“You keep on talking like that,” I said, “and you might have to go through the whole thing over again.”
“You don’t frighten me,” she smiled. “I love it.”
I started to kiss her again, but the doorbell rang. “Damn,” I said.
She slipped out of bed. “You wanted breakfast.” She started for the bathroom. I called her and she turned in the doorway and looked back.
“You’re beautiful. Do you know that?”
“Go get your breakfast,” she laughed. “I don’t want to be responsible for your starving to death.”
I slipped into my robe and went to the front door. I was drinking the orange juice before the pink cloth-covered table came to a stop.
I had almost finished my ham and eggs by the time she came out of the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, her hair still wet from the shower. I looked at her with my mouth full and gestured to the chair.
She sat down, poured herself some coffee, and didn’t speak until I had finished mopping up my plate with the last piece of English muffin.
“You weren’t kidding,” she said when I put down my knife and fork.
“I told you I was hungry.” I poured myself more coffee. “I feel better now.”
She picked up her coffee cup.
I got up and pulled the venetian blind. The sunlight flooded into the room. “It’s a beautiful day out and we have a long three-day weekend in front of us. Why don’t we take off?”
“And go where?” she asked.
“Palm Springs?”
“Too dull,” she said.
“Las Vegas?”
“Too busy,” she said.
“The ocean? We can go down to La Jolla and charter a boat.”
“I get seasick just looking at the waves,” she said.
“What would you like to do then?” I asked.
“Why do we have to do anything?” she smiled up at me. “Why can’t we just stay in and fuck?”
“Can’t top that,” I said. “Okay, if that’s what you want, go get dressed.”
Her surprise showed in her voice. “What for?”
“If that’s all we’re going to do this weekend,” I said, “I’ve got a much more romantic place to do it.”
***
I turned the car into the driveway and went on into the carport. I got out of the car. “Come on.”
She followed me to the front door and I took out a key and opened it. “You walk down,” I explained.
We stopped at the bedroom on the first level and I put away the valise into which we had tumbled enough things for the weekend. I hit the button and the ceiling rolled back.
She threw herself on the bed and looked up. The overhead sun bathed her in gold. “I don’t believe it,” she cried.
“That’s only the beginning,” I said. I hit the other button and the bed began to move and the television sets came up and down around the room. I turned the switch off and everything stopped.
“Enough for now,” I said. “Let me show you the rest of the place.”
We went on down the steps into the living room. I pressed a wall switch and the drapes moved back. All Los Angeles lay there at our feet. I moved back the sliding glass door and we stepped outside. The small oval pool sparkled in the sunlight.
“It’s beautiful,” she yelled, kicking off her shoes and pulling her dress over her head. She dove into the pool and came up sputtering water. She squinted her eyes and turned her face toward me. “Whose place is this?”
“Mine,” I answered.
She swam back toward me, her naked body gleaming even more whitely in the blue water. She rested her arms on the edge of the pool. “How long have you had it?”
“Five years about.”
“Who lives here?”
“Nobody,” I said.
She was silent for a moment. “I don’t get it. With a place like this, why keep living in the hotel?”
“I’m not ready for it, I guess. Besides I get service in the hotel.” I began to take off my shirt. “I tried it for one night.”
“And?”
“It was too empty.” I stepped out of my shoes and slacks and pulled off my shorts. I ran naked to the diving board and held my hands over my head.
“Yum, yum, yum,” she laughed, looking up at me.
I dove into the water. Between the pool heater and the sun, the water was warm. I came up looking for her. I didn’t see her.
She was a white streak under the water as she caught me around the waist, her mouth nibbling at my loins. We sank into the pool and came up blowing water.
“Hey,” I asked laughing, “do you know you can drown trying to do something like that?”
“Do you know a better way to die?” she asked.
***
When the sun went down we had steaks and baked potatoes that I had picked up at the market on Sunset on our way over. Afterward we turned on the stereo and stretched out in front of the fireplace.
“How do you feel?” I asked as I turned to her with the brandy warmed by the hearth.
“Fantastic,” she said. She sipped her brandy. “Am I anything like your wife?”
I was startled. “What makes you ask?”
“Once, last night, when you were inside me, you called out her name. Barbara, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Barbara.”
“Do I remind you of her?”
I looked into my brandy glass. It was dark and golden. I swished the liquor around. “In a kind of way.”
“How?”
“Attitudes mostly. Nothing I could put my finger on. The way you both looked at life and approached it. Barbara was a very physical person. She, too, wanted to feel everything, taste everything.”
“Did she?”
“No,” I said. “But then, no one ever does.”
She was silent. Then she took another sip of the brandy. “I will,” she said.
***
Later that night when I was lying on her and in her and our skins were like extensions of each other, she looked into my eyes. “I want to see the sky,” she said.
“It will be cold, the nights are cold,” I said.
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’ll keep me warm.”
I reached across then hit the switch. The cool night air came rushing down over us. The moon painted her face a pale white.
She pulled my head down to her breast. “Don’t move,” she said. Then she pulled the sheet over us up to our shoulders. “Now turn your head and look up.”
It was beautiful. The moon and the stars filled the midnight-blue velvet of the sky.
“It’s like flying, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
I could feel her tighten around me. “I love you.”
I thrust myself deeply into her until she groaned trying to absorb all of me. “More, I want more,” she said huskily. “Put all of you inside me. Your balls, your whole body. All of you.”
It was like that the whole weekend. We never left the house except to go to the market for food, the liquor store for wine and whiskey, and the Strip for grass.
On Monday I brought the rest of my things from the hotel and we moved in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I’ll have to find an apartment,” she said.
“Why?”
“You know why. How would it look if Mother or Daddy called me and the service answered, ‘Gaunt residence’?”
“That’s simple,” I said. “We’ll have a separate line put in. Only you will answer it.”
“And the address?”
“Nobody knows this place. That wouldn’t make any difference.”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t work. The first thing they’ll want to do if they come out here is see my apartment. Just to make sure that I have a comfortable place to live.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Don’t look so hurt,” she laughed. “I’m not moving out. It’s just a cover.”
“Try to find
a place nearby.”
“I’ll need a car too.”
“I’ve arranged for that already. A Mustang convertible will be delivered here for you tomorrow.”
“White with red leather?” she asked.
I nodded.
She flung her arms around me like an excited little girl.
That was on Monday. When I came from the studio Tuesday evening, she was pacing up and down the living room. “They didn’t deliver the car yet.”
“I’ll check them tomorrow,” I said casually. “I’ll get into a pair of slacks and we’ll go out for a bite to eat.”
“I’m not hungry!” she said petulantly and went up the steps to the bedroom. I could hear the door slam.
I went over to the bar and poured myself a drink. I wondered if there was anything I had done to upset her. I looked down at the ashtray behind the bar.
It was filled with cigarette butts, half of them roaches. It all began to make sense. She had been bored with nothing to do all day and now she was coming down from her high.
I swallowed some of my drink and sat there. I heard her footsteps on the stairs and turned around. She had put on a pair of pants.
She came toward me and took a cigarette from the bar. I held the light for her. She looked slightly pale, blue shadows under her eyes, and there seemed to be faint beads of perspiration on her forehead.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked.
“No,” she answered shortly. She dragged on the cigarette.
“What is it?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said antagonistically.
“I think I might. Is it a female thing?”
For a moment I thought I detected a kind of relief in her eyes. “Something like that,” she admitted.
I didn’t speak.
“Ever since I began to take the pill,” she said. “There are times when I go out of whack.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head. “No.” She dragged on the cigarette, then looked at me. “Can I borrow the car for a few minutes?” she asked. “I’ll run down to the drugstore. Maybe I can find something there that’ll help me.”
“I’ll drive you down if you like.”
“No. You don’t have to bother,” she said. “You take your shower and change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Okay. The keys are in the car.”
She kissed my cheek. “Thanks.” She ran up the steps. I heard the motor start and the car move out of the driveway. Then I took my drink from the bar and went up to shower.
It was over an hour and I was on my third drink by the time she got back. I heard her footsteps on the stairs crossing over to the bedroom, then I heard the bathroom door close. I made myself another drink and waited. It was another fifteen minutes before she came down.
“How do you feel?”
“Better,” she said.
“You look better.” It was true. Her color was more normal and the blue shadows seemed to be disappearing from beneath her eyes. “What did the druggist give you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But he made me take it there and wait to see if it worked. That’s what took so long.”
“I’m glad it worked,” I said. “Would you like a drink?”
“No,” she smiled, taking my arm. “You must be starved. Let’s go out to eat.”
“Okay,” I said, putting down my drink. “But you might have to drive. I think I’m a little smashed.”
“My poor baby,” she smiled. She pulled my face down to her and kissed me. “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time.”
***
She found a small apartment on the hill just below the house. She put a telephone into the apartment and an extension line to the house. That way whenever the telephone rang in the apartment, it would also ring at the house. It worked very well.
She was generally awake and on the phone to her agent by the time I left in the morning. She spent a good part of the day running around town on interviews. Once I asked her how she was doing.
“It’s a drag,” she said. “All most of them want is to get laid.”
Another time when I came home, she was sitting in the fading light in the living room, dragging on a reefer.
“Aren’t you turning on a little early?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
I went over and kissed the top of her head. “You can talk to me,” I said. “I’m your friend.”
“I have to get a job,” she said. “I have to.”
“Why the blues?” I asked. “You’re only out here a few weeks. It takes time until you get established.”
“Daddy’s raising hell,” she said. “He says if I don’t get something within a month, he wants me to come home.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Just before you came home,” she answered. “He and Mother called me.”
“Keep on making the rounds,” I said. “Something will turn up. They’re beginning to cast next fall’s shows.”
“So what?” she asked. “I keep losing the job to somebody’s girlfriend. Maybe I’m using the wrong approach.”
“No, you’re not,” I smiled. “You’ve got a friend at Sinclair.”
She looked up at me, a hope in her eyes. “You mean you’ll do something to help me?”
“I might,” I put on a false leer. “Of course you know what that means. You’ll have to show your appreciation. You might even have to sacrifice your honor.”
“I’m willing, I’m willing,” she laughed. She got to her feet and pulled off her dress. “Now?”
“It’s as good a time as any,” I said, pulling her to me.
The next morning I heard they were looking for a new girl in one of our Western series. I had her go up for it. It wasn’t much of a part, but it was good exposure and she got it.
***
At the end of the month I had to go into New York for the board meeting. Besides, the rock show was ready and I wanted to see how Jack would juggle the schedule to accommodate it. She drove me out to the airport.
“You hurry back,” she said.
“I will,” I promised.
“And stay away from the New York girls. I’m a very jealous woman.”
“I know that,” I laughed. I kissed her and went into the terminal as she drove off. But the airport was socked in by fog and at one o’clock in the morning when they announced that all flights were canceled for the night, I caught a taxi and went home.
She was fast asleep, curled in a ball, the sheets kicked down around her feet. There was a kind of childlike defenselessness about the way she lay there that made me smile to myself. A dozen burglars could have come and gone and she wouldn’t have known the difference. Gently, I picked up the sheet and covered her.
I undressed in the dark and went into the bathroom, closing the door before I turned on the light so that I would not disturb her.
I went over to my washbasin and turned on the water. As usual, it ran cold and I waited for the hot water to come through the pipes. I glanced over at her washbasin and forgot all about the hot water. The two washbasins were built into the same marble counter. Her side was normally cluttered with her makeup and hairpins and combs and brushes. Tonight there was something added. A teaspoon, some burnt wooden matches, and a hypodermic needle.
There was a small envelope lying beside the hypo. I picked it up and opened it. There were several small packets inside. I took one out and opened it. It was filled with a fine, white, crystalline powder. I put some on my finger and tasted it. The sickly bittersweet taste of “shit” lingered on my tongue.
Suddenly it all made sense to me. Her peculiar attack of nervousness the day the car didn’t arrive. The strange glazed look in her eyes that night in New York I went to pick her up at the party. The funny way she slurred her speech at times as if her tongue were too thick to say the words. No one ever traveled that far on pot.
But I still couldn’t beli
eve it.
I took a washcloth from the rack and held it under the hot water until it was soaking wet. I squeezed it out and went back into the bedroom. I pulled the sheet away from her and hit all the lights.
She came awake with a start. “Steve!”
I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her arm out straight. I began to rub the inside of her elbow with the washcloth.
She tried to pull her arm away. “Steve! Have you gone mad?”
I held her arm tightly without answering. The makeup came off all over the washcloth. I looked down at the suddenly naked white flesh. The needle marks were there. All around the purple-blue veins.
I flung the washcloth angrily across the room. “Damn you!” I said. “Damn you for a stupid bitch!”
My Darling Girl was a first-class addict.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I sat at the bar in the living room, swirling the Scotch in the glass. I heard her footsteps on the staircase behind me. I didn’t turn around.
She crossed the room and sat down at the bar beside me. “Steve.”
I didn’t look at her. “Yes?”
“I’m not on the stuff. Really. It was only because I was lonely. I missed you and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Don’t lie to me, Myriam,” I said. I turned to look at her. “I counted at least six punctures on your left arm. How many have you got on your right?”
“I can kick it anytime I want.”
“Who are you kidding, Myriam?” I asked. “Did you ever try?”
“I’ll prove it,” she said. “Look.” She opened her hand and showed me the small packets. She got down from the stool and went behind the bar. She turned the water on in the sink and began to open the packets one by one and empty them.
I reached over the bar and took one packet from her hand. I opened it and tasted it. Bicarbonate of soda. I gave the packet back to her. “I never knew a junkie yet who could pour the stuff down the drain.”
She stared at me. Slowly she turned off the tap. “I love you,” she said. “Do you know that?”
“Sure,” I said sarcastically. “I would not love thee half so much, loved I not heroin more.” I put Scotch in my glass and walked away, leaving her. I sank into the couch facing the window. Los Angeles lights were out there in the night. But somehow it didn’t look all that beautiful anymore.
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