The Black Marble (2 page)

“You
can't
be a policeman!” the usher sputtered.

“Yes, I'm terribly sorry,” the man in the yellow rubber raincoat belched. Then he staggered into the night.

The last thing he heard before the rain struck his face was the eternal Slavonic chant: “Have mercy on us … Holy God Immortal … Have
mercy
on us.”

2

La Buena Vida

Victoria's redolent warm puffs hinted of the pâté they had shared that night. Madeline Dills Whitfield lay awake listening to the rain. She snagged a lacquered Juliette fingernail on pearl satin sheets sliding closer to Victoria without waking her. Vickie whimpered in enviable sleep as Madeline waited for three Dalmanes and six ounces of Chivas Regal to release her.

Now their mouths were almost touching. Vickie's tongue flicked wet and Madeline ached to stroke the incredible arch of her neck. It was a marvelous neck, now carrying a faint scent of Bellodgia, a neck that lent great hauteur to her movements.

Hauteur. Madeline remembered last Monday afternoon when she and Vickie had strolled across the grounds of the Huntington Sheraton, that once-opulent old dowager of a hotel. That relic of the days when Pasadena was the cultural and social center of the entire Los Angeles area. When old bewhiskered Henry Huntington would don a homburg and waistcoat and ride from his San Marino mansion to Los Angeles in his own railroad car. On a private spur laid by Mexicans and Chinese to his very door.

It hurt to see her so seedy, time-ravaged and mutilated by a grotesque porte cochere of gray concrete, grafted onto the entrance of the hotel where Madeline's mother had been presented at a debutante ball in 1923. And it hurt more when she walked with Vickie by the Bell Tower, toward the hotel's Ship Room, where “Old” Pasadena society had enjoyed dance music virtually unchanged for thirty-five years.

Before she died, Madeline's mother said she was glad her husband had not lived to see the foreigners buy the dear grande dame. Old Pasadena feared the investors from the Far East would tear her down and cover the grounds with cherry trees and high-rise condos.

Madeline and Vickie had stopped in the lobby for a moment, and impulsively, Madeline had turned toward the creaky Picture Bridge which linked the old building with the homely new wing and overlooked the swimming pool where an Oriental waitress served cocktails. Madeline wanted a Scotch and water, but she paused on the footbridge and looked up at the rustic timbered roof, at the painted murals on the gables. The murals suggested pastoral early California. As it never was. Mexicans, Indians, Americans, padre, peasant, landowner: brothers all, in the ubiquitous vineyards and groves.

Then the too familiar empty thud in her chest. A rush of heat to her temples. The price for daring to wax nostalgic, for lingering on this Picture Bridge. Where she had so often stood as a girl and made wishes she had never been given reason to doubt would come true. Then she turned toward South Pasadena and saw the layers of mauve and azure gasses heaving in from the west, and remembered that this lovely vapor blanket made the San Gabriel Valley air perhaps the deadliest in Southern California.

But it wasn't just the smog that was killing Old Pasadena. It was
la buena vida
of the past coupled with the frugality of the old social order. When white domestics would not work for the wages offered, there were others who would. The blacks were enticed to Pasadena in large numbers and they prospered and multiplied. And then more came and prospered less but still multiplied. Until a day when fourth-generation Old Pasadenans were troubled to discover that twenty-five percent of their school district was composed of children black and brown. And in another ten years they were shocked to discover that thirty-five percent of their public school children were black and brown. And then one day they were outraged and bewildered to discover that over fifty percent of the children in Pasadena public schools were black and brown! Then the white flight began in earnest.

A nine-thousand-square-foot mansion with guest house, tennis court, swimming pool, and two verdant acres of hundred-year-old twisted oak sold for one-fifth the price of what it would bring “over the hill,” or “on the west side,” on the beaten path of
nouveau riche
: Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel-Air, Brentwood. Henceforth, Old Pasadena was under siege and near panic. Some were old enough to have children grown and need not fear ghetto busing. Others dropped all democratic pretext, and prep schools quickly became overcrowded. Others moved a few blocks away into the tiny bedroom community of San Marino which had its own public school district. All white.

Madeline Whitfield now needed that drink very badly. She and Vickie left the bridge and walked quickly down to poolside. Then she heard it. The man was unmistakably a Minnesota tourist in for the Super Bowl. Who else would be reeking of coconut oil, white-legged in Aloha print shorts, red socks, black-and-white patent-leather loafers? A hairy belly glistening oil in sunlight which any Californian knew was not hot enough to burn even this flabby outlander. But then he was probably using the pool and the sunshine as an excuse to get drunk at one o'clock in the afternoon. As if an excuse was needed during Rose Bowl and Super Bowl weeks in Pasadena.

The man's voice was bourbon thick. He said, “That bitch moves like a stallion!”

And Madeline Dills Whitfield, who had been forced into inactive, sustaining membership in the Pasadena Junior League three years before for being too old. Madeline Dills Whitfield, only twenty-five pounds past her prime, never considered pretty, but damn it, not homely. Four years divorced, childless, two-year analysand, three-year patient of a dermatologist (I
know
that middle-age fat is just excess adipose tissue, Doctor, but
why
did I have to grow a moustache!). Madeline Dills Whitfield, who dutifully spent more than she could afford in Beverly Hills high-fashion shops like Giorgio's—which boasted a billiard table, and a full-time bartender serving free drinks to patrons—where Pasadena matrons invariably shopped for clothing with exclusive labels but basic lines. Madeline Dills Whitfield, who cared enough to have her nails done at Ménage à Trois. (Also over the hill in Lotus Land—thirteen bucks, tip included, for a Juliette, forty-five to make hair look more natural, sixty-five bucks to look like you just got out of bed—and you better know the license number of your Mercedes because all the parking attendant has are Mercedes keys in
that
key box, lady.) Madeline Dills Whitfield, who had not seen male genitalia for five years, yet who was just peaking sexually at the age of forty-three, unsheathed a smile like a knife blade.

The kind of abandoned smile seldom seen on Pasadena Junior Leaguers, unless they were ignited by Bombay martinis at Annandale Country Club. A smile which would unquestionably be deemed provocative by the socially wed and nearly dead at the all-woman Town Club. Oh God, she dreaded the day she'd be old enough to
want
to join. Madeline Dills Whitfield unleashed a smile she had reserved for Mason Whitfield on those rare occasions he bedded her in the last dreadful years of their marriage.

A smile which carried a promise made instantly, consciously, irrevocably—to screw the patent-leather loafers right off this Minnesota greaseball.

A smile which was not even
seen
by the hairy stranger. Because he was admiring Vickie. Staring after
Vickie.

The oily stranger turned again to his friend and said: “Look at the muscles in her legs. She moves like a stallion, I tell you!”

Then Madeline felt loneliness all right. And
real
fear. The kind that choked her awake in those first months after Mason had gone. The worst kind of fear, born of loneliness, which only became manageable when Vickie came.

Vickie. Madeline sat there with Vickie by the pool and drank three double Chivas with water-back, and controlled that fear and looked at the hairy stranger scornfully. She wasn't jealous, she was
proud.
Vickie belonged to
her
, and Madeline loved her obsessively.

The rain was steady. She wondered if she'd be awake the entire night. Probably, if she insisted on these tormenting thoughts. But as she lay in the dark and looked at Vickie's elegant jaw, she couldn't help admitting that she would have given a healthy chunk of a secretly unhealthy trust fund if that oily man had said drunkenly to Madeline: “You bitch, you carry yourself like a
stallion!
”

Madeline wryly wondered if, in the history of the old Huntington Hotel, any “sustaining” Junior Leaguer had sat by the Picture Bridge and yearned for a man to look at her thighs and arouse her with an antiquated, vulgar, erotic cliché. By comparing her to a male horse.

Victoria stirred in her sleep. Madeline touched her lovingly and risked awakening her by snuggling closer until her mouth was touching Vickie's ear.

“Sleep, love, sleep,” Madeline whispered. She stroked that arched neck and said, “Sleep, my darling.”

But Vickie opened her eyes: perfect ovals, blinking in momentary confusion. Madeline kissed each eye, marveling at the luster: wet chocolate irises, whites like lapis lazuli in the moonlight.

“Sleep, love, sleep.”

Vickie sighed and turned just enough for Madeline to see how deep those eyes were set, how shaded by brows of silver white. Madeline wanted to touch her face and kiss that lovely ear.

Like most insomniacs, Madeline toyed masochistically with her devils in the night. Today's tennis exhibition at the Valley Hunt Club.

It is the oldest social club in the Los Angeles area. Where ladies still sit courtside and worry over coming-out parties. Where Old Pasadena strives to nourish its moldering roots by presenting the family flowers at frantic and archaic debutante balls.

Madeline had been courtside at the Valley Hunt Club, ostensibly watching a listless college tennis exhibition while downing the third double Scotch and water of the afternoon. She had waited an appropriate time to order her fourth because of the presence of Edna Lofton, an obtrusive bitch Madeline had known since Kappa House days at the University of Southern California, when Edna was a smartass sorority viper.

Edna Lofton, another “sustaining” Junior Leaguer, also active with Madeline in the Junior Philharmonic and the Huntington Library Docents, seldom missed the opportunity to grin knowingly whenever Madeline ordered more than three or four afternoon cocktails at the club.

Like other “younger” Valley Hunt Club members, Edna had switched from Yves St. Laurent sunglasses to the latest from over the hill: oversized sunglasses with logograms engraved on the lower lens. In Edna's case it was a little white tennis racquet. It should have been a spider and a web, Madeline thought. Madeline herself had bought a pair in Beverly Hills at the Optique Boutique. She had wanted the tennis racquet too, but resisted because Edna had beaten her to it, so she settled for a white flower. Madeline thought the glasses chic and becoming, though the little speck was annoying when she looked at anything below eye level. The price tag annoyed her even more.

One day while shopping on Lake Avenue in Pasadena she had encountered something considerably below eye level: a barefoot black girl about seven years of age. The child stopped her skateboard. “Lady?” She was licking a green Popsicle, gawking at Madeline's ninety-dollar, double-gradient sunglasses.

“Yes, dear, what can I do for you?” Madeline smiled.

The girl stopped licking and said, “I was wonderin. How come you don't jist wipe the bird shit off them funny glasses?”

The following Sunday, Madeline's Mexican housekeeper, Yolanda, wore those glasses proudly to a picnic in Elysian Park.

Edna flipped up her sunglasses with the little tennis racquet on the lens, and said sweetly: “Madeline, go easy, we're playing doubles later and may need you as a fourth.”

Madeline tried a sassy, nose-wrinkling grin. She stuck out her tongue at Edna, but given the pain and the fear and the Chivas Regal flush in her face, it didn't come off.

“Put your tongue in, dear,” Edna purred. “You look like the victim of a hanging.”

The second set was as dilatory as the first. Most of the spectators were of course U.S.C. rooters. Old Pasadena, if the money was still intact, seldom attended state-supported institutions like U.C.L.A. It was impossible to concentrate. She imagined Edna's vindictive gaze on her back.

Madeline was in tennis whites and hated it. She was considering trying tennis pants, but was fearful that the club would disapprove if she played in anything but a skirt. Actually she didn't want to play at all anymore. She had always hated the game, but without some exercise she'd probably look like a medicine ball. (Why the continual weight gain, Doctor? I don't drink
that
much. I haven't eaten a really full meal since my husband left me, I swear!)

Mason Whitfield. Stanford, class of '48. Infantry officer in Korea. Decorated for typing a report in a tent near Seoul in freezing weather after the company clerk was evacuated with the clap. He had typed for six hours without gloves and was frostbitten. Mason returned to Pasadena wearing a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.

Like his father before him, Mason had gone to Harvard for his LL.B. and joined a law firm in downtown Los Angeles. One of those giant firms where the lawyers in Probate don't even know the guys in Corporate. He managed to work ten years without ever setting foot in a courtroom. He made big bucks. He was a near-perfect, Old Pasadena scion. He and Madeline prospered. But they didn't multiply. He had a flaw or two.

Madeline felt Edna's eyes on her back, and self-consciously tucked a roll of cellulite under the tennis panty which was cutting into her flesh. Madeline just knew Edna was still telling the Filthy Story about Mason Whitfield, when he made a boozy revelation to the barman at the Hunt Club: “Wanna know why I left my wife? Zero sex appeal, that's why. And I just came back from a wonderful holiday in Aca-pulco. Wanna know what I like best about my secretary? The moustache doesn't scratch my balls as much as Madeline's did.”