Crowned Heads (21 page)

By the time they got back to the hotel she knew everybody had heard how she had hit the burro with the stick. She sat on her patio and tried to meditate, but she was in an agitated state. At the cocktail hour, Bud and the other tennis players came out of their cabaña and went along the walkway, none of them looking at her. She sat, burning with shame and hot resentment. She hadn’t meant to hit the little beast, only it wouldn’t go, what was she to have done?

She was surer than ever that Bud had leaked information about the Stan Wyckoff scandal. Of course it was all true, so what could she do? They had been deeply involved, she and the baseball player, and when the Perkies people had got wind of the affair they had made it known that they didn’t want their spokeswoman linked with a black man, a prominent and married one to boot. She was crazy for him, but even if he’d been free, he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t marry her. People said it was her mother who objected, but it had been his; her son was not going to many a white woman, no matter how famous. The scandal erupted at a public function. Stan was being honored as Player of the Year at a banquet at the Ambassador Hotel, and it was during the after-dinner speeches, when the jokes had become broader and the talk rougher, that Lorna Doone made her appearance. She was got up like a kootch dancer, in spangled bra and tights, she wore a black Afro wig, and her body was covered with brown make-up. She sauntered casually up to the dais, where the honored guest, her lover, sat, and stood before him, one hand on her hip, the other toying with the curly wig. Well, Stan, she said, am I black enough for you now? She took a drink from the table and dashed it in his face, then turned and just as casually sauntered from the room.

Effective, but it scotched the Perkies contract. People talked about it for weeks.

She never understood why she did the things she did. She was not proud of her past, merely grateful that she had got away with it for so long. Nor was she particularly ashamed; it was the way she was, that was all. The front she had put up for so many years hid many secrets, ones even
Confidential
had never managed to expose. What if they had printed the true story? She had had her first sexual experience at thirteen—not so early, as it turned out when she had compared notes with other women. There was never any notion of love from his side; he had taken, she had given. Once, then many times. After him others, older, more grown up, sophisticated; they took, she gave. Lorna Dumb.

In high school, since she twirled a baton in the band, she came in contact with a lot of athletes; she became a sort of “sports enthusiast,” and obliged each of the teams through the seasons, football in the autumn, hockey and basketball in winter, baseball in the spring, and for extra measure there were counselors at a camp up in Malibu; she “saw” to them all. Lorna Doone, the all-American cookie. Later she spent a lot of time in Errol Flynn’s trailer; he’d told her that he wanted to see how the cookie crumbled. But what went on in the trailer didn’t hit the papers, never got beyond gossip on the set, and her mother never knew.

She had been with the industrialist for four years before Sam, and no one would have believed what went on behind the wall, beyond the manicured lawn and neat flower beds. If Hedda or Louella knew, they never printed it. But she was used to gossip. The scandal over Stan hadn’t fazed her; she planted herself firmly at prominent tables in the Polo Lounge or at the Brown Derby, daring anyone to laugh at her. They hadn’t; only behind her back, but she was used to that, too; anyway, who cared what people were saying over their Cobb salad at the Derby?

Still, somewhere along the line it had dawned on her what a fraud she was. Lorna Doom.

She sat watching the fishing boats come in, hand pressed against her breast, feeling the flutter. Peace, she thought; peace. But where was it? Day by day she could sense it departing, like a bird within grasp suddenly eluding her. When she went to have her shower the water was cold, and she had to shout for the boy to come and light the fire under the boiler. He came, eventually. Fortunately she didn’t have to face anyone in the dining room over the burro incident, for she was to dine at Joan Taylor’s. She put on some of her prettiest things and walked up the beach. There was the usual crowd at the yacht club, sitting out on the deck, and bobbing at their moorings the usual boats, the
Molly g,
the
Alrae,
the
Paradiso
from San Francisco, the
I Dream of Jennie.
She saw, leaning on the rail, the club’s owner, an American called Jack. She stopped and asked him about the regatta. He told her there had been a series of bad storms in the California Gulf, and that the boats in the race had been forced to shelter at Cabo San Lucas until fairer weather. When would that be? she asked. Jack didn’t know; who could tell when storms might blow themselves out? She said she was expecting friends, the Sandlers from La Jolla. Yes, Jack knew the
MorryEll,
but he had no idea when they might be arriving.

Jack smoked French cigarettes, which he had flown in from Martinique; she suddenly found herself engulfed by their aroma. She still had not smoked since leaving Los Angeles, but she stopped at the cash register and bought a pack of the same brand.

She was surprised to find the Tashkents at Joan’s house, and she thought, Oh, God, one of those evenings. But Bob proved a good host, warm and friendly, and no one made any bones about the fact that there was a movie star in their midst. The Tashkents—her name was Ethel, his Irving—were diffident, and careful not to look at Lorna for too long at a time. She was glad she’d worn her jade necklace, and let the older woman admire it. Ethel had one of those comical Yiddish accents, and it turned out that the Tashkents came from Santa Monica, too. Before retiring, they had owned Tashkent’s Select Kosher Deli at the beach, close to where the young Lorna Doone had gone to school at Santa Monica High. Tashkent, Tashkent; Lorna tried to remember. No, sorry, she couldn’t recall Tashkent’s Select Kosher Deli.

Joan was interested in knowing what Fedora was really like; Lorna disappointed her by saying they’d never met, none of their scenes were together and Fedora had remained hidden in her hotel room during most of the filming of
The Miracle of Santa Cristi.
Inevitably the name of William Marsh came up; she didn’t like talking about Willie, but since they asked … He had been one of the most prominent figures in Hollywood for many years, and since his success in the Bobbitt films, one of the most popular and beloved. It was perhaps a blessing that Bee Marsh had died last year, and hadn’t lived to see the tragedy; or perhaps if she had lived, it never would have happened. The others, of course, were well acquainted with the details of that ghastly night last summer; the papers had been full of them for months.

Upon arriving, Lorna had accepted only her usual pre-dinner glass of wine, which she drank right down, and then, because it was, she said, a “special occasion,” she allowed herself to be persuaded to have one of the frozen margaritas the others were having, and which Bob Somers made so well. She interested herself in Bob, taking his arm and drawing him across the room away from the others, admiring the work he had done on the house. And all with his own hands? Remarkable. She was in awe, she said, of a man who could do things. Why, he ought to have been an architect. Bob said he preferred fishing.

On one wall was a series of framed prints, featuring a serpent similar to that in the bar mural at the hotel, with the feathered bird over it. He told her that in Mexico the snake had been a prevalent symbol in native art when Hernando Cortés had come to the New World, only a few years after Columbus. Believing he was the incarnation of their god, Quetzalcoatl, they welcomed the Spaniard, little knowing that he was to destroy them. After the great Montezuma was slain, when Cortés was further exploring the country, legend had it that he had come to the village of Ixcal, afterward christened Boca de Oro, the mouth of gold. The legend told that high up on the Sleeping Maiden was a temple to Quetzalcoatl, a great gateway with stairs and a sacrificial altar in the shape of a jaguar, whose eyes were jade. Quetzalcoatl was called the Plumed Serpent, and was represented by the snake, whose crown of plumes was the feathers of a bird, and whose robes were the leaves of the jungle itself. Though she had already heard Pedro telling most of this to the tourists, Lorna nodded solemnly, listening in rapt attention. No one had really seen the temple, Bob said, but old villagers still spoke of it, a few claiming ancestors who had accidentally stumbled across some ruins, and there were tales of the flight of stairs leading upward, where Quetzalcoatl had ascended to heaven. The stairs were called
Las Escaleras Que No Conducen a Ninguna Parte—
The Golden Stairs That Lead Nowhere.

Pat O’Connor, the doctor, arrived late; he’d been treating a patient for snakebite. The Plumed Serpent? Lorna asked; no, just
culebra de cascabel
—rattlesnake. At dinner, Pat, who came from West Virginia, described the outlawed snake-handling cults in Appalachia congregations, who fondled poisonous reptiles, believing so devoutly in their ability through God that their faith overcame any danger. Handling, caressing, even kissing the venomous snakes proved the domination of Godly power over the Devil, virtue over sexual desire. Didn’t the snakes bite? Lorna asked. Frequently, Pat said. Lorna shivered; it was a devotion she couldn’t contemplate. Still, she said, if you truly believed, you could possibly overcome the reptile’s natural instinct to bite by controlling its natural fear. It was probably something conveyed from the human to the reptile, like the music Indian snake charmers played to make a cobra rise from a basket and dance; she’d seen one in New Delhi on her second honeymoon cruise. She went on to say that such faith was not unlike what had happened that day in Italy when they were shooting
The Miracle of Santa Cristi
and Willie Marsh had that old woman die in his arms. The woman, a peasant, had believed that Willie, in his clerical robes, was a priest and had asked his blessing; Willie had been so moved that he had converted to Catholicism and become a very religious type of person. It really was a moving story and—Oh, dear, she was rattling again. She leaned across and asked Mrs. Tashkent how Santa Monica was these days.

Pat was seated on Lorna’s left and she realized that Joan had invited him on her behalf, so she would have a man. She wasn’t sure she appreciated the favor. Still, he
was
a man. She’d had several margaritas and felt suffused by a warm lethargy she hadn’t experienced in some time. She’d been careful not to have more than any of the others, but with the wine, she felt a little giddy. Then there were after-dinner liqueurs, and she took just a
touch
of Kahlúa with her coffee. Pat’s face was quite red by that time, and he had taken over the conversation, in an obvious attempt to impress her. She remained unimpressed. She urged him to help Joan with the dishes while she talked to Bob Somers again—being “early to bed,” the Tashkents had said their good nights—but Pat wanted to go over to the cantina for the dancing. For some time they had been hearing the sounds of the mariachis across the bridge, the cries and shouts, while the locals got drunk on beer or
ricea,
the native brew, which Joan said tasted like kerosene. Well, Lorna said, she would go if Joan and Bob did, so when the dishes were done they all went together.

It was the mariachi band from the hotel, playing near the long wooden bar, and around the wall the tourists were watching the natives dance. The girls wore pretty if modest dresses and pretty if modest expressions; the boys were mostly in white, white pants and long white shirts that hung out and were embroidered white on white around the yokes. The first thing Lorna saw was Emiliano dancing with Rosalia. She let Pat buy her a beer, Dos Ekkies, and asked him to light her cigarette. She refused his invitation to dance, but swayed with the music to indicate that she had the rhythm, her attention divided between watching Emiliano and listening to Joan, who was on her left. Behind her was Bob Somers; he seemed subdued. Lorna decided that Joan must have said something to him about spending so much time with Lorna before dinner. There were other guests from the hotel, and she nodded graciously to them, deciding that this was perhaps the best way to confront them after the burro incident; she wanted them to see the type person she really was. Then she saw Bud and the rest of the tennis players; they were with the secretaries, and Miriam Seltzer’s dress was bright with native flowers and kitchen rickrack everywhere: obviously she was going native. After a while Pat excused himself and went and asked her to dance; they were out on the floor making absolute fools of themselves, trying to do those intricate steps. Emiliano and Rosalia were another story; they moved with such agility, hands behind their backs, feet crossing in front of them, their eyes locked with those secret lovers’ smiles on their lips. Lorna felt a tightening, a physical gathering in her stomach. How young they were; Emiliano was not much older than Jeffrey, but still she had to look at him and think the things she was thinking.

These private thoughts were intruded upon by Bud, who had appeared at her elbow. Joan and Bob had gone to talk with someone in the orchestra, and she was alone. Hey, come on, Bud said, don’t be mad at me. She wasn’t mad, she said formally, merely disappointed; she had taken him for a different type altogether. No, thank you, she didn’t care to dance. She hoped that Pat would come back to her, but he was engrossed with Miriam now. She regretted not having accepted his invitation to dance. She smiled over at Bob, but he only smiled back and returned his attention to Joan and the rest of the group.

Well, she said finally to Bud, if he’d be a little nicer to her she
might
dance with him. Oh, he said, he’d be nice. They danced.

She really enjoyed herself then, and told herself everything was all right again. Bud held her close and she liked the feel of someone’s arms around her; it had been so long. Nothing was mentioned about Stan Wyckoff, and for a while she felt herself being calmed and lifted out of her depression. Perhaps it was just the
ricea,
which Bud insisted she try; it tasted not like kerosene, but a little like Japanese sake. She asked the bartender to cut it with grapefruit juice. He punctured the can and poured her a glass, and Bud added the
ricea.
Not too much, she told him; she didn’t drink. They danced again, and she was feeling warmer and more relaxed, and she hadn’t had this good a time in she didn’t know how long. Joan and Bob had left, and she reminded herself to write a little thank-you note for the nice dinner. Then she dragged Bud over to the musicians to see if they could play “Elmer’s Tune”; they didn’t know it, but they knew “One O’clock Jump,” and she was out on the floor jitterbugging the way they used to in college. Then she saw Emiliano and got him out on the floor and tried to make him jitterbug with her, and she could tell that Rosalia didn’t like that. The others did; they were all laughing, she could see them. Then the band played a slow number and she held on to Emiliano and insisted he dance again with her, clutching him tightly and pressing her body against his, until Rosalia went out the door and Emiliano, embarrassed, followed her. Why were Latins always so jealous? Lorna wondered vaguely.