Part 7 (1/2)

”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, sungla.s.ses s.h.i.+elding 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, burnis.h.i.+ng 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.

There are two men in panama hats at the table across the aisle who are playing cards.

A trio of couples behind us are arguing raucously about moral rearmament.

A man in the far corner is moving closer and closer to his date, a young Mexican girl who looks uneasy, her thin-slitted eyes darting around.

”Is anybody hungry?” Bill is saying. But the rest of us don't seem to answer, and then there are more drinks and Mike's arm is around my waist, fingers grazing my midriff.

”Don't forget that actor who was sweet on you.” Mike is laughing.

Everyone looks at Alice, who stares blankly.

”Don't you remember? That English fellow who kept saying, 'Measure the inseam, darling. The inseam.' ”

Alice smiles noncommittally, not meeting Bill's gaze.

”Remember how he made you run the tape measure?” Mike chortles, and Alice suddenly laughs, too, despite her efforts. I think maybe I laugh, too.

”I'm glad you don't have to do that anymore,” Bill says, determinedly lightly.

”They called her the Girl with the Tape.” Mike sighs. ”And they meant it fondly.”

”Oh, Mike,” Alice says dismissively. ”Where should we eat?”

”Let's dance,” I find myself saying, the music from inside swelling sweetly.

”Wonderful!” Alice clasps her hands together. ”Why eat when you can dance?”

”Shouldn't we eat first?” Bill says. ”These drinks must be falling hard on you.”

He is looking at Alice, but it is Mike who laughs. Laughs as if Bill has made a hilarious joke, and turns to me and holds out his hand and I take it. I take it.

And the next thing I know I am pressed against him on the small dance floor, the orange-gold lights of the bar cloaking us, tucking us closely together. The music is so beautiful I think I'll never hear such beautiful music again.

Later, I won't remember what was playing. But I remember one lyric buzzing hot in my ear over and over, ”It was a night filled with ... desperate.”

Later, the lyric won't make sense.

Later, I'll try to remember how it went. But I can't match it. Can't make it work. Can't make the words hang together right.

I'll just remember that we danced and then he seemed to know everything about me and seemed to see everything and he was so limited, such a horribly limited person, but that night he seemed like he knew everything and I would take it. Who was I not to take it?

At just past midnight, Mike deposits me at my door and says good night to us all. My brother and Alice, arms around each other, walk into their room, and I walk into my adjoining one. A few minutes later, I stumble into the shared bathroom. Holding on to the sink, dizzy with drinks and dancing, I laugh at my own reflection, its frenzied gaiety. How has all this happened?

Alice comes in a few minutes later, dress half off, hanging in front of her like a silky bib. I resist the sudden flash before my eyes of her, laid bare, on the dirty playing card. Dizzy with drink, I literally shake my head to knock the image out.

Giggling and hiccuping, she walks toward me, arms out. ”Help me, Lora. Bill's all thumbs.” Five minutes of giggly fumbling, of her b.u.t.tons going in and out of distended focus, and I undo her.

She tugs the top half of the dress down to her waist and shakes her arms free, facing the mirror. After a long look at herself, she reaches past me to my cold cream on the counter.

”I always wash the makeup off,” she stresses, waving past my face. ”No matter how smashed I am. If I can barely stand-if I have to hang on to the sink with one hand to see the mirror- I still do it.”

I nod gravely and watch her scoop the cream with two fingers.

Suddenly, we both hear a knock from my adjoining room.

”Someone's at my door,” I say. Alice's eyes widen. Then narrow.

”Honey, you'd better get it,” she says in a whisper, turning back to her reflection with a faint grin.

”Is it Mike?” I ask as she covers her face in white.

”Go get it, darling,” she says, her red lips still visible. ”I won't tell.”

Vaguely, I want to tell her she has the wrong idea, that I haven't invited Mike Standish back, that I don't know why he might be there, and that there is no secret to keep. Tell whom? But I can't form the sentences. It seems too exhausting. I manage only ”Maybe it's the bellboy ... room service by mistake ...”

She keeps looking straight into the mirror, her face a big blank now. I walk back into my room, closing the bathroom door behind me. My left shoe dragging in the carpet, I make it to my room's front door and say, touching the blond wood lightly, ”Who is it?”

”Little Jack Horner,” Mike says.

I open the door partway.

”Is that the one with the thumb and the pie,” I ask.

”Sure, baby.” He reaches a hand from behind him and shows me a bottle of champagne. ”Nightcap, room 411, five minutes or, if you'd like a personal escort, presently.”

When he speaks, his eyebrows rise and his round shoulders tilt forward and I stare at him for a moment, leaning hard against the rough edge of the door, and then I extend my hand without thinking. And I take his arm. And my hand doesn't even seem to make it halfway around its thickness. And his smile is so loose and so easy and only a half smile really, and I don't even stumble because, you see, he wouldn't stumble. He never stumbles at all. And as we walk along the red and tan diamonds on the carpet, the sconces releasing only a soft golden shadow for us, I think this might be all right.

Two hours later, staring up at the shadows of the banana leaves on the ceiling ... This is the end of everything. The phrase rings out and shoots through the air and quavers tightly, suspended, and does everything but dive into my chest. Could six words ever sound so ominous?

The following night, after a long day at the beach and the markets, we enjoy what becomes a nearly endless dinner on a commercial yacht anch.o.r.ed a few miles from sh.o.r.e. The service is so slow that it is two hours before the food arrives and, along with those at nearly every other occupied table, we become unintentionally fuzzy with drink.