by M. J. Bosse
“About losing the pipe overboard? Well, at least it’s plausible.”
“I believe it’s the truth.”
“He could have found the microfilm before losing the pipe.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because that prick would have tormented you if he could. If he’d had the film, can’t you just see him dangling it in front of your nose like a carrot?”
Virgil relaxed a little behind the wheel. “You’re right. Yes, I agree.”
“But if he hadn’t lost it and put you to the test, how would you have identified the right pipe?”
“By looking in each shank. I’d say I had carved a mark in each shank and that’s how I remember my pipes.”
“Cornball, Virgil.”
“True. I’d simply count on his desire to believe it.”
“You mean, the dumb-nigger bit.”
“That’s right—so dumb I had to mark my pipes to remember them. During the test, if I found a pipe with film inside, I’d say the pipe was mine. That’s when the fun would probably begin.”
“What would you do?”
“Put it in my pocket and walk away.”
“And if he tried to stop you?”
“That’s when the fun would begin.”
*
We didn’t find Ginny Vaccaro at her sumptuous oceanside home, but the maid who answered the door volunteered the information that “they are all probably down on the beach.” She allowed us to park there. I guess she accepted us as Ginny’s hippie friends, and in my getup I qualified, and of course Virgil’s being black just naturally fitted into that scene.
We set out across the dunes, coming down from them along the white sand, where a warm breeze was blowing in from across the water. It was beautiful: just a faint streak of orange left on the horizon where the sun had been, and overhead a group of gulls were dipping and cawing. Ahead of us, not far along the shoreline, was the glow of a large beach fire, and as we approached we saw a lot of people milling around. The hauntingly lovely sound of a single guitar filled the dark air, and soon we caught the good old healthy smell of hot dogs cooking.
We stopped at the edge of the group. There were about twenty people, most of them younger than me, all in swimsuits, some lying on blankets spread around the fire. On a rack nearby were at least a dozen surfboards drying. A few of the kids were squatting near the fire with hot dogs sizzling on the ends of sticks. Others were listening intently to the guitar player, a very skinny boy, all elbows and knees, who had learned to imitate Bob Dylan pretty skillfully. Those who took any notice of us at all just smiled. One kid raised a Coke bottle to me and I took a swig, then handed it to Virgil, who drank too.
“Who’s Ginny?” Virgil asked, and the boy offering the Coke pointed across the fire to a small, rather plump, quite lovely brunette in an absolutely minimal bikini. We slogged through the sand over to her. Squatting down, Virgil introduced us as Virgil and Judy and said hello. She stared at him; her eyes, reflecting the firelight, had flickering orange centers. Her hair was short but with long sideburns; her skin looked wonderfully ripe. But her mouth was unpleasant—too straight-across, so you couldn’t figure out what her moods were.
“Beer or Coke.” She waved her hand in the general direction of a large cooler sitting at the edge of the lit circle. Virgil went to get us Cokes, so I was left with Ginny and a blond boy whose chest looked like armor plate. Surfing had probably given him those tight bunches of muscle on arms and shoulders. I mean, he looked chiseled out of stone by Phidias, but half reclined like a lazy Roman at an orgy. I said to him, rather wildly, “Don’t you think The Who Live at Leeds is just about the greatest live rock ever recorded?” I can’t really blame him for ignoring me for coming on so uncool like that, but I have the feeling that he’d have ignored me if I’d said, “Let’s you and me go over in the dunes and ball.” I noticed that at least my getup was intriguing Ginny, so I took off the floppy hat and handed it to her. She tried it on, the boy blinked, and then she took it off. “A groove,” she murmured in a hot, thick voice.
This chick was something I wanted my Virgil to avoid. I mean, in that little scrap of bikini her crotch, which kind of sank back where her full thighs met, would be a magnet for any man, and that was what Virgil was. When he returned with the Cokes, I was hoping he would start in immediately about the pipes—no jiving, no buildups, no prologues. I wanted out of there. But Virgil just grinned at us all and sat down on the blanket. Another boy had arrived with a guitar, and a duet began. It was all real relaxed. Some kids were listening, some not; some were eating hot dogs; some were just staring at the fire; a few were kissing and feeling a little, but not with any interesting passion. These were just a bunch of young college kids having an innocent time around a campfire.
Then I began to see it. The quick motions among hands. It was like devout Catholics doing beads, only what was moving from one hand to another, from one person to another, had nothing to do with organized religion, man. There they were, the little pills, the Red Devils, Yellow Jackets, Christmas Trees, and Pink Ladies. I had never seen such an assortment, nor had I ever contemplated the fantastic potential of so many drugs; and ups and downs changing hands would have stocked a drugstore. I saw the blond boy pop something into his mouth like a grape, but what a groovy grape that was. I realized then why Ginny’s eyes had impressed me. She was really turned on, and from her slow speech I figured she was on barbs. Then I noticed that two girls opposite us were huddled together and shivering as if very cold. One was muttering, the other gulping air like a fish tossed up on the sand.
Well, well, we had stumbled onto a real live scene. I felt a touch and looked around to meet the bloodshot eyes of a freckle-faced boy. He slipped a pill into my hand and kind of scuttled like a crab toward the fire, into which he stared almost without blinking. I looked at Virgil, who firmly shook his head, so pretending to dump the pill into my mouth, I buried it with my other hand. Then I leaned over and nuzzled his neck, whispering, “Get to the pipe” against his ear. Virgil didn’t answer, but turned to smile at Ginny Vaccaro, who lay there like one of Matisse’s odalisques, all warm and confident and much too sexy for my own good. I am sometimes a jealous bitch. I wished for my own pot bag, but that wouldn’t have made good points with Virgil anyway, so I decided to sit back and patiently watch the evening unfold.
We had a couple of hot dogs and some potato chips. Virgil helped two boys put more wood on the fire, while I yawned on the blanket with Ginny Vaccaro. Nothing much happened in the next hour that you could see, although now and then a couple would get up quietly and leave the campfire for the surrounding darkness. The two guitars went on endlessly, the players changing now and then, the songs remaining Dylan. It was on the surface, as I said, a relaxed and innocent evening on the beach. It was also a multitude of sensibilities going up or coming down, riding the waves of vision, holding on to or letting go of fantastic ideas, and beyond the range of firelight there was a lot of screwing in the sand, that was certain, and these rich cagey kids were having their kicks, all right.
Now and then Virgil would turn to say a few words to Ginny, who answered in heavy monosyllables and kind of shifted all her female weights around on the blanket. Her blond boyfriend was on a down, his mouth parted, his eyes half shut, like a lizard basking on a rock. Sometimes he yawned and stretched those beautiful muscles. What a waste of man, I thought.
“Get to the pipe,” I whispered fiercely against Virgil’s ear, but he still didn’t do anything.
Then I heard Ginny say in her plodding voice, “Want something?”
“Just might,” Virgil told her.
“What?”
“Some smoke.”
“Sure.”
“I like a pipe.”
“Me too.” Ginny yawned and waved her arm toward a beach bag lying near the blanket. Virgil lifted it and rummaged around, coming out at last with a saddle-bit Bulldog with an amber stem. He told Ginny that it was a good-looking
pipe. “You have a collection?” he asked.
She held up three fingers.
“This one doesn’t look like you,” he said.
That straight-across mouth of hers almost seemed to smile.
“You look more like an Oom-Paul.”
“What’s that?”
Virgil made a curvy motion in the air. What corn, I thought. Ginny yawned and rearranged herself on the blanket, jiggling all that Oom-Paul flesh of hers.
“I like to see people smoke what they look like,” Virgil said.
How corny can you get, I thought, but Ginny Vaccaro looked at him almost with interest. “I just picked it up, I didn’t buy it,” she said. This was the longest string of words that had come out of her mouth all night.
“Steal it?” Virgil asked, smiling.
The left corner of her mouth slightly changed, which must have been for her an answering smile. “Belonged to a dead man.”
“Ah, interesting vibrations,” Virgil exclaimed, and rather maliciously I wanted to tell him that he was using old-fashioned phrases, and this girl, who obviously was, I mean, really grooving, would consider him a dirty old man of over twenty-five for making a corny remark like that. Instead I sat there and watched him turn the pipe around and around in his hand, then suddenly unscrew the amber stem and look inside. “Better clean it,” he said after a moment, screwing it back again.
Ginny looked past him toward the fire. Obviously he was beginning to bore her, and was I glad.
“It’s very dirty inside,” Virgil explained.
“No kidding,” she said. “I never knew you could take those things apart.”
The blond boy’s eyes opened wide for an instant and then half-shut again.
Virgil reached over, took my wrist firmly, and pulled both of us to our feet. “Bye,” he said.
“Going?” said Ginny Vaccaro.
“Bye!” I said enthusiastically.
And we were off and away, out of that draggy scene. Soon we were beyond hot dog smells and guitar sounds. Overhead the stars were bright, the sky clear, and a warm breeze hummed along the sand. Suddenly I suggested that we have a swim before going back to the car, and after a moment’s hesitation Virgil agreed. We ran to the shore, where we stripped off everything and dashed into the water.
The first impact of ocean took my breath away, but then it didn’t seem so cold, and we splashed on until the water was over our heads. We swam close together, frequently turning over on our backs to float and look up at the motionless stars, the clouds going by, while the coolness lapped up over our mouths.
When we felt a little tired we started back to shore, and when the water was shallow enough to stand in we held hands, and when the water was at my breasts Virgil stopped and turned toward me and stroked my body. A sudden desire for him filled me. We were alone, free, excited by the night and the water. I clung to him and said joyously against his face, “Let’s do it!”
“Right now?”
“Yes!”
“Think we can? In this much water?”
I pulled back a moment and grimaced at him. “I know a lot of guys who would find out.”
“Sometimes I wonder what you people from the Midwest really do out there,” he said. Then he put his hands on me—and as I say, whenever Virgil concentrates on something, he stays with it to the end.
*
The next morning, snug in the bed of Mrs. Halliday’s guesthouse, I awoke to the singing of birds. I stretched and turned toward Virgil, who was beginning to wake up too. In the sunlight diffusing through gauze curtains his skin was like rich mocha chocolate, sweet-looking enough to bite. And by God, that’s what I did: bit his arm. Gently, but enough to make his eyes widen.
“I hate you,” I whispered, reaching down to pinch him just above the hair.
“You didn’t hate me last night.”
“Yes I did, until we had our swim. I hated you for jiving that zonked kid, Ginny.”
“I found out, didn’t I?”
“If I hadn’t been there, you would have found out. As the Bible says, you would have known her.”
“She was too far gone for that.”
“See what I mean? It was on your mind. You were thinking of all that fat flesh.”
“She wasn’t fat.”
“She was fat. Obese. She belonged in the circus.” I grabbed him possessively, pulled, and leaped out of bed before he could catch me. From the shower I called to Virgil, “What did you mean by finding out?”
“First, if she had the pipe. Second, if film was in it. Third, if film was not there, could we assume she had not removed it.”
“Funny. I thought you meant you had found out if she balled.”
“Judith” came from the bedroom.
“Well, you took a long time getting to the pipe. You sat there mooning at her for an hour. But of course, with Paco and Salisbury you got right to the point.”
“Ginny Vaccaro was the most difficult of the three.”
Poking my head around the shower curtain, I stared at Virgil where he was sitting on the bed. “Why?” I asked.
“Had that girl had the slightest inkling I wanted to see the pipe, she would have thrown it into the ocean.”
“Rationalization for your behavior,” I jeered, but on second thought I agreed with Virgil. It was comforting to think of Ginny Vaccaro as a thoroughly evil little girl who would have destroyed my Virgil’s life.
When ready, we left the cottage and went to the main house, where a maid told us Mrs. Halliday was on the patio. We went out there and found her at a table set for breakfast. She wore absolutely breathtaking Pucci pajamas, all flowing oranges and reds, brilliant in the morning sunshine. Maybe the outfit was for Virgil’s benefit, but my competition had been on the beach last night, yawning on a blanket, all thighs and crotch.
Through immense sunglasses Mrs. Halliday was reading the newspaper when we came onto the patio, and she looked up with an air of surprise. “Up so early?” she cooed, but not nastily. I was beginning to like Mrs. Halliday, especially because she knew Virgil would defend his right to sleep with me. “I thought Ginny and her friends would wear you out,” she added, and with a graceful gesture she pointed to chairs at the table. Everything there was crystal and white china, sparkling in the sunlight, and the brown toast, in its napkin nest in the middle of the setting, made my mouth water. All we had eaten the day before was a couple of hot dogs and some potato chips.
Mrs. Halliday chatted about the international news, calling it “appalling,” and asked had we been successful in our search for whatever it was we wanted. She had already forgotten about the pipes. I had this idea of a woman skimming along the surface of things; underneath it somewhere was fear and confusion.
Timidly I slid a piece of toast onto my plate and nodded vigorously when she asked would we like eggs and bacon. “Bloody Mary?” she asked as she tinkled the service bell by her plate. “No? Well, I’m having another. It was rather a wet evening,” she sighed. “People here make you drink too much.” The maid came and scooped up Mrs. Halliday’s empty glass. Our hostess nibbled the corner of a piece of toast. “Were Ginny and her friends—how does it go—tripping?”
“I hardly think so,” I said, which were about the only words I had yet said to Mrs. Halliday.
“Really? She was very high on something the other night at my party.” Mrs. Halliday lowered the glasses on her nose and peered at me for emphasis. “I thought tripping was de rigueur among the young.”
“I didn’t see anything like tripping,” I declared, because although I am nearly too ancient for Ginny’s generation—hers is under twenty—I will not be a stool pigeon for generations older than my own.
Breakfast came, and Mrs. Halliday’s Bloody Mary, and about that time her handsome lisping friend, David, appeared on the patio. He was decked out in white ducks, an inverted sailor hat, sandals, and a red silk shirt flowing open at the neck. His graying hair was quite distinguished. There was some initial chitchat between him a
nd Mrs. Halliday—the formality of long habit, I guess—and while they were talking, I managed to demolish three fried eggs and a half dozen strips of bacon. Virgil ate lightly and listened closely to what was being said. Soon he and David were having a literary discussion, Mrs. Halliday worked solemnly on her Bloody Mary, and I basked in the warm light that was beating down upon our faces.
Give Virgil a couple of minutes and he will tune in on any wavelength. That’s what he did with David. For nearly an hour they exchanged critical views about American novelists, obviously David’s thing. Although Virgil hadn’t read as many of the novels, he won David’s respect. I almost fell asleep, lulled by crickets bleeping in nearby bushes and salt winds stirring in the maple leaves. Now and then Mrs. Halliday and I looked at each other and smiled confidentially the way women do when they’re left out of the male world and feel secure about it. All of this reminded me of the lazy summer life I had known in Omaha, the poolside hours that waft by on waves of sunlight. Maybe in a way I missed it.
As for Mrs. Halliday, she was not a bad sort at all. She was a lonely widow who had probably loved her husband and whose money could buy her the pain-killers for grief—sunshine and booze and clever but undemanding friends. I had seen such women among the wealthy of Omaha, because things like this do happen in Omaha, and I didn’t dislike Mrs. Halliday anymore; I understood her, recognized her, and this knowledge, like, put me all together that morning and made me feel all right. By the time we left, I was a sleek old cat, blinking and reluctant to get up and stretch.
At the car there was a really fond farewell, and on impulse I leaned over and kissed Mrs. Halliday on the cheek. I could see it moved her. She craned her head back and appraised me. “Now I know,” she said. “You remind me of the film actress, the British one, Julie Christie. The same mobile features.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said. and I meant it. She embraced Virgil formally, and David waved happily at both of us. When we drove off, I said to Virgil, “What a good scene that was,” and he replied, “Also informative.”