BLOOD ON THE MOON
119
Lloyd’s face lit up at the possibilities for exploration. “I was trying to follow the rabbit down the hole,” he said. “I was trying to light a fire under the world’s ass. I wanted to be considered a tough guy so that Ginny Skakel would give me a hand job. I wanted to breathe pure white light. Good answer?”
Kathleen smiled and gave Lloyd a sedate round of applause. “Good answer, Sergeant. Why did you quit?”
“Two boys got killed. They were riding on one sled. A ’53 Packard Caribbean smashed them to pieces. One of the boys was decapitated. My mother asked me to quit. She told me that there were safer ways to express courage. She told me stories to take the edge off my grief.”
“Your grief? You mean you wanted to continue playing that insane game?”
Lloyd savored Kathleen’s incredulous look and said, “Of course. Teenage romanticism dies hard. Turnabout, Kathleen?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Are you a romantic?”
“Yes . . . In all the deepest essentials . . . I . . .”
Lloyd cut her off. “Good. May I see you tomorrow night?”
“What did you have in mind? Dinner?”
“Not really.”
“A concert?”
“Very amusing. Actually, I thought we might be-bop around L.A. and check out urban romanticism.”
“Is that a pass?”
“Absolutely not. I think we should do something that neither of us has ever done before, and that rules out that. You in?”
Kathleen took Lloyd’s outstretched hand. “I’m in. Here at seven o’clock?”
Lloyd brought the hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’ll be here,” he said, walking out the door before anything could happen to defuse the power of the moment.
*
*
*
When Lloyd wasn’t home by six o’clock, Janice went about preparing for her evening, feeling relief on all fronts. She was relieved that Lloyd’s absences were becoming more frequent and predictable, relieved that the girls were so engrossed in their hobbies and social life that they didn’t seem to mind their missing father, relieved that her own loving detachment seemed to be growing to the point where some time soon she would be able to tell her husband, “You have been the love of my life, but it is over. I cannot get 120
L.A. NOIR
through to you. I cannot stand any more of your obsessive behavior. It is over.”
As Janice dressed for her night of dancing she recalled the episode that had first given her the impetus to consider leaving her husband forever. It was two weeks ago. Lloyd had been gone for three days. She missed him and wanted him physically, and was even ready to make concessions about his stories. She had gone to bed nude and had left her bedside candle burning, hoping to be awakened by Lloyd’s hands on her breasts. When she finally did awaken, it was to the sight of Lloyd hovering above her in the nude, gently spreading her legs. She held back a scream as he entered her, her eyes transfixed by his hellishly contorted features. When he came and his limbs contracted spastically, she held him very tight and knew that she had finally been given the power to forge a new life.
Janice dressed in a silver lamé pantsuit, an outfit that would brilliantly reflect the swirling lights at Studio One. She felt little twinges of slavish loyalty, and reflexively defined her husband in coldly clinical terms: He is a disturbed, driven man. An anachronistic man. He is incapable of change, a man who never listened.
Janice rounded up her daughters and drove them over to George’s apartment in Ocean Park. His lover Rob would look after them while she and George discoed the night away. He would tell them kind, gentle stories and cook them up a big vegetarian feast.
*
*
*
Studio One was crowded, bursting to the rafters with stylish men undulating toward and away from each other under the benevolent distortions of stereo-synched strobe lights. Janice and George tooted some coke in the parking lot and imagined their entrance as one of the grandest, most closely scrutinized promenades in history. The only woman on the dance floor, Janice knew that she was the most desired body under the lights—desired not in lust but in desperate yearning for transference—tall, regal, tanned, and graceful, every man there wanted to be her.
*
*
*
When she returned home late that night, Lloyd was waiting in bed for her. He was especially tender, and she returned his caresses with great sorrow. Her mind ran disconnected images together to keep her from succumbing to his love. She thought of many things, but never came close to guessing that he had made love to another woman just two hours earlier; a woman who considered herself “something of a businesswoman” and who