She Walks in Beauty (17 page)

Cindy came to a full stop. A little smile played around the corners of her mouth. “You’re picking up the angles.”

“I’m a quick study. Another thing, has it made any difference with one less judge?”

Cindy stiffened. “Dividing the totals by six is no more difficult than dividing by seven. The pageant uses computers, you know. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

Sam stepped right in front of her. “Rumor has it that Kurt Roberts was kidnapped by the delegation from—” Which state would make sense? It helped to have these lies worked out in advance. Kidnapped by whom? The mob. New Jersey. It’d play. “—New Jersey because they got the drift that Kurt didn’t like their girl.”

Cindy whirled. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Well, at least it got her attention. “And I couldn’t help but notice, I saw you and Kurt Roberts out at the pool yesterday afternoon, and it seemed as if you two—I was just wondering—do you know where he went? I was thinking of doing a sidebar on judges and the judging process.” Actually that wasn’t a bad idea. “And it’d be interesting to know what could drag a man away from—”

Cindy Lou bobbled her head above a rigid neck, her lips in a pout. When Goldie Hawn did it, the gesture was cute. “He went back to New York.”

“That’s what I heard, but it seems strange. Is that what he told you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything.”

“Really? He just up and left without saying good-bye?”

“He—I—” Suddenly Cindy Lou’s composure crumpled. Her mouth trembled. “Get away, leave me alone,” she snapped, then wheeled and bolted down the hall.

Sam could have caught her again, if she’d really wanted to. But there was the siren call of the press conference. She’d give Cindy Lou a rest.

*

Darleen Carroll stared in the mirror of the dressing table. It was almost noon, and she hadn’t put her face on yet. Here she was, barely 36, and an old hag.

At least, that’s what Darleen thought. Actually, she still looked rather like the 18-year-old only daughter of the only Jewish jeweler in Eureka—way north of San Francisco, on the cool redwood coast where the fog made for good complexions—when she left off the two inches of makeup.

If she looked hard, she could see that young girl yet, the Darleen who’d hitchhiked her way south across the border to an abortionist in Tijuana before she chickened out at his front door, where pigs were rooting in garbage she didn’t want to think about. It was in Los Angeles that she, still pregnant and hitching her way back toward Eureka, met Billy, who was pumping gas and waiting for a break into the Big Time. Billy thought he had the stuff to be another Old Blue Eyes. He’d done some little theater, and he had the eyes and the best baritone in Sioux Falls.

Those had been the sweet days. He’d said she reminded him a lot of the little sister he’d left back home in South Dakota, and he’d let her sleep on his couch. It wasn’t long before she’d moved into his bed, and then she had a miscarriage, losing the baby of that other Billy, Billy Barnes back in Eureka, who couldn’t have been much of a man, said Billy Carroll, whose real name was Billy Karczewski, to let her run off that way by herself.

Darleen had straightened up Billy’s little apartment, made some curtains out of flowered sheets she found on sale—she’d liked to make things pretty since she was a tiny thing—and before you knew it, they had a sweet little home, and Billy did get a break. They honeymooned on the proceeds from his deodorant commercial, and then there was a walk-on on a soap. Next came a small speaking part in a James Garner film, and they thought the sky was the limit.

But before too long, it became apparent that Billy would have to aim a little lower.

“Too short, next!” casting directors would say,
right to Billy’s face.
Hey! What about Dustin, he’d scream as he threw things through the windows of the little house they’d taken in Santa Monica. A few inches didn’t stop him.

Darleen never said, Yeah, but maybe he was more talented, though she was beginning to think that. But it was too late to make noises like that because Rachel Rose was on the way, and she definitely wanted this baby to have a daddy.

So she kept telling Billy he was the greatest and went right on with the decorating classes she’d started taking at night. It wasn’t long before Darleen could render you a perspective of what your house was going to look like, color swatches attached, and she found it real easy to get along with the Haute Queen antiques dealers at the Design Center who gave her special deals and turned her on to super-rich clients in return for a little kickback.

Darleen had done
very
well, and Billy’s career had eventually picked up. He’d found his way into the emcee market—and occasionally got to sing a song or two. Then “The Big One” had come along, and it was the Big Time—for Billy. It paid bushels of cash, and the set was always plump with cute little dollies.

Darleen stared hard at her face in the mirror and wondered, What would happen if I had a chin implant? Would that pull out those little grooves that are starting from my nose down to my mouth? Or are we talking full-scale lift here?

She’d have to ask her friend Maureen, who had had the whole thing done when she was 40. Maureen said there was no such thing as too early, and besides, you could always have it done again.

But what Maureen couldn’t tell her, and what she wanted to know right now, was whether or not Billy was sleeping with Miss New Jersey.

He played Atlantic City once a year, just to keep his hand in, he said. His hand in
what
?
Last night Darleen had passed on watching Billy’s act. After all, she’d seen it a million times before, both onstage and in their living room, and besides—it wasn’t in the main room. He was just another singer playing to a bunch of drunks and losers, and the combo couldn’t ever seem to get the intro to his theme song, “Send in the Clowns,” to go just right.

Frankly, the show embarrassed her.

Actually, Billy was beginning to embarrass her.

Darleen, she said to herself in the mirror, admit it. Billy has embarrassed you for years, and humiliated you with other women, and what you’re trying to do now is get up the nerve to leave him.

That’s right, she whispered back. But it’s hard to do, after all this time, and you’re afraid of spending the rest of your life like all those divorcées you know back home in Newport Beach, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, doing your house and your face over and over until your face looks Chinese and your house looks like Versailles. So what you’re looking for is some Grand Finale, some Huge Scene, some
in flagrante delicto
so
flagrante
that it will force you into declaring it the
coup d’état
—Darleen having learned more than a
soupçon
of French from the Haute Queens.

For a long time she’d hung in because of Rachel Rose. But she couldn’t use her as an excuse any longer. Rachel Rose was just about grown, and she was wise to her dad, though she still loved him. As did Darleen—a little. After all, he had taken her in when she was young and desperate. They knew each other’s warts. On the other hand, there was her pride.

The song was right. Breaking up
was
hard to do.

Just then, Billy stumbled into the bathroom.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “My head.”

Darleen gave him a look of cool appraisal. After all, she wasn’t a jeweler’s daughter for nothing. “Four A.M., I’d say. And at least half a bottle of Cutty Sark.”

He held his head. “Ooooooh. Don’t remind me.”

“I waited for you after the show, Billy. Right where we agreed, in Uncle Pennybags.”

Billy lifted his face from the sink, which he’d filled with ice from the wet bar. His theory was that a faceful of ice cured any multitude of sins and hid them from the camera. Darleen didn’t know why he persisted in this belief, since he looked easily five years older than she, and they were born two weeks apart.

But then, she didn’t drink.

And she didn’t screw around.

“No, darling, I didn’t get your message.” She shifted into her cheerful voice, which Billy detested in the morning, if you could call noon the morning. “Did you leave it with one of the sweet Guatemalan waiters who couldn’t deliver it because he doesn’t speak English so well, bless his heart?”

“No, I left it with the hotel answering service.”

“Oh, damn that hotel answering service.”

Billy lowered the ice from his face. “Sarcasm is not becoming, Darleen.”

“Oh, double damn,” she said. “And to think no one has told me that before now.”

*

Billy was worried about Darleen. She didn’t seem like herself lately. A little more snippy. A lot more outspoken. He wondered if she was going through the change of life early. His Aunt Thelma back in Pierre had done that. At least that’s what they said when she went out into the barn early one morning and castrated all the bulls.

The thought made Billy shiver. He reached for the bottle of Maalox.

“Bad stomach?” Darleen cooed.

Yeah, maybe it was the change. Maybe he ought to talk to her about going to see that gynecologist of hers. Of course, Billy was convinced that the gynecologist was a dyke. How else did you explain a woman wanting to stick her hand up other women all day? And he didn’t want any dyke putting any more ideas in Darleen’s head. She came up with enough of them by herself—and talking to her crazy friend Maureen.

He didn’t know what had gotten into women these days.
Nothing
ever seemed to make them happy. That’s why he preferred ’em young.

Of course, preferring and having were two different things. If you’d been around the block more than once, you really had to show the girls something.

Something like a Mercedes 560 SL, for starters. Access to swanky clubs, hideaways down in Florida, a lot of disposable green to throw around.

At that thought, Billy shivered again.

It was trying to make that disposable green to impress the dollies that had gotten him into the fix he was in.

Oh, Jesus.

He didn’t know why he’d let himself get snookered into that poker game in the first place. Poker wasn’t his thing. He favored the ponies.

He stared into his sunny-side-up eyes above the sink and thought, Who’re you fooling, Billy? Everything’s your thing. Everything you can lose money at. Football. Cards. The track. Basketball. Baseball. Hockey. Tennis. Hell, once he’d even bet on Ping-Pong when the Olympics were on TV in a bar.

The girl who was with him at the time, a silly little redhead not much older than Rachel Rose, which shamed him if he thought about it—he tried not to think about it—said: Billy’ll bet on anything that has balls.

There was some truth in that. The whole truth was, Billy would bet on anything, period. He was the kind of guy, the fellas in Vegas liked to say, his mother was dying, Billy’d bet which way she’d fall.

Yeah, Billy was a Vegas kind of guy.

The kind they loved to see coming.

And coming and coming and coming.

Yeah, Billy was a real spurter all right. And a bleeder and a sweater and a crybaby, and right now he felt like he didn’t have a single drop of liquid left in his body.

He’d pissed it all away on the cards last night.

And why had he gone into that back room at Tommy’s for that very private little game with the high rollers? The big boys?

Because they asked him, that’s why.

It made him feel like one of the gang. It made him feel like a big man, Billy Carroll of “The Big One.” Little Billy Karczewski was left behind in Sioux Falls, never to be thought of again.

It made him feel like the kind of guy who would always be lucky, and who would
get
lucky every night, with a different beautiful babe on his arm—many of them
tall.

But then, when it was all over, and he’d lost, lost Big Time, he’d turned to old Angelo Carlo, called Angelo Pizza because he ran a chain of pizza parlors for Ma Amato. Angelo was very big in Ma’s various businesses, not the least of which was loan-sharking. “Angelo,” he said, “I’m gonna have to ask you for a favor.”

“Don’t do it,” Angelo had said, shifting his weight to his good leg. “It won’t be no favor.”

“I need ten large.”

“I can see that. But I can also see that the last time you had trouble paying the vig, and it got nasty before it got nice, and I don’t like having to do that. It puts me in an awkward position, Billy. And I’m in a bad mood already, got a guy who skipped, just like you, always behind.”

“Please. You know I never skipped on anything in my life. What’s skip? As if you couldn’t find me in a second. Please, Ange.” Billy hated hearing himself beg like that. But he didn’t have much choice. He had to give the players the money, or he wasn’t getting out of the room alive. Better to be alive now and worry about being dead tomorrow was one of Billy’s philosophies.

Eventually, Angelo made him the loan.

But now Billy looked at his eyes in the mirror, and they made him want to puke because they were so scared. The vig, the vigorish, the interest on the 10, was 300 a week. That was just to stay even, paying nothing back on the principal, 156% interest a year, or $15,600. Plus the original 10 large.