28

Acapulco, 1953

She moved to the door like a vision, crossing the floor so silently and elegantly that he thought he must be watching a reflection, some trick of the dying Acapulco sun along the glass of her mansion on the cliff. Flowing toward them like some piece of rear projection, real but not quite real, wearing an after-swim gown nearly the color of the midnight-blue sea below. Her head held high and her eyes hidden behind dark glasses, moving with such grace that Tom could fully understand at last what it must have been like to see her gliding along the great hall of Grand Central station in a spotlight.

Charlie and he stood at the door like a couple of chastened schoolboys, holding their overnight bags in their hands. When she saw them there she stopped for a moment in her glide across the floor, her mouth tightening in irritation.

“Jesus, Charlie,” she said after she slid the glass door open with a luxurious whoosh. Brushing the dark glasses up on her forehead, her green eyes flashing disapproval at the both of them. “You brought the original stage Paddy show on the road.”

“You should’ve seen us in Cuernavaca,” Tom said, while Charlie tried to grin.

“Good to see you, too, Slim,” he said.

 

The house was set up in the cliffs above all the other flamboyant mansions, like the one real jewel in a garish tiara. It was enormous, white and glassed in, and wedged ingeniously into the cliffside, just below the Indian laurels. There were little gardens of rock and cactus leading into the laurels, and a patio the size of a ballroom, paved with slate-blue stone, and a drained, blue-bottomed pool to one side. The winding mountain road they had followed up to it ended at a garage built for a dozen cars, and a turnabout that was roughly the size of Columbus Circle.

Inside, the house was dark and cool and cavernous, their shoes echoing along the ochre tile work, where Slim glided noiselessly in her bare feet. The place seemed barely furnished, and what couches and chairs there were looked faintly ridiculous, gilt-edged or glass or overstuffed and white, like the kind of things they sold to not-overly-bright tourists along Fifty-Seventh Street. Slim left them to sit uncomfortably on a very slippery white leather couch, while she fixed a tray of scotch and ice.

“Servants’ night off?” Charlie tried, but Slim just scoffed at him.

“What servants?” She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. “There’s just Mercedes, who comes in once a week to make sure I haven’t burned the place down, smoking in bed. Melchior usually shuts the house this time of year. He offered to have them stay on, but I told him I liked the isolation.”

She laid the tray with its cut-glass scotch decanters and glasses on the ridiculously ornate glass coffee table in front of the couch and sat in front of them so they could see her face. A beautiful blond woman wreathed in smoke. Just behind her, through the panoramic front windows, they could make out almost the whole of the deep-blue bay and the white crescent beach.

“Where’s dear Melchior off to? Europe, with the rest of the lammisters?” Charlie asked, and Slim stared at him, even more incredulous.

“What are you talking about, Charlie? That’s your Big Crowd—”

“You used to like them well enough.”

“It’s they who don’t like me anymore,” she said, turning to address herself to Tom. “Not much company here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“No? Not even Princeton?” Charlie goaded, his voice almost a snarl, surprising Tom in its fury.

“Ah, Jesus, Charlie, really? You’re really going to make us go through all this again, in front of Tom?”

“He’s family,” Charlie said evenly, weighing his scotch in both hands, down between his legs. “And maybe he should hear about it.”

“Goddamn you, Charlie. Goddamn you,” she said softly. “I tell you it’s done, and you come all the way out here just looking to start this up again.”

“Why, don’t you want him to know about it? It was nothin’—nothin’ at all, that’s what you told me.”

“Damn you, Charlie, don’t do this to me—”

“Don’tcha know why she’s up here all alone, Tommy?” he said, half turning to face him on the couch. Looking every bit his age just then, Tom couldn’t help but notice. His face broad and red in his indignation, the slack jowls wagging as he worked his jaw. Thick legs planted in a bulldog stance on the tiled floor.

“Didn’t she tell you anything about it? Didn’t you read about it? No, I’m not surprised you didn’t. It took our big friends, the ones she despises now, a lot of money to keep it out of the New York papers. C’mon, Slim, tell ’im all about it—tell ’im how you divided the whole town of Acapulco—”

“Stop it!” she screamed at him, drawn at last out of the low, cool voice she had been talking in. “Stop it! Why are you being so hateful?”

“Because that’s the way it was. While I was on the phone three, four times a day pleadin’ with ya to come home, you were out on the beach with Princeton, becomin’ a scandal again in still another town—”

“Do you know what he told me? Do you know what he told me in the end?” she said, pointing at Charlie, her voice miserable and teary and beyond control now. Both of them were on their feet, snapping at each other across the coffee table. Tom stood, too, more startled than anything else, not even sure what he was witnessing.

“Slim—” He tried to cut her off—too late.

“He told me, ‘You’re embarrassing a high officer of the United States.’ Those are the exact words that he used! Jesus Christ, what kind of a man would say such a thing?”

“That’s enough!” Tom shouted. He moved toward her but was looking back at his brother, in time to see a curdled grin creep up over his face.

“‘Me gusta caballeros.’ I like to ride men. I guess that wasn’t so wrong after all.” He turned on his heel, striding across the room, heading for the door.

“Charlie, what the hell—”

Charlie kept going, as if he hadn’t heard him, hurriedly snatching up his overnight bag, then sliding back through the door to the car in the turnabout, and Beneficio, who moved obediently into the driver’s seat.

“I thought you came here to bring her back!” Tom called after him.

“It’s no use!” Charlie said brusquely. “All she’s intent on is humiliating me. It was a mistake to come.”

He looked around for his own bag, but Charlie was already climbing into the car, banging on the door for a confused Beneficio to start moving.

“Charlie—wait! Don’t be a damned fool—” Slim called, running up after them in her bare feet, but he ignored her.

“I’m going back tonight. Slim can give you a ride tomorrow, or I’ll send Benny here back with the car. I’m sorry, Tom—I just can’t spend a night under the same roof where I’ve been insulted like that!”

Then the big Lincoln was gone, speeding down the serpentine cliff road they had just climbed up. Tom in shock watching it go.

“What was that?” he asked no one in particular, but Slim only shook her head and padded back to the front room, where by now the stars were beginning to appear over the perfect sea and the perfect beach, as if all the big white mansions along the cliffs had been fired up into the distant sky.

“It’s this place. It makes him crazy,” she said, shaking her head as she slipped another cigarette into her mouth and lifted a hefty silver lighter in the shape of an egg off the coffee table.

“What? How?” Tom asked distractedly.

She gave a half shrug.

“It’s a young man’s town, Tom—and he’s old.”

“Who’s Princeton?” Tom asked, and she seemed to deflate then, letting herself fall back into the couch and looking out toward the darkness where the ocean had been. Even that movement she managed to make seem elegant and sexual, her body dropping weightlessly. He noticed that she already had something of a tan, a light browning over the past couple of days that made her skin glow all the more radiantly against her blond hair.

“Nobody,” she said miserably. “Just a . . . boy. He’s the son of one of the big hotel owners here, a friend of Melchior’s—”

“Another member of the Big Crowd? And an Ivy Leaguer at that?”

“Well, that would account for why they call him Princeton, now, wouldn’t it. You’d be surprised, Tom, they can read and write here, too, now, as well as in Ireland,” she snapped at him, and he realized that what he was feeling was a twist of jealousy.

“And?”

“And what?”

“And is there anything between you?”

She stared at him so hard that he thought she might hurl the scotch glass at his head.

“‘Is there anything between you?’ What are you now, my father confessor, Tom? Jesus Christ, have all the O’Kanes lost their brains on the same night?”

“I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying, and I don’t care for it.” She stood up and began pacing before him, furious now. “I told you, it’s over between me and your brother. And you gave up any claiming rights a long time ago.”

“All right—”

“Ah, Jesus, Tom!” she said, stopping in front of him and putting the palm of her cigarette hand to her head. “Ah, Jesus, but I messed up! I messed everything up.”

He stood up then and went to her side. Taking her into his arms despite himself, despite everything that he’d told himself he wouldn’t do. Rocking her gently there, while she cried and shook her head.

“I made a fool of myself. It’s just that I couldn’t stand it anymore. Did he tell you about how it was—back in Mexico City?”

“Just a little,” he admitted. “He said there were complaints from the expats—”

“Those old carrion eaters and their wives!” she said with a snort, pulling away from him and sitting down again to pull at her scotch and gesture vehemently with her cigarette. “Retired oil men and mining engineers, the red glint still in their eyes. Wanting to know what Charlie was doing to de-nationalize the oil companies. Just waiting for everything to blow up, so they could grab it all back again! You should’ve heard Charlie talk about them—but now I’m the one to blame for not wanting to spend my evenings with them!”

“You had your bullfighting afternoons—”

“Yes, did he complain about those, too?” she asked, her voice bitter. “Oh, he liked them well enough at the time! He used to love it when we walked to the Madrazos’ box and the whole Plaza de Toros stood up and cheered him. He would bow to the crowd, hold up the matador’s hat to them. He loved it, Tom, he loved it. You can’t believe how many lies he tells. It’s another one of his goddamned fantasies. Did he tell you about his dream of coming back to Ebbets Field and having all the little people cheer him?”

“No,” Tom lied. “Now just tell me what happened.”

He leaned down to hold her hand, and put an arm back around her shoulders, and she clung to it.

“I couldn’t take it anymore, I told you. The only times I could stand were those bullfight luncheons in the fall, and nights with my music friends. We’d get back to the embassy late, after going to the cafés, and I would play the guitar with them, and sing a little. I know he didn’t like that, either, but it was the only time I had to relax. At least I was home, right downstairs; he could’ve come down anytime he wanted, and I would’ve sung to him!”

“It’s all right, Slim—”

“But it wasn’t, don’t you see that?” she said, looking up at him anxiously. “I had to do something, I had to get out, I was trapped there. The songs only made it worse, singing sad love ballads in my living room. I was still a young woman, Tom! Going around acting like I was wrecked, like I was wrecked just the same as he was—”

She put a hand to her mouth as soon as she said it, looking at him for forgiveness.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Tom. I don’t mean he’s wrecked, or that he didn’t get a bad rap—”

“I know, Slim, I know.”

“But that’s the way he acts, isn’t it? Like he’s goddamned Napoleon on goddamned Saint Helena! Like he’s a church martyr—and I was supposed to do that with him! I wouldn’t, Tom. I just couldn’t anymore.”

“I know you couldn’t.”

“I think I lost myself then, Tom. I have to admit, I really think I did. We started socializing all the time with those awful friends of his. You saw them. Second-rate crooks in a third-rate country. I lived in society all my life, Tom. I know what a social parasite looks like. I know what a crook is, too—I lived in New York.

“But I told myself I loved them. I told myself I was as crazy about them as Charlie was—Charlie O’Kane, still and evermore the Barefoot Boy from Bohola! Impressed by anyone who could flash some money and a little style in front of him—”

“Don’t say that, Slim. It isn’t fair.”

“No, no, I suppose you’re right, Tom.” She sniffled, shaking her head. “I won’t blame him for what I know better myself. I knew what they were, and I threw myself into it. God, it felt like such a relief after suffocating in that embassy! Just to be out and about, doing things! No more bridge nights with the mummies. No more evenings down in Cuernavaca, watching Henry Fink do his goddamned softshoe—did he really take you there?”

“He did,” Tom conceded grudgingly.

“So you know what it was like. This was our life, Tom! I couldn’t take it any longer. Even the Big Crowd would do, if that’s all there was. And it was such an easy life, Tom. There was always a hotel suite available—always a mansion like this. No money necessary, no obligation. I got too deep into it, Tom. I got too deep, and I lost myself.”

“Not from where I’m sitting, Slim.”

“Ah, you don’t know, Tom!” she said, writhing in his arms. “I started staying out here in Acapulco. I knew he wanted me back, Tom. I knew he needed me back. His term as ambassador was ending, and he’d just been up to testify in front of Kefauver, and I knew he was at low ebb—as low as I’ve ever seen him.

“But I couldn’t go back. Instead I stayed here, even though he was calling me three, four times a day. He started ordering me to come back, pleading with me. Going on with that goddamned silly stuff about how I was embarrassing a high officer of the United States! Jesus, have you ever heard anything so stupid? How the hell did I marry such a man?”

“Easy, now,” Tom warned. “He wasn’t himself—”

“Yes, yes, I know it,” she said sadly. “And I wasn’t myself by then.”

“And there was this boy . . .”

“There was this boy,” she said, her voice leavening as she thought of him. “And that’s all he was, really, a boy. It was just a flirtation, really. Princeton. I was staying in his daddy’s hotel. He was married already, and I knew that. I knew it couldn’t last. But we’d be seen together. We started water-skiing together across the bay every morning, and people started to talk. It’s quite a prudish little Catholic country still, for all its airs.”

“Were you in love with him?” he asked quietly.

“No, nothing like that,” she said, swiping a hand at the notion. “But I loved being with him. I loved the whole feeling of being free again, of being with a man who adored me.”

“But you weren’t free.”

“I know that. But it felt so good, to be away from Charlie, and all that gloom. I was out there in the sun with him one afternoon, just lying about, talking and flirting, nothing more serious than that. When I came off the beach I just felt so good, so strong and radiant with the sun. My flesh just felt so good, you know how that is? And I came back into the hotel lobby feeling like I loved everything and everybody in the world, and there was his wife.”

“Jesus—”

“She was furious, I could tell. But it was like I was drunk. I was feeling so good that I thought I could make anything right, and I went right up to her, smiling, and kissed her on the cheek, right there in the lobby. Just as a way to say, you know, there’s nothing very serious going on with your husband, I love you, too. I kissed her right there, in front of about half of Acapulco—and then she exploded.”

“Ah, Slim—”

“I know. It was a damned foolish thing to do, but it seemed so right at the moment. I kissed her, and I guess she thought I was patronizing her, and she made a scene. The next thing I knew it was all over the papers down here. Charlie managed to hush that up, all right, before it hit the States, anyway, but it was all over for me!” She laughed bitterly.

“It was the kiss that divided a country—both here in Acapulco, and back in Mexico City. Everybody was on his side or hers, but nobody was on mine. I was a marked woman.”

“Jesus, Slim—”

“And all these hypocrites with their mistresses, and their back-door lovers!”

“Why don’t you just get out?”

“I’d like to just get out, Tom. I’d love to get out, but I don’t know where to go. Back to Charlie, and El Ranchito? Back to New York, where he’s already queered it for us? Back to you, Tom?”

“You know that’s not possible, Slim.”

“Isn’t it, Tom? Then you tell me what is.”

“You know I’m trying to fix it. But he won’t stand still. I can’t get anything out of him—”

“But that’s how he’s always been, Tom. You know that. He’s the most evasive man in the world, when he wants to be.”

“But why, Slim? Doesn’t he want to get out, too? Out of all of this?”

“What makes you think so, Tom?” she said, turning that same ironic smile on him again. “Has he ever said so?”

“Not exactly—”

“What makes you think he isn’t perfectly contented to stay down here, flirting with all those Kansas City divorcées who come through El Ranchito, or the local talent Henry Fink provides? What makes you think he wants for one minute to give up playing the martyr down here—the wrongfully accused exile, the cuckolded husband—when he can get such beautiful sympathy for it?”

“But why?” Tom asked, almost pleading. “Why wouldn’t he want to clear his name?”

“You saw how he was as mayor. There’s something in Charlie that gets right up to the starting gate, but then he shies away. There’s something that’s almost great about the man, and that’s what’s worst—”

“Don’t say things like that about him!”

“It’s true, and you know it. It’s like there’s no foundation to him, he just crumbles in the end. He’s not the man we want him to be. He’s not the man we think he is. Surely, he’s told that to you with his own lips. I know he’s said it to me.”

Tom slumped down on the floor, looking up at Slim in her chair, astonished.

“You know,” he said, “I believe he has.”

“Ah, Tom,” she said, reaching out to put a hand under his chin. “You know, for a prosecutor you don’t listen very well.”