“Now hold it!”
“For what? What do you think I am anyhow? Where’s Bernie?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were supposed to be him, gawddamn it!”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Anybody pull what you pulled, mister, somebody ought to take a rusty knife to em and plain—”
He sat up and glared at her. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he roared. “I was sound asleep! I didn’t know who you were, and I don’t know who you are. I was so sound asleep I didn’t know even what you were.”
A corner of her mouth twitched. “You could have got the general idea I was a girl.”
“That occurred to me!”
“Don’t you roar at me, you sneaky bassar! You woke up, all right, soon enough, and you could have figured it out, being in Bernie’s bed, maybe some mistake was happening. But did you say a damn word?”
He stared at her. “When? And what was I supposed to say? My God, girl, it’s like a man falling off a building; you’d expect him to tie his shoes and wind his watch on the way down.”
Her mouth twitched again. “Real something, wasn’t it?” Without warning her eyes filled and she put her hands over her face and began to sob like a child. She toppled sideways and lay curled up, shivering and weeping.
“Now what?” he said with exasperation.
“S-S-Sneaky b-b-bassar!”
“Why are you crying?”
“What you d-done to me. In my whole l-life I never had no affair with s-somebody I din even know. Makin’ me feel like a slut girl. Makin’ me feel all cheap and r-r-r-rotten. Oh, oh, oh.”
“You hush, whatever your name is.”
“Doan even know my name!” she wailed. “Bonny Lee Beaumont, gawddamn you!”
“My name is—” He hesitated. “Uh—Kirk Winner.” He pulled her right hand away from her face and grasped it and shook it. “Now we’re introduced. For God’s sake, stop blubbering.”
“But I din know you then!”
“But if you’d known you didn’t know me, then it wouldn’t have happened would it?”
She stopped abruptly and looked up at him, sidelong and wary. “Huh? How does that go?”
“As far as you were concerned, I was Bernie. Right? So there’s no reason to blame yourself, is there?”
She was silent for a moment. Then she sat up, snuffled once, nodded at him. “I guess I got to think on it the way you say. But I broken a secret vow to myself, made when I was fourteen, how never in my whole life would I sack out with no man I din feel love for. Even it’s an accident, it still counts, sort of. I even feel funny you lookin’ at me, and it never bothers me with no man I love. But I get dressed, that’s funnier yet. I doan know what the hell to do, mister. What’s your name again?”
“Kirk Winner.”
“Friend of Bernie’s?”
“A friend of a friend.”
“You down on the television thing?”
“No.”
“Married?”
“No.”
She tilted her head. “You’re not such a bad looking fella anyways.”
“Thanks so much.”
She wrinkled her clear young forehead into a thoughtful scowl. “What bothers me, it was so real fine, Kirk. I mean I had the idea there had to be love, so when it’s fine with a stranger, it makes me out some kind of animal like.”
“You were expressing the love you feel for Bernie. That’s what made it right, Bonny Lee.”
She grinned. “You talk things out good for me. You’ll be having me coming around with all kinds of problems, hey?”
“Any time.”
“I keep wondering now how Bernie would look without the mustache. Gawddamn it, I thought I was going to get to see.”
“How old are you, Bonny Lee?”
“Twenny, practically.”
“Dear God. You live with your folks?”
“My folks! You some kind of a nut or something? My folks, they’re farmin’ on shares, South Carolina, and I was fourteen, went into a beauty contest you were supposed to be sixteen, and I sure God looked sixteen or better. I didn’t do good on the talent part, but the prize I got was one of the judges taken me to New Orleans and I never been back since. Married one time and it was a mess and I shucked him fast, man played clarinet and drank shine. Then I got to singing around, and now I’m working a place, Rio’s, up North Miami, singing and sort of stripping some, but not down to raw, and a bongo thing I do too. But what’s coming on for me good now is a career, and that one marriage was plenty I can tell you, and Bernie he’s been good to me, starting last year. So I have a ball, it saying on my work card I’m twenny-two, and my own little car and all, and friends enough, but Jesus I didn’t count on walking into nothing like this here. I tell you true, it has plain upset the hell out of me, Kirk.”
She swiveled and moved off the bed in a leggy stride, moved out of the bright area of the light. She was in a shadow area then, where the only visible things were the bright hair and the two pale areas of bikini.
“Folks!” she said and snorted. “I swang that hoe enough under that hot sun, and I stayed, I’d be wore down with nakedy kids by now, cause there you don’t have your first young by fifteen, you got to be looking like a toad frog, and I sure didn’t. And don’t.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Took that little judge’s wife seven weeks to hunt him down, and then she bust every dish in the apartment. On him, and me going out the back way with the little bit of money he had left by then. That taking the money is the only thing I ever did shamed me until this night, Kirk.”
Moving slowly, she picked her clothes off the floor, shook them, hung them over an arm of a chair. She came back toward the bed, picked up a white purse and sat on the edge of the bed, toward the foot of the bed, just out of the cone of light, facing him.
“Glaring on you,” she said. She got up and switched on a low lamp in a far corner, turned off the overhead prism and sat on the bed again. She took a small brush out of her purse and brushed the fitted cap of white curls. She was partially silhouetted against the light. She lit two cigarettes and stretched toward him and handed him one.
“Well, hell,” she said wistfully. “You can’t win ’em all.”
He had begun to realize how remarkably good he felt. He wanted to ride a chrome bike down Main Street, no hands, waving all the flags of the Americas. He wanted to get a reasonably good start and run right up the side of a few tall buildings. He could do a tireless handstand and twirl batons with his toes. This was indeed a splendid girl. He was very fond of her.
“What’s so gawddamn funny?” she demanded.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize I was laughing.”
“What you do for a living, sugar?”
“I—I’m sort of between jobs.”
“What’s your trade?”
“Sort of—investments.”
“And the investment was three kings against a lousy little full house. That’s how it goes, sugar.”
“Uh—Bonny Lee?”
“Yay?”
“You—uh, you said it was—pretty fine?”
“You were there, weren’t you, brother? You weren’t all that much sound asleep, and that’s for sure. You want a medal of honor or something? I swear to God, some day I hope to meet a man doesn’t want to be told he’s the best there is. What is it with men anyhow? A girl, she just wants to be lovin’ and wanted, and a damn man, every time, it’s like he wonders if he can make the Olympics. You all scared you haven’t got it? Y’all go round provin’ it often enough, then swaggering around like you’d done something special, like as if it was something any mink couldn’t do quicker and oftener. Big deal. I give you a passing grade. Okay?”
“Sorry I mentioned it.”
“So am I, sugar. So am I. There’s one thing bores me damn near to death, it’s talking about it. Folks get hungry and have a fine steak, they sit over the bones and talk about it? They get t
hirsty and have a big cold drink, they sit around peerin’ down into the glass a-wonderin’ what temperature it was, for Gawd’s sweet sake. The way I figure—”
“I said I’m sorry I brought it up!”
“Shees marie, you don’t have to beller at me, sugar! You know, you got a temper onto you?”
“I’m a very mild guy! I always have been! I never lose my temper! Get off my back, will you?”
“Kirk, sugar, you’re real edgy. There anything to eat?”
“Some cold ham. Rye bread.”
“I’ll just whomp up sanwiches, make us both feel better. You know it’s three in the morning?”
She went into the kitchen corner and turned on the bright overhead fluorescence. He propped himself on the pillows so he could watch her. Her long legs were so tanned they looked carved out of redwood, shaped lovingly, sanded to sleekness, polished. As she bent and moved and worked, he admired the smooth clench and slither of the young muscles of haunch and back and shoulders. And he felt the vast contentment of what he knew could be no more than a momentary ownership, and he wanted to find a heavy stone and chunk himself in the head with it for having deprived himself for so long of this kind of fatuous, arrogant smugness he had not realized existed.
She began to hum and then to sing. Her singing voice was an octave deeper than her speaking voice. Both the song and the phrasing were tantalizingly familiar.
“Billie!” he said suddenly.
She turned and grinned at him. “God rest her soul. Played all them records til nothing left but a scratchy hiss, then boughten some more and played those out too. Withouten Lady Day, I’d have hardly no career at all, sugar. There any one of hers you like special?”
“God Bless the Chile.”
She clapped her hands with delight. “Damn all, Kirk honey, that there is my song. Seven thousand times I sung that, all alone and for the people, and not one time it wasn’t like my heart turning over slow. I can cry to that song, thinking of that poor lost broad and how the world broke her down. After this here ham, I’ll sing it to you good, and you shuten your eyes, you’ll think she’s come on back for sure. Say, here is some of that burgundy red wine all fizzed like a sof’drink, like I had here one time before. You want some tall with ice?”
“I’d like that, Bonny Lee.”
She brought the wine in tall glasses, and thick sandwiches on white napkins, all on a teak tray. Nothing had ever tasted better to him. “I’m night people,” she said, chewing busily. “Three o’clock, four o’clock, I could gnaw the ears off a gallopin’ horse.”
“But you get out in the sun.”
“Set my alarm for noon, usually. Swim fifty lengths, five at a time, bake myself in between. Keeps me tightened up nice, you think so?”
“Very nice, Bonny Lee.”
She took the tray out and brought back more wine. When it was gone she put the glasses aside and said, “Now close your eyes and hear Billie.”
She did it beautifully, her tone smoky, gentle. Midway he opened his eyes. She was singing with her eyes closed, swaying slightly. “—rich relations give crust of bread and such. You can h’ep youself, but doan take too much.…”
After the last note was gone into the silence of the room, she opened her eyes and they were shiny.
“You liking that, Kirk sugar, knowing about Billie and all, asking for that one—it’s somehow something starting out all dead wrong and swinging around right. You feel that?”
“Yes, Bonny Lee.”
“And it could set that first time all the way right if I was to know it was you, maybe. But I don’t want you thinking wrong, this being the first time in my whole life knowing a gentleman friend such a short little time. But time got messed up kind of for us.”
“I wouldn’t think wrong.”
She went over and turned out the light and came back. In a little while she said, “Kirk sugar, what for you shaking so?” In another little while she said, “You know, your hands are like ice!” And in another little while she said, “Sugar, is it really meanin’ all this much to you, honest?” And when she knew it did, she whispered, “Then it’s meaning ten times as much to me too. Which I am now to let you know. Shees marie, here I am tumblin’ into love again, and a damn tow-head, cold-hand, evil-temper yankee, a gamblin’ out-a-work man, and so gentle-sweet I can start crying any minute, and nobody does any more talking from here on in.”
Eight
THERE WAS A HORNET big as a sea gull perched on something right in front of his face. It had a wide nasty little face, gray-green eyes, long heavy milky hair, a puffy mouth heavily lipsticked. It smacked its evil little mouth and swung its stinger back and forth. It had big veined wings which looked as rigid as plate glass. At intervals the wings would vibrate for several seconds, becoming almost invisible, making a harsh resonant burring sound.
The hornet was gone. A phone was ringing. He sat up, lost in space and time, still half wary of the hornet. He was in a huge vague bed in a shadowy room, with a dawn slant of sun coming in from the breakfast porch. As an orderly part of his mind picked up the count on the ringing of the phone, he turned and saw a tousle of curls sunk into a pillow at the far edge of the bed, four feet away, and a brown nape of tender neck, a silky V of white hair against it, and a deep brown shoulder, and a pale blue sheet, draped, molding the long girl-shape of the rest of her—incredible ornamentation to an unknown morning. Memory was suddenly an avalanche, pouring into the dry arroyo of the stunned and empty mind. He felt a stab of delight so unexpected it was more like pain than joy. He felt as if somebody had suddenly thrust a hollow needle into his heart and pumped it full of spiced molasses.
… thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and the phone went on and on. By the simplest deduction, it had to be Betsy Alden. Anybody else would have given up. By letting it ring and ring, she was letting him know who it was.
… nineteen, twenty, twenty-one …
He found the phone on the shelf to the left of the headboard.
“Yes?”
“Good morning, Kirby,” Joseph said, the rich voice almost gelatinous in its baritone flexibility. “Uh—how—”
“You’ve really been very tiresome lately, Kirby. But all will be forgiven if you can give us a little co-operation now. You are really in all kinds of trouble now, you know. The vicious assault on that poor waiter was a stupid mistake. But you seem to be reasonably ingenious, so we think you can probably devise some way of getting from that apartment to the Glorianna without incident. Listen carefully, my boy. She is tied up at the Biscayne Marina, E Dock. Please be aboard by ten at the latest.”
“What time is it?”
“Twenty after seven. It should give you ample time.”
“But I don’t—”
“Filiatr—Betsy, rather, is a very silly, stubborn, emotional child. She tried to be clever. Let’s just say it isn’t wise to attempt a fool’s mate against the queen’s gambit. Perhaps she was counting upon a sentimentality which doesn’t really exist. Or trying to play us against you. It’s rather hard to tell at the moment. She’s no longer very coherent. I must congratulate you upon not confiding in her completely. Because she really became very eager to confide in us. We did learn you two young people have become quite fond of each other in a very short time. And, of course, where to get in touch with you. And with Miss Farnham. Charla is wonderfully eager to talk with Miss Farnham too, and they should be bringing her here any moment. But we won’t start asking her tiresome questions until, say, ten o’clock.”
“What are you trying to—”
“I’m urging you to join us, old boy. I’m counting on your sense of responsibility for Betsy. And your sentimentality, I suppose. She’s really too high strung for this sort of treatment, you know. Also, unless you’ve suddenly become irrational, you must realize that with the way things have developed, you need us quite badly. We’ll be expecting you, Kirby.”
The line was dead. He hung up and looked at his hand and noted that his fingers were tremblin
g. He got up and put on his shorts and went around to the other side of the bed. He sat on his heels and looked at Bonny Lee’s dear sleeping face and thought his heart would burst with the wonder of it. It was dark against the pillow, lips parted, a face of absolute innocence. Her hand rested near her face. It was a lean, tanned, muscular hand, very like the hand of an active boy in his early teens. In the reflected glow of the early sunlight he saw the white hairline outline of a scar on the back of her hand shaped like an L. He wondered where she had gotten it.
He put his hand on the warmth of the bare shoulder and shook her gently. “Bonny Lee, darling. Hey! Bonny Lee!” Aside from a faint frown that disappeared immediately, there was no response.
He shook her more violently, spoke more forcefully.
“Wurrow!” she said, a small, irritable squalling sound, and flounced over onto her other side. He rolled her back over and shook her.
Finally she opened her eyes and slowly focused on him. She glowered at him. “Middla ni’,” she mumbled. “Middla ni’. Lemmilone.” And she was gone again. He pulled the sheet off her, pulled her legs out of bed, took her by the shoulders and sat her up. She sat with her chin on her chest, shoulders slumped, mumbling and growling at him. When he took his hands from her shoulders, she toppled onto her side and gave a small, purring snore. He sat her up again, took her wrists and started to pull her into a standing position. When he realized he would merely be pulling her off the bed onto her face, he reached and took her around the waist and stood her on her feet about two feet from the bed. She started to sag, then braced her legs. She peered at him, her eyes slightly crossed. As soon as he let go of her, she made a slow half-turn, took one step and dived face down across the bed. He stood her on her feet again and began to walk her. She leaned heavily against him, staggering, cussing him, groaning. He released her suddenly, ready to catch her if she fell. She wobbled around, caught her balance, shuddered violently, combed her fingers back through her curls and focused on him.
The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything Page 10