Night of Fire and Snow

by Alfred Coppel

  A quartet of Banshee jets screamed overhead, letting down into the landing pattern at Moffett Field. He remembered the lazy flight of the Macon, bright silver in the sunshine. It seemed part of another life, another time-slower and somehow less jarring to the heart and mind.

  I’m remembering it wrong, he thought. I’m remembering it with the selective nostalgia of middle age.

  He glanced out of the window to see a towheaded boy standing in the drive of the redwood house. He was about five or six and he was watching Miguel with that open curiosity of youth. Wondering, Miguel thought, if I’m a kidnapper or a policeman or Jack the Ripper. Jack Rinehart, specialist in crimes against children, stepmothers, and motion picture stars. Mr. Adulterer Rinehart, if you please. Profession: none. Chances: lost. Future: questionable.

  The boy walked slowly down the walk to the street and said, “Hi.”

  Miguel snubbed out his cigarette and said, “Hi, yourself.”

  The boy said, “Did you see the jets? They were Banshees.”

  “I saw them,” Miguel said. “They really go, don’t they?”

  “They fly over the house all the time. They’re Navy jets. Do you live around here?”

  “I used to,” Miguel said. “I’m just visiting.”

  “I’ve lived here for a long time.”

  “What’s you name, son?”

  “John.”

  “I’ll bet everyone calls you Johnny.”

  “Some people do. What’s your name?”

  “Mike.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Rinehart.”

  The boy picked up a pebble and tossed it from hand to hand. “I have a sister and a baby brother,” he said.

  “That makes it pretty nice for you, I guess.”

  The gate in the grapestake opened and a woman in a house dress called, “Johnny?”

  The boy half-turned and then said to Miguel, “That’s my mom.”

  The woman walked swiftly down toward the car. She had sunburned blond hair and a wide-boned face. She wore no make-up. She said, “I’m sorry if he’s bothering you—“ She took the boy’s hand.

  Miguel said, “He’s no bother. We were talking—”

  The woman brushed a strand of hair out of her face. Her eyes met Miguel’s and held there.

  After what seemed a long while, Miguel heard himself say slowly, “Hello, Allie. I was looking for you.”

  “Mike. Mike Rinehart.”

  Miguel felt numb. He almost hadn’t recognized her. It wasn’t her looks that had changed so much. It was something else. Something inside.

  “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Allie?” he said. He was amazed at the quiet impersonality of his tone.

  The little boy clung to Allie’s hand.

  Miguel said, “Your son?”

  “Yes.” She seemed uncomfortable standing there talking to him. Presently she said, “Would—would you like to come in for a minute?”

  “Why, no. No, thanks just the same, Allie. I haven’t much time. I just wanted to see the Tor again.” He paused, trying to think of something to say. “Funny you should have a house right here—”

  She broke in on him with a nervous laugh. “John saw the place and just fell in love with it. John’s my husband, Mike. John Harmon?”

  “I don’t think I knew him,” Miguel said apologetically.

  “I guess you wouldn’t have. We met in the East. In Norfolk—“ She broke off, as though embarrassed by the mention of Norfolk.

  There were a thousand things Miguel had thought he would want to say to Allie, but he could think of nothing now that wouldn’t sound inane.

  “You’ve done very well, Mike,” Allie said, smoothing her dress. It was an edgy gesture as though she were conscious of how she must look, without stockings, her bare feet in sandals, her house dress plain and faded. “We’ve followed your career all along. Los Altos boy makes good.” She laughed again. He wanted to cry out to her: For God’s sake, Allie, don’t be so frightened. I’m not going to say or do anything.

  “Have you been down to see Becky?” she asked.

  “I just came from there.”

  “Midge is married, you know.”

  “No. I didn’t know.”

  “She married Lawton Higby, of all people. They live in Stockton now. Lawt couldn’t get into the Army.”

  Miguel nodded stupidly, not knowing what to say. Allie rushed on. “When I read about you in the paper yesterday I said to John that you might even stop by to see us, isn’t that crazy? I never thought you would, of course. But he said he’d love to meet you because everybody around here remembers you so well—“ She laughed again.

  “Allie?”

  Her face went pale and she said, “Yes?”

  He was going to ask her if her husband knew about the things that had happened, but suddenly it didn’t seem worth mentioning. It had all happened a long time ago and it was forgotten and covered over with the dross of years and why even talk about it now? He felt as though something he had carried inside himself for a long while had vanished into nothingness, leaving a blank and empty space where it had been.

  “How about your mother and father?”

  “Daddy died last year. Mother went East to live with her sister.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “I was sorry to hear about Luis, Mike.”

  “Yes,” Miguel said. “It was a shock to me.”

  Aldyth shifted her weight nervously. “Of course, I hardly knew him.”

  He wanted suddenly to break off this conversation and he was sure Allie felt the same way, but neither of them knew how. He glanced at the little boy pulling at Aldyth’s hand. “That’s quite a boy you’ve got there.”

  There was a pride in her voice that should have stabbed Miguel to the heart, but somehow didn’t, as she said, “He’s just like his father.” And then, because she must have sensed his blankness, she asked, “How many children have you, Mike?”

  “Only one. A daughter.” He smiled a bit ruefully and added, “She’s just like her father, too.”

  Conversation languished. Young Johnny grew restless. Allie said, “Are you sure you won’t come in? Some coffee?”

  “No, thanks, really. I have to be going.”

  He started the motor. Allie stepped back. She picked up her son, holding him in her arms. She looked relieved.

  Miguel said quickly, “I’m glad everything turned out well for you, Allie.”

  She nodded and held the boy closer, rubbing her cheek against his as he squirmed in her arms.

  As the car moved away, Miguel heard him shout, “So long, Mike! Be seein’ ya.”

  Miguel lifted a hand and drove slowly down the street. As he turned the corner he could see Aldyth carrying the boy back into the house.

  TWENTY-ONE

  By five o’clock Miguel had stopped at five bars along El Camino and had a martini in each. There was a buzzing sound in his ears and the whole front of his jaw felt numb. The traffic was fierce and the more he drank, the more exaggerated became his caution. He drove along in the line of cars moving north through Daly City, the car radio turned up as loud as it would go, and his hands beating time on the steering wheel. The radio speaker overloaded so that all that came out of it was a modulated roar with the pounding beat of traps and an occasional crash of a sock-cymbal.

  The perfect music for the goddam atomic age, he thought blurrily. First the flash and then the shockwave and then the firestorm and then flip the record over and have another go at it, only louder and funnier please, because the five martinis weren’t enough and now he needed to stop and find a place where he could have another.

  He drove down 19th Avenue and turned into Stonestown, looking for a bar. He spotted the familiar symbol of the neon cocktail glass and the olive and toothpick. Only was it an olive, after all? It could be that being a martini drinker predisposed you to think of it as an olive. If you were a manhattan drinker it would probably be a cherry. He decided to ask
the bartender and parked the car.

  The inside of the bar was dim, amber-colored, and filled with soft and nondescript music. The tables were all occupied and there were only a few stools at the bar. He sat down and ordered a martini.

  The bartender put the drink in front of him and he drank it “Another one, please.”

  The bartender gave him a funny look and poured gin into the shaker. Miguel studied his own face in the mirror behind the bar. There had been something he wanted to ask the barman but he’d forgotten what it was now. What I should do, he thought, is go home and curl up in bed with a good book. He reached into his pocket for cigarettes and found he was out. He went to the vending machine and selected a brand at random. He returned to his seat and drank half of the martini and then opened the cigarette pack and reached into his coat pocket for a match. He came up with the paperback Bellamie book.

  The man next to him glanced at it as he put it on the bar. Miguel looked at him and said, “Haven’t you ever seen an albatross before? I wear it around my neck.”

  The man turned away quickly and Miguel laughed at him. The man got up and moved to another stool.

  Miguel lit his cigarette and drank some more of his martini. He looked at the Clift-like man and Nora on the cover of the book. A busty lusty gusty tale of swashbuckling adventure, a million copies sold to children, innocents, cretins and campfire girls with a love of auld Erin in their green little veins. Or was it awld Erin? No dialectician, I, he thought. No writer, either. No love, no nothing. He glared at the image in the glass behind the bar. What now? Little man, what now?

  He finished the martini and opened the book. First printing, 2nd printing, 3rd, 4th, five, six o’leary, and now CinemaScope with additional dialogue by Miguel Rinehart who was once said to be a promising young novelist and now—what? He flipped the page and read: “The Green Hills of Home, a Novel of High Adventure by Kathryn Bellamie.” Dear old Kate, he thought, smelling of Coty’s Emeraude and secreting saccharine instead of sweat. And what a blessing she must be to readers drenched in the sort of wolfsbane they get from the likes of writers like that eminent Latin-American Miguel Jos6 Maria de Castana Rinehart.

  There was something written on the page in a childish and unformed hand with circles instead of dots over the i’s. He held it up to the light and squinted at it. The page seemed to dance around. Some message from Donna Katarina La Petrarcha? Some words of wisdom for the hopeful disciple?

  He read, “You owe me a dinner. I’m in the phone book. Jean Murray.”

  The bartender was watching him. Miguel said, “Now who in hell is Jean Murray?”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t know, Mac.”

  Dinner, Miguel thought foggily. Dinner. Yes, by God, the stewardess on the plane. He’d asked her to have dinner with him. And here was her name. And where, oh please, where was the phone book? To the bartender, he said, “What do you think of that? A gift from old Kathryn.” He shoved his glass at the man. “Another, please. And some change.”

  He tried to remember what the girl looked like. He couldn’t. It didn’t matter. She was a gift. A gift in time of need. Dear God, how he needed her right now.

  “Where’s the phone?”

  “Over in the corner by the head.”

  He walked to the booth. He had some difficulty finding the number. The page wouldn’t hold still. Finally he pinned it down with a forefinger and read, “Jean Murray, 16 Bay Street, Apt 2, Yukon 1-5598.”

  “Let her be home,” he said aloud as he dialed. “Please let her be home.”

  The phone rang several times before it was answered.

  “St. Michael for the True Cross,” Miguel said.

  “Who is this?”

  “Is this Jean Murray? Jean Murray the A Girl?”

  There was a pause and then she said, “Oh, I know who it is. You found the number.”

  “The trap snapped shut three minutes ago,” he said. “Tell me, if you can dream true—who is this?”

  “It’s Miguel Rinehart, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a bar.”

  “That, I can tell. But where?”

  “In Stonestown.”

  “Stonestown—what are you doing way out there? Why aren’t you here?”

  “I’m waiting to be invited.”

  “You are invited, Mr. Rinehart.”

  “I accept. How do I get there?”

  “Have you a car?”

  “I have.”

  “Are you all right to drive?”

  “Californians are always safe to drive. It’s our hot-rod heritage.”

  She laughed and gave him instructions, repeating herself several times.

  “Shall I bring anything?” he asked.

  “Such as what?”

  “Gin? Bourbon?”

  “I’ve got plenty.”

  “I won’t make the obvious answer to that.”

  “What?”

  “I said, I’m practically on my way.”

  “Hurry,” she said, and hung up.

  He returned the receiver to the hook and returned to his seat at the bar. The crowd had thinned out and the bartender was looking at the book. He pushed it toward Miguel as Miguel picked up his cigarettes and his change.

  He tried to remember Jean Murray’s face. There was nothing at all in his mind but the muscular movement of hard, tight buttocks under a uniform skirt. That, and a little pair of golden wings on the left couloir of Annapurna.

  The martini was warm and tasted watery, but he drank it anyway. He tore the title page out of The Green Hills of Home and slid the book across the bar to the bartender. “Nothing like a good book on a slow night. Read it, you’ll have a ball.”

  The barman wiped the bar and said, “Good night.” His eyes flicked over the page in Miguel’s hand. “And good luck.”

  She met him at the door wearing black velvet matador pants and a red-gold blouse. Her hair was short, loose and tousled, and there were black velvet slippers on her feet. On one hip was sewn a red-gold rose. It moved forward and back as she walked and Miguel thought it the most suggestive thing he had ever seen.

  “What a beautiful sight,” he said.

  She laughed and drew him inside. He put the packaged bottle of Gilbey’s on a table just inside the door. “I didn’t want to come empty-handed. It’s against the custom of the country,” he said.

  “Do you want a martini?” she asked.

  “That would be fine.”

  He watched the rose undulate across the room to the tiny pullman kitchen visible behind a Shoji screen.

  “Sit down,” she called. “Be comfortable. I’ll just be a minute. There’s music if you want it.”

  Miguel walked to the black bent-tube record rack. It was the kind they advertised in The Saturday Review. He flipped the folders, inspecting the titles. He wanted a drink badly. The liquor he had taken earlier lay like a pool of slag in his middle.

  He looked around at the two Braque prints on the green pastel walls. Evidently Jean had decorated the place herself. He could see the uneven edge between the green wall and the pale tan ceiling. The furniture was all black reinforcing rod and bright-colored canvas. All except the couch. That was a huge black lushness shot through with gold threads.

  Jean called from the kitchenette, “Do you like olives or onions in your martinis?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just make sure they’re cold and dry.”

  “I’ll settle for that,” she said. Miguel heard the ice tinkling in a martini pitcher.

  He turned his attention to the records again. The Warsaw Concerto, The Red Poppy, André Kostelanetz Favorites. He selected an LP of Cole Porter music and put the record on the matched Bogen set. Everybody had one these days. You couldn’t get by socially without High Fidelity. High fidelity music for a low fidelity society, he thought. Damn, would she hurry with that drink?

  She came in with a tray, a glass pitcher of martinis and two iced glasses. He moved a
copy of Charm over on the coffee table and she put the tray down. Then she sat down on the couch and poured the drinks. She handed him one and lifted her glass. ‘Tm so glad you could come, Mr. R.,” she said.

  He drank his drink down in two swallows, like a thirsty man. It was a good martini. She watched him and there was a suggestion of a smile on her lips. He noticed that she had very brown eyes and her eyebrows were delicately arched. The red-gold blouse didn’t look as though there were anything under it. He thought, what do we talk about until it’s time for me to make a pass?

  “Do you want to go out to dinner, or what?” he asked.

  “What do you want to do?”

  Well, what would she say if he simply told her I want to go to bed with you and bury my head in the valley between Annapurna and K2 and forget I’m alive, forget about Becky and Raoul and that frightened little housewife with the towheaded boy who might have been mine—that’s all I want. “Let’s think about it later,” he said.

  “All right. How’s the martini?”

  “Very fine.” He held out his glass and she refilled it. Her eyes seemed to glisten as she looked at him. She had a fine quality of making a man think that being with him was all in the world she wanted to do.

  “What did you imagine when you saw my note in your book?” He shrugged. “I was surprised. Why didn’t you just say something on the airplane?”

  She laughed. “I knew you’d call.” There was a chilling echo of Nora in the way she said that. And yet, she was right, wasn’t she? Right as rain. Right as hell. Right down the old alley. You set ‘em up and you can’t miss. Why was it that availability always made a woman so irresistible? And wasn’t that a passion-killing little thought. It made you feel like a lemming.

  He finished the martinis and offered to make more.

  “You’ll find everything you need in there,” she said.

  When he returned she had taken off her shoes and was sitting cross-legged on the enormous black and gold couch looking pleased with herself. I’ve seen looks like that on cats with feathers on their whiskers, he thought. The drinks were beginning to work on him again.