Crowned Heads (50 page)

Arco stopped and stood waist-deep, his brows still knit. “Oh?”

“I simply said I thought you probably came from the city,” Willie explained, “and hadn’t much opportunity to swim.”

“That’s right,” Arco returned coolly, wading over to the coping. “Just a poor city boy. They didn’t hand out swimming pools in Hamtramck.”

“That’s where—Hamtramck,” Judee said, gulping from her glass.

“Detroit, pops. Where the Polacks come from. Us wops needed a passport to get in.”

Judee laughed shrilly, the others joined her, excluding Willie from the moment.

“Why don’t you drop your duds and take a dive, Willie?” Arco suggested. Their eyes locked again and Willie saw that he was being dared.

“Sorry, no swimming. I’ve got”—he couldn’t say “gout”; it sounded like an old man’s disease—“respiratory troubles,” he finished weakly.

“Gee, that’s too bad.” Arco’s sympathetic expression flattened out into mere careful watching. Watching and waiting; this was the impression Willie had.

Then Arco reached from the water and tickled Judee between the legs. “Pussy pussy.”

She shrieked with laughter; Willie looked away in embarrassment again.

“C’n I have some more shampoo?” Judee waved her empty glass.

Willie picked up the bottle. “Feel free at any time.”

“Put it down,” Arco said sternly. Willie’s mouth dropped, and he set the bottle back on the table. “Ask again,” Arco ordered Judee.

“Please-Arco-may-I-have-some-more-shampoo?” It seemed a sort of child’s ritual between them.

“Yes. Then you may take six giant steps.” She held her glass out to Willie; he filled it, and she went marching nude around the pool.

“Hey, let’s see your medals,” Arco said casually to Willie. “What are they?”

Willie held out the cluster of gold medals on a gold chain around his neck. “This one’s Saint Genesius, patron saint of actors, this one’s Saint Christopher, that’s for travelers. And this,” showing a third, “is Saint Dympna.”

“That’s a new one on me.”

“Oh, she’s very helpful—patroness of those suffering from nervous distress. This medal has been touched to her relic.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Sent away for it. In
TV Guide.
You mail a coupon.”

“I see.” Arco appeared interested. He got Willie bending forward from the chaise so he could examine them closer. There was also a gold heart and two keys. “What’re they?” Arco demanded.

“A present.”

“What’re the keys?”

“To my heart”

“Jazzy.”

“
I
thought so.”

Arco extended his empty glass and Willie tipped the mouth of the bottle to it. From inside came the sound of the telephone. Before he could move to answer it, he found himself being grabbed around the wrist and drawn from his seat. The strength in the small hand, the thin arm, was enormous.

“No—no,” he murmured in panic, realizing Arco’s intent, but the force was irresistible. The phone continued ringing; he could do nothing. He was dragged to the edge of the pool, forced to step awkwardly around Judee, his protest rising to a quaver, then a cry as he was yanked off balance and tumbled into the water. He glimpsed the pale loins and dark pubic hairs, as first he was submerged, then forcibly held under. The blood was pounding in his throat and ears while a merciless hand bore down on him, he felt a swirl of current and saw Bill’s legs thrashing toward him, then sudden release. He shot to the surface, choking.

“Hi, pops.” Arco greeted him with a grin. He was holding something in his hand; Willie realized it was his toupee. When he tried to grab it Arco first dangled it out of reach, then flopped it onto his own head, and paddled backward.

“Hell, Arco,” Bill shouted, “whadya want to do that for? In all his clothes?” Fuming and sputtering, Willie waded to the steps and bent to wring the knees of his trousers. Judee came running around to help him up, while Arco stood arms akimbo, ludicrous under the wretched toupee. Inside, the phone rang and rang.

“Damn,” said Willie. “Damn.”

“You okay?” Bill asked. Willie was already stripping off his soaking shirt, fighting down the urge to order Arco from the house. His clothes, his toupee, his boots, the broken Baccarat goblet. No, he told himself, it wouldn’t do any good to get mad; better to take it as a joke.

“All right, Arco,” he said, wagging a playful finger. “I’ll get you for that.”

“You’re on, pops.” Arco tossed the toupee, which whizzed through the air and fell sopping on the deck. Judee retrieved it and stroked it as if it were a pet. The phone stopped ringing, began again.

“Please—
someone
answer the
phone
!” Willie hurried into the cabaña, removed his wet things, and sat shivering on the bench, huddled in a monogrammed bath sheet. Outside he could hear them laughing.

“Did someone get the phone?” he called through the louvered door.

“They hung up,” Judee said.

Willie was angry; he hated missing calls. “Bill, would you check the time? I don’t want to be late for the TV show.”

“Right, Willie.”

Silence.

Whispers.

Giggles.

He finished drying himself and put on a robe. He opened the door, then as an afterthought stuck on the little cap that hung from a peg. Along with the cap he stuck on a smile as well, slid his feet into a pair of Japanese
zoris,
and came padding out.

Bill was sprawled on one of the chaises, wrapped in his towel. Arms behind his head, staring at the sky, Arco lay on the diving board, occasionally making it jiggle as he kicked his feet. Siren-like, the girl lounged in the fountain shell, singing, dangling her legs, too short to reach the pool. Willie headed for Bill, and took the adjoining chaise.

“Hey, that’s terrific,” Bill said of his robe. “Where’d you get it?”

“Bee bought it for me in Marrakech,” he said shortly. It was a striped djellabah, with braid around the cuffs of the short sleeves and the low-cut neck.

“And the cap—Morocco, too?”

“No, it’s from India. Gypsy Rose Lee gave it to me.” The cap was small and round, with small squares and circles of mirror stitched into colorful embroidery.

Willie wished Judee would get out of the fountain; it was badly balanced and could easily be upset. He angled his head away as Arco walked from the diving board onto the grass and stood on his hands.

“It’s okay, Willie,” Bill said consolingly. “He was just having some fun.” He moved beside him, put his hand around his shoulder, and gave his arm a squeeze, then three or four little shakes. “Arco’s a real pal. He don’t mean nothin’.”

Willie stared at his thin arm, saw goose flesh form, lifting the sparse hairs that grew there. He thought for a moment, then turned to Bill. “Listen to me. Your friend Arco—”

“Yes?” Bill persisted.

“Your friend Arco is going to be in a lot of trouble one day.”

“Why?”

“He has a very bad hand.”

“Aw, c’mon, Willie, you just got finished saying that don’t mean anything. It’s a lot of crap.”

“Nevertheless. I saw it. He’s a dangerous person and I’d advise you to be careful unless you want to get in trouble.”

Bill started away; Willie caught him by the arm. “Don’t say anything, please,” he cautioned.

“You think I want to get my head knocked off? Heck. You never seen him when he’s really angry.” He strode off to where Arco and Judee were horsing around in the fountain. She screamed, he yowled, Bill dashed forward as the stone shell tipped, pitching them into the water while the shell struck the coping, bounced, and dropped like a cannonball into the pool. As it settled to the bottom, water from the broken fountain pipe shot into the air against the darkened sky. Willie ran behind the cabaña to turn the valve off, then hurried back. Judee was climbing up the pool ladder while Arco stood looking at the cracked coping. In the glimmering light his flesh was as pale as a piece of marble statuary, as if his veins had been opened and drained of their blood. Bill sat beside Willie and hung his heavy arm over his shoulder again. “Hey, pardner, c’mon—you’re so nervous. Relax, okay?”

“Okay.”

Drunk, he still felt tense, stiff as a board, as if he might shatter, break. He drank from his glass in long gulps, thinking what did it matter, he might as well be plastered. He leaned and whispered into Bill’s ear.

“I want him to go.”

“Why, Willie?” Bill asked gently.

“I don’t … like him.”

“Why?”

“He scares me.”

“Hey, man.” Bill exerted a greater pressure, gripping Willie’s wrist with his other hand, making encouraging little movements. “Hey, man … hey, man.” Uncomforted, Willie lifted his face to the darkened sky as the first drops of rain spattered the pool. In the yellow garden lights the nude figures looked bizarrely unreal as the palm trunks reached their swaying shadows across them to bleed again into the darkness. Their leaves trembled and whispered, and Willie imagined for an instant that the sound was like the whisper of the wings that death flies on; he felt afraid.

“Hey, man,” Bill said, cradling him, “hey man …”

The room, for the moment, appeared deserted; but that was only the room, and only Willie’s way of looking at it. In the dimly reflecting planes of mirror it seemed he could make out the truer sense of the place, those remembered figures and images, woozy and half-realized fantasy shapes, that once had brought it life, where people, music, conversation, flowers carefully arranged, food lavishly provided, gave it breadth and sweep and animation; but all these, he saw, were only shadows of that past which had died with Bee’s death, were gone, never to come again. He hiccupped, then glimpsed a quick flash of movement, and looked to see the girl’s elfin face—her name was forgotten again—peer down at him.

“Hi, sweetie. Feelin’ better? Gee, didn’t it rain some?”

As far as Willie Marsh was concerned, the last two hours or more had been a washout even before the rain began. His plan for the group to watch the TV broadcast of
The Player Queen
on
Classic Movies
was spoiled, since Bill remained out in the lanai barbecuing hot dogs, while Arco wandered around the room making a careful inventory of the memorabilia, and Judee, in a terry-cloth robe from the cabaña, curled cutely like a movie ingenue on the sofa, interrupted the picture a dozen times with questions and comments. A fire smoldered in the grate; the logs were damp. Bill popped in at polite intervals and caught a look, though Willie could tell he wasn’t greatly interested. Arco had called him, and they initiated a game of darts while the hot dogs overcooked. They ate, finally, watching the last reel, a form of silence which might have passed for boredom, and even Willie had found himself unabashedly yawning. So much for
The Player Queen.
The rain ended, a quick summer storm, but it leaked and dripped from every palm frond, and night fog had rolled in from Santa Monica, reducing the glimmering city view to a murky blur. When Willie turned off the set Judee wanted to put more records on. She patted his mirrored cap and told him he sure used to be a handsome fellow when he was young, and took Arco to dance, her platforms clattering like sabots, he moving lithely, balletically, the way a cat would; too feline, Willie thought, for a man.

Spread across the glass-topped coffee table was the litter of the improvised meal, with the half-chewed ends of hot dog rolls and mustardy napkins and smears of red ketchup and curled watermelon pickle. Wet horseshoe-shaped marks had crushed the nap of the velvet chair seats that someone had thoughtlessly lounged on in a damp towel, and the dogs had torn apart one of the velvet sofa pillows, in which Arco had playfully tucked their rubber toy.

Idly, dizzily, Willie again wished that they would go, but no one took the hint of his elaborate yawns. Bill clumped back and forth to the bar, bringing more champagne and other drinks; Willie didn’t know what they were, didn’t care. A good deal more pot had been smoked; the room still reeked of cannabis. More pills of undisclosed prescription had been swallowed. After a while the other two stopped dancing and disappeared, he had no idea where. Then Bill, too, was unseen for a time; Willie wasn’t sure, but he had an idea they were investigating other parts of the house. He felt too weak to remonstrate; everything seemed vague, remote. It was almost as if a spell had been cast over the place, though whether of enchantment or evil he could not tell. Vague currents of emotions swirled through the room, intangible feelings whose sources he could not trace or identify.

The girl came clattering back on her platforms, swinging her hips in a campy trollop’s slouch she called her “trash walk,” one hand on a hip, the fingers of the other spiraling her frizzed mop of hair. “Ya look all strung out, sweetie—are ya depressed?” She stopped and tickled him; he cried out sharply, moved back. He hated being tickled; it was painful to him.

She sat beside him, touching his hand. She smelled of a familiar scent: she had been upstairs at Bee’s vanity table.

“You’re using a dead woman’s perfume,” he told her.

“Ooh,” she squeaked in her child’s treble. “I don’t like to think about death. It makes me all squirrely inside. I like to think about living; it’s so much nicer, isn’t it?” She cuddled closer to him, as though for her own comfort.

“Yes. Yes, it is,” he agreed solemnly. Someone approached across the floor, a large, loping hulk, heels scraping on the tiles.

“Ah, Bill, where’ve you been?”

“We wuz jes’ havin’ a look at the pitchers in the dinin’ room. You havin’ a good time?”

“Cert’nly am.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“Really sure?”

“Really sure.” In his djellabah and embroidered cap Willie felt a little exotic, raffish even.

Bill flipped out and pointed his finger pistols—
choo choo—
gunning down his image in a mirror, reholstered them, moved away again. On the TV screen was a silent graphic shot of a family group; the caption read: “Parents—do you know where your children are tonight?” Judee flopped off the Marion Davies sofa and went to join Bill and Arco at the aquariums. Willie closed his eyes, the room turned inside his head. Why wasn’t Norma Shearer here tonight? Irene Selznick? Bill Holden, Roz, Junior Fairbanks? Where were Willie Wyler, Billy Wilder and Audrey? “Sing something, Judy,” he murmured, meaning Garland, but it was the two
e
’s who giggled.