“Thank you.”
“And maybe we can ring up the other girls for a drink in the evening.”
“Maybe,” says Donna, eyeing his lips for slobber. No sign.
“Y’know what I mean.”
“I know.”
Upstairs, while Marianne lies in bed reading, Bobby stretches out on the floor and sketches the floor plan of the house on a large sheet of butcher paper. Marianne thinks for a moment; then it dawns on her. “If you’re planning on turning this into a whorehouse, count me out. I don’t see that as an intelligent atmosphere.”
“What else could you do?” asks Bobby maladroitly.
“I could go back to work! Working in a whorehouse is not the only option I have! I never had such a discussion until I met you!”
“You were the one who took on that cop with such alacrity.”
“Not alacrity, you bastard, I was fool enough to indulge myself in your wishful thinking.”
“Which I see you now resent.”
“You bet your life! And especially since you don’t seem to have any conviction about it yourself. Listen to me, Bobby, I am reading a nice book by Jane Austen, and tonight I have no further desire to discuss whorehouses. Go talk to the whore downstairs, if you can’t stand the pressure. I’m reading my book.”
“I might.”
I am on probation for soliciting. One slip and I will be jailed or assigned to community service. I prefer Jane Austen.”
“I’m going downstairs to talk to Donna.”
Bobby’s bathrobe trails behind him as he descends. Bobby opens the spare room. It is empty. The drawers on the first floor are all pulled out. Marianne’s purse is upended, looted. He turns his wallet inside out in futile hope. When he treads upstairs and back into the bedroom, Marianne inquires, without looking up from her book, “We been robbed?”
“Yup.”
“Did she eat the little snacks you left by her little table?”
“I guess there wasn’t time.”
Bobby goes to bed, outfitted in disappointment. Yet once the lights are off, he falls into a deep sleep, dreaming of ambulance service in the Ardennes. Then he wakes up and snaps the light. Marianne is already awake, lost, her eyes going nowhere.
“Darling?”
“What, baby?”
“Have you had thousands of lovers?” he asks.
“Oh, babe.”
“Tell me.”
“No,” she says.
“How many?”
“I don’t know, darling.”
“You don’t even know how many?”
“I didn’t count.”
“Count. You mean it would be necessary to start counting?”
“Oh, Bobby, can’t we just sleep?”
“I have to get this off my chest.”
“Why do you have to?”
“I can’t sleep,” says Bobby. “Under fifty?”
“I think so.”
“But close.”
“Bobby, I don’t know! My God, we don’t even make love ourselves lately!”
“What a heartache I’ve got.”
“I’m starting to get mad!”
“Don’t get mad at me. My heart is aching, God damn it!”
“If you’ve got such a heartache, why are you trying to turn me into a hooker?”
“To wipe those aches away!”
“Well, let me tell you right now, I’m not about to reconstruct my past for you. So you can quit worrying about that one.”
“Yeah, but you had one.”
“So did you.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Did you sleep with that English rotter?”
“Obviously yes.”
“I’ll bet he was a bum lay.”
“You’ll never know.”
“I can guess.”
“Let’s put it this way,” says Marianne measuredly. “He beat the hell out of that plainclothesman.”
“Don’t keep running my face in that one!”
“Bobby, honey, you’d better figure out what you’re up to. I mean, this is all very adventurous, but if you can’t handle it, you better think of something you can.”
“Is that some kind of attack on my nerve?” Bobby says sharply. Who is this dumb bunny trying to put on the spot?
Marianne has no trouble finding Donna at her predictable table the next day. The same bartender is in the corner like a heron spotting minnows.
“May we have our belongings back?”
“I don’t know.”
“That wasn’t very nice.”
“I’m not very nice. Blah, blah, blah.”
“That’s right,” says Marianne. “You’re a useless girl. And your fingerprints are on everything. I’m going from here to the police unless we can have our things back.”
“Better have your boyfriend go. You’ve got a record.”
“That’s fine. Is that how you would prefer it?”
“I’ll tell you something better. All your stuff is up to Chino’s place, ’n’ that. Your boyfriend went up and hassled my guy, and it was a question of my getting back in the first place. I’m not interested in being a house pet with a view of the ocean. Part two, I love my guy. Can you follow that? If you want your stuff, go get it.”
“Thank you very much, I will.”
It must be that Chino can feel the vibration of someone on the fire escape because once more he is smiling on the landing, this time at brave Marianne, who seems primly ascending, like someone distributing leaflets for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“Good morning,” she says. “I’ve come to see about my things.”
Chino holds the door for her. Still sleepy, he looks more like Donald Arthur Jones; “Chino” is for as the day goes on. But it does seem the latter is coming on rather rapidly.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “The odds and ends Donna lifted. The money is in my bank and the credit cards are back in circulation.”
“Well,” Marianne says, feeling very much as though she were at the World Trade Center, “start thinking about how you’re going to get them for me.”
“Why?” Chino is narrowing down.
“Because we need them.”
“Who? You and what’s his name, Errol Flynn? Errol Flynn needs them. You don’t.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That means you’re not going anywhere. Errol Flynn is going to have to do his own cooking and washing until he can find some more live-in help. His old lady just found a new job.”
“I’m looking for a girl named Donna. You remember, a tall brunette who sits at that table, that one there, next to the sidewalk?”
“I don’t know her,” says the bartender.
“Come on, she sits right there! I left a hundred bucks with you to cover her drinks.”
“I don’t remember that either.”
“She’s here every day!”
“Lower your voice or I’ll have you bounced.”
“I … I’m sorry. I have a job to do. I want to clean up this neighborhood. I could’ve used your help.”
“Sorry.”
“If it turns out I needed your help bad, I’m coming back to see you.” Bobby’s got his hand on the gun, and he’d like to shoot this fucker’s lights out.
“Whatever blows your dress up,” says the unflappable bartender as he swishes mai tai glasses in the suds.
Bobby stands on Chino’s landing with his ear to the door. He can hear incoherent murmuring from within. He’s got the gun in front of him and he’s turning the knob as slowly as he can. The latch clicks and the door is free. Bobby kicks it wide open, jumping inside with the gun held two-handed, straight in front of him.
Three Chinese house painters babble in abject terror in the completely bare flat. Bobby gapes at the emptiness as he backs out amid the oriental cacophony.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry.…”
“So sorry,” they echo, nervously trying to get with it.
In a regally anonymous condominium, high in the middle of the city, each of whose windows gives onto a merciless view of the ocean and the far bridges of the bay, the silent corridors reach past the sealed doors like a nervous system. A door opens; a well-dressed man backs into the corridor trailing a woman’s arm. It drops away and swings back into the doorway. He says thank you and goes. The girl is not Marianne; she is on the couch beyond in a nightgown. But the door closes.