Llewellyn and Maddy did not discuss the situation that first evening; in fact they discussed nothing at all. Llewellyn went not to bed but to the study; when Maddy woke in the morning it was to the volley of his typing. All day there were long periods of no sound at all, followed by bursts of it. Maddy dressed Jane for school. Jane ate her breakfast at the kitchen table and listened to the pounding in the servant’s room. Is it Catherine? the child asked. Maddy hurried lane to school. When she returned Catherine’s pounding had stopped but the door was still locked. Maddy was afraid to open it. Llewellyn didn’t come out of his study all day and was there long into the night after Maddy had gone to bed. In the night she woke to the renewed sound of Catherine’s attempts to get out; she wrapped the pillow around her head. The same pattern repeated itself the next day. By the second night she had finally overcome her state of general mortification to knock on the study door. After a long minute the door slid away. The man who stood on the other side was barely her husband. He was unshaven and his hair was a tangle, and his jaw hung slightly, small streams of saliva glistening in the edges of his mouth. His eyes were pinpoints of color. They seemed to look through her. Yes? he said quietly.
She backed away from him. Finally she said, I won’t have this. What? he said. Don’t you think she might be hungry, said Maddy, don’t you think she might need to use the toilet after two days and nights?
I’ve fed her, he said. I’ve attended to her concerns.
I’m going to call the police, she said, mustering her resolve.
Bad idea, he said, shaking his head. Nothing but trouble there. Girl’s illegal, no doubt. They’d send her back.
Fine, said Maddy, they’d send her back.
You know what slavery is, Madeline? he said. You own someone and bend them to your will without compensation, locked in a room…
You locked her in the room! Maddy cried hysterically, her control dissolved. She held her face in her hands. She heard the door slide closed. She looked up and stepped to the door and said through it, I’m not going with you to that party. She listened, and when he didn’t answer she went on, Let them say what they will there. She listened, and when he didn’t answer she went on, You’re pimping her to that photographer and the rest of them. On the other side of the door she heard him begin to type. When she looked around, Jane was standing at the top of the stairs.
I’m not pimping her, Llewellyn said out loud, though she would no longer hear him. I’m not pimping her, Llewellyn said to himself, I won’t take money for it. Rather I’m like a man who can’t bring himself to love her, and therefore offers her up to others that they may love her for him and he may watch. In this instance I’m a man who cannot bring himself to look at her, and therefore offers her up to others that they may look at her for him. I’m a voyeur, not a pimp, watching others in the act of watching her. There’s a difference. One pimps for a profit. One voyeurs for a passion.
After a week he came to her one night, unlocked the door and took her by the arm through the house. The house was eerily quiet except for the two of them until Catherine heard, just as they were walking out the front door, Maddy call his name from upstairs. Llewellyn put Catherine in his car and they drove. He said nothing to her at all. They went deeper into America than Catherine had ever been, crossing La Brea Avenue up into the Hollywood Hills. After ten minutes they came to Eileen Rader’s house, where a party was going on.
It was a small elegant house. The living room shimmered with glass and light. In the center an enormous wax candle burned like a volcano on top of a glass table, and an antique music box played in the background. The room was filled with Jamaican actresses and German models and Austrian chanteuses and Australian actors hailed in the morning papers as the next Gary Cooper. There were girls from Chicago and Portland and St. Louis with small breasts and blue nipples that shone through silk tops. The only person Catherine had ever seen before was Larry Crow, who was at the bar. Richard was not there. The party gathered in pockets of actors and editors and writers, with associate producers traveling desperately among whoever would speak to them. Llewellyn held a firm grip on Catherine’s arm and seemed propelled toward something; he was breathless by the time they got in the door. He looked around at everyone and Catherine watched the back of his head, her eyes on fire.
Then she saw they were looking at her.
The room did not exactly come to a hush, but conversations trailed off and there was left only the
