Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

She looks terrific.

She always does, and not just for a woman in her forties but for a woman of any age. She’s wearing a basic black dress, just short enough to show off her legs and cut just low enough to show a little cleavage.

Back in the day, Frank thinks as he opens the car door for her, we would have called her a “classy broad.” Course, you don’t talk like that anymore, but that’s what Donna is. Always was. A Vegas showgirl who didn’t hook or hustle, didn’t succumb to the booze or the dope, just did her job, saved her money, and knew when it was time to call it a day. Took her savings, moved to Solana Beach, and opened her boutique.

Makes herself a nice life.

They drive up the coast to Freddie’s by the Sea.

It’s an old San Diego place on the beach in Cardiff, and sometimes, like tonight, the water laps right up against the restaurant. The hostess knows Frank and shows them to a table by a window. With the storm front coming in, the waves are already approaching the glass.

Donna looks out at the weather. “Well, it will give me a chance to catch up on inventory anyway.”

“You could take a couple of days off.”

“You first.”

It’s a constant joke between them, and a constant hassle, two business-minded people trying to find time to go off for even a few days’ vacation. She doesn’t really feel comfortable with anyone else running the boutique, and Frank is, well, Frank. They made it to Kauai for five days three years ago, but since then, they’ve managed one overnight in Laguna and a weekend at Big Sur.

“We need to stop and smell the roses,” he tells her now.

“You could start by having two jobs instead of five,” she says. Still, she has a sense that maybe one reason their relationship works so well is that theydon’t have too much time for each other.

The waiter comes back and they order a bottle of red and then, in the interest of time, go ahead and order their appetizers and entrees, too. He goes for the seafood soup and the shrimp scampi; Donna orders a green salad-no dressing-and the baked halibut with tomatoes.

“The scampi is tempting,” she says, “but butter shows up on me the next day.”

She excuses herself to go to the ladies’, and Frank takes the opportunity to scamper into the kitchen for a hello call to the chef, for the usual: How’s the fish been? Any complaints? Wasn’t that yellowtail terrific last week? Hey, just to let you know, I’m going to have a good supply of shrimp next week, storm or no storm.

When he gets to the kitchen, John Heaney isn’t there.

Frank has known him for years. They used to surf a lot together back when John owned his own restaurant in Ocean Beach. But John lost that place on aMonday Night Football bet.

Frank was there that Tuesday morning, at the Gentlemen’s Hour, when John paddled out, hungover and looking like death.

“What’s the matter with you?” Frank asked him.

“Twenty large on the Vikes to cover,” John replied. “They blew an extra point. A goddamn fucking extra point.”

“You have the money?”

“No.”

So bye-bye restaurant.

John went to work out at the Viejas casino, which was kind of like an alcoholic going to work at the Jack Daniel’s distillery. Every two weeks, he’d pull a paycheck in the red, and finally the casino canned him. John bounced from job to job until Frank got him the gig at Freddie’s.

What are you going to do, Frank thinks. A buddy is a buddy.

John makes good money at Freddie’s, but good money is never good enough for a degenerate gambler. Last time Frank heard, John was moonlighting as the late-shift manager at Hunnybear’s.

“Where’s Johnny?” he asks the sous-chef, who nods his head toward the back door.

Frank understands: The chef is out back by the Dumpster, grabbing a smoke and maybe a quick drink. You go to any Dumpster in back of any restaurant, you’re going to find a pile of butts and maybe a few of those little airline bottles of booze that the staff is too lazy to toss into the garbage.

John’s sucking at a ciggy and staring at the ground like it has an answer for something, his tall, skinny frame bent over like one of those cheap sculptures made out of clothes-hanger wire.

“How’s it going, Johnny?” Frank asks.

John looks up, startled, like he’s surprised to see Frank standing there. “Jesus, Frank, you scared me.”

Johnny’s got to be-what, mid- to late fifties, maybe? He looks older.

“What’s wrong?” Frank asks.

John shakes his head. “World of shit right now, Frank.”

“This G-Sting business?” Frank asks. “Is Hunnybear’s involved in that?”

John holds his hand, palm down, up under his chin. “What if they close the place? I need the fuckin’ money, Frank.”

“It’ll blow over,” Frank says. “This stuff always does.”

John shakes his head. “I dunno.”

“You’ll always work, John,” Frank says. “You want me to drop a word somewhere…”

It would be easy to hook John up with a second job at some good restaurant. He’s a good cook, and besides, he’s a popular guy. Everybody likes him.

“Thanks, Frank. Not right now.”

“You let me know.”

“Thanks.”

Frank makes it back to the table just before Donna, and blesses the fact that there’s always a line at the ladies’ and that women take a lot longer to get all that complicated gear off and on again.

“How’s the chef?” Donna asks as he gets up and holds the chair out for her. Frank sits back down and shrugs with a look of hurt innocence.

“Incorrigible,” Donna says.

The rain really starts coming down while they’re having dessert. Well, Frank’s having dessert-cheesecake and an espresso-and Donna’s having a black coffee. The rain starts with slow, fat plops against the window, then picks up, and it’s only a minute or so before the wind starts to drive sheets of rain against the glass.

Most people in the restaurant cease their conversations to watch and listen. It doesn’t rain that often in San Diego-less than usual, in fact, the past few years-and it rarely rains hard like this. It’s the true beginning of winter, the short monsoon season in this Mediterranean climate, and the people just sit back and gaze at it.

Frank watches the whitecaps picking up.

It’s going to be something tomorrow.

Donna’s condo doesn’t have an ocean view. Her place is on the back side of the complex, away from the beach, so she got it for about 60 percent less. Doesn’t matter to Frank-when he goes to Donna’s place, all he wants to look at is Donna.

Their lovemaking has a ritual. Donna isn’t one of those off-with-the-clothes-and-into-bed women, even though they both know that’s where they’re headed. So tonight, like most nights he comes over, they go into her living room, and she puts some Sinatra on the stereo. Then she goes and gets two snifters of brandy and they sit on the sofa and neck.

Frank thinks he could live in the crook of Donna’s neck and never leave. It’s long and elegant, and the perfume she dots there makes his head whirl. He spends a long time kissing her neck and nuzzling her red hair, and then he moves down to her shoulder, and after some time there, he eases the strap of her dress off her shoulder and down her arm. She usually wears a black brassiere, which drives him crazy. He kisses the tops of her breasts while his hand makes the long, slow trip up her leg, then kisses her lips and hears her purr into his mouth. Then she gets up and takes him by the hand and leads him into her bedroom and says, “I’m going to get comfortable,” and disappears into her bathroom, leaving him lying, fully dressed, on her bed while he waits to see what she’s going to wear.