The guy pauses, waiting for Lois to respond.
"So?" she says.
"That boy-next-door look is, uh, really nice to see. And he's so young, too. When he sings he seems so, uh, smart and experienced, and yet he can't be much over, what, sixteen?"
"You want to talk, talk. You want to ask questions, find a school."
"Wait, I... Sorry, I just wanted to know if he maybe... like, if he needed an older friend to help him, you know...."
Lois plays it real easy. She's certain the guy is no plant, because he's one of the regulars. And she's not unsympathetic to his problem, because she and he both know that Older Friends meeting young men to Help is the reason for Thriller Jill's in the first place. The entertainment and socializing are fun, but the sex is what's true.
Still, Lois hates it when they try to use her to get to the Kid, or even to the hustlers. It's like getting touched. It's taking more than they got a right to.
"I'm a barkeep and a dyke," she tells the man. "I'm not a pimp. Got it?"
He nods and moves away as one of the bartenders signals to Lois—the law is here—and the lights go down for the show. Lois pats her envelope pocket and hits the street.
Nothing is said at these transactions. No one ventures an opinion—even, apparently, has one. It's not a matter of attitude. It's a matter of fact: If you're outlaw, you pay off. You pay in full, on time, and without a face. No expression. Don't provoke them. Think of it as Other Side tax. Think of it as a bank deposit without the hello. Some cops joke it around a little, especially when they see a woman. Lois's cops don't say anything. They just sit in their unit and the guy in the shotgun seat takes the dough and that's it.
Tax. Lois thinks, Everybody pays it somewhere along the line. Your gender. Your race. Your looks. Moving up in business, you'll pay certain kinds of tax. Your wife and kids and mortgage—that's a tax, too. That's a "Don't hate me, I'm like everybody else" tax.
Back in Jill's, Lois stands against the bar during the entertainment, as always admiring how easily Jo-Jo creates a wholly different show every night by varying his jokes and bouncing off the news.
"It seems that F.D.R. left Harry S. two sealed letters," Jo-Jo is telling them, "the first to be opened in grave need and the second in gravest need. So there was the railroad strike, and Harry opens the first letter. It reads, 'Blame it on me.' So everything's fine. Then Miss Alger Hiss comes to trial."
A few titters.
"Communists and pumpkins and it's terribly embarrassing for Harry. So he opens the second letter. It reads, 'Start writing two letters....'"
Well, they laugh. But, shit, they're not here for Jo-Jo's views on newspaper stuff. They want him way over the fence, with the secret words and the jokes nobody else gets. And they want the Kid, because he's a looker. Even Lois kind of felt a little something, watching him in the vest. He had oiled his chest, too, the sneak.
The Kid's doing a lot of nostalgia tonight: "Let's Do It," "Lucky in Love," "Make-Believe." Are they really listening to him, or are they just watching, drinking him in? The all-American looks with the busy green eyes: Everybody loves a scamp. Anyway, they know what's good around here, and the Kid knows he's it.
Larken's here, too, Lois notices—the only regular she truly likes. Strange guy. He doesn't hustle, he's too young to be a john, and his style's too jam for a queen. He's like the nice-looking young guy in a war movie who gets blown up about reel three. Sandy hair, slim, smart-looking. Remember high school? Larken was the boy you pretended to be crazy about when what you really wanted was for Mary Beth Taggert the Head Cheerleader to rub against you, saying, "How about I eat your muff?"
As the show ends and the lights come up—about thirty-five seconds late because the bartenders are asleep again—Lois joins Larken at his table.
"What do you say, my friend?" is her opening.
"Hi, Lois. Dandy show."
"With Bob Hope and that Dead End Kid of a Buddy Clark, how can I go wrong?"
Larken smiled. "You always tear down whatever you build."
"What do I build?" Lois caught the eye of one of the bartenders and cocked her head at Larken. The bartender nodded.
"You've got a whole little world in here," said Larken. "Self-contained. Neat-like."
Desmond the pianist shuffled by in hunt of praise. Larken waved at him, and Desmond asked, "Did you like the Jeanette-Nelson medley? We worked so hard on it."
"I could tell. But you sneaked a little Jeanette-without-Nelson in at the end."
"The Love Parade!
" Desmond exulted. "You noticed! But life is one great parade of love, isn't it?"
The bartender put Larken's drink on the table, a glass of draft. Larken started to say something, but Lois made a quick gesture: You're welcome and say no more.
"Yes," Desmond went on. "Love parades through this bar. Now we sense it, now it's gone. It's just like music, because all of us respond to it, yet not all of us can sing."
Larken thought that over. "Desmond, that's... that's pretty deep."
"It's quite a thought," Desmond eagerly admitted. "It just came out of me." "Desmond, Desmond," said Larken, nearly laughing.
"Look," said Lois, "it isn't love parading through anywhere, because love is in hiding. As for this place—"
"It's a nice place," said Desmond. "They come from miles around."
"It's a joint," said Lois.
"The music and the fun," Desmond cited. "The jests and surprises of this bar."
Larken and Lois looked around: at the johns silently aching; at the glowering hustlers lined along the back wall; at the queens dishing everyone in sight, in history, in the imagination. This was the world. All it contained, besides your day job, and maybe your cover marriage, was here.
"It's a joint," Lois insisted. She turned to Larken. Her eyes said, Right?
"Well, yes, it's a joint," Larken agreed. "But a necessary joint."
Desmond, feeling ratified, wandered off.
Lois shrugged.
Larken shrugged, too, smiling at her.
"I wonder why you come here," Lois told him. "You're not like the others. You're too..."
"Uh-oh."
"No, it's not an insult. You're too gentle for this place. Look at them."
Lois nodded her head at the crowd, not taking her eyes off Larken.
"What do you see?" she asked him.
"My friends, I guess."
"Your
friends'?
The queens gabbing away there like exotic birds in some rain forest? And those saphead johns? Your friends? The hustle boys are your friends?"
"They're my kind, somehow or other."
"Christ."
"Well, why else are we all here? See, that's why you put on these shows for us. The comedy and song. Because we've got this... this thing in common."
"You could sell it, you know that? You're cute enough."
"Queens only go with trade, Lois. They want a handsome piece of trash."
She nodded. "You guys sure know how to make it tough on yourselves."
Larken nodded. "It's kind of hard to fall into step with each other when we're so invisible in the real world. I mean, how are we supposed to know who we are?"
"We aren't. That's why they call it the Other Side."
"They don't call it that.
We
do."
"Yeah." She looked at him pointedly. "Funny how that works out."
"So how do you get along, Lois? What's your story, anyway?"
"Yeah," she said. "Right," as she rose. "I'll tell you someday."
Derek Archer was satisfied with the stir he made when he took his first-ever visit backstage at Thriller Jill's. This is Hollywood, after all, and a star is a star, even a star as yet on the rise who'll still be a second-rater when and if he does get there. Jo-Jo played it smooth but grand, Desmond genuflected, and the Kid let the star pay him court. The Kid, after all, was the reason for Archer's visit in the first place, and the Kid knew it. You don't grow up constantly getting slurped by your cousins and rammed by your schoolmates without developing a certain perception about your marketability. You watch the eyes, read the codes. You begin to figure out that they are starving and you are cake.
The Kid has perfected a way of flirting that is not flirting, whereby he is dreamily attentive, technically fixed on you but drifting. He finds that it draws people closer to him, because while everyone is grateful for attention most of them are dying to know exactly
what kind
of attention they are getting. So the Kid gives them attention, but the kind is kept secret.
"I love your movies," Desmond was telling Archer. "They are so elegant and profound." Thrillers and weepies. "I wouldn't miss one, except for a death in the family."
"Which is your favorite?" Archer foolishly asked.
Desmond, stumped for a title, sweats for a bit till the Kid steps in for him.
"Who could choose?" the Kid says—confides, really, in a tone meant for one of those quiet little tables for two that he's always singing about.
"Don't
you
have a favorite?" Archer asked, moving closer.
"I don't have favorite movies. I have favorite people."
"That's so true of all of us!" Archer turned to his starlet date. "Isn't it?"
"Don't you think he has amazing eyes?"
"Some of us have favorite movies," Desmond put in, having thought of a Derek Archer film to praise:
It Happened in Monterey.
"Rather than favorite—"
"And what about his singing?" Archer, staring at the Kid, asked the starlet.
"Simplicity," said Archer. "Honesty. Youth. It's exciting to be around such talent in its... its beginning time. Uncompromised. Unmarked." "You sound like one of your posters, Hollywood," said Lois, striding up and eyeing each of them in turn, commanding Archer, warning the Kid, and, briefly, sifting the starlet, who sifted right back.
"Someone's been around the block, I see," Lois half muttered to the starlet. Then to Archer she said, "What's her name this week? Nippla? Muffina?"
The starlet guffawed.
"Lois, I am your convinced fan," Archer told her. "Oh, totally. Because I
love
this club," as he's taking her with an arm around the shoulders for a walk away from the others. Shit, another toucher.
While Lois's back is turned, the starlet smiles at the Kid, carefully holds a finger to her mouth—carefully, so that he will comprehend the advanced level of discretion that he is being asked to maintain, because this is very high-contract Hollywood and we don't want anything to go amiss, do we?—and whispers, "When do you get off?"
The starlet? But the Kid is game, because he is in his beginning time, and who knows where he might end, if he can only continue right.
"A little after two," the Kid tells her, his voice low.
"He'll send a car. Two blocks down the Boulevard.
That
way." She points. "What is that, east? Anyway, ask the driver for 'Mr. Nougat.'"
The Kid plays it easy, wry. "Mr. Nougat?"
The starlet shrugs. "His little joke, I guess."
"It suits him," says the Kid.
She had been turning to go; she stopped, one eye on Archer and Lois. "Careful what you say, you hear? Like, no irony. Got it, baby?"
"Irony. Lady, you're
literary.
Where've
you
been, huh?"
"Where? Toured by experts and coming home for a rest. Roger wilco?"
"And out."
Archer merrily signaled to the starlet, who told Lois as she passed, "Not Muffina. Latwata. Latwata B. Tasty."
"I'm free most afternoons," said Lois, playing along.
Archer cut in with "Oh, the atmosphere is so dense here. Dense. You know, I play a cabaretier in my next film,
Broadway Lullaby.
What a challenge, you're thinking. But that's why I love to come here. To breathe in the... Don't you think the color of the place," he asked the starlet, "is truly—but I mean sincerely now—
positive?"
"You—"
"It's so useful coming here, I can't tell you," Archer told Lois, and he and the starlet left.
Jo-Jo, who had witnessed, and relished, every detail, piped up with "He's one part Cary Grant and one part Audie Murphy, but who's the third part?"
"Ann Blyth," said Johnny. The Kid.
Lois grimaced and Jo-Jo made no-no fingers at Johnny.
"You know," says the Kid, "I only describe what everyone sees."
The black Duesenberg was waiting for Johnny, the capped chauffeur as stiff as an extra in the movies.
"I ask for Mr. Nougat," the Kid told him as he slid inside, describing rather than taking part in the espionage. He felt a bit less ridiculous that way.
The chauffeur said nothing the whole trip, never even glanced at the Kid through the rearview mirror.
That's okay, as long as you plush me. Do it to me, the works. Movie stars and limousines and a date with Mr. Nougat. Not bad for a kid from Placentia who spent high school sweating it out in the principal's office for being a wise guy when he wasn't being cornered by bullies.
Chauffeur's a sharp driver, too. Fleet but smooth. Derek Archer obviously hires right and pays well. That's good news.
Johnny the Kid, how old are you, really?
Well, that depends on who's counting. My mother, if she cared, would say, "Too old for his age." Precocious. You know, twelve going on Dorothy Parker.
Jo-Jo, who doesn't know everything, would guess, "Jailbait till the next remake of
Beau Geste."
Lois figured it out. "You're seventeen and don't tell me about it," she said. "And don't show me your doctored I.D.s. Just keep it clean for the cops,
versteh?"'
Keep it clean, sure, as I ride into the Hills for my dance with Mr. Nougat. Give a boy looks and moxie and he's going to keep it clean? What planet have you been living on? Because the Kid's going to make out, see? He's going all the way up there, see? Top of the world, Ma!
Exposure.
Meeting the kingpins. Oozing to the heights in a limo where a chauffeur knows the protocols and you're getting hot for your date with Mr. Nougat.