Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,216

a Night Angel. No big studios, no contracts, no options. It was all strictly B-league. Still, Lana’s not inconsiderable on-screen charms had attracted her share of attention, almost all of it male. And while Lana Lake might have been a minor starlet in the Tin-seltown constellation, she shone bright as Polaris in her hometown of Martinez after she decided that dancing and drinking, not moviemaking, were more in tune with her nocturnal rhythms.

Location turned out to be everything of course. Martinez, a shot-glass toss away from San Francisco’s infamous Cocoa Club, was home not only to Lana Lake, but to the equally infamous martini. Mother’s drink of choice was, naturally, Dean Martin’s choice. The Flame of Love: swirl three drops expensive sherry in an iced stem glass, then pour out. Squeeze one strip of orange peel into the glass and flambé. Throw away the peel. Fill the glass with ice to chill it. Toss out ice. Add very expensive vodka, then flambé another strip of orange peel around the rim. Throw away the peel. Stir very gently.

“I like a new Lincoln with all of its class,” Mother sang to Daddy while sitting in his lap. “I like a martini and burn on the glass!”

That was Lana Lake: burn on the glass all the way.

Myself, I’d never experienced the forbidden and fermented fruits of the Cocoa Club. And liberal as Lana was, she still couldn’t slip me under the velvet ropes and into the backdoor of the smoky nightspot.

To make up for it, she rehearsed her act for us in the living room, for Daddy and me, and maybe some of the boys in the band who always seemed to be lounging around there, smoking and joking, or tinkling “Street Scene ’58” on the piano, because sooner or later, everyone ended up at our house.

Including Daddy.

Lana’s little trick started like this: first she would disappear behind the Chinese screen—Chinoise, en français, she explained in her crazy put-on accent, not quite French, not quite anything. Then she would slink out from behind the screen with a wink of an emerald eye.

And then she would dance.

The lights played with the curves of her silhouette on rice paper as satiny-smooth as the head of Daddy’s snare drum. He kept time with the jive of her hips. His shirtsleeves would be rolled up, the collar unbuttoned, his tanned skin dark against his white undershirt. Cigarette half-forgotten in the corner of his mouth as he stared at her. As we all stared at her.

Luis Ramirez whistled. “Now that’s what I call a sweet little cookie,” he said, shaking his head.

“A fortune cookie. All wrapped up in Chinese silk,” Daddy said with a proud swish of cymbals. He wasn’t the only one who loved Mother. They all loved her: the boys in the band, and Daddy…and me. Burn on the glass, all the way.

Lana had hundreds of costumes jammed in her closet like piñatas: Spanish bullfighter bolero jacket and a snorting bull painted above her breast. Caravan gypsy with bright scarves and an evil silver blade licking the tip of her rouged nipple. Queen of the Nile in a sleek leopard pelt and a painted python with an amber eye that wound around her narrow waist.

Daddy’s wife, Cassandra (she liked to be called Mrs. Joe Caiola), had called Mother a common whore. Right to her face once, when we ran into her in town. With all those people standing there like a church choir. Nervous titters and uneasy glances all around. Lana Lake was Lana Lake, after all, and there was no telling what she’d do for a slight like that. To everyone’s amazement Mother only smiled, and we kept walking. Still, there was a tightness to her steps. Red dress. Red high heels. Red hair bouncing down her back, burning like her cheeks.

I never understood, then, how it was possible to hate something so unabashedly beautiful. I was transfixed by unrestrained female beauty in a way that only a girl of eleven, uninitiated to the mysteries that awaited the thrust into adulthood, could be. God, how I wanted that life for myself: a hundred handsome boyfriends to drive me anywhere I wanted in a shiny limousine. And a private jet to fly me to the Isle of Capri.

They should burn that damn club down, Mrs. Caiola said. She was arguing with Daddy in the house next door. It was a scorching summer morning; all the windows were open. You couldn’t help but hear her.

Burn it down…

My