Blue World (47 page)

“I haven’t thought about that for… it seems like forever,” she said. “The blue world. Maybe… I just stopped lookin‘. I don’t know.” She walked to a monument, leaned against it, and traced her fingers over the carved white marble. “It’s strange, huh? People live and die every day, and you never know a thing about ’em. Everybody just goes on about their business, like a big boilin‘ pot. I mean… we’re all in it together, aren’t we?” She gazed at Lucky, her eyes glittering in the blue half-light, and then she looked away. Her fingers tightened on the marble. “I’ve gotta get out of this,” she said. “I’ve gotta… figure things out. Somethin’ went wrong. It went wrong, and I don’t know where it went wrong.” She lowered her head, and John heard her choking on a sob. It was the same sound of a lost, crying child that he’d heard in the confessional, and his heart yearned to give her peace. He started toward her, to rest his hand on her shoulder and tell her his name was not Lucky but John Lancaster, and that he was a Catholic priest.

“Don’t touch me,” she said as he reached out. “Okay? Don’t touch me just yet.”

John stopped. He pulled his hand back, and the moment spun away like a dead leaf.

“I’m sorry.” She reached out and grasped his fingers. “I’m a bitch sometimes.” She examined his face and touched a place on his left cheek that made him wince. “I bruised you,” she said. “Hell, maybe I ought to get into foxy boxin‘ and oil-wrestlin’, huh?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Listen… I’m not mad at you. I knew me gettin‘ that part was a real long shot. It wasn’t you that screwed me up. You’re still my Lucky, right? Soul mates?”

“Right,” John said.

She nodded. “Believe it.” She paused, staring toward the grave of her friend. The blue world was passing now, and night’s edge was coming over the horizon. “Come on,” she said, and tugged him toward Solly’s car. “I’ll buy you a burger.”

At eight-forty-six their jet was taking off from LAX. It turned above the hazy fire of the metropolis and arrowed north.

By ten o’clock they were leaving San Francisco International, heading along the Bayshore Freeway in Joey Sinclair’s white Rolls-Royce.

Sinclair lit a cigar, and the flame painted his face. His eyes glared at John for a moment; then his attention drifted to Debbie. “Solly called me after you left L.A.,” he said in a subdued voice. “That Solly.” He shook his head and puffed blue smoke. “You put him up to bat, and he can’t hit nothing but foul balls.”

“It wasn’t Solly’s fault,” Debbie told him. She had her sunglasses back on, staring at the red circle of Uncle Joey’s cigar. “They found out, that’s all.”

“Yeah.” Sinclair sat without moving for a long time, his eyes half-closed and the cigar’s fire glowing and waning. The lights of San Francisco gleamed ahead. John saw Sinclair’s hand slip to Debbie’s knee, and the older man patted it gently. “Don’t worry, baby. You’re a star. I snap my fingers, you’ve got a flick opening in three hundred theaters. What more could you want?”

She didn’t answer. Her dark glasses caught a spark of neon, and John saw her stare at her hands, clenched into fists in her lap.

“Chuck? See our friends upstairs, please,” Sinclair told his son when they’d parked in front of Debbie’s building. A light rain was falling, the street like black glass. Debbie got out, but as John started to, Sinclair’s hand closed on his sleeve. “Hey, Lucky,” the man said quietly and forcefully. John had no choice but to pause. “You queer?” Sinclair asked.

“No.”

“You got AIDS?”

“No.”

“Good, ‘cause Debra likes you. I can tell. She gets hot for a guy, it shows on her face. You ever done any film work?”

“No,” John said, his throat dry.

“Doesn’t matter. How about this deal: you and Debra in a movie together? It’d just be a bit part for you, but we’d do some photo spreads and get ‘em in the glossies like

Chic and

High Society.

Then we’d let it leak that you two are fucking each other in real life.“ He removed the cigar. ”See the beauty of it?“

John could do nothing but just stand and stare at him, his mouth partly open, as waves of disgust crashed through him.

“Yeah, I thought you might go for that idea. You think about it and let Uncle Joey know.” He released John’s sleeve. “I want the suit back, but you keep the money,” Sinclair said. “Call it a down payment, right?” He laughed and shut the door, and a little stinking whiff of cigar smoke floated past John’s nostrils before the rain shredded it.

Up in Debbie’s apartment, Chuck looked at John as he came through the door and said, “Off. The duds. Now.” John started to walk back to the bathroom, but Chuck caught his arm. “You deaf, Lucky? Take ‘em off. I

gotta go.“

John stripped off his borrowed suit, and in another moment he was standing in his underwear and socks. Chuck put the clothes back on their hanger and called, “I’m gone, Debra! See you tomorrow, babe!” He went out the door, and it thunked shut behind him.

“Tomorrow?” John heard water running in the bathroom. He walked in and found her vigorously brushing her teeth, stripped down to her hose, panties, and bra. “What’s tomorrow?”

“Working day,” she said, her mouth full of green foam. She spat into the sink. “We’re shootin‘ in Chinatown. Want to go with me, kinda hang out?”

“No.” He steadied himself against the bathroom door. Unicorn was in his sandbox, listening like a flat sphinx. “I’ve got to get dressed and go--”

“No!” Debbie said suddenly, her eyes widening. She spat the rest of the toothpaste foam out. “Lucky, no! You’re gonna stay the night with me, aren’t you?”

“I can’t. Really. My… uh… other girlfriend--”

“Screw your other girlfriend!” she said. “I mean…

don’t screw her. Lucky, I need you to be with me tonight. I don’t want to be alone. Okay?“

“Debbie… I…”

“I’ve got fresh sheets,” she told him. “Look. Let me show you.” She took his hand and pulled him into the bedroom before he could brace his legs to resist. The bed was made--one of the tasks she’d done when she’d been zipping around this morning--and now she threw back the spread to show him the crisp pale blue sheets. “I put these on ‘cause I kinda thought they went with your eyes and, you know, we could celebrate.”

“I don’t think there’s much to celebrate.”

“Yes there is!” She paused, thinking. “Our plane didn’t crash.”

He laughed in spite of himself, and she put her arms around him and held tightly. “If you don’t want to fu… if you don’t want to, like, be disloyal to your girlfriend, I can understand that. I don’t like it, but I understand it. Just come to bed with me and hold me, Lucky.” Her hands gripped into his shoulders. “Okay? Just hold me?”

“Okay,” John said, and this time nothing in him screamed that it was wrong.

He got into bed, still wearing his underwear, and she slid in beside him with her hose, bra, and panties on. “This’ll be like a pajama party, huh?” she asked him excitedly. He put his head on the pillow, and her head with its long black hair found his shoulder. Then she twisted her body around to face him, her hands stroking his chest. “We must’ve met in another life,” she said. “That’s why I feel so good around you. Maybe we were lovers in ancient Egypt, huh? I want to do you, Lucky.”

“What?”

“I want to do you.” She touched his left earlobe. “You know. I want to pierce your ear for you.”

“No, thanks.”

“It’ll be sexy! Come on, let me! I’ll put ice on it to get it numb, and--”

“No!”

“Either you let me pierce your ear,” she said defiantly, “or I’m gonna go to my cookie jar and have a white taste.”

He looked at her; she wasn’t fooling. Oh, my dear Lord…! he moaned inwardly. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. She was still waiting for his answer. “Will it hurt?” he asked.

“Sure. That’s what it’s all about.” Then she smacked him on the stomach. “No, dummy! The ice deadens your earlobe, and I’ll burn the needle before I use it.” She got up and hurried to the kitchen, where John could hear her scooping ice into a plastic bowl. He looked down at the floor. Unicorn had scuttled beside the bed and settled himself into a corner; the damned crab looked as if it were smiling in expectation of quite a spectacle.

Debbie returned with the bowl of ice, a cold wet cloth, and a needle. She lit a match and held it under the needle’s tip as John pressed two pieces of ice on either side of his lobe. Then she straddled his chest. “Okay, turn your head this way. You feel that?” She pinched his earlobe, and he said, “Yes. No. Wait. No, I didn’t feel it.”

“Good. Hold still, now, this’ll just take a sec.” She leaned forward, the needle ready.

He remembered a dentist saying that to him, just before the pain almost blasted his molars out.

The needle touched his flesh. John grasped hold of Debbie’s thighs. “Little sting,” she said, and then the needle slid in.

This, then, must be love.

Tears squeezed from his eyes, and he bit his lower lip. “Easy, easy,” she whispered. “Almost done.” The needle was in, and she was drawing it all the way through the lobe. She caught the drops of crimson on the cold cloth. “One more time through,” she told him. The needle entered the raw-edged hole. She let it stay there, half-in and half-out. “I knew a guy with five studs in one ear,” she told him. “You want to go for two?”

“No!” he said quickly, before that idea locked in her mind. “One’s plenty.”

“Well, I think you’re gonna look real good.” She leaned forward, her hair brushing his face, and worked the needle gently in and out for a moment. “Got to make sure it doesn’t clot up. You know, the hole’ll grow shut real soon if you don’t keep it open.” She removed the needle, and her hand went to her hair and shoveled it back. John could see that there were three studs in each of her earlobes. She took one out of her left lobe. “Wear this one. It’s a real diamond. A rough diamond, I mean. But it’s got a shine to it, see?” She showed him its hard glint, then pushed the stud into his ear--a new level of pain--and capped its sharp little point on the other side. “All done,” she told him.

Hail Mary, Mother of Grace, he thought. I didn’t scream.

She caught one of his tears on her fingertip, and she licked it off. Then she put the torture equipment away and rested her head against his shoulder, her fingers gliding back and forth across his chest.

Sometime during the night, when rain thrashed against the bay windows, John awakened to the sound of her crying.

She had turned away from him, her back pressed against his side, and she was sobbing--muffled, horrible sounds--into a pillow. When he shifted his position a half-inch, her crying immediately halted on a strangled note.

He lay where he was, his eyes closed and burning, and Debbie Stoner sobbed her soul out.

A knock at the door. An impatient knock, John thought. He went to the door and opened it.

Father Stafford stood there. “Well, the prodigal returns! John, where in the world were you yesterday? McDowell was tearing the place apart looking for you!” Darryl’s gaze was suddenly riveted, and John knew why. “John… tell me what that is in your ear.”

“A rough diamond,” he answered, and he went back into his bathroom to finish splashing cold water on his face. It was eight o’clock on Friday morning, and John had returned from Debbie’s apartment barely thirty minutes before.

“Oh.” Darryl stood in the doorway. “Great. Well, that explains everything. You disappear all day--and night-- without warning, and suddenly you’re back with a pierced ear. Would you explain--” He stopped, and looked quickly to his left. John felt a leap of terror, because Darryl had just glanced at the apartment door and John heard someone else walk in.

“Father Lancaster,” the monsignor said quietly. He pushed Darryl aside. “You missed our conference yesterday morning. I knocked at your door and there was no answer, so I had Garcia unlock it. Strange to say, you were not here. Neither were you in any of the other places I checked. Would you mind enlightening me as to your whereabouts?”

“I…” His heart boomed. What to say, when there was no explanation? Or, at least, not an explanation the monsignor would care to hear. “I… was with a sick friend.”

“Oh!” McDowell glanced at Darryl, his face expressing cynical sympathy. “John was with a sick friend! All day and all night, without a word, and not even a telephone number in case we had an emergency. Now, isn’t that a fine picture of responsibility?” He glared again at John, and behind the monsignor’s back Darryl made a throat-slashing gesture.

“My friend needed me.” John felt a touch of anger redden his cheeks. His heart was pounding hard.

“What if we needed you? Don’t you think you have a duty to-- What is that?”

“That what?”

“That. That! Right there! In your ear! What is that in your ear?”

McDowell was shouting, the harsh voice like explosions off the bathroom tiles. John touched his diamond stud, but of course there was no way to hide it. “Take it out!” McDowell commanded. “Take it out, this minute!”

The voice hurt his eardrums. It was a voice without sense or reason, just the snort of a bull about to charge a scarlet flag. John felt his face redden a deeper shade, which simply served to make the old bull’s eyes flare wider. And as he looked into those eyes and saw the callous stone behind them, John was aware of a jam in the river of his obedience, like logs crashing together and damming a flow that had always run the safe, well-ordered route.

“No, sir,” he said, surprisingly calm about it now that he’d made his decision. “I won’t take it out.”

McDowell gasped, absolutely gasped. John thought his eyes had bulged, and the small purple veins on his nose-- wine veins, John had always thought of them--swelled. “You will!”

McDowell thundered. “Or I’ll jerk it out myself!”

“If having a pierced ear makes me less of a priest,” John said, “you can flush yourself down the toilet and I’m walking out of here.”

Now even Darryl looked stricken, as if he was on the verge of a heart attack.

McDowell moaned, shivered, and stuttered like a furnace about to blow.

“This is my apartment. You had no right to come in here when I was absent.” He wanted to stop; he knew he had to stop, but his mind was casting out the long-stifled thoughts. “I was with a friend all day yesterday and last night. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know where I was, but I just couldn’t. Does that make me less of a priest too? Can’t I have friends? Can’t I…