17. The Great Unknown

Shortly after nine o’clock the following evening Casey parked his VW in the lot behind the Key Western Inn in Anacapa. He got out, locked the car doors, and walked into the hotel lobby, then into the Key of Sea Lounge, where Warren Roberts was hard at work, playing “New York, New York.” When Warren saw Casey he grinned and motioned him over to his side. Every stool around the piano was occupied.

“Pick up the mike,” Warren said. “Sing a chorus or two for these lovely people.”

“I don’t touch that song,” Casey said. “Can you modulate into E-flat and give me a pickup for ‘Manhattan’?”

At the end of the second chorus of “Manhattan” Casey heard the sweet sound of hearty applause, a reward he’d been missing for months.

A couple next to the keyboard rose from their stools and the woman stuffed a ten-dollar bill into Warren’s tip jar. “Have a seat,” the man offered. “We have to be leaving. Thanks for the song.”

“My pleasure,” Casey answered, and meant it. He sat on the stool closest to the piano player.

Warren said, “Sing another tune, crooner.”

“I like New York in June,” Casey responded a cappella, still in E-flat. “How about you?” Warren joined him on the second line, and they delivered the song and were both paid off with more applause.

———

“So, how about you?” Warren asked, when the two musicians took a break outside behind the kitchen door. Warren offered Casey a Winston.

Casey shook his head. “I haven’t had a cigarette for over a year. Don’t miss tobacco a bit. Weed, on the other hand.… You don’t happen to have a lead on where I can score a lid, do you?”

“I gave that one up long ago,” Warren said. “It made work too hard. So. How’s that hotel gig working out?”

“The hotel never opened, and I just learned that it’s never going to open. It’s as if I’ve wasted eight months waiting for nothing.”

“Bummer. Are you out of practice?”

“No, I’ve been playing a couple of hours almost every evening, but practically nobody listens to me. The hippie crowd I’m involved with doesn’t share our taste in music, to put it kindly. It’s boiled down to an audience of one.”

“That lovely Diana?” Warren asked.

“That lovely Diana. She’s the one, all right.”

“She’s not enough? Sounds like nice work, if you can get it.”

“I got it, but I miss playing professionally.”

“You miss the hecklers, the singers who can’t carry a tune, the waltz-stompers who talk out loud while you play soft?”

“I miss it all. I guess I miss the adventure, Warren. Even the uncertainty.”

“You, pal, are plumb nuts. So are you and Diana breaking up, or are you going to take her on the rocky road from gig to gig?”

“I’d like Diana to come with me, but she’s not as plumb nuts as I am.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” Warren said, putting his cigarette out against the sole of his shoe and flicking the butt into the bushes. “Because I happen to know of a gig you two would be perfect for. Up in Santa Barbara. Montecito, actually.”

“Oh?”

Warren nodded. “Five nights a week, a girl singer and piano accompanist. A new club called the Café Rouge, attached to the Montecito Inn, which was built by Charlie Chaplin back in the day. The club manager, Sid Mitchell, loves standards.”

“Hmm. I’ve worked for Sid a few times, a few years ago. The job’s still open?”

“It was at five this afternoon. That’s when Sid called me.”

“How come you’re not—”

“I don’t have a girl singer. You, on the other hand, do, right?”

“Maybe,” Casey answered. “Maybe not.”

“Well, if I were you, I’d find out. Find out fast. Meanwhile, I’ve got to get back to my post. You coming?”

“Actually, I think I should go on back up the hill and find out whether or not I have a girl singer.”

“Atta boy.”

———

After a late supper that same evening in Tillie’s apartment in Maricopa, Nqong finally told Matilda he wanted to move on. “I haven’t been outside in two days,” he said. “This is the longest I’ve ever stayed indoors. You’re kind to keep me hidden and safe, but I’ll die if I don’t get out and get moving.” He had found he couldn’t even do his thirty-six stretches in the tiny confines. He hated the feel of wall-to-wall carpeting under his bare feet.

“I like the food you’ve made for me. The suppers. The sandwiches you leave for me when you go to work. But I have to go.”

Tillie frowned. “Go where? The cops in this county are vicious, baby. You’ll end up in jail until they think up something to do with you. And whatever they come up with, you won’t like it. You have to have a plan. What’s your plan, Inngg Kong? Where will you go?”

“Walking,” Nqong answered. “Into the mountains. I can find my way home. I miss home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Hope Springs.”

Tillie smiled. “Hope Springs? Near Tecolote?”

Nqong nodded.

“Shoot, I know Hope Springs. At least I know where it is, or at least where it used to be. I didn’t know people lived there. Do you have family in Hope Springs?”

Nqong looked down at the hands in his lap. “Maybe. If they’ll have me back.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“I let them down. And now I’m letting you down. I like the way we fit when we lie down together. I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye. But I need to go home. I’ll find my way.”

“When? Inngg Kong, it’s dangerous out there! I keep telling you.”

“I’ll go at night. Tonight.”

“Fuck that,” Tillie snapped. “No such thing. You stay here tonight and we’ll fit our old bods together one last time, and in the morning, first thing, we’ll get in my truck and I’ll take you home.”

“What about your job?”

“Screw it. I hate that job anyway. I’m a footloose rover, honey. I’ve packed my stuff in the back of that pickup more than once a year since my second divorce. Okay? You help me pack my truck this evening, and tomorrow bright and early we hit the trail to Tecolote. Is it a deal?”

———

Eleven o’clock. It was time for Karen’s last warm bath of the day, but there hadn’t been any baths for the past four days. She had taken a cold shower that afternoon out behind the bathhouse, which had been pleasant enough because it was a warm day. But the hot water in the shower wasn’t hot, because it was no longer heated in its coiled copper pipe in the tank under the bathhouse. That was okay in the summer, but before winter Karen would have to buy a water heater for the yellow community and install an indoor shower. Karen had already put that on the growing list of changes ahead.

Living at Hope Springs without hot baths would not be such a joyful experience for her community. The folks who still called themselves the yellow people. Karen wondered how long that would last. How long her community would survive. Especially after the yellow beetles died off in the fall and didn’t come back next spring.

She heard a timid knock on the door and said, “Enter.”

The door opened, and Diana walked in. She looked like a frightened, lost child. She walked into Karen’s hug, trembled there for a minute, and wept onto her shoulder.

“Still don’t know what you want to do?” Karen asked.

Diana shook her head and hiccoughed. “What I really want I can’t have. I want to stay here and cook for my friends. I want Casey to stay here and play piano. I want to sing songs to Casey every night of the week and to guests on weekends. But Casey’s moving on, and there won’t be any guests, because there won’t be any hotel because there won’t be any hot water. But damn it all, Karen, shit.…”

“What?”

“I still want to cook for this community. It’ll be the way it was before, almost. I don’t want to leave!”

Karen felt like weeping herself. “Then don’t. If Casey can’t see what a treasure he’d be losing if he left you behind, he’s not worth following. Especially into the great unknown.”

Diana didn’t answer, and into the brief silence that followed barged the sound of footsteps approaching on the hallway outside Karen’s apartment.

He smiled at the two women, but it wasn’t one of his goofy grins full of Casey charm. It was a hopeful, tentative, almost bashful smile.

“I agree with you, Karen. I’m not worth following into the great unknown.”

“Well, then, Casey—”

“But what if it could be the great known? Diana, what if I could assure you of a real job, singing five nights a week in a classy club in Santa Barbara? You’d be the main attraction. I’d be lucky enough to back you up on the keys, but you’d be the headliner. People would come to hear you, they’d be wild about you, and between a regular paycheck and tips you’d earn a good living. Would you be willing to give that a try? Say a couple of months? Karen, could you spare Diana for a couple of months, so she could at least give the thrill of entertaining a try?”

Karen did not answer. Her lips formed a thin straight line. Her eyes seemed to smolder.

Diana asked, “Is this something you can offer, Casey, or is this just more wishful bullshit?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Casey admitted. “But we’ll find out tomorrow. I know the club owner, and I know he’s looking for talent. I’ll call him in the morning. If we could audition tomorrow, I’m pretty sure we’re in. If we want it. If you want it. What’s the harm in finding out whether or not he wants you, which I bet he will, and whether or not you want the gig? That would be entirely up to you.”

Karen spoke. “Casey, you’re a first-class snowman. You should be selling encyclopedias door to door.”

“Maybe so,” Casey answered, looking only at Diana. “I’d do that, or anything else if it meant I could have what I want and need. To be a first-class showman, and to share my good fortune with only you. Diana. Could you please say something? Anything?”

Diana inhaled and swallowed. She looked at Karen, then back at Casey. “You make it sound so perfect and so easy. But I have a job here, Casey. Here at Hope Springs. I have to feed my friends. This community needs a cook.”

Casey turned to Karen. “Help,” he softly begged. “Please.”

Karen said, “Much as I love you, Diana, and as much as I love the way you nourish us all, I could hire another cook. I can see how much you want to be with Casey, even though I still think he’s a big unknown, and you might end up stuck with an itinerant piano tuner. But I want you to audition for this impossibly perfect gig. If it’s really right for you, really right, you should take it.”

Casey: “Diana?”

Diana: “Okay. I’ll go up to Santa Barbara with you tomorrow and audition. But I won’t move away from Hope Springs until Karen’s found another cook. If this club owner wants me, he’ll have to wait his turn.”

Casey: “That may not work for him.”

Diana: “Tough. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”