Marie sneezed. “You think my sneezin’ will get me anything if I do enough of it in shorty pajamas under a tree?”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “Maybe you’ll be beaned by a hungry undertaker.”
Marie said, “I knew you were listening.”
Outside, fitting his new knapsack onto his back, climbing on his bike, Jack noticed a candy bar wrapper next to the curb.
9
The short tanned girl with short dark hair wearing a short white tennis skirt watched Jack approach without apparently blinking in the full sunlight. She stood by a net on one of the tennis courts. Three racquets leaned against the net. At her feet was a bag of balls.
She had just stood by the net, waiting, not practicing her serve or using the backboard. She didn’t even have a racquet in hand.
“Shana told me about you,” she said. “At lunch.”
“I’m Jack.”
“I know.”
He picked up one of the three racquets. “Are we expecting someone? Playing Canadian doubles?”
“No. I just thought I’d give you a choice of racquets.”
“Thanks.”
Coming out of the General Store in the village of Vindemia, Jack had noticed a uniformed security guard using the public pay phone.
Before going to the tennis courts Jack had bicycled his groceries back to his quarters, stored them in the small refrigerator, small cupboards. He ate a ham sandwich with a glass of milk.
“Let’s just rally, shall we?” he asked.
“Okay.” Alixis’ voice was bored, indifferent.
Watching her across the net playing tennis, Jack saw that Alixis had been beautifully taught. Her legs were excellent, muscular, springy.
But either she was awfully tired or awfully lazy. Unless his shot bounced within a convenient few steps of her, she ignored it.
After a few minutes, he asked, “Shall we play a game?”
“No,” she answered. “Let’s just sit. I’m hot.”
“Okay.”
She sat on a bench in the sunlight at the side of the court.
She said, “This will permit me to tell my father I spent time on the tennis court this afternoon.”
“Is that required?”
“Required?” A light breeze blew against her short hair. “You mean, do we have to sign in, punch a clock? Not exactly. But it is well to mention casually our day’s activities in front of my father: time spent swimming, in the gym, on the tennis courts, in the library.”
“Why?”
“If we don’t, if he doesn’t think we are obeying his philosophy of daily living, balancing physical and so-called intellectual activity, he just turns colder. Then comes comments regarding our wasting our lives, sarcasm … He lets us know his disapproval.”
“I heard a cabin on the estate blew up the other day, before I got here.”
“Yes. My father’s ‘think house.’”
“How did it happen?”
“One of his ideas must have caught fire while he wasn’t watching.”
“Why would the heat be on in the cabin this time of year?”
“Was it?”
“And the front axle of his Jeep broke while he was driving it?”
“It shouldn’t have. That Jeep is almost new.”
“And Doctor Wilson was gassed to death in the laboratory this afternoon.”
“Do you suppose it was because he is an Afro-American?”
“What would that have to do with anything?”
“Got me.”
“Why would a physicist have lethal gas in his laboratory anyway?”
She said, “I doubt he did.”
Jack hesitated. “The lab. blew up. I was there. We all thought your dad was in the explosion. I mean, dead. Killed by it.”
Fixing her hair with her fingers, Alixis said: “Oh.”
“He looked rather heroic walking out of the smoke carrying Doctor Wilson’s body in his arms.”
“Oh, that’s just Dad,” Alixis said. “Put him in a briar patch, and he’ll just smell of roses.”
“Does it seem to you someone just might be trying to kill your dad?”
Alixis shrugged. “I should care?”
He watched her flat eyes as she yawned. “Don’t you?”
“Not really.”
“He’s your father.”
“It would be nice not to be so pushed.”
“‘Pushed’ …”
“He bothers me a lot about what I’m doing, not doing.”
“You starred in a movie?”
“That was finished late last summer.”
“That must have been fun.”
“It wasn’t. Hanging around a film set is about the most boring thing you can do. It’s all hurry up and wait.”
“So you’re an actress. You want to act.”
“No. All that was my father’s idea as something I should do. It’s very important to him to report to the world what a great success each of his children is.”
“Maybe it’s important to him that each of his children is fulfilling himself.”
“‘Himself being him, you mean?”
“Why would he set up a movie for you to star in if—”
“I flunked out of Ol’ Miss. What a disgrace. As if I were the only person in the whole world who flunked out of college. I don’t like school. It’s too much work. Always having assignments hanging over your head. I mean, when you don’t do the work, the teachers can get right nasty, as if it’s any of their business. Why should they care if you don’t do your work?”
“Why, indeed.”
“So my father decided I should star in a movie. I had played Peter Pan once, in a school play. I wasn’t very good, didn’t like it much, but he insisted I was wonderful. He had this idea for a movie, got someone to write the script, hired a director—three directors, actually, before we were done. The first two quit. Said I wasn’t cooperating. He spent these tons of money, bribed people to put the movie in their theaters, all to distract people from the fact that I hadn’t cared to complete my college assignments. I guess he thought making a movie would turn me on, you know, as if I had a switch somewhere.”
“Did you at least try to get into it, I mean, get enthusiastic, involved?”
“How can you get enthusiastic with everybody telling you what to do twelve hours a day? I had to work with a dance coach, singing coach, do things over and over until I was bored out of my mind. Rehearsing didn’t do any good. I was never any better after I practiced something than before. It was all corny anyway. It was almost as bad as a children’s story. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ or something. Well, it came out last April, and everyone trashed it. They knew my father had bought and paid for it. They trashed me, as if it had been something I wanted to do. It wasn’t my idea. I tried to tell them. They said I was the spoiled daughter of a rich man. The money should have
