My skin had the cold quivers, just below the nape of my neck. “What did you do then, Nancy?”
“Are you another doctor? For a thousand years I’ve been up to my hips in doctors. I was a woman when I was fourteen, and when I got caught doing it, that was when they sent me to the first one, and I could tell he would have liked it too, if he could get up the nerve. He used to get sweaty and clean his glasses and walk around. They all make a big thing out of stuttering when I try to say… ef aye tee aitch ee are. Are you going to give me tests?”
“My name is Trav. I’m not a doctor.”
“Trav. Trav, why did he tell you to bring me these pictures? They aren’t even the same. There were more of me. Hey, you know who this was? This one with no face? A very famous movie star. Lysa Dean! Honestly, I’m not kidding. She’s just a little thing, but so gorgeous.”
“Who took the pictures?”
“How should I know? I didn’t know anybody took any pictures until I walked into his study and he had them. He gave me money and I caught up with Sonny again. I was with him a long time. Months, I guess. All over. Wherever he raced. I remember the day he died and the next thing I remember is in the hospital in Mexico City. Somebody had to take me down there, but who? I couldn’t have wandered down there, could I? Somebody dumped me in the hospital parking lot in the middle of the night, I found out later. I had bronchial pneumonia and two broken fingers. I was hallucinating and I had a dose of clap. When I could tell them who I was, they wired… him. As soon as I could be moved, he sent people to bring me back and put me in… Shady Rest? Refuge Mountain? One of those crappy names. How do you expect me to remember. I can’t even remember being brought here!”
“How did your father get those pictures anyhow?”
“How do I know? He thought I knew all about it. He thought it was friends of mine, and we cooked it up to get money out of him.”
“This is a pretty good place to be, Nancy”
“I guess so. I guess I like it. Sometimes I get very very nervous. After that I get sad. I’m sad a long time. I hum sad songs all day without making a single sound.”
“Did anybody at that house party say anything about pictures of Lysa Dean?”
She turned toward me with an exasperated look. “You know, you get to be a terrible bore about those pictures. No. Nobody said anything. I didn’t see a camera. Let’s drop it, shall we?”
I put the pictures away. “Why are you mad at the M’Gruders?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then we won’t.”
“You know, you are terribly nice, Trav ” She smiled at me, all abeam with innocence. She put her hand on mine.
“Thank you. You’re a nice girl.”
“I’m a slut, darling. I’m a drunk and a slut. May I ask you a very personal question?”
“Of course.”
“Why don’t we go over in the bushes a minute, sweetheart?” She tugged at my hand quickly and strongly, trying to press it against herself. I yanked my hand away. “It keeps me from getting nervous,” she said. “Please, honey. Please, please, please.”
I stood up quickly and she jumped up to try to press herself against me. I held her off with my hands on her shoulders. She dipped her head sharply to the side and licked my hand. I shook her. “Nancy! Nancy! Cut it out!”
She shuddered, smiled sadly, backed away. “It never makes any difference to a man. Why should you care one way or the other?”
“I have to get back. It was nice to visit with you.”
“Thank you,” she said politely. “Come and see me again.” She squared her shoulders like a child about to recite. “When you get back there, tell my f-f… tell him I am being a good girl. Tell him that… I am getting good marks.”
“Of course.”
“Goodby.”
I walked the hundred feet to the entrance to the path. When I turned and looked back at her, she shook her fist at me and yelled, “You ask that Patty M’Gruder why she kept locking me up! You just ask that goddam bitch!”
Halfway back to the compound I stopped in the path and leaned against a tree. My knees felt strange. I lit a cigarette, took one drag and threw it away. Stan Burley was in the small office talking to Dana. He got up and brought me some iced tea and said, “How did it go?”
“I don’t know. Her memory was pretty good. It damned near broke my heart listening to her trying to call him father. What’s the matter with that son of a bitch? He threw her away. He threw away a pretty good person, I think.”
“Was she any help?”
“I don’t know. I have to check it out. Stan, she made a hell of a direct pass at me.”
He raised his ridged monkey brows. “Little early for that. I’ll start keeping a close watch on her. Thanks.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
He wiped his hand across his face. “I don’t know. The highs don’t seem to get any higher, but the periods of apathy seem deeper and seem to last a little longer. And when she comes up out of them I have the feeling… there’s a little less of her. She’s lost some songs she knew a month ago. She’s getting a little more awkward and untidy feeding herself and caring for herself. I… I guess we’ll keep her here as long as we can. She loves the beach so. She hates to be locked in. This place has the illusion of freedom. Maybe a big institution could arrest it, even improve her a little, but never enough to let her out into the world. She isn’t dangerous to anyone. She’s a victim. He made her a victim.”
“What happened to her mother?”
“She died in a hotel fire when Nancy was seven. She was with a lover at the time. Nancy has a strong body. I am afraid it will keep going long after the brain is gone. Maybe for an other forty years or more. There is a brother. Older, and from all reports, extremely righteous. Nice to see you again, Trav. Nice to talk to you, Miss Holtzer. It’s a strange world, you know. We can defend ourselves from our enemies, and even from our friends, but never from our family. That tyke was sent to boarding school at age seven. She had lovers at fourteen, alcoholic dementia in a mild form at fifteen, and her first shock treatments at sixteen. I am off to paint chairs. My cure for depression and indignation. Come by any time, either of you.”
We stopped at a fish house in town for lunch. We had the privacy of a corner booth. I told her about the dead one. Sonny Catton. I told her about the eight pictures, the slap, the hostility toward the M’Gruders, her final strange comment.
“From the way you look it was rough, Travis.”
“I guess so. I don’t know why it rocked me so. I guess because she looks so fresh and clean and bright. I guess a man gets the feeling… a lovely mixed-up girl, if you could take her along, love her, treat her well, she’d shape up. But you know you can’t. Maybe the last one to be in a position to do anything was Catton, but he wasn’t the type for it. I guess she got handed around quite a bit, with none of them doing her much good.”
I told her about Carl Abelle. The corners of her strong mouth turned downward in an ironic smile. “The Galahad of the slopes. I met him once. I’d been working for her just a matter of weeks. It was quite a while later they went off to stay in that Chipmann house. He was pretty gorgeous. Dark blond curly hair, huge shoulders, bronzed face, custom sports coat, silk ascot, and a little faky German accent. Hair a little much over the ears. You know. A little wave there too. Lots of huge white teeth, and a very Continental handshake. The almost too typical Hollywood stud.”