When we had finished eating, we each had a bottle of excellent Mexican beer, the moisture beaded heavily on the outside of the dark glasses. We walked back through the night to our cabin. We had agreed that in Mexico the money should remain locked in the back of the car. We carried our baggage in the back seat so that there was never any need to unlock the trunk compartment of the car.
She went into the cabin and I stood out in the night for a little while. Some sort of pump or generator chugged heavily not far away. The insect shrillings nearly drowned out the sound of the infrequent cars passing. The caged animals chittered and grunted.
When my arms and ankles began to feel as though little hot needles were being stabbed into them, I opened the screen door and went into the cabin. A twenty-five-watt bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling. She had taken off her blouse and skirt and sandals. She was diagonally across the bed, one leg swinging free, her dark hair hanging from the opposite side, her eyes closed, dark-circled.
Again, as at the ferry, I felt the odd disassociation with time and place, the peculiar unreality. I had always thought of criminals as being a breed apart. A separate race. Now I was learning to know them better. I was learning that probably every one of them had one moment or many in which he said, as more prayer than curse, “Oh, God, can this be me?”
The performance of the criminal act is a form of intoxication, of self-hypnosis. It is accompanied by the pounding pulse, sweating palms, and yet is not vastly different from the games we played as children. Crouched in the shrubbery by the porch estimating the chances of making a dash back to the elm tree to come in safe. The real recognition comes later. It comes when you suddenly realize that no parent is going to come out onto the porch to say that the game is over and it is time for bed. This game goes on forever, and the elm tree is forever out of reach. No matter how much you will it, the game cannot be halted.
I had my two prizes. The money locked in the car, meaningless. This woman stretched across the bed. I stood near her head and looked down at her. The soft expressionless mouth, slim throat with hollow at the base, fragile tracery of collarbones slanting toward that hollow. What was that slant of collarbones once called by the English poets? The neckline of Venus. One arm was flung up so that I saw the dark smudge of unshaven hair at the armpit. Breasts slightly flattened by her position. Belly and pelvis and thighs, a composition of long, taut, rounded lines.
I looked down at her and thought that this was indeed a strange animal. A breathing, masticating, digesting, perspiring, warm-scented animal. Hurt it and it cries out. Give it pleasure and it whimpers softly. But it has no more constancy than a cat. No more morality than a mink. Its mind and its heart are dark places that it does not understand. It is never friend, never lover. It is an organism dedicated to self-gratification without thought of loyalty.
She slowly opened her eyes and looked up at me. It was once again that look of dark mockery, unchanged from that moment when I had stood at the drinking fountain and watched her.
“Thinking of that nice bouncy little schoolgirl out there, Kyle?”
“In a way.”
“And making comparisons, I suppose.”
“I was thinking, actually, of how you kept me from going to see Jo Anne’s mother, and wondering why. I can’t see you being jealous.”
“It wasn’t jealousy. I didn’t want you going soft and backing out at the last minute.”
“Because I was going to be useful to you.”
She stretched and yawned. “Kyle, you think too much. Maybe you want too much. Just relax a little. We’re doing fine, aren’t we?”
“But something is missing. Maybe I’ve gone soft. Maybe I need trust, or love.”
“They weren’t in the bargain, Kyle. Remember what I made you say, and it was hard for you to say it? You did this for me. To be able to have me. If I’m not enough, if you’re having regrets, if that schoolgirl looks better to you, then you’ve made a bad bargain, haven’t you?”
“Call it a bad purchase. In a store where no returns are accepted. All sales final.”
The expression of anger appeared and disappeared so quickly, I could not be certain that I had seen it. Then she smiled in her careful way. “All right, Kyle. In Mexico City we’ll divide it. Every last dime. And we’ll separate, if that’s the way you want it.”
“Damn you!”
“Poor Kyle. You’re trying to think the purchase is bad, and yet you can’t give up the merchandise.”
“I can’t give you up. I suppose you want to hear me say that.”
“You don’t have to say it. I’d know it anyway.”
“But it’s all one-sided,” I said. I felt ashamed at the little whine of complaint in my voice. “You could leave me. You could go with Beckler and it wouldn’t make any difference to you. You need a man. Any man. Any stud. It isn’t fair.”
“No other woman will do for you. Maybe you’d better say that out loud, Kyle.”
“What are you after? Reassurance? Your charms aren’t exactly infinite variety. They’re pretty highly specialized, you know.”
She bounded up toward me as though big springs under her were suddenly released. Her curled fingers reached for my face I caught her wrists, turned quickly so that her knee hit my thighs as she kicked. I levered her wrists so that she dropped heavily to both knees. For a time she glared up at me with pure, perfect hatred, and then, as her eyes glazed into blindness, as her mouth slipped into urgency, I felt the awakened response. And, a bit later, she said, in a strained, twisted, convulsed voice, “Say it, Kyle.”
“No other woman,” I gasped.
We were a pretty pair. A fine young American couple. As the familiar act cycled up to its inevitable climax, I sensed a new chill area of objectivity, far back in my brain, buried deep. This is what you wanted, Kyle, it said. This is what you sold out for. Enjoy it, because there’s nothing else left for you, no other way in which you can forget, even for seconds, that you are a thief, a murderer, a stained, befouled little man who has lost every right to any sort of respect, either hers or your own.
A dream awakened me that night. I awakened shuddering, full of the creeping horror that nightmare brings. In childhood you screamed and she came to you, smoothing your hair back from your sweaty forehead, murmuring that it was only a dream, that everything was all right, and go back to sleep, darling.
But you grow up and a nightmare becomes your own problem. You must fight away the horrors, unaided.
The dream had been so real. I had been behind the bronze bars, and they had come up to my window. Jo Anne and Kyle Cameron. Jo Anne had laughed at me. And my other self was grinning. “We’re drawing out all our money,” she said. “Give it to us.”
And I had turned to the bin where the sheafs of bills should have been. In each compartment were tiny pallid naked figures, dozens of tiny black-haired Emilys turning and writhing in the compartments, little shrill voices barely audible.
“Count them out,” Jo Anne said.
I picked several of them up. They were like ice as they writhed in my hand. They were perfect in every detail, with infinitely small, dark-tipped breasts. As I tried to count them out under the grill, they fastened tiny teeth in the soft skin between my fingers. I could not pull them free and the blood began to run between my fingers. Others came out of the drawer and patted across to me, swarmed up my shirt front, and began to tear at the flesh of my throat.
“Count them out,” Jo Anne said, laughing.
I tried to tell her that they were hurting me. Jo Anne and the other Kyle didn’t seem to understand.
And then everybody was laughing. Everybody in the bank, standing where they could see me. Raddmann and Grinter and Limebright and Tom Nairn and Pritch. Laughing so hard they held their bellies and rocked on their heels, their eyes squinted shut, while I stood and pulled helplessly at the icy, writhing figures and tried to tell them that I was being hurt.
When I was shocked out of sleep into the moist, thick Mexican nig
ht, I did not at first understand where I was. Slowly it all returned and my breathing slowed down. I was a child again, afraid of the night. She lay with her back to me. I slid close to her and put an arm around her. She muttered and tried to pull away, but did not awaken. I lay there for a long time, with the long silken back against my chest, my knees against the backs of her thighs, trying to take comfort from the mere closeness of another human being. But there was no comfort in her, no closeness.
I moved away from her and listened to the night sounds. The pump had stopped. A heavy truck droned by, heading for the mountains. I could not hear her breathe. A mosquito mourned in a minor key. Palm fronds scratched against the edge of the cabin roof in a moist breeze, and I could hear, not far off, the sound of running water.
In the morning we drove up the incredible slope of the Sierra Madre, the road winding through endless passes, with the steep drop-off first on one side and then the other. Always climbing. Climbing out of heat into an exhilarating coolness. Emily slowly came back to life. She had died long ago, when the heat wave had first struck Thrace. And now life came back to her, quickening her, giving her a kind of gaiety that I had never seen before.
Twice the car overheated and we had to stop. Each time we stopped she got out quickly and stood looking out over the hundreds of peaks that stretched away to the blue distance.
We had an early lunch at a roadside place called Zimapán, and she ate hugely, with a seemingly insatiable hunger. We climbed over the last high pass and then the road wound down to the great plateau of Mexico. In the late afternoon we were stopped at the outskirts of Mexico City. After inspecting our tourist cards, the official recommended a driver to take us on into the city. The driver handled the car with frightening abandon, avoiding collision by inches, time after time. Emily sat forward on the seat, lips parted, face eager, spots of color in her cheeks.
The driver spoke English. He said, “You have a reservation, a hotel?”
“No,” I said. “We’d like a small hotel, inexpensive.”
“Take us to the best,” Emily said firmly. “The very best.”
“Yes, señora. The best,” he said. “It would be the Reforma, or the Hotel del Prado.”
“I’ve heard about the Del Prado. Take us there.”
I put my mouth close to her ear. “Is that smart?”
“They’ll look in the little hotels first,” she whispered.
“They’ll expect us to do that.”
The driver pulled up in front of the Hotel del Prado. Bellhops came out for the luggage. I paid the driver and tipped him. The doorman said the car would be taken care of. As we went up the wide steps and through the huge glass doors, Emily said, “Get the best suite, the very best.”
I shrugged. It didn’t make much difference at this point. I asked for the best. The amount translated to twenty-five dollars a day. I told the obsequious clerk that I had no idea how long we would stay.
The suite was incredible. After the bellhops had been tipped and had bowed themselves out, Emily went through the big rooms, purring like a cat. Great deep, wide beds, a glass shower stall large enough for a platoon, a deep-green sunken tub at least eight feet long and five feet wide, so deep that three steps led down into it. The windows, with silver-gray draperies, looked out over the high, sunlit city. Indirect lighting and deep piled rugs, and soft perfect colors.
She explored every corner, the way an animal will inspect a strange house. And then she came back to me and flung her arms around my neck in the first gesture of affection I had seen from her. “We’ll live like this,” she said intensely. “Always.”
“It means a lot to you.”
“This is the way I was meant to live. I’ve known that from the beginning.” She walked away from me and paused in front of a full-length mirror. She looked at her reflection with contempt. In that room the cheap, tight, bright skirt looked completely out of place. She pulled her hair free, arranged it quickly in the way of Emily Rudolph rather than Mrs. Marshall.
“Isn’t it a little early to drop the new identity?”
“I’m sick of it. I’m going to look like myself.”
“We’ve got to go find this Manuel Antonio Flores.”
“Not today. And maybe not tomorrow, Kyle. Give me time to start living again.”
“We shouldn’t waste time here.”
“Last Friday I was a grubby little clerk in Thrace, living in a stinking little apartment. Now I’m a lady in Mexico City. Thrace never existed, Kyle.”
“If we’re taken back there, you’ll find it’s real enough.”
She spun around, her eyes narrow. “Nobody will take me back there. Ever. I’ll never go back there.”
“Then you better agree that we ought to look up Flores tomorrow.”
“The bank probably doesn’t even know yet. What’s the hurry?”
“We’ll look him up tomorrow. There may be a delay after we see him.”
“All right, all right!” she said. “But I’m not leaving this suite except to buy clothes in the morning. We’ll eat up here. I’m going to take a bath.”
I paced restlessly around the big living room of the suite, hearing the roar of water rushing into the big tub. After a time I phoned the desk and ordered a pitcher of Martinis. Shortly after I had signed the chit for the drinks, I heard her call me. I went into the bedroom. She was standing by one of the beds, staring at the sleazy clothes she had bought in the cheap store in Syracuse.
“I’m not going to put any of these things on,” she said. “I saw shops below the lobby level in a sort of arcade. Go down and get something that will fit me. You know the sort of thing I like, the sort of thing I used to wear.”
“I don’t think you ought to start wearing—”
“Do as I say!” she yelled. “Do it!”
I tried to face her down. My eyes dropped first. I went down to the shops. For sixty dollars I bought a lightweight wool dress in a gray-green shade, size twelve. It was very severe, very plain. The clerk boxed it and I took it back up. She snatched the box from me, snapped the tape, opened it up. She held the dress up to her and looked in the mirror, then slipped it on over her head, pulling it down, smoothing the skirt down with her palms. She had made up her mouth in the old way, and fixed her hair so that once again it was a soft dark frame for the pale oval of her face with its odd eyes, child’s nose, sensuous mouth. I watched the reflection of her face. There was no visible change of expression.
“Like it?” I asked.
“It’s me again, Kyle. Can’t you see? It’s me again.”
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning she went shopping. She said she wanted to go alone. I stayed in the suite for a time, and then went out. I found that air editions of U.S. papers were sold in the lobby. There was no Thrace paper, but I found a Tuesday edition of the New York Times. I went into Sanborn’s coffee shop in the basement of the hotel and took a small table, ordered coffee. I went through the paper with great care. There was no mention of any embezzlement at the First Citizens’ National Bank of Thrace.
If it had broken, I was certain the Times would have it. I left the paper on the table and went out onto Juarez, walked down the wide sidewalk. I thought of how she had been the previous evening. Steak and champagne. Bright drunken eyes and more laughter than ever before. Emmy Rudolph from Carbondale, being all the Emmys from all the Carbondales wrapped up in one.
The sparkle had not been for me. It would have been the same for anyone who shared the setting with her. I had begun to sense that there was not even gratitude in her, only her belief that somehow, someone would have provided all this. I had merely happened to be an instrument of her manifest fate.
I had drunk far too much, as it turned out. But one thing kept returning to my mind. At one point during my drinking I had reached a place where there was a kind of warm, crazy joy, rather than regret. It hadn’t lasted long, that particular period, but during it, I had been able to think of Beckler without fear, think of the
money with harsh pleasure, look at Emily and believe that the choice had been right.
And I kept remembering that brief interval with a sort of longing. I wanted to return to that frame of mind. I turned left off Juarez and found a small bar. The bartender had very little English, but he understood me when I asked for a Martini. I drank it slowly, and the next and the next. And then I waited, trying to find out if I had undershot or overshot the mark. I could sense the slow return of that feeling of well-being. And the world became a good place. I was strong, and I had won out. They had tried to trap me behind bronze bars, chain me to a suburban bungalow. But I had won out. I had won a strange, lovely woman, and a fortune, and the strength to murder to keep what I had won. I walked back through the bright noon colors of the streets, setting my heels down firmly, carrying my head high. I was highly conscious of the hips and breasts of women on the streets and I told myself that the whole world is a jungle, and if your fangs are sharp, you can win.
In the lounge of the hotel I had another drink, and then went on up to the suite. Emily was standing in front of the big mirror in a new black dress. I slammed the door behind me and took hold of her roughly.
“You’re drunk,” she said, trying to twist away from me.
“Not drunk, honey.”
“Don’t you start calling me that!”
“Not drunk. Just smart. Just smart enough to know what makes the world go round.”
“Don’t be so rough! You’re mussing up this dress.”
“Then take it off.”
“Don’t be such a fool. I’ve got to …”
I hooked my fingers over the front of it. “Take it off, or I will. And my way will surprise you, honey.”
She stared at me. “Your eyes, Kyle. You’re beginning to look funny. Sort of like Ralph.”
“And you told me that Ralph was too much like you.
Weep for Me Page 14
