Crowned Heads (25 page)

Because she hated going back to the hotel in the same clothes, she went over to Joan’s. She didn’t mention having stayed at Jack’s, but Joan was a big girl, she knew. Somehow she wasn’t as
simpática
as she had been. Lorna decided that Pat must have talked about the night spent in Mirabella with Bob Somers. She passed it off, asking if she couldn’t borrow something to put on, and Joan loaned her shorts and a shirt; they both had her own label.

There was only one way to get to the cabaña without being seen, and Lorna worked her way around the back of the lagoon, under the trees. Fruit, there was fallen fruit all along the ground, rich, soft, opulent fruit, with something decadent about it in its unused, wasted condition. Ripe, yellow, split open, leaking with seeds. Then she saw the man called Ávila. He was standing back in the shade, his sombrero tilted away from his face, which was pushed into half a mango he held in his hand. Eating, he looked at her, and when he took the mango away she saw the glint of his gold teeth. His free hand moved slightly, and she stopped, stared at him as he undid the buttons of his jeans and exposed himself. Then she ran, not looking back but wondering how he dared, did he do that to other women, or was it only her, and what had he heard about her?
El Loco.

She got back to her cabaña, where the maid was pushing a wet mop over the terrazzo. She ordered her to leave, then threw herself on the bed, panting, wanting to throw up, telling herself the
MorryEll
would soon be coming. Jack had not given her much rest, so she slept, and when she awoke it was late afternoon. She longed for one of those beautiful Mexican sunsets, but the sun went down in a murky haze, leaving the clouds an ugly red color, like blood. She called for Benito and told him to bring her a coco loco; no, two.

She drank them, one after the other, sometimes in the hammock, sometimes in the painted chair, but her eye directed along the point of rocks. Emiliano was out there, with his fins and goggles. No more a god, but a Mexican dancer, flamenco,
olé.
She watched him steadily while she sipped through the twin colored plastic straws, putting her hands together as if in supplication, looking up at the sky, praying to God with a mute and, she hoped, beseeching expression.

Emiliano came out of the water, dripping, brown, a fish flapping on the end of his spear. She watched him go. He did not see her.

Inside, on a hangar on a hook, was the white negligee. She sat staring at the white ruffles around the neck, the sleeves, the skirt; she watched them, thinking they needed pressing. She had an unlit cigarette in her lips, and a box of wax matches; the cover of the box said
Las Cinco Palmas.
When she had lighted her cigarette she watched the flame of the match, the small wavering flame, until her fingers grew hot. She blew it out and dropped the burnt match, then she went inside.

Five minutes later a shout went up. Someone had seen the smoke; it was pouring out the windows of Number One. The bartender rang the ship’s bell, while Lorna Doone came falling through the door onto the patio, coughing. The waiters and kitchen crew were running, then they went back for buckets and from the point they dipped up water and passed the buckets hand over hand. They came with the garden hose and turned the nozzle on the flames. The fire was put out, but the cabaña was uninhabitable. They moved her to another, in the back. She said she had no idea how the fire had started. Most of her clothes had been ruined by either flame, smoke, or water, and she had salvaged only a few things, including several bikinis and her cosmetic case. Also her copy of
A Guide to Inner Peace.

When they had got her moved they found secreted away among her possessions all kinds of strange things—bars of hotel soap, rolls of toilet paper, dozens of matchbooks, knives and forks, several maids’ uniforms, an entire china service for two with the
Las Cinco Palmas
emblem—cups, saucers, dinner and salad plates. Also office supplies, Sashia’s plastic mirror and comb, and a pair of Emiliano’s white bathing trunks.

Steve Alvarez issued orders that the bar was to be shut off to her and the waiters were not permitted to bring her any more drinks. She went down the beach in a scorched caftan to the yacht club, where she made a disturbance, and Jack had her forcibly removed from the premises. She went to the village, and when she returned she carried a paper sack: grapefruit juice and two quart bottles of
ricea.
She called to the boy to bring her a can opener.

It rained, and she stayed inside. They could hear her all the way down the walkway to the dining room, crashing around and talking and shouting and crying, sometimes breaking things. These outbursts would be followed by long periods of silence. When it grew dark she would sit on her patio under the dripping thatch, in her caftan, a towel stamped
Las Cinco Palmas
draped burnoose style over her head, keening into the night. They watched her from the bar, orange faces hung like jack o’ lanterns over the candles. Later, naked, she stood in the shadows, arms upraised like Astarte, Venus, the nipples of her breasts brilliant with red, her face a painted mask, howls coming from her mouth. Whatever happened to the good old days and “Elmer’s Tune”? she cried.
Silencio!
someone shouted, and she was silent

She complained of illness, fever, and Cupie said they ought to get Pat O’Connor down to look at her; he came, but she wouldn’t let him in, she screamed at him and rushed through the door onto the patio, trying to strike him. He waited around the bar, undecided, then went back up the hill.

She wouldn’t eat. Cupie went with soup and buttered bread. She lit the stove heater with kindling and newspapers and sat while Lorna lay on the bed, holding her head and crying. Cupie took and cradled her in her great arms against her rolling bosom. When she got up she brought her into the bathroom and then into the shower. She held her there and helped her wash—there had been vomiting—and shampooed her yellow hair and rinsed it, and got her out and dried her. She left her sitting in the chair while she stripped the bed. She brought clean sheets and cases and made them up, then got her back into bed and sat with her. When the Delco went off Cupie had to leave her in the dark, because Steve said she couldn’t have matches for a candle or lantern. She wanted cigarettes and Cupie had been lighting them for her, one after the other, and putting them out for her. Don’t leave me, Lorna whispered, I’m afraid. Cupie stayed and sat with her in the dark, talking. It remained overcast for several more days. Cupie went to the yacht club to learn news of the end of the regatta. There was no word. She returned and brought Lorna out onto the patio, and sat her in a broken rocker from the storeroom. She sat there, they said, like an old grandmother, rocking, and you would hardly know her. The hair; the makeup. Someone went and secretly snapped pictures of her through the bougainvillaea. They said they bet that those papers they sell in the supermarkets would pay to put them on their front page.

What’s happening to me? she asked no one, sitting on the patio in the rocking chair. She could hardly remember. They had moved her from the front, that she remembered. There had been a fire, that she remembered. She had been drinking, that she remembered. She was waiting for something, that she remembered.

The
MorryEll.
She longed for one familiar friendly face.
Richard,
she thought;
oh, Richard.
She knew she looked terrible, her mirror had told her that. But she would put it all together as soon as her hands stopped shaking and her heart stopped booming and her eyes stopped crying. It was what the doctor had warned her against: too much external stress, which produced internal stress. That’s what he had said, and it had happened, way down here in Mexico, South of the Border. That was strange and a little funny; you came to “get away from it all” and it was all right here waiting for you.

People certainly weren’t being very sympathetic. Cupie was, but it was a sympathy Lorna couldn’t understand. That sort of forgiveness only embarrassed her; she thought Cupie was really silly, stupid even. She herself could never forgive a thing like that.

She had been thinking of suicide again. She realized that she’d been considering it as far back as when the tennis players were there—how long ago was that? Walking on the beach, she had wanted to walk into the water and swim away, as far as she could swim, until she was tired, and then she would just drown; it would be easier, she had thought. Now she didn’t know. She didn’t want to cut her wrists again; she hated the sight of blood. She didn’t have enough pills.

Perhaps the doctor was right, perhaps she did have this urge to destroy. Not others, surely not others—she never wanted to do that. Herself, her own body, her own soul, she could hurt them as much as she wanted to; they were hers. But hurt somebody else? Never. She couldn’t bear to see others suffer, or to be the cause of their suffering.

She didn’t know what she was going to do. Cupie said sit and rest, just rock. Sit. Rest. But what would she do when she had rested? Rocked? Would she stay here forever, resting, rocking?

Where was Richard?

What was happening?

How was the weather in New York?

What will I do? she asked no one.

No one replied.

It rained again. The sun came out. The place steamed. It rained again. She could not say which she disliked more; both were oppressive, both inimical. Both seemed fatal. Back there, behind the bougainvillaea, it was like a swamp. She sweated interminably, dabbing with Kleenex and sighing. What should she do?

Cupie came with news. Jack had gone to Mirabella for the weekend, had been on someone’s boat, had talked on the ship-to-shore telephone. The
MorryEll
with three other boats had left Cabo San Lucas two days before. She waited, dying of excitement, but no boats arrived. She sat on the beach, not caring what she looked like, gazing out at the mouth of the bay, praying. To hold back her cries she bit the back of her hand and tasted the salt deposits secreted through her pores. They didn’t taste any different from her tears.

She watched, waited, yearned. She whimpered like a dog waiting to be released, to be taken for a walk on a leash. She begged silently. God. God …

She made another survey of herself. Her fingernails were bitten so far back she hardly recognized them as her own. Or her hair, yellow, lank, horrible. And her face. She applied more make-up, foundation, eye shadow, liner, lipstick, rouge, powder, anything, everything. She ransacked her case, trying to find something else to add. Eyelashes, plenty of those. She chose the longest. Glue. Trembling hand. Sticky mess. Faulty vision. What did it matter, it was a face, wasn’t it?

But whose?

Oh, God.

Rain.

Sun again. Someone had left behind a green plastic eyeshade, and she appropriated it. On the beach in her scorched caftan, sitting, staring, waiting. She was so tired. People kept looking at her, but no one asked for an autograph; except one. A woman who came up from out of the blur of faces that had got off the noon boat, holding out a Wrigley’s spearmint gum wrapper. Would she sign it? It was for her niece. She said, I’m so happy to have met you, Miss Doone, and good luck with your career.

Didn’t she
know?

This was how the cookie crumbled.

Cupie would come and talk with her, about anything, talking but receiving no replies. Don’t you think you ought to go home? she would suggest gently. Go home and get well? Lorna would shake her head. Can’t. Can’t. Any day now, any moment, just a little longer, look, see the sun, good weather, white sails, just a little longer, see the birds, what kind of birds are those?

She felt more feverish. Pat O’Connor sent some pills. She didn’t know what they were; she flushed them down the john. She went to the village for more
ricea,
hiding the larger bottle and using a small plastic one from her cosmetic case, keeping this in her raffia bag so it was with her at all times.
La Loca,
they called her.

Steve came with her overdue bill. She said she hadn’t the money to pay it. He said she must make other arrangements, they would be needing the cabaña. She asked how she could leave; he must wait until money was wired or her friends arrived. She called the boy to bring her grapefruit juice and spiked it from her plastic bottle.

It was a curious thing that she sometimes thought she saw things quite clearly when she was drunk. Perhaps it was a property of the
ricea;
she didn’t know. But she saw how foolish she had been about Emiliano. She had traded Security for Romance, and she should have learned from past mistakes that this was folly. The fatal error. He had lured her; this Mexican, with his winning smiles and
caballero
ways, had come on with her, and she knew about that type of person, on the make for rich American divorcees. That fatal type. She did not find it difficult to hate him now, that dark Emiliano and his wretched Rosalia. She told herself not to think about either of them anymore. She told herself to cream her elbows too, but didn’t….

The sky cleared and the sun came out again, for once and for all, it seemed. It was very hot. Of the clothes she had salvaged from the fire there were few that fit her, she had put on so much weight. She struggled into a pair of sharkskin shorts and tied on her bandanna halter, and a pair of kick mules whose heels balanced her precariously. She did her face, then tied her hair back with the Hermès scarf, and screwed her pearls onto her ears. She put on her wrist watch; it had stopped, but she wound it and reminded herself to check the time and set it.

She went to the dining room and ate her breakfast, chattering across the room to anyone who would listen to her. Wasn’t it nice to see a blue sky? Wasn’t it hot, though? Had anybody heard what the weather was like in New York?

She spiked her
jugo de naranja
with
ricea
from her plastic bottle, and had her usual coffee and rolls, with lots of butter. Her hand trembled as she drank and ate. She thought she ought to do something about her nails, and after breakfast she went clicking along the walkway in her heels, going to
Numero Uno,
to look through the burned cabaña for her good nail file, which had been lost. She found it under a piece of rattan that had peeled from the plaster wall. The file was black and bent from the heat; she threw it away.