Part 11 (2/2)

”Two of these in that size, please. And you don't really mind stretch socks too much, do you? Size thirty-three shorts, mmm? No, don't wrap them. I can pop them right in here.” She lifted the small suitcase up onto the counter, a cheap one of pale blue anodized aluminum. As she put the articles in, I got a glimpse of some feminine things, and some drug store parcels. She latched it and waited for her change.

”We've got a flight in about twenty-five minutes,” she said.

I carried the case out of the store into the waiting room area. I carried it to a quiet s.p.a.ce and put it down and turned to her and said, ”Have you lost your fool mind?”

She locked strong icy fingers onto my wrist and looked up at me and said, ”It's all right. Really. It's all right.”

”But...: ”I couldn't get the luggage back. It was stowed aboard. It'll be taken care of in New York. Look. I've been a grownup for a long time.”

”It's just that...”

”Shut up, darling. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Do you want me to draw pictures for you? Stop looking like a spavined moose. Say you're glad. Say something.”

I put fingertips on her cheek, ran my thumb along the black gloss of her eyebrow. ”Okay. Something.”

She closed her eyes and s.h.i.+vered. ”Oh G.o.d. No claims, Trav. Nothing like that. Either way.”

”Either way.”

”Just don't laugh.”

”You know better than that.”

I read consternation in her expression. ''Maybe I'm just not what you... Maybe you never really... You could have been just being polite, and now...”

”You know better than that too. Shut up, dear.”

”I wired New York.”

”Kindly excuse delay.”

”Dammit, we've never even really kissed. My knees are all wobbly and strange. Please lead me to a drink, darling.”

During the flight, in spite of all the persuasive immediate magic of Girl, in spite of scent, closeness, dark eyes to drown in, and the shallow-breathed feeling of expectancy, the workman part of my mind kept moving in old and seamy patterns. We'd made a big swing, and, one by one, we'd been dropping them out of the final count.

Carl Abelle, terror of the ski lifts, dangerous as a prat fall on a bunny slope. Sonny Catton, cooked meat in a pretty whoosh and bloom of high octane. Nancy Abbott, cooked just as thoroughly but over a lower flame. No point in checking Harvey and Richie, the Cornell kids. Their biggest problem was to find someone, anyone, who would ever believe their story. Caswell Edgars was out of it. And out of just about everything else in the world too. Ives was gone, and violently. So was Patty M'Gruder. If old Abbott, Nancy's father, had any luck left, he was dead by now too. Less violently but less pleasantly.

It was narrowing down. To a yacht b.u.m named Vance M'Gruder, to a waitress named Whippy, to a r.e.t.a.r.ded little man named Bogen. It was like going through an empty house, checking the closets. Either it was more complex than I could comprehend, or so it made even less sense. But there was a nastiness somewhere in it that was out of control. I sensed that, and sensed it was aimed at Lysa Dean, and maybe at me, and I couldn't imagine who or how. I knew only two things. I was running out of closets. And I was glad I hadn't been at that house party. So I held the hand of the girl, and told myself it was a fine world, and filed away my doom-thoughts.

A bored kid built a s.h.i.+ny little model city with his new kit and when it was finished he gave it one h.e.l.l of a kick and spewed bit hunks of it out across the desert floor. We tilted down across the afternoon, seeing an unreality of blue pools and green fairways against that old lizard-skin brown of the everlasting desert. We came in with a batch of pilgrims-the brand new ones trying to be cool about their interest in the air terminal slots, about all the hawking and proclaiming and loud instant promotions. All the old pilgrims wore the memory of pain, and were impatient to get to that certain table at that certain place, in time for crucifixion.

I noticed a pair of appraisers as our group came through the gate, backs against the wall, staring left and right, somnolently vigilant, bouncing the little black glances off the pilgrims like aimed bb shot. They have the index memories of the ten thousand faces in disrepute in Slotsville, plus a feel for new trouble on the way-the ones who have come to get it any way they can, including using a gun on the winners.

My lady performed no transit services this time. It was a fine and pleasant distinction related to the absolute silence of the airplane ride, the hand tightly held, the dark eyes hooded. She stood four square, still and humble, patient and sensuous, while I, with no bag to retrieve, went off to d.i.c.ker a vehicle and, with ironic impulse, took that most typical of game-town cars, a big airconditioned convertible, this one in metallic blue-green, white leather, ominously silent as Forest Lawn.

There had been a place I liked, way out on the Strip, an utterly gameless and consequently expensive motor house called the Apache, and I knew it would be meaningless and would astonish her should I consult her. At the desk I said I had been there before, knew I wanted a double cabana at the pool, gave the porter a dollar to let me have the key and find my own way.

It was a great long room in gold and green, with two huge beds, all of it too bright in the dazzle of poolside sun. I pulled the cords that creaked the heavy yellow draperies across the acre of window wall, turning the room into a shadowy gloom of gold.

The whisper of the hushed cooled air made it an oasis, a thousand years from yesterday, and ten thousand years from tomorrow. Every fifth breath she took was very deep, with a little catch, like a hiccup at the high end. I put my hands upon her, at waist and nape of neck, stopping her sleepy sway.

The man who sits in the steel office and throws the switches and pushes the b.u.t.tons can rest his hand on his desk and feel, more like a low-cycle sound than any measurable vibration, the power that thrums in the bowels of the light plant. She felt unyielding and I could not guess how it would be for us. Then she gave a little crooked sigh, turned her mouth upward to me, leaned with heat and softness and purpose.

There is one kind of rightness that is an almost-rightness, because it is merciless and total and ends in a deathlike lethargy.

Then there is another kind of almost-rightness that can never be finished.

Both of these make you strangers to each other. Both of these things make you untidily anxious to give and receive rea.s.surances.

But with Dana it was that rare and selfless rightness which moves with but the gentlest hiatus from one completion to the next, each a growth in knowing and closeness while, unheeded, the deep sweet hours go by. After all the fierceness is gone, it then astonishes by returning in that last time which ends it without question for now, and she is spent and dies there, slumbrous and fond.

I fought sleep. I made myself get up. I covered her over and went and showered and dressed. I turned on a meager light in the room and sat on the bed, pushed black curls aside, kissed the sweet nape of a musky neck. She turned to peer up at me, her face soft and emptied and young. ”Yuhraw dress!” she mumbled in accusation.

”I'm going out for a little while. You sleep, honey.”

She tried to frown. ”Y'be careful, d'ling.”

”Love you,” I said. It doesn't cost a thing. Not when you do. I kissed a soft and smiling mouth, and I think she was asleep before I stood up. I left the low light on and let myself out.

I walked toward the main buildings feeling all that strange ambivalence of the conquering male. Goaty self-esteem, slight melancholy, a mildly pleasant and unfocused guilt, a tinsoldier strut.

But something more than that with her. A feeling of achieving and establis.h.i.+ng ident.i.ties, hers and mine.

There had been no dishonesties. And so, in all that total giving and taking, I had been aware of her as Dana, so vital and so enduring.

The slight physical strangeness of the very beginning of it had lasted but a very short time. Then she was all known and dear. As if we had been apart for a very long time and found each other again, quickly getting over the awkwardness of separation.

After that it was a knowing and re-knowing in a profound way which has no words. It became a symbolic dialogue. I give thee. I take thee. I prize thee.

And there was also the fatuous feeling of enormous luck. It is such a d.a.m.ned blind chance after all.

I worked my way through two bemused gin and bitters while they seared my steak. Over coffee I stopped marveling at myself and got a local paper and read the more detailed account of the murder of Patty M'Gruder.

Then I drove downtown and parked and wandered through that strange area of cut-rate stores, pastel marriage chapels, open-sided casinos bathed in a garish fluorescence. Spooks trudged amid the tourists, and the cops kept a close sharp watch. Old ladies yanked at the handles, playing their dimes out of paper cups. Music bashed across the dry night air, in conflict with itself, and in the noisier alcoves one could buy anything from a dream book to a plastic bird t.u.r.d.

The Four Treys was a long bright narrow jungle of machinery. What happened to the old-fas.h.i.+oned slot machine? Now you can pull two handles, hit three s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps and an astronaut and get a moon-pot, which is one and a half jack pots. The change girls sat behind wire, popping open the paper cylinders of silver, dumping it into paper cups for the people. At regular intervals came the clash of money into the scoop, and a shrillness of joy.

I had just wanted a look. I needed no directions. Presently I got back behind the wheel of the luxury device afforded me by a famous movie star and drove off again through the neoned night.

Twelve.

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