“De fashion show was a financh success, Amos?
“Oh yes, it was great, all right. Made close to a hundred dollars fo de lodge—”
“Give me that line again, Mama?”
“Whatever’s the matter with you, Marylin? I declare, I never saw you like this, not paying an ounce of attention. Seems like you don’t care at all.”
The happiness suffusing Marylin’s lovely features dimmed. “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said placatingly.
NolaBee repeated the line. Marylin’s face assumed her role’s slightly foolish eagerness, and she read Vera’s lines. NolaBee watched, her long upper lip quivering as if she, not her daughter, were speaking.
Then the phone rang.
They all stared at the instrument that many days crouched atop the bookcase in black, abeyant silence.
On the second ring Roy picked it up. “Yes?”
A pleasant baritone drawled, “May I speak to Marylin Wace?”
“Who may I say is calling?”
“Linc.”
Roy held the instrument toward Marylin. “Must be a Neanderthal. The missing link.”
Marylin jumped to her feet and ran across the room. She dragged the phone as far from Roy’s cot as the cord permitted, pressing the receiver to her ear.
“Hello,” she said in that soft tone that Roy thought of as angora. “Yes. . . . Me too. . . . Fine . . . Tonight? . . . No—yes. Yes, I’d like that. See you.” She hung up, and for a split second her eyes were out of focus, a newborn, blue-green look. Then she ran to the wardrobe with the chipped walnut veneer, flinging open the door. “Mama, I’m going out for a snack.”
“A good thing, too. You barely touched your chicken.”
NolaBee was beaming archly. With uncomplicated cheer she twitted Marylin about her admirers, and had no idea how much the two years she had snipped from her daughter’s life had distorted the girl’s relationships. Despite Marylin’s total lack of interest in her callow swains, NolaBee persisted in viewing the masculine telephone calls and prom orchids in the tiny, leaking Frigidaire as proof that her beauty whirled in breathless excitement between enraptured, wealthy admirers. “I reckon this must be the same Linc who drove you home. Tell me about him. Who is he?”
Marylin was snatching a handful of rayon underwear that she had ironed yesterday, her good high heels, the powder-blue date dress. “Oh, somebody’s brother.”
“A match made in heaven,” cracked Roy. “You’re somebody’s sister.”
Marylin didn’t hear her. She had shut the bathroom door.
“I reckon if Marylin’s new beau is coming,” said NolaBee with a wink, “we better stack the dishes.”
* * *
Marylin was still immersed in the rituals of the bathroom when the brisk masculine footsteps rang on the rickety staircase.
Roy opened the door anticipating the usual, a perspiration-glossed, nervous-tongued male wearing a dark blue letter sweater adorned with a big orange B.
Instead she confronted a tall naval officer whose butternut tan contrasted with his white uniform.
“Hi,” he said easily as he removed the cap with the gold insignia. “I’m Linc Fernauld.” He looked around.
“Some of us are getting fixed up,” Roy said in her best Cagney voice.
“The kid sister?”
“Actually her mother. A sad case of arrested development.”
He grinned. His smile tipped downward on the left.
“Oh, you, Roy!” NolaBee called good-naturedly. Freshly lipsticked, she sat on the sagging easy chair with the latest Modern Screen—“Linda Darnell Confides Her Five Greatest Passions.” “Come on in, Linc. I’m Mrs. Wace, and this little pest is Roy. You’d never know it from the way she acts, but she’ll be in high school next term.” NolaBee coquettishly bent her turbaned head. “My, my, you Navy boys certainly have the handsomest uniforms.” She squinted at the wings affixed to the white dress jacket. “A pilot, then? Would you like some coffee? Fruit?—we have apples.”
“Will she be that long?”
“No, no. Are you from around here, Lieutenant?”
“Right now, I have an APO number, but my parents live on Hillcrest. My sister’s a friend of Marylin’s.”
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite catch your last name.” NolaBee was putting another cigarette in her mouth.
He extricated a book of matches to light it for her. “Linc Fernauld. I’m BJ Fernauld’s brother.”
“Oh, yes.” NolaBee inhaled. “When you called, I was helping Marylin learn the lines of your sister’s play. She’s got a right clever sense of humor. The way she tucks in those jokes so slyly . . .”
NolaBee had always possessed the gift of gab, and though she expended no additional effort on Linc for his famed sire, she had him chuckling.
Roy, silent, darted looks at him. If, during an English test, she were called upon to describe Linc Fernauld in one adjective, “clean” would be the word. Not only that shining uniform and his gorgeous tan, but his reactions, his words, the way he sat, somehow summoned up the one-syllable description of physical and mental decency. Clean.
The bathroom door opened and closed, sending sweet drifts of Apple Blossom cologne and dusting powder through the chicken-scented air. Linc, rising slowly to his feet, stared at Marylin.
The pale blue crepe dress clung to her delicately sensual curves. Her smooth, gleaming hair was pushed back to show small blue-enamel earrings (bought at a Woolworth’s sale) dangling against her slender, luminous neck, her cheeks glowed, her huge sea-colored eyes were bedazzled.
NolaBee had unfolded the fan-magazine screen around the kitchen mess, and the hidden faucet dripped loudly in the long moment while Marylin and Linc gazed at each other. Marylin drew a quick breath. “Hello, Linc. I see you’ve met Mama and Roy.”
“Charmed them, I hope.”
“Absolutely,” said NolaBee. “But anyway, you have to have her back here by ten-thirty.”
“You’re a hard woman, Mrs. Wace.”
He draped Marylin’s coat over her shoulders.
After the door closed on them, NolaBee had a thoughtful look. “They make a right handsome couple, don’t they? Did you see the way he looked at her?”
“Mama, she’s cuckoo about him, really cuckoo. He’s the One.”
In a family of three females it is inevitable that a disproportionate amount of conversation centers on romance. The Waces speculated endlessly on characteristics of the One who would rescue each from her single state—even the widowed NolaBee came in for a good share of ribbing from her daughters.
“You’re bein’ right silly, Roy. She’s just a child, she has her career. There’ll be others, loads of others.”
“His father’s a big screenwriter, the family’s rich.”
“I reckon Marylin is as good as anyone, she’s a Wace, she has Fairburn and Roy blood.” NolaBee rose, as if that settled that. “Marylin’ll go through a horde of beaux—and so will you, my little curlyhead.”
Roy held still under the affectionate, smoothing hand, praying it would continue forever.
But NolaBee swung over to the sink. “Come on, Roy, hon, let’s get those dishes done.”
5
Linc took Marylin to the Players on Sunset.
It was too early for a nightclub to swing, so most of the small round tables were empty. Pink lights sifted down on a trio of rum-guzzling Army officers and their dates, a sailor with an extravagantly made-up blonde, a few civilian couples. The quartet was playing “Stardust” with a slow, inviting riff, yet nobody had ventured onto the floor. The red-jacketed waiter brought Linc his Southern Comfort, and with a flourish placed Marylin’s ginger ale in front of her.
Linc took a long drink. “Been here before?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You’re a funny girl.”
“Me?”
“For openers, the last thing you look like is a ‘Marylin Wace.’”
“What should I be called?”
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“Mmm . . . give me a moment. Something ethereal and beautiful, unusual but not pretentious.”
His eyes possessed a mysterious magnetic force and she could not turn away.
He snapped his fingers. “Rain.”
“That’s not a name,” she said.
“Rain, absolutely. Rain. And a plain yet aristocratic surname. Any ideas?”
“Fairburn,” she said.
“On the button.” He made a circle with his thumb and index finger. “Fairburn—where’d you dig it up?”
“A family name. My mother’s.”
Raising his glass, he said, “Rain Fairburn. Gentle and pretty-sounding, yet a touch theatrical.”
“Not pretentious, though.”
“Boggles the mind, doesn’t it, how right it is?”
“Right as rain,” she said.
They smiled across the little table.
“Linc, what is it like . . . out there?”
His mouth tensed. “Long stretches of boredom interspersed with a few minutes of monstrous, degrading terror,” he said.
“How can you force yourself to go into danger?”
His thick black brows drew together. “Baby, in case it’s escaped your notice, this isn’t a debriefing. It’s happy hour.”
His capricious reversal to this afternoon’s leaden sarcasm was like an icy wind, and she froze with the realization that he had probably determined that she was using the war as a conversational ploy. She gazed at the elegantly rhythmic black men on the bandstand.
After a few chords he said, “Avoid the subject, okay?”
His eyes, dark brown with small gold flecks, were watching her apologetically—almost anxiously.
The anger’s not part of him at all, she thought.
Again they smiled, and she felt immersed in a sumptuously delicious joy. It occurred to her that this euphoria went beyond its obvious romantic connotations: despite Linc’s sudden fault lines of rage, for the first time in years she was at ease with someone other than Roy or her mother. Indeed, in their enveloping intimacy she felt as if she were floating several inches above her chair, rosy as the lights, graceful and airy as the sweet, rippling notes.
The musicians segued into “These Foolish Things,” Linc rose to his feet. “Shall we?” he said.
They moved onto the empty, polished square, he took her in his arms, which were shaking a little, and she closed her eyes. They whirled and dipped slowly, as if they shared the same motor responses, they drifted in the slow cloudlike chords, they swayed in time to the poignant, rippling beat.
The winds of March that made my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings, but who’s to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things
Remind me of you.
She wasn’t sure if she sang aloud in her huskily musical little voice, or if, like the music and the trembling pressure of his hands and body, the words were part of her soul.
“Marylin, you know what they say about couples who dance well together, don’t you?” he said against her ear.
“What?”
“Tell you later.”
The music stopped, and they pulled apart, still holding hands.
A tall, narrow-shouldered Army captain, obviously loaded to the gills, banged on his table. “Encore, encore, for the Navy looie and the knockout little broad with him.”
The quartet reprised “These Foolish Things,” and Linc and Marylin again drifted across the floor.
The drummer blew into the mike. “That’s all for now, folks,” he announced. “We’re gonna take five.”
As Linc led her back to the table, he said, “Would you have dark thoughts if I suggested we get out of here?”
“Should I?”
“Absolutely.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Nearly ten anyway. Is ten-thirty a big deal to your mother?”
“It’s a school night.”
“You afraid of her?”
“No. It’s just she works so hard for us, and I don’t like going against her.”
“You’re a soft, gentle girl, Marylin. I fear for you.”
“Why?”
“Fernauld’s Rule. The soft and gentle inherit the earth—by getting trampled into it.”
“Hah!” she said happily.
“It’s a basic fact of life.”
“Didn’t you say something about leaving?”
Outside, the mist was thicker, and along Sunset Boulevard the hazy, shimmering streetlights resembled enormous, otherworldly shasta daisies. As they curved west, she sat close to him and he held her hand. “Another thing that’s wrong about you,” he said as they passed Mocambo’s with its stream of cars waiting at the entry for the parking attendants. “You seem older.”
It was destined, it was fate, an irrevocable karma that she admit, “I am.”
“An old soul, as the Russians say.”
“No. I’m eighteen.” Only the faintest flutter of her heart and voice marked the unlocking of the secret that for two years had incarcerated her in solitary confinement.
“Come again?”
“I was eighteen last August.”
His hand loosened on hers, and he gripped the gearshift. They halted at a boulevard stop sign. “Were you sick as a kid or what?”
“No. After my father died, my mother got the idea that I ought to be in movies—I’d always been in the school plays. She decided if we moved to Beverly Hills, I’d be discovered—you know how many movie people’s kids go to the high school.” As she remembered that Linc’s father was the legendary Joshua Fernauld who not only wrote smash films, but had directed several, the blood rushed into her face and she blessed the darkness. “I was seventeen then, nearly, but she figured I’d have the best chance if I entered as a freshman.”
He said nothing until they reached the next stop sign at Doheny Drive. “Why didn’t she go the usual route?” he asked. “What about storming the studio gates?”
“Mama thinks that sort of thing is common.”
“Common. Yes.”
“Besides, it hardly ever works.”
“True, true.”
His tone attacked her, withered her, yet surprisingly she felt no darts of regret at telling him. “Please don’t be like this, Linc,” she entreated.
“I’m filled with admiration is all. The ingenuity of it. One fine day, Darryl Zanuck or Jesse Lasky—or is it Joshua Fernauld?—will be watching his darling perform, and right there, lighting up the Beverly Hills High School auditorium stage, will be our own little geriatric Marylin Wace.”
She clasped her trembling hands together. “Please?”
“Any more confessions—are you, for instance, a part-time call girl?”
“Oh, Linc,” she sighed.
“Shame.” He gave a jarring laugh. “It certainly would expedite matters if I could offer you a few bucks and not have to go through the gyrations.”
“I’ve never told anyone before,” she said.
“I don’t blame you for that. Some of the kids—like BJ, for example—might feel they’d been had, taken advantage of, used.”
She shrank into the Packard’s plush upholstery. “I haven’t hurt anyone,” she said.
“A simple case of gulling and deception, your Honor.”
He sped past the poinsettia field that, by clear December light, waved like a rippling blood-red flag on the eastern border of Beverly Hills. Turning down Arden, he zoomed by dimly visible big houses. Some animal, Marylin wasn’t sure whether it was a cat or a dog, darted from the fog into the glaring headlights.
Swerving with an instantaneous reflex, Linc jammed down on the brake. The tires squealed. They skidded in an arc. Marylin gave a little cry as her body jerked forward and her outthrust hands hit the dashboard. Controlling the car, he pulled over under the big palms, turning off the motor.
“Marylin, all right?”
“Fine.” But she was gasping audibly, still in a physical terror.
“Linc, please—”
“Quit saying please,” he muttered, and bit a kiss onto the vein at the pulse of her throat.
We might have been killed, she thought, then realized that he must live with this sort of danger. A few minutes of monstrous, degrading terror, he had said. As his raging sarcasm had seemed grotesquely out of proportion a minute ago, so now did her own panic at a near-miss of a minor accident. This warm, living body had been exposed to racing bullets, would be exposed again.
She gave a breathy cry and began feverishly caressing the tendons of his neck above the uniform. Her mouth pressed around his in a wild fugue of kisses, her nerves quivered, alive, she was moist down there, perspiring, her heart pounded until she thought it would surely break out of her body—she could feel his heart equally fast. She shoved off her coat, he unzipped the side of her dress.
His touch slowed, expressing the tenderness that she was positive was the real him, and time seemed to halt, waiting, waiting, until the exquisite moment when his fingers traced her naked nipple. They were breathing each other’s breath in an endless openmouthed kiss. Her habit of prolonging each pleasure remained: she wanted this sumptuous melting to last forever—yet at the same time her body trembled with the need for his caressing hands to move downward, she ached for her body to be part of his in the unknown act, the irreversible act, the awesome mystery. Nice girls don’t, she thought. I just met him. Oh, I want, yes I want, darling . . . love . . . Please . . .
Everything and More Page 4