She looked over the partition at the kitchen sink. 'That, I certainly have.'
'You married very young.'
'Seventeen,' she said. 'The terrible thing is, I still feel seventeen inside.'
She touched herself between her breasts. 'With everything ahead, you know? But nothing is.'
For the first time the woman was coming through to me.
'You have your children.'
'Sure, I have my children. And don't think I don't do my best for them and always will. Is that all there is, though?'
'It's more than some people have.'
'I want more.'
Her pretty red mouth looked pathetically greedy. 'I've wanted more for a long time, but I've never had the nerve to take it.'
'You have to wait for it to be given,' I said.
'You're full of sententious remarks, aren't you? You're fuller than La Rochefoucauld, or my husband. But you can't solve actual problems with words, as Taps thinks you can. He doesn't understand life. He's nothing but a talking machine, with a computer instead of a heart and a central nervous system.'
The thought of her husband seemed to nag her continually. It was almost making her eloquent, but I was growing weary of her boxed-in tension. Perhaps I had brought it on, but basically it had nothing to do with me. I said: 'This is all very interesting, but you were going to talk about Feliz Cervantes.'
'I was, wasn't I.'
Her look became meditative. 'He was a very interesting young man. A hot-blooded type, aggressive, the kind of man you imagine a bullfighter might be. He was only twenty-two or three - so was I for that matter - but he was a man. You know?'
'Did you talk to him?'
'A little.'
'What about?'
'Our pictures, mostly. He was very keen on French art. He said he was determined to visit Paris some day.'
'He said that?'
'Yes. It's not surprising. Every student of French wants to go to Paris. I used to want to go myself.'
'What else did he say?'
'That was about all. Some of the other students turned up, and he shied away from me. Taps said afterwards - we had a quarrel after the party - he said that I had been obvious with the young man. I think Taps brought you here to have me confess. My husband is a very subtle punisher.'
'You're both too subtle for me. Confess what?'
'That I was - interested in Feliz Cervantes. But he wasn't interested in me. I wasn't even in the room as far as he was concerned.'
'That's hard to believe.'
'Is it? There was a young blonde girl from one of Taps's freshman courses at the party. He followed her with his eyes the way I imagine Dante followed Beatrice.'
Her voice was cold with envy.
'What was her name?'
'Virginia Fablon. I think she's still at the college.'
'She quit to get married.'
'Really? Who was the lucky man?'
'Feliz Cervantes.'
I told her how this could be. She listened raptly.
While Bess got ready to go shopping I moved around the living room looking at the reproductions of a world that had never quite dared to exist. The house had taken on an intense interest for me, like a historical monument or the birth-place of a famous man. Cervantes/Martel and Ginny had met in this house; which made it the birthplace of my case.
Bess came out of her room. She had changed into a dress which had to be hooked up the back and I was elected to hook it up. Though she had a strokeable-looking back, my hands were careful not to wander. The easy ones were nearly always trouble: frigid or nympho, schizy or commercial or alcoholic, sometimes all five at once. Their nicely wrapped gifts of themselves often turned out to be homemade bombs, or fudge with arsenic in it.
We drove to the Plaza in ticking silence. It was a large new shopping centre, like a campus with asphalt instead of lawns where nothing could be learned. I gave her money, which she accepted, to take a taxi home. It was a friendly gesture, too friendly under the circumstances. But she looked at me as if I was abandoning her to a fate worse than life.
20
SHORE DRIVE RAN along the sea below the college in an area of explosive growth and feeble zoning. It was a jumble of apartment buildings, private houses, and fraternity houses with Greek letters over the door.
Behind the stucco house numbered 148 a half-dozen semidetached cottages were huddled on a small lot. A stout woman opened the door of the house before I reached it.
'I'm full up till June.'
'I don't need lodging, thanks. Are you Mrs. Grantham?'
'I never buy door-to-door, it that's what's on your mind.'
'All I want is a little information.'
I told her my name and occupation. 'Mr. Martin at the college gave me your name.'
'Why didn't you say so? Come in.'
The door opened into a small, densely furnished living room. We sat down facing each other, knees almost touching. 'I hope it isn't a complaint about one of my boys. They're like sons to me,' she said with a professionally maternal smile.
She made an expansive gesture toward the fireplace. The mantel and the wall above it were completely taken up with graduation pictures of young men.
'Not one of your recent boys, anyway. This one goes back seven years. Do you remember Feliz Cervantes?'
I showed her the picture with Martel-Cervantes in the background, Ketchel and Kitty in the foreground. She put on glasses to study it.
'I remember all three of them. The big man and the blondie, they came by and picked up his stuff when he left. The three of them rode away together.'
'Are you sure of that, Mrs. Grantham?'
'I'm sure. My late husband always said I've got a memory like an elephant. Even if I hadn't, I wouldn't forget that trio. They rode away in a Rolls Royce car, and I wondered what a Mexican boy was doing in that kind of company.'
'Cervantes was Mexican?'
'Sure he was, in spite of all his stories. I didn't want to take him in at first. I never had a Mexican roomer before. But the college says you have to or lose your listing, so I rented him a room. He didn't last long, though.'
'What stories did he tell?'
'He was full of stories,' she said. 'When I asked him if he was a Mex., he said he wasn't. I've lived in California all my life, and I can tell a Mex. when I see one. He even had an accent, which he claimed was a Spanish accent. He said he was a pureblooded Spaniard, from Spain.
'So I said, show me your passport. He didn't have one. He said he was a fugitive from his country, that General Franco was after him for fighting the government. He didn't take me in though. I know a Mex. when I see one. If you ask me he was probably a wetback, and that's why he lied. He didn't want the Immigration to put him on a bus and send him home.'
'Did he tell any other lies?'
