“Hi, ma’am.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, “you’re as precious as I thought you would be when I saw you walking in and asked the usher to bring you onstage. I’m crazy for cowboys, you know. You with the rodeo?”
“Yes!” No purpose in telling her otherwise.
She threw her arms about him. “Oh, honey! Oh! I’m Amber,” she breathed her name. “You staying in the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Invite me?”
“Yes!”
“Toldya she’d show up,” the security guard said to Lyle.
4
A question of love.
Was it a dream? Was he in an expensive hotel room with this beautiful stranger? Was he in bed with her and listening again to Rose’s masterful instructions? Were they having sex? Terrific sex?
Fuck, yes, they were!
“Do you love me?” Amber asked, her eyes misty, after he had come three times—or so it seemed—and she had seemed to come at least ten.
“I loved what we did,” he said enthusiastically. “Let’s do it again!’
She lowered her eyelashes. “That’s not what I asked. Do you love me?”
I love Maria, he thought. “No,” he answered truthfully. His voice seemed to speak on its own, the way his fists acted. “I love Maria.”
She sat up. “What! You brought me to your hotel room and you love another woman?”
“Yes, I love Maria, in Rio Escondido.” But she might be my sister, his mind pursued.
“How could you make love to me? How?”
“Easy—you’re sexy, you’re gorgeous.”
“You betrayed your beloved!” she said, standing up, pulling on her clothes. “You are an unfaithful bastard!”
“Uh-uh,” Lyle denied. “I may be a bastard because of my lying son-of-a bitch father, but I wasn’t unfaithful to Maria, no way.” He spoke aloud Rose’s lesson, “People aren’t unfaithful here,” he touched his groin, still aroused. “Only here,” he pointed to his heart, “and that’s where Maria is.”
Amber stood up, trembling. “And this is where it hurts!” She slapped his growing hard-on.
“Ouch!” he winced.
She headed for the door.
“Wait, I’ll walk you back.”
“Go to hell,” she said, and slammed the door.
5
Back to the glorious City of Angels.
This time, at the edge of Las Vegas, he didn’t bother to stick out his finger for a ride. That hadn’t worked before, but this had: He sat on his suitcase and asked the Holy Virgin Guadalupe to send someone to give him a ride soon.
Not too soon, but soon after, a car stopped. “Where you headed?”
“Los Angeles!”
“Hop on!”
Lyle hurried to the car, got in. “Mr. Fielding!”
“Mr. Cowboy! Why didn’t you tell me you were headed for Los Angeles, I’da saved you some shoe-wea—boot-wear,” he corrected himself with a jovial chuckle that shook his belly. “What happened to your horse?”
“I told you, I—”
Mr. Fielding had gone on, “Mr. Cowboy, I believe in fate, circumstances, all that stuff—and I keep running into ya. My gambler’s instinct tells me—”
“—that I’m bad luck,” Lyle said dourly, “but it turned to good luck when I prayed to—” He was about to tell him about the money he’d won, share it, partner to partner.
“Shush now!” Mr. Fielding said sternly. “Can’t mention prayers when you’re gambling. Bad luck. Take back whatever you were going to say—”
“But I won—”
“I said, take back whatever you were going to say!” Mr. Fielding insisted, cross.
“Okay,” Lyle shrugged, “I take it back.” What else to say?
Mr. Fielding had been so intent on the promise that he didn’t realize he had veered across the highway, almost running into a Greyhound bus. “See, we didn’t hit it, we became lucky when you took that back,” he said.
They drove on, along miles of desert, past craggy mountains like giant faces—until, after dozing off and on—Lyle woke up to see tall buildings sparkling like splintered diamonds.
“Here we are, Mr. Cowboy,” Mr. Fielding said when he had swept off the freeway and they were riding along a wide, palm-lined street that said “Wilshire Boulevard.” “My instinct tells me to let you off here. See ya around, cowboy.” He opened the door for Lyle to get out.
On the street, Lyle started, “Mr. Fielding—” to thank him, but he drove off. Lyle rubbed his eyes to make sure that the man was real this second time.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1
Lyle relies on his instincts and Clarita’s prayer, and encounters BABETTE.
On a day full of sun and jacaranda blossoms, Lyle stood on a street lined with trees whose branches were shedding flowers, scattering petals like lavender snow on the ground. He saw a bus. Its destination said: HOLLYWOOD. A name everyone knew! He boarded the bus, its passengers mostly Hispanics and blacks on their way to work.
“Huccome you’re riding a bus, cowboy? Dónde está su caballo?” an old man asked Lyle, arousing friendly laughter.
“I’m not a—” Lyle started, and stopped. What the hell. “My horse died on his way here, sir, got hit by lightning. His name was Rigger,” he said, with profound earnestness.
“Trigger,” a black woman corrected.
“That was Gene Autry’s horse,” a man said.
“Belonged to Rogers,” an Anglo woman corrected.
Lyle sat down and looked out the window. The City was on display for him—buildings like slabs of mirrors, palm trees lording it over everything, flowers climbing up light posts, and along every block, billboards with pictures of … everything.
He didn’t know where he was going, with his suitcase, his guitar, and his boots full of money. Now why was he here? he pondered that, and then gave himself the answer: To find out everything about life. Everything! For now, he’d rely on instinct, like Mr. Fielding, get off the bus when his hunch told him to.
The bus crawled along heavy traffic, past—
My God! Who was that? On a huge poster—the bus had stopped for a red light—that picture of a woman, standing, arms up, exultant, black hair tumbling over white, velvety shoulders, scarlet lips, moist, parted, enormous blue eyes inviting from under extravagant eyelashes, a face like a seductive pouting angel’s, an angel with huge breasts, a tiny waist, a body given almost total display by a black bikini, mere swaths of black cloth.
“Wow!”
Lyle read the name under the picture on the poster:
BABETTE
“Babette,” he said her name aloud, straining to look back back until the picture had entirely disappeared form his sight. Never in his imagination had he seen anyone like her.
He got off on Franklin Avenue, a strip of apartment buildings draped with flowery vines. The stretch was a mixture of grand old homes that retained a weathered splendor, lesser new ones, and apartment buildings with names like “Spanish Arms,” “California Manor,” “Palm Mansion.” Several had courtyards and fountains and trees like leafy umbrellas.
Farther along the block, young men and women lounged drinking frothy coffee in small outdoor cafés. Nudging each other, several turned to look at the tall young man wearing a cowboy hat and boots and lugging a guitar and a suitcase. Lyle heard a woman’s voice say, “hot,” followed by her boyfriend’s nervous laughter. Along that block pretty shops housed fresh flowers, artificial flowers, psychics, palm-readers, vintage clothing.
Again in the spirit of Mr. Fielding’s reliance on chance—it wouldn’t hurt to back that up with a prayer to the Virgin Guadalupe to help him choose right, reminding her of course, about Clarita’s introduction—he walked on, then stopped and closed his eyes. When he opened them, whatever came into his mind would decide his next destination. BABETTE. No, that wouldn’t do for now. He closed his eyes again, opened them, and saw:
A Spanish-style building that r
eminded him of the Texas Grand Hotel. There was a For Rent sign—and a fountain in a leafy courtyard, warm sun splashing it with pools of light. There was even a cactus in the garden. The Fountain Apartments.
A reedy older woman came to the door marked MANAGER. “Yes?”
“I want to rent the apartment.”
“You ain’t seen it, cowboy.”
“I’m not a—” Oh, hell. “I like the place.” He looked around, liking it more when he saw a dark young woman who reminded him of his beloved, Maria.
“We got high-class renters, lots of movie stars,” the woman informed. “You know who Vampira is?”
Lyle shook his head. She sounded sinister.
“Real famous hostess of late-night movies—used to live here. You know who Babette is?”
Babette! The gorgeous woman on the poster! “She lives here?” Lyle gasped. He sure believed in instinct now and in the efficacy of Clarita’s prayer.
“No, but she drives by now and then in her silver Cadillac. I seen her parked across the street once, admirin’ the building like she might want to live here.”
“I’d like to move in,” Lyle said, doubly encouraged.
“Whoa, cowboy. Listen to more. Greta Garbo lived here.”
“Wow,” he said. He knew to be impressed.
“If you wanna join those legends, you gotta expect to be respectful.”
Lyle took off his hat, tipped it, and bowed.
“Okay, cowboy, the apartment to let is over there, Number seven. It’s furnished real nice.” The woman pointed to a unit that faced the fountain. “I’m Mrs. Allworthy, and here’s the key, go look at the apartment, then we’ll discuss deposit and rent.”
Lyle didn’t need to discuss that, he’d already decided, and, besides, he had lots of money in his boots. “I’ll take it, ma’am.”
“Go look at it, will ya?” the woman insisted.
It was a one-bedroom apartment with a small kitchen and barely enough furniture to qualify as “furnished.” It had high ceilings and tall, arched windows. Lyle sat down on a chair before a small table that doubled as a desk. There was an abandoned pen, some paper, envelopes; on one sheet was written, “I can’t believe that you—” That was all, as if whoever had lived here had rushed away from what was about to be said.
Lyle’s instinct took this as a signal that he should write Maria and Clarita and Sylvia now that he was in Los Angeles. To Maria: “I love you, and I hope you’ve gotten that silly idea out of your beautiful head. Please?” He rewrote it and left out “silly.” He wrote Clarita: “I miss you; thank you for telling me about the Holy Lady”—and dug several bills out of one boot to enclose for her. What to write to Sylvia? “Dear Mo—” He started again: “Dear Sylvia. I miss you a whole lot. Love, Lyle.” Later, he would get a telephone, and call her—and Clarita and Maria. He reconsidered. No, he preferred to write, and he would write often. Talking by telephone to those he was so far away from would only add to his missing them.
A knock at the door. There stood Mrs. Allworthy.
“Gonna be looking for a job, huh?”
“Yes.” He might as well, rich as he was.
She let herself in, sat on the bed, and appraised him. “You look to me like you could get into a lot of trouble in this city.”
“Not going to,” Lyle assured her.
“They hire good-looking young people at Disneyland, but they specialize in hideously cute ones; you’d be too sexy.” She winked, caught herself, pretended to have an eye twitch.
Lyle sat up, to obviate whatever sexiness he was indicating.
“I got a notice of a job you’d be ideal for, though. Need young guys to tend to people at a big rich—very rich—party, parking cars.”
“Don’t know how to drive,” Lyle confessed.
She looked startled. “Really? Oh, sure, you rode a horse.”
“No, I just like to walk and run,” he informed her, but she had moved on.
“You can be one of the attendants at the party. Big party,” she said mysteriously, wanting to be asked whose.
“Whose?” he asked obligingly.
She whispered, about to divulge delicate information. “It’s Huey’s,” she said, with the air of someone who has managed to give information without breaking a confidence.
“Huey’s? Wow!” Whoever he was.
“I call him Huey. He came by a few times, one of his girls lived here before she moved into the Mansion. The agency Huey uses—the most trustworthy of course—calls me when he needs guys like you to usher famous people around for his parties. This one’s in honor of …” She paused in awe. “Ms. Universal!”
“Sounds good,” Lyle said.
“Pay’s good, tips are better, Huey’s a big tipper. I won’t be there myself because my duties keep me here. Don’t think I haven’t been invited,” she said gruffly.
“Thank you, Mrs. Allworthy. I’ll apply.”
Again she was struck with a flirtatious eye twitch. When Lyle didn’t say anything, she sighed, “Oh, well,” and she was the assertive manager again, taking the rent, a deposit, giving him a receipt—after he returned from the bathroom, where he had drawn money from his boots.
The next day, he walked long, long blocks to an office building on a side street off the Sunset Strip, where Mrs. Allworthy had instructed him to go to be interviewed. Before locating the address, he stood astonished by what he saw. Towering murals, huge billboards that whirled about, and winked and blinked, outdoor cafés under circus awnings, shop windows with indifferent mannequins, more billboards that changed colors, turned upside down, lit up, grew.
About to feel woozy, he entered a building that looked like an expensive house. In a waiting room were several other young applicants. They all addressed each other as “dude” or “man,” had tans and highlighted haircuts that made them look as if they had just gotten out of bed. All kept a hand over or near their groins.
It was Lyle’s turn. He walked into another office, glassy, glitzy, chromy where a jolly man and a big woman sat behind a small, shiny antique desk. When he saw Lyle, the jolly man put his hand to his lips and said, “My, my”—and then proceeded to write down an answer to everything the woman asked Lyle, whether he responded or not.
He was hired. The jolly man escorted him to yet another room. “I answered every question correctly for you so you’d get the job,” he confided to Lyle.
A woman measured Lyle in order to make adjustments on the clothes he would wear as attendant—black pants, white shirt, black bow tie. The jolly man remained there smiling until the woman motioned him to leave.
“You can wear your own shoes, as long as they’re black,” the woman told him.
He returned to the office with the big woman and the jolly man, who again said, “My, my.” The woman instructed, “On the day of the party, you turn up here with the others, and you’ll be driven up to the Mansion.”
2
Lyle discovers Hollywood Boulevard. His excursions about the city; its sights, excitement, and grave dangers.
As Lyle awaited the day when he would usher the rich, the beautiful, and the famous about the grounds of Huey’s Mansion, he encountered a world far away from Rio Escondido.
And what a wonderful, beautiful, sexy city this was! Flowers managed to push out of cracks in the sidewalks and to shove out of thick shrubs. Bougainvillea draped walls and balconies, like a bunch of Clarita’s ruby-colored rosaries. Too damned arrogant, those palm trees; and all over the city, drawings of feathery angels appeared daily on billboards and posters, winged sculptures in the city’s plazas.
Hollywood Boulevard! The Wax Museum—somber, smiling statues of movie stars that looked dead and stuffed. Across the street, a dinosaur pounded on the top of the Believe It Or Not Museum. At the Chinese Theater, he gazed down at footprints and handprints embedded in the courtyard.
“I bet you’d fit these.” A giggly girl pointed down.
He straddled the prints. He fit them. He read the name: Gary Co
oper.
He gazed at huge portraits on one side of the Chinese Theater—Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, Marilyn Monroe. At the end of the row, on a rented billboard, there she was again!
BABETTE!
Lyle’s heart pounded, his cock twitched. He tore himself away, reassuring himself that he could return to gaze at the luscious woman whenever he wanted. He wandered the blocks of army surplus stores, movie-poster shops. Before the Stella Adler Theater, a pretty girl with glasses sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, earnestly reading.
“Whatcha reading?” he asked her.
“Chekhov!” she said.
Had she told him to jack off? He’d better be careful about being too friendly too soon. He lingered before the windows of Frederick’s of Hollywood, imagining Maria in one of those undies with a cutout heart right there—and Rose, in a red see-through—what was it? He passed young men and women—about his age, several younger—with spiked hair streaked red, green, yellow; earrings piercing their noses, belly buttons, nipples, eyebrows, tongues; tattoos crawling over their pale bodies.
When he discovered that the guided tour he took by bus was a tour of cemeteries, he stayed on not to be disrespectful of the others, older men and women. With them, he trooped like a pilgrim through Forest Lawn, rolling green hills, blocked tombstones—he removed his hat out of respect—white naked statues, oblivious of sorrow, and a huge replica of David rising like a triumphant giant over the realm of death.
At dusk, the tour ended at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. As if attending the funeral of a dear friend, the group traipsed somberly along the rows of ornate stones, mausoleums large enough to live in. Lyle held his hat over his heart as members of the tour sighed, gasped, wept. “Valentino!” … “Tyrone Power!” … “Clara Bow!” … “Cecil B. DeMille!”
Later that night, he saw yet another world as he walked back to his apartment. Within the freeway underpass he had to cross were piles of trash. One stirred, then another. Bodies slept under the debris. Bands of shabby boys and girls scurried into the further coves under the freeway.