Golden Orange Read online

  Her hair was the color of melted butterscotch, streaked with golden highlights, like that last halo before sunrise he used to see from his boat when he was bobbing level with the horizon. Before that bitch Tammy took his sloop and anything else with a salvage value.

  The woman at the bar might as well have been wrapped in razor wire, she looked so unapproachable. She smoked, and sipped something that looked like an Americano. Winnie knew he was blasted when he heard himself blurt, “I used to have a twenty-nine-foot sloop. She was Danish, a double-ender with a canoe stern. A production boat, glass, but sweet. Once I was sitting in her cockpit at four A.M. And … Do you know that water boils at a higher temperature at sea level?”

  “I only know about water in my kitchen,” she said. Smiling!

  “Anyways,” Winnie continued, “the coffee was very hot. The sun was beyond the curvature of the earth but getting ready to rise at the stern. I put my coffee down and watched this light start at the horizon. And there were these cottonball clouds so heavy you couldn’t star-sight. The clouds were so full in that breeze, well, the fan spread and it sorta backlit the clouds. That’s the way it must a looked before there were continents. The light, it was something like ... it was like the color a your hair. Well, I jist wanted to tell you that.”

  She was really smiling now, not the way a beautiful woman usually smiles at a drunk. He had lots of experience in such matters. She smiled like she meant it, with those wide vermilion lips of hers!

  “My name’s Tess Binder.” She held out her hand and he took it. She was strong.

  “I’m a sucker for women that shake hands like a man,” he said.

  She chuckled. Like wind chimes! She said, “That’s flattering. I guess.”

  “I don’t know why I said all that. I don’t know why I told you about the sun backlighting the clouds. It’s like when you’ve seen something like that, you can’t take life’s other crap too seriously. And I took a lot of it today.”

  She was looking him over, but subtly. Still, she was looking at him. Winnie was dressed better than usual: a Reyn Spooner aloha shirt designed inside out for that faded look, Levi jeans bleached nearly white, Sperry Top-Siders. Suddenly, he wished he was wearing socks. Were his ankles cruddy?

  “Is it something you’d like to talk about?” she asked, causing Winnie to nod to the ever-alert saloonkeeper, who fixed two drinks before they could change their minds.

  “I went to court today,” Winnie said.

  “And what happened?”

  That was strange. She didn’t say, “Traffic Court?” or “Divorce Court?” She was looking at him like she knew.

  “I’m the guy that hijacked the ferry,” Winnie said.

  “Did he mind?”

  “F-E-R-R-Y. The boat.”

  Wind chimes again! “I knew what you were talking about,” she confessed. “I get silly when I drink these.”

  “You knew? How?”

  “I saw your picture in the paper. You’re the ferryboat skipper. So what did you get from the judge?”

  “You saw my picture? You a reporter?”

  “I came here partly because of the article. This is a place I’ve been wanting to see. Everyone I know’s been here once or twice.”

  “Probation. I got probation. You read about me, huh?” They were quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Yacht club. You belong to the yacht club, I bet.” He moved his leg until the knee of his jeans was just touching her pants.

  “Wrong. The other club.”

  He was disappointed. She looked like old money. Then she pleased him by saying, “My grandfather was commodore at the yacht club many years ago. I grew up there but I’ve always hated boats. I joined my club because nobody cares about boats. They just own them. Huge ones.”

  “Whadda they do at your club?”

  She shrugged. “Aerobics class. Dinner sometimes. Lie on the beach. Gossip. Drink.”

  He’d never seen a serious drinker order Americanos. Campari reminded him of the cough medicine he got drunk on in Nam when it was all he could get.

  “So you read about me and you came here to have a look?”

  “I admit I’m curious about you, Mister Farlowe, and …”

  “Win.”

  “… and you seem an extraordinarily colorful character. I hoped I might see you. I like unusual people.”

  She hadn’t said, “You seemed like a colorful character.” She talked the way they did on Masterpiece Theater! With an English accent, she could be called Beryl or Elspeth! Winnie felt de-boned. This woman was turning him to jelly. But she’d probably call it jam or marmalade. Masterpiece Theater!

  “Whatever your reason,” Winnie said, “I’m jist glad you came. You look like a Daphne or Sybil, but I like Tess. In fact, I’m crazy about the name.”

  Tess Binder took a cigarette from her purse, and Winnie searched the bartop for a match. She lit it with a gold lighter.

  Winnie looked apologetically at the wormy ship timbers holding up the oppressively low ceiling. The walls were padded from the floor at least six feet up so the drunks didn’t get hurt when they stumbled against (or were knocked against) the bulkheads. A post in the middle of the room was wrapped by three-strand hemp. There were obligatory nautical maps on the walls, and nets, and wooden blocks and ship lanterns. A huge outrigger hung from the ceiling, and someone had stuck a bobble-head doll at the prow. The doll wore an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap.

  Life preservers bearing the names of World War II fighting ships hung on the walls, as did an old Mae West, supposedly retrieved from the U.S.S. Arizona when Spoon was transported to a hospital after being wounded during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

  In short, it was the kind of waterfront saloon where members of yacht clubs might drink or shoot snooker with dory fishermen and boatyard roustabouts. The bumper sticker over the bar alluded to the kind of rogue Republicanism practiced by the Orange County working class. They were pro-choice all right. In fact, they favored free abortions for every welfare mother in the country. The bumper sticker said: ABORT A FETUS, KILL A DEMOCRAT.

  “What’re you going to do now?” Tess asked. “Got another job?”

  “Oh, that ferry gig was jist part time. I have a Coast Guard license and they needed somebody during the holidays, so …”

  Her teeth were the most perfect he’d ever seen up close. Rich people’s teeth. And she had those cheekbones. Did rich women get them the same way they got those teeth? he thought boozily.

  “The newspaper said you’re an ex-policeman.”

  “Medical retirement. Bad back. Fifteen a my best years I gave them.”

  “The pension isn’t enough to live on, is it?”

  “I gotta work. Besides, I wanna work. I’m still young.”

  “Forty,” she said. “The article was very revealing.”

  This woman was interested in him! He felt his goddamn pump starting to miss beats again. The scary heart business had started when he was just weeks from facing the hanging judge: two beats off every sixty.

  “I think I gotta cut down on my worries,” he said, massaging his chest.

  “You feeling okay?”

  “The court appearance. It was … stressful.”

  He could feel the sweat break out on his forehead. He really wasn’t feeling that well. Tonight of all nights, when his miserable luck was changing for the better!

  “Perhaps you ought to get a good night’s sleep,” Tess Binder said, snuffing out her cigarette. “After what you’ve been through.”

  She was leaving! And now his pump was firing on every fourth stroke, and there was a fire in the engine room!

  “I like this place,” she said. “I’ll be back.” She smiled for the last time and floated away from him. He thought he heard wind chimes as she drifted through the doorway.

  Winnie remembered a photo he’d once seen of a blond model with twin Borzois on a double leash: elegant leggy animals with long aristocratic Balkan noses. The dogs looked like Marlene Dietrich, and
the woman was like this one. He took a quarter off the bar to play Tony Bennett’s version of “Sophisticated Lady.”

  A roar went up as Carlos Tuna’s turtle, Regis, got cheered on by a small group at the other end of the bar. The reptile had stopped racing and had mounted Bilge O’Toole’s Irma. Regis was gasping open-mouthed and struggling to find his way inside Irma’s armor plate.

  Bilge was in the corner crying in his beer with a rich guy from Bay Island who never should have said, “What’s wrong tonight, Bilge?”

  Bilge didn’t know about the ravishing of Irma until the cheering started. When he saw it he roared like a sea lion, and Spoon had to scramble over the bar to break up a brawl.

  Winnie got up, staggered to the men’s room, splashed cold water on his face, but felt no better. By the time he got back to the stool, Bilge was drinking alone, twisting his patchy hair into dreadlocks, wailing, “You okay, Irma?” to the turtle, who was sound asleep in a puddle of spilled beer.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Spoon mumbled to Winnie, who paid his tab and listed unsteadily, still rubbing his chest.

  “I don’t feel so good. My pump. It’s like, missing beats!” Winnie said. “That’s scarier than Dan Quayle!”

  “Well, I can’t help you with that,” Spoon said, droning. “I’m busy as the beach master on D-Day. I can’t be worryin about turtles gettin boffed and I can’t fix bum tickers, okay? Do you understand what I’m sayin?”

  Guppy, whom one of the snooker-playing cops had outlined in chalk while she snoozed on the bartop, suddenly lifted her head from her arms and cried: “Of course there’s something wrong, Winnie! You’re drunk, you dummy!”

  Spoon decided to pop for a musical freebie and actually put a quarter of his own into the ancient Wurlitzer, beating out a spoon-fed accompaniment to Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea.”

  When Winnie lurched out of the saloon that night, he heard Guppy cry out to the sleeping she-turtle: “I got boffed and left on the beach! I know what it’s like! How was it for you? Did the earth move or what? Did it, Irma?”

  5

  Star-crossed Lovers

  The invitation to “The Champagne Brunch and Fashion Show” carried a suggestion of “Big Apple attire.” The Big Apple had come to The Golden Orange! Which meant that there were a lot of women wearing red or black, and everybody hoped to be described as either chic or sophisticated, this on the southwestern edge of North America, where, despite some of the most expensive residential property in the nation, only a few of the most chic and sophisticated restaurants suggested jackets for gentlemen. At its most formal, The Golden Orange dress code mirrored the Costa del Sol in summer, but ordinarily, Pago Pago casual was okay. The gentlemen’s dress code just about anyplace on the Gold Coast was: shoes, and a shirt with a collar. The salespeople in shops and department stores pay no attention whatsoever to how a customer is dressed. But they can spot a $10,000 Swiss watch faster than anyone this side of Zurich. They address themselves to a customer’s wrist.

  The afternoon fund-raiser suggesting the Big Apple duds had Tess Binder agonizing, but she settled on a persimmon and white nautical jacket with braided trim and brass buttons, over a white skirt. She’d worn the outfit two or three times and hoped anyone who’d be there wouldn’t have seen her in it. She couldn’t remember where she’d worn it last and worried that it made her look heavier. Tess wore only a size six, but there was a time when she wore a four. The years were tumbling by so fast, Tess couldn’t even remember when the hell it was that she went to a six! She’d begun perspiring even before putting on the jacket. Oddly enough, when she thought of Win Farlowe it calmed her.

  Tess got stuck in a traffic jam on MacArthur Boulevard, caused by a two-car fender bender. Traffic in this, the fastest-growing area in America, was increasing at a terrifying clip. And everywhere Tess looked there were brand-new high-rise towers of tinted glass and steel. Tess Binder was surrounded by unimaginable wealth and awesome economic power. Driving to the brunch, she felt lost in a wilderness of looming dark towers.

  The fashion show raised a good deal of money that afternoon, but for Tess it was a disaster. She lusted for the pantsuits and capes, and the “little dresses with big impact,” but prices for virtually nothing were starting at about $1,000, and one jacket she adored went for $15,000.

  The women looked thinner because so many were wearing black. Fuller lips were definitely in: big swollen pouters, sometimes obtained by collagen injections or even fat cell transplants for more permanence. The fat cells were often siphoned from the fanny and funneled into the lips, which seemed ironically appropriate to the Gold Coast daddies who footed the bill. Most of the women just got the bee-stung effect by applying lipstick liner and matching lipstick, set by matte brushed powder, thus making themselves look poutier than John McEnroe. What with all the Manhattan black and blood-puddle red and swollen lips, the hot mommas resembled a coven of vampires.

  At table number one were the Woodcrests. Morton Wood-crest wasn’t just “seven-one-four” rich—the dialing code for Orange County and title of a name-dropping local publication—he was “F.F.H.” rich, 292nd in Forbes’ 400. Tess thought that his wife, Zoe, was no longer just willowy, but so emaciated her spine jutted into her dress like a string of beads. Before Morton settled on his fifth wife, half the hot mommas at the club looked like Cambodian refugees because Morton liked them thin.

  The brunch itself was so uninspired, everyone was bitching. The Arts Society had the gall to serve Belgian waffles, which anyone could get at Denny’s all day. The fact that these waffles were served with strawberries and cream and cold curried chicken made matters worse. That combination had been déclassé for ten years. And the domestic champagne was simply undrinkable.

  Everyone just knew that something as trite as Norwegian salmon poached in a tarragon beurre blanc would be next, and they were right! They could at least have served something simple and light, maybe some grilled trout with braised fennel. The Golden Orange hadn’t seen such sneers and eye rolling since a consortium headed by eastern Jews had moved in on the biggest land development in the area.

  The whispered reminder that the proceeds from the fashion show and champagne brunch were for “the arts” impressed no one. When you’re limited to a thousand calories a day, you’d better be offered more than waffles and lox. Most of the hot mommas managed only a few forkfuls of watercress and shiitake mushrooms.

  There were, however, a lot of happy Mexican busboys and dishwashers who later loaded up on leftovers and guzzled champagne from opened bottles. Though most of them agreed with the hot mommas that the bubbly wasn’t much. Couldn’t touch Dos Equis, Corona, or any beer from Baja.

  After Tess got home that afternoon, she poured herself a diet cola and sat barefoot on her patio, on the ghetto side of the island, facing Pacific Coast Highway. She promised herself she’d never go to another fashion show unless she could afford any silly goddamn piece of New York or Paris or Tokyo trash that struck her fancy. Tess Binder had never felt so poor.

  Valium calmed her sufficiently to pick up the telephone.

  The ten o’clock news had already dealt with the shoot-out in Laguna Beach by the time Buster Wiles arrived at Spoon’s Landing. It was the first fatal shooting involving Newport Beach policemen in more than ten years.

  Guppy Stover lifted her old gray head from her folded arms and greeted him with, “Hey, I saw you on TV. Goddamn killer!” Then she yawned and shut her eyes.

  Knowing how Buster counted calories, Spoon put a glass of light beer on the bar, but Buster said, “We been shootin people all day and whadda I get? Light beer?” Buster was trying to look jaunty but his hands were shaking. “Gimme a Wild Turkey,” he said. “Neat.”

  Winnie Farlowe spotted Buster from his table across the saloon where he’d been watching the Lakers on the big screen. Winnie got up and joined the big cop at the bar.

  “Saw your little trauma drama on the news,” Winnie said. “What the hell you doing down there in
Laguna anyways?”

  “Man, you got off the job just in time,” Buster said. “Guy had an Uzi! I was looking up at death!”

  Guppy Stover popped up again, smoothing her trademark evening gloves and adjusting her red velvet hair ribbon. “What’d it look like?” she asked Buster. “Death?”

  “An Uzi,” Buster said to his drink. “Looks like an Uzi.”

  Unable to visualize an Uzi, Guppy closed her eyes again. Bored and drunk.

  Buster Wiles bared his shockingly white teeth and squinted through one heavily lashed violet eye when he held Spoon’s bucket glass up to the light. Satisfied that it was moderately clean, he settled onto the barstool and reached under his L.A. Raiders warm-up jacket to adjust the ride of his shoulder holster.

  He was forty-four, but still had the iron-pumping build he’d cultivated when he won the surfing competition in Huntington Beach in 1966 before going to Nam. And he’d lost very little of his coppery mane to middle age. The present-day surfers said that Buster wasn’t too hot on a board anymore, but he still had pick-of-the-litter when he felt like making an appearance at any of the surfing events in Orange County. One of the reasons the department had taken Buster off motors, according to police scuttlebutt, was because in a uniform with helmet and boots, he had women of all ages intentionally cruising through red lights just to get stopped by the hunk with violet eyes. They called him “Gideon” Wiles, he’d been in so many hotel rooms.

  “So what happened down there, Buster?” asked Winnie.

  Buster let out a vaporous sigh that seemed to enervate his mean-looking body. Then he said, “Soledad Sam, ever run into him when you were on the job?”

  Winnie shook his head and Buster said, “Call him Soledad ’cause he’s got this tattoo of Soledad Prison on his shoulder. Anyways, he’s this little speed tweaker, like our snitch. Spends his time in low-life meth labs breathin more ether fumes than all the patients at Hoag Hospital put together. Uses meth and other dirtbag drugs. But our snitch tells us Soledad Sam’s been hired to transport a key of cocaine from this apartment house in Laguna Beach to a hotel up by John Wayne Airport. I mean, this little ratfucker’s gonna be trusted with a key!”