Raylene
By Deirdre Hennings
Raylene gazed through chain-link fence, past weeds and the new Budget Rent-A-Car parking lot, to the dingy white nightclub fronting the massive old hotel’s vacant windows. Hard to believe this had been the Ambassador—L.A.’s most glamorous place when the Kennedys reigned, before Bobby was shot and so much changed. She shuddered but noticed the gate was unlocked and some film trucks, parked near the hotel, were being unloaded. The place was open! She had an hour before Carl would finish his meeting. Why not? She walked quickly toward an untended door, skirting equipment and cables, hoping the clipboard girl barking orders wouldn't notice. Raylene’s age and mechanical voice box flagged her as someone who didn’t belong in their movie.
She slipped into a dark passageway, saw two guys setting up lights on the far side of the old lobby, and walked the opposite way. Her breath stopped when she saw the heavily tooled golden doors perched at the top of three black shag-carpeted stairs. They were still the same after all these years.
Pat had been such a gentleman, she thought, like Carl had been when they were first married, before he went to Korea and came back silent as a stone. Raylene leaned against the purple wall and remembered Pat’s soft touch as he had guided her by the elbow up these stairs so many years ago. Carl would never do that, just let her find her own way. Besides, her husband never wanted glamorous places, just VFW affairs like today's lunch. They'd driven all the way from Ventura to hear some retired General, then Carl had gone to a business meeting with their son Vince, who still lived in town, and she was left to shop. Except she'd forgotten there weren't any nice shops anymore on this old stretch of Wilshire Boulevard.
Raylene closed her eyes and she was thirty-six again, still attractive with curly chestnut hair, before the laryngectomy took her voice away. She remembered the yellow satin cocktail dress she’d worn and how she’d hung giddily onto Pat's strong arm as he maneuvered them through the colorful crowd.
"You look so good I could just eat you up," she could still hear Pat whisper, his handlebar moustache tickling her ear as he patted her behind. "Your butt’s a ripe fruit—"
"Pat! We're in a public place!" she hissed, and his hands minded their own business again, but his eyes continued to twinkle. He enjoyed getting her twittery.