1973 - Have a Change of Scene (8 page)

I waited until she had reached the front door, then set the car in motion, pulled up when the road petered out and leaving the car, walked up to the bungalow.

The front door stood open. I looked into the tiny lobby. A door to my left stood open.

I heard a man say, ‘Jesus! So you’re back!’

A wave of cold, bitter frustration ran through me. I’ll pay my fare, had been a con.

I moved forward, and Rhea, hearing me, turned.

We stared at each other.

‘You want something?’ she asked.

A man appeared. He had to be her brother: tall, powerfully built with the same thick chestnut-coloured hair, a square-shaped face, green eyes. He was in something that looked like a dirty sack and soiled jeans.

He would be some years younger than she: twenty-four, probably less.

‘Who’s this?’

‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said. ‘A welfare worker.’

We regarded each other and I began to hate him as he gave a sneering little chortle.

‘The things that go with you,’ he said to Rhea. ‘Maggots out of cheese now a welfare worker!’

‘Oh, shut up!’ she snapped. ‘He’s a do-gooder. Any food in this stinking place?’

I looked from one to the other. They were right out of my world. My mind flashed back to Paradise City with its fat, rich old women and their dogs, Sydney, buzzing and fluttering, the clean, sexy looking kids in their way-out gear, and yet this sordid scene had a fascination for me.

‘How about having a wash?’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you both a meal.’

The man shoved Rhea aside and moved up to me.

‘You think I need a wash?’

Then I really hated him.

‘Sure you certainly do, you stink.’

Watching, Rhea laughed and moved between us.

‘He’s my thing, Fel. Leave him alone.’

Over her shoulder, the man glared at me, his green eyes glittering. I waited for his first move. I felt the urge to hit him. He might have seen this in my expression for he turned and walked across the shabby, dirty room, pushed open a door and disappeared.

‘Some homecoming,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to buy you a meal?’

She studied me. Her emerald-green eyes were jeering.

‘Man! Don’t you want it!’ she said. ‘When you have me, it’ll cost you more than a meal.’

This was a challenge and a promise and I grinned at her.

‘I’m at the Bendix Hotel, anytime,’ I said and walked out of the bungalow and to my car.

Sooner or later, I told myself, we would come together: it would be an experience worth waiting for.

* * *

I drove back to Luceville, had lunch at Luigi’s, then bought a bunch of grapes and went to the hospital.

Jenny was looking brighter. She smiled eagerly as I sat on the hard backed chair by her bedside.

‘How did it go?’ she asked, after thanking me for the grapes.

I gave her an edited version of my meeting with Rhea Morgan. I said I had met her, and driven her to her home and had left her there. I said her brother seemed tricky and hadn’t welcomed me.

But Jenny wasn’t that easy to fool. She looked searchingly at me.

‘What do you think of her, Larry?’

I shrugged.

‘Tough.’ I tried to give the impression that as far as I was concerned, Rhea meant nothing to me. ‘I told her you had an accident and I was filling in.’

She smiled her warm smile.

‘She didn’t care, did she?’

‘No she didn’t care.’

‘You’re still not right, Larry. People do react to kindness.’

‘She doesn’t.’

‘Yes, that’s right, but a lot of people do, but of course, some don’t. She is a difficult case.’

‘You can say that again.’

A long pause as we looked at each other, then she said, ‘What are you going to do? You won’t stay on here, will you?’

‘Tell me something. You’ve been in hospital now for two days. How many visitors have you had, apart from me?’

It was a rotten thing to ask, but I wanted to know.

‘Just you, Larry. No one else,’ and again she smiled.

‘So all the old women who pester you for handouts haven’t been to see you?’

‘You’re not proving anything, Larry. You don’t understand. They are all very poor, and it is a tradition that when you go to a hospital you bring something. They haven’t anything to bring, so they stay away.’

I nodded.

‘Thanks for explaining it.’

She asked suddenly, ‘How’s your problem, Larry?’

‘Problem?’ For a brief moment I didn’t know what she meant, then I remembered I was supposed to have a problem, that I was grieving over the loss of Judy, that I had been in a car crash, that I couldn’t concentrate on my work and her uncle had advised a change of scene. For the past two days, I hadn’t even thought of this problem.

‘I think the problem is lost,’ I said.

‘I thought so.’ She regarded me. ‘Then you had better go back. This town isn’t your neck of the woods.’

I thought of Rhea.

‘I’ll stick around a little longer. Anything I can bring you tomorrow?’

‘You’re being an angel, Larry. Thank you. I’d love something to read.’

I bought a copy of Elia Kazan’s
The Arrangement
, and had it sent to her room. I thought this book was about her weight.

FOUR

I
drove to Jenny’s office, found parking with a tussle, then walked up the six flights of stairs.

Since I had left Jenny, I had returned to the hotel. I had stayed in my dreary little room for around half an hour, during that time I had thought of Rhea Morgan. I had paced up and down while my mind dwelt erotically on her. I wanted her so badly it was like a raging virus in my blood. The thought of stripping off her clothes and taking her made sweat run down my face, but I reminded myself of what she had said: Man! Don’t you want me! When you have me, it’ll cost you more than a meal.

But I wasn’t a sucker like Jenny. When I had her, as I was going to have her, it wasn’t going to cost me a dime.

But first, I had to know a lot more about her. Jenny would have kept her record and I now wanted to read it. It might give me a lever to turn an attempt to bargain into a sale.

This was my thinking, so I drove to Jenny’s office.

I paused outside her office door. Through the thin panels I could hear the clack of a typewriter, and this surprised me. I knocked, turned the handle and walked in.

A thin, elderly woman sat behind the desk. Her face looked as if it had been chopped with a blunt axe out of teak. Squashed in a corner was a teenager doing a peck and hunt routine on the typewriter. They both stared at me as if I had landed from the moon.

‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said and gave Hatchet face my best smile. ‘I’ve been working with Jenny Baxter.’

She was a professional welfare worker - not like Jenny: no sucker. I could imagine the old women would take one look at her and then scuttle.

‘Yes, Mr. Carr?’ She had a voice a cop would envy.

‘I thought I’d look in,’ I said, my eyes moving to the filing cabinets that stood behind the teenager who had stopped typing. She was just out of High School, very earnest, completely sexless and a drag.

Somewhere in those cabinets, I thought I would find Rhea’s background. ‘If I can be of help,’ let it hang.

‘Help?’ Hatchet face stiffened. ‘Are you qualified, Mr. Carr?’

‘No, but I’ve.’ I stopped. I was wasting my breath. I was sure she knew about me.

‘Thank you, Mr. Carr.’ She stared me over. ‘We can manage very well.’

‘I just thought I’d look in.’ I backed towards the door. ‘I’m at the Bendix Hotel. If you want help, just call me.’

‘We won’t trouble you, Mr. Carr.’ Then with a sour grimace, she added, ‘Miss Baxter was always calling on amateurs. That’s not my method.’

‘That I can imagine,’ I said and stepped into the passage and closed the door.

I would have liked to have done it legally, but if the old cow was this way, then I would have to do it illegally. I still had the key Jenny had given me to the office.

So I walked down the six flights of stairs and out on to the cement-dusty street. The time was 17.00 and I walked to a bar opposite and sat in a corner where I could survey the entrance to the office block. I ordered beer, lit a cigarette and waited.

Time moved on. People came and went. A barfly tried to get talking with me, but I brushed him off.

After a second beer, taken slowly, I saw Hatchetface and the teenager emerge and walk together down the street. Hatchetface held the teenager’s arm in a possessive grip as if she expected some man would leap out and rape the girl.

I was in no hurry. I had a third beer, smoked yet another cigarette, then getting to my feet, I walked out on to the street. By now it was 18.15. Two giggling girls, in miniskirts, came out of the office block as I entered. In another hour it would be dark. I didn’t want to turn on the lights in the office. That could be a giveaway. I walked up the six flights of stairs. The owners of the one-room offices were going home.

They brushed by me as I climbed: little men, tall men, fat men, thin men: some with their typists. They didn’t notice me. They were too eager to get back to the discomfort of their homes, to eat, to watch television and then go to bed with their dreary wives.

As I reached the sixth floor, a woman with a face like a wrinkled prune came out of an office, slammed the door shut and edged by me as if I were the Boston Strangler. I unlocked Jenny’s door, slid into the tiny office, shut the door and turned the key.

It took me some ten minutes to find Rhea Morgan’s file. I sat at the desk and read her case history the way I would have read my own case history.

Jenny had done a good job. The report was written in her sprawling handwriting. She must have felt it was too personal for a helper to type.

Rhea Morgan, I learned, was now twenty-eight years of age. At the age of eight, she had come before the law as uncontrollable. She had been sent to a home. At the age of ten she had been caught stealing lipstick and perfume from a self-service store. She had been sent back to the home. At the age of thirteen, she had had sexual relations with one of the executives of the home. They had been caught in the act and a few hours later, before the police arrived, the executive had cut his throat. She had been moved to a stricter home. After a year, she had run away. A year later, she had been picked up while prostituting herself to truck drivers on a freeway to New York. She had come before the law again and had been sent for psychiatric treatment. No success there for she had slipped away and had gone missing for two years.

She had then been picked up in Jacksonville with three men who were attempting a bank robbery. There had been a plea for her age and she drew a year. By this time, she would be around seventeen years of age. After serving the sentence, she dropped out of sight, then she reappeared three years later. This time she was involved with two men in a jewel robbery. She was handling the getaway car. The two men, armed with toy pistols, had walked into a cheap jewellery store in Miami. They were amateurs and came apart at the seams when a guard appeared with a .45 automatic in his fist. Rhea could have driven away, but she stuck and was arrested. With her past record, she drew four years. Out again, she was involved with three men in a gas station holdup. This time the judge threw the book at her and she went away for another four years, and that was her life up-to-date.

I dropped the report on the desk and lit a cigarette. I now knew her background and I was now curious about her brother. I searched through the files, but came up with nothing. It looked as if Jenny had had no dealings with him, but I was sure he was in Rhea’s league.

As the light began to fade, I sat on the desk and thought of Rhea. I thought of the life she had led and I found I was envying her. I thought of my own dull home life, and my mother, kind, who had died when I was fifteen years old, and my father who had slaved in a diamond mine, had made a lot of money, had invested badly and had been defeated when he had died. Rhea had lived a vicious life, but she hadn’t been defeated. The moment she had got out of prison, she had followed her destiny of crime. At least she had purpose and drive. The purpose was bad, but she had set her signals and had driven ahead.

Bad?

I crushed out my cigarette and lit another.

I had been taught that stealing was bad, but was it in this modern world in which I lived? Wasn’t it rather the survival of the fittest? Wasn’t it a brave, private war waged by one individual against the police? Wasn’t that better than living the dreary life the people lived who scrounged on Jenny?

Half my mind told me I was wrong, but the other half argued. I knew Rhea had suddenly become the most important person in my life. The fascination was sexual, but also there was this envy that she could have more courage than I had. I wanted suddenly to experience what she had experienced. She had been hunted by the police. This was an experience that I found myself wanting. I thought of how she must have felt when the pressure was on and yet she hadn’t panicked and driven away from the jewellery store. I envied her that experience. I felt the urge to find out if I had the guts, under pressure that she had.

It was getting dark now so I returned the report to the filing cabinet, emptied my ash and two cigarette butts into an envelope which I put in my pocket. I didn’t want Hatchetface to know someone had been in the office, then I left.

As I walked down the stairs, I kept thinking of Rhea, with her brother in the sordid bungalow, and I envied them.

Judy?

I continued to walk down the stairs.

Judy was dead, I told myself, but Rhea was alive.

* * *

What I should have done was to have checked out of the Bendix Hotel and driven back to Paradise City. I should have talked to Dr. Melish and put myself in his hands. I should have told him I had met a woman with a vicious criminal record and had become sexually obsessed with her. I should have confessed to him that I now had an overpowering urge to do what she had done, trying to explain that when I had her, she and I had to be on equal terms: I as bad as she was, and she as bad as I was. I should have admitted that, because I was male and she was female, I had this thought now hammering in my mind that whatever she could do, I could do better. Maybe it would have helped me. I don’t know because I never gave him the chance. I didn’t check out of the hotel, nor did I run away to Paradise City.