Crowned Heads

by Thomas Tryon

  Lorna nodded; she was sure he was.

  When she felt better, she thought she must get away from the cabaña, and since she was still unable to go to the beach she planned a trip to the village, which she had not visited yet. She put on her white Jax slacks and the red bandanna blouse and the pale-blue sneakers, she tied her hair Apache fashion with a scarf, and walked down the beach.

  The lagoon had halfway filled and a trio of burros stood knee-deep in the teal-green water, staring vacantly at her. They looked like such amusing, friendly creatures; once she’d had her picture taken astride one in Tijuana, when she and Jerry the jockey went down for the bullfights. She passed the yacht club, and Joan Taylor’s shop, went over the bridge, and along a dusty path into the village. She was disappointed. It was dirty and dusty, the houses were ramshackle adobe-and-stick affairs with roofs of broken terra-cotta tiles, and chickens and goats in the yards. Children played there, thin and dirty, and she wondered how people could live like that.

  There were some men outside the cantina, and they eyed her as she went past. One of them, tall and gaunt, his face shadowed by a wide sombrero, nudged his companion and said something. He picked his teeth with a match, his nails were dirty, and the teeth were mostly gold. He wore soiled dungarees which hung in worn, droopy folds about his thin shanks, and a cowboy shirt with a lanyard at the collar. She hurried past and went into the church.

  It was the most impoverished church imaginable, adobe walls, thatched roof, and sorry benches for pews. There were plaster figures of saints, garishly decorated with gimcrack ornaments, with the painted faces of cheap dolls. Some women were kneeling before the altar, praying. They were dressed in black and their leather huaraches squeaked as they rose wearily; one of them massaged her knees as she stared at Lorna, who wondered what there was about such a poor, unlooked-after place that made them believe God’s Presence was actually there. In the corner was a bottle with bent plastic straws, 7-Up, hecho en México.

  She had brought her camera and she took several pictures of the most interesting local color she could find, and headed back toward the bridge. The man in the sombrero left his companions in front of the cantina and moved along the shadow of the building. He stood under an awning, picking his gold teeth, watching her go. She hurried across the bridge; when she looked back he was following.

  She went quickly up the steps of the handicraft shop and entered. Bells on the door tinkled, and a voice called from the patio. Joan Taylor was weaving at a loom under a palapa. She rose to greet Lorna warmly and invited her to sit down. The patio overlooked the bay on one side and the village on the other. Who is that man? Lorna asked; she could see him at the far end of the bridge, leaning on the railing and looking down into the water. Joan said the man was called Ávila; he was a local character, El Loco. The crazy one. He trapped birds up in the hills, and sold them at Mirabella for zoos or bird fanciers. And snakes as well. Why snakes? Lorna asked. Joan explained: they were sold for their venom, their skins, their flesh; in Mexico snake meat was considered a delicacy.

  She left her weaving and took Lorna into the shop, adjoining the house that Bob—Somers was his last name, an ex-professor from Oregon State—had built himself. They had been in Mexico for twelve years, and they loved it. There were bolts of fabric, Hong Kong silks and Egyptian cottons in beautiful colors; Joan traveled to pick them out. There were Mexican handicrafts, Oaxaca blackware, silver from Taxco, bright woven belts with tassels from Cuernavaca. Lorna remembered that Rosalia’s sister Eusabia, who worked at the hotel, had just had a baby, and she thought a little christening gift might be nice; she picked out a sweet blouse—it wasn’t expensive—and had Joan wrap it. Then she found a lovely pair of real tortoise-shell barrettes she wanted, and some soap, and a candle in the shape of a pineapple. Afterward Joan made tea and they went back to the patio and watched the fishing boats come in. It was very peaceful and relaxing—a good life, Joan said. Oh, said Lorna, she could see that; it must be fabulous. Privately she wondered how they could waste their time in such a place, letting the rest of the world go by. They certainly weren’t getting any younger: Joan must be all of forty and had crepy elbows; Bob’s hair was silver-gray.

  Joan confessed that she’d had three husbands, and wasn’t taking any more chances on marriage; Lorna said she knew what she meant.

  She had the habit of taking off her glasses when speaking personally to someone, and also, at times, of removing them to listen. She put them on and took them off constantly as the conversation went on. She found Joan muy simpática, and talked at length about herself. She liked Joan, she really did. She was the sort of person you’d like to have as a friend, and Lorna mentioned her breakdowns and some of the problems she’d experienced. She said that when she got home again, she thought she might take up cooking, a gourmet class, and perhaps some extension courses at UCLA, possibly in psychology or social sciences, eck cetera. Joan thought that was a wonderful idea. Lorna said she had friends who donated time to Mount Sinai and Saint John’s hospitals; she thought she might do something like that. Joan nodded agreement. Lorna said she meant to spend less time on the telephone or visiting at coffeeklatsches around the neighborhood, waste less time on trivial things like that. Joan thought that was a good idea. Or travel was broadening; perhaps a trip to New York—shopping, theater, Fun City; Joan agreed. Lorna talked about her children. Like Joan, Carrie had also managed three husbands, but in seven years, and she was only in her twenties. Presently she was living with a professional skydiver in Malibu canyon, but who knew when she would show up on Lorna’s doorstep with her three-year-old twins; as mother and daughter, when apart they naturally missed one another, but together they were impossible. Jeffrey was another problem, a perpetual adolescent, incapable of settling down at any job. Successively he’d been an assistant director, an apprentice film cutter, an agent at William Morris, a producer who had produced nothing, a quick-sketch artist at the Renaissance Fair, and a rodeo rider, eck cetera, and he brought home the most dreadful girls. But, Lorna said, she was determined to look on the bright side, she was taking a positive view, she was working with good attitudes. That was wonderful, Joan said.

  Maybe, Lorna said, she might open up a gift shop, like Joan’s; was it difficult? A lot of hard work, she supposed; Joan said that it was. Well, Lorna said, conversation becoming confidences, confidences confessions, she really had no idea what she wanted to do; one day it was one thing, one day another. Her doctor never pressed her into decisions, and since her last collapse she had felt disinclined toward any decisions. Truth to tell, in order to pay hospital expenses and medical bills—hers, her mother’s, Carrie’s—she had mortgaged the property and a balloon payment loomed, threatening foreclosure. The indiscretion of these generously offered confidences did not extend to the more distressing matters of the theft or the fire, but there were other topics: she just loved that Cupie Alvarez, though how she could let herself get so fat, don’t say it was mental, it was gluttony, and how between them she and Steve had made such an adorable child, except Lorna didn’t think children’s ears should be pierced so young; she could remember back to when Carrie was that age, the age, for after that they were only problems, but it wasn’t easy raising a child in Hollywood in that kind of environment—how did people from Duluth know what Hollywood was really like—and when Lorna had suggested dieting to Cupie, Cupie had only laughed and said Steve liked her that way, so why bother?

  Why indeed, Joan said.

  Lorna sensed that she was rattling and forced herself to stop, then Joan suggested a small dinner party in the near future, and asked how long Lorna’s stay would be. Without alluding to Richard by name, Lorna spoke of the Sandlers’ boat, the MorryEll—his name was Morrie, hers Ellen—and that they were in the regatta and should be arriving soon at Cabo San Lucas; meanwhile she would love to come to dinner. She left feeling that she had made a friend, and sensed a lightening of her spirits.

  She walked back along the shore, telling herself it wa
s the children that mattered. She would Keep On for their sakes, but knowing that “their sakes” didn’t enter into it. They didn’t care; they had their own lives. Let them go, Nan had said over and over; she had already let Selma go, in her mind anyway, but not her babies. After the awful business with Stan she’d come home and swallowed pills, but had taken the precaution to see that Nan’s lights were on down the street. She came, took care of her. Hospital again, stomach pump, Carrie crying beside the bed, Mummie, haven’t you learned anything? Jeffrey sullen and embarrassed; she couldn’t get either of them to laugh, though the whole episode was just that: funny.

  The lagoon had broken through the bar and lay flat and nearly empty. She looked up to where the sun hung low over the highest peak of the mountain, which they called the Sleeping Maiden. It was like a tall green conical hat, and at the very top, wheeling spokes of light rayed out as if a jewel were buried in back of it. Then, as her eye returned to the level again, she saw the man called Ávila, El Loco. He was standing by a palm tree, watching her. As she passed he touched his two fingers to the brim of his sombrero. She did not acknowledge him. She looked away, out to the bay, and hurried back to the hotel. When she had taken her purchases to her cabaña, she returned to the beach for a sunset walk. The man was nowhere to be seen. The beach was deserted, the bay was bright gold, the sand, where it was wet, a silvery purple and blue, all the pale colors of the caftan she’d put on. It was her blue time of day; she was often subject to fits of melancholy during this twilit hour, while people gathered at the bar and the music played and Cupie went around lighting the candles. It was the time of day she most disliked being alone. She asked herself why she didn’t join the others; answer: she just didn’t feel like it. She saw Emiliano at the bar, setting up his glasses and peeling lemon rind. She had put a hibiscus blossom in her hair, and the feel of the sand on her bare feet made her think she was a girl again, in the good old days of “Elmer’s Tune,” and she began to run along the shore, her shadow flying before her across the sand. The girlish shadow of an older woman reaching out for something that lay just ahead, a blue shadow rippling over the wet sand, and her heart felt suddenly certain that things were going to pan out after all.

  Several of the familiar faces had disappeared from the dining room during her sunburn—the chic New York couple, the people from Duluth—but there were new ones. Among them, a trio of secretaries from Minneapolis, Cupie informed Lorna. They looked her over carefully but didn’t invade her privacy. None was really what you would call pretty, though they all seemed sweet enough. The most attractive one was a Jewish girl, Miriam Seltzer, who had a marvelous figure and a crushed-fruit look, and wore heavy make-up—scarlet lips, dark eyes. It wasn’t difficult to tell what type of personality Miriam Seltzer had: she was vivacious, she flirted with every man, and by way of flaunting her charms, she wore evening things that were cut down to there. On the very first night, Pat O’Connor had made a big play for her, and she ate it up. Lorna thought Miriam Seltzer was very foolish: she should be able to see that Pat was only interested in one thing. All that sitting and talking seriously over the candle, as if what he was saying were important or profound, when all he wanted was to get her into bed. He did. Miriam made no bones about leaving the bar after the flamenco dancing and going up the hill. When she came down next morning nobody said anything, no one even paid attention. She lay on a mat getting sun and oiling her sleek tan and looking very rested.

  Lorna wondered how Pat was in bed.

  That evening they were together again, and oh, the looks that passed between them at dinner. Didn’t she realize it was only a one- or two-night stand, that she was just one of any number who came and went, that Pat would have them all if he could? A woman on her own in a vacation spot: Lorna had seen it all before. It was stupid of Miriam to give it away like that, and when she got home she’d look back on it and regret it.

  Later, after the Delco had gone off, Lorna watched from her patio. Miriam went to her cabaña, and moments later, carrying a tray of drinks, Pat came. She could hear them in there, talking, then after a while they weren’t talking. Lorna went inside and read Centennial. The book was heavy, she doubted she’d ever get through it. She lay alone by lantern light, sometimes reading, sometimes thinking. The night sea sounds made her remember other places, other beaches, in other times when she had felt other than she did now. Other beaches, other times, and always with the sea and a man beside her, a man’s shoes akilter on the floor, the after-smell of a man’s shaving in the bathroom. In the dark, in the unfamiliar silence, with only the sound of the lapping waves and the cries of birds in the jungle, she was easily unnerved. She always took pains, as she had been told to, to shake out her shoes, a precaution against lurking scorpions; but sometimes she thought she heard things crawling in the thatch, could imagine their segmented bodies working their way through from the outside, or breeding in there, could envision their dreadful sting-tails driving into human flesh and secreting their deadly venom. It didn’t help to tell herself it was only the night breeze in the straw; just the thought, or threat, of scorpions kept her awake. Occasionally she would hear something drop on the terrazzo flooring, a hard, lumpy, metallic sound. She would light the lantern, get up and shake out her bedclothes, and then kneel on the bed, bending to inspect the floor as far as she could see beyond the circle of light into the darkness. She would leave the lamp lighted on the table, and when the last of the barflies came along the walkway, she could hear their voices; sometimes they were talking about her, not in denigrating terms but only wondering at the lateness of her light, and she had to fight down the impulse to jump up and invite them to stop at the patio for a nightcap. She hated being alone with the thought of scorpions.

  Often, having got to sleep at last, she would awake again, her sheets damp from perspiration, and her pillow—but this was from tears, cried unconsciously in the dark. She would lie awake, hearing nothing but the ocean, but hoping for the sound of a voice. Whosoever it might be, she would call or go to it, talk, be friendly, the way other people were. Or she would construct elaborate dialogues in her head: what she would say to Carrie on her return to Los Angeles, or to Jeffrey, how she would confront the insurance people, long involved scenes which gave her every opportunity to spill her guts, using all the clever turns of phrase, all the right words that she couldn’t ever think of when she was actually talking to—fighting with—people. And as she lay there, slowly, as though it weren’t a part of her at all, her thumb would creep into her mouth, her teeth would scrape nervously, thoughtlessly against it, peeling away the carefully applied polish, and in the morning before she went to breakfast she would have to take the color off and do a new coat.

  After breakfast she would not go to the beach, but would sit on her patio, staring at the water, fighting tears whose sudden appearance again dismayed her. When she felt like it, she would get into the hammock and loll, staring impersonally out at the bay, feeling strangely detached from what Nan’s travel brochure had described as the “hidden jewel of the Mexican coast,” and wondering why she was so unmoved by it. It was like another form of waiting; but for what, other than the MorryEll and Richard, it would have been difficult to say.

  She saw Emiliano coming out of the water, brownly glistening, in his white trunks. She went onto the beach then, and sat under her umbrella. When he went by with his spear gun she said she’d never seen one, could she have a look? While he obliged her, pointing out and explaining its various mechanisms, she kept noticing little details about him, that his fingernails were trimmed and polished and that his hands were like a sculptor’s, or a pianist’s. She had friends who talked at lunch about checking a man’s thumbs as a clue to the size of more intimate parts, but she’d never believed it. She particularly liked his feet. She thought it remarkable how the foot was overlooked as a beautiful part of a man’s anatomy. She would have to get the word for “foot” in Spanish from her phrase book and surprise him with it. That afternoon she asked Emiliano
if she might borrow his fins and goggles “just to see what it was like.” It was an unfortunate experience, and caused her such a shock that she talked of it for days. There were few bathers other than Cupie and little Sashie in the water at the time. Lorna had waded out to her chest, with her head down, peering through the oval glass, with the plastic snorkel in her mouth, when she saw going past her range of vision a long dark undulating line, like a length of telephone wire. What was attached to the other end of this wire was the most enormous and horrifying creature imaginable, the size of a grand piano, a great batlike creature whose tail the “wire” was, slowly skimming along the bottom. The awful wings as they rose and lowered were black on top and palely spotted underneath, and the thing had a hideous bat’s face. She thrust her head from the water and screamed. She splashed her way to shore, crying to Cupie to get Sashie out. Thank God for Emiliano, who came running, and when she told him what she’d seen, he said it was a stingray. He ran for his spear gun, took his fins and snorkel, and his goggled head disappeared in the water. Half an hour later he had shot the ray, and they dragged the ghastly thing up on the beach. They showed her the sharp spear near the base of the tail, which was its poisoned weapon, then some of the villagers came and took the ray with them and cut it up for stew.

  She didn’t go in the water anymore.

  To recover, she spent the remainder of the morning in the library, reading. She had given up Centennial in favor of Atlas Shrugged, a dog-eared paperback someone had left behind, its pages stained with suntan oil, but she had read The Fountainhead and thought she might like it.