Belinda (12 page)

People were looking at Belinda. Babymouth, white wine, pink glasses.

"Yeah?" Andy was waiting for me to finish. "What kind of new stuff, Jeremy?"

"Later, Andy, later. Where's the honcho? I want to buy that piece now."

[7]

THERE was time to hit the Union Street boutiques afterwards. She didn't want me to spend money, she kept protesting, but it was too much fun taking her into one fancy store after another, buying her all the things I wanted to see on her. Little pleated wool skirts, blazers, delicate cotton blouses. "Catholic school forever," she teased me. But pretty soon she was having fun, too, forgetting to protest the high price tags.

We drove on downtown and made Neiman Marcus and Saks. I bought her frilly dresses, pearls, the lovely froufrou stuff that the new female rock stars had made popular. But it was clear that she had a good eye, was used to good things, and thought nothing of the attentive saleswoman clucking over her.

Slacks, bikinis, blouses, suede coats-all the interseason things you can wear year-round in San Francisco-went into the fancy boxes and garment bags.

I even got her perfumes-Giorgio, Calandre, Chanel-sweet, innocent scents that I liked. And silver barrettes for her hair, and little extra things she might never have bothered with, like kid gloves and cashmere scarves and wool berets-finishing touches, you might say, that would make her look like one of those beautifully turned-out little girls in an English storybook.

I even found a lovely princess-line coat with a little velvet collar. She could have been seven or seventeen in that. I made her buy a mink muff to go with it, although she told me I was crazy, she hadn't carried a mug since she was five years old and that had been in the dead of winter in Stockholm.

Finally we ended up at the Garden Court of the Palace Hotel for dinner. Service slow, food not great, but the decor absolutely lovely. I wanted to see her in that setting, against the mirrored French doors, the gilded columns, the old-world elegance. Besides, the Garden Court always makes me happy. Maybe it reminds me of New Orleans.

It reminded her of Europe. She loved it. She looked tired now, last night finally catching up with her. But she was excited, too. She stole sips of my wine, but otherwise her table manners were exquisite. She held her fork in the left hand, Continental style. She asked for a fish knife-and used it, which I had never actually seen anyone do before. And she hardly noticed my noticing it.

We talked easily about our lives. I told about my marriages, how Andrea, the teacher, had felt small on account of my career, and Celia, the free4ancer, was always traveling. Now and then they got together in New York, had a few drinks, and called me to tell me what a bastard I was. It was what Californians call family.

She laughed at that. She was listening in that marvelously seductive way that young women can listen to men, and my realizing it didn't make me feel any less important.

"But did you really love either one of them?" she asked.

"Sure, I loved them both. Still do in a way. And either marriage could have lasted forever if we hadn't been modern Californians."

"How do you mean?"

"Divorce is de rigueur out here once the marriage is the least bit inconvenient. Psychiatrists and friends convince you that you're crazy if you don't split up for the smallest reasons."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Definitely. I've been watching the action out here for twenty-five years now. We're all proudly enjoying our acquired lifestyles, and pay attention, the key word is acquire. We're greedy and selfish, all of us."

"You sound like you regret the breakups."

"I don't. That's the tragedy. I'm just as selfish as the rest of them. I never gave my wives an emotional fifty percent. So how can I blame them for walking out? Besides, I'm a painter." She smiled.

"Such a mean guy," she said.

"But look," I said, "I don't want to talk about me. I want to talk about you. I don't mean about your family, all that. I've got the rules down, relax on that." She waited.

"But what about you right now?" I asked. "What do you want besides wearing punk clothes and not getting busted?"

She looked at me for a moment, almost as if the question excited her. And then a shadow passed over her face.

"You talk in big crayon-style print, you know it?"

I laughed. "I didn't mean to sound so harsh," I said. "I mean, what do you want, Belinda?"

"No, it wasn't harsh. I like it. But it doesn't make much difference what I want, does it?" she asked. "Of course, it does."

"Isn't making you happy enough?" She was teasing. A little.

"No, I don't think so."

"Look, what I mean is, I can't do what I want till I'm eighteen. I can't be anybody. You know, I'd get caught if I really did anything." I thought about that for a moment. "What about school?" I asked.

"What about it?"

"You know there are ways we could fix it. I mean, get you into some private school. There have to be ways, names, lies, something-"

"You're crazy," she laughed. "You just want to see me in one of those pleated skirts again."

"Yeah, I'll cop to that. But seriously-"

"Jeremy, an education I have, can't you tell that? Nannies, tutors, the works, I had it. I can read and write French, Italian, and English. I could get into Berkeley now, or Stanford, just by passing an examination." She shrugged, stole another drink of my wine. "Well, what about Berkeley or Stanford?" I asked.

"What about them? Who would I be? Linda Merit, my fake person, she'd rack up the credits?"

Her voice trailed off. She looked very worn out. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and take her home to bed. The long day was obviously telling on her.

"Besides," she said, "even if I wasn't on the run, I wouldn't go to college."

"Well, that's my question. What would you do? What do you want? What do you really need right now?"

She looked at me in a slightly distrustful way. And I sensed a defeat in her again, as I had in the car on the way to Union Street. It was a sadness bigger than being just tired, bigger than not knowing me very well.

"Belinda, what can I give you besides pretty clothes and a roof over your head?" I asked her. "Tell me, honey. Just tell me."

"You crazy guy," she said. "That's like the moon and the sky right now."

"Come on, honey, this whole thing is a little too convenient for me. I'm getting what I want and what I need but you-"

"You still feel guilty about me, don't you?" She looked as if she was going to cry, but then she smiled in the sweetest, gentlest way. "Just ... love me," she said. She shrugged and smiled again, her freckles showing for a moment in the light, very pale, very cute. I wanted to kiss her.

"I do love you," I said. Catch in the throat. Catch in the voice. Did she think it was like some sixteen-year-old telling her?

We looked at each other for a long private moment, oblivious to the crowded, brightly lighted room, the waiters moving among the white-draped tables. Candles, chandeliers, reflected light-it was all melded around us.

She formed her lips into a silent little kiss. Then she grinned and cocked her head.

"Can I listen to rock music real loud and put posters on the walls of my room?"

"Sure, you can have all the bubble gum you want, too, if you'll lay off the Scotch and cigarettes."

"Oh, boy, here it comes."

"Well, wasn't it bound to sooner or later? You want a lecture on nutrition and the needs of the teenage female body?"

"I know what this teenage body needs," she purred, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. "Why don't we get out of here?"

HALFWAY home I remembered I had to send Celia five hundred dollars right away-that phone message I'd never answered. We drove back downtown to Western Union.

As soon as we got in, she hit the Scotch. Just one drink, she said. Half a glass, going down her gorgeous young throat as I watched. Well, bring it up to bed, I said.

AFTERWARDS I made a fire in the grate and went downstairs for a bottle of sherry and two crystal glasses. I mean, if she had to drink, at least it wouldn't be the Scotch. I poured her a glass of sherry and we sat snuggled up against the pillows in the four-poster, watching the fire in the darkness.

I told her again she could do anything she wanted with the room down the hall. We should have taken her movie posters out of the Page Street dump.

She laughed. She said she'd get some more. She was all soft and warm and drowsy beside me.

"You want a stereo, go get one," I said. I'd set up a bank account for her, for Linda Merit. She said quietly that Linda Merit had one. Good, I'd put money in it for her.

"You got a VCR?" she asked. She had some videotapes, hadn't been able to watch them in a long time. Yes, two, I said, one in the back den up here, one down in my office. What were the tapes? Just old things, odd things. I told her about the big rental places on Market.

We sat there quiet for a while. I was running a mental tab of all the things she had said about herself. Quite a puzzle it was.

"You have to tell me something," I asked. I was reminding myself to be gentle.

"What?"

"What you meant last night when you said you'd bombed as an American teenager."

She didn't answer for a while. She drank another half glass of sherry. "You know," she said finally. "when I first came-to America, I mean-I thought that just being an American teenager for a while would be wonderful. Just being with kids here, going to rock concerts, smoking a little grass, just being in America-"

"And it wasn't like that?"

"Even before I ran away, I knew it was a crock. It was a nightmare. Even the shiny-faced kids, you know, the rich brats who were going on to college, they're all criminals and liars."

Her voice was slow, no teenage bravado.

"Explain."

"Look, I had my first period at nine. I was wearing a C-cut bra by the time I was thirteen. The first boy I ever slept with was shaving every day at fifteen, we could have made babies together. And I found out the kids here are just as developed. I wasn't any freak, you know? But what is a kid here? What can you do? Even if you're going to school, even if you're a goody-two-shoes who hits the books every night, what about the rest of your life?"

I nodded, waited.

"You can't legally smoke, drink, start a career, get married. You can't even legally drive a car till you're sixteen, and all this for years and years after you're a physical adult. All you can do is play till you're twenty-one, if you want to know. That's what life is to kids here-it's play. Play at love, play at sex, play at everything. And play at breaking the law every time you touch a cigarette or drink or somebody three or four years older than you."

She took another sip of the sherry. Her eyes were full of the red light of the fire. "We're all criminals," she went on. "And that's the way it's set up, that's the way people want it. And I'll tell you this much, you play by the rules and you're a shallow person, a real, real shallow person."

"So you broke them?"

"All the time. I came here breaking them. And all I saw when I tried to join in and be one of the crowd is that everybody else was breaking the rules. I mean, to be an American kid you had to be a bad person."

"So you ran away."

"No. I mean, yes, but that's not why." She hesitated. "It just ... came to that," she said tentatively. "It all blew up. There was just no place for me."

I could feel her stiffening, drawing away. I took another drink. Ought to hold off, I thought, take it very easy. But she started to talk again.

"I'll tell you this," she said. "When I first hit the streets, I did think, well, it would be an adventure. I mean, I thought I'd be with the really tough kids, the real kids, not those rich slick little liars. That was stupid, let me tell you. I mean the rich kids were adults pretending to be kids for their parents' sakes. And the kids on the streets are kids pretending to be adults for their own sakes. Everybody's an outcast. Everybody's a faker."

Her eyes shifted anxiously over the room, and she bit a little at her fingernail again, the way I had seen her do last night.

"I didn't belong on the street any more than I did with the others," she said. "I mean, guys who stole car radios every day to score food and dope, girls selling themselves in the Tenderloin, and the hustlers, my God, convincing themselves it was a big deal if some gay guy took them to a fancy hotel for an hour and bought them dinner. It was the world, sixty minutes in the Clift Hotel, imagine! Same as the rich kids, everything unreal. Unreal. And the cops, they don't really want to bust you. They don't have any place to put you. They hope you'll up and disappear."

"Or Daddy will come-"

"Yeah, Daddy. Well, all I want is to grow up. I want my name back. I want my life to begin. I want this shit to be over."

"It is over for you," I said. She looked at me.

"Because you're with me," I said. "And you're OK now."

"No," she said. "It's not over. It just means you and I are criminals together."

"Well, why don't you let me worry about that part of it?" I bent forward to kiss her.

"You crazy guy," she said. She lifted her glass. "Here's to your pictures in the attic."

t:i~'
. ^.
,i. I saw the glowing numbers on the face of the bedside clock before I was even awake. Now the grandfather clock was chiming the hour, and in the vibrating silence that followed I heard her voice very far away. Downstairs. Talking to someone on the phone?

I got up slowly and went to the top of the stairs. The hall light was on down there. And I could hear her laughing, an easy cheerful little laugh. "Prince Charming," she was saying, and then the words were lost. Car passing in the street, even the ticking of the grandfather clock came between us. "Just don't let them hurt you!" she said. Anger? Then the voice went down to a murmur again. And I heard her say: "I love you, too." And she hung up the phone.

What was I doing? Spying on her? Should I sneak back to bed as if I hadn't come this far?