The Tin Horse: A Novel (43 page)

And maybe none of that mattered. Over the years, I would see generations of high school romances in all their drama—and their evanescence. And I wondered if Danny and I had been outgrowing each other already, as we moved from high school into the world; and if that was why, the next spring, I was ready to fall in love with Paul.

Paul had been part of my life all along. We had two classes together,
history and English, and we gravitated to the same group of campus left-wingers. I was grateful for the help he had given me after Barbara left—and for his discretion. Word got around Boyle Heights about her dancing at the Trocadero, but I never caught wind of any rumor about the girlie pictures. Seeing Paul around campus or at a party, I occasionally caught a hint of the shivery, caressing look he used to give me, but he no longer tried to unsettle me. I supposed he felt sorry for me, or embarrassed, since he’d seen the photos.

Then, one afternoon in May, we got on the same streetcar from campus at the end of the day and sat next to each other. And when we got off in Boyle Heights, he asked if I wanted to take a walk.

“I’ve got at least two hours of reading to do,” I said.

“It’s spring,” he said. “Smell.” We were standing beside a night-blooming jasmine, just unfurling its petals in the late afternoon and emitting an indolent perfume.

On the streetcar, we had discussed what the entire country was obsessing about: the war. The week before, Germany had launched simultaneous blitzkrieg invasions into Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Holland and Luxembourg had already surrendered. Now France and Belgium were fighting for their lives—with help from the British Expeditionary Force, which included Danny and Burt’s unit from Canada.

On our walk, though, the war didn’t exist.
It’s spring
, Paul had said, and it was as if by announcing it, he made spring the central fact of the universe, more real than anything else. It was one of those perfect late afternoons in May, the sun pleasantly warm yet soft, a sun that kissed everything—the streets, buildings, Paul, and me—with golden light. Flowers bloomed riotously, the jasmine and also California poppies in orange, yellow, and crimson. Walking to Hollenbeck Park, I noticed my legs gliding in my hip joints with an animal joy I hadn’t experienced since I used to dance.

There was another kind of awareness, too, a return of the current I had once felt between us. But it was no longer a flicker, a
could-this-be-sexual
frisson. As if the current had gained force from months of lying dormant (months, Paul told me later, when he had held back, giving me time to get over Danny), it permeated that afternoon. It was present in the glances
Paul and I gave each other, in the brilliant poppies, in the softness of the grass on my bare feet when I took my shoes off in the park. And the heady jasmine—whenever I remembered our first kiss, that afternoon in the park, the memory was drenched with the fragrance of jasmine.

I didn’t love Paul with the sweet abandon of my love for Danny. Thank God. A college woman now, I cringed to think of the girlish sweetness and naivete I had only recently escaped. That summer of 1940, Paul became the first and only man with whom I would ever make love. Still, I reserved parts of me he couldn’t enter, keeping him from getting too close through ironic remarks. He fought back avidly. How we thrived on our battles! Going with Paul—and, later, being married to him—had the kind of charge I used to envy between Danny and Barbara.

I wrote to Danny to tell him I was going with Paul; I felt I owed him that. He didn’t respond, but I didn’t know if that was because of my news or because he’d started a dangerous new job. I had heard through the Boyle Heights grapevine that following the evacuation from Dunkirk at the end of May, Danny, whose first languages were Polish and Yiddish, had volunteered to go behind enemy lines as a spy.

On September 12, 1940, exactly one year after the last time I’d seen Barbara, I was on edge all day. All of us were, privately, unable to bear mentioning it. Surely, wherever she’d gone and whatever filled her day, she was thinking of us. And her persistence in
our
thoughts, in our yearning, was so intense, I felt as if we could will her into physical presence, at the very least that we could summon her voice on the phone. Magical thinking. Of course, there was nothing. Then the day ended, and it was September 13, then September 14, and so on and on.

LIFE STUBBORNLY CONTINUED
.

I completed my sophomore year at USC, making the dean’s list as I had the year before. Paul and I broke up after one of our spats exploded, and for those moments I loathed him—and loathed knowing I’d given him power to hurt me. But the fight also made me realize how much Paul meant to me. And by the time we got back together a week later, with fevered makeup sex, I couldn’t remember the specifics of the fight. (During our
marriage, we used to joke that neither of us ever thought of divorce, but we often contemplated murder.)

The war spread. Germany attacked Yugoslavia, Greece, and even the Soviet Union, to the anguish of our leftist group. There was constant debate about whether the United States should get into the fight, and more Boyle Heights boys went to enlist in the Canadian army, two of them immediately after the terrible news that Burt Weber had been killed fighting in North Africa.

In my house, there were just five places at the dinner table; no one made a mistake and set six anymore. I knew from Audrey that Mama still went out a couple of days a week, and I assumed she was going to Hollywood, but she no longer acted as if she were sleepwalking; she seemed herself again.

I hated anniversaries, those false markers on the calendar that raised a flutter of anticipation I couldn’t suppress. The following March 28 was Barbara’s twentieth birthday, March 29 mine. I stayed out late both of those nights, refusing to wait at home for a letter or call that wasn’t going to come. And both nights I got drunk, which in my case didn’t involve dancing on tables; when I drank, I really did get “tight”—wound up, archly funny, and, according to Paul, sexy in a sort of dangerous way, as if I might have a switchblade concealed in my bra. When the next September 12 came along—two years—I did the same.

It was 1941. I was an adult, a junior at USC, and no longer a virgin. A boy I knew had died in battle. If there were times when I ached to share a story with Barbara or hear her laugh—if, alone in
our
bedroom, I opened the lid of my treasure box and held her note, or found a scarf she’d left behind and pressed it to my nose to catch a whiff of her—the next morning I was brisk and cool again: Katharine Hepburn in
The Philadelphia Story
, Rosalind Russell in
His Girl Friday
, Bette Davis in anything.

I felt as if I were in a movie, delivering lines that surprised me with their sophisticated bite, the first time I spoke to Philip Marlowe. I guess he brought that out in me.

It happened that October at Leo’s bookstore. I was working alone that afternoon. An ominous sky and thunder growling in the foothills had discouraged paying customers, leaving just a handful of regulars, people
who would read entire books as they stood in the aisle—and whom I trusted not to steal anything. It was enough to glance at them occasionally from the office, where I was studying for a pre-law class.

I looked up, alerted by the bell over the door, when Philip came in. I kept looking because he didn’t belong. Not because he was handsome in the rough-hewn style of movie thugs; we got customers who looked like that. But those men entered the store like every other book lover—even as their feet carried them forward, their eyes kept darting toward the shelves on either side, and after a few steps, they paused, enticed by a title or the look of a binding. This man headed straight toward me, and though he was polite as he elbowed his way down the narrow aisle, I sensed a contained violence in him that put me on alert and intrigued me.

He opened his wallet and flashed a star at me. Apart from chatting with the beat cops who stopped by the store, my only experiences with the police had involved helping Mollie hide from them and having them call Papa to look at girls in the morgue. I said nothing, collecting my thoughts. And I took off my glasses, distancing myself; though a moment later I realized it was the gesture I’d adopted as a teenager around boys. Well, the cop
was
good-looking; more than that, his eyes hinted at intelligence and humor.

He asked if I’d do him a favor.

“What kind of favor?” Whoever this cop was chasing, I figured I might be on their side.

But he wanted to know about Arthur Gwynn Geiger. And he asked as if he wanted something bad to happen to Geiger, which made me inclined to help him in any way I could. I hated Geiger for ruining Barbara, even though blaming him wasn’t rational. He had only sold the photos; I should have turned my wrath toward Alan Yardley for taking and peddling them, or the capitalist system for turning girls into commodities, or why not Barbara herself for being such a little fool? But no matter; it was Geiger who repelled me.

Still, I didn’t know what the cop wanted with Geiger. And was this man really a cop? Anyone could make up a badge with a star, and something about the man felt slightly off. Stalling as I debated whether to trust him, I parried his questions. And flirted a little. He parried back. I had never met
a cop with such an agile mind. I’d been right about the intelligence in his eyes.

He asked for an 1860 edition of
Ben-Hur
with a specific erratum. I looked it up and saw that Ben-Hur hadn’t been published until 1880.

“There isn’t one,” I said.

“Right. The girl in Geiger’s store didn’t know that.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” I had seen the girl who worked for Geiger, a slithery sexpot; I questioned whether she even knew how to read.

Then the man told me he was a private detective, and the things that had seemed wrong about him fell into place. I gave him my impression of Geiger, not saying a word about Barbara, of course. And not mentioning Geiger’s business in smut—clearly he already knew about that.

Two days later, every bookseller on the boulevard buzzed with the news that Geiger had been shot. Murdered.

The next week, the detective returned to Leo’s bookstore. He introduced himself this time—Philip Marlowe—and asked if he could buy me dinner when I got off work.

“Did you shoot Arthur Geiger?” I asked. I would have cheered to hear about Geiger’s public disgrace or financial ruin. I wouldn’t have minded in the least if he’d been beaten to a bloody pulp. But murder …

“Didn’t you see the newspapers?” he said. “He was killed by a business associate. A falling-out among thieves.”

“Do you believe everything you read in the papers?”

He laughed. It was a good laugh, with nothing mean in it. When he finished laughing, he regarded me seriously. “I didn’t kill Geiger. But I killed another man. I was protecting someone. Maybe you wouldn’t see it that way, though, and you might not want to have dinner with me.”

I considered it. Not just his having killed someone but the dangerous, tantalizing spark I felt with him.

“On the other hand,” he drawled, “you might want to tell me what
your
beef was with Geiger, and if it’s settled now.”

How had he guessed I had my own reasons for hating Geiger? “Is this just an invitation for hamburgers?” I said. “Or will you buy me a steak?”

Dinner turned out to be steak, although it bore no resemblance to anything I knew as “steak”—the cheap cuts that Mama cooked on rare occasions
and parceled out among us. At the dimly lit Hollywood dive to which Philip took me, the waiter placed a slab of porterhouse in front of me. It was the most mouthwatering meat I had ever tasted.

I hadn’t planned to say anything about Barbara. But I’d had a glass of Scotch, and the place was smoky and intimate, and Philip listened with such deep attention, his surprisingly gentle eyes offering understanding but not, thank God, pity. I ended up telling him everything over dinner that night, about the dirty photographs and Arthur Geiger and Yardley, whom I suspected of having lied to me, but how could I have forced him to talk? I even shared the awful moment in which I found Barbara with Danny. I’m sure that getting people to open up was one of Marlowe’s professional skills, but what really made me trust him was that he reminded me of Paul. He had the same essential … 
Goodness
is an old-fashioned word, and it seems an odd choice for a man who’d just told me he had killed someone. But in Philip, as in Paul, I saw a good man—fair, generous, compassionate, a man of principle who would choose his battles wisely but, once he decided to fight, wouldn’t back down.

After I told him about Barbara, he made a proposal. He’d do a bit of sleuthing and see if he could find out anything about her. In exchange, would I help him with occasional library research, things like that?

I didn’t say yes right away. I’d gotten my hopes up too many times already, only to have them crushed. And after two years there seemed even less chance of success. But I decided it was wrong not to tell Mama and Papa about his offer. They insisted on meeting him. Mama, especially, adored him. In my mother’s living room, the muscular detective came across like a big, gentle dog, albeit one who was extremely well-spoken. He listened with respectful kindness when she talked about leaving her village as a girl and never seeing her parents again, and he asked for a second piece of her apple cake. And so our agreement began.

He called a few days later with my first “assignment”—going to the library and perusing the newspaper society pages for the past six months, looking for connections between a society matron and a handsome young man who I figured was a con artist. It was a tedious task that cured any illusions I might have about detective work being exciting. He had me give him the results over dinner, his treat at the dive with the fantastic steaks.
He had news for me, too. He had gone to Alan Yardley’s studio in Hollywood but discovered Yardley had closed his business nearly two years ago; he’d moved to Twentynine Palms, near Joshua Tree National Monument, according to the dentist who had an office next door.