L.A. 46, page 13
Terrified and embarrassed by what he was trying to do, still clinging to the melon, trying to keep it between them, she cursed him and tried to kick him. “You leave me alone, you old son of a bitch,” she cursed him.
But Mr. Cronkite cursed her right back and kept on worrying at her until, in desperation, she squirmed as far up on the bed as she could and lifting the melon with both hands she burst it over his bald head, then used one of the spike heels she’d been wearing to kick him where it would hurt him the most. And after he staggered, moaning, out of the house, holding himself with both hands and babbling drunkenly that she’d ruined him for life, she brushed cold melon pulp from her lap, picked up her wrapper from the floor, and neither she nor her mother had ever seen Mr. Cronkite again.
Nor had she ever told Vera about Mr. Cronkite or the incident. If she had, Vera would have said it was her fault, that she hadn’t acted like a lady. And just how could you act like a lady with a nasty old man trying to get his false teeth in your crotch?
The slap of the waves was so loud on the ocean side of the court that Wally had to raise his voice to make her hear him as he unlocked the door of the unit “Why so sober?”
“I was just thinking of something.”
“Something pleasant, I hope?”
“No.”
Wally gripped her shoulders as they stood in the open doorway. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? We can still go to the party, you know.”
Ruby studied his face for a moment, then, her voice small, she asked, “Don’t you want me, Wally?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, God yes,” Wally said as he held her close to him and kissed her.
For a moment, Ruby kissed back as fiercely as he was kissing her, their bodies straining together in the doorway. Then, worried that the occupants of one of the other units might be watching them, she put her hands on his chest and pushed him away almost as fiercely. “Please, Wally. At least wait until the boy brings our bags and we can close the door.”
Wally had forgotten the bags. “Oh, yes. The bags.” Ruby examined the unit while they waited. It was as nice as she’d known it would be. Everything Wally did was nice. The sitting room was large and expensively furnished. There was a king-sized bed in the bedroom. Even the ceiling of the bathroom was tiled. She parted the drapes in the front window and peered out. As far as she could see in the moonlight was sand and water, water that stretched as far as the horizon. She felt both excited and a little sad. The unit probably cost as much for one night as most people spent for their vacation. She clung to the thought. Wally had to like her a little. She wasn’t just another piece of tail to him. He had to like her a little to be willing to pay this much for her cherry.
She sat on the arm of one of the overstuffed chairs. “Well, here we are.”
“Here we are,” Wally agreed.
Ruby studied his face through the naturally long eyelashes that persisted in fluttering down over her cheeks. Wally was almost as nervous as she was. He started to unbutton his coat, and didn’t. He walked to the windows and back. He sat in a chair, one long leg over the arm, then got up again and lighted one of the big cigars that he insisted on smoking because he thought they made him look older.
“You like the place?” he asked, concerned.
“Very much,” Ruby assured him.
An awkward silence followed while they waited for the attendant to bring their luggage. When he did and Wally had tipped him two dollars and closed the door behind him, a second long silence followed his departure.
Ruby forced herself to be practical. If it had to be, it had to be. There had to be a first time for everything. She was glad it was going to be with Wally. Getting to her feet, she crossed the room to him and lifted her face to be kissed.
“I love you, Wally.”
“I love you, Ruby.”
“I’ll only be a minute. But, please. Don’t come in until I call you.”
“All right.”
Ruby started to close the bedroom door, and didn’t. Knowing Wally was watching her, she turned down the satin spread and the top sheet on the king-sized bed, smoothing them neatly the way Gloria Ames had done in Jungle Fever the first night she’d stayed with the white hunter, then walked into the bathroom to undress, fully conscious for the first time that she’d never see Gloria Ames in another picture. Miss Ames was dead. The story in the evening paper said she’d taken too many sleeping pills and that her psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Gam who, she’d been proud to point out to Wally, lived in the same building she did, had been questioned to see if he knew any reason why she might want to take her life and where she had gotten the overdose of sleeping pills.
It didn’t seem possible. Miss Ames had so much to live for.
Her fingers shaking slightly, Ruby unzippered the side of her dress, hung it on a hook to one side of the bathroom door, then studied herself in the full-length mirror as she unhooked her bra and worked her briefs down over her hips. Some girls were pretty there. Some weren’t. She thought she was. She hoped Wally liked her. Still, if he was like most of the other boys she’d dated, he probably wouldn’t notice. When boys had that on their minds, they didn’t care what you looked like. All you had to be was a girl.
She unfastened her garters and her garter belt, then sat on the edge of the bathtub to take off her shoes and her stockings.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t help feeling a little cheap, especially after Wally had insisted on taking her to meet his parents that afternoon and his mother and father had been so nice to her.
His mother had called her a sweet child.
“So you are Ruby,” she’d smiled, “the girl Wally has been raving about all week. I’m glad to know you, my dear. And, my son having the good taste he has, you’re just as sweet and charming a child as I knew you would be.”
Ruby wet her thumb and rubbed at the red mark one of her garters had left on her leg. That was what she had said. Not putting on. A real lady.
Wally’s father had been just as nice. Even with all his money and his name on signs all over the city, Mr. Faber had made her feel as if she was every bit as good as they were.
After they’d talked for a while, they’d all had tea and cookies, tea in bone china cups poured from a sterling silver tea set. You could tell it was sterling just by looking at it. And if she lived to be a hundred years old, she’d never forget their house. It was the kind of house you seldom saw except in a picture, huge, with a high, beamed ceiling in the living room, with tall French windows and a grand piano, and a butler to open the door and a uniformed maid to pass the cups after she’d filled them with tea.
Ruby realized she was crying and brushed at her cheeks with the back of her hand. She wasn’t cheating Wally. He’d get what he wanted. But in a way she was cheating his folks. They thought she was a “sweet child.”
She found her compact in her purse and powdered the tearstains on her cheeks. On the other hand, just how many boys in eight-year-old Fords and bald Mr. Cronkites and fat slobs of mothers and sisters who hacked, then spit in the sink and turned on the garbage disposal, had Mrs. Wallace K. Faber III had to put up with? She had her own life to lead. Hawaii was two thousand miles from Los Angeles. And she didn’t write very good letters.
Standing up, she looked in the mirror a last time, then walked barefoot into the bedroom and lay on the bed with only a corner of the top sheet covering her.
“You can come in now, Wally.”
14
Continued fair and warm . . . sunny today and tomorrow with variable high clouds . . . little change in temperature . . . gusty northwest winds down local canyons . . . some spotty early morning coastal fog.
It was twenty-five minutes of one by the electric clock on the dashboard when Ruby and Wally returned to the Casa del Sol. Wally found a parking space a half block from the building and, oblivious of the occasional late passersby on the walk, they strained against each other as they kissed.
“You feel all right?” Wally asked, concerned. “You aren’t sick, or anything?”
“No.”
“And you won’t get into any trouble with your sister?”
“I can take care of Vera.”
“Then I suppose I’d better get started for Dago.”
“I suppose so,” Ruby agreed, reluctantly. “But you will phone me tomorrow afternoon, just as soon as you can?”
“You know I will, baby.”
Wally got out of the car and walked around it and opened the door for her and helped her out onto the sidewalk and cupped and kissed her one last time. Then, cocking his uniform cap at a jaunty angle, he swaggered back to his car, maneuvered it in a deft U-tum, and drove back down the hill, beeping his horn lightly as he turned the corner.
One gloved hand raised in farewell, Ruby watched the taillights of the big car out of sight, then turned and walked up the hill under the dusty olive and eucalyptus trees, the rhythmic tapping of her spike heels on the cement a pleasant sound in the hushed stillness of the night. It felt almost as if her feet weren’t touching the walk. So Miss Ames was dead. So? She didn’t have to pretend she was someone anymore. She was.
She turned into the building, then stopped under the lights on either side of the entrance arch and took her compact from her purse and studied her face in the mirror to make certain her hair was in place and her makeup wasn’t smeared. She didn’t want a scene with Vera. Not tonight. That would be too much.
Satisfied that she looked all right, she returned her compact to her purse and continued on toward the front stairs and stopped again as Romero wove out of the semidarkness in front of the bank of mailboxes.
“Well. Look who’s just coming home,” he said thickly. “You’re a little late tonight, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Ruby admitted. “I guess I am. A little. But I don’t see it’s any of your business.”
She tried to walk on and Romero blocked the way to the stairs with his arm. “What’s the hurry?”
“You just said it. It’s late.”
Romero continued to block her way. “But not too late for you to let that young punk of a Marine I just saw you with cop a last few feels while he kissed you good night.” Romero drank from the neck of the bottle he was carrying in a brown paper bag. “How was he, honey? Pretty good?”
Ruby pushed at the muscular arm keeping her from the stairs. “Please, Mr. Romero. Let me by.”
Dropping his arm to her waist, Romero tried to pull her to him and kiss her. “Oh, no. Not until you’ve been nice to me. Come on. How about a little kiss, honey?”
More annoyed than frightened, Ruby twisted away from him. “Hah. That will be the day.”
She climbed the stairs to the second floor balcony looking back over her shoulder to make certain he wasn’t following her. The nerve of the dirty Mex. She’d never given the punch-drunk fool so much as a pleasant look. What did he think she was, for free or something?
At the top of the stairs she paused before continuing on up to the third floor. There were lights in the Katzes’ and the Mazerics’ and Colette’s apartments, but all of the other windows she could see were dark. She tried to see up to the third floor and couldn’t because of the overhang. She hoped Vera wasn’t waiting up for her. She didn’t want Vera picking at her because she’d stayed out so late. She didn’t want Vera to know anything about what she intended to do. Vera would say she was too young.
Then, there was the other problem. She still didn’t know what she was going to do if Mr. and Mrs. Faber insisted on meeting her sister and her brother-in-law. Tom was all right. He didn’t pretend to be anything but what he was. But if Vera put on her hoity-toity act, then picked her nose or scratched herself or hacked in front of Wally’s mother, she’d die. She’d lie right down and die.
She climbed the stairs to the third floor. There was no light in the living room but there was a light in their kitchenette. She took a deep breath and exhaled, then unlocked the door with her key and continued on into the kitchenette to get it over with.
Vera was in her nightgown, getting a drink of water. “Well. It’s about time,” she greeted her. “I ’most gave you up. How was the party?”
Ruby started to ask what party and remembered just in time. “It was fine,” she said as she took off her gloves. “It lasted kinda late, didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, sat around and talked and played games and danced. You know. Kid stuff.”
“Do they have a nice house?”
“Very nice.”
“Who’d you go with?”
“A boy from school. Why?”
“I just wondered. You didn’t say in your note. The same boy you’ve been out with every night this week?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“Wally.”
“Oh, yes. Of course, Wally. Did you park on the way home?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I just let him kiss me a few times. You have to let them do that or boys won’t take you out.”
“I know,” Vera said. “Believe it or not, I used to date. But you didn’t do nothing bad with him, did you, Ruby?”
“No.”
Vera yawned and scratched herself where she itched. “That’s good. You know what I’ve always told you.”
“Yes,” Ruby said. “I know. May I go to bed now, Vera?”
“Who’s keeping you up? Tom’s been asleep a half hour.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night, kid.”
Ruby went into her own room and took off her chiffon scarf and put it and her gloves in a drawer, then got her nightdress and robe from the closet and thought, “Oh, my God, here we go again,” as Vera followed her into the room and sat on the edge of her bed.
“I knew there was something I wanted to tell you,” her sister said. “Did you miss it, kid!”
Ruby let down and combed her hair. “What did I miss?”
“The excitement.”
“Where?”
“Right here. You know Mrs. Mazeric?”
“Of course.”
“Well, she left here around one o’clock this afternoon and no one has seen her since then.”
Ruby was genuinely concerned. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes,” Vera said. “At first all they did was worry. But when Tom and I came up about a half hour ago, they had Mr. Morton and the police looking for her. At first I thought maybe some punks had pulled her into a car. You know, you’re always reading about things like that in the paper.”
“I know.”
“That’s why I worry when you’re out. But the longer she’s gone, the more I wonder if maybe she hasn’t got a boyfriend and they’re shacked up somewhere. Either that, or she’s run off with some guy.”
Ruby fastened a rubber band around her pony tail. “Oh, now, Vera. Please. That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
Vera was smug. “Maybe not. But you know how those foreigners are. That’s all they ever think about. It could be she’s as bad as Romero. And that’s another thing. You should see the Mex tart he brought home with him tonight. In a nice building like this. Her and a kid about six years old. And he had the nerve to introduce them to me. ‘Mrs. Wylie, my wife and son. Alicia, Mrs. Wylie.’ And did I put the bum on him.”
Ruby unzippered the side of her dress. “Maybe she is his wife. Maybe you hurt his feelings and that’s why he treated me the way he did just now.”
Vera was immediately protective. “How did he treat you? What did he do to you?”
Ruby was sorry she’d mentioned the incident. “He didn’t do anything. But he’s been drinking. And as I passed the mailboxes, he—” she caught at the hem of her dress with both hands, pulled it over her head, then instead of continuing talking, she turned, puzzled, to face her sister as the older woman gasped:
“Oh, my God.”
“Now what?”
“Yes. I’ll just bet you let him kiss you a few times.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about, she asks me. Well, I’ll tell you. Where are your pants, you dirty little slut? And don’t tell me you didn’t wear any. I know better. You always wear pants. What did you do, leave them in the back seat of Wally’s car?”
Ruby looked at the lower half of her body and felt her face turn crimson. When she’d dressed again, she’d put on her bra and her stockings and her garter belt, but with Wally sitting on the edge of the tub, just as if they were already married, telling her how pretty she was, she’d been so happy and so excited, she’d forgotten to put on her briefs. As far as she knew they were still lying on the floor of the bathroom in the motel on the beach.
“I—I can explain, Vera,” she began. “I—”
Vera got up from the bed and slapped her as hard as she could, first with one hand, then the other. “Don’t bother lying to me. If your pants being gone isn’t proof, your face is. I wouldn’t believe anything you said if you swore on a stack of Bibles. And I wanted you to be different. I hoped maybe you’d escaped it But no. You’re as bad as our mother was. How many times did you let him do it to you? And how many other boys have you been with? Half of the boys in your class? All of them?” Tears streaming down her face, Ruby made no attempt to defend herself other than back away. “Please, Vera. Don’t talk to me like that. And don’t hit me anymore. I know you’ve been good to me and I appreciate it. But don’t make me do or say anything I’ll be sorry for. Honest to God, I—”
Vera hit her with her clenched fists, then yanked her pony tail so hard the younger girl screamed. “Keep His name out of this. And don’t please Vera me. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a smart slut.” She punctuated her sermon with another flurry of slaps. “What’s this Wally’s last name? What’s his address? I want to have a talk with his parents. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Tonight. Now stop that damn bawling and tell me his last name and where he lives.”
