“Hey, man,” Garth’s face said to him. He felt arms reaching under him.
Helen, looking beautiful, her eyes sympathetic, her long hair falling on tanned shoulders like an innocent Tahitian girl’s, smiled sweetly: “We’ll get you to bed.”
They put his arms around their shoulders and became his crutches. Andrea held the wooden gate open. Tony’s head flopped from side to side, a helpless newborn. He rested on Helen’s shoulder and found himself looking straight down her nightshirt at those remarkable breasts, full and long, big nipples, standing with languid elegance, erect, but not arrogant. He kissed the top of her chest, his lips smacking. “God, they’re beautiful!” he shouted.
She laughed. A deep, throaty, amused noise, unselfconscious and welcoming. He heard Garth say: “He’ll be fine,” to someone, and then time skipped, a needle dancing across the record surface, making nonsense of the music.
Without Tony knowing how, he was in a bedroom. Garth stood a few feet away, naked except for bright blue underpants.
There was hot liquid in him. He forced his eyes open and saw a large mug at his lips, a light green pool lapping at his mouth, its gentle tide infiltrating, warming him, his head clearing. He heard the pleased chuckle again.
“He’s turning me on,” a voice at his side said.
“I don’t mind, if you don’t,” Garth answered, squinting with concentration.
Like a picture coming into focus, he could now see. His eyes must have been closed before. He was lying in their bed, naked. His right thumb was rubbing Helen’s nipple, while his palm caressed its underside. But she wasn’t looking at that, her eyes were on his genitals. Tony glanced down and saw he had an erection, so complete in its yearning that it arched above his belly, a missile angling for launch. She was holding a mug of tea to his mouth.
“I thought booze made you boys impotent,” she commented pleasantly to her husband. They spoke as if he weren’t conscious.
“He’s young,” Garth said with his patented ironic smile, almost a sneer, one comer of his mouth furrowing. Tony closed his eyes again. “And horny. It’s been two months. Told you we should have gotten him a girl.”
“Shouldn’t we let him sleep?” she asked in a halfhearted tone.
“This’ll deal with tomorrow’s hangover.”
“I’m not out,” Tony heard himself say. He wanted to shut up, continue pretending unconsciousness, but he was still too drunk to dissemble. He spoke the words together, all soft vowel sounds.
“What?” Helen asked, moving the cup away.
Tony opened his eyes. At first he couldn’t focus on anything. “I’m awake!” he shouted, so his words would be clear. He stared at her, seeing that she was also nude. He told himself to let go of her breast, but his hand held on. Looking into her eyes, he forgot everything else. They were all that existed in the universe. Again, he wasn’t sure who he was — he felt very young, lying in bed with a beautiful motherly woman smiling lovingly at him. “I’m only pretending to be drunk!” he yelled again, slurring his words so badly that “drunk” came out “drugged.”
He heard Garth laugh. “It’s a very good performance,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Tony said in his direction, but when he swung his head that way, he felt his stomach swish and slosh sickeningly, a bag full of water precariously connecting his torso to his legs. He groaned.
“Easy,” she said, and he felt her arms, very warm, come around him. He closed his eyes. Her breasts pressed against his tired, tired face. Her heat swelled over him, a mother bear protecting her cold child.
“I’m asleep,” he mumbled and let go of the world.
The rest is silence, David Bergman repeated to himself, hearing Richard Burton’s long hiss of sorrow from his high-school drama-class days, the sour-faced teacher standing rapturously beside the big box of a turntable. David moved through the nightmare with a still mind, becalmed of anxiety. The rest is silence, a dead actor’s voice told him.
Chico had taken it hard. He shouted and pleaded with the Brazilian police, switching from nervous pleas for understanding to arrogant demands for freedom from questioning. He had made a brief feint at pretending they didn’t know who the dead man was — but he soon gave that up and began shouting for the right to communicate with Newstime. Not only to have this story explode in their face but also to be scooped on it was the cause of Chico’s agony.
He hasn’t realized yet, David coolly observed, that our careers are over. Neither of them would ever be Groucho.
After twelve hours they were freed and permitted to leave the country. Newstime having agreed to release and in fact surrendering all the information they had on Gott. In a brief phone conversation with Rounder. Chico had been told that Newstime was making a completely open response to the event.
On the flight home, they had in hand the first burst of world news coverage. The pertinent embarrassment, that Newstime had been in the process of paying Hans Gott for his story, was mentioned only in passing — David knew it would take until the second editions for the criticisms to begin. The simple facts were that his killer, Tamar Gurion, arrested at the scene peacefully, was the descendant of a Jewish family — most of whom, she claimed, had been victimized in the camps by Mengele and Gott. Whether the dead man was in fact Gott was still in question, and it was this problem that obsessed Chico throughout the flight.
“I think we owe it to Mrs. Thorn to make no comment until we’ve talked it out with her and Richard,” Chico said, knowing they would be mobbed by reporters at the airport. David noticed Chico was now calling Rounder by his first name — usually he contemptuously referred to him as Rounder, sometimes as Round Robin.
“I thought he said we should be open,” David said. “Doesn’t that mean answering all questions?”
“We have to talk it all out and then hold a news conference. We’re going to be making appearances anyway.”
“Appearances?”
“Nightline, the Today Show, they’re all gonna talk to us — but you have to do your piece on the killing first.”
David stared off. So he would have to preside over this indignity. Report his own stupidity, cowardice, and avarice as though they were merely the virtues of being an innocent bystander. What platitudes would he have to invent about the young woman, whose eyes seemed so calm and happy as she killed? Predictably, he would have to take the attitude she wasn’t a hero or a villain, but tragically, another victim. He thought of her, alone now, in a jail filled with … what? Were they monsters too? Would she be electrocuted, guillotined, poisoned, hanged, shot? I guess the guards won’t rape or beat her since she’ll have to be shown to the cameras a lot, he tried to console himself. He prayed that the malicious old man really was Gott. If she had destroyed herself over a fake — the ultimate non-news story — the tone he would have to adopt in the piece … His stomach churned at the thought. He looked at Chico, talking feverishly, a dead man not knowing the killing blow had been struck, a megalomaniacal chicken missing his swelled head, and wished he could choke him. Stuff all the bullshit back down into his throat and out the right end. The rest is silence, he said to himself in bitter silence.
When they landed he realized the isolation on the plane with Chico was a blessing compared to the invasion of his brothers at the airport. The Minicams, the microphones, the notebooks rustling like autumn leaves, the pasty eager faces made bodiless by their equipment, swelled in their way, flowing with their attempt to escape the airport, a moving aggressive pack of animals unconscious of everything but the pursuit of their prey. The lights they cast followed their every step — David noticed other passengers watching the spectacle with confused expressions on their faces. Who are they? he could almost read their lips. You’ll know soon, David thought to himself. He was going to make every network, every paper, every wire service, both national newsmagazines. He could see the camera photos, read the captions, hear the laughter at Weekly, and write their stories with just the right touch of sardonic disparagement. Two of the big boys had fucked up, rushed off half-cocked into a dubious arrangement, and were now at least responsible for the ruination of a young woman, and possibly for the death of an innocent con man.