made his way into the house.
Rennie looked at me and shrugged. “Tom drinks too much,” she said.
“I see that.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Probably not.”
We talked for a few more minutes but it seemed her attention was wandering toward the direction of the house. I got up and excused myself. She walked me to the door.
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said. “Can I see you again?”
“Of course,” I replied. “Any time.”
She kissed me and I headed across the courtyard to the street.
I had just opened the door to my car when I heard my name being called. I looked back at Rennie’s house. Tom Zane was hurrying toward me.
“Let’s go somewhere,” he said. His breath was eighty proof.
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on, let’s just go.”
Rennie had appeared at the gate.
“You need to sleep it off,” I said.
“Yeah, but not here.”
I looked back at Rennie. Her arms were folded across her chest. She lifted her hand and waved at me. I looked at Tom. It would probably be a favor to her to take him away.
“Where to?”
“My house. On the beach.”
“Get in,” I said.
He got in and scooted across the driver’s seat to the passenger side.
“Where are we going?”
“Malibu,” he said.
Rennie had gone back into the house. I started up the car, made a U-turn and headed down to Sunset. By the time I got there Tom was asleep.
18
When we reached the ocean, I woke him.
“Where do I go from here?”
He sat up and got his bearings. “Right on the Coast Highway. Wake me up again when we get to Malibu.” He shut his eyes and went back to sleep.
The blue sea glittered in the deep light of the winter afternoon. A few surfers in black wetsuits paddled out into the water and rode the slow waves back in, like children who dared the sea by wading a few feet into the surf and running back.
We reached Malibu, a strip of fast food places, surf shops, and bars. I woke Tom. He directed me off the highway down a narrow two-lane road that cut between meadows where horses grazed in the shade of big oaks. Here the light had a nimbus of gold and poured like a stream through the silty air. Tom had me turn down a dirt driveway to a small stucco house hidden from the road by a row of overgrown Italian cypresses. He stretched and opened the door.
“What’s this?” he asked, picking up a card from beneath his leg. I glanced at it. It was the card that Tony Good had given me with his phone number.
“An admirer,” I said.
He inspected the card, tossed it aside and got out of the car. I followed him to the door of the house. He fumbled with some keys and then let us in.
The living and dining rooms were combined into a single space. There was a counter along one wall, revealing the kitchen. A corridor led off from the main room to bedrooms and bathrooms. The place smelled of old fires and the fireplace held the charred remains of the last logs burned in it. The concrete floor was covered by threadbare carpets. A few sticks of old furniture were scattered haphazardly through the room. On the whole, the house was dark, chilly and quiet.
Tom looked at me and grinned. “What do you think?”
“Not exactly what I expected.”
“I like to be comfortable. Rennie’s house is like a museum.”
His nap had sobered him up. I said as much.
“Booze doesn’t have a big effect on me,” he said as if he believed it. “It’s warmer outside.”
We went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a half-full bottle of Chardonnay. He led me outside to a covered patio. Weightlifting equipment was lying here and there, as were pieces of driftwood, sea shells, empty bottles of wine and beer. A bike leaned against a wall next to a battered surfboard and a wetsuit. A jock strap hung from a nail above a pile of firewood. Tom sat down on a canvas chair and invited me to pull up a chair next to him.
“I should get back to L.A.,” I said.
“You can stay for a little while.”
I pulled up a chaise longue and sat. An orange cat appeared at the far end of the yard and watched us.
“That your cat?”
“Only when she’s hungry.” He took a swallow of wine and passed the bottle.
“I don’t drink.”
“Never?”
“I’m an alcoholic.”
Tom grinned at the cat and said, “Isn’t that the point?”
The cat loped across the yard and came to the edge of the patio. She yawned and began to groom herself with quick, fastidious flicks of her tongue. Tom leaned forward, pulled off his blue polo shirt, and then sank back into his chair. His skin was as tawny as the little cat’s fur. Even at rest, his elegant muscles seemed to quiver. He was kin to the little calico licking her paws at the edge of the patio; a great golden cat. He rolled his head toward me, lazily, and sketched the faintest smile at the comers of his lips. I imagine Narcissus had watched that smile form on the surface of a lake.
“It’s quiet here,” I said, to say something. “You come here to think.”
“Thinking’s not what I do best. That’s Sandy’s job. All my brains are in my face.”
“Rennie doesn’t much like Sandy,” I observed.
He smiled distantly. “Sandy’s all right. He knows what I am.”
“And what’s that?”
“A hustler,” he replied. “Like Gaveston. You don’t need brains to be a whore. Just a little luck and good timing.”
“Rennie must see something else in you.”
His face seemed to darken. “She knows, too,” he said, then added, mockingly, “but she forgives me.” He picked up his wine bottle and drank some more. “Poor Rennie,” he muttered. “She brought me out here to shove me in the face of every producer who ever told her that she didn’t have the looks to be a star. I’ve got the looks,” he said, more to the cat than to me.
“She thinks she can turn you into an actor.”
He set the wine bottle between his legs. “Who the hell cares.”
“You did the play.”
“I knew a guy like Edward,” he said, lifting the bottle and drinking. “Someone I met in the joint.” He studied my face and grinned. “Don’t look so surprised, you’re a lawyer — don’t you know an ex-con when you see one?”