Fancy Pants (13 page)
"Stay out of this!" the tattoo called over to Pete as he wrenched the
case from her hands. "This is between the girls."
"No!" Francesca cried. "It's not between the girls. Actually, I don't
even know this person, and I—"
She screamed as Cleo sank her hands into her hair and began twisting
her head in the general direction
of the lavatory. Her eyes began to
tear and her neck snapped backward. This was barbaric! Awful!
They
would murder her!
In that instant, she felt several strands of her hair being pulled from
her scalp. Her beautiful chestnut hair! Reason left her and blind fury
took over. She went wild, releasing a screech as she swung out. Cleo
grunted as Francesca's hand caught her in an abdomen that had lost its
tone. The pressure on Francesca's scalp immediately eased, but she had
only a moment to catch her breath before she saw Bonni coming toward
her, ready to pick up where Cleo had left off. A table crashed to the
floor nearby, glass shattering. She was dimly aware that the fight had
spread, and that Pete had leaped to her rescue, wonderful Pete of the
plaid shirt and beer belly, wonderful, marvelous, adorable Pete!
"You bitch!" Bonni cried, reaching out for anything she could grab,
which happened to be the pearl buttons set into the cocoa trim on
Francesca's greige Halston blouse. The front gave way; the shoulder
seam split. Once again Francesca felt her hair being pulled, and once
again she swung, locking her other hand around Bonni's head and
grabbing some hair herself.
Suddenly it seemed as if the fight had surrounded her— chairs scraped
over the floor, a bottle flew through the air, someone screamed. She
felt one of the fingernails on her right hand tear. Ribbons of fabric
hung from the front of her blouse, exposing her ecru lace bra, but she
had no time to worry about modesty as Bonni's sharp rings scraped her
neck. Francesca gritted her teeth against the pain and pulled harder.
At the same time she had the sudden and horrifying realization that
she—Francesca Serritella Day, darling of the international set, pet of
the society columnists, almost Princess of Wales—was at the heart, the
very center, the absolute core, of a barroom brawl.
Across the room, the door of the Blue Choctaw swung open and Skeet
walked in, followed by Dallie Beaudine.
Dallie stood there for a moment, took in what was happening, saw the
people involved, and shook his head with disgust. "Aw, hell." With a
long, put-upon sigh, he began to shoulder his way through the crowd.
Never in her entire life had Francesca been so glad to see anyone,
except at first she didn't realize it was him. When he touched her
shoulder, she released Bonni, swung around, and hit him as hard as she
could in the chest.
"Hey!" he yelled, rubbing the spot where she'd landed. "I'm on your
side ... I guess."
"Dallie!" She threw herself into his arms. "Oh, Dallie, Dallie, Dallie!
My wonderful Dallie! I can't believe it's you!"
He pulled her off. "Easy, Francie, you're not out of here yet. Why the
hell—"
He never finished. Someone who looked like an extra in an old Steve
Reeves movie came at him with a right hook, and Francesca watched in
horror as Dallie sprawled on the floor. Spotting her cosmetic case
sitting in splendid isolation on the jukebox, she snatched it up and
banged it into the side of the awful man's head. To her horror, the
clasp gave way, and she watched helplessly as her wonderful blushers
and shadows and creams and lotions flew about the room. A box of her
specially blended translucent powder sent up a scented cloud that soon
had everyone coughing and sliding and quickly put a damper on the fight.
Dallie staggered to his feet, threw a couple of punches of his own, and
then grabbed her arm. "Come on. Let's get out of here before they
decide to eat you for a bedtime snack."
"My makeup!" She scrambled toward a cake of frosted peach eye shadow,
even though she knew it was a ridiculous thing to do with her blouse
falling off, a bloody scratch on her neck, two fingernails broken, and
her very life in danger. But recovering the eye shadow suddenly became
more important to her than anything in the world, and she was willing
to fight them all to get it back.
He whipped his arm around her waist and lifted her feet off the floor.
"To hell with your makeup!"
"No! Put me down!" She had to have the eye shadow. Little by little,
every single item she owned was being taken away from her, and if she
let just one more thing disappear, one more possession slip out of her
life, she might very well disappear
herself, fading away like the Cheshire cat until nothing was left,
not
even her teeth.
"Come on, Francie!"
"No!" She fought Dallie as she'd fought the rest, flailing her legs in
the air, kicking his calves, screaming out, "I want it! I have to have
it."
"You're gonna get it, all right!"
"Please, Dallie," she begged. "Please!"
The magic word had never failed her before, and it didn't now.
Muttering under his breath, he leaned forward with his arm still around
her and snatched up the eye shadow. As he straightened, she grabbed it
from him and then reached out, just managing to grasp the open lid of
her cosmetic case before he pulled her away. By the time she had
snapped the lid shut, she'd lost a bottle of almond-scented moisturizer
and broken a third fingernail, but she had managed to avoid spilling
out her calfskin handbag along with its three hundred and fifty
dollars. And she had her precious frosted peach eye shadow.
Skeet propped the door open and Dallie carried her through. As he set
her down on the pavement, she heard sirens. He immediately snatched her
back up and dragged her toward the Riviera.
"Can't she even walk by herself?" Skeet asked, catching the keys that
Dallie pitched to him.
"She likes to argue." Dallie glanced toward the flashing lights that
weren't all that far away. "Commissioner Deane Beman and the PGA are
only going to put up with so much from me this year, so let's get the
hell out of here." Shoving her none too gently into the back seat, he
jumped in after her and closed the door.
They rode in silence for several minutes. Her teeth began to chatter
from the aftereffects of the fight, and her hands shook as she tried to
pull the front of her blouse together and tuck some of the torn ends
into her bra. It didn't take her long to realize the task was hopeless.
A lump lodged in her throat. She hugged her arms over her chest and
yearned for some expression of sympathy, some concern for her
condition,
a small sign that someone cared about her.
Dallie reached under the seat in front of him and pulled out an
unopened bottle of scotch. After breaking the seal with his
thumbnail, he unscrewed the top, took a long swallow, and then looked
thoughtful. Francesca prepared herself for the questions to come and
made up her mind to answer each one with as much dignity as possible.
She bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.
Dailie leaned toward Skeet. "I didn't see anything of that red-haired
waitress. Did you get a chance to ask about her?"
"Yeah. The bartender said she went off to Bogalusa with some guy who
works for the power company."
"Too bad."
Skeet glanced into the rearview mirror. "Seems the guy only had one
arm."
"No kidding? Did the bartender tell you how a thing like that happened?"
"Industrial accident of some kind. A few years back the guy worked for
a tool and die outfit up near Shreveport and got his arm caught in a
press. Crushed that sucker flatter than a pancake."
"Guess it didn't make any difference to his love life with that
waitress of yours." Dailie took another swallow. "Women are funny 'bout
things like that. Take that lady we met last year in San Diego after
the Andy Williams—"
"Stop it!" Francesca cried, unable to hold back her outcry. "Are you so
callous that you don't have the simple decency to ask me if I'm all
right? That was a barroom brawl back there! Don't you realize that I
could have been killed?"
"Probably not," Dailie said. "Somebody most likely would've put a stop
to it."
She drew back her hand and hit his arm as hard as she could.
"Ouch." He rubbed the spot she had struck.
"Did she just hit you?" Skeet inquired indignantly.
"Yeah."
"You gonna hit her back?"
"I'm thinking."
"I would if I was you."
"I know you would." He looked at her and his eyes darkened. "I would,
too, if I thought she was going
to be part of my life for any longer
than about the next two and a half minutes."
She stared at him, wishing she could take back her impulsive blow,
unable to believe what she'd just heard. "Exactly what are you saying?"
she demanded.
Skeet sped through a yellow light. "How far is it to the airport from
here?"
"Clear across town." Dallie leaned forward and clasped his hand over
the back of the seat. "In case you weren't paying attention earlier,
the motel's up another light and down a block."
Skeet stepped down on the accelerator and the Riviera shot forward,
throwing Francesca back against the seat. She glared at Dallie, trying
to shame him into apologizing so she could magnanimously forgive him.
She waited the rest of the way to the motel.
They turned into the well-lit parking lot, and Skeet swung around to
the side, stopping in front of a line of brightly painted metal doors
stamped with black numbers. He shut off the ignition, and then he and
Dallie climbed out. She watched incredulously as first one car door
slammed and then the other.
"See you in the morning, Dallie."
"See you, Skeet."
She leaped out after them, her case clutched in her hand, trying
unsuccessfully to hold her blouse closed. "Dallie!"
He pulled a room key from the pocket of his jeans and turned. Greige
silk slithered through her fingers as she closed the car door. Couldn't
he see how helpless she was? How much she needed him? "You have to help
me," she said, staring at him with eyes so pitifully large they seemed
to eat up her small face. "I put my life in jeopardy going to that bar
just to find you."
He looked at her breasts and the ecru silk bra. Then he pulled his
faded navy T-shirt over his head and tossed it to her. "Here's the
shirt off my back, honey. Don't ask for anything more."
She watched incredulously as he walked into his motel room and shut the
door—shut the door in her face! The panic that had been building inside
her throughout the day burst free, flooding every part of
her body. She
had never experienced such fear, she had no way of coping with it, and
so she converted
it into something she understood—a burning flare of red-hot anger. No
one treated her like this! No one!
She'd make him deal with her! She'd make him pay!
She dashed to his door and banged her case against it, hitting it once,
twice, wishing it were his horrid, ugly face. She kicked at it, cursed
it, let her anger detonate, let it blaze bright and righteous in one
never-to-be-forgotten display of the temper that had made her a legend.
The door swung open and he stood on the other side, his chest bare and
his ugly face scowling at her. She'd show him a scowl! She'd show him
that he'd never even imagined what a scowl looked like! "You bastard!"
She shot past him and flung her case across the room, where it
shattered the television screen in a satisfying explosion of glass.
"You depraved, moronic bastard!" She kicked over a chair. "You callous
son of a bitch!" She upended his suitcase.
And then she let herself go.
Screaming out insults and accusations, she tossed ashtrays and pillows,
threw lamps, and pulled the drawers from the desk. Every slight she had
suffered in the past twenty-four hours, every indignity, came to the
surface—the pink dress, the Blue Choctaw, the peach eye shadow. . . .
She punished Chloe for dying, Nicky for deserting her, she assaulted
Lew Steiner, attacked Lloyd Byron, mutilated Miranda Gwynwyck, and most
of all, she annihilated Dallie Beaudine. Dallie, the most beautiful man
she had ever met, the only man who wasn't impressed by her, the only
man who'd ever slammed a door in her face.
Dallie watched for a moment, his hands planted on his hips. A can of
shaving cream flew past him and hit the mirror. "Unbelievable," he
muttered. He stuck his head out the door. "Skeet! Come over here. You
got to see this."
Skeet was already on his way. "What's going on? It sounds like—" He
stopped dead in the open doorway, staring at the destruction taking
place in front of him. "Why is she doin' that?"
"Damned if I know." Dallie ducked a flying copy of the Greater New
Orleans telephone directory. "Damnedest thing I ever saw in my life."
"Maybe she thinks she's a rock star. Hey, Dallie! She's goin' for your
three-wood!"
Dallie moved like the athlete he was, and in two long strides he had
her.
Francesca felt herself being upended. For a moment her legs hung free,
and then something hard jabbed into her stomach as she felt herself
being tossed over his shoulder. "Put me down! Put me down, you bastard!"
"Not hardly. That's the best three-wood I ever owned."
They began to move. She screamed as he carried her outside, his
shoulder pushing into her stomach, his arm clamped around the backs of
her knees. She heard voices and she was dimly aware of doors opening
and bathrobed bodies peering out.
"I never saw a woman so scared of a little old mouse in all my life,"
Dallie called out.
She banged her fists against his bare back. "I'll have you arrested!"
she screamed. "I'll sue you! Bastard! I'll sue you for every penny—" He
veered sharply to the right. She saw a wrought-iron fence, a gate,
underwater lights—
"No!" She let out a bloodcurdling scream as he pitched her into the
very deepest part of the motel swimming pool.
the pool watching her. Finally Skeet made an observation. "She's not
coming up real fast."
Dallie tucked one thumb into the pocket of his jeans. "Doesn't look
like she can swim. I should've figured."
Skeet turned to him. "Did you hear the peculiar way she says 'bastard*?
Like 'bah-stud.' I can't say it the way she does. Real peculiar."
"Yeah. That fancy accent of hers sure does manage to screw up good
American cusswords."
The splashing in the pool gradually began to slow down. "You gonna jump
in and save her any time in
the next century?" Skeet inquired.
"Suppose I'd better. Unless you'd consider doing it."
"Hell, no. I'm going to bed."
Skeet turned to walk out the gate, and Dallie sat down on the edge of a
lounge chair to pull off his boots. He watched for a moment to see how
much struggle she had left, and when he judged the time to be about
right, he wandered over to the edge and dived in.
Francesca had just realized how much she didn't want to die. Despite
the movie, her poverty, the loss
of all her possessions, she was too
young. Her whole life stretched before her. But as the awful weight
of
the water pressed down on her, she understood that it was happening.
Her lungs bumed and
her limbs no longer responded to any command. She was dying, and she
hadn't even lived yet.
Suddenly something caught her around the chest and began dragging her
upward, holding her close, not letting her go, pulling her to the
surface, saving her! Her head burst through the water and her lungs
grabbed the air. She sucked it in, coughing and choking, grabbing at
the arms around her for fear they would let her go, sobbing and crying
with the pure joy of still being alive.
Without quite being aware how it had happened, she found herself being
pulled up on the deck, the last shreds of her greige silk blouse
staying in the water. But even when she felt the solid concrete surface
beneath her, she wouldn't let Dallie go.
When she could finally speak, her words came out in small choked gasps.
"I'll never forgive you ... I hate you. . . ." She clung to his body,
painted herself on his bare chest, threw her arms around his shoulders,
held him as tight as she had ever held anything in her life. "I hate
you," she choked out. "Don't let me go."
"You really did get shook up there, didn't you, Francie?"
But she was beyond replying. All she could do was hold on for dear
life. She held on to him as he carried her back into the motel room,
held on to him while he talked to the motel manager who was waiting for
them, held on as he pulled her case from the rubble, fumbled through
it, and carried her to another room.
He leaned over to lay her on the bed. "You can sleep here for the—"
"No!" The now-familiar wave of panic returned.
He tried to pry her arms from his neck. "Aw, come on, Francie, it's
almost two in the morning. I want to get at least a few hours' sleep
before I have to wake up."
"No, Dallie!" She was crying now, gazing straight into those
Newman-blue eyes and crying her heart out. "Don't leave me. I know
you'll drive away if I let you go. I'll wake up tomorrow and you'll be
gone and I won't know what to do."
"I won't drive away until I talk to you," he said finally, pulling her
arms free.
"Promise?"
He pulled off the sodden Bottega Veneta sandals, which had miraculously
stayed on her feet, and pitched them to the floor, along with the dry
T-shirt he'd brought with him, "Yeah, I promise."
Even though he'd given his word, he sounded reluctant, and she made a
small inarticulate sound of protest as he went out the door. Didn't she
promise all sorts of things and then promptly forget about them? How
did she know he wouldn't do the same? "Dallie?"
But he was gone.
Somewhere she found the energy to pull off her wet jeans and underwear,
letting them fall in a heap beside the bed before she slid under the
covers. She pushed her wet head into the pillow, closed her eyes, and
in the instant before she fell asleep, wondered whether she might not
have been better off if Dallie had left her on the bottom of the
swimming pool.
Her sleep was deep and hard, but she still jolted awake barely four
hours later when the first trickle of light seeped through the heavy
draperies. Throwing off the covers, she jumped unsteadily from the bed
and stumbled naked toward the window, every muscle in her body aching.
Only after she'd pushed back the drapery and looked outside at the
dreary, rain-soaked day did her stomach steady. The Riviera was still
there.
Her heartbeat resumed its normal rhythm, and she slowly made her way
toward the mirror, instinctively doing what she had done every morning
of her life for as long as she could remember, greeting her reflection
to assure herself that the world had not changed during the night, that
it still orbited in a predestined pattern around the sun of her own
beauty.
She let out a strangled cry of despair.
If she'd had more sleep, she might have handled the shock better, but
as it was, she could barely comprehend what she saw. Her beautiful hair
hung in tangled mats around her face, a long scratch marred the
graceful curve of her neck, bruises had popped out on her flesh, and
her bottom lip—her perfect bottom lip—was puffed up like a pastry shell.
Panic-stricken, she rushed to her case and inventoried her remaining
possessions: a travel-size bottle of Rene Garraud bath gel,
toothpaste (no sign of a toothbrush), three lipsticks, her peach eye
shadow, and the useless dispenser of birth control pills Cissy's maid
had packed. Her handbag yielded up two shades
of blusher, her
lizard-skin wallet, and an atomizer of Femme. Those, along with the
faded navy T-shirt Dallie had thrown at her the night before and the
small pile of soggy clothes on the floor, were her possessions ... all
she had left in the world.
The enormity of her losses was too devastating to comprehend, so she
rushed to the shower where she did as much as she could with a brown
bottle of motel shampoo. She then used the few cosmetics she had left
to try to reconstruct the person she'd been. After pulling on her
uncomfortably soggy jeans and struggling into her wet sandals, she
spritzed Femme under her arms and then slid on Dallie's T-shirt. She
looked down at the word written in white on her left breast and
wondered what an AGGIES was. Another mystery, another unknown to make
her feel like an intruder in a strange land. Why had she never felt
like this in New York? Without shutting her eyes, she could see herself
rushing along Fifth Avenue, dining at La Caravelle, walking through the
lobby of the Pierre, and the more she thought about the world she'd
left behind, the more disconnected she felt from the world she'd
entered. A knock sounded, and she quickly combed her hair with her
fingers, not quite daring to risk another peek in the mirror.
Dallie stood leaning against the door frame wearing a sky blue
windbreaker beaded with rainwater and bleached-out jeans that had a
frayed hole at the side of one knee. His hair was damp and curled up at
the ends. Dishwater blond, she thought disparagingly, not true blond.
And he needed a really good cut. He also needed a new wardrobe. His
shoulders pulled at the seams of his jacket; his jeans would have
disgraced a Calcutta beggar.
It was no use. No matter how clearly she saw his flaws, no matter how
much she needed to reduce him to the ordinary in her own eyes, he was
still the most impossibly gorgeous man she had ever seen.
He leaned one hand against the door frame and looked down at her.
"Francie, ever since last night, I've been trying to make it obvious to
you in as many ways as I could that I don't want
to hear your story, but since you're hell-bent on telling it and since
I'm getting pretty close to desperate to get rid of you, let's do it
right now." With that, he walked into her room, slumped down in a
straight-backed chair, and put his boots up on the edge of the desk.
"You owe me someplace in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks."
"Two hundred—"
"You pretty well trashed that room last night." He leaned back in the
chair until only the rear legs were on the floor. "A television, two
lamps, a few craters in the Sheetrock, a five-by-four picture window.
The total came to five hundred sixty dollars, and that was only because
I promised the manager I'd play eighteen holes with him the next time I
come through. There only seemed to be a little over three hundred in
your wallet—not enough to take care of all that."
"My wallet?" She tore at the latches of her case. "You got into my
wallet! How could you do something like that? That's my property. You
should never have—" By the time she'd pulled her wallet from her purse,
the palms of her hands were as clammy as her jeans. She opened it and
gazed inside. When she could finally speak, her voice was barely a
whisper, "It's empty. You've taken all my money."
"Bills like that have to be settled real quick unless you want to catch
the attention of the local gendarmes."
She sagged down on the end of the bed, her sense of loss so
overwhelming that her body seemed to have gone numb. She had hit
bottom. Right at this moment. Right now. Everything was gone—cosmetics,
clothes, the last of her money. She had nothing left. The disaster that
had been picking up speed like a runaway train ever since Chloe's death
had finally jumped the track.
Dallie tapped a motel pen on the top of the desk. "Francie, I couldn't
help but notice that you didn't have any credit cards tucked away in
that purse of yours ... or any plane ticket either. Now, I want to hear
you tell me real quick that you've got that ticket to London put away
somewhere inside Mr. Vee-tawn, and that Mr. Vee-tawn is closed up in
one of those twenty-five-cent lockers at the airport."
She hugged her chest and stared at the wall. "I don't know what to do,"
she choked out.
"You're a big girl, and you'd better come up with something real fast."
"I need help." She turned to him, pleading for understanding. "I can't
handle this by myself."
The front legs of his chair banged to the floor. "Oh, no you don't!
This is your problem, lady, and you're not going to push it off on me."
His voice sounded hard and rough, not like the laughing Dallie who'd
picked her up at the side of the road, or the knight in shining armor
who'd saved her from certain death
at the Blue Choctaw.
"If you didn't want to help me," she cried out, "you shouldn't have
offered me that ride. You should have left me, like everyone else."
"Maybe you better start thinking about why everybody wants to get rid
of you so bad."
"It's not my fault, don't you see? It's circumstances." She began to
tell him all of it, beginning with Chloe's death, stumbling over her
words in her haste to get them out before he walked away. She told him
how she'd sold everything to pay for her ticket home only to realize
that even if she did have a ticket, she couldn't possibly go back to
London without money, without clothes, with the news of her humiliation
in that terrible movie on everyone's lips so that they were all
laughing at her. She realized right then that she had to stay where she
was, where no one knew her, until Nicky got back from his sordid fling
with the blond mathematician and she had a chance to talk to him over
the telephone. That's why she'd set out to find Dallie at the Blue
Choctaw. "Don't you see? I can't go back to London until I know Nicky
will be right there at the airport waiting for me."
"I thought you told me he was your fiance?"
"He is."
"Then why is he having a fling with a blond mathematician?"
"He's sulking."
"Jesus, Francie—"
She rushed over to kneel down beside his chair and looked up at him
with her heart-stopping eyes. "It's not my fault, Dallie. Really. The
last time I saw him, we had this awful
quarrel just because I turned down his marriage proposal." A great
stillness came over Dallie's face and she realized he had
misinterpreted what she'd said. "No, it's not what you're thinking!
He'll marry me! We've quarreled hundreds of times and he always
proposes again. It's just a matter of getting hold of him on the
telephone and telling him I forgive him."
Dallie shook his head. "Poor son of a bitch," he muttered.
She tried to glare at him, but her eyes were too teary, so she stood
and turned her back, struggling for control. "What I need, Dallie, is
some way to endure the next few weeks until I can talk to Nicky. I
thought you could help me, but last night you wouldn't talk to me, and
you made me so angry, and now you've taken my money." She spun on him,
her voice catching on a sob. "Don't you see, Dallie? If you'd just been
reasonable, none of this would have happened."
"I'll be goddamned." Dallie's boots hit the floor. "You're getting
ready to blame all this on me, aren't you? Jesus, I hate people like
you. No matter what happens, you manage to shift the blame to somebody
else."
She jumped up. "I don't have to listen to this! All I wanted was some
help."
"And a small bit of cash to go with it."
"I can return every penny in a few weeks."
"If Nicky takes you back." He stretched out his legs again, crossing
them at the ankles. "Francie, you don't seem to realize that I'm a
stranger with no obligation to you. I don't do all that good a job of
taking care of myself, and I'm sure as hell not going to take you on,
even for a few weeks. To tell you the truth, I don't even like you."
She looked at him, bewilderment imprinted on her face. "You don't like
me?"
"I really don't, Francie." His burst of anger had faded, and he spoke
calmly and with such obvious conviction that she knew he was telling
the truth. "Look, honey, you're a real traffic stopper with that face
of yours, and even though you're a little on the puny side, you kiss
great. I can't deny that I had a few wayward thoughts about what the
two of us might have been able to accomplish underneath the covers, and
if you had a different personality I could even see myself losing my
head over you for a few weeks. But the thing of it is, you
don't have a different personality, and the way you are is pretty much
a composite of all the bad qualities of every man and woman I ever met,
with none of the good qualities thrown in to even things out."
case from her hands. "This is between the girls."
"No!" Francesca cried. "It's not between the girls. Actually, I don't
even know this person, and I—"
She screamed as Cleo sank her hands into her hair and began twisting
her head in the general direction
of the lavatory. Her eyes began to
tear and her neck snapped backward. This was barbaric! Awful!
They
would murder her!
In that instant, she felt several strands of her hair being pulled from
her scalp. Her beautiful chestnut hair! Reason left her and blind fury
took over. She went wild, releasing a screech as she swung out. Cleo
grunted as Francesca's hand caught her in an abdomen that had lost its
tone. The pressure on Francesca's scalp immediately eased, but she had
only a moment to catch her breath before she saw Bonni coming toward
her, ready to pick up where Cleo had left off. A table crashed to the
floor nearby, glass shattering. She was dimly aware that the fight had
spread, and that Pete had leaped to her rescue, wonderful Pete of the
plaid shirt and beer belly, wonderful, marvelous, adorable Pete!
"You bitch!" Bonni cried, reaching out for anything she could grab,
which happened to be the pearl buttons set into the cocoa trim on
Francesca's greige Halston blouse. The front gave way; the shoulder
seam split. Once again Francesca felt her hair being pulled, and once
again she swung, locking her other hand around Bonni's head and
grabbing some hair herself.
Suddenly it seemed as if the fight had surrounded her— chairs scraped
over the floor, a bottle flew through the air, someone screamed. She
felt one of the fingernails on her right hand tear. Ribbons of fabric
hung from the front of her blouse, exposing her ecru lace bra, but she
had no time to worry about modesty as Bonni's sharp rings scraped her
neck. Francesca gritted her teeth against the pain and pulled harder.
At the same time she had the sudden and horrifying realization that
she—Francesca Serritella Day, darling of the international set, pet of
the society columnists, almost Princess of Wales—was at the heart, the
very center, the absolute core, of a barroom brawl.
Across the room, the door of the Blue Choctaw swung open and Skeet
walked in, followed by Dallie Beaudine.
Dallie stood there for a moment, took in what was happening, saw the
people involved, and shook his head with disgust. "Aw, hell." With a
long, put-upon sigh, he began to shoulder his way through the crowd.
Never in her entire life had Francesca been so glad to see anyone,
except at first she didn't realize it was him. When he touched her
shoulder, she released Bonni, swung around, and hit him as hard as she
could in the chest.
"Hey!" he yelled, rubbing the spot where she'd landed. "I'm on your
side ... I guess."
"Dallie!" She threw herself into his arms. "Oh, Dallie, Dallie, Dallie!
My wonderful Dallie! I can't believe it's you!"
He pulled her off. "Easy, Francie, you're not out of here yet. Why the
hell—"
He never finished. Someone who looked like an extra in an old Steve
Reeves movie came at him with a right hook, and Francesca watched in
horror as Dallie sprawled on the floor. Spotting her cosmetic case
sitting in splendid isolation on the jukebox, she snatched it up and
banged it into the side of the awful man's head. To her horror, the
clasp gave way, and she watched helplessly as her wonderful blushers
and shadows and creams and lotions flew about the room. A box of her
specially blended translucent powder sent up a scented cloud that soon
had everyone coughing and sliding and quickly put a damper on the fight.
Dallie staggered to his feet, threw a couple of punches of his own, and
then grabbed her arm. "Come on. Let's get out of here before they
decide to eat you for a bedtime snack."
"My makeup!" She scrambled toward a cake of frosted peach eye shadow,
even though she knew it was a ridiculous thing to do with her blouse
falling off, a bloody scratch on her neck, two fingernails broken, and
her very life in danger. But recovering the eye shadow suddenly became
more important to her than anything in the world, and she was willing
to fight them all to get it back.
He whipped his arm around her waist and lifted her feet off the floor.
"To hell with your makeup!"
"No! Put me down!" She had to have the eye shadow. Little by little,
every single item she owned was being taken away from her, and if she
let just one more thing disappear, one more possession slip out of her
life, she might very well disappear
herself, fading away like the Cheshire cat until nothing was left,
not
even her teeth.
"Come on, Francie!"
"No!" She fought Dallie as she'd fought the rest, flailing her legs in
the air, kicking his calves, screaming out, "I want it! I have to have
it."
"You're gonna get it, all right!"
"Please, Dallie," she begged. "Please!"
The magic word had never failed her before, and it didn't now.
Muttering under his breath, he leaned forward with his arm still around
her and snatched up the eye shadow. As he straightened, she grabbed it
from him and then reached out, just managing to grasp the open lid of
her cosmetic case before he pulled her away. By the time she had
snapped the lid shut, she'd lost a bottle of almond-scented moisturizer
and broken a third fingernail, but she had managed to avoid spilling
out her calfskin handbag along with its three hundred and fifty
dollars. And she had her precious frosted peach eye shadow.
Skeet propped the door open and Dallie carried her through. As he set
her down on the pavement, she heard sirens. He immediately snatched her
back up and dragged her toward the Riviera.
"Can't she even walk by herself?" Skeet asked, catching the keys that
Dallie pitched to him.
"She likes to argue." Dallie glanced toward the flashing lights that
weren't all that far away. "Commissioner Deane Beman and the PGA are
only going to put up with so much from me this year, so let's get the
hell out of here." Shoving her none too gently into the back seat, he
jumped in after her and closed the door.
They rode in silence for several minutes. Her teeth began to chatter
from the aftereffects of the fight, and her hands shook as she tried to
pull the front of her blouse together and tuck some of the torn ends
into her bra. It didn't take her long to realize the task was hopeless.
A lump lodged in her throat. She hugged her arms over her chest and
yearned for some expression of sympathy, some concern for her
condition,
a small sign that someone cared about her.
Dallie reached under the seat in front of him and pulled out an
unopened bottle of scotch. After breaking the seal with his
thumbnail, he unscrewed the top, took a long swallow, and then looked
thoughtful. Francesca prepared herself for the questions to come and
made up her mind to answer each one with as much dignity as possible.
She bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.
Dailie leaned toward Skeet. "I didn't see anything of that red-haired
waitress. Did you get a chance to ask about her?"
"Yeah. The bartender said she went off to Bogalusa with some guy who
works for the power company."
"Too bad."
Skeet glanced into the rearview mirror. "Seems the guy only had one
arm."
"No kidding? Did the bartender tell you how a thing like that happened?"
"Industrial accident of some kind. A few years back the guy worked for
a tool and die outfit up near Shreveport and got his arm caught in a
press. Crushed that sucker flatter than a pancake."
"Guess it didn't make any difference to his love life with that
waitress of yours." Dailie took another swallow. "Women are funny 'bout
things like that. Take that lady we met last year in San Diego after
the Andy Williams—"
"Stop it!" Francesca cried, unable to hold back her outcry. "Are you so
callous that you don't have the simple decency to ask me if I'm all
right? That was a barroom brawl back there! Don't you realize that I
could have been killed?"
"Probably not," Dailie said. "Somebody most likely would've put a stop
to it."
She drew back her hand and hit his arm as hard as she could.
"Ouch." He rubbed the spot she had struck.
"Did she just hit you?" Skeet inquired indignantly.
"Yeah."
"You gonna hit her back?"
"I'm thinking."
"I would if I was you."
"I know you would." He looked at her and his eyes darkened. "I would,
too, if I thought she was going
to be part of my life for any longer
than about the next two and a half minutes."
She stared at him, wishing she could take back her impulsive blow,
unable to believe what she'd just heard. "Exactly what are you saying?"
she demanded.
Skeet sped through a yellow light. "How far is it to the airport from
here?"
"Clear across town." Dallie leaned forward and clasped his hand over
the back of the seat. "In case you weren't paying attention earlier,
the motel's up another light and down a block."
Skeet stepped down on the accelerator and the Riviera shot forward,
throwing Francesca back against the seat. She glared at Dallie, trying
to shame him into apologizing so she could magnanimously forgive him.
She waited the rest of the way to the motel.
They turned into the well-lit parking lot, and Skeet swung around to
the side, stopping in front of a line of brightly painted metal doors
stamped with black numbers. He shut off the ignition, and then he and
Dallie climbed out. She watched incredulously as first one car door
slammed and then the other.
"See you in the morning, Dallie."
"See you, Skeet."
She leaped out after them, her case clutched in her hand, trying
unsuccessfully to hold her blouse closed. "Dallie!"
He pulled a room key from the pocket of his jeans and turned. Greige
silk slithered through her fingers as she closed the car door. Couldn't
he see how helpless she was? How much she needed him? "You have to help
me," she said, staring at him with eyes so pitifully large they seemed
to eat up her small face. "I put my life in jeopardy going to that bar
just to find you."
He looked at her breasts and the ecru silk bra. Then he pulled his
faded navy T-shirt over his head and tossed it to her. "Here's the
shirt off my back, honey. Don't ask for anything more."
She watched incredulously as he walked into his motel room and shut the
door—shut the door in her face! The panic that had been building inside
her throughout the day burst free, flooding every part of
her body. She
had never experienced such fear, she had no way of coping with it, and
so she converted
it into something she understood—a burning flare of red-hot anger. No
one treated her like this! No one!
She'd make him deal with her! She'd make him pay!
She dashed to his door and banged her case against it, hitting it once,
twice, wishing it were his horrid, ugly face. She kicked at it, cursed
it, let her anger detonate, let it blaze bright and righteous in one
never-to-be-forgotten display of the temper that had made her a legend.
The door swung open and he stood on the other side, his chest bare and
his ugly face scowling at her. She'd show him a scowl! She'd show him
that he'd never even imagined what a scowl looked like! "You bastard!"
She shot past him and flung her case across the room, where it
shattered the television screen in a satisfying explosion of glass.
"You depraved, moronic bastard!" She kicked over a chair. "You callous
son of a bitch!" She upended his suitcase.
And then she let herself go.
Screaming out insults and accusations, she tossed ashtrays and pillows,
threw lamps, and pulled the drawers from the desk. Every slight she had
suffered in the past twenty-four hours, every indignity, came to the
surface—the pink dress, the Blue Choctaw, the peach eye shadow. . . .
She punished Chloe for dying, Nicky for deserting her, she assaulted
Lew Steiner, attacked Lloyd Byron, mutilated Miranda Gwynwyck, and most
of all, she annihilated Dallie Beaudine. Dallie, the most beautiful man
she had ever met, the only man who wasn't impressed by her, the only
man who'd ever slammed a door in her face.
Dallie watched for a moment, his hands planted on his hips. A can of
shaving cream flew past him and hit the mirror. "Unbelievable," he
muttered. He stuck his head out the door. "Skeet! Come over here. You
got to see this."
Skeet was already on his way. "What's going on? It sounds like—" He
stopped dead in the open doorway, staring at the destruction taking
place in front of him. "Why is she doin' that?"
"Damned if I know." Dallie ducked a flying copy of the Greater New
Orleans telephone directory. "Damnedest thing I ever saw in my life."
"Maybe she thinks she's a rock star. Hey, Dallie! She's goin' for your
three-wood!"
Dallie moved like the athlete he was, and in two long strides he had
her.
Francesca felt herself being upended. For a moment her legs hung free,
and then something hard jabbed into her stomach as she felt herself
being tossed over his shoulder. "Put me down! Put me down, you bastard!"
"Not hardly. That's the best three-wood I ever owned."
They began to move. She screamed as he carried her outside, his
shoulder pushing into her stomach, his arm clamped around the backs of
her knees. She heard voices and she was dimly aware of doors opening
and bathrobed bodies peering out.
"I never saw a woman so scared of a little old mouse in all my life,"
Dallie called out.
She banged her fists against his bare back. "I'll have you arrested!"
she screamed. "I'll sue you! Bastard! I'll sue you for every penny—" He
veered sharply to the right. She saw a wrought-iron fence, a gate,
underwater lights—
"No!" She let out a bloodcurdling scream as he pitched her into the
very deepest part of the motel swimming pool.
Chapter
10
Skeet walked up next to Dallie, and the two men stood on the edge of10
the pool watching her. Finally Skeet made an observation. "She's not
coming up real fast."
Dallie tucked one thumb into the pocket of his jeans. "Doesn't look
like she can swim. I should've figured."
Skeet turned to him. "Did you hear the peculiar way she says 'bastard*?
Like 'bah-stud.' I can't say it the way she does. Real peculiar."
"Yeah. That fancy accent of hers sure does manage to screw up good
American cusswords."
The splashing in the pool gradually began to slow down. "You gonna jump
in and save her any time in
the next century?" Skeet inquired.
"Suppose I'd better. Unless you'd consider doing it."
"Hell, no. I'm going to bed."
Skeet turned to walk out the gate, and Dallie sat down on the edge of a
lounge chair to pull off his boots. He watched for a moment to see how
much struggle she had left, and when he judged the time to be about
right, he wandered over to the edge and dived in.
Francesca had just realized how much she didn't want to die. Despite
the movie, her poverty, the loss
of all her possessions, she was too
young. Her whole life stretched before her. But as the awful weight
of
the water pressed down on her, she understood that it was happening.
Her lungs bumed and
her limbs no longer responded to any command. She was dying, and she
hadn't even lived yet.
Suddenly something caught her around the chest and began dragging her
upward, holding her close, not letting her go, pulling her to the
surface, saving her! Her head burst through the water and her lungs
grabbed the air. She sucked it in, coughing and choking, grabbing at
the arms around her for fear they would let her go, sobbing and crying
with the pure joy of still being alive.
Without quite being aware how it had happened, she found herself being
pulled up on the deck, the last shreds of her greige silk blouse
staying in the water. But even when she felt the solid concrete surface
beneath her, she wouldn't let Dallie go.
When she could finally speak, her words came out in small choked gasps.
"I'll never forgive you ... I hate you. . . ." She clung to his body,
painted herself on his bare chest, threw her arms around his shoulders,
held him as tight as she had ever held anything in her life. "I hate
you," she choked out. "Don't let me go."
"You really did get shook up there, didn't you, Francie?"
But she was beyond replying. All she could do was hold on for dear
life. She held on to him as he carried her back into the motel room,
held on to him while he talked to the motel manager who was waiting for
them, held on as he pulled her case from the rubble, fumbled through
it, and carried her to another room.
He leaned over to lay her on the bed. "You can sleep here for the—"
"No!" The now-familiar wave of panic returned.
He tried to pry her arms from his neck. "Aw, come on, Francie, it's
almost two in the morning. I want to get at least a few hours' sleep
before I have to wake up."
"No, Dallie!" She was crying now, gazing straight into those
Newman-blue eyes and crying her heart out. "Don't leave me. I know
you'll drive away if I let you go. I'll wake up tomorrow and you'll be
gone and I won't know what to do."
"I won't drive away until I talk to you," he said finally, pulling her
arms free.
"Promise?"
He pulled off the sodden Bottega Veneta sandals, which had miraculously
stayed on her feet, and pitched them to the floor, along with the dry
T-shirt he'd brought with him, "Yeah, I promise."
Even though he'd given his word, he sounded reluctant, and she made a
small inarticulate sound of protest as he went out the door. Didn't she
promise all sorts of things and then promptly forget about them? How
did she know he wouldn't do the same? "Dallie?"
But he was gone.
Somewhere she found the energy to pull off her wet jeans and underwear,
letting them fall in a heap beside the bed before she slid under the
covers. She pushed her wet head into the pillow, closed her eyes, and
in the instant before she fell asleep, wondered whether she might not
have been better off if Dallie had left her on the bottom of the
swimming pool.
Her sleep was deep and hard, but she still jolted awake barely four
hours later when the first trickle of light seeped through the heavy
draperies. Throwing off the covers, she jumped unsteadily from the bed
and stumbled naked toward the window, every muscle in her body aching.
Only after she'd pushed back the drapery and looked outside at the
dreary, rain-soaked day did her stomach steady. The Riviera was still
there.
Her heartbeat resumed its normal rhythm, and she slowly made her way
toward the mirror, instinctively doing what she had done every morning
of her life for as long as she could remember, greeting her reflection
to assure herself that the world had not changed during the night, that
it still orbited in a predestined pattern around the sun of her own
beauty.
She let out a strangled cry of despair.
If she'd had more sleep, she might have handled the shock better, but
as it was, she could barely comprehend what she saw. Her beautiful hair
hung in tangled mats around her face, a long scratch marred the
graceful curve of her neck, bruises had popped out on her flesh, and
her bottom lip—her perfect bottom lip—was puffed up like a pastry shell.
Panic-stricken, she rushed to her case and inventoried her remaining
possessions: a travel-size bottle of Rene Garraud bath gel,
toothpaste (no sign of a toothbrush), three lipsticks, her peach eye
shadow, and the useless dispenser of birth control pills Cissy's maid
had packed. Her handbag yielded up two shades
of blusher, her
lizard-skin wallet, and an atomizer of Femme. Those, along with the
faded navy T-shirt Dallie had thrown at her the night before and the
small pile of soggy clothes on the floor, were her possessions ... all
she had left in the world.
The enormity of her losses was too devastating to comprehend, so she
rushed to the shower where she did as much as she could with a brown
bottle of motel shampoo. She then used the few cosmetics she had left
to try to reconstruct the person she'd been. After pulling on her
uncomfortably soggy jeans and struggling into her wet sandals, she
spritzed Femme under her arms and then slid on Dallie's T-shirt. She
looked down at the word written in white on her left breast and
wondered what an AGGIES was. Another mystery, another unknown to make
her feel like an intruder in a strange land. Why had she never felt
like this in New York? Without shutting her eyes, she could see herself
rushing along Fifth Avenue, dining at La Caravelle, walking through the
lobby of the Pierre, and the more she thought about the world she'd
left behind, the more disconnected she felt from the world she'd
entered. A knock sounded, and she quickly combed her hair with her
fingers, not quite daring to risk another peek in the mirror.
Dallie stood leaning against the door frame wearing a sky blue
windbreaker beaded with rainwater and bleached-out jeans that had a
frayed hole at the side of one knee. His hair was damp and curled up at
the ends. Dishwater blond, she thought disparagingly, not true blond.
And he needed a really good cut. He also needed a new wardrobe. His
shoulders pulled at the seams of his jacket; his jeans would have
disgraced a Calcutta beggar.
It was no use. No matter how clearly she saw his flaws, no matter how
much she needed to reduce him to the ordinary in her own eyes, he was
still the most impossibly gorgeous man she had ever seen.
He leaned one hand against the door frame and looked down at her.
"Francie, ever since last night, I've been trying to make it obvious to
you in as many ways as I could that I don't want
to hear your story, but since you're hell-bent on telling it and since
I'm getting pretty close to desperate to get rid of you, let's do it
right now." With that, he walked into her room, slumped down in a
straight-backed chair, and put his boots up on the edge of the desk.
"You owe me someplace in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks."
"Two hundred—"
"You pretty well trashed that room last night." He leaned back in the
chair until only the rear legs were on the floor. "A television, two
lamps, a few craters in the Sheetrock, a five-by-four picture window.
The total came to five hundred sixty dollars, and that was only because
I promised the manager I'd play eighteen holes with him the next time I
come through. There only seemed to be a little over three hundred in
your wallet—not enough to take care of all that."
"My wallet?" She tore at the latches of her case. "You got into my
wallet! How could you do something like that? That's my property. You
should never have—" By the time she'd pulled her wallet from her purse,
the palms of her hands were as clammy as her jeans. She opened it and
gazed inside. When she could finally speak, her voice was barely a
whisper, "It's empty. You've taken all my money."
"Bills like that have to be settled real quick unless you want to catch
the attention of the local gendarmes."
She sagged down on the end of the bed, her sense of loss so
overwhelming that her body seemed to have gone numb. She had hit
bottom. Right at this moment. Right now. Everything was gone—cosmetics,
clothes, the last of her money. She had nothing left. The disaster that
had been picking up speed like a runaway train ever since Chloe's death
had finally jumped the track.
Dallie tapped a motel pen on the top of the desk. "Francie, I couldn't
help but notice that you didn't have any credit cards tucked away in
that purse of yours ... or any plane ticket either. Now, I want to hear
you tell me real quick that you've got that ticket to London put away
somewhere inside Mr. Vee-tawn, and that Mr. Vee-tawn is closed up in
one of those twenty-five-cent lockers at the airport."
She hugged her chest and stared at the wall. "I don't know what to do,"
she choked out.
"You're a big girl, and you'd better come up with something real fast."
"I need help." She turned to him, pleading for understanding. "I can't
handle this by myself."
The front legs of his chair banged to the floor. "Oh, no you don't!
This is your problem, lady, and you're not going to push it off on me."
His voice sounded hard and rough, not like the laughing Dallie who'd
picked her up at the side of the road, or the knight in shining armor
who'd saved her from certain death
at the Blue Choctaw.
"If you didn't want to help me," she cried out, "you shouldn't have
offered me that ride. You should have left me, like everyone else."
"Maybe you better start thinking about why everybody wants to get rid
of you so bad."
"It's not my fault, don't you see? It's circumstances." She began to
tell him all of it, beginning with Chloe's death, stumbling over her
words in her haste to get them out before he walked away. She told him
how she'd sold everything to pay for her ticket home only to realize
that even if she did have a ticket, she couldn't possibly go back to
London without money, without clothes, with the news of her humiliation
in that terrible movie on everyone's lips so that they were all
laughing at her. She realized right then that she had to stay where she
was, where no one knew her, until Nicky got back from his sordid fling
with the blond mathematician and she had a chance to talk to him over
the telephone. That's why she'd set out to find Dallie at the Blue
Choctaw. "Don't you see? I can't go back to London until I know Nicky
will be right there at the airport waiting for me."
"I thought you told me he was your fiance?"
"He is."
"Then why is he having a fling with a blond mathematician?"
"He's sulking."
"Jesus, Francie—"
She rushed over to kneel down beside his chair and looked up at him
with her heart-stopping eyes. "It's not my fault, Dallie. Really. The
last time I saw him, we had this awful
quarrel just because I turned down his marriage proposal." A great
stillness came over Dallie's face and she realized he had
misinterpreted what she'd said. "No, it's not what you're thinking!
He'll marry me! We've quarreled hundreds of times and he always
proposes again. It's just a matter of getting hold of him on the
telephone and telling him I forgive him."
Dallie shook his head. "Poor son of a bitch," he muttered.
She tried to glare at him, but her eyes were too teary, so she stood
and turned her back, struggling for control. "What I need, Dallie, is
some way to endure the next few weeks until I can talk to Nicky. I
thought you could help me, but last night you wouldn't talk to me, and
you made me so angry, and now you've taken my money." She spun on him,
her voice catching on a sob. "Don't you see, Dallie? If you'd just been
reasonable, none of this would have happened."
"I'll be goddamned." Dallie's boots hit the floor. "You're getting
ready to blame all this on me, aren't you? Jesus, I hate people like
you. No matter what happens, you manage to shift the blame to somebody
else."
She jumped up. "I don't have to listen to this! All I wanted was some
help."
"And a small bit of cash to go with it."
"I can return every penny in a few weeks."
"If Nicky takes you back." He stretched out his legs again, crossing
them at the ankles. "Francie, you don't seem to realize that I'm a
stranger with no obligation to you. I don't do all that good a job of
taking care of myself, and I'm sure as hell not going to take you on,
even for a few weeks. To tell you the truth, I don't even like you."
She looked at him, bewilderment imprinted on her face. "You don't like
me?"
"I really don't, Francie." His burst of anger had faded, and he spoke
calmly and with such obvious conviction that she knew he was telling
the truth. "Look, honey, you're a real traffic stopper with that face
of yours, and even though you're a little on the puny side, you kiss
great. I can't deny that I had a few wayward thoughts about what the
two of us might have been able to accomplish underneath the covers, and
if you had a different personality I could even see myself losing my
head over you for a few weeks. But the thing of it is, you
don't have a different personality, and the way you are is pretty much
a composite of all the bad qualities of every man and woman I ever met,
with none of the good qualities thrown in to even things out."
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