Mister Rainbow in Drop Dead Gorgeous

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS
The kid’s just turned eleven – or maybe it’s fifteen – and I’m taking her out to celebrate her birthday, after me and the ex had the following discussion on the subject:
Salina: ‘I’ve just found Mr Perfect on the internet and this is the only day he can take me out so you’re looking after Imogene.’
Me: ‘But I’ve got this job, Sal, I’m busy.’
Salina: ‘Then you can just get yourself unbusy.’
*
Imogene’s trotting beside me, clutching a notebook and looking like something the cat dragged in. I make with the conversation.
‘What’s with the papyrus?’
‘You’re joking, right?’
I want this to be a nice day. Call it guilt or call it wishful thinking.
‘Help me here, kid.’
So she helps me and the way she helps me is by telling me that what she’s got in her hand is her textbook.
‘I write down all the things you tell me, daddy. The cases you get and how you solve them. Your tips on what to do and what not to do and the funny way you talk. In short, how to be a private detective, because that’s what I’m going to be as soon as I’m old enough.’
Bloody hell.
‘Why don’t you become something normal, kid, like the chief executive of a finance company?’
Her answer comes back like a shot from a Browning.
‘Because of your number one rule in life, daddy. And that is that if money does anything in this world, it does bad.’
As it happens, right now I’m loaded, having just scored a motza for a job. And because I don’t like dough all that much, I want to get myself unloaded.
‘I’ll tell you what, kid – let’s make a day of it.’ I ruffle the kid’s hair – I read in this magazine once when I was waiting to get a broken leg fixed, that kids like having their hair ruffled. ‘We can start by buying you some new clobber.’
The kid hauls off from the hair-ruffling and looks harder than she ought to at my own get-up-and-go – the too-tight pink jacket I got from the Salvation Army in Matraville during an all-you-can-fit-in-one-bag-for-five-dollars sale, the oversized black daks from Vinnies, the green hat from Lifeline, and the white-sided co-respondent shoes I always wear.
‘What about you, daddy – couldn’t you get something nice, too?’
‘I don’t do nice, kid.’ She’s too far away for me to do the hair-ruffle again, so I just do the tight-in elbow-riff on the coat. ‘Like I say: money – and all the accoutrements that go with it – is for the pigeons.’
We’re in the top-end of town – where jokers are too rich to think of anything but money and par consequence shops for the poor have been hounded away – and instead find a boutique selling clothes for girls that want to be more grown-up than they ought to be and when we come out, that’s what the kid looks.
‘Where to now, kid?’
‘What about an expensive restaurant, daddy?’
‘You mean McDonald’s?’ I glance around. There are jewellery-stores, places selling men’s wear that can afford the apostrophe, and cafes with university-educated baristas in them. But fast-food franchises are thin on the ground. ‘I guess we’ll have to go to another part of town for that, Immo.’
The kid whacks me with the book. The whack’s part pretend, but also part like she means it, just like my comment about the eatery.
‘I mean a proper place, daddy.’
So we find a joint where you got to wait for the maitre d’ to find you a table, like you got too much wealth to find one for yourself, only I clap eyes on a dame to die for, and am suddenly able to select a table all by myself.
The kid hesitates.
‘Are you sure this is where you want to be, daddy?’
At the next table, where I’ll be able to reciprocate her interest without turning my head too much – golden hair tickling shoulders that the shoe-straps of her little red dress are having terrible difficulty staying attached to, a gorgeous face, and beautiful eyes – the dame’s looking my way far more often than she would if all she wanted to ask was the time.
‘Sure I’m sure.’ I change the subject before the kid puts up the sort of fight that fathers are always going to lose. ‘Now how about showing me what’s in that book of yours.’
So, after we order our food, the kid shows me what’s in the book, and what I see in the book – between glances that tell me the beautiful dame’s still checking me out – is little drawings of a figure that might be me doing something like a cross between ballet and kung-fu, interspersed with writing under headings like THE HOOD WITH NO HANDS, DEATH OF A LADIES’ MAN and HORSES FOR CORPSES.
And at the end of it all, a GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED.
The dame’s shifted in her seat so that one beautiful breast is more on display than it was before, but I manage to stick with the program.
‘So what’s with this glossary?’
The kid takes a break from eating to tell me, while I hear the dulcet tones of the dame telling a wait-person to bring her a queen-serve milkshake, so that she can add to her already well-shaken curves.
‘You know the funny way you talk, daddy?’
I hoist the shoulders. My upbringing – after my mum topped herself and my dad dumped me on a maiden-aunt that was also a gumshoe – consisted just about solely of how to be a private-detective, and old black-and-white gangster movies, but that doesn’t mean –
‘It don’t seem all that funny to me, kid.’
‘See? And that’s just what I’ve written.’
I note that the kid has spotted the fact that me and the dame are exchanging more than the odd glance, so I assure her, Yeah, I see what she’s written, like I got a lot of enthusiasm for the fact, and I also try and pretend I got my mind on the job while the kid goes on explaining:
‘So I’ve put down here about dulcet tones and how you call women dames and men jokers and guns gats and equalisers and places joints. And how in your world everyone’s got moves and counter-moves and people are hoods and punters and the fuzz and palookas.
And then there’s your descriptions of women, like you’re trying to establish some sort of supremacy over them that you’ll never have in real life – expressions like knockout and zinger and shaped like a DNA molecule – I suspect that’s your update on hourglass. And if you don’t mind me saying, it all seems to – oh, I don’t know – reveal how sadly isolated you are, daddy, and sometimes I wish –’
Suddenly the kid’s got my attention. In her new clobber – demure dress and nice, heavy, roll-neck sweater – she looks so grown-up that she needs more protection than I been thinking necessary to provide her with lately – and the undivided attention that ought to go with it.
I knuckle her hand.
‘Wish what, honeybunch?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She takes her hand away and a deep breath, and it looks like she might be a lot sadder than her big bright smile is trying to make out she is. ‘All right, I’ll say it.’ She glances towards the dame. ‘That you weren’t so completely vulnerable to women.’
The world seems topsy-turvy all of a sudden. This is the sort of advice I should be giving the kid, not the other way round. I start to deny the truth of what she’s saying but it’s like a deflect-move in aikido, as though by my own unaided efforts I’ve managed to put myself flat on my back on the floor.
‘You got someone specific in mind, kid?’
The kid’s mouth sets in a grim little line until she’s able to speak again, at which time she nods in the direction of the dame.
‘Yes, that horrible woman at the next table who, ever since we sat down, has been ogling you like you’re the next course on her menu.’
Somewhere in that book of hers would be words to the effect of Lies are the beginning of the end in any familial relationship. So instead of going into denial, I shrug the trapezia and tell her:
‘So what do you want me to do about it?’
Maybe I’ve taught her more than I thought, but a mischievous look comes into eyes that appear to have grown up with the clothes.
‘When that dame makes her move – ’
I interrupt her.
‘What do you mean – makes her move?’
‘You know, comes onto you.’
Why am I surprised? This is the 21st century and the kid’s a child of the 21st century and in the 21st century, unlike the one I was brought up in, the male of the species hasn’t got it all his own way any more.
But I still got to put up a fight.
‘Come on, kid, I got about as much attraction to that dame as the underside of a turtle.’
The kid doesn’t deviate.
‘As I said, when she comes onto you, I want you to tell her as follows.’
She’s busy riffling through her book until she finds what she’s looking for and when she’s found it she swings it around to face me and points something out, just as I hear the dame at the next table get to her feet and start towards us.
I can feel the dame’s presence beside me, smell her scent, sense the absolute promise of what she’s likely to be offering me.
But at the same time the kid’s putting the squeakers on me, whose birthday it is.
I read what she’s showing me.
‘Just that?’
‘Just that.’
‘Hi, handsome.’ The dame’s so close that her portside thigh’s massaging my shoulder, and when I look up she’s got the milkshake in one hand and her calling-card in the other. ‘Here’s my number if you’re interested in getting in touch.’
I glance across at the kid. The thigh’s a 21st century thigh, the kind of thigh that comes courtesy of an expensive gymnasium and a personal trainer, and it’s attached to the kind of beauty that only pays you a visit once in a lifetime.
‘Say it, daddy!’
‘Do I got to?’
‘Yes, you got to.’
So I take a deep breath and with my eyes closed so I’m not blinded by all the beauty perched beside me, I say the words.
That’s when I open my eyes and that’s when I see what the dame looks like when she’s upset.
‘What did you say?’
I try it with my eyes open.
‘Drop dead, gorgeous.’
*
The suit I got from the outfitter’s next to the eating-house deprived me of the rest of the money I had, but the kid made me buy it, just like she –
‘You didn’t have a choice, daddy’ – she’s gripping my hand and she’s a kid again, a kid that’s just been out on a birthday-treat with her dad, a kid that had her dad all to herself for once, a happy kid – ‘With that milkshake all over you, you had to get something else to wear and that was the only shop there was.’
*
When Salina opens the door, she’s looking at the ground and she’s looking unhappy. I still put the question.
‘How did it go?’
She still doesn’t look at me.
‘The guy wasn’t the one whose picture was in Man of Your Dreams, more like his idiot cousin.’
That’s when she looks up and that’s when she sees me.
‘Jee-sus!’ she says.
I step back. In my experience, Salina hits me just after she says something like that.
‘What’s up?’
Salina takes a deep breath and although she’s taking delivery of Imogene it’s like the kid’s not even there.
‘I don’t like saying this, Rainbow, but you look drop-dead gorgeous.’