The lights were turned on in the living room. Miss Ungewitter crossed the terrace and sat down heavily in one of the white peacock chairs and tried to remember where she had left her sweater.
Suddenly she saw Robert standing behind the trunk of the tree, watching her, “How long have you been there?” she asked him almost crossly, wondering whether she had been talking to herself.
“I’m waiting for it to get dark enough,” he said.
“Where’s your sister?”
“I don’t know. In the house.”
“Doesn’t she want to watch while we set it off?”
“She says you’re a fat old witch.”
“Does she?”
“Are you?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that wasn’t a very nice thing for her to say, was it?” And she almost added “after I took her to a movie and bought her ice cream,” but she thought better of it and said nothing.
“You are fat.”
“I have a lot of height on me, don’t forget,” she said, “to make up for it. And I used to be quite slim, what’s more.”
“I don’t mind if you’re fat,” he said.
“Come out of the shadows where I can see what I’m talking to,” she told him. He stepped out. He was carrying the Catherine wheel. “I think it’s dark enough,” Miss Ungewitter said suddenly. “Here, I’ve got some matches. Let’s set it off! Bring it over here.”
“Nobody will see it,” he said.
“Oh, yes, they will. All over town they’ll see it. Ships at sea will see it, wait and see.”
“But hot Harriet or Daddy.”
“Harriet is—” She wondered how to put it so that he would understand. Harriet—odd, gawky, cross Harriet, Harriet whose moods changed so fast you couldn’t tell from one minute to the next how she would be, faster than you could say Jack Robinson. Harriet, who one minute wanted to love everybody and the next minute wanted to kill everybody and see them all lying dead at her feet. Harriet, who just that morning had asked what she could do about her front, it was growing so large, larger than any other part of her. Harriet who thought she was all out of proportion and who pretended to be a beauty queen to make up for it! “Harriet is too old,” she said finally.
“She makes me sick.”
“I know. Well, we must try to please Harriet sometimes.” Miss Ungewitter stood up and smoothed the front of her blue dress with her fingertips. She took the Catherine wheel from him now. Suddenly, as she held it gingerly between her two forefingers, it took on the aspect of a deadly, dangerous weapon. Unlighted, it was calm and harmless, but touched with a match it was a spinning wheel of fire, the devil’s own lamp.
Carefully she set it on the high wall of the terrace. Then she realized that it had to be nailed to something or it would simply spin itself over the edge. She looked around for a proper place for it. There was a spike in one of the branches of the tree where a swing had once been, and Miss Ungewitter pushed her chair to this spot and stepped up on the wicker seat to reach. The wind whipped her skirts tight against her legs. She fastened the pinwheel firmly to the spike and then lit several matches which the wind quickly blew out. Finally she had one going and she held it to the fuse, and then, seeing it was lit and sputtering, she jumped clumsily off the chair and grabbed Robert’s hand. “Watch out!” she cried irrationally as the thing began to spin.
It spun at first slowly, lazily, and then, gathering momentum, it spun rapidly, wildly, with a great whirring sound, showering the leaves of the tree with sparks, lighting up the topmost branches, pricking out the ponderous blooms with shafts of red streaked with orange, and blue streaked with red fire, and in the center the light was blinding white like burning magnesium, and faster and faster it spun, and the sparks came huge now, great clusters of stars falling apart around that moon of light, and the sparks flew into the hollyhocks and over the edge of the terrace, down, down into the endless darkness.
Robert screamed with delight. The Catherine wheel spun on while everything stopped for Miss Ungewitter and the universe centered on this mad shining thing that powered itself and drew its deadly energy from some invisible sun. Robert was looking for shipwrecks now, and the wheel spun slower, slower, and the sparks were fewer, till finally, with a sputter of blue and gold and crimson, the wheel stopped, stood motionless, glowing for an instant, and went out.
It was a moment or two before Miss Ungewitter could say a word. “Harriet! Harr-i-et!” Robert was shouting. “Did you see it? Did you see it?”
Miss Ungewitter turned around and looked toward the house and saw that Harriet had, indeed, seen it. Harriet’s face was pressed against the living-room windowpane.
“Tell me about it, tell me about it,” Robert repeated, jumping and tugging at her hand. “What made it do that? Why did it keep going and going? Do you think a ship saw it? Do you think they saw it from the Casino?”
“I think the man in the moon saw it,” said Miss Ungewitter. But what she couldn’t tell him, what she herself even did not understand, was that for a moment—oh, only an untraceable moment in it—she had seen something, something in the burning center of that blinding sun, features etched in the white brilliance, features which assembled, materialized, and became for a moment two almost real eyes over a wrinkled nose above a smiling mouth that curled up and drew a sudden deep cleft in the birthmark on that cheek, his cheek, the last touch of reality. And for a moment there she had almost said, “Oh, you are here, you did come to France after all, you silly man, you did appear again.” But then it had begun to fade.
“It’s your bedtime,” Miss Ungewitter said. “Harriet saw it—there she is, see her? She saw it. Come on, time for bed.”
“Will you carry me?” he asked her.
“Oh, we’re too old for that, aren’t we? Going on seven? Well, maybe once more.” He said that she couldn’t, but she said, oh, yes, she bet she could, and to show him she could she picked him up by the armpits and for a couple of steps did carry him. Then she remembered Harriet still watching, and she thought, No more foolishness, enough is enough. He didn’t mind, and did as he was told, walked like a man beside her into the house.
LYDIA
The girl who was lying face down on the terrace beside the pool turned her face to one side and looked at the young man who was sprawled, or rather spread-eagled, on the yellow towel next to her. Her look was not one of invitation, nor was it one of rebuke. It was a practiced look, involving a slight arching of the eyebrows, a small upturning of the mouth, and a widening of the eyes. “What will you do if I tell you?” she asked. It was a flirtatious look; she was aware of it.
“Just call you by it,” he said.
“Very well. It’s Lydia,” she said.
“Hello.” She turned away from him and looked straight ahead, toward the pool and the swimmers, her chin resting on her folded hands. Directly in front of her, in a little arrangement, were a bottle of suntan oil, a raffia purse, a pack of cigarettes, a small enameled lighter, and a fashion magazine spread open, face down. She reached now for the cigarettes, extracted one carefully from the pack, and seemed to wait, still looking directly ahead, at nothing. The young man pulled himself up on his knees, reached for the tiny lighter and flipped it open, holding the flame in front of her.
She took her time noticing this. Then, cupping her hand around his, she held the light he offered close to her cigarette, and inhaled. She let her eyelids flutter up now, to meet his eyes. Then she exhaled a sharp stream of cigarette smoke and continued looking straight ahead. The young man, who was blond, slim, and muscular (a lifeguard? she wondered), returned to his original position on the towel. Smoking, the girl said nothing.
She was twenty-nine, but could have passed, perhaps, for twenty-three or twenty-four. That is, she hoped so. She was slender, and her skin was very smooth. She was evenly and flawlessly tanned from two weeks of lying, first on her stomach, then on her back, in the Las Vegas s
un. Her hair was light brown but the sun, aided by a chemical preparation, had bleached it to a reddish-streaked blonde. A stickler for perfection of detail in women’s faces might have found her nose a little too small and her mouth a little too wide, but would have quarreled with little else. She knew how to use her face, how to compose it in a brooding, sulky look. Her mouth seemed to pout as she smoked. Her face had a finality, a definiteness that made men turn to look at her.
“Been here long?” the young man asked her.
“Two weeks,” she said, not looking at him.
“For the usual reason?”
She looked at him now. “What usual reason?”
“For a divorce?”
She gave him her inviting-rebuking look again. “My, aren’t we curious!” she said. She looked at him a moment longer, then looked away. It was not the perfect reply, she knew. What had been called for was some witty, some offhand and less mocking remark. But people frequently caught her off guard. Something was said that called for an amusing or sophisticated reply, and inevitably the thing she chose to say emerged sounding not amusing, but silly. Not sophisticated, but surly. She tried to make it a point to answer such remarks only with silence, but often she forgot. The trouble was—and she was aware of this just as she was aware of everything else about herself—that she was not clever or even particularly bright. It was the single flaw in an otherwise perfectly concocted human being. Being reminded of this made her expression even more petulant, and she started wishing that the young man would go away, handsome though he definitely was. Rising and falling moods were another problem. Trying to make her voice sound gay, she said, “Where are you from?”
“Nowhere in particular,” he said.
“Nowhere? You must be from somewhere.”
“Well, I’m from L.A. And I’m from here, too. Lots of places.”
“Do you work here at the hotel?”
“No,” the young man answered.
“What are you doing here, then?”
“I come here to swim.”
She smiled. “Why here?”
“More pretty girls lie on this terrace than any other,” he said.
There it was again: a remark that called for a bright, or at least an adroit, reply. And once again her mind was empty, like a television screen gone suddenly dead with no images or words. And while she groped, mentally, for dials that would produce sounds and meanings, the light, or whatever it was, in her head receded and drew in until it was only the smallest, almost invisible, white dot. She looked up at the sun, and then, walking toward her along the edge of the pool, threading his way between seated, reclining, and standing figures, she saw her salvation coming: Mr. Whatsisname, the man she had met the night before.
“Well, hello!” she said.
The man stopped and looked down at her. His expression was puzzled, almost startled. Then, recognizing her, he smiled. “Hi,” he said. “How’re you today?” His voice had a pleasant drawl.
“Just wonderful!”
“It’s—ah—Lydia, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. How cute of you to remember!”
“How could I forget?” he said, smiling.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve got a confession to make. I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Sid Thurman.”
“Oh, of course!” She paused. Then she said, “How are you feeling today?”
“Pretty good, pretty good,” he said. “All things considered.”
The girl laughed. “Well, we both certainly were not having our lucky day, were we? I haven’t dared figure out how much I lost!”
“No more roulette for me,” he said. “Craps. That’s safer.” He stood over her for a moment, smiling down. “Well,” he said finally, “perhaps I’ll see you again. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” she said. She lay watching him walk away, toward the far end of the pool, a graying, heavy-set man in blue shantung trousers and a vivid orange sports shirt.
The blond young man, who had been lying with his face buried in a well created by his arms, as if asleep, looked up now. “Well, well,” he said.
“What do you mean, ‘well, well’?” she asked.
“Sid Thurman.”
“Well? Who’s he?”
“Are you kidding?”
She looked at him. “No, who is he?”
“Just one of the richest men in Las Vegas.”
The girl appeared suddenly interested. “Is that so?” she asked. “Really?”
“Sure. He’s got oil wells pumping all over Fort Worth.”
“Really? What’s he doing here?”
“He lives here part of the time. Not here at this hotel, but he’s got a house down the road. Spends a couple of months here every year.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake.” The girl sat up suddenly and tucked her legs underneath her, tailor-fashion. “He never gave the impression—you know—of being wealthy. Of course he did lose a lot of money at roulette. I was with him last night. Not with him, really, but—you know—we were sort of standing together, in the casino. He lost—oh, I don’t know how much. Maybe three hundred dollars.” She laughed. “I should have guessed it. When he lost that much money, I mean, he didn’t seem to care. Just sort of laughed it off!” She laughed again, tossing her head back. “Well, well! Isn’t that interesting? I thought he was awfully nice. He bought me five stingers. Ooooh, what a head I had this morning!”
The young man looked up at her and grinned broadly. “Five stingers,” he said. “That’s a lot.”
“I hardly ever, barely drink,” the girl said. “I’m just not used to it.”
“Ah,” he said, “I bet you’re used to it.”
“I’m not,” she said sharply, her face turning to a pout. “No, I’m not used to it.” She looked away from him once more. From this seated position she could see farther. She could see across the pool, over the tops of pink and white umbrellas, over the red-tiled roof of the low, sprawling hotel, to a single, fat, absolutely motionless palm tree that seemed to shimmer, almost to steam, in the hot, still desert air. Studying its leaden, drooping green leaves, she felt her own spirits sink leadenly also, her morale drooping like the leaves. She remembered her hangover this morning, traces of which still persisted; she remembered the arduous, elaborate steps it had taken for her to rise from the bed, to open her eyes before the mirror. She had taken the B-l capsules, but they hadn’t seemed to help. Recovering from a hangover was getting to be more of a job. It required first those shaky, painful steps toward the bathroom; then acknowledging her face in the mirror, greeting it, as it were, to assure herself that the face, the girl, was still there. Then it took a long shower, first hot, then cold. Then room service for coffee, then aspirin, then more coffee. And then, though it tasted wretched, a cigarette. Then dressing, then fixing hair, face, putting on lipstick. Then a trip to the pool, a brief, cold immersion in the water and an hour in the sun. Then, finally, normality returned, and confidence, which was always helped by the arrival of a slim, handsome, blond young man, standing there holding his yellow towel and saying, “Can I spread out here?” In the two weeks she had been at Las Vegas, the mornings had been getting worse, not better. She didn’t understand it. She had always, or so she thought, been able to hold her liquor, to drink with the best of them. But something had changed. Perhaps she was drinking more, or perhaps it was the boredom, the emptiness and bleakness of each day as it dawned, stretching dismally ahead of her. Like a prisoner, she had begun to tick off the days until she could go, until she would have her divorce. Until she would be free. Even the word “free” was beginning to lose its meaning for her. Free of what? Free of Tom. But even Tom was hard for her to think of now, and so being free of him—free of someone who already seemed to have vanished to have diminished like the receding image on the television screen—seemed meaningless. They had been married for four and a half years. “I guess we both just had the four-and-a-half year itch,” she had said to friends laughingly. The words, th
eir marriage, the four and a half quarrelsome, confused years—nothing, actually, seemed to have any pertinence to her as she sat beside the pool. And she felt herself sinking into a great, deep chasm of despair. “What time is it?” she asked.
The young man looked at his watch. “Eleven-ten,” he said.
“I’d better go,” she said. She began picking up her things.
“Perhaps I’ll see you around,” the young man said.
“Maybe.” She gathered her things and stood up. “Good-by,” she said.
“So long, Lydia.”
Walking back toward the hotel she realized that she did not even know his name.
She stopped at the desk. “Are there any messages for me?” she asked.
The room clerk consulted the row of mailboxes. “No, Mrs. Emerson,” he said. And then he said, “Oh, yes—I forgot. Mrs. Morris says she can see you at eleven-thirty.”
“Oh,” Lydia said. “Thank you.” She walked down the hall to her room and let herself in with the key. The room was dark, with the slats on the Venetian blinds tilted upward. She turned on the overhead light. She had forgotten, too, about the plans she had made yesterday morning, about seeing Mrs. Morris. And remembering this made her remember the diminishing sheaf of traveler’s checks folded in the pocket of her suitcase. She knew how many checks were left; she would not count them again. If she did, she would only feel bluer. She stood, irresolute, in the middle of the room. Then she went to her closet, opened the door, and studied what she saw there. She decided on a simple, yellow cotton sundress, which she could wear with the yellow shoes.
By eleven-thirty she was dressed and ready. She left the room and walked back down the corridor to the door marked MANAGER. She knocked on it.
“Come in,” a woman’s voice called.
Lydia opened the door. “Mrs. Morris?” she asked politely.
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