‘I like a man with a big appetite,’ the waitress said.
She was a slender blue-eyed blonde with a pert nose and rosy complexion – exactly the kind of woman about whom his mother probably had nightmares.
Tommy wondered if she was flirting. Her smile was inviting, but her comment about his appetite might have been innocent small talk. He wasn’t as smooth with women as he would have liked to be.
If she had given him an opening, he was incapable of taking it. One rebellion a night was enough. Cheeseburgers, yes, but not both cheeseburgers and a blonde.
He could only say, ‘Give me extra Cheddar, please, and lots of onions.’
After lathering plenty of mustard and ketchup on the burgers, he ate every bite of what he ordered. He drained the milkshake so completely that the sucking noises of his straw against the bottom of the glass caused nearby adult diners to glare at him because of the bad example he was setting for their children.
He left a generous tip, and as he was heading toward the door, his waitress said, ‘You look a lot happier going out than you did coming in.’
‘I bought a Corvette today,’ he said inanely.
‘Cool,’ she said.
‘Been my dream since I was a little kid.’
‘What colour is it?’
‘Bright aqua metallic.’
‘Sounds pretty.’
‘It flies.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Like a rocket,’ he said, and he realized that he was almost lost in the oceanic depths of her blue eyes.
This detective in your books – he ever marry blonde, he break his mother’s heart.
‘Well’ he said, ‘take care.’
‘You too,’ said the waitress.
He went to the entrance. On the threshold, holding the door open, Tommy looked back, hoping that she would still be staring after him. She had turned away, however, and was walking toward the booth that he had vacated. Her slender ankles and shapely calves were lovely.
A breeze had sprung up, but the night was still balmy for November. On the far side of Pacific Coast Highway, at the entrance to Fashion Island Mall, stately ranks of enormous phoenix palms were illuminated by floodlights fixed to their boles. Long green fronds swayed like hula skirts. The breeze was lightly scented with the fecund smell of the nearby ocean; it didn’t chill him but, in fact, pleasantly caressed the back of his neck and playfully ruffled his thick black hair. In the wake of his little rebellion against his mother and his heritage, the world seemed to have grown delightfully more sensuous.
In the car, he switched on the radio. It was functioning perfectly again. Roy Orbison was rocking out ‘Pretty Woman.’
Tommy sang along. Lustily.
He remembered the ominous roar of static and the strange phlegmy voice that had seemed to be calling his name from the radio, but now he found it difficult to believe that the peculiar incident had been as uncanny as it had seemed at the time. He had been upset by his conversation with his mother, feeling simultaneously put-upon and guilty, angry with her but also with himself, and his perceptions hadn’t been entirely trust-worthy. The waterfall-roar of static had been real enough, but in his pall of guilt, he had no doubt imagined hearing his name in a meaningless gurgle and squeal of electronic garbage.
All the way home, he listened to old-time rock-’n’-roll, and he knew the words to every song.
He lived in a modest but comfortable two-story tract house in the exhaustively planned city of Irvine. The tract, as was the case with most of those in Orange County, featured none but Mediterranean architecture; indeed, Mediterranean style prevailed to such an extent that it sometimes seemed restfully consistent but at other times was boring, suffocating, as if the chief executive officer of Taco Bell had somehow become an all-powerful dictator and had decreed that everyone must live not in houses but in Mexican restaurants. Tommy’s place had an orange barrel-tile roof, pale-yellow stucco walls, and concrete walkways with brick borders.
Because he’d supplemented his salary from the news-paper with income from a series of paperback mystery novels that he’d written during evenings and week-ends, he’d been able to buy the house three years ago, when he’d been only twenty-seven. Now his books were coming out in hardcover first, and his writing income had gotten large enough to allow him to risk leaving the Register.