Death Is a Lonely Business Page 13

  “Right! Only the projector and the films in the parlor. Time only works well in one direction. Back. I control the past. I’ll be damned if I know what to do with the present, and to hell with the future. I’m not going to be there, don’t want to go there, and would hate you if you made me. It’s a perfect life.”

  I looked at all the lit windows of her house and all the rooms behind the windows and then over at the abandoned limousine to one side of the mosque.

  This made her nervous enough that suddenly she was gone and came running back with the white wine. She poured it, and muttered, “What the hell. Drink this. I’ll—

  Quite suddenly, as she handed me my glass of wine, I began to laugh. Laugh, hell, I exploded, I guffawed.

  “What’s the joke?” she asked, half-taking the wine back. ‘What’s funny?”

  “You,” I roared, “and the chauffeur. And the maid. The maid, the chauffeur! And you!”

  I pointed at the kitchen, out at the limousine, and back at her.

  She knew she was trapped and joined my hilarity, throwing her head back and giving a delicious yell.

  “Jesus Christ, kid, you caught on! But—I thought I was good.”

  “You are!” I cried. ‘You’re terrific. But when you handed me my drink, there was something in your wrist motion. I saw the chauffeur’s hands on the steering wheel. I saw the maid’s fingers on the serving tray. Constance, I mean Miss Rattigan—”

  “Constance.”

  “You could have carried the masquerade on for days,” I said. “It was just the smallest thing about your hands and wrists.”

  She ran out of the room, scampered back, frisky as a lap dog, wearing the chauffeur’s cap, took it off, put on the maid’s, cheeks pink, eyes flashing.

  “You want to pinch the chauffeur’s bum? Or the maid’s?”

  “All three of you have terrific bums!”

  She refilled my glass, tossed the two caps aside, and said, “It’s the only fun I have. No jobs in years, so I make my own jobs. Drive around town nights, incognito. Shop evenings, as the maid, ditto. I also run the projection equipment here in the parlor, and wash the limo. I’m not a bad courtesan, either, if you like courtesans. I used to make fifty bucks a night, much moola, in 1923, when a buck was a buck and two bits bought dinner.”

  We stopped laughing as we went back inside and sank into the pillows.

  “Why all the mystery, why those late nights?” I asked. “Do you ever go out by day?”

  “Only to funerals. You see”—Constance sipped her coffee and lay back among the pillows, which resembled a kennel of dogs— “I don’t much like people. I started turning cranky young. I guess I have too many producers’ fingerprints on my skin. Anyway, it’s not bad, playing house alone.”

  “What am I doing here?” I asked.

  “You’re Fannie’s friend, one. And, two, you look like a good kid. Bright but brainless, I mean innocent. Those big blue eyes full of naivete. Life hasn’t got to you yet? I hope it never does. You look safe to me, and rather nice, and fun. No phys. ed., though, as they say, no phys. ed. Which means I’m not going to tackle you into the bedroom, your virginity is safe.”

  “I’m no virgin.”

  “No, but you sure as hell look it.”

  I blushed furiously.

  “You still haven’t said. Why am I here?”

  Constance Rattigan put her coffee cup down and leaned forward to stare straight into my face.

  “Fannie,” she said, “is frightened. Terrified. Spooked. Are you, I wonder, the one responsible?”

  For a little while I had forgotten.

  The drive to the beach had blown the darkness out of my head. Being in this house, standing by the pool, watching this woman dive in the sea and return, feeling the night wind on my face and the wine in my mouth had made the last forty-eight hours vanish.

  I suddenly realized I hadn’t laughed really hard in a good many weeks. This strange lady’s laughter had aged me back to where I should have been: twenty-seven years old, not ninety the way I had felt getting up this morning.

  “Are you the one responsible for scaring Fannie?” she repeated, and stopped.

  “My God,” said Constance Rattigan. “You look as if I had just run over your pet dog.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Did I just kick you in the kishkas?”

  “Kish—?”

  “Meatballs. Sorry.”

  She let go of me. I didn’t fall off the cliff. So she said, “It’s just, I’m protective as hell about Fannie. I don’t think you know how often I’ve been down to that ratty tenement to visit.”

  “I never saw you there.”

  “Sure you did, but didn’t know. One night a year ago, Cinco de Mayo, there was a mariachi Mexican Spanish Pachuco conga lineup through the halls and down through the tenement, gassed on wine and enchiladas. I headed the conga line dolled up as Rio Rita; nobody knew who I was, which is the only way to have a good time. You were at the far end of the line, out of step. We never met. After an hour I had a small chat with Fannie and vamoosed. Most of the time I arrive there at two in the morning because Fannie and I go back to Chicago Opera and Art Institute days, when I was painting and in the opera chorus free, and Fannie sang a few leads. We knew Caruso and were both skinny as rails, can you believe that? Fannie? Skinny! But what a voice! God, we were young. Well, you know the rest. I came a long way with mattress marks on my back. When the marks got too numerous, I retired to pump money here in my backyard.”

  She indicated at least four oil-rig machineries heaving and sighing out back of the kitchen, wonderful pets for a good life.

  “Fannie? She had a lousy love affair which cracked her permanently in half and blew her up to the size you see now. No man, not me, not life, could coax her back to beauty. We all just gave up on that and stayed friends.”

  “A good friend from the sound of your voice.”

  “Well, it works both ways. She’s a talented, dear, eccentric lost lady. I Chihuahua-caper to her mammoth gavotte. Lots of good honest laughs at the four-o’clock-in-the-morning world. We don’t kid each other about the facts of life. We know we’ll never come back out into it, she for her reasons, me for mine. She saw one man too close, I saw too many, quickly. Retirement takes many forms, as you can see by my disguises, as you can see by Fannie’s Montgolfier balloon shape.”

  “The way you talk about men, I mean, you’re talking to a real live one here, now,” I said.

  “You’re not one of them, I can tell. You couldn’t rape a chorus line, or use your agent’s desk for a bed. You couldn’t Knock your grandma downstairs to cadge the insurance. Maybe you’re a sap, I don’t know, or a fool, but I’ve come to prefer saps and fools, guys who don’t raise tarantulas or yank wings off hummingbirds. Silly writers who dream about going to Mars and never coming back to our stupid daytime world.”

  She stopped, hearing herself.

  “Christ, I talk a lot. Let’s get back to Fannie. She doesn’t scare often, been living in that old firetrap for twenty years now, door open to one and all, and the mayonnaise jar in hand, but now something’s wrong. She jumps when fleas sneeze. So—?”

  “Last night all we did was play opera and try to joke. She didn’t say.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to bother the Martian, that’s one of the things she calls you, right? I know by the way her skin shakes. You know horses at all? Ever see the skin on a horse twitch and jerk when flies land on it? Invisible flies are landing on Fannie all the time now, and she just firms her mouth and shakes her flesh. Seems her astrology chart is out of whack. Her hourglass is malfunctioning, someone has put funeral-urn ashes in it instead of sand. There are odd whispers in her icebox door. The ice falls inside the fridge at midnight and sounds like the wrong kind of laughter. The toilet across the hall gargles all night. The termites under her chair are going to gnaw through and drop her to hell. The spiders in the wall are mending her shroud. How’s that for a list? All intuition. No facts. Would get thrown out of c
ourt fast. You understand?”

  With nothing trembles.

  I thought that, but didn’t say it. Instead I said, “You talked to Henry about this?”

  “Henry thinks he’s the world’s greatest blind man. That don’t catsup any beans for me. He hints Something’s up, but he won’t say. Can you help? Then I can write Fannie or call her through the Gutierrez lady or drop by tomorrow night and tell her everything’s Jake. Can do?”

  “Can I have some more wine, please?”

  She poured, never taking her eyes off me.

  “Okay,” she said, “start lying.”

  “Something is going on, but it’s too early to tell.”

  “By the time you tell, it may be too late.” Constance Rattigan jumped up and paced around the room, turning at last to rifle-shot me with a stare. “Why won’t you talk when you know Fannie’s scared gutless?”

  “Because I’m tired of being afraid of every shadow, myself. Because I’ve been a coward all of my life and I’m sick of me. When I know more, I’ll call you!”

  “Jesus.” Constance Rattigan snorted a laugh. “You got a loud voice. I’ll move back and give you air. I know you love Fannie. You think she should come live with me here for a few days, a week, to protect her?”

  I looked around at the grand pillows, the bright elephant herd of satin surfaces with goosedown stuffings, so much in shape and size like Florianna.

  I shook my head. ‘That’s her nest. I’ve tried to get her out to movies, to plays, even to operas. Forget it. She hasn’t been out on the street in over ten years. To take her away from the tenement, her big elephant boneyard, well—”

  Constance Rattigan sighed and refilled my glass.

  “It wouldn’t do any good anyway, would its’

  She was reading my profile. I was reading the dark surf out beyond the French windows where the tidal sands turned in their sleep, in their own good time.

  “It’s always too late, isn’t it?” Constance Rattigan went on. “There’s no way to protect Fannie or anyone, not if someone wants to hurt or kill you.”

  “Who said anything about killing?” I protested.

  “You’ve got the kind of plain pink pumpkin face that shows everything. When I told fortunes it wasn’t tea leaves, it was obvious eyes and vulnerable mouths. Fannie’s spooked and that spooks me. For the first time in years, when I swim at night, I figure a big wave will take me so far out I’ll never make it back. Christ, I hate to have my one really big enjoyment spoiled like this.” Then she added, swiftly, “You wouldn’t be the spoiler, would you?”

  “What?”

  Suddenly she sounded like Crumley, or Fannie telling me not to “bring anyone with.”

  I must have looked so startled that she barked a laugh.

  “Hell, no. You’re just one of those guys who kill people on paper so’s not to kill for real. Sorry.”

  But I was on my feet now, bursting to say something, tell wild things, but I wasn’t sure what.

  “Look,” I said. “It’s been a crazy month. I’m beginning to notice things maybe I never noticed before. I never read the obituaries, ever. Now I do. You ever have weeks or months when too many friends go mad, or go away, or drop dead?”

  “At sixty”—Constance Rattigan laughed ironically—”there are whole years like that. I’m afraid to go down any flight of stairs; friend broke his neck that way. Afraid of eating; two friends choked. The ocean? Three friends drowned. Airplanes? Six friends smashed. Cars, twenty. Sleeping? Hell, yes. Ten friends died in their sleep, said what the hell and quit. Drinking? Fourteen friends with cirrhosis. List me some lists. It’s only begun for you. I’ve got a phone book here, look.”

  She grabbed a small black book off the table near the door and tossed it to me.

  “Book of the dead.”

  “What?”

  I turned the pages, saw the names. There were little red crosses by fifty percent of the names on each page.

  “That personal phone book is thirty-five years old. So half the people in it have been gone quite a while, and I don’t have the guts to finally erase or yank out the names. It would be like a final death. So I guess I’m the same sort of custard you are, son.”

  She took the book of the dead back from me.

  I felt a cold wind from the window and heard the beach sand stir as if a great and invisible beast had put a huge paw down on it.

  “I didn’t spook Fannie,” I said, at last. “I’m not Typhoid Mary. I don’t carry the disease. If it’s anywhere tonight, or here, it’s on its own. My stomach’s been ruined for days. People are dying or running away, and there’s no connection, and I can’t prove anything. I’m around or near when it happens and I feel guilty I can’t see, know, tell, stop it. I have this god-awful feeling it’ll go on more days than I can bear. Everyone I look at, now, I think, I wonder if he or she is next, and know that if I wait long enough, of course, everyone goes. They just seem to be going faster this week. That’s all I’m going to say. Now I’ll shut up.”

  She came and kissed the ends of her fingers and put the fingertips on my mouth. “I won’t rile you again. For a custard, you snap back. What now, another drink? Want to run films? Midnight dip in my pool? Mercy sex with your film mother? None of the above?”

  I ducked my head so as to avoid her mocking and fiery gaze.

  “Films. I’d like to see Constance Rattigan in Lace Curtains. Last time I saw it, I was five.”

  “You sure know how to make old folks feel great. Lace Curtains. Stand back while I load the projector. My pa worked a Kansas City cinema when I was a girl, taught me to run the machines. Still can. I don’t need anyone in this house!”

  “Yes, you do. Me. To watch the film.”

  “Damn.” She leaped across the pillows and started fiddling with the projector in the back of the parlor. She yanked a can of film on a nearby shelf and deftly began to thread it through the machine. “You’re right. I’ll watch your face watching me.”

  While she was busy, humming and adjusting, I turned and stepped out on the low porch above the sands. My eye traveled along from the south, roving the shore, past the front of Constance Rattigan’s property, and on north until …

  Down by the tideline, I saw something.

  There was a man standing there, motionless, or something that looked like a man. And how long he had been there, and whether he had just come in from the surf, I couldn’t say. I couldn’t see if he was wet. He looked naked.

  I gasped and glanced quickly inside. Constance Rattigan, whistling between her teeth, was still dickering away at the projector.

  A wave fell like a gunshot. I flicked my gaze back. The man was still there, hands at his side, head up, legs apart, almost defiant.

  Go away! I wanted to yell. What are you doing here? We’ve done nothing.

  Are you sure? was my next thought.

  No one deserves to be killed.

  No?

  A final wave came in behind the shape there on the shore. It broke up into a series of cracked mirrors that fell and seemed to envelop the man. He was erased. When the wave pulled back out he was gone, perhaps running away north along the sands.

  Back past the Bon cage in the canal, past the canary lady’s empty windows, back past my apartment with its winding-sheet bed.

  “Ready?” Constance Rattigan called from inside.

  Not really, I thought.

  Inside, Constance said, “Come see the old lady made young.”

  “You’re not old,” I said.

  “No, by God.” She ran around turning off lights and fluffing pillows in the middle of the room. “This health nut’s writing a book, out next year. Underwater gymnastics. Sex at low tide. What bicarbs to take after you eat the local football coach. What—my God. You’re blushing again. What do you know about girls?”

  “Not much.”

  “How many you had?”

  “Not many.”

  “One,” she guessed, and crowed when my head bobbed. “Where i
s she tonight?”

  “Mexico City.”

  “When’s she coming back?”

  “Ten days.”

  “Miss her? Love her?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to telephone her and stay on the phone all night so her voice protects you from this dragon lady?”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Like hell you’re not. You believe in body warmth?”

  “Body?”

  “Warmth! Sex without sex. You can give this old gila monster canned heat without losing virtue. Just hold and hug, spoon fashion. Keep your eyes on the ceiling. That’s where the action is. Films all night until the dawn comes up like Francis X. Bushman’s erection. Sorry. Damn. Come on, son. Let’s hit the sack!”

  She sank into the pillows, pulling me after, at the same time stabbing some buttons on a control console imbedded in the floor. The last lights went out. The sixteen-millimeter projector started humming. The ceiling filled with light and shadow.

  “Look. How d’you like that?”

  She pointed up with her beautiful nose.

  Constance Rattigan, twenty-eight years back in time, on the ceiling, lit a cigarette.

  Down beside me, the real lady blew smoke.

  “Wasn’t I a bitch!” she said.

  I woke at dawn not believing where I was. I woke incredibly happy, as if something beautiful had happened in the night. Nothing had, of course, it was just sleeping among so many rich pillows by a woman who smelled like spice cabinets and fine parquetry. She was a lovely chess game carved and set in a store window when you were a kid. She was a freshly built girl’s gym, with only the faintest scent of the noon tennis dust that clings to golden thighs.

  I turned in the dawn light.

  And she was gone.

  I heard a wave come along the shore. A cool wind blew in through the open French doors. I sat up. Far out in the dusky waters I saw an arm flash up and down, up and down. Her voice called.