by Win Blevins
“Inside, the tower is covered with the paintings of a great Hopi artist, Fred Kabotie. My Grandfather is a trader. He sells that kind of art—he knows all the artists and everything about their work.”
She gave my hand a little squeeze. I couldn’t tell whether she was flirting with me, humoring me, or telling me she’d heard enough.
We walked past the reception desk, where Julius was taking care of registration. To our right stretched a pale turquoise hall, long and high. I’d never imagined such a display of Southwestern Indian art. It was king-size and absolutely terrific. I was at home here. I could tell her all about it.
I led her toward an eagle kachina made by a carver who Grandpa had taken me to meet down at Third Mesa, on the Hopi Reservation. “That—”
Miss Darnell took my hand and squeezed again. A big yawn told me this squeeze meant, Enough for now.
Julius sidled up and handed her a key. “Your room, Miss Darnell. And a letter for you.” He handed me another key. “Our room,” he said, “next door.”
“I believe I’ll go freshen up,” she said, eyes tired. “Then maybe you’ll give me a tour.” She waved at the art and set off behind Julius and the bellman.
I took advantage of her two hours of getting fresh to check out the art thoroughly. Before the navy, I’d spent my life in a house jammed with Navajo and Pueblo art, selling it to the few tourists we got or toting it to traders in Flagstaff. Still, I had never seen anything like these pieces. They were bigger, more ambitious, and more imaginative than I’d dreamed possible. My first thought had been to sound like an expert to Miss Darnell. Now I didn’t care if I sounded like what I was, awestruck. I found the manager and asked him about the artists, where they lived, what their clan was. He was glad to talk about them.
“Let’s have a drink,” she said from behind me.
After a quick introduction to the manager, I escorted her to the bar, and she went through the same routine with the ingredients of her margarita.
“The same for my friend,” she told the barman.
“No,” I spoke up, “I’m working. I’d better not.” Maybe Mr. John sent me to guard Linda Darnell against a known threat. I ought to ask Julius, who’d spotted himself on a stool at the far end of the bar, where he had a wide range of vision and an open field of fire. Why did Mr. John send two bodyguards, instead of a bodyguard and a driver?
When her second margarita came, I saw her look at the fourth finger of her left hand. She tossed me a devilish smile and slipped the ring off and into her clutch purse.
“You’re married,” I said.
She licked the salt off the rim of her margarita glass and said, “Sort of. You?”
“I don’t see that in my near future. And the way Navajos do it—”
“It? You do it differently?”
She knew what I meant. Or didn’t mean. “The way we get married. Real traditional. My mother is set to choose my wife.”
Her eyes danced. “Oh, I see. And how does she do that?”
“It’s got to be someone I’ve never met. Some people are so squeamish about it, that if you drew pictures together when you were five years old, forget it. Plus, you’re not allowed to see each other until the wedding day.”
She whooped at that one. I wished it was a joke. “What happens if the two don’t like each other?”
“That happened with an uncle of mine. One look, he and his new wife hated each other. The family tossed them in a hogan together, boarded up the door, and by the time three days went by? They liked each other very well.”
“And who will your mother choose for you? Any guesses?”
“That custom, it’s not for me. I intend to marry who I damned well please.”
She glinted, she glowed, and I think she thought I was too funny—not in the good way—for words. After another drink, we went in to dinner.
Linda asked for a table where we could look out on the gardens. The maître d’ bowed too deeply and said, “Anything for Miss Darnell.” Again Julius took a table with command position.
She put her small purse on the table and pulled out her compact and dabbed powder under her eyes.
“Miss Darnell? I’m not trying to be nosy, but there is your purse, wide open, and there is an envelope jammed inside it.”
She looked away from the mirror for a split second, glanced at me, and went back to studying herself.
Her tone didn’t sound so merry all of a sudden. “You’re very observant, aren’t you?”
“My job, I—”
“Your job does not include rummaging through my purse.”
“We both know I didn’t do that.”
“Good.”
“But Julius handed you a letter when you checked in,” I said. “Who knows you’re here?”
“You mean other than the entire movie crew, Mr. Ford, his entourage, my manager, the people who take care of my home, the—”
“Your husband?”
“Of course,” she said. “Look, I get lots of mail. Could we just have a nice dinner?”
I felt like an idiot, but it occurred to me I might feel like that plenty of times while I was taking care of this particular lady. I apologized, she accepted, but my job was still my job. I’d just have to learn to do it better. That was all.
With the menu in her hand, she came alive, and all was forgotten. All was a delight. “Posole,” she said, dwelling on the syllables like she could taste the hominy, pork, and green chiles. “I love it.”
“Where did you grow up?”
She looked into my face, took a pause, and made a choice. “Cherokee country. Then we moved to Dallas. It’s Dallas that feels like home. The people there are real, not like those Hollywood phonies.”
She tucked her face back into the menu. “I want some fry bread with honey to start.”
Now I was looking at the ring on her right hand. It was a beaut. “May I see that?”
“Sir, you are an unusual man.”
“Hey, you grow up in a trading post, you notice jewelry. Part of the deal.”
She held her hand across the table. The stone was a brilliant emerald, like her eyes, and circled by small diamonds. Her hand was soft, sweet.
She took it back. “A gift,” she said. Nothing about her husband or a boyfriend or …
“Your skin,” I said, “smells like sagebrush right after rain.”
“What an extraordinary thing to say. Thank you.” She cocked her head, maybe reassessing me. Maybe just thinking about posole.
My sense of smell, all my senses, felt more acute. No doubt about it, the gleaming presence of Linda Darnell could wake a dead man.
Her eyes roamed around the dining room, which had viga and latilla construction, big horizontal beams supporting slender poles. “I think vigas are so manly,” she said. “What a miracle. Mary Colter turned these common materials into something grand. That’s courage. Not always easy to make yourself known.”
Unless you’re the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. This lady was a puzzle inside a puzzle. Which would make my job, protecting her, trickier than I’d expected. Best to prepare for the unexpected. Without, as she’d said, being paranoid. A fine tightrope.
For me, that dining room was an oasis of Southwest color and design. The china was thick, same as they used on the train. White dishes with deep red or black Hopi-style rabbits, coyotes, storm patterns, and ancient people running along the edges. They were hand-painted, so each piece was a little different. The Navajo rugs hanging on the walls were mostly eye-dazzlers with a few Two Grey Hills thrown in, and all of them large. The placemats were train scenes, and every one was a love song to the colors turquoise, yellow, and orange. Mexican pavers on the floor caught our words and held them. My grandfather would have said it was pure grace. Nothing like Hollywood here. Nothing like any place in the world. No wonder movie stars loved this hotel.
The waiter appeared. Miss Darnell ordered the fry bread, followed by posole.
“Tell me all about yoursel
f, please,” she said. Miss Darnell placed her pretty chin in the palm of her hand and leaned forward. “Other than who you are not going to marry.”
I wanted to tell my story, because it would raise me in her eyes. Of course, the story was mostly about my family. My grandfather, and his devotion to the trading post, to his family, to the Navajo people, and especially to educating me. I was a branch on Grandpa’s tree. A branch growing thicker and thicker, I implied.
As I talked, she gazed at me with those river-green eyes, eyes that told me that what I was saying was the most interesting thing she’d ever heard. In her life? That wasn’t possible.
The food came—mine the green chile stew, hers the spicy hominy soup. While we ate, I made a couple of attempts to turn the conversation to her, but she steered it back to me. “You’re such a rare creature,” she commented. I thought I liked that, though I wasn’t sure.
When we finished eating, she led the way to the bar and sailed back into her margaritas. I studied out the room. It didn’t look like there was anything or anyone to worry about. Which was a good thing, because she was tipsy for sure now. That made her smile more charming, her laugh more heady, and she begged more hungrily for my stories. She clasped my forearm every time she got excited or silly.
My first full-fledged dunk into star power. I was swimming her current just fine, but it was one whale of a ride.
Then, like pink sky breaking into deep blue, her whole attitude changed. She waved at Julius, got his attention, and beckoned him over. In an imperious tone she said, “Julius, thank you for everything today. I’ll be all right now. I won’t be needing you.”
When he started to protest, she gave him a look that said, Be gone, little man, and not a word. And he was gone.
She gave me a long look of appraisal and eventually took a chance. “Yazzie,” she said, the first time she’d called me that, “being a movie star is a lot of work. I’m always on. I can’t be myself with movie people, and they’re not themselves with me. It’s playacting. All of it.”
The bartender came to ask if we wanted another drink, but before he could speak, she shook her head no.
“I’m wondering if you and I could be friends.”
I was stumped.
“I had good friends in Dallas, regular folks. I talked to the girls about clothes and makeup and boys, and talked to the boys about hunting and baseball. Real stuff.”
Another left turn. I couldn’t get a word out.
She rescued me. “So, friends?”
“Sure,” I said.
She sized me up. “I think you’d better see me to my room now.”
I did.
At the door she said, “Don’t stay up all night and stand next to my door, please. Studio protection, it’s too much. As I told Julius, if anything happens, I’ll scream loud enough to wake the dead.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Enjoy your night with Julius,” she said.
I didn’t think leaving her alone in a room with a skeleton-key lock was such a hot idea, but I’d been given instructions, and I wasn’t going to buck them. She wasn’t the one paying me, but she was the boss. At least when it came to me.
My room was enough to calm me to the inside of my bones, despite the delicious Linda Darnell. Julius’s wheeze was soft. The room was pretty. Black-and-white tiles, the two finest carved wooden headboards I had ever seen, and a claw-foot bathtub. I cleaned myself up and opened the windows. Some kind of tree with feathery leaves blew against the screen, just a gentle caress. La Posada truly was a paradise hidden in the middle of the desert, and, I have to say, a real surprise tucked inside a mostly ugly town. I fell asleep listening to the leaves and smelling sage in the garden below.
The next morning Julius was gone. I found him upright and standing opposite her door. Not to be outdone, I leaned on the wall next to him. I could hear Miss Darnell humming while she got ready, some Mexican love song.
She emerged, a vision of splendor. My breath caught for a moment. She gave Julius her imperious look. “Call my agent,” she told him. “Tell him I have to stay in this lovely hotel another day. I need the rest. He can fix it with the studio.”
Julius waggled his stogie up and down once and headed for the front desk, which seemed to mean yes.
She took my arm and let me escort her to the restaurant. When I gave my coffee order, I waited to see if she’d ask for a margarita for breakfast. “A Bloody Mary, please,” she said, “with plenty of Tabasco.”
She beamed at me. “Now that we’re friends,” she said, “tell me about a good time you had in Southern California.”
I was tongue-tied. She waited. No help in sight. I dived in.
“Uh, two navy buddies and I went to The Pike in Long Beach.” Everyone had heard of the place, an extravaganza of an amusement park made famous by the 1904 World’s Fair. I spun out short tales, well embroidered as stories should be. The first was about the majestic rise and fall of the Ferris wheel. Gaining confidence, I flew into the wild ride on the roller coaster. I paraded out the laughs of the fun house, horsing around in the penny arcades, and the strangeness of the Laughing Lady. Finally I jumped into my excitement about the Diving Bell.
I stopped and waited.
She shrugged her shoulders and studied her placemat. Seemed like I’d just gotten a C on a test.
“My turn. My husband,” she said, “is a good man. He photographed a couple of early movies of mine. We’re friends. But that’s all we are, friends. Well, more like father-daughter.”
She let that one sit. It was uncomfortable.
“There’s a man I’m dating, but he—”
She stopped short and changed direction. Talking to her was like watching a complicated bank shot on a pool table. Quick left, sharp angled right, straight back at you, and rolling to a stop nowhere in particular.
She launched. “Tell me, while you were in the navy, what was the best lay you had?”
I almost jumped out of my skin. I studied her eyes. Though they were playful, she wanted something real, and I didn’t know what.
So, roll the dice and see.
I talked unsteady, like a drunk. “When you’re shore patrol, you end up in bars, usually to break up fights. But what the sailors, and the women, go to bars for is—”
She mimed pulling with her hands, like, Give. Out with it.
“So, one time we straightened out a little ruckus and got the guys headed for the door, meaning we herded them to their ship.
“A pair of women sat at a round table toward the front, holding drinks. As I passed, baton swinging from my wrist, one of them said, ‘What time are you off duty, sailor?’
“I said, ‘After everyone else is asleep.’”
“Tell me what she looked like,” said Linda. The cue ball banks again.
“She was attractive. Thirtyish, auburn hair cut short, nice, willowy figure.”
I hesitated. “So she sticks out a piece of paper, and I take it. A phone number and also a name. Annie.”
“She says, ‘Call me between nine and ten in the morning.’”
I looked at Linda, carved the tablecloth with my fingernail. “I’d never even used a pay phone.”
She laughed out loud.
“I wasn’t used to women acting like that. After a minute I nodded yes. And left.”
I paused.
“Go on, get to the good part.”
“At five after nine I called and said, ‘It’s your sailor. From last night.’
“‘Come on over,’ she said, and recited an address.”
“Good, tell me what she was like. Exactly what she was like.”
“She opened the door wearing one of those fuzzy robes that look like a towel. She took my hand, gave me one glance, and led me around the house. When we got to the kitchen, she actually asked me if I wanted an egg-salad sandwich. I said I’d pass.”
“Oddball thing to say.”
“That’s what I thought. Then she got all embarrassed, covered her mouth with one hand, and with the o
ther led me to the bedroom. She looked like she was going to fall backward on the bed, and then she said, ‘You first.’”
Linda motioned with a cupped hand, “Come on, come on,” and she grinned.
“After I’d stripped completely, I laid down on the bed. She took her time looking at my crotch, which was at full alert. Then she dropped her robe, all at once, and was stark-naked.
“It’s hard to look shy when you’re naked, but she did, and she reached out to me. I took her hand, kissed her, rolled her onto her back, which she seemed glad about in a way, but she crossed her legs. Then she drew my mouth down to one breast. The rest you know.”
“Details!” said Linda.
“What can I say? We did the usual things, I mean the basic thing, and she acted shy and girlish the whole time. Actually, she acted like she was ashamed and lapping up the adventure all at once. We finished pretty quick. Simple and straightforward.”
“Missionary position.”
“Yeah.”
“Noisy.”
“Never. It didn’t take her long, or me.”
“It doesn’t really sound like a great lay,” said Linda.
“Well, the great part was that she asked me back just about every weekday.”
“Ever get beyond the basics?”
“Never. Our routine was do the deed and then eat egg salad at her kitchen table in the nude while she told me about her life. Her husband was a salesman, on the road five days a week. She said, ‘I know he has honeys here and there, but I don’t know how many.
“‘For a while now,’ Annie said, ‘I’ve wanted revenge. And, big boy, you are revenge on the half shell.’ She tilted her head, pursed her lips, and said, ‘I want you to screw me again, harder this time.’”
I couldn’t believe I was telling anyone this stuff, much less a woman I’d just met, much less a movie star.
Linda gave me that Get on with it gesture again.
“And then…”
I had hit a brick wall.
“Yaz-zie?”
“She came up with some wild fantasies. She liked to pretend her husband set this up and was hiding in the closet, watching us through a hole drilled in the sliding doors.”