The veterinary's assistant came just at dusk the next day. He expressed delight. I did not give a damn about his delight. He removed the drains, pulled healing edges more closely together with criss-crosses of tape, provided separate and smaller bandages. I felt like a sad sick dog. I wanted no part of anyone's care and attention. When I went down into sleep, broken women grinned at me. Almah, Nora, Dru. And there were other faces, standing behind them, fragments of older memories, all grinning at their personal angel of death.
She went out with the little doctor and talked for a long time in the night before he went rattling down the slope in his old car. When she came in she was thoughtful, absent-minded. I put a jacket on and sat in the old rocker on the porch while she cooked. She called me and we ate in front of the fire. A silent meal.
While she was cleaning up, I went back to bed as was the custom, after using the back lot privey and brushing my teeth in the out of doors.
I lay with my back to the room and heard her getting ready for bed. She flipped my blankets up and slid in with me, fitting herself to my back, naked as a partridge egg.
"I didn't realize my teeth were chattering," I said.
"Perhaps mine are."
"What the hell is this, Connie?"
"I had a long talk with that nice little man. He couldn't help noticing how morose you are. I told him that some very bad things had happened, and you thought they were your fault, and you were brooding about them. He said there is a certain depression which one can expect as an aftereffect of shock and weakness. I proposed a certain antidote for his consideration. He was dubious. But he is a very practical little man, and I am a very practical woman. There is one thing, Senor McGee, that is the exact opposite of death. Now turn over here, darling."
That big husky vital woman was incredibly gentle. I don't believe that at any moment I bore more than five pounds of her enfolding weight. I do not think she expected anything for herself, but at the final time, she gave a prolonged shudder and sighed small love words in her own tongue and, after a little space of time, rested herself sweet beside me.
"Angel de vida," she murmured, "de mi vida."
I held her close, stroked that silver head, her curls crisp to the touch, damp at the roots with her exertions, her breath a sighing heat against my jaw and ear. It made me remember something from a long time ago, visiting the zoo man who had the half-grown lioness for a house pet. She had come to me in a tawny stalking, bumped the great beast head against my thigh, made a furnace sound of purring, huffed that hot breath of carnivore, demanding that this stranger scratch her ears and ruffle her throat fur, tilting her yellow eyes at me in a kind of mocking amusement at this charade we played.
"Happier?" she whispered.
"Bemused."
"Sleep now, and we will awake singing. You will see."
"You'll stay here?"
"From now on, querido. For whenever and however you want me. I was not designed by the gods for an empty bed."
Twenty
THE TEMPTATION Was to stay there too long. I pushed myself to the limit each day. At first it was shockingly limited. A mile of walking, a few simple exercises, and I would get weak and sweaty and dizzy. When I had begun to improve, she left me alone for two days, went back to the city, and came back in the gunmetal Mercedes, bringing more clothes for herself, many gifts for me, games and exercise equipment and clothes and wine and target weapons. And she brought news.
Chip Fertacci was being sought for jumping bail. After a minor hernia operation, Calvin Tomberlin had died in the hospital of an embolism. The day after she returned, I went with her in the grey car to Palm Springs and brought back the jeep she had left there at the airport.
We had no visitors. We spread blankets and took the hot sun. She said it was foolish for her to do it, as she was already as dark as she cared to be. The hole in my back was healed first. I looked at it with an arrangement of mirrors, a shiny pink button, the size of a dime.
As I became fit again, able to split mountains of wood, jog my five miles up hill and down, do the forty pushups, and heartily service the lady, our relationship became ever more violent and disruptive. We brawled like wicked children over the competitive scores we made on our improvised shooting range, and she could yell Spanish obscenities that echoed in the stone canyons. Once in a fury over my comment about her having let vegetables boil dry, she sucker punched me with an enthusiasm which split her knuckle and caused my knees to sag. I upended her and walloped her rear, trying to get some yelp of pain out of her, but the only sound was my own roar when she sank her teeth into my thigh.
We took all the fierce and childish competitions of the day into the bunk at night, and there it became competition on a different level. I was sometimes fool enough to imagine I could sate her, and even managed to, a very few times. We had immediate and violent differences of opinion on everything from Freudian theory to how to cook beans. But there were the good times too, when something set off laughter, laughing until we wept, rocking and gasping, setting each other off all over again. It was good to laugh like that. It was another part of healing. I hadn't known laughter like that for years.
But we were tearing each other apart in the constant clawing for advantage. I have memories of her, naked by firelight, pacing back and forth, shaking her fist, yelling at me. Nobody sulked. Nobody walked away. We fought every fight right down to the bitter finish, and they all ended in a draw. We learned each other well enough to learn all the tender places, to be able to draw blood at each encounter.
The symbol of the end of it was the sizeable wooden packing case I brought back from the town, along with a dime store stencil kit and excelsior. I got a big enough case so the size to weight ratio would not be unusual. I packed the thirty-four gold images, fastened the top on with wood screws, labeled it as marine engine parts and addressed it to myself in Lauderdale. I had about a hundred and seventy-five pounds of gold and twenty pounds of crate, and I took a childish pride in making the effort look easy when I swung it into the back of the jeep.
I took it down alone and shipped it out and got back in the first cool of dusk. It was a quiet and thoughtful evening. We finished the wine. In the night I missed her. I got up and put something on and went looking for her. I found her beyond the road, throwing the gifts and games and toys one by one down into the rocky gully, hurling them with great force, crying as she did so. It was foolish and petulant and very touching.
I held her and, in the wrack of sobs, she kept saying, "Why? Why?"
She was asking, I suppose, why she had to be the person she was, and why I had to be the person I was, and why it was impossible for us to find any way to be at peace with each other. She knew it was time to end it, and she wanted to end it, but resented the necessity of ending it. I led her back in and made love to her for the last time. I guess it should have been symbolic, or a special closeness or sweetness. But we had already lost each other. Our identities had been packed in separate crates, with the lids securely fastened. So it was merely competent and familiar, while our minds wandered. It had all been reduced down to an amiable service.
She was bright and cheerful in the morning. We tidied the place, buried the perishables and left the rest, stacked wood high and scrubbed the board floor. On the way down in the grey car, we did not look back. At Los Angeles International I found a flight that would leave for Miami in ninety minutes. I checked my luggage aboard and then walked her back out to her car. There was no point in her hanging around, and she showed no desire to do so.
After she got behind the wheel, I leaned in and kissed that indomitable mouth.
"Come around for the next incarnation," she said. "I'll be a better one next time."
"I'd planned on being a porpoise."
"I'll settle for that. Look for me."
"How will I know you?"
"I'll keep the yellow cat eyes, darling. But I'll throw the devils out. I will be the sweet, humble, adoring girl porpoise."
"I'll b
e the show-off. Big leaps. A great fishcatcher."
She blinked rapidly and said, "Until then, darling. Take care."
And she started up so fast she gave me a good rap on the elbow with the edge of the window frame.
There was no reason why I should not use the same name and the same hotel in New York. I came up with the golden goodies packed into two sturdy suitcases. I put them into a coin locker in the East Side Terminal. By three o'clock on that hot and sticky afternoon, I was settled into the Wharton as Sam Taggart. I used a pay phone to call Borlika Galleries. They said they expected Mrs. Anton Borlika back in about twenty minutes.
I had difficulty visualizing her until I heard that flat Boston accent, then I saw all of her, the Irish shine of the black hair, the whiteness and plumpness and softness of all the rest of her.
"It's Sam Taggart, Betty," I said.
There was a long silence.
"I never expected to hear from you again."
"What gave you that idea?"
"Let's say because you left so abruptly."
"It couldn't be helped."
"It's been months. What did you expect me to think?"
"Do you need those pictures back?"
"The negatives were on file. Keep them as souvenirs. What do you want?"
"I thought we had a deal lined up."
"That was a long time ago."
"Maybe they're more valuable now, Betty."
After a silence she said, "Maybe there's more risk."
"How?"
"You bastard, I'm not that stupid. You took the pictures. You lined up the outlet first, and then you went after the merchandise. And it took you this long to get it. How do I know the whole thing won't backfire?"
"Betty I had them all along. I was just busy on other things."
"I can imagine."
"But I did manage to pick up a few more."
"Of the same sort of thing?"
"To the layman's eye, yes. Six more. Thirty-four total. So it will come to more money. And I'm ready to deal. I told you I'd be in touch. There's only one small change. I've lined up another outlet, just in case. But because we had an agreement, it's only fair to give you the chance first. If you're nervous, all you have to do is say no."
It was one of those big pale banks on Fifth, in the lower forties, one of those which manage to elevate money to the status of religious symbolism. I arrived by cab at eleven, and toted my bloody spoils inside.
She got up from a chair in the lounge area and came over to me. She looked thinner than I remembered. There were smudges under her eyes. She wore a hot-weather suit, severely tailored and slightly wrinkled.
"Back this way please," she said.
We went through a gate and down a broad corridor. An armed guard stood outside a paneled door. When he saw her coming, he turned and unlocked the door, swung it open, tipped his cap and bowed us in. It was a twelve by twelve room without windows. When the door closed she smiled in an uncertain way and said, "Hello, Sam."
"How are you, Betty?"
"All right, I guess. I feel a little strange about... the last time I saw you. It wasn't... standard practice for me."
"I didn't think it was."
She lifted her chin. "I'm engaged to be married."
"Best wishes."
"I'm going to marry the old man."
"Best wishes."
"He's really very fond of me, Sam. And he is a very kind man."
"I hope you will be very happy."
She stared at me for a long moment and then said, "Well, shall we get at it?"
There was a long steel table in the room with a linoleum top. There were four chairs around the table. There was a blue canvas flight bag in one of the chairs. I put a suitcase on the table, opened it and began taking out the pieces. She hefted and inspected each one and set it aside. She did not make a sound. Her lips were compressed, her nostrils dilated, her blue eyes narrow. Finally all thirty-four were on the table. A little army of ancient spooks.
"Which six were not in the Menterez collection?"
"I have no idea."
"Where did you get the extra ones?"
"From a cave at the bottom of the sea."
"Damn you, I can't take the chance of...."
"You will have to take a chance on my word that nobody misses them, nobody wants them back."
She said she would take the whole works for her original offer. I immediately started packing them away again. She asked what I wanted. I said two hundred. She laughed at me. She made a phone call. She offered one fifty. I came down a little. After two long hours of dispute, we settled at a hundred and sixty-two five. She had a hundred and forty in the canvas bag, fifties and hundreds, bank wrapped. She went out into the bank and drew another twenty-two five, while I packed the heavy little figures of ancient evil back into the suitcases.
There was room for the extra money in the canvas bag, after I had completed my count. She put her hand out and when I took it she laughed aloud, that exultant little chortle of someone who is happy with the deal just made.
"I'll use a porter and a guard to take these away." she said. "Perhaps you would like to leave first. I could arrange a guard if you like."
"No thanks."
"I didn't think so. Sam? Once you have this in a safe place, perhaps we could... celebrate the deal tonight?"
"And celebrate your pending marriage, Betty?"
"Don't be such a bastard, please."
I smiled at her. "Honey, I'm sorry. You just don't look to me like the kind to forgive and forget. I think you are itching to set me up somehow."
There was just enough flicker in the blue eyes for me to know it had been a good guess. "That's a silly idea," she said. "Really!"
"If I'm going to be free, I'll give you a ring at the apartment."
"Do that. Please."
A side door of the bank opened into the lobby of the office building overhead. I had marked it on my way in, so I went through in a hurry, got into an elevator and rode up with a back-from-lunch herd of perfumed office girls and narrow-faced boys. I rode up to twelve, found a locked men's room and loitered until somebody came out. I caught the door before it closed, and shut myself into a cubicle. The blue canvas bag was just a little too blue and conspicuous. I had the string and the big folded sheet of wrapping paper in an inside pocket. The blocks of money stacked nicely and made a neat package. I left the blue bag right there, walked down the stairs to ten, took an elevator back down.
A trim little gal with chestnut hair, wide eyes, a pocked face and not enough chin was just ahead of me. I caught up with her and took her arm and said quickly, as she gave a leap of fright, "Please help me for thirty seconds. Just out the door and head uptown talking like old friends."
I felt some of the tension go out of her slender arm.
"What do old friends talk about?" she said.
"Well, they talk about a man who'll leave me the hell alone if he sees me come out with a date."
"Big date. Thirty seconds. This must be my lucky day."
We smiled at each other. I did not look around trying to spot anybody. She came along almost in a trot to keep up with long strides. At Forty-fifth we had the light, and there was a cab right there waiting, so I patted her shoulder and said, "You're a good kid. Thanks."
As I got into the cab, she called, "I'm a good kid, tenth floor, Yates Brothers, name of Betty Rassmussen, anytime for thirty-second dates, you're welcome."
At nine o'clock on an evening in late July, Shaja Dobrak invited me into the cottage she had shared with Nora Gardino. Her grey-blue eyes were the same, her straight hair that wood-ash color, her manner quiet and polite. She was a big girl, and slender. She had been working at a gold and grey desk in the living room. The two cats gave me the same searching stare of appraisal.
"Please to sit," she said. "You drink somesink maybe?" She smiled. "There is still the Amstel, you liked last time."
"Fine."
She went to get it. She wore coral
cotton pants, calf length, gold sandals, a checked beach coat. When she brought it to me, she stared frankly at me. "In the eyes I think you are older. Terrible thinks?"
"Yes."
She went to the couch, pulled her legs under her, grave and waiting. "You wish to say them?"
"I don't think so. You went up to the funeral?"
"Yes. So sad. Less than one year I am knowing her, Travis, but I loved her."
"I loved her too."
An eyebrow arched in question.
"Yes. It started sort of by accident. It was very good. It surprised both of us. It pleased us both. It could have lasted."
A Deadly Shade of Gold Page 34