86'd: A Novel - By Dan Fante Page 0,17

there’s an untapped market for stuff like that.

Your comrade in arms,

Bruno Dante

eight

Working in the limo business in L.A. is a bizarre way to make a buck. Like licking up wet dog shit for God. The clientele for Dav-Ko in Los Angeles was mostly made up of night freaks and zombies. Rich, cranked-out movie producers, spoiled rock star punks, gangsta rappers with their black Glocks tucked into the belts of their pants, alkie ex-actors with too many DUIs, and a gazillion wannabe high rollers. Human beings who exhibited the most unpleasant personality characteristics common to L.A.: Too much ego and way too much money.

People come to L.A. hoping to discover something out-pictured beyond themselves. Something they hope to name and believe in, some idea of satisfaction through success or accumulation or recognition. Of course it never comes. Then they buy a bigger house in Brentwood or another Benz or get more plastic surgery or smoke more amphetamine and marry someone they meet at the gym. Whatever’s next. Whatever it takes to hold on to the fantasy and avoid a hard look at what’s missing within. Here I was among them. Front and center. My ticket got punched at birth.

Three weeks after the madness of my accident, Koffman and Francisco left town and he turned the day-to-day running of Dav-Ko over to me. Portia had kept her word about the incident and managed to contain my folly. And wisely, to cover my ass, I’d cut back on the booze.

In effect Portia and I were now nearly partners in running the company. As planned her dispatcher hours were expanded. Her new schedule was six days a week. Twelve p.m. to ten p.m. except for our busy weekend twelve hour shifts.

After the few days of us working at close quarters it became apparent to me that Darforth-Keats’s personality had two single overriding characteristics. The first one was the one I already knew about; a high-strung, gum-chewing, constantly talking, aristocratic weirdo, whose daily wardrobe consisted of nothing that wasn’t black. Though Koffman had been right about her polished English style and its positive effect on our phone clients, it was personality number two in particular that, over time, was getting to me. Portia Number Two appeared to have a preponderant and unmanageable attraction to guys. All guys. I’d overhear her flirting on the telephone like an 800 number call-in hooker while taking bookings for agents and managers. And if she happened to be on the line with anyone whose life had ever included strumming an electric guitar, listening to her sycophantic cooing would often force me to take a bathroom break. And she never failed to sweet-talk her favorite chauffeurs as they came in to drop off cash payments or credit card slips—telling them how “splendid” they’d done on this or that airport run—or making a big deal and complimenting them for remembering ridiculous snot like emptying the ashtrays or vacuuming out the car, stuff that they were supposed to do anyway.

In particular she seemed to have taken a shine to Frank Tropper, our former male escort turned chauffeur. Frank was tall with red hair and blue eyes and nobody’s fool when it came to manipulating any human who pissed sitting down, especially Dav-Ko’s nicotine-gum-chewing dispatcher.

If a choice driving job came in from an e-mail or over the phone—an all-nighter with a rock star or a big money cash tipper—on too many occasions it was Frank who was somehow immediately available for the job, and got it. More than once I had to delete his name from the computer’s dispatch screen and let her know that playing favorites with chauffeurs was a bad idea. The fact that Frank was an arrogant self-consumed pretty boy asshole and had a variety of woman picking him up after work every night was apparently the only thing keeping Portia from jumping his bones. This was in stark contrast to big Robert Roller. Robert could pass an entire afternoon sitting in our chauffeur’s room with the TV on without so much as a glance from his selective dispatcher.

But, frighteningly, the other member of our company whom Portia appeared to have developed an attraction to, over time, was me. The closeness of us being stuck in the dispatch office together, when I wasn’t out driving or supervising an on-site limo job, allowed her to yammer away by the hour. In the past she’d had a female cyst removed and two miscarriages and somehow had given herself permission to yammer away at