18

“STRIP.”

I dropped Jack Lumber’s gym bag and did as I was told.

“Well,” Wendell said with a roll of his eyes as he focused a standing lamp to bathe me in jaundiced yellow wattage. “Someone fell off the fitness tree and hit every branch on the way down. Who’s your father, Jack LaLanne?”

I unbuttoned my shirt. “No. A dock worker from Oakland.”

Wendell’s attitude was playful, but not happy. He had to respect Shirley’s old friend until there was no need to keep up pretenses. Once I was gone, he could shit-talk me to the cadre of teens who called him ‘God.’ “What do you need? Formal? Elegant? Timeless?”

“I need to look like I fit in at the Hilton in Venice.”

Shirley took a half-empty pack of Kools from a worktable with a Frankenstein’s monster head tilted to one side. “Hilton? You finally become the gentleman escort I always thought you were born to be?”

I hung my shirt over the head of a faceless mannequin. “I’m a private eye now.”

Shirley clapped her hands, smoke perched on the edge of lips that sparkled in the weak glow of the lamp. “Oh, my! Bravo! In what movie?”

Wendell drew his tape across my shoulders. “No. Not an actor. A real private investigator.”

Her mirth sank into gloom and she cut the applause. “What? That’s the dumbest thing you could ever goddamn do.”

Wendell’s breath was heavy on my neck. A clear sign of approval of the drop in the temperature of the room.

I grinned. “We can’t all be entrepreneurs of gags and magic.”

She pointed the tip of the ciggy at me. It shook with her stream of words. “Don’t try and make this about me, handsome; I’m good at what I do. I live my life the way I want to live it, and I don’t give a damn about other people’s dirty laundry. But you? You’re sniffing around people’s garbage, poking your nose in their bedrooms, collecting the dirt we forget we leave behind.” She tapped her ash with enough force to make the flecks fly like windborne glitter. “Wendell, stop.”

Flummoxed, my arms dropped and Wendell whistled the William Tell Overture.

This was bad. I’d tried the truth and it had sunk me like a freshly dug grave after a monsoon. Fiction would have to do.

“Shirley.”

“Get out, panty sniffer.” “You got it all wrong.”

“What part of you being a bloodhound of misery makes me off beam?”

“Look.” I dropped to my knees, opened Jack’s bag, and ripped out the mask.

That shut up further discussion of my heinous character flaws.

Wendell gazed at Shirley, but her dance hall lashes were flapping only for me. “What the hell is this?”

“The truth. I’m a wrestler. A pro wrestler.”

Wendell gripped his tape around his neck like a country lawyer’s suspenders. “You mean a fake, phony, a conman.”

Shirley turned, then tapped more ash. “A wrestler? Like at the Olympic?”

“That’s where I’m headed tonight, but I have to meet the promoter. He wants to meet at the Hilton and they have a dress code and my dress code has been S-L-O-B since I was a kid.”

“Good thing you’ve always been handsome,” she said, and her firm pink lip started to curl. “Why the fuck would you say you were a panty sniffer?”

“Believe it or not, Shirley, not everyone thinks wrestling is a bonafide career choice and, well, wrestlers are kinda secretive about the code.”

She shook her head. “Days like this I’m glad I’m no longer traveling the circuit. Code? As if there were honor among those thieves and shirks. Bunch of dirty old men selling lies for fun and profit.” Her lips softened. “But I can see why you’re attracted to it. The spotlight. Mystery. Travel.” She snatched the mask from my grip. I let her hold it. “But hiding that pretty face under this foul material? That, James, is a crime.”

I held out my hand and she gave it back. “Keeps it pretty and out of harm’s way.”

“Well, thank heaven for small miracles.” Wendell laughed, and it seemed genuine. Shirley took a long drag. “Okay. Let’s get my boy ready to look like a million bucks of hammered gold.”

I never much cared for tailored clothes. Seemed like a waste of everyone’s time. But Wendell’s fingers weren’t just geared for coins, dice, or cards; he was a legit tailor working at breakneck pace while I made gentle suggestions. Shirley watched me standing in my briefs as if the peep show window got broken and she was getting a sneak peek.

“I’ve always done my best when wearing browns and blues,” I said.

“Sounds like a lost track from Robert Johnson,” Wendell said, halfway between my legs. Shirley half-laughed with a career smoker’s nicotine gurgle.

“My boy’s a stand-up comic. Big draw at Ciro’s on the Strip.”

Ciro’s was a legit nightclub and they hired headline comic talent. “Didn’t know I was dealing with comedy royalty. Where did you get your start, Wendell?”

He finished measuring my inseam, then ran a quick gait into a sea of clothes. “Like all true artists, I came from nowhere and nothing and wait in limbo for my overnight success. More exactly, I was in a Christian revival family act. I loved show biz, and they threw me off the covered wagon when they realized I was playing with balls at night.”

Then his hand snapped out of the pile with the three collapsible felt balls.

“Until they turned red and grew a friend!”

Shirley clapped. “He just makes this stuff up on the spot, can you believe it?”

I could. “Shirley, you don’t have to wait here. What about your adoring fans outside?”

She walked over, trying to look sultry in the yellow light, but what she looked beneath the makeup was sick. Worse was how she sounded. Without the noise of the store, you could hear her breathing was ragged and haggard. She used to move like a swinging blade onstage, legs like iron wrapped in fishnets, and she was strong enough to toss me around the way she liked. But those memories were lost to weak lungs, a sore heart, and a desire for denial to be a cure for whatever was ailing her. There was a taste—not magic, just life—of something crossed that could not be undone. She was a startling vision of life before the next station change on the radio we call mortality. But there was no tear in my eye or pity in my heart as she drew close enough for me to feel her breath. Right now, before me, Shirley Martell was a terrible beauty who still made me want to surrender. “Boys always wait for me, James. You know that.”

Then she took a kiss. And I surrendered. Smoke and life, hard wet teeth, and for twice in a lifetime my arms didn’t know what to do as she took that kiss and made me her own, swimming together as she placed cold fingers on my ass and pulled my crotch to her belly, hips dancing with me like I was her puppet and the show was completely in her hands.

“Save it for the ten o’clock show!” Wendell said, tan trousers over one shoulder, navy jacket over the other. “What if America sees that love knows no age! We’d be having babies dating grannies.” He grabbed his head and mocked tearing his hair out. “That is madness!”

Shirley’s chest heaved with a giggle she was trying to keep from turning into a cough. She pulled back. “Was it worth the wait?”

I looked down at my member, giving her a righteous salute. “On behalf of all of us, I can say without a shadow of a doubt it was.”

“Smart gang,” she walked to the office door and darkness enveloped her. “Wendell? This is on the house. Just get the rags he was wearing and burn them.”

Shirley coughed with the turning of the door’s latch, as if to hide it. She exited and closed the door behind her. Soon thereafter, the shop bell sounded and the lost boys of the love generation were rushing down the aisle to worship their beloved.

“You know she’s sick, right?”

Wendell sat at a little desk with a Singer, lining up the bottom of the tan trousers under the needle.

“How long?

He shrugged. “She won’t say.”

“I get it.”

He gave me the stink eye. “Get it? That’s rich. Might as well be talking about napalming babies and why it’s bad. I get it. I don’t feel it. I don’t see it. I get it, like a brochure or a commercial of a real feeling. It’s different when you’re the one cleaning up the bloody tissues.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Death is easy, comedy is hard.”

He started to press the treadle to operate the machine, but something was stuck under it: the brown toe cap of my wingtip. Wendell leaned back, scared but somewhat defiant. My voice chilled. “You’re an asshole, you know that? And the only thing keeping me from giving you a lesson in impossible contortions so that you might, indeed, be able to fuck yourself, is that you’re the one giving Shirley joy.” I yanked my shoe free. Then I held out my hand. “Thank you for making her happy.”

He took it. It was neither strong, nor weak, but the opposite of his appearance: completely controlled. We broke off and he told me to sit. “Turning a cocktail napkin into a magic carpet takes a solid ten minutes.”

He was ridiculously correct.

I abandoned my favorite suit for tan slacks, a navy blue double-breasted blazer, white shirt, and burgundy tie. I looked like the kind of putz who enjoyed the links and a par four, attended senior executive functions (whatever that was), and fucked his secretary in Palm Springs while his wife fucked her gardener in Cabo. The guy who shit on the man in the gray flannel suit. The boss. The operator. The clothes fit perfectly, and in the glare of a full-length mirror, circled by boxes full of gags and magic, I felt like even more of a pretender than when I handed Shirley the wrestling mask. A complete and utter phony who thought the world was his pleasure yacht and used everyone else like toilet paper.

“Now you look fit for the Hilton,” Wendell said from behind me. I turned.

“Thanks. You’re really good at—”

“Everything, I know, it’s a burden, but I bear it like Jesus on Easter.”

I rarely want to punch someone in the face that much, but the mirth and more he was giving Shirley was an invisible shield protecting his mug. Plus, I’d already shaken his hand. “Word to the wise, Wendell?”

“You’re preaching to the choir as it is.”

“Don’t quit your day job.”

“And what do you know—”

“I mean the comedy. You’re a decent magician, and this store is a great way to keep sharp, but you’ve got a gift for making people laugh that other comedians would kill for.” Of course, I kept that case of a mad sorcerer trying to steal a comedian’s talent all to my bad self. “Don’t get lazy just because you have a captivated audience between recess and the final bell.”

I turned to leave.

“You won’t see her again,” he said. I stopped. “Will you.”

I turned and smiled. “You never know. We live in a world of wonder. The impossible is always strongest when it’s being watched. Never would have thought I’d see her today and yet, here we are.”

I left as he made a witty retort involving Descartes’ famous aphorism, and perhaps some Schiller, as if to make clear to yours truly he was actually the smartest cock in the yard. I denied him the victory of recognition, shouldered the gym bag, and yanked open the door.

The burning daylight radiating through the glass gutted my eye, so I only saw the darkened specter of Shirley turn around with a gasp. “Ladies and gentleman, may I present Mr. James Farnsworth, a great patron of the magic arts and owner of several islands in the South Pacific.” I briefly held the attention of the boys, who realized they could now stare at Shirley’s bosom without her noticing.

I bowed graciously. “Sorry to dash like this, Shirley, but my meeting is minutes away. Thanks so much for being the number one supplier of Magic Incorporated’s worldwide network of performers and establishments.”

“Not at all!” she said, young and joyous, the phlegm in her throat cleared as if by grace. “But you come back when you’re in town next, James. You still owe me tickets to a wrestling match at the Olympic. I just love those masked men. So mysterious!”

“It’s a date.”

I got outside. I opened the cab door, climbed in, sat, and swallowed my heart.

“Right on time,” Hector said, then looked in the rearview mirror. “Hey? Hey, lucha, are you okay?”

I wiped my face dry, then smiled. “Just not used to clothes this fine.”

He read my expression and shifted gears. “Hey, you win enough, you will wear clothes like that all the time! You any relation to Gory Guerreros? I hear he has a son wrestling in Japan.”

“No relation. Tell me more about your uncle as we head for the Hilton.”

He did, without looking back at me, and by the time we pulled into the entrance of the mansion of a hotel—a great white gold edifice against the glow of the early evening, the Pacific at its back like a beautiful slave—my ducts were dry. I might be dressed like a millionaire, but I was reminded of something Shirley once said when I apologized for wearing the same shirt twice in a row to her place. “Honey, I love money and what it can bring, but what matters is what you keep in here.” She’d tapped her head. “Make memories so beautiful and rich that when the Grim Reaper comes for you, you’ll show him things even that old fuck has never seen.”

“You need me for another run, lucha?” Hector said.

I grabbed the bag. “No, but thanks for the family history.” I handed him a ten. Before he could protest, I added, “Take it with gratitude; I loved hearing the stories.”

He shrugged, took the ten. “See you around, lucha.”

“If you get off early enough, I’ll have you on the guest list at the Olympic. Tell them the Assassinator said it was jake.”

“Gracias! I hope you banish the villain in the ring!”

I smiled, nodded, and hoped the same thing.