Exit to Eden (40 page)

"What did this mean to you, Lisa?" I was clenching my teeth so hard I was hurting myself. And I could hear my voice breaking up. I could hear myself imploring. "Lisa, come straight with me.
Come straight
! If you can tell me that you just cracked, that you just fucking cracked and I was just part of it, if you can say that, that I was just an escape route, then say it out loud to me now!"

I couldn't go on. I couldn't speak anymore, and that awful feeling came back to me right out of the long night of drunkenness of telling her that she was going to hurt me, that she was going to do it, and the awful realization that it was happening now.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, oh, God," I was cursing, muttering. I was walking in a circle, and then I went for her, catching her as she backed into the dark kitchen, and holding her by the arms. "Tell me you don't love me, Lisa!" I was roaring at her. "If you can't say you do, then say you don't. Say you don't. Say you don't. Say you don't. Tell me that!"

I pulled her towards me, and with all her strength, it seemed, she tried to pull back. She had her eyes shut, and her hair was in her eyes and she was gasping, choking, as if I had my fingers around her throat. I didn't. I was just holding her arms.

"Scott!" she shouted suddenly. "Scotty!" And she jerked away as I let her go. "Scotty!" she screamed.

She caved in onto one of the kitchen chairs, heaving, dry sobs coming out of her, her hair hanging down in front of her face.

Scott and Richard were in the room, and Richard went around me, with a darting motion and came up behind her shoulder and asked her very softly if she was all right.

The very sight of him bending over her, the solicitous sound of his voice, made me go right out of my head.

I didn't do anything. I just turned and I went out of the room. I was in a blind rage. I wasn't walking on the same earth with anybody else. I could have knocked a brick wall down with one blow. That she could call out for that guy, that she could call out like I was hurting her!

The next thing I knew I was sitting in the courtyard on the little wrought iron bench and I had somehow managed to light a cigarette and I was staring at the dark glossy tangle of the little overgrown yard. My face was pumping with heat. I couldn't hear anything. I was deliberately memorizing the fountain, the broken-down little cherub in it, the conch and the slimy water, and the choke of spiderwebs in the cherub's eye. I don't know whether they were talking to me or not.

But a long time passed, maybe twenty minutes or so. My heartbeat was pretty regular again. And I was so miserable and getting so much more miserable by the moment that I thought I was going to break. I was going to go to pieces or something.

I mean like I might really, really hurt somebody. These geniuses of pain, for instance, these clever, sophisticated masters of The Club. These guys! These fucking bastards! I swallowed it over and over. And then I heard someone coming out of the room, and I looked up and saw it was Scott, the guardian angel.

"Come inside," he said. You would have thought somebody had just died and I was the chief mourner, and he was the undertaker. And here I was ready to commit murder. "She wants to talk to you. She has something to say."

She was sitting in the rocker again with the linen handkerchief in her hand. She had for reasons utterly unbeknownst to me put on her shoes. And Richard was standing behind her like another guardian angel, and Scott hovered around me like I might all of a sudden take a poke at somebody. I might.

"I don't blame you for being mad, Elliott," she said.

"Save it, lady," I said. "Don't say anything else like that."

She winced like I'd hit her right between the eyes. I couldn't stand looking at the way she bowed her head. But she looked at me again, very straight, right through a fresh film of tears.

"Elliott, I'm begging you to go back," she said. "I'm begging you for my sake to go back to The Club and wait there for me."

Tears sliding down her face, quavering voice.

"I'm begging you to go back," she said again, "and wait for me just a couple of days till I… till I come."

I hadn't expected this. I looked at Richard. A model of candor and compassion. And Scott, who had slipped in along the wall behind me, just watching her with his head lowered and to the side, rather sad.

"They won't make you do anything, Elliott. They won't, you know… nothing."

"Absolutely correct," Scott said under his breath.

"Just let everyone see you get off the plane," Richard said. "And it's your choice what you want to do after that."

"Elliott," she said, "I promise you I will be back." Her mouth was working again, twisting the lower lip pressed between her teeth. "I just need those days. I need them alone to understand why I cracked, why I did this. But I promise you that I will come back. Whatever you think about this, I will be back and you can tell me. You can tell me just what you think I deserve to be told. And if you want to leave The Club then, it can be arranged properly and officially for you to leave."

I glanced at Richard, and he nodded.

"Just cooperate a little with us," Scott said.

"I'm begging you," she said. "Will you do it for me?"

I didn't answer for a minute. It seemed like it was crucial to wait that one moment, just looking at her, the little wet-faced, straggle-haired waif, shoes or no shoes, with the rhinestone straps fallen down off her ankles, as she huddled, knees bare, dress all messed up, on the edge of the chair.

"Are you absolutely sure," I asked as quietly as I could, "that you want me to leave you here?"

"Believe me, Elliott," she said in the same tremulous voice, her eyes black and glistening. "It is the
only
thing I want."

For a second I couldn't breathe.

I was so hurt and the pain was so pure that I guess my face was blank. The pain felt like a mask that was spreading and tightening over my face. I didn't look at the other men, but I knew that Richard was looking at me, and that Scott had respectfully bowed his head and moved closer to the door.

There was an astonishing innocence to her expression, her large eyes so beautiful even with the smudges of mascara and so tired.

The mask of pain was getting tighter and tighter. I could feel it pull at every tissue, feel it close over my throat. But gradually it broke and it melted, and I felt like something was being comfortably, miraculously drained away.

"It's just like everything else you've said and done," I said to her. "It could mean at least two different things!"

We looked at each other, and I could have sworn something happened, some little private thing. Maybe that her eyes softened, that it was just the two of us for one split second, or maybe it was only that I had caught her off guard with some little idea she didn't expect.

When she spoke again now, she had to take her time and the tears rose up in her eyes.

"My life's falling to pieces, Elliott," she said in a near whisper. "It's just coming down around me like the walls of Jericho. I need you to go back and wait for me to come."

Richard and Scott both took that as a cue. Richard bent down and kissed her on the cheek, and Scott was gently pushing me towards the door.

I stepped out into the garden, a little baffled that I was doing it, and I stood there looking at nothing, thinking nothing, hearing Richard talking to her behind me, something cold and reserved in the tone:

"Now are you certain that you…"

"I will be all right," she said, wearily, in an almost sing-song voice. "If you will just go. I promise you. I won't leave this hotel. I'll plug in the phone. I'll be here. Station one of the goons out there, but tell him to stay out of sight. Just let me have what I need right now."

"Very well, my dear. You call us day or night."

I was staring at the distant glass doors to the front hall of the hotel. The soft heat of the night was pulsing with the sounds of the katydids. The sky had a violet light to it still in a sharp formed by the high brick walls.

"Look, this is going to work out," Scott said. He looked perfectly miserable for what it was worth.

"Leaving her here like this?" I demanded.

"We have a man watching her. He's in the bar. She's going to be okay."

"Are you sure about that?" I asked.

"Listen, man, this is what she wants," Scott said. "She's okay, I know her."

You
know her.

I took a few steps away from him across the flags. I lit another cigarette. Private gesture that, lowering your head, cupping your hands around the flame. Just for a second blow them all way.

Richard had come out and he appeared beside me, glancing back at her furtively as he spoke under his breath.

"You're doing exactly the right thing," he said.

"Back off, asshole," I said.

"You love this woman?" he asked, deep-set eyes narrowing, voice like ice. "You want to ruin everything for her? She won't come back to The Club unless you're waiting for her there."

"Play this one out with us, Elliott," Scott said, "for her sake."

"You guys have got everything figured, haven't you?"

I turned around and looked back at her. She had risen and come towards the french door, her ankles unsteady in the perilous shoes. She had her arms folded, and she looked shattered, absolutely broken to bits.

I stamped out the cigarette on the stones, and pointed my finger at her.

"In a couple of days," I said.

She nodded.

"I won't break my word," she said.

I wanted to tell her coldly and calmly that I didn't care whether or not she ever came back. I wanted to call her every bad name for a woman I knew, every snarling bad name in every language that I had ever heard. But she wasn't all those names to me. She was Lisa. And the one lie she had told, she had admitted to that first morning at the Court of Two Sisters. And there had never been any lies from her after that, or any promises, or any commitments of any kind.

Yet I had the feeling of something so vital and so precious being destroyed, something so extraordinary and so crucial, that I couldn't even look into her face anymore. It was like some door had opened, and the horror that had always been behind the door, the awful thing I'd feared all my life was finally standing there.

All we are asking is that you explain it to us, that you let us try to understand. How could you do it?

It was a dump, a hole, joint, any name you can think of for a seedy tourist trap built like an alleyway with a bench down one wall for the customers, and the stage a garishly lighted strip behind the bar opposite.

And a man who looked exactly like a giant of a woman was dancing, if you could call it that, or more truly shuffling back and forth in satin mules, the light flickering on her white satin gown, her heavily made-up cheeks, the spun glass of her white wig, her vapid unfocused eyes. She/he was watching herself in the mirror, dancing with herself, mouthing the words to herself of the recorded song as it crackled through the speakers, a dreary leakage of rhythmic sound, the silver boa shivering over her smooth and powerful arms, her whole appearance strangely, undeniably sensuous as it was manufactured, beautiful as it was ghastly.

To me anyway. You are all angels. You have transcended everything into the pure theater of yourselves. I am worshipping.

I mean, you are the mentor, the guardian angel of this whole system, and you tell me not to ask you any questions!

I sat motionless against the wall, watching her, the heavy, almost lumbering steps of her big feet, dime-store pink of her waxed mouth, dull, straight-ahead stare beneath fringe of false lashes. Reek of urine from the little bathroom just beyond the filthy red velvet curtain. Stench of dirty carpet, damp, mildewed on the narrow floor. Faint sweet stink of pancake makeup, dirty costume. Like the giant marble angels in church who hold out the shells full of holy water for us to dip our fingers. Larger and smoother than life, undeniably perfect creatures.

It had been hours that I'd been sitting here.

How could you do it to him, to him, I mean whatever the reason? Play games with him like this? What do you think this guy is that you can manipulate him, use him like this? You are the one who taught us to never, never underestimate the psychological dynamite we are dealing with.

Two hundred-dollar bills to keep the place open. Ten, eleven, twelve rip-off seven-ounce nightclub bottles of beer, Bourbon Street almost empty outside, and only one other person in The Club, I mean this dump, not the club, this hole, this dive, this alleyway, this chapel of the perverse, this catacomb, an emaciated man hunched over his drink at the end of the bar, checkered jacket.
How could you do it
?

Now and then the barker came in. Nobody bothered me.

One female/male after another gliding back and forth on the tinseled strip over the rows and rows of dimly lighted bottles, bare shoulders, sleek pink arms, hint of cleavage under the dirty strip of sequined satin, shoes down at the heel, high sheen of artificial estrogen all over.