THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction

by LEE OLDS

  “So, what’d he do?” Hammond was now very interested.

  I said, “Want to hear? Thought you said you didn’t like the guy. Nothing! He did nothing.” I pursed my lips shut.

  “You know what I meant,” he retracted his view. At least temporarily.

  Well, they held dances out there at the beach. And why not. In truth there’s no more romantic place in the world to dance than at the beach. It’s where we (mankind) first stepped out of the ocean onto land, our true ancestral home, and undoubtedly where we’ll return someday or to a medium very nearly like it. You’re close to something and yet far away, on edge. The very place man seems to find most desirable whether defying death (successfully) or making love.

  I mentioned the several bars out there, didn’t I? There was the Windjammer and the Sand Piper, a small exclusive tavern with a fireplace, red carpets and upscale paintings which hung on the walls, whereas the Windjammer had a long bar and a sunken dance floor with raised tables on either side, a real bar, not unlike one of the old Viking halls with their tall raftered ceilings and long tables where the guests sat. It was here where they held their dances, which really everyone who was anyone at the beach attended whether they danced or merely sat and observed while they chatted.

  As it was, Hartwig and Barney had several verbal run ins in the tiny community. One was by the general store, another on the beach. It was like bumper cars out there. The area was too small to avoid a collision though that didn’t mean you had to be unfriendly. Or did it? With two double X chromosome males, each of whom thinks he has something on the other, let’s just say a clash is bound to occur especially where a female’s involved. And right there might just be the entire story of man’s history on earth from beginning to end.

  “Female involved?” Said Hammond. “Don’t tell me Barney’d been chasing Sandy himself though it might sound like it if he takes such offense at Hartwig’s sudden monopoly.”

  “No … Matter of fact it was his own girl who was the problem, the alcoholic.” She, it seemed, could prompt that carpenter to do whatever she wanted. Wrap him around her little finger if it came to that. Just … just, in fact, by so much as looking at another man out there. I don’t know how many he’d challenged to fights because of this but … too many. One was too many for jealousy never got anyone anywhere though it strikes some people like a virus they find impossible to repel.

  “So, this man wasn’t after Sandy. Hartwig obviously wasn’t after the alcoholic, or Sarah, or whatever you called her, what…? It just must’ve been he didn’t want anyone criticizing anything he did.”

  “Not exactly true,” I stood up in alarm.

  According to Hartwig, Sarah was absolutely the most beautiful woman at the beach, or if you could believe him, anywhere you might come across a woman when searching for that quality. She was all, five foot eight or so, willowy of figure with big feet and small (but not too small) breasts, large blue eyes with high cheekbones and wavy auburn hair. She was supposed to be part Hawaiian. If so she got all the right proportions and even those didn’t tell the full story. Just to see her, evidently, was to want to sleep with her. Without even trying she had that allure to men that’s impossible to define. You can call it sex appeal, the expression of a ‘need to surrender’, whatever. Like the philosopher Moore’s naturalistic fallacy whatever you try to define anything as you always come up with something you’ve left out…

  “Christ, in that case if any of this is true, though she didn’t sound like it at first description, maybe the man had a real reason to be jealous. He’s not such a paranoid loser after all.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s all of that. Been married twice, failed to pay child support … And about her you judged her before you let me go far enough.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Sandy was certainly jealous of the beauty’s looks and ability to attract men even though she had little money but was on welfare because of the kid. And Sarah felt slighted since she knew how Sandy ridiculed her own boyfriend, claiming,

  “Only a tramp’d run around with such a loser.”

  Let’s just say there was plenty of enmity between the two women and recently their men’d had words, though no physical clash. In both cases there’d been a little saber rattling but their women had managed to pull the two men apart.

  Dances occurred on Friday and Saturday nights. At dusk, after watching the sunset when the fog allowed, various parties’d emerge from their houses and walk up to the Windjammer that had been built on a truncated dune several hundred yards off the beach when the entire area’d been nothing but dunes. The parking lot was hard sand but was used mostly by visitors from over the hill.

  It was a roaring night; the crowd had packed the place. Every seat at the bar was taken the tables on either side of the dance floor came to be occupied.

  “Guess what music was playing?” Hammond shrugged his shoulders.

  “Mexican, what else. Since they’ve apparently taken over our country I think it’s only fitting that we listen to their music. Don’t you?” Receiving no reply, I continued. “Or Cuban or something with a Latin beat is all I really know. And, believe me, it’s great to dance to. Better perhaps than any of our modern experiments. Old people like it for sure. It’s not so frenetic but it does keep you moving.”

  Whereas Sandy hesitated to attend, fearing quite justifiably the carpenter and his alcoholic girlfriend’d be there since they went every weekend, and the proximity of the two men might prove too tempting, she said,

  “You go on alone. Perhaps you’ll meet someone. I’m just too tired.” Hartwig grabbed her, shook her a little and said,

  “Then I’m going home.” She was a poor dancer but he’d been teaching her disco in the living room and he wanted to show her off.

  “If you insist, but I’m not going.”

  She was stubborn and spoiled to the hilt. Both of them were when it came to having to have their own ways. She retreated to her bedroom, locked herself in but somehow Hartwig managed to get to her. I don’t know whether it was through a window or perhaps he forced the lock. But he cornered her on her bed, pulled her up and made her get dressed. Just to make sure she went along and didn’t run away on him kept him from dressing. He, however, knew others’d be there in their sandals and shorts so what was the difference? It was a beach community. Go like you’d just come off the beach. You were there, weren’t you? The dress he picked out for her was white and summery. It’d be the beachcomber and the fashion model, perhaps a fitting combination out there.

  Not two blocks from the house they ran into several neighbors. Once Sandy began chatting he let her tightly held hand go. He figured she was no longer a flight risk and just before they entered the old tavern she did make him promise.

  “Just be good and don’t cause any trouble. That’s all I ask.” To which Hartwig answered,

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  A reasonable request, of course, if you’re dealing with rational people but they weren’t like that. Was anyone really if you stopped to think about it? None of them were, including some of the other peacemaker types in the vicinity, who caused more trouble than they made peace. On top of that they’d been drinking. Or at least the provocative ones had.

  “Boy,” said Hammond, “Now I’d really like to see Hartwig knock the crap out of that Barney fellow. He does sound despicable.”

  “You would? And I haven’t even been talking about him. I could say it never happened. Something did, however, it always does and here’s what it was.”

  The crowd was so thick any party that couldn’t fill a table entirely was bound to share it, hopefully with friends, but if not with amicable strangers. Sandy and Hartwig sat with the Adamses, a grey haired couple both of whom were artists, and Mort the script writer who commuted between Hollywood and the beach. He’d come with Vera, another single woman out there who had money and also a weight problem. Though she had a pretty face, Mort wouldn’t look at her.
She had a ribald sense of humor and was funny as hell. That’s why he put up with her. He’d once made a play for Sandy and been rejected but they were still friends and he had no objection to Hartwig, who he found quite intelligent and more than once had suggested a screen test for him. The Adamses, the woman and the man, though fun, were figure and landscape painters respectively and not very good. Hartwig’d seen their works at the local gallery and though Sandy had bought several of their things, which hung in her home and she’d told Hartwig how great they were, his reply’d been.

  “Yes, I’m sure. They’re lucky to have you as a client otherwise they’d have nothing to live on.” Made in jest, I’m sure, for the couple had other money otherwise they wouldn’t’ve been there, but,

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say.” He’d managed to insult Sandy’s integrity in the process. To the Adamses, however, he was unctuously sweet. He claimed it was a painful exercise just not to talk about painting in their presence especially as he considered it such an interesting subject.

  “And,” I said to Hammond, “Guess who took the table on the other side of the dance floor virtually opposite to where they sat?”

  “The Pope … Now really, Pearson, you know how I hate these guessing games.”

  “The giant and the beauty,” I said, “along with several of his henchmen from the swamp.”

  Call them bodyguards if you like, though I’m sure the convict’s ego’d never admit that he needed any such entity. They wore hats that sat on their heads like beehives and they walked like sloths with sloped shoulders and long, dangling arms. They’d set their head pieces on the table and were waiting for the music. She had worn a pink orchid in her long flowing hair and a print Hawaiian dress. Like a diamond in a dark room it was hard to take your eyes off her.

  The musicians in their ranchero costumes and sombreros were gathered on a dais opposite the floor level bar at the other end of the hall, screeching their various instruments in warm up mode. The spotlights, which shone on a revolving multi-faceted globe that resembled the eye of an insect, cast rays of light in an otherwise dark setting. One of the bartenders and part owner, sprinkled mica dust on the floor. The leader of the band stepped forward and in quite good English, announced the first tune upon which couples filtered from their seats and took the floor. With the bay windows all along the western wall, the ocean in the offing, it was the perfect setting and mood for a dance. But what battlefield hasn’t been idyllic before soldiers and their weapons took to it. You just name one. All crowded into one corner table, were the wives and children of the players. They were the only Latinos there.

  The evening began on a romantic note. Couples danced, waitresses zigzagged their way between the two tables with drinks and food. The owner, an Irishman they called Big Red, stood behind the bar helping out now and then; sometimes with arms folded … I’m sure licking his chops as to how profitable the night might be. Band nights were big for him. That’s where he made his money. Without them he’d have to close up.

  Hartwig said he saw no cause for trouble as he’d perhaps hoped. He and Sandy danced. People rubbed against one another and accidentally bumped. He gave Vera a turn or two, and the couple glided past the giant and the beauty easily like two fish slithering by one another in a stream. The sloths may’ve been a little clumsy with their partners but they at least danced. They were out there trying. What more can one ask of one with limited ability or any ability for that matter?

  The band took a break and began another session. After tiring out Sandy, Vera and the artist’s wife, all of whom Hartwig danced with, he got a strange notion into his head.

  “Wonder if she’d dance?” He turned to Mort and pointed across the floor to where the beauty sat.

  “Don’t know,” said Mort. “Why don’t you go ask her?” That, of course, was all Hartwig needed. With the drinks he’d had despite the exercise, he was just loose enough to ask. He’d seen her dance and she danced really well. So, guess what …?”

  “What?”

  “Hartwig went over and asked her to dance and she said yes and the fool allowed her go onto the dance floor with his worst enemy or rival or whatever those two had become to one another.”

  “And the bully had no compunctions, he let her go?”

  “Yes,” I said, “at first anyhow.”

  He must’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for her to turn Hartwig down on her own but when she hadn’t, he didn’t want to show timidity by objecting. The idea is she’ll come back to you having found out what a dud the rival turned out to be and your hold over her’ll be even greater than it was for having taken the risk. Maybe she’ll fall for the other and that’ll be your own tough luck. Barney smiled kindly, confidently as the beauty rose and shaking her butt followed Hartwig out onto the dance floor.

  I call this man a giant. He wasn’t, of course. Though he was six feet six and towered over Hartwig, I doubt if he weighed as much. He was all legs with yet a long trunk, narrow bowed shoulders like one of those long legged birds with hunched wings and long neck we sometimes see in wetlands. He didn’t have a bill, naturally, but his nose was adequate, his jaw prominent and long in the Neanderthal tradition and his eyes were connected at the bridge by overlapping hairy eyebrows. When he smiled it was like a skull smiling at you, very preoccupying. But he wasn’t bad looking, or at least the women thought so and he also possessed a certain flirtatious charm.

  He had a receding hairline and he maintained a constant nervous energy about him, which was actually for the most part upbeat and must’ve been amply sustained by the hard life he’d lived. Chosen by himself, of course. I winked at Hammond, despite what Plato suggests to the contrary that no one would willingly choose a wrong path in his life. The man had been in and out of prison, was currently on probation. In the slammer he’d learned to box a little but wasn’t nearly as proficient as he thought he was. Because he was so tall and skinny, in his weight class he’d always looked down on his challengers. It took a usually shorter opponent with special courage to charge through his stinging defense, but once a good man had the carpenter cracked like a reed in the wind. He was just too thin not to. But in the baggy clothes he wore, he presented a towering, almost invulnerable figure. At least that’s how the beach crowd had accepted him. And there was no doubt about it, he was a strong, wiry man with powerful hands from wielding a hammer all day at least when he worked. Though not steady, that was often enough, often enough.

  It’s difficult to say why one man fears another but among a crowd of normal citizens, an ex-con always presents a conundrum. He’s overstepped a line none of them’d cross and what was to prevent him from doing that again. As to why he chastised the boy I’ve already said. As to challenging some of the lifeguards or town firemen, who really were big fellows, like professional linemen, he was smart enough to avoid them entirely. If one of them looked at his woman, as was often the case, he’d grab her and they’d move on to another place. That’s one of the reasons they were constantly fighting and drifting from bar to bar. At Oceanview, of course, there were only two but there was one in Salinas, a small town nearby.

  When Hartwig made his move, it wasn’t just to engage his new partner for one dance; it was for the entire evening. In his inebriated state I’m sure that’s what he intended. And not without some justification since he’d tired his other partners out.

  You can say other things about him but the man could dance, especially with a few drinks under his belt. Fox trot, rumba, bop, twist, hip-hop, the jerk, he’d kept up with them. And this was Latin music, his favorite of all.

  Chapter Five

  Of course, it’s one thing to hand your girlfriend over to a virtual enemy out of decorum for a dance or two; another to end up like you’re watching an elimination contest where only two couples end up on the floor to receive the grand prize, but that’s nearly what happened here. Evidently Hartwig and the woman, Sarah, partnered nearly perfectly together. The two couples moved in synch like one, the cha, cha
, the merengue, cumbia, samba, you name it. And all this while the giant looked on as a circle widened around his girlfriend and Hartwig with the beauty, who sometimes smiled, sometimes pouted like a professional who knew what she was doing. Her hair shined as it caught the light. The other dancers stopped to gawk, realizing they’d been outclassed. And then it’s not so bad to watch someone better than you. It can even be enlightening. As a crowning insult, however, the band accepted the solo routine and directed its music to those two alone. They could be considered lovers.

  “What’dya think of that?” One of the sloths said to Barney. “Not only did you let her go out and dance with that imposter but you’ve ruined it for everyone else. They’ve … they’ve taken over the floor. Go get her, why don’t’cha Barney?”

  “Not yet,” said the tall man as he rubbed his chin undoubtedly making some quick mental calculations.

  Sandy, who was peeking at the bilious affair through her fingers, was angry. Even her old friend the cook in his floppy hat had emerged from the kitchen to admiringly watch, which further embarrassed her.

  “Look at that son of a bitch,” she said to Mort. “What’d I come with him for? How dare he? I’m going home.” And she stood up grabbing her coat from the back of her chair as Mort, the card, pulled her back down. She fell into it.

  “You … you could always go over and ask the string bean to dance. Look at him sitting there like a gawking bird. He … he’s so flustered he doesn’t know what to do. He’s a wallflower, ha, ha, ha.”

  “Very funny. Why don’t you go ask him to dance?” Sandy pouted. “He’s more your type.” And she stared at him furiously.

  But no matter from what standpoint you criticized the newly found partners they were inspirational to watch. Like people talking in tongues, they created a belated enchantment. Many of the older people in the crowd had forgotten two people could move that well.