“Did I really get this lucky?”
“Don’t count your chickens. Lavonne Cohen took a trip with her mah-jongg club and Mickey thinks it’s open season on me. Tonight was supposed to be the Mocambo, the Grove and late drinks with the Gersteins. I pulled a snit and escaped.”
“I thought you and Mickey were in love.”
“Love has its flip side. Did you know you’re the only Turner Meeks in the Central White Pages?”
Buzz unlocked the door. Audrey walked in, dropped her mink on the floor and scoped the living room. The furnishings included leather couches and easy chairs from _London Holiday_ and zebra head wall mounts from _Jungle Bwana_; the swinging doors leading to the bedroom were scavenged off the saloon set of _Rage on the Rio Grande_. The carpeting was lime green and purple striped–the bedspread one the Amazon huntress lollygagged on in _Song of the Pampas_. Audrey said, “Meeks, did you _pay_ for this?”
“Gifts from a rich uncle. You want a drink?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Why not?”
“My father, sister and two brothers are drunks, so I thought I’d give it a pass.”
Buzz was thinking she looked good–but not as good as she did with no makeup and Mickey’s shirt hanging to her knees. “And you became a stripper?”
Audrey sat down, kicked off her shoes and warmed her feet on the mink.
Side 84
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The
“Yes, and don’t ask me to do the tassel trick for you, because I won’t. Meeks, what _is_ the matter with you? I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
He could still smell the queer. “I coldcocked a guy today. It was shitty.”
Audrey wriggled her toes, making the coat jump. “So? That’s what you do for a living.”
“The guys I usually do it to give me more of a fight.”
“So you’re telling me it’s all a game?”
He’d told Howard once that the only women worth having were the ones who had your number. “There’s gotta be somethin’ we’re better at than buttin’ heads and askin’ each other questions.”
The Va Va Voom Girl kicked the mink up in her lap. “Is the bedroom this outré?”
Buzz laughed. “_Casbah Nocturne_ and _Paradise Is Pink_. That tell you anything?”
“That’s another question. Ask me something provocative.”
Buzz took off his jacket, unhooked his holster and threw it on a chair.
“Okay. Does Mickey keep a tail on you?”
Audrey shook her head. “No. I made him stop it. It made me feel cheap.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Three blocks away.”
All green lights to make his best stupid move an epic. “You got it all figured out.”
Audrey said, “I didn’t think you’d say no.” She waved her mink coat.
“And I brought a towel for the morning.”
Buzz thought, RIP Turner Prescott Meeks, 1906–1950. He took a deep breath, sucked in his flab, pushed through the saloon doors and started peeling.
Audrey came in and laughed at the bed–pink satin spread, pink canopy, pink embroidered gargoyles as foot posts. She got naked with a single flick of a clasp; Buzz felt his legs buckling as her breasts bobbed free. Audrey came to him and slipped off his tie, undid his shirt buttons, loosened his belt. He pried his shoes and socks off standing up; his shirt hit the floor via a bad case of the shivers. Audrey laughed and traced the goosebumps on his arms, then ran her hands over the parts of himself he couldn’t stand: his melon gut, his side rolls, the knife scars running up into his chest hair. When she started licking him there he knew she was okay on it; he picked her up to show her how strong he was–his legs almost blowing it–and put her down on the bed. He got out of his trousers and boxers under his own steam and lay down beside her–and in a half second she was all arms and legs around him, face to face and mouth open, pushing up against him like he was everything she’d ever wanted.
He kissed her–soft, hard, soft; he rubbed his nose into her neck and smelled Ivory Soap–not the perfume he’d played pretend with. He took her breasts in his hands and pinched the nipples, remembering everything every cop had told him about the headliner at the Burbank Burlesque. Audrey made different noises for each part of her he touched; he kissed and tongued between her legs and got one big noise. The big noise got bigger and bigger; her legs and arms went spastic. Her going so crazy got him almost there, and he went inside her so he could be part of it. Audrey’s hips pushing off the covers made him burst going in; he held on and she held him, and he gave her all his strength to smother their aftershocks. Half his weight, she was still able to push him up as she kept coming–and he grabbed her head and buried his head in her hair until he went limp and she quit fighting him.