Color Him Dead (2 page)

It figures, I said.

Did you want something? Your tone remotely polite, like a saleslady in men’s wear.

I thought we’d have a game of chess.

You shrugged, switched on the bed lamp, and opened a thumbed copy of Spock. I looked sideways at you, regretting that pregnancy hadn’t made you blotchy and unattractive. Through a gap between the buttons of your pajamas, I saw the swollen convexity of a breast, drooping slightly with a fullness which made my palms itch. Around the Madonna-like serenity of your face, the fresh-smelling hair fell like a black mist to your shoulders.

Does Spock say you shouldn’t put out?

Drew, I asked you—

Are you completely neutral?

I’m tired, but I’ve never denied you—

Screw it. Go to sleep.

And you did. If you’d laid the book aside then and peeled those pajamas off your clean scented body, my life might have continued in a straight line, fading at last into a haze of charcoal smoke around a suburban barbecue pit, kids growing up, you grown attractively gray at my side. But you slept, flat on your back with your hands clasped over your mounded stomach, and I lay for an hour and listened to the soft whisper of your breathing. Then I got up and fixed a drink, then another and another….

The memory drew his forehead into a scowl. Carey’s eyes flew wide and her nostrils flared. She turned and looked across the farm-checkered valley. He could see her thighs trembling against her skirt and he wanted to tell her: Don’t be afraid, I don’t hate you, I don’t love you, everything I ever felt has been brutalized and burned away. If this thing works you will quake and wonder if I will come to torment you. Your husband will demand police protection and buy a gun. Tell him to save his money; I’m not planning to race down that particular lane of memory, so go home now, go home and tell my son that you just saw his father and that he was dead, burned up like an idiot moth in a flame called Edith.

The Reverend was still talking. Who will pay him, Drew wondered, now that the money’s gone? Never mind. It isn’t time yet. Don’t clutch up, don’t think about it. Think of something else, think of—

Edith.

He’d been ready for her the morning after the quarrel. He hadn’t yet known she existed; he knew only that the liquor had left his mind jumbled and his nerves raw. This same morning he’d realized it was a mistake trying to work his way through art school as assistant to a public relations man named Barr Massu. Drew’s current project was a long-range publicity campaign for an embryonic lake resort fifteen miles from the city. The resort’s owner was a gently inflexible person named Nils Nisstensson who had this morning informed Drew, through Barr Massu, that Mrs. Nils Nisstensson herself wanted to help with the planned brochure, even to model for it—

A moment before he met Edith, Drew was pacing the sidewalk in front of his office building, dangling his Rollei by the strap, watching the morning wind play with the skirts of passing girls, tasting the acid of last night’s frustration, and debating whether to quit his job now or endure a day of being diplomatic to some bumblingly eager matron who knew perfectly well what a brochure was, having published one for her flower club, and wouldn’t those dogwood blossoms make a lovely background—

—When a voice floated up behind him: “Mr. Simmons?”

He turned to see a shiny black Lincoln stopped at the curb. A head, just as shiny and black, leaned out the window. Somewhere he’d gotten the idea that Nisstensson’s wife was old and fat, maybe because the old man had five grown sons. But this one was neither old, nor fat, nor ugly. Oh no. There was a sweeping look about her. The hair swept like a black wing across her forehead, black lashes swept her cheeks. Jaw made a smooth sweep from earlobe to chin. Chin had a forward thrust, an aggressive power which put him immediately on his guard. She also had a small nose and an upper lip that curled upward at the corners.

“You
are
Mr. Simmons?”

“Yes.” Gawking ape, he thought. Do something.

He walked closer. “You were going to bring props?”

She jerked her head toward the back. “I’ve got everything we need. Get in.”

Still dazed, he slid in beside her. His head was nearly jerked off his shoulders by the speed of her takeoff. She looked at him and smiled. “My name is Edith.”

“Drew,” he grunted, then, “Hey!” A pie truck was bearing down on them, and he noticed that she’d wandered into the wrong lane of traffic. She whipped the big Lincoln back into the right lane, and in the process nearly ripped the front bumper off a Chevrolet. She roared through a caution light just as it blinked red. A traffic cop blew his whistle and she fluttered her hand out the window at him. The cop lowered his whistle and stared after her. Drew stopped counting the lights she jumped; his thigh muscles hurt from pressing his feet against the floorboards. Not until they were on the highway leading down to the lake did he get a chance to examine Edith Nisstensson from the neck down. A short-sleeved checkered blouse sheathed her to the waist; it was well-filled in front, whether by Edith or the Maidenform people he didn’t know. A black checkered skirt came over her knees; skirts were long that year. He looked ahead and concentrated on the smell: expensive upholstery, new-car smell. A faint sachet of violets came from the woman beside him.

“Cigarette, please?”

He fumbled a pack of Pall Malls from his pocket and shook one out.

“Light it, please?”

He shoved in the dash light and waited. When he had it lit, he held it out to her; she pursed her lips at him without taking her hands off the wheel. That was fakery, he knew; she’d driven one-handed through the city, and now they were on the open road. He put the cigarette between her lips and thought: Here is a dangerous woman, out to dominate all men as she no doubt dominates her husband.

She spoke around the cigarette: “See if I missed anything. I’ve got water-skis, ski-belt, rope, beachcoat, rope sandals, a beach blanket, rubber mattress, picnic basket, cooler, some swimsuits, towel, shorts and stuff, luggage—”

“Why luggage?”

“We have a hotel there, didn’t you know? I thought a shot of myself going into the hotel, checking in with luggage from Nisstensson and Sons Department Store—”

“What exposure should I use?” The skin on the back of his neck was drawing tight.

“Don’t you know?” She glanced over, frowning. “Oh, you’re kidding … aren’t you? Or are you annoyed?”

“I just want complete instructions.”

“I see. You’re the photographer and I should keep my ideas to myself. I’m sorry.”

Her apology made him feel helplessly angry. She said it without contriteness, as though the word itself contained some sort of magic which automatically erased ill will. And at once she went on as though nothing had happened. “Are you a good photographer?”

“Not particularly.”

“You’re modest. Barr said you were once a staff photographer for
Life.
”

Drew sighed. “Years ago I happened to be nearby with a camera when a tornado lifted a house off its foundations. They printed it in
Life,
and in Barr Massu’s jazzed-up world, that makes me a staff photographer for
Life.
”

“But you
are
a photographer?”

“Let’s say I’m Barr’s photographer. I’m also his copywriter, layout man and illustrator. We run an economy operation. Barr gets the accounts, I do the work, and our typist does the modeling.” He saw that she was frowning, chewing her lip. He knew she was displeased, but today he didn’t care. “You want to go back, get a pro? You’re paying the bills—or your husband is.”

At that moment she twisted the wheel and sent the big Lincoln into a heeling, squealing turn. He jammed his feet against the floorboards and opened his mouth to say he’d walk back. Then he saw an arrow pointing up a lane of asphalt:
lake tarara
3
miles.

She turned up the road and waved a hand at the sign. “We’ll make that name as well-known as Banff or Acapulco, or—”

“Devil’s Island,” he said, settling back. Though he was still on the job, it appeared that she hadn’t gotten his message.

She gave him a curious glance. “But really, don’t you think we could do something with the name?”

“Change it. Sounds like something the marines took back in 1945.”

She flushed. “I’m the one who named it.”

“Then you’re the one who can change it.”

Without warning she hit the brake, throwing him forward against the dash. Weeds screeched against the fenders as the car came to a stop at the side of the road. She turned to him with her hands folded on the wheel. “You’re trying to bug me, Simmons. Why? Because you wanted to use that typist of yours?”

Drew studied the hands on the wheel; they were slim, long-fingered and large at the knuckles. They looked strong. “Call it temperament, Mrs. Nisstensson. I just don’t think I can work with you.”

“Is she prettier than I?”

Drew shook his head. “That isn’t the problem.”

“You think she’s got a better shape?”

Before he could answer, she reached down and pulled back the hem of her checkered skirt. It happened too fast. Drew would have preferred to gaze in quiet, meditative contemplation, but she allowed him only a glimpse, quicker than the flash of a strobe light, then drew the curtain of her skirt once again over her legs. Drew was left with a burning memory of two well-formed knees, one on each side of the steering post, widening out to thighs glossy within a tight casing of nylon—

“Well, has she?”

“There’s—” he cleared his throat. “There’s more—”

“Must you see it all?”

His face flamed hot, and her words made his blood surge with a wild, pulsing excitement. He no longer thought of what he had already seen, but of what he had not seen.

To his self-disgust, he had to clear his throat again before speaking. “I started to say, there’s more to a model than a pretty face and a good body. Marianne has learned how I work. She does what I tell her.”

“Oh, that.” Laughing, Edith steered the car back onto the asphalt. “I can handle
that,
Mr. Simmons. I’ll be putty in your hands, wait and see.”

But she wasn’t, at the beginning. Their work turned into a restrained conflict with tacitly observed ground rules: photographic angles and poses were his domain. What product to display or how to display it, she regarded as her realm, and always she closed the subject by suggesting that he call her husband and get his opinion. Drew felt she was taking an unfair advantage, so he retaliated in the only way open to him.

As she posed registering, he said: “All right, bellhop, smile at her as you take the bag. Mrs. Nisstensson, don’t stare at the bag like you’re afraid he’ll swipe it. Not at the ceiling either. Just turn slightly, this way, there. Now, wait until they move that ladder out of the background—”

He kept her jumping from pose to pose, holding still until her muscles trembled, changing clothes until her skin must have been raw. Shorts for a picture outside one of the pool cabanas, change to afternoon dress for a drink on the terrace, change to green backless swimsuit for a shot on the beach.

“Play ball with one of the boatmen, there’s one. What’s your name? Jack? This is Mrs.—You know her? Okay, toss the ball, don’t keep turning around, all I want is your manly back. Smile, Mrs. Nisstensson, you’re supposed to be having fun. Okay, change for the skiing pix, that’s three shots in that suit—”

The hotel wasn’t yet finished. They were still painting murals in the bar; they were dragging in poplar trees with their boles wrapped in brown paper and setting them in huge holes. The pool wasn’t filled, and the diving board hung out over empty space.

“—No, Edith, I’m not going to risk posing you on the end of the board. Look, let me set up the shots, huh? Start climbing the ladder. Don’t look at me, keep climbing, now come down and try it again. You’re dry as a bone. Let him wet you down with that hose. Sorry, I didn’t know it was that cold. Now we’ll have to wait until the goose pimples go away—”

But conflict itself leads to a certain intimacy, and gradually the tension eased. In the brief pauses between shots, while he changed film and held the light meter to her face, they exchanged the superficial details of their lives. He learned that she was only twenty, that her husband was sixty-four. He noted that she filled her swimsuit beautifully, naked thighs gleaming wet, wide smooth back dewed with moisture. During a high-angle shot from the top of the ladder, he discovered that the breasts were not Maidenform, only Edith, and he came to consider her in that way a man has of considering any reasonably desirable woman with whom he comes in contact, projecting her compliant image onto a clean white sheet.

One restraining element was the manager, a small, dark-haired young man named Krock who shadowed Edith with a hopeless, haunted look in his eyes. Edith treated the man with a cool, studied formality which suggested to Drew an affair now dormant, an affair not too pleasant, and one in which Edith had retained the upper hand, perhaps through control of her husband’s purse strings. Drew had a feeling that this was a trap worth avoiding.

And during a late-afternoon lunch, when both were drawn and haggard with fatigue, Edith displayed one of her least pleasant features. The dining room wasn’t finished, they didn’t have the steam table up, and there were no customers. And that was fortunate, because Edith required the entire kitchen staff to serve her.

“—Throw the asparagus out. It’s stringy. Take the potatoes back and give me some without parsley. Don’t just take the parsley off, it leaves a taste. Give me fresh potatoes. This steak is bleeding all over my plate. Put it back on the fire. Oh, now you’ve fried all the juice out. Try again. My God, what if I were a guest? Boy, bring me a bottle of good wine. I said
good
wine. I use this California stuff to wash my car—”

Drew’s food formed an undigested lump in his stomach, and finally he said: “You aren’t used to having money, are you?”

He knew he’d pricked a sore spot. There was a tightening of skin across her cheekbones, a flattening of her eyes. “Why do you say that?”