California Gold (58 page)

“Yes, Carla’s all right.” He snatched his wineglass and drank. The snow fell faster; he could scarcely see the bridge now, and the heights of Brooklyn not at all.

He watched the snow a while. “Last night, in that fine soft bed at the Astor House, the blizzard nightmare came back. When I walked outside this morning, there was the same snow. I know why I live in California.” She smiled. He sampled the cold vegetable she’d prepared with a touch of vinaigrette. “These avocados are fine.”

“They’re from home. Like the oranges for dessert.” She pointed to a bowl on the kitchen counter.

“Can you buy California navels here?”

“Yes, at the grocers on the corner.”

“Those oranges might well be mine, you know.”

“There, you see? The railroad isn’t all bad. Please don’t tell Mr. Hearst I said that. Now I want to hear about this yacht you’re buying.”

“I haven’t actually commissioned it. But I’m talking to designers, and I know what I want. Two hundred feet, minimum.”

“Won’t that require a huge crew?”

“I anticipate forty to fifty men. I can afford it. I told you I’d go back to San Francisco in style.”

“And you’re ready.”

“Soon.”

“It just delights me that you’re doing so well. You must be very content.”

“Content? I don’t know—” He picked up the wineglass again, deeply chilled by the invisible breath of winter radiating from the windowpanes. He rose and walked to the fireplace. The applewood burned sweetly, its light burnishing the bowl of oranges so they glowed like spheres of gold. “There’s always one more Klondike to explore, one more vein of gold to find. Sometimes I regret I’m too busy to chase off to Alaska and follow the new strike.”

“But you are successful, and happy—?”

He turned around and laughed ruefully.

“Never ask that question of a married man.”

“I didn’t mean to pry, or—”

He startled her by striding to the table and setting his glass down firmly. He turned her in her chair, holding both her shoulders from above.

“No, I’m not happy. I tried to make it work with Carla but it hasn’t.”

“Mack, please…” She pried at his right hand, a curiously innocent, almost frightened expression on her face.

“It would be different with you,” he went on. “That’s the real reason I came to New York. To say that.”

Deftly, she slipped away from him. Standing by the window nearest his chair, she said, “Carla struck me as an intelligent woman. I expect she knows how you feel.”

His tooled boots rapped the floor as he followed her. He set the chair out of the way and caught her shoulders from behind. “Forget about Carla.”

He kissed the back of her neck above her collar. The dark hairs were downy-warm. His mouth moved to the left, the curve to her shoulder, his right hand sliding around to find her breast.

She sagged and pressed back into him. “Oh dear God.” She clasped both hands on top of his.

He released her long enough for her to turn, and she raised her arms around his neck and kissed him with her mouth opening a little, and her sweet tongue telling of memories of Yosemite, the falls’ roar all about them, and this same fire licking up within them—

The moment broke when he started to pick her up in his arms.

“No, Mack.” She was quiet but firm and pushed him away with a final, dogged “No.”

“Why not? No one will know.”

“We’ll know.”

“Nellie, I love you.”

“I love you. That doesn’t make any difference. An affair is never worth the turmoil and pain it causes. It hurts everyone, even those not directly involved.”

Shocked, he realized she was admitting something. Anger found its way into his voice. “You’re an expert, are you?”

She collected herself by the fire. “Yes, but never mind the circumstances; it’s in the past. It happened soon after I came here. I think I was trying to get over you. Anyway—if we did what we’d both like, eventually we’d all suffer. You, and me—and your wife.”

“I doubt she’d be overly concerned.”

“I’m sorry, Mack. The answer’s no.”

She tucked her golden blouse into the waist of her skirt and smoothed it. He could almost see her walling up her emotions with the cement of reason and will. “We must go on with our lives as they are. I have the novel to look forward to—you have San Francisco to conquer—another page to turn in that guidebook. Do you still have it?”

“On my desk in Riverside.”

“Haines—that was the author. I still intend to look him up someday.”

“You’re changing the subject. I want to discuss—”

“No, it’s settled. I’m glad you came to visit, very glad. But that’s all it’s going to be. A visit.”

“Damn your fine high principles, Nellie—” She stiffened and seemed to withdraw into herself as she hurried to the kitchen. “Will you be staying in New York a few more days?” she asked, returning with the bowl of oranges.

“Earlier this afternoon I thought so.” He paused, his eyes bleak. “But I find there’s nothing left to do. I’ll catch a train tomorrow.”

“Then you’ll be traveling on New Year’s Eve.”

“Yes, I’ll probably celebrate by watching the snowdrifts go by in some godforsaken place like Iowa or Nebraska. What does it matter?” He was furious with her; he’d never loved anyone so much.

Nellie held out the bowl. “Would you care for an orange?”

“No thanks. I get all that I need back home.”

Two hours after Mack left, the storm became a blizzard. Nellie heard the building creaking and stumbled from her hard narrow bed to peer out the window. She could barely see the bridge, or anything else, for the wind-driven whiteness.

She hadn’t been sleeping. She felt wound tight inside and her feet were stiff with cold. She’d piled all the fur pallets onto the bed, but they didn’t help. How she wished he were here for—

No, she mustn’t think that. She had been so close to giving in tonight—too close. He was a married man now. But he was still a potent force in her life, she’d been stunned to discover when she first saw him with Mr. Hearst at the office. She hurried back to bed in the frigid darkness and shivered under the furs, remembering how he looked, how he touched her, all the small things he said to interest and secretly delight her—

Damn your fine high principles, Nellie.
He said that, too.

“Oh God, yes, I wish I could. I wish I could,” she murmured as she turned her tear-streaked face into the pillow.

On the last day of 1897, Carla went out to Pasadena on the Santa Fe. The train was packed with tourists, and she resented their noise and good cheer. She could only think of Mack and how he’d abandoned her a week before Christmas to travel to New York.

I’m the one who does the abandoning, my friend. You’ll see.

“The Tournament of Roses” is a name well chosen to convey to the blizzard-bound sons and daughters of the East one of the sources of enjoyment of which we boast here in the Land of Perennial Sunshine.

So said the official parade program lying open on her lap. It was a splendid morning in the San Gabriel Valley, January 1, 1898. Carla was expensively, even extravagantly dressed. So were all the ladies crowding the veranda of this fine house on Orange Grove Avenue. It belonged to a vice president of the Bank of Pasadena, a dull little man who did business with Carla’s father.

Since its inception on New Year’s Day, 1890, the Tournament had become an important event on the Southern California calendar. A local traveler and promoter had persuaded the Valley Hunt Club to sponsor a parade of vehicles, followed by an afternoon of games and concerts. The promoter remembered colorful flower festivals he’d seen while traveling in the Mediterranean, and he suggested that parade entries carry floral decoration. The event was supposed to be an antidote to the low spirits that followed the bursting of the land bubble in ’88. A corporation of private citizens ran the event now, and it attracted more tourists every year.

Precisely at ten-thirty the guests on the veranda heard music from Colorado Avenue, and they put aside their punch and champagne, their plates of fresh watermelon and strawberries in cream, and crowded to the rail to await the first units turning south on Orange Grove. Utterly bored, Carla nevertheless joined them, feigning enthusiasm.

Following the color guard came the City Band, blaring Sousa’s “Thunderer March,” then the gentlemen of the Valley Hunt Club, red boutonnieres in their lapels, red rosettes brightening the bridles of their thoroughbreds. There were marching units and bicycle units. A ten-man glee club rolled by on tandems, singing “My Old Kentucky Home.” But the loudest applause was reserved for the vehicles artfully smothered with roses and geraniums, carnations and marigolds, sunflowers and chrysanthemums in blankets and garlands and sprays. Every wheel bore flowers, and every harness and headstall. Green chains of twining smilax complemented the flowers. Carla soon grew glassy-eyed at so much color.

Entries ranged from modest to magnificent, and were sorted into categories, starting with single Shetland-pony carts, tandem goat carts, and burro carts. Hotels and businesses entered huge gleaming four-in-hand and six-in-hand road coaches driven by professional whips. On top of these splendid equipages were giggling, waving girls, the prettiest to be found. Pennants of blue, yellow, and cardinal decorated the first-, second-, and third-prize entries in each category.

Professor Thaddeus Lowe, who had operated the Union balloon corps in the Civil War, was represented by six vehicles. Lowe and his family rode in the first one, a George IV phaeton. Something of a local celebrity, the professor operated a narrow-gauge scenic railway running to the summit of a peak named, predictably, Mount Lowe.

Carla’s host and hostess sought her out.

“Enjoying yourself, my dear?” the banker’s wife asked.

“Oh yes, it’s beautiful.” She hated it.

“After lunch we’ll drive to the park,” the banker said. “There are bicycle races, ring tournaments, burro races—it’s thrilling.”

Anyone thrilled by a burro race is an idiot
, Carla thought. She smiled. “I certainly hope to go with you. But I seem to have developed a ferocious pain just here.” She pressed a spot between her eyebrows. “I have it at certain times. It lasts for hours, sometimes a whole day.”

They understood the feminine code, and withdrew graciously. At the conclusion of the parade, she pleaded indisposition and returned to her suite at the Green Park Hotel. She ordered a light lunch, ate it, bathed, and settled down to wait for him.

It was half past ten. They lay naked in the darkness beneath the crinkly sheet. “I’m glad you telegraphed me, Mrs. Chance.”

“And I’m so happy you could arrange to come down for the Tournament, Mr. Fairbanks.”

“You’re certain your husband is still in New York?”

“Yes. You’ll be able to conduct all of your urgent business without interruption.” He laughed and seized her billowy breast. He was hasty, even a bit rough, but his muscles and his masculine smell aroused her. Her arm flew around his neck and, like a devouring animal, she opened her mouth. Soon he was jerking up and down deep inside her. She hung on his neck, imagining Mack’s face if he could see this. Then, overcome, she flung her head back and cried out.

Fairbanks took her three times in as many hours. After they slept, at her insistence, he came into her again. At half past four in the morning he crept out, shut the door, adjusted the do not disturb tag, and returned to his own hotel.

O
N FEBRUARY 15 THE
battleship
Maine
blew up in Havana harbor. Of her crew of 350, 260 died.

Everyone suspected a Spanish mine, and war fever spread like an epidemic. A balky President McKinley backed step by step toward armed intervention, flogged by his Republican colleagues and the yellow press. Hearst and Pulitzer trumpeted their vindication and demanded military action:
REMEMBER THE MAINE
!

Villa Mediterranean seemed a long way from all that. A copy of
A Daughter of California
arrived, its flyleaf inscribed
Affectionately—N.
Mack decided not to show it to Carla.

Carla had been surprisingly pleasant, even ardent, when he came home. One evening early in April, they went driving down on the flats in their black trap with the elegant thin gold stripe on the side, taking a dirt road through the groves of ripening Valencias. The dark-green leaves rustled in a warm breeze and the perfume of the trees was thick and heady.

Carla asked him to stop the trap. Noticeably pale, she rubbed her arms. “I’m so glad spring’s here.”

“Are you feeling well? You seem to have lost color lately.”

“Just a little faint now and then.” She fixed her eyes on the multicolored clouds of evening, and it was hard to say whether she was disturbed or merely intent. “There’s a reason for it, Mack,” she said finally, resting her hand on his.

Mack snatched the receiver off the hook and racked the crank around twice. God, when would they get the new express phones that didn’t require cranking?

“Central exchange.”

“Harriet, this is Chance. Ring Doc Mellinger, please.”

“Mr. Chance, it’s five past eight. I was just about to close up and go home.”

“Damn it, Harriet, this is an emergency. Ring him.” Dr. Gustav Mellinger answered in his perpetually grumpy Teutonic voice, and Mack barked, “Doc? Mack Chance. Will you come up here first thing in the morning? You need to see Carla. She’s expecting again.”

Later that night, they lay in each other’s arms.

“It’s wonderful news,” he said. “But I’m not sure I know when we—”

“One of those nights right after you came home. The baby’s due early in October, I think.”

“Does it please you, Carla?”

She was silent a while. “I’ll be honest. I never intended for it to happen again. Papa told you I’m not the domestic type. But I refuse to risk my life by going to one of those filthy midwives in some back alley in Los Angeles. I’ll make the best of it.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, chafing her hand to warm it. “Things will be better from now on.”

With a bitter little laugh, she patted his cheek. “You’re always so optimistic.”