“I’ll do what you say.”
“Fine. Got a gun to take along?”
“Yes.”
“Good. See you tomorrow night.”
The pockets of the jacket were dry, and I stuffed half the packets of money into each pocket, tucked them down deep, and put the check in my billfold.
Then I carefully folded the jacket over my arm and went out and smiled at Lu, who rose from the table, hooked her arm in mine, and we drove back to Des Moines, to the apartment, and made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
33
The new play opened tonight at the Candle Lite Playhouse, and the marquee had been changed accordingly. It was early afternoon and the block’s worth of parking lot adjacent to the big brick two-story was empty. I parked along the side of the building, with a few other cars; Christine Price and a couple other people had apartments here in the theater building, and the cars probably belonged to them.
I’d spent a leisurely morning at the apartment. Lu slept in till damn near noon. I was awake around seven and sat drinking Sanka, watching the morning game shows and soap operas on the portable, volume turned down low. I watched the shows but didn’t watch them. Thinking is what I did. A lot of thinking.
Then when Lu woke up, I fixed a late breakfast for us. She appreciated that. She said it took a liberated man to work in the kitchen. I said it took a bachelor. As we ate I told her I had another job interview this afternoon, and she said fine and didn’t ask for particulars, which was nice of her, as it saved me the trouble of making some up.
There was no problem getting inside at the Candle Lite. The front doors were unlocked, just like the other day. Beyond the front doors, to the left off an entry landing, some stairs led down. Some other stairs, a shorter flight, went up to the lobby. I climbed them, wondering if strike weekend was over.
It seemed to be. The stage set was finished, four-poster bed and other antique furniture assembled into a bedroom, the walls of which were painted and made very realistic-looking scenery. No one was on stage. No one was in the big theater room with its gentle tiers with the small covered tables with chairs.
I walked back out into the lobby and down to the entryway, only I turned left this time, headed on down the stairs to the lower level, where Ruthy’s apartment was.
The big room still looked like the basement it was. Besides a few clusters of stage props, battered furniture, dressing screens, and so on, the room was just a spacious, open area probably used as a rehearsal hall. One large corner of the room, however, was walled off, and considering the size of the place the walled-off area was the size of a small house.
Ruthy’s house.
There was a door, with a glittery star on it. A sarcastic comment on the fact that an actress lived within. At least I thought it was meant to be a sarcastic comment. With Ruthy, who could say?
I knocked.
It didn’t take her long to answer.
She was wearing a red terry cloth robe, but the terry cloth was-brushed or cut some way that made it look like velvet. It was long and flowing, but it clung to her, was belted around her middle and the neckline plunged. Of course.
She touched her hair, which was piled up on top of her head recklessly, and she said, “You really don’t believe in giving a girl much notice, do you? Come on in.”
She led me through, a small living room that looked like a prop room, odd pieces of secondhand furnishings scattered around with no apparent plan, and ranging from a possibly antique love seat to a cigar-store Indian with his cigars broken off. From the living room we passed through a small kitchenette area, just large enough for a table and chairs, refrigerator, stove and sink, and a lot of dirty dishes. Then we were in a tiny hall, about the size of a broom closet, off of which was a surprisingly large bath room on the one side, and her bedroom on the other, the latter being where we finally ended up.
There were only three things in the room: her round bed, with pink sheets and a fuzzy white something spread, unmade; a huge wardrobe trunk, standing open, like a mouth going sideways, with various clothes hanging and drawers that her other things were apparently stored in; and an imposing dressing-room-style dresser with big square mirror surrounded by glowing dwarf light bulbs. The top of the dresser was cluttered with various sorts of make-up, and on the walls around the mirror, and elsewhere in the room but not as concentrated as here, were pictures of her, both glossy posed photos with the crest of a studio photographer, and large color blow-ups of snapshots taken during various performances of plays she’d been in.
She sat in front of the mirror and started taking some pins out of her hair.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “You want something to eat? I can fix us something. You rather wait till afterwards, for that?”
“Is that why you think I’m here?” I said, sitting on the round bed. “To fuck you?”
She shook her head, not in any response to me, but to make her blond hair tumble to her shoulders, which it did, as if in slow motion. Her smile in the mirror was as smug as it was sexual.
“Why else?” she said. “You knew it was here if you wanted it. And I knew you’d come and get it, sooner or later.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because this is exciting to you. You’re shacked up with my best friend… who’d scratch my eyes out if she knew, and yours too, probably. And I’m seeing your new boss… who happens to be the type who frowns on somebody messing with his property. I think all of that’s kind of exciting, don’t you?”
“I get chills.”
She dropped her robe to her waist. Cupped her big, small-pointed breasts and looked at them appraisingly in the mirror. Then she took some lipstick and touched it against each nipple, rubbed the dark red rouge into each nipple with the forefinger of either hand, then licked each finger.
I’d had this wrong, from the first day, and there was no excuse for it. I’d made an assumption I shouldn’t have and I was an asshole for it. I had assumed that simply because she was a woman, Lu would naturally play the stakeout role, the passive part.
But I knew now I was wrong.
Lu played the same role I used to play, when I was in the business: she killed people.
And her back-up man had almost as big a tits as she did.
“You’ve traveled around a lot, haven’t you, Ruthy? Played a lot of dinner theaters, all over the country?”
“Sure,” she said. She was using some kind of tiny black pencil or crayon or something to draw a star-shaped beauty mark to the right of the nipple of her left breast.
“And when you appear in a play, you might stay in a town as long as six weeks, or two months maybe?”
“That’s right,” she said, idly.
“Plenty long enough to strike up a relationship with a gentleman friend.”
She gave me that schoolgirl smile of hers, but it dissipated into a smirk as she said, “I’ve been known to know a man now and again.”
“You could get to know a man pretty well in that space of time. Know just about his every habit, whole pattern of his life.”
She shrugged, stood, and let the robe drop to the floor. She had a great ass. Her thighs in back looked smooth, slippery, but firm; her calves were muscular, tapering. She turned and rubbed her breasts, smearing the lipstick but leaving the little black star intact and then kind of scratched at her snatch and said, “I’m gonna have a bath,” and hip-swayed out of the room.
I heard the bath water drawing.
I walked across the nothing hall and into the large bathroom. She was leaning over testing the water as it came out of the faucet. She poured in some milky bubble bath.
There was a counter-top sink, with more make-up and feminine things and another big mirror. There was also a small portable television on the edge of the counter, for her to watch as she bathed.