by Bel Mooney
As patterns in a kaleidoscope change, the group reformed in the warm July evening, as if just for me. Zandra murmured something about seeing how the cook was progressing (for they had hired someone to make a special dinner tonight) and followed Luenbach into the house. The telephone rang. Corelli answered it, and called Anthony inside. After a few moments Lace and Marylinne drifted out on to the terrace, and sat where Zandra and I had been sitting, leaving the sofa empty, still indented with Carl’s shape. I stood quietly, watching the ocean in the distance, through a fringe of leaves. The sky was hazy still; somewhere in the distance I heard the zipp of a rocket as someone grew impatient for the celebrations to come next day.
“Christ Jesus, I can’t stand him,” whispered Lace, behind me.
“Just two more nights, Lacey, two more, that’s all,” said Marylinne, in a voice that was softer, more soothing than I had ever heard.
Lace giggled. “Maybe he’ll have a heart attack. All that weight he’s carrying.”
“Ah reckon we all gotta trust in the Lord’s wi-ill,” intoned Marylinne in her best Mississippi.
“Hall-el-luiah!”
“Lacey, they been talking about the film again. I think it’s going to be okay. Won’t please Annelisa.”
“Don’t please me too much.”
“Shit, honey, are you crazy? Luenbach’s getting some big European director to come in for the next one, a real famous guy, and Anthony told me we’ll get bigger parts. Annelisa can go take a walk, with all her eye-rolling and complaining. Me, I know what I want and I’m going right in there to get it. And I don’t much care what I have to do.”
As I turned round, Emmeline Carl came through the doors, petite and elegant in pale yellow seersucker, with a large white Puritan collar. Her ice-grey hair was smooth, as if she had that moment stepped from her Upper East Side hairdresser. She wore her habitual expression of gentle, bland concern.
Lace was shaking her head, making the blue-black hair ripple like water. “Yeah, Marylinne, but I feel different, okay? I think it’s, like …embarrassing.”
“When you’ve been a centrefold!” Marylinne was mocking, her voice harsh again.
Emmeline sat where her son had been sitting, folded her hands in her lap, and smiled benignly at the two women. “Now what are you two girls talking about?”
“Ardy-See-Us,” said Marylinne, shortly.
“No, dear, it’s not going to be called that now. Anthony said today that they’ve definitely changed the title. It’ll be called The Nights of Penelope. Now I think that’s much better. Folks ’ull know how to say it.” Again the all-encompassing smile.
“Uh-huh,” muttered Lace, looking down.
“Is something the matter, honey? Why, I do believe something’s wrong with you, Lace. You can talk to me … come on now.”
Lace said nothing. Emmeline glanced at Marylinne, who shrugged slightly. “Oh, she’s just a bit uptight now – about the movie.”
Emmeline’s face wore an expression of utter astonishment, as if she had just been told that Billy Graham was a pimp. “But Anthony and Zandra tell me it’s a wonderful picture! It’s all about one woman’s struggle for survival, and makes what happens to her truly relevant to our modern world. That’s what my son told me, and I always believe what he says. Don’t you?” She was accusing now.
“Yeah, but the things …” Lace started, then stopped.
“What things, honey?”
“She means the things we do, Mrs Carl,” said Marylinne.
“Yes …?” said Emmeline, encouragingly.
“Us two, you know? It’s like … weird.” To my astonishment, a flush slid across Marylinne’s cheek, deepening the tan and the blusher.
“Not the kinda stuff I dreamed in school,” Lace said dryly.
Emmeline rose decisively, crossed to where the other two were sitting, and stood between them, resting a hand on each of their shoulders. “Well now, it seems to me that you two girls have got to trust in people a little bit more. I just know that my son would never ask anyone to do anything that was bad for them. He’s always been good to you, hasn’t he, Marylinne? Bringing you here, and all?”
“Yup.”
“Well then,” she crooned, giving each of them a little pat that was half reassurance, half rebuke, “you just have faith in my Anthony’s judgement, and you’ll be all right – you believe Emmeline, now. You see” I heard ruthlessness in that voice.
They looked at her, then at each other. Lace shrugged.
“I lost sixty dollars this afternoon,” said Marylinne.
“Mine was fifty,” said Lace.
Emmeline clucked gently. “Tssh, you girls should know better than to throw your money away,” she said. “My mother used to say that folks that gamble are folks who’ve already lost.”
“Too right,” said Marylinne.
There was a pungent smell of garlic and fish from the kitchen. Glasses stood empty. Sam Luenbach, dressed now, came towards us from the sitting room, followed by Peter Corelli, whose stomach stretched a white safari shirt. “Anthony’s bankrolled enough class movies for them to let him get away with this …” Luenbach was saying.
“Yeah, but there’s a lot of pressure right now … These finks who call themselves the Moral Majority – though who’se ever seen or heard of them, for Chrissake?”
“The New York Times didn’t invent them, Pete.”
“Put a contract on the leaders, and we’d have no more trouble.” They both laughed heartily.
“Who wants a drink?” Zandra Carl had changed into tight purple trousers, and a white halter top. Diamonds spiked her ears; gold chains nestled in the shadow between her breasts; a single huge ruby shone dully on the red-tipped fingers that reached for my glass. I found myself wondering what she looked like in the morning, when her hair had seen no rollers and her face no make-up – those slightly scared lines of worry more obvious on her thin face. There was no catty pleasure for me in such imagining; I felt mere frustration that there would never be a chance to take a portrait of her naked in that way.
Such people glisten, as Annelisa had done in Atlantic City, sheen of skin and clothes attracting the light, and softening shadows too – so that curves are all the more gradual and voluptuous. I am angular, the planes of my face harsh in most lights, far more clear-cut than my judgements. I never glisten. Were I to take a self-portrait it would be in black and white of course (people like Annelisa and Zandra are meant for colour only, with its total indulgence of the surface) and a montage. I would take my head, harshly side-lit like a still from a horror movie, and drop that close-up print amongst the little stones and blades of grass at the edge of a pond, so that a third of it was submerged, the image losing definition, harshness dissolving, beneath the waterline. And I would photograph the whole thing, just for myself. I haven’t done it yet. Perhaps I never will for the image is so clear in my mind that its moment has passed. That has been the trouble lately. The shutter sticks. Or, the image is in my mind, and I can’t make it real. Between my idea and its enaction falls the shadow of what I have already seen: pictures filed permanently in my mind’s eye.
Miranda was watching television with her brother, hunched over her knees, her hair smooth now and turned under at the ends in an even bob. They did not look up as I passed. From the terrace came the sound of laughter and the chink of ice in glass. The group had reached cohesion as Anthony Carl came out, Marylinne and Lace rising, all of them standing in cocktail party mode to laugh at his witticisms.
“I’m just going upstairs for a few moments. Too hot,” I said. And indeed I was sweating slightly in my Indian cotton dress, with its elbow-length sleeves. The air felt close and full of thunder.
“See if Annelisa’s coming down, honey,” said Zandra quietly, “I know she wears a lot of make-up, but she’s not making it up there.”
In my room I stripped off my dress with relief and splashed my face with cold water. Looking in the wardrobe, I cursed the lack of suitable clothes, fin
ally choosing the only elegant garment – a black silk dress with shoestring straps – I had thrown in thinking it would not be needed. Gloomily I realised how much I was under the influence of Zandra: I wanted to look as sleek. Until that moment I had not realised how like my mother I am. Although the faces I admire usually have the beauty of age (Colette, Rebecca West, Katharine Hepburn, the odd, sad, wrinkled little girl’s face of Stevie Smith) it is a poster of Warhol’s repetitive open-mouthed Monroe which hangs in my bathroom.
The magazine lay by my bed. Flopping down, I opened it, wondering if I could meet the July Handmaiden’s eyes. Annelisa’s Book came into my mind, and those sets of pictures I had looked at four years ago. She must have added to them now, with stills from the film too, the nature of which I suspected already. The portfolio had been lying in the hall, with her case. Was she sitting in her room (as I sprawled here flicking through the pages to find those unequivocal eyes), turning over the plastic pages with her clean, long fingers, to see how she had improved? Why else bring the thing along?
Anthony Carl now wrote an editorial in his magazine. Its title, with turbanned logo, was “EMPEROR OF THE SENSES” and the first few lines of it made me almost shout with laughter.
“Since the dawn of time men have worshipped women. Cavemen stopped hunting and started loving to help them forget the savagery of existence in the world outside the cave. Poets in the Middle Ages and in Shakespeare’s time poured out the ecstasy of their love in matchless lines of longing. And we today, in the offices of Emperor give thanks each day that we are uniquely privileged to offer to you, our readers, the naked sensuality of the women who grace our pages. Let us not forget, as a new tide of repression sweeps the United States, that women’s bodies have always been instruments of love, and should, therefore, be celebrated …”
It went on, in similar vein, for half a page, the other half being taken up with a montage of Handmaidens, each photograph presented as if it were a snapshot pinned up on a noticeboard, some of them curling artistically at the corners, each one attached by a little turban-headed pin.
Over the page were the readers’ letters, under the headline, “FROM THE BOUDOIR”. From Montana, Indiana, Maine, Ohio, Michigan, Vermont, California, Virginia – came the fantasies: every variety of sexual activity, carried on in changing rooms, parked cars, sitting rooms, hotel corridors, swimming pools, gardens, college rooms, even a shoe store; every possible permutation of single or plural partners doing things to each other that stretched the imagination. Vocabulary too, for, dictionary in hand, I could not have dreamt up the fanciful names barely literate men applied to their own and their partners’ genitals – from the poetic (“her love channel”) to the wistfully-sadistic (“my giant beaver-cleaver”). Panning an eye over the page I was overwhelmed by a bizarre fantasy of all the citizens of the United States poking and prodding each other, slobbering and gobbling, and smearing and dripping – a frenzy of waving legs and humping buttocks that would slowly, slowly, with the insistent rhythm of a sledgehammer, drive the nation beneath the waves.
The July Handmaiden, Miss Lorraine Daniels from Nevada, had short curly hair, a slight Mexican or South American look, and enormous breasts with nipples as big as tennis balls. The copy described her as a “psychology major who now lives on a ranch and spends her days researching what makes raunchy ranchhands tick”. Miss Daniels was not, however, totally content with her life: “Most guys I know hop on for a quick ride, and I dream of the real old-style gentleman who’d be interested in a little romance and foreplay. I guess I wouldn’t mind so much if the cowboys at least acted with a little respect – but it’s a rough, tough old life on the ranch. Still, at least they’re treating me like grade A prime.” Being a centrefold was something she had dreamed of: “When I was a young girl I was short and fat, and wore braces. I worried that my boobs were too big and that no boy would ever find me attractive. So to be picked as a Handmaiden is a personal triumph that makes me deeply, deeply happy.”
Her pictures were the same as Annelisa’s, and as those of the other girls in that issue, who had not been granted the supreme accolade of being Handmaiden of the Month. In the end there are few variations, since a vagina is a vagina is a vagina, and the aim of each picture is either to show its pink lips held apart, or else the proferred bottom with its little cyclops eye. Shot after shot the same, the names of the photographers large beneath the feature titles. I had seen it all before, yet suddenly it depressed me, and I threw the magazine on the floor. Why had they left it there? Was I supposed to go downstairs and praise its quality – say that the British Journal of Gynaecology could learn a lot from that? Zandra Carl had left it in my room, at his behest, and a response would be expected. What was I to say – Cartier-Bresson would have taken better pictures? I knew I had nothing to say, and the truth was shaming.
I knocked on Annelisa’s door. “Who is this?” she called.
“Are you coming downstairs?” I whispered through the wood. “Better be quick or the boss’ll get impatient.”
There was a rustling from inside, but she said nothing. Without thinking I turned the handle and walked in, closing the door behind me.
The room was almost identical to mine, but made smaller by a clutter of clothes, scarves, bikinis and make-up. There was a cloying smell of perfume in the air, and I thought I detected something else too – the sweet and herby aroma of marijuana. Annelisa was sitting at the painted dressing table, her chair at an angle, half-turned towards me. She was naked under a pink silk kimono that hung open, carelessly. In that second I saw everything: a tiny gold-topped vial, a razor blade, a little hand mirror laid down flat, and a container that looked rather like a miniature flour-sifter, with a crank on top like that of a coffee-grinder. Very carefully she was sifting white powder from this on to the glass, and as I watched she took the razor blade and separated it into two fine lines.
“Annelisa …” I said.
She looked up with a dreamy, euphoric expression. “Hi, honey. Come on in. Listen, this is some sweet blow. Ninety-eight per cent pure Colombian and no speed.” She dipped her finger in the white powder, held it out to me as if it were sherbert and she a child offering a lick. Then she rubbed it on her gums, and slowly, deliberately rolled a dollar bill into a straw, held one nostril shut with a long, pink-varnished nail, and inhaled a line of cocaine with her other nostril. Throwing back her head to breathe deeply, she smiled.
“Mmmm, that’s nice,” she sighed.
“God, Annelisa, what the hell are you doing?” I sounded foolish to myself.
She giggled, catching her breath.
“Honey, Annie’s making herself high as a Georgia pine … You wanna do a line? Come on, babe, you’ll feel good …” More laughter, choking and chirrupping around me.
“No …”
“Come on, honey, do a line for me … mmmmm-mm! Makes you ease up, real nice, real slow …” She stretched, still smiling. “Don’t you do any drugs? Oh my, you don’t know what you’re missing! What’s wrong with you?”
“I tried dope and speed,” I said, “but it doesn’t suit me. I like to stay in control.”
She made a mock-scared face. “Lordy, Babs is in control. Hot shit, we all better just watch out! Well, honey, if you’re such a big, controlled, strong lady, why don’t ya come over here and give Annelisa a big hug. Annelisa’s missing her Momma …” And she grinned, leaning back, splaying her legs still further and holding out her arms to me like a large, lascivious child.
I walked across the room, and stood next to her. She closed her eyes and waggled her fingers at me. “C’mon, honey … Look after Annie … Be good to me now” – murmuring in a hypnotic sing-song, with the smell of the room all around us, and closer, the unmistakable smell of sex on those fingers.
I was afraid.
She opened her eyes, and dropped her arms. “No? And you don’t wanna do a line? Or some dope?” I shook my head, and she shrugged, still smiling. “Okay, do me a favour, honey. Go downstairs and
tell them I’m still in the shower or somethin’. When I come down I’ll be real happy, and no one but you’ll know why. Oh, man …”
I said nothing. Annelisa fluttered her hands, shooing me. “Go on, now …”
As I turned to leave the room she was bending her head once more, preparing for that elaborate, ritualised inhalation.
Chapter Six
When Annelisa came down, thirty minutes later, her eyes were luminous. A dress of fine pleated apricot silk, with a bodice in the style of a simple Greek tunic, cross-draped over her breasts. A thin gold belt circled her waist; the broad slave bangle indented the flesh of her upper arm She walked with an exaggerated sway, like a model on a catwalk, half-dancing into the sitting room to the sound of rock music from the television set. An overpowering scent of Femme accompanied her – sweet, yet arrogant.
