Джо Горес - Cases

He had started lifting in high school, with a hundred-pound barbell set that had a booklet of exercises modeled by the movie actor Fred MacMurray, had kept on at Notre Dame. But these guys!

In fact, even the gawkers were interesting: faddists, beach bums, physical culturists, high school girls with condoms in their purses getting their jollies from all the exposed male flesh, queers doing the same: a fringe world by the Pacific.

One girl with her back to him stood out from the rest, a diamond among zircons, wearing a red knit dress like the girl in his dream. When she turned to say something to the sandy-haired man at her side, he realized she indeed was Penny Linden.

Forty minutes before, Gerald had said icily, “You just stay here and order me a martini,” and went out to get Penny’s coat. She had forgotten it in the car and had gone into the Anchor Room brazenly exposed in her red dress.

He never acted this way back in Iowa. A nice start to their romantic night at the beach! “A martini for my fiancé, and...” She felt rebellion within. “A... third rail.”

The bartender had scar-tissued eyes and a flattened nose and wore a starched red knee-length apron.

“When I was fightin’ I always trained on good beefsteak an’ tomatoes. Lotsa protein, that’s what it takes.” He set the drinks in front of her, put a foot on the beer cooler, leaned forward confidentially. “Thirty-five fights, light-heavy like Billy Conn. I even got the same first name, but between you an’ me, I like tendin’ bar a hell of a lot better.”

“I bet you were a very good fighter, Billy,” Penny said.

“ Billy? I leave you alone for five minutes and you know the bartender’s first name?”

Thinking he was joking, she said, “Oh, hi, honey. Billy was just telling me what it takes to be a prizefighter.”

“Years and years of no schooling.”

“Gerald!” she exclaimed, astonished. “What a terrible—”

“And you’ve had too much to drink.”

He grabbed the glass from Penny’s hand to slam it down on the bar. Penny grabbed it back up and drained it and waved it.

“I’ll have another one of these, Billy.”

She’d had a third, in fact, before Gerald finally got her out of there to “walk it off.” The third rails had bombed her.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said in a little voice she hoped wasn’t slurred. “Let’s not let it ruin our last night together.” On a wooden platform twenty yards from the walk, three gargantuan lifters were taking turns doing three-hundred-pound repetition squats. “Let’s go watch those huge men lift those huge weights.”

Dunc didn’t like the boyfriend’s looks, his clothes, his build, anything about him. Especially his prim little mouth. When they moved back to the boardwalk from the lifting platform, Dunc tagged along behind. Muscle Beach was a rough place.

A teenage boy leaned against the edge of one of the stalls and blew into an empty beer bottle to make hollow whistling tones. Another, slightly older, wearing only swim trunks, was behind the counter tapping two Coke bottles together and moving his lean tanned body to the beat. A third squatted on an empty pop case playing the spoons back-to-back.

An older guy in his late twenties was crouched on a three-legged stool in front of the stand, pounding with an almost sexual fervor on the bottom of a five-gallon ice cream container. He wore Levi’s, hack boots, a crushed cycle cap, sunglasses, and a two-day growth of beard. The sleeves of his black leather jacket barely contained his massive biceps. Big guy.

He brought a bottle of dago red out from under his jacket. A silver skull ring glinted on the ring finger of his left hand.

“Hey, man, anybody got any more of this Sneaky Pete?”

The crowd parted for a pimply teenager wearing khakis and a white sweatshirt with a ketchup stain down the front of it.

“I got money, Johnny!” he said proudly.

“Hey hey hey! Double Bubble, run and get me my bongos.”

An overweight blond girl trotted off, her enormous breasts jouncing with each stride. Johnny winked at the crowd as he beat suggestively on his ice cream container. Reluctantly Dunc drifted away. After all, Penny was betrothed, not his to save.

“Isn’t it exciting, honey? These kids with no money, no jobs, no security, but with all that music inside. They’re—”

“Exciting? They’re tramps, beach bums!” Gerald realized that he hated California and everything it stood for. He heard himself blurt out, “That drummer with the greasy hair and the sunglasses, that’s what you find exciting. First the bartender and now this animal—”

Her fingers were icy but she managed to unclip his fraternity pin from the bosom of her dress. She dropped it into the pocket of his jacket. “I believe this is yours,” she said.

Gerald slapped her very hard across the face. In the same instant he regretted it, but she was already gone, leaving her coat behind on the sand. He returned to the Anchor Room, ordered a martini. She’d show up. He had the car keys.

Penny, wandering around alone! And then Dunc lost her in the crowd. Johnny’s bongos had arrived, along with a guitar and a set of maracas. They had moved to boxes set in the sand, had lit a forbidden driftwood fire. Dancing flames made red masks of their youthful laces. The bongo beat was formless, primitive.

“Dance!” someone shouted. Other voices made it a chant. “Jimmy dance! Jimmy dance! Jimmy Jimmy dance dance dance!”

The lithe boy m the swim trunks leaped into the middle of the circle to gyrate frenziedly. He arched back until his hair brushed the sand, came erect with deliberate pulsing movements.

A Negro girl wearing tight black, pedal pushers and no bra under a half-open black sweater leaped into the firelight facing him. She and Jimmy whirled, churned together, apart, against one another, on their knees. The sweater came completely open; eyes, cheekbones, ebony breasts shone in the firelight.

Jimmy fell, all through, was dragged away by his ankles like a vanquished gladiator. Johnny, head down and heavy shoulders hunched forward, punished his bongos savagely, thighs straining around the drums as around a woman’s body.

The Negro girl spun away, finished, but Penny, barefoot, threw away a wine bottle, drunk, languid, danced in her place without frenzy, undulating, almost dreamy, unutterably sensual. One silver earring was gone. Her hair had come loose, fireglow-lit with fluid highlights. The tight red skirt had slid up, her long legs flashed, richly ivory. She was magnificent.

Johnny was still attacking his bongos, but now his head was up, his eyes behind their sunglasses were fixed on Penny as she moved. Where in hell was her fiancé? This guy was huge, six-two, with arms like an ape. Together, maybe, just maybe, the two of them could handle him, but not Dunc alone. Could he?

Gerald was irritated. Perhaps he hadn’t been entirely blameless tonight, but after forty-five minutes and no Penny he stormed back out into the night. There was a bonfire on the beach, from the boardwalk he could see some cheap slut with her skirt up...

Oh God no! It was Penny!

He tried to elbow through the crowd to the ring of fire, but was shoved this way and that, casually. Flames danced redly as from the entrance to the Pit. Drums throbbed in his skull.

The music stopped, the crowd parted. Penny shambled by him, unseeing, eyes glazed, skirt still halfway rucked-up. Gerald floundered after her through the soft sand. But someone was before him, slipping a thick possessive arm around her waist.

That horrible greasy-haired drummer!

“Hey, chiquita. ” Minus the sunglasses, Johnny’s eyes were blue and expectant. His bongos were slung over one broad shoulder. He sang in a good baritone, “Chiquita banana, and I’m here to say, my banana’s gonna get you in a certain way—”