“I thought you were doing the dishes,” I said.
She took a comb from her purse and went to work tidying her hair. “No. I went upstairs and turned on the shower a little bit. Stan’ll think I’m taking a bath and when I don’t answer he’ll think I’m sulking. Then he’ll go on back to work.” The comb made shushing sounds in her thick hair. “I thought you all would be talking a while longer. Stan might have caught me.”
Gerry put the comb away and rooted around for a lipstick. She adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see herself in it. “Mind if I borrow this?”
“What’s Stan going to say when he finds you’re gone?”
She rolled her eyes. “He’ll raise the roof. But I know how to handle him... most of the time,” she added thoughtfully. She touched up her lips with a shade that might have been called Carnal Red. “I wouldn’t usually run out like this unless Stan said I could, but it’s kind of important.” She patted the full lips with a Kleenex. “He won’t give me a car. He’s afraid I’ve got other boyfriends.”
“Don’t you?”
She gave me a cautious look. “No. Not exactly. I’ve got a friend... but he’s not exactly a boy. He’s older. You going downtown?” I nodded. She settled back after turning on the radio.
“Besides,” she said, “Stan’s got other girls. I know. I’ve seen one of them. I was supposed to be upstairs in bed. They were on the sofa. It was kind of dark. She was a blonde. I don’t like blondes.”
“You go to school?”
This tickled her. “Me?”
“How old are you?”
“Old enough,” she said wisely. She looked at me closely, as if she wasn’t quite happy riding with me any more.
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
“Oh, any place downtown will be fine. I’m going to the Coral Gardens Hotel — that’s over on the beach. But I can catch a bus or something.”
“In those pants,” I said, “you could catch anything.”
“Huh?”
“As a matter of fact, I was going that way myself,” I said, and shut up.
At the Coral Gardens Hotel I put the Buick in a no-parking zone square in front of the canopy. The Coral Gardens was a modest seven-story building, its yellow color mellowed and softened by the salt wind off the Atlantic that crept to the back doorstep like a great patient beast.
Once the Coral Gardens had been a favorite of migrating and vacationing hoods from the North, but newer and more splendid places with names like Cote d’Or and Chateau Castile had lured the trade away. A few old-timers, friends of Macy, still settled there during the winter, but, on the whole, it had turned respectable.
Gerry waited patiently for me to come around and open the door for her. “You busy right now?” she asked, stepping out of the Buick.
“No, I don’t think so.”
She took me by the hand. “I want to show you something,” she said urgently, and took me around to the back of the hotel, down a flight of steps to the damp smelly basement. There were dressing stalls for swimmers down here and puddles of water on the concrete floor. A window fan roared and rattled, and an old man wearing a T shirt stenciled Coral Gardens Hotel waited patiently for the puddles to dry so he could put away the mop he was leaning on.
We went into a large room near the steps to the lobby upstairs. Here the air was cleaner and drier and sunlight touched all corners through two big windows. It seemed to be some kind of art studio. There was a raised platform against the wall under the windows and behind it was an old tarpaulin backdrop. Finished canvases leaned against the walls. Tubes of oils and brushes were scattered on a table convenient to an easel. There were a couple of sofas for lounging or other basic pleasures.
Gerry pointed to a partially completed portrait on the easel. “Owen’s painting a picture of me,” she said proudly.
I looked at it closely. She was posed astraddle a straight-back chair, one cheek resting on her crossed forearms. The expression on her face was stiff and lifeless. The rest of her nude body was very well done. Breasts jutted high, and the contours of stomach and abdomen were properly shadowed. Owen had duplicated skin tone well, but he was having some trouble getting the shade he wanted for her hair.
“Don’t touch it,” Gerry warned. “Owen’s not through. It’s not dry yet.” She looked at me for approval. “It’s good, isn’t it?” I said it was good. She walked around the studio, looking at other paintings, her hips rolling neatly in the tight toreador pants. “He’s got talent,” she said. “Owen’s really got talent.”
I wondered what Maxine would do if he knew Owen Barr was entertaining his girlfriend. I could imagine.
I told her I had things to do. She made no move to go with me. I went up the stairs and met Owen Barr walking across the lobby. He had come out of the package store and carried a wrapped bottle under his arm. He seemed surprised to find me there. He wore an unpressed gray jacket and baggy dark green slacks.
“Hello, Mallory,” he said, frowning past me at the basement. When I nodded he clutched the bottle more tightly and went around me, his eyes sulky.
I got a room and key at the desk and went back downstairs. The door to the studio was closed, but it wasn’t much of a door. With my ear against it I could hear very well.
“Are you going to paint this afternoon?” Gerry said.
“I don’t know. Sick of it. Where’s a glass?”
“Over there. It’s sure beginning to look like me.”
“The tits look like you. The rest — I can’t seem to get the face right. Oh, the hell with it! You want a drink?”
“No. Is something wrong?”
“Everything’s always wrong. Come on and sit down.”
“When do you think you’ll finish it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I won’t finish it. What’s the use? I’m no damn good.”
“You are good!”
“No damn good. Aw, baby, don’t do that. I don’t feel like it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t drink so much. I thought you were going to paint today. I sneaked out of the house—”
“Just leave me alone. I don’t feel like listening. Maybe Macy’s right. Maybe it is just junk. I’m no damn good.”
“Don’t feel that way.”
“I’m glad somebody is trying to kill him. Really glad. I hope the bastard gets it good. All my life he’s ordered me around. Just a stinking big shot. Order me around. I never had a real chance. Nobody ever paid any attention to me, because of goddam Macy. I... I...”
“Owen!”
“You like me, don’t you, baby? Pretty Gerry — like me, don’t you?”
“Sure I do, Owen. And you know I don’t like Macy any better than you do. Not after he treated me the way he did.”
“The stinking big shot. You do this, Owen. You do that, Owen. I’m no goddam dog. I got feelings like anybody else. I never had a real chance... Where’d I put that bottle? You’ll stay with me, won’t you, Gerry? Let me have another drink, and then we’ll look at the painting. I want to sketch your face, and maybe I can get it right — you’ll stick around, honey?”
I looked down the hall, saw the shower-room attendant creaking toward me with the mop over his shoulder. I took my ear away from the door and Owen’s vocal pangs of misery and went upstairs, wondering why Maxine’s girl should hate Macy Barr.
There was no point in bothering with Gerry any longer; I didn’t want to stay sidetracked. I had to find out who was so persistently trying to knock me off. And I knew just the man to ask about it, although all I had to go on was a sketchy description and a pale blue hat with a light-colored band.