“From all you’ve told me about him, maybe we should both piss on his picture,” Paul suggested. “Was he really as bad as you say?”
“Worse,” Caron sighed. “Physically, he was repulsive. I’m still not sure how I ever stopped barfing long enough to marry him. Had a body like a toad when he undressed. And did you ever see that little joke booklet, WHAT MEN REALLY KNOW ABOUT WOMEN? Open it up and it’s all blank? Well, Lou wrote that. In between chapters of his book on Keats. Say—will the estate settlement allow me to burn his manuscript? I could really get off on that.”
And they rolled together, laughing and tickling and giggling like children at play. I have never, Caron thought, felt one half so good in all my life. Never. But the realities were imposing themselves. “Listen, I had better get dressed. Why don’t you fix us another drink and put on some music? Be back in a few minutes, love, don’t get started on anything without me.”
When she came back, wearing a loose silk shirt and baggy gaucho pants, a scarf tied around her long brown hair, the room was full of Nat King Cole and a fresh campari and soda was sitting on the bar. Caron remembered the days when she had to get piss-drunk before she had the nerve to try fucking, and she shook her head sadly. She drank a little now, not much, and only for socialization.
“Cheers,” she said, tilting her glass, while Nat King Cole sang “Nature Boy”. Paul had turned her on to soft jazz, Cole, Ellington, Billie Holiday, George Benson. Something else she had to thank him for. “Oh,” she said, a little sadly, “I think I hear Sheila’s moped.”
“At least we’re decent,” Paul smiled. “But the room smells like a Chinese whorehouse.” He touched her skin. “I happen to like Chinese whorehouses.” She stood on tiptoes to kiss him, then settled back.
“That’s awfully loud for Sheila’s moped,” Caron observed. “It sounds more like a car.”
Paul went to the window and looked out. “It is,” he said. “A red Volkswagen, with—California plates, I think.”
Caron stood up. “Oh, Good Christ,” she moaned, “are those Goddamn Bible salesmen working the area again? Shit! There’s the doorbell! Well, if it’s a salesman, you can help me chase him off. Unless he’s cute. Then maybe we can work up a threesome—or a foursome if Sheila gets back in time…”
Hand in hand, laughing, they went to the door. Caron opened it, said, “Yes?”
A girl stood in the doorway, a girl probably in her late teens. Blonde, breathtakingly blonde, in fact, with a proud mane of golden hair that swept around her cute face and swirled onto her shoulders. Built like the proverbial brick shithouse. About five feet two, at least 38-D on top. It was hard to tell, because she was rocking slightly on the balls of her bare feet, while her tits rocked much more than slightly. She wore a skintight t-shirt with HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD emblazoned across the front and a pair of jeans she had obviously been born in. If she owned any underwear, it must have been in the red Volkswagen parked in the driveway, just behind Paul Drake’s Buick. She didn’t look at all like a Bible salesperson.
“Yes?” Caron said again, and the little blonde stood grinning vapidly. Stoned? Probably. Weren’t all kids stoned nowadays? All the time? And this was a kid if Caron Archer had ever seen one.
“Mrs. Archer?” the blonde said in a whisper of a voice that some people would probably find very sexy. Caron looked over at Paul, who stood beside her. His eyes seemed to have glazed over slightly, and the angle of his vision was apparently focused downward, toward the puffy protrusion of nipples in the tight t-shirt the blonde wore. Oh, my God, Caron thought, if he’s responding to this little twit! Men! It was easy to see that the girl was a cheap, showy piece of nothing, and it unnerved Caron to see the silly grin occupying Paul’s face. She elbowed him sharply in the ribs.
“I’m Caron Archer. Is there something you want?”
A head peered round the edge of the doorframe. Its owner must have been standing there all the time, waiting for his child accomplice to make the first move. Caron stared at the head, wondering why it looked so familiar.
It belonged to a man, a well-weathered man, apparently in his late thirties, perhaps early forties, she decided, as he came into full view and slipped his arm round the busty little blonde’s waist. He was bald on top, with fingers of hair on the sides of his head. Gray hair, though he didn’t seem that old. The top of his scalp gleamed as if it had been polished. The biggest moustache Caron had ever seen not belonging to a member of the walrus family. Barrel-shaped body in sleeveless t-shirt. Big, beefy arms, tan everywhere she could see. Faded denims. Sandals on his feet. Grinning like a shit-eating dog.
Caron’s forehead wrinkled. His eyes glittered. So did his teeth, under the mustache. White, even teeth, barring one on the lower jaw that was slightly out of line and protruded just like a little fang.
The moustache, she thought. He hasn’t always had that moustache. He was shorter, pudgy and flabby, big pot around his waist, white skin like a fish’s belly. The crooked, out of line tooth. “Oh, my God,” she said, and her body started to go limp. Paul caught her, braced her.
“Hi ya, kid,” the man said, still grinning. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
“Caron—is something wrong?” Paul asked in concern.
She couldn’t speak. He had to hold her up. He framed her face with his hand. She felt her consciousness starting to go. It would be so much better if she passed out. Caron cleared her throat, found she really could speak. Even if she didn’t want to. “It’s—it’s him,” she told Paul. “Don’t you recognize him? From the picture? It’s —it’s Lou. My husband. He’s come back.”
Lou grinned, shrugged, squeezed the giggly blonde. “We were in the neighborhood, thought we’d drop by and say hello. Aren’t you going to ask us in?” And before Caron could answer, he and the girl were edging past. “Do you still keep the booze in the same place?” he asked. “I hope you have some Scotch around.”
Caron stood trembling, watching them enter the house. Paul was there, at her side, but she had never felt so alone in her life. Never. It’s worse, she thought, worse for him to came back than it was when he left in the first place. She still couldn’t believe what her eyes and her brain assured her were true, very true. Lou Archer had come back.
CHAPTER THREE
Sheila stepped back, tilted her head to one side, looked at the picture. It still wasn’t right. Frowning, she took her brush in hand. She looked up at the sky, blue with massed banks of white clouds drawn back over the ocean. She looked at the sea below, swirling into the cove in foamy waves, as it had always done, as it always would. A moist ocean wind kissed her face, ruffled her auburn hair. She dabbed her brush on the palette, stirred the little patty of color, and once again she tested it on canvas. There was still something missing. Try as she might, Sheila couldn’t make the nipples the precise shade of pink her eyes and tongue remembered so well, ah, God, so well.
Sighing, she put down her brush and palette. She was working on a portrait, not a seascape, but working here on the bluff overlooking the cove gave her a degree of privacy she wouldn’t have had at the house, “Oh, what are you doing now?” Caron would want to know, and there were certain portions of Sheila’s life that belonged only to her. This portrait of Claire. That was one of the areas, and Sheila did not feel the slightest desire to share it, not even with her sister, the dearest, sweetest sister anyone could ever want to hive.
“When, darling, are you going to find yourself a man, fail in love, get married and settle down? Or at least find a man and settle down?” Caron’s favorite question. As if her own marriage had been anything to set an example for others! Well, she’d never figured it would last. Caron was too nice for a twerp like Lou Archer. Too young—she was almost nine years younger than the man when they married, only just out of college, one of those crazy student- teacher relationships.
I know all about those, Sheila thought, and for a silent moment her eyes misted over and she remembered Ms. Thatcher, who’d taught painting and drawing in high school. Beautiful, sweet Ms. Thatcher. But it was a good student-teacher relationship, all the same. As long as she lived, Sheila would never forget that one night they had shared, when Ms. Thatcher let down her hair and took a trembling, tense young girl into her bed and taught her that. Love was something too important to waste on men. Sheila shook her head, scooped up a fallen lock of hair.
Anyway, Lou Archer was an ugly man, running to fat, losing his hair. But like any man of his age or condition,
