Mad Girls In Love (35 page)

She raised her right hand. “Pass it down here, buddy.”

He squatted at the edge of the tub. As he handed her the bottle, the tips of their fingers touched. Her breasts floated just beneath the surface. After a minute she handed up the bottle, giving him a view of naked flesh. “Funny, but I've never heard of waterborne abductions. They always seem to occur in the woods.”

“That's true!” He took another drink and started walking toward the tub. “I'm coming in.”

“In your clothes?”

“Oh, right.” He set the bottle on the edge of the tub, yanked off his shoes, and pulled off his T-shirt. Then, turning his back to her, he stepped out of his jeans and underwear. Before Clancy Jane got more than an impression of white buttocks, he clasped his hands over his groin and spun around. Curly brown hairs protruded through his fingers. Then he slipped into the water.

She swam toward him, her feet skidding on the bottom of the tub. Then she noticed how he was staring. What if he thought she was in league with the Vellagrans? He might push her head under the water and hold her down until she stopped flailing. He lunged forward, sending a sheaf of water over the tub, and fell on his knees in front of her. He clasped his arms around her waist.

“Hey,” she said.

He pulled her down and silenced her with a kiss. She tried to push him away, but he seized her wrist and shoved it down between his legs. She felt something the width of a celery stalk, but only half as long. It occurred to her that
he
might be a Vellagran. She wrenched away from his grasp and surged through the bubbling water, trying to climb out of the tub. He grabbed her arm. “Hey, don't rush off,” he said and fell on top of her, pinning her against the steps.

“I'm not rushing, I'm—”

His mouth closed over her lips and nose, as if he were giving her artificial respiration. She felt him grope between her legs and insert his finger. She gripped the sides of the tub, desperately trying to stay above the churning water. He blew air into her mouth, and once again she was reminded of CPR.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand
,
three-one-thousand.
He was still probing with his finger. Then she felt his hands on her waist—
both
of his hands. So if it wasn't his finger down there, what in God's name was it? She began to struggle for air, and the boy, apparently mistaking her movements for passion, began to gasp. He groaned, and pushed hard against her.

“God, that was good,” he said, panting. He rolled off, and the celery stalk floated between his legs.

Oh, my God,
she thought.
That's what a Vellagran's penis looks like.

“Was it good for you, too, Mrs. Falk?” He gazed up at the stars. “I sure hope the Vellagrans didn't see.”

At the mention of aliens, she sobered a little. She scooted to the far end of the hot tub, then climbed out rather ungracefully and reached for the tequila bottle.

“Don't leave just yet,” he called. “I'm just getting revved up.”

 

That night a possum crawled into an electrical transformer, plunging the entire county into darkness. Danny was still outside, and he began to scream for Clancy Jane. Still feeling woozy from the tequila, she made her way to the deck. Danny was wild-eyed.

“It's an alien plot. They want to distract us,” he yelled, pointing at the sky. “So they can abduct us. Without any lights, they can do what they want.”

“I don't see anything.” Clancy Jane looked up. The moon was hovering over the trees. The air smelled of pine needles.

“Listen,” he whispered.

She was just about to tell him to leave, that she'd had enough, when she heard faint rumbling. At first, she thought it might actually
be
a spacecraft, but then four National Guard helicopters chugged across the sky, stirring the trees beneath them. They flew over her land regularly, and she always cursed them for waking her up.

“Man, it's a fucking invasion,” Danny was saying.

“No, it's not,” she said. The helicopters were making a grinding noise, and the windowpanes began to rattle. Danny began to jump up and down, his tiny penis swaying. “They see us!”

“These aren't aliens, they're just National Guard,” she said.

“No, these are
black
helicopters!” he cried.

“Now hold on just a minute,” she said testily. “These helicopters fly over here once a month. It's the goddamn Guard!”

“No, it's
them
.” He strode to the edge of the deck. “And it's high time I faced them. So don't you worry. I'll protect you, Mrs. Falk. I'll throw up a smoke screen and make them abduct me instead of you.” She could still hear the helicopters, way off in the distance. Danny hurried down the steps, then took off running across the meadow. Clancy Jane opened the door to go in, then glanced over her shoulder. Danny stood poised against the sky, as if he might heave himself into it. “Over here!” he cried. “I'm the one you want.”

 

A TAPED MESSAGE TO ROSALYN CARTER

A bee dropped out of the sky, emitting a halfhearted buzz, and landed on a martini glass that lay crooked in the sand. The bee rested on the rim, wings flicking, and began a slow counterclockwise crawl. I straightened my sunglasses and watched the insect, wondering how a bee could be attracted by the bitter remains of a martini, especially when the island was full of sweeter offerings.

Yesterday, on the way back from Ocho Rios, the tour driver pulled off the road and pointed out a pineapple plant. Another passenger, a man with curly black hair and deep-set eyes, smiled at me. He wore a red Izod shirt, white shorts, and flip-flops, but his cultured voice suggested a mansion back home filled with children and a beautiful wife, so I just brushed him off. Later, at the hotel swimming pool, I saw him again. Treading water in the deep end, we exchanged superficial information. His name is Louie DeChavannes, and he is a cardiovascular surgeon from New Orleans.

“I'm recently divorced—for the second time,” he told me, swimming closer. “Do I sound dangerous?”

He did. I flashed what I hoped was a mysterious smile, then swam over to the ladder, got out of the pool, and climbed to the high diving board. Below, in the blue water, the doctor was swimming laps, a perfect American crawl. I waited until he reached the shallow end, then I dove into the pool. When I surfaced, the doctor paddled over to me. “You look like Aphrodite,” he said. “Would you have dinner with me?”

We ended up skipping dinner. In fact, we never left my room. We undressed recklessly, and somehow overturned my perfume. The next morning, we ordered room service. Croissants, papaya, jam, and honey. Thick island coffee. To escape the overwhelming odor of Shalimar, we ate on the private terrace, which overlooked Montego Bay and a small sandy strip of land where a uniformed guard patrolled with a German shepherd and a double-barreled shotgun.

“You're a Libra to my Scorpio,” he said. “And a graduate of Harvard?”

“Ha'vard School of Interior Design,” I mumbled biting into a croissant. It made me feel guilty to mislead this man. I felt even worse indulging in pastries when the locals seemed malnourished. The beggars were waiting at the edges of everything, chasing after the tour vans, holding Coca-Colas and cigarettes up to the windows. Louie seemed to feel no such qualms. He snapped up his croissant, then licked the flakes from his fingers.

After we finished eating, he carried me to the bed and kissed the concave space between my breasts, then moved down to my stomach. “The Shalimar has to go, baby,” he said.

“Shalimar?” I said dreamily. “Why?”

“It's unworthy of you.” He moved his kisses up to my shoulder, then higher and higher until he reached my neck. “You need to wear Bandit. It's rumored that Garbo loved that scent. She was a goddess, and so are you. A goddamn goddess.”

 

We stopped by the concierge's desk and booked a day trip to Negril Beach, the supposed heart of hedonism—a mere ninety minutes away from the hotel on bad roads. When the tour van arrived, we found a seat in the back. The other passengers filed in: a blond couple, dressed in matching blue plaid shorts, who spoke in British accents; newlyweds from Missouri who sat in front of us and French kissed; two talkative women in straw hats and ceramic fruit jewelry. They passed a roll of peppermint Certs, urging all passengers to take one. There was also a stocky girl with a shaved head and lovely blue eyes who kept firing questions at the driver. He responded by turning up the radio. Nilsson was singing “Coconut.”

Negril was the sort of place where no one dressed for dinner, although the nicer restaurants and bars had signs posted:
NO GANJA
—
NO COCAINE
. We went to the most popular place, Rick's, where locals and tourists gather to watch the sunset. I was wearing a white fishnet shift over my black bikini, but no one even glanced in my direction. It was such a relief to fit into a place, to not have anyone point at me and whisper.

The waitress seated us on the terrace. I ordered a lobster salad and Chardonnay; Louie ordered a lobster tail and champagne. I wasn't sure what he was celebrating—the end of his vacation or the end of our fling. In a few days we'd be leaving this island. He'd go back to New Orleans and I'd go back to Crystal Falls. But I wasn't sad. I'd learned a few things on this trip—that I could travel alone and take a lover and not freak out. Over his shoulder, I could see the sun dropping down into the water with alarming speed.

When it disappeared, turning the water a ruddy pink, the diners stood up and applauded

Louie was looking just beyond the cove, to the cliffs, the rocks backlit by a tangerine sky. There was still enough light to see swimmers moving like ants across the cove's white sandy bottom.

“I'm going,” Louie said, pulling off his shirt. Then he reached into his trunks' pocket and pulled out his wallet and room key. He dropped everything on the table.

“Where?”

“To dive in. Why don't you join me? Put our stuff in your beach bag.”

“But if I go, who'll watch the bag?” I looked up at him.

“I guess you're stuck with it, Beauty.”

“Beauty?”

“Just an endearment. Hey, do you mind if I go by myself?”

Yes, I
do
mind, I wanted to say. Absolutely. Sit your handsome self down and drink your drink. But Louie had already kicked off his shoes and was heading along a red-sand path to the cliff. “Don't hit your head on the bottom,” I called. “I bet there's not a single neurosurgeon in Negril.”

From the depths of the terrace, a voice yelled, “There's not!”

Two tables over, a man grinned at me. “He's pulling a Zelda,” he called in a Yankee accent. He was balding, with a paunch. I gave the man a blank look.

“Zelda Fitzgerald?” the man continued. “The mad wife of F. Scott? One night on the Riviera she jumped into the ocean, a thirty-foot dive at
low
tide. Later she leaped into the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel, but that must have been anticlimactic.”

At the next table, the British woman said, “Your husband must be a risk-taker.”

“He's not my husband,” I told her.

“Too bad,” said the Zelda man. “Leapers make life exciting.”

I watched Louie climb to the top. A blond man jumped first, curling into the fetal position just before he struck the water. When he surfaced, he let out a war whoop, then swam over to the metal steps. High above the lagoon, standing on the ledge, Louie appeared to contemplate the blue water. From below, one of the scuba divers—a woman with long red hair—spit out her regulator. “Come on, beautiful,” called another, a long-limbed blonde, her breasts squeezing out of her wet suit.

I got up and moved over to the rail. I expected Louie to give a thumbs up, or at least a wave, but he kept his eyes on the water. He swung his arms over his head and inhaled. Then he bent his knees and sprang upward. He fell straight down, knifing into the water with hardly a splash.

When he didn't immediately surface, I gripped the rail and peered over the edge. He was swimming underwater, but he wasn't alone. The women divers circled him. Two minutes went by, then five. I realized that he wasn't coming up, that he was down there having a party, sipping from their air tanks. Behind me, a champagne cork exploded; I turned, and the waitress held out the spewing bottle. I could hear the tinny sound of exploding bubbles. I thought my heart might burst.

“Cheers,” said the waitress.

May 10, 1978

Montego Bay, Jamaica

 

Dear Dorothy STOP:

I've tried to call but nobody is ever home STOP I have decided to stay an extra week STOP Having fun STOP Don't worry STOP Love Bitsy STOP