Barbary Shore (11 page)

While this went on, Guinevere prattled at me. She had also had a dream the night before, and she proceeded to tell it in detail. “And you know I thought I was a turtle, can you make that out, Lovett?”

“No.”

“Boy, it was murder. I was a turtle, and there I was lying on my back, and I couldn’t get up again. You got any idea how that makes you feel? This morning I had to go out to the drugstore, and get myself a bromo.” She lit a cigarette and drew the smoke into her broad painted mouth.

“Well, it was just a dream.” I was irritable this morning.

“Yeah, but you didn’t have it. I can’t get over that, being a turtle.” Without altering her position, she shrieked suddenly, “Monina, you leave Mr. Lovett’s stuff alone.”

The child paid no attention, but I do not think Guinevere expected any response. She merely groaned and turned to me. “That kid’s got hell in her blood. She takes after me. Honestly, Lovett, the things I’ve done.”

I squinted at the sunlight lancing through the window, and made no answer. “You know when I was in Hollywood,” she told me, “I ruined my career just cause I was so wild.”

“When were you in Hollywood?”

“In the middle of my burlesque career. They gave me an option. You know about the time they were making stars out of burlesque queens. They took me on too, and if I’d had any sense, if I’d been smart about it, I’d be making five thousand dollars a week today.” She sighed and exhaled some smoke. “But I threw it away by being wild. You know I put out for everybody, not cause I figured they could do anything for my career, but because I’ve always had a good heart, and you got to realize there were a lot of handsome stiffs out there. I used to be
crazy about making love in those days. And the fellows out there they really got whangs on them cause they use it so much.”

She snuffed her cigarette, and turned to the child. “Monina, where’s the radio?”

“Doutside.”

“Well, go get it. What’s the matter with you anyway? If you leave it out there, somebody’s going to steal it.”

Monina sighed impatiently, signifying she was weary of her mother, but she obeyed. Gone for a moment or two, she reappeared in the doorway staggering under the load of a portable radio which in proportion to her child’s frame must have been as unwieldy as a suitcase. “That’s a godsend,” Guinevere said. “On linen day it keeps me from going nuts.” She reached down and hefted it from the floor to the bed. As she played with the dials, she continued to talk.

“You can understand, Lovett, being as you go for me, that for a lot of them out there I had It. You wouldn’t believe if I told you the names of some of the famous stars and producers who wanted to marry me, but I ruined my chances by being too nice to all of them. They knew about me, and even then a couple of them wanted marriage, but I loused up my career and that made it impossible.”

“How?”

“Well, by playing around so much. The breath of scandal can’t touch a luminary; if it does you’re cooked. And I mean I can see their side of it. They would have invested millions of dollars in me, and they never could have known when some jealous star would have bought off the police and had me framed in a love nest. So they didn’t renew my option.” She smoothed the sheets with her hand, and stood up, and without transition, looking at me with her head to one side, she said, “How would you like to dance, Lovett?”

“I’m not very good.”

“That’s all right. I can show you.” She had found some
music on the radio, and now she closed her eyes, hummed to herself, and approached, arms outstretched. We drifted about the room in a slow shuffle, her body draped upon me in what was virtually an embrace. Leisurely we swayed, back and forth, the fresh warm air of summer morning eddying through my open window. “You’re not bad,” she murmured.

Guinevere moved quite well, her body light, her rhythm sensitive. At heart, however, it was not a dance. She applied her body to me, coquetted, withdrew, her motions an invitation. But of course there was nowhere to go. While the music played, Monina withdrew into a corner, knees against her chest and arms about her knees, the tiny face stricken in loneliness. When the song ended, it was followed by another tune with a faster beat. Guinevere wriggled in my arms, oscillated her hips, and grinned wantonly at me. Only Monina did not stir; her nature minted into the same coin as her mother, she must exhibit characteristically the other face. Her head an inch from her knees, she stared at the floor and began to whimper.

“Scared,” she cried, “I scared.”

The music ended, and with it the program. A voice began to talk about a canned food. Guinevere withdrew her body slowly, stood a short distance from me, her eyes looking into mine. “Let’s dance some more,” she said softly. With a glance over the shoulder, she bellowed without irritation, “Keep quiet, Monina.”

Monina responded by blubbering.

“Oh, that kid,” Guinevere whispered. Her eyes were bright and provocative. I had the impression that if Monina were not there, the hide-and-seek which Guinevere must play with me would be finished. For this instant she seemed younger and more attainable, lavish in the promise her eyes conveyed. “If only the kid wasn’t around,” she said into my ear.

We were standing still. She turned away to find other music on the radio, and Monina grasping the pause to advantage
ran toward me and threw her arms about my legs. I patted her head, felt her clutch me more firmly as Guinevere stood up and said, “Oh, this band is smooth.”

“I don’t want to dance,” I told her.

Nevertheless she approached, her eyes fluttering to the music “Aw, come on, Lovett.”

Monina released me and pummeled her mother’s thigh with her fists. “Mommie-diggie, mommie-diggie,” she shrieked with rage.

“What the hell’s got into her?” Guinevere demanded. She began to chuckle. “I bet she’s jealous.” With a deft swipe of her arm, she pinioned the child against her. “Now, take it easy, Monina,” she cautioned. “Boy, I bet she’s made me black and blue.”

The radio, unadjusted, blared too loudly in the room. I turned if off, and listened to Guinevere saying, “You know you got no idea, Lovett, how I bruise. I tell you I got the whitest flesh, and you can’t imagine how delicate it is. Every time a man puts his hands on me, it leaves marks.” The child, pacified, was now hugging her mother. Guinevere winked at me. “I’ll let you know something I never told anybody—when a man starts pawing me, I can tell there’s going to be bruises, and I feel like a white sheet or a carpet or something, and a guy with muddy boots is just walking all over it. What do you think of that?”

I made no response. I sat down at the desk, and Guinevere, the child at her knee, ensconced herself in the armchair. “You haven’t been thinking about … you know, what we were talking about yesterday?” she asked casually.

“What do you mean?”

Guinevere was insufferably cunning. “Well, you know, about just keeping an eye out, seeing what happens.”

“I told you I don’t spy.”

“Who was talking about that?” She made a small attempt
at righteousness. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you such a thing. I just thought maybe like everybody else you got curiosity about this person and that person.” Monina had placed herself at her mother’s feet and was trailing her hand idly over her legs.

“Go to Hollingsworth. He’s got more aptitude for it than I.”

“Now, why do you say that?” Suddenly her face exuded an air of manufactured mystery. “You know I’ll tell you something funny. I’ve been wondering about Hollingsworth myself.”

“You have?”

“He’s a sneaky son of a bitch,” Guinevere said, fingering her bosom. “There’re things I could tell you about him.”

I shrugged, having the idea that behind her elaborate digressions, something demanded voice. She was in a state where she sought information, but if balked would end by furnishing it. “I think he’s masquerading,” she suggested.

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Well, there’s something about him.” She had lit a cigarette, and was waving the extinguished match at me for emphasis. “Sometimes I think he’s the son of a prince, now I don’t mean that exactly, but you know, a magnate, or a … a potentate, and that he’s living here in disguise.”

I laughed. “What gave you that idea?”

She was quite serious. “I got my intuition about it. There’s something fishy with that character.”

“Something fishy?”

She was reluctant to expose her evidence, as if once removed from the fertility of her brain it must wither in my barren room. “Things,” she said ominously.

I laughed again.

Annoyed, she finally admitted in a grudging voice, “There’s a joker that’s always going up to visit him. I don’t like that a bit.”

“What does he look like?”

“Oh, I can’t tell. He wears a dark blue suit, and he’s got a
hat he pulls down over his forehead. My theory is that he’s the guy who comes to pay off Hollingsworth.”

“For
what?
”

“Well, I figure that’s the way his father gives him his allowance, you know in the form of a stipend.”

“Guinevere, I hope you realize how silly this is. Why can’t the man be just anybody?”

She caressed her forearm, mouth puckered in suspicion, uncertain how well she could trust me, “You know I’ve seen a little bit of Hollingsworth,” she confessed. Her expression was sullen. “I don’t trust him,” she repeated. With an abrupt gesture, Guinevere smoothed her dress upon her thigh, and stated dramatically, “I asked him about his buddy. Do you know what he said?”

“I don’t.”

“He said nobody ever comes to visit him.” She was triumphant. “What do you think of that?”

“How do you know he visits Hollingsworth?” Yet I was uneasy. Somehow she had created a mood where anything was conceivable.

Without embarrassment, Guinevere mounted her proof. “I followed him up the first time. I like to know what’s going on.” Her mouth was cherubic in its pride.

“Did you and Hollingsworth ever become friends?” I asked suddenly.

She was very casual. “What’s it to you?” she yawned.

“Not much.”

Guinevere looked at me, her eyes wary, denying the sense of her words. “He’s just like the rest of you,” she said raucously in one of her sudden modulations. “He wasn’t above trying to get up my skirts either.”

I made no answer. I was ruffled she had lumped me in the same basket with Hollingsworth. A minute dragged by, and Guinevere to fill the pause went on at length with one of her
inexhaustible stories about a lover and his whang, developing ever more lavish detail as if I were a kitten to be enticed by brightly colored ribbons. At her feet, Monina, bored amanuensis, sketched designs in the dust.

The child began to complain at last, and Guinevere stood up and hefted her pile of sheets once more. “Well, I got other things to do besides talking to you,” she said. Still, at the door, she turned around coquettishly. “You’ll keep an eye out, won’t you?”

“No.”

Visibly irritated, she departed, yanking Monina behind her.

W
HAT
a long day was to follow.

After Guinevere left, I had my solitary meal at noon, and came back to write for several uninterrupted hours. When I finished, the afternoon was at its height, and in a lethargy of self-satisfaction I lay on my bed and watched the air flutter along the pitch of my ceiling. The door was open to the hall for any breeze which might wander through, and after a while I began to drowse.

A voice woke me, a soft husky voice whose overtones were sweet. “I’m awfully sorry. Would you get up?”

I roused myself to a sitting position. A girl was standing in the doorway, her slender body balanced awkwardly, much as though she would leap into flight if I stirred too quickly. “Come in,” I offered.

“You looked so comfortable sleeping there,” she said, “that I hated to wake you. I guess you have the secret of knowing how to sleep.”

“I was just drowsing,” I mumbled foolishly.

She took my desk chair, and sat down upon it. “No, you mustn’t be ashamed. I thought you were beautiful.”

I rubbed my head, dazed by awakening in the afternoon
heat. Apparently, she expected no answer. “Oh, it’s wonderful,” she went on. “You’re awfully lucky.”

“Why?”

“To have this room. I love it. If I could, I’d buy it from you.”

I grimaced. “It’s dirty enough and cheap enough.”

“But that’s what is good about it. It’s
so
dirty,” she said in her husky voice. “I hate clean rooms. I hate people who are always afraid of leaving a trail. That’s why this place is wonderful. You live here and you leave your marks, and after you stay long enough it’s going to be in the walls, and the air, and a part of you is never going to leave here.”

On the strength of this speech, I examined the girl more closely. Her face, narrow and delicate, with a childish nose and mouth, a soft chin, and gentle brown eyes, made it difficult to determine her age. Like Hollingsworth, like myself, she might have been twenty; it was not unlikely that she was ten years older. My stare was returned candidly, a small smile rendering her lips tremulous, while she fished awkwardly in her purse for a cigarette, lit it, and passed it over as if we were old friends. I accepted the gift, but I was hardly prepared for such abrupt intimacy.

“Don’t
you
want one?” I asked.

“Oh.” She seemed startled. “Oh, yes.” Once more she fumbled through her pocketbook, and struck a match with hands that shook perceptibly. I noticed her fingers then, long and slender, potentially beautiful, but the nails were bitten, the cuticle was ragged, and deep tobacco stains yellowed the skin. She smoked like a man, palm upward, the cigarette held in the crotch between her fingers, the smoke drifting through the interstices and curling about her wrist. With her delicate features she could have been attractive except that her complexion was dull and beneath her eyes discolored, and her brown hair, unadorned, dropped lankly to her shoulder. I had the impression
she was not wholly aware of herself, and even the most elemental grooming would be performed spasmodically. Certainly her clothing would carry the stains of everything she touched.