“No.”
“That’s good. You don’t want to know anything about the Colombians,” Lenny said again.
She was thinking about the Colombians and Bogotá and the town where Lenny said he had a house, Medellín. She was thinking they would have called her gitana, with her long black hair and bare feet. She could have fanned herself with handfuls of hundred-dollar bills like a green river. She could have borne sons for men crossing borders, searching for the definitive run, the one you don’t return from. She would dance in bars in the permanently hot nights. They would say she was intoxicated with grief and dead husbands. Sadness made her dance. When she thought about this, she laughed.
The driveway seemed sudden and steep. They were approaching a walled villa. Lenny pushed numbers on a console. The gate opened.
He parked the red Ferrari. He opened the car door for her. She followed him up a flight of stone steps. The house looked like a Spanish fortress.
A large Christmas wreath with pinecones and a red ribbon hung on the door. The door was unlocked. The floor was tile. They were walking on an Oriental silk carpet, past a piano, a fireplace, a bar. There were ceiling-high glass cabinets in which Chinese artifacts were displayed, vases and bowls and carvings. They were walking through a library, then a room with a huge television, stereo equipment, a pool table. She followed him out a side door.
The pool was built on the edge of the hill. The city below seemed like a sketch for a village, something not quite formed beneath the greenery. Pink and yellow roses had been planted around two sides of the pool. There were beds of azaleas with ferns between them and red camellias, yellow lilies, white daisies, and birds-of-paradise.
“Time to swim,” Lenny said.
She was standing near the pool, motionless. “We don’t have suits,” she said.
“Don’t tell nobody, okay?” Lenny was pulling his shirt over his head. He stared at her, a cigarette in his mouth. “It’s private. It’s walled. Just a cliff out here. And Bernie and Phyllis aren’t coming back. Come on. Take off your clothes. What are you? Scared? You’re like a child. Come here. I’ll help you. Daddy’ll help you. Just stand near me. Here. See? Over your head. Over baby’s head. Did that hurt? What’s that? One of those goddamn French jobs with the hooks in front? You do it. What are you looking at? I put on a few pounds. Okay? I’m a little out of shape. I need some weights. I got to buy some weights. What are you? Skinny? You’re so skinny. You one of those vomiters? I’m not going to bite. Come here. Reach down. Take off my necklace. Unlock the chain. Yeah. Good. Now we swim.”
The water felt strange and icy. It was nothing like she expected. There were shadows on the far side of the pool. The shadows were hideous. There was nothing ambiguous about them. The water beneath the shadows looked remote and troubled and green. It looked contaminated. The more she swam, the more the infected blue particles clustered on her skin. There would be no way to remove them.
“I have to leave,” she said.
The sun was going down. It was an unusual sunset for Los Angeles, red and protracted. Clouds formed islands in the red sky. The sprinklers came on. The air smelled damp and green like a forest. There were pine trees beyond the rose garden. She thought of the smell of camp at nightfall, when she was a child.
“What are you? Crazy? You kidding me? I want to take you out,” Lenny said. He got out of the pool. He wrapped a towel around his waist. Then he wrapped a towel around her shoulders. “Don’t just stand there. Dry off. Come on. You’ll get sick. Dry yourself.”
He lit a cigarette for her. “You want to get dressed up, right? I know you skinny broads from Beverly Hills. You want to get dressed up. Look. Let me show you something. You’ll like it. I know. Come on.” He put out his hand for her. She took it.
They were walking up a marble stairway to the bedroom. The bedroom windows opened onto a tile balcony. There were sunken tubs in the bathroom. Everything was black marble. The faucets were gold. There were gold chandeliers hanging above them. Every wall had mirrors bordered by bulbs and gold. Lenny was standing in front of a closet.
“Pick something out. Go on. Walk in. Pink. You like pink? No. You like it darker. Yeah. Keep walking. Closet big as a tennis court. They got no taste, right? Looks like Vegas, right? You like red? No. Black. That’s you. Here. Black silk.” Lenny came out of the closet. He was holding an evening gown. “This your size? All you skinny broads wear the same size.”
Lenny handed the dress to her. He stretched out on the bed. “Yeah. Let go of the towel. That’s right. Only slower.”
He was watching her. He lit a cigarette. His towel had come apart. He was holding something near his lap. It was a jewelry box.
“After you put that crap on your face, the paint, the lipstick, we’ll pick out a little something nice for you. Phyllis won’t need it. She’s not coming back. Yeah.” Lenny laughed. “Bernie and Phyllis are entertaining the Colombians by now. Give those boys from the jungle something to chew on. Don’t look like that. You like diamonds? I know you like diamonds.”
Lenny was stretched out on the bed. The bed belonged to Bernie and Phyllis but they weren’t coming back. Lenny was holding a diamond necklace out to her. She wanted it more than she could remember wanting anything.
“I’ll put it on you. Come here. Sit down. I won’t touch you. Not unless you ask me. I can see you’re all dressed up. Just sit near me. I’ll do the clasp for you,” Lenny offered.
She sat down. She could feel the stones around her throat, cool, individual, like the essence of something that lives in the night. Or something more ancient, part of the fabric of the night itself.
“Now you kiss me. Come on. You want to. I can tell. Kiss me. Know what this costs?” Lenny touched the necklace at her throat with his fingertips. He studied the stones. He left his fingers on her throat. “Sixty, seventy grand maybe. You can kiss me now.”
She turned her face toward him. She opened her lips. Outside, the Santa Ana winds were startling, howling as if from a mouth. The air smelled of scorched lemons and oranges, of something delirious and intoxicated. When she closed her eyes, everything was blue.
She didn’t see him at her noon meeting the next day or the day after. She thought, Well, that’s it. She wasn’t sorry. She got a manicure. She went to her psychiatrist. She began taking a steam bath after her aerobics class at the gym. She went Christmas shopping. She bought her daughter a white rabbit coat trimmed with blue fox. She was spending too much money. She didn’t care.
It was Christmas Eve when the doorbell rang. There were carols on the radio. She was wearing a silk robe and smoking. She told Maria that she could answer the door.
“You promised never to come here.” She was angry. “You promised to respect my life. To recognize my discrete borders.”
“Discrete borders?” Lenny repeated. “I’m in serious trouble. Look at me. Can’t you see there’s something wrong? You look but you don’t see.”
There was nothing unusual about him. He was wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket. He was carrying an overnight bag. She could see the motorcycle near the curb. Maybe the Colombians had the red Ferrari. Maybe they were chewing on that now. She didn’t ask him in.
“This is it,” Lenny was saying. He brushed past her and walked into the living room. He was talking quickly. He was telling her what had happened in the desert, what the Colombians had done. She felt like she was being electrocuted, that her hair was standing on end. It occurred to her that it was a sensation so singular that she might come to enjoy it. There were small blue wounded sounds in the room now. She wondered if they were coming from her.