A Game for the Living (16 page)

“Excuse me.” He bowed to the woman. “Ramón, may I have a word with you?”

“I am not Ramón!” But it was Ramón's voice and his laugh.

“Pablo—Come on, I
know
you are Ramón!” Theodore pulled at his arm. “I would like to go on to another party. Come with me, if you like. I know you'll be welcome.”

“Where?”

“A party in Pedregal. They are sending a car here, and it may have come. Olga will excuse us. Come on.”

“What happened upstairs?”

“Nothing! A silly girl. Just—”

“That is not what I heard,” Ramón said ominously.

“I don't care what you heard. Do you want to come or not?”

Ramón flung Theodore's hand from his arm. “A fine thing!” Ramón said. “Drunk at a party and necking with a girl in a bedroom!”

“Well—you have the key, Ramón. You can go home when you like.” He walked towards the door, his face burning with shame and anger. Hadn't the psychiatrist told him to treat Ramón as if he were normal? Theodore felt he was retreating in disgrace, however. He stopped and looked around for Olga and forced himself towards her. He explained that he was going on to another party for a while, and said that he would look in again and say good night if her party was still going on when he came home.

“Of course it will be going on!”

Theodore went out into the cool night, and saw a chauffeur getting out of a long black Cadillac. “Do you come from Señorita Straeter?” Theodore asked him.

“
Sí,
señor. Señor—” He consulted a paper in his hand.

“Schiebelhut.”

“Schiebelhut,
sí
!” Smiling, he opened the car door.

“Teo!”

Theodore turned round and saw Ramón. “You're coming, Ramón?”

“Yes,” Ramón said. “I'm sorry for what I said to you. Whether it's true or not—it's a small thing, a small sin, Teo, compared to other sins.”

“Now what is all this about sins!”

Ramón held Theodore's arm in a firm grasp. “Forgive me, Teo. I'm sorry for what I said.”

“I forgive you. Now get in, Ramón!”

The big car raced across the city, held Theodore tongue-tied with its speed, and shot out on the wide, dark highway towards Pedregal. Why am I going here, Theodore asked himself, and did not mind at all that he had no answer. He felt quite tired of looking for answers.

“Would you like this for a change?” he asked Ramón, pulling the cat mask out of his pouch.

Ramón put it on obediently.

They were gliding past the great wall that guarded the wealthy homes of Pedregal. The car turned in at a lighted gate of tall iron bars, like the entrance of a prison. Two soldiers with torches, and rifles on their shoulders, came up on either side of the car and threw their torch beams over both of them and the car's interior. It was the usual inspection of cars entering Pedregal.

“No secret weapons,” Theodore said.

The guards waved them on, a whistle blew, and the gates clanged behind them. Now the road was very smooth, curving pleasantly between terraced, well-kept lawns on which sat the expensive houses, most of them brightly lighted tonight. Dance music swelled and faded as they rolled along, yet there was a sedate, muted atmosphere here, as if they had entered a different city. Black humps of lava, made decorative with flowers, stuck out of the lawns. Gravel began to pop under the tires. The car stopped beside two huge glass doors, through which Theodore could see a great room full of people in costumes. On the other side of the car was a swimming-pool rimmed with blue lights and a spot-lit fountain spewing up gold-colored water, like effervescing champagne.

“Theodore! You
did
come!”

Theodore recognised Elissa Straeter's tall, slender figure in a white satin dress, though she wore a tightly fitting green cat's mask over her head and face. “Good evening!” Theodore said. “I've brought my friend, Ramón Otero. Ramón, this is Señorita Straeter. But I think you've met before, haven't you?” They had, Theodore remembered distinctly, and Elissa said:

“
Ramón
!
” in a tone of wonder, and stared at him, although nothing at all of him was visible.

“Elissa, perhaps it's better if you don't introduce us to anyone. I don't want people staring at Ramón.”

“Of
course
! I understand, Theodore,” Elissa said, taking his hand. “You won't even have to meet the host!” She staggered a little, either from drink or the irregularity of the flagstones. “Come on, Ramón. We'll get you a drink and you can amuse yourself looking at the costumes.”

The noise blared as soon as they opened the glass doors. A few people reclined with their drinks on the floor. There were several tall, bare-legged girls in tights, most of them with curled blonde hair above their masks, American girls. Elissa pushed glasses of champagne into their hands and lifted a glass herself.

“To your health, gentlemen,” she said rather formally, and Theodore knew she was as drunk as usual, perhaps more so.

The sober, efficient figures of three or four maids moved among the noisy guests, collecting glasses, passing trays of hot
canapés,
though a long table at the side of the room held elaborate salad moulds and mountains of little sandwiches.

“You see, you don't have to meet anybody, if you don't want to,” Elissa said in her gentle, barely audible voice. “But that's our host, Johnny Doolittle, over there, in case you don't recognize him.” She pointed to a small gorilla hanging over a chair, gesticulating as he talked.

There was a moment or two, when Elissa was narrating a long, uninteresting story, when Theodore wanted to leave. He knew no one, or if he did could not recognize anyone now, and Elissa was going to keep their conversation on the same dull level for the rest of the night, he knew. Her voice came with absurd earnestness and gentility through the smiling slit of the cat's mouth.

“Ramón doesn't speak English, you know,” Theodore put in by way of explaining Ramón's drifting away a moment before, out on to a terrace.

Then Theodore found himself and Elissa walking towards the swimming-pool.

“It's heated,” Elissa said. “Isn't it lovely?”

A smiling boy in a white mess-jacket approached them with a tray of trembling champagne glasses. Elissa set their nearly empty glasses down on the tray and took two full glasses.

“Elissa, I must ask you something. I've been getting silent telephone calls for the last month—since Lelia's death—at least one a week. If it's you, I don't mind, naturally, but—” He explained in a rush to her. He felt as if he stood beside himself and listened to his own voice, and made his judgment of Elissa's solemnly shaking head. She looked as if she really didn't know anything about it. She had taken off her cat's mask, saying she couldn't be bothered with it any longer, and her narrow, coldly beautiful face looked at Theodore with a tipsy attentiveness.

“No, Theodore, absolutely not. The police officer who called on me asked me that, too. He also took a sample of my typewriter. Now I didn't
mind,
Theodore, of course I didn't mind. This is a serious matter. The woman was very important to you, wasn't she?”

“I loved her,” Theodore said emphatically, and shuddered. There was a chill in the air. And the liquor was unnerving him. He heard a succession of splashes in the swimming-pool. The girls in tights were diving in, masks and all.

“They're from an American show,” Elissa explained.

Now they were surrounded by people who were coming out of the house to watch the events in the swimming-pool. A xylophone was being rolled out. More lights went on, making the pool a deep yet clear blue. Theodore looked around for Ramón. The people at this party moved more slowly than those at Olga's. From the voices he heard, they were nearly all Americans. A certain gaiety was missing, and, realising this, Theodore felt more depressed and apprehensive. He noticed that the moon was full.

“So you think he's not guilty?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ramón. You don't think he's guilty?” she asked casually.

“No, I do not think he is.”

“Well, it just seems to me that in any situation like this
someone
has an idea who did it. You don't have to tell
me,
Theodore, if it's something you've been told by the police not to tell.”

“No. I'm telling you the truth. No one—” A huge splash as three girls went in. “No one knows. Not Ramón, not I, not the police. But they are still working on the case. As hard as ever.”

“Oh,” said Elissa thoughtfully, but still with the cold unconcern. “Well, they'll find out eventually, Theodore. They always do.”

“Yes,” Theodore said, without conviction.

“Let's sit down somewhere,” Elissa said, reaching for his hand. She took every opportunity to touch him.

“I'd like to find Ramón. Excuse me, Elissa.”

He went back into the big living-room, looked around, then went out on the terrace. People were pushing balloons over the terrace parapet, trying to get them to land on the playing fountains below. Theodore saw Ramón in conversation with a man in a purple costume in a corner of the terrace. For a moment, he hesitated about interrupting them, then went on.

“Excuse me,” Theodore said to both of them. “How are you. Ramón?”

“Very well,” Ramón said. “I am learning about the coffee industry from this gentleman.”

The gentleman in purple, costumed like a devil, bowed slightly and said: “Tonight we need no introductions. We simply talk.” He laughed affably. “Your friend is in a serious mood.” He turned to Ramón. “Well,
adiós,
Pablo. I must get back to my wife—who's not really my wife, of course.” His hand almost touched one of his red horns in salute, and he moved off, round-bellied, slender-legged and graceful.

“He was referring to one of our jokes,” Ramón said. “He said he has several wives tonight. Tonight the devil claims his own.”

“But I dare say you approached him,” Theodore said.

“You are right,
amigo
!” Ramón said gaily.

“And the only thing roasted was coffee.”

“Right again!” Ramón swung his arm around Theodore's shoulder and pressed his clown's mask against Theodore's cheek in a gesture of a kiss.

They stared in fascination at a tumbling balloon poised on the crest of a spraying fountain, until the balloon fell and there was a low groan and laughter from the people watching.

“You're enjoying yourself?” Theodore asked.

“No,” Ramón said, though not disagreeably.

They walked back through the living-room and out on to the driveway. Theodore saw Elissa wandering on the grass near the pool, and she saw him at almost the same instant. Theodore went to her and said that he and Ramón were leaving.

“But the party's just begun! Johnny's going to serve breakfast in a little while!”

Theodore said that they had to get home. Elissa then insisted that they take her car. She would go with them and come back to the party. There was no dissuading her. She sent two servants in different directions to find her chauffeur.

In the car, Elissa spoke awhile in Spanish to Ramón—her Spanish was not bad at all—and asked depressingly polite questions. She was like a polite machine wound up to run God knew how long. She was even too polite to have an affair with anyone, Theodore thought. One could not imagine her becoming that realistic. Theodore listened to her, nodded, and replied in a fog. She asked if he was going to Cuernavaca soon—she took a certain suite at the Marik-Plaza there when she went, she said—and Theodore thought of a certain street in Cuernavaca where he liked to walk, remembered the reddish-brown Indian faces of little boys he saw there, the heavier faces of the black-haired, black-mustached men who drove the beer-trucks, the faces of old men under sombreros, and he was glad they made up the majority of the people, even in Cuernavaca.

“Well, here we are,” Theodore said as the car slowed at his house.

“And how is your maid, Inocenza?” Elissa asked.

“What a good memory you have! She is fine,” Theodore said as he got out of the car. “Thanks very much for your
libre
service tonight, Elissa. We very much appreciate it.”

“You're not going to ask me in for a nightcap?”

Theodore had feared that. “Why, of course. Come in.” He felt through the slit in his costume for his trousers pocket where his keys were. The lights were still ablaze at Olga's, and he supposed Inocenza was there.

A light was on in his living-room. Leo crouched tensely in the middle of the floor and stared at them. His tail lashed from side to side. Theodore spoke to him, told Elissa and Ramón to sit down, then went to the kitchen to get some ice and to turn the furnace up.

“A beautiful house!” Elissa sighed behind him. She had been here two or three times before.

When he returned with the ice-bucket, Leo was looking at Elissa and making a sound like a siren in his throat.

“Don't be so unfriendly, Leo,” Theodore said. “He's probably been chilly all evening, and he's annoyed with me.”

Elissa seated herself gracefully in a corner of his sofa with her Scotch and soda. Theodore saw her face take on the slightly pained expression that had preceded all her remarks on ‘the Ballesteros affair'. He lifted his own weak drink and glanced at the clock to see the time. The clock was gone.
Robbery
registered on his brain at once, simply the word.

“The clock's gone,” he said, and looked down at the cocktail-table, where he thought he remembered seeing his cigarette-lighter before he went out. That was gone, too.