The bed creaked and suddenly a pale shape moved past the corner of the bed and stopped in the light, facing the balcony. I had pulled back quickly, but one instant had stamped it into memory for as long as memory would last. Naked, skin so white it seemed to blaze in the downthrust of the ceiling spot. An incomparable figure, simultaneously rich and delicate, without blemish. Nipples of that rare youthful pink, soft pubic bush, a color paler than old pennies. And it did what the picture could not do. It brought her into the focus of memory, of almost a year ago, when Meyer took the wheel and I went forward to bend a line on the new anchor. She was the one who stood at the bow in white shorts and a red top, and had looked out across Lake Worth with almost the same soft, brooding, dreamy, inward expression. The wind had tangled her hair that day as much as bed had tangled it a year later. Welcome back from your damp Florida grave, Miss Bix.
The throaty, French-lady voice from the bed corner said, “Darling? You’re too sweaty to stand in that cold night air. You’ll get chilled.”
“Can we go out on the balcony and look at the stars, Eva?”
It was a little-girl voice, humble and obedient. “Of course, darling child. But we’ll have to put something on.”
I wondered if there was a gap at the other end of the draperies, where I could look in through the glass, from a darker area. I moved over and stood up and found a slit just wide enough. I saw Eva come to the edge of the light and hang some kind of floor-length cape or cloak over the girl’s shoulders. It was a dark, rich blue, a violet-blue. She kept her hands on the girl’s shoulders and I could hear her distinctly as she said, “Did I make you happy?”
The taller, younger girl turned quickly into Eva’s arms, eagerly, gladly. Murmurous love-words. A soft, triumphant little laugh. Long kisses. And then Bix went off into shadows while Eva stood in the edge of the light, half-smiling. Hers was a slightly more spare and forthright body, as feminine, but with more of a look of function, so that naked she seemed more naked. Swarthy skin tones, sharp breasts with broad umber-dark nipple areas, long downsweep of muscular belly to the wide, vital spread of curly blackness, a look of compacted sinew along the tops of the thighs.
Bix brought a tailored gray robe and held it for Eva to slip on. My mind had been caroming around amid probables and improbables, bouncing off obstacles, like the shiny ball finding its way down the pinball machine, looking for the bumper that would ring the bells, flash the lights, award me some free games.
As Eva Vitrier looked down to fasten the belt of the robe, taking her first step toward the balcony, I pulled the doors wider and stepped into the room. “Hate to bust in like this,” I said.
Bix Bowie moved back into the shadows and stood staring at me without expression, yet with a kind of market-dog wariness which says that to find out if stones will be thrown, or food, one must wait, ready to run and ready to eat.
Eva Vitrier leaned forward in fishwife fury, backs of her hands against her waist, elbows cocked forward. I think that had I been able to understand French, the words would have chopped out little chunks of my flesh and left smoking craters. As I waited for her to run down, she whirled and dived to grab the nightstand phone. I clapped the cradle back down an instant after she lifted it. She hit me in the middle of the forehead with the earpiece. I clopped her on the side of the head with a cupped palm. It knocked her onto her hands and knees. She rose slowly, touching her hair, and said, “Bixie sweetie, go into the bathroom and close the door.”
“I want to watch, Eva.”
“Mind me! Or there’ll be no surprise tomorrow, and no candy.”
The girl turned and went into the bathroom and closed the door. And Eva came after my eyes with ten long nails. A wiry, furious, unrestrained woman can be dangerous to all men who, out of some notion of chivalry, try to quell her furies, hold her wrists and avoid her kicks and bites until she gives up.
Chivalry is pretty flexible. And sometimes it is dead.
So I hooked her a pretty good one in the stomach as she was coming in, and it was on a slightly upward angle, so her heels lifted off the floor, her legs swung up, and the first thing that hit the floor was that rear end which Enelio had found so delectable long ago. Momentum rolled her over onto her back, and her legs went up and over and she ended on her knees, the gray robe forward, and all entangled about her head and arms, which were resting on the floor. Enelio might find that angle even more entrancing. She rolled onto her side, sat up, smoothed the robe down. She reached and caught a chair and pulled herself up and sat on it, making inhalation groans to try to suck enough air back into herself. Hit a woman, would you, McGee? I surely would, now and then.
All the spark and snap was gone. I saw switches by the door and went over and turned on the rest of the room lights. I closed the glass doors and pulled the lined draperies shut. I sat on the foot of the tousled bed.
She straightened herself. “You know, I could have you killed for that.”
“If you know where to go and how much to offer.”
“I can find out.”
“And I can walk you into the bathroom there and try to teach you to breathe underwater, and I might have to do just that if I don’t like the answers.”
“There won’t be any answers.”
“Suit yourself, French lady.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Something to knot you up with. Nylons are great. Stronger than steel. Then we’ll see how much of this Kleenex we can cram into your mouth, and I’ll tie that in place, roll you under the bed there, get Miss Bowie into some clothes and take her to the Embassy and phone her father from there. So forget the answers. I don’t need them.”
“Wait a minute. Sit down. Stop opening drawers, please. Listen to me a minute. I brought her back from living death, Mr. McGee. You don’t know what she was like. Even I didn’t know how lovely she would look.”
“What is she blasting lately? She’s way off center right now.”
“She can’t get along at all without something. I don’t think she ever will. She’s on charas. An agent brings it in for me from Calcutta. It’s like marijuana, but very, very powerful. They use just the resins. I let her smoke three tiny little cigars of it a day. We make a ceremony out of it. Don’t you understand? She’s been too badly damaged. She can’t exist in the real world.”
“But your world is just dandy. Best thing for her.”
“She gets love and protection, and I keep her in good health. We have silly little games we play. I make her keep herself clean and pick up her clothes.”
“And you get her her distemper shots and keep her coat glossy, and some day you can bury her in the foot of the garden and put a mossy little headstone up. Bix. Beloved pet. But that would be a little sentimental, huh?”
“You are certainly a cruel bastard. All right! So maybe I don’t want any more challenging human relationships.”
“After four old husbands?”
“You meet the simple young ones who can introduce you to the important young ones who can introduce you to the important and rich old ones. And you work at it, you know. You give fair value. All of them use you like a waste bin, a conveniently shaped receptacle, just as males used Bixie. But there is tennis and sailing and all the vigorous games in bed, and the old ones do not last long. The money was earned. The privacy was earned. The freedom was earned.”
“I might pop you another one, just for luck.”
“I don’t think it would astonish me, actually.”
“So she gets love. From you.”
“I saw her and Minda in the zocalo. I followed them. They had to keep stopping at benches so Bix could rest. There was something about her. I had to know her. They needed help. The word probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but do you know that she had never been sexually awakened? Can you imagine how much restraint and patience it took? But now she is more easily stimulated each day. She’s very sensual. But she lives on Lesbos forever, because it is the only island she has ever known.”