Fridays at Enrico's

  “Good,” she said. “We can go shopping together.” Her call had made up his mind. It was time to buy some real clothes, a nice suit or two, some decent kicks, Florsheims, nice shirts, cuff links, ties, tie-tacks, the works. Carrie could help him shop.

  Then, when they did drive over to Hollywood to the department stores, he decided in a flash to buy a new car, too. But when he wrote out a check for the entire amount, the salesman got suspicious. Stan had to say, as airily as he could, “Oh, fine, you cash the check and I’ll be back Monday.” Stan took Carrie’s arm and they left the Cadillac agency and the skeptical salesman. On Monday Stan came back to claim his brand new Cadillac convertible, pale green with a cream-colored top. This time the salesman was his best friend. Stan drove out of the place thinking that maybe his new life had now actually begun. Now, maybe, a house in the hills. Not buy, of course, but rent. He daydreamed of taking Carrie to this new house in, let’s see, Beverly Hills? No. Malibu. That was the place. He imagined the surprise and delight on her face. A simple person, just like Stan. She’d love Malibu, wealth, a dreamlife on the beach. She’d even quit working. Stan made plenty and would make plenty more. He could set her up in any business she wanted. They didn’t love each other, but so what?

  62.

  What attracted Carrie so much was Stan’s simplicity. Most of the men she dated were salesmen or office workers, men she ran into at work or at Credit Managers. They were usually married or had other complications in their lives, but not Stan. After only a couple of dates, she decided he was just what he said he was, a book writer trying to break into the movies. She tried to read the book he gave her, but it was a man’s book and she couldn’t get interested. It didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that Stan wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t ugly, and his face had character, but he wasn’t the kind of man you’d call good-looking. He had soft eyes and a firm sensitive mouth and was gentle with her. Most of the men she dated didn’t know how to make love, or were too uptight. Stan was different. More like a little boy, she decided, eager about everything but polite, like a polite little boy sitting down to a big dish of ice cream. She understood after a while that it was probably because he’d spent all those years in prison away from women. He wanted to try everything. He didn’t seem to know the difference between ordinary sex and crazy stuff, he wanted to try it all. And then of course everything he did to her, she felt she had permission to try on him. Very liberating.

  Stan was not only great in bed and getting better, he was a man with lots of money. She didn’t have an eye on his money, but more to the point, he didn’t seem to have his eye on hers. So many men these days were just looking for a place to crash. Or wanted to assume control of her savings. Or tell her what business to go into and how to run it. Some, after getting to sleep with her, wanted to tell her how to run the laundry business. Stan not only had no opinions as to how she should run her life, he was always asking her how to run his. Once she realized he was completely sincere, she felt sympathy. He’d been brought up without manners or social skills, thrown into prison with animals, and yet wasn’t bitter or mean. One day she planned to take him across the Valley to meet her family.

  The Grubers weren’t a small family. Carrie had five brothers and two sisters, all living in Southern California, and her parents still held the family home in San Fernando. Carrie and her siblings had been taught to be independent, to go out into the world, to make and save, become financially independent, which she had done. She didn’t much like her family, but she was glad her papa had given her a good solid upbringing, exactly the kind Stan had been denied. She meant to teach him Gruber values.

  But Stan was more than a piece of clay for her to mold. If his face was nothing to write home about, he still had a beautiful body, tanned and muscular, and he made good money in a glamorous business. Of course, she saw show business from a slightly different angle than most, working for Lyle Freed. Lyle had begun in high school as a cheerleader, then went into Special Services in the army, singing and dancing for the other men who had to fight. She’d heard the whole story a million times. His lucky break had come when a bunch of Hollywood people came to his army camp for a show. He was master of ceremonies and they liked his act, and an agent told him to call the day he got out of the service. The rest was history. A role in a series, the series a big hit. Lyle spent five years wearing the same clothes and saying the same dumb jokes until he wanted to kill himself, but he saved enough that when the show was canceled he could purchase the laundromats.

  Lyle hated show business and everyone in it. Stan wasn’t like that. He had nothing bad to say about the people who were keeping him dangling. He didn’t even seem nervous. Lyle had told her so many times that nobody in show business was to be trusted, but Stan didn’t care. Maybe his life in crime had made him immune to dishonesty, like a flu shot. All she knew was that Stan was the most decent and straightforward man in her life.

  “He’s an ex-convict, Papa, but he’s going to be rich.” She could hear her father saying, “Well, how rich?” Stan himself never talked about marriage or even love. He was careful not to say, “I love you,” even when they were making love, and she was just as careful. But something made her think he did actually love her, in the same friendly way she loved him. They were friends, they were lovers, and they were compatible. What more to want? To show him her feelings, she went out and had her hair done blonde, just the way he liked it. Actually, she’d always wanted to be blonde. Stan loved it. “You’re my Marilyn Monroe,” he told her.

  They didn’t have to get married. Why rock the boat? They’d go into business together. Stan would put money into any business she chose. Part owner, silent partner, not taking over because he was a man, just investing in her because he believed in her. Naïvely he’d tell her he didn’t know how to manage money and that she could do it for them both. “You can be my business manager,” he’d said. She told him about business managers. Lyle was almost poetic in his hatred of business managers. All they did was take your hard-earned money and put it into fly-by-night ventures. When things went wrong they’d just hold their hands up in surrender, like Jack Benny. “Gee, we didn’t know!” They never went broke, just their clients. Carrie was pretty sure Stan would soon be in the big money, and she looked forward to helping him invest it. Not in her business, but in stocks and bonds.

  These days she daydreamed of a candy store. Good for her, because she didn’t eat much candy. Candy was like show business. In hard times, business would be good. The worse things got, the more they needed little treats. She had an idea for a very special candy store, one featuring candies from all over the world, exotic candies, the favorites of people everywhere. As the owner, she’d travel the world, searching for good interesting candies, getting the recipes and test marketing them here. There would have to be a chain of stores. She’d start with one, then expand. A real possibility. She and Stan could travel, have a good time, and sample candies. Stan could make the store a favorite with his Hollywood buddies.

  Stan had no objection. “We’ll open the first store in Malibu,” he said. “And live over it.” He was open to travel. “I’ve never been anywhere,” he told her, then tapped his head. “Except in here.”

  They had the top down on his Cadillac, and Stan was wearing the Hawaiian shirt she had bought for him, wearing it the way she’d shown him, unbuttoned with a white tee shirt underneath, and his red bathing trunks with the white stripe down the sides. She wore her black bathing suit and one of his dress shirts open down the front. They both had on their sunglasses and it was going to be a wonderful day. She’d taken the day off just so they could go to Malibu when the beach wouldn’t be crowded with hundreds of thousands of people, a sunny Tuesday morning, and Stan had told her he had to run downtown for a minute to visit his parole officer.

  They pulled into the parking lot next to the State building and Stan got out of the car, walking around to her side to give her a kiss, when another car pulled into the lot and this big f
at Mexican man got out. He wore a light brown suit open in front, and his belly hung over his belt. He looked about fifty, and he stared at Stan angrily.

  “Do you know that man?” she asked him. Stan turned and grinned. “That’s my parole officer,” he said, waving at the man, who walked toward them, his face hard.

  “You’re dirty,” he said to Stan.

  Stan looked very surprised. “Huh?”

  The parole officer was taller than Stan, and looked down at him coldly. “You’re violated.”

  Stan’s face contorted, then he seemed to get control over himself. “I’m not dirty.”

  The officer looked at him in his open shirt and bathing suit, sunglasses, brand new Cadillac, his girlfriend with the big tits and the blonde hair, and said, “Bullshit. Up against the car.”

  “Stan, what’s going on?” she asked. She was scared, but Stan looked at her as if he didn’t know her. “Stan?” He didn’t answer, as the big Mexican man handcuffed him.

  “Stan!” she cried. “What about the car?” But neither of them answered as Stan was led into the building. She learned later that he hadn’t been sent back to San Quentin, he wasn’t going to be punished that hard. They were only sending him to Los Padres National Forest, to a road gang, where he would cut brush for two years.

  PART FIVE

  Freedom

  63.

  Charlie hadn’t thought about his novel in a long time. He didn’t even know where the damn thing was. He’d gotten three big packages of paper from Bill Ratto six or seven years ago, but wasn’t sure what he’d done with them. It certainly wasn’t in his home office, because he ransacked the office right after Bill called.

  “Remember me?” came the fake Ivy League voice over the telephone.

  “Are you calling from New York?” Charlie asked, just to seem provincial. But Bill Ratto had left publishing and was now a producer in Hollywood.

  “No wonder your voice sounds so clear,” Charlie joked.

  “I was just sitting here thinking about you. Remember that novel you wrote, that brilliant Korean War novel?”

  “Oh, the Korean War novel,” Charlie said.

  Bill Ratto had been thinking. Charlie had disliked the version of his novel that Bill came up with, and Bill had no problem with that, he even tended to agree. “I think I turned a silk purse into a sow’s ear,” he said. But never mind the past. Bill had the beginnings of an idea. “Why don’t we make a movie?” He perfectly agreed with Charlie that it would be foolish of them to get back into the novel per se, but, now consider this, what about using the novel as the source material for a really serious big film about the Korean conflict. “Korea hasn’t been done, you know. Not really, not the way we could do it.”

  “Everybody hates war,” Charlie said dryly.

  “That’s just it!” Bill’s voice was filled with enthusiasm. “Everybody hates war. Time has passed. These days everybody agrees with you. It could be one of the great pacifist movies of all time.”

  Charlie didn’t know how to take it. He sat at his desk, killing the morning until he had to go to work. Looking out the window he could see a light haze over the bay. It was going to be a nice warm one. Another perfect day in paradise. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked abruptly. “I quit writing years ago.”

  “Charlie, that was a mistake. Quite possibly you didn’t have the skills for writing the novel you set out to write, a very ambitious book. But this is a movie we’re talking about here. Movies don’t require the same skill level. Are you following me?”

  Right into the sewer, Charlie thought, and then was ashamed. There was nothing wrong with movies. Charlie loved movies, especially bullshit movies. “So, what do you want of me?”

  What Bill wanted was permission to think about making a movie out of Charlie’s manuscript. But he didn’t have a copy either of the original or the “modeled” version he’d so painstakingly put together. The version that was more Bill than Charlie.

  “I don’t know where that fucking thing is,” Charlie said. “Maybe we threw it out. That was a long time ago, man.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bill said. “Could you hold a minute?” And he was gone. Charlie analyzed his feelings. He wasn’t a writer, but it didn’t hurt anyone. He’d never really been a writer. His literary ambitions, like all his ambitions, were not so much absurd as obsolete. Why bother? Yet what Bill was talking about did sort of interest him. To make a movie would be to get over all those nagging literary problems, and pull the thing straight down into plot and dialogue. As a kid dreaming about his giant war novel, he’d always imagined it would be turned into a giant epic movie, though at the time he was cynical and thought they’d wreck the book if they didn’t hire him to write the screenplay, because Hollywood hacks were, well, hacks. No wonder he was being sarcastic. He didn’t want to get his hopes up. Poor Little Charlie.

  “Are you there?” Bill asked. “Here’s what I had in mind. Find that book, read it over, think about it, and give me a ring.”

  Charlie hung up and looked at his watch. He was working the eleven to six shift at the no name bar. The bar opened at eleven thirty to accommodate the Sausalito alcoholics, but he still had an hour before he had to leave home. He could look for the manuscript. He felt calm, but there was a film of sweat on his brow that hadn’t been there before. Maybe the call made him more nervous than he cared to admit. Was he still ambitious? His old novel had been ambitious, so ambitious, so full of shit. Also the center of his life for ten years, until he met Jaime. Like his first child. She, he, and Bill Ratto, a man he didn’t quite like, go out into Potter’s Field, dig up the little corpse, clean off the dirt, put makeup over the corruption, and sell the body to the American public? Hmm.

  “What’s in it for me?” Charlie asked the air. He had to laugh. The notion of making money, a great deal of money, appealed just fine. At least it would be a change. As a bartender he wasn’t pulling in all that much, in fact, he couldn’t have afforded to live where he lived on his income. Thank God for Jaime and goddamn books. Not that he hated her books. He didn’t. He loved them. They kept him in Mill Valley. But they also seemed to keep Jaime out of Mill Valley. She’d come home for a week, two weeks, even a month, and then she’d be off again, either traveling or over in North Beach at the apartment, writing. She wrote there even though Charlie had often told her she could have his damned office at home. All Charlie used it for was to read or sleep on his couch. But if Jaime stayed home she stopped writing. Her absence might seem to offer him a wonderful freedom, but freedom to do what?

  Charlie lit a joint, the first of the day. Good thing Bill hadn’t called after he turned on, he would have talked his ear off and probably flown down to Hollywood that morning. Pot really made Charlie feel good, but it also made him talkative and easy to manipulate. Which is how he liked to be.

  After looking in vain for the manuscript, he walked out through the French doors to the lawn. The haze was clearing and the sky was going to be pure blue. Charlie took his third hit and pinched out the roach, sticking it into his watch pocket. He’d take another couple of hits when he parked, so his stroll down Bridgeway to work would be enlightened by the dope. At work throughout the afternoon people would come in with a variety of things to give away, and being in the spotlight as the bartender meant he got a lot of free stuff from admirers—coke, hash, weed, acid, codeine, Percodan, bennies, amps, meth, barbs, seconal, a whole pharmacopoeia of friendly little helpers, which Charlie knew had to be taken in moderation or avoided entirely, since he didn’t want to turn into an addict. He’d sample one one day, another another day, and the stuff that was passed to him routinely he’d pocket and then give away to friends. Neil Davis didn’t know about it, or if he did he kept his mouth shut. For Charlie it was part of the new spirit of anti-government. The only hopeful sign anywhere.

  Charlie walked around the house to the garage, where their battered old Porsche waited for him. Jaime didn’t drive to the city anymore. She’d tak
e the bus or let Charlie drive her, but they’d given up the garage as too expensive, and parking on the street was impossible. Charlie sold his old Volkswagen, practically the only valuable thing he owned, and they were a one-car family. The dusty black Porsche showed a rusty crease down the right side, where Jaime had drunkenly scraped something one night. Poor old thing needed a wash. Not Jaime, the car. He wanted to call her at the apartment, but this was her peak working time, and anyway Charlie had been smoking and she could tell it. Jaime was fierce about drugs around Kira. If they were caught with drugs in their house they could both be arrested and hauled off to jail, and then Kira would be stuck in a foster home, and how would he like that? He wouldn’t. But it wouldn’t happen. He didn’t let Kira see him smoking dope because he didn’t want to encourage her to use it. Charlie got into the car and started it up with a nice throaty roar. Driving stoned was fun. Every trip down the hill a ride on the marijuana rollercoaster. Halfway down the hill he remembered his call from Hollywood, and began to daydream about writing a movie, a big movie, a big war movie.

  64.

  After school or in the summer, Kira sometimes took the bus to Sausalito to spend the afternoon on Bridgeway. Charlie didn’t mind, so long as she got her schoolwork done. Though he was never quite sure with Kira, who could be an extraordinarily adept liar. Bridgeway was a circus, the shops and sidewalks crowded with tourists, especially now in summer, so you couldn’t drive through town in under an hour. Colorful hippies, leisure-suited Midwesterners, Japanese in their blue suits and white shirts, waterfront people, street people, anything you wanted. Kira and a lot of other kids hung out on the steps or bummed change from the tourists, which Charlie tried to forbid. Kira looked at him with her big dark eyes and said she wouldn’t, but she was always spending money Charlie hadn’t given her. She was tall for her age, and had been having her periods since she was ten, so Charlie also had to worry about Sausalito street philosophy, which suggested that if you were old enough to bleed, you were old enough to butcher. At twelve Kira was tall, skinny, and incredibly beautiful, at least from her father’s point of view, and could pass for fourteen. Plenty of runaway hippies that age came through Sausalito, and might tempt his daughter into a life of empty leisure.