“He wasn’t acting rationally, whatever his motives. Smedler believes you should have demanded a conservator for the estate.”
“I’m not the kind of woman who demands. I guess I’m not sure enough of myself to tell other people what to do.”
“You seem to me to be quite sure of yourself, Mrs. Shaw. You’ve made some bold decisions in the past three weeks.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps too bold.”
She shrugged and turned away. Her movements were graceful but a little contrived, as though they’d been practiced for years in front of mirrors. “If I broke the law and a few conventions, I suppose I’ll be sorry eventually. Right now I’m not, I’d do the same thing again. It’s going to sound very silly coming from a grown woman, but I couldn’t help myself. I fell in love. It never happened to me before, even when I was young. The other girls at school were continually in love, they took it for granted as an everyday thing. For me it was a miracle and still is... You look impatient. Am I boring you?”
“No.”
“But you would prefer not to hear it.”
“Happy beginnings are a dime a dozen. I like happy endings.”
“There’ll be a happy ending, I intend it that way.”
He almost believed her. She seemed to be putting it all together, the strength and power she’d never used, the will she’d never exerted, the determination she’d been afraid to show.
“Fine,” he said. “Great. Now let’s get the business over with and I can leave.” He opened the briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers. “I’ll need your initials at the bottom of each page — after you’ve read it, of course — and your signature at the conclusion.”
“I’m not signing.”
“You’d better think this through, Mrs. Shaw.”
“I already have. If Neville could play his little game, I can play mine.”
Aragon sat with the briefcase across his lap. The blinding sun had given him a headache, the heat was unbearable, the broken spring of the chair was sticking into his flesh like a spur. “I told you I liked happy endings, Mrs. Shaw. Especially my own. I am, as Smedler’s secretary keeps reminding me, a junior junior employee of the firm. It’s not a secure position. Neither is yours. Whatever you got from Mr. Tannenbaum isn’t going to last, so you have to consider the possibility that Grady and the money might run out simultaneously.”
“I’m buying time, Mr. Aragon.”
“Time can’t be bought, it can only be spent.”
“You don’t understand. Grady is starting to love me, really love me. I’m becoming indispensable to him. When you’re indispensable to someone he has to love you.”
“My wife is indispensable to me, but so is my auto mechanic and him I’m not too crazy about.”
“You’re not even trying to understand.”
“Look, Mrs. Shaw, sign the papers and I’ll get out of here and you can tell Grady only whatever you think he’ll believe.”
“He’ll believe anything I say. He’s a beautiful person.”
“Glad to hear it. In my line of work I don’t meet too many beautiful persons.”
She got up suddenly, and forgetting all the lessons she’d learned in mirrors, flung herself down on the bed and began to weep. She wept silently, barely moving a muscle of her face. It was a half-comic, half-sinister sight, like a wax-museum figure rigged to spout tears at the press of a button.
Aragon looked away from her, toward the sea. The purple van was gone and the wide stretch of beach was empty. In the water a solitary swimmer who had to be Grady was heading free-style straight out to sea as if his life depended on it. The next land in that direction was Hawaii, but maybe Grady figured it was worth a try.
“I mustn’t cry,” she said in a whisper. “Dr. Ortiz won’t allow it.”
“He’s not here, so go right ahead.”
“No. It’s not good for me. Dr. Ortiz says I have to avoid bad emotions. I must think only of pleasant things.”
“I hope he remembers that when he’s making out his bill.”
“You’re a cruel, cynical man.”
“I’m an errand boy for Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee, Powell. This isn’t a personal matter between you and me, so let’s not get nasty.”
As he spoke he saw the swimmer turn suddenly, as if he’d heard his name called, and head back for shore. You should have kept going, Grady.
Miranda was dabbing away tears with the sleeve of her robe, but new ones kept coming and her eyes were starting to turn red. “I need something to calm me.”
Aragon wasn’t sure what she meant but he hoped it was pharmaceutical. “I have some aspirin in my car. If you like, I can—”
“Aspirin. Aspirin, for God’s sake. I’m dying and you offer me aspirin.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“Call Grady. He can tell Dr. Ortiz to come and give me a shot.”
“Grady went for a swim.”
“Swim, that’s the only thing he ever does, the only thing he ever thinks about.”
“Beautiful persons need a lot of exercise,” Aragon said.
When Grady returned to the cottage he stopped for a minute at the carport to admire the Porsche that was parked inside. It was a yellow Carrera with gold mag wheels and beige glove-leather seats. Every time he looked at it he felt a little light-headed, he had to convince himself that it was really his and Miranda was going to give him the pink ownership slip as soon as it arrived from the Department of Motor Vehicles. He called it Goldfinger, not out loud in front of anybody, but very softly and secretly as part of a pact between him and the car.
It was the only perfect thing he had ever owned and he felt personally insulted when Miranda criticized it: “Why can’t we simply get in it and go? Why do we have to sit here for half an hour with the engine running?” “Not half an hour,” he told her. “Just five minutes.” For her it was ugly time, full of noise and smell and vibration. He loved every minute of it, it was like waiting for an orgasm.
He entered the cottage without knocking and went into the alcove behind the wooden screen to dress. A white T-shirt, a pair of shorts, the wristwatch Miranda had given him before they left Santa Felicia, the huaraches he’d picked up in Tijuana.
Nobody said anything. The loudest sounds in the room were insects humming and Grady slapping the sand off his legs with a towel. He began to whistle the song Goldfinger but stopped almost immediately because he was afraid someone might recognize it and guess it was the name he’d given the Porsche. He felt that in some crazy way this could ruin things. He didn’t know how, he only knew things ruined easy.
He came out from behind the screen, still holding the sandy towel. “It’s four o’clock, the café should be open by now. I’m going over for a can of beer. Anyone care to join me?”
No one did.
Miranda was sitting at the desk and there were a lot of papers spread out in front of her. She wore a pair of half-glasses he’d never seen before, and when she peered at him over the top of them she looked like an old woman.
“Hey, what is this, Halloween? Take those things off.”
“I can’t read the fine print without them.”
“Fine print. Okay, I get it. This is private business and you want me to split.”
“No, I think you should stay.” She began gathering up the papers and putting them in numerical order. She moved slowly, as she always did, but Grady saw that this was a different kind of slowness, clumsy and reluctant. “Mr. Aragon has brought us some bad news, Grady. Nothing we can’t handle, the two of us together, but—”