Free How Long Has This Been Going On by Ethan Mordden Page A

touch apologetically, "I liked it, too."
    Lois shrugged. "You've the right."
    "No, listen, Lois, you've got something here," Larken went on. "The Kid's working up his own style of act. Something new. He could easily have turned himself into another Mickey Rooney, the way they all do. But instead—"
    "What difference does it make?" Lois countered. "Look around and say what you see. A joint, huh? So who cares if we got Mickey Rooney or—"
    "You care. Because it would make the club more successful if the act became an attraction instead of part of the furniture, the way it is in every other club like this one. You could move to better quarters, maybe."
    "Huh. You mean, like, have a real place? Cross back over to—"
    "No, no! We need this place as it is, our place. But you could up the tariff a bit. Go a little Hollywood."
    "Business advice from Mormons, now," Lois told Elaine.
    "Mormons run a sound church, Lois," Larken told her with a smile. "It's just their sex that's problematical."
    "The imp is here," Lois announced, as the Kid pulled up at their table.
    "They liked the new song," the Kid said. "You heard them, Lois."
    "Larken liked it."
    "Yeah?" "I'd say you should turn your whole act around," Larken explained. "Build up the Contessa patter and do more of those old comedienne specialty numbers instead of the current hit parade."
    "Lois?" the Kid asked her.
    "Listen to him," said Lois, and Larken talked to the Kid while Lois talked to Elaine.
    "All right, like, first," said Lois, "where's Mr. Denslow?"
    "On the road."
    "What is he, Oklahoma!?"
    "A salesman."
    "Okay..."
    "I don't," Elaine began, and stopped. Then: "Please tell me, just... very directly... if I did the wrong thing... or, let's say, an impetuous thing... in coming here."
    Her defenses penetrated, Lois managed to force herself to grunt out, "I'm glad you came."
    "That's Dewey telling Truman, 'I'm glad you ran.'"
    "Shit," said Lois, "why can't I just be... Hell. Look, I really am, chick. Glad you're here. Question is, are you?"
    "I've never seen anything like it! Everyone's so interested in everyone else!"
    Meanwhile, Larken was giving the Kid a fast lecture in the discography of Sophie Tucker, Ruth Etting, and other top mamas of the torch-and-novelty-song circuit, and the Kid was drinking it in.
    "'My Friday Man Is Busy Saturday Night'?" he echoed. "Where can I get a copy?"
    "You'll have to get an arranger to take down a lead sheet from the record," said Larken. "This was specialty material, written on commission for the singer herself and never published."
    "How do you know so much about these dead songs?" the Kid asked him, genuinely curious.
    "I don't know. Listening and watching, I guess."
    "But this stuff is old. It's gone. Where did you find it? There isn't a club you can join, is there?"
    "I wish."
    Lois had some managing to do and the Kid had to get ready for the second show. Larken decided to go home early. Now that the music had stopped, he was back to confronting what was happening to him, getting arrested and looking toward a trial and being found guilty of his life. Anyway, he hadn't gotten much sleep last night.
    "Yes," said Lois. "Okay. Don't be..." What do you say in a case like this? "Look, it's your dues. It's dues we all have to pay."
    Lois was giving Elaine the details as Larken left; he turned and waved at them at the door, but it was a very depressed wave. It was funny how just being in Jill's could cheer him up, though he never put it to use the way everybody else seemed to, the johns morosely chatting with the hustlers, the queens sizing them up, and the hustlers making their deals. Twenty to twenty-five bucks was the going rate, and Larken usually had it to spare. But he didn't want sex with a stranger: He wanted love with a friend.
    It was after ten o'clock by the time Larken reached his semi-attached hacienda, Los Angeles's single-story equivalent to the urban apartment building. All he could think of was This New Trouble, and That