39 – Wrong place wrong time
The noise struck him full in the face-- the roaring musical expression that marked the Boulevard's circus at full tilt. Night-time brought all its elements together, jesus freaks and acid heads and dirty old men, mingling into a mass of shifting flesh. The sidewalk became nearly impassable with wall to wall people. He felt weak and lost. Contact with those at his apartment had left him a little disoriented. He wanted to curl up in a corner and wait for it to end, for the stores to close and lights to cease and tourists to vanish again. But that wouldn't happen for hours and he needed to find Mike.
Marie seemed undisturbed, walking at his side like an aristocrat, strutting herself before the bikers and horny college boys the way Sarah often had.
"Stop that," Lance scolded.
"Stop what?"
"Drawing attention," he said. "It's bad enough we've got to be here."
Her pretty face soured with contempt. "You're being paranoid," she said. "Just like Mikie."
With good reason, Lance thought, feeling as if he walked beside a neon sign saying: Here we are to whomever wanted to look.
"I don't understand you're with Mike at all if you think that," Lance said.
"Because I thought it would be exciting," she answered, surveying faces in the crowd as they passed-- pressing a little too tight against Lance's side.
"And you don't think that any more?"
She shrugged. "This is exciting," she said, giggling. "And I liked the party. But Mike doesn't like any of that, he wants to live somewhere quiet where nothing happens at all. Like on the farm."
"I suppose he wants to protect you," Lance said, studying her face, noting the lines that had formed around the mouth and eyes, hard lines, lines of experience.
"If I wanted to be protected I would have stayed with my daddy," she said sharply-- the drugs making her speak a little too loudly.
More attention! Curious eyes staring at them!
Los Angeles was a city filled with curious eyes, from the dirty old men to the angry cops, staring at everything that looked out of place, trying to find a place for it, trying fuck with its head...
"Shush!" Lance hissed.
"What are you afraid of, Lance?" Marie asked, her eyes laughing. "My Daddy? He doesn't know where I am."
"Just keep your voice down, all right?" Lance said, feeling her grip tighten on his arm as she laugh, and her soft breast pressing into him.
"Oh don't be so silly," she said, then stopped short in front of a particularly flamboyant tavern, pink and white lights illuminating its sign. "Can we go in here?"
"That's a gay bar, Marie," Lance said.
"So? Are you afraid?"
Curious males in silk and feathers eyed him from around the door, their lustful smiles smearing their lipstick.
"Of course I'm not afraid," Lance said. "It just doesn't seem like your kind of place, that's all. Besides, we're supposed to be looking for Mike and I doubt very much we'd find him in there."
"Which is why I want to go in," she said playfully. "Mikie would never think to take me to a place like this. Be a sport. I promise I won't let go of you the whole time."
For some reason this stung. Did Marie see something in Lance he did not?
She propelled him through the door, reading his silence as consent. The smell of perfume, booze and sweat striking him full in the face-- the air thick with rising plumes of cigarette smoke and conversation.
Low light disguising the real intent behind the slow moving bodies on the dance floor, a grinding, sensual sense of close space that gave Lance immediate claustrophobia. It could have been a Saigon bar full of B-girls and GIs, or a Lower East Side club full of a horny queens, though the mixture of sexual preference here seemed more diverse, men with men, women with women, and a fair number of more conventional couples as well. A few of the single queens near the door blinked their painted lashes as he passed saying: I'm available, honey.
"What's the matter with you, Lance?" Marie said with shinning eyes. "I thought you said you weren't afraid."
"I'm not. It's just too smoggy in here. I can't breathe." His palms sweated in hers. He wiped them on his jeans and squinted through the smoke, ignoring the grins from the barstools. "Can we go now?" he asked. "Have you seen enough?"
"Sure," she said, then disappeared, vanishing into the crowd, her slim form mingling with those of the more flamboyant gays. Lance yelped and charged after her. But a hand grabbed him by the arm.
"Rude boy!" a large male said, though the touch of lipstick indicated his orientation. "Don't you even say excuse me?"
"I'm sorry," Lance said trying to peer around the man's wide chest, as if around a line backer for the L.A. Rams. "I'm looking for someone."
"Aren't we all? Do you have a match?"
"You miss the point," Lance said, staring desperately into the dim light, searching the smear of bright colors for Marie's white blouse and red hair. "I'm not interested."
The gay did not release his grip, but eased back against one of the eye-beams, smiling as he blew out a stream of smoke. "Then what are you doing here, honey?"
"Looking for a friend, all right?" Lance barked. "Now leave me the fuck alone!"
This last he said too loudly, the words penetrating the wall of music and conversation-- the last of which petered out into a wall of stares.
"Are you a cop?" the line-backer gay asked, hard eyes focused straight on Lance's face.
"A cop? Hell no," Lance said as the jukebox halted mid-song.
"You smell like a vice cop to me," someone else said. A strong sense of riot touching everyone there.
"Well I'm not," Lance said, moving away from the linebacker to face others like him, angry, brutal faces of inflected femininity-- they wanted his blood, yet parted as he moved. He cursed Marie and wondered just how he was going to tell Mike he had lost her.
Another large man met him near the door, his face grim, his body thick-muscled beneath a fishnet shirt. "We don't like vice cops here," this man said amid smells of sen-sen and alcohol.
"Look," Lance growled. "I'm not a cop. I didn't even want to come in here. So just leave off me, all right?"
"Let him go," someone from behind the bar said. "We don't need no trouble here."
The gay man grumbled and motioned Lance towards the door. "All right. Get out. But don't ever let me see you again, you hear?"
Lance heard and scurried out, not even glancing back for Marie. If she wanted to mingle with that crowd, it wasn't worth his hide to stop her.
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