Walter Mosley - Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

“No.”

“You ever watch X-rated movies?”

“Sometimes I be wit’ a boyfriend who watch ’em but I never paid much mind.”

“I bet it takes a lot to impress you.”

“I like your rings,” I said with some emphasis.

“How old are you?”

“Old enough to get arrested for suckin’ a white man’s dick in the front seat’a his car.”

“Do they arrest the man?”

“No. They give him a summons an’ send him home.”

“They should arrest the john for child molesting and send you home to your mother.”

“I ain’t no child.”

“Only a child could be as beautiful as you are, Debbie Dare.”

I was very young and he was older than my dead father but that didn’t matter. The place I was looking for was a room where somebody looked at me and called me pretty. I was a wild thing when I climbed into Theon Pinkney’s car but he tamed me with just a few words.

When I woke up the morning sun was streaming into the polar bear room. There was drool down the side of my face and my crotch itched.

In the bathroom I peered into the mirror, half expecting to see white roots coming in at the baseline of my brown hair.

I brushed my teeth and ran a comb through the short dark brown mane.

There were three messages on the answering machine. I wondered if I had missed them when I got home, or maybe the phone had rung in the night but I was too deep asleep to hear it.

Marcia Pinkney had called again. She said that she’d be home for the entire day tomorrow and would be happy to see me at any time.

I wondered again at the time of her call. It was ten in the morning and Marcia was an early riser. If the call had come in on Thursday then she meant for me to drop by today; if it was this morning that she called she’d be expecting a Saturday visit.

This displaced feeling fit perfectly with my state of mind. I was lost in time, experiencing the past as clearly as (in some cases more so than) the present.

For long minutes I considered Marcia Pinkney’s call and its origins. It didn’t occur to me to call her. Marcia had never spoken to me directly. When Theon brought me to her home, on the occasion of his brother’s death, she had said to Theon, “Please tell this woman that she is not welcome in my home.”

Finally I moved on to the second message.

“You’re fired!” Linda Love shouted, and then she slammed her receiver down.

“Coco Manetti here,” the third caller said, his voice smooth and somewhat sinister. “I’m an associate of Richard Ness...” He left a number and said that he hoped I would call him.

I knew of Coco. I’d have to shoot him if ever I brought out my father’s piece.

A pang of hunger made its presence known. I was starving. This feeling confused me. For so long I went hungry by choice.

LeRoy’s Chicken and Waffle House was on Venice Boulevard very near the ocean. Absolutely everybody ate there at one time or other.

I had the pecan waffle with two spicy thighs and a side of hash browns along with coffee and orange juice.

I sat at an outside table that faced in a westerly direction but did not afford the view of the ocean; it was just that much too far away.

The sky was clear and vacant like nearly every day in Los Angeles, like most of the people who came to California.

The feeling of Los Angeles is that of free fall , I wrote in the little journal that I pilfered from our housekeeper. There’s nothing to grab onto but it’s beautiful if you could only stop and appreciate the view .

It felt good eating all that food and sitting outside in the stupid but beautiful day. No one came to talk to me because of my dress and shoes. It was the perfect disguise in that part of L.A., the shabby, faded look.

Hey, Debbie , I remembered a male fan once shouting at an adult film event, I just wanna fuck that red dress, baby, that’s all .

Kip Rhinehart lived in a converted schoolhouse way up a steep driveway deep in Malibu Canyon. It was a horseshoe-shaped building with the hump facing toward the entrance drive. The arc of the front of the building was two stories high. Kip had an apartment on the second floor. The rest of the place was composed of single-story classrooms. These were leased by the day or week to people in various businesses, including my own.

I parked behind Kip’s red pickup in the circular area in front of the informal business. Then I rang the doorbell and waited patiently.

You could smell the ocean up there — something to do with the wind currents. There was a wildness to that particular section of the canyon that almost made it seem alive — not filled with life but like a huge creature with a single mind and a long, long life span.

“Can I help you?” a man called from my right.

He would have been shorter than I even standing straight, but Kip was a little hunched over from some natural malady or condition. He wore a white T-shirt and dark blue jeans. He also had on hard-looking light brown cowboy boots.

“Hey, Kip.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you recognize me?”

The sixty-year-old’s face was wrinkled and brownish but he was a white guy. When he squinted he aged a decade. The surprise made him younger again.

“Deb? That you?”

“Do I have to put on a wig and contact lenses just to come visit?”

“No,” he said.

He rushed over and hugged me.

Kip was one of the few men I allowed this privilege. Guys tried to grab me so often that I naturally avoided cuddles, clinches, and bear hugs. But with Kip it was always friendly, considerate.

“What happened to your hair?” he asked.

“I’m just tired, Kip.”

The empathy in his eyes reflected some decision that he’d reached long ago, before I was born no doubt.

“You wanna cup’a java?” he asked.

Kip’s property ended at a cliff that overlooked the ocean. The tiny bands of waves were far enough away that you could see but not hear them.

There was a stone dais laid out at the far edge. On this platform sat a pink table and four shabby plastic white chairs. It was there that Kip served me his Spanish coffee and canned evaporated milk.

I accepted this hospitality not because I wanted or needed it but because he offered. The kindness was like a high-denomination poker chip: valueless as a thing but representing something of significance.

“I’m so sorry about Theon,” he said after we were seated and looking out.

It was early afternoon. The sun was high and hot.

“He went out with a beautiful girl on top of him,” I replied.

“He loved you though.”

“Yeah. I guess he did.”

“It’s hard being an old porn star, Deb,” Kip said. “I mean, it’s harder on women but guys feel it too. There’s no retirement plan and unless they can use a camera there’s no work to speak of.”

“It’s quiet around here,” I said, because there was no reply to Kip’s pronouncement.

“Not rentin’ out too much. I took in Jolie ’cause Theon asked personally. Place is paid for and I got my government check for the bills.”

Kip gazed back at the vacant area inside the horseshoe. It was a brick playground turned patio, with grasses and weeds growing up through the cracks. Looking at that space I remembered seeing Kip gazing down from his second-floor window when I was taking one man’s hard-on down my throat while his German friend was fucking my ass.

“I was chokin’ at one end and trying to relax at the other,” I told Theon that night.

He told me that he’d been in the exact same situation once when a gambler, Coco Manetti, made him do a gay film to pay off a bad debt.

I remembered feeling sorry for Theon.

And now he was dead.