Free 86'd by Dan Fante Page A

loan to myself before I got my check. One of the girls at one of the 800 numbers—who said her name was DeVon—said she was ten minutes away on Fairfax, and if I had two hundred in cash she’d be right over.
    My problem was Ms. Portia. I was buzzed enough to forget that she was asleep in the chauffeur’s room on one of her overnighters.
    The commotion of me opening and closing the desk drawer then rattling the cash box woke her up. She stood in the dim light from the hall wearing a long, open man’s dress shirt—her giant tits half exposed above the two pole lamps she used for walking.
    “I heard a noise. Is everything all right?” she whispered.
    “Jesus! I forgot you were here! Sure, everything’s peachy. I’m just in need of a few bucks from the cash box.”
    “At two-fifteen in the morning?”
    “Exactly. Precisely. At two fifteen a.m. Or twelve seventeen in the afternoon. Or whenever the fuck I want to. I didn’t know I needed your permission?”
    “Of course you don’t. I was simply inquiring. I wasn’t asleep anyway. I was reading.”
    Brushing passed me she opened the desk drawer, then the cash box, then handed me several fifties that she’d paper-clipped together. “I think that’s three hundred dollars,” she cooed. “I counted it myself this afternoon. Do you need more?”
    “Three hundred’s fine.”
    “Let me make sure.” She turned on the light.
    “Right. Thanks.”
    And there she was. Under the fluorescent bulbs I could see she was naked beneath the shirt.
    I was staring. Leering. But I didn’t care.
    “Please, let me go slip something on,” she whispered, looking away.
    “No. I like you the way you are. Just stand there.”
    I held up my jug. “How about a nightcap? One drink for the good of the company. It won’t kill you.”
    “Actually, I’ve had a bit of wine already…it helps me sleep.”
    “C’mon.”
    “Very well. But only one.”
    I took a hit then passed the bottle to the skinny girl. She downed most of what was left with one gulp.
     
    Screwing Portia on the pull-out bed in the chauffeur’s room was like trying to run backward. Clumsy. Elbows and knees everywhere. And nearly without participation.
    Ten minutes after we started, when I couldn’t cum, she sucked me off.
     
    “Well…did you enjoy that?” she asked finally.
    I checked my jug. It was empty. “Any liquor in the office?”
    “There are two bottles of that inexpensive limo champagne in the fridge. Shall I get one?”
    “Get both.”
    “I feel quite good. Sex relieves stress, you know.”
    “You’re right. So does drinking.”
    “Well…I’ll get the champagne.”
    “Good idea.”
    For the next half hour we lay wordless, sipping fizzy wine, crunched together on the mattress. Two fools connected by the darkness.

eleven
    T he next morning I picked up one of our freebie geriatric clients. My dispatch slip read, “J. C. Smart: The Garden of Allah Villas.” Portia had mentioned that Mrs. Smart was eighty-seven years old.
    I knew the address on Crescent Heights Boulevard because I’m into Hollywood history and used to drink coffee at Schwab’s drugstore around the corner on Sunset.
    The Villas was an elegant retirement community composed of a dozen thirties-vintage single Spanish-style bungalows at the mouth of Laurel Canyon. It had once been Scott Fitzgerald’s old stomping ground.
    I was a few minutes early so I parked on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, in front, and read from the new novel by the underground writer Mark SaFranko.
    J.C. lived in bungalow #1. The outside of her tiny, white-fenced yard was well manicured, and her small garden was festooned with freshly blooming roses and carnations.
    I knocked on the door.
    No answer.
    I knocked again. Maybe J.C.’d had a heart attack and was floating facedown in her tub, the old girl’s aluminum walker tipped over on the bathroom floor.
    Then the door swung open and there she was, dressed to the nines and fully made-up and holding a big,