And all I could think of was Lloyd Watterson saying the same thing.
“Do you have any idea how few addicts make it?” I asked her in the mirror, royally pissed at her, loving the way the water made her breasts look so smooth and round and shiny. “Almost none!”
“You were friends since childhood. He’s trying to make a new start. You have to help him.”
“Surprising him like this is no way to do it!”
She began to drain the water, stood, and began adjusting the shower nozzle, so she could wash her hair. Over the tub gurgle, she said, “Then I’ll just go without you and when Barney asks, I’ll say you didn’t want to see him.”
And she turned on the shower, cutting off anything I might say in response.
My mirror began steaming up, and I was steamed too, rubbing a place on the glass for me to finish shaving, muttering to myself, watching her shower, cutting myself when I was paying too much attention to the way the water was streaming down her slender shapely frame, cascading over the tiny cliff of her perfect little breasts, a rivulet trailing through her dampened pubic tuft…
I was in my underwear sitting on the bed when she came in with her hair wrapped up in a towel and her body tied into a terrycloth robe with the hotel’s gold BHH monogram.
“I’m not going,” I told her.
“You have to go,” she said. “Besides, you told Eliot we were going out for a late supper.”
She came over and sat next to me and sighed heavily, even dramatically, and announced, “Anyway… there’s something more important than that we should, well…”
I frowned at her. “What?”
“Can we talk?”
Those three words again: now I was starting to know just how deadly they were in married life, trumped only by the fatal four: “We have to talk.”
But I could tell something was really wrong. The violet eyes were troubled, the smooth brow managing a wrinkle.
Melting, I said, “Sure, baby.”
“What I have to tell you is going to make you sad.”
I slipped an arm around her. “What is it?”
“Oh, Nathan… I know you’re going to be so disappointed…” She was tearing up; lips trembling.
“What, doll?”
“… I got my friend today.”
“Your friend?”
“My friend… you know-my period.”
“You can’t get your period-you’re pregnant.”
“No, I’m not. That’s what I’m trying to tell you-it was a false alarm.”
She explained that she’d always been as regular as clockwork with her periods (which of course I already knew-just as I knew the bad ones put her in bed for a day or two) and when she’d been late, a week and a half ago, she had assumed the worst. (Exactly how she put it: “The worst.”)
“But you went to the doctor…”
She swallowed; looked sheepish. “No. I made an appointment, but I never kept it… didn’t bother… I’ve never missed a period, never had one arrive so late-oh darling, I know how dearly you wanted a child, but we can have another.”
I felt empty. The emotional roller coaster Peg and I had been riding lately, where this now nonexistent kid was concerned, had finally jumped its tracks; and this very long day suddenly caught up with me, and I flopped back onto the bed. For some reason, I began tearing up, too. Emotions getting away from me…
Peggy crawled onto the bed and leaned over me; her face, with no makeup, at all, was lovely. “Nate, darling, when the time is right, we’ll have as big a family as you want-I’ll be your personal baby-making machine.”
She was so earnest, hovering over me, making that silly statement, that I had to laugh. Smiling, she cuddled close to me.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll make you better.” She slipped her hand into the fly of my boxer shorts, found me, and brought me out for a look. “He’s tiny.”
“Just what every man hopes to hear from a beautiful woman.”
“Let’s see what I can do.”
Then she knelt over me, making me grow, her head bobbing up and down, sliding up and down slowly, quickly, slowly, and it was dizzingly sensual, making me giddy with pleasure, and when I had to come, I warned her, but she didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop…
It was the best I’d ever had.
Next to Elizabeth Short.
A man who has been paid that kind of attention will follow a woman anywhere, and so I was now in the Mocambo, hand in hand with her, Al Capone’s nemesis trailing faithfully behind us, walking over to where my other best friend sat with his former showgirl wife.
My partner Fred Rubinski was there, as well, seated next to Barney in a spacious corner booth. Everybody had drinks already, and Fred was inflicting a Havana on them.
Just above and behind where Barney sat with Cathy at the linen-covered table, concealed lighting glowing upward, a huge tin sculpture seemed to float. The life-size figure of a South American native in a headdress of curled tin stood on a round pedestal, exotic fronds and flora at his feet, skeletal body festooned with webbing and ball fringe, arms outstretched, an elaborate electric candelabrum in one hand, a small iron cage in the other.
The tin figure would have been at home in Welles’ Crazy House, or possibly in a dope addict’s dream.
Though this surrealistic statue seemed to be springing from his head, Barney Ross did not look like a dope addict. In fact, he just looked like Barney Ross-a slightly pudgy bulldog-pussed brown-eyed ex-boxer in his late thirties, his hair prematurely stone gray, looking pretty spiffy for just getting out of rehab, in a brown-and-white- checked sportjacket and red bowtie.
I stood swallowing spit, feeling just a little awkward, no worse than the time I farted on the witness stand.
Cathy looked great-a Maureen O’Hara type with the flowing dark tresses to prove it. In her powder-blue dress with dark blue embroidered flower at one shoulder, she looked as chicly beautiful as the movie goddesses around us.
But Cathy’s smile-which normally could make a man’s knees go rubbery-seemed forced, and anxiety was doing a spastic dance in her usually flashing blue eyes.
She was holding on to Barney’s elbow-he was looking up at me, pop-eyed-as she whispered to him: “It was my idea-I hope you don’t mind, dear.”
“Hey I’m sorry,” I said to him, backing away a little, Peggy hugging my arm protectively. “I don’t like surprises, either-Peg and me can just go.”
Barney just looked up at me, frozen.
“Barney,” Eliot said, ignoring the melodrama. He reached his hand across the table and Barney shook it, numbly. They were old friends, too-used to practice their jujitsu together. “Glad things worked out-you look good.”
Barney was just sitting there as glazed as a glazed ham and with about as much expression.
Then he said to Cathy, “Let me out.”
“Barney…”
“Let me out, would you?” His voice was flat.
She complied, getting out of the booth so that he could, too. Was he going to paste me one? Great-nothing like standing here waiting for a sucker punch from the former welterweight/light-weight world boxing champion.
“Barney,” I said, holding out a palm, “take it easy-I couldn’t stand what you were doin’ to yourself; I had no choice, I had to do it.”
Barney just stood there, looking at me, trembling, hands balled into fists, mouth quivering, eyes twitching-
