She winked and dropped the subject, having apparently resolved any moral conflict she might have had. I, however, still had a few waning thoughts of Liz and feelings of concomitant guilt. But they vanished as the car turned north off of Sunset up Vine and stopped just south of Hollywood Boulevard in front of a dimly lit doorway below a tiny neon sign that read simply “Mack’s.”
The lights of the Pantages Theatre gleamed up on Hollywood where the tourists snapped pictures of the stars on the sidewalk, but this stretch of Vine was only partially lit. There was a small crowd standing around the doorway smoking and wearing leather coats that served no purpose in the late June evening other than to look good.
Mack’s is a hipster bar. Self-consciously eclectic music mingles with red and blue lights and everyone inside is always cooler than the next guy. It was the kind of place you never went alone because no one but your own friends would ever speak to you. There were couches and cushions everywhere. Long drapes hung on the walls and down from the center of the room, creating small chambers of soft cloth, warm light, and just enough shadow to hide your lack of self-esteem. It was the essence of Los Angeles nightlife: snobby, snazzy, and completely self-absorbed.
We sat on a large cushion in a corner of the room. Morgan continued her assault on the cosmopolitan and I, not wanting to risk upsetting the delicate balance of the evening, stayed with gin and tonic. Morgan regaled me with stories of her various unsuccessful efforts to get kicked out of the elite prep school she attended. It was a litany of routine pranks, some more ballsy than others, but none particularly radical. She clearly enjoyed talking about herself and her exhibitionism. I kept wondering why someone with that kind of opportunity would try to sabotage or squander it.
But just when her behavior seemed to paint her into a stereotype I was well prepared to apply, she would do something like stare up at the mock frieze behind the bar and laugh as she read the words written in it. “They’ve mixed Latin and Italian,” she said in an almost derisive tone. “And worse, the dialects they’ve used are over a thousand years apart.” She shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows, doing her best impression of a cute, dumb blonde. “I guess it’s true what they say about LA — all style and no substance.” She laughed and leaned back into a massive pillow, slowly lifting her legs up and resting them across my knees. “But the atmosphere is absolutely faaaaabulous!”
I looked down at the curves of her legs. She wiggled her toes, having slipped off her shoes. I watched the red lights move across her face. She smiled, slumped back, almost supine, resting her drink on her chest between her breasts and peering around it.
I shifted toward her, turning slightly and resting a hand on her ankle. My heart was pounding as I felt her ankle move beneath my fingers, settling in, getting comfortable. She was fine with me touching her. She only sipped her cosmo and continued talking. My head swam. The music throbbed, lights pulsing, and my dry mouth seemed to require more and more of the fizzy drinks the waitress kept bringing.
Two hours later, after Morgan had told me all about her friends from college, her trips to Europe, and the crazy boyfriend she once had who she swore would be a famous writer one day but who didn’t pay enough attention to her for her to stay with; after she had laughed at something I had said and leaned forward to touch me on the shoulder for the twelfth time; and after I had managed to slide my hand up to the middle of her calf, just below the knee, and torture myself with distracting thoughts of what the rest of her must feel like; Morgan got up and went to the bathroom. When she returned, she stood in front of me and said, “I think I need something to eat. Where do people in LA go at midnight on a Monday? Take me somewhere local, some nasty place with greasy food.”
***
Pink’s is a hot dog stand on La Brea. Pink’s is also an institution, a landmark dedicated to late night consumption, and one of the few places in the world where hundreds of drunks, drug addicts, stars, and socialites will wait in line