Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

word, “nebbish,” a Hollywood word, Archie said, because there were so damn many of them around.

She’d wanted to do it with Kenny that first time and maybe if she had things would be different, but it wasn’t her fault. Other girls were doing it and talking about it and telling her about diaphragms, and with Kenny it would be safe and secret and so she got the diaphragm and one night when she was home for the weekend, and Iris was off and Granny out with her gigolos she invited him over and put Sinatra on the phonograph and got him on the couch. They’d hardly kissed when he exploded and excused himself and when he came back from the bathroom was so embarrassed he left. Comme ça. Imagine having that for a boyfriend!

Lizzie wanted to drive. As the crow flies, Angelo Drive isn’t all that far from Sunset, but crows don’t follow mountain roads. Angelo is technically Beverly Hills, but not the part people know about. You’ve got to find the right canyon and then the right road, only three of which make it all the way over the mountains. The others go in circles or lead to dead ends. Lizzie knew the way because she’d been part of the Times team that covered the Manson murders on Cielo Drive, which is even harder to find than Angelo. Manson knew the house. You don’t find Cielo Drive by accident.

Lizzie insisted on taking her Ford rather than Maggie’s Porsche. Angelo is winding and endless and dangerous with steep drops, and Lizzie knew how Maggie drove. So did Billy Todd. They came to the black mailbox with the name Zug and turned off onto a pocked asphalt road leading up a steep hill. The road was cut through jagged stone that sprouted scrub grass and some chaparral stalks through the cracks. Above the cut for the road, scrawny brown pines lusting for sunlight leaned south.

“Not the most inviting driveway I’ve ever seen,” Lizzie said.

“Discourages drop-ins.”

“Imagine going back down that canyon at night after a few drinks.”

“Drinks or something worse.”

The Zug house was a sprawling, two-story, Spanish-style hacienda with white stucco walls and towers on each end and a red tile roof and tiled eve overhang running the length of the facade. Despite its stylistic lavishness, there was something fake about it. In front, five cars, all foreign, all expensive, were parked around a grassy, well-tended roundabout. The scent of jasmine and gardenias rose from bushes, and bright red Bougainvillea climbed along both sides of blue and yellow ceramic steps wending up to the front door, which was open behind a screen. From somewhere they heard cries and splashes. Ascending, they heard voices inside and saw the screen door slowly pushed open. Didi had seen them coming.

“My goodness, a family delegation, mothers, aunts, could a cousin be lurking around somewhere? And a Ford—Mother, how shameful! Where is your Porsche?”

Maggie tried a hug, but it didn’t work.

Didi wore a wrinkled purple muumuu and her feet were bare. Her dark hair was brushed after a fashion, but it was too early for make-up, which wouldn’t have helped much with the circles under her eyes and bruises on her neck. Her skin was tight and sallow and a little bit twitchy and she held the railing by the door for support. Bad hangover. Maggie looked at her once beautiful daughter, and the word “slovenly” passed her mind.

“How did you find me? Granny told you, didn’t she?”

“Granny couldn’t find this place. Are you going to invite us in?”

“Just a minute,” she said, retreating inside and closing the screen. They heard voices, muttering, doors slamming before she returned. “Some of my friends weren’t, shall we say, dressed for the occasion. They’ve gone out to the pool.”

“I would like to meet your friends,” said Maggie.

Didi smiled. “They were—well, never mind. They felt like a swim.”

The furniture was Spanish oak, large and clunky and made semicomfortable with enormous bulky cushions. The living room was long and, in the Spanish style, dark. They sat down, and Maggie caught a fleeting glimpse of the maid she’d seen on her first visit. The house seemed clean enough, but it was surface clean. Under shaggy rugs and thick cushions and heavy furniture was stuff accumulating faster than any maid could get it out. The smell was the kind you only got out with something that smelled worse. It was a luxury house on a handsome estate high in the hills and icy as an igloo. Two giant sofas faced each other across a well-stained oak coffee table. Didi took one of the sofas, leaving her mother and aunt on the other, a more adversarial positioning than Maggie would have preferred. She was happy to have Lizzie there. Her sister’s presence always helped.

“I suspect this delegation has come to take me home,” said Didi with a tight little smile. “Wherever home might be.”

Maggie looked across at this disheveled, dissipated and dispirited presence. She observed the neck bruises. Not a doubt what they were from. The image of the fastidious little girl at the beach club sitting alone eating egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off passed her mind. How could it be? “Your home is in Bel Air, I believe.”

“I’m not going back there. What’s happened to Granny, anyway?”

“Your grandmother has had a stroke,” said Lizzie. “She’d like to see you.”

“Probably wouldn’t even recognize me.”

“Who does?” said Maggie. It slipped out. She tried recuperating. “You could always come live with me.”

The arrow had hit its mark, and the girl reddened. “I don’t even know where you live, Mother. You never bothered to tell me.”

“Because I couldn’t find you. Anyway, I’m back in Westwood.”

“Either of you have a cigarette by any chance?”

Maggie took out her Tareytons and Zippo. She stood and shook one out for Didi, snapped the lighter and held the high flame toward her daughter, whose hand shook so badly she had to grasp her mother’s hand to steady it.