Boldt Read Online Free Page B

his head.
    â€œNo, I may go to the Westerby for a few days. The manager thinks I know something about him. I would have gone there last night if it’d been earlier. I’ll go there tonight.”
    Murdock taps the counter with his glass and the bartender makes up two more. While he’s doing that, there is the sound of voices behind us, and as I look into the mirror beyond the bar, I’m faced with a charming scene--- a double date. It’s perfection, straight out of a Coke ad. The girls first, they’re marvelous. Fashion marches on, but after all, fashion only reflects life and in the case of these two girls, life 1966 style is as far as they want to go. Now today, if they were dressing like everyone else their age, they’d be in long skirts and the charcoal tops and the crinkle-cut hair and they wouldn’t be laughing—not in the way they’re laughing, anyway. With these two there’s no smell of musk, no feeling that they change their underwear maybe once a week, no feeling that makeup has been put on top of makeup. Sure, they’re in a certain kind of fashion, a fashion acceptable to whoever might be employing them; they’ve got leather and they’ve got cheesecloth but it’s conservative and even the one with the bubble-cut wouldn’t look out of place in a Disneyland outfit. And they look clean; you can almost smell the talcum, and they’re not anonymous broads from the campus. They’re like daughters, like you imagine daughters ought to be like. Through them you can almost visualize the kind of parents they might have, the kind of love, rightly or wrongly guided, those parents might have given these girls.
    And the guys, the two guys, one of them could play the lead in The Tab Hunter Story , and the other one could be his faithful friend who gets the hand of Tab’s girl’s confidante. They’re even wearing ties.
    The four of them spill into the silence of the bar, full of life, apparently only conscious of their own immediate situation. The girls allow the guys to shepherd them to a booth and there’s a lot of stuff about deciding what they’re all going to have. Then the one who looks like Tab Hunter detaches himself from the group and comes over to the bar to order. But of course his name isn’t Tab Hunter; for all his blondness he’s called Harold Schwarz, and I know him very well. And he knows me and Murdock, but he’s not aware of either of us until he’s two-thirds of the way to the bar and then, when he realizes that Murdock and Boldt are sitting where they’re sitting, it’s too late for him to do anything else but complete his approach. The bartender glides into a serving position and Schwarz orders four draught beers. The bartender goes to work and Schwarz begins to go back to the booth but as he turns from the bar Murdock says to him, “Hello, Harold.”
    Schwarz pretends he hasn’t heard and keeps on going but Murdock says, “Talk to me Harold, will you?”
    I look toward the booth. None of the others is taking any notice of what’s going on at the bar and Harold takes this in too, so it’s easier for him to turn around and look at me and Murdock.
    â€œNever knew you worked this ground, Harold,” Murdock says.
    â€œThere’s nowhere he doesn’t work, is there, Harold?” I say.
    â€œJoin us,” Murdock says, sliding off his seat and leaving room for Schwarz to get between the two of us. “Have a drink.”
    â€œI just ordered one,” Schwarz says.
    â€œHave a drink,” I tell him, so he climbs onto the stool and sits between us glancing over his shoulder at the booth. I say to him, “Don’t worry, Harold. Your partner won’t be leaving without you.”
    â€œWhat would you like, Harold?” Murdock asks. “Not beer, hey? Something a little stronger?”
    â€œA Bacardi and Coke,” Harold says. “Some