A Better Goodbye Read online




  A BETTER GOODBYE

  A Novel

  JOHN SCHULIAN

  Let the bell toll for

  Johnny Lira, the toughest guy in the neighborhood,

  and

  Jim McCarthy, who believed because that’s what friends do.

  They all have a plan until they get hit.

  —MIKE TYSON

  And I wonder where you are

  And if the pain ends when you die

  And I wonder if there was

  Some better way to say goodbye

  —PATTY GRIFFIN

  1

  Too bad Barry lived in Santa Barbara. Suki would have told him her real name if he’d been local. Or maybe she would do it anyway, her resistance wavering as the two of them lay naked in the master bedroom. He smelled like soap and had a nice ass. Best of all, he was mature, not like the last client she’d dated, the loser whose cell phone bill she was still paying. Even with the curtains drawn in the middle of the afternoon and the only light coming from the candles beside the futon, she could see that his short black hair was going gray fast. He’d said he was forty-two, twice her age practically, but she didn’t mind.

  The last song on her Mazzy Star CD had ended a while ago, and now it was just Barry talking about his new car and generally acting like an hour with her was more enjoyable than the massage or the happy ending.

  “It’s a Rolls,” he said. “Convertible.”

  “Really?” Suki didn’t know much about cars, but she did know that a Rolls-Royce cost a fortune. “Did you just buy it?”

  “It was part of a business deal.”

  Barry always talked about business, but he never said exactly what it was he did. Other guys would let you know right away that they were lawyers or doctors—lots of weird doctors out there—or producers or writers or the one thing Southern California must have had more of than any other place in the world, entrepreneurs. But Barry kept it vague. Suki wondered if he was a drug dealer.

  “You look like you’re freezing,” he said, not waiting for a response as he reached down to grab the comforter and pull it up over both of them.

  “A little, I guess,” she said, relishing the sudden warmth. Even snuggled against Barry, she’d felt like she was turning blue.

  “How much longer are you working?”

  “Like I’m supposed to get off at seven, but I don’t have any more appointments scheduled. Unless the other girls booked something while I’ve been with you.”

  “They do that?”

  “No, usually, if someone asks for me, they say I’m off, or I don’t work here anymore.” Suki couldn’t help laughing.

  Barry frowned.

  “Come on,” she said. “It’s funny.”

  “It wouldn’t be in my world.”

  “Girls are always bitches to each other.”

  “They are, huh?” Barry was smiling now. He looked like he wanted to say something else when there was a knock on the door.

  “Suki?” No mistaking Contessa’s voice. She could offer you ice cream and make it sound like you’d stolen her favorite earrings. “Time’s up, baby.”

  “Be right there,” Suki said.

  She sat up quickly, her long hair tumbling over one of her small, perfect breasts, her smile turning into a pout. “Sorry,” she said. She scrambled off the futon, grabbed her black Trashy Lingerie mini dress off the floor and tugged it on. “I always forget the clock when you’re here.”

  Barry nodded in a way that made Suki think it was the same for him, and he never took his eyes off her. He’d told her he liked her with clothes on as much as he did naked. It was the kind of thing guys always said, but he made it sound real.

  “Do I have time for a shower?” he asked.

  “Sure. I put a clean towel out for you.”

  She was just about to open the door when he stopped her with a question: “Would you like to go for a ride? I was going to ask you before but . . . ” He nodded toward the door and the lingering menace of Contessa’s voice.

  The guys who were sprung for Asian girls, the rice chasers, would see Suki for the first time and ask her out almost before she’d told them to turn over—dinner, a concert, a weekend in Vegas—but not Barry. He’d started seeing her when she worked for the Russian couple on Laurel Canyon, and only now, eight months, three apartment complexes, one guesthouse and her own place later, was he making his move. “Cool,” she said, her smile big and genuine. “I’ll find out.”

  When she stepped into the living room, she made sure the door was closed before she turned to face the stare she knew Contessa had waiting for her.

  “Look at you, all smiley and shit. Musta fucked him.”

  “No way,” Suki said, pissed that she’d forgotten to lose the damn smile. A hand job was as far as she ever went when Contessa was on the other side of the wall.

  “Bullshit.” The word sounded extra bad because Contessa was so pretty, with her milk chocolate skin and her hair dyed honey blonde and braided. She had huge boobs too, real ones that looked more enormous than ever now, as she crossed her arms beneath them and they bulged out of a white negligee that wasn’t meant to contain them in the first place. “You in there for an hour and twenty minutes, got to be some fuckin’ going on.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint you,” Suki said.

  “Uh-huh,” Contessa said with an accusing smile.

  Any other time, Suki would have been trying not to laugh. Contessa made no secret of the fact that she screwed every client who asked for it. It didn’t matter if they were players flashing gold or uptight white businessmen out to prove something to themselves. She did them all, even a guy who looked like a grandfather and had to be risking a heart attack every time he saw her. And here was the thing none of the clients knew about Contessa: she never cleaned herself afterward. Didn’t douche, didn’t shower, didn’t do anything but count her money—three hundred for full service—and wait for the next guy with his sights on the health hazard between her legs.

  “Do I have any more appointments?” Suki asked. “I’d kind of like an hour off. Maybe a little longer.”

  “With that dude in there?”

  Suki flushed and looked away from Contessa’s stare. “You know it’s always slow the next couple hours. I’ll be back by the time the phones get busy.”

  Contessa wasn’t the boss or anything. The boss was a real-estate guy named Derek who always had a massage operation or two on the side, for the unreported income and easy sex. Derek couldn’t turn down the volume on his salesman’s yada-yada-yada, which was all the reason Suki needed to go deaf when he came around. But she tried not to leave the other girls hanging no matter where she worked. Sometimes they reciprocated.

  Contessa glanced over at the sofa. A blonde who called herself Brooke was curled up on it, worrying a strand of her streaked hair as she worked one of the two phones on the coffee table in front of her. There wasn’t any other furniture in the room, and Suki always thought the relative emptiness made their voices sound different.

  “Security code’s five-oh-seven,” Brooke was saying. “Same as the apartment.” She flashed Suki and Contessa a smile as she listened. “Great. Then I’ll see you at two-thirty.” Another smile, bigger this time. “I can’t give too many details on the phone, but I promise you’ll leave very satisfied, okay, sweetie?”

  Brooke put the phone down and stood. She was tall and willowy, like a model, just not that pretty; she needed a lot of makeup to camouflage her ravaged complexion. “New client,” she said.

  “You tell him about a two-girl?” Contessa asked.

  Brooke got the same guilty look on her face she’d had when she told Contessa she watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I will when he gets here,” Brooke said.


  “Yeah.” Contessa nodded slowly, letting her know that would be a damn good idea.

  Suki was starting to fidget. She hoped Barry would wait in the room until she went back in, the way unwritten protocol said he was supposed to. If he came out now, before a decision was made, Contessa would know what was up even if he never said anything except goodbye.

  “I think I’ll wear my red negligee,” Brooke said. “From Victoria’s Secret.”

  “You sure?” Contessa said. “Makes you look titless and shit.”

  “Really?” Insecurity strangled Brooke’s voice. “I better go see what else is in the closet.”

  She started toward the master bedroom, where the girls kept their things. Suki had to stop herself from reaching out and grabbing her.

  “Brooke, my client.”

  Contessa went back on the offensive instantly. “She been fuckin’ him and won’t say.”

  “Well, he is really cute,” Brooke said. She was so consistently nonjudgmental in her ten-watt way that Suki couldn’t help liking her.

  “Nothing happened, believe me,” Suki said. “Let me see if he’s ready.” But she stopped at the door and looked at Contessa hopefully. “So, you think it would be all right? I’ll only be gone for, like, an hour.”

  “Fuck it,” Contessa said.

  Suki took that as a yes and ducked back into the master.

  The only other Rolls she could remember seeing in Sherman Oaks belonged to Barry White, and Sherman Oaks was loaded with phat rides, especially when you went up in the hills south of Ventura Boulevard and the houses got fancy. At least, someone had told her the Rolls was Barry White’s—probably a client old enough to remember when he was making all that “Take off your brassiere, my dear” music. To Suki he was just this bloated black dude with a Jheri curl head who looked like he could barely squeeze behind the steering wheel. Or maybe it was his driver who had the eating disorder. If you could afford a Rolls with a root-beer-colored body and a cream-colored convertible top, it would be cool to have a driver.

  The few times Suki had seen the Barry White–mobile rolling down out of the hills, she’d never imagined riding in one. Now here was her own Barry, Santa Barbara Barry, opening the passenger door of his Rolls for her. It had a pale yellow body and a white ragtop, and he was saying it was a ’97 Corniche. Six years old, Suki thought. In her world, that made it practically hot off the assembly line. But this wasn’t the time to change the subject. Barry was having too much fun talking about how much horsepower it had and how it was so heavy—indestructible, even—that it went through brake pads like they were Kleenex.

  He was cuter than ever when he was wound up this way, but there were only two things about the Rolls itself that really mattered to her then and there. First was the sound the door made when he closed it behind her, like the door on a velvet bank vault. And then there was the leather upholstery, so soft it made her wish she were wearing shorts instead of jeans.

  She was still running her hands over it when Barry climbed behind the wheel. “Can’t stop giving massages, huh?” he said.

  “What? Oh . . . ” She pulled her hands up into her lap and smiled at him uncertainly, not relaxing until his deadpan expression gave way to a smile of his own. “It’s just that these seats are, like, totally amazing.”

  “I’ve got to tell you this is the nicest car I’ve ever driven,” Barry said, “and I’ve driven a lot of nice cars.”

  “I’ll bet.” She glanced at the dashboard. “Is that real wood?”

  “Yeah. The guy I got the car from told me what kind, but I forgot.” He laughed at himself. It was another thing she liked about him.

  He was one of those clients who made her forget the life that had brought them together, the life she led in the apartment complex in whose shadow they were still parked. She wasn’t ashamed of what she did there, although she did try to stay away from neighbors’ prying eyes. She just liked being with a guy who made her feel like they could have met anywhere. That wasn’t how it usually was.

  Suki didn’t know the engine was on until Barry eased the car away from the curb.

  “Wow, quiet,” she said.

  As they went around the block and got on Sepulveda, the noise from outside the car was still there, but it was filtered through privilege.

  “Know what one of these costs new?” Barry said.

  “How much?”

  “Three hundred and two thousand, five hundred dollars.”

  “Really? Wow.” Suki laughed self-consciously. “I keep saying wow all the time. Sorry.”

  “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

  Barry looked at her as if he expected her to say something else.

  “What?” she said.

  “Don’t you want to know what that twenty-five hundred dollars is for?” he asked. “I mean, you’d think three hundred K would be a nice round number everybody could live with, right?”

  Suki said, “Sure,” with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

  “Floor mats.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  When he began laughing, she joined in, punching him lightly on the arm and saying, “I thought you were serious.” Then she settled back, content, thinking his sunglasses were way nicer than hers and liking how the lines around his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

  “It’s got a killer sound system,” he said. “Listen.” He pushed a button and a couple of seconds later a woman’s voice was filling the Rolls with yearning: “I envy the rain that falls on your face, that wets your eyelashes and dampens your skin . . . ”

  “Who’s singing?” Suki said.

  “Lucinda Williams.”

  “I didn’t know you liked country music.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call her country. I mean, that’s how she started, but now she’s got lots of other things going on. Blues, rock-and-roll, even gospel sometimes.”

  Suki nodded. “She’s good. I like her.” It wasn’t a lie, either. It was just that Suki didn’t know much about music except Coldplay and what she put on during massage sessions. Most of her friends were into rap and hip-hop, and that was cool too. In fact she thought the funniest song she’d ever heard was “Smack My Bitch Up.” But she wasn’t going to tell Barry that, not yet anyway.

  By the time they were heading east on Ventura, Lucinda was singing about a jukebox getting her through the long nights of the heart, and Suki was back to thinking what a great day it was to be in a car like this. Seventy degrees in the middle of January, and the air was clear the way it never was in the summer.

  “Can we put the top down?” she said.

  “Absolutely,” Barry said. “I should have done that right away.”

  He pushed a button on the center console, and slowly, seductively, the top began to rise and move back. With the first crack of blue sky overhead, Suki felt the sun’s warmth.

  “Let’s go up to Mulholland,” Barry said. “It’ll be beautiful.”

  “I haven’t been up there in, like, forever.”

  They’d been hitting green lights all the way and the traffic wasn’t as thick as it usually was, all in all a perfect afternoon. Nothing for Suki to do but ride the good feeling wherever it took her.

  Then Barry said, “Shit.”

  Suki had only heard him swear a time or two before. When she looked over, his smile was gone and he was leaning on the button for the convertible top. The convertible top. That was the reason for his mood swing. It was sticking straight up as they rolled past Tower Records, a block from Van Nuys Boulevard. They were supposed to turn there and head up to Mulholland. But right now Mulholland was the furthest thing from Barry’s mind.

  “Goddammit,” he said.

  Lucinda Williams was still singing, but the only sound that registered on Suki was a low grinding noise. When she looked around, she saw other drivers staring and two Asian guys in a jacked-up Honda Civic pointing at her and laughing, like this was what she got for hanging out with a rice chaser old enough to be
her father. Her first impulse was to flip them off.

  Then Barry said “shit” one more time, and she turned her attention back to him. “What should we do?” she asked.

  He had both hands on the wheel now and he was moving into the right lane, hunting for a parking place. He didn’t look at her when he said, “You should get me a brain transplant.”

  “No, don’t say that.”

  “I was fucking stupid enough to try putting it down when we were moving. Should have parked.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “Not if I fucked up the goddamn car.”

  He hit the brake when he saw a Lincoln Navigator pulling out of a parking space. But it stopped halfway onto the street because the woman behind the wheel was busy yakking on her cell phone. “Fucking bitch,” he said.

  Suki flinched. She didn’t like the side of Barry that was emerging any more than Barry liked sitting here knowing that everybody who saw his Rolls’s convertible top waving in the breeze thought he was a rich idiot. She would have thought the same thing if she’d been driving down the street. And she had to stifle a giggle when she realized she couldn’t wait to tell someone about what had happened. Not Contessa, but maybe Brooke. No, not Brooke either, because she’d turn around and tell Contessa. Then they’d both dis Barry the way they dissed most clients, and Suki felt too protective of him for that. But she had to find someone. This was just too good, you know?

  Stepping into the apartment, she didn’t hear anything except the icemaker in the fridge. There was no sign of Contessa and Brooke—they were probably still in session. She walked toward the living room and saw that the coffee table’s glass top had been knocked sideways. A closer look told her it was cracked. One of the cushions had been pulled away from the sofa, too. Suki, starting to feel strange, off-balance, moved to straighten things up, the way she always did, and almost stepped on one of the phones. It was lying on the floor, smashed, as though someone had jumped on it.

  She glanced around the room, the sun sinking in the west, its light streaming through the vertical blinds. There was a dark slash on one of the walls that hadn’t been there when she left. Below it lay what she guessed had put it there: the other phone, now cracked and useless.