AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m too antsy to sit through a movie where I can’t drink.”
“Want to drive to the beach?”
“I don’t have a car and we don’t have helmets. We’d make it about five blocks.”
“Fine. We’ll go somewhere you can walk to. Let’s meet at Bamboo House of Dolls in an hour.”
“I’ve been drinking all day.”
“I haven’t,” she says, “so I need to catch up.”
“That’s the most reasonable thing anyone has said to me in days.”
“See you there.”
“One hour.”
“Or sixty minutes, whichever is sooner.”
I hang up feeling vaguely better.
I put the Aqua Regia away, brush my teeth, and take a shower, scraping off the grit of this frustrating day.
I’ll give Abbot and Julie twenty-four hours to call me. After that, I think I’m going to have to do something really stupid.
VIDOCQ AND ALLEGRA are already at Bamboo House when we get there. Candy chats with them while I go to get drinks. On the jukebox, Frankie Carle is playing “Beyond the Reef.” Carlos uses one of the potions he’s been buying from Lurkers to spritz a civilian clown harassing a young Ludere. The guy’s skin turns a pale green when the potion hits him.
“So everybody can see your sorry ass from a mile away,” he says.
The harasser doesn’t need to be told to get out. He figures it out all on his own. As he hits the exit, half the bar is laughing at him. Usually I’d say the incident was the price civilians pay for playing on our turf without knowing the rules. But how dumb do you have to be to not know to back off when a woman—Lurker or civilian—is giving you the cold shoulder? Fuck him. Maybe Carlos grew the guy up a little tonight. If you go home from a bar looking like a jalapeño in Dockers, it’s time to reexamine your life choices.
I bring the drinks back and give Candy hers. The three of them are talking about music. Candy and Allegra get excited about their favorite guitarists. Vidocq has them both beat when he talks about seeing Django Reinhardt in New York in the midforties.
“That’s not even a little bit fair,” says Allegra. “You’ve been around too long to play this game.”
“Then I’ll remain silent,” he says.
“Besides, show-off, I know Jades who saw Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival,” says Candy.
“Alas, I wasn’t there,” Vidocq says. “But I did see him perform at Madison Square Garden, though I honestly don’t remember the evening very well. My friends and I had taken LSD before leaving home.”
“Goddammit,” says Candy. She looks at Allegra. “We missed everything cool.”
“It’s true. I never even got to try getting into Studio 54,” Allegra says. She holds a hand up to Vidocq. “And if you ever went, I do not want to hear about it.”
A small smile creeps across his face, but he keeps his mouth shut.
“Did you ever seen Robert Quine?” says Candy.
“No. That was more James’s type of music,” he says.
Candy looks at me. I shake my head.
“Quine was the New York scene. I’m an L.A. boy.”
“You haven’t seen enough,” she says to me. “And you’ve seen too much,” she says to Vidocq. “You’re both useless.”
“We’ve been put in our place,” says Vidocq.
