Please Write for Details (27 page)

At breakfast she sat with John and Barbara and Miles Drummond and told them that she was really getting worried. And she gave them a more complete report on what had really happened.

“I keep feeling I should get in my car and go up there.”

“There are how many people in that city? Four million?” John Kemp said. “You can’t do any good that way. Park is considerably over twenty-one, and I haven’t noticed anything incompetent about Miss Bitsy.”

“But this isn’t
like
her,” Mary Jane said. “I suppose everybody has the classy idea they’re holed up in a hotel room someplace. Bitsy isn’t that kind of girl. She isn’t engaged to him or anything.”

“I’d suggest you wait until tomorrow,” John Kemp said. “If they aren’t back by, say, tomorrow noon, I think we could notify the embassy. They must have some apparatus for tracking down wayward citizens.”

“The child is under age,” Miles said. “But I don’t really think I could be held responsible for her. There’s nothing in the prospectus …”

“Oh, stop sweating!” Mary Jane said angrily.

“Well, really, Miss Elmore!”

“I’m cross and you would be too. Drink your coffee and stop looking so hurt, Mr. Drummond. I’ll wait until tomorrow. And then
I’ll
do something. I don’t know what it will be, but it will work up some kind of storm.”

Agnes Partridge Keeley paused by the table and said, “Class in five minutes, dears!” She wagged a playful chiding finger, and bracelets jingle-jangled on the fat-creased wrist. She billowed away, marshmallow haunches spreading the fabric of pale purple slacks, straw slippers slapping, and, under the flimsiness of the back of the peach-colored blouse, her bra straps cut deeply across the yielding flesh.

Mary Jane said reflectively, “Now just where would you go to buy a pair of slacks like that? What size would you ask for? My God!”

“Now, now,” Miles said. “Don’t be cruel, dear. She’s really a very nice woman.”

“Personally, I think she’s as mean as a snake,” Mary Jane said defiantly. “How about that poop sheet on Gam Torrigan she’s been showing around, making out like it’s a big secret? She showed me and I saw her whispering to Harvey Ardos,
and I’ll just bet she’s showed it to every-damn-body. She show you, John?”

“Yes. Actually it doesn’t say much. I guess if he was trying to get a job in the trust department of a bank it would queer him. But I don’t think he’s interested.”

“She wanted me to … discharge him,” Miles said uncomfortably. “But with the session nearly half over … and it would leave just one teacher …” He stood up suddenly and patted his mouth with his napkin. “I do so wish we wouldn’t have these little intrigues.”

After he walked away, Barbara said, “You know, I think he’s really getting better. He’s almost taking hold. You hardly ever see him looking as if he was going to cry any more.”

“Time for instruction,” John said. “You joining us, Mary Jane?”

“Oh, I guess so.”

Agnes Keeley led her little group three hundred yards down the road, followed by the red bus. Fidelio unloaded the chairs, easels, and paintboxes. Agnes busily supervised the placement of the chairs. The morning group consisted of John, Barbara, Mary Jane, Klauss, Hildabeth McCaffrey, Monica and Harvey. She set them up on a grassy area facing a wall forty feet away. The wall had once been painted bright blue and now it had faded. A lush flame vine, loaded with blooms, covered half the wall area. There was a stunted tree at the left.

“Now is everyone set up? Today we’re going to see if we can’t get more grace and delicacy into water color. As I’ve been telling you, you must work quickly, and you can’t correct, not with transparent water colors. And please pay some attention to the shadows of the flowers and leaves against the wall. If you neglect the shadows, it will look as though your vine was pasted against the wall, or painted on it. Use your pencil very lightly to get the rough dimensions and perspective. I’m glad to see you with us today, Mary Jane. Monica, dear, I want you to try not to draw in each teensy detail. Just try to suggest the masses of color. And Harvey, please try to make your colors light and vibrant. Use more water and see if you can keep from making everything look so moody and gloomy. All right, everyone. Let’s begin.”

They worked under the increasing glare of the morning sun. Those who attended Miss Keeley’s classes regularly soon
acquired a high-altitude tan. Agnes merely became more pink, with a constantly peeling nose and forehead.

Agnes walked from person to person, with continual comment and criticism. When she looked over John’s shoulder she said with a labored coyness that did not hide the edge of irritation, “You’re not doing the assignment again, John. You’re just doing the little tree and you’re not even using transparent water colors.”

“It has an interesting shape.”

“That background looks terribly … smeary.”

He did not bother to tell her that it was underpainting for the eventual abstraction he might do if he was satisfied with the composition.

“Hildabeth, you have a very good start. I’m very proud of you.”

“Now I’m not so scared, I can just slash it right on there fast.”

“Mr. Klauss, you’re using too much water again, and your colors are all bleached out.”

“Barbara! Oil inks? They’re so dreadfully hard to control. I’m really afraid you’re under John’s influence. But at least you’re tackling that wall, that lovely wall.”

And so, in the hot morning silence, they worked, each with his own purpose and diligence. The bugs shrilled, and cattle munched the barranca grass. In a house a hundred yards away someone had a radio on so loud that the speaker diaphragm blurred all the sounds into a metallic clashing. A big plane went over, very high. There was a far whine of trucks in low gear descending from Tres Cumbres.

And there were the inevitable spectators, content to stand and stare throughout the morning. Solemn ragged children. An old man who carried two live white pigeons, a horny finger hooked under the string that bound their ankles. The upside-down birds strained to keep their heads upright and, infrequently, they made soft hollow sounds as though they spoke to each other in sadness and wisdom of impending death. A pulque man paused to watch for a time, halting his burro which carried the goatskins full of the warm and sour brew. When they got too close, Agnes would run at them, taking several little steps, and say, “Shoo!” And they would back up slowly.

The man known as Monica’s admirer arrived a little later than usual and, with the care and talent of a master strategist,
selected a place that was as close as possible without risking being shooed back by Agnes, a place that was in the shade, and a place that provided an unimpeded view of Monica. On this day she wore short, short shorts of gray twill with the cuffs turned up, and a pale-blue seersucker halter which, with utmost valiance, was barely able to perform its function. The sun had browned her smoothly and deeply, and as she worked there was a glisten of perspiration on the brown roundness of thighs and calves, shoulders and waist.

The admirer was a loutish-looking fellow, a dark and broad-faced type, with a wide belly and loose jaw structure, and eyes like little damp blueberries set close on either side of a fleshy and flattened nose. The only sparkling thing about him was the crisp white straw sombrero which he wore pushed back from a low forehead, and held in place by a chin thong. He wore ragged, dun-colored shirt and trousers, and broken black boots. He could sit endlessly, tirelessly, on his heels, thick fists resting half clenched on his thighs. He looked out of proper time and place. He should have been back in the past, slitting gullets with Pancho Villa.

He sat and slowly chewed something unidentifiable. And the small eyes, quite expressionless and seeming never to blink, never moved from the figure of Monica. With each slow chew the lips gaped slightly to reveal the lower row of teeth, looking like little dusty brown pebbles. It was impossible to guess what slow thoughts moved through the brain behind the fixed eyes during the long mornings. John Kemp learned that it was easy to fall into the error of interpreting that blankness, of, in a sense, anthropomorphizing the man. If you thought you saw lust, you saw it. If you expected to see awe, you saw that. Kemp preferred to interpret it as a look of muted consternation, spiced with disbelief.

Monica Killdeering had become disconcerted by his stare the first morning he had appeared. Indeed, it was quite possible to imagine that were such a glance long leveled at the maiden in “September Morn,” she would soon break and plunge into the water, immersing herself until only her head showed. After the first two days of it, Monica reported for Agnes’ next sketching trip in a white turtleneck sweater and a full pleated skirt. Had it not been for her splendid constitution, she might have toppled off her stool by midmorning. As it was she skipped Gam’s afternoon class and napped that day. But the change of
raiment did not affect the intensity of the observation of her admirer.

When Agnes chose the device of longer walks to more obscure places, she outwitted him once. From then on he hung about in the vicinity of the hotel and tagged after the group.

At approximately his sixth appearance, it was Jeanie Wahl who became sufficiently indignant to attempt to put an end to it. She marched over to the man and spoke to him firmly and at length, in perfectly grammatical Castilian Spanish, spoken rapidly and in the uncompromising nasality of the Midwest.

It was only when she had finished and stood waiting for an answer that the man suddenly seemed to notice her. He unstuck his focused gaze and stared up at her blankly, stopping in the middle of his mastication with his mouth sagging half open. Jeanie spoke again. He kept staring at her. And then, with an almost imperceptible shrug, he continued with Monica where he had left off. Jeanie stamped her foot and marched back to her chair. John Kemp then went over to him. In his rough, make-shift Spanish he told the man it was not courteous to stare, to be on his way. The man looked up at him and for a few moments the tiny eyes were very ugly. He muttered something.

“What did he say?” Agnes asked.

“If I understood him, he was telling me this was now a free country, and his country, not mine.”

Outside of dressing Monica in a Mother Hubbard, or building a wall around her, it seemed that nothing could be done. For a few days they had made jokes about her admirer. And, gradually, his presence was taken for granted, even by Monica. She resumed her habitual briefness of attire. Only Harvey Ardos remained conscious of the man.

He felt a strange empathy with the rude and sloppy stranger. And a kind of envy. He wished he had the boldness to be able to sit and stare at her. But all he could risk were those fleeting glances which invariably made him feel giddy.

Harvey was deeply ashamed of the carnality which made him so constantly aware of the taut abundancies of Monica. He felt as if he was dishonoring her. She was, as he said to himself, all lady. And she was an Older Woman—maybe four or five years older—and she had a College Education and she was a Teacher. And she was so damn patient with a stupid linthead. But oh dear Jesus God how she was stacked.

He wished she’d keep it covered up more. But it wasn’t like she was waving it around, not like that Rose that would come into the stockroom when things were slow, swinging it as if she had a limp in both legs. No, Monica was just being comfortable. And practical, like. When they went down into town she always wore dresses and blouses and skirts and so on, on account of how it said in the guidebook the Mexicans didn’t like it, women going around in shorts and so on. But around the hotel it was shorts and halters, or those leotard things. Maybe it was practical as all hell, but he wished she’d keep more covered up. It would make everything a lot easier all the way around.

He still wasn’t real comfortable about calling her Monica. It seemed more proper if he called her Miss Killdeering. One thing sure, he was learning a lot from her. She got those books for him the time she went up to Mexico City, and she was all the time getting more from that little rental library down in the hotel court in town. And she’d made such a big long apology and turned so red in the face the time she asked him if it was all right if she corrected him when he used bad English. And he had to explain to her that he really did know better English than he was using, but when you didn’t have hardly any education, then you made yourself talk worse. Defiance, like.

It was wonderful the way she was so patient. He’d never got such a boot out of anything as out of the long talks they had. He’d never talked about such stuff before. Thought about it, in a kind of fuzzy way, but never talked about it. Religion, philosophy, mankind. The real big things. And she never laughed at your crazy ideas. Not once. And she kept telling you what a good mind you had. Which is a lot of crap, but makes good listening.

But if she didn’t have that built, it would be one hell of a lot easier keeping track of the conversation. After Gam’s class they’d usually walk out to the main highway and take a bus down to the center of town, and get one of those sidewalk tables and sit there until it got to be dark and it was time to go back to dinner. They’d drink beer, and it was like in the movies, the people you see at sidewalk tables, really talking up a storm. But every once in a while he’d be talking along, trying to make the words fit the involved idea that was so clear in his head, and she’d do some damn thing like move without meaning to so their knees touched, or stretch a little, sort of
arching her back, or twist in her chair to look back over her shoulder for the waiter, and that big idea he was talking about was just gone. Pow! There he’d be with his mouth half open and his whole head as empty as a brass drum. With a little help from her he could usually get back on the track, but sometimes it was gone for keeps.

And lots of times they had been walking and where it was uneven they’d accidentally bunk hips. And that really scoured the mind clean. It made him want to drop and bang his head on the rocks and roar like a tiger.

One of the worst times was last week, when they had walked out after dinner to look at the moon and talk it up some more. She had been standing close beside him, wearing that white sweater of hers, and when she turned once, she accidentally brushed one of those things right across his upper arm and dragged it back across again when she turned back. And it had been a damn good thing she’d been the one doing the talking at the time. It had curled his toes tight in his shoes. After they said good night, he tried staying in his room and knew he couldn’t. If he’d stayed in there he would have banged his head on the wall. So he had dressed and gone out to the road and run as hard and fast as he could, all the way up to the barracks, and then turned and run all the way back down past the hotel, and turned and run to the hotel again. And just outside the gate that Texas redhead had said, “What in the blue-eyed world are you doing, Harvey?”