You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up (10 page)

THIS GIRL IS DIFFERENT

W
ay past midnight I was on my way home from the chute concession, crossing Shore Front Boulevard, when I saw the swimming-girl again. She was all dressed this time. She looked different but I knew her. I could always remember her face. She was sitting in a Packard roadster, not saying anything; just sitting there watching me. I went over.

"Hello," I said. "Been swimming lately?"

She didn't pay any attention to that. She said, "I've been looking for you."

"I was looking for you, too, the other night," I said. "Where did you go?"

"Home," she said.

"Fine," I said. "I went and got you some clothes, and when I got back you'd blown. How'd you get home?"

She didn't say anything. So I said, "You went home in my suit?"

"I've been trying to find you to give it back to you. I couldn't find where you lived."

"Oh, I moved," I said.

I kept looking at her. She just sat in the car, looking straight ahead. She had clothes on, but she looked just the same—as if they didn't mean anything. She had on a blue beret and a white roll-neck sweater and flannel trousers. But she didn't look like the chippies who go up and down the pier wearing those things and showing everything they've got. She looked like they didn't mean anything any more than when she had no clothes on at all.

She just sat there, not saying anything.

"It doesn't matter about the suit," I said. "It was just an old one."

She took a breath, then she said, "I wanted to return it. It's home now, if you want to come and get it."

I got in, and she turned the car round.

"Where do you live?" I asked her.

She pointed down the shore.

"Not out there?" I asked, and I pointed out to the ocean.

She didn't answer. She just went on driving, looking steady at the road. I could see her face by the dash-light. She looked sort of frightened, and I knew she knew I was looking at her.

We went way down the shore and then started climbing up over Palos Verdes. She turned on a dark side road and then into a drive and stopped the engine. It was quiet then, and in the dark I could smell the place, the wet grass and dampness underneath eucalyptus trees.

"Funny, how when you live by the sea, you can smell green stuff so much clearer," I said.

She looked at me almost for the first time and smiled. "You know that, too?"

"Sure. I know a lot of things," I said.

She didn't answer then, but snapped off the headlights and started down a path. I followed her. Now the headlights were gone it was darker still, but I could hear her heels and I followed the sound.

I didn't know how to jolly along a girl like this, so I figured I'd better say nothing.

We went through an archway, and round a long path and then over a flagged walk up onto a big veranda.

"Wait here," she said, and went in.

You could see why they built the veranda there. It looked right through a clearing in the eucalyptus grove, out over the ocean from way high up. You could see the shore lights curving round the bay, and off inland the crisscross of lighted streets, and far away, and twinkling like stars, all the lights of Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

She came back with a little suitcase. She put it down and sat beside me on the porch swing. She didn't say anything, and I didn't know what to say. I think we sat for half an hour, maybe. Then all of a sudden I said:

"I work on a concession on the pier, switching gondolas round. I get twenty-five a week."

I don't know why I said that. I just bust right out with it. She didn't move. She said: "My grandfather operated a bawdy house in Carson City."

I didn't know what to say. She didn't say it tough. Most nice girls I've known—li
ke the few back in high school—
never let on they know about those things. But this girl did, and yet it made no difference to her. It was just as if because it was true it didn't make any difference her knowing it and saying it. I hadn't ever known anybody like this girl was. I didn't know what to say.

She sat very still, close beside me, but sitting up straight and looking ahead. Then she got up.

"Now," she said.

We walked back to the car.

"Where are your folks?" I said.

"Mother's away," she said.

She opened the door to the car.

"You want to drive, don't you?" she said.

I did want to drive, but it was funny how she found that out. It was a sweet boat. I started down the hill, just br
ak
ing down on compression, and out along the shore boulevard. It was a sweet car. I hated getting there. I drove by the pier and got out.

"You love machinery, don't you?" she said.

"I like this car," I said.

I got the suitcase out.

"Look," I said. "What's your name?"

"Sheila," she said.

"When shall I see you again?"

"Must you see me again?"

"Well, I ought to get this suitcase back to you."

"Oh, of course," she said. "I drive past here sometimes. I have driven past here every night since that night. But I couldn't find you."

"I don't get through till around one-thirty," I said. "Then I generally sit out on the end of the pier for a while."

She didn't say whether or not she'd come. She just started the car and drove off, real fast.

I couldn't get that girl out of my head. First off I'd think she was nuts. Then I'd think I didn't want to see her again. But after a while I could hardly believe that seeing her had ever happened. Then I'd wish I could see her again so that I would know it was true and it had happened.

And then one night she was there. Her car was on the boulevard. She was sitting in the car, but not in the driver's seat. I got in quickly and drove away, because I didn't want any of the bohunks on the pier to see her with me.

That Packard was a sweet car. You could push it up to eighty-five and it would still be going sweet with no overvibrations. I drove way up the Lincoln Boulevard and through Santa Monica and up along the shore route with the hills hitting up high on your right and the ocean down on your left.

We just went along not saying anything, just looking out at the white stripes on the road and watching the mirages like when another car comes toward you and it looks like it's traveling over a lake of water with the headlights all reflected underneath.

Way up past Malibu I parked a while and Sheila ran down on the beach. Before I knew it she was in swimming. She didn't say anything—just got undressed and first thing I knew she was in the water. I went in swimming after her and we went way out. It was warm, and we would dive under the water. When we did that we could see each other all outlined in a sort of col
d fire that comes from the phos
phorus in the water. When we came out Sheila got a long piece of kelp and went running up and down the beach and dancing with the kelp waving behind her.

I said, "Come on, let's get dressed. Someone might see us."

She didn't answer at all. It was funny; when she was down by the ocean you could talk to her but she just paid no never-minds.

That first night we had been swimming, after we got in the car she waved good-by to the ocean.

"You like the sea, don't you?" I said.

She nodded. I remember what she said. She said:

"Man can do anything to the land. But his domination stops right at the beach. He can't do anything out there. He can't spoil it. His power stops right exactly at that place where the deep waves begin."

When she said that her voice was funny. It sounded like

Genter's voice when he was telling me about the mountains not being there.

We drove down by a barbecue joint and got coffee. It was a slum place. The bird running it jumped round and waited on Sheila like she was a queen. She was that way—the minute she came into,'$ place it seemed to make it all different.

I drove her home and we sat in the car by the eucalyptus trees.

"You can come in," she said.

The house was all dark and I followed her in. She walked through all the rooms, turning on lights, going through every room like she wanted me to see the whole house. On the piano was a big photograph of a beefy bird with a funny jaw.

"Is that your father?"

"No," she said.

"It seems like I've seen him somewhere," I said.

"It's Lamport," she said. She said that as though I ought to know who Lamport was. "He's my mother's friend," she said. Then she walked away.

We went upstairs and she showed me a room with all the walls covered with books.

"That's where I used to study," she said.

"Don't you study any more?" I asked her.

"No," she said.

"Why?"

"They made me stop. They were afraid."

She didn't say afraid of what. She walked into a bedroom and stood there. It was all white and pretty and smelled nice like lavender. It was funny being in the bedroom of a girl like that.

She walked to a photograph on the wall. "This is my father," she said. It was just an enlarged snapshot of a man wearing a derby, standing on some steps outside a house.

"He's a swell-looking guy," I said. "Is he dead?"

"No," she said. "He's living in Nevada. He's a State Supreme Court Judge."

She was very proud of her father. I could see she was tickled because I'd said he was a swell-looking guy. She seemed happy. It wasn't like you'd think about a girl asking you into her bedroom. It was just as if she was showing me a garden.

"Now," she said.

Then she walked out. We went down to the car and I drove back to the pier and got out, and stood there while she drove away again.

I walked home. It was near four in the morning. I thought over everything we'd said and done. Her running on the beach with the kelp; I could remember that plain like a moving picture I could see in my mind.

Then I got to thinking it was funny—about no one being in the house at all this late at night, and her father, and her mother, and her mother's friend. It gave me the shivers.