sands. My eye traveled along from the south, roving the shore, past the front of Constance Rattigan's property, and on north until.
Down by the tideline, I saw something.
There was a man standing there, motionless, or something that looked like a man. And how long he had been there, and whether he had just come in from the surf, I couldn't say. I couldn't see if he was wet. He looked naked.
I gasped and glanced quickly inside. Constance Rattigan, whistling between her teeth, was still dickering away at the projector.
A wave fell like a gunshot. I flicked my gaze back. The man was still there, hands at his side, head up, legs apart, almost defiant.
Go away! I wanted to yell. What are you doing here? We've done nothing.
Are you sure? was my next thought.
No one deserves to be killed.
No?
A final wave came in behind the shape there on the shore. It broke up into a series of cracked mirrors that fell and seemed to envelop the man. He was erased. When the wave pulled back out he was gone, perhaps running away north along the sands.
Back past the lion cage in the canal, past the canary lady's empty windows, back past my apartment with its winding-sheet bed.
'Ready?' Constance Rattigan called from inside.
Not really, I thought.
Inside, Constance said, 'Come see the old lady made young.'
'You're not old,' I said.
'No, by God.' She ran around turning off lights and fluffing pillows in the middle of the room. 'This health nut's writing a book, out next year.
Underwater gymnastics. Sex at low tide. What bicarbs to take aftou eat the local football coach. What, my God. You're blushing again. What do you know about girls?'
'Not much.'
'How many you had?'
'Not many.'
'One,' she guessed, and crowed when my head bobbed. 'Where is she tonight?'
'Mexico City.'
'When's she coming back?'
'Ten days.'
'Miss her? Love her?'
'Yes.'
'You want to telephone her and stay on the phone all night so her voice protects you from this dragon lady?'
'I'm not afraid of you.'
'Like hell you're not. You believe in body warmth?'
'Body?'
'Warmth! Sex without sex. Hugs. You can give this old gila monster canned heat without losing virtue. Just hold and hug, spoon fashion. Keep your eyes on the ceiling. That's where the action is. Films all night until the dawn comes up like Francis X. Bushman's erection. Sorry. Damn. Come on, son. Let's hit the sack!'
She sank into the pillows, pulling me after, at the same time stabbing some buttons on a control console imbedded in the floor. The last lights went out.
The sixteen-millimeter projector started humming. The ceiling filled with light and shadow.
'Look. How d'you like that?'
She pointed up with her beautiful nose.
Constance Rattigan, twenty-eight years back in time, on the ceiling, lit a cigarette.
Down beside me, the real lady blew smoke.
'Wasn't I a bitch!' she said.
I woke at dawn not believing where I was. I woke incredibly happy, as if something beautiful had happened in the night. Nothing had, of course, it was just sleeping among so many rich pillows by a woman who smelled like spice cabinets and fine parquetry. She was a lovely chess game carved and set in a store window when you were a kid. She was a freshly built girl's gym, with only the faintest scent of the noon tennis dust that clings to golden thighs.
I turned in the dawn light.
And she was gone.
I heard a wave come along the shore. A cool wind blew in through the open French doors. I sat up. Far out in the dusky waters I saw an arm flash up and down, up and down. Her voice called.
I ran out and dove in and swam halfway to her before I was exhausted. No athlete this. I turned back and sat waiting for her on the shore. She came in at last and stood over me, stark naked this time.
'Christ,' she said, 'you didn't even take off your underwear. What's happened to modern youth?'
I was staring at her body.
'How you like it? Pretty good for an old empress, huh? Good buzz-um, tight rump, marceled pubic hairs…'
But I had shut my eyes. She giggled. Then she was gone, laughing. She ran up the beach half a mile and came back, having startled only the gulls.
Next thing I knew the smell of coffee blew along the shore, with the scent of fresh toast. When I dragged myself inside she was seated in the kitchen, wearing only the mascara she had painted around her eyes a moment before.
Blinking rapidly at me, like some silent screen farm girl, she handed me jam wand toast, and draped a napkin daintily over her lap, so as not to offend while I stared and ate. She got strawberry jam on the tip of her left breast. I saw this. She saw me seeing this and said, 'Hungry?'
Which made me butter my toast all the faster.
'Good grief, go call Mexico City.'
I called.
'Where are you?' demanded Peg's voice, two thousand miles away.
'In a phone booth, in Venice, and it's raining,' I said.
'Liar!' said Peg.
And she was right.
And then, quite suddenly, it was over. It was very late, or very early. I felt drunk on life, just because this woman had taken time to play through the hours, talk through the darkness until the sun, way over in the east, beyond the fogs and mists, threatened to appear.
I looked out at the surf and shore. Not a sign of bodies drowned, and no one on the sand to know or not know. I didn't want to go but I had a full day's work ahead, writing my stories just three steps ahead of death. A day without writing, I often said, and said it so many times my friends sighed and rolled their eyeballs, a day without writing was a little death. I did not intend to pitch me over the graveyard wall. I would fight all the way with my Underwood Standard which shoots more squarely, if you aim it right, than any rifle ever invented.
'I'll drive you home,' said Constance Rattigan.
'No, thanks. It's just three hundred yards down the beach. We're neighbors.'
'Like hell we are. This place cost two hundred thousand to build in 1920, five million today. What's your rent? Thirty bucks a month?'
