“Packing what? I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”
“Well … a bathing suit, at least.”
He shrugged. “I’ll wear one under my jeans.”
She thought for a moment. “The Speedos, huh?”
He nodded. “The others are too baggy. Why?”
“Just curious.”
She was worried about Theresa again; he liked that.
“Go shower,” she said.
He went to the bedroom and shed his shoes and shorts and jockstrap. As he sat on the edge of the bed, collecting his thoughts, Mary Ann came to the door. It was almost as if she had heard him thinking.
He looked up at her. “You didn’t tell me Simon was going.”
“Where … oh, the Mount Davidson thing?”
He nodded.
She went to her vanity and began rearranging cosmetics. “Well, it was kind of a last-minute thing, more or less. The poor guy obviously didn’t have any place to go for Easter, so … I thought it would be nice for him.”
He didn’t respond to that.
She turned around. “Don’t do this, Brian.”
“Do what?”
“Work yourself up again. I thought we’d put that behind us.”
“Did I say anything? I just wondered why you hadn’t mentioned it to me … that’s all.”
She shrugged. “It didn’t occur to me. It’s no big deal. It’s just an assignment.”
“At five o’clock in the morning.”
She uttered a derisive little snort. “And we all know what a lustful creature I am at that time of day.”
She got the smile she wanted. “O.K.,” he said, “O.K.”
Sitting next to him, she leaned down and licked a drop of sweat off his breastbone. “You big, smelly jerk. Just relax, O.K.?” She pulled back and looked at him. “How did you hear Simon was going?”
“Mrs. Madrigal mentioned it.” He felt stupid about it already. “Let’s drop it, O.K.?”
“Gladly.” She nuzzled his armpit. “Whew! That is potent. Don’t let Dragon Lady catch a whiff of that.” She kissed his neck and rose. “I vacuumed the car this morning.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“It’s up on Union next to the Bel-Air. I think there’s enough gas.”
He got up. “Look, I’m sorry if …”
“Hey,” she interrupted. “No apologies. Everything is fine.”
A long, hot shower did wonders for his spirits. Afterwards, he put on his bathrobe and returned to the bedroom. Mary Ann was still sitting on the bed. When he approached the mirror on the closet door, he found the “Tot Finder” taped there. He turned around and looked at her.
She was waiting with a cautious smile. “I thought we should put it up, at least. Until we decide on where to put the nursery.” Her face was full of gentleness and resolution. He knelt next to her, resting his head on her lap. She smoothed the hair above his ear. “I want one too,” she murmured.
It was almost three o’clock when he arrived at Theresa Cross’s rambling ranch house in Hillsborough. There was plenty of room to park in the rock widow’s oversized driveway, so he slipped the Le Car between a Rolls and a Mercedes, shamed by his embarrassment. Here, of all places, such things shouldn’t matter. Bix Cross was the very man who had taught him to be suspicious of materialism.
After asking directions from a uniformed Latin American maid, he made his way through the pearl-gray living room until he came to a knot of people drinking furiously by the pool. They had all the single-mindedness of an ant colony trying to move something large and dead across a room.
Someone fell out of the circle of chatter, as if thrown by centrifugal force. He was somewhere in his early forties, and his face was bland but tanned. “Hello there,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Arch Gidde, Theresa’s realtor-slant-escort.”
“Hi. I’m Brian Hawkins.”
“You’re looking for her, I suppose.”
“Well … eventually. This is the party, I guess.” A dumb thing to say, but he felt so unannounced.
Arch Gidde smirked. “This is it.” He cast a sideways glance al a lavish buffet, largely uneaten. “I hate to think how many salmon have died in vain.”
“Uh … she was expecting more?”
Another smirk. “Do you see Grace Slick? Do you see Boz Scaggs? Do you see Ann Getty, for that matter?”
How the hell did you answer that one? “Is there … uh … a specific reason or something?”
“Oh, God. You haven’t heard, have you? And I’ll bet you’re one of Theresa’s rock-and-roll buddies. Quelle bummer. You missed the big one.” He sighed histrionically. “We all missed the big one.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a furtive mutter. “Yoko Ono is throwing a little do in her suite at the Clift.”
“Uh … now, you mean?”
The realtor nodded grimly. “As we speak.”
“No shit.” It was all he conili muster.
“And madame is pissed. Madame is extremely pissed. Her guests have been bailing out all afternoon.”
“I see.” Jesus God. Yoko Ono in San Francisco.
“So,” continued Arch Gidde. “she has retired to her chambers to compose herself.” He tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger, then narrowed his eyes at Brian. “You look awfully familiar, for some reason.”
Brian shrugged. He had waited on plenty of jerks like this during his career. “I don’t think we know each other.”
“Maybe. But I can’t help thinking …”
“What’s the party for?”
“This one? Or that one?”
“That one. I mean … why is Yoko Ono in town?”
“Oh, God.” The realtor splayed his fingers across his face. “That’s the part Mother Theresa hasn’t heard yet. Mrs. Lennon is looking for a house.”
“You mean … to live here?”
His informant nodded. “She thinks it’s a good place to raise … little whatshisname.”
“Sean,” said Brian.
“Imagine what this is going to mean to Theresa. Two rock widows in the same town. Two Mrs. Norman Maines.”
He didn’t know who that was, and he didn’t want to ask. Seeking escape, he let his eyes wander until he spotted his hostess as she emerged from her seclusion. She was wearing a black-and-pink bikini in a leopard-skin pattern. Her hair seemed larger than ever.
She stopped at the edge of the terrace, resting her weight on one hip, then clapped her hands together smartly. “All right, people! Into the pool! You know where to change. I want to see bare flesh.” She strode toward Brian, pointing her finger at him. “Especially yours.”
He tried to stay cool. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She came to a halt, once again settling her weight on one hip. “Where’s Mary Ann?”
“Oh … I thought she told you. She had to work. She was really sorry she couldn’t make it.” For some reason, that sounded phony as hell, so he added: “I’m here to tell her what she missed.”
“Good,” replied Theresa, arching an eyebrow, “but don’t tell her everything.” There was something about her leer that rendered it harmless. What she seemed to offer was not so much lust as a genial caricature of it, an eighties update of a Betty Boop cartoon. She was accustomed to scaring off men, he decided; she counted on it.
Her body surprised him somewhat. Her breasts weighed in at just above average, but her big peasant nipples dented her bikini top like a pair of macadamia nuts. Her ass was large and heart-shaped, really a lot firmer than he had expected. All in all, a package that suggested a number of interesting possibilities.
“So get naked,” she said. “We won’t have the sun much longer.”
Some of the other guests were already changing, so he doffed his shirt, shoes and jeans and stashed them behind the cabana. Theresa, meanwhile, eased her way into the deep end of the pool, taking care not to damage her mammoth gypsy mane.
Brian gave his Speedo a quick plumping and ambled toward the pool. The rock w
idow’s hair bobbed above the water like a densely vegetated atoll. “You wet me,” she said, “and it’s your ass.”
He grinned at her, then dove in effortlessly, without splashing at all. It was one of his specialties. When he surfaced, Theresa was dog-paddling in his direction. “Have you eaten?” she asked, sotto voce, as if it were an intimate question.
He shook his head, tossing water off his brow. “It looks great.”
“Better do it now. You won’t feel like it later.”
He didn’t know what she meant until she aped Arch Gidde’s gesture and tapped the side of her nose. “Right,” he said. “Sounds good to me.”
She made good half an hour later when she led him into her flannel-paneled screening room and began chopping cocaine on a mirrored tray. “Take that one,” she said, pointing to the fattest line of all. “It looks about your size.” She handed him a rolled bill.
He took it in one snort, then made the obligatory face to show that it was good stuff. “Thanks, Theresa.”
“Terry,” she murmured.
“No shit? I never heard that.”
A heavy-lidded smile. “Now you have.”
He nodded.
“Only the real people get to use it.” She powdered her forefinger with the remains of the coke and rubbed it across her gums. “I don’t waste it on the phonies. You know what I mean?”
He nodded again. “Thanks, then.”
“Terry’s what Bix always called me.” This offhand brush with immortality seemed to put more bite in the cocaine. He was pretty sure she knew that.
“I wish they’d leave,” she said.
“Who?”
“Them. Those others.”
“They aren’t your friends?”
“I never do this,” she said, without answering his question. “I loathe people who sneak the stuff. But they’ll never leave if I offer them some. I know how they are.”
“Yeah.”
She grabbed his hand suddenly. “Did I show you Bix’s panties?”
It wounded him slightly to see that she had forgotten. “Yeah. Last time. During the auction.”
“Oh. Right.” She smiled penitently. “Brain damage.”
“That’s O.K.”
“I don’t show them to just anybody. Only the real people.” He nodded.
“You’re a good guy, Brian.”
“Thanks, Theresa.”
“Terry,” she said.
“Terry,” he echoed.
Phantom of the Manor
THERE WERE ELEVEN PASSENGERS IN ALL, SIX OK WHOM were Americans, The driver doubled as guide, providing commentary as the bus left the village behind and plunged into the engulfing green of the countryside.
“Today, ladies and gentlemen, we shall be visiting Easley House, the focal point of the village of Easley-on-Hill. Easley House is an outstanding example of an English Jacobethan manor house.” He chuckled mechanically in the manner of every bad tour guide on earth. “That’s right. You heard me correctly. Jacobethan. That’s a cross, don’t you see, between Jacobean and Elizabethan. The house was built between fifteen eighty-seven and sixteen thirty-five by the Ashendens of Easley-on-Hill, a Gloucestershire gentry family which had owned properly in the county since before the Conquest.”
Wilfred made a not-so-subtle yawning gesture.
Michael smiled at him. “It was your idea,” he whispered.
“She’s your friend,” said the kid.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” answered Michael, gazing out the window at a meadow full of sheep. “I’m not counting on anything.”
The bus slowed down as it entered Easley-on-Hill, a picture-perfect village built entirely of crumbling umber limestone. They bounced along a sunken lane for a minute or two, then crossed another sheep-dotted meadow until the manor house came into view.
Wilfred’s voice assumed a near-reverential softness. “Look at that, mate.”
“I’m looking.” Michael murmured. “Jesus.”
Easley House shone with the same burnished glow as the village, a looming conglomerate of gables and chimneys and tall mullioned windows winking in the sunshine. It was bigger than he had pictured, much bigger.
“She’s running drugs,” said Wilfred.
The guide pulled into a parking lot the called it a car park) several hundred yards from the house. Michael and Wilfred shuffled out with the other passengers, reassembling in a passive clump like raw recruits awaiting orders. The guide, in fact, made a passable drill sergeant, with his blustery delivery and time-worn anecdotes and his disconcerting Roquefort cheese smile.
“We shall proceed from this point on foot. Easley House is the private residence of Lord Edward Roughton, son of Clarence Pirwin, fourteenth earl of Alma, so I trust we shall all remember that and conduct ourselves accordingly at all times.”
Wilfred made a farting noise.
“Now,” continued the guide, oblivious of Wilfred’s punctuation, “the first building you will notice on our left is the tennis pavilion, a thatched structure erected in the nineteen twenties. The building across the road there is the tithe barn of the village, built in the late fourteenth century by the abbots of Easley to store the produce tithed to them by their parishioners. The slit windows in the gables were put there to admit fresh air and … what else?” He looked around, flashing more Roquefort cheese, and waited for an answer; none came. “No guesses? Well … that’s a private entrance for the owls. They needed them, don’t you see, to control the vermin.”
Four or five of the other passengers made sounds of recognition. “See, Walter,” piped one of the Americans, tugging on her husband’s arm, “see the little slits for the owls?” Her spouse nodded dully. “I see it, Phyllis. I have eves. I see the slits.”
Michael and Wilfred brought up the rear as the group was led through an ornate gatehouse built of the ubiquitous golden limestone. A small church lay to their left, encrusted with moss and whittled away at the edges by five hundred Gloucestershire winters. Its tombstones bore an uncanny resemblance to the guide’s teeth.
“Now,” he was saying, “we are passing the brewhouse, which was last used before the Great War when a brewing woman would come each autumn on a bicycle to brew the year’s barley crop. We shall enter the house through the archway just ahead, passing first through the old kitchen …”
“In other words,” whispered Wilfred, “the servants’ entrance.”
“Just behave yourself,” said Michael.
A rusted lawn roller was parked by the door. Next to it lay a hinged, V-shaped sign, apparently still in seasonal storage. Its flaking letters said: EASLEY HOUSE—OPEN FOR TEA. Michael visualized the arthritic old butler who would drag it down to the public road when summer began.
“You will note,” intoned the guide, as they entered the house and filed through a narrow passage, “these unusual-looking steel bars along the walls. This corridor was used as a larder some years back, and joints of meat were hung along these bars.”
“See?” said Phyllis.
“I see,” muttered Walter.
They were led into an empty paneled space which the guide identified as the dining room. The label seemed honorary at best; it obviously hadn’t been used for years. Then came the butler’s pantry and the lamp room, “where paraffin lamps were cleaned prior to the electrification of the house in nineteen thirteen.”
“This next room is the audit room,” the guide continued. “Lord Roughton is justifiably proud of the fact that he has not sold off the cottages of the estate. He has made every effort to preserve the visual charm of the entire village. His lordship collects the quarterly rents in person, using a special rent table—that’s it in the center there—and that table was made especially for Easley House in seventeen eighty. His lordship informs us that this practice not only saves postage but facilitates complaints about leaking roofs and the like.”
By the time they reached the great hall, Michael had been lulled into lethargy by the steady drone of the guide. He
was hardly prepared for the dimensions he encountered, the heavenward leap of the high mullioned windows facing the chapel, the echo of their footsteps on the rough plank floor.
He was certainly not prepared for Mona.
Watching from a balcony.
Standing there, cool and blond, looking down on them.
Catching his eye.
Frowning.
Disappearing.
He touched the small of Wilfred’s back. “I saw her.”
“Where?”
“Up there.” He led the kid with his eyes, “That little balcony at the end of the room.”
With uncanny timing, the guide directed their attention to the same spot. “Above us, ladies and gentlemen, is all that’s left of the original minstrels’ gallery—the place where musicians would gather to perform for the gentry gathered in the great hall. The gallery was converted to a bedroom in the late eighteen forties, at which time the oak posts supporting the gallery were sheathed with the present stucco Doric columns.”
“Are you sure?” whispered Wilfred.
“Uh-huh ”
“What now, then?”
“Nothing. We can’t. Not yet.”
The kid glanced impishly around the room.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” murmured Michael, “but don’t. ”
“Over there,” the guide rattled on, “next to the bay window, you will see a very rare Chippendale exercising chair. Bouncing on that rather odd contraption was believed to be beneficial to one’s health.” He grinned stupidly at the one named Walter. “How about you, sir? Would you care to try it?”
“No, thanks,” was the sullen reply.
“Oh, Walter, don’t be such a fuddy-duddy.” His wife gave him a little shove.
“Phyllis …”
The guide coaxed his victim with a big hammy hand. “C’mon, sir. There’s a good sport. Let’s have a hand for the gentleman, shall we, everybody?”
Even Michael became engrossed in the man’s humiliation, joining in the applause as the hapless Waller sat down in the suspended chair and began to bounce. The laughter that followed was all the diversion Wilfred had needed. When Michael turned around again, the kid was gone.