Deep Purple

by Parris Afton Bonds

  The next Sunday afternoon, Nick showed up at her door again and informed her he was taking her out to dinner. She looked to her father, but he only nodded, giving her his permission, and returned to the radio program “Eddie Cantor's Camel Caravan,” as if his daughter’s going off with a married man were a perfectly normal and acceptable thing.

  Once inside the car, Amanda folded her arms and asked in as ungracious a tone as she could, “Where are you taking me to eat?”

  Nick flicked her an amused glance—as if he didn't buy her disgruntled act for one moment. His arrogance was too much. She couldn't be with the impossible beast five minutes and he had her steaming with irritation! “Nogales," he replied and returned his attention to the superhighway running south out of town.

  "Nogales!" She sat upright. "The border?"

  “Right.”

  She settled back in the plush seat, refusing to say another word. She could stay just as cool as he. But just being near him set off an itch. Now he didn’t even look at her. Treated her as if she didn't exist. Her first impulse was to order him to take her back. But she kept glaring at those hands that seemed to almost caress the steering wheel. There was black hair scattered on the back of his hands. She shuddered with distaste. Only animals, and crude, coarse, vulgar men, had hair on their bodies. He probably had it running all the way down his stomach to . . .

  Now how did such a revulsive image worm its way into her thoughts? It was the ridiculous way he handled the car—as if it were an animate object, a woman ... the same almost tender way he had treated the Cessna. And with her he was so rude and rough and overbearing!

  The flat roofs of the American business buildings and the housetops on all the hills glistened with the last light of the afternoon. Nick halted the car at the customs house on International Avenue, and an officer waved him on through into the more vivid Mexican side. Once past the gaily colored curio shops and hotels with tiny iron-grilled balconies, Nick turned the car onto Calle Elias, bordered by pink, orange, yellow, and white adobes.

  At that time of evening the street was filled by vendors hawking handmade leather belts, holsters, and bridles and children selling sugar-coated cigarettes or boxes of tissues. Mexican women wrapped in the folds of bright rebozos slipped quietly along the narrow walks. The Mexican men, as though conforming to a ritual, strolled up and down the sidewalks flashing flirtatious glances at the women passing in the opposite direction.

  Nick opened the car door for her, and the pungent smell of Carta Blanca, Dos XX’s, and other Mexican beers and liquors from the scores of cantinas assailed her. She wasn’t prepared for the kind of restaurant to which he directed her . . . a cavern. La Caverna Restaurant was the only one of its kind for three hundred miles around, and Nick told her it used to be an Apache hideout. The restaurant’s manager seated them in a secluded alcove lit by a candle ensconced on the cool, rough-textured wall. She had to admit grudgingly that the atmosphere was exotic, the Mexican food Nick ordered for her excellent, and the five-piece mariachi band dressed in black, silver-conchoed costumes most entertaining. Rather than a Mexican folk tune, Nick requested they serenade her with the currently popular “Green Eyes.”

  Even in that hideaway restaurant Nick did not go unnoticed. Halfway through their meal a tall, florid man stopped by their table to offer Nick his support in the upcoming senatorial race. Nick introduced her unabashedly. “Mandy—Jim Tyson, our railroad commissioner; Jim-—Mandy Shima, a law student at the university.”

  After Tyson left, she rounded on Nick. “Won’t your wife mind the gossip about us?” she snapped, annoyed.

  “Danielle is very liberal-minded,” he replied indifferently. He tasted the salted Margarita. “I’m sure she didn’t expect me to become a monk when she set up another bedroom. She knows there have been other women, and she doesn't give a damn as long as she has all the power and prestige accorded the Godwin name. And as long as she behaves discreetly as a politician’s wife—and a Warren—should. I don't care how she satiates her sexual appetite. If she has any.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that not all women find you . . . appealing?” Amanda retorted. “You probably just . . . just rear up on them like a bull and—and force them into submission whether they like it or not!”

  His grin was infuriating. “If you're curious. I'd be delighted to demonstrate my crude technique on—"

  "I most certainly am not!”

  “Well, I’m afraid then what I do with other women is none of your business.’’

  “As long as you occupy your unpleasant attentions with other women and leave me alone, I couldn’t care less!”

  She could not wait for the evening to end and breathed a sigh of relief when Nick deposited her at her door without demanding even a kiss.

  Three weeks passed by, too slowly. She was edgy, and everyone knew it—her father, Larry, even Kathy. “What do you expect from a married man? They're after one thing only. And if they don’t get it, they move on to another claim"

  Amanda did not say anything, and Kathy, still chomping on her spearmint gum, added, “But for a man like Nick I’d willingly give up my virtue." She cast Amanda a sidelong glance and grinned. “If I hadn't lost it already!”

  That same night Nick came to Amanda's house. She and her father had already finished dinner, and while her father listened to the radio she was studying for the approaching midyear exams. At the sound of knocking, she rose and went through the darkened business portion of the house to open the door.

  Nick leaned against the doorjamb, grinning at her. “Miss me?”

  “We don’t take laundry after business hours,” she said and started to close the door, but he stepped inside, somehow managing to close the door with her between the door and him. He planted his hands on either side of her head. "I would have sworn your eyes were jade-colored,” he teased. “But they’re not. They’re a cool mint green.”

  She turned her face away, feeling his hot breath playing on her skin. “I missed you,” he said, an almost belligerent tone to his deep voice now. “That damned mysterious face of yours haunted me all my waking and sleeping hours. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

  When she didn’t answer, he grabbed her shoulders and slashed his mouth down against hers. His lips moved angrily across her lips, as if he wanted to bruise them, to leave his mark on her for everyone to see.

  “Who is it, Amanda?” her father asked from the back room.

  Nick kept kissing her. When she wouldn’t part her mouth, he nipped at her lips. Her mouth flew open, and his tongue plunged into the intimate cavity in triumph before he abruptly released her.

  She wiped the back of her hand across her lips. Her eyes blazed at him. She wished her gaze would burn the man to cinders. “It’s Nick,” she called out at last.

  Nick slipped off his shoes most naturally and, taking her hand, began walking toward the back room. “I would have been by sooner,” he said, as if his visits were of any consequence to her, “but Danielle has become suddenly demanding—even to the point of sharing my bed. I think that like a cat she has scented my interest—beyond the usual—in another woman.”

  “God help her then!”

  “Welcome to my house, Mr. Godwin,” her father said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Shima.” Nick seated himself on the floor with all the ease of an Oriental now despite his solid frame. “I’ve come to ask you and Mandy to spend Thanksgiving with me—at the Stronghold.”

  “The Stronghold?” she echoed in an almost reverential tone. She could not have been more astounded had he said the White House. “You’re serious?”

  “Most.” He looked at her father. “Your presence, Mr. Shima, will, of course, prevent me from compromising your daughter.”

  “And your wife?” her father asked.

  “She’s flying back east to be with her parents for the holidays.”

  Taro nodded slowly. “Tell me, Mr. Godwin, why do you want us to come?”

  “I want your daughter near m
e. And since Mandy believes the Stronghold should be hers, I can think of no better bribe than a weekend there.”

  ‘‘You would set her up as your mistress?” her father asked, and her breath held.

  Nick’s bold gaze met her father’s steady one. “I detest that term, Mr. Shima. I would take the greatest care with your daughter, treasure her as you do. And permit no harm to come to her. I would offer her everything but my name.”

  “That is something I don’t want!” she snapped with a whoosh of her inhaled breath.

  “But you want the Stronghold. And as far as I’m concerned, it belongs to Paul—and his children, if he ever remarries. Yet the Stronghold is still the family home, and I want you there with me for the weekend.”

  He rose to his feet, towering over her father and her. “I hope I do not offend you, Mr. Shima. You are a man who appreciates honesty, I believe. I would have your daughter. But I am not setting the condition that to stay at the Stronghold she has to become my mistress. That will have to come of her own free will.” He shrugged his heavily muscled shoulders and looked at her. “Think about it, Mandy. You can reach me at my office.”

  “Would you come?” Amanda asked her father after she had deliberated three agonizing days over her decision. The desire to see the Stronghold warred with repulsion for Nick’s overbearing masculinity. There was nothing delicate or tender about his lovemaking as she was sure there must have been between her mother and father.

  "If I would not?” her father asked.

  “Then I wouldn't go either. I wouldn't think of being without you on Thanksgiving.”

  “Sooner or later you two will have to confront each other— and yourselves. Perhaps Thanksgiving will be the time.”

  She called Nick from the Casablanca. It was not yet five, and only a few customers were beginning to trickle in for the first show. From the piano Larry watched her, curious. A switchboard operator answered and transferred her call to Nick's private secretary. She gave the efficient young voice her name, and the secretary put her through immediately to Nick.

  “Hello, Mandy.” She heard the sound of victory in the low thunder of his voice and wanted to slam the receiver down then. Agreeing to go to the Stronghold was an admission of surrender to a certain extent. And Nick would chip away her defenses little by little until she gave herself to him. If she had her way he would go on wanting her the rest of his life.

  Taro closed his laundry on Wednesday afternoon and found a neighbor to care for Trouble in their absence. Amanda arranged to have the Friday and Saturday off, though Mike was not too pleased at the idea. But after a year she had built up a following, and she knew he did not want to push her into quitting.

  Nick came by for her and her father Thursday afternoon. It was one of those perfect Indian-summer days. The Empire foothills were alive with fragmental shades of autumn—oranges and reds and browns. The Pierce-Arrow covered the narrow winding road in rapid time. As far as the eye could see, Nick told them, was Cristo Rey. The Huachucas, Santa Ritas, and Whetstones served as its boundaries. Amanda kept thinking, This could have, should have, been mine.

  Cristo Rey’s rancheria was a mass of crumbling ruins, but Amanda could truly say she was not disappointed when she saw the Stronghold. As stately mansions go, it did not compare to some of the elegant Victorian homes found in the Paseo Redondo section of Tucson. But it was imposing—as Nick was. She saw it first silhouetted against a magnificent sunset of pinks and purples. Her breath caught. Nothing could be more beautiful!

  Yet by the time they drove up to the gates the Stronghold was even more beautiful—incredibly beautiful, lit up as it was with a thousand lights to contrast against the sudden black velvet of evening. Nick allowed her that one tantalizing view, then drove on through the wrought-iron gates, telling her they had replaced the heavy timbered ones that had rotted away. The earthen-walled castle that reared up behind the original adobe fortress had been added by Elizabeth Godwin, he told her dispassionately, after her grandson, his father, Brigham, went to Tucson to live with Nick's mother.

  Nick took them on a brief tour of the castle turrets and cathedral room with skylights that spanned the original adobe and the castle. He pointed out the billiard room that was de rigueur for the wealthy in the years after the turn of the century. Then there was the enormous library and the conservatory to see. Despite Paul Godwin’s absence, a wealth of servants unobtrusively kept the Stronghold going. And the stable of thoroughbreds and garage of roadsters and Rolls-Royces testified to his occasional visits.

  For Amanda it was like coming home. A sense of belonging pervaded her, especially when she walked through the fortress’s courtyard to her great-grandmother’s bedroom. It was an austere room, almost like a nun’s and cool and musty from disuse. Religious tin paintings graced the walls, and a bed and handmade bureau occupied the otherwise bare room. She could imagine Dona Dominica waiting there for Don Francisco, as Catherine must have waited for Lorenzo.

  Nick did not seem to find it strange that she wished to stay in that room rather than in a much nicer guest room provided in the castle proper. When she and her father joined him for Thanksgiving dinner that night in a dining room that would seat at least fifty, it seemed completely right to her that she should be there.

  After dinner a retainer, an old Mexican man, served liqueur in the parlor that housed Paul’s growing art collection. “He brings a painting home from almost every country Roosevelt sends him,” Nick said, adding grimly, “which are becoming fewer in number as Hitler’s armies march across Europe.”

  He paused and looked at her father. “That brings me to something else I wanted to talk to you about. Eventually we will become officially involved in the war. I'm sure you’ve already experienced some anti-Japanese sentiment. But it could—and will—get much worse. I fear for Mandy’s safety."

  Her father set his cup on the round marble-topped coffee table. “I also, Mr. Godwin. But there is nowhere we can run and hide. And this is my country now."

  “If war comes, promise me you’ll accept my protection— promise me, Mr. Shima, that you’ll bring Mandy here.”

  Her father rose. “No, that I cannot do. I submitted to this one visit to Cristo Rey, Mr. Godwin, because I hoped to quench my daughter’s unnatural thirst for the Stronghold. I am hoping she will see that it is only a pile of rock and wood that with time will be nothing but rubble.”

  He left the parlor then, his stooped shoulders carried with dignity. Nick crossed to her and took her cup from her trembling hands. He set the cup on the coffee table. “Your father is right, you know."

  When he pulled her to her feet, an intense urge to flee the room that was dominated by his presence swept over her. But he held her tightly to him. “Isn’t this what you wanted? To tempt me, to make me half mad with wanting you?”

  She tried to push him away, but he ground his fingers into the soft flesh of her buttocks and pulled her against him. “Can you feel what you do to me?” he asked thickly. He jerked one of her flailing hands down and pressed it against him, and the rock-solid bulk frightened her. She was no match for Nick. The balance of power could easily shift in his favor.

  When she would have wrenched free, he lifted her in his arms and carried her through the zaguan out into the courtyard He reached Dona Dominica’s old bedroom and set Amanda down, pinning her against the door. “No!” she hissed. “Leave me alone! ’ ’

  “It’s my time now,” he rumbled. His hand slipped down to the fork of her legs in a half-slap and half-caress that did not cease until he heard her groan. Then he released her abruptly. “Sweet dreams!” he snapped and stalked off into the darkness.

  She hated him! Hated him! She rolled restlessly in bed from her right side to her left. The itch between her thighs was unbearable. Damn Nick Godwin! He had known, and she hadn't, that a man could make a woman burn like that! It was unfair— and cunning of him. Surely this hunger for what he could give her would leave her system. If she could just hold out against him
.

  At last she went to sleep and awoke in a vile, ruffled mood. Now she knew why the female scorpion stung her mate to death. She dressed in khaki pants and a beige cotton shirt and headed out to the stables that had been built after the old ones were torn down to make way for the addition to the Stronghold. Apparently Paul retained only three horses in his absence, but they all appeared to be thoroughbreds. She chose a stocking-footed chestnut that took her out to the Cristo Rey wildlands and away from Nick Godwin.

  She rode southeast toward the Fort Huachuca military post— toward the craggy foothills and rock-strewn arroyos that her mother and grandmother must have often ridden. Her long hair blew out behind her, and though the early morning temperature was still cool, in the fifties, the sun warmed her face. Beneath her thighs she could feel the heaving barrel of the animal as it galloped unrestrained.

  Once the friskiness was out of both the horse and herself, she settled her mount into an easy canter, always heading southeast. It was not as if she expected, at twenty-four, to see the Ghost Lady—as she had at six and seven. She did not scout out every lonely, twisted Joshua tree in some eerie expectation of an apparition.

  Still, seeing the lone rider and horse loping toward her was like deja vu. She pulled up on the chestnut and sat waiting for her past to approach. When the horse was close enough she saw that the rider was a man of perhaps forty-five or fifty—a handsome man, in a dignified sort of way, with silvery hair and mustache.

  “Hello,” the gentleman said, moving his black mount alongside hers. "You must be Amanda.”

  She canted her head, puzzled. Swiftly she scrutinized the ascetic features—the high brow, the contemplative eyes, and the refined line of the lips, so unlike Nick’s more carnal, unforgiving features; yet she knew the man was his stepbrother. “You’re Paul, aren’t you?”

  He smiled. “It seems we’ve met before—about fifteen years ago, wasn’t it? You were just a—”