Walter Mosley - Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

I watched him pour a triple shot into a squat glass. He seemed to be quivering a little.

I didn’t blame him.

He pulled in across from me.

“So?” He managed a light tone and I was impressed.

“My husband died in debt,” I said. “Some of the people he owed money to are what you might call disreputable. This guy Dick was a kind of leg breaker. Manetti is somewhat worse than that.”

“Should we call the police?”

“And say what?”

Instead of answering he took a healthy swig of our thirty-year-old cognac. Rash was wearing a buff-colored jacket, blue jeans, black tennis shoes, and a white T-shirt. Only in California could you find black people like him and me.

“What kind of work did he want you to do?”

“Do you want to be my friend, Rash?” I decided to speak without thinking, to find out what was going on in a kind of trancelike stream of consciousness. If Rash could flow with that then he could come along — wherever it was I was headed.

“I don’t know you well enough to answer that question yet.”

“Do you think that you might like to be my friend?”

“That’s why I’m here. Though I’m not quite sure what I’m getting into.”

Rash was smiling. He had a small gap between his two upper front teeth. He was looking straight at me without the slightest aggression.

“Are you gay, Rash?”

“No. Why?”

“Why does a girl ask a guy if he’s gay?”

“Uh...”

I had been in the business for too long. I was blocking the sex scene that this conversation would become on Linda Love’s or Roger Bonair’s set. The shy guy and the brash whore. He’s her husband’s clueless friend and she’s hungry for sexual exploration...

“Rash is a funny name for such a shy guy,” I said, trying to derail my knee-jerk train of thought.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yep.”

He looked around the room and I saw that I was losing him.

“Are you looking for a way out of here, Rash?”

“So that guy, that Coco, he was like a gangster?”

“I wouldn’t be upset if this was too much for you.”

“I just want to know what happened with that guy. Why didn’t you tell him my real name?”

“I told you,” I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice, “my husband died but he was in debt. Theon had a lot of vices. He gambled and chased women; he liked to drink good brandy too. Guys like that often show up on people like Manetti’s radar. I didn’t tell him your name because you are none of his business.”

Whenever Rash crinkled up his face, trying to understand what was being said, I had the urge to kiss him. I managed not to give in to these frequent urges.

“And what about you?” the coffee-and-cream-colored young architect asked.

“What about me?” I stood up from the table, reminding myself of Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon .

“That gangster wanted you to go to work for him.”

I considered lying and, in a flash, I understood the femme fatale of film noir and noir novels. They lied because it was easier than the truth, because they had been invited in for their charms and lies, because the truth always sounded so guilty when they were just trying to make it through the day — like everybody else.

I tried to say something but the words weren’t there.

I took in a deep breath to compose myself.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Rash said.

For some reason the idea of love crossed my mind. It seemed to me then, in spite of the triteness, that love was an impossible goal unless you broke it down into pieces — fragments. I could love my father because he was tall and strong and funny, because he read stories to me and understood how the world worked. He loved me because I was small and needed him. Those two loves came together but they were not one love.

“Do you want me to leave?” Rash asked.

I looked at him, feeling that he was alien, like a high school foreign-exchange student from a country that no one in the class, not even the teacher, had ever heard of. Some kid who wore strange, dull-colored clothing and smelled like bread.

“What?” he said.

“You want something to eat?” I managed to ask.

“I’m still full from the restaurant.”

“Oh... right,” I said. “I forgot about that.”

“Why did that guy call you Ms. Dare?”

“Dare is my stage name.”

“You act?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Theater?”

“If you’re looking for an excuse all you have to do is walk out to your car.”

“Why won’t you talk to me, Sandra?”

“I am talking.”

“I ask you if you work in theater and you tell me that I can leave. That’s not talking.”

I grinned at that, appreciating the young architect’s ability to stay on the scent.

“How many nights have you eaten at Monarc’s since we met there?” I asked.

“Every night.”

“Why?”

“In case you came in.” He looked down at my hands.

“Kinda like stalking somebody who isn’t there.”

“I liked talking to you.”

“But you don’t like it now,” I countered.

“Yes, I do. I’d rather talk to you than anyone else I know.”

“Isn’t that kind of obsessive?”

“No,” he insisted. “It’s just sudden.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

He hesitated.

“Come on now, honey,” I said. “Tell me the truth.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

“Annabella. Annabella Atoll.”

“Are you engaged?”

“No.”

“Do you live together?” I had almost forgotten Coco Manetti by then.

“Uh-uh, no. We... we date.”

“And where has Annabella been all these nights you were waiting for me?”

“She goes to grad school at UCLA. She’s studying for her accounting finals. I won’t see her for at least another ten days.”

He was a nice guy but a little out of focus, like somebody you meet at a bar after the sixth or seventh drink — the kind of man I’d remember liking but just couldn’t recall the name of. I had been blaming this haziness on my depressive trauma, but just then I saw that it was Rash himself that was out of alignment in the world he lived in.

“Do you recognize me?” I asked.

“You mean from TV or something?”

“Answer the question.”

He scrunched up his face and concentrated. After thirty seconds or so he shook his head no. He’d have to be a consummate liar to have succeeded with an act like that.

“My husband just died,” I said, lifting the words up like a shield.

“I’m not trying to do anything,” he said. “I mean, I was, I am attracted to you, but I wouldn’t have even said anything in the restaurant if you didn’t want me to. And I came here because you asked me.”

“Kind of like a puppet.” I immediately regretted these words. I had been playing the hardhearted seductress for so long that the role was both my first and last resort.

Rash moved his head from side to side, genuflected in the chair as if he meant to rise and walk away, but then sat back.

“You just looked so calm,” he said at last. “Sitting there reading your book, looking up now and then with this little smile you got. I don’t know... I guess I wanted to feel like that.”

“Like what exactly?”

“Like I wasn’t all the time waiting for something else to happen. Like I was just sitting in a chair completely comfortable with myself.”

“You were,” I said.

“No,” Rash Vineland said.

He looked me directly in the eye. That’s what I was waiting for: for a man who had not seen or heard about my genitals who was talking straight in my face.

“Get up,” I commanded. “Come with me.”