The Memory of Eva Ryker (22 page)

“What about?” she sneered. “My precarious teetering between life and death?”

“And your strange brand of good fortune. Your landlord found you in time, lying on the bathroom floor. And you've got nice run-of-the-mill O-type blood, which the hospital has sitting around in gallon jugs. That's why you're here with catheters up your twat, swapping
bon mots
with me.”

“Jesus, Hall.” Her lids blinked desperately in an effort to blot the seeping moisture. “You really are a son of a bitch.”

“Possibly.” I handed her a Kleenex. “But I may also be the only friend you've got. Not that Daddy and Company aren't useful. Your hospital bills are paid off. Mike also stuffed green down the throats of your greasy young studs and other survivors of your recent bash. But even Daddy's money couldn't buy off the landlord. You've been tossed out.” I spread my hands. “La Dolce Vita is all gone.”

Eva's lips pressed tight. “Get fucked, Hall.”

“Act your age. What are you going to do when you get out? Sure, the Ferrari's gassed up and Mike left some cash, but what then?”

“Just what are you proposing?”

“Something more than what you've got.”

“How very righteous! And you've cast yourself in the role of Holy Father!”

“By necessity, Eva. I'm not letting you out of my sight.” I reached out a finger and gently touched her forehead. “You see, locked up in your skull is a memory. Fifty years ago you threw away the key.”

“Shut up!”

I grabbed her arms and shook them before her eyes. “That's the reason for this! And it's why you've tried to turn your entire life into a pile of shit!”

She turned from my grasp and clamped both hands over her ears. “Leave me alone! God damn …”

“I can help …”

“No!” she screamed hysterically. “Just get out! Get the hell out of my life!”

She bent double as the dam broke. I found myself sitting on the bed, stroking her hair. Murmuring guilty words of comfort. Wiping the eyes of a face stretched like pulled taffy under the weight of tears. Let it all out, Eva. It's all for the best. Catharsis, courtesy of Norman the Good.

I held her hand in mine and tried to ignore any lingering taint of treachery.

Five days later I watched Eva Ryker walk toward her Ferrari parked in the hospital lot. She already had the key in hand before jumping in. The engine turned over. And over and over and over.

I knocked on the door and held up the distributor cap for her to see. “This joins us at the hip.”

Leaning against the car, I waited for her string of swearing to end. “Are you through?”

“… you miserable bastard. I'm …”

“That's enough, Eva. You're going to at least pretend to be a civilized human being, or you're not going anywhere.”

She slow-boiled in a dormant state. “Just what do you have in mind?”

I bent inside the car and snatched the keys from the ignition. “Move over.”

Walking to the front of the Ferrari, I installed the cap. A quick slam of the hood and I slipped in the driver's seat. The engine caught with typical Italian shrieking and propelled us out of the parking lot onto the Paseo de las Delicias.

Eva slumped down in the bucket seat. “Okay, Hall. I consider myself kidnapped. What next?”

“Oh, don't fret, Eva. Just a little spin down to Balerma. I've rented a beach house there.”

Her eyes widened. “That's over three hundred miles away!”

“Quite right.” I smiled, dodging a produce truck as we crossed the bridge over the Manzanares River. “Nothing so therapeutic as a change of scenery.”

“Oh really?” She folded her arms tight across her chest. “And what if I decide not to play along with this farce?”

“I don't think you'd leave your car.” My thumb pointed backward. “And all your clothes are in the trunk. Not many alternatives, I should think.”

Her frown cracked a little. “Don't expect me to sleep with you.”

I accelerated around a Fiat sedan, then throttled down to cruising speed. “Believe me, my dear, I have no designs on your virginal white flesh.”

Eva cinched her seat belt tight as the Ferrari sped south, away from Madrid.

Spain was up to technicolor-travelogue standards during the long drive south to the Mediterranean. The shadow of the Ferrari grew longer and longer on the road as I pushed at a steady hundred twenty kilos through Getafe and Pinto and Aranjuez and Ocana and Madridejos and Puerto Lapiz.

Headlights flashed on as the orange glow faded in the west and the big Italian engine boomed out the stretch through Manzanares and Valdepeñas and La Carolina.

We stopped for the night at Bailen, registering at La Plaza de la Naranja, just off the main road. Eva stormed unceremoniously to her room, but did agree to eat dinner with me, a minor improvement in our cold war.

At the risk of seeming provincial, I've never approved of Spanish dining etiquette. A late supper
cum
midnight snack doesn't agree with my digestive tract. Eva and I squinted at the menus in the semidarkness and finally managed to order Cochinillo asado, Polio al Barco, and sangria by a quarter to eleven.

I glanced at a neighboring table. “The food looks edible, anyway.”

“Are you speaking as a gourmet?”

“Not really. But my wife's cooking does spoil me.”

“Oh, yes. Janet, isn't it?”

“Janice.”

She turned her head to study me. “For some reason, I can't see you married. You have the look of a rumpled, unpressed bachelor.”

I smiled as the sangria arrived. “Sorry to break your heart.” I passed her a glass. “Fifteen years of matrimony. Sixteen in September.”

Eva took a healthy gulp. “A whirlwind courtship, I suppose.”

“Naturally. She was too good an agent to lose.”

“Such an unbridled romantic.” Another sip. “Kids?”

“None with Jan. A son by my first marriage.”

Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “You? Twice-bitten?”

“Sad but true.”

“The girl back home, right?”

“In Honolulu.”

Eva's glass made a wide swing toward her mouth. “Are you sure you're from Hawaii? Shouldn't you be … blond and sun-kissed?”

“Not necessarily. Among rich haoles, you do well to be nondescript and unethnic. Eastern Seaboard Wasp, with a mere hint of a tan, is considered very proper.”

Eva grinned. “Did you qualify?”

“We both did. Louise and I.” I toyed with my fork. “But … things happen. We separated before I went into the Army. After the war, I didn't come back. We still see each other every year or so, when I visit Ron.” I shrugged. “Christmas and birthday cards and all that. My son doesn't understand, I'm afraid.” I laughed tightly. “Unlike Louise, who understands
everything
. Or so she tells me when we meet. All knowing and forgiving.” My hand dropped the fork. “Somehow, though, I get the feeling she wouldn't care too much if I dropped dead.”

Eva sighed and settled back in her chair. I felt very comfortable in the room-within-a-room we were building out of sangria and small talk.

“Tell me something, Hall.”

“Hm?”

“Do you find me attractive?”

“Women! This afternoon you sweated over your fate worse than death, and now you want me to meter your sex appeal?”

Eva flushed pale pink. “Well?”

Candlelight cast a kind glow on her face and bare shoulders, framed by a simple black dress.

“The answer's yes. You're very lovely.”

Her lips curled in Gioconda irony. “How earnest, Hall.”

“I'm sorry,” I said gently. “But I don't feel safe letting it warm up.”

“That's very pure. And quite unworldly.”

“Maybe.”

“Then why the unbreakable vows with Wifey?”

I raised both hands. “We're hot for each other.”

“I can imagine! A regular duel of the titans.”

“Cut it out, Eva. You don't have to play slut queen for my benefit. You don't love me. I'm not even sure you like me. So it's all moot sparring.”

“You know,” she drawled, “I'm not sure you're entirely normal.”

“Such veiled barbs. You're a master, Eva.”

The wine glass circled in for a landing. “Once I read someone—a literary critic, I think—who said that American novelists form a long daisy chain of failed queers.”

“Then I must be the missing link.”

Wine sputtered across the table. I jumped up and pounded her on the back as clattering dinnerware died and people stopped, food in hand, to stare at us.

Eva finally regained her breath. There wasn't a sound in the dining room. Every eye trained on us.

We glanced at each other across the table and broke up.

“Good God, Hall, how much did we drink last night?”

The car's exhaust boomed along with my head as I maneuvered out on the road leaving Bailen. “I lost count after the third pitcher.”

Eva gingerly cradled her skull. “And you were supposed to reform me.”

After a stop for coffee we felt slightly more human.

“Well, I told you my life story last night.” I glanced at Eva as we slowed while passing through Padul. “How about reciprocating?”

Her eyes lost their focus as she gazed out the window. “Where do I begin? There's so much to tell! I was born of poor and humble parents …”

“Spare me your wit. Before lunch, at any rate.” I braked the Ferrari as we entered Durcal. “Did you have many friends as a kid?”

“Friends? Sure, plenty. Mostly rich snots, though. One time …”

She chattered for the next two hours as we flew down the empty road to Motril and cruised along the Mediterranean toward Balerma. All about her girlfriends who ripped up her paper dolls and her airedale, Skipper, who died of kidney stones and her first date and college and her moving to Switzerland and her sex life and her money and how her father was driving her to ruin.

But never in all the welter of half truths did she mention a thing about the
Titanic
.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at the little beach house just past the outskirts of Balerma near the Punta del Moro.

Eva walked through the living room to the big glass doors sliding onto the balcony facing the sea. I sat the luggage on the floor and stood behind her.

“Quite a scene,” I said.

She silently studied the orange cliffs loping down to the huge crescent beach curving around us. An urgent wind blew off the sea and the breaking waves were some of the largest I'd ever seen on the Mediterranean. There wasn't another human in sight.

“It's beautiful,” she whispered, before her voice resumed its hearty badgering mold. “So this is your torture chamber. Very plush.”

“I'm glad you approve.” I tugged the suitcases toward the bedrooms. “No talkathons tonight, Eva. Ferrari lag. We'll get a fresh start in the morning. There's something I want to show you tomorrow. You'll need your energy.”

Eva's first surprise came at seven
A.M.
, when I showed her the carport at the side of the cottage.

“A jeep?” She blinked incredulously as I climbed behind the wheel. “Where in hell are you taking me?”

“Where finicky Italian sports cars fear to tread.” I held out my hand. “All aboard.”

We cruised along a paved highway to Almeria, then over unmarked dirt tracks into the desert roads of boulders and sand and wishful thinking. Fortunately, I'm blessed with a boy scout's canny sense of direction.

“Hall, have you lost your mind?”

“Patience, Eva.” I kicked into four-wheel drive, skidded us atop a sand dune, and cut the motor. “Come with me.”

I carried a picnic basket and helped Eva through the blasted Martian landscape, trying to ignore the painful chafing of clothes against scar tissue as we rose over the last knoll. Then I pointed. “Curious, no?”

She gaped at a scene of war and devastation. The snaky skeleton of railroad tracks, blackened by dynamite scars, lay twisted like coat hangers. An old steam locomotive sprawled on its back, with upturned steel wheels sparkling in the sun. A drunken conga line of splintered passenger coaches trailed behind the engine at crazy angles. Two crows circled warily above, but we were the only people in sight.

“What in God's name happened?”

I steadied her as we plunged through the sand toward the train. “It's a movie, Eva. They shot here last summer. ‘Lawrence of Arabia,' it's called. Due for release this Christmas.” I threw out my arms at the wide open spaces. “Tourists haven't got wind of it yet. But it'll be picked clean before too long. I thought you'd like to see it. Illusions like this don't last forever.”

We spent the next couple of hours poking through the rubble. She climbed atop the roof of one of the coaches and forced me to follow. The perfect picnic spot, she said.

Eva was not a shy eater. I spent most of my time passing her hard-boiled eggs, pepper, and celery stalks.

“Hall,” she mumbled around a mouthful of roast beef, “how could you give all of this up?”

“‘This?'”

“The movie business, I mean. You were in it, weren't you?”

“In my flaming youth.”

“Didn't you like it?”

“Most of the time I spent under house arrest at the writers' block at Metro. I saw myself as a latter-day Algonquin wit fighting the corrupt temple of Mammon. But it didn't play; so I got out.”

“Ever regret it?”

“Hell, no!” I slapped my thigh in mock gaiety. “Look at all the swell folks I've met. You, for one. And your father, not to mention the interesting company he keeps.”

She frowned gravely. “What do you mean?”

“In the last few months I've learned some marvelous things about William Ryker. Get too close and you end up singed. Scarred for life.”