Deja vu All Over Again Read online

  Ginny’s had been a real church once upon a time. Several of the wooden pews served as benches along the wall opposite the bar. Nate had witnessed many a patron who, driven to his knees on the dance floor when the setting sun streamed through the stained glass above the entrance, were touched by divine inspiration and, in holy joy, ordered another round.

  “How-dee. I’d like to get her nekkid wearing nothin’ but a pair of mouse ears.”

  “Show a little respect, will you?”

  Nate flicked a pretzel stick at his best friend, Woody, who was leering at a woman at the opposite end of the long bar. It was Nate’s fault. He was the one who started it by mentioning how much she resembled Annette Funicello. Annette the post-Mouse Club beach babe. She had Annette’s dark hair, dark eyes and an Ivory girl complexion with tiny lips and a full figure. Nate tilted his chin down as if studying his beer while he raised his eyes to watch her. She’d strolled in wearing tight jeans and a sleeveless blouse with a high, banded collar from somewhere out of the sixties. He guessed she was nearer to forty than his vision of Annette, but she was a great knockoff of every boy’s favorite Mouseketeer.

  “You’re right. You’re goddamned right,” Woody said. He removed his sweat-stained Dodgers cap and placed it over his heart.

  “Gentlemen, a moment of silence, please.”

  “May she rest in peace.”

  “Amen.”

  They clinked the necks of their beer bottles, and Nate felt a familiar pang of lust for the Annette of his past with her pair of large, beautiful, soft, round…mouse ears. She owned the hearts of an entire generation of boys like him.

  His eyes darted to Annette Knockoff’s left hand. No wedding ring. Some guys were breast men. For others, their first look dropped to a woman’s butt or legs, while others started with a smile or the eyes before working their way down. Nate went directly to the ring finger before even considering whether he had a right to ogle a lady. Guys cheated on their wives. Wives cheated on their husbands. But what low-life, pond scum sucker would do it with another man’s wife?

  The kind who had diddled his wife, Valerie, that’s who. That’s how he wound up divorced after twenty-plus years. She had a wandering eye, along with other parts of her body. He had an overdeveloped sense of trust, along with denial that enabled her until the proof was too clear even for him to rationalize away. Nobody gave a rat’s ass about the husband. Like Nate. So he swore he could never do that to anyone. Someone had to have a little respect for the other guy, especially if the wife didn’t.

  Annette Knockoff caught him gazing at her. She smiled. Nate ordered a shot of courage.

  “What kind, hon?” Ginny asked. She had a voice that was pure gravel from two packs a day, white hair piled high on her head and her eyes let you know, in no uncertain terms, that you were boring her.

  Nate considered his finances. “Cheap.”

  The old woman shook her head, disgusted. “Bottom shelf, coming up.”

  The beauty at the end of the bar not only had Mouseketeer written all over her, she had the same dark hair, high cheeks and mischievous eyes as The Coop-ster. He basked in the glow of a two-fer. Two shots of Julie Cooper memories in the same day. At least he wasn’t standing in the debris of his life this time. He had made a few feeble attempts over the years to find Julie on Facebook and Google. She had married not long out of high school, he knew, but he couldn’t remember her husband’s name and that made his search futile. It was just as well. Finding her online, and finding she was still happily married, would only confirm he had no business wanting to see her again. Thinking of Julie while sitting on a barstool always called for a second shot.

  “What if?” Whiskey and regrets always led him to ask that.

  “What, what if?”

  “What if you could go back to, say, high school? I mean, you know how your life turned out, right? So if you could go back and do it over again?”

  “Stupid question,” Woody replied.

  “Frickin’ stupid,” the redneck on Nate’s left said, although Nate hadn’t asked him.

  “Who wouldn’t?” That came from the geezer on Woody’s right.

  All along the bar, the vote was informal but unanimous, life would be better, richer, more perfect if they got the kind of mulligan in life that you could on the golf course. A do-over.

  Nate stole another glance at the woman, threw back his head and tossed down the rest of his whisky, hard, certain he was falling in love. He thumped the glass on the bar and exhaled slowly.

  “Thanks for coming, Woody. And thanks for putting me up for tonight.”

  “No problema. Mi sofá es su sofá.”

  Woody had been his dorm mate in his first year at a state college just outside of Los Angeles. Nate had a baseball scholarship and interest in film studies. Woody had an interest in coeds and played in a rock band to meet girls. Thirty years later, he was still making music.

  He jerked his thumb toward a table where two guys who blew in with Woody were playing a dice game with one hand while slugging beer from a bottle in the other. “Me and the boys are headed to this party down the hill tonight. It’s gonna be an outrageous event. You should come along.”

  Together they were a band called Woody Wood and the Peckerheads. The Peckerheads were famous for three weeks when their “yodel rap” song “Swillin’ and Chillin’” went to the top of the country-western charts. With rap lyrics and a hip-hop beat featuring a slide guitar and fiddle, Woody’s song about pimping a ride in his pickup with his bitch (a hunting dog named Ho) developed a cult following over the years. Yodel rap flamed out faster than a cheap Roman candle on the Fourth of July, but it was enough to make Woody some serious bling, and the band was still a favorite at county fairs and Indian casinos.

  Woody said, “I still can’t see you bopping the shit out of that military dude the way you did. That just ain’t like you.”

  “Yep.” Nate nodded. The more he thought about it, the more he was pleased with himself.

  “I am impressed, Bubba. Being a pussy liberal and all.”

  “That hurts. And you are so wrong. I am not all that liberal.”

  “Okay. Just a pussy. I bet you can’t remember the last time you took a swing at somebody.”

  That stopped Nate. Whenever it was, it had to have been serious, because Nate had anger issues. Not trouble controlling his anger, generating it. Nate accepted the fact he was too nice for his own good, but what could you do?

  Then Woody ventured into an inconvenient truth. “Okay, maybe you ain’t exactly pussy material but I can’t imagine nobody else who’d catch his wife doing another man and then spend so much time trying to fix things until she walked out on you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve done stupider shit than that.”

  “Gave it your best shot. But you still should have beat her to the punch, you know?”

  Nate did know. After seven months of intense marriage counseling, he surrendered to the obvious. He waited for her to get home from work on a Friday with his bags packed and ready to walk, rehearsing how to break it to Valerie in a way that wouldn’t hurt her too badly. He was still waiting around midnight when she sent him a Twitter message to say she wouldn’t be coming home at all. She couldn’t respect any man who would put up with the crap she had pulled. Divorce papers to follow. The marriage ended with a Tweet.

  “At least you got a great story out of the deal,” Woody said. He didn’t look at Nate. He studied the label of his beer bottle instead.

  “Best damned thing I ever put out there.” It was. Somewhere between Valerie’s late night tweet and the final divorce degree, he opened a vein and poured his heart and soul into a beautiful script of heartbreak and love gone sour. Everybody, including his agent and an Acadmy award winning producer who bought the rights for a gob of money, said it was the best thing they had ever seen.

  Nate barely had time to cash the check for the first installment—a pittance of the total with a promise of more to come—when the producer di
sappeared with the rest of Nate’s money. Also missing: Six million dollars from major investors in the project. They went to court and won the right to hold Nate’s story hostage until they got their money back.

  Nate hadn’t written a useful word since.

  He watched Annette Knockoff. The stool next to her was empty.

  “Twenty bucks says you ain’t got the guts.”

  “What guts?”

  “You’ve been eyeing that cutie over there since we got here. Twenty bucks says there’s no way in hell you’ll man up and pitch her.”

  Any other day Nate would have rationalized his way out of putting the moves on her, but that night he was a man with nothing to lose. Valerie, the ex-wife from hell, and the Air Force had made sure of that. He was tired of letting life push him around. By God, he would do it.

  “Bet. Twenty bucks. This is the new Nate Evans you’re talking to pardner. M.O.A. Man Of Action. I’m going to invite her to your damned party.” The woman didn’t look like the sort who would accept an offer to go off with a bunch of strangers, but what the hell; he had a PhD in rejection.

  “Well?”

  He hesitated. Then, fueled by alcohol and fatalistic bravado, he stood, hitched up his jeans and sauntered over to the woman like the cool and smooth Richard Gere-like character in his script Cocktails for Kittens.

  “All night I’ve been wanting to tell you I would buy you a drink just for one of your smiles.” It was a line straight out of his script.

  Her name was Irene and she smelled of jasmine perfume. She was a hairdresser and worked in a shop north of town. They were only three minutes into what was shaping up to be a warm conversation when the door banged open.

  “Irene, you ain’t supposed to be here. I get home and where’s my dinner? Ain’t on the table.”

  “Hey, Phil,” Irene said with zero enthusiasm.

  Phil was a mountain of a man with deep red hair, buzz-cut on the sides but full on top with a mullet down the back of his head so that it looked like a squirrel had climbed up there and died. He had cut off the sleeves of his shirt to show the tattoos that covered both arms from wrist to neck, and the requisite redneck goatee, unkempt and bushy—it made you think he was in the middle of swallowing a small cat.

  Nate watched Irene brush her bangs aside with her left hand, reassured that he hadn’t been mistaken. There was no ring. Had it gone MIA? Recently? Deliberately? Possibly in the minute before Irene walked into Ginny’s?

  Phil tugged at her arm and turned toward the door. Irene shook loose but fell back when he slapped her, and Nate rushed between them to stop the big guy.

  “Keep your goddamned hands off her.” They could squabble all they wanted, but he couldn’t stand a man getting physical with any woman.

  “Fuck off, you little wimp. This ain’t none of your business. And if you ever touch my girl again, I’ll wipe the floor with your sorry ass.”

  Irene hissed at Phil, “I’m not going back. I’ll get there when I get there.” She didn’t need him, and then, as if to prove it, she did a whirlwind survey of prospects in the bar. As she locked her eyes on Nate, a chill ran through him. Life did that sometimes. It put you in the wrong place at the wrong time. Before he knew what hit him, Irene planted her lips upon his and began drilling with her tongue, more eager than a rookie surgeon hot on the trail of a rogue tonsil.

  As California earthquakes went, it wasn’t more than three-point-five on the Richter scale, but the roar Phil let loose rattled the rafters and shook the floorboards. He grabbed Nate by the hair at the back of his neck and pulled him out from under the woman. He pushed Nate to clear some space and create room for a brawl.

  Shit. The day started out as a disaster; no reason why it shouldn’t end that way. Nate straightened himself. He threw back his shoulders and planted a finger in Phil’s chest.

  “Take your best shot, Fuck Face.”

  “Bring it on, you wimp.”

  The crowd had stopped yakking and moved closer to get a better view. Someone cranked up the bar’s eight-track tape player: AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” Perfect. A goddamned fight anthem. So instead of addressing the big guy in front of him, Nate stretched both arms with his palms out like an actor ready to make his bow for the audience.

  Then Nate, recently converted Man Of Action, raised his voice over the music. “Damned straight. I am a wimp. And I will kick the ass of anyone who says I ain’t.”

  He wheeled. The good news was that he got in the first punch. The bad news: it wasn’t nearly enough.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Suicide in One Hundred Forty Characters

  “So much for being a Man of Action,” Nate moaned.

  “Dude! That is some righteous discoloration of the cranial covering.” Nate couldn’t see which of Woody’s Peckerheads said it.

  His left eye wouldn’t quite focus as he tried to ice the bruise above, below and to the side of it with a chilled bottle of Sam Adams. Nursing a beer and nursing his wounds from the beating he’d taken in the bar, Nate sat on a faux boulder next to the faux waterfall of a pond in back of a mansion belonging to someone in the faux übercool class of Hollywood. Woody had said the owner was most definitely rich and most likely industry connected. Nate didn’t want to be there, but he had nowhere to go. That simple fact made his head throb even more. Besides, he was in debt to the Peckerheads, and after his fight with Phil, he wasn’t about to fight them when they decided he needed a party to cheer him up more than he needed to go straight to Woody’s place and recover.

  “I’ll go get something to fix you up,” Woody said. He had a fox-like grin that Nate could see even with his damaged eye. “Don’t piss anybody off while I’m gone.”

  Nate’s vision started to clear. The patio made up the ground floor of the property, with three stories of mansion stacked and stretching into the night sky over a sheer rock wall. Minglers ignored a jazz guitarist and his partner, their music simply adding to the buzz of white noise. Most were drawn to an open hospitality tent set up at the base of the patio wall. One of the Peckerheads told him that Ruffles, the Pekinese star of the hit TV series Murder, She Barked, was holding court under a blaze of video lights. Nate got to his feet and wandered over to join the audience. Ruffles’ owner and co-star, Mary Grant, stood next to the dog. She played a quirky spinster sleuth named Mary who solved crimes with the aid of her Pekinese private-eye pooch on the show. Woody had wrangled an invite to the party because the Peckerheads had done a ten-second cameo as a lounge band in the latest episode.

  Three cameras strategically placed around the tent pointed at the mutt in a chair with Ruffles’ name stenciled on the backrest. The scene was lit from every angle. One of the minglers told him the cable TV show, Entertainment X-S, would be recording an interview for a show to be aired the following week.

  Nate climbed a flight of steps that took him to the first floor of the main house, and he entered through a sliding glass door, stepping into a game room. Pool table. Foosball table. Huge flat-screen television sets on every wall where there wasn’t some kind of modern retro impressionistic painting or photographs of notable Hollywood characters. He found Woody in the kitchen, one more flight up.

  “So whose house is this?”

  “Hell if I know. Somebody who knows somebody I don’t. Does it matter? Look around you. This place has more beaver than an Oregon rainforest.” Nate flinched. Crude but it did capture the ratio of starlets to mere mortals in the party crowd.

  Woody took Nate by the arm, steered him to the sink and dumped wine out of a glass sitting there. He filled it with water. “This’ll cheer you up. Guaranteed.”

  He handed him a rolled paper capsule about the size of a horse pill. “Ecstasy, as pure as it gets. Watch.” Woody took the glass of water and tossed the paper ball onto the back of his tongue. He gulped the water until the glass was empty.

  Shit. If life was going to hell in a handbasket anyway, he might as well enjoy the trip. He popped the capsule into his mouth and down i
t went. When he finished a second glass of water, he gave Woody a shrug. “Okaaaaay.” He didn’t feel anything.

  Woody tapped the back of his wrist and told him to give it time. “Takes about half an hour. But you’ll be feeling it. Trust me.”

  Bodies filled all the rooms on that main floor; Nate and Woody navigated around various couples and cliques. They stayed together until Woody spotted a tall blond pouting near the stairs that led to yet another level of the mansion. She was as rail thin as a fashion runway model and cursed with large eyes and a sharp beak that made Nate think of an owl.

  “Try to get laid,” Woody said. He took inventory of women in the room like a starving man at a buffet. “That shouldn’t be too difficult here. And the ecstasy? Man, everything you’re feeling, multiply it by four.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah. Everything.” Woody steered toward the blond.

  Nate snatched a glass of wine from the tray of a waiter hustling across the room. In due time, he eased into a small group, some guy and three women he was trying to impress.

  “You know Rob Castle?” the guy asked. “He was in a couple of movies. I forget which ones. Yeah, I had to work him over real good.”

  He bared his teeth and ran a finger across them. “We did his implants all along the front. What, you think those things are real?” Nate watched the man’s eyes drop to measure the breasts of the woman in a scoop neckline blouse on his left. Nate looked at her left hand wrapped around a glass of wine. Wedding ring. Run away.

  When her cleavage let go of his attention, he said, “I’d give you my card, but I can see that none of you ladies need help. You all have great smiles. I’m a dentist,”

  “Like, dentist to the stars?”

  “That’s me,” he replied. “But I do a bit of acting, too. That’s really where my future is.”