Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (141 page)

'My favourite.' Daliah smiled and hugged her. 'You always
remember.'

'Of course I remember,' Inge said with exasperation, her
eyes flashing vivid sapphire shards. 'I may be old, but my brain
has yet to retire.'

Daliah luxuriated dreamily in the shower. Sheets of pulsating
hot water sluiced off her body. Clouds of steam rose to envelop
her. She sighed with an almost beatific rapture. After all those hours cramped in the car, the throbbing massage of the water
was invigorating and cleansing.

After a good fifteen minutes, her fingertips were so wrinkled
that she looked like she'd been washing dishes all day, and she
knew it was best she get a move on. Water invariably made
her lose all track of time.

Steeling herself for the shock, she twisted off the hot water and nearly cried aloud at the sudden plunge from hot to ice
cold. She forced herself to endure the frigid extreme for a full
two minutes. When she turned it off, her teeth were chattering but she felt completely rejuvenated and wide-awake. It always
worked wonders and fooled the body. She felt as though she'd
just awakened from a long, marvellous nap.

She slid the plastic shower curtain aside and reached for a
giant blue-striped terry-cloth towel. Briskly she rubbed herself
dry and tucked it around her like a sarong. Expertly she
wrapped a second striped towel around her streaming hair in
a towering turban. Her hair could wait. She'd work on it later,
tomorrow even. Now that she was wide-awake she was keen
on only one thing, and that was spending some time with Inge.

She glanced over at the Hermès alarm clock that went with
her wherever she travelled. Incredibly, it showed the time was
already eleven-thirty.

That got her moving. She slipped into a pair of baggy pants made of parachute silk, buttoned a matching blouse over her
shapely torso, and slid her feet into her favourite huaraches.
Then, her hair still wrapped in the turban, she made a dash
for the manager's cabin, stopping at the car to retrive the two
bottles of champagne she'd nearly forgotten about.

Inge had already finished setting the table, and the sugary
smells of baking mingled with the fruity aroma of boiling raspberry syrup. Happy was on alert, sitting a respectable distance
from the oven, but eyeing it covetously. Steady dribbles of
saliva dripped from the corners of his jowls.

Inge turned from the stove and waved a raspberry-coated
wooden spoon. 'You are just in time,' she called out. 'I already
made the Kaiserschmarnn and it's warming in the oven.'

'I brought champagne.' Daliah went over to Inge and
handed her the bag. 'I forgot all about it and left it in the car. It's probably become warm in the meantime.'

Inge felt inside the bag and shook her head. 'The bottles
still feel cold, but I will put them in a bucket of ice water right away.' Smilingly she shook her head. 'Champagne to go with
the Kaiserschmarnn. You spoil me, Daliah. Every time you
come here you make me feel like an empress.'

While they were eating, Daliah filled Inge in on her split with
Jerome. Her spirits had plunged. She picked at the food desul
torily, barely touching the shredded, raisin-studded omelette
Inge had prepared to perfection. It was sweet and fluffy,
dusted with a snowy layer of sifted icing sugar and served along
with Inge's thick homemade raspberry syrup. Piece by piece,
she fed it to Happy, who wolfed it down.
Even Inge ignored the food. There was a dead, mournful
look on her usually lively face, and she looked like she was
about ready to cry.

After a while, Daliah couldn't bear the expression on Inge's
face any longer. 'You look like the world's collapsed,' she
said. 'Please don't look so sad.'

'I cannot help it.' Inge blinked her eyes rapidly. 'I can tell
you are hurting, and that makes me feel terrible.'

'Like Patsy would say, "This is but a moment in time",' Daliah said lightly, but her smile was bleak. 'And it'll take
time, but eventually I'll bounce back.'

'I only want for you to be happy.' Inge sniffled. 'That is not
asking for so much, is it?'

'I'm afraid that sometimes it is.' Daliah's eyes were glassy.
'But don't worry, I'll get over it. Being Jewish helps.' She gave
a low laugh. 'No matter what's dished out to us, we always
keep right on going.'

'Sooner or later, I know you will meet the right man.'

'Maybe.' Daliah's voice rose slightly and she looked over
into Inge's eyes. 'And then again, maybe not. There are many
women who have, but there are also a lot of old maids out
there—'

She saw Inge flinch as though she had been slapped, and
her voice came to an abrupt halt. She was suddenly stricken.
A long moment dragged out to what seemed an eternity.
Daliah bit down on her lip. 'I'm sorry, Inge,' she said miser
ably, a heavy feeling of guilt taking up residence inside her.
She frowned angrily and shook her head. 'I didn't mean to
imply. . . .

There was another awkward pause. After a moment Inge
gave a sad smile and fingered the stem of her champagne glass.
'I know you didn't,' she said gently. 'Let's forget it was ever
mentioned, shall we?'

Daliah nodded. She was only too happy to. But unspoken
though the subject remained, it had been raised like a malevol
ent spirit at a seance, and it hung there over the table like a
cloud.

Inge had never found the right man; for that matter, she
hadn't even found the wrong one. Some people were doomed
to go through life alone, and Inge was one of them. She had
never complained about it, and had kept all her thoughts regarding it to herself, but now Daliah, in her own tortured
misery, had inadvertently brought it up.

Damn, Daliah thought miserably. What did I have to go
and blurt that out for? I love Inge. Hurting her was the farthest
thing from my mind.

'It is getting late,' Inge said finally. She pushed her chair
back from the table and got up. 'Run along, now, and get
some sleep. We can talk more tomorrow.'

Daliah nodded, kissed her wretchedly, and then fled guiltily
to her cabin.

In the morning, Otha took over in the office, and Daliah and
Inge walked along the beach. Clyde Woolery rang in the after
noon, just after they'd eaten lunch.

'Remember me?' he asked after Inge handed Daliah the
receiver. 'The lowly store clerk?'

'The budding author, sure,
'
she said warmly. 'How is life?'

'Dull, dull, dull. I was hoping you'd be able to pull me out
of the doldrums.'

'The writing can't be going that badly,' she laughed. 'And
it's quiet up here, not dull.'

'Sometimes I wonder,' he said. 'Are we still on for a date?'

She had to laugh. 'You make it sound like we're innocent
schoolchildren. But yes, I would like it.'

'Seven o'clock all right with you? Don't forget, this isn't
New York. Up here, they roll up the sidewalks at eleven p.m.'

'Seven will be fine.'

'And don't dress up. Be as casual as you like.'

She laughed. 'You'll be sorry.'

'I doubt it.' He laughed also. 'I'll come by and pick you up
on the dot. And don't worry, the place I have in mind is so backward that it'd be a miracle if anybody recognized you.'

Daliah smiled into the receiver. He sounded almost too
good to be true.

From across the room Inge watched her hang up the phone.
She had moved deliberately out of earshot, but curiosity was
killing her. 'He sounded like a very nice young man,' she
prompted. 'Very polite.'

'If this is your way of trying to fish for information, then I
might as well warn you that I'm on to your methods, Inge.'

'You do not have to get nasty, Daliah,' Inge said virtuously.
'If you want to keep secrets from me, that is quite all right. For your information, I have plenty of other things to keep
me occupied.' She made a show of busying herself with some
pots and pans at the sink.

Daliah went over and watched Inge polishing the copper
bottoms of some barely tarnished frying pans. Inge pretended
not to notice her, but after a while she began giving Daliah
some inquisitive sidelong glances.

'All right, Inge,' Daliah laughed, 'I'll tell you what you want
to know. You won't have to fix dinner for me because he's
coming to take me out on a date.'

Inge looked slightly mollified. She abandoned the copper
cleaning and began to put the pots away again. 'It will do you
good to go out,' she said, nodding.

'I think so too. You don't have to wait up for me, though.'

'I was not going to,' Inge sniffed.

'And you don't have to worry if I stay out late. It's only an
innocent date.'

Inge looked at her severely. 'You are a big girl now, Daliah.
I cannot tell you what you can and cannot do.'

Daliah spent the rest of the afternoon giving Happy a bath,
helping Inge in the manager's office, and drinking a Campari
and champagne while she got ready to go out. She took her
cue from Clyde and brought new meaning to the term 'casual'.
She had done nothing to her hair, other than pulling it to one
side and securing it with several clips; it stuck out dramatically
like a wavy black ponytail growing out the right side of her
head. She wore her most treasured pair of washed-out Levi's,
the disreputable ones with the ragged holes worn through in
the knees, a too-large man's lumberjack shirt in a rich, brilliant
tartan pattern of red, blue, and yellow, and as she heard Clyde
pull up punctually outside and lean on the horn, she grabbed
the first accessories which came to hand. Flying out the door
as she secured them, she barely noticed the incongruity of
her choices—a tooled mock-western belt with an 18-carat-gold
buckle, which she slung casually over her hips, and a pair of fifty-thousand-dollar teardrop ruby earrings, set with choice pavé diamonds in yellow gold, which Jerome had bought her
at Bulgari more than three and half years previously.