The Flaming Motel

Sunday

November 3





VIII


Liz called the next morning, her mother’s number appearing on the caller ID as I answered. They’d had a nice time. Shopping. The Mexican place. Same as always. What had I done? Nothing much. I was exhausted. Took a nap in the afternoon. Went to Father’s Office, had a burger and a beer. Came home and went straight to bed. I thought of the blonde hair in the darkness on Ben’s deck as I lied to her, figuring what could it hurt, I was the one who’d been the fool.

After that, I sat around all day, debating whether to go to the party at Vargas’s house. It seemed inappropriate. I didn’t know these people. I never met Don Vargas. The very idea of being there struck me as intrusive. But Ed Vargas’s invitation seemed sincere. At five in the afternoon, I told myself I’d drive by just to see what was going on. If it felt right, I’d stop in and say hello. Maybe I’d meet some people who’d been there the night of the shooting. It was just an excuse to do some work. Just being efficient. See?

What I saw when I got there was a mob scene. Mulholland Drive was lined with parked cars, tucked into the limited space along the road. There were two-dozen people milling around on the steps of the house, drinks in hand, enjoying the last minutes of a glowing and gorgeous November day.

I found a spot next to a driveway on the opposite side of the road. At the end of the driveway was a high black gate with a guardhouse and a short black man inside it, reading the paper. He smiled at me as I parked and I walked over to him.

“Am I okay here? I’m going on up to the Vargas house. I don’t think it’ll be too long.”

The man set the newspaper down and leaned out the little window. He looked at my black BMW and then back at me. “At least it’s better than the last car I had park here. Some ratty thing. Broke down.”

“So it’s okay then?”

“It’s fine.”

I nodded my appreciation and stared up at the wrought iron gates. The driveway curved back behind dense bushes and no house was visible. “Hey,” I said. “Who lives here?”

The man looked at me with a grin and started to laugh. “What kind of guard do you think I am?” He motioned up the road with his chin as he returned to his paper. “Go on up to your party. We won’t complain.” He paused for a second, and then added, in a soft mutter, “We never do.”

I shrugged at his comment and started walking. About halfway between my car and the Vargas house, the smell of a barbecue and the sound of the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove” hit me. As I crossed the parking area in front of the house and climbed the steps, people nodded at me. The music grew louder and the clusters of people got thicker until I finally went through the open front door to see a hundred or more people clogging the great room I’d seen empty two days before.

It could have been a frat party at a college known more for keggers than classes. That these people had been at a funeral only a few hours before seemed unimaginable. The glass doors to the deck off the back of the house were open and more people swarmed outside. There was a grill going somewhere beyond that. I could see the smoke from it wafting away from the house, out over the city, like lone clouds of smog against the otherwise clear sky.

Most of the people were young, under thirty, with only a smattering of people Don Vargas’s age. The nature of his business, I assumed, skewed the demographic. The market for fifty-year-old porn stars had to be small. Most of the people in this room were young and beautiful, with model looks, like they made their living with their bodies. Many of them showing off their goods even at a wake.

I felt a burst of insecurity come over me as I lingered at the top of the steps leading down into the main room. People passed me going both directions with red plastic cups full of beer and cocktails. No one was paying attention to me, yet I was sure everyone knew I didn’t belong there. A woman near the bar danced by herself with a slow, steady sway to her hips—far too slow for the music in the room—as if dancing around an imaginary pole. I studied her contour, followed her hands as they ran over her own body, immediately lost in the mesmerizing fluidity of her motion.

And then it hit me. She was a professional. She made her living by having sex. That was how she made money, and the way she moved made it obvious that she was very, very good at it. My face flushed and I looked over the room again, realizing more than ever that I did not belong there, that I was a stick in the mud, a man who got nervous even talking about sex, embarrassed but fascinated by it. At the top of the steps, it was clear that I was on the opposite side of the vast divide between the people who made pornography and the people who watched it.

“Ollie, dude, glad you could make it.” I felt a slap on the back and turned to see Ed Vargas, hand out, wide smile, eyes a little glassy from something.

I shook his hand. “There’s a lot of people here.” It was the only thing I could think of to say. Somehow, “I’m sorry for your loss” didn’t seem right.

“Yeah.” He looked around, as if surveying the party for the first time. “It’s a good crowd. Dad would have liked this. A real party, you know, none of that sitting around and whining.”

He told me to enjoy myself, showed me where the drinks were, and disappeared down the hallway toward the back room where the pool table and the substance he was using were located. I had an urge to follow him because I didn’t know anyone else, but I resisted and leaned against the wall, watching the action. Two guys were setting up an old film projector in the center of the room. I studied them for a few minutes, until I heard her voice beside me.

“Hey.” It was soft, but it leapt out of the noise at me like a famous face in an old photograph.

I turned to see Brianna in a tight black cocktail dress, no doubt her idea of funeral attire. It was hard not to stare at her figure—the petite frame making her breasts look enormous—so I turned my attention back to the guys with the projector. “What are they setting up for?”

“That’s Nickey and Tom, they’ve worked for Don for years. They were laughing this morning about something they found in his office. An old movie, I guess.”

I looked around the room again, “Pretty festive for a funeral.”

She winked and raised her plastic cup of beer. “Life’s always got to be a party. And even if it isn’t, make it look like one.” Then she laughed and reached out for me. I almost recoiled at the approach of her hand. She picked up my tie and said, “You should take this off. This isn’t a normal funeral.”

It was the understatement of the year. The music had gotten louder and switched to a wild, electronic mix. More people were dancing, spilling beer on the carpet, and shouting and hooting and carrying on like it was New Year’s Eve in Cancun.

I undid my tie, looking up at the loft that overlooked the room as I did. I saw Tiffany Vargas standing at the far end of the railing, near the back of the house, looking down on the chaos. She was the only one in the room who looked somber, reflective, and sad. The contrast only magnified her sullen expression. She stood like a black hole in the center of a fire.

“She’s the only one here who looks upset.” I motioned toward the loft as I stuffed my tie in the pocket of my sport coat.

Brianna leaned over to say something and then stopped herself. She looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then she took my hand and led me across the room, hurrying, like a little girl running off to share a secret. She led me into the hallway where Ed had disappeared. The corridor was empty. Down at the far end of it, I could see the room with the pool table was crowded with men and cigar smoke. I heard them laughing and drinking among themselves like they were at a different party altogether.

Brianna hovered at the door to the office where Don Vargas was shot, and then opened it. She peeked inside, looking to see if the room was empty, then went in. She motioned for me to follow. I hesitated for a second, it seemed a strangely intimate space in such a crowded house. Given that Vargas had died there, it almost felt like trespassing.

I followed her in and she stood with her back to the desk, almost leaning against it. I closed the door behind me and looked at the floor, but the chalk outline was gone. I stared out at the falling darkness. The window had already been replaced. All evidence of the death had been erased.

Brianna was smiling at me. “What?” I asked her.

“Eddie and Tiff have been fighting, all weekend.”

It didn’t surprise me, given what I knew about the financial arrangements. Why she was telling me, that was the interesting part. “I can imagine things are stressful.”

She leaned forward slightly, as if trying to make what she was about to say even more of a secret. “I heard that Tiffany was going to inherit everything.”

I shrugged. “It’s possible. She was the wife, after all. Community property and all that.”

“You should have heard them last night.” She glanced out the window, as if the scene were replaying itself against the jasmine covered wall outside. “He accused her of being a gold digger. Said she only married his dad to get at his money, that she was nothing but a fraud.”

I shrugged again. “People say ugly things when it comes to family and money.” I sipped my beer, running my eyes over the curves in the fabric of her dress. She saw me do it, but I didn’t care. I could see her smile widen a little as she watched me.

Then she let out a sigh and sat on the desk, her feet dangling above the floor. She set her plastic cup of beer on the desk and shook her head. “I’m going to have to move out. It sucks. I’ve never had my own place before. But Tiffany never really liked me. Now, with Donnie gone, I’ve got to get out of here. I’m meeting a real estate guy tomorrow.”

“Why doesn’t she like you?” I asked, wanting to ask her why she lived there at all.

“I think she always felt threatened.” Her eyes glimmered a little as she said it. “I think she always suspected there was something going on between Don and me.” Then she laughed with a quick snort and covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Can you imagine? Don was like, my father.” And then she stopped laughing just as quickly. Her brief flash of humor stifled by something inside her. She took a sip of her beer and said, “You’re a nice guy, aren’t you?”

It was more a statement than a question, and it caught me off guard. I shrugged again and realized how silly it made me look. Like a child frightened of getting caught in a lie, I shook my head and mumbled, “I don’t know.”

“Shy too,” she grinned, her eyes boring into me over the top of her plastic cup. Her blue irises glowing from some inner fuel source. Hope? Determination? Something more complex? After a long pause, she said, “Yeah, you’re a nice guy. There aren’t too many of you out there. A girl knows one when she sees one.”

“Like pornography,” I laughed and immediately cringed inside. I’d spoken without thinking, trying to be clever and outsmarting myself. I talked fast, trying to explain myself. “You know, Potter Stewart, the Supreme Court Justice? He said he couldn’t describe pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. So that’s, you know, a lawyer joke … I guess.” I could feel my confidence withering rapidly, but I kept talking, as if more words could cover up my stupidity. “You know, whenever someone says they know it when they see it.”

She waited for me to run out of steam, tilting her head to one side, the glow in her eyes sharpening a little, revealing a steely, cautious intelligence. Finally, she said, “I know it when I see it too.” She waited, watching me. I could feel my face getting hot with embarrassment and anger at myself. When she spoke, her voice was nearly a whisper. “Pornography, I mean. I don’t have any trouble spotting it.”

I watched her cross her legs, my eyes darting uncontrollably between them to see if I could catch a glimpse of anything. Pupils drawn like ball bearings to a magnet. She had me trapped. I felt like I used to feel, as a teenager, as a college kid, flustered and flushed and incapacitated whenever thoughts of sex combined with close proximity to beauty. I wanted to leave and to stay at the same time. I was thirteen again, alone at the dance, looking for an excuse to leave even when the girl I wanted most was asking me onto the floor.

“You don’t have to get all shy.” She smiled. “God, a girl mentions pornography and you’d think the world had come to an end.” She slid off the desk and walked toward me. “There’s nothing wrong with pornography, Ollie.” She said as she went by. “It’s just sex. Everyone does it.” She paused beside me and smiled up at me. Her face was close and my stomach tightened. “It’s no big deal.” She grinned, the twinkle back in her eye, the playfulness back in her voice.

“I know,” I said, in faint protest that sounded like I didn’t have any idea what she was getting at.

She shook her empty cup next to her face and said, “I need more beer. How ‘bout you?”

Out in the hallway a thick-jawed guy in a tight black T-shirt was going by and stopped when he saw us. “Hey Bree, what’s up?” His voice was deep and dripping with testosterone.

“Same as always,” she said.

The guy looked at me and stuck out his hand. “I’m Todd.” He had a strong grip. I introduced myself, my eyes tracing the outline of his pecks beneath his shirt. He looked like he lived in a gym. I could see the top of a tattoo poking out through the neck of his shirt. Something that looked like fire. Todd winked at me and said, “She’s as good as they come, ain’t she?”

Brianna put her hand on his chest and pushed him lightly, in a way intended to be playful but belying an irritation. “F*ck you, Todd,” she said, as she started to walk away.

He laughed and nodded. “I will, baby. Next week.” Then he pointed to me as he started walking down the hall to the pool room. “Keep her warm for me, buddy.”

“What was that about?” I asked.

Her façade of humor rested on a foundation of anger and mild disgust. She looked up at me like I was crazy. Like my question couldn’t possibly be serious. She must have concluded it wasn’t because she turned and walked out into the main room without answering. I followed her, wondering if I’d somehow made her angry. And then I wondered why I was so concerned, why I wanted her attention, what I was doing there at all, and why I didn’t just leave.

She stopped and talked to a cluster of women, all of whom looked more or less like her, some more haggard than others. I made my way to the keg and watched the group of them. I made my way though an entire cup of beer in less than five minutes, still watching them.

They all laughed together, all turned and pointed at other people in the room, said casual hellos to people passing by. But Brianna was apart from them, somehow; she had a quality they lacked. I doubted she was any younger, or if she was, it was only slight. It was a presence she had, an inner charisma that made me want to look at her more than the others. Star power, I suppose it’s called.

And I wasn’t the only one looking. I glanced around the room and saw other men watching her as well. And above us all, still in her lonely spot in the loft, Tiffany Vargas tracked Brianna’s movements with the precision of a circling hawk.

I was pumping up the keg to refill my cup when Brianna turned and walked over. She smiled at the motion of my hand, moving the slide of the pump up and down. “You’re pretty good at that,” she winked. “You must practice a lot.”

“Cute,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she smiled, filling her cup, “A lot of guys do that with their hands when I’m around. I’m totally used to it.”

Her humor was back, but infused with more overt sexuality. As if vulgarity could overcome whatever had bothered her in the hallway by drowning it out and making it seem like a joke that didn’t really refer to her as a human being, but merely to some persona she took out and wore for the amusement of others.

I was about to speak again when the room was split by a sonic hiss and shriek that severed the music and left a ringing silence in its wake. There was a swell of surprise and heads turned to the center of the room. I noticed for the first time that the deck out back was dark and the glow of the city shimmered in the night below the house.

“Sorry everyone,” a curly-haired guy with a microphone said in the center of the room. He waved a hand and stifled an embarrassed grin. “I guess this thing works after all.” His magnified voice boomed through the room, followed by a shrill hiss of feedback.

He pointed at the projector and said, “We all know why we’re here today. We all knew Don Vargas. He gave a lot of us our first breaks in the business.”

I looked around the room at the nodding heads. There was a somber murmur of agreement in the air. The man with the microphone went on. “Well, even Don Vargas started somewhere, and, with the help of Gino,” he motioned to an old guy sitting on a sofa beside the projector, “we’ve been able to find out exactly where.”

There were a few hoots in the room as the guy went on. “Now, we haven’t watched this, so we don’t know how it’s gonna look. But Gino tells me this is Don’s very first movie. Shot in, what was it?” he asked, his words trailing away from the microphone. Gino said something. “1976,” the guy repeated. “If someone could get the lights.” A few seconds later the room went dark.

A large square of light appeared on the wall as the reel began to tick with a projector noise I hadn’t heard since middle school. The room fell strangely quiet as a few splashes of pink, overexposed frames flashed on the wall. Then there was a burst of noise from the projector—synthesizers and an electric bass—and the image of an open stretch of PCH, with the ocean on the left side of the picture, came into view.

A red, 1960s Triumph came speeding down the road and passed the camera. Then it cut to a blonde woman on the side of the road with a suitcase. She was wearing high heels, cutoff jeans, and a halter top—hardly good traveling clothes—and her suitcase looked like something she found in her grandfather’s basement. A second later, the car came into view and stopped to pick her up. The curly-haired driver wearing oversized sunglasses said, “I been waiting to give you a ride,” and grinned.

The woman tossed her suitcase in the car and climbed over the door, into the passenger’s seat. “That’s good, cuz I could use a good, hard, ride.” The woman tried a throaty whisper, spacing out the words, but it was too ludicrous to take seriously. The Triumph peeled out in the gravel on the roadside and drove off. Somebody behind me hooted in the darkness. Another person yelled something about an Academy Award.

Then the Triumph pulled into the parking lot of a motel I’d seen before. A wide shot of the car stopping beneath the awning showed the sign—Starlight Motel—with the same pastel pink and green paint as the picture in Pete Stick’s office. Then I saw the same young version of Pete Stick, standing behind the desk in the motel lobby as the driver went inside.

Pete Stick looked up from a newspaper and said, “Can I help you?” Even these simple words came out with the hideous halted quality of a really bad actor.

“Yeah,” the driver grinned, looking back at the woman in the car. “My wife and I are on vacation. Our honeymoon. Got any rooms?” Pete peered around the guy at the car, with an expression that was supposed to be comical. It was funny, but not for its intended reason.

Then the camera switched to the inside of a generic, low-end motel room. A queen bed with an ugly gold blanket on it. The walls were a similar shade of pastel green. The most original touch was the sconce lights on the wall on either side of the bed that were shaped like seahorses with lampshades above their heads. The two weary travelers came in through the door. She tossed the suitcase on the floor and peeled off her halter top, exposing large, natural breasts that jiggled in a way most of them don’t anymore.

They started going at it. The film abandoned any pretense of a storyline. The room started filling with cackles of laughter. There was a derisive tone to it. I was in a room full of professionals, critiquing an inferior product from a previous generation.

“My God,” the guy next to me said, “these camera angles are horrible.”

But even with the mockery, it was still arousing. I drained my beer and watched the familiar pattern unfold. First the woman went down on the guy, her mouth over his flaccid penis, bringing it erect. There was so much hair everywhere, you really couldn’t see much until she pulled her mouth off of his oversized, swollen dick. It was surprisingly long as she took her mouth away, and someone in the room shouted, “Whoa! Deep throat!”

Then the cutoffs came off—no underwear—and revealed a wide muff of deep pubic hair that no woman in her twenties would be caught dead with today. The room erupted with catcalls, whistles, and someone yelling, “I’ll go get some hedge clippers.” The man in the film performed the obligatory cunnilingus on her, but between the hair and the inept camera work, there was nothing to see. The guy beside me guffawed and shook his head at the pitiful technical defects.

I poured myself another beer as the couple made their way through a few positions. Sixty-nine, doggie, and a couple of things that looked unnatural and uncomfortable. I made my way through half the beer as the woman got on top of him, leaning forward, grabbing a seahorse light, with the other hand flat against the wall. She bounced up and down, harder and faster by the second. It went on and on for several minutes. The camera moved around like it was unsure exactly where to look. I thought she was going to rip the flimsy light right off the motel wall.

I finished my beer as the movie finished. The woman suddenly leaped off the guy and went down on him again for the big finale, smiling as he came all over her face, like it was just the best damned thing in the world.

Then the wall went white again as the film ended without any closing credits. Not that many would want to take credit for it. The lights came back on and people applauded. I looked around and noticed that Tiffany Vargas had disappeared from her place at the railing.

Slowly, voices began to talk again. Then the music came back on with a burst of noise, as though someone had paused an iPod while the film was on and had simply hit “play” again. Brianna turned to me and smiled. “That was pretty funny. Those old hairdos and clothes.”

I mumbled something and then added, “I guess Tiffany didn’t like it much.” I motioned up at the empty railing. “She left.”

Brianna said, “She’s really emotional lately, for obvious reasons, I suppose. She seems to think everyone’s out to get her. She’s become really secretive.”

“How so?”

“She’s pretty much stopped talking to people. She’s been fighting with Ed constantly for the last couple of days. A lot of it has to do with money and who’s going to run the business. I’ve been trying to stay out of it.” She grinned. “Fly below the radar, you know. But like I said, with Don gone, I gotta get out of here. Tiffany never really liked me anyway.”

I drank another beer. Then got another. Then we went out on the deck overlooking the city lights. My head was starting to float on my shoulders and, as we passed the roaring gas grill near the edge of the pool, I realized I hadn’t eaten anything. I started to think about work and getting up Monday morning, and I began to wonder if the party was ever going to end. Then I took another look around—these people’s whole lives were a party.

Brianna came up beside me as I leaned against the railing, staring out at the lights of downtown, the cluster of skyscrapers that sparkled like jeweled matchboxes in the distance. “Helluva view,” I said.

“It’s better from the upper deck. There’s no bushes around you, it’s like you’re floating in the sky.” I felt her take my hand and lead me back into the house. Her flesh was warm and incredibly soft. We went in through the French doors, into the room with the pink pool table, into the hallway, and then turned up some stairs I hadn’t noticed before.

I stumbled on one of the steps and splashed beer on the carpet. “Oh, shit,” I mumbled.

“Don’t worry about it,” she laughed, “this whole place is covered with one kind of liquid or another.”

I was bent over, leaning on the stair she was standing on, and looked up at her. I reached over for my plastic cup without looking, and accidentally grabbed her bare ankle. The skin of her lower leg was so smooth and firm, my face must have registered shock. I pulled my hand away as if from something hot, and she grinned down at me with a look of surprise and pity, as if she couldn’t quite decide what to do with me.

“Sorry,” I said, as a mixture of desire and fear came over me. She saw it in my eyes and her smile widened.

“For what?” she tilted her head as she spoke, and then leaned over and took my hand. The flash of breasts down the front of her dress as she bent over caused a kind of panic inside me as she led me by the hand up the rest of the stairs and down a long corridor.

As we went down the hallway, she turned to me and put a finger to her lips, urging quiet. We padded over the thick carpet, past several doorways that opened into bedrooms and bathrooms. Turning a corner, I looked into one room and caught a flash of Tiffany Vargas hunched in a chair in the corner of her bedroom holding a small wooden box in her lap. All I could see was that she was crying.

We made it to another corner and turned again, I spoke in a drunken whisper, “Where are we going?”

Brianna turned back toward me, laughing, but keeping quiet. Then she whispered, “The view. Trust me, it’s great up here.”

I wasn’t even sure what side of the house we were on anymore until she ducked through a doorway and into a large bedroom with a sitting area. We were in one of the south corners of the house. At one end of the room was an entryway that led into a dressing area, with another room beyond. At the other end were more French doors, leading out to a veranda with unobstructed views to the south and west.

“Nice room,” I said. “It looks like a suite at a Four Seasons.”

She smiled and said, “This is my room.” Then she turned and crossed to the doors, opened them, and stepped out into the night air.

I finished my beer and set it on a table she had next to a black leather Eames lounge chair. There was a book spread open on the table. I caught the title: The Rise of the Network Society. I figured she either liked to impress people, or she liked to hide from them. I was leaning toward the latter, which only magnified the question: what was I doing there?

I followed her out on the deck. She was right. The view was incredible. The party continued on the deck and around the pool below us, but we were alone and removed from the fray. I stood beside her. She leaned some of her weight against me and crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing her bare triceps.

She said, “It’s getting cold out here.”

I didn’t get it at first. I stood there, my head sagging with the weight of too many drinks, mesmerized by the billions of glittering lights suspended in the darkness. Then she said it again, rubbed her arms some more, and leaned a little more weight against me.

Without thinking about it much, I got behind her and put my arms around her, hands rubbing the goose-bumped bareness of her upper arms. She leaned back against me. The smell of her hair and the solid curves of her back and thighs and ass against me were overwhelming. I put my arms across the front of her, I could feel those breasts, separated from me by only a millimeter of cloth. She squirmed slightly, her entire body a sexual instrument.

I looked down at the people around the pool and wondered what they would think if they looked up and saw us there, leaning against the railing, sinking into our self-absorbed abandonment. And the thought reminded me of the night before, leaning against the wall on the beach, staring up at Ben Cross and that woman, being thankful for the moment that Liz hadn’t been there.

Brianna seemed to sense my sudden burst of rational thought. She turned to face me, her entire body so close, I was nearly lost again. “What is it?” she whispered.

“Nothing.” I shook my head. I wanted her, though I was still unsure if she wanted me, if that was exactly where this was heading. But my brain began to spin, and the lights and the party noise spun right along with it. “I’m not feeling well,” I said. Even in my state, I managed to avoid mentioning Liz. “I would love to stay a little longer, but I’m afraid I won’t be any good to anyone. I might even be sick.”

I let go of her and backed away a couple steps. I rubbed my face and found a hot sweat there. She came toward me with concern on her face. “Maybe you should lie down.”

“No,” I said, and turned to go. Suddenly worried about it being late, and having to get up for work in the morning. My mind racing with a million reasons why it was inconvenient to stay there, why I simply had to leave, immediately.

And I did. I left her there on the deck and made my way out of the house. My entire body was overcome with heat as I crossed the driveway and headed down the edge of Mulholland toward my car. I filled my lungs with the night air, trying to cool myself down, but my vision grew spotty from the heat and movement.

Moments later, I was leaning against my car, trying to put the key in the door. Then I was clinging to it, trying to stay upright, the evening’s consumption gurgling back up my throat and across the black paint of the car door. I heaved over and over, my insides spastic with the need to get the entire night out of me. And when it finally stopped, that swift clarity that follows a violent sickness came over me. I hung loosely against the door, my entire body slack against the car, breathing heavy. Suddenly cool and clammy, but clam.

Then I felt hands on my shoulders and heard a voice. “Whoa there, son. You wanna get yourself killed? Or worse? You in no condition to do any kind of driving.”

I turned to see the black man, the gate keeper, grinning at me and shaking his head. He took the keys from my hand. I didn’t fight him for them. “I got a phone in the office,” he motioned back behind him with his thumb, toward the tiny gatehouse. “I’ll call you a cab. You can thank me for saving your life someday.”