Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

Pussycat crawls into the room, twisting her naked body to fit through the open space, careful not to brush up against the bedroom door lest she be betrayed by a squeaky hinge. Once her hands and her knees have maneuvered her feet inside the room, her eyes rise to the surface of the bed. The old man asleep in his bed, dressed in blue pajamas with up-and-down white stripes, is lying on the closest side to her and the door.

The room has the fragrance of Ben-Gay, Pine-Sol evergreen air freshener, Old Spice, and foot odor. The air conditioner sticking out of the far-right bedroom window hums a good solid baseline noise that helps mask her subtle movements. That’s the good part. The bad part is it’s much colder in the master bedroom than it was in the living room and the upstairs hallway. Chill bumps sprout up across her exposed skin like hives. The goosebumps that pop up on her naked derriere give the young girl that Charlie christened Pussycat the feeling of what having a tail might be like. Indulging in the whole house-cat masquerade, she gives her bony ass a little wiggle. Yet the chilly temperature doesn’t act as an obstacle. Instead, like the cool bracing waters of a mountain stream, after the initial sensation of cold air making contact with warm flesh, she finds the shudder that runs through her body invigorating.

She inches closer to the side of the bed. Then Debra Jo slowly rises from her all-fours feline position to her knees. Her face is very close to the face of the sleeping old man reclining in his bed. The red light bulb sticking out of her mouth gives the young girl an inhuman expressionless demeanor, sort of a cross between a robot and a blow-up fuck doll. Only her pronounced dark eyebrows, which verge on one long unibrow, indicate any sense of expression.

She examines the face of the sleeping old man. His labored breathing that veers ever so close to snoring. His wispy white hair strands that spring up from his bulbous skull, every single strand going its own way. The sunken lips on his toothless mouth. She looks over at the bedside end table and, sure enough, next to a pair of glasses, a lamp, and a small clock sit a set of false teeth soaking in a cloudy glass of water.

Her curious gaze goes from the dentures to the sleeping old fart, to his elderly female companion sleeping next to him. She’s a touch on the fat side when compared to her bony, ghoul-like husband. Unlike the old man’s every white stringy follicle for itself, the old lady has her bright-orange-dyed hair done up in tight curls that obviously must require weekly beauty-shop visits and quarter jars of Dippity-do to maintain.

Debra Jo takes her hand and places it above the sleeping old man’s face and wiggles her fingers. He doesn’t stir in the slightest, just continues his loud rhythmic breathing. She’s feeling confident now, so she slowly rises to a standing position off her two knees onto her two feet. After all the time she’s spent close to the ground in her cat-like posture, standing upright at her full height gives her the sensation of being a Gulliver -like giant.

Using the balls of her feet, she silently pads away from the bed and its inhabitants, across the room, over to the bedroom window that faces the front of the house. The curtains to the window are open, and she looks through the glass and sees Charlie and her friends standing together in front of the house on the sidewalk. Froggy is the first one to spot her and jumps up and gives Debra Jo an excited wave. The rest of the group wave up at her like they’re restaging the closing credits of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Debra Jo, red light bulb sticking out of her mouth, looks down at them through the Hirshbergs’ bedroom window and waves back. Quietly, she moves over to a wooden chair parked in front of the woman of the house’s vanity table, lifts it off the floor, and brings it up to the window. Also by the window is a bedroom lamp. Sneaking a quick glance at the sleeping couple to make sure she hasn’t disturbed them, she begins to slowly unscrew the top of the lamp that holds the shade in place. Once she’s done that and has placed the screw top on the table, she silently lifts the lampshade from its home base and quietly places it on the floor. All the while watching the couple in bed for any sign of consciousness creeping up. So far, so good. Keeping both eyes peeled on the old fogies for a reaction, she unscrews the light bulb.

This is by far the noisiest thing she’s done, yet the couple’s rhythmic breathing, the air conditioner, and her squashed ego keep the equilibrium in the room from changing drastically. Once she is through her final rotation, Debra Jo lifts the light bulb clear of the lamp. Then places it noiselessly on the couple’s carpeted bedroom floor. The brunette intruder removes the red light bulb from her mouth and screws it into the lamp’s light socket. Once it can turn no farther, she knows she’s accomplished her task.

She twists the tiny knob on the lamp till it clicks and the room is bathed in a glowing red light. She watches the couple in bed for a reaction to the change in atmosphere, ready to race out of there if the red light has disturbed their REM . But the low-watt red bulb is still dark enough not to disrupt their slumber.

So she climbs up onto the chair by the window, her naked body framed in the windowsill, backlit by a red-hued Amsterdam-like tableau in the middle of Pasadena. She smiles down at her friends below on the sidewalk, who jump up and down in excitement at Debra Jo’s accomplishment. The sixteen-year-old brunette begins gyrating a go-go dance in the window for the amusement of her friends outside. They applaud and cheer her on. She undulates up and down, dancing wilder and wilder, while her friends whoop and whistle, till she jumps off the chair, runs across the floor, and leaps into the bed with the sleeping old couple with a cackling “Geronimo!”

The old couple wakes to find this naked brunette teenager rolling around in bed with them, laughing like a lunatic. The old woman lets out a bloodcurdling scream, as the old man sputters, “What the hell?”

Debra Jo throws her arms around the old man’s neck and plants a big kiss on his toothless mouth. When he tries to scream, she shoves her tongue inside of it. Then she lets go, hops out of the bed, runs out of the room, down the stairs, through the living room (snatching her clothes as she goes by), out the open sliding-glass door, through the backyard and the backyard gate, across the front lawn, and down Greenbriar Lane with her “Family,” laughing.

Chapter Six

“Hollywood or Bust”

Outside of Dallas, Texas

Four Years Earlier

The rodeo cowboy in the dirty white ’59 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, pulling a dirty white horse trailer with a dusty brown horse in it, spotted the young lady with her thumb sticking out on the side of the road on the highway heading out of Dallas about a quarter of a mile before he reached her. She sported a tight pink T-shirt, a banana-colored miniskirt, long bare legs and bare feet, a big white sun hat, and a canvas duffel bag. Once the cowboy got closer, he saw that tight pink T-shirt covered two large bouncing boobs, and her long bare legs were uncommonly white.

When he pulled over to the side of the road and she bent down to look at him through the passenger-side car-door window, he noted she had long golden-blond hair hanging down from the white sun hat; she was about twenty-two and a goddamn good-looking gal.

“Need a lift?” he asked rhetorically.

“I sure do,” said the blonde, sans Texas accent.

The cowboy turned down Merle Haggard crooning about Tulare Dust on the radio and said, “Where y’all goin’?”

“California,” was the big-boobed blonde’s reply.