BLOOD ON THE MOON

133

“Yes. Two. Do you cheat on your wife?”

Lloyd laughed and dug into his pants pocket for his wedding band. He slipped it onto his ring finger and said, “Yes.”

Kathleen’s face was expressionless. “Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Kathleen grimaced. “I shouldn’t have asked. No more talk of death and woman-killers, please. Shall we leave?”

Lloyd nodded and took her hand as she locked the door behind them.

*

*

*

They drove aimlessly, ending up cruising the terraced hills of the old neighborhood. Lloyd steered the unmarked Matador through the topography of their mutual past, wondering what Kathleen was thinking.

“My parents are dead now,” she said finally. “They were both so old when I was born, and they doted on me because they knew they’d only have me for twenty years or so. My father told me he moved to Silverlake because the hills reminded him of Dublin.”

She looked at Lloyd, who sensed that she wanted to end her games of will and be gentle. He pulled to the curb at Vendome and Hyperion, hoping that the spectacular view would move her to divulge intimate things, things that would make him care for her. “Do you mind if we stop?” he asked.

“No,” Kathleen said, “I like this place. I used to come here with my court. We read memorial poems for John Kennedy here on the night he was shot.”

“Your court?”

“Yes. My court. The ‘Kathy Kourt’—spelled with two Ks. I had my own little group of underlings in high school. We were all poets, and we all wore plaid skirts and cashmere sweaters, and we never dated, because there was not one boy at John Marshall High School worthy of us. We didn’t date and we didn’t neck. We were saving it for Mr. Right, who, we all figured, would make the scene when we were published poets of renown. We were unique. I was the smartest and the best-looking. I transferred from parochial school because the Mother Superior was always trying to get me to show her my breasts. I talked about it in hygiene class and attracted a following of lonely, bookish girls. They became my court. I gave them an identity. They became women because of me. Everyone left us alone; yet we had a following of equally lonely, bookish boys—‘Kathy’s 134

L.A. NOIR

Klowns’ they were called, because we never even deigned to speak to them. We . . . We . . .”

Kathleen’s voice rose to a wail, and she batted off Lloyd’s tentative hand on her shoulder. “We . . . We . . . loved and cared for each other, and I know it sounds pathetic, but we were strong. Strong! Strong . . .”

Lloyd waited a full minute before asking, “What happened to your court?”

Kathleen sighed, knowing that her answer was an anticlimax. “Oh, they drifted away. They found boyfriends. They decided not to save it for Mr. Right. They got prettier. They decided they didn’t want to be poets. They . . . they just didn’t need me anymore.”

“And you?”

“I died, and my heart went underground and resurfaced looking for cheap kicks and true love. I slept with a lot of women, figuring I could find a new entourage that way. It didn’t work. I screwed a lot of men—that got me the entourage, all right, but they were creeps. And I wrote and wrote and wrote and got published and bought a bookstore and here I am.”

Lloyd was already shaking his head. “And what really,” he said. Kathleen spat out angrily, “And I am a damn good poet and a better diarist! And who the hell are you to question me? And? And? And? ”

Lloyd touched her neck with gentle fingertips and said, “And you live in your head, and you’re thirty-something, and you keep wondering if it’s ever going to get better. Please say yes, Kathleen, or just shake your head.”

Kathleen shook her head. Lloyd said, “Good. That’s why I’m here—because I want it to get better for you. Do you believe that?” Kathleen shook her head affirmatively and stared into her lap, clenching her hands. “I have a question for you,” Lloyd said. “A rhetorical question. Did you know that the L.A.P.D. treats the undercarriage of all their unmarked cars with a special shock-proof, scrape-proof coating?”

Kathleen laughed politely at the non sequitur. “No,” she said. Lloyd reached over and secured the passenger safety harness around her shoulders. When she remained blank-faced he waggled his eyebrows and said, “Brace yourself,” then hit the ignition and dropped into low gear, popping the emergency brake and flooring the gas pedal simultaneously, sending the car forward in an almost vertical wheel stand. Kathleen screamed. Lloyd waited until the car began its crashing downward momentum, then gently tapped the accelerator a half dozen times until the rear wheels caught friction and the car lurched ahead, straining to keep its