Desert of the Heart: A Novel (18 page)

Again on duty, Ann put her mind to the problem of the night. She had not said definitely that she would have a drink with Evelyn. She would be asleep. Or Ann could tell Silver that she had to go home and would meet her tomorrow. But it was Silver’s last free weekend. And Ann was not at all sure she wanted to go home to Evelyn.

“Change!”

God, they could take a whole row of slot machines and she wouldn’t notice. She must concentrate, not on Evelyn, not on the negative nature of the universe, not even on this peculiar, human population, but on money, machines, and mirrors. The noise raged up at her, filling her head with a pounding, useful emptiness.

Ann checked out her apron at quarter past three, but she was not allowed to leave until she had answered more questions and signed a statement. Silver was waiting for her in the employees’ lounge.

“Well, how does it feel to be a big-time gangster?”

“Lousy,” Ann said. She was too tired and discouraged to joke.

“It’s not important,” Silver said, trying to comfort her. “They just make a big thing of it. Do you remember the time that drunk unscrewed the money box on my blackjack table? They asked me how long I’d known the guy. When I told them he was my manager, they put it in the statement and asked me to sign it. Jesus! It’s their job to keep the slot machines and money boxes screwed in, not ours. Just screw them.”

“Yeah,” Ann said.

“Do you want to go back to your place?”

“I don’t know, Sil. I don’t know what I want to do.”

“You need a drink.”

Ann lay on her stomach on the carpet in Silver’s living room, silent, playing with the ice in her glass. Silver was finishing a T-bone steak she had cooked for herself.

“You know, Hiram O. is going to survive the loss.”

“Sure, I know. It just made me feel funny, as if the whole crowd was … I don’t know. Do you ever get tired of it? Do you ever wonder why you work there? Do you ever … think about it?”

“Not much. You think too much.”

“I remember once I found moths in my closet, holes in everything. Everywhere I went I kept thinking of those moths, eating away there in the dark. I couldn’t stop thinking about them.”

“What’s eating at you now?”

“I don’t know. Just things in general.”

Silver got up and walked over to Ann. “Come on. Roll over and give us a foot.” Ann rolled over on her back and offered her right boot to Silver. “Now the other one. You know, you could live with Joe and me if you wanted to.”

“What?”

“But you don’t want to, I know.”

“I’ve got a place to live.”

“To eat and sleep.”

“And work. That’s all I want.”

“I’m going to tell you something, love,” Silver said, kneeling down beside Ann and beginning to undo her belt. “And you’re to shut up until I’m finished.”

“I’m not promising. Look out for my drink.”

“I’m looking out. You’re the one who ought to be looking out. You’re about to get hooked, little fish, hooked and landed. I want you to make damn sure the bait you swallow is what you want.”

“Look who’s talking about getting landed.”

“I’m talking because I know,” Silver said with real fierceness. “You need somebody, whether you know it or not. I watched you play around with the idea that it might be Bill. He’s a nice guy. I was sorry for a while that it didn’t work out. Then Joe said to me, ‘He isn’t smart enough for her. She’d ruin him in a year.’”

“Thank Joe for me, will you?”

“Sit up,” Silver said. She had unbuttoned Ann’s shirt and was about to take it off. “Now it’s this Evelyn Hall. I haven’t anything against women, and I don’t know her. But I know you. Lie down.” Silver took hold of Ann’s trouser legs and pulled. “How smart is she?”

“Very.”

“How good is she in bed?”

“Well …”

“And how disappointed were you when you found out that she really wanted to go to bed with you after all?”

“What do you mean?”

“Love, when little boys want to marry their mothers, they have a hard enough time of it, but they manage. When little girls want to marry their mothers …”

“I thought you said you charged for analysis. How much is this going to cost me? I want to be sure I think it’s worth it.”

“Fierce,” Silver said softly, “very fierce. If you want a woman, have a woman, but remember you’re a woman. You need some man-handling. How many women do you know who can …”

“One,” Ann said, letting her body go with a strange reluctance, almost like grief, desire answering skill, will answering love, without really wanting to.

They slept until after noon, and Silver would not be hurried with cooking or eating. Then she had to dress herself for the occasion of shopping in Hollywood-blond lavender, Cinderella slippers on her long, tan feet. Ann watched her put on her jewelry. She decorated herself as Frances decorated a Christmas tree, hanging great, bright ornaments everywhere. Finally she turned to Ann for approval, the clattering of metal on metal like a muted nickel jackpot payoff.

“You’re marvelous,” Ann said.

“Got up like a common whore,” Silver answered, mimicking an unknown, ideal, female enemy.

“I wonder if I ought to take time to change.”

“I’m certainly not going to go into Magnins with you looking like that.”

“All right, but we’d better hurry.”

“I’ll put my clothes in the car. We can eat downtown and change at the Club.”

It was well after two when they arrived at Ann’s house.

“Are you coming in with me?”

“I am,” Silver said, exaggerating a real determination.

But Ann, in her own preoccupation with meeting Evelyn, did not realize until she was introducing them in the upstairs hall that Silver had, of course, had a real female enemy in mind. There was a moment of tension in which Silver seemed to hesitate between the extremes of hauteur and crudity, in which Evelyn recovered from a shock her expression serenely concealed.

“I better change,” Ann said.

“Come in and have a cigarette with me, Silver, while you wait.”

“Thanks. Don’t be long, Ann.”

It was something between an assertion of possessiveness and a plea. Ann understood Silver’s uncertainty in the use of her name. She had not called Ann by name more than three or four times in four years they had known each other. Ann turned away at once, grateful not to have to cope, but she would certainly not take long. The sooner she got Silver away from Evelyn the better. Even in ten minutes Silver could do irreparable damage, but perhaps it was just as well. Evelyn had wanted to know what kind of world Ann lived in. Now she would find out. Ann reached into her closet for something to wear that would not be a comment on Silver’s garishness. She chose an apricot cotton she had bought to please Bill. Silver had also been delighted with it. “I like that new plunging waist line.” Then she put on earrings, which she hardly ever wore, and a bracelet and a ring.

“Got up like a common whore,” she murmured, but, as she glanced at herself in the mirror, she caught in her own eyes the same look of critical hopefulness that she had seen in Silver’s. “Have your cake and eat it, that’s what you want.”

She hurried down the stairs, apprehensive about what might already have happened.

“All set,” she said, looking quickly at Evelyn.

“Evelyn’s coming with us,” Silver said.

“Are you?”

“It sounded like fun.”

“She’s promised to come to the wedding, too. We can pick out your dress today.”

“My dress?”

“I have to buy you a dress,” Silver said, almost reproachfully. “I’m going to be in champagne. Evelyn and I have decided you should be in caviar.”

“Black?” Ann asked, “or red caviar?”

“Pewter,” Evelyn said quietly. “The color of your eyes.”

“Won’t it be a little dreary?” Ann protested, fighting down the same ridiculous tenderness that had threatened her so often in the last weeks.

“Subtle,” Silver corrected. “Are we ready?”

They went out together, stopping only for a moment to explain to Frances that they would not be back for dinner.

“Did you get the wedding invitation?” Silver asked.

“I did,” Frances answered. “I’ll be there.”

Ann and Evelyn had already started out the door.

“I’m sorry about last night. It was too late to call.”

“It’s all right. Will you be home tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Ann said, and, before she could say anything more, Silver had joined them.

When they got to Magnins, Silver and Evelyn approached the clerk together. Silver, in her role as bride-to-be, mixed earnestness with comedy, vulgarity with parody. Evelyn, quick-eyed and quiet, defined the range of Silver’s taste and confined herself to it with tact and good humor. As Ann watched them, she still felt tentatively protective of Silver, whose gaucheness made her seem suddenly very much younger and more vulnerable. In a way, though her makeup revealed rather than concealed the hard uses she had put herself to, she did actually look five years younger than Evelyn. For Evelyn had let her hair begin to gray, and her aristocratic bones and candid intelligence gave her face an authority and quietness that is always associated with age. Ann studied Evelyn for any faint sign of condescension. Was it there in the way she seemed to keep Silver from any outburst of graphic appreciation when Ann tried on a dress too tight for her? Was it there in Evelyn’s almost uncanny ability to reassure Silver at the very moment she was discouraging her from making a choice in outrageously bad taste? If she was condescending, Silver obviously did not feel it. Ann had rarely seen her so wholehearted in an effort to please anyone; and, in her own eyes, Silver felt she was succeeding, for she grew less assertive and more genuinely good-humored every moment. When Ann had tried on all the dresses Silver and Evelyn had selected, they had found nothing that really pleased them.

“Don’t you want to look for yourself?” Ann asked.

“No, not now. Let’s go to that classy little shop around the corner. I’ve never been in it.”

“I can’t bear the place,” Ann said. “Anyway, everything’s outrageously expensive.”

“You’re not paying for this,” Silver said. “I am.”

There was no one else in the shop, and the only clerk was on the phone.

“Where do they hide the clothes?” Silver asked, starting over to the closed cupboards.

The clerk half turned, alarmed, as if she expected a raid. Evelyn touched Silver’s arm and nodded to a settee. The clerk turned back to her hushed conversation, reassured but still uncertain.

“This reminds me of the female trade,” Silver said suspiciously. She would not sit down with Evelyn but stood looking around. “You know that corset shop on West Second they closed about a year ago?”

Ann laughed.

“I’m not kidding. I’m not letting you in that dressing-room alone.”

“Don’t worry,” Ann said, grinning. “I’d scream.”

“Cigarette?” Evelyn said.

“No thanks. Is this really on the level?”

“I think so,” Evelyn said, amused.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” the clerk said to Evelyn, ignoring Silver and Ann. “May I help you?”

“I hope so,” Evelyn said, her dignity suddenly cool. “Miss Childs is looking for an afternoon dress.” She nodded to Ann as she spoke, suggesting the color and material.

“Size twelve?” the clerk asked, her eyes never seeming to have looked anywhere but at Ann’s face.

“Usually,” Ann answered.

“Won’t you sit down?” the clerk suggested to Silver, her tone subdued to politeness by Evelyn’s manner. “I’ll bring a chair for you, madame,” she said to Ann, “and then I’ll show you what we have.”

Silver sat reluctantly, but she, too, seemed subdued.

“If it isn’t on the level,” Evelyn said, picking up Silver’s phrase and suspicious tone, “I’ll bet they’re losing money.”

Silver relaxed into a guffaw of laughter. Ann looked down at Evelyn with surprised admiration. Then their attention was directed to the clerk, who had brought out three dresses.

“That’s the one,” Silver said immediately.

“Exactly,” Evelyn agreed.

“Hadn’t I better try it on?” Ann asked.

“I suppose so,” Silver said, arching her invented eyebrow.

Ann, in the dressing room, had an almost overpowering desire to scream. It was an hilarity that came from a need to do something with the tense energy the afternoon had created in her. She felt reckless and uncertain. The dress, paler in color than she had imagined, was like smoke or moonlight, and, though the folds of material were decorous, only softly suggestive, the effect was of something transitory that at any moment might simply be cast aside. It was a magnificent whim. To model it properly she should step out in it and then step out of it in one free, exalting gesture. Only her conventional underwear really prevented her. How sad it was that madness was so frail and easily inhibited. She walked out, wistful, to Silver and Evelyn.

“My God!” Silver said softly.

“I think it suits your daughter, don’t you?” the clerk said to Evelyn.

“She’s not my daughter,” Evelyn said, her eyes on Ann, her quiet voice so final that the clerk could not even apologize. “It becomes you.”

“You’re almost unbelievable, little fish. It’s a good thing I’m not worried about competition,” Silver said. Then she turned to the clerk. “How much is it?”

“A hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I’ll write a check.”

“Sil …” Ann began, sobered by the price.

“It’s worth twice that. Don’t argue.”

“But it’s …”

“Hush. Go take it off carefully before it disappears all by itself.”

Ann stood, reluctant to let Silver win the argument. She could buy it herself if Silver wanted her to wear it to the wedding. To let Silver buy it made Ann really uncomfortable. She looked over at Evelyn, but Evelyn would not help her. She had obviously withdrawn from this moment of the afternoon because it had nothing to do with her. Ann went back into the dressing room, the secret hilarity gone, the dress nothing more to her now than an embarrassment; but, if she was going to let Silver buy it, she must be glad of it. She did not want to ruin Silver’s pleasure. Ann had never been so aware of considering Silver before. The self-consciousness of it troubled her because her very concern seemed a kind of criticism of Silver which she was refusing to acknowledge. Was it Evelyn’s criticism, or was it her own? Ann rejoined her two friends, determined to be pleased.