by Alison Lurie
Katherine’s bathing suit, which covered her more than adequately, began to feel too small, especially in back. She recalled that she had not shaved her legs for several days. But she certainly wasn’t going to be forced to move. After all, she was here first. She lay down again, on her back, and put her white sweater over her face, completely covering it. For some reason this reminded her of the classic college anecdote, about the girl who was on her way to her room from the showers, with nothing on but a small towel, when suddenly she saw the janitor coming down the hall. Quick as a flash, she whipped the towel off her body and wrapped it round her head, preserving her anonymity forever.
Dots of sun shone through the wool and into Katherine’s eyes. She lifted the sweater and looked down the beach. The girl in the bikini had her head down now, her long, bleached hair spread over her face; but the two men were still staring in Katherine’s direction. Really, how rude. Where was Paul? There, down by the water. He had progressed no farther into the Pacific Ocean, but still stood waist deep, waving his arms, rebuffed by wave after wave.
With irritation, Katherine sat up and began piling her things onto one of the towels. Then she stood, took hold of one end, and dragged her possessions away along the sand until she was about thirty feet from the intruders.
It was at this moment that Paul decided to come out of the water. He walked up the beach, not towards Katherine, but towards the natives. For a moment she feared that he was going to say something rude to them on her behalf and start a fight, so she beckoned nervously to him. He waved back, but went on, though more slowly. The men sat up as Paul approached, the girl in the bikini raised her head. Now he had come up and was shaking hands with them, one after the other. What in heaven’s name was going on? Paul pointed down the beach towards Katherine, and waved at her to come over. Then, as she did not move, he ran towards her.
“Come on,” he called as he came near. “These people want to meet you. One of them is the guy that has the car I’m thinking of buying. He’s going to show it to me today.” He stood beside her now, still panting from his exercise, dripping salt water. He picked up one of the towels, shook it out, and began to rub his hair.
“Oh, I see. I wondered how you knew them.” Though relieved, Katherine did not sit up. “I had to move all our things away because they had their radio on so loud,” she said. “I don’t want to meet them. What should I meet them for?” She laughed a little. “I just couldn’t believe it when I saw you talking to them; how could you ever know people like that, I thought. Did you ever see such dreadfully vulgar bathing suits?”
Paul hung the wet towel around his shoulders. He grinned briefly at Katherine, but made no answer. “He wants to show me the car now; it’s parked near here.”
“All right, go and look at it.” Katherine lay down again. It was no concern of hers what car Paul bought, or from whom. All cars looked the same to her.
“Aren’t you going in? The water’s great.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I will later.”
Neither Paul nor Walter Wong spoke as they walked up the beach, casting occasional covert looks at each other. Paul was feeling very uncomfortable; he had not expected Walter to be here today. He had come to meet a friend of the Tylers named Kelly who was going to Mexico and wanted to unload his car. It sounded pretty good—a 1932 Ford with a ’45 Ford flathead V-8 engine. It was a “street drag” (the term “hot rod,” he had learned, was obsolete) equipped and tuned for riding around town in, rather than a “competition drag” intended for racing.
But Kelly had already left for Mexico, it turned out, and had asked Walter Wong to sell the car for him. Paul did not want to derive anything more from Wong, or have any further dealings with him. He was going to go through the formalities of looking at the car, because that was socially easier than refusing to see it, but he wasn’t going to buy anything.
It was a long way to where the dragster was parked, and his feet slipped in the hot sand. He was tired from his struggle with the Pacific Ocean, and had difficulty keeping up with Walter, who moved rapidly ahead up the beach, spraying back sand with his thin, knobby feet. How the hell did Ceci ever get mixed up with this skinny little creep? Will you look at that scraggy beard, like Fu Manchu or something. And he sells Fuller brushes for a living.
“That’s her.” In an alley off the ocean front Walter and Paul stood before a beautifully preserved Ford coupé, shiny jet-black with dark green trim. Paul wanted it at once, in spite of his resolution. He walked round, looking it over.
“What kind of brakes has it got?” he asked.
“1956 Mercury brakes and wheels in front, ’46 Lincoln brakes in back.”
“Hm,” Paul said, impressed. A technical discussion followed. Walter Wong opened the hood, pointed out what he said were two Stromberg 97 carburetors on the engine or “mill,” and started the motor. Gradually Paul became less exclusively conscious of their conflicting relation to Ceci, and more aware of Walter’s patience, automotive knowledgability, and even a kind of wry charm. The more he saw and heard of the Ford, the better he liked it. After all, he began to say to himself, it’s not Wong’s car. But for bargaining purposes, as well as to discourage his own covetousness, he continued to denigrate it mildly (“I was hoping to pick up something with fuel injection”).
“Why don’t you take it over yourself?” he asked presently. “You could use it for your sales work; it ought to make a big impression on the customers.”
Walter shook his head. “I’ve got a car. Anyhow, I’ve quit the brushes.”
“Yeah?”
“Had to.” He leaned back against the Ford, under the open hood. “You have to hustle too much on these commission deals. Like you’ve got to have the salesman’s mentality.” He smiled. “You know: the Protestant ethic. I was running into some real swinging scenes, but I wasn’t making any bread. I’ve got a new gig now.”
“Oh? What’re you doing?”
“I’m an exterminator.” Walter pantomimed squirting with a can of Flit. “Universal Insect and Rodent Control. Like ants, roaches, spiders, silverfish, mice, rats—all that.”
Paul laughed, though a little nervously. Looking at Walter Wong, with his strange thin beard, his hard brown arms and legs, his brief bathing suit patterned in black and yellow, he thought that he could not have chosen a more suitable profession. But was he the Pied Piper or the leader of the Insects and Rodents?
“Rats?” he said. “Do you really have rats in Los Angeles?”
“Do we have rats? The place is crawling with them. All kinds. The worst are the big ones up in the palm trees.”
“Oh, come on,” Paul said. He looked up. Not far away, the dry, brittle fronds and rough trunk of a palm broke the pale expanse of sky. “Rats in the palm trees?”
“Man, I’m telling you,” Walter said. “We don’t take care of them—it’s too much for us. The city has to do it. That’s why you see those big yellow trucks going around all the time stripping the trunks, like so the rats can’t climb up there. You watch them some time when you see one of those trucks. It’s some fun. When they start on an old tree, wow, you’ll see those bastards jumping off it and running to beat hell in every direction. Crazy!” He grinned.
Paul did not believe this. He decided that Walter was trying to make fun of him. Well, he would show that he wasn’t taken in. “Yeah,” he said dryly. “It must be almost as much fun as when they chased the Japs out of town.” As soon as the words were sounded he remembered that Walter Wong was half-Chinese.
Immediately, Walter’s whole face changed. His amused smile was wiped off as if with a sponge; his expression became impassive—Orientally impassive. Paul knew he ought to apologize, but before he could arrange the words, Walter began to speak in a flat, slow, anonymous voice, a completely new voice, making some complicated remarks about the car and what sounded like “Iskenderian cams.” Paul did not try to understand him.
“Uh-huh,” he said as soon as Walter had stopped speaking. “List
en, I’m sorry about that crack. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
“Yeah,” Walter said, leaning against the car and staring into space. His voice altered slightly in the direction of humanity. “It’s like we minority groups have got to stick together.”
“I guess so,” Paul agreed heartily, unsure of what was meant.
“That’s the way it is. What minority group do you represent?” Walter turned his head and looked at Paul.
“Well, I,” Paul said. “I guess none.” He realized that he was making it worse. But Christ, he couldn’t do more than apologize.
“Oh no,” Walter said slowly. “Can’t be. You’ve got to belong to some underprivileged order, or Ceci wouldn’t be interested. That’s her kick, see. I thought maybe you were a Jew. But hell, of course she’s already had a Jew. Funny.” He stared impassively but insolently at Paul, who thought, well, I insulted him, now I suppose he has to insult me.
Leaning against the shiny fender of the car, Walter eased a cigarette and a folder of matches out of his trunks, and lit up without offering Paul anything. “How are you making it with Ceci these days?” he said suddenly, in a friendly voice.
Paul flinched. “All right.”
“She’s a real cool chick,” Walter continued, in a tone almost of self-parody. “She really is.” Paul thought he recognized a move towards establishing masculine solidarity, but he didn’t want to get together with Walter over this topic. He said nothing. Walter looked at him; then he went on, “She’s always on some new kick. You met that Tomaso yet, that crazy Mexican runner?” Paul shook his head stiffly. “A long-distance runner, man. He’s big in the track world. Like he’s broken all kinds of records for endurance.” He gave Paul a malicious smile.
“Never heard of him,” Paul lied briefly. (O’Connor, Wong, Tomaso.) “Hey,” he said. “How’s the muffler?”
Walter stared at Paul, his face impassive again. “It’s the best, man,” he said. “Dual straight-throughs with scavenger tail-pipes.”
“I think I’ll take a look at it,” announced Paul.
“Yeah,” Walter said. “Why don’t you do that?”
Paul lay down in the dust and gravel of the parking lot, and awkwardly eased his head and shoulders under the side of the Ford. As he looked up at the underside of the car, he heard the door open, and metal grate against metal. Suddenly he had the conviction that Walter was going to release the brake so that the car would run over him—he would say afterwards that it had been an accident. In a panic, as fast as he could, he scrambled out from underneath.
He got up. Walter was standing on the opposite side of the car, leaning against the open door. His face was expressionless, but he raised his eyebrows as he saw Paul. “Wow,” he said. “What happened to you down there?”
Paul became conscious of a stinging pain in his right shoulder and arm; he saw that he had scraped it raw against the gravel and cinders, while the rest of his body was blotched with dust and grit. He tried to brush himself off, thinking that it was possible that Walter had just been trying to frighten him. He said nothing.
Watching Paul, Walter began to smile. “Hey!” he said. “I get it now. I know what group you represent. You’re a square.” He laughed. “That’s it, man.”
Paul felt that he had never disliked anyone in his life as much as he now disliked Walter Wong. If he hadn’t really wanted the Ford he would have walked round it and hit him. “Oh, fuck it,” he said. “You want me to buy this heap, you better knock off that kind of talk.”
For a moment they faced each other across the open engine, with the expressions of enemies. Then Walter put on an innocent Oriental houseboy air, and turned his hands out, palms up. “What you want, man?” he asked. “I talk to you the way I feel. You want me to give you some used-car-lot pitch, ‘Oh, you’re such a hot guy, boss, such a great cat, I love you so much I want you to have this fine car, this colossal deal’?” He shut the door of the Ford: blam! Then he walked forward and shut down the hood with a crash so sharp that Paul, already in fantasy its owner, feared he would hurt the finish.
“All right,” Paul said. “How much does he want for it?” Walter turned and looked at him, his hands still resting on the hood of the car. Then, very slowly, he smiled. “What’s it worth to you?” he asked.
After sitting on her towel for a little while longer, Katherine got up and walked towards the ocean—partly to escape the continuing stares of the large bearded man and the girl in the bikini, partly to have an answer for disagreeable Dr. Einsam, who would be sure to say to her: “Did you go into the water?”
She picked her way through the heaps of rubbery wet seaweed, and down a slope of coarse brown sand. In front of her the ocean flung itself again and again on to the beach, lifting a solid heap of dark green salt water which broke into foam against the sand, then another. A shallow sheet of cool water came up and licked her feet after each attempt. Reassured, Katherine took a few steps forward. As the water went out, each time, it left a crust of pebbles and bubbles on the shore, and sucked grains of sand down the slope and over Katherine’s feet. The rhythm was restful. She forgot for the moment that she was Mrs. Katherine Cattleman, thirty years old, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, an employee of the University of California, a sufferer from chronic sinusitis. She looked out to sea; her eyes rested on the long peaceful horizontal line where air and water seemed to meet. Nearer in she could see the waves rising and advancing towards her, growing larger.
She walked forward; her knees were wet now, and now her thighs; she felt spray on her face. Suddenly the sea came up and pulled at her. Katherine tried to step back, but the ground was uneven, and the undertow had already buried her feet in sand. With a great effort she freed herself and, almost falling, struggled back out of the ocean.
11
A DAMP NIGHT. FOG blew in from the sea steadily, smothering the beach towns; the neon lights along Venice and Washington Boulevards smoldered, sending out plumes of colored smoke. Ceci clung to Paul’s arm, but it was he who had to be guided as they made their way through the black alleys behind the beach.
“Here.”
She stopped before a shabby store-front, so dimly lit that Paul would have passed it by without a second look. The windows were heavily misted; here and there drops had gathered and run down, leaving a crack through which yellow light seeped.
They entered. A long, very dark room, a jumble of wooden tables and chairs, walls scrawled from floor to ceiling with drawings and writings, all obscure in the gloom. On every table a squat candle, the kind lit in churches, burned in a glass container—each soft flame flickering in a pool of colored wax.
“We’re early,” Ceci said, looking around at the empty tables, on some of which games of chess were set up ready for play.
“It’s ten-thirty.”
“Mm. This place doesn’t really heat up till around midnight. Well.” She slid onto a bench by the wall.
Paul sat beside her and looked about. In the rear corner two men in shirts and sweaters were playing chess. A small dark girl, with curly black hair that hung over her face like a poodle’s, sat with them. Otherwise the room was empty. Paul removed his raincoat. He had dressed for the occasion: the chino pants spattered with house paint were his own, but the oil-paint-stained sweatshirt had been borrowed from Ceci. She had even dug up a pair of sandals for him, a little too small, but not much. As a final gesture, he had decided not to shave that morning. It was wonderful how much difference it made to get out of the tight case of fabric he usually wore. In these old clothes he felt as if he could really move, swing his arms, jump, run.
“Hiya, Dinny,” Ceci greeted the girl with the poodle haircut, who had come over to them. “This is Paul.” Dinny smiled prettily at him, but said nothing. As nearly as you could tell in the gloom, she was wearing only a pair of orangish tights and a baggy gray sweater. “Who’s winning tonight?” Ceci asked. “Is Leo beating again?” Dinny shook her head. “Cool. Expresso, I guess. What d’you want, Pa
ul? ... Two expressos. You want something to eat?”
“Sure, I’m starving. What’ve you got?”
Dinny, though addressed directly, still said nothing. “How about some of that pastry?” Ceci asked. “Dinny blows great pastry. Have you got any of that way out cake tonight, you know, with all the different-colored layers?” Dinny nodded. “Great. Bring us two of those.”
“Hey. Why doesn’t she ever say anything?” Paul asked in a whisper, as soon as Dinny had disappeared behind the curtain at the back. “Can’t she talk, or something?”
“Uhuh.” Ceci did not whisper. “She can if she wants to. Only Dinny just doesn’t dig words. Like she doesn’t relate verbally.”
The two men studying the chess-board gave no sign of having heard this, though they must have done so. Well, maybe we all talk too much. Paul fell silent himself, just looking around and enjoying being there. Then Dinny brought coffee and cake, the expresso steaming black and hot, the cake cold and thick with whipped cream. What a great place. Why hadn’t he been here before? Because he never saw Ceci at night, when Venice came alive; that was why.
“I like it here,” he said. “Look at those plaster flowers along the molding; I wonder what this place used to be. You know, Venice was once an elegant resort town about fifty or sixty years ago. Named after the real Venice. I’ve been looking up the records: lots of these streets were canals then. There were about fifteen miles of canals, all of them built out of concrete by a retired manufacturer from the Middle West named Kinney, who wanted to make this a big cultural center. He put up all those arcades and imitation palazzos in the square, and he got gondolas with singing Italian gondoliers to take the tourists from the railroad station to their hotels. I’ve seen pictures; the men in the straw hats and knickerbockers, and the women all got up in white, like Gibson girls, with parasols. He brought Sarah Bernhardt to play Camille in an auditorium he built on the end of the pier, over the waves.” Ceci did not seem to be listening very hard; she looked at the candle flickering on the table dreamily. “Right around here, right up the main street, only it was a canal then, there was an outdoor restaurant with hanging gardens called l’Esperanza. ... What are you smiling at?”