Part 9 (1/2)
”Fruit salad,” Dwight Christian said.
”That's hindsight,” Ruthie Christian said.
”What the h.e.l.l does that mean?” Dwight Christian had stopped drinking martinis and lapsed into a profound irritability. ”Of course it's hindsight. Jesus Christ. 'Hindsight.' ”
”Janet loves you, Inez,” d.i.c.k Ziegler said. ”Don't ever forget that. Janet loves you.”
8.
DURING the time I spent talking to Inez Victor in Kuala Lumpur she returned again and again to that first day in Honolulu. This account was not sequential. For example she told me initially, perhaps because I had told her what Billy Dillon said about the crackers, about talking to Dwight and Ruthie Christian and to d.i.c.k Ziegler, but it had been late in the day when she talked to Dwight and Ruthie Christian and to d.i.c.k Ziegler.
First there had been the hospital.
She and Billy Dillon had gone directly from the airport to the hospital but Janet was being prepared for an emergency procedure to drain fluid from her brain and Inez had been able to see her only through the gla.s.s window of the intensive care unit.
They had gone then to the jail.
”I suppose Dwight'll be breaking out the champagne tonight,” Paul Christian had said in the lawyers' room at the jail.
Inez had looked at Billy Dillon. ”Why,” she said finally.
”You know.” Paul Christian smiled. He seemed relaxed, even buoyant, tilting back his wooden chair and propping his bare heels on the Formica table in the lawyers' room. His pants were rolled above his tanned ankles. His blue prison s.h.i.+rt was knotted jauntily at the waist. ”You'll be there. I'm here. You can celebrate. Why not.”
”Don't.”
”Don't what? Actually I'm glad you're here.” Paul Christian was still smiling. ”I've been wondering what happened to Leilani Thayer's koa settee.”
Inez considered this. ”I have it in Amagansett,” she said finally. ”About Janet-”
”Strange, I didn't notice it when I visited you.”
”You visited me in New York. The settee is in Amagansett. Daddy-”
”Not that I saw much of your apartment. The way I was rushed off to that so-called party.”
Inez closed her eyes. Paul Christian had stopped in New York without notice in 1972, on his way back to Honolulu with someone he had met on Sardinia, an actor who introduced himself only as ”Mark.” I can't fathom what you were thinking, Paul Christian had written later to Inez, when I brought a good friend to visit you and instead of welcoming the opportunity to know him better you dragged me off (altogether ignoring Mark's offer to do a paella, by the way, which believe me did not go unremarked upon) to what was undoubtedly the worst party I've ever been to where n.o.body made the slightest effort to communicate whatsoever ...
”Actually that wasn't a party,” Inez heard herself saying.
”Inez,” Billy Dillon said. ”Wrong train.”
”Not by any standard of mine,” Paul Christian said. ”No. It was certainly not a party.”
”It wasn't meant to be. It was a fundraiser. You remember, Harry spoke.”
”I do remember. I listened. Mr.-is it Diller? Dillman?”
”Dillon,” Billy Dillon said. ”On Track Two.”
”Mr. Dillman here will testify to the fact that I listened. When your husband spoke. I also remember that not a soul I spoke to had any opinion whatsoever about what your husband said.”
”You were talking to the Secret Service.”
”Whoever. They all wore brown shoes. I'm surprised you have Leilani's settee. Since you never really knew her.”
Billy Dillon looked at Inez. ”Pa.s.s.”
”Everyone called her 'Kanaka' when we were at Cal,” Paul Christian said. ”Kanaka Thayer.”
Inez said nothing.
”She was a Pi Phi.”
Inez said nothing.
”Leilani and I were like brother and sister. Parties night and day. Leilani singing scat. I was meant to marry her. Not your mother.” He hummed a few bars of ”The Darktown Strutters' Ball,” then broke off. ”I was considered something of a catch, believe it or not. Ironic, isn't it?”
Inez unfastened her watch and examined the face.
”My life might have been very different. If I'd married Leilani Thayer.”
Inez corrected her watch from New York to Honolulu time.
”That settee always reminded me.”
”I want you to have it,” Inez said carefully.
”That's very generous of you, but no. No, thank you.”
”I could have it s.h.i.+pped down.”
”Of course you 'could.' I know you 'could.' That's hardly the point, you 'could,' is it?”
Inez waited.
”I'm through with all that,” Paul Christian said.
Billy Dillon opened his briefcase. ”You mean because you're here.”
”That whole life,” Paul Christian said. ”The mission f.u.c.king children and their pathetic little sticks of bad furniture. Those mean little screens they squabble over. That precious settee you're so proud of. That's all bulls.h.i.+t, really. Third-rate. Pathetic. If you want to know the truth.”
Billy Dillon took a legal pad from his briefcase. ”I wonder if we could run through a few specifics here. Just a few details that might help establish-”
”And if you don't know what this did to me, Inez, making me beg for that settee-”