SUMMER HAD GONE AND COME AGAIN. IN THE MIDDLE of October the heat returned, raging. A Santa Ana, the natives called the wind that blew in from the desert with such fury that even the seashore burned. There was no humidity, no decent sweat to relieve fever temperature. Fletcher’s wound needed moisture; with every breath he inhaled pain. His temper became insufferable. Elaine suggested that they drive north to Carmel, fly to Hawaii, sail off on any boat that went anywhere. He stamped about the house, grunting, refusing comfort.
To escape the unbearable climate of the house, Don and Cindy drove down to Nan’s place at Newport Beach. She had promised that her house would always be open to them, her pool available. They found the doors locked, the gate barred. Too late Cindy remembered that Nan had gone to stay at her father’s Lake Arrowhead place while her husband was abroad, her servants on holiday. It was irksome. She and Don had met a few people with houses in that area, but none whom she could visit without invitation. The shore burned like desert sand, the ocean lay sullen in the glare, the sky was as blue as oxidized copper molded to reflect heat. Although they disliked public beaches, they had to get into the water just to feel alive. Like ordinary people whose friends do not own beach houses, they undressed and left their clothes in the car. After the swim Cindy combed her hair and did her face on the open beach. While their bathing suits dried, they could find no pleasant place to sit, no cafés with tables under parasols, not even a decent cold drink. They walked a long way in search of some place more inviting than the sordid shacks whose signs advertised bottled drinks and whose stoves filled the air with the stink of frying fat and cheap ground meat. A diamond is easier to find on the California shore than a glass of fresh orange juice or real lemonade.
The beach ended in a bluff. Pretending to be gay and beatnik and unconventional, they decided to walk in bathing suits along the highway where they might find an edible sandwich. They ascended a narrow street. A sign caught their eye: FOR SALE—UNUSUAL—A BARGAIN. The house was only a few feet up a narrow lane, tree-shaded and secluded; a perfect gem, adorable, divine, irresistible and not expensive; less than forty-five thousand dollars. Forty-four, nine hundred and fifty. A few miles up the coast, where Nan lived, a narrow lot cost seventy-five thousand. Without the house. This was ideal for a young couple, the sort of unpretentious place they could explain to people who lived in two-hundred-thousand-dollar houses as “cozy” and “completely private.” It was only five years old, authentic California modern with a flat roof, two sun decks, glass walls all over the place. There was no pool, merely the ocean for swimming, but they could maintain status by reminding their friends that they had come from the East, had spent their summers on the Atlantic and preferred surf bathing. The house was offered at this absurd price because the owner, a young executive who was transferred to his company’s Ohio branch, wanted to sell immediately. For a down payment of only five thousand dollars they could own the house. They were almost naked, Don in the trunks, Cindy wearing a few inches of a bikini, but the owners of the house at once recognized them as the right sort and said they would be happy to have their home occupied by such nice people. Don mentioned casually that Nan’s father would arrange the financing. Cindy added that the famous banker’s daughter was her closest friend. The effect was magic, the house practically theirs.
Hand in hand, like enchanted children, they raced along the beach to fetch their clothes and car. “Just think, a home of our own. We can entertain,” Cindy said, “informally, of course, but with chic.” She saw a dining table in an ell that faced the sunset; laid it with wedding presents of china and silver stored now in her mother’s basement; clothed herself in a fabulous cotton hostess gown and welcomed guests who simply adored her new house. Don thought barbecue dinners a better way of entertaining. Over watery coffee and plastic-wrapped sandwiches they argued about the sort of parties they would give.
They had been too hungry and too impatient to look for a decent place, so had settled on a so-called beach café where food and drinks were thrust over a counter at barefoot customers who, if they were lucky enough to get a table, could sit down while they ate. At this hour only one other table was occupied. A pair of foreigners in dark glasses spoke an ugly guttural language.
“What’s the soonest we could move in, Don?”
Don bit into his sandwich, grimaced, said, “Well, I guess that settles it. We’re staying in California definitely.”
Cindy’s sandwich might have been of glue or caviar, smoked turkey or cardboard. She was too excited to taste mere food. “Do you think we can use the Hitchcock chairs and the hutch in a modern house?” She had inherited the antiques from her maternal grandmother.
“Maybe I can land that job with Carter Consolidated.” Don rode his own train of thought. “I’ll try to see Doug Third in the morning. He told me his grandfather was looking desperately for the right man, and promised to make an appointment. There’s a future in that outfit.” He saw himself at an executive’s desk in an air-conditioned office with wall-to-wall carpeting, a beautiful secretary, and his name on the door. A group of young Negroes invaded the shack, took possession of the empty tables, crowded their brown bodies into the narrow space. They ordered hamburgers. A greasy smog drifted from the grill. Laughter and guttural foreign syllables interrupted Don’s dreams of executive importance and Cindy’s plans for entertaining millionaires.
When they returned they found the house prettier than they remembered. Imagination had made it their own. The owner’s wife suggested that they change their clothes in a bedroom where they had a private moment, a naked embrace in the lustful thought that this pretty chamber would be their own. While Cindy took her own good time to redo her hair and face, Don discussed details of the transaction. The owner’s agent lived close by and had been summoned by telephone.
Arrangements were the usual ones. A deposit of one thousand dollars would put the house in escrow. When these proceedings had been completed, Don would pay the additional four thousand and the house would be his. “Unfortunately,” he said gaily, “I haven’t a thousand dollars on me, and I didn’t bring my checkbook to the beach.”
No one expected him to pay on sight. A house is not purchased like a cake of soap. Impatient to make a deal, the agent suggested that they meet the next morning at the escrow department of a bank in downtown Los Angeles. Don remarked that deals of that sort were simpler in the East where no escrow formalities were demanded, and people simply bought and sold without having to wait while a third party held the buyer’s money and searched the seller’s title.
“It’s for your protection,” said the agent piously.
“You won’t find any termites in this house,” the owner added.
“What time do we meet?” asked the agent.
Don assumed an important air. “I happen to have a rather full day tomorrow. A meeting that may go on all afternoon.” Like a man of affairs, he shrugged off the dreary business, suggested that they get together in the morning of the next day. There was no doubt that he had made a good impression. The Jaguar and the Strode address in Pacific Palisades had not gone unnoticed. These were solid assets like cash in the bank. Donald Hustings seemed a man whose signature could command thousands. But he did not feel that he had made a commitment recklessly. He had given himself an extra twenty-four hours to raise the money.
“You think your father’d advance it?”
Cindy thought about it bitterly. They were driving on the freeway, and she noticed all the posters advertising houses that could be owned by veterans without a penny’s down payment. Don had given two years of his life to the US Navy. Her father would probably suggest that a man without ready cash take advantage of some such drab opportunity. During their stay in his house her father had shown little generosity to the honeymoon couple. It was galling to contrast her fate with Nan Burke’s splendid life. If Cindy had been a poor man’s daughter she could have forgiven her father’s ungenerous attitude, but she had so often heard her mother speak in angry reverence of Fletcher’s fortune that Cindy had grown up believing herself an heiress. Nothing in Fletcher Strode’s present style of living (except the absence of a servant in the house) suggested that he was not wealthy. What had Cindy to expect from such a father? His money was squandered on that second wife.
She looked up at Don. His well-cut features were deformed by a scowl, the sculptured lips pressed between his teeth. “I don’t know. Daddy’s been so dismal lately, he’s in a sort of depression.” She did not speak in her usual flat voice but wailed softly like a disconsolate child. “I’m kind of afraid of asking. It’d be easier with Nan’s father. He likes you so much, Donnie.”
Don turned down the car radio. At any other time the jazz combo would have delighted him, but with so many cars whirring on the freeway and Cindy using that affected childish voice, he could barely hear. His tones, still adjusted to the jazz band, were far too loud. “We can’t ask him for the down payment. If he’s going to finance us for forty thousand, we can’t let him know we don’t have the first five thousand.”
“Why not?”
“We’d be poor security. I doubt that his company would accept us even with his recommendation.”
Cindy was not informed about money. Don had to explain the transaction in words of one syllable. He became harsher as the reality of the situation became clearer. It had disappointed Don that Cindy’s private income and expectations were not what he had been led to believe; but then he had also represented himself as a suitor with a solid job and brilliant prospects. The house might indeed be a bargain for a man who had a few thousand dollars, but for a man in Don Hustings’s position, there were no bargains. “Maybe we oughtn’t to buy now.”
“I’ll die if we don’t get that house. Isn’t there some way, Don?”
“We might borrow on your trust fund.”
A transformation took place in Cindy. The plaintive little girl became a woman of iron. Her very skin took on a metallic hue. Once before Don had suggested borrowing on the principal. She had burst out with such an astonishing series of shrieks, accusations, and tears that for days he had been afraid to talk to her. The trust fund settled upon her by Fletcher at the time of his divorce was sacred, her only security against starvation in the streets.
“You know I’d never do that,” she answered with surprising dignity. “But there must be some other way. For people like us. Daddy must still have plenty of money. Couldn’t we just use his name?”
Don had become very tense. An idiot truck driver had slowed up just ahead. They were entering the city. Smog made breathing impossible. Heat lay upon the earth like an electric blanket. “Not unless he’d co-sign. That’d be no different from asking him to lend us the money.”
“I don’t mean asking him. I mean just being his daughter. After all,” Cindy held her breath while Don swung out and passed the huge truck, “I am his daughter, and he’s not so young and has had that terrible operation.”
“He’s done all right by you. Do you know how much principal it takes to earn a seventy-five-a-week income? We know nothing about his will, and besides he may live for years.”
“I hope he does,” Cindy said and added without thought of the contradiction, “but there are big insurance policies. He made them out for Mom and me before the divorce and it was in the settlement he’d keep them for us.”
Don sighed. They could not raise money on hopes and promises. Their only chance was a direct appeal to Fletcher Strode. The prospect appalled Don. From time to time he turned to look at Cindy and saw the fear in her face. There were only two courses, either to give up and go back to his hopeless job and his debts, or to risk his father-in-law’s contempt. Presently he suggested that Cindy appeal to her father. She answered that financial problems were his responsibility. For the rest of the drive they argued, weaving in and out between the speeding cars and breathing foul fumes. In anger Don drove faster and more dangerously until he was stopped by a traffic cop and given a ticket for reckless driving. This was not a good omen.
A MIRACLE AWAITED Cindy’s homecoming. “Nan’s here,” she announced with the reverence of a herald angel. A Rolls-Royce was parked in the driveway.
“Don’t say anything about the house.”
“Why not? I’m dying to tell them.”
“We’ve got to break it to your father carefully. He might not approve if he’s not in the right mood.”
In the living room they found Nan Burke chattering at Fletcher. Her simple cotton dress had cost two hundred dollars, if not more. “Darling!” she and Cindy cried simultaneously and hurried to touch cheekbones.
“I thought you were in Arrowhead,” Cindy said.
“I was. I am,” Nan replied with the accent and giggle she and Cindy had acquired the same year at the same school. “But after all, Arrowhead shops aren’t exactly fabulous and I was desperately in need of shorts. Imagine forgetting to pack shorts! They’re an absolute must in the mountains.” Nan could go on like this for hours. About nothing important. “And with the place at Newport empty, there was no one to fetch them so I came to town for some new ones. And stopped in to see you. And met your famous father.” She glanced toward Fletcher coyly. She had been told about his infirmity and warned that he was morbidly sensitive. “Actually I dropped in to bring you something.” From a mammoth alligator bag that must have cost three hundred dollars (if not more) she brought out a pair of engraved cards. “With Rexie away I don’t feel much like going out at night. The mountain air’s so positively great that . . . well, really, you won’t believe this . . . we fall asleep at nine. Isn’t it fantastic? You really ought to come up there, Mr. Strode”—she favored him with a bright, apologetic smile—“it’s so relaxing. Really! And you’d be welcome to use our bit of beach and sail one of my father’s boats if you’d like.” She gestured with a cigarette, brushed ash off her expensive cotton bosom. Her breasts were large, her waist filling out. Although she was Cindy’s age and had so far only one child, she had begun to wear the bountiful air of a patroness.
Cindy cooed over the cards which were for a widely advertised movie premiere, a benefit sponsored by one of Nan’s favorite charities. Cindy had heard the girls talk about it, had been aching to go but could not dream of paying fifty dollars for the cheapest seats. The tickets Nan bestowed were for the best box and had probably cost a thousand dollars, if not more. They also entitled the bearers to attend a midnight supper dance at the San Marino estate of an oil millionaire.
Ecstatic, Cindy contrived to show decent protest. “Are you sure you don’t want to go, Nan?”
“Without my husband?”
“Why not?” asked Don with a provocative smile.
“Who’d take me?”
“I’m sure there are dozens of men who’d welcome the privilege.”
“I’m not that sort of wife. Not yet.”
Cindy joined Nan in gales of merriment over the innuendo. Don had pleased Nan, which pleased Cindy; and Don was pleased with himself. Fletcher’s stomach rumbled. Elaine came in with a tray of iced tea and cookies.
“What about your parents? Couldn’t you go with them?” asked Cindy, stretching the danger of self-sacrifice to its limit.
“They’re too lazy. And my father’s bored to death by those affairs. People make speeches.” Nan made the word sound obscene.
“If you change your mind, just call up and you have your seats back,” Cindy offered reluctantly as she tucked the tickets away in an amusing straw bag which cost only eighteen dollars at a sale.
“Why don’t you use my father’s seats, Mr. Strode? I’m sure you and your wife would enjoy the show.” Nan addressed Fletcher in a slow, clear voice calculated to show compassion for the afflicted.
Fletcher grunted something inaudible and marched out of the room. He refused to stay and be spoken to like a deaf mute or a moron, and to be offered the charity of unwanted tickets. Did that fool girl imagine he’d burst with joy at the privilege of sitting through an affair that bored her father? Fletcher Strode! God knows, he could afford a pair of tickets if he wanted them; a dozen pairs. He would have liked to hurl the ashtray, stubs and all, at the complacent bosom. Most distasteful of all was Cindy’s acting like a poor relation.
“I hope you don’t mind poor Daddy, he’s so morbidly sensitive,” Cindy said with the frayed remnant of a laugh.
“I tried to offer him a bit of pleasure.” Nan stood up. Her purse slid to the floor.
Elaine murmured thanks for the invitation and excused herself to go after Fletcher. Don hurried to retrieve the fallen bag. Sir Walter Raleigh could not have shown more gallant obeisance to his queen. Nan bestowed a regal smile. Don acknowledged it with a flattering eye. Nan walked out with a swinging motion of her hips. Don accompanied her to the car. Cindy started after them, but Don turned with a wink that bade her remain behind. When he helped Nan into the Rolls, he lifted her hand and kissed it.
“Wasn’t Daddy awful?” Cindy whispered when she and Don were in their room with the transistor turned high and the door closed. “You don’t think she was sore, do you?”
“I did my best to smooth out the ruffled plumage.”
“You were adorable.” Cindy kissed the tip of his chin. “If businessmen were women, you’d be a millionaire.”
Don stripped off his shirt and flexed his muscles at the suntanned fellow in the mirror. “Never underestimate the power of a woman. Her old man may be clay in Nan’s little hand.”
“Wasn’t Daddy terrible, though? Tomorrow, Donnie, I’m going to tell him what I thought of that performance—”
“Not if you want the house. Tomorrow you’re going to ask Daddy for five thousand dollars. And one thousand of it right away.”
“You’re the man, darling, you’ve got to ask.”
Implacable, the man said, “You’re his daughter, the sweetest little girl in the world. Remember, daughter dear, it’s only a loan you’re asking for.”
“He’ll squawk at me in that voice. It makes me sick. I just can’t take it.”
The argument went on until they reached a compromise. Cindy would gird up courage and appeal to her father; Don would charm Elaine into using her influence with Fletcher. This seemed a brilliant idea. A couple of cocktails stiffened their courage. Fletcher drank a lot before and during dinner. Afterward they played bridge and he won. This seemed a good omen.
CINDY AND DON came to breakfast promptly. She explained prettily that she had decided to get up every morning at the crack of dawn, and do something useful. “After all, a vacation can’t last forever, you know.” She kissed Fletcher on both cheeks and ran to the kitchen to help Elaine. Don explained that he had an early appointment with Douglas Lyman Carter III about an opening in his family’s firm. Fletcher grunted something that Don preferred not to understand. Since the day he arrived in California, Don had been talking about his fraternity brother, the Carter heir. After several meetings and many martinis, Don had been introduced to the personnel manager of Carter Consolidated. An opening had been mentioned, but it was neither interesting nor remunerative enough for a man of Don’s caliber. Young Doug had laughed at the very idea of his fraternity brother’s taking a job on a junior-junior level and promised a personal meeting with his grandfather.
“Today’s the day. Doug’s done a top-selling job because the old man’s giving me a half hour of his time.” Don was never more blithe than in a spontaneous lie.
“Good luck,” Elaine said.
Cindy wore a pink ribbon in her hair. It gave her an innocent look so that she seemed only a little older than the ruffled child in the photograph on Fletcher’s desk. This picture was the one souvenir that Fletcher had wanted to keep after he married Elaine. It brought back memories of the days when his daughter had been adoring and adorable, and he had given her four Saturdays a year. They had gone off together like clandestine lovers, freed of his wife’s heavy companionship; to beach or circus or rodeo or ice show; to overeat and laugh boisterously together. He had been looked upon as the king of happiness and had bestowed extravagant toys.
Cindy served Fletcher’s toast and eggs. In the softest of little-girl voices she asked if Daddy would like to have her come and play golf with him. “Not that I’m good enough . . . I’m more of the tennis type . . . but if you’d want me . . .” She had dressed for the links in a misty pink and gray plaid dress and flat shoes.
She played deplorably, and the sun beat down like punishment. Fletcher tested her by going the full eighteen holes. She bore it valiantly so that he felt sorry and invited her to lunch. He suspected that she was out after a gift, perhaps a new dress for that shindig on Monday night. Why not give it to her? Fletcher Strode’s daughter need not feel inferior. She had large blue eyes very much like his own, and her mother’s pale skin, now prettily tanned. A good-looking girl deserves good clothes. He had not been generous to her lately, nor fair in judging her charms.
She imitated Elaine in suggesting his lunch menu, selecting things he liked, protecting him from the waiter. All through lunch she chattered so that people, observing them, probably thought the middle-aged man extremely patient with the prattle of his young companion. When they were drinking coffee she slid her hand across the table, rested it upon his and asked gently if he would like to help her and her husband. “We do so want a home of our own.”
There were a number of questions in his mind but he did not care to expose his infirmity in the restaurant. He signaled the waiter, and Cindy, tactful today, announced that Mr. Strode would like the check. It was not until they were in the car that Fletcher spoke. Would she like a new dress for that party? Anything she chose at the shop. The price did not matter. Fletcher Strode’s daughter could dress as well as that big-bosomed friend of hers. Ordinarily Cindy would have been ecstatic, not only having bought an expensive dress but wangled a wrap and a pair of slippers to go with the outfit.
“Thank you very much, Daddy. You’re so wonderful but”—she slid toward him and rested her hand upon his knee—“my beige organza is just perfect for Monday night, and no one out here’s seen it yet. There’s something else,” she paused for a deep breath, “money, Daddy. But only as a loan. Don will pay it back. He’s practically been promised that Carter job, you know.”
“How much?”
“We’re not asking you to give it to us. Really. We’ve decided to live very economically so we can pay you back soon.”
Fletcher barked out the question again.
Cindy hesitated. She was afraid he would remind her that the income from her trust fund was a lot of money for a young girl, that she did not appreciate the sacrifice it had cost to make this liberal settlement on his daughter. He had to ask once more before she tightened her hand on his thigh and asked tremulously, “Could you afford to lend us five thousand dollars, Daddy? One thousand Monday and the rest—”
A roar interrupted. That was a damn fool question, an insult, a slur on his name. Could he afford five thousand dollars? Did she think her father a pauper? Whenever he was angry and spoke too fast, neglecting the control of abdominal muscles and the rhythm of breath, he sounded like a defective machine. Cindy could not half understand, but experience had taught her that his rage would be increased if she reminded him of the horror.
He knew. A few blocks before they reached the house he parked the car, turned off the motor, and asked in painfully controlled syllables how much the house would cost and how Don expected to finance it. She told him all that Don had explained. Fletcher did not approve.
He kept her waiting. The suspense was unbearable. She was tempted to jump out of the car and run away from the sound of his breathing. She found a handkerchief in her bag, wiped her eyes, turned away and blew her nose. Fletcher pretended not to notice but was fully aware of her agitation. His blood ran faster, his pulse raced, the glow of power sent up his blood pressure. Fletcher Strode had become a man again. Others waited and feared his decisions.
His daughter eyed him timidly.
“Let me think about it.” He had the voice of authority.
“You will, Daddy!” The girl was ecstatic at not having been rejected.
He switched on the motor, thrust his foot hard upon the gas pedal. The car raced up the hill like a creature freed from bondage, moving with swift and certain power.
“DON’T MOVE. STAY just as you are. I want to enjoy this pretty picture,” Don said.
In spite of the warning, Elaine raised her head. Sunlight threw upon her face varied patterns of tree and shadow and the latticework of the pavilion. “Cindy went off to play golf with Fletcher. They’re probably staying out for lunch so I’m enjoying the working girl’s special.” She had brought a sandwich, a glass of milk, and a book to the wicker table. “How’d it go? Did you meet Mr. Carter the First?”
“What a character!”
“I’m thinking over the offer.” Don’s sly wink could be interpreted in a number of ways.
“What about money? Will they pay you well?”
“I could do with more, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what that bastard in personnel offered me last month.” Don did not wish to admit that once again he had seen none of the Carters but only that bastard in the personnel office, that he had been told once more that there was a fair sort of job open, that several applicants were being considered and that Don’s original application would be reviewed. All the bastard had offered was another appointment for Monday. Adding a bonus to the lie, “It was a tense hour with the tycoon,” he said. “I could use a drink.”
“Have you had lunch?”
Elaine enjoyed serving lunch to a young man with a hearty appetite. Don enjoyed eating with her in the charming pavilion. While he told her about the house, he watched her slender hands with the coffeepot and cream pitcher. His perverse mind caught glimpses of her, rather than Cindy, in the rooms and upon the windswept decks of the new house. Elaine had many talents that his wife lacked, chief among them the ability to listen. She asked for a cigarette. He held his lighter to it long after it had caught fire. Elaine backed away from the small flame.
“Sorry.” Don moved off, too, stiffening slightly. “I was so busy admiring you that I didn’t notice.”
“Don’t let your admiration set me on fire.”
“I wish it could!”
Both laughed away the tasteless compliment. Elaine shifted her chair so that she was not facing him directly. Presently he moved around to see her better. Never, during his days as a lawyer, had Donald Hustings pleaded with greater brilliance. Elaine’s attention excited him. Every word was cogent, every pause had meaning.
Elaine readily understood what he wanted of her. “Do you honestly think I can get Fletcher to help you?”
“Who else has such influence with him? He worships you like a goddess.”
Her light died out. The lovely head drooped on the long stem of her neck.
“Please try, Elaine. I know he’ll listen to you. God!” Don’s fist struck the table with such force that cups leaped and saucers rattled. “A man needs a home of his own. Starting out the way I am, in a new field. A house is security. Especially out here in the West, if you don’t own your home you’re just dirt. White trash.”
Though not quite honest, Don was completely sincere. Self-interest is a strong hypnotic. His heart was set upon possession of the house which, he believed with superstitious ardor, would finally turn his luck. No matter how heavily mortgaged, the property would be recorded in his name, adding the luster and solidity demanded of a young executive.
His urgency restored Elaine. She saw the eager spaniel eyes, the mouth more than ever sculpted by a boyish pout, the tremor of his hands. She could not remain indifferent to the tension, the anguish, and the frankness. “I’ll try but I can’t promise a lot. Fletcher makes his own decisions. He’s a very positive person.”
“But you’ll try? Talk to him tonight.”
“It depends upon his mood.”
“I’ve got to have the first thousand on Monday. Otherwise we may lose the house. Bargains like that don’t wait.”
A bee flew between them, buzzing impudently over the dish of sweets. Elaine brushed at the air. Don jerked her arm away. “You’ll get stung if you’re not careful. Promise to help me, Elaine.”
“I want to, but I can’t argue with Fletcher. He’s nervous lately and,” she had become agitated and looked at the bee, studied the polish on her fingernails, toyed with the sugar tongs, “unhappy. He’s very unhappy.”
“You coddle him too much. He treats you brutally sometimes.”
“Worshiping me like a goddess?”
“I often wonder why you put up with his tantrums.”
“I love him.” Defiantly, “I do,” she declared. The bee flew around the pavilion, humming relentlessly. “Don’t look at me so skeptically, Don. Probably Cindy and her mother have told wild tales about me, that I set a trap and caught Fletcher because he was rich. But I loved him. He was so wonderful.”
“And so rich.”
“Why must people always talk about money? I knew other rich men. Fletch was terrific.” Memory kindled delight. She could no longer sit quiet behind the coffee cups, but had to get up and move around restlessly like the bee. “You can’t imagine the man he was. So alive!” She wrapped her arms about her body, ecstatically. “I’ve never known anyone with such a capacity for living. Just sheer living. He enjoyed everything. Crazy!” She danced around the table with small springing steps that showed the way she had moved in that magic spring when she and Fletcher Strode became lovers. “How we’d laugh, you could hear him miles away, he was so hearty. His voice . . .” A curtain fell over the show of lost rapture. “Fletch had a very loud voice.”
“And that made you forget that he was rich?”
“No. I don’t want to lie. I like money. Perhaps without it Fletcher wouldn’t have seemed so glamorous to me. But he wouldn’t have been the same person either, there wouldn’t have been such careless rapture. Money’s wonderful not to think about. I love not counting the cost of groceries, I love charge accounts and expensive restaurants and beautiful clothes and . . .” She paused and thought about the present, laughed, and shrugged a shoulder to show the futility of her tastes. “Not that I have any use for them now. What good are pretty clothes if you never go anywhere?” The dancing mood was over. “It’s wicked of me to talk like that. He’s so desperately unhappy.”
Don could not disagree. “It’s tough. I feel sorry for him just the same.”
“He wants to die.”
There! At last she had said it. Fear, long contained, had escaped by its own force. Reality was less real than her imaginary conversations with Ralph Julian. Perhaps it was better this way; Don was a member of the family.
Fletcher’s son-in-law was not shaken. “Wants to die? What makes you think so?”
Elaine sought protection in the pavilion’s shadiest corner. “No. No, he hasn’t actually threatened, but he thinks about it all the time.”
“How do you know? He must have said something to give you that idea. Lots of people think about suicide, and some even talk about it. But they don’t do anything so final.” Don seemed to think the common formula would soothe her.
“Once,” Elaine faltered and thought carefully of what she meant to say, “we saw one of those hysterical shows about mercy killing. Euthanasia, they say on TV, very fancy. The actor smothered his wife with a pillow. Like Othello.” She looked through the lattice as though the drama were being played among the autumn flowers. “She was dying anyway, the wife. In ghastly pain. And the husband smothered her.”
Don led her back to the long chair, drew his own chair closer, held her hand. “What did he say?”
“He asked if I had the courage.”
“He was just talking. Probably didn’t mean it.”
Elaine shook her head. It had ceased to matter that she had told her secret to the wrong man. Speech solidified the horror. All of a sudden, remembering another time when Fletcher had talked about his death, she began, “One day last spring he said . . .” but could not go on. Right here in the pavilion while she lay upon this very chair and watched the quail; and she had turned away her flaming face as now she turned to hide herself from Don. Bees had been flying around the garden on that day, too. In the buzzing she heard echoes of the mangled voice: You wish I was dead.
Don held out a lighted cigarette. “Take it easy, dear. There’s probably nothing to it. Probably it’s all in your imagination.”
Elaine shrank from his cigarette. Ridiculous, she had cried at Fletcher’s recognition of a forbidden dream. In the daytime she tried never to think of freedom, but at night she sometimes woke abruptly and was ashamed because her dream had promised escape. Now that she had begun, she had to go on talking. “Sometimes at night, I’m frightened. I wake up . . . and go into his room to hear him breathing. Almost,” she produced a shamed trill of laughter, “every night. It isn’t only because I dream. I go before I let myself fall asleep. I think it will keep me from dreaming.”
From a distance she heard Don beg her not to worry, say that she was building a mountain range out of a nonexistent molehill. It was easy enough for him, who had not been with Fletcher in the worst moods, to say that a man of that nature would never destroy himself.
“But if he should!”
“He wouldn’t. He’s too fond of himself.”
This offended Elaine. Accustomed to protecting her husband, she kept up the habit when he was not present and in need of protection. “You don’t know him at all. What you see today isn’t the real Fletcher. Believe me. He’s terribly sick, he’s in misery. He doesn’t like living, he’s stopped caring about anything.” She was shaken by her own vehemence, appalled at having shown passions that a decent soul would hide under layers of composure. The confession had not relieved her. And Don continued his arguments, offering reassurance like flowers in a sickroom.
They heard wheels on the driveway. “He’s back,” and Elaine was off to welcome her husband.
It was not Fletcher’s silvercloud Lincoln but a white truck as antiseptic and glittering as an ambulance. A lanky Negro boy opened the back and brought out a bundle of clothes. “Top Drawer Cleaners, how you today, miss?” Like all other delivery men, he stopped for a chat with a friendly customer.
When the boy had gone, Don carried the bundle of clothes into Fletcher’s room. Elaine opened the closet door. “Wait, let me make room.” She cleared a space upon the pole and stood with her back to the door while Don brushed past. He kissed her. It was swift and shocking. Between them like a shield he held the bundle, plastic covers rustling delicately over Fletcher’s suits.
“You’re so damned lovely.”
She tried to edge away. Don pressed her against the door. They did not hear the car stop nor the closing of doors. Cindy’s voice came to them from the corridor. Elaine moved off like a jet. The bundle of clothes slid to the floor.
Fletcher came in.
“We’re putting away your things from the cleaner’s.”
“Elaine was showing me where to hang them.”
It would have been wiser not to offer excuses. Had there been anything between them, they would not have chosen Fletcher’s bedroom nor been caught with a bundle of suits in plastic bags. “Your cashmere jacket,” she said, “came back at last. I hope they got the oil stain out.” As far as Don was concerned she had no cause for guilt, but the general burden was so heavy that the interrupted kiss, which she had tried to repel, added to the weight on her conscience.
Fletcher seemed to have noticed nothing unusual in their behavior. He helped pick up the fallen clothes. Later he invited them to the movies, then took them to a nightclub. Don had a way with headwaiters so that he managed, without reservations at the most popular place in town, to have Fletcher Strode treated as a frequent and desirable patron.
It turned out to be Don’s lucky night. Had he gone to the men’s room three minutes earlier or later, he would not have bumped into that important executive who, weeks before, had kept him waiting an hour for a five-minute interview, had promised another appointment and had never been heard from again. “Don’t I know you?” Mr. Heatherington had asked. With exceptional tact Don had reminded him of the circumstances. Jocund and flushed, Heathington had offered profuse apology while Don had shown understanding of a position so demanding that a man could not remember his promises.
Mr. Heatherington invited Don to drink with him at the bar. “To talk business, boy,” he said with a nod toward the table where Mrs. Heatherington was entertaining cousins from the Middle West.
It certainly did not hurt Don Hustings to be seen in public with an executive arm around his shoulders. “What have you been doing with yourself lately?” the tycoon asked.
“I’ve decided to stay out here. Just bought a house.”
“Fine, boy. Great. Where is it?”
“At the shore. In that new development below Newport Beach.”
Mr. Heatherington approved. The area, he said, was bound to boom. And what was the young man doing with himself, business-wise? Don answered that he had been up to his ears in work. “Looking after my father-in-law’s affairs. Fletcher Strode, you know, the man who promoted that Ark-well-BDU merger in New York. And Zeno, Incorporated, he put that on the map, too.” Heatherington was impressed. There had been more revelations about Fletcher Strode’s business and regretful mention of his illness and retirement. “But Dad’s anxious to become active again. If he could find the right thing, of course.” There was, Don hinted, far more than capital to be invested—although that was considerable, too—since it was vital that Fletcher Strode’s business genius be utilized. Heatherington, drinking with zest, had encouraged Don to go on, and Don had implied, without making too much of it, that he acted as the voice of his afflicted father-in-law. Heatherington let drop word of a proposition that might catch Fletcher Strode’s fancy. He would have liked to meet Don’s father-in-law, but Don explained that a hasty, unprepared meeting would be the worst way of approaching the supersensitive man. “It might be more practical to give me the details first. How soon can we meet and talk it over, sir?”
“Free for lunch tomorrow?” asked Heatherington and signaled the bartender for another round of doubles.
“I’ll make it my business.”
Heatherington felt obliged to return to his wife’s relations. Don went back to the table in high spirits. They were all in a good mood, the two girls reflecting Fletcher’s pleasure. As a big spender he had always enjoyed privilege and in this nightclub he felt himself a man of importance again. In a place where loud music made conversation impossible, it was not necessary to talk. Don ordered food and drinks for the party, and although he hovered a bit too eagerly, Fletcher was pleased with the obeisance. Mr. Strode was functioning again, making decisions, exerting power over people who depended upon his favors. And his son-in-law was truly his mouthpiece.