Gravel crunched under the wheels of the Mercedes as Eliot Zane pulled off of the road, letting the dark green '65 convertible roll to a halt only a couple of feet short of the low barrier that ran along the edge of the drop. The road behind him was not much used, winding through the upper reaches of the Hollywood Hills but not going anywhere that other roads did not lead to more quickly, and when he brought the car to a halt and turned off the engine the silence was striking. For a moment it was like there was no sound in the air at all except for his breathing and the soft creak of the cream leather upholstery as he pushed his seat back.
The impression of silence did not last long. After a moment his hearing adjusted to the lack of engine noise and picked up the background of night sounds and the faint buzz of a party from somewhere above and behind him on the other side of the hill. LA was never truly silent, but this was about as close as it ever got. It was close enough.
Eliot let his fingers rest on the steering wheel, looking out past it to where the city of Los Angeles lay below him, black against the dark blue of a summer night's sky and lit by an infinite number of tiny lights. The skyline had changed over the years, but from up here, in the dark, it looked almost like it used to.
He had belonged down there once, in the heart of the nightlife, but he had walked away from all of that twenty years ago, and there was no going back. He was seventy now, with pale grey eyes and a tangle of white hair, not too receded but a lot shorter than it had ever been back then. He was lean still, retaining at least the illusion of his old physique in his black shirt and dress slacks, even if day by day he felt he was moving further away from slim and closer to gaunt.
When did it happen? Eliot wondered. When did I get so fucking old?
His gaze shifted down to the dash of the car, to the glove compartment. He had driven out here for a reaon, but now that it came to it...
A new sound broke through the low background noise, causing him to look up. It was close and distinct and easily identifiable: the click of heels on tarmac. Eliot turned his head and saw the figure of a girl walking along the side of the road, heading his way.
He turned the headlights on. She was close enough that she would already have seen the shape of the car in the darkness but he thought she may not have seen that there was someone in it and he didn't want her to be startled by his presence. The car was parked at an angle to the road, so the light did not fall directly on the girl, but there was enough of a peripheral glow from the beams to give him a clearer look at her.
She was about 5'6, though the heels of her boots gave her a couple of extra inches, and her slender body was wrapped in a corset style top that left her shoulders bare except for a loose scarf of purple silk. A long, artfully slashed leather skirt showed off most of her long, fishnet-clad legs. The light glinted on her glossy black clothes, and on various decorative metal chains that hung around her neck, wrists and waist. Her gloves, fingerless and edged with lace, were also black, as were her knee high boots, and her hair was blonde, shot through with pink highlights. She was not as pale as some girls Eliot had known who affected the goth look, but even so he had rarely seen it worn better, and she walked with a casual, easy confidence that suggested that she was perfectly aware of how good she looked.
She didn't miss a step when the lights came up, and as she came up to the car she walked in front of it, glancing over at him briefly as she passed through the beams and over to the other side, turning to lean back against the low metal barrier.
"Nice car," she said.
Eliot guessed she was nineteen or twenty. Her eyes were dark and she didn't wear a lot of makeup, just a little shade around her eyes and a pink gloss on her lips. Her voice was low and sultry, sophisticated beyond her years, like a film noir femme fatale.
"Thank you," he said. "Where's yours?"
"I walked."
"In LA?" Eliot was sceptical. No one walked anywhere in this town.
She glanced off to the side, back the way she had come. "I had my dad's car," she said. "It's like a mile down the road." She paused before adding as an afterthought, "Also a couple of hundred feet down the slope."
"Are you okay?"
She looked back at him and smirked. "Sure. I mean it's not like I was in it when it went over the edge."
"I didn't think you were," Eliot said, "but that doesn't mean you're okay."
For a moment her aura of confidence seemed to flicker and she glanced away again, but when she turnedto face him again it was back in place. "It hit a tree on the way down," she said casually, "but it didn't explode."
"I think that only happens in the movies."
"Sure, but this is LA." She spread her arms out, taking in the city behind her. "Movie rules should apply here, right?"
Eliot smiled. "If only they did."
She straightened up and walked over to the car, leaning against the edge of the windshield. "I'm Lauren, by the way."
"Eliot," he said, shaking her offered hand. "Eliot Zane." He saw no hint of recognition in her eyes, but then why would there be? His heyday had been and gone before this girl was even born.
Which was a depressing realization. One more to add to all the others that had been taking up so much of his thoughts recently.
= = =
Her dad, she told him, was in the movie business, which didn't come as any surprise. She didn't live in Los Angeles and was attending college on the other side of the country, but had come out at the start of the summer break for a couple of weeks.
Her relationship with her dad sounded complicated. She kept her tone casual, but couldn't hide her admiration for his working independently of the major studios, and then in more or less the same breath she said that all of his films were terrible, before adding that she had seen every one of them. She also said she loved coming out to LA to see her dad, but after two weeks was always ready to go back to the East Coast.
All of which, delivered in that low, alluringly confident voice, Eliot found utterly fascinating. If she wanted to talk all night, he would listen. It wasn't that he missed the company of a younger woman; he was comfortably well off and that was never more than a phone call away. It was more that this was entirely different from those conversations, which were when all was said and done, merely part of the transaction. Here they were just two people talking, with no underlying expectations.
Lauren sat alongside him now in the front passenger seat, her feet propped up on the dash in a way that looked very uncomfortable to Eliot, until he took into account how much younger she was than him, as well as probably being more supple than he had ever been.
"So what are you doing out here?" he asked. "Other than wrecking your dad's car?"
She shrugged. "He's got others. It was mostly his girlfriend who drove the Porsche anyway."
"Ah." That shed some light on the incident. "You don't like her?"
"He could do way better."
She'd mentioned that her parents were divorced, and that she had almost no contact with her mother, so Eliot wondered idly what standard her dad's apparently unsatsfactory girlfriend was being held up to.
"Anyway, it's my birthday today," she added, and glanced at the clock on the dash. "For another hour or so."
Eliot wasn't sure what the link was, but he said the automatic thing, "Congratulations."
And got the automatic response. "Thank you."
"Shouldn't you be with your friends then?" he asked.
Lauren tilted her head, nodding vaguely back and upward. Eliot wondered if that was the party noise he had heard earlier, even though it was unlikely that there'd only be one party going on up in the Hills, this night or any other.
"They probably haven't even noticed I'm gone," she said. "All my real friends are back home." She made a small sound, somewhere between an exhalation and a sigh. "I miss them a lot."
"When are you going back?"
"Tomorrow." She sat up straighter, taking her feet off the dash. "So I'm allowed to be moody tonight."
Eliot started to laugh. He couldn't help it.
"What's so funny?"
"You're not the only one with a birthday today," he told her.
"Really?"
It sounded so unlikely, and so much like a pickup line, that Eliot felt obliged to get his wallet out and offer his driver's licence as proof of his date of birth.
"So," Lauren asked him after reading it, "shouldn't you be with your friends?"
He smiled, acknowledging the point with a tilt of his head. "I suppose neither of us are in the mood for too much company tonight."
"Yeah." Lauren sat up in her seat and turned to face him, one arm slung over the headrest. "Okay, let me guess," she said, suddenly playful. "You were thinking about your life, because that's what you do on your birthday. So you decided to come out here to remember all the times you drove up here in this car to make out with girls."
Eliot chuckled. "Oh Christ, how old do you think I am?"
"Fifty? Fifty five?" Now he knew she was playing.
"And the rest."
