Too Soon Dead (22 page)

“It’s an autogiro,” I said, pleased that my monthly reading of
Popular Mechanics
was finally proving useful. “That thing that looks like a giant propeller above the cockpit is actually a rotating wing, which enables the plane to land and take off from very small fields.”

“What makes it work?” Gloria asked.

I had no idea. “Gravity,” I suggested.

The plane swung around and came to a stop.

“It’s a Kellett,” Cathy said. “I’ve never seen one up close!”

She started eagerly toward the craft and we followed. “It’s a what?” I asked.

“A Kellett KD-1,” Cathy said over her shoulder. “It’s based on the Cierva design. I flew in a Cierva at Floyd Bennett Field a couple of years ago.”

We stopped a few feet from the plane. There were two cockpits, one behind the other, and from each protruded a head encased in a leather helmet and goggles. “Let me get this straight,” Gloria said to Cathy. “You flew an autogiro?”

“No, no,” Cathy said. “Juan de la Cierva, the guy who invented it, flew it. I was his passenger. He’s Spanish.”

We looked at her. “I met him at a nightclub I was working at. I wasn’t married then,” she said defensively.

Senator Childers trotted up to join us. By now everyone on the field had come over, and a group of about fifty people surrounded the autogiro. The two leather-clad aviators pulled themselves out of the cockpits and lightly dropped to the ground. They raised their goggles.

Senator Childers stepped forward, right arm extended. “Chas!” he bellowed. “Good to see you. Nothing like making an entrance, eh?”

Charles Lindbergh pulled the leather helmet off, revealing his close-cropped sandy hair. “These things are truly exciting!” he said, patting the side of the plane. “They bounce into the air. Bounce. Never seen anything like it.” He took the senator’s hand. “Glad to be here, Senator. I’ve brought a guest. Well. Actually she brought me.”

His flying partner removed her helmet and shook her head, cascading blond curls down to her shoulders. “Hi, there,” she said. The surrounding crowd pulled in closer.

“Senator Bertram Childers,” Lindbergh said, “let me introduce you to Amelia Earhart. She holds the altitude record in these things.”

Earhart patted Lindberg fondly on the head. “Well, actually, it wasn’t a Kellett. It was a Pitcairn PCA-2,” she said. “I took it over eighteen thousand feet. Where’s the food?”

Lindbergh and Earhart strode toward the pavilion, with Childers trotting alongside looking like the cat that had taught the canary to dance. The circle surrounding the plane slowly dissipated as the guests straggled back to the pavilion in the wake of Lindy and Amelia.

“We’ll follow them inside,” Brass said. He turned to me. “Morgan, let’s keep you in reserve. Wander off on your own and don’t join us unless I give you the office. See what you can see.”

“Right,” I said, and wandered. I could have made a pointed comment about the vagueness of his instruction, but as I had nothing better to offer, I kept my mouth shut. Past the pavilion were the sporting areas: three tennis courts, a swimming pool, a wading pool, a field on which indications showed that baseball might be played if one was so inclined, another field on which running, jumping, and general sportive behavior might not be discouraged, and a dirt track. There was a changing house by the pool, and several small shacks, probably for storage, scattered about the sportive grounds, all done in the style of European peasants’ huts, complete to the thatched roofs. I would not have been surprised to see sturdy yeomen and yeowomen standing in the doors to the huts a-pulling of their forelocks.

Two of the tennis courts were in use, and an informal softball game was in progress on the informal baseball field. The joint was jumping with celebrities. Al Jolson and W.C. Fields, both immaculate in white shirts and trousers, were playing tennis in the near court, with Fanny Brice watching from a lawn chair by the side of the court, a large drink in her hand. I didn’t recognize the people in the other court, who were younger and more enthusiastic but not noticeably better tennis players.

Among the guests who still dotted the landscape there were a number of attractive young ladies who did not seem to be escorted by young men, attractive or otherwise. After a little judicious questioning of passersby I determined that they were from the chorus line of
Girls! Girls! Girls!
an aptly named review that had just closed at the Eltinge Theatre after a run of 243 performances. They had been brought down in a railroad coach car provided for the occasion and were being chaperoned by several staunch matronly ladies from the Anna P. Waldo Club, which ran a boardinghouse for women in the theatrical professions on Forty-fourth Street.

I wandered down to the swimming pool, a monstrous rectangle of chlorinated water with three separate diving boards, the top one high enough to give nosebleeds to the sensitive, which was currently deserted. The air was cool, but the pool was heated. If anyone had felt like taking a dip, it would not have been an unpleasant experience.

I settled into a wood and canvas chaise by the pool and stared into the water, which was doing a poor job of reflecting the high-flying cirrus clouds stretched out overhead. I should have been peering into closets, stealthily opening hidden drawers in writing desks, and asking clever, pointed questions of the guests, but I had no idea of where to look or what to ask. I searched for inspiration in the steam rising off the water.

There was a noise behind me, and I turned as much of me as I could manage in the chaise without falling out of it. One of the girls had just come out of the pool house and was heading toward the tennis courts. She was wearing a short skirt and flimsy blouse that seemed a little skimpy for the weather, but I was not going to discourage her from dressing as she pleased. Personally I found the outfit, and the slender body under it, very pleasing indeed. My motion must have startled her; she jumped back a little with a sort of “oh!” sound coming from the back of her throat.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I didn’t see you,” she said.

I sat up. Her hair was long and the color of a burnt-sienna crayon that I’d had as a child. It had been my favorite crayon. Her face was oval and her lips were wide and looked as if they might smile if provoked. She might have been twenty. “I saw you,” I told her seriously, “and I’m willing to continue the experience indefinitely.”

She smiled. “How nice.” Her voice was deep and throaty, almost a purr.

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s always a risk.”

“What?”

“Complimenting a girl’s appearance. Some will smile and accept the compliment, and some will get all red and call you names and slap your face, if they can reach it. And you can never tell until you’ve made the experiment.”

She perched on the chaise next to mine and stared down at me seriously. “So I was an experiment, was I?”

“You see?” I said. “I get in trouble whatever I say. If you were, you should be judged a success and used as a model for all women who come after you.”

“I have been told that there are no others like me, that they broke the mold when I was cast,” she said seriously. “And some of those who said so did not mean it as a compliment.”

“Then they should be taken out and beheaded for spiritual blindness and general poor judgment,” I told her.

She nodded solemnly. “I think I like you. Tell me, is there a real live person who I could get to know under the badinage?”

“Well,” I said, “let’s take the badinage off and see.” I wiped my hand in front of my face without changing my expression, which I think was a sort of earnest smile. “There. Notice the difference?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Now I see the serious you, all ready to talk about world affairs and the situation in Ethiopia and the French governmental crisis and how it’s all going to affect the stock market.”

“My favorite topic of conversation,” I said. “How did you know?”

She bent over and peered closely at my face. I peered up at hers. It was a face that stood up to close peering very well. “I think it’s the amber specks in your otherwise light brown eyes,” she said. “They speak of honesty and earnestness and strength and gentleness.”

“All that in a few specks?” I asked.

“And the ability to play the cornet,” she added, “and a tendency toward bilious attacks when you eat fish.”

“I never eat fish,” I said.

“And a good thing, too.” She stood up. “My name is Elizabeth.”

“Mine is Morgan.”

“Like the pirate? What do you do, Morgan, sink ships, sack whole cities, and carry off the women and children?”

“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” I told her. “One must remember the proper order: first rape, then pillage, then burn. If you get it wrong, it could ruin your whole day.”

“I can see where that would be important,” she agreed.

There was a breathless quality to Elizabeth, as if she were always running even when she was standing still. There was something in her eyes—blue eyes, wide eyes, under long dark lashes—that dared you to see under the banter and take her seriously.

“I work for Alexander Brass,” I told her.

“The columnist?”

“That’s right. I am his amanuensis.”

“Are you here amanuensing?”

“No. Off duty. We’re just here as guests of Senator Childers. And you?”

She pouted. “And me what?”

“What do you do?”

“I look decorative. I smile at dull young men and tell them how clever they are. I smile at dull old men and tell them they shouldn’t say such naughty things. I listen attentively while men explain to me things that I understand better than they do, and bite my tongue so as not to say anything when they get it wrong. And I smile. Most of all, I smile.”

An insight into her character? Possibly a hint at her profession? I didn’t know and I discovered that I didn’t care. “I think I like you too,” I said, “although you are a bit cynical and worldly-wise for one so young.”

“I’m twenty-two,” she said, “and I didn’t ask to be born.” She said it flatly and without affect, just stating a fact to her new friend. But I felt the chill of truth behind the words. I took her hand and tried to think of something to say that would wipe away the feeling without sounding banal to both of us. The silence stretched on.

“Damn!” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Neither did I,” I said. “Let’s just—”

She stood up and pulled me to my feet. “Come with me,” she said. She led the way back into the pool house and closed the door behind us. “This way,” she said.

To the right were the showers and little cubicles for changing, but she took me to the left. We went through a door and were in a small suite of rooms: bedroom, sitting room, and bath. “What is this?” I asked.

“A little hidey-hole I found,” she said, closing the door. She pulled me through into the bedroom, kicked that door closed with her foot. The bed was covered with a blue and white bedspread and had twelve pillows and a small teddy bear on it. The wallpaper was white with red flowers and the curtains on the one small window matched the wallpaper. Across from the bed was a bureau that looked too big for the room, and a small table was at the foot of the bed, leaving little floor space.

She sat on the bed and took both of my hands in hers.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Please!”

“I don’t think—” I said.

“No need to,” she told me. She pulled me with a gentle pull until she was lying on the bed and I was leaning on top of her, supported by my hands, which were still in hers. “Can you kiss?” she asked.

I showed her I could.

“That’s nice,” she said after a minute. “What else can you do?”

Ten minutes before I would have said, “Not much, really,” but now, with the sound of her throaty voice in my ears, the fresh smell of her in my nostrils, the feel of her under my hands, I felt that I could do anything. I kissed her again, more thoroughly, and again. I moved beside her on the bed and fumbled at her blouse. She pulled my jacket off and her hands reached for my shirt and began unbuttoning it. My hands circled her and I found the hooks for her brassiere. I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I could feel her heart beating beside mine. My thoughts were befuddled and at the same time miraculously clear.

For a while neither of us said anything, but we conveyed a wealth of information with our hands, with our lips. And then, unexpectedly, Elizabeth sat up and pushed me away. I lay there for a second to catch my breath, and then rose to a more-or-less sitting position. She stared at me across the pile of pillows and discarded clothing.

I stared back at her, suddenly concerned that I was naked and visible in the light coming through the window. She was also both naked and visible, and a wonderful sight she was; but I’ve always thought that my best physical feature was the way my clothes hung on me when I was dressed.

“What?” I asked.

She leaned forward and cupped my face in her hands. She was crying.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I like you, I really like you,” she said. “Please don’t hurt me!”

That stopped me. For what seemed an eternity I could say nothing. Then I stammered, “Why on earth—? What makes you think—? How could you possibly believe—? You of all people? Now of all times?” I took her hands in mine and kissed each palm.

“I have been with many men,” she said. “Since I was—much younger. It has nothing to do with love, or probably even sex, although it ends up as sex. I can’t help it. I can’t explain it. When the men I’m with find out what I am… this need I have… often they become cruel and hateful. I’m sorry.”

I stared at her and thought over what she’d said. She sat, her hands in mine, watching my face like a supplicant, or a dog waiting to be kicked.

“You like sex,” I said cleverly.

“I
need
something,” she said. “It isn’t sex, but sex will have to do until I figure out what it is.”

“You mean you really don’t want to go to bed with me?”

“We are in bed,” she pointed out. “I really do want to go to bed with you. Really.”

“And you like me?”

“I really do like you,” she said. “But if I hadn’t met you I would have found somebody else. Not necessarily somebody I like.”