"Take it off," he commanded, keeping between her and escape. "Or I'll take it off for you."
Her eyes narrowed. She straightened and let the torn gown slip to the floor.
"Now come here."
"No," she said.
He reached for her again and she held her ground, mocking him with round cat eyes. The tips of her breasts touched his chest and she did not flinch. He tucked his hands under her arms and ran them down slowly. She laughed in his face.
"Okay," he said between his teeth. He flung her to the couch.
A stream of obscenities spewed from her writhing lips and her teeth sank into his shoulder. He drove the shoulder up, jamming her head back.
"Now," he said, "Let's see about my being a man..."
ONE
Peering through the Studio C porthole, Don Brent watched fifty or more teen-agers milling around under the billboard that read: Brent's Bandstand. He had to smile. Half of the kids were already dancing without benefit of music. The bright-eyed, clean-limbed girls heel-and-toed solemnly, their bouffant skirts swishing, their compact, mobile derrieres rhythmically switching. The boys frowned in perspiring concentration, swaying and rocking. Don's smile faded.
Jerry, the floor manager, had unplugged his headset from Carny's camera and was trying to settle them down. Most of the kids sifted obediently to the seats in the low grandstand, but one girl defiantly continued to dance, tossing her jet-black hair, flashing her challenging grin at Jerry. The floor manager, his face crimson, absently waved her away, his indifference an obvious pretense. The crew was laughing at him; teen-agers were grinning slyly. At last the girl retreated to the grandstand, but not without offering Jerry one last accomplished bump.
Don swore softly to himself. Juanita Smith, the Little Egypt of Studio C, seemed so young to be so all-over breathtakingly beautiful, so young to spell out trouble in such big letters.
He turned away and pushed out of the sound lock into the hall. From among the small group of beaming, bird-like mothers decked out in their best silk prints, a voice chirped excitedly, "Isn't that him-Don Brent?"
Don nodded and smiled as warmly as he could, ducking hurriedly into Studio B before they could put the arm on him for an autograph or corner him for a session of honeyed commonplaces. He knew the type and he would never cease to marvel at how little such essentially decent people knew about their kids-or about anything else, for that matter.
He hurried through the muffled gloom of Studio B, past shrouded cameras and into the control room. His director, Fitz Gilmore, was fussing with a sheaf of papers and griping. "Where the hell's the music sheet? Nobody ever tells me anything-"
Don climbed the short flight of steps to the podium where Fitz sat before his set of toggles and buttons. Directly below Fitz, the technical director and his companion sat before their monitor screens, idly correcting the pictures coming from the two cameras out in Studio C. In front of them was the expanse of triple-paned glass through which the studio could be seen, glowing like a giant aquarium tank. Above the window a row of large monitor screens showed pictures from film and tape room, from the cameras, from the national network. Right now they were broadcasting a network soap opera-the show that preceded Don's Bandstand show.
"Better late than never, eh, Fitzie?" Don shoved the music sheet under the director's quivering nose.
"Yeah-what, what?" Fitz was notorious for his bellowing, particularly over the intercom when he was directing. The cameramen called him Old Drumbuster.
Don bent to lift the headset off the director's ear and inform him softly, "The music sheet is right under your nose. Jill told me to tell you she's sorry, but we had some changes and she just got it done."
"Oh." Fitz located the sheet and snatched it up. "Okay." Not even he could bring himself to be mad at Jill. "Well, you'd better get out there."
Don gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Five minutes yet. We'll make it."
Climbing down, he stopped at a separate control board and set of record turntables where Big John, the audio man, sat like a beached whale, absently kneading his groin with one hand. Don handed him a stack of LPs and a copy of the music sheet.
"Oughta get this stuff to us earlier," Big John grumbled petulantly, setting up a record with surprisingly dexterous fingers. He sat back, leering, and pointed a thumb toward the studio. "I see Juanita's with us again today." Behind his glasses, his eyes rolled like wet green olives, and he shook all over with gluttonous laughter. "San Quentin Quail-on toast. Hey, what's the wife think about you chivvying this young stuff every day, Brent?"
"She doesn't say." Don turned and pushed out into the sound lock between the control room and Studio B and ran headlong into Jill.
"Oh-"
Automatically his arms went around her. Jill did not move, but stood firm, small and trembling against him, staring up with her lips slightly parted and gleaming damply in the dim light. He could see the shine of white teeth and the shimmer of the gold flecks floating in the gray-blue-green of her eyes. Quickly he let her go and stepped back.
"Sorry."
"Sorry?" She studied him, hugging her clipboard to her breasts, breasts that obviously needed no engineered wire and cambric to hold them high. Her smile was quizzical, tentative.
Ignoring the question in her eyes, he muttered, "Five minutes," and led her through Studio B and out into the hall. The parents were still there, smiling eagerly. He smiled back. He knew what he looked like when he smiled-like one of the glossy boys in the soda fountain ads.
"We'll have to clear the hall, folks. You'll get a much better view of the show on the monitor set in the lobby." It was his first principle-no parents in the studio. The show belonged to the kids.
The adults turned, chattering, and moved obediently away down the hall. Don followed Jill into the Studio C sound lock. The hall door hissed shut behind them, and they were alone in the cramped silence of the dead air space between the two sound-proof doors. Very faintly they could hear the tinkling strains of Penguin at the Waldorf being piped into the studio. Big John was playing his own records again, though it was only a few minutes before air time. Some of the kids had come down from the bleachers and were dancing to the old Frankie Carle recording, among them Juanita and her boy friend, Vince Ellison.
"Look at her, will you," Jill drawled half scornfully, half in admiration.
He looked. Juanita had dragged Vince out to the middle of the floor and had promptly taken over the spotlight. She did the old-fashioned jitterbug as well as she did everything else, swinging easily, with fine control of the pent-up heat that glowed inside her like a banked fire, tossing her tangle of crow-black hair, hitching her slim hips in a slow, rhythmic slide and grind. The whole camera crew stood frozen, helpless, in various poses, eyeing her hungrily.
With less than a minute and a half before air time, Don touched Jill's elbow. "Listen, baby-we'd better forget about what happened last night."
Color flooded Jill's cheeks. She bit her lip, but her gaze held firm. "Nothing much happened." Her eyes flashed a challenge. "Now did it?" She gave the door a hard shove with her shoulder and disappeared into the studio.
Don hesitated, getting his smile ready. Finally, taking a deep breath, he followed her in to give the kids the big hello.
"Okay, cats, grab your partners and spread out down here. You all know what to do. And no mugging into the camera." He threw an aside to Jerry: "What the hell's going on here? Tell John to shut that thing off and get the theme music ready."
"Sorry, star," the floor manager said. "We had a bet that Juanita couldn't jive. We were wrong, huh? Or did you notice?" Jerry's grin was cocky, but he plugged his headset in and conveyed the order to the control room. The music stopped immediately.
Don climbed to his podium just under the billboard and settled himself on the bar stool. He shuffled hastily through the stack of copy, notes, commercials, the music sheets and formats of this afternoon's show. Down on the floor, the couples stood ready. There was a scattering of kids in the bleachers, mostly unescorted girls. Carny dollied his camera into position on the far side of the dance floor. Watkins got Camera Two into position off to Don's right, where it could cover him, get close-ups of the dancers and swing around to shoot the bleachers.
Jill stood against the wall with her clipboard. Her job of preparing the show, lining up the kids and getting the copy and music together was done for the day. Her eyes met Don's. Don looked down at the format sheet.
Today the kids were mostly from Roosevelt High. Once a week the program featured a particular high school. The rest of the time was open house, although Jill frequently sent out special invitations to clubs, fraternities and sororities to make sure there would be a full dance floor.
And there were the regulars, kids who showed up almost every day of the week. They were turned away now and then, just to maintain a steady turnover and not present the same faces day after day. But some of them, like Juanita and Vince, were such good-looking kids and such good dancers that they were encouraged to come regularly. Juanita and Vince were slated for today's semifinals of the big twist contest.
Don glanced up and discovered Jill looking away from him. Helplessly he studied her, as he had been doing pretty regularly these days. She stood with her slim legs planted apart, the plaid skirt drawn tight across the shallow swelling of her belly. She was talking to one of the kids, smiling brightly, laughing, her eyes moving now and then to the clock-casual, pretty, bright and at the same time all business. She had been working for Don for six months now and was perfect for the job except for one thing-she was getting to him.
Nothing much had happened, she had said. And she had been right, nothing much had happened. He had only kissed her, or rather, they had kissed each other. They had been working late, catching up on letters, and they had bumped heads as she had straightened from a file drawer. They had laughed, holding on to each other and suddenly they had not been laughing. He had felt the thrust of her breasts against his chest....
The lights came on and the bank of scoops were suddenly hot over Don's head. Jerry raised his hand beside Camera One. Stand by. Thirty seconds.
Don glanced down at the monitor set buried in the top of his podium. The soap opera was just going off. The station break came up-the rooster signature and the call letters of the station: KLON-TV. Over the studio speaker the announcer's voice read out the call letters. Then came a car commercial-a sleek sports car threading a mountain road. He had wanted one of those for himself, but Jill had talked him out of it. Remember, you're the clean-cut older brother. No squirreling around in hotrods for you, boy. We've gotta preserve your image....
And Marge, Don's wife, who had wanted the car for herself, had offered to buy it with her own money, but he had not let her. All their belongings had been paid for with his earnings. He never once allowed himself to think of the loot her father had stashed away for her in his half-dozen banks around the world, and he did his best to keep her from thinking about it herself-and to keep her from talking about it.
Tonight was their anniversary. Three years. She had him lock, stock and barrel, all right. Never mind, he told himself impatiently. This is one marriage that's going to last....
"Ten seconds," Jerry called out.
The driving beat of New Castle Rock filled the studio. The kids swung into action and in a moment the studio was a sea of bobbing heads and shining young faces. On the monitor screen a slide flashed: Brent's Bandstand and the announcer read the opening announcement. The signature dissolved into a picture of the dancing youngsters. Don had no need of Jerry's signal.
He smiled at the camera. "Hi, there-this is the Bandstand, and I'm Don Brent. Hey, what a fine afternoon, huh? We've got a great show for you today, your kind of music and the semifinals of the big twist contest. Stick around, won't you? Right now, let's shake down and loosen up with a little bit of Castle Rock-"
He could do it in his sleep. His voice was naturally well modulated and pleasant-the smile came easy. He grinned steadily into the blue lens of Camera Two until the red lights blinked off. Then he bent his head to dig out the copy for his first commercial.
He read the copy over twice to refresh his memory. Then there was nothing for it but to look up. Sure enough, Jill was watching him, a quizzical smile on her face. He shifted his gaze to the dancers. Jerry was having trouble staying out of camera range and at the same time keeping the couples moving past Camera One. They crowded in too close, lingering in front of the lens, giggling and making faces.
Kids. Don smiled to himself. But they were not quite kids either. Those here today looked to be mostly seniors. They were somewhere between childhood and adulthood, on the brink of full realization of manhood-womanhood. There was a blonde in a white sweater. Her eyes were outlined heavily in mascara, her unpainted mouth parted damply as she danced. Her shoulders and arms followed the beat of her jouncing flesh, almost as though her breasts were leading her body, leading the music too. She was a healthy specimen and knew it. Carefully he looked away. As usual, Juanita and Vince held the center of the floor, ignoring the cameras, dancing intently. Suddenly the blonde seemed dumpy and pale. Don reflected that Juanita's hair always seemed slightly damp, coiled in gleaming black tendrils down her shoulders and back, writhing like a nest of headless black snakes...
He shifted his gaze again, only to find Jill still staring at him. He looked down at his copy, but could not seem to read the words. A tiny trickle of sweat ran down between his shoulder blades under the crisp white dacron of his button-down-and suddenly he was angry, enraged. Why the hell hadn't they raised the lights? The glaring reflectors were too damn close over his head. Every morning he asked the crew to adjust them and every afternoon he came in here only to be broiled all over again like a barbecued duck in a restaurant window. Damn them. Damn Fitz and that foul-mouthed Big John and all the rest of the...
He checked himself, startled at this sudden surge of that violence he knew he always carried inside him. He usually managed to take it out on the back wall of the handball court in his Saturday games with Fitz. He had never lost his temper while he was on the air-but there could always be a first time. Take it easy, he commanded himself, settle back, relax. like Como.
Three records and two commercials later he was himself again, announcing the semifinals of the twist contest and cutting the six couples loose on the current big hit, Chucky Chubber's Twist It Right.
Chubber was good at what he did. There was a wild and undeniable command in his hoarse howl. Two tenor saxes wailed and growled behind him and an amplified bass thumped a pile-driver beat that grabbed you low down somewhere and set you helplessly heaving with the music.
Twist it in Twist it out
Twist it, baby, round about....
The lean boys and the smooth-calved, slim young girls canted slowly forward and back, hips swiveling, arms seesawing at their sides, knees cocked out and nearly touching, hands spinning sudden spastic circles.
Twist all day Twist all night
Come on, baby, twist it right. . .
Vince Ellison, in black from his high-gloss Italian shoes to his boot-polish black ducktail and sideburns, weaved an expert, controlled counterpoint to Juanita's wild gyrations. She was fantastic. Her crimson lips spread flat across gleaming teeth, her lids fell half closed and her eyes glazed as she gave herself to the music, hitching her slim, tight little bottom right and left, swaying back and then forward, until one knee was thrust far out and drawing the hem of her skirt slowly up the taut flesh of one slim brown thigh.
Don glanced at Jill. She was watching Juanita too, her face blank. Everybody was watching Juanita-the three judges beside Jill, the kids in the grandstand, the camera crew, even the couples competing with her and Vince.
Twist it in Twist it out
Tell me, baby, what it's all about Come on, baby, twist it right Come on, baby, twist tonight....
Don caught the swelling glow of a cigar at the edge of his vision and turned his head to discover the boss, Charlie Dugan, standing in the control-room window, his glasses two blank and ominous silver discs in the gloom. Oh, God, trouble-that was what Juanita spelled. Don began to sweat with a vengeance.
It was no surprise to anybody when the judges selected Juanita and Vince as one of the two finalist couples. Don congratulated them from his perch on the podium, buzzed hurriedly through the third commercial and managed to fit the better part of a final record in before they ran out of time.
"That's it for today. Hope you had a good time. Remember, tomorrow the Curbstone Four, in person, and the finals of the big twist contest. Don Brent here. So long and take it easy, will you?"
He waved, smiling. The red lights of Camera Two winked off, the red lights of Camera One winked on, the music came up strong, the announcer read the closing announcement over the picture of the dancing kids. Abruptly the music cut out and the picture changed to the rooster once again and: KLON-TV.
"That's it, everybody," Jerry called, coming out from behind Carny's camera, pulling the headset from his head. "Wow, hot."
You're telling me, Don thought bitterly, but he came down smiling, hitching carefully at the cuffs of his shirt in an effort to peel the soaked sleeves from his arms. Oh well, occupational hazard, he tried to tell himself.
He was looking uneasily around for Dugan when Juanita came bouncing up, dragging Vince after her. "Hey, Dimples, how was that for fucking?"
"Come again?" Don grinned wearily.
"I mean the contest. Man, we were tough, Vince and me, weren't we?" She tossed her wild mop and her slippered feet danced by themselves, their soles whispering against the rubber tiles. She gave Vince's hand a vicious little jerk. "Say hello, you drag."
"What's up, Vince?" Don asked casually, altering his tone and smile for the boy.
Vince came forward, one hip cocked, one thumb probing his shirt pocket. "Hi, Don," he said impassively, and then to Juanita: "I need a cigarette."
"Wait a minute, will you." She gave him a reproving scowl, then slipped closer to Don, tilting her head to look up into his face. She came just to his shoulder. "I saw you watching us. You had eyes, huh, Granma?"
"The better to see you don't get out of hand," Don said with a wry smile.
"Oh?" She moved back a step to look him up and down, then abruptly she began to hum the Chubber melody and set her body into motion, dipping forward until the six inches of unadorned thigh showed again. She straightened, and with her head to one side, smiled mockingly at him.
"Did I get out of hand, Mr. Brent?"
"Yes," he snapped too quickly, too loudly. At his side, Jill shifted her clipboard and stared down at the blank sheet on it. He added hastily, "Look, Juanita, you know that all kinds of people watch this show, and it's unfortunate that the opinions of just a few of them can put us right off the air. There are a lot of people in this world who don't understand young people and don't want to. They want kids to be as they think kids should be and no buts about it. Now, you wouldn't want to put my show off the air and deprive an old man like me of a living, would you?"
The girl continued to fix him with her teasing, tremulous smile until he thought he was going to have to turn away. Then she tossed her head again and reached without looking to secure Vince's hand.
"I sure wouldn't want to do that, Dimples. If you went off the air, Vince and me wouldn't win the contest tomorrow and get that trip to Hollywood. And we wouldn't be able all to go down there and five it up together, would we, Dimples?"
She turned away. He called out quietly, "Juanita."
"Yeah?" She turned back to face him, her mouth pouting slightly.
"Do me a favor. Call me Don."
She studied him a moment longer. Then, suddenly, she was laughing, wheeling and skittering for the studio door. Vince lounged after her, an unlit cigarette between his thin, tight lips.
Gypsy, Don thought, watching the girl go. She was like a wild gypsy in some romantic novel, striding along beside a caravan in Spain, blazing with the first dark bloom of womanhood.
Holy God, he was thinking like an adolescent himself. No doubt about it, too much contact with the teen mentality-or was there such a thing?
He turned to talk to Jill, but she had left. A quick glance toward the door showed him a flash of plaid skirt as she disappeared, moving fast. What the hell, if it isn't one thing, it's another, he thought, and then of Juanita again, helplessly: I hope to heaven she and Vince don't win that contest. Don Brent, chaperon, in Hollywood with the Little Egypt of Studio C...
TWO
Vince wheeled into the Tall Dog lot, and Juanita was thrown lightly against him. Deliberately she pressed her breast against his arm. No response. Hoo-hoo, he was mad all right. Ignoring her completely, he jammed his front wheels neatly against the curb, flipped off the ignition, set the emergency brake and leaned back against the seat all in one smooth, angry motion.
"Burger and what?" he asked flatly, staring straight ahead through the windshield.
"Oh, come on, lover," she cooed, closing in again, taking his arm in her hands and pressing it firmly between her breasts so that it tightened her bra and made her hurt a little. His arm was slender and hard. He pulled it away.
"Come on, yourself. What do you want?"
Looking at the grim line of his mouth and the gloomy darkness of his beautiful, black-lashed eyes, she felt sorry for him, but at the same time she wanted to shout for joy or break into the giggles. He was green, simply green!
"What I'd really like is a beer," she said cheerfully. "Let's get a case of beer. It's my night off."
He shook his head. "I'm taking you home."
"Oh, thanks a lot," she grumbled. "You really know how to take care of a woman."
He looked at her then and the hurt and rage she saw behind his impassive mask nearly stopped her heart. Here it came and she deserved it. She stiffened, ready to be chastened, ready to be punished for being such a flirt with Dimples Brent. Ready to be sorry and to be his.
But he cheated her. He looked casually away and his teeth showed in a quick, vengeful grin. "Yeah, I'm taking you home to cook dinner for your dear father." Jerking the door open, he got out and headed for the glass doors.
"All right then, a root beer," she shouted after him.
She would have gotten out, too, but the place was deserted and besides, she didn't like the day manager. She worked here nights, three nights a week and Saturday and Sunday, hopping cars. The night manager was okay and didn't mind your having fun as long as you did your work. So many older people seemed to be against fun on principle, as though they had dedicated their lives and souls to putting every little happy moment down.
Vince stopped to talk to a new carhop and Juanita watched narrowly. The girl was new, but the slacks she was wearing sure were not. They had been pretty well stretched out of shape by Mary-Lou, who had been a hippo. A nice hippo, but a hippo. Vince moved on to the rest room after giving the new girl their order. Too mad even to make a play. Juanita grinned to herself, wriggling on the car seat.
She yawned, stretching back, then frowned and bent to lift the hem of her skirt. Damn-it was already fraying where she had turned it up. No wonder, it was nearly four years old. She had bought it way back when she was a freshman with ten dollars Aunt Lucille had sent from Milwaukee just before being killed in a car accident-the last member of the family Juanita and her father knew about.
A shadow moved across her and she looked up in time to catch a middle-aged, balding man looking intently at her legs as he moved past the car. She ogled him back, not bothering to flip the skirt down. He turned red, looked away hastily and hurried on between the cars and into the Tall Dog.
Now there's somebody who digs knees, she thought. The poor old guy's eyes nearly fell out of his head...
Juanita giggled and stretched her legs out, admiring them-she had never had any complaints. At least she had good legs, even if her one good winter skirt was falling apart.
Vince emerged from the men's room and came swiftly out, not even bothering to give the car his usual proud examination. It was a lowered black '50 Ford, no chrome, no kookie flash decoration. You think I want to look like I'm driving a bread truck? Some of these guys get a spray gun in their hands and they go crazy. Nossir, I like a cool car. The quality's all inside, see, under the hood, in the guy driving. That's what cool is....
The sun glinted on his black curls as he ducked into the car and his lowered lashes were black and long against his pale cheeks. She wanted to reach out and touch his hair, wrap her arms around him, kiss him gently on the eyelids. But instead she found herself leaning forward to cock a grin up into his face.
"Hey, you're in a sweet mood, aren't you, lover?"
He looked into her eyes for a long time. In a moment, she thought, he was going to close his eyes abruptly, the way he did, with a despairing sigh of surrender, and wrap his arms around her so hard, so desperately that she would be sure her shoulders were going to fold up like a coat hanger. But instead he thrust her away from him so hard that her arm struck the door handle and she gasped in pain.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. But he would not look at her. He rolled the window down for the new girl-he even had a "Thanks," for her. But he handed the burger and root beer to Juanita without a word or a glance.
Juanita sat rubbing her arm, thinking suddenly of her father. Huey had promised her he would go down to the state employment office today. Had he? Or was he in some crummy joint right now, lifting a glass of red wine delicately between thumb and forefinger and telling anybody or nobody at all how he had been robbed of his tools in San Luis Obispo, California, twelve years ago and had had no luck since?
Suddenly she wanted to be home. It was lonely there, but at least she had a radio in her room and the loneliness of home was familiar, almost comfortable in an awful way-not as painful as these times with Vince could be.
"I'm sorry," he said suddenly, still refusing to look at her.
"That's all right. It's not the first time."
"Look, let's get that case of beer and--"
"No," she said. She had made up her mind. She was not capable of handling Vince right now. He could often be confusing when his brightness suddenly turned to dark. "I want to go home. Right now."
He turned, his eyes clouded, his mouth half open.
Oh, say it, Vince, please say it, say something to make my mixed-up feelings go away...
But he only turned away again and started up the car. The car was something he could control, something he could feel with his hands. He gunned the motor and the exhaust pipes throbbed and howled. Juanita sat stiffly, staring ahead, aching to be home and free of the familiar agony knotting in her chest. Turn on the radio, start dinner for Huey, go through the fruitless routine until she was tired enough to flop into the sack.
Finally Vince pulled the Ford to a stop and sat back stiffly. It was growing dark in the dead-end alley. The walls of the warehouses flanking them rose like black cliffs, and the refuse cans were like tombstones in the gloom. In front of the car was a leaning board fence and beyond it the rising wooden stairways at the back of an apartment house. Behind the car a narrow segment of street showed-trucks and cars moved by and men hurried home in the twilight.
Juanita started to get out.
"Wait a minute," Vince said.
"Please, Vince, not tonight." She tried to soften her voice, tried to make him see. She was no longer angry, just tired.
"Honey." His head came around slowly, unwillingly, as though resisting, yet pushed by some terrible force. He reached for her hand, and then she was in his arms. "I'm sorry, honey, real sorry," he cried softly, hoarsely against her cheek. "Please-I'm sorry."
"I know. I'm sorry too-we're a couple of kooks-" Nothing mattered now. He was holding her, kissing her eagerly, hungrily, his arms clamped securely around her. Suddenly she was happy again. She wanted to shout, to sing. She flipped on the car radio. Rouser Hardwick on KLOD said, "Here's Bullseye Bill Brown and the Bombers to call the shots on Pikes Peak Twist-"
Juanita snapped the fingers of her free hand to the beat and rubbed her nose against his-flup-flup-and leaned back to smile up at him. "You're a kook."
"You-" He smiled ruefully, helplessly. "You-" Maybe because she loved that half-hurt look of surrender in his eyes and wanted it and this moment to last forever-or because she felt so good-she laughed murmurously and let her eyelids fall half shut and whispered, "Honestly, Don Brent means nothing to me, nothing at all." She knew at once she had gone too far. "Vince."
"Listen, damn you, listen." His face was pale as death in the darkness, his eyes two tilted knives. "You're mine and I'm going to show you, you're mine-"
His hands were at the buttons of her sweater, not gently, not with the sweet, tender, agonizing, trembling slowness she sometimes knew, but clumsily, tearing, like the quivering claws of a mechanical man. "No, Vince, please-"
"Do you love me? Damn you, do you love me?"
"Vince, please, not like this-"
His hands tore at her skirt, hooked over the elastic of her pants like two cold steel clamps, jerking, tearing. She could hear the clear, sharp sounds of footsteps going by at the end of the alley. His mouth was a hard trap over hers, not gentle and searching, but another clamp to hold her in place, push her back.
"Do you love me? Do you, do you?"
The dome light was a ghost careening high in a dark sky, and she was vaguely aware that Rouser Hardwick was shouting desperately, as if to warn her, warn the world, screaming something about Little Joe's Tamalis. Her pants snagged on her shoes, and one knee banged cruelly against the dash as Vince jerked them free. His hand ran hard up the inside of her leg, and she gasped at the sudden thrust of his knuckles. The plastic seat covers were cold on her buttocks-the butts of his hands ground down on the bones of her pelvis, as though he were about to halve her like a Jonathan apple. He was panting, grunting, holding her there while he fumbled with his pants.
"Vince, please-"
"Shut up."
She heard the whir of automobile tires going by and the incessant clang of a railroad crossing signal somewhere. His flesh was a sudden, small, pale-blue and black flag in the dim light from the radio. Then he was lowering to her again, his legs coarse with hair against hers. She tried to writhe away.
"Easy," he growled hoarsely, pinning her upper arms with his elbows. His hip slid sideways, wedging in between her legs. She tried to resist, but somehow her muscles would not work and the weight of him suddenly slid in close to her and she winced at his awkward fumbling. Her knee was pushed against the dash again, and the metal dug in to her flesh. But finally she gave in with that moan of surrender that never failed to make her sick with its meekness-the cry of a rabbit split by the hunter's knife, the mute protest of a fleshed and fatty hide about to be nailed to a barn wall.
And then the hot wave of need rushed over her, the tidal wave of all her hurt and all her longing, stripping her of fear, pride and shame. Her hands groped for him, slipped up the back of his shirt, trembled on the bunched muscles there and her mouth reached up for his, seeking, begging. He moved slowly now, knowingly, kissing her hard, forcing her lips painfully back against her teeth, plunging into the soft, throbbing pink mussel of her mouth, moving, probing, waiting, moving again.
"Your shirt," she pleaded. "Take it off. Please!"
But she was too late. He moved again and she felt the breath trapped in both their lungs as the earth stopped for a moment, held in agonized suspension, hot and swollen and throbbing....
"Oh, God!"
"Do you love me now-do you, do you?"
His chest was a wiry, sweating mat against her. His chin ground into her shoulder. She welcomed him with a fierce spasmodic closure. It was part of his vengeance that he should plunge ahead of her, driving her along the seat covers until her head was crooked against the door handle, riding over her in punishment and exploding with a cruel, abandoned, heartless shudder, then leave her swiftly-leave her suddenly cold all along her body and in her mind and heart, frozen above a chasm suddenly closed against her.
She ached, she wanted. His arms-at least a kiss. But he took his warmth from her. Her breast chilled as she heard the mocking sound of his laughter.
Then she was crying and clawing for the door.
Don was not surprised to find the station manager, Charlie Dugan, waiting for him in the hall. "Just a word, Don."
"Sure, Charlie."
"That girl. That Juanita."
"Yes. Well, I just had a talk with her, Charlie-"
The boss shook his head impatiently, a big, square man, gnawing on a cigar. "Too much, she's too much, isn't that the way the kids say it?" But he was not amused. He tilted the cigar and squinted around it. "How old is she, anyway?"
Don shrugged. "Sixteen, seventeen maybe, a junior at Mission. Look, Charlie, we can't take her off the show now. She's won the semifinals in the contest, and she and her boy are sure to win the finals. Juanita is a good kid. She just happens to have a lousy old man and a terrific figure. She cooks for the old guy in some crummy flat down by the yards and has to work nights and weekends to pay for her own clothes and grub for them both-listen, she'll be all right. I'm sure I can handle her."
Charlie's eyes narrowed. "Oh, you're sure, are you?"
"Oh, come on, Charlie, are you going to give me that stuff, too? Look, she's a nice kid, that's all. If we were to take her out of the contest right now, it would really louse her up. Dancing, being on the show, having some kind of a place in the sun means a lot to a kid like that. Besides, how would it look if we took her out? Pretty unfair. Juanita's the best."
"The best what? Look, Don, I like the look of fresh young things as well as the next man. And I suppose a good chunk of your viewers do too. But that one's a wild Indian. Who does she think she is, throwing it around like Gypsy Rose Lee? Listen, I'm the one who has to answer the letters from the PTA and take all the phone calls from steaming bluenoses. You ought to hear what they have to say about your little Juanita and the twist and the baked potato-"
"Mashed potatoes," Don corrected. He could not suppress a smile. "According to the kids, we're the baked potatoes."
"Okay, okay. Now I know there's nothing we can do about these dances. The fool things just happen to become the craze, and we're stuck with them. Crazy, hedonistic hopping around-"
"Now wait, Charlie-"
Dugan held up his hand. "Okay, you won that argument long ago. I'm perfectly willing to agree that dancing is vitally important to teenagers, that it gives them a feeling of being in on something not monopolized by adults. God only knows, I couldn't handle that nutty dance, why, I'd break my can. Yeah, yeah, it helps them find their identity-all that crap. Hell, I'm even willing to agree that the twist isn't much wilder than the Charleston was and certainly no sexier than that jiving they were doing when you were a kid. Never could do that either-tried to swing a girl through my legs once like they do, and she got away from me. By the time I'd turned around she'd skidded right across the floor into the band. Left with the drummer too, damn. Where was I? Okay, I'm just as happy as you are about the national publicity we're going to get out of sending a contest winner to Hollywood. A television station has to make money, no matter what the Federal Communications Commission people and the thoughtful citizens and busy do-gooders say. But I've got our license and our standing in the community to think about too-" Dugan took a deep breath, loading up for the final blast-"and I can't risk losing my right to broadcast just so some little twerp can get off her psychological rocks by doing an unabashed kootch dance on my air."
"Your air," Don reminded him softly, "belongs to the people too."
"Okay, okay, I know you went to broadcasting school.
But what's right is only the half of it. Broadcasting is a commercial enterprise and you know it. Advertisers are people, I keep tryin' to tell myself, and-" Dugan removed his cigar and waved it vigorously, groping for his point. "Listen, we got seventeen phone calls during that contest dance. Seventeen! I took them all personally, and believe me, they weren't all cranks."
It was time for respectful silence. Don waited for the indignant huffing and puffing to subside. Dugan removed his glasses and wiped them sourly. He put them back on. His mouth worked around the cigar.
"You say you talked to her."
"Yes, right after the show. She's a smart kid, Charlie. I'm sure she'll be careful from now on."
"Okay." Dugan grunted, examined the end of his cigar with peculiar intensity, then added suddenly, grudgingly: "She's a beauty all right, and she does dress up the show. Just make sure she keeps her legs together on the air, that's all." He turned abruptly and waddled off down the hall.
Don's sense of unease caught up with him on the way up the stairs and closed around him like a formless shroud. The afternoon's series of incidents constituted a vague threat.
A lot of parents held their kids down because they had forgotten what it had been like to be young, because they had failed to keep alert to changes in the world and in the society in which their kids were expected to move, in which today's youngsters would one day have to exist. Many of the kids were crowded by their parents' anxieties and squashed by their parents' sexual frustrations and fears until they could do nothing but explode-steal a car, get drunk, give their bodies away wildly or hold themselves in with a maniacal fervor that might lead to frigidity and loused-up marriages.
He thought of his own marriage and quickly wrenched his mind back to the comfort of cold academic musing, at any rate, he had always told himself that his show was a good thing, that it gave the kids a chance to express themselves in their own way.
But he was no longer sure. Not that his theories had changed. Not that the kids had changed. He was changing. A hundred images crowded his aching brain, threatening unreasonably-Jill, Juanita, his wife, a writhing sea of twisting, bobbing heads, Big John's lascivious leer, like a blood smear, like some virulent culture the doctor shows you and you can't believe it's your own.
He wanted to get home, pour a little bourbon over the rocks and settle down with a mystery-some nice soothing little murder tale set in the West Indies or the heart of Africa-some nice civilized place, where the grinding beat of electronic bass fiddles and howling saxophones did not pulse under glaring hot lights, surge in the veins, set the blood to jumping with a will of its own.
Jill was putting the cover on her typewriter when he came in. The rest of the office staff had gone home, and the halls above the studios echoed with emptiness. She maneuvered around the desk to the side opposite from him, dropping a sheaf of papers on his blotter as she passed.
"I put the Curbstone Four on after the second commercial-okay?" She shouldered into her coat, avoiding his gaze. "New commercial schedule starting next week. The stuff is here. Well, good night."
"Wait." The word popped out of him.
She was halfway to the door. She stopped and turned to face him.
He wanted to say something, but what was there to say? "Baby, I-" he shrugged and dropped his hands. "Nothing."
Her eyes looked tired, jaded. "Don," she said. "Yes?"
"Do me a favor. Call me Jill." Her eyes flashed once and she was gone, her heels echoing down the hall.
He picked up the papers, let them drop again. He had not wanted things between Jill and himself to come to this. He had made the first move impulsively, without thinking. Then he had pulled back, refusing her exactly what he had been leading her to expect all these weeks.
Vivid images flashed through his mind-a few afternoons with just a drink together, then one night the show at Mato's, dance a little, drink some more, drive around the lake, find a motel out on the highway, some nice old place gone to seed, with rickety cedar shake cottages and a weeping willow...
Insane. He shook his head. Any other woman. He had had such moments with others. They were not right for Jill. Not even if the rut that raged in him these days brought foam to his mouth and sent him raving into the streets after a hooker. Jill meant too much to him.
He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes for a moment. And yet something was bound to happen to Jill and himself.
Wearily he picked up the phone and dialed his home. No answer. He put the receiver down and sat motionless several minutes, too befuddled to think. Finally, doubtfully, he dialed another number.
"Don, honey-" In Doris Patterson's vigorous twang. "Come quickly-Ben and I just got home from dinner at Vespucci's and said to ourselves, must have a party. We've got half of Magnolia Bluff here and the rest on the way."
"Have you by any chance got my wife there?"
"Why, yes, honey, if you want her. Just a minute."
He listened, his veins turning slowly to lead. After a long pause there was the distant sound of voices at the other end of the line, then the telephone was dropped, recovered, and finally a familiar voice crooned hoarsely, Come on, bay-uh-by, twist it right Come on, bay-uh-by, twist tonight ...
... while Chucky Chubber's tune thundered in the background and saxes and electric guitars tromped over and over up and down the same maddening, moronic melodic line.
"Okay, dammit, okay," he groaned softly. "I'll be right out. But take it easy on the straight stuff, darling. Marge? Marge, do you hear me?"
But the line was dead, even the hollow, painful presence at the other end, gone.
THREE
Juanita made it up the last flight of stairs, let herself into the apartment and stood numbly for a moment, her cheek to the cool wood of the door frame. In the darkness her nostrils shrank from the sharp, persistent tang of muscatel. Try as she would, she could not scrub it from the place. It was always there. She flipped on the light, and her eyes went immediately to the swollen old couch by the window, Huey's bed. He was not there. As always, she did not know whether to laugh or cry, to wish him home or wish him dead.
There were only the dishes from breakfast in the sink, which could mean that he had been following job leads all day or, more-likely, that he had guzzled the lunch money she had given him and had managed to panhandle or borrow enough to keep him smashed all afternoon.
The apartment had only two rooms, plus a small kitchen nook. She crossed to her door, unlocked it and let herself in. In the five years they had been here, she had done her best to fix it up. She had painted the walls a pale, flat green and had tried to cover the awful plaid linoleum with beige and green scatter rugs from the dime store basement. The curtains and bedspread she had made herself, and she owned three sets of pale-yellow sheets and pillow slips that she reserved for her own use.
She had made a desk out of two old bedside tables and a slab of plywood that Vince had lifted from the lumber yard where he had once worked. She had refinished an old kitchen drop-leaf table and skirted it with a pretty green and blue cotton print to make a dressing table. On the wall above it was a round mirror, delicately framed in gold, that she had found at the Good Will. Beside this hung a white taffeta rose, a gift from Vince for her last birthday.
His picture stood on the table in a leather frame, and beside it, unframed, was an autographed photograph of Don Brent: To Juanita, Who Needs a Spanking. And beside them both, an impressive array of bottles and cans and jars-like clusters of oil derricks and huge tanks full of black gold, her capital, her war paint. Beauty aids were one thing she did not stint on-those and food.
But she was proudest of all of her ornate old brass bedstead. She had hated it for so long, thinking of the padded heads of Hollywood beds, of high, old-fashioned Scarlet O'Hara beds with frilled canopies, of her friend Peggy Donohue's neat little maple bed with the knobby bedspread and the comforter at the foot that her grandmother had made her.
Poor Juanita, no grandma...
Nobody but herself had ever been in this room, not Huey, not Vince. She had the only key. Her room was the only place in the world where she felt entirely safe. Here she could be alone-cry, dance, be whoever she wanted to be-even Elizabeth Taylor lounging on an elegant bed. This room was herself, inviolate. Some day she would exchange it for another room, a room where a man slept-her man. But until then, this was hers alone, this secret, locked room.
She stowed her books in the closet, glanced at her hair in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door, groaned mightily and shut the closet quickly. She went into the bathroom to give her hair a quick combing and briefly press a damp cloth to her face. Then she hurried back to the kitchen to get dinner started.
Huey came home an hour later. He stood in the doorway, teetering on his latest pair of cracked old Salvation Army shoes, a kind of Emmett Kelly without grace-unshaven rheumy-eyed, smiling blearily.
"Spa'sh rice, why tha's wonnerful, sweetheart, my favorite, spa'sh rice." He tottered forward, grinning, giving his arrival the lighthearted treatment-Huey Smith, the loose cat of Canal Street. He pulled his sweaty hat from his balding gray head and tried to sail it to the couch. It struck the arm of the couch and flopped soggily to the floor.
"Eat a horse, eat a horse," he mumbled, maneuvering his bottom into a chair at the table.
"Go wash your hands," Juanita snapped.
Huey stumbled into the bathroom and back out again. He wheezed into position over his plate and began to eat noisily.
"Did you go to the state employment office?" Juanita asked as calmly as she was able.
He peered up at her over his hobbling fork and his watery eyes narrowed slyly. "I sure did, sweetheart. First thing this morning. Right off the bat." His voice thinned and he shook his head sadly. "No good, sweetheart, no good. 'What social security card,' I said, 'I'm a journeyman carpenter, Local Three-o-four, Modesto. Tools stolen right out of the bus station in San Luis Obispo in nineteen forty-nine. What do I need a social security card for, I'm not 'fraid to get my hands dirty, work with my hands, these hands, always have, with my hands-' "
"What did you do with it?" she found herself shouting. "Where is your card?"
He peered at her, his head hanging like a rotten fruit, his eyes swimming in drunken confusion and hurt, and immediately she was ashamed of her shouting, her senseless rage.
"Dunno, sweetheart, really dunno, musta lost it. Tomorrow I'll look. I really will, honey, only now-" He closed his eyes, shook his head, got slowly to his feet, holding tightly to the back of the chair. "Only, now-don't feel so good." He shuffled carefully to the couch and let himself slowly down, wheezing and groaning and pressing the grimy back of his hand to his eyes. "Journeyman carpenter, Local Three-o-four. Don't do the work like they used to, miter the corners. Sorry, sweetheart, your old man's sorry. Beautiful like your mother was. God, she was beautiful, Carmen was, sing those Mex songs, La Paloma, beautiful but mean, rotten. You're like your mother, beautiful, mean, and I always do 'em wrong-" He fell asleep.
Juanita finished eating, hurriedly rinsed the dishes and took her coffee into her room. She locked the door behind her, turned on the bed and dressing table lamps. Taking off her skirt, she sat down on the edge of the bed to examine it. The hem was out halfway across the back. Her heel had caught on it-or Vince's shoe-
She began to cry. But she wanted him again. That was the awful thing, she wanted him again, right now, again and again and forever.
Other girls did not have her problems. They were different, she was sure. Something had happened to her long ago, when she had been twelve, something she hated to think about. She had taken a pea-picking job that summer, hoping to earn enough to replace Huey's tools. She still remembered the pea vines, tall, green, leafy walls on either side of her as she worked along the row, dragging a bushel basket. She had been teamed with another girl, but they had parted at the end of the row, moving off in opposite directions. Juanita had been bending over to search out the long, fuzzy green pods, and her first warning had been a slithering sound behind her. She had turned. The men had slipped up silently, one on either side of her, one right through the vines behind her, three red-necked farm hands in grimy overalls. One of them she recognized. He had handed out the baskets from the truck at the edge of the field and had bent down to whisper to her, "There's a river nearby, should you get hot, girlie."
She had thought him pretty ridiculous then, in his baggy overalls, his teeth snaggly and yellow, his eyebrows grown together over his long, peeled nose.
"I'm cool, country boy. Forget it."
"Yer gonna be sorry for that, li'l bangtail."
Now he came closer. A bubble of spittle gleamed a moment in his mouth. "Hiya, sweetie. How about a swim?"
She faced him, her back straight. She did not believe he would do anything. After all, she had made her way daily through the toughest district of the city, and nobody had ever touched her. However, she was not allowing for the license of the wide open spaces, the raw, uncomplicated lust of these three rustic juvenile delinquents.
"How'd you like it if we weighed in your peas a pound or two overweight?" the one just behind the snaggle-toothed leader had offered. "Make you a little money, honey-or you want it in cash?"
"Go to hell." She turned to face the one behind her. He was shorter than the others and fat, his face crimson and swollen and his eyes oddly unfixed. With a sudden spasm of revulsion she saw that he had unbuttoned his overalls.
Then she heard the slide of boots beside her and terror had swept full force across her. She smashed the basket into the face of the fat one and tried to run, but a horny hand clamped across her mouth...
She no longer remembered the details of the struggle beyond the frightening hopelessness she had known at the end when she had thought herself dead. The pain of violation had told her she was not-they had taken her one by one, scuffling and grunting between the green rows under the blazing sun, fighting her more than was necessary, until the last one, the fat one, had finished without help from the others, gasping, rising and leaving her there to roll into a ball and hug her knees to her chest.
"Keep your mouth shut, if you wanta collect wages," the leader had said, bending close to be sure she heard. Contemptuously he had nipped her skirt down to cover her shivering thighs, and had added with sure and terrible insight: "You'll thank us some day, sweetie. You liked that, didn't you?"
She had not told anyone. She had bought Huey tools with the money she had earned that summer. Two weeks after she had given them to him, Huey had hocked them. It had not been the first time he had disappointed her, nor was it to be the last. Time after time she tried to help him shake himself free from the wine-soaked net of fears that trapped him and time after time he failed her, whining and wheedling. She hated him. She loved him. He was all she had.
Yes, she was different from other girls. She had learned early what it was to be a woman. The knowledge gave her a certain advantage over other girls.
They could look down on her for her shabby clothes and short skirts and her wildness. They could even pretend to look down on her because of Vince, who was easily the best looking cat at Mission, if also one of the wildest. They could look down their noses, but she knew they were envious. She knew they sensed that she knew something they did not-that she was still undefeated at a game they had not yet learned to play. She was hip. It was hell, but like her room, like her body, it was something she had...
She brushed her tears away and raised her head. She threw herself across the bed, reached for the radio dial. Rouser Hardwick again: "Hi, ho, cats, up on the hind feet for this one..."
Juanita wriggled out of her half-slip and hung it up, took off her sweater and hung it up, all the while rocking, rocking to the beat. She took out her bathrobe, kicked off her shoes, returned to the full-length mirror. She rocked, twisted, throwing a mocking smile back at the girl in the mirror, twirling the terry cloth robe like a flag.
A week ago she had embroidered Vince's name on her panties. He had not noticed. He had not had the time when he would have had the opportunity.
Oh, you're going to pay, Vincent Ellison, you're going to pay...
She laughed, scooped up the photograph of Don Brent, television personality. She kissed the cold glossiness of the smiling lips, replaced the photo on the table. She laughed, dancing alone in front of the mirror in her underwear.
FOUR
Don found the Patterson's place lit up like a roadhouse. The front door stood open, and Chucky Chubber's record blared from the open windows. Cars were jammed bumper to bumper in the driveway, along the white gravel shoulder and even in his own driveway next door. He had to park on the road a hundred yards away and walk back. Passing his place, he toyed briefly with the thought of going home, taking a quick shower and flopping into bed. But there was the problem of Marge. Don moved on and turned up the flagstone walk that wound its way to the elegant Patterson front door.
Ben and Doris Patterson had one of the showplaces in Magnolia Bluff. After the war, Ben had hired a nationally known architect to design him a "pace-setting" home-a sprawling, split-level palace. Beside it, Don's place looked like a shack. The only comparable features were the terraces with their glass sliding doors.
People were perched all along the railings of the Patterson terraces. The entry hall was a bedlam of casually but well-dressed guests, each holding a drink. A few recognized Don and said hello. He smiled here, shook a hand there, making his way through the crowd and up the Venetian tiled stairs.
He realized as soon as he reached the entrance to the living room why so many people had been crowded into the hall and out onto the terrace. The rug had been rolled back, the furniture piled in the dining alcove and the floor was filled with dancers, most of whom needed plenty of space.
Everybody was learning to do the twist. Short and tall, thin and fat, middle-aged and older, they labored away at making their hips rotate on a plane opposite to that of their shaking shoulders, flapping their arms like gunned-down ducks, cranking their knees, heel-and-toeing. They were doing it out on the terrace and down beside the pool. They were doing it in the kitchen area, and there were shouts and groans of frustration and pain from the hallway upstairs. One couple was even dancing in the sunken center well of the living room, one on the bench that circled the open fireplace. Those who were not dancing were guzzling liquor.
Don hesitated at the fringe of the danger area. "Have you seen Marge?" he shouted into the ear of a woman he thought he recognized as one of his wife's bridge friends. The woman failed to hear him. She was twisting, her eyes closed, her mouth open, her girdled hips grinding methodically. She did not have a partner, but one advantage of the twist was that no partner was necessary. She was doing pretty well without one. She moaned and her tongue shot in and out between seamed and heavily painted lips as she murmured hoarsely, fondly to herself, "Come on bay-uh-by, come on bay-uh-by-"
In his effort to slip past her without interrupting her erotic communion with herself, Don nearly ran into a short, fat man who was clutching at his bald head and shouting at his wife, "I can't do it, dammit, I can't do it. The cha-cha-cha, I learned, but this is impossible."
"Come on, come on," she urged, reaching two plump hands to clutch at his hips and force him manually into appropriate action. "You're wiping your butt on a towel," she said. "And putting a cigarette out with your toe. Keep thinking that-you're wiping your butt on a towel-"
"Oh, God, I'm too old, too damn old," the little man moaned, clutching his head in despair even as he submitted to his wife's vigorous manipulations.
Making it around the pair, Don sidestepped a younger couple, who dipped and weaved expertly opposite one another, their gazes locked and bright with excitement. He recognized a neighbor's wife and thought he recognized her partner as the new golf pro at the Sandy Hill golf club, a bachelor. The woman was good. She ground slowly down to the floor almost as expertly as Juanita had done, her skirt hiking up. The man went down with her, and their knees touched, trembling with the strain of the pose. Twist it in Twist it out
Come on, baby, tell me what it's all about....
Don hesitated in the middle of the floor, his brain twisting painfully to the music, violence unaccountably building up inside of him. A woman's tightly girdled backside rubbed insistently against his and he stepped away, only to bump into somebody on the other side.
Where was Marge? But did he want her-did he really want her? Yes, but only to get her the hell out of this madhouse.
"If I ever saw a man who needed a drink, it's you," a booming voice said behind him. Don turned to find Ben Patterson towering over him, a drink in his hairy fist, his once-handsome face twisted in a bleary grin. "Come on, pal, let's put some oil on those troubled waters."
"Do I look that bad?"
"Like you're just about to blow a fuse. Come on."
There was nothing for it but to follow the slightly weaving Patterson across the room to the bar. Ben picked a bottle at random, looked around unsuccessfully for a glass and finally reached up to the shelf behind him and brought down a silver loving cup. He squinted at the inscription on the trophy and read laboriously: "Baja-San Diego, Unlimited. I'll be damned-forgot all about that one."
"Look, Ben, don't bother."
"Now, think nothing of it, old buddy. I don't mind your drinking out of my sterling silver trophy. After all, no time to stand on ceremony, man needs a drink."
"It isn't ceremony that holds me back, Ben, it's the thought of whisky mixed with silver polish. Have you seen Marge?"
"Okay, you take my drink, nice clean glass. I'll drink out of old Baja-San Diego, Unlimited." Ben poured the cup full of bourbon. Two dead moths floated to the surface. Snickering, he dipped them out one by one and flipped them aside. "Hey want to see my new car?" He fumbled in the breast pocket of his linen jacket. "Ferrari. A beauty, right?"
Don glanced at the colored photo of a gleaming red sports car and did his best to put down a twinge of envy.
"Going to race again, Don," Ben assured him. "Can't keep old Ben off the road. Drink up, boy."
Don lifted his glass briefly, then turned away to scan the dancers. No Marge.
"Baja-San Diego, Unlimited," Ben mumbled, "forgot all about that one," running his finger over the inscription on the cup.
He had made his money during the war. He was not the smartest operator in the electrical supply business, but he had been lucky and quick to capitalize on his luck. About the same time he had started drinking. He had met and married Doris in 1950, gone on the wagon and started racing sports cars. Eight years later he had simultaneously fallen off the wagon and gone off the road into a grove of eucalyptus in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. And now, four years and countless bottles of Kentucky Club later, he was talking about racing again.
Don had known him since before the war, when he had read some of Patterson Electric's commercials as a kid on a small radio station. Ben had just come to town and had set up with a little capital. Nobody knew exactly where he was from. Right now he was one of the biggest advertisers in town and, although he had not yet placed any of his commercials on Don's show, he did spend a lot of money at KLON-TV. Both Charlie Dugan and the sales manager had suggested hopefully that Don should solidify his relationship with Patterson, but somehow he and Ben had never become close friends. Actually, Marge and Doris were much closer than he and Ben would ever be.
"Ben, Marge is here tonight, isn't she?"
The big man looked up dully for a moment. A loose grin spread across his face. "Why didn't you say you were running your wife to earth, old buddy? She went to the powder room with Doris-be right back." He grinned, lighting a cigarette. "Teaching me to do the twist."
"Marge-the twist?" Don laughed. "Since when?"
"Aha!" Ben waggled a finger. "The little woman's been practicing at home, Don, watching that television show of yours. Shouldn't neglect the wife like that." He was serious, solicitous, offering sage advice. "Women get restiess, Don, mistake to neglect them."
Don finished off his drink and reached for the bottle; the wives in question were threading their way through the dancers toward them, Doris in the lead. "Don, you made it!" She leaned on the bar and pressed her shoulder against his, ignoring her husband.
"Darling." Marge brushed past Doris to fall on Don in pretended abandon, wrapping her bare arms around his neck. "To think that you left your hot little nest of nymphets just to come home to your wrinkled old wife." She snickered, rubbing her cheek against his, watching him.
She looked neither wrinkled nor old in the sleeveless blouse and white linen skirt. Her hair, tinted a tawny gold, held its tangled shape, framing a handsome and well-tanned face that showed only the pleasant little crow tracks of her smile. You had to know her to recognize the subtle signs that she was smashed-the swollen veins at the corners of her eyes, the dazzling, almost fierce brilliance of her smile-to know that at any minute she was-likely to pass out cold, break something or wantonly excite some poor guy who would never suspect until too late that she was a blind alley. But until that moment came, she would carry herself well enough, with just the right sophisticated gayety-a well-bred graduate of an expensive woman's college. He had married her, Don sometimes thought, because she had at one time seemed to him to combine the best of two worlds-his and hers.
He took her elbows and pried her loose gently. "Marge, I want to talk to you."
"Oh?" She measured him with her pale, Nordic eyes. How many times had he been coldly conned like this? Her eyes flooded with icy humor and she shook her head playfully. "Not right now, darling," and broke free and grabbed Ben's arm. "I'm teaching Bunny here to twist. Come on, big boy."
They stumbled out onto the floor and she launched into an expert twist. Ben was right-she had been practicing. She was good, damn good. Ben was not bad himself, grinning like a fool, but managing to move with some grace and matching every movement of her hips-teetering closer and closer, the broad grin slowly ebbing away and leaving something prurient and unpleasant on the corroded shoals of his face.
"You're staring, Don." Doris slid her arm under his and bumped him gently, deliberately with her hip. She was not a beautiful woman-her eyes were too narrow, her mouth was too small and thin and faintly vicious. But she had a terrific figure. Her unharnessed breasts made a solid, swollen buttress along the top of the skin-tight tube of elastic jersey she had drawn over her torso, and her hips were wide and full under the light wrap-around cotton skirt. At more than one party at the golf club Don had overheard muttered intimations that Doris Patterson had just been roundly had on the number nine green, but he had never investigated the rumors himself.
"Forty-two-twenty-six-thirty-eight," Doris said, catching his eyes on her. "Dimensions of a shot-putter."
"Not exactly," he muttered, glancing at Marge and Patterson. Marge's knees bent slowly, spreading, and the white linen was tight across her belly as she pumped steadily down before the squinting Patterson, her tongue between her teeth, her eyes half closed, her head tilted to one side, listening for some special, secret word from the wild music.
Come on, baby, do it right Come on, baby, twist tonight....
"I'll bet you don't even know how to do it," Doris drawled softly beside him.
"What?" he asked with a start.
"What do you think?"
"Let's make with the twist, Doris."
"Certainly, darling." She laughed, put a crimson-nailed talon on his arm. "But do you know how, or is Ben right about you? Behind that cherubic smile of yours are you just another righteous Puritan, just a cold fish?"
Don took a pull at his drink and matched her bantering tone. "I can do the stomp."
"Oh, that. That's just the Charleston."
He grinned. "With a new twist."
"And the mashed potatoes?"
"I don't know. The kids haven't tricked me into trying that one yet."
"But the twist, of course!" she crowed with glee. "I remember now, I saw the program where the kids got you out on the floor. You can do it, all right. Okay, Dimples. Isn't that what the kids call you? Come on, show me." Doris batted her lashes, her eyes glittering like black jewels. "I'm not quite sure I've got it."
Don took off his coat and hung it over a chair. Following her out onto the floor, he watched her broad hips undulate beneath the skirt. She had it all right, and plenty of it. Fleetingly he speculated on how she would be, comparing her reputation against Marge's sometimes disappointingly naive and simple bed tastes. When Marge would consent to action of any kind, that was.
Doris had it all right and if she lacked Juanita's tight-hipped control, she made up for it in liquid action and wild abandon. She was a rippling, squirming, jerking morass of flesh opposite him, her small mouth popping open and shut, her beady eyes glittering.
"Take the bait!" she cried, casting an imaginary fly at him, spinning an imaginary reel and cranking him in, closer and closer, with the music pounding in his ears and other bodies jerking and twisting all around him and the vivid image of Marge and Ben doing the same somewhere in a corner in his mind ... closer and closer and all the way over her spasmed, heaping body until they froze, their chests touching, quivering, teetering, gasping, until he had to catch her to keep her from falling flat on her back.
"Don, oh, Don-" Her breath was hot on his cheek, her lips damp at his neck.
He shot a glance across the floor through the plate-glass wall to the terrace and saw that nobody was down by the pool now-no swimmers, no sign of movement in the shadows under the great weeping willow. Doris' fingers ran scratching up the back of his hand, and she pressed closer until one of her breasts heaped high against his arm. He looked down at her round, sloping shoulders, at the valley between her breasts where tiny wrinkles gathered on the swollen mounds like the marks of erosion in a gully between two bald hills.
There was a racket across the floor and abruptly she pulled away, her thumb automatically thrusting down between her breasts to pull the jersey back into place, her eyes narrowing and fixing on the tableau across the floor.
Ben Patterson was reeling in a circle near the entrance archway, trying to clear a space. With one big paw he gripped the hand of a young girl who could not have been over sixteen. She was trying to laugh and at the same time keep her balance, a high pink flush on her translucent cheeks. Each rough yank on her arm caused her to wince involuntarily.
"Gonna learn the mash' potatoes," Patterson was shouting, waving his free arm. "Clear away there. Peggy best baby-sitter dance teacher in world, teach old friend and protector mash' potatoes-clear away there!"
"Mr. Patterson, I really should go home, I really should." The girl smiled painfully, apologetically around at the circle of faces, brushing fruitlessly at her flying white-gold hair, beseeching. "Please, Mr. Patterson, I promised my mom I'd be home by midnight, and it's two already. Please!"
Abruptly Ben stopped and stood spraddle-legged, gazing around at the circle of startled faces. He shook his head and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. His lips moved, saying something inaudible. He had the look of a man pulling himself up short, counting to ten, reciting some ritual of self-restraint. Finally he turned to the girl, loosening his grip. He stroked her hand gently.
"Sorry, honey. Sure, we'll take you home. But I want you to teach me that dance. You promise?"
The girl smiled up at the huge bear of a man bent in sudden supplication above her and there was a gentle note of triumph in her voice. "Sure, Mr. Patterson, next time, okay?" She laughed gaily. "I bet you could mash a lot of potatoes, Mr. Patterson."
Her quip relieved the strange tension in the room. Ben laughed-they all laughed-and he took the girl's arm to lead her toward the long wall closet where the coats were stored.
Don searched the gathering and located Marge. She was seated on the bench by the fireplace, absorbed in the drink in her lap and swaying slightly-a bad sign. He started across to her, but Doris Patterson's hand gripped his arm fiercely. "Don, I want you to take her home."
"Marge?" He stared at her. "Matter of fact."
"No, the girl, Peggy, the baby-sitter. Please." She squeezed his arm urgently, then shook her head impatiently at the puzzlement in his look. "Because-because Ben's too damn drunk to drive. Isn't that reason enough?" Gripping his wrist, she dragged him after her to the archway and planted him there. She cut hastily across the room to the closet where Ben and the girl were searching for her coat.
Doris drew her husband aside and engaged him in a spirited but brief conversation, while the girl stood uncertainly, obviously embarrassed by what she was hearing. Ben protested, turned his head from side to side like a cornered bear, but finally gave in with a shrug, turned from his wife and headed straight for the bar. The girl's eyes followed him-wistfully, Don thought. Doris brought the girl to him and handed her over with brisk instructions to take her home and drive carefully, then left them.
"Excuse me a moment, will you, Peggy. I have to talk to my wife."
The girl nodded absently, her eyes still on Ben Patterson.
Don made his way through the scattering of couples on the floor. They were dropping like flies now, and casualties lined the walls, their heads drooping, untended drinks between their knees. He kneeled at the edge of the sunken fireplace area and bent his head close beside his wife's. "Marge, why don't you go home? I'll be there in a few minutes."
She stirred sluggishly, lifting her head with obvious effort. "Home? Home is where the heart is, Donald."
"Please, Marge. Look, I've had about enough tonight, and you have, too."
"Oh, have I?" She gazed around at the grinding dancers, took a drink and turned to eye him narrowly. "And where are you going?"
"I have to take the girl home." He pointed to where Peggy Donohue stood alone, slim and pale, still staring across at Ben Patterson and his wife.
Marge snorted. "Who's she? One of your little proteges? Now, Donald, you've always said you weren't going to bring any work home."
"Marge, please-"
"We have twin beds. Maybe we should make it triple beds, one of them a crib. Everybody we know has a crib in the house-why shouldn't we have one? For your little friends, of course, your little sisters."
He had had enough. As calmly as he could he said, "I'll see you at home."
She took it as calmly, saluting him with her drink.
"Maybe. Maybe not."
FIVE
Peggy Donohue sat exactly midway between him and the right-hand window, her knees neatly together, her hands folded in her lap. In the faint light from the dash her pretty face had the delicate glow of polished ivory, and her hair seemed as light and fine as spun glass.
She cocked her head and eyed him curiously. "You're the Don Brent on television, aren't you?"
He nodded. As many times as the question was asked him, he still sometimes found it awkward and irritating to make the admission. Sometimes it seemed to him that there were so many other things he might have been-a newscaster, manager of a small radio station, maybe even a network executive-anything but Don Brent of Brent's Bandstand, who had dimples and curly hair and made a genial fool of himself once daily for the entertainment of thirty thousand gawky teen-agers.
"My mom doesn't think much of your show, but she's pretty square, let me tell you. I know somebody who sure digs it. Juanita Smith."
He was surprised that the two girls knew one another. Peggy's address had told him that she lived on Magnolia Bluff, one of the swankiest old residential districts in town. Juanita lived literally across the tracks.
"Don't tell me you go all the way across town to Mission High?"
"Oh, no. I knew her in Y-dub before she had to drop out to go to work. I still see her sometimes, just around. We were good friends, but my mom-" Peggy paused, ashamed and uneasy, choosing her words carefully. "Well, she takes awful good care of me. I guess because I'm all she has."
"I see." So the girl's mother was a widow-or divorced. And, like so many others, she apparently saw Juanita as a bad influence.
"I dig the show too," the girl added anxiously. "I'd like to come down and see it some time."
"Any time, Peggy," he assured her.
She was silent for a few more blocks, then abruptly she blurted out, "Poor Mr. Patterson. I mean-"
"What do you mean, Peggy?"
She hesitated, then brought it out in a rush. "Oh, nothing, it's just that he's such a nice guy but his wife is such a-I mean, I'm sure that's why he drinks."
"Things usually aren't that simple, Peggy," Don muttered and the pretense at wisdom weighed on him as a great lie. What did he know?
"Sure-but he's never like he was tonight-sort of desperate like that. And you've got to admit that she bugs him every minute. Have you ever seen him race? I read about it-I've never seen a race like that in my life. He says he'll take me to the races some time, but cripes, my mom would simply kill me-"
Tired as he was, Don could hardly keep from laughing. So little Peggy had a crush on big Ben Patterson. There was one for the books. "What does your mom think about your sticking around for Ben's parties?"
She gnawed at her pink Up, eyeing him cautiously.
"She doesn't know," she admitted reluctantly. "She thinks I'm just baby-sitting. And I am, of course. It's all right, honestly. When they come home from dinner like that and decide to have a party, Ben-I mean, Mr. Patterson-invites me to hang around and sometimes I do, if I haven't got a date to come and take me home. Mrs. Patterson won't let me drink anything but ginger ale but Mr. Patterson sometimes slips a little shot in for me-not too much, you know. But he treats me like I'm somebody hep-" She stopped. "You're laughing at me."
He shook his head, chuckling helplessly. "No, not at all, Peggy. I understand. I dig, believe me."
She eyed him shrewdly. "Then you're not going to tell my mom?"
"Telling her is up to you. As you say, you're no longer a kid. But I have to say this, Peggy-you do have responsibilities, and the greatest and first one is to yourself, to your conscience." Pausing at a red light, he turned to smile solemnly at her. "Just don't try to pull the wool over your own eyes and you'll be all right."
"I knew you wouldn't rat on me," she said, delighted. "Juanita said you were okay. In fact-" she giggled, watching him-"she thinks you're just a gas, a real doll."
To cover his uneasiness, to hide the sudden, absurd rush of heat to his cheeks, he said callously, "Yeah, well, that's one girl who had better watch her step."
Peggy nodded, suddenly solemn. "She is pretty wild all right." With a sigh she added: "Poor Juanita, she's had all the bad breaks. You know, sometimes I think she's doomed, just doomed. I wonder what will happen to her."
They both fell silent for the rest of the drive up to the Magnolia Ridge. Don pulled up in front of one of the largest old mansions on the street. The place had been divided up into apartments. Peggy and her mother lived on the first floor.
Mrs. Donohue was a short, well-groomed redhead in her late forties-brisk and capable looking. "Thank you very much for standing in for Mr. Patterson and bringing Peggy home, Mr. Brent."
He answered her implied question carefully. "Ben was too busy to leave his guests, so I brought Peggy along."
"Guests?"
A step behind her mother, Peggy chewed her hp and looked imploringly at Dan.
Hastily he improvised. "A few of us came home from dinner with them." And to change the subject: "You have a lovely daughter, Mrs. Donohue."
"Why, thank you, Mr. Brent." The older woman turned a mother's gaze of mingled pride and anxiety on her daughter and Peggy smiled with what looked like shyness but could have been wily humor. "But sometimes I wonder if I really know her," Mrs. Donohue said, turning back to Don. "I often think she's growing away from me."
Don smiled. "I don't remember who said it, but it's good advice-'Raise your children to leave you.' "
Peggy's mother nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose whoever said it was right. Do you have children, Mr. Brent?"
"I'm afraid I don't, Mrs. Donohue. Well, good night."
He nodded to Peggy. The girl was soundlessly mouthing the word: Purrrograaaam-
"Oh, by the way, Mrs. Donohue," Don said. "I would be honored if you and Peggy would come down and see my show some afternoon. We badly need the opinions of parents like yourself."
Mrs. Donohue did not know whether to be pleased or cautious.
"Oh puh-leeze, Mom," her daughter crooned behind her.
Mrs. Donohue nodded. "Tomorrow then."
"Fine. Good night and thanks. So long, Peggy."
"So long, Mr. Brent." The girl's voice trilled happily. "And thanks, thanks for everything." Everything?
Driving home, Don made no plans. He had no idea of what he was going to do, but he knew he would do something. Things between Marge and himself had been going from bad to worse for a long time now-it was a long time since he had felt he was giving any woman "everything"-especially Marge.
And what was he giving Jill? What could he give her?
His driveway had been emptied of other cars, but the party was still roaring next door. He found Marge in the living room. She had put a transistor radio on top of the television set and was twisting before the blank screen. She had not bothered with lights, but a dim glow spilled from the Pattersons' terrace next door. Against it Marge's undulating curves were outlined through the filmy stuff of her nightgown.
Even over the howl of the music she apparently heard his step on the slate floor of the entryway. "Home so soon?" she murmured, not stopping her movements. "Was Peggy a virgin? Tell me all about it, Dimples."
"She's still a virgin," he said and even managed a feeble laugh. Suddenly all the anger left him and Marge seemed merely pitiful dancing so urgently and desperately alone in the empty house. She needed him as much as he needed her. If they came together now, they might sdll recapture what they had lost.
Don stepped toward her and reached past her to turn the radio off. He tried to take her in his arms.
"Oh, no, you don't." Marge twisted free, grabbed the radio and danced away. She turned the volume to full.
Twist it in Twist it out
Tell me, baby, what it's all about....
She hummed and mouthed the melody. He had to shout to make himself heard. "Marge, even if we can't make love, we have to talk."
"About what?" She danced with her back to him, gliding over to dip and grind in the slash of light through the terrace curtains. The sounds from the party drifted into the room and mingled with the raucous chant of the radio.
"About us, dammit!"
She stood still a moment, and only her nightgown moved in the slight draft. Then the radio went screaming across the floor and crashed up against the wall and she faced him, the tendons of her neck standing out like tent ropes. "All right then, let's talk about us. Let's talk about how you won't give me children."
"That's not true, and you know it."
"Then why won't you go take the tests? Why won't you find out if you can give me children? Why, why, why?"
He ground his teeth. "Because it's no good unless we both go. You've got to go too. We both have to take the tests if they're to mean anything."
"Mean anything? I'll tell you what you hope the tests would mean. You don't want children, because then you'll be stuck with me. That's right. Don't shake your head like some punished mutt-you're afraid of being stuck with me. You don't love me, you never have. You don't even like me."
"Marge, that's not true. I did-I do love you. And I want children."
"You want children. We know what kind of kids you want, don't we Buster? like that blond baby tonight and that little heller, Juanita Smith. Oh, you're making her a big television star, aren't you? She's got talent all right, that little-"
"For God's sake, don't start on her. She's a good kid. She's had it rough."
"Oh, has she? Well, I've had it rough too these past two years. If you ever loved me, you stopped long ago. Only kids will save this marriage, and you don't want kids because you don't really want to save the marriage. Oh, I know you think you do. It's all you talk about. Why don't you just divorce me, Don? Get us both off this miserable hook. Get rid of me and get yourself some juicy young thing like your precious Juanita-"
"Dammit, will you lay off her? She's just a kid from a broken home."
"Broken home. Now we're into that again. You and your broken homes. The great benefactor, Big Daddy Dimples. I suppose that little blonde you hauled home tonight is from a-"
"As a matter-of-fact, she doesn't seem to have a father."
"And that one you've got working for you, that size-twelve junior miss with the Polydent grin and no bra-that Jill. Is she from a-oh, no, don't tell me. That would be too much. I tell you, I'm sick of your broken homes. Just because your father copped out on your mother, you're not going to nail me to a cross. Because that's just what our marriage has become for both of us, a cross. We're nailed to it, nailed face to face on the same damn cross with the same damn dirty skanking nails-"
With a dry sob she slumped to the couch, drawing her knees up and pressing her face to them. She made no further sound. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her shins, pulling herself into a tight ball.
Don still felt sorry for her, but overriding his pity was bitterness.
"Maybe Ben Patterson is more your speed," he said softly.
She looked up. "And what about Doris?" she asked as softly. "I saw you two. You mutt. You'd even go for a tired old dyke like Doris."
"What makes you think she's a dyke?"
Marge looked away. "All right then, a tired old piece like Doris, you mutt."
"I'm a mutt. I'm a mutt because my wife has cut me off like I was a dog in heat."
"Exactly." Marge smiled suddenly and her tone sent a chill up his spine. "You're a mongrel, a rutting animal." She closed her eyes dreamily. "Ben now, he's something else again. He may be a lush and a clown-"
"He doesn't think any more of you than he does of any other available woman. They're all the same to him. I ask you, does Doris look like a satisfied wife?"
"Sometimes," she said. "At least she has children. At least Ben is a man."
Abruptly Don knew what he was going to do. He was a little surprised he had not known earlier.
"You're my wife, Marge," he said. "And you're going to stay my wife and be my wife in every sense of the word."
"Am I?" Her voice held challenge.
Don lifted up the hem of her nightgown. He took it in both fists and ripped it slowly down the middle.
"I gave that to you for our last anniversary-do you remember, Marge? Tonight I've got another kind of present for you. The most personal one I can think of-"
She tried to writhe away but he caught her.
"Now take that rag off."
She glared, crouching away from him.
"Take it off," he commanded, keeping between her and escape. "Or I'll take it off for you."
Her eyes narrowed. With a sudden, strange smile she straightened and let the torn nightgown slip to the floor, Her flesh was knobby with the night air-or with excitement-was that possible? Her belly curved down and beyond the saddle of her pelvis he could see the full roll of the flesh of her hips, the softness above her low-slung, dimpled haunches. One taloned hand rested lightly on a thigh, the other went up to toss back a sheath of golden hair. He shucked his clothes swiftly.
"Now come here."
"No," she said, still smiling.
He reached for her again and she held her ground, mocking him with round cat eyes. The tips of her breasts touched his chest and she did not flinch. He tucked his hands under her arms and ran them down slowly. She laughed in his face.
"Okay," he said between his teeth. He flung her to the couch and fell upon her.
A stream of obscenities spewed from her writhing lips and her teeth sank into his shoulder. He drove the shoulder up, jamming her head back.
"Now," he said, "Let's see about my being a man."
She heaved against him, twisted her shoulders, raked her nails along his sides. Her heels thudded spasmodically as she fought him until at last she could struggle no more and yielded.
And, to his surprise, the fire was there-almost as it had been early in their marriage.
Afterward he held her locked in his embrace. Not even now-especially not now-would he let her go.
She was silent a long while, resting the tips of her fingers on his bare shoulder, her nails tap-tapping.
"You're so pretty on the television, Mr. Brent," she murmured. "So cherubic, boyish, innocent. If only your loyal fans knew the truth." She turned her head and her breath was hot and relentless against his ear as she whispered, "Whom did you just violate? Do you know? Was it that little blonde? Was it your hard-working Jill? Or was it that minx Juanita? Don't tell me it was me. Women know these things. You didn't just force me. I'm not even here. I never have been. Think about that and ask yourself why you married me. Think about it, Dimples, sleep on it. If you can."
He held her tightly and buried his face in the rough nap of the cushion, trying to grind the sweat and shame away. Why had he married her? She had been beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated. He had not wanted her money or her father's money. He had loved her-or had thought he did-and the marriage had been good at first. . .
Don was suddenly tired. His eyes closed, his grip relaxed. He slid to one side of the wide couch and felt himself drifting into a twilight zone of half-dreams.
He stirred, felt her peel her body from his and get slowly to her feet. He half opened his eyes to see her sidelong glance of hatred. She turned to move away.
It was, he thought, like the beginning of some bad dream.
SIX
Mission High was on the opposite side of town from Magnolia Bluff. It sat on a knoll in the center of a district that had once been modestly pretty but was now going to seed as a result of neglect, poverty, greedy and indifferent landlords and the unrest and painful conflict of racial intermingling. The houses were unpainted and peeling. The city neglected the streets and sidewalks while preoccupied with jamming a freeway through the district to connect the suburbs with the business area and allow goods to flow freely over the scabrous, forgotten underside of the metropolis. In the growing shadow of the great concrete monoliths of the freeway, the residents struggled to meet high rentals and landlords hoped the city inspectors would not come.
Juanita blazed down the front steps of Mission High after her last class. She had just gotten an A on a social studies test on urban redevelopment and recognized the object lessons all about her without bitterness.
Buddy Jackson was lounging with some other football players on the big granite blocks that flanked the steps. He waved at her and grinned with his big teeth.
"Thanks fer the help on the test yesterday, Aztec."
He had copied the answers right over her shoulder, and there had not been much Juanita could do about it. The nickname was his invention. Juanita was not ashamed that her mother had been Mexican, but she did not like the way Buddy kidded her about it.
"Any time you can't make it, halfback, let me know," she said, laughing into his face and skipping off down the stairs, fully aware of the eyes following her.
Let them look. And weep...
Vince was parked at the curb. She hopped into his car, leaned over and pecked him hard on the cheek. "Hiya, lover."
He failed to respond, drawing hard on the butt between his fingers and squinting narrow-eyed out the window at Buddy Jackson and the other football players on the steps. Oh Lord, she had done it again. She should have ignored Buddy.
"We going to win that contest today, Astaire?" she demanded, trying to divert him.
"What else?" he grunted. He flipped the butt out the window. It sailed up the steps and landed under Buddy Jackson's dangling feet. Jackson glanced up, his laughter fading. He outweighed Vince by at least fifty pounds.
"Vince, please, let's go."
"Okay." He made no move for a moment, but Jackson only stared curiously down at the car, squinting against the sun. Finally Vince put the Ford in gear and peeled rubber away from the curb and past the Sandwich Shop, where the kids stood around against the window and perched on a Coke case, waiting for something to happen-always waiting.
It gave Juanita a thrill to arrive at the parking lot below the looming, windowless white wall of the television station. Other kids would be getting out and would stare at her and Vince, recognizing them, whispering and ogling. It was like being a movie star-in a minor way, of course, but still noticed. And today they were going to take a step up. They were going to dance away with first place in the twist contest and that trip to Hollywood.
Juanita was surprised to spot Peggy Donohue and Peggy's mother getting out of a car on the other side of the lot. Peggy's mother had never approved of dances like the twist. Peggy had always been nicer to Juanita than the other girls in Y-dub, but in a prissy, irritating way. For a brief time they had almost been close friends, but Juanita always had had the feeling that Peggy was putting her down.
Peggy had liked her, but had also envied Juanita's defiance of life. She had not minded Juanita's having a drunken father or a wild boy friend like Vince, but it seemed to Juanita that Peg had pitied her for not having much money. If Peg had not wanted to change Juanita, she had wanted to pity her and pity was just about the worst form of putting down that there was.
The Donohues said hello. Mrs. Donohue was only a little distant, but Peggy seemed glad to see Juanita. She seemed happy to see Vince too, maybe a little too happy. Vince noticed and his spirits rose surprisingly. At least that was a good sign for the contest, Juanita consoled herself.
They all walked across the lot together and into the building. Juanita slipped off to the rest-room to make sure her makeup was right. When she came back, Vince and the Donohue women had already gone into the studio.
She paused in the sound lock and peered through the round window. For some reason her heart was pounding like crazy. She saw the cameras, the kids in the bleachers, Don Brent talking to that pretty but kind of skinny Jill. Then Vince. He was between Peggy and her mother. He was bending close to Peggy, and on his face was that easy, confiding smile that always made him so heart-breakingly handsome-his closing-in smile.
Juanita drew her breath in sharply, bit her hp and pushed the door open.
"Here I am, cats. We can start now."
There was not a head in the place that did not turn, including Vince's.
Don looked deliberately away from Juanita and leaned over to study the music sheet on Jill's clipboard.
Jill said, "Here she is, the Delilah of the younger set."
Don sighed and straightened. He had to admit Juanita was beautiful today, excitement giving her eyes and face, even her hair a warm glow. He was aware of an odd mingling of pleasure and despair.
"Dammit, Jill, look at that skirt."
Juanita had taken up the hem for the occasion.
Jill's comment came faintly, ruefully: "I wish my knees weren't bony-" and by the time he had turned to assure her that they were not, she was hustling away toward the door with the music sheets for Fitz. Impatiently he forced his confusion aside and strode over to greet Peggy Donohue and her mother.
"Glad you could make it, Mrs. Donohue. Hi, Peggy, I see you and Juanita met again."
"Yes." the blond girl said shyly. Not so shyly, she added: "And Vince."
"Oh yes, and Vince." Don's smile was returned with the usual guarded squint by the boy. "How's the Ford running?"
"Okay."
"Good." Don gave Juanita a careful smile. "And how's the Delilah of the younger set?"
For the sake of Mrs. Donohue's tender sensibilities, Don forced a reproving smile and turned to the older woman. "Hope you enjoy the show, Mrs. Donohue. And good luck, kids."
He moved away.
The show went well enough. At one point, during the playing of the new and potent mashed potatoes release called, One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four ... he glanced over at Mrs. Donohue and surprised a look of stunned bemusement on that handsome matron's face-almost a look of desperation. The music was obviously getting to her. She frowned suddenly, probed in her purse for a cigarette and lit it hastily. It was difficult to read her expression after that, she threw up such a smoke screen.
Peggy stood obediently beside her mother, but now and then her feet moved irrepressibly with the music and her mouth murmured the lyrics. She kept her eyes on Vince and Juanita, but it was impossible to tell which one of the pair interested her most.
Juanita and Vince were in fine form, but ran into competition. After a stalemate, they won the contest in a playoff dance. There was just time to congratulate them on the air. Don climbed down from the podium, clutching a wad of certificates and reservations and dragging a hand mike. But before he could reach them, Juanita broke from Vince's grasp and came flying toward him, her bare arms outstretched, her black hair flying, her mouth a crimson smear lifting.
He somehow noticed Carny struggling to swing Camera One around and managed to cock a free eye to the picture on the monitor and note with an aching turn of the intestines that Fitz had been caught with a big fat close-up of lovely little minor Juanita Smith kissing handsome brother-image Don Brent full on the mouth.
"Oh, Don-oh, Daddy, oh, Dimples, we're going to Haaaaaaleeeeeeewoooood!"
When she finally saw fit to release him, he managed to gasp out a fairly coherent closing. The moment the red lights winked off, he swung his gaze fearfully toward the control room window. Charlie Dugan was absent, but Jill stood behind the glass, the clipboard pressed firmly to her chest. As he looked, she tilted her head, gave him a small, icy smile and twiddled her fingers at him. He managed a lame grin.
"I was going to offer-" he turned grimly to Juanita "congratulations."
"Oh, thank you, Don, thank you," she squealed, abandoning Vince and starting for him again. "Thank you-"
"Whoa." He backed away, pretending playful trepidation, almost believing in his own fear-yet he was stirred by the impression the girl's breasts had made against his chest and the sudden warmth of her bare arms about his neck. "Don't thank me-thank your partner. You won this together."
"Why sure, Dimples." Juanita turning her body toward her boy friend while her glance lingered mockingly on Don.
"Thanks a lot, Brent," Vince said quietly, acidly over her shoulder, his dark eyes snapping. Juanita wrenched his head around, held it between her two hands applied her mouth to Vince's with slow, sure vigor. The demonstration brought the entire studio to an absolute standstill for nearly thirty seconds.
Don glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Donohue. Her face was an ominous blank and beside her Peggy stood wide-eyed, pale lips compressed, her face looking oddly crushed and bleak.
"Hey, knock it off you two." Don tried to apply just the right edge to his voice. "Where do you think you are, the balcony of the Orpheum?"
The two pried themselves apart. Vince drew a handkerchief from his vest pocket and wiped his mouth, fixing a look of puzzlement and suspicion on his girl. Juanita turned slowly and sidled back to Don, her slippers making that disturbing whispering sound.
"What hotel will we stay in, Mr. Brent?"
Mr. Brent, Daddy, Dimples-she called him by everything but his first name. He shrugged, doing his best to look angry. "Hollywood Sands, I think."
"Suite?" She giggled at the inane pun.
"A room for everybody," he promised. "By the way, we have to have another chaperon."
"My old man would love to be it," she said, a sly look in her eye. "What about Vince?" She pointed without looking. "We need somebody to take care of him."
"Cool it," Vince muttered uncomfortably.
"His parents' permission will be enough," Don said. She shrugged, still mocking him. "No parents, only an uncle."
"Okay," Don said irritably, "then his guardian's permission." Suddenly he wanted to slap her, take her over his knee, or-just get away from her eyes and her perpetually wriggling body. He was honestly alarmed. "You'll have to get permission to get Friday off from school. We can give you a letter. Jill will arrange everything for you. Talk to her. I'll see you two Saturday morning, okay?"
"Okay," Vince muttered, popping an unlit cigarette into his mouth and looking deliberately away.
"Too much," Juanita murmured, tipping back her head for one last mocking smile and bat of her lashes. "You're just too much, Samson."
Don turned. Mrs. Donohue and Peggy had disappeared. He hesitated, then determinedly left the studio for the dressing room, where he again seated himself in front of the mirror and smoked three cigarettes in succession, doing his best this time to think of absolutely nothing.
He slogged wearily into the office to discover Jill busily clearing her desk.
"That was quite a love scene, Dimples," she said, trying to sound chipper. But her words came tinged with a faint and deadly venom and, embarrassed, she looked down, pushing papers around like someone hunting a lost paper clip.
He groaned. "If you ask me, it was more like a scene between Wallace Beery and Shirley Temple. And don't call me Dimples, please."
"All right then, Mr. Brent." She looked up briskly. "Anything else today?"
"Yes." He swallowed, then looked her square in the eye, and his voice came huskily. "Have a drink with me?"
She stared bleakly at him for a moment, then looked down. "All right," she said so softly he could barely hear her and, without looking at him, she went to get her coat.
He led her to the farthest, darkest booth of a cocktail lounge where neither of them had ever been. When the waitress had brought martinis and gone away again, Jill twirled her glass thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger. "Well?"
"Well, I-" He paused, not at all sure of why he had brought her here, except that he had known after their last exchange that he would have to make the next step, and that this was the next step. "I just thought we might talk."
"Talk?" She pronounced the word bitterly. "I'm sick of talk. We talk and talk, hour after hour up in that office when everybody is gone, when the halls are empty, when there is nobody there but you and me, and you don't want to go home to my empty apartment. But we don't do anything, do we? Nothing ever happens. Why doesn't anything ever happen, Don? Is it me? Is there something wrong with me?"
"You?" he protested painfully. "Christ no, why you're-you're-"
"What?" she asked sharply, challenging him. "What am I-an angel? Oh, no, Don. A virgin?" She shook her head, and suddenly her voice was low and tremulous, a voice he had never heard before. "Don, please, I'm a woman, please, my place tonight-" She reached out and took his hand and dragged it across the table. She turned it upward, kissed the palm and pressed it hard against her breast. "Please, Don, don't you see how hard it is for me to say this-Don, I love you."
Her breast was warm against his hand, moving with her breathing, stirring like a bird seeking release. For a moment he could see nothing but her parted lips-then he shook his head and pulled his hand away.
"Jill, no, please, if you knew how much I want-"
She pushed his hand away, reached for her purse. She stood up. "Wanting is not doing, Mr. Brent. I-I'm not used to martinis and maybe-but sometimes I think there must be something wrong with you." Tears were starting in her eyes and she swallowed. "Is it a war wound or something? You can tell me. You've told me everything else-about your wife, about your mother raising you so gallantly, what a sacred thing marriage is, more sacred than-than love!"
"Dammit, Jill, you've got to give me time," he whispered desperately, angry in his confusion, confused by his anger.
"Time. Time for what?" Jill moved around the table and started out. "Time for your little Delilah?"
He was struggling to get out of the booth, but her last words drove him back into the upholstery. He decided to let her go. Your little Delilah ... what the hell? Everybody was playing the same nonsensical tune at him.
But a vision of Juanita rose up in his mind. She was laughing at him, and her hair was like a living nest of wet black eels and her mouth small, hungry and red as blood.
He had another drink. And another.
For once it was he who was drunk and, strangely enough, Marge was cold sober. It occurred to him that this was the way their marriage had been going for nearly two years now. They were always missing each other's boat. He snickered.
"So what's funny," Marge asked him without interest.
He passed her, moving to the liquor cabinet. "Nothing, just two ships that pass in the night-that's us," he said. "Let's watch television. I want to see if the Arthur Murrays are still getting along. Things move so fast these days."
"You're in fine shape," she said dryly, standing, facing the narrow opening in the terrace curtains, tapping a cigarette sharply, restlessly against a crimson thumbnail. "I think I'll go over to see the Pattersons. At least when Ben gets loaded he doesn't sit around mumbling platitudes."
He moved up behind her to peer over her shoulder.
The Pattersons had their terrace curtains wide open, and every light was blazing in their large living room. Patterson stood alone on the middle of the rug, bending unsteadily over a putter. He turned, selected a driver, bent to place the ball, cranked back and fired. There was a crash of glass from the back of the house. He had used a regulation ball.
"Excellent form," Don mumbled, lingering only long enough to see Patterson double over with laughter and Doris emerge from the kitchen, her face livid. "Better stay here," Don added dryly. "No fun getting conked with a golf ball." He moved back to the couch.
"Then I need a drink."
She had not turned. He looked at her seriously for a long moment, at her slender figure under the robe and her tawny hair knotted in a wild and somehow becoming bun at the back of her head. He got up and went quietly to make her drink, then carried it over to her. She accepted it without looking at him. The Pattersons were arguing, Doris behind the bar, Ben still standing in the middle of the room with the club in his hands.
The words came from him with only a token urgency, in a weary whisper. "Marge, why don't you come down to Hollywood with me this weekend?" He waited numbly. He did not even know what he wanted her reply to be-he only knew he had to make this last attempt.
She turned a look of pretended surprise on him. "And ruin your setup with that little Smith girl? Why, I wouldn't think of it. I love you too much for that, darling."
He had to clamp his eyes shut a moment to find his bearings. He felt as if he were committing hara-kiri ... once you got started, you had to go all the way.
"It'd be a change for you," he continued stubbornly. "We can get rid of the youngsters for most of the time. Juanita's father will be along and he can squire them around. We'd be together and away from here. Maybe away like that, relaxed, with the studio paying for everything-"
She had been listening closely. She turned suddenly away, almost as though frightened that what he said might be true, that a trip away might really change things between them.
"No."
"Marge, it might be our last chance to make our marriage work."
"No."
"Did you hear me, Marge-our last chance."
"Is that a threat?" She was staring across at the Pattersons again, drink in her hand. He wanted to say yes. He said, "No."
She laughed loosely, not in relief, but in mocking disbelief. She raised her glass. She said, shaking her head, "I'll be better off here." She was silent a moment, then turned thoughtfully, raised her eyes and fixed her mocking stare on him. "Ben Patterson will take care of me."
He had the feeling he was being studied clinically, that what she had said had been an invention, some kind of weird ploy, that she did not mean what she said at all. But the implied insult sank in slowly and was too much for him. Half disbelieving his own rage, he nonetheless jumped to his feet, shouting.
"I'm telling you, Marge, you fool around with that dumb drunken ox, and that will be it. I mean it. And that is a threat!"
She continued to stare at him silently. The only sound was the tinkle of ice in his own glass. Unaccountably he found himself rising, not to hit her, but to reach out and touch her.
"Uh-uh," she said, shaking her head, an odd, wistful smile on her face.
He sank back. She meant it. Yet she had never looked so beautiful, with the rich butterscotch coils of hair straggling over her ears, her eyes big and mocking, one hip cocked under the straight fall of the robe.
He tried to shake the tangle of contradictions from his brain and was left with nothing but the longing, the crawling in his groin. "Marge," he said again.
Would he go on calling to her like this for the rest of his life?
Ignoring him, she stepped to the curtains, looked a moment, then jerked them shut. "I'm going to bed," she announced, moving past him. He could hear the whisper of silk, see the long, fine line of her striding legs. He might have reached out, but he had forced her once and the act had proved nothing.
"Marge, I meant that about Patterson."
She turned briefly in the doorway, her face in shadow.
"Have yourself a time in candyland, darling. With your budding little slut."
Then she was gone and he could not suppress a despairing laugh at himself. He had just denied Jill, the one woman he was coming to believe he really loved, and he had just been denied once and for all by his wife, the one woman he was coming to believe he truly hated. And both of these women had struck back at him by invoking the girl, Juanita, the one female he had absolutely no right and no intention of loving.
He could hear Marge humming in the shower and the words came alive in his mind:
All my loves were lovely, All my loves well loved, But lovelier by far than they Is the memory of their loves...
He made a drunken toast, raising his glass to the mutely hanging curtains. Here's to our house of hate, where time regrets her years, and the air is thick with the breath of the sick and even the walls have fears...
Whatever happened to the good sweet days of our youth, he allowed himself to wonder, and further: had they ever really been?
SEVEN
So this was Hollywood. Crazy. Juanita had not liked the jet, especially the seat belt, the feeling of being held down and helpless. The plane had given her the sensation of a plush coffin, securely pressure-sealed.
Vince had eaten it up. "Seven hundred per," he had whispered in awe as they had speared straight upward for a long, long time, then leveled off. Then when it seemed they had scarcely been flying level for ten minutes, the plane had pointed earthward again.
You did not really feel the speed but Vince loved speed, even in the abstract. "The sound barrier-you don't know what that means, 'Nita. We could break it in this thing."
No, thanks, not if it meant having some too brisk, too efficient stewardess strap you down for the trip. Of course, Vince had flipped over the stewardesses too, or had pretended to. There was no relieving the pressure between him and Juanita that had built up since that awful time in the front seat of his Ford and she was not even sure she wanted to relieve it. It added to the excitement that kept her heart racing, her mouth damp with anticipation.
But things were a little disappointing at first. The airport was big, but just like any other airport, the limousine just like any other bus. Dimples did not help much, keeping a buttoned lip most of the way. She had been unable to get even a faint blush out of him. But surprisingly he had put away two martinis during the trip and aside from itching for one of the cool silver drinks herself, Juanita had been oddly excited by his drinking and the seeming desperation of his mood. In a way it made the perfect counterpoint to her own giddy feelings of suspended elation. She felt like kissing him again.
Her single source of unease was her father. Huey was freshly shaven and wearing a nearly new suit she had bought him at the Salvation Army thrift shop. His hair was combed, his shirt ironed, his shoes polished. But he did not look like the distinguished old man she had hoped for. There was no mistaking the raw-meat complexion, the watery eyes, the thin, brittle hair and loose lip of the lush. His gnarled old hands trembled in his lap and when the stewardess brought the first martini to Dimples, Huey's eyes rolled alarmingly. But she had made him promise not to drink until noon and he held on, desperately silent, scared and horribly shy, as he always was when he was sober.
While his abject helplessness made her mad, it filled her with a familiar, aching pity and she had to do her best to ignore him.
Hollywood. It began to get to her. Suddenly they were gliding along among the low pavilions of the stucco jungle, spinning along past palm trees that grew right on the parking strips like the chestnuts and sycamores at home, surrounded by a sun-drenched, candy-colored pastel world of flowered yards, jazzy store fronts and broad white streets, the whole scene positively seething with glossy automobiles. Even the people seemed different-browner, blonder, brighter, at least seventy per cent of them in dark glasses.
"Everybody has their shades on, trying to look like a movie star, and everybody's peering around everybody else's shade, trying to spot a movie star. Isn't it a gas?" Giggling, she nudged Don hard in the ribs.
He smiled and nodded. The martinis seemed to have brought him halfway back to the land of the living.
They pulled up in front of the Hollywood Sands and got out. To the left of the entrance was a deep green funnel of jungle growth leading into a bar, the Kraal. There were real live parrots in glass cages among the elephant-ear leaves, bright macaws the color of knitted afghans. "Oh, Dimples, let's go in there!"
Don shook his head. "Debbie Reynolds would have trouble getting a drink in there, child. That's the men's bar."
Huey was gazing bright-eyed into the cool, dim recesses of the place, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. Juanita had the feeling he would like to scuttle over, reach into a cage, grasp a parrot, drink the parrot. She giggled, then was immediately ashamed of herself, laughing at her own father. But she felt so good!
"Then you and Vince can go in later. How 'bout that, lover?" She had to lean over to grin up into Vince's face.
Vince shrugged, glancing at Brent with a rueful smirk.
"Behave," Don said with forced severity, "or you go back on the next jet!"
"I'll fly back on my own power," Juanita cried, dancing in ahead of them through the plate-glass doors. "I'm a jet-I'm a jet!"
The elderly bellboy was like a wizened little monkey in his red suit. He watched her slyly as he struggled along with the bags and she knew he was puzzled. Was she a tourist or a newly discovered juvenile descended on the town for her first picture? In his time he had seen them all, but still he was impressed, she was sure.
They all were.
A stout man in black horn-rimmed glasses, smooth-shaven, manicured, turned his wily olive-green eyes up from his paper as they passed and she saw a stirring in his jaundiced gaze, almost as if he were shaken by some poignant memory. She laughed for no reason at all, trailing past him after the bellboy and the determinedly striding Don Brent. She had bought a new outfit for the occasion, spending every cent she had managed to save the past few months. The skirt was wine-colored, straight, the blouse pale blue. The blouse took nothing away from her full-blown breasts, but its loose folds gave them a furtiveness, a delicate mystery.
"Not bad, not bad at all." Vince was looking around the lobby and she knew he was trying to be cool though he was as excited as she.
On the wall of the elevator were directions on how to get to the pool and cabanas.
"Cabanas?" she wondered excitedly.
"Separate little rooms around the pool," Don explained. "Cabins." His eyes were twinkling. He was enjoying their pleasure, too.
"Yeah," Vince commented dryly. "Like a motel." He took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and popped it into his mouth, filter end out. Vince, who prided himself on being cool at all times. Juanita felt a small twinge of gentle contempt as he hastily switched the cigarette around.
Their rooms were a little disappointing, modern and bright, but small and strangely barren, with no pictures on the walls, no vast expanses of fluffy carpet, no rolling tables with silver tea services on them, no long dividers covered with creeping vines. Juanita made a mental correction of the movies about Hollywood she had seen and was happy again.
Her room had a view of the pool. She gazed a moment, took a quick shower and changed her underwear. Again she pressed her nose to the glass to peer down at the green pool and its circle of little cabins. Lovely golden people lounged about on the blue tiles. They had drinks. A waiter moved among them with a silver tray.
There was a familiar, hesitant scratching on the door and she went to open it. Huey's room connected with hers. Huey came in furtively, his watery eyes pleading.
"Sweetheart, yer old man's dry as a powder house. Can't you swing a drink for me, daughter? I'm feelin' sick."
"There'll be plenty later," she told him shortly. "We've got a lot of places to go and I don't want you falling-down drunk."
She turned away, then turned back and ran to hug him. "Oh, I'm sorry, Pops. But please, please don't ruin it all."
"I won't, sweetheart. You can count on me," he muttered, patting her shoulder awkwardly. But he was sweating and had to flop into a chair, where he sat restlessly, his eyes flitting about anxiously.
Next came a nervous, staccato rapping on the hall door, and she let Vince in. He had removed his white shirt and tie and replaced it with a gaucho shirt, blue-striped.
"Oh, no, lover, you're too loud."
"Nuts," Vince said, pacing nervously to the window and back. As always in an unfamiliar situation, he was growing increasingly nervous, holding in a building violence. She had been proud of this exciting quality in him around the softer, more cautious and polite kids at school, but now it made her feel a little ashamed.
"Cool off, lover-we just got here."
"Man, I need a beer. Is this Dimples kook going to bluenose us all the way?"
"Let's go over the schedule," Don said quietly from the open doorway, his gaze on Vince.
Juanita measured the two of them and saw Vince look nervously away from the older man's level stare.
"The schedule-let's have it." Juanita seated herself eagerly on the end of the bed, easing the unfamiliar heels from her swollen feet.
"Okay." Dimples grinned and began to read from a typed sheet. "The recording company's publicity man and photographer should be here any minute. They'll be bird-dogging us all the way. First, some shots around the hotel, down by the pool and so forth. Then we have lunch here. Then over to the recording studios to meet The Ravens and Stan Dorsey and maybe Chubbers, if he can make it. Then some more pictures at Hollywood and Vine and around, you know, the winners having a ball in Hollywood. Late this afternoon you do a solo shot on the network dance show out at Television City."
"You mean we get to dance?"
"Coast to coast," he assured her.
"Catch me!" She threw herself back on the bed, letting her legs flop into the air, not caring.
Dimple's voice took on a subtle change. Juanita continued to look at the ceiling, but she was glad she had on clean underwear.
"Tonight we go to a premiere out on Sunset. A rock and roller called Not Too Young. Then home to bed."
"But what about Ciro's? The Mocambo?"
"Yeah, how about that, man?" Vince came tensely alive.
"I told you to behave," Don warned gently. "Tell you what, tonight, once we're up here for good, I'll have room service send each of us a dry martini."
"Oh, wow," Vince drawled sarcastically.
"Cool it," Juanita snapped. "Dimples is only doing his job."
Vince subsided grumpily. Don continued. "Tomorrow you'll be on the Chubbers set all day. They'll use you in a few dance scenes for his latest movie. The Stomp, I think the thing is going to be called."
"You mean-" She stared at him, unbelieving.
He grinned, absorbed in her pleasure. "Yep, you're going to be in the movies. In fact, you'll get paid."
"Oh, no, oh, God-oh, too much!" She jumped up and went tramping around the bed in her stockinged feet. She began to bounce, her skirt flying, feeling like the kid she had hardly ever been. "I'm a jet, a jet!" Flinging herself toward the ceiling and sinking back into the mattress with a satisfying crash.
"Easy, easy," Don protested, half laughing, half alarmed.
"Jet, nothing," Vince grumbled. "You're out of your skull."
"What say we retire to the bar?" Huey suggested suddenly from his corner. "Should protect ourselves from the sun. Mad dogs and Englishmen-"
"And then all day Sunday, it's Disneyland," Don finished.
"Now, that," Vince drawled with all the sarcasm he could muster, staring hard at her, "is no surprise at all."
"I think it's great." Juanita wriggled happily on the bed, aware of Don's averted glance and of Vince's jealous anger.
The rest of the day was a wild and dizzying whirl of dazzling confusion, delightful surprises, thrilling shock. At lunch, Huey got his drink, a martini-the nearest thing he could order to straight gin.
Juanita could not get him to eat a thing, but she was too busy with her own lunch to bother much. She, Don, Huey and Vince sat at a crisp, white, linen table right in the middle of a vast room full of other diners. Overhead, crystal chandeliers sparkled even at noon. Waiters scurried with quiet, urgent formality between tables.
Juanita watched Dimples order easily-he seemed to find his place on the gigantic menu as though it were a map of his childhood. Vince smoked incessantly before, during and after the meal and she was impatient with the way he hunched over his plate, as though he were afraid one of the waiters would snatch it away.
She eyed the other diners and saw several looking at her, especially men. She felt beautiful, she felt rare-she sensed the hunger of men and the envy of women. She was more herself than ever before in her life. Here all the people seemed more tensely aware of one another-this was Hollywood.
The publicity man was short and nervous. His photographer was tall and nervous. She and Vince posed in her room, out in front of the hotel, in the lobby, in bathing suits down beside the pool. She did not get a chance to take a dip. Protesting loudly, she was dragged away to her room and told to dress again.
"Your hair," Don explained, with his eyes upon her growing softer, sadder every minute. "Got to keep you in shape for the worshiping millions, child."
Millions. There were millions of eyes watching for her and Vince, waiting to see them dance on flickering screens across the nation.
On the oddly barren, strangely unexceptional corner of Sunset and Vine, they had their pictures taken doing the twist right on the sidewalk out under the sun. A man with newspapers under his arm and a change-maker on his belt hummed the melody for them and snapped his fingers. A small boy with freckles ran up to her, propelled forward by an alert woman in tinted glasses who looked to be his grandmother, and asked her for her autograph. She signed her name in his little book, selecting a pale-green page, giggling like crazy, while Don looked on with a smile and Vince fired a butt into the gutter and immediately lit another.
The recording studio was a big room surrounded by glass windows, where all the sounds were strangely muffled and soft, even the clash of the drummer's cymbals that intermittently accented the suave jazz of the Stan Dorsey Trio. The recording session was long and during it the trio played the same number no less than eight times before they got what she was told was a "take"-a good recording.
She and Vince were introduced by the publicity man. Mr. Dorsey was a grave young man with thick glasses and a sheaf of music paper in his hands that he kept examining tensely. But he did take time to look at her a second time, and she knew that he liked what he saw, that he very nearly came out of whatever complex musical dream stupefied him.
The Ravens were different, waiting in a smoking lounge beside the studio to start their own session. They were four wildcats, two of them brothers, all with long black ducktails and smooth, glinting dacron suits. They could not have been more than a year older than she and Vince, but they had a nervous, cool confidence. One of them asked her for a date right out.
"Or are you with the dimpled daddy over there?" He jerked a nod toward Don, snapping his fingers idly, letting his little pin-point eyes drift languidly up and down her body.
The idea was so sudden and flattering that Juanita giggled right in his face and he shrugged, turned away-and found himself facing Vince's grim stare. He threw his hands up in a comic gesture of protest. "All right, all right, don't hate me, I'm only a married scat singer and father of four!"
It was funny and strange and exciting. Even the publicity man grew more attentive as the afternoon whirled on. Only the photographer did not seem to know she was there as a person-he was too busy peering at her through his lenses. They had their pictures taken with both Dorsey and The Ravens. Chubbers failed to show up.
At one point Don disappeared and Huey trailed after him. When they returned, Juanita caught a whiff of Huey's fortified breath and noted that Dimples seemed once again stubbornly indifferent toward her. It was as though he were drinking to forget her. What a great idea! She skipped up to him and took his lapels in her hands. "What next, chaperon?"
He smiled vaguely and consulted his schedule. "Limber up those little legs, child. We're off for Television City."
They went in a real limousine this time, a Cadillac. Vince leaned forward to grill the chauffeur about the car, ignoring the rest of them all the way, trying so hard to cold-shoulder Juanita she had to laugh to herself.
More of the vast, flat, stucco world peeled endlessly by. Then they were at their destination. The studio was not much bigger than the one back home, but there seemed to be a lot more producers running around giving orders.
But Juanita felt no nervousness when the floor manager gestured her and Vince out to the middle of the floor, and the throbbing beat of Twist it Right came slowly up. She could not hear what the announcer was saying, but whatever it was, it was all right with her, because she had the music right there in her spine and Vince was himself at last, really cool for the first time since they had arrived. He was the old Vince with the sharp, handsome features, the easy tilt of his head, the intimate, closing-in smile, the smoothly rocking, slender body.
She was surprised when the dance was over. She felt her pelvis tightening up as the music drained out of her. As she and Vince moved off the floor hand in hand to a rousing round of applause, she scarcely heard Vince's whispered, "We cooled it, kid, we cooled it-" She was looking for Don.
"Out for a drink," the publicity man told her, doing his lame best to be cute. "Want a root beer?"
"Nuts," Vince muttered angrily. "He's out for a shot and we're sweating our tails off."
"Stop it," Juanita snapped at him, tired of his vulgarity and his complaining, but most of all hurt that Don had not stayed to watch her dance.
Vince glared sullenly. She moved away from him to watch the rest of the show, pouting unhappily. When Don finally appeared, with Huey weaving along happily at his side, her heart began to trip happily again.
She watched him through the remainder of the afternoon. And Vince watched her. Filled with good liquor for once in his life, Huey was unusually cheerful. Don was quiet. He had two martinis during the meal. It was not until after she had put on her old dress, the one Aunt Lucile had made over for her long ago, that Juanita realized how tired she was. It had been a long, hard day. But there was more.
The premiere was outwardly like those she had seen in the movies, with crowds jostling the rope fences leading in under the marquee and searchlights combing the blackness overhead-with glittering women and men in dinner jackets. But she had not guessed at the chaos inside the theatre, with photographers and little men with pencils and slips of paper running around everywhere, with flash bulbs going off like guns until every flash shot a sharp pain behind your eyeball. Even the important people were looking lost, anxiously alert, talking loudly and endlessly-and unimportantly.
Nor had she been prepared to see the theatre become half empty, to see the ermine stoles and dinner jackets slipping away up the aisle before the picture was half over. The event seemed to be nothing but a shell, a false front, a make-believe occasion with some vague purpose of which nobody was really sure.
The young male star of the picture spoke briefly before the showing, but she could not hear him very well over the microphone-besides, he seemed pretty drunk. Later, she was sure, he was among the ghostly shapes abandoning the front rows one by one during the showing, so that the theatre was nearly empty when the lights came back on at the end.
When the show was over Don said wearily, "I'd say we've had about enough for today, kids. Let's go home to bed."
"Man, it's only ten-thirty," Vince protested. "Want to see another movie?" Don inquired with weary sarcasm. "No, but-"
"Then come on. I promised you a drink."
The sidewalk was abandoned when they exited. The searchlights had already been towed away and there was no crowd. They caught a cab back to the hotel. Vince sat stiffly in the car. Juanita had an impulse to take his hand but decided abruptly not to. She was tired and on edge and he kept snapping his fingers and staring hard out the window.
When they were in Don's room, Vince drew her aside. "Listen, we have our phony IDs. They'll pass, anything'! ! pass at this time of night if we're cool about it. Let's ditch this drag and go down for a drink."
She hesitated, then made up her mind. "No, Don says not to. He's calling room service right now."
"What is it with you?" he demanded, shooting a venomous glance across the room to where Don bent over the phone.
"Vince, you're hurting my arm."
"I'm telling you, Nita, if you-" He swallowed hard and despite his fierce glare, his voice was faint, almost plaintive. "Baby, I want to see you later. I want-leave your door unlocked."
"No," she said and then, confused by the familiar stirring within herself, she whispered pleadingly, "Not tonight, please, Vince."
like an iron grating, the resentment slid down over his features and he turned to stare through the window.
Huey stumbled from the bathroom. His tie hung untied, his shirt was open and there was a loose, lost smile on his livid features. "Journeyman carpenter," he said. "Worked with these two hands, not 'fraid to admit it, worked with my hands-"
She got him by the arm. "Help me, Vince." Reluctantly he came over to get Huey's other arm and they half-carried the old man into his room and put him down on the bed. Juanita waved Vince out, saw his pale, indignant face turned toward her, then the door closing. In the darkness she stripped her father down to his underwear.
"Robbed of livelihood," Huey muttered. "Robbed all my life, robbed of Carmen, beautiful Carmen, sing La Paloma-"
She pulled the covers up over him and he turned, grunting, and curled up, with his hands to his grizzled cheeks. She stood for a moment in the darkness. Oh Papa, Papa ... she thought, and suddenly she wanted to talk to Vince, wanted him to hold her hand.
She hurried back into her room but Vince was gone. She went to look for Don.
Don turned from the phone. "Where's Vince."
"I don't know." And then, covering up out of habit: "I think he felt a little sick and went to bed."
She kicked her shoes off and crawled up on the bed, tucking her legs under her and leaning back against the padded headboard. "Gee, I'm pooped."
"Me too," Don said. He sank into a chair. "Busy day."
"Wild."
"And your father?"
"Vince and I put him to bed."
"Tell me about Huey," Don said. He leaned forward to prop an elbow on a knee. The smudges of weariness under his eyes made him look sadder, older, handsomer. "Tell me about both your parents."
She told him. She told him about her mother's leaving when she had been just a baby, about the three times she had seen her mother, each time for only a day, twice in Milwaukee, once out here. How beautiful her mother was, even now, and how she had always believed her mother had not wanted her and that Huey's drinking had been only an excuse, a way to get free of unwanted husband and unwanted daughter.
The waiter came with the drinks, then left. Juanita went on. She told him about all the jobs Huey had held and lost, about the time she had had to have her tonsils out and he had stolen a set of lug wrenches from a garage to pay her doctor's bill. She had come out of the hospital full of ice cream and the love of the nurses only to find her father in jail.
She told him about the times she had had to send a boy friend to drag Huey out of the gutter and help carry him upstairs, about the times he had reciprocated by driving her boy friends away, about all the nights as a little girl she had lain awake in her bed listening to the unspeakable howls and groans, the jibbering descriptions of two-headed demons, rats and scorpions, a gigantic ball of yarn that unwound and unwound, tumbling in her father's wine-crazed brain. All those nights he had died and each night she had died a little with him-until she had gradually hardened, had learned how to hold him through whole weeks of sobriety, to be stern with him when she had to.
Only recently a social worker had wanted to put him in a hospital. She had promptly gotten a job to support them both and somehow had talked them from taking away the father she hated-and loved.
She said it out loud. "I can't help it, he's my father."
She told Don more than she should have, more than she had ever told anybody, even Vince. And he listened quietly, finishing his own drink, starting on Vince's, his eyes fixed blindly on the wall, now and then looking at her and, when she looked back, pulling his glance quickly away.
"What about you?" she asked at last. "What's your-your wife like?"
He stared down into his glass. She knew he wanted to tell her, could feel him struggling not to. He stood up abruptly, looking at his watch. "My God, time for bed. Got to say good night, child. We've got a busy day ahead of us."
"Yes."
He held the door for her, waiting. "So many families are-incomplete these days, Juanita. In a way it helps to face it, you know. Then it doesn't bug us so much."
He smiled and for a moment she felt lifted free by the gentleness of his glance. "Let me stay," she asked softly. "Just for a minute. Just to talk."
He stared at her for a long moment, and the blood drained slowly from his face, leaving it bleak and cold as a rock. He said abruptly, "Get out and go to sleep."
From his tone, Juanita knew better than to argue.
Back in her own room, she wondered if he would check on Vince. There was going to be trouble if he did. She got ready for bed, locked her door and crawled in. For a while she was sad, but the events of the day began to gambol through her thoughts and she was slipping happily off to sleep in a haze of pink stucco shadows, sun and tanned flesh, blue-muted searchlight beams and popping flash bulbs, when Vince's sharp rap came at the door.
"Who is it?"
The rap again, sharp, insistent, like him. Wearily she crawled out and went to press her cheek to the panel, "Who is it?"
"You know who it is. I've got a bottle."
"Go away."
"Don't square up on me, baby. Let me in."
"Go away and let me sleep."
There was a long silence, then his voice, more faintly: " 'Nita, I love you."
"Then go away, go away!"
"Baby, you've got to love me, you've just got to."
She hesitated, then whispered faintly back. "I do, Vince-oh, I do. But please go to bed, please."
Another silence. Then his voice came coldly: "You're not the only one who can play this game. Okay. Sleep tight, baby."
His footsteps moved briskly away, down the hall.
Oh, God, she thought, crawling miserably back into bed to press her face to the cool freshness of the pillow. Why was it always this way? Why was there only one way to prove her love to him?
She knew all the answers they had so handy in psychology. Vince had no parents at all. His mother had died giving birth to him. His father had died seven years later, poisoned by sulphur or something in the chemical plant where he had worked all his life. Vince had been raised by an uncle, tough, hard-working, virtually a stranger.
But such answers were no help. They might explain Vince, but not her own feelings. Sometimes she wished those farm hands had killed her and left her between the tall pea rows wound with sticky tendrils, under the glaring sun. She remembered the blood on her torn pants, blood caked and brown on her legs, blood on her split lips. She could remember the taste of pain. In the three long years that had followed, she had hated the memory, but sometimes at night she lived through the violence again and found inside her a turgid stirring, the hot, moving coils of something she could not name.
She had gone out with boys afterward-before she met Vince-one after another. And nearly every time they had recoiled in shock and horror from her reaction to their anxious or faintly hopeful touches. She had flown into frenzies, slashing them with her nails, spewing out filthy names and later-too late, she had wept with shame and disappointment. Why did she get so excited? A kiss, a hand held in the movie, a touch to her breast-these were to be expected, they were normal, they were right.
But she could not stand to be touched-until she met Vince.
The first night she had slapped his face. He had grown very cool with her. So cool that it was she who had made the next move. They had been in a drive-in theatre, with the vast wall of blazing technicolor light flickering at them, and the faint, ardent rustling of lovers in other cars all around them. Suddenly she had leaned over and kissed him awkwardly.
She was not sure what had happened after that. She had only known that the coils were moving inside her and that suddenly she had clung to Vince and a vivid image of the fat, red-faced farm boy had blazed across her thoughts.
Her actions had been a mistake-she had known so instantly. Vince had wanted her and yet she had known that deep inside him he had been startled and horrified by her sudden passion. He had never mentioned it, but she had known.
On another night, in the same drive-in, they had crawled into the back seat. She. had managed to hold herself in until his desire rose to match hers. Then she had let go, had unleashed the coding monster inside her. She had tasted blood again that night, Vince's and her own, mingled on her lips and the red-necked farm boy had been right-they had taught her something, and she had liked it. Oh, God, she liked it far, far too much. She could hear the rasp of Huey's breathing through the door. Somebody was singing drunkenly but sweetly, something from an opera, down beside the pool, but she was too tired to get up and look. The bed was big, bigger than her own. She felt lost in it. She felt cold. She wanted Vince, anybody, a man-flesh.
Love. What was it? Was it always a two-edged sword?
She wished there were a man who would be gentle with her. A man who was not so tortured by need himself that he could give. Just once in her life-a man who would give and not take.
She knew the wish was silly but it clung stubbornly in her imagination, a storybook love, a man who would give her everything.
Huey groaned and cried out softly, "Carmen."
Oh, Mama, you could tell me what to do...
EIGHT
To dream about any woman the way he had was torture. Because the woman was still a girl-a girl who a few scant hours before had quietly and almost entirely without self-pity, laid her life out before him. And it had not been a life to stir the listener with pride in the human race.
The hangover was no help. Don ordered breakfast and sent the waiter to the kids with a message that he would be over later and they should order for themselves. Don put down soft-boiled eggs, toast and bacon and made his phone calls. Everything was set. The kids had been cleared through the Screen Actor's Guild and AFTRA-the Chubbers unit was set to shoot the dance sequences beginning right after lunch.
He sat at the phone for a long time, idly fingering the tight little coils of the handset cord. Finally, taking a deep breath, he dialed the long distance operator, gave her his home number and braced himself for Marge's voice.
"Don, darling. What gets you up so early? It's only ten."
"Had a long day with the kids yesterday."
"I'll bet you did. And how's our Juanita?"
"Marge, about what I said the night before I left-"
"Oh, that. Matter of fact, Ben's right here, so you see, there's no reason to worry. I'm sitting on his lap, eating scrambled eggs."
Her laughter rang in his ear. Was she trying to throw him off by kidding? He did not want to know. Surprisingly, he did not give a damn.
"I just thought I'd call."
"Of course, darling. Everything's fine. The man came to fix the dryer yesterday. I'm having the nicest little Japanese man mow the lawn. He used to pull a rickshaw, can you imagine?"
"That would probably be Chinese. Marge-"
"And the bill came from the dentist-forty-four fifty. That's a lot of filling, isn't it, but then, he's still paying for his high-speed drill. And, so yes, darling-" she paused and he knew that this was what she had been working up to, the kicker-"the cat's in heat."
The phone went dead. There was no sound of the receiver being slammed down-simply the sudden absence of a presence on the other end of the line. Don put the handset down gently, fit a cigarette and sat beside the phone, smoking.
Suddenly he had to talk to Jill. His hands shook as he dialed, gave his home studio number. The buzzing seemed oddly distant.
Linda, Fitz's assistant, answered, went looking for Jill. She was back in a minute. "Sorry, Don, I didn't know. Bud says she came in this morning, decided to take a week off and left at noon."
"Probably gone up to her cabin at the lake," he mused aloud. He made no excuse. "There were some notes from the net publicity people, nothing important-"
"I'll be glad to dig them out for you."
"No, thanks, Linda, don't bother. I'll be in Monday morning."
Shaving, he nicked himself with the first stroke. What would he have said to Jill? He had simply wanted to hear her voice. Would she have asked about Juanita too? Would that have made her a bitch also? Of course not.
He cut himself again and decided on a morning drink. He had one, finished dressing and went to Juanita's room.
He knocked and she opened the door. She looked bright and fresh and seemed glad to see him, but as he stepped in he found the room charged with tension. Vince stood at the window, and Don had the feeling that the boy had been there for some time. He was staring grimly down at the pool, his hands jammed deep in his pockets and his mouth set in a thin, stubborn line.
"Well, stars, we ready to go?"
"Today I'm a rocket," Juanita announced, but her gaiety was forced, and she frowned impatiently at Vince. "Hey, Tyrone, you're wanted on the set."
Vince turned with a sigh, ignoring her. "Any time, Dimples."
"Where's Huey?"
Juanita wrinkled her nose. "Still out. We'd better leave him here-just lock him in."
"He won't panic if he wakes up?"
"As many times as he's been the route? Ha. He won't feel safe if he isn't locked in." She flung her head, going to give herself a last examination. She caught Don gazing at her from across the room and smiled ruefully back at his reflection. "No, really, Dimples, he'll be all right. We're better off without him."
"You're tellin' me," Vince muttered.
"Then let's get going. We'll grab lunch at the studio."
Juanita spun away from the mirror. "How do I look?"
Don sensed Vince's resentful attention. "Chubbers will love you," he muttered, turning to the door.
Behind him, Juanita laughed. At him? At Vince? Don felt old, older even than his hangover warranted. He could taste the morning bourbon at the back of his tongue.
Chucky Chubbers was a pleasant, soft-spoken man. He was nearly thirty but there was still something of the innocent eagerness and tension of adolescence about him and probably always would be. He took to Juanita immediately and insisted that the director use her instead of the professional who had been assigned to dance with him during the instrumental break in his song.
Watching from the sidelines as they set up the scene, Don found himself grimly amused at Vince's sullen reaction when the star hopped down from the microphone, stole his girl away from him and began to twist opposite her.
Then, suddenly, watching Chubbers expertly bringing out Juanita's fiery best, Don was aware that his own reaction made him extremely uncomfortable. The look on his face must have matched that on Vince's.
When the record-company flak suggested they slip out for a drink, he grabbed at the chance. They left Juanita and Vince to discover for themselves that movie making can be a long, drawn-out, repetitive process, and the photographer to do his job.
They had to drive off the lot to find a bar.
"The kid is a knockout," muttered the pudgy publicist over his manhattan. "Sort of like Liz Taylor when she was young. There was always that provocative hint of prurience about her, even when she played the innocent pre-teen horse lover. You remember. It was in the mouth, I guess, something more exciting than purity. I guess that's what made her look so damn pure, the fact that she didn't, quite. You know what I mean?"
"Not sure I do," Don said with a laugh. But he did.
"Of course, she doesn't look much like Taylor. More like-like-"
"A gypsy?"
"Yeah, like a gypsy, mean and wild and wise but somehow essentially innocent." The man was a good talker, but there was something vaguely unwholesome about his chatter. "Bernie is hot for her," he said of the photographer. "In his weird way. Says he'd give his left arm to do nudes of her. In a wheat field, he said." The publicist pressed his belly against the edge of the bar, shaking with laughter. "Must be a pleasure to travel with a young thing like that. Yessir. She as wild as she acts?"
"Now I remember whom you remind me of," Don said.
"How's that again?"
"Never mind. We'd better get back."
The first take on the big dance scene was finally under way when the guard readmitted them to the huge sound stage. The vast area under the lights was thronged with extras in teen getup, all doing the twist. Far out on the tongue of a crane, the camera peered attentively down at Chubbers, who rocked and swayed on the bandstand, pretending to bellow into a microphone. Actually, the music had been pre-recorded and was being piped in on speakers. The camera swung back and up to get a panorama of the floor full of dancers, then swiftly in on Chubbers again as the instrumental break came and he vaulted from the stand and into the crowd after Juanita.
It was hard to say which of the two figures was going to earn the most plaudits at this point in the film. Chubbers was a professional and knew how to command attention, but Juanita had an uninhibited fire and beauty. Don was sure that the people in any prospective movie audience would spend a good deal of time with then-eyes glued to her shining face, her flying hair, her grinding hips. He was sure because the technicians and bystanders on the sound stage were doing just that. So was he.
There were a total of seven takes. Don and the publicity man went out for refreshment twice more. They returned in time to catch the finish of the last try and found most of the people on the set wilted by the hard afternoon's work. Even Chubbers looked a little jaded and, shouting a general goodbyeee, he slipped into his dressing room and was not seen again.
Only Juanita retained her freshness. She seemed even more vibrant with excitement than when they had begun. The director thanked her and had her sign some papers. The photographer begged for some last shots with her and Vince beside the big camera. Finally they were on their way out, through the lot gates, Juanita quivering irrepressibly between Don and Vince in the back seat of the limousine.
"They're going to give us credit in the movie. Special guest dancers or something. Just think, they'll be showing it at the Orpheum-everybody will see us. Oh, my God, it's too much, too much!" She twisted on the seat, and her hip pressed against Don's leg as she bent to grab Vince. "Lover, we're stars!"
She grabbed his ears playfully and kissed him hard, but he only grunted, sitting straight up. For the first time it occurred to Don that Vince might have been drinkinghe had been acting strangely all afternoon. Juanita twisted and jiggered happily and Don had a feeling his turn was coming. He braced himself. You are thirty-two years old, he reminded himself grimly.
"Oh, Dimples, it's all been so wonderful!" She threw herself upon him and lifted her face. He saw her mouth, the dark, dark lakes of her eyes, two small white teeth gleaming. He kissed her lightly on the cheek and gently pried her loose.
"Glad you're enjoying yourself, child. Now it's back to the hotel to change, then dinner and early to bed. We've got a big day at Disneyland ahead of us."
"Disneyland," she echoed in disgust. "What a pair you two are. Man, I feel like I'm sitting between a couple of stiffs." She turned to glare fiercely at him. "And don't call me a child!"
"Then don't call me Dimples."
They glared at one another. Then they were laughing and only Vince sat silently, burning with whatever bitterness he was nursing.
Back at the hotel, Vince went into his room without a word. Don was just closing his own door when he heard Juanita's despairing groan. "Oh, God, come here and check this."
He joined her at the closed door to Huey's room and heard the aimless, croaking song:
Wrong, wrong, I've been done wrong, The Fates have passed me by, Wrong, wrong, I've been done wrong, And I can't for my life tell why...
They stared at one another. "We forgot room service." Juanita moaned. "They always have a key." She doubled over against him, laughing helplessly.
"Well, at least he stayed put," Don said. "We'll just leave him."
"Oh, Dimples, I'm so tired-"
"Juanita, look-"
"Just let me rest a minute like this."
"No." He took her shoulders and forced her to back a step. "Juanita, listen, you're a very pretty girl-and a very smart girl. I want you to be happy. I want you to grow up and marry a good man and have kitchen curtains and babies-"
"Oh cool it, Father Time!" She jerked away and flung herself down on the bed. "Okay, okay," she murmured after a moment. "I'll be a nice little girl. Now leave me alone."
At the door he paused. "Juanita, I meant what I said. You're a smart girl, now stay smart."
"Yeah, I know, kitchen curtains and babies. Easier said than done, mister. Sometimes I wonder who is the child here. Well, go on."
He closed the door softly behind him.
Dinner was a painful affair. Don drank just enough to stun himself, but not so much he could not retain a semblance of dignity. Thoughts of Jill kept filtering through his mind, pleasant, nameless images just out of reach, and once he thought he heard Marge's voice at a nearby table and felt his bowels tighten.
Vince ate stolidly. Incredible how taciturn the kid could be. He had the look of a paranoiac on death row.
Juanita was stubbornly gay, chattering at the waiter when nobody else would respond. "I can't sign the check, but I'll autograph your shirt front. I've just been discovered, even though nobody knows it yet. You see, we haven't seen the rushes. Any other movie stars in here tonight? Oh, that swinger Sinatra, I need him like I never have. Look at the pair of deadheads I'm stuck with. Is this any way to treat a star?"
"Yes, miss. No, miss." The waiter blandly placed the baked Alaska all around. He was used to this sort of thing.
Without finishing his dessert, Don got up to go. "I'll check on your father, make sure he gets something to eat." Noting a certain wily brightening in Juanita's eyes, he added: "Don't leave the hotel, you hear me, either of you. I want you two in bed by ten."
"Which bed?" she inquired softly, her dark eyes darker still with gentle mockery. For the first time since they had sat down, Vince looked intently at her.
Don felt a tightening of his heart that amounted to pain. He wanted to sit down again, but the thought that he might be doing it out of some insane kind of jealousy held him back, made him mutter, "Ten, I said-" and stalk away.
In the lobby he stopped the monkey-faced little bellboy. "Keep an eye on those kids, will you? I don't want them leaving the building." The monkey nodded and folded the sawbuck expertly back into his palm.
Don stopped by at the bar for a drink and to tell the bartender under no circumstances to serve the pretty young girl and long-haired young man he described.
Assuring himself that he had done his best, Don took the elevator up. The best he could do, he was sure, was to remove himself from the girl's presence. To run, frankly.
Huey let him in reluctantly. The old man was unshaven and in his underwear, a sorry sight. Juanita had not been able to buy her father a new pair of shorts. A bottle and glass stood on a tray beside the unmade bed. "Scotch," blathered the old man. "Smo-o-o-th. No more bust-head for this fella. Gonna drink scotch rest of life."
Don went to the phone and ordered a light supper. "And I want you to eat it, Huey. Then to bed. And no leaving this room, understand?"
" 'Kay, Don, you can count on me. How 'bout you?"
"I'm going to hit the sack," Don admitted. He allowed himself a touch of weariness. "Been a long day."
"Count on me, Don. Where's the kids?"
"Downstairs in the dining room. They'll be up soon."
"Yessir, count on me."
Don casually checked the door between the rooms. It was locked on Juanita's side. He picked up the bottle of scotch and started out. Huey broke from waggle-headed reverie.
"Say."
"Yes?"
The old man frowned, trying to look severe. "Don' want that punk Vince in there with her, Don. Don' want all these punks gettin' in my daughter's pants. Don' look good."
"Don't worry," Don said dryly. "Father has 'sponsibility."
"Yes, he does, Huey."
"Yeh." The old man cocked an eye and an incredible slyness, a reptilian glint slithered in the watery blue. "Beautiful li'l piece, ain't she, Don?"
"The chill started at the base of Don's spine and ran all the way up, gripping the nape of his neck with fingers of ice. "Some day, somehow, someone is going to forgive you for that, Huey," he managed to mumble. "Good night." He closed the door behind him, locking it on the old wino's degenerate leer.
Using a water glass from the bathroom, Don deliberately finished the scotch. It was eleven o'clock. Undressing, he put himself carefully into bed.
A great confused wave of longing swept over him, and the names came all at once, intermingled, like a three-dimensional tangle of lettered doll bodies: Marge, Jill, Juanita, Doris, Ben, Peggy-Juanita.
The thought of facing her again, of having her innocently turn those glowing black eyes on his own emptiness was too much. He fell into sleep like a man dropped into a well.
And discovered a desolate scabland of barren desert with a road running from horizon to horizon, and along this road, moaning, laughing, singing, came a motley chain gang. At the head of it shuffled his father, a faceless, anonymous being-then his mother. Behind her come Jill, then Marge . .
He sat bolt upright in bed. The girl stood in the center of the rug looking at him. The door was shut behind her. Her dark hair was lost in the night, her face was a pale smear, her robe too white, like a bandage on the dark.
"Juanita, what the hell? What's the matter, child?"
"He hit me," she said.
"What? who?"
"Vince. He's never done that before. Why can't I make him happy? He wanted me to drink, so I drank. We polished off the whole pint down there, stuck it in the coffee. But, but he-you, see, he only loves me when-"
She swayed. He started to scramble from the bed.
"No-I'm all right." But her voice came from a great distance, as if from a dream. She came closer, sat slowly down at the foot of the bed. "And the crazy thing is that-I-I'm only sure of myself when-"
He could see her more clearly now in the dim light that framed her pale face. Her eyes were caverns, her mouth a blurred smudge, the beauty spot high on her cheek an inky dot.
"He didn't hit me hard, just across the cheek. But it hurt so. I wonder if he has any idea how much it hurt."
"By God, I'm going to have a talk with that kid-"
"No, please." Again she prevented him from rising, this time with a hand on his arm. "I don't want him. He's in his room, passed out. Let him be. It's not his fault. That's the truth-nothing is anybody's fault. It's funny, but I ran into that little monkey bellboy in the hall, and he asked me who I was looking for. With that awful, puckered grin of his. Was I looking for my father? I said no and the first name I thought of was-yours."
She was crying silently, and he did not know why. But he understood and took her shaking shoulders in his hands and tried to quiet her.
"Juanita, listen-"
"I heard my father snoring and I couldn't stand it. It's like a death rattle."
"Listen, child-"
"I know why Vince hit me. I deserved it, I always deserve what I get." She laughed and the flame of her spirit flickered faintly, far away and dying. "Anyhow, I still have one good side for the photographer."
"Juanita, child, child-"
"I love you."
"No."
"I do, I love you-"
She had his hand in hers and the tiny claw had a terrifying strength. She was pressing his hand to her breast, grinding her forehead against his chest, weeping desperately. "Don, please, you don't know me, please-"
Somewhere, some time for all of us the love the child feels for the parents becomes another kind of love. But the natural process cannot be reversed, he told himself, it must not be reversed, meddled with or turned around.
And yet in the reeling darkness she was suddenly more woman than child to him and he drew her against him, slid his hands in under her robe and down her slender back, down the soft knobby ridge of her backbone, and pressed his clenched teeth to her shoulder.
NINE
San Quentin quail. How many times had he been disgusted and righteously indignant at the term? Well, he had no more high horse to get up on. Because they had all been right: Big John, Marge, Doris, the sleazy little Hollywood flak, even Jill. He had taken the girl the way he had once taken a candy bar as a kid, with his conscience drugged with the sweet smell of chocolate and nothing in his mind but the knowledge that the almonds would crunch sharply between his teeth and taste damn good.
It was true that she had come to him. But she had been a lonely and scared youngster. He knew now that for all the maturity of her body, she was as young as any girl her age, perhaps younger in some ways. He had been amazed at the wild and yet wise and knowing way she had used her body-and his. like a wild young gypsy chi ... oh yes, he had been right enough about that.
But a child nonetheless. And afterwards she had thanked him and cried in his arms, had clung to him until he had felt his senses helplessly dimming, blacking out. Early in the morning he had awakened to find her gone and her pillow still damp and had lain awake for hours, able to think only that he had abandoned her for sleep.
There were things he could do, not out of contrition-what had happened had happened-but to answer the trust with which she had come to him. He could get off a sharp letter to the casting director of the Chubbers unit. After all, they had used her in a feature capacity in the film, and she deserved more money than she had been promised for appearing just as one of the dancers. He could try to get Huey a job he could handle and stick to-he knew a contractor who would not mind carrying the old man until he became productive again. And he could help her find something better than the job in the drive-in. Maybe as receptionist at one of the radio stations in town. He might even be able to help Vince out in some way...
He found himself alone with her for a moment high up in one of the turrets of the caste in Fantasyland, looking down at the colorful throng filling the midways of Disneyland.
"Look, look," she cried, "way over there, the jungle! Alligators come up out of the water with their jaws open-" She made jaws of her hand, pushing them playfully toward his nose, and "Schnipp!" pretending to snip it off. Then, suddenly, she was serious, staring wide-eyed up into his face. "I'm not ashamed," she said quietly. "And in a way I do love you. You're gentle and understanding. Maybe I think so because I never really had a father, only Huey. Isn't that the way the psychologists would figure it? I want to say thank you. But I won't bug you, I promise you that. I know it was just sort of-a thing of the moment for both of us. It was over before it began, like everything else."
"Juanita, child-"
Her eyes glittered with tears, but she was smiling. "One thing, Don."
"Yes?"
"Just call me Juanita." She started away.
He was half laughing, half weeping, moving awkwardly after her-she was skittering down the ramp past brightly colored shields and tapestries, snaring Vince's hand and heading for the drawbridge.
"Come on, man, while it's still there, let's get a piece of that Tomorrowland!"
Climbing the toy Matterhorn and watching her ride over the hump of the frosty plaster mountain ahead of him, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes laughing bravely back at the sun, he promised himself something else-he was going to do right once and for all by his marriage. He was going to make everything work again.
Marge greeted him with one of the best meals she had made for him in months-wild rice, stuffed pork chops-his favorite combination. He had always suspected that the pork chops stood for his mother; her food had always been homely stuff. Gourmet foods like wild rice stood for Marge-expensive, rare. He had not known such food existed until after his nineteenth birthday.
"This is great," he told her, genuinely pleased.
But his pleasure soured promptly. Her answering smile was sly and mocking. "Sorry I can't serve you breast of quail, but I suppose you got your fill of that over the weekend."
"Oh, God," he groaned softly and had the sudden image of a snake coiled inside the mouth of fluffy brown rice. He got up hastily.
"I suppose you're going for a drink."
"That's right," he said.
"Good, fix me one." And a moment later. "Well, I had my fun too, you can be sure of that."
"Good, Marge. I'm glad."
"You don't believe me, do you?"
Looking at her, he was not sure. He thought of Ben Patterson and felt a rush of jealousy. He looked sharply at Marge and had another thought-maybe she had had her fun, but she had not enjoyed it much. Under the make-up, dark smudges showed around her eyes, and the two fine lines beside her mouth seemed deepened with weariness.
"Marge, I think we should try those tests," he said.
It was the one hold he had always been sure he had on her, and now it occurred to him that it was the one thing about her he had ever been really sure of-she had wanted children.
But she shook her head. "I've been thinking of leaving, going to the folks' place in Vermont. They're in Europe right now, and it would be good to get back East again. Doris says she might come away with me, just to get a break. Maybe to Las Vegas."
She meant it-she was serious. He shook his head numbly. "Doris? You talked to her about it?"
"Just that I might be going away for a while. But it won't be just for a while."
She was smiling, enjoying herself and his discomfiture. But more powerful than his resentment was his wish to win her back. He said, "Marge, you don't mean this. You're punishing me for-for something you think happened in Hollywood."
She insisted with an airy gesture, "I'm going away."
All his confusions gathered in upon him and became panic.
"We'll take the tests. You've always wanted to find out."
She studied him with that calm, pitying smile that he had seen so much of lately and finally murmured, "You really think that'll do it, don't you? All right then, we'll take the tests. You won't believe this, but I'm doing this for you. I would like to see you grow up, I really would. The least I can do for you is to help you do that."
Then she was gone, leaving the food untouched on the table, and he was wandering into the living room to watch television, to sit staring blindly while lantern-jawed cowboys drawled and galloped and cannonaded in a flickering dream world. His own life was close to unreality-he no longer understood it.
Marge was leaving. He was sure of that despite her agreement to the tests.
And Jill had already left. Or had she?
He had been right about her sudden retreat to her little cabin on Beaver Lake, a. two-hour drive from the city. She had called him from there. "I'm sorry about cutting out on you like this, boss, but suddenly I had to have action or bust."
"Action?"
"Water skiing. The nice bachelor broker down the road has a spiffy inboard. I'm on one ski now."
It had been useless for him to deny the sharp twinge of jealousy.
"Congratulations. How many skis is he on?"
"Oh, he's still on one."
Her laughter had rattled, strangely remote and thin. In a way he had been glad she was so far away and his relief must have tinged his tone.
"Well, take your time. Everything's under control here."
"Oh? I'm not so sure I like that. Are you by any chance trying to tell me you don't need me?"
"I-sure I need you, but not right away. Look, you've got a full three weeks coming. Take it all, if you want. Enjoy yourself, relax."
"Thanks," she had said abruptly. "I might do that. You enjoy yourself too. 'Bye." The receiver had clicked with finality.
Time, he told himself, he had to have time. But with time came only increasing pressure. He was not surprised when Vince and Juanita did not show up for the telecast the Monday after their return from Hollywood, but Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday went by and still no sign of either of them.
He thought briefly of calling the girl, but then he remembered that she and Huey had no phone-too, it occurred to him that perhaps she did not want to see him again and that any phone call or visit would only embarrass her. On his own part, he could not suppress a certain feeling of relief that she was not around. The ugly phrase kept repeating at the back of his mind, cluttering it's threat-San Quentin quail.
But finally he made himself write to her. It was hard to strike a balance between what he wanted to say and what he dared to say. After five tries he finally came up with:
Dear Miss Smith, We are sorry you and your partner are no longer dropping in on us for a dance now and then. There are various details regarding your winning of the twist contest that we would like to bring to your attention at your earliest convenience. Give us a call."
Cordially, Don Brent
BRENT'S BANDSTAND
As he finished the letter he felt a sudden chill as he visualized himself in court-Dimples, Pretty Boy Brent, friend of the young, charged with corruption of a minor and statutory rape.
He typed the letter himself and mailed it outside the building.
Time, he told himself and tried to hang on. Evenings at home were a hell of charged silence. There were no arguments. Marge was strangely calm, moving about the house in the evenings with a vaguely amused and contemplative look in her eye. They talked little, about nothing, and drank a great deal. Between them they would quietly put away a fifth of bourbon, then climb wordlessly into their twin beds, sleep, get up at the first sound of the alarm, have breakfast, part for the day-silently acting out some incredible sleep-and-waking dance-in some ways more like real married people than they had ever been. They even went to a couple of movies and sat out the Sundays in the back yard with drinks and the funny papers. They had both taken the tests and were waiting for the results.
Sometimes in his dreams Juanita called out to him from a long way off across the scabrous tarpaper roofs of warehouses, but when he tried to answer his throat was shut by fear. There was no reply to his letter.
Jill came back one weekend short of her three weeks, on a Friday afternoon while the show was in progress. He was pitching Kool Kat shoes and, at the unexpected sight of her standing among the kids behind the cameras, he fumbled. The patented shoe he was demonstrating snapped back on him and the thing went flying out of camera range and into the hands of the delighted kids.
"Yeah, well, when they say these shoes jump, they mean it," he covered lamely, and Fitz dissolved to a shot of the feet of dancing kids as they launched into the final number of the afternoon.
Jill laughed at him when he came down and made his way through the crowd toward her. She looked fresh and tanned and he realized how much he had missed her.
"Girl Friday appears on a Friday," he said, pretending a brashness he did not feel. "What brings you back two days early?"
"I got tired of it," she said, trying to be offhand too. "Even on one ski."
"Oh?" He tried not to stare. She was wearing pedal pushers and a sleeveless cotton blouse. He had only seen her in casual clothes a few times, and each time he was surprised all over again at the youthfulness of her figure, the fresh clarity of her eyes, the honest warmth of her smile.
"You look wonderful," he said softly. She smiled back bravely, but under the tan she reddened and, to cover her embarrassment, she did a little shuffling dance in her flat shoes. With a start he was reminded of Juanita.
"Boss, I'd like a word with you," she said brightly.
"Okay."
He took her arm and led her to the hall outside the studio. The last stragglers were drifting toward the exit, chattering, snapping fingers, lighting cigarettes.
"I'm going to ask Charlie to transfer me, Don," she announced flatly.
He had no idea of how he really felt-he only knew he could not afford a reaction of any kind, not right now.
"All right," he said.
She paled, watching him. "To the news department," she said faintly. "I've always wanted to work in news."
"Sure. Okay, if you want to."
"Then-that's all," she said and it came out almost as a question. She looked down.
"I guess so," he said.
She turned away. "See you Monday."
"Right." He wanted to reach out, take her shoulders and spin her around to face him, but he looked away until she had disappeared around the corner. He turned and moved blindly toward the stairs.
Time, he had to have time. There had to be time for Juanita to reappear. There had to be time to wait for the results of the tests. Unreasonably, desperately, he told himself everything depended on the results of the tests.
Marge waited for him on a stool back by the kitchen bar that evening. He stood in the dimmed room with his coat in his hand. Light from the Pattersons' terrace spilled in through the slit in the curtains and caught on the nyloned roundness of her crossed knees and on the two slips of white paper that jerked in her hand like pale batwings.
"The reports," she said softly. "There's nothing wrong with either of us. We can have babies."
He made his feet move across the rug to the liquor cabinet and, his coat still looped over his arm, began making a drink.
"Well?" she shrilled, "are you happy now?"
He was not thinking of whether he was happy or not.
He was thinking of Jill. He knew he would have to relinquish the thought of her in a moment, but he clung to the sudden, vivid image of her as a child clings to something fabled and marvelous.
TEN
Marge was waiting for him to come away from the liquor cabinet. He did not want to come out, because he knew that she was waiting hungrily to shove him face first into the thorny tangle of his thoughts. If only he could get them clear in his mind before he faced her. He had always clung to the thought that Marge's and his childlessness had to be either her fault or his. Their lack of children had always been his explanation for all his marital troubles-even the attraction other women had for him-now he was left with a nameless, frightening emotion. He turned to face her.
She smiled. "We can have children after all. We can go into that bedroom right now and make a baby."
"But we haven't got children, Marge. Explain that."
His challenge only seemed to increase her pleasure. "That's right. What about that? They say that one or both the partners, fertile or not, can actually prevent the conception of a child-if he or she really wants to."
"Are you trying to tell me that I-"
"I wanted to have children, darling. That first year anyhow. You won't deny that, will you?"
He shook his head. "No, but I don't believe that I could have stopped you. Besides, I never wanted to. It was just bad luck."
"All right." Marge slithered down from the stool and came slowly toward him. "Let's make love right now, Don. Let's make a baby." en
The callousness of her approach shocked him. She had him, and he knew it.
All he could do was say, "You've changed your tune all of a sudden."
She laughed in his face. "Oh, I haven't. But you're going to have to change yours. Come on, admit it-you never did want me to get pregnant-you haven't loved me for two years, maybe you never really loved me at all. You only wanted me because you thought I had 'class'. What a funny word that is. The people who really have it wouldn't consider using it."
"Marge, I'm telling you-" He raised his hand.
She waited, her chin lifted. "You can't even hit me," she whispered triumphantly. "You can't even manage that."
He dropped his hand. "There's no point." And there was not because he knew at last how much she hated him. He shook his head. "All this time, all the hope wasted-"
"How typical. Moaning, whining, blubbering like a punished kid. You make me sick, little boy. Is it my fault I want a man!"
At last his anger rose to match hers. The words spilled from him without thought, propelling him toward a knowledge that he still would have denied. "You'll never find the man you want, Marge, never. Because you're not a woman. You hate me, you hate your father, no matter what you say. You'll never make it, Marge, not with me, not' with Ben Patterson, not with any man."
He saw her eyes fly open, saw her cringe, then she was gone. He heard the back door slam and started to follow her, then stopped. What had he said? No, no-he refused to believe it. And besides-his old, blind, stubborn resistance to anger arose-whether she loved him or hated him, wanted him or was repelled by him, she was still his wife.
"Marge," he called across the darkened kitchen toward the gaping door. A cool breeze wafted gently out of the blackness and teased his flaming cheeks. "Marge, come back."
He turned back to his drink.
He scarcely knew how much later it was when he heard the music. Chucky Chubbers was howling next door. Don moved to the curtains and gazed across the two terraces into the vast aquarium of the Patterson living room. Doris Patterson sat at the bar, staring over a drink, a thin, small smile on her lips. Patterson leaned casually on his driver, lightly flipping a ball up and down in one hand. His back was to the terrace, but Don could visualize the loose smile on his broken face, the casual smirk of the lone customer in the parlor of a bawdy house. Marge was dancing before him, her chin up, her hands delicately pendulating before her twitching hips. As he watched, she started down, slowly, jerking to the beat, her long thigh sliding inch by inch out through the slit in her robe, until the padded satin edge rested flat against her belly and all her leg and more was in sight, bunched in tawny shadows of gold, tan, deep brown. Patterson strolled over to the wall and carefully placed the driver there, removed his smoking jacket and returned to face her. He eased into the beat, moving with restraint, following her.
Don didn't notice that Doris Patterson had left her living room until he heard her low, harsh laughter behind him.
"Peek-a-boo, Peeping Tom."
"Hello, Doris," he said flatly. Reaching up, he shut the curtains, then turned. "What'll you have?"
"Well, now," she drawled, running one red-tipped finger slowly down the side of her sweating glass. "I already have a drink."
"Good, saves me the trouble." He flopped wearily onto the couch. "Make yourself at home."
She came directly to the couch. She was wearing a simple sack dress that made her look surprisingly youthful. When she sat down the material rose above her knees. He had never noticed how muscular her legs were.
When he raised his eyes, she leaned back so that her breasts strained against the loose fabric.
She laughed shortly and said, irrelevantly, "I'll bet you didn't know that I still hold the National High School Indoor Women's record for the broad jump."
"No," he said, chuckling in spite of himself. "How far did you jump, Doris?"
"Don't remember," she said. "High jump too. I was a tomboy-still am, I guess. I used to look at other girls and think how pretty they looked in their middy blouses and how dumpy I looked in mine-and then I'd jump all the higher. I've always envied the slim ones. like Marge. like your little Juanita Smith. like that little Peggy Donohue. Slim, with small, pretty faces, ankles like candy sticks, mouths like gum drops-but childhood dumpiness sometimes turns out to advantage. I mean, I'm no toothpick model, but I'm not undesirable. Am I, Don?"
She definitely was not. Don felt heat rising in him and said quickly, "I was never much of a top myself. Look let's grab that bottle of scotch and go back to your place."
"I wouldn't advise it," Doris said. "There's-likely to be embarrassment all around."
He felt himself flush with resentment-then, suddenly, he did not care. He sank back into the chair to study curiously Doris' strong body, her hard, yet somehow warm smile.
He asked, "Would you be embarrassed?"
She returned his frank look, and the calm in her face held a weary wisdom. "I guess I've seen too far to be embarrassed any more. like Marge, in a way. Except that she's just coming to a few realizations."
He stirred uneasily. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She shrugged and looked away. "Nothing much. Anyhow, I've been there. Sometimes I consider trying to come back. But I don't think I care enough."
"I don't get it, Doris."
"Never mind. You will soon enough, I suppose. Tell me, why this thing about marriage? Why do you want to hold on to Marge?"
He shrugged. "Simple enough. I suppose you could say I have an obsession. My father left my mother when I was a baby. No support, never a word from him-he simply abandoned her. I suppose she drummed it into me about the sanctity of marriage. There has to be something to depend on in this world."
She nodded. "Maybe, but you have to be able to depend on yourself first. Believe me, I know. When I was a tomboy I really enjoyed climbing trees, pushing boys around, broad jumping. But my mother told me it was unlady-like and I was ashamed. So I ended up hating what I really enjoyed and afraid of what I was told I should enjoy-" She broke off abruptly. "I'm talking too much about myself. Enough to say that I've come to the point where I can take it or make it either way-anything. As long as I get my kicks. Not a very distinguished point of view, but it works and it's kind of peaceful. As for you, I still say you're something of a fool."
"Look, if you came over here to tell me that-"
"Easy, friend." She laughed, her black eyes glittering. "I'm only trying to help. At this point, what good is it to persist in lying to yourself and everybody else? I can understand a woman clinging to a crumbling marriage, insisting that what is not there is there. Hell, I've done it for some years now myself, for the kids' sake, for my own-but you, you're a man, Don."
He turned sharply on her, saw the gentle curl of her hp, had to chuckle at himself. "Thanks for that, anyhow."
But she would not give up that easily. "You are a man, aren't you?" she asked softly.
He stood up. "Come on, we're going over there and break this thing up."
But in a flash she was at the curtains. "A little late for that, I'm afraid." Grabbing the draw cord, she yanked and with a metallic screech the curtains were flung wide.
At first he saw nothing, only the brightly lit chromatic blaze of walls and drapes, monster lampshades, paintings. Then he saw Marge and Patterson. They were on the floor.
"Wall-to-wall carpeting has its advantages," Doris was murmuring. "You'd be surprised how really restricting are the precipices that encircle the average bed. They inhibit. Still, I'm afraid Marge is in for a disappointment. Or maybe she already knows Ben isn't any great shakes."
Don did not know how she did it, but Doris' dress fell to her ankles. She wore nothing. Her large breasts stood out surprisingly firm and high and the rest of her was not repellent, but inviting.
She turned slowly. To show him her back? To take a last look at what was going on next door?
"As for me, I'm still optimistic," she said lightly. She added in a slow, nudging whisper: "I'm waiting, Don."
There was a roaring in his ears and he knew that at last the armageddon he had dreaded was upon him. Swiftly he finished his drink and put down the glass.
Doris whirled to receive him, and as they careened toward the rug, he thought he saw, over her shoulder, two pairs of eyes looking out across the terrace, two pairs of eyes glazed and blind with anguished hunger, their axes tipped at right angles to one another, as though they lived in the same forehead, the same skull, the same fevered brain.
Then he was lost in a tangled swamp of flesh, muscles, teeth and hair.
At one point he gasped, "Hey, who's the man here, anyway?"
She laughed down into his face, her breath coming fast. "I told you, Don, I can take it or make it. Either way. You tell me."
And a moment later, her hair splayed across the rug like hell's own halo, she was hissing into his ear with what he sensed was gratitude if not relief, "Show me. Make me a woman-just for now-make me a woman, Don!"
The following Friday morning, Charlie Dugan sent for him, and he found the manager reclining on his pride and joy, a patented monster, half chair, half lounge, with a complex of gears and levers that hoisted it up and down and swiveled it right and left.
"My contour reducing chair," he called it. "When I don't fit into it any more, I stop eating."
With a well-gummed cigar, Dugan waved Don to a chair. He did not look grim, Don reflected, but on the other hand, Dugan never called employees into his office for social visits. Mounted on an ashtray at the edge of the desk was a miniature cast-iron television camera and Don noted uneasily that the toy was pointing straight at him.
"What can I do for you, Charlie?"
Dugan pressed a button and with a faint electronic whine the chair revolved forty-five degrees toward Don. "You can tell me what the hell's going on."
Don attempted a grin. "That's quite an order. Mind narrowing it down a little?"
"Okay. Where's our budding Salome?"
"You mean Juanita?" , "That's right, the buxom pixie, Juanita whatsername. Where did she go all of a sudden?"
"I don't know. I wrote to her a few weeks ago. She doesn't have a phone. No answer to the letter. I do know that she has been having a little trouble and has been thinking of dropping out of school and working full time. Maybe she can't fit the dancing into her schedule."
"Her schedule?" Now Dugan looked grim. "Listen, I thought the idea was that she was to be featured regularly on the program and that we were going to send her East for the national contest. We've sunk a lot of air time and effort into that girl. The sales department had to hustle all that stuff in Hollywood, you know. The network put its publicity people on it. I have to admit, I just picked up on this last week. How long has it been since the girl appeared on the show?"
"She hasn't been on since the Hollywood trip," Don admitted.
"A month?" Dugan grunted discontentedly, squinting shrewdly over his cigar. He pressed another button, and slowly the chair whined into an upright posidon. "Come on, Don, what's up?"
Don had no confidence in his ability to pull the wool over Dugan's eyes, but he had to give it a try. "I have a feeling she's in trouble, Charlie, personal trouble. There's her father, and that boy friend of hers. Vince-"
"Goddamn, I knew it. Trouble, that's what that girl's meant from the beginning!"
"Take it easy, Charlie. Give me another week. I've been waiting to see if she would answer my letter. She obviously isn't going to, so I'll go see her."
"Nuts. Get her up here. I'll have a talk with her, by God-"
"No, please, Charlie, you'll scare the kid to death."
"Am I that ugly."
"I know her. She's a funny kid."
"Okay. You're a good man and I trust you. Only, I'm still a little worried."
"About what?"
"About you." Dugan studied him solemnly. "You're not up to snuff, boy. You look pooped and your timing is off on the air. I see you moping around like a pointer that's lost his bird. For a time I thought something happened out there in Hollywood."
Don fought the impulse to answer too quickly, taking time to fight a cigarette, shake out the match, take a long drag. "Nothing like that."
"At home?" When Don did not answer, Dugan added apologetically: "Sorry, I've got no business poking into your private life. But first Jill comes up with a request to be transferred, then I notice this Juanita is mysteriously unaccounted for-"
"Nothing mysterious about it, Charlie, believe me. Just give me a week." The plea was clear enough.
Dugan nodded. "I trust you, but find that girl," he said. Machinery hummed and the chair extended slowly backwards until he was again in a supine position, the cigar pointing up at the ceiling.
"By the way," Don said. "I've been thinking of a few changes in the show I'd like to discuss with you one of these days."
"Finally decided the twist isn't the answer to juvenile delinquency, eh?"
"Something like that."
"Any time, boy."
"Thanks, Charlie." He got up to go.
Dugan's voice reached out to snag him with one last question. "How's Marge? Haven't seen her in nearly a year now. Saw Ben Patterson at the Athletic Club the other day-"
Don did not answer.
"Okay, okay, but I do have an interest in the people who work for me, and you misjudge this old goat, if you think it's purely professional. Ask me to tell you about my divorce some time."
"Some time," Don agreed and left.
The interview left him feeling more uneasy than ever. Suddenly, he cursed himself for avoiding the task of locating Juanita. God only knew what the girl was up to. Dangerous as she could be to him, it was better to have her where he could keep an eye on her. He had been a fool to let it go this long. He had a feeling he had been letting a lot of things go for too long.
There were the promises he had made to himself to help Juanita. All in all, he had done pretty badly since the Hollywood trip. He took little joy these days in doing his show. He muffed commercials and was short with the crew. He saw Jill in the halls and longed to take her hand and lead her out of the place to some quiet place where they could talk, but instead he nodded curtly and moved on, dogged by his fears and guilts, sick with the series of shocks that had belted him one by one since the trip-that incredible wife swap Friday night, with the hellish music pounding next door like a maniac's heart, like the final deadly invitation to suicide-or murder of all his beliefs.
What had Doris said? "Thanks, Don. If I weren't beyond help, you would have helped me." And he had not wanted to understand her meaning, had not wanted to see her or Marge or anybody else again. He had staggered alone into his bed that night and passed out. The next morning he had crept from the bedroom early. Leaving Marge asleep, he had fled across town for five furious games of handball with Fitz.
All his armageddons seemed to come out this way, never the end after all, only introductions to further chaos.
So that it was really no surprise at all and only another dull and painful confirmation of his feeling of impending doom when, after Friday's show, he spotted Huey at the end of the hall near the freight elevator.
The old man huddled among assorted props and studio furniture, looking totally wizened and piteous, as he always did when sober. But his eyes were hard with a new kind of confidence as he blurted hoarsely. "I wanta talk to you. It's about my daughter."
ELEVEN
Directly across from the big white KLON-TV building stood a ramshackle eyesore of a tavern called The Rodeo. The story was that Charlie Dugan had a standing offer of a ten per cent raise to anybody who would burn the place down. Don took Huey there. The old man seemed glad to see the stretch of tattered backs at the bar and whiff the vinous tang of ten-cent muskie. They sat in a back booth, and Don waited patiently for Huey to get his first drink down before asking his question. "Where is Juanita?"
The old man coughed, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, held up his empty glass. "Gasolina-like they used to say in Mexicali. The motor don't run without gas, Don."
Two "gasolinas" later, the old man became evasively reminiscent, rolling his watery eyes upward. "Say, wasn't that a crackerjack time we had down there in Hollywood? That imagine hotel and all them teevee stars an' all. 'Course, you're at home down there, aren't you?"
Don's shrug was noncommittal.
"Yessir, you pull weight for your size, even down there. I imagine you make the eagle scream pretty good. I mean, a pop'lar figure like you gets well paid, right?"
"I eat," Don admitted.
" 'Course, working with youngsters the way you do, you got to be careful about your professional reputation. You're looked up to as a model of morality and all. I've noticed many a time, for instance, when we were down there in Hollywood, what a good boy you are."
"I didn't think you had time to notice much down there, Huey," Don said.
A mistake. The old man's eyes flashed defiantly, and his leer was openly contemptuous now. "Well, now, I was a little under the weather off and on, wasn't I? But not unconscious, Don, nossir. That's where you made your mistake. That, and forgetting that room service would unlock my room when they brought up supper. I enjoyed that meal, Don. It sorta freshened me up. So I took it into my head to take a walk. First I went next door to see my little girl. But she wasn't in. So I asked myself, now, who would know where my little girl is? Who is the moral guardian of this here to-do? And of course, I thought right away of you, Don."
A threatening icicle broke from its moorings and plunged into Don's bowels. This was it, the Day of Judgment.
He had to keep his head, not only for his own sake, but for Juanita's too.
"I don't think I know what you're getting at, Huey."
"Now just because you're purty, don't mean you're dumb," the old man said testily, suddenly out of patience with his own game. "Gasolina!" he croaked, waving his glass. And when the barman had gone away again: "I heard it all, Mr. Puritan, all her guff about how that punk hit her, and you bein' so nice to her, talkin' soft, pettin' her just like you thought maybe you was her father. Well, you ain't and you proved it-didn't you?"
Don paled. He had to grip the edge of the table to keep from reaching for the scrawny, wattled neck. "Go on."
"You damn right I'll go on. I'm that girl's father. Me, Huey Smith, and I'll tell you somethin', she's no damn good. It's her mother's blood in her, rotten Mex blood. Her mother was a hooker. Once a hooker, always a hooker-" He faltered. His voice became maudlin, his expression doleful, his thoughts meandering in a strange land of broken memories and winey haze. "She was purty, too dam' purty. Carmen. But she was nuthin' but a whore and she proved it when she left me. Her daughter turned out just like her, too purty and rotten inside. I've seen her out in that punk's car. Nuthin' but a slut. I tried-God knows I tried to steer her straight. I told that punk I never wanted to see him around again. I told her that if I ever caught her messin' around again, I'd kill her. But she just laughed at me and told me Vince was all she had and she knew how to handle him. As if I was nuthin' to her-me, that's seen the devil-"
He looked up in alarm and confusion, scanning the figures at the bar anxiously, eyeing the musty corners of the room. Then his eyes came to rest again on Don, and the cold clarity of undiluted greed returned to his eyes. "You got that little girl pregnant, and you're gonna pay for it."
This time he was ready. "I want to see Juanita, Huey, and right away. Do you hear me?"
"You're gonna pay. Call it cost of an abortion if you want, say about a thousand to start with-"
Don's hand shot out to gather up the threadbare lapels, jerking the old man stiffly upright. "You can forget about that, Huey, you're not the man for blackmail. I want you to tell me where Juanita is, and fast."
"I'll tell, all right-I'll tell everybody," the old man said frantically. "I'll call up the newspapers and your boss and your wife-"
Don released him and stood up. "All right, let's start with my boss. Drink up, let's go."
The old man glared upward fiercely. "By Gawd-" Then he looked down, muttering, twiddling his empty glass. "Gasolina," he mumbled. "Sit down, dammit, have a gasolina-"
Don leaned across and plucked the glass from the old man's fist. "Now I know Juanita didn't send you here, Huey. I don't know if she's pregnant or not as you say, but I do have an idea she needs my help. I want you to tell me where she is."
The old man waggled his head stubbornly. "Pay or I'll ruin you." His trembling hand reached for the glass.
Don held it just out of reach. "Your charges won't mean anything without Juanita's word. Nobody is going to take an old wino's word and you know it. There's no surer way for you to get yourself into real trouble than to try to make trouble for me. If you really want to help Juanita, if you really want to be a father to her-"
The old man gave up. He shook his head, passed his hands vaguely across closed eyes. His frail body began to tremble.
"If you really love your daughter, Huey-" The old wino broke. Tears welled in the rheumy eyes and ran in dusty rills down the corroded cheeks.
"Dunno-I dunno." Huey wept waggling his head hopelessly. "She said she was leavin' me, that's all. Sunday.
She said she thought she was pregnant and Vince didn't want her and she was goin' away, that was all. And she said-"
"Yes, Huey?"
"She said that she'd always blamed her mother for leavin' me, and she'd always hated her for that, but that now-she wasn't sure."
Don slid the glass back across the table and called out, "Bartender, gasolina, please."
Although Huey did not know where Juanita had gone, he did know of a few of her hangouts. After questioning the old man thoroughly, Don bought him a gallon of wine and drove him back to his apartment. Exhausted and thoroughly drunk, the old man muttered a promise not to leave the place that night. Don knew no assurance, but there was nothing to do but leave him there and drive back to the station.
Rounding the corner opposite the newsroom, he ran headlong into Jill.
"Oh!"
Automatically his arms went around her, and he recalled with painful clarity that afternoon so long ago when he had run into her this way in the sound lock, the day after their first kiss.
Again she stood her ground, looking solemnly up into his face. "We meet again."
He drew back, released her and ducked away with a muttered, "Excuse me," and headed for the stairs.
He called Marge. Doris Patterson answered. He and Doris had not spoken since the Friday-night wife swap, although she had waved to him from the terrace occasionally as though nothing at all had happened.
"Don, honey, Marge and I were just talking about you."
"Let me talk to Marge."
He heard the phone being put down, Marge's footsteps approaching, her voice, throaty, loose. "Darling, hurry home, Doris and I are getting smashed." There was a pause, then: "You can watch," and the sound of them both giggling.
"Marge, I'll be late tonight. In fact I might not be home at all."
Without a pause she answered, "Good. Have a good time."
"Marge-"
"Believe me, Don, please believe me, I do not give a damn."
He started to hang up, but she caught him: "I am curious, though. Who is it-Juanita, or that sweet girl Friday of yours? This is Friday, isn't it?"
He hung up on her mocking laughter.
Very carefully he made a list of the teen hangouts he knew. He had neither phone number nor address for Vince. The boy and his uncle had lived in one of the houseboats on the canal up until two months ago, when they had moved. Don did not know their new address, but he wrote down the old one. The rest of the list was pitifully short. It occurred to him that he had never really taken the trouble to find out much about his kids, other than talking to them casually in the studio. He had never been to any of the places where they normally aggregated, with the exception of the Tall Dog, where he had once had a hamburger and malt. Something to think about for the future, he thought grimly-if there were to be a future.
Charlie Dugan's demand echoed in his brain-find that girl-but he was not worried about Charlie or his own precious reputation and job, for that matter. He paused at the door of the office with his hand on the light switch, remembering the room Huey had showed him that afternoon. Juanita's room. She had left it unlocked for the first time when she left, Huey had admitted. A pitiful enough room but barer now, even, than when she had lived there. The clothes were gone from her closet. He had looked for but found no note. An empty picture frame had stood on the dressing table and, hunting further, he had discovered photographs of himself and Vince under the bed, scrambled in a heap of glossy, worthless confetti.
She had broken all ties. She was alone in the city. She had been alone for-how long? Four days now, according to Huey. Where had her flight led her? How had she felt, stumbling down those rickety stairs in the dark, her last retreat behind her, the gaping, wounded and hungry world ahead of her?
Don switched off the office light and hurried down the echoing hallway, heading for his car.
TWELVE
To go anywhere, just anywhere and leave everything behind was all she wanted.
What was it Huey had said? The devil gets in the blood like a worm, and I seen it, I seen it, the worm in your mother's blood and in yours. . .
Of course he had said it all before in one way or another when he was talking drunk-and always with that feeble, self-pitying bitterness that had told her so clearly that it was really himself he thought no good. She had pitied him and had felt only resentment and hatred for her mother.
But at last she had not been able to pity and forgive. Or even hate. Suddenly it had seemed that he was right, that he had always been right, that deep in her heart she had always known he was right. There was a worm in her blood...
You'll pay...
And maybe he had even been right there. Her period was more than a week overdue, and it seemed to her that her breasts had swollen and that the tenderness of her nipples told her of a secret of her body too terrifying, too wonderful and fearful to think about.
For the first time in her life, stumbling out into the sultry, somehow sweetly lonely and familiar night, she felt the sad ache of understanding, of pity and love for the mother she had never really known. The mother who had run away from husband and child. Why? Maybe because she had discovered that her husband hated her blood as much as he loved her. beauty. Maybe because he had not given her what she needed, what she found elsewhere in the night.
Maybe just because she had had a worm in her blood....
Juanita stopped to put the suitcase down and rest her cramped hand and shoulder. She had already walked so far from home that she did not recognize the corner. The night was laced with red-hot threads of neon and cars hissed by interminably, their lights flaring in her blurred sight as in the movies.
She had thought briefly of going to the Y-dub to get a room, but had recalled Peggy Donohue's pale, angelic smile, and recoiled in spite of herself. She had not been able to stand the thought of running into Peggy, of facing that gentle smile and the pity that was really a concealment of superiority. Because she knew now that Peggy really was better than she-Peggy was superior after all.
People should be content with doing what they are good at, she told herself. People should not try to be better than they were meant to be.
A man hesitated before crossing the street, and his furtive, anxious glance was so comic and familiar that Juanita laughed out loud. He came a step closer and she picked up her suitcase and moved away, still laughing. Men looked so funny when they were giving you the eye, apprehensive and gawkishly hopeful. There was one laugh that would always be hers, bitter as the taste of it was.
Suddenly she remembered Vince's long-lashed, dark and brooding eyes and turned her head away from the car lights-though she knew that none of the people in them would give a hoot even if they could see her tears.
He had been so strange that Sunday at Disneyland, not angry, not struggling to freeze her out, but crushed, withdrawn and beyond her reach. She had tried to cover her own confusion and fear by living it up, by laughing. But for once it hadn't worked, not even with herself. And then, inside Mr. Disney's spaceship, as they had reeled in the starry confusion of imaginary outer space, it had occurred to her with sickening suddenness that he knew that somehow he had found out what had happened in the hotel the night before, and that she had lost him for good because of it.
She had done her best to deny that night with Don through the long and silent trip home, through the weeks that had followed, when they had seen each other as regularly as ever, at school, in the evenings-and she had had the feeling that Vince was doing his best to deny his knowledge, too. But it had been there, and had come bursting forth at last the afternoon they had had the fight.
It had not been at all like their other arguments. He had not yelled at her, and she had not teased him-nor had they ended up in each other's arms, begging each other for forgiveness. No, Vince had spoken with deadly calmness and she had not been able to shake off the tension with a laugh, had not been able to defeat the feeling of defeat that had flowed over her.
They had argued about going back to the television show. She had tried to tell him that she was tired of it, that she just wanted to be alone with him. He had asked her why and she had tried to explain. He had interrupted with the suggestion that maybe she was running from something and she had asked him what he thought she was running from-and then he had told her.
Huey had been listening and watching at Don's door that night. Huey had told Vince everything the following morning.
Vince had made his little speech and she had cringed away from him, his words hammering her closer and closer to hysteria until, to keep from flipping, she had had to scramble free of his awful gaze, flying into the house, past Huey on the couch and into her room to fling herself on the bed.
Whore, whore, whore. The words had come wrenching from Vince's throat like some awful cough, like an issue of blood.
For once she had forgotten to lock herself in. Lying on her bed, weeping, she had heard the slow, furtive opening of the door and had sat bolt upright to find her father entering her room, his rags hanging around his quivering frame, his eyes inflamed with wine and righteousness.
The worm, the devil, the rottenness in her blood, he had railed and then, squinting slyly and sniggering, for all the world like the fiend himself, he had told her his awful plan.
"No!" she had screamed at him, jumping from the bed, flinging herself on him and sending him stumbling from the room. And with the door once again locked and her cheek to the panel: "I'm going away, Papa. I've had enough."
From the other side came the sounds of him getting to his feet, muttering to himself, then: "Going away?"
She had not replied but had kept her ear pressed so hard against the wood that it hurt.
"But I'm your father-"
"No, no, not any more-"
"But sweetheart, it's me, Huey-"
"No, no, no."
Silence, and then: "When?"
She had said nothing, although she had already made up her mind. The minute he left the apartment.
"But what will I do, what will your poor old man do? Listen, sweetheart, we can make this bastard Brent pay for what he done to you. Why, he dam' near raped you-"
"That isn't what you were saying a minute ago," she had whispered so softly that he could not hear her.
"I'll get the police on you," he shouted suddenly. "You won't get far, by God!"
And then some more muttering, his feet stomping aimlessly about the room, a last furtive scratching at the door. "Sweetheart, you don't mean it-"
She had clenched her teeth to keep from crying, absorbing herself in the little pains shooting from the tender flesh of her ear. She was leaving him, she had to, just as her mother had, maybe for the same reasons. But it hurt.
Finally he had gone out, slamming the outside door behind him. And she had gone to her dressing table and slowly pulled Vince's picture from its frame...
Now she stood staring blindly into the night. A few yards away the glowing red outline of a cocktail glass hung over the sidewalk and a glass brick front threw an inviting glow out into the street. A man came walking toward her, started to turn into the bar, saw her and came slowly forward. He was well dressed and seemed in his twenties, shaven and pleasantly good looking.
"If you're waiting for a bus, you're in the wrong spot," he told her cheerfully. "Unless, of course, one just happens to crash into a lamppost." His voice was soft and easy, his smile warm.
She trusted him.
"A beer truck would be better," she said with a grin.
He laughed. "Why wait?" and took her arm and guided her toward the bar. But just as he was reaching for the polished handle, he cocked his head to give her face a closer look, and his eyes narrowed. "Hey, you're just a kid."
She felt her cheeks grow pink under his scrutiny and threw out her chest, doing her best to make her smile bold. "Old enough, mister."
He moved back a step to look her up and down. "Not over seventeen," he murmured.
"I'm twenty-one," she said, but it came out in a whisper.
"Jailbait," he said softly and shook his head.
"Please, mister," she said, reaching impulsively for his arm. "All I want is a drink. Look, all you have to do is escort me in. Once I'm in there I'll be all right-"
He shook his head again. "In there? No sir. Look, kid, the bus stop is down at the corner-"
"I don't want the damn bus," she burst out angrily. "And I'm not a kid."
The line of his mouth hardened. "According to the law you are, sweetie. You want me to take you around to the police? Look, there's a bus coming. I'm going to stand here until I see you get on. Now get moving."
She hesitated, furious, but there was nothing she could do but lug her suitcase hastily to the corner and flag down the transit bus. She climbed on, listened to the doors sigh shut behind her, paid her fare and struggled to a seat. As the bus moved away, the man waved, then turned and pushed in under the glowing cocktail glass. She had an urge to wrench up the window and lean out and swear at his retreating back.
But all the starch was gone out of her and she leaned against the backrest. She was alone in the bus except for an old lady asleep on the back seat, a wrinkled paper bag in her lap. The driver was a faceless, dark shape and outside the glaring fronts of penny arcades, bars and cluttered windows of pawn shops moved by.
What would Don think of her now, Juanita wondered. Once again she felt the plunging pain of regret. She had done him a great disservice at the same time that she had wronged Vince. She had thought she had seen in him all the things she had missed in Vince-the calm assurance of maturity, gentleness and understanding. She had even convinced herself momentarily that she loved him, and had uncovered a need in him equal to her own.
Perhaps in a way they had loved one another, at least that night. What had happened between them had been an abortive and unfortunate thing and yet, as with all mistakes, there might be something to be learned from it.
How hard he had tried to tell her that she was good, that there was no worm in her flesh.
She could not stand her thoughts in the insidiously vibrant bus. She gripped the handle of her suitcase and forced herself to get to her feet and reach for the bell cord. It did not matter where she got off. One block was as good as another. That was what the worm in her blood told her...
It was a big Friday night at the Tall Dog. Cars clustered around the place like ants around a meat loaf and inside, counter and booths were jammed. Heavy black-and-orange letter sweaters swaggered here and there and bright cashmeres and pleated skirts flitted from group to group, from booth to booth, from car to car.
Don nosed in between two carloads of teenagers and rolled down the window to wait, marveling at the bright and anxious young, at their scrubbed and clean-limbed handsomeness, but most of all their restless activity. He heard shouts and roaring of tail pipes, whistles and catcalls. The noise was nervous, disorganized, confused, perhaps, but he felt envy and awe and an odd tenderness-perhaps actually directed at his own youth.
The carhop arrived in a rush. Fate had tossed a handful of freckles across her face from ear to ear, and her little breasts stood out like spikes under the satin blouse.
"Do you know Juanita Smith?" Don asked her.
"Why, sure, Dad."
"Does she still work here?"
She shook her head. "She hasn't shown up since-" Her frown of concentration was ferocious and she kept dinging nickels out of her change machine and dropping them back in. "Since about two weeks after-" Her blue eyes focused on him intently and she squealed. "Hey, aren't you Don Brent?"
He nodded a grudging admission, his stomach tightening. This would be happening all the way-he had no way of avoiding recognition. And if anything went wrong, if anyone went back over his trail, there would be no doubt about who had been looking for little Juanita Smith, champion twister, San Quentin quad. He had his story ready.
"She didn't pick up the photographs and all her prizes for winning the contest," he explained. "I'd like to get hold of her tonight. Have you seen her around at all?"
"No, but there are a lot of swingin' places. I'll trade you for an autograph." And while he scrawled a routine greeting and his name on one of her order pads, she wrote out some addresses for him.
"Look for Vince, too," she said with a parting wink. "Where she is, he is. They're so steady they're Siamese."
Next he tried the canal waterfront and found the houseboat where Vince had lived with his uncle, but the windows were boarded. An old man in the floating shack next door told him that nobody knew where Vince had moved and that mail was not being forwarded. Obviously Vince's uncle didn't want bill collectors tracing him. There was nothing to do but check the teen hangouts one by one.
The Pizza Palace was far from palatial, a crowded hole in the wall with a single stand-up counter and grossly misleading portraits of giant pizzas bejeweled with great chunks of pimento and anchovy. The little store quaked with high-spirited yelling and the nasal plant of the juke box.
Don had to strain to hear his levi-clad informant: "Yeah, I go to Mission. Juanita? She hasn't been in all week. Vince neither. Maybe they split to de the knot. Too bad. I really did dig her."
The Burger Heaven was a hell of sizzling onions and stale grill grease, the stools spinning, the plywood booths rocking to the beat of bands and the rapping of knuckles, as the bubbling juke blasted out Twist Again. Now and then a couple would be overwhelmed with good spirits and get up to dance, and the perspiring counterman would wave his arms desperately, screeching, "Cut it, cut it, no license!" Here Don found more kids from Mission, but none of them had seen Vince or Juanita at school for nearly a week.
"Vince is cool," a shrewd-eyed little brunette confided. "He cuts out now and then to work on his car. He'll be back. But her, I don't get it. Juanita hardly ever cuts classes, far as I know. Why don't you try Christian Youth? Once in a while they dig that grim scene."
Christian Youth was represented by a basement recreational center beside a large church. Here gimlet-eyed matrons oversaw the distribution of pale orange punch and organized sedate folk dancing which excluded all bodily contact. The glaringly lighted dance floor was nearly empty, and the chaperones outnumbered the youngsters. Don could not imagine Juanita and Vince in this setting and a pale young blonde was benignly indignant at the mention of their names.
"Well yes, they did come once or twice, just to embarrass us, I'm sure. I understand that Vince was putting something into the punch." She tittered nervously. "You would do better to try some place downtown."
The Wagon Wheel was a cabaret, poorly lighted, vast and low-ceilinged, with a combination hillbilly and rock-and-roll band sawing away for dancers of all ages and descriptions.
"We don't serve minors here," the pudgy bouncer assured him, blandly ignoring the two teenage couples just then crowding past him toward the tables. "But I happen to know the kids you mean. They ain't been here for months. I'll give you a tip, try the north end-Duffy's Four Corners, f'rinstance."
Duffy's was a small roadhouse surrounded by a gravel parking lot jammed with cars. Inside, couples rocked and swayed to the music of a small but vigorous jazz combo. Don questioned a man in a cowboy shirt at the door.
"You mean the kid with the black Ford? I offered him two-fifty for that clunk and he wouldn't take it. And that little piece, Juanita. No, you won't find 'em here, or any kids, for that matter. Hell, man, we just got back our license."
Don drove back via the freeway at a loss-all his leads used up. He cruised through town, scanning with faint hope the faces of the youngsters waiting in lines in front of movie theatres, lounging in all-night cafes, wandering restlessly in close-knit little bands up and down under downtown neons. He drove up South Street and past Mission High. The big brick building was dark, looming on its landscaped knoll like a model prison, but a peculiar sort of prison which locked its inmates out at night. In front of the candy store across from the school a half-dozen boys lounged around a battered coke case. Don parked the car and walked over.
"Vince Ellison?" one of them repeated after him, blank-faced. "Never heard of him."
"Fuzz, fuzz all over," another stated loudly, staring directly into Don's face.
"No," he corrected with a smile. "I'm Don Brent. You know, Brent's Bandstand."
"So?" the boy drawled, looking deliberately away and spitting into the gutter.
They stared silently at him. Behind them, the aproned owner of the store furdvely eased the door shut and shot the bolt.
One of the boys stirred restlessly, slid down off the Coke case and sidled slowly toward Don, his hands in his pockets, his face averted. He was a full inch taller than Don, lean and wiry.
"Look, Brent, we're not a buncha PTA biddies or the principal's goodie-goodie finks, so don't give us any guff about being a friend to the young. If we knew where Vince was, we wouldn't tell you. What your type doesn't seem to understand is that we do all right on our own. We don't need your help. Now why don't you go off to your party in your imagine split-level in Magnolia or wherever it is and leave us alone."
They continued to stare at him. At last, one of them stirred, swearing softly, but was silenced by a glance from another. Don heard a car pull up at the curb behind him, but he did not turn.
"Party!" a voice sang out. "Lakeside Park. Come on!"
Silently they moved toward him in a group, flowing around him, their shoulders brushing him lightly, fleetingly. He heard muttered questions from the car, heard them climbing in, heard the doors slam. He turned, and the car started away from the curb.
Abruptly a head thrust from a rear window and jerked curtly. "Follow us, Mister Bandstand."
THIRTEEN
Lakeside Park was a public resort area just outside the city, sprawling along the edge of a freshwater lake surrounded by summer cottages. The "park" consisted of a large dance pavilion and tavern, a number of refreshment stands, a beach with a dock and diving floats, several acres of trees and hard-packed earth. As usual on a warm Friday night, the place was crowded with nighttime fun-makers. Don heard an accordion and boisterous singing in German. A group of middle-aged men were noisily frying steaks on one of the outside grills. The kids had set up on the beach, where they lounged around a small fire, happily charring marshmallows and wieners, galloped in and out of the water, huddled in ardent twos under blankets, did the twist ankle-deep in sand or drank beer. Camouflaged as they were among groups of adults up to more or less the same monkey business, they were relatively safe from interference. But the party was beginning to get wild-some of the girls were dancing in bathing suits and one young reveler had swum out to the float and was standing on the diving board, clearly silhouetted in the moonlight, alternately guzzling beer from a hubcap and throwing back his head to howl at the moon.
Don found Vince seated on the fender of the Ford, gloomily drinking beer and peering through the trees at the party.
Vince's greeting was drawled and to the point. "What are you doin' here, candy butt."
"I'll take a beer."
"Buy your own. And who the hell put you on me, anyway?"
"One of your buddies."
"Some buddy. Well, you can just keep moving."
"Not like that. Vince, I'm worried about Juanita." The boy's eyes flashed for a split second, then grew veiled. "You're the only one, I'll tell you that."
"Have you seen her lately?"
"Not since Saturday night and that's fine by me. I hope I never see that-" He drained his beer, and the can clattered away in the darkness. "To hell with her."
Don let the silence close around Vince's statement, before saying softly, "The old man came to me. He says she's pregnant."
For seconds the boy was a rigid statue beside him. Then he turned to pull another beer from the case at his side and opened it with two neat, vicious jabs of the opener.
"That sounds more like your problem, Dimples." He hawked a dry, humorless laugh.
"I don't know if she's pregnant or not," Don said, "but that isn't what concerns me right now. The girl is obviously in trouble. She's left her father, and now you say you don't know where she is."
"And don't care," the boy suddenly burst out, his voice rising, quavering. "I tell you, I don't want to know where she is. After what happened out there in Hollywood-listen, Brent, maybe you're nice to her, maybe she-likes you and thinks of you as some kind of guardian or something, but me, I don't take that crap, not from any broad, especially not from her. I told her, I told that lousy bitch-"
The boy's hands strangled the beer can, and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "Yes," Don prompted softly, "you told her?"
"I told her what she is," Vince muttered through clenched teeth. "I told her she's got swinging doors for knees. I told her, by God, and I hope she ends up in a slot shop doing what she was meant to do."
"She just might if we don't find her. Look, we're all at fault. You, me, Huey, Juanita herself. But if that girl is wandering the city alone-think of it, Vince, totally alone and unwanted-"
The boy's chin struck his chest and he made a strange gesture with the beer can, as if to shield his face. "Knock it off, Brent. I'm telling you, I don't give a hoot in hell-"
His voice trailed off. They sat in silence. Through the trees they could see the fire leaping higher with the addition of empty beer cartons, and the silhouettes of slender young bodies jerking and swaying against the flames. Somebody's transistor vibrated and a pale wraith appeared suddenly on the other side of the fire, her flaxen hair tumbled about her eyes, her mouth gaping open, her hands plucking at the buttons of her sweater to reveal a stark white and piteously small brassiere banding a slender chest. Then the skirt came off, melting into the center of the blaze to reveal the pallor of young, fragile limbs, a flat white belly, the frilled whisp of white nylon....
Silently Vince handed Don an open beer. "I've got me another broad," he assured the night. "Something nice, get it? Not like this-" He waved a hand toward the scene, his Up curled in disgust. "Something nice and straight."
"You, my friend," Don murmured wearily, "have got a lot to learn."
He hoisted the beer.
Two swallows later the night was sundered by the shriek of sirens and black and white chariots came screaming through the trees to pull up in a phalanx surrounding the party on the beach. Uniformed officers scrambled from the cars and raced toward the beach, swearing and spearing scampering kids in their flashlight beams. Don heard the squeals of the girls and the sharp commands of the boys, the clatter of beer cans hastily cast through the trees, the splash of whole cases being flung into the lake, and the furtive sounds of the crafty youngsters swimming away into the darkness.
Vince was slugging him briskly on the upper arm and hissing, "Come on, let's split."
"But my car-"
"You can come back and get it later. Come on, shake it, granpa!"
Then he was in the Ford beside the boy and they were thundering through the trees, circling the dance pavilion and easing out the back way, with blackberry bushes scraping along the sides of the car, and the shouts and sirens still sounding general alarm behind them.
"What am I doing?" Don protested as they pulled up at an all-night diner to wait out the raid. "I'm of age."
"Okay, Dad." Vince laughed shortly. "You're the teenager's everlasting friend, aren't you? Well, you got to keep in touch."
But as Don got out of Vince's car opposite the entrance to the park, he leaned in through the door to find the boy's face again bleakly withdrawn. "Vince, you've got to help me find Juanita. You know the hangouts, the pads-"
"I told you my idea," the boy replied. "Try the goddam whorehouses."
"Vince, you don't know what you're-"
"Because that's where she belongs. You ought to know."
Vince's voice was rising involuntarily, beginning to crack, and it was clear from his expression that all he could think of was getting away.
"You have a responsibility," Don insisted, clinging to the door. "Besides, if we don't find her, the police are going to be involved."
Vince laughed, slamming the car into gear. "Scared, aren't you, Dimples? You don't know what it's like to get busted, do you? What a messy end to a fine career that would be. You'll find her all right. You got to. Just don't give her my regards."
The door was torn from Don's grasp and snapped shut of its own momentum as the Ford roared away, spitting gravel.
He found his car under the trees. The kids had all cleared out or been run in. In other areas of the park their elders carried on, their antics somewhat less pleasant to see. At the edge of the pool of light spilling from the dance pavilion two beer-logged, middle-aged men tried to fight, making fruitless pawing motions at one another, while their screaming wives tried to claw them apart. Far down the beach a woman pranced awkwardly before the fire, her doughy flesh jouncing about the two tight bands of her bathing suit. She lifted a beer in toast to the moon, poured it over her head, stumbled and fell to her knees and began to cry. Her wailing arose over the lesser sounds of the night and became the keening keynote to all the broken vows, crippled hopes and angry desperation seething in that place. At least the young, Don thought, have the grace of youth-a kind of beauty and health born of hope.
He drove home slowly. His own life was as ugly a mess as any he could imagine. His marriage was a melange of misery. His career was in jeopardy, but more important than the money or the job was that his reason for being was imperiled. He had let down the very kids he had hoped to help.
Where was Juanita right now? He had a vivid image of her dancing alone in some enormous ballroom, while one of those mirrored globes revolved slowly overhead and from the sidelines hungry hands reached for her, menacing, old, ugly, and leering mouths whispered obscenities. There was no music.
He found Marge and Doris Patterson in one another's arms on the living room couch. They were asleep, Marge's head nestled on Doris' breast, her features strangely child-like. Two glasses and a bottle of scotch rested on the rug beside four shoes and two sets of clothing.
He stood rooted to the floor of the entry hall, staring at the two figures locked together in the dim light from the terrace window. He tried to comprehend their death-tike rigidity as only sleep, but the faint smile of triumph on Doris' small mouth, the slack surrender on his wife's features told him too clearly of what had gone before, and at last the doubt that his marriage had dissolved was swept from his mind.
He began to sweat. He closed his thoughts against the resentment and rage that wracked his brain. He pressed both hands flat against the wall so that he might feel them there and somehow control them, keep them from reaching out and tearing at the two on the couch. He did not know how long he stood so, but finally he heard the stirring and turned to face the couch.
Marge awoke first. Her eyes flew open and for a moment she seemed a frightened tittie girl, then the bitter, defensive mockery rose to her lips.
"I told you," she murmured. "I tried to tell you in every way I knew." She tried to get up, but let herself back again to the other woman's broad breasts. "Now go away," were her last words as Doris Patterson's muscular arms tightened around her.
What was it Doris had said?
Marge is finding out ... sometimes I consider trying to go back, but I don't think I care enough any more ... As he climbed into his car, Don saw Ben Patterson take the corner of the sleeping street on two wheels and come to a gravel-scattering halt before his house. The big man unfolded himself laboriously from the cockpit of the sports car, paused to run his hand affectionately down the crimson fender. He turned, made it up the walk to the door, stumbled and fell to his knees, got up and fell through the dark opening like a corpse returned to its coffin.
Wearily Don Brent mounted the steps at the side of the neat duplex and leaned on the button beside the door. For a long time there was no sound, and he felt a new fear gripping his vitals. What if Jill had gone out to the lake again? But that would be all right too. He did not deserve her tonight, perhaps he would not for a long time. But at last he heard the faint sounds of someone coming. The door opened a crack and he saw a pale-blue padded robe-Jill's eyes widened as she flung the door wide.
"Don!"
"I'm sorry, Jill. I have no right to come here like this. But I told you once that when I was sure-well, I'm sure now."
She paled, stepping back. He followed her in.
"Darling, I can't explain it all right now. But Marge and I are through and I'm here. If I could just have a cup of coffee and sit here quietly-"
"Don," she said softly, moving forward, and next he was holding her slenderness tightly.
"I've got a lot to tell you, Jill-"
"Not now," she whispered. "You've told me enough-all I want to know. All I've ever wanted to know."
He leaned back to look at her. She blushed and bit her lip. "I guess I'm pretty brazen, taking a man right off the streets like this, but I'm tired of waiting...."
The bed was a coolness, but her body was warm. And there was all the time in the world, time to press himself into the soft hollows of her, time to feel her palms smooth his back, time to laugh softly and swallow her answering laugh with his mouth, to wait and grow slowly into her and let the realization burgeon tike a bunch of flowers, like a song of joy. To lie at last in peace, emptied of self-love for that instant and full of love for one another, and lust and love become, along with all the contradictions at the center of life, all one word.
"Shush," she said. "Listen. You can hear the buds bursting. You can hear the children growing in their beds."
FOURTEEN
She had managed to get her drink, but she had found no place to go, no place where she wanted to stay. Tangled coils of neon cast a smoldering net around her, and her consciousness snagged painfully here and there upon the faces drifting by. An old man with a matted beard, a red-faced man in an apron, a young hood in a studded jacket, a mannish woman with a face as bright and unreal as a circus poster-their eyes looked into hers, looked away, slinked furtively down her body, attached themselves to some part of her anatomy, moved on. She wanted to close her eyes and shut them all out, be alone, entirely alone.
She had been served in one bar, a dark and tawdry skid-row tavern, and had been driven from another by a bartender who had wanted to take her into the back room. She wanted another drink.
Here she was the daughter of a drunkard, and all she could think of was getting smashed. She had never been prudish about drinking. Huey had always been telling her what a proper upbringing he had had and how he had never taken a drink until his wife had broken his heart.
But a man can only take so much and the devil got into my soul, a soul that was so pure and innocent it exploded the way a perfect diamond will when it's hit just right and hard enough...
The thought of her father's soul pure as a diamond made Juanita laugh, but behind what he said she read a more profound truth and warning-people who could not forgive themselves could not forgive others.
She had never avoided liquor, but she had only been drunk twice and had been violently sick both times. She had usually let Vince do most of the drinking, yet here she was itching for alcohol, not for fun, not for momentary relaxation, but to feed a deep and frightening hunger for oblivion.
She passed the open doors of a penny arcade, where men stood before endless rows of blinking pinball machines. Chucky Chubbers' voice howled encouragement to another "baby" from the long glass mouth of a store where men stood staring with glazed eyes upon-a screaming cascade of black and white price tags and displays of bright-faced LP jackets, bongo drums, plastic fans, miniature cameras, pocket tape recorders, cast-iron nutcrackers shaped like a woman's hips, salt and pepper shakers shaped like breasts-yellowish puddles of congealed plastic labeled: Sick, Sick, Sick!
In the window of the place next door there were sun-faded magazines with names like Black Garter, Torture and Adonis Unveiled, and in the store well-dressed men mingled with men in tatters before tables heaped high with magazines and books, and pawed through trays of photographs wrapped in shiny cellophane.
She turned into a coffee shop, long and narrow, its windows blinded by steam. Automatically she ordered coffee, but when it came she could not touch the stuff. Two sailors at the counter eyed her furtively. She stared back boldly and finally one of them faced her.
"Y'all like a drink?"
"Maybe," she said. He hesitated and Juanita smiled. "Okay, just one."
They seemed all right. The one who had spoken to her seemed only a little older than she-the other had been around, was harder in the eyes and a little too quiet. Juanita felt a little worried about him, but she needed some fun. Wandering alone was a drag with the electric excitement of the city nagging at you.
The two sailors introduced themselves-Al and Rob. The three of them left the coffee shop and went to a bar, but the bartender refused to serve Juanita.
She was angry, but Al, the younger sailor, laughed. "Okay-give my sister a Coke," he said to the bartender.
They moved to a booth and Al brought out a bottle. The whisky did not spoil the Coke too badly and it sent a warm glow through Juanita. She wondered if tonight would make the third time she got stoned.
Might as well enjoy going to hell, she thought.
She let Al order her another Coke, which he again spiked liberally. He looked a little like Vince, she thought-not feature by feature, but the way he looked intently at her. His eyes were dark like Vince's and after a few drinks they got the same possessive hunger. When he slid his hand along her thigh, she let it stay.
Rob, the older sailor, said almost nothing, but he kept staring at her. After a while she could tell from his eyes that he knew just what Al was doing to her-he smiled faintly and his glance grew hot.
Juanita stared at him oddly. She wanted no part of him. She still was not sure she wanted any part of Al, either-he was, if anything, a little too much like Vince and she might not be able to take more than one Vince in a lifetime. Thinking of Vince brought her sadness back.
Al suggested leaving the bar and she said no. They all had another drink and now Al was looking at her uncertainly and she could have laughed at herself for thinking he looked like Vince, who by now would have been closing in. Al seemed on the point of retreat, so she encouraged him a little, letting his hand do pretty much as it pleased under the table.
One thing she was sure of-she did not want to be alone immediately.
After a while a signal of sorts seemed to pass between the two men. Al stood up and said, "Come on, chicklet's split. You and me. Let Rob find his own girl."
He grinned at Rob who smiled back barely perceptibly.
"Okay," Rob said. "But leave me the bottle."
"Sure." Al laughed again. "I got more up in the room."
Juanita felt a small inner warning at Al's mention of a room, but at the same time she was relieved that they were leaving Rob. She let Al lead her out. Al, alone, she felt she could handle.
Or not handle-as she saw fit. She giggled and the glow she felt did not come entirely from liquor.
They walked a few blocks to a cheap hotel. She felt misgivings again at sight of it but quelled them.
"Just one flight up," Al said and guided her toward the stairs, away from the rickety elevator.
The room was nothing to lift her spirits-two beds, a chair, a faded rug and a beat-up dresser. Juanita saw the second bed and thought of Rob.
"Lock the door," she said.
"Sure, chick," Al said. "We don't need company, do we?"
She shivered, a little frightened now at what she was doing. But she was even more frightened at the thought of being alone and Al still did not seem dangerous. He was looking at her like a pup eager for a bone-except that, of course, he was not thinking of a bone.
She plumped herself into the room's only easy chair.
"I thought you said you had something to drink here."
"Coming up," Al said.
He brought a bottle from a duffle bag, found two glasses in the bathroom and poured drinks. Sitting on the arm of Juanita's chair, he handed her a glass. She drank and the undiluted whisky almost gagged her. Then, as the fire reached her stomach, she began to see its advantages. Her eyes blurred as she looked up at Al.
He was leaning down toward her and once more he looked like Vince. Perhaps he did so only because she could not see clearly. Or perhaps the whisky had done something to him, too, as it had earlier-because any trace of uncertainty had vanished from his eyes.
Though they still looked hungry.
She let him kiss her. At first she felt nothing except just the pressure of his mouth on hers-then things began to uncoil inside her and she made him take her glass. Al put both their drinks aside and once more reached down for her.
This time there was no question of the fire building up inside her. She fought it as she had done with Vince-as she had with everyone except that one night with Don-but there was no question about the outcome in her mind. Al's hands worked over her-her breasts, her back, her thighs-and at last she was clinging to him even as her mind cried faintly, No-dammit-no...
Al picked her up and carried her to bed. He was in a hurry now and Juanita closed her eyes. Yes, he was like Vince now and she both wanted and hated him-and knew she had to have him. Then they were together and a wildness seized her ... a wildness where nothing mattered save her need.
When it was over, she almost loved Al-but hated herself. She wanted to leave, to run, but he was holding her and then came the knock on the door.
"Don't answer it," she hissed, but Al only laughed at her.
"That would be Rob," he said. "I guess he couldn't find anybody."
Juanita sat up. "Don't let him in."
"Why not?" Al asked. "This is his room too. I can't keep him out of it. Besides, what difference does it make?"
She jumped out of bed and made a rush for her clothes. Al went to the door and opened it, not hurrying, looking at her over his shoulder and smiling. He was giving her time to cover herself, but not enough. She was half dressed when Rob came in.
Rob stood in the doorway, his mouth twitching in what might have been a smile. His eyes were burning-there was no smile in them.
"Nice," he said, his gaze licking over her. "How was she, Al?" His voice was casual, as if he did not really need an answer, and without waiting for one, he started toward her.
Juanita waited, not moving. Inwardly she knew sheer terror. Curiously, the smell of the sun on green things growing came back to her-the feel of earth, the taste of blood. The memory of pain. Once again she was in the pea field where those farm hands had violated her, where she had first learned helplessness.
She was afraid of Rob. And not only of Rob, now, but of Al, also. Al, who stood at the door, his back against it, smiling. Oddly it registered on her awareness that Al did not look unfriendly even now, although he did not seem to care what happened to her. Vince, she thought wildly-Vince would have cared. Vince would have died before he let anyone like Rob touch her.
Don? Perhaps Don would have, too, though she doubted it. It was easier to see Don letting things take their course and try to mend matters afterward-Juanita had the sensation of learning many things she had only half understood with blinding rapidity-much as a dying person was supposed to see all the events of his or her life.
Was she dying?
Rob stood before her, studying but not touching her. He smelled of blood and dirt like those farm boys-he even looked like them. So did Al, though he had not a moment ago. How could she have stood Al's touching her?
She heard the click of the lock as Al pressed the door fully shut.
Al said, "How about a drink first, pal? Maybe she'd like one, too."
"I don't need a drink," Rob said. "Neither does she." Still without touching her, he began to take off his clothes.
Juanita watched, hypnotized, as his hairy body emerged. He was heavily built, bigger than either Vince or Al-bigger than Don. His shoulders and chest were massive, corded with muscle.
"You're gonna like this, baby," he said.
When he touched her, she went limp. He swore and grabbed at her. "Dammit, don't go passing out on me-" He carried her to the bed.
She lay perfectly still while he finished undressing. She suffered his touch as he lay down on the bed beside her. She let his hands roam, his mouth nuzzle...
At last he said, "Dammit-take off them clothes-" ripping at the scant covering she had managed to give herself while Al had gone to open the door.
And finally she moved.
She kicked out suddenly catching Rob off balance, sending him sprawling on the floor. Remembering the futility of her struggle in the pea field, she chose her target carefully. Rob had barely hit the floor when he doubled over swearing, holding his groin. She rolled off the bed and lunged toward the door. She saw Al make a futile grab at her, felt the sharp tug at her dress and heard it tear as she fell through the door and out into the hall, on her hands and knees.
Al came after her but perhaps his heart was not in it, for she had time to scramble to her feet. Next she was running down the hall, down the single flight of stairs. At the foot of the stairs she saw a side door and darted for it.
She hit the street and kept running, listening to sounds of pursuit. Stone steps dipped down from the sidewalk to a basement door labeled Salvation Army Thrift Shop. Swiftly she darted into the shadows beside the door and slipped into an almost invisible opening.
She waited, watching the street. There was no pursuit. Al probably reasoned he had gotten what he wanted-why should he risk chasing a fleeing girl down an open street.
After long moments she saw the side door of the hotel open. The two sailors emerged, carrying white sea bags, moving hurriedly off up the ramp.
Juanita stumbled to the railing of the steps and rested her head in her arms. Gradually she began to feel the coolness on her legs and looked down to find her dress hanging in two panels from her waist. The front seam had split. She started to cry, but it seemed so silly to be crying over a skirt that she stopped. She reached down with one hand to hold the two panels-and suddenly she was laughing, gripping the rail helplessly. Terror had done her a service after all-abruptly she discovered that she was not pregnant. But it seemed silly to laugh about that too and she stopped, gripping the rail and gazing downward into the darkness.
All the hurt was gone from her at this moment. She heard coughing down the street and squinted, trying to see. In the shadow of a warehouse thirty feet away she could make out a form, and she knew from the sounds that it was a drunk being sick and it occurred to her that the man could well be her father.
"I love you and I forgive you, Huey," she whispered. "I forgive myself, I forgive everybody-but I am not going down any further."
Don's trip to Mission High was fruitless. The girls' advisor, to whom he was referred by the principal of the school, was a sharp-nosed old biddy with a heron's predatory eye. "It seems to me you're going to quite a bit of trouble, Mr. Brent, just to deliver some prizes and photographs. If I know that girl, she'll show up to claim her own sooner or later."
"Well, we are also interested in having her continue on the show. She's a very good dancer, you know."
"I'll say she is. Perhaps too good."
"Yes-well, I presume you people will be looking for her."
"We notify the parents on the third day of absence. After a week we send a strong letter-" She hesitated, her hand hovering over the small card file where the two thousand kids in Mission High were alphabetically catalogued. "In this case, one parent, I believe. The mother isn't it?"
Don shrugged. Two thousand kids were a lot to keep track of. What could you expect?
"After two weeks have passed with no response," the woman continued, "we notify the juvenile officer, who makes a personal call. That would be Monday in this case. You're lucky you found the administrative staff here on a Saturday. We're between terms, or we certainly wouldn't be here."
He stood up. "Thank you."
"You see, Mr. Brent, we are compelled to deal through the parents. It's the law, and besides, we can't do everything here in the school, you know."
"No," Don agreed, and then, hopefully. "Is her home room teacher here today?"
"Maybe." Her hands leaped to the file, thumbed briskly through to J. "Yes-Smith, Juanita. Mrs. Bunson, down the hall, one-thirteen. She should be in for schedule conferences."
Mrs. Bunson was a short, round woman with heavy-rimmed glasses that gave her an owl-like stare. Her mouth was startlingly fat and active, surging damply with each consonant. "Yes, and Vince, too. Heavens, it's a shame. Of course, I must admit, things have been quieter mornings. But they were in love-my, yes-and that girl is such an utter darling that I do miss her. Wild, you know, like an animal. I have to admit, I let her get away with murder. With those eyes and that hair, what could I do? She should be a show girl. What a shame we don't have vocational courses in show business. After all, the boys get shop and we even teach driving. There are just some youngsters who should not be in a school that doesn't recognize their particular talents. Oh, not that Juanita isn't smart enough for us. She is. But she was meant for something else, that other side of life. If I hadn't been so-well, frankly, so homely, I would have been a show girl myself. Yes, life is a little dull in here without her-teaching is dull-dull-"
He left her staring out the window, the stars slowly dimming in her eyes, her plump mouth working damply over some childhood wish.
"I'll have to go to the police tonight," Don told Jill wearily. It was Saturday evening, and once again they were alone in the office, but the tension was gone from these moments and they were right at last.
"There must be some way to find her without your ruining yourself," she said with that stubborn little jerk of the head with which she always met resistance.
He smiled at her. "You're amazing."
She laughed. "Oh sure, terrific. I can't think of a thing."
"No, I mean the way you're taking this, the way you've taken all I've told you about what's been going on these past weeks-no, this past year."
She shook her head and bent to wrap an arm around his neck. "Not amazing, Chum, just stuck on you. Besides-" Her laugh was gently mocking. "I know how to handle a man."
"You sure do." He frowned and reached suddenly for the phone. "Now or never."
"The police?"
He shook his head. "First I'll try one more lead."
"Oh?" He dialed. "Hello, Doris?"
"Yes. Oh, it's you, Don. Listen."
"Wait. Are you having another party?" He could hear the ungodly racket behind her, but he had to be sure. "Yes-"
"And your baby-sitter?"
"What?"
"Your baby-sitter, who is she."
"Peggy Donohue."
"Is she still there?"
"Why yes, I think so. She wanted to hang around, and Ben-"
"Keep her there. I'll be right over."
"No, but wait, Don, please, Marge doesn't want to see you-"
"That," he said flatly, "is too damn bad," and hung up. And to Jill, who came toward him with a puzzled frown: "Just a chance. Peggy and Juanita were once pretty good friends."
FIFTEEN
Once again the Patterson place was lit up like a road-house, and Chucky Chubber's latest recording thundered from the wide-open door: The Twist is Out, the Stomp is In. Once again Don saw the same vaguely familiar faces, the same drinks held chest high like ceremonial cups, the same crowd on the stairs, the same frantic jumble of dancers in the vast living room-and Don's mind turned back to that other night when he had taken Peggy Donohue home, and she had told him with regret that Juanita was "sort of doomed"-and, with wide and starry eyes, that Ben Patterson was "cute."
He was not surprised to find Ben drunk or that both Doris and his wife had disappeared. But he was definitely startled to find Vince Ellison standing beside Peggy, his face fixed in a faint smile of wry unconcern. So this was Vince's new girl. Peggy looked uneasy. Her hands, buried deep in the billowed front of her full skirt, twisted and knotted upon one another and her blue eyes were fixed in stark fear on Ben Patterson.
The big man was insisting that she dance with him, cranking down into an absurd bow and speaking in a voice that was turning heads all around the room. "My little princess, I ask you yet a third time, may I have the pleasure of this quadrille."
The girl shook her head wordlessly, her golden pony tail swinging. "No, please, Mr. Patterson, I have to get home. Vince has come for me, and my mother-"
"Your mother?" Ben straightened. "What does your mother know? She lets you waste your time with-" He gestured toward Vince, then in mock apology. "S'cuse me, kid, no offense meant." Turning back to the girl, Ben asked, "My dear, does your mother know how very much you are worth? Here, let me show you-" Fumbling in his picket, he dragged out a wad of bills and flung them down in front of her. "Now dance with me, child."
"The lady doesn't want to dance," Vince said, his lips barely moving.
Don had started forward, but Vince was there before him, reaching out for the shoulder pad of Patterson's jacket and throwing his slight weight into the effort to turn the big man from the girl. But all his weight wasn't enough, and Patterson was pulled only halfway around. He came the rest of the way around himself, swift as a cat, all his weight behind a right-handed punch that caught Vince on the side of the head and sent him smashing against the wall. A left to the stomach and another right to the cheek and the boy was on the floor.
"You saw it," Patterson said thickly, looking directly into Don's eyes. "The boy attacked me." Then he turned and was gone, leaving behind him the echo of Peggy's scream, the excited babble of the dancers and the faint scraping sounds of Vince struggling to get to his feet.
"I'll kill him."
"Let him do it himself," Don said. He bent to help the boy up. "Come on, let's wash it off."
They staggered arm in arm into the kitchen, where Vince bent to spit into die sink, sending two bloody teeth skittering across the porcelain. Don handed him a damp cloth.
"Can't win 'em all," Don said.
Vince muttered through the cloth, "Man oh man, that is one bastard I'd really like to cream-"
"Take it easy," Don said. "You want to pump it all out through your mouth? We'll take care of him later one way or another. In the meantime, there's Peggy."
He started away and the boy tried to stagger after him, the cloth still pressed to his mouth.
"Wait. Hang on here a minute. I'll fetch Peg."
Vince nodded.
Don found Doris Patterson in the suddenly silent crowd in the living room.
Doris said, "Peggy's locked herself in a bedroom. I was at your place. Somebody came and got me. I talked to her through the door a second ago. She says she won't talk to anybody but you. You sure have a way with the ladies."
"Which door?" Don asked and Doris pointed. Don followed the direction of her finger, called through the door, "Peggy, it's me, Don. Let me in."
After a moment the lock clicked and he stepped in, closing the door behind him. Peggy had backed to the bed, where she crouched with her elbows on her knees and her face buried in her hands. "I have to tell somebody. I don't want to tell my mother. But some grownup-oh, golly, what am I going to do?"
He sat down beside her and took her hand. "Tell me, Peggy."
She looked up with a face streaked with tears. "You won't tell my mother?"
He shook his head. "Not if I can help it. You'll have to do that yourself. But maybe telling me will help."
She nodded. "Maybe." She looked down again, and not once during her story did her voice break or did her eyes leave the torturous winding and unwinding of her hands.
Ben Patterson had been so mature, big and strong. He had let her stay after baby-sitting to watch his parties, meet fascinating people, have a harmless drink now and then. He had taken her home time after time, sometimes swinging down to the Magnolia Drive-In to buy her a hamburger and shake, once even sneaking her into a cocktail bar, where they had each had a real martini. And all the time he had been gentle, fatherly and-oh, always scrupulously well-mannered and polite-all the things her mother had always taught her to admire in a person, all the things she would have wanted her father to be.
And then he had invited her to come down to see his cabin cruiser on a Saturday afternoon, and she had gone, telling her mother she was going swimming. He had been sober, grave and gentle. All the way down he had talked about how important it was to have high standards in boy friends, to keep herself for her husband, to remain pure until the right time came. She had thought his talk a little peculiar but, after all, it was the kind of talk she always heard from her mother.
And then, as Ben had lifted her to the deck of his boat, she had felt his hand on her leg, just a touch, high up under her skirt. But when she had turned, startled, unbelieving, he had only smiled and asked her if she got seasick.
But they had not gone anywhere. After they had each had a martini in the cabin, it happened. Ben did not seem different at first, but then, shockingly and absurdly, he had tried to kiss her. And as she had resisted, he had changed. When she tried to scream and his huge hand clapped over her mouth, she instinctively knew, staring in horror up into his writhing features, that it would be a fatal mistake to struggle.
She had come to with the world dipping and rocking sickeningly and had thought she was dead. And then she had seen Ben seated at the top of the hatch stairs, watching her. He had changed into white slacks and seemed cheerful again and only a little distant. But the awful look had flashed in his eyes one final time as he had helped lower her aching body down to the dock. Now you're not a virgin any more, he had told her, but if you don't tell anybody, I won't tell anybody. And nobody in the world will know-only you and me...
She had not cried until she arrived home and was alone in her room.
"How long ago was it?" Don asked at last.
She looked up. There it was, the marvelous rebounding power of youth, the hope of the world. "Long enough for me to know I'm not pregnant. And you know something? I know it all happened, but I don't really believe it affected me. You know what I mean, Mr. Brent? I mean, he didn't really touch me."
"If you don't think so, then he didn't," he said, getting up.
"And another thing. Can you guess whom I wanted to talk to after I was strong enough to think about it at all?"
"Your mother?"
Peggy shook her head. "She wouldn't understand. She would try to understand, but it would be too hard for her. She would be ashamed in spite of herself. No, the first person I wanted to talk to was Juanita."
"Juanita." The name was a thousand faces on his tongue: the face of youth, beautiful, afraid, confused, laughing out in courage.
"Yes," she cried excitedly. "And she called me! Just today, can you imagine? Oh, golly, it was so good to hear her voice. And she was glad to hear mine too. We met downtown in this funny little Chinese restaurant, right on skid row, but you wouldn't know it, the way those people took care of us. We had a whole army of waiters and cooks. We could have talked all day, heck, all night, but I had to baby-sit here. I didn't want to, but Mr. Patterson was so insistent on the phone with my mother and I was afraid that if I refused-and then this date with Vince. I didn't tell Juanita about it, because I knew it didn't really mean much to Vince, I mean, I know how he feels about Juanita, even if he doesn't admit it to himself, the jerk."
She seemed so totally revived, so animated that he hated to halt the flow of her enthusiasm. But he had to know. "Is Juanita all right?"
"Oh sure. She can take care of herself."
Peggy said it with such finality that for a moment he was struck dumb with relief. All the horrors he had imagined were banished by that one assured statement.
"Where can I reach her?" Don asked.
Peggy gave him a phone number. "You call hershe's got a right to say whether she wants to see you or not."
As they left the room, Doris Patterson stepped quietly up behind them and touched Don's sleeve. "This isn't the first time Ben has done a thing like this," she said. "You might as well know. There were-incidents-in the East before the war."
"Where is he?" Don asked.
"Probably went off joy riding."
"Doris, I'm sorry-"
When he was again driving Peggy home through the night, Peggy said, "Poor Mr. Patterson, poor Mrs. Patterson-all the poor, crazy, mixed-up grownups."
He said nothing for the rest of the drive and later he drove home slowly, feeling now and then at the breast pocket containing the piece of paper upon which he had written Juanita's phone number.
All the lights were on in his place. He was so tired, that he was almost glad to see the familiar phenomenon. One of the first arguments of their marriage had been over the electric bill. Yes, like all lower-class creatures, Marge had said, you get tight without enjoying it. But then, you'll never learn...
There was a note on the breakfast bar:
Gone to Las Vegas. Doris is leaving her kids with her mother and coming with me for a vacation. Then maybe I'll go to my folks' place in New England. Anywhere is okay with me. One thing is sure-I'll never be back. One last confession: do you know why we didn't have children after that first year? I took care of that the modern way. Only sometimes I think I'm going crazy. The modern way. It's a good thing I'm the one with the money. I need it more than you ever will. Goodbyeee.
Marge.
And that was it at last-one last desperate, incoherent message from his Greatest Mistake. He did not even care if her fantastic confession about preventing the children "the modern way" was true or not.
He sank down beside his telephone and called Jill.
"I love you," he said.
When he had hung up, his doorbell rang. Vince stood outside. "Don, I want to help you find Juanita."
"Good. Peggy gave me a phone number. Come to the studio tomorrow and we'll see what we can do."
"Man, that is good news."
"Drink?"
"No. I got some thinking to do."
"Sure. Good night, you hard street cat."
"Good night, Friend to the Young."
Next door, at the Pattersons', the party was still on. Through fatigue-fogged eyes, Don saw a guest pick up the phone, saw him slap his hand to the mouthpiece and call out, saw the others turn questioningly, saw the search begin. He watched, becoming increasingly fascinated and puzzled, as the guests combed every corner, hurrying in and out of doorways, calling out to one another. The howls of Chucky Chubber had long since been silenced and in the wordless sounds he heard there was a panic that dulled the edge of his amusement. A certain paleness and distortion of the frantic faces made his blood turn cold.
At last a half a dozen guests turned with one accord toward his window, and he saw one of them dispatched out through the front door and two climb cautiously from one terrace to the other and approach the glass opposite him slowly and knock gingerly, unwillingly, for all the world like messengers of doom.
SIXTEEN
Ben Patterson was dead. Don's feelings were mixed when he heard the news-perhaps the kindest thing he thought was that Ben had probably gone the way he wanted. His bright-red sports car had missed a turn in Magnolia Park. Don visited the scene of the accident. The car had crashed through a guard rail-with its driver it hung impaled on a three-inch pipe like a giant, crimson bug. By his expression, Ben had never known what killed him.
Or even that he was dead. The coarse face still clung to its evil.
Don spent most of what was left of the night in a futile effort to reach Doris and Marge. He had no idea of the route the two women had taken and the best he could finally do was notify Vegas police.
He was haggard when he reached the studio the following morning, to find Vince and Jill waiting. Vince greeted him, grinning through two missing teeth.
"On the ball, man. This is the big day."
Jill noticed his sleepless look and her eyes widened in concern, but she said nothing.
Don told Vince, "There's one fight less for you to look forward to-" and broke his news about Patterson.
Vince listened, dead-panned, his face suddenly withdrawn.
Jill said, when Don had finished, "I'm sorry." Her eyes flitted from Don to Vince.
Vince said finally, "I guess that was one cat who never grew up. What do you two want me to say." He looked from one to the other of them defiantly.
Don went to his phone. "I guess you've just said it. Let's call Juanita."
He dialed the number Peggy Donohue had given him.
A woman's voice said, "Hyatt Hall."
He asked for Juanita. There was a long pause.
At last he heard the slightly husky, lilting answer: "Hi."
He handed the phone to Vince and was careful not to listen. Then he took a turn and finally Jill. It was Jill who arranged the meeting that night.
"On duty until six, so anytime after that, okay," Jill said briskly. "Fine. See you then, hon."
"Holy cow," Vince said when the phone was finally back in its cradle. "She went to the cops. I'll kill her."
"Vince, you've really got some dandy prejudices," Don complained. "The police have some reason for being. You've got a few things to learn, cat."
"So teach me."
"The police seem to have sent her to a good place," Jill said.
Don nodded thoughtfully. "Hyatt House-I remember it, the community youth center."
"They wanted a spot on the show," she reminded him, "and you turned them down."
Don nodded regretfully. "All those commercials, no time for public-service stuff. But I've been working up a pitch for Charlie. If I can get him to budge one commercial per show-"
"You will be a miracle worker," Jill supplied wryly.
"Yeah."
But he tried that afternoon, figuring to set Dugan up with certain preparatory maneuvers, and then close in on him.
Dugan sat in his patented chair, an unlit cigar thrusting from his mouth like a cannon. "So you found the girl."
"Yeah, found her."
"She's all right?"
"Yep."
"She hasn't got a bun in the oven or anything."
"Charlie, I don't think that's any of your business."
"The hell it isn't. She's my star, ain't she? Didn't I discover her?"
"Yes, oh, sure."
"Sure. Now what's all this about you wanting to change the show?"
Don rolled his eyes. "Have you by any chance got my office bugged?"
"Of course not." Dugan waved his cigar impatiently. "I've seen it coming. You were hinting around the last time we talked."
"That's right. Well, I think for one thing we should give a little more time to informing the kids about places where they can spend their free time-not just goody-goody spots, but other decent places where teen-agers are welcome for what they are."
"Good idea." Dugan lit his cigar. "We'll work it out. But don't get any ideas about taking out any commercials. Cut one of the dance numbers if you have to."
"My God, but if we add a bulletin-board feature, the kids will hardly get to dance. Tell me, Charlie, did you ever dance yourself?"
"Don't be silly."
"Come on now, never?"
"Get outa here, you clown!"
Don retreated.
A half-hour before they were to leave for Hyatt House, Don had a call from Mrs. Donohue. Peggy's mother spoke levelly, as if after much consideration. "Peggy has told me everything, Mr. Brent. I am very grateful to you for your help, but I'm afraid I'll have to ask for more. We are not planning to prosecute Mr.
Patterson, but I do feel it's my right and my duty to confront him. I want him to know that the threat of prosecution hangs over him, should he ever feel tempted to-well, I called him at his home today, but there was no answer all morning. This afternoon I went over there, but the house was locked up. I really must talk to him and you are the only person I can turn to for help. Where is Mr. Patterson?"
"I can't tell you exactly where he is, Mrs. Donohue."
"But, Mr. Brent-"
"But I can tell you he's dead. He had an accident last night. His body is at the Magnolia Funeral Home."
"Good Lord. I'm-I'm sorry, Mr. Brent." There was a silence. "I'm afraid I was not-too kindly disposed toward Mr. Patterson-in fact, I haven't been a kindly disposed person. To an extent I blame myself for what happened. If I hadn't objected to some of Peggy's friends-like that Smith girl-"
Don passed a weary hand across his forehead. I'm sorry ... I blame myself ... would Peggy and Juanitayes, and Vince too-take refuge behind those grown-up cliches? Did kids alone possess the God-given faculty of not being sorry-of not blaming themselves? Mrs. Donohue was sorry. Ben Patterson, had he lived, would undoubtedly have lived only to be sorry. He, Don himself, was no stranger to this adult hell.
He said, "Mrs. Donohue-perhaps it would be better for us not to talk more now."
There was no point in telling her that Ben had had a record of uncontrolled behavior elsewhere. No point in speculating on how much of a blight the threat of further outbreaks had been on Ben's marriage. No point in mentioning the puzzlement in the eyes of the single witness to the accident, who had seen the car start into the turn until it had swerved at the last minute, taking the rail head-on.
The police had been doubtful, but Don agreed with the witness that the accident had looked suspiciously like suicide. Ben had raced cars-he had known as much as most men about speed and curves-had his death been a bid for freedom from his own irrational and destructive lusts.
Had it been Ben's way of saying, I'm sorry . . .I blame myself....
Don picked up Huey on the South Side, then followed Vince's Ford to Hyatt House.
"Have a little trouble keeping up?" the boy asked as they met again in the parking lot. But he was far from as cocky as he pretended to be. He kept patting at his ducktail nervously and smoothing his hands on his trousers.
Don nudged him. "Keep cool."
"I'm cool," Vince assured him. A fine film of perspiration coated his upper lip.
They pushed in through the glass doors. The inner walls of Hyatt Hall were brightly decorated and the floors well polished. Piped music came from somewhere.
A Mrs. Guild greeted them, a handsome woman in her fifties. She sent for Juanita and spoke softly to Don.
"Mr. Brent, we're between the devil and the deep blue sea. We're not a bunch of psychologists and sociologists, although we do have a few people with degrees. We are not prepared for, nor do we mean to handle, real hardship and delinquency cases. We leave those to the Juvenile Center. We're not doing very dramatic work and I'm afraid we don't make headlines. But at the same time, we have no particular axe to grind, so we lack the support of some churches and a few other clannish segments of the population. Especially when it comes to funds. We're supported by a number of community organizations and get a little money directiy from the city. But we need more. Why, the building is bursting at the seams."
Don looked. Couples crowded the dance floor. There was scarcely room for the single row of folding chairs that held the odd girls and no room for the stags, who hovered in traditional oblique alertness in the hallway near the refreshment counter.
"Our guest rooms are always full. Why, I nearly had to turn Juanita away. We have many unwed teen mothers. Usually on their way home or to more adequate care and help. Our idea is not so much to stamp any particular set of beliefs or principles on the youngsters. Teenagers are a little old to have their personalities drastically altered. We want first of ah to give them a place to be, to belong. Next we hope to provide them with an atmosphere that will give them a chance to be themselves, to build their individual talents and ambitions and at the same time keep them from crippling themselves by going too far-"
Juanita arrived. Vince took a step toward her and froze. She was lovely in a plain purple dress that clung demurely to her figure. But she was still Juanita. Don realized almost with a shock. She was still the gypsy of Mission High, the Little Egypt of Studio C. But her personality had a new edge of discretion, of maturity. It made her ah the more beautiful.
"Perhaps we could talk sometime, Mr. Brent," Mrs. Guild was saying. "We don't want to put anybody else out of business. We simply want a hearing and a chance to do our job."
"Mrs. Guild, I think I need your help as much as you need mine. We'll get together-the sooner the better."
"Hey, cats!"
"Juanita."
She kissed them, Vince last. "Oh man, did you shake me up with that call."
"We're sorry, Juanita."
"No, it's all right, really. I was all set and didn't know it, back on my legs and ready for the world again. When I got here, ah I wanted to do was rest, just crawl into my hole. But Mrs. Guild put me on salary and on the cashier's desk right away and then I got the idea I should call Peggy. After I talked to her, I wanted to talk to everybody, I really did. I would have done it eventually, but I'm glad you did it for me."
"Salary?" murmured Huey, stepping forward with open arms. "Sweetheart-"
She accepted his kiss on her cheek, then held him gen-Uy away from her. "No, Papa, you're on your own. That's one thing I decided. Honestly, I love you, and I know you love me, but you've got to grow up, too. I've got things to do. I've got to get back to school-" She laughed. "That's something else I figured out."
Huey stood with a look of admiration on his face. He leaned close to Don and muttered, "How d'you like that-told me right off, didn't she?" waggling his head in wonderment.
Juanita had turned to Vince.
"Dance?" he whispered hoarsely.
Juanita slippered toward him, reaching out a slender brown hand. "Okay, whoever you are without the teeth."
They moved off hand in hand, and the next number began with a moan that quickly became insistent thunder. Don turned raised eyebrows to Mrs. Guild. "Mashed potatoes?"
She nodded primly. "But only between foxtrots," then broke into a startling grin that revealed one gold tooth.
Don turned to Jill. "I'll teach you."
"Oh, no," she said, "we'll teach each other."
They moved out onto the dance floor with the youngsters.
