Alternatives

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."

She gave him a teasing smile. "Come on. I mean look at this car. You'd have been out here with your best girl. Bobby Vinton on the radio. You wondering if you'd get to third base that night..."

He laughed. It almost turned into a cough but he managed to keep it under control. He returned her smirk with one of his own. "The first time I came out here it was to get a blow job from a new wave girl I'd met an hour before."

"So no Bobby Vinton?"

"More like Roxy Music," Eliot said, slightly surprised with himself that he would remember that detail after so long. "And," he added, "it was a different car. I've only had this one for two months."

"It is a nice car."

"It used to belong to a friend of mine. When it came up for auction..." Eliot shrugged. He didn't feel like putting into words why the car had come up for auction. He had the feeling that this girl was perceptive enough to fill in the blanks if she wanted to. "Yes," he finished, "it's a nice car."

"So I wasn't totally wrong. You did come out here to remember."

"I suppose I did," he said guardedly.

It was partly true. He had no intention of telling her the rest of it.

= = =

"So what is it that you do?"

Eliot reflected on the way Lauren had phrased the question. 'What is it that you do?' rather than 'What is it that you did?' He wondered if it was intentional.

"I was in the music biz," he said, leaning on the past tense like he was giving the finger to any temptation to deceive himself that he was still involved, "and I owned a club for a while, down there." He nodded out toward the city.

Lauren leaned forward, intrigued. "Which one?" she asked.

"Oh, we went through a lot of names. Started off as 'White Noise', then it became 'CyberZone' for a while -"

"'CyberZone'? Really?"

"It was the '80s."

Lauren waggled her eyebrows. "No kidding."

Eliot smiled. "Yes, that didn't last long. After that it was just 'Zone', then 'Z', then finally 'The Z Room.'"

Lauren gave a slight, apologetic smile. "I've never heard of it."

He waved that off. "I'd have been surprised if you had. I sold out a long time ago, and the club has went through a couple more names since then."

"What sort of place was it?"

"New wave, initially. We cycled through all the alternative trends over the years; electronica, goth, industrial, all the rest." Eliot smiled. "You'd have fit right in."

Lauren's smile widened. "Think you'd have given me a VIP pass?"

In a heartbeat, Eliot thought.

He made a show of thinking about it. "Maybe."

"That much competition, huh?"

Eliot let his eyes wander for a moment. Their conversation had taken on a more flirtatious tone. She was certainly just playing with him, but he was enjoying that and gave her something to play off of. "A lot of girls did come to the club; singers, models, actresses..."

"Like who?"

"I wouldn't want to say."

"Too much of a gentleman to name names, huh?"

"It's not that. It's just that my ego couldn't take the hit if I did tell you and you didn't know who any of them were."

Lauren laughed. "Tease!" She was leaning so close to him now he could breathe in her perfume, hear the muted squeak of her black vinyl corset as she moved. She would have been a knockout back in the Z Room days. Eliot knew he would have fallen for her in a big way.

"So why did you give it up?" she asked.

It wasn't the first time he'd been asked that question and the answer he gave usually varied depending on who was asking. This time he decided to tell the truth. "I didn't want to end up as one of those guys."

"Which guys?"

"You've been to clubs in LA, right?" Lauren nodded. "Then you've seen them. Those old guys who shuffle in with a model on each arm. Hooked up to these twenty year old girls like oxygen tanks. And they've got some hanger-on in their entourage to make the approaches to any other girls that catch their eye."

Lauren smirked in recognition. "'Mr. Janosz would like you to join him at his table.'" It was a very good imitation of the kind of lackey Eliot had been thinking of and he wondered if she was quoting from an actual encounter.

He chuckled. "There you go. You've been there."

"Uh huh." She grinned. "Now you're wondering if I said yes."

She really was very perceptive.

"I think that's not your style," he said, hoping he was right.

"it's not. I do like older guys though." Her lips twitched in a flicker of a smile and Eliot let that hang in the air between them for a moment. He was fascinated by this girl, and if she wasn't interested in him she was surely giving the impression that she was.

Even so...

"I didn't want to become one of those guys," he said at last. "So I sold the club and walked away."

"You're a romantic."

"Hardly that." He tried not to sound too cynical, just realistic. "I've got no problem with what's going on there. It's a business transaction. Fine, I've been there myself. I just don't have enough self delusion to try to convince myself that it's anything other than what it is, let alone convince anyone else."

"You think they do?"

"Some of them."

Lauren looked thoughtful. "So what did you do after you gave up the club?"

"I travelled for a while. Then later I wrote a book about the music business." Eliot gave a self deprecating shrug. "The publisher went with a very low print run once they realized I wasn't going to do a tell all and it didn't sell very well. It was a while after that I realized how bored I was."

"You've got friends though, right?"

"A few." Eliot mused. "Not many I have much in common with. The people I know now, they have kids and grandkids. Either that or they're..."

"Those guys."

"Right."

Or dead, he added silently.

"You never married?"

He shook his head. "No. I never did."

"So why didn't you get back into the club scene?" Lauren asked. "I bet you've still got connections."

His answer was indirect.

"I had a film crew at my house, a few days ago," he said. "They were making a documentary about the scene in the '80s and '90s. You know, the sort of thing where they chop the interview up into bits and use it in snippets in between the archive footage, with your name at the bottom of the screen so people know who you are."

Lauren made air quotes. "'Eliot Zane, Club King.'"

He chuckled. "Something like that."

"So how did that go?"

"Honestly? I felt like one of those animatronics of historical figures you see in museums. Where you push a button and it recites a little speech about whatever it was that person was remembered for."

"Uh huh."

Lauren stretched, looked out across the city. "You don't have anything to drink, do you?"

"I think there's some water in the glove compartment," Eliot said without thinking. Lauren leaned over, reaching for it, but he shot a hand out. "Wait. I'll get it."

She sat back again. "Okay."

He got the bottle of water out carefully, leaning forward at an awkward angle so that his arm blocked her view. When he handed her the bottle she twisted off the cap and drank down most of the contents in a couple of long gulps.

"Kind of thirsty," she said.

It was a warm, early summer night, but it wasn't that warm. Eliot gave her an inquiring look.

"What did you take?"

Lauren pouted. "Whatever it was it's not doing much except making me thirsty." She shrugged. "A tablet. Something."

"You don't know?"

She waved a hand defensively. "Hey, don't get all judgemental. I get enough of that from my dad."

Eliot felt the age gap stretching open between them, and that stifled most of what he had been about to say in reply.

"Fine," he said eventually, "but I always knew what I was taking."

Lauren regarded him curiously. "You did a lot of drugs?"

Eliot smiled. "You must have missed the part where I mentioned I owned a nightclub. In Los Angeles. In the 1980s."

She laughed. "Okay. So now I'm imagining you sitting in your office with like a kilo of cocaine on your desk."

"I think you're confusing me with Al Pacino."

"Hey, don't ruin my illusions."

"There was a lot of drugs around. Don't believe anyone who tells you it never snows in Los Angeles." Eliot shook his head. "Still," he admitted, "it was a long time ago."

"Um, yeah." Lauren drew her legs up under her, then stretched out. Her silk scarf fell away as she rolled onto her back and wriggled along until she was laid out across both her seat and his, her head in his lap. "Hold on,."

"Lauren, what are you doing?"

"I just need to check something out," she said, looking up at him. "I want to see if your nose is fucked up from all that coke you did in the '80s."

Eliot rocked back in his seat with laughter.

"Okay, that's good" said Lauren with mock seriousness, "now just tilt your head back some more."

He did so, looking up at the stars while she made thoughtful little hmm sounds, like a doctor examining a patient.

"So what's the verdict?"

"Yeah, your nose is fine."

Eliot looked back down. She looked up at him, an impish smile on her face. "Good to know," he said. He tapped a finger on his leg, only an inch or so away from the side of her head. "You can sit up now."

"Uh huh," said Lauren, making no attempt to do so.

After a moment he reached over to stroke her soft blonde/pink hair. "Comfy?" he asked.

"Uh huh," she said again. "You?"

"Very."

Eliot felt a tightness in his chest that was pleasantly unlike the usual aches and pains that he'd only ever grudgingly got used to. He tapped the girl on the tip of her nose. "Your nose is okay too."

"Uh huh."

He let his fingers wander down to brush over her mouth, the lightest possible touch. "Your lips too."

Lauren grinned. "The rest of me too, but you haven't seen that. Yet."

Eliot looked down into her dark eyes. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Give me one good reason why we shouldn't," she said softly.

"I can't think of one."

"Good," said Lauren. Then, "Wait."

He watched as she took out her phone, bringing up an app and making her selection before reaching back to place the phone on the dash, just over the radio, then she turned onto her side and placed her hands on his thighs.

Eliot exhaled softly as he felt Lauren's fingers wrap around his cock. In the background her phone played Roxy Music.

They were in LA so of course they had a soundtrack. Movie rules applied.

= = =

He was already hard. Having the girl's head resting in his lap had seen to that.

Her touch was a tantalizing blend of the softness of her fingers and the slick smoothness of her fingerless gloves. At first she just let her palm run up and down his length a few times as she angled her head over his cock, and then he felt her warm breath play over the head before her lips parted and she lowered herself down onto him. She took his shaft into her mouth slowly, an inch at a time, letting her tongue roll around each time before she moved further down, as if studying the texture and taste of his cock. The small, appreciative noises she made in the back of her throat were echoed by those her attentions drew from him.