The maitre’d at Maple Drive escorted Roc and Uncle to a booth on the far side of the main dining room, an ideal place to see but not be seen. Marie and her friend Julie were already engaged in launching a bottle of Perrier Jouet, and the mood was clearly festive. Taking a seat, Roc was introduced to Julie; he didn’t acknowledge that he’d almost met her in the lobby of the Sunset Lagoon the night before. He watched Marie go through a breezy series of little kisses on either side of Uncle’s skull, and it wasn’t until his second glass of champagne that he could erase the lurid image of her licking that big bald head. Marie, it turned out, was quite witty and seemed to have Uncle Strange’s number in many ways. He was clearly in thrall to that breathy accent, among her other charms, and he shrugged sheepishly when she referred to him as her Monsieur Propre, a reference to the French version of the well-known cleaning product and its bald symbol. Julie, it emerged, was a trust fund baby whose grandmother had invented Teflon, and she and Marie had gone to school together in Switzerland. Roc found himself enjoying the company in spite of his usual social discomfort.
“My father is Jean Luc Solange,” Marie explained. “Maybe you are knowing his films, O, P, and Q. It is his trilogy, very famous in France, of course, where each line of dialogue begins with the letter in the title.”
Uncle was nodding far too seriously at this. “I’m sure that Q must have been his most challenging work.”
“Yes, until now, that is. He has been brought to Hollywood to work in English for the first time, you know. In this new picture, the child of Dr. and Madame Bovary would be unhappily married to a plastic surgeon, you see.” At this point, Julie leaned close to Roc, ostensibly not wanting to interrupt her friend, and whispered a request for champagne, brushing her lips against his ear. Uncle noticed and took the opportunity to fondle Marie’s thigh under the table.
The dinner became louder and looser, and Roc actually laughed out loud in public for the first time in a long while when Julie threw her hair back and thumped her chest, imitating the faux swagger of the latest reality starlet on Fox. Roc referred to her caboose being mightier than her engine, and Uncle looked genuinely surprised. Roc went to get up and had to grab the edge of the table to steady himself. The girls, noticing, giggled in unison, and Julie said with authority, “Time to go dancing.”
Marie added her oui, but Uncle was still pressing for the Roxy. Roc cast the deciding vote, again to Uncle’s surprise. He’d spent enough hours in the Roxy for one lifetime. He wouldn’t dance, of course, but a change of scene would be fun. Uncle just shrugged and grinned and made a quick call on his cell.
The Swerve Club was loud and dark, and they were led to a corner table lit by candlelight. The DJ was doing an eighties and nineties mix, and Roc was surprised at how well the Clash, Human League, the Black Crowes, and Howard Jones got along.
Of course, a change of beverage had led to more hilarity. Julie was doing an excellent impression of Marie’s accent, asking directions “to the water closet if it please you” and Marie in turn was passably impersonating Uncle, holding her palms out and crossing her legs in a lotus position, saying, “Problem. Empty glass. Solution. Another drink.” A photographer suddenly appeared and took a quick shot of Roc and Julie; she nestled in close and smiled at him, forcing a shy smile in return. Uncle and Marie were happily snogging and sharing a seat when Julie grabbed Roc in the middle of a conversation about the dos and don’ts of leather pants and pulled him onto the dance floor. “Black Velvet” was playing, and Roc moved tentatively but was soon distracted as Julie ran her hands down his sides and grabbed his hips during the sultry opening bars of the song. She began moving him back and forth in time to the swaying of her body, and she looked into his eyes with flamenco intensity. He caught his breath and thought how easy it would be to let this night go where it was clearly headed. His heart wasn’t in it, but another part of his anatomy might be telling his heart to go home early. Julie was writhing about an inch away from his body when the song ended, and they stood on the dance floor in one of those “there’s no one else here” moments. A camera flashed.
Everyone agreed it was time for some fresh air, so Uncle paged Roscoe, his driver for the night, and they headed unsteadily into the street. Uncle insisted on playing the new CD in the limo, and in the silence after “Swan Dive,” Julie said wide-eyed, “That’s so beautiful. Did you write that for someone?”
Roc shrugged enigmatically, his normal response to that question, and the moment passed. He felt a twinge of what — regret? Uncle opened a bottle of Armagnac and handed glasses around. Julie stuck her nose in the glass. “Mmmm, way pruney.”
Uncle was warming the glass with his hands. “Another exquisite French export.” He leered at Marie. “Prune, vanilla, and a touch of violet, non, mon amour?” She nodded and giggled into her glass.
With the sunroof open and the tops of the palm trees blurring past, Roc closed his eyes for a moment as he slouched on the seat. The next time he opened them, Julie was asleep, curled at his feet, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Marie looking lustily at Uncle’s glowing dome. He asked Roscoe to take him to the hotel and rested his eyes for just a minute.
When he came to the next morning, there was an inferno in his mouth and a war raging in his stomach. He opened his eyes just enough to know that he was in his room at the Sunset Lagoon, and not in Cedars Sinai hospital. He felt a moment of panic and said a small prayer before looking to his left in the bed. He sighed with gratitude to see that he’d slept alone. Did I really tell Uncle about Bobbie? He felt like a detective trying to reassemble bits of last night like a torn up photograph. There was a picture, he vaguely remembered. And I danced in public, he recalled with pained amusement.