by Judith Gould
'I'll just give you your key, and then I'll let you go off to your bungalow,' Inge said. 'Everything should be just the way you left it. Otha was in and cleaned it earlier today.' She headed behind the counter and fished a key out of one of the little cubbyholes against the back wall. 'I know you will want to freshen up. By the time you have done that, I will have something ready for you to eat.'
Idly Daliah twirled a postcard rack, watching the glossy Cape Cod scenes spin around. She shook her head. 'Don't go to any trouble. It's late, and I don't want to keep you from going to bed.'
'It isn't any trouble,' Inge declared. 'Besides, I like staying up late. The trouble is, there usually is no reason to. The tourists are at the restaurants or have gone dancing, and there is no one to talk to. If I turn on the TV, all the movies they show on the late show are ones I have already seen.' She handed Daliah the key. 'Go clean up. In half an hour I'll have fixed you a nice Kaiserschmarnn.'
'My favourite.' Daliah smiled and hugged her. 'You always remember.'
'Of course I remember,' Inge said with exasperation, her eyes flashing vivid sapphire shards. 'I may be old, but my brain has yet to retire.'
Daliah luxuriated dreamily in the shower. Sheets of pulsating hot water sluiced off her body. Clouds of steam rose to envelop her. She sighed with an almost beatific rapture. After all those hours cramped in the car, the throbbing massage of the water was invigorating and cleansing.
After a good fifteen minutes, her fingertips were so wrinkled that she looked like she'd been washing dishes all day, and she knew it was best she get a move on. Water invariably made her lose all track of time.
Steeling herself for the shock, she twisted off the hot water and nearly cried aloud at the sudden plunge from hot to ice cold. She forced herself to endure the frigid extreme for a full two minutes. When she turned it off, her teeth were chattering but she felt completely rejuvenated and wide-awake. It always worked wonders and fooled the body. She felt as though she'd just awakened from a long, marvellous nap.
She slid the plastic shower curtain aside and reached for a giant blue-striped terry-cloth towel. Briskly she rubbed herself dry and tucked it around her like a sarong. Expertly she wrapped a second striped towel around her streaming hair in a towering turban. Her hair could wait. She'd work on it later, tomorrow even. Now that she was wide-awake she was keen on only one thing, and that was spending some time with Inge.
She glanced over at the Hermès alarm clock that went with her wherever she travelled. Incredibly, it showed the time was already eleven-thirty.
That got her moving. She slipped into a pair of baggy pants made of parachute silk, buttoned a matching blouse over her shapely torso, and slid her feet into her favourite huaraches. Then, her hair still wrapped in the turban, she made a dash for the manager's cabin, stopping at the car to retrive the two bottles of champagne she'd nearly forgotten about.
Inge had already finished setting the table, and the sugary smells of baking mingled with the fruity aroma of boiling raspberry syrup. Happy was on alert, sitting a respectable distance from the oven, but eyeing it covetously. Steady dribbles of saliva dripped from the corners of his jowls.
Inge turned from the stove and waved a raspberry-coated wooden spoon. 'You are just in time,' she called out. 'I already made the Kaiserschmarnn and it's warming in the oven.'
'I brought champagne.' Daliah went over to Inge and handed her the bag. 'I forgot all about it and left it in the car. It's probably become warm in the meantime.'
Inge felt inside the bag and shook her head. 'The bottles still feel cold, but I will put them in a bucket of ice water right away.' Smilingly she shook her head. 'Champagne to go with the Kaiserschmarnn. You spoil me, Daliah. Every time you come here you make me feel like an empress.'
While they were eating, Daliah filled Inge in on her split with Jerome. Her spirits had plunged. She picked at the food desultorily, barely touching the shredded, raisin-studded omelette Inge had prepared to perfection. It was sweet and fluffy, dusted with a snowy layer of sifted icing sugar and served along with Inge's thick homemade raspberry syrup. Piece by piece, she fed it to Happy, who wolfed it down. Even Inge ignored the food. There was a dead, mournful look on her usually lively face, and she looked like she was about ready to cry.
After a while, Daliah couldn't bear the expression on Inge's face any longer. 'You look like the world's collapsed,' she said. 'Please don't look so sad.'
'I cannot help it.' Inge blinked her eyes rapidly. 'I can tell you are hurting, and that makes me feel terrible.'
'Like Patsy would say, "This is but a moment in time",' Daliah said lightly, but her smile was bleak. 'And it'll take time, but eventually I'll bounce back.'
'I only want for you to be happy.' Inge sniffled. 'That is not asking for so much, is it?'
'I'm afraid that sometimes it is.' Daliah's eyes were glassy. 'But don't worry, I'll get over it. Being Jewish helps.' She gave a low laugh. 'No matter what's dished out to us, we always keep right on going.'
'Sooner or later, I know you will meet the right man.'
'Maybe.' Daliah's voice rose slightly and she looked over into Inge's eyes. 'And then again, maybe not. There are many women who have, but there are also a lot of old maids out there—'
She saw Inge flinch as though she had been slapped, and her voice came to an abrupt halt. She was suddenly stricken. A long moment dragged out to what seemed an eternity. Daliah bit down on her lip. 'I'm sorry, Inge,' she said miserably, a heavy feeling of guilt taking up residence inside her. She frowned angrily and shook her head. 'I didn't mean to imply. . . .
There was another awkward pause. After a moment Inge gave a sad smile and fingered the stem of her champagne glass. 'I know you didn't,' she said gently. 'Let's forget it was ever mentioned, shall we?'
Daliah nodded. She was only too happy to. But unspoken though the subject remained, it had been raised like a malevolent spirit at a seance, and it hung there over the table like a cloud.
Inge had never found the right man; for that matter, she hadn't even found the wrong one. Some people were doomed to go through life alone, and Inge was one of them. She had never complained about it, and had kept all her thoughts regarding it to herself, but now Daliah, in her own tortured misery, had inadvertently brought it up.
Damn, Daliah thought miserably. What did I have to go and blurt that out for? I love Inge. Hurting her was the farthest thing from my mind.
'It is getting late,' Inge said finally. She pushed her chair back from the table and got up. 'Run along, now, and get some sleep. We can talk more tomorrow.'
Daliah nodded, kissed her wretchedly, and then fled guiltily to her cabin.
In the morning, Otha took over in the office, and Daliah and Inge walked along the beach. Clyde Woolery rang in the afternoon, just after they'd eaten lunch.
'Remember me?' he asked after Inge handed Daliah the receiver. 'The lowly store clerk?'
'The budding author, sure,' she said warmly. 'How is life?'
'Dull, dull, dull. I was hoping you'd be able to pull me out of the doldrums.'
'The writing can't be going that badly,' she laughed. 'And it's quiet up here, not dull.'
'Sometimes I wonder,' he said. 'Are we still on for a date?'
She had to laugh. 'You make it sound like we're innocent schoolchildren. But yes, I would like it.'
'Seven o'clock all right with you? Don't forget, this isn't New York. Up here, they roll up the sidewalks at eleven p.m.'
'Seven will be fine.'
'And don't dress up. Be as casual as you like.'
She laughed. 'You'll be sorry.'
'I doubt it.' He laughed also. 'I'll come by and pick you up on the dot. And don't worry, the place I have in mind is so backward that it'd be a miracle if anybody recognized you.'
Daliah smiled into the receiver. He sounded almost too good to be true.
From across the room Inge watched her hang up the phone. She had moved deliberately out of earshot, but cu
riosity was killing her. 'He sounded like a very nice young man,' she prompted. 'Very polite.'
'If this is your way of trying to fish for information, then I might as well warn you that I'm on to your methods, Inge.'
'You do not have to get nasty, Daliah,' Inge said virtuously. 'If you want to keep secrets from me, that is quite all right. For your information, I have plenty of other things to keep me occupied.' She made a show of busying herself with some pots and pans at the sink.
Daliah went over and watched Inge polishing the copper bottoms of some barely tarnished frying pans. Inge pretended not to notice her, but after a while she began giving Daliah some inquisitive sidelong glances.
'All right, Inge,' Daliah laughed, 'I'll tell you what you want to know. You won't have to fix dinner for me because he's coming to take me out on a date.'
Inge looked slightly mollified. She abandoned the copper cleaning and began to put the pots away again. 'It will do you good to go out,' she said, nodding.
'I think so too. You don't have to wait up for me, though.'
'I was not going to,' Inge sniffed.
'And you don't have to worry if I stay out late. It's only an innocent date.'
Inge looked at her severely. 'You are a big girl now, Daliah. I cannot tell you what you can and cannot do.'
Daliah spent the rest of the afternoon giving Happy a bath, helping Inge in the manager's office, and drinking a Campari and champagne while she got ready to go out. She took her cue from Clyde and brought new meaning to the term 'casual'. She had done nothing to her hair, other than pulling it to one side and securing it with several clips; it stuck out dramatically like a wavy black ponytail growing out the right side of her head. She wore her most treasured pair of washed-out Levi's, the disreputable ones with the ragged holes worn through in the knees, a too-large man's lumberjack shirt in a rich, brilliant tartan pattern of red, blue, and yellow, and as she heard Clyde pull up punctually outside and lean on the horn, she grabbed the first accessories which came to hand. Flying out the door as she secured them, she barely noticed the incongruity of her choices—a tooled mock-western belt with an 18-carat-gold buckle, which she slung casually over her hips, and a pair of fifty-thousand-dollar teardrop ruby earrings, set with choice pavé diamonds in yellow gold, which Jerome had bought her at Bulgari more than three and half years previously.
Catching sight of her, Clyde jumped out of his vehicle and went around to the passenger side. It was an old army-surplus jeep, and even several new coats of olive-drab paint could not completely hide where the white stars and military markings had been. They hadn't been sanded off, and showed slightly in relief.
She twirled around once in the gravel. 'How do I look?'
He grinned. 'Gorgeous,' he said. Then he let out a whistle. 'Those real rubies?'
Daliah flashed him one of her 'get real' looks as she jumped up and swung herself expertly into the jeep.
'You did that like you've spent a lifetime in a jeep.'
'Well, not a lifetime, exactly. Just my tour of duty in the Israeli army.' She waited for him to climb in. 'So where're we going?'
'Depends what you're in the mood for.' He fiddled with the gear lever. 'How's steak and lobster sound to you?' He looked at her questioningly.
She smiled. 'It sounds fine.'
'Good.' He stepped down on the accelerator and turned the jeep around, practically on a penny. 'I bought two fillets, two jumbo lobsters, and stole a magnum of champagne. I also collected some driftwood. Since it's an unusually balmy evening, what do you say to a picnic on the beach?'
She grinned at him. 'I say that sounds just fine.'
Chapter 6
The jangling of the telephone reached down through the layers of her sleep and startled her awake. Eyes closed, she felt blindly for the receiver, finally located it after knocking the alarm clock over, and mumbled,' 'Lo?'
'Lunch is ready in half an hour!' It was Inge, and her voice sounded so loud and cheerful that it would have awakened Dracula in broad daylight.
Daliah cringed and held the receiver away from her ear. Then she frowned. 'You mean breakfast, don't you?' she grumbled.
'I mean lunch,' Inge said definitely. 'We generally eat lunch at one-thirty in the afternoon, not breakfast. And it is one o'clock now.'
'One in the . . .' Daliah's eyes snapped suddenly open and she sat up wide-awake. She righted the alarm clock and stared at it closely. Inge wasn't kidding. It was one o'clock, all right, right on the button. And behind the drawn curtains the sun pulsated like floodlights.
'All I want to know,' Inge said, 'is should I bring your lunch over on a tray, or do you want it here?'
'I'll have it there,' Daliah said, swinging her legs out of bed. 'Just give me five.' She hung up and got up too suddenly. She groaned and touched her forehead gingerly. It felt like someone was stabbing it with a handful of ice picks. What Clyde hadn't told her was that he had two magnums of Taittinger—and a thermos of ready-made margaritas on ice. And somehow, between them both, they'd managed to put away every last drop.
She stumbled into the little bathroom, stared into the mirror with disbelief, and quickly gulped four aspirin. After slapping handfuls of cold water on her face and gargling furiously with Listerine, she managed to slip into some clothes and staggered outside. The sunlight was so blinding that she had to shield her eyes with her arm.
Inge was bustling around her kitchen, cheerful as a dwarf in a Disney cartoon. 'I put on a fresh pot of coffee for you, but you can have tea instead, if you like. Lunch isn't quite ready.'
'I'll wait.'
Inge slid a cup of steaming coffee in front of her. One hand on a hip, she stood there for a moment, waiting, looking down at Daliah, but Daliah pointedly ignored her and poured a scant teaspoon of cream into the coffee. She knew Inge was waiting to hear all about her date, and she wasn't in any mood to talk, at least not until the pounding in her head abated.
'By the way, you had a phone call,' Inge said conversationally as she went back to the sink. 'It was Jerome, and he insisted on talking to you. I told him not to bother, but he said he would call back.'
Daliah gritted her teeth. 'Why doesn't he just give up and leave me be!'
'If you want, I can put him off,' Inge said, 'but maybe it would be best for you to tell him that you don't want to talk to him. He won't listen to me; maybe he will listen to you.'
'I doubt it.' Daliah blew on her coffee, but before she could take the first sip, the telephone shrilled again. The sound went straight through her head.
Inge went to answer it. 'Daliah, it is Jerome,' she said, holding her hand over the receiver.
Daliah twisted around, her face quivering with anger. 'Oh, all right!' she said truculently.
Inge brought the phone over to her, and she lifted the receiver slowly. 'Yes,' she said warily.
'Daliah!' He sounded cheerful and relieved both. 'It's nice to hear your voice.'
'I wish I could say the same,' she said.
There was a pause, and when he spoke again there was reproach in his voice. 'I wish you didn't try to avoid me so obviously. I tried calling all over town to get your new number, but no one would give it to me. I'm still in France, and you don't know how much trouble that put me through. If I hadn't figured you'd gone to Inge's, I'd never have found you. You didn't have to go in hiding, you know.'
'Who said I'm in hiding? You found me, didn't you?'
'There you go again! I really don't know what's gotten into you. You're behaving very strangely, you know that?'
'How do you expect me to behave?' she said with a touch of asperity. 'Do you want me to tell you everything is okay, and act kissy-kissy?'
'I wish you wouldn't be this way, that's all.' Exasperation crept into his voice. 'I don't know you like this, Daliah.'
'I don't know myself like this either,' Daliah replied. 'Leaving myself open to get hurt is entirely new to me. I haven't quite got the hang of coping with it just yet.' Her voice turned suddenly brisk. 'Now
, the sun's shining here and the dog wants to go for a walk along the beach. Why don't you just get whatever it is on your chest off it? That way we won't have to argue about it all day long.'
He didn't seem to have heard her. 'You know, you put me in an embarrassing situation, running back to the States the way you did. I didn't know what to tell people. It wouldn't have been half so bad if Red Satin hadn't walked away with the Palme d'Or, but since it did, your absence was only that much more obvious. But I guess you know that already.'
'As a matter of fact, I was out of touch. I didn't know Red Satin won.' She added dryly, 'Congratulations are in order, I suppose.'
'No, you should be the one being congratulated. It was your performance that did it. I wasn't at all surprised that you won for best actress too. Since you weren't here, I accepted your prize for you, but now I don't even know where to bring it.'
'Sending it would be the easiest. Airmail has become quite reliable.'
'Daliah.' He paused and added gently, 'We have to talk.'
'We're talking now,' she pointed out.
'You know what I mean.'
'No, I don't. I thought I'd made myself perfectly clear. You use Arab money, you lose me. Period. It's cut-and-dried.'
He couldn't keep the ugly edge out of his voice. 'You're a tough bitch, you know that?'
'Thank you very much. I'll take that as a compliment.'
'Look, I really need to see you so we can talk. In person.' He paused to emphasize that point. 'I'm sure if we sat down together, we could work this thing out like adults.'
'I've made my position crystal clear, Jerome.'
His voice rose three octaves. 'Will you listen to me, goddamn it? I haven't accepted a dime or even signed a single contract yet. I had the backers eating out of the palm of my hand, but after you split, I put them on hold while I scrambled to find alternative financing.'
She raised her eyebrows and blinked. This was news indeed. For the first time, she could feel herself thawing a bit. 'But you haven't turned them down, either,' she said cautiously. 'Have you?'
