The Empty Glass by J. I. Baker

Author:J. I. Baker [Baker, J. I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780142196786
Publisher: Plume
Published: 2012-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15

31.

I wasn’t thinking about Marilyn and wouldn’t think of Marilyn and the only reason I went back to Joe’s on Melrose was to get my ruined car. I didn’t intend to walk inside the place, and I wouldn’t have walked inside the place—except for the fact that I couldn’t find a pay phone on the sidewalk.

Joe was mopping up the bar as I walked to the bank of lit phones to the right of the door. I sat on the stool under a phone and put a dime in and called a tow truck.

“Be right there.”

I hung up.

I would not think of the diary. I wasn’t thinking of the diary as I played “Young World” on the Wurlitzer and sat at the bar. I smelled the familiar and comforting smell of damp hops. I saw the wood scored with pierced hearts and long-ago loves, the black lines from burned cigarettes. But I’ve said this already, haven’t I?

I went up to the bar.

“Jesus,” Joe said. “What happened to you?”

“Cut myself shaving.”

“You and Albert Anastasia.”

“Very funny.”

“What can I get you?”

“Budweiser.”

“Kinda early, isn’t it?”

“I had a rough day.”

“You look it.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Anytime.”

I waited for the tow truck. I wasn’t thinking about Marilyn. I was on vacation, after all, but after another Budweiser (okay, three), the truck still hadn’t arrived and I really had to pee.

Sorry for the vulgarity.

“No problem,” you say.

I stood from the bar with the foam still in the glass and walked past the table to the bathroom. I wasn’t going to look for what was left of the diary, but the truth is that I didn’t use the urinal. I used a stall—the same stall, in fact, where I had hidden the torn pages.

I was whistling and pissing when I couldn’t help myself: I looked up to see the tile over the toilet slipped just slightly to the right. Past it was darkness, and . . . what?

Pages?

I flushed, closed the cover, stood and pushed the tile over, my head rising from the light into the darkness, eyes above the ceiling line, staring across the tile tops, past rattraps and rusted pipes, searching for the diary.

“It’s gone,” I said back in the phone booth. “Someone took it, Jo. I came back to get the car, and—”

“Mr. Fitzgerald?” A woman’s voice.

“Jo?”

“This ain’t Jo.” It was Mabel, the colored maid. “Jo ain’t here.”

“Where is she?”

“That club on Sunset.”

• • •

The club was Ciro’s, the place on the Strip that, like so much else, had devolved from its status as a glamour spot for movie stars to a mostly empty place that was, that evening, as quiet as a chapel mid-week. It was mid-week, after all, which meant the only people in the place were serious drinkers, as the blonde who sat like a living doll with Jo at the table in the corner was a serious drinker.

Listen: By living doll, I don’t mean that she was beautiful. I mean that she was scary, as a life-sized doll propped in a chair with a highball and fried blond hair would, in fact, be scary.

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