Nowhere City (8 page)

“Let’s make it noon.”

“Good.” He began to construct his excuses for Friday.

“Okay.” Disengaging herself from Paul, Ceci walked over and opened the door for him, with a succinctness that he found disconcerting. Surely there should be more conversation, more hesitation over a thing like this.

“You’re right near the beach here, aren’t you?” he said, moving slowly in the direction of the door. “Maybe if it’s still warm we could go for a swim; what do you think? Shall I bring my suit?”

“We won’t have the time, man.” Ceci gave him a cat’s half-smile.

Paul paused in the doorway. “Well,” he said. He bent to kiss her good-bye; the door was between them, and only their mouths met; warm, wet. Now, he thought, and started to go round the door; but Ceci leaned against it and pushed, hard. Thrown off balance, he staggered back and outside, on to the porch.

“Ceci—”

“Later,” she said, and shut the door on him.

In a state of mild shock, Paul went down the stairs, got into his car, and began to drive home. It was because things were happening too fast, he thought, too soon, that he felt this way. He was used to having to force his way through a lengthy routine of flirtation and discussion, first base and second base; used to beating down a series of defenses with all the sensual, emotional, and intellectual energy he had. This lack of resistance threw him off balance. From an ugly, desperate girl he might have expected such directness, but not from Ceci O’Connor. Maybe she was a nymphomaniac.

What to tell Katherine? Well, he could say something about a special project at N.R.D.C. A rush job, so he had to go in on Friday. She would believe it, because she had no idea of the real situation. In fact, no one at Nutting ever asked him to do anything. Executives from the top offices came by sometimes with visitors and he was introduced as a Harvard historian who was writing the history of the company. Even that wasn’t true yet. He was trying to write it, but the trouble was he still couldn’t find the data he needed in all those piles of paper on his desk: the basic facts and figures like the names of the original stockholders and the size of their investments. And nobody seemed to have the time to help him. They didn’t care about the past: they were only interested in the present and the immediate future.

“So why worry?” Fred Skinner had said. “You’re pulling down your salary.” Katherine would have understood why he worried, but since Katherine already despised Nutting, he hadn’t told her. Which as it now turned out was just as well.

Only he would be crazy to get mixed up with a girl like Ceci. She was unbalanced; must be. A nymphomaniac, a kleptomaniac; a psychopathic personality. She was very pretty; beautiful. Her hair, breasts. Probably she slept with everybody she knew. She might even have something catching. It would be crazy to go back there on Friday.

Paul started down the other side of the hill into Mar Vista, and the sun set behind him; the rosy flush on the stucco dimmed, the smog among the palm trees in the middle distance turned from blue to gray. On his street, the outlines of the houses were beginning to blur, and the colors of the flowers shone softly: great white roses, yellow chrysanthemums, and many more that he could not name, fantastic in shape and color.

He had suggested to Katherine that she might find out something about these flowers. She had always liked that sort of thing: when they visited in the country in New England, she would come in from a solitary walk on the coldest, wettest day with a handful of damp leaves or twigs in bud, crying out their names with joy. Why shouldn’t she take an interest in the local vegetation? There must be hundreds of new plants here. So he had thought and said, but to no use.

Their lawn was as green now as the neighbors’, Paul thought as he pulled into the driveway. Green, lush, long—in fact, it needed to be mowed again. And it was getting into the flowerbeds, he noticed as he crossed the yard. Long runners of grass had leapt the trench between lawn and garden and were spreading spiderlike towards the house. What was more, as if in reprisal the flowers were getting into the grass: white flecks of alyssum spotted the lawn, and some heliconia had sprouted near the front door, breaking the ground like moles. He should cut and weed at once; it was too late tonight, but he would have plenty of time over the weekend, if he didn’t go to Venice.

The house was dark. “Katherine?” he called, and walked through to the kitchen, turning on lights as he went. Katherine’s kitchen was as clean and tidy as an office, unadorned except for an engagement calendar and a shelf of herbs. The pots and pans that should have held his supper hung on the wall, their copper bottoms shining.

Paul went into the bedroom. The blinds were drawn down, and his wife was lying in bed in the dark.

“Hello!” he said.

His wife groaned, or sighed.

“It’s late. Don’t you want to get up?”

Katherine heaved herself up in bed, a white shape lit vaguely from the hall. She was wearing a cotton flannel nightgown with flannel ruffles. Paul raised the Venetian blind. It clattered up over a view of Los Angeles evening: a smoky dark blue mist decorated with blurred lights—red, white, green. The branches and leaves of the peach tree outside the window were close and black. Above, hazy blades of searchlights crossed and recrossed the sky. It was spectacularly fine, Paul thought, and was going to say so, when Katherine remarked flatly:

“Hell. That’s what it looks like: hell.” She sat up, the sheets twisted round her shoulders. Paul looked at her, and found her not attractive. Maybe his standards of comparison had changed—the good-looking girls here were all deeply sun-tanned, outdoor types, glowing with light and life. Or maybe she had changed. But anyhow, it was as if the pale flame that had burned so steadily in the gray, damp New England air had become invisible—extinguished in a blaze of sun.

“I suppose you want something to eat,” Katherine added.

“Well, I was thinking of it,” Paul said. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“No.”

“Do you have sinus again?”

“Yes.”

A moment of nothing to say followed. Paul looked at Katherine; Katherine looked at the floor.

“I’m sorry, I simply don’t feel up to cooking,” she said finally.

“That’s all right. I’ll find something in the icebox.”

“There isn’t anything in the icebox, really. I meant to go to the store today, but I didn’t feel up to it. ... Why don’t you go out and get something, and I’ll try to sleep. I’ve been trying for hours, and I’d just dropped off when you woke me up. It really wasn’t very considerate of you.”

“Well, it wasn’t very considerate of you not to get anything for supper,” Paul said, in what he intended for a humorous tone.

“If you had any idea of how I feel,” Katherine said, not humorously, “you wouldn’t ask me to get up and cook. I’m so dizzy, and I have pains shooting through my head like long needles. All through my head. Or maybe you would ask me, I don’t know,” she concluded in a dull shrewish voice.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said flatly. Katherine might have managed to buy him a pound of hamburger, considering that she had practically nothing to do all day. Which was probably part of her trouble.

“Oh, by the way,” he said. “Did you call up U.C.L.A. yet? Skinner asked me about it, you know.”

“I know.” Katherine raised her eyes briefly. She was suspicious of Fred Skinner: she would not believe that he had thought she had been “really great” at his party; she was convinced that he had deliberately tried to make her drunk out of boorish malice. Suspecting some similar trick, perhaps, she kept putting off investigating an apparently good job he had heard about at U.C.L.A. “Susy called today. She wants us to go to the beach with them and some friends on Friday. I said I didn’t know. I really don’t want to go, but I thought you might.”

It occurred to Paul that going to the beach with the Skinners would prevent him from being crazy enough to see Ceci O’Connor again, so perhaps it was a good idea. Besides, he had been trying for weeks to show Katherine the sea, the sun—“We ought to go,” he said. “It’s insulting to keep turning down invitations all the time. Fred and Susy will think you don’t want to see them.”

“I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want to go to the beach.” Katherine lay down again, pulling the sheet with her. She tugged it into position with weak gestures. “I don’t mind seeing her, but I can do that any time.”

“You should go. Maybe you’ll be feeling all right by then. You haven’t been to the beach at all yet.”

“If I feel all right, I’ll have better things to do than go and sit in the dirty sand with a crowd of vulgar people.” Katherine half sat up, twitched the blanket over herself, and fell back. “Would you mind putting the blind down again?” Paul looked at her; then he looked for the cord of the Venetian blind, and let it down. “Thank you. Why don’t you go by yourself if you want to?” she added.

“I can’t,” Paul said. “I have to go back to the office on Friday. I have to finish a special project.”

A
LONG THE PACIFIC COAST
Highway, in an unsteady stream of cars, moved the pink station wagon in which Katherine Cattleman, Susy Skinner, and Susy’s two children were going to visit the G.J. Putty mansion, art museum, garden, and private zoo. Katherine and Susy were in front; Mark, aged three, lay on his stomach in the cargo area, digging up the rubber matting with a toy bulldozer, and Viola, aged six, sat primly in front of him holding a plastic purse in white nylon gloves.

The Putty estate is not open to the general public, but it may be visited on certain days by those who have made previous arrangements, and Fred Skinner had made such an arrangement through someone he knew in the U.C.L.A. Art Department. Katherine admitted to herself that it was thoughtful of him to have done so. She had no interest in the mansion, the garden, or the zoo, but the collection included paintings by Rubens, Renoir, Matisse, etc. which few people had ever seen, and she felt (or rather knew she ought to feel) gratitude to Fred for this opportunity. In the same way, she owed him gratitude for the job she had just accepted at U.C.L.A. which would start next week. It had turned out not to be a trick at all, but a bona fide position: research assistant on a project two professors in the Department of Social Sciences were starting under a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Yes, she owed gratitude to Fred Skinner, but it irritated her to pay him; she preferred to deliver it to his wife.

“What awful, awful traffic!” Susy said. They had got to a break in the Santa Monica cliffs where the canyon opens out onto the beach. On both roads, cars stood jammed together in the hot sun. The sidewalks were crowded with muscular people in bathing suits and sunglasses and beach robes, most of them burned to the color of furniture. They crossed the highway in front of the stopped cars, carrying canvas umbrellas, surfboards, portable radios, towels, and bottles of Coke, under a banner of red and green spangled letters two feet high: MERRY CHRISTMAS. The lunch counter on the corner repeated this theme: two nearly naked boys stood eating popsicles behind a window painted with white, metallic snow and ice. In the window of the bar next door the snow was solid Styrofoam, strong enough to support a cardboard sleigh and plastic reindeer. The glittering sun made Katherine’s sinuses hurt, and she squinted her eyes.

“Want to go to the beach, Mommy,” Mark said.

“Some other day, honey. Today we’re going to the zoo, and see all the animals.”

“Honestly,” Susy added, as the lights changed and then changed back without their having moved more than a few feet. “You’d think everybody in L.A. was trying to get to the beach today.” She started forward as the lights changed, then put on the brakes sharply and blew the horn at a bunch of high-school kids who had begun to cross in front of her. Honk! One of the boys turned and made a face at her over the hood, putting his thumbs in his ears, waggling his fingers vulgarly, and sticking out his tongue. In the rear-view mirror, Katherine was surprised to see Viola imitating him, white gloves and all.

“The way some people bring up their children,” Susy said, glancing round as if with some sixth sense; but Viola had returned her hands to her lap.

“When are we going to get to the zoo, Mommy?”

“We’re nearly there, love.”

Again on their right the cliffs rose up sheer, a high wall of pale dried mud, eaten by the wind into uneven patterns like giant ants’ nests. Presently Susy pulled off the highway and stopped in front of an iron gate which was wedged into a break in the cliff. She got out of the car, rang a bell, and spoke into a box. A buzzer sounded, the gate opened, and they drove in. As soon as the tail of the station wagon was through, the gate swung shut behind them with a loud iron clang.

“They’re locking us in, Mommy,” Viola exclaimed. “They’re locking us into the zoo!”

“It’s all right, lovey. They’re not locking us in. They’re just shutting the gate again, in case some bad men wanted to get in and steal something.”

They started uphill on a narrow road crowded by dark trees, crowded in turn by the steep sides of the canyon. High above, shreds of bright blue sky appeared and disappeared. From somewhere not too far off came the sound of a machine or carnivorous animal roaring and grinding its teeth.

“What’s that, Mommy?” Mark asked. “What’s that noise?”

“I think I want to go home, Mommy,” Viola announced.

Round a last bend the gully opened out into a shallow landscaped basin: a circular sweep of drive, massed trees and flowers, and a long stone villa. “Here we are, kids!” Susy said.

At first sight the effect was European—Sussex or the Île-de-France; but the trees were too tall and of strange shapes, Katherine thought; the flowers were too large, and the hills behind the house were much too near: they looked dry and flat, like the canvas backdrop of a stage.

Susy parked the car, and they got out next to an orchard: rows of pruned trees, the ground beneath them littered with huge, heavy yellow oranges—Why no, they must be grapefruit; hundreds of grapefruit lay here, ripe and over-ripe, rotting in conspicuous waste.