It was a pretty brisk day, as I recall. Sky a little overhung, the Palisades greyish behind the mist. I suppose that's why the beach wasn't too crowded. Then again, it was a weekday and school hadn't let out yet. June. Put them together and what have you got?
A long stretch of beach with just her and me.
I'd been reading. But it got tiresome so I put the book down and sat there, arms around my knees, looking around.
She had on a one-piece bathing suit. Her figure was slight but well-placed. I guessed she was about five-five. She was gazing intently at the waves. Her short-chopped blonde hair was stirring slightly in the breeze.
"Pardon me but could…" I said.
She wasn't turning. She kept looking at the shifting blue ocean. I looked over her figure again. Very well-placed. A model's figure. The kind you see in Mademoiselle.
"Have you the time?" I asked.
She turned then.
Eyes. That was my first impression. The biggest and the brownest eyes I'd ever seen, great big eyes seeming to search for something. A frank look, a bold one, meaning a bold curiosity. But no smile. Deadpan. Did you ever have a child watch you from the seat in front of you in a bus or a trolley car?
That's what it was like.
Then she lifted her arm and looked at her watch. "One-thirty," she said.
"Thank you," I answered.
She turned away. Her eyes moved to the sea again. I felt the uneasiness of the unconsolidated beachhead.
I rested on my elbows and looked at her profile. Delicately upturned nose. Lovely mouth. And those eyes.
After watching a while to catch her eyes again, I gave up. I was no professional at pickups. I got up slowly and walked down to the water. I felt her eyes following me.
I didn't leap in like athletes do. I stalled, I edged, I shivered. I evolved quick arguments for forgetting the whole thing.
Then I slid forward with a shudder and swam out a little way. Body heat took up the chills, my blood started moving.
On my back, looking up at the sky I wondered if I should speak to her. Whether it was worth it.
Then, when I came dripping back, she asked me if the water were cold.
I jumped at the opening.
"Pretty cold," I said. "I'll give you ten dollars if you go in."
She shook her head with a smile.
"Not me," she said.
I dried myself.
"Does the weather get cold out here?" I asked her. Weather talk, I thought. Always an ample wedge.
"It gets cold at night," she said.
The eyes intent on me again. I almost felt restive. They were searching. But for what?
I edged a little closer to her blanket.
"Well, I've just come from New York," I said, "and I came to get warm."
"Oh," she said, "is it cold there?"
Weather talk. Enough to start on. We eased into other things. California. New York. People. Cars. Dogs. Children.
"Do you like good music?" she asked me.
"What's good music?" I asked.
"Classical music."
"Sure," I said, "I love it."
The eyes looking harder. Was that the basis of the search?
"Gee," she said.
She sat hugging her knees. The filtering sunlight touched her white shoulders. She couldn't have been more than seventeen, I thought.
I was smiling. "Why gee?" I asked her.
"Because men never like good music," she said. "My…"
She stopped. Her eyes lowered.
"What's the Hollywood Bowl like?" I asked her, not wanting to let conversation run down.
She was looking again, shaking her head.
"I don't know," she said, "I sure wish I could go, though."
Too easy, I thought. Where is the hedging, the sly evasions, the mental sparring of a he and she? The moxie?
No moxie in Peggy.
That was her name.
"What's yours?" she asked.
"David," I said, "David Newton."
And so we talked. I'm trying to remember the significant things she said. They came out once in a while in between straight data about her mother, dead, her father, a retired navy man, her profession, none, and her spirit, obviously stepped on somewhere.
She saw my book and asked what it was. I told her, and we got started on the subject of historical novels.
"They're dirt," she said, "nothing but sex."
Something in her eyes. A hardness. I said why read them if they offend her.
"I'm looking for a decent one," she said.
"I'll write one," I said.
Obvious move. Impress the little girl. I am a writer, what do you think about that, young lady?
She didn't catch it.
We kept skating around with words. Talking about home and background, school and other things. I told her I'd graduated from the University of Missouri Journalism School three years before. She told me about traveling around with her mother, father and brother until her mother died, then she and Phillip, her brother, not being able to follow the old man from one base to another anymore. So they stayed in San Francisco with a friend of her mother's.
"She was a swell woman," Peggy Lister said. "But her husband…"
"What about him?"
"He was a pig," she said.
A significant remark. Not to me at the time. But later I understood.
Now, though, I just listened halfway, devoting the other half of my attention to looking at her almost childlike face. At the way her hair was parted on the right, the boyish wave of blonde hair over the left part of her forehead. The full lips, delicately red. And those eyes.
How could a face like that give you premonitions? It just didn't. And that was too bad.
We were in the middle of a discussion on jazz when she stood up.
"I have to go," she said.
I felt myself start. I'd almost forgotten we'd just met.
She began to put on her jeans and blouse.
"Well, I have to get back to my novel too," I said standing up. Trying again.
"Oh, that," she said, frowning.
"No, one I'm writing, not reading," I said, giving up subtleties.
We scuffled across the warm sands.
"Gee," she said, "you like good music and you write." She shook her head. I got the impression she was confused.
"Is it so strange?" I asked.
"Men aren't sensitive enough to do things like that."
We reached a corner on Arizona and she started to turn off. I fiddled around, asking for her phone number and she fiddled back, finally giving it to me with a brooding reluctance. I memorized the number.
We said good-bye and I watched her walking down toward Santa Monica Boulevard. She moved with a relaxed, effortless grace.
I turned away. I went home and worked on the book with a renewed vigor.
That afternoon I sent a card to a friend in New York. Met me a cute gal, it read. Glad you aren't here.
That evening I remembered something. I remembered that I'd forgotten to write down her telephone number and now it was gone from my mind.
I went to the beach every day for a week but I saw no Peggy Ann.
I gave up three days and wrote heavily. Then, on the fourth day, I got up late, couldn't get up the fortitude to sit in front of my typewriter, ended up by putting on my bathing suit and leaving for the beach.
And, down there, happened to glance up while I was walking across the sands and saw her. My heart beat harder. I realized I'd been looking for her. Again.
She didn't see me. She was sitting on her blanket rubbing cocoa butter over her legs when I came up with my blanket and clothes.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello, Davie," she said.
It made me feel strange. No one since my mother had called me that, Davie. There was something about it.
"I was going to call you," I said, "but I forgot your number and your name wasn't in the directory."
"Oh," she said. "No, I live with another couple and the phone is under their name."
She seemed a little evasive that day. She avoided my eyes, kept looking down at the sand. Then, when she tried, without success, to put the cocoa butter on her back, I offered my services.
She sat stiffly as I rubbed my hand over her sun-warmed back. I noticed how she kept biting her lower lip. Worriedly.
"I…" she started to say once and then stopped. She sat quietly. Finally she drew in a deep breath.
"I have something to tell you," she said.
I felt myself tremble slightly. She sounded so serious.
"Go ahead," I told her.
"I'm divorced," she said.
I waited.
"Yes?" I said.
Her throat moved. "That's all," she said, "I… I just thought you might not want to go out with me when you knew… I…"
"Why not?"
She started to say something, then shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
"I don't know," she said, "I just thought."
She looked so young, so timorous.
"Don't be silly, Peggy," I said, quietly.
She turned in surprise.
"What did you call me?" she asked.
"Peggy," I said. "That's your name isn't it?"
"Yes, but…" She smiled at me. "I didn't think you'd remember."
She shook her head in wonder. "I'm so surprised," she said.
It was one of those things about Peggy. The littlest thing could delight her. Like when I brought her an ice cream cone later that morning.
It might have been a diamond ring.
***
Peggy lived on Twenty-sixth Street off Wilshire.
It was Sunday night and I was walking up the quiet tree-lined block looking for her house. It was to be our first date.
I was thinking that it was amazing how quiet it got right off Wilshire. Like a country street. That's what a lot of Los Angeles and suburbs are, I'd decided. A hick town with feathers. Gaudy but rustic.
There were two things in front of the house. An old Dodge. A man watering the lawn. The car was a 1936 model. The man about a 1910 model, pudgy and pasty faced, wearing most unfetching shorts.
"Peggy Lister live here?" I asked him.
He looked at me with watery blue eyes. His expression was dead. He held the hose loosely in his hands. His head jerked a little.
"She lives here," he said.
I felt his eyes on me as I stood on the porch. Then Peggy opened the door.
With heels on she was tall, about five-ten, I guess. She wore a sweater and skirt, a brown sport jacket. Her shoes were brown and white, carefully polished. Her hair had been set and combed out painstakingly. She looked wonderful.
"Hello, Davie," she said. "Won't you come in?"
I came in. Those big brown eyes surveyed me.
"You look nice, Davie," she said.
"You look terrific."
Again. Surprise. A half-quizzical smile which seemed to say-oh, you're just fooling me.
Just then an older woman came out of an adjoining room.
"Mrs. Grady, this is David Newton," Peggy said.
I smiled politely, said hello.
"Going out?" asked Mrs. Grady.
"We're going to get acquainted," Peggy said.
Mrs. Grady gave us a nod. Then she leaned over and called out the window.
"Supper's on, Albert."
We went to the front door and passed Albert. He gave me a sullen look. And her a look. A look that made me start. Because there was almost a possessiveness in it. It gave me an odd feeling.
"Who is that guy anyway?" I asked as we started down the street.
"Mr. Grady," she said.
"That look he gave you," I said.
"I know."
That expression was on her face again. Not quite identifiable. Mostly disgust. But there was something else in it, too. I wasn't sure but it might have been fear, I thought. The fear of a child who has come upon something it does not quite understand yet instinctively shrinks from.
I decided to change the subject.
"Where would you like to go?" I asked.
"I don't care," she said, brightening. "Where would you?"
"A movie?" I suggested, without really thinking.
"Well…" she said.
"What am I talking about?" I said. "I don't want to go to a movie. I want to talk to you."
She smiled at me.
"I'd like to talk, Davie," she said.
We went down to Wilshire to the Red Coach Inn for a few drinks. It's a cute little place, intimate, booths, a man playing casual organ music.
She ordered a Vodka Collins and I ordered a Tom. Then she turned to me and, casually, said, "I think I should tell you I'm madly in love with you."
I took it for a gag, of course.
"Splendid," I said. "That's grand."
But her face wasn't smiling. It made me feel a little restless. Sometimes you couldn't tell what Peggy meant.
We drank a little. It was quiet.
"Would you like to come to a party with me?" she said. On the spur of the moment it seemed.
"Why… sure," I said.
"Good," she said.
"Where is it?"
"At my lawyer's house," she said.
"You have a lawyer?"
"He handled my divorce," she said.
I nodded. I asked her where the house was. She said Malibu.
"Oh," I said, "how will we get there? I plan to get a car but I haven't yet."
"We can get a ride," she said confidently.
Then the confidence seemed to slip. She fingered her glass nervously.
"Davie," she said.
"What?"
"Will you… will you promise me something?"
I hesitated. Then I asked what.
"Well, I…"
She looked irritated at her own fluster. "These parties are so…"
Again she halted.
"You're a gentleman," she said.
I waited. "I am?" I said.
"I mean," she went on, "you know how these parties are. Actors and actresses and… well, usually they get all drunk and the men start to…"
"You want me to promise not to touch you."
"Yes."
I didn't like to say it. She looked delicious then, in that soft light.
But I nodded. "All right," I said.
She smiled gratefully.
After a few drinks we started down Wilshire again, headed for the ocean.
"I wish I did have a car," I said.
"It's all right," Peggy said.
We walked and talked. Peggy told me about her mother. Her mother had died when Peggy was twelve.
"Tell me about your marriage," I asked once.
"There's nothing to tell," she said and that was all I could get out of her.
When we walked past my room I asked her if she'd like to come in and read some of my published stories. Strange it didn't seem wrong with Peggy. With any other girl I would have felt obvious, but with Peggy I couldn't even conceive of anything under the table. She had too much… what's the word? Class, I guess you'd have to call it.
Peggy sat on my bed and looked at my stories. I sat across the room by my typing table. I watched her draw up her shapely legs and rest one of them under her, then drawing the slip and skirt down. Watched her as she took off her jacket, as she leaned against the wall reading, watched her large brown eyes reading my words. Living in them. She was right there.
She looked up after reading the first one.
"My goodness," she said, awed. "I had no idea."
"Of what?" I asked.
"Of how… deep you are."
I chuckled self-consciously. "I've done better," I said.
She shook her head wonderingly. "You're so sensitive," she said. "Men aren't sensitive, but you are."
"Some men are, Peggy," I said.
"No," she said. And she really believed it. "They're pigs. They don't care anything about beauty."
Was that her marriage talking? I wondered. What had it really been like to put that look of bitter conviction on that sweet face?
All I could do was shrug. Feeling a little helpless before her complete and dismaying assurance.
"I don't know, Peggy." I shouldn't have said it.
"I do," she answered.
And there was hurt there too. She couldn't hide it. I didn't want to spoil the evening. I tried to let it go.
But Peggy wasn't finished.
"I've seen it time and again," she said. "My uncle left my aunt with three children to support. The husband of the woman my brother and I stayed with was a drunkard. Phillip and I used to lie in bed on Saturday and Sunday nights and listen to the man beat his wife with his fists."
"Peggy, those are only two examples. In my own family I can give you four examples of happy marriages."
She shook her head. She read some more. And her jaws were held tightly. I sat there looking at her sadly. Wondering if there were anything I could do to ease that terrible tension in her.
The night seemed to disappear, Houdini-like. The first thing I knew we were walking back on the block off Wilshire. It was a nice, starry night. The street was dark and quiet. Peggy took my arm as we walked.
"I do like you," she said. "You talk my language."
We talked of different things. Nothing important.
"I should work," she said, a little ashamed. "It's not very honorable to live on… my alimony. But…" She looked at me as if almost pleading. "I don't know how to do anything, and I dread the idea of working in a ten cent store or something. I did that when I was married. It's… awful."
I patted her hand.
A little later. "Where does your ex-husband live, Peggy?"
"Do we… have to talk about it, Davie? Please."
"I'm sorry," I said.
It was when we were walking past the little park between 24th and 25th Streets.
"Would you like to sit in the park a while?" she asked me.
"Sure," I answered.
So we sat on the grass looking over the mirror-like pond. Watching the moon saucer that floated on the water's surface. Listening to a basso frog giving out a roundelay for his lady love.
We didn't talk. I listened to her breathing. I glanced at her and saw her looking intently at the pond. Felt her hand on the ground and covered it with mine. And, naturally, without forcing it, found my head resting against hers. Her cheek was firm, soft. The cologne she wore was a delicious, delicate fragrance.
And, then, in a moment, casually, I drew back her hair and kissed the back of her neck. Long.
She didn't move. She shivered. Didn't struggle. But her hands tightened on the grass and pulled some out. I wondered what her lowered face was like.
I took off my lips. Her breath stopped, then caught again. In time with mine? I wondered.
Her throat moved. "Wow," she said.
I guess I laughed aloud. Of all the words in the world, it was the last I expected.
Peggy looked hurt, then offended. I quickly apologized.
"The word seemed so odd right then," I explained.
"Oh." She smiled, a little awkwardly. "No one ever kissed me like that," she said.
I looked at her in amazement. "What? No one?"
She shook her head.
"But… your husband?"
Her lips tightened.
"No," she said. She shuddered and her hands tightened into hard fists. "No," she said again.
"I'm sorry," I said.
She shook her head. "It's not your fault," she said. "You just don't… realize. What it was like."
I put my arm around her.
"Peggy," I said, softly.
When we reached the front of her house I took her in my arms and kissed her. Her warm lips responded to me.
I left her three times. Then, each time, turned to look back. And saw her standing by the picket fence that glowed whitely in the moonlight. And she was looking after me. The way a frightened and lonely child looks after its departing parent.
I kept going back. Holding her. Feeling her press her face against my shoulder. Whisper. "Davie. Davie."
And trying to understand that childlike look, that hungry, wistful look in her eyes.
It was while I was walking away the third time that the big car passed me, I didn't notice it. At least not any more than I'd notice any car that passed me on a dark street in the early morning. We'd sat talking till way after midnight.
But at Wilshire I stopped to go back again.
And found the car parked in front of her house. Right behind Albert's old Dodge. I saw a man at the wheel wearing a chauffeur's cap. He was slumped down, staring at the windshield.
Another man was at the door. He had on a top coat, a homburg.
At first I thought, Oh my God, it's her husband and he's a millionaire. I felt like creeping away.
Then I saw her framed in the doorway and I suddenly knew I couldn't leave and I had to know who this man was. I walked past the Cadillac, a sleek, black job. I glanced at her room which faced the street. But the shades were drawn. I turned into the alley and walked up to the side window of her room. I stood there in the darkness, holding my breath. The window was open. I could hear her voice.
"You shouldn't come here like this," she was saying, "at this time of night. What will the landlady say?"
"Never mind that," said the man. "I was talking about something else."
"I said no and I mean it."
Silence a moment. The man's voice again.
"And who's the new one?"
She didn't answer. I felt my brow knitting. Because the man's voice was familiar.
"Some poor fool who…" he started.
"Oh leave me alone, will you?" she burst out.
"Peggy."
The voice was low and it warned. "Don't keep trying my patience. Even I have a limit. Even I, Peggy."
I heard her skirt rustle, then a long silence. I tried to hear. I tried to look under the shade. Nothing to see or hear. I imagined. I'm good at that.
"Jim," she said. "Jim… no."
Another connection. Not quite secure. The voice. The name.
Then I heard the back screen door shutting and I walked down the alley. As I turned onto the sidewalk I saw a dark figure coming up the alley. Albert. I recognized the form. I didn't know whether he was just out for the air or whether he was going to listen at the window too.
It didn't matter to me.
I'd had enough. I stalked past the black Cadillac and walked quickly toward Wilshire. In my mind I kept seeing her in the man's arms, being kissed, minutes after I had kissed her. Kissing him the way she kissed me. Peggy, the new, the bright, Peggy, the deceiving one.
I think I felt sick. I just wanted to get far away. When it comes down to it, I'm not very confident about my overweening charms. Right then the only thing I wanted was escape.
Good-bye Peggy Ann.
***
There was someone scratching on my screen.
I raised up on one elbow and looked at the window. She was looking in. She knocked at the door then. I hesitated. Then I relaxed.
"Come in," I said.
She was carrying her bathing suit and a towel in one hand. A grease-spotted paper bag in the other.
I looked at her clinically.
"I brought doughnuts for breakfast," she said.
Still no answer from me. She caught the look. Peggy was always quick at that. She knew the moment your feelings toward her chilled. Her face fell.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
I didn't answer. Her face was disconcerted. The face I was beginning to love. I tried to fight that but it was just about impossible.
She turned away sadly. "I'll go," she said.
I didn't feel anything until her hand touched the doorknob. Then it seemed as if someone were wrenching at my insides.
"Peggy."
She turned to look at me. Her face blank.
I patted the bed. "Come here," I said.
She stood there, looking hurt. She tried to flint her features, failed, tried again. I patted the bed a second time.
"Sit down, Peggy," I said.
She sat down gingerly.
"I haven't done anything," she said.
"I came back last night," I said.
At first she didn't understand. Then her face tightened.
"You saw Jim," she said.
"Is he your husband?"
"He's my lawyer," she said.
Last connection. The voice, the name, the profession.
"What's his last name?" I asked.
"Vaughan," she said.
"My God."
She looked at me in surprise. "What is it?"
"I know him," I said.
"You do?"
"We went to college together."
"Oh." Her voice was faint.
I shook my head. "My God," I repeated. "Jim Vaughan. Of all the crazy coincidences."
I turned to her.
"Is Jim in love with you?" I asked.
"I…" She looked helpless.
"Is he?"
"I don't know."
"Isn't he married anymore?" I asked.
"They're going to be divorced," she said.
Audrey divorced. I saw her face at college, in my mind. Adoring Jim Vaughan. Divorced.
"Is Jim's brother here too?" I asked.
"Yes."
"My God, it's so fantastic." I saw that look again and let it go for the moment though there were still many questions I wanted to ask. Jim and I had known each other very well at the University of Missouri. "It's his party we're… supposed to go to?" I asked.
She looked at the floor. "I suppose you're not going now," she said.
"I don't know," I said. "I'd like to see him again. But if he's in love with you it would be a… little strained."
"If you don't want to," she said.
"Don't you think he'd mind?"
She didn't answer.
"Peggy, come on."
"I had no idea you knew him. But… what difference does it make? I asked you to go with me."
I remembered something.
"Poor little fool," I said. "Why that snotty son of a bitch. He's as smug as ever. Sure, I'll go. I just want to see his face when he sees me walk in with you."
***
I was putting the polishing touches to my bowtie when the car horn honked outside.
I found the black Cadillac waiting.
Peggy was inside, the door open.
"Hi," she said. "Come on in."
I got in. The door shut and the car pulled away from the curb. Good God, I was thinking, this ices the cake.
Peggy smiled at me.
"What's the scoop?" I asked, quietly so the driver couldn't hear.
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't say we were going in Jim's own car."
"What's the difference?"
I started to answer. Then I chuckled. "Jim will do nip-ups."
"Why?"
She actually didn't know. Not my Peggy Ann Lister, divorced and very wonderful.
I patted her hand.
"Here is the picture, my dear," I said. "You taking Jim's rival to Jim's party in Jim's car. You get it?"
She looked blank. "You're no rival," she said.
It was my turn to look blank. Maybe she was naive, I thought.
I took a closer look at the driver. Affluence, I was thinking. Jim has done well for himself. A Caddy, a chauffeur, a house at Malibu.
But the chauffeur didn't fit. Not quite. Rich men's chauffeurs have non-committal features. They match the upholstery.
Not Walter Steig. That was his name. Steig stood out like a keg of beer among wine glasses. Big and stolid. His face and neck were reddish. He looked like a left-over from the Third Reich. Big and brutish with closely cropped hair of grayish-steel color. Rimless glasses and a stiff, unrevealing expression.
The first time I saw Steig I don't think I believed him. He was a living cliché.
He turned the car onto Pacific Coast Highway and speeded up the ocean. Malibu, I thought, Jim has done well. A beach house probably. Fireplaces and French windows and opulence. Jim Vaughan.
I looked at Peggy.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that I can't help being surprised that you know Jim. That he's so well off. When I knew him he was… as poor as I am now."
That was poor.
She smiled back. My love was wearing a dark blue dress that clung fittingly to her boyish figure. Her blonde hair was brushed out again, haloing her head with light curls. Her skin was flawless. No makeup other than lipstick.
Everything seemed fine.
Why, then, did I start to feel premonitions? No, it wasn't her face, that was silly. I guess it was the memory of the look Jim had given me that last time I saw him. On graduation day. It was a look that killed and Jim was one of those people who try never to let such looks be seen on their faces.
And that chauffeur. Again the disparity hit me. That burly German just didn't go with Jim's overt refinement, with his cultivated taste for the inoffensive, the best in company.
I wondered why.
I tried to let it go. Talk to Peggy and not jump the gun. And I pretty well succeeded except for a stray conjecture here and there.
The Malibu house was a lush two-story affair that rambled all over a hillside and ended up like a luxurious animal crouched on a cliff, peering down at the pounding surf way down below across the highway. I imagined that the living-room windows were tightly fastened because the back porch was air.
I felt nervous as we stood on the front porch waiting for the door to open. Years had passed. And now I was entering Jim's life again. With the only tongue that could ever scathe him. And, more important, with another of his women on my arm. Stab in the back number two, I was thinking. A maid opened the door and we entered the high-ceilinged hallway.
It was quite a place. Thick broadloom, everything smart and rich. Jim's taste, all right. I could see that.
"Well…"
And heard him. I turned and saw him standing, one foot below the other on the step that led to the raised living room.
Staring at me.
Prophetic, I thought, that the last time I had seen him and this first time again, the expression I saw was devoid of all concealment. With not enough time to combat shock, it was Jim Vaughan in the raw looking at me. The look had surprise in it. Surprise, and, no hiding it, although he did his best thereafter, distinct and obvious displeasure.
"David!"
The pose was back. His hand holding mine was firm. The smile, the look was one of pleasure.
"If this isn't a coincidence," he was saying.
"How are you, Jim?" I said.
No need to ask. He was in fine shape. From his well-trimmed head of red hair, down through his well-shaven, well-fed face, through his maroon dinner jacket, and down to his shiny, dark maroon shoes. Jim was all right. I almost felt like a tramp in my old jacket, one he'd seen at college no less. And that feeling was a new one for me. When I was with Jim especially.
I'd always felt at least equal, if not superior.
"What are you doing out here?" he was asking me.
His arm around Peggy's waist. Obviously. She looked a little pained but she didn't move away. The move made me feel strange. As if with one calm, assured gesture, Jim was removing her from my sphere.
"Writing," I said.
"Oh yes, of course," he said, as if he didn't know it. "You wrote."
His tendency towards smugness that I'd taken delight in puncturing at school had now blossomed into a full-fledged snobbishness. This, I suspected, was progress to Jim.
Then came a move which sort of put down the groundwork for the coming months.
"Peggy, I've got someone you must meet," Jim said.
That was the opener. There were other words, quickly spotted. But the kicker was me standing alone in the hallway. A few seconds after I'd met a guy who'd been a good friend years before, I'd been dismissed that easily. Jim Vaughan discarding the past like a scab. He'd said, "We'll have to have a long talk," but I knew it was only words.
I saw him wedge Peggy into a mass of people standing up near a large fireplace which was crackling with orange flames. Peggy looked toward me once, apologetically. But it didn't much ease my irritation.
I went up the small staircase and into the huge living-room. Just as expected. Lush. High-beamed ceiling, thick, wall-to-wall carpeting, huge, solid color furniture, copper lamps. Jim had it.
I looked around. At first I thought there would surely be someone I had known from college. He couldn't have discarded them all, he knew so many. If nothing else, there would be Audrey. She and I had been minor buddies at college. She wasn't too pretty a girl. She made up for it though. So well you hardly ever knew she wasn't particularly attractive. Something inside. Not many people have it.
No Audrey. I kept walking around adding unto myself a drink and a plate of well-catered canapés, a high-class antipasto. I stood, back to a wall-high picture window and surveyed the room full of affluent strangers. I got philosophical. I always do when I'm around people who all have more money than I do.
It was about that time that I saw Dennis.
He was sitting on a couch with a pretty young thing. He was glowering alternately into his drink and at the mass of people wherein stood Jim and Peggy.
I went over, sat down. I hadn't known Dennis at college except by sight. Flitting about the campus like a scholastic phantom, carrying books and a woman. Always a woman.
"Hi," I said.
The young thing showed teeth. Dennis looked at me with his dark eyes. Stuck in a lean face that seemed more than anything else to reflect one big, endless resentment. Of anything. Of everything.
He didn't answer. Once a spider looked at me like he did.
"You don't remember me," I said.
"No, I don't," he agreed.
"I'm Dave Newton," I said. "I was a friend of Jim's at Missouri."
Recognition. But no pleasure.
"Oh, yeah," he said.
I can't get on very well with people who won't talk.
"You've got quite a home here," I said.
"Jim has quite a home."
There it was. Plain as the nose on his sullen face, The resentment. I'd heard Dennis talk once at college. That was one day when I'd come up to him and Jim on the campus. Dennis had walked away saying, "Sure, have it your way. You always do anyway."
And Jim had said to me, faintly amused, "That is brother Dennis. The brat of the family."
Now, in the present, I saw that Dennis was still the brat of the family.
"Yeah," I said, for want of anything better.
Young thing coughed. Dennis didn't stir.
"I'm Jean Smith," came a gushing introduction. "Dennis is just awful about introductions."
I smiled and nodded. I forgot about her.
"Where's Audrey?" I asked Dennis.
He looked at me coldly a moment. I guess he didn't see what he was looking for. He turned away.
"She's sick," he said.
"That's too bad."
"Yeah, isn't it?" he said and was up and moving for the bar.
"Are you in pictures?"
That was the young one. The busty one, revealing her deepest interest, her religion. To gain stardom at all costs, chastity to soul.
"Sure," I said disgustedly, "I work at Metro."
"Oh, really!"
Big eyes popping. Brassiere straining.
I was looking at Peggy. She was smiling at some big man who was holding her hand and obviously shooting her a line.
"You're an actor, I bet," the young thing simpered.
I paid little attention. "Producer," I said.
"Oh?"
The poor girl was losing breath. She was dying to do something impressive. Chant Ophelia's song going downstream, or peel clothes or do something noble.
"What have you produced?" she asked.
I took out a cigarette after she took one. I lit it and blew out a cloud. David Newton, producer and liar.
"I just did a remake of Lassie Come Home with Gene Kelly."
"Oh?"
"Musical. Technicolor," I said. I watched Peggy look around cautiously, looking for me. Around her waist still, Jim's arm.
"Technicolor," said the young thing.
"Couple of million," I said. "Prestige picture."
"Yes, I see."
I looked at Miss Nothing. I sighed.
"My greatest picture though…" I stopped, overcome.
"What? What?"
"Vanilla Vomit," I said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"That was the title."
"Vanilla…?"
"Vomit."
"I don't believe I…"
She was still looking very blank as I moved for the big group. I was getting tired of this. It was obvious that Jim had no intention of sharing Peggy. She was private property.
"It was superb." Jim was doing some soaping up. Lamar Brandeis, real producer. Influential man. I stood behind Peggy Lister.
"Peggy, let's dance," I said.
Jim's smile was antiseptic. Toothpaste ad smile.
"Not right now, Dave," he said. "We're rather busy." Then I was left to stand there, unintroduced, the ghost of Hamlet's father at Malibu. I felt a heat churning up in my stomach. I've got a temper. I'll be the last to deny that.
Peggy kept looking at me when she could, trying to smile. But Jim kept closing up the group so that his back was to me. I looked at the back of his neck. Jim Vaughan, I thought, my old buddy. You dirty, smug, son of a bitch.
Why didn't she come to me, excuse herself? I figured that she was afraid to. She was a timid girl really. She could be taken advantage of.
I listened to the talk awhile. Then when my arm muscles felt like rigid glass I just moved around and grabbed Peggy's hand.
"Come here, Peggy," I said aloud. "There's someone you must meet."
I could feel their stares on me as I pulled her away.
"That wasn't very polite," she said.
I took her over to the small open portion of the floor where a few couples were dancing to record music.
"It wasn't polite to bring me here and ditch me, either," I said.
"I didn't do anything," she said. "He took me over."
"No, you never do anything," I said. "Peggy Lister, victim of fate."
She tried to draw away. I tightened my hold. "You're going to dance with me," I said.
She was quiet then. Her mouth was a resigned line, parenthesized. She held herself stiffly.
"My old friend Jim Vaughan," I said.
No answer.
"Peggy."
"What?"
"Do you want to meet the person I was going to introduce you to?"
No answer.
"Do you?"
"Who is it?" she asked, with false patience.
"Me," I said. "I'm all alone."
Her eyes on me. And softness coming back. I felt her hand on my shoulder tighten.
"Davie," she said softly.
"How do you do," I answered.
Later. About. Jim taking her. Then me dancing with her. And both of us standing by, around eleven, while Dennis danced with her. Both of us trying to put on an air of Auld Lang Syne.
"I suppose Peggy has told you about our marriage plans," Jim said. Casually. Jim loved to flick off bombshells.
"No," I said, keeping it casual even though it killed me. "She didn't say anything."
"Well, it's understood," he said. The dampener. And was that a little threatening in his voice?
"Does Audrey understand?" I asked.
The twitching that presages a well-reserved smile.
"She understands," said Jim Vaughan.
"The way Linda understood," I said.
Another twitch, without a smile this time. I knew he remembered as I did the time at college when I'd started to date Linda. Linda, who everybody but myself considered Jim's un-ringed fiancée. And Jim had taken me into the Black and Gold Inn one afternoon and given me the low-down. Told me, just as casually, that he and Linda were going to be married. Although Linda didn't know it. Although Linda later on left him cold.
"That was a childish thing," Jim was saying now. "I'm past childish things."
I nodded. "I see," I said. Then I said, "I hate to say it Jim but I'm in love with Peggy."
No sign. No hint. He gazed at me like an exterminator, sighting on his prey.
I smiled thinly. "I know it isn't very guest-like for me to tell you," I said, "especially after what happened with Linda but… well, there it is."
He looked at me as if making some sort of decision. His grayish-blue eyes examined me carefully through the lenses of his glasses. His thickish lips pursed slightly as he deliberated.
He decided.
"Come in here, David," he said. Father about to tell his son that the birds do more than fly and the bees buzz.
He led the way to the library. He ushered me in. The door closed off the sound of the party. He locked the door. We stood together in the quietude, surrounded by the literature of the ages, all dusty.
"Sit down, David," he said.
I sat. I didn't know what to say. I decided to let him play the scene his own way.
"What has Peggy told you about herself?" he asked.
I sat quietly a moment, trying to figure out what his angle was. Jim was always trying for an angle. It might be hidden at first but it was always there. I knew that from school. He'd lead up, lead up, then sock you over the head with his coup de grace.
"Her family," I said. "Her life." I paused for effect. "Her divorce," I said, as casually as possible, figuring that it was the angle he was working on.
James Vaughan, late of Missouri farm town, now of California society, raised his eyebrows. Most effectively. All right, let's have it, Jim, I wanted to say, you can spare the histrionics. I know you.
"That's what she told you," he said. "That she was divorced?"
"That's right."
A sinking sensation in my stomach. What in hell was he driving at?
He looked at me, still deliberately. Until the thoughts of what he might be hiding started to make my skin crawl.
"What is it, for Christ's sake?" I asked.
He put one hand into his coat pocket.
"I don't know whether you'll believe what I tell you," he said.
"What?"
"Peggy isn't divorced," he said.
"She's still married?"
"No," he said, "not now."
"What about her husband?" I asked, perfect straight man for horror.
He hesitated. Then he said, "Murdered."
I felt the cold sickness explode in me because I knew his coup de grace before he said it.
"Peggy murdered him."
