Everything and More (24 page)

When Dwight wasn’t around, Roy would daydream of him, her delectable reveries occasionally shattered by a bleak thought that swooped down on her like a persistent bird of prey: I wonder what’s with Althea?

The sole other time since the inception of their friendship that the girls had been incommunicado for longer than a day was the previous Christmas, when the three Cunninghams had gone back East to the Archie Coynes’ camp in the Adirondacks, a virgin tract of lakes and mountains that, Althea mentioned in passing, had its own ski lifts.

As the hot August days passed, the enforced separation took its toll on Roy. She felt lousy enough at having lost her confidante, at being unable to pour her wondrous new emotions into her friend’s delicately molded ear, but what felled her utterly was the guilt of knowing that Althea missed her far more. After all,
she
had Dwight.

I really have to give her a buzz, Roy would think. Each time she reached this decision, she would hear—actually hear—the bitchy note in Althea’s cool voice as she called Dwight chicken. Like an unworshiped icon, the telephone remained in the ledge indented in the rough stucco of the hall.

*   *   *

On Thursday morning Althea phoned.

“Hi,” Roy mumbled. “Long time no see.”

“Yes, a lot of water under the proverbial bridge,” Althea said, pausing. “Firelli’s at Belvedere.”

“Firelli!” Roy gasped. “You can’t mean
the
Firelli?”

“None other. He’s a friend of my parents. They’re in Washington—I told you Daddy’s a dollar-a-year man for the State Department, didn’t I? It’s fallen on little me to entertain the maestro.” Althea’s voice dropped to lecherous depths.

“Your parents
really
know Firelli?”

“Through my grandmother. Are you and Dwight an item?”

“We’re seeing a lot of each other, yes,” Roy said guardedly.

“Then why don’t the two of you drop by and spend an afternoon with him?”

“Sounds fabuloso, but I’ll have to ask Dwight.” Then Roy burst out, “Althea, without you it’s been Lower Slobbovia.”

“Ditto,” Althea said.

“I mean, it’s swell of you to call.”

“You’ll adore Firelli. It’s hard to believe he’s so ancient.”

“We have one minor problem. No car.”

“Pick you up, natch.”

When Roy hung up, she leaned back in the folding chair by the phone, limp as if a great, crushing stone had been removed from her body.

  
21
  

It was hardly a secret that Carlo Firelli was English.

His life was an open book—a renowned open book. The thirteenth child of a poor greengrocer, he had been the youngest applicant to win a full scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, had conducted his first triumphant concert before that black-clad dwarf, Queen Victoria, and had refused knighthoods from both George V and George VI.

Roy, however, knew Firelli only by the patronym splashed across the few classical albums that she enjoyed. So what surprised her most about the famous old conductor was his English accent—not hoitytoity, but a pungent, musical Birmingham.

She broached the subject of his misleading Italianate name.

“In my youth I had the idea that a bloke called Charlie Frye would never be seriously considered in the world of music. So I transcribed my name to Italian, and it pleased me mightily.” His sweet, deep bass wordlessly sang a triumphant theme unknown to Roy. “Now when I look back on that boy, I rather approve his vanity, yes, I admire that brash lad.” The round old face broke into a gay cobweb of preordained wrinkles as he chuckled. “Does that sound swollen-headed, little Roy?”

“No, honest.” She returned his smile. “You seem to enjoy everything, Firelli.” (On being introduced, he had insisted that she and Dwight drop the prefix of “Mr.”)

“Why not? Life is a gift, and to refuse a gift is churlish.” He
glanced down ruefully at his stout belly. “But I daresay I should be a good sight thinner if I didn’t enjoy the nutritional oblations so much.”

The old Englishman’s thick haunches and short, very wide legs were clad in dandified white flannels, a cravat circled his roly-poly neck, and he had rolled up his shirt sleeves because, he told Roy, the California sun blessed his arms. A jolly halo of white hairs stood out from his pink skull.

Roy had never met anyone like the British conductor. It wasn’t his fame—lately through Joshua Fernauld she had met several famous people. None, however, possessed this gusto, this indefatigable delight. In his late seventies, Firelli fitted right in with the young people, so they felt none of the constraint that elders generally stamp on gatherings. He radiated good cheer and tolerance. His small raisindark eyes were innocently wise, nonjudgmental, accepting.

“I know what you mean.” Roy sighed. “Me, I never pass up a meal or snack—as if you couldn’t tell.”

“You? Tosh!” He tilted his large, haloed head admiringly at her new shorts and the hand-me-down blouse that bared the freckled upper curves of her breasts. “Tosh, I say. Little Roy, if only you knew how perfect you are.”

They were reclining on chaises near the pool. The water churned with Dwight’s methodical Australian crawl and Althea’s swift butterfly. Roy, having the tag end of her period, couldn’t go in.

“Firelli, why are you in Beverly Hills?”

“To raise filthy lucre. England needs the stuff, you Americans have it.”

Too late she remembered reading about the posh benefits he was doing: with Firelli, though, one felt no humiliation at ignorance. “I’m mad for your records,” she said.

He leaned forward, unabashedly delighted at her compliment. “Which is your very favorite?” he asked.

“The one that has ‘Full Moon and Empty Arms.’”

“The Rachmaninoff, yes. I think it’s jolly good, too.”

“When’s the next concert?”

“I conducted at the Bowl three nights ago. That’s my coda. I stay for a few days at Belvedere. Then it’s back across the pond.” He made a face. “That convoy zigzagging brings on violent seasickness, it does.”

She wanted to ask how well he knew the Cunninghams, but didn’t, not because of any reticence with Firelli but because Althea, squirrely-secretive about her family, might construe this as prying, and Roy did not care to poke any holes in their rewoven friendship.

Firelli pushed heavily to his stubby feet, panting a little. “I am going inside for a cuppa and a snooze. Tell the others I’ll see them at dinner.”

Roy watched the stout little figure waddle up through terracing toward the gracious, rosy-bricked mansion. Imagine! Me talking to
Firelli,
buddy-buddy!

Dwight hauled himself from the deep end, chest heaving. The polio had slightly atrophied his left leg, and the thigh muscles were a shade less stocky than the right.

Althea, too, got out of the water, pulling off her rubber cap to shake her pale, lovely hair. “The maestro gone up to the house?”

“Yes, he said he’d see us at dinner. He seemed tired.”

“He’s been wearing himself out since the war began, and this tour’s been a huge strain. Mrs. Firelli used to make him rest, but she died last year. That’s why Daddy insisted he stay at Belvedere for a few days.” Althea turned to where Dwight was drying himself off with one of Belvedere’s luxurious pool towels. “Dwight, how about a Blue Ribbon?”

“Is there one?”

“No. That’s why I asked.” Smiling, Althea went through the open French doors.

Roy asked Dwight quietly, “Enjoying yourself?”

“The living legend! Firelli! I can’t believe it!”

“Who can? And what about Belvedere?”

“It’s really incredible.” His eyes were fixed on the shadowed poolhouse, where Althea bent over the miniature refrigerator to get the beer. “Althea’s totally different than I thought.”

“Phooey on first impressions,” said Roy, forgetting she always trusted them.

After dinner—eaten by flickering candlelight on the upper veranda—the old Englishman disconcerted and delighted them by sitting down at the music-room grand piano and, with superb rhythmic swing, playing any popular song they named.

After he hoisted his stout self upstairs, the party pooped out.

Dwight said, “Listen, maybe we better get on home.”

“Here.” Althea slipped the car keys from her slacks pocket, draping the chain over her long, slender forefinger. “You two take the wagon, bring it back when you come over tomorrow.”

Roy glanced at Dwight. The overhead lights caught his eyes with an odd flatness, and as he gazed back at her, his broad lips drawn tightly over his large, square teeth, a vulpine smile that excited Roy so that she could scarcely breathe.

They drove up to a dark, narrow ledge overlooking Beverly Hills.
Lights blinked below while the radio spread the cool, limpid notes of Benny Goodman’s “And the Angels Sing.”

“C’mon over here,” Dwight said, putting his arm around her, drawing her to him, kissing her. The skin of his face felt hot yet oddly dry, and he smelled clean, of chlorine from the pool. While they kissed, the hands Roy had longed to cup her breasts, did. Her pulses beating a staccato, she imagined she would swoon.

The radio ballad changed. His grasp roughened, foraying under the square cut neckline of her blouse, and his tongue thrusts pushed deeper into her throat. She felt a chill. “Don’t,” she murmured with the faintest reproval and gripped his thick broad wrist.

In this Oldsmobile station wagon she had necked with servicemen, pick-ups, yes, yet all seemed to recognize a code: they had gone as far as Roy had let them, sometimes persisting in a wordless tug of war, but when, by her actions, she let it be known that there was nothing doing, that she was a “nice” girl, they desisted and either went back to kissing or sulkily removed themselves to the other side of the seat, adjusting uniform trousers.

Dwight, though, ignored her restraining grasp. His hands clamped like an iron pectoral on the bare flesh below her brassiere.

She squirmed. “Stop it.”

“Want you so, baby.”

The endearment thrilled her, and for a moment she gave his hands autonomy. He made a swift sortie, pushing down the zipper of her shorts to invade below the waist of her underpants. Horribly mortified—he surely must feel the elastic sanitary belt—she tried to tell him to stop, but his tongue trapped her voice. His fingers jabbed downward, grabbing crisp brown hair.

He pulled back, and his mouth wet against hers, he said, “I have a safe.”

Safe? A word she had encountered before in this station wagon, and it baffled her. Though Roy talked sophisticatedly, she had only a muddled, unclear acquaintance with the physiological truths of sex. What, exactly, was a safe? It certainly had to do with the ultimate surrender. Was
that
what Dwight wanted of her?

“It’ll be absolutely all right, I promise you,” he said, sprawling onto her, squashing her down flat on the seat, pushing at her shorts. Using both hands, she shoved him, but he was too strong for her. With a loud, vibrant sound, the shorts tore.

“No!” Summoning all her force, she squirmed from under him. In the wrestle, her knee must have caught him in some vital place, for he released her with an agonized groan.

Pulling back to the wheel, he hunched over.

“Don’t be like this,” she whispered. “I care so much.”

“Some way you show it. Jesus, you could’ve permanently damaged something.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Dwight.”

“Listen, I don’t care you’ve got the curse.”

A subject so taboo that hearing it spoken aloud was like being doused with ice water. “It’s not that,” she mumbled.

“You put out for the others. Pete says you do, he says everybody at Beverly High knows about the Big Two.”

Roy began to cry, her hiccuping little sobs sounding hollow in the dark privacy for which she—in her romantic idiocy—had yearned.

Dwight turned up the radio. Under the cover of a station break, he asked, “Is it because of my leg?”

“Oh, Dwight . . . how can you think that?” She blew her nose, and while Herb Jeffries sang of flamingoes, she mumbled, “That stuff at school, it’s all a horrible mistake. . . . Althea and I, we act different from the others, so people invent the most horrendous lies about us. It’s not true, not true at all. We aren’t that kind of girls.” She blew her nose again, adding in a bleakly apologetic little voice, “I’m a virgin.”