Makennah took a sharp breath and sized up Jane’s appearance before replying. Jane herself looked like she’d just gotten done with a shower after sex, especially as she too, appeared to be a guest of The Sleepy Inn.
“Who am I doing?” Makennah finally said, looking Jane up and down. “Who are you doing?”
Jane looked to the side and cleared her throat.
“Alright, looks like we have a standoff, then,” Jane said.
“That’s right,” Makennah said, nodding warily. Jane might have been her journalism school mentor back at U.S.C. but she was ready to kick her ass if she got too nosy.
“So how about we didn’t see each other here, never were here, don’t know or care who was here with us,” Makennah said.
“Deal,” Jane said. The two continued to hold their stares mistrustfully. Finally, Jane gestured at the ice machine; Makennah stepped aside to let Jane fill a bucket, eyes still fixed on her. Jane was a grade-A snoop, it’s why she was a newspaper reporter after all. So Makennah was going to watch her go all the way back to her room and go inside before she went anywhere near room 319 and Allen.
Jane fished through her robe’s front pocket for a couple of quarters, plugged them into the generic drink machine, and whacked the Diet Shasta button, which instead dispensed cans of The Club Diet Gin & Tonic (without a liquor license, of course). Jane cracked the pop top nonchalantly and took a long pull on the watered-down cocktail like it was an actual soft drink.
“This is good stuff,” Jane said rhetorically.
Makennah scoffed, still eyeballing Jane like a threat. “Yeah, I bet it is.”
“When did you get home from S.C.?” Jane asked.
“Wednesday,” Makennah replied.
“What happened with the Register?” Jane asked, meaning an internship in Orange County.
“Didn’t happen,” Makennah said. “Those fucking libertarians took some dipshit from Arizona State instead.”
“Typical,” Jane said. She noticed that Makennah was wearing a man’s tank top which she had to clutch and reposition to cover her tits. The tank top also said BAKERSFIELD BASEBALL CAMP 1988. A hunch started to form.
Makennah’s body language suggested she was going to break off the conversation. Jane, like any good interviewer, jumped back in to extend it with an open-ended remark. “I could have gotten you an interview at the L.A. Weekly,” she said.
“Thanks,” Makennah said, loosening a little. “But I’m a little over the edgy stuff for now. It’s like all they want to read about is sex workers from the Valley, and I had enough of that with my magazine writing project.”
“So you’re back in town just … lifeguarding?” Jane asked.
“That’s right,” Makennah said. “Nice mindless summer before I go back down to L.A. for Song Girl practice. How’s the Sentinel? I thought you were going to Ventura or Riverside.”
“Yeah that didn’t happen either,” Jane said. “So I’m back home. It pays the rent. Maybe not in Calloway Meadows, but at least I’m not living with Mom.”
“So you’re husband shopping out here at the Sleepy?” Makennah said.
“Not quite,” Jane said archly. “So, who’s going back to their room first while the other watches to see who’s at the door?”
“I nominate you,” Makennah said, sweeping her hand toward the stairs.
“Alright then,” Jane said. She knew who Makennah was fucking, or at least had a good idea, but confronting her with that right now wouldn’t get her anything. Besides, she wanted to double-check something in the Sentinel’s morgue before going after the real responsible party.
Jane’s room was on the second floor, facing Route 69. Makennah stood on the breezeway, eyes following Jane as she knocked on her door and was let in by someone she couldn’t see. Well, she should have carried her key, Makennah thought, but whoever she was fucking was a pro at this no-tell motel game. Makennah turned for the third floor and trotted back into the “bridal suite” where Allen was lying on the bed, licking an index finger as he paged through a three-ring binder full of takeout menus from nearby joints.
“Alright, I need you to do me a favor,” Makennah said, urgently enough that Allen sensed there was trouble and shut the binder immediately. Makennah peeled off Allen’s tank top and threw it back to him, then stepped out of her basketball shorts and put her lifeguard swimsuit back on, with the shorts over the bottom again. Makennah mentioned that she had been spotted at the motel by someone she knew.
“She? She who?” Allen asked, a little startled.
“Not important, but she definitely knows you, too,” Makennah said. “She’s going to be watching me go to my car.” So she told Allen to tiptoe down the stairs, then go to the back of the motel property, jump a fence, and meet her in the parking lot of the nearby Donut Shoppe.
“Who is it? You swear you’re not ditching me,” Allen said, a little panicked.
“What? My God, no, baby,” Makennah said, moving over to Allen to peck him on the lips as he was stepping back into his board shorts. “Baby, you just gave me the best fuck of my life, you’re all mine, sweetie. Pinkie promise.”
Makennah watched from the rear breezeway as Allen tiptoed down the stairs in his sandals, then sprinted, flat-footed, past the Sleepy’s long abandoned, algae-filled pool and cleared a chain link fence with a boot-camp style vault, stumbling as he blew out a flip-flop on the dismount. He limped to the rear of the Donut Shoppe, crouched beside a Dumpster, and flashed a thumbs-up back at the motel. Makennah sauntered out of room 319, leaving the key on the bed, and got in her Corvette, throwing a middle finger in the direction of Jane’s room as she did so. She left the parking lot by turning left so she could circle the block and approach the Donut Shoppe from the rear, completing her pickup of Allen just before Jane realized what was going on and could get to the rear breezeway to spot the goods.
“Shit,” Jane muttered, watching Makennah’s Corvette make a safe getaway from the back of the Donut Shoppe. But that tank top Makennah was wearing was a powerful piece of circumstantial evidence.
“Chief, I gotta go back to the office,” Jane said upon returning to her room. Chief Fairfield was on the bed in a white undershirt and black shorts, but no underpants, jerking off to a topless bikini competition on the closed-circuit TV. He grunted an acknowledgement to Jane, spitting tobacco juice into a coffee cup. She then got herself dressed, put on a baseball cap over her wet, messy hair, and went to her car in the parking lot. Chief Fairfield, once he got dressed, walked over to an unmarked cop car in the Donut Shoppe’s rear parking lot and departed about 10 minutes later.
• • •
Jane cycled through the Sentinels from May and June 1988. Playboy was holding a casting call for a “Hometown Girls” pictorial out at The Sleepy Inn, that was pretty funny in hindsight. The county commissioners proclaimed May 21 to be “Vegas Showgirls Day” in recognition of three locals who were either from town or moved there after their careers in Jubilee! Some farmer grew a huge potato that looked like Richard Nixon … Ah, there it is. On the sports front for June 7.
Springfield Gushers send four to baseball camp. (The high school’s logo was a spouting oil derrick, calling on the area’s oil-patch heritage) And sure enough, there was Allen with three teammates standing at parade rest, mugging for the camera insincerely. They had opened the flies on their baseball pants and either the photographer did not notice or care. One of his teammates had also extended a middle finger down his right thigh.
Allen went to Bakersfield Baseball Camp that year, which accounts for the t-shirt Makennah was wearing. He was the only junior on the team selected. The other three Makennah recognized as scholarship athletes at small colleges out of state. Bakersfield Baseball Camp was a somewhat prestigious summer camp that selected its players, you didn’t just pay a fee and attend. It was run by Tim Esasky, who had coached the college’s baseball team to back-to-back-to-back NAIA championships, and later made a lot of money selling a line of instructional VHS tapes.
Jane made a photocopy of the story and went back to her desk, fishing out the police report from the preceding Tuesday when Maria beat the shit out of Lilly in her carport, looking over its details once more. She tapped a no-print blue felt-tip pen against her teeth as she thought about what to do next.
• • •
Makennah safely deposited Allen back at his home before either of his parents arrived. They laughed conspiratorially as he kissed her goodbye, then jogged barefoot across her backyard to his home. It had been one hell of a day. Makennah had taken him to the country club for the whole day, in defiance of his grounding; he’d gotten a blowjob after nearly suffering third-degree chemical burns to his dick and balls; then he got laid at The Sleepy Inn and had made a successful escape like he was the Chamber of Commerce president banging someone from the Springfield Central Schools PTA. It was, as one might say, a day of days.
Allen was in his room playing R.B.I. Baseball on his Nintendo when his Mom got home from work. If she got home before his Dad, that usually meant his Dad was out with the fellas at a bar and might be skipping dinner. The phone rang in the bottom of the fifth inning of his video game. Allen let his mother answer it.
“Allen?” Suzanne said, knocking on his bedroom door. “Pick up the phone, one of your friends wants to talk to you.”
Allen continued playing Nintendo and put the receiver under his chin, against his left shoulder.
“Yeah?” Allen said.
“Mom and I are doing a barbecue out by the pool if you’d like to come over for dinner,” Makennah said sweetly. Allen paused the game and took the phone in his hand.
“Of course!” Allen said brightly. If he was a cartoon character, little cartoon hearts would have been popping over his head. “Can I bring anything?” Never mind how he would buy or make that, he just knew it was courteous to bring a side when your neighbor invites you to a barbecue.
“We’re having hamburgers and we already have chips and buns and everything, but …” Makennah said wryly, “you can bring your big hotdog just for me.”
“Can do!” Allen snickered, hanging up the phone.
Allen put his swimsuit back on, as well as his favorite Lakers jersey and flip-flops, and returned to the poolside behind Maria’s house. It was getting dark. Makennah had already started the grill, which glowed orange underneath the grates. The lights were on in the bottom of the pool. Soft dentist-office rock played from a set of speakers near the diving board. It was an incredibly chill scene, and Allen felt like the coolest guy in the world when Maria greeted him, kissed him on the cheek, and introduced him to Jillian, who was no slouch herself in the hotness department.
All four enjoyed a pitcher of sangria that Maria had stirred together and talked about how they’d come to know each other. There wasn’t any suggestive or provocative sex talk or anything. Everyone had already had enough for the day, it seemed, and the fun and spontaneous tone of the dinner lent the conversation to sharing personal stories and funny you-had-to-be-there anecdotes. Once the sun had completely descended, Allen was leaning back in his chair with Makennah’s head resting on his shoulder, and Maria and Jillian were holding hands.
“Well, I’m going to get the dishes started,” Maria said cheerfully after Allen finished an anecdote about a weird guy he met at Bakersfield Baseball Camp. Jillian followed her inside to help. Allen and Makennah stayed out by the pool. He was tracing his fingers through her billowy black mane of hair and making small talk, it looked like. Maria felt a wave of happiness that she hadn’t really felt before. She’d hooked her daughter up with someone really sweet. A good fuck, make no mistake, but a young man who didn’t just leave the scene after getting his nut, for a change.
She walked into the sunroom with a plastic goblet of box-wine chardonnay and looked back at the pool, Makennah and Allen were now in the in-ground hot tub near the pool, making out. They still had their swimsuits on, it looked like, but they were just a couple of kids swooning and enjoying the pleasure of each other’s company, so to speak. Makennah draped her hair over Allen’s face and closed in on him for what the high school health teachers called “heavy petting.” They appeared to be dry humping as the hot tub jets blew bubbles and steam everywhere. It was very cute, and very hot. As Maria watched, she felt Jillian come up from behind, put her hand over her waist, and lean in to kiss her neck. Everything, finally, seemed right in the world.
Then the phone rang. Annoyed, Maria walked over to an end table and picked up the receiver.
“Hi there, may I speak to Maria Peroni?” a young woman’s voice said. Maria at first thought it was a telemarketer, but instead said, “This is she.”
“Ma’am, this is Jane Carmel of the Springfield Sentinel,” Jane said, professionally. “I was hoping to speak with you regarding a police report in your neighborhood from earlier this week.”
Maria dropped her plastic wine glass, which did not shatter, but did throw cheap white wine all over the tile floor of the sunroom. Jillian was instantly concerned, but slipped into the kitchen for paper towels to clean up the spill.
“Well,” Maria said, trembling, her guard fully up, “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
“I can explain,” Jane said, “if you’d care to meet me at The Donut Shoppe for coffee tomorrow. It’s next to The Sleepy Inn.”
