Джеймс Суэйн - The Man Who Cheated Death

The exec had a lot of class. They’d eaten dinner at a swanky Vietnamese joint called Le Duc, taken a midnight drive through Malibu, then home to Beverly Hills to snort more coke and screw. The next day they woke at noon, did more lines on an Italian marble coffee table, and screwed some more. When they were finished, he’d announced he was going to put her into a movie.

“Give me a break,” Tawny had said.

He had. Down to the MGM lot that afternoon and she was on a movie set being measured for a cocktail waitress’s outfit, then whisked to a sound stage. They had shot her scene four times, then called it a wrap. On the way out she was given a check and made to fill out her first tax form. That night she phoned the exec, dated him a few more times, but couldn’t wrangle any more parts. He was Mister Busy, and had promised to call.

For a while she had gone on casting calls, and tried to avoid the streets. When the last of her money ran out, she took a job selling black leather panties and other freaky stuff in a boutique called Slut. Working behind the counter she might get noticed, offered another part, and it would lead to something; that was how the dream went back then.

Tawny got noticed, mostly by men buying birthday presents for their wives, and she regularly turned down dates, endless drugs, and weekends in Aspen and Maui. She didn’t see the point in making someone else happy when it didn’t make her happier. Or a little less broke.

After a month in Slut her eyes began to wander. Down the block from the store, a white-haired chick had come up with a real calling card. Twirling a boa constrictor, she let it wrap itself in a life-threatening coil around her throat. Sometimes a Mercedes or BMW would pull up, and the chick would jump in, off on another adventure. A few hours later she’d be back twirling the boa, a few bucks richer.

Tawny had decided to give the streets a shot. From her closet she dug out a halter top and shorts, and painted metallic thunderbolts on her fingernails. She hated whoring, but on the street there was action and the chance, no matter how slim, that someone would pluck her out of the slime, and put her smiling face back in front of the cameras. A one in a million shot; that was how the dream went now.

The black Eldorado bumped the curb.

“Hey sweetheart,” called the driver. “Come over here. Don’t be shy.”

Tawny leaned seductively against the newspaper machine, a stationary object on a street whirling with rough trade.

“What are you hiding,” she said, trying to make him out. “I don’t like what I can’t see.”

A dim light illuminated the car’s interior. “You’re a fox. Slide over this way. I won’t bite.”

She edged up to the gleaming, factory new car. Now visible, the john shot her a sorry smile. His face was old and weathered and he wore a black muscleman shirt that barely held in the tire of flab around his mid-section. I have a daughter about your age, he would confess as he started to do the grossest thing imaginable to her. Give her my regrets, Tawny would want to say.

“Are you available?” he asked, flashing another smile.

Something about the guy felt wrong. Tawny had learned to trust her intuition, and banged her hand on the hood of the car.

“Take it someplace else, Pops.”

The Eldorado bolted with a rubbery squeal, and she watched its taillights disappear in the traffic.

The bad feeling in her gut would not go away. She crossed against the light and walked five blocks to Madrid, a pickup joint that she sometimes frequented.

Madrid’s parking lot was packed. In its center, four police vans were parked in a tight circle. Another roundup. Girls she knew were being handcuffed, others herded into the fun buses. Tawny started walking backwards in the shadows, and when she was sure no one had spotted her, ran in her heels down the street. She ducked into a video arcade.

She found an old Bally shoved against the back wall, and fed a quarter into a machine that had been rewired to give only three balls and no Free games. As the machine came to life, she imagined the constant thunder of tumbling pins, and thought about her mother playing in the Women’s Baptist Church League every Tuesday night, and never able to break one-sixty.

“Hey, beautiful. What’s your name?”

A big dude edged up beside her, his eyes hidden behind a pair of wraparound shades that people wore in L.A. to make tourists think they didn’t want to be recognized.

“Tawny. What’s yours?”

“Bob. My friends call me Bobbie. Want to go on a date? We could have drinks, maybe a bite to eat...”

Tawny crossed her arms, gave him the deep freeze.

“Or we could act like big kids, and head straight for my place. I live up in the hills.”

She didn’t like his approach. “It’s going to cost you. Two-fifty an hour.”

He gave her a boyish grin. “Really? Why did I think you were picking me up.”

“Fuck off.”

She stormed out of the arcade. At the corner she started to cross when he came up from behind, pinching her arm.

“Come on. I was only joking.”

“Get your goddamned hands off me.”

“Calm down. How about two hundred?”

“ Two-fifty . Take it or leave it.”

“Come on. Every price is negotiable.”

“Not tonight. And not for you.”

“You, my dear, are a little whore.”

“So was your mother.”

He pinched her arm and made her cry. Her foot found his groin, and he doubled over. Pulling off her shoes, she ran across the busy street and halfway down the next block before glancing over her shoulder. He was gone.

Every guy in this sleazy town had a come on. Even the married ones. At the next block she waited for the light with a dispirited bag lady. The bag lady opened her mouth, and a torrent of obscenities spewed out. Tawny stared in horror past her. Bobbie was knocking people down running towards her, eyes ablaze.

She ran into the street, dodging one car and then a delivery truck. A man delivering pizzas swerved into another lane, not wanting to get involved. She screamed belligerently at him, then saw a dorky guy wearing a baseball cap drive by in a Celica, and banged on his windshield.

“Please help me. That guy is trying to hurt me.”

His window came down. “Get in.”

Tawny jumped in. Bobbie grabbed her door before she could close it, and tried to pull her out. Leaning across the seat, the driver punched him in the face. Bobbie fell hard on the pavement with blood pouring from his mouth. The Celica pulled away, and Tawny clapped her hands together and let out an elated squeal.

“That was the best,” Tawny said.

“Thanks.” Her rescuer sheepishly averted his eyes and drove away. He wore a Dodger baseball cap and thick black glasses.

“What’s your name?”

“Tom.”

Textbooks lay on the back seat. Calculus. A book on the fall of the Roman empire. Henry James. Tawny wondered what it would be like to go to bed with a nerd, and blow his socks off.

“Thanks a lot, Tom.”

He smiled nervously. “Was that guy... your husband?”

“Ha-ha. You moonlight telling jokes?”

“Sorry. Guess that was a pretty dumb question.”

“Know where the Las Palmas hotel is?”

“Sure. It’s on my way.”

“What are you studying?”

“I’m taking a few classes in education. This might be another dumb question, but that guy back there, do you even know him?”

“Not his name. But I sure know his kind.”

“You a hooker,” he asked, watching the street.

“You a Boy Scout?”

“Yeah, I guess I am. Tommy the Boy Scout. My good deed today was helping a hooker get home safely.” He took a sharp right off the Strip, and a mile later parked beneath the blinking neon sign of the seedy Las Palmas. “Well, nice meeting you.”