Listening to Billie (8 page)

He looked mostly like a pimp, but would that be, like, his disguise?

One time, she had heard about the funeral of a pimp, and
she had to laugh, it was so funny. Jimmy, the pimp, used to have this green Caddy with pale brown leather inside, and at the funeral there were all his whores, three black and two blond white girls, all wearing these green outfits, with pale brown leather trim. Still, Jimmy was dead, shot dead by the brother of a girl he’d pulled, one of his whores.

What did those guys have to say to pull a girl, to get her to be their whore?

Kathleen said, “Miriam! wake up. Suppose somebody comes in?”

Miriam could get home to the Project by walking along Webster Street and then down Steiner, instead of going along Fillmore, where he might be. But at five o’clock she still didn’t know; she didn’t know where to go.

“There was this bad purple outfit in the window this morning,” she said to Kathleen, and she suddenly wished that Kathleen were Eliza, who would at least say something nice. But she went on anyway. “Tunic and pants—it was
bad.
Where I saw that guy.”

“Lord, Miriam, all you think about is outfits. And guys.” Together they turned off the lights, and locked up, and walked down the stairs to the street, where for a moment they stood in parting conversation.

Miriam laughed; suddenly she felt very good. “Sometimes you sound like my mother,” she said. “Telling me what I don’t need.”

“You go to hell. Well, see you tomorrow. And you be on time!”

“Yeah, tomorrow.”

And Miriam walked off toward Fillmore Street, to where she now knew he would be waiting for her, with something—a Valentine?—he would have something for her. An outfit? A ride in his car and some kind of offer of a job?

Some stuff for a great new high?

“How about it?” asked the man—Larry? Harry?—in the pink-and-black jacket who was introduced to Eliza about ten minutes ago. “How about it? I’ve got the tickets in my pocket. We could take the red-eye flight to Acapulco, have breakfast and grab a car and on to …” The name of the Mexican town he mentioned was unintelligible, lost in the din of the Kennerlies’ party. “We could be back by Wednesday or so,” he added.

Laughing politely (she was like that, generally), Eliza excused herself with the truth. “I have to go to unemployment on Tuesday.”

From Hollywood, although born in Berlin, Harry (not Larry) was used to people who did that; everyone sooner or later got unemployment checks. “Okay, sure,” he answered easily. “Tuesday it is.”

He did not, could not, know about her Tuesday traumas: the bus trips to a frightening part of town, Third and Bryant, standing in line with discouraged, tired people. Being given cash—being terrified.

In fact his reasonable tone, delivered in a still slightly Berlin-flavored accent, had begun to make Eliza wonder how could a reasonable man make such an insane suggestion. A very old-fashioned phrase even came to her mind: What kind of a girl do you think I am? And at the same time her imagination, which
was quick and vivid, saw a stretching hot white Mexican beach, a tropical background of palms and manzanitas. Where they were, in Belvedere, across the Bay from San Francisco, it was a terribly cold dark day.

He even looked a little crazy, Harry did. His hair was a little too long for that time, its waves a little theatrical. His slightly protuberant blue eyes were too intense. (Too intense as she thought this, Eliza inwardly smiled; it was an odd phrase for one who had pursued intensity with lemming-like directness, who had generally thought the non-intense people were the crazy ones: Smith, her brother-in-law, and The Lawyer, her recent lover.) But the point was that, introduced to her fifteen minutes ago by their mutual host, Ted Kennerlie, this man was now asking her to go fly to Mexico for the weekend with him, in the midst of a perfectly ordinary California conversation about the length of the rainy season.

“The surf is really nice there, and the beach—” And just then, in mid-sentence, he surprised her again; he said, “Oh, my God, there’s someone over there I’ve got to talk to. But I’ll be back,” and with a quick intense pale look he was gone, pushing through the crowded room toward the huge window, the mammoth view of San Francisco Bay. And Eliza was left to assume, naturally enough, that he had seen a prettier, more chic or more pliant-looking girl.

Not that she was especially insecure in matters of attractiveness; she knew that some men were strongly drawn to her, certainly not all, but who on earth would want all men? And as for chic, she knew, or wryly recognized, that at the Kennerlies’ she tended to dress in conformity to their view of her, which is to say, to dress less well than she could. Now, in her black silk shirt, black skirt, she was aware that she looked vaguely arty, unsmart and somewhat waifish—exactly the Kennerlie and Kennerlie-friend view of her. They would not be at all surprised to hear that she now collected unemployment; they would view it as an eccentric joke, having themselves never been to Third and Bryant.

A remarkably homogeneous group, the other guests: attractive people in their late twenties, early thirties, who would all make a great deal of money in advertising, commercial art, architecture, something like that with a couple of bright young psychiatrists thrown in. The wives didn’t do those things; they were busy having children, decorating “homes”—keeping the whole show going, as some of them liked to put it. (Peggy Kennerlie, the hostess and Eliza’s college friend, often said this of herself.) And periodically Eliza came to these parties that the Kennerlies gave, and she wondered why. From one party to another she confused the names and faces—as they did hers: she is Ted and Peggy’s funny offbeat friend.

Peggy approached Eliza, and with a little gesture indicating secrecy she exhibited her left hand, where above the wide gold band that she had worn for years (ten) now appeared a new green circle of stones. Peggy, with her reddish hair and large brown eyes, had a weakness for green, today a too bright (Eliza thought) green knit dress. But the ring was very pretty indeed; this was clear even to Eliza, whose lusts did not run toward jewelry. “Oh, that’s so pretty,” she said.

Peggy was terribly pleased; regarding her becoming new ring, she smiled but said, “Well, it’s not too bad. I thought it was pretty nice, an anniversary present from the old boy.” She had a tendency to speak of Ted in this way, in a good-fellow tone, which was odd to Eliza’s ears, since she was sure that Peggy loved Ted. Ten years must mean love, mustn’t it?

Eliza asked, “But is this an anniversary party, then? Peggy, why didn’t you say?”

“Oh, well, we didn’t want to advertise. You know, presents and all that jazz.” Further proof to Eliza of the true intimacy of the Kennerlies; theirs was a private love.

And how did she, Eliza, really feel about this marriage, this successful love? At various times she had asked herself this question, and had come up with a variety of opposing reactions: pleasure, envy, boredom, disbelief. But she was fond of Peggy, on the whole.

Peggy laughed—her style included a lot of warm, small and inexplicable laughter, and she asked, “Well, tell me, what do you think of him?”

“Who?” She was, of course, pretending.

“Harry Argent, of course. Ted thinks he’s pretty terrific, really successful, and he certainly is attractive, don’t you think? Of course I guess he’s not exactly your type.”

“Do I have a type? I thought I was just promiscuous.”

“Oh, Eliza, what a thing—how can you say that?” Peggy laughed.

“Anyway, what does he do, Mr. Argent?”

“He’s in movies—of course not an actor. He’s obviously too bright for that. He produces them. Ted says he has tons of money. And some he’s even written and directed.” Peggy named a couple of movies that Eliza thought she had heard of, had not seen.

“Well, if he’s so terrific maybe I’ll run away with him. We’ll elope,” said Eliza.

Peggy laughed again, and moved away.

Eliza began to talk to some other people who were near her elbow, people whom she had met before and almost forgotten. They were talking about skiing, which is what they all had done the previous weekend, at Sugar Bowl. And Eliza, who did not ski, imagined white spaces of snow, and frozen blue lakes, as vividly as she had earlier pictured hot beaches in Mexico.

In fact, the huge windows of that expensive house were lashed with rain, rattled with violent and unremitting wind. It was a winter storm that seemed to promise to remain forever, with no warmth or light, no spring.

Someone was saying, “The intro could just be a shot of that window, with water streaking down it, and the clouds. Some heads bobbing around in this room, giving the sense of a party. Party clothes, animated faces. And then after the titles and credits, all that junk, a cut to the beach at Ixtapanejo. Plane trips are all the same, unless you crash, and that’s a kind of exploitation film that doesn’t interest me. Any more. Anyway,
the beach—and a couple lying there alone in the sun. Who’ve just made love. Or maybe not—that would be up to you.” And Harry Argent, who was speaking from Eliza’s other, non-ski-talk elbow, looked at her with a sort of friendly inquiry.

Everything about him was so outrageous that she laughed, but at the same time she was glad to see him back.

He took her arm and guided her expertly between people and furniture to a corner near the window; he asked, “No draft? You won’t be cold here? Well, tell me a little about yourself. Just a little, really. I’m not a good listener. You know, your current status, aside from being unemployed.”

“I’m divorced.” She always said this. Never: I’m a widow.

Impatiently he said, “Of course you are. Divorced. Only interesting if you’d done it five or six times, and at your age that’s pretty unlikely. Any kids?”

“One. Catherine. She’s ten.”

He was quick to say, “We could take her along. That would be a whole other trip. It might be interesting.”

“At the moment she’s in Boston, with my mother. Spring vacation. At her school what they call a ski break.”

“Jesus, a ski break. Some schools these days.” Berlin had become heavier in his voice.

“Oh, well, it’s probably simpler this way. Two people. Grownups.”

“Look.” Eliza faced him and laughed. “You can’t possibly think I’m coming to Mexico with you? To some preposterous town I’ve never heard of?”

“Well, why not? Look,” he said to her, “I’m not divorced, not quite, and my wife has been giving me a pretty hard time. I’d like to talk to a pretty, intelligent girl who has an imagination. I can see all that in you; I have an infallible instinct for friends, unfortunately not for wives. And I talk best on beaches, and Ixtapanejo is not preposterous. It’s there, and it’s really beautiful.”

•  •  •

“Plane trips are all the same, unless you crash.” This sentence revolved in Eliza’s hollowed head as the plane lurched, jolted sideways, and, beside her, Harry Argent peacefully slept, smiling slightly at whatever vision occupied his sleeping mind. And Eliza thought how strange that she should die with a man she didn’t know at all.

For distraction she concentrated on the two people across the aisle: an almost middle-aged and getting-fat couple, in cheap and garish Hollywood clothes; sleepily affectionate with each other, they exchanged words in accents that Eliza believed to be Australian. But what were they doing in those clothes, why going to Acapulco? What in life did they do? And why were they not afraid? Why was she the only person on the plane in such a state of panic?

Seen from the air, at dawn, even Acapulco was beautiful: the lovely white curve of coast, the pink-tinged new tall hotels.

“Actually it’s a cesspool, one of the ugliest places in the world,” Harry muttered to Eliza as they landed, as she unclenched her stiff fingers from the sides of the seat.

They went through customs easily; no one would search Harry’s voluminous and overweight pale leather fitted suitcase, or Eliza’s overnight bag, which she had pulled together in the ten minutes allowed her by Harry between departing from the Kennerlies’ party and going to the airport.

And then, outside the baggage room, Harry left her to stand in the palmy sultry day—to wonder why and where she was—while he went off to see about renting a car.

Returned, “It’s the only car available,” he said disconsolately. It was a long maroon Cadillac, whose young Mexican driver was uniformed in beige.

Having imagined a Fiat, or a VW, Eliza wondered just what he had wanted. Later she asked, “What kind of car do you usually drive?” “Uh—I have several. Mostly English.” “Oh.”

•  •  •

Sometimes, during that drive to Ixtapanejo (a name that she never learned to spell), Eliza slept, and then at intervals she woke to find herself in the midst of improbably towering palm trees, of forests of palm. Passing tiny huts of plaster or brick, roofs thatched or made of crude tile, sometimes with crude porches instead of a front wall. She tried then, and totally failed, to imagine the lives in those houses.

This was the same effort that her sister Daria made, driving among the poor of Southern Europe, in the outskirts of Naples or Rome—an imaginative effort that nearly broke her.

They were sitting on a balcony—their own, small and private—overlooking some tropical abundance of flowers, of greenery, and the wide white beach, the sea and an extraordinary pink-to-mackerel sunset. Sitting with long drinks, having spent the afternoon in the clear green warmish water, on the beach, having bathed, having made love.

Harry was saying, “It’s too gorgeously romantic, isn’t it? No one would believe it for a minute. It’s like those travelogues when we were kids, remember? No, you’re too young. ‘And so we say farewell’—they used to end like that, always with improbable sunsets.”

Eliza had just understood that he was again writing, seeing a movie of his own.

“On the other hand,” he went on, “why not? Why not an old-fashioned extravaganza, Janet Gaynor watching Fredric March as he goes off to drown in the sunset—why not?” And he stared morosely at the actual sunset before them, perhaps not seeing it.

Eliza was thinking, I am drowned in sensation, I may never surface. And she smiled vaguely, exhaustedly.