"No! A fifteen-year-old boy with the hormones of a bull moose was standing there and for the first time in his life he was seeing a woman. That's a big difference, honey."
She put her hands together as if about to pray. "I am so glad I'm not a man! What happened next?"
"I reached down and wiped the film off her face with my hand. I guess it was mucus or something else. Nothing else happened. I stood there and looked till Joe got back. The interesting thing was when he came, he wouldn't get near her. He stood up on the ledge and craned his neck but refused to come down.
"Nothing ever happened in Crane's View, so I'm sure the cops were thrilled to hear about a body. They were there in less than ten minutes. Captain Cristello and Pee Pee Bucci."
"Pee Pee?"
"Peter. The cop we hated most. He'd graduated from the high school a few years before. The one who always gave us the roughest time when we were caught doing things."
"Were you really a tough guy, Dad? I mean, all the stories you tell about when you were a kid make you sound like a real delinquent."
"No, I faked it. I never fit in. I only did bad things because the guys I hung around with did them. I wanted them to like me but they knew I'd leave Crane's View as soon as I could. And I did. But when you're a kid, you go with the flow. That's part of the deal. Do you think the punks or the hippies were any different? It's just a different costume and haircut, but kids want to be accepted. They'll sell a lot of their soul for that. You're about the only one I've ever known who's stayed on her own path. I admire you for that."
It was true. From the beginning, Cassandra had been strong-minded and genuinely independent. When her mother and I had divorced, she'd handled it so well it disturbed me. Until now, boys had stayed away from her because she was mature and honest. Unfortunately she thought it was because she wasn't good looking. She had a large marvelous nose, her mother's cheekbones and slightly Oriental eyes. She was tall, wore tortoiseshell glasses and generally hid the curves of her lovely body with no-nonsense work shirts and jeans. I adored her and treasured the time we spent together. I had turned much of my life into a royal fuckup, but what surprised me was the fact I was a good father. We talked about everything and her candor educated me and made me very proud. One of the things I relished was what good friends we had become over the years, in spite of all the fallout that comes with a broken marriage.
"Okay, so Pee Pee the cop and the other guy came and you were there with the body."
"Right. Joe's up on the bank, I'm down on the beach and here come the sirens. It was so typical. There were two police cars in town and both arrived with sirens screaming. Couldn't they have just gotten into one car –"
"Dad, the story?"
"The cops arrived and took over. Cristello ordered me away from the body. A minute ago she was mine but now she was public property. Pee Pee made me climb up the bank and give him a statement. I thought that was the coolest thing – I was actually giving my statement to the cops! It was just like on Dragnet or Naked City, my favorite television shows. I could see Pee Pee was jealous because he kept asking me ridiculous questions like, 'What do you mean, you saw a shirt in the water?' and, 'What were you doing by the river anyway?'
"What did he expect you to say? You were only a kid!"
"Exactly. That's why he was jealous. Cops in small towns wait all their lives to find a murder victim. Now two dopey kids had stumbled on one and all Pee Pee could do was take our statements. It was great. So we gave them while waiting for an ambulance to arrive from the town hospital. Cristello got a tarpaulin out of the back of the patrol car and covered her body. I remember that moment very well – it was as if I was saying goodbye to her. For all intents and purposes I was, because when the ambulance got there, the men took the body away quickly and I never saw it again.
"We had to ride in Pee Fee's car to the station house and give our statements again. When we got in, the radio was on and the disc jockey was saying, 'And now what you've all been waiting for: the new song by the Beatles, "A Hard Day's Night." ' It was the first time I ever heard it. Since then, whenever it comes on, I think of that day."
"Did they find out who did it?"
"I don't know for sure. Her boyfriend from college was convicted and sent away to jail but there were a lot of rumors afterward. Plus we had our own ideas and you know how kids talk. The story that went out to the public was that the night before, she had gone down to the river with the guy she was dating. He hit her on the head, panicked, and threw her body into the river. That's all."
"Why didn't you try to find out? You guys were the ones who found her!" Cass sounded indignant we hadn't followed up on it.
"I know, and we did try, but no one would tell us anything. Especially not the cops. Not a word."
"That's really strange. Who was she?"
"Pauline Ostrova." I thought about the dead girl a moment, trying to frame what to say to make the description right. "You know, no matter how small a town is, you can usually find at least a couple of very good and very bad kids in it."
Cass put up a hand to stop me. "Wait! Let me guess – Pauline Ostrova was . . . very good. All A's, editor of the yearbook and dated the captain of the football team."
"No. Much more interesting than that. I didn't know her well because she was a few years ahead of me in school. She had already graduated by that time but was still legendary because she was both. Completely wild, she had a reputation nine miles long. The word was she slept with whoever she liked, drank like an Irishman and would do anything on a dare. But she was also brilliant and had a full scholarship to Swarthmore."
"Swarthmore? Swarthmore's harder to get into than Harvard!"
"That's why she was so amazing. God only knows what she would have become if she'd lived. There were so many contrasting Pauline stories floating around when I was in school, you never knew which to believe. She must have been something."
"But you didn't know her?"
"Not really. Once in a while I'd see her driving by in a car or walking down the street. But the stories made her so much larger than life that I could only stare at her a second before I had to look away. It was like looking at the sun. Your eyes would burn out if you looked too long."
"I can't believe you didn't find out how she died."
I waited a dramatic moment and then said triumphantly, "That, my pearl, is what I am about to do."
She took a quick breath. "What do you mean?"
I was going to play this one for all the effect I could, especially in front of my favorite audience. I walked over to a sideboard and took out the photograph from Pauline's senior-class yearbook I'd borrowed from the high school library. I'd had it copied and then enlarged. I brought it to Cass and propped it in front of her. "Pauline Ostrova."
She took the eight-by-ten and looked at it a long time before speaking. I watched her face to see if I could decipher what she was thinking. As usual, nothing showed because nothing would until she'd made up her mind. I knew my daughter well enough to know she didn't like any kibitzing until she was good and ready to pass judgment. "Tall or short?"
"Kind of tall, as I remember."
"Where'd you get the picture?"
"It's her senior-year portrait. Out of an old yearbook."
She shook her head. "Her face is so small. And look at the teeth – they're tiny and perfect. I could imagine her being the class brain from this picture, but not the other. Not if this was the only picture I ever saw of her. Do you have others?"
"Not yet, but I'm working on it."
Cass looked at the picture again. "She looks too sweet to be dead."
That evening I brought her to the railroad station. While we were waiting for her train to arrive, she told me a story that stuck in my mind like a piece of chewing gum on the bottom of my shoe.
One of her friends' mother was an airline stewardess. She was taking a shuttle bus from London out to the airport when they hit a bad traffic jam. Apparently the woman is very good looki
ng. During the ride, she and this handsome well-dressed guy across the aisle were making heavy eye contact. But the whole time he was also talking nonstop on a portable telephone and from what she overheard, he was in the middle of pulling off a big deal. She was already late and the bus wasn't moving. Her flight was going to take off soon and finally it was clear she wasn't going to make it on time. Desperate, she went over to the sexy guy and asked if she could borrow his phone to call the airline and tell them about the delay. The guy sputtered a minute and then said very sheepishly that he'd like to help her, but the phone was a fake.
After putting Cass on the train back to Manhattan, I sat in the car and looked at my hands on the steering wheel. Mr. Telephone gave me the creeps because his story sounded too much like mine. I had been walking around pretending I was a successful big shot too, when in fact I was a stuck buckaroo with a mediocre novel sitting on my desk, staring at me like a gargoyle every time I entered the room. What if I was finished as a writer? There were too many stories about novelists who just dried up one day and never found another drop inside. The idea of writing Pauline's story excited me, but what if that came out flat and lifeless too? I'd have no excuses then.
My still ringers began drumming and jumping around on the wheel. What if? What if? I didn't need any more doubts in my life, but sitting there alone on a pretty Sunday evening in summer with nothing to do, the what-if's poured out of my brain like a swarm of killer bees.
There was a large billboard on a wall advertising a new kind of yogurt. It pictured a beautiful female hand holding a silvery spoon with a blop of violet yummy on the tip. The tag line read, "Heaven is only a spoonful away." Looking at it, I suddenly remembered Spoon, Cassandra's girlfriend who'd had her vagina tattooed. One tattoo led to another and reaching into my back pocket for my wallet, I took out the bunch of calling cards I kept there. Shuffling through them, I found Veronica Lake's with the picture of the tattooed Russian criminal. I looked at it a few seconds, considered what other prospects I had for the night ahead, and picked up the telephone.
It rang four times before her machine clicked in. Answering-machine messages tell a lot about people. Cassandra's mother said only, "You know the drill," and then came the beep. The most humorless man I know has the most embarrassingly unfunny attempt at being funny on his tape. It never fails to make me cringe. My credo is if it ain't there, don't try to record it. Veronica's voice came on, crisp and friendly. "Hi. This is 555-2338. Leave a message and I'll call you as soon as I can." I felt a small tug of disappointment that she wasn't there, but thought it best to say something so she would know I'd been thinking of her.
"Ms. Lake, this is Samuel Bayer –" Before I could say more, the phone clicked and she picked it up.
"Hello, Mr. Bayer."
"Are you hiding behind your answering machine?"
She chuckled. "Yes I am. I like answering machines. They're like a bouncer at the front door: They only let in people you want to talk to."
"I never thought of it that way. Listen, I'm sure you're in the middle of ten things right now –"
"I'm not doing a thing. Did you have something in mind?"
"Actually I did. I was wondering if you'd like to have a drink." The words were out before I really knew what I wanted to say.
"I would love to! Are you nearby?"
"No. I'm sitting at a train station in Connecticut. But I could be there in a couple of hours."
"Wow! You'd drive all that way to have a drink with me?"
"It's a nice night. It's a nice drive."
"And it's a nice idea! Where should we meet and when? Just say and I'm there."
Hawthorne's is the nicest bar in New York. The drinks are big, the clientele quiet and discreet and the surroundings are comfortably worn in. By the time I arrived it was almost nine. I'd driven straight to the city from the train station so I was still wearing my Sunday-at-home clothes. That was all right for Hawthorne's and for Veronica too. I saw her when I walked in the door and felt a second's worth of eerie because she was wearing almost exactly the same outfit I had on – a white button-down shirt, khakis and sneakers. Only her shoes were industrial-strength, high-top basketball jobs with enough home-boy decoration on them to rate her a free pass to a Crips meeting. She looked delicious – that big blond ice sculpture of hair, long neck and erotic rise beneath her shirt to make you wonder what it looked like underneath . . .
On seeing me, she clapped her hands. "We look like twins!"
"I was just thinking that. Who's your tailor?"
She patted the seat next to het for me to sit down. "How was the drive in?"
"Clean and fast. Sometimes it's a killer on Sunday night, but I guess everyone decided to stay in the country another day. What are you having?"
"Iced tea."
"You don't drink?"
"I do, but I didn't want to tonight. I needed a clear head if I was going to meet you."
"Why's that?"
"Because you're my hero. I don't want to chance saying something dumb and scare you away."
"You're a dream date, Veronica: Before I sit down, you say I'm your hero. I don't even have to tell you my stories to try and impress you."
"No, but I would love to hear your stories, Mr. Bayer."
"Sam."
"Do you know how often I've dreamed of hearing you say that? Dreamed of sitting with you in a place like this, just the two of us, and hearing you say, 'You can call me Sam'?"
"Are you always so, um, honest?"
"Lying is too much trouble. You have to make sure to taste each word before letting it off your tongue. I hate that. It's hard enough making people understand without lying."
The waiter brought my drink. Sipping it, I tried to get a better read on Veronica while we both thought of the next thing to say.
She looked younger than I remembered, more voluptuous and desirable. I had a bad habit of getting involved with skinny, neurasthenic women. They were often good lovers, which got me hooked in the beginning, but their early sass in bed later turned into ugly static electricity that made me feel like a lightning rod in an electrical storm. Of course some of the trouble in the relationships was my fault due to my own defective wiring and various deadly sins. I was an optimist who loved women, two things that never failed to get me into trouble. Even now, five minutes after greeting Veronica Lake and just having begun the mating dance, my spirit was already racing down the runway toward takeoff. Already thinking, I wonder when I can ask her to Connecticut? I wanted to know what her back looked like, what other authors she read, how her breath smelled. I was thinking how much I enjoyed her honesty, the direct eye contact, the way she threw her hands around like an Italian when she spoke. I liked her before I knew her, but that was par for my course.
"What are you working on now? Can I ask that question, or is it too personal?" Her voice had some doubt in it, a little unsureness.
"No, not at all. I was writing a novel, but something happened recently that got me going on another project. I'm very excited about it."
"Can you say what it's about? By the way, are you a Pisces?"
I stopped and cleared my throat. I don't like astrology. Don't like people asking my sign. Too often when you tell them, they nod their heads sagely as if your birth date explains why everything about you is so fucked-up. It didn't surprise me that Veronica guessed correctly.
"Yes. How did you know?"
"You're a fish. I can smell it." She smiled and left it at that.
"What do you mean? I smell like a fish?"
"No, you smell like good cologne. Probably . . . Hermes? Hermes or Romeo Gigli. You smell great. I don't mean that."
I signaled to the waiter. "Time for another drink."
To my surprise, she leaned forward and took firm hold of my elbow. "Listen, I'm just a fan. I'm nobody. The last thing in the world I want to do is offend you. Your face says I just pissed you off, big-time. Please know I didn't mean to. Should I leave? Shit. I'm so sorry."
S
he slid her chair back. I grabbed it. "Veronica, I just drove two hours to New York. Four minutes into our conversation you say I'm a fish and now you're leaving? I think we should run our tape back a ways and start again. What do you think?"
"I think I'm scared to open my mouth."
"Don't be; I like your honesty. You asked what I was working on. Let's start there." I let go of her chair and sat back. She stared at me and didn't move.
"When I was fifteen, I found the body of a girl who had been murdered."
Telling the whole story took only a few minutes. When I was finished, she sat silently looking at the table. Only after a good long pause did she raise her eyes and look at me. Her expression said she had figured something out. "Pauline Ostrova was your dead mermaid. The end of childhood. All those impossible combinations we can only know and accept when we're young, you know? Woman and fish. Young and dead. Sex and murder . . ."
"Oxymoron."
She nodded slowly. "Precisely. Childhood is all opposites. You're either too hot or too cold. It's hate or love, nothing else, and it shifts back and forth in a second. What you had in that fifteen-year-old minute was all of 'em together in one. Right then in your life, a dead girl ivas sexy. Of course you wanted to stare at her underpants. That .makes sense to me."
"You mean I wasn't a burgeoning fifteen-year-old necrophiliac?"
"I don't know about you, Sam, but at fifteen I would have had sex with anything. You have a wonderful mouth, you know. I think I will have a drink."
She had vodka with ice. Her large hand with its salmon-colored fingernails wrapped around that glass of clear liquid was somehow so alluring that I sighed. When I looked at her, she was looking at me. She smiled guiltily, as if I'd caught her at something. She began talking quickly.
"I heard an interesting story today. A friend of mine owns a restaurant up on Sixty-eighth Street. A few months ago, a man came in and ordered filet mignon. My friend prides himself on buying the absolute best and freshest meat every day. I don't know anything about it, but the food tastes pretty good to me. So the customer had the filet and when he was done, said it was the best steak he'd ever eaten. The place is expensive, but every day for the next week he comes in and orders another filet. Big tipper, completely satisfied, always full of compliments.
Kissing the Beehive Page 4
