Sin City

by Wendy Perriam

  The car is very big. It’s not a car. It’s a kind of lorry with an open back. The back is full of rubbish. I get in the front. The man gets in beside me. I wish I knew his name.

  He lights a cigarette. I don’t like smoke, but I’m going to Death Valley where no one smokes and the air is pure and clean.

  I hold my bag, my Dress. I’m very lucky.

  I’m going to wear red shoes.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  I think it was a hundred years we slept – give or take a couple. I remember waking once or twice, and there was always that comforting warm shape beside me. Sometimes it was awake as well and whispered things and put its arms around me. Other times, it was very still and quiet. When at last we surfaced, it was Sunday afternoon, winter sun streaming through the window. Sunday. Day of rest. Blessed day with Victor.

  We still haven’t made love. We shan’t yet. That may sound crazy when we’ve got so close, shared a bed, and when Victor’s still paying for his right to screw me – all day, all night, if that’s his wish. He calls the tune as client.

  No. I hate that word, can’t bear the thought of Victor being number hundred and one. It’s as if I’m still in quarantine and daren’t risk infecting him. I need time to heal, recover. I want to be a virgin for him, virgin to his unicorn. He’s tainted, too, from Suzie, and also scared, I think – nervous that he’ll never measure up. That’s crazy. The very fact he understood, didn’t rush me, override me, made me want him more. But something still said “wait”. It must be very special when it happens.

  We’re sitting in the garden now, in recliner canvas chairs. It’s like a holiday. Blue sky and suntan lotion. Imagine sunbathing in mid-January! I wish I’d brought a sundress or bikini. I’m dressed in an old blue vest of Victor’s (which he calls an undershirt), and a sort of miniskirt, improvised from one of his checked shirts tied around my middle by its sleeves. It’s a relief to wear old and comfy clothes. Okay, I like nice gear, but it was becoming quite a chore to have to look sexy as a duty; hoist my breasts in black lace push-up bras, totter round in three-inch heels, always wear suspenders. My legs are bare today, my hair’s a mess. Yet Victor’s told me, twice, that I look stunning. He’s dressed very formally in grey trousers and a clean white shirt. I suspect he’s so careful about his clothes to compensate for the problems underneath. He daren’t look anything but conventional and neat, in case he draws attention to himself. And it was only today when I was sorting through his clothes to try and find a pair of shorts to borrow, that I realised that he can’t have worn either shorts or swim trunks for nearly twenty years. He’s still hiding from the world. It makes me furious that he should have to give up all those simple pleasures like sunbathing or swimming, in case stupid ignorant people shrink away. People like myself.

  I start undoing his shoes, peeling off his socks.

  “What you doing?”

  “I want your feet to sunbathe.”

  “Don’t. It tickles.”

  “You’ve got smashing feet.” He has. They’re straight and very solid-looking, as if he’s firmly planted on the world, won’t ever trip or stumble.

  “Aren’t feet all the same?”

  “Don’t be silly. ’Course they’re not.” I glance down at my own – small and rather chubby, the two big toes curving slightly inwards. “Gosh! I’m thirsty in this sun.” I fill my glass with Victor’s strawberry cooler, more lethal than it sounds. We’ve had a sort of picnic tea (which was also lunch and breakfast) spread out on the grass, and now I’m feeling flushed and fizzy, too content to move.

  I reach out for a cigarette, remember that I’ve hidden them, pick a blade of grass instead. I’ve given up. Yes, really. It’s my gift to Victor. He used to smoke himself, but they made him stop when he was having all those skin grafts and he’d caught a chest infection. He said the anaesthetist came and warned him, read the riot act, called him a bad risk. That was years ago, but I still don’t want to harm him, when he’s been through so much hell. Every time I smoke, he inhales quite a high percentage of all that ghastly nicotine.

  I read it in the Las Vegas Sun. I’d hate him to die of Rothmans, like my father did.

  I “smoke” my blade of grass, chew the top of it. Distractions help. It’s really hard to quit. It makes me feel jittery and my hands are restless all the time, as if they’ve lost their rôle, but I also feel quite proud. I’ve never done something quite as big as that, not for someone else. I know it’s only Day One and the worst is yet to come. I may even get the shakes or blinding headaches, but I’m still determined not to weaken. No one’s ever given Victor anything, except a few fucking medals in return for half his skin. Norah will be pleased as well. She hates the smell of smoke and grotty ashtrays. I just wish I could tell her, find out how she is. I’ve been ringing her all afternoon, and several times yesterday before we went to sleep at twelve. (Twelve noon, not midnight. Falling in love is horribly exhausting.) But there’s never any answer.

  I force myself to get up, take my tumbler with me as I float across the grass. “I’d better try Norah again. They may be back by now.”

  They’re not back. The unanswered phone quavers on and on.

  “No luck?” asks Victor, as I flop back in my chair.

  “No. I’m not worried, though. She’ll be out with Angelique still.” I’ve been unfair to Angelique. She may be a bit hard on George, but you can rely on her to help you in a crisis. Well, it’s not strictly a crisis, but she must assume it is. (Trouble with a clinging client, or Carl overbooking, then expecting me to bail him out.) Anyway, I couldn’t lie here basking in the sun and Victor’s love, without Nanny Angelique to keep an eye on Norah. I’ll do the same for her one day, take George off her hands, maybe, next time he comes over. He’s off them at the moment, flew home yesterday. They must have taken Norah to the airport with them. She’d love to watch the planes and I expect they all had lunch out first. We’ll hear all about it when we see her later on. We’re driving over this evening – me and Victor. I like that: me-and-Victor – joined and one.

  I gaze out at the mountains in the distance. They look so beautiful: white clouds snagging on white peaks. Even the bare brown slopes beneath the snow-line are shining in the sun. I soak up sun and silence, feel the peace seeping through my skin. Victor’s peace.

  “Oh, Victor.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I reach down, help myself to grass, keep my fingers busy splitting each fine blade. I’d like to say “I love you”, but I daren’t. I’m wary of the word. I used it with Reuben, even meant it. Yet I didn’t know him; still don’t quite know Victor, not the whole of him. And he knows less of me. I take a deep breath in.

  “Listen, Vic, there’s something I …”

  He gets up from his chair, leans down over mine. “It’s at least fifteen minutes since I kissed you.”

  “No, don’t – not now. You’ve got to listen, Victor, otherwise you may be in love with the wrong me. I mean, could you love a liar and a thief? Please don’t laugh. It’s true. I was caught stealing from a supermarket just this last September. Oh, I didn’t nick much, only a swiss roll and …”

  “Swiss roll?”

  “Don’t you have those in the States – sort of sponge cake things rolled up with jam? No, you don’t have jam, either, do you? Hell! It’s like a foreign language. Thank God you’re learning English. At least we’ll soon be able to communicate.”

  “Jelly rolls?”

  “You have them?”

  “Yeah. Only the word means something else as well.”

  “What?”

  “It’s difficult to …” He breaks off, starts to demonstrate, making thrusting circling movements with his hips.

  “Wow! Victor, you look like Elvis Presley crossed with Michael Jackson.”

  He laughs, collapses on the grass. “I guess that’s where Jelly Roll Morton got his name.”

  “Who’s he?” I lie down next to him, curl into his chest.

  “Forget him. Le
t’s get back to your swiss roll.”

  Victor’s right. I can’t chicken out now I’ve started. He’s got to know the real me – and the real me’s got to smoke. I can’t blurt out all that heavy stuff without a fag to help me. I get up to go inside. That huge carton’s in the sitting room, hidden in the bookcase behind a row of fish books. A hundred and eighty left. I counted yesterday. I’ll have just one – less than one – just a few quick puffs to give me courage.

  “Where you going, darling?”

  “Only for a pee.”

  I get almost to the door, turn back. Fool, I tell myself. Weakling. Selfish bitch. I should have thrown the bloody things away, except it seemed a shocking waste and I knew Angelique would love all those free fags. “It’s okay, I can wait,” I say, as I plump down on the ground. I sit on both my hands, clear my throat, and suddenly I’m telling him – everything – my childhood and my father and Jan’s bedsit in Vauxhall and the police and Dr Bates, and even Reuben and the wedding. Reuben is the hardest. I can feel Victor tense, hear the minefield in his voice.

  “Did you … love him, Carole?”

  I pause. If I say “no”, then I’m lying once again, denying what I truly felt: the excitement, the elation, the best sex I ever had.

  “Yes,” I say. “I did.”

  “So you must be very hurt?”

  “I was. Yes.”

  Victor leans up on one elbow. His whole face is different now. “Christ! You don’t think … ? I mean, what you feel for me isn’t just a reaction, Carole? Love on the rebound or … ?”

  “It could be. Yes.”

  “You’re very honest.”

  I tie his shirt more firmly round my middle, start fiddling with the buttons on the sleeves. It’s easier not to look at him. “I must be, Victor. Because the girl who almost married Reuben wasn’t honest. She was a rotten little liar who deceived herself as well. This Carole is a new one, one who’s going to tell the truth – or bloody try. And she’s a virgin, like you want.”

  “Carole, I don’t want. I want you … all of you. The crazy kid who steals swiss rolls, and the poor screwed-up Carole in the hospital, and the complicated Carole who’s called Jan and disappears …”

  I’m chewing on a button, mumbling through it. “And the Carole who landed in a brothel?”

  He’s silent for a moment. “Yes. And her. Her especially, because otherwise I might never have met up with her again.” He leans over, kisses me. I can’t respond. I’m too stunned by what he’s said. It’s only now I realise that if it hadn’t been for Reuben, I’d have lost Victor for ever, been safely back in England, not working as a whore.

  Victor strokes my foot. “I stole something once.”

  “What?” I pull my foot away. The stroking tickles, and my mind is still on Reuben. The dregs of love and anger are leavened now by a crazy sort of gratitude.

  “A diamond ring from the five-and-dime.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. I’m not. Well, maybe not exactly diamonds. I was eight or nine at the time – wanted to get married to this gorgeous girl in third grade and couldn’t afford the ring.”

  “So you were always a romantic?”

  “Always.”

  I rip up a daisy, pull its petals off. Can one be jealous of a gorgeous girl in third grade? I glance at Victor’s eyes. When I’m not with him, I forget how blue they are. Even when I woke him up this morning (afternoon), I was jolted by the fierceness of that blue again. He looks different now I know him. I keep noticing things I overlooked before – the fair hairs on his thumbs, the little indentation above his upper lip which people always say’s a sign of passion, the decisive ways he moves, his calm good-tempered voice. I turn over on my tummy. “I was horrible at nine. Know what I used to do?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Well, you know fish and chip shops?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you do, Victor. Don’t be dumb. They’ve got these huge great jars of salt, up on the counter with the vinegar and stuff, and people help themselves. Well, I had this friend, Jackie, a real tomboy – tall with freckles. We used to go into the shop and unscrew the salt, so the top was just balanced on the jar. Then, when the next customer picked it up, a whole pound or so of salt cascaded on his cod and chips.”

  Victor laughs, refills his glass, as if the salt has made him thirsty.

  “Another thing we did when we were older was to ring people up – just strangers – and tell them they’d won thousands on the pools.”

  “Pools?”

  “You know, like your lottery.” It almost scares me, the way we speak two different languages. Even with the same one, there are still misunderstandings; half-truths, thinking words mean what they don’t or can’t – not words like “pools” or “vest”, but dangerous ones like love.

  “So you were a cute little liar even then?”

  “Mm. Does it put you off me?”

  “No. I love you more.”

  Victor’s brave. He’s used the word “love” at least ten times already, whereas I still shy away from it. “Yeah,” I say, correcting him.

  “I thought we were speaking English.”

  “No. I prefer American, especially jelly rolls. Do it again – the Michael Jackson bit. It really turned me on.”

  He does it, twice, then picks me up, feet right off the ground, whirls me round and round. He’s strong. It’s a funny combination – strong and doting. He spoils me so, I half believe he even chose the day for me today, drove miles and miles to pick me out a really bright and sunny one, paid a fortune to make sure the sky stayed blue. Only now is it beginning to fade and cloud, tarnish into twilight.

  “Shall we go in? I’ll make some tea.”

  “It’s dinner time.”

  “No, it’s not. We started late. That tea was really lunch, so now it’s tea again.”

  “Okay.”

  I take more trouble with that tea than I’ve ever done before – not just teabags dunked in mugs, but a proper heated teapot (well, the nearest I can find to it, which is actually a flower vase with a saucer as a lid), and pretty cups, and milk in a jug and not the carton, and a white cloth on the tray. And I won’t let us pig it in the kitchen. This is posh tea in the sitting room with side plates for our biscuits and paper serviettes. Jan wouldn’t recognise me. Even the fish look pretty damn impressed. I get pleasure from Victor’s pleasure, though, as I pour him out a second cup. He leans across to take it, lets his hand brush across my breasts.

  “It shouldn’t be allowed, you know, leaving off your bra like that. I don’t know how I’ve kept my hands to myself.”

  I push my vest up, take his hand, place it where I want it. “You don’t have to keep them to yourself.” I can sense him still uncertain, holding back. “What’s wrong?”

  “I … I still feel it’s just not fair, Carole. I mean, I’ve put you in a like … difficult position. You can’t not respond because you’re scared to hurt me, and yet you may feel …”

  “I feel good. All over. Especially my right breast. Now touch the other one.”

  “Like that?”

  “Mmm.” I am in a difficult position. I love him touching me, but I don’t want to go too far. Oh, he says he understands, but I can’t help worrying that he thinks I’m still revolted by his scars. It’s so hard to balance everything – my fears, his lack of confidence, my feeling that we still need much more time, contradicted by my desire to reassure him. I lean across, run my hands across his chest, and lower. He’s got a hard on. I start inching down his zip.

  “No, Carole.”

  I keep my hands exactly where they are. “Victor, I want you to believe me. I’m not put off at all, not now. It was just that first shock, and really more you shouting than anything I saw.” I’m lying. Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t lie, but this is a good lie, a precious lie, the best one I’ve ever told. That scarred skin still upsets me, that lumpy roughened prick is still a shock, but they’re part of Victor, part of his courag
e and unselfishness. And my lies are part of loving him.

  He’s got his eyes shut, as if he can’t bear to see himself. I stroke him stiff again. “There was this machine I saw, Victor. It was in some loo – I can’t remember where now, and it sold these contraceptives with special raised spirals which gave the woman extra thrills and stuff. They cost a bomb – five dollars each or something. You’ve got them naturally.”

  He kisses me: a brief kiss, but the fiercest yet.

  I touch my mouth – it’s hurting – slide my body down a bit so my breasts can keep him hard. “Well, it’s my special hero prick, you see, and I’m very proud of it.”

  He’s going limp again. God knows what I’ve said now. I have to be so careful.

  “Don’t use that word. Please don’t.”

  “What, ‘prick’?”

  “No, ‘hero’.” He fumbles for his cup, drains his tea.

  I push myself against him. I’m feeling quite excited. That kiss … All the sex he hasn’t had, all the excitement and frustration dammed up for years and years, seemed to flood and crackle into it. Christ! If it’s like that when we actually make love … Are we mad to wait? Wasting precious time? I remove his cup, try and get his hands all to myself.

  “No, Carole darling, listen.” He leans back in his chair, as if he needs to put a bit of space between us. “Remember what you said just now about loving the wrong you? I’ve been scared of that myself.”

  I tense. “You mean, you do love the other me, the Jan?”

  “No, no. I’m talking about me this time – all this hero stuff. You used the word earlier when we were lying in the garden.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, you did. It’s a seductive word, I guess. Except all of us are cowards in the end. Heroism always cracks at some point, Carole. I’ve seen it happen loads of times, even with the so-called bravest men.” He takes a biscuit, a chocolate-coated cream, uses it to gesture with. “There’s another kind of heroism, the small and hidden kind that wins no medals – just the day-to-day business of getting on with life without bitterness or bitching; or putting up with poverty or sickness, or battling through the daily grind with a few kind words to spare for fellow sufferers. I guess that sounds really sentimental. It’s hard to find the words for what I mean. But I’ve met more heroes digging dirt and shovelling sand, or lugging round the lunch trays in the hospital, or even commuting on the New York subway, than I ever did in ’Nam.” He puts the biscuit down again, sucks a smear of chocolate off his thumb.