Cards

Starsky and Hutch are browsing in Venice Beach on a Sunday morning and several “business” cards are exchanged.

For Sandra (a.k.a. Victoria): Merry Christmas 2004!

On Sunday mornings, Venice Beach heathen drifted into Robert’s Colophon Café looking for something to read, somebody to recognize, unusual muffins, freshly squeezed juices, and organically grown coffee. (“Save the Songbirds,” said the tent cards on every table.) While there, if only as an excuse to stay longer, they might cruise by the walnut-stained plywood bins of bargain records near Mythology. Regulars knew to have a couple of extra dollar bills handy in case of live music, though musicians in that part of town couldn’t always be counted upon to be humble or awake enough to provide it. Today, one of them was bobbling away at a hammered dulcimer, oblivious to the empty condition of the wicker basket at his feet. The bookshelves were weighty with the accumulating wisdom of a New Age — although its enlightenment had not yet revealed to anyone at Robert’s the need for systematic inventory management.

A man with at least one layer of clothing too many draped on his lanky frame alternately stretched and crouched as he worked his way down the shelves in an aisle near the back of the store. He inclined his head at an angle matching that of the small white card he held at eye level between two fingers of his right hand; he used these to scan book titles. He stayed focused on his project even after an equally over-layered companion strode toward him, proudly showing off a shrink-wrapped LP.

“Hey, Blondie, look what I’m gettin’.”

“Yeah? That’s good.”

“Bet you’ll be surprised.”

“Nothing about you surprises me anymore, Starsk. Hey, here we go! Here it is.” He pulled the book off the shelf with something approaching reverence and moved closer to his friend so they could read the table of contents together. “Interesting?”

“Come on, Hutch. You don’t need no sex book.” It was laughable. There were more creamy beauties waiting in line to get under Ken Hutchinson than any one man had a right to. Whatever he was doing in that old brass bed of his, word must have gotten around that it was worth the wait.

“It’s not about sex.”

“It ain’t motorcycle maintenance, buddy.”

“Well, actually….”

“Yeah, I know. I read that. This the one Joy told you to get?”

“Wants both of us to read it, before Saturday. It’s about…love and…transcending death.” His hand stroked the cover of the book, but he didn’t look at it. “Through Joy.” He chuckled briefly, and stuffed the tantrika’s card into a pants pocket.

A silence that might have been comforting settled over the two men, until one of them shrugged it off.

“Coffee? Uh…Hutch?”

“That takes cash. I’m living on plastic ’til payday.”

“So I’m buyin’.”

“Give me the record. I’ll take care of it with the book. Maybe that’ll shame you into keeping an open mind.”

“I’m shameless. And anyway, it’s not my mind that I’m worried about somebody openin’.” He ignored his friend’s mild groan. “See ya over there.”

Jesus. Hutchinson was serious about this. Well, whatever was keeping all those babes comin’ back for more should at least be worth watching up close and personal. Didn’t have to go no further than that. Whoa! That was already pretty damn far! Yeah. That could be interesting. Well, he’d read the damn book and worry about the details later.

He strolled across the bookstore and under the thick stucco archway separating it from the crowded coffee bar, smugly reminding himself that he was no slouch in the female conquest department, either. Lotta women preferred the dark, dangerous type. His left hand patted for his wallet and he pulled it out, fanned through its contents, and sacrificed two bills to the wicker basket. He chose a table far enough away from the rinky-dink music to allow for conversation, and placed their order with a waitress who looked forty but probably could have claimed thirty if she lost the frown. His attempt at humor failed to prove him right, one way or the other.

“No. No thank you. No!” The raw edge to the male voice made him turn around. A seedy-looking bum was forcing a stained, wilted business card into the sight lines of a college kid and grunting something about telling his fortune. Starsky recognized the guy. Although he took pity on him, he needed to move on, and Starsky helped him do so, even going so far as walking him to the door and holding an animated farewell conversation with him on the sidewalk.

“Hey, thanks, man. He really creeped me out,” the college kid said when he returned.

“Aw, he’s harmless. Just needs a mission in life. There’s one a coupla blocks from here he’s headed for now.”

“Oh. Cool.” The kid nodded and went back to his Collected Nietzsche.

A few minutes later, Starsky’s blond bombshell approached, holding a large, neatly folded maroon paper bag in front of himself at waist level.

“Got somethin’ to hide, Mr. Transcendence?”

“Stuff it, Starsk.”

A sudden clatter turned every eye in the café toward them and etched another ten years into the face of their waitress, whose tray of incoming coffee and pastries had just landed in a sloppy mess at her feet. She got down on all fours, trying to push puddles of coffee into shards of what had been hand-thrown pottery easily worth half a good day’s tips.

The need for his strategically placed maroon paper bag having just vanished much faster than it had arisen, Ken Hutchinson placed it on the table, grabbed a wad of paper napkins out of the dispenser, and went down on one knee to help clean up the accident he had managed to cause.

The now-fifty-year-old waitress who could have been thirty allowed herself to make eye contact with the clumsy stranger and, by God, Starsky observed, she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Nice teeth. Actress, maybe. She muttered something, and Hutchinson muttered something in return. He took both her wrists gently and helped her to stand, then accompanied her as she floated on a small cloud of pleasure back to a sink behind the bar.

Starsky shook his head, stifling laughter. The man was unbelievable. Noticing the maroon paper bag on the table that he was resigned to occupy by himself, he began opening it, intending to get a head start on Chapter One.

It was then that the woman at the next table decided, with evident relief, that her long blue batiste dress had been spared collateral damage. Hell to clean on a trip. She smoothed it over her thighs two or three times, leaned back in her chair, and returned to her Fodor’s Guide to Bay City — from which a heavy embossed card inserted halfway into a matching envelope tumbled out onto the floor right at Starsky’s feet.

Though anxious to divert attention from himself while Hutch saw to the clean-up detail — in more ways than one — he plucked up the envelope and offered it to its owner, wondering what her connection to the UCLA Music Department could be and if the record Hutch had just bought for him could turn out to have been an omen of some kind and if she liked movies and where they should go for dinner the first time, if she was going to be in town long enough. Pretty hair.

“Miss?”

The woman in the blue batiste dress looked around, then down at the hand of the man offering the invitation, then up into his eyes. At home, it might not be polite to get too friendly too fast under these circumstances, but she was in Venice Beach — the beginning of the end of all that was proper. He looked delicious. This was hardly an improper sort of place. She brightened, and smiled.

“Seems you dropped this, Miss…”

Before he could turn over the envelope to learn her name, she retrieved it with a tug. “Why, thank you. I’ll need this tonight.”

“Well, now that you have it, for whom do I have the honor of being a knight in shining armor?” He held out his hand with an expression that explained everything he felt she needed to know about him, but he added anyway, “Dave Starsky.”

“How do you do, Mr. Starsky. My name is Miss…um…Victoria.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms Victoria.”

“Oh no, just Victoria.”

“But not Vicky.”

“No. Not Vicky.” To make the point crystal clear to herself, she liberated some of her long brown hair from the ivory lace shawl in which it had gotten twisted earlier and tied the shawl’s ends loosely over her breasts.

“Visiting, Victoria?”

“I suppose that’s obvious,” she said, displaying her Fodor’s. “And you. Social worker?”

Puzzled for a moment, Starsky remembered Billy Fortune and gave her points for insight. “Something like that. If you’re looking for interesting places to check out in this part of town, I’d love to give you a guided tour. Until four o’clock, anyway.”

“When you turn into a pumpkin, or mice or something?”

“Nope. Turn into a cop on night duty. Same with Prince Charming over there,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the lean, pretty blond fellow who was returning to the scene of the catastrophe with the waitress and a rag mop in tow.

“Hutch, meet our new friend, Victoria-but-not-Vicky. Thought we’d show her around. She’s from someplace else.”

“I didn’t say yes, you know. You’re strangers.”

“True, but people always complain that you can never find a cop when you need one, and here you got two of Bay City’s finest at your disposal.” He pulled out one of the cards he and Hutch carried for the benefit of victims, witnesses, and potential informants, placed it in front of Victoria, and rapidly snapped his fingers at Hutch to do likewise with one of his.

“Only one of Bay City’s finest today, Starsk. I’m gonna be busy.” Hutch levered the mop handle toward the waitress, fished a card out of his pocket and gave it to Victoria with a dazzling grin. “But if he tries anything funny, give me a call.” He bent out of further conversation to scoop broken mugs and sopping wet muffin chunks into a waste-can while Annie — or was it Annette? — mopped up the remaining puddle of coffee.

Incredible body, sixty percent legs, like Hutch. They’d fit nicely.

“Well, Victoria-but-not-Vicky, whaddya say? Game for a little gallery-hopping and a stroll on the beach?”

“I’ll skip the beach, thanks, but the rest is tempting. I’ll tell you what, Mr. St…”

“Dave.”

“Mr. Dave Starsky, I have an errand to run. If I’m not back here by noon, you may assume I’ve taken leave of my senses.”

Dave Starsky rose as gallantly as he knew how and watched his afternoon delight walk under the stucco arch and out into the street, to mix with the likes of Billy Fortune.

The woman in the blue batiste dress and the ivory lace shawl, with an invitation tucked into her Fodor’s and two business cards in hand, cut through a riptide of Venetian humanity for a block or two, soaking up the exceptionally colorful local color of this strange non-city, passing a dress shop, an ice cream parlor, another dress shop, a God-knows-what shop, this boutiques and that boutique, until she reached a corner dominated by a huge open-air fruit market that seemed relatively peaceful. There, she glanced down at the business cards and read once more the name of the gypsy-looking cop.

Oh, a detective sergeant, actually. Whatever that meant, it seemed special. And the other one would be the same, she guessed; though, what was his name, again?

“Joy,” the second card read, with a phone number and a lotus blossom, all in deep lavender printing. That’s odd, she thought. She flipped the card over, looking for something resembling the other card, only to find words scrawled in pencil, smudged a little, but readable:

Rawson

Tantra, the Indian Cult of Ecstasy

Robert’s

Victoria straightened, suddenly aware of the kiss of sunshine on her face, the tickle of lace on her bare arms, and the mouth-watering scent of papaya. She lowered her eyelids for a moment, breathed deeply — slowly in; slowly, mindfully, out — turned around and began walking back across the current to the place where, on Sunday mornings, some of the heathen of Venice Beach put five-dollar bills in musicians’ empty wicker baskets, even when they really hated the music, and some others thought the way to a working girl’s heart was through her dignity.