Ken grinned. ‘I was just waking up anyway.’
‘I’m pleased about that,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to think that you might have grown tired of me.’
He rolled off the airbed, and splashed into the water. Then he swam with long, even strokes to the side of the pool. He lifted himself a little out of the water, and kissed her bare toes.
‘You are a goddess,’ he said, ‘of whom no man could ever grow tired.’
‘I wish my second husband had known that. It would have saved an awful lot of legal expense.’
He climbed out of the pool and shook himself like a wet dog. Then he reached for the thick Turkish towel that he had hung on the upraised arm of a Roman nymph, and wrapped it around his waist. He kissed her, and her thin dress clung to his wet body.
‘Holman tells me you’re very useful around the house,’ said Adele, as they walked across the patio. ‘He says you’re very efficient.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘I don’t know whether he’s told you, but we’re having a party on Saturday night. It’s in honour of Tony Seiden. You know Tony Seiden the film director, don’t you? He’s finishing his new thriller on Friday, and we thought it would be nice for him to get away from Hollywood for his wrap-up party.’
‘He directed Secret Nights, didn’t he?’
‘Directed and produced. The same with this one. It doesn’t have a title yet, he calls it Number Seventeen.’
‘He’s kind of political, isn’t he? I never saw Secret Nights, but I heard it was kind of political.’
Adele wafted in through the open door of the house. ‘Tony’s always political. He did that scathing picture on Mayor Daley of Chicago. That’s why he always produces. He doesn’t like other people telling him how to direct.’
Ken rubbed his hair with the towel as they walked through to the living room. Holman the butler was there, decanting the sherry, and Adele said, ‘Holman, bring us two mint juleps, will you? Make them tart.’ Holman said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ in a noticeably aggrieved tone.
‘And Holman?’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘Mr Irwin is working for me, Holman, but he is also my guest and my friend. As well as yours, I hope.’ Holman kept his eyes on the floor. ‘I’ll bring the juleps right away, ma’am.’
After the butler had disappeared through the archway to the kitchen, Adele swirled about the room, her dress floating around her. Ken saw shadowy and tantalizing glimpses of her flat stomach, her perfect breasts, her slender thighs. She said, as she swirled, ‘You mustn’t mind Holman. He doesn’t feel happy unless he has something to complain about. It’s the butler’s disease.’
Ken sat down in a heavy Spanish-style armchair, his towel draped loosely around his middle. He took a cigarette from the box on the table beside him, and lit it with a lighter in the shape of a conquistador’s helmet.
‘And what’s the famous movie star’s disease?’ he asked her.
She smiled, but didn’t stop dancing.
‘I know what the sullen young gigolo’s disease is.’
‘Oh, yes?’ asked Ken. ‘And what’s that?’
‘It’s over-confidence. An unshakeable belief in his own beauty. A firm conviction that his older mistress is so passionately fond of him that she could never bear to throw him out.’
Ken stayed very still in his chair.
Adele twirled around a couple more times, and then came across the polished floorboards towards him. She leaned over him, and touched the tip of his straight young nose with her sharp pearl-painted nail.
‘You’ve forgotten something already,’ she said. ‘I’m the ice queen. I have a heart of frozen stone.’
Ken licked his lips. He glanced up into her deep brown eyes, and he saw all of the years of pain there, all of the years of experience and fame and disappointment and of dragging herself out from under. His cigarette sent rags of blue smoke across the dim Spanish room, and outside he could hear one of the gardeners singing Cuando caliente el sol as he trimmed the herbaceous border.
‘I didn’t mean to take you for granted,’ said Ken, in a husky voice.
‘No,’ said Adele. ‘But you did.’
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked her.
She stood up straight, and walked a few paces back across the room. Her bare feet made a soft kissing sound on the floorboards.
‘I’m not going to do anything,’ she smiled. ‘I happen to like you too much. And anyway, if we’re having a party on Saturday, I’d like to show you off as my new stud. There are several ladies invited who will be absolutely emerald green with envy.’
‘I hope you don’t think that I’ve been trying to rip you off, just because you’re a movie star,’ Ken said. ‘It hasn’t been like that at all.’
She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re not that important. I like you, I think you’re cute, but just remember that you’re not that important.’
Ken took a long, slow drag of his cigarette. He looked as if he might be about to say something, but didn’t.
‘I want to parade you on Saturday,’ said Adele. ‘I want you to look ravishing. A white silk shirt, open to the waist. White silk slacks, so tight that they can tell if you’ve been circumcised or not. White rope sandals. The ice queen’s personal snow slave.’
‘Who do you think I am? Liberace, or something?’ She gave a laugh that was like a carillon of small bells. ‘Not at all. But I’ll tell you something. For some reason I don’t completely understand, you want to stay here much more than you’ve been trying to let on. You need to be here for some strange reason or another. Well, that’s all right by me. You’re a pleasantly decorative piece of flesh, and you’re good in bed. But it’s supply and demand in this world, Ken, buyer and bought, and if you want to stay here so desperately, then you’re going to have to stay here on my terms. And my terms are that you strut around for me on Saturday with your shirt open and your pants tight, working my middle-aged lady friends up into a lather of jealousy.’
Holman came in with the mint juleps on a small silver tray, and then left again, like a shabby and disgruntled toucan.
‘There’s one alternative, of course. You can leave,’ Adele said.
He looked at her. He said, in a thick voice, ‘You really don’t love me at all, do you?’
‘Love you? Why should I?’
‘I thought you might. Just a little.’
‘My darling Ken, how can you think such a thing? I don’t fall in love with people.’
He stood up, holding the towel around him. Against the light that strained through the living room window, his profile was dejected and sad.
‘I guess the reason that I’ve been taking you for granted is because I’ve been trying to stop myself falling in love with you,’ he said quietly.
She was sipping her mint julep, and she slowly lowered it.
‘What did you say?’
He turned and gave her a brief, regretful smile.
‘I didn’t mean to. I was only looking for a few days of luxury living. Back where I come from in Montana, this kind of life is a fantasy. Folks wouldn’t believe it existed for real if you showed them photographs. But I guess I got more than I bargained for. I fell in love with you, Adele. Instead of ripping you off, you went right out and ripped me off. You ripped off my heart.’
Adele stared at him. Then she set down her drink and walked across the room, her dress flowing around her magnificent body, her pearls glistening. She came right up close, so that her breast was touching his arm through the fragile lawn.
‘I can’t believe you sometimes,’ she said. ‘I really can’t believe you. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk such complete bullshit with such a completely straight face in my whole life.’
He didn’t say a word. His brown chest rose and fell with his tense breathing. Somewhere in the house, a clock began to chime the hour of four.
Adele said, more softly, ‘But you can stay, for as long as you like. I can’t wait to
see Hilary Nestor Hunter’s face when you walk into the room on Saturday, and that’s going to be worth a million bucks whether you love me or not.’
Ken gave her a small, secretive smile. Then he let the towel drop from his waist, and she saw that the thick, root-like veins in his penis were already swelling.
A little less than an hour and a half later, on the dusty road between Cathedral City and Rancho Mirage, under a wide velvety sky, a red AMC Jeep pulled off the road and stopped. Ken Irwin, in his jeans and his plaid shirt, was sitting behind the wheel with a cigarette between his lips and his easy-rider shades on the end of his nose. The radio was on very loudly, and it sounded oddly distorted out there in the open.
He didn’t have long to wait. From the direction of Rancho Mirage, a primrose-yellow Pinto appeared, and drove gradually closer. As it approached the Jeep, it slowed down, and flashed its headlights once. It pulled over on to the opposite verge, and stopped.
Ken switched off his radio, swung down from the Jeep and walked across the road. There was a faint wind, but apart from that, there was only the sound of his desert boots on the ground.
The Pinto door opened, and out climbed a tall man with greased-back hair and sunglasses with mirrors for lenses. He was wearing a red open-necked shirt and black cord pants.
‘How are you doing, Ken?’ said the tall man.
‘I’m fine, T.F. How are you?’
‘Stiff in the butt. This was the largest car I could rent. I got it from AAA. Can’t show my face around Avis or Hertz for a while.’
Ken leaned on the Pinto’s hot yellow roof. ‘I went up to the Cullen place,’ he said. ‘Madam’s been pretty free with the use of her Jeep.’
‘What did you find out?’
‘Not much more than we already know. Cullen spends most of his weekdays out walking dogs and waxing cars. The girl stays home usually, making beads and artsy-crafty stuff to sell.’
‘What about the fat guy with the beard?’
‘Name’s Mel Walters. His place is back in the trees a way. They’re pretty good friends, apparently, and he comes down to supper once or twice a week. Usually Tuesdays and Thursdays.’
‘So all three of them could be home tomorrow evening?’
Ken took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. ‘That’s right. And it’s real secluded up there. You could pitch Barnum and Bailey’s circus in their front drive, and nobody would even see an elephant’s ass from the road.’
T.F. leaned into the back of the Pinto and pulled out a long leather case. He lifted it on to the roof of the car, and clicked open the catches. Inside, its barrel wrapped in soft cloth, was his M-14.
‘You’re going to be able to get this into the house okay?’
‘Sure thing. She never watches me. As long as I shove it up her once a day, and go around the house acting moody, she’s happy.’
T.F. closed the case. ‘You look after this. I’ve had this baby for years. It means something to me, you know?’
‘Sure, T.F. Cigarette?’
T.F. took a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. ‘I really hate to be parted with it, you know?’ he said, keeping his eyes on the horizon.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after it.’
T.F. bent his head forward to accept a light from Ken’s Zippo. He blew out smoke as if it was bitter, and said, ‘The people I’ve nailed with that baby, you wouldn’t believe. It means something to me.’
‘For Christ’s sake, T.F.’
T.F. looked at him, and Ken saw his own face, curved and dopey-looking, in the twin lenses of the tall man’s sunglasses.
‘I’d better be leaving,’ said T.F. ‘I have to get down to San Clemente tonight, for a job there.’
‘I’ll call you at three tomorrow,’ said Ken.
‘Okay, take it easy.’
T.F. climbed stiffly back into the Pinto, slammed the door, and drove off. Ken stood by the side of the road until he had disappeared into the waves of reflected heat that shimmered on the horizon, a primrose yellow mirage that dwindled and shrank to nothing. Then he walked slowly back to the Jeep, carrying the long leather case. He covered the case with a tartan travelling rug, and then swung himself up into the driver’s seat and started the motor.
Twenty-Two
In the first light of Thursday morning, Carl X. Chapman lay in the arms of Lollie Methven, his grizzled head resting on her breasts. She was stroking his temples with the tips of her fingers, soothing him. The blue and white bedroom was bright with desert sunshine.
‘You’re a girl in a million, you know that?’ he said. She stopped stroking for a moment, and looked down at him. ‘I’m nothing special. Just a working girl.’
‘There are working girls and working girls,’ he insisted. ‘And you’re the best I ever met.’
‘You must have met quite a few, huh?’
He chuckled. ‘Hundreds. I reckon since I’ve been married that I’ve met hundreds. Tall ones, small ones, black ones, white ones. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads like you.’
Lollie eased herself up the bed a little way, to make sure that Carl was talking close to her navel. She said, ‘You had sex with them all? I mean, intercourse?’
‘What do you think I did? Played midget golf?’
She laughed. ‘You’re a beautiful person, Carl. I really want you to know that. A beautiful, beautiful person.’ He propped himself up on one elbow. ‘You’re damned beautiful yourself, Lollie. Apart from which, you have the sexiest mouth in the whole of the Western hemisphere. If I could take you back to Washington with me, all packed up in my luggage, I would.’
She gently pressed his head down against her breasts again.
‘I wish I could come with you, Carl. I really do.’
He sighed. ‘A politician who wants to succeed has to be married, honey. Or at least he has to seem to be married. It’s the nation’s guarantee that he’s reliable, Christian, and heterosexual.’
‘It really matters that much?’
‘It does when you’re aiming for the White House. I’m going to be President one day, Lollie, and a President needs a First Lady. That’s why my wife and I have stayed married so long. It’s not a marriage of love, although God knows it used to be. It’s more of a business partnership these days. I don’t think we’ve made love for more than a year, and then she told me I was behaving like an animal. A hog, she said. A Minnesota hog.’
Lollie said, ‘You’re going to be President? Is that for real?’
He propped himself up on his elbow again. ‘Just about as sure as the sun’s going to rise on Friday.’
‘Wow,’ said Lollie. ‘You mean I’m in bed with the future President of the United States?’
He chuckled.
‘You’re really not joking?’ she badgered him.
He lay back. ‘No, I’m not joking.’
‘But how do you know? Don’t you have to get elected first?’
‘Sure you have to get elected first. But there are ways of knowing how elections are going to turn out.’
‘You mean you can predict them in advance? Like fortune-telling?’
‘Something like that.’
Carl rolled over and stood up. Lollie tried to reach out for him, to keep him within range of her microphone, but he walked heavy-bellied and naked to the window, and looked out over Las Vegas and the desert. Lollie thought that he looked like a wise old orangutan, an elder statesmen from The Planet of the Apes.
‘When I’m President,’ he said, ‘this country is going to be great again. It’s going to be strong, and proud, and pure.’
Lollie, anxious to pick up everything he said, climbed out of bed and twined her arms around him. She kissed the grey hair on his shoulders.
‘I never met a President before,’ she said. ‘Not to talk to.’
‘Well, it’ll be something to tell your children, when you have them.’
‘I’m so proud. You don’t have any idea,’ she gushed. Carl put his arm around her, and gave her a squeeze.
‘This country is crying out, do you know that? It needs a man who can tell it what to do, instead of compromising and backing down. It needs a man who can set it an example. A country is like a family, you know, and just like any family, it needs a father.’
He took a deep breath, and looked at her. His eyes were glistening with the emotion of his own rhetoric. ‘Believe it or not,’ he said, ‘but I am that father.’ Lollie smiled, and then saw that he was deathly serious, and stopped smiling. ‘Why don’t you come back to bed?’ she suggested. ‘It’s only six. Maybe we can do it once more. You know, once more with feeling.’
‘You want more?’
She giggled. ‘I like it with you, that’s all. If you didn’t have to work, I could stay in bed and do it all day.’
He beamed, but he shook his head. ‘I don’t have the time. I have a breakfast meeting in a half hour. I’ve got to get dressed, and haul my ass back to the Xanadu.’
‘Not even a teensy one?’ Lollie coaxed him in her little-girl voice.
‘Not even a teensy one. I have three aides over there, and they’ll be going bananas already.’
He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at her. The morning sun was behind her, and it glowed through her fine red hair, and gleamed on the pale skin of her breasts and her thighs.
She stepped forward, and stood in front of him, and laid her hands on his shoulders. He kissed her flat stomach, and his lips were within a half-inch of the microphone transmitter concealed in her navel.
‘I’m going to tell you something, Lollie, and I hope you remember it in years to come. I’m going to be the greatest President that America ever knew, and that’s because I was born to be President.’
‘You mean you knew right from the time you were a kid?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve never doubted it, not once. Not even when I’ve lost campaigns, or suffered setbacks in the Senate. All these years, I’ve never lost my belief in myself, and my fitness for the great task of leading America.’
She stroked his face. ‘You’re amazing,’ she said. ‘You’re really and truly amazing. You have such confidence in yourself.’
He smiled. ‘I have confidence because I know that I’m going to win. I have confidence because I’m the first President in history who’s going to be elected because the people need him, rather than just because they want him.’
The Sweetman Curve Page 15
