Color Him Dead (16 page)

“
Dudu
…” Leta’s breathing was loud; she seized him with her hand and began a quick, impatient massage. Her leg slid across his and the hinge of her thighs opened up. A velvetly warmth moved against his hip. The magic of her West Indian pelvis allowed a boneless, sinuous movement. A warm, wet mouth searched desperately.

“
Dudu,
make love …”

There could be no delay once you’d set the machine in motion. She was Edith all over again. He stretched out his arm and laid his cigarette on the ashtray. She was still moving when he turned back to her; he seized her hips and dug his thumbs deep into the flesh of her stomach, but he couldn’t stop her movement. He accepted the rhythm and fit himself into the mechanism, feeling the circling arms and the legs which locked together in the small of his back like a tight steel clamp. He struggled to hold back while she fought to steal it all, charging forth to seize her trophy, then retreating, then charging forth again and again, each thrust more savage until it was over and there was nothing left of her. As he rose, her arms slid from his neck like two lengths of rope. They flopped on the sheet and lay lifeless on each side of her body, palms up and fingers half-closed.

He rolled to the edge of the bed, picked up his burning cigarette, and used it to light another. He hopped to the window and felt the cool night breeze on his sweat-damp body. The moon, not yet risen, had sent a faint sheen ahead of it into the eastern sky. The mountains formed a jagged black pattern against it, like the jawbone of a wolf with several teeth broken.

He looked at the big house through its screen of foliage. A white panel of light stretched out across the beach, rooted in Edith’s bedroom. Perhaps she was reading in bed, lying naked beneath the sheet. He pictured himself walking into her room, jerking off the sheet, lifting the gun, and—

I could kill her now, he thought. I could forget about restoring her memory and resurrecting that old, dead Drew Simmons; I could just kill her and start again.

But he’d give it more time. He was glad Leta had come; she absorbed the urge which Edith awakened. The craving was gone … no, just pushed into the back of his mind. He sensed its presence and knew it would come rushing back to fill the hollowed-out cavity of passion …

Drew picked up a fragment of coral and gave it an underhanded toss over her balcony. He heard it tic against her window and then clatter on the tile floor. A minute later she appeared at the wrought iron railing tugging at the belt of her blue dressing gown. She squinted against the rising sun.

“Seright. You’re about three hours early.”

Her voice sounded sullen and truculent. She had always awakened with a defensive rancor at the world.

“Yes,” agreed Drew. “How about breakfast?”

A breeze whipped the gown away from her legs, revealing pink pajama shorts bloused around her thighs. She drew it together at her knees and frowned irritably.

“I always eat alone here on the balcony.”

“How do you know, always?”

Her jaw set, and for a moment he thought she would turn him down. Then she shrugged, “Tell Meline to fix another serving. I’m going to shower.”

The angular cook pinched her gray lips together when Drew said he would breakfast with the madame. He knew that the news would reach Ian and probably put the man on his guard. But it couldn’t be helped; he had awakened to feel the crushing pressure of time, an awareness that yesterday had been a blank and that only five days remained. His only chance was to be constantly at her side, dragging her past before her.

He stepped through the upstairs door and heard the susurration of a shower from behind a mahogany door at the north end of the building. The rest of the upper floor formed a single vast room with three sets of French doors opening onto an encircling balcony. Functional groupings of furniture divided the room roughly into three sections: On the east stood a complex of sofa, overstuffed chair, marble coffee table and mahogany bookcase. On the west, a sewing machine dominated a long table littered with scraps of material, tissue patterns, and half-finished articles of clothing. He pondered this un-Edithlike hobby corner for a moment, then walked over to inspect the sleeping section. Besides the double bed, between a nightstand and a wardrobe, stood a six-foot tall, three-panel mirror. It was almost a twin of the one which had taken up a third of the living room in their apartment. But he saw that this one had been made in England; the other had come from Cedar Rapids and Rochester,
via
her husband’s store.

Making a mental note to ask where she’d acquired her taste for mirrors, he regarded his multiple image with a faint distaste. His faded denim shirt ended at the elbow in a raveled fringe; his abbreviated dungarees hung limp and whitened from the sun and the sea. His crutch was a pale aluminum finger extending from his wrist to the floor; the spiral of tape around his leg was turning gray. Patches of black stubble grew on his jaws and chin where he had been unable to shave over his cuts. His cropped hair formed tufted clumps on his skull.
Leta, you’ll never make it as a barber….

The hiss of the shower ended; a moment later he heard the muffled tinkle of bottles. He glanced in the mirror and saw her back through the four-inch gap in the door. She sat at a dressing table touching up her copper hair with deft upward strokes of her fingers. He watched her slide the gown off her shoulder and begin applying deodorant to her armpit.

“That’ll just wash off when you ski,” he said.

She stiffened, then drew the gown back over her shoulder. “Will you please close the door?”

He closed the door gently, irritated by the icy formality of her tone. The night seemed to have cooled the friendly intimacy of the day before.

Lena entered with a loaded serving tray, going wide around him as though he were a savage beast chained to the wall. A minute later she returned from the balcony and departed in a furtive, fearful scurry. Drew strolled over to the bookcase and pulled out a slim gray volume.
Gems of Poetry.
His hands trembled as he riffled the cheap yellowed pages. He’d received the book as a prize in the fifth grade and had loaned it to Edith in an attempt to raise her cultural level. There should be an inscription on the title page:
To Drew Simmons for Perfect Spelling, from Miss Garrison.
That would prove—

Nothing. Only a ragged margin remained where the page had been ripped out. Who had obliterated this remnant of her past? Ian, or Edith herself?

He replaced the book and noticed the heavy silver ashtray on the coffee table. He picked it up, remembering the night Edith had given it to him:
“Drew, see that hunk of cork in the center? You knock your pipe out on that.”
He’d felt her eyes pleading for his approval. But he’d known the gift came from her husband’s store, and he hadn’t liked what that made him.
“You’ll have to take it back tomorrow.”
But later that evening she’d taken her nail file and etched his name deeply inside the bowl. She’d been so childishly triumphant at having the last word that he’d laughed, and the ashtray had remained.

Now the cork island in the center was battered and chewed; the silver had turned gray and the green felt of the base was eaten away. And his name—

Someone had tried to efface that too, but the four letters were still visible beneath an overlay of newer scratches.

He looked up as the bathroom door opened. Edith approached in silver sandals, black silk trousers and a high-collared Chinese silk jacket. He felt warmed by the knowledge that she’d adorned herself for his eyes, but he kept to his purpose.

“Where’d you get this?”

She gazed with sullen disinterest at the ashtray. “It must be Ian’s.”

“He doesn’t smoke a pipe. This is for pipesmokers.”

She shrugged. “It’s always been here. That’s all I know.”

“There used to be a name carved in it. Look.”

She wouldn’t take the ashtray. She bent to peer into the bowl where he pointed, and he caught the distracting fragrance of her perfume. “I just see scratches.”

“There are letters. D-R-E-W.”

“Oh yes.” She looked up and smiled. “Then it must be Mr. Drew’s. Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

Sighing, he put down the ashtray and followed her out onto the balcony. Drew’s breakfast was juice of sour-sop in a frosted glass, sausage, a cantaloupe, and an egg in a silver cup. For Edith there was a single poached egg, a glass of orange juice, and one slice of toast with orange marmalade. He watched her eat, remembering their rare breakfasts together, when they’d gone early to the lake and eaten at the hotel restaurant. She’d put away enormous meals: hot-cakes, eggs, sausage, sweet rolls. He wondered if the complete turnabout was a weight-watching measure, or a result of her amnesia. He knew so little about the subject.

Lena crept in and spirited away their empty plates as though she were committing an act of theft. Drew poured out two cups of coffee and decided Edith could stand another nudge.

“You like poetry?”

She lifted her cup. “That would depend, I think, on the poem.”

“This girl I told you about once wrote me a poem. I can remember only two lines: ‘Where two young hearts like driftwood dance, upon the restless waves of chance.’ ”

Edith sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “I don’t think she was in love with you.”

“She said so.”

“Because she thought you’d swallow it. Same with the young hearts bit. She laid it down because she figured that’s what you had to have before you’d take her to bed. That’s all she wanted from you.”

Drew laughed softly. “Have you always been this cynical?”

She looked down at her cup. “Please, not again.”

“I’m curious. Did amnesia change your personality?” He saw that her hand was trembling on her cup. He went on: “How does it feel to have no past? As though you’d come out of an egg just yesterday—”

She brought her cup smashing down into her saucer, shattering it into fragments. Both jumped up to avoid the rivulets which trickled off the marble top. Lena glided out with a cloth, betraying the fact that she’d remained within earshot.

“Leave it, fool!” Edith’s voice cracked like a whip. “Get downstairs. Don’t come back until I ring.”

When she was gone, Edith turned on Drew. There was a white line around her lips. “From now on I’d rather you watched me from a distance, Mr. Seright. You keep gouging at me, trying to dig up my past. Damn, can’t you see it just upsets me?”

“That’s because you fight it.”

Her fists clenched. “I do
not.
I—” She whirled away and gripped the iron railing facing the sea. When she spoke again her voice was low. “I don’t know, maybe I do. I try not to think about it. I feel it back there, hovering, something clammy and evil. I want to keep it away as … as long as I can.” She turned to face him, and her eyes were misty. “Look, will you just leave me
alone?
You disturb hell out of me, and I don’t want … I’m not supposed to be … disturbed.”

Her throat worked, and he saw that she was on the verge of crying. He didn’t want to see that.

“I’ll get the boat ready,” he said, turning away.

“No. I really don’t feel like skiing.”

He saw another day slipping by and felt a tingle of desperation. “We’ll do something else. You have a black swimsuit?”

“I don’t want to—” She stopped. “There’s a two-piece I made myself. Why?”

“I don’t want the sharks to mistake you for a fish. We’re going skin-diving.”

She shook her head and smiled wanly. “You’ve got more activities up your sleeve than a recreational director. How do you know I can skin-dive?”

“There’s equipment in the shed.”

“And of course Ian isn’t the type.” She nodded abruptly. “Okay. I’ll meet you at the jetty."

She clung tightly to his arm as they floated above the submerged ridge. Her fingers dug into his flesh when a school of needle fish flashed below like a flight of silver arrows. He knew she was suffering that first paralyzing fear of drifting in a strange new world of distorted shadows and blurred, wavering shapes.

Gradually she loosened her grip and swam freely beside him. The launch followed, guided by Ti-Cock who sat in the stern with an oar. Drew swam down to a blur of white sand fifteen feet below the surface. He jabbed with the point of his spear, saw the tell-tale jet of fleeing clams, and seized one before it could burrow too deeply. He turned to see Edith beside him, her cheeks hollowed by the grip of the snorkel. The water had rounded the contours of her body, producing two mounds high on her chest where her bouyant breasts struggled to escape the unelasticized confines of her homemade suit. He put the clam in her outstretched hand, then saw a parrotfish nosing out from behind a rock outcropping. He kicked himself forward with the gun held in front of him. Five feet from the fish he squeezed the trigger. There was a chug! the fish jerked and released a bright blue cloud of blood. He returned to the surface and swam back to the boat with Edith beside him.

“It’s so
quiet
down there,” she said when they were aboard. “At first I had a horrible feeling of falling through space, but then it was like flying.”

He watched her peel off her bathing cap and shake out her hair. “Next time we’ll try it with the tanks. Go down to where it starts getting dark.”

“Ooooh, don’t rush me, Seright. I’m not at home down there like you are. You went after that fish like … like a hunting falcon. Do they all have such funny-looking blood?”

“All blood is blue until the oxygen hits it. In the water it takes longer.”

“Oh.” She held up the clam. “What do I do with this?”

“Eat it. Here.” He pried open the valves and ran his knife around the inside to cut the meat away from the shell. He held it out to her, and her nose wrinkled with distaste. “Raw?”

“Certainly. A little lemon helps, but I forgot to bring any.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and popped the clam into her mouth. A moment later her eyes flew wide. “Why it’s
good.
How did you find out about them?”

“I’ve been living off the sea—and the land.”