The Only Girl in the Game (4 page)

Hugh Darren thought it over. “No.”

“So face it, kid. Drunk that he is, we need Jerry more than we need you.”

Hugh finished the dregs of his coffee and banged the cup down. “Damn it, I hate to leave here before the job is running the way I want it to.”

“So why leave?”

“I told you. He’s too often in my hair, Max.”

“In some ways you’re stupid, kid, but I think I can help some. I think I can keep him from laying it on you so much. I’ll talk to Al. Al will talk to Jerry. He’ll make it sound as if the beef came from me. Then here’s what you do for me. When I’m about to work on one of those … special problems … with Jerry, I’ll let you know. Then he’ll have the right to mess a little with the hotel end. Pay no attention to whatever he does. And I’ll let you know again when the problem is over. Any other time he gets in your way, let me know.”

“It isn’t … exactly what I hoped for.”

Max stood up and edged out of the booth. “But the way things are, it’s all you get. Right? So you take it and smile, because it’s more than I thought I’d give you, Darren.”

After Max had walked away on his tough bowed legs, Hugh Darren sat alone for ten minutes. I should get out of here, he thought. I knew that in any setup like this there’d be a stench here and there, and I thought I could stay clear of all that, but somehow it seems to get closer all the time. And maybe I get a little more indifferent to it all the time. And perhaps one day I’ll find out I’m right in the middle of it, and then it will be too late to get out.

The strange, almost superstitious, feeling of foreboding had been growing stronger these past two months. He had the sensation that he was moving toward some inexplicable disaster. And so, sitting there alone in the booth, he shook off apprehension by retreating into his dream. Four years ago he had found the island. A sixty-acre tropical island, part of the Berry Islands group, an island that stood by itself ten miles from Fraziers Hog Cay. Last year he had finished paying for it, had made the final payment to Her Majesty’s Government, and Peppercorn Cay was his. It had a small natural boat basin fronting on deep water.

When he had saved thirty thousand dollars of his own, he would begin to build the small, perfect resort hotel he had visualized. Thirty thousand was a dangerous minimum. He knew the people in Nassau who would back him with an additional ninety thousand.

So he would and could endure this place, and consort with people like Max Hanes, Al Marta, Gidge Allen, Harry Charm, Bobby Waldo, Beaver Brownell, Jerry Buckler and the rest of the hoodlums, just for the sake of the wonderful way his bank balance was increasing. Food and lodging were free. He could bank almost his entire salary, and the amount that remained after taxes was still impressive and comforting. Eight months were gone. Three full years would do it, and maybe an extra year could be endured if he wanted a better margin of safety.

He had nothing to fear from these people. They could touch him in no basic way. He had a hotel to run, and run it he would. So that one day, sooner than he had ever dared hope, he would have his own to run in the good ways that would suit him.

He signed his outgoing mail at a little after three, returned two phone calls, and then went to his room, changed to swim trunks, went down the rear stairs and through the
service alley and the big gate at the end of it, and across the perfect and velvety lawn toward the pool and the main patio, lengthening his stride with a pleasurable anticipation as he looked among the sunbathers for Betty Dawson.

• • •  two

Betty Dawson saw Hugh Darren approaching the pool area, turning his head from side to side as he looked for her. Though she had been expecting him, and had expected him nearly every day since this pleasant routine had been established, something reached in and gave her heart a sly rude pinch in that moment of recognition. And, as always, it gave her a feeling of mixed tenderness and exasperation which, vocalized, would have come out, “
Now
they tell me!”

It was a damnable thing, she thought, that They waited so long before exposing me to this kind of a guy. They threw all the clowns at me. They paraded their battalions of bums, and They said, “Sorry, this is all we got in the store.” So I made the best of it, and the road was full of rocks all the way. So after They bounce me until my heart is all over calluses,
then
They wheel Darren in and say, “We just didn’t happen to have this sort of thing in stock when you first started to trade with us, Betty.”

Today she had asked one of the pool boys to put the aluminum-and-plastic chaise over on the grass away from the pool apron, near but not shaded by a contrived clump of narrow trees, with a table nearby for drink, book, sun oil and cigarettes. She wore today the blue bandanna bikini, knowing well that it was the most demanding costume any woman could wear, and taking considerable justifiable pride in being able to wear one at twenty-seven. She knew she could take no credit for her basic structure—wide shoulders (almost too wide, almost boyish), high round breasts placed well apart, short waist, long legs, a straight and reliable framework of bone—but she felt damn well smug about keeping things the way they should be, devoting all the tiresome hours to keeping the waist limber and narrow, the belly tight and flat, the long thighs unpuckered.

You had to earn the right to wear a bikini from age seventeen on, and no matter how confident you felt in it, you
could not afford to forget you must never never walk away from your beloved while wearing one. This angle of vision turned even a Bardot into a slapstick comic. And so a certain amount of tactical maneuvering was required.

She was a tall brunette with unusually dark blue eyes, and a loveliness of face that was reminiscent of Liz Taylor, but without the flavor of self-satisfaction. It was a stronger face, and because strength breeds resistance, life had marked it here and there in small ways, bracketing the corners of the mouth, drawing little half-moon lines over glossy, quizzical brows.

When Hugh Darren paused she raised her arm, and he spotted her and came over, smiling. She moved her legs and he sat on the foot of the chaise and said, “You look like an import—brought here by a rich guest.”

“Ho! A week-end companion. A chippy, hey?”

“Rich guest with good taste.”

She huffed on her fingernails, looked at him with disdain, and pretended to buff them on her bare midriff. “I’m on duty out here, sir. Part of my employment contract, decorating the pool area.”

He looked at her meaningfully. “Any smaller suit than that one, Betty, and you’ll be running competition to those bare broads in the Safari Room. You’ll be taking business away from our headline talent—two shows nightly.”

“That mess is taking business away from itself. Max must have had holes in his head when he booked that crew into the big room. It’s so bad it’s giving free material to every comedian in town. And what do you mean, a smaller suit than this? There’s no such thing.”

“Don’t go away,” he said. He dropped his towel and went to the pool and dived in. She kept her head turned and watched him do his fast laps and the racing turns, watched the long arms reaching, the muscles of the shoulders sliding and meshing under his red-brown tan. She could sense the complete way he was expending himself. He came back to her, winded and gasping, and spread his towel beside her chaise and stretched out there.

When his breathing had quieted down, she lit a cigarette and reached down and placed it in the corner of his mouth.

“How went the battle last night, mother?” he asked her.

“My four exciting performances? The midnight and the two o’clock were square, so damn square I had to back away from my own stuff and do them ballads, which I do poorly and which I despise doing. The four o’clock was empty. Two
drunkey couples, not together. But the five-thirty aye em was a warming thing. Old fans rolled in, a party of fourteen, by gosh, with requests for this and that, and the excitement even brought some spooks in off the casino floor, jangling their silver dollars. So I had to nightcap my old buddies, and I didn’t get into the sack until seven, or out of it until two-thirty. Tonight I’m off, but tomorrow night if you could hang around for the midnight, I’ve got a new one I want you to catch. I’ll lead off with it right after the standard opening, so you won’t lose too much time.”

“What’s it about?”

“I won’t tell you much because I don’t want to spoil it. It is a lament-type thing, about a young girl who has grown up in the sports-car era, and who had adjusted well to love in Jaguars, M.G.’s, Triumphs, Mercedes and so on, but now she is in love with a guy who loves classic cars and he drives an ancient sixteen-cylinder Cad, and she just doesn’t know what the hell to do with all that space.”

“It sounds choice.”

“I’m saving it for a time you can catch it, Hugh.”

He sat up and grinned at her, and she couldn’t let him guess the weird way it made her heart thump to see that crooked wonderful grin. “I am so damn glad,” he said, “that the entertainment around here is entirely a casino operation and Max Hanes handles it with Al Malta’s help and advice, and nobody asks me anything about it.”

“So you don’t have to face up to the sad job of firing me?”

“Hell, I’d give you a single in the Safari Room.”

“And
that
would be a gasser, lad.”

“I mean I like it because I can be with you with no stress and strain, Betty. I know you’re under no obligation to be pleasant to me. Maybe you’ve never thought of it, but the job I’ve got is lonely. If I set up any teacher’s pets, it starts cliques and jealousies.”

“Some of those waitresses would make dandy pets.”

“Yes indeedy.”

“You don’t have to smack your chops like that. Jerry Buckler doesn’t have your scruples, Mr. D.”

“And I wouldn’t hire Jerry to throw water if I was on fire. He bitches me every chance he gets.”

“Don’t buck him too hard, Hugh.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’d like to keep you around for a while, that’s all. I’m a fixture here, dear. Two and a half years. Good ole Betty Dawson and her little songs of love and stuff. There’s no
room in any of these palaces along the Strip for … some kind of perfectionism, or idealism, or whatever you want to call it.”

“I just want to do my job and ignore all the rest of it.”

As he was not looking at her just then, she could look at him with most of her heart in her eyes and say, “I hope that’s the way it will work for you, Hugh. I really hope that’s the way it will be, until you can leave with all the bread you need for Pepperbox Island.”

“Peppercorn Cay. I’ll take you with me when I leave, Dawson.”

“Sure enough?”

“And you’ll be the only entertainment in my joint. Dawson of the Islands, they’ll call you. Of course, I’ll have to clean up some of your blue material.”

“My God, not that! I’ve got no voice and I can’t play much piano, so what would I have left? Oh oh! Here comes a flaw in your coffee break, Mister Manager.”

Jane Sanderson was walking toward them. She stopped at the foot of the chaise and said, “It’s nice to get out here once a day and find out how the rich people live. How are you, Betty?”

“Broiled. I endure this discomfort for the sake of my vast following. They appreciate a spurious look of health.”

“Oh, sure! Mr. Darren, this wire came for you.”

He began to smile as he started to read it.

LOYALTY DEMANDS WE FOLLOW OUR FAVORITE BONIFACE EVEN TO DEGRADING PLACES. CAN YOU SUITE US FOR A WEEK, STARTING FRIDAY? WE
’
RE ARRIVING ANYWAY, SO BE READY WITH ACCOMMODATIONS OR APOLOGIES. VICKY AND TEMP.

“They’ll be through redecorating 803 Thursday, won’t they?”

“That’s the schedule, Mr. D.”

“Have the desk set it up for Mr. and Mrs. Temple Shannard of Nassau. Fruit, flowers, free drinks on arrival.”

“Will they be billed at all?”

“Yes. And thanks, Jane.”

As Jane Sanderson walked away, Hugh handed the wire to Betty, saying, “Wonderful types. Real people, for a change.”

“They sound nice.”

“Temp owns a piece of the place I managed in the
Bahamas. He helped me fight my battles, backed me up when I needed it. He’s loaded. He inherited a little and made the rest out of the tourist business in the Islands. Vicky is English. Temp came originally from New Hampshire. He’s one of the guys who has promised to back me when I’m ready to go. You’ll like them and they’ll like you, Betty.”

“How old are they?”

“I’d say Temp is fifty, but he doesn’t look it. Vicky is close to thirty, I think. His first wife died. His kids are grown. He’s been married to Vicky for seven or eight years. They’ve wanted kids, but they haven’t been able to have any. They’ve got one of those … good relationships, Betty. They don’t have to go around patting and cooing for you to sense it. It’s just there, all the time.”

“Whenever I run into that bit, I get wistful. Wigwag that high-heeled dolly over there so we can drink some free liquor, buddy.” As the waitress started toward them, Betty sat up and snapped her white bathing cap in place and said, “Tell her another rum collins for me, please.” She was pleased she had timed it perfectly, so that while she was walking away from him he was too busy with the waitress to turn and see the rear view of the bikini.

She felt unaccountably depressed as she slid down into the dance of the blue water and began her slow and lazy trips up and down the pool. When the reason for the depression occurred to her, the realization created a sour, guilty amusement. She wanted him all to herself, to be his only friend, the only person he could talk to unguardedly. Now old friends were coming to restake old claims and talk to him of times and places she had never known, shouldering her out of the way for a little time.

Be careful, girl, she told herself. When it gets this strong and this important to you, it means that you’ll have to work twice as hard to keep it from showing, to keep him from guessing. With a man like Hugh, should he ever learn how deeply it goes with you, how it has become love, then he would respond to that love out of a sense of responsibility to you, if nothing more. And you don’t want that. It’s too late for that. And it has been too late for over two years.