Golden Orange (11 page)

“Lie down,” she said.

“What?”

“Here. On the sofa. Lie back and put your feet up.”

Tess dropped to her knees on the white carpet, lifted Winnie's legs onto the sofa and slipped off his cheap penny loafers. She plumped the sofa pillows behind his head, got up and swayed toward the fireplace. She lit a small gas fire for effect. The logs were fake. Then she came back and knelt beside him.

Winnie watched her take her jacket off and toss it carelessly onto the matching silk sofa on the other side of the glass table. She picked up his drink and held it to his lips, showing him an unreadable smile. She was acting just like a goddamn nurse!
Was
this one of those blue movies, or what?

“Comfy?” she asked.

“You kidding?”

He thought she was going to lean over and kiss him, but she didn't. She giggled softly. Wind chimes again.

“Still scared?”

“Sure.”

This time she chuckled out loud. “Win Farlowe, you're perfect!”

“I know. You said. A straight-ahead guy. Can I ask you something?”

“Okay,” Tess said. “Anything.” She crept a little closer, resting her arm on the cushion beside his. He could feel the soft down on her forearm. In the firelight it was the color of polished brass.

“I mean, I wasn't conceived in a Cal Tech sperm bank. But I'm not stupid.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“I mean, I don't like poems that don't rhyme, but I'm no dummy.”

“You are definitely no dummy,” she agreed.

“So why me?”

“Why you, what?”

“Someone like you. Looks. Brains. Money. A real
babe
! I don't get it.”

“You're the world's only ex-cop who ever broke up a parade all by himself. You're different.”

“I'm different. Slumming, is that it?”

“You're going to force me to get specific? Okay, starting with your looks, well, you look like … like daybreak at Catalina. When I was a girl and my dad took me over to the island for weekends, we'd sit out there on the water at dawn, fishing. Or rather,
he
was fishing and I was watching the sunrise. I thought, if there's one thing you can depend on it's that beautiful sunrise over the island. All this, after my mother and father had been screaming at each other all night and my fingers were bleeding from chewing my nails to the quick. Unlike you, I've always thought of the sun in masculine terms. Old mister sun rising up out of the sea at dawn. Anyway, I look at you and I think of that. That's how you strike me, old son. There's something
certain
and reassuring about you.”

“That's why you call me old son? You mean like in the big sun up there?” Winnie pointed toward the twenty-foot ceiling.

“Could be a subconscious choice of words,” she said. “I don't pretend to understand myself any more than I've understood the men in my life: my father, my husbands, all three of them. But I think I understand a few things about
you.
You're a straight-ahead guy.”

“Got any kids?”

“No,” she said. “Guess I couldn't bring myself to inflict the men I married on some helpless child. How about you?”

“My ex talked me into adopting her brats, I guess, so she could get a little more when her lawyer opened my veins. Never had any a my own. Sometimes I wish I had a son. Me, I had a
great
old man.” Thinking of his father, he sighed, then said, “So, how about all the guys around here? All the guys at your club? You don't like em?”

“They bore me or threaten me or repel me. Maybe they seem as ruthless as my father, I don't know. But you, you're
different.
”

“I don't scare you, huh? That figures. I don't scare anybody.”

“But I scare
you
?”

“I'm starting to get used to it,” Winnie said, and his hand inched toward her bare shoulder. His little finger lightly touched the flesh. She felt cool even with the fireplace heating up the room. “It still don't exactly add up.”

“Stop acting like a cop,” Tess said, moving her shoulder so that three of his fingers were touching her. “If you
must
have a motive, try this one: From the first moment I saw your photo in the newspaper, I was intrigued. You appear so vulnerable and yet look what you've done. I wanted to find out more.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. A time of life. Divorced for the third time. Facing middle age. Almost broke. Yeah, don't let this house fool you, it's mortgaged to the hilt. All alone, with my father dead less than a year. A father who left his property to someone
else.
Well, I saw your photo, when you were walking out of jail with your lawyer, and I thought: That man, I've
got
to meet him.”

“What? Pity?”

“
Self
-pity, maybe. You'd
acted
! You
did
something, though I'm sure you regret it now. Still, through frustration or rage or whatever, you did something and it made people notice you. Me, I'm afraid to
do
anything to change my life. With you I somehow feel that anything's possible. There, is that enough of a motive for you, Officer? And please don't say I'm trying to make a father figure out of an ex-cop. Believe me, old son, you are
nothing
whatsoever like
my
father, Conrad P. Binder.”

“How come you use your maiden name?”

“My last husband took everything else so I thought he should get back his name. Never liked it anyway. Anything
else
you'd like to know? About motives or clues or evidence or whatever else a cop looks for every time he meets a woman who likes him?”

She was smiling when she said it, but she turned away and dabbed at one eye and removed her glasses.

“Hey!” Winnie said, propping himself up on one elbow. “Hey.”

She turned back to him, and once again her eyes were opaque and unfathomable and absolutely dry. “Hey, what?” she said.

“Hey, lady,” Winnie said softly. “Hey, lady, I didn't mean to make you sad.”

She leaned over and kissed him. Then she took his hand and held it to her face. Then she turned and kissed the palm of that hand, and then every fingertip. “You wouldn't mind walking me upstairs, would you?” she whispered.

“I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree,” Winnie Farlowe said.

He followed Tess Binder through the living room to that sweeping staircase. She led him by the hand, but stopped for a second when he had to grab the rosewood banister.

“I'm okay,” he lied.

Tess led him through a set of double doors and switched on a lamp. The master bedroom was the biggest Winnie had ever seen outside a movie. It was done pretty much like the living room with statuary and paintings in gilt frames. The carpet was white but seemed heavier and whiter than the one downstairs. Tess pulled back the ivory silk bedspread. He'd never slept on peach-colored sheets. He'd never
seen
peach-colored sheets.

Tess said, “Hop in there and warm the linen. I'll be right back.”

She was gone for nearly five minutes. Winnie got undressed, wondering if it was okay to leave his clothes on the black leather chaise, a high-tech job that looked like a stealth bomber in flight. It was the only object in the entire house that Tess had picked out herself, and it clashed outrageously with the costly kitsch her husband had collected.

Winnie decided what the hell, stripped, tossing his things onto the black leather chaise, and jumped into bed. He was glad she hadn't seen his ragged boxer shorts.

He was under the covers when she reentered the room, wearing a primrose peignoir. Tess switched off the light, but instead of coming to bed, she walked to the window and threw open the drapes. Winnie could see the headlights behind her from Pacific Coast Highway, and heard voices from the restaurant parking lot across the narrow, yacht-choked channel. Tess stood with her back to the room for a full minute. He wished she'd hurry; the booze was hitting him hard and his eyes were getting heavy.

When she finally turned toward him, she stood motionless in the moonlight, next to a marble sculpture that Ralph had loved but left. The nymph extended a hand toward Winnie Farlowe. He found himself growing more alert. Agitated. Something! What was it? He couldn't guess what the nymph might be offering with her open-handed gesture. The hand was empty.
Déjà vu
?

We looked at each other in the same way then

But I don't remember where or when.

Tess Binder opened the tie on the peignoir and let it fall to her hips. Then she tugged again and let it fall to the floor. Winnie could see that she was small-breasted like the nymph, but a tad more voluptuous in the hips. The nymph was a size four.

He looked from Tess to the nymph and back again. They were the loveliest things he'd ever seen in his life: the nymph and Tess Binder. Both of them so cool and still and bewildering in the moonlight. He was sober enough to hope he'd remember it all in the morning. He forgot about the song, and that glimpse of something half remembered.

“Well, old son,” Tess said finally.

But it sounded like the voice came from the cold marble nymph.

8

Straight-ahead Guy

W
hen Winnie's eyes popped open he fully expected to find the twin buzzards perched on his bed, maws gaping and bloody. Instead, he found peach-colored sheets and a faint smell of jasmine and for a moment he couldn't remember where the hell he was.

Then he saw Tess sitting on that black futuristic chaise, staring through the open French doors, a cigarette glow reflecting off her glasses. She was wearing only the peignoir even though the offshore wind was cool and damp. Seeing her cleared his mind and he wanted to make love to her all over again. And he
did
remember most of that. He plumped his pillow and she turned toward him.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, lady.”

“It's three o'clock, go back to sleep.”

“I know it's three o'clock,” he said. “I always wake up at three o'clock.”

“Why?”

“The blood sugar,” Winnie said. “The booze makes it do a swan dive. Then you wake up and meet your hobgoblins. Mine're a couple of real characters. They stay with me about two-three hours on average. You got any?”

“Men,” she said. “Cruel heartless men I've known.”

“Lemme visit the head and then you can tell me about 'em if you want,” Winnie said.

He got out of bed. Suddenly self-conscious of his nakedness, he sucked in his gut and hurried into the bathroom. He wasn't sure, but she might've chuckled.

When he returned and jumped into bed, he said, “Gold faucets in the sinks and tub! They real gold?”

“They're as real as the Gold Coast itself,” she said. “They complement the stained-glass window, don't you think? My husband could've designed it, it's so like him. This statue was one of his investments in
art.
”

Tess always figured that Ralph was the only man in the entire history of The Golden Orange to have a life-sized marble nymph in his bedroom. Completely left to his
own
devices he'd probably have painted in the nipples and pubic hair like a Saudi sheik on Sunset Boulevard.

The ice in her voice made him pause, but he said, “Yeah, well, I like the window. All those sailboats and dolphins.”

“Newport Beach
belle époque
,” she said. “Nineteen seventy-nine. That's when my husband's company built this one. He could've afforded any house he wanted on this island, but he had that
arriviste's
insecurity. Wanted to be able to liquidate and run if the market failed, but it's hard to run with a house. On the other hand, some of the people around here are
fearlessly
nouveau. One conspicuous consumer completely remodeled his house five times in a four-year period. One of our Y.P.O.'s.”

“What's that?”

“Young Presidents' Organization. Have to do twenty million a year and have at least fifty employees, or something like that. They kick you out when you turn fifty. He's nouveau Jewish, that one. When I was growing up there wasn't a Jew at any of my father's clubs, which're probably still restricted—
de facto
if not
de jure.
Even my club was probably only fifteen percent Jewish until about ten years ago.”

“You got a problem with Jews?”

She shot a look at him and said, “Of course not.” Then she turned back toward the darkness.

“Me, I only got a problem with money,” Winnie said. “Problem is I got none, and no prospects for any. But I like talking about it. Unless it bothers you.”

“Not at all.”

“What's it cost to join your local golf club?”

“The initiation fee's about a hundred and thirty thousand. Waiting list of a year, at least.”

“I used to play a little,” Winnie said. “Read where it costs over a million to join in Tokyo and you gotta wait years. Guess the rich and shameless don't have it so bad around these parts. Not compared to Tokyo.”