Sinners (24 page)

In the main office Mr Snake, the manager, lolled in a black leather chair, his feet up on the desk in front of him. He was on the phone and ignored Herbert when he was ushered into the office by a secretary.

Herbert stood ill at ease in front of the desk and thought about sitting down. Mr Snake hadn’t indicated that he should, and in the face of employers Herbert always liked to do the right thing. At least the police weren’t present, which was something to be thankful for.

Mr Snake finished his conversation, banged the receiver down, fumbled for a cigarette, and snapped, ‘Have you been taking a leak in our customers’ swimming pools, Jefferson?’

‘What?’ Herbert questioned, his sallow skin reddening.

‘You heard me. Right or wrong?’

‘Wrong,’ he said quickly. That was something they couldn’t prove.

‘You’re fired. I gave you a chance to tell the truth and you blew it. Some kid was taking a film of his mother before she went out, and through the glass doors there’s you taking a piss in their pool, calm as you like. I saw the film myself this afternoon. Pick up your things and get out of here. The cashier’s got your check made up until today.’

Mr Snake picked up the phone again, and by the time Herbert turned to leave he was deep in conversation.

After the incident with Clay and the two strippers, Charlie went into a deep depression. He shut himself in his hotel bungalow with the ever-faithful George, and refused to see anyone except on business about the film he was due to start. The film, a comedy, was called
Fred
.

The main girl’s part was to be played by Laurel Jones, an ugly-pretty girl who had been nominated, but had not won, the previous year’s Oscar for best supporting actress. She came to dinner with Charlie at his hotel, bringing her husband of two months, a long-haired member of a currently successful pop group called ‘Sons’.

Charlie liked them both. They were full of talk about politics, drop-outs, world air pollution, world starvation. To Charlie it made a refreshing change from conversation consisting of either the film industry or who was laying whom.

Laurel and her husband, Floss, were vegetarians and planning six months off work to become involved with a World Starvation project in India.

‘That’s where it’s at, man,’ Floss said, ‘helping people who can’t help themselves.’

Laurel nodded, her eyes shining with agreement.

‘Yes, but what about your careers?’ Charlie asked. ‘You’re both sort of at the start. I mean I know you’re doing very well, but if you just throw it up right now—’

‘We worked it all out,’ Floss said.

‘Yes,’ Laurel joined in, ‘Floss and the boys are going to record enough stuff and tape appearances to keep them going, and I’ve got another movie to do after
Fred.
’

‘Man, if you can’t spare six months of your time to help other human beings I just don’t know.’ Floss shook his head sadly.

Charlie tried to recall what
he
had done to help other people. He always, gave George his old clothes, and he had given over fifty thousand dollars to various charity organizations in the last few years. That was tax deductible, of course. He had been approached some months back to make a public appeal for the homeless, but had declined to do so, not because he didn’t believe in the cause, but because it embarrassed him to appear in public unless he was acting. He had signed a petition along with many other prominent people to legalize pot. Laurel and Floss, both nineteen, made him feel very old.

After dinner he suggested maybe they could all turn on and listen to some sounds.

Laurel and Floss exchanged smiles. ‘We gave it up,’ Laurel said.

‘Yeah, either you need it or you don’t, and we figured we had reached a point where we just didn’t need it any more.’ Floss ran his hand through his long blond hair. ‘You go ahead,’ he added.

Sheepishly Charlie put away the joint he had taken out. ‘No, I don’t need it,’ he said, ‘I just thought you er . . .’

‘Everybody thinks all we do is fly on drugs and trial marriages and all that stuff. Laurel and I want to show people that our main concern is for the future of the world we live in. Every day we both meditate for an hour. That’s the greatest. Throw off your clothes, man, and meditate, it’s better than getting high.’

After they left, Charlie took off his black-ribbed turtle-neck sweater and pants. How did one meditate?

He sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, contemplating. Then after five minutes he said, ‘Fuck it!’, lit a joint, put on some sounds, and went to bed.

*    *    *

Apart from Laurel Jones there was supposed to be six gorgeous girls in
Fred
. Charlie, who had casting approval, told Cy Hamilton Junior to hire whomever he wanted. They were only small parts, and Charlie simply couldn’t be bothered to audition a load of starlets.

Cy said on the phone, ‘Come on down to the office, shmuck, I’ve got more delicious cooze passing through here than you’ve ever seen.’

Charlie wondered what kick it gave men like Cy and Clay to be on the continual look-out for available girls. They were married, so what was the point? How many girls could you screw at once? When he had been married to Lorna he had never bothered to look around; there had only been Michelle. But on thinking it over, he had to admit that before Dindi he had been exactly the same – searching for the prettiest face, the biggest breasts, the longest legs. It didn’t matter if they were all raving idiots, he had been concerned only with outward appearances. Underneath all the lions’ manes of hair and false eyelashes had there lurked one reasonable brain?

‘I have definitely learnt my lesson,’ Charlie confided to George, who was used to receiving intimate revelations from his boss. ‘No more dumb starlets,’

George nodded wisely. He wouldn’t have minded a few of Charlie’s cast-offs.

*    *    *

The first day on the set Charlie was working with a six-foot two-inch redhead named Thames Mason.

She smiled and widened her large hazel eyes. ‘Mr Brick, it’s such a delight to work with you. I’ve simply adored all of your movies. You don’t know what a thrill it is for me today.’ She spoke a heavy Southern drawl.

Charlie drew under cover of the character he was playing and became Fred. Although the accent was fascinating, he had no plans to become friendly with anyone on the film. They would know him as Fred, and that was all – except for Laurel. She and Floss began to see a lot of Charlie, who enjoyed listening to them.

He visited their house and met their friends. They were a different group from the film crowd – young record producers, singers, musicians. Most of them favoured hippy-style dress and they accepted Charlie quite easily. What he liked was that nobody seemed impressed by who he was; in fact he wasn’t at all sure if anybody knew or cared. He was just another friend of Laurel’s and Floss’s.

He took to going to see them almost every night after work. They held open house for their friends.

A Mexican couple took care of the house and there was always plenty of food.

Charlie took his own supply of pot, because although Laurel and Floss didn’t turn on, they didn’t object to their friends doing so, and most of their friends did.

It was a good scene as far as Charlie was concerned. He got himself some long flowing tops, baggy trousers, and love beads. He stopped wearing his thick horn-rimmed spectacles and switched to granny glasses. He couldn’t grow his hair because of the movie, but he planned to as soon as it was finished.

‘You look great, man,’ Floss told him. ‘You’re really part of the seventies scene.’

Charlie smiled. He was sitting on the floor in their living room watching slides of butterflies projected onto the wall, and listening to a new album. He passed the joint he was holding to the fair-haired boy beside him, who in turn passed it along to a girl.

‘You really should get on to the meditating kick,’ Floss remarked. ‘Laurel was a mess until I put her on to it.’

Charlie nodded. ‘Yes, I will try it.’ He had been coming to their house for ten days now, and Floss was always on at him to meditate. About eleven o’clock every night Laurel and Floss, and whoever else wanted to, solemly stripped off and sat cross-legged and silent in the middle of the room for at least half an hour.

Charlie couldn’t really see the point of it. He had never been enthusiastic at the idea of mass nudity.

Laurel had a perfect body. Everything was very small and compact. Floss was muscled and rangey.

Sex in Laurel and Floss’s house appeared to be a very casual event. There were two bedrooms for their friends to use, and often a couple would stroll off to one, spend an hour or so and then re-emerge.

Charlie had his eye on a girl. She was English, and he had only seen her at the house once before. She wasn’t pretty. She had a ratty, sulky face with suspicious eyes, but in any discussions she always spoke intelligently. She was young, very skinny, with long coarse light brown hair.

Charlie had not actually spoken to her, but she accepted a joint from him, and caught him staring when she took off her clothes to meditate. She was so thin that her ribcage stuck out, and she had tiny upturned breasts with crushed nipples.

When she dressed he sought her out. ‘You’re English,’ he remarked.

‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ she replied, eyeing him with suspicious eyes.

‘Yes, well of course it is. London with a touch of the north.’

‘That’s right. Why didn’t you meditate? And why were you staring at my body? I’m not beautiful.’

‘Er – well, love – well – er – you’re certainly not ugly.’

She laughed suddenly. She had little-girl teeth. ‘I’d love something sweet. Do you think there’s any chocolate cake around?’

‘Let’s go and get some.’

‘OK.’

They left silently. She made no comment on his car, just acted as if she’d been climbing into Lamborghini Miuras all her life.

‘Go to the market on Doheny,’ she instructed.

He drove there and they picked out chocolate cakes, cookies, pecan nuts, different flavoured ice-creams, and some candy bars.

‘What a feast!’ she exclaimed.

Poor kid, he thought, she probably hasn’t eaten. More than likely she was eking out an existence in some crash pad on the Strip. ‘Shall we take it back to Laurel and Floss?’ he suggested.

‘Whatever you like.’

I’d like to get laid, he thought. There had been no one since Dindi. But the hell with it, he wanted more than a quick lay, he wanted some sort of relationship with a girl to whom he could actually talk.

The following night he learnt from Laurel that the girl was Lady Phillipa Longmead, and that she was visiting her mother and stepfather who had a house on Beverly Drive.

Whilst he was talking to Laurel, having caught her just before the hour of meditation, Phillipa was sitting on the floor, shovelling handfuls of chocolate cake into an effeminate boy’s mouth.

Charlie went over and said, ‘Are you going to meditate tonight?’

She shrugged. ‘I might, if there’s nothing else going on. Are you going to?’

He quickly shook his head.

‘Ashamed of your body?’ she asked casually.

‘Certainly not.’

‘Let it all hang out,’ the effeminate boy sang.

‘I could take you home,’ Charlie ventured.

‘Who, me?’ the boy asked.

Phillipa shoved the last of the chocolate cake into the boy’s mouth. ‘I don’t usually go home this early, but if you’ve got any grass I’ll come to your place.’

During the drive to the hotel she discussed the latest student riots. ‘It’s just sad the way those kids get beaten on the head.’ Then she talked about a big open-air rock festival being held near San Francisco the following weekend. ‘Laurel and Floss are going. I may go with them.’

At the hotel she flicked through his record albums with an air of dismissal. ‘Don’t you have any new sounds? No, I suppose you don’t.’ She finally selected a Rolling Stones album of which she approved. Then she put her dirty feet on a table and smoked the joint he gave her. She took very strong, deep pulls, closing her eyes and letting the smoke snake slowly out of her nostrils.

Charlie sat opposite her. He felt a very strong need to have this girl approve of him. He wanted her to realize that he might be over thirty but that he wasn’t one of the dreaded older generation; he was still young, still hip.

They listened to the Stones in silence. When the album was finished she said, ‘If you want some sex, just ask me. I don’t particularly care for it myself, but I don’t mind.’

He was immediately excited. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s the last thing I was thinking of.’

‘I suppose you don’t find me very desirable after all those beautiful big-busted freaks you mix with. Personally I think sex is all a mental thing.’

He nodded. ‘I agree.’

‘Do you?’ She was surprised. ‘Do you really?’

‘Yes, well I could never really fancy a girl – go to bed with her I mean – unless I could talk to her. Sex for sex’s sake is just . . .’ he trailed off, searching for words. Oh, if Clay could only hear me now, he thought.

‘I think that’s so commendable of you, I really do. Most old men think quite differently. My stepfather’s friends are always trying to touch me, it makes me sick.’

Most
old
men!! Charlie was choked. Did she think he was old? He was only thirty-nine, thin as a rake, in perfect condition, dressed in the latest style. How could she possibly think he was old?

‘How old do you think I am?’ he asked.

She shrugged, her favourite gesture. ‘I don’t know, how old are you?’

‘No, come on, seriously, take a guess. How old would you say I was?’

‘If I guess too old you’ll only be angry, and if I guess too young I’ll be flattering you.’

‘How old?’

She studied him through narrowed eyes. ‘Thirty-nine,’ she said at last.

‘You’re kidding?’

‘No, why? Younger or older?’

‘Spot on, you’re spot on. How did you know?’

She shrugged. ‘You look thirty-nine.’

‘I look thirty-nine?’

She smiled a peculiarly evil smile. ‘I told you you’d be angry.’