Dreams Are Not Enough (3 page)

But the champagne—a vintage Mumm’s—did its work, and by the time the eggs benedict arrived, the five cousins were back to their usual bickering jests and digs.

“So tell me, Barry-boy,” Maxim asked, “how do you intend breaking the news to your parents.”

“Quite simply. I’ll point out that they eloped, too,” Barry said.

“Alas, that’s not the type of logic Cordiner parents accept,” Maxim retorted.

Beth turned to her new sisterin-law.

“And what about you, Alicia?”

she inquired with the attentive smile she employed at rush teas.

“How will your family feel?”

Alicia looked down at the table.

“They’re in El Paso.” She spoke too rapidly.

At this non sequitur there was a silence.

Then PD asked, “You’re a Catholic?”

After a fractional hesitation, Alicia nodded.

“Uhhuh.”

“That makes two of us, then, and we both know there’ll be repercussions. You’ve married out of the Church.”

Her soft, full mouth quivered, her eyes looked a yet darker blue.

“Hey, they’ll get over it,” Hap said.

PD asked, “Barry, where’ll you guys live?”

Currently, Barry lived in his parents’ tract house, which had three tiny bedrooms, one bathroom and thin walls.

“We haven’t decided,” he said, unable to repress his shudder.

Alicia touched his hand.

“I’m pretty sure my boss’ll let us have the cute cottage in back that I told you about,” she said comfortingly.

“Cottage?” Maxim asked.

“Do you tend sheep or bake bread or what?”

“Housework,” Alicia replied.

Barry’s flush was so deep that his freckles disappeared. He dropped his napkin on the table.

“We better get a move on, Alicia,” he said abruptly.

“Good idea.” Maxim grinned.

“I hear tell there’s a great shortage of motel rooms in this town.”

“Really?” Alicia asked.

“He’s kidding us,” Barry said, embarrassment forgotten in a surge of masculine superiority.

“PD, thanks.”

“For what?” PD replied expansively.

“The Fabulador’s paying.”

The newlyweds moved around the linen-draped tables, Barry putting his arm around Alicia’s narrow waist as they reached the lobby.

Maxim said, “There goes Barry Cordiner with the hell shot out of his legal career.”

His brother Hap retorted, “I didn’t hear anything about dropping out of college.”

“What was so wrong with skipping the ceremony and taking the fabulous little knockout directly to a motel?” PD wanted to know.

Maxim shook his head.

“Jesus, a Mexican live-in!”

“He’s cuhrazy about her,” Beth said, her despair hidden by a jocular tone.

“If this doesn’t kill your mother, nothing will,” Maxim said.

“Face it, Beth, on humane grounds, for Aunt Clara’s sake, your twin should’ve foregone the legalities.”

“One thing Mother isn’t,” Beth said hotly.

“A bigot.”

“Ahh, but she wants her half-Hebe chickadees to fly high,” Maxim said.

Maxim, PD and Hap joked about PD’s Catholicism and Desmond Cordiner’s rise from nothing to Episcopalian, never catching on to Beth and Barry’s invariable hasty changing of the subject when it came to their Judaism.

Beth looked down at the remains other eggs benedict.

“If it weren’t for all the goop,” she said, “I’d have guessed Alicia to be way younger than eighteen.”

“You got that impression because she’s a mite low on the brainpower,” Maxim said.

“It’s her wedding day. And she was too terrified of us to say anything,” Hap said, leveling his gray eyes on his younger brother.

“We all know you rise to defend the underdog,” Maxim retorted.

“In this case, there’s no need. I mean, with an ass and boobs like that, who needs an IQ?”

“Maxim, please,” Beth murmured.

“She’s my sisterin-law.” PD gave Beth that warm smile, flashing white teeth.

“That lust you hear from Maxim, Bethie, is pure envy.”

Hap raised his glass.

“To our new cousin,” he said.

“To Alicia. And Barry.”

One eye cocked for a suitable motel, Barry cruised slowly along the gaudy strip.

“I’ve never been inside a place like that before,” Alicia said.

Though scornful of the huge neon outline of a woman on the hotel’s facade, Barry had also been awed by the Fabulador’s grand scale.

“It’s crass,” he said.

“Your family sure gave us a classy sen doff.”

“They have style,” he said, nodding.

“Style,” she repeated slowly, as if to imprint the word on her memory.

For a moment Barry relived that excruciating humiliation he had suffered when Alyssia had announced her occupation. Then, as she shifted across the frayed upholstery, her side snuggling against him, his anxieties and doubts fled. When he was alone with her and the world didn’t impinge, another Barry Cordiner emerged from the skinny, insecure original: a man of the world, sauve, assured.

His bride, he knew, came from a large, close-knit family in El Paso.

Though she had mentioned them only sketchily—Mr. Lopez drove a big rig, Mrs. Lopez fixed sensational albondigas soup—Barry’s mind had developed a keenly precise snapshot of Alicia’s dark and plumply pretty mother with one arm around the lean waist of the tall Lopez, their numerous offspring lined up in front of them. At eighteen, Alicia, the eldest, had no chance of college unless she earned the money herself, so she had left home to find work in Los Angeles.

Alicia’s poverty made it unimportant that he was starting out married life with a five and two ones in his wallet. As a matter of fact, at this moment his lack of cash exhilarated him.

Through the dusty windshield he spotted a long, narrow motel dwarfed by a clump of tall, dusty Washingtonia palms. The trapezoidal shaped sign was emblazoned: $3, $3, $3, $3. The lowest-price accommodations that they had spotted. Slowing, he asked, “How does that place look?”

“Perfect …” She trembled as she spoke.

He drew her closer to him, wildly excited by what he would soon do to her, yet remorseful. He knew for certain that she, a good Catholic girl, was a virgin. Parking, he kissed her, a kiss that turned ardent.

Reluctantly he pulled away.

“I better make the arrangements.” Wiping the lipstick from his mouth with the back of his hand, he put on his jacket despite the heat—he needed to hide his hard-on.

The small office was empty. Pressing the bell on the counter, he looked out the full-length window. Alicia was putting on lipstick. He smiled. What a female female she was, smearing on that junk when the minute they were together he would kiss it away.

There were no sounds coming from behind the closed door with the brass sign: manager’s office.

“Hey,” he shouted, pressing on the buzzer again.

Again no response. Going behind the counter, he rapped on the door.

“Anybody home?”

No answer. He lifted a key from its hook, assuaging his law-abiding soul by scribbling: Nobody around, so I took the key to #7. Pay you later.

Parking in front of number 7, he reached for the brown paper bag containing two new toothbrushes and a small tube of Pepsodent, their total baggage. (The Trojans he’d purchased at the same Thrifty were discreetly stashed in his jacket pocket. ) He carried Alicia across the warped wood threshold.

The heat trapped inside smelled thick, as if the place had been unoccupied a long time. Kicking the door shut, he turned on the air conditioner before setting down his bride. He kissed her thoroughly, his tongue thrusting deep into her open mouth, both hands cupping the firm, gorgeous butt to bring her closer to him. With a small shoving gesture against his chest, she pulled away.

“Barry …” she murmured.

“First can we shower?”

Disappointed, yet recognizing that after the desert drive in an un airconditioned car, she was right, he touched his lips to her forehead.

“I should’ve thought of it.”

As the water began running in the tiny bathroom he felt the champagne combine with the previous night’s lack of sleep. Sprawling on the dust-odored chenille bedspread, he lit a Tareyton and examined the barren, ugly cubicle. He imagined a future anniversary when they would clink their crystal wine goblets and chuckle at the crazy kids they’d been. By then he would be the main partner in a prestigious

law firm (Cordiner,
Etc.
” Etc.” and
Etc.
) with a white streak in his hair and a couple of exceptionally fine novels under his belt. Alicia would be even more stunning in a long black sheath, the simple, elegant kind that his aunts wore to display their diamonds.

The shower was turned off. He stubbed out his cigarette expectantly.

Ten minutes passed with excruciating slowness before the door opened and she emerged, makeup complete, black hair atumble over her shoulders, a skimpy towel hiding the torso of that astonishing body.

“Your turn,” she said.

Resisting the urge to yank off her towel, he stepped under the shower, rubbing the sliver of soap under his armpits, not taking time to dry himself. In deference to his bride’s innocence, he wrapped the other threadbare towel around his waist.

The spread was folded onto a chair. She lay with the sheet pulled up to her throat.

Sitting on the edge of the double bed, he said, “Hi.”

She managed a small, nervous smile.

Kissing her, he slowly drew down the sheet. Necking, he had become acquainted in a tactile fashion with her body. Seeing it took his breath away—no figure of speech, he felt as if the air had been suddenly forced from his lungs.

That astonishingly luminous flesh seemed to collect all available light in the dim motel room. She was all slender, supple curves, the young breasts full and firm with nipples the pale pink of tea roses, the waist deeply indented, and the black leaf of hair startlingly explicit between the white hips. Gazing at her, his mind filled with names and images of love goddesses: Astarte, Venus, Aphrodite. He found himself kneeling at the foot of the bed, kissing each of the crimson nails of her small, soap-scented, high-arched feet.

Stretching out next to her, he pulled her nakedness to his own. He was incapable of holding back to put on the rubber. Moving on top of her, he forgot every technique he’d studied in sex manuals.

Penetrating her, he moved back and forth three or four times, sweat pouring from him as he ejaculated.

He held her, gasping. In a few minutes he’d calmed enough to reach for another cigarette.

“Everything okay?” he asked tenderly.

“Fine …”

“I didn’t hurt you?”

“Now I’m truly yours.”

Her murmur held the emotional intensity of their exchange of vows.

Smiling, he closed his eyes.

For a full five minutes after his breathing lengthened into the steady rhythm of sleep, she lay very still, then slowly disengaged herself from his loosened grasp. Getting out of bed, she brushed a kiss on his forehead. He stirred. She poised, scarcely seeming to breathe until he rolled over to clutch a pillow with a long, contented, snore like sound. Reaching for her large, shiny new imitation patent purse, she tiptoed into the bathroom, locking the door.

She unzipped the largest of the interior pockets, taking out a half finished tube of contraceptive foam. She squatted to use it, her expression intent.

She was rinsing herself free of the medicinal odor when the hammering blows started.

“Open up, damn you!” shrieked a female voice from outside.

“This is the manager!”

Alicia wrapped the towel around her nudity, running into the other room, where Barry was hastily skivvying into his shorts. His face was pale and guilt-ridden.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

“In the office nobody answered, so I took the key,” he mumbled.

“How am I going to explain?”

“Don’t worry.” Alicia yanked the covers into a semblance of order, lying down and pulling the sheet over herself.

“I’ll help you.”

The shouts and hammering grew more overwrought.

Barry unlocked and unchained the door. The manager, whose platinum hair was wound around pink curlers, stood there, the sags of her face set as if in one of those primitive masks of rage.

“You punk bastard!” she shrilled.

“Don’t you know there’s laws against breaking and entering? I got friends in the sheriff’s department!

You’ll get six months! “

“Nobody answered the buzzer. I left a note for you.” Grabbing his trousers, he drew out his wallet.

“Here, let me give you the money.”

“You damn rich suck-ups, you think you can wave a buck and get away with everything!”

“Please?” The tremulously unhappy girl’s voice belonged to a stranger.

Barry turned to ascertain that only Alicia was in the unit.

The manager stared at her.

“Jesus, and you got a kid with you. For that you can do life, buster.”

“She’s my wife,” Barry said.

“Yeah, sure.”

“We are married,” Alicia said, holding up her left hand with its shiny new sterling ring. Then she raised up the sheet around her, whispering, “My parents wouldn’t think we’re married either. We went to that wedding place up the road. A justice of the peace did the ceremony. No … priest….” She buried her face in her hands.

“Hey, no need to carry on like that.” The manager’s voice had softened.

“It’s … a … a mortal sin….”

“Dearie, it’s okay, okay.”

Alicia’s head remained bent. Unconsolable little sobs drifted from the black veil of tousled hair.

The manager touched Barry’s naked arm.

“Pay me later,” she hissed.

“Go make it up to the kid.”

When the door closed, he stared at Alicia. Her body shuddered as if with sobs.

“Hon, don’t, please don’t. I know how you feel. Remember, I told you my mom’s parents disowned her because Dad wasn’t Jewish. Listen, if you want, I’ll become a Catholic. Religion’s a big deal to Beth, but it means nothing to me.”

Alicia looked up. She was convulsed with laughter.

“The old bag,” she managed to gasp out.

For a moment he was devastated that she had fooled him so completely.