Crowned Heads (49 page)

“Golden what?” Judee asked.

“Our fiftieth anniversary.”

“Gee,” she said reverently, “that’s a long time.”

“That’s beautiful, Willie, honest,” Bill said. “Shit, fifty years.”

Judee pushed her fingers in her hair and massaged her scalp. “Most folks don’t stay married that long these days. My father and mother never even got married. I guess fifty years must be some kind of record, huh?”

“What’s the matter, Willie?” Arco had spoken up finally.

Looking as if he’d choked on something, Willie was staring open-mouthed at Judee, who was patting her hair into shape again. He closed his lips and touched them with his handkerchief. “What’s that you say?” he finally managed.

She dropped her head and gave her frizzed hair a good fluffing. “I was saying fifty years married must be some kind of record….”

Aghast, Willie looked from her to the portrait, then back again, and his words came out in a hoarse croak. “Beetrice Marsh was not my wife,” he pronounced indignantly.

“Not your wife?” Bill echoed stupidly.

“Certainly not. Beetrice Marsh was my mother.”

Judee’s head snapped up, her eyes roundly bulging. “Your
mother
?”

“Yes, of course. My mother.”

There was a moment during which nobody said anything. Only the gentle snoring of the dogs could be heard. Willie looked at the three of them, looking at him. “My mother,” he repeated, raising his eyes to the portrait. “God bless her.”

“Oh. Sure,” said Bill.

“Oh. Sure,” said Judee.

Arco said nothing.

Willie coughed, and shifted in his chair. “Beetrice Marsh was the most wonderful mother a boy could hope for. And I accept Judee’s error as the greatest compliment. The greatest in the world. ‘Every good boy loves his mother, loves her first before another.’ That’s what Bee always used to say.” He was forced to use his handkerchief again. “There was a rumor for years that she was my sister, but nothing could be further from the truth. Bee was mah l’il ol’ mama. Oh, sure, she talked ‘southren’ and I guess while you could take the girl out of the country, you couldn’t take the country out of the girl, but she was a grand person. The most famous mother in Hollywood. In all show business,” he added, wiping his eyes again.

“Your mother,” Bill echoed dumbly, shaking his head. “I’ll be jiggered.” Arco still made no comment. Judee clambered down to the end of the sofa and leaned to Willie, wriggling her fingers at him.

“Gee, sweetie, don’t
cry
….”

“I’m sorry.” He sniffed and blew his nose. He pocketed his handkerchief and raised his glass to the portrait once more. “Well, dearest Bee, here’s to crime.” He tilted his head back and drank, long and fully. The dogs stirred; Judee giggled; nobody said anything.

“Well,” Willie offered finally, mastering his emotions, “why don’t I just pop out to the kitchen and see what’s in the refrigerator that I could give you? Meanwhile, you all just make yourself at home.”

“Fine, Willie.” Arco pressed his hand on Willie’s shoulder; again there was that strange warmth emanating from it. Bill and Judee were on the sofa, talking. He waved to them as he pursued an erratic course through the room, heading for the kitchen. “His
mother,
” Bill echoed. “Ssh,” said Judee. She giggled again.

When he returned Willie was surprised to find the game room empty. Outside, darkness had fallen. He was more surprised, and a little shocked, to discover a trail of hastily doffed clothes, leading to the lanai. He went out to find everybody in the pool. Judee was nude astride a float, while Arco, also naked, lounged along the pool steps, half in, half out, and smoking a cigarette. The odor of pot drifted across the water. Bill’s tanned bulk was stretched full length on a second float, midway between the two. He lay on his stomach, and there was a narrow white band where his bathing suit would have been, but he, too, was naked.

“Hey, Willie, ol’ pal, we’re ’bout outta champagne,” he called cheerfully. “How’s ’bout ’nother bottle?”

Willie maneuvered through the maze of wrought-iron furniture and went inside again. Heading toward the bar, he realized he was quite drunk. Hardly a new condition, and he knew well enough how to handle himself in the circumstances, but he had misgivings; already he was thinking perhaps he’d made a mistake asking them to stay. He should have let them leave, and watched
The Player Queen
by himself. Still, he was having a good time, wasn’t he? At least he wasn’t alone. He brought an unopened bottle from the refrigerator, then found some of Bee’s second-best glasses, stored in the back of a cupboard. He proceeded outside, and as he bent to set down the champagne bottle, his toe touched something. He heard the sound of glass shattering, and looked down to where someone had set one of the Baccarat goblets: it was snapped at the stem.

Bill circled on his float “Oh, heck, did it break?”

“Yes, it did,” Willie said curtly, bending to pick up the pieces. He started as a wet face suddenly emerged at the coping and Arco grinned up at him.

“Sorry, man. I guess I shouldn’t have left it there.” His eyes seemed brighter, his smile more of a leer.

“It’s all right,” he said, trying to appear friendly. “After all, it’s just one more worldly possession. We all have too many of those, anyway.”

“Some of us do, anyway.”

Willie brought the dustpan and brush from behind the barbecue, finding that Arco’s close scrutiny made him feel absurdly ill at ease. He dumped the broken pieces in the trash can. “People can get cut that way,” he said when he came back.

“I said I was sorry.”

Willie could see that Arco meant it; or perhaps it was only that he wanted to believe it. Suddenly, and with no apparent reason, it had become important that Arco like him. He said, “I’m sure you are.”

“Hey—psst—c’mere.” Arco beckoned him to the pool’s edge with a confiding gesture. “You want to drop?”

“Pardon?”

“We all just dropped half a dot—y’know, acid? There’s a half left if you want it.”

Willie cleared his throat. “No, thank you. I’ll abstain on that, if you don’t mind. I want to watch my movie with a clear head.”

Arco laughed. “Oh, sure, sure. We’re all going to watch it. What’s to eat?”

“Well, there are some hot dogs, and I’ve made a salad—”

“Terrific, man.” In only a brief while his cultivated speech seemed to have undergone alterations: the careful diction had disappeared; in its place was a kind of street jargon, hip, cool, jazzy. His arm still hung on the coping and Willie noticed a colorful tattoo on the knotted deltoid: an ornate letter Z circled by what looked like a snake eating its tail.

Willie adopted a casual, pleasant tone as Bill and Judee paddled their floats over. “It’s all right, just an accident, nothing really, the glass can be replaced.” Judee began shrieking as Arco upended her from her perch, and there was a lot of good-natured splashing while he appropriated the raft. He flopped onto it backward, with no attempt at modesty as he paddled to the deep end of the pool, where his pale form became half obscured in the shadows. Willie filled two of the cheaper glasses with champagne, and when he handed them to Bill on the raft he noticed that his shoulder bore the same tattooed emblem as Arco’s, the Z circled by a snake. Bill maneuvered out into the pool and paddled over to join Arco, where the rafts paired side by side, also the two heads; Willie could see them, the fair handsome one, the dark not-so-handsome one, also side by side. He absently touched his toupee, then turned to Judee, who was chattering again.

“’S really a treat,” she chirped gaily. “I just love shampoo.” Drops of water clung to her lashes, lending them an odd, sparkly effect, creating a kind of jeweled fantasy face. Coyly, demurely, even flirtatiously, she clambered out, stretching naked along the stonework and squeezing her kinky-wooly hair between her fingers. She rolled onto her stomach, propping her head on her hands and staring up at the sky. The red lines on her back were more obvious, and there were yellow bruises on her thighs and buttocks. “Gee,” she said, “d’ya think it’s gonna rain?”

“According to the news, it’s supposed to.”

“The stars just went in, all of a sudden. Like they turned off a switch or something.”

Scanning the sky, Willie was surprised to discover it had clouded over; there were no stars. At the end of the pool Bill and Arco lay on their rafts; Bill’s deep baritone floated across the interval, his words unintelligible. In the watery light his body was golden, while the other one’s was pale and marmoreal, as if it seldom saw the sun, or even daylight.

“Hey, what’re you fellows doing over there?” Willie called genially. Arco’s laugh was muffled, and Bill glanced back over his shoulder, but neither answered.

Judee said, “Isn’t he terrific?”

“Bill?”

“Oh, Bill, too. I mean Arco. I never had sex with anyone until him—can you believe it, a virgin at sixteen? He’s really fantastic. Better than Bill.”

“Uh—” Willie thought a moment, not caring particularly for the turn in the conversation. “How old are you now, if one may ask a lady?”

“Seventeen. How old’re you?”

“Uh—that is a question I do not choose to answer.”

“What sign are you?”

“I’m a Libra.”

“Oh, Libra? Gee, I don’t think I know any Libras. Arco’s Taurus—they’re terrific. Bill’s Leo—they’re terrific, too. I’m Aquarius—y’know, the water-bearer?”

“Yes, I know the water-bearer.”

“Don’tcha believe in astrology?”

“Not particularly. I tell fortunes, though.”

“Oh, gee, honest? Cards or what?”

“I read hands.”

She stuck out her palm. “Do it, do it. Hey, gang—Willie’s going to read my fortune.”

He took her hand and turned it toward the light, so he could see the lines. He traced several with his thumbnail, and pointed out the various areas of the hand as Bee had explained them to him during her palmistry phase.

“Oh, I know all that stuff.” Judee giggled impatiently. “Tell me if you see a trip somewhere. Like to the South Seas—Fiji, y’know?”

Well, yes, he thought possibly there was. He found the lines muddled and obscure, with little revealing about them, but he dreamed things up, evoking the inevitable stranger entering her life, happy prospects, the trip she sought, and anything else he could think of to give her pleasure. She beamed, then crowed excitedly, “Hey, gang, c’mere—this guy’s fantastic.”

The rafts were now empty; Bill and Arco sat side by side on the diving board, still engrossed in their conversation.

“Look at them, aren’t they gorgeous?” Judee called to them again. Bill waved, handed his glass to Arco, then stood on the tip of the board and dived.

Judee applauded. “Doesn’t he make you want to cream? That body—Arco says it’s absolutely the Greek ideal. Oh, God—Arc-
o,
be careful!”

Having carelessly set the glasses on the diving hoard, Arco was bouncing up and down. One by one the glasses moved to the edge, then fell into the pool.

“It’s okay, I’ll get ’em.” Willie watched Bill deftly execute an elegant surface dive, his thighs flashing in the turquoise light as he submerged, his body gone quickly dark as he traveled downward. Arco continued jouncing on the board and Willie, suddenly embarrassed by the display of nudity, bent down to dust the toe of his boot.

“Honest,” Judee said, “wouldja b’lieve that thing? Everytime he takes it out I want to stick my head in a gas oven.” She made a comical face, screwing up her features and widening her mouth into a downward grimace, the Greek mask of tragedy, through which she poked her pink wet tongue; Willie laughed in spite of himself. Meanwhile Arco had sprung off the board in an awkward, leggy dive, and came up looking for Bill, who surfaced behind him, holding the glasses aloft.

“Got ’em!” Together the pair made their way to the coping, where Bill set the glasses down, then they got out of the pool.

“Towels in the cabaña,” Willie called to Bill. As he passed, the light played across his bare back and flanks, and Willie noticed red marks and bruises similar to Judee’s; some were almost welts. Dripping, Arco had taken Judee’s place on the chaise, ignoring Willie’s mild remonstrance that he wait for a towel.

“It’s okay,” he said breezily. Judee took his right hand and presented it for Willie’s inspection. Without touching it, Willie looked at it for a long moment. Like Arco’s body, it was slim and well made, rather delicate, like a woman’s. The nails were long and carefully manicured, the fingers spatulate; the mound of Venus was pronounced, indicating an active sex life. When Willie finally took the hand in his own, it again felt curiously warm, which was strange, since Arco had just come out of the pool. Willie bent it back so the lines showed more clearly. He studied them for some time, aware that Bill had come up from behind with a pile of towels, another nipped around his waist.

“Well?” Arco’s eyes, bright and watchful, snapped with nervous concentration. Willie peered into them, then down, then suddenly dropped Arco’s hand, pressing it quietly from him and crossing himself.

“Sorry …” he muttered, and stood.

“What d’you mean, sorry?” Arco demanded with a perplexed expression. “Something wrong with it?”

“No no no, not at all.” Willie caught himself rubbing his palms on his thighs. “It’s really silly, isn’t it? Judee, I think you’re right—it’s going to rain.” He pretended to be studying the sky. Scowling, Arco jumped up and leaped out into the water.

“Jeez, Willie,” Bill said, “you oughtn’t to of done that. Why wouldn’t you read it?”

“It doesn’t matter, really. It’s all rather medieval, fortune-telling. No basis in fact whatever.” Bill turned away, then took a running start and dived back in the pool, clearing the water with beautiful strokes which quickly brought him to the far end of the pool, where Arco hung on the corner. Then, together, they started swimming back toward the shallow end.

“Arco must be a city boy,” Willie observed to Judee.

“From outside Detroit. Howdja know?”

“He’s not a very good swimmer. And he dives badly. Bill should give him lessons. … He doesn’t seem to get much sun, does he?”

“He can’t go in the sun—it’s bad for his skin. He
never
goes in the sun. Arco, Willie says you should have swimming lessons,” she called as he swam by.