Enter The Dragon Lady
We watched TV and drank coffee in silence. It felt like sitting in a hospital waiting room except all the magazines were in French and there was nothing sturdy to sit on.Chloie and I laid next to each other on the mattress, not really watching the television which was propped up on a cardboard moving box. We were waiting, stealing glances at each other.
At 8:20 Chloie made a phone call on the other side of the room. After a few minutes, Chloie said, “She wants talking to you, Shame.”
She? She who? What is this? I took the receiver. Chloie walked back to the mattress on the floor, lying down so that her white panties under her black pantyhose were facing me.
She opened and closed her legs slowly, making sure to see that I was watching. Her eyes locked on mine. The outline of her holy of holies opened and closed, winking at me.
“Who ARE you?!” the accusatory asian voice bellowed, the sound of a TV blaring in the background.
“I’m Lynnie’s friend,” I squeeled in startled fright. I sounded like a third grader who had been caught by the vice principal roaming around in the hallway during class.
“He asked me to fill in for him tonight.” The vicious ferocity in the woman’s voice had surprised me. I thought everything had been arranged about me driving Chloie. Wasn’t I doing everybody a favor by filling in for an errant employee?
“Mr. Duford DOESN’T do the HIRING around here. I do. Do you understand? This is MY agency and nobody works for me unless I talk to them first. Not the girls, not the driver. NOBODY. DO YOU UNDERSTAND OR NO? YOU CAN’T WORK FOR ME UNLESS I TALK TO YOU FIRST. Are you black? "
There was a poignant pause.
“No talking to girl,” she resumed. “You driving and no talking. YOU UNDERSTAND OR NO?”
“Yes.” What the hell was all this? A job interview? I hadn’t asked for a job, didn’t want a job that would interfere with barbeque and bikini parade nights at Crookside.
Besides, this lady sounded more like a succubous than your standard ball-breaking L.A. employer. This was the kind of person you performed an exorcism on, not the kind you worked for.
“Put her on the phone,” the woman ordered. Chloie talked to the woman a minute then handed me the phone again, smiling.
“Do you know where downtown is?” the Dragon Lady asked in a tone that implied she thought I must be some sort of a retarded, halfwit, mongoloid, country bumpkin, male moron idiot.
“Yes.”
“Downtown, L.A.?”
“Yes.”
“What would you take?”
“10 east to—”
"NO," she screeched. The ‘no’ sounded like ‘you loser, shithead moron.’
“You take 101 south to 11th left, right on Figueroa around the block to Holiday Inn. Can’t miss it from the freeway. Repeat. READ IT BACK,” Dragon Lady demanded sharply.
“Uh, 101 south, 11th left, Figueroa right. Holiday Inn.”
“No, AROUND THE BLOCK to Holiday Inn. Repeat.”
“Around the block to Holiday Inn,” I repeated, feeling like a puppet whose mouth strings had just been pulled.
The line rudely clicked off as I stood there with my mouth open. No way was I going all the way up to the 101 when the 10 was just a few blocks away. And no way was I going to argue about it with this screaming Dragon Lady, either.
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