Perchance to Dream (22 page)

    "You simply are a bastard, aren't you, Marlowe."

    "I'm a detective, lady. I told you that before. I don't play at it. I work at it. I belong where I am, in a lousy apartment on Franklin, in a crummy office on Cahuenga. I pay my own way, and do what I will do, and don't accept insults. It isn't much. But it's mine. Whatever brains and guts and muscle I was dealt, it belongs to me, and I use it in my work. And what money I have I earned."

    She was crying. I felt a little like crying myself.

    She said, "Do you want to kiss me goodbye?"

    I said, "I want to kiss you goodbye," and dragged myself to my feet and put my arms around her and she pressed against me and opened her mouth and we kissed for a long time.

    Then we broke and she said, "Don't come back. I couldn't stand it again," and turned and left the room fast. I stood and tried to get my breathing calm.

    While I was doing that, Norris came into the room.

    "Mrs. Regan asked me to show you out, sir."

    "On my way," I said.

    "I'm very grateful, sir, that Miss Carmen is back."

    "We'll see to a proper place for her, Norris."

    "Yes, sir, the General would approve of that, sir."

    I said, "Norris, do you have champagne?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Chilled?" I said.

    "Of course, sir."

    "Bring it with some brandy," I said, "and two glasses, to the greenhouse, please."

    Norris smiled. "Yes, sir," he said.

    The greenhouse was as I remembered it. Stifling, thick with moisture, overgrown with thick fleshy plants. In the center, just as it had been, was the wheelchair on the red Turkish rug on the flagstones under the domed roof. The lap robe was folded and hung over the back. There were two wicker chairs set near the wheelchair. Drops of water fell from the glass roof and splattered occasionally on the hexagonal flagstones. I sat in one of the wicker chairs and took out a cigarette and lit it and exhaled slowly. Norris came through the jungle pushing a tea wagon with a bottle of French champagne in a silver ice bucket, which was already densely beaded, and a bottle of fine French brandy.

    "The champagne as cold as Valley Forge," I said to Norris, "and about a third of a glass of brandy beneath it."

    Norris didn't speak, but he mixed two glasses of champagne and brandy and handed me one. We drank in silence. The forest dripped, the smell of the orchids was like the smell of dying beauty, the rotten sweetness of a prostitute, General Sternwood had said. We finished our drink without a word. Norris standing, me sitting in the wicker chair where I had sat the first time Fd met the General.

    "He had the soldier's eye, Norris," I said. "Like yours."

    "If I may say so, sir," Norris said, "not unlike yours."

    Then we put our glasses down on the tea wagon and I shook Norris's hand and walked away from there. On the way out I saw Eddie Mars get out of his car and stroll to the front door. He didn't see me. I walked out to the street past the slow sweep of the lawn sprinkler and got in my car and drove away and didn't look back.