BEFORE SHE WAS PROPERLY SEATED ON THE STOOL NEAREST THE SMOKING deck, Faulkner plunked down a coaster, a draft of Anchor Steam Beer, and a sealed envelope.
The envelope had been addressed by Charley. Inside, however, she found a note from someone else.
I have news of your brother.
Tipsy turned the note face down on the bar, covered it with her hand and looked around as if she were a tourist from Kansas to whom, concerning this dive, some bribed concierge had conveyed misleading information. Nobody paid attention.
She took a sip of beer and turned the page face up.
Of necessity, I’m on the move. Discretion advised. But if you’re interested in Charley’s news, I’ll telephone the bar at nine o’clock on Sunday night.
The note was unsigned.
Three men, one on a stool and two standing, dressed according to a variation on a theme: torn hickory shirt, paint-streaked bib overalls, a striped engineer’s shirt flecked with little holes burnt by slag. Two of them wore moustaches, the third a full beard. The three were in there doing the same thing she was doing, which was taking the edge off a hangover and starting in on a new one. One of them had a shot of bourbon lined up behind his beer glass: the avant-garde.
None of these guys paid any attention to Tipsy, either. Unlike herself, all they had to do was get drunk, get some sleep, get up, go back to work, and persist with the notion that, beyond the gallon of paint, beyond towing some hulk to Oakland, beyond that coffee can full of valve springs, the future didn’t exist.
“Faulkner.”
“Yo.”
She held up the envelope.
“It was stuck in the door when Walter opened up this morning.”
“At six?”
She let the envelope fall to the bar.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
She looked up.
His face fell. “Didn’t you miss me?”
“Miss you … ? Oh! Yes—yes of course I’ve missed you.” She stood and tendered a distracted hug.
“Gee,” Quentin said, as she pulled away. “That’s what I call a perfunctory salutation.”
She waved this off. “Sit down and have a drink. You’ll feel better about it.”
Quentin didn’t sit down and he didn’t order a drink. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No more than usual.”
“Okay,” he snapped.
She shook her head. “This is coming out all wrong.”
“There are other bars,” Quentin pointed out, “and other lonely female drunks in this town, and if I can’t do any better than stand here and take this … this chill abuse—”
Tipsy shook her head. “Will you please lighten up and sit down?” She jerked an empty barstool a foot closer to her own. “Where the hell you been?”
“Sensitivity training.”
She didn’t give it a thought. She tapped the envelope with a fingernail. “I need to ask you something.”
“Sure.” Quentin sat on the stool. “We can discuss my problems later.”
Tipsy frowned. “Where’d you get that jacket?”
“Downtown.”
She fingered its sleeve. “There’s still a thrift shop downtown?”
Quentin archly drew away from her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Then it’s as new as it looks?”
“You like it?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you, darling. I’d tell you that I bought it exclusively because I dress for you, but that wouldn’t be true, if only because I never see you anymore.”
“You never see me any more? The truth of the matter is, I, we”—she indicated the rest of the bar—“nobody sees you any more.”
“That’s all in the past,” Quentin said. “Faulkner.”
“Mr. Quentin Asche,” Faulkner said, coming down the bar. “Long time no see.” They shook hands.
“What time is it? Wait. I forgot.” Quentin shot his cuff and had a look. “It’s seven-thirty.”
“Nice watch,” Tipsy said, as if perplexed.
Faulkner spun a napkin onto the bar. “What’ll it be?”
“Whiskey sour. Hold the whiskey.”
“No fruity drinks.”
“An Old Fashioned, then. Hold the bourbon.”
“I’m outta cherries.”
“Soda water, rocks, maybe a lime?”
“I can do that.”
“Thank god. I’m exhausted.”
Faulkner went away.
Quentin watched Tipsy watching the watch. “You like it?”
Tipsy frowned. “What the hell is going on?”
“I put the house on the market, served China with eviction papers, China made himself scarce, I took the house off the market, cleaned it up within an inch of its life, took out a second, had a guy draw up some plans and get a building permit, hired a contractor for the remodel, and moved my skinny portfolio into the nicest hotel money can buy.”
“Wow,” Tipsy said, after a long pause. “And here I was thinking maybe you had committed suicide.”
“Well,” Quentin admitted, “the thought crossed my mind. But then I realized I have no heirs—see?”
Tipsy shook her head. “Negative.”
“If I were so foolish as to blow myself away, without the proper paperwork, whatever assets I left behind would go to improve some bridge in Yolo County.”
“You mean, probated to the State of California.”
“Exactly. It was China’s Pumping Iron poster that reminded me of it.”
“He didn’t take it with him?”
“He didn’t take it with him.”
“Huh. He must have been pretty upset.”
“I sincerely hope that was the case.”
“You don’t know where he went?”
“No idea.”
“Not at the house, at any rate.”
“The house least of all. We hauled two twelve-yard debris boxes out of there, stripped out the fixtures, the lath and plaster, the insulation, even the plumbing and electrical—the place is down to the studs and uninhabitable.” He touched her arm. “Even the Datsun has been hauled away. And I sold the Mercedes to my mechanic for what I owed him. Now it’s his nightmare, and I’m taking cabs everywhere I go.”
Tipsy put her hand on his forearm. “You didn’t throw out that kitchen window?”
Quentin smiled and patted her hand. “Not on your life.”
Tipsy relaxed. “Twelve yards of debris. …”
“Twenty-four.”
“It sounds like a lot.”
“It was. But it’s what it took to get the place back to zero. By the look of it, China ran the facilities into the ground before he took off. I mean, darling,” Quentin made a face, “the toilet was clogged with magazine pages.”
Tipsy made a face. “Nice.”
“It cost me close to ten grand just to clean the place up enough to gut it.”
“How much for the whole remodel?”
“Depending on fixtures, eighty to a hundred.”
“Just out of curiosity, what’d you list it for?”
Quentin smiled. “A conservative one point one million.”
Tipsy, who had raised her drink halfway to her lips, set it down on the bar again. “I’m gobsmacked a lot lately.”
“Be very gobsmacked. It would have gone for more. And,” Quentin raised a forefinger, “it’s a tear-down.”
“But it’s your home!”
“Maybe that’s why I took it off the market.” Quentin shook his head. “On the other hand, I am so over the past-tense aspects of that place. Let’s look at it from the point of view of an inveterate real estate developer.”
“How’s that?”
“Would you spend eighty to a hundred grand to make three to four hundred grand?”
“Does unilateral foreign policy make me sneeze?”
“Right you are. Meanwhile, darling, it’s first-class hotels and organic luncheons.”
“You’ll do design and dècor yourself.”
“Correct. When the project is finished, oh, eight or ten months from now, I’ll figure out what to do with it.”
On the television over the far end of the bar a couple of steroidally overdosed women in sequined patriotically-colored bikinis and crash helmets bashed each other with electronic pugil sticks that lit up whenever they scored a solid hit. A crawl across the bottom of the scoreboard read, Sabotaged pipeline scorches 10,000 acres, 5 villages.
“I finished the DUI class.”
“Congratulations.”
Tipsy studied her beer. “Thanks.”
After a short silence Quentin said, “You should see this hotel. Fabulous restaurant. We’ll go there later. Their cocktails start at nineteen dollars.” He spilled a little carton of pills on a napkin and began to sort them. “A very nice bar,” he added significantly, talking to Tipsy but addressing the pills, “where they don’t resent fabricating a whiskey sour. Entertainment, too. Real entertainment, I mean. Musicians who can play music.”
“You know perfectly well, Quentin, that you’re the only customer in here who can get a mixed drink.” Tipsy touched the base of her glass to the rim of Quentin’s.
“The Margaritas and Bloody Marys in here,” Quentin reminded her, “are pre-mixed. The margin on top-shelf Margaritas is something like three hundred percent.”
“Just like your house,” Tipsy observed.
“Oh really, darling.” Quentin closed his eyes and segued directly to realtor mode. “I bought DeHaro Street in June of 1977 for $45,000. The down payment was sixty-seven hundred and fifty dollars. It’s been paid off for twenty years, and now it costs about two thousand a year, in insurance and taxes, to own. Let’s generously suppose that I put $35,000 in it over the years—a new roof, two paint jobs, two dishwashers, new cabinets, like that—plus the ten thou I had to throw in on account of that parasite that was living there.” He set his glass on a coaster and lowered his voice. “I priced it low.” He threw two pills to the back of his throat and chased them with water. “With multiple bids, I probably could have cleared the asking price. One-time deal on my primary residence after the age of fifty-five—I’d get out from under tax free.”
Tipsy drew back. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“The line of credit on it,” Quentin lowered his voice, “is a cool two hundred grand.”
“Get further the fuck out of here.”
“They didn’t even want to see my tax returns. There would have been a bidding war.” Quentin looked at her. “What part of Kansas are you from?”
“Mars.”
“Let me get that drink.” Quentin put a hundred dollar bill on the bar.
“You really refinanced your gutted house?”
“A new owner would have knocked it down, built a new place for another million, and wound up paying some $37,500 a year in property taxes alone. Plus insurance, debt service, and blah blah blah.” Quentin drew himself up to his full height. “I felt it incumbent upon myself, as a citizen of this community, to prevent this calamity from overwhelming some hapless buppie.”
Tipsy shook her head. “That’s mighty civic-minded of you.”
“It’s a new era, darling,” Quentin assured her. “I’m telling you. If I die the day before I spend the last dime,” he touched the bar with the tip of his index finger, “I’ll be getting out in the nick of time.”
“Let’s hope you live that long.”
Quentin looked at her. “Thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Just exactly in what way did you mean it?” Quentin ignored his own question. “I really put my house up for sale.” He sounded a little hysterical. “I’m going to live the rest of my short life in interesting hotels. When I mentioned to the bank I needed a little money to tide me over until the house sells, they fired up that $200,000 line of credit faster than you can say Roy Cohen. Times have changed.” Quentin moved in close, nudged her elbow with his own, and tilted his head. “It’s a different world than the one I plundered.”
Tipsy looked down, only to see a roll of cash halfway out of his trouser pocket. It was the thickness of the business end of a baseball bat.
“Criminey,” Tipsy whispered. “That looks like enough money to jump-start the Cuban economy. Don’t be flashing it like that. Christ, I’ve never felt so weird about money in my entire life. What’s the deal? You’re paranoid without it, you’re paranoid with it?”
“Who’s paranoid?” Quentin giggled loudly.
Faulkner looked their way from the other end of the bar. Quentin waved the fingers of his empty hand at him. Tipsy rolled her eyes. Faulkner looked the other way.
Quentin took up his water. “Need any cash?” he whispered over the rim of the glass.
Tipsy nodded her head, yes, then began to shake it. “No. I don’t want to foul up our relationship. It’s fouled up enough as it is.”
“What relationship?”
“But, oh,” she hooked her arm through his, “I’ve missed you so.”
Quentin sipped. “Just so you know it’s there.”
Tipsy’s eye fell on the envelope. She pursed her lips. “There is one thing I have to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“Who did you tell about Charley?”
Quentin narrowed his eyes. “You’re causing me pain.”
“I asked you once before and you didn’t answer me.”
Quentin gingerly set down his drink. After a pause he said, “Okay.” He tented his fingertips below the tip of his nose and looked straight ahead. “One night, three, maybe four months ago, when you first started getting the letters about Charley’s recent … his projected … his … that he was contemplating … a trip—China was waiting for me when I got home.”
“China … ,” Tipsy breathed. “I knew it.”
“Hear me out?”
“Sure,” Tipsy nodded. “What do I have to lose?”
“I don’t know.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth.
“He was reasonably sober for a change. It was a warm night. China had the big window open, and he was cooking the one recipe he’s really good at.”
“Chipotle and green olive chicken with wild rice and okra.”
“Very good. You could smell it from De Haro Street. Plus—and I don’t know where he got them—he had chilled a bottle of Pinot Grigio and opened another of Crozes-Hermitage. Just on the off chance, you understand, that I’d like to taste them. Which I did. One sip each. Delicious.”
“Which of your books did he sell to pay for them?”
Quentin closed his eyes.
Tipsy sipped her drink. “Anyway, China doesn’t know anything about wines. He must have looked them up on the internet.”
“Just …” Quentin’s eyes moistened. “It was unbelievable. The aromas of Côtes du Rhône and roasting chicken were competing for my saliva. Do you know how long it’s been since I could really taste anything?”
“He wanted something,” Tipsy began. “He—”
Quentin held up a forestalling hand. “Oh, thought I to myself, the child can’t help himself. He wants something.” He shook his head. Tipsy nodded hers. “I braced myself for a fine meal and maybe even some sparkling conversation, followed by the kind of sex that suckered me, if you’ll pardon the expression, into that domestic morass in the first place. Enjoy yourself, I told myself; but drink very little, and don’t get too relaxed, because, after everything else—”
“Comes the bite,” Tipsy concluded.
“That’s right. But I was wrong and so are you. He didn’t want anything—at least,” Quentin hastened to add, “not right then he didn’t want anything.”
Tipsy waited.
“It was just like the old days,” Quentin posited with a smile. “Before he got involved with all the wrong people, too much alcohol, the drugs …”
“The personal trainer …”
“Yes, yes …”
Tipsy had her doubts about the rosiness of Quentin’s recall, but she said, “Delicious food?”
Quentin nodded. “Great conversation …”
“Come on, Quentin,” Tipsy insisted, annoyed. “Passable conversation.”
“No …” Quentin began.
“At least you weren’t fighting,” Tipsy suggested.
“We weren’t fighting,” he conceded.
“And finally, great sex.”
“No,” Quentin hastened to correct her, “it was … meaningful sex.”
“Oh,” Tipsy said, slightly clearing her throat. “Meaningful sex.”
“He was just as loving as the China I remembered. Firm without being too demanding, not too strict, took his time …”
“Oh, please,” Tipsy said. “I’m going to puke.”
“Nobody puked …” Quentin continued dreamily.
“Okay okay,” Tipsy hurried him. “Afterwards you lay in each other’s arms and talked. Just …”
“… talked,” they said together.
Tipsy swirled the last inch of beer in the bottom of her glass. “About anything in particular?”
“At some point,” Quentin sighed, “he asked about you.”
“Oh,” Tipsy said. “This is about me?” She pointed a finger to her breast. “China Jones asked about me?”
“And I told him your great news,” Quentin said simply. “We were talking about the things that we both cared about,” he added defensively. “After all …”
“After all?”
“I care about you, Tipsy.”
“And I you.” She patted his arm. “What exactly did you tell him?”
“Just that Charley had gotten in touch after months of silence.”
“Did you tell China that Charley had work?”
“Well, that was good news, too, wasn’t it?”
“Did you tell China what kind of work?”
Quentin held up his hands and inverted them, palms up. “Do I even know what kind of work?”
“Did you tell China about Charley coming to San Francisco?”
Quentin frowned ingenuously. “Charley is coming to San Francisco?”
“Charley was coming to San Francisco.” She made a fist and stabbed the bartop with her middle finger. “I sat right here and read it aloud. You were here.”
“So you must have done. I’d forgotten.”
“I thought you were all bent out of shape about my good news?”
“Totally,” Quentin insisted, “absolutely one hundred percent infatuated with your good news. It had been a long time since you’d had any, and I was happy for you.” He faced her, as if frankly, and placed one hand on her forearm, as if in sincerity. “Put yourself in my place. China was making nice and he really really wanted to know what else was going on in my life. I couldn’t wait to tell him. I was so happy for you!”
Tipsy removed her arm from his touch. “Blabbermouth.”
“Blabbermouth?” Quentin sat upright and touched the fingertips of both hands to his chest. “How dare you. I’ve been keeping your counsel for just about as long as I can remember, and I know it’s been going on for as long as you can remember.”
Tipsy paused the rim of her glass before her mouth and raised an eyebrow. “You have a point there.”
“I,” Quentin said forcefully, “think so.”
“Don’t get worked up.”
“Now she tells me.”
“China’s it, right?”
“What do mean, China’s it? Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me he’s not unique?”
“Far from it. What I meant to say was, is China the only one you told about Charley?”
“Who else would I tell, for God’s sake?”
Tipsy handed note and envelope to Quentin. Quentin read it. She showed him the envelope. Quentin didn’t have to be told to compare the handwriting. He noticed the uncanceled stamp. He read the note again. He handed envelope and note back to her. “Have you heard from Charley lately?”
Tipsy shook her head.
Quentin indicated the note with his chin. “Are you going to meet this guy?”
“You bet I am.” Tipsy nodded gravely. “Are you coming with me?”