by Devon, Gary;
Doorways stood open to large dimly lit rooms. Through the openings came the pleasant murmur of dinner being served, of subdued conversation and the tinkling of silver, glasses, ice. Huge tapestries covered the walls. Slater remained a step behind Sheila, watching for the unexpected familiar face, aware of the huge risk he was taking just by bringing her here tonight.
A waiter led them outside, across a terrace, down a small flight of steps and out a wide white gangway toward a maze of thatched huts some twenty yards offshore. Other waiters jockeyed past them, bearing trays of steaming bowls and chafing dishes. The floorboards creaked, sagged unnervingly under their steps now and then while below, against the pilings, the water lapped steadily. In the huts, behind layers of mosquito netting, figures drifted slowly and in secret, like ghosts.
Drawing the gauzy netting aside, the waiter showed them into one of the huts. It contained a single room, with a round table and a pair of fanciful bamboo chairs. The floor appeared to be covered in cream-colored marble; there was crystal and silver and unlit candles. Like a sacrificial offering, a great sheaf of flowers lay across an antique sideboard. The ceiling was open at the peak, a paddle fan circulated the ocean air. Helping Sheila seat herself comfortably, the waiter then tied back a panel of netting where it faced the Pacific and departed.
Slater moved his chair next to hers. With great propriety, they sat side by side. “I’m sorry about the heat,” he said. “We could still go inside if you’d rather.”
“But we just got here,” she said. “It’ll be cooler when the sun goes down.”
In the middle distance, the silhouette of a fishing boat went by, its outboard sputtering, a myriad of silver splinters, like minnows, following in its wake. Long after it had passed from sight, its waves splashed against the pilings beneath them.
“It makes me want to dive right in. How about you?”
“Speak for yourself,” Slater said, clearly enjoying himself. “What would you like to have to drink?”
Sheila looked at him uneasily. “Can I … here?”
“No one’s watching.”
“What are you going to have?”
“Maybe a martini.”
“Okay,” she said. “Then, that’s fine with me.”
“They’re fairly potent. Maybe you’d rather …”
“No, I want what you’re having.”
When the waiter returned, Slater ordered champagne. Sheila laughed and waited until the two of them were alone again.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t you trust me? Didn’t you think I could handle one little martini?”
“It’s not that. I thought champagne seemed more appropriate.”
“Oh, I don’t care what we have,” she said, “except sometimes you treat me like I’m still ten years old. I can take care of myself.”
The sleeve of his jacket, that brushed her wrist, seemed to have the texture of some rich and delicate cashmere. It was immensely flattering to be here with him, to feel the attention he lavished on her. After all, he knew so much more about the world than she did. Sheila thought he couldn’t really be so pleased with her as he appeared, or so interested in every word she uttered, but it made him wonderfully attractive. When she saw him again after sometimes weeks had passed, it always took her by surprise to discover that he remembered everything she had said the last time they had talked during some brief chance meeting. It was easy to understand why shop clerks and bankers and housewives voted for him, why sixty thousand people, who might have met him once and shaken his hand, called him by name as if they had known him all their lives.
Occasionally, she would see him downtown, the mayor on his way to lunch with other men—an influential man, distinguished and powerful. He seemed entirely different to her then, like a man she had never known and could never know; almost like her own father, whom she had no real memory of and could only imagine. Sheila liked the fleeting sensation of completeness and definition it gave her to think of Henry Slater that way. But tonight, she was happy to be with the other Mr. Slater—the one she had known over the years, who gave her things and didn’t mind coddling her, a man whose gray eyes continually smiled upon her with approval.
Presently, a second waiter wheeled in a cart filled with small oval dishes containing hors d’oeuvres and served them, one by one, onto their plates. Sheila nibbled a fantail shrimp dipped in mustard so hot it took her breath and made her eyes water.
“Whooo,” she said, “now I’ve embarrassed myself.” She wiggled back in her chair. “I can’t sit still. Do you mind if I get up and look around?”
He said he didn’t mind. He asked if she still needed to call the McPhearsons, and Sheila told him she already had, while she had been waiting for him in Pacific Grove. It was almost enough then for Slater to unwind in his chair and let his mind become saturated with her—her fingers that ran along the old sideboard and then went to her throat as she bent to breathe the indolent flowers, her leg that peeped from beneath her skirt in a wild, reappearing surprise.
“What about your boyfriend? Won’t he wonder where you are?”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“But you’re in love with him.”
The light changed in her eyes; she was looking at a place in the air between them that he couldn’t see. “Something’s happened to me since my Gramma’s gone and I really don’t know if it’s me or if it’s him, but Mr. Slater,” she said gravely, “I don’t think I love anybody anymore.”
“You’re too young to be so cynical. Maybe you do and just don’t know it.”
He saw her shrug. “I always thought when I really fell in love, I’d do it in a big way. I’ve known Denny since the seventh grade, almost as long as I’ve known you, and he’s my friend, but we don’t get along anymore. We fight all the time and it’s—”
The champagne came, interrupting them. Curiosity lured her back to her chair; her manicured fingers lifted her glass in a toast. As they drank she smiled, watching him over the glass’s transparent rim. Hers was a look that came with the speed of dreams, a look almost shy—but aware—that no experienced woman could ever duplicate.
They talked and drank, meandering through six courses. They watched the night overtake the Pacific, saw white sails turn gray-purple as the sundown collapsed. In the candlelight that followed, his thoughts revolved only on her. If only I could touch her, he thought. Slater reached out for her hand, and Sheila laced her fingers through his, spontaneously, like a child. At the same time, a photograph of Sheila as a child shown him once by a proud grandmother rose up in Slater’s memory and, in an instant, faded. It rocked him. The touch of her, the fact that he always had to seek her out in secret, was a communion with the darkest tyranny in his life. Slater pulled his hand away.
He said, “Sheila, what would you do, if I said: let’s go away somewhere? Come live with me and we’ll leave all this behind?”
Sheila laughed and slumped back in her chair. “I don’t think I could right now, tonight; I think I probably have to wash my hair. Where would you want to take me?”
“Where do you want to go?”
Her eyes were flashing with playfulness. He could see that she was carried away with the charm of make-believe. “I don’t know. What would I be—your kept woman?”
“I wouldn’t care what you were.”
“God,” she said, “it would be, wouldn’t it—just like being married. Would you ever marry me, Mr. Slater? Would you divorce Mrs. Slater, throw everything away, just to go off somewhere and live with me?”
“What if I would? What if I did that and more?”
Her face, much like his own, was all aglow, a delicate pink in her cheeks. “But you’re so much older than me,” she said. Then all at once, Sheila couldn’t maintain the pretense any longer; slowly her beautiful head turned away. “This is making me really nervous, Mr. Slater. You’ve always been so nice to me. But I don’t always know when you’re kidding
and when you’re not. I think I know and the next minute I’m not sure. You shouldn’t say these things unless you mean it, because I start to get carried away—I start wanting to believe it.”
“Never mind,” he said. “I sometimes start to believe it, too.”
After he’d had his coffee and Sheila the chocolate soufflé, while the waiter was clearing their table for the last time, Slater asked not to be disturbed again. Over the years he had stopped believing in simple happiness, only taking real enjoyment in hard-won successes. But with the night outside surrounding them and no one stirring in the dark hut next door, he felt safe for the first time all evening and relaxed completely.
Sheila insisted he undo his tie; she slipped out of her shoes, folding her feet up under her. He saw her toes sheathed in thinnest nylon, watched a wave of gray silk drape over a drawn-up knee. Slater thought he had never seen a girl so dangerous.
“Thank you for this,” she said tenderly, her splendid shoulders turned toward him.
Taking the champagne from the ice, she leaned close to refill their glasses, her face passing within inches of his, the tip of her tongue curled on her upper lip. “This is my last one,” she announced. “I don’t want to get plowed.”
“I don’t want you to, either.”
“Are you sure?” she said recklessly.
“You’re really a nice girl,” he told her. “I thought you might grow up to be only gorgeous.” When he lifted his glass and drank, she watched his fingers, the clean, trimmed nails, the strength of their grasp. “I’m not always so nice,” she said.
All evening she had laughed at any trifle, and when she was not laughing she was smiling. Her eyes sparkled. Young and unsophisticated, she had been charming even to the waiters, probably because, Slater thought, without ever being aware of it, she had been trained in trust and decency. Rachel’s strict domination had, at least, given her that. “You know what they say about you?”
“No.” Her eyes widened suspiciously. “What?”
“That no one stands a chance with you.”
“Who told you that?” She tried to laugh it off. “Gramma told me that’s what you men talk about. I’m beginning to believe a lot of the things she used to say.” Sheila waited for him to reply. Some part of her, schooled in Rachel’s caution, was now wary. She shrugged with exaggerated carelessness and smiled uncertainly, not knowing what or how much to reveal about herself. “I …” She looked down at the billions of stars reflected in the water. “Do you think I seem like that? I don’t give myself as easily as a lot of the girls, if that’s what they mean.”
Again he waited, still watching her.
“Well, now I’ve told you almost everything,” she said, tossing it off as unimportant. “But let’s talk about something else.”
His eyes seemed to her to be softly lit with understanding. “Sheila, don’t be afraid to show me how you feel.”
She nodded and fell silent. She fingered one of her earrings. Her frivolity wavered. He could see that she tried to laugh again and couldn’t.
“Mr. Slater,” she said, “you shouldn’t take me so seriously. I’m just a girl who looks good in a room. That’s all.”
Except that he loved her. He knew that now. No one else mattered. At the slightest sign of her discontent, he moved to correct it. In a quiet, humorous voice, he said, “Come on now. Who’re you trying to kid? Modesty doesn’t suit you.”
Sipping the champagne, she looked at him and lowered her eyes, her long lashes nearly touching her cheek. Then, as if she could read his thoughts and knew his mind, she lifted her eyes and said, “Mr. Slater, tell me the truth: why are you doing this? I mean, what do you want with me? I’m a nobody and you’re married.”
And she saw it come fully into his eyes—the sudden taut leap of fire.
She thought, My God, this can’t be happening. She said, “Why do I feel like you planned all this and we’ll never be like this again?”
“What time do you have to be getting back?”
“I didn’t give a time,” she answered. “I said I might be late.”
Slater said, “I don’t want to go back yet, do you? What if I said I didn’t want to ever go back? What would you do then?”
His eyes were fastened on hers like magnets.
“Couldn’t we just go for a walk?” she asked. “Somewhere … maybe out to that point? Unless you’d rather get started driving.”
Most of the huts were dark when they returned along the gangways and across the flagstone terrace. They didn’t speak. Sheila glided beside him, her body now and then brushing against his sleeve, but she didn’t take his arm. A band was playing in the cocktail lounge; while Slater paid the check, she stood near the doorway, listening.
She was only partly aware of the people around her, except once, when she spied a group of young men wearing fraternity jackets. Denny could look like that, she thought. If he wanted to, he could be one of them.
She was completely unprepared when one of the fraternity men asked her to dance and before she could decline, she was whisked onto the dance floor. The musicians let loose, the congas’ rhythm releasing her to the spirit of the moment, and Sheila surrendered herself to it with the same exuberance she had shown all evening. Unnoticed behind the crowd, Slater went to the end of the bar and ordered a double brandy.
“Who are these college kids?” he asked the bartender.
“UCLA,” was the answer. “Guests of Cal Dawkins.”
Slater had never heard of Cal Dawkins—that’s good, he thought as his eyes slowly canvassed the crowd. He saw no one he knew.
Sheila danced with an abandon that was mesmerizing, so total was her enjoyment in the music and in the evocative shapes she made of it. As she whirled among the other dancers, Slater saw flashes of the clinging evening gown and he felt his throat tighten.
He saw her now in her world, her young world, lost and immersed in it, irrepressible and resilient and full of life. Once, like a bright ribbon thrown above the music, he heard her ecstatic laughter and it thrilled him. It all seemed so right; Sheila looked completely at home, as if to be dancing among young people was her proper place. And Slater felt drawn to them, wanted to become one of them. Was that what she really meant to him—had she become his last frail link with a world he could never be a part of again?
My God, what am I doing?
I’m in love with that young girl, he thought. Slowly it dawned on him that his plans for the night ahead shouldn’t happen. This is wrong, it’s all wrong. God, just look at her. How could he hope to hide her away and deprive her of this—this hungry young life? If you really do love her, Henry, you won’t draw her into this. You’ll let her go. Let her go.
I can’t, he thought. I can’t. I can’t do this.
She danced through two numbers with a succession of admiring partners, and when the set was finally over, she sank onto the stool next to him, her eyes bright, her color high. Sheila leaned against his shoulder, plucking her dress away from her skin. “Oh, that was fun,” she gasped, “just what I needed.” He put his arm around her and she accepted it without a word.
“Could I have a taste of that?” she asked and he gave her the brandy. With a sip and a shudder, she handed it back.
The band started up again. “Let me have one more,” Slater told the bartender, “and we’ll call it a night.”
No one saw them go out through the black shuttered door. With her arm wrapped in his, her head resting lightly against his shoulder, they stepped into a night that was warm and damp and luminous. Following the path under the coconut palms, they passed behind a row of bathing huts, which were standing like lonely sentinels, canvas walls swelling and collapsing in the breeze. Gradually the path narrowed to nothing. Sheila perched on the low seawall, crossing her legs to remove her slippers.
“Let me do that for you,” he said and he cupped the backs of her calves, first one then the other, to slide off her shoes. He could feel a shivery ripple run deep into her thighs.
For her, it was one of those inconsequential moments that linger in the mind and take on a kind of immortality. The firm delicacy of his hands seemed to stay there longer than was conceivably possible. Even after he was through and her slippers were removed, she could still feel him holding her legs. A voice inside her said, You’ll remember this the rest of your life. Still, he had hardly touched her. This man she had known half her life, and the other man, the stranger, she was sure she could never know.
Telling him to turn his back, Sheila drew aside the slit in her skirt, unhooked her stockings, and took them off, stashing them in her purse. She reached for her slippers. “I know where to put them,” he said, and watched as she walked out on the beach, the sand giving way beneath her feet.
Slater took off his own shoes and put them with hers under the base of a spindly lifeguard’s station. He rolled the cuffs of his trousers. With his jacket over his shoulder, Slater went across the sand after her, still watching her go before him, with that slow, sliding kick in her stride. He knew that they would never reach the point.
They were quiet, walking side by side. She was trying to recapture the feelings she’d had only a month ago, before her grandmother’s murder, but she couldn’t There came into her heart a painful yearning for the world she had lost, irretrievably. The night, the empty beach, the abandoned promenades of palms, only reinforced the emptiness welling up inside her. In front of her, out through the starry dark, stretched the enormous panorama of her loneliness. When she looked around, Henry Slater wasn’t looking at the ocean. He was looking at her, and she thought how much she wanted to be with him. She even thought she might do something quite unlike herself, something rash and quite immodest.
She looked down at herself. Here I am, she thought, in this beautiful dress. Gramma would have never let me have a dress like this. Look at my nails; look at my hair. Only he sees me like this. Look what he bought for me. He’s made me feel good for the first time since she died.