Die a Little (10 page)

thirty-two-year-old climber to know. And it always helps that he is from Connecticut and went to Columbia (and nearly graduated) and has the sheen of class and breeding everyone he works for lacks.

There is something very easy about Mike, about being with Mike, about Mike's whole existence. He never has a wrinkle on his suit. His hair is cut once a week, though one never need know how it happens, or where or when, because it occurs in the margins between when I see him and when I see him next. I never see a restaurant check, or worry about hailing a cab, or imagine how it happens that Mike pays his bills or his rent, or his cleaning lady. All the practicalities of his life seem to go on invisibly, effortlessly.

How does he come to own the clothes he wears so immaculately--

when does he shop? When does it happen that orange juice and Coca-Cola end up in his refrigerator or the plate of perfectly arranged Kentucky pralines on his kitchen table or the Seagram's and soda water on his bar cart? Even if his cleaning lady purchases these things, or the stores deliver them on a regular order, when does Mike place the order or sit and think about what he wants?

When does he deal with the mail on the table? I've seen him run through it, eyes darting at the return address names, and then toss it back down. When does it all happen? Where is all the offscreen time?

It is barely possible to imagine Mike taking a shower. Isn't he always perfectly groomed, crisply cologne-scented, freshly shaved and ready to go? What a disappointment it would be to become truly intimate with him, to stay over past the deliciously mechanical grope on the bed after the long string of martinis and have to see the behind-the-scenes efforts that produce such a clean and cool container of a man.

Die a Little -- 59 --

[?]*[?]

Exactly when--in what order--these things happened, the structure, is hazy, muddled. The moments pop forward, spring out suddenly, and there I am, sometime early that summer, coming by to visit with Bill, maybe go for a drive together. Instead, I find Lois, whom I haven't seen since that day five weeks before at the Locust Arms.

She is making herself at home in the bedroom, wearing a lavender feather boa, parts of which are stuck to her face. It looks as though she's been wearing it for days, some of it still fluffy and sleek, like an excited bird, other parts knotted and fraying.

"Lois, each time I see you ..."

Lois, each time I see you, I think I've discovered the body.

"Fuck a duck, Lora King, I got it bad," she slurs, then as if just noticing it, she lifts the edge of the boa and examines it. "This belonged to Loretta Young until Wednesday."

As her arm stretches out, I see a footpath of bruises and welts.

"Lois."

"These men I know ... they wanted to have a party. I thought it'd just be booze. Sometimes you can't tell. One of them had eyebrows that ran together," she says, dragging a ragged fingernail across her forehead. "He looked like out of Dick Tracy, you know?"

"Does Alice know you're here?" I ask, remembering what Alice said about telling Lois to stop coming around.

"She told me to come. We ran into each other last night at this place over on Central Avenue, before my date with Big Harry."

"Who?"

She taps the flaccid skin of her blue-white arm as if in response.

I want to confront her with what is an obvious lie. I want to say, There is no way in the world you saw Alice on Central Avenue. No white woman from Pasadena would-- Instead, I say, "Let me put you in a bath and get some food in you."

"Bath sounds good. You got any chop suey joints around this neck?

I go crazy for chop suey. I think the last thing I ate was a fried bologna sandwich around two o'clock yesterday."

Her eyes shining like clanging marbles, she laughs as I start to peel the boa from her face.

"Honey, you must really wonder how the hell you got messed up with me."

Die a Little -- 60 --

[?]*[?]

Looking in Mike Standish's mirror at 2:00 A.M., my face, neck, shoulders still sharp pink, my legs still shaking, I see something used and dissolute and unflinching. How did this all happen so quickly?

And it has nothing to do with him at all. It is as if this girl in the mirror has slipped down into some dark, wet place all alone and is coming up each time battle-worn but otherwise untouched.

A late dinner at Lido's by the Sea, all cracking seafood, clamoring jazz, squirts of lemon in the air, the clatter of dozens of docked party ships on the water, long strings of lights stretched out into nothing.

Now, back at Mike's apartment, he uncharacteristically down for the count, dreaming heavily, stunned into sleep after a day-into-night of cocktails and courses, a director's wedding, a premiere, a party, and finally dinner with me.

I decide to phone for a taxi.

Tiptoeing into the impeccably tailored dark green and tan tones of the living room, I sit down at the desk, on which rests only a phone, a pad of paper, and a set of fountain pens. I slide open the desk's sole drawer to find a phone book.

As I pull it out, I see that I have inadvertently picked up, along with the phone book, a tidy pack of playing cards. The pack falls soundlessly into the deep carpet. Reaching down, I accidentally knock the cards, and they slide out of the pocket into a near perfect cardsharp's fan.

I kneel on the floor. As I collect the cards wearily, a few flutter again to the carpet, flipping over from the standard navy blue pattern to their reverse sides.

There, instead of the mere jack or diamond, I see slightly grainy, hand-tinted black-and-white photographs.

I bite my lip and faintly recall Bill's army buddies joking about the decks they picked up in France, where, they'd laugh, "women understand men."

The cards are filled with naughty open-legged shots of women, and I avert my eyes, shoving them back into the box. As I do so, however, one catches my eye.

It is two women, wearing only garters, kneeling, hands cupping each other's breasts. Unlike what I had seen in the flash of the other cards, these women are facing not a man just out of frame or their own plump forms. Instead, they look openly into the lens, heavily made-up eyes gazing out.

I stare for a hard thirty seconds before realizing I am looking at Lois Slattery and my sister-in-law.

Lois's unmistakable crooked face.

Die a Little -- 61 --

Alice's brooding eyes--eyes so intense that not even the thick layer of kohl could conceal them, a virtual fingerprint.

They are kneeling on what looks like a cheap Mexican serape.

Their fingernails are painted dark.

They look younger, with a little of the roundness that especially Alice now lacks.

Their mouths are open, Lois's lewdly, like a wound.

Though their bodies and faces are tinted a rosy shade, the photographer hasn't bothered to tint the insides of their mouths, so instead of red or pink, the mouths give way to a gray-blackness like something has crawled inside them and died there. Like their insides have rotted and the outside has yet to catch up.

Suddenly, I hear stirring in the bedroom. Before I know it, I've palmed the card, shoving the rest of the pack back in the drawer.

Mike Standish is standing in front of me, trousers pulled up, suspenders hanging rakishly.

I am still kneeling on the floor, fortunately holding the phone book by way of explanation.

"I'll take you home," he says with a casual yawn. "Sorry I fell asleep, King. Bad form."

"All right," I say, looking up, knees brushing painfully into the carpet.

He holds his hand out, and I grab it, and as he lifts me to my feet, I feel like the sin could never be greater. Who is this man? And--his hand now casually curved around my lower hip, my buttocks--what have I fallen into, eyes half open or more?

That night I think about the picture of Alice and Lois for a long time.

I think about telling Bill. I think about asking Alice. Or Mike. But I know I will do none of these things. I know I will hold on to it, hold on to it tightly. The strangest thing of all is how unsurprising it is. It has a haunting logic. I suppose Alice had been desperate for money.

Hadn't she always been desperate for money? How can I know what it was like? I don't know how bad things may have gotten before she had Bill to turn to. I don't even know if the photos were doctored. I don't know anything. But I know I will hold on to the card, tuck it in my drawer under three layers of handkerchiefs, just in case.

Within two weeks, I've banished the thought. After a few awkward encounters, I can finally see Alice again without the image shuddering before me, raw-boned, grimy black and a stark, sweaty white. But I don't forget it.

Die a Little -- 62 --

[?]*[?]

One weekend, Bill and Alice canceled plans with me at the last minute to go to Ensenada. They came back glowing, brown as cafe con leche and with a duffel bag filled to bursting with mangoes, melons, passion fruit, ripe and fleshy. Bill pretended to be mad that Alice had snuck the fruit through customs while he, a member of law enforcement, no less, sat beside her. He spoke to her sternly and refused to melt at her lippy pout. But when she made her signature ambrosia dripping with honey and coconut, spelling his name with cherries on top, he ate heartily, pulling her onto his lap and kissing her with a sticky mouth.

A few weeks later, Alice suggests a weekend getaway to Baja, Bill and Alice and Mike Standish and myself.

"You know Bill hasn't quite warmed up to Mike, and I think this would be a good opportunity for everybody," Alice says to me in a confiding tone.

"Bill doesn't like Mike?" I say plainly, wondering what she knows.

"I wouldn't say that. I'm sure it's hard for a brother. No man',s good enough for his sister, right?"

"It's not as though we're serious," I say carefully. "He's just someone I can go out with."

"All the better." Alice smiles. "No pressure, then. Wouldn't it be divine? Swimming, dinner at the waterfront restaurants, dancing."

"It sounds expensive."

"Mike can afford it. He's got pockets full of dough."

"What about Bill?" I say, purposely light.

"Oh, he needs to splurge more. He's too careful. His work is so stressful. It's important that he have fun."

"I don't know if Mike ... we see each other during the week. I think he has more glamorous commitments during the weekend. I wouldn't feel comfortable asking him."

"I've already asked him. He wants to go. And don't worry"-- she grins at me sidelong--"I've booked separate rooms for you two, to keep up appearances."

"Alice," I say, with a feeling of dread. "I don't think it's such a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Many, many reasons. And you know." Because, in truth, I know Bill doesn't like Mike Standish. I can tell by the careful way he speaks about him and to him, or the freighted tones with which he asks, "How was your evening with the publicity man, Lora? Did he Die a Little -- 63 --

see you home after the party, Lora?" Once I heard him say to Charlie Beauvais, "What kind of man wears a pink shirt, anyway?" And Charlie laughed, and Bill, rubbing his bristle cut, did not.

"What do I know, Lora?" Alice says blankly but with a faint glimmer in her eyes.

"You know. Let's not go through it all."

"I don't know what the problem is. I'm suggesting a lovely weekend trip. You should be thanking me," she says with no apparent guile, only a pretty Alice-smile.

"Bill will not want to do it, Alice."

"True, at first. He didn't want to, at first." Alice smiles. "But then he settled down about it."

And then we are on the highway, in Mike's convertible. Alice is playing Louis Prima loud on the radio and holding her wide-brimmed straw hat to her head, ribbons blowing behind in the breeze. There I am, watching Mike and wondering why we are all here. A cigarette hanging from his mouth, sunglasses shielding his eyes, he smiles lazily at me, as if getting a kick out of the entire improbable thing--

what a gas. Here he is with a cop and his schoolmarm sister, two squares who should be sitting on some porch swing in Pasadena, twiddling their thumbs.

It starts with mai tais. We girls are drinking mai tais on the long deck that wraps around the hotel. The sun is setting, burnishing everything, and the rimy drink sets our teeth on edge, and we are leaning back and the drink is churning slowly and warmly inside.

The men have ordered Scotch, which they are nursing quietly.

They are trying to find things to talk about. UCLA football. The best way to get to San Diego. Mike's new coupe.

But Alice is skilled at making it work. She beams at Bill and brings up "topics" and laughs at all Mike's jokes. She tells a long, funny story about a dress she worked on for Greer Garson. She'd had to take it out, and out, and out. They kept sending the dress back, saying the actress was "er, retaining" and needed more "room to move."

Mike has a second Scotch and begins to swap studio gossip, and he places his hand on my leg under the table and it is fine and relaxed.

There is a lengthy discussion about where we should eat and where the best seafood is supposed to be and when is the best time to go.

A sloe-eyed torch singer takes the stage in the bar and begins crooning. Suddenly, there are more mai tais and I notice myself giggling and can't remember why I've begun.