Mile High (37 page)

CHAPTER SIX

After her first show, after she could speak pretty good Italian, after the new architectural offices were established and Derek was commuting from London, after everything was simply marvelous and simply couldn't possibly get any better, Walt spoiled everything by demanding that she marry him. The more he pleaded and bullied and wheedled, the more certain she became that she would not marry him. She spent seven months fighting off his maniacal resolution, and once when they were in a desperate argument in the street she pointed up at the street sign proclaiming St. Agnes' agony and yelled at him with muscular Italian therapy that it wasn't only Agnes who was feeling pain. But he wouldn't stop and she couldn't stand it any longer, so one day while he was at the office she hired two men with a truck and broad shoulders and they packed everything in the flat in the Via Parione, including her new paintings, for shipment to Paris to an address she was to cable them. She left only Walt's packed suitcase.

She flew to Geneva, then took the train to Paris, where she found an apartment on the first day in the Avenue de Neuilly, which she rented in the name of a
notaire
so that Walt's detectives couldn't find her. She remained in the flat for four months, leaving only to shop for food in the neighborhood, and then heavily veiled. At the end of that time she felt she had almost forgotten him. She had accumulated twenty-seven new paintings in all, and the afternoon she met with the dealer she thought most capable of handling her show, she was tagged by Walt's people, who followed her home. Walt rang the doorbell at nine-twenty the next morning, and his appearance almost broke her. He was thin and sick-looking, almost dead-looking—just large eyes and sunken white cheeks and thick, hanging ketchup-colored hair.

“Walt! My God!”

“I'd like a cup of Bovril.”

“Bovril?”

“Don't you have any?”

“How did you find me?”

“I just had people covering the
trompe-l'oeil
dealers in Europe.”

“In
Europe?
”

“We got a line on your being in Paris from your letters to your mother, but they had no return address on the envelope and I was quite strict with the people about not daring to open them. But we knew you were in Paris from the postmark, and we knew you were in Neuilly, but we couldn't seem to pick you up until you showed at the gallery. May I come in?”

She stood aside for him and he entered the flat wearily. She closed the door and she knew that she had not forgotten him at all. She threw her arms around him and kissed him tenderly, then hungrily, and she cried.

After five weeks he had responded to her cooking. He moved his single suitcase in with her, turned rosy again, was extremely careful about not mentioning marriage, and everything was wonderful again. Derek came up from Rome and they established West & Adler, Consultant à Elaine Hewlett et Grellou, and bought a marvelous, large piece of property on the Boulevard Jourdan through the land agents for West to West Ltd. Mayra had refused to marry him, but she had aided his career vastly. Three offices, three rather huge building development complexes that would alter the housing standards of thousands, and a total of seven realty-architectural-administrative companies had been formed because of her. She told Walt that maybe if they lived long enough in the goddam argument it could mean advanced housing for all of Europe.

But she couldn't paint and cook and defend herself all at the same time. They were married on September 27, 1958, at the Chelsea Registry Office in London, with the Adlers as witnesses. They went to a restaurant in Basil Street, where they drank champagne but ordered no food, and Walt played the piano and sang to them until Derek was inspired to make a Bauernschmaus. So they bought two magnums of champagne and climbed into what Adler called his Rentley, a hired Humber, and swanned into Soho to buy sauerkraut, pork, paprika, sausages, onions and carrots, while Derek assured everyone that a Bauernschmaus was merely a light Szekely Gulyas. It took an hour and a half to cook and two hours to eat, then the bride and groom were returned to the basement flat in Hans Place, which Walt had generously leased from Mayra during the almost two years they had been away from England.

The cablegram arrived on December 15, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wagstaff West.

Walt tore open the envelope and flattened out the message sheet. He looked, grew pale and dropped the cable. She picked it up. “It's from my father,” he said shakily. “Read it to me.”

“Hawk Bay, New York. Nine twenty-two—”

“No, no. The message.”

“‘Cordially invite you and your bride to spend Christmas Day with your brother and myself at Bürgenstock West and to remain here to see in the great promise of the new year. Mr. Tobin will telephone you to make all arrangements. Your father, Edward Courance West.'”

Walt walked unsteadily to a large chair and sat down. “Now, what did he do that for?”

“It's natural. Christmas, and you have a new black bride.” She sounded easy, but she was frightened, and she didn't know why this was.

“We won't go.”

“I wish you would. I'd like you to meet Mama.”

“Let's fly Mama over here.”

“You know she won't fly.”

“But what can I say to him?”

“Hell, honey, you'll think of something.”

“I'm going to call Dan.” He picked up the phone and put the call through to Washington. “After all these years of being go-between Dan ought to know that I've finally been called in to meet my father about a month before my thirtieth birthday.”

“Well, sure.”

“I hope it's not too late.”

“Baby, why should it be too late?”

“I don't need it now the way I used to need it when I was a kid.”

“But you're curious. You've got to be curious.”

“That's what it is. That's what it's reduced itself to-just curiosity. When your own father is one of the most important men in the world, how can you help being curious about just meeting him? Right?”

“That's right.” The telephone rang and Walt picked it up instantly.

“Dan? Walt. Hey, what do you think happened to me? I just got a cable. Father sent me a cable inviting Mayra and me to spend Christmas and New Year's with him at Bürgenstock West.”

“He did? But—how come?”

“I thought you might know.”

“No. In fact I can't think of anything that would be a bigger surprise. He must want to ask your wife if she's a Communist.”

Walt laughed. “Do you think I ought to go?”

“Of course not.”

“You don't?”

“Listen, Walt. You're in love, you have an exciting career going for you, everything is coming up roses, so what the hell do you all of a sudden need an insane man on your side for? Forget it. You're safe where you are. Stay safe.”

“But just the same, Dan, I—”

“So you're going anyway?”

“Well, I—”

“Okay. I know. I mean, really, it's okay. You were raised to answer that way. Nothing you can do about it.”

“It's not that, Dan—”

“When do you leave?”

“Well, I suppose we'll have to leave tomorrow to get there by Christmas Eve, because we want to spend some time with Mayra's mother in New York.”

“I can't get there Christmas Eve, but I'll get there on Christmas Day. I have to see for myself what it all looks like. You can't be there all alone with that son of a bitch, because he's sick and he wishes no one well and if he makes any effort at all, on anything, in any direction, its only for one reason—to feed his sadistic insanity.”

“That's pretty strong stuff, Dan.”

“I know. I wish—ah, what the hell. I'll look forward to seeing you and meeting your bride on Christmas Day.”

Walt hung up.

“What was pretty strong stuff?” Mayra asked.

“Oh, Dan and Father had some family fight. It's nothing that won't be all fixed up by Christmas.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

When the big West plane stopped and Mayra looked out the window she saw Mama waiting. And Mayra wasn't ready for that. Mama thought she had married a fair-to-struggling young architect, and now a big Learstar slides in from across the ocean and only two people get off, one of them li'l Mayra. Mama stood straight and looked just great, but there was gray in her hair. She looked just beautiful, but she wasn't the young Mama that Mayra always thought she was. She had a stack of Christmas parcels in her arms and she was smiling wide, getting ready to be happy, carrying it all off as though she was always getting driven out to meet her daughter stepping down out of a private, transatlantic plane. She had on a mink stole and she wore it over a gorgeous red dress, her long, slim legs rising above red shoes. There stood Mama. Mayra grabbed Walt and said, “There she is, that beautiful black lady!” She shrieked with happiness and buried her head in Walt's chest.

The engines stopped. The steward opened the door. Mayra flew down the ramp, across the cement and into her mother's arms. Mama gave Walt a big kiss straight off and he blushed five shades of red and pink. “He may not be black,” Mayra said, “but you got to admit he's colored. How's the credit, Mama?”

“Perpetual at last. I got a food store that sells everything. Big, fat German fella from Dover, New Jersey. His wife says he eats cold spaghetti. I swear. I started him off with a cash deposit of a hundred, then second time I give him one-fifty, then third time round he says why bother to pay it in front, my credit is good with him, and I tell you he sure could give lessons to that Relleh on Manhattan Avenue.”

When they got to Mama's house she made them tea but she backed it with gin, Scotch, beer, ice and setups. They sat around the dining room table grinning at each other, Walt shy and Mayra manic, Mama calm and happy. They talked about the housing Walt's firm was working on and Mayra's hat and dress and Mama's hat and dress and mink stole. “How about that stole,” Mama said. “Did that almost knock you down? You know where that came from? Remember Miss Lily the—the lady on Madison Avenue and Sixty-fourth a long time ago?”

“The blonde one?” Mayra asked. “The one on cocaine?”

“That's the one. Well, she died about five months ago and she remembered me in her will. I cried like a baby. She left me that beautiful fur thing.”

After a short while Mayra lied. “Walt, I know you have to see Mr. Tobin and don't you worry about Mama and me—we have plenty to talk over after all these years—and maybe if you go now you'll be able to be back in time for dinner.”

Walt knew that Mayra knew that Willie Tobin wasn't waiting for him anywhere, but he got the drift. Anyway, it was a chance to have a good uninterrupted look at the Seagram Building, so he said, “I can get back here by six. Will six be all right?”

“Then is the hour,” Mama answered.

“Looks like you got a good man,” Mama said.

“Maybe better than that.”

“What about that plane? What about that Rolls?”

“Belong to his daddy.”

“Who his daddy?”

“That's the crazy part. Our name is West because his daddy is Edward Courance West.”

Mayra expected her mother to be startled, agape with awe, wholly astonished and maybe even speechless for a little minute. But she hadn't ever expected to see the shock and then the fear that came over her mother's face. “Mama! What's wrong?” Mayra asked quickly. The older woman shook her head slowly but did not speak. Mayra could hear clocks ticking. Mama reached out and poured some gin into a glass. “I know that man, honey. He's a bad man. Baddest there ever was for women. I know him. He even screwed me once on the floor of Miss Baby's john—and that's a long time ago, when he was the most famous man in America, and he's bigger than that now. He put her in that pad and she moonlighted on him. He maybe figured she'd sew or like that between the times he felt like stopping in. He didn't put bodyguards and secretaries on his meat in those days and he had chicks all over. A little guy name of Willie Tobin used to come around and pay off. Miss Baby was careful not to ball him and I didn't wear no uniform when we knew he was coming. I played like I was the cook and cleaner. Miss Baby was greedy, that's all. She got that pad and clothes and a lot of roommates to stay on with her because, like she told Mr. West, she got lonesome—plus he gave her a thousand bucks a month, and that's in the Depression. Well, Mr. West found out and, man, he
wrecked
her, and he knocked me around plenty too. Then he calls up the
cops
. He rates, I mean. The place was full of police inspectors and assistant DAs, and they work, out of me a statement that Miss Baby had been running a house of prostitution and trafficking in drugs and compulsory prostitution and fencing stolen goods—and those last ones were just dreams. He dropped everything on her. Then they took her downtown and they made it all stick in court, and she died in jail with tuberculosis after she done six years. And why? Because she cheated on Mr. West, that's why.”

Mama began to cry. She hunched over in her chair sobbing and mopping her face with a napkin. “Then he almost killed Miss Pupchen. For nothing. She didn't do anything. He just came in with crazy eyes and he broke her into pieces, and when it's all over he's clear-eyes. Yeah, Mr. Clear-Eyes. He give me five hundred bucks, because he said he lost his temper when he come on me and screwed me the time before at Miss Baby's, then beat the shit outta me. But this time he didn't do me nothing. He give me a check for a thousand and he say, ‘Take care of the kid,' and he start out. I run after him. I say I can't, I don't know how, and she's hurt bad. She's all wrecked. He says for me to call Willie Tobin, and he strolls out, all clear-eyes.”

“Walt's not like that. Walt's not anything like that. And he's never seen his father in his whole life.”