Sinners (12 page)

Tonight it was a party. The woman was wearing skintight leopard-printed chiffon trousers and hardly any top.

Herbert thought it disgusting the way some men let their wives go around. As a matter of fact, he was rather concerned about Marge – dear fat old Marge, who for so many years had been simply content to squat in front of the television and eat. Since her first outing with Louella Crisp – the new neighbour – she had changed. She was always popping over to visit the house next door, and her dresses actually looked clean. She made up her face, and had even gone to the beauty parlour to have her scraggy hair styled.

Herbert was amazed, and not pleased at all.

The final straw had come that evening, before he left for work.

‘Louella’s having a little party next week,’ Marge announced. ‘She wants to know if you can come. It will be awful good fun, games and things. Her husband’s gonna be there too.
Will you
be able to come, hon? I’m gonna get myself a pretty new dress,
and
go on a diet.’

Herbert regarded his wife’s elephantine form coldly. ‘I don’t want you going to no party.’

Marge’s eyes brimmed full of tears, which, mixing with her mascara, dribbled down her cheeks. ‘But Herbie, hon, she’s my friend, my only friend . . .’

‘She’s a bad influence on you. I don’t want you seeing her no more. Look at yourself – made up like a whore.’

She chewed on her lower lip, the tears ceased, and a crafty expression passed across her fat face.

‘If you don’t let me go, I’m gonna tell about you writing those dirty letters. I’m gonna tell the police and they’ll put you in jail for being . . .’

She trailed off as Herbert fixed her with his eyes. They were the meanest eyes she had ever seen.

‘What letters?’ His voice was very controlled, but inside he was shaking with fury.
Nobody
knew about his letters. He wrote them upstairs, locked away in the little box-room. Marge was always busy watching television. ‘What letters?’ he repeated, taking her fleshy arm in a tight grip.

She was frightened. Herbert got so strange at times. She wished she hadn’t mentioned the letters, after all she had only found two, and she certainly didn’t mind if he wanted to write to those fancy movie stars.

‘Angela Carter,’ she gulped, ‘it was torn up, and I stuck it together. It’s all right, Herbie, I was only joking. Herbie, you’re hurting my arm – Herbie . . .’ She screamed as his nails raked into her soft skin and drew blood, then she sniffled quietly as he paced up and down the room, beside himself with anger.

How could he have been so careless? He usually tore up, and flushed down the toilet, any unfinished efforts.

‘Get them,’ he demanded.

She scurried off immediately and fetched the two letters, hidden carefully under the mattress. She was reluctant to part with them. They had kept her company many a long and lonely night. She handed them over.

‘I wish you’d do some of those things you write about to me,’ she whined. ‘You never do anything to me any more.’

She rubbed her vast bosom up against him. ‘I’d like to do all those things again, Herbie. Can we start doing them again?’

He pushed her away. ‘You’re too fat,’ he muttered. How could he ever consider touching that gross body again when he had someone like Sunday Simmons?

‘But, Herbie.’ In desperation Marge was unbuttoning her blouse and releasing a mammoth bosom from the confines of a dirty white bra. ‘Look what I’ve got. I’ve got beautiful titties, you used to love my titties.’

He glanced at her with disgust. Big fat floppy bosom. He turned his back. ‘Get dressed, you whore. And see you stay in tonight.’

Then he grabbed his jacket and marched out.

*    *    *

Yes, the whole episode with Marge was most disturbing. Especially the sexual part, the exhibiting of herself to him. Didn’t she realize that that part of their life was over? It made him feel unclean and disgusted just thinking about it.

‘Hey, driver,’ the woman was leaning drunkenly forward from the back seat, a cigarette dangling from her painted scarlet lips, ‘got a light?’

‘Emerald, sit down please. I’ll light your cigarette.’ Cy’s voice was tense.

‘I wouldn’t dream of bothering you, my sweet. You don’t want me to smoke.
You
don’t think it’s the done thing for a lady to arrive at a party smoking. Well, fuck
you.
’

‘Emerald, please.’

She waved the cigarette at Herbert. ‘Light me up, Sam.’

Furious with the man in the back for letting this woman get away with such foul talk, he silently handed her the automatic lighter.

She threw it down on the front seat when she was finished, and Herbert burnt his fingers returning it to the dashboard. Then the man in the back pressed a button, and the glass partition slid up, cutting off the rest of their conversation.

Herbert resolved to pee in their swimming pool again on the return journey. He would drink plenty of beer and piss another perfect arc . . .

Charlie wasn’t sure when he first realized he had made a terrible mistake. Was it the day after his Las Vegas wedding – or the day after that?

Viewing things in the cold light of reality, he couldn’t imagine how he could have done it.

Dindi was just as pretty as ever, but an idiot, a pretty little unintelligent idiot. Every time she opened her pouty lips it was to ask for something.

Even after two days it was beginning to drive him mad.

‘Baby, can I have some money for roulette?’ ‘Sweetie, can I have those
marvellous
diamond and turquoise earrings?’ ‘Pussycat, what about a little mink to keep off the cold night air?’

He gave her everything she wanted. After all, it was their honeymoon.

Public reaction to their wedding was mixed. The newspapers made the most of it:
Beautiful starlet marries Charlie Brick
, and similar headlines all over the world.

Personal acquaintances were another matter. George arrived by plane, and he and Dindi seemed to become instant enemies. Marshall on the phone was positively rude; he talked business and ignored the marriage until the end of the conversation, when he mumbled something about lots of luck, you’re going to need it.

From England came a long telegram from his mother. ‘Son, what have you done? Couldn’t you have waited? Will arrive soon. Serafina, your loving mother.’

It irked Charlie that everyone wasn’t going around saying how lucky he was to have married such a gorgeous young girl. He was infuriated that there had been no word from Lorna.

Serafina was merely upset because she had not been present. She hated to miss anything, and was looking forward to her forthcoming trip to Hollywood. A new daughter-in-law wasn’t exactly what she had been anticipating.

Dindi was immediately jealous of George. He arrived, summoned by Charlie after the wedding, and as usual, stayed near Charlie, available for all his requests.

‘Is he going to come everywhere with us?’ she questioned, a little put out because George had hovered near them at the swimming pool all day, and was now back in their suite setting up stereo equipment.

‘He doesn’t bother you, does he, darling?’ Charlie asked mildly.

‘Oh no,’ she shrugged, ‘I guess I’ll go downstairs and have a looksee through the shops. Can I have some bread?’

Charlie was beginning to be irritated by Dindi’s constant use of what she considered to be hip phraseology.

He gave her yet another stack of dollars, she seemed to go through money like confetti. She left and he went to watch George at work on the stereo.

‘How long will we stay here?’ George asked. He had already summed up the marriage as a dead loss, and couldn’t understand how Charlie had been so foolish.

‘A few days, maybe longer. I was thinking of having you drive the Maserati back and coming to fetch us in the Mercedes. There’s a couple of houses you can look at for me. I’ve got to get something settled before the children arrive.’

*    *    *

Downstairs, Dindi bought three new bikinis, and a big straw sunhat. The rest of the money she took over to the roulette table and covered number twenty: she bit her lip with excitement as she watched the wheel spin, and hey presto – twenty came up. She gave a little squeak of joy, and then the manager was beside her and muttered, ‘Let it ride.’

She looked up at him. He smelt of a very funky aftershave. She let the money ride, and twenty came up again. She had won a bundle.

Laughing, he took her arm. ‘Take it all off.’

She smiled at him. ‘The money?’

‘For now.’

They understood each other.

Dindi felt a tingle of excitement. Charlie didn’t excite her: she didn’t feel free to be herself. With him she was still playing Baby Girl.

‘Listen, if you want to count your money, I have an apartment on the eighteenth floor, apartment E.’ He winked at her and walked off.

Well, the sonofabitch was certainly sure of himself, but so what, she had nothing to lose. She was a married lady now, and fun was fun. She scooped up her chips and went off to change them. Then she took the elevator to the eighteenth floor.

*    *    *

They stayed in Vegas five days, at the end of which Charlie was bored stiff and couldn’t wait to get to work. Angela Carter had been signed for
Roundabout
and the new script was completed. They were still looking for another girl, as Sunday Simmons was unavailable. It was only a small part and presented no major problem.

Unbeknown to Charlie, Dindi had plans to grab the role for herself: a little chat with Marshall, a few hints to Charlie, and the whole thing should be a cinch.

George had chosen a house in Bel Air which he thought would meet with Charlie’s approval. It was a two-storey ranch with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a guest house, and numerous bedrooms and entertaining rooms. It had been a choice between that house or a glass and steel modernistic effort up in the Hollywood Hills. George had instinctively known Dindi would prefer the modern house, so he had picked the other one.

Charlie was delighted with it. There was more than enough room to assemble all his stereo equipment, records, tapes, cameras and other toys that took his fancy. He was a great collector, getting a bug about something for months on end, then abandoning it and going on to something else. At the moment it was stereo and cars, but he was just starting a photography phase.

Dindi was impressed with the house. She had had a great time in Las Vegas, and had returned to Hollywood loaded with clothes, jewellery and a movie-star husband. What more could a girl want? She didn’t even bother to collect her things from her old apartment, just instructed the landlady by phone to find her passport and mail it on to her. Who needed old things when she could have everything new?

She opened charges everywhere, and, the first day back, went on a wild spending spree.

*    *    *

Clay and Natalie Allen arrived in town.

‘Why don’t we have a little dinner party, a sort of celebration?’ Charlie asked Dindi. ‘You can ask some of your friends, as many as you like. We’ll have it catered by Trader Vic’s.’ He had decided to make the most of his mistake. After all, Dindi was very young, and surely it would be a fairly simple matter to make her into the kind of girl he had thought he had married. She was bound to be willing to improve herself.

‘Yeah.’ Dindi nodded thoughtfully. Who of her so-called friends could she possibly invite? All the guys she had screwed. And as for her girlfriends – well, who needed those big mouths? The only person she could think of was Sunday Simmons.

‘Really, I don’t have many friends here,’ she said. ‘Most of my close friends and all my family are in Philadelphia.’ Dindi had never been to Philadelphia in her life, but she figured it sounded like a pretty respectable town to come from. Actually she had been born in Arizona and hadn’t been back since she zoomed out of town with a travelling salesman at the age of fifteen.

‘It doesn’t have to be a big party,’ Charlie said. He didn’t want to present his new wife to the Allens on her own; she seemed more intelligent among people. ‘We’ll make it small – just Marshall, Cy and Emerald Hamilton, Clay and Natalie and a few others.’

‘My best friend is Sunday Simmons, I’d like to invite her.’

‘Fine. Make out a list, and we’ll try and arrange it for the weekend.’

He went off to study his new script. Everything was going to work out. At least now he wouldn’t have to go running after little ding-a-lings. He could concentrate on his work, and Dindi would soon have the children arriving to keep her occupied. Maybe she and Natalie would become friends. Natalie could teach her a lot. He just had to remember she was seventeen years younger than himself and hadn’t been around. It would all work out.

Sunday found herself spending a lot of time with Branch. He was easy-going, and pleasant. She didn’t fancy him sexually, she thought of him as a big brother, and hoped that he regarded her with the same feelings. She hadn’t forgotten that both Dindi and Carey had said he was gay and since he hadn’t made a pass at her, she was prepared to believe he was.

He was a strange boy in many ways. He hated to talk about himself or his past, was very nervous about the outcome of his test, and dreaded the thought of having to return to New York if it was unsuccessful.

It was good for Sunday to have a male companion. With Carey, when they had gone out together at night, they had been constantly bothered by men: now, with Branch by her side she was never pestered.

Carey was most put out by the whole situation.

‘If your name has to be linked with someone, at least let it be Steve Magnum, not some little unknown schnook.’

Sunday just laughed, and she and Branch were soon regarded as an item.

Steve Magnum was unamused. It was not often he was turned down for some muscle-bound nothing. Just wait until he got Miss Sunday Simmons in Acapulco!

Branch’s test was successful. He was signed for a cowboy movie that was to start shooting in Mexico almost immediately. He was delighted.