Lovers and Gamblers

by Collins, Jackie

  ‘Yes,’ snapped back Melanie, ‘Edna’s prepared it specially.’

  ‘I wanted to see the children.’

  ‘Nobody’s stopping you. Pop over, kiss them goodnight, and come right back. I’ll go in and make some martinis. I shouldn’t think Edna could cope with that.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Paul. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Al and Paul had adjoining houses. They had acquired the land at a reasonable price some seven years previously, and they had divided it neatly down the middle and built respective mansions. Al’s was ranch style, Paul’s white and modern. They both had swimming pools, garages large enough for four cars, billiard rooms, and saunas. Paul often thought it was stupid and nouveau riche to have both build swimming pools, but Melanie had insisted. ‘I don’t want to feel like a poor relation,’ she had complained when he had suggested they didn’t need one.

  His children were sitting up in bed washed and scrubbed, and Nanny was reading them a story.

  ‘Hey, kids!’ exclaimed Paul. ‘Did you miss Daddy?’

  They leapt excitedly out of bed and threw themselves at him until he was a tangle of arms and legs and kisses. It was a good feeling. Love. Pure and unblemished. The only true kind.

  Nanny got them off him and settled them back in bed.

  ‘Mustn’t get too excited,’ she admonished, ‘otherwise we won’t sleep, will we?’

  Paul knew when he wasn’t wanted. Nanny hated having her routine screwed up. And Melanie bent over backwards to please Nanny. ‘Do you realize,’ she had once informed Paul, her pretty face grimacing with horror, ‘if Nanny ever left us I’d have to look after the children myself!’

  On impulse Paul went downstairs to his study, locked himself in, and direct dialled Linda’s number in New York. She was there.

  ‘I miss you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you,’ she replied.

  He wondered very seriously what Melanie would say if he asked for a divorce.

  * * *

  ‘Hello there, fatso!’ Al walloped Edna on the behind. ‘All tarted up. Are we going out?’

  Edna blushed. He had noticed.

  Melanie hung onto Al’s arm. ‘How about a delicious cold martini? Shall I fix us some?’ She led Al into the living room and called over her shoulder, ‘Ice, Edna.’

  ‘Where’s Evan?’ Al demanded. ‘Funny kid, you’d think he’d be here to greet me.’ He went to the foot of the stairs and screamed out, ‘Evan!!’

  The boy appeared at the top of the stairs, white-faced and pasty.

  ‘Don’t I get any sort of greeting?’ demanded Al. ‘Come down here.’

  Evan walked slowly down the stairs and Al grabbed hold of him in a bearhug.

  ‘How’s it going, boyo?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Still the randiest little bugger at school?’ He winked at Melanie. ‘Just like his dad. I thought about nothing but girls when I was his age.’

  ‘Have things changed?’ giggled Melanie.

  Al burst out laughing. Evan scowled.

  Edna came bustling in with the ice. ‘Where’s Paul? Dinner’s nearly ready.’

  ‘He’ll be right back, he just popped over to see the kids.’ Melanie busied herself behind the bar.

  ‘Was New York nice?’ Edna asked.

  ‘Not bad,’ replied Al. ‘Business, business, business. I just want to relax now. Christ, but it’s a noisy city.’

  ‘I love it there,’ interrupted Melanie. ‘The shops, and the theatres. Wouldn’t you love to go, Edna?’

  ‘Not really…’ She caught Melanie’s look and added lamely, ‘Well yes, I suppose I would.’

  Al wasn’t even listening, he was staring out into his garden. ‘Who’s been fucking around with my apple tree?’ he demanded.

  ‘Don’t use that language,’ said Edna, ‘not in front of you know who.’ She glanced stealthily at Evan. ‘You know I don’t like it.’

  ‘Who,’ said Al coldly, ‘has touched my apple tree?’

  ‘I did,’ scowled Evan. ‘I cut off a few rotten branches.’ He turned to Edna. ‘She told me to.’

  Edna blushed. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind. The bad apples were falling in the pool. I didn’t think you’d mind…’

  ‘Jesus H!’ exclaimed Al. ‘What the fuck do you think I employ a gardener for? It’s too bad, Edna, just too bloody bad…’

  Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’ll see to dinner,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Martini!’ said Melanie brightly, and she handed Al a glass.

  Paul returned, and Al took him to one side. ‘I’ve had a great idea.’

  ‘Yeah?’ questioned Paul with relief. At least Al was talking to him again.

  ‘We finish off the TV special next week?’

  ‘That’s right. There’s just the locations left to shoot.’

  ‘Great. You know the number “Lady”?’

  ‘The song you sing to Katy May?’

  ‘Right. Where are we shooting it?’

  ‘South of France.’

  ‘Terrific. Now Katy just sits there, right?’

  ‘We start off with a shot of you and her in an open car driving along the coastline, then the beach, swimming, fooling around. Should be fantastic.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Katy in a bikini?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s short. Oh, I know she’s cute and cuddly, and a lovely little singer, but…’

  ‘And very popular.’

  ‘I give you that.’

  Paul sighed. He smelled trouble. ‘What are you leading up to?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to look right my singing “Lady” to Katy.’

  ‘She’s the only female guest on your show.’

  ‘She doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘Who do you want? Raquel Welch?’

  ‘I want “Miss Coast to Coast”. Perfect little spot for her. She’ll do it if we pay her the right amount. Call New York and arrange it. And Paul – this time don’t fuck it up.’

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ called Edna. She had recovered her composure and proudly set out all Al’s favourite foods in the middle of the dining-room table.

  ‘When you get a hard-on…’ muttered Paul.

  ‘Humour me. After all, I am the star of the family. Evan! Come on, boyo, dinner’s ready.’

  Melon to start. Al liked melon. He wolfed it down, then got up from the table and said, ‘None of this other crap for me, I’ve got to watch the old weight.’

  ‘I’ve cooked all your favourite things,’ wailed Edna. ‘Al, you must eat.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Al cheerfully, ‘can’t let the paying public down. Anyway, I’m not hungry. Evan, fancy a game of tennis?’

  Evan scowled. That was the last thing he felt like doing.

  Edna’s eyes brimmed over with tears, and, streaked with blue eyeshadow, they fell silently down her cheeks.

  One thing stardom had done for big brother, mused Paul, it had turned him into a right bastard.

  Chapter Nine

  When Ed Kurlnik left, Dallas fixed herself a large vodka on the rocks. She put on a bathrobe, curled up in a chair, and nursing her drink, she mulled over the previous scene.

  Ed Kurlnik. Powerful. Rich. Married.

  Ed Kurlnik. Little sixty-one-year-old boy who liked to play games. Naughty games.

  She reached beneath the chair she was sitting on and fished out a recent magazine. Ed Kurlnik was on the cover with his wife, Dee Dee, a strong, respectable-looking woman with steely grey hair and icy blue eyes. A woman in her middle fifties – fifty-six, the magazine said – who was still attractive in a ‘lady of the manor’ way.

  Dallas opened up the magazine and turned to a picture of two girls. The Kurlnik twins. The Kurlnik heirs. Rich bitches, with cool blond hair and wide-spaced grey eyes. Twenty years old. The same age as she was. One of them wore riding clothes, the other a neat skirt, sweater, and pearls.

  Dallas laughed aloud. Pearls indeed! She would fuck their father wearing pearls, she would make him buy the
m for her. Or maybe he could borrow them from his daughter. Now that would be a laugh…

  She read the article through for the hundredth time. It was like reading about a stranger. And yet she knew him so well, or thought she did. ‘Ed and Dee Dee Kurlnik are one of the happiest married couples on the island.’ She read about their holiday home on Fire Island. ‘There is nothing better Ed Kurlnik likes to do than pitch a barbecue and feed his family.’ Dallas could think of many things he liked to do better than that. ‘Ed Kurlnik has always been the perfect father. Work or play, he always puts his family first.’ Did they still make love, Ed and the well-preserved Dee Dee? Dallas bit hard on her lip. She didn’t want him making love to anyone else, she wanted to be the only one.

  ‘The twins never bother or worry their father. Dana is studying nursing, and Cara is interested in social work.’ Crap! No one family could be that perfect. Dee Dee was probably an old lush, and the twins raving nymphos.

  Dallas stuffed the magazine back under the chair.

  How would life have been if Ed Kurlnik had been her father? Would she have worn riding clothes and studied nursing? Would someone have cared what she made of her life?

  She had left home at seventeen and nobody had cared. Nobody had come looking for her. She had become a hooker, a whore. Nobody had forced her to, she had just drifted into it. And nobody gave a shit. She wondered if her parents or her husband or even Burt and Ida Keyes had given her a second thought. Probably not. Life at the zoo had probably just kept going.

  What would they all think of her now? A beauty queen, a title holder, girlfriend of one of the richest men in America. They still probably wouldn’t give a shit. They were like that.

  Dallas sighed. She had got over the hurt a long time ago. So they hadn’t come looking for her. Big deal. They wouldn’t even recognize her now, she had changed. Before she had been a pretty little nothing. Now she was a beauty, a show-stopper, a breathtaker, a winner.

  She downed the rest of the vodka, dressed, and took a cab back to the Plaza.

  Mrs. Fields was waiting impatiently. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.

  ‘Did my shopping arrive? I want to wear the black dress tonight.’

  ‘I hung everything up.’

  ‘How kind of you. Just like having a personal maid!’

  * * *

  Once the decision to kill Bobbie was made, Dallas fantasized hundreds of ways to do it. She hadn’t been watching television steadily for four years without having learned a thing or two. There were several workable methods.

  Poison. Fire. Gunshot. Drowning.

  Dallas finally picked on drowning as the neatest method. Bobbie had never been a very good swimmer, she attacked the water like a dog – thrashing around in all directions. ‘I like the water, but it scares me,’ she had confided to Dallas. ‘I think my old man tried to do me in under a fire hydrant one hot and funky summer!’ Pity he hadn’t succeeded.

  Bobbie had become very dependent on her heroin, and because of her habit she was not insisting on such a vigorous professional schedule. That was a relief as far as Dallas was concerned. It gave her time to see Ed and also time to plan what she was going to do. Her constant fear was that Ed might find out her line of work. He wouldn’t want her if he knew, he would want nothing to do with a common hooker. She vetted every job Bobbie arranged. Who would be there? How many? What was involved?

  ‘Don’t start getting high hat again,’ complained Bobbie. ‘I need the bread.’

  Half the time she was incapable of performing at all, and Dallas was tempted to leave, just vanish off to New York with Ed. Bobbie would never find her in the state she was in most of the time. But if she did it would blow everything… No, it was a risk Dallas couldn’t afford to take.

  She felt no remorse about what she was planning to do. The things that Bobbie had forced her into… The humiliations, the degradations, the sexual nightmares of beatings and animals and sadomasochist happenings…

  She watched one night while Bobbie fixed herself up, then she produced good Mexican grass, turned on, and invited Bobbie to join her. She cooked a sensational dinner and made love to the black girl for the first time in a year.

  ‘Wow!’ Bobbie exclaimed, ‘What’s happenin’, man? What’d I do?’

  Dallas smiled. ‘Like old times, huh?’

  ‘Like – yeah, sugar. Do that again.’

  Dallas obliged, then later she suggested they go down to the communal pool and swim.

  ‘Skinny dip?’ inquired Bobbie. ‘I love to feel that warm water go ridin’ up my hot little pussy!’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed Dallas, ‘only quietly. We don’t want to wake everyone up.’

  They twisted towels around their nakedness and crept down to the pool.

  Dallas slid in the water first. It was cool and dark. ‘Come on,’ she called to Bobbie.

  ‘Hey, I’m cold,’ Bobbie complained.

  ‘It’s lovely in the water. Come on.’

  Bobbie sat gingerly on the edge of the pool in the shallow end and dangled her legs in.

  ‘Let’s go, baby,’ whispered Dallas.

  ‘Aw – I think it’s too cold.’

  Suddenly Dallas gripped her by the ankles and pulled her sharply into the water. She kept a firm hold of Bobbie’s ankles, raising them above the water so that the top half of the black girl’s body was completely submerged.

  There was no sound, just the sudden splash when she had first pulled Bobbie in. For seconds Bobbie was still, and then all at once she started to struggle, and it was like holding a fish. Dallas moved slowly back into deeper water, but Bobbie’s struggling was becoming so intense that she managed to free one leg, and was kicking out with it. Dallas hung firmly on to the other one.

  How long did it take to drown? How painful was it? Jesus Christ – what was she doing? This wasn’t some TV film, this was life, this was happening, this was now.

  Abruptly she let go of the struggling girl, and spluttering and choking, Bobbie surfaced. She thrashed her way to the side of the pool and crawled out. She lay by the side retching.

  Dallas climbed silently out. She wrapped the towel around herself.

  ‘You fuckin’ bitch!’ Bobbie groaned. ‘You tried to kill me. You want me out of your life that bad you fuckin’ got it. Get out of my apartment – and don’t you never come back!’ She started to retch again, and Dallas left her lying there. She went up to the apartment and packed her things.

  Maybe she hadn’t meant to kill Bobbie at all. Maybe she had just wanted to frighten her…

  Yes, that was it. She had only wanted to frighten her and it had had the desired effect. Dallas nodded to herself. She wouldn’t have hurt her, really she wouldn’t.

  * * *

  Ramo Kaliffe was Dallas’s arranged date for the première, and Ed would not be pleased about that. She froze him out of thinking there would be any action. Screw him. He had served his purpose. ‘Did I not please you last time?’ he asked in a hurt voice at the end of the evening.

  ‘Please me?’ she said incredulously. As far as she could remember she had spent three-quarters of an hour going down on him, and he had kindly dipped his head to her for a fast two minutes. Not that she minded, sex was no turn-on whichever way it was served. Sex was a means to an end. Sex was Ed Kurlnik and pleasing him.

  Back at the hotel someone had dropped off an envelope of photos, and she devoured them with her eyes.

  They were ten by eight glossies of her taken at the ‘Miss Coast to Coast’ contest. Enclosed was a brief note, ‘Dropped these by as souvenir – would like to get together and do some more. Please call Linda Cosmo.’ And there was a telephone number.

  It was still early, before midnight. Dallas picked up the phone and asked for the number.

  Linda answered sleepily.

  ‘Hi, this is Dallas – “Miss Coast to Coast”. I got your note. I’d love to do some photos.’

  Linda stifled a yawn; she had been fast asleep. ‘Marvellous. When are you fre
e?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Wonderful. About ten o’clock.’

  ‘Couldn’t be better. What shall I wear?’

  ‘Can I look at what you have when I get there?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘See you tomorrow then.’ Linda hung up and switched on the light. Too late for Al King, but it would be a good scoop to do some photos of the girl. She might be able to place them in People or Newsweek.

  Dallas hung up the phone and flopped out on the bed. She felt drained, it had been a busy day. The first day of her new life. Beauty Incorporated were probably going to be furious that she had arranged her own photo session, but that was just too bad. For once in her life she was going to be the decision-maker, and doing a photo session with a female photographer appealed to her. Guys were always on the make, trying to hustle, making suggestive comments. It would be nice to have some good photos taken, sexy but decent. Not like the murky photos from her past. Photos where she had tried to keep her face out of the picture. And it had been easy really, it wasn’t her face they were after. Gyno shots, Bobbie had called them – ‘Snatch money! The easiest way to make it!’ she had joked. But Dallas had hated posing for that kind of picture. What kind of sick people paid for that kind of photograph? Guys who couldn’t get it up… Or maybe guys who didn’t want to… Dallas finally fell asleep, surrounded by the glossy pictures of her as ‘Miss Coast to Coast’.

  Chapter Ten

  The sun at Nice Airport was blazing down. Photographers were jostling for shots of Al as he disembarked from the Air France plane. Tourists were gaping. Officials were pushing forward to greet him.

  He wore a white sports shirt, white trousers, and a thin black alligator belt that clasped together with his initials in gold. His black hair was just long enough and carefully tousled. His black eyes hid behind grey-tinted shades.

  He had spent the previous week at his home in London lying by the swimming pool and acquiring a perfectly respectable golden tan. London had been having a heat wave, and Al had taken full advantage.

  Paul, by his side, was more conservatively dressed. But the women, when they had stopped eyeing Al, turned their attention to him and wondered who he was. He was a couple of inches taller than Al, leaner, with finer bones and smokey eyes. The brothers were by no means plain.