“Seventeen and a half, thirty-six,” I said humbly.
“Two of these in that size, please. And you don’t really mind stretch socks too much, do you? Size thirty-three shorts, mmm? No, don’t wrap them. I can pop them right in here.” She lifted the small suitcase up onto the counter, a cheap one of pale blue anodized aluminum. As she put the articles in, I got a glimpse of some feminine things, and some drug store parcels. She latched it and waited for her change.
“We’ve got a flight in about twenty-five minutes,” she said.
I carried the case out of the store into the waiting room area. I carried it to a quiet space and put it down and turned to her and said, “Have you lost your fool mind?”
She locked strong icy fingers onto my wrist and looked up at me and said, “It’s all right. Really. It’s all right.”
“But…:
“I couldn’t get the luggage back. It was stowed aboard. It’ll be taken care of in New York. Look. I’ve been a grownup for a long time.”
“It’s just that…”
“Shut up, darling. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Do you want me to draw pictures for you? Stop looking like a spavined moose. Say you’re glad. Say something.”
I put fingertips on her cheek, ran my thumb along the black gloss of her eyebrow. “Okay. Something.”
She closed her eyes and shivered. “Oh God. No claims, Trav. Nothing like that. Either way.”
“Either way.”
“Just don’t laugh.”
“You know better than that.”
I read consternation in her expression. ‘’Maybe I’m just not what you… Maybe you never really… You could have been just being polite, and now…“
“You know better than that too. Shut up, dear.”
“I wired New York.”
“Kindly excuse delay.”
“Dammit, we’ve never even really kissed. My knees are all wobbly and strange. Please lead me to a drink, darling.”
During the flight, in spite of all the persuasive immediate magic of Girl, in spite of scent, closeness, dark eyes to drown in, and the shallow-breathed feeling of expectancy, the workman part of my mind kept moving in old and seamy patterns. We’d made a big swing, and, one by one, we’d been dropping them out of the final count.
Carl Abelle, terror of the ski lifts, dangerous as a prat fall on a bunny slope. Sonny Catton, cooked meat in a pretty whoosh and bloom of high octane. Nancy Abbott, cooked just as thoroughly but over a lower flame. No point in checking Harvey and Richie, the Cornell kids. Their biggest problem was to find someone, anyone, who would ever believe their story. Caswell Edgars was out of it. And out of just about everything else in the world too. Ives was gone, and violently. So was Patty M’Gruder. If old Abbott, Nancy’s father, had any luck left, he was dead by now too. Less violently but less pleasantly.
It was narrowing down. To a yacht bum named Vance M’Gruder, to a waitress named Whippy, to a retarded little man named Bogen. It was like going through an empty house, checking the closets. Either it was more complex than I could comprehend, or so it made even less sense. But there was a nastiness somewhere in it that was out of control. I sensed that, and sensed it was aimed at Lysa Dean, and maybe at me, and I couldn’t imagine who or how. I knew only two things. I was running out of closets. And I was glad I hadn’t been at that house party. So I held the hand of the girl, and told myself it was a fine world, and filed away my doom-thoughts.
A bored kid built a shiny little model city with his new kit and when it was finished he gave it one hell of a kick and spewed bit hunks of it out across the desert floor. We tilted down across the afternoon, seeing an unreality of blue pools and green fairways against that old lizard-skin brown of the everlasting desert. We came in with a batch of pilgrims-the brand new ones trying to be cool about their interest in the air terminal slots, about all the hawking and proclaiming and loud instant promotions. All the old pilgrims wore the memory of pain, and were impatient to get to that certain table at that certain place, in time for crucifixion.
I noticed a pair of appraisers as our group came through the gate, backs against the wall, staring left and right, somnolently vigilant, bouncing the little black glances off the pilgrims like aimed bb shot. They have the index memories of the ten thousand faces in disrepute in Slotsville, plus a feel for new trouble on the way-the ones who have come to get it any way they can, including using a gun on the winners.
My lady performed no transit services this time. It was a fine and pleasant distinction related to the absolute silence of the airplane ride, the hand tightly held, the dark eyes hooded. She stood four square, still and humble, patient and sensuous, while I, with no bag to retrieve, went off to dicker a vehicle and, with ironic impulse, took that most typical of game-town cars, a big airconditioned convertible, this one in metallic blue-green, white leather, ominously silent as Forest Lawn.
There had been a place I liked, way out on the Strip, an utterly gameless and consequently expensive motor house called the Apache, and I knew it would be meaningless and would astonish her should I consult her. At the desk I said I had been there before, knew I wanted a double cabana at the pool, gave the porter a dollar to let me have the key and find my own way.
It was a great long room in gold and green, with two huge beds, all of it too bright in the dazzle of poolside sun. I pulled the cords that creaked the heavy yellow draperies across the acre of window wall, turning the room into a shadowy gloom of gold.
The whisper of the hushed cooled air made it an oasis, a thousand years from yesterday, and ten thousand years from tomorrow. Every fifth breath she took was very deep, with a little catch, like a hiccup at the high end. I put my hands upon her, at waist and nape of neck, stopping her sleepy sway.
The man who sits in the steel office and throws the switches and pushes the buttons can rest his hand on his desk and feel, more like a low-cycle sound than any measurable vibration, the power that thrums in the bowels of the light plant. She felt unyielding and I could not guess how it would be for us. Then she gave a little crooked sigh, turned her mouth upward to me, leaned with heat and softness and purpose.
There is one kind of rightness that is an almost-rightness, because it is merciless and total and ends in a deathlike lethargy.
Then there is another kind of almost-rightness that can never be finished.
Both of these make you strangers to each other. Both of these things make you untidily anxious to give and receive reassurances.
But with Dana it was that rare and selfless rightness which moves with but the gentlest hiatus from one completion to the next, each a growth in knowing and closeness while, unheeded, the deep sweet hours go by. After all the fierceness is gone, it then astonishes by returning in that last time which ends it without question for now, and she is spent and dies there, slumbrous and fond.
I fought sleep. I made myself get up. I covered her over and went and showered and dressed. I turned on a meager light in the room and sat on the bed, pushed black curls aside, kissed the sweet nape of a musky neck. She turned to peer up at me, her face soft and emptied and young. “Yuhraw dress!” she mumbled in accusation.
“I’m going out for a little while. You sleep, honey.”
She tried to frown. “Y’be careful, d’ling.”
“Love you,” I said. It doesn’t cost a thing. Not when you do. I kissed a soft and smiling mouth, and I think she was asleep before I stood up. I left the low light on and let myself out.