The grounds were stately. Poor people have stoops, and middle-class people have yards, but rich people have grounds and the best kind of grounds are stately grounds. The driveway snaked around hills and offered views of the city, the house, the pool, the stables, and then everything opened up onto a grand green lawn with a series of rectangular pools tangent to the front door and extending halfway down the mountain. The drive was hidden off to the side behind a row of cypress trees.
A woman rode a horse towards the house. Two women in a 1961 Lincoln Continental followed behind.
“It seems like she has the upper hand.”
“It should seem like that. She totally does.”
“Okay. Just trying to get a read on the situation,” Tiresias Richardson said. “What’s our play here?”
“Well, I don’t think she’s gonna murder us,” Big-Dicked Sheila said.
“She’s gonna murder us? I thought we were here to murder her?”
“There’s a fluidity to current events, Tirry. But I think we’ll be okay. She wouldn’t have invited us in to kill us. There’s, like, witnesses now and shit.”
The pools were surrounded by hedges. Rich people love hedges. Nothing proclaims one’s mastery over nature quite like a well-trimmed hedge. The rich people say, See this green, leafy bullshit? Wants to be a bush. See those fuckers over there? I pay them to make sure that never happens. It’s shrubbery! Yearns towards a certain wooliness and scrabble, but I say: Fuck you, plant, I want you to be perfectly rectangular. Look upon my hedges and despair. That’s what the rich people say.
Sheila and Tiresias waved at the gardeners.
“Did they see us?”
“Keep waving.”
“Maybe you should honk?”
“I’m not gonna honk.”
“Now you’ve got me all paranoid and I need to know they saw us.”
“That guy–”
Tiresias WHAPPED the horn real quick before Sheila could swat her hand away; the horse startled a bit and the blonde on top turned around annoyed. The gardeners did look, however, and Tiresias shoved her face right up close to the window and waved, then she turned back to Sheila and said,
“We’re safe now.”
“You’re my hero.”
“Do you think I should have a gun?”
“No. Why? Oh, God, no,” Sheila laughed. “Never. I’d give the horse a gun before you.”
Tiresias popped the cuffs of her blouse under her black jacket, took a deep breath, and pinched Sheila on the arm hard.
“What!?”
“You’re just mean!”
So Sheila takes her foot off the pedal to raise her knee in a defensive posture, and thwacks at Tiresias’ shoulder, who karate chops back at her; the car has now slowed to a stop on the incline of the driveway and the blonde on a horse has gotten quite a lead when she turns the animal around and yells at the two women having a slapfight,
“Are you two all right!?”
And the two disengage, Sheila gives the thumbs-up, and the car starts rolling again.
“Tirry, I love you.”
“I love you so much, Sheel.”
“I could have phrased my phrasing better.”
“Pinching is wrong.”
“How long is this driveway?”
“I know, right? This place is bigger than Harper.”
“The zoo or the college?”
“And the observatory. AAAAHahaha!”
They came around a corner and there was the turnabout, brick and over a hundred feet in diameter, with a life-size nude teen carved from stone and spitting water into the sky in the center. A Rolls Royce Phantom, mustard with a brown roof. White convertible Mercedes. The woman turned the horse towards the women in the car and said,
“I’m gonna put Chicken up in the stables and I’ll be right back. Go on in and make yourselves comfortable.”
And she rode off, presumably towards the stables.
“There are stables?”
“Presumably.”
“The horse is named Chicken,” Tiresias said.
“I gathered as much.”
Rich people in Los Angeles have three choices of house: Vaguely Spanish, Modern Nightmare, or Far Too British. This one was the third variety. It was alabaster and looked like a Duke had shamed his lineage there and the window frames were judgmental. Chimneys abounded, and there was ample gabling. You half-expected the door to open and a butler in full livery emerge.
The door opened, and a butler in full livery emerged.
“Well, that’s cool.”
“I don’t know anyone with a butler.”
“I have a girl that comes by and cleans once a week.”
“Yeah. Tampa. She comes by my place, too, Sheel.”
“I’ve been meaning to fire her.”
“She’s the worst. She rearranges my furniture.”
“I fucked a butler once.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you find a butler?”
“Party.”
“How was it?”
“Quick.”
“He probably had to get back to work.”
“Right. Incredible posture, though. I remember that.”
“Did you make him keep on the outfit?”
“Of course I made him keep on the outfit. Half the reason I was fucking him was because–”
“Ladies?”
This was the butler. Full kit: long black coat, gray vest, white shirt with the starched collar. Windsor knot on the tie. He even had the gloves. Tall and stiff with a head like a sofa cushion. His hair had never been out of place.
Sheila killed the engine and left the keys in the ignition. She grabbed her enormous purse, and Tiresias took the briefcase and both of the women got out of the car and checked herself out in the window’s reflection as she closed the door. Tiresias was in the suit she had brought with her in case she got an audition to play a sexy FBI agent or a hot homicide detective or a district attorney you wanted to fuck, but she had overshot her mark with the slicked-back hair and the aviators and the cherry-red lipstick–plus the teetering stilettos–and the look was now “malfunctioning Soviet assassin droid in a Cinemax movie.” Sheila was in her leathers with the lace-up crotch and a black tee-shirt from The Snug’s second retirement tour; it was real tight, and there was a hole in the left armpit.
They were both chewing gum.
“Welcome to Standicott. I am Bottle.”
“Bottle the butler,” Sheila said.
“Goodness. You noticed the phonetic similarities. What a brain you must have.”
“Oh, you’re that kind of butler.”
“May I take your shabby handbag? Your incredibly suspicious briefcase?”
“I’m good.”
“No, thank you.”
He stood aside and gestured them in. There was an implicit middle finger to his motions; it was the most passive-aggressive gesturing the women had ever seen performed.
The foyer was damn near an atrium: three stories on either side with a double staircase leading to the second floor opposite the doors. The walls were made out of nooks, and the nooks were filled with sculptures, and the chandelier was the size of Zimbabwe. The house radiated out from the space along each wall, and under the stairs, and there were perches from which you could be viewed from above. A tasteful piano.
“You’re to wait here for the Lady’s return. Can I get you a drink? A fortified wine, perhaps?”
“I’ll take a scotch & soda, thank you.”
“Ooh, yes. Scotch & soda. And I’ll take Diet Dr. Pepper for my soda.”
“No, that’s not how it works, Tirry.”
“You don’t get to pick your soda in a scotch & soda?”
“It’s soda water. Club soda.”
“That makes so much more sense. I’ve never actually had one, but it’s so perfect for the moment. Good call.”
“I was gonna say martini.”
“Ooh, now I want a martini.”
“Bottle, can we change our drink orders? I think we’re going with martinis,” Sheila said.
“I have insanely specific requirements when it come to martinis, Bottle.”
“I’m bringing you scotch, and I shall spit in it,” the butler said, and withdrew from the room. Only butlers can withdraw from a room; the rest of us just leave.
“I played a butler. We did a gender-flipped Bertie and Jeeves play at Harper.”
“How’d it go?”
“Wodehouse’s estate sued.”
“That well, huh?”
They wandered away from each other, checking out the art. There were small, circular tables all about bearing impeccably-placed objets-de-art, and the two women repositioned each one. Just slightly. Sheila considered stealing an art deco turtle made from glass but decided against it, or at least that she should wait until she was leaving. Tiresias’ stilettos went TICKDACK TICKDACK against the polished wood floor. She picked up a piece, about a foot high, that looked like a dick.
“This is a dick, right?”
“Oh, yeah. All sculptures are secretly dicks. Put the dick down, Tirry.”
She held it at her crotch, began humping.
“Goofy things.”
“But there’s no upkeep,” Sheila said.
“True, true.”
“They’re wash-and-wear. Low-maintenance appendage.”
“Dicks are cats, and pussies are dogs.”
“Oh my God, that’s so true. Cats are less effort but they do whatever the fuck they want and cause nothing but trouble.”
“But you still let them in the house for some reason.”
“And dogs need constant attention or they chew through doors.”
“Maybe the metaphor falls apart a little at the end.”
“Fuck, no. I have known at least three women who could gnaw through doors with their vaginas. Nearly married one.”
“Glassy?”
“Glassy. Dude, she had a double-jointed pussy.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You’d understand if you fucked her.”
“Ahem.”
Not the sound “Ahem.” Bottle said “Ahem” is distinctly as possible. He had been standing there for several lines of dialogue. He had drinks on a tray. Tiresias put the dick down.
“Bottle!”
“Drinks!”
They went to him and took the glasses. Thick and heavy. The pale liquid caught the light, and so did the rim of the glasses, and the bridge of Tiresias’ sunglasses, and Bottle’s head. There was a lot of light to catch, and the tumblers made a low CLUNK when the women toasted–
“To Bottle.”
“Oh, fuck yeah. Bottle!”
–and threw back half of their drinks.
“Delicious.”
“So smoky. Is that what you say about scotch?”
“Yeah. Smoky. Very smoky.”
“I’m glad you make out the subtleties of the alcohol through your wads of Hubba-Bubba. Wait here for the Lady of the House. I’ll be in the next room.”
“Dude, hang out,” Sheila said.
“I have, like, a million questions about how the art and science of buttling. Did you ever see Clue?”
Bottle withdrew to the next room. The two sipped their drinks and wandered over to the piano.
“Scotch is so macho.”
“Scotch-o. Is there a school for butlers?
“Gotta be. There’s a clown college; there’s gotta be a butler school.”
“I dated a guy who went to clown college. The real one, the Ringling Brothers one in Florida,” Tiresias said.
“Of course it’s in Florida.”
“Oh my God, you have no idea of the long relationship between Florida and the carnival/sideshow industry. I got lectures. Guy’s name was Scott. Incredible body. Like a gymnast. Kinda short.”
“What was his clown name?”
“Sabnock Tasa, Builder of Towers .”
“That’s a choice. What happened to him?”
“Left me for a lion tamer.”
Tiresias grew up in Little Aleppo. Not all the way on the Upside, but a good distance into it–you couldn’t smell the Downside from there, for example–and so, along with the braces and acting classes and summer camp, she got years of piano lessons. She slid onto the bench and lifted the lid and TINKLEYDINKLEY played one of those show-offy hand-over-hand runs, an establishment of bona fides like a magician fanning the cards. Sheila did not receive musical instruction as a child, but that’s maybe 900th on the list of problems Sheila encountered during her childhood; she leaned against the side of the brown grand piano just like Tommy Amici used to.
“You know My Last Pantomime?”
“I think I do. In E flat?”
Tiresias laid her sunglasses on the soundboard and played the opening chords.
“That’s a good key.”
“It suits you,” Tiresias said, and played the head of the song. She hammered out the brass part with her left hand, covered the strings with her right, and Sheila came in a tiny bit late just like Tommy Amici used to.
Greasepaint
And heartache.
The tools of my trade
But those lights that heat you up
On the stage
Don’t shine into the dressing room.
Tiresias sang the next verse.
Costumes
And barrooms
The length of my daaaaays
But those friends that stand you drinks
At the bar
They’ll all find homes soon.
And they joined in together.
I’ll never take up
My makeup
Agaaaaaaaaaaain.
This is my LAAAAAAAAaaast…pantomiiiiiiime.
“HEY!”
Sheila and Tiresias looked up at the yelling voice, and saw that it was the woman from the pictures, and from the horse. She had changed into something white and slinky, and was leaning over the railing, having been symied in her attempt at a Dramatic Entrance. (“Mysterious blonde in something white and slinky descending a staircase in a mansion” is one of the more dramatic of the Dramatic Entrances. It’s up there with “Guy with enormous gun kicks in door” and “Undead motherfucker just appears in the middle of the room.”) But the piano was off to the side of the stairs, and a little bit behind, so the girls couldn’t see her and were drunkenly singing torch songs anyways.
“Oh my God, you look stellar.”
“You did your hair so quick!”
The woman stared for a second and yelled,
“Bottle!”
He emerged, stood at a dickish attention.
“Ma’am?”
“I left you instructions.”
“You did, ma’am. I ignored them wholly. I looked forward to ignoring them as you were relaying them to me, and then I ignored them and it made me happy.”
“Bring them up to my office,” she said and stormed up the stairs and down the hall. Tiresias played her a little walking-off music and a door slammed far away. Bottle raised an eyebrow, and Tiresias got up from the piano and they followed him.
“You two are awesome together,” Sheila said.
“Botty, sweetie–”
“You may not call me that.”
“–I am 100% switching to martinis once we get up there. Conceptually, the scotch is perfect, but as a beverage? Not feeling it.”
“You tried something new, though. That’s a good thing,” Sheila said.
They started up the steps.
“You know I’ve been so open to new experiences this year. That’s my thing this year. I didn’t even tell you: I tried that Mexican vegan place on Monarch Street.”
“Soy Soy?”
“Yeah. It just made me want real Mexican food,” Tiresias said.
“Uh-huh. Vegan food is edible, but it’s not actually food. I’m convinced most of ’em are lying, anyway. Remember Carla who used to work at the shop? Caught her at Anatoly’s having a bacon cheeseburger.”
“Didn’t she used to stage die-ins at the butcher shop?”
“Yeah, but I think she also had a personal thing with one of the guys that worked there.”
The butler and the two women turned left and the hallway was plush, dark, and covered in art with frames so fancy they stepped out of the shower to take a shit. The rug was from a country more dusky and exotic than any casually racist Victorian-era travel writer could imagine, and so thick that Tiresias was having trouble in her thin high heels, so she was walking on the far outside of the corridor where there was wood. Sheila had come over out of solidarity. Bottle walked in the dead center of the hall until he got to an open door, stopped, pointed.
“Hussies.”
Sheila reached way up and flicked at his nose and said,
“I bet you say that to all the hussies.”
And Tiresias said,
“Are you doing the martinis here or downstairs? Because if you’re doing them downstairs, I’ll write down–”
And Bottle closed the door behind himself.
The windows were arched, and two stories high, and confounded with draperies. There were globes and bar carts everywhere, and varnish. Every splinter of wood was so thickly varnished that, upon entering the office, you instantly began calculating the annual Lemon Pledge budget. A sitting area on one side with club chairs and a chessboard table, game half-played. On the other side, a desk that could have been sliced into eight or nine average-sized desks; stuffed lion’s head above it; behind, the high-backed chair was facing away from the room.
Outside the window was the pool, and beyond that was the tennis court, and beyond that were the stables. There was also an area for entertaining featuring a barbecue pit.
“This is even more macho than the scotch.”
“I’m almost positive we’re on our own where the drinks are concerned,” Tiresias said and then she looked around. “Jesus. Does Ernest Hemingway live here?”
“This is why straight people shouldn’t be allowed to be rich. They do shit like this with their money.”
“I like the bar carts.”
“Ooh, yeah.”
They slid over to the closest one, which had a roll-up top like a secretary’s that revealed five different types of glasses and a Christmas tree of mixologian utensils–strainer, whisker, that sort of thing–and leather coasters the same dark green as the upholstery on the club chairs. There was a shaker, too, and Tiresias put the silver briefcase down and picked it up. Sheila knelt and opened the cabinet in the base of the cart, and there were all your major boozes, plus a separate compartment that she opened to reveal ice.
“Tirry.”
Tiresias bent down, looked at the ice.
“That is so fucking clever. If it had a jukebox and a coke dealer, you’d never need a bar. AAAHahaha!”
“I mean, I know it can’t be brand-new technology, but I’m still impressed.”
“It’s just thoughtful,” she said and handed Sheila down the shaker. Filled, handed back, then the vodka and vermouth, and she bounced up.
She had faults, but Tiresias Richardson made the perfect martini.
- Set a martini glass before you. Now chuck it against the wall. The only useful martini glass is an enormous one that you put a burlesque dancer into. This is no opinion: it’s a matter of surface tension and fluid dynamics. The martini glass is a scientifically inappropriate shape to make a receptacle out of.
- Get a rocks glass.
- Whisper to rocks glass, “Vermouth exists.”
- Vodka, ice, shaker.
- Resist urge to say the stupid James Bond line.
- Extract five olives from the jar. Then, throw them against the same wall as the martini glass and straight-up pour the olive juice directly into the shaker.
- Pour 8-10 ounces. Do not garnish.
“Let’s drink to Bottle.”
“I already miss him,” Tiresias said.
They toasted CLUNK and Sheila looked around the office, then snagged a couple of shot glasses from the bar cart and dropped them into her purse.
“No, he’s a dick. But I figured the whole thing out because of him.”
“Can we smoke in here?”
“Oh, my God, we totally should be able to. This is totally a ‘smoke ’em if ya got ’em’ room.”
“The decor practically begs you to light a cigar,” Tiresias said, scanning the flat surfaces for…
“Bingo. Ashtray.”
There was a stand-up ashtray next to the chessboard table. It was brass and looked like it belonged on a sailing ship cruising the Seas of Nicotine. They shambled over as Sheila lit two Camels FFT PHWOO and handed one to Tiresias, and they sat in the club chairs that had their backs to the far wall.
“The horse chick is gonna ask us to kill her elderly husband.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, she doesn’t own the place. Bottle wouldn’t treat her that way. She moved in recently.”
“Go on.”
“Y’know, I’m so glad I came with you now.”
“Me, too. I love you so much.”
“The guy who owns this house has been here forever,” Sheila said, ashing her cigarette. “The Rolls out front? 25 years old. The little Mercedes?”
“Such a cute car.”
“Yuck. Brand-new. Old man’s car, young wife’s car.”
“Very sexist.”
“We’re in Los Angeles. I’m fitting in.”
“So Daddy Warbucks wants to off his chippy?”
“You accuse me of being sexist and then you call another woman a chippy?”
“You’re right,” Tiresias answered.” Besides, she’s not a chippy. She married the guy.”
“Yeah, that’s a trophy wife. I’ve thought about doing that.”
“Marrying an old, rich guy? I think about that all the time.”
“It seems like more hassle than money.”
“Like donating an egg?”
“I guess, sure. So, anyway, the guy who owns the house…what’s his name?”
“The guy who gave us the briefcase called him Buttermilk.”
“Oh, of the Denver Buttermilks,” Sheila said and sipped her martini. “So, the Lord Buttermilk is madly in love with the Lady, but she’s humping the stable boys. Heart’s broken. He calls us–”
“The professional assassins.”
“–to put an end to his sorrows by putting an end to her. But she found out about his diabolical plan, and now aims to turn it against him and inherit his vast fortune.”
“You’re a brilliant.”
“She is MOST CERTAINLY not!” came from the other side of the room, and then the high-backed chair behind the enormous desk yanked itself around and there was the blonde from stairs and the horse and the pictures, still in something white and slinky. “She was like twenty percent right and all of that was basic observations!”
Sheila and Tiresias blinked at her.
“You were going to do the turn-around-in-the-chair thing.”
“Ohh. That would have been so dramatic.”
“And we should have come and sat in front of the desk,” Sheila said.
“This is the second time we’ve done this. I feel terrible.”
“In our defense, Bottle did not instruct us properly in our roles.”
“Bad direction. That guy’s a handful.”
The blonde blinked back at them. The women ashed their cigarettes. There was a good forty feet in between them.
“Could you two come over here, please?”
On the way over, Tiresias picked up the briefcase she had left by the bar cart. They sat there, smoking. The blonde opened a drawer, took out a heavy glass ashtray, shuffleboarded it across the width of the desk. Sheila dug in her purse and waggled the pack of Camels at her.
“No. Do you two not know my name?”
“Names don’t matter to assassins,” Tiresias
“They make the job a lot easier,” Sheila added.
“Oh, sure. In most cases, you’d prefer to have a name. But it’s not essential.”
“The picture’s the thing. You need the picture. To do the job.”
“But we might know your name. You don’t know what we know and we’re not telling you.”
“Why would we do that? We’re assassins.”
The blonde nodded.
“Uh-huh. So I’ll just call myself Lady Buttermilk.”
“We have code names, too,” Tiresias said.
“I don’t care. My husband doesn’t want me dead because I’m fucking the stable boys. He’s fucking the stable boy, too.”
“Talk about horseplay. AAAHahaha!”
Sheila and the blonde who was calling herself Lady Buttermilk stared at her for a moment.
“He wants to replace me. I’m aging out of the role, apparently.”
“There’s just nothing good for older women in this town,” Tiresias said.
“How do you know?” Sheila asked.
“Because I’m the fourth wife, and he did this exact thing to the second and third wives.”
“What about the first wife?”
“He just divorced her when he got rich. The other two both disappeared in their mid-thirties.”
“They disappeared?”
“Yeah.”
“So you don’t know what happened to them,” Tiresias said.
“No, I do. The third wife? The one I replaced? I kinda planned the disappearance with Lord Buttermilk.”
“Wow.”
“Wow.”
“I’m gonna be honest with you here: I thought he would die before it was my turn. And I really wanted to be rich.”
Sheila and Tiresias were so morally outraged at this revelation that they nodded their heads and made small noises of agreement.
“And I was right: there’s nothing like it. And I’d like it to continue indefinitely. So here we are.”
Tiresias stubbed out her Camel and said,
“But you don’t want us to kill him?”
“God, no. I can’t even imagine the legal maelstrom that would bring about. Far too many lawyers asking questions. No, no: what I want is the status quo to keep restating itself until the piss-smelling fuck dies of natural causes.
“Every marriage is different,” Sheila said.
“What I want is for you two to kill her,” the blonde going by Lady Buttermilk said, and slid a manila folder across the desk to Tiresias. There was a photograph inside. Another blonde, mid-20’s. She said,
“Is this your replacement?”
“Not for much longer.”
Then the blonde threw a stuffed envelope at Sheila. There was cash inside.
“This should be a nice warning shot for the old man, huh?
“Parting shot for her, though,” Sheila said.
Which was true, even though none of the women in the office knew it at the time. The blonde in her mid-20’s in the photograph was named Lynn Danube and was lying on the bed in her Hollywood apartment with two bullets in her skull. Sheila and Tiresias got in the Lincoln, wound down the driveway, and pointed the car towards the dead girl.
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