The only good thing about the trip that Walter had been able to come up with on the plane over (Air Canada, three hours late, sweet Jesus, just Walter’s fucking luck) was a brief respite from a cool Toronto October.
But he hadn’t banked on the Santa Ana. When Toronto got hot, you sweated; here you dried to dust, dehydrated in seconds. He had once read a story about the hot, desert wind, the way it made meek wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. The writer was right: it did make you edgy and crazy. Walter felt as if he’d had a steel band around his forehead for two days. It was getting tighter.
‘Wally!’
Walter came out of his reverie. He was sitting in the hotel lobby taking a smoke break between sessions. Nobody seemed to smoke these days. In California it was hardly surprising: you couldn’t find many places where it was legal to do so. Damn government health warnings on everything now, even the wine. And he had seen the way the young hotshots with their white teeth turned up their noses when he lit up, even if they were sitting in a goddamn bar. Christ, who was this coming towards him, hand outstretched, teeth bared in a predatory smile? Should he remember? Awkwardly, he got to his feet.
‘Hi, good to see you,’ he said.
‘Good to see you!’ the stranger said. ‘It’s been years.’
‘Yeah.’ Walter scratched the side of his right eye and frowned. ‘Now where the hell was it…?’
‘Baltimore. Baltimore, ’seventy-nine. Jimmy Lavalli. Remember, we closed down that bar together?’
‘Yeah, of course. How you doing, Jimmy?’
And so it went on, the empty greetings, inane conversations, tales of triple bypasses, and all the time Walter knew, deep inside, that they were all out to get him, were all laughing at him. ‘Oh, old Wally Woodchuk, Wally Dump-truck, Wally Up-chuck, fucking dinosaur, sales have been down for years.’ No one had said it to his face, but they didn’t need to. Wally knew. At fifty-nine, he was too old for the pool supplies business. And it was obvious from the number of tanned young men around the convention that the company thought so too. You’d almost think the new breed were chosen because they’d look good sitting around a swimming pool, like the way auto manufacturers used curvaceous women to sell cars. Wally’s curves were in all the wrong places. Ungrateful bastards. He’d given his life to Hudson’s Pools and Supplies, and this was how they paid him back. He felt like that salesman in the play must have done, the one that guy who’d been married to Marilyn Monroe – not the baseball player, one of the others – had written for Dustin Hoffman.
He had heard the talk around the office, noticed the muted conversations and insincere greetings as he passed couples chatting in the corridor. They were putting him out to pasture. That was why they sent him to California. He wouldn’t be surprised if his office – if you could call a screened-off corner in an open plan an office – was cleaned out when he got back and someone else was sitting there in his place. Some tanned young asshole with white teeth and a wolfish smile. Maybe called Scott.
He got rid of Jimmy with promises to look him up if he was ever in Baltimore (not if he could help it!) and looked at his watch. Five o’clock. Shit. Time for another boring session, then up to get changed for the convention banquet. Tofu burgers again, most likely. Maybe grab a few minutes in between and call Kate…
Thank God that was over with, Walter thought, as he waved goodnight to the stragglers in the Pasadena Ballroom and headed for the elevator. What a fucking ordeal. And typical California, too – no smoking, not anywhere in the dining hall. Not tofu burgers, but almost as bad: Cornish game hen or some such skinny little bird stuffed with grapes and olives and jalapeño peppers, basted in lemon, garlic and the ubiquitous cilantro, of course. And they had to put him at the table with that loud-mouthed jerk Carson, from United. Just his luck. Still, Walter had kept his end up. He had been nice to the right people, managed a smile, passed his company card around, even if the recipients did absently slip it into their side pockets where they’d throw it out with the lint and the hotel matches.
A funny business these conventions, he thought as he went into his room. Hours of manic glad-handing, hurried conversations in lobbies and men’s rooms, talking business even with your dick in your hand, then when you finally got to be alone at the end of the night, all you felt was an incredible loneliness descend. At least Walter did.
So there you are in your strange hotel room alone miles from home after the party. Oh, the guys were setting up all-night poker sessions, planning trips to strip joints and bars, but Walter had had enough of all that, and of his colleagues. He wanted to be alone, but he didn’t want to feel alone.
It was the wind, he thought, that goddamn Santa Ana. And the air-conditioner had quit. Just his luck. He lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head and tried to relax. He couldn’t. He hadn’t drunk much. That was one thing he had under control these days. That was why he couldn’t for the life of him remember closing any bar with Jimmy Lavalli in Baltimore. If those tanned bastards knew what they looked like after they’d had a few too many… anyway, those days were past. As he lay there restless in the heat, feeling the band tighten around his head, the heartburn start to kick in, the resentment and fear churn inside him, he became aware of one feeling he would never have expected. God dammit, Walter Dimchuk was horny!
Not that it had never happened before, of course, but never with such a keen, urgent edge, not for a long time. He remembered the outing he’d had with Al and Larry yesterday afternoon. Given a couple of spare hours, they had driven to Santa Monica, walked on the pier, the boardwalk towards Venice. And now as he lay trying to find sleep, all Walter could find were the disturbing images of those girls in their bikinis, all that smooth, firm, tanned flesh.
He turned over. This was ridiculous. His lust felt so strong it was gripping his heart, making him squirm. The images churned in his mind, spurring him on. It was the damn heat, he knew it. Maybe if he could get out for a while. Tell someone at the desk to fix his air-conditioning while he took a little drive around town.
He sat up and slid his shoes back on. Yeah, that was the thing to do. Maybe drive to the ocean and cool off a little. That or a cold shower. He looked at his watch. Still only eleven o’clock. OK, car keys, jacket…
Such romantic-sounding street names they had: La Cienega, Sepulveda, La Brea. But they weren’t so fucking romantic when you were on them; they were either freeways or roads running past shitty little Spanish-style stucco houses with graffiti all over the stucco and postage-stamp gardens full of junk.
It was cool in the rental, but Walter still couldn’t shake the horniness. He’d pass a row of stores set back from the road and see a gang of kids there, girls in cut-off jeans and halter tops drinking Coke from the bottle, breasts jutting out. It was getting worse, as if the Santa Ana somehow slipped in through the air-conditioning and messed with his brain.
He found himself on Hollywood Boulevard. Walter loved old movies, the black and white kind, and the real stars they had back then like Cary Grant, Garbo, Bogie, Gable, Jimmy Stewart. Christ, he must have seen It’s a Wonderful Life about twenty times, and then they went and colourized the motherfucker. But the boulevard, with all those stars in the sidewalk, had gone to porn theatres, dirty bookstores with barred windows, hookers, pimps, muggers, losers.